Global News Journal

Berlin Wall went down with a party — rather than a bang

One of the most amazing aspects about the Berlin Wall’s sudden collapse 20 years ago was that no one lost their nerve. Not a single shot was fired. The Cold War ended with the biggest street party Berlin, or any city anywhere, has ever seen. 

Who would have thought that’s how the Berlin Wall would go out? Berlin’s long division was the result of World War Two. The Wall was the focal point of the Cold War — Soviet and American tanks faced off almost barrel-to-barrel at Checkpoint Charlie. Not surprisingly, many people thought that the stalemate would only be changed by another war. But instead on Nov. 9, 1989 there was no bang, no blood. Just a lot of celebrating. And a lot of tears.

That’s for me probably the most fascinating thing about the sudden implosion of the Communist East German regime — it went out so peacefully. And that’s one of the themes that has been touched upon in the myriad of German media accounts in recent weeks ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s fall on Nov. 9.

It’s also an issue that’s been explored by Reuters correspondents in Berlin past and present — in a series of  stories that you can read on this special page . 

The collapse of the Wall was for Reuters a special occasion — not only because it was both the first to report the news to the world that the Wall had fallen but also because it was the first to report it was being built 28 years earlier, as my German language service colleague Volker Warkentin notes in his illumating story (click here) about the famous press conference on Nov. 9, 1989 that led to the Wall bursting open in the hours that followed.

Guenter Schabowski, a Politburo member, had inadverently announced at the very end of that otherwise dull hour-long news conference that East Germans would be allowed to travel directly to the West from now on.  Schabowski was asked when the new rules took effect and stammered: “That comes into effect…according to my information…. immediately, without delay,” he said, shuffling through the papers spread in front of him as he sought in vain for more information. It later emerged the announcement was not supposed to be released until 4 a.m. the next morning and it was supposed to include instructions for an orderly process of applying for visas first — not the mad dash to the border that he caused.

Tom Heneghan, the bureau chief for Germany at the time, was in East Berlin writing many of the stories on that famous evening when the Wall burst open. But as the American journalist notes in his intriguing story  (click here) there was so much going on that many of the details of the action only came to be known later.  “What we only found out much later was that Schabowski silently asked himself: ‘I wonder if this has been cleared with the Soviets.’ He didn’t know!”, Heneghan writes. “Later that evening, as the world’s eyes zeroed in on the partying at the Wall, East Germany’s communist leader Egon Krenz was pacing the long corridors of the Central Committee headquarters alone mumbling ‘What should I do now?’  What a gem that would have been in our story that night.”

It’s all the fault of those people who work and save too much

One thing we’ve learnt from the crisis is that if something sounds funny it probably is. All that talk about slicing and dicing subprime debt to turn it into triple-A securities was hard to understand at the time and now we know it was just the 21st century equivalent of alchemy.

The current debate about the responsibility that surplus countries like China, Germany and Japan share for the crisis has a similar ring.

Plenty of people warned that the huge deficits and debts that countries like the United States, Britain and Spain ran up over the past decade were unsustainable. Recently the argument has been made that the countries that sold the Americans and Brits all those things they bought on credit share the blame.

In economic terms, it takes two to tango: if one country has a deficit, there must be a surplus somewhere else. In fact, if you run a big surplus, you are practically forcing someone else to have a deficit.

Well before the crisis broke, in March 2005, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke discussed the “global savings glut” as an explanation for the persistent and rising U.S. current account deficit.

In recent weeks, The Economist has subjected the economies of surplus countries China, Germany and Japan (as well as that of the United States) to critical examination in a series on “rebalancing the world economy”. In its latest edition, for example, it describes the Japanese as “serial exporters”.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan’s Enemy No.1

Who is Pakistan's biggest threat? Not the Taliban, not even India, but the United States, according to an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis surveyed in a poll just out.

On the eve of the 62nd anniversary of Pakistan's creation, the Gallup Pakistan poll offers a window into the mind of a troubled, victimised nation. And it surely must make for some equally uncomfortable reading in the United States, led at this time by a president who has sought to reach out to the Muslim world and distance himself from the foreign policy adventurism of his predecessor.

Here is the poll summary and here the full poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan, an affiliate of Gallup International. The poll was commissioned by Al Jazeera and here are some highlights:

Fifty-nine percent of Pakistanis believe the United States poses the greatest threat to the nation, despite the billions of dollars of military and development aid. (There is, of course, a separate debate on about how heavily the previous administration skewed the aid towards the military instead of schools and hospitals as highlighted in a report by the influential Center for American Progress but that at some other point.)

About 18 percent of those polled said they felt most threatened by India. The number is not as high as you would ordinarily expect, given that the Pakistani establishment has long portrayed the neighbour as the existential threat. Is there an opportunity here? Will the peacemakers on the two sides seize on this to build greater people-to-people contacts?

Anyway to get back to the poll, only 11 percent thought that the Taliban were the greatest threat, despite all the bombings and suicide attacks they have carried out across the country. To a separate question, some 43 percent supported dialogue with the Taliban.