France Government System
Oct0
MANILA, Philippines—A sudden cluster of massive earthquakes, which has shaken Asia-Pacific communities and likely left thousands dead, has also jolted some scientists, who are starting to question conventional thought.
Experts, who had dismissed the notion that far-away quakes could be linked, are beginning to have second thoughts after huge tremors rocked Samoa and Indonesia on the same day, followed by another major convulsion in Vanuatu.
Thursday’s magnitude 7.6, 7.8 and 7.3 earthquakes in Vanuatu also came just minutes after a large tremor shook the Philippines.
Some 184 people died in the terrifying tsunami that smashed into Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga on Sept. 30, while thousands are feared dead after parts of Indonesia’s Padang city were reduced to rubble just hours later.
On Thursday, thousands of panicked people fled the coast as a rapid succession of large quakes off Vanuatu set off a tsunami warning for much of the South Pacific.
At 10:41 a.m. on Oct. 8, a very deep magnitude-6.7 earthquake was recorded in the Celebes Sea, 320 km south of Zamboanga in Mindanao.
The “remarkable” sequence has prompted veteran earthquake-watcher Gary Gibson to tear up his theory that it all came down to chance and to search for a possible connection.
“I can no longer keep using the response that it’s all a big coincidence, can I?” Gibson, senior seismologist at Environmental Systems and Services consulting group in Australia, told Agence France Presse.
Link between Samoa, Indonesia
“But what would the (link) mechanism be? Nobody has come up with a good story.”
University of Queensland’s Huilin Xing also challenged accepted science by proposing a possible link between the Samoan and Indonesian earthquakes—9,660 km apart.
Xing said the fast-moving Australian tectonic plate may have set off one quake, and then the other.
“From the observations, there were similar correlations of the quakes in the different places,” Xing said. “For two great earthquakes to occur within hours in such a way, it is abnormal.”
The Philippines, located in the Pacific Rim of Fire where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur regularly due to the movement of tectonic plates, is hit by daily quakes, most of them not felt by the people.
Valley Fault System
Scientists expect a big quake to hit Metro Manila, home to 12 million people, at any time. If the government fails to prepare, a magnitude-7 temblor from the Valley Fault System (formerly known as the Marikina Valley Fault System) would affect around 38 percent of residential buildings, 14 percent of high-rise buildings and 35 percent of public buildings in the metropolis, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.
A magnitude-7.8 quake struck northern Luzon on July 16, 1990, killing 1,621 people.
“It’s remarkable. I’ve been working on this for 30 years and I’ve never seen it (series of big quakes) before,” said Gibson.
“Many times it’s chance, but when you get these many large earthquakes on the Australian plate boundary, it’s stretching the concept of just coincidence. But nobody I know has published a link that will stand up in all cases.
Historical precursor
He said there was no mechanism that anybody had thought of to describe why it was happening. “I personally think there may well be something else and I’m continuing to look for it,” he said.
Kevin McCue, president of the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society, rejected ideas of any connection between the Pacific and Indonesian quakes, but said the tremors in Samoa and Vanuatu had a historical precursor.
Agence France-Presse
- posted by demo kid
Does Jonathan even know what socialism IS? I don’t really think so, unless he’s using the crazy Fox News version of the term. Let’s test this out, by replacing Jonathan’s weasel words with something a little more… interesting.
In [Norway], people have no jobs. What jobs that do exist are back-breaking and afford a pittance of a salary. And what meager money people earn isn’t enough to buy enough food to feed yourself, let alone a family.
I’ve often wondered why it is that socialists / liberals / progressives or whatever they are called today don’t look at the obvious evidence that socialism doesn’t work—ever—and conclude that they were wrong. I think I have an explanation.
See, in [Norway], [Prime Minister Stoltenberg] goes around telling people one of two things. One, that if the people were actually practicing real socialism and honestly gave up every capitalist motive in their body, there would be enough to spare. In other words, the “No true Scotsman” defense. Socialists use this to describe why socialism in [Sweden], [Denmark], [France], [Canada], and any other place it was tried failed, but it will definitely succeed here. Here being, of course, wherever the socialist is standing at the moment. See, socialism in those other places wasn’t real socialism, or the right kind of socialism, or socialism at the wrong time for the wrong people, etc…
The other excuse [Stoltenberg] uses is that due to forces beyond his control (involving the United States, of course), the people of [Norway] are suffering. See, if only America would stop doing X or start doing Y, they would have enough food to eat and to spare. This is the classical victimization argument but applied to systems of government. It wasn’t because [Great Britain] was corrupt, incapable, and retarded, it was because America happened to have a run of good luck and exploited that fact to destroy the worker’s paradise. It wasn’t because [Finland] / [The Netherlands] etc… were failures, it was because the United States / etc… oppressed them.
These two arguments, of course, are hogwash. But any true socialist doesn’t have a hard time believing them. This is because they’ve already swallowed all the other hogwash that has been spat upon them by pretender philosophers.
Capitalism and freedom don’t need excuses. It works. Everywhere. Under any conditions. Under any oppressive forces. It works in China without political freedom. It works in Hong Kong under foreign domination. It works in the United States with corruption and gangs and drug problems and the breakup of the family. It works because it is the only economic system that can deliver on its promises [of oppressive forces, a lack of political freedom, foreign domination, corruption, gangs, drug problems, and the breakup of the family].
The only time capitalism doesn’t work is when government tries to control it. When governments raise taxes, borrow vast sums of money, and control massive amounts of capital, impose regulations, fire the CEO of major corporations, and otherwise imposes its will on the market, then it fails. Of course, we have a word for systems of government that impose their will on the free market.
Socialism.
Indeed.
Now, obviously, there are some details that you can quibble with — Sweden is ruled by a center-right coalition, all social democracies have done some privatization over the past several decades, France may not be the BEST model to promote, Norway is propped up by oil money, and so forth. Still, it is interesting to see how FWC doesn’t seem to realize that his entire argument is propped up by REALLY weak examples and straw men. A national healthcare plan, for example, is NOT going to mean we’ll all start eating grass and boot leather to survive like in North Korea.
But then again, what would he be without crazy hyperbole, right? Watching him rant about his fantasy mix of libertarianism and A Handmaid’s Tale is kinda funny when you get down to it.
14K Yellow Gold Domed 2.5 mm Size 10.25 Wedding Band Ring TempurpedicAds
