dibba, dubai, abu dhabi

Tensions mounting over the flow of traffic through that potential choke-point of the Strait of Hormuz come from a wide array of trajectories, with a lot of significance and history not only in tow but also projecting, deferring antagonism into some imagined and virtual future. The arts, cultures, diplomacies, histories and scholarship of the people of Persia, as it is for a lot of other peoples of the region, have been saddled with a great unplumbed and sad ignorance on the part of many outsiders and reckon their story only begins with twilight colonialism and the framework of shoves and tugs of foreign policy.

Though quick to forget and disinclined to learn, Iran’s choices in self-determination come in spite of international manipulation, and rather than because of whatever outsiders attribute to the attested doctrine of deterrence of the country. There is a sophisticated technical and scientific community in Iran, and were such a group gathered elsewhere, I think, no accusations of violence would muddle the research. Furthermore, although much different in character and circumstance, with an eye to the past, I would not be surprised if out of the massing armada or lands just out of range there did not come a dubious and distorted casus belli, like the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that lead Vietnam Conflict and the irrevocable license against Communist aggression. What is going against the traffic is the projections and predictions--the congestion of the present standoff careering head on with abstract and hypothetical contingencies and future threats of embargoes (and consequent shortages) that (both) won't come into effect for months.  These conflicts coming from different and undefined vectors are what creates tension and obstacles to understanding.

rumour-mill

Although the deportment, the way they choose to carry themselves, of senior military leadership, under all flags, I think, does not excuse or explain all the murky prospecting that has been carried out in the name of democracy, provocation and business-interests, I do think that that deportment, however, does play into how leadership handles morale, uncertainty and rumour management.

There has been a lot of talk and speculation in German press, surely instigated by gossips official and unofficial pressing to have heard what they want to hear, regardless of realities or outcomes, about significant reduction of the presence of the American Army in Europe, a winnowing down to a few enduring locations. It is strange that this news, which has been in the works for some time depending on who one asks--or is as fresh as the latest market boom and bust, coincides with the annual Munich Security Conference and the announcement that Ramstein Airbase will host the NATO missile shield command, which is a provocative move to many of the successor powers of the Cold War belligerents. It is difficult to say if these changes are reaffirming a commitment on the part of the US to its NATO alliance or represent its distancing. It is one of the biggest challenges to deliver reassurance in opposition to what one wants to hear, but it is a challenge proper to leadership nonetheless, and it does not seem very much in keeping with restraint to spread rumours oneself, as the echo-chamber of military hierarchy has done. It's strange also having lived for so long as sort of a stateless individual, not a political refuge or someone disenfranchised any more or less than any one of the voting class, without congressional representation, unlike for residents attached to a state with an advocate to rage against reduction in forces and base-closings. There's no apparent wheeling-and-dealing overseas and not many tears shed in Congress over these changes, and at other times, the lack of interference is most welcome, especially considering the bearing and posture that comes with it. By deportment, I mean that run-a-way instinct for preservation that has been made dilute and calculated and usual takes the form of yes-men and conformists who'll serve out their terms in safety and security, making their world friendlier to their ilk. Such behaviour leaves a proverbial battlefield as well of bad decisions which usually need the same attendant walk-back in the end.

prognosticate, procrastinate

I am a bit early, but there is cause to commemorate the approaching day that marks the tenth anniversary of my arrival in Germany. The date is only stamped in an expired passport in a drawer somewhere but I can visualize it--though I never connected the date with Groundhog Day before. Tomorrow, it's Groundhog Day--again, and it's weird and wonderful that an event that's a mix of traditions and folk-beliefs can be articulated to a degree where the roots are nearly overshadowed and yet still take on more meaning, metaphysical and metaphoric. By the way, does anyone else, on the first morning of the month, somersault out of bed and shout "Rabbit, Rabbit?"  The same routines don't loop back on themselves, outside of work certainly, and every day is an adventure, with many that bear repeating.

ratiometric or gmbh

Though the end of the Christmas shopping season and despoiled by colder, more seasonable weather has resulted in a slight turning away from positive prospects, the unemployment rate in Germany remains at historic lows, levels certainly unseen following re-unification. And though there is far less wage-gentrification and perhaps purer, more honest numbers to go by and to live by (since the struggles of the working poor are not just statistics, a divisor or remainder to be made up elsewhere with social support), the health of the German job-market may not be completely brash and rosy, as there are still inequalities and possibly expectations heaped on some who cannot hope to meet them. There is also something, not sinister or menacing exactly, but maybe a little suspect and at the expense of neighbours about the persistence of the success of the German markets.

