Bicycle sales boom in US amid rising gas prices

Sat Oct 1, 9:14 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - More bicycles than cars have been sold in the United States over the past 12 months, with rising gas prices prompting commuters to opt for two wheels instead of four.

Not since the oil crisis of 1973 have bicycles sold in such big numbers, according to Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong, an industry association.

"Bicycle sales are near an all-time high with 19 million sold last year -- close to the 20 million sold during the oil embargo in the early 1970s," said Blumenthal, whose association is based in Boulder in the western state of Colorado.

The US Chamber of Commerce says more bicycles have been sold than cars over the past 12 months.

In a country where most of the population still relies heavily on cars, some 87 million people have climbed on a bike in the past 12 months, Blumenthal said.

While less than car sales, bike sales generate about five to six billion dollars of business a year, he said.

Bicycles are back mainly because the sharp increase in gas prices has made them a practical alternative, said Paul Gaiser, owner of Scooter Commuter in Bethesda, Maryland.

"Above all it's the higher price of gas, but also it's concern for the environment and the cost of another car," Gaiser told AFP.

The average price of gas in the United States has increased 47.3 percent in a year, according to figures published last week by the American Automobile Association.

Gaiser believes the bicycle trend is no passing fad.

"Our sales have quadrupled in the last two months," he said. "I think it's a major paradigm shift. It's here to stay."

Cyclists on the streets of the US capital agreed.

"I bought my first bike six months ago to go to college. I could not do without it. It's faster in traffic and less expensive," said Erik Lubell, a student at George Washington University wearing a multi-colored helmet.

Near the affluent district of Georgetown, Stella Hardwood said she had a different motivation.

"I don't want to put on weight and my bike forces me to exercise," Hardwood said.

The superstar status of cycling champion Lance Armstrong, who has won the Tour de France seven times, has also helped spark interest in the sport.

The US government has also done its part to promote a more bicycle-friendly environment. Some 3.5 million dollars in federal money has been set aside to create cycling trails over the next four years.

Kunstler: Calgary

By James Kunstler,
October 3 2005
I was way out in Calgary, Alberta, last week, the tar sands capital of western Canada. I was there to yak on camera for a CBC-sponsored documentary about suburbia, and the city itself proved to be a strange and interesting case of immersive delusional behavior.

Calgary started out, of course, as the railhead for western ranching and a jump-off for various gold rushes in the late 19th century. Now it has become an archetypal city of immense glass boxes in a sterilized center surrounded by an asteroid belt of beige residential subdivisions -- sort of what Rochester, New York, would be like if it had an economy. The vast suburbs ooze out onto the prairie to the east, along with their complements of strip malls, power centers, car dealerships, and fry-pits, and on the west they bump up against the foothills of the Rockies.

The real estate scene in Calgary is rip-roaring because newcomers are flooding in to work the tar sand angles. No doubt the tar sands will generate a lot of wealth in the years ahead. But those who think they will save western civilization from a Peak Oil clusterfuck are going to be very disappointed. We are not going to run the interstate highway system, Walt Disney World, and WalMart on the Canadian tar sands.

These days, a lot of people (including news reporters) are saying that the tar sands contain the equivalent of a trillion barrels of oil, which is just plain nonsense. It's more like the equivalent of 180 billion barrels -- with world consumption at 30 billion annually (do the math). But the word equivalent is tricky, too, because it's only the equivalent in volume, not in the cost of recovery, since the stuff does not flow out of the ground at room temperature like Texas sweet light crude. The process requires a huge up-front mining operation on top of everything else, conducted in a climate so cold that the 13-foot-diameter tires of giant dump trucks crack regularly. The Achilles heel of the operation is that it requires hundreds of millions of dollars a year worth of natural gas to melt the stiff goop out of the sand, and that Canada's natural gas supply is verging on depletion just as ours is. They'll have a gnarly choice in a few years: either heat their homes or power the tar sands operation.

Another catch is that even in the short term, the petroleum that is recovered is not going exclusively to the United States or even Canada. The Chinese have been very busily inking contracts for substantial gobs of it. Is George Bush going to send the 82nd airborne into Alberta to secure access to the tar sands?

But this blog entry is not really about the tar sands, it's about the expectations of the people working off of them, which is that they assume the easy motoring utopia will continue indefinitely and are madly busy building a suburban infrastructure for it to dwell in, even while Canadians themselves are now paying the equivalent of $4 US a gallon for the privilege to commute forty miles a day.

What's going on in Calgary, with new subdivisions of half-million dollar houses opening every month, is the North American tragedy in microcosm. Because every new suburban house built, every new Target store opened, every new parking lot paved, every highway widened will be a project in the service of a living arrangement with no future. It is a true madness that beats a path to historic tragedy.


And this is what you have to think about, wherever you live in the US or Canada: what kind of projects and proposals are moving right now in the permitting pipeline of your own municipal planning boards? Things waiting to be built in the next year or two. Chances are they're the same suburban furnishings we've been getting for half a century, in the latest state-of-the-art releases. Each one is a tragedy. Each one will carry us further into darkness.

How do you stop such suicidal behavior? Probably not by persuasion or exhortation. People change what they are doing when circumstances compel them to and not before. The American public barely even thinks about these things. The Sunday New York Times news section contained not one story this week about the current state of oil-and-gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The fact is that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed more than 90 production platforms as well as pipelines and drilling rigs. The implications are so obvious and we are not getting them.

