I’ve been traveling with Monica and another friend for several weeks on a gambling trip in Europe. Monica escaped communist Poland via a work visa to Sweden. She’s fluent in English but won’t talk to me. She tells me it’s because I don’t drink. In Communist Poland, booze is the first line of defense against the Secret Police. “If they drink on duty, they might slip and reveal their ‘secret identity’,” Monica tells me. We have a drink and everything’s cool. It isn’t just in the movies. It really was standard operating procedure in the Soviet Block for the secret police … Continue reading Lessons for Dealing With the American Stasi