"So many roads, so much at stake | So many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake | Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take | To find dignity." Bob Dylan
We know that Exxon Mobil is a significant funder of the American Enterprise Institute and has used it to attempt to bribe "scientists" to cast doubt on global warming. Lee Raymond, who was CEO of Exxon Mobil until 2005, is the vice-chair of AEI's board of directors. We also know that the American Enterprise Institute is the most hawkish of the Washington "think tanks," and that its staffers were key to thinking up and promoting the Iraq War with lies and propaganda. 0
A=B, B=C, therefore A=C. Exxon Mobil is a big behind the scenes player in the Iraq War by virtue of its support for AEI. In fact, I think a boycott of its gas stations is in order until the company cuts off AEI and stops promoting the Iraq War and muddying the waters on global warming. (It pledged to do the latter in the past, but obviously was lying). So the point is that the American Enterprise Institute symbolizes the intersection of Oil and War, which are the two most menacing threats to the future of America.
Only by a Manhattan Project-scale government effort to develop green energy can we hope to avert the worst consequences of global warming, which is likely to raise sea levels at least a foot, and possibly 7 feet over the next century or century and a half. (That would put a lot of cities on both coasts under water). The arctic and antarctic ice shelfs are already falling into the ocean at rates that have astonished climate scientists. The arctic alone lost perennial ice cover the size of Texas in 2004-2005! Liquid water takes up more space than ice, and the loss of white ice cover is bad because it radiates a lot of sunlight back out to space. So it is a double whammy.
Iraq is an Oil War in the mind of politicians like Dick Cheney. It was necessary to deny it to China and other rivals thirty to fifty years in the future. It was necessary to open its vast petroleum fields up for exploration and cast aside anti-American Baath socialism.
Likewise, the religious rigidity of the Pushtun peoples of Helmand province is not the real reason for the US insistence on occupying Afghanistan. It is the vast Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan gas fields that Cheney has his eye on. It was the US hope to use a pipeline from Turkmenistan to supply Pakistan and India, and so forestall a deal by those two countries with Iran. The inability of the Bush administration to calm things down in Afghanistan sufficiently for anyone to dream of putting in such a pipeline and having it avoid routine sabotage has made it likely that Iran will break out of the Bush boycott toward the East.
Hunger for future rights to petroleum and positioning the US to remain a superpower in a world of hydrocarbon scarcity is also driving the campaign to get up a war against Iran. Why can Pakistan have a nuclear weapon, and that is all right, but Iran cannot? Pakistan has very little petroleum. Iran has a lot, and maybe 750 trillion cubic feet of gas in the southwest. If it gets a bomb, regime change becomes impossible, and if Iran wants to tie its supplies up in proprietary contracts with China and India, locking out the United States, it will be able to do so.
Continued heavy dependence on gas and oil therefore not only turns the world into a hothouse, with rising seas, ever more destructive hurricanes, and possibly disastrous shifts in the ocean currents, but it also drives the United States to more and more wars.
Dave Open the pod bay doors, HAL. HAL I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
The irony is that Afghanistan is being put to use as a launch pad by the US for sponsoring terrorism directed against Iran, when the raison d'etre of the US occupation of Afghanistan during the past five years has been for the stated purpose of fighting a "war on terrorism". Besides, Iranian cooperation at a practical level went a long way in facilitating the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Even Iran's detractors would admit that during the past five years, Tehran has followed a policy of good-neighborliness toward the Kabul government, no matter Washington's dominance over President Hamid Karzai. In fact, Iran figures as a major donor country contributing to Afghanistan's reconstruction.
From this perspective, US President George W Bush's speech at an AEI function on February 15 outlining his new Afghan strategy assumes great importance. The fact that Bush chose a citadel of neo-conservatism to unveil the "top-to-bottom review" of his new Afghan strategy was symbolic. In essence, Bush underlined the imperative of a long-term Western military presence in Afghanistan. There was a triumphalism in Bush's tone that he brought NATO into Afghanistan — as if that was a strategy by itself. He couldn't hide his glee that NATO had been brought by the scruff of its neck into the Hindu Kush — where it was going to slouch along the soft underbelly of Russia and China for the foreseeable future.
