Photographed by Vincent Montibus

July 17, 2009 #300

[FR] Courbes toi devant moi !

Matériel & Traitement :
K20D avec le 10-17mm fisheye @ 10mm f/8 monte sur la tete panoramique Nodal Ninja 3 Mark 2.
6×5 prises sur trépied a -4EV, -2EV, 0 EV, 2 EV, 4 EV (60º d’écart angulaire et -15º de Tilt) + 1×5 prises pour le zénith + 3×5 prises pour le nadir. Toutes les prises ont été traitées dans Photomatix Pro puis Photoshop (réduction du bruit avec le plugin Ninja Noise et filtrage passe-haut) pour obtenir 8 photos. Le panorama a été assemble avec Hugin puis j’ai utilise Cubic Converter pour récupérer les vues projetées sur un cube afin de supprimer le trépied de la face du bas. J’ai finalement réinjecté la face corrigée dans Cubic Converter pour obtenir le panoramique équirectangulaire. J’ai réinjecté l’image équirectangulaire dans Hugin afin de créer la projection stéréographique.

Material & Processing :
K20D with 10-17mm fisheye @ 10mm f/8 mounted on the Nodal Ninja 3 Mark 2 VR Head.
6×5 shoots on tripod @ -4 EV, -2 EV, 0 EV, 2 EV, 4 EV (60º steps for the rotation and -15º of tilt) + 1×5 shoots for the zenith + 3×5 shoots for the nadir. All processed individually in Photomatix Pro then Photoshop (Ninja Noise plugin for noise reduction and high-pass filtering) to obtain 8 pictures. Panorama stitching was done in Hugin then I used CubicConverter to get the projected cube faces in order to remove the tripod and VR Head from the bottom face. I injected the corrected bottom back to CubicConverter to process the equirectangular panoramic. I injected back the equirectangular image in Hugin to process the stereographic projection.

Voici le lien vers un Quicktime VR de cette photo / Here is a link to a Quicktime VR of this picture : photos.montibus.net/panoramiques/360-Le-Ponant.html
View Big On Black / Voir en grand sur fond noir

– License

I was happy to hear that the American captain, Richard Phillips was saved this weekend from Somali pirates. And that the rest of the Maersk Alabama crew was already safe.  However, I have been a little disturbed by the recent emergence of pirates off the coast of Somalia, which is pretty much a land of chaos.

I don’t remember hearing about pirates when I was growing up, or even in the last seven years of my life. But recently, pirates are becoming more and more prevalent.

I was reading an article by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson in Vanity Fair.  He wrote about the French ship Le Ponant, and it’s hijacking by Somali pirates.

Maybe it was the way he wrote about the pirates, or the way the ships captain described the the situation, but they seemed alright.  In the end, the situation was probably not described negatively because nobody was hurt, everyone was rescued, and six pirates were arrested.

Are pirates really taking over the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean? Will the rest of the world really have to fear traveling in that specific part of the world.  For some reason I thought living in the 21st century, a few rag-tag, glorified thieves could not threaten an entire region.

Or could they?

The pirates know what they are doing. They usually attack ships traveling through the Gulf of Aden because it is large enough for them to sneak up to the boats, but narrow enough to reach the coasts for supplies and more men.

They wield machine guns, which stand up pretty well to the complete lack of weapons on the cruise and cargo ships.

They have an abundance of reserve pirates, who seem to be the only authority in Somalia now.  Reserve pirates can be on the occupied boats within an hour or so.

They use the policies and power of the American and French against them.  They know that the U.S. warships won’t fire on the occupied ship, because they don’t want to be responsible for any dead hostages.  So they let U.S. and French navy fleets hang out in the distance, and simply wait for the ransom.

In the end, maybe a few pirates will get killed or arrested.  But they will still probably get their ransom money, and have less people to split it with.

How many more hostage situations does the international community need to witness before they say, “Hey, we should really do something about these pirates.”

I really enjoyed this Vanity Fair article summarizing the adventures of the crew of Le Ponant, a “French” luxury cruise vessel commandeered by Somali pirates for a week in April 2008.  It comes across as a promotion for the captain’s book, but that doesn’t detract from the riveting details you don’t see in short-form media.  Langewiesche’s exploitation of this episode as a parable of extranational affairs, French empirical chest-thumbing, and cultural contrats is what sets the article apart from a standard narrative tale.

Yes, it’s that time of year again, to reflect, mourn and shudder at the year’s events. I will be looking at 2008 in a number of ways, over these last 10 days of the year. Here is the first installment. Enjoy!

2008 – Top 5 World Changing Events

2008 Street Of the Year

5. Recession

This year, we learnt that ‘boom and bust’ really hasn’t gone away. We had been promised that it was not going to happen anymore after the ole dot.com bubble exploded all over our faces. Not only is recession embaressing, it also causes poor people to lose their jobs and get angry and that gets everyone down.

