When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime .

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital Magazine NEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Germany

A Christmas Wish For Europe: Time To Defend Our Civilization

After the Christmas market attack in Berlin, the Western world would be wrong to assume it can prevent its cultural or political dissolution by merely  repeating its prayers to the glory of diversity.

Near the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square in Berlin, on Dec. 22
Near the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square in Berlin, on Dec. 22
Mathieu Bock-Côté

-OpEd-

PARIS — There was something atrocious and yet, at the same time, terribly ordinary about the scene. A few days before Christmas, a dozen people killed and some 50 more wounded by a truck at a Christmas market in Berlin. It felt like déjà vu after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had driven into crowds in Nice on Bastille Day. Once again, a public celebration will chosen as a target to spread terror and trauma among ordinary citizens.

But Europe has its practiced way of talking about these incidents. Some will say that it's an isolated act. We'll sing in unison that this has nothing to do with Islam. Others will suggest, once again, that the West had it coming, though one can wonder what Germany is guilty of. Faced with Islamism, the media establishment chooses denial. It takes the reality out of events, spreads them across thousands of news items in the miscellaneous section and bars us from putting a name on the war being waged against the West.

Still, this attack falls in line with the sequence of terrorist attacks linked with what happened in Paris, in November 2015. Islamist terrorism wants to show it can strike anywhere. It no longer targets individuals or institutions as was the case with Charlie Hebdo, but anybody and everybody, by turning a simple truck into a ram of death. In these blind attacks, anyone can be a target. In the total war being waged against Western civilization, the simple fact of being a member of it is enough to be guilty and sentenced to death.

Just another day

What we witnessed in Berlin is in fact just another ordinary act of terror. Once again, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. Whether it was really planned from afar or whether it's the result of a more or less spontaneous undertaking, there's one thing we can be certain of: Islamist propaganda is haunting European civilization and is capable of enflaming deadly passions.

And yet, this wasn't exactly a blind attack. The fact that the target was a Christmas market brings Europe back to a part of itself it no longer knows what to do with, its Christian roots. Those who attack Europe want to hit the most intimate part of its identity. More and more often, Christian symbols are the target.

Let's remember that in its statement after the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, ISIS said it had targeted "Crusader France." Similarly, the ritual murder of Father Hamel in his church in Normandy in July 2016 left no room for ambiguity regarding its meaning. Europeans are being sprayed with bullets, butchered or plowed down not so much for what they're doing as for who they are. Except they're no longer aware of this part of themselves. The Western world wants to believe it's been attacked because it's democratic, modern and liberal. By doing that, it prevents itself from understanding that there is such a thing as tension between cultures, between civilizations and even between religions: These aren't necessarily cut out to coexist within the same political community.

The role of politics in this world is not to slide into a sort of multicultural Irenicism, in which all are told to come together under the sign of a happy diversity; but rather it is to build, preserve and guard the protective borders that allow peoples and nations to sustain their historical entity while never denying opportunities to expand productive interactions between them.

We will rightly refuse to reduce the confrontations our world is witnessing to a mere clash of civilizations. Wrongly, we will also refuse to see that it's nonetheless part of the truth.

Those who want to redefine the relevance of borders aren't vultures or demagogues seeking to manipulate peoples' sorrows to isolate them from the rest of the world. Germany is experiencing the predictable consequences of an unbridled humanitarianism in the face of the migrant crisis. Still, the consequences of the open-door policy go beyond Islamist terrorism. You only need to keep in mind what happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne last year to understand the numerous dimensions of a crisis that is not even close to going away.

The time of great military invasions might be behind us, the fact remains that Islamists are driven by a desire of conquest and they believe they can bank on mass immigration to take over Europe. How can European civilization react to this forced mutation if it downplays its significance?

It would be pointless to try to articulate in one paragraph how to respond to this terrorism that has become part of our daily fabric. Still, the Western world would be wrong to assume it can prevent its cultural or political dissolution by merely and ritually repeating its prayers and chants to the glory of diversity. Clearly, it's not just a source of richness. Not all differences are equally appreciable.

As a matter of fact, it is perhaps by embracing what one could call their civilization identity that European nations will be able to find the strength to fight this long war. There's nothing ludicrous in thinking that by turning to the very part of itself that's being attacked, European civilization will find the strength to fight.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Green

The Unsustainable Future Of Fish Farming — On Vivid Display In Turkish Waters

Currently, 60% of Turkey's fish currently comes from cultivation, also known as fish farming, compared to just 10% two decades ago. The short-sightedness of this shift risks eliminating fishing output from both the farms and the open seas along Turkey's 5,200 miles of coastline.

Photograph of two fishermen throwing a net into the Tigris river in Turkey.

Traditional fishermen on the Tigris river, Turkey.

Dûrzan Cîrano/Wikimeidia
İrfan Donat

ISTANBUL — Turkey's annual fish production includes 515,000 tons from cultivation and 335,000 tons came from fishing in open waters. In other words, 60% of Turkey's fish currently comes from cultivation, also known as fish farming.

It's a radical shift from just 20 years ago when some 600,000 tons, or 90% of the total output, came from fishing. Now, researchers are warning the current system dominated by fish farming is ultimately unsustainable in the country with 8,333 kilometers (5,177 miles) long.

Professor Mustafa Sarı from the Maritime Studies Faculty of Bandırma 17 Eylül University believes urgent action is needed: “Why were we getting 600,000 tons of fish from the seas in the 2000’s and only 300,000 now? Where did the other 300,000 tons of fish go?”

Professor Sarı is challenging the argument from certain sectors of the industry that cultivation is the more sustainable approach. “Now we are feeding the fish that we cultivate at the farms with the fish that we catch from nature," he explained. "The fish types that we cultivate at the farms are sea bass, sea bram, trout and salmon, which are fed with artificial feed produced at fish-feed factories. All of these fish-feeds must have a significant amount of fish flour and fish oil in them.”

That fish flour and fish oil inevitably must come from the sea. "We have to get them from natural sources. We need to catch 5.7 kilogram of fish from the seas in order to cultivate a sea bream of 1 kg," Sarı said. "Therefore, we are feeding the fish to the fish. We cannot cultivate fish at the farms if the fish in nature becomes extinct. The natural fish need to be protected. The consequences would be severe if the current policy is continued.”

Keep reading...Show less

The latest