Ain't Talkin'

"...just walkin'"

All my loyal and my much-loved companions | They approve of me and share my code | I practice a faith that's been long abandoned | Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road

I been listenin' to old Bob. Got dem ol' blogger's blues #46. Why not? Everythin's bust, battered, broken. 'Cepting myself, of course... We was walkin' on the mountain with old Zonker and the Dutch Boy round full moon. I was determined to get a coupla good shots. But you get a coupla good ol' boys from the 70s, a late-nite mountain an' a coupla spliffs and you got yourself some improvisation. So the above's my shot of the moment...just walkin'.

I'm gonna keep on doing that — walkin', despite everything that came down on us afterwards. We spent a few hours up on that cold old wintry mountain, till the wind's bite felt warm and invigorating. There was a giant ring around the moon but, although I pointed the camera its way countless times, I wasn't interested in shooting it. You can't in the city. When you look at the pictures, the lack of clarity reminds you of your whereabouts and your desire to get out of town.

Lion's Head's part of Table Mountain, but I wanted a shot of the table itself by the light of the moon. I got it. Couldn't see a damned thing through that viewfinder, but I guess the camera knew where to look.

The picture above reminds me of the old Zen poser, "What do you do when you've climbed to the top of the mountain?"

A lot of people head up the mountain at night and, we guessed, that's why we saw the blue lights of cop cars driving along Table Mountain Road. You get a lot of muggers up there. But all the cars sort of sidled down as the evening progressed and, around half-past ten, the cops left and the only light to be seen was that of the Cable station.

So the other's an old view — there are fuck all people up there, so I like it, and that's why it's here. That ol' lump of stone has lasted longer than anything around it, about half-a-billion years. Sitting 'neath its shadow, you feel the mysterious power of all that time. It hangs over you, brooding, like a shroud or a weight of some ancient wisdom.

It doesn't do so in any negative way. As the New Agers assert, it energizes you and enables you to cope with the crap going on down below.

Zonker and the Dutch Boy were meeting Joe at a club in Long Street, so they had to head off. I'd heard Zonker having a chat to Joe's landline a few minutes before. "Howzit, Joe. I don't have your number so can't give you a call. So I just wanted to tell you not to call me." He looked at us. "You reckon that was lucid?" he asked. "Perfectly," we assured him. We idled down. Wendy and I wanted to head over to Signal Hill to get a shot of the mountain with Devil's Peak off to the side.


"...at the world's end."

The sufferin' is unending | Every nook and cranny has its tears | I'm not playing, I'm not pretending | I'm not nursin' any superfluous fears

In the dark of the trees shading the road from which our path wound to heaven, a security guard manned a barricade.

"We want to go and take some pictures from Signal Hill," I told him. "That okay."

Apparently not. The road was closed.

"What do you mean, 'It's closed'?" I asked with some dread. I recalled trying to drive up to Rhodes Memorial at night last year, only to be turned away by a chained gate and an official notice that it was closed to the public "after hours."

Too many muggings, murders, rapes and what not.

"We're Capetonians. It's our mountain. We wanna get a shot of Devil's Peak. It's a full moon."

He looked at us as though we were dumb. Zonker had picked up an orange road cone and, using it as a bullhorn, was ordering imaginary cars from the hill. The Dutch Boy wandered up in all his politeness. He reminds me of Frank, although Frank looks more mischievous. There's solidity (in principle and presence) about the Dutch Boy. With his silvering hair and spectacles, he epitomises the well-off, middle-class pillar of suburbia.

"Good evening," he smiled. "Are we allowed through?"

"Jesus," I thought. "I've just asked him that. He won't let us through."

As indeed he didn't. The city's capitulated. It's given in to gangsters and criminals and refuses to allow law-abiding citizens walk its open spaces after 10:00 pm. So much for the fucking police. While we'd been enjoying a clear, starlit sky and a celestial display of icicles circling the moon, they'd been throwing people off Table Mountain.

I wanted to see the moon go down the next morning so Wendy and I headed home while Zonker and the Dutch Boy headed off to catch some jazz in town. I was seething. "Fucking cunts!" I swore. "It's those Goddamn Yanks. We've all fallen victim to fear. We've given in to thuggery."

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm anti-American or anything; in fact some of my best friends...

Last year, I got some shots of the FPSO Dalia while she was in port. I had to go to extraordinary lengths to get those pictures. The harbour I wandered as a kid and adolescent had been taken from us. "By whom?" I asked the guy who organised me a permit. "The Americans," he answered. "They don't want 'terrorists' coming in."

I kid you not. And this is backed by an impeccable source who tells me the U.S. is putting pressure on Cape Town to move the Royal Cape Yacht Club from its corner of the harbour. "Their supply ships come and go," he told me. "And they don't declare a damned thing. It's military and their manifests are blank. And we let them get away with it."

Back down in the suburbs, the cops were all over the place. First, we avoided a road block leading out of town — some habits die hard, and the next thing we knew we were witnessing the usual Friday night carnage. Blue lights and ADT vans all over the place. Houses behind high walls, razor wire, and electric fences.

