Twisters and Trailer Parks

What's with Tornados and Trailer Parks?

When Edmonton was hit with its first ever Tornado it took out Evergreen Trailer Park.

Last weekends three Florida Tornadoes took out Trailer Parks.

David Demar stands in the remains of his mobile home at Lake Mack early Saturday, Feb. 3, 2007 after a killer tornado struck the Paisley, Fla. neighborhood Friday.(AP Photo/J. Pat Carter)

My partner suggested that it is because of location and heat, that is trailer parks are on the outskirts of cities, and that buildings and other urban developments give off heat patterns that do not attract the Tornados.

Mobile homes are cheap housing for the working class, and are not made to the same specifications or building codes as houses.


They are deliberately placed in the path of tornadoes by a sinister conspiracy of capitalists to kill off excess members of the working classes whom they call white trash. (just kidding).

It is actually just that capitalists can't be bothered to build cheap afforable homes, and place them in safe areas.

Picture of the "double tornado" that hit the Midway Trailer Park in Dunlap, Indiana, killing 36.

Here's what some other folks think.

Back in Kentucky, we always called trailers "tornado magnets."

Tornadoes and hurricanes are indeed most frequent in states with many mobile homes. For instance, eight states are in the top eleven for both prefab homes and tornadoes. Furthermore, Florida leads the nation in violent storms and is third in manufactured home purchases.

Statistics from the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City show
that from 1975 to 1991 nearly 36% of all tornado deaths occurred in mobile
homes. Tornadoes don't hit mobile homes more often than conventional homes,
but mobile home are just that - mobile.

Is it not within the realm of thinking that the reason trailer parks garner
the most television exposure in regards to tornados, is because
of the higher mortality, and injuries sustained in mobile home vs.
a home of standard construction.
The most significant difference in their construction I would
contend is the "basement", or lack of a basement.

i should also point out that in many places of the southern states, the
water table is too high for houses to have a basement and not have it
flood. in the case of texas, the ground is so hard, u'd need dynamite
and jackhammers to dig a basement. trailer parks and houses on slabs
are more economical to build.

One in 25 Americans live in some kind of mobile structure, mostly in states where there are dozens and dozens of tornadoes each year. Places like the great plains, in general, have lots of folks living in these structures, which are just not built strongly enough to withstand even your run of the mill wind storm, let alone a tornado.

Okay, okay, so if trailers don't attract tornadoes, why do so many trailer parks get hit by tornadoes?
There are probably hundreds(maybe more than a thousand) very small tornadoes that touch down in the USA every year, but are not recorded because they do no damage. However, since a mobile home flips over so easily in even the weakest tornado, trailers probably act as "mini tornado" detectors. This makes it seem like tornadoes are attracted to mobile homes, but that is because trailers are the only things that reveal the presence of what would otherwise be an unrecorded event.

Another reason for trailer homes to pop up as the victims of tornadoes, is that trailer parks are often situated on flat plain-like areas. If you have a valley, more often than not, the trailer park will be situated in its flattest part. Tornadoes also enjoy these same geographical areas.

I don't know about anywhere else, but back in Tulsa, there was a period of time when it seemed like just about every tornado would actually change its path on approach to the city in order to accomodate the position of the trailer parks. Thinking about it later, I realized that it might have been just were the trailer parks are located in the city -- cheap land adjacent to or right near the Arkansaw river. Because of this, you have two contributing factors: 1) the river was on the west side of town and almost every storm (especially tornado producing ones) moves in from the west and 2) the river acted as a barrier against the tornadoes (storms/tornadoes that would tear up towns to the west would effect much less to little damage on Tulsa) so that if a tornado did hit the Tulsa area, the position of the trailer parks ensured that they were set receive a fully powered storm.

I was thinking it could be the history of the areas. Like noone wanted to build houses/buildings in that area because of all the tornadoes, so that made the land cheap enough for someone to start a trailer park there.

