LONDON (Reuters) - The southern end of the San Andreas fault near Los Angeles, which has been still for more than two centuries, is under immense stress and could produce a massive earthquake at any moment, a scientist said on Wednesday.
Yuri Fialko, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California, said that given average annual movement rates in other areas of the fault, there could be enough pent-up energy in the southern end to trigger a cataclysmic jolt of up to 10 meters (32 ft).
"The observed strain rates confirm that the southern section of the San Andreas fault may be approaching the end of the interseismic phase of the earthquake cycle," he wrote in the science journal Nature.
A sudden lateral movement of 7 to 10 meters would be among the largest ever recorded.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake that destroyed San Francisco in 1906 was produced by a sudden movement of the northern end of the fault of up to 21 ft.
Fialko said there had been no recorded movement at the southern end of the fault -- the 800-mile long geological meeting point of the Pacific and the North American tectonic plates -- since the dawn of European settlement in the area.
He said this lack of movement for 250 years correlated with the predicted gaps between major earthquakes at the southern end of the fault of between 200 and 300 years.
Elsewhere on the fault, there were average slippage rates up to a couple of centimeters a year that prevented the build-up of explosive pressure deep underground. Continued.
June 18, 2006 by Rodrigue Tremblay New American Empire
"We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." [ABC 'This Week', March 30, 2003]
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
"It's obvious. [the Iraq War] was a mistake. And I've said this from the very start. I mean, you had no weapons of mass destruction, you had no connection with al-Qaeda, there was no danger to our national security. We don't put young people in harm's way unless we have a threat to our national security."
Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), MSNBC- Meet the Press, June 18, 2006
"If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd American President
Journalists keep asking the above question but are frustrated they never receive a straight answer. It has become more and more obvious to them that, from the start, the official story on Iraq never made sense. Last April, political commentator Chris Matthews of MSNBC-Hardball tried again to elicit an answer when he interviewed Republican Congressman Vin Weber, a card carrying member of the Project for the New American Century. Here is one exchange:
Last Friday, an Israeli gunboat sitting off the Gaza coast deliberately fired shells at a family enjoying a picnic on the beach. Below is a link to the video of the aftermath. Please right click and choose "save as" to download and view it. Spread the word as far and wide as possible. Something must be done to stop this wanton inhumanity.
There is only one word for the actions of the Israeli government and military towards the Palestinian people - slow and steady Genocide.
Ordinary Jews are not to blame for this. The responsibility lies with the small number of psychopathic Israeli right-wing "Zionist" leaders who, we can only assume, actually enjoy the sight of dismembered Palestinian children.
By Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed Inter Press Service
06/12/06 -- BAGHDAD, Jun 12 (IPS) - In the wake of the Haditha massacre, reports of another atrocity have surfaced in which U.S. troops killed two women in Samarra, and then attempted to hide evidence of their responsibility.
Among the innumerable such cases people speak of, this one too has now come to light.
According to an earlier account, Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, a 35-year-old mother of two, was killed in firing along with her 57-year-old cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan on May 30 when they were being transported to Samarra General Hospital for Nabiha to give birth.
What was not reported, according to an Iraqi human rights investigator who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity, was that both women were shot in the back of the head by U.S. snipers.
As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima.
At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several seconds to travel across the sky.
A few minutes later an impact could be heard and geophysics and seismology research foundation NORSAR registered a powerful sound and seismic disturbances at 02:13.25 a.m. at their station in Karasjok.
Farmer Peter Bruvold was out on his farm in Lyngseidet with a camera because his mare Virika was about to foal for the first time.
"I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke," Bruvold told Aftenposten.no. He photographed the object and then continued to tend to his animals when he heard an enormous crash.
"I heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away," Bruvold said.
Astronomers were excited by the news.
"There were ground tremors, a house shook and a curtain was blown into the house," Norway's best known astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard told Aftenposten.no.
Røed Ødegaard said the meteorite was visible to an area of several hundred kilometers despite the brightness of the midnight sunlit summer sky. The meteorite hit a mountainside in Reisadalen in North Troms.
"This is simply exceptional. I cannot imagine that we have had such a powerful meteorite impact in Norway in modern times. If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the (atomic) bomb," Røed Ødegaard said.
The astronomer believes the meteorite was a giant rock and probably the largest known to have struck Norway.
"The record was the Alta meteorite that landed in 1904. That one was 90 kilos (198 lbs) but we think the meteorite that landed Wednesday was considerably larger," Røed Ødegaard said, and urged members of the public who saw the object or may have found remnants to contact the Institute of Astrophysics.
Support First U.S. Officer to Resist the illegal Iraq War
For Immediate Action!
"Never in my life did I ever imagine I would have to disobey my president. But then again, never did I imagine my president would lie to go to war, condone torture, spy on Americans, or destroy the career of a CIA agent for political gain. I would rather resign in protest, but the army doesn't agree."