Updates available at www.kunstler.com

31/1 Bear And Tiger Day

Photo emailed by Allan Muir. Thanks Allan.

Today is Korea's Founding Day, so it's a holiday. The Creation Myth goes something like this (for the full version click on the title of this post):

A bear and a tiger who shared a cave near the sacred sandalwood tree wanted very much to become human beings. Everyday they prayed so earnestly before the tree that the Heavenly Prince decided to give them a chance to become human. The Heavenly Prince gave the bear and the tiger a bundle of mugwort and twenty bulbs of garlic and told them that if they ate only these and stayed in the cave for one hundred days that they would become human.

So the bear and the tiger took the garlic and the mugwort and went into the cave. After a short time the tiger ran away because it could not stand the long days of sitting the cave and eating only garlic and mugwort, but the bear endured the boredom and the hunger, and after only twenty one days the bear was transformed into a beautiful woman.

The woman was overjoyed, visiting the sandalwood tree again and again she prayed that she may have a child. She became Queen before long and soon gave birth to Dan-Gun the Sandalwood King. Dan-Gun later reigned as the first human King of Korea.

If you want to think seriously about this story, then the bear symbolises a tribe, with certain features, and another tribe, perhaps more aggressive, perhaps more dangerous, represented by the tiger. Stories are told using this mythological device to insure that they hold onto, maintain, a degree of authenticity. The Bible uses the same device. But it's important that people remember what symbols represent, and don't start worshipping the symbols themselves.

Cleaned my apartment today and ate a delicious dinner (a warmed up can of beans).

Have been doing some frantic emailing...possible job as editor for a South African magazine on the line.

But also made time to watch Smallville with a good friend. Nice to see her, and she brought me a salad, which made dinner a slightly more balanced affair.

We also went downstairs briefly to find out what the enormous explosions were that were shaking the windows. Big fireworks display in front of Lotte. The building create a sounding board, really throwing the bangs against the windows of nearby buildings and then bouncing them right back.

It's chilly. 19 degrees.
Tomorrow I can pick up my passport and alien card. And then the clock really starts ticking.

If you have any beautiful or interesting photos that you think I might like to use, please email them to me at nicolasvdl@yahoo.com.

High Oil Prices Met With Anger Worldwide

We will continue to see anger over energy costs well up, from Nigeria to Nambia, from Belfast to Brussels and everywhere in between.

The reason we will see a crisis is because the people who were supposed to do something about this, preferred to see short term profits. They still do. They still want us to mine coal and natural gas. We have to say no to all that and use our resourcefulness, our intelligence (not someone elses) and see to our long term collective survival. Because that is at stake. Chomsky's last book is called Hegemony or Survival. What will it be?

Both Rich and Poor Countries Make Moves To Appease Citizens
By Paul Blustein and Craig Timberg
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 3, 2005; Page A01

Rising fuel prices are stoking popular anger around the world, throwing politicians on the defensive and forcing governments to resort to price freezes, tax cuts and other measures to soothe voter resentment.

The latest example came this weekend in Nigeria, where President Olusegun Obasanjo promised in a nationally televised Independence Day speech that the cost of gasoline would not increase further until the end of 2006, no matter what happened in global oil markets. He acted after furious demonstrations shut down whole sections of major cities around the country over the past several weeks.

Stock prices, economic forecasts and consumer confidence show that ever-more-volatile oil prices have become a barometer by which consumers, investors, corporate executives and even voters gauge the future.

Antagonism over the strains inflicted by escalating energy costs is a phenomenon that stretches from rich nations in Western Europe, where filling up a minivan costs upward of $100, to poor countries in Asia and Africa, where rising oil prices have driven up the cost of bus rides and kerosene used for cooking.

Although prices vary widely around the globe, with many governments keeping fuel costs below market levels and others maintaining stiff taxes on petroleum products, the mood in many parts of the world can be summed up in the lamentations of Julia Seitsang, a mother of 10 who lives in Windhoek, the capital of the southern African country of Namibia.

"Gas prices are biting us so hard it stings," said Seitsang, a 46-year-old businesswoman, opening her wallet to show just a few Namibian coins as she stood on a busy street looking for someone to share a taxi. "I have to spend more and more for my husband to drive my children to school every day."

Adding that her children, who go to three different schools according to their grades and talents, might have to be moved to one school because of the family's gasoline bill, she said, "I swear we are living in the hands of Jesus with these gas prices."

The impact is particularly hard on people in nations like Namibia, where the average annual income is $5,000 and gas costs about $5 a gallon. They have watched helplessly as the prices of crude oil and petroleum products, which are set in global markets, have soared over the past two years, first because of the powerful demand generated in large part by China's rapidly growing economy and more recently because of the gasoline shortages generated by Hurricane Katrina. But in many wealthy countries as well, discontent among ordinary citizens is compelling politicians to respond.

Media Savvy

 One of my favorite staples for information is The New York Times. Lately I've been reading The Washington Post too. I've recently come across some information about the people who own these newspapers. But before we get to that, let's look at the pudding, for some proof.

Two articles on the same subject, Fossil Fuels, and a third offering a practical alternative.

