Bomb the Gooks

... if North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive — the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry.

[...]

This is a hard measure for President Bush to take. It undoubtedly carries risk. But the risk of continuing inaction in the face of North Korea's race to threaten this country would be greater. Creative diplomacy might have avoided the need to choose between these two unattractive alternatives. Indeed, in earlier years the two of us were directly involved in negotiations with North Korea, coupled with military planning, to prevent just such an outcome. We believe diplomacy might have precluded the current situation. But diplomacy has failed, and we cannot sit by and let this deadly threat mature. A successful Taepodong launch, unopposed by the United States, its intended victim, would only embolden North Korea even further. The result would be more nuclear warheads atop more and more missiles.

Washington Post | If Necessary, Strike and Destroy

Ho ho ho. The authors? The Post tells us: Ashton B. Carter was assistant secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton and William J. Perry was secretary of defense. The writers, who conducted the North Korea policy review while in government, are now professors at Harvard and Stanford, respectively.

So much for the MIC, eh? These bastards are everywhere.

Either way, there appears to be much truth in the old Chinese maxim, "The Americans are fucking crazy." Why the MSM continues to publish this drek baffles me. If not Somalia, then Iraq must surely have shown the U.S. it is incapable of successful military action.

The Empire is lost, you ageing crackleheads. You're going down. Your grandchildren will live in poverty and strife — they will spit on your graves and curse your memories forever.

Actually, why not? Go ahead. Win lots of friends and influence some people. Smack the slanty-eyed bastards. Show 'em who's boss. Pyongyang won't mind. They know the sun will never set on the Imperium and they'll welcome your bombs with roses.

Yeah... Let's liven things up a little. Go for it.

Table for Two…

Cape Town — the way I like it...

Took MacCracken MacCracken for a walk up Table Mountain this past weekend.

She deserved the break.

I almost forgot to stop at the top. Luckily, there was some crazy bastard who jumped off the edge. He was wearing a sail and so was in no real danger, but he served to remind me that what goes up, must come down.

Which we did.

It took a whole bloody day.

Last time I go up there.


Seeing the light...

Perhaps this is a better picture. I think the Chinese have taken over the mountain's upkeep. Lot of Zen shit up there.

"Hold that thought," said MacCracken MacCracken swiftly.

"What thought?" I asked.

"You're slow. But you're learning," she answered with a smile.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

Jumpers

Icarus climbing...

This one's for Jeneane...

... and this one's for Alex.

Tomorrow...

... everybody must get stoned.

Ancient faces.

C'mon... you do see them, don't you?

Note: If this blog now has any content, it's to be found in the comments section of the small and not-so-small albums uploaded to the gallery. Sounds good, eh? I think so too.

Allah Rising...

Muhammad and the Mountain

This one's for Shelley Powers...

...and this one's for Kalk Bay.

Plain Sailing...

Russian barque Kruzenshtern, Cape Town.

Added six images to this week's shipping news — see entry below. The Russian barque Kruzenshtern, a seventy-year old, four-masted barque doing duty as a training academy, is the second largest still plying the oceans.

Note The album (see also bloggable BubbleShare entry below), freshly updated with daylight photographs of the FPSO Dalia and STS Kruzenshtern, necessitates a further entry — coming to this page soon.

It explains how a visit to the Kruzenshtern closed a thirty-year old story (and, coincidentally, photograph album), and it details evidence of the resounding victory of the shadowy neocon cabal behind George W. Bush — The Man Who Terrorised The World.

I kid you not. More to come...

Oil and Water

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Alternative link. Enlarged graphics

My photojournalism associate McCracken McCracken and I were lounging around on the top of Signal Hill, waiting for a war to break out or for the gangsters to fall from the trees; whichever came first.

Being a photojournalist is not such an easy gig. Opportunity is fickle, and seldom knocks. In many ways, it's similar to a shooting star. If you don't stare at the sky, you'll never see one.

Or something like that.

"What the hell is that?" asked McCracken McCracken, cracking a beer and pointing towards the harbour and a blaze of light parked hard up against the city. "A Christmas tree?"

