Cultuur & Historie in het Nieuws (Deel 8).

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Op vrijdag 12 oktober 2012 15:08 schreef Cobra4 het volgende:
Scheepswrak gevonden in IJssel bij Kampen

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Today's Middle East: 1848 Redux? by Mike Rapport - The Globalist

The Arab Spring has parallels with many of history's revolutionary spasms, including Europe's Springtime of the Peoples in 1848. But changes at the top, the ideological underpinnings of the revolutions, and even the local dynamics of sectarian and tribal divisions may ultimately give the new Arab regimes a better chance for lasting reform than Europe's "Forty-Eighters" ever had. Mike Rapport explains.

When the German democrat Georg Herwegh addressed a multinational crowd at a public meeting in Paris in March 1848, he and his audience were celebrating a revolution in France that had just toppled the last French king, Louis-Philippe, and established a republic.
They were also aware that the French Revolution of 1848 was inspiring further insurrections all across Europe. That year was a "domino" revolution — a wave of upheavals, similar in aims and broadly sharing the same causes, which spread rapidly from one country to another.

Interest in such revolutionary waves has, of course, been rekindled by the Arab Awakening of 2011. Commentators have frequently drawn parallels with the "color" revolutions of the last decade in the former Soviet Union, as well as with the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and with the global protests of 1968.

But can't one go back further, as far back as 1848, when a surge of liberal revolutions cascaded across Europe? These events toppled authoritarian regimes (usually absolute monarchies) from Paris to Krakow — and from Berlin to Palermo.

The swirling revolutions aroused hopes for civil rights and constitutional government. National liberation and unification became a common cause among peoples still chafing under the rule of the multinational empires of the East: Austria, Russia and the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which ruled much of the Balkans.

Then, as now, observers were particularly struck, even overawed, by the speed with which the revolutions spread from one country to another. This, in turn, led to discussions about the role of modern communications.

The political revolutions of 1848 were energized by a wave of technological revolutions: the train, the steamboat and, though still rare, the telegraph. In a similar manner, Facebook and Twitter energized those of 2011.

They galvanized the uprisings alongside longer-standing forms of sociability or networking. Reading clubs, universities and scientific congresses were political proving grounds in 1848.

The springboards for protest in 2011 included market squares, the workplace, cafés and Friday prayers. These overlaid the role of more frankly revolutionary organizations like Giuseppe Mazzini's "Young Italy" in 1848 and the Muslim Brotherhood in 2011. The term "Arab Spring" recalls not only Prague in 1968, but also the "Springtime of Peoples" in 1848.

Yet, since their initial outbreak, the Arab revolutions have diverged from those of 1848. It is rare to find an historian who would argue that, overall, 1848 was anything but a failure.

There were notable achievements: the democratic mobilization of ordinary people who previously had never had a political voice, the emancipation of the serfs in Central Europe, the abolition of slavery in the French Empire, and the establishment of constitutional government in some important states, such as Prussia in Germany and Piedmont in Italy.

Yet by year's end, the liberal, revolutionary regimes had been rooted out and destroyed by a dramatic resurgence of the same conservative forces that had been defeated only months earlier — a domino counterrevolution.

Only some tough, heroic pockets of resistance held out into 1849 in Italy (Rome and Venice, for example), in Hungary, and in Germany's Rhineland.

The results in 2011 are decidedly more mixed, even if the differences are sometimes subtle. Where elections have taken place in the Arab states, the new political order has already outstripped the lifespan of the liberal regimes created in 1848.

In 2011, as in 1848, some of the authoritarian regimes that were convulsed by unrest either held on, as in Bahrain, or they fought for their life and engulfed their people in civil war, as the Libyans and Syrians know all too well (albeit, so far, with very different results).

So in September 2012, the postrevolutionary political landscape is far more varied in the Middle East than it was at the same chronological point in Europe.

There, by September 1849, the final embers of revolutionary resistance had already been stamped out and most of the countries affected were under monarchical rule more centralized — and more authoritarian — than before.

This is not just an exercise for historians: Europe's experience in 1848 can help explain why the consequences of the Arab Awakening have been so varied. For Western observers, the most obvious of the overarching factors is the international context.

The civil war in Syria rages on partly because the world's great powers are rancorously divided over the fate of the uprising and of Bashar al-Assad's regime. The revolution in Egypt elicited belated, distant and often lukewarm reactions abroad. That reticence probably favored Hosni Mubarak's opponents as they tipped him from the presidential seat.

The conflict in Libya, on the other hand, brought in European airpower that shifted the balance decisively in favor of Muammar Qaddafi's opponents, led by the National Transitional Council.

The reactions of the great powers in 1848 were just as varied, but with one crucial difference: all the most important interventions served to stymie the revolutionary momentum, or to crush it altogether.