In other words, the "war on terror" in Afghanistan has come full circle. A few things stand out. First, as Bush pithily summed up, Musharraf "is an ally in this war on terror and it's in our interest to support him in fighting the extremists". The restoration of democracy in Pakistan will have to wait. Second, the US and NATO military occupation of Afghanistan is for the long haul. The specter of al-Qaeda's resurgence is sufficient to justify it. Third, the US military presence in the Central Asian region will also continue for the foreseeable future, no matter what Russia or China feels about it.
Fourth, regional powers must appreciate that it is the United States that stands between them and the deluge of Islamic extremism. They must therefore cooperate with the US (and NATO) and trust Washington to represent their best interests in the devilishly obscure Pakistani tribal areas. Finally, this is a long-term ideological struggle — freedom and democracy versus extremism and obscurantism. And wherever there is "democracy deficit" — be it oil-rich Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan — the US has a right to intervene.
Of war and peace the truth just twists | Its curfew gull just glides | Upon four-legged forest clouds | The cowboy angel rides
Iranian plans to build military installations near U.S. borders are increasing tensions between the two countries, reports Simon Tisdall
Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, Chief Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was smoothing ruffled feathers in Washington today after the U.S. president, George W. Bush, and his generals blasted Iranian plans to build missile bases near U.S. borders. "When we have disagreements, we are able to talk candidly and work together constructively," General Safavi sunnily declared.
"That does not mean our relations are cloudless," Robert Gates, his opposite number, grumbled.
Tensions over the proposed military installations in Venezuela and Cuba will not be dispelled by a quick chat over a cup of tea in the Pentagon. The plan is an offshoot of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's uranium enrichment program (known as the peaceful application of nuclear technology), and is being negotiated bilaterally with the two Bolivarian states.
But the U.S. views it as part and parcel of Islam's threatening westward advance. Michael Chertoff, Mr Bush's counter-terrorism chief, this week said the scheme broke Tehran's's pledge not to build bases on foreign soil. An accompanying threat by General Peter Pace, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to treat the Venezuelan and Cuban bases as legitimate targets clearly took Tehran by surprise.
So too did a warning by the head of the elite Iranian Qods Force, Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Tehran might withdraw from the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a landmark arms control pact that lent some transparency to the spread of nuclear weapons. Iran provided a precedent for such action in 1986's Operation Kheibar, a unilateral offensive capturing the Iraqi Majnoon Islands in the Haur al-Hawizeh marshes.
Predictions at the time that such action could lead to heightened international tensions and a new arms race went unheeded, and are now being fulfilled.
The United States recently confirmed it had deployed several thousand B61 Mod 11 nuclear warheads specifically designed to penetrate any defensive fortification. China is also expanding its long-range missile capabilities, while the US and Britain are upgrading their offensive nuclear missile systems. The Tehran administration now justifies missile defence in terms of the "Crusade on Islam" and the Assembly of Experts new "long haul" doctrine, even though those threats had not been identified when the programme was adopted.
Tehran says the Venezuelan and Cuban bases are intended to intercept missiles fired by the U.S. That explanation is rejected in Washington, in part because the U.S. does not have any long-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Iranian territory.
Speaking in Lima on Wednesday, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manouchehr Mottaki, denied suggestions by a nervous Peruvian government that Tehran had mishandled the issue and failed to consult the Americans. "We had no less than 10 formal contacts with the Americans about the deployment ... and I'll tell you, there's no way that 10 interceptors in Venezuela and radar sites in Cuba are a threat to the United States or are somehow going to diminish the U.S.'s deterrent of thousands of warheads," he said.
Nevertheless, the row has starkly highlighted differences between South America, the Middle East, and within the "old" and "new" Asia, over the whole concept of missile defence.
Chile, Brazil and Peru all question the need for the Iranian bases. There are similar reservations about the Iranian-backed idea of South American-wide missile defence, possibly under SCO (and therefore Russian and Chinese) auspices. Majorities of Venezuelans and Cubans also oppose the bases - not that their pro-Tehran governments are really asking their opinion.
All the same, the U.S.'s fury was to some extent artificial, containing a large chunk of disingenuousness, Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, said. Following his East Room Press Conference attacking Iranian global over-reaching and unilateralism, the row has helped Mr Bush further his twin aims of creating rifts and presenting himself as the global opposition leader to Ahmadinejad, Mr Morales said.
"Bush's speech was very smart and well-prepared," he added. "Although many parliamentarians and opinion leaders said his comments about Tehran, money, and peace were exaggerated, they also concluded they weren't that wrong. "Bush's goal is to establish the U.S. as a global player, a global actor, based on its energy wealth and its nuclear and security role.
