naturalfeature:indian ocean

  • Chennai, an Indian City of Nearly 5 Million, Is Running Out of Water - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/21/climate/chennai-india-water-shortage-images.html

    Satellite photographs reveal the stark shrinking of one of the main rain-fed reservoirs that serves Chennai, one of the biggest cities in India.

    In one image, taken by satellite on June 15 last year, the city’s largest reservoir, Lake Puzhal, resembles a dark blue ink-stain amid a densely crowded cityscape.

    In another, taken on Sunday, exactly a year later, the lake is a small grey fraction of its former self.

    One of the city’s other important reservoirs, the smaller Chembarambakkam Lake, is also running dry.

    Chennai, a hot, muggy city on the Indian Ocean coast, should be in the throes of the monsoon by now. But the rains are late across India. And Chennai has received virtually none of the rain it should have seen by now.

    #climat #eau #Inde

  • Save the Date & Call for Papers for the 8th International Symposium on the History of Cartography: Mapping the Ottoman Realm International Cartographic Association

    https://icaci.org/cfp-8th-international-symposium-on-the-history-of-cartography

    Since its massive expansion under Sultans Selim I (1512-20) and Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-66), the Ottoman Empire extended from the Algerian shores to Georgia in the Caucasus and from Hungary in the heart of Europe to Yemen on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Albeit in a long decline thereafter, the core of this multi-cultural conglomerate survived into the early 20th century, before it finally disintegrated after World War I. Throughout these five centuries, the Ottomans deeply influenced these heterogeneous countries with at times closer or looser ties to the metropolis Constantinople, leaving a multi-faceted cartographic legacy behind.

    The symposium is open to everyone with an interest in the cartography of the (former) Ottoman countries during, but not limited to, the 16th to 20th centuries. The symposium will focus on two main themes:

    #cartographie #empire_ottoman #turquie

    cc @alaingresh

  • World Court Says U.K. Should Cede Rule of Indian Ocean Islands - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-25/world-court-says-u-k-should-cede-rule-of-indian-ocean-islands


    Diego Garcia, a British Indian Ocean Territory and the largest of the islands in the Chagos Archipelago.
    Photographer: USGS/NASA Landsat data/Orbital Horizon Gallo Images via Getty Images

    The International Court of Justice said the U.K. should hand back to Mauritius control of an Indian Ocean archipelago where a key U.S. naval base is located.

    The U.K.’s continued administration of the Chagos archipelago “is an unlawful act of a continuing character,” court President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said in The Hague. “Accordingly the U.K. is under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos archipelago as rapidly as possible,” Yusuf said.

    The United Nations in 2017 sought an advisory opinion from the ICJ, its principal judicial organ, on the legal status of the archipelago.

    Chagos is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, which has been administered by the U.K. since 1965, when it paid the then self-governing colony of Mauritius 3 million pounds ($3.9 million) for control of the islands. Between 1967 and 1973, hundreds of inhabitants were removed to make way for the Diego Garcia U.S. military base, which has been used to launch bomber jets for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth in August obtained the backing of the African Union and about 30 other countries in his bid to have control of the archipelago returned to Mauritius. The request to the ICJ excludes Diego Garcia, he said.

    • Je ne comprends pas cette dernière remarque du premier ministre mauricien :

      The request to the ICJ excludes Diego Garcia, he said.

      Le jugement de la CIJ est assez clair :
      https://www.icj-cij.org/files/case-related/169/169-20190225-01-00-FR.pdf
      Il ne mentionne nulle part #Diego_Garcia. J’imagine que P. Jugnauth veut dire qu’il ne remet pas en cause le statut de la base états-unienne, mise à disposition pour une durée de 50 ans par des accords de 1966 (tiens, c’est bientôt la fin, j’imagine que les perspectives de renégociation des accords n’est pas pour rien dans l’affaire…)

      183. Par ces motifs,
      LA COUR,
      1) A l’unanimité,
      Dit qu’elle est compétente pour répondre à la demande d’avis consultatif ;

      2) Par douze voix contre deux,
      Décide de donner suite à la demande d’avis consultatif ;

      3) Par treize voix contre une,
      Est d’avis que, au regard du droit international, le processus de décolonisation de Maurice n’a pas été validement mené à bien lorsque ce pays a accédé à l’indépendance en 1968 à la suite de la séparation de l’archipel des Chagos ;

      4) Par treize voix contre une,
      Est d’avis que le Royaume-Uni est tenu, dans les plus brefs délais, de mettre fin à son administration de l’archipel des Chagos ;

      5) Par treize voix contre une,
      Est d’avis que tous les Etats Membres sont tenus de coopérer avec l’Organisation des Nations Unies aux fins du parachèvement de la décolonisation de Maurice.

      La juge états-unienne Joan E. Donoghue a voté non à toutes les questions, sauf sur le point 1 sur la compétence, Peter Tomka, slovaque s’est opposé à l’émission de l’avis consultatif (point 2).

    • Mind your business, réponse diplomatique du Royaume-Uni à la Cour internationale de justice et à l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU, statuant sur la décolonisation.

      Dispute over Chagos Islands is a bilateral matter : UK junior foreign minister | Reuters
      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-mauritius-worldcourt-chagos-idUSKCN1QF1CX

      Britain will consider the view of the World Court on control of the Chagos Islands but the dispute is with Mauritius and should be resolved bilaterally, British foreign office minister Alan Duncan said on Tuesday.

      On Monday the International Court of Justice (ICJ) told Britain to give up control over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, and said it had wrongfully forced the population to leave in the 1970s to make way for a U.S. air base.

      The U.N. General Assembly asked the court to advise on whether the process of decolonization had been concluded lawfully.

      We will of course consider the detail of the opinion carefully but this is a bilateral dispute and for the General Assembly to seek an advisory opinion by the ICJ was therefore a misuse of powers which sets a dangerous precedent for other bilateral disputes,” Duncan told parliament.

      The defense facilities on the British Indian ocean territory help to keep people here in Britain and the world safe and we will continue to seek a bilateral solution to what is a bilateral dispute with Mauritius.

  • Iran starts Gulf war games, to test submarine-launched missiles | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-gulf-wargames-idUSKCN1QB0TN


    Frégate Sahand, WP

    Iran on Friday began large-scale naval drills at the mouth of the Gulf, which will feature its first submarine cruise missile launches, state media reported, at a time of rising tensions with the United States.

    More than 100 vessels were taking part in the three-day war games in a vast area stretching from the Strait of Hormuz to the Indian Ocean, the state news agency IRNA reported.

    The exercise will cover confronting a range of threats, testing weapons, and evaluating the readiness of equipment and personnel,” navy commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi, said in remarks carried by state television.

    Submarine missile launches will be carried out ... in addition to helicopter and drone launches from the deck of the _Sahand destroyer,” Khanzadi said.

    State media said Iran would be testing its new domestically built _Fateh (Conqueror) submarine which is armed with cruise missiles and was launched last week.

