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Railway lines once connected the Middle East

economist.com

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Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#91

Post by rolleiflex »

rendall wrote: post #20

This article made me think about how the presence of trains indicate peace. Trains are so vulnerable to attack. Their existence depends on everyone with access to the tracks to trust and agree with their purpose. I suspect if we're mourning these trains, we also mourn the loss of peace and stability in the region. As an aside, TIL that there are actually two Tripolis, one in Libya and the other in Lebanon. I have hea…

We had, in fact, three — we called the one in Libya Trablusgarp, Trablus of the West, and he one in Lebanon Trablusşam, Trablus of the Levant, and we call the only one that we have left in Anatolia, today's Turkey, Tirebolu. Just like hashes, given a large enough empire, name collisions are inevitable.

Edit: Corrected one of the names. Thanks @egiboy.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#93

Post by rayiner »

throw0101a wrote: post #73
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. The last thing I want during covid is to be stuck in a metal box with 100 strangers uncomfortably wearing masks instead of in my own car blasting music with the window down.

> The last thing I want during covid is to be stuck in a metal box with 100 strangers uncomfortably wearing masks instead of in my own car blasting music with the window down. Or you could walk or take a bicycle (e.g., Amsterdam/Netherlands).

And get rained/snowed on like an animal?

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#94

Post by n8cpdx »

AlgorithmicTime wrote: post #83
Gigachad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is so much more enjoyable when you move away from the suburbs and get rid of your car. The freedom to just walk to your destination and having everything within walking range is priceless.

I disagree. The freedom to get in my car and go anywhere in the country, in the company of my entire family, no less, is priceless.

You can rent a car anytime you want to go on a longer excursion. It is far harder to rent walkability or access to amenities. You can’t rent “my children can walk to school and I can walk to pick them up for lunch” nearly as easily. Nor can you rent “it’s my buddy’s birthday and we wanted to go out on the town without a long car ride after”. Nor can you rent the physical benefits of movement to apply to your many car trips. Nor can you rent the climate benefits of the freedom to not take a car to do all of your errands.

A substantial portion of my childhood is 20-40 minute car rides punctuating every excursion, every new experience. Maybe it’s family time, but mostly I was on my Nintendo DS or GameBoy Color (or reading and getting carsick) and ignoring legs made restless from lack of use. Freedom has its price.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#95

Post by dredmorbius »

yyyk wrote: post #86
dredmorbius wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that TAP's significance ended largely with the 1967 war, though I'm not especially familiar with it. Its existence does explain much of the strategic significance of Beruit (the pipeline's Mediterranean terminus) however.

>My understanding is that TAP's significance ended largely with the 1967 war, though I'm not especially familiar with it. The TAP stopped most operations because Saudi discovered they can use supertankers through international waters and pay much less in pipeline fees. The 1967 war may have actually given TAP a few years more - it closed the Suez canal for awhile, so tankers had to go the long way around. Suez reopen…

Thanks.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#96

Post by agumonkey »

ajuc wrote: post #30
rendall wrote: post #20

This article made me think about how the presence of trains indicate peace. Trains are so vulnerable to attack. Their existence depends on everyone with access to the tracks to trust and agree with their purpose. I suspect if we're mourning these trains, we also mourn the loss of peace and stability in the region. As an aside, TIL that there are actually two Tripolis, one in Libya and the other in Lebanon. I have hea…

> This article made me think about how the presence of trains indicate peace. Trains are so vulnerable to attack. Their existence depends on everyone with access to the tracks to trust and agree with their purpose. I suspect if we're mourning these trains, we also mourn the loss of peace and stability in the region. Trains can also indicate war :) They are crucial for logistics, and were especially so before WW2. My…

There was some massive article about Russian logistics in WW2. It was indeed a big factor in a war. Invading a country with incompatible rails was a problem.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#97

Post by jcranmer »

photochemsyn wrote: post #24

Some historians point to the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway (barely mentioned in the article) as playing a primary role in the outbreak of World War I. The naval forces of Britain had made the decision to switch from coal to oil, and that mean Britain would have a more maneuverable and faster fleet than Germany - so Germany followed suit. Unlike British sea access to Persian oil at the time, the only German option was tra…

Linking World War I to an oil race between Germany and Britain is... really pushing it. To the extent that Anglo-German enmity played a major role in forming the alliance blocs pre-WWI, that is more because Kaiser Wilhelm canned Bismarck in favor of a more aggressive foreign policy that, quite frankly, pissed everybody else off, leading to German diplomatic isolation.

The idea that competition for oil was a major player in that is only viable if you ignore the minor fact that causes happen before actions. To summarize the underlying assertions: the Berlin-Baghdad railway, built in 1889, was needed to transport the new critical resource of oil from its discovery in the Ottoman Empire in 1908 for the insatiable demand of coal-fired dreadnoughts like HMS Dreadnought (1906). (Yes, coal-fired--as far as I'm aware, all of the German capital ships built or planned before or during WWI were primarily coal-fired. The decisive move from coal to oil happens largely at the tail end of WWI, way too late to be a major factory in strategic thinking to motivate foreign policy in the run up to WWI.)

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#98

Post by hylaride »

AlgorithmicTime wrote: post #83
Gigachad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is so much more enjoyable when you move away from the suburbs and get rid of your car. The freedom to just walk to your destination and having everything within walking range is priceless.

I disagree. The freedom to get in my car and go anywhere in the country, in the company of my entire family, no less, is priceless.

You don’t lose any of that having neighbourhoods where you don’t need a car to pick up some milk. I don’t think we should ban private cars or anything, but when public schools have 3 lane car pickup lanes several blocks long there’s an issue.

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#99

Post by egiboy »

rolleiflex wrote: post #91
rendall wrote: post #20

This article made me think about how the presence of trains indicate peace. Trains are so vulnerable to attack. Their existence depends on everyone with access to the tracks to trust and agree with their purpose. I suspect if we're mourning these trains, we also mourn the loss of peace and stability in the region. As an aside, TIL that there are actually two Tripolis, one in Libya and the other in Lebanon. I have hea…

We had, in fact, three — we called the one in Libya Trablusgarp , Trablus of the West, and he one in Lebanon Trablusşam , Trablus of the Levant, and we call the only one that we have left in Anatolia, today's Turkey, Tirebolu . Just like hashes, given a large enough empire, name collisions are inevitable. Edit: Corrected one of the names. Thanks @egiboy.

It's not Trablusşark but rather Trablusşam, Tripoli of the Levant: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trablus%C5%9Fam

Re: Railway lines once connected the Middle East

#100

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

NmAmDa wrote: post #18
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had been working the land, making arid desert farmable and installing infrastructure, since at least the 1880s.

So it was an empty land and no one was forced out of their homes?. Classical zionism propaganda.

I did not say that.
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