Crime & Punishment

I wonder if mainstream media's gatekeepers have noticed the differences in the way Germany's government has handled East Germany's killings at the Berlin Wall versus the U.S. government's handling of the Waco killings.

I also wonder if it will take as long to bring guilty U.S. elected officials and bureaucrats to justice.

The Berlin Wall lasted almost 40 years.

In Germany, it took the toppling of a corrupt and brutal communist government to get some semblance of justice for the killings at the Berlin Wall.

In the United States, the same government that carried out the killings of about 80 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas is still in power. Survivors and their supporters still have not found justice.

Does the U.S. government also need to be brought down?

In a Thursday news story from Karlsruhe, Germany from Reuter, the German supreme court upheld the guilty verdict of "six former East German generals for ordering border guards to shoot refugees trying to escape to the West." (Reuter, Thursday July 24 4:57 PM EDT)

In the story, titled "Ex-Generals to Be Jailed for Wall Deaths" Reuter wrote "The Federal Constitutional Court, the highest court in the land, said in its ruling the generals had placed the state's interests above East German citizens' "right to life."

The Reuter story did not compare the Berlin Wall case to that of the more than 80 federally sanctioned deaths of men, women and children at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

In the case of the killings at Waco, U.S. President Bill Clinton, his Attorney General Janet Reno and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had also "placed the state's interests above" the rights of American citizens and their "right to life". Very few U.S. news sources have adopted this viewpoint.

In the Reuter story, "four of the generals accepted partial responsibility for killings at the Berlin Wall in a letter in 1991 to the Speaker of the German parliament, Rita Suessmuth, and asked for the border guards who fired the fatal shots to be excused."

In the United States, some federal agents were given mild discipline including formal reprimands, but no discipline has resulted for President Clinton, Attorney General Reno, or other high ranking officials, according to U.S. news sources.

In Germany, a "judge said border guards should have known that the killing of defenceless refugees was illegal, despite political indoctrination in the former communist state", according to Reuter's story.

In the United States, federal agents planning and executing the raid on the Branch Davidians at Waco seem to have been indoctrinated by the present U.S. federal branch with a bias against religious minorities.

In the United States, rather than treating the killings as something illegal that warrants justice and punishment, the U.S. government has treated the whole affair as if the deaths were unfortunate and that a few sympathetic government statements are a fair substitute for justice.

Apparently, no significant judicial reprimands have resulted in the Waco killings case. There also has been no successful filing of formal charges leading to convictions of either the agents executing the raid, or federal officials ordering and approving the deadly raid. Attorney General Janet Reno approved the deadly raid that killed men, women and children, and in the eyes of some critics, Reno ordered the raid.

In Germany, "Dozens of lower-ranking border guards have already been convicted of murder, but given suspended sentences", according to the Reuter story.

In the United States, surviving Branch Davidians were arrested, tried, convicted and punished on federal charges, according to U.S. news sources.

Still Waiting for Justice!
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