Hewlett Packard Backed Report Includes Planned Penal Colonies for Climate Skeptics

The camps in Germany started out as holding camps for domestic political deniers and non-pledge takers in the early phases of the regime plans.

Not too surprising that HP have an authoritarian streak in their corporate culture.
In their PCs (computers) they also restrict customer freedom – you can’t for example go to a website like NVidia and directly update the driver for the graphics card – you can only wait till their ponderous HP update machine gets round to it. This is intolerable for our business in xray 3D imaging technology so that is why we only buy Dell – where you have much more flexibility and leeway. (We use NVidia cards for their CUDA GPU programming platform).

Plus, living in Belgium, I can’t even view the hp website in English! My only options are French or Dutch! If I try to go to the UK or USA sites I get “you are forbidden access to this server”. Creepy.

In July of 1989 I entered East Berlin and East Germany through Checkpoint Charlie. The dreaded communist Honecker regime was still in power then; it was just four months before the Wall fell.

I wrote the following long ago and I didn’t keep track of dates then – probably about 2010.

THIS FEARFUL, REPRESSIVE SCENARIO IS WHAT THE LEFTISTS WANT FOR AMERICA.
____________________________

I had the privilege and misfortune of travelling into East Germany in July of 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

We were on a business mission to West Germany, and somehow our bosses had committed us at the last minute to a brief detour into the East.

One of our group refused to go, saying it was a despicable totalitarian sh!thole, so we agreed to meet him in Cologne.

We flew to Tegel airport in West Berlin, and were escorted by a Stasi driver though West Berlin. It was Friday night, and West Berlin looked exciting, electric..

We travelled though the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie, and the world changed. I had been sitting in the front seat beside the driver snapping photos, but when I tried to take one of the East German checkpoint, I felt resistance as I tried to lift my camera. The Stasi driver’s hand was on my camera holding it down, even as he looked the other way, talking through his window to the East German border guard.

We took a sharp left and then a sharp right onto the main street, called Unter den Linden. The majestic Brandenburg Gate was visible just behind us. As we passed the Reichstag, I lifted my camera to snap a picture. The driver stopped quickly to assist my photo, and it was suddenly obvious that there were no other vehicles on the street, and no pedestrians either.

We stayed at the Metropol Hotel that first night, and went for a walk after dinner. I had asked my dinner hosts if I could go for a jog in the morning, and was cautioned that “We do not jog in East Berlin” I then asked if I could go for a long walk, and was assured, with a telling look, “You can walk anywhere in East Berlin – you will be perfectly safe, not like your London and New York”.

We soon found out what he meant – every block had eight small kiosks staffed with police, two on each side of the street. At any time we were within easy view of perhaps ten such police posts. Again, we were the only people on the street. The police talked quietly with each other on their telephones, and seemed to know that we were no cause for alarm. Their primary job to prevent any attempts by East Germans to defect to the Western embassies located on Unter den Linden.

In our brief stay, we visited a mine to view some equipment, had interminable meetings in a very hot room, learned that the local cola beverage was called Prik Cola, and found that our business colleagues in East Germany were pretty human, much like ourselves.

I also had sufficient liberty to get away from our group, and was able to observe that East German infrastructure was crumbling, the roads, buildings, sewage systems, cars, trains, heavy equipment, electrics, electronics, etc. etc. etc. were fifty years out-of-date and falling apart. Environmental degradation by industry was severe and disgusting.

More significantly, the East German people were a fearful lot – frightened to death of me, lest someone think they were communicating with me and report them to the dreaded Stasi. Those condemned to the Stasi, and there were many, would lose their jobs and could wind up in prison – their lives would be ruined.

My friend was right – East Germany was a vicious totalitarian state, and worse. We all decided that we had seen enough, and agreed to leave a day early.

We took a taxi to the Wall, and negotiated our way through Checkpoint Charlie again, this time without the assistance of our Stasi driver, and spent the extra day walking around West Berlin.

We saw a memorial to those who had been killed trying to escape through the Wall. The last death took place a few months earlier in February 1989, when Chris Gueffroy died trying to escape into West Berlin. Gueffroy was hit in the chest by ten shots and died in the border strip. He was 20 years old.

Several months later the Wall fell, and I stayed up all night watching the celebrations on CNN.

Now that was a good day!

Epilogue:

I recall our Canadian NDP leaders extolling the virtues of East Germany to the Canadian public, and their stories being dutifully reported by the Canadian press – how East Germany was the “Economic Engine of the Soviet Union”, “The Workers’ Paradise”, and all that other BS. I shall never forgive the Canadian left for these self-serving lies, and I will never believe a word they say.

A few years later, I was back in Berlin on another business trip. Although I no longer jogged, I walked to the Brandenburg Gate. Then, I broke into a slow jog, and ambled my way through the Brandenburg Gate and down Unter den Linden.

You see, now, we do jog in East Berlin.