80's Rock

My deepest condolences to you Paul.

No, no ,no…i wasn`t taliking about the F - word at all, instead I talked about the word frick you mentioned.

OK.

So the first post of the cartoon was just like “huh?”

The discussion of NEDM and burning cats, turns my stomach.

It reminded me of the two Iraqi workers burned to death by a rocket about 20 yards from my workshop in Iraq.

Not a pretty sight.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102036.html

EXCERPT
Clinton seems to have found his role as facilitator-in-chief, urging us to give up our deadly national passivity(LJ Note : A Clinton trademark…no economic initiatives, no energy policy, no move on Osami bint Lami, no response but words to the first WTC attack[1993], a chicken run from Mogadeshu with only high tech low results battles/wars, including Yugoslopia, for the remainder of his term.) and start thinking things through for ourselves. Commandeering the role of government through civic action suddenly feels like a very empowering notion – the alternative being to find oneself stranded in a flood waving a shirt from a rooftop(LJ NOTE : Thanks to decades of Louisiana state and local Democrat misappropriation and mismanagement of Levy repair funds.)
…

The White House doesn’t seem to realize it yet, but we are entering a post-spin era in public life(LJ NOTE : The Clinspin machine geared up his last year in office. Recall/google the Clinton attempt at a Middleeast solution…Yassar turned down an offer of 98% of everything he wanted. Since Clinton’s Reaper Visit he has revved it up to CLINSPIN). The shift has long been underway in the business world, propelled by the Enron catastrophe and the collapse of the (LJ NOTE : CLINTON) dot-com bubble. Process, not perception(LJ NOTE : Sounds like the liberal classroom…“Process , not result,”) is king in boardrooms today. After so much corporate malfeasance it all got too dire to put up with fake CEOs anymore. (LJ NOTE : Google the timeline. The malfeasance was during the Clinton years, while the the cleanup occured during the W years.)
…

The irony is that no one would have believed that Clinton – the king of spin, who went out under a cloud of indecency five years ago – could climb back to such credibility. …he’s backlit now by his disciplined handling of the economy(LJ NOTE : A Republican US Congress held his feet to the fire and he trumpeted his accomplishment.), the unsought(LJ NOTE : Read as INCORRECT.) comparisons of how well FEMA used to perform under his watch and the enlightened(LJ Note : Last Chance! Redemption) nature of his global activism.
…

On Clinton’s face these days is a look of wry, judicious knowingness(LJ NOTE : William Jefferson Clinton will win an Academy Award. A feat never accomplished by Ronald Reagan[ http://www.reelclassics.com/Actors/Reagan/reagan.htm ].) It’s the look of political wisdom, and it imparted to his conference’s departing crowd something like serenity.
(LJ NOTE : He’s ba-acck!!)
END EXCERPT

As this has been posted with the authors permission, i guess that he will have a look at the forum to see how we react.

@El:

Aftermath of War: A Lesson from History
–------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Nick Robertson

…

On May 28, 1453, two of the greatest armies in the world ended an epic 52-day battle on the border of Europe and Asia. On one side the 100,000-man army of Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire and the forces of Islam were attempting to capture one of the world’s greatest cities — Constantinople (now Istanbul). On the other side, behind the supposedly impenetrable walls of the city, were the defensive forces of the west — the 10,000 man force led by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI.

Well, i think the description here is over-exaggerated. Byzantine was kind of a “vassal” of the Ottomans for about 200 years at that stage. Its empire was the city. The city was historically and culturally great, but the number of citizens has been declining, from plague sweeping over it (AFAIR twice), from being raided by Venetians (who then imposed the “Latin Empire” and looted it thoroughly), and other internal struggles.
The forces of the “west” never were forces of west, they were forces of the east: non-catholic, greek instead of latin etc.

Dragases. The battle for Constantinople is considered one of the greatest and most important confrontations in history.

Constantinople was one of the most vital possessions of the Christian world. The city was the capital of the East Roman — or Byzantine — Empire ever since the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great selected it as his new capital in 324 AD. Constantinople was the gateway between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam.

