Man Made Volcano

As if Indonesia did not have enough environmental problems; 340000 flee deadly floods in Jakarta, now we find out that the mud spewing volcano that erupted last year is a man-made phenomena.

The Indonesian volcano, known as Lusi, has been spewing steaming mud since May last year, causing 13,000 people to flee their homes (Image: University of Durham)

Drilling for gas most probably caused the eruption of an Indonesian mud volcano, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people, scientists report.

"[The eruption] appears to have been triggered by drilling of over-pressured porous and permeable limestones at depth of around 2830 metres below the surface," says the study, the first published on what caused the eruption.

The study, which appears in the February issue of the journal GSA Today, adds that the volcano has been disgorging 7000-150,000 cubic metres of mud every day since it erupted in May last year.

Such pressures, coupled to the local geology, suggest the flow "will continue for many months and possibly years to come", warn the UK researchers, led by Professor Richard Davies from the University of Durham.

In the coming months, sag-like subsidence several kilometres wide will occur, and around the main vent there is likely to be "more dramatic collapse", forming a crater, the study adds.

An area of at least 10 square kilometres around the volcano will be uninhabitable for years, and over 11,000 people will be permanently displaced, it says.

Add to that the wildfires started by slash and burn operations for palm oil plantations and the continuing disruption and displacement from the 2004 Tsunami and Indonesia is an ongoing environmental disaster.

But do plan to take your holidays there, I hear it is quite nice otherwise.

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Indonesia

Palm Oil

Borneo

Disasters

Environment

Volcano

Tsunami


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Environment Minister MIA

I am having a flashback.

The new Conservative Environment Minister has become just like the old Environment Minister.

John Baird has bowed out of appearing before the Parliamentary Environment Committee, twice now, reports CBC reporter Julie Van Dusen on Newsworlds QP.

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Ambrose


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Jack Alliterates

Jack Layton on the partisan politics in parliament around the environment bill C-30.

"We have ditherer's, deniers and delayers"




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Jack Layton

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Crack The Whip

Tonights vote in Parliament on the Liberals Kyoto motion will be whipped for the Tories says Don Newman on CBC. Yep them Tories who promised free votes in the House. And that they would only whip votes on fiscal bills. Another broken promise. No wait, they already broke that one.

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Whip

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Polyandry And Butterflies

This is a male fantasy, one male for forty females.....but wait it's butterflies we are talking about.

The fact that female butterflies could even find mates in the presence of male-killing Wolbachia stunned scientists. In some islands there was only one male for every 40 females. One would expect this type of sex imbalance to leave females deprived of a mate, explains Hurst.“To our knowledge we’ve never heard of female promiscuity being caused by fewer males,” he says.

What were they supposed to do remain childless spinsters? That ain't natural.

Another example of the birds and the bees, well butterflies anyways, and polyandry

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Polyamory

Polgamy

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Not Man Enough To Be PM

Stephane Dion is a girly man says the Ottawa Citizen.

Everything about Dion seems soft, from his handshake to his policies. His appearance at the Citizen editorial board Friday confirmed the fears I had when the Liberals chose him as their leader. Dion is a verbose, mild-mannered academic with a shaky grasp of English who seems unfit to chair a university department, much less lead a country.

Randall Denley
The Ottawa Citizen

Yep not man enough to be PM unlike our current Manly Man PM Stevie boy.

What a cheap shot, and it has the Blogging Tories all a buzz. Well at least Dion doesn't suffer from baby fat.


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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.

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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.

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Chavez

Venezuela

Latin America

Cuba

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