"Nah," I replied, digging around for a smoke. "It's the FPSO Dalia. Gunnar Horpestad's tracked it from Korea to Norway and has thirteen albums covering its building and fitting. Amazing stuff. He shot it all with a Canon EOS 300D. It's a 6.3 megapixel SLR. Makes me feel a pauper."

I felt dejected. But McCracken McCracken felt nothing. "Shut up, you fool," she snorted. "It's not the size of your camera that counts. It's what you do with it that matters. What's that thing called?"

My spirits rose. "FPSO Dalia. It's spectacular, but most Capetonians haven't even seen it. They're asleep."

"You're telling me. I thought we had an energy crisis. That thing's lit up like Times Square."

"It gives the terrorists a target," I muttered, finding a Forum, lighting it and taking a drag. I decided I would ask Gunnar if he had a second-hand job lying around. Norwegians are rich. I should know. Amé lives there.

The mountain was quiet. I couldn't see the gangsters pitching.

"So, what is it?" asked McCracken McCracken, her tone displaying an unwillingness to voice ignorance. "The FPSO Dalia, I mean?"

"It's a Floating Production System Offshore," I answered. "A petroleum and gas refinery. This one belongs to Total and it's headed for Block 17, a deep-sea oil concession and oil field 135 kilometers off Angola, to pillage the last of Africa's oil while the people starve. They're scagging about 250,000bbd from 1,500 meters down. It's a rich folk's game. They buy these things."

"How'd you mean?"

"Well, they cost. But there are plenty of people with money. They have armies working for them and can afford these things. They buy FPSOs like we do used cars. That thing — the Dalia — is 300 meters long, 60 meters wide and a couple of hundred feet high. Its superstructure of 30,000 tons is dumped on a 55,000 ton hull, it can process a quarter million barrels of crude a day, and can store 2,000,000 barrels. With Esso, BP, Statoil, and Norsk Hydro, Total have 34 wells and two rigs up there, so the Dalia will be busy."

"How do you know all this stuff?" McCracken McCracken eyed me suspiciously.

"It's my job," I answered off-handedly. "I am, after all, a professional photo-journalist."

I paused, taking it all in. I don't like what's going on. All this fits my thesis, developed some years ago, that South Africa will one day serve as an American base of some sort. Forget tankers docking in the Bight. We'll see a U.S. Navy base on Sao Tome or Principe before long. And U.S. carriers in Table Bay.

"Now that Peak Oil is a reality, the rich pigs need portable refineries capable of moving here, there and everywhere to exploit increasingly small pockets of wealth."

"Okay, so they cost. How much?"

"That's over a billion dollars worth. The work is outsourced to countries like Korea. The Koreans build the thing and it's then sent to Angola and Brazil to take what oil's left. It's built to last 20 years, when the oil runs out, and it'll end up littering the sands of Chittagong or, as we like to put it, the Breaker's Yard."

"So if it's such big business, that's why these guys all work together, e.g. the EU and the States with their Black Hole prisons and such?"

"You got it. And they have navies to protect their assets."

"So how come this thing's in Cape Town?"

"We're trying to make ourselves attractive as an all-purpose repair and fitment centre," I answered. "That's why the SEDCO 709, a massive Transocean drilling rig, is over on the Waterfront side. Three South African companies, DORBYL Marine, Globe Engineering and SA Five, have a ZAR130 million contract to refit and repair her."

We gazed down at the rig, its lights a busy but smaller equivalent of the Dalia's. I imagined the welding and banging and lifting going on in that corner of the harbour.

"They just appeared," mused McCracken McCracken. "Out of nowhere. And they're off to nowhere."

She's the romantic. "The rig's going to be around a while yet," I told her. "The Dalia will soon be off to Angola for its first assignment."

"It's amazing to think there are these things out there," McCracken McCracken said quietly. "We can no longer see ourselves raping our reserves."

"Yeah. Just like the First World's sweatshops. There are more than 100 of these FPSOs in operation, mainly off Angola, Nigeria and Brazil. But the Brits have quite a few operating off the Shetlands. What intrigues me is that they're lumpen. On their own, they're useless."