Trailer Parks are usually located on flat open ground. Tornadoes travel easier in this type of land. Also trailers are built of cheaper, much less sturdy materials than houses. It does not take nearly as much wind to damage a trailer. Plus most of them have flimsy underpinning. Trailers are built up off the ground a bit. Strong winds can destroy the underpinning and get under a trailer tossing it up and over. The trailer that gets tossed then becomes a weapon when it hits somebody or another trailer.

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SheHe Rights

The authorities in Nepal have granted a man who dresses and behaves as a woman both male and female citizenship.

The unprecedented legal status was given to 40-year-old Chanda Musalman.

Conservative and religious Nepal, like many Asian countries, has a sizeable community of people who are born male but behave as women.

It is unclear how this unique legal status will play out in practice - for instance, how it will affect Chanda's marriage rights.

Nepal has a community of men identifying themselves as women


Nepal is not the only country that has communities of men who are transexual/transgendered or women for that matter, it is a universal phenomena.

But this is a postive blow for human rights, which have been denied to Transexuals in Canada.

Gender bending is as old as humanity and is reflected in the traditions of magick and shamanism.

It is disturbing to conservative moralists because it shows that gender is a social construct.


Also See:

Metrosexual

Gay

Homosexuality

Queer

Sexuality

Gender

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Did They Or Didn't They

Was a Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated by Israel? Or is this another disinformation campaign?

Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran, reported that nuclear physicist Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, had died in mysterious circumstances.

Whose lying here, and why?

Israeli Mossad ‘assassinates’ Iran’s N-scientist

Tehran denies reports on scientist's "assassination"

Was it just an accident, that resulted from the push for rapid development of nuclear power in Iran, which is fraught with danger. Haste makes waste....of nuclear plant workers. And the Iranian government is covering up a nuclear accident.

Is the U.S. is using an accident to create a disinformation campaign that Israel was capable of assassination in Iran to destalize the regime. Since Israel has assassinated nuclear scientists before.


A senior nuclear physicist involved in Iran's nuclear program who died under mysterious circumstances two weeks ago was killed by the Mossad, according to a report released in a U.S. website this weekend. The website - Stratfor.com - features intelligence and security analysis by former U.S. intelligence agents.

Read between the lines.

See:

Iran

Israel




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Venezuelan Contras

Venezuelan Contras now in Florida are teaming up with their reactionary brethren in the Cuban Contra community in developing propaganda radio broadcasts to Venezuela.

The Miami Herald's near-continuous front-page coverage of developments in Venezuela is beginning to look less like objective reporting and more like a crusade against President Hugo Chávez and his government. I'm not saying that the reports themselves are slanted, although sometimes they border on it, especially the headlines. Rather, the pattern, frequency and the way they are displayed bolsters that impression.

The American state will sanction these new radio programs while denouncing Chavez for having nationalized the telecommunications/media industry in his country. Wait a minute, state sanctioned radio versus nationalized media....

Contrary to the propaganda of the Americans, Chavez does not just intend to make these organs of the state. They will be run collectively by the workers and community.

It was clear two months ago when I was in Venezuela that if Hugo Chavez won his third six-year term in the presidency this fall, he was ready to radicalize Venezuela - and he already has. He is going to abolish presidential term limits and "deepen this revolution." He is going to nationalize Venezuela's telecommunications and electricity utilities, bring the country's enormous oil wealth under more state control, and seek new powers from his already controlled legislature to rule by decree and reform the constitution along socialist lines. Local democracy will be run by "communal councils" reminiscent of the Paris Communes and the early Soviets.

The next step of course will be a Contra terrorist campaign. No wait that already happened, and the Americans refuse to extradict the Cuban Contra Terrorist to Venezuela for justice.

See

Chavez

Venezuela

Latin America

Cuba

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Business As Usual

Despite the headline the bosses still don't get it.

Bosses heed climate warning

The oil and gas sector's peak lobby, the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association, described the IPCC report as a "sober, careful and comprehensive overview" of the status of climate change science. APPEA chief executive Belinda Robinson said national and international policy responses must be similarly considered, measured and multi-faceted. "Just as the IPCC avoids hysteria, so should our responses. The report leaves little doubt in my, and judging by a range of polls, most people's minds that climate change is very, very serious," she said.

