Baja Infotheque Network

Why Haiti’s quake toll higher than Chile’s

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:08:45 +0000

About six weeks ago, a large earthquake devastated Haiti and killed over 200,000 people. Saturday, a huge earthquake releasing 500 times more energy, devastated Chile and killed hundreds.
So why did the smaller earthquake kill so many more people? And why the sudden spate of disastrous earthquakes in the Americas? No, the apocalypse is not coming. No, the two earthquakes are not linked in any way. And no, Pat Robertson, you can’t blame the Devil or the French. The real answers, for those comfortable with science and the Enlightenment, are tectonics and poverty.
Of the many revolutions of the 1960s, the one that really mattered to geologists was the revolution of plate tectonics. Tectonics is the word geologists use to describe the process by which mountains move and rocks squeeze and crunch. In the sixties, new data from research cruises and from earthquake seismometers led to the realization that tectonics makes mountains slide sideways long distances. Earth scientists discovered that the Earth has a patchy skin of mobile plates a hundred miles thick and thousands of miles across, and that they move horizontally at a slow but irresistible pace. It’s where they collide that our problems begin.
South America is a prime example of this process, one that geologists call “subduction.” It’s why we have the long chain of mountains called the Andes and it’s why countries like Chile and Peru suffer giant, destructive earthquakes every few decades.
Off the coast of Chile is a tectonic plate called the Nazca Plate. Unseen by most, it has been inching its way towards the South American continent, and sliding underneath it, for well over a hundred million years. Since the day that Magellan first rounded Tierra del Fuego it has encroached by 130 feet in a roughly east-north-east direction.
The Nazca plate doesn’t slide under the South American plate in an orderly fashion though. It moves in fits and starts, sometimes sticking and sometimes slipping, sometimes here and sometimes there. Along the coast of Chile, patches can get stuck for over a hundred years. When they do finally slip, they go with a bang. All that squeezing energy is released in seconds and an earthquake happens.
On Saturday a patch roughly the size of Maryland came unstuck, unleashing one of the most powerful tremors ever recorded. Fifty years ago, a patch four times bigger and with an area of about 50,000 square miles, the size of Louisiana, slipped and triggered the Valdivia earthquake. Its magnitude has been estimated as at least 9.5, making it the largest earthquake of modern times.
Over millions of years, this tectonic squeezing has formed the Andes and raised the high desert known as the Altiplano. Elsewhere it has created the Alps, the Rockies, the Himalayas, and Tibet. It has also created and distorted some of the islands of the Caribbean, including Haiti.
So that’s why some parts of the world suffer from big earthquakes that strike with irregular frequency, while other regions are seismically quiet: it all depends on where the plates meet and how fast they are running into each other.
Knowing this helps us assess seismic risk and mitigate it. It helps us know where the strongest earthquake shaking will hit and roughly how often. Predicting when the shaking will hit is a much greater challenge, and geophysicists are working hard to reach that goal. In any case, prediction is not the real problem: poverty is.
Poverty is what ultimately kills most people during an earthquake. Poverty means that little or no evaluation is made of seismic risk in constructing buildings and no zoning takes place. It means that building codes are not written, and even if they do exist they are difficult, or impossible, to enforce. It means the choice between building robustly or building cheaply is not a choice at all.
Haiti is a tragic illustration of this. Weak building materials and poor construction standards share much of the blame for the grotesque numbers of fatalities, injured and internally displaced people.
Of course it’s complicated. Earthquake shaking is a complex process and the chain of causation from earthquake source magnitude through infrastructural damage to human harm involves factors like the type of earthquake fault, its orientation, the hardness of bedrock or presence of wet soil, and so on. A lot also depends on the time of day the earthquake strikes in terms of how many people are inside buildings that could collapse. Population density, distance from the epicenter, and the depth of the rupture are the most important factors of all.
Nevertheless, those countries most at risk of seismic tragedy are not simply those on tectonic plate boundaries, but also those with the least money to spend on protecting themselves.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Colin Stark.

Credits 100%: CNN and Colin Stark Orginal here

Colin Stark, Doherty Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, is a geophysicist and geomorphologist whose research is focused on the effects of typhoons and earthquakes on the triggering of landslides and the erosion of mountain rivers.