But ‘boom and bust’ returned with the Credit Crunch, which despite sounding like a chocolate bar, is actually not very tasty at all. For a full explaination of how and why this happened, see here.

Why did it change the world?

Don’t be thick. It gives the world something to talk about. We all have something to collective bitch and moan about to each other constantly.

‘Hey Derek, you see General Motors need $9.4billion of taxpayers money to stay afloat. It’s fucking scandalous’

‘Hey fuck you, my wife works for General Motors! Those tax dollars are keeping this country afloat!’

‘You’re wife is scum man! You’re living off money stolen from the people! Fuck your corporate nepotism!

These kinds of conversations are very entertaining, and give the world something to do, rather than mindlessly surfing the internet looking for youtube videos of people falling over, or something to whack one off to.

Oh, and recession also causes global economic contraction, mass unemployment, political unrest, class conflict, severe environment strains and also brings us significantly closer to a full on intenrational resource war which will bring about the end of the world.

4. Barack Obama

Get your scrolling finger ready!

Just posting this explains things nice and simply and saves me effort. So that’s what I did.

Thanks - http://www.wallstats.com/

How it Changed the World

The USA now has a President who listens to ‘da hip hop’, shoots the ‘b ball’ and has a number of contacts ‘in da hood’. America also thinks it’s done something good, for this first time in a longtime, which is nice and refreshing for them, although the rest of the world is kinda thinking ‘hang on…are we supposed to congratulate them for not being racist?’

However, the fact the world has considered congratulating America at all, shows what a world changing event Obama’s election was in 2008. Plus it reminded us all that we should argue with old men and retarded women and not feel guilty about it.

3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indiana Jones 4? Awesome!

IJATKOTCS, as well as having a stupidly long name, unfortunately turned out to be spectacularly un-awesome. In case you haven’t seen it, I shall now fill you in. If you have seen it, you’ll enjoy these reminders.

The first half an hour can be summed up like this:

And the remaining frustating hour and a half can be summed up by this:

How it Changed the World

What Indiana 4 revealed to everyone, is that any movie or film franchise, person, idea, theory, institution or tradition – no matter how excellent, revered or  respected, can be destroyed by the desire to make a quick buck. If someone thinks something can make enough money, then it will be sold like a cheap backstreet whore.

But not only does Indiana 4 represent the prostitution of the world but how fucking terrible ideas still manage to enter the world. With swathes of middle management, executives, directors, shareholders, customers and all manner of other checks and balances in today’s 21st century world, you’d think retards with shit ideas would finally have no place to hide. Unfortunately, as Indiana 4 shows, shit ideas are definitely here to stay.

2. The Large Hadron Collider

One ring to find them all and in the darkness bind them?

After a completely absurd amount of time, 2008 saw a large concrete circle, (with a 17 mile circumference) finally finished. The thing accelerates very small stuff (protons) at 99.999999% of the speed of light. Which is nearly as fast as the average Frenchman lasts in bed. Scary stuff.

Trigger a huge explosion of rumours that crazy scientists are actually going to create a blackhole in Central Europe, causing the entire world to implode into Switzerland. At least it would be a chocolately death. With cuckoo clocks.

How it Changed the World.

In many ways, it began the subliminal process of making us all feel more comfortable about taxes being pissed down the drain. The construction of the LHC (large circle) began in 1983 and at £6billion, a complete bargain compared to $400billion to keep some banks open.

And what for? To find the elusive Higgs boson. I mean, before spending 25 years and millions of man hours and billions of pounds, surely they could have just asked Higgs first?

At least when the scientists get bored of their new toy, it can be used as a massive NASCAR circuit.

It also inspired a series of hilarious jokes, most of which revolved around the idea of mass murder due to a huge collision with a large hard-on.

However, most of all, it reminded everybody that people who jump up and down screaming about our impending doom, death and eternal punishment should be shot on the spot. Or at least kicked abit.

1. Pirates

RECTUS. DOMINUS.

They’re back!

Why? Maybe they are inspired by Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Carribean, or maybe by the fact that our increasingly globalised world means at any one time there are billion of pounds worth of goods floating, unguarded, across oceans around the world.

This year, pirates have attacked:

A Ukrainian ship, the MV Faina, containing an arms consignment for Kenya.

MV Sirius Star, 450 miles off the coast of Kenya. The ship was carrying around $100 million worth of oil and had a 25-man crew.

French luxury yacht Le Ponant carrying 30 crew members off the coast of Somalia. The captives were released on payment of a ransom.

All in all, there have been an estimated 100+ attacks in 2008. But, it is believed only 50%, and maybe as low as 10% of pirate attacks are reported, so as to not increase insurance premiums. Seriously man, they are like totally everywhere.

