Thursday, December 06, 2012

Philippine news

Typhoon hit the poorest area of the country, Mindano, and alas several hundred died, mainly from floods/mudslides/storm surge.
LINK

LINK

The elites here will echo the west and blame global warming, when everyone living in the boondocks knows the flooding is from lack of evacuation from low lying areas, inadequate and/or silted up drainage systems, and many of the mudslides were from illegal logging etc.

one note: 90 percent of the banana crop was destroyed, since most of the export bananas come from plantations in this area. That probably won't hurt us, since we eat locally, but will affect the economy.

AFP photo.


But when I see this photo, I wonder: Did the banana plantations contribute to the flooding? (i.e. no grass, no weeds, no hardwood trees with deep roots etc)...I don't know enough about bananas to answer that one.

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Obama was reelected, so China figures they can get away busy pushing around it's neigbors, and has a new passport that includes the West Philippine sea and parts of India's territory on the pass port map of China.

From StrategyPage: The War with China begins on January 1.

December 5, 2012: The government is moving its new warships (retired American frigates and coast guard cutters) to offshore areas that China claims. That won’t be enough, because China already has many more warships is building over 40 new coast guard and navy patrol ships and boats. Plus, China has a growing number of navy patrol and combat aircraft. The Philippines needs a major ally, like the United States, to provide enough naval muscle to keep the Chinese from enforcing their new rules that will, starting January 1st, have Chinese naval patrols escorting, or expelling, foreign ships from most of the South China Sea. This includes offshore areas of the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei and Vietnam that international law does not recognize as Chinese. Happy New Year to you too. 
In other words, they are theatening not only our fishermen but the sea lanes.

As for India; they are putting up anti missile defenses:
As a result of this and several other successful tests earlier this year, Indian missile development officials believe their anti-missile system is ready for mass production and deployment. This would provide some Indian cities protection from Pakistani or Chinese ballistic missiles.
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Here, we had no storm. Just light rain.

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