20 Years Since Berlin Wall Fell

**Bobl** · November-08-09, 12:56 PM

Yes, it has been twenty years. I thought it would be interesting to get some comments from forum members.
Here are two thoughts that I have:
While driving a German acquaintance down Jefferson years ago, past the lakefront mansions of the Grosse Pointes, he actually gasped when we entered Detroit at Alter. "Who threw the switch? Looks like we just entered East Berlin in the 1960s" was his observation.
Who would have believed it, twenty years ago, if told that it would soon be easier and more convenient to cross all borders in Europe than to visit Windsor from Detroit?

**Detroitej72** · November-08-09, 06:50 PM

Originally Posted by Bobl

Who would have believed it, twenty years ago, if told that it would soon be easier and more convenient to cross all borders in Europe than to visit Windsor from Detroit?

Sign of the times, Europe is opening her boarder while America is closing hers down.

**Bobl** · November-08-09, 07:00 PM

...Which begs the question: Who is winning the "war on terror"?

ccbatson · November-08-09, 07:50 PM

It would help if our President would acknowledge that there is an ongoing war and engage in it.

**elganned** · November-09-09, 07:59 AM

There is no "war on terror". That was a transparent excuse used by our former POTUS to justify pointless adventuring in far-off lands. It's no more a "war" than was the War on Poverty or the War on Drugs. Pure rhetoric, nothing more.

What it is is an ongoing police operation against an international gang of criminals, conjoint with two actual wars that have as much to do with terrorism as butchering cattle has to do with religious revival, i. e., nothing at all.

**Lowell** · November-09-09, 12:09 PM

What a great anniversary, one that I never thought I would celebrated in my lifetime and now it is twenty years in the past already.

I was fortunate to be in Berlin the following year to pound this baseball-sized chunk out of the wall while a bored East German guard looked on.
Attachment 3775

**Bobl** · November-09-09, 12:24 PM

Originally Posted by ccbatson

It would help if our President would acknowledge that there is an ongoing war and engage in it.

He has already kept the USA free of attacks longer than Bush did.

**Danny** · November-09-09, 01:00 PM

It's awful back then when the East German Communist Socialist Eastern Bloc Government along their the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had proposed to build a 10ft solid concrete wall all over East Berlin to prison those who tried to escape to the west. After the collapse of Eastern Bloc and U.S.S.R. Germany is united and family and friends from long ago are back to loving each other.

Communism will never tame the human spirit and it will never win against the free world. Karl Marx, your dialectical materialistic practices is absolutely flawed and it never be used in this planet or the rest of the universe. I would like to see this evil practice BANNED! for good.

**rb336** · November-09-09, 01:55 PM

Originally Posted by Danny

It's awful back then when the East German Communist Socialist Eastern Bloc Government along their the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had proposed to build a 10ft solid concrete wall all over East Berlin to prison those who tried to escape to the west. After the collapse of Eastern Bloc and U.S.S.R. Germany is united and family and friends from long ago are back to loving each other.

Communism will never tame the human spirit and it will never win against the free world. Karl Marx, your dialectical materialistic practices is absolutely flawed and it never be used in this planet or the rest of the universe. I would like to see this evil practice BANNED! for good.

the soviet union, china, cuba, etc, are about as close to Marxist as Leonard Nimoy is to a Vulcan. they are/were nothing but fuedal states with the "party" replacing the aristocracy

**barnesfoto** · November-09-09, 02:43 PM

I went through the wall at Friederichstrasser Station one cold day a lifetime ago and thought that it was the most evil thing that I ever saw. Never cared for borders after that, and never suspected that the wall would ever come down. I still remember buying a Free Press at Vernor and the Blvd, at dawn on the morning of Nov.9, 1989 and seeing the stunning headline "Berlin Wall Opens to Freedom".
How sad and pathetic that some people who are old enough to remember this wall have the audacity to think that it should be duplicated here.

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/11/09/we-are-the-people/

**Detroitej72** · November-09-09, 03:22 PM

Originally Posted by barnesfoto

How sad and pathetic that some people who are old enough to remember this wall have the audacity to think that it should be duplicated here.