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Weak U.S. data raises worries about recovery

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:11:37 +0000

This is all about the US economy – what’s the connection to Baja and Mexico?? Well, is their not the saying: “If the American economy coughs the Mexican economy has a flu” or such?? Woth all the positive thinking and hopes: does not look so good at all to the editor. Look at the whole picture…. Does a 20% occupation around xmas at one of the main resort areas in Mexico, Loscabos ring a bell?? How long will the living in self denial within the Baja business people continue until they think of plan “B” ??? One is wondering when observing some of the actions that are going on within some industry. Noticeable in the so called ‘luxury” real estate industry…
The US Commerce Department said Thursday durable goods orders, excluding transportation, slipped 0.6 percent last month, but overall orders jumped as civilian aircraft bookings surged 126 percent. Separately, the number of people filing initial claims for jobless aid rose for a second straight week last week, topping analysts’ expectations, although the figures were likely affected by snowstorms that blanketed parts of the country. “Rising jobless claims and weaker orders suggest the economy is retrenching in the first half of the first quarter,” said Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York. Still, he said the data did not suggest the start of a “double dip” recession. “Some back-and-fill is standard operating procedure in recoveries,” Low said.
The weak reports and threats from rating agencies to downgrade Greece’s sovereign debt pulled U.S. stocks down. Prices for U.S. government debt soared, while the dollar neared a nine-month high against the euro.
The data, coming in the wake of reports showing a drop in consumer confidence and a plunge in new home sales to a record low in January, supported views economic growth would slow in the first quarter after a brisk 5.7 percent pace in the October-December period.
“The fourth quarter was supported by a swing in inventories. That adds to growth, but it’s not something that can be sustained over time,” said Andrew Gledhill, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
“First quarter (growth) will be more dependent on how the U.S. consumer is doing and what kind of production levels manufacturing is doing. It’s more the underlying economy, less the kind of temporary technical factors.”
The economy resumed growth in the second half of 2009 after the worst downturn since the 1930s. However, employment is lagging the recovery and weekly jobless claims have failed to hold retreats made since mid-November.
The latest report from the Labor Department Thursday showed first-time filings for state unemployment benefits rose to 496,000 last week from 474,000 a week earlier. An analyst with the department said snowstorms may have kept some workers sidelined and could have delayed the processing of claims, leading to the unexpectedly large spike.
While economists remained optimistic the economy would start to create jobs in the first half of the year, they worried the continued rise in jobless filings could be a sign of a shift in the downward trend that layoffs had displayed. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also acknowledged the harsh weather could negatively impact employment data, but he said he expected the effects to be temporary.
“We will have to be particularly careful about not over interpreting the data,” he told a congressional committee. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, payrolls have dropped every month, except in November last year when employers added 64,000 jobs.
Durable goods orders, excluding transport, were pulled down last month by the biggest decline in a year in orders for machinery. Economists had expected a 1 percent gain. Disappointment was tempered by an upward revision that showed non-transport orders increased 2 percent in December.
In January, motor vehicles and parts orders saw their largest fall in eight months, and a closely watched gauge of business spending dropped 2.9 percent after a 3.3 percent rise in December.
Shipments, which go into the calculation of GDP, slipped 0.2 percent. They rose 2.4 percent in December.
Some analysts drew comfort from gains in some categories, in particular large orders for computers and electronic products, which they said pointed to increased business investment in equipment and software.
“Unfilled orders increased for the first time since September 2008 and inventories did not fall for the first time since December 2008,” said Tony Crescenzi, portfolio manager at PIMCO in Newport Beach, California. “In this context these data are not as bearish for the economy as the core data suggest.”
Durable goods inventories were flat last month after easing 0.2 percent in December. Unfilled orders rose 0.1 percent, snapping a record 15 straight months of decline.

b.i.n. = Baja Infortheque Network.