When the Germans and Danes fought over the border territories of Schleswig and Holstein, it unleashed waves of revolutionary, patriotic fervor on both sides.

But it also triggered intense diplomatic pressure from Britain, Russia and Sweden to stop the war. They feared that the conflict would disrupt strategically vital commerce and communications between the Baltic and the North Sea.

When the German Parliament in Frankfurt ratified the armistice, there was a violent uprising in the city, the intensity of which shocked many Germans and gave momentum to the conservatives.

In 1849, French troops — sent by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the president elected in the wake of a backlash against the French radicals — crushed the democratic Roman Republic, overcoming its determined defense mounted by Giuseppe Garibaldi.

That same year, the Russians poured troops into Hungary to help Austria's Habsburg Emperor destroy its liberal regime and to tether the country once again to rule from Vienna.

Internal developments were just as powerful, if not more so. In 1848, the most corrosive solvent of the incipient liberal regimes was internal civil strife and interethnic conflict.

In Paris, the bloody tragedy of the June Days pitted republican against republican, when a socialist-inspired insurrection was crushed by moderates who battered, bayoneted and shot their way through the barricades.

This spasm had its violent equivalents in Berlin and Vienna. Such brutal divisions among the revolutionaries fatally weakened the revolution itself. The Middle East has not (yet) witnessed violent strife on such a scale among the victors of the original revolutionary Springtime.

Equally fatal — and far more widespread in 1848 — was ethnic conflict, particularly in central and eastern Europe: Germans fought with Danes and Poles, and Magyars fought with Romanians, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs and Austrians.

The conflicts in Hungary were especially damaging, because they arose among subjects of the same overarching polity, Austria's Habsburg Empire, which held sway over eleven different nationalities.

The existence of such fierce dissension within this multinational space gave the imperial family and its supporters in Vienna a golden opportunity to "divide and rule." By pitting the different ethnic groups against each other, it did manage to destroy the 1848 revolutions.

The counterrevolutionary reaction that emerged was bloody but triumphant — even though it really just postponed the real day of reckoning by another six or so decades.

A better chance for lasting reform

In terms of intensity, the full horrors of internal conflict have been visited on the Middle East. It does have an 1848 character of despair to it.

The divisions within the Libyan revolution split along tribal lines. In Syria, Bashad al-Assad's core Shia supporters are holding out against the primarily Sunni opposition, at great human cost. There have been sectarian attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt.

And yet, the conditions are different. For one, there is no longer any overarching empire that might play one nationality off against the other, as there was with the Habsburg monarchy in 1848.

More importantly, where tribal or religious conflict has broken out in the Middle East, the ruling group has been so closely identified with one side or another that it could not play the "Habsburg card" of divide and rule.

That requires being seen, like the Habsburg Emperor, as somehow "above" such divisions. In Libya, the very opposite happened: Muammar Qaddafi was unable to follow his usual, adept strategy of balancing tribal aspirations and rivalries as one after another turned against him.

In Syria, Assad probably cannot divide and rule along sectarian lines because his otherwise secular Ba'ath regime draws support from the country's Shias and is backed by Shia Iran. That, combined with international inertia (in stark contrast to Libya), means that the war looks set follow its tragic course for a while yet.

This issue overlaps with the question of leadership, which in turn goes to the heart of a problem faced by all revolutionary regimes: legitimacy. In 2011, heads of state were forced from office in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

In the case of Libya, Qaddafi was not just overthrown, he captured and shot dead in October 2011. In Egypt, an ailing Hosni Mubarak was tried and sentenced to life in prison in June of this year.

Nothing analogous occurred in Europe in 1848. The last king of France, Louis-Philippe, was sent scurrying into exile, and in a couple of states in Germany (Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt) the rulers abdicated — but in favor of their heirs.

The fact that 1848 did not entail, in most places, a complete change of regime from the very top downwards meant two things. First, the revolution and the monarchs presented conflicting sources of political legitimacy fighting for the loyalties of the people.

Against the liberal ideologies of the revolutionaries, many people still regarded the monarch as a paternal figure, their protector against the depredations of their landlords, some of whom were precisely the same people trying to achieve constitutions and national freedom.

In the Habsburg Empire, one of the great victories of 1848 was to abolish serfdom where it still existed. Yet those very decrees were issued from Vienna by the Emperor, a move aimed deliberately at trumping the liberal revolutionaries, who moved too slowly on the issue.

The peasants therefore voted accordingly and supported counterrevolutionary candidates in the elections which the liberals had hoped would legitimize their new order.

In the Middle East, by contrast, the revolutionaries held the ideological ace: irrespective of how much Westerners and Arab secularists are anxious about the Muslim Brotherhood and its victory in Egypt's elections, Islam has provided an ideological continuity which reaches deeply into the region's past.

