And my mother turned to me and said, What language is he speaking?

When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, and didn't know that it was Jesus.

And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

Of course, Europe is not Africa, where violence and despair are the engines of fragmentation.

When stressed, a big surface bifurcates in big chunks, but then the disintegration continues into smaller and smaller fragments.

Some financial segmentation is a price well worth paying for stronger regulations that are solidly backed by domestic politics.

It is the Yemeni government s inability to find a political solution to these problems that has led Yemen to the brink of fragmentation.

Yet information technology and global social media have empowered people to overcome social fragmentation along occupational, residential, and national lines.

A banking union is an important start, which should prevent financial markets from fragmenting along national lines and reduce private sector borrowing costs.

Meanwhile financial fragmentation within the eurozone continues Spain, and to a lesser extent Italy, suffers a seemingly irresistible rise in borrowing costs and political strains grow more visible.

But, as the economic crisis persists and perhaps even worsens we may witness further explosions of populism and nationalism that could translate into a new wave of fragmentation.

While reforms enacted in the wake of the Greek crisis have equipped the eurozone with crisis management capabilities, more is needed to restore confidence, ensure financial stability, and ward off financial fragmentation.

From the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia s violent self destruction, and Czechoslovakia s peaceful divorce to today s centrifugal pressures in Europe, the West, and the major emerging countries, fragmentation has been fundamental to international relations in recent decades.

But if it turns toward the past in looking for its future, and if it believes it can dispense with investments in the future in favor of shameless personal self enrichment, it will continue to lose ground.

Meanwhile, in Syria, the people rose up, were fired upon, took up arms, were manipulated, and began a cycle of sectarian killing and revenge that can only fracture them further.

Yet information technology and global social media have empowered people to overcome social fragmentation along occupational, residential, and national lines. On some recent days, posts about Taksim Square have reportedly occupied a huge part of the entire world s Tweet space.

But, beyond the absence of a referee, another issue looms the wave of globalization that followed the end of the Cold War has, paradoxically, accelerated fragmentation, affecting democratic and non democratic countries alike.

After flirting with disaster last July, interest rate spreads for eurozone bonds have generally been subdued, and financial segmentation has been slowly reversed (that is, at least before European officials embarked on the controversial path of trying to impose losses on guaranteed bank deposits in Cyprus).

This atomization of the state and society continues to impede Libya s ability to establish effective and credible government. With the right approach, however, there is hope.

Yemen s central problems are two the ongoing civil war that the government is waging against the Houthi tribe in the country s north, and the suppression of a secessionist movement in the south.

In a way, this reveals a paradox of Latin American democracy exclusive, minority governments that devalue and weaken the state are no longer acceptable, while the rise of personalismo a concentration of power and coupled with refractory political tactics are bringing about fragmentation and unruly governance.