Some context: Erich Mielke was born in a tenement in Berlin-Wedding, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire, on 28 December 1907. During the First World War, the neighborhood was known as "Red Wedding" due to many residents' Marxist militancy. In a handwritten biography written for the Soviet secret police, Mielke described his father as "a poor, uneducated woodworker," and said that his mother died in 1911. Both were, he said, members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
Mielke was then put on trial for ordering the shootings of East Germans who were trying to defect to the West. In November 1994, the presiding judge closed the proceedings, ruling that Mielke was not mentally fit to stand trial. During his incarceration, at JVA Moabit corrections officers supplied Mielke with a red telephone like the one in his office at Stasi Headquarters. Although it was not connected to the outside world, Mielke enjoyed having imaginary conversations with non-existent Stasi agents. His other favorite pastime was watching game shows on television. In 1995, parole officers and Mielke's attorneys argued that he was "totally confused" and obtained his release. At 87 years of age, Erich Mielke was Germany's oldest prison inmate and had been incarcerated for 1,904 days. Days before his release, the Public Prosecutor of Berlin announced that he was "not interested in chasing an 87 year old man anymore" and that all further prosecution of Mielke had been indefinitely suspended. According to Koehler: [Mielke's] bank account, which held more than 300,000 marks (about US $187,500), was confiscated. Before his arrest in 1989, the most feared man in East Germany had lived in a luxurious home with access to an indoor pool. In addition, he owned a palatial hunting villa, complete with a movie theater, trophy room, 60 servants, and a 15,000 acre hunting preserve. After he was released from prison Mielke was obliged to move into a two room, 600-square-foot flat. Like all Stasi pensioners, he would henceforth have to live on 802 marks (about US$512) a month.
What else is interesting about his imprisonment?
A: During his incarceration, at JVA Moabit corrections officers supplied Mielke with a red telephone like the one in his office at Stasi Headquarters.
Some context: Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. (born September 18, 1951) is an American neurosurgeon, author and politician serving as the 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development since 2017, under the Trump Administration. Prior to his cabinet position, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the Republican primaries in 2016. Born in Detroit, Michigan, and a graduate of Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School, Carson has authored numerous books on his medical career and political stances.
Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Robert Solomon Carson, Jr. (1914-1992), a World War II U.S. Army veteran, and his wife, Sonya Carson (nee Copeland; 1928-2017). Robert Carson was a Baptist minister, but later a Cadillac automobile plant laborer. Both of his parents came from large families in rural Georgia, and they were living in rural Tennessee when they met and married. Carson's mother was 13 and his father was 28 when they married, and after his father finished his military service, they moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Detroit, where they lived in a large house in the Indian Village neighborhood. Carson's older brother, Curtis, was born in 1949, when his mother was 20. In 1950, Carson's parents purchased a new 733-square foot single-family detached home on Deacon Street in the Boynton neighborhood in southwest Detroit. Carson's Detroit Public Schools education began in 1956 with kindergarten at the Fisher School, and continued through first, second, and the first half of third grade, during which time he was an average student. When Carson was five, his mother learned that his father had a prior family and had not divorced his first wife. In 1959, when Carson was eight, his parents separated and he moved with mother and brother to live for two years with his mother's Seventh-day Adventist older sister and her sister's husband in multi-family dwellings in the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston. In Boston, Carson's mother attempted suicide, had several psychiatric hospitalizations for depression, and for the first time began working outside the home as a domestic worker, while Carson and his brother attended a two-classroom school at the Berea Seventh-day Adventist church where two teachers taught eight grades, and the vast majority of time was spent singing songs and playing games. In 1961, when Carson was ten, he moved with his mother and brother back to southwest Detroit, where they lived in a multi-family dwelling in a primarily white neighborhood (Springwells Village) across the railroad tracks from the Delray neighborhood, while renting out their house on Deacon Street which his mother received in a divorce settlement. When they returned to Detroit public schools, Carson and his brother's academic performance initially lagged far behind their new classmates, having essentially lost a year of school by attending a Seventh-day Adventist church school in Boston, but both improved when their mother limited their time watching television and required them to read and write book reports on two library books per week. Carson attended the predominantly white Higgins Elementary School for fifth and sixth grades and the predominantly white Wilson Junior High School for seventh and the first half of eighth grade. In 1965, when Carson was 13, he moved with his mother and brother back to their house on Deacon Street. He attended the predominantly black Hunter Junior High School for the second half of eighth grade. When he was eight, Carson had dreamed of becoming a missionary doctor, but five years later he aspired to the lucrative lifestyles of psychiatrists portrayed on television, and his brother bought him a subscription to Psychology Today for his 13th birthday.
Was Ben Carson well liked in the early days?
A:
Some context: John Bruce "Jack" Thompson (born July 25, 1951) is an American activist and disbarred attorney, based in Coral Gables, Florida. Thompson is known for his role as an anti-video-game activist, particularly against violence and sex in video games. During his time as an attorney, Thompson focused his legal efforts against what he perceives as obscenity in modern culture. This included rap music, broadcasts by shock jock Howard Stern, the content of computer and video games and their alleged effects on children.
Thompson was involved in a similar suit in Alabama in 2005 on behalf of the families of police personnel killed by Devin Moore, a teenager who was reportedly a compulsive Grand Theft Auto player. The lawyer's participation in the case, however, ran into a dispute over his pro hac vice, or temporary, admission to practice in that state. The opposing attorneys sought removal of the privilege by arguing that Thompson's conduct was unethical and claiming that he had threatened and harassed them in letters and emails. The judge added that Thompson had violated his gag order during Moore's criminal trial. Thompson tried to withdraw from the case, but his request was denied by the judge, who went ahead and revoked Thompson's temporary admission to the state bar. For his part, Thompson said he thought the judge was trying to protect Moore's criminal conviction at any cost. He also complained about the judge's ethics, saying a local attorney who claimed to have influence on the judge had assured him the case would be dismissed unless the attorney was on Thompson's team, and also claimed that Rockstar Entertainment and Take Two Interactive posted slanderous comments about him on their website. In the aftermath of this lawsuit, Thompson lobbied Alabama attorney general Troy King to file a civil suit and call on retailers not to sell "cop-killing games". After the slaying of another police officer in Gassville, Arkansas by Jacob D. Robida, an 18-year-old fugitive, Thompson again raised the possibility of a connection to Grand Theft Auto, but investigators found no evidence that video games were involved.
Did the judge respond to this assertion?
A:
In the aftermath of this lawsuit, Thompson lobbied Alabama attorney general Troy King to file a civil suit and call on retailers not to sell "cop-killing games".