Anarchist Economics

This years Nobel prize in economics was given to an American Political Economist who for all intents and purposes espouses the anarchist economics of community control, mutual aid and direct action. While much attention has been given to the fact that this was first time a woman was given the award much commentary has been that this was another Euro slap at the rampant liberaltarian free market economics of the U.S. In fact Elinor Ostrom's political economic analysis is far more libertarian than the apologists for U.S. capitalism.

Professor Ostrom - who shares the prize with Oliver Williamson of the University of California, Berkeley - has spent much of her career challenging the view that when people share a finite resource, they will inevitably end up destroying it. This widely held belief, known as the tragedy of the commons, is used to support arguments for tighter regulation or even privatisation.

She has approached the argument from an unusual perspective, too. Through her study of the way that natural resources have been managed around the world, she has found that, left to manage resources on their own and given the right support, local people often develop the most effective methods of sustainable development.

“We have a team of people studying forestry in 200 cities around the world. This is very big study, trying to understand why some forests have just disappeared and others have been sustained. We started in 1992. We have been able to go back and go back and go back to get very good data sets.

“Our findings are that some local people who have had long-term assurances of harvesting rights are able to manage forests more effectively than people who do not have the same assurances. The lessons are that when regulation comes from a distant authority and is uniform for a very large region, it is not likely to succeed.”

Professor Ostrom - whose doctorate is in political science and who considers herself a political economist - will not be drawn to comment on hot political issues, such as the push for tighter regulation of Wall Street or the perennial question of American healthcare. They are, she says, not her field.

But she does have a message for government: “The big message is that we need to have respect for the capabilities of humans living all over the world, not just those occupying high positions,” she said. “It’s not that we want to get rid of government. It’s about getting rid of the idea that government can solve everything.”

To this end, she is a firm supporter of direct action. “I have recently written a paper on global warming and argued that we should not sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting for someone to do something. We should act now. There is a lot we can all do at all levels,” she said.

Canada's Constant Gardner

The recent kidnapping in Niger of a Canadian Diplomat assigned to the UN reminded me of John LeCarre's novel; The Constant Gardner, which opens with the disappearance and subsequnet murder of a British Diplomats wife. In fact the senarios are very close.

In this case however the culprits are not global pharmaceutical companies but global mining companies as the article in the Globe and Mail (reprinted below) points out. Ironically while uranium mining is Niger's chief source of development funding, dominated by French corporartions, Canada's friendly imperialism is in promotion of gold mining.

Envoys visited Niger mine on day they vanished
Diplomats ate lunch at the site with employees and left in the afternoon without incident, company spokesman says

And of course we all know Niger from it's apparent role in justifying the U.S. invasion of Iraq because of its uranium.

The vesitages of French colonialism and in the case of other West African countries now in conflict, Belgium colonialism, are the real reason for the so called tribal wars that rage across that contient. The current wars are the old wars of the colonial age. Wars over resources in particular mining interests.The so called atrocities committed in the Congo, Darfur, Rawanda,etc. like the cutting off of hands and mass extermination of ethinic minorities, are not tribal traditions, but modern horrors introduced by European colonial powers. It was European Imperialism at the turn of last century that picked winners and losers and the losers are still fighting back.

However in the case of Niger, the losers are the vestiges of an earlier colonialism, that of Islam and its economy of slavery. This is often overlooked by the apologists for Islam, who attempt to white wash its own role in the development of Africa as a slave colony before the coming of Europeans. Before the European slave trade developed it was preceded by the Arab/Islamic slave trade, which it adapted to its colonial needs to build the new world.

Slavery is the result of patriarchical caste societies, who rely on it as an economic base for production. Caste societies are made up of warriors, merchants and priests and someone has to do the work, which results in the enslavement of those who are out-caste.

