Posted on 06/06/2013 4:37:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
From the heights of Gibraltar you can see Africa about nine miles to the south and gaze eastward on the seemingly endless Mediterranean that stretches 1,500 miles to Asia beyond. The Romans called it Mare Nostrum, "our sea," and these deep blue waters allowed Rome to unite Asia, Africa, and Europe for half a millennium under a single prosperous, globalized civilization.
But the Mediterranean has not always proved to be history's incubator of great civilizations -- Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Florentine, and Venetian. Sometimes the ancient "Pillars of Hercules" at Gibraltar's narrow mouth of the Mediterranean marked not so much a gateway to progress and prosperity as a cultural and commercial cul-de-sac.
Between the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the construction of the Suez Canal, the classical city-state powerhouses in Italy and Greece faded from history, and the Mediterranean became more a museum than a catalyst of global change. In contrast, the Reformation and Enlightenment energized Northern European culture, safely distant from the exhausting Mediterranean wars with Islam.
By the early 17th century, Northern Europeans could more easily and safely reach the rich eastern markets of China and India by maritime routes around Africa. The discovery of the New World further shifted wealth and cultural dynamism out of the Mediterranean.
After World War II, the Mediterranean seemed to roar back. Huge deposits of petroleum and natural gas were found in North Africa. The Suez Canal was a shortcut to the newly opulent and strategically vital Persian Gulf. With the unification of Europe and the ongoing decolonization of Africa and the Middle East, there was the promise of a resource-rich, democratic, and commercially interconnected Mediterranean.
Not now. The Arab Spring has brought chaos to almost all of North Africa. The bloodbath in Syria threatens to escalate into something like the Spanish Civil War -- sucking in Lebanese militias, Iranian mercenaries, Turkey, the Sunni sheikdoms, Israel, and the Palestinians, along with surrogate arms suppliers like China, Europe, Russia, and the United States.
The economies of the Islamic rim of the Mediterranean are in shambles, but so is the southern flank of the European Union, as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain haggle for subsidies and loans from an increasingly fed-up Northern Europe. New oil and gas finds in North America, China, and Africa may soon make both Mediterranean supplies and Suez passage to the Persian Gulf irrelevant for a billion energy consumers.
A shrinking and aging Europe keeps drawing in young Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa. They want out of their impoverished Islamic homelands but are being consumed by, rather than enriching, the wealthier European societies to which they are drawn like moths to a flame. The recent rioting in Sweden, the gruesome near-beheading of a soldier in London, and periodic unrest in the French suburbs all remind us that the Mediterranean is not a shared postmodern vacation getaway. Instead it is increasingly a stagnant premodern pond of religious, political, and economic tensions.
Unrest in the West Bank, Gaza, Cyprus, Syria, Libya, and Egypt could at any moment spark violence that cuts across religious, racial, and political fault lines. Otherwise, these tired hotspots are immaterial to a world that from Shanghai, Mumbai, and Seoul to Palo Alto, Houston, London, and Frankfurt is creating vast new wealth, technologies, and consumer goods without much of a nod to Mediterranean science or innovation.
The old strategic fortresses at Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Malta, and Gibraltar are becoming inconsequential as the United States pivots to Asia. The Cold War is long over. Europe has all but disarmed. Meanwhile, societies on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean are coming apart at the seams.
It is hard to find a robust free-market economy anywhere in the Mediterranean these days. Instead European socialism, Arab statism, and Islamic terrorism are in various ways retarding commerce and growth. Mediterranean tourism -- with visitors gazing at ancient rather than modern wonders -- is more profitable than manufacturing.
Will the Mediterranean world rebound again? History is usually more cyclical than linear, and the region's favorable climate and opportune geography suggest that it could.
Before we see another Mediterranean renaissance, constitutional government must sweep the Muslim world. The fossilized bureaucracy of the European Union must radically reform or disappear. A new generation of Michelangelos and da Vincis must believe that they can think, say, and write whatever they wish in a climate of economic confidence, prosperity, and security.
Unfortunately, Mediterranean culture is reverting to its stagnant 18th-century past rather than leading the 21st century.
If a new generation who can think, say, and write whatever they wish should appear, the rest would fall into place, but the upheaval would be comparable to the Protestant Revolution and the ghastly religious wars that accompanied it.
bump
It saves you the trip.
-——Europe has all but disarmed-——
It is seldom noted that European psyche was traumatically and perhaps permanently damaged by the death and destruction of the war of the 1940’s. The same trauma was doubled or perhaps quadrupled in Russia. The vital energy was sapped and there was not only no stomach for more war, there was and is a residual fear.
With the new generations, that memory is fading and in perhaps 10 more years, the first hand memory will be gone.
When those terrible memories no longer exist, the current rein holders can consider that war might not be so bad considering the new trauma of Islam that has crept into their very core. The grandmotherly admonition forever forbidding war will be or can be disregarded. The actual threat can be met with force of arms and death and destruction.