  • China Military Threat: Seeking New Islands to Conquer - James Stavridis - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-21/china-military-threat-seeking-new-islands-to-conquer

    The constant refrain was simple: The West is becoming a less reliable partner. These allies are dismayed by a U.S. administration that has repeatedly criticized its closest partners and accused them of freeloading on defense. They are also worried about weakness and distraction of a Europe facing Brexit. This is compounded as they watch China increase pressure on Taiwan to accept a “one nation, two systems” deal a la Hong Kong and militarize the #South_China_Sea by constructing artificial islands.
    […]
    There is also a less-noticed but extremely worrisome aspect to China’s increasing boldness: It seems to be building its naval capability to dominate farther into the Pacific — as far as what Western analysts call the “second island chain.

    When thinking in a geo-strategic sense about China, the island-chain formulation is helpful. Since the 1950s, U.S. planners have delineated a first island chain, running from the Japanese islands through the Philippines, and down to the tip of Southeast Asia. Dominating inside that line has been the goal of China’s recent buildup in naval and missile capabilities. But U.S. officials warn that Chinese strategists are becoming more ambitious, set on gaining influence running to the second island chain — running from Japan through the Micronesian islands to the tip of Indonesia. As with its initial forays into the South China Sea, Beijing is using “scientific” missions and hydrographic surveying ships as the tip of the spear.

    Japan and Singapore are essentially anchors at the north and south ends the island chains. They have been integrating their defense capabilities with the U.S. through training, exercises and arms purchases. They are exploring better relations with India as the Pacific and Indian Oceans are increasingly viewed as a single strategic entity. This is a crucial element in the U.S. strategy for the region. But there are changes coming.

    First, there are expectations that China will eye the third island chain, encompassing Hawaii and the Alaskan coast before dropping south down to New Zealand. This has long been regarded as the final line of strategic demarcation between the U.S. and China. Second, some analysts are beginning to talk about a fourth and even fifth island chain, both in the Indian Ocean, an increasingly crucial zone of competition between the U.S. and China.

    Two obvious Indian Ocean chains exist. The first would run from southern Pakistan (where China has created a deep-water port at Gwador) down past Diego Garcia, the lonely atoll controlled by the U.K. from which the U.S. runs enormous logistical movements into Central Asia. As a junior officer on a Navy cruiser in the 1980s, I visited Diego Garcia when it was essentially a fuel stop with a quaint palm-thatched bar. The base has expanded enormously, becoming critical to supporting U.S. and British combat efforts in the Horn of Africa and Middle East.

    The fifth and final island chain could be considered to run from the Horn of Africa – where the U.S. and China now maintain significant military bases – down to the coast of South Africa. Little wonder the U.S. military has renamed its former Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command.

    #Mer_de_Chine_méridionale

  • #Iran to send warships to the Atlantic, closer to U.S. waters | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-usa-navy-idUSKCN1OY0SX

    The Iranian navy will send warships to deploy in the Atlantic from March, a top commander said on Friday, as the Islamic Republic seeks to increase the operating range of its naval forces to the backyard of the United States, its arch foe.

    Iran sees the presence of U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf as a security concern and its navy has sought to counter that by showing the flag near American waters.

    A flotilla will leave for the Atlantic early in the Iranian new year, starting from March, Iran’s naval deputy commander said.

    The Atlantic Ocean is far and the operation of the Iranian naval flotilla might take five months,” Rear-Admiral Touraj Hassani was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.

    He said Sahand, a newly-built destroyer, would be one of the warships. Sahand has a flight deck for helicopters and Iran says it is equipped with anti-aircraft and anti-ship guns, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and has electronic warfare capabilities.

    Hassani said in December that Iran would soon send two to three vessels on a mission to #Venezuela.

    A senior Iranian military official said last month that the navy could sail in the Atlantic near U.S. waters since U.S. aircraft carriers were allowed to move around in international waters near Iran.

    Iran’s navy has extended its reach in recent years, launching vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden to protect Iranian ships from Somali pirates.

  • The Kaiser goes : the generals remain - Theodor Plivier
    https://libcom.org/history/kaiser-goes-generals-remain-theodor-plivier-1932

    Text entier en anglais : https://libcom.org/files/TheKaiserGoesTheGeneralsRemain.pdf https://libcom.org/files/TheKaiserGoesTheGeneralsRemain.mobi

    Du même auteur : Stalingrad (1945), Moskau (1952), Berlin (1954), une trilogie sur la guerre contre les nazis. Je n’ai pas encore trouvé de version en ligne.

    This is an amazing novel about the German Revolution, written by a participant. Republished here in PDF and Kindle formats.

    I’m republishing a novel about the German Revolution called The Kaiser Goes: the Generals Remain, written by a participant in the naval mutinies which kicked the whole thing off. But the novel doesn’t just concern rebellion in the armed forces, there’s all kinds of other exciting events covered too!

    I first became aware of the novel when I noticed some quotations from it in Working Class Politics in the German Revolution1, Ralf Hoffrogge’s wonderful book about the revolutionary shop stewards’ movement in Germany during and just after World War I.

    I set about finding a copy of The Kaiser goes..., read it, and immediately wanted to make it more widely available by scanning it. The results are here.

    Below I’ve gathered together all the most readily accessible information about the novel’s author, Theodor Plivier, that I can find. Hopefully, the sources referenced will provide a useful basis for anybody who wants to do further research.

    Dan Radnika

    October 2015

    THEODOR Otto Richard PLIVIER – Some biographical details

    Theodor Plivier (called Plievier after 1933) was born on 12 February 1892 in Berlin and died on 12 March 1955 in Tessin, Switzerland.

    Since his death Plivier/Plievier has been mostly known in his native Germany as a novelist, particularly for his trilogy of novels about the fighting on the Eastern Front in WWII, made up of the works Moscow, Stalingrad and Berlin.

    He was the son of an artisan file-maker (Feilenhauer in German) and spent his childhood in the Gesundbrunnen district in Berlin. There is still a plaque dedicated to him on the house where he was born at 29 Wiesenstraße. He was interested in literature from an early age. He began an apprenticeship at 17 with a plasterer and left his family home shortly after. For his apprenticeship he traveled across the German Empire, in Austria-Hungary and in the Netherlands. After briefly returning to his parents, he joined up as a sailor in the merchant navy. He first visited South America in 1910, and worked in the sodium nitrate (saltpetre) mines in 1913 in Chile. This period of his life seems to have provided much of the material for the novel The World’s Last Corner (see below).

