tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15992530400437426432024-03-13T01:14:58.526-07:00Pirate YarnsThe infidel in their midst, an obstacle to their unscrupulous designs...Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-79698751473371555032016-10-14T08:07:00.001-07:002016-10-17T20:43:06.670-07:00Lost At Sea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">At daybreak on 4 November 1587 the King of Spain’s great Manila galleon, the <i>Santa Ana </i>was in sight of Isla de California. It was a crisp, clear day, without a single cloud in the sky. Tomás de Alzola stood on the prow of his command searching for signs of life on the desert hills. He knew the place was inhabited by Pericú indians. But they were peaceful and kept a low profile. Pirates were his main concern.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The nabobs of the South Sea Admiralty, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to remove his cannons before he left Acapulco in April, and use them to protect the port against pirate raids. "That way you’ll have more room for cargo" they said. Now all he had to protect his ship was blunderbusses and stones.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Alzola took a deep breath. The air, though dry, was saturated with warm fragrances from the coast: mimosa, prickly pear, and sun dried coral. “I can already smell the fresh water of Aguarda Segura,” he sighed, putting a hand on his first mate’s shoulder, “and we’re not even past the cape yet.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The arced promontory of Cabo San Lucas was a welcome sight. Awash with surf and sunlight it looked like the hand of Neptune fumbling in the shallows for errant mermaids. </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVOjzIR0T22k44Km5ICFdnoKLOpNc9FI0zSgZjhgLVOpabF3Fb4ZPl5HzJgRz1fqvUyrjkAaAtP2qSLXtkmbrJ8Updlyapt656h612Nv12zCJpvV-e9uhQ9aAfn35Pkqpe594YeNoMxNg/s1600/Astrolabe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVOjzIR0T22k44Km5ICFdnoKLOpNc9FI0zSgZjhgLVOpabF3Fb4ZPl5HzJgRz1fqvUyrjkAaAtP2qSLXtkmbrJ8Updlyapt656h612Nv12zCJpvV-e9uhQ9aAfn35Pkqpe594YeNoMxNg/s320/Astrolabe.jpg" width="320" /></span></a><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">He reached into his jacket pocket and took out an antique brass navigational instrument, an astrolabe that was a gift from the Archbishop of Seville, Cristóbal Rojas Sandoval, who had died the very same day that he had given it to him. Along with his spyglass, it was one of the captain’s few keepsakes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Another 700 miles of this wretched 9,000-mile journey to go," thought Alzola. "After watering at Aguada Segura we should reach Acapulco in ten days." He was delighted to have crossed in such good time, just four months from Manila. For the first time since setting sail, he was happy. </span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A turkey vulture circled overhead. The pallor of corpses yet clung to the decks. Nearly half of those who had boarded the <i>Santa Ana</i> in Manila Bay had perished at sea. “<i>La muerte en el mar debe ser esperada, cotidiano incluso</i>, <i>solamente nunca es aceptable,</i>” the captain often said. “Death at sea is to be expected, quotidian even, but it is never acceptable.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Sea lions on the cape were barking. “They sound more like sea donkeys,” he laughed. Just then a sailor in the crow’s nest cried, “<i>Vela</i>! <i>Vela</i>!” Alzola raised his telescope and spotted two small ships on the horizon. “English pirates!<i>” </i> he cursed. “<i>Pinche cabrón, pendejo!</i>”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">At Sampeguita, the gated community where my parents live on San Jose del Cabo Bay, every unit has a second-storey master bedroom. The old man hasn’t climbed those stairs in years, but my mother usually sleeps up there. The room has a spectacular view of the bay. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Lately, when I’ve come to visit, she’s given me this room and moved into the garage. My sister gets the same treatment. We’re spoilt, for sure, but what can we do, she insists. Besides, the garage is where she keeps her workstation and all of her bits and bobs, and it’s air conditioned. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This past week Cabo has experienced apocalyptic levels of humidity. A new air conditioner was installed in the master bedroom. No wonder I’m spending more time upstairs, sitting at the wooden writing desk, which looks like the poop deck on a Spanish galleon and has multiple hidden drawers and secret compartments. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In 2012, I wrote the first few chapters of my second novel <i>Pirates</i> at this desk<i>. </i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Then, as now, staying focused was difficult. Sliding glass doors open onto a terra-cotta balcony with a vista that stretches across the bay, from Palmilla to Punta Gorda. Occasionally I go out for a smoke. One hit of that Acapulco Gold and I am spellbound, my face a wide open, pie-eyed target for well placed cannon shot. Mercifully, pirate ships no longer bedevil the Sea of Cortez.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I once saw a killer whale hunting in the littoral waters, a joy to watch through binoculars. But my greatest WTF moment came the morning I stepped out on the balcony to blaze and found a </span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">futuristic </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">naval warship cruising up and down the bay, like a dark and menacing cyber-kraken from the future, the most badass ocean craft I’d ever seen. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Turned out to be <i>USS Independence</i>, a high-speed “littoral combat ship” from the naval base in San Diego. With her trimaran hull she specialized in operations close to shore, and had sailed into Mexican waters to provide extra security for Secretary Clinton’s visit to Cabo; she was attending the first ever meeting of the G-20’s foreign ministers, at Barceló Grand Faro, 250 yards up the beach from where my parents live. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">For the native Pericú indians watching from shore that November day in 1587, the kerfuffle off Cabo must have been quite the WTF moment. Three galleons flying two different colors were sizing each other up. Two ships had cannons, the other blunderbusses and stones. They hurled insults, too, at each other, in Spanish (“<i>Pinche cabrón, pendejo! No sea gorgojos idos!</i>”) and in English (“God’s teeth, I bite my thumb at you, you half-faced, onion-eyed, huggermugger!”). </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="s1">These were not the first galleons the Pericú had seen sailing their waters. Elaborate boats helmed by elaborate boatmen had been dropping anchor off Cabo for fifty years. They came for what the Pericú called </span><span class="s2"><i>Añuiti</i></span><span class="s1"> (place full of reeds) and the Spanish <i>Aguada Segura </i>(safe spring), the only reliable source of fresh water within hundreds of miles. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Being one of a few tribes on the California coasts to have mastered watercraft, the Pericú were open-minded to the arrival of big boats from across the sea. But seeing them engage in hostilities was a first, indeed terrifying for those out fishing at the time.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The Spanish galleon was nearly four times the size of the two English galleons put together, yet she had no cannons to fire back at them. After one of the English ships came alongside, sailors began boarding but were quickly driven back, some into the sea. The English then pulled back, to pursue their prize with the full force of their guns, firing everything they had at her. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">After the Spanish galleon began to sink the raiders again boarded, were again met with dogged resistance by her crew, but finally took control of the ship. They sailed her to a bay enclosing the mouth of the freshwater river so prized by the Spanish, where they anchored, removed the surviving crew and passengers to shore, then started pumping out seawater. They needed to keep her afloat long enough to unload her cargo.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The Pericú indians, who by then had gathered in large numbers on the beach to watch the spectacle offshore, could not have known that this single act of piracy would spell their doom.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Writing pirate yarns distracts me from the phantasmagoric image of my old man laying on his everlasting death bed. I feel guilty for not spending more time at his bedside, for not being able to do much for him, and for ignoring him. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“What’s that brownie got in it?” he asks, as chocolate crumbs tumble down his chest. He’s noticed something different in the mix. “Marijuana?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“That’s right, dad. Remember, we talked about this. Gerry got the weed, mom paid for it, and Bobby cooked it up in a batch of chocolate brownies.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“Oh,” he says. Later he complains of a belly ache. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“So you don’t like the brownies?” I ask.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“No,” he says, “I like the brownies. The brownies don’t like me.”</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Did it have any effect on you?"</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"What?"</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"DID IT HAVE ANY EFFECT ON YOU?"</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Yeah, I was dancing with the fairies." </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Trudging back upstairs to my cave I take refuge behind a thicket of words. It’s my very own stairway to heaven. Dad, I think, needs a stairlift. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>We departed out of Plymouth on Thursday, the 21 of July, 1586, with 3 sails, to wit, the Desire, a ship of 120 tons, the Content, of 60 tons, and the Hugh Gallant, a bark of 40 tons: in which small fleet were 123 persons of all sorts, with all kind of furniture and victuals sufficient for the space of two years.”- </i>Francis Pretty, man-at-arms on the <i>Desire</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The circumstances surrounding the sacking of the <i>Santa Ana</i> were serendipitous. The Manila galleon just happened to be carrying more than the usual rewards on that particular sea voyage. England was at war with Spain. And Thomas “The Navigator” Cavendish, an English privateer who had been given license by Elizabeth I to lay to waste every beslubbering Spanish outpost and galleon he found on his sea voyages, just happened to be in the neighborhood.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">For six months he had been sailing up the South Sea, raiding ports, sinking ships, and burning churches in the Americas. He then heard from a Spaniard he had captured that the <i>Santa Ana,</i> a 700 ton galleon stripped of her cannons was sailing solo from Manila to Acupulco with a large cargo worth hundreds of thousands of pesos, and was due to arrive soon at <i>Aguada Segura.</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Cavendish knew that after a such a long sea voyage crew and passengers would be gagging for fresh water, and in no condition to resist an attack, especially without proper weapons.<i> </i>He must have been smiling to himself as they set sail for Cabo, swaggering on the sun bleached poop deck of his beloved <i>Desire</i>, gob smackingly amazed by the cunningness of own brilliant plan. </span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The 14 of October we fell with the Cape of St Lucar, which cape is very like the Needles at the Isle of Wight ; and within the said cape is a great bay called by the Spaniards Aguada Segura: into which bay falleth a fair fresh river, about which many Indians use to keep. We watered in the river, and lay off and on from the said Cape of St Lucar until the fourth of November, and had the winds hanging still westerly.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /><br />From my writing desk I can see the same “great bay” where the privateers dropped anchor four centuries ago. Now there’s a highway through it and piles of waterfront condos, but essentially it’s still the same desert oasis on the bay: Añuiti, Aguada Segura, San Jose del Cabo.<br /><br />For three weeks they waited, foraying onto shore from time to time to barter with the Pericú for fresh water. Anything metal was of great value to them. A soup ladle fetched six barrels of water. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The natives, who had never known galleons to stay for so long, had no idea what they were up to nor did they make any trouble for them. Too busy gathering roots and shoots for the next shamanistic ritual, which they hoped would keep the danger they could smell at bay, they paid them no mind.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Without so much as a breath, Pretty recounts the events as they unfolded from the moment the <i>Santa Ana</i> rounded the cape:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="color: yellow; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The 4 of November the Desire and the Content, wherein were the number of Englishmen only living, beating up and down upon the headland of California, which standeth in 23 degrees and face to the northward, between seven and 8 of the clock in the morning one of the company of our Admiral, which was the trumpeter of the ship, going up into the top, espied a sail bearing in from the sea with the cape. Whereupon he cried out, with no small joy to himself and the whole company, "A sail ! a sail !" With which cheerful word the master of the ship and divers others of the company went also up into the maintop. Who, perceiving the speech to be very true, gave information unto our General of these happy news, who was no less glad than the cause required : whereupon he gave in charge presently unto the whole company to put all things in readiness. Which being performed we gave them chase some 3 or 4 hours, standing with our best advantage and working for the wind. In the afternoon we gat up unto them, giving them the broadside with our great ordnance and a volley of small shot, and presently laid the ship aboard, whereof the king of Spain was owner, which was Admiral of the South Sea, called the St Anna, and thought to be 700 tons in burthen. Now, as we were ready on their ship's side to enter her, being not past 50 or 60 men at the uttermost in our ship, we perceived that the captain of the said ship had made fights fore and after, and laid their sails close on their poop, their midship, with their forecastle, and having not one man to be seen, stood close under their fights, with lances, javelins, rapiers, and targets, and an innumerable sort of great stones, which they threw overboard upon our heads and into our ship so fast, and being so many of them, that they put us off the ship again, with the loss of 2 of our men which were slain, and with the hurting of 4 or 5. But for all this we new trimmed our sails, and fitted every.man his furniture, and gave them a fresh encounter with our great ordnance and also with our small shot, raking them through and through, to the killing and maiming of many of their men. Their captain still, like a valiant man, with his company, stood very stoutly unto his close fights, not yielding as yet. Our General, encouraging his men afresh with the whole noise of trumpets, gave them the third encounter with our great ordnance and all our small shot, to the great discomforting of our enemies, raking them through in divers places, killing and spoiling many of their men. They being thus discomforted and spoiled, and their ship being in hazard of sinking by reason of the great shot which were made, whereof some were under water, within 5 or 6 hours' fight set out a flag of truce and parleyed for mercy, desiring our General to save their lives and to take their goods, and that they would presently yield. Our General of his goodness promised them mercy, and willed them to strike their sails, and to hoise out their boat and to come aboard. Which news they were full glad to hear of, and presently struck their sails, hoised their boat out, and one of their chief merchants came aboard unto our General, and falling down upon his knees, offered to have kissed our General's feet, and craved mercy. Our General most graciously pardoned both him and the rest upon promise of their true dealing with him and his company concerning such riches as were in the ship : and sent for the captain and their pilot, who at their coming used the hke duty and reverence as the former did. The General, of his great mercy and humanity, promised their lives and good usage. The said captain and pilot presently certified the General what goods they had within board, to wit, an hundred and 22 thousand pesos of gold : and the rest of the riches that the ship was laden with, was in silks, satins, damasks, with musk and divers other merchandise, and great store of all manner of victuals, with the choice of many conserves of all sorts for to eat, and of sundry sorts of very good wines. These things being made known to the General by the aforesaid captain and pilot, they were commanded to stay aboard the Desire, and on the 6 day of November following we went into a harbour which is called by the Spaniards Aguada Segura, or Puerto Seguro. </span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /><br />A fortnight passed. As a full moon rose up from the sea, every person of importance in the Pericú community was seated around the sacred fire. From atop their desert hill they had a favorable view of the valley where Añuiti flowed into the bay, and where the three ships that had been there since the half moon were now floating in moonbeams.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The light hanging over the hills behind them, against which the souls of their ancestors were silhouetted, was the color of a prickly pear. Scattered around them were the tools of the tribe: stone grinding basins, spears, lark's-head netting, and coiled basketry.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A shaman singing incantations, his face painted red with ochre, passed around a palm-bark vessel containing a liquid that had been simmering on the fire. Each person respectfully drank from it. An hour passed, taken up only by incantations. The sky was full of stars. Then the red-faced shaman climbed to the top of a sacred rock above them to call down supernatural forces.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">For a moment the sky was empty. Suddenly, from the heavens above the bay came a flaming dragon that lit up the ships below with the glow of its tongue. The Pericú gasped, threw up their hands. Then came another fire demon over the bay, this one shaped like a palm tree, then more palm trees, a hefty flaming forest of palm trees. Never before had the shaman conjured up such mind-blowing sorcery. It helped that the psychoactive drugs were just kicking in. Still, WTF…</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Three hundred and forty five years and a day later my father was born.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>“Oh, Edmund, it's wonderful! But what about Melchy and Raleigh? You must have brought something for them as well. [Edmund clears his throat trying to think of something] - Nursie's got her beard, I've got my stick; what about the two boys?” </i>- Queen, <i>Blackadder II ‘The Potato’</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“God bless the Queen,” roared Thomas “The Navigator” Cavendish, raising a glass to England’s sovereign of 30 years, “and long may she reign.” The Spanish captain also raised a glass, though not in triumph. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It was the night of 17 November, Coronation Day and Tomás de Alzola and a handful more people from the <i>Santa Ana </i>had been invited on board the <i>Desire </i>to celebrate with the English. It was as bizarre a situation as he had ever been in, toasting his enemy's monarch while his own king's property lay run-aground in the bay, looted of all her riches. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />The English captain’s toast was the cue for the master gunner to start the fireworks display. The <i>Desire</i> and the <i>Content</i> also made their salutes by firing fireworks from their cannons. They lit up the bay with a pyrotechnic spectacle the likes of which Alzola and his men had never seen before. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“Impressive, hey?” said Cavendish putting an arm around the Spaniard who stood awestruck, his eyes fixed to the sky. “I was given a dozen barrels of water just for telling the native warlock we’d be having a firework display this evensong. Ha ha…” He then reached into his coat and produced a brass instrument, the very same one the Spanish captain had been holding when he was captured. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />“An ancient astrolabe?” said Cavendish, brandishing the object so the others could see it. “Were you planning on traveling back in time?” His officers roared with laughter. </span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“May I have it back,” asked Alzola, reaching out. “It was a gift from…” He stopped short, knowing how Cavendish felt about Catholics. The week before The Navigator had had a friar hung by the neck from the <i>Santa Ana</i>’s yardarm just for making the sign of the cross.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“No, you may not,” snapped Cavendish, who then threw the object into the sea. “By the way, could I get you to sign this bill of sale for the cargo we’re purloining?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It took the privateers two weeks to offload the Manila galleon of her most precious cargoes. For want of stowage on their own two small vessels, they were forced to leave a few things behind, much of which had already been tossed overboard into the sea. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Before departing, in an uncharacteristic show of empathy, Cavendish gave weapons, provisions, and the <i>Santa Ana</i>’s sails for shelter to the seafarers marooned in the bay. He then set fire to their ship. She was still ablaze when <i>Desire</i> and <i>Content</i> set a course for the Philippines, with the booty split between the two sails. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The 19 day of November aforesaid, about 3 of the clock in the afternoon, our General caused the king's ship to be set on fire, which, having to the quantity of 500 tons of goods in her, we saw burnt unto the water, and then gave them a piece of ordnance and set sail joyfully homewards towards England with a fair wind, which by this time was come about to east-north-east. And night growing near, we left the Content astern of us, which was not as yet come out of the road. And here, thinking she would have overtaken us, we lost her company and never saw her after. </span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Two years and fifty days after his departure from Plymouth, Thomas Cavendish sailed back into the same harbour. The <i>Desire</i> was only the third ship to circumnavigate the globe, after the <i>Victoria</i> of Ferdinand Magellan (journey completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano) and the <i>Golden Hind</i> of Francis Drake. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Cavendish invited Queen Elizabeth to a dinner aboard the <i>Desire</i>. She was suitably impressed by his haul of gold, silver, silks, ivory, spices, and porcelain. Thereafter he was knighted and joyfully celebrated across the realm. He was 28.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Although a scoundrel and a scalawag, he does deserve kudos for his audacity. In the 250 years that Manila galleons sailed the trade route between the Philippines and Mexico, no greater prize was ever looted from a “nao de China” than Cavendish's haul from the <i>Santa Ana</i>. Three years later he had already squandered his fortune. He died at sea at the age of 31.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">By the time I was 21 I had circumnavigated the globe five times. I have my parents to thank for that fanfaronade. They took me everywhere, from continent to continent, ocean to ocean. In time, like a satellite that’s reached critical orbit, I could not be stopped. The world is a blur to me now. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">At 54 I move continents on average every six and a half years. That’s a pirate’s life for me. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Can’t say the same for my parents. Retiring to Cabo twenty five years ago was meant to ensure the good times never ended, that they could both continue to enjoy their singular lifestyles up until the day they each shook off that mortal coil.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But my father is trapped in a body that will neither let him rise from his deathbed nor let him die in it. And my mother is trapped in a situation that requires more strength and presence of mind than an octogenarian can always muster. Sadly, there’s no way around it.</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The saddest thing is how little my dad remembers of his own accomplishments: building 'comfort stations' in the slums of Ibadan, revitalizing the safari circuit in northern Tanzania, overhauling Air Lanka in Sri Lanka, finding a million jobs for Indonesians, and advising the Singapore government on how not to be dicks. Even the highlights are gone, no longer there to comfort him in his moment of reflection: scuba diving in the Maldives, skiing in Syria, building a waterfront dream home in San Jose del Cabo.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">These days, the English and Spanish no longer visit Cabo, nor does Hillary Clinton. The Pericú indians are no longer here either. Two hundred years ago, war and disease carried over by conquistadors and missionaries, who had been sent by Spain to secure the California coast against future pirate raids, killed off the Pericú indians. Nothing of their culture and language remains. