Starting a rant about the GDR with your first paragraph does only show that you have about the same mindset as the GDR gouvernment had, or worse. You dont want to hear others opinion and are going to forcefully repatriate them, if you had it your own way?! How can anyone take you serious from that point on?

I am not defending the GDR, but if you can't lean back, reflect upon the whole picture and see that the GDR was no worse then a whole lot of other countries (including, for instance the USA), and still better then about half of the rest of world you should better not starting such a thread.

And before you start to damn other governments you look at our own, and take a very close look. I dont see someone in the news with torch and pitchfork storming the Reichstag and putting them into their place. Where is your zeal, where are you? Contend with what you have and glad you're not living in africa right now, i guess.

Funny post!  I guess for some, saying "it could be worse" is a sustitute for striving for the best.  However, the proof of the error of your statements lies in the facts.

Fact: 238 people killed trying to ESCAPE the GDR. (Another 5000 were more fortunate).

Fact: 12-20 million people are IN the USA illegally.  In other words, they could not wait for the paperwork.

So I dare say that the GDR is nothing like America in any respect.  Free people voted with their lives.  You lost.

Another Egads double post.

Where do you live? We can't be talking about the same country. I think it should have been obvious that my comment about repatriating those who glorify the good old days under communist rule in the GDR to a country where most of what they praise and love is a reality was not "dead" serious, but rather an exasperated attempt to tear off the pink goggles. If they like it so much, those who fit the bill should love to live there anyway, so it'd be like doing them a favour.

I leant back and reflected and the GDR was a pretty bad place to live if you did anything but follow the rules. Loud protest of the regime would land you in a lot of trouble, often prison. And then there is the whole Stasi method of using "inofficial" employees who spied on friends and neighbours and informed the Stasi about many things that were said in the privacy of family and friends. The evaluation of those archives will keep the historians busy in the next decades.

I don't see anybody that needs to be put in place in Berlin. And if there would be, the next election will come around soon enough to allow me to express my anger by voting those that I don't like out of office. That is an option the GDR never offered as they manipulated every result of elections to have the one that the regime wanted in the end. To equal the GDR with the USA is laughable - your whole post makes it difficult to take you seriously, as a matter of fact. Please get your historic facts straight. I am not interested in polemics.

Thats great. Now tell me how many native americans where resettled (forcefully) or killed, and what was that funny stuff about that imprisonment camp the was going through press? I remember your precious agency abducting people even from germany because they might, maybe (or not all, but how knows) terrorists.

Selective memory is such a beautifull thing, isnt it. But mayby you never had any history lessons.

Ich sage nicht, dass die DDR ein toller Ort war, sondern lediglich, dass vieles von der Presse aufgebauscht wurde. Ich kenne viele die in der DDR gelebt haben, und ja, Kritiker hatten ein beschissenes Los. Aber viele mit denen ich gesprochen habe, können diese ganze Verdammung nicht nachvollziehen. Es gab im Osten viel schlechtes, aber auch gutes und die Beurteilung sollte denen überlassen werden, die dort gelebt haben und darunter zu leiden hatten, oder eben nicht. Jeden zu verdammen, der seine eigene Meinung kundtut, und nicht der Masse folgt, ist heuchlerisch und basiert m.E. auf der Propagander der Sieger. Ich persönlich habe nicht im Osten gelebt und kann mir deswegen kein Urteil erlauben, und meine Meinung ist eben genau nur das, eine Meinung.

Die Stasi war großer Mist, da stimme ich dir zu. Aber zu glauben, das es in der westlichen Welt wesentlich anders zu geht, wenn auch sehr viel subtieler, ist meiner Erfahrung nach ein Trugschluss.

