101–110 of 324 posts
The photo of the balloon here really helps put the story into perspective. https://web.archive.org/web/20190408181736/https://www.museu...
> “Are we here in the West??” Only this one question is asked by Peter Strelzyk and Günter Wetzel when they were in the early morning of the 16th. The "Handmaid's Tale" TV series has a great variation on that moment, which chokes me up every single time. (spoilers in video title) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c
Odd how nobody ever builds a balloon to fly towards the communist utopias.
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That movie was also all over the Disney Channel when I was a kid. Many other movies have related messages. And much of the public library books were a couple generations old, plus there was the Cold War, which meant lots of exposure to anti-fascism messages, and to anti-Soviet-like messages. So, today, people of a certain age, who paid attention in school, have been programmed that the secret police saying, "Your pap…
Downvoters: The story is about the terrible politics, and should be a cautionary tale that's immediately very relevant. Unless you were only interested in the ballooning "maker" angle?
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The 2018 film is a really good movie, I would highly recommend checking it out!
+1 to this! I wonder if some of the horror in it (the constant threat of the Stasi and its implications) translates well to non-German audiences. In case you're wondering about Germany's strict privacy laws - this is part of why they exist.
Not anymore.
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I believe the USA-Mexico border wall was called something similar
That wall is to keep people out from another state, not in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson#:~:text=A%20month...
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I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a bad implementation? Obviously, if you intend to abduct ("imprison") or kill ("execute") somebody as punishment, then you should have very high certainty they deserve that punishment. One of the methods of achieving that is giving them a chance to defend themselves ("court process"). I don't see any difference between individuals and monopolies on violence ("state…
"I didn't say a lynchmob, why do people always assume a bad implementation?" Maybe because of your language? "Bleeding out on the pavement is also acceptable."
But if the choice is between no punishment and somebody gunning them down in the street or droning them, i prefer the latter.
Court processes are useful when guilt is uncertain at first look and you want to increase certainty. But dictators and their close supporters, the certainty is often sufficient by nature of many their actions being public. Sometimes they literally go on TV and declare they're going to a foreign country to kill their people and take their land. At that point, it only becomes a matter of making sure you have the right person.
And don't forget the victims. Many authoritarian regimes don't kill opposition outright (for various reasons) but imprison them instead. Such a victim knows many of the people (cops, judges, informants, etc.) responsible for / guilty of falsely imprisoning them. After a regime change, the victims go free and have often more knowledge of the offenses than can be proven to a court by the simply virtue of being there and therefore have more than enough confidence to deliver a just punishment.
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+1 to this! I wonder if some of the horror in it (the constant threat of the Stasi and its implications) translates well to non-German audiences. In case you're wondering about Germany's strict privacy laws - this is part of why they exist.
The havoc that finding out your family and friends spied on you for benefits, can not be overstated. How deeply anti social and lonely such a divided and conquered socialist utopian society is can not be expressed in words, and yet it can. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesbeauftragter_f%C3%BCr_di...