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Occasionally there’ll be a firework display in San Jose del Cabo Bay, over near Palmilla, or out in front of Barceló Grand Faro, but no one’s quite sure why. You can take a cruise aboard an authentic galleon, sail around Cabo San Lucas on a “family-friendly pirate-themed adventure” while drinking tequila and keeping a bleary eye out for whales. Yup, the pirate theme prevails, in a plethora of colourful tourist attractions. True pirates, though, are lost at sea.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Tomás de Alzola is the hero of this pirate yarn. His heroism emerges in the final chapter. For as soon as those privateers had sailed over the horizon, leaving the Spanish galleon ablaze, Alzola and his seafarers swam out to the ship and put out the fire. They then set about rebuilding her, fixing her hull, raising her sails, and setting her adrift again on the Sea of Cortez. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">On 6 January 1588, seven months after leaving the Philippines, the Santa Ana limped into Acapulco, minus her cargo. On board, as well as Captain Alzola and the survivors, were two Pericú indians, husband and wife. </span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have a recurring dream about my father struggling out of his bed and into his wheelchair, wheeling himself out onto the beach, and then down to the edge of the surf where a boat is waiting. He drags himself onto the boat, then pushes off and drifts out into the bay. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The sea, mirroring a billion brilliant stars under a moonless sky, is as calm as a millpond, not a ripple. Leaning over the bow he sees his reflection in the water. “There,” he whispers, “what’s that?” A league beneath the surface, glimmering in the starlight is an object resting in the sand, a brass instrument. “It’s an astrolabe,” dad says, then closes his eyes and passes away.</span></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-55061363318547243042014-09-23T09:17:00.003-07:002014-09-23T09:21:28.565-07:00Maritime Drug Trafficking<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">How Changes in Technology Are Making It Harder to Nab the Bad Guys </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">by Ashley Milburn</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In 2010, the U.S. Coast Guard seized just over 90 tons of cocaine destined for U.S. shores, a haul valued at more than USD $3.5 billion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">However, in the multibillion-a-year U.S. cocaine industry, the Coast Guard's interdiction rate accounts for only 26 per cent of the estimated 350 tons of cocaine arriving in the U.S. each year; the sale of which supports both criminal and terrorist groups in Latin America and abroad.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The remaining supply, shipped from the Andean nations of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia through an intricate trafficking network that spans South, Central, and North America, is able to be delivered unhindered as a result of the traffickers' efforts to continually seek out more efficient and anonymous ways of transporting their product.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">With large operating budgets, traffickers have proven their ability to develop and adopt new techniques that allow them to elude international maritime forces. However, while the evolution of their technology is a hallmark of the cat-and-mouse game of maritime drug trafficking, the discovery of a fully submersible submarine in a clandestine jungle shipyard in Ecuador last July was deemed a game changer.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">In the past </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Over the last 30 years, seafaring cocaine traffickers, who transport over 80 per cent of the cocaine arriving in the U.S., have made a living of finding ways to elude authorities. In the late 1990s "go-fast" boats began to replace airplanes as the main means for moving cocaine through the Caribbean, the primary trans-shipment zone of the day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">At the time, the favoured mode of transportation, the twin-engine light plane, could only carry up to 700 kilograms of cocaine, while go-fast boats provided an opportunity to move at least three times that amount. In addition, the fiberglass watercraft was capable of travelling up to 130 kilometres per hour and offered smugglers a speed advantage over the authorities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Furthermore, with a price tag of $25,000, the boats were cheaper to acquire and operate than airplanes, and were considered to be a more disposable platform, an important characteristic given the fact that operators often scuttle their vessel after the shipment has been delivered.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">However, the boats' large wakes made them easy to spot, and anti-drug agents, using helicopters and their own high-speed vessels - such as the Midnight Express speedboats that the U.S. supplied to the Colombian Navy in 2005 - became far more adept at spotting and intercepting the traffickers' vessels.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">By the year 2000 </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">By the turn of the century, Plan Colombia, the U.S. effort to fight the illegal drug trade in the number one cocaine producing country, was introduced, leading to a shift in trafficking routes from the Caribbean to the lightly patrolled Pacific.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In addition to the geographic shift, less conspicuous vessels, such as cargo ships and fishing vessels, became increasingly common means of transporting cocaine. Fishing vessels, usually equipped with sophisticated navigation and communication instruments, were popular as they did not require the type of refit work that would give away the vessel's role in smuggling operations, and allowed traffickers to transit long distances without attracting suspicion from authorities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">At the time, traffickers also became increasingly skilled at concealing their illicit cargo, hiding cocaine in compartments within fuel or ballast tanks, making it nearly impossible to locate the cache of drugs without emptying the fuel tanks - a move that violates U.S. environmental laws - or dismantling the vessel in question.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Also, traffickers using non-commercial vessels, such as pleasure yachts, opted to make their voyages during peak times, such as civic holidays, allowing them to better blend in with legal maritime traffic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In addition, the use of multiple at-sea transfers, decoy vessels and logistics supply ships increased during the early 2000s, adding more complexity to maritime trafficking routes and challenging interdiction forces.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">In the last five years </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">However, new rules implemented in 2007 that required fishing boats operating off of Colombia and Ecuador to carry GPS devices allowed police to better track vessel movements, and helped curb the number of commercial vessels being used by traffickers. Additionally, the Container Control Program ( CCP ), a joint initiative by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Customs Organization, that minimize the risk of maritime containers being commandeered by traffickers began to achieve measurable results: in the first three years since CCP operations began at the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador, almost 25 tons of cocaine were seized.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The increased surveillance of commercial vessels is what authorities believe led traffickers to change course yet again, this time heading below the surface.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">The arrival of semi-submersibles </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In 2006, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter spotted the first semi-submersible boat, nicknamed "Bigfoot", off the coast of Costa Rica. Powered by a 300-horsepower diesel motor and travelling 18 inches below the surface at about 12 kilometres an hour, Bigfoot was a sign that traffickers were opting for stealth over speed to evade authorities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The 60-foot fiberglass vessels, painted in various shades of blue to blend into the ocean, can travel undetected by the human eye or surveillance systems for up to 2,000 nautical miles. The boat's tiny wake creates a negligible radar footprint, and because the exhaust is released through tubing below the surface and the boat has an upper lead shielding to minimize its heat signature, patrol aircraft are unable to rely on their heat-sensing equipment to locate the vessels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Additionally, the boats, which are primarily built in jungle shipyards along the estuaries of Colombia's Pacific coast for approximately half a million dollars each, are capable of carrying up to 10 tons of cocaine. This is a haul that garners a street value of up to $550 million, more than 1,000 times the cost of the vessel, making it a highly lucrative conveyance method.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As a result of their stealth and return on investment, authorities believed that up to 70 percent of the 480 tons of cocaine leaving Colombia's Pacific coast in 2008 was packed aboard semi-submersibles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">With the UN estimating an interdiction success rate of only 14 percent, Joint Interagency Task Force ( JIATF ) South, the Pentagon's anti-narcotics command centre, compared the task of patrolling for semi-submersibles to policing the entire United States with only three squad cars.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Policy changes </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In addition, authorities also faced legal challenges in stopping the vessels as crews were able to avoid prosecution by simply scuttling the craft and sinking the drugs if spotted. However, in October 2008, a law passed by the U.S. Congress outlawing the use of semi-submersibles in international waters unless registered with a state, made it possible for authorities to convict a boat's crew on the basis of visual evidence that they were manning the subs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The following year, SOUTHCOM, the command responsible for all U.S. military activity in South and Central America, reported a 46 percent decrease in the detection rate of semi-submersibles transiting the area, and the Colombian Navy only detected one semi-submersible in 2010, down drastically from 22 seizures in 2009.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The lower detection rate was seen by SOUTHCOM and other agencies as an indication that traffickers were adapting yet again. However, it wasn't until July 2010, when the first fully functional, completely submersible "narco-sub" was discovered in an Ecuadorian jungle shipyard, that authorities' suspicions were confirmed.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Fully submerged </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A proper diesel-electric submarine like the one discovered in Ecuador has the option of shutting down its engines and submerging fully to run on batteries, at which time it becomes completely invisible on radar and infrared. Such a capability means that interdiction forces can then only locate the sub by using sonar, which has a shorter range, is far less reliable, and requires the use of a greater number of assets.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In many ways, the move towards fully submersible submarines was an inevitable transition in the evolution of maritime drug trafficking technology. The technology is not overly advanced but its advanced covert qualities follow the trend of traffickers opting for stealth over speed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Given that most Western navies still maintain significant anti-submarine forces, drug traffickers may find themselves forced to adapt their maritime strategy once again. While the Director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency for the Andean Region, Jay Bergman, described the narco-sub as the "final frontier" for the maritime drug smugglers, historical trends indicate nothing is impossible in the multi-billion dollar cocaine trafficking industry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">URL:</strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n065/a01.html</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Newshawk:</strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> Herb</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1599253040043742643" title="Rate the spin and quality of this clipping">Votes</a>:</strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> 0</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Pubdate:</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> Mon, 31 Jan 2011</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Source:</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> Lookout (CN BC)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Copyright:</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> 2011 The Lookout</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Contact:</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> </span><a href="mailto:frontoffice@lookoutnewspaper.com" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">frontoffice@lookoutnewspaper.com</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Website:</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> </span><a href="http://www.lookoutnewspaper.com/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;" target="win2">http://www.lookoutnewspaper.com/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Details:</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> </span><a href="http://www.mapinc.org/media/1178" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;" target="win2">http://www.mapinc.org/media/1178</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Author:</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> Ashley Milburn</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;">Bookmark:</b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> </span><a href="http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;" target="win2">http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica;"> (Cocaine)</span></span><br />
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-42380466275528676612014-09-18T09:05:00.003-07:002014-09-18T09:05:30.894-07:00PIRATES Book Signing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjueEXMORKWkrrmtEfD5A5CQOBwho24xrog2_NHldqpRe4M36kkJmrgCVeJj2cPAbZ9lrWPDutIu-_uE7iGXNVuFr6mMbt-mWb4g-mE5xtRE3y6n874x9Hrc45oP8LYt1Z5titXZw0TFPs/s1600/mysteriousgalaxybanner.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjueEXMORKWkrrmtEfD5A5CQOBwho24xrog2_NHldqpRe4M36kkJmrgCVeJj2cPAbZ9lrWPDutIu-_uE7iGXNVuFr6mMbt-mWb4g-mE5xtRE3y6n874x9Hrc45oP8LYt1Z5titXZw0TFPs/s1600/mysteriousgalaxybanner.gif" height="312" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Greg Cummings will be appearing at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego, CA, Monday, October 6, at 7:30 PM, signing and reading from his new novel <i><a href="http://www.mystgalaxy.com/book/9781908122629" target="_blank">Pirates</a></i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Mysterious Galaxy is an independent genre bookstore that is passionate about creating and maintaining a community of readers, authors, and booksellers. Cummings is honored to be offered this opportunity to interact with his readers at such a respected and appreciated independent bookstore. </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Join Greg Cummings f</span><span style="font-size: large;">or an in-store author event that promises to deliver the</span><span style="font-size: large;"> magic and torment of the African</span><span style="font-size: large;"> savannah to SoCal.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Bring your family</span><span style="font-size: large;"> and</span><span style="font-size: large;"> friends. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.mystgalaxy.com/" target="_blank">Mysterious Galaxy</a></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">San Diego CA 92111</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">(858) 268 4747</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Pirates</i> is available in store and at the Mysterious Galaxy <a href="http://www.mystgalaxy.com/book/9781908122629" target="_blank">website</a></span></b></div>
Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-28691267532925551092014-08-21T12:00:00.000-07:002014-08-27T10:07:54.524-07:00Looking For Johnny<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Who is Johnny Oceans?</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mickey Munday, last of the Cocaine Cowboys reveals the terrifying truth about this enigmatic smuggler turned agent, i</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">n grammy award-winner Robin Klein's investigative documentary, </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looking For Johnny</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, shot on location in Miami, FL</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Johnny Oceans, the hero of <i>Pirates</i> by Greg Cummings, is partly based on a real-life Floridian smuggler. In 2010, while big game fishing on the Kenyan coast </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">with the author</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">, the real Johnny Oceans revealed confidential matter about his past, some of which was incorporated into the novel. Only he and the author know what is fact and what is fiction. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Seeking to capitalise on the abstruseness of the character, and inspired by a piece in <a href="http://theflamingosun.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">The Flamingo Sun</a>, filmmaker Robin Klein (who won a Grammy Award for <i>Rock and Roll Circus</i>) flew to Miami in June 2014 to make a short documentary, interviewing some of the people who knew Oceans. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the 1980s </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mickey Munday</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> helped smuggle $2 billion worth of cocaine into South Florida for the Medellin Cartel. He became famous after the release of <i>Cocaine Cowboys </i>(2006)<i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">directed by Billy Corben.<i> </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Klein's documentary Munday speaks openly about his association with the former smuggler, claiming only to have known <i>of</i> Johnny Oceans. "He's a ghost, and I like that. Sometimes a ghost bumps into a ghost."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But nothing is quite what it seems... </span></div>
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/103834136">Looking For Johnny</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user12956951">gorillaland</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-70959603334728447612013-11-29T01:11:00.000-08:002014-08-26T06:43:07.258-07:00Five Hours GMT: World Events That Helped Shape Pirates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1">It was shortly after 11 pm on 11</span><span class="s2"><sup> </sup></span><span class="s1">July 2010, and thousands of Ugandan football fans had crowded into Kampala’s bars to watch the last ten minutes of the World Cup finals on TV. Not being a footy fan, I had purposely stayed away from the melee, and was at home watching <i>Discovery</i>. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I did not hear the first attack. The Ethiopian restaurant in Kabalagala was out of audible range, but the large outdoor screen at Kyadondo Rugby Club, where the second attack took place was less than three kilometres from my apartment. I heard a dull thud immediately followed by a terrible scraping noise, the sound of countless steel ball-bearings ripping through plastic chairs, flesh and bone. Moments later, another explosion. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">The death toll from the suicide attacks totalled 74 people, and 70 more were injured. I later learned that a friend had been badly injured in the rugby club attack. She has since made a remarkable recovery. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Notwithstanding the real human tragedies involved, the news, while getting closer to home, was proving a source of inspiration as I attempted to write compelling adventure stories set within real life events. And a miasmal alphabet soup of headlines about human wickedness had been floating around my subconscious since childhood.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Listening to BBC World Service each week day morning over breakfast - two fried eggs, two beef sausages, and a mug of strong, black Nile coffee - is a tradition I’d be loathed to give up. The Beeb, like the African dawn chorus, is deeply embedded in my memory. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">When I lived in Dar-es-salaam in the early 1970s, every school morning began with the chimes of Big Ben phasing in and out as my father tuned his Grundig Yacht Boy to the World Service. The scholarly voice of an Oxbridge announcer, bouncing off the ionosphere to reach me snug in my bed blended nicely with the pulse of the Indian Ocean outside my window. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">But the awakening was frequently rude, alarming headlines that wormed their way into my young mind. Living two time zones ahead of London, we were often the first in the Anglophone world to hear the news. “<i>Palestinian terrorists, the so-called Black September group, have killed all the Israeli athletes they were holding hostage at the Munich Olympic games…</i>” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Harris" target="_blank">Thomas Harris</a> (<i>Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal</i>) began writing his debut novel <i>Black Sunday</i> after watching television coverage of the hostage crisis in Munich. A disgruntled Vietnam veteran, who pilots blimps over NFL games, conspires with a Black September terrorist to launch a suicide attack in the United States. With a bomb</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"> made of plastique and a quarter of a million steel darts,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> he aims to detonate the explosive during the half time celebrations at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. It was the first modern adventure story I read as teenager.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10602791" target="_blank">BBC news headline</a>:<i> </i>“<i>The Somali Islamist group al-Shabab has said it was behind twin blasts which hit the Ugandan capital Kampala on Sunday, killing 74 people.</i>” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I was half-way through writing the manuscript for my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gorillaland-ebook/dp/B00757ICAG/" target="_blank">first novel</a>, a thriller set in the Congo, and not yet thinking about a second. But the attack in Kampala brought the conflict in Somalia to my doorstep. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called the terrorists “backward and cowardly” and vowed to deal with the authors of this crime. “It will have to be peace enforcement to bring peace to Somalia.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">My girlfriend Sandra and I ventured into Kabalagala to witness the aftermath of the horror inflicted by jihadist. And as we sat down for lunch across the street from the Ethiopian restaurant where the first attack occurred, our waiter told of coming to work and finding a human limb in the gutter. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Another deadly menace dominating the headlines at the time, also emanating from the Horn of Africa, was Somali pirates. They had attacked hundreds of ships passing through the Gulf of Aden, hijacked dozens, collected hundreds of millions in ransom money, and it seemed nothing was being done to stop “the pirate kings of Puntland,” as one <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2009/06/2009614125245860630.html" target="_blank">alJazeera headline</a> described them. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">When pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama taking Captain Phillips hostage, <a href="http://harpers.org/blog/2009/04/pirates-and-the-cia-what-would-thomas-jefferson-have-done/" target="_blank">a former CIA agent asked</a>, “Where is the CIA? Where is the humint effort in Somalia? Where is the covert action capability of the CIA that should be on the ground in Somalia, collecting, pressuring, attacking, and destroying pirate infrastructure?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">But there are two sides to the story. While fishing in Kenya in October 2010 I learned tuna stocks had recently bounced back, because the threat of piracy had effectively deterred all foreign trawlers from coming anywhere near the western shores of the Indian Ocean. </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It occurred to me that although unscrupulous and lawless, compared to the jihadists the pirates were in many ways the good guys. Yet the international community was using the same blunt instrument to deal with them both: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/drone-operations-over-somalia-pose-danger-to-air-traffic-un-report-says/2012/07/24/gJQALvnf7W_story.html" target="_blank">Reaper drones</a>. I wanted to write a story that showed how these two groups were diametrically opposed, and decided on a plot that pitted pirate against jihadist.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Research confirmed that since the 1980s European and Asian trawlers had been illegally fishing in Somali waters, drastically depleting tuna stocks, and off the shore of Puntland at the tip of the Horn of Africa the Italian mafia had <a href="http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/somalia-the-mafia-the-nuclear-waste-dump-zone/" target="_blank">dumped tonnes of toxic waste</a>. </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Grave injustices had been committed against Somalia, in particular against the good people of Puntland. Yet, despite decades of illegal plundering of Somali coastal waters, the international maritime community only started paying attention after fishermen took up piracy. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">There was one notable exception. In 2000, with the help of British company Hart Security Maritime Services, the <a href="http://www.idaratmaritime.com/wordpress/?p=14" target="_blank">Puntland coast guard</a> was established. Some twelve-hundred fisherman were trained in maritime security tactics: how to track illegal fishing trawlers, approach vessels undetected, board without ladders. But shortly after they began patrolling their waters, the Puntland government tore up Hart’s contract in favour of a Dubai-based operation, which eventually ran the service into the ground. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Soon there were hundreds of highly-trained coast guardsmen out of work, loitering in coves along the coast of the Horn of Africa, watching their fish stocks continue to plummet, and waters get polluted, for which no one was being held accountable. No wonder they turned to piracy. (And no wonder <a href="http://www.hartsecurity.com/" target="_blank">Hart Security</a> today provides much of the maritime security for ships passing through the Gulf of Aden.) </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, a much darker story was unfolding on the Horn of Africa. Without significant rainfall in four years, Somalia was quickly becoming gripped by famine. Al-shabaab-held territories were worst hit, as the Islamists refused to accept foreign aid and the United States refused to provide it. </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">In August 2010, <a href="http://www.cfr.org/somalia/al-shabaab-somalias-spreading-famine/p25630?cid=nlc-public-the_world_this_week-link17-20110812" target="_blank">the United Nations estimated</a> twenty-nine thousand children under the age of five had died in southern Somalia and 3.7 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance across the country. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;"> “The scale of the crisis is unprecedented in many ways,” said Rashid Abdi, an analyst for the International Crisis Group. “The closest example you have is the 1984 famine in Ethiopia.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I had spent five months in Ethiopia during the latter half 1985, and witnessed first-hand the effects of famine. While working as a press officer for Catholic Relief Services, I visited one refugee camp in the Afar region where I met a woman whose task it was to weigh babies to determine if they were too far gone for supplemental feeding. I remember thinking at the time that there could be no more distressing a job in the entire world. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1">In 2011, as hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled the famine in Lower Shabelle, Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya swelled beyond capacity. I decided </span>Kakuma, which meant “nowhere” in Swahili, would be the setting for my early chapters. Unable to visit in person, I researched everything I could about the camp online, accounts by refugees who’d been trapped there for over a decade, day-in-the-life videos made with funding from well-meaning aid agencies, and countless articles in the <i><a href="http://kanere.org/" target="_blank">Kakuma News Reflector</a></i>, “a refugee free press.” </span><br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xhs7re" width="480"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhs7re_pirates-haven-aljazeera-english-on-somalia-1of3_news" target="_blank">Pirates' haven - AlJazeera English on SOMALIA 1of3</a> <i>by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/afrikanews" target="_blank">afrikanews</a></i>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">I made two road trips that greatly influenced my story line. The first was to the Kenyan capital for the Easter long-weekend. Sandra and I checked into the <a href="http://www.fairviewkenya.com/" target="_blank">Fairview</a> on Nairobi Hill, owned by my friend Charles Szlapak, and spent hours lounging under giant jacaranda trees on the hotel’s luxuriantly shady grounds, sipping Tusker beer while carefully observing how Mossad agents from the Israeli embassy across the road maintained security. I subsequently used it as the backdrop for a pivotal scene in <i>Pirates </i>in which I try to demonstrate the ruthlessness of al-Shabaab<i>.</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Next stop Kidepo Valley in northern Uganda, an otherworldly place that has to be seen to be believed. We arrived just in time to witness July’s lunar eclipse at <a href="http://www.ngamoru.com/" target="_blank">N’ga Moru lodge</a> on the edge of the national park, a superb spot run by Lyn Jordaan and Patrick Devy. By 10 pm the event had begun. Sitting by the fire, Lyn, Patrick, our driver Sam, Sandra, and I watched the heavens transform as the Moon, like a Hobnob dipped in coffee, turned umber then faded to black. It was the darkest night in a hundred years, but I’d never seen so many stars.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">While stargazing, it occurred to me - as it does in <i>Pirates</i> to Derek Strangely - that Kakuma refugee camp is located just across the border barely a hundred kilometres away. I asked Patrick if it was possible to walk the distance. “Not without getting shot by a Turkana,” he laughed. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">“Nothing Strangely couldn’t handle,” I thought. But I was wrong. My safari guide would be incapable of making such a journey without a good deal of cajoling and a cash incentive. Enter Johnny Oceans, a name I’d first heard mentioned while <a href="http://talesfromtherift.blogspot.com/2013/11/forgedaboudit-how-i-came-to-write.html" target="_blank">tuna fishing off the coast of Kenya</a> the year before.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Derek and Johnny were seated beside an excellent fire at the base of a small granite kopje overlooking Kidepo Valley National Park, in northeastern Uganda. They’d flown up on a private single-engine that Johnny Oceans had chartered, which landed them in Kidepo Airfield, where they were met by park staff who chauffeured them to a camping site at the foot of a kopje. </span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ve been to some spectacular places in my lifetime,” sighed Johnny, “but this is the shit!” Derek just nodded. Words could not express the way he felt about this particular East African wilderness. The sun was setting and the fiery light of dusk had transformed the valley into a son et lumière, recalling the time millions of years ago when it was a cataclysmic inferno, venting the planet’s burning mantle through a cluster of volcanoes.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Except in the far reaches of the imagination,” said Derek, “no one would ever believe this place existed. It’s as if those volcanoes got up and danced around until they all keeled over with exhaustion. And this is how they were found: burnt out and contorted on the Mesozoic dance floor.” He poured himself a double shot of Wild Turkey into a cut-glass tumbler filled with ice, and then said, “Right, Johnny Oceans. You owe me an epic, and it better be a good one.” - Pirates</i> by Greg Cummings</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">With Johnny Oceans I had a strong, enigmatic hero, seemingly capable of standing up to the threat of radical Islamism in Puntland and cattle raiders in northern Kenya. But <i>Pirates</i> needed a heroine to speak out against the nihilism in Somalia. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">Khadija Abdul Rahman was a challenging character to write. Named after an impressive matriarch I’d met, the mother of Sandra’s best friend Fatuma, I knew she had to be inspirational. Social networks provided ample evidence of single-minded Somali women who were fed up with the state of affairs in their country. And I found inspiration in the outspoken Dutch-Somali activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. More importantly I was surrounded by strong women, and across the Arab world they were also <a href="http://lightbox.time.com/2012/07/09/after-the-spring-women-of-the-revolution/#1" target="_blank">making themselves known</a>. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">In <i>Pirates </i>Khadija walks a fine line between her religion and culture as she tries to quash the brutal, clannish behaviour of her country men. She is forced to act after jihadists attempt to recruit her teenage son Nadif in his madrasa. </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">To understand how her boy could be attracted to radical Islam, I researched the Salafs perspective on everything, including fishing. This led to a chapter in which Nadif and his pirate uncle Maxamid fish together off the tip of the Horn of Africa. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">It was hard to get my hands on suitable books. But I managed to reread Ernest Hemingway’s <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2165.The_Old_Man_and_the_Sea?ac=1" target="_blank">The Old Man and the Sea</a>, </i>studying his legendary pelagic battle in fine detail. </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6729638-the-somali-pirate" target="_blank">The Somali Pirate</a>, </i>a autobiographical tale by Noor Fayrus of the Darod clan, was a surprise discovery. It is a delicate, heartbreaking story, told from the heart by a thoughtful writer, a fisherman who had personally experienced the grief and revenge. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">When it came to shaping Omar and al-Rubaysh, <i>Pirates</i>’s <a href="http://www.bartamaha.com/the-missing-link-al-qaeda-in-somalia-33569/" target="_blank">conspiring antagonists</a>, by far my most useful reference was <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2716661-the-african-jihad" target="_blank">The African Jihad</a>: Bin Laden’s Quest for the Horn of Africa</i> by Gregory Alonso Pirio, which I found in a Nairobi bookstore. Much of the background information I needed for these unseemly characters was in that book: Bin Laden's power brokering in Khartoum, the events leading up to Black Hawk Down, and how the Islamic Courts, the only authority that had managed to restore any semblance of law and order in Somalia, was forced to relinquish power under pressure from the US and Ethiopia. Its demise resulted in the formation of al-Shabaab.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">By the end of September 2011, as Kenya prepared to invade Somalia, I had written the first two chapters, and a seven thousand word synopsis that I scarcely altered while writing the manuscript. On the strength of this, Cutting Edge Press offered me a publishing contract for <i>Pirates</i>. </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">But there were still two further news stories to come that would prove most pivotal to the plot: in February “<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/02/201221054649118317.html" target="_blank">Al-Shabab 'join ranks' with al-Qaeda</a>” and in April “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17674996" target="_blank">Somalia's al-Shabab Islamists move north into Puntland</a>”. Still, these stories did not necessitate any changes to my novel, as I had already seen them coming.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: large;">“<i>We will part the sea as Musa did with his mighty staff, for the glory of Allah, reestablish the bond between our great continents in the name of global jihad.</i>” - <i>Pirates</i> by Greg Cummings.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Available as an ebook on Amazon: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-ebook/dp/B00G3DC5RO/">http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-ebook/dp/B00G3DC5RO/</a></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-53951975634337977852013-11-24T06:41:00.003-08:002013-11-25T05:42:30.659-08:00Forgedaboudit!: How I Came To Write Pirates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s ten o’clock at night. Unseen in the viridescent shadows, half a dozen Masai <i>askaris</i> and two Rottweilers are patrolling the grounds of Bobby Cellini’s Malindi home. The two-storey rococo mansion is lit up by coloured spotlights that cast ferny shadows across its rustic ochre walls. Palm fronds nudge up against the terra-cotta roof tiles, rustling in a warm Swahili breeze that blows up from the coast.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Seated at a long glass dining table in a outdoor gazebo by his swimming pool,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> the seventy year-old American patriarch is holding court with his daughter Daniela Cellini, her artist friend Alexandra, nephew Jody Baker, and me. We’ve just eaten an exquisite meal of Wahoo steaks brushed with rosemary branches dipped in olive oil and tied together with a clove of garlic in between. Now comes dessert. “Greg, when was the last time you had Key lime pie?” asks Bobby, as a slice is placed in front of me.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“Way too long,” I sigh pushing my fork through its firm meringue mantle, soft creamy centre and crispy biscuit crust. After tasting a morsel I gasp. “Damn, that’s the best Key lime pie I’ve ever tasted.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Bobby smiles at me, nods, then shuts his eyes. I want to ask him about incorporating my gorilla safaris into junkets for his casino clients but the opportunity has passed. Jody, who suggested I pitch the idea, senses my disappointment, leans in closer and says, “<i>Forgedaboudit</i>.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">I first met Jody Baker </span><span style="font-size: large;">in the highlands of Rwanda </span><span style="font-size: large;">one chilly September morning in 2009. He and his wife Renata, who was seven-and-a-half months pregnant and about to trek mountain gorillas, were standing outside the headquarters of Volcanoes national park, observing the chaos created by half a dozen inflexible park rangers trying to organise four dozen foreigners. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Among the high-paying <i>mzungus</i> eager to start trekking, three stood out: a middle-aged man and his two teenage boys. Outfitted to the teeth in elaborate and expensive khaki safari gear - two hiking poles each, knee-high black gators, and mosquito-net hats - my clients were impossible to miss.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">As Jody recalls, “They wore pith helmets equipped with solar panels to power their attached forehead fans. I made eye contact with their <i>mzungu</i> guide, another sideline observer. He had a look I recognised: one who is well Africanized, knows the ropes, and can afford to pull some strings. He had already</span><span style="font-size: large;"> made</span><span style="font-size: large;"> h</span><span style="font-size: large;">is moves</span><span style="font-size: large;">, like me he was just waiting for the confusion to die down.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have only ever met a handful of kindred spirits in my life. Each time we instantly hit it off, shared a mutual acceptance of each other that transcended all other aspects our lives, except maybe a common appreciation of cannabis. That’s how it was with Jody and me. Within minutes of our meeting we were lamenting the dearth of a decent smoke in East Africa, and both somehow knew we’d end up being life-long friends.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Three days later I ran into him again in a hotel lobby near Kigali airport. He and his very expectant wife were about to fly to home to Miami to prepare for their baby’s birth. My clients had just departed, and I was planning to drive back to Kampala the next day. After exchanging emails, we promised we'd stay in touch.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">In the year that followed each of our lives got seriously revised. Jody became a father for the first time. “My little boy is awesome,” he said in a Facebook chat with me, “the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. Childbirth is nasty but amazing!”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">I met Sandra Richardson, </span><span style="font-size: large;">the love of my life</span><span style="font-size: large;">. “An amazing woman,” I told Jody, “We’re putting all we got into this relationship.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sandra moved into my apartment in Kampala and, after reading the manuscript I’d been working on for three years, pointed out several worthwhile ways it could be polished up. Her suggestions vastly improved the story arc and made the characters much more believable. I realised I’d met my muse, and over the next few months, with her help, struggled to complete my debut novel, <i>Gorillaland</i>. At the end of August 2010, on the strength of the first ten chapters, Martin Hay of Cutting Edge Press called me from London with the offer of a publishing deal. "<i>Bo yakka!"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">In the euphoria that followed, I wrote to Jody. “When are you back in East Africa? When can we get this groove on? Sandra and I need a break from Uganga! The Swahili Coast has all that spicy, salty, seductive, smiling, fruit-fried, frangipani, sweet mimosa, underwater turquoise style going on...”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“Great timing, younger brother!” he wrote back. “I sold a property and am supposed to be in Malindi in October. I am making arrangements now. I'll probably stay there a week or so. You're very welcome!”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">We’re sailing 17 miles off the Kenyan Coast aboard Albatross, Jody’s 33 foot Black Fin Express, fishing over a canyon in the Malindi-Watamu bank with a spread of nine lines trailing from her stern. The sun is pegging and all around us fish are jumping: wahoo, swordfish, tuna.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Suddenly a line screams off its reel. “You’ve got a strike!” snaps Jody, handing me the rod. I struggle to take control, grappling with the method and muscle required. All the while I’m being hurled instructions from above and behind: “Feed the line!” “Let the pole do the work!” “Don’t let your line touch the boat!” “<i>You can’t take a break now</i>!” Eventually I get the hang of it and am rocking and reeling like a pro, dragging a monster up from the deep.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">It feels like I’ve been fighting for hours, though it can only have been 20 minutes, and I want to give up for the ache in my left arm, but I know I have to see this through to completion. Finally I spot him, shimmering below the ocean surface, a sizeable tuna fish, still fighting hard. I put all my strength into reeling it in those last five meters. When the fish is at last close enough, the boatman leans over the edge and hooks it with a gaffer.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“<i>Boo yakka</i>!” I shout, staggering back from the gunwale in sheer delight, breathless, bone-tired, and dripping in sweat from the fight. The boatman hauls my yellowfin</span><span style="font-size: large;"> aboard and</span><span style="font-size: large;"> immediately bleeds it with a long knife.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />With its vivid silver and black markings, a turquoise stripe down its side, and bright yellow fins and finlets, it’s a beautiful creature to behold - weighing at least 25 kilogrammes. And despite my role in its brutal demise, nothing can contain my excitement at seeing this yellowfin at my feet. “You can’t be a Tuna Murdra without getting blood on the decks, <i>mon</i>!” laughs Jody. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“Who’s the daddy?” asks Jody, triumphantly reeling in another mighty yellowfin, our fifth of the day. He’s an experienced angler and it shows; it takes him less than 10 minutes to bring in his tunny.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“Incredible,” I laugh, shaking my head. “So many fish!”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“You can thank the Somali pirates for that,” he says over his shoulder. “Since they started attacking ships around the Horn of Africa, tuna stocks on the Kenyan coast have shot up.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">BOOM! I did not realise it at the time, but right then a lure was dropped for my second novel. Another year would pass before I finally got a strike, figured out a suitable plot, but that was the moment the story began to develop, emerge from the deep.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“It doesn’t really say anything,except flat bottomed boats at posh universities!” said my agent Maggie Phillips. She was reacting to my title, <i>Puntland</i>. “If you are writing about Somali pirates – always in the news, apparently unstoppable – then you need to flag this up in the title. Baddies like this are fascinating, people want to read about them, so give them a chance to realise what your book is about!”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">World events were influencing my storyline: the Arab Spring, the death of Osama bin Laden, the alliance of al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, and the crack down by the maritime community on Somali pirates. Adding to that, I had visited Kidepo Valley in northern Uganda and found the ideal </span><span style="font-size: large;">setting </span><span style="font-size: large;">for the opening chapters.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The strike came during one of Kampala’s regular power cuts. Sandra and I were sitting under a starflower tree, discussing the plot, what motivates Somali pirates, and batting around real current affairs, when she came up with a plot twist that I knew would grab every reader by the short and curlies. "<i>Bo Yakka!</i>"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />With a worthy plot, in-depth storyline, and cast of intriguing characters, I wrote a detailed outline, chapter-by-chapter - the synopsis for<i> Pirates</i>, sent it off to Maggie and Martin, and thereafter secured my second publishing contract, with a deadline to complete the manuscript by April 2012.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Johnny Oceans, <i>Pirates</i>’s enigmatic hero, is a maverick Italian-American from South Florida with a background in dope smuggling. In 1998 while working on the Kenyan coast in the family’s gaming business he was abducted by pirates. Eventually he settled in Somalia, converted to Islam, changed his name to Mehmet Abdul Rachman, and married a beautiful Darod woman. But nothing is what it seems.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The novel’s indomitable heroine is a chain-smoking, skinny-jeans wearing, forty-something Somali woman who happens to be the hero’s wife. Inspired by the women of the Arab Spring, Khadija Abdul Rachman urges her fellow Somalians, through Twitter and Facebook, to put aside their clannish ways and stand up against the rising tide of Islamic jihad in Somalia.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Enter the reluctant protagonist, safari guide Derek Strangely who crosses over from my first novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gorillaland-ebook/dp/B00757ICAG/"><i>Gorillaland</i></a>. After a perilous journey into Puntland, he comes up against Khadija’s mercurial brother Maxamid, a Somali pirate who dislikes foreigners. Meanwhile, behind the scenes Ali al-Rubaysh, a veteran jihadist now commander in al-Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula, plots a terror attack on America more devastating than 9/11.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In a barren province of a troubled desert land deemed a failed state, <i>Pirates </i>pits pirate against jihadist. While the outside world believes the situation as hopeless, brave men and women strive to solve the Gordian knot that is the Horn of Africa.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“How goes Johnny O?” asked Jody. “You inspired? I'm headed to Kenya around the 20th for about a month, Diani - Malindi. Chillin'. Hugs.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“Been writing like a whirling dervish,” I replied. “ Long hours, and I’m not paying much attention to anything else. When you heading down this way? My folks would love to do a trade - their place in Cabo in exchange for your place in Malindi.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">“I just spent $18,000 on the place in Malindi, paint, pool, everything - I'll get pictures soon. They are welcome to my house anytime. Trade or no trade ;) <i>Fuhgetaboutid</i>…”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jody kept me on point, suggesting weapons and equipment Johnny Oceans might use. By way of our regular conversations, he also gave me the correct vernacular for my hero. I wrote the majority of the manuscript in San Jose del Cabo, Baja, Mexico. Working in a desert environment with waves constantly pounding the shore was a boon to the story (and considerably safer than visiting Somalia). And the support of my parents, in particular my mother, provided me with all the encouragement I needed to get the job done in time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile my muse was back in Uganda, trying to make ends meet on $100 a week. It’s only now, after living through comparably lean times that I understand how much she suffered to ensure there was a home waiting for me back in Africa. I love you Kigongo.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">It’s December 2012, eight months past my deadline. I’m on a leaky ship, struggling to put the finishing touches on my manuscript before I sink. World events are getting ahead of me. Kenya has invaded Somalia, al-Shabaab is in retreat, Egypt is in turmoil, the Arab Spring has turned cold, and piracy has been effectively vanquished from the Horn of Africa.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Penniless, shackled to my writing desk in a remote, dusty neighbourhood of Kampala, I have nothing to distract me from the task at hand. I’m working day and night. And no matter how bare the cupboard, at least once a day Sandra puts a square meal in front of me.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Two final hurdles remain: a convincing climax and Johnny Oceans</span><span style="font-size: large;">’</span><span style="font-size: large;"> backstory. I’ve modelled him on a living person and wonder how best I can reconcile that in a work of fiction. I voice my concerns to Jody.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Greg Cummings: “I haven't yet figured on where Oceans is from. At the moment I'm using his <a href="http://theflamingosun.blogspot.com/"><i>actual</i> back story</a>, with a twist. But I think I will change that. Don't need them getting pissed with me…”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Jody Baker: “Not to worry, they'd call me ;)”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Greg Cummings: “If you say so…”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Jody Baker: “In Godfather II, when Hyman Roth (Meyer Lansky) is discussing the split up of Havana, he gives the casino to the ‘Levini brothers, Eddie and Dino’. Watch that part of the movie where he is talking to Michael Corleone on the rooftop of a Havana hotel…” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Subsequently Jody sent a chapter to his uncle in Malindi.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Jody Baker: “I don't think Uncle Bobby is happy about what I forwarded him but you know what… all that shit is already on the internet and the rest is fiction.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Greg Cummings: “Should I worry?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Jody Baker: “No - it's a work of fiction, artistic license and all that... It's funny, a black comedy. Good publicity.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The trouble with writing action adventure stories that are set in the present day is that the latitudes keep moving. At some point the author must decide what makes a gripping yarn and disregard the rest, but a well-told story that cuts closer to the facts is undoubtedly more riveting. Writing <i>Pirates</i> on three continents in as many years was almost as much a roller coaster ride as the story itself. I believe it’s an audacious tale. Inspired by the oceans, I hope it will appeal to as wide an audience.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">See for yourself. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-ebook/dp/B00G3DC5RO/">Read the book</a>. Enjoy the adventure! </span><span style="font-size: large;">It's at least as good </span><span style="font-size: large;">as Uncle Bobby's Key lime pie.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">"I owe you a debt of gratitude, older brother."</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">"Nah, younger brah, you owe me nothing. But if this book's a bestseller I want a '58 Cadillac ragtop...Capisce?"</span></i><br />
