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 ..
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.
Buffett: GOP Threatening To 'Blow Your Brains Out' Over Debt Ceiling
James Sunshine The Huffington Post First Posted: 7/7/11 04:01 PM ET Updated: 7/8/11 01:38 AM ET
Republicans are playing a dangerous game by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, according to Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.
"We raised the debt ceiling seven times during the Bush Administration," Buffett told CNBC on Thursday. Now, the Republican-controlled Congress is "trying to use the incentive now that we're going to blow your brains out, America, in terms of your debt worthiness over time."
If Congress fails to raise the borrowing limit of the federal government by August 2, the date when the U.S. will reach the limit of its borrowing abilities, it will likely begin defaulting on its loans.
But even with this information, Buffett is unfazed.
"We had debt at 120 percent of the GDP, far higher than this, after World War II and no one went around threatening that we're going to ruin the credit of the United States or something in order to get a better balance of debt to GDP."
Some experts, like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, have floated the idea of the Treasury paying some obligations while not paying others. This, Buffett says, is ludicrous.
"If you don't send out social security checks, I would hate to think about the credit meeting at S&P and Moody's the next morning," Buffett told CNBC. "If you're not paying millions and millions and millions of people that range in age from 65 on up, money you promised them, you're not a AAA." A triple-A credit rating is the highest possible rating that can be received.
The Republicans’ Unprecedented Obstructionism by the Numbers
By Jon Perr - October 13, 2011 04:00 PM - 13 comments
Credit: Perrspectives
"Congressional historians said Mr. Boehner's move was unprecedented." A month before Senate Republicans blocked Barack Obama’s popular jobs bill, that’s how the New York Times described Speaker John Boehner's refusal to grant the President's request for a September 7 address to joint session of Congress to present the American Jobs Act. As it turns out, "unprecedented" is apt description for almost every boulder in the stone wall of Republican obstructionism Barack Obama has faced from the moment he took the oath of office. From the GOP's record-setting use of the filibuster and its united front against Obama's legislative agenda to blocking judicial nominees and its admitted hostage-taking of the U.S. debt ceiling, the Republican Party has broken new ground in its perpetual quest to ensure that Barack Obama will be a one-term president.
Even before Barack Obama took the oath office, Republicans leaders, conservative think-tanks and right-wing pundits were calling for total obstruction of the new president's agenda. Bill Kristol, who helped block Bill Clinton's health care reform attempt in 1993, called for history to repeat on the Obama stimulus - and everything else. Pointing with pride to the Clinton economic program which received exactly zero GOP votes in either House, Kristol in January 2009 advised:
"That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues."
The essence of the argument involves section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
In my view and that of Prof. Epps, this means that the president would have constitutional authority to take extraordinary measures to protect the public credit and prevent a debt default even if it means disregarding the debt limit, which is statutory law subordinate to the Constitution. .. your - http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2296/debt-limit-options [with comments]
.. from your second .. What our Declaration really said - By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: July 3[, 2011] .. one ..
Whether they intend it or not, their name suggests they believe that the current elected government in Washington is as illegitimate as was a distant, unelected monarchy. It implies something fundamentally wrong with taxes themselves or, at the least, that current levels of taxation (the lowest in decades) are dangerously oppressive. And it hints that methods outside the normal political channels are justified in confronting such oppression.
We need to recognize the deep flaws in this vision of our present and our past. A reading of the Declaration of Independence makes clear that our forebears were not revolting against taxes as such — and most certainly not against government as such.
In the long list of “abuses and usurpations” the Declaration documents, taxes don’t come up until the 17th item, and that item is neither a complaint about tax rates nor an objection to the idea of taxation. Our Founders remonstrated against the British crown “for imposing taxes on us without our consent.” They were concerned about “consent,” i.e. popular rule, not taxes.
The very first item on their list condemned the king because he “refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” Note that the signers wanted to pass laws, not repeal them, and they began by speaking of “the public good,” not about individuals or “the private sector.” They knew that it takes public action — including effective and responsive government — to secure “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” .. your - http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-our-declaration-really-said/2011/07/02/AGugyvwH_story.html [with comments]
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