It was vital as a symbol, and still had some meaning for trade, though Genoa and Venice were more important, using the Mediterranean Sea for trade (while Constntinople was important for land trade).

Though, Constantinople was a “buffer” between teh Latin Christianity and Islam. As long as it stood, the westerners cared not too much (except in the Reconquista (sp?)). After it fell, Islam found its way to the borders with the west.

The city rested by the Bosporus, a watery straight which was the most important artery of international trade. Trade ships from Venice, Genoa, England, France, and much of Europe traveled past Constantinople to the eastern Black Sea ports which connected the European continent to the major trade centers of India and China. The wealth that traveled on this route built the economic power of the Western world — a 15th century version of today’s globalization of trade.

The main shipping trade routes did not go through Constantinople anymore. It once was important for the city, true, but in 1450 it already had changed. It still had importance in the trade with the Black Sea (and thus, with part of the Rus), but it did not control the trade routes, as it did a few hundred years ago. The black eastern sea ports were not important for the trade with India/China after the Varangians had been defeated there, that trade went through Arabia.

As the battle for Constantinople began, the Ottomans unleashed man’s newest weapon, artillery, to breach the city’s massive walls. Shortly after the shocking breakthrough, the Ottomans accomplished what had been deemed impossible for over a millennium — the fall of Constantinople. There was horror and disbelief as the forces of Islam routed the Western army. Panic swept across Europe. The vital trade routes to the East were now under enemy control, and an alien army with strange beliefs threatened to march through Europe.

The “shocking breakthtough” was a small unguarded unclosed door called “Kerkaporta” or “Kerkoporta”. “alien army with strange beliefs”, well this is after the Crusades and Reconquista, the Europeans probably though they knew what would come.
A very emotional writing style all the way up to now, something that i feel inappropiate here.

Was this the end of the Western world? Quite the opposite. What seemed at the moment a knockout punch to Europe ended up causing great change. It literally forced the discovery of a new world.

the conclusion “forced” is discussable: “helped” would be better IMHO.

Constantinople had been Europe’s center for intellectual studies for centuries.

For centuries long past, when it finally fell. It was non-catholic, looted by catholics. Even then, it still had amassed a lot of historic valuable scripts and other things. Most that we know of the Ancient Greek had been saved by them. So, it was not hte center for studies, but a main archive, which the west didn’t care about to visit or use for its own good.

…Many who lived inside the city’s walls devoted their lives to studying and preserving history’s classical past. When the Ottomans conquered the city, many of these intellectuals fled to Italy. This flight from war was directly responsible for the acceleration of one of the most important periods in Europe’s history, the Renaissance.

Correct.

Classic ideas, locked inside the walls of Constantinople for centuries, broke free and spread out across Europe. Isolated city-states began to gradually dissolve. For the first time in history, nation states — like Spain and Portugal — emerged. The Renaissance brought Europe into an age of light after an age of darkness.

Not fully correct: Portugal and Spain (that is Catille and Aragon) existed for about 100 years by then. The Renaissance did not happen in nation states, but in the Italian city states.
I would not support this way of concluding that tghe fall of Byzantine lead to the rise of nation states. Not without further explanation that is.

Since Constantinople’s fall blocked overland trade routes to the spice markets of South and East Asia, the emerging nation states needed new routes to the riches of the East. The Great Age of Exploration began. Brave men such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Magellan circumnavigated the globe to find new routes across vast, unknown oceans. In the process they discovered the world — and many of its secrets, treasures and mysteries.

Notice that above it’s “trade ships”, why Constantinople is important, here it is overland trade routes. Again, memerging nation states are mentioned, which is discussable. The rest is correct to my knowledge.

…

i skipped the rest of that discussion, my only comment: far stretched :)
The only thing in common is the loss of a war. The important (for the west) fled of intellectuals and access to old sources and the change to the commerce system are not present in Iraq.

IL, this is 2002.

Well apparently bringing old threads back is in vogue.

Well, we can. It’s just that I have an incredible amount of assignments and reports I have to make up on the computer (I’m a terrible speller – so sue me). I haven’t been able to read a lot of TM’s post, so is their anything in particular you would like her to respond to?