Home, land, security. Great concept, but put together, it spells NSA, and it's nasty.

9/11.

Two planes on the twin towers, another on the Pentagon, and one crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. I'm sure we all remember where we were when the footage started coming out, and we probably watched those impacts in New York many times.

I remember a journalist saying on TV: "The world will never be the same again". I though at the time that he was exaggerating, but no, he was right. The world has not been the same since.

Now, I am not a conspiracy theorist, I believe it's very hard to conceal big things that involve lots of people for a long time (remember a secret is something you only share with one person at the time), and in this case, I am unconvinced, either way. I can't believe that a government would do this and get away with it, and at the same time I have reservations about the Pentagon plane, and am sort of not sure about the whole thing. Anyway, that's not really the point.

It happened, killed hundreds, and indeed the world has not been the same since.

There are few things that make me wonder however about the post - 9/11 era.

The first one is that I find it very coincidental that the moment the Berlin wall came down, we found ourselves a new enemy. Bloody commies didn't make it and raised the white flag, and bingo! Muslim fanatics pop up everywhere. There was no such thing prior to the late 90's, was there? Not in that structured, focused and dangerous way anyway (Ok, the PLO blew up a few planes, as did Gaddafi, but is wasn't really muslim fundamentalism, was it? It was local politics using violence to advertise their case as I recall). Mostly, anyway.

All of a sudden we have "Al Qaeda", a very sophisticated, well financed, global organization with a clear objective to impose a global caliphate, at least in the Middle East, but preferably world-wide.

Right.

What were these buggers doing when the wall was still up? And how come they only pop up their ugly heads after most of the wall was sold as souvenirs?

Secondly, after the Afghanistan invasion and the partial and temporary demise of the Taliban (nasty people, these, unless you like your women to be seriously obedient, don't drink, sing, dance or generally enjoy anything but beheading folks.....armed to the teeth by the Western world, I might add), some Texan schmock decides that Saddam is really a very bad guy, protects muslim fundamentalists (he never did, he quartered them), has weapons of mass destruction (anybody knows a weapon of no destruction? Oh, and he didn't by the way, which is what the UN said all along), and really, my dear, he is just a bad person, isn't he?

Now, North Korea has bad stuff - proven and tested. It has a very friendly little man as leader, right in the footsteps of his father and grand-father. OK, no muslims there, but still. No, he's ok, let's ship some fertilizers and stuff so these poor people don't starve.He's just a communist, they are not threatening are they?

Want a list of countries led by "bad" people (in the opinion of the Western world) and enjoy membership at the UNHCR, the commission for refugees, OHCHR, the commission for human rights, or other perfectly decent organizations?

Anyway, so Irak is invaded, the US makes a mess of it, and eventually leaves.

Meanwhile the "War on Terror" is launched. Homeland security is set up, new powers are granted to the "authorities" to "protect" the people (American people mostly that is, the others are just potential terrorists). Many countries follow suite. Too good an occasion to tighten the noose and get a grip on all those free thinkers that bother the smooth running of government.

Massive data basis' are set up, new detention powers granted, Guantanamo becomes the shame of the Western World, and... and we, the poor citizen of this world, we... get our mugs shot, fingers printed, passports changed to biometric, and then biometric mkII, our mails are collected and sometimes read, our phone conversations are listened to (ask Angela Merkel), and if you buy a rucksack AND a bottle of gas on the same day at the same shop, you risk the police raiding your house at dawn...

On a boat, we risk "hard boarding", i.e. armed people getting aboard never mind that your wife is naked in the shower (it happened to a catamaran in Trinidad not very long ago). We risk getting boarded by US coast guards in international waters, against all Maritime laws (also happened to some friends on a yacht not too far from Cuba (another dangerous place, that, hence the "embargo" without which, no doubt Cuba would invade the US).

 We are all very thankful of all the attention. Nice change...

I obviously take exception to all of this. If it did make any sense at all, I may actually go along with it (reluctantly)(not really)(no. I probably won't go along with this at any time). But anyway, the thing is it DOESN'T make sense..

At all.

Imagine you are Al Qaeda. You are a bunch of very smart, well financed fanatics, dedicated to destroy this evil Western society and set up the law of Allah.

Just imagine.

Would you go only for airplanes and airports? And the odd embassy?
Would you attack only the best defended parts of Western society?
You: sophisticated, smart and well financed?

Would you?

I know there were attacks on the London tube and a couple of buses, as well as the Madrid railway station*. But frankly, how well are bus stops, railway stations and the tube defended? The answer is NOT AT ALL. Yet for some reason the incidence of attacks on these targets is extremely rare.

Now imagine you are really smart, well financed, etc... Wouldn't you go for other things than just planes? Bridges, tunnels, shopping malls, undergrounds everywhere, whatever makes a big bang with little risk? Disrupting the western world in a really big way (can't go to work, searched before shopping, infrastructure blown up left right and center). Boy that would mess up our system...

I took the TGV (French rocket train) from Paris to Brussels a few years ago. No controls upon entering the railway station or boarding the train in Paris (I think they carry about 1500 people at close to 400 km/h). In Brussels, I was taking a plane to Heathrow. I showed my passport about 6 times before boarding the plane, went through multiple "security" checks - by the way, those "security" people are obviously the cream of humanity - and they love to ask sexy girls to take off their boots, particularly if they have a short skirt and don't you dare challenging them... but that's beside the point (Is it?) - and guess what: I had to go through security again upon LANDING in London!

How come I am not checked going to Brussels, or taking the subway in Brussels or Paris, or anywhere, but  I'm controlled so many times getting on a plane, or out of a plane for that matter? Will I blow up Heathrow, when I could have blown up the plane getting there? I probably would blow up the queue in Brussels, before the security check (there were hundreds of people waiting to be checked), as I mentioned to one of the security guys there (that was stupid, I was almost pulled out of the line for questioning, and probably would today)

Making a bomb is easy. Concealing it is easy. Sticking it in a shopping mall is easy.
Yet these Al Qaeda  imbeciles use some liquid stuff (hence the 100 ml allowed on the plane) or shoes sole explosives (hence taking off your shoes) to down planes, after going through various types of controls.
Man they are stupid! WHY PLANES?

Need I go on ? (and please don't tell me there are no attacks on the targets suggested above because our security apparatus is so efficient. Please!  Also, please don't tell me it's now the John Doe nut head that's attacking planes in the name of "Al Qaeda". If so, he/she is equally idiotic).

Conclusion, either:

1) Al Qaeda is really a bunch of pteromerhanophobics (look it up). They are afraid of planes, and just outright hate them. It's possible, and I could live with that, just like I can live with all sorts of phobic people. Many civil servants are one such group, they hate civilians who bother them while they are having their coffee (Know the joke about the civil service in Holland, where it is prohibited to look out of the window in the morning? Why? Because they would have nothing to do in the afternoon...). Ok I'm unfair.  So are they most of the time. Anyway, who am I to complain, they are the "authority" (I have a phobia about authority).

2) Al Qaeda is seriously stupid, in which case we are quite safe. They never thought of anything else but planes. So it should be easy to keep them in check. But then, why the "security" apparatus (snooping etc...)?

3) They don't exist (at least not as described, or at least not any more)? Convince me they do exist, please, I really need the reassurance. Until anyone does, I will continue to think this is just a story made up to keep us within the confines of Georges Orwell's 1984 logic (invent an enemy, focus people's energy on fighting that enemy).

