Berlin Wall Hype - Why ?

Palestinians break Israel's wall

Security walls divide Iraqis

The walls of empire are crumbling.

I think probably the reason for the hype is because a lot of Germans are celebrating.  Including a lot of German-Canadians who escaped East Germany.

I remember watching the wall falling with my mother.  We were transfixed to the television.  It was incredible.  My Oma and Opa took a trip back home a year or two later and connected with relatives they hadn't seen in 40 years - couldn't visit them before that, and they couldn't visit us, of course.  It was amazing to discover an entire family I never knew before.

Doesn't mean that socialism would be a bad thing, of course.  Germany has amazing social programs, and they could be even better as far as I'm concerned.  But the Stalinist repression that characterized the regime in East Germany certainly isn't my idea of progressive socialism.

The tearing down of the Berlin Wall was a turning point in history that failed to turn.

What should have happened is the Cold War and tensions between West (largely the U.S.A.) and East (largely Russia) should have ended.

What we have now is a new Cold War, where instead of the "threat of the spread of global communism", we have the "threat of the spread of global Islamist terrorism". Once again, Russia is "the bad guy". The U.S.A. (the Pentagon with its tool NATO) is attempting to isolate Russia by inducting former Soviet (Russian) 'Republics' like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerebaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekhistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan into NATO or at least to buy cooperation with the U.S.A. at the expense and disquiet of Russia.

Consequently, as for the fall of the Berlin Wall, I consider it most unimportant and uninteresting, other than it's 'nice' that Germany was allowed to do something that, in this case, was natural - reunify.

The hype is meant to distract us from the corporate/banking kleptocracy that's running the West, by reminding us that we have the greatest political and economic system in the history of mankind.  It's also meant to show us that Margaret Thatcher was right; there is no alternative.

Furthermore, it gives neoliberal apparatchiks like Stevie-Boy the opportunity to be heard on CBC radio thanking God for giving us our holy democracy.

It'll be the 50 year anniversary of the creation of the wall in 2 years.  Why not propose a big celebration for that and see who comes?

Surely you're not suggesting, Fidel, that the people of north Korea are better off than the people of south Korea.

Cold War anecdote: one of my classmates in school back in the '80s was months away from earning a master's degree in pharmacy in Poland when she and her husband had to flee.  Her husband was in Solidarity, and word through the grapevine was he was going to be arrested.  So they left and eventually made it to Canada.  She had many heart-warming stories of life behind the iron curtain, like mandatory May Day parades.  She tried to sit one out due to suffering from the flu, and her landlord begged her to go because he would be punished if any of his tenants didn't participate.

Surely the lesson of the 20th C is that you need a balance between capitalism and socialism - that way, neither the state, nor the private sector, has too much power.  You give too much power to one or the other, and there are abuses.

As for the people in Russia and East Germany who wish they could have communism back - ever heard the expression, "Better the devil you know..."?

Sineed wrote:

Surely you're not suggesting, Fidel, that the people of north Korea are better off than the people of south Korea.

How could they be better off? How could Cuba be better off after losing all of its trading partners with dissolution of the USSR and having to endure genocidal trade sanctions? The same vicious trade sanctions were waged against VietNam and Cambodia.

By comparison, how would the US economy fare with losing just its largest trade partner, Canada?

Sineed wrote:

Cold war anecdote: one of my classmates in school back in the '80s was months away from earning a master's degree in pharmacy in Poland when she and her husband had to flee.  Her husband was in Solidarity, and word through the grapevine was he was going to be arrested.  So they left and eventually made it to Canada.  She had many heart-warming stories of life behind the iron curtain, like mandatory May Day parades.  She tried to sit one out due to suffering from the flu, and her landlord begged her to go because he would be punished if any of his tenants didn't participate.

Where is Lech Walesa and the solidarity movement today? Margaret Thatcher bought coal from Poland at a total savings of a piddling amount of money in order to put English coal miners out of work. Gdansk shipyards and British coal mines, Sheffield steelworks etc all mothballed today as a result of the war against unionized labour in Britain.

And the USSR produced more educated people with advanced degrees than the west in a short period of time. There was socialized medicine as well. These things are gone today in those countries except for socialized medicine in Czech Republic and few others.

Sineed wrote:

Surely the lesson of the 20th C is that you need a balance between capitalism and socialism - that way, neither the state, nor the private sector, has too much power.  You give too much power to one or the other, and there are abuses.

Gorbachev said he believed that what they would be getting was a form of Swedish style market socialism. Maggie and Ronnie cheered on Yeltsin and Kravchuk from the sidelines and dared them to be dictators in the way that General Pinochet braved it out making Chile into a genesis fable for the new liberal capitalism.

Sineed wrote:

As for the people in Russia and East Germany who wish they could have communism back - ever heard the expression, "Better the devil you know..."?

