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Checkpoint Charlie Is Back: Ukraine Starts Building A New Berlin Wall
Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,
On August 13, 1961, the government of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) began to establish an “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”.
The idea was to, you know, protect people… from fascist terrorists who intended to do harm in the country.
Just weeks after government officials stated that they had ‘no intention of erecting a wall’, they closed the border and started reinforcing the defenses with barbed wire. Concrete came soon after.
When it was finally erected, the wall stood for decades as a symbol of tyranny over freedom.
And in the ensuing period, people within the Iron Curtain suffered the misery of secret police, centrally planned bread production, and some of the worst indignities imaginable.
This is starting to happen once again… now in Ukraine. The ongoing conflict with Russia has fueled a resurgence in totalitarianism.
Two days ago, the government registered a draft to ‘improve’ the criminal code of Ukraine, essentially making it a crime to even question Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
In other words, if you don’t buy the Ukrainian government’s official (and US-funded) propaganda, you’re looking at up to three years in prison.
In addition, the Ukrainian government has been arresting people who criticize the war, and they’ve established a hotline where people can rat out anyone with anti-government views.
They’ve also forcibly impressed citizens into military service (and thrown people in jail who refuse).
And as of this morning, the government of Ukraine started… “reinforcing”… the defenses of Kiev with eight barricaded checkpoints.
Why? In order to protect citizens from terrorist attacks.
Walls are never, ever erected to keep people out. They’re built to trap people inside.
This is a country whose economy is in shambles. The currency continues to plummet to levels never seen before. The government is inches away from default. A deep recession is mounting. And the banking system is extremely fragile.
This is an epic disaster. And anytime that happens, history shows that governments reach into a very limited playbook. Their answer is to dig their heels in even further and tighten controls.
Capital controls. Exchange controls. Wage and price controls. Border controls. People controls.
They lie. They deceive. They wave flags and tell people about their patriotic duty to suffer and die.
I hope my friends in Ukraine see the writing on the wall and get the hell out of there.
And I hope anyone else paying attention heeds the lesson that desperate actions by politicians have consequences. And these consequences aren’t worth waiting around for.
Rational people don’t wait for disaster to strike. Rational people have a plan B.
And yes, even if you think everything is just fine and dandy at home, when all the objective evidence indicates that your nation is a warmongering terminal bankruptcy case, having a plan B sometimes means having another place to go.
It’s an insurance policy. You hope like hell you’ll never need it. But it’s not a conversation you’ll want to start having while you pack your bags.
The world is a big place and there are lots of great options out there. Start thinking about yours now while time is still on your side. That can all change in an instant.
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Heckuva job, Kerry.
Think, guys. Rich Ukrainian farm land on the cheap for the oligarchs (cough...Omidiyar...) as people flee for their lives. Even this article says "get the hell out". I credit Doug Valentine for this observation. These multi-billionaire fucks (cough...Soros...) play at a different level and for keeps. I hope they all die passing razor blades from their bowels.
I am OK with that as long as we can get some Non Monsanto GMO eats out of the deal.
Omidiyar? same as the one financing Greenwald and drip drip Snowden leaks?
Until
Kiev
Really
Abandons
Its
Neo-Nazi
Embarrassment …
… Eastern Ukraine must build a wall …
Blast from the past. I remember going through Check Point Charlie in 1983: walk through no-mans land, shake down in the old wooden building at the half way point, scary bleak scenery, the whole thing. Lots of guys with SKS's standing around looking bored. I wonder if they will sell tourist visits to the reconstructed one?
"...This is an epic disaster. And anytime that happens, history shows that governments reach into a very limited playbook. Their answer is to dig their heels in even further and tighten controls..."
In that case, Ukraine needs to call out the experts: Israel and the U.S. Zio Mafia.
They helped the U.S. create staff our Stazi (DHS). They are disproportionately represented in both our Justice Department and the commanders in the Department of Defense. They handle port security - at least in Texas. They supplied the equipment for AT&T's phone-tapping black rooms for the war on drugs. They trained TSA with Mossad techniques, and had plenty of seminars for our top law enforcement officials in IDF anti-terrorist tactics. They advised New York cops on how to deal with Occupy Wall Street terrorists. Their Mossad-funded private contractors want to build a similar 'protection wall' between the U.S. and Mexico.
Between the Israelis and their own Nazis, Ukriane should have absolutely no shortage of the finest minds in the security industry.
''Walls are never, ever erected to keep people out. They’re built to trap people inside.'' I agree to a certain extent but I also think walls are built to keep people outside. Either way building walls in front of your own capital says its the beginning of what could be the end of Ukraine but not the World!
How about Wall Street?