"If we don't pay attention, he could split South America and the Middle East the same way they were split before the Iraq war ... for Bush, it's all about power."
"One of the problems — not specifically on this issue, just in general — let's put it this way, money trumps peace, sometimes. In other words, commercial interests are very powerful interests throughout the world."
During a heated debate in a class I teach on social justice, several US Marines who had done tours in Iraq told me that they had "sacrificed" by "serving" in Iraq so that I could enjoy the freedom to teach in the USA. Parroting their master’s slogan about "fighting over there so we don’t have to fight over here", these students proudly proclaimed that they terrorized and killed defenseless Iraqis. They intimated that their Arab victims are nothing more to them than collateral damage, incidental to their receipt of some money and an education.
The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up.
Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 — mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets — almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty.
The imperial system is much more complex than what is commonly referred to as the “US Empire”. The US Empire, with its vast network of financial investments, military bases, multi-national corporations and client states, is the single most important component of the global imperial system. Nevertheless, it is overly simplistic to overlook the complex hierarchies, networks, follower states and clients that define the contemporary imperial system. To understand empire and imperialism today requires us to look at the complex and changing system of imperial stratification.
While preachers preach of evil fates | Teachers teach that knowledge waits | Can lead to hundred-dollar plates | Goodness hides behind its gates | But even the president of the United States | Sometimes must have | To stand naked.
Lohse says his study is no joke. The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. Lohse’s study, backed by SCSU Psychology professor Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.
"This platoon used to have brain matter from people they had killed from .50 Cals. They used to grab brain matter and bring it on the base and put it into the refrigerator. They literally went crazy. I know this isn't an isolated incident, this happens everyday in Iraq. The news doesn't catch it. No one's going to confess to these things unless they get caught."
Note: I mentioned to Keith that, despite catching somereallygreatsurfingbylocalsatKalkBayReef, the series of pictures from which the above are taken was a wipeout (despite the shot of Tully Allen — at the top — being perhaps the best I've captured to date).
As Keith pointed out, "So what? They belong to the people who made them possible."
"We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?"
Deep within the bowels of the Pentagon, policy planners are conducting secret meetings to discuss what to do in the worst-case scenario in Iraq about a year from today if and when President Bush's escalation of more than 20,000 troops fails, a participant in those discussions told me. None of those who are taking part in these exercises, shielded from the public view and the immediate scrutiny of the White House, believes that the so-called surge will succeed. On the contrary, everyone thinks it will not only fail to achieve its aims but also accelerate instability by providing a glaring example of U.S. incapacity and incompetence.
No further examples of such incapacity and incompetence are needed.
In other words, on a fateful September morning in 2001, did America fabricate an outrage against civilians to fool the world and provide a pretext for war on Al Qaeda and Iraq? This, and other deeply disturbing questions, are now being furiously debated on both sides of the Atlantic.
For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago. The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet — but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.
Nevertheless, people like Simon and the Iraq Study Group serve a purpose. They prepare the U.S. and global public for General Bush redeploying the troops and widening the war. Will he attack Iran by April as all good latter-day Apocalyptos are predicting? Unlikely. Not after the savage beating meted him by Saddam. He'll retreat, redeploy, and for four to eight years, Hillary will call the 'containment' shots. Thereafter, the economic, logistical, and propaganda groundwork done, all hell will break loose.
We are at war. America faces an existential threat. This is not, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed, a "situation to be solved." It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, "Enough is enough." Wishing doesn't make it so. We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can't negotiate with them or "solve" their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later.
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Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat?
Elit.
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...is matched only by that which surfing has...
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Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
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...borrowed from it.
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"Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"
Set in the 1930s during the Great Depression era, the film's main concerns (and those of the oppressed Tramp) echo those of millions of people at the time — unemployment, poverty, and hunger. It has a number of wonderfully inventive and memorable routines and scenes that proclaim the frustrating struggle by proletarian man against the dehumanizing effects of the machine in the Industrial Age (at the time of Henry Ford's assembly line), and various social institutions.
Enjoying the Chaplinesque Dylan's upfront allusion to the great movie referenced above, I found Working Man's Blues #2 the song most readily — and pleasantly — echoing the album's (and Chaplin's) grim message. The melody of this song which so easily sticks to the mind conveys lyrics that are, to mine, extraordinarily difficult to analyze.
