Huge earthquake..Japan

[StarmanSkye]

Interesting, thoughtful crit of how Capitalism has greatly aggravated and contributed to the human-toll in last month's Japanese earthquake, extending from the faulty cost-benefit analysis which places a financial trade-off value for human life vs infrastructure and energy utility investments. Mentions but doesn't deeply explore the psyop public opinion-modeling that 'sold' nuclear-power to a nuke-skeptical society. Advocates for democratic representaion and socialized control over energy production.

Loosely dovetail's (NOT explicitly) Moret's recent theme involving genocidal policies of war and economic exploitation are disaster capitalism in-action.



--quote--
With information from SolidarityEconomy.net

As many of you are aware by now, a massive tsunami measuring about 10 meters (or 33 feet) have hit the island nation of Japan causing wide spread devastation. The death tolls have yet to be completed and are expected to be horrible. But in the midst of this disaster, the profit-driven system capitalism has compounded the situation and made it worse.

Now an 8.8-magnitude earthquake has hit the nation as well.

Like in Thailand, as now, a major cause of death was not just the tsunami. The other major player was the buildings themselves that took lives. Almost all buildings lacked emergency access to rooftops. Greedy real estate developers build homes on drained lagoons and riverbeds, or on loose landfill. The new Sendai Airport was surrounded by water on all sides paralysed.

The disaster made light of major weaknesses in the Japanese critical power infrastructure. Huge flames coming from ruptured gas tanks in Ichihara sent orange fireballs into the sky precautions had been properly carried out.

There is absolutely no doubt that this lack of preparedness was caused by cost/benefit calculations. The profit motive is singularly the greatest suppressor of safety precautions and disaster preparedness. One would think that such infrastructure built in a prone area would be designed for it. I don't think its even necessary to mention the stupidity of placing a nuclear plant in an earthquake prone area.

An answer to this unmitigated foolishness lies in the social organization of Cuba. In 2005, a category 5 hurricane hit the island with few deaths. There were few deaths because Cuba was prepared for hurricanes. Cuba gave great importance to safety measures and preparedness. Something capitalism simply is not capable of doing.

The government in Japan is attempting to cover up a major threat to the people of not only Japan, but North America and the Pacific. The government has enacted the Article 15 Emergency Law, which silences all media from reporting on events. This is being used to cover up a nuclear threat.

Tepco's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is in an emergency situation as Japan's Industrial Nuclear Safety Agency has announced that radioactive isotopes cesium and iodine were detected by a monitoring station. Its very likely that an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction has started. Overheated uranium rods have made it through and have started nuclear fission.

This has serious implications not only for the people of Japan, but the people of north America. The Pacific jet-stream blows directly towards the US and could begin carrying nuclear airborne particles. This would mean radioactive material would be spreading across the country from California to Wisconsin.

El Nino Variable could cause the particles to move northward into Western Canada and increase the number of American states affected.

The creation of and spreading of the disaster is the direct result of capitalism on energy production. It has been long known that nuclear power is the least safe form of energy available. The only reason it continues to march along is because the alternatives aren't as profitable for private energy suppliers.

Even thought a majority of Japanese are opposed to nuclear power, it is still rammed down their throats by the ruling class. Despite this opposition dependence upon nuclear power plants for electricity grew from 9% in 1990 to 32% in 2000, despite 4 major nuclear accidents (one at level 5).

Japan has vast untapped reserves of offshore wind energy, the only practical alternative to nuclear power and fossil fuel. Yet the nuclear lobby, coal companies and oil majors have strong-armed the government and industry to stubbornly refuse to invest in advanced and efficient turbine engineering, including magnetic-levitation rotors that eliminate the need for energy-sapping bearings.

It is clear that capitalism has no solution for the energy crisis faced by the world. Ecological destruction culminating in the destruction of the planet is an increasing threat, and all capitalism does it deny it. The only solution is to seize the creation of energy from the ruling class and place it in the democratic control of the masses to be used in a non-destructive way.

[anothershamus]

This is for all the folks on the West Coast! Track back and look at more of the pictures and ignore the 'duck and cover' crap that we have been fed for all these years!

http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/46512-what-to-do-in-an-earthquake-good-advice

What to do in an earthquake - good advice

Wednesday, 30 March 2011 10:30

'My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI ), the world's most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake.'
EXTRACT FROM DOUG COPP'S ARTICLE ON 'THE TRIANGLE OF LIFE'

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries. I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years, and have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.

The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under its desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene -- unnecessary.

Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them - NOT under them. This space is what I call the 'triangle of life'. The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the 'triangles' you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common sh ape, you will see, in a collapsed building.
TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Most everyone who simply 'ducks and covers' when building collapse are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a bed, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.

6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!

7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a diff erent 'moment of frequency' (they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

Get near the outer walls of buildings or outside of them if possible - It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

9) People inside of their ve hicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.