I'm not a complex person and I'm not sure what Simon's real point is. I have spoken with "normal" people in Eastern Ukraine since the internet is still open to them....and they quite adamantly said "why isn't the rest of the world helping us"....they condemned Putin and there was no question in their mind he was behind their suffering, and the demolition of their cities.
Yes, I appreciate Putin's defiance to Western Fascist and our moronic leaders...and I don't like US Imperialism (although I've benefited from it), but the Ukrainian situation is very unfortunate, and I wish they could govern themselves. Suggesting that checkpoints around Kiev are there to entrap Western Ukranians is full on retarded....what? because they don't want them to defect to the East!
IMO he is implying the populace is being broken, crushed and set up for being completely robbed of financial and property rights. Its essential when key players want control of local resources, economic and political systems. It is not the first time the west and east worked hand in hand to f'k a nation. Russia, China, USA, UK, etc all went against Rhodesia...some have made more money out of Zimbabwe than others but now local resources are not easily contested by the sovereign interests of private property owners.
Counterexamples: Hadrian's Wall, and the Great Wall of China.
Everytime I start to think there is absolutely no way The O Administration can screw up any worse, damned if they don't find a way.
EDIT:
And there goes the InnerWeb http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dems-on-fec-open-to-new-regs-on-donors...
The more golf this jerk-off plays golf the better the world is for it.
How's Jumpin' Joe's son Hunter Gatherer doin"? Workin' on "his"oil deals?
Is horse face Kerry helpig with that?
What could possibly go wrong???
Can we build a wall around Washington DC?
Or just nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Fuckin A!
Nukes in orbit are illegal.
Rods from God are not however....
I remember looking over Checkpoint Charlie after the wall went down. I thought I was looking at a historical relic and that the bad ole'days of the Cold War were over.
Little did I imagine. Sigh.
North Korea, surreal/real*.
*not in this particular order
Forget that, just just dig around it and cut it loose into the ocean.
There is one, it's called the Capital Beltway. And if you try to escape from D.C. you may be injured.
We have a fence around the whitehouse and that doesn't seem to keep the people "IN", but I guess a fence isn't the same as a wall.
If the article author is right and walls are only built to keep people in...then your idea has my vote. And could we cut off their internet too.
If the article author is right and walls are only built to keep people in...then your idea has my vote. And could we cut off their internet too.
Which way will the getaway Trabants run this time?
so Great Wall of China not to keep out Mongol hordes?; US/Mexico border walls erected to keep people in US? wtf
Indeed - a wall to keep someone OUT is completely different from one to keep someone IN.
Déjà vu all over again.
The Mongols will still be able catapult diseased bodies over the walls of Kiev.
I really wanted to poke a little fun at you for the US/Mexico "border wall" comment, but I agree with your point too much.
no, you can leave the US just without your money!
Hi, I'm simon black. I learned about Ukraine when I was living there last year on $0.33/day, right in downtown Kiev! Can you believe that????? $0.33/day!!!!!!!111111111 It was a beautiful rental overlooking the city. Try and live on $0.33/day in the US of A! Well hey, visit my blog (ZeroHedge is the only traffic I get) and make me feel important.
Funny how quickly Simon changes his tune. Just a week or two ago he was all aboard the "Russians seized Crimea and invaded Ukraine" bandwagon.
A bit of consistency would be welcome but much less funny.
Walls are never erected to keep people out? What about the Rio Grande?
Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is pressing for better terms for Greece’s debt deal in what are likely to be tense talks in Brussels
Is Lagarde trying to seduce him...she is such the looker.....oh wait typo
hey check the schnozzes in that legarde / varyoudous foto, kin? mommy?
Niemand hat die Absicht eine Mauer zu errichten
Walls are never, ever erected to keep people out. They’re built to trap people inside.
Wrong. The Great Wall of China was built as a defensive installation to keep people out.
Same with Hadrian's wall in the UK.
Built to keep the riff-raff out.
Am seeing more and more bad info here at ZH.
A Drudge clone..??
ZH should build a wall to keep Simon Black out.
You know he once killed the President of Paraguay with a shrimp fork, right?
He is... the Most Interesting Man in the World TM.
it was a Q-tip, get it right.
Hadrian's Wall was built to keep the Roman garrison occupied.
No it wasn't. It was designed to trap the raiding parties inside so that they could be dealt with. It was too hard to stop the mobile Mongols from simply riding into China but, once inside the military formations could be called upon to deal with them. The wall was designed to enable the Chinese to focus their military into corridors, prohibiting escape except for fighting through the (much larger) army. It worked brilliantly because it's very hard to fight a pitched battle against a superior enemy and hold on to your loot. It made raiding China unprofitable.
