common rocket propulsion units (11. 909)

Founded on this day in 1974 in the Frankfurt suburb of Neu-Isenburg by entrepreneur and aerospace engineer Lutz Kayser, the West German company Orbital Transport - und Raketen-Aktiengesellschaft became the first commercial developer of satellite launch vehicles, attempting to undercut national space agencies with a cheaper, modular alternative to traditional rocketry, French Ariane rockets and the US space shuttle. With Wernher von Braun and retired NASA director Kurt Debus as scientific advisors, OTRAG carried out their first test launches in Zaire, hoping to secure the market potential of Africa, with mixed results. France and the Soviet Union, concerned by the prospect of German reentry into the field of long-distance rocket, pressured the Zairian government of Mobutu Sese Seko to close down the research and development facility, and eventually convince Bonn to withdraw its support for the private operations. In response Kayser relocated production and testing to Libya by 1981, and for the next six years made some rather significant advances (differing from traditional multi-stage launchers, their rockets were bundled tubes that could be mass produced inexpensively) and even attempted the launch of a private space vehicle, until Gaddafi seized the facility and equipment and nationalised it.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a solar energy firm established in 1905 (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: the panopticon of Piccadilly Circus plus more findings from gravitational waves

eight years ago: Mister Smith Goes to Washington plus atmospheric wells

nine years ago: the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards plus more on America’s drone wars

twelve years ago: US military bases in Germany plus oversized landmarks

storm daniel (11. 000)

First affecting Greece and Turkey with massive floods before reorganising itself as a low front over the Mediterranean and overwhelming dams and causing a catastrophic breach in the Lebanese port city of Derna, the cyclone forming in the Ionian sea has proved the deadliest and most expensive event of the year, only just now dissipating with tens of thousands of casualties and exponentially more displaced. A quarter of the the ancient city was washed away with entire neighbourhoods unaccounted for, seeming carried to the sea. The unconscionable scale of the disaster is attributed in part of years of neglected infrastructure maintenance under the regime of of Muammar Gaddafi followed by civil war but the extreme weather is also on account of the effects of runaway climate change.

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Waltons (1972), spreading seeds plus an AI illustrated Bible

two years ago: assorted links to revisit plus rice harvest art

three years ago: one of the first laws enshrining freedom of the press (1770), explaining the year 2020 to someone from the past plus music to move by

four years ago: seeing the tarnish of the golden era plus RIP Eddie Money

five years ago: Trump downplays deaths in Hurricane Maria, a new Russian cathedral, Jimmy Carter Says Yes, more on calendar reforms plus Trump’s campaign manager in court

coalition of the drilling

In the first State of the Union Address to the American people since the 9/11 terror attacks some five months hence, delivered on this day in 2002, George W Bush minted the coinage “axis of evil”—a portmanteau of Ronald Reagan’s characterisation of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire and the Axis powers of World War II, Germany, Italy and Japan. Originally levied against Iran, the Baath party of Iraq and North Korea as sponsors of terrorism, net exporters and actively seeking weapons of mass destruction to define a common enemy and threat to US and its allies, other politicians and commentators expanded the term to include Syria, Cuba, Libya, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.

mappi mundi

On this day in 1507, humanist and cartographer Martin Waldseemüller—whom also went by the Latinised form of his name Hylacomylus (forest-lake miller)—together with his collaborator Matthias Ringmann, published their map featuring the new world, significantly portraying South America as a continent separate from Asia and naming portions of the New World America after explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The academy that Waldseemüller and Ringmann founded in Saint-Dié with the patronage of the Duke of Lorraine came in possession of a booklet that gave a rather heroic and sensational account of the voyages of Vespucci in the western Atlantic and the two scholars carried forward that credit in a short treatise with atlases and a world map as a primer on cosmography (Cosmographiæ Introductio) that spanned from the familiar to the antipodes that were predicted in Antiquity. Ringmann actually, persuasively championed the toponym America, arguing: “I see no reason why anyone could disaaprove of a name derived of that Amerigo, the discoverer and a man of sagacity—with suitable forms being Amerige, meaning land of Amerigo, or America, especially since both Europe and Asia have women’s names.” Europa was raped by Zeus in the form of a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur. Hesione was a Trojan princess and distressed damsel for Hercules to save from a sea monster and blamed indirectly for the Trojan War—Hercules helping himself to the fine horses that Zeus sent in compensation for the abduction of Ganymede and causing strife among the gods. Classically referred to as Libya, Africa was considered to have a feminine ethnonym as well. The original world map was believed lost until a copy was found in Schloss Wolfegg in Austria in 1901 and purchased by the US Library of Congress (pictured)—though other uncut gores to be assembled into globes survive.