    He returned to Germany, Hamburg, in 1914, when he was still only 22. He was arrested by the police for a brawl in a sailors’ pub, and was thus “recruited” into the imperial navy just as the First World War broke out. He spent his time in service on the auxiliary cruiser SMS Wolf, commanded by the famous Commander Karl August Nerger. It was he who led a victorious war of patriotic piracy in the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, seizing enemy ships and their cargo, taking their crews prisoner, and returning in glory to Kiel in February 1918. The activities of SMS Wolf are described in fictional form in the final chapter of Plivier’s The Kaiser’s Coolies (see below). The young Plivier didn’t set foot on land for 451 days, but while at sea he became converted to revolutionary ideas, like thousands of other German sailors. Nevertheless, he never joined a political party. In November 1918, he was in Wilhelmshaven and participated in the strikes, uprisings and revolts accompanying the fall of the German Empire, including the Kiel Mutiny. He also played a small role in the November Revolution in Berlin.

    He left the navy after the armistice (11 November 1918) and, with Karl Raichle and Gregor Gog (both sailor veterans of the Wilmhelmshaven revolt), founded the “Green Way Commune”, near Bad Urach. It was a sort of commune of revolutionaries, artists, poets, proto-hippies, and whoever turned up. Two early participants were the anarchist Erich Mühsam and Johannes Becher (see below), who was a member of the German Communist Party (KPD). At this time several communes were set up around Germany, with Urach being one of three vegetarian communes set up in the Swabia region2.

    It was the beginning of the anarchist-oriented “Edition of the 12” publishing house. Plivier was certainly influenced by the ideas of Bakunin, but also Nietzsche. Later he took on some kind of “individualist anarchism”, ensuring that he didn’t join any party or formal political organisation.

    In Berlin in 1920 he married the actress Maria Stoz3. He belonged to the circle of friends of Käthe Kollwitz4, the radical painter and sculptor, who painted his portrait. On Christmas Day 1920 he showed a delegation from the American IWW to the grave of Karl Liebknecht5. In the early ‘20s he seems to have associated with the anarcho-syndicalist union, the FAUD (Free Workers’ Union of Germany), and addressed its public meetings6.

    Plivier underwent a “personal crisis” and began to follow the example of the “back to nature” poet Gusto Gräser7, another regular resident of “Green Way” and a man seen as the leading figure in the subculture of poets and wandering mystics known (disparagingly at the time) as the “Inflation Saints” (Inflationsheilige)8. In the words of the historian Ulrich Linse, “When the revolutionaries were killed, were in prison or had given up, the hour of the wandering prophets came. As the outer revolution had fizzled out, they found its continuation in the consciousness-being-revolution, in a spiritual change”9. Plivier began wearing sandals and robes…10 According to the Mountain of Truth book (see footnote), in 1922, in Weimar, Plivier was preaching a neo-Tolstoyan gospel of peace and anarchism, much influenced by Gräser. That year he published Anarchy, advocating a “masterless order, built up out of the moral power of free individuals”. Supposedly, “he was a religious anarchist, frequently quoting from the Bible”11. This was not unusual amongst the Inflationsheilige.

    His son Peter and his daughter Thora died from malnutrition during the terrible times of crisis and hyper-inflation in 1923. A year later he began to find work as a journalist and translator. He then worked for some time in South America as a cattle trader and as secretary to the German consul in Pisagua, Chile. On his return to Germany he wrote Des Kaisers Kulis (“The Kaiser’s Coolies”) in 1929, which was published the following year. It was a story based on his days in the Imperial Navy, denouncing the imperialist war in no uncertain terms. At the front of the book is a dedication to two sailors who were executed for participation in a strike and demonstration by hundreds of sailors from the Prinzregent Luitpold12. Erwin Piscator put on a play of his novel at the Lessingtheater in Berlin, with the first showing on 30 August 1930. Der Kaiser ging, die Generälen blieben (“The Kaiser Goes: The Generals Remain”) was published in 1932. In both novels Plivier did an enormous amount of research, as well as drawing on his own memories of important historical events. In the original edition of Der Kaiser ging… there is a citations section at the end with fifty book titles and a list of newspapers and magazines consulted. This attention to historical fact was to become a hallmark of Plivier’s method as a novelist. The postscript to Der Kaiser ging… clearly states what he was trying to do:

    “I have cast this history in the form of a novel, because it is my belief that events which are brought about not by any exchange of diplomatic notes, but by the sudden collision of opposed forces, do not lend themselves to a purely scientific treatment. By that method one can merely assemble a selection of facts belonging to any particular period – only artistic re-fashioning can yield a living picture of the whole. As in my former book, The Kaiser’s Coolies, so I have tried here to preserve strict historic truth, and in so far as exact material was available I have used it as the basis of my work. All the events described, all the persons introduced, are drawn to the life and their words reproduced verbatim. Occasional statements which the sources preserve only in indirect speech are here given direct form. But in no instance has the sense been altered.”

    His second marriage (which didn’t produce any children) was to the Jewish actress Hildegard Piscator in 1931. When Hitler came to power as Chancellor in 1933, his books were banned and publically burnt. He changed his name to Plievier. That year he decided to emigrate, and at the end of a long journey which led him to Prague, Zurich, Paris and Oslo, he ended up in the Soviet Union.

    He was initially not subject to much censorship in Moscow and published accounts of his adventures and political commentaries. When Operation Barbarossa was launched he was evacuated to Tashkent along with other foreigners. Here, for example, he met up (again?) with Johannes Robert Becher, the future Culture Minister of the DDR! In September 1943 he became a member of the National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD), which gathered anti-Nazi German exiles living in the USSR – not just Communist Party members, although there were a fair number of them involved. In 1945 he wrote Stalingrad, based on testimonies which he collected, with official permission, from German prisoners of war in camps around Moscow. This novel was initially published in occupied Berlin and Mexico, but ended up being translated into 14 languages and being adapted for the theatre and TV13. It describes in unflinching and pitiless detail the German military defeat and its roots in the megalomania of Hitler and the incompetence of the High Command. It is the only novel by Plievier that was written specifically as a work of state propaganda. It is certainly “defeatist”, but only on the German side – it is certainly not “revolutionary defeatist” like Plievier’s writings about WWI. The French writer Pierre Vaydat (in the French-language magazine of German culture, Germanica14) even suggests that it was clearly aimed at “the new military class which was the officer corps of the Wehrmacht” in an effort to encourage them to rise up against Hitler and save the honour of the German military. The novel nevertheless only appeared in a censored form in the USSR.

    He returned to Weimar at the end of 1945, as an official of the Red Army! For two years he worked as a delegate of the regional assembly, as director of publications and had a leading position in the “Cultural Association [Kulturbund] for German Democratic Renewal” which was a Soviet organisation devoted to changing attitudes in Germany and preparing its inclusion into the USSR’s economic and political empire. As with so much else in Plievier’s life, this episode was partly fictionalised in a novel, in this case his last ever novel, Berlin.