Here's the first in brief:

Gas Lite
By DAVID BODANIS
Published: October 3, 2005
London

IN the early 1600's, the Flemish alchemist Jan Baptista van Helmont planted a willow sapling and measured its weight as it grew. After five years the tree weighed 169 pounds.

Where had the solid bulk of wood come from? Not from the soil, which had lost only two ounces in all that time. Rather, Helmont's measurements led to the discovery that a tree's new wood comes from tiny bits of carbon that float in the air, in the form of carbon dioxide.

That simple insight tells us a great deal about the problems that bedevil American energy policy. Coal and oil ultimately derive from ancient vegetation that soaked up carbon in the planet's primeval atmosphere. Breathe in car exhaust or the air near a coal plant today and you are inhaling the earth's ancient geologic atmosphere, in the form of carbon that accumulated over millenniums. But the carbon dioxide we release as we burn fuel builds up in the air, leading to global warming.

The good news is that not all fuels store the same amount of ancient carbon. And the United States can have a cleaner, low-carbon energy future if it makes greater use of a low-carbon fuel - namely, natural gas. The advent of natural gas was a major advance in the history of energy use, but American regulations have held the United States back from embracing its full benefits.

And he makes this comment about South Africa:

South Africa has used a similar technology for 50 years, and now makes 200,000 barrels per day of synthetic gasoline and diesel.

We (South Africans)all know how stinky and dirty the Vanderbijlpark area is where SASOL is based. When you drive through there in winter, the smoke is so thick you have to slow down on the national highway because you can only see a few feet ahead of you. It's this technology that creates that extremely toxic smoke.

And then, this article, right below it (yes, in the same newspaper):

The Other Black Gold
By BRIAN SCHWEITZER
Published: October 3, 2005
Helena, Mont.

AMERICA has a substance abuse problem, and Montana may have a cure.

It is easy to forget, but before the hurricanes bumped up already outrageous fuel prices, President Bush was forced to ask the royals of Saudi Arabia - the country that gave us 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers - to lower the price of oil so Americans could afford to drive. He was refused.

In truth, he had no choice. America is addicted to foreign oil, and like any addict we are at the mercy of the pushers and require an intervention. Montana, among other states, is trying to help America get clean by promoting a range of modern domestic energy strategies. Yet our biggest idea is actually a very old recipe: gasoline made from coal instead of oil.


Here's the problem. The first article espouses the use of natural gas when America is already importing 20% from Cananda. It consumes all of its own production and then some. So how can you offer natural gas as a solution when you don't even have enough for home heating. Ding ding, is this guy suggesting we use natural gas for cars? Ridiculous. Writer...David...go and drink several cups of coffee and then possibly write some columns again after more research, and more importantly, after you wake up into this world. This real world.

Next we have some bright spark suggesting we use coal. Okay I am not sure where to start. Coal is an extremely toxic (read polluting) reservoir for oil. It's a poor substitute because the costs to the environment are huge, and the costs to get the oil in the first place (in terms of energy costs) are pretty hight too. The writer mentions nothing of the environmental impact, of course, but does say this:
So what are the drawbacks? The hurdle in making synfuel has always been the cost of production, about $35 a barrel, more expensive than oil has historically been.
These costs, both environemental and economic, come at a time when we can simply not afford them. We'll have to make do with the economic costs, but if we put even more pressure on the planet, and that's a choice that is still pending...have we learnt anything yet? We will soon have the opportunity to demonstrate whether we have learnt anything.
We are are already reaping the Hurricanes, and we want to double or triple the amount of greenhouse gases by getting our oil from coal?

What is the answer? The answer is nuclear. I posted something earlier on E=MC2, and that is our answer. You melt matter down and then get the energy from that process. It's not energy that you can put in your fuel tank, it's not immediately useful for that, but it is the sort of energy that might allow us to create cars running on electric power and eventually Hydrogen.

Hydrogen is not an alternative source of energy. Hydrogen is merely a way to store energy. Hydrogen is something that we have to make, and store. Hydrogen is like MAKING a battery. And the energy it takes to make the battery is about the same as the energy you get from it. None of these writers seem to have a clue about the real world.
It's that teenage phenomenon when you embark on an idea and think it's fresh, that no one has thought of it before, and gasp, it might work.
Oil is not easy to replace, and nuclear power takes 5-10 years to set up. We're very far behind.
We're already far enough behind for scooters and bicycles to become real alternatives.

Some finding two wheels are better than four
00:00 am 10/03/05
JOHN BUCHEL State Journal

Madison attorney Tony Delyea bought scooters for his law firm, Delyea & Cornia, to get to the courthouse quickly and save money on parking Downtown.
(JOHN MANIACI - State Journal)
The day after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, disrupting oil production along the Gulf Coast, Madison attorney Tony Delyea went to buy two more scooters for his law firm.

Delyea & Cornia already had two scooters, and its attorneys found them so easy to park on courthouse trips that they would argue over who got to use them. The scooters' great gas mileage was an unexpected bonus as fuel prices shot up, Delyea said.

It turns out that Delyea isn't the only one recognizing the benefits of scooters. As gas prices shot up again this week after a brief dip, Madison-area commuters are investigating alternative modes of transportation, according to workers at scooter and motorcycle dealerships, bicycle shops and the local bus system.