mediterranean diet

Marginal Revolution correspondent Alex Tabarrok clues us in to the mysterious and probably lost herb favoured by the ancient Greeks and Romans called silphium, which was so renowned as a flavour-multiplier and for its pharmacological merits was worth its weight in gold—or salt.
Despite their best efforts to cultivate the plant in their own lands, however (and there are surprisingly many familiar staples that still defy cultivation), silphium, fantastically also known as laserwort, would only thrive in a narrow band of terrain in Libya and was the essential export item of the city of Cyrene—critical to its trade and economy—and while remembered in coinage and heraldry, no one seems quite sure of its actual appearance and properties or whether the valued herb went extinct or survives in undisclosed pockets in northern Africa. The plant’s reputation as a means to allay the maladies of those struck with love and as a mediator for one’s germinative functions may also have given rise to the ♥ symbol (as well as having been accorded its own special glyph for the flowering plant) and its connection to romance and shared affections on the speculation that supposedly related species have heart-shaped fruits. Maybe this spice being extolled as a super-food is a bit of an embellishment but the world may never know what culinary and medicinal treasures might be absent from our dining experience.  I wonder what other secret ingredients out there that have remained unknown, lost to history, over-consumption or lost of habitat. 

refoulement

Though the public was quick to blame politicians and the authorities beholden to them for systemic failures in the migration and asylum process, and it’s no comfort to the affected families—and those legitimate claimants who’ll potentially face being rebuffed—one tragic irony behind the angry lunatic who hijacked a lorry and killed the driver and mowed down twelve individuals at a Berlin Christmas Market is that his country of origin refused to take him back. Non-refoulement is the principle of international law that restricts the rendition of one adjudged a true victim of persecution to his or her place of persecution—although north Africa lands like Morocco, Libya and Tunisia had been declared “safe countries” for some time and refugees originating from that region almost without exception have their asylum-applications rejected.
In this instance (and there are untold numbers of individuals suspended in this legal limbo) Tunisia denied that the perpetrator was a citizens and therefore was under no obligation to take him back. Earlier investigation revealed the quite opposite to be the case, and the dossier that the government in Tunis had on this dangerous and unstable criminal was all the more reason not to accept his expulsion. The flood of refugees and those opportunists that are carried in the wake of humanity fleeing war either don’t have travel-documents or identification because either issuing authorities no longer exist or were encouraged by smugglers or fellow-travellers to destroy them, the logic being it would confound the receiving authorities and reduce the chances of being rejected outright since absent papers, one could claim the sympathies of the day and any nationality one wished. Whatever story offered would hold up to scrutiny at least long enough to get one’s foot in the door, so to speak. The revelation that Tunisia’s belated approval to take back the perpetrator—coming just two days too late—may have been the final bit of news to push him over the edge. Elements of the German government are demanding that foreign aid be withheld from any nation that acts in a similarly recalcitrant manner.

mmxv: annus horribilis

These end-of-year annuals have become somewhat of a tradition here (here, here, here, and here too) at PfRC but never before in these annuls of time has one period been so stand-out negative and gloomy.  We tried to accentuate the positive but that was yeoman’s task, so this year-in-review is coming out a few days early in hopes that the holidays will be a time of lasting good cheer to cleanse the palette and that some last minute joys might befall us all.  There were a few bright points which mostly involved accomplishments in space exploration, but on balance, we are happy to be saying good riddance to bad rubbish.

january: Unpegging the Swiss franc from the euro unleashes more turmoil on financial markets and oversees the gradient of reserve currencies levelled out. With the situation in Ukraine still very tense, the Eurasian Economic Union comes into being. In Nigeria, Boko Haram’s brutality goes unrestrained. Elements of the Cosplay Caliphate in Paris assassinate cartoonists and satirists.