Islam might thus transcend both particular regimes, which come and go, and the role of any one individual, like a dictator. It therefore gives the new order a legitimizing, ideological foundation with which the old autocracies simply could not hope to compete.

Second, Europe's monarchies in 1848 were usually left in control of the military, so they could marshal their forces and strike back at the opportune moment.

An important example of this was in Prussia, where the King and the newly elected parliament in Berlin clashed over control of the army. The King won and used the same forces to crush the liberals shortly afterwards.

In Egypt, by comparison, the new president Mohammed Morsi has — for now — been able to assert the authority of the elected, civil government over the army, beginning with the dismissal of potentially troublesome commanders.

The world may not have seen a wholesale destruction of the old order in the Arab states in 2011. But the changes at the top, the international context, the ideological underpinnings of the revolutions and even, perversely, the local dynamics of sectarian and tribal divisions may ultimately give the new regimes a better chance for wide-ranging and lasting reform than Europe's "Forty-Eighters" ever had.

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Mp3: Made in Germany
Serie Onderzoek en Innovatie in Duitsland

21-nov-2012 Sibrand de Boer

Gigabites aan muziek meenemen op je telefoon of iPod is tegenwoordig geen enkel probleem meer. Het zoeken naar dat ene nummer in een stapel CD’s is verleden tijd. Dat alles hebben we te danken aan bestandsformaat mp3, een innovatie ontwikkeld in Duitsland.

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'Grimms' populairiteit was onverwacht'

Toegevoegd: zaterdag 8 dec 2012, 09:14
Door redacteur Lambert Teuwissen

Roodkapje. Hans en Grietje. De Kikkerkoning. De wolf en de zeven geitjes. Het is haast onmogelijk volwassen te worden zonder de sprookjes van Grimm.

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Op dinsdag 11 december 2012 16:29 schreef golfer het volgende:
TV / [TV-tip]: De Gouden Eeuw

Wil er niet ook hier een apart topic over openen, maar denk dat de C&H-users daar misschien wel interesse in hebben?

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(Belga) Het federaal parket mag een gerechtelijk onderzoek laten openen naar de moord op de Congolese premier Patrice Lumumba, in 1961. Dat heeft de Brusselse kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling (KI) beslist. Volgens de KI woedde er in die periode in de voormalige Belgische kolonie een gewapend conflict en zou de moord op de eerste premier van Congo een oorlogsmisdaad kunnen uitmaken.

Verschillende zonen van de Congolese premier hadden bij het federaal parket klacht met burgerlijke partijstelling ingediend tegen een twaalftal overlevenden van toen, politiemensen, politici en ambtenaren. Daarvan zouden er intussen maar een achttal in leven zijn. Eén van hen zou Jacques Brassinne zijn, in 1961 Belgisch diplomaat in Katanga. Andere namen die opdoken waren die van Etienne Davignon, toen jong diplomaat, en de in Zuid-Afrika wonende Charles Huyghé, de toenmalige kabinetschef van de Katangese minister van Defensie. Vooraleer het federaal parket een onderzoek kon openen moest eerst uitgemaakt worden of het Belgische gerecht wel bevoegd was. Het federaal parket meende van wel en steunde zich daarvoor op de genocidewet uit 1993. Die geeft de Belgische rechter een universele bevoegdheid om oorlogsmisdaden, misdaden tegen de menselijkheid of volkerenmoord te vervolgen. Klagers of beklaagden moeten wel een band hebben met België, wat in dit geval wel het geval was. De KI heeft het federaal parket nu gelijk gegeven en geoordeeld dat de moord op Lumumba mogelijk een oorlogsmisdaad is en België een gerechtelijk onderzoek kan voeren. (KAV)

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VOC-archief ligt te rotten in depots Jakarta
De archieven van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie zijn van grote historische waarde voor zowel Nederland als Indonesië.

Volgens Historicus Hendrik Niemeijer ligt er naar schatting zestien kilometer aan documenten uit de Nederlandse tijd, maar is nog lang niet alles geïnventariseerd. Tweeënhalve kilometer bestaat uit originele archieven van de VOC uit de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw.

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De Corts Stichting, die de VOC-archieven in Indonesië probeert te behouden, wil meer geld voor het digitaliseren van het materiaal. De documenten liggen opgeslagen in depots in het zuiden van Jakarta, maar daar liggen ze al jaren te rotten.

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Polderselectie nog altijd trauma

Toegevoegd: vrijdag 11 jan 2013, 08:00
Update: vrijdag 11 jan 2013, 11:13
Door redacteur Lambert Teuwissen

Eva Vriend kent de vooroordelen over Flevoland. "Op die kale vlakte gebeurt toch niks. Geef maar snel een dot gas op de A6. En als je in Almere een huis koopt, dan is dat omdat je Amsterdam niet kunt betalen", somt ze meewarig op.