Waiting to read freedom123 (a.k.a. viedoklis_lv) Anti-Putin rant and spin on this story!! LOL LOL LOL
The boy who cried potato.
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/43/4322d1ade797044504e7d2d27a8b5a4412be2eb0...
Definitely the wall is to keep people IN. Kiev is nowhere near the fighting on the Eastern Front.
I just read that many of the checkpoints in other parts of Ukraine, like around Lvov / Lviv are to protect oligarchs from other oligarchs' armies. Interesting if true: http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/ukrainian-elites-are-spiders-in-can.html
We've come so far since the cold war. It's heartwarming.
This news must be 'moistening' the arid nether regions of the lovely U.S. Asst Sec of State Ms Victoria (F.U.) 'Toria' Jane Nuland (nee:Nudelman) Kagan
Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!
'your nation is a warmongering terminal bankruptcy case"
Sounds like the U.S.
fallacious - "Walls are never, ever erected to keep people out." .... kaaay, but The Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, etc. - out, not in. we've got one here in Michigan between Grosse Pointe and Detroit keepin' 'em out - not in.
Great wall of China was built to keep raiders in so that they could be dealt with by the military.
Are the checkpoints really that different than the US plan to limit crossborder travel WITHIN the continental US ? Or warrentless home entry, or Samsung smart TV's integrated cameras and microphones? Or TSA X-Ray and cavity searches...and on and on and on...
I'm just traveling in the land of the free - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oTWMXfb_QY
Ukrainian Government: “No Russian Troops Are Fighting Against Us”. Sanctions against Russia based on Falsehoods
Ukraine’s top general is contradicting allegations by the Obama Administration and by his own Ukrainian Government, by saying that no Russian troops are fighting against the Ukrainian Government’s forces in the formerly Ukrainian, but now separatist, area, where the Ukrainian civil war is being waged.
Here is a screen-print of a google-chrome auto-translation of that statement:
Ukraine Chief of Staff is explicitly and clearly denying the very basis for the EU’s sanctions against Russia, and for the U.S.’s sanctions against Russia: all of the sanctions against Russia are based on the falsehood that Ukraine is fighting against “the regular units of the Russian army”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukrainian-government-no-russian-troops-are-...
The direction of the barbed wire indicates if the wall is keeping in or out.
I've noticed some of the manufacturing plants around Cleveland indicate the barbed wire is there to keep employees in.
"Walls are never, ever erected to keep people out. They’re built to trap people inside."
I have to correct that. Walls are ALWAYS built to keep "Them" out. But in time, they only function to keep "Us" in. Only when the last brick has been placed do we see the light suddenly disappear, and realize we've entombed ourselves.
Great Wall of China being a large exception to this rule.
It didn't work very well.
Great wall was built to keep raiders in so that they could be dealt with by the military.
Physical walls made of concrete are so 1980's. If you want to keep your population from leaving, do like we do in 'Murica (Fuck Yeah!) and hit those bitchez in the pocket book and they will stay. $110 federal reserve notes for a US passport or $2,350 federal reserve notes to renounce your citizenship. No walls needed!
Too many "draft dodgers".
Apparently the general population lacks the same enthusiasm to wage war
as embraced by the leaders of the CIA installed coup in Kiev,
and demanded by US military and political "leadership".
"Walls are never, ever erected to keep people out." Hmmm .... I seem to recall a wall that is growing in size at the southern U.S. border.
Well, THAT should keep all those people from trying to flee the US.
That's what the article says walls are for.
Sorry Simon.
The people who can act on your 'International Man' message in Ukraine are the ones building the checkpoints.
Everyone else is too poor to easily uproot and travel, too uninfluential to be allowed across the foreign border.
The warm wonderful 'folks' who instigated this tragic civil war between these poor peaceful coexisting defenceless peoples should be publically skinned alive ..... extremely slowly!
You can buy high quality bulk chemicals no-questions-asked from Ukraine nowadays.
People get creative in desperate times.
The black market is working overtime.
Yep, that's why I moved out and away of the stinking police state callded the USSA,
Article quote "Walls are never, ever erected to keep people out. They’re built to trap people inside."
So let me get this straight. The new fence wall between Mexico and America is to keep the Americans in?
That's probably why it's not working to keep others out. :-)
Exactly. The outflow of 'Muricans to Puerto Vallarta must be stopped.
The new fence wall on the Mexican border is for show. Anybody serious about heading north will just go around it, as usual.
When DC get serious about border security, it'll be to keep American tax-peons from voting against austerity with their feet.
You'll see.
(The wonder is that Comrade Erika hasn't seen fit to insist Athens require exit visas for anybody under 65 trying to leave Greece. In cash or a cashier's cheque drawn on a bank in a country not subject to a bailout programme, obviously.