february: Faced with its own deck of sanctions, Russia drafts and submits to the United Nations for passage Resolution 2199 that provided for asset-freezing and curtailing financial resources for the Cosplay Caliphate, strongly condemning as well the group’s destruction of ancient archaeological sites in Syria. The Egyptian armed forces retaliate for the beheading of Copts in Libya by the Caliphate—with more atrocities broadcasted. Sadly, Leonard Nimoy passes away.

march: A space probe visits the Dwarf Planet Ceres. An unholy alliance forms between terror groups as al Qaeda tries to distance itself from these extremists. A suicidal pilot deliberately crashes an airplane full of passengers in the French Alps.

april: A massive earthquake causes destruction across south-east Asia.  Writer Günter Grass and performer Percy Sledge passed.

may: Ireland, by popular-vote, legalises same-sex marriage. Truer to the original, audiences began getting hints of the continuation of the Stars Wars saga to be screened later in the year.  We had to bid farewell to musician B. B. King.

june: Fédération Internationale de Football Association chief resigns pending an on-going criminal probe into corruption allegations championed by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. A real estate magnate and beauty pageant judge announced his candidacy for president of the US.  The Caliphate perpetrates several horrific attacks during Ramadan. Actor Christopher Lee died.

july: Greece becomes the first country to miss a payment to the International Monetary Fund and political revolt is unable to extricate them from this web of debt. New Horizons visits the dwarf planet Pluto. Cuba and the USA normalise diplomatic relations after half a century of hostilities. Video game godfather Satoru Iwata passed away.

august: The march of refugees from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to Europe via the Balkans in unending.  We had to say goodbye to philosopher Oliver Sacks.

september: Liquid water is confirmed on Mars. A major German automaker was found to have doctored the cleanliness of their fleet of vehicles. The proxy war continues in Syria, with Russia launching air-strikes and powers are at odds with which party to back. Personality Jackie Collins died.

october: The Caliphate sabotages a jetliner of holiday-goers in the Sinai Peninsula. Maureen O’Hara departed.

november: Turkey destroys Russian fighter jets for violating a tip of its airspace, possibly setting off World War III. The Caliphate again attacks Paris with horrific and terrifying efficiency. Weeks later, the UN holds its climate change conference in the same venue. Former Chancellor of West Germany Helmut Schmidt passes away.

december: Tragically, yet another mass shooting takes place in California, inspired by religious fanaticism. A wayward Japanese space probe that over-shot its mark five years ago gets a second chance to rendezvous with Venus. Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland passed away.  Recognising what the world needs now, Pope Francis threw open the Mercy Gate at the Vatican.

barbary states

I think I must just be a little naïve, because although I never felt that the threat that the Caliphate poses was not a very real one, proved wrenchingly cruel and callous but not potent many times over, though shock and determination which can sometimes make up for other shortcomings for a little while—and when it seemed their violence had reached a sort of plateau, unspeakably gruesome reports come that ISIL may be harvesting the bodily organs of its victims to sell on the black-market—I never saw the potential for Rome and the Vatican to become prime targets, but I suppose they always were. ISIL is gaining territory in Libya—the former Italian colony on just the other side of the Mediterranean. Taking advantage of the power-vacuum created with the overthrow of strongman Qaddafi, whom had ambitions for creating a superstate across the Maghreb as well, the group is finding another staging ground in a leaderless land, like that American mandate, Iraq, that’s also proved to be vulnerable over its vacuity in leadership. They’ll be no defenders forthcoming for that past peerage of dictators, but destabilising order, especially a tyrannical one, has consequences.

brigadoon or unscheduled appearance

Though more concerned presently is on keeping Venice and other islands from sinking further below the waves, our favourite BLDG BLOG reports on the very curious case of the sometimes island of Ferdinandea. Presently a volcanic seamount in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily and directly north of the island of Lampedusa, which garnered attention during the revolutionary Spring of North Africa when an influx of refugees came into this nearest port of the European Union.