Maar vlak na de drooglegging werden de IJsselmeerpolders gezien als een Hollands paradijs. Over de strenge selectieprocedure voor de moderne Adams en Eva's schreef Vriend 'Het Nieuwe Land'.

De vraag naar het nieuwe land was enorm, schrijft Vriend, zelf kleindochter van een van de gelukkigen. "Als je hiernaartoe kon verhuizen, dan ha

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De Europeanen waren niet de eerste buitenlanders die Australië bezochten. Indiërs zouden 4000 jaar geleden al voet hebben gezet op het eiland. Daarop wijst een studie van Max-Planck-instituut voor Evolutionaire Theorie in Leipzig. De onderzoeksresultaten zijn gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift PNAS van de Amerikaanse Nationale Academie van Wetenschappen.

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“Vlaanderen wil Slag van Waterloo dan toch niet herdenken”

Vlaanderen zal geen traject opzetten rond de herdenking van de slag van Waterloo in 2015. In de commissie onroerend erfgoed van het Vlaams Parlement werd hierover deze week een voorstel van resolutie van Vlaams volksvertegenwoordiger Dirk Van Mechelen weggestemd. Van Mechelen spreekt over een gemiste kans: “Nochtans beschikken we in Vlaanderen over een aantal aantrekkelijke sites, die bezocht kunnen worden in aansluiting op een bezoek aan het slagveld van Waterloo. Ik denk dan bijvoorbeeld aan het Fort Napoleon in Oostende en het Koninklijk Paleis op de Antwerpse Meir.”

Op 8 juni 1815 werd het Franse leger van Keizer Napoleon verslagen door een Geallieerd coalitieleger. “Ongetwijfeld zal de 200-jarige herdenking heel wat belangstelling met zich meebrengen,” aldus Van Mechelen. “De Waalse gewestregering trok liefst 40 miljoen euro uit voor de herinrichting van het slagveld en voor de verdere toeristische ontsluiting ervan. In april 2011 liet Vlaams minister Geert Bourgeois in een persbericht weten dat hij afspraken had gemaakt met zijn Waalse collega om ook Vlaanderen te betrekken bij de herdenking. Beide ministers en hun administraties zouden geregeld overleg hebben en voorstellen uitwerken.”

“De resolutie die in de commissie door de meerderheidspartijen werd weggestemd had als enige bedoeling om ervoor te zorgen dat er effectief werk wordt gemaakt van zo’n traject”, zegt Van Mechelen in een persmededeling. “De ervaring met de voorbereidingen rond de herdenking van de Eerste Wereldoorlog tonen aan dat dergelijke zaken heel wat voorbereiding vragen. In de week dat Vlaams minister Geert Bourgeois nog de resultaten van een studie voorstelde, waarin werd gewezen op het economische belang van de toeristische sector, zou je verwachten dat iedereen dit voorstel zou steunen. Zeker ook omdat we in Vlaanderen met bijvoorbeeld het Fort Napoleon in Oostende en het Koninklijk Paleis op de Antwerpse Meir over een aantal aantrekkelijke sites beschikken die in aansluiting op een bezoek aan het slagveld kunnen worden bezocht. Als je weet dat men mikt op 500.000 bezoekers per jaar is het potentieel onmiddellijk duidelijk,” vervolgt de vroegere erfgoedminister.

Van Mechelen: “Ik was dan ook zeer verwonderd dat de meerderheid dit voorstel van resolutie niet wou steunen. Blijkbaar is er sinds de aankondiging van april 2011 niets gebeurd en wordt vanuit die optiek het belang van de herdenking in vraag gesteld. Iedereen met enig historisch besef weet echter dat niet alleen binnen Europa maar mondiaal 200 jaar Waterloo op heel wat belangstelling zal kunnen rekenen. Het blijft ook eigenaardig vast te stellen dat partijen die het steeds over transfers hebben, nu geen gebruik willen maken van de mogelijkheid om ook in Vlaanderen een toeristisch en economisch graantje mee te pikken van de investeringen van de Waalse overheid.”

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America's Bismarck: How Lincoln Created Industrial America by Martin Sieff

Everyone thinks they know who Abraham Lincoln is, but even after the new Steven Spielberg movie few Americans know about the full range of activities Lincoln commanded. He not only held the nation together, but he also set it onto the path of industrialization. Lincoln was America's Bismarck — and then some.