Today the small African countries that occasionally make it into the news, like Niger or Chad, are being fought over again for their resources, uranium, gold, copper, heavy metals, and oil. The so called tribal conflicts are localized wars on behalf of modern Imperialist nations, including not only America and Europe but China and yes Canada. Development in Africa remains 'resource' development for global corporations, not sustainable economies for Africans. The result is the mass migration from Africa to Europe of the dispossessed and the genocidal internecine conflicts that make the news like the situation today in Niger.

Because Globe and Mail opinion pieces disappear behind subscriber only walls I am reprinting it here in full.

COMMENTARY
Caught in the crossfire of two historical forces
GEOFFREY CLARFIELD
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
December 18, 2008 at 12:00 AM EST
The disappearance of two Canadian diplomats in the predominantly Muslim West African country of Niger - there is speculation their apparent abduction is related to a complex conflict involving the Niger government, rebel groups and international mining companies - is part of a much wider game: the struggle for political and economic power in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Niger is a nation of high infant-mortality rates. Slavery is still widely practised, with some sources suggesting that 8 per cent of the population live a life of bondage. Niger is also a nation plagued by periodic drought. It cannot grow enough food to feed itself, and it is dependant on donors. It has been democratic for less than a decade and it has experienced periodic rebellions by its northern ethnic groups.
The latest round of fighting began last year. This could be the fifth or the 10th "Tuareg revolt" of the past 100 years, depending on who's counting. Quite simply, there is a power struggle going on for who controls, and benefits from, Niger's meagre resources, a struggle that is being directed by the elites of two coalitions of ethnic groups - one largely African and agricultural that is based in the southern part of the country, the other largely Berber and nomadic pastoral that is based in the north. It is a struggle that has been going on for centuries, and it is a conflict as old as Jacob and Esau.
The southern, smallest and most densely populated part of the country is close to the Niger River where the Hausa, Djerma-Songhai and Gourmantche peoples sustain themselves through subsistence agriculture. These people are the dark-skinned descendants of the great sedentary Sahelian Muslim kingdoms that arose during the Middle Ages and to whose French-educated elites the former French colonialists gave the reins of power, when Niger became independent in the 1960s.
The largest groups of northerners are the Tuareg, light-skinned nomadic camel herders, former slave traders and raiders who were once the masters of the Saharan gold trade. During colonial times, they were the most resistant to modernization, education and change. They were, and to some degree remain, predatory warriors and smugglers who roam the desert caravan routes, taking what they want by sword or gun.
During colonial times, their elites did not send their sons to France, so they did not master the "means of administration." Ever since the southerners took control of the state and the army after independence, they have been at a distinct disadvantage.
Since then, their grazing lands have been restricted, their slave raiding and slaves have been declared illegal, their elites have not been represented in the government and, most galling to them, they have not shared in any of the wealth that has emerged from the uranium mines that supply Niger with 70 per cent of its export earnings and that are located in the desert wastelands of their traditional grazing lands.
Until recently, French companies had a monopoly on the mining and exportation of uranium from the deserts of northern Niger. In the past two years, however, the Niger government has considered allowing other companies to invest, including Canadian firms that are also involved in the development of gold mines. Through their periodic rebellions, the Tuareg are trying to tell both the government and foreign investors that they want a piece of the pie. And since it has been their historical custom to take what they want, they most likely kidnapped the two Canadians - Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, both of whom were representing the United Nations - in the hope that the Canadian government could help them put pressure on the Niger government and thus gain the pair's release.
UN negotiators have dealt with this kind of situation before, and one sincerely hopes they will find a way to negotiate the release of Mr. Fowler and Mr. Guay. Meantime, Canadians should recognize that Niger and the other states of the Sahel are one extended battleground between northerners and southerners. In Niger, Mali, Chad and Sudan, one must take great care not to get caught in the crossfire between these two opposing historical forces.
Geoffrey Clarfield is a Toronto-based anthropologist.



