Fall of Berlin Wall Anniversary More Than Just Media Overkill
Considering the amount of coverage that the arbitrarily chosen 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall received, one would think that it was purely, or at least mostly a media event.
As it turned out, despite the cold rain falling on November 9, 2009, it was more of a celebration of the human spirit, of the beginning of the end of communism in Europe and a call for action against continuing violations of human rights throughout the world.
There have been many discussions as to who actually contributed the most to the disintegration of communism.
Most knowledgeable experts underscore the huge contribution of Pope John Paul II, who has given the Polish people the encouragement needed to start the strike at the Gdansk shipyard and to found the Solidarity trade union in 1980.
The communist government has cracked down on Solidarnosc on December 13, 1981. Many activists were imprisoned, but the opposition remained very active, finally reaching the point in February of 1989 of forcing the Polish government to initiate talks with the opposition to defuse social unrest.
Here’s the rest of the timeline of events, leading up to the demise of communism in Europe:
1989
April 5: The Roundtable Agreement is signed in Poland, legalizing independent trade unions and calling the first partially democratic elections in June.
May 2: Dismantling of the Iron Curtain – the boundary between Warsaw Pact and NATO countries – begins as Hungary disables the electric alarm system and cuts through barbed wire on its border with Austria.
Aug. 19: The ‘Pan-European Picnic’ – a peace demonstration at the Hungarian town of Sopron on the Austrian border – turns into an exodus when Hungarian border guards hold their fire as 600 East German citizens flee to the West.
Aug. 24: Tadeusz Mazowiecki is appointed Polish prime minister, becoming the first noncommunist head of state in Eastern Europe in more than 40 years.
Sept. 10: Hungary reopens its border with East Germany, allowing 13,000 East Germans passage to escape through Austria.
Oct. 18: East German leader Erich Honecker is forced to resign.
Nov. 4: One million people rally in East Berlin during weeks of mounting demonstrations.
Nov. 9: The Berlin Wall falls.
Nov. 17: The ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Czechoslovakia erupts in reaction to a police crackdown on peaceful student protests in Prague. Days of mass demonstrations ensue.
Nov. 24: Communists in Prague step down.
Dec. 3: Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov, speaking after a press conference between George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, who were concluding a shipboard summit at Malta, declared: “From Yalta to Malta, the cold war ended at 12.45 p.m. today.”
Dec. 22: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu is overthrown. He and his wife, Elena, are executed three days later after a summary trial.
1990
April 8: Hungary elects a non-communist government.
Oct. 3: Germany unifies.
Dec. 9: Poland elects Lech Walesa president.
July 1: Baltic states gain independence from the Soviet Union.
Dec. 25: The Soviet Union dissolves.
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So why didn’t Obama go considering he spoke in Berlin when he was running for prez?
Always Obama this, or Obama that… He did send Hillary and a video message and he is heading for Asia.
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Thank you so much! I feel properly honored
Nice dodge on your answer. I’d think the prez of the US should have been there.
Harrison, its not a dodge. He also should have been in Poland on September 1, 2009, at the commemoration of the start of WWII. The WH sent Jim Jones, instead.
Didn’t Jim Jones drink the Kool Aid? Just asking you why you think he didn’t go.
Harrison, you seem to be under the impression that I have a really close, almost a touchy-feely relationship with the present occupant of the White House. Am I right in that assumption?
I don’t want to disappoint you, but frankly, the president did not consult with me about going, or not going to the Berlin festivities.
Wow all of the sudden opinions are very scarce here!
Harrison, maybe in that case YOU would like to venture an opinion as to why Obama didn’t physically go to Berlin?
Did he go spiritually? I don’t know… can’t explain it really. He should have been there.
Harrison, maybe he should, but there is no doubt that it was more of an European event and the Obama administration doesn’t seem to be as interested as much as it should in relations with Europe.
Sadly, I think you are right.
Obama should have been in Europe to celebrate the fall of that war. When that wall fell western Europe unified, perhaps more so than any other part of the world. Their conservative and liberal extreme exceed ours, and yet they are much more tolerant of each other. They are much more tolerant of other cultures. They are far more advanced than us socially. Fall of that wall was a great, great achievement for mankind, that was a healing in response to the Holocaust. Irregardless of how American leadership acted towards it, instead of focusing on them, we should just recognize and respect how important this even was. Lets hope same unity can be recreated in other parts of the world.
