While the deportment of history—when one scratches the surface—shows affairs to be far otherwise, international largess, hegemony seems reserved as a soft-power to just a select few or active belligerents, an encouraging word to play along. Learning a little bit, however, about the long-lived British practise of impressment. Comparable to the phenomena that goes by the name of crimping or shanghaiing, so called press-gangs of the Admiralty, in lieu of a standing order for conscription or compulsory service, the privileged purchase of impressment was enjoyed from the times of George I until the early nineteenth century by English navies.
This practise of policing the idle and the incorrigible into service at sea was widespread and took place at sailors’ haunts by hook or by crook, with the poor having no recourse other than to oblige themselves to a fixed term aboard that was subject to multiple extensions with pay offset by half a year and no defined career track for non-officers. Any by-stander might fall prey to this scheme—especially merchant seamen that betray some degree of acumen. As tensions in European waters increased in post-revolutionary France, Britain believed it had a moral right to impressment, and revisiting one of the many issues left unresolved in the American War for Independence—once Canadian had had its limit with poaching—Britain refused to recognise the concept of naturalisation—that is, renouncing one’s subjecthood in order to gain citizenship and enter the employ of the more profitably import-export business. The acquisition of this labour-force (and of course the pay for commercial shipping was far better than service for king and country), in the pall of the Napoleonic wars, ignited the conflicts of 1812. The northern US states attested that such conscription was routine, sealed by a shilling sunk in a drink, while the South was vocally against this kind of slavery and the federalist prerogative. Never an attempt to reclaim the North American colonies but rather with the aim of destabilising revolutionary forces, this bone of contention and forced repatriation makes me think of the uniquely American habit (Uganda is also party, to the denunciation of the US) of universal taxation and burgeoning desire to leave it all. It strike me as if there is a bit of no quarter to be found here either, no matter what civil society has previously conceded to—like living off the grid or shedding one’s birth-rite. What do you think? Are we all still so impressed to allegiance to one system or other and left with little choice?
Wednesday 26 August 2015
press-gang or 1812 overture
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฑ, ๐ข, foreign policy, revolution
Tuesday 25 August 2015
de minimis or new wine in old skins
you only live twice
catagories: ๐ฌ, ๐บ, holidays and observances
Monday 24 August 2015
suddenly seymour
Sunday 23 August 2015
lunchtime safari oder it takes a village
I told H that I was happy to have the chance to see my people again so soon and we trekked through scores of installations, all expertly maintained and strikingly spacious and appropriately interactive, with swarms of hungry, tame goats to navigate through. Mostly we tried to pose with the inmates to our mutual success but the habitats constructed and selection in this Tiergarten was quite impressive, the whole menagerie seemingly at home and adapted to German climate—not because it’s gotten hotter and more sultry here but rather as a model of sustainability and accommodation, which is no small feat, especially for a small, private endowment.
There were parallel ranges for familiar creatures, like foxes, elk and deer with giraffes, camels and bison. Raccoons, mongooses, pythons and company, too. We had a bite to eat that surveyed the whole park below at the end of our little safari. The zoo was certainly worth the visit and I hope there’s more places like this—independent and impassioned because the difference is telling and appreciable, to discover and explore.
catagories: ๐ฆ, environment, Hessen, transportation
sprรผdelhof, badehaus
As many other spa towns at the turn of the century, Bad Nauheim attracted many celebrities, including those of the scientific community. I had seen that iconic class-photograph of past, present and future laureates previously but had not realised that it was taken during a conference held on these grounds. Another influential luminary that often visited, as a child, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was brought there numerous times to take the waters. Not only did these memories later inspire FDR to build his own health spa, he also ordered that Bad Nauheim be spared Allied bombing during the war, despite its proximity to Frankfurt and to one of Hitler’s command centres—called Adlerhorst, the eagle’s eyrie (nest) and often conflated with theKehlsteinhaust near the Austrian border.
The complex is still a temple of wellness but seems to have lost either its exclusive luxury or democratic access—I’m not sure which but very happy the elegant, moderne setting was preserved and there to enjoy. Elvis Presley was also stationed there in the years just after the war—and though not as famous as the crosswalk on Abbey Road, used one of the gates of the town as cover art for his album, Hunk o’ Love.
Friday 21 August 2015
asylsuchenden
With massive overcrowding in shelters and resources already under great strain, it ought not to be a surprise that tensions among refugees encamped are rising and tragically, there will be more violent flashpoints.
There was an incident in nearby by Suhl, that awful and uncivil as it was, that has been, I believe, wrongly classified as a hate-crime (a bias-based incident, to wit) whereas—with no excuse or solution forthcoming, the stress of the moment and environment did not allow for much pre-meditation—though putting a Quran in the toilet is not exactly blind passion either. Discomfort and fear is no excuse for bad conduct that’s making a bad situation far worse, but the leap to intolerance, rather than reflecting on finding ways to improve the stability of the homelands one is leaving or that some people just are jerks or that riots are bound to break out and there might be ways to mitigate them, is pressuring officials to call for segregating the Balkan refugees from the Syrians and the Afghans. Given the lack of shelter and support, separation does not seem like a feasible solution, and it rings to me a bit disingenuous if not paradoxical since integration and broadmindedness are being thrust at both guest and host but pandering to the prejudices of the few are spoiling the response and reception.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐, foreign policy, Thรผringen
stadials and glacials
Listening to a really engrossing panel discussion of geologic ice ages and the usual state of affairs of the planet Earth—how the drama has gone on for รฆons without of intervention or influence and what level of detail can be teased from the rock and sediment of how the inaccessible past looked, I felt a little sad that although those taking part in the discussion saw no need for some moralising postscript because it still felt rather grubby and contrarian to be talking about the topic, though strictly in the framework of billions of years and the science of geology, without addressing the weather—and made one feel like a climate-change denier. People tend to shy away from taking about vaccines, evolution or the politics of race, irrespective of the setting, to avoid controversy and being tagged with such a label and science suffers, as does the way such things are debated and understood in the public sphere.
The language of academics seems almost more relaxed than the choice words of journalists and pundits, and I was delighted to be instructed. For the past fifty million years or so to the present day, the Earth has been experiencing an ice age, by the definition that there is permanent ice at one or both poles, and the Earth has been making the transition from Icehouse to Greenhouse conditions for all its history. Though the intensity of the cycles have varied and have gotten somewhat less extreme out of consideration for the living organisms there to witness these shifts (and the Earth has been mostly a hot-house—with only some fifteen percent of the geological record attesting to a colder climate), researchers believe that it’s the cusps of these changes that drive evolutionary development, the emergence of the creatures that would become us corresponds with switch that began about fifty million. The imbalance of climatic change—or the reason there are such variations in the first place, has to do with geography driven by tectonic shift: without a landmass near or at the top or the bottom of the world there is no polar ice and oceanic currents also play a big role, like the blockage of the Isthmus of Panama or the massive southern sea that encircles Antarctica that keeps warmer water at bay. Whereas Icehouse Earth has presented in the distant itself more like icy Europa and Greenhouse Earth has been a far more watery and steamy place, the carbon-dioxide that human industry and occupation has released into the shrinking wilds has pushed our greenhouse gases beyond the levels that Nature can tolerate in an Ice Age—as my sanctimonious coda. I wonder how the New North will fare?