RE: Fighting the cybercensor

>That's it?  The system collapsed because the guards left their posts?
>And no mutiny charges?  Incredible.

I was there.

The collapse of East Germany was quite spectacular. There
was at most three months of warning. First there was a series
of sit ins at foreign embassies, then a migration of large 
numbers of people in their twenties within the eastern block.

I missed the actual collapse of the wall itself having to go
to England. I was told of the sequence of events by friends in
Berlin. 

By this time the protestors were confident enough to stage
open demonstrations. The authorities had tolerated small
scale demonstrations for some time provided they did
not appear to be part of a larger movement. The sudden 
increase in numbers from tens to tens of thousands left
the authorities unsure of what to do. They could not be
sure of the reliability of the police should they attempt 
to violently suppress the demonstrations. To imprison the
ringleaders was equally dangerous. The communists were
aware that the South Africans had continued to be troubled
by Mandela and Biko long after they were imprisoned or 
murdered.

At some point a group of protesters approached the wall,
probably hoping to goad the police into making an arrest.
The guards made no response and the numbers increased to
the point where firing of warning shots was impossible
without causing a massacre. West German protesters joined 
from the other side of the wall. The border guards did try 
to use a water cannon but to little effect since the
range was insufficient.

At some point someone appeared with a sledge hammer and a
pickaxe. Some people say that this was at the start of the 
protest, others that someone fetched them. I have heard 
people who believe that they were brought from either side
of the wall. They started attacking the wall and soon had 
removed one of the panels.

Next day the border guards quite literally abandoned their 
posts. The Brandenburg gate was opened for the first time 
in fifty years and the party apparatus all but collapsed.


The only military activity during this period was GDR forces
preparing against possible invasion by Soviet forces. Not that
this was a logistical possibility since it was unlikely they 
would get across Poland unopposed.


Read Norman Davies book "Europe a history" if you want to find
out the background for the velvet revolution. It is one of the
most amazing events in political history. It is a pity that
people have forgotten so quickly about the real causes. It
was not military power that prevailed but the protest movement.

Unfortunately US commentators tend to see everything in terms of
US cultural norms, many of which were explicitly rejected by the
protestors. The East Germans wanted West German affluence, they
wanted to be part of Western Europe. They were certainly not 
responding to US military spending as right wing theorists claim, 
nor was the economy collapsing because of the arms race, it
was collapsing because of the costs of a totalitarian state and
the incompatibility of that state with modern industrial 
organization.


	Phill

At 12:59 PM 1/28/97 -0500, "Phillip M. Hallam-Baker" <hallam@ai.mit.edu>
wrote:
>>That's it?  The system collapsed because the guards left their posts?
>>And no mutiny charges?  Incredible.
>I was there.
>The collapse of East Germany was quite spectacular. There
>was at most three months of warning. First there was a series
>of sit ins at foreign embassies, then a migration of large 
>numbers of people in their twenties within the eastern block.

In particular, people started leaving East Germany by way of
still-somewhat-communist Hungary (where the Germans let them go)
and from there into Austria (where the Hungarians let them go),
and it was getting to be tens of thousands of people per month.
Once a system like that starts leaking, it's hard to contain.

(ObCypherpunksContent: if substantial amounts of tax money starts
escaping into Cypherspace, it's not easy to maintain a modern
CorporatistWelfare-for-Bureaucrats state either.....)

>Unfortunately US commentators tend to see everything in terms of
>US cultural norms, many of which were explicitly rejected by the
>protestors. The East Germans wanted West German affluence, they
>wanted to be part of Western Europe. They were certainly not 
>responding to US military spending as right wing theorists claim, 
>nor was the economy collapsing because of the arms race, it
>was collapsing because of the costs of a totalitarian state and
>the incompatibility of that state with modern industrial 
>organization.

The US right wing does argue that the Soviets couldn't afford to run
a military industrial complex big enough to outrace theirs,
and that it was a major contributor to the economic collapse
(which it probably was.)  Of course, they also consider that
Communism isn't an economically viable system, ignoring the similar
problems with the Good Old American Patriotic Military-Industrial-Complex,
and somehow think that now that there aren't any Russian Commies
to kick around any more that we need a bigger army, as well as a
supply of easily-kicked-around enemies.  Unfortunately, I suspect that
sometime soon they'll remember that there still are a billion 
Commies left, and that Oceania has always been at war with EastAsia.
Hopefully the Communist system in China will have fallen apart by then
to the extent that it can admit to being a semi-capitalist kleptocracy
instead of pretending to still be in charge of anything.


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)

One point I had forgotten. The demonstration took place
on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht. This is one explanation
as to why the border guards did not attempt to open fire with
firearms or attempt to break up the demonstration with tear gas.

Also consider that the Tiennamen square massacre had occurred
only a few months before and it did not appear to have settled
the issue of who controlled china. Many of the dissidents were still
at large, China was a pariah nation. East Germany had recently been
visited by Gorbachev who did not appear ready to help keep the
regime if things got sticky.

The mass defections were taking place at their peak at a rate of
tens of thousands in a day. Something like a quarter of the youth
between 18 and 25 had defected. Bill if anything understates this point.

Certainly if the people decide that the structures of state are
not worth supporting change can be astonishing. 

I think that the spending into bankrupcy thesis might be argued for
the case of the USSR and more plausibly the US. The problem is that
I don't think that the military spending in either case bore any
relation to need, to the threat from the other side or to any
rational determination. I think both budgets simply increased to
the limit that the economies could support and beyond. 

There is a similar problem in the third world today. Many third world
countries spend more on arms than they do on health or education.
Much of the alledged "foreign aid" is in fact subsidies for this 
trade. The arms are primarily to suppress internal dissent. There
are plenty of governments left in need of similar reform.

	Phill