SEE:
Somali Eco Disaster Bred Pirates
Congo's Ghosts
A Contient of Children
History Of Slave Ships
The New Imperial Age
Mobile Capitalism
Our Jean
The Pentacost of Poverty
Your Breakfast Cup of Coffee

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The Ugly Canadian

While Harper trumpeted Canada's generosity towards Tanzania, money promised by the previous Liberal Government and still not up to the actual commitment of 20% of the GDP, the real face of Canada was shown by the Mining companies that Harper had in tow with him. The same gang he had in tow with him when he visited Latin America earlier this year. For Harper 'aid' means investment opportunities.

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA — The goal was to leave the image of a benevolent Canada investing in the health of poor Africans, but in the end it was another Canada, that of its globe-hopping mining companies, that stole the day.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent eight hours yesterday in this commercial centre on the Indian Ocean, visiting a school, lunching with Tanzania's President and announcing a $105-million contribution to a new health-care initiative in Africa and Asia.

Yet it was a 45-minute meeting with officials from a dozen Canadian investors, led by mining giant Barrick Gold Corp., that dominated Mr. Harper's news conference with President Jakaya Kikwete.

Thanks in large part to Barrick's three gold mines, Canada has emerged as Tanzania's largest foreign investor, prompting a resource boom that helped Tanzania record a 6.2-per-cent growth rate last year.

Yet the mining success has prompted allegations that royalties are too low and that Tanzania's people, still among the world's poorest, are not sharing adequately in the bonanza.

Adding to this is a nasty labour dispute at Barrick's Bulyanhulu gold mine, where 1,000 of the 1,900 workers have been on what the company calls an illegal strike for the past month.

A court hearing scheduled for yesterday, at which the union hoped to obtain an injunction to stop Barrick from hiring replacement workers, was postponed to today for reasons that were unclear.

Mr. Harper would not comment on the strike other than to say that he expects Canadian companies to "act responsibly within the laws of the land" when they are abroad. He praised Tanzania for creating a stable political and business environment that encourages Canadian companies to invest.

Mr. Kikwete was also diplomatic when the subject turned to Canada's investment in the mining industry and in particular the work of a committee created to advise the Tanzanian government on whether to change the royalty regime.

"We are not blaming the mining companies," the President said, noting that the companies are living within Tanzanian law.

He added that the goal of the review is to achieve a "win-win situation" for the companies and the government.

"We'd like to see more and more Canadian investment," Mr. Kikwete said.

It was the second time in recent months that Mr. Harper had met Barrick officials during an international trip. In July, he stopped off at Barrick's offices in Santiago, Chile, where the company is developing the massive Pascua Lama mining project in the Andes, despite protests from environmentalists.

Joan Kuyek, the national co-ordinator of MiningWatch, a group that critiques what it sees as irresponsible mining practices around the world, says Barrick's Tanzanian operation displaced thousands of small-scale miners and gives little back to Tanzania.

"If Mr. Harper met only with people chosen to have him meet with and didn't meet with the small-scale miners, didn't meet with the people who have to deal with the social and economic and environmental price that these mines are racking up in Tanzania, and didn't meet with their representatives, well I think that's pretty shocking," Ms. Kuyek said.

See:

Cold Gold

Afghanistan or Africa

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Global Warming Headlines

World on the verge of climate 'catastrophe': UN chief

Climate change accelerating, top scientists warn

Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt everywhere.

Huge death toll after Bangladesh typhoon

Climate change fuelling water crisis

Aid Workers: Climate Change, Rising Prices Threaten Africa's Food Supply

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A Contient of Children

If the Harper Government is so concerned about ending; violence against children, their exploitation and impoverishment, then its abandonment of the former Liberal government focus on African Aid is the biggest moral betrayl of those aims.

Because at the beginning of this century, seven years ago, one in two Africans were under 18. In other words 50% of the continent is populated by children. Many of them war children.

And as he made clear at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday Harpers development and foreign aid focus is not Africa. He has abandoned the continent of children for a policy of neo-liberal colonialism in this hemisphere.



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Curses!

