It's a nice dream. The good thing is sometimes it can come true. The bad thing is the correct timing when it may come true is difficult.

Gandhi had the perfect timing and the perfect opponent for his strategy. A West-German once climbed over the wall in order to destroy automatic shooting apparatuses in the East. He was shot, not by an apparatus, by a man. 1953 a peaceful demonstration was shot down in East Berlin, 1989 the people danced on the wall. The carnations revolution was peaceful and successful, the spring revolution in Prague was peaceful and not successful, crushed by tanks.

McGrath once has mentioned the beautiful picture of a Chinese girl stopping a tank 15 years and 6 weeks ago. A few weeks later the tanks came again and this time did not stop when people were in their way. That was 15 years ago last week and I nearly had started a thread about it but I thought not enough were interested being reminded that massacre.

It can work, yes, and it does in rare moments of history. But my personal heroes in history are the Jews of the Warszwa ghetto who with no chance at all except choosing the way of dying did take what little they had in way of arms to fight the German army as long as they had breath.

Wolfgang