*http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,655123,00.html*

Very interesting article on the attitudes of those that lived in East Germany, and the East German attitudes toward them....

In some aspects, our government is getting close to the East German government's attitude and actions...

quote:

In some aspects, our government is getting close to the East German government's attitude and actions...

Maybe you could share some of those "aspects" you are referring to? Then maybe we could have us a debate.

quote:

Originally posted by SenClaghorn:

quote:

In some aspects, our government is getting close to the East German government's attitude and actions...

Maybe you could share some of those "aspects" you are referring to? Then maybe we could have us a debate.

Great, an internet stalker...

Geez, why don't you read it for yourself and try to figure it out...because.....uhhhhhhh.....that's why there's a link to the article. Aside from that, having a "debate" with you is a laughable prospect.

Ah, psyco....sad but true!

quote:

Originally posted by psychoABN:

quote:

Originally posted by SenClaghorn:

quote:

In some aspects, our government is getting close to the East German government's attitude and actions...

Maybe you could share some of those "aspects" you are referring to? Then maybe we could have us a debate.

Great, an internet stalker...

Geez, why don't you read it for yourself and try to figure it out...because.....uhhhhhhh.....that's why there's a link to the article. Aside from that, having a "debate" with you is a laughable prospect.

I am an internet stalker because I responded to your thread? LOL Funny guy, but you flatter yourself.

It is pretty clear that this baiting thread, but I was really hoping that you would come up with some real comparisons. My bad.

quote:

"A new Trabi has been launched with two exhaust pipes -- so you can use it as a wheelbarrow."

I don't care who you are...that there's funny.

Chernobyl wasn't an accident--it was just a Soviet program to X-Ray its population.

Sorry Psycho---I don't recall hearing about anyone being detained for telling jokes...though I hear there's a fella from Kansas in a bit of a kerfluffle over calling possum 'the other dark meat'.

quote:

Originally posted by Yooper_tj:

quote:

"A new Trabi has been launched with two exhaust pipes -- so you can use it as a wheelbarrow."

I don't care who you are...that there's funny.

Chernobyl wasn't an accident--it was just a Soviet program to X-Ray its population.

Sorry Psycho---I don't recall hearing about anyone being detained for telling jokes...though I hear there's a fella from Kansas in a bit of a kerfluffle over calling possum 'the other dark meat'.

They are pretty funny...you just have to keep in mind the East German condition.

"Christmas has been cancelled. Mary didn't find any diapers for the baby Jesus, Joseph was called up to the army and the three kings didn't get a travel permit."



"There are people who tell jokes. There are people who collect jokes and tell jokes. And there are people who collect people who tell jokes."

quote:

Sorry Psycho---I don't recall hearing about anyone being detained for telling jokes...though I hear there's a fella from Kansas in a bit of a kerfluffle over calling possum 'the other dark meat'.

Not yet anyway...However, it is taboo to disagree with President Obama, though...that gets you pegged as a RACIST...there may not be "prosecution", but there is "persecution". And with that, "prosecution" may not be too far behind.

Possum????? I thought armadillos were the...eh...I guess it depends on where you are.


RE:Chernobyl

"If the farmer falls off his tractor, he must be close to a reactor."

Yakov Smirnoff made a pretty good living yukking it up with that sort of stuff...but I don't think it made him terribly popular in Red Square.

Humour's a great defense against insanity.

Armadilloes? Reminds me of a summer in Central Florida. I must have seen a thousand dead armadilloes before I finally saw a few still alive at Cape Canaveral.

The lure of the road...

quote:

Humour's a great defense against insanity

Humour? Humour? Yooper, are you going Canadian on us??????

quote:

Originally posted by Yooper_tj:
Armadilloes? Reminds me of a summer in Central Florida. I must have seen a thousand dead armadilloes before I finally saw a few still alive at Cape Canaveral.

The lure of the road...

Yep..I wouldn't eat 'em though...unless they are very, very well done...they are some diseased little suckers...Hansen's disease...bad news.

My house is half an hour's leisurely stroll from the border. Don Cherry and Lloyd Mansbridge have corrupted me, I fear.

Just kinda rolls off the keyboard sometimes.

quote:

Originally posted by psychoABN:

quote:

Originally posted by Yooper_tj:
Armadilloes? Reminds me of a summer in Central Florida. I must have seen a thousand dead armadilloes before I finally saw a few still alive at Cape Canaveral.