It appears though that Wicca has made it into the Big Leagues in America. As in Major League Baseball. Not so strange since most sports types are superstitious and after all witchcraft and magick is commonly used in Soccer.

Garner can’t find right voodoo doll

Looking for a way to slow down Chicago Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano, Houston Astros manager Phil Garner decided to try voodoo.

“I’m confused,” Garner told Chicago’s Daily Southtown. “I went online and looked for my voodoo guy and I’m going to have to pick one and try to get it. Most of these curses are against lovers … I’ve got to find one that puts a curse on a baseball player.”

Of course there are other ways to curse a ball player.

“It wasn’t voodoo. I stayed away from the voodoo. I can’t go into the details. I’ll just have to tell you Wicca (a form of witchcraft),” Garner said to the Houston Chronicle, explaining his latest plan.

But Voodoo ain't Wicca. The former does claim on occasion to use curse magick the latter says it doesn't.


Voodoo is Black Magick, as in originating in Africa, while Wicca claims to be White Magick, as in Eurocentric.

A Witchcraft suppression bill, currently being drafted by the Mpumalanga legislature, has struck fear into the hearts of South Africa's witches, who fear the dark days of medieval witch-hunts may soon return.

The bill, leaked in June to the South African Pagan Rights Alliance (Sapara), threatens to undermine the freedoms and rights of a religious minority by criminalising and prohibiting their right to exist and practise their religion, says Sapra convener Damon Leff.

The draft, titled the Mpumalanga Witchcraft Suppression Bill 2007, states in its introduction that it is "to provide for the suppression of witchcraft in the province".

In Chapter 6 it states any person who "professes a knowledge of witchcraft or the use of charms" or "for gain pretends to exercise or use any supernatural powers, witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment" shall be guilty of an offence.
One of the major causes of the Western pagans' upset, according to Leff, is the failure of the bill to recognise the doctrinal and ethical gap between Western pagan and some forms of traditional African witchcraft.

And according to Vos, by lumping the two religions together the bill has overlooked how differently they approach the issue of ethical responsibility.

"While in rare cases (some in Mpumalanga) murder has been committed to get hold of human tissues, such as hearts and genitals for muti practices, the furthest a Western pagan would go is to collect human hair and nail clippings," he claimed.

Another serious criticism Western pagans in the country harbour is the bill's stereotyping of witches and witchcraft as being harmful and dangerous to their community.

The bill defines witchcraft as "the secret use of muti, zombies, spells, spirits, magic powers, water, mixtures, etc, by any person with the purpose of causing harm, damage, sickness to others or their property".

Leff has asked the Mpumalanga advocates to replace it with the definition: "a religio-magical occupation that employs the use of sympathetic magic, ritual, herbalism and divination".

AIDS, Witchcraft, and the Problem of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa

As an epidemic of AIDS sweeps through this part of Africa, isidliso is the name that
springs to mind amongst many in the epidemic’s path. To the extent that this occurs, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS becomes also an epidemic of witchcraft. But the implications for a witchcraft epidemic are quite different from those of a public health crisis, at least as such things are conventionally conceived in western discourses of social and political management.

In this paper I will examine some of the implications of interpreting HIV/AIDS
infection as witchcraft and ask what they might mean for the legitimacy of public power in post-apartheid South Africa. For when suspicions of witchcraft are in play in a community, problems of illness and death can transform matters of public health into questions of public power, questions relating to the identification and punishment of persons deemed responsible for bringing misfortune to the community, that is: witches.

So instead of using pins in dolls to curse his opponent perhaps Garner should have found a witch who was good at casting Lucky Mojo Spells.

Like this guy.

Wiccan Wins Lottery

Wiccan instructor Elwood "Bunky" Bartlett says a New Age book store made it possible for him to become an overnight multi-millionaire.

The Maryland accountant, who claims to hold one of four winning tickets sold for Friday night's estimated 330 million dollar Mega Millions jackpot, says he made a bargain with the multiple gods associated with his Wiccan beliefs: "You let me win the lottery and I'll teach."