    Plievier ended up breaking with the Soviet system in 1948, and made an announcement to this effect to a gathering of German writers in Frankfurt in May of that year15. However, Plievier had taken a long and tortuous political path since his days as a revolutionary sailor in 1918… He clearly ended up supporting the Cold War – seeing the struggle against “Communist” totalitarianism as a continuation of the struggle against fascism (logically enough). What’s more, his views had taken on a somewhat religious tinge, talking of a “spiritual rebirth” whose foundations “begin with the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai and end with the theses of the Atlantic Charter”! Although it can be read as a denunciation of the horrors of war in general, it’s clear that Berlin, his description of the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945, is far more of a denunciation of Soviet Russia than anything else. The character Colonel Zecke, obviously a mouthpiece for Plievier’s views, even claims that Churchill and Roosevelt only bombed Dresden because they wanted to please Stalin. If you say so, Theo…! One virtue of Plievier’s single-minded attack on the Russian side is that he draws attention to the mass rape of German women by Russian soldiers. This was a war crime which it was not at all fashionable to mention at the time he was writing, despite the existence of perhaps as many as two million victims16.

    Berlin ends with one of the recurring characters in Plievier’s war novels being killed while participating in the East German worker’s revolt in 195317. Despite his conservative turn, Plievier obviously still has some of the spirit of Wilhelmshaven and can’t restrain himself from giving the rebellious workers some advice about how to organise a proletarian insurrection – seize the means of production! Another character says:

    “What use was it raising one’s fists against tanks, fighting with the Vopos [Volkspolizei – People’s Police], trampling down propaganda posters – one has to get into the vital works, to get busy at the waterworks, the power stations, the metropolitan railway! But the workers are without organisation, without leadership or a plan –the revolt has broken out like a steppes fire and is flickering away uncoordinated, in all directions at once.”

    He went to live in the British Zone of Occupation. He got married for a third time, in 1950, to Margarete Grote, and went to live next to Lake Constance. He published Moscow (Moskau) in 1952 and Berlin in 1954. He moved to Tessin in Switzerland in 1953, and died from a heart attack there in 1955, at the age of 63.

    His works – particularly the pro-revolutionary ones – are almost unknown in the English-speaking world (or anywhere else) today. The republication of The Kaiser Goes: The Generals Remain in electronic form is a modest attempt to remedy this!

    Finally, please read Plivier’s novels! Even the reactionary ones…

    #Allemagne #histoire #révolution #littérature

  • Macron at Sea Shows U.S.-France Ties Run Deeper Than Trump Spat - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/macron-at-sea-shows-u-s-france-ties-run-deeper-than-trump-spat

    France’s Emmanuel Macron is heading to sea on his biggest warship a day after he suffered a tirade of abuse from Donald Trump. The trip, planned for weeks, will show France’s alliance with the U.S. goes beyond any temporary disagreement between the presidents.

    France’s sole aircraft carrier, the Charles-de-Gaulle, the world’s most powerful vessel outside the U.S. navy, puts to sea Wednesday and will sail to the Indian Ocean early next year. It is starting a joint mission with the U.S. and an American frigate will escort it on the voyage, according the Elysee presidential palace.
    […]
    The French aircraft carrier will be part of what Macron has called an “Indo-Pacific Axis” — a strategy to expand France’s participation with a group of nations that includes Japan, Australia, India and the U.S.

    The countries, which are linked by military partnerships, are working to contain China’s maritime claims, keep shipping lines open and secure for trade in a region from Somalia to the Midway Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

  • Venezuela : arrivée à La Guaira du navire hôpital chinois Hé Píng Fāng Zhōu (ou Arche de la Paix)

    Buque Chino llegó a Venezuela para «iniciar operación estratégica»
    http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/politica/buque-chino-llego-venezuela-para-iniciar-operacion-estrategica_252868


    Foto: @ArmadaFANB

    Este sábado arribó al Puerto de La Guaira, estado Vargas, el Buque Hospital chino «Arca de la Paz».

    Bienvenidos. Sigamos estrechando nuestros lazos de amistad y cooperación, para la paz”, escribió Vladimir Padrino López, ministro de Defensa, en su Twitter.

    El ministro detalló que el “Arca de la Paz” atenderá a personas de todas las nacionalidades, incluyendo a 1.200 colombianos.

    La visita de este buque hospital también se inscribe en una operación defensiva estratégica. Va a ser muy satisfactorio tener este buque en Venezuela”, precisó.

    El Ministerio de Comunicación e Información detalló que el buque tiene 500 camas, 35 unidades de ciudados intensivos y 12 quirófanos.

    «Sus equipos permiten atender problemas cardiovasculares, ginecología, odontología, oftalmología, pediatría y medicina interna, entre otros», informó el Ministerio en su página web.

    • Pour l’opposition, ce sont les conseils communaux qui désigneraient (" choisiraient ") les patients à traiter à bord du navire chinois.

      Le ministre de la Défense répond qu’il va (même !…) soigner 1200 Colombiens…
      Rocío San Miguel : Consejos comunales « escogerán » pacientes del buque chino
      http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/politica/rocio-san-miguel-consejos-comunales-escogeran-pacientes-del-buque-chino

      Rocío San Miguel, abogada y defensora de Derechos Humanos, denunció este sábado que los consejos comunales «escogerán» a los pacientes que recibirán atención médica por parte del buque hospital chino «Arca de la Paz».

    • Durée du séjour non précisé dans l’article. Lors de son escale à Papeete fin août, il était précisé qu’il repasserait à Tahiti le 22 décembre.

      Le He Ping Fang Zhou a accosté au port de Papeete | La Dépêche de TAHITI
      http://www.ladepeche.pf/he-ping-fang-zhou-a-accoste-port-de-papeete


      Photo : Yan Roy

      Le navire hôpital chinois, He Ping Fang Zhou, était attendu mardi dans la rade de Papeete. Il a finalement accosté ce vendredi matin dans le port de Papeete, après avoir passé près de trois jours au large de Tahiti, pour des raisons administratives. Cependant, le bâtiment militaire ne va pas s’attarder dans nos eaux. Il repartira dès 20 heures ce vendredi soir, après avoir refait le plein en carburant. À noter qu’un retour du navire est prévu le 22 décembre prochain, selon le calendrier des arrivées du Port autonome de Papeete.

      Pour rappel, cette « arche de la paix » a déjà pris en charge 90 000 patients, et intervient principalement dans les zones de guerre, peu équipées ou nécessitant une aide humanitaire. Le navire comprend à son bord une pharmacie, une salle de radiothérapie, un scanner, huit salles d’opération, un laboratoire d’analyses, une salle d’examens, une zone de stérilisation des instruments, des services gynécologiques, stomatologie, ophtalmologie, pédiatrie, médecine interne,…

    • Double nom, double lecture évidente : #soft_power ou #bâtiment_de_soutien_d'assaut_amphibie.

      Mystery Chinese Hospital Ship : What’s It For ? | WIRED
      (article de novembre 2008)
      https://www.wired.com/2008/11/mystery-chinese

      Late last month, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) accepted its first purpose-built floating hospital, the 10,000-ton “Ship 866.” While seemingly innocuous on the surface, ships like this are windows into an evolving military strategy for an emerging world power. Hospital ships can be used for a wide range of missions, from supporting full-scale amphibious assaults against heavily defended targets, to humanitarian “soft-power” expeditions winning hearts and minds.