Kind of like the conservatives who want to duplicate the wall down along our boarder with Mexico?

**elganned** · November-09-09, 03:31 PM

The one big difference between the Mexican wall and the Berlin Wall is that the former is to keep people from getting in, while the latter was to keep people from getting out.

I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, and the wall was a fact of life, like gravity. It would always be there.

Then it wasn't, just like that.

A magical day, after which one thought that anything was possible.

**gibran** · November-09-09, 03:40 PM

Berlin wall, Warsaw Ghetto, apartheid walls, ethnic ghettos, Bantu States don't solve conflicts; since that has to come with justice...walls just makes the truth harder to be seen. The human spirit will endure as long as it has a crack to let hope in...we as people need to be able to see beyond the walls and see the realities of why they are there in the first place.

**Detroitej72** · November-09-09, 03:46 PM

There is a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in----

Leonard Cohen.

ccbatson · November-09-09, 05:18 PM

The wall represents socialist oppression...and Obama would love to rebuild it.

**barnesfoto** · November-09-09, 05:45 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZK7D...eature=related

ccbatson · November-09-09, 09:26 PM

A wall to keep people out...versus keeping people in.

**barnesfoto** · November-09-09, 10:24 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LAChIoJQPg

**elganned** · November-09-09, 10:39 PM

Originally Posted by ccbatson

The wall represents socialist oppression...and Obama would love to rebuild it.

Maybe he'll build it through your neighborhood. But it wouldn't compare to the wall you've built in your mind to keep reason out.

**Gistok** · November-10-09, 12:51 AM

Well I actually thought that this was going to be a thread where we didn't have one savant babbling endlessly about SMART and Livonia... and another savant babbling incessantly about Socialism... which by the way Germany HAS...

But I was wrong...

The Berlin Wall was the most famous section of the fortified border between East and West Germany.

My family originally comes from northern Bavaria, only 8 miles from the former Iron Curtain. It was a chilling experience when I was young, visiting a West German overlook across the 1/3 mile wide swath of no-mans land of unvegetated minefields, razor wire fences and warning signs... that cut across the heart of Germany, thru forests, hills and valleys.

I had made this pilgramage about 10 times in my life, and was finally glad to see this ugly abomination to humanity finally gone.

**rb336** · November-10-09, 08:16 AM

Originally Posted by elganned

Maybe he'll build it through your neighborhood. But it wouldn't compare to the wall you've built in your mind to keep reason out.

beautiful. what a perfect encapsulation of the right-wing mindset

**gnome** · November-10-09, 05:11 PM

Was in Alexanderplatz in East Berlin and a couple of young guys started buskering out some off-tune Buddy Holly tunes. Folks are tossing in a few pfendings into their open guitar case, then out of the crowd swoop in five large STASI types and stomp the shit out of the kids.

People just turned away and looked at the ground like nothing had happened.

**oladub** · November-10-09, 09:08 PM

This is a great discussion of the non permanence of borders. The guy is neither advocating or discouraging borders. One of the things he notes is that Tea parties sometimes get out of control. I think he is suggesting that something like a successionist Tea Party movement or the Mexican immigration are both candidates for altering our borders. Or maybe parts of the Canadian border will eventually fade away.

Bookmark it-
Futurist and author Juan Enriquez
http://www.poptech.org/popcasts/juan_enriquez__poptech_2006

ccbatson · November-10-09, 09:13 PM

He [[Obama) is building a wall [[as in iron curtain) of socialism in all of our neighborhoods.

**barnesfoto** · November-10-09, 09:42 PM

^^^^ die mauer im kopf ^^^^

As for "futurist" Juan Enriquez, he needs to go back and brush up on his Spanish History. Spain has not been speaking Spanish for anything close to 500 years...Spain is really about 5 countries that became one country when two monarchs got married, assembled an army and drove out the Jews and Muslims 500 years ago, and Spanish only became the true national language under Franco, who also outlawed regional languages, giving rise to Basque and Catalan Seperatist movements.

Given his stunningly simplistic view of history, one can predict that Enriquez' view of the future is even more flawed.