On 08/01/2012 03:07, Ross wrote:
On Sat, 7 Jan 2012 15:33:13 -0800 (PST) [UTC], ian batten wrote:
On Jan 7, 11:26 pm, wrote:

2) Assuming he did, and that he was foolish enough to fire any gay
person on the grounds of sexuality, the lawyers would have been onto
him even faster

Discrimination on grounds of sexuality was legal up until shamefully
recently.

Wiki suggests 2003, which surprises me as I thought it was rather
earlier.

Perhaps BR was ahead of the pack; it was one of the variants of
discrimination the railway claimed not to accept in the supervisory
course I did back in early 1997 (a Central TOU/CTL course, but using
"BR" course material, as many courses did at that time).

("BR" being shorthand for something cross-sector by that time)

Wasn't there a tribunal (or something?) about lesbian partners of SWT
staff a while ago? I've a vague idea it may have been a "see what the
rules are as this hasn't arisen before but will almost certainly come up
again" kind of case.

I'd Google south west trains lesbians, but there is sure to be some
really bizarre website...
--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On 08/01/12 10:26, Arthur Figgis wrote:
An idea for Middlesbrough?

I prefer this one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

Ian

Am 06.01.2012 22:35, schrieb The Real Doctor:
For a man who takes every opportunity to attack the British state for
evildoing, you are curiously reluctant to say anything at all critical
about the Third Reich. I

I have nothing special against this or that specific imperialist
robber, in contradition to you.

You cherish British colonialism, and defend all the history or
robberies and genocide. And in that vein you try to turn the attention
away from the necessary fight against imperialism (not this or that
specific, except for being the specific victim of this or that
imperialist robber) to a "foreign" imperialism -- "foreign" from your view.

And then you try and begin to stage a show trial.

In this specific case we are discussing the hatred of a German fellow
supporting German capitalists against German workers, who have --
according to the persion in question, Herr Schnell, preserved some of
the conquests of the four decades GDR, and you are so upset of his fact,
that you again try to turn the attention away by a roundabout show trial
against the messenger.

You are a miserable slanderer and liar.

End of discussion.


L.W.

Am 06.01.2012 20:23, schrieb Wolfgang Schwanke:
Am 06.01.2012 18:51, schrieb Wolfgang Schwanke:
the border towards East Berlin was not
an international border, but merely a sector boundary within the joint
occupation zone of Berlin.

in your fictional thinking.

My thinking about this issue is irrelevant, because I'm not a
government. I was merely reporting the view of the US, UK and France at
the time.

As I always said: you do not think for yourself, but just in best
prussion Untertan fashion adopt the "thinking" of your rulers. Who, in
contrast to you, uphold those fictions only for sunday speeches, but
treat in reality with realities.

They say, just as myself:

But reality was different.

Borders are not realities, but theoretical constructs among humans.

If that were the case, why all the material amassed at borders,
fences, walls, armed cops, customs officials and their instruments of
violence? Does that not count?

As long as all parties agree, that's fine. In cases where the relevant
parties disagree about the existence, or the specific nature of a
border, then there's disagreement.

"If my theory does not conform to reality, all the worse for
reality!" is your motto.

There is no reality beyond this fact, because borders are not real
to begin with.

Now the various Ians and other apologists for imperialist robbery
have to accuse you of denying the deaths which have occurred at the
GDR-Westberlin border.


L.W.

Am 07.01.2012 22:35, schrieb :

West Berlin was technically not a part of the Bundesrepublik,

on the contrary. It was _legally_ not part of the FRG, but in
technical terms it was integrated into the FRG. They used the same
currency, Westberlin was integrated into the FRG telephone network
(using the same international prefix 49), just to name two examples. But
they had their own postal stamps.

although its citizens did have West German passports.

No, they had Westberlin ID cards. As said above: Westberlin was
technically integrated in the FRG, but legally a separate political
entity. The last word in all matters lay with the occupation powers (to
come back closer to our subject in discussion, it was an officer of the
British occupation troops who ordered the S-Bahn workers strike of 1980
to be ended).

But using a trick, they could also get an FRG passport -- for
example, I signed a sublet form for a Westberlin social-democratic
student leader, so that he could get a secondary address in the West
German city I happened to live back then, and thus an FRG passport. This
passport enabled him to cross the border (the Wall) to the GDR side of
Berlin, which was not allowed for Westberlin citizens (this was in the
late 1960ies).


Cheers,
L.W.

Am 08.01.2012 00:43, schrieb Ross:
Did Soviet officers often cross into West Berlin for the day?
According to a website of "memories of US officers in Berlin" I
stumbled over some time back (which was rather interesting reading),
it wasn't that unusual for their plain clothes intelligence patrols
when driving around West Berlin to find themselves following a Soviet
plain clothes intelligence patrol.