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Tin Man

Gee who do you think might have been responsible for this?

In the grip of speculators, tin hits 18-year high

And has lots of cold hard cash to invest?

China

China is also one of the major tin-producing countries; the main producing area is the Gejiu complex in Yunnan which has accounted for a large proportion of the total output in China for many years.

Total mined production of tin in 1990 (as ores and concentrates) was 211,000 tonnes, with the major producing nations being Brazil, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bolivia and Thailand.

Thus an alliance that once was part of the non-aligned anti-Imperialist bloc now becomes aligned with the new Imperialist player on the block, who can throw some coin their way in the global marketplace.


SEE:

Turning Lead into Gold

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

China: The Triumph of State Capitalism

China No Longer Red Nor In The Red

US vs China for Global Hegemony

Afghanistan or Africa

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Fair Trade Is Good Capitalism

Galloping Beaver points out that the vulgar liberaltarian Adam Daifallah is claiming Fair Trade Coffee campaigns are Left Wing.

Mon Dieu, and there I thought Fair Trade was good for farmers, good for the developing world, good for business, good for trade, the good old fashioned authentic market place.

Not the Oligopolistic Capitalism that Daifallah defends.


SEE:

Cooperative Commonwealth=Free Market

Chocolate Worms

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The New Imperial Age

China's Imperialism. In Africa, the Ugly American has been replaced by the equally ugly Chinese trader.

The People's Republic has been so shameless in its wooing of other nations that it now receives the type of anti-imperialist criticisms once reserved for America. It stands accused of exploiting foreign populations for economic gain; of stacking the international political deck in its own favour; of ploughing forward with no regard for environmental sustainability.

As trade and diplomacy between China and other countries in the developing world has skyrocketed, America's relationship with poor countries has crumbled – nurtured by years of unpopular wars, military interventions and one-sided economic policies.

In East Asia, where many of China's new friends are located, the animosity toward the U.S. veers on cartoonish. In Seoul, roughly half of young people polled said their country should support North Korea in a nuclear war with America. Kurlantzick doesn't say this may have been a knee-jerk reaction to a fresh outrage – U.S. soldiers crushed two 14-year-old South Korean girls in an armoured vehicle – but the sentiment is widespread.

In Africa, a continent wooed intensely by Chinese officials, the U.S. has likewise soiled its reputation to China's benefit. America even threatened poor, famished Niger with sanctions when it tried to support the International Criminal Court, which the U.S. opposes.

As America rolls back from Africa, cutting aid, China has moved – straight into the worst neighbourhoods. China now controls about 40 per cent of Sudan's oil consortium and regularly courts mass murderers such as Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.

But China's support of African despots is well documented. Kurlantzick is valuable because he traces, first-hand, the cutthroat romp of Chinese industry all the way to Latin America.

Kurlantzick notes, though, that China's efforts haven't been seamless: There is anger at hollow trade deals; resentment at the huge trade deficits; protests by Africans upset by Chinese firms' preference for exported Chinese labour.

SEE:

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

Neo-Liberal State Capitalism In Asia

China: The Triumph of State Capitalism

US vs China for Global Hegemony

China No Longer Red Nor In The Red

Free Trade Not Aid

Bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism

Russian Oligarchy

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Our Living Earth

It's Alive.

Lovelock's Gaia thesis is that the Earth, our home, is alive. Though she may not be interested in the goings on of the surface dwellers. I began this post a week ago, and while posting a nuclear leak occurred in Japan after an earthquake and as these posts show there was wide spread tectonic plate activity this last week and over the last month all across the globe.

More than 5000 tremors have been felt since January in the Patagonia region of Chile, causing residents to fear that a cataclysmic earthquake may surface.

