Posted on 01/06/2013 8:44:39 PM PST by neverdem
Edited on 01/06/2013 9:17:57 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
The leading power of the age is in relative decline, beset by political crisis at home and by steadily eroding economic prowess. Rising powers are jostling for position in the four corners of the world, some seeking a new place for themselves within the current global order, others questioning its very legitimacy. Democracy and despotism are locked in uneasy competition. A world economy is interconnected as never before by flows of money, trade, and people, and by the unprecedented spread of new, distance-destroying technologies. A global society, perhaps even a global moral consciousness, is emerging as a result. Small-town America rails at the excessive power of Wall Street. Asia is rising once again. And, yes, there's trouble in the Middle East.
(Excerpt) Read more at strategicstudyindia.blogspot.com ...
The crucial point about the world 100 years ago, then, is not that it is identical to the world today -- it isn't -- but that there was a time, in the not-so-distant past, when a globalized world, not entirely dissimilar to our own, fell apart. And it wasn't because human societies were in the grip of the uncontrollable forces of destiny or that they were particularly dumb. Most just didn't expect things to pan out the way they did. People actually living through the year 1913 did not experience those 12 months as the moody prelude to catastrophe. In retrospect, there were storm clouds on the horizon. But at the time, many people found themselves living through the best of times -- or simply had other things to think about.
ping
Forewarned matters... ping. Read it all - worth the time.
While 2013 might be the year of a great war, there is no real, meaningful parallel to WW I. The 20th century was all about the final desolation of the major monarchies and the establishment of new governments.
It is not over yet. Russia is still struggling. China is not yet recovered. Egypt is in turmoil.
The next great war, actually already underway for 20 years, is with radical Islam. While the west is in the throes of Repudiation, casting off religion, much of of Islam is engaged in a battle for Restoration. The west has become the enemy in order to have a bag to punch while stirring up anger and disruption at home.
The writer got his daily quota of words but they are but so much speculative balderdash.
Bert’s three R’s........ Reformation, Repudiation, Restoration. History is largely about them and the 4th..... Rennaissance
It seems patently obvious that even **AFTER** the mass devastation of Japanese cities and industry, the Japanese would never have surrendered without the decision of the Emperor to do so. That nation, from the lowly peasant to the highest general, gave every appearance well into 1945 of being willing to die in a last-ditch defense of the Home Islands. The mass suicides at Okinawa were likely only a foretaste of what was coming if the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not worked and if we had been forced to invade.
Nations, like alcoholics, sometimes have to hit bottom to decide they need to change course.
I think a reasonable case can be made that Mao, by unifying most of China under a single central government, and then destroying much of his country's traditional elites in academic, religious, military and cultural affairs, and then with the Red Brigades showing to pretty much everyone the utter bankruptcy of Maoist ideals of agrarian Communism, made his own country “hit bottom” in ways that caused Chinese leaders to look to the West to find a system which worked economically while preserving social unity and government control.
But then again, understanding the “inscrutable oriental” has not always been the easiest task for Western minds, and we have found our failures to be catastrophic at times.
Thanks neverdem.
https://twitter.com/charlesemmerson%2BCHARLES+EMMERSON
...Charles Emmerson has also written articles for the Financial Times, Monocle, The Huffington Post and other media outlets...
http://www.ewi.info/charles-emmerson-future-history-arctic
Well said.
Irrelevant to the number 13 -- it is not [evenly] divisible by 13, as your line of reasoning would indicate it must be.
and astronomically a amazing phenomenon has put the earths/sun solar system beginning 12-21-2012 into its 13th orbit around Sirius since the dawn of time.
While astronomically interesting, what's the point of your saying so? Or do you mean to use astrology in interpretation of the bible?
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