So that's how I got the blogger's blues. We're a city of fear. And we're doing nothing to help ourselves. For myself, I don't want any part of it. I'll speak to whoever I want, even if he's carrying a gun.

Which leads me to my most depressing news. I'll leak it out over the next long while. The Americans, as I feared and as Thomas P.M. Barnett now gloats, have landed. That's not worst of it either. My contention is that Cape Town is already host to what will become the nerve centre controlling the Pentagon's latest beast to slouch towards Bethlehem, Africa Command (AFRICOM).

But more about that later. It's all too depressing to think about. I need a walk.

Ain't talkin', just walkin' | Up the road, around the bend. | Heart burnin', still yearnin' | In the last outback at the world's end.

Bob Dylan | Ain't Talkin'

Stormhoek

From Madame Levy of La Vache Qui Lit

Yesterday, after much consideration and consultation with a few blogging friends, I decided to try and get in touch with Stormhoek and get some answers to some of the questions a lot of people have concerning Stormhoek and the South African Wine Industry in general since Hugh MacLeod seemed both unable and unwilling to answer any questions we had.

Not being known for my tact, everyone was begging me not to be asshole-rude as I rounded up questions from a number of people. You know who you are.

First I tried the number that Chris Rawlinson had left in my comments here. It had nothing to do with the reality of the number in South Africa which I eventually called and got a machine. I didn't leave a message and decided instead to call the UK number provided on the Stormhoek blog. I got through to someone whose name I understood as Rocko. I explained who I was (just some blogger and citizen) and that I would like to speak with Catherine Monahan (who had left a comment on my blog) or anyone else that could answer some questions I had about Stormhoek, as Hugh MacLeod had suggested I do. After putting me on hold for a couple of moments I was told that everyone was out to lunch and that I should call back in an hour. It was 3:45 pm UK time.

I then tried the correct South African number again and got Graham Knox on the line who gave me his cellphone number and suggested I call him in 30 minutes. In the meantime I re-called the UK number and was told that although they were now back from lunch, Catherine Monahan was unavailable as she "was at a tasting". I asked if there was anyone else I could speak to and was told no. No reason was given by the person I was speaking to, who was a real cunt in the UK sense of the word. I have it on tape. Called back Graham Knox who was stuck in traffic going back to the farm and although the line was bad we made an appointment to speak at 6pm.

By this time I was wondering whether they were taking the piss. I knew that the UK people were definitely taking the piss and were most likely getting pissed at their "tasting".

For all Hugh's posturing and touting of blogging and bloggers and his stealing and misinterpretation of the Cluetrain and pretend willingness to open "conversation", I still believe he divides people into two categories: Important People Who Matter and Insignificant Asshole Losers who have nothing to offer him. If you take a good look at his "cartoons" I think you will see this theme explored again and again. The people at the UK office seem to have adopted this same world view. They remind me of this horrible North London middle class prick that one of my asshat Harvard going cousins married. A real asshole. Dying to get into the Groucho Club. Taste this, fuckers.

It was six. I called the number Graham Knox had given me. He answered. We could hear each other better now and I explained who I was (or wasn't), and asked him if I could ask him a few questions. I was upfront about my run-ins with Hugh MacLeod and didn't try to pretend to be anything other than what I am. I told him the only reason I started getting interested about all these South African wine issues was because of the incredible pr push MacLeod had done on his wine.

Graham Knox was kind, gracious, lucid, calm and insightful. He answered every question thoughtfully and mindfully.

He employs 11 people on the farm. Four in management type positions and 7 workers. The workers have adequate housing and are paid a higher wage than other workers in the area and although Graham says it's a living wage and one with which his workers can support their families, he feels it is still not enough. They do not use mechanical harvesters, the terrain making it impossible and it's something he wouldn't do anyway. It's necessary for the grapes he uses to be picked by hand.

The South African government provides no healthcare for anyone. He has a plan that covers everyone who works at the farm and a medical aid worker who comes from a nearby village each week to deal with regular checking in on general health issues. If someone is seriously ill or been injured, he takes them to his doctor in Wellington.

When I asked him how he deals with anyone who has a substance abuse problem he told me that there's been two workers who were alcoholic and he brought them to a clinic run by some women's charity where they received treatment. One recovered, one couldn't. Two people in 9 years. No way is any alcohol available for consumption on the farm.

There are some families who live on the farm. There are some babies that have been born there, including Graham's own grandchildren. The school is being refurbished as there are more kids now. Not one of the children suffers from fetus alcohol syndrome.

When he first arrived, (9+ years ago if I remember correctly - I have to re-listen to the tapes - note: Graham is Australian and didn't grow up in SA.) not one worker could read or write and all had trouble counting and dealing with money. Now everyone is literate and some of the kids have gone on to university. He doesn't believe in the patriarchal system and said that was one of the hardest problems at the beginning, trying to try and change that mindset amongst the employees (partly due to so many years of colonialism).

He is a fascinating man, kind, forthright, intelligent and well read. He is ready to laugh. We went on to talk about some non-wine related subjects that we share a common interest in.

