Indonesia's devastating 'mud volcano' could keep spewing for the next 30 years, filling the equivalent of 50 Olympic-size swimming pools every day, a top Australian expert warned on Thursday.
Curtin University of Technology's doctor Mark Tingay, who has just returned from the disaster site in East Java, said about 100,000 people remained under threat from subsidence three years after the volcano first erupted.
"In effect, the whole region around the vent hole is sinking by about two to five centimetres each day due to the rising mud level, causing more damage to suburban villages and triggering frequent bursts of flammable gas around homes," he said, according to a Geological Society of Australia statement.
Tingay added that damage caused by the mud, which has been devouring land and homes in Sidoarjo district since May 2, 2006, was estimated at about 4.9 billion dollars.
The volcano has buried 12 villages, killed 13 people, displaced more than 42,000 residents and wiped out 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of densely populated farming and industrial land.
He said the volcano could produce enough scalding mud to fill Sydney Harbour twice over in the next 30 years but admitted the time-scale was only an estimate.
"The high flow-rate may only continue for two to three years, or it might continue for hundreds of years," Tingay said. "And like other mud volcanoes, Lusi will probably be in existence for thousands of years, even if its flow-rate subsides," he added.
Australian oil and gas giant Santos, which was drilling in the area when the volcano erupted, by September had declared previsions of just 88.5 million dollars to cover the clean-up cost.
In December, Santos exited the project and said it would pay an Indonesian firm 22.5 million US dollars "to support long-term mud management efforts" at the site.
#2
You know, this is one of those reasons why my Geology professor likes to say, "I wouldn't want to live there" And he doesn't. Apparently the criteria was no volcanoes, big earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes or polar bears.
Zahra, an Iranian woman studying at an English university, is in a state of terror. Her husband, an activist in the cause of the defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, was arrested a fortnight ago, and has not been seen since. Zahra, whose eyes are lined in green, the colour of the country's reformist opposition, told the BBC: "Why should he be in jail? What was wrong with what we did in Tehran? It was the basic right of all Iranians to take part in the election." She went on: "They don't let my husband call me . . . this is torture." It is torture for Zahra because she has a good idea of what is happening to her husband. The Iranian state media have been broadcasting a series of "confessions" by demonstrators against the alleged rigging of the presidential vote in favour of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They all tend to say the same thing: "I admit that I demonstrated under the influence of the BBC, the Voice of America and other foreign media."
Their identities are not discernible, because their faces have been obscured. The reason for this was made horribly clear by remarks in The Guardian from a shopkeeper friend of an 18-year-old who had been "questioned" by the Iranian security services: "You could tell straight away he had just been released. His face was bruised all over. His teeth were broken and he could hardly open his eyes . . . [Later] the doctor told me that he had suffered rupture of the rectum." The shopkeeper quoted his 18-year-old friend to the effect that he had not "confessed" despite several days of beating while being hung from a ceiling with his hands and feet tied together. At that point two men tore his clothes off while a third "did it" -- that is, inflicted the assault that ruptured his rectum. He was raped several times in this way, in front of four other detainees, but continued to refuse to sign a confession along the lines suggested by his interrogators. So when we hear Ayatollah Jannati, chief of the Guardian Council, say of arrested Iranian employees of the British embassy in Tehran, "Naturally they will be put on trial, they have made confessions," we should be only too aware of what will have been happening to some of Her Majesty's servants.
Few people, men or women, are able to withstand such interrogations, especially if they have family members vulnerable to the threat of arrest. Even such a strong personality as the Canadian-Iranian journalist and film-maker Maziar Bahari -- who was brave enough to work in Iraq after the invasion of 2003, and also to make films about an HIV-infected man's search for love in theocratic Iran -- has now made a confession. After nine days' detention, Bahari emerged to describe western journalists in Iran as "spies". Immediately before he disappeared, Bahari had given Britain's Channel 4 News footage of members of Iran's volunteer paramilitary force, the basiji, opening fire on a crowd of protesters. Press TV, the Iranian English-language service which broadcasts internationally from London, did not manage to show this film of the basiji in action. However, it did report Bahari's confession without a scintilla of scepticism, thus: "Bahari explained the nature of some of his activities in Iran over the past years and the role that the western media had played in the events which unfolded . . . Bahari specifically highlighted the role of the BBC, CNN [and] Euronews." This account could almost have been designed as a self-advertisement for Press TV; it was launched two years ago by the Iranian government to counter what Ahmadinejad described on its first day of broadcasting as "a media global war" against Iran.
