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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18/7

Steam power is the basis of the industrial revolution and the birth of Capitalism in America. Some of the steam lines in New York City date back to then. And steam is inherently explosive.

Huge Steam Pipe Blast Kills One in NYC

Emergency personnel look over a truck that lies in a hole in the street after a steam explosion in midtown Manhattan, New York, Wednesday, July 18, 2007. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

A transformer exploded in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, creating a roar and a huge plume of smoke and sending pedestrians fleeing from the area in scenes reminiscent of the September 11 attacks.

Police at the scene said 15 to 20 people had been taken to the hospital. CNN said three of the injured had been admitted to the New York Presbyterian Hospital emergency room.

In Washington, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said there was no apparent link to terrorism.

"Right now it is a localized incident," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "At this point, we see no nexus to terrorism."

Officials said a ruptured steam pipe appeared to have caused the transformer to blow.

The explosion erupted during the evening rush hour in one of the busiest sections of New York City, near the transportation hub of Grand Central station.

A loud constant roar rang out through the streets.

Photograph by J.D. Griggs on February 3, 1988

Steam explosions (also called littoral explosions, because they occur at the shoreline, or littoral zone) result when lava meets the sea. In the photograph above, the explosion sprays fragments of lava into the air. The smaller pieces are carried by currents and deposited in bays to form black sand beaches.

SEE:

Nuclear NIMBY

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And Justice For All

Shareholders rights upheld in Lord Blacks trial which has conservatives all in a tizzy. Since they favored the aristocratic pretensions of robber baron Black rather than the rights of the 'little guy and gal'.

For Prince, 58, Black's fate was sealed in a 2002 shareholders' meeting.

As prosecutors played the recording, and she heard angry investors lambasting Black about why he and other high-ranking Hollinger executives were receiving millions in non-compete payments, Prince decided she would do everything she could to convict him of fraud.

In fact, if it were up to her, Black would also be going down on an additional fraud count. Had that happened, she said, it might have shown the pattern of criminal activity jurors needed to convict the fallen media baron of the most serious charge of all – racketeering.

Despite efforts to avoid media during the trial, jurors overheard in an elevator one day that some Canadian media had called them a "blue collar" jury and critiqued their appearance. "When we were deadlocked, one of the jurors, she's a teacher, gave us a pep talk," said Prince. "She said, 'They're calling us country bumpkins. They think we're too stupid to figure out this case.' And it brought us all together. We were going back in there with a unanimous verdict," she said.

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Torture Porn

I see that the MSM have spent this weekend focusing on what they call Torture Porn which I wrote about in Gore Kulture. Cliff from Rusty Idols and I then proceeded to have a running discussion on the phenomena in the comments.

From horror film to torture porn

Torture porn films - horror or hype?

Is there any escape from tired, old torture-porn?

Hollywood, movie fans shy away from "torture porn"

Held captive to torture-porn zeitgeist

Torture porn for popcorn eaters not up to snuff

Filmgoers may be fed up with sadistic gore

See

Gothic Capitalism Redux

Jack the Ripper

Emotional Plague


Serial Murder

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Die Vurm

Gathering dust for a hundred years; a source for De Vermis Mysteriis

A University of Alberta paleontologist has helped discover the existence of a 95 million-year-old snakelike marine animal, a finding that provides not only the earliest example of limbloss in lizards but the first example of limbloss in an aquatic lizard.

The fossil was originally collected during the 19th Century from a limestone quarry in Slovenia. It then sat at the Natural History Museum in Trieste, Italy for almost 100 years before Caldwell and a colleague found it in 1996 during a trip to Europe. He later connected with Alessandro Palci, then a graduate student in Italy whom he helped supervise, and they worked on the fossil together.

The researchers soon realized the lizard's front limbs were not formed during development. "There was a moment when I said, 'I think we stumbled on a new fossil illustrating some portion of the aquatic process of losing limbs,'" said Caldwell. "There are lots of living lizards that love to lose their forelimbs and then their rearlimbs, but we didn't know it was being done 100 million years ago and we didn't know that it was happening among groups of marine lizards."

Ancient giant serpents were known as worms (vurms, wurms),in Europe. Giant serpents or legless lizards may have existed into the modern age. They are not to be confused with Dragons, which are a different kind of beastie, though they commonly are.

If huge giant things roaming the Scottish hills were not enough, we have also had to contend with huge dragon things too. If you had been around in the 12th century you could have visited the Linton Worm who lived in a hollow outside Jedburgh on Linton Hill in the Scottish Borders (still called Worms Den to this day). The dragon terrorised the country, eating cattle and generally making a nuisance of himself. He was finally dispatched at the point of a peat-coated lance by a courageous - some would say reckless - lad called Sommerville of Larison. There have been no more dragon-sightings since.

Like the Lambton worm which was featured in Bram Stokers Lair of the White Worm. Which was made into a passable bit of gothic horror blasphemy by over the top art house director Ken Russell.

The Nordic saga of the Giant worm plays a role in the popular revolutionary imagination of Wagners Ring Cycle.