Kenya: Earth Tremors Cause Panic in Nairobi Tremors hit Peshawar, Swat

Two 5.0 magnitude earthquakes jolt Negros Oriental

Uganda: Heavy Rains Causing Tremors, Says Expert

Tremors shake Portsmouth again — second this month

Another quake hits the North People living in the Burmese town of Tachilek and Laos' Bokeo province also felt the tremors.

PESHAWAR: An earthquake of mild intensity was felt in Peshawar and Swat districts on Sunday at 1724 hours. According to Peshawar Meteorological Station, magnitude of the earthquake on the Richter scale was recorded at 4.8. The epicenter of the tremor was about 300 kilometres north of Peshawar in the Hindukush Range, it said.

Then a couple of days later I discovered in the discount bin a book on the social and geological history of the 1906 San Fransisco Quake. Simon Winchesters; A Crack In the Edge of the World.

It outlines not only the geological faults that resulted in the San Fransisco quake, in light of the recent 2004 Tsunami, reviewers were quick to link it to the recent hurricanes; Katrina and Rita that destroyed New Orleans.

Winchester relates that 1906 was record year for massive, 8 and higher on the Richter Scale, earthquakes around the world, the plates all shifted. Which is the BIG picture of life on earth. Get practicing on your skate boards for the global shift.

Ours is an age of disasters: natural, as in hurricanes, tsunamis, famines, earthquakes, fires, and man-made, as in war and terrorism.

It's hardly surprising, then, that such a distinguished writer as Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa, should commemorate the approaching 100th anniversary of the earthquake and fire that began at dawn on April 18, 1906, and nearly destroyed San Francisco.

But Winchester doesn't confine himself to the disaster itself. He provides a virtual guidebook to the world of tremors and earthquakes and the geological conditions that produce them. He also examines the long-range effects of the San Francisco disaster.

With hurricanes Katrina and Rita fresh in our memory, Winchester's words on the far-reaching consequences of natural calamities strike home:

Seldom does an entire and very large urban community fall victim to utter disaster ... The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the most obvious. The Great Fire of London in 1666. ... The huge earthquake in 1755 in Lisbon — and then, in 1906, San Francisco. ... The largest of these cities and areas survived [because they] exist for reasons that go far beyond the accumulation of buildings that is their outward manifestation. Their presence ... is invariably due to some combination of geography and of climate, together with some vague and indefinable organic reason that persuades mankind to settle there.

So it was with New Orleans and San Francisco. Otherwise, who would live in a city situated below sea level and adjoining a stormy sea? Who would want to settle in a place where, over the years, numerous earthquakes and fires have occurred?

In New Orleans, the catastrophe came from the sea; in San Francisco, from the earth, specifically the San Andreas Fault, which runs from Northern to Southern California, ending at the Salton Sea near the Mexican border.

Winchester, who trained in geology at Oxford, gives the reader a short course in geological theory, detailing the history of geological ideas. He shows why the 1906 earthquake occurred and why such a catastrophe will almost certainly recur near the same place.

The San Francisco earthquake changed the life of the city. More than 28,000 buildings were laid waste. Estimates of the dead range from about 600 to about 3,000. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 were left homeless.

Before the quake, moreover, San Francisco was the preeminent city of the American West. After the quake, slowly but inexorably, that title passed to Los Angeles, 400 miles to the south. Various things wrought the change, but among them was this: The San Andreas Fault in Southern California has never been as destructive as in the north. Los Angeles has had its quakes, but so far none has come close to devastating the city.

Winchester points out that tectonic plate activity is a source of earthquake activity as much as magma movements are and current research verifies this.

Tremors deep inside the Earth are usually produced by magma flowing beneath volcanoes, but a new study suggests they can also be produced by the shifting and sliding of tectonic plates. "Unlike the sharp jolt of an earthquake, tremors within Earth's crust emerge slowly, rumbling for longer periods of time," explained Kaye Shedlock, the program director for Earthscope at the National Science Foundation.

These are the first recordings of non-volcanic tremors deep inside the Earth. They were recorded in deep boreholes that were drilled down to a depth of about 2 miles.