How it Changed the World

2009 will see the coming of the Pirate revolution. They already dominate the internet, political and military control is within their reach.

Perhaps. At the minimum we are guaranteed some awesome pirates vs U.S. Navy battles and the footage should be fookin’ mint, as the sword is pitted against the nuclear submarine.

But what piracy has really shown us this year, is that stealing is perfectly fine, (as I’m sure the banks would agree). If a group of drunken mates from Somalia can grab some blunt instruments and take a cargo ship over and make millions of dollars, well dammit I haven’t got a job, so I’m gunna go nick a plasma screen.

With piracy driving people towards both disillusionment with the capitalist, globalised system and instilling a blatant and unrelenting desire for stealing shizzle, piracy is going to quickly become responsible for deepening the recession and plunging us into the new dark ages, global connectivity shredded to ruins and everyone living in either boats or cardboard boxes shouting ‘arrrggh! feck off ye landlubber!’ at passers-by.  You have been warned.

Conclusion

So what have we learnt about 2008? Well we’re all poorer, but less racist, but more used to the prostitution of the world and our collective souls, suspicious of doom-mongers, disillusioned toward scientists and open to the idea of theft.

Prediction of what will happen in 2009, coming soon!

Correspondents say Somali coastal waters are now considered to be among the most hazardous in the world. With no effective government, pirates are able to operate largely unchecked… [T]his is the first time in nearly a year that no hijacked ships are being held by Somali pirates.

- BBC News, December 2007

The correspondents hadn’t seen anything yet. Since last December, many more vessels have been seized, and some of the attacks have been quite high-profile. In April the pirates grabbed a French luxury yacht, the MY Le Ponant. In September they took the MV Faina, a Ukrainian-owned ship carrying tanks that were probably destined for South Sudan. Among October’s victims was the MV Yasa Neslihan, a Turkish ship of interest to Canadians because it happened to be carrying iron ore from Canada to China. Just this week, Somali pirates claimed a Saudi-owned oil tanker, the MV Sirius Star.

A report by the UK think tank Chatham House (PDF here) puts the problem in perspective. As of September 25, at least 61 attacks had taken place in 2008, although of course not all were successful. This is a small number compared to the 16,000 ships that pass through the Gulf of Aden  every year, just as the estimated total ransom money that has gone to the pirates in 2008 – US $18-30 million – is barely a fly in the ointment of the global economy. Even so, the attacks are raising insurance premiums and threatening to force shipping companies to divert their vessels to the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope. The Chatham report gives other reasons to take the problem seriously, including the possibility of a major oil spill in the Gulf of Aden.

Beyond the economic and environmental costs, it’s simply absurd that the world’s nations – including Canada, in the wake of the Yasa Neslihan incident – are allowing their commerce to be raided with near-impunity by packs of lightly armed maritime bandits. There is a substantial international naval presence in the region, including some Canadian vessels, but the ships cannot be everywhere at once and a thicket of legal obstacles make it difficult for them to go on the offensive and actually hunt down the pirates. As a result, they’ve barely dented the problem, while pirates gloat over their spoils in the thoroughly infested port city of Eyl.

However, squeamish legal niceties didn’t stop the French from swooping into Somalia to capture six pirates and recover some of their ransom money after Le Ponant was released, and nobody seems to be rushing to haul President Sarkozy in front of an international tribunal. This is the kind of direct, decisive action that Canada and its partners in the region should emulate whenever possible. Blackbeard was a great pirate in his day, but his head eventually ended up swinging from the bowsprit of the HMS Pearl. The petty raiders of Eyl can hardly complain if they find themselves in his august company.

Corwin

For France, the taking of the 850 tonne luxury yacht Le Ponant by the highly organised “Somali marines” pirate gang was a matter of national pride. In a part of the world where France had had a powerful presence for centuries, it was an insult, it was personal on a national scale, it was an insult.

The Somali Marines, one of four such groups, is a loose collection of well-armed, well-disciplined, well-financed fishermen-cum-pirates eqipped with-state-of-the-art communications equipment. They are unsullied by fundamentalist Islamic politics, they want the cash with as reputation for politeness towards their involuntary guests. Some 25 piracy incidents have been creditted to them in the past year.

While their ability to seized ships gets a lot of attention their real strength is organization. Once a ship is seized a logistic chain ensures that those aboard can hunker down during extended ransom negotiations with supplies of food, water and cigarettes for a long period, and replacement pirates put on board to allow the other pirates some rest and recreation.

It’s an expensive business but the rewards of the warlords who finance the operations are are high. The warlords themselves risk little since they demand reimbursement from the pirates any loses, like the skiffs sunk during the Danica White incident in 2007.