Golden Arple, I agree in general terms, although don’t really see the fall of the Berlin wall, as being too closely connected to the Holocaust, or healing in that regard.
After all, the Holocaust was perpetrated by the Germans and the Berlin Wall was in fact built by someone else entirely.
Europeans are not “more tolerant” of other cultures. The French dislike the N. African immigrants the British feel a similar way about the Muslims who are in that country establishing a state-within-a-state. All of Europe dispises the Roma, and in Holland they have huge problems with Muslims (witness the Allah cartoons). And if they are so “advanced” why have they been stalling Turkey on trying to join the EU for the last 15 years? Are they so tolerant that they don’t want all those Muslims pouring into their countries?
Yes… Europe is “far more advanced” in that they have higher unemployment, less diverse economies, poor healthcare, and in places like England “Big Brother” with cameras everywhere checking on their population. They also do not have true freedom of speech. Quite an “advanced” place indeed.
I lived over there for a couple of years and I can tell you I would take the US over that any day.
And Europe can only be “so advanced” because America essentially has covered their defense since 1945 allowing their governments to dump money into their social system. But even that time is drawing to a close as deficit spending threatens to rip the EU apart.
Harrison, the main Mohammad cartoon issue emerged in Denmark.
Yes, we have been covering their defense. Only a tiny fraction of Turkey is in Europe.
They actually have freedom of speech, but that varies from country-to-country Their health-care system – despite all the propaganda is superior to ours in most ways and in general, their quality of living is indisputably higher.
I have lived there also and I experienced it first-hand.
My mistake I was thinking of the film maker Theo van Gogh who was slaughtered in the streets of Holland by a Islamic fanatic.
And if I had prostate cancer, breast cancer, or any of the other most common forms of that disease I would not want to be treated for it in Europe… their survival rate is much less than it is in the US. Guess that’s why our healthcare system sucks?
From the time I lived there and the people I knew (French 20 year olds) they were miserable because they could not find jobs. It’s still that way. No thanks.
And you either HAVE freedom of speech or your DON’T. Sort of like being pregnant… you are or you’re not.
Harrison, at the same time, isn’t the cancer rate lower in Europe in general than in the U.S.? Could it be the crappy food that we produce and eat, or the not so good health-care system, or both?
Frankly, our young people are not faring much better nowadays as far as jobs. More and more are coming back after finishing their college education to live with their parents. And yes, as far as France is concerned, there was a story not too long ago about a group of unemployed young people taking over a mansion in Paris. Maybe our young people should take over the mansions of the Wall Street shysters?
Harrison, do you really think that there are significant differences in the issue of freedom of speech between the U.S. and most European countries? Personally I haven’t noticed it.
I know there are in England, France, and Germany. I don’t know about the other countries but those are kind of the biggest ones in Europe. In France you can be sent to jail for “hate” speech. Of course we all know banning “hate” speech prevents people from thinking bad thoughts.
People eating badly has nothing to do with a healthcare systems ability to do a good job. The REAL reason for the survival rates (they are percentage based by the way) is because over here preventative screening is common and there it’s not (not paid for!).
Funny… when people’s 401Ks were doubling every year I never heard about the “Wall Street shysters.” Shyster, btw, is commonly an anti-semitic term.
Harrison, nobody’s perfect, I guess. Here you can get sent to Guantanamo, or some other dark hole, just for talking, or writing about what could be perceived as terrorism contacts, or activities by the authorities. Catching a real perp is one thing, locking up and throwing away the key, because someone might have wanted to do something, but actually didn’t (Moussavi comes to mind here), is another.
Just because the medical diagnostic system is hugely overbuilt, profitable and over-used, like ours is, doesn’t necessarily make it good.
I have never believed in the 401ks and have absolutely no use for them, now, or before.
This is from Wikipedia:
“A shyster is a slang word for someone who acts in a disreputable, unethical, or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law and politics.” You can add “business” to that. “The word is derived from the German verb scheissen, ‘to defecate’ and the English suffix -ster, “one who does”. German speaking people consider the word to be the lowest form of insult. Shyster is an alteration of the German Scheißer (a person who is shitting). [2] Various false etymologies have proposed an anti-Semitic origin, and some people continue to regard the word as referring particularly to Jews or Jewish lawyers.”
I did not intend to say that Europe is a perfect system. I don’t think we, as a human race, will develop a political system that is eliminated all problems any time soon. Every society has something they need to work on.