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-7029782981942327552013-11-16T19:13:00.000-08:002013-11-16T19:15:11.950-08:00PIRATES by Greg Cummings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-ebook/dp/B00G3DC5RO/" target="_blank">Now available as an ebook on Amazon</a></span></b></div>
Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-45250037535636736192013-09-24T06:43:00.000-07:002013-09-24T07:37:25.411-07:00Militant Ambush<b><i>Excerpt from </i>PIRATES <i>(Cutting Edge Press, London) by Greg Cummings</i></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Terrorism has no religion'</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Khadija’s mind was not on her driving. The coastal route to Bosaso was less a road than a series of tracks over a broad swathe of semi-desert plain, where she rarely encountered another vehicle. The sun was low in a cloudless azure sky that stretched from the sea to the Karkaar mountains, their shadows tumbling into each other like colossal dominoes. That’s where al-Shabaab militants had their base. The authorities knew where they were, and regularly sent soldiers to raid their hideout in Galaga. Yet somehow they kept their foothold in Puntland. “They will not take my son,” she cried, gripping the steering wheel of her Land Cruiser. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Was anybody listening to the voices of Somali women? Like Khadija, most of them had endured intolerable tragedy in the name of jihad, orphans and widows who’d lost parents, siblings, husbands and children. The restrictions on women, derived from archaic tradition, demanded that they somehow endure it all in silence. Any Somali woman who stood up to her man was seen as wild and deviant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But things were changing now. She was surprised to find a consensus among her “old girls” from Eastleigh Academy when she caught up with them on Twitter and Facebook. None was afraid to speak out any more. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Somali women have been disturbingly silent for too long,” posted one. “It's time to stop the unbridled atrocities being perpetrated by our brothers in the name of Islam.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“If you are brave, and love Somalia,” another tweeted, “form a united front against al-Shabaab, which is bent on destroying our culture and faith.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“I don’t know of a single Somali woman undeserving of praise, nor one who doesn’t think she had a strong mother.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Somali women must be strong, in order to stay sane when our faraxs have gone insane.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Khadija truly believed the common-sense attitude she found among Somali women could somehow be channelled towards genuine change in her country. Solidarity through social networks was a proven force in the world today, as ordinary people had clearly demonstrated during the Arab Spring. But Somalia lacked a recognisable government to demonstrate against, let alone a square in which to gather in protest. Change would have to come despite of that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">She checked her iPhone to see if there were any new messages, then her Twitter account – @QueenArawello – which had so far attracted a thousand followers. She slowed down. A familiar obstruction lay ahead, a lagoon about eighty metres wide, which flowed across the road. It appeared shallow enough, but during the rainy season it was impassable, and motorists were forced to take a bumpy detour that added a half hour to the journey. She could ill afford any delays now, so she accelerated and drove straight through it, sending a plume of saline water upward like giant green butterfly wings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">With the flat, empty landscape before her stretching from horizon to horizon, she put her pedal to the metal, and accelerated to a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour. Her rear-view mirror was vibrating so dramatically, it obscured her view and at first she didn’t notice the beat-up white pickup truck approaching from behind. She didn’t expect to find anyone else on the road. Soon it was tailgating her, swerving erratically from side to side, and blasting its horn. She tried to make out the driver but there was too much dust and grime on her trail. This had all the hallmarks of a terrorist kidnapping. She veered to the right to allow him to overtake, but he followed her, so she signalled for him to pass, but he remained on her tail. She could not shake him. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Suddenly the pickup truck accelerated and swerved around her, and Khadija saw half a dozen armed men seated in the back, wearing military fatigues with red checkered keffiyeh wrapped around their heads. She immediately screeched to a halt, tossing a plume of sand into the air that completely enveloped her Land Cruiser. Bosaso was at least five kilometres away. With no one else in sight, she had no means of escape.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">When the dust had settled she saw her car was surrounded by armed men with their faces hidden by their keffiyeh. “Get out of the vehicle!” commanded one militant, rapping on her window with the butt of his AK-47. Khadija popped the handle of her door and, using both hands, slowly eased it open, forcing the men to back away. Then she stepped out and stood beside her car, next to the “No Weapons” sticker on her door. “Where are you going?” barked the militant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“I have urgent business in Bosaso to attend to,” said Khadija, trying to remain calm.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Why aren’t you wearing your burka?” he shouted. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“There is no fatwa in Puntland that requires it,” said Khadija. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Women should wear the burka at all times when in public!”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Wearing the burka is not a religious practice, and, as far as I’m concerned, it is the face of jihad. I am not a soldier in your holy war.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“You conduct yourself like a Kafir! Since when does a woman drive a car? Sharmouta!” The militant spat on the ground and then stepped closer to Khadija. “Islam forbids a woman to drive a car.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“No, it does not,” she said, easing back. “I have been driving a car for twenty years.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“You should stay in your house, wear the hijab and abstain from showing off your adornments to non-mahrams, with fear of Allah.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“I don’t need you to teach me my faith.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Where is your husband?” he barked.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Where is your wife?” she snapped. The militant raised his weapon and aimed it at her chest. Then a voice from the pickup truck ordered him to cease. The men retreated and climbed back into their vehicle. Khadija slumped against her car and clutched her forehead. The fear she had dared not display now ran across her like a clutch of spiders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pirates-Greg-Cummings/dp/1908122544/" target="_blank">Click to pre-order Pirates</a></i></span></div>
Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-43216462033638875332013-09-22T07:34:00.004-07:002013-09-24T05:21:15.697-07:00The truth is about to be uncovered...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Fifteen years ago Johnny Oceans disappeared off the coast of East Africa. His body was never recovered. Accident or conspiracy? Why did it take so long for the courts to declare him dead? A champion sport fisherman, keen diver, smuggler, and casino impresario, he had many friends and a few enemies. Investigating Ocean’s hidden story, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/08155306549381323193" target="_blank">Hew van Grit</a> spent a year on two continents following the enigmatic trail of a man who led more than a double life. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i><a href="http://theflamingosun.blogspot.com/2013/09/johnny-oceans-lie-or-legend.html">continue reading...</a></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>"<i>Gawd this is awesome - what a story, and great writing!</i>" - Jane Metcalfe, co-founder of WiReD</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>"<i>So so good.</i>" - Saffeya Shebli, publicist Cutting Edge Press</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>"<i>The Johnny Oceans story is so odd, with its sudden ending. Great mystery, but no answer. Reads like half of a great screenplay.</i>" - Michael Backes, screenwriter, Rising Sun</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>"<i>The world needs a new hero...</i>" - Johnny Oceans</b></span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Prepare for some real shock n' awe....</span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><a href="http://theflamingosun.blogspot.com/">We're live!</a></i> </span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">Read the full story <a href="http://theflamingosun.blogspot.com/">here</a>.</b></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-65409837712494211002013-09-14T03:34:00.004-07:002013-09-14T05:36:57.511-07:00Drug Smugglers Use High-Speed Boats to Run Cocaine, Marijuana Into Florida<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;">From the <a href="http://www.toledoblade.com/#" target="_blank">Toledo Blade</a> - Jul 12 1986</span></b></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">By <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-barber/" target="_blank">Ben Barber</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Special to The Blade</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">MIAMI - The shoreline is ablaze with hotels but three miles out in the choppy sea a Metro Dade police launch bobs darkly in the waves. The 600-horsepower engines are turned off so the crew can listen for the scram and slap of the drug boats.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Suddenly an 800-horsepower "Midnight Express" storms into view, heading for the shore. "He refused to stop - we were going 50 miles per hour side by side - pretty fast for outside" on the open sea, said Sgt. John Sander, of the Metro-Dade police.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Finally at gunpoint he stopped - there was almost a ton of marijuana under the decks." The rough sea had kept the more powerful smuggler boat from winning the race that day. It's not always true.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I've been out here when a boat with five outboard engines made twin circles around me, gave me the finger and went back to the Bahamas with his load," said Gregory Rogers, a US Customs patrol officer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"That's what gets me - when I'm going flat out and you can see you're not going to catch the guy into Haulover Cut," one of the few entrances from the Atlantic into the bays where drugs are delivered to waiting vans.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sergeant Sand and Officer Rogers are on the front line of the USA's war against drugs. South Florida is just an hour by speedboat from the Bahamas, or even closer to an air drop in international waters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is the main importing centre for the estimated $90 billion to $110 billion-a-year cocaine trade, according to Denis Fagan, of customs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The waters off Miami have become a battle zone in a war that drug smugglers are clearly winning: About 150 tons of cocaine are expected to enter the United States in 1986, up from 85 tons in 1984, according to a February report by the U.S. House Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Gregory Jansen, in charge of US Customs in Fort Lauderdale, said 80-90 per cent of the cocaine used to come in by plane, but now half the cocaine and 90 per cent of the marijuana comes in by boat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Customs Agents are not sure if better offshore radar or bigger loads led smugglers to revert to the water route. But, from the mangrove thickets of the Keys to the posh canals of the Gold Coast, drug runners attack the coastline with alarming success.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Every night at 9 p.m., if you're out at Bimini you can see the boats take off for Miami - it's like a chariot race - six powerful boats at full throttle and only one or two have the drugs," said a sailboat captain at the Miami Boat Show last month. "The others are decoys. Please don't use my name. We've all been offered $200,000 for a night's work driving those boats."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Drug smugglers have vast amounts of cash at stake - a 2,000-pound shipment of cocaine is worth $40 million wholesale. They can spend $200,000 for the top of the line - an 1150 horsepower Fountain powerboat with $20,000 in radar and night vision binoculars - and beat the boat to death on just one run. If it succeeds, they can buy 10 more boats and still show vast profits.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wellcraft Scarab</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The police and customs men who fight the smugglers know they're outgunned. But they keep on trying to staunch the flow of drugs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Shoving the throttle forward on his 32-foot Wellcraft Scarab, the twin 235 horsepower engines lifted the bow and Gregory Rogers raced through the Cut on a recent patrol.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In jeans and a sweatshirt, with his machine gun and blue light hidden, he cruised past marinas where drug boats had been seized.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Once I chased a guy in a 900-horsepower boat through the Cut and he jumped off," he recalled. "He left the boat going full throttle up the inland waterway. We had to pull alongside and board it."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As Officer Rogers cruised down the 135th street canal he pointed out where a drug boat had jumped a sea wall at high speed, landing 30 feet up on someone's lawn with 900 pounds of cocaine - worth $16.2 million wholesale in Miami.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Just ahead, up on the cement dock of a marina, he pointed out the three famous aqua and blue Wellcraft Scarabs used in the "Miami Vice" television show. "In reality you wouldn't want to have a boat painted like that - how long do you think it'd be before they recognise that?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Mr. Rogers' boat has no name or customs identification. But when he spots a suspicious boat, he mounts a U.S. Customs sign and a blinking blue light, dons his customs jacket, and whips out a pistol and a machine gun in about 10 seconds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"You want a low-key boat," he said. But, he admitted "the 'Miami Vice' boats are pretty good. Metro [Dade County] boats are not so good. And you should see the crap the real Miami Vice has."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">At a recent Miami boat show, sister boats to the Miami Vice Scarabs were being sold at $115,000 apiece by salesman Patrick Lee. "We do a lot of cash deals," he admitted. "I gets lots of small bills - 10s and 20s that smell funny. It's not my job to question where the money comes from or what they want to do with the boats."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">To get around the federal requirement that all cash transactions over $10,000 be reported, buyers pay in $9,900 instalments, according to Mr. Lee. "Come on - this is Miami," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Elsewhere at the show customers checked out the electronics that have turned smuggling into a high-tech adventure in the 1980s.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPFn9GwcqnCP4G0qgtwQ8UaFeEl5xPyLrp2z6Q1Sa5Mr90T1agtJAxWszX-bPEQK_zWqKV7LXud2YVM2TPvON7P2QATuMdKaQ9a1mlnwnKCmvFNK0Vuyd0wnOfSf1bznDvpo6bNPBVMM/s1600/Drug+Routes+1978_700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPFn9GwcqnCP4G0qgtwQ8UaFeEl5xPyLrp2z6Q1Sa5Mr90T1agtJAxWszX-bPEQK_zWqKV7LXud2YVM2TPvON7P2QATuMdKaQ9a1mlnwnKCmvFNK0Vuyd0wnOfSf1bznDvpo6bNPBVMM/s400/Drug+Routes+1978_700.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Drug smuggling routes in 1978</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Back in the 1800s the Federal Government sent the navy to Key West to control the "Wreckers" - islanders who moved warning lights to lure ships into reefs for the salvage. Later Ernest Hemingway would write of the captains who smuggled rum and illegal immigrants from Cuba into the United States.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But these days anyone with $8,000 goes to Mitch Shulman at N & G Electronics and buys infra-red projectors, starlight telescopes for night vision, fuzz busters to detect police radar, and 72-mile maine radar to tell if they are being chased.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"There's no doubt that the customers of these sport boats and electronics are often using them for drugs," he said. "It's an old story: profits. Whatever the coast guard does, someone does better."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Customs, on Feb. 11, unveiled a new high-tech radar command centre in Miami - a sort of war room for the drug fight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Using radar images from U.S. Air Force radar balloons tethered high above the smuggling corridors, and 40 high-speed boats being delivered this month, customs hopes to outfox the smugglers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Already a suspicious blip that had a rendezvous with another blip and then blitzed toward the coast was stopped with cocaine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Officer Rogers insists that plain police work and common sense is at least as important as the high technology/performance boats and electronics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whipping past a boat gassing up near Government Cut in the shadow of the elephantine, white cruise ships, he says "there's a boat that can go international - let's see what it looks like."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When he sees fishing lines and rough clothing as well as a valid number on the bow, he is satisfied.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"We get them coming in all the time with five huge engines off the back, no fishing gear, and the pilot is a Mariel [Cuba] refugee who doesn't speak English but is wearing Gucci shoes and gold chains," Mr. Rogers says. "The boats smell of [bleach] because they've just unloaded down at the Keys and have cleaned them out."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Florida laws allow lawyers who defend drug suspects to see the files of arresting officers, complained Officer Sander. This led the smugglers to understand that the smell of drugs was justification for a thorough search. So they began using smelly cleaning fluids to cover the smell.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In addition, many smugglers are using hidden compartments, so customs must chop the boats open with axes to search. Officer Rogers has completed a special course on the detection of those compartments and teaches other officials what to look for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's still a cat-and-mouse game out on the sea.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaIwRU1-JBca7yUB_kUnS33fsdYdMka0oqiepJ7UgCLql-7gyxfJ2RqXcOrroq-B97gxySAhaFzp59JKPbTkz9pJv-pVELIyrxkiEvhgveKb2h0Tu_h8KjPqOvHejvlFi8ZX9fa9ASnp4/s1600/707577208_7b89194b6a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaIwRU1-JBca7yUB_kUnS33fsdYdMka0oqiepJ7UgCLql-7gyxfJ2RqXcOrroq-B97gxySAhaFzp59JKPbTkz9pJv-pVELIyrxkiEvhgveKb2h0Tu_h8KjPqOvHejvlFi8ZX9fa9ASnp4/s320/707577208_7b89194b6a.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">Smugglers use smaller spotter boats to lie at the entrance to the harbours and radio when the coast is clear.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Officer Rogers says he can radio for a helicopter if he can't catch a smuggler, but ultimately it takes another boat to make the arrest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"It's always better to let the smuggler go than sacrifice a man's life" trying to keep up in rough seas at high speed, he said.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Ben Barber is a journalist in Miami.</span></i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4bNJYXhnCuUPFcKUtUfstzFE98aE718xGazga61EEXSGtH8Z-Lvv-C9PsjR_8E5PJlMfF-HT4A3GBYlXvY4w4tNjcLt04p_Rju-n3rjxHdpegkt16wGc8hLnAt6eXlzb1cNHh9c5iCPE/s1600/628x471.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4bNJYXhnCuUPFcKUtUfstzFE98aE718xGazga61EEXSGtH8Z-Lvv-C9PsjR_8E5PJlMfF-HT4A3GBYlXvY4w4tNjcLt04p_Rju-n3rjxHdpegkt16wGc8hLnAt6eXlzb1cNHh9c5iCPE/s400/628x471.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Midnight Express Interceptor</td></tr>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-33510056957070469602013-09-13T01:16:00.001-07:002013-09-13T01:17:33.481-07:00Cocaine Cash Cow<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11161428-american-desperado" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="American Desperado: My Life--From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset" border="0" src="http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320388378m/11161428.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11161428-american-desperado">American Desperado: My Life--From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/809128.Jon_Roberts">Jon Roberts</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/707132182">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Couldn't put it down. Carried the book around like a weapon for a week. It awoke something in me, as only a handful of other books have done.<br /><br />Jon Roberts lays all his cards on the table, tells the brutal truth about a lifetime of violent crime, an unrepentant "wise wiseguy" who always learned from his mistakes and lived by two rules: crime does in fact pay and evil is more powerful than good. Still Even Wright, who co-authored the book, manages to show us a more vulnerable person than the one Roberts portrays. It wasn't just to avoid the heat after he murdered his business partner that he abandoned organised crime in New York City and moved to Miami in the mid-70s. He had aspirations beyond the Mob, and he wanted to have fun in the sun. His arrival in South Florida coincided with a rising tsunami of Columbian cocaine that was about to engulf the US. Roberts made sure he rode the crest of the wave, earning hundreds of millions of dollars as a smuggler until his arrest.<br /><br />Wright skilfully organises Robert's vivid recollections into a gripping narrative, giving full flow to his rapid wit and fast-flowing streams of consciousness. Robert's memory is like a newsreal, countless detailed observations of crime scenes in which he was usually the perpetrator. Wright seeks to corroborate stories he hears from Roberts, especially his more audacious and savage claims. Chillingly, he finds evidence to back most of them up.<br /><br />American Desperado is a well-researched and touching profile of one of the most successful criminals who ever lived, a fascinating insight into the mind and the heart of a man you will not disagree is totally beyond redemption.