Meanwhile our civil liberties are going, going, gone. This IS IMPORTANT. It's impossible to regain civil liberties except via revolutions, and these, folks, are painful, bloody, and rare.

But this is all for our own good, right? Meanwhile we don't bother too much with drug money, how it's used (we are talking billions here, enough to finance a US presidential campaign every year or buy a few countries every month), about the lack of transparency in politics generally, about what government debt really means, about how good/bad our leaders are, about how to keep population growth in check (remember my earlier blog?), or any other such topic that really matters.

We are officially safe.

In the middle ages, there was a guy going round the walled city at night, shouting: "All is quiet, sleep tight". This was the precursor of Homeland security. W improved it. Obama changed nothing. Why?

NSA, thank you for listening. You are my best public.

Next blog: Sharks and whales and dolphins and lionfish. Dangerous vs. cute species, and why Spielberg is a dangerous fellow, and why we are wasting energy on the wrong topics.

Comments, as usual, are most welcome.


  * I am not talking about bombs going off in many parts of the world on a regular basis. Doesn't impact the West, really, does it?

Sleep tight! Cheers.

Hearing impaired, surface technicians, blacks and other misnomers

Do you sometimes get fed up with the oppressive political correctness in our world?

Nobody is deaf any more, but hearing impaired. Surface technicians are the sweepers of old. Blacks are African or African Americans, or anything but black (As I recall, black is a color, not an insult. Maybe we will eventually have a traumatized eye and an African coffee? What if it comes from Colombia: African Colombian coffee? That's if Colombia becomes too synonymous with drugs, then it will be African coffee from South America, or maybe "Sleep Prone Remedy from Somewhere"?  ).
Shell shock is no more. Nobody is handicapped or old or retarded. Everything is dandy, and as long as the appropriate term puts a veneer on things, all is good. Another good one is "authorities". Since when is Public Service an "Authority"? They are supposed to SERVE, not order around, but then maybe it's me who misunderstood?

There is a great book that deals with this, along with many other issues of how we went from the age of enlightenment to total horseshit: Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul (the full title is Volataire's Bastard: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West). Basically the book analyses the shift from reason to system, from free thinking to the straightjacket of organization, and the corresponding shift in language from clarity to "lingo".

Lingo is a way to appear knowledgeable. It's a code, used by specialists to communicate amongst each other and keep the rabble out of the conversation. Every profession has its lingo, codes, specific terminology, which could very well be expressed in layman's terms, but sounds so much better when interlaced with words that make the whole topic totally unintelligible.

This applies to professional communication, political rhetoric, and certainly to mankind's issues. Why can't I be critical of Israel without being labelled an anti-Semitic bastard? Why is Black a term to be used only as a primary color? Why is a senior or "third age" person not old? When one starts hiding facts behind cosmetics, and one is not allowed to address issues as they are without becoming the target of hundreds of pressure groups that will take exception to anything that is not smack on their agenda, human debate becomes sterile and progress becomes impossible. That's if I don't end up outright in jail...

I think one consequence of this very insidious process is that we are regressing back to the age prior to the enlightenment. These were times when dogma was prevailing over reason (religious dogma, royal autocracy, etc...). Now it's another form of dogma: the systemic one, where once the book is written, one has to stick to the book, never mind that it makes no sense any more, or never did.

In our travels, we have been confronted to rules and regulations in various countries that clearly make no sense, even to those who are supposed to implement them. But it's in the book, so it has to be done. Examples?

8 copies of every passport page (even the blank ones) to enter India by boat, plus 8 copies of the detailed inventory of how many cans of peas and beans and tomatoes we have on board, plus 8 copies of the list of navigation equipment - including serial numbers... That's about 4 inches high worth of paper, which gets filed in huge piles with nobody ever looking at it.

Or the story of this Thai girl trying to fly home to Bangkok from Grenada, via Trinidad and the USA, being held at Miami airport for 4 hours (when her confirmed onward flight to Bangkok was only 2 hours after her arrival), and then sent back to Trinidad because she had no "transit visa". Upon arrival in Trinidad, she applies for a transit visa, pays 120$, waits for a week (in a shitty hotel next to the airport - she speaks hardly English and has very little money), and her visa application gets rejected because she entered the country "illegally" when she first tried to get home. She ends up flying via Bogota and god knows where, and misses the cruise ship she was due to work on upon arrival in Bangkok. Wouldn't it have been easier to let her board her scheduled flight, she'd been out of the US two hours earlier...

Want more? Mandela's funeral was a grand event, as he deserved (although let's please remember he WAS a "terrorist" at one point)*, attended by all the great leaders of our world, most of whom have a serious problem with any dissidence on their own turf. Obama was standing tall but meanwhile Julian Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, basically a prisoner, and Edward Snowden is a host of the great Russian democracy. Will they be honored at some stage when it becomes clear that there is more than one way to be a good citizen? And by the way, what about what the ANC is doing to South Africa? How come the whole world went up in arms against Apartheid but remains perfectly still when it comes to the massive racism many African and Caribbean countries show towards the white (is that a Caucasian?), South Africa being a prime example...

My point is that seemingly minor lingual evolutions can be extremely dangerous. When one cannot call a cat a cat any more (we still can, I think, but I'm sure it will be "domestic feline" soon) one opens the way to a level of hypocrisy that leads to a loss of all we have gained over the 200 or so years when Western mankind liberated itself of some of the chains of dogma.

Society is moving towards a new form of dogma: the politically correct, the veiling of the truth in lingo and the drowning of liberties in loud assertions of concern for security. All these become a "System", where rational thinking takes second place to the "Rule", however stupid, irrelevant or counter-productive.

Reminds me of this joke where a female journalist interviews Ray Charles and tells him: "Oh Mr Charles, you are such a brilliant man, I admire your work so much, what a pity you are blind". And he answers: "It's OK my dear, it could be worse, I could be black"

Next blog: Security, Al Qaeda, airports and other nonsense. Hi NSA guys. You busy today?


* The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter depends on who wins in the end, not on the means used to achieve victory. Terrorists of the past include American colonists, French freedom fighters, PLO, ANC amongst others. At the same time Stalin's, Mao's or Genghis Khan's rule never were that bad, were they? How about water boarding or NSA snooping? 

Hey, still alive here in Panama.

I went through the canal yesterday with some friends on a class 40 race boat! Great experience, with great people, and they somehow tickled me about this blog, dormant for a few months (I was busy working on the boat, my usual excuse).

There are still lots of topics I'd like to talk about, and after my last blog (I had one friend saying; "Stop this Olivier, believe in life and mankind's ability to sort things out"), I suppose it wouldn't hurt to go on a different tack and just focus on a given topic that either pisses me off or makes me wonder.

(It doesn't mean I am more optimistics about the issues related to population growth...)

By the way, the crew on this class 40 are man (professional racer with heaps of experience), wife (former journalist who went to Africa for years to report on slums and other hard topics), and 2 great kids aged 7 and 3.
They built their boat in a very interesting "social" context (see their website), forgo income to help worthy causes ("no child labor" is one), and have started a round the world trip with very little money on a very demanding boat (a race boat has none of the luxuries most circumnavigators consider "normal"). They made me think about some of the stress I am taking on to fix stuff on my boat - stuff they don't have and never will have. They also made me think about the difference between ranting and raving and just doing, with the humility of not trying to change the world, but just living with strong convictions and an open heart.

