Saturday, August 13, 2016

When A Wall Is Built….NEVER AGAIN!

Whenever a government wanted to either isolate its citizens from outside influences or prevent a foreign invasion, a wall was built. The Chinese built the longest wall on earth, Europe has had walls built around towns (medieval age) and even the early Wikings had walls around their villages. Castles were surrounded by walls to protect from “the pitchforks” and so were Christian Convents. In America, Forts were surrounded by palisades.

Building walls has always been seen as the most appropriate way of either confining or protecting people.
I grew up in Germany after the war. While I was a kid in West Germany the country went through the aftermath of WWII. Germany was divided  into allied zones. Americans were in the south, French had the west and the Brits had occupied the north, and the Russians held the entire east, including East Berlin. While the western allied forces were working towards an orderly release of government to German authorities, the Russians never had any plans of giving back the eastern zone. Instead they started a new country, The German Democratic Republic (DDR). It became a satellite country to the Soviet Union and was systematically robbed of its resources and put under a dictatorship of the Socialistic Unity Party (SED) It was all other but democratic. What had been the Gestapo under Hitler became now the STASI (Staatssicherheitsdienst) in the new state.
And of course, the Russian-led DDR government started to build a wall through Berlin “to protect its citizens from western capitalism propaganda and influence”.  I don’t know whether they ever realized that the wall did not prevent western news from its free flow into the east.  Instead, it was dividing families and friends and cutting off any trade across the border. It became the biggest drama and tragedy in Germany after the war. And the Russians didn’t only build a wall through the city but also set up a country-wide border line fortified with barbwire and mines, and guarded by border guards trained to kill people who did not believe in their shrewd anti-western propaganda and  attempted to cross the “Iron Curtain” into the west. Around 800 DDR-escaping citizens have been killed, some execution-style, at iron-curtain borders which led into freedom. I don’t know whether there has ever been a more tragic border in the world, but it made me the most freedom-loving person.

 
Pictures of a post-war Berlin after the city was divided by a wall.                         By Swedish Photograph  Bernard Larsson

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  “Bernauer Strasse” w. wall and closed-off windows
  Before those windows were closed people escaped the east by jumping down into the street which was West Berlin

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image-1033429-galleryV9-wche-1033429                                     Make-shift wall

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image-1033441-galleryV9-peym-1033441                     Hiding the view to “Reichstag” building

image-1033443-galleryV9-tnut-1033443                                Young boy with a toy pistol
Listening to a self-destructing bigot idiot of a U.S.- Presidential candidate talking about building a massive wall towards Mexico is making me sick to my stomach, even though I know it’s never gonna happen.
It’s just one of his crazy sick NAZI fantasies.
The mere fact that he now received an “endorsement” of the American Nazi Party, is hopefully making even his most eager supporters realize what kind of fools they have been to even consider him as their president. And if not they qualify as Nazis themselves.

Walls may have filled a purpose when wild hordes of enemies were lurking outside, ready to kill and destruct, but walls have outlived their time. Today, our world is facing global problems none of which can be solved by building walls.
No country should build a wall towards its neighbours. Instead, every effort should be made to be on friendly neighbourly terms and encourage trade and mutual exchange. Nationalism has never been a way to increase prosperity.

6 comments:

  1. It makes me wonder if - and that's a really big if - there was a Trump wall, then would Mexico reciprocate and tell the American tourists to stay the hell out of Mexico? Could you blame them?

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  2. Peter,
    I agree,spent 1963 thru 1967 in the town of Helmstedt,Germany with the Army Security Agency in the British sector with the East Germans looking at us from the other side of the barbed wire fences and guard towers.So glad to have seen the reunification of Germany.

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  3. You're talking about walls within a country. That would be similar to putting a wall between the eastern U.S. and western U.S. We have to be tougher with our southern border because we are not only dealing with Mexico, we are also dealing with South America. One of the arguments supporting Mexicans is that they fill an employment need in harvesting crops, housekeeping, etc. and they are referred to as "cheap" labor. Their living conditions once here is not always the best. Isn't that "slave" labor? Our immigration process is broken and we have to temporarily stop the flow and reboot. Like it or not, Canada has a "wall." One cannot waltz across the border on either side. What's the definition of "wall?"

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    1. I am not talking about borders. I am talking about physical walls like a certain Mr. Trump has in mind. I am fully aware of the problems of your southern border, but a physical wall is just too silly and will not serve its purpose. Especially because you just can't build a wall across mountain tops, but also because it is an outrageous thing to do in itself. I would definitely reject your idea that Canada has a wall. It's a friendly border where I am on a first name basis with our CBP and CBSA-officers. A borderless conglomerate like the European Union is not gonna work. We all know that. But would you build a wall around the entire EU? i think not.(besides of the fact that it is physically impossible)

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  4. There's another element that I failed to mention--our Border Patrol. They need to be allowed to do their jobs and we need to enforce our deportation laws. Trump's not going to build a physical wall unless he uses Mexican labor. I wonder how many would cross the border for that project? I live near a tourist town and a lot of the workers here are from Peru.

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    1. I do understand your point and I agree but a wall would not solve the problem. Because they would keep coming across the sea. Our wonderful government in Canada has now said that we need to import more workers from China to cover for a lack in labor force. The only reason they are saying it is to keep wages down for the industry. And that is precisely the reason in the U.S. as well. But it is officially rectified by saying Americans/Canadians don't want to have those jobs. I happened to overhear a conversation between young people in Banff (tourist town) where they all said that they could not get a job as all jobs were given to the Chinese. Banff has gotten into Chinese hands and they work for crumbs. The fastest way of stopping that kind of exploitation would have been to increase minimum wage for ALL. A Canaddian cannot live of $10/hr especially not in Banff. Chinese can as they all live on top of eachother in primitive accommodations. But this is all a bit beside the topic of building walls.

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