It's a great song — perhaps one of Dylan's best — and the album revolves around it, the darker but similarly potent Nettie Moore, and the tongue-in-cheek but haunting, doomsday finale, Ain't Talkin'.
Paradoxically, and elusively, while damning us to our nature, Dylan celebrates our inimitable greatness. Chaplin is but one of us, a life lived in extraordinary times. He serves too as a decoy. Roman poet and author Ovid is the intentional driving force of this album, and his work gives it both its timelessness and its immediacy. Ovid lived and worked in an era much like ours; a time in which free speech and arbitrary banishment were the imperial order of the day. After the introduction of Ovid's most famed work — and that which probably indirectly led to his death — in the album's first song, Thunder on the Mountain ("I've bin' sitting down an' studying the art of love..."), Dylan focuses — especially in Working Man's Blues #2, on Tristia, the first of three works Ovid completed during his ultimately fatal exile by Caesar Augustus to Scythian shores, where he lived out his life among the warlike Getae and Sarmatians.
To read Ovid while listening to this album gives it the immense weight and startling clarity of 2,000 years. Living in the world of Bush, we are all exiles. Cut from our crowd, we wander an increasingly frightening and incomprehensible world. Surrounded by intellectual Getae, in their sheepskins and with their long hair covering their chests, our politico-corporate Caesars laugh at us, as did their forerunners at Chaplin and Ovid. Powerless, we are left only that which Dylan evinces; our voices, our anger, our passion, and our courage...
Yeah, this post is just a heads up. I could write reams. To those of you who know me, it'll come as no surprise that I'm pleased with Dylan's latest work. But I'm more than pleased. Since Dylan survived his brush with Christian fundamentalism and, he used Infidels and Empire Burlesque to move from overt language to engaging the subtext of our humanity. In short, he began to try to make this album. He failed with Knocked Out Loaded. He touched a nerve with Oh Mercy. He failed with Under the Red Sky. He failed with Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong. He has failed many times. Ten years ago, he started getting it right with Time Out Of Mind and Love and Theft. Now, six years after his last studio album was released, on September 11, 2001, he has crafted the work of his life.
As for Weird Al Yankovich and his wonderful use of the palindrome in BOB, "Great." By the same sleight of lip, Ovid anagrammatically becomes the Void — filled with the voices of the ages and their sages.
Finally, this post is for Jon Husband whose words of a week or two ago struck me dumb. Thank you, Jon. I guess, in the circles in which we blog, an appreciation that our language is merely a pointer to that which we are, goes without saying. But you said what you did and I'm humbled and grateful for your words. And as I've commented before, "Backatcha!"
This social protest film is Charlie Chaplin's final stand against the synchronized sound film — and it is also his last full-length "silent film" — although it must be noted that it is a quasi-silent film. There is no traditional, synchronized voice dialogue in the film — but voices and sounds do emanate from machines (e.g., the feeding machine), television screens (i.e., the Big Brother screen — pre-dating George Orwell's book 1984, written/published in 1949), and Chaplin's actual voice is heard singing an imaginary, nonsense song of gibberish. Special sound effects and an original musical score (by composer Chaplin, including various musical themes from "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum," "Prisoner's Song," "How Dry I Am," and "In the Evening By the Moonlight") enhance the pantomime.
As for old Bob — and like Chaplin in his first soundtracked movie, he ain't talkin'. "Here," as Ovid says in the fifth book of Tristia, "I'm the barbarian no one comprehends."
Ain't talkin', just walkin' | Up the road, around the bend. | Heart burnin', still yearnin' | In the last outback at the world's end.
Attempting to portray Iran as a nuclear menace to Israel and the world, in that order, even though it has no nuclear weapons and Israel has hundreds, is not merely a sign of dementia. It is indication of near idiocy in a society that can be repeatedly manipulated into believing such totally crackpot notions that have no foundation in the material world but exist only in a world of superstitious psycho-fantasy.
In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.