      The question is: what is Ship 866 intended for? I asked two leading naval analysts for a new piece in World Politics Review.

      • It’s for #soft_power, contends Bob Work, from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He says Ship 866 has its roots in the 2004 tsunami. Many world powers sent ships to help out in the aftermath of the storm, which killed more than 200,000 people in countries bordering the Indian Ocean. But not China: the PLAN didn’t have any ships capable of assisting. “The tsunami embarrassed them,” he says. “The Chinese respond to embarrassments in very focused ways.” In this case by building a hospital ship.

      • John Pike from Globalsecurity.org disagrees. He says Ship 866 is probably intended to support the growing Chinese amphibious fleet, which in turn is meant for enforcing China’s claim to South China Sea oil reserves. It’s a far cry from humanitarian soft-power missions.

      Of course, intentions are only intentions. Regardless of the original motive, the PLAN now has a ship capable of both humanitarian missions and supporting amphibious assaults. The Chinese are still decades from matching the U.S. Navy’s huge amphibious and humanitarian fleet, but it’s a start.

      Pour mémoire, la marine états-unienne dispose de 2 navires-hôpitaux (3 fois plus gros)
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Mercy_(T-AH-19)

      La France ne peut se payer ce luxe et utilise ses navires de soutien amphibie (à coque grise donc) pour ces missions humanitaires, les 3 BPC de la classe Mistral qui ont succédé aux 2 TCD de la classe Foudre.

      cf. Irma en septembre 2017
      Ouragan Irma : première mission humanitaire | colsbleus.fr : le magazine de la Marine Nationale
      http://www.colsbleus.fr/articles/10267

      A la fois bâtiment amphibie, porte-hélicoptères, bâtiment de commandement et navire hôpital, le bâtiment de projection et de commandement (BPC) présente une polyvalence exceptionnelle dont le déploiement du Tonnerre aux Antilles a montré une nouvelle fois. Mis en alerte le 8 septembre, après le passage de l’ouragan Irma, le Tonnerre a appareillé, avec un préavis très court, dès le 12 septembre, pour apporter son soutien aux populations de l’île sinistrée de Saint-Martin. Retour sur cette mission.

      Le module de rétablissement sommaire sur la plage à Saint-Martin

    • Tiens, d’ailleurs, après l’ouragan Maria à Porto-Rico en septembre-octobre 2017…

      Navy Hospital Ship USNS Comfort Will Deploy to Colombia to Care for Venezuelan Refugees - USNI News
      (article du 20/08/2018)
      https://news.usni.org/2018/08/20/35918


      The Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) arrives in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Oct. 3, 2017. Comfort will help support Hurricane Maria aid and relief operations.
      US Air Force photo.

      The Navy’s hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) is being deployed to Colombia this fall to provide medical care to a growing regional humanitarian crisis, as Venezuelans steadily pour over the border to escape a deteriorating health and political climate.

      While visiting Colombia late last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced he was sending Comfort at the request of Colombia’s government. The hospital ship will assist the Colombian medical services network in providing medical care to what has been reported as an influx of more than 1 million Venezuelans into neighboring Colombia.

      The plan is for that hospital ship, USNS Comfort, to deploy this fall,” Col. Robert Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, said during a Monday media briefing. “The details are being worked out as far as a detailed timeline.

      A departure date has not been set, and medical staffing needs aboard the ship are still being determined, Manning said.

  • Paradise Leased: The Theft of the #Maldives

    Maldives tourism isn’t all swaying palm trees and white sand beaches. The truth is something far uglier.

    Thanks to a trove of leaked files, OCCRP reporters have uncovered the details of an audacious multi-million dollar scheme that saw dozens of Maldivian islands leased out to developers in no-bid deals — and the money then stolen. While local tycoons and international investors cashed in, the people of this island paradise in the Indian Ocean saw precious little.

    For the first time, reporters have tracked the deals, finding what was handed out, to whom, and for how much.

    The revelations also include fresh evidence that implicates the Maldives’ authoritarian president, Abdulla Yameen, in the scandal.


    https://www.occrp.org/en/paradiseleased
    #corruption #deals #business #investissements #tourisme #Maldives_Marketing_and_Public_Relations_Corporation (#MMPRC)

    Carte interactive:


    https://www.occrp.org/en/paradiseleased/interactivemap
    #cartographie

    via @albertocampiphoto

  • Russia detects missile launches from French frigate off Syria’s coast in Mediterranean — RT World News
    https://www.rt.com/news/438676-french-frigate-mediterranean-missiles


    © French Navy

    Russian airspace control systems registered missile launches from a French frigate in the Mediterranean on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
    The French Navy’s newest frigate, FS Auvergne, fired rockets at around 8pm GMT on Monday, the Russian military said. “Airspace control has recorded rocket launches from the French frigate ’Auvergne,’” the ministry’s statement read. The ’Auvergne’ is deployed in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Syria.

    Paris denied “any involvement in [the] attack,” a French army spokesman said, as cited by AFP.

    It is a ’European multi-purpose frigate’ (FREMM) which entered the service of the French Navy in February this year. Prior to its official commissioning, the Aquitaine-class warship underwent deployment across the globe, including the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

    The launch was detected at around the same time that air traffic controllers at Khmeimim Airbase “lost contact” with a military Il-20 aircraft during an attack by Israeli F-16 fighters on Latakia. Some 14 people were on board the plane at the time of the disappearance. A search and rescue mission is underway.

    The IDF has refused to comment on the report. Despite the fact that Israel rarely acknowledges striking specific targets inside Syria, earlier this month the IDF admitted hitting at least 202 “Iranian targets” in the country.

    As tensions over Idlib rise, Turkey and Russia on Monday agreed to establish a “demilitarized zone” between militants and government troops as part of an effort to clear the remaining jihadists from Syria.

  • Seychelles meetings probed by Mueller included several Russians : exclusive | NJ.com
    https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/seychelles_meetings_probed_in_mueller_investigatio.html

    Several Russians, some linked to the Kremlin, participated in meetings in the Seychelles in January 2017 and are subjects of an ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to the island’s aircraft data and sources with knowledge of the meetings.

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller is examining a series of meetings that took place in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, as part of a broader investigation into Russian meddling. The inquiry into the meetings suggests there is growing interest by the Mueller team into whether foreign financing, specifically from Gulf states, has influenced President Donald Trump and his administration.

    Much speculation has centered on one particular meeting between Erik Prince, founder of the security company Blackwater; Kirill Dmitriev, the director of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds; and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the effective ruler of the United Arab Emirates, also known as “MBZ.”

    La presse arabe (http://www.alquds.co.uk/?p=976231) s’intéresse bien entendu à la présence de MBZ....