"Eh?" Knocking back the last of her beer and scrabbling for another, McCracken McCracken looked interested. "How'd you mean, lumpen."

"They can't power themselves and have to be towed or carried everywhere. Y'see that freighter-looking thing next to the Dalia?"

McCracken McCracken peered down on the lights of Cape Town. "Vaguely," she muttered.

"it's not a freighter. It's one of Fairmount's super tugs. Two of the buggers will tow the refinery up to Angolan waters."

"Pretty big tugs," McCracken McCracken agreed.

"Yeah, but how's about the Gavea Lifter, carrying the rig?" I asked her. "I mean, one doesn't think of rigs being loaded on a ship and carted about like so much cargo. Or using a ship as a dry dock. But the Gavea Lifter, towed by the Smit Amandla, hauled the Sedco 709 down from Saldahna Bay."

"There's a ship under that rig?"

"It's basically a barge. And it's also owned by Fairmount. There's something fishy about that. Anyway, these things are new, partly submersible, and everywhere. It demonstrates a 'can-do approach' in all its ugliness."

"Shit, there's a lot going on that we just don't get to see."

"Yeah, you're telling me. Look, nothing's going to happen up here, so let's go down and get a better view."

Which we did. Harbour security is tight, but I've been developing my contacts. We were soon sucking in the scent of the sea while marvelling at man's monstrous hubris. I spoke to a South African who's doing six months on the Dalia, and he explained something of its function.

These weapons of mass pillage are going to grow in number over the next five years. But the rig was cool; a lot of work going on and everything on a scale unimaginable until seen up close. As a kid, I sailed past one after a couple of weeks at sea, and was awed by the encounter. Silent, immutable, and looking like Kubrick's monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, it dwarfed the surrounding ocean.

Hoisted atop a barge, it's still pretty damned impressive. But I've grown used to these things and, today, it's the harbour itself that fascinates me. It is here that people gather to do whatever it is they do. Whereas land-based commerce has been reduced to the electronic flow of unseen ciphers, down on the waterfront people continue to wheel, deal, and make the decisions that matter. No matter the size of their toys.

Note: Beware the harbor, all ye new to the age of the camera. Prone to experimenting (and finding that, while shots of well-lit subjects are best left to 'auto or night settings with flash' and less well-lit shots can be successful juggling aperture and exposure—the color and lighting are better though camera shake is a big factor), I was constantly cleaning the camera's lens.

No matter how romantic the harbor air, it is filled with diesel, gas, and other petrochemicals that settle like snow on a lens. What these things do to our lungs, I really don't know.

But that's not my concern. Because you can't see whether a shot's been buggered by these unseen hazards stolen from deep in the heart of the Earth, the best thing to do is zoom in on the LCD display of each shot and scour it for discoloration. If you find any specks, clean it with either cotton or a 'lens pencil', a piece of static-free cloth attached to a flanged nipple that fits neatly into the lens' corners, backed on the end by a brush.

I told Niek (he and Shelley — both professional photographers and fine bloggers to boot — have given me encouragement), I find people extremely difficult to shoot. I'm adding night shots to the list. That said, when they do work (and the exposure and aperture settings sing in harmony), the hard work is justified.

The Image Makers

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Why's there a Flickr badge on this blog? Because BubbleShare doesn't make 'em.

Albert, do something.

Seriously, the vertical slider ain't enough. A blog needs a 140x200-or-something dynamic badge.

Otherwise, I've tried Flickr and it pales against BubbleShare. Restricted to 20MBs a month, free users need to reduce the size of their images on their hard drives to save bandwidth. As a on-paying subscriber, I've no gripe with saving Flickr bandwidth; it's just that BubbleShare will resize your graphics on upload — a major plus.

And it's free.

Most Web users have little idea how to resize graphics optimally or retain image information. I certainly don't. But the quality I get from BubbleShare is akin to that which I obtain uploading images to my freebie gallery tool, David Ekholm's JAlbum — a truly wonderous, free offering and portable album that uses bicubic resampling to deliver a good, clear image when creating an album on my local machine.