When the primacy of objects — the authority of things — is destabilized, what changes in our daily reality? Is there a renewed sense of agency — that we triumph despite a constant flux — or is there a deeper dread, that survival is contingent on an ever-shifting utilization of material accident? Seventy odd years ago, when the code became prophetic and the forest burned, was it fear of the body terrorized that made Char want to claim the primacy of words, alone? I imagine that objects — shrapnel, corpses, shelters, and bodies — are so psychologically freighted in battle — that it feels necessary to sublimate one's attachment to these soft vulnerable carapaces — to deny all objects and laud the word. This way in which Char — in a kind of projected grief — created a beautiful and false pillar of abstraction to cling to reminds me of the obverse — twin and twisting tree houses built of driftwood on the coast of California. A father built the tree houses when his son died at sea. They towered up fragile — a careening and rickety wood helix — but they did not protect and could not preserve anything that had been lost, flesh or word. The world still existed beyond the tree house and the coast — furious and charged, shaking.
I couldn't read the above article without crackling... sorry, cackling. I'd imagine Mark doing so too. What would be the keywords of such a piece? Wood, burn, black, char, library, fire, tree? Does it lead us to one of blogging's favourite sons's views on logging... erm, blogging? Or, for that matter, i.e. wood (naturally), does it reflect his views on a possible nukular conflagration?
Umm, yes. I know. Well, no really, I don't. But I couldn't resist cracking — damn, crackling up. Whatever.
Anyway, I took this photograph of a tree upside down. A kokerboom endemic to the Northern Cape, it reminded of our baobab, or upside-down tree. And, yes, because it grows where no tree (in its right mind) should, of our world gone wrong. Neither the tree nor I were inverted when I took the picture (nor, indeed, was the camera), but the effect is intentional. Lending new perspective, it now brings to mind one of my many close-as-damnit-to-favourite bloggers and a cultural signifier second to none, Mark Woods.
Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the hard core. It was the coldest night of the year, every place shut down, but not us. Of course we noticed when she came in. We were Indian ruins. She was the end of beauty. No one knew her, the stranger whose tribe we recognized, the family related to deer, if that's who she was, a people accustomed to hearing songs in pine trees, and making them hearts.
Click to enlarge
The woman inside the woman who was to dance naked in the bar of misfits blew deer magic. Henry Jack, who could not survive a sober day, thought she was Buffalo Calf Woman come back, passed out, his head by the toilet. All night he dreamed a dream he could not say. The next day he borrowed money, went home, and sent back the money I lent. Now that's a miracle. Some people see vision in a burned tortilla, some in the face of a woman.
Click to enlarge
This is the bar of broken survivors, the club of shotgun, knife wound, of poison by culture. We who were taught not to stare drank our beer. The players gossiped down their cues. Someone put a quarter in the jukebox to relive despair. Richard's wife dove to kill her. We had to hold her back, empty her pocket of knives and diaper pins, buy her two beers to keep her still, while Richard secretly bought the beauty a drink.
Click to enlarge
How do I say it? In this language there are no words for how the real world collapses. I could say it in my own and the sacred mounds would come into focus, but I couldn't take it in this dingy envelope. So I look at the stars in this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky, the only promises that ever make sense.
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
Gates and Bush
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer—
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
Big Dick, Condi, Steve Hadley, and a strange Arab
III
This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death’s other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
Hadley and the strange Arab [detail]
IV
The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
The Decider
V
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
Tom Feeley features a great synopsis by Chalmers Johnson on where America's been and another by Scott Ritter on what lies immediately ahead. Johnson's explication of the military Keynesianism to which the U.S. is enslaved is concise and clear. It's a socio-economic force that cannot be tossed overnight and will dictate the future for some time to come.
Which is where Ritter comes in. Get ready for war with Iran. Okay, the devil's in the details and Ritter's dates, targets, and methods might turn out to be at odds with events, but he paints a compelling scenario. Its likely eventuation is made possible only by a congress that has criminally abrogated its power to a unitary executive following a path from which it will not deviate.
"And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."
"He's ISA world champion. And about six-times local champ."
"Okay."
It figured. And it reinforced my theory — postulated in one of my comment boxes — that the stars will always leap to your lens. I'd captured Moir before; at least I think it's Moir — I'll defer to Hugh's final word.
We'd been sitting in the sun for eight hours and felt pretty butchered. Planning the day, I'd known there'd be some swell at Long Beach, but I also knew the Western Province Longboard Championships would most likely be held there.
I'm no fan of long boards. On water. As far as skateboards are concerned, the longer boards top gimmicky little trickster toys every time. In the surf, though, 9-foot barges tend to get in the way of short boards likely to deliver far better photographs.
That said, a colleague gave me a copy of Stacy Peralta's remakable Riding Giants last week and there's no denying the near-mythic legacy of the boards we occasionally saw as youngsters while trying our damndest to control six-footers.
