The Guardian publishes articles by request, and pays for them.

To the extent that we must grudgingly consider it a mainstream paper, it is the only place an article like this could have been printed. It attracts and harbors this sort of author, with articles ranging from the risible to the outright disgusting.

If you have a STASI, Securitate, AVH etc. in your country, everything else is secondary, unimportant and don’t need to know.
Not to speak about the sad fact that if the readers of the Guardian ever heard of the Stasi they must have this knowledge from some other source. Or did you read anything negative about these murderous dictatures from Seumas Milne and his folk at the Guardian? Maybe they wrote someting only I missed it unfortunately?

Are you seriously saying most readers haven’t heard the downsides of East Germany? The average reader knows “Stasi” and “Trabant” - and little or nothing else. It’s like reducing the US to foreign invasions (Vietnam et al) and the Model T.

Exactly this is the point. She knows enough about it, but most of the readers don’t. She is trying to exploit their ignorance and naivete by spreading lies and distortions about the system. Everybody I repeat everybody who lived there together with her knows that comparing the GDR with a Western capitalist country is something like comparing the Garden of Eden where the inmates sometimes can’t get their manna in time with hell where sometimes the there is no empty burners due to bad planning.

She’s saying there’s more to it than that, and highlighting things not so well known.

True, there is more to it than that… The trains left and arrived on time…

Also, as you might surmise if you bother to think about it, the author lived in East Germany long enough to know all about the well-publicised downsides. She’s saying there’s more to it than that, and highlighting things not so well known. She has a book (http://www.arterypublications.co.uk/books/ stasi_hell_or_workers_paradise.html) which no doubt explains the complexity a lot better than a short comment piece.

But we can see the logical connection between the different aspects of the Guardian World View in this very popular comment (45 recommendations) on the Hungarian thread:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/06/1989-hungary-disillusionment

Chapaev
6 Nov 2009, 7:26PM
Hungary was a decent, proud country under the leadership of Janos Kadar from 1956-89 during which there was high economic and social development, good living standards, decent jobs, etc. It has since become a laughable banana republic that takes its marching orders from Washington, Brussels, and Tel-Aviv such as when it sends its soldiers to participate in the aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan, while its economy and people has suffered tremendously by liberal misrule.

Did you got the synthetized message?