Instead of volcanoes, the scientists think the subterranean rumblings might be caused by processes similar to those that produce tremors near the Cascadia Subduction Zone, an active fault that runs from mid-Vancouver Island to northern California.

Add to that the fact that some scientists believe the Earth is about to reverse polarity, and well as they say; 'all Hell will break loose'.


So lets go back to the beginning of this post which I began last Monday five days after the initial shocks as a result of our living earths tectonic plate movements, which are slow as molasses in January as my mother would say, resulted in a series of earthquakes and other seismic activities.

Tanzania's 'Mountain of God' erupts

Kenyan panic after more tremors

US geologists say recent earth tremors were due to a seismological process known as seismc swarm

Research on earth tremors necessary, say local geologists

The Japanese earthquake ,Southwestern Japan proving temblor hotspot, resulted in exposing the poor safety and maintenance record of their privatized nuclear industry. Tremors spotlight nuclear plants

But there is always a silver lining.

Many earthquakes in the deep ocean are much smaller in magnitude than expected. Geophysicists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have found new evidence that the fragmented structure of seafloor faults, along with previously unrecognized volcanic activity, may be dampening the effects of these quakes.

Examining data from 19 locations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, researchers led by graduate student Patricia Gregg have found that "transform" faults are not developing or behaving as plate tectonic theory says they should. Rather than stretching as long, continuous fault lines across the seafloor, the faults are often segmented and show signs of recent or ongoing volcanism. Both phenomena appear to prevent earthquakes from spreading across the seafloor, thus reducing their magnitude and impact.

Until you get the big picture. Which is that it is not magma alone that is responsible for earthquakes and volcanic activity, some of it is human, (oil and gas drilling, nuclear blasts), and much of it is now being attributed to tectonic plate activity as well. Because a week later, early this morning another quake hit India.

Moderate quake in India, mild tremors in Delhi

Along with the threat of global warming and asteroids now we have to consider Gaia evolving herself, and we are just along for the ride.


See:

Boreno is Burning

Did Nuke Cause Earth Quake

Our Living Earth

Dialectics of Extinction

(r)Evolutionary Theory

Earth in Upheaval-Updated

1666 The Creation Of The World

Man Made Volcano

Lost Tsunami Lost Atlantis

New Island

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Harpers Latin America Tour

Harper leaves on his mission to Canada's trading partners in Latin and Central America and the Caribbean. The small number of countries he is visiting shows this trips is all about being Canada's salesman for our friendly Imperialism in the region.

Whether it is promoting our investment interests in Haiti, or those of Barrick Gold in Chile, or the role of the money laundering Scotia Bank in the region. Canadian miners are big investors in the Caribbean and Latin America, and their impact on the environment leave much to be desired.

It is a natural extension of the Conservatives contientialism. They have abandoned aid to Africa, a Liberal policy, for selective aid to countries we have sent our military to, or have investment interests in.

Ironically one of the Caribbean countries we have major investments and influence in is not being visited by Harper, Cuba.

Harper's itinerary is also packed with meetings with Canadian investors in the region, and with speeches to local economists and businessmen.

In Santiago, he will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Canada's free-trade deal with Chile, tour a new Scotiabank office, and stop by the local headquarters of Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation, which is developing a highly controversial mine in Chile.

"It will be very disappointing if the prime minister returns from this trip and it simply has been a business-as-usual approach - of trying to sign as many new contracts as possible, slapping leaders on the back, talking about how investment is going to flow and how new commercial opportunities are opening up - without any significant attention paid to these very real human rights concerns," said Alex Neve of Amnesty International Canada.

Well Alex be prepared to be disappointed.

See:

More Munk-Key Business

Haiti Quebec's Shame

Haiti Canada's Colony

Haiti Atrocities

Canadian Imperialism

Gildan Sweat Wear

Gildan Sweat Shop Success Story

Gothic Capitalism Redux

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