Yesterday, Saturday, this Berlin 'club' arrived at the White House, and intended to deliver a 'gift'....a 2.7-ton piece of the old Berlin Wall.
None of this was coordinated, and it would appear to be more of a political agenda gimmick than anything else. It was turned down upon the presentation.
The group doing this? Initiative Open Society. Who funds the 'open society' operations? One of the key figures is George Soros, which opens up on debate on the key agenda and how it's used in news reporting.
There are two curious pieces to this story, which the news media misses....maybe accidentally....maybe otherwise.
First, there were 45 kilometers of the Berlin Wall originally (that's about 28 miles). The vast majority got 'dumped' after the Wall collapsed in 1989. A fair number of 'chunks' ended up in a holding yard where they were handed out to various museums in Germany, Europe, Asia, and even the US. I should note that virtually everyone that wanted one.....got one, but they had to pay the shipping fee.
I, myself, actually bought a 4-lb chunk of the Wall which was purchased at Sears in Tucson. Yes, with an authenticity letter....in a nice box. It sits in a bigger box now, in my basement. I kinda feel shameful to admit that I paid around $7 for the piece (with around 50 cents in city tax added). I could have driven over to Berlin and just chipped it myself....freely.
Second, which something you don't want to mention to the Open Society folks or the news media....when DDR got ready to put up the Wall in the early 1960s.....they commonly used Chrysotile-asbestos in building materials. No engineer or inspector-group has ever commented about this or done studies on the Wall, and it's contents.
If you open this can of worms....you can imagine the folks standing there and asking stupid questions about how the Wall was built, if there are contaminated zones, how the Wall was dismantled, and where the 'remains' got dumped.
The odds of asbestos in this 2.7-ton chunk? It might be zero percent chance.....it might be more.
Traveling around the US as part of some 'road-show' (now the discussed topic)? It might draw some attention....which even I will admit. Folks in rural Alabama? Well, unless they did Army time in the 'old' days....they've never seen anything like this. It might draw a crowd of twenty people if parked around the general store with some guy selling t-shirts and noting that East and West Germany are now united (shocking some locals who still have their 1978 map of divided Germany on the kitchen wall).
However, if you were to talk to older generational East Germans around today, they would comment on one key element of the Berlin Wall.
It was not designed to keep West Germans out. In fact, you can't find any recorded incident of a West German escaping off to East Germany (DDR). It was designed purely to hold East Germans in....preventing their escape out of their own country. It's effective nature? Backed up with guards roaming with machine-guns and ready to kill an escapee. The Wall itself was just half of the 'message'.
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