Thanks Ben and Anne Mai (and Isis and Miles) for the breath of fresh and clean air! (by the way, their website, somewhat inactive lately is: www.nacira-40.com  I highly recommend it, and if you feel like going on a cruise with a REAL racer on a real racing boat, this would be the one to chose! You will learn a shitload, will enjoy the conversation and laugh your balls off at some of the stories and the humour...

So, anyway, my future blogs will be longer ( I re-read my past ones, and even with my attempts at staying short but dense, I feel the points are not getting across properly), more focused, and will come more from the amazing encounters I make on this 'round the world trip.

I will talk about Miguel, the 70+ year old Spaniard who lost his second boat in Port Elisabeth, South Africa (he lost his first one in Cuba), who has no money, except what he makes from selling puppets - and he's done that for 25 years! - and did his sea trials on the newly acquired beat up boat from South Africa to Brazil, all without papers, convincing the "official" in Brazil that the storm blew all his papers away...

I will talk about this Frenchman who was accused of murder in St Lucia, and is probably still in jail, although there is very good evidence that he never killed the guy.

Or the japanese single hander who managed to convince his wife, by washing up dishes for years, that she should let him go on a world cruise for 2 years (but NO MORE).

Hunting in South Africa. Yeah, HUNTING IN SOUTH AFRICA. Another topic that needs clarifying, so the usual politicaly correct bullshit gets sorted. I did hunt in South Africa. It changed my mind. I was educated, and I loved it.

Ariane rocket launch in French Guyana. Another great experience, and another source of thoughts...

And then there's T & T (I will not give their full name), a Dutch-American couple, who made us laugh and worry for the better part of a year with their antiques, running aground, breaking stuff,  sailing to a different island from the planned one, without realizing... They are worth a book on their own.

Anyway, future blogs will change for theoretical ravings to experience learnt, and some thoughts deriving from that.

Another major change in this blog. Will I get it right this time?

Comments, as usual, are welcome.

Hello, fellow lemmings!

Been wondering what all this raving and ranting has been about?

Just an aging unemployed guy's way of spending his time? Yes, indeed! But I am hoping that in the process I might tickle your mind.

The media, politicians, our political system, the environment, industrial risk. All matters of great conversation around your 5 o'clock sun downer. Maybe 4 o'clock (I’m still talking pm, so it's not too bad yet).

Anyway, surprise, surprise! There is actually a system in this raving. Not that it's going to make any difference to the way the world turns or humanity is screwing it up. But somehow, I feel everything I read or hear in conversations on and off the boat is quite off the mark, and find it very frustrating.

I want to talk about population growth.

Let's look at all the issues previously touched on (I dare not say addressed, that would be presumptuous): all of them have a common cause.

And that is population growth.

Allow me some statistics: Humanity reached it's first billion in or about 1800. It took from the beginning of times to the beginning of the 19^th century to reach 1 billion bodies (not sure about how many souls that is).

The second billion was reached around 1930, or just over 100 years later. Quite an acceleration, no? The third billion was in 1960, or so. I was part of that third billion. Darn! Vivien made up part of the 4^th billion...

At the last estimate, we are about 7.1 billions now. That's 5 billion more in about 80 years, or about 600 million every 10 years. Estimates vary about future growth, with the developed world not growing much any more (aside from migrations, but let's remember the developed world is less than 1 billion people today, depending on the definition), and the “third world” continuing on it's trajectory. Some forecasts predict about 80 million more people every year for the foreseeable future, some see it declining to 50 million per year (lots of models are out there, one can argue with them, but for me the lower forecasts are unrealistic) . Factors that impact this are:

• reduced infant mortality in most countries
• increased life expectancy in most countries
• Better health care pretty much everywhere
• reduction in birth rates in developed countries
• development rate of “second” world countries that slowly reach “developed” status

This exponential growth in population has a number of consequences. All bad.

1. Demand for food is increasing massively. Imagine the difference between feeding 10 guests, and feeding 70? Humanity had to find ways to increase food production, not by a factor of 7 in less than 200 years, but probably by a factor of 10, given improvements in quantity and quality of food between the mid 1800's and today. This means more land, more fertilizers, more pesticides, more GMO, more irrigation, more aquifer tapping... All bad.
2. Demand for energy has gone up a factor of 200 in the same time frame. We've gone from the beginning of steam engines 200 years ago to a life style that demands enormous quantities of energy, both in industry and in households (remember the manual drill anyone? How about oil lamps?). Transportation requirements have gone through the roof, both for goods and for people (hello, holiday makers! Ibiza or Thailand this year?). Goods need to be transported increasingly far to bring food and energy from the production places to the consumption places. Industry needs a lot of power to produce efficiently what we all consume. Households use power like there's no tomorrow, from electric blenders, to air conditioning, multiple TV's and computers to huge refrigerators. And I'm not mentioning cars, they didn't exist 200 years ago... Imagine every Chinese with a car?
3. Land usage has increased for all the uses this additional population has: countryside has yielded to suburbs to towns, road systems have exploded, industrial farming has expanded massively, rain forests have been cut down (and continue to be destroyed), industry has taken over former low yield farming land, coastlines have been transformed from beaches and cliffs to ports, river systems have been dammed, with entire valleys flooded. All bad.
4. Political systems have gone from a “human” dimension to a professional system where the fundamentals of the original democratic idea are long gone. How many balloons are required to become president of the USA? How much input does one really have with ONE vote amongst 30, 50, 100, 300 million? The entire institution has become a joke. Bad, wouldn't you agree?
5. Society is losing it's values. The family network (except in much of Asia, and maybe in some parts of Africa) is de-laminating. One parent families, bad education, loss of “human” values like honesty, work, charity, compassion, etc, are being diluted by materialism, short term gain and egocentricity. Not good surely.
6. The social structure is affected: media doesn't play it's role of INFORMING. It sells advertising. It does not educate, it misinforms and becomes a propaganda tool. Quality education is available only to the few, and social networks benefit largely the parasites. Crime becomes a statistic, real or perceived insecurity is a problem, governments use technology to track their citizen against all the advances in civil liberties gained in the past 300 years (NSA, are you listening?). Societies are becoming ruled by systems, and civil servants expect you to serve them...

I could go on. But I think we all perceive this, without really wanting to think about it. The bottom line is more people means more of all of the above. Logically. It's not a choice. That's just the way it is.

For me it's dramatic. I'm glad I'll be dead in 50 years (more likely 30, but who knows, I like being a pain in the backside...).

Communist China was the only country EVER to try and address the issue. They imposed a one child policy. Brutally at times (forced abortions and severe financial penalties in some cases). It worked, insofar as the population growth has all but stopped. Several side effects have come up however: one is the age pyramid has gone upside down (too many old people, not enough young), the other is the imbalance between genders, every family wanting a boy, which leads to a male/female ratio of (depending on the source of data) 1.15 to 1.25 to 1 (the biological balance is 1.03 males to 1 female, I wonder why?). Female fetus abortion and infanticide mean that some 55 million male babies will not have a mate in China in 20 years.

No other country has ever tried this, and by the way, China was criticized left, right and bloody center for their “barbaric” ways in doing what they did (forced abortion????). Nobody else tried, and one has to wonder if there is a “good” way to do this

Now, some 50 years after starting the process, China is relaxing the rules, partly because they found that one cannot do this so quickly. It takes time to start a population control policy. One generation is way too short (a generation is 30 years, folks).