Abraham Lincoln was the real architect of the unprecedented global colossus of Industrial America. He pushed through and shaped the laws that allowed industrial and financial corporations to organize on an unprecedented scale. He provided them with more security from interference by government than private enterprise had ever before enjoyed in human history.
Lincoln held the United States together through an unprecedented shedding of blood. Then he tied it together with literal bonds of steel. He pushed through financial incentives for private companies to build railroads that united the continent. This made continental-scale trade possible for the very first time.

European countries did not offer anything comparable to the financial and land grants Lincoln offered the new railroad corporations. It took Russia nearly 40 more years to build its first transcontinental railroad. Lincoln gave the United States a 40-year head start on Russia.

Lincoln believed in industry over agriculture. He also believed in the primacy of manufacturing over the mining and basic commodities sectors in order to strengthen the future economy of America. He encouraged technological innovation, invention and the practical application of science to business and war in every way he could.

In his four short years as president (Lincoln was elected twice but was assassinated at the beginning of his second term), he transformed the Union from a huge agricultural "empire of liberty," half dependent on slave labor, into the world's industrial giant.

We think of Lincoln as a saintly hero — a gentle beloved male version of Mother Teresa in the White House. This vision of Lincoln is a relatively modern one, owing a great deal to Carl Sandburg. But Sandburg was a terrible historian and a shameless hagiographer. He distorted the real life of a great American leader to produce a childish caricature of reality.

Hailing from Chicago, Sandburg found his true calling as a highly touted biographer of Lincoln. He painted Lincoln as a suffering saint of the prairie. Subsequently, it has been difficult for ordinary Americans to think of the Great Liberal Emancipator in any other way.

Sandburg's achievement was extraordinary. Even after 80 years, the image he painted of Lincoln continues to define him for the American public. His clichés still blot out the lessons to be learned from the continuing flood of genuinely first-class scholarship about Lincoln's life.

Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated movie does much to provide a far more realistic and nuanced portrait of Lincoln, the wily politician, the caring man — and the human being riddled by doubt.

But even with that major refinement in our understanding of the 16th President of the United States, the real Lincoln still continues to hide in plain sight from the American people. This development would have given him wry satisfaction.

The real Lincoln was no Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. He suffered, but not as a servant. He was not religious in any conventional sense.

Lincoln's skepticism was well known in his home community in Springfield, Illinois. In 1846, he turned up at one Sunday morning church meeting to campaign for support in his first election to Congress (and the only one he ever won.) The clergyman holding the meeting was fulminating on the horrors of the fires of Hell that awaited unbelievers.

Seeing Lincoln, whose skepticism he knew well, the minister asked, "And where do you think you're going, Mr. Lincoln?" "I don't know where you're going, Reverend," Lincoln replied. "But I'm going to Congress."

Lincoln was passionate in his genuine abhorrence of chattel slavery, but he was no pacifist. He wasn't gentle in his conduct of the national affairs of the United States. He also wasn't into forgiveness of those who crossed him or failed him. Although he issued many pardons, he also approved military executions of deserters from the Union Army.

There was no disagreement between Lincoln and the Radical Republicans in Congress over the need to impose a harsh peace over the conquered South in 1865. His proposed peace behind his soft words was as harsh as theirs.

"Blood and Iron"

We all know who Abraham Lincoln was. But what was his significance to American history?

What was Abraham Lincoln? He was America's Bismarck. Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Prussia, Lincoln's exact contemporary, won the respect and fear of the world because he fought and won three wars to create the new German Empire.

He boasted that he would unify Germany and impose his will on it by "blood and iron." And he did.

Lincoln reunited America just as Bismarck united Germany. But Lincoln's achievement was on an incomparably greater, far more terrible scale. More than three times the number of soldiers was killed in the U.S. Civil War than in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War.

Total fatalities in the war between Prussia and France were almost 185,000. Some 650,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. Lincoln also built up America as a far greater industrialized nation than Germany became in Europe.

Lincoln had a vision of a better America that would emerge from the war. Had he lived, Lincoln would have rejoiced in the rise of American industry. If Lincoln had lived to retire from the presidency in 1869, he might have sat on the boards of Union Pacific, Standard Oil or Carnegie Steel.

To prove this, we only have to look at what Lincoln did for a living.

Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. But he was no simple, poor, champion of the "Forgotten Man," the way legendary movie director John Ford portrayed him in "Young Mr. Lincoln" in 1939. That movie, starring Henry Fonda as the young Abe, is still watched today. It embraced Carl Sandburg's picture of Lincoln.

The real Abraham Lincoln — that is, the real unknown Lincoln — was a very different kind of man. He was a respected appeals lawyer, a lawyer for the railroad and other enterprises, and became wealthy doing so.

But in 1854, he chose to speak out against the extension of slavery through the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Though unsuccessful in his subsequent bid for a U.S. Senate seat, he had acquired the taste for politics. He went on to change the nation — socially, politically and economically.