Ich beneide Dich um diesen Glauben. Aber der Machtmißbrauch und die Korruption sind in der BRD genauso ausgeprägt, wie sie es im Osten waren. Eurofighter? Lewandowski? Bankerettung? Kohl verschwundene Parteimillionen? Parteiauslandskonten der SPD (oder wars CDU? hm) Auch das jüngste Beispiel, Westerwelles Hotelsteuersenkung hat natürlich überhaupt nichts mit den Millionenspenden vor der Wahl zu tun. Wirklich nicht. Ehrlich. Und ob du zur Wahl gehst oder nicht, macht doch gar keinen Unterschied mehr, die Personen wechseln, aber die Machtgefüge bleiben die gleichen. Die neue Regierung hat das ja wohl sehr eindrucksvoll bewiesen. Jede Partei ist dermaßen voll von Lobbyisten, das eine Politik für den Bürger gar nicht mehr möglich ist.

Aber nichts für ungut, du hast ein Recht auf deine Meinung. Und das akzeptiere ich. Unsere erfahrungen scheinen einfach zu verschieden.

Oh, und ich lebe in Berlin.

---------------

I am sorry for that german wall of text, but my english is not good enough to write my thougts in that matter. If it is against board rules, please delete and forget

THe main problem with a german wall of text is that fairly few on this forum can actually read it.

Anyway, I suggest watching 'Good Bye Lenin'. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301357/

I can.

But coming back to the problem, I see two easy solutions.

For those who miss living under communism, the following should be sufficient:

1. Give away three quarters of your income to charity, live off the rest. Even in rich, succesful communist societies people make less than 25% of what people make in the west.

2. Give away your mobile phone, as communist countries don't have them. Cut your telephone land line as in East Germany most people didn't have telephones.

3. Quit your job and go work in a dirty factory. Insist that most safety regulations be dismissed. Communist countries don't have the solid safety regulations found in the west.

4. Add some poisenous chemicals to the water before you drink it. Most communist countries did not have clean water (or even clean rivers).

5. Don't drive. Most people in communist countries waited decades for a car.

6. Don't travel. People were usually not allowed to leave the country under communism.

There you go. Communism is alive again.

And for those who miss the socialism, the feeling of togetherness, there are a few things that can be done:

1. Volunteer on a kibbutz in Israel. Kibbutzniks live in a socialist society and share everything.

2. Or, if you don't like Jews much, found your own kibbutz movement in Germany. If you are also a communist, you can add a secret police and a wall around the location. But statistics show that there are more socialists in Germany than there are kibbutz volunteers from Germany. Odd, that.

3. Leave Germany (or whichever western country you are from) and its welfare payments and health insurance system behind and volunteer in some poor place in Africa.

4. Volunteer for your local church. They are always looking for people who want to help others. But again statistics show that there are more socialists in Germany than there are people who voluntarily contribute to help others.

5. Get a job, work hard, and pay taxes. Contribute more to society than other people.

Problem solved.

You know, as long as we don't live in poverty and can still leave the country, I really don't care much about government corruption.

The fact that you can complain about government scandals in a public forum is the difference between West-Germany and East-Germany. Who says that democratic governments are necessarily less corrupt than dictatorships.

You do not only "envy people for their faith" [in the western system] ("Ich beneide Dich um diesen Glauben.") but you yourself show strong faith in the system when you criticise it publicly.

There are two types of faith: spoken faith and true faith. And while some people are honest enough to speak what they feel, others speak one thing but show, through their actions, that they really feel differently.

Your open criticism of the western system makes it obvious that you totally and absolutely trust the system: you do not just believe but you KNOW that you can criticise the system without fear.

"But to believe that in the western world things are really different, even though much is more subtle, is, according to my experiences, an error."

May I ask what your experiences are? Have you ever been in prison for speaking up against the system? Do you expect to go to prison for what you wrote here? I don't think so.

I'll make a wild guess here and say it:

You, my friend, have never had any such experiences as you speak of.

You have only experienced the western system as the best thing that ever happened to you. That's why you dare to criticise it openly. That's why. You TOTALLY and COMPLETELY trust this system.

If you really had any bad experiences, you wouldn't speak up any more. Very few people who have felt the power of the dictatorship continue to speak up. It takes courage that I don't think you have, that most people don't have.