So. If humanity wants to start controlling it's population growth effectively, it will take, say, 2 or 3 generations before it has an impact. That's 60 to 90 years.

At a growth rate of 600, or even 500 or 400 million every 10 years, this means on the low end of the scale 2.5 to 3.6 billion more people BEFORE we start having an impact (it means 3.5 to 5.5 billion more on the high end...). So we'll be 10 to 14 billion by then... Does this make the need for action urgent? I think it does, big time.

Yet, who talks about it? Who is instrumental in making a change effective?

NOBODY!

NGO's fight against pesticides and GMO's and oil platform and nuclear energy, and advocate biodiversity and the fight against infant mortality or malaria etc, all worthy causes, but they don't attack the root cause, they attack the symptoms ... Hardly anyone talks about the real root cause. It's not sexy, doesn't sell (who will buy media not selling royalty and bad news, but talking about not having children?), or is not politically correct (forced abortion.... WHAT?). Who promotes population control or even worse population reduction, and why would they do that? Can Greenpeace raise money on this topic???

Churches promote zero family planning (they promote abstinence, bloody criminals, and it goes beyond population growth: AIDS actually works in this process, but at what cost?). Governments all over the planet (with very few exceptions) promote birth rates via children benefits, companies need more customers, i.e. population growth, unions want more members, nobody has an interest in stabilizing population, and even less in reducing it. Every organized part of our society has a vested interest in the continued growth of population. Ever heard of lemmings?

And by the way, how would we even start to achieve a move towards population control? Education takes 2 or 3 generations. How would the Catholic church react? Or the Muslim world? How would companies respond to a new economic model based on NO growth? Is it at all possible? Is mankind able to do this revolution?

I don't see it happening. Frankly, I think we are doomed. The race for growth is on. Countries lagging behind will continue to try and catch up and we can't blame them for it. Nobody is interested in fixing the problem, least of all our governments.

See you in 20 years, with another 1.5 billion people, less nature, more bad stuff in the rivers and everywhere, more noise from anti-this or anti-that organizations, none of which make any difference to the fundamental issue.

Sorry, I'm extremely pessimistic about the outcome for mankind.

No worries about the planet. It will fix itself once we're gone. Good luck to the next species!

Does this blog help? Probably not much, but then the more of us realize that population control IS THE REAL AND ONLY problem, the more of a chance we have to get something done about it. Vote for anyone who wants to address the issue! Otherwise nature will fix us, probably via a really good virus that will wipe most of us out (wars don't kill enough people – the 2^nd world war hardly killed 40 million people, just 1 year's worth of growth)

Comments welcome. Help me out of this gloom!

Greetings from Roatan, Honduras. Nice place.

The environment, industrial risk and shipping spills.

The environment, part 3.

Exxon Valdiz, Amoco Cadiz, Erika, tankers on the rocks, oil platforms blowing up, tens of thousands of gallons of oil, diesel, gasoline in the sea. Seagull stuck in muck, otters dying, turtles asphyxiated, oyster banks ruined, beaches a disgrace, fishing industries bankrupted. Terrible stuff!

Fukushima explosion and long term disastrous consequences - following Chernobyl..., refinery explosions, paper mill discharges into the rivers, airplane crashes, chemical spills, all with enormous environmental impact. Horrendous!

Every time, commissions analyzing, judges ruling, fines, monetary compensations, clean-up costs, and lots of finger pointing, someone has to be responsible, right?

Quite right, BUT:

Have you ever had an accident at home? Burning oil on a hand perhaps, or an electric shock, maybe? Falling from a ladder anyone? How about car accidents, a slight trace of ice in the winter, or a moment of inattention, a flower pot falling from the balcony, or a roller skate left unattended? Banana peels ring a bell?

These are accidents we could avoid, and given that it concerns us directly, we do make a great deal of efforts to avoid them. Yet they happen.
All the time.

Industry spends an extraordinary amount of time, effort and MONEY to avoid accidents. Accidents are bad in many respects: they cost a lot of money and downtime (more money), they hurt people, including staff members, they damage reputations, sometimes irretrievably. Companies have mind boggling procedures to avoid accidents, traning procedures, safety procedures, ISO standards, double redundant safety systems, and so on. As an example, I know one oil company that has the following before changing a light bulb (I am not kidding, guess who it is?):

1) Describe the problem in detail, check the description by another person, do an impact analysis of the problem. Check if any regulatory approval is required before any intervention.
2) Describe in detail the intervention procedure, vet it by another person, approve it at a higher level.
3) Describe all the "lock-up" requirement (in this case, turn off the power, lock the power switch by another persone, check the lock-up by yet another person). List and have approved at a higher level all personal safety equipment needed.
4) Prepare the intervention, e.g. build the scaffolding, check the scaffolding by another person, approve the scaffolding as built by yet another one.
5) Re-check all the above before the person starts climbing the scaffolding. Have a stand-by assistant nearby to help if needed, who also verifies that the safety equipment is properly worn.
6) Proceed with the change of the bulb. Test that the intervention has been done properly by another person.
7) Dismantle everything and prepare for restart.
8) Before restart, check again that all is ready, cleared and cleaned.
9) Restart
10) Issue an intervention report describing all the above.

This is for a light bulb (company is BP, would you believe it?)... Imagine for a major refinery refit?

Shipping companies have incredible constraints placed on them (from the qualification of the skipper and crew to the age and regular vetting of the ship, loading procedures,  watch systems, redundant safety systems, etc...

Yet, accidents happen. Amazing no?

Oil tankers move about 2,000,000,000 metric tons of oil per year. This makes about 5.5 million tons per DAY. I couldn't find the average size of an oil tanker (they have increased in size over the years to reduce freight cost), but certainly to move 5 million tons EVERY day, means a very large number of tankers at sea at all times, particularly if one thinks that much of it comes from the Middle East or West Africa and has to travel across large oceans to reach Europe, Japan or the USA.
The average age of a tanker is 10 years. One third of them is 4 years old only. Big ones are newer, small coastal carriers are older.
All oil companies have a vetting system, basically disallowing the use of tankers more than 10 years old,  requiring double hulls, recent inspections, and all sorts of constraints on the shipping company.

Accidents happen. Shit happens. It happens at home, on the road, and at sea. It happens in plants despite all the safety procedures., and it will continue to happen WHATEVER we do.

Considering the number of man hours worked, and the volumes produced and shipped, the accident rate in industry is extremely small, and a very small fraction of the accident rate in private homes or on the road. In other words, industry is about as safe as it can be, and the usual finger pointing that happens after an accident is totally unfair. How would you feel to be fined or jailed because your spouse fell off a ladder while unclogging the gutter? It is true that the impact of industrial accidents/spills is much greater that whatever can happen at home or even on the road, but it does not negate the fact that safety is a prime concern of industry and shipping.

Shit will happen. It's bound to, and CANNOT be entirely avoided. Or rather it can, no more spills if no more oil is transported. No more big bang in plants if we shut down the plants. No more car accidents if we just prohibit cars (reminds me of the joke: alcohol kills on the roads, let's prohibit roads) and so on. But are we prepared to go back to the caves? Can we feed the world, and house the population, and basically maintain some sort of developed living standards by doing so? Answer is obviously NO.

So, my point is: What kind of life style do we want? Developed? Means accidents will happen.
No accidents or spills? Means back to the caves.