Opinion polls in recent years reveal they preferred Soviet style state socialism to this, what they have now.

Fidel wrote:

Opinion polls in recent years reveal they preferred Soviet style state socialism to this, what they have now.

Can't say I blame them.  My main thing is, we shouldn't defend what is indefensible.  N. Korea, for instance, is a horrifying totalitarian state of its own accord.  

As many of your posts show, Fidel, it's entirely possible to criticize capitalism and American imperialism without downplaying human rights abuses in the past because they happened to take place in socialist countries.

I haven't read all the contributions carefully. My apologies if I missed a relevant remark. However, it may be of interest for some babblers to know that the ORIGIN of the Berlin Wall wasn't such a bad thing. What it evolved into was, of course, a different matter.

The wall originated as a response to the western (capitalist) attempts to undermine the subsidy that Germans in the DDR were getting. Lots of western spies, and scumbags, were speculating on the subsidized goods available in the Soviet Zone of Germany. So the wall was a way to combat this speculation. What a pity the East Germans weren't more creative in their subsequent policy. Fracken' idiots.

However, let's be clear about something else. The DDR never attacked anyone. OTOH, within 10 years of the restoration of capitalism in East Germany ... the Luftwaffe was bombing European targets in Belgrade. Freedom equals the right to bomb your neighbours. ooh rah. Who knew?

Victor Grossman has his say  .... 

Quote:

Why does no one recall that it was Eastern Germany, the GDR, which pushed for reunification during the postwar years while Chancellor Adenauer brusquely rejected all proposals, even general elections? Only then, and after West Germany set up its own state, formed an army, joined NATO, and insisted on regaining huge hunks of what was now Poland, were such attempts finally abandoned.

Why is it never mentioned that the GDR, though certainly undergoing an economic crisis, was in less of a crisis than all of Germany today, and that until its very end it had no unemployment, no homelessness, free medical care, child care, education, and a sufficiently stable standard of living?

Why is it forgotten that many of its travel restrictions had been considerably eased in the two previous years, so that not only pensioners, who were always able to visit West Germany, but 1-2 million GDR citizens had been able to visit West Germany in 1987-1989? Young people wanted desperately to travel, it is true; but their chances of being able to were already improving.

boomerbsg wrote:

Why Republics in quotes? I know many Balts who would object to being referred to as a "Republic" rather than the sovereign nations that they are. With the long and antagonistic relationship the Baltic states have had with Russia I don't blame them for joining the EU and NATO

I was referring to when Russia was the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). "Republics" in that context meant provinces, not independent nation states.

Yes, the non Russian peoples of former regions of the U.S.S.R. cherish their independence and are fearful of (possibly) losing it to Russia. The U.S.A., the Pentagon and NATO play on this fear to the U.S.A.'s advantage.

Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians are fearful of Russian and have joined NATO. Georgia is fearful of Russia and look at how the Pentagon insiduously stirred up trouble between Georgia and Russia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia and is trying to get Georgia to join NATO.

Ukraine has always been fiercely independent/fearful of Russia. Look at how the Pentagon has played on this and is trying to get Ukraine to join NATO.

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekhistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan, ethnically Asians and members of the Islamic faith, have traditionally been independent minded and fearful of Russia. These are oil rich countries, look at how the U.S.A. is trying to get Armenia and Azerbaijan to either join or cooperate with NATO and how the U.S.A. is trying to integrate the other countries through bilateral treaties and agreements to integrate into the U.S. dominated "global"(?) economy, etc.

Fidel, for the love of Godlessness, please don't defend North Korea.  There's never been anything positive about what happened there.  That state was never about anything but defending the party for the sake of defending the party.  And it's worse now, since Lil' Kim decided that he had to throw in with the military hardliners on the weapons thing. 

Yes, there's a lot of horrible things in the west and in "anticommunism"(which is why I've never identified as an "anticommunist" for one thing).  Everyone on the left who criticizes the Stalinist heritage agrees with that.   Why do you act like we all sweep that under the rug?

1989 happened because the people in Eastern Europe found their lives intolerable.  They knew that it was possible to have social justice without a police state(and, indeed, to have more of it).  They were forced to settle for right-wing governments by the Western outsiders.  The answer is to work with them(and the rest of the world)to create social equality without repression.  This has always been possible.  It's even more possible now.  That's what we should be doing, not wasting our time on defending any part of Stalinism(a political system under which almost all babblers would have been rounded up and shot, btw).

Ken Burch wrote:

Fidel, for the love of Godlessness, please don't defend North Korea.  There's never been anything positive about what happened there.  That state was never about anything but defending the party for the sake of defending the party.  And it's worse now, since Lil' Kim decided that he had to throw in with the military hardliners on the weapons thing. 