I CAN read it well enough, I sort of forgot to answer. To summarize the German Wall of Text - which coincides with the article: People are mad because the verdict of the GDR is really negative. Osiris thinks that only people who have lived there should be the ones to judge it - which I think is unrealistic. Historians are able to judge and evaluate events decades, centuries or even millenia after they happened. They do that by looking at the documents (the "evidence") that is left behind. So, no OsirisDawn, it is possible to come to an informed oppinion of the political system and to judge it. That isn't meant as a personal attack on the people who lived there. I think those two things become confused sometimes.

Then Osiris relativized the Stasi and their way of operating by stating that other nations have secret intelligence agencies as well and thus weren't any better. But the german secret service never paid other west germans to spy on their friends and family which is one of the  most heinous aspects of the Stasi.

Also, corruption, lobbyism and powermiuse happen in the Federal Republic of Germany all the time so calling the GDR an unjust system is the pot caling the kettle. Which of course doesn't c hange the fact of what went on in the GDR one bit - it's a wellused defense mechanism.

Hallo nach Berlin aus Freiburg.

You will note I did not say that America (or the west) was perfect.  There is a reason for my omission.  Nothing of Man's is perfect, and no society ever created by man has been either.  America has its sins, and the treatment of the Souix, Arapaho, Seminole, and others (they as much hate "native american" as they do "indian" since both are constructs of the victorious Europeans, and not really accurate - it was not America before Vespucchi figured out it was not India) is perhaps the blackest of its sins (but definitely not the only one).

My "precious agency"?  Again you claim something I did not say.  Nor is the CIA (I gather that is your reference) pure either.  But then you can complain about past excesses because at least for now, it is a free and open society that roots out the excesses and exposes them.  And man will make mistakes (and the more power you give to man, the more mistakes he makes).  You say I have selective memory.  I challenge you to show me where.  I did not give a complete history of the world in my brief synopsis, I merely listed some facts that support a conclusion.  Not all the facts do, but then not all are relevant to the discussion at hand.  And that is why I did not clutter up my response with how many toes Lincoln had, or how many times JFK cheated on Jackie.

When I was a young lad in High School (Gymnasium), a girl - of questionable mental capacity - told me that I had no business judging anyone who used drugs because I did not use them.  Being young, I was not rendered speechless and quickly retorted "I don't use Arsenic, but I will condemn it!".  And so this statement of yours I use the same logic.  Clearly not many of us (relative to the cognizant world) lived under the Stasi in the GDR, but all are more than qualified to discuss it, perhaps more so than the people who never lived under anything else.  If you don't know what freedom is, how can you comment on it?  Yet many Ostdeutschen, not having any taste of freedom, still made a strong statement about it.  Risking their lives (and sometimes losing the risk) to gain it.  They along with all Ostdeutschen and all people are qualified to talk about it, from my perspective, since it is a natural right (not one given to people, but one that all are born with).  We do not have to tastte arsenic to know it is poison, nor do we have to live under tyranny to know it is not a good thing (not that it is all evil - some tyrants are benevolent).

As far as I know, there is no language qualifications on posts.  We have one Algerian who posts in French, and answers in French (when we post in english).  Others stick to their native tongue, and with help, we can make out what is being said.  My German is very rusty, and with the help of Leauki and Utemia, I was able to read most of your post.  And a quick referral to a German-English dictionary helped with the rest.  I actually appreciate reading it as it wipes some cobwebbs from my brain and makes me use what I have not used in a long time (but would rather not totally forget).  Danke Shoen.

I remember in 1992 - 500 years celebration of the discovery of the american continent by Columbus - that many native first nation tribes were sort of pissed off at the celebration because it hadn't been any good news for them. I think some even went to Europe and declared it as their territory to mirror what happened in the wake of Columbus.