I make no claims for the truth or otherwise of that claim, before Lüko
starts ranting.

rant rant rant.

Are you satisfied now in your prejudices?


Cheers,
L.W.

Am 07.01.2012 22:39, schrieb :
So, there was literally no border control on the West Berlin side when
crossing from East Berlin? Nobody even checking passports?

Well, for people crossing to the West at Bahnhof Friedrichstraße,
they would have to police all exits from S-Bahn stations, or have their
controls directly inside the Bahnhof Friedrichstraße. See e.g. the Swiss
border post at the exit from the platform at Basel Badischer Bahnhof.

I don't know if Westberlin had ever been offered to set up such a
control post, but accepting it would have meant to openly discard their
legal fictions, which Herr Schwanke is always confusing with reality.

I am not sure about the street crossings. I can't remember any
systematic controls when coming back from Berlin Hauptstadt into
Westberlin, but there might have been a police post, checking everybody
looking suspicious (dark complexion being a typical incentive...). At
the well know crossing Friedrichstraße (reserved for non-German
foreigners, maybe even for the occupation personnel) there was a
US-american military post. But I was, of course, not allowed to cross
there...


Cheers,
L.W.

On 08/01/12 14:41, Lüko Willms wrote:
Now the various Ians and other apologists for imperialist robbery

And who would these people be? I'm wholly against imperialist robbery
whether it was practised by he UK in India, the USSR in Hungary or
Argentina in the South Atlantic.

Ian

Am 06.01.2012 20:23, schrieb Wolfgang Schwanke:

The West German governement positively denied immigration to any number
of foreigners, and they may well have asked East Germany to help them
doing so.

I welcome that you finally accept the facts!

I'm not disputing it,

You have constantly claimed the opposite.

I'm saying that's fine.

Sure, you follow like a slave the politics of your master. If they
want the Berlin Wall to be closed completely, you are in favor of it,
while at the same time denying that anybody ever had wanted it.

But they never locked any person into the country -
convicted criminals excepted of course -,

Wrong again. They have set up Black Lists of people who must not
leave the country, and they put into prison other people for the sole
crime of being in the country.

or asked another government to do so.

But they did. They collaborated with the neighboring countries
lifting the Schengen agreements, the last big time four years ago at the
occasion of this commercial event of the UEFA in Austria and Switzerland.

They positively never asked the East German government
to lock foreign asylum seakers into the Eastern bloc,

Maybe not, but they strongly demanded the GDR government to close the
Berlin Wall completely. Not to let people to leave the GDR to Westberlin
without a valid visa for Westberlin, so effectively demanding that the
GDR acts as a auxiliary police for the capitalist parts of Germany.

like they did with their own citizens.

See above, the Bonn government did it with their own citizens quite
frequently.

Please remember also that the Bonn government hastened to organize a
conference of the new governments of the East European countries after
the rebellions of 1989/90 with the purpose of ordering them to strictly
apply the travel restrictions of the FRG. The demand of "free travel"
being only for propaganda, but not for reality. They were happy to make
a big propaganda for "freedom of travel", as long as they could condemn
other governments for hindering it, but that propaganda stopped
immediately as they had to close the borders themselves. Today the
outside border of Fortress Europe is as strongly guarded as the GDR-FRG
border was before, but with more deaths caused than in the four decades
of the division of Germany (organised by the capitalist class and their
foreign allies).

On the deportation prisons in the FRG:

Because they tried to immigrate illegally. But that is not a breach of
the freedom of travel.

Sure. Freedom of travel is freedom. What you describe is not freedom,
but limited breaches of a general denial of travel. Making the passport,
as Bert Brecht noted so well in his "Flüchtlingsgespräche" the most
valuable part of a human being, actually degrading the human being to a
mere carrier of the passport, since the passport cannot move by himself.
Birds and other animals have more freedom of movement and travel than
humans, the supposedly "crown of creation".

Freedom of movement includes the right to _emigrate_ from any country,
including one's home country.

Which is and was often denied by refusing to issue a passport, as
e.g. a number of US-american socialists have experienced. As all
US-american citizens experience today who get a big fine or even prison
for travelling into neighboring Cuba.

But it does not include the right to _immigrate_ into any country,
except one's home country.

You see, you argue against real freedom of movement.

Therefore, denying immigration to non-residents is not a
violation of their freedom.

Blah blah blah.

"Denying freedom is not a violation of freedom"


L.W.

Am 07.01.2012 22:41, schrieb :
Same situation applies for those leaving North Korea for South Korea.

The South Korean government sees itself as the rightful government of
the entire peninsula, so anybody coming in from the north is
automatically a citizen of the Republic of Korea.

Was because of that that they allowed only two delegations to travel
to the North for the Kim Yong-Il funeral, while all others who wanted to
attend were denied the right to travel?


L.W.