@Uncle $cam
Wrong target for a deliberate action in my view – qui bono?
Anyhow, the tourist business in those areas will be down over the next year and that will bring a lot of additional harm adding to the severe direct impact. This means also less state income, less money to redistrbute, more social strife. For Aceh in Indonesia and the Muslim areas in southern Thailand this may increase violent independence movements.

Posted by: b | Dec 26 2004 14:40 utc | 4

.’I will tell you why you are here,..because u know something. What u know u can’t explain, but u feel it, u have felt it your entire life, that there is something wrong with the world. U don’t know what it is but it is there, LIKE A SPINTER IN YOUR MIND, DRIVING YOU MAD.’
I’ve made the ‘Paranoid shift’ and you have to, u just don’t know it yet.
That the Bush administration has desperately fought every attempt to independently investigate the events of 9/11, is not a “theory.”
Nor, finally, is it in any way a “theory” that the one, single name that can be directly linked to the Third Reich, the US military industrial complex, Skull and Bones, Eastern Establishment good ol’ boys, the Illuminati, Big Texas Oil, the Bay of Pigs, the Miami Cubans, the Mafia, the FBI, the JFK assassination, the New World Order, Watergate, the Republican National Committee, Eastern European fascists, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, CIA headquarters, the October Surprise, the Iran/Contra scandal, Inslaw, the Christic Institute, Manuel Noriega, drug-running “freedom fighters” and death squads, Iraqgate, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, the blood of innocents, the savings and loan crash, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the “Octopus,” the “Enterprise,” the Afghan mujaheddin, the War on Drugs, Mena (Arkansas), Whitewater, Sun Myung Moon, the Carlyle Group, Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States, is: George Herbert Walker Bush.
“Theory?” To the contrary.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 26 2004 15:13 utc | 6

although I can unfortunately believe the worst about all the big power brokers the world over, I would have to credit natural forces until I had reason, other than intent, to assume otherwise in this case. nature can be as cruel as humans, and without recourse to hope of justice.
the horror of the sublime, whether created by the small gods of our time or the natural, are equally immoral and uncaring.
the cruelty of the world can drive you mad. the greatest act of rebellion is to maintain your vision of reason and justice when everyone is convinced god is on their side and justifies every inhumane action.
With that in mind, I hope, over the holiday, to get a chance to read
Havoc In It’s Third Year.

Posted by: fauxreal | Dec 26 2004 17:01 utc | 8

Bernhard, is the German media covering this?
Uncle Scam, Friday 26 December, 2003

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 26 2004 19:50 utc | 10

As ever : “Vosotros, fascistas, sois los terroristas”.
Please, any translator?

Posted by: Remember | Dec 26 2004 21:02 utc | 12

Quakes in Iran are nothing new. Their previous capital in Rey, something like 50 miles from Tehran, was completely flattened by an earthquake in the 18th, prompting the shah to move the capital West in the hope the area would be less quake-friendly. In fact, you could basically see one 10.000+ deads earthquake in every decade of the 20th.
Setting up artificially a quake is kinda hard, since we’re not meddling with the 20-km wide close layers of the atmosphere, but with basically the first 1.000 km of the inner Earth, and trying to use electro-magnetism is kinda tricky when an earthquake is essentially a mechanic event – not to mention you’d need a pretty insanely huge electro-magnetic device to try to influence the core, the kind of things that would need the entire US nuclear plants, and would cause magnetic fields whose disruptions would make the Bermuda triangle a mere anecdote. Not to mention that you can’t produce quakes ex nihilo, since their energy comes from the accumulated tensions between tectonic plaques; if there’s been a quake the month before, there’s no tension to release in the area. The basis of quakes is that the longest you have between 2 quakes in a seismic area, the biggest the next one will be – which bodes quite ill for California and Tokyo, I’d say -, so man-made quakes would in fact be counter-productive, imho, since they would release earlier the tension and energy of what would normally have later been a bigger earthquake.
I’d say, stick with market manipulations and bunker-buster nukes, it’s far easier to comprehend and do.
Oh, last funny tidbit, for those who’ve seen larger maps of Sumatra, island closest to the quake’s epicenter, there’s a pretty big lake in the middle of it, which in fact is the massive crumbled caldera of some humungous voclanic complex dating some 100.000 years ago (roughly). This whole area is a big mess of subduction and related volcanic and seismic activities.
But I can understand this is quite puzzling to many Americans, since only the Western third of the country is really concerned with this, so for many of them all this quakes and volcanoes thingie may appear a bit like magical thinking and cargo cult, caused by some remote and powerful entity whose goals are shadowy and hard to guess. Speaking of US and volcanoes, the whole Yellowstone area is a major source of mayhem occasionally; occasionally, as in every few hundreds of thousands of years; mayhem as in some of the biggest eruptions recorded since the ones in the Dekkan who occurred at the time of the end of dinosaurs and their big meteor, up there with the aforementioned Sumatra one.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Dec 27 2004 0:55 utc | 14

“Vosotros, fascistas, sois los terroristas”
=
“You, facists, are the terrorists”

Posted by: wp | Dec 27 2004 12:47 utc | 16

Read it
and weep.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Dec 27 2004 19:51 utc | 18

Yahoo has death toll up to 40,000 now.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Dec 28 2004 12:38 utc | 20

It is hard to grasp this desaster and I find the individual stories the most devastating – I guess because they are easier to relate to than just numbers.
Here are a variety of articles all conserning the tsunami:
The lost generation – Up to half the 60,000 victims of the tsunami are children, says UN. Tens of thousands more are orphaned, and face threat of disease
World unites to help save the stricken as disease threatens
I thought that I couldn’t be anymore disgusted with Bush, but hey, he just done it again, and of course it is all Clintons fault. And yes actions speak louder than words – to me Bush actions say loud and clear I don’t care about this desaster, vacations and clearing brush (I wasn’t aware that Texas had that much brush) is more important.
Aid Grows Amid Remarks About President’s Absence

