Note: I'll be in an MEI staff retreat all day today. This will be my only post unless I have something this evening.
Yesterday's shocking videos of ISIS destroying antiquities in the Mosul Museum again underscored the threat war and instability pose to irreplaceable historical and archaeological heritage. Not since the Nazis looted Europe of art treasures during World War II (many of which have never been seen again, despite the efforts of Allied forces as depicted in the film The Monuments Men), have so many historical and archaeological treasures been threatened. The civil wars in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and the 2011 Revolution in Egypt, all saw cases of looting of museums and archaeological sites, as well as collateral damage from artillery of ancient and medieval monuments. But ISIS is embarked on a campaign to destroy antiquities not as a casualty of war but as a matter of direct policy. Shi'ite, Christian, and Yazidi religious sites and libraries were first, but now the ancient heritage of ancient Mesopotamia is being targeted: the walls and gate of Nineveh and the Mosul Museum.
It's a good time to remember the work of the late Maurice Chehab, Director of the Lebanese Antiquities Department and Curator of the Museum during the Lebanese Civil War, and a man who saved much of the collections even though the Muesum was quite literally on the front lines: the division between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut (the Green Line) was the street in front of the museum, and a key but dangerous checkpoint between the two sides was called the Museum Crossing. Lebanese know this story and have honored him; I suspect it's less well known outside.
Emir (Prince) Maurice Chehab was a scion of the Chehab or Shihab dynasty which once ruled Mount Lebanon; originally Druze, the family today has both Maronite and Sunni branches; the former produced Maurice, as well as former Lebanese President Fouad Chehab.
Born in 1904, Chehab attended the Jesuit St. Joseph University in Beirut and then did graduate work in France at the Louvre. He became an accomplished archaeologist and specialist on Ancient Phoenicia, and dug at Tyre most famously but also elsewhere; from 1928 onward he held various official posts under the French Mandate and after independence, heading what evolved into the Directorate-General of Antiquities.He taught at the Lebanese University and was designated as the first Curator when Lebanon's National Museum was being organized in the years after 1928; it opened in 1942.
He was a distinguished scholar and already past 70 when the Civil War broke out in 1975, when the grim twist of fate brought the war quite literally to the Museum's doorstep. Eventually, the Museum would not only be the target of artillery but would become a frontline bunker for militiamen and a death trap for anyone else. The card catalog, photographic archive and much else were lost.
But not the prize collections. Early in the war, using a rear entrance as the story goes, Chehab and his wife Olga (with a few other senior people) gathered the smaller objects on display and moved them to basement storage to avoid looting. The area was sealed off with steel-reinforced concrete. The larger objects, including the best-known objects, the stone sarcophagus of Ahiram and the other Phoenician sarcophagi, were also encased in wooden or concrete coverings.
Maurice Chehab retired in 1982 and died in 1994. In 2013 the Museum rededicated one of the key galleries as the Maurice Chehab Hall.
You can find other retellings of this story here, and at the museum's Wikipedia page, and even fuller accounts at several tribute pages: here and here and here..
Mosul could have used a Maurice Chehab.
Following up on those videos of ISIS smashing Assyrian antiquities in the Mosul Museum, here's a roundup of commentary and detail from several websites around the preservationist community. And let me emphasize that I am not giving more weight to the destruction of antiquities than to the slaughter of human beings, but that barbarity is already well known.
There is no doubt that the Islamic State is profiting from the illicit trade in antiquities. Although the criminals have destroyed some ancient artefacts, the have also destroyed a lot of modern reproductions – as is visible, for example, around 00h03m58s. All this video really shows is that they are willing to destroy things that they can't ship out and sell off.
A post by Lynda Albertson for the Association for Research into Crimes against Art has some "before" photos from a UNESCO report, identifying the gallery shown in the photo.
An AP story by Sinan Salaheddin quotes a professor from the Archaeological College of Mosul as saying that most of the artifacts are genuine and not replica; the story also confirms that the sites shown are the Mosul Museum and the Nergal Gate in the ruins of Nineveh.
Another heritage preservation website, Gates of Nineveh, has not yet posted on the video, but you can find a summary of earlier destruction here.
While some of the statues are said to be plaster casts, they have destroyed the famed winged bull of Nineveh. I hope to have more detail in a later post.
Adventures in Bad Viral Journalism: Did it Really Rain Money in the Gulf, and if so, Where? Dubai? Asir in Saudi Arabia? Kuwait?
Fact checking: yes the statement that It is estimated that notes valued between two and three million Dirham were loose - meaning up to £500,000": As of yesterday, three million dirhams would have been about £527,000. or US$817,000. Even if the total number of notes is misstated, each 500 dirham note is just under the £88 pounds cited (£87.95 yesterday) Not a bad "windfall," so to speak.
The Emirati press says it didn't happen in the UAE. No doubt Dubai's reputation for extravagant expenditures and outrageous building projects fueled the idea that this happened in Dubai.
A wave of sand and thunderstorms in Saudi Arabia brought dust, rain and snow across the desert Gulf Kingdom except one place, where it rained money.
Residents of a neighbourhood in the Southern Asir province could hardly believe their eyes when they were flooded with hundreds of Saudi riyal notes.
Unlike in rainfall, instead of seeking shelter they welcomed the money storm with open hands, open hearts and a big smile on their faces.
They apparently were very curious as to where the money came from but not to the extent they would return it to the source. They simply picked the notes and vanished happily inside their homes.
The story says these were Saudi Riyal SR100 notes, each worth a bit over US $26 or £17.20 Sterling, so SR10000 would be $2600 dollars or £1720, an amount that may be credible for loading an ATM machine, but hardly The Daily Mail's half a million Sterling.
The quoted Saudi newspaper Sabq is an electronic one, and i haven't yet found the alleged story, but let me also note that the Emirati report cited above is illustrated with a man holding up a Saudi 50 Riyal banknote as if it were one of those that fell from the sky, but the story says they were 100 Riyal notes.
Also, Asir is the Saudi Province just north of Yemen. I've never been there, but both the tall buildings and the spoken Arabic in the video make me think this is somewhere in the Gulf.
Skeptical yet, Watson? It gets better. Multiple reports noting background buildings say it's filmed in Kuwait.
Abu Dhabi's The National: "'Raining money' video was filmed in Kuwait - not Dubai"
A building, Burj Jasim, can be seen near the car park, where a Fatburger restaurant is also located. Both indicate that the incident happened in Al Murqab area's Al Soor Street, in Kuwait City.
A video of the incident has gone viral on Youtube and social media websites. While some reports have claimed the incident took place in Dubai or Saudi Arabia, verification of the buildings where the video was filmed, it appears that the incident happened in Kuwait. Midway through the video, the name Burj Jassim (Jassim Tower) appears on a building outside where people are gathering the money. The presence of a FatBurger outlet, also located at Burj Jassim (pictured below) would support the belief that the video was shot in Kuwait.
Perhaps this is real, but misattributed. The Gulf has been windy and unseasonably cold and maybe a crew reloading an ATM did lose some currency but not some huge mount.
Perhaps the video was done for some sort of commercial promotion, or as a commercial for television.
It could also be a hoax.
You May Know of the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. But Do You Know About the Quake and Tsunami That Day in Morocco?
The Great Lisbon Earthquake and fire of 1755 remains one of the iconic disasters of modern Europe; it devastated the Portuguese capital and sparked debates between religious folk who saw it as the judgment of an angry God (it occurred on All Saints Day, November 1), and Enlightenment philosophes who saw it as a sign of the arbitrariness of fate, most famously Voltaire, who subjects the eponymous hero of Candide to it and makes him wonder if Pangloss is right about this being the best of all possible worlds. (Voltaire also wrote a separate essay on the earthquake.) Since I assume my readers are well-read, you probably know about the Great Lisbon Earthquake of November 1, 1755, but let me ask if you've heard of the destructive Tsunami that hit Morocco less than an hour later, and may have been as deadly there as in Portugal?
Though far from the deadliest earthquake by world standards, the 1755 shock, fire and Tsunami in Lisbon (the largest Tsunami on record for the North Atlantic) had a major impact in Europe, but many overlook the impact on Morocco.
The epicenter, as shown in the map at right from Wikipedia, was west of the Strait of Gibraltar; this is at a point where he Eurasian tectonic plate meets the African plate, though of course plate tectonics were unknown at the time. Although Lisbon's destruction is famous, the Algarve in southwestern Spain and Portugal and the coastal cities of Morocco may have suffered even worse from the quake itself and the resulting Tsunami, though Lisbon was in part destroyed by an accompanying fire. We know they were devastated, though casualty counts are slippery, in Morocco as in Portugal. Totals in the tens of thousands dead, however, are often cited for both sides of the Strait, with some going to six figures. But Voltaire didn't put Candide in Tangier or Rabat. Most estimates put the total dead in Morocco at at least 10,000, perhaps higher. The quake was also felt in Algiers.
Of course, the highly useful Japanese word tsunami was unknown in Europe in 1755; in Portuguese it was known as a maremoto, a movement of the sea.
While the earthquake is historically known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake, its effect, and that of the following tsunami, also took a toll on Spain and Morocco, particularly but not exclusively the coastal areas.
The sources for the Moroccan damage are scattered, including native Moroccan writers, Spanish and Portuguese priests living in those country's enclaves in Morocco, and European consuls. Because Morocco also suffered another earthquake wave the same month, November 18-19 centered in the Rif Mountains, some have argued (for example P.L.Blanc, cited below) that the reports of intense damage to the interior cities of Meknes (badly hit), Marrakech, and Fes may have conflated the November 1 earthquske with the later ones, but this is still debatable. Discussion and citation of these source can be found in online studies such as Evaluation du risque tsunamique sur la littoral Atlantique, a doctoral thesis by Samira Mellas in French; and P.L. Blanc, "Earthquakes and tsunami in November 1755 in Morocco: a different reading of contemporaneous documentary sources."
Without studying each of the sources more carefully, I can't judge whether the damage from two separate quakes has been conflated, but in any event, both coastal and interior cities in Morocco suffered severe damage in November, 1755.
