Comments on The Pensive Quill: Anna In Stasiland

I Irish State has secretly copied the Stasi model ...

2012-10-27T16:53:04.996+01:00

I Irish State has secretly copied the Stasi model to the letter, and they are not just empty words I do mean to the letter.And get this Garda is using technology that can SEE what you are picturing and can HEAR what you are saying in your MIND ,and they can do this from miles away.This technology is being used on the MASSES. That is first hand Whistleblower Information. We live in a free society ? we don't even have freedom of thought any more. This is why we have gagging order.

‘Mick/Organized Rage, ‘What the German Stalinists...

2012-08-09T11:01:40.513+01:00

‘Mick/Organized Rage,

‘What the German Stalinists tried to create after WW2 was a decent place to live for the majority of people.’

I tend not to see it this way. I go with the Orwell view that nine times out of ten revolutionaries are social climbers with bombs. Power is the capital which these people seek to accrue, bank and profit from. I think they absorbed Stalinism. Rather than it being an obstacle it was a prop for their careers. I don’t think the Cold War explains it either. Stalinism (outside the GDR) predated the Cold War and communists proved very susceptible to it.

‘If my memory serves me correctly the head of the stasi was charged with murdering a nazi policeman in the early 1930s.’

He should have been given a medal. But these societies are invariably steeped in repression.

I have read Le Carre before but would pick up the one you refer to. What is it called?

Good post as always Mick.I think there is lots to ...

2012-08-04T15:00:30.968+01:00

Good post as always Mick.I think there is lots to be learnt from that period and place,

I do not feel the definitive book about the GDR ha...

2012-08-04T13:17:22.079+01:00

I do not feel the definitive book about the GDR has yet been written(If there is such a thing) even I who hates conformity like the plague can see many good things within the GDR.

An old communist once said to me before the fall of the wall. 'the trouble with you, if you lived in a communist country, you would be a dissident.' He thought he was insulting me but I took it as a complement, for in politics there are horses for courses.

What the German Stalinists tried to create after WW2 was a decent place to live for the majority of people. They faced two major hurdles which they could not overcome, their putrid stalinist ideology which had little confidence in the masses. And geographically they were slap bang centre of the cold war, which alone was enough to make anyone one paranoid, let alone those who had spent years in Stalin's Russia before returning home.

After reunification there was much talk of them committing high crimes whilst in office, but when it came to prosecuting them little actually emerged. If my memory serves me correctly the head of the stasi was charged with murdering a nazi policeman in the early 1930s.

There is a book by Markus Wolf, the head of the stasis foreign desk, who John le Carie based one of his main character on in his spy nevels on. Worth a read as it gives you an idea what motivated these men and women.

Trotsky once said Stalin's greatest crime was he perverted the minds of young communists who came into the struggle to build a better world (or some such) Most of the leading members of the GDR fall into this category.

By the way I have seen the wall when active, check point charley and the machine gun nests at the end of the platforms of the GDR underground stations. A totally perversion of socialism is the only way I can describe them.

Marian Price is seriously ill in hospital with pne...

2012-08-02T12:07:00.148+01:00

Marian Price is seriously ill in hospital with pneumonia.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/#ixzz22Nyy2gOP

Anthony this feels and sounds familiar...

2012-08-01T22:04:42.152+01:00

Anthony this feels and sounds familiar...

another woman fighting injustice

2012-08-01T21:09:46.619+01:00

another woman fighting injustice