Lavish hotels out of vogue

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:47:06 +0000

Interesting reading, in particular when considering the blown out of proportion “lifestyle” area around Loscabos. We all see how the recession did affect that area and the people living and working there. (Yeah, the editor does know: we just see things NOT the right way and without having a vision….. sure…!!) Luxury hotels with $1,000-a-night room rates and extravagant resorts may face a tougher recovery than the rest of the industry. “The most over-the-top excesses will probably be a long time — if ever– coming back,” Marriott President Arne Sorenson told the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit. He drew a distinction between these hotels and the typical Ritz-Carlton luxury hotels the company operates. Marriott’s other brands include its namesake properties and Courtyards. Sorenson added that some projects in the Caribbean, which tend to be smaller and partly rely on residences, “may never come back” because they rely on the kind of lavish spending that has gone out of vogue with travelers. “They require really that conspicuous consumption to support their entire business model,” Sorenson told reporters in a telephone interview. Of all hotels, luxury properties were the hardest hit last year. While rates sank nearly 9 percent for the U.S. hotel industry, luxury hotels saw their rates tumble more than 16 percent, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Many hotels across the spectrum have buckled under their debt loads in this downturn, as lower room rates constrain cash flow used to service these payments. The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel indicated last year that it would no longer be able to meet debt service, Fitch Ratings said last month.
Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co, a division of Marriott, will close its Lake Las Vegas property this year. Some distressed properties have bristled against standards set by companies like Marriott. Sorenson said the company is working with some hotels to manage their payments, and has extended the deadline for hotels to put flat-screen television sets in rooms.
“We’ve also got some one-off owners who just don’t have two nickels to rub together,” Sorenson said. “If it goes too long or if it is too severe, that is a place where the response is really to pull the flag.” Chief Financial Officer Carl Berquist and Sorenson said typically 5,000 rooms leave the Marriott system each year, but this year a few thousand more rooms could be shown the door.
These properties would largely fall in the limited-service category in tertiary markets. In the event that a hotel goes into foreclosure, Marriott has “non-disturbance agreements” on many hotels, which prevents that hotel from leaving its brand, Berquist said.
Widespread distress in the hotel industry, lower rates and tough economic conditions do not mean all luxury hotels will go belly-up, Sorenson said. Some of these hotels will be able to restructure their debt with their lenders. “There’s a whole bunch of hotels that are in established destinations, dealing with meaningfully lower rates,” Sorenson said. “Over the next number of years (these hotels) are going to see their owners work with their lenders.”
Interesting reading for one living at Baja Sur with all of it’s Baja luxury…. Read that and the next post and then go back to our post last year about the ‘W” of double-dip and build yourself a opinion….

b.i.n. = Baja Infortheque Network.

Exodus along the U.S. border

admin — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:51:45 +0000

This is a interesting report, however we like too emphasize that the described circumstances in NO WAY reflect conditions at Baja California or the majority of Mexico! Ciudad Juarez, which lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, hit perhaps its lowest point in years of violence when suspected drug gang hitmen burst in on a party of high school students in January and killed 15 people, most of them teenagers. Kidnappings and extortion’s are also rampant as drug gangs seek extra income, despite a government security crackdown.
“I fled to El Paso when a gang tried to kidnap me last year,” said the head of a cross-border trucking firm who declined to be named for safety reasons. “They came for me but I had a change in my schedule so I wasn’t home and they kidnapped my neighbor instead,” he added.
Once one of Mexico’s fastest growing cities, Ciudad Juarez is now blighted with shuttered restaurants and shops. Garbage and unopened mail gathers around the doorways of empty office buildings and once upscale suburbs are devoid of cars.
About a quarter of homes in the city lie empty as residents escape or new houses are left vacant, according to the municipal planning institute. Wealthy and middle class families are heading to safer Mexican cities like Guadalajara and Monterrey, traumatized by the 4,500 drug murders in Ciudad Juarez since violence exploded in early 2008.
At least 30,000 people have moved to El Paso.
Estimates vary on the size of the exodus but academics and Ciudad Juarez officials put it at between 75,000 and 200,000 people since mid-2008. An economic crisis has also hit the city but violence is the main reason for the exodus, city officials say.
Ciudad Juarez, which boomed in the U.S. Prohibition era of the 1920s and until recently attracted Americans seeking cheap medicine, dental care and tequila, is home to U.S.-run plants producing goods ranging from auto-parts for General Motors to surgical masks for Johnson & Johnson.
The factories, attracted to Mexico by lower labor costs, are operating normally. But some U.S. companies are halting investment in Ciudad Juarez because of the violence, said Carlos Chavira, president of a leading local business group.

