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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Sat, 8 Sep 2001 00:58:33 GMT
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Viewed:
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1631 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Pedro Silva writes:
> 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.
OK, great. So how was this a non event? Wasn't aware that millions of
enslaved people was a "non event". (enslaved by the USSR's territorial
aggrandisement, by the way, I haven't forgotten I have some stuff to come
back to...)
He's a twit.
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