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2898408-greg-cummings">View all my reviews</a>
Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-20127281950108173292013-08-28T21:50:00.005-07:002013-09-01T07:18:12.564-07:00Jonny Gibbings' review of PIRATES<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm not sure where to start with Greg Cummings 'Pirates', what I will say though, is it is a wonderful book. If you, like me, started out reading popular books that had a romping pace, the stuff like Robert Ludlum and Wilbur Smith and you loved the roller coaster plot, but soon got bored of them because they quickly lacked substance. So you started reading novels with more bite. Pirates has every bit the plot and pace of epic yarns but also has a unique depth and integrity, effortlessly weaving around serious issues and the politics of deepest Africa.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Pirates is the tale of a Safari guide and who happens upon his believed to be dead friend Johnny Oceans, who recruits him to help him re-enter Somalia. However things are not what they seem. The reader is taken through the Gulf of Aden, facing jihadists from Al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab, a different understanding of Somali pirates and Somalia itself. I imagine many base their view on Somalia as I do on films such as Black Hawk Down and on news footage of AK-47 toting pirates. Greg shows us proud people fighting to keep Puntland independent in the face of growing pressure from Muslim extremists, through beautiful, tight t-shirt wearing, skinny jeans loving matriarch Kahdija. Where Pirates excels is that it uses real issues as plot points, not the plot itself. Greg has so many plot points that fragment, leaving you in suspense as you just know they are in a funnel and will all meet at a singular event. While there is real tension, and real issues, the story is all adventure and drama with some brilliantly funny parts. There are some far-fetched elements that are Indiana Jones over the top, such as the Vulture/drone bit, but you don't mind, simply as it is infused with such reality and drama that it balances it out. The story builds and builds to such a fantastic end once you have read through twist after twist. With US Navy drones, CIA Spy's, treasure, kidnap gunfights and romance. This is a brave book and Greg pulls it off, the result is simply staggering and a truly epic read.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><b><span style="font-size: large;">Jonny Gibbings is the author of 'Malice in Blunderland' (Cutting Edge Press) and you can follow his blog <a href="http://jonnygibbings.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></b>Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-19014640311143225092013-08-25T23:19:00.001-07:002013-08-29T06:11:06.803-07:0020 Minute Interview with Jonny Gibbings, author of 'Malice in Blunderland' re PIRATES<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>23:05 Jonny Gibbings</b><br />
Just finished! Fucking EPIC! Honestly, what a romp! Amazing book. Jeez!! LOVE it!<br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;"><b>23:05 Greg Cummings</b><br />
Yeah?<br />
That was a brisk read<br />
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<b>23:08 Jonny Gibbings [SPOILER ALERT!]<br />
</b>Oh mate - what a read! The whole mujahideen vs pirates with Derek as a patsy to Johnny - the watch, twist of the son about to martyr, Johnny not being dead... his wife kidnapped... fuck! I've not been able to put it down and I've not been held by a book like that for a decade at least.<br /><b><br />
</b>I've been non-stop on it. Loved it sooo much!<br />
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<b>23:09 Greg Cummings<br />
</b>Wow! That's quite an accolade. Thanks mate<br />
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<b>23:10 Jonny Gibbings<br />
</b>I genuinely mean it - it is simply stunning, genuinely.<br />
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You utter cunt... where did it come from? This is huge!!<br />
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<b>23:11 Greg Cummings<br />
</b>Martin is looking for reviews...<br />
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<b>23:11 Jonny Gibbings<br />
</b>I will write one ASAP!<br />
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<b>23:12 Greg Cummings</b><br />
I don't know where it came from. I wrote most of it while I was at my folks in Baja - right up to the drone ride - then worked on it LA, London and at Martin's house in northern France, which probably helped with the inspiration<br />
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<b>23:13 Jonny Gibbings</b><br />
You know, your being the gorilla man has just marinated it in Africa, it has so much depth. This is massive. Martin must be freaking over this!!!<br />
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<b>23:14 Greg Cummings</b><br />
He seems pleased but he's keeping his cards close to his chest. Susan my editor and Maggie my agent both remarked how much of a leap it was from G'LAND<br />
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But yours is the first genuine review I've gotten from it<br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;">I'm blown away you liked it so much<br />
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<b>23:15 Jonny Gibbings<br />
</b>Oh man, this is big league shit. This is a whole other world.<br />
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<b>23:16 Greg Cummings<br />
</b>Really?<br />
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<b>23:16 Jonny Gibbings<br />
</b>G'land was good, but Pirates is amazing! Just has everything.<br />
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<b>23:16 Greg Cummings</b><br />
You liked Khadija?<br />
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I think she's pretty hot. Sandra, my other half really helped me get her right<br />
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<b>23:19 Jonny Gibbings</b><br />
When I was younger I used to read Robert Ludlum, it has the same relentless pace. Khadija? Hells yeah, she's hot. What I liked most was how she dressed. we are sold Somali as tribal, third world not independent women, sexy - tight jeans etc. even the reference to CSI miami helped to show they are as modern as us etc.<br />
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<b>23:23 Greg Cummings<br />
</b>I read Ludlum when I was younger too, and Forsyth, even a few Wilbur Smith, but my taste in books took a whole different direction in high school and I can barely remember the genre now.<br />
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I expected Susan to ask me to fill it out with more description in the second draft MS but she had hardly any edits. I guess I cracked it...<br />
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<b>23:25 Jonny Gibbings<br />
</b>Me too, but you know that pace. and how the story splinters and you know it will all meet and it will be action, but you can't work out what and your 'Argh... I can't wait' but with pirates there was a maturity with the politics and cast/race issues. Very impressive.</span></div>
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<b>23:26 Greg Cummings<br />
</b>Fuck me, I'm chuffed!<br />
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<b>23:28 Jonny Gibbings<br />
</b>You should be. I'm jealous... prick! lol!<br />
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<b>23:28 Greg Cummings<br />
</b>I could do with some success - who couldn't<br />
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If Pirates is as good as you say it is, my fucking ship might be coming in<br />
which is no easy feat in a land-locked country<br />
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<b>23:29 Jonny Gibbings<br />
</b>It deserves to be massive!!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Exhausted… just finished <a href="https://www.facebook.com/gregory.scott.cummings"><b>Greg Cummings</b></a> new book Pirates. Quite simply a quantum leap from 'Gorillaland' - in my top five best books I have ever read. enormous in how brilliant it is. Old school epic with cutting modern issues/politics and a fast paced romp. Utterly fucking brilliant." - Jonny Gibbins, author of 'Malice in Blunderland' Read his full review <a href="http://talesfromtherift.blogspot.com/2013/08/review-of-pirates-by-jonny-gibbings.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Pre-order PIRATES on Amazon: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Greg-Cummings/dp/1908122544/">http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Greg-Cummings/dp/1908122544/</a></span></b><br />
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<b>Jonny's blog: <a href="http://jonnygibbings.wordpress.com/">http://jonnygibbings.wordpress.com/</a></b></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-46964320979514391372013-07-02T02:40:00.000-07:002013-09-24T09:25:17.332-07:00The Staff of Musa<br />
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“<span style="font-size: large;">Allah has vouchsafed the power of his Rod only three times in history. We were godless fools the first time, fresh out of Eden, using it to cross Bab-el-Mandeb with less understanding of its might than if it had been an ape’s walking stick. The second time the prophet Musa was given the power of the staff, both to invite the pharaoh to accept God’s divine message as well as to help the Israelites escape Egypt. But the staff was wasted on the Jews as they were unwilling to fight the Canaanites once they reached the Promised Land.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“After the prophet’s death, the staff was moved to Jerusalem. Many comers then tried to get their hands on it but all were denied even the chance to shift it from the stone where it lay entombed. The third and last time Allah bestowed the power of his staff was on the 13th-century Muslim Sultan Baybars, who was allowed to remove it from Jerusalem, as it was otherwise destined for the hands of Frankish barbarians. He placed it in a nondescript box, and took it to the Land of Punt where it was reburied in the desert. And there it has remained, hidden away under the sands of time…”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><i>Excerpt from the first draft MS for </i>PIRATES <i>(Cutting Edge Press) © Greg Cummings</i></b></span></div>
Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-46563357586459266582013-06-01T08:37:00.002-07:002013-06-01T08:46:31.056-07:00Searching for clues...<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">For the first time since he could remember, al-Rubaysh felt safe walking down the street. No one in Bosaso recognised him. During his two days in port he had managed to carry out his enquiries in the open, audaciously and without the threat of drone attacks. Widespread fear among Majeerteen fishermen, aroused by the recent spate of attacks on pirate skiffs, helped loosen the tongues of those he consulted. The conspiracy to foment jihad in Puntland through a terror campaign at sea, a plan he’d dreamed up, was working fine. So far he had gleaned useful bits of information about Mehemet Abdul Rahman. Now he needed to connect the dots. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It was eight o’clock in the morning and pedestrians were streaming through traffic, moving swiftly through the shadows of the old quarter’s cavernous streets. Every building on Osman Street, at least the corners and cornice mouldings, was painted a candy shade of pastel. Fragrant whiffs of frankincense poured through open doorways. And at each cross street a clutch of shops displayed sacks of fresh spices. Rubaysh was on his way to find an old man who once worked for the American. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There was no need to bluff his way through harbour security today. He’d been told to ask around on the west side of the port under the shade trees, where the fishing boats were kept. In due course he found the old man leaning against his skiff and using a fishbone needle and nylon cord to mend a damaged fishing net. Tawny, weatherbeaten and misshapen, his true age was hard to fathom. He was wearing a pair of tortoiseshell Wayfarer sunglasses that when removed revealed a pair of pterygiums growing in the corners of the his eyes, the result of too much sun. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Good morning,” said Rubaysh, smiling and extending his hand in a salesmanlike manner. “Are you Mohamud Farole?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“What do you want?” asked the old man, bluntly refusing the offer of a handshake. “I don’t talk to strangers.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“My name is Aden Ali, and I’m from Hodeida Port Authority.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I know the port well. Never seen your face before.” While the old man continued to mend his tattered seine, fingers moving across the weave like ballroom dancers, his peculiar eyes never left Rubaysh. “Besides Hodeida’s nearly a thousand kilometres from here. What are you doing in Bosaso?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“There’s a very simple explanation for my being here. I believe you used to do business with the American, Mehemet Abdul Rahman, also known as Johnny Oceans.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Never heard of him.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“It’s just that, well, he died recently, and a container full of goods he arranged to have shipped here from France is now stuck in my port. Maritime authorities in my country have slapped it with a ‘deceased cease order’ until I can find someone in Bosaso to whom we may deliver it.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Why don’t you ask his widow?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Ah, so you did know him then.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Yes, I knew him.” Mohamud dropped his gaze. “Mehemet was a good man, a Majeerteen in all but blood. He helped many fishermen along this coast retain their livelihoods, so they did not have to become <i>badaadintu badah</i>.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Really? How did he do that?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“With small loans that we paid back within a few months. I bought a smoking machine with mine so I could process my fish for export to Dubai. I don’t know another foreigner like this man. An American who would rather help us than kill us.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“A great man indeed, this Mehemet must have been. Did you ever work for him?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Yes.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Doing what?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Why do you ask so many questions?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“It’s a rather delicate matter, and I’m not actually at liberty to discuss it. Let’s just say the contents of Mehemet’s container have led us to believe he may have been involved with organised crime.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Mehemet was not a gangster.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“How can you be sure?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Because I used to run errands for him.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Errands?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“To Djibouti. He would give me a package and I would take it there by boat.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“What sort of package?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Always the same thing: a locked black box.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I see. And who was your contact in Djibouti? Who did you meet there?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“An American Navy officer from Camp Lemonnier, who always gave me a different black box in return.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Rubaysh’s eyes sparkled, and he began toying with his beard. “So Johnny Oceans was a spook,” he hissed. “Thank you, Mohamud. You’ve been very helpful. By the way, do you happen to know if the widow Khadija still lives at his same address, in Bender Siyaada?”</span></span><br />
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-27374680033126643502013-04-11T23:36:00.001-07:002013-06-01T08:40:32.189-07:00The Badaadintu badah<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><i>Excerpt from the first draft MS for </i>PIRATES <i>(Cutting Edge Press) © Greg Cummings</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>“Badaadintu badah</i>,” Somali for “survivors of the sea,” was carved across the wall above the heads of the scores of prisoners confined in a five-by-five metre lockup in Bosaso Prison, next to the port. Their cell had no beds, no toilets, and just one small ocean-facing window, too high to reach on another man’s shoulders. The only other exit was a solid iron door, riddled with corrosion but nevertheless impermeable. On the rare occasions it was opened, the cross-breeze provided momentary relief from the stench of excrement, rot and sweat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Eighteen pirates had just been brought in, all captured by the Combined Task Force 150 in the Gulf of Aden. The new arrivals were greeted with high fives, hugs and the knocking of fists: a fraternity of <i>badaadintu badah.</i> Whatever gangs they belonged to they had one thing in common: they were all Majeerteen fisherman. They did not fight among themselves, as they had vested common interests and a great sense of clan pride. It was against their code to behave as thugs when onshore. Every one of them could recite the litany of injustices that forced them to trade in their fishing nets for weapons, and hijack whatever foreign ships they found in Somali waters.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Maxamid Malik stood in the middle of a row of men with his back against a wall that abutted the ocean, where a light spray sometimes rained down on their heads. It was an exclusive spot. He led his own gang of pirates from a base on the Hafun Peninsula, two hundred and fifty kilometers away, on the other side of the Horn. He glared at the other prisoners with a fearsome expression, manifest by feral eyes, boney cheeks and thin grey lips. At nearly two metres tall he could scare the hell out of a ship’s crew even before he boarded. “How long can there be honour among thieves?” he asked, scratching his hennaed goatee, “when even the sea complains of starvation”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Maxamid,” shouted one of the new arrivals, striding forward to knock fists with the lanky pirate, “we missed you in the Gulf.” It was Faraad, one of many who had set out from Hafun in a multi-gang flotilla a few days before, intent on launching a surge of attacks in the Gulf of Aden. He was short, with a stocky build and had a receding hairline.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“We were unlucky,” said Maxamid, “We sailed too close to the wind, and got nabbed near Abdul al Kuri, Who caught you?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“American Navy,” growled Faraad, “near Aden.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“We were arrested by Puntland Coast Guard,” said Ibrahim, another pirate from Maxamid’s ranks who was standing next to him, “and they confiscated our skiff.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“What?” cried Faraad, “Those bastards never do their jobs.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“They did not stop any other boats in the flotilla,” said Maxamid, “yet no amount of bribes could persuade them to change their minds about escorting us to Bosaso.” He paused to listen to the sound of hull and engines skimming across Bosaso port. “We were set up. And I have a pretty good idea who was behind it. As soon as I am released from here, I will rectify the situation.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“God forbid, they will destroy our livelihoods, and we will die hungry in the desert.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The entire cell was suddenly silenced by a thunderous clang followed by a piercing creaking sound, as the iron door was unbolted and swung open. Then came an uproarious cheer. “What is it?” asked Faraad, who was too short to see the cause of the commotion.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Time for <i>khat</i>,” snapped Maxamid.</span></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-47121759328573885922013-04-02T03:08:00.001-07:002013-04-02T03:36:13.893-07:00History of the Dhow<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8nS3nFLv6oLLmodN6q1qLoij4yaTZEv0Au2YudIa-QvzoHn4tHo4yiAlFE_ijQFWA-yA7mOO28D4pPhucqZIzFIFNSOe4kSX64UU4YCwOt4-Ua7ftRVoFzCZ1aM5XLvAS_fdlhetpDCk/s1600/dhow-md34P54107.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8nS3nFLv6oLLmodN6q1qLoij4yaTZEv0Au2YudIa-QvzoHn4tHo4yiAlFE_ijQFWA-yA7mOO28D4pPhucqZIzFIFNSOe4kSX64UU4YCwOt4-Ua7ftRVoFzCZ1aM5XLvAS_fdlhetpDCk/s400/dhow-md34P54107.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>Reprinted from Ancient Navigation & Sailing - http://nabataea.net/ships.html</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For many centuries, boats that sailed on the Indian Ocean were called dhows. While there were many different types of dhows, almost all of them used a triangular or lateen sail arrangement. This made them markedly different than the ships that evolved on the Mediterranean. These ships had a characteristic square sail. The dhow was also markedly different than the ships that sailed on the China Sea. These ships were known as junks.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Unfortunately, there is almost no pictorial evidence of early dhows. Most of our knowledge of the dhow's early construction comes to us from the records of Greek and early Roman historians. Added to this, we can compare some similar hull constructions used in the later Roman period, after they had opportunity to learn from the Arab sailors. Along with this we can examine early shipwrecks, and lastly we can learn from modern day construction of dhows. It seems that dhow making is considered an art, and this art has been passed down from one generation to another, preserving, at least in part, the dhow's basic design and use. (Some modern dhow makers now nail their hulls together, and many are now making a square stern rather than a double-ended vessel.) By taking all of these into consideration, we can get an excellent idea of how the ancient dhow was constructed and what its sailing abilities were.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Despite their historical attachment to Arab traders, dhows are essentially an Indian boat, with much of the wood for their construction coming from the forests of India.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In Europe, boats names are based on the type of sail rigging the boat has. Thus, it is typical for Europeans to label all Arab boats as dhows. In the Middle East however, boats are classified according the shape of their hull. Thus, dhows with square sterns have the classifications: gaghalah, ganja, sanbuuq, jihaazi. The square stern is basically a product of European influence, since Portuguese and other boats visited the Arab gulf since the sixteenth century.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Older type vessels are now called buum, zaaruuq, badan, etc., and still have the double-ended hulls that come to a point at both the bow and the stern.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The generic word for ship in Arab is markab and safiinah. Fulk is used in the Quran. The word daw is a Swahili name, and not used by the Arabs, although it was popularized by English writers in the incorrect form of dhow.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The dhow was known for two distinctive features. First of all, it's triangular or lateen sail, and secondly, for it's stitched construction. Stitched boats were made by sewing the hull boards together with fibers, cords or thongs.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The idea of a boat made up of planks sewn together seems strange. Actually, it is a type that has been in wide use in many parts of the world and in some places still is. In the Indian Ocean, it dominated the waters right up to the fifteenth century, when the arrival of the Portuguese opened the area to European methods. A Greek sea captain or merchant who wrote in the first century AD reports the use of small sewn boats off Zanzibar and off the southern coast of Arabia. Marco Polo saw sewn boats at Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. He took a dim view of them: "they were twine and with it stitch the planks of the ship together. It keeps well and is not corroded by sea-water but it will not stand well in a storm." (Marco Polo, Book I, ch xviii, translated by H. Yule, 3rd edition, London, 1903, I, p.108)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Later travelers reported seeing large sewn boats of 40 and 60 tons' burden and versions of fair size were still plying the waters of East Africa and around Sri Lanka in the early decades of the twentieth century.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"The earliest surviving example of a sewn boat, as we shall see, was found beside the great pyramid of Giza, but it is unquestionably a descendant of ancestors that go back to Egypt's primitive times. Sewn boats are mentioned by ancient Roman writers, from tragic poets to the compiler of Rome's standard encyclopedia, in ways betraying their conviction that such boats belonged to the distant past, the days of the Trojan War, of Aeneas and Odysseus. They were surely right in connecting sewn boats with an early age. They were wrong only in assuming that it had not lived on: marine archeologists have found remains of sewn boats that date from the sixth century BC on into the Roman Imperial age. By the fashioning of a hull by sewing planks together, despite its early appearance and continued existence, remained a byway. As the following chapters will reveal, the mainstream of boat building followed a different channel." (Ships and Seamanship in The Ancient World, Lionel Casson, Princeton University Press, 1971)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>History of the Dhow</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>According to Hourani, fully stitched construction was observed by medieval writers in the Red Sea, along the east African coast, in Oman, along the Malabar and Coromandel Coasts of India and in the Maldives and Laccadive Islands.