The Man Who Brought Down the Berlin Wall

Gunter Schabowski was an official of the Social Unity Party in communist East Germany. He was famous for accidentally beginning the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

On November 9th, 1989, Schabowski famously announced in a live-broadcast international press conference that (effectively) all rules for travelling abroad were lifted, in effect "immediately". However, the misunderstanding was only with regards to the date; the plan had been to lift the rules, found unsustainable after the mass defections via Hungary and Czechoslovakia, on the next morning.


Tens of thousands of people immediately went to the Berlin Wall where the vastly outnumbered border guards were forced to open access points and allow them through, which proved to be the end of the Wall regime. During the following purges of the "old guard", Schabowski was quickly thrown out of the SED, which now morphed into the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), even though earlier in 1989 he had been awarded the party's prestigious "Karl Marx" medal.

After the German Reunification, Schabowski became highly critical of his own actions in the GDR and those of his fellow Politburo members, as well as of Leninist-style socialism in general. As of 2004, he remains the only really high-ranking GDR official that has renounced that state as fatally flawed. He worked again as a journalist and editor for a small local paper between 1992 and 1999. His campaign help for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) has caused some of his former allies to call him a Wryneck.

Military Honors for President Cory Aquino

President Cory Aquino's family did not opt to have a state funeral for their mother but the Philippine military gave full honors nonetheless. She was given a 21-gun salute, a ritual given by the military during funerals of Philippine presidents.

The gun salute involved volleys fired at one-minute intervals until it reached the 21st. The military did this in 4 military camps in Metro Manila: the Philippine Navy Headquarters in Roxas Boulevard; the Army Headquarters in Fort Bonifacio; the Airforce Base in Villamor; and, at the headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Camp Aguinaldo.

There was also a firing of volleys on Saturday, August 1, the day President Aquino's death was announced. Brawner said the the ritual started at 8 a.m. with 8 volleys fired. Thereafter, a volley was fired at 30-minute intervals until sundown.

This military custom was carried over from the battlefield. Warriors then temporarily ceased fighting to tend to the dead. The volleys signaled that the burial party was ready to resume battle.

Flags in military camps are also at half-mast for 30 days, as dictated by the military's manual, according to Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner, spokesperson for the Philippine military.

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