Along the coast, the Tsunami was devastating, though a reported height of 75 feet for the waves at El Jadida (then known by its Amazigh namd Mazagan or in Portuguese as Mazagão) is debated as being a likely exaggeration. Some reports claim that at Tangier the waves submerged the city walls. In Assila, the water entered the streets of the city, and along with the force of the earthquake, many houses were destroyed.
At the twin cities of Rabat and Salè, which face each other across the Bou Regreg River ships were sunk in he river and many drowned. Farther south at Safi there was also extensive damage. Agadir was also affected.
In the interior, there was certainly earthquake damage in Meknès, Marrakesh, and Fes; columns at the ancient Roman ruins of Volubilis also fell. Blanc argues that the damage in the interior was from the later November 18-19 quakes (the dates given by European reports; Mor0ccan reports date hem November 27-28). This is not established and reports written before those dates do refer to damage and deaths in the interior cities.
Casualty figures may be exaggerated (and the European ones distinguish between casualties among Christians, Jews, and "Moors," but certainly most accounts place the dead in multiple thousands. Though what made Lisbon so destructive was the combination of earthquake, Tsunami, and fire, the Moroccan accounts do not appear to speak of fire as a destructive force. Still, it seems clear that the Great Lisbon Earthquake was also the Great Moroccan earthquake.
Twice on this blog, in 2012 and again last year, I've noted the fact that the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of Osman from whom the Ottoman Empire takes its name, is an enclave considered sovereign Turkish territory deep inside Syria, and guarded by Turkish troops.
No longer. Over the past weekend Turkey sent a substantial armored military force through Syrian territory to the site, rescuing 38 Turkish soldiers threatened by ISIS. They also destroyed the site and retrieved the remains of Suleyman Shah.
A new site is planned just 200 meters inside Syria, retaining its claim to territory inside Syria but moving it closer to Turkey. (In fact, the tomb had been relocated before, when Lake Asad was built.
The Asad government has denounced the operation, and some Turkish opposition parties have denounced it as surrendering national territory.
#Egyptian #inspiration They say that the Oscar statuette represents a knight standing on a reel of film gripping a crusader's sword but it is just looks so similar to the representation of Ptah (Ancient Egypt God) holding the scepters...!!
It's time for another post on "Vanished States" in the Middle East in the 20th century. Previous posts dealt with the Republic of Hatay (1938-39), the Syrian Arab Kingdom under Faisal (four months in 1920), the Hashemite Kingdom of the Hejaz (1916-1925), and the Rifian Republic (1921-1926).
Today let's deal with two Soviet satellite states declared on Iranian territory in 1945, at the end of World War II and in the midst of the opening moves of the Cold War: the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad (usually referred to as the Mahabad Republic) and the Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan (or Azerbaijan People's Government). By late 1946, both were gone after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
The two emerged from the occupation of Iran by Britain and the Soviet Union in 1941, when Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Muhammad Reza, in order to facilitate Allied supplies to the USSR. The Allies pledged to evacuate their forces from Iran within six months after the end of the war. These assurances were repeated when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at the Tehran Conference in 1943.
But as World War II ended and the Cold War began, the Soviets encouraged these two states to declare independence, and Soviet forces remained in northwestern Iran. The Azerbaijani state, which had its capital at Tabriz, was rather different from the Kurdish one: it was run by veteran Communists and closely tied to the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, while the Mahabad Republic, with its capital at Mahabad, as led by Iranian Kurdish nationalists of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), in alliance with a military force led by the Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, founder of the Iraqi KDP and father of the Kurdish Regional Government's President Mas'oud Barzani.
The Azerbaijanis declared their state first. A group of longtime Communists led by Ja'far Pishevari declared the formation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party on September 3, 1945, the day after the surrender of Japan. The Tudeh Party, the official Communist Party of Iran, ordered its Azerbaijani branch to join the new movement. The group formed a "peasant's militia" and on November 18, 1945, staged an de facto coup, declaring an "autonomous republic." (Since Iran was a monarchy, how could a republic be autonomous within it?") Pishevari served as President and Ahmad Kordari as Prime Minister.
During the approximately one year before its dissolution, there were clearly close links between the Soviet Republic and the "Autonomous Republic" in Iran and Azeri Turkish was made official and Persian banned. A Soviet-style judicial code was enforced.
To the West, the Kurdish region of Iran also sought to declare itself a Kurdish Republic. The USSR does not seem to have been as enthusiastic there since the Kurdish leadership were more traditional Kurdish nationalists rather than veteran Communists. The Soviets sought to encourage the Kurdish leadership in Mahabad, which during the period of Soviet occupation had been formed of traditional tribal and religious elements, to join the Azerbaijani Republic, but instead they declared thgeir own autonomous state on December 15, 1945 and on January 22, 1946, announced the formation of the Kurdish Rrpublic in Mahabad.
Its President was Qazi Muhammad, from a family of religious judges, and its Prime Minister Hajji Baba Sheikh, both members of the KDPI rather than traditional Communist Party (Komala) cadres. The Defense Minister was Mulla Mustafa Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader. Historians claim that there was considerable resentment of the Barzani clan's presence in Iranian Kurdistan, where they had fled after fleeing Iraq. But Barzani's forces clearly were a mainstay of the Mahabad Republic's defense forces. Though the Kurdish Communist Party (Komala) supported the Mahabad Republic, the republic's leadership was officially KDPI.
Mahabad's more traditional leadership, though it included elements from Komala, resisted merger with the Communist government in Tabriz, and while the Soviets supported it in their efforts to remain in Iran, they seem to have been less trustful of the independent-minded Kurdish state than of the more Moscow-lining regime in Tabriz.But Mahabad was small, since significant parts of Iranian Kurdistan were in the Anglo-American rather than the Soviet-occupied zone, and were thus easily held by the government in Tehran.
The West saw the Soviet efforts to remain in northwestern Iran in terms of the Cold War and viewed both mini-states as Soviet satellites. The newly formed United Nations was soon wrestling with what came to be called the Iran Crisis, and in fact, three of the first five resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council (UNSC Resolutions 2, 3, and 5) dealt with Iran; the Soviets were absent for the later resolutions.
The end of Mahabad was messier and bloodier. Even as the withdrawal of Soviet support undercut his government, and many traditional tribal shaykhs and aghas were deserting the republic, Qazi Muhammad and his war council pledged armed resistance on December 5, 1946. With the Soviets leaving and Azerbaijan falling back under Tehran's control, this was a futile and rather puzzling gesture, especially given the fact that Qazi Muhammad agreed to the occupation of Mahabad by Iranian troops. During this period, Qazi Muhammad's brother, Sadr Qazi, had been serving as a Deputy in the Iranian Majlis in Tehran and serving as a go-between in negotiations. Nonetheless, after the fall of Mahabad, the Iranian government hanged Qazi Muhammad, Sadr Qazi, and their cousin Seif Qazi. This seems particularly unjust in the case of Sadr Qazi, who had been the go-between negotiator.
Mustafa Barzani and his Iraqi Kurdish forces tried but failed to cut a deal with Tehran and then conducted a fighting retreat toward the Iraqi and Soviet borders, bloodying the Iranian forces. To his credit, Stalin [as much as it pains me to write those four words about Stalin] allowed the Barzani forces into exile in Soviet Azerbaijan. In the 1950s, after the fall of the Iraqi monarchy, they would be allowed to re-enter Iraq.
Sunday (February 22) will be George Washington's actual birthday (adjusted for the Gregorian calendar), though we celebrated last week on the President's Day holiday. Back in 2013, I posted a 1789 letter Washington wrote to the Sultan of Morocco, but this is not a rerun of that post, but rather a fuller contextualization of the origins of US-Moroccan relations.
Late in 1780, according to a history published by the US Embassy in Morocco, the Continental Congress approved the idea, telling Caille to move toward such a treaty. But only after the 1783 peace treaty with Great Britain did the project move forward. In May 1784 Congress authorized Franklin, John Adams (US envoy to London), and Thomas Jefferson (the new envoy to Paris) to negotiate the deal. In October 1784, a Moroccan corsair seized an American merchantman in the Atlantic, and the Sultan pointedly noted that he had been asking for a treaty for several years. In 1785, Thomas Barclay, US Consul-General in Paris, was sent to Morocco to negotiate the terms. Adams in London wrote to Jefferson in Paris, "If Mr. Barclay will undertake the voyage, I am for looking no farther. We cannot find a steadier, or more prudent man." Barclay reached Marrakesh, then the Sultan's capital, on June 19, 1786. On June 28 the treaty was signed and sealed by the Sultan; you can read the English text here.
Israeli elections, with their proliferation of parties and shifting alliances, further complicated by the fact that there are multiple polling agencies getting differing results, can be confounding. A hat tip to Avner Cohen for drawing attention to a rather useful Wikipedia entry: "Opinion Polling for the Israeli Legislative Election, 2015."
It has useful comparative tables party by party, and appears to be updated almost daily.
At Jadaliyya, "Quick Thoughts: Paul Sedra on the IS Massacre of Egyptian Copts in Libya" does a useful job of distinguishing the ISIS massacre in Libya from the context of Egyptian domestic politics and Christian-Muslim relations. It's short but important.
Yesterday I (belatedly) noted the 70th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt's meeting with King 'Abd al-'Aziz Al Sa'ud (usually referred to by Westerners at the time as "Ibn Saud") aboard the USS Quincy in February 1946. After meeting the King on February 14, FDR departed for Alexandria and there, on February 15, met Winston Churchill, who was also returning from Yalta. Then FDR departed for home. It was the last time Churchill and FDR met; Roosevelt died in April.
After the departure of our American friends I had arranged meeting with Ibn Saud. He had been transported to the conference with the President in he American destroyer Murphy, and travelled with all the splendour of an Eastern potentate, with an entourage of some fifty persons, including two sons, his Prime Minister, his Astrologer, and flocks of sheep to be killed according to Moslem rites. On February 17 his reception was organised at the Hôtel du Lac at Fayum oasis, from which we had temporarily removed all residents.