  • Why Ancient Mapmakers Were Terrified of Blank Spaces

    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/maps-history-horror-vacui-art-cartography-blank-spaces

    The Indian Ocean is teeming with sea monsters in Caspar Vopel’s 1558 map of the world. A giant swordfish-like creature looks to be on a collision course with a ship, while a walrus with frighteningly large tusks emerges from the water, and a king carrying a flag rides the waves on a hog-faced beast.

    Vopel, a German cartographer, left behind no explanation of why he added these things to his map, but he may have been motivated by what art historians call horror vacui, the artist’s fear of leaving unadorned spaces on their work. Chet Van Duzer, a historian of cartography, has found dozens of maps on which cartographers appear to have filled the empty spaces on their maps with non-existent mountains, monsters, cities, and other gratuitous illustrations.

    #cartographie #géographie_du_plein #cartographie_du_vide #mondes_inconnus #représentation #symboles #sémiologie

  • Indonesia, India to develop strategic Indian Ocean port | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/indonesia-india/indonesia-india-to-develop-strategic-indian-ocean-port-idUSL3N1T11XL

    Indonesia and India pledged on Wednesday to step up defence and maritime cooperation, with plans to develop a strategic Indonesian naval port in the Indian Ocean, the leaders of the two countries said after meeting in Jakarta.

    Indonesian President Joko Widodo met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss, among other issues, developing infrastructure and an economic zone at #Sabang, on the tip of Sumatra island and at the mouth of the #Malacca_Strait, one of the busiest shipping channels for global trade.

    “India is a strategic defence partner...and we will continue to advance our cooperation in developing infrastructure, including at #Sabang_Island and the #Andaman Islands,” Widodo told a news conference after the meeting at the presidential palace.

    #détroit_de_Malacca

  • On China’s New Silk Road, Democracy Pays A Toll – Foreign Policy
    http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/16/on-chinas-new-silk-road-democracy-pays-a-toll

    To understand how the #Belt_and_Road Initiative can threaten human rights and good governance, consider first how its projects are financed.To understand how the Belt and Road Initiative can threaten human rights and good governance, consider first how its projects are financed. Thus far, China has largely favored loans over grants. It is not a member of the Paris Club of major creditor nations, and it has shown little inclination to adhere to internationally recognized norms of debt sustainability, such as the sovereign lending principles issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. At the same time, many of the recipient countries participating in the project lack the capability to assess the long-term financial consequences of China’s loans — or they may simply accept them, assuming the bills will come due on a future government’s watch.

    Ballooning, unsustainable debt is the predictable result. Sri Lanka, where in 2017 some 95 percent of government revenue went to debt repayment, represents the best-known example of Belt and Road’s negative impact on a country’s balance sheet. But Sri Lanka is only the most prominent case; a recent study by the Center for Global Development identified eight countries — Djibouti, the Maldives, Laos, Montenegro, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan — that are at particular risk of debt distress due to future Belt and Road-related financing.
    […]
    China’s planned development of a “#new_digital_Silk_Road ” has received comparatively less attention than other elements of the initiative but is equally troubling. China’s digital blueprint seeks to promote information technology connectivity across the Indian Ocean rim and Eurasia through new fiber optic lines, undersea cables, cloud computing capacity, and even artificial intelligence research centers. If realized, this ambitious vision will serve to export elements of Beijing’s surveillance regime. Indeed, Chinese technology companies already have a track record of aiding repressive governments. In Ethiopia, likely prior to the advent of Belt and Road, the Washington Post reports that China’s ZTE Corporation “sold technology and provided training to monitor mobile phones and Internet activity.” Today, Chinese tech giant Huawei is partnering with the government of Kenya to construct “safe cities” that leverage thousands of surveillance cameras feeding data into a public security cloud “to keep an eye on what is going on generally” according to the company’s promotional materials. Not all elements of China’s domestic surveillance regime are exportable, but as the “New Digital Silk Road” takes shape, the public and online spaces of countries along it will become less free.
    […]
    States financially beholden to China will become less willing to call out Beijing’s domestic human rights abuses, for instance, and less eager to object to its foreign-policy practices. This dynamic is already playing out within the European Union. In mid-2017, for the first time, the EU failed to issue a joint condemnation of China at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Greece, which had recently received a massive influx of Chinese investment into its Port of Piraeus, scuttled the EU statement.

    #OBOR

  • ANALYSIS-Data-bait: using tech to hook globe’s multi-billion-dollar fishing cheats
    https://af.reuters.com/article/africaTech/idAFL8N1Q94J5

    In 2016, a Thai-flagged fishing vessel was detained in Seychelles on suspicion that it had been fishing illegally in the Indian Ocean, one of the world’s richest fishing grounds.

    The Jin Shyang Yih 668 was caught with help from technology deployed by FISH-i Africa, a grouping of eight east African countries including Tanzania, Mozambique and Kenya.

    But as the vessel headed to Thailand, which pledged to investigate and prosecute the case, it turned off its tracking equipment and disappeared. Its whereabouts remain unknown.

    Such activity is rampant in the global fishing industry, experts say, where illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is estimated to cost $23.5 billion a year.

    However, a range of non-profit and for-profit organisations that are developing technology solutions to tackle IUU say it is a matter of time before vessels can no longer vanish.

    The industry is developing very fast ... basically the oceans will be fully traceable. There is no place to hide,” said Roberto Mielgo Bregazzi, the co-founder of Madrid-based FishSpektrum, one of the few for-profit platforms.

    With backing from Google, Microsoft’s Paul Allen and Leonardo DiCaprio, among others, such platforms also track fishing on the high seas and in marine reserves, aided by radio and satellite data that send vessels’ locations and movements.

    They use satellite imagery, drones, algorithms and the ability to process vast amounts of data, as well as old-fashioned sleuthing and analysis, to help countries control their waters.

    Algorithms could identify illegal behaviour, Mielgo Bregazzi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, including predicting when a fishing vessel was about to meet its quota, triggering an alarm.

    Bradley Soule, the chief fisheries analyst at OceanMind, a non-profit, said technology can help even rich countries, which might otherwise struggle to process the volume of data broadcast by hundreds of thousands of vessels.

    Organisations such as his crunch that data and help to differentiate between normal and suspicious activity.

    The bulk of the threat is non-compliance by mainly legal operators who skirt the rules when they think no one’s looking,” said Soule, who helps Costa Rica monitor its waters.
    […]
    Dirk Zeller, who heads the Sea Around Us - Indian Ocean project at the University of Western Australia, said as the ocean’s bounty is a public resource, the world should know who is taking what.

    Part of the problem, he said, is overcapacity in the global fishing fleet.

    But he also points to difficulties in calculating IUU’s scale: the FAO’s estimates of fish stocks, for instance, are based on official government data, which are open to under- and over-reporting.

    His research shows global catches from 1950 to 2010 were 50 percent higher than countries had said.
    […]
    The FAO’s senior fishery officer, Matthew Camilleri, agrees technology is no silver bullet.

