For some reason have kept a google news alert for this article in my inbox over the last week:

18 clandestine migrants were saved from a shipwreck, by Algeria II passenger-ship. A well-informed source told El Khabar that the clandestine migrants were attempting to reach the Mediterranean northern bank. They were handed over Tuesday to Oran port coast guard services.

Algeria II passenger-ship discovered, during its Oran-Marseille trip last Sunday, 8 people on the point to sink as their boats could not resist the strong waves movements. The ship crew saved them and decided to continue the trip toward Marseille for it was impossible to cancel it. On the way back, the same ship discovered at large another sinking boat with 10 clandestine migrants on board. They were 18 “haragas” [pk: those who ‘skim’ across the sea, the forbidden ones, to attempt the adventure of emigration] and aged lesser than 30. El Khabar sources denied any lost or dead among them.

Not sure what exactly what intrigued me about this article so much to not delete it. might be the slightly clumsy use of english which no doubt is the the result of either french to english or arabic to english translation. in any case i really like they way europe is referred to as the ‘mediterranean northern bank’ (if you are to believe google nobody but the writer/translator of the article in question and the ‘Standing Committee for the Euro-Mediterranean Partnerships of the Local and Regional Authorities‘ use this description. if you ask me, it should definitely be used more often! sounds like Europe is separated from Africa by a tiny little river called the Mediterranean:

Another photo of a car that has been upgraded with seats that enable undocumented migrants to hide in them. This one has been released by the Spanish Guardia Civil (the last one came from the US Immigration and Customs enforcement Service):

According to this article at typicallyspanish.com the pictures where taken at the El Tarajal border crossing between the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and Morocco.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about borders is the way they structure the local economies of adjacent regions. People one the one side suddenly start selling ridiculous amounts of all kind of things that are not available – or much more expensive – on the other side. Particularly vivid examples of this phenomenon can be observed on the fringes of France. The area around Calais is full of shops selling booze and cigarettes to busloads of brits & in Portbou just across the border to Spain where there is not a single store that does not sell Pastis in 5 litter bottles to visiting Frenchmen. Laila adds another although – although completely unrelated to leisurely border crossing – example from the border between Gaza & Israel:

“Yes, you know, the Imsaddar household. Their farms are near the border with Israel, in eastern Gaza… their bees fly across the border and gather pollen from the Kenya trees and Orange groves in their farms. So the honey is just better.”

How is it that honey from bees gathering pollen from trees across the border is better? Is it because the flowers are freer? Less empty or trapped or sad? Less occupied, perhaps?

“I think they just have more trees and flowers there. After all, most of our groves were razed during the Intifada,” explained a friend.

Taken from her excellent ‘Raising Yousuf, Unplugged: diary of a Palestinian mother‘ blog

… straight from the US Immigration and Customs enforcement website (o.k with a detour via the the excellent subtopia field guide to military urbanism), the chair guy:

This is the most amazing combination of sheer will, imagination and engineering i have come across in ages (subtopia calls it ‘imagination of desperation’). Makes me hope that this has remained undetected for a while before these pictures were taken…

I think i have mentioned before that I am maintaining a list of reported deaths of immigrants trying to enter the European Union called meanwhile at the border. This is quite a depressing routine that builds on a couple of google news alerts and a number of highly customized rss-feeds. some of the links that i am getting in my inbox do not immediately reveal if the linked pages are indeed news reports concerning drowned/shot/dehydrated migrants which means i get to see a fair amount of websites that contain any possible combination of the words ‘migrants’, ‘dead’, ‘drowned’, ‘illegal’ and so forth while following up on them.