A number of social problems arose. I had been told that neither smoking nor alcoholic beverages were allowed in the Royal Presence. As I was the host at luncheon I raised the matter at once, and said to the interpreter that if it was the religion of His Majesty to deprive himself of smoking and alcohol I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them. The King graciously accepted the position. His own cup-bearer from Mecca offered me a glass of water from its sacred well, the most delicious I had ever tasted.
It had been indicated to me beforehand that here would be an interchange of presents during the course of our meeting. I had therefore made what I thought were adequate arrangements. "Tommy" Thompson [Churchill's aide] had bought for me in Cairo for about a hundred pounds, at the Government's expense, a little case of very choice perfumes which I presented. We were all given jewelled swords, diamond-hilted, and other splendid gifts. Sarah [Churchill's daughter] had an enormous portmanteau which Ibn Saud had provided for "your womenfolk." I appeared that we were rather outclassed in gifts, so I told the King, "What we bring are but tokens. His Majesty's Government have decided to present you with the finest motor-car in the world, with every comfort for peace and every security against hostile action." This was later done.
I assume it was a Rolls-Royce.
King Ibn Saud made a striking impression. My admiration for him was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us. He was always at his best in the darkest hours. He was now over seventy, but had lost none of his warrior vigour. He still lived he existence of a patriarchal King of the Arabian desert, with his forty living sons and the seventy ladies of his harem, and three of the four legal wives, as prescribed by the Prophet, one vacancy being left.
Churchill omits the awkward fact that one key topic of conversation was Palestine, where Churchill hoped to extricate Britain from its Palestine Mandate through peaceful partition and hoped for Saudi support. That was not forthcoming.
February 1945: Roosevelt Meets "Ibn Saud"
I've been so preoccupied with the 100th anniversary of World War I that I let slip a critical 70th anniversary: the meetings between Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Farouq, Haile Selassie, and King 'Abd al-'Aziz Al Sa'ud ("Ibn Saud") in the Suez Canal in February 1945. FDR was returning from the Yalta Conference on the the cruiser USS Quincy. The conference took place February 12-14, 1945, so I'm a couple of days late in noting its anniversary. Roosevelt arrived by air from Yalta and then traveled to join the Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake of the Suez Canal. The next day he met with King Farouq and Haile Selassie.
The first film clip is partially in color; though the two clips show the same events there are some differences in detail.
The US Marine Corps colonel appearing in the meetings with Roosevelt and Ibn Saud is Colonel Bill Eddy, the US Minister to Saudi Arabia. You can find an account of the meeting written by Eddy here. For more about Eddy, see Tom Lippman's 2008 book, Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East.
You can find Eddy's own account of the meeting here.
I note that both newsreels say that this is the first time Ibn Saud had left his Kingdom. I guess they mean since he became King; he spent his youth in exile in Kuwait until he led the raid on Riyadh that expelled the Rashid family and restored the Sauds, beginning the formation of the Kingdom.
The Islamic State or ISIS, is a serious challenge deserving serous attention, and I don't mean scare headlines like this one in The Daily Mail.
Graeme Wood in The Atlantic: "What ISIS Really Wants."
A response to Wood by J.M. Berger: "Enough about Islam: Why religion is not the most useful way to undertand ISIS."
Emile Nakhleh at Lobelog: "America and the Middle East after The Islamic State"
Juan Cole, "Today's Top 7 Myths about Daesh/ISIL"
In addition to its on Monday airstrike against Islamic State elements in Libya in retaliation for the murder of 21 Egyptian Christians, Egypt appears to be urging wider international intervention in Libya, possibly including Italy, the former colonial power, This is the latest instance, among many, of the emerging alliance of Gulf States and Egypt in taking proactive military measures against radical jihadist movements.
It is probably no coincidence that Egypt also just ordered Rafale multirole fighters from France, a deal which may be underwritten by Gulf funds.
Today is the Presidents' Day holiday in the US. Normal blogging resumes tomorrow.
In yesterday's first part of this two-part post,we dealt with the use of Zeppelins in the Italo-Turkish War in Libya and the bizarre 1917 adventure of German Zeppelin L59 attempting to cross British-occupied Egypt and Sudan to resupply troops in German East Africa.
As mentioned in yesterday's post, after the death of Count von Zeppelin in 1917, the Zeppelin enterprise was headed by Dr. Hugo Eckener, When the Versailles Treaty force Germany to give up all military Zeppelins, Eckener began to seek permissions for civilian passenger Zeppelin airships, and by the late 1920s there began the age of luxury airship travel, when these luxury liners in the sky offered elites a way to cross the oceans faster than ships, at a time when heavier-than-air crossings were still he realm of adventurers like Charles Lindbergh and passenger aircraft with such range were still in the future (though the first passenger flying boats were beginning to challenge them).
Returning, though, to Graf Zeppelin. Designated LZ 137, she was built at the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshaven am Bodensee between 1926 and 1928, she was 776 feet long (the largest airship built to that time) and could reach a top airspeed of 80 mph, though it normally did not reach that speed. During its lifetime (1928-1937) it would make 590 flights and cover a million miles, including one round-the-world trip (Weltfahrt). She was Weimar Germany's pride and joy, and she was meant as a demonstration of German aviation prowess.
As a result its trips were often intended to impress, and therein lies the theme of this posts: its Middle East visits, to Palestine in 1929 and to both Palestine and Egypt in 1931. It would also visit Tangier during one of its Mediterranean voyages, as well as I believe on its trips to Latin America.
For a good summary of both the 1929 and 1931 visits, let me refer you to zan article by Alan McGregor in a 1994n issue of Saudi ARAMCO World: "Contrary Winds: Zeppelins Over the Middle East."
"The Egyptian people, through no fault of their own, are being prevented from witnessing a magnificent spectacle. This is due to [British] envy of the thoughtful, hard- working German nation, which is developing so quickly and outclassing most other countries, particularly in aviation. As a result, the people cannot see the [Graf Zeppelin], and it will not see the Suez Canal."
Leaving Fridrichshafen on March 25, 1929, tthe Graf passed over Italy, Crete and Cyprus before reaching Palestine in the evening.
By early evening they were over Palestine, dropping a bundle of 5000 letters to the large German colony at Jaffa. They found Mount Carmel bedecked with German flags and the word "Willkommen " spelled out in 8-meter-height letters; then they flew along the coast to Tel Aviv, where a passenger showered confetti on the crowds below.
The ship then sailed east to Jerusalem, stopping its engines to hover over the Old City, then proceeding eastward to Jericho and the Dead Sea. Over the sea, the captain descended to close to the surface before rising and proceeding back over Jerusalem, now visible in bright moonlight.
Proceeding out over the Mediterranean, the Zeppelin proceeded along the Egyptian coast, where Dr. Eckener, off Rashid, sent birthday greetings to King Fuad I, regretting that "contrary winds" prevented him from visiting Egypt. Graf Zeppelin then passed over Greece, circled the Acropolis, and proceeded via Vienna to Friedrichshafen and home. The first Middle East visit had lasted four days, May 25-28. Her next Middle East visit would be in 1931.
Meanwhile, the British completed their challenger to he Graf Zeppelin, the R-101. On October 5, 1930, on its first trip outside Britain, R-101 crashed and burned in France, killing 48 of the 54 people aboard including Britain's Air Minister. That marked the end of British dirigible building. It also brought Dr. Eckener to the funeral of those killed. At that point, the British Air Ministry invited Eckener to visit Egypt with the Graf.
On April 9, 1931, Graf Zeppelin left Friedrichshafen at 6:10 AM and proceeded south over Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, and reached the Libyan coast at 5:15 AM the next day and proceeded eastward over Benghazi, crossing into Egypt at Sollum and continuing to Alexandria at 12:55 PM. The Zeppelin spent 40 minutes circling over Alexandria while much of the population watched.
From Alexandria, the ship followed the Nile to Cairo, arriving around 3:30 PM. Eckener brought it over the Qubba Palace, where King Fuad I and Queen Nazli were watching from a balcony. He dipped the great Zepplin's bow three times to the monarch.
So much of the 1929 trip had been in the dark that there were few photo opportunities, But the 1931 trip offered plenty of the sort of publicity photos Eckener and Germany had been hoping for.
The Zeppelin proceeded south to the Step Pyramid at Saqqara and then cruised northward over the cities of the Delta overnight, while the passengers slept. At the coast it turned back towards Cairo and its first landing in the Middle East.
At 5:15 AM,the ship reached Cairo and the old Almaza airfield, which was Cairo's original civil airport and is today an Air Force Base some distance south of Cairo International Airport which replaced it. There, at 6:10 AM, British troops stationed in the area manned the mooring cable and also formed a cordon around he airship to hold back surging crowds, estimated at 30,000, who had flocked to Almaza to see it Firehoses were reportedly used to hold back the crowds when it took off later. An account of that visit can be read here.
Eckener and some of the crew disembarked in Cairo, as did others wishing to see Cairo. Eckener had lunch with dignitaries and an audience with King Fuad. Meanwhile, the Zeppelin took off for a voyage over Palestine, passing over the Suez Canal, gaza, ajd Tel Aviv-Jaffa, then turning east toward Jerudalem.
The Graf Zeppelin then returned to Cairo, landing at Almaza at 5 PM. After picking up Eckener and the other, and departed over the desert, passing over Siwa and exiting over Libya. The second Middle East visit of the Graf Zeppelin was over. She returned to Friedrichshafen after 97 hours (four days plus an hour).
The ARAMCO World article cited earlier claims that for years Egyptians used the phrase "zayy al-zeppelin" (like the Zeppelin) to refer to something very large.
Zeppelins in the Middle East: Part I: Military Use in Libya and the Improbable Tale of "Das Afrika-Schiff"
The great age of luxury Zeppelin travel was a brief one in the 1920s and 1930s, memorably concluding with the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. The rigid dirigible airship, designed by Count (Graf in German) Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the 1890s, originally was used for military applications through World War I; Count von Zeppelin died in 1917,and the Zeppelin company was taken over by Dr. Hugo Eckener. Barred by the Versailles Treaty from building military Zeppelins, Eckener eventually won the right to build Zeppelins for civilian transport, and created the idea of these luxury liners of the sky for European and American elites, that could carry people across the Atlantic in comfort faster than a ship, at a time when heavier-than air aircraft were not yet ready to carry passengers so far.