"I've heard the word 'gas' more in the last two weeks than I have in my entire life," said Randy Knudson, who owns Scooter Therapy, 9 N. Ingersoll St.

When gasoline prices hit $3 per gallon last month, scooter sales began to pick up. Now, distributors can hardly keep up with the demands of dealerships across the country..

Be careful what you read in the papers. Just because it's called The New York Times doesn't mean the powers thatdon't want a monkey say, monkey do status quo.

Investing now in coal and natural gas is like a man in the desert stopping halfway to the Oasis to dig a hole. Even if you find water, the energy wasted in the digging for it makes it a foolish idea. We don't have the patience to do long term planning, but we simply must. Because you know, the land belongs to someone, someone who wants to make a profit from it, a short term profit. He's asking you to do the digging. He wants to make money out of a well, or a mine, even if you can find one.
Even if you do find water(subsitute oil, natural gas) it will still only last a short time. In the end you have to find an alternative. You have to get to the Oasis. The Oasis represents an alternative to oil. And water represents our thirst for life, for energy. The hole in the ground is oil, and it's an uncertain fate. The Oasis represents salvation. Our focus should be on the Oasis, not on other fossil fuels, not on digging more holes for ourselves.

We're not monkeys, even if they think we are.

Jumping the Queue

 

Have you ever stood in line and then someone said that the tickets were almost finished, or the doors would soon close?
It's that same impulse that leads to this:

S. Korea concert stampede kills 11

Monday, October 3, 2005 Posted: 1057 GMT (1857 HKT)
SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) -- A massive crowd surged at a music concert in South Korea on Monday, killing 11 people and injuring over 40 others, news reports said.

More than 5,000 surged to enter one of the gates at a stadium in the southwestern city of Sangju, and those waiting at the front fell and were crushed by the surging crowd, the organizer of the concert, the broadcaster MBC, said in a news report.

Eight of the 11 killed were elderly or children, MBC said.

More than 40 people were injured in the accident, but there may be more casualties, MBC added.

 

 

 

Eleven

The Floor

The nurse in the pharmacy: in the city where you were born, in the city where I gave birth to you; she draws fluid, cold like the moon, and loads it into a syringe, a shoe.
She pumps B12 into you.
Into the white loaf under your shirt.
You murmur something and go.
What do you feel? Is it safe to say so?
People are hungry for lunch.
Just hungry for something new.
You drift between the shelves.
It's a hot summer's day.
You feel a burning.
Hot or cold, you cannot say.
In your brain and in your feet.
You stand in your cold square keep.
You feel your nose and cheeks drip with ice.
Your legs slowly give way
like trees that have been chopped all day.
You close your eyes and try to squeeze life back.
You concentrate on your heart, you suck in a breath
But a cold snail coils itself on your tongue
Like a liquorice and poison snack
You try not to swallow
But you begin, slowly, to see the floor reaching up to you.
The floor pulls at your shoulders and your chin.
It's all going yellow
And before you even hit the ground,
the floor
and everything around you has disappeared.

Now you lie on the floor, like a corpse.
Now do you see how it is?
Now do you see?
There is no sizzling of insects in summer's frying pan.
There is not a single bird that looks down on you.
There is not even a breeze to touch your toe.
High in the heavens your Earthly thoughts create a stir.
High in the sky your electric sparks begin to spin.
Higher and higher you turn spiraling linen thread.
Not a single sound.
Not a single leaf or frog or flute.
Not even the touch of a human hand or puppy's tongue or tail, to stroke your hand or touch your ear.

There is just the powerful poetry of the universe. There is the emptiness. A vast space of cold and black.

But now you know, my son, that there is more, much more, than that.

Energy is tied in the fission fields of stone, or a ball, or a shoe. Huge blossoming arrays of frozen energy sleep in matrices of locked in life.
Your finger, this paper, is full of storms.
And here you lie, my boy, become this man, with this gentle forehead and its paths worn away by worries and doubts, by brooding and suspicions.
And yet there is still youth and joy and strength in the shining brow.
Because beside these paths I see the forests they have cut down. The lush and gentle power that whispers and sleeps beside the busy dirt tracks of your yellow and green and blue traffic. Your thoughts shuffle by, sometimes stuck, like traffic jammed, sometimes flowing as traffic jams do.
I wonder when these paths will fill with the vivid energy of parrots, the fallen goodness of fruit, or shimmer with the treasure of a new season's silver morning, or the flames of an autumn fire.

Life is like walking on a path through a forest.
You have a glimpse now, of what it is like to be in the forest. Yes, to be the forest. It is so much more than just the path through it. It is all the roots and all the leaves, all the stems and all the fruits, filling up with the sun, sucking up the sugars and salts of the Earth, breathing it all in and all the million surfaces, letting all out.

Now you return to the path, and breath begins to fill your emptiness.

I see you here, lying on the floor, and behind your dead eyes I feel the universe fill with your spirit.
It swells, the way water in a bath inches higher when a bar of soap slips into it. It swells its tiny swelling, when another drop of water joins the soapy water.
It swells, almost imperceptible to he or she, when the smallest ant ice-skates off the ceramic edge.
And yet across the gulf of space, I can be right here with you, holding your silver fingers in my own, in this one instant that they tremor between a single moment of your life, and the next.