I guess JAlbum is to Picasa what BubbleShare is to Flickr at the moment.

I then upload an optimized image which, most importantly to we Third Worlders, saves time and money on costly dial-up connections [Note to self: Remind SDOTI™ to introduce Web 2.0 to Telkom]. So yeah, maybe Flickr offers similar tools, but it'd cost me $29,95 to find out and wouldn't do much to reduce my phone bill.

Hey, $29,95 is $29,95. Around ZAR180,00. Which is great if I want to archive my images on the Web. But at around US$1,00, I can stash around 500 images on a CD.

And a CD, as we know, is forever.

I've not tried all BubbleShare's gizmos — I don't need to; but until someone can point me to a better local album than JAlbum and a bloggable Web service beating BubbleShare, I'll use both as I have Blogger. Prodigiously.

Anyway, back to the weekend. Courtesy BubbleShare.


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Afterword: BubbleBoy's quite correct. You can resize BubbleShare's flash-image frames to a badge fitting your blogroll. Ah well, there you go — service with a smile from the CEO. That's the Web for you. And the people who 'get it'... Does Albert 'get it'? Ho ho ho. Into filling that great, gaping void between "...static photos and full motion video...", I think we can say he does — in word and deed.

Chasing the Sun

Just like a nuclear bomb...Whooeeee!

Surprise, surprise...there's a new one out now called...sorry, I forget.

The nut of it is that McCracken McCracken and I decided to get out of the house a while. We travelled over the hump of Devil's Peak, around the face of Table Mountain, and up and over Kloof Nek before dropping into Camps Bay where we watched the sun set.

Yeah. This evening. A short while ago. Okay, so it wan't much of a sunset, but we come from the sunrise side of the mountain and every sunset is kinda special. Besides, today turned out warm and sunny — which is not necessarily what we in the trade call a good thing. A combination of sun, rain, biting cold, radiant warmth, the mountain and the sea have left me a splitting headache, which makes you doubly fortunate to be witnessing what you should be watching out there rather than by way of your computer.

Nah...this is a labour of love. I've not had this much fun since fp asked me "Do you blog?" and I got to meet the Powers, Wards, Hockxs, Farragos, and...ah, to hell with it — of the blog world. Back then, I did not dream I would one day post a self-taken picture to the Web.

Today, thanks to my good friends, I know no shame and will embarrass myself before anybody. Why not? We get only one shot at this crazy thing called life, and should make the most of it.


Indian summer

Tomorrow, if I get a chance, I'll BubbleShare yesterday's mountain adventure and today's sunset with those too lazy to click this link. Don't worry, I understand all too well. I am, after all, a blogger of repute who has studied at the feet of the greats. And I do know that waiting for other people's snapshots to download is about as interesting as watching grass grow.

Now, if you thought yesterday's "nestling" bee was good, how's about this butterfly, eh?

Winter's Reign...

Mountain bride...

...holds sway. I dunno...the first day of sun we've been able to enjoy in weeks and what do we do? McCracken McCracken, Sarah, Chris and I head up the mountain to find out what's happened to the rain.

Bathed in the warm glow of the sun's great shining orb, we strolled Through idyllic country the colours of a painter's palette. Sadly, not for long. By way of Nursery Ravine and Skeleton Gorge, the loamy path rose to meet the mountain's forbidding cliffs and the day's warmth soon departed, leaving behind a frost-laden chill. And in the gloaming of the forests we found the rain transformed to veils of white, shrouding the mountain's face in awesome, icy splendour.

For now, the rain is hiding, married to the falling contours of the mountain, but she shall return — to fill our dams, sate the thirsty earth, and fuck up our week.

I mean, hell, one can only take so much purple prose. I tried working "nestles" into the above, but vomited over my keyboard. In essence though, I kid you not. Check it out for yourselves...and how's about that bee, eh?

