The Associated Press - Published: Monday, Nov. 9, 2009 - 11:23 am
BERLIN -- President Barack Obama has paid tribute to the fall 20 years ago
of the Berlin Wall in a video message to the main anniversary event.
Was he watching the hoops playoffs when he made the call or was he on
the golf course talking on his satellite phone?? The German Prime
Minister invited Obama to Germany to celebrte the anniversary of
Reagan bringing down the Berlin wall but he said he was "too busy". I
bet he'd find the time if they were putting the wall back up.
Ft. Hood?? To do what make another speech?? Will he wait 2:30 into the
speech to FINALLY mention the terrorist attack on the soldiers?? "In
their hour of need". Gimmee a fucking break !!! The last thing the
military needs is to have big eared community organiser useing them as
a photo-op.
BUTWHADDABOUTBUSH !!!???
This may be a big deal in Germany but it's pretty much a nonevent in the
US. Why should Obama care?
--
Building a better American by hammering the right.
The Joe Steel Blog
http://thejoesteelblog.blogspot.com
Reagan hasn't done shit.
>wall but he said he was "too busy".
And yet, you would have complained had he decided to go.
You rightards are soooo predictable...
I
> bet he'd find the time if they were putting the wall back up.
Is this from you or are you quoting Limbaugh or Beck or another of
your heroes`?
Get help
I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor,
who has symbolised throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin.
And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished
chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and
freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American,
General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis
and will come again if ever needed.
Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum". Today, in
the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner".
I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!
'Vitality and force'
There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they
don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist
world. Let them come to Berlin.
There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them
come to Berlin.
And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the
Communists. Let them come to Berlin.
And there are even a few who say that it is true that Communism is an evil
system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin
kommen. Let them come to Berlin.
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have
never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from
leaving us.
I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the
other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the
greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a
distance, the story of the last 18 years.
I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still
lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of
the city of West Berlin.
'Part of the main'
While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures
of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction
in it, for it is, as your mayor has said, an offence not only against
history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing
husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish
to be joined together.
What is true of this city is true of Germany - real, lasting peace in Europe
can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the
elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice.
In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned
the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their
nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people.
You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main.
So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today,
to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin,
or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the
wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to
all mankind.
'Front lines'
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.
When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will
be joined as one and this country and this great continent of Europe in a
peaceful and hopeful globe.
When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take
sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost
two decades.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and,
therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner".
> Joe Steel wrote:
>>
>> This may be a big deal in Germany but it's pretty much a nonevent in
>> the US. Why should Obama care?
>
> ...
>
> All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and,
> therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein
> Berliner".
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3022166.stm
>
As the son of a capitalist and a capitalist himself, Kennedy had an
interest in opposing and antagonizing the East. He got some applause
when he said it but almost 50 years later we'd just as soon forget. The
American People were not well-served by capitalist war-mongering and
terror-driven politics.
If he had gone, I am quite sure that you and the entire right-wing
noise machine would be condemning him for wasting his time on a
celebration, in some other country, of some event that happened 20
years ago, when we have an economic crisis and two wars to deal with.
Can anyone doubt it? After all, you went on the attack when he went to
Amsterdam for a day to lobby for bringing the Olympics to the U.S. for
2016. Right-wingers actually applauded with joy when America lost that
bid. (Chicago IS in the U.S., you know, and real Americans actually
live there.) How anti-American can you get?
If he had gone to Berlin, you'd be ragging on him for not going to Fort Hood
memorial. Which is the more important place for the President of the United
States to be?
--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> September 5914, 1993
293 days since Rick Warren prayed over Bush's third term.
Obama: No hope, no change, more of the same. Yes, he can, but no, he won't.
Reagan hasn't done shit.
===================
Reagan praised the Wehrmacht SS on the D-Day 40th celebration.
He was definitely smart enough to do what he was told.
He clicked his heels, gave the Hitler salute and goosestepped back to Mommy.
That seems to be the MO lately of the Republican party. If Obama does
something, it's wrong. If Obama doesn't do something, he's wrong for
not doing it.
Quick: Someone name one thing the Republicans have consistently
praised Obama for doing.
ESAD !! Now you're getting a taste of what we have had to listen to
for 9+ years. Get used to it. You're clueless community organiser is
gonna get his mulatto/marxist ass ripped every time he opens his
smelly cakehole. Learn to live with it because you ain't seen nuthin'
yet.