10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

Spread the word and save someone's life...

The entire world is experiencing natural calamities so be prepared!

'We are but angels with one wing, it takes two to fly. In 1996 we made a film, which proved my survival methodology to be correct. The Turkish Federal Government, City of Istanbul , University of Istanbul Case Productions and ARTI cooperated to film this practical, scientific test. We collapsed a school and a home with 20 mannequins inside. Ten mannequins did 'duck and cover,' and ten mannequins I used in my 'triangle of life' survival method. After the simulated earthquake collapse we crawled through the rubble and entered the building to film and document the results. The film, in which I practiced my survival techniques under directly observable, scientific conditions , relevant to building collapse, showed there would have been zero percent survival for those doing duck and cover.
There would likely have been 100 percent survivability for people using my method of the 'triangle of life.' This film has been seen by millions of viewers on television in Turkey and the rest of Europe, and it was seen in the USA , C anada and Latin America on the TV program Real TV.

"Triangle of Life":

Without listening or reading, simply by looking at the following self-explanatory photos, you can learn more than in a thousand words about how to protect yourself during a major earthquake...

[seemslikeadream]

With the energy of the innocent



Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused

By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused

By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived

In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by
By and by--
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

[dqueue]

Via SlashDot, I read about a study recently released by a group of physicists (Russian and American). From the /. blurb:

"A new paper presented at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland shows the rapid heating of the atmosphere directly above the fault days before the devastating earthquake hit. This is theorized to be the Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling mechanism that occurs when large amounts of radon are released due to massive stress in the fault right before the quake. This can be detected with satellites analyzing infrared waves: 'The radioactivity from this gas ionizes the air on a large scale and this has a number of knock on effects. Since water molecules are attracted to ions in the air, ionization triggers the large scale condensation of water. But the process of condensation also releases heat and it is this that causes infrared emissions.' This is a shift from the Haiti earthquake where DEMETER was used to monitor ultra low frequencies. The presence of radon could also possibly explain erratic wildlife behavior prior to an earthquake."

Seemed worth bumping this thread...

[Nordic]

Via SlashDot, I read about a study recently released by a group of physicists (Russian and American). From the /. blurb:

"A new paper presented at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland shows the rapid heating of the atmosphere directly above the fault days before the devastating earthquake hit. This is theorized to be the Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling mechanism that occurs when large amounts of radon are released due to massive stress in the fault right before the quake. This can be detected with satellites analyzing infrared waves: 'The radioactivity from this gas ionizes the air on a large scale and this has a number of knock on effects. Since water molecules are attracted to ions in the air, ionization triggers the large scale condensation of water. But the process of condensation also releases heat and it is this that causes infrared emissions.' This is a shift from the Haiti earthquake where DEMETER was used to monitor ultra low frequencies. The presence of radon could also possibly explain erratic wildlife behavior prior to an earthquake."

Seemed worth bumping this thread...

Yeah I'd say that's worth a bump.

[battleshipkropotkin]

Another recent study from Cornell concerning earthquakes:

Astronomical alignments as the cause of ~M6+ seismicity
Authors: Mensur Omerbashich
(Submitted on 11 Apr 2011)

Abstract: I here demonstrate empirically my georesonator concept in which tidally induced magnification of Earth masses' resonance causes seismicity. To that end, I show that all strong (~M6+) earthquakes of 2010 occurred during the Earth's long (t>3 day) astronomical alignments within our solar system. I then show that the same holds true for all very strong (~M8+) earthquakes of the decade of 2000s. Finally, the strongest (M8.6+) earthquakes of the past century are shown to have occurred during the Earth's multiple long alignments, whereas half of the high-strongest (M9+) ones occurred during the Full Moon. I used the comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin), as it has been adding to robustness in terms of very strong seismicity since 2007 (in terms of strongest seismicity: since 1965). The Elenin will continue intensifying the Earth's very strong seismicity until August-October, 2011. Approximate forecast of earthquakes based on my discoveries is feasible. This demonstration proves my hyperresonator concept, arrived at earlier as a mathematical-physical solution to the most general extension of the georesonator concept possible.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2036

The paper in PDF:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1104/1104.2036.pdf

Dr. Omerbashich's website, with updated alignment and seismic tracking:
http://sites.google.com/site/omerbashich/

[tazmic]

This is for all the folks on the West Coast! Track back and look at more of the pictures and ignore the 'duck and cover' crap that we have been fed for all these years!

'Duck and Cover' may be more relevant to the West Coast, than a developing nation.

Triangle of Life - Copp controversy.

Wiki Overview

"The U.S. Department of Justice launched a fraud investigation because Copp received $649,000 from the 9/11 victims fund yet apparently did little or no rescue work and did not suffer the serious injuries he claimed. "

Ad hominem links

He has a blog