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Op donderdag 24 januari 2013 19:59 schreef Cobra4 het volgende:
Voordracht Van Nellefabriek als werelderfgoed

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'Je hoefde geen nazi te zijn om te moorden'
Schrijvers Neitzel en Welzer in gesprek met Grunberg

24-jan-2013 Fleur de Weerd

Wehrmachtsoldaten waren geen moordmachines omdat ze fanatieke nationaal-socialisten waren. Ze vochten omdat het van hen verwacht werd en omdat geweld in de menselijke aard zit. Dat concluderen historicus Sönke Neitzel en socioloog Harald Welzer in hun boek ‘Soldaten’, waarin ze afgeluisterde gesprekken van Duitse krijgsgevangenen analyseerden. Gisteren spraken ze er met schrijver Arnon Grunberg over in Amsterdam.

Sönke Neitzel beleefde tien jaar geleden de droom van iedere historicus. In een boek over Duitse onderzeeërs in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, ‘Black May’, vond hij een verwijzing naar een verslag van een door de Britten afgeluisterd gesprek tussen twee Duitse krijgsgevan

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Beyond the Mayan Calendar: Doomsdayism is Alive and Well by Brent Ranalli

With calendars rolling over to 2013 at midnight, we can now say with absolute certainty that the world did not end in 2012, as many believed the ancient Mayan calendar predicted it would. But with globalization fueling a rise in cultural and economic dislocation, Brent Ranalli predicts that while the world may fail to end, end-of-time prophesies will continue to resurface.

December 21, 2012 has come and gone, the Mayan "Long Count" calendar has rolled over, and the world as we know it persists. There was no apocalypse, no pole shift, no rendezvous with a mysterious "planet Nibiru." What are we to make of this strange social and cultural phenomenon of expectations of worldwide calamity?
For many, the notion of the end of the world was an excuse for levity ("Buy Christmas presents? Why bother?"). It seemed like high comedy. But unfortunately for some, the macabre expectations and fears were all too real.

NASA fielded inquiries from teenagers and adults who were distraught, panicked, and even suicidal on account of the supposed ancient Mayan predictions. According to the pollsters at Ipsos, a survey of over 16,000 people in 21 countries revealed that fully 10% believed that the ancient Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012, and 8% admitted experiencing anxiety or fear on that account.

What are we to make of this?

To put the 2012 episode in perspective, we must remind ourselves that end-of-world beliefs are nothing new. For nearly 3,000 years, people have been holding their breath and cringing before a final blow that never arrives.

Credit for inventing this curious and unnatural phenomenon goes to the ancient Persian prophet Zoroaster. Zoroaster invented the idea of a cosmic force of evil at large in the world, opposed to a cosmic force of good.

War between good and evil demands a climactic battle, which in turn requires a happy resolution, with old scores settled and blessed rest for the virtuous (that is, the pious followers of Zoroaster), while the wicked undergo eternal torment.

Ancient Jews freed from their Babylonian captivity by the Persians brought this suite of ideas with them to Jerusalem. They grafted it onto the traditional Hebrew religion. From there, it spread wherever the Old Testament was read.

Jesus tried to discourage morbid curiosity about the timing and details of the final catastrophe among his disciples, but he couldn't stop later devotees from inserting a book of Revelation into the Christian canon.

When the prophet Muhammad found a group of his own followers debating the timing of the end of the world, he provided them with a helpful list of ten signs to watch for.

Apocalyptic thinking blossomed in the Middle Ages. And nearly every generation since then has had some prophet or other predicting imminent doom or salvation.

Columbus thought his voyages were fulfilling predictions in Revelations and ushering in the end of days. Thomas Müntzer led a peasant rebellion in sixteenth-century Germany that ended in grisly annihilation but not the expected apocalypse. Many of the English Puritans who colonized America in the seventeenth century and fomented civil war at home thought they had the millennium, 1,000 years of peace and prosperity before Judgment Day, within their grasp.

When European religion became more "rational" in the enlightened 18th century and materialistic 19th century, secular thinkers stepped in to fill the void. The socialist Charles Fourier speculated that the oceans would soon lose their salt and turn to lemonade. Karl Marx predicted a workers' paradise and a stateless society. If the 20th century saw an uptick in religious apocalyptic fervor, this could be seen as just a return to the status quo.

Thus, the "Mayan 2012" apocalypse can be seen as merely one more installment in an ancient and venerable tradition of failed predictions.

What makes the recent episode unique is two-fold. First, it was a truly global phenomenon. Authorities in China and Russia had to make official statements to calm public fears.

Communities in France and Turkey near alleged "safe spots" were overrun by paranoid fanatics and gawking tourists. A mayor in Brazil urged his constituents to stock up and prepare for the worst.

