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Tuesday, April 28, 2015



The 7.8 Nepal Earthquake kills at least 5000.
In 1994, this blogger was literally in the middle of the Infamous 6.6 Northridge Earthquake in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. It was terrifying! At the time, I was out in Hollywood consulting on an Oliver Stone film, starring Al Pacino. That night I went to sleep at the Vagabond Inn and at 4:30:55 A.M  pacific coast time, I felt a huge vibration that shook the wooden framed lodging.  For a moment, I cursed the large trucks that were driving near by on the 405 Highway heading south into Los Angeles.

However, I quickly realized that the thunderous noise and the collapsing Inn were the beginning of a major earthquake. I did not stand in the doorway for protection as it is often prescribed. Instead, I ran out of the motel and went to the rented car, a large Cadillac, for which I had ‘mysteriously’ packed the night before. I say mysteriously because that was the first time in my professional life, I had not packed what little clothing I had just before I was to fly out at 11AM.
As I rushed out of the door, I encountered what I can best describe as a scene from Armageddon. The concrete beneath my feet cracked open in a wide yawn revealing flames and smoke spewing from the bowels of the pipes buried beneath the street. At the same time, live electrical wires from the overhanging telephone poles were whipping around the smoke-filled air.

I saw one police cruiser passing by with its searchlight beaming a bright light through the debilitating rancid smoke that quickly consumed what little oxygen was left. I rushed into my rented car, set on getting to the Los Angeles Airport at all cost, betting on one simple fact. I convinced myself that the different airlines which flew out of LA Airport would not leave their $40M planes on the tarmac.  I had a first class ticket, I would board whichever plane that flew out of LA to whatever destination they would take; be it China or NYC.
It was extremely dangerous driving to the airport. First I drove in the middle of the 405 Freeway as I noticed lesser sized cars than my behemoth Cadillac peeling off to the sides of the highway as the road started to buckle in front and behind me. I turned off the air conditioner because smoke from the burning buildings that I was passing had entered the air conditioning system. I was choking throughout the minutes or however long that trip took to get to Century Blvd which led to the Alamo Rental car then onto the LA Airport.

As I approached Century Blvd, I noticed a police barricade placed in front of the exit ramp. I decided that I would swerve around the barricade and try to get to Century Blvd and then Aviation Blvd at whatever cost; even if it meant I would enter a police chase or an arrest. I managed to swerve around the police barricade without injuring myself or any LA police and proceeded by rote to Century Blvd.  Next, I turned onto Aviation Blvd and then into the Alamo which had, ironically, the only lights on in the entire LA block that I was traversing.
I asked the bus driver to get me to the airport ASAP.  Of course, I gave him a significant tip; and finally I reached the United counter where the lovely lady informed me that I should head back to my hotel. I explained to her that I would not leave the airport and that I would pay extra for any United Flight that would take off any time soon.
As serendipity would have it, I boarded the next flight out of LA on First Class of an almost completely empty plane back to Washington D. C.---my original destination. When the attractive stewardess came up to me and asked me what I would have for breakfast as I watched the plane take off from a seemingly buckling tarmac, I replied “Champagne”. The rest of the five to six hours were a blur. But I know that I had never drunk as much Champagne in my life in one sitting. 

Now that I see the horror of an earthquake in Nepal where thousands of victims have been killed,  I whisper a few consoling words to myself and them, wishing them a speedy recovery. We take too much for granted when it comes to the equilibrium of our planet. We assume that the ground beneath our feet will always remain firm. We breath air that will always be only slightly polluted and not filled with noxious contaminants.
Most of all, we tend to live in places that beckon us to stay away; be it a fault line in a potential earthquake; or a combat zone in a war-weary mountainous region where no man has ever conquered man or nature. As so-called rational human beings we are completely irrational and self-delusional about our vested interest in remaining safe and healthy. We presume without reason that nature is compliant to our wishes because we can conquer the air by flying and the seas by sailing.
However, we cannot and will not subdue Mother Nature whenever her tectonic plates rub against each other at times we know not where or when. A bit more humility and  respect is required when addressing the great forces of nature which we have mistakingly assumed we have tempered.


The earthquakes in Nepal and Northridge make me realize that the internet is not the only phenomena that binds me to the world. It is also the savage rumble of a destructive force in the past that makes the Nepalese my neighbors of today.
May their recovery be swift and without even more major damage; and may our need to destroy ourselves through war be submissive to our respect of Mother Nature.
Let me end with the words of the great Roman warrior/philosopher, Marcus Aurelius: “Life is a stranger’s sojourn, a night at an inn.” 



