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11.06.09 - 10:49 AM
Walls Still Standing
On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a special report from the BBC on the walls that still divide the world. A dozen countries tend walls - of concrete, wire, sand, guns - that keep out migrants, poor people, the fearful Other.
6 Comments so far
Show Allyou couldn't make it up!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/05/new-berlin-wall-u2-gig
People often try to live with walls, attempt to learn ways to get on with live in the presence of the wall. Once the wall falls,though, they realize how
overlooking the obstacle or barrier compromised their thinking, twisted their logic, the world divided between them and us. I still remember those days in 1989 when we felt that a dark episode in our history came to a close. I realize that the struggle continues...
What about Australia's "Rabbit Proof Fence"?
Free Roger Rabbit, Mate!
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
I hate to nitpick on this, but there's just one minor detail:
One little thing that differentiates the walls in the article from the Berlin wall. The Berlin wall was built to keep people in, you know, the worker's paradise. It was preventing them from getting out.
The walls in the article are to keep people from the outside coming in.
It comes to the same thing: preventing people from going where they want to go.
Good article Abby to counter the sanctimonious coverage of the fall of the Berlin wall. It is easy to be smug about what has already happened. Like the way PBS ridicules those who did not appreciate the Impressionists in the 1800s. The trick is to understand the present. Like the West Bank wall and the one on the border of Mexico.
Joe