Yes, there's a lot of horrible things in the west and in "anticommunism"(which is why I've never identified as an "anticommunist" for one thing).  Everyone on the left who criticizes the Stalinist heritage agrees with that.   Why do you act like we all sweep that under the rug?

Ken, all we've ever heard throughout the cold war era how evil the evil empire was. We heard and read very little in mainstream corporate news media about the terrible atrocities committed in our own hemisphere as well as the frontline states and every thirdworld shithole under tutelage of the west between there and here. Very little.  We know now that a lot of the cold war news was propaganda and spin for the sake of political expediency. And the propaganda on the part of our newz agencies and politicians was both constant and pervasive.

Would you agree with that in general?

Ken Burch wrote:

1989 happened because the people in Eastern Europe found their lives intolerable.  They knew that it was possible to have social justice without a police state(and, indeed, to have more of it).  They were forced to settle for right-wing governments by the Western outsiders.

Russians wanted Soviet state socialism democratizing. I read that years ago in an article written by a former Soviet economist who was critiquing a book on the dissolution of the USSR written by American academic David Kotz and Canadian Fred Weir. Weir lived in Moscow for ten years leading up to 1989. And now opinion polls in Russia are supporting this general idea. Mind us, state capitalism in Russia or anywhere else in the world where tried never appealed to very many who've lived it. My father and his relatives lived through the 20's and dirty 30's and never talked about those years of their lives in very positve ways. There was no good economic model to follow for any world leaders then, including Stalin. who was actually busy preparing his country for western aggression against the revolution part two. Keynes and many other westerners travelled through Stalin's Russia and were impressed enough to write about what they saw happening in Russia in the late 20's and 30's. Meanwhile, laissez-faire state capitalism was flat on its behind throughout the western world, and especially in the US and Canada. 

What happened in Russia was a top-down revolution. The Moscow intelligensia and nomenklatura hated Soviet socialism. This is what they told your countrymen Dr Michael Parenti and his colleagues in academia in 1980. It was they who had nothing good to say about state socialism. And it was their eyes that lit up with dollar signs at thoughts of state capitalism and what would become the greatest theft of the commons since enclosure era England. It really was what Marx described as primitive accumulation. And they were ruthless motherfuckers about it - them, their European financier friends and US oil magnates now suing the oligarchs for leading them astray. Sure they were led astray, like babes in the woods. Do we feel sorry for them? Not one iota.

Same with the Chinese after Mao. And yet we were told that Tiananmen protesters were protesting in favour of capitalism. That was a lie, too. And we are still lied to constantly. Every day. I recognize the cold war machine set in motion again in recent news stories in the middle of our corporate-owned newspapers and magazines, radio etc. They're doing it again.

Ken Burch wrote:

 The answer is to work with them(and the rest of the world)to create social equality without repression.  This has always been possible.  It's even more possible now.  That's what we should be doing, not wasting our time on defending any part of Stalinism(a political system under which almost all babblers would have been rounded up and shot, btw).

We don't have to defend Stalinism anymore than the right feels they have to defend McKinleyism, Teddy Rooseveltism, Truman or Eisenhowerism, doctor and the madman-ism, Carterism, Clintonism, or the latest war criminals, crazy George Bushs I&II and now Obama being manipulated by the warfiteers and military-industrial lobby doing their bidding. In fact, they are publicizing the torture and renditions occurring since WW II and declaring it official policy for all to observe and get used to it happening.

Ken, what will we do if the perfect revolution happens? Will the right leave us alone to build socialism in one country? Or will they plot and scheme against us?  Will they encircle us militarily and hire neo-Nazis to spy on us and orchestrate false flag terrorism against us? Will they tell lies about us? Will they tell everyone that they have to be afraid of us? Will they threaten us with nuclear annihilation dozens of times, like they've threatened North Korea illegally so since the 1950's and continue to do?

[url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,634122,00.html]57% of East Germans prefer life the way it was under Soviet communism[/url] der Spiegel

The new liberal capitalism duller and greyer than Soviet communism?

Fidel wrote:

 Keynes and many other westerners travelled through Stalin's Russia and were impressed enough to write about what they saw happening in Russia in the late 20's and 30's. 

Did Keynes happen to make it into Ukraine in the 30s?

That 57 percent may prefer life under the old East Germany.  That does give them the right to imprison the other 43 percent by denying others the right to leave for the west.

I would be ticked off if the Canadian government told me that I could not leave Canada to go to another country.

Snert wrote:

Quote:

This is someone who feels personally affected when Stasi terror and repression are mentioned. He is an academic who knows "that one cannot sanction the killings at the Berlin Wall." However, when it comes to the border guards' orders to shoot would-be escapees, he says: "If there is a big sign there, you shouldn't go there. It was completely negligent."

 

Obedient citizens don't get shot.

Who were you quoting Snert?