You yield enormous energy. You are frozen to your flesh, like a tree imbedded in an acorn.

Before you yield to the life in you, this living tissue, the luminous splendor engulfs you for one more singular moment. It happens so quickly that you probably do not notice it. You have, after all, skipped from one moment of life to the next. But beneath you an abyss falls and fills with colorless light and emptiness. You will know, as I know now, that emptiness cannot exist without it being filled, with stars, with swirling masses of stars sweeping in a dance. You fill with your imagination, and your shining arms shower sparks and vigorous eruptions of energy into the universe like spring flowers filling fields. You fill emptiness around you with plasma and power.

Imagine a glass of water on the edge of a long long jetty, jutting far into a blue blue sea. A powerful wave reaches up, thuds hard into the pillars that hold it up out of the water. The glass begins to bicycle in a small circle, and then topples off the edge. As it falls, the living water spills out of it, and into the sea, and moments later, the glass is filled up with the soup and its lovely light. It's a soup filled with electrical salts and gulping jellyfish. The great tides may pull and push this glass through all the waves, until its glassy shield decides to dissolve into the living cocoon that connects into the ocean's drenched fabric.
You lie here like a glass, with your energy, for just a moment, somersaulting up, as though a table under you has been kicked.
Your table has been kicked by the sudden infusion of highly concentrated Vitamin B12. Your brain, in an effort to contain this imbalance, has shutdown.
Give it a moment my boy.

And now, the salts in your brain settle like crystals on popcorn.
The traffic begins to flow.
Your brain fills again with fresh blood.
Your eyes flicker open and your silver hands fill with red ribbons and wet flesh and bursts the silver balloon of my ghostly grip.
Above you a heavenly ceiling, and twelve apostles reverts to a ceiling, and some people standing over this young man, who fainted in a pharmacy.
 

Get Your Ducks In A Row

Did a two hour plus Rollerblade in Lake Park after dinner. Went with Song, an ex-colleague of mine. She's awesome. She was dressed completely in black, her hair tied up in pigtails, and the only way to see her once they turned off the light was to spot the twinkling glow stick she brought and a soft blue beam that made spoon-shaped shadow on the cycle path. She's really fast and she basically helped me to joina Rollerblading Club when I first came to Korea. I joined the club, paid the fee, got the pads and rollerbaldes, and then never went to a single Club meeting. Quite silly.

I hadn't rollerbalded in nearly a year, so I wondered how confident I would be. I had quite major tumble early on, but then got a lot more confident. On my second lap I found myself really flying. Even attached my iPod and just flew along. That's the way to do it.

Before I left the Park I went off the path to do some pullups. On the very first one I could feel how heavy I've become, and also how much my arms have weakened since I was sick. But somehow I managed to do 10, and then managed to do a few more after a short rest. The fact that I can lift up my full body weight 10 times shows me that although I'm getting a bit chubby, all is not lost.

Walked by Diana and Mysterious Companion on my way back to my apartment at around midnight.

Bought an icecream and will probably watch Corpe Bride now on my computer.
Will go for a run tomorrow, and start making concerted efforts to bring my fitness back where it needs to be. 

Celebration in City Hall

Seoul was celebrating (click on the title of this post for details) the re-opening of a stream in the city (on October 1st), so there were concerts and fireworks all over the city. Traffic seemed to be heavier than usual. 

Gecko's

I had mixed feelings about going out. Decided to get out of my apartment in the end, if only just to get a nice meal at Gecko's. The Burger was good but the salad was terrible. Had a few beers, and then went to Helios where there was a lot of male posturing. I was almost guilty of some myself. As I left a guy called out, to us I suppose, and when I looked up he was like, "Not you, do you think I'm trying to get your attention you fag." I thought about going back inside and throwing one of the three losers off the balcony. Caught a taxi instead, after giving the characters a long hard look. The loudest mouth couldn't even hold my gaze. So not much of an evening, but did manage to pick up some phone cards, and it was nice to see Jo again.  

 

The nice thing about The Bungalow is you can take your shoes off and sit in the sand. Kind've feels a bit like Thailand. Not sure if this place will be that successful in winter though. Make a nice contrast to heliops though. here you can lounge, hear yourself speak and savour a cocktail or a nice tea in a friendly and comfortable atmosphere. The Bungalow is right beside 3 Alley Pub in Itaewon. You have to climb a pretty steep spiral staircase to get to it. 

Bohemian Rhapsody - not quite

Inside The Bungalow. Reminds me of Cafe Dharma in Kloof street in Cape Town. Very Bohemian atmosphere. I had a Pina Colada. They even serve Rooibos tea here. The french restaurant manager, who looks a lot like one of the Beetles, gave us complimentary tickets to another restaurant he is opening down the street - on Thursday. Might go to that after work. 

Being Boring in a Cosy Corner

 We were served by a very nice Korean waittress, who also volunteered to take this photo.

That may have been the highlight of the evening, and my pina colada. I think maybe we were just an odd group because I already wanted to go home after Gecko's, since everyone seemed to be feeling very flat.
Jo left after Helios and Andrea was just running around everywhere looking for friends of hers who she couldn't seem to find. At The Bungalow the conversation was still pretty dull. Just one of those evenings I guess.