I would certainly tell my older daughters to tell their dirty vegan hippy UK student friends that the white's ok for them and the red and rosés are fair game for anyone else. Graham emailed me last night recapping the conversation and I look forward to continue exchanging reading suggestions and conversation.

To wit:

Thank you for the opportunity to meet a questing and inventive mind.

Life is both interesting and fun.

Till we talk again,

Best wishes

Graham

There was one point in his life when he could of chosen to shut down (as a human) but he chose to open up. He is an inspiring example for me and makes me realize just how fucking weird this world is. What are the chances? Or the odds, as Tree Shapiro might say.

I have tapes of the conversation and will tweak the sound a bit (Graham's voice needs to be louder and mine less) and put them up sometime next week so you can see for yourself. There is much I am not covering here including his views on the KWV, apartheid, the situation in South Africa in general and how he met Hugh and why he decided to work with him.

Lest you think I've gone completely over the edge, I still think MacLeod is a HUGE asshole who needs to get fucked badly (take a good look at his vagina and penis "witty cartoons" and ask yourself why he asks himself why he can't find love or sex) and those pretentious toffs that work at the UK office can go fuck themselves.

Tasting, my ass.

How to tell the difference between a human and a pr parrot.

Leslie Winer

I've been rough on South African bloggers of late, but it's their own fault. New to blogging — five years after Ev Williams and Blogger took it to stratospheric heights, most do not offer much at all. And hey, as a blogger only by default — my occasional post merely affords me the title, I'm not climbing into or blaming anybody here. It's just that it's all been said and it's all been done.

And, so it seems, continues to be done.

By foreigners.

Like Leslie Winer.

This story started and stopped with our Madame Levy (heavily backed by artillery, field guns, and machine-gun nests strategically posted by Jeneane Sessum and Frank Paynter, two of the finest bloggers of the old school — see my blogroll for further shining exemplars).

The above entry — lifted verbatim from Leslie's site and with which I wholeheartedly align myself, leads back through the links to the arrogant intransigence of the Idiot Macleod and amounts to as fine a lesson in blogging as anybody's likely to receive. This is what it's all about. And although I know Jeneane is probably champing at the bit to put further pertinent questions to Stormhoek's Graham, whom I'm sure would happily answer them, it's as complete a rout of blogging naysayers as I've seen (more on that subject later).

Macleod's job, no doubt, is quite safe. Were he NOT such an arsehole, Stormhoek — the type of vineyard we so desperately need in this country, would not have garnered such further positive publicity. I'm sure the Gaping Void appreciates the irony of the idiocy accorded him.

Many thanks to Graham Knox for clearing up so much so effortlessly. And especial thanks to Leslie for expending the time, money, and effort to obtain the answers to questions many of us have recently been asking.

And fuck you, pradoc.

John Maytham's World

CNN's Anderson Cooper

On 13 December 2006, 21-year-old hospital clerk Stacy Wilson was beheaded by a machete-wielding Sean Samuel in front of horrified onlookers at a bus terminal in Kingstown, St Vincent. For those of you who don't know where that is, it's in the Caribbean.

Yesterday, South African Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula told international investors crime-fighting strategies are being beefed up to increase staff numbers, improve training and introduce new technology. Business Day informs us Nqakula told the Italian business community in South Africa that crime should not be seen as an obstacle to business.

Earlier this afternoon, after being sent an SMS by a listener to his radio talk show, veteran 567 CapeTalk presenter John Maytham blew his top at the irresponsible hordes now publishing sub-urban rubbish on their 'blog sites' and 'blog spaces'.

What have these events to do with each other? As I heard it, Maytham's listener — a woman — had received an irate, anonymous e-mail asking what the hell Charles Nqakula was doing assuring foreign fat cats the country was safe when young girls like Stacy were getting their heads cut off.

In Johannesburg. That's in South Africa. Not the Caribbean.


Afghanistan's Inexplicable Refugee Crisis

Yeah...I know. Silly woman. It's the typical Monday office chain mail issued by some apartheid throwback with a hell of a weekend hangover and a chip the size of Devil's Peak on his shoulder. And he or she thinks it's clever. All of us get this stuff. Some of us flush it out before it gets on to our mail clients. Most delete it and a still significant number send it on, their brooding racism having been fed its daily diet of irrational fear, loathing, and all-round hatred of the human race and, by extension (Neanderthals aren't too long gone), themselves.

Suffering an irrational intolerance of the insular, banal, inane, and usually witless nature of most South African blogs, I giggled at Maytham's anger. It turns out he's not clueless — he just hasn't signed on to Blogger or doesn't subscribe to blogging. Yet. Like most, he uses Snopes to check out the fantastic; and he rightly advised his listeners to doublecheck all weird stories emanating from the Internet and Web before passing them on.

Where is this going? Hell, I don't know — it wouldn't be blogging if I did. It has something to do with each of us knowing where to draw the line and it has to do with the nature of the mainstream media and why we choose to believe what we believe. The first picture above is of CNN's Anderson Cooper presenting his show entitled, naturally enough in a self-absorbed industry, Anderson Cooper 360°. The insert, aired around June 19 or 20, is Without Homes — Refugees in Crisis [.flv 1.6MB], a skewed piece highlighting the plight of Afghan refugees.

