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Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

"The idea of a city split into two by ideologically opposing factions, and the split being marked by a big wall, sounds like sci-fi now."

Current reality in Nicosia (capital of Cyprus, a EU nation).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Buffer_Zone_in_...

>"The Turkish army has built a barrier on the zone's northern side, consisting mainly of barbed-wire fencing, concrete wall segments, watchtowers, anti-tank ditches, and minefields. The zone cuts through the centre of Nicosia, separating the city into southern and northern sections. In total, it spans an area of 346 square kilometres (134 sq mi), varying in width from less than 20 metres (66 ft) to more than 7 kilometres (4.3 mi).[2][3][4] Because of this, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Nicosia remains the last divided capital in Europe.[5][6]"

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Big difference between Berlin and Nicosia/Lefkoşa. I lived for 2 years (2010-2012) in the North as a westerner and while the division certainly affects the Island, it is nothing like Berlin in the Cold War.

Healing and forgiveness, on both sides, must occur before reunification.

>Healing and forgiveness, on both sides, must occur before reunification.

I have an instinctive reaction to that type of language now - it makes me wonder if one side has dramatically more fault than the other

'Fallacy' ? Take two opposing Counterparts, teached by history. 'Farmers and the church were the first, who thought something like welfare, the farmer were "addicted" to the help of others to bring in the harvest, often village people to construct and harvest...historical the church seemed to be addicted to grace -which the people had to obey [turns-in-a-circle] to fulfill the will of "god" (abstract: a 3rd person). So it today those two (farmers and the church) seem to be the first who drag money out of it (the social).'

A few post above someone wrote something that "'fascist' refer to Germans who didn't join communism"

And that one may say, extremists are 'well-aligned on the idea of strict enforcement of their ideologies' (Quoting).

So take a look at history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwardian_era

And add that Wilhelm II (Germany) was an grandchild of the british Queen Victoria. And, that socialdemocracy as domestic policy was concerned the biggest threat of his time (under his politics)

Bismarck (his predecessor) for example whereas is considered as the father of the 'modern' welfare state.

Maybe a try to show how easy it was to distract me, with a simple 'governments pushing their agenda a lot more strongly than the general population would have on its own'. (-;

Healing and forgiveness, on both sides, must occur before reunification.

Along with massive repatriations for lost property; compensation to the families of the hundreds who disappeared; and criminal investigations of those responsible for -- and who profited from -- the orgy of plunder and mayhem that ensued after the partition.

Of course.

Korea. While it's not in the middle of the capital, it's not that far. And the border is much tighter than the Berlin wall has ever been.

I don't know about that, trying to cross the border had/has a high chance of being shot to death, both in the GDR and (AFAIK) in North Korea. East Germany even had automated the whole killing part:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selbstschussanlage

(I haven't found the matching article on the English Wikipedia, sorry)

matching article in English

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-gun

(on most wiki pages you can find matching articles in other languages near the bottom of the column of links under the wikipedia logo on the far left of the desktop version)

I know that. But there was always some travelling over the Inner-German border. Not convenient at all for those wanting to travel from the East, could lead to losing your job and even imprisonment until the West paid to get you free years later. But possible for those who were persistent enough and accepted the sometimes severe consequences. In Korea even that is not enough.

Only pensioners got an exception and could travel from East to West to visit family. Everybody else had to try their luck digging tunnels (mostly in Berlin in the 60s), over the Baltic Sea or make it through the "Death Strip" alive, all ending very likely in death or if they're lucky, imprisonment (one of my uncles and his wife ended up with a 10-year prison sentence for trying to flee over the Hungarian border, and were eventually "bought out" by the West).

Travel from West to East was unrestricted of course.

Neither is fully correct.

We had working age relatives visiting us from the East in the West in the 1980s. But visa were not easily granted, not at all for people in many positions. And only for one person of a family at a time. I'm sure the Stasi checked in advance that the risk of not returning to their family was low.

Traveling from the West to the East was not free either. Officially it was only allowed to visit relatives and for cultural exchange. Individual tourist journeys were not allowed, only day visits to East-Berlin. But nobody checked very carefully whether the "relatives" were real. I had a friend of mine visit distant relatives of myself in the 1980s. They just filled in that the relationship would be cousin or something like that and nobody asked or checked. The East was interested in the money from the West. For every visiting day there was a mandatory exchange. From a Western point burning money because you could not buy anything of equivalent value for money in the East. I bought a big series of math books translated from Russian once. I fear I still haven't read them all. Maybe when I retire...

You could buy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronshtein_and_Semendyayev in bad paper quality. I probably still have mine somewhere... But it costed probably something like 2 day rates. So if you visited weeks over a couple of years that did not solve the problem of the burnt money.

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