Consider the boom in fence building around the globe:
- India and Bangladesh. A 2,500 mile (~$1.2 billion dollars) fence to seal the border from what India fears could become the "new Afghanistan."
- US and Mexico. A 2,000 mile state of the art barrier being constructed in incremental installments.
- Israel and the West Bank. 436 miles of concrete barriers.
- Saudi Arabia and Iraq. A 550 mile wall at a cost of $600 million (part of a ring to encircle the entire country, as with the fence to the south with Yemen).
- Spain and Morocco.
- Thailand and Malaysia. 75 km border fence.
- Pakistan and Afghanistan. A 2,400 km fence.
- Kuwait and Iraq. Upgrade to the 215 km fence with Iraq.
- Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
- UAE and Oman.
If the Berlin wall (et. al.) were a sign of a fundamental contradiction in the communist system that ultimately destroyed it, are these walls a sign of a similar contradiction (albeit different, given the change in directionality)?
image: Mexican/US border via Subtopia
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3 comments:
hey, i think i see my house from here (not reeeally, but close...) The sunny shit is, with all this talk about building thise billion dollar wall... Most of us in San Diego are going "huh?" because there ALREADY IS a fucking wall, and we all know that it does nothing. Such a bullshit marketing scheme/cash cow... I just figured out recently that most of the country thinks that no wall already exists. We thought everyone knew there was one... I need to go down there and shoot it for like a week. Get some shots of the masses "going for it" as they charge the thing in waves as if it were the stage at a Slayer concert.
PS. It truly is amazing how blind we are though, in this country. I remember getting to South Africa and studying their history and seeing it all in front of me... I thought somehow that as Americans we were beyond all that. And i remember thinking, shit... we haven't even begun. Call it just sheer ignorance, but i was raised next to that wall (and with/by "illegal immigrants", just like whites in South Africa). I grew up with it all sewn into my idea of normal. Good times...
the older i get the more I relize that we are never 'past' much of any thing. Human nature is a continual battle.
I thought that was your neighborhood!
Subtopis has a post called "border ball" - you'll get a kick out of it.
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