Seagulls

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Ending our digital retrospective, through which — courtesy of Bubbleshare — I've managed to cram a good couple of hundred images onto this page and into ten entries, are these fortunate shots of storm-tossed, south Atlantic gulls, widely derided as loud-mouthed scavengers. I dunno. These snaps show them to be remarkably delicate and fragile when frozen onscreen. Would added light have enhanced the pictures? I assume so, but when afforded the opportunity to frame them, I didn't want to be caught flat-footed, waiting for the flash to charge.

Also, for those who fail to travel beyond this page, we revisit last weekend and a dark, gloomy Simonstown naval base and penguin penal colony (again, see entry below). This weekend? Who the hell knows? Not the weather bureau. They predict sun, but I have learnt the hard way and know for a fact that it rains only on weekends. I expect vile and ugly weather and, although keen to snap away, am tired of portraying the sunniest place on Earth as the Heart of Darkness.

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Which brings us to Frank (the breadth, depth and scope of whose 400-word entries over the past six months or so secure forever his place among the top writers in this medium), who came closest to identifying the spot from which the fynbos pictures were taken (see the other entry below). Frank placed our intrepid photographers in Mendocino, north of 'Frisco, a hemisphere and half-a-world away. Never mind. He was far closer than any other entrant... umm, yeah, sorry, I forget; he was the only entrant.

There is no such thing as 'kinda teasing', Frank and you know it. What is it my good friend Bob is so fond of saying? We "cover up the truth with lies." It does us no good; we always mean what we say, no matter our choice of words. To illustrate the point, this small peninsula at the foot of Africa enjoys — like Mendocino — a Mediterranean climate, with long, hot summers and cool, wet winters. Well, it's cool by most people's standards but bloody freezing by mine.

Roll on the solstice and a return to longer, warmer, lighter days.

How that illustrates anything, I don't know. Never mind...Where was I? For those interested, the rather raggedy fynbos below can be found at one of our last pieces of genuine wetland, the area encircled by Kenilworth Race Course and surrounded by South Africa's Mother City. Hemmed in by suburbs, office blocks, and congested streets from which exhaust fumes blow the atmosphere to hell and gone, this patch of land is protected; for now.

Okay, it's the weekend. McCracken McCracken and I have work to do...

Father Christopher and the Man who Fell to Earth

Father Christopher meets Buzz Aldrin

This is ground control to Major Tom | You've really made the grade | And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear | Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare...

Late one night during the mid-80s, I sat in a Rondebosch pizza house chatting to Buzz Aldrin.

I mean, y'know, in a situation like that, one just has to ask. "So, Buzz, what was it like?"

I don't really remember his answer to my question, but I do remember, on many occasions and with a large circle of friends, lounging around that Rondebosch pizza house.

On Wednesday evenings, we'd drink coffee and talk until the early hours of the morning.

Buzz seemed a nice guy.

1984 was an especially good year. It's not really surprising therefore that, through Chris and RageBoy, it was in 1984 that Father Christopher became my Spiritual Guide and Mentor (SG&M)™.

I just didn't know it — all those years ago.

When I climbed that step to enter the warm gloom of the hall under the bridge in August of that year, I was stark-raving mad. I mean it. Twenty-six years old and completely barkers. Insane, cracked, bat-shit crazy. I was fucking psychotic and I was as scared as all hell.

Had I not climbed that step — it was about two feet and a million miles high, I'd have ended up dead or in jail. I'm not convinced of it. I know it.

But it's the year, i.e. 1984, and Buzz being the second man on the moon, that stick in my mind.

As, over a couple of years, I learnt just how fortunate I was to meet those hard-talking, heavy-smoking people who frequented the pizza shop in Rondebosch, I might have guessed that halfway around the world, Chris had taken that first step a while before me.

Back then, Father Christopher, his ever-faithful stenographer Locke, and the vile and evil RageBoy were already reconstituting our lives, the universe, and whatever else there might be in store for us.

It's a good feeling. Congratulations, thank you, and lead on, Chris. Without the likes of you, I'd not be here today.

This is Major Tom to ground control | I'm stepping through the door | And I'm floating in the most peculiar way | And the stars look very different today...

David Bowie | Space Oddity