Today i ran into a remarkable feature on the site of maltatoday.com. They have a page that lists this week’s headlines and the current edition of which exists for almost 50% of headlines related to the influx of migrants to the island of Malta:

Sunday, 25 June

Child born on patrol boat

A Somali woman gives birth to a boy on board the Armed Forces patrol boat that goes out to rescue a group of illegal immigrants, including the woman, caught out at sea. The AFM rescues 25 migrants and the mother gives birth to her child the moment she is transferred to the military patrol boat. Both mother and child are reportedly in good health after being transferred to St Luke’s Hospital.[…]

Monday, 26 June […]

Migrants give the slip

Seven migrants are on the run after landing with a group of 27 others at Xghajra in the dead of night. The migrants are noticed during a police patrol in Xghajra and apprehended by the police after a thorough search of the area. Seven Africans, remain on the loose. […]

Tuesday, 27 June

Mass breakout

Almost 400 illegal immigrants escape from the Safi detention centre and attempt to march all the way to Valletta to protest against detention. The mass breakout also turns violent at times with immigrants hurling stones at police officers and soldiers who at times seemed to be overwhelmed. A sizeable group of immigrants gets as far as the roundabout leading to Garibaldi Road in Marsa before being forced back into the centre by the security forces almost two hours later. Several police officers, soldiers and immigrants are slightly injured. Security personnel, called in from all parts of Malta, show great restraint in controlling an extremely tense situation.

266 more migrants

The largest group to date of immigrants is sighted off Malta’s coast after the boat they are on stalls. The 266 immigrants initially refuse the army’s assistance but then are persuaded to board an army patrol boat and brought to shore. The immigrants hail from Morocco and Egypt and are very likely to be repatriated soon.[…]

Thursday, 29 June […]

More migrants arrive

A group of 28 illegal immigrants including three women arrive in Malta aboard a boat. They land at Benghisa in Birzebbuga and are rounded up by the police.

Friday, 30 June […]

48 migrants arrive

Another group of 48 illegal immigrants, all men, arrives in Malta after being brought in by the army to Haywharf. Saturday, 1 July

I guess this pretty much speaks for itself. Also in other news today one migrant was shot and two fell to death while trying to enter Melilla (a.k.a Europe) from Morocco and 21 bodies of sub-saharan migrants washed up on a beach in western Morocco)

Looks like the football world cup has begun today. Unfortunately i am traveling to berlin on this very same day (by train via Arnhem/Duesseldorf), which means that you have to share the slightly overcrowded train with about 300 english football supporters and lots of bottles of more or less warm beer (i never loved my sound-canceling headphones more). However it also means that the authorities are freaking out in the name of security and decide to stop the train at the border station (where it usually does not stop) in order to let a posse of badly dressed, short-haired idiots wearing reflective vests on board of the train to check everybody’s passport.

Now everyone including the train staff assumed they would board the train and then do the checking while the train is moving. Instead the well-dressed gentlemen who was in charge of the whole operation had the brilliant idea to stop the train for the entire duration of the operation.

When asked them if he thought that this was a good idea his even less intelligent sidekick (with a much bette taste in facial hairdo though) told us that the stop was not related to their activities, but due to the trains engine having to be changed at the border. Now this is the biggest bullshit i have heard in a long time as there was (a) no stop scheduled and (b) the ICE3 does not even have a separate engine but rather a number of electrical motors under all the carriages. He also told us ‘to shut up as it was none of our businesses’

Now, to make matters worse, the 20-or-so cops decided that it was most efficient if they would walk through the entire train in one big group instead of splitting up in smaller groups. the result: the aisle clotted by a slowly moving mass of cops who were permanently bumping into each other (i guess that is why they were wearing kevlar vests) and stepped on each others feet while shouting personal data of everyone looking remotely British or non-european into their mobile phones.

All in all this truly impressive display of collective intelligence took more than 30 minutes. No terrorists where apprehended, the English supporters got their first good laugh at the German police and everybody missed their connections (which on a Friday afternoon is a bit of a pain in the neck).

Also shortly before Duisburg the bar ran out of beer which is a bit embarrassing as the Deutsche Bahn is one of the main sponsors o the wold cup and has been running ads depicting happy supporters on trains for quite awhile now. Somebody at market research should have told them that happy football supporters consume more beer than average train passengers.