This is testament not only to the influence of Hollywood (with its 2009 blockbuster disaster movie 2012 and the stealth marketing campaign that preceded it), but also the sheer power and dynamism of the Internet and social media in a globalized world.

Second, this is perhaps the first major case of "New Age" apocalyptic fever, based on a blend of supposed ancient wisdom and garbled science (rather than, say, on mysteries propounded in the books of Daniel and Revelation).

Cultural dislocation and economic insecurity

Yet we must still ask: Why do end-of-world predictions catch on? What makes such fantasies compelling, and what kind of person finds them believable?

A basic condition for end-of-world beliefs is a worldview based on a story. Zoroaster couldn't conceive an end to the world until he had envisioned a cosmic drama unfolding in human history.

Cultures that view time as cyclical, such as the Hindus and the ancient Greeks (and, we might note pointedly, the Mayans), are not as susceptible to apocalyptic thinking as cultures with strong creation myths and cultures that are not well grounded in natural cycles.

The ancient Jews were highly susceptible on both counts. They thought time had a distinct, purposeful beginning, and they made stern efforts to suppress remnants of the old fertility rites and nature-based spirituality they shared with most other ancient cultures.

We have inherited their legacy. Today's globalized urban civilization is profoundly alienated from natural cycles, and while monolithic religious (and Marxist, etc.) stories-what post-modernists call "grand narratives"--no longer dominate our historical imagination, we are certainly used to thinking about history in terms of purpose and progress.

We can be even more specific about the risk factors for apocalyptic thinking. The British historian Norman Cohn pointed out that in the context of the Middle Ages, the groups most prone to apocalyptic thinking were the culturally dislocated and economically insecure.

These included artisans working outside the guild system and peasants rocked by the break-up of the manorial system.

Cohn has often been misunderstood as attributing apocalyptic thinking to the poor and oppressed. This is not quite the same thing. It was not oppressed serfs who clamored for the end of the world in the Middle Ages. Rather, it was their grandchildren, former serfs set adrift in a world that no longer required them as a link in the Great Chain of Being.

This explanation rings true. It may be those who are unable to imagine a convincing future for themselves — whether for personal, economic or cultural reasons — in the world they inhabit, must perforce imagine something else, whether with dread or hope.

It certainly rings true, for example, in the case of the Ghost Dance fever that swept the Plains Indians in the late 1800s. When they could no longer fight or run, many of the surviving Plains Indians fell back on the desperate conviction that the white man's world was merely an elaborate set dressing that would fall over of its own accord. In a flash, the old way of life would be restored.

Does this explanation hold for believers in the Mayan prophesies of 2012? It is certain, at least, that the economic dislocations of an increasingly globalized economy and a global recession have left many at a loss to imagine a convincing future for themselves and their families.

In China, Ipsos found that rates of belief in the alleged Mayan prophesies were as high as 20%, far and away higher than in any other country polled. This could reflect unsophisticated consumption of electronic media in China. It could also reflect the huge psychological effects of the recent breakneck pace of social and economic change in China, the lack of a social safety net, and erosion of confidence in the dominant (Communist) historical narrative.

Leaders of the mystical revolutionary Chinese Boxer and White Lotus movements of earlier centuries would have found the Mayanists' 20% ideological alignment enviable. It is hardly any wonder that the Communist regime has cracked down on the Mayan cult.

If this understanding is correct, there is every reason to believe that we have not seen the end of global end-times fads in the 21st century. There is no end in sight to economic dislocations and cultural collisions in our globalized world. And we have food shortages, peak oil, and conflicts over water to look forward to.

While only 8% of those polled by Ipsos felt anxiety about the Mayan prophesies for 2012, fully 14% said they expect the world to end within their lifetime.

The dangers of apocalyptic thinking

Should we be concerned about apocalyptic beliefs and apocalyptic cults? The dangers to the public were perhaps overhyped this time around.

One NASA representative expressed concern about survivalists with stockpiled guns and ammunition getting panicked and trigger-happy as December 21 approached. Not missing a beat, a commercial end-times website took the opportunity to remind its readers that even if the Mayans were wrong, the threat of deranged, armed survivalists is another good reason to stock up on survivalist merchandise.

But even this time around, the costs were real: in psychological distress, in suicides (at least one confirmed in the United Kingdom), in distracting public officials and scientists from their proper business, in maintaining public order.

There were hundreds of arrests in China. Russians summoned a priest to calm a mass psychosis at a women's prison, and police in Brazil and Argentina obstructed planned mass suicides.

Arguably, the Mayan 2012 episode was relatively benign. The prophesies didn't demand that believers demonstrate publicly, or harm themselves, or persecute scapegoats. There is no guarantee that future episodes will be similarly benign.

