A shorter article in the Sunday Parade magazine sent me searching for this:
Underground coal fires are relentlessly incinerating millions of tons of coal around the world. The blazes spew out huge amounts of air pollutants, force residents to flee their homes, send toxic runoff flowing into waterways, and leave the land above as scarred as a battlefield. "A global environmental catastrophe" is how geologist Glenn B. Stracher described the situation.
Stracher, of East Georgia College in Swainsboro, organized an international symposium on the topic at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "This symposium is dedicated to disclosing the severity of the coal fires problem," Stracher said, noting that some of the fires have been burning for centuries with few people aware of the problem.
Concern and action is needed, he said, because of the environmental impact -- especially of mega-fires burning in India, China and elsewhere in Asia. One coal fire in northern China, for instance, is burning over an area more than 3,000 miles wide and almost 450 miles long.
"The direct and indirect economic losses from coal fires are huge," said Paul M. van Dijk, a Dutch scientist who is tracking the Chinese blazes via satellite. He estimated that the Chinese fires alone consume 120 million tons of coal annually. That's almost as much as the annual coal production in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois combined. And no scrubbers! The horror!
The Chinese fires also make a big, hidden contribution to global warming through the greenhouse effect, scientists said. Each year they release 360 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as much as all the cars and light trucks in the United States.
And Al Gore won't say a word about it, either ...
Soot from the fires in China, India and other Asian countries are a source of the "Asian Brown Haze." It's a 2-mile thick cloud of soot, acid droplets and other material that sometimes stretches across South Asia from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka. The cloud causes acid rain that damages crops, cuts sunlight reaching the ground by 10 to 15 percent, and has been implicated in thousands of annual lung disease deaths. All linked to global warming!
Mine fires are frustratingly difficult and costly to extinguish, panelists said. Weapons range from backfilling mine shafts to cutting off the oxygen supply with a new foam-like grout that's squirted into mine shafts like shaving cream and then expands to sniff out the fire. Most are simply left alone to burn until they eventually exhaust their fuel supply. The Parade article talked about a new nitrogen-based foam to suffocate the fire.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/26/2007 13:15 ||
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#1
Sorry, no "r" in the word "mine".
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/26/2007 13:28 Comments ||
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#2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_fire
Centralia, Pennsylvania fire, which has been burning since 1962. Of the hundreds of mine fires in the United States burning today, most are found in the state of Pennsylvania.
thousands of inextinguishable mine fires are burning, especially in China and India
Australia's Burning Mountain, the oldest known coal fire, has burned for 6,000 years
Posted by: john frum ||
08/26/2007 13:37 Comments ||
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#3
The Chinese fires also make a big, hidden contribution to global warming through the greenhouse effect, scientists said. Each year they release 360 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as much as all the cars and light trucks in the United States.
#5
Actually, coal fires result in global cooling. PBS showed a documentary on this pointing out that the human activites causing global warming and those causing global cooling are in near balance.
Any attempt to cut out one set of activities is as likely to trigger an ice age as anything else.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
08/26/2007 13:53 Comments ||
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#6
Luckily, China is exempt from the limitations of the Kyoto treaty, so it doesn't matter how much CO2 or other pollution they produce.
#7
Guam K57 Caller > asked host the question "Do the people of Guam wish to die for the United States", ala proposed US military buildup. *MVARIETY > JAPAN TO CONTROL MOST OF BUILDUP MONEY. Other - PROPOSED AIRFIELD [light? planes] MAY BE BUILT NEAR RACE WAY [Guam's Route 15]. Since CHINA has formally but quietly asked the USA to divide the Pacific into two differentiated "Sphere of Influence-Control", WESTPAC controlled by CHINA, EASTPAC by USA, to my parent, relatives, and friends for many years now I've said a similar question must be asked "Do the people of Guam, ec. [WESTPAC]wish to live under Communist China?"m espec under the risk of being forcibly removed back to mainland China to be worked to death in the camps and industrial factories???
German authorities will destroy 160,000 poultry at a Bavarian farm following the discovery there of the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu, local authorities said Saturday.
Tests on a number of ducks from the farm at Wachenroth near the southern city of Erlangen, 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Munich, confirmed the strain, local authority spokeswoman Annika Fritzsche told AFP.
Investigations will continue to determine how the virus -- which in its highly pathogenic strain can also infect humans, sometimes fatally -- entered the farm, Fritzsche said.