No other option, so let's stop pointing fingers and damning industry and shipping. They do their very best (with some few exceptions, and in such cases the punishment must be massive), and have a relatively superb track record. The problem is not with industry. The problem is with the demand placed on industry (and shipping), given the size of the population and the living standards expected.

So, just like with food, and fertilizers, and pesticides, and the general power requirements, industry is doing what is needed to keep the system going. It is the system (i.e. numbers of people and individual requirement) that creates an unfix-able problem for the environment.

We need to talk about population control and/or reduction and life style expectations. This is the issue. Nothing else.

This will be the topic of my next blog.

Comments welcome.
Cheers from Roatan, Honduras.

OK, so humanity and the environment.

Do you prefer "sustainable" energy or feeding the third world? Do you prefer primary rain forest and orangutang habitat maintenance and bio-diversity or increasing output to satisfy both of the above? Do you want "clean" energy or do you want to power the world?
Do you want to clean up the rivers by reducing or prohibiting pesticides and fertilizers, or grow enough food for the 80 million or so additional humans on this planet every year (not counting the huge amount of people who do not get enough already and starve more or less slowly)? Do you want to reduce wastage (which is huge) or plastic packaging and the cold chain? Do you want I-pad's and new techno-gimmics regularly (most people do apparently- see recent uptake of X-Box or I-phone 5S), new annual fashion, and brand names and super-duper cars, or a more reasonable use of the world's resources, in particular brain power? Organic (bio) food anyone (great stuff if you can afford it)?

I could go on for ever with all the issues hundreds of NGO's busy themselves with. The problem is one of conflict. Everyone seems to have his favorite battle (mine is sharks), but focusing on one single issue (pesticides, food, energy, biodiversity, etc...) is completely unproductive.

A recent and simple example I saw on Facebook was: This year, for Christmas, let's buy from small local businesses. I subscribe completely. BUT: let's imagine we all do that, and the large retail companies will miss the biggest sale of the year. What will they do? Close shops, Retrench people? I know it's not the environment, but what I'm trying to say is that every action leads to a re-action (Archimedes principle). Nothing is an easy fix, whenever you pull on a string, both sides of the string move.

Elaborating on the first paragraph:

- Vegetable oil can be used for food or biodiesel. Not both at the same time (given a certain production level - driven by cultivated land, pesticide and fertilizer use)! When German Mercedes users switch to biodiesel,  they increase the price of vegetable oil to a level where the poor Indian consumers can't feed their children any more. The law of offer and demand.
- Food production (including veg. oil) is a factor of land and yield. Increased food production means either more land or higher yields. More land means converting more nature into productive areas (rain forest amongst others). Yields are driven by type of seeds (GMO, anyone?), fertilizer and pesticide use and irrigation. Increasing yields means better seeds (GMO, here we go again), more pesticide and/or fertilizer use and/or increased use of aquifers (or building dams, with other consequences), One CANNOT increase food production without one or the other.
- Some advocate the reduction of meat consumption in favor of a vegetarian diet. OK, but the flaw in the reasoning is first that many people like meat (including me), and that if meat stops being a major food ingredient, we will lose a lot of natural fertilizer, and probably find that cows, chicken, pigs, lambs, etc... end up on the endangered species list as well. Species seem to only survive when they make economic sense in our world.
- Organic food is a great idea, but how many people can afford it? It WILL cost more to produce good food, will use the same amount of land, and procure lower yields. This means higher prices, so in a way, people who buy Organics are actually making life more difficult for those who can't afford it. Provocative? I am listening...
- "Clean" energy is a flawed concept. It does not exist. Fossil energy (coal, oil, gas, nuclear) is not clean. Wind and solar power are not clean either. First they require large amounts of fossil fuel to build and maintain, they require massive amounts of storage, usually in the form of batteries, i.e. heavy metals, and need large amounts of space (want a HUGE wind generator in your backyard, anyone?). To equate the output of an average size nuclear reactor (there are usually more than one  in one location) - 660MW-  it takes about 86 of the largest type of wind generators (Enercon E-126 - 7.6MW capacity - not output, that's only about 4MW- 198m high). The largest solar plant in the world (in the Mojave desert in California) produces 75MW, so you need 9 of those, each one using 1600 acres ( 650 ha).That's 14500 acres, folks!  I'm not advocating nuclear power, I'm just pointing to a conflict...
- Wastage comes from a number of factors, primarily loss in the supply chain and excess purchase in "rich" countries. Reducing wastage means improving packaging (multilayer plastics are an option, but of course they use fossil fuel), generalizing the cold chain (in the third world, a huge proportion of food is lost because products go bad before they reach the table), and that means more ozone depleting gases and a hell of a lot of energy required to power the system. As for the excess purchase in the rich world, I'm not sure how to stop it, and if one could, how to ship it to the part of the world that needs it?
- Resource optimization is another conundrum: Lots of "misfits" advocate very loudly their disgust with modern civilization, yet listen to music on their I-pod while using all the modern amenities of a developed world. I am yet to find a "green" person who is ready to let go of light, heating, music, movies, and so on. It is true that too much emphasis is put on non-essentials, too much brain energy used for little benefit. But that's what the majority of people demand, and are prepared to pay for.If only all this superb brain power was used to research better solar energy or low emission plants... Trouble is there is more money in I-phone 6, and don't blame the corporation making it, blame yourself if you buy it!

More than 5 minutes. I know this is provocative. I have another very provocative point to make. Stay tuned (it concerns the oil industry and industrial risk).

Comments, as usual, are welcome.

Topic of the century: the environment (we used to call it nature)

Five minute on the environment. Sounds like world news in 2 minutes, or 'round the world in a day.
How much do you get?

So, I'll have to slice this into sub-topics again if I want to make my point clear.

We used to call this "nature", probably because there was still such a thing. We saw it as separate from us, like a shared rental: on one side, there was nature, living it's life, on the other, us living ours.
As we grew and multiplied, and as we developed technology to make use of our friendly neighbor, nature became the environment, something that is around us, but not different from us. Actually something that must be used (abused), that is there for us.

The concept already is shocking. It means that as the dominant life form on the planet (for how long?), we have every right to consider that everything not human must serve humanity. A little like Indians in the Western US owned the land, but served no purpose other than to be destroyed to gain the land and resources (a very good book on the topic is "I buried my heart in Wounded Knee", highly recommended).

So anyway, now it's called the environment, and more and more concern is expressed in various quarters about what humanity is doing to it (by the way, this is a recent thing, when I was younger, NOBODY talked about it). Looking from a high flying aircraft, human invasion looks like a cancer, concrete everywhere, roads, houses, cities, even the countryside in many places look like checkerboards, fields all nice and square and the odd farm in the middle. At night, our planet looks like a Christmas tree seen from space. Space itself, around our planet, is as congested (in relative terms) as the worst highways on earth.
It is estimated that almost 15% of the earth surface is used now for urban and industrial areas and intensive farming, with another 6 to 7% for "managed" pasture. That's more than 20% of the grand total, folks! And we all heard about how many football fields of primary forest disappears every minute to make room for more fields and pasture land.

And this is only the "blue sky" view (haven't seen a blue sky in some countries for years, it's more like bluish-grey, when it's not outright covered in haze). Looking at the environment from the smaller (!) side, human development has so far lead to a significant reduction in biodiversity, partly because of hunting (gone, the dodo!), largely because of destruction of habitat, and increasingly because of indirect causes like introduction of non-native species, pollution, and possibly climate change. How many species have disappeared is not really known, given that we hardly know all the species there were in the first place, but some scientists call it already the "anthropocene extinction", comparing it with past extinctions related to major climate changes or cataclysmic events of the distant past. Currently there are over 3000 species of animals (and 2600+ species of plants) on the endangered list (IUCN), not counting those we know diddle about.

