Word: berlin
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This week marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As we recognize the historic occasion of East Germany’s opening, America quietly completes construction of its own wall. The southern border barrier between the United States and Mexico covers 670 miles of southwestern desert between Mexico and the four states it borders. Like the Berlin Wall, the border wall is emblematic of much more than just a boundary between countries. Cutting indiscriminately across ecologically-priceless land, it has become a symbol of governmental disregard for environmental protection...
...fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago signaled a sea change in international policy and kick started a period of unprecedented global openness. While the border wall does not have this same public resonance, stopping its construction would be a first step toward creating a new environmental consciousness within the U.S. government. This sea change would prove no less significant than that which occurred after the fall in Germany. The last 20 years have seen international barriers shrink on an unprecedented scale; the next 20 must see environmental consciousness of the same scale...
Reagan was right. (In 1990, Gorbachev not only won the Nobel but was named TIME's Man of the Decade.) Neither Gorbachev nor Reagan was directly responsible for the fall of the Wall; rather, it collapsed from its own weight. But Reagan's speech presciently identified Berlin as the proving ground of Gorbachev's intentions to open up the communist bloc. If Gorbachev truly sought peace and liberalization, Reagan said in Berlin, then he should let the Wall come down. In the end, Gorbachev did, and the rest of the Iron Curtain followed. Allowing democracy to spread through Eastern Europe...
Watch TIME's video "A GPS Tour of the (Former) Berlin Wall...
...years, the Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of the division between Eastern and Western Europe. So when East and West Berliners tore it down one night in November of 1989, it seemed as though this division would break down, too. Communist regimes throughout the region were replaced by democratically elected governments, and in 1991 even the mighty Soviet Union broke apart...