Harrison, you mention that Europe has let United States worry about their defense, and sank all of their money into social programs. I don’t understand why you’re making it sound like a negative thing? Isn’t that a society that we should be striving for, where we spend our resources not on weapons, but on the infrastructure and education to evolve as a country?
Read Paul Kennedy’s book ‘The Rise and Fall of Great Powers’ if you ever have a chance. Other world powers, at the height of their influence, did what we are doing now, sink majority of their budget into military force. And the closer they got to the end as the empire, the more they spent on war. At times I feel like United States is doing the same. And what do we have to really fear? A terrorist act that can kill 3000 people? Do we fear invasion and occupation? A nuclear war?
We have a government, and very helpful media outlets, that first plant fear of the outside, foreign world, that make us believe everyone is against us and wants to hurt us. Once we are afraid, once we feel vulnerable, we are told that the only way we can fix that is to attack some far away country and to wage war against an idea. If we want to fight terrorism, we have to start fighting it on the home front. There are more terrorists in Washington then in the caves of Pakistan and Afghanistan. If we want people to stop hating us, to stop wanting to hurt us, we have to do a better job ensuring they have a better quality of living.
I think over the last eight years, the Bush administration did a superb job making Americans believe that during 9/11 we were a target because the terrorists hated ‘the way we leave’, ‘how much freedom we have’, ‘how well we treat our women’, and ‘how much wealth and success capitalism brings us’. But those are not the reasons at all. Instead, we were attacked because of years of foreign policy decisions that, while militarily and strategically strengthened United States, in the process also hurts millions of civilians in the countries where United States operated. When you think about Afghanistan, that country was destroyed in the 80’s by the Soviets (when US funded the insurgents that are fighting us now) again now by United States, and in the middle was ruled by a harsh and oppressive government. The elected government, representing US interests, isn’t fairer, effective, or any more popular now. When you think about how poor and violent their life has been over the last three decades.. are you surprised they are resorting to suicide bombings to try to get change?
Golden Arple, couldn’t have put it better myself. Thank you.
There are many faults in your logic. Mainly, you ignore that somebody will have to spend money on defense… had the US not “covered” that for Europe since WWII they could not have built up their social programs. Even with the US having taken that obligation away from Europe their social spending has grown so large that now even they cannot afford it. So it lasted for maybe 2 generations now it will have to end.
And people said a similar thing about the “American empire” 100 years ago. They were wrong then they are wrong now.
You are also wrong to think that Islamic extremists do not hate our way of life. All of the things we take for granted do not exist where Sharia law does. It is their goal to restore the Caliphate. And they view anybody who stands in their way as their enemy. Going and hiding in a little hole somewhere will not save you. To believe that it will is a mistake.
Harrison, frankly, is there a real, meaningful difference between the different shades of extremism? Are the Christian, or Jewish (haven’t noticed too many Buddhist extremists for some reason), or Muslim extremists THAT much different from each other in reality? I doubt it. Extremism in general is the wrong way to look at things.
Last time I checked we didn’t have a “problem” with Christian or Jewish extremists flying planes into buildings or setting off car bombs and killing 100 or more people at a time. Islam has not gone through a Reformation so they live in the Dark Ages. That’s fine for them just don’t try and make me live there, either.
Harrison, as you might have realized by now, I don’t happen to be a Muslim.
No, we haven’t taken up the “flying planes into buildings or setting off car bombs” game as yet. Instead, we have replaced it with dropping bombs from planes and firing missiles and artillery. Is there a meaningful difference there? Both methods kill scores of people – mostly civilians.
You miss the most important part… the INTENTION is different. And when fighters hide amongst civilians that’s what happens.
Harrison, I don’t think that I am missing the point at all. The INTENTION is absolutely identical: to kill someone, someone doesn’t like – period.
Do THEY have troops on our soil, by the way?
That is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. By your definition we should not have fought Germany in WWI or WWII because they weren’t on our soil.
Harrison, comparing the needless invasion of Iraq, to the needed invasion of Nazi German must be the biggest load of crap of all!
I’ll side with Politicus on this one, you cannot compare World War II with Afghanistan/Iraq. Unless you consider us to be playing the role of Germany in the two recent engagements.
Actually, I never mentioned Afghanistan, Iraq, or anything else it was you who said why fight someone who isn’t on our soil.
Harrison, we can assume that the discussion is about relatively recent events, not something that happened 60+ years ago.
I am speaking in general…
You know what they say about assumptions…