Dr. Eckener's gem was the Graf Zeppelin, named for Count von Zeppelin and intended to demonstrate the Zeppelin's capabilities as the airborne version of a luxury liner. As the Weimar Republic struggled to recover from World War I, she became a major showpiece for the reputation of German aeronautical engineering. Later that year she made her first Transatlantic trip, to the US. She would make other high-profile flights, including a round-the world-flight in 1929, but here I wish to discuss her two visits to the Middle East, in 1929 and 1931.
But those trips, including photos, will appear in Part II of this post. Here in Part I, I want to discuss military Zeppelins in the Middle East.
But first, a few words about military Zeppelin use in the Middle East prior to the golden age of luxury Zeppelin travel. During the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-1912, Italy became not only the first country to drop an aerial bomb from a heavier than air airplane, but probably also the first to use dirigibles for bombing. (Some use "Zeppelin" for all rigid dirigible airships, others only for the German products).
During the bombing of Libya in 2011 I noted this on this blog, and posted this photo of Italian dirigibles dropping bombs on Turkish positions in Libya.
It would be a dangerous mission: her top speed would be only 50 mph, making her a sitting duck for British fighters based in Egypt, Sudan, or Kenya. The Zeppelin, whose production designation from the Zeppelin works was LZ 104, was redesignated the L59 in German Naval service. Her sister ship, L57, had originally been chosen for the Africa flight, but crashed and burned during trials.
The Zeppelin works' Dr. Eckener himself piloted her to Jamboli airfield in Bulgaria, a German ally, where command was handed over to KapitanLeutnant (Lieutenant Commander) Ludwig Bockholt of the German Navy.
Bockholt, earlier in 1917, had drawn attention when, in command of Zeppelin L23, he had lowered a prize party from the Zeppelin to capture the Norwegian sailing ship Royal, still the only incidence in history in which a Zeppelin captured a surface ship. So he may have seemed the right man for a daring mission.
After two false starts,she took off on November 21, 1917. She passed across Turkish airspace (allied with Germany) and headed out over the Mediterranean. Over Crete she encountered a thunderstorm and, as was standard practice, retracted her radio antenna to avoid lightning strikes. Meanwhile in East Africa, von Lettow-Vorbeck had suffered a defeat and was withdrawing into rough terrain where the Zeppelin could not land (he eventually crossed into Portuguese East Africa/Mozambique. The German Colonial Office tried to recall the L59 but with her antenna retracted she missed the signal.
At 5;15 AM on November 22, L59 crossed the African coast near Mersa Matruh. As the morning sun heated the Sahara below, the airship experienced considerable turbulence; the heat of the days and bitter cold of the desert nights also affected the crew adversely, some even experiencing hallucinations.
She passed over the Farafra and Dakhla oases on course to parallel the Nile from Wadi Halfa. On that afternoon, however, her forward engine seized up. She continued to make good time on her remaining engine, but the forward engine controlled the power to her radio transmitter, so she was from that point on unable to transmit, though she could receive with some difficulty.
While the loss of the transmitter made it impossible to contact Germany, it may have had another benefit: British Intelligence knew the Germans planned to make the attempt, but were unsure of the timing; British fighters in Egypt and stations in Sudan and Kenya were ordered to watch for and intercept her, and were listening for her radio transmissions. Her inadvertent radio silence may have helped her evade detection.
Sundown on the 22nd found L59 over Sudan; she had reached the Nile and was following it southward. the sharp drop in desert temperatures at night caused her hydrogen bags to lose buoyancy and she lost altitude.
At 12:45 AM on the 23rd, L59 finally received the German recall order. There was some debate as some preferred to go on, but Holbock decided to turn back. Meanwhile, about 3 am, her loss of buoyancy due to the cold caused her to stall and nearly crash in the desert, but control was regained.
Finally, about 125 miles west of Khartoum, L59 turned around and headed for home.he had passed over Egypt and half of Sudan, and now had to pass over them again without being detected.
There has been some controversy over the recall message. British Intelligence operative Richard Meinertzhagen would claim that it was a British ruse, broadcast in German naval code and claiming von Lettow-Vorbeck had surrendered. The British may have transmitted recall messages (though days later they were still looking for Zeppelin in East Africa, so they apparently did not know where it was. The recall message was not about a surrender, but a retreat, and the message recorded in L59's log reportedly matches the one sent by the German Navy. Meinertzhagen's recent biographers have called into question his once famous diaries, which appear to be full of fabrications.
L59 successfully avoided detection and reached the Mediterranean. She was not quite home free, having another loss of altitude after night fell and nearly crashed in western Turkey, which was at least friendly ground, but recovered, and landed back at Jamboli at 7:45 am on November 25. She had flown for 95 hours and 4,200 miles without landing, a Zeppelin record that would stand until the great ocean-crossing passenger Zeppelins of the 1920s and 1930s.
Since the original plan was to dismantle L59 once in Africa, and with Lettow-Vorbeck now in Mozambique, the Germans had no immediate plans for L59, so they decided to modify it to carry bombs and keep it in the Mediterranean theater. On March 11-12, 1918, she raided Italy, bombing Naples.
Its next mission was an attempt to bomb Port Said and the Suez Canal.later in March reached a point about three miles from the target, when contrary winds forced a retreat. Unfavorable winds also forced abandoning the backup target, Suda Bay in Crete.
On April 7, 1918, L59, still commanded by Bockholt, took off from Jamboli to bomb the British base at Malta. She crossed the Straaits of Otranto and headed towards Malta. The German submarine UB-53, running on the surface, witnessed her passing low overhead; the U-Boat commander estimated her altitude at 210 meters and reported he could see the details of the Gondola.
A bit after the Zeppelin passed over, the U-Boat commander reported hearing two explosions and then witnessing a giant flame descending into the sea. She was listed as lost to an accident since neither the Italians nor the British claimed to have brought her down; none of the crew of 21, including Bockholt, survived.
Some in the German Navy's Zeppelin service reportedly suspected that UB-53 might have mistaken L59 for an Italian airship and shot her down, then realized their error. This is unproven, and UB-53 herself went down after hitting a mine in Otranto in August 1918.
That's the strange tale of Zeppelins in wartime in the Middle East. Tomorrow, the luxury liners of the sky era: Graf Zeppelin's 1929 and 1931 visits to the region.
For Lincoln's Birthday, a Reprise of "Flap Over Confederates Seized in Tangier, 1862"
Today is Abraham Lincoln's 204th birthday, as Americans used to know before Lincoln's birthday (February 12) and Washington's (February 22) were merged into a generic "President's Day." The US Civil War generally didn't involve the Middle East (though as I've noted in "Stone Pasha and the Khedive Ismail's Yanks and Rebs," officers from both sides were actively recruited into the Egyptian Army after the war, and one became the Egyptian Chief of Staff under Khedives Ismail and Tawfiq.) But I thought today we'd focus on one diplomatic incident that did engage some of Lincoln's attention: the arrest by the US Consul in Tangier of two Confederates visiting that Moroccan city in February 1862, 151 years ago this month. It isnt well known but in addition to the Union, the Confederacy, and the Sultanate of Morocco, it also managed to draw in the British and French consuls and home governments.
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How to make a fortune with a charity shop bargain in West Hampstead
Rachael Getzels
Published: 5:00 PM August 22, 2012 Updated: 1:32 PM October 14, 2020
Inspired by the story of a Ham&High reader who bought a handbag for �20 and found out it could be worth more than �350,000, reporter Rachael Getzels goes in search of a deal in West Hampstead's fundraising stores.
I have �20 in hand and an afternoon to spend it. Not bad for a day's work but I'm hunting for a bargain here – and I won't stop until I get a return. A �100,000 return, that is.
Last month the Ham&High featured a West Hampstead man who had dug deep in the dusty depths of a charity shop and for just �20 purchased a Philip Treacy Elvis-design handbag which was later valued at �350,000 by some experts.
I decided that it could happen to me so I went on my merry way to West End Lane, which has the highest density of charity shops in Camden. My chances were good.
I'd heard that the West Hampstead charity shops are a bargain hunter's paradise – stuffed to the gills with designer threads and vintage gowns. So I began with Marie Curie.
I didn't expect my big breakthrough right away, so I was perfectly happy with a do-it-yourself burglar alarm for �1.50.
And a grow-your-own tomato (in the shape of a square). I never knew I wanted one until then but it only cost �2 so it wouldn't break the bank and I was beginning to get hungry.
Nearby Oxfam was a trusty standby, but a little too predictable. The rails were neat and organised and I couldn't do much in the way of digging.
So I decided it was onward and upward to the disordered but dazzling rails of All Aboard, an independent charity shop that recently made Time Out's top 10 list in London.
An attachable brunette ponytail, slightly knotted, was my best find there, but it wasn't something I wanted to take home with me. However, I did learn that All Aboard had a history of stocking the bizarre.
Employee Yollando Brigo told me staff once found a pair of dentures in a bag of clothes delivered to the shop.
"You have to dispose of them – it's not always pleasant," she explained.
"But the thing is, it really is a cycle here. We get lots of lovely bags of clothes as people clean out their homes but then we get the other end of it. Sheets that we know people have died in."
It was a sombre thought to add to my mission. The shop also had some curtains for sale and it did make me wonder whose glowing windows they once covered at night.
But time was ticking on and my mission was far from complete.
I wasn't so keen on the �50 white wedding dress I found at one of the shops (and nor was it in my budget). But it would be a happy memory for someone who likes pineapple-tiered gowns.
I heard that this same shop once sold a black dress by late designer Alexander McQueen for a bargain �70.
But I wasn't seeing any of that. So I went for practicality. If I couldn't corner that golden find, I might as well invest in the gear for next time.
Desert boots for climbing a mountain – they'll come in useful for my next treasure hunt and they only cost a fiver.
My next purchase was a black H&M top that I once had but have since lost – it may not go for millions but it's a safe re-investment. The closest I could find to a designer bag was a Cath Kidson baby blue holdall.
It was the first label I recognised and it was an eighth of the original price so it felt like I'd struck gold.
I was beginning to feel guilty about my material indulgence so I went for something cerebral – The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (for 50p) would last a lifetime.
Hitting the �20 mark wasn't too difficult – West Hampstead charity shops are known for being on the expensive side – but making my millions had been much more of a challenge.
In the end my finds probably aren't worth a fortune, but only time will tell.
Until then, I've got my �1.50 burglar alarm to protect the lot. I don't want to take any risks.