The GDR raised more hard currency that way...)
Yes, it will be used to keep people from leaving when the SHTF.
Walls are never erected to keep people out...
US-Mexican border, anyone ?
"The ongoing conflict with Russia has fueled a resurgence in totalitarianism"
Actually:
Russian fuel has fueled a resurgence of Western crypto-fascism.
Je suis Charlie comes to Ukraine...
"Bring down that wall Mr Gorby" was just a dream, 'cos now the frontier will move to Ukraine!
Wow, the US won 400 Km from Berlin to Donbass in 25 years!
Some achievement!
Clash of Empires is back on the world agenda.
Thank you "New American century", neo-con hubris, for your unique, unrivalled contribution to History!
The Ukrainian government has bankrupted "Yuzhmash", which produced the fearful ICBM "Satan" and space ships. And thousands other plants and factories.
Instead, it'll provide government jobs by building this thousand miles long wall.
That's the plan approved and financed by Europe!
Yatz the Yid needs his own Wailing Wall in Kiev. Convenient also for when Nuland (Nudelman) visits and passes out cookies.
http://www.realjewnews.com/?cat=400&paged=2
If it wasnt for the people dying, everything ukies and porky does would be slapstick comedy gold.
"In other words, if you don’t buy the Ukrainian government’s official (and US-funded) propaganda, you’re looking at up to three years in prison."
Woo hoo! I'm a felon in the Ukraine too. That gives me three:
1) The DC US - Various things and opinions. (Bonus: There is NO law requiring an American pay income taxes to the DC US. Even if there were such a law, they are operating outside the bounds of the Constitution, and therefore are criminally Unconstitutional, making all of their so-called laws null-and-void.)
2) Germany - The Holocaust is a lie. (That one probably gets me a few extra felonies in a few other nations, like Canada.)
3) The Ukraine - The Russian military is not in, and did not instigate the current situation in the Ukraine, Zion did. (That one may also turn any visit to Israel into a caged affair for me.
Anyone ahead of me?
The banksters need to repay us.
"Walls are never, ever erected to keep people out. They’re built to trap people inside."
One of the favorite sayings among the Mongol hordes
Statement is generally true, but there are clearly exceptions.
The conniving media is struggling hard to look away from 800 lb gorilla in the room.
The fact is that it is classical proxy war of US against Russia in civil war context just like against Soviets in Afghanistan in 1980-ties except the Russians did not have to invade Ukraine they just live in there for generations, all 22 millions of them.
Those half-baked journos of corporate propaganda machine must be buying whole production of Johnny Walker to flush out all the mendacious sewage coming out of their mouths, especially about what’s going on in Ukraine.
More balance look on what’s going on in Ukraine and most important who are so-called Ukrainians can be found at:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/ukraine-no-country-fo...
And of course the Ukrainians have never had any reason to mistrust or fear the Russian. The Holodomor is just a figment of imagination, the Czars never prohibited teaching the Ukrainian language and Stalin never packed the trains to the gulag with Kulaks. Oh yeah and the Swiss never guard their borders and the Chinese just loved the Mongol hords.
Lost me at "Russia's aggression against Ukraine." Somebody needs to learn a little something about the people of the Donbass region who declared their independence & are fighting for it, & why they seek to not be a part of Ukraine, any longer. This type of regurgitation of the corporate news & political establishment is just terrible.
If I may speak for the author, I interpret this to mean it has become a crime in Ukraine if anyone questions the Kiev junta’s propaganda that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine, and not the junta. Sort of what happened here under George Bush the Lesser when it became a crime for any American citizen to send aid to a Palestinian or give to a Palestinian cause even though Israel is the occupier and the aggressor in Palestine.
What an amazing reversal for this century and what the West once proclaimed it stood for!
Here's to the new epoch in our terminal decline!!!
No patriot could oppose the author’s arguments, for they are the reason men want to be free.
When people speak of tyranny versus slavery it’s not a 17th century concept - because the chains are the locks on your cell when you have tried to be free but the secret police came for you instead.
How can Americans pretend that it won’t happen here when their representatives in Congress are pleading for weapons to give Kiev more power over the citizens of Ukraine. Who among us is so stupid to believe that the masters of these congressmen will not turn those weapons on us? And how far are we away from locking up citizens who criticize the government?
Closer than you think.
Simon Black makes an excellent point that walls are not built to keep people out but to keep people in. How true this has become for America’s southern border where U.S. border agents and fences are not enough because the politicians have opened the gates to floods of aliens. But that’s not all; these same politicians are now pushing laws to hold Americans within their own country, forbidding them to leave... with their property.