Now the Giants have the Hoard and Ring safe-kept by a monstrous Worm in the Gnita- (Neid-) Haide [the Grove of Grudge]. Through the Ring the Nibelungs remain in thraldom, Alberich and all. But the Giants do not understand to use their might; their dullard minds are satisfied with having bound the Nibelungen. So the Worm lies on the Hoard since untold ages, in inert dreadfulness: before the lustre of the new race of Gods the Giants' race fades down and stiffens into impotence; wretched and tricksy, the Nibelungen go their way of fruitless labour. Alberich broods without cease on the means of gaining back the Ring.

In the period around this first prose résumé and the first libretto sketches for the Ring, the years 1848 and 1849, Wagner also wrote several important texts which may shed light on his intentions with the tetralogy. Among them are «Die Wibelungen. Weltgeschichte aus der Sage» (The Wibelungen. World History as told in Saga), which includes several sections on the Nibelungs, «Die Revolution» (The Revolution), «Die Kunst und die Revolution» (Art and Revolution) and «Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft» (The Art-work of the Future), all written in 1849 These works are very likely to have been influenced by the philosopher Feuerbach, whom Wagner is known to have read at that time, and with whose writings stylistically common traits have been found at least in The Wibelungen, by the anarchist Proudhon, whom he probably also read (certainly in Paris in 1849), as well as by the ideas of the socialist thinkers Max Stirner, Mikhael Bakunin and Karl Marx.

A Brief Introduction to Norse Myth

When Ragnarok would come,
the winter would last for three years and would be
extremely bitter. The two giant wolves, Skoll and Hati,
would devour the Sun and Moon whilst starts would fall
from the heavens. The giant worm Nidhogg, which was
gnawing on the roots of the Yggdrasil for the longest of
times, would finally succeed. The root Nidhogg succeeded
in gnawing through was the root that supported Niflheim.
Loki, who had been confined for causing Balder's death
escaped his imprisonment. Loki would rally with the
frost giants and his offspring and would lead them
against the Sons of Mankind and the Gods. Fenrir would
escape the magical Fetter, the Midgard Serpent,
Jormungand, would slither out of the ocean. The Frost
Giants and Mountain Giants would leave their home in
Jotunheim, sailing on a ship known as Naglfar, whilst
their cousins the fire giants would leave their realm
of Fire, Muspelheim.

And Australia has recorded the largest earth worm ever, 13 feet long.

Of course worms are not legless serpents, nor some strange creature out of Tremors. Or out of the sewer in a town in Georgia.

Employees at the Huddle House had been having problems with the restaurant’s drainage line clogging up and when plumbers came by to check on the problem they found that some unknown species of animal had apparently crawled through the city sewer lines toward the Huddle House until it became lodged in the line just short of the outside clean-out plug. When a worker spotted the plug, he grabbed it and began pulling it out. And he pulled and he pulled and he pulled until an eight foot long, white, skinless, eyeless snake-like creature emerged. At first glance, it appeared to be a long grease clog. But closer inspection revealed that its composition was of a meat-like consistency. And it had the makings of a mouth. But, apparently, had no skeletal structure.

Or in the Gobi Desert.

The first time you hear about the Mongolian Death Worm you assume it has to be a joke; it sounds too much like the monster from a B-movie or an especially dire comic book to be true. A five-foot (1.5m) long worm dwelling in the vast and inhospitable expanses of the Gobi Desert, the creature is known to Mongolia’s nomadic tribesmen as the allghoi khorkhoi (sometimes given as allerghoi horhai or olgoj chorchoj) or ‘intestine worm’ for its resemblance to a sort of living cow’s intestine. Apparently red in colour, sometimes described as having darker spots or blotches, and sometimes said to bear spiked projections at both ends, the khorkhoi is reputedly just as dangerous as its alarming appearance would suggest, squirting a lethal corrosive venom at its prey and capable of killing by discharging a deadly electric shock, even at a distance of some feet.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are offering a free documentary, watchable on their website, on the hunt for the fabled "Mongolian Death Worm". In 2005, respected writer-researcher Richard Freeman led a four man team from the CFZ to Mongolia in search of the notorious worm; a fabled reptilian beast said to spit venom and kill its victims with electric blasts. The investigation is documented in "The Lair of the Red Worm", which can be viewed in two parts - Part One and Part Two.

And in this day and age of modern virtual myths you can play a Giant Worm in a PC Game.

Giant worms fascinate us. We loved them in Beetlejuice, we thought they were cool in Dune, and we loved watching them be blown away in Tremors. I've seen giant worms pop up as enemies in games before, most recently in Lost Planet. Death Worm may be the first game, indie or otherwise, that lets us play as the giant beasts though.

SEE

Nessie?

Snakes Alive

Nessies Relative

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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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Pakistans Reichstag Fire

Like that other fascist regime which used an ultra left communist as their scapegoat for the Reichstag Fire, Pakistans Friendly Fascist President/Generalismo Musharraf used the Red Mosque for the same purpose this week. To distract from the fact that Pakistans Intelligence Service is behind the Taliban, and other Islamist fascist movements including the Red Mosque.