To paraphrase the CNN televangelist, Afghanistan's 2.1 million refugees constitute the world's largest refugee population (that's crap — Iraq and several central African countries probably have far more). Cooper goes on to explain that, given the country's long history of war, it is difficult to explain what prompted their exodus.

Indeed.


Where have all the Syrians gone?

CNN then zooms in on a map of Afghanistan...Syria...Afghanistan in Syria...I dunno...something. Anyway, it's Syria become Afghanistan. You can see for yourself and you can download the file or watch it on YouTube. Perhaps Syria's about to become Afghanistan? Perhaps Palestine will become Palestine after all. Either way, I had no idea there were that many refugees hailing from Kabul and its surrounds. In Syria or anywhere...

Ostensibly a goof by a design team at CNN, the map illustrates far more. First, there was my doubt that the video cut was genuine. I mean, how dumb do you have to be to let something like that slip through? Secondly, I took it off YouTube, not your most authoritative source of hard news and an easy repository for some joker who's engaged in some editing and splicing.

But, then again, why doubt it? The blooper shows Afghanistan to be on that side of the planet, which is about as close Anderson Cooper gets to the facts in his insert. If he can spew such rubbish, and with the U.S. having bombed that country "back to the stone age", why should the CNN cartographers not indulge in The Geography of Infinite Justice?

And, having done some snoping, it seems Cooper does have his fans. They're as unlikely to know where Afghanistan is as the average CNN set designer. In fact, CBS tells us that, according to a Roper poll conducted for National Geographic, "...six in 10 young American adults were unable to locate Iraq on a map of the world." One in three could not locate Louisiana on a map, half don't know where the hell the Mississippi flowed to, and only an equal number could find New York. New York state that is.

After Hurricane Katrina, you'd expect all Americans, George W. Bush excepted, of course, to know where Louisiana is. Why not Dubya? He didn't know it was there when it was there.

Ye Gods!

Speaking of which, according to a press release from the dubious ChristianNewsWire yesterday, the "...latest Roper Poll shows more than half (56 percent) of the American public believing UFOs are real and not imaginary."

Let's try and get a handle on this. More USians are likely to find a UFO than they are to find the Mississippi or the states of New York and Louisiana. And they don't get a map to find the UFO. Incidentally, I'd recently remarked to Wendy that the only conclusion I could draw from the remarkable dearth of recent UFO sightings is that the aliens must have decided we lack intelligent life.

So yes, I believe the CNN gaffe to be real. I place my trust in the unlikely likes of Michael Rivero, Bob Harris, Josh Ing, and the Anorak (the last would have to British, wouldn't it?). And I apologise to the woman so roundly scorned by the vile John Maytham earlier today. I mean, who the hell is he to tell us what to believe? Why would we doubt a particularly gruesome murder taking place in South Africa as the Minister of Safety and Security tries to placate foreign investors?


Iraq: Denial and Deception [Source: White House]

I mean, for Heaven's sake, the Western World claims to have swallowed hook, line, and sinker the altogether transparent lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair and their administrations. It thereby tacitly admits to allowing the invasion of Afghanistan and the obliteration of Iraq, its history, and the lives of millions of its people.

Sadly, whereas "...A Newsweek poll in September 2004 showed that 36% believed 'Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001'", Newsweek now tells us the figure has risen to 41%.

We choose to believe what we choose to believe. But remember, John, most people maintaining 'blog sites' and 'blog spaces' are not dullards and fools. They're American™. You may leave the room now, Anderson Cooper. Your small sin is forgiven. And may Stacy Wilson of Kingstown escape forever the clutches of fools to rest in peace.

You can catch John Maytham's show between 15:00 and 17:00 SAST on 567 CapeTalk using broadband and streaming audio. After a hard day's work, it seems he can get you to think again.

Note: Thinking of thinking again, media silence surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty merits pause for thought. Another gaffe, perhaps? Methinks not.

The Photographer Function

Click to enlarge

I learned photo criticism from Niek Hockx. A high-profile professional photographer of long standing with a more-than-impressive portfolio, he posted a picture, made by his sister, Aicha, on the Web. I analysed it, and enjoyed doing so. Whether or not my opinions of the photograph — a simple black-and-white study of a young woman, fell within the bounds of conventional photographic criticism, I don't know.

All I know is that, as a person with a camera who regards himself a journalistic photographer (composition takes place in the viewfinder rather than the gut), I found the work of a photographic artist 'decipherable'. And so I found myself delighted to find, a while before he linked to one of my photographs, the work of another photographer seeping into Web space.

Let me state at the outset that I find photography the most perplexing of occupations. While I find it says much of another, I fail to divine meaning or an appreciation of myself in my camera work. Also, my opinion of 'images' is unformed or ill-defined. I don't know what to make of them. Also, I'm aware that, in criticising a photograph, I'm projecting onto a projection of a projection, i.e. the photographer. Can meaning travel clearly across such a space or can one communicate effectively though such obfuscation?

