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Remembering the Fall of the Wall

By Doug Bandow on 10.16.09 @ 7:40AM

It's been two decades since the Berlin Wall fell.  The road to freedom has been rocky, but it is hard to remember the awful world that once existed:  dreary, brutal, repressive prison states extending from East Germany all the way to the Pacific.

It turns out that West German intelligence collected East German jokes as a measure of discontent behind the Wall.  Laughter was an important form of resistance.  The Daily Telegraph reports:

Among the jokes recorded in the files were:

Did East Germans originate from apes?

Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year.

What would happen if the desert became communist?

Nothing for a while - and then there would be a sand shortage!

How do you double the value of a Trabant?

Answer: Fill it up with petrol.

And the regime reacted accordingly.  Explains the Daily Telegraph:

Thousands lost jobs, families and sometimes even their liberty for poking fun at the worker's paradise.

On November 9 we all should raise a glass in remembrance of the fall of the Wall.