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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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Somewhere around the middle of the second decade of life, a syndrome of forgetfulness overtakes many humans. Let us call it adolescent amnesia.
Even after several years and a lot of miles, Chuck Johns still wonders why he was the recipient of a random act of kindness on The Massachusetts Turnpike. A random act? Maybe not!
Have you ever noticed how somethings stick in your mind, while things you need to remember can be hard to recall? Chuck Johns has, and writes about one of those things that has hung on for years regarding doing good and using what God has given.
The lights went out. Chuck Johns compares a power outage he remembers in upstate New York in 1965, with that of one that St. Luke remembered in Jerusalem.
A little child thinks the well-soaked Jesus "looks scared" in a picture of Jesus at his baptism. A child senses the fear in this placid river scene. Do we fear our journey through the wilderness of faith? Chuck Johns assures us we can count on our "Tour Guide" to see us through.
Bishop Susan Hassinger offers insight into discussions at a recent extended area cabinet gathering. She writes that as part of that time, "We considered, as we worshiped together and sought God's guidance, where were the bright stars among us that were lighting the way to the Christ, and to the future. We reflected on those pastors and congregations and communities where new moving outward of the gospel message was happening, or where we were seeing the potential for that to happen."
She shares the characteristics used to identify those situations and invites pastors and local church leaders to look at your congregations in this way.
A Christmas gift sends Chuck traveling down the road, examining wants and wishes versus what is really needed.
What are the hopes and fears of all the years? We could sit with yellow pad and pencil. Parallel columns. Hopes and fears. We could fill a page. It is probably a useful exercise to review the distance between the place from which we have come and the place to which we are going.
I WONDER AS I WANDER . . . ADVENT 2009: Anticipating "God's Renewed Creation"
At the recent Council of Bishops meeting, this semi-annual global gathering of United Methodist Bishops, active and retired, adopted unanimously a pastoral letter which we are asking every congregation to hear during the season of Advent. The theme of the pastoral letter is "God's Renewed Creation: Call to Hope and Action," and is the result of more than four years of study and listening to many persons and groups around the world. Bishop Susan Hassinger shares her thoughts on the letter and urges churches to use it and supporting documents in worship during Advent and in study in the new year.
A friend sits across a lunch table and empties an overflowing heart. Nearing the end of her long and painful story, she finally says to me, "You know, when all of these things went wrong in my life, I thought it might help if I went to church. So I started. I came for quite a while. But my problems did not go away. My life did not get any better. Everything was just as bad as before. I figured, what's the use? So I stopped coming.
It is not as hard to follow Jesus when all is well, when we eat our fill of bread and fish, when we are healthy, the kids are in the Honor Society, we are blessed by a happy marriage, we like our job, and we have a few bucks under the mattress. But what happens when the locusts ride in on a cold night wind and devour the crops?
My reading of the Gospel does not reveal any guarantee of rescue, although God's grace can and does afford it. It does not promise another free lunch, although life-transforming grace surely is free. I read about the promise of presence and possibility. I read of the bread of life that feeds the deepest human hunger for meaning and the wine that quenches the hidden thirst for life eternal. I read about the gift of a peace which remains after the locust's work is done.
I did a double take. I was sure that my eyes were having me on. It has happened before, of course. It could just be a variation on the mistaken identity that regularly inflicts aging eyes. Settling back into the cushioned pulpit furniture after the processional, I was strategically positioned to get an unobstructed view of the back of the pulpit. Being an occasional visitor to chancels, I get to see the preacher side of pulpits now and again. This time I looked once, twice, three times. This was a new one on me.
Sure enough, upon closer scrutiny, my first impression was accurate: it was a fire extinguisher. My mind went wandering off into a flight of fancy as to the reason for a fire extinguisher in the pulpit.
Driving to my next stop, I was kidnapped by that fire extinguisher. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that having a fire extinguisher pulpit-side could well be understood as a statement of faith about what can happen in worship. Perhaps the fire extinguisher should be regularly and prominently placed upon the communion table for all to see. Let it be a reminder of the Holy Fire upon whom we call in our prayers.
A recent e-mailing from the Alban Institute included a piece adapted from Pathway to Renewal: Practical Steps for Congregations by Daniel P. Smith and Mary K. Sellon (© 2008 by the Alban Institute). The article's theme dovetails nicely with our emphases on best spiritual practices and re-thinking how we "do" church. I am happy to share a shortened version with you as we continue along the journey of our local churches preparing to share their gifts, graces, people and ministries with new conferences in New York and Pennsylvania. I hope you find it helpful.
One Sunday not so long ago, the congregation was responding to the pastor's invitation to announce joys and concerns. Near the end of the time, a hand went up a few rows in front of me and a woman asked for "packing mercies". It was the pastor's spouse. The pastor had been appointed to a new congregation. The moving van would arrive in a few weeks. A ripple of knowing laughter skittered across the sanctuary.
Her remark set my mind chasing after memories of the fourteen moves in my own odyssey. It was a moment of empathy that had roots in my own moves sustained by prayer as well as sweat and tears. The prayer request transported me to the tape dispensers, colored markers, newsprint bundles and dozens of sturdy cartons begged from the Wine and Spirits Shop. An unknowing visitor in the parsonage at either end of the move might well be startled by the colorful boxes that were formerly home to a variety of non-Wesleyan beverages.
Matthew reports that Jesus' traveling instructions to the disciples as he sent them to the house of Israel was that they travel very lightly: no gold, no copper, no bag, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff. Sounds like little more than the clothes on their backs.
I WONDER AS I WANDER . . . When Is Enough "Enough?"
We do not know much, but we know what is unfair. One of our most highly developed inherited traits, passed down from our Eden ancestors, is a particularly keen awareness of when we have been unfaired against.
We respond pretty much the way the hearers must have responded as Matthew reports Jesus' parable. The caprice of the landowner, paying all workers the same, strikes everyone as bizarre, even though that caprice is generous, even extravagant. Jesus, master teacher, elicits from his hearers and from us the response he desires: "it's not fair."
The depth and complexity of any parable defies a single interpretation. Here we can place ourselves within the story and stand with the landowner or the laborers. From where we stand, we respond accordingly. However, this is a parable for disciples, for only disciples can have any chance whatsoever of entering upon the deeper meaning. One group receives their just wage and the other group receives an undeserved gift.
Our annual conference concluded its penultimate (next to the last) session on Saturday, June 6. It was a year of looking back over our 158 year history and looking ahead to the two new conferences of which we will be a part next year. As always at annual conference there were moments of celebration and joy and there were moments of frustration and angst.
Celebrations and joys fire us up and excite us about new possibilities. Frustrations and angsts can leave us despondent about the future, so much so that we might overlook new insights and new learnings. In these brief thoughts below my focus is an area of our life that we may have passed over too quickly in Scranton or that we did not fully grasp. The area is finance. A fuller understanding of our conference's finances can turn frustration and angst into- if not celebration and joy- then at least hopeful promise for what lies ahead.
I am not an atheist. I can't remember a time in my life when that was a se rious consideration. From time to time I have read the travel brochures, but I have never been tempted to purchase a ticket. Time out of mind, I booked pas sage on another ship on which I have been traveling my whole life. Before I knew what it was to know, inclinations were planted within me that, when the time was right, led me to the ticket agent and, for an exchange of considerations, I boarded and found my seat with the others.
If opinion research is to be believed, it is a ship with many passengers. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Americans say that they are on board. Polls reveal that about 90 percent of our fellow citizens say they believe in God. To be sure, the polls also reveal that only about 36 percent of that same group attends worship at least once each month. The current cliché is "I am spiritual but not religious." Belief is one thing, behavior is an other, spirit and flesh ever the uneasy companions.


