The lives of others. (Wow a movie about our lives.)

I have not blogged in a long time, and this will be no exception. I have been a little distracted by other projects, but also by the whole, the government is trying to harm my in my home with some kind of electromagnetic energy from the apartment below me. Same as last time, but they seem to be turning up the frying a lot. To the stage where I have to find a workaround, let's just say it's become more imperative than before. Then there is the whole how to survive and stay well when the state is trying to destroy you literally. Well they do say live in interesting times, and now I do.

However there is still lot's that everyone needs to know, so I thought I would take the easy way out and post a movie review.

A movie review from someone else, cause this is a movie review about the lives of others. This is a movie about what's happening to many of us in our democratic countries. This is what happened to many citizens of the former East Germany. I wonder if they are still posting the suicide rates for this country, or if they will stop soon?

Remember I said there was a bridge in my city and they had to cordon it off because people just kept jumping and killing themselves, when I got back from the other city I was in for a time, I couldn't understand why. I just thought they had gambling problems or something. I am sure this was not the reason for everyone jumping, but I bet this explains the increased rate to the stage where they had to place steel ropes at the side of this very long, long bridge.

The rate of drug use, and mental illnesses has gone up a lot in my city as well, from people that I have discussed this with, and the whole time I could not begin to understand why. Apparently this stuff just comes with the territory when regimes like this are coming into play, it's all part and parcel of the whole genie gig.

This sort of listing or life destroying activity can happen to rich or poor, famous, non famous, infamous.

There is a book now put together by some journalists, and they talk about something called the buzz saw. It's something that can rip through you, and leave you and destroy your life. If you investigate the wrong story or do research into the wrong thing. You might just experience the buzz saw. Maybe I should have written the college paper on the upcoming pole shift? We are all suppose to believe it's all caused by global warming right?

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=1573929727

[quote]
Synopses & Reviews
The buzzsaw is what reporters call the powerful system of censorship in the US that is revealed to those investigating extremely sensitive stories, usually having to do with high-level government or corporate malfeasance. Here a group of journalists, who usually avoid collaboration and the spotlight, risk the blade by describing their encounters with it. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Synopsis:
Writing in riveting detail about their personal experiences with corporate efforts to kill their controversial stories and their careers, nearly two dozen print and TV journalists present devastating essays about the dangerous state of American journalism today. [quote]

Anyways without further ado, a movie review about the lives of others, which should be out on video if I understand correctly.

http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/movieDetails/287227
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

[quote]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/ I wonder why there has been so little written and publicized about this movie. This should be seen in every country and its merits trumpeted from the skies. It starts off slowly and the locale is the former East Germany, inhabited by 16 million people who are being spied upon relentlessly by their secret police. In this very real world of the Berlin Wall, there are many Stasi, 90,000, overseeing the populace, aided and abetted by hundreds of thousands of informants. Many of these snitches were blackmailed or other pressures exerted (threats to children and loved ones) and a few obliged voluntarily. [/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

[quote]In 1984 East Germany (also known as the GDR or DDR) , Stasi Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (HGW), a keenly idealistic supporter of the communist regime, is assigned to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman, who, Wiesler is told, is suspected of Western leanings. Stasi agents secretly enter Dreyman's apartment in order to install small microphones in the light switches and electric sockets, and cables in the walls, which connect the microphones to an attic space above the apartment, where Wiesler and an assistant take turns monitoring the activity below 24 hours a day, typing a report with anything they hear that might be relevant. A neighbour who happens to observe the agents is told that if she reveals their presence her daughter will be forced out of her spot in the university.

Wiesler soon finds out that the real reason why Dreyman is being spied on is that a minister and member of the Party's Central Committee is attracted to Dreyman's girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria; if Dreyman is arrested the minister will have free rein. This destroys Wiesler's motivation, as the job is not seriously investigating crimes against the Socialist state.

