Border disputes

Yesterday I spent half an hour digging with a Kurd called Rekar who is eleven years old, and plays for EPS, Patrik's old football team. He wanted to speak english. He gets into troubles at school. I asked him why, and he said it was because he called the Finns "suomeen homot" and I asked why he had done that, and he said because they had called him "paskat Kurdit".

I said that I had seen that some of the tool boxes on the allotment had been thrown into the ditch, and he said it was the "Suomeen skinnerit" who had done it. He then proceeded to tell me there had been an argument between the previous owner of my plot, and the old grandmother who owned the adjacent plot.

It was a border dispute. Just imagine a border dispute over a 10meter square plot of land, and not between countries. He then said that the Arab on the other side of my plot had stolen my land and I should fight to get it back. I was not interested in fighting over a few weeds. If anybody wants them they can have them.

What chance does Israel and Palestine have in solving border disputes when you can have a conflict of interests, and an eruption of animosity over an allotment in Espoonlahti.

Land is more important than gardening. Ownership and rights are the things that matter most. If I have to engage in a battle over border disputes, then it will be the town council who decides who owns what. For Israel it is Jehovah who decides and for Palestine it is Allah, and old Karl Marx or was it the French anarchist Proudhon was of the opinion "all property is theft"

Perhaps we should listen to Douglas Adams who later pointed out in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the term property is in common usage as a term for what Proudhon calls possession. Taken out of context, it can be an excellent way to justify stealing: "Property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property, therefore this [insert stolen item here] is mine..."