“The Mediterranean: Saga of A Sea” by Emil Ludwig. You’ll thank me.
If I were exiled to Mars and could take only five books, this would be one of them.
Unrest in the West Bank, Gaza, Cyprus, Syria, Libya, and Egypt could at any moment spark violence that cuts across religious, racial, and political fault lines. Otherwise, these tired hotspots are immaterial to a world that from Shanghai, Mumbai, and Seoul to Palo Alto, Houston, London, and Frankfurt is creating vast new wealth, technologies, and consumer goods without much of a nod to Mediterranean science or innovation.
Indeed. The only science and innovation in the Mediterranean is coming from Israel. The rest of the region is a backwater, culturally and economically stagnant.
Three huge longshots there....
Yes it will be ugly, but it's inevitable I believe.
Europe was spared renouncing slavery in a sense by losing Mexico (France/Spain) and the US in wars against the British thus leaving them only islands to gain freedom. Is it not quaint that history has overlooked European Slavery and placed the entire burden of on White Americans, and not the British first for the colony's?
No, but they can prevent you from speaking it and can kill you if you do.
In 21-century Europe--and other places as well--you are legally prevented from saying certain things, even though you might think them. Some are attempting to establish this in the USA.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Kaslin. |
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You can find and read the lyrics, both in German and the English translation
Here is that same idea, sung in American-English.
Note the last verse:
Dean Martin's standing on the corner...
Not certain if all that's still true, times have changed... ;-)
Die Gedanken sind Frei
Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten,
sie fliegen vorbei wie nächtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschießen
mit Pulver und Blei: Die Gedanken sind frei!
Ich denke was ich will und was mich beglücket,
doch alles in der Still', und wie es sich schicket.
Mein Wunsch und Begehren kann niemand verwehren,
es bleibet dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei!
Und sperrt man mich ein im finsteren Kerker,
das alles sind rein vergebliche Werke.
Denn meine Gedanken zerreißen die Schranken
und Mauern entzwei: Die Gedanken sind frei!
Drum will ich auf immer den Sorgen absagen
und will mich auch nimmer mit Grillen mehr plagen.
Man kann ja im Herzen stets lachen und scherzen
und denken dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei!
Ich liebe den Wein, mein Mädchen vor allen,
sie tut mir allein am besten gefallen.
Ich sitz nicht alleine bei einem Glas Weine,
mein Mädchen dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei!
I think what I want, and what delights me,
still always reticent, and as it is suitable.
My wish and desire, no one can deny me
and so it will always be: Thoughts are free!
And if I am thrown into the darkest dungeon,
all these are futile works,
because my thoughts tear all gates
and walls apart: Thoughts are free!
So I will renounce my sorrows forever,
and never again will torture myself with whimsies.
In one's heart, one can always laugh and joke
and think at the same time: Thoughts are free!
I love wine, and my girl even more,
Only her I like best of all.
I'm not alone with my glass of wine,
my girl is with me: Thoughts are free!
It would not any longer be Islam.It would be apostasy to a very different religion or to areligious modernism. The Reformation, violent as it was and extreme as were the antipathies, did not change the basic beliefs of Christianity. A "Reformation of Islam" that allowed Moslems to become modern would be a wholesale abandonment of the basic beliefs of Islam. Christianity was never a rigid system that encompassed every faced of government and law. It, in all its variations, delineates and prescribes man's personal relationships with God and his fellow man and says nothing about government. Islam in its holy book prescribes submission to allah and the moslem ruler and makes no allowance for anything like democracy or any sort of republic and enjoins constant warfare and conquest. It can be "reformed" and has been reformed- see the Shia- but the reforms can only address who is authorized to rule. Islam cannot become tolerant or modern.
The French were deep into slavery too, but were so brutal the bulk of theirs rebelled and gained freedom in Haiti.
IMHO it began earlier with WWI. Europe went from a largely agrarian region in 1815 to prosperous industrial societies in 1914. Science and industry revolutionized in a century where there was no "world" war. The Europeans thought they had it all figured out.
Then came the shock that they fell into a world war over, essentially, nothing. They created a system of international institutions, treaties and arms limitations to try to see that it wouldn't happen again. The Oxford Union swore never to fight for King and Country under any circumstances.
Despite the evidence in their face of evil and aggressive fascist states, they still thought they could have "peace in our time." The British and French fought WWII only because Hitler finally left them no choice. The Russians fought because, well, they were invaded. So, Europe was indeed traumatized, I would agree. After a century of relative peace, two world wars from 1914 to 1945 with only a brief intermission in between.
I agree with you that renewed war is inevitable. The history of mankind yields no other answer. But Western elites, people like Obama, think you can have peace by refusing to fight. And Europeans have way to much faith in the EU and UN to maintain peace. The situation bears much resemblance to the pre-WWII era and, as you suggest, soon no one will be left alive who witnessed the horrors of WWII.
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