Remarkably well-preserved and wonderfully beautiful, Brugge is the top tourist destination in Belgium for good reason. Found in the northwest part of Belgium, Brugge is home to around 120,000 people, and it is both the capital and largest city of the West Flanders province. Once one of Europe's wealthiest cities, Brugge boasts a wonderful mix of architectural styles, with Gothic being dominant, which makes Brugge tours a visual delight. Brugge Belgium residents are proud of their hometown, and chances are good that upon your visit here, you'll be wishing you were one of them. Often referred to as "The Venice of the North," Brugge is full of canals, which complement the narrow city streets. An attractive city with a lot to enjoy, Brugge is calling all travelers, so toss it on your Belgium itinerary, and see what all the fuss is about. An hour-long ride on a comfortable Belgian train can get you from Brussels to Brugge, and it's only 30 minutes by rail from Ghent. Come summertime in Brugge, trips to one of the nearby Belgian beach communities are certainly recommended, as it's just a 15 minute trip to Knokke or Ostend.
Brugge Belgium, or Bruges Belgium as it is known to non Flemish-speakers, is quite akin to a time warp in that its old city retains most of its medieval architecture. The old center of town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is a most ideal place for walking tours—just be sure to bring some comfortable shoes for the cobblestone streets. During the twelfth century that Brugge began to truly grow in importance, and the dynamic period between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries is known as the city's "Golden Age." By the sixteenth century, Brugge Belgium was beginning to experience a decline, much of which was the result of Antwerp replacing it as the new economic powerhouse in western Europe. Attempts were made in subsequent centuries to bring glory back to Brugge, but the city only fell more by the wayside, which was a sort of blessing in disguise. This helped the city to avoid the wars and destruction that so many other European cities fell prey to.
By the latter part of the 1800s, the Brugge attractions were starting to generate foreign interest, and Brugge travel started to become rather vogue with wealthy British and French tourists. Ever since then, Brugge travel has only increased, and today it is a tourism Mecca. Thankfully, the Brugge residents are happy to share their city with visitors. You can bet that they understand the desire that foreigners have to visit their cherished home. Sure, it gets pretty packed here in the summertime, but with a destination as fabulous as this crowds are just part of the territory. Many visitors enjoying a Brugge vacation will start their tours in the heart, or hearts, of the city. Two monumental squares make up the center of town. They are named the Burg and the Markt. Narrow medieval streets branch out from both squares.
The Burg is a delight for anyone who appreciates different forms of architecture, and it is here where the city of Brugge grew up around a fortified castle. Not much remains of the original castle, but you will likely be impressed by the Renaissance facade of the Old Civic Registry. The baroque splendor of the Provost's House is also striking. The Markt is also of considerable interest before you head on to some of the other great Brugge attractions, most of the best of which are just a five to ten minute walk away. In the center of this square is a sculpture that honors Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck, who are Flemish heroes from the fourteenth century. The Markt is also where you will find the famed Belfry and Market Halls. The Belfry tower rises some 270 feet into the sky, and the 47-bell carillon at the top of it chimes with regularity, especially on summer days. The lower section of the Belfry was built in the thirteenth century, while the upper reaches were added in both the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Climb the 366 steps to the top, and you'll enjoy some fantastic panoramic views of the city below.
Built between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Church of Our Lady is another one of the Brugge attractions that you won't want to miss when enjoying a Brugge vacation. It's definitely featured on most Brugge tours, as inside it is a marble sculpture by one Michelangelo. This sculpture, which depicts the Madonna and Child (the Virgin Mary and Jesus), is quite special. No other work by the grand Italian artist ever left Italy during his lifetime, and to this day, it is rare to find one of his works outside of his home country. After you enjoy one or more Brugge tours and do some city sightseeing, you might consider hitting the Groeninge Museum for a wonderful display of Low Countries art. The works here date from between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, and among them are works by such artistic luminaries as Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, and Hans Memling.
For a change of pace when it comes to Brugge travel, drop by one of the city's parks or gardens. A few blocks south of the Burg is the Queen Astrid Park, which is a great place to escape for a while, and the Lake of Love is also a tranquil spot. Found to the south of the city center where a canal funnels into it, this peaceful lake borders the historic Begijnhof, and another excellent park. The Begijnhof is one of various Flemish begijnhofen, which were convents of sorts for religious women who were akin to nuns in many ways. For those interested in Belgian biking, pedaling along the canals during your Brugge vacation is always a good idea when looking to unwind. When enjoying all that Brugge travel has to offer, you're bound to get hungry, and thankfully, the Brugge restaurants are plentiful. There are also plenty of Brugge hotels to choose from, which helps to make Brugge travel so divine.


