Author: Gene Berkman

Several years ago, when President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, I sent an email to several people to explain that in the original German, it would be called “Heimatsicherheitsdienst. ”

Heimat is “Homeland” in German. Sicherheitsdienst means “Security Service.” The Third Reich had a Sicherheitsdienst – SD – and the German Democratic Republic had a Staatsicherheitsdienst – State Security Service. So parallel to Nazi Germany and Communist Germany, America now has a Heimatsicherheitsdient.

Yesterday I did a google search to see how many websites or blogs had a reference to “Heimatsicherheitsdienst” and 54 hits came up. Today I did the same search, and got 66 hits. Most hits were postings criticial of the Homeland Security agency on various libertarian or left-liberal blogs. But both yesterday and today, the final hit that came up on google was the official website of the Department of Homeland Security www.dhs.gov !

Try it yourself.

~ Gene Berkman, Renaissance Books.

Politics1.com is a very useful site for political information. The politics1.com site includes pages for each state, with lists of announced and potential candidates, links to party websites and news websites for each state. Politics1.com also carries long, interesting profiles on the various political parties — not just the two major parties, but all the little parties on the right, on the left and on various tangents.

The editor of Politics1.com carries information on candidates and parties without bias , but occasionally lets his own views be known. He was enthusiastic for Howard Dean’s campaign last year, because of shared opposition to the Iraq War. Apparently he has taken a position that while the war was wrong, we are now responsible for Iraq and cannot pull out until it is safe and stable.

Today (August 5, 2005) he carried an editorial worth reading headlined:

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS … BY BRINGING THEM HOME
“Until this week, I was in the ‘You break it, you bought it’ camp…” (a position shared by Howard Dean and other mainstream “opponents” of the war.)

“We were misled into the war and never should have crossed the line that turned us into one of the bully nations that unilaterally starts so-called “pre-emptive” wars. “(This is a view that now more than half of Americans agree with, according to recent polls.)

“There is a very thin line between liberator and occupier — a line that usually gets get crossed very soon after the “victory” is declared…the distinction today between Iraqi insurgent and Iraqi citizen seems almost non-existent…”

“I fear that if we stay in Iraq another year (or another ten years), the internal situation in Iraq will remain largely unchanged — but the horrific body count will be so much higher. They obviously don’t want us there…”

His solution: “…let’s declare victory today (“The world is rid of Saddam Hussein…”), bring our soldiers home, and give them some great parades and our thanks for their sacrifice…No more American mothers should have to bury sons who died “defending” a foreign nation that doesn’t want us there. Bring ’em home. Every single American soldier. Starting today.

Read the whole thing here: (scroll down to the 7th post)

Gene Berkman