Continued on Page 49
Pakistan: Here We Go Again It appears impossible to get a straight story out of the Government of Pakistan. The other day a bomber on a motorcycle attacked a bus and wounded 30 in Rawalpindi, the Army's HQ. Government said the workers were from an arms manufacturing installation at Taxila, where Pakistan has several armament factories.
Turns out the bus was carrying Kahuta nuclear facility workers.
Now, that doesn't bother us one way or the other, even though it gives the western media another chance to make stories about the danger to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Unlike the west, we aren't the least bit impressed by the handful of weapons Pakistan has, and we're becoming increasingly sure for a variety of reasons we cannot share that actually the Pakistanis are right when they say there is no threat to their arsenal.
What bothers us that there just seems to be no story originating with the Government that is wholly truthfully. This is why we've been skeptical about the counteroffensive against the Taliban in the NWFP. There really is no reason to believe the Government. This bus incident is just one more reason we say that.
#1
we're becoming increasingly sure for a variety of reasons we cannot share that actually the Pakistanis are right when they say there is no threat to their arsenal.
Inshallah maintenance by engineers who studied the abilities of djinns, perhaps? I learnt here that nuclear weapons need frequent and fiddly maintenance by highly trained technicians, else they become very highly polished paperweights.
#3
(Sigh)
Spellcheck is my friend,
Spellcheck is my friend
Occasional glasses wipe helps too,
So Solly.
What's with this new quiz to post?
We really get that many trolls, and while I'm at it, my nym's started vanishing again.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/05/2009 21:38 Comments ||
Top||
Morteza Kazemian
In a letter to the head of Iran's judiciary, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has requested an investigation into the death of Neda Agha Soltan.
In his letter he writes, "In view of the extensive commentary about this painful incident and the wide-ranging propaganda by foreign media and other evidence, the interference of those who oppose the Iranian nation or are inimical to it for the purpose of using this event for political purposes and to destroy the image of the Islamic republic is definitively clear."
While the difficult and cold conditions that are prevalent in Iran today may appear that pondering on this letter may not be appropriate, there are quite a few issues in it that deserve comment.
" More fundamentally, what is Ahmadinejad's clear position on the violent street crackdown and actions against those protesting the results of the election in the days after June 12th, and the wide arrests, mistreatment of those detained, etc? "
1-As the highest executive official of the country, is Ahmadinejad aware of other killings that took place after the tenth presidential election?
2-Do the deaths of a number of Iranian citizens deserve the creation of a special investigative committee?
3-Does Ahmadinejad know the perpetrators of the other deaths, or those who may have ordered them?
4-From Ahmadinejad's perspective, did the people who lost their lives following the June 12 election deserve to die or where these homicides?
5-Is Ahmadinejad's letter to Hashemi Shahrudi to clarify the facts over the murder of Neda Agha Soltan or to confirm the view and his determination about the "involvement of the opposition" in this regard for political purposes?
6-Had not been "extensive commentary" and "wide-ranging propaganda" over Neda Agha Soltan's heartbreaking murder, as Ahmadinejad believes there was, would he still have called for an investigation on this?
7-Why is it that Ahmadinejad calls for investigating the violation of basic rights of Iranians only when the issue is covered widely in the media or takes a global perspective?
8-More fundamentally, what is Ahmadinejad's clear position on the violent street crackdown and actions against those protesting the results of the election in the days after June 12th, and the wide arrests, mistreatment of those detained, etc?
There are many questions that exist for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are not few, and without being presumptuous, one can be patient and wait to receive a response. But sooner or later, real and truthful answers will emerge, even if they don't come from Ahmadinejad, and they will be recorded in history and in books, where they will remain intact.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/05/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
Three weeks after Iran was shaken by its most serious unrest since the 1979 revolution, the dust seems to have settled. Banned and broken up by force, the largely peaceful, massive protest demonstrations have fizzled out.
The Guardian Council - the powerful, appointed watchdog body - has formally endorsed the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose unexpectedly large declared margin of victory triggered the protests.
On the face of it, Tehran and other Iranian cities now look much as they did before the 12 June elections. So does that mean everything is back to normal, and nothing has changed?
That seems unlikely.
The disturbances, and the crisis they expressed, have left much unsettled business, and many unanswered questions.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/05/2009 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.
