{"id":8110,"date":"2016-11-22T10:57:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T15:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=8110"},"modified":"2016-11-22T22:03:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T03:03:57","slug":"the-guernica-of-our-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=8110","title":{"rendered":"The Guernica of our times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The horrific bombing of Guernica in 1937 inspired one of the best known of Pablo Picasso’s paintings<\/a>. Yet images of the ruined city were not enough: The world did nothing, and two years later, another war began that brought the same horror, but on a much larger scale, to all of Europe and many parts of the world elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\"Die<\/p>\n

And\u00a0here we are in 2016, and it seems we learned nothing. Another civil war rages on, this time in Syria. And another rogue great power intervenes with its mighty warplanes, conducting indiscriminate bombings against civilian targets.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Just like in 1937, the world remains largely silent. Appeasing a great power and its power hungry despot is more important than lives. And we forget the lessons of history: despots cannot be appeased. They always want more. The demons of nationalism, awakened by false promises of restored pride, cannot be appeased. They will always demand more.<\/p>\n

What horrors will follow in the coming years? Will we see the streets of Europe, perhaps North America, look like Aleppo’s today? Is Aleppo just a prelude to what is yet to come, just like Guernica was 79 years ago?<\/p>\n

As I think of this, it brings to my mind a 33-year old German-language hit song,\u00a0Nena’s 99 Luftballons<\/a>. \u00a0Here is how that song ends (my less-than-perfect translation of the German lyrics; they also produced an English version but it was, well, rather lame):<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n
Neunundneunzig\u00a0Jahre Krieg
\nLie\u00dfen keinen Platz f\u00fcr Sieger
\nKriegsminister gibt’s nicht mehr
\nUnd auch keine D\u00fcsenflieger<\/p>\n

Heute zieh’ ich meine Runden
\nSeh die Welt in Tr\u00fcmmern liegen
\nHab ‘n Luftballon gefunden
\nDenk’ an Dich und lass’ ihn fliegen<\/td>\n

Ninety-nine years of war
\nLeft no room for a victor
\nThere are no more war ministers
\nAlso no more fighter bombers<\/p>\n

Today as I took a stroll
\nSaw a world, ruined by war
\nThere, I just found a balloon
\nThinking of you, I let it fly\u00a0soon<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The horrific bombing of Guernica in 1937 inspired one of the best known of Pablo Picasso’s paintings. Yet images of the ruined city were not enough: The world did nothing, and two years later, another war began that brought the same horror, but on a much larger scale, to all of Europe and many parts […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,25,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-history","category-music","category-politics","category-54-id","category-25-id","category-4-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8110"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8132,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8110\/revisions\/8132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}