"But in tackling it there is absolutely no room for knee-jerk, ill-informed approaches that have more to do with political optics than a genuine desire to understand the complexities in settling on a suite of policies that serve the best long-term interests of Australia and the world."

Ms Robinson warned that until commercial, environmental and technological drivers combined to dictate Australia's future energy profile, the emphasis must be on keeping all gas, clean coal, renewable, nuclear and a variety of other energy options open, as well as well others not yet dreamt of.

As in Canada so it is in Australia. PM pushes nuclear power

See:

Environment

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Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Real Climate - Climate Science From Scientists says the Fraser Institutes Flat Earth response to the IPCC report, falls flat as a pancake;

An unofficial, "Independent Summary for Policymakers" (ISPM) of the IPCC Fourth Assessment report has been delivered by the Fraser Institute. It's a long, imposing-looking document, resembling, come to think of it, the formatting of the real Summary for Policymakers (SPM) document that was released on Friday after final negotiations of the IPCC in Paris last week. The Fraser Institute has assembled an awsome team of 10 authors, including such RC favorites as tilter-against-windmills-and-hockey-sticks Ross McKitrick, and other luminaries such as William Kininmonth, MSc, M.Admin -- whose most recent paper is "Don't be Gored into Going Along" in the Oct-Nov issue of Power Engineer. To be fair, he did publish a paper on weather forecasting, back in 1973. According to the press release, the London kickoff event will be graced by the presence of "noted environmentalist" David Bellamy. It's true he's "noted," but what he's noted for is his blatant fabrication of numbers purporting to show that the world's glaciers are advancing rather retreating, as reported here.

And Real Climate refutes the theory of Radiative Forcing which Blogging Tory Kitchner Conservative used in his blog to prove that the IPCC report was Fear Mongering and Alarmism.

One of the strangest sections of the Fraser Institute report is the one in which the authors attempt to throw dirt on the general concept of radiative forcing. Radiative forcing is nothing more than an application of the principle of conservation of energy, looking at the way a greenhouse gas alters the energy balance of a planet. The use of energy conservation arguments of this type has been standard practice in physics at least since the time of Fourier. We have heard certain vice presidents dismiss "Energy Conservation" as merely a matter of personal virtue, but we have never before heard people who purport to be scientists write off the whole utility of "Conservation of Energy." From what is written in the Fraser report, it is not even clear that the authors understand the first thing about how radiative transfer calculations are done.

Ouch.

And DeSmogblog issued a press release in anticipation of the Fraser Institutes Report today;

DeSmogBlog.com: IPCC Criticism Fits into Canadian Climate Change ...

A Canadian think tank's attack on the recently released report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of several recent initiatives by Canadian groups to block action on global warming, DeSmogBlog.com President, James Hoggan, said Monday. The latest attack, by the Exxon-funded Fraser Institute, is scheduled to be released today, Feb. 5 at a press conference in the United Kingdom.

"These people are an embarrassment to Canadians," Hoggan said. Two industry front groups (the Natural Resources Stewardship Project and the Friends of Science) have popped up in Canada the last couple of years, spreading doubt about climate change at every turn. And a scientist associated with those groups put together a petition of skeptical "experts" last spring, a petition that was quoted in U.S. Senate committee hearings.

Now the Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank that has received annual grants from oil-giant ExxonMobil, is issuing what it calls an independent summary of the report of the IPCC. The Institute claimed that the IPCC's own summary is a political document "neither written by nor reviewed by the scientific community".

Andrew Weaver, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis and a lead IPCC author called the Fraser Institute's effort "highly ideological". The IPCC summary was written and reviewed by some of the most senior climate scientists in the world, without political or bureaucratic input, Weaver said.

The English newspaper the Mirror issued the following report;

ATTACKS ON GLOBAL WARMING

A RIGHT-WING think tank funded by oil firms will today try to rubbish claims of climate change.

The Canadian-based Fraser Institute argues there is no globally consistent pattern in rain or snow falls and not enough data to prove rising temperatures pose a danger.

Its review - branded "rubbish" by Friends of the Earth - attempts to challenge the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which compiled a report by 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries.

