{"id":448,"date":"2007-04-24T17:08:07","date_gmt":"2007-04-24T16:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=448"},"modified":"2007-04-24T17:08:07","modified_gmt":"2007-04-24T16:08:07","slug":"do-walls-help-or-hinder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=448","title":{"rendered":"Do walls help or hinder?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Walls have played a special role in history &#8211; but they seem to be making a comeback.<br \/>\nThe Great Wall of China was a mammoth enterprise &#8211; but, in the end, it provided no real defence since opposing forces simply went round it. I have visited this wall as I describe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/China.html#Beijing\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nMuch more recently, we had the Berlin Wall which we were all delighted to see fall at last. On a trip to Berlin, I visited the museum devoted to a history of this wall as I mention <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Europe.html#Berlin\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nMost recently, I&#8217;ve just returned from a week&#8217;s holiday in Israel where I saw the wall &#8211; or &#8220;separation fence&#8221; &#8211; built around the West Bank as I describe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Israel.html#ED\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nToday the &#8220;Guardian&#8221; has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/Iraq\/Story\/0,,2064118,00.html\">a sobering piece<\/a> describing just how many walls and barriers have been or are being constructed around the world.<br \/>\nIn my view, generally speaking, such walls do not solve the problem they are addressing. Often they simply redefine or relocate the problem. Even when they appear to &#8216;work&#8217;, they are often cost a disproportionate amount to build and maintain and they make it politically harder to resove the problem that gave rise to them.  We should be building relationships not walls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walls have played a special role in history &#8211; but they seem to be making a comeback. The Great Wall of China was a mammoth enterprise &#8211; but, in the end, it provided no real defence since opposing forces simply went round it. I have visited this wall as I describe here. Much more recently, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}