red the whole report on Reuters.com here…

Mexican government for its “heroic” efforts to combat drug trafficking praised

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Traveler confidence report

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:18:11 +0000

Travelocity’s most recent poll shows a dramatic increase in travel intentions, indicating traveler confidence is on the rise. Travelocity’s second Traveler Confidence Report reveals that nearly half of respondents plan to increase their travel in 2010 as compared to 2009. The Traveler Confidence Report gauges travelers’ plans and attitudes now as compared to six months prior and one year prior. Significantly more respondents (49 percent) plan to increase their travel in the year ahead, compared to 21 percent six months ago and just 10 percent in 2009. Another 44 percent plan to travel “about the same” as compared to last year. The number of travelers planning to decrease travel is down significantly to 7 percent, compared with 34 percent one year ago and 24 percent six months ago.

When asked how lower prices would impact travel plans, 33 percent said they would stay in a higher star-rated hotel; 30 percent said they would take a trip they had not expected to take; and 18 percent said they would extend their stay. The majority of respondents (56 percent) did not have a predetermined travel budget for 2010. Of those with a predetermined travel budget, 34 percent plan to increase that budget. An overwhelming 76 percent of respondents are at least somewhat likely to book a vacation package as a way to save money.
The findings are based on the intentions of more than 2,000 North Americans surveyed by Travelocity and even more let’s hope that some of them “good” percent’s think of Baja and all the great opportunities here….

b.i.n. = Baja Infortheque Network.

Mexico and Brazil – Rethinking the problem

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:14:18 +0000

As an increasingly violent and costly drugs war clogs up prisons with small-time users, some Latin American countries are abandoning hardline U.S. policies on consumption to intensify the fight against major traffickers. Convinced that the four-decade-old, U.S.-led war on drugs has failed, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and other countries are relaxing penalties for possession and personal use of small amounts of narcotics.
Former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico issued a report last year saying U.S. coca crop eradication efforts in Latin America have merely pushed cultivation areas from one region to the other. “The dominant strategy has been the so-called ‘war on drugs.’… This strategy has clearly failed. It must therefore be changed,” former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso said during a recent conference in Washington.
Most of the world’s cocaine still comes out of the Andean countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, even after billions of dollars spent eradicating crops.
In Mexico, the drug war has killed more than 16,000 people since late 2006 when President Felipe Calderon took office and deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to combat ruthless cartels that behead and dismember rivals, and bribe or intimidate police and judges.
Drug violence has also soared in Central America, where street gangs have taken over the trade and in some cases infiltrated political parties. Mexico is the world’s biggest producer of marijuana and Paraguay, in the heart of South America, has taken the No. 2 position as demand grows in neighboring Argentina and Brazil.

Rethinking the problem
Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies in Latin America, are taking the lead in a new approach to individual drug consumers. Brazil has partially decriminalized drug use and in Mexico, carrying small amounts of any drug is no longer a criminal offense.
In Argentina, President Cristina Fernandez is expected to soon send a drug reform bill to Congress that proposes sending users to treatment instead of jail, following on a Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal to prosecute drug consumers.
“The U.S. is retreating from imposing a model,” said John Walsh, head of drug policy for the Washington Office on Latin America think tank. “The White House… is going to be taking a more measured approach to talking about drug policy.” Even some areas of the United States, the top global drug consumer, are rethinking their approach, with more than a dozen states now allowing marijuana use for medical purposes.

Editors opinion
One has to realize the current US drug policies are costing lives and money and they are not working. Marijuana should be legalized and taxed like alcohol and cigarettes. That will get rid of a significant portion of the problem. For hard drugs, it is time to mount a publicity campaign denouncing users, rich or poor, as murderers. It’s they’re demand that makes the drug business profitable and causes world wide misery.
Put the harsh realities of drug violence on prime time TV. Denounce Hollywood and the pop music industry every time they release “entertainment” that in any way excuses or glamorizes drug use and trafficking. At the same time keep educating our young people and keep busting the bigger players with tough mandatory sentencing including the death penalty. It is appropriate for the murderers that they are.

