Spies and Walls...

Monday, August 13, is the 46th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall. It was one of the best examples of the absurdity and horror of trying to keep a people under control and complete observation.

As a reminder, then, a few links to keep things in perspective.

• The Documentation Center and Memorial to the Berlin Wall, with many links and references, available in French, English, Italian, and German.
• The site for the former Stasi prison, now a memorial to those held and tortured there for political "crimes" such as saying the government was bad or trying to leave the GDR or not informing on others, most victims of an intense network of spying and collaborators informing on their friends.
• In an August 11th editorial entitled The Need to Know, the New York Times quite rightly comments that, "If President Bush wants Americans to give him the power to spy on them at will, Americans should be allowed to know how much their freedoms are being abridged."
• And here The New Yorker publishes Jane Mayer's article on secret CIA prisons in Poland and elsewhere, The Black Sites, A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program.
• And finally an editorial from Berliner Zeitung pointing out how absurdly little the bushbaby has learned about giving weapons to supposed allies, forgetting what happened with Saddam and Iran, only to name a few, and blindly believing guns will stop terrorism. Neither it nor spying will.