Was the war unfathomably destructive? No doubt it was. Was there any other way the matter of slavery could have been resolved, given the economic status of the South at the time? We’ll never know, but I doubt it.

I saw that this morning.

The wooden ships of the US Navy got a lot of their wood from the Naval Live Oaks area and masts from our pine forests. There is a Fort Pickens monument, although it is better known as Geronimo’s prison, than the bottleneck it was during the Civil War. The Naval Shipyards was the only significant Civil War action fought in Florida.

The Spanish started building ships in Pensacola, and the British made some improvement to the facilities, which well-sited as almost everything necessary for ship building was available locally.

– Badtux the History Penguin

Actually, Badtux, it is Gaddafi’s son who made that “dire prediction”.

The situation is simple: the oil is in the East of the country, but the money has all gone to the West, so people in the East are PO’ed about living in poverty and putting up with the pollution while Tripoli prospers.

I try not to get too involved because that !#$@#$@$ Gaddafi tried to shoot down the aircraft I was in over international waters in the Gulf of Sidra in the 1970s. The fact that a C-130 was able to out-maneuver a pair of Mirage 2000s tells you all you need to know about the Libyan air force.

A civil war will be difficult to arrange when the oil money runs out to pay the mercenaries that have been attacking the protesters in the East.

– Badtux the MYOB Penguin