I don't know, but I'd like to think so.


Click to enlarge

Without knowing whether we all reveal something of ourselves to others or others to ourselves, I took great interest in mw's photograph of a break in a stone wall leading to what appears to be a peaceful, naturally overgrown, tree-shaded garden with a bench containing somebody's backpack and perhaps an article of clothing.

Untitled, the photograph itself is named — seemingly in contradiction to the break giving it shape, "gardenwall". Seeing the picture, I thought, "Aha, more to come. The photographer speaks..."

It's a beautifully tranquil composition.

I missed 'downstream' a couple of days later — the link of which is buggered, and will have to go back to it. It reflects a strangely tentative ambiguity (strangely because it is a strong picture), the sky and clouds mirrored in a deep stream on the far bank of which stands both the trunk of one overly pruned, savaged, or 'bared' tree and another, an explosive profusion of leaves and branches.

Between them, a path leads through flowers to the water. Further downstream, away from the viewer and across the water, the foliage is dense, verdant, lush.

Again, behind the ambiguity of the river, its reflection of the sky, and the dissimilar "twinned" trees, it is a tranquil and inviting scene. Seeing it now, it reinforces my notion that the photographer is sharing his view of that which he sees before and, more important, within him. Sooner or later, the clouds take their form.

I made that assumption when the aptly titled 'further downstream' appeared a day or two later. To me, here was our first self-portrait of the photographer — and let me again emphasise that this is merely 'my projection onto a projection of a projection of a possible projection'.


Click to enlarge

The greenery of the opposite bank is cut off at the water's edge.

The water and the large tree reflected in it, balanced on the near shore by a smaller bush, dominate. More intriguing, the picture is anchored by a rock touched in the foreground by the near-shore greenery. Above the rock, the reflection of a set of telephone lines atop a solitary pole spans the river or pool.

The photograph's file name is 'further.' Good stuff and worthy of some serious contemplation. This is not an ordinary snapshot. It's a careful gut shot, an informal composition mirroring the photographer's assessment of that which is pleasing to him.

Water is life; more so the deeper or darker it is. I scattered my father's ashes on the sea and spend much of my time beside it, whether on mountains or cliffs or at its shore. I'm drawn to the surf photography though I have an inadequate camera. I guess surfing, much like a reflection 'covering' water to lend it a clearly defined 'surface', delivers images that obscure that which lies beneath — paradoxically stressing the notion that the water is metaphorically both source and vessel.

And much as a surfer shreds the face of the wave, the reflected tree in 'further downstream' penetrates the water's surface. Alongside the 'upturned' tree, the telephone pole does too, but not as overtly. Like the sides of a triangle, tree and pole point through the picture to the apex, the rock anchored in and out of the water.

I take the photographer to be the tree and I take his use of the telephone pole and the fine strands of its telecommunication lines (joining the reflected tree and the nearside bush) to be a statement. He owns that statement, but it's good to see that whether the telephone wires represent communication, technology, or man's interaction with nature or himself, the strands are extraordinarily delicate, slightly distorted, and almost fragmented by the water.

Their capacity to form a coherent line crossing over, through, or under the water lies in their number and the water's accommodation of them.

Another point of interest. Bordering the photograph — to the left, is the reflection of a not-altogether insurmountable wire fence crossing the river. A case of "So far and no further" perhaps.


Click to enlarge

I really don't know. Perhaps I read too much into these things. Is composition conscious? Following this photograph, above a piece by Dylan Trigg on The Architecture of Shadows, is 'a micro solstitial moment,' a remarkable photograph not only because it adds to Trigg's observations but because it makes nonsense of them too. Taken at the side of the stream, alongside a rock bound in the roots of a tree, a long, flat stone bridges a short span of fast-flowing water to rest on two smaller rocks.

The effect is Escher-like. Visually, the crossing stone could be in the water, bounding what might be a wellspring.

Centered in the pool encircled by this 'deception of rocks' another, smaller stone protrudes from the virtual wellspring. It bears uncanny resemblance to a garden sundial's gnomon, echoing the photograph's name.

Again greenery fringes the photograph and the water leaving the wellspring, flows rapidly.


Click to enlarge

As I write this, I visualize myself speaking it. People are looking at me in a manner that brings to mind the word 'weird.' But this is what I see. And the photographer does not make it easy for me. The next day, he compounds my frustration at seeing patterns, narratives, intent, and meaning in his work by posting 'Stile.' Its subtitle, given above the title, is 'yet further downstream', as much a statement of series or continuity as one could hope from a photographer's dispatches from the field.

"Not that much further," I'd remark snidely were I to speak to him. "You've merely crossed the fence bounding 'further downstream.' My will to stanch this flow of graphic information would be futile though. Not only does the water flow freely from the wellspring in the earlier picture; in this photograph, the stile is the picture — there is no "tree" here; in the solid, wooden stile astride the fence it has been put to work.

