Still thinking about walls. Or, more precisely, about borders. They rule politics, these days, or the talk about them does. Case in point is the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that might reemerge if Brexit happens without some miracle solutions. I think I finally understood the problem of the Irish backstop yesterday when I read the article attached at the end.

The worry is that the decades-old conflict between unionists who are allied with the UK and nationalists who want a unified Ireland for the Irish will erupt again. Fears are that this will happen if and when a hard border is re-erected because half of the island will belong to the EU and the other half will leave because of Brexit. Lest we forgot: this conflict claimed close to 4000 lives over 30 years, and sparks of violence are already happening again in form of car bombs or other dangerous attacks.

Peace had been called by the Good Friday agreements in 1998. The border, which was heavily militarized during the conflict, both a symbol of the strife and a very real target for nationalist paramilitary groups, was eradicated, helped by membership and free flow of goods via the EU. If a hard border is re-established between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, many fear it could inflame still-simmering tensions and reignite conflict. So the backstop is the idea that refers to a guarantee that a “hard” Irish border — meaning actual physical checkpoints for goods and people trying to cross it — won’t be put in place when the EU and UK break up.

But of course there is no agreement about the backstop, with the Brexiteers furious about the possibility that it implies no clean break with the links to the EU, the EU furious that May wants to have that back door open to appease the warring Irish parties and so on. Alternatives, like technological gimmicks and/or drones instead of watchtowers, seem to be pragmatically still far from ready to be implemented. For the full argument go here- it does a better job at explaining than I can, still having trouble to connect all the dots.: https://www.vox.com/world/2019/2/18/18204269/brexit-irish-border-backstop-explained

Which brings me to one of my favorite perceptual illusions of dots that are present but that you cannot see in their totality – only those (and perhaps a few others in the vicinity) which you look at directly with your fovea will be perceived. The rest vanishes before you can connect them. The fun part in the demonstration below is interactive, though: if you change a few parameters you can make the illusion disappear or re-appear. Just like the Irish troubles – change some parameters, and it will raise its ugly head again…..Click on the link below.

https://michaelbach.de/ot/lum-NinioDots/index.html

And here is the song for Ireland….