Cultuur & Historie in het Nieuws (Deel 8).

quote:

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

quote:

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.

quote:

“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.”

quote:

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.

quote:

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

quote:

'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

quote:

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.

quote:

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.