This is just one angle. Species are living being we tend to care about. Aquifer over-exploitation, topsoil erosion, pollution of the oceans, ever-growing garbage dumps, and many other "environmental impacts" of similar concern, are somewhat less talked about, but are also becoming unmanageable (I don't use the word unsustainable for a reason, we'll get into that later).

Moreover, we are playing apprentice sorcerer in many fields (and I am not a science basher or a skeptic towards the scientific community) in areas like genetic modification, use of hormones, antiseptics or antibiotics, or messing up the food chain by feeding cattle with dead cattle (see the mad cow disease - also called Creutzfeldt Jacob disease). Fact is we don't fully understand what the hell we are doing, and economic pressure reduces the likelihood of wanting to dig deep before using new "fixes". Fukushima is one such example of madness, see ☢ Fukushima: Beyond Urgent ☢ on youtube...

So we are all mad. Or are we?

We are destroying the only planet with chocolate, reducing it's beauty and viability, putting our lives at risk, and more certainly that of our children, mortgaging the future, and crying victory when the newest technology has mastered another bottleneck in our development.

Now the question is "why do we do that"?

Obviously, human population is growing, humans thrive for better living, meaning security (no more large predators taking their nightly prey), assured food (who wants to hunt or fish for the daily ration?), comfort (running water, power, shelter, etc...), and hence not only are the numbers growing, but the overall demand for the satisfaction of the above increases. And the only way out, it seems, is to continue taking what is rightly ours, the dominant species, from the vast resources of our planet. Not that we don't mind that this type of animal or plant disappears, and of course we do mind that we are sawing the branch we are sitting on, both as persons, and as a society.

The problem is, at the same time, we all want child mortality to come down in Africa, we want to cure world diseases, we understand that we can't prohibit development in the third world, and desire shorter work hours in the first world, we want security, social services, good food, a healthy and long life, in a word, we want it all.

OK, more than 5 minutes already. Damn, time flies...

More to come on this topic.

Comments welcome

Cheers

Writing a blog in Guatemala is sacerdotal, given internet connections, and the need to re-write stuff umpteen times.... Anyway: (this will be more than 5 minutes, sorry!)

"Art is difficult, criticism is easy" is a saying by Polybe,  (Πολύϐιος / Polúbios), a Greek historian I believe in very strongly. When I was still working, I used to be one those to say to subordinates : "Don't give me problems, give me solutions".

So, now that I have bashed and ranted about politicians and democracy, I suppose it's time to try and be constructive, and propose alternatives.

It's again a bit complex, as we tend to view a political system from a national point of view, i.e. as a system applying to a social group that happens to have been put together via battles, treaties or colonial rule.

Nations today do NOT necessarily correspond to the new context of civilization (i.e values). See the extremely interesting theory by Samuel P. Huntington  (Samuel P. Huntingto) in his book "the clash of civilizations or the remaking of the world order". Civilizations, i.e. values are more diffuse than geographical borders, as the Chinese, Muslims and other groups prove every day (I don't agree with his implied idea that Western civilization is better, but the theory remains a truism for me).

 I believe the issue of the value of the social contract in modern society should today be more related to a commonality of views than to a national frontier. I am not advocating breaking down borders (or at least not right away), but at least within borders, for a start, trying to find commonality between people, and adapting the political system to that overwhelming need for a common ground. Modern democracy claims it is doing that, but the failure is obvious: society is made up of minority opinions concerned with small matters that impact their life, people being allowed to vote once every so many years, and voting in a politician who... see previous post!

Churchill said that "Many forms of Gov­ern­ment have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pre­tends that democ­racy is per­fect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democ­racy is the worst form of Gov­ern­ment except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

So what is the answer?

I believe the answer is neither in enlightened dictatorship (although it works in some places), nor in the leftist utopian theory that mankind is inherently good, and hence sharing means of production (and all the rest) is the answer (proven to have failed).

I believe direct democracy is the answer.

Direct democracy. It's basically the concept used by the Greeks (who excluded slaves, women, and whoever didn't contribute to the war effort), at a time when it meant meeting in the Agora and voting on ANY topic of interest. Somehow it worked then, but then remember, the numbers were smaller than today (OK, 30,000 people is not small, but they did manage to make it work for a long long time with zero technology).

Applied with today's technology, direct democracy is perfectly possible (it's called "EDD"). As a matter of fact direct democracy is practiced in Switzerland (or at least two of their cantons (Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus), and in an interesting way in all the other cantons), and in a limited way in 24 US (yes, US of A) states via the "ballot" system.

Direct democracy is very close to the libertarian concept of"social anarchism", which added the component of non-nation (which I agree with), and collectivism (which I disagree with). Kibbutzes in Israel worked fine, not that I'd want to be part of it, but that's the whole point: if you like it, do it!

Anyway, direct democracy is a system that in my opinion would be perfectly viable in our modern world, as long it is linked with an information system (i.e. education and media) that performs it's natural function of INFORMATION and education, as opposed to opinion, belief or propaganda (seem my blog on media).

Our modern technologies would very easily allow for a citizen (let me define a citizen here, once and for all: a citizen is a member of society who contributes to the common good: he pays taxes. PERIOD!) to be involved on a quasi-daily basis in decision making, be it on micro or macro-societal issues, on domestic topics: economic, legal, other matters, or international: treaties or war and peace...

We are not any longer in the dark ages. We have information and communication technology that makes direct democracy perfectly possible. It does not do away with some kind of executive apparatus (let's call it a government), but it allows for the individual citizen to become seriously involved in the running of the social group, on a "piecemeal" basis. The government

Moreover it allows for a reduction of size of the social group on may issues: Smoking in restaurants, seat belt laws, speed limits on the roads, local environment issues, noise rules, you name it: why does this have to be decided at "national level", why not at local level? Are the little things not what creates quality of life after all?

Again, the Swiss are leading the way: any person who collects 50,000 signatures can call for a referendum on just about anything, anyone with a 100,000 signatures can propose a change in the constitution. And remember, Switzerland is a small country, yet is subdivided itself in cantons, who in turn have different ways of exercising their democratic rights: Two of them actually ask the citizen to meet physically in the marketplace to vote on significant local issues. Not the best use of technology, granted, but what a great way to create or maintain social cohesiveness!

Last but not least, I believe that allowing individuals to feel they have an impact on small topics is also likely to re-create a sense of belonging in society, hopefully leading to a "vision" that everyone can adhere to. In a way like in world wars, where petty disagreements are put aside and all societal forces work together for victory. Isn't it unfortunate that this typically occurs in war, and is fast forgotten in peace time?

So, direct democracy, education and the rebuilding of the social contract.

Next post is about the environment, and the great conflict between growing population, growing consumerism, and the limits to which the environment can(not) be pushed.

As usual, comments are welcome!

Politicians part 2

Don't you just love them, our heroic elected representatives?

In many countries, they are dynasties, in most countries nobody knows what they stand for (assuming they stand for anything), and in any case, considering that their prime objective is to stay elected, if there was a vision to start with, it soon fades under the pressure of opinion polls, the press (see my first post) or various pressure groups that have financial power or the potential for nuisance.