Ferdinandea’s most famous and prominent appearance was when it broke the surface in the year 1831, causing quite a sensation (quite expected for an island appearing overnight and without warning) with many scientists and celebrities visiting the tiny basalt shoal with two lake-like depressions and even sparking a minor international crisis over disputed claims: the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the United Kingdom, Spain and France all saw strategic importance in this little rock. Some were even alarmed that this outcropping might be the first stage of an entire chain of volcanic islands that would join Sicily to Tunisia, changing dramatically the definition of Europe and Italy’s crown. The tensions were soon quelled, however, when after five months, the island was reclaimed by the sea, almost as abruptly as it had appeared. Aside from a few rare intervening appearances, including an incident when the seamount was bombed in the shallows by American fighter jets, believing the marauding island was a Libyan submarine, Ferdinandea is lounging about six meters beneath the waves but could, at any time, rise again.

redux or a man, a plan, kofi annan

While I have respect for the former United Nations’ Secretary General and hope that his mission does help stop violence and blood-shed, there is something decidedly unsavoury and inscrutable about the ways in which Western concerns are being manifest presently—along a continuum of interference and strategy—for the future of Syria and the whole region. If reports and accounts by the opposition are accurate, the present regime’s clinging to power is probably serving no one, but a peace negotiated by the US and the UN could be a very suspect treaty indeed, who may well be basing their assessments off of another disgruntled Curveball character (DE/EN). Since Western involvement with Libya, there has been a marked departure from the uprisings and revolutions of the Arab Spring, which took much of the world unawares, and like bankers and speculators trying to profit from the controlled-collapse of distressed and overburdened markets, petroleum-politicians are wanting events to unfold or crumple on their terms.

It all seems a bit opaque—outside concern that’s neither quite spontaneous nor quite a natural consequence of emboldened rebellions or business interests, but yet like déjà vu all over again. Pacifying Syria may also appear a selfish, self-interested and calculated endeavour in the larger framework of the parallel troubles that are occurring in the region, which I believe are bundled together in the view of most of the public and diplomatic corps: tensions are growing over Iran, a fulcrum waiting to tip one way or the other depending on which hostile fires the first volley. Despite the arguments of many authorities who hold that the country maintains only a scientific and benign nuclear programme, the West insisting that Iran recant hostilities that it has not perpetrated and a weapons programme that it probably does not even have. Such swaggering demands sound uncomfortably like the trigger and fuse for another American led crusade, and local yapping it is not helping mattering. It is also not reassuring that the Arab Spring awoke in the lumbering police-states of the US and the UK, leading by example, their penchants for spin, censorship and holding a population in contempt and under complete surveillance—outstanding examples of what they purport to combat in foreign lands. I hope that negotiations can help save lives and preserve livelihoods for the Syrian people but without orchestrating prime conditions for neo-colonialists and the West to battle for and amongst themselves by proxy.

bucket brigade and bail-in

Collusion, conspiracy seems to play a big part in commercial affairs, especially when deferment, demurring on the inevitable, is playing an event larger role. Adventures in the Middle East, under U.N. sponsorship, are proving costly but sorties were inspired by the misapplication, transference of one uprising to another.

The pressure to act or react, according to a naïve paradigm, has anchored military and statecraft to a civil war or a tribal war, an internal affair, that even the rebel forces are finding awkward and unwieldy. Meanwhile, the same precedence that's potentially prejudiced with misjudgment hangs over the Ivorians, Syrians and the Iranians. Procrastination and bickering over nuance and semantics has been another form of deferment for the US government, interested in defanging, surgically certain programs. Kettled though undeterred, there is another uprising being organized, different though inspired by protests in the UK and witnessing what can be accomplished elsewhere, that aims to garner maximum attention, and make the beneficiaries of all this strife and delay take notice. There is a huge disconnection between economic health and the health of a people, of a nation--no matter what's selling, which is only proportional to the disconnection between the classes.

Solidarity and education are certainly powerful, but when fundamental problems are not addressed and too much profit is skimmed off of that dawdling, conspiring forces are invited in: with sovereign default and shutdowns looming, the spectre of meddlesome quagmire and people financially alienated, these major banks and their familiars only need the bad press of sunshine.

new metrics or libya the tattooed lady

Continuing incidents in this lead up to Spring have proved to be incommensurate with the conventional public systems of measurement and we are all being educated with new units of dread and hope and ways to gauge the appropriateness or irrationality of one's reactions. In addition to the millisievert, the gray, and the rad, conditions are described in terms of chest x-rays per hour or airport naked body scanner-equivalency. It is like speaking of budget short-falls and economic hobbling in terms of trillions of whatever denomination one chooses, as inflation's impossibly big numbers is a great equalizer--or telescoping figures of personal loss and devastation across whole regions.