It is Pakistan that is the terror state with nuclear weapons, not Iran, that is the greatest threat to the region.

Leading up to the crisis of the Red Mosque of Islamabad, General Musharraf was facing an unprecedented uprising by the ordinary citizenry, led by the popular and recently dismissed chief justice of Pakistan. As the sweltering summer of discontent spread across the country, tens of thousands of lawyers poured onto the streets in what is known as the "black coat" protests. Finding no room to manoeuvre, Gen. Musharraf emulated Ayub Khan, and manufactured a crisis. Then, like a knight in shining armour, he stepped in to put down the rebellion by Islamists holed up inside the Red Mosque.

It's important to know that the Red Mosque was a creation of Pakistan's intelligence services, which used it for decades to recruit armed jihadis. It was another U.S.-backed Islamist dictator, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who had allowed the Red Mosque jihadis a free hand in spreading their hateful doctrine of extremism under the name of Islam. The Americans simply went along.

The brothers who led the Red Mosque rebellion - the one who was arrested trying to escape in a burka, as well as the mullah who died in the fighting - worked for Pakistan's intelligence agencies. Their father, too, was an employee of the government and ran the fiefdom in the heart of Islamabad until he was assassinated.

The mullahs and radical jihadis in the Red Mosque were all actors in the game of Pakistani roulette. As long as the mosque remained a visible hotbed of Islamist activity, Gen. Musharraf could show the West that it needed him to fight terrorism. Just as Ayub Khan was able to convince successive U.S. administrations that, without him, Pakistan would slide into communism, Gen. Musharraf has convinced George Bush that, without him, Pakistan would become one large Red Mosque teeming with jihadis trying to whip the nation into an Islamist nuclear power.

What he fails to disclose, of course, is that the arming of the Red Mosque could not have happened without his government's full knowledge. There's no way that machine guns, rocket launchers and ammunition could be brought into the heart of Islamabad, next door to government ministries, without arousing the suspicion of the country's omnipresent security agencies.

Today, the Pakistani army will claim to have stamped out a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. Tomorrow will be another story. Abdul Rashid Ghazi will emerge as the martyr of the Islamist movement in Pakistan, and his death will become the rallying cry for the Islamofascists, not its end.

In the end, Gen. Musharraf was caught in his own trap. He could not put the jihadi genie back into the bottle, so he had to kill it. He may come out as a hero to the White House and to Pakistan's ruling upper-class elites, but history dictates that this will be a short-lived romance.

SEE:

I Was An IslamoFascist For MI6

Harpers Silence Over Musharraf

Winning Friends

How To Create Terrorists

Say It Ain't So

Brief Cases vs Batons

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Comeuppance

The irony here is that Lord Black of Crossharbour left Canada to buy his Lordship from the Mother Country, because he thought we were too liberal for his pro-American conservative values.

Say it loud: Lord Black is too proud

Now that democracy of the common man; America, has given the Lord his comeuppance.

Conrad Black found guilty of obstruction and could face decades in prison

Just like his Her0 that other Crime Lord from Chicago.




Also See:

Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism: Black Lord Dodges Tax Man

Criminal Capitalism: Black & Radler,Thick as Thieves

Criminal Capitalism: Lord Black Fugitive

Criminal Capitalism: Black gets his comeuppance

Criminal Capitalism: Hollinger's Black Eye

Criminal Capitalism: Black Out


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Tax Cuts For The Rich Burden You and Me

Two recent stories point out the failure of the 'peoples government of Canada' to meet the peoples need. Instead they have passed on the tax burdens once again to Johnny and Janey Canuck. And these assessments don't come from the Left but from the Right.

Basically reminding us that Jim Flaherty's much vaunted Tax Fairness is not.

Misdirected Tax Reforms Driving High Canadian Tax Rates: C.D. Howe Institute

Targeted tax relief doesn’t cut it, think tank says

Workers bear the brunt of taxation with high personal income, payroll and sales taxes, the report stated, with the Canadian effective tax rate on labour at 45.9%, down slightly from 46% in 2006.

"As economic studies have shown, the effect of such high effective tax rates on employment income is to reduce the incentive to work, especially for secondary workers in the family," said the report.

Corporate cuts at consumers' expense

- Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is urging provinces to go for a tax change that would shift billions of dollars a year in corporate taxes to the shoulders of individuals.

In this year's federal budget, Flaherty renewed Ottawa's push to get all provinces to harmonize their sales taxes with the goods-and-services tax (GST).

However, full harmonization by the five provinces that still operate retail-sales taxes --Ontario, B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island -- would shift $7.5 billion in what is now a tax on businesses to consumers, a new report estimates.

In Ontario alone, the shift would amount to $5 billion annually, said Jonathan Kesselman, a public policy professor at Simon Fraser University. "It's large," he said in an interview, adding that it's been a bit of a political sleeper.

"Harmonization's Achilles heel continues to be the visibility of the large tax-burden shift from business to consumer," Kesselman writes in the latest edition of Canadian Tax Highlights, a Canadian Tax Foundation publication.

See:

Tax Fairness For The Rich

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