Naw, he's going to praise the Germans for murdering millions like Saint
Reagan did.
ESAD !! Now you're getting a taste of what we have had to listen to
for 9+ years. Get used to it. You're clueless community organiser is
gonna get his mulatto/marxist ass ripped every time he opens his
smelly cakehole. Learn to live with it because you ain't seen nuthin'
yet.
============
Shove it. Ever heard of Bill Clinton, Sonny?
Saint Reagan went to Berlin to praise the WWII rightwing repugs from
Nuremburg.
The goal of America is to destroy the White race. The
multi-culture and pluralism they push is only at the expense of
Whites. No one is trying to push multi-culture in China or Japan or
anyplace but on the Whites. And they promote racial intermarriage.
If things continue as they are the White race is doomed.
And who is doing all of this? It is the USA government and the
media, in other words the Jews.
Many Whites are traitors. They support the USA government and their
own destruction. We should look for allies. And anyone who wants to
remove the Jews from power is our ally. In the past the Japanese were
our allies. Today it is the Muslims.
Osama bin Laden
September 24th statement published in Pakistan
"I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We
are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United
States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic
freedom. This system is totally in control of the American Jews, whose
first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is simply that the
American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced
to live according to the principles and laws laid by them. So, the
punishment should reach Israel. In fact, it
is Israel, which is giving a blood bath to innocent Muslims and the
U.S. is not uttering a single word."
http://www.ihr.org/ www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/
http://www.natvan.com http://www.nsm88.org
http://heretical.com/ http://immigration-globalization.blogspot.com/
How old are you?
Conclusion: The fall of the Berlin Wall is a huge event in
Germany and a non-event in the U.S.
If he'd gone, you'd be saying that he should have stayed
home to attend the Ft. Hood service. You dickheads are
quite predictable.
Who needs ideas when you're got ideology?
Michael
So you *believe* that our President's efforts to try to create new
jobs in and bring thousands of foreign tourists to the United States,
who would have spent LOTS of money, by having the Olympics here was
somehow a "BAD" thing?
-Tom Sr.
He may be suffering from Global Obstruction Pathology. GOP sufferers
want to oppose, obstruct or complain about everything which doesn't
benefit them personally and immediately.
They have a support group.
It's called the Republican Party.
So don't whine to the rest of us about President Obama's not going,
unless you want cheese with it.
-----
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120251027
*Official Discusses Release Of Berlin Wall Documents*
November 9, 2009
Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, talks to host
Melissa Block about the release of secret documents concerning the
Berlin Wall. He says that neither Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa nor
the George H.W. Bush administration wanted it to come down, while the
Soviets and the Czechs were thinking of tearing it down themselves to
relieve the refugee problem.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
While ecstatic crowds poured across the border in Berlin 20 years ago,
a number of key world leaders were deeply anxious about the turn of
events: worried about the prospect of a unified Germany that they were
sure would follow. The nonprofit National Security Archives has just
published secret documents from the time. You can find them at
npr.org. And the archive's director Tom Blanton joins us to talk about
what those files show. Tom, welcome back.
Mr. TOM BLANTON (Director, National Security Archive): Hi, Melissa.
BLOCK: One of those documents is of a conversation between Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
This was a little bit more than a month before the fall of the wall
and Margaret Thatcher flat-out tells Gorbachev: Britain and Western
Europe are not interested in the unification of Germany.
Mr. BLANTON: She was anxious as all get-out. I mean, she really did
not want Germany to be reunified and so she was coming to Gorbachev to
say do whatever you can to stop it. You've got those troops in East
Germany. We want you to stop it. She actually tells the note-takers
stop taking notes. Of course, his name was Anatoly Chernyaev. He runs
out in the hallway and scribbles it down. And we have his diary today,
which is part of what we're publishing. It's fascinating because
Chernyaev later writes, you know, Thatcher wants to prevent Germany
from coming together, but she wants to do with our hands, that is to
say, not her own. The top leaders were really worried. I mean, here in
Washington, George Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft,
scribbles in one of his sort of daily diary entries: Gosh, you know we
might be better off if Germany stayed divided because at least then
we'd have a little more stability. They were all scared to death of
the unknown, what could happen.