Professional politicians are not just inherently a curse. They also are organized in parties, which determine opinion lines, sometimes based on dogma (e.g. communist parties or the Christian right), sometimes on electoral tactics (i.e. getting as many votes for the next election), or purely on marketing strategies, all of which leaves even less room for individual vision.

So, not only does the individual politician have very little incentive to have a grand project, he's also subject to guidelines and "orders" from his party (and let's face it: without the backing of party, you are screwed, ask the many "independents" who lost quasi-systematically).

Where does that leave vision, and the will to represent the people that voted for him?

Basically nowhere.

Once in 2, 3 , 4 or 5 years, we are asked to express an opinion, via a vote for a person. The transparency of what this person stands for (again, assuming he stands for anything) is usually non-existent, unclear or fake. Moreover, the numbers of voters involved mean that any single individual vote really makes no difference: One in 130 million (USA), one in 25 or 30 million (many European countries)?

The day after election day, our heroic politicians (those who were voted in or renewed in their "mandate") congratulate each other, and basically do whatever they please, notwithstanding promises made. Image management becomes again the prime issue, not issue management, because the next election looms.

The problem with all that is quite simple: Modern societies require VERY careful management. How to keep the social group coherent? How to create a common vision? How to change course when the environment requires it? And most importantly, how to make the difficult decisions that may be required at times, explain them and get on with it.

Our current system really does not cater for this. Democracy, professional politicians, the party system, lobbies, etc... does not allow for fundamental, hard, decisions to be made. It does however favor the creation of a new class (elite?): Politicians. We, the voters are taken to the cleaners.

The democratic system itself (like every political system ever invented by mankind) does not allow evolution to adapt to a new environment. Our large democracies basically still function like the old Greek one, except for the fact that anyone can vote, whether contributing to the group or not (and I'm not too sure that's a positive evolution). When will we have a referendum asking the 40, 50 or 60% of people that rarely or never vote why they don't vote? Who would have an incentive to in initiate that? My bet is it will never happen. Yet I can't believe there are so many fishermen in so many democracies, who just happen to feel the urge to go fishing on election day.

Could it be that they have noticed it's all a sham?

Again more than 5 minutes.... I need to slice thinner. :)

One more post on this subject, leading to questions about the democratic system...

Comments welcome.

   OK, so a promise is a promise.

The world and mankind. Where did I decide on such a massive subject?

Someone said that whenever a problem is too complex, you have to cut it into small parts, and as you address the small parts, you reduce the complexity. I think it was Fermat, whose last theorem was solved recently - the riddle was: x high n + y high n cannot be equal to z high n, if n is more than 2. Fermat wrote this in 1637, and it was solved in 1995 by Andrew Wiles, using a very unusual way to actually prove it: he cut the complex problem into smaller problems, and then went sideways to solve it.

Anyway, so talking about humanity and the world is complex. As I alluded in my first blog, nobody has time to read more than 5 minutes a day (what a pity!), so the only option is to slice the issue into small portions, like ham or sausage.

So, today, I'll talk about politicians.

The people we are electing, and who are deciding on so much stuff that affects us every day: voting new laws (ever heard about a law being repelled????), deciding on all sorts of stuff from immigration rules to retirement age to new taxes (mmmh new taxes especially!).

Politicians are elected by the people, normally on majority vote system (in some places like the US, it can be via a secondary majority) .  The idea is to vote for people that will defend your views and represent you.
Now, where does the system come from: Ancient Greece invented democracy, which means "the rule of the people", and it basically involved 30 to 60,000 "citizens" (out of 200 or 300,000 people), a citizen being one who partake in the wars, and hence earned the right to vote. The system then went to Rome, via emperors, was forgotten for ages, and re-invented over time, culminating in the French revolution of 1789.

We are now in a situation where a citizen is anybody who has citizenship, whether he or she contributes to society or not (the old concept of partaking in wars), and his/her vote is worth the same whatever the origin/education level/contribution to society. So, a complete moron and a highly educated person, someone paying millions in taxes, and someone paying nothing carry the same weight.
Politically incorrect? Yes. I warned you, but it's a bit of a problem having imbeciles voting, as they seem to be a majority... And imbeciles vote for politicians, getting pretty much what they deserve.

Ancient Greece had less than 100,000 persons voting. It's a lot of people, but it's not that many compared to today. The US has about 135,000,000 voters (I'm not counting the people who go fishing on that day, many on purpose, another topic to come). By the way, the candidates of the last US presidential election spent some 1.2 billion dollars in the process...

Now, me and my wife have a serious problem agreeing on some very basic issues. That's 2 people.
I have been in organizations where 50 or 60 people have an opinion (school boards for instance), and it's very hard to agree on anything. How can 130 MILLION people agree on basic issues?

Democracy works in relatively small groups. It does not work well in large groups, for the reason stated above, and because "serving" the people now requires full time attention, i.e. is a full time job.

So, over time, we have developed a specialized breed, like ants develop soldiers, and workers, we've developed politicians. A new profession.

Any professional wants to do well. In the case of a mason, he wants to build a good wall. Unfortunately, in the case of a politician, he wants be re-elected, otherwise he's out of a job.

There was a time (long past), when politicians came from normal society. They used to be masons, or doctors, or businesspeople, and maybe had a vision, wanted the best for mankind, and took risks to get their ideas across (example are the declaration of the rights of man of 1793 see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_Citizen_of_17
93)
Now, we have professional politicians, who most often have held no other job, or at best have not been instrumental in creating value in society. Their job is to get elected. They have gone through a very selective and gruesome path in their party, elbowing others, and doing what it takes to be the one standing for election. Money spent is often huge, and the investment has to pay off...

What drives these people? Vision? Power? Money?

I've had the opportunity to meet quite a few elected politicians. They usually have a very strong ego, some have a conviction, but foremost they all have the will to stay alive in the system. And when your job is politician, the way to stay alive is to be re-elected, whatever the means.

OK, it's more than 5 minutes, sorry.

I'll continue on this topic next time. And will draw some conclusions.

Comments are most welcome.

A major change in style

6 years into our trip round the world.

Last post was South Africa, and technical problems with the boat.

Since then, we've crossed the South Atlantic to St Helena (hi Napoleon!), then on to Salvador in Brazil, where we spent some 4 months, then on Northwards towards Cabedello, Fortalerza and French Guyana (hi Ariane rocket!).

We then went on to Trinidad and the Eastern Caribbean, where we spent almost 3 years, basically drinking rum while fixing major issues on the boat (again...how boring).

Then Cuba, a different world, Belize in shit weather (so no diving in one of diving's top three spots in the world, darn!), then Rio Dulce, the "sweet river" in Guatemala for the hurricane season.

Anyway, why this title?

I've decided to start a new style blog, where I will express opinions about the world and humanity.

Ambitious, but WTF, I've had a rich life of education and an even richer one of experience in my career. And then the time to reflect, and bounce off ideas with like minded, and extremely interesting people amongst the sailing community.

So I'll talk about the world and humanity. About social issues and the stupidity of mankind, about the politically incorrect and about FACTS (as opposed to beliefs, opinions or propaganda).

Facts seem to be a thing of the past. In our new world of immediate information, facts seem to have become secondary. Speed is essential, as any media person needs to be the first one to report, leaving no time for verification, homework or reflection (that's when it's not invented news, opinions, belief or propaganda).

