Subject:
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Re: Bummer of the Week: LEGO Made in China (long forgotten subject!)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.fun
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Date:
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Fri, 7 Sep 2001 22:20:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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1821 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Dave Low writes:
>
> > I couldn't find any more informative references to or by him either -- his
> > comments on Ayn Rand's propagandists were sufficient guarantee of
> > reliability for me as a layperson:
> > http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/overrate.htm (#18)
>
> He's a twit. Quoting:
>
> The Berlin Wall (1961-89)
> Berlin: the grim and lonely front line in the Cold War.
>
> What exactly happens on the front lines of a non-event? Border guards glare
> at one another; they patrol the barbed wire perimeter, and carefully check
> your papers before waving you through.
>
> Big deal; they do that on the Canadian border.
>
> Can anyone explain the importance of the Wall without using the word "symbolic"?
>
>
>
> How about this: "Hundreds of thousands of people escaped enslavement before
> it was built, it kept millions from trying to escape after it was built, and
> the guards directly caused the death of hundreds if not thousands of people
> shot while trying to cross it"
>
>
> Never once used symbolic, did I?
No, you did not.
But I must say it doesn't take *a wall* to prevent people from fleeing (see
"Iron curtain"), and people got shot and killed while crossing borders in
different contexts: before 1974 you could get killed by the portuguese
border patrol if you were caught "jumping" (crossing with no papers) to
Spain. My point is that those who were shot had no papers/visas, and were
illegally (acording to DDR's law) trying to cross the border - hence
becoming "legal" targets. Not that I agree with that, but it was *their* law.
So I disagree with you when you claim the Berlin Wall was not symbolic: It
was a symbol, a very *visible* symbol of the ideological fracture between
East and West. The key is visible - it was of little difference trying to
cross the German border elsewhere, because there were *different*, less
visible, means to keep people "imprisioned". In fact, bearing in mind the
relative proportion of East Germans living near BRD's border (including West
Berlin's), Berlin had the correspondent death ratio of about a third of the
total.
Besides, some of the impact of the Berlin Wall was due to the fact it was
built fairly quickly and unexpectedly, suddenly showing East Germans what
their government thought about those who wanted to leave. It ended many
hopes, and when hope is gone there is little else to fight for - such was
the intended "psichological factor" (spelling?) of the Wall. It almost
succeeded, yet fortunately it did not.
Pedro
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bummer of the Week: LEGO Made in China
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| (...) He's a twit. Quoting: The Berlin Wall (1961-89) Berlin: the grim and lonely front line in the Cold War. What exactly happens on the front lines of a non-event? Border guards glare at one another; they patrol the barbed wire perimeter, and (...) (23 years ago, 7-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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