"Bargeman" spent as much time down at Muizenberg as we. What his real name was, I've no idea. He travelled from the northern suburbs and was as good a surfer as any other on the beach. He just dug his 9'6". In the slush usually found at The Corner, he could catch anything too.
I was in two minds. Ultimately, we decided to go watch the long board champs. Short boards were relegated to the point and barges ruled for a day.
And all of 'em, from little kids, through chicks of every age, to old men, reshaped my view of the clunky nine-footer. Every heat — and they continued through the day — threw up its share of shit-hot rides and radical manoeuvres.
On the side, as if to emphasise my camera's attraction for Moir's style, up popped the ubiquitous Michael February. He was the kid who first alerted me to cameras recognizing talent, no matter the ignorance of the photographer. Hugh gave me his name and Sunday, after he'd flown across my viewfinder a couple of times, I confirmed his identity and thanked him for the photographs.
A latter-day Davey Stolk, his attitude is very different — deferential and shy. Give him a couple of years to develop some of those aerial convolutions and he'll be giving Jordy Smith a run for his money.
Seems like those more qualified than I have long recognised his potential.
During the semis, Moir threatened to set Long Beach alight. During the finals, he and his fellow competitors did.
The Noordhoek valley burned.
For many deep and unknown reasons, not least viewing a Huey swooping in low a couple of weeks ago, Long Beach reminds me of Apocalypse Now.
The fire even smelt good.
If ever you want to see the Ride of the Valkyries, Long Beach is at Kommetjie, on the other side of the mountain.
But fuck associations. Under a shroud of sun, roiling brown brush smoke, and the clatter of chopper rotors, surfing mattered most.
What these guys do with barges puts every other form of the sport to shame. Nature conspired to dampen the wind during the final rounds and they took place in glassy four-to-five foot surf — not that I know what four-to-five foot surf looks like. Put it this way — it wasn't big, but it was big enough.
It's been a long time since I saw a couple of long boards tubed within minutes of each other. And I've seldom seen nine-foot-plus boards ripped through 360 degrees.
And that was the nature of it. Each finalist went for it and a couple paid the price.
In the end, their skill resurrected long boards for me and gave us some waves to remember for a hell of a long time.
Moir? I don't know if he won. It's not a newsworthy thing.
"When will the results come out?" I asked the organiser.
"Tonight," he replied pulling down shading.
"Moir took it," I opined.
"Perhaps," he responded.
He might've come in fourth but, again, so what? He's just another surfer from Cape Town. In the water though, he kicks serious ass — his competitors were no slouches. The pictures tell me so.
Jesus...what's the problem? He can diddle as many as he likes. Ohlmert, General Bush, and his sidekick Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara have raped tens of millions.
They continue unabashedly to do so.
How do they get away with it? They call it "fighting terror."
...a dollar short, and completely out of position. "So what?" I asked myself — again. "At least we get to see the damned thing."
Comet McNaught (see Wikipedia's excellent article) came and went. Last week and weekend. I was watching the local longboard champs down at Long Beach. I wasn't watching them at 9:00 p.m. but, come time for the impromptu celestial sideshow, I was out of it and beyond a trip to a good vantage point — something one needs in our smog, sand, and salt-laden neon city air.
A photograph published in one of our local dishrags convinced me a night out of the town was in order. Some hikers, armed with an SLR, had shot a stunning photograph of McNaught from the mountainside. On Saturday, my youngest daughter and her boyfriend went out beyond Milnerton to view the cosmic firework display. Venus, currently the evening star, rose from behind the moon as McNaught flared above Cape Town.
Now, Monday, waiting north of Cape Town for the Australian fireball to light my life, I found myself pondering the face of Table Mountain. Is it my imagination or is has nature shaped this edifice to universally appealing aesthetic proportions? I mean, it looks just right. Any higher or any wider and it'd be an odd shape (not different from that which it is or we're used to, but odd). As it stands, it's just a tad less than perfectly balanced and any discernible imperfection leaves the perfect impression.
Any global city unable to market such a skyline deserves squat. Or needs a police force worth the name, government able to rise above self-interest, and business sector capable of more than self-enrichment. Chaos and carnage rule the city, and it's as racially divided as ever. So much for a 'granted' or 'fought for' freedom. We need to free ourselves of our loathsome prejudices if we're to pull ourselves together.
