Pan African Central Core: The Scion of Culture & History’s Post

Intensive intelligence activity on the Lebanese-Israeli coastline

Revisiting the Estonia Disaster of September 1994.  (written by Walter James Blumberg) There was a time during the cold war when Sweden, along with Finland, wanted to have the appearance of neutrality and so they avoided association with NATO so as not to offend their geographical neighbor, the Soviet Union.  I am happy today that my many friends in Sweden no longer feel that need and so I congratulate Sweden on their formal membership as a NATO partner.  I appreciate their desire to attempt to remain neutral even after the former Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia ran to join NATO as soon as the Berlin wall came down and did not hesitate to obtain funding to buy the necessary armament to protect their boarders as independent Nation States.  Part of this involved the substantial purchase of military patrol boats made in Sweden by Dockstavarvet AB which my good friend Fredrik Falkman (whose profile can be accessed on my LinkedIn page) delivered in quantity to Tallinn, Estonia sometime around 1999-2000 if I remember correctly. Much business was being conducted along the Stockholm-Tallinn route by many companies, and this was and remains one of the main access points into the former Soviet Union. The unfortunate sinking of the MS Estonia on the evening of September 27- 28, 1994 killed 852 people and is one of the worst maritime disasters in European history second only to the Titanic. It was originally believed this was an accident caused by the failure of the locks on the bow loading ramp when in the closed position as the ship was enroute to Stockholm; but a Documentary team diving on the site in 1997 discovered a 13-foot hole in the ship's hull.  Sabotage was a consideration from the very beginning due to the importance of this route in facilitating the independence of the Baltic States from Russia, but there was no objective evidence of sabotage until this hole was discovered. This has reopened the investigation on a multinational level by the numerous countries that used this and other ferries to communicate and do business on this route. Below is a YouTube link to a concise 8-minute summation that seems to have been posted 3 years ago and explains a number of mitigating circumstances that may have contributed to the magnitude of this disaster including the rapidity at which the ship sank creating a lack of time for the crew to respond, the EPIRB's onboard needing manual activation which was not accomplished making location of the sinking vessel and rescue difficult, in addition to other factors such as the newly discovered 13 foot hole. https://lnkd.in/eVQzf4-D

#notablepaper #Water as a Problem and a Solution in #Arid #Landscapes: #Resilient Practices and Adapted #Land Use in the Eastern Marmarica (NW-Egypt) between the 2nd Millennium BCE and the 1st Millennium CE ✍ by Anna-Katharina Rieger 👉https://lnkd.in/gaDZXyQG

4 regions (Oblasts), 16 hromadas, and dozens of villages visited in collaboration with #ShelterCluster partners, local authorities, and recipients of #cash and #inkind assistance helped in monitoring 2023-24 implementation of #solidfuel: Take a tour to review lessons learned and recommendations from this year's implementation: Esri ArcGIS Online Global Shelter Cluster #Ukraine

conducting Transhuman corridor mapping exercise in Somalia

Only 30 years ago, the Aral Sea was the planet’s fourth-largest inland water mass, covering an area of 26,000 square miles between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. It was an ancient sea so vast that even Alexander the Great wrote about his struggles to cross it. But today, the Aral Sea is a ghost of its former self, reduced to just 10% of its original size and split into two smaller bodies of water. The reason for this dramatic transformation is human intervention. In the 1960s, the Soviet government diverted water from the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea to irrigate cotton and rice fields in the region. As a result, the sea began to shrink rapidly, and by the 1980s, it had lost half of its volume. The consequences were devastating. The fishing industry that had sustained communities for centuries collapsed, and the once-thriving ports that lined the shore became stranded in a sea of sand. Today, the Aral Sea is known as the “Desert of Ghost Ships,” with rusting hulls and decaying infrastructure dotting the barren landscape. https://lnkd.in/d5X8DFY2

Who knew that the US/Canada border features not one but two glaring mapping mistakes that were never corrected. (the other giving 65% of Lake Superior to the US) This one is just odd; like a mini Alaska inside and surrounded by Manitoba accessible to the US only by water and the subject of repatriation. Anyone know of other historical mapping errors? https://lnkd.in/err_CmAp

Part 2 of the #FRUS volume covering foreign economic policy during the #Eisenhower transition and presidency covers additional topics such as the law of the sea and Antarctica. https://lnkd.in/esGcbTu8

Analysis of changes in the coastline of the western shore of the Caspian Sea within the framework of coastal cells https://lnkd.in/e8kqMfXt

Uncover the hidden world of Cold War espionage, filled with intrigue and danger. Explore covert operations, high-stakes missions, betrayal, and geopolitical tension. #ColdWarEspionage #CovertOperations #HighStakesMissions #SecretWorld #ColdWarHistory #Espionage #SpyMissions #Intrigue #Geopolitics #HistoricalEspionage #ColdWarSecrets #InternationalSpying #HiddenOperations #HistoricalIntrigue #HistoricalMysteries