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Deloche summarizes the characteristics of pre-European influence, ocean going Indian ships based on pictorial evidence. They were double-ended craft. Prior to the eleventh century AD, the stern was raked, but after that time, a long projecting bow became the predominate characteristic. Hull planks were flush-laid and stitched with the stitches crossed and penetrating right through the planks.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Procopius, writing in the sixth century AD, tells us that ships used in the Indian Seas 'are not covered with pitch or any substance, and the planks are fastened together, no with nails but with cords.' (Ray, 1994, pg 173)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Some illustrations of stitching can be found in Sanchi sculptures of the second century BC, and paintings accompanying al-Harari's Maqamat of AD 1237. The thirteenth century AD account of Marco Polo is less than complimentary: "The vessels built at Hormuz are the worst kind, aand dangerous for navigation, exposing the merchants and others who make use of them to great hazards."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="356" naturalsizeflag="3" src="http://nabataea.net/Photos/old.jpg" width="293" /></span></center>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /><i>Illustration above: A possible reconstruction of early ocean-going dhows. Their main characteristics were sewn double ended construction, steering oars at the stern and a lateen rigged sail.</i></span></center>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Illustration above: A possible reconstruction of a later dhow with stern rudders and a rope system of steering.</span></i></center>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Contemporary records prove without a doubt that during the third millennium BC, Babylon carried on extensive overseas trade through the Persian Gulf southward to the east African coast and eastward to India. Hardly anything is known about the vessels used on these ambitious runs other than that they were very small; the largest mentioned has a capacity of some 28 tons. (Ships and Seamanship in The Ancient World, Lionel Casson Princeton University Press, 1971, Page 23)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A 'seagoing boat' of 300 gur is mentioned in a document of 2000 BC; see A. Oppenheim "The Seafaring Merchants of Ur." (Journal of the American Oriental Society 74, 1954, 6-17, especially 8 note 8. For the size of the gur, see Appendix 1, note 5)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Masts and sails </b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>In early times the masts and yards were probably made of coconut wood and teak, although a number of woods were used in later construction. It is thought that originally sails were woven from coconut of palm leaves, and that eventually cotton cloth became the favorite for merchants on long voyages. Cotton cloth was manufactured in India. Two main sails were carried, one for night and bad weather, and the other for day and fair weather. Sails on a dhow could not be reefed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The lateen sail used by Arabs stops short of being completely triangular. Their sails retained a luff at the fore part in proportion to the leech of roughly 1-6 in the mainsail. The retention of this luff added a much greater area of sail to be hoisted than would a completely triangular design. During the Byzantine era the Lateen sail completed its evolution into a triangle, and this idea spread from Byzantium to the rest of Europe, where it developed into the varieties of mizzen sails which later gave European sailing ships so much flexibility. From there it was eventually developed in the west into all the types of fore-and-aft rig known to yachtsmen today, a form superior still to the lateen for sailing close to the wind.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It is assumed by some that the lateen sail developed on the Red Sea, and spread from there to the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf. There is some evidence that a fore-and-aft lateen rig arrived in the Aegean Sea from the 2nd century onward, and in the Persian Gulf around this time.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The masts and rigging of the dhow was similar in all types of dhows, with added rigging in larger vessels. Masts were secured at the base by being slotted into a mast step, which fit over the floor timbers. The rigging of a typical dhow can be seen in the diagram below. Cables were often made of coir.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="388" naturalsizeflag="3" src="http://nabataea.net/Photos/rigging.jpg" width="481" /></span></center>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Sails</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />The lateen sail on the dhow looks triangular to the casual observer, but in fact it is quadrilateral and is correctly termed a settee sail. Was sail is made of several cloths, sewn parallel to luff and leech. Different types of sail were made according to the requirements: a sail wanted for reaching would be made less flat and with a fuller luff than a sail wanted for beating.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The lateen yard was normally very long in proportion to the mast and hull, and was sometimes made of more than one piece of timber. In this case, it was fitted with a strengthening piece, along the middle. Two holes were them made so that the halyard type could be secured to prevent it from slipping along the yard. On a yard of very great length a second strengthening piece would be fitted along the middle of the first.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Modern Dhows</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />There were a number of different types of dhows that evolved. Some of the types common during the last two hundred years are illustrated below.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Illustration above: A baghlah with a modern square stern. Illustration taken from Paris' Souvenirs de Marine, 1882.</span></i></center>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /><i>Illustration above: a Cuch dungiyah. Illustration taken from Paris' Souvenirs de Marine, 1882.</i></span></center>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Illustration above: a sewn fishing badan, from the 1830's.</span></i></center>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Illustration above: A cargo badan in the 1830's. Drawing first published in Paris' Essai sur la construction." Note the double keel pieces and the rope system of steering on each of the two above dhows.</span></i></center>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="398" naturalsizeflag="3" src="http://nabataea.net/Photos/fishing.jpg" width="360" /></span></center>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Illustration above: A baggarah with a rope steering gear in the 1830's from Paris' Essai sur la construction. The hull of this small boat is very similar to a battil, but the stern-piece is continued in a straight line instead of the club like shape of the battil, but lacks protection despite it's high stern post. This vessel is also known today as a shahuf, and is often used as a fishing vessel along the coasts of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Yemen.</span></i></center>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Summary</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>Dhow shipbuilding is a very ancient trade. In various places around the world, ship building techniques and styles developed until they were successful. Once they reached this stage, schools of shipbuilding, with their various skills and knowledge solidified certain styles of boats. These styles changed very slowly over the centuries as ship building techniques were often closely guarded secrets. Ship builders took special pride in their particular style of building.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Thus, three styles of ships developed in the ancient world. On the Mediterranean, triremes and trade boats shared similar styles, with small square sails, and outboard steering oars. On the Indian Ocean, dhows, with their triangular sails and stitched hull design dominated the waters. On the <a href="http://nabataea.net/china.html">China</a> seas, Chinese junks, with their tall forecastles, multiple masts, and unique sail rigging and sternpost rudder existed for centuries.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Each of these seas was separated from the other, some by landmasses, and some by dangerous striates and massive cultural differences. Bridging the gaps between these civilizations were other smaller civilizations that daringly took goods and knowledge from one sphere to the other. In Arabia, the Nabataeans played this role. In Asia, sailors with their lashed-lug ships seemed to have played this role.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It was only when ship builders saw a proven improvement that they would adapt it into their own design. Thus, ship design changed very slowly over time, allowing us to fill in the gaps in shipbuilding knowledge, but looking at previous designs and later designs. Changes in shipbuilding technique also point to nautical contacts between these three great shipbuilding spheres. Added to this, it must be accepted that many if not most dhows were built in India, and sold to Arab traders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Dhows and the Nabataeans</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>As mentioned in my paper <a href="http://nabataea.net/who1.html">Who were the Ancient Arab Traders</a>, the Nabataeans were known as seamen, and at various points in history totally dominated the shipping that was taking place on the Red Sea. While they originally obtained their boats by piracy, they must have either bought boats from <a href="http://nabataea.net/india.html">India</a>, or constructed or remodeled them themselves. It is interesting to note that some nautical historians point to the Red Sea as the probably place where the lateen sail was first developed. Perhaps the Nabataeans played a role in its development, since the lateen sail would have made it possible for them to bring the frankincense harvest up the Red Sea to their port at <a href="http://nabataea.net/come.html">Leuke Kome</a>. (See <a href="http://nabataea.net/sailing.html">Sailing and Navigation</a>) Whatever the case, dhows were the preferred boat for transporting cargos on the Indian Ocean, and they dominated this scene for almost two thousand years.</span><br />
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<u><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Bibliography</span></u><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Casson, Lionel, <i>Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times</i>, British Museum Press, 1994, London</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Flecker, Michael, <i>A ninth-century AD Arab or Indian shipwreck in Indonesia: first evidence for direct trade with China.</i> World Archaeology, Volume 32(3): 335-354 Shipwrecks, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2001</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Griffith, T., <i>Marco Polo: The Travels</i>, Wordsworth, London, 1997</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Hourani, G. F., <i>Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times</i>, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1995</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Manguim, P. Y., <i>Southeast Asian shipping in the Indian Ocean during the first millennium A.D</i>. In <i>Tradition and Archaeology</i>, (eds H. P. Ray and J.F. Salles), State Publishers, New Delhi, 1996, pp 181-198</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Paris' <i>Essai sur la construction</i>, 1930</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Paris' <i>Souvenirs de Marine</i>, 1882.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Ray, H. P. and Salles J. F., <i>Tradition and Archaeology: Early Maritime Contacts in the Indian Ocean,</i> State Publishers, New Delhi, 1996</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Tibbetts, G. R., <i>Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese, </i>London: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1981</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Vosmer, T., 1997, <i>Indigenous fishing craft of Oman,</i> International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 26(3): 217-235</span>Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-66370473211890386262013-03-18T00:00:00.000-07:002013-06-01T22:56:02.475-07:00The Chase<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br />
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<b><i>Excerpt from the first draft MS for </i>PIRATES <i>(Cutting Edge Press) © Greg Cummings</i></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZMeCPJWl3OnY3siOZSTIaGxmq8S4I9aIJbB-6877MB5OwWVugYOkzqhtjeuuSCJzlLSNDXmZV8YlcJz82kqMQhPCb52AynaNFuw0EH2SUoWwUSIy8WwjrkHVskt8650cKBL4X5mHa-Jg/s1600/skyline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZMeCPJWl3OnY3siOZSTIaGxmq8S4I9aIJbB-6877MB5OwWVugYOkzqhtjeuuSCJzlLSNDXmZV8YlcJz82kqMQhPCb52AynaNFuw0EH2SUoWwUSIy8WwjrkHVskt8650cKBL4X5mHa-Jg/s400/skyline.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></b></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><i>Continued from <a href="http://pirateyarns.blogspot.com/2012/12/chapter-one.html">Chapter One...</a></i></b></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“What do you want here?” demanded the old <i>askari</i> on one side of the large iron gate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“You know very well,” protested the equally elderly woman on the other side.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“<i>Hapana!</i> ” yelled the <i>askari</i>, “You cannot enter! Afendi does not know you, and you will not pass through this gate.” He was a tall, dark Acholi, from the same northern Ugandan tribe as Idi Amin, dressed in colonial-style khakis - short-sleeved shirt and shorts. He stooped over the peep hole in the gate, and wagged a bony finger at the woman on the other side, who stood back from the smell of his breath but refused to leave.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Who’s at the gate Aturu,” asked Derek Strangely, shuffling out of his bungalow into the blazing equatorial sun. He wore only a purple <i>kanga</i>, and was followed by his dog Rafiki, a mongrel of mixed origin, like Derek. It was mid morning.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“She must not enter, <i>afendi</i>,” replied Aturu, standing to attention. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Is it Agnes?” asked Derek, approaching the gate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I don’t know this woman,” he said, slamming shut the peep hole.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“C’mon, Aturu, let Agnes in.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“<i>Hapana! </i>I cannot!”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Jesus, Aturu, she’s my maid.” A pair of White-bellied go-away birds flew in to roost atop the tall <i>olyusambia </i>tree growing in the property opposite, and started cackling.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I’m not opening for this woman, <i>afendi</i>. Even if you give me <i>kibokos</i>.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Fine. Then stand aside! <i>I’ll</i> let her in.” Derek pushed past his <i>askari</i> and tried to unbolt the doorway that led through the gate, but Aturu had padlocked it. “The key, Aturu...” The <i>askari</i> smiled broadly; he was missing most of his teeth. Rafiki barked at him, but he stood his ground. Then Derek stepped up closer to him and sniffed. “Have you been drinking?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“No sah!” said Aturu, still grinning through a misshapen rift across his wrinkled face.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Well then, give me the key.” Reluctantly the old northerner reached into his khaki shorts and produced his greatest possession: the key to the padlock that opened the gate to Mr Derek’s house in Kampala. With it he wielded great power.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Derek opened the gate, and Agnes barged through and rounded on Aturu. “<i>What’s wrong with your problem?</i>” He tried to dodge her blows, protesting loudly in his defense, but she continued her assault. Rafiki circled the squabbling Ugandans, barking incessantly. Derek simply turned and walked back to his bungalow; he was used to the routine by now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He had recently made some adjustments in his life. One of them was taking on full-time domestic staff to help him feel more secure at home. But his <i>askari</i> was proving a handful. There is such a thing as too much security. He sat down on his sagging sofa and examined his dilapidated living room. A clean patch of wall, as big as a window marked the spot where a map of Congo used to hang. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">On his driveway was another empty space where his black-on-black Land Rover Discovery III had once been parked. Without Pedro to drive it, nor to stop him, Derek had sold “The Blackback” to the first Big Man who came along. He no longer had any need for a safari vehicle. After all the negative publicity that followed his ordeal in the Congo, no one wanted to hire him, not even to guide their day trip to Lake Mburo. The money from the Blackback had been barely enough to support him since. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The cacophony at the gate had died down and, and Rafiki was curled up at his feet. The only sound was bird life, an overabundance of it coming from every power line and treetop. “At least the power lines have <i>some</i> use,” thought Derek, pointlessly aiming his remote at an inert television on the other side of the room. Avian life was about the only entertainment he could rely on these days. With over a thousand species ranging through the country, it was hard to avoid an interest in ornithology in Uganda. There was one particular bird, a Common bulbul that perched outside his window every morning before the sun was up and began singing, “<i>Get straight to it Strangely! Get straight to it Strangely!” </i>like an insistent nanny. He made a point of never rising before hearing it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“How the hell can I get straight to it, when there’s no goddamn electricity?” was his usual response. Uganda’s relentless power outages were the main bone of contention for anyone living there. Derek found them especially hard to endure in the morning, as he was never fully awake until he’d drunk a mug of black coffee. Brewing it over a coal fire was just too complicated and time consuming. And neither Agnes nor Aturu ever grasped the concept of a good cup of Joe. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Power cuts in the evening, however, were much more bearable. He would simply hang a paraffin lamp in the starflower tree next to his veranda, sit down on the grass with a cold Club, and watch a billion stars twinkle. “They don’t call it the Dark Continent for nothing.”</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju6apXw6fD3G1wH5Xs97XwHCyT66gZgSTlYjt9f68zONCaSlOL1yzBi6m5w_wwxMPhQ4FuRQelG7U4cfIHEbvDBSyhMlZAGb6gdRVgy4EL3cWBxiNz3WK1rm18aJ25hTEPxGKSK2VBaHg/s1600/Corythaxoides_leucogaster_2.gif" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju6apXw6fD3G1wH5Xs97XwHCyT66gZgSTlYjt9f68zONCaSlOL1yzBi6m5w_wwxMPhQ4FuRQelG7U4cfIHEbvDBSyhMlZAGb6gdRVgy4EL3cWBxiNz3WK1rm18aJ25hTEPxGKSK2VBaHg/s200/Corythaxoides_leucogaster_2.gif" width="195" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Derek’s phone rang. It was not a number he recognised. “Derek Strangely.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Yo, Gorilla Man! How’s it hanging?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Who’s this?” asked Derek, stroking his black and silver beard.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Johnny Oceans.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“<i>Dive bwana?</i> No fucking way! I thought you were dead.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“If that’s true, then Kampala’s hell. Meet me at Fat Boyz in twenty minutes.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I’m on my way.” Derek quickly dressed in a pair of jeans, T-shirt, and flip flops, and headed out the door, tying his greying hair back in a ponytail while issuing instructions to Aturu to feed Rafiki and get some more charcoal. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“But <i>afendi</i>, it is my job to guard the gate. You can send Agnes for charcoal.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Not now, Aturu,” barked Derek, closing the gate behind him to howls of protest from Rafiki. After taking a few short steps he was accosted by a <i>boda boda</i>, one of Kampala’s omnipresent motorcycle taxis. <i>“Jjebale’ko sebo,” </i>said Derek, greeting the driver in accordance with the Bugandan custom of exchanging niceties before proceeding with anything.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>“Kale sebo nawe jjebale,” </i>replied the driver.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Take me to Kisamenti,” instructed Derek, donning his Ray ban Wayfarer sunglasses.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Kisementi, Kamwokya?” asked the driver.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Eh-heh!” replied Derek, jumping on the back. The ride was a far cry from the luxury of the Blackback but he didn’t care much. <i>Boda bodas</i> were the poor man’s helicopter in these parts. When they reached the end of his street, the driver arced into Kira Road and sped down the hill, cutting around vehicles and pedestrians like a sun-addled bat. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He narrowly missed a traffic cop, a stout woman dressed in khaki, black beret and boots standing at the side of the road, who did not even blink. Despite the fact few Ugandan motorists demonstrated any grasp of the Highway Code, this traffic cop wasn’t interested in trying to enforce the law. Like so many in her profession, extortion was her racket. She was looking out for drivers in expensive cars talking on their mobile phones. Before long, she had pulled one over, a big man in an AUDI. “Another Ugandan Driving Imbecile,” quipped Derek, looking back over his shoulder, as she cheerily sidled up to the unfortunate motorist’s window. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Where are you from?” asked Derek’s <i>boda </i>driver as they sped away. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Canada,” replied Derek, “but I’ve lived my whole life in Africa.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Then you’re an African,” laughed the driver, “My name is Boda Tiger. And your name?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Mr Derek.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ducking into the vortex behind Tiger’s back, long enough to keep his flame lit, Derek sparked up a joint. He took a long, thick toke, held it in for a few seconds then blasted the smoke back out again in a fit of coughing. He was careful to keep the blunt cupped in his hand, lest one of the many traffic cops along the road spotted it’s distinctive trumpet shape. Not that any of them would bother chasing him. In all likelihood they lacked the air time on their cell phones even to call it in. Nevertheless, there was no mistaking the<i> </i>aroma emanating from the back of Derek’s <i>boda</i>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Through pie-eyes and Wayfarers he surveyed his surroundings. In the vivid light of a clear morning, the city looked like an old master’s painting to which children had been allowed to add daubs of their own brightly coloured paint. He marveled at the panorama, as three of Kampala’s seven hills came into view, each one crowned with a communications mast rising above some minister’s gimcrack folly, looming over a clutter of orange rooftops that increased in density towards the valley, as though the literal consequence of an economic landslide. Brilliant sunshine and stark shadows gave everything a vividness that was almost too intense to bear.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He thought about Pedro, his erstwhile driver, rastafarian partner-in-crime, at this moment in time, riding his softail and growing his dreadlocks on the Mexican coast, after vowing never again to return to Africa. Things just weren’t the same in KLA without him. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He spotted a large Billboard featuring one of his former girlfriends, gazing back at him with those familiar bedroom eyes while sucking salaciously on a sweating bottle of lager. Consequently, he did not notice the police officer coming up behind him on the back of another <i>boda</i>, and was startled by the hand that suddenly gripped his right shoulder, causing him to jerk to the left, free of its hold, then send his <i>boda boda</i> fishtailing. “Stop!” cried the <i>afendi</i>, who was wearing the blue <i>madoa doa</i> camouflage of the regular police - the busting kind - and about to attempt another lunge, “You’re under arrest!”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“It’s the Po Po!” shouted Derek, flinging his burning spliff into a gutter, “<i>Tu wende!</i>” Tiger rapidly accelerated out of reach, then began to weave through the traffic at high speed. The <i>afendi</i> remained in hot pursuit. “Listen, <i>sebo,</i>,” said Derek, clasping the motorcycle’s rear metal rack with both hands, “do whatever you have to do, but I will pay you twenty thousand shillings if you outrun this fool.” Without looking back, or even in <i>any</i> direction, Tiger responded by making a sharp right, clear across a busy thoroughfare, narrowly escaping a collision with an on-coming mini bus taxi, then swerving to the left into Old Kira Road. With no hesitation. the pursuing <i>boda </i>made the same erratic move, and sped after them down the hill. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Turn right here,” barked Derek, and Tiger veered hard through a narrow gap between a wooden phone kiosk and a ramshackle scrapyard, then down a bumpy road that led into the mud-clogged, lunar landscape of Kamwokya (pronounced Kam-wo-cha), a clamorous shanty town wedged between Kololo hill and the swamps below. Driver and passenger swayed savagely from side to side, as they zigzagged through the slalom run of potholes, people and livestock. Dodging a work detail of boys filling in the rifts in the road with rocks and soil, they narrowly missed another <i>boda</i> driver who was involved in a melee between two shop owners, then swerved to avoid an infant who’d wandered into the road crying. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The backstreets were crowded with more animal life than human: half a dozen cows, a goat on a rope that ran directly across their path and throttled himself, a gaggle of geese that chased after them until dispersed by the blue <i>afendi</i> still hot on their trail. Even<i> kaloles</i> took flight, those ungainly, lappet-faced storks that rummage around Kampala’s dumps like ugly spies, but are among the most graceful flyers in the African sky. Tiger burst through a line of laundry, then sped back out on to the main road, immediately hitting a speed bump that sent them skyward after the storks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In the brash equatorial sunlight Kamwokya was a riot to the senses: the sight of village belles in drab clothing sashaying between yellow Mobile Money cubicles and illustrated hair saloons, the odour of roasting goat fat and open sewers, the flavour of exhaust from the taxi ahead, the din of car horns clashing with DVD stalls, and the bump to the ass of potholes within potholes. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Their <i>boda</i> barely missed a <i>matoke</i> seller sitting straight-legged by the road, beside half a dozen sizable bunches of dark green bananas, then sped past hardware stores, iron gate makers, butcheries (the preferred local spelling), a pork joint where a dozen young men were huddled around two pool tables, the Pleasure Hotel, Valey Inn, a stall displaying piles of mattresses and plastic containers that tumbled in their slipstream, scattering rainbow-coloured wares all across the road. It was all a haze to Derek, even as they passed a group of pretty young women shouting, “<i>Muzungu! Muzungu!</i>”, as he remained insensible to everything but the pursuing <i>afendi </i>on the <i>boda</i> behind, now caught up in a mess of mattresses and containers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Tiger was careful to avoid the shit-mottled, viscoelastic waste water flowing in and out of people’s shops and homes, and decelerated as they approached a five-metre wide stretch of it where the road dipped below the surface. Barely clearing their feet, they proceeded cautiously through the slough, swerving at the last moment to avoid a well-known, car-sized pothole concealed beneath it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The pursuing <i>afendi</i> was not so careful, and drove straight through the middle, hitting the hidden pothole with an impact that caused him to be soaked from head to toe in sewage, and brought the chase to an abrupt end. Derek and Tiger stopped to high-five each other on the other side of the puddle, then drove off through the throng of market goers. “At least it’s Friday,” said Derek, relaxing his posture. Friday was market day in Kamwokya, and he knew the police officer and his driver would easily find a change of clothes. Still, he dreaded the next time he ran into that<i> afendi</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As they approached their destination his thoughts turned to the phone call he’d received thirty minutes earlier from the American. After fourteen years everyone had given up on ever finding Johnny Oceans, dead or alive. Now, suddenly, he was back. But from where? Derek was keen to find out and, as Tiger pulled into the Kisementi car park, he searched for his old friend through the dazzling reflected glare of countless automobile surfaces surrounding its drinking establishments. “There he is,” he cried, spotting a man seated on the front terrace of Fat Boyz Bar & Grill, which boasted “Warm Beer - Lousy Food”; there was no mistaking that Roman nose. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://pirateyarns.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-reunion.html">Continue reading this chapter...</a></i></span></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-26443662422857674792013-03-17T00:30:00.000-07:002013-07-01T22:33:28.363-07:00The Reunion<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;"><b><i>Excerpt from the first draft MS for </i>PIRATES <i>(Cutting Edge Press) © Greg Cummings</i></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><i>Continued from <a href="http://pirateyarns.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-chase.html">The Chase...</a></i></b></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Derek paid Tiger, then dashed up the steps to give his long lost friend a heartfelt hug. Johnny Oceans had a full head of black hair, a pukka shell choker around his neck, and a large, rugged black watch around his left wrist. He was well-tanned, physically fit, and dressed in a turquoise Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Except for an expression of inner contentment, he looked much the same as he had a decade and half ago. “Wherever you’ve been hiding, its obviously done you the world of good, <i>rafiki</i>,” said Derek, grabbing a seat. A waiter arrived to take their order. Oceans asked for a Coca Cola, and although it was still not yet midday Derek ordered a cold Club beer. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“The last time I saw you was 1998,” said Derek. “We were out scuba diving on the Malindi-Watamu bank, about twelve kilometres off the Kenyan Coast, totally baked, I seem to recall. You signaled you were going to surface.” Derek laughed, thrust his thumb upward a few times, then shook his head in disbelief. “I continued on my solo dive for another ten minutes, <i>ten goddamn minutes</i>, but when I got back to the boat you had fucking vanished. No clue, no note; <i>nothing!</i>”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I thought you’d be OK,” smiled Oceans. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Drifting on the open sea with no fuel, <i>hapana</i>, I was not Ok. I was in fucking peril. Luckily, Azziza Nshuti came along in her speed boat”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Who?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Madame Nshuti, the Congolese smuggler. <i>Jesus,</i> <i>where have you been</i>? </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Is that why you didn’t report me missing for a week?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Listen, man, there was no way I wanted to get caught up in that ordeal. Johnny Oceans, member of the notorious DeVini family, Meyer Lansky’s gaming connection in the 1950s, disappears and I’m the last person on earth to see him alive. Uh-uh! No thank you. And besides, I thought you’d show up sooner or later. I just didn’t expect it to be fifteen years later.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A cloud eclipsed the equatorial sun, followed by a refreshing breeze that transformed their shirts into fluttering flags and took the heat out of the day for an instant. Then the sunshine returned, plastering the walls, awnings and car park with a blinding light that soaked up the midday shadows like a sponge.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Did those gorillas give you a hard time?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“You have no fucking idea! It was like Godfather meets Lord of War. The day those gorillas arrived on the Kenyan Coast is still fresh in my memory like it was yesterday. I remember Azziza was about to catch her flight back to Kinshasa and the two of us were just chilling in the sand. I spotted them through the heat haze, a hundred metres away, tramping up the beach towards us, side by side: the three Wise Guys. Only a gumba from New York shows up at a beach resort in a rayon track suit.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“What did they say to you?” asked Oceans, chuckling.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Oh, you wouldn’t believe the charm offensive. The fat guy, sweating profusely and dabbing his jowls with a hanky, asks in a high-pitched voice, ‘Are you Derek Strangely?’ I say, ‘Yeah.’ Then he asks, ‘Who’s the <i>mulli</i>?’” Oceans could not contain himself after that, and doubled over with laughter, extending his hand all the while to indicate Derek should hang on before continuing his story. “Not a good move,” continued Derek after his friend had regained some composure, “Madame Nshuti was no <i>mulli</i>.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“What did <i>she</i> say,” asked Oceans, wiping the tears from his eyes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Let me see if I can remember her exact words. She stood up - she was an imposing woman, with stunning good looks - and she said, ‘It’s clearly a joke that you men are called wise guys. But if you want to last a day in Africa, you’ll be wise to show the locals more respect.” Then she left for the airport, without even kissing <i>me</i> goodbye.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I’m so sorry, dawg…he he...You got to remember, those paisans had never before left the Tri-state area. To them Africa was somewhere east of Bronx Zoo.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Yes, well, as the last person to see you alive, I ended spending a lot of time with your paisans. Bobby, Jimmy, Petey, Tony… Do you have <i>any</i> relatives with names that don’t end in ‘y’?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Sure, Sal, Luca, Rocko...”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Well, your <i>gumbas</i> took over the Blue Marlin Bar for a whole fucking week, and ran up a huge tab which they never paid. They complained about everything - the lack of sausage and peppers mostly - and did whatever they fucking pleased. The <i>matatus</i> flipped them out; they wanted to whack the drivers of those damn bus taxis. And the bugs; they fucking hated the bugs. One time Petey got up in the middle of the night and started shooting at the goddamn geckoes on the walls of his room. I told him geckoes keep the bugs away, but he was having none of it.“</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Oh man, I wish I’d been there to see that.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I fucking wished you’d been there. I tried my best to entertain them, being a safari guide and all. But those wise guys had no interest whatsoever in going on safari, not fishing, diving, seeing any of the sites. All they did was drink alcohol all day long, that is when they weren’t trying to muscle-in on the local forex racket. That didn’t go down too well. Swahili Muslims don’t take too kindly to being called pigs. Your boys even asked me if I wanted to be their coke mule.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Oceans stopped laughing, shook his head with incredulity then said, “That’s my family, Derek, not me…”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“So?” asked Derek, taking a slow swig of his beer during which he eyed his long, lost friend inquisitively, “I’m curious to know what had happened to <i>you</i>. Did you go back to the old country, lay low in your ancestral village while things blew over, or what?” But Oceans steered clear of the subject, glancing around at the other people on the terrace to see if anyone was listening in on their conversation. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Let me tell you something,” he said, moving in closer, “When my Uncle Dino started out in the business in 1920s he was just a kid, working as a craps casino dealer at Rex's Cigar Store, in Steubenville, Ohio. Before long he was the youngest ‘bust out’ man in Steubenville.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“What’s a ‘bust out’ man?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“He’s the guy whose job it is to switch crooked dice in and out of the craps games, the sort of Baboo the gangsters who ran the rackets hated, that is until they hired him to ward off undesirables, hustle the <i>spacones</i> with lots of money to burn, and break lucky winning streaks.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Was he a cheat?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“More a <i>montambanco</i>, what you call in English a mountebank. The whole family’s like that. It never really dawned on me until I moved to Kenya in the Nineties to manage Nyali Casino for Uncle Tony, Dino’s brother. Typically, some guy I’d never seen before would start playing the tables, and Tony would tell me to go talk to him. ‘Why should I talk to him when he’s an asshole?’ ‘Because he’s a big spending asshole, that’s why.’ Uncle Tony knew <i>everything</i> about the financial status of every American gambler alive. And when their luck ran out, he knew just how much credit to extent to whom.“</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Sounds like a worthwhile talent to have in the gaming business.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Yeah, but it could be used to devastating effect. I remember one night when only a handful of hard-core gamblers remained in the casino, including two brothers from New York. One was playing with high stakes in a closed game at the blackjack table, and losing excessively; his brother had already lost a shit load of money. Before long they both came up and asked Uncle Tony for credit. ‘You're OK,’ he snapped at one of them, "but not him," jabbing his finger at the other, who walked away in humiliation. Later that night the brother he snubbed hung himself, and Uncle Tony ordered one of the casino workers to plant $10,000 on his body before informing the other brother, to make it look as though his gambling losses were not a factor in his suicide, that he had other motives for taking his own life. When the surviving brother failed to pay <i>his</i> debt after he returned to New York City, who dunned him for the payment? Who else? The mob!” Oceans drank back the last of his soda, and burped. “I had to get the fuck out!”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“So? Where did you go?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“You really wanna know?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Damn straight!”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Oceans stood up and surveyed the bar, beat his chest a few times nonchalantly, the smiled back down at Derek. “I’ll tell you everything, but not here. C’mon, we’re going on safari.”</span></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-1798639380500411642013-03-12T00:31:00.000-07:002013-03-18T03:44:35.110-07:00Under Stars<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?-->
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: Geneva;"><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"><b><i>Journal entry, written at a refugee camp in Ethiopia</i></b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;"><b><i>, </i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;"><b><i>aged 23 © Greg Cummings</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Sun, Nov 17th ‘85</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">As a crescent moon sets in the west wrapped in whisps of cloud, Jupiter follows closely like an older brother. The mountains open up to devour them, and the stars become brighter - a choir of a billion worlds rising to a crescendo of light, like the chorus of Beethoven’s choral movement from the Ninth. Now the moon is a Cheshire grin brimming on the edge of the black mountains; Jupiter, it’s one eye released from a wink, behind. A wink and a grin ‘good night’ and the chorus of the sky erupts.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Camp Bete's agents are asleep in their tents - “From Jarusalem with Love” - sunk deep in a pool of dreams from another place far away - a starker reality. The sporadic voices of refugees in their village under the stars, sing a distant rhythm of life, a promise of a more hopefull life, but the end of a different promise. Like the Cheshire grin of the moon now burried, the chorus of a greater calm now stronger, these brief journeys of salvation must wane, and the celebration of life, the ebbing formal flux of existence, must become itself again.</span></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-48837289549814641182013-03-03T08:25:00.001-08:002013-03-16T00:02:14.677-07:00PIRATES on Amazon!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-77144056324641443482013-01-01T18:00:00.000-08:002013-01-01T21:57:54.931-08:00Chapter Four <div style="text-align: center;">
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<b><i>Excerpt from the first draft MS for </i>PIRATES <i>(Cutting Edge Press) © Greg Cummings</i></b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ali al-Rubaysh’s third-storey apartment was bathed in the lustre of late-afternoon sunshine. Located four streets up from the waterfront, in al-Mukalla, an ancient port on the Hadramaut Coast of Yemen, he had a commanding view of the Gulf of Aden. “<i>The sun doesn’t rise upon a land that does not contain a man from Hadhramawt</i>,” said Rubaysh, gazing through his picture window at the sea, which sparkled with a thousand pinpoints of shimmering light, as though a silvery leviathan had surfaced from its depths.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As a Hadrami Sayyid, directly descended from Mohammed, Rubaysh could trace his ancestry back millennia to a time when the Arabs from the Hadramaut Coast ruled the entire Indian Ocean. He was also a seasoned terrorist, one-time leader of the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, former inmate in Guantanamo Bay, and now a military commander in Al-Qaeda Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Consequently, he tried to disguise his high-born features with tussocky facial hair and heavy spectacles, though he usually dressed nobly at home, in a white cotton <i>dish-dash</i> that swayed from side to side as he went about his business. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Watching him from an armchair was Omar Abu Hamza, a twenty three-year old al-Shabaab commander from Somalia. He was long and slender, with a complexion like blued steel, and sported a similar beard to Rubaysh’s: clean-shaven on his chin, upper lip and cheeks but bushy around the jowls. He was wearing a grey polyester jacket two sizes too large, and mismatched socks that shot out of his slacks like gun barrels. Their meeting had been kept secret even from their own superiors.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Rubaysh emerged from the kitchen, smiling and carrying a silver tray laden with a mint tea service and a bundle of <i>khat</i> he’d bought in the market that afternoon. “So the American got away,” he said, placing the tray in the centre of his coffee table. He spoke with an accent that reflected his English public school education, though often as now, he purposely tried to sound more Arab, in order to make his company feel more at home. “And his wife?” Omar shook his head. “At least if you’d captured that <i>sharmouta</i>, we could have flushed him out.“ </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He poured the tea into two glass cups, and was about to divide the <i>khat</i> into two equal halves but Omar gestured that he would not partake. Unlike the Shabaab mujahideen, Rubaysh and others in AQAP were not averse to chewing <i>khat.</i> He sat down opposite his Somali visitor and immediately began plucking the leaves from his half of the bundle, placing them in his mouth, and munching until all the juice had been consumed. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“He knew we were coming,” said Omar. “We arrived just minutes too late. If the American is still on the Horn, my men will find him.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“These days you’ll find many Americans on the Horn,” said Rubaysh, using his tongue to shift the pulp into the corner of his mouth, “mostly in the ranks of your militia, al-Shabaab. We even have blond-haired, blue-eyed jihadists in al-Qaeda! Still, there was only one I was interested in, and that was Mehemet Abdul Rahman... <i>Inshe Allah</i>, you have some <i>good</i> news for me.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I could have told you this news by telegraph,” snapped Omar. “Why did you insist I come here in person? I had to leave in the middle of the night, at great risk to my own life, and cross the Gulf in high winds and choppy seas. What could be so important to warrant such a visit?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Rubaysh removed his glasses, pressed his left palm against his chin, swiveled it back and forth a couple of times, then twisted his head sharply clockwise, making a loud cracking sound at the back of his neck. “What I am about to tell you is extremely sensitive, and I did not wish for our messages to fall into the wrong hands. <i>Masha Allah</i>, you were able to reach here safely as quickly as you did.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Thanks to the almighty Allah who sustains all the mujahideen.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“It has not gone unnoticed by al-Qaeda that these days all-Shabaab is fighting the Kafir on many fronts in Somalia, more aggressively than ever before. Now Kenya has invaded, AMISOM has pushed you out of Mogadishu and Kismayo, away from your lucrative port taxes, and the US keep sending those fucking drones. Correct?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Omar took a few contemplative sips of his tea then said, “We need more money and recruits.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Is that why Shabaab sold those two Spanish hostages you took in Dadaab? You should have beheaded them. You need to do more terrorizing. We have taken you under our wing and now we must fly together. <i>Allah hu-Akbar. </i>The problem is Shabaab militants are all concentrated in the south, fighting a conventional war. The north is rich pickings for jihad.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“That is why we have established a base in Galaga, in the Karkaar Mountains, but the Majeerteen are racists who despise outsiders, unlike al-Shabaab who welcomes all mujahideen who wish to defend Islam.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“So, you teach the racists a lesson,” proclaimed Rubaysh, putting down his tea. “And it must be done <i>now</i>, because the Majeerteen are becoming too rich from this piracy business, and soon they will be powerful. Strike a blow at the heart of Puntland,” he said, beating his fist into the palm of his hand, “as you did in 2008, and then another, and another.” They glared at each other for a second. Both pairs of eyes were unemotional, as though they no longer drew blood from their hearts. They were cold-blooded killers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Rubaysh sat back and breathed deeply. “Look at me. The Americans gave me a badge of honour when they sent me to that Cuban pig pen of theirs. They tried to break me with torture, but instead they turned me into a better warrior.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“This is why we have aligned ourselves with al-Qaeda,” said Omar. “Al-Shabaab also want to fight the Kafir. But they are cowards, and they hide. A mujahideen will bravely martyr himself in an American aeroplane, but they refuse to even put pilots in the ones they send in retaliation. We’re sick of fighting AMISOM. We want to fight AFRICOM."</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Rubaysh leaned forward and put his hand on Omar’s shoulder. “They have failed to see the bridge that connects us, my friend. South Yemenis have always been closer to Somalians than we are with the rest of the Arab world. <i>This</i> is our true identity.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Omar nodded sagely. Rubaysh pulled him closer and rasped, “We’ll part the sea as Musa did.” His words hung there for a moment, like gold-embroidered Arabic on a black, velvet wall hanging. Then he stood up and moved towards the window. The light had faded from the apartment, and the sun was sinking fast. “The Gulf of Aden… How many million barrels of oil do you suppose pass through it every day?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“I don’t know,” said Omar.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Ten percent of the world’s oil trade. That’s millions of barrels a day, worth billions of dollars… Al-Qaeda has grown stronger during the Arab Spring, especially in Yemen. Our forces are better trained and more sophisticated now.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A muezzin’s call reminded them of their religious duty. “Come,” said Rubaysh, “let us go to the mosque and pray to Allah. We have much to thank him for.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“You still haven’t told me why you called me here.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Ah, yes,” said Rubaysh, smiling. He reached into a briefcase beside his chair, retrieved a sheet of paper and handed to Omar. “Look at this diagram.” It showed two drums side by side tethered to the seabed beneath the surface over which sailed a ship. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Omar pointed to the letters H</span><span style="font: 8.0px Arial; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><sub>2</sub></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">S written across the drums, and asked, “What does that stand for?” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Hydrogen sulfide,” smiled Rubaysh. “It kills instantly.” Omar nodded profoundly and rubbed his chin. “The drums can be made to any size. Triggered remotely they quickly rise to the surface. Once in contact with air, they explode with a cloud of deadly noxious gas.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Ingenious," laughed Omar.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“You see how we have adapted, my Somali friend... I promise you, when we’re through with them, the Kafir will have shed enough tears to turn the deserts into oceans.“</span></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-80321500715577090042012-12-30T22:23:00.002-08:002012-12-31T10:20:19.108-08:00Arrested for Espionage<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">© Greg Cummings</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Sun, Nov 10th 1985</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I'm standing on the rooftop of the Red Sea Hotel as dusk falls. The Yemeni port of Hodeida hums with commerce, hustle, trade between seafaring cultures in transit. It's a busy, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">sprawling seafront town,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">of two and three storey sand-brick buildings pierced by half a dozen slender minarets. </span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">The port </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">juts out into the sea, strong-arming passing ships into harbour. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">And t</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">here are hundreds of ships here, as many vessels as there are little restaurants filled with <i>khat</i>-addled Yemeni men in sarongs, tucking into steaming plates of barbequed chicken, beef stew with puffy flaps of pita bread, salad. No alcohol. No women. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I'm only in the Yemen because I won </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">second prize in a raffle </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">at</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> the United Nations 40th Anniversary Ball</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> at</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> the Addis Ababa Hilton: </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">two weeks in</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> the Yemen </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">"What was first prize," </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">asked </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">my father</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">, "one week?" </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">The night before last</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">when I stood as now outside my room on the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">rooftop terrace</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">of the Red Sea Hotel smoking a cigarette, listening to the muezzin's call to prayer</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">a favourable</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> off-shore breeze broke through the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> haze, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">intense pre-dusk sunlight</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">revealed a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">spit of land</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">stretching northwest beyond</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> the port</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">The next morning I found my way out to this </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">forbidding province of flatland</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">, and spent most of the day sitting cross-legged </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">in front of the </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Red Sea, on</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> an empty, wind-swept beach on the far side of the</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">port</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">. It was an</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> elemental convergence of </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">sky</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> sun</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">,</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> sand, sea, and</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">prodigal son</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">.</span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Everything </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">on </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">my barren beachhead </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">was flat and simple</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I could not see another soul anywhere. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Such a desolate scene deserved a photograph.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">M</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">y father had loaned me his</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Yashika single lens reflex camera for the trip. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I placed it in the middle of the road, set the timer, then walked away. After ten steps I heard the shutter click then wondered how the picture had turned out. As I retrieved the camera, I spotted a vehicle approaching from the direction of town, a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">white Land Rover heading straight for me at high speed. Still</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">, it took an entire minute for it to reach me</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">The</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> vehicle came to a screeching, sideways halt just a few feet in front of me. Out jumped half a dozen men in headdresses, armed with traditional Arab cutlasses around their waists. One of them politely ordered me into the vehicle. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">“Please! Please!” he said. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Crabs scuttled like ragged claws across my back.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> I didn't know these people. Was I being kidnapped? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">He showed me his badge and then his pistol, and I realised all along he'd been saying, “Police, Police!” Reluctantly, I climbed</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> into the vehicle. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">We</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> sped back to Hodeida. They parked the car in front of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">police </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">headquarters </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">then escorted me into a compound</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> where everyone was carrying weapons. I was forced at gun point into a room furnished only with a single mattress on the floor and naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. "This is fucking it!" I thought. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">They went through my leather satchel, sifting through letters, removing my journal, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">my passport,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> my camera, smiling all the while. Then </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I was </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">hustled out of the station, back into the Land Rover and dropped back at </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">the Red Sea Hotel. Once inside the hotel lobby, they</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> informed the proprietor I was under house arrest, and me that they would pick me up </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">the next morning </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">at nine o’clock sharp. By this time I was </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">intensely </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">shaken by the whole ordeal, unsure what to do next.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">The police had my passport. Still, I recalled a page in it that stipulated, in leu of any Canadian diplomatic service, I should seek out the nearest British</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Counsel.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> I found him in the bar of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">the nearby Ambassador Hotel nursing a gin and tonic, and told him my story.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"You were taking pictures of the harbour?" he laughed. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"Not intentionally," I said. "All I saw was empty flatland. I was photographing myself, if anything."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"You should be grateful you're standing here, talking to me now," said the Counsel. "The last chaps they arrested for that offence were thrown in jail for two weeks." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Just then I spied a man trying to conceal himself behind a pillar outside the hotel entrance. It was the same </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">stalky bearded guy </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">who'd been following me since I left my hotel. He was obviously my minder, though I found I could keep him at bay as long as I held an alcoholic beverage in my hand.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Hoping he'd eventually tire of waiting, I shot a few games of pool with some Norwegian aid workers, who reassured me this was all just a storm in a teacup, then left the Ambassador at around midnight. My minder was nowhere to be seen. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Back in my </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">rooftop hotel</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> room I</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> spent a hot, sleepless night dreaming</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> a ghostly visit from a dead friend and awoke in a pool of sweat, held fast by desert moonlight, no idea where I was. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">The next morning</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> as promised, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I was picked up outside my hotel at 9 am by the police</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> and taken back to their headquarters where </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">this time </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">they ushered me into a different room, filled with suspects. There I </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">waited</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> for about two hours, chain smoking, listening to the complaints and queries of the aggravated assembled. </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Finally, I was led </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">out of the waiting room and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">up a flight of stairs to the second floor. As we walked the corridors, the high ceilings and mosaic floors had </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">a cooling, calming effect. We eventually reached a large office. There, seated behind a desk, was a tall, well built man, wearing a white <i>dish-dash </i>and red checkered <i>kefeyah</i>, and screaming into his phone. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I saw my journal, letters and passport strewn across on his desk and wondered if he'd read any of my writing, or all of it. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I'd written some fairly blasphemous content. How would he react? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">When he hung up the phone, he intstructed the man who had led me there to translate for him. That's when I realized he couldn’t have read any of it. Phew! </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">They gave me back my camera. The film had already been</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> developed. The shot of me walking away, down the abandoned highway wasn't that bad at all, in focus and with good depth of field.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">The chief of police situated himself in front of his desk, with one foot in his hand, then stretched and twisted his neck. He repeated this again and again as he </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">asked me my purpose in Yemen, my profession, and why in God's name I'd been taking</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> photographs</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> near a military installation. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I answered the questions slowly and precisely, explaining </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I had no idea I was in such a sensitive area. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"Why would you take photographs," asked the translator, who had the air of an undertaker, "when you wrote in your journal someone had already warned you when you arrived at the airport not to take pictures?" I swallowed hard, but the words escaped me. So my journal <i>had</i> been read.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Nevertheless, the chief of police seemed convinced that I was not a spy, and the conversation </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">soon </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Geneva;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">moved to the situation in Ethiopia, a nation gripped by famine. As we talked, he became more interested </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">and concerned about their plight and asked me what I thought was the best solution to the problem. </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"The misuse of land that has contributed to about a third of the problem," I said. "Development, and a better understanding of agriculture are the best long term solutions."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">"Perhaps we can be of some help," he said. "We Yemenis have been farming the desert for centuries."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">He then</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">dismissed me</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">, saying he was grateful for having had the opportunity to meet me and that in future I should be more responsible about where I take photographs. I thanked him and left, with my passport, my letters, my journal. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I'm preparing to leave old Hodeidah-by-the-sea now, breathing in the rich, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">sweet </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">air as I struggle to stuff the endmost of my things into a suitcase. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I think my favourite kind of climate is breezy tropical coastal, with lots of sunshine. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">And the life must be simple and free...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Dar es Salaam, and Hodeida are all places which meet the criteria. But </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I doubt I'll pass this way again.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">I recall the time I placed a long distance call from New York to LA for an Arab who could not speak English, after he accosted me at JFK airport. Christ, I don’t know how I pulled that off. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I stuff the photographs into my satchel and smile, glancing momentarily at the shot of me walking down the road. In the distant background I can just make out the silhouette of a missile silo. It won't take much to enhance it.</span></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-6981601800440058722012-12-21T10:57:00.002-08:002012-12-21T11:38:18.582-08:00A Non-Lethal Deterrent<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Watching a young man in the suburbs load an arsenal of weapons into the boot of his car, the powers that be concluded his intentions were hostile. Accordingly they eliminated him before he could do any harm. Imagine if this had been in Newtown, Conn last Friday. Twenty children would still be alive and enjoying the holiday season. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Instead this was a “signature strike” drone attack in a region of the Yemen under the control of Al-Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula (AQAP). A signature strike targets individuals or groups “who bear characteristics associated with terrorism but whose identities are not known.” In this case, the signature was a young man stocking his car with AK-47s. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As it turned out, he wasn’t an AQAP militant but a civilian on his way to a wedding. It’s traditional to fire guns in the air at Yemeni weddings. Consequently, the United States government launched yet another botched drone attack in which innocent people were killed.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Looking at the two events in tandem - the drone attack in Yemen and the Newton massacre - it’s clear Barak Obama’s priorities are completely wrong. Here’s a president who hasn’t passed a single bit of gun legislation during his entire time in office, yet approves dozens of drone attacks that have claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia -fostering the next generation of militant Islamists bent on attacking Americans, I might add.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“When Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009, he had authorized more drone strikes than George W. Bush had approved during his entire presidency. By his third year in office, Obama had approved the killings of twice as many suspected terrorists as had ever been imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">So wrote <i>Newsweek</i> correspondent Daniel Klaidman, in his book <i>Kill Or Capture </i>about Obama’s secret war of drone strikes and covert operations. Klaidman’s unique insight recounts the painful deliberations the president went through over successive briefings by the military and CIA regarding the planned executions of people on the “kill list”. He also describes how Obama ultimately wholeheartedly embraced the practice. Homeboy has a jones for drones.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifjaYwVV42Epfyehxca6ntyjrMQtLZThq0nKTbApI_h9a7A0qh-cE7Ym4G5KLhCPL_MNQ7CUMu9E58lRsD7WZMuKX1vN_1udEyBpkjikopMaxj6VX4m6dqDlwsMgWlMmQAt0WnXdN5xgg/s1600/reaper.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifjaYwVV42Epfyehxca6ntyjrMQtLZThq0nKTbApI_h9a7A0qh-cE7Ym4G5KLhCPL_MNQ7CUMu9E58lRsD7WZMuKX1vN_1udEyBpkjikopMaxj6VX4m6dqDlwsMgWlMmQAt0WnXdN5xgg/s320/reaper.gif" width="313" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Drone attacks on Somali pirates aren’t common, thank God. Rather, to monitor the multifarious activities of majeerteen fishermen around the Horn of Africa, the US military flies regular unmanned arial missions out of Arba Minch airport in Ethiopia for surveillance purposes only. It’s up to the combined task force 151 (CTF 151), an international maritime defense fleet deployed in the Gulf of Aden, to come to the aid of any vessels under attack by pirates. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Although many ships these days will not sail through the Gulf without armed guards on board, the wider maritime community disallows lethal weapons on seafaring vessels. Most countries forbid them aboard ships that sail into their ports, which kind of makes sense. In an effort to combat piracy within the restrictions of maritime law, therefore, more and more shipping companies are now deploying non-lethal defences aboard their ships.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What constitutes non-lethal? Wether its a dazzle gun</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;">,</span></span><span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;"> long range acoustic device, boat trap, electric fence, slippery foam, optical laser distractor, robot anti-pirate boat, </span><span style="font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;">or active denial system, the key characteristic of a non-lethal weapon is its effectiveness in deterring and disarming attackers without necessarily harming them. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Take the active denial system, an energy weapon designed for “area denial, perimeter security and crowd control.” Sometimes referred to as a heat ray, it works by cooking its targets, much like a microwave oven, causing intolerable pain. Burn injury is prevented by limiting the beam’s intensity and duration. It was developed by the US military and deployed to Afghanistan, but withdrawn without ever letting the Taliban feel the heat.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A long range acoustical device onboard ship</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The long range acoustic device (LRAD) is a unidirectional combat loud speaker that uses intensified sound waves with similar effect. It has a metre-wide beam and only those in the line of fire receive the full excruciating blare, as the LRAD sends forth an audio assault of pain inducing tones that force attackers to cover their ears and let go of their weapons. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Sweeping the beam across a crowd in a metachronal rhythm produces a similar effect to a Mexican wave. There’s also a ‘ghost battalion’ selection on the device which replicates the sound of warfare at a thousand times the decibels. Imagine being pursued by an LRAD blasting ABBA’s “Mama Mia‘...</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Perhaps the most ingenious non-lethal weapon is the dazzle gun, or laser rifle, a man-portable piece that uses intense directed radiation to temporarily blind or disorient its target. Dazzlers have been used in Iraq to halt (but not kill) drivers who fail to stop at checkpoints manned by American soldiers.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Laser rifles temporarily blind their target</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Could this be the way to defend America’s schools without bringing lethal weapons into the classroom? Would a dazzler have been effective in thwarting Adam Lanza’s attack on Sandy Hook? Could an LRAD have forced him to let go of his weapon?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It seems incongruous that in deterring America’s enemies, in far-flung failed states, the United States government is willing to consider non-lethal means, but in defending its own children, it’s an all-or-nothing debate about firearms. How is it that Somali pirates get more consideration than American citizens?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There is an alternative, and the US has the know how to invent it. Meantime, if you must continue with your “signature strikes”, Mr President, at least use them to target the mass murderers in your midst.</span></span></div>
Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1599253040043742643.post-73708706489599304212012-12-16T08:11:00.002-08:002012-12-16T08:55:51.011-08:00The Yemeni Road <!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?-->
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"><b><i>Journal entry, written on a</i></b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;"><b><i> bus in The Yemen, </i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;"><b><i>aged 23 © Greg Cummings</i></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;"><b><i> </i></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaCEiIfo1sWmfsFelY5S3SWkcqAxNX5BGG7qktgzhKYZvpLPhb8XEt7Tk4JpHKs9EeglDrN6GfPhHaIO2ooI78N6aOb_QWIES8gKXXRxYZw1a8tR6tyk1yfVgBiwt43V_Ud0bFG72k_MQ/s1600/yemen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaCEiIfo1sWmfsFelY5S3SWkcqAxNX5BGG7qktgzhKYZvpLPhb8XEt7Tk4JpHKs9EeglDrN6GfPhHaIO2ooI78N6aOb_QWIES8gKXXRxYZw1a8tR6tyk1yfVgBiwt43V_Ud0bFG72k_MQ/s320/yemen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Thurs Nov 7 ‘85</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;">About an hour outside Sa'na, the earth suddenly falls away and plunges some five thousand feet into a sandstone valley. It makes for pretty precarious driving but, with a grooving Yemeni tune rolling round the bus, I feel quite comfortable. I've just noticed the rocks are green, not from moss or anything like that, just green. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;">The weather is cold but the air, chocked with dust, and random twisters dance between the hills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Entire towns are perched precariously atop towering rock promontories, two to three thousand feet above the saddle, leading one to wonder how the fuck the inhabitants of these eyries manage to say a neighbourly 'Good morning' to each other. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">The bus was stopped just outside Sa'na at a military road block, and a young soldier carrying an </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;">AK-47 came aboard and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;">scrutinised the faces of the bus passengers, presumably looking for subversives. He took one look at me and demanded, “Pazzpord.” I trusted my papers were all in order.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Climbing up the other side of the valley now, where the rocks are blue and the clouds roll between the sun and jagged peaks of the southern rift. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip8geP6oYa67EwM5s34BxQZf6mDtT0uJ36vDSrR7t3GMQwc3yAzSwQUtu6SvJsfmBSeXNgPeRaAxbFJaTF_aX-JOM3zPEGDKEgc8wGlBnOnc-evT97k_7Ee1FUuYcDcfddnNgMsf7rbVY/s1600/coast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip8geP6oYa67EwM5s34BxQZf6mDtT0uJ36vDSrR7t3GMQwc3yAzSwQUtu6SvJsfmBSeXNgPeRaAxbFJaTF_aX-JOM3zPEGDKEgc8wGlBnOnc-evT97k_7Ee1FUuYcDcfddnNgMsf7rbVY/s400/coast.jpg" width="300" /></a><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">I want to escape into these mountains and wail a despondent solo, live in a clay tower with a veiled wife and goats, read the Quran every day and soar with the hawks, learn to play the <i>harooz</i> and weave silk with hennaed hands. Only then will I be able to write home and tell mother everything's just fine.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Down we wind, through a maze of jagged hills and passes, where more tropical vegetation clings to the river banks we cross. It’s certainly warmer and more humid in the valley below, and I see more women without veils, some quite beautiful. We’re still a ways from the sea, zigzagging our way up and down foothills. The boulders appear carbon-based and ready to issue wisdom. Their smooth wispy shapes evoke wild impression, a sense of madness in the geology. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">We’re on the coastal flats now, where a thick haze of dust </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;">hangs over miles and miles of farmland</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;">, so thick the setting sun disappears behind it. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;">For all I know in this murk, w</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px;">e could be nowhere, trapped on a doom-bound bus that's hurtling its way through desolate uncertainty towards the edge of the earth. No more farmlands, it’s now only desert. We're headed for world’s end. Hang on, there’s a town up ahead. Could it be - yes it is. Hodeida-by-the-Sea. I get it, what seemed a desert was really the world’s widest beach!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">Alas, the Red Sea! The balmy, balmy Red Sea!</span></span></div>
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Gorillaland Safarishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18050299123109314463noreply@blogger.com0