Man arrested for t-shirt (cont.)

peterchen

I don't know if it's naiviety or simple doubt: let me tell you where it comes from. East & West germany have been living side to side for 40 years, sharing the same history, and and, basically, we started with the same people. Yet after the fall of the wall, it was frightening how uninformed one was about the other. For the east, it was hard to separate what was propaganda and what was the truth. For the west, most simply didn't care. More startling than the uninformedness was the misinformation. Did we have hot running water? Did we have refrigerators*? Didn't everybody who critizised "the system" vanish immediately? Yes, Yes, No. It was amazing how far you could go if you knew your way. A Dictatorship doesn't work by banning white T-Shirts. It works by making people afraid of wearing them. And you want to tell me you know what happens to someone who wears a GPAC T' in Iraq? You can smoke your certainty in a pipe, sir.

If you go to war, you will destroy a great country a stoned greek chick to the richest man of the world
sighist | Agile Programming | doxygen

Jason Henderson

peterchen wrote: A Dictatorship doesn't work by banning white T-Shirts. It works by making people afraid of wearing them. So are you now calling the U.S. or the Bush administration a dictatorship? The administration had nothing to do with this incident. peterchen wrote: And you want to tell me you know what happens to someone who wears a GPAC T' in Iraq? I did not mention a GPAC t-shirt in my original post, I said "opposes Saddam" or something like that. Of course Saddam will love anyone wearing that shirt now, but it is a fact that Iraqis disappear when they openly oppose Mr. Hussein.

Jason Henderson
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Gandhi

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peterchen

Jason Henderson wrote: So are you now calling the U.S. or the Bush administration a dictatorship? No, I intentionally didn't. You jumped to this conclusion. I merely stated my experience how these things work. As said, I doubt that everybody disappears immediately - this is to simplistic. If you consider this naivety of me, fine with me. (If you knew me better, you would know that naivety is rarely found with me. Positive assumption in the absence of knowledge, maybe.)

If you go to war, you will destroy a great country a stoned greek chick to the richest man of the world
sighist | Agile Programming | doxygen