June 2, 2006
First U.S. military officer poised to publicly refuse orders in support of the illegal Iraq War requests your immediate support and assistance. Having already attempted to resign his commission in protest, he now poised to refuse deployment via simultaneous, cross-country press conferences, within days.
"I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to watch families torn apart, while the President tells us to "stay the course." . . . I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression. I wanted to be there for my fellow troops. But the best way was not to help drop artillery and cause more death and destruction. It is to help oppose this war and end it so that all soldiers can come home." - LT, US Army officer*
A working group has formed to facilitate an unprecedented political and legal support campaign on his behalf. Well respected civilian legal representation has been secured. A legal and political defense fund has been created. Many of us have already met LT* and have been moved by his determination to help stop an unjust war.
We envision a broad political support campaign with this petition as our basis of unity:
There are children standing here, Arms outstretched into the sky, Tears drying on their face. He has been here. Brothers lie in shallow graves. Fathers lost without a trace. A nation blind to their disgrace, Since he's been here.
And I see no bravery, No bravery in your eyes anymore. Only sadness.
Houses burnt beyond repair. The smell of death is in the air. A woman weeping in despair says, He has been here. Tracer lighting up the sky. It's another families' turn to die. A child afraid to even cry out says, He has been here.
And I see no bravery, No bravery in your eyes anymore. Only sadness.
There are children standing here, Arms outstretched into the sky, But no one asks the question why, He has been here. Old men kneel and accept their fate. Wives and daughters cut and raped. A generation drenched in hate. Yes, he has been here.
And I see no bravery, No bravery in your eyes anymore. Only sadness.
A MASSIVE ocean vortex discovered off the West Australian coast is acting as a "death trap" by sucking in huge amounts of fish larvae and could affect the surrounding climate.
A team of scientists from The University of Western Australia Murdoch University, CSIRO and three American, French and Spanish research institutions announced the discovery of the vortex after a month-long research voyage in the ocean just west of Rottnest Island.
Led by Dr Anya Waite, a biological oceanographer from UWA, the 10-member team found the vortex – 200km in diameter and 1000m deep – spinning at speeds up to 5kph just off the Rottnest Canyon.
Dr Waite said the vortex, shaped like a giant child's spinning top, was created by current movement down the coast and is one of the largest ever found off of WA.
Visible from space, the vortex is acting as a "death trap" by sucking in fish larvae from closer to the shore, she said.
"It's actually acting as a predator, it's actually taking the fish larvae which need to stick around their natural habitat on the coast, and dragging them off to sea," Dr Waite said.
She said the climate above the vortex was noticeably different.
"It feels like you're in the tropics," she said.
"It's warm, soft, moist air, with flying fish, it's a very different environment."
It could also potentially affect climate further afield, she said.
"The vortex is moving a large volume of a very warm current out back into cooler waters, so essentially it's taking that heat and moving it away from the coast.
"So essentially that really changes the heat budget of our regional ocean and it's the ocean that determines climate."
Dr Waite said the vortex was unlikely to pose a danger to people sailing or diving in the area but the change was definitely noticeable.
"We were in a 70-metre boat and you could immediately feel the shift in the ship's tract, so you can certainly tell that there's something unusual going on out there," she said.
Looks like some serious manipulation is happening.
by Lisa Guliani
On May 31, 2006 at 4:30 pm I received an unexpected phone call from Patsy Smullin, owner of KOBI-TV Channel 5 in Medford, Oregon. If you read my latest article entitled, Jeff Rense: A Reinvention of What? then you know that Patsy Smullin is Jeff Rense’s former employer. This was our third conversation in a weeks’ time, and regrettably it wasn’t as cordial as our previous exchanges.
Ms. Smullin began the conversation by asking, “Have you heard from the Eugene attorney yet?” She sounded extremely nervous and agitated and her voice was shaking.
I responded with, “An attorney; for what? No, I haven’t heard from anybody. What is this about?”
Smullin was having great difficulty expressing herself, and I was trying to put together the gist of what she was attempting (but unable) to say.
Smullin: You called me asking for Jeff Rense’s dates of employment and I had to do a lot of work to get that information for you. I had to go into another building to get that information for you.”
Me: “Yes, and I thank you. But what are you talking about now? What attorney? I don’t understand what you mean.”
Smullin: “You need to remove those two sentences from your article.”
Me: “Which sentences?”
Smullin: “The ones about Jeff Rense being a compulsive liar, and about him not being known for his honesty. You need to remove those.”
Me: “Why should I remove them? I didn’t misquote you at all. I wrote down exactly what you said. I have it in my notes. You knew I was writing an article.”
Smullin: (in a low voice): “That’s not the way I remember it.” (A pause, then excitedly) “You don’t seem to understand. I’m trying to help you.”