Have always been fascinated with border towns. The fact that another national economy with other taxes and other social norms is just across the border/mountain/river/fence tends to have interesting effects on these places, and especially what is for sale in the stores and on the streets. Now my most favorite border town in Europe is Portbou on the border of Spain and France:

The tiny shops in the even more tiny city center have ridiculous amounts of Pastis on sale (for the Frenchmen who live just across the mountains where the tax on booze is much higher) and Portbou is home of my favorite memorial (for Walter Benjamin, who committed suicide in this place when the Spanish did not let him into the country in 1940).

On top of this the place has an absolutely incredible location: crammed into a little bay of the Mediterranean and surrounded by the foothills of the Pyrénées, the place ca only be approaced by the spectacular coastal road that runs from Perpingnan in France south to Girona in Spain and follows the spectacular Mediterranean coast for a good 30km. Portbou is situated in the smallest of the bays along this coast just south of the actual border. Because it is so small the center has a building density that makes one feel as if one was in a much bigger city, an effect that is reinforced by the gigantic propositions of the railway station. Being a border station between Spain and France the railway station needs two sets of tracks (standard gauge for the French trains and broad gauge for the Spanish trains) plus an enormous marshaling yard. The surface of the railway station probably equals the surface of the rest of town.

I have always wanted to explore this railway station, but on my last 2 visits I never had the time. This time i spend about an hour exploring the station which for the biggest part seems to be deserted, with closed deserted waiting rooms that seem to patiently await another emigration or immigration wave. If you ever have the chance to visit Portbou, make sure that you take some time to visit the train station. In the meanwhile i have posted some pictures to my flickr account.

Right now i am at the media shed in Southend on Sea (a.k.a.the end of the world) just out of London where mongrel is hosting a launch party for two new projects: Hairy MP’s & Telephone Trottoire. One of the people giving a speech is Yoshitaka Mouri of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music. He just showed Lampedusa, a disturbingly beautiful project about the ‘two sides’ of the island, by Frederico Baronello & Takuji Togo:

Lampedusa is the southernmost summer resort island of Italy, the border between Europe and Africa. In recent years there has been a massive and constant influx of immigrants who try to illegally enter the country by setting off in small boats from the coast of North Africa. The CPT (Centre for the Immigrants’ First Acceptance) is a detention house next to the airport of Lampedusa. Here, foreigners who have been denied refugee status are sent back to Libya, and arriving tourists are welcomed to visit the island. There is also a space of the island cemetery dedicated to the refugees, many of whom died trying to make the journey across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Check it out here (and make sure you have sound enabled).

The border film project by Brett Huneycutt. Victoria Criado and Rudy Adler has some amazing pictures online. The project distributed hundreds of disposable cameras to undocumented migrants attempting to cross from Mexico into the US of A (they also distributed them to so called minuteman vigilantes trying to stop the immigrants from coming there). The migrants used the cameras during their travels and then returned them to the project. Pictures are still coming and the ones already available on the website give a very impressive (and intimate) insight into the process of crossing borders.

I almost missed my flight today. First air france offered me €150 and Hotel costs if i would consider flying the next day as the flight was overbooked. Given that it was sunny 30C in BsAs and snowy -2C in Berlin i immediately accepted their proposal. i was given a voucher for €150 and asked to wait for half an hour in case they would have place on the plane. unfortunately they had, but they told me to keep the €150 as a reward for my flexibility (my first ever experience of this capitalist mantra for more flexibility (of the workforce) producing tangible results!

Ironically AF’s computer system seems to be much less flexible than me: in Paris it took them about 40 minutes to turn the voucher into cash as the procedures involved where too complicated for all 8 employees present). The whole procedure (the one in BsAs not the one in Paris) had taken so much time that i had about 40 minutes left to get to the gate (through immigration and security check). Normally this is not a problem unless one is confronted with invisible argentinean technicians causing a 30 minute queue in front of the immigration control booths:

The whole sign makes me wonder of Indian technicians or German engineers would be able to upgrade their systems in a way that ensures faster throughput during the operation. I highly doubt this, as – at least in my case – the procedure was really efficient: take the passport, scan it, enter the date of departure in the computer system, stamp the passport in about 15 seconds. Can’t really see how they want to optimize this procedure. Given that the old implementation of the migration control system was supplied by the US it might take out that one particular second required to send the data to the CIA….