17 comments:

  1. Dr Steve what's your opinion on what's is been said in this Y/T video? "Baltimore Riots: State of Emergency Declared, Protesters Outnumber Police"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p96apB26a08

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  2. I can relate after being introduced to my first quake in 1971 . I lived 22 miles from 7.1 epicenter of Sylmar in No. Hollywood in a 3 br 2 ba home worth about $29,0000 at the time which nearly came off its foundation. It was quite unsettling as the Richter scale goes up logarithmically.
    I know a lady who bought some really expensive Northridge homes for cheap right after the quake you described Dr P
    Like you many homeowners just wanted "out" and fast!

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  3. Anybody hear anything about blogger Barry Popik or Raymond these days?

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  4. This is one very interesting read:::::New World Order: The Founding Fathers
    “One wintry afternoon in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance for the British Empire and to the world as a whole.”
    So begins Professor Carroll Quigley’s book The Anglo American Establishment. It may read like a John Le Carre thriller, but this was no spy fiction. The three staunch British Imperialists who met in London that day, Cecil Rhodes, William Stead and Lord Esher, were soon joined by Lords Rothschild, Salisbury, Rosebery and Milner, men whose financial, political, and administrative powers set them apart. Some of these names may not be familiar to you, but that is a mark of the absolute success of this group. From the outset they insisted on secrecy, operated in secret and ensured that their influence was airbrushed from history. They believed that white men of Anglo-Saxon descent rightly sat at the top of the racial hierarchy and they fully understood the impending threat from a burgeoning Germany whose modern, expanding economy had begun to challenge British hegemony on the world stage.
    The above named elites drew up a plan for a secret society that aimed to renew the bond between Great Britain and the United States [1] and bring all habitable portions of the world under their influence and control.
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-world-order-the-founding-fathers/5445255

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    1. Ah, when capitalists merge, they do not share same interest because of race, or religion, they temporarily go together because of power, yes they will invent always some nice story which is not going to be about money for horns to stay hidden, because they all know that rule is that only one capitalist stays, this is just joyful delay. Our job of people is to wait in generations so we can fill their dream to one day one of them will emerge alone. For instance when Hillary goes to China to sell America she will tell them how American and Chinese people together share quality that they both work hard, soon she will go with bucket of yellow paint when only Chinese are going to be those who have job, do not worry.

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    2. Oliver Stone is real gentleman, i never heard anyone telling anything wrong about him where ever he goes. He is very smart but he always tries to express him self modestly. Something like Lindsey Graham and Alan West, ... joke.

      Idea to kill rich is evolutional idea, there are only two ideas in history, God's idea to get born as one of us, and idea to kill rich by Lenin...

      Oliver Stone & Tariq Ali - The untold history of the US - Subversive festival, Zagreb, May 2013

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3JYyu7w6SY

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    3. He tells here how when he was on dinner with rich Hedge Found owners, that they were spitting on table when they heard the name of Jimmy Carter... telling how he was communist... hi hi hi but they forget that under Jimmy Carter to kill even one american in world was prohibited and very dangerous for any government and society, americans had to be protected like pandas, today when you kill americans in world, that is something of less importance than to kill russian or chinese. Uncontrolled capitalists make shit of everything they touch.

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    4. And yes Anglos are ok, but they also have too much German blood they must overcome that. In this new order, those genes who will fall on to elite propaganda (homosexualism, gender theories, female emancipation) will die off, as they will not have kids and families and will become addicts. Targeted group are Germans, because they listen everything they are told and they are too tribal for Christianisation.

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    5. Hey hey! A very interesting post indeed! Especially regarding William Stead my namesake and a very important figure in my actual town in England!!! No relation though! William stead was also editor of our local newspaper "The Northern Echo" and interestingly enough he perished on the titanic! Thanks for that post I shall dig a little deeper

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    6. Perhaps a Rupert murdoch of his time??

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    7. Perhaps a Rupert murdoch of his time??

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  5. "The champaign was flowing like the potomac in flood"

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  6. "The champaign was flowing like the potomac in flood"

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  7. I remember driving down Ocean Highway one and stopping to look at this huge crack running parallel to the road that San Andreas fault is unfortunately ripe to rip.In Italy, I believe they charged seismologists with manslaughter for not predicting an event accurately. I have only felt one 'shudder' in the UK which rattled our house. In the Science Museum in London they used to have an Earthquake simulator set in a supermarket in Tokyo which went off as they showed real CCTV footage from the store. It was pretty freaky. Dr P I would suggest that like the birds and other animals, your unconscious sensed the upcoming danger, so you packed your car for a quick getaway but not at that moment knowing why at a conscious level.

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  8. Mit we can appease the "gods" if we throw Al Gore into that caldera! : )

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  9. It is really just a big spot get loads of Oxy-Acne treatment for big Yellow.

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  10. Using RentalCars you can find the most affordable car hires at over 49,000 international locations.

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