 

 

 

 

 

The October Octopus

So it's the first day of October, and I forecast that this will be a grim month.

Oil should take centre stage, with the effects starting to gnaw and bite from Johannesburg to Jakarta. That's another way of saying, everywhere.

Johannesburg - South Africa's retail petrol price for all grades of petrol will increase by 12c a litre (c/l) from October 5 after a 29c/l rise on September 7, the department of minerals and energy (DME) announced on Friday.

The latest increases bring the retail price of a litre of 93 octane petrol in Gauteng to a record 603c/l. The coastal retail price increases to 590c/l from 578c/l.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Riot police fired tear gas Friday at about 100 rock-throwing students who were among thousands demonstrating on the eve of drastic fuel price increases, which Indonesia's president defended as the only way to stave off an economic crisis.

Next, the elections in Iraq are scheduled for October 15. This month is likely to be bloody.

Already, in Bali, two blasts have occurred close to the bombings of 2002. This may be part of "The Great Ramadan Offensive." A September report warned that Bin Laden and his top lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri may be planning a series of attacks in October.

Finally, as autumn gives way to winter, Americans will feel the pinch of spectacularly high natural gas prices. Some in the northwest will find that they aren't able to afford to keep their homes warm.

At the same time In Asia bird flocks will continue to move where they will, but this time there'll be changing temperatures driving these movements as well. We may begin to see a manfestation of the pandemic panic, in places like Jakarta, spreading as far afield as Johannesburg. If it is simply a matter of one case of bird flu operating in a person who simultaneously has another flu (though more transmissable) I would expect H5N1 to begin to spread from person to person this winter. We'd be very lucky if it didn't.

And then we still have 60 more days of Hurricane season. If the trend is anything to go by, there should be plenty of time for one more monster. Let's hope not.

Whether or not there is another major Hurricane, flights are already being cancelled, and flying is becoming more and more expensive. Expect a flurry of bankrupcies to be declared in the coming weeks, from Johannesburg to Jakarta.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American Airlines plans to cancel 15 daily round-trip domestic flights from its two largest hub airports because of the skyrocketing price of jet fuel, the No. 1 U.S. air carrier said on Friday.

Surging fuel prices helped push Delta and Northwest Airlines Corp. into bankruptcy earlier this month, briefly leaving American and Continental as the only solvent U.S. "legacy" carriers.

Many pipelines that carry jet fuel and other petroleum products from the U.S. Gulf to other regions are closed or running below full capacity because of power outages or other storm-related problems.

This means that tanker trucks will have to be used to carry the product into airports, adding to the cost.

"If airlines aren't feeling the pinch now, they will be," said one Gulf Coast jet trader, who said airlines will take on fuel wherever they can get it.

In October we'll see the giant octopus, with not one tentacle but eight, slithering through the door. We'll want to pinch ourselves to wake up, but the octopus will still be there.

 

 

 

S. African Gets Life for Lion-Pen Death

In the movie, The Manchurian Candidate, a very British sounding man turns out to be an extremely evil South African neuroscientist, who orders, among others things, soldiers in an American army unit, under a kind of surgically induced hypnosis, to murder and strangle each other. There seems to be this idea that white South Africans are somehow more German than Dutch, and more Nazi than nice. Thanks guys. I guess that means Charlize Theron must give her star back (she recently got one on the Walk of Fame, not far from where she was first 'discovered' in a bank.) Charlize incidentally is German, on her mother's side anyway, and French, on her father's side.

South Africans also get a bad rap in movies like Lethal Weapon 3 (huge Nazi overtones there) and The Beach (where the South African character is a real jerk called Bugs, and even his girlfriend cheats on him).

Every now and then, South Africa seems a useful addition, as the infamous pariah, to the 'axis of evil', if only in the minds of moviegoers. Maybe the next James Bond movie will have a South African mogul try to ice the world with a diamond powered laser gun. Stranger things have happened.

Earlier this evening I watched a Lonely Planet documentary on Nambibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe (all bordering South Africa), and the Aussie dude trekking through these countries at one point opens up a discussion on a beach with a black woman, asking her about apartheid. The black woman says whites have a 'bad attitude'. Maybe they do in Luderitz, I don't know.

The problem with demonising a country is you might find you reinforce bad behaviour, instead of encouraging good behaviour. If everyone believes South Africans are still racists, or should I say, that all white South Africans are racists, even though 70% of the country voted out their own white government, well what are the majority of well meaning South Africans supposed to think?

I remember, growing up in South Africa, watching CNN and noticing that every single story just showed the same images. Death, squalor, tyres or vehicles burning, and some kind of racist injustice. Even I thought, "God, I'd hate to live there."
You know, if you really want to bother thinking about South Africa, or reading about it, then you should think about the real problems that exist there now. Not sensational stories. The undercurrent that effects the majority of people in serious ways every day. Focus on that, and if you care, contribute.

Do you know what the real issue is in South Africa? It's called AIDS and more people are dying, have died, and will die, than died in the Holocaust. This is a real live holocaust in our time. And the people who are dying, you know, are the poor, and many of these are black people. If a white government was as intransigent and ineffective in providing anti-retroviral drugs as Mbeki's government still is (the President still does not acknowledge that HIV causes AIDS) that would make CNN news probably on a daily basis.
There is still Apartheid in South Africa, and it's based on one thing. The rich versus the poor. Except now many of the rich are black people, probably just as many black people in the rising middle class as whites. So who is to blame now?