It was detected in three young ducks from a batch delivered four weeks ago by a supplier in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, whose premises will also be inspected, a spokeswoman for the agriculture ministry in Berlin said.
H5N1 was found in other ducks in Bavaria this month and over the summer around 50 wild birds were found dead with the virus across the country.
Wild birds can infect domesticated birds with the highly pathogenic strain. Experts fear it will mutate into a strain that can be transmitted between humans.
#1
Nobody gets quite as authoritarians as Germans during a health alert. I spoke with a German physician who still remembered a trichinosis outbreak in the 1950s, thirty-five years before, and how overnight, the city of Stuttgart was much as it had been during the early 1940s.
Except in this case, the 3am knock on the door came to anyone who sold meat. Even canned meat. And they would inspect their store from then through the entire next day. Every square inch, and in the methodical Germanic manner.
It turned out that someone had shot a bear, and shared the meat with their friends. Bears are also carriers of trichinosis.
(N.B.: And you *don't even* want to know what their punishment is for adulterating beer. Some things are just too horrible to know.)
(SomaliNet)The president of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in northeast Somalia Adde Muse Hersi said on Saturday that they have nothing to do with the decisions of Somalis federal parliament over the oil contracts with the foreign companies.
Speaking to the local media today, Puntland President said he could not accept any outcome from the Somali parliament based in Baidoa that would damage the rights of the Puntlands natural resources. We would not abide by the resolutions of the parliament in Baidoa and Puntland has rights to decide about the boodle and the baksheesh its oil and gas resources, he said.
The presidents comment came week ago when the Somalis premier Ali Mohamed Gedi told the press that no deal would be regarded compatible until the new legislation is ratified. He called on foreign companies to negotiate only with the interim government. Recently, the second deputy parliament speaker Osman Elmi Boqare said they had received documents from the country's senior officials over oil contracts they signed with foreign oil companies.
Puntland, which is now booming economically, is growing more concern over the future decisions by the federal parliament believing that oil bill will redirect power and potential wealth away from the region. It has been involving in contracts with the with Australia's Range Resources, giving the company exploratory rights to minerals and oil reserves in region.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/26/2007 00:01 ||
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How Angola's experts will train our police and military in the art of shooting straight...at us!
Here's a name that should be giving some of us a few sleepless nights - General Francisco Pereira Furtado. The General is Chief of Staff to the Angolan Armed Forces, but he's not in Angola at this time, he's right here in Zimbabwe, and believe me that is bad news.
General Furtado flew in last week, and has been making a tour of our defence establishments. He is, he says frequently, looking for areas where Angolan expertise can "enhance the performance" of Zimbabwe's military and police personnel.
"Enhance the performance"? That's just military double-talk. What it means is, teaching our guys to use their guns.
Soon - possibly in the next few weeks - instructors from Angola's feared police "ninjas", a nickname earned by their all-black uniforms and their savagery, will be arriving in Zimbabwe, while selected Zimbabwe police and army members will pass them going the other way, to Angola.
Concentrated training will ensue. The result, the Mugabe government hope, will be that when the next election looms, and when opposition activists and supporters take to the streets, the average Zimbabwean army ranker or constable will shoot the demonstrator he aims at, and not the one next to him, or one of his own colleagues, or one of his own feet.
I revealed the need felt by the Mugabe government to train its forces in the use of weapons back in March, in the First Post. Police Commissioner August Chihuri said then, in a leaked memo, that his junior officers needed "practical skills". He meant they were bad at killing people.
At the time the plan was to import some 3,000 ninjas from Angola to help out in a really hands-on way. They would kill people for us. But this was abandoned when someone remembered that such a scheme would cost foreign exchange, which we don't have.
So in its place comes this intensive Angolan training programme, which will involve almost every Zimbabwean who wears a uniform - police, prisons officers, army and airforce - and soon all of them will be skilled in the gentle art of shooting their fellow countrymen and women.
#1
So what has happened to Bob's Famous Fifth Brigade, trained by N-Kors?
They not up to the job through lack of food and pay? Ok, let's see, Angolan ninjas, they good, they all blacked up with nice uniforms, and not from any tribe round here, all is good.
ZANU-PF approved, rubber-stamped by OAU or whoever, kick-backs to all top people.
