Balkingpoints.com / Balkers

2 Responses to “ Berlin Wall Comes Down ”

1. USA / Roy G says:

   13 November, 2009 at 11:09 AM

   Thanks for getting that posted Jeff. I was 29 when the Berlin Wall came down, and part of the world’s population that had always known it to be there – like the Sphinx or something. Older people remember when the Soviets put it up (1961), and the whole political climate at the time.

   Others on the planet are under 25, and have lived now their entire lives with it down. (…hey, when did people born in the ’80′s turn into adults? ;^)

   I read some bull yesterday about Gorbachev letting the Wall come down because of Reagan’s relationship with him. After it fell in 1989, there was
   a lot of chest-thumping by the right-wing biased U.S. media about how Reagan’s arms buildup in the ’80′s had bankrupted the U.S.S.R.

   Nonsense on both counts.

   Gorbachev was indeed the catalyst, and literally the man who changed the world. But it had little to do with Reagan. After decades of repression by Stalin and disciples, Gorbachev had embarked as premier on 2 reform policies; “perestroika” (restructuring) and “glasnost” (opening of society
   to outside influences)

   Speech and press restrictions were lifted a little, and citizens of Iron Curtain nations began to get confirmations from Western sources of what they’d heard and felt for decades; the West had indeed prospered and enjoyed a lifestyle, well beyond what communism had delivered for them.

   And that knowledge was the beginning of the end for the U.S.S.R.

   In exactly the same way, that is how & why the WWW can be such a liberating catalyst within repressed nations now – Iran for example. I’ve read nearly half it’s population is under 35. They’ve been turned on to outside influences enough to know they do not want to live in an oppressive Islamic state akin to those of ancestors a thousand years ago. They simply want to join the modern world, with all it’s benefits and personal freedoms…
2. Canada / Pat Morin says:

   14 November, 2009 at 1:33 PM

   I was a teenager then but old enough to have heard references to the wall growing up. The disbelief and the triumph which the East Germans had in that video is remarkable. It says it all about what kind of government they were under.