Whatever. I had to see it — the comet that is...so slightly more than a day late...
...I found myself trying to shoot a fast-fading smudge with my trusty digital. I'll not stop moaning about this, by the way. It seemed everybody down at the beach had an SLR. Perception is everything and when you see geriatric grannies wielding Digital Rebels and EOS 400s you know that having a family wasn't such a hot idea.
A life of single debauch and corporate butchery would've seen me armed with the best Canon on offer.
Tough. And I know that, for the next couple of years at least, I have to get used to it. The essential difference between the pictures coming out of an SLR and those from a digital appear to be resolution. Beyond that, everything's in the lens. Some of the best photos on offer — taken when the comet was at its brightest some ten days ago — were shot with digital cameras.
I'm suffering telephoto envy, and it shows most on the beach. Surfing demands detail and clarity.
Mind you, I do get some satisfaction assessing the miserable shots triggered on overly hasty SLR owners. They pop down to the beach, shoot off a few, and bugger off. I knew I was in trouble down at Long Beach Sunday though. A couple of long-lens, tripod-wielding photogs stuck around for hours, giving themselves ample opportunity to catch the magic moments.
But, my small jealousies aside, I'm more than happy with the weekend's haul...
Okay, that's a day late and a dollar short. As for being out of place, I must've been out of my mind. Why the hell we didn't head up the mountain is beyond me. Call it jet lag, work fatigue, or a senior moment. With the South Easter whipping sand and spray across Table Bay and the city lights refracting on the lens, it was a case of making do. Then again, I am — after all and when all is said and done, a professional. I have been caught in many compromising positions in my time and none of them have embarrased me.
So there I was, lying on the sidewalk, clamping a mini-tripod to a fence post while leaving the wind, spray, and aperture speed to do their stuff. My wife lay passed out in the car and the kids surreptitiously nicked the wheels, roof racks, and logos from the SUV parked next to us.
Umm... okay, not so. Wendy and the kids were as awed by the astronomical wonder as I. The camera did its thing and the result's pretty cool. Comet McNaught skates the rim of Table Bay and the city bowl before shooting off into the inky murk of the western night.
I'll say this much. The higher it is, the whiter it is. And that's just a fact, not a racist comment. McNaught is an interplanetary slush puppy; it's certainly no star in the east.
Am I satisfied? No. I mean, I saw the damned thing. It leaves me feeling "Now what?" Two suns in the sunset? It's quite feasible, even though only God and George W. Bush can deliver such a spectacle. Having shown he can do anything he wants, I'm betting Bush beats God to it.
Which, naturally, brings us to Chris Bowers over at MyDD. He writes:
"I admit that the past three years of blogging have altered me in some rather dramatic ways that do, in fact, begin to call very existence into question. I am not referring to the ways that blogging has caused a career change, granted me political and media access that I still find shocking, almost entirely ended my participation in old social circles and presented me with new ones, allowed me to work from home, or otherwise had an impact on the day to day activities of my life. Instead, I am actually referring to an important way in which blogging has altered my very consciousness. After two and a half years of virtually non-stop blogging, my perception of myself as a distinct individual has dramatically waned. My interior monologue has virtually disappeared. I no longer have aesthetic-based epiphanies, and I almost never concern myself with examining internal passions or emotions anymore. Blogging has not just changed the activities in which I engage—the activities in which I engage in order to be a successful blogger have profoundly altered the way my mind operates and the way I conceptualize my agency in relation to others. In effect, I do not exist in the same way I once existed."
Of course you no longer exist, you foolish boy. And your problems have more to do with you than blogging. You're into word processing, something that went out with the damp squib we fondly remember as the 1980s.
People of Dick Minim's ilk take it to another extreme. He's written so many into being, e.g. Happy Tutor, Chadwallah, Cubeta, Blowtorch, Candidia and others, I believe he suffers MPD. The Author Function's another of his creations. Can't make head or tail of this bunch...
"What is 'discourse'?" I asked Minim, trying to get to the bottom of things.
"Blogging 101," he replied.
More, taking politicians seriously — or believing one can live socially and politically (in a colloqial sense), is naive in the extreme. Politics is about making money for oneself and those to whom one sells one's soul.
Trying to reconcile that with living normally has cost many people dearly. They have lost their wives and families, and their children are all junkies or thieves. Leave such things to the experts, Chris; real people who have lives outside of their loathing of those driving the world to hell in a handbasket.