Dreyman is a supporter of the regime, but dislikes the way dissidents are treated. He publicly stands up for his friends if he feels that they have been unfairly treated. One friend is a director, Jerska who has been sapped of joie de vivre because he has been blacklisted for several years. At Dreyman's 40th birthday party, Jerska gives Dreyman a gift of sheet music entitled "Sonata for a Good Man". Shortly afterward, Jerska commits suicide which finally spurs Dreyman into speaking out against the regime. Dreyman arranges with West Germany's "Der Spiegel" periodical magazine to anonymously publish in an article on suicide rates in the GDR. While the GDR publishes detailed statistics on many things, it has not published any statistics on suicide rates since the 1970s , presumably because they are embarrassingly high. Because all typewriters are required to be registered, Dreyman uses a separate typewriter with a red ribbon to write the article, which he hides under the floor in his apartment. Before Dreyman and his friends discuss sensitive issues in Dreyman's apartment they test whether it is bugged: they pretend that someone will be smuggled in a relative's car over to the West. Later they conclude that the apartment is not bugged, because the car is not searched. Unknown to them, that is only because Wiesler has temporarily taken pity on them and had not understood that the discussion was in fact a test.

As Wiesler's empathy for the writer and his girlfriend has grown over time, he lies in his reports to protect Dreyman. Also, at his proposal, the hours of surveillance are reduced, so that it is no longer continuous and he no longer has to share the work with his more objective assistant.

Meanwhile, the minister, angered that Christa-Maria had chosen to no longer see him, orders Wiesler's superior, Anton Grubitz, to find some way to destroy her and tells him that she has gained narcotics, illegally, from abroad. Grubitz and his men manage to catch her in the act of purchasing these drugs and she is arrested. Terrified, she turns Dreyman in. The house is searched for contraband by security officials, but the typewriter is not found. Wiesler is called in to interrogate Christa-Maria. At this point, Grubitz begins to suspect of Wiesler's newly found pity and implies that, even though they are longtime friends, a failure to perform his work will be very costly. Wiesler interrogates Christa-Maria (with his boss watching through the two way mirror) with the same flawlessness and objectivity that characterized him for years. She breaks down and tells him where the typewriter is hidden. Wiesler however, still determined to protect a couple he has come to care for, travels to their apartment before the police can search it again and surreptitiously hides the typewriter.

During a second search, in the presence of Christa-Maria, when the hiding place of the typewriter is about to be opened, Christa-Maria walks away in shame, and throws herself in front of a truck. The secret hiding place is opened, but is found empty. A helpless Wiesler who is watching the events just outside the apartment, tries to tell Christa that he has the typewriter, but can't complete his words. Dreyman arrives at the scene and Christa-Maria dies in his hands. As a result the surveillance operation becomes pointless: Wiesler's superior, calls it off and distrusting Wiesler, ensures the end of his career. The newspaper lying in the front seat of Wiesler's car announces that Gorbachev is the new Party Secretary of the Soviet Union. Wiesler is demoted to Department M, where he tediously steams open letters all day. Four years and seven months later, Wiesler is opening letters when a coworker with a radio notifies him of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

At the end of the film, after German reunification, Dreyman encounters a former minister and asks why his apartment was never bugged. The minister ironically details the scope of Dreyman's extensive surveillance, telling him where to look for the equipment. Dreyman finds the wires and becomes perplexed as to how he was never caught. He finds the truth further while searching his file in Stasi's archives: while Wiesler heard Dreyman and his friends conducting anti-regime activities (such as the writing of the suicide article), Wiesler did not report those things in his voluminous typed notes; instead, he (Wiesler) falsely wrote that Dreyman was writing a play on Lenin, a topic the regime would have approved. Next to the final page of notes is a red smudge, which provides evidence that it was he who had removed the type writer, which used red ink. Dreyman notes the code name "HGW XX/7" in all reports and discovers the identity that it corresponds to. He finds out the location of Wiesler and pursues him in a taxi, watching Wiesler delivering leaflets. He gets out of the car with the intention of meeting him, but changes his mind and gets back into the car.

Two years later, Dreyman publishes a novel named "Sonata for a Good Man". By chance, Wiesler sees the book in a bookstore, and finds that it is dedicated "To HGW XX/7 with gratitude" . When Wiesler buys the book and the vendor asks him if he should package it as a present, Wiesler responds: "No. It's for me." [/quote]