The worst US president for native american tribes was Andrew Jackson in the 1830ies. He was quite the little dictator and forced the tribes to move beyond the Mississippi, away from their fertile lands where they had settled before. If I remember correctly, the relationshp between the settlers and tribes wasn't bad at all, too. But they wanted the land so the 5 civilized tribes were forced off. Interestingly enough, one chief sued against that in the Supreme Court and won, but that didn't help in the end.

Political correctness made those Indians target the wrong man.

Columbus did not enslave the Indians, his Spanish masters did. And then did those who came after them. Columbus only discovered the land (for Spain) and wanted to become rich through trade. I cannot condemn him for that. Even the nicest American Indian would want the same if he had the technology to contact remote civilisations.

Many Indian tribes and nations also profitted from the arrival of the Europeans, namely those who were slaves or tributaries of the more powerful nations and who chose to be allies of the Spanish rather than slaves of other Indian nations. Not all of them became victims. And not all of those who became victims had been entirely innocent before.

The Indians had a chance to celebrate what should have been a wonderful experience, the first contact between civilisations, instead they chose to blame the contact for everything that happened later. They blamed Columbus for the crimes committed by others. Instead of celebrating the man who tried to connect people, they gave up a chance to tell Europeans and European-Americans what they really did wrong, how they should have handled the situation, and what they could do to create a better future for everyone.

Discovering America was not the great crime the politically correct crowd pretend it was.

Enslaving and killing a population is a crime. But finding out that they exist is not.

Just to put this in perspective:

The five civilised tribes were called such because the white settlers, quite in contrast to the racist image they have now, really did regard those tribes as "civilised".

Of the five tribes, two allowed slavery like the southern states did. Indians owned black slaves just like the European-Americans did.

In the Civil War, two tribes fought on the side of the rebels and two fought on the side of the Union. One tribe was divided and one half fought on the rebel side and one half on the Union side.

Many or most of those Indians adopted a "white" lifestyle and simply became "Americans". The rest were eventually removed.

The "Trail of Tears", the most symbolic example of the crimes committed against Indians by Americans affected some 15,000 Indians, 4,000 of whom died in the process. In total less than 50,000 Indians were removed in that manner. Those tribes were dramatically smaller than we imagine now. (Of course, if something that happens in Europe kills a mere 4,000 people, we wouldn't even mention it in history books. We have much higher standards.)

The tribes that were not "civilised" were often hunter gatherer societies who take up a lot more land to live than agricultural societies (like the Americans). The same thing happened in Europe 10,000 years when the farmers arrived from the Middle-East and replaced the natvie European population of hunter gatherers.

I never said that Columbus was the villain. But the celebrations centered around his discovery and accomplishment. The criticism by the protesters wasn't about him but generally on colonialization. I don't really remember many details about it, it was 18 years ago. 
If you were to take the net benefit that natives gained in total and weighed it against the total negative impact I think the negative would win by far.

I said that the 5 civilzed tribes went along ok with the white settlers. They had their own alphabet and court system and so possessed many similarities. They were agrictultural and raised crops and sold them. But more and more settlers arrived and they wanted the fertile land, and so the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830. For not being a very large group the 5 tribes owned quite a bit of land and greed raised its ugly head.

Ah..and I wouldn't quite compare the neolithic age with the situation in the the americas in the 17th, 18th and 19th century which implies a sort of natural development which might be used to justify driving those "primitive nomads" off the great plains. Not that you saidand meanth it that way, but some people argue like that.

History went as it did, but I find the way the first nation tribes were treated morally and ethically very questionable because every treaty that had been made was broken. It was always justified by needing more land, or some security issues. Even when they protested against that treatment by using the US legal system (they sued against it - very modern actually) which ruled in their favour, it still didn't help them. Nobody questions that. Or are you saying that it was OK by employing the utilitarian argument of what is good for the benefit of most people is the best solution? Quite a way to judge quasi genocide.

I don't really know many details about indian culture,  but there were enough tribes that were high developed. They weren't primitive. I don't know if they used metal though. But even if they didn't, where does it say that the use of metal is the qualifier for a worthy and respectable civilization and culture?