Could East Germany succeed from Unified Germany? There is an interesting article in the Guardian regarding a recent poll by the Forsa Institute finding that nearly 20% of Germans wish for the wall back.

Westerners are fed up with what they see as sending too much money to the easterners and calling them whiners. While the easterners say not enough money is sent their way and that a third of easterners are no better off than in the communist days.

I'm not sure what this really says. It could simply be some form of class warfare or jealousy. I'm thinking the eastern part of the country's infrastructure still isn't as developed as the western sides, even after 14 years. They have higher unemployment and lower wages in the east and it may be due to this lack of basic infrastructure.

Gerhard Schroeder is really taking some flack over all of this.

The divide between the east and west is growing and I'm not sure if this is going to turn into some sort of succession attempt in the future if people get disgruntled enough. So while we are rearranging our troops around the world and deploying them elsewhere this could turn into a potential hotspot in the future if things get really bad.

Hat tip: Brothers Judd

My Beltway Traffic Jam

Update:

A week after I posted this Right Thinking From The Left Coast finds this piece in Expatica

Amid voter anger over Germany's sour economy and high unemployment, extremist parties ranging from the far-right to the former communists are expected to score big gains in eastern German regional elections Sunday, polls show.

...

Leading the rightist pack is the anti-Semitic, anti-foreigner National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) which is on target to win at least 9 percent in Saxony state while the German People's Union (DVU) is tracking at around 5 percent in Brandenburg, polls say.

"German jobs for Germans first!" demand DVU posters along roads in Brandenburg.

Meanwhile, former East Germany's communists - renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) - could grab the biggest overall share of votes in Brandenburg which surrounds Berlin.

Here the PDS could garner 31 percent, compared with 29 percent for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) who rule the economically troubled state in an awkward coalition with the Christian Democrats (CDU) as junior partner, pollsters say.

Read the rest, it's kinda scary the way it's looking exactly like Germany just before Hitlers rise to power.