At odds with these metrics, impoverished ambitions, beggaring their neighbours and sending mixed messages about thrift, restraint and dissolute decadence though money can always be found for making war, each tomahawk missile launched is equal to the average annual salaries of twelve civil servants. Such abstract connections are held up to the spectre of a forced-furlough and US government shut-down--like the low-hanging austerities threatening other nations. Given the level of control over each situation and the real risk associated with it, the response seems inverted: there is no panic and whirlwind of blame and litigiousness despite the dire conditions--the Japanese remain civil, continue to recycle their trash and in some areas what utilities remain are powered by wind-mills that weathered the earthquake and tsunami intact. In contrast, there is delineated anarchy over Tripoli with no nation wanting to take the leadership role and arguments about strategy and goals. However much divergence there is between causes and corollary, it seems that both have root in human miserliness and greed and growing demand for cheap energy.

trojan sunset

Trojan sunset, which sounds like some exotic and potent cocktail, or Delta Dawn (what’s that flower you have on, could it be a faded rose from days gone-by?) or whatever it is being called is some inscrutable name for an operation—that has been renamed the military forces of the various players (the French Opération Harmattan, the English Operation Ellamy) and called a crusade by the antagonists, and I doubt there’s even appreciable irony in it, much less some symbolic or allegorical meaning behind it. Many argue that the debates at the United Nation, on whether to violate the sovereignty of one of its members by imposing a no-fly-zone, was glacial and infuriating. Inaction, times before, allowed the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the genocide in Rwanda. It is decision that is not without sympathy and an unenvious debate, since whatever coalition, backed with whatever support, has to proceed with extreme caution.  Hopefully, the motivation is framed by a genuine desire to want to protect fledgling reform movements in the region and protect citizens potentially in harm’s way, and not bemoaning lack of engagement or invitation to participate in those emboldening rebellions. Or just another excuse to make war and raise armies, which has dangerous and scary parallels—nearly word for word, with the aggression in Iraq, which has not yet ended well, and began with enforcement, albeit more autocratically but with the eventual endorsement of the global community, to unseat a madman from power, who was also a danger to his own citizens and the broader region. It is not an easy task to surgically dissect the way dissent is playing out here, and disaffectedness is either not so well studied and established or seemingly not as universal as in the other uprisings. After leadership was tolerated or made the confidant of Western powers for so many years, distrust and aversion are not so lightly earned without suspicion. Because or despite of this intervention, however it may escalate, one hopes that peace and prosperity can return and that the conduits for dialogue and diplomacy are not shut off.

ad lib

The situation in North Africa and the Mid-East is still explosive, and despite progress won there is a distinct and present risk of recidivist tyrannies and back-sliding into chaos. Some protesters’ honeymoons have lost their sheen as police are doing their job of civil policing and concessions, sometimes meaningful, betimes empty, are being offered by leaders of a whole range of vested and divested authority.

People have been inspired towards revolution, though no oppression is exercised in quite the same way—Libya is a very different place than Egypt or Tunisia or Algeria or Jordan or Iran or Iraq or Yemen or Saudi Arabia—and though steady-state strife, disenfranchisement or even civil war is influenced by macroeconomic factors and policy-decisions that have left a younger population disaffected and without many opportunities for a commensurate career, aside from daily staples and small freedoms. Many observers seemed spooked by talk of civil war and the subsequent disruption to oil supplies and overall destabilization that would make it more difficult for carpetbagger corporations to operate there.

I hope that outsiders are not just wishing this away, support tepid at best, to keep cheap oil pumping and promote continued expansion opportunities to export Western luxuries and fast food franchises and to ensure that the standard of living stays low and not too much of the treasure and resources are retained and used in these places. Just like it is billed as a rarity to witness a revolt that was not under the ægis of the forces that spread freedom and democracy in the world, it is likewise billed as unusual to see a civil war starting, as most assume such regional conflicts have always been, some warring tribes in lands with borders jimmied out arbitrarily when the colonial powers moved on to pure mercantilism—and what of that blood and treasure in a decade not so well invested in Iraq as protests begin in Baghdad. Years of war and occupation have left the people with precious little left to loose, and makes the chance ripe to regain and reclaim what was once theirs without meddling, direct or tangential.