Is there anything that can be done to mitigate future episodes of end-time hysteria? Social safety nets, sound environmental and trade policies, good governance, the principle of subsidiarity — any and all measures to give people confidence in and power over their own future may help.

Another important palliative is a good grasp of history. If we understand just how many predictions of end-times have been made and proved wrong in the past, and give some thought to how our own children will judge us for our own actions, we may be more likely to exercise greater skepticism the next time around.

In this sense, end-time beliefs are something like chain mail. Bogus and misguided petitions that circulated at the dawn of the Internet age are still circulating today. There are always new users who are not yet savvy enough to recognize a hoax.

If those who turned to NASA for help and guidance in 2012 are a representative sample, it appears that teenagers — inexperienced in the ways of the world — may be among the most vulnerable to end-times panic. Prophylactic education may be needed.

But even with the best education and preparation, end-time beliefs are likely to continue to resurface as long as we live in dynamic urban societies. I'll hazard a prediction that world will fail to end many times over during the course of my lifetime.

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Grondlegger "pingpong"-diplomatie China-VS overleden

zo 10/02/2013 - 14:23 In China is Zhuang Zedong overleden. De drievoudig wereldkampioen tafeltennis werd vooral beroemd voor zijn rol in de zogenoemde pingpong-diplomatie waarbij hij eigenhandig de aanzet gaf voor het ontdooien van de relaties tussen China en de VS. Zhuang was 73. Hij leed al geruime tijd aan kanker.

Zhuang beleefde het hoogtepunt van zijn carrière in de jaren zestig, onder het regime van Mao Zedong. Hij behaalde drie maal goud op de wereldkampioenschappen en werd geëerd als een nationale held.

In 1971, in volle Koude Oorlog, haalde hij opnieuw de media toen hij een geschenk gaf aan de Amerikaanse tafeltennisser Glenn Cowan. Cowan was tijdens het Wereldkampioenschap tafeltennis in Nagoya, Japan, argeloos de bus van het Chinese team opgestapt en bemerkte pas zijn vergissing toen een dozijn paar Chinese ogen hem stomverbaasd aanstaarden. Zhuang en Cowan poseerden samen voor de fotografen. De foto veroorzaakte wereldwijd sensatie.

Het Amerikaanse tafeltennisteam werd daarop uitgenodigd voor een bezoek aan China. Tien maanden daarna kwam er nog een staartje aan het verhaal toen president Richard Nixon een verrassingsbezoek bracht aan China, wat uiteindelijk leidde tot het aanknopen van diplomatieke relaties tussen de twee landen in 1979.

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Op woensdag 20 februari 2013 15:05 schreef yvonne het volgende:
Beleef de Februaristaking van 1941 'live' op Facebook

Nederland in de oorlog doet dagelijks verslag vanuit bezet Nederland. Met 'live updates' op Facebook brengen we breaking news van 72 jaar geleden. Wat nu het nieuws beheerst, zijn de roerige februaridagen van 1941. De Februaristaking kondigt zich aan in de berichten. Voor je ogen zie je het verzet groeien en de opstand ontstaan.

Februari 1941 is een roerige maand. Toenemend antisemitisch geweld, vechtpartijen in Amsterdam, de afgrendeling van de Jodenhoek, de oprichting van de Joodse Raad, Joden en niet-Joden die zich verenigen in knokploegen – de spanning is om te snijden, Nederland is een tikkende tijdbom. Hoe lang gaat dit nog goed? Volg de ontwikkelingen in realtime op de Facebookpagina van Nederland in de oorlog

“Nederland in de oorlog maakt optimaal gebruik van social media (‘realtime’ contentprikkels) om op een beknopte en visueel aantrekkelijke manier een stukje historisch bewustzijn te creëren.”
— Bas Gezelle (initiatiefnemer Nederland in de oorlog)

Nederland in de oorlog doet 'live' verslag vanuit bezet Nederland in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. We willen mensen prikkelen met de actualiteit van vroeger, versteld doen staan van gebeurtenissen die vandaag exact 72 jaar geleden plaatsvonden. De tijdslijn van Facebook biedt een prachtige mogelijkheid om alle gebeurtenissen in chronologische volgorde te presenteren. In woord en beeld, op de dag nauwkeurig. Met Facebook, maar ook Twitter, bereiken we vrienden en volgers in hun eigen belevingswereld. Temidden van alle huis-tuin-en-keuken-berichtjes en onzintweets valt Nederland in de oorlog op met opmerkelijk, relevant en vaak schokkend nieuws. Een mooi perspectief.

https://www.facebook.com/nederlandindeoorlog

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Op donderdag 28 februari 2013 10:21 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
Het onderzoek levert overtuigende resultaten op. De wetenschappers zijn voor 95 procent zeker dat Homerus zijn meesterwerken tussen 376 en 1157 voor Christus schreef.