up periscope or dead men tell no tales

Regardless how the US refrains from using assassination (targeted killings) in the same way it refuses to “negotiate” with terrorists, the drone-wars have exhausted—unintentionally but with the lulling effect of new technologies and the easier path—whatever intelligence capital and standing that America had in the world. Not only does the incomplete picture obtained by intercepting communications (SIGINT) yield grave inaccuracies including a lot of collateral deaths (though they’re never referred to as by-standers), these tenuous links can no longer be explored or exploited once the person of interest has been obliterated.

Repeat missions based on the same models eventually dispose of all potential known-associates but do not solve the underlying problems nor create channels of access, like traditional espionage might have accomplished, and one’s understanding of connections and associations become diluted and unpredictable. Reliance on telephonic communication and the telemetry that’s a backformation that tends to put blinders on the drones’ human minders whose lightening bolts are already handicapped with tunnel-vision—the soda-straw effect, as only a very small part of the surroundings comes into focus, instead of some wide-angle cinematic panning that the audience expects to document the drama. Such a keyhole perspective, buffeted by the same dragnet snooping that the US has applied roundly to the entire world’s populace without discrimination, collapses leads, true or false, and has resulted in incalculable civilian loss and distrust. Despite that this way of warfighting is portrayed as safer and more surgical, it seems quite otherwise and has earned more than a modicum of scepticism, especially since the same intelligence-gathering, dossier-compiling unleashed on the general public is being used to vaporise terrorists and their associates, begging that invoking that justice from on-high is just a few clicks away.

giraffe, erdmännchen & co.

Parallel to the much celebrated and intensely competitive Wildlife Photograph of the Year run through the auspices of the BBC and the London Natural History museum, nature-photographer Paul Joynson-Hicks had the idea to capture the more candid side of the business with his “Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.” Spiegel features a funny slide-show of some of the best entries, and the contenders are sure to ratchet it up for next year’s competition.

hinweisgeber

Just following a significant operational disclosure revealing the structure and extent of the US admin- istration’s military drone program, Transparency International Germany awards its Whistleblower prize to a former drone jockey stationed at the secretive base in Ramstein for exposing how deeply the installation is mired in the controversial drone war. Germany has been given to question whether hosting the such operations is not a violation of its own laws and principles, despite a regular litany of denial on both sides that’s by now twice-spent any credence. A French chemist is also being honoured in the ceremony in Kaiserslautern for demonstrating the grave toxicity of a popular herbicide.

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twilight of the gods: Nina Hagen, Grace Jones and others feature in a Biblical Rock Opera, Gutterdämmerung, who strive to return the Earth to a state of vice

dyson’s sphere: luminous fluctuations in a distant star’s brightness could be signs of ancient alien technology

marylebone: BLDGBlog ponders the supposed funerary teleportation grid of Greater-London

scrumptious: venerable art foundation raises funds for galleries and museums with edible masterpieces, via the splendid Nag on the Lake

babel: a few odd, nuanced (but expeditious) terms found in EU English

long-distance

To illustrate for us how that intimate, intense engagement with our Handys, tablets and other devices comes across as kind of estranging and lonely, photographer Eric Pickersgill captured subjects so disposed—with the offending gadget removed. Check out the rather hauntingly and sad gallery here, via Quartz—and remember, putting our phones away is about more than etiquette.  It is an odd phenomenon that we repair to our own little world with accessories that do not even challenge the imagination but nonetheless seem preferable to the great here-and-now.

chancel, chancellery

The predominant theme of German news and discussion panels has been refugees and immigration for weeks now and is demanding an increased sense of urgency due to its unrelenting stream of asylum-seekers and families fleeing war and institutional poverty and the change in weather that assuredly guaranteeing no happy-campers, sheltered in to a large part in tent-cities or cavernous warehouses. The rational that buoys compassion is that Germany’s ageing population needs an injection of young, able-bodied adults to supplement their workforce (and retirement scheme) in order to maintain the competitive economic edge that they’ve enjoyed for the past couple of generations.
Germany’s young breeders apparently are not working hard enough to replenish the labour-pool. Employment-models suggest that the influx of refugees (many of who purportedly will not stay in Germany but be resettled elsewhere in Europe) has not yet reached that threshold of sustainment and whatever money and resources spent are a good investment, but I wonder if that welcoming reception might change once the requirement is met—or when the demographers realise that their constructions and projections are not valid gauges of future job-markets, what with robots threatening to take-over vast parts of certain jobs-sectors. Aside from worries over the effect on housing-market (and the question of adequate, affordable accommodations), there are significant challenges ahead with integration and assimilation that are only just now being broached—although wholly unaddressed by one particular group, those migrants—not necessarily from those same regions but grouped together as such I’m sure. I wonder what this silence means—whether or not the more established immigrant population is reaching out to newcomers and being forthcoming with assistance and sponsorship, or whether there’s a widen rift, agonising whether these late arrivals might upset whatever social-acceptance that they’ve gained, feeling their benefits under-threat. Maybe that’s an aspect just not being reported but I don’t know. This image, first discovered by the fabulous Nag on the Lake some time ago, is a public-service announcement from the Scarfolk Council, which is unfortunately caught in a Doctor Who-style time-loop and forever condemned to relive the decade of the 1970s and importantly makes us confront our own selective humanity.

fliegerhorst wasserkuppe

Over the weekend, H and I took a little stroll on the leveled summit of the highest peak of Hessen—the Wasserkuppe outside of Gersfeld and just in the Rhön mountain range over the state border.

We’ve spend quite a few afternoons watching the gliders towed aloft by small aeroplanes crisscross the horizons and come in gentle on the grass runway, and though a lot of others had the same idea as us on this bright October, everything looked somewhat transfixed under that day’s sun and it turned out to be a pleasant little walk around—through a lot more urchins were climbing over the Fliegerdenkmal than five years ago. I knew that there was some provision to getting a pilot’s license for a glider, which could be accomplished at a younger age than the usual minimum age to obtain a driver’s license, that ended up making the end process of the later license to drive somewhat easier, which drove some adolescents’ interest, but the idea—though possibly a little bit scary, is enervating besides. There are quite a few flying-clubs of this sort in our area. The Wasserkuppe, aside from its ideal locale, has a long and innovative history, going back to the first decade of the twentieth century with university students experimenting with kites and short flights.
The first sustained, hang-gliding sessions happened here, about two decades after the first mechanical fixed-wing flight—as the properties of aerodynamics were not very well understood until this feat. Interest in the air-sail grew considerably with the end of World War I, whose conditions of surrender forbade German research or use into powered flight, and competitions in glider design were launched centred around the Wasserkuppe and in a few years, test-flights of all sorts of flying-machines, including the Messerschmitt and early rocket-jets, were conducted there. After the war, elements of the American and the French air forces occupied the summit, especially prized for its commanding view into the Iron Curtain, and the radom in the background is a remnant of those days. The recreational use of the mountain, however, was not restricted for too many years.

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miss cellany: eccentric, vintage beauty titles

cross-over: bizarro universe celebrity guest stars

high-tension: creative engineers turn Iceland’s pylons into colossal works of art

letterbox format: French museum displays tiny, detailed recreations of movie sets

blue-light special: retail sound-track circa 1989-1993 preserved for posterity