I have no doubt that transparency and genuinely good stewardship are the major contributing factors, but I do wonder if there isn't some balance with an extra long, retributive or invisible fulcrum that's off-kilter because of Germany's recent good-run. All this was a round-about way of saying that there is no longer a one-to-one correspondence between employers and the unemployed (Arbeitgeber u. Arbeitslose), but it is certainly still fairly commensurable, and it, I think, was more than just a campaign sound-bite for the Chancellor to point out the earlier correlation: that the number of job-seekers matches, down to the person, the number of registered businesses, franchises, branches, store-fronts and firms, some 2.88 million, in Germany. Each business, the Chancellor appealed, taking on just one person would eliminate unemployment entirely. Of course, it probably would not pan out so well, and I wonder what a situation where all people are fully-employed, busy, engaged and obligated would mean not only for political attitudes and sympathies but for other elements of society as well.  Most Germans, I think, work in order to live and not the other way around, but--not free from want nor in heated competition, I wonder if those priorities might go missing as a community approaches that one-to-one ratio.

grecian grey

The economic stability of the European Union does not seem as prevalent in reporting currently, what with the Iranian standoff and campaign posturing in the US not willing to relinquish the centre ring. For those whose career’s purpose lies exclusively on reading such augers and repackaging austerities as something progressive and obliging, however, the plight of the Greeks is very much a topic for common-currency. Though usually reserved for the for the influence peddlers at the attendant transnational credit rating agencies (and their hangers-on) another industry, a group of German travel agents, is stirring the cauldron lately.

They wonder how vacation-package providers will handle the issue of remittance, in case Greece declares bankruptcy and leaves the euro-zone. How would contracts be negotiated with a devalued Drachma and would they be expected to accept a hair-cut as well? It is a practical concern but has raised some ire in this on-going situation. Seeing travel agencies at every major corner, coming from the States, I am a bit bemused and proud of how they are a part of the infrastructure, the inventory of the smallest villages. In America, it seems as if the neighbourhood travel agent was made redundant long before its time, just as the ability to book flights oneself (and direct sales from the airlines) was emerging. Seeing the store front touts and posters make me instantly distant and yonder thinking about our next adventures. Apparently, there are a lot of bargains to be had on the isles. I wonder if such commerce as tourism and green-grocers ought not be the main power-brokers behind the decisions of sacrifice and reform, since they seem a bit more fair-minded than the bankers.

urbs in horto aut lapsus linguae

As the Washington Post reports, a faction of botanists, presumably the Anglo-Saxons, are persuading the discipline to relax its rules for the use of Latin. Plants will still bear their hyphenated genus- specie- variety- cultivar-names, but new discoveries will not be required to be catalogued with an erudite Latin description. Some argue that struggling with a dead language only serves to create barriers to science, and zoology with a fraction of unnamed animal species to describe abandoned Latin descriptions some years ago, but I do fear that changing the tradition will invite academic laziness.

Latin is very much alive in the legal profession and anatomy, physics, and astronomy as well as with certain advocates in the Church, and it is in specific branches of the sciences and humanities that one finds rigour and preciseness that transcends translation. Some people bemoaning Latin grammar is no reason to replace the lingua Franca with English. How would chemists feel if they were required to use to German Sauerstoff and Wasserstoff as common parlance? Latin has remained the language of science all these years, aside from not being malleable like a living language, in part because it does require some formal education that invites peer-review and can serve as a barrier, not against progress and discovery and curiosity, but against intentional forgery and accidental duplication.

studio system

The curators for many brilliant and wonderful things, the Retronauts, feature a series of parallel-universe movie posters by artist Peter Stults. He’s very creative too with casting and choice of directors: Faye Dunaway with Steve McQueen in the Terminator series, a 2001: A Space Odyssey by Fritz Lang, and Pulp Fiction starring Charleton Heston and Harry Belafonte are just some of my favourites.