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"Why are some walls so loud and others mute" An interesting question. I suspect it depends of the wall is trying to 'protect' you, it's 'in your favour', OR is the wall trying to keep you out, exclude you, it's against you. The Berlin Wall was to 'protect' the Communists from a loss of people to the West; it simultaneously restricted us Westerners from access to half a city, and indeed half a continent, and for Germans, half a country. The Berlin Wall also ran from the Baltic to the eastern Alps and on down to the Black Sea. This restriction became very real during the Berlin Blockade during the 60s. the incident where the US President announced "I am a doughnut" (Ich Bin Ein Berliner). However from a Western perspective, and Israel is a Western-oriented island in a different, Islamic, region, the Israel Wall is 'protetcive', not exclusionary. Similarly, the US Wall along the Mexican border, funny they don't have one on the Canadian border isn't it. We, in the West, hear more about other Walls that are 'exclusionary'.for us, like the Korea Wall, the Cyprus Wall, and former Walls in Belfast and Cotteslowe, Oxford (I'm using 'Wall' in a wide sense here). Historically we hear less about the (very) old Dublin Wall, the 'Pale' enforced by Norman occupiers of 'John Bull's Other Island', to keep out 'Celtic barbarians' (hence the saying, 'beyond the pale'). That was a 'protective' wall, for 'us'. What would be interesting is to hear from crit-geoggers from other countries, on the other side of such Walls (not expecting much N Korean contribution here of course). Every Wall that 'protects' on one side 'excludes' on the other. Any comments from The Other Side Of The Wall' (great thing about the Internet, social media, it bridges walls very well, as we saw in the Arab Spring recently). Electrons can leap walls where humans cannot jump. Dr Hillary J. Shaw Director and Senior Research Consultant Shaw Food Solutions Newport Shropshire TF10 8NB www.fooddeserts.org -----Original Message----- From: Deb Ranjan Sinha <[log in to unmask]> To: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 11:40 Subject: Re: boycott israel motion excerpt from Eduardo Galeano’s new book *Mirrors* ------------------------- Walls The Berlin Wall made the news every day. From morning till night we read, saw, heard: the Wall of Shame, the Wall of Infamy, the Iron Curtain... In the end, a wall which deserved to fall fell. But other walls sprouted and continue sprouting across the world. Though they are much larger than the one in Berlin, we rarely hear of them. Little is said about the wall the United States is building along the Mexican border, and less is said about the barbed-wire barriers surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast. Practically nothing is said about the West Bank Wall, which perpetuates the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and will be 15 times longer than the Berlin Wall. And nothing, nothing at all, is said about the Morocco Wall, which perpetuates the seizure of the Saharan homeland by the kingdom of Morocco, and is 60 times the length of the Berlin Wall. Why are some walls so loud and others mute?