#2
They're all retired & kicking back in the ruins of Ma & Pa Rodesier's confiscated farms. Why run around killin' folks when you've got all the land you can neglect, courtesy of commandant Bob? Ask Farmin B. Hard, I seem to remember he was some sort of non-com in the Fifth.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
08/26/2007 12:42 Comments ||
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So what has happened to Bob's Famous Fifth Brigade, trained by N-Kors?
Probably working security in neighboring presidential palaces. And let's not forget the Libyan-trained smugglers and prostitutes, er, ZANU-PF youths. Thing is - Bob has a high desertion rate in his uniformed-ranks.
Sooo... Zim has (Chinese-contracted) Paki pilots, techs and mid/upper staff personnel. Now Angolan... trainers. I wonder if the Chinese are paying for them (up-front) as well.
JEDDAH According to a report the rate of domestic servants fleeing their sponsors in Saudi Arabia is as high as 70 per cent.
The other thirty percent must be chained to their beds.
This, coupled with such countries as the Philippines and Indonesia, refusing to send maids to the Kingdom unless their salaries are increased, has given rise to demand for runaway maids.
Many maids run away from their sponsors as a result of alleged torture, nonpayment of salaries and difficult working conditions. Muhammed Al Dowaish, a legal consultant at the ministry, said that if the maids have any problem with sponsors, they should approach the police, the labour office or the governorate for a solution.
According to Saudi government statistics, over 30 per cent of runaway maids are Indonesians. A source at the Indonesian Embassy said that they receive about 10 complaints from maids every day. Most of them involve abuse and include severe beatings, suicide, kidnapping, rape, withholding of salary for months and years, sexual harassment and impregnation.
In other words, just the usual in the Magic Kingdom.
Saudis say that the authorities need to find a solution to the problem.
More chains?
It will only cause an increase in the demand for runaway maids because people are left with no other choice. They have urged the government to look into bringing maids from other countries to solve the shortage of maids.
The Philippines has refused to send maids to the kingdom unless they receive SR1,500 per month. The Indonesian government is demanding SR800 for their maids. About 50,000 Indonesian maids currently await permission to leave Indonesia for the Kingdom. Sri Lankan agencies have also demanded increases in the salaries of maids to SR600.
How much do the respective governments get in kickbacks?
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/26/2007 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Little Eva the BroodHound ||
08/26/2007 13:15 Comments ||
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#3
Please note how there is absolutely no mention of any craqckdown upon the maids' employers for rape, torture, physical assault, sexual harassment, false imprisonment or all of those other things that The Master Race does so very well. Remember, folks, Saudi Arabia was the last country on this planet to finally ban slavery. That was all the way back in 1962!
Labour is facing an official inquiry into an alleged front organisation, financed by millionaire Muslim businessmen, which has donated more than £300,000 to the party. The electoral watchdog, which polices political funding, confirmed that it was investigating donations to Labour from a group called Muslim Friends of Labour. Its findings are expected to lead to a full-blown inquiry the first potential sleaze probe to hit Labour since Gordon Brown became prime minister in June.
Imran Khand, a Glasgow-based entrepreneur, is revealed as a leading financial backer behind Muslim Friends, which funnelled £100,000 a month to Labour between March and June. As his money is paid to Muslim Friends - rather than directly to the Labour party - his identity has until now remained secret. The Electoral Commission is probing whether Labour has broken laws on the disclosure of donations by hiding the true source of its financing.
Khand is a close associate of Mohammad Sarwar, the controversial Labour MP who chairs the organisation. Sarwar was embroiled in a vote-rigging scandal in the late 1990s which saw him suspended from the parliamentary Labour party. He was later cleared of the allegations in the High Court.
Khand has recently set up a series of companies with a Pakistani arms salesman and is also funding a British parliamentary inquiry into tackling terrorism via another organisation. He has never been publicly named as a Labour donor although Muslim Friends has risen to become the partys second most generous nontrade union benefactor. It is understood that most Labour Muslim MPs and peers are members.
Muslim Friends, which until recently gave only modest amounts, is set up as an unincorporated association which does not publish accounts or reveal the source of its funding. It is registered to a PO box address in south London. Labour politicians have previously criticised the Conservatives for accepting money from a similar unincorporated association involving Robert Edmiston, a Midlands car dealer.