Snert wrote:

One of the nostaligic East Germans from the link in post #29.

Ah. Thank you.

Actually it says the opposite.  A public police force was used as a mercenary army by wealthy private interests in Estevan.

Victor Grossman interviewed here by Sonali Kolhatkar. After the wall came down it was not unification says Grossman; rather many people who lived in the old DDR called it annexation or colonization.

Quote:

"Not everybody is happy about what happened after the Wall went down. In fact, it's often referred to in East Germany not as German reunification but as West German annexation or even colonization, because the economy in East Germany took a nosedive after the two joined, the East and the West joined -- a terrible nosedive, which is still happening." -- Victor Grossman

Sineed wrote:

Fidel wrote:

 Keynes and many other westerners travelled through Stalin's Russia and were impressed enough to write about what they saw happening in Russia in the late 20's and 30's. 

Did Keynes happen to make it into Ukraine in the 30s?

Probably not. And I don't know if he read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath either. It was a time when tens of thousands of Americans and Canadians were thrown off the land their families had lived on for generations and taken possession of by the banks. There were hungry people in two countries with lush and arable farmland from one side of the continent to the other. Families travelling with all their worldly possessions on loaded onto trucks and cars were stopped at the California state line and told to turn back because there were no jobs.

And where they were able to, the US government under FDR instituted emergency measures. Government run farm collectives sprouted up all over the US to feed and house the destitute and provide work in the bad old days of the depression which raged on until the outbreak of world war. Boulder City and Rag Town were another form of state run collectives to provide the economic security for thousands that the private sector was unable to in those days. Governments around the western world were experimenting with a new way.

[url=http://history1900s.about.com/od/photographs/tp/greatdepressionpictures....

They were lucky to arrive at government operated farm collectives. Private farms tended to pay them subsistence wages, and living conditions were appalling. Some profited by the depression at the expense of the unemployed and down and out. Some even starved to death in the land of plenty. And Canada had its own labour camps in Northern B.C. under the reign of R.B. Bennett. Canadians wrote to him with stories of hardship and illness. Sometimes the Prime Minister would send them $20 dollars in the mail. And sometimes he just sent the RCMP out west to put down striking workers and protests.[/drift]

Sineed wrote:

Fidel wrote:

Probably not. And I don't know if he read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath either. It was a time when tens of thousands of Americans and Canadians were thrown off the land their families had lived on for generations and taken possession of by the banks. There were hungry people in two countries with lush and arable farmland from one side of the continent to the other. Families travelling with all their worldly possessions on loaded onto trucks and cars were stopped at the California state line and told to turn back because there were no jobs.

Surely you're not comparing the depression with the genocide Stalin perpetrated on the Ukrainians?  Seven to 10 million, depending where you look; Stalin was careful to erase records after he erased people such that we have no way of knowing how many he actually killed.

My point was and continues to be, it doesn't do the left any good to diminish or be apologists for monstrous acts of the past because the people perpetrating them have a passing acquaintance with a philosophy you agree with.  As your posts continue to show, there's plenty to criticize about the west without resorting to making excuses for actions of the Stasi, etc.

I think there is apologism in this thread discussion, which seems to have drifted from talk of East Germany and the wall to a specific period in Ukrainian history. The wall didn't exist in the 1930's to be clear.

Sineed, if you want to call me an apologist for Stalin, that's fine. It's not true but that's besides the point. But I refuse to call you an apologist for western world fascism. Because you have not attempted to apologize for any of the atrocities and deliberate mass murders perpetrated by democratic western world governments both before and after the Ukraine famine and continuing today as in the here and now. No I will not. I don't think you would tolerate that.

Ken Burch wrote:

We'll join together, in solidarity and with passion to defend it, with our lives if necessary.  Why would that be harder than defending what happened in the USSR between the rise of Stalin(or perhaps between the defeat of the sailors and soldiers of Krondstadt)and 1991?

I don't desire another first world war to create the conditions ripe for revolution. I don't desire a second international military effort to reverse the results of a popular revolution to get rid of an anti-Semitic tsar and oppressive setup that it would have to reach that point. 50 to 83 million dead and missing at the end of WW II. Russia took the brunt of depopulation in WW I and "civil" war, and again during western aggression against the revolution part II. No thank you.

Quote:

Why do you assume it's harder to defend a good revolution than a bad one?

Oh just all of the evidence and historical record emerging bit by bit since end of the cold war? I don't know, Ken? What, pray tell, leads you to believe that history would not repeat itself? I think, Ken, that the elite around the world are fully capable of starting another world war so as to maintain their way of life and purge the world of an idea. They've been trying to murder an idea and profit by it ever since the end of the last war to end all wars.

Peter Lavalle hosts a discussion on the topic at Russia Today. The link it to a YouTube video of the discussion.