BLOCK: Well, what was the fear of a unified, strong Germany?
Mr. BLANTON: I think from the American side, the fear was a Germany
that would go neutral, and therefore, no longer be part of the
alliances and would therefore be this big wild card in the middle of
Europe. I think for the Soviet Union, which had been invaded by
Germany under Hitler, the fear was for revanchist power in a way that
would start threatening all the neighbors. But what's fascination
about the anxiety is that the Germans themselves kind of take their
own fate into their hands. First, the East Germans pushing across the
wall that night and then voting for a unification but in a very
interesting, peaceful economic way. I mean, once of the historians who
was at a conference the other day said, you know, the Poles had the
pope but the Germans had the deutsche mark.
BLOCK: Let's talk a little bit more about the Bush administration's
position at the time. A couple of years earlier in 1987, Ronald eagan,
of course, made his famous pronouncement - Mr. Gorbachev, tear down
this wall - and the impression would be that's exactly what the Bush
administration wanted: the wall to come down, Germany to reunite.
Mr. BLANTON: That Reagan speech has risen to the level of myth. But it
was really, I think, directed more at a domestic audience. He was at a
weak point in his presidency after the Iran-Contra affair. So, he was
kind of taking back some of the old rhetoric, that morning-in-America
Reagan again. And I think American policy was real clear. Yes, we're
for a united Germany except getting there was a whole other matter.
And with the hallmark of the Bush administration, I think, during 1989
is worry, anxiety, insecurity. And you see it over and over in the
internal notes, the diaries where they say Gorbachev's out in front.
He's more popular than we are. He's got the initiative.
And they never seem to ask themselves, wow, all these initiatives.
Maybe that's in our best interest. Bush actually writes in his diary
in July 1989, after he met a bunch of dissidents in Eastern Europe,
says things are spinning out of control. I better get together with
Gorbachev and see if we can slow it down.
BLOCK: Hmm.
Mr. BLANTON: Interesting. U.S. policy was to slow down the change in
1989.
BLOCK: And within the Soviet Politburo at the time, what was the
thinking? Was this the logical extension of Gorbachev's policies of
glasnost and perestroika or was this going off in some wild direction
that they didn't think they could control?
Mr. BLANTON: I think logical extension - there's this wonderful moment
on November 3rd, 1989, where in the Politburo, the Foreign Minister
Shevardnadze says, you know, we ought to take that wall down
ourselves. There's not much response to it in the Politburo. They go
on and talk about other topics. But they'd already - Gorbachev at
least - had already decided to take down the barriers. He had this
idea about a common European home - wasn't exactly a concrete plan but
it was a vision. So, when the wall fell, there's actually some joy -
amazing, there's joy in Moscow, worry in Washington, high anxiety in
other capitals, too.
BLOCK: No worry though in Moscow that this would represent the end of
Soviet domination in Eastern Europe.
Mr. BLANTON: They didn't see it that way. Gorbachev didn't see it that
way. He saw it as part of what he kept calling the pan-European
process toward one common home - a lot of contradictions there. He
sure didn't see unification happening so quickly. He'd had a different
plan for it. But interesting that in Moscow there wasn't panic. They
didn't see it that way, the way we look back at it today in this kind
of golden glow and say, oh, that was the end of communism. We're kind
of imposing our view today, but at the time it was very different.
BLOCK: Tom Blanton, thanks for coming you.
Mr. BLANTON: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: Tom Blanton is director of the National Security Archive.
Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved
-----
-Tom Sr.
>"Tom Sr." <tomswif...@gmail.com> wrote in news:e3fa9f9e-610c-47c5...@d5g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:
>> On Nov 10, 6:19 pm, VRWC Destruction Machine <RightWin...@vrwc-dm.com>wrote:
>>> The boy went the Coppenhagen on the thought his celebrity would bring
>>> the Olympics to Chicago.
>>
>> So you *believe* that our President's efforts to try to create new
>> jobs in and bring thousands of foreign tourists to the United States,
>> who would have spent LOTS of money, by having the Olympics here was
>> somehow a "BAD" thing?
>>
>
>He may be suffering from Global Obstruction Pathology. GOP sufferers
>want to oppose, obstruct or complain about everything which doesn't
>benefit them personally and immediately.
>
>They have a support group.
>
>It's called the Republican Party.
That is so good it belongs in the subject line.