The difficulties and dangers of dealing with warlords is well presented in Blackhawk Down, an incident that still haunts the American psyche when dealing with the madness that is Somalia today. You can’t do much to a people that have nothing and who are already hurting desperately.

Calls not to pay ransom are little more than bluster, and often politically hypocritical. One seafarer, at least, has been executed to make the point, and one wonders how many seafarers’ deaths would be acceptable. Refusal to pay doesn’t work, the kidnappers will simply move on, prehaps after executing the ship’s crew, to another target.

Put it like this, if a thug puts a gun to your face and demands your wallet, will he stop robbing people if you refuse to give it over? Of course not. He’ll shoot you and move on.

What will work is to identify and target the pirate’s shore-base and act forcefully.

Whatever one thinks of the European and American empires of the 19th and early 20th century, they did provide the conditions under which pirates bases could be unilaterally attacked effectively. In today’s political economic and diplomatic climate such actions are rare.

In that sense, the French action in Somalia is a throwback to the 19th century, the era in which, it could be argued, the French are most comfortable. It would appear the old ways are the best ways.

When Le Ponant was taken on 4th April, Gendarmerie counter-terrorism units were sent to Djibouti, about 1,000 kilometres away. Djibouti is also the headquarters of the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion, anorganisation with a deservedly fearsome reputation and a deeply embedded institutional experience in the region.

While details of what happened next are likely to remain hazy, it is likely that a decision was made at the Elysee Palace by President Nicolas Sarkozy at a fairly early stage. One can construct a likely scenario.

While the frigate Le Commandant Bouan with a Candian helicopter from HMCS Charlottetown tracked the yacht and built an intelligence assessment as the yacht finally anchors at Garacade, off the port of Eyl, Puntland. Meanwhile, French government personnel and the yacht owners, CMA-CGM. Public announcements are made that paying a ransom cannot be discounted.

The, largely notional, Puntland government is brought into play to provide at least a veneer of an invitation for forceful intervention to legitimise the action.

On Friday, 11th April, the ransom, a modest $2m is paid and the pirate release the hostage and leave the yacht. With the hostages now safe, the armed intervention begins.

There are conflicting accounts of what happened during that intervention. Now, happy, the pirates were tracked by French attack helicoters back to the fishing village of Jaliban. Realising they’d be trailed, sdeveral of the pirates tried to make a run for it in a vehicle which was disabled by a sniper and its occupants arrested. Part of the ransom was recovered and what were described as several ‘interesting bags’ were recovered. Six out of 12 pirates were captured.

While French officials deny anyone was killed in the operation, eyewitnesses claim that three people dies and eight were wounded in rocket attacks from the helicopter.

Whatever information is drawn from the captured pirates, the issue will be how to act upon it. Putting the pirates themselves on trial in Somalia is probably not a viable option, given the situation, and expecting the Puntland government to capture or kill the warlords who finance these ventures is expecting too much.

In this case, the captured pirates will probably go on trial in France.  After the action, Puntland authorities gave what is effectively carte blanche for oversea governments to go after the pirates, a significant step forward.

The French action has certainly torn a hole in the traditional invulnerability of the Somali Marines, it may need a couple more such actions to make the point. The challenge will be to turn that success intoi a long-term gain. Part of that may involve leveraging the traditional rivalries between the four main pirate groups in Somalia.

Cutting the umbilical cord between the pirates and the warlords who finance them must be a part of any long term strategy. Giving some form of economic independence and opportunity to those communities most subject to the warlords, and defending them from the warlord wrath, must be part of that strategy. Many of the pirates are young and savvy, yet without hope in a psuedo-nation that offers them little. Pirates are not stupid.

A taller order will be to tackle the clan loyalties on which the warlords depend, and which is an essential part of Somali culture, and its curse. Warlords are the centres of gravity of this system, they cannot, as a class, be removed, but can be replaced, if the political and military will is there to do so. It was said of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, by an American politician, “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”, we have to replace the existing warlords with our sons of bitches.

AFP video on release of hostages

BBC News Report on Capture of pirates

Pirates have attacked a yacht off of Somalia’s coast:

PARIS (AP) — Pirates seized control of a French luxury yacht carrying 30 crew members Friday in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia’s coast, the French government and the ship’s owner said.

Attackers stormed the 88-meter (288-foot) Le Ponant as it returned without passengers from the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, toward the Mediterranean Sea, said officials with French maritime transport company CMA-CGM.

“This is a blatant act of piracy,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon told reporters while on a visit to Brussels. “The Defense and Foreign Ministries are mobilized to act as quickly as possible, I hope in the coming minutes or hours to try to win the freedom of these hostages.”
…
The International Maritime Bureau, which tracks piracy, said in its annual report earlier this year that global pirate attacks rose 10 percent in 2007, marking the first increase in three years.

More here