text:
package build

import (
	"github.com/mmcloughlin/avo/attr"
	"github.com/mmcloughlin/avo/operand"
	"github.com/mmcloughlin/avo/reg"

	"github.com/mmcloughlin/avo/gotypes"
)

//go:generate avogen -output zmov.go mov

// Param returns a the named argument of the active function.
func (c *Context) Param(name string) gotypes.Component {
	return c.activefunc().Signature.Params().Lookup(name)
}

// ParamIndex returns the ith argument of the active function.
func (c *Context) ParamIndex(i int) gotypes.Component {
	return c.activefunc().Signature.Params().At(i)
}

// Return returns a the named return value of the active function.
func (c *Context) Return(name string) gotypes.Component {
	return c.activefunc().Signature.Results().Lookup(name)
}

// ReturnIndex returns the ith argument of the active function.
func (c *Context) ReturnIndex(i int) gotypes.Component {
	return c.activefunc().Signature.Results().At(i)
}

// Load the function argument src into register dst. Returns the destination
// register. This is syntactic sugar: it will attempt to select the right MOV
// instruction based on the types involved.
func (c *Context) Load(src gotypes.Component, dst reg.Register) reg.Register {
	b, err := src.Resolve()
	if err != nil {
		c.adderror(err)
		return dst
	}
	c.mov(b.Addr, dst, int(gotypes.Sizes.Sizeof(b.Type)), int(dst.Size()), b.Type)
	return dst
}

// Store register src into return value dst. This is syntactic sugar: it will
// attempt to select the right MOV instruction based on the types involved.
func (c *Context) Store(src reg.Register, dst gotypes.Component) {
	b, err := dst.Resolve()
	if err != nil {
		c.adderror(err)
		return
	}
	c.mov(src, b.Addr, int(src.Size()), int(gotypes.Sizes.Sizeof(b.Type)), b.Type)
}

// Dereference loads a pointer and returns its element type.
func (c *Context) Dereference(ptr gotypes.Component) gotypes.Component {
	r := c.GP64()
	c.Load(ptr, r)
	return ptr.Dereference(r)
}

// ConstData builds a static data section containing just the given constant.
func (c *Context) ConstData(name string, v operand.Constant) operand.Mem {
	g := c.StaticGlobal(name)
	c.DataAttributes(attr.RODATA | attr.NOPTR)
	c.AppendDatum(v)
	return g
}


This article appeared earlier today in the Observer section of the Guardian.
From its founding in 1932 until 1998, Lego had never posted a loss. By 2003 it was in big trouble. Sales were down 30% year-on-year and it was $800m in debt. An internal report revealed it hadn't added anything of value to its portfolio for a decade.
Consultants hurried to Lego's Danish HQ. They advised diversification. The brick had been around since the 1950s, they said, it was obsolete. Lego should look to Mattel, home to Fisher-Price, Barbie, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, a company whose portfolio was broad and varied. Lego took their advice: in doing so it almost went bust. It introduced jewellery for girls. There were Lego clothes. It opened theme parks that cost £125m to build and lost £25m in their first year. It built its own video games company from scratch, the largest installation of Silicon Graphics supercomputers in northern Europe, despite having no experience in the field. Lego's toys still sold, particularly tie-ins, like their Star Wars and Harry Potter-themed kits. But only if there was a movie out that year. Otherwise they sat on shelves.
In 2015, the still privately owned, family controlled Lego Group overtook Ferrari to become the world's most powerful brand. It announced profits of £660m, making it the number one toy company in Europe and Asia, and number three in North America, where sales topped $1bn for the first time. From 2008 to 2010 its profits quadrupled, outstripping Apple's. Indeed, it has been called the Apple of toys: a profit-generating, design-driven miracle built around premium, intuitive, covetable hardware that fans can't get enough of. Last year Lego sold 75bn bricks. Lego people – "Minifigures" – the 4cm-tall yellow characters with dotty eyes, permanent grins, hooks for hands and pegs for legs – outnumber humans. The British Toy Retailers Association voted Lego the toy of the century.
When The Lego Movie came out in 2014 the film snob website Rotten Tomatoes awarded it a 96% approval rating: only Oscar nominees 12 Years a Slave and Gravity matched it. This year's follow-up, The Lego Batman Movie, outperformed the last "proper" Batman movie, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, to such a degree that DC Comics now faces a genuine problem: audiences overwhelmingly prefer the Dark Knight in his pompous and plastic version voiced by Will Arnett, rather than Ben Affleck's portrayal.
Lego's revival has been called the greatest turnaround in corporate history. A book devoted to the subject, David Robertson's Brick by Brick: How Lego Rewrote the Rules of Innovation, has become a set business text. Sony, Adidas and Boeing are said to refer to it. Google now uses Lego bricks to help its employees innovate.
Lego's saviour is the aforementioned Vig Knudstorp – a father of four, perhaps not uncoincidentally – who arrived from management consultants McKinsey & Company in 2001 and was promoted to boss within three years, aged 36. "In some ways, I think he's a better model for innovation than Steve Jobs," Robertson has said.
Last month I flew to Billund, a small town in the Jutland peninsula where Lego was founded. The landscape was flat and grey, but as I drove from the airport a large primary coloured arm or head would occasionally appear though the pine trees: the Lego Group owns several buildings here and has decorated the landscape accordingly. I was immediately in a good mood.
"Billund was built to function, not to please," explained Roar Trangbaek, Lego's cheerful, bearded publicist. "There's not a lot of fun here." He meant there wasn't a lot to do there – it's hard to imagine the nightlife is up to much – but given that 120m Lego bricks are manufactured here every day, fun was very much the point of the place. As if to prove it, Trangbaek handed me his business card. It was a Minifigure of himself.
The following morning the Lego Group was due to announce its latest annual results. Today was an opportunity to meet some of its key employees, tour the factory and be among the first to step inside Lego House – a 130,000sq ft marvel that will open in September, and is expected to draw 250,000 visitors a year. It has been designed by Bjarke Ingels, the hottest name in architecture right now, whose commissions include Google's HQ, the new World Trade Center and last year's Serpentine Pavilion. Ingels certainly seems to have enjoyed himself: Lego House resembles 21 giant Lego bricks stacked into a 30m tower. Visitors can climb up to the rooftop garden and down the other side, pausing to take in attractions, restaurants, play zones and a gallery dedicated to fan-made Lego extravaganzas. Life-sized Lego sculptures had been placed around the interior – a cop, a firefighter – while real-life construction workers in hi-vis tabards beavered away around them, a surreal sight.
Vig Knudstorp rescued Lego by methodically rebuilding it, brick by brick. He dumped things it had no expertise in – the Legoland parks are now owned by the British company Merlin Entertainments, for example. He slashed the inventory, halving the number of individual pieces Lego produces from 13,000 to 6,500. (Brick colours had somehow expanded from the original bright yellow, red and blue, sourced from Piet Mondrian, to more than 50.) He also encouraged interaction with Lego's fans, something previously considered verboten. Far from killing off Lego, the internet has played a vital role in allowing fans to share their creations and promote events like Brickworld, adult Lego fan conventions. A year before James Surowiecki's landmark book The Wisdom of Crowds was published, Lego launched its own crowdsourcing competition: originators of winning ideas get 1% of their product's net sales, designs that so far include the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine, the Beatles' Yellow Submarine and a set of female Nasa scientists.
It also started making hit toys again. As well as putting a focus back on classic Lego lines like City and Space, it has launched the ninja-themed Ninjago line, Mindstorms, kits that allow you to build programmable Lego robots, aimed at teens. And for grown-up kids, Lego Architecture, replicas of the Guggenheim, Burj Khalifa and Robie House, that last one not for the feint-hearted or time-poor – it contains 2,276 bricks. Most impressively for a company with a customer base that in 2011 was 90% boys, it finally cracked the girls' market. Lego Friends features a reconfigured "Mini-doll" and centres on five characters in the fictional Heartlake City. None of this has happened by chance. Lego is said to conduct the largest ethnographic study of children in the world.
"We call it 'camping with consumers'," says Anne Flemmert Jensen, senior director of its Global Insights group. "My team spends all our time travelling around the world, talking to kids and their families and participating in their daily lives." This includes watching how kids play on their own and with friends, how siblings interact and why some toys remain perennial favourites while others are relegated to the toy box. Children are fickle – as the makers of forgotten "must-have" Christmas toys, like Pogs and Furby, will concede.
Lego Friends took four years of research (plus a $40m global marketing push) to get right.
Lego Friends sets (bakery, amusement park, riding camp, etc) tend to feature something else missing from boys' sets: a loo. The boys don't care, the girls' pragmatism demanded it.
Roar Trangbaek shows me the original Lego house, where the company's founder Ole Kirk Christiansen lived. It's now a private museum that tells the Lego chronology through artefacts, packaging and toys. More than one adult visitor has been known to burst into tears when confronted by a key line from their childhood: in my case the Space Lego of the mid-1970s. (Lego gets inundated with requests for re-releases, but they won't do it. Their focus is the kids of now and tomorrow, not yesterday.) Christiansen was an expert carpenter when the Great Depression hit. He figured the one thing people would always find money for was toys for their children. His company motto is carved into a plaque here – "det bedste er ikke for godt" (Only the best is good enough) – something borne out when Christiansen's son Godtfred returned home one day to proudly inform dad he'd saved them some cash by only applying two of the usual three coats of varnish to a wooden duck. He got a tongue- lashing for his trouble.
"It is a good story, but it's also a true story," says Trangbaek.
In 1946, against everyone's advice, the family invested in a newfangled plastic-injection moulding machine. Later they adapted Croydon-based inventor Hilary Fisher Page's self-locking bricks (billed his "sensible toy") – plastic cubes with two rows of four studs to enable stacking. The final part of Lego's success clicked into place in 1958 when it created its "system". Where previously they'd made toys of all shapes and sizes now every brick fitted with every other: everything was backwards compatible. "We've got the bricks, you've got the ideas," advised a 1992 Lego catalogue. A mathematician recently deduced that just six eight-stud bricks of the same colour could be combined 915,103,765 ways.
Teen dream: the Mindstorm robot.
Lego is increasingly concentrating on bridging the physical and the virtual. This year it rolled out Lego Life, a social network for kids too young for Instagram to share their creations, gaining "likes" from peers and Lego characters alike. "Lego Batman can comment in character. 'That's awesome – would have been better in black and yellow,'" says Dieter Carstensen, head of digital child safety and the Lego Life team."That kind of stuff." There's also Nexo Knights, a video game where powers are unlocked by scanning Lego pieces. They're researching VR and AR. "Some of the things we're looking at are very near to being feasible now," says William Thorogood, an irrepressibly bouncy Brit, and the senior innovation director with Lego's creative play lab. "Other things are very exciting, but probably not feasible for 10 years, depending on how mature the tech becomes." Later this year we can look forward to The Lego Ninjago Movie, whose tone looks every bit as irreverently daft as its predecessors.
The next morning in Billund, Lego announced the highest revenues in its 85-year-history. Since December the company has been run by another Brit, Bali Padda, the first non-Dane in charge, after Vig Knudstorp moved into a new role to expand the brand globally. Asia, with its booming middle class, is a focus.
Thomsen produced two plastic bags containing a few red and yellow bricks, part of a basic kit they use to engage learning.
We set to work. Thomsen's duck had two outstretched wings. Mine had a red bill, a red slab for feet and a yellow block for a tail.
There was no wrong or right duck, of course. That was the point. "It's about the process of making and investigating and learning," Thomsen said.
"How fast do you think anyone can do a duck?" Thomsen asked.
I'm not sure, I said. Ten seconds?
Then he slammed another set of pieces straight down on to the table.
Lego is a serious business. It just happens to be in the business of fun.


