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Incunabula

16 Jan, 11 tweets, 4 min read

Remember when Rio Tinto, after blasting the 46 000 year-old sacred Aboriginal site in Juukan Gorge, promised that the company would "never again" destroy sites of "exceptional archaeological and cultural significance" during mining operations?
theguardian.com/environment/20…

"Thousands of feet beneath Oak Flat is a copper deposit estimated to be one of the largest in the world and worth more than $1bn. If the mine goes forward as planned, it will consume 11 square miles, including Apache burial grounds, sacred sites, petroglyphs & medicinal plants."

"For the project to proceed, Rio requires control of more than 10 sq km of national forest used by 11 tribes, where mining was previously prohibited. This would mark the first time the US government has given a sacred site to a foreign mining company."
ft.com/content/496324…

"The Forest Service’s environmental impact report outlined that the mine has a high risk of affecting sacred places. The mine will create a crater roughly two miles wide and one thousand feet deep. It will potentially destroy Oak Flat."
nit.com.au/rio-tinto-copp…

Don't focus on the Trump bashing elements of this. The Obama administration also moved the application forward in its last days in office. This is about the power & ruthless amorality of mining companies like Rio Tinto, and the endemic, bipartisan corruption of the US government.

"Rio Tinto lobbied Congress for a land exchange to circumvent the mining ban. That legislation failed 13 times until Sen John McCain - then the largest recipient of Rio Tinto campaign contributions - inserted a rider in a must-pass defense spending bill."
biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-r…

"Naelyn Pike, co-leader of the Apache Stronghold coalition, said "The proposal is like taking away a church. But the thing about Oak Flat is it’s worse, because you can rebuild a church. Oak Flat will be completely destroyed and it could never come back."
billmoyers.com/story/the-mine…

The San Carlos Apache tribe has been fighting the transfer of this federal land to Rio Tinto for two decades. Read this extract below, for an insight into the breathtaking corruption at the heart of the US government.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Flat_…

"McCain’s rider also subverted the National Environmental Protection Act, NEPA. As prof. Patrick Parenteau said, McCain designed a “bastardized version” of NEPA protocols to ensure that the mining operation could not fail as long as a review is produced."
newrepublic.com/article/160940…

Worth keeping in mind that the two partners in Resolution Copper are both Anglo-Australian mining companies, headquartered in Melbourne and London. The San Carlos Apache, whose interests he subverted, were McCain's actual constituents, whose interests he was elected to represent.

This land-swap will net Rio Tinto and Resolution Copper a windfall profit in excess of $100 billion. The San Carlos Apache Reservation's median annual household income is approximately $27 542, according to the US Census. 49 percent of the inhabitants live under the poverty line.

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More from @incunabula

Incunabula

@incunabula

18 Jan

On of the most impressive works of bibliography published in the last decade, these three massive volumes celebrate the work of Samuel Bogusław Chyliński(1631–1668), translator and publisher of the first translation of the Bible into Lithuanian. 1/6

Three copies of the printed version of Chyliński's Old Testament survived into the 20th century: They are known as the Stettin (Berlin), London and Vilnius copies respectively, after the places were they were discovered. 2/6

The Berlin copy was lost in World War II. The Vilnius copy was taken to St Petersburg & was destroyed by fire there. The only extant copy today is the one held by the British Museum in London (shelfmark C 51b.13). This is Vol I, a facsimile of the BL copy, published in 2008. 3/6

Read 7 tweets

Incunabula

@incunabula

14 Jan

A colossal hand-bound book, with no printing, no writing of any kind, no illustrations of any kind..... 908 pages of blank paper.

So why is Olafur Eliasson's "Your House" regarded as one of the most technically accomplished and influential artist's book of the 21st century? 1/9

Because of what's NOT there! It's the empty spaces cut out of the paper that make this book so remarkable. The subject is Eliasson’s house in Denmark, rendered in a vertical cross section through an elaborate laser die-cut process of each page. 2/9

The format of the book allows Eliasson the space to fully realize his idea on a scale of 85:1, so that each leaf corresponds to 2.2 centimeters of the actual house. 3/9

Read 11 tweets

Incunabula

@incunabula

19 Dec 20

The only known copy of the world’s first electronic computer manual.

Operating & maintenance manual for the BINAC binary automatic computer built for Northrop Aircraft Corporation 1949. Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp, Philadelphia 1949. Written by Joseph Chapline (1920-2011). 1/5

This is the only known copy of the world’s first electronic computer manual, and the only record of how the BINAC actually operated. It is also the model for the countless numbers of operating manuals for computers that were written in the following decades. 2/5

OCLC records no copies of this work in libraries, and there was no copy in the Origins of Cyberspace collection. As only one BINAC was ever built, it is likely that only a handful of copies of the manual were ever produced. 3/5

Read 10 tweets

Incunabula

@incunabula

17 Dec 20

BREAKING RUNESTONE NEWS

The runestone shown in the middle foreground in this engraving from Ole Worm's 1643 Danicorum Monumentorum was buried and lost in the 18th century.

Roadworkers just accidentally found and dug it up ON WEDNESDAY MORNING THIS WEEK!

svt.se/nyheter/lokalt…

"On Wednesday morning, a sensational archaeological find was made during excavation work outside Ystad. One of the missing Hunnestadsstenarna was found after having been missing since the 18th century."

svt.se/nyheter/lokalt…

"A fantastic fun find, which you did not think would happen. This stone has been gone for so long that we thought it was destroyed", said Magnus Källström, runologist at the Swedish National Heritage Board.

Read 6 tweets

Incunabula

@incunabula

27 Sep 20

This extract barely scratches the surface of the misinformation, vested interests, political maneuvering, and even outright duplicity surrounding the claimed looting of the libraries of Timbuktu. The real story of what happened has not yet been written.
dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-0…

I have some first-hand knowledge about this. When reading about the Timbuktu libraries, bear in mind three things:

1. The news in 2013 was almost pure catnip to NGOs and cultural charities, instantly confirmed the world-view....1/2

of right-leaning ones (ISIS are culture-destroying Islamofascists) AND left leaning ones (Africa is the repository of ancient wisdom). You could hardly, even in theory, conjure up a set of circumstances more likely to engage the interests of NGOs & philanthropic foundations. 2/2

Read 10 tweets

Incunabula

@incunabula

23 Sep 20

Churinga (or tjurunga) are the most important physical evidence of the intellectual heritage & artistic genius of the Aboriginal people.

I strongly believe that the effective prohibition on displaying them in Australian (& most other) museums is massively counterproductive. 1/9

There are no museum exhibitions of churinga. There are no books published in recent decades on them, and almost no scientific papers. They effectively cannot be sold on auction, even outside Australia. All of this is in deference to their status as Aboriginal sacred objects. 2/9

And yet sacred objects from most other religions are freely photographed, displayed, written about, and, where in private hands, bought and sold. By effectively 'disappearing' churingas from view, I believe we deprive the Aboriginal people of their due recognition... 3/9

Read 9 tweets

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