Guest Editorial

The WALLS That People Build

Vic Ratsma

We are used to live between walls. A good part of our lives is spent surrounded by the wall of our homes, schools and workplaces and other buildings. Walls serve to protect us from outside influences, in these cases, mostly the weather, but also to separate us from our neighbours, students in different classes, other workplaces, give privacy etc.

Mankind has build walls for protection sine ancient history. In low-lying countries they built walls (dykes) to protect against the sea or flooding rivers. Many ancient cities were surrounded by high walls, of course to keep enemy armies at bay. The Chinese probably built the longest wall of all, known as the Great Wall of China, to protect themselves against enemy invaders.

Other well-known walls are the Atlantic wall, built by Nazi Germany during the Second World War and the Berlin wall, built during the Cold War following WW 2.

Still other walls have been built to isolate enemy countries from the rest of the world. The Iron Curtain was one. Ad economic sanctions against South Africa, current sanctions against Iraq, and the U.S. blockade against Cuba are examples of walls that are aimed at overthrowing other countries’ governments.

So the building of walls is certainly an ancient practice that is still applied today. The U.S. has built a many kilometers long wall on the Mexican border, ostensibly to prevent Mexican workers from illegally entering the "promised land." Free trade for goods only, not for people. The most recent example of a wall that is being built is by Israel to separate Israelis from the Palestinians.

During these days, when the representatives from the G-8 governments, or officials from the WTO, World Bank or IMG are meeting - they are surrounded by a wall of barricades, guarded by armies of security police to keep the protesting demonstrators at a safe distance.

Walls, walls and more walls. Of course not all of them are bad and some are absolutely essential. One place where walks are virtually non-existent is on the Internet, where information flows freely around the world, although security systems such as Echelon are intercepting and scrutinizing millions of messages each and every day and individual computers can be monitored. Still a wall, but a rather porous one.

The unfortunate think about walls is that many are designed to protect the socio-economic system of the world’s ruling powers and the privileged few who control that system. It seems that, when old walls come down, new ones are built to replace them. John Lennon (of Beatles fame) once sang a song called "Imagine" in which he asked if we could imagine a world where people lived for today, in peace and harmony without countries and borders. He said that he was a "dreamer." Can you imagine a world without walls?

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