ExxonMobil has paid the institute more than £30,000. A quarter of its funding comes from organisations including pharmaceutical, oil, and gas companies.

Today's launch of the report follows the revelation that the right-wing American Enterprise Institute - also funded by ExxonMobil - offered scientists up to £5,000 to underminine the IPCC study.

Just to be Fair and Balanced as they say on Faux Newz.

The Scoop from New Zealand published a news release from a New Zealand Flat Earth Coalition, another arm of the Fraser Institute. You can tell because they call the Fraser Institute an 'independent think tank', not a right wing one nor do they mention Exxon funded the report, nor the fact they are one of the Fraser Institutes sources.

Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Independent Summary Shows New UN Climate Change Report Refutes Alarmism And Reveals Major Uncertainties In The Science

February 5, 2007

For Immediate Release

LONDON, UK—An independent review of the latest United Nations report on climate change shows that the scientific evidence about global warming remains uncertain and provides no basis for alarmism.

In 2006, independent research organization The Fraser Institute convened a panel of 10 internationally-recognized experts to read the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draft report and produce an Independent Summary for Policymakers. The result, released today and available at www.fraserinstitute.ca, is a detailed and thorough overview of the state of the science. This independent summary has been reviewed by more than 50 scientists around the world and their views on its balance and reliability are tabulated for readers.

US Republican Senator Inhofe is using the Fraser Institute Report to refute the IPCC Report, he too is aligned with the small circle of climate deniers, he quotes the report almost word for word,

Washington, DC – Sen. James Inhofe, (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, today commented on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Summary for Policymakers.

"This is a political document, not a scientific report, and it is a shining example of the corruption of science for political gain. The media has failed to report that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers was not approved by scientists but by UN political delegates and bureaucrats," Senator Inhofe said. The IPCC is only releasing the Summary for Policymakers today, not the actual scientific report which is not due out until May 2007.

Which is refuted by Real Climate;

Why go to all the trouble of producing an "independent" summary? The authors illuminate us with this wisdom regarding the official Summary for Policymakers: "A further problem is that the Summary for Policy Makers attached to the IPCC Report is produced, not by the scientific writers and reviewers, but by a process of negotiation among unnamed bureaucratic delegates from sponsoring governments." This statement (charitably) shows that the Fraser Institute authors are profoundly ignorant of the IPCC process. In fact, the actual authors of the official SPM are virtually all scientists, and are publically acknowleged. Moreover, the lead authors of the individual chapters are represented in the writing process leading to the SPM, and their job is to defend the basic science in their chapters. As lead author Gerald Meehl remarked to one of us on his way to Paris: "Scientists have to be ok, they have the last check. If they think the science is not represented, then they can send it back to the breakout groups. "

Inhofe, the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition; a handful of scientists and rigth wing lobbyists, and a wine grower, like the folks the Fraser Institute has rounded up are all part of the coalition funded by Exxon of climate change deniers, like the Candian petro lobby; Friends of Science.

In fine neo-con tradition what they do is quote each other, without refering to the fact they all belong to the same club, as if that proves their authority and points.
And they make the misleading claim that they are "leading climate scientists" which of course they are not. They are corporate apologists for capitalism.

This is the same tactic used when the Fraser Institute issues an economic report on the joys of the free market, proving their evidence by quoting a "leading" economicst from the Cato Institute, which of course quotes a "leading" economist from the Fraser Institute as a source.

You get where all this is leading. It is a self completing circle, as Phil Ochs said; a small circle of friends. Though one could be forgiven for considering it an ideological circle jerk.

See:

Fraser Institute

Environment


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Anarchism In Action

Many folks have seen Avi Lewis and Naomi Kleins NFB film The Take, here is a report on the mass self-valorization movement in Argentina and the people who took direct action and direct control of their lives and communities after the collapse of the IMF regime in their country.

It is an example of anarchism in action, the creation of use value, hence self-valorization, and the elimination of exchange values, money-capital-money, for a barter system. Which pre-dates capitalism and is known as the gift economy.

