Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

F6 .. a documentary on the Berlin crisis .. fascinating, it was as you were there, in places .. early on one group of 17?
escaped by fashioning a homemade key to the subway, where they flagged down a train .. another .. chat chatted,
to learn how to start an armored car, stole it, drove over 20km, smashed it into the wall, was dragged over by
West Berliners, and into a bar where he, from the floor, saw labels on booze bottles .. only then did he know
he was in the West .. some context, mostly recreations of escapes, and interviews with those concerned ..

Just had a thought that the ideologues bringing on the credit crunch are a bit like, Honecker, et al .. those in
East Berlin determined to stand against change .. against inevitable change .. mean a 'bit like' in that respect ..

These videos i had loaded so am going to leave .. since, i have found the oldish article, and the VIDEO link, below ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cggRzZ_N30M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWLHOD-o-Bk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFT_E7BFfJE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1i-0mNt--w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loAR7XPWQ1o

Busting the Berlin Wall
About the program [c VIDEO]
Bob Wurth 02 November 2009



As we mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bob Wurth considers the case for the 'West Bank Security Fence'.

While Berliners joyfully celebrate the 20th anniversary of the tearing down the hated Berlin wall, Israel is nearing completion of its own high wall around Palestinians on the West Bank.

The demise of the Berlin wall began on November 9, 1989 when Communist East Germany, under increasing international and domestic pressure, finally announced that East Germans could cross freely to West Berlin, which paved the way for the tsunami of German reunification.

There is some irony for Israel in the concept of high border security walls.

The Nazi plan to exterminate Europe’s Jews took place at villa in a suburb of West Berlin called Wannsee, as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN in September 2009: “There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments.”

Netanyahu flourished a copy of the minutes in the General Assembly for deniers of the Holocaust, especially Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The world’s horror at what the Nazis did to the Jews in the extermination camps assisted in the creation of the Jewish state of Israel.

But are there lessons to be learned by those who would divide communities using concrete walls?

There are some similarities and many differences when comparing the Berlin Wall, started in 1961, to what Israel today calls the “West Bank security fence”, which started in 2002.

In 2003, Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader, famously said Israel was constructing “a Berlin wall” around Jerusalem.

Border walls block the normal interaction of people and trade. They cause personal hardship and lead to agitation and strife.

East Germany constructed the Berlin Wall to keep its own people in, stopping a flood of East Germans defecting to the West. It stemmed not only an outward flow of educated and skilled workers but also the people’s desire for change, greater freedom and opportunities.

Israel is constructing the West Bank wall to keep its enemies out and to stop Palestinian suicide bombing attacks on its citizens.

Much of Israel’s 700-kilometre barrier is a wall - not dissimilar to Berlin’s - up to eight metres high in a 60-metre exclusion zone. It runs for the most part along the 1949 Armistice “Green Line”, with deviations. Much is located on territory occupied by Israel in the West Bank.

Palestinians say the wall is an Israeli land grab and is part of the problem, not the solution. It effectively prevents Palestinians from travelling within the West Bank, in some cases to their own disputed land.

But there has been a dramatic drop in the number of attacks in Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu told Parliament in July 2009 that his wall will stay: “I hear they are saying today that because it’s quiet, it’s possible to take down the fence. The opposite is true. It’s quiet because a fence exists.”

Yet international reaction to Israel is moving ahead, just as it did for the former East German GDR regime, which ceased to exist in October 1990. On October 16, 2009, the UN Human Rights Council endorsed a report accusing both Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas of committing war crimes.

While Israel has stemmed Hamas attacks and reportedly satisfied a majority of its own people, history would find some irony and condemnation if Israel was found over prolonged years to have excessively inhibited the Palestinian people’s freedoms and opportunities, as the now defunct East Germany regime did with its wall for some 28 long years.

The West Bank wall will be completed in 2010. It’s future will depend on a more lasting
peace than currently exists in the region, and the ebb and flow of international politics.

http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/blogs/view/id/114116/t/Busting-the-Berlin-Wall