After a day of repeated inquiries from reporters about his public absence, Bush late yesterday afternoon announced plans to hold a National Security Council meeting by teleconference to discuss several issues, including the tsunami, followed by a short public statement.
Bush’s deepened public involvement puts him more in line with other world figures. In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cut short his vacation and returned to work in Berlin because of the Indian Ocean crisis, which began with a gigantic underwater earthquake. In Britain, the predominant U.S. voice speaking about the disaster was not Bush but former president Bill Clinton, who in an interview with the BBC said the suffering was like something in a “horror movie,” and urged a coordinated international response.
…
Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy. “Actions speak louder than words,” a top Bush aide said, describing the president’s view of his appropriate role.
Some foreign policy specialists said Bush’s actions and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. “When that many human beings die — at the hands of terrorists or nature — you’ve got to show that this matters to you, that you care,” said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. “It’s kind of freaky,” a senior career official said.
The president of Bread for the World, a leading advocacy group lobbying for more U.S. assistance to suffering people abroad, did not criticize the Bush administration, but did urge the United States to play a central role in the relief effort. “This is a disaster of biblical proportions and one that calls for a global response, with the United States playing a key role,” David Beckmann said.

They just don’t learn it seems, now I do hope the US will help, but why do they need to play a key role. Do they think they rest of the World is not able to help. As far as I have seen, at least many of the European Countries have been active helping since sunday, without the US playing any key role.
And finally something for the tin-foil-hat – or maybe not.
Earthquake: Coincidence or a Corporate Oil Tragedy?

According to Jim Cummings of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, Seismic surveys utilizing airguns have been taking place in mineral-rich areas of the world’s oceans since 1968. Among the areas that have experienced the most intense survey activity are the North Sea, the Beaufort Sea (off Alaska’s North Slope), and the Gulf of Mexico; areas around Australia and South America are also current hot-spots of activity.
The impulses created by the release of air from arrays of up to 24 airguns create low frequency sound waves powerful enough to penetrate up to 40km below the seafloor. The “source level” of these sound waves is generally over 200dB (and often 230dB or more), roughly comparable to a sound of at least 140-170dB in air.
According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, these 200dB – 230dB shots from the airguns are fired every few seconds, from 10 meters below the surface, 24 hours a day, weather permitting.
These types of tests are known to affect whales and dolphins, whose acute hearing and use of sonar is very sensitive.
On December 24th there was a magnitude 8.1 earthquake more than 500 miles southeast of Tasmania near New Zealand, with a subsequent aftershock 6.1 a little later in the morning that same day.
On December 26th, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck at the intersection of the Australian tectonic plate and the India tectonic plate. This is the devastating tragedy that we have all heard about. The death toll of this horrific event has reached 52,000 souls and continues to rise.

Does anyone know more about this topic? I just know that vibrations can have a powerful effect. If I remember correctly in physics they thought us that military companies were not allowed to walk in lockstep over a bridge, because of the vibration. So how much more powerful is the effect of those airguns?

Posted by: Fran | Dec 29 2004 6:27 utc | 22

SecDef Cohen warned of earthquake weapons
DoD News Briefing; Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen Monday, April 28, 1997 – 8:45 a.m. EDT:
[…]
Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week’s scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B’nai Brith.
A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we’ve learned in the intelligence community, we had something called — and we have James Woolsey here to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.
So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It’s real.
[…]

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 29 2004 13:22 utc | 24

Should have read the Genesis interpretation first, before commenting. Actually Ritenbaughs comments on Genesis 1:26 in connection with the environment sounds fine to me. However, it seems not many Fundamentalists seem to read it in the same way.

To think that God gave man carte blanche to plunder and destroy the earth is simply ludicrous. He is its Creator! Why would He immediately command Adam to ruin it? Would any woodworker, upon just finishing a beautifully stained piece of furniture, tell his son to break it up for firewood? No! Just as God desires for His creation, the woodworker would put his handiwork to use and also care for it by keeping it waxed and dusted to prolong its life.
This is exactly what God told Adam. Genesis 2 contains a parallel account of creation, adding detail to certain parts of the narrative of the first chapter. Notice God’s expanded instruction: “Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend [dress, KJV] and keep it” (verse 15). This greatly modifies the force of “have dominion” and “subdue it” from Genesis 1:26, 28!
Tend (Hebrew ‘abad) means “to work or serve,” and thus referring to the ground or a garden, it can be defined as “to till or cultivate.” It possesses the nuance seen in the KJV’s choice in its translation: “dress,” implying adornment, embellishment, and improvement.
Keep (Hebrew shamar) means “to exercise great care over.” In the context of Genesis 2:15, it expresses God’s wish that mankind, in the person of Adam, “take care of,” “guard,” or “watch over” the garden. A caretaker maintains and protects his charge so that he can return it to its owner in as good or better condition than when he received it.
To Noah, God gives a similar command after the Flood:
So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. (Genesis 9:1-2)
Once again God gives man dominion over all other life on the earth, and with this renewed authority comes the implicit responsibility to tend and keep what was explicitly given to Adam. In this post-Flood world, God gives mankind a second chance to use and preserve the resources He had so abundantly provided. To that end Noah, after 120 years as a preacher and shipwright, took up farming and planted a vineyard (verse 20). We can assume, from what we know of human nature, that this attitude of stewardship did not pass to very many of his descendants.

Posted by: Fran | Dec 29 2004 20:33 utc | 26