Tag Archives | East Germany

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How Hogan’s Heroes Saved Me from the East German Stasi

(Video starts after 7 or 8 seconds)  Hearty thanks to Matt Kibbe and Free the People for inviting me on this podcast.  Plenty more comic relief where this came from at this link – Here’s a story I wrote for Mises Institute in 2018 on that adventure at that communist border. Here’s the article composed […]

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Karl Marx & the Great Socialist Revival

Karl Marx and the Great Socialist Revival by James Bovard January 9, 2019 Socialism’s popularity is reviving in America. Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez captured a seat in the new Congress and is calling for confiscatory tax rates at the same time Democratic Socialist candidates are thriving in many areas of the nation. The Washington Post reported […]

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The Great Socialism Sex Charade

Vox is whooping up the wacky notion that “sex was better under socialism.” Tell that to Romanian women forced to undergo monthly gyno exams to outlaw abortions because the government proclaimed in 1985 that “the fetus is the socialist property of the whole society… Those who refuse to have children are deserters.” Women’s reproductive lives […]

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Podcast: My East German Interrogation Comedy Show

OK, so I screwed up in one of my illegal jaunts behind the Iron Curtain.    But at least there’s a funny story about how I was able to eventually bluster my way out of a long interrogation at the Czechoslovakian – East German border in the Erzgebirge mountains.  This broadcast includes my novel pronunciation of […]

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New York Times 1987: Eastern Europe, the New Third World

Some folks think that I have only recently become cynical.  Actually, my skepticism has a long pedigree… xxx New York Times, December 20, 1987 BUSINESS FORUM: ECONOMIC COLLAPSE; Eastern Europe, the New Third World By JAMES BOVARD     IN the wake of the summit talks between President Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail S. […]

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How the Berlin Wall Spurred My Biggest Blunder

Here are two more jpegs for that article created by Natalie Fawn Danelishen, the media graphics artist for the Mises Institute. Natalie does great work; if you need an artist, contact her. Mises Institute Blog, February 15, 2018 How the Berlin Wall Spurred My Biggest Blunder by James Bovard As of last week, the Berlin […]

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Communist Burlesque: The Comecon Trade Trainwreck

Mises Institute, November 6, 2017 International Trade Under the Soviets: A Comedy of Errors by James Bovard One of Ludwig von Mises’ great contributions to modern thought was his proof of the inability of economic calculation under socialism. This core truth should be recalled as many leftists seek to restore communism’s cachet. Perhaps nothing more […]

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