Yesterday Sarwar, who is to step down at the next election, refused to reveal who funded the donations. I will not name names. We have made a decision not to release the information. That is the decision of the board of Muslim Friends of Labour, he said. He added that the organisation was very powerful and was regularly consulted by ministers drawing up policies of interest to the Muslim community.
Another senior member of Muslim Friends disclosed that Khand was the leading benefactor. He revealed that Sarwar, himself a multi-millionaire, had also provided funding. One leading Muslim Labour figure said: I am staggered how much money they are giving suddenly. It started off in the wake of 2001 when Muslims were facing serious challenges, but now it seems to be Sarwar and his friends. Last week Khand refused to comment on his donations to Muslim Friends.
Yesterday, when asked to justify its decision to accept donations from Muslim Friends, the Labour party said it would take steps to ensure that donors to the group were made public.
Senior police officers have been warning for several months that a growing number of teenagers in big cities are becoming involved in gun crime.
The age of victims and suspects has fallen over the past three years as the availability of firearms in some cities has risen. Liverpool and Manchester are the cities where illegal guns are most readily available, with criminals claiming that some weapons are being smuggled from Ireland. Sawn-off shotguns are now being sold for as little as £50, and handguns for £150.
Despite a ban on handguns introduced in 1997 after 16 children and their teacher were shot dead in the Dunblane massacre the previous year, their use in crimes has almost doubled to reach 4,671 in 2005-06. Official figures show that although Britain has some of the toughest anti-gun laws in the world, firearm use in crime has risen steadily. This year eight young people have been killed in gun attacks: six in London and one each in Manchester and Liverpool.
Illegal firearms have become increasingly accessible to younger offenders who appear more likely to use these firearms recklessly, a report on gun crime commissioned by the Home Office cautioned last year.
The research supports warnings from police chiefs in Merseyside and London about the spread of gun use in gangs and among teenagers.
Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Chief Constable of Merseyside, said this year that although gun crime in the area had fallen there had been an increase in the number of teenagers involved in firearms crimes.
Figures from the Metropolitan Police show that the average age of gun crime victims in London fell from 24 to 19 between 2004-06 and that there was a similar trend among suspects charged in connection with shootings.
Mr Hogan-Howe said that youths were being protected by a wall of silence, and he demanded a new law to compel the public to give information about gun crime. He said that action must be taken to break down the power base of families involved in gun crime. Families who do nothing to stop their childrens involvement in gun crime put society at risk and could find themselves identifying their child in the morgue, he said.
The Home Office research highlighted how guns were an integral part of a gang culture in which guns were used to deal with disputes. In the context of firearm ownership, even quite trivial disputes may result in shootings as the presence of guns elevates threat levels and the so-called shoot or be shot scenario precipitates pre-emptive violence, the study said.
Policies to help to deal with the problem were considered at a scheduled No 10 summit yesterday, chaired by Gordon Brown and attended by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, Beverley Hughes, the Childrens Minister, Lord Hunt, the Justice Minister, as well as police chiefs and local government leaders.
It was the first of a series of meetings to tackle the issue. Mandatory minimum jail sentences for carrying knives and requiring people to give information if they are aware that people have illegal weapons are among the ideas under discussion. Mrs Smith has asked the Serious Organised Crime Agency to look atways to curb the importation of illegal weapons.
After the 90-minute meeting, the Prime Minister said: Make no mistake about this the people responsible will be tracked down, they will be arrested and they will be punished. He said that the Home Office would be earmarking ten areas for an intensive campaign against gun and knife crime. The areas will be announced next week.
Mr Brown added that families would be offered greater support. The vast majority of young people are decent and law-abiding. They too want to feel safe and secure on our streets. Where theres a need for early intervention, we will work very intensively with those families so that young people are deterred from going into gangs and guns and knife crime, he said.
Mrs Smith has outlined a range of measures, including the increased use of Acceptable Behaviour Contracts and a crackdown on the sale of alcohol to under-age children. The Government has issued guidance to police and local authorities on how to use the contracts written pledges to improve behaviour effectively.
David Cameron said that social breakdown would be the central theme of the Conservative election manifesto. Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, called for a change of atmosphere in communities with gang violence, but said that there was no simple solution.
#3
Remember, gun control is not about preventing crime-- its about keeping the slaves feeling helples and dependant on their betters.