The lure of the road...

Yep..can't eat 'em though...they are some diseased little suckers...

I'd be afraid of getting the stupid on me.

Three Soviet workers find themselves locked up, and they ask each other what they’re in for. The first man says:

"I was always ten minutes late to work, so I was accused of sabotage."

The second man says:

"I was always ten minutes early to work, so I was accused of espionage."

The third man says:

"I always got to work on time, so I was accused of having a Western watch."

Dead Armadillos? Y'all know why the chicken crossed the road?

To prove to the armadillos that it could be done.

A KGB officer is walking in the park and he sees and old Jewish man reading a book. The KGB says, "What are you reading old man?"

The old man says, "I am trying to teach myself Hebrew."

KGB says, "Why are you trying to learn Hebrew? It takes years to get a visa for Israel. You would die before the paperwork got done."

"I am learning Hebrew so that when I die and go to Heaven I will be able to speak to Abraham and Moses. Hebrew is the language they speak in Heaven." the old man replies.

"But what if when you die you go to Hell?" asks KGB.

And the old man replies, "Russian, I already know."

Stalin decides to go out one day and see what it's really like for the workers, so he puts on a disguise and sneaks out of the Kremlin. After a while he wanders into a cinema. When the film has finished, the Soviet Anthem plays and a huge picture of Stalin appears on the screen. Everyone stands up and begins singing, except Stalin, who smugly remains seated.

A minute later a man behind him leans forwards and whispers in his ear: "Listen Comrade, we all feel exactly the same way you do, but trust me, it's a lot safer if you just stand up."

Bonesaw...Freaking hillarious!!!!!!! Keep 'em coming!!!

Why do the KGB operate in groups of three??

One can read, one can write and the other to keep an eye on the two intellectuals.

Leonid Brezhnev pays a state visit to France and he's given a VIP guided tour of Paris. He's conducted round the splendours of the Élysée Palace, but remains as stony-faced as ever. He's shown the masterpieces of the Louvre, but the curators fail to get any reaction out of him. He's taken to the Arc de Triomphe, but displays not the slightest interest. Eventually, the official motorcade drives him to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where Brezhnev finally stares up in amazement and astonishment.

He turns to his French hosts and asks in bewilderment: "But, Paris is a city of 9 million people... surely you need more than one watchtower?"

Speaking of communist jokes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-zzmCmMVI&feature=related

quote:

Originally posted by SenClaghorn:

quote:

In some aspects, our government is getting close to the East German government's attitude and actions...

Maybe you could share some of those "aspects" you are referring to? Then maybe we could have us a debate.

Maybe reporting others to the White House Fishy website could be seen as a first mild step toward that goal. Great societies and nasty ones have one thing in common, niether were made overnight.

There may be no parallel here, but easy to see the posibilities.

quote:

Originally posted by sgt_posty:

quote:

Originally posted by SenClaghorn:

quote:

In some aspects, our government is getting close to the East German government's attitude and actions...

Maybe you could share some of those "aspects" you are referring to? Then maybe we could have us a debate.

Maybe reporting others to the White House Fishy website could be seen as a first mild step toward that goal. Great societies and nasty ones have one thing in common, niether were made overnight.

There may be no parallel here, but easy to see the posibilities.

Right...can you imagine Ed Meese, or Dick Nixon, or J Edgar Hoover allowing some of the anti-government sites on the web today to keep functioning or their webmasters to walk free?

quote:

Originally posted by Yooper_tj:

quote:

Originally posted by sgt_posty:

quote:

Originally posted by SenClaghorn:

quote:

In some aspects, our government is getting close to the East German government's attitude and actions...

Maybe you could share some of those "aspects" you are referring to? Then maybe we could have us a debate.

Maybe reporting others to the White House Fishy website could be seen as a first mild step toward that goal. Great societies and nasty ones have one thing in common, niether were made overnight.

There may be no parallel here, but easy to see the posibilities.

Right...can you imagine Ed Meese, or Dick Nixon, or J Edgar Hoover allowing some of the anti-government sites on the web today to keep functioning or their webmasters to walk free?

So that makes it okay? it's a hypothetical...it wasn't right then and it's not now...

quote:

So that makes it okay?

Makes what okay?

It points up that your right to express your opinions--no matter how far right or left--suffers far less governement interference today than it did in the past.