    “What use is it if you’re able to detect IUU fishing and find the vessel with illegal fish on board, but you do not have the process in place to enforce, to prosecute?” he said.

    Progress is underway towards that in the form of the FAO’s 2009 Port State Measures Agreement, which is aimed at curbing IUU fishing. Close to half of the 194 U.N. member states have signed it, including four of the top five fishing nations - Indonesia, the United States, Russia and Japan.

    China, though, has not. It is the world’s largest fishing nation, whose 2014 catch of 14.8 million tons, the FAO’s 2016 State of the World’s Fisheries report showed, was as much as the next three nations combined.

    When asked whether it was likely to sign, China’s mission to the FAO in Rome told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it was not authorized to comment.

    Tony Long from GFW - which runs a free-to-access platform that uses Automatic Identification System (AIS) data to track the global movement of vessels - said combining technology with cooperation between countries could close the loopholes.

  • Exclusive: U.S. sorghum armada U-turns at sea after China tariffs
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-sorghum-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-sorghum-armada-u-turns-at-sea-after-china-tariffs-idUSKBN1HR0

    Sorghum is a niche animal feed and a tiny slice of the billions of dollars in exports at stake in the trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies, which threatens to disrupt the flow of everything from steel to electronics.

    The supply-chain pain felt by sorghum suppliers on the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans underscores how quickly the mounting trade tensions between the U.S. and China can impact the global agricultural sector, which has been reeling from low commodity prices amid a global grains glut.

    Twenty ships carrying over 1.2 million tonnes of U.S. sorghum are on the water, according to export inspections data from the USDA’s Federal Grain Inspection Service. Of the armada, valued at more than $216 million, at least five changed course within hours of China’s announcing tariffs on U.S. sorghum imports on Tuesday, Reuters shipping data showed.

    #sorgo #guerre_commerciale

    • China-bound U.S. sorghum diverted to Saudi Arabia, Japan | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters
      https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL3N1S126K

      Four U.S. sorghum shipments initially bound for China have been diverted to other countries after Beijing’s move last week to impose hefty anti-dumping deposits on imports of the grain from the United States, according to trade sources and Reuters shipping data.

      Three of the cargoes are now sailing for Saudi Arabia after being sold to a private buyer, a U.S. trader and a Middle East-based trading source with knowledge of the matter said Tuesday. A fourth ship is heading to Japan, according to Reuters shipping data.
      […]
      Saudi Arabia is not a big sorghum importer, but it is the world’s 10th-largest buyer of corn. Some of the sorghum is expected to replace corn in animal feed rations.

      Japan is the second-largest market for U.S. sorghum, well behind top importer China which normally buys about 90 percent of all sorghum exported from the United States.

  • How a Remote Iranian Port Could Heighten China-India Tensions - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-10/india-s-grip-on-strategic-port-loosens-as-iran-turns-to-china

    The shift makes sense for #Iran, which wants to ensure #Chabahar is an economic success. But it could be a strategic loss for #India, which opposes #China’s expansion in the Indian Ocean and is already worried that Gwadar could one day be used as a military base — along with other China-backed ports from #Myanmar to #Bangladesh to #Sri_Lanka.

  • #MH370 four years on: until the plane is found, theories run wild | World news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/23/mh370-four-years-on-the-main-theories-on-what-happened-to-the-plane

    In the vacuum of information, theories – some more likely than others – have sprung up. These are the four main contenders:

    Mass hypoxia event
    The official theory, adopted by both the Malaysian government and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, is that the passengers and crew of MH370 were incapacitated by an unknown “unresponsive crew/ hypoxia event”. Hypoxia is a deficiency of oxygen.
    […]
    Fire or accident
    In the immediate aftermath of the disappearance, former pilot Christopher Goodfellow speculated that an electrical fire broke out on board. He said this explained the first turn towards Malaysia as Shah was searching for an emergency landing strip. He believes the fire then incapacitated Shah and the cabin crew, leaving the plane to fly south on autopilot.

    Patrick Smith, another pilot, has cast doubt on the fire theory, saying it was unlikely MH370 could have continued for six hours on autopilot after a major fire. Officials believe Shah was unconcious, but have not offered any theories as to why or when this occurred.
    […]
    The rogue pilot
    Byron Bailey, a former RAAF trainer and captain with Emirates, believes the plane was under the control of its captain as part of a deliberate descent into the Indian Ocean.

    This would radically alter the current search operation – and potentially explain why the plane has not been found. Current and previous searches assumed the plane dived steeply and suddenly, with nobody at the helm, near the location of the seventh handshake.

    But if Shah was conscious, he could have manoeuvred the plane in a long, slow glide, travelling almost 200km further south. This also would have kept the plane more intact, with less debris.
    […]
    A northern landing
    Yet another theory says the plane is not near Australia at all, but rather to the north of Malaysia.

    This theory stems from the way satellite data is calculated. After MH370 turned back towards Malaysia, its last known military radar point showed it travelling slightly north-west towards India.

    Bonus…

    Photo evidence
    Other armchair investigators have claimed to have discovered photo evidence of debris that places MH370 in various other locations, but all have been discredited.

    On Monday, Peter McMahon, an Australian investigator, told the Daily Star he had discovered the plane on Google Maps near Mauritius and submitted photo evidence to the ATSB.

    But the ATSB pointed out his images were more than 10 years old and predated the plane’s disappearance.

    The images sent to ATSB by Mr McMahon were captured on 6 November 2009, more than four years before the flight disappeared,” a spokesperson for the ATSB said.

    • L’ancien premier ministre malaisien y rajoute sa propre hypothèse… Prise de contrôle à distance

      Possible that MH370 was taken over remotely, says #Mahathir, SE Asia News & Top Stories - The Straits Times
      http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/possible-that-mh370-was-taken-over-remotely-says-mahathir

      Missing flight MH370 might have been taken over remotely in a bid to foil a hijack, Malaysia’s former leader Mahathir Mohamad said, reviving one of the many conspiracy theories surrounding its disappearance.
      […]
      Tun Dr Mahathir, 92, who is leading an opposition bid to topple Prime Minister Najib Razak in elections due this year, said he did not believe Kuala Lumpur was involved in any cover-up.

      But he told The Australian newspaper in an interview that it was possible the plane might have been taken over remotely.

      It was reported in 2006 that Boeing was given a licence to operate the takeover of a hijacked plane while it is flying so I wonder whether that’s what happened,” said Dr Mahathir.

      The capacity to do that is there. The technology is there,” he added of his theory.

      Reports say Boeing in 2006 was awarded a US patent for a system that, once activated, could take control of a commercial aircraft away from the pilot or flight crew in the event of a hijacking.

      There is no evidence it has ever been used in airliners due to safety concerns.

  • Sands of time: world’s oldest message in a bottle found on Australian beach
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-bottle/sands-of-time-worlds-oldest-message-in-a-bottle-found-on-australian-beach-i

    The oldest known message in a bottle was found on an Australian beach 132 years after being thrown from a German ship in the Indian Ocean as part of an experiment to track currents, experts said.