The media (most of them anyway) don't sell information. They sell advertising. This is via the "eyeball concept", i.e. how many people buy a paper or magazine, how many people have watched TV or any other electronic media at any one point. This drives the cost of an add. Low circulation papers sell advertising at low rates. High circulation ones sell at high rates. So circulation drives income, which drives survival/profitability of the paper (same for any other rmedia). Circulation thrives on how exciting the media is. Truth is less relevant than hype. So most of this planet's people actually get their news from organizations that care less about the facts than about how exciting the news is. (When there is nothing exciting, why not create it?)

I'll get back to this, but how sad is it that a technology that could be used to EDUCATE people and TEACH things is diverted for making mankind more stupid (and make money in the process)?

Anyway, this being the first "new style" blog, I'll stop now, as no one has time to read more than 5 minutes a day... Future topics will include: media, politicians, democracy, world over-population, NGO's, capitalism vs other forms, education, linguistics, Asian values, spying, religions and anything else that happens to tickle my mind.

A far cry from "Mary Ann around the world"? Not really. This our world. The only one with chocolate.

And always remember: when there is no solution, there is no problem.

Mary Ann is back in the water!

Lots done, more to do,... and unfortunately a badly vibrating shaft, which hopefully won't mean we have to go out again!

Shit, it was hard to get to South Africa. It seems even harder to leave.

Meanwhile, I am going hunting tomorrow: Bush pigs will fall... I am going with Eric, the yard manager, who invited us yesterday for a brai at his home (Bush buck, Kudu sausage, lamb, salad, and a host of exotic drinks... ). Back home at 2 am, and finished the paint work.

I made a new friend it seems, he invited me today for the outing tomorrow. 8 hunters, 12 dogs, and a few beers.
Not sure I'll want to shoot anything, but the experience should be fun.

Left to do on board: hydraulics, struts, turbo mixer, finish the fridge, and then more to come in Durban.

As we are getting late in the season, I decided we'll stay a few months in the Caribean. No way we can pass Panama this year, so Bonaire, here we come (maybe).

Brai at Frank and Maureen's
Saturday was a good day for Mary Ann and crew.

We finished fixing the bow thruster, put all the mess back together (boiler, tools, spares, etc...), changed all the anodes, and were ready just in time to go to Frank and Maureen's for a brai (brai is a local institution, and translates into barbecue and lots of booze).

We packed 2 huge T-bones, rhum, rose wine and drove to Meerensee, a short 15 minute drive to Frank's place.

Pretty suburban house with frangipani trees, hibiscus, a great dog (Sam), and a BBQ equipment worthy of professionals.

Lunch was a late one (needed time for drinks), and included millipop (a local millet based puree), T-bone, lamb chops, booreworst (local sausage), and some weird booze, distilled by friends of Frank's. Conversations revolved around South African life, the decline of the country, the gloomy outlook, and the pity in living in a place that used to function and is slowly going down the drain.
Also, jokes about the scotch (Maureen is of Scottish origin), and the sailing community.

Home at 8pm, internet and bedtime...

This morning, I am walking towards the club, and meet Simon, who towed us from Tuzi Gazi to Zululand Yacht Club 2 weeks ago.
He's hauled his boat out and greets me with a huge "Bonjour mon ami!": he did some French at school, and starts reciting verses from Les Fleurs du Mal (Baudelaire), tells me about Raimbaut's time as a shop keeper in Ethiopia, and here I stand in the Richards Bay sun, listening to poems I haven't heard since high school times... Weird!

The nice weather has returned after the cyclone a few days ago, and we will take it easy today.
Mary Ann should be back in the water next week, and work has progressed well. Still a long list of things to do, including the anti-fouling paint, but no rush, a bit of rest will do us all good.

Almost a bad day

Yesterday was almost a very bad day:

Spent the whole morning trying to fix my bow thruster, couldn't get it to work.

Then at noon, the yard manager came to advise there was a forecast for VERY heavy wind in 2 hours... So, with Jean-Pierre, we decided to tie some ropes around the mast and secure them on strong anchor points (trees, pegs in the ground, etc...).

In driving rain, I climb up the mast to put a rope around it,.... and slip.

I fell from about 2.5 meters backwards, and landed on deck, pretty hurt.
Hospital: no broken bones, but concussions on the both feet, and a bad pain in the back. Meanwhile the wind is howling, trees are falling, and the forecast announces the first cyclone of the season.

Back on board at about 4:30pm, all is well, and I go lie down. Could have been worse.

And today, we managed to fix the bloody bow thruster (6 different faults), our friend Frank manages to fix the windlass,... and all looks a lot better.

I still have to hobble like an old man, but it will gewt better in a few days.

No 2 days the same.

Vivien went with Jean-Pierre to a FREE paella at Tuzu Gazi Marina, next door, and I am on board writing this blog. I have wine, so all is good!

The haul out

This is how it looked like. The travel lift was a bit short and very narrow, so I had to aim right to get in.

Then the bow gets tied, two spring lines from the back, and up she goes. Very stresfull as one starts hanging from 2 slings and slowly the tractor and electric winches pull us up...

This was one of the heaviest boats ever pulled out here. We weight in at about 28 tons, although we took off a lot of weight and put it in storage... anchors, chain, jerrycans, gas bottles, sails, etc... All went well. Now the work has stared and its a mess everywhere. We've got work to do on the diesel engine (change engine mounts, do a complete engine revision), transmission (change the sterngland box), electric systems (redo wiring in various places), hydraulics (boom vang leaks), outboard engine, dinghy, watermaker, dive compressor, eletronics, and so on.

I expect we'll be stuck here for a couple of weeks - on the dry - then another week to 10 days in the water, and then hopefully we can sail on to Durban and Capetown.

On the dry in Richards Bay

OK, I've procrastinated long enough, so here starts Mary Ann's blog...

We have been on the dry since Saturday, November 7th. This wasn't planned, but our stern gland decided to pack up, and we were taking on water, so no choice but to haul out.

The facilities here are borderline for this: 30 ton travel lift, but a bit short in length. Eric, the lift out manager, came on board and decided it was OK.
So, Saturday last we came to the slipway with the 4pm tide, and Mary Ann was slowly hoisted up, secured, and pulled to the dry. We spent the night still attached to the travel lift, and in the morning, stilts were installed to hold the boat. The lift was pulled away, and we are now sitting on grass.
A new experience, with no water, no toilets, thankfully we have electricity, but the morning run to the loo is not our preferred activity...

Sunday was spent cleaning the hull (with a good, borrowed, Karcher power cleaner) - we started at 8am and finished at 7:30 pm, quite exhausted. The hull is now clean, and awaits a new pair of coats of anti-fouling paint

Monday we started organizing the work, lining up a mecanic, diesel specialist, hydraulics expert, electrician and still looking for specialists on electronics, compressors and watermakers.

This morning, Tuesday, work started on the propeller/shaft/stern gland... basically the whole main engine transmission system needs to come out to fix what's called a "stern gland packing box". This is the system around the engine shaft as it passes through the hull, to allow the shaft to turn without letting water enter the boat. Our packing box collaped after showing signs of weakness for a few months (we couldn't fix it as we were at sea most of the time and nowhere near a place to go on the dry).
All day was needed to take out the shaft and access that box. Tomorrow, we'll see what needs to be done to fix it... hopefully.

Right, first post, and it's about techical issues... sailing is as much about fixing the boat as it is about navigating. One thing I have learnt since we left almost a year ago.