What are the influencing factors of filtration equipment?
Larger-sized air filters have relatively high prices, and filters with a larger size generally have a wider range of filters, and some require smaller filters for home use.
The combination of membranes and sulfur bodies, contact time will have a great impact on the filtration effect, in addition, is also closely related to the type of particles, the particle type is divided into non-deformable particles and variable particles, certain pressure conditions will undergo some changes, and filtration The type of membrane is different, and the pore size and structure of different membranes are also different. Some membrane membranes are rigid and some can be moved.
Different filter brands use different production technologies to produce filters, and the cost of using more advanced filter technology is relatively high. Therefore, when the merchants conduct the sales, the prices specified are relatively high.


text:
<?php

class SampleDashboard extends StandaloneDashboard {
  public function buildDashboard(){
    $chart = new ChartComponent();
    $chart->setCaption("Expenditures Incurred in Publishing a Book");
    $chart->setDimensions (8, 6);
    $chart->setLabels (["Paper Cost", "Binding", "Printing Cost", "Royality", "Transportation Cost", "Promotion Cost"]);
    $chart->setPieValues ([25, 20, 20, 15, 10, 10]);

    $this->addComponent ($chart);
  }
}

$db = new SampleDashboard();
$db->renderStandalone();


text:
Q: Star operator (*) applied to lists and integers Let's say we have a Foo class and we want to instantiate a lists of foos, which we can do as follows:
foo_list = [Foo()] * 3

Now what if we do foo_list[0].x = 5? This statement will set the attribute x to all of the instances inside the list!!!
When I found this it blew my mind. The problem is that when we create a list like that, apparently python will create the Foo instance first, then the list instance, and then append the same object to it 3 times, but I really would expect it to do something like this:
foo_list = [Foo() for i in range(3)]

Wouldn't you too? Well, now I know that definitely this syntactic sugar can't be used as I wanted to use it, but then, what is it used for? The only thing I can think of is to create a list with an initial size like this: list = [None] * 5, and that doesn't make much sense to me in the case of python.
Does this syntax have any other really useful use case?

A: You can use the star form, with any immutable type, like this
print [5] * 3
print "abc" * 3
print [1.1] * 3
print (8,) * 3

Lets say, for example
nums = [5] * 3
print map(id, nums)

Output on my machine
[41266184, 41266184, 41266184]

id function gives a unique id of the current object. As you can see, creating immutable objects this way is very simple, and efficient. Because all the elements in the created object, point to the same element. (Remember the objects used are immutable)
So, as a rule of thumb,
if the objects are mutable, use list comprehension form
[Foo() for i in range(3)]

if the objects are immutable, use can use the star form
[5] * 3

A: It's not syntactic sugar at all, it's just multiplying a list. That is,
foo_list = [Foo()] * 3

is
foo_list = ( [Foo()] ) * 3

is
foo_instance = Foo()
bar_list = [foo_instance]
foo_list = bar_list * 3

No special syntax at all. It creates a list that has the same contents as the list being multiplied, three times.
One thing I use it for is when I get a list of unknown length and I want it to have exactly length n, then I add a list of n times a default value to it, then slice:
def set_to_length(l, n, defaultvalue=0):
    return (l + [defaultvalue] * n)[:n]

Of course doing that with mutable defaultvalues leads to trouble, as you've found.

A: The syntax:
list=[any_object]*n

is a short-cut of making a list of n same objects.As you can see the following:
>>> l=[foo()]*3
>>> l
[<__main__.foo instance at 0x02D64D28>, <__main__.foo instance at 0x02D64D28>, <__main__.foo instance at 0x02D64D28>]
>>> m=[ foo() for i in range(3)]
>>> m
[<__main__.foo instance at 0x02D64F08>, <__main__.foo instance at 0x02D613A0>, <__main__.foo instance at 0x02D611C0>]

In the above code the three objects are same in the
list l
as indicated by there memory locations or you can use id(object) but in the
list m
they are different.
The point is when you use list comprehensions you actually do the process of creating three objects in one line rather than using a loop to instantiate objects and putting them in a list,but the former list=[any_object]*nis just again a shotcut of appending the same object in a list desired number of times.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


At Valient, design is what we do.
Businesses have turned to Search Engine Optimization in an effort to maintain or grow market share. The saying, "If you build it, they will come" no longer applies to online businesses. To keep up with your competitors, you need to make the first move and that means your website must be optimized for better search rankings.


Slings to fit CAR-15/M4-type carbines and submachineguns with the newer style Colt Type II SOCOM "rib reinforced" sliding buttstock (and similar). Also fits collapsible-style post-ban pinned stocks. Fits both .223 and .308 weapons. We also offer mounting hardware separately.