Posted by: N Guard ||
08/26/2007 9:17 Comments ||
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It's not just the gun control. The criminalization of any self-defense is a big factor, as is the refusal/inability to investigate, prosecute and punish 'petty' crime. England is where New York City would be by now if Giuliani hadn't taken that detour a few years back.
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan successfully tested a new air-launched cruise missile with stealth design on Saturday, the military said in a statement. The missile, named Hatf-8 (Raad), has a range of 350 kms (220 miles) and can carry all types of warheads, the military said. The missile has a low detection probability due to stealth design and materials, it said.
The military said the missile would give its aircraft a strategic stand-off capability on land and at sea.
The test came a month after Pakistan tested the nuclear-capable Babur Hatf VII cruise missile, which has a range of 700 km (435 miles). The Babur was first tested in 2005. The Raad - which means thunder in Arabic - has an accuracy comparable to the Babur missile, the military said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/26/2007 00:00 ||
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They sure have a lot of faith in our GPS.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/26/2007 7:24 Comments ||
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And Chinese engineering...
Posted by: john frum ||
08/26/2007 11:39 Comments ||
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Backchannel diplomacy re-started yesterday with the departure for London of Tariq Aziz, secretary of the National Security Council, for a final round of talks with Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairwoman Benazir Bhutto to win her support for the forthcoming presidential polls by making constitutional amendments to remove legal hurdles for President Gen Pervez Musharrafs re-election.
According to the proposals in Mr Azizs pocket, the president is ready to shed his uniform after the presidential polls. In exchange he would seek the PPPs support for amendments in the Constitution to remove hurdles in the path of his re-election from the current assemblies. But whether they can sell this to Ms Bhutto remains a moot question. Her main concern will be to make sure that she is not seen to be making any deals with an unpopular president in which the people of Pakistan dont get anything. At the very least she is likely to insist that he take off his uniform, give general amnesty from all criminal or corruption charges to all politicians including the Sharifs, and remove the ban on being prime minister for a third time. She may pave the way for his becoming president from the current assemblies but still refuse to vote for him while he is still in uniform.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/26/2007 00:00 ||
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The central working committee (CWC) of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Saturday recommended that Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mian Shahbaz Sharif return to Pakistan before September 10. PML-N Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq presided over the CWC meeting here at the partys central secretariat, which was called to decide the date of the Sharif brothers return to Pakistan and discuss the Supreme Courts decision to allow them back.
Push is coming to shove for Perv as the Islamicists make their moves.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/26/2007 00:00 ||
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President General Pervez Musharraf on Saturday said that exiled former prime minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif would go straight to jail on their return to Pakistan. If they returned to Pakistan they will be jailed, Gen Musharraf told members of parliament and district nazims from Rawalpindi Division at Presidents House, according to sources present at the meeting. The meeting was called in connection with the election campaign of the president.
Gen Musharraf said the Sharif brothers were trying to sabotage the exile agreement reached between them and the government with the help of a brotherly country. He said the government would handle the two brothers on their return.
The Soddies seem to own the Sharif brothers. I doubt if Perv will actually do anything if they return, but at the same time they might talk a great return.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/26/2007 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
JEDDAH According to a report the rate of domestic servants fleeing their sponsors in Saudi Arabia is as high as 70 per cent. 
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan successfully tested a new air-launched cruise missile with stealth design on Saturday, the military said in a statement. The missile, named Hatf-8 (Raad), has a range of 350 kms (220 miles) and can carry all types of warheads, the military said. The missile has a low detection probability due to stealth design and materials, it said.
Backchannel diplomacy re-started yesterday with the departure for London of Tariq Aziz, secretary of the National Security Council, for a final round of talks with Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairwoman Benazir Bhutto to win her support for the forthcoming presidential polls by making constitutional amendments to remove legal hurdles for President Gen Pervez Musharrafs re-election. 
The central working committee (CWC) of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Saturday recommended that Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mian Shahbaz Sharif return to Pakistan before September 10. PML-N Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq presided over the CWC meeting here at the partys central secretariat, which was called to decide the date of the Sharif brothers return to Pakistan and discuss the Supreme Courts decision to allow them back. 
President General Pervez Musharraf on Saturday said that exiled former prime minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif would go straight to jail on their return to Pakistan. If they returned to Pakistan they will be jailed, Gen Musharraf told members of parliament and district nazims from Rawalpindi Division at Presidents House, according to sources present at the meeting. The meeting was called in connection with the election campaign of the president.