And given the amount of space taken by the sturdy stile as a subject, I'd say crossing the not-altogether-insurmountable fence — also, incidentally, now made of wood, was quite important to the photographer.

Whatever. I haven't a clue. The photographer function made me do it. I await further instruction.

Photographs: Mark Woods

Hide in the hollow trunk | of the willow tree, | its listening familiar, | until, as usual, they | cuckoo your name | across the fields.

You can hear them | draw the poles of stiles | as they approach | calling you out: | small mouth and ear | in a woody cleft, | lobe and larynx | of the mossy places.

Seamus Heaney | Oracle

Orphans

Never, I would have never thought this to be possible. Iraq has never known anything like that and that despite Her being bloodily invaded before by barbarians...
But never that way, never like this... Never.

I am even too sad to write...What is there to say?
I find myself strangulated by grief, silenced beyond words, sliding into consternation and disbelief...
I find myself torn inside as if a thousand daggers have transpierced me...
I wonder what God feels...I want to tell Him, Her, It...

The war is in its fifth year, and still, Bush has not produced anything even vaguely resembling a political solution. He is utterly clueless.

The world’s oldest civilization is being destroyed before our eyes — its cities laid to waste, its people slaughtered by the tens of thousands. Saddam never could have dreamed of devastation on this scale. We’ve ruined everything. Truckloads of dead men are delivered to the Baghdad morgue every morning where they are processed and then dumped in mass graves in abandoned soccer fields or schoolyards. 20 percent of the population has either been internally displaced or forced to flee into Jordan and Syria. In Falluja alone, 65 percent of the buildings have been destroyed and tens of thousands of its citizens are left living in tent cities scattered across the desert — exposed to the elements, living on crusts of bread and foul water. The number of refugees has risen rapidly; 2 million in Amman, Damascus and Cairo. They go wherever they can to avoid the bombing and find safety or hselter.

The Iraqi people are now facing what Juan Cole calls an "everyday apocalypse" — a complete security meltdown in which crime and terror flourish in the seedbed of foreign occupation. Bush’s war has created the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our time — 700,000 dead, millions more maimed or traumatized for life, and an entire country reduced to rubble.

Mike Whitney | Iraqis to Bush: "You have left us with nothing"



Dear One, I am so sorry. They have not only destroyed our homes, but they have destroyed Yours as well...
Where are we to go now Dear One? Which refuge? Which direction? Where do we turn? What are we to face?
The roofs have fallen and the skies are uncovered...
And we are like fugitives, running...Looking behind us, in front of us, above us with a sky wide open over our heads and an earth ready to swallow us any moment...

Is there anywhere at all where a Red Line has not been crossed?

From the moment I knocked on the front door of Daoud Mousa al-Maliki's home in Basra, I knew something had gone terribly wrong in the British Army in southern Iraq.

I had seen British military brutality in Northern Ireland - I had even been threatened by British officers in Belfast - but I somehow thought that things had changed, that a new, more disciplined army had emerged from the dark, sinister days of the Irish conflict. But I was wrong. Baha Mousa, Daoud's son, had died from the injuries he received in British custody, a young, decent man whose father was a cop, who did nothing worse than work as a receptionist in a Basra hotel.

Then I went to see Kifah Taha, who had been so badly beaten by British troops in the presence of Baha Mousa that he had terrible wounds in the groin. He told me how the soldiers would call their Iraqi prisoners by the names of football stars - Beckham was one name they used - before kicking them around the detention headquarters in Basra. There were stories of Iraqi prisoners being forced to kneel on sharp stones, of being kicked and punched in the groin, the kidneys, the back, shoulders, forced to sit with their heads down lavatory holes.

Robert Fisk | A cry for justice from a good man who expected us to protect his son



We run and run and there are no lines we have not crossed. No borders, no frontiers...
We run and run and they follow us everywhere...Right into our temple within, our temple without, into our beds, into our sleep, into our dreams...into our prayers...

Not a minaret, not a dome, not a church door...Nothing has been left untouched...

I imagine the Iraqi people will react with anger and shame. Many will blame the United States for bringing this on them, because they brought the war and these leaders and the destruction of the Iraqi society they knew. For many Americans, that will be hard to comprehend, especially since American soldiers carried these boys in their arms and saved their lives.

Lara Logan | Clinging To Life In A Baghdad Orphanage

What intrigues me, despite Lara Logan's insight above and the rescue of these children, is the egregious mendacity with which CBS portrays naive agents of an occupying power that has had five years to secure the Iraqi capital and protect its people and infrastructure — in accordance with Article 32 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as heroes.

In short, throughout its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, it was and remains the United States's responsibility to ensure that such atrocities do not occur.

There's no evading it. The U.S. military, its commander-in-chief, and all U.S. public and private institutions and persons supporting the Iraqi puppet regime, are responsible for the conditions in which these kids find themselves. And by deception through distortion, the U.S. media is as guilty of perpetrating this small war crime — redolent of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu's Romania — as their political masters.

But no mind. Far worse has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen as long as one U.S. soldier remains on Iraqi or any other sovereign nation's soil.