The answer is that it is better to find solutions than to lay blame, but as in the case of New Orleans, people who don't show leadership in a crisis should be made accountable.

Having said all that, despite the AIDS terror (which provides South Africans with their own 'war on terror', except, one that makes sense, one based on saving lives and keeping people healthy and alive) - despite AIDS South Africa's GDP has expanded to over 6%. The USA's GDP this year will be half that figure if they're lucky. Although this figure is good, South Africa needs a minimum of about 5.5% GDP growth just to employ its school leaving population, an ever increasing number.

I've been asked, directly and indirectly, whether I am a racist, and if that's the first thought that pops into your mind when someone introduces themselves to you as a South African (thanks CNN) then that's really too bad. I won't pretend that there aren't any racists in South Africa today. There are. I know some. I don't approve of racial slurs, of racist jokes. Yes, I don't have much of a sense of humor about it. Why should I? I grew up in a country that was locked out of the Olympics, and the Tour De France, and we got mostly American TV because the British Actors Guild or something, didn't want their sitcoms or documentaries entertaining racists.
So we missed out on a lot. More if you're into your sport. We in South Africa were locked out of international rugby and cricket, and I'm not saying the country didn't deserve it. Once we were readmitted, we quickly became the Rugby World Champions, and came within a hair's breadth, at least twice, of becoming World Champions in cricket. That was exciting to watch and to be a part of. It made you proud of your country, and gave the young boys their own dreams for the sports field. But when I grew up, life was altogether less exciting in many respects. All the games we saw were of South Africans playing with each other. Naas Botha was a national hero, and the most exciting show on TV was The A Team. TV was dull, and the feeling of being isolated was real. Our crocodile-like president at the time, not unlike today's Kim Jong Il, sustained ongoing TV campaigns, using the statecontrolled SABC to promote the propaganda that the world is bad and we are good, and we won't change. PW Idiot managed to rule his roost and shut us out until he got booted out by his own colleagues. Let's hope the North Koreans do something similar.
I felt my skin crawl whenever PW Botha made a speech on TV. Some of that was also because his English was so atrocious.

Now what I am saying is, Did I deserve that? I was born in the country and basically, by the time I was a teenager, everyone basically was going, This is a bad idea and it's a bad situation and it's getting worse so let's get rid of it. But we missed out on a lot growing up, and the reasons didn't seem to have much to do with me. This is why I still have a bone to pick with smart-ass politicians who spin and swagger and use government as a sort of private money laundering business.
I'm pissed off at our leaders, and also at your average person in authority. Why? Because a lot of the time they fuck up other peoples lives. Why are people such parasites to each other? When will people learn that the best way is together, through co-operation?
Meanwhile, our futures are being fucked up in the present. Leaders all over the world are doing things we don't approve of. We shouldn't let them.

So racist jokes...I've heard them quite a lot. And sometimes I feel like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, who plays a homosexual. In one scene he's in a sauna and his boss starts cracking crude gay jokes. He halfheartedly laughs along, while internally he feels revulsion, and who can blame him?
Obviously you sometimes hear racist jokes in South Africa. I heard them a lot while working in Bristol in England, and I heard them almost daily working in Korea - from coworkers who were Scottish, Canadian, American and from New Zealand.
I think a better question, before you ask a South African whether he or she's a racist is to ask, "Am I?" A simple yes or no will do.

But to come back to the original question, No, I'm not.
What many people who have never been to South Africa don't understand, is that many blacks work in the homes and gardens of whites, babysit their children, cook their food and wash their clothes. There are plenty of close relationships, but they don't always work.
At my home in South Africa we employ a gardener and a maid. When I visited there my father was helping our housemaid to buy a house. She is a genial woman, with a big white smile and a can do attitude. When I was at home, I was aware of my father helping her get a loan approved, helping her get the deeds from his attorney, and providing the collatoral for that loan. Why not? She does, after all, live on our property, and has done so for more than 10 years. My father is a widower, and this woman, Maria, cooks for him and takes care of him. The new house that my father's helping her to buy (along with a government subsidy) will allow her and her family to live somewhere else in a home that she will own. Now that's a great partnership. And that's a remarkable achievement for a domestic worker in South Africa. For people who have struggled much of their lives, things are starting to improve.

But for every heartening story, there's also a tragic disheartening one.
My father also has a farm, and the man who stayed on it murdered his wife, and then went to jail. When he came out, my father allowed him to come back to the farm and continue working there. I didn't really agree with that. I'm not one for walking around in the bush with a convicted murderer camping nearby. I complained to my father about this, but he said, "At least I know him. If I get another guy, I have to go through the whole business again of him understanding me and me understanding him." I understood the point, but didn't really agree with it.

Time passed and the guy started stealing...running amuck on neighboring farms...the police were called. Eventually my father asked him to leave and he wouldn't. The law actually states that if someone has lived on your property for 10 years or 20 years or something, they get a kind of right of ownership. So he had to start a legal process. A feel sorry for that man. I remember how he helped me scrape a mountainbike track, using a tractor and a plough, in the dirt and in the veld all along the river of our farm. I couldn't have done it without him. Where can you go as an old dying man (he picked up AIDS in jail, and was soon in an advanced stage of it), when you own nothing? I wonder if he is even still alive today.

