Back in the summer of 2013, just around the peak of the first major escalation involving Syria and the US attempt to remove its president al-Assad, the Mediterranean briefly looked like a parking lot, with US and Russian ships on anchor just off the Syrian coast prepared for any eventuality.

Then, last year, around the time Russia announced it would deploy its air force to Syria for the first time, we predicted that sooner or later, the naval phase of the Syrian conflict would ratner and lead to a repeat of the events from the summer of 2013. So, one year later, precisely this sequence of events now appears to be in place: earlier today, Russia’s defence minister said Wednesday that Moscow was dispatching its flagship aircraft carrier to bolster its forces in the eastern Mediterranean off Syria.

The Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier would be sent to join Russia’s current…

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Photos are taken: Vienna

Lasse de vivre, ayant peur de mourir, pareille
Au brick perdu, jouet du flux et du reflux,
Mon âme pour d’affreux naufrages appareille.

From L’Angoisse (Anguish)

[translation in the book]
Weary of life, and yet afraid of death,
Like the lost brig, the toy of ebb and flow,
My soul prepares for shipwrecks terrible. 

I had started my collection in an amateurish way as a boy of fifteen, and in all these years, thanks to a great deal of experience, more money than when I first began and even greater passion, I turned a mere assortment of separate items into an organic structure, transforming it, I think is fair to say, into a genuine work of art in itself.

– Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday

Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), despite being somewhat forgotten today, was in his own time one of the most widely read authors in Europe. During his short career, which tragically ended in suicide in 1942 after he had escaped his native Austria and beloved Europe to exile in South America, he authored dozens of novels, short stories, biographies, plays, and one work of memoir, The World of Yesterday. 

Stefan Zweig. The Reed Library, State University of New York at Fredonia.  http://fredonia.libguides.com/archives/zweig

In