The story begins in 2001, when the Argentine economy collapsed under pressure of IMF demands. Unemployment reached 35 percent. Direct action movements of unemployed workers known as “piqueteros,” mostly women, began blocking highways and then negotiating with the authorities for subsistence programs and public works employment.

The example of the “piqueteros” spread to a more and more disgruntled population. Discontent came to a head as the government accepted even greater austerity demands from the IMF and imposed a state of siege to suppress popular protest. Every bank account in the country was frozen. On the night of December 19, 2001, people from all over Buenos Aires took to the streets banging pts and plans and marched on Congress and the presidential palace. The next day, spontaneous street demonstrations forced Fernando de la Rua to resign the presidency. People throughout the country from diverse class backgrounds began meeting in “self-convened neighborhood assemblies.”

In the context of the crisis, people began improvising new economic institutions. New bakeries and gardens began providing food, often with support and distribution through the neighborhood assemblies. Soon five to seven million people were involved in barter networks, trading not only basic goods but also services – for example, psychoanalysis for computer repair. They also began taking over abandoned buildings, notably banks, and reopening them as neighborhood centers.

Meanwhile, many bosses stopped paying their workers and eventually closed their workplaces. The idea of taking over the workplaces emerged in response. One textile worker says the takeover at the Brukman factory “wasn’t an occupation at first, but it became one without us intending it.”

“Together, everyone in the factory thought about our situation, and decided to stay to see if the bosses would decide to give us a little money so we could celebrate the holidays with our families. . . . We waited two months for the bosses to come back. We went to the unions, the Ministry of Work, all with the intention of getting the boss to come back and offer us a solution. He never came. So we decided to work.”

At the Chilavert printing factory,

“When we realized that they were going to come and take the machines, well, then we had to make a decision. The time for thinking had ended and we took over the workplace. . . You know that if they take the machines from you, you’ll end up on the street. It’s a reflex – you don’t think about cooperatives, you don’t think about anything. Defending your source of work is a reflex.”

More than 200 such “recuperated workplaces” are currently in operation. Almost all were closed, abandoned, in bankruptcy, and/or in debt and in arrears in payments to their employees. Seventy percent were initiated in the 2001-2 period, but such takeovers are still occurring. Most are in the Buenos Aires area, but others are scattered in all parts of the country. They employ about 10,000 workers in total.

See:

Workers Control

Self-Management

Anarchism

Latin America





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It's An Ecological Crisis, Stupid

Climate Change and Global Warming are only symptoms of the ecological crisis created by the fordist production models of capitalism.

Climate change is just one of the many symptoms exhibited by a planet under pressure from human activities. "Global environmental change, which includes climate change, threatens to irreversibly alter our planet," says Kevin Noone, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

Global studies by IGBP show that human-driven environmental changes are affecting many parts of the Earth’s system, in addition to its climate. For example:

• Half of Earth’s land surface is now domesticated for direct human use.
• 75 percent of the world’s fisheries are fully or over-exploited.
• The composition of today´s atmosphere is well outside the range of natural variability the Earth has maintained over the last 650,000 years.
• The Earth is now in the midst of its sixth great extinction event.

See

Environment


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Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Love this announcement from the Fraser Institute for their Flat Earth Report; note the Bill O'Riley like No Spin Zone pronouncement.

Climate Change Without the Spin:
An Independent Summary for Policymakers of the New IPCC Report

When spinning is exactly what this is all about. Another example of neo-con newspeak.


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Environment


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Direct Action In Israel

Defintely not Zionists.

"Anarchists block Tel Aviv street"

Protesting against the separation fence, "Anarchists Against the Wall" activists blocked the entrance to one of Tel Aviv's main streets, Rothschild Boulevard, with barbwire and a sign saying "restricted military zone" on Saturday.

This is the anarchists' second Tel Aviv protest aimed at demonstrating the daily difficulties the separation fence places on residents of the Palestinian Territories.

The demonstration did not last long, and since the act was illegal, the anarchists refused to reveal their identities for fear of getting arrested.

Anarchists in Tel Aviv Saturday (Photo courtesy of activestills.org)

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Anarchism

Berlin Wall

Israel

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