Me: “No, I don’t understand, because you haven’t told me what you’re talking about. That’s not the way you remember it? We just spoke YESTERDAY. What are you saying? Are you now suddenly denying that you made those comments? Are you calling me a liar? I wrote exactly what you told me.” No response to my questions. (Another pause.)
Smullin: “I’m saying you need to be very careful. I can’t say anymore.”
Me: “I need to be careful? Careful of what? Are you saying somebody’s going to sue me? If so; for what … for quoting you?”
Smullin: “No, no. I really can’t say anymore. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called, I’m sorry. I can’t say anymore.” Click.
Well, well, well; isn’t this interesting? Patsy Smullin seemed frightened – not at all the way she had sounded during our first two conversations. Previously, she’d sounded upbeat, friendly and more at ease. We’d had two very pleasant phone conversations; one on Friday, May 26, 2006 and the second on Tuesday, May 30, 2006. Ms. Smullin was indeed very helpful in providing the requested dates of employment as I’d requested. She was also quick to respond to my questions, and related recollections of Jeff Rense, her former employee.
At this point, I’d like to be very clear: Patsy Smullin knew perfectly well why I had contacted her. I fully identified myself right from the start, both with her secretary/assistant and to her personally. It is not my tendency to beat around the bush with people, so I told her that I’m an independent freelance writer and the purpose for my call was fact checking. In addition, I laid it out in no uncertain terms (within the first two minutes of our initial contact on May 26, 2006) that I was working on an article about Jeff Rense, and that this fact-checking was necessary in order to verify some information contained in online bios referencing his previous broadcast journalism career.
Let’s get this straight: Nobody forced Ms. Smullin to return my phone messages, to respond to my inquiries, or to answer any single question posed to her. Nobody tricked her, lied to her, or twisted her arm to do any of the above, and no one made her call on May 30th to provide me with the dates of Jeff Rense’s previous term of employment at KOBI-TV. She did these things of her own free will. To be honest, I didn’t expect her to call me back at all. I suspect that others in her position simply would not.
Moreover, I quoted Smullin’s responses precisely, as in verbatim-word-for-word regarding every single statement attributed to her in my article. Any and all of those comments she did make, voluntarily, and without embellishment, exaggeration or assistance from me.
Apparently, 24 hours after my article hit the Internet, “Somebody” had a real problem with the fact that I talked to Patsy Smullin. It is my distinct impression that “Somebody” wasn’t expecting this particular connection to happen. Surprise, surprise, Jeff. “Somebody” was undoubtedly blindsided by this piece – and I’m telling you right now, it wasn’t Patsy Smullin. My impression is that Smullin is a very nice lady, and someone is trying to intimidate her based upon this peculiar phone call I’ve just described “for the record”.
Thus far, I have not been contacted by the aforementioned “Eugene attorney,” but if this does happen, I’ll certainly apprise everyone of the situation. I’m a little amused at how little time it took for “Somebody” to completely unravel and start throwing their weight around behind the scenes over this latest article I’ve written. I’ll give you three guesses as to who is driving the intimidation machine. Nah, this one’s a no-brainer. Make that one guess. Question: Is this how Jeff Rense intends to respond to my article? By putting the “thumb” on people? Fine, Jeff. If that’s how you want to play, then so be it.
Just so everybody; and particularly “Somebody” knows: I stand behind every single word written in my article – completely, and 110%. Furthermore, I do not intend to remove anything, including and particularly, the two sentences in which I quoted Patsy Smullin during our conversations. The two sentences that allegedly needed removal addressed the “honesty” of Jeff Rense and were the personal opinion of someone who actually knew him, as related to me over the course of two separate phone discussions. Patsy Smullin’s statements were quoted by me accurately, verbatim, and in their proper context; and it should be noted that she would be considered a very credible source of information.
Let it be known that I have never once in my life removed or retracted truthful information from any of my articles, and I am not going to be intimidated into such a cowardly act now by anybody, including a convoy of legal guns from Eugene, Oregon. I stand by EVERY SINGLE WORD in that piece. Patsy Smullin should be commended for telling the truth. Maybe the monkey should get off her back. She didn’t write the article. I did.
Message to Jeff Rense: You know exactly where I am and how to contact me. So, if you’ve got something to say to me, then be a man and do it directly, if you have the cajones. Unlike you, I don’t cower in shadows, wear wigs to disguise my identity, or put the squeeze on people - whether overtly or behind the scenes. Furthermore, it is not in my nature to shrink from cowards, hypocrites, liars, bullies, or from truth. I confront each of these squarely head-on, and will most certainly not shrink from the likes of you or any of your “legal thugs”. One would hope you’re adult enough to do the same.
I do not – and never will - fear the truth. Interestingly enough, it appears that you do. If you want to come after someone, well, here I am.
