Posted by N.H. [Pravo] on November 10, 1999 at 07:09:39 {AAJB0ph6mYdhIjSXPymAX.sgIvMbfw}:
In Reply to: Lessons from the Stasi posted by Rick on November 10, 1999 at 00:00:06:
Hi Rick,
You said:
I'm watching with horrified fascination the Discovery Channel's episode called Big Brother.
Did it remind you of anything?
Right now they're covering the Stasi. This was the German secret police organization in Germany some time back, before citizens had enough of them and they were stopped.
Well, it was the EAST German (DDR) secret police. As you might know that state ended 10 years ago, when the two German states was on their road to be reunited. Hence the big celebration in Berlin these days because 10 years ago the people started to demolish the wall.
The citizens in DDR of course had enough of the Stasi from day one, but alas DDR being a communist dictatorship didn’t have squat to say about anything, kind of like your beloved Watchtower Society.
Picture this: The Stasi kept records on every citizen in Germany with one out of 7 German citizens serving the Stasi as informants.
Hum, well, every citizen in DDR.
The Stasi realized how destructive to their reputation it would be if the world discovered their activities in record-keeping, so they spent months in underground vaults shredding the evidence.
Yes, they became extremely busy when the Wall fell.
These underground vaults were the size of small cities. During the Stasi's ordering of the records of the German people shredded, they were interrupted when the Stasi were shutdown. You know how many records they were not able to shred?
Yes, the West German secret police sent copies of all the Stasi files to the good old US of A.
125 MILES OF FILE CABINETS IN CITY-SIZED UNDERGROUND VAULTS, containing every "banality" down to a person's personal body odor, sexual practices and personal masturbation practices, what they said bad against whom, what they ate and the dates they got sick and threw-up, very banality one could imagine. These were painstakingly recorded in over 125 miles of file cabinets in underground vaults that made the U.S. Pentagon's underground vaults look like little storage sheds by comparison!
Again, what organization do this remind you of?
The lessons learned? That privacy is precious, so the German people learned painfully. That the Stasi must never again rear their ugly heads in the form of any organization, and that the tendency to be like the Stasi is a cancer amongst humankind that must be kept from spreading.
Yes, that is why all of you Jehovah's Witnesses here have to be anonymous, otherwise the Watchtower Stasi will find you and DF you. So the Stasi spirit is alive and well, thriving in the “New World Society”. So it has been rearing it’s “ugly head” for years, in your beloved sect.
I was shocked and horried at the coverage of the Stasi, their informants, and before the biggest mass-shredding in history, the thousands of miles of file cabinets containing every embarassing detail of every German citizen. It's a horrific testament to what imperfection can cause people to resort to, and all in the name of "the greater good of the people."
When do you think the time will come when the Watchtower Society well start shredding all their files? You know the ones they keep for the “good of the organization”? You know the one they have to keep clean. Like Stasi which was created to keep DDR a “clean” communist state, so the Watchtower Society have their own “Stasi” for the same purpose.
May we root out anything that remotely resembles Stasi-like practices in the organization that we believe has a mission to preach the Good News of Christ's return, to herald the glad tidings of peace and security the kingdom will bring.Rick
Yes, Rick. I have been working for over 10 years now to root out such despicable organizations, and will of course continue to do so for a long time. No doubt one fine day we will be able to herald the glad tidings that the evil organization in Brooklyn is no more that the Brooklyn “DDR” is no more, that the “walls” which separated us from our loved ones have been demolished.
Norm.