So if someone asks me, "Are you a racist?" I find it a bit ironic. Maybe they should say, in a chirpy tone, "I'm not a racist, are you?"
"Does not liking you count?"
You see you can't really ask someone that question and expect to get a sincere answer. They'll tell you what they think you want to hear, or maybe what they want to hear.
It's something like asking someone, "Are you fat?"Watch and learn.

Now the story below is interesting. Disgusting yes, but CNN and Yahoo and world media seize on it because it confirms the stereotype of the brutal white killing the helpless black victim. Sterotypes are based on some truth, let's be clear on that at least. But this time it doesn't conform to Lethal Weapon's Nazi Afrikaaner (this guy's name is Mark Scott-Crossley, maybe a more realistic sounding name than the whacko name for the South African used in The Manchurian Candidate).
Not only is this guy not an Afrikaaner, but he coerced another black man (three I think) to help kill his former employee.
If he forced this other guy to commit murder, why is the other guy getting 15 years?
And how do you force someone to commit murder anyway? Do you say, "If you don't kill him you're fired?" Maybe. I just think this is inaccurately portrayed as white vs black. And there's a bigger picture than just this picture.
You know Charlize Theron's mother shot a man that was attacking her, on their farm in South Africa. It was her husband. No racism involved.

People want to believe the worst about other people, when often there is a lot more than a stereotype going on in the background. The same is true when we consider going to war. Sometimes it is better to hesitate before making up our minds. Sometimes, he who hesitates (for long enough) is not lost, but is enlightened to something new, that makes sense.

Here's the article:

By TERRY LEONARD, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 55 minutes ago
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - In a case that shocked South Africa for its brutality, a white farmer was sentenced to life in prison Friday for the murder of one of his black workers, who was attacked with machetes, tied up and thrown into a lion enclosure, where he was devoured.

The trial brought impassioned protests from demonstrators who saw the killing as another racial attack in a country still grappling with its apartheid past.Many in the courtroom in the northern town of Phalaborwa whistled and cheered in approval when Mark Scott-Crossley, 37, was led out after the sentencing.

Human rights advocates said the killing also highlighted the plight of farmworkers in a country with a culture of violence and a history of racial hatred and mistrust. South Africa's Human Rights Commission said in a 2003 report that attacks on farm workers were common. Most are black or mixed race, and their bosses are white.

Note: If you've lived in South Africa, as I have, you're also familiar with an expression, 'one settler, one bullet'. For the past several years, black farm workers have attacked and murdered farmers (commonly their employers) and their families in isolated farm houses. Usually the women are raped, the men killed, and valuables stolen. Almost every week (a trend that continues today)the newspapers flash another murdered white farmer.
Today, when you read the paper, this kind of thing no longer makes the front page. There's a sort of obituaries-come-classified column for crime. They basically summarise the crime on one page that might have 10 abbreviated stories. Each day, in local newspapers. But you don't see any of these stories making CNN news.

Judge George Maluleke sentenced Scott-Crossley to the maximum of life in prison for the killing. Scott-Crossley's employee and co-defendant, Simon Mathebula, was sentenced to 15 years because the judge found he had been coerced by his employer. The pair were convicted in April.

The judge said life sentences should only be imposed to protect society from a repeat of the crime or when the offense is so monstrous it demands harsh punishment.
"No crime fits this description more than the one before me and there is no doubt it would warrant this extreme punishment," the judge said.

Nelson Chisale, 41, had been fired two months before his Jan. 31, 2004, murder for allegedly running a personal errand during working hours. According to testimony at the trial, Chisale was assaulted with machetes after returning to pick up some belongings and then was tied to a stake.

After being left bleeding for six or seven hours, Chisale was taken to the Mokwalo White Lion Project and thrown over the fence, screaming as the animals tore at his body.
Later, investigators looking for Chisale found only bones and bloodstained clothing.
Maluleke said Scott-Crossley had masterminded the attack, dragooning his employees to participate in the crime.

Witnesses at the trial portrayed Scott-Crossley as a man with a history of aggression and violence.
The judge said there were substantial and compelling circumstances to justify a lesser sentence for Mathebula. The judge said Mathebula had limited participation in the crime and had nothing to gain from the death of Chisale, whom he had befriended and visited.

"More importantly, he disclosed to the police his complicity in the crime shortly after he was arrested," the judge said.
The trial of a third suspect, Richard Mathebula, a former Scott-Crossley employee who is no relation to Simon Mathebula, was postponed until November because of illness.

A fourth man, Robert Mnisi, was given immunity from prosecution when he agreed to testify for the state.
Scott-Crossley was married (BIZARRE!) by a magistrate Friday morning before his sentencing and was led from the courtroom with his bride. His attorney, Charl van Tonder, said the verdict and sentence would be appealed.
Mathebula's legal aid-appointed lawyer, Mduduzi Thabede, also said he intended to appeal.

Now the question you really have to ask is, who is the wench that married Crossley? If he feeds a farmworker (who he catches running an errand), to lions what will happen to her when he ever gets cross with her?