How many people were detained over spreading lies about the health care bill when the folks on their email fwd fwd fwd lists ratted them out?

You even got any rumours of knocks on doors?

Nope. Old school disinformation to discredit your target...sprinkle in a tiny grain of truth to lend credibility to the panic...target the gullible looking for validation, and the vulnerable who see the internet the way the citizens a few thousand years ago viewed the weather...

One question, Psycho...

You buying or selling this bill of goods?

quote:

Originally posted by Yooper_tj:

quote:

So that makes it okay?

Makes what okay?

It points up that your right to express your opinions--no matter how far right or left--suffers far less governement interference today than it did in the past.

How many people were detained over spreading lies about the health care bill when the folks on their email fwd fwd fwd lists ratted them out?

You even got any rumours of knocks on doors?

Nope. Old school disinformation to discredit your target...sprinkle in a tiny grain of truth to lend credibility to the panic...target the gullible looking for validation, and the vulnerable who see the internet the way the citizens a few thousand years ago viewed the weather...

One question, Psycho...

You buying or selling this bill of goods?

Yoop, I'm not buying or selling anything. Although there isn't official censorship yet, there is censorship. Just look at what happens if someone disagrees with President Obama's policies...it's an automatic "racist" label. I'm sure that there are those, somewhere, that just hate it that an African-American is in the White House, but come on, to classify everyone that disagrees in that category is ridiculous. Then we get to WH officials speaking out against specific news outlets. After you get to that point, how much further is it to official censorship? Realistically speaking, how much further? Have you heard some the the things that the diversity czar has said?

quote:

Originally posted by psychoABN:

quote:

Originally posted by Yooper_tj:

quote:

So that makes it okay?

Makes what okay?

It points up that your right to express your opinions--no matter how far right or left--suffers far less governement interference today than it did in the past.

How many people were detained over spreading lies about the health care bill when the folks on their email fwd fwd fwd lists ratted them out?

You even got any rumours of knocks on doors?

Nope. Old school disinformation to discredit your target...sprinkle in a tiny grain of truth to lend credibility to the panic...target the gullible looking for validation, and the vulnerable who see the internet the way the citizens a few thousand years ago viewed the weather...

One question, Psycho...

You buying or selling this bill of goods?

Yoop, I'm not buying or selling anything. Although there isn't official censorship yet, there is censorship. Just look at what happens if someone disagrees with President Obama's policies...it's an automatic "racist" label. I'm sure that there are those, somewhere, that just hate it that an African-American is in the White House, but come on, to classify everyone that disagrees in that category is ridiculous. Then we get to WH officials speaking out against specific news outlets. After you get to that point, how much further is it to official censorship? Realistically speaking, how much further? Have you heard some the the things that the diversity czar has said?

Ya mean like this?

quote:

American experiment in democracy is failing...because we have allowed our public sphere [of information dissemination] to be dominated by the interest Madison called merchants.

I've heard what The American Thinker is inferring that the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the FCC is implying, if that's what you mean---it's in another thread.

Seems to me that Dubya's administration wasn't terribly fond of NBC's spin on his actions---sound familiar?

I expend more than few keystrokes slamming Faux News(?) here too...not because I think they're racist, but because their rightward slant is so blatant.

Everyone's allowed to speak their piece...then everyone else is allowed to address it.

The racist label?? That's just more turd-flinging, like traitorous unAmerican Marxist/Maoist/Demosociofascilibitard.

And let's not forget tricky Dick's hit list on the media and everyone else that disagreed with him. Right now censorship is just a state of mind. If you really believe what you want to say, you should say it and suffer any consequences, imagined or not.

When someone disagrees with anyone, someone jumps up and slams, or refutes, or debunks, or hedges, or deflects, or denies, or strawmans, or ad hominems...none of that is censorship.

To a large extent, it's like unregulated kindergarten. The web let's pretty much anyone write an opinion piece with misquotes, chopped quotes out of context, or nothing but speculation and sell it as fact. PT Barnum's (mis)quote does the rest:
There's a sucker born every minute. They lap it up and run with it.

They can make and edit a video to spin any event they like, post it on YouTube and it becomes the news.

Censorship? You gotta be kidding.

Thing is that Your Constitutional Right to Speak Freely does not impose an obligation on any privately owned forum to offer you a soapbox from which to broadcast your views.

That's not censorship either.