Mexican government for its “heroic” efforts to combat drug trafficking praised

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Nestle to invest $390 million in Mexico

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:43:55 +0000

Nestle, the world’s biggest food group, said on Saturday it will invest 5 billion pesos ($390 million) in Mexico over the next three years to increase coffee processing capacity, part of a $1 billion expansion plan. “The majority of these 5 billion pesos will be invested in the Nescafe instant coffee processing plant,” Nestle said in a statement, adding that the investment would increase capacity by 40 percent at the factory in Toluca near Mexico City. Mexico, a major world coffee producer, has struggled to improve the quality of its beans in recent years but is positioning itself as a processor of coffee to serve U.S. and European markets. Nestle said it planned to invest $1 billion in Mexico between 2008 and 2012.
Source credits: Reuters.com

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The journalism of VICE “rocks”

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:40:02 +0000

Original content CNN: CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of VICE, an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn, New York. VBS.TV is Vice’s broadband television network. The reports, which are produced solely by VICE, reflect a very transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers. Viewer discretion advised.
If CNN makes such a statement it sure is worth look or to, after all they would not recommend REAL doo-doo to their website visitors.

And sure enough – them guys at VBS.TV “rock”! And sure enough also take the hint “Viewer discretion advised” if you are easy offended by images that are usual blurred at other info sources on the net or on TV as well if language below the artificial created social excepted level offends you. May reminds you that it is used daily from MTV to the grunts in Afghanistan!!

Find more about “VBS on CNN“, see VBS.TV comments about that here or just visit their homepage

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Ground zero in America’s longest and deepest recession, El Centro in southern California

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:16:31 +0000

If you’re looking for ground zero in America’s longest and deepest recession, El Centro in southern California appears on first glance to fit the bill. The unemployment rate here and for the whole of Imperial County hit 30.1 percent in September, the highest rate in the United States. Locals say there is no denying that El Centro has suffered as a result of the recession and that jobs are more scarce in an area where agriculture is the backbone of the community and forms 25 percent of the local economy.
El Centro city manager Ruben Duran say the jobless numbers don’t tell the full story. Duran points to the fact that back in March 2006 unemployment in Imperial County fell to 12.2 percent and the number of employed people in this county of around 160,000 totaled 54,057.
But when unemployment hit 30.1 percent – well over double the rate in March 2006 — the number of employed workers slid less than 1 percent, to 53,734. City revenue from taxes is only down about 10 percent this year, Duran said, which also does not tally with the sharp rise in the jobless rate. “Yes, there has been hardship and suffering here,” Duran said. “But where did all those extra unemployed people come from if the number of people in work has barely fallen?”
Drive around El Centro, a city of some 48,000, and it does not feel like some of America’s long-suffering communities like Flint, Michigan, where collapsing auto sales amid the recession have led to an unemployment rate of 15.8 percent. Whereas Flint is dealing with shuttered businesses and abandoned homes, relatively few stores have closed in El Centro.
Duran said the key to understanding the local economy and El Centro’s high jobless rate lies just across the border in the city of Mexicali, a city of more than 1 million people. “The border bleeds both ways,” he said. “Many people who live here work in Mexicali. The trouble with the statistics is they stop at the border and don’t take into account the role a major city across the border plays in our economy.”

b.i.n. = Baja Infortheque Network.

Mexican government for its “heroic” efforts to combat drug trafficking praised

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:05:45 +0000

More than 300 people have been arrested in a series of drug raids targeting a Mexican drug cartel operating in the US, American officials have said. The two-day operation, which involved thousands of police officers in 19 US states, is the latest aimed at the cartel known as La Familia. It was part of Project Coronado, which has led to almost 1,200 arrests over four years, officials said. The US attorney general said the cartel had been dealt a “significant blow”. La Familia, which is based in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, has been accused of carrying out bloody attacks on Mexican security forces. Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 troops to fight drug gangs since he took office in December 2006. However, more than 11,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in that time.
Announcing the arrest of 303 suspected cartel members on Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder described the gang as demonstrating “an incredible level of sophistication and ruthlessness”. The Mexican authorities “face a problem of almost unimaginable dimensions”, he added. In the course of the two-day crackdown, US police and FBI agents seized $3.4m (£2.05m) in cash, 144 weapons and more than 100 vehicles, as well as stashes of methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. “These are drugs that were headed for our streets, and weapons that often were headed to the streets of Mexico,” Mr Holder said.
Read the whole report here…

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