We stand, raise our hands to the sky and we receive fire bombs falling into our arms, against our chests, crushing us...
We bow down and repeat the sacred name and arrows pierce our backs in a ritual ablution of blood...
We prostrate down and touch the earth with our foreheads and mines explode in our faces...

Is there anywhere Dear One, that is no Red Line - Anywhere at all?

Layla Anwar | -/- A Red Line -/-

Unfortunately, while Americans sleep, nope.

Skyline

Table Mountain Panorama

A short while ago, Stuart Savory, the only blogger endowed with perfect recall, was looking for bloggers' skyline pictures. I didn't have a camera, so couldn't send him one. I didn't use a tripod for this one, Stu — nor did I try any of that weird newfangled straightening stuff, but here's my badly-patched entry. "Better late than never," as my old Zen Master used to say.

This is taken from Lion's Head, facing south. It looks a bit insignificant as it stands, but if you right-click it, you should get the picture. On the other side of the big lump of stone (about 20 miles down the road), you'll find my favourite stamping ground, Cape Point. And to the starboard and over the hill, you'll find Chapman's Peak where, in the late 70s, my bike — a '76 Honda CB500 4, used to give me a hell of a run for my money.

Cape Point Lighthouse

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Beautiful place. Absolutely nobody there — access larger images from Panoramio through the Google Earth entry below.

Yup, sixteen months after buying a Canon PowerShot A520 (since upgraded to the PowerShot S3 IS), this blog's Image Gallery now contains 47 albums and 2,500 photographs — mainly of Cape Town.

Best buy I ever made.

Tell The Truth Nigga

Bin Laden didn't blow up da projects... [.flv 7MB]

It's been available four months. I didn't know that. Thought you might not too. So download it above or head over to YouTube.

KILLER3488 comments:
when the rappers made this video : Where they smoking weed? and i don't think u can say that bush never was envoled in it but then again where's the proof

As does Sickillahz:
Fuck you =/
Immortal And Mos talk real shit on this track man honestly he speaks some truful shit tbh

So too does nativebrother9:
da gove dont control internet or else the MS 13 n Al Qaeda wouldnt have web sites like dey do.

By the way, Leslie's having a dust up with Hugh "Integrity" Macleod over some shitty wine we make over here. Madame hates it that we South Africans treat farm laborers worse than Zionists do Palestinians or Americans Iraqis. How's this?

Yesterday I left two comments on gaping void. Lo, when I went back today to see how the conversation was going, both of my comments were nowhere to be found. I should have text padded them but who knew Hugh was such a sensitive censor? He seems like such a awesome rebel dude guy, what with his Cluetrain ripoff school tie askew and shite. He's like Tony Robbins skimming a copy of Cluetrain on a stairmaster while watching midgets teach him how to sell real estate on a flatscreen while chugging a pint. The big blue monster balls up against the wall in his court. Mark my words, the DaVinci veneers are right around the corner. Aisle six Guv'nor, right next to the condom andwiches.

Leslie's dealing with Tesco, crap wine, and teflon airheads here but she's game and I have every confidence in her. Wny? Because she's right.

Macleod, being from another planet, evades the issue, resorting to elision and evasion. Having been bought and paid for, he's an asshole for doing so. Farm laborers, especially on Western Cape boutique wine farms milking the tourist industry (and where the label and bottle are usually infinitely more pleasing than the content), are our new Bushmen, the target of our latest quiet genocide.

And yeah, the dop system is still practised on farms in, would you believe it, Stellenbosch. I'll fill this with links to back my statements but, for now, trust me. Hugh, in a manner redolent of many living the good life in the Western Cape, prefers to see only that which he wishes and is being more than dumb ducking the truth. He's doing his client, Stormhoek, immense disservice — not altogether a bad thing but, really, he's cutting off his nose to spite only his and Stormhoek's face.

JaqueOlantern offers more cautious, if not qualified, opinion:

i doubt rappers know the truth about 9/11

Or bloggers the truth about the wine industry?

Postscript

Questioning the merits of Stormhoek and in the spirit of her Darfurian entries, BlogSister Jeneane Sessum whacks in a great post highlighting the plight of local farm workers. She is more than ably supported by Colonel Frank Paynter of the EGR Irregulars.

When bloggers like Jeneane and Frank get going, you can bet your bottom dollar somethin' is happenin'.

Reading their posts, it struck me Stormhoek seems to believe it's operating in a "money for nothing and your chicks for free" environment. The Web don't work like dat. Blogging ain't a free lunch with a bottle of plonk tossed in. And hey, nobody's accusing Stormhoek of practices endemic to the industry but, to blog effectively and meaningfully in this environment, we need to know from our hard-pressed Hugh what's happening on the ground.

We need to know from the farm workers (no link?) what they put into Stormhoek. Where's their blog? Where's their voice on the Stormhoek site.

Or don't they have one?

It's a great idea dishing out free wine to techies at fatwalleted dinner parties, but these guys are not at the heart of the Blogosphere or the wine industry. They are consumers. Blogging was always going to be about 'conversations.' Either the dream died while I slept or Frank's Rich People took over.

