While looking for articles yesterday morning to post on opennews (the side bar on the front page), I came across an article about the proposed US-Mexico border. As well as restricting the flow of illegal migration from the south, the rather ill-thought out and intrusive route of the wall will also dissect natural habitats, a university campus, a golf course and a national historic site.
Does this mean that students with lectures on the other side of the wall will have to show their passports? Or golfers whose balls have strayed into Mexican lands?
A similar wall, known as the Tortilla Wall (sadly, not as fun as it sounds), already exists between San Diego and Tijuana. In a rather comic attempt to undermine the authority of this barrier, an acrobat was blasted into the US from a cannon in Mexico - with his passport in tow.
The justification for erecting walls usually has its basis on security grounds: the Berlin Wall, also known as the rather catchy "Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart", the Great Wall of China and of course, the more recent Israeli-Gaza Strip and Israeli-West Bank barriers all follow this line of reasoning. And yet the proposed logic of building walls seems always to be subverted by the increased aggression and resentment it rouses in those that they exclude.
Further disconcerting is that walls are cropping up all over the place and not just as defence mechanisms against other states. The above article was soon followed by another lamenting a model community which has been established in crime-ridden South Africa. Now this community, set within the heart of lush winelands, is able to boast first-rate schools, parks, houses and places of worship as well as the simply-must-have feature of every utopian town - a 35,000 volt fence. Heaven if you're white and middle class (and insular) which of course most of its residents are, and just what a country like South Africa, riddled with its horrific history of segregation needs.