    The Dutch gin bottle, with no cork or top, was spotted by Tonya Illman in January in remote sand dunes 180 km (112 miles)north of Perth, the capital of Western Australia state.

    Inside, her family discovered a note tightly rolled up and tied with string, carrying the date June 12, 1886, and the name of the ship, Paula.

    “We took it home and dried it out, and when we opened it, we saw it was a printed form, in German, with very faint German handwriting,” Illman said.

    Her husband searched online to find that, in an experiment run from 1864 to 1933 by the Deutsche Seewarte, or German Naval Observatory, ship captains would throw bottles overboard, each with a message giving the date, the ship’s name, its location coordinates, home port and destination.

  • 30 Days Timelapse at Sea | 4K | Through Thunderstorms, Torrential Rain & Busy Traffic - YouTube
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHrCI9eSJGQ

    Un timelapse de 30 jours sur un porte-conteneur…

    30 Days of Timelapse, about 80,000 photos combined. 1500GB of Project files. Sailing in the open ocean is a unique feeling and experience. I hope to capture and share it for everyone to see.

    Route was from Red Sea — Gulf of Aden — Indian Ocean — Colombo — Malacca Strait — Singapore — South East China Sea — Hong Kong

    #timelapse #beau ! (nuit, ciel, tempêtes)
    #mondialisation #porte-conteneurs

  • How much trade transits the South China Sea? | ChinaPower Project

    https://chinapower.csis.org/much-trade-transits-south-china-sea

    The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that roughly 80 percent of global trade by volume and 70 percent by value is transported by sea. Of that volume, 60 percent of maritime trade passes through Asia, with the South China Sea carrying an estimated one-third of global shipping.1 Its waters are particularly critical for China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, all of which rely on the Strait of Malacca, which connects the South China Sea and, by extension, the Pacific Ocean with the Indian Ocean. As the second-largest economy in the world with over 60 percent of its trade in value traveling by sea, China’s economic security is closely tied to the South China Sea.

    #chine #transport #transport_maritime #commerce_mondial

  • U.S. Firm Ocean Infinity Says it’s Hopeful of Getting #MH370 Search Contract Soon – gCaptain
    http://gcaptain.com/u-s-firm-ocean-infinity-says-its-hopeful-of-getting-mh370-search-contract-


    Ocean Infinity’s vessel Seabed Constructor serves as host for six AUVs to conduct its seabed survey. Photo: Swire Seabed/Ocean Infinity

    U.S.-based seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity on Wednesday said it was moving a vessel closer to a possible search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 as it soon expects to be awarded a contract by Malaysia to resume the search.

    The disappearance of the aircraft en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014 with 239 people aboard ranks among the world’s greatest aviation mysteries. Australia, China and Malaysia ended a fruitless A$200-million ($156.62 million) search in January last year.

    But in October, Malaysia said it was in talks with Ocean Infinity to resume the search on a “no-cure, no-fee” basis, meaning it will only get paid if it finds the plane.

  • Report on #MH370 finds ’initially similar’ route on pilot’s flight simulator
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-airlines-mh370/australian-searchers-say-fruitless-end-is-unacceptable-in-final-report-on-m

    The captain of the Malaysian Airlines aircraft that vanished somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean with 239 people on board had flown a route on his home flight simulator six weeks earlier that was “initially similar” to the one actually taken, Australian authorities said on Tuesday.

    The details were contained in a 440-page final report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) on the unsuccessful search for flight MH370.

    The disappearance of the Boeing 777 on March 8, 2014, on a flight to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

    The report concluded that the reasons for the loss of the aircraft could not be established with certainty until the aircraft was found.

    It is almost inconceivable and certainly societally unacceptable in the modern aviation era...for a large commercial aircraft to be missing and for the world not to know with certainty what became of the aircraft and those on board,” the ATSB said.

  • Study : Ship Emissions Make Thunderstorms More Intense – gCaptain
    http://gcaptain.com/study-ship-exhaust-makes-thunderstorms-more-intense

    A new study mapping lightning around the globe finds lightning strokes occur nearly twice as often directly above heavily-trafficked shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea than they do in areas of the ocean adjacent to shipping lanes that have similar climates.

    The difference in lightning activity can’t be explained by changes in the weather, according to the study’s authors, who conclude that aerosol particles emitted in ship exhaust are changing how storm clouds form over the ocean.

    The study published Sept. 7 in Geophysical Research Letters is the first to show ship exhaust can alter thunderstorm intensity. The researchers conclude that particles from ship exhaust make cloud droplets smaller, lifting them higher in the atmosphere. This creates more ice particles and leads to more lightning.

    The results provide some of the first evidence that humans are changing cloud formation on a nearly continual basis, rather than after a specific incident like a wildfire, according to the authors. Cloud formation can affect rainfall patterns and alter climate by changing how much sunlight clouds reflect to space.

    It’s one of the clearest examples of how humans are actually changing the intensity of storm processes on Earth through the emission of particulates from combustion,” said lead author Joel Thornton, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences.

    • L’article est en accès libre
      Lightning Enhancement Over Major Oceanic Shipping Lanes - Thornton - 2017 - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library
      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074982/abstract

      Abstract
      Using twelve years of high resolution global lightning stroke data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN), we show that lightning density is enhanced by up to a factor of two directly over shipping lanes in the northeastern Indian Ocean and the South China Sea as compared to adjacent areas with similar climatological characteristics. The lightning enhancement is most prominent during the convectively active season, November-April for the Indian Ocean and April-December in the South China Sea, and has been detectable from at least 2005 to the present. We hypothesize that emissions of aerosol particles and precursors by maritime vessel traffic lead to a microphysical enhancement of convection and storm electrification in the region of the shipping lanes. These persistent localized anthropogenic perturbations to otherwise clean regions are a unique opportunity to more thoroughly understand the sensitivity of maritime deep convection and lightning to aerosol particles.

      Plain Language Summary
      Lightning results from strong storms lifting cloud drops up to high altitudes where freezing occurs and collisions between drops, graupel, and ice crystals lead to electrification. Thus, lightning is an indicator of storm intensity and sensitive to the microphysics of cloud drop formation, interactions, and freezing. We find that lightning is nearly twice as frequent directly over two of the world’s busiest shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The lightning enhancement maximizes along the same angular paths ships take along these routes and cannot be explained by meteorological factors, such as winds or the temperature structure of the atmosphere. We conclude that the lightning enhancement stems from aerosol particles emitted in the engine exhaust of ships traveling along these routes. These particles act as the nuclei on which cloud drops form, and can change the vertical development of storms, allowing more cloud water to be transported to high altitudes, where electrification of the storm occurs to produce lightning. These shipping lanes are thus an ongoing experiment on how human activities that lead to airborne particulate matter pollution can perturb storm intensity and lightning.