Invite a bunch of local and / or international bloggers, including the media bloggers, the social bloggers, the kitty-litter bloggers, etc. to Stormhoek for a day or two and let them wander the place, speak to the people — especially those who work in the vineyards, and taste the wares. (For those of us who don't drink, a bottle of Wellington chutney will do nicely.)

Show and tell them what you're doing to improve / maintain conditions on your farm and, more important, other farms propping up an industry living off the fat of the land and other people's thirst for the next best thing.

Hell, you should fly somebody like Jeanne — probably the top food blogger on the Web today, out from London. You get the nod from her and you'll really be on to something. Kos might reach large audiences, but those audiences do not lend quality to what amounts to a contribution to the same old information cascade.

Blog to the right people and get the right people to blog. They're not into sour grapes and you'll go far Furthur.

What I'm saying is, if you listen, women will tell you what they want.

And even if you DON'T listen, women will show you what they want.

And if you don't listen and don't take heed, then they will swipe at you and you will be laying face up begging for them to just not hurt you and maybe to get a cage of their own if that would be at all possible.

Then when they move next door, you go back into your plastic dome house and lay around, just like you used to before they ever showed up.

And that's kind of how it works.

Jeneane Sessum

Better listen up, Hugh.

North and South

L'Agulhas — the Southern Tip

Gordon Coale's on to Panoramio and has loaded a full album illustrating one of the world's most beautiful spaces, the North West. Funny thing, the Web. When last I had broadband, I spent time listening to Gordon and his friends broadcast a wonderful gig from Whidbey.

That we were able to communicate during what was a remarkable hour of music made it one of the best live performances I've attended — and, having covered live music, I've heard many a late-night jazz-blues jam. Given time zones, it made it 03:00 or thereabouts for me, so I'm forced to live on the great memory of it. And Whidbey's stuck away in a remote corner of the North American continent, a stone's throw and a world away from Vancouver.

Now, thanks to Panoramio, I get to see more of Gordon's neck of the woods — for that is what they are. So here's to you from the southern tip of Africa, Gordon, the place where East, West, and the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. And because Google Earth seems to have focused more closely on our urban conurbations than these great spaces — it makes the photographs more worthwhile.

Post Apocalypto

Cape Point

Okay, for a minute or two I thought that nice Melvin Gibson boy's Apocalypto had come and gone. Having published Panoramio to Blogger, nothing happened. "O ye of little faith..." sprung to mind. I republished and whaddaya know? The thing worked. So here's a tour of the foot of Africa and some instruction in the geography of the peninsular tip.

Just click the icons and Panoramio will do the rest. You can check out a thumbnail, right-click a larger image on the Panoramio page, or right-click that and get the original. Forty-one photographs in one short blog entry? Records are set to be broken.

The Cape Peninsula is tipped by three capes. The Cape of Good Hope, the most south-western tip of Africa is — naturally, to the west of the other two capes and, with Dias Point, forms the western bounds of Dias Beach. Little-known Cape Maclear (on which the old lighthouse is situated) furthers the rocky road and sees sea cliffs towering to Heaven — well, at least eight or nine hundred feet. Things fast get dodgy and there's little sand, howling winds, intimidating rocks, looming cliffs, and a bloody big ocean surging about you as you slog further south.

It's all worth the effort when you reach the foot of Cape Point, the third of our three capes. To put it bluntly, it's fucking awesome. Adding to the wonder of the place, a couple of caverns, which can be seen from above, give a seldom-seen view of both Dias Point and the Cape of Good Hope.

Hmm...

According to a map generated by the South African Geographic Names System, I'm as much to blame for getting place names wrong as anybody. Apparently Cape of Good Hope adjoins Cape Maclear, which bounds Dias Beach (a fast-closing beach break) to the west. I've mistaken Dias Point (on the eastern side of Dias Beach) for Cape Maclear, but at least I do know two of the three when I see them.

Then again, perhaps local knowledge clinches it. I go with Sunset Beach on this one.

Note: Whichever way one looks at it, do not try this walk at home. It can get decidedly rough and both extreme caution and local knowledge are called for.

Cool Tools

Kalk Bay

This is just what I wanted to see happening before the Apocalypse. Panoramio and Google Earth put place and space together to get context — a marriage made in Heaven for all happy snappers.

Before the Apocalypse? Yeah. I've been thinking about images. About how the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Mayans, and now we adopted highly stylized representations (some deluded fools think we're aiming or achieving realism) of that which we wish to communicate. Simulacra. We're at the Anime meets Big Brother stage. Not long to go.

Well, bring it on. Here's a user-friendly, interactive, personal (yeah, as in 'me', myself', and 'I') photo gallery where you get to travel with our latest pocketbook weapon of mass distraction, the digital camera.

As for Google taking over the virtual world (few companies have not been acquired and, for many, it's been a case of plain bad luck)? An early adopter, I don't care. It's still the real world that irks me.

Note: If nothing happens in the square above the text in your browser, forget it. You're either on dial-up or read too much of that fantasy shit. For you, the Apocalypse already happened.