GeologicalScienceBlog - subjects include Geology, Climatology, Environmental Science, NASCAR, Beer, Property Rights, Random Thoughts, & Politics from a Christian Conservative/Libertarian/pragmatist viewpoint. As a Dad & Grandad, I am concerned about the overgrowth of government at the expense of freedom. Background - two degrees in Geology (BS '77, MS '90), started studying Geology beginning Senior Year of high school (1971 - 1972) <68>

Friday, April 16, 2010

What a Geologist Sees - Part 30

[Updated from a December 2, 2007 post.]

These thin sandstone slabs are from the Permian Cloud Chief Formation from NW Oklahoma. They were collected from downstream of Lake Vincent in southern Ellis County.

The bulk of the formation is composed of siltstone and claystone redbeds.

(Click to enlarge images)

Pictured are the tops of the individual beds. The 1 cm bars are accurate, to show scale.

A few months after dropping some specimens off with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, they told me that there were probably "arthropod locomotion marks". Being busy with life in general, I accepted the answer without trying to determine "what sort of arthropods".

Recently, while looking at some of the slabs, I revisited a point of previous curiosity. Each trackway seemed to not have a companion for the opposite side of the critter. Perhaps because the critter was wider than the slab of rock.

So I started doing an internet search of Permian arthropods. An early result gave the word "Arthropleurid" as a likely suspect. An Arthropleurid was a large, centipede-like critter, in some cases up to 6 feet long. A later result gave this article, concerning the Late Pennsylvanian Cutler Group, in northcentral New Mexico.

If I get a chance to revisit the area, I will be looking for wider slabs, to hopefully find more-complete trackways and to document the occurrence a little better. Would like to maybe do a short paper/talk, maybe for a future GSA regional meeting. Or if I don't, maybe I will have somehow inspired someone else (in Oklahoma) to do so.

[The comments were generated with the original 2007 post.]

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Posted by: on-the-rocks / 9:30 AM 11 comments
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Genocide and Future Famine Coming to South Africa

Those that forget the past...

This began close to 10 years ago when I read a Christian Science Monitor article about Robert Mugabe's efforts in Zimbabwe. When challenged by a more Marxist political adversary, Mugabe moved left and began stealing farm land from white farmers to give as political favors.

The white farmers (and their black African employees) at the center of this unfolding travesty had decided to stay and "make a go of it" when many other whites fled the Rhodesia-to-Zimbabwe transition. At that time and for the next 20 years or so, Zimbabwe was known as "the breadbasket of Africa", fully capable of feeding itself and contributing to the food supply of surrounding nations. Some of the white farmers had no where else to go, after their families had lived in the area for a couple of generations. Others were making a good-faith effort to cooperate with the new majority-black government.

Some Leftists will make the weak argument that "the ancestors" of the white farmers "stole" the land from the Rhodesian natives, decades earlier. Though there is some partial truth in this notion, we all know "two wrongs do not make a right". In the early 1900s, it is doubtful that natives of what became Rhodesia had any system of land surveys and legal land titles, making the case of white settlers "stealing the land" kind of fuzzy.

There had been a program by which white farmers were "encouraged" to move towards a farm system that included more black Zimbabweans and one could make the weak point that the white farmers didn't make enough of an effort towards this goal (while disregarding the black employees that would be learning farming while working for the white farmers).

Commercial farming is a learned skill. Though a few white farmers managed to sell their farmlands, many were murdered (as were some of their black employees), others had to flee the country, abandoning their land.

Anyway, as I told my students at the time (in 2001), this policy led to famine and starvation. The confiscation of farmland (under mortgage contracts) also helped wreck their banking system. [I guess it didn't matter, Marxists don't have much need for private banks, anyway.]

So despite the famine, starvation, and collapse of life in Zimbabwe, the Leftist-dominated international media and their Leftist political cohorts looked the other way, some even praised Mugabe. Some African leaders of neighboring countries weakly protested Mugabe's actions, but were not supported by widespread public pressure from citizens and leaders in European and Western nations (partially because of the media coverups).

Ignoring the lessons of recent history, Leftists in South Africa - especially members of the African National Congress - seem to think killing white farmers and shutting down productive farms is a good idea.

From this American Thinker article:

"Last week, South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) finally told its members to stop singing the song "Kill the Boer" -- that is, murder white South Africans. (Boer is Afrikaans for "farmer," but colloquially is a disparaging term for any white South African.) This came after ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema defied a court ruling and kept singing the song (he still refuses to stop),...

...Whites in South Africa are keenly aware of the plans to kill them. They expect mass killings to begin very soon after the death of Mandela, but to tell this to the world is a waste of energy. More than 3,000 white farmers have already been murdered, and Genocide Watch lists the Boer farmers in South Africa as victims of genocide -- but the media couldn't care less. Malema has praised Zimbabwe's murderous seizure of white-owned farms as "courageous and militant." White South Africans know what's coming."...

More from the article:

..."Under ANC rule, the government has stopped reporting the race of murder victims and the race of the murderer. This is because the international community (mainly GenocideWatch.org) was starting to notice the disproportionate number of whites being murdered in South Africa. The ANC stopped reporting the race of the victims of murder so there would be no way to track the number of black-on-white murders. Problem solved."...

Author Pamela Geller continues:

..."The American media says little or nothing about the genocide in South Africa, because it's black against white; it's politically incorrect to notice. The mainstream media portrays all white South Africans as racist monsters like Eugene Terreblanche [leader of the noxious and hateful neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), who was savagely bludgeoned to death at his farm in South Africa's North West province.] This is simply not true. And remember: a key step on the road to genocide is to dehumanize the intended victims.

What is happening in South Africa against the white population is a crime against humanity. Savage. And no one will speak of it. The leftist media (all big media) and the international community (notoriously left) ignores it entirely. Their silence is affirmation; it sanctions the evil. Most decent people are perplexed by the uneven humanity and inhumanity of our leftist moral "superiors." I am not. They unremittingly vilify the Jewish people and Israel, the most benevolent government and army in the Middle East, but pay scant attention to jihad and the Islamic culture of honor killings, clitorectomies, child slavery, forced marriage, child marriage, etc. Why?

Because the leftists are bigots and racists, that's why. Because as morally superior as they think they are, they have no regard for the perpetrators of violence on the left, like the black South Africans. Their subliminal message is clear: "They're animals, whaddaya expect?" That is their prejudice. It's the soft bigotry of low expectations."... [Emphasis added for following commentary.]

Personally, I disagree with the highlighted sentences. I think this is more of the Leftist mindset of "social justice" (REVENGE for past generations' misdeeds), regardless of repercussions. [Remember, while highlighting past grievances and ginning-up ethnic crises, they grab for more power. Sound familiar?]

This has been going on in South Africa - under the radar - for a while. I don't recall the Bush Administration of strongly protesting (because of Political Correctness). And I damn sure don't expect the Obama Administration (or the UN) to threaten to withhold monetary and food aid for the future famine and starvation that are likely to follow in South Africa, if this policy of killing white farmers continues. If sensible voices do not speak up, the only support the white farmers may get is from the other political extreme, e.g., the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB).

Those that forget the past...

In the 20th Century, Socialist/Marxist governments (including Nazi Germany) killed between 100 million and 120 million of their own citizens (not soldiers). It looks like nothing has changed as we are one decade into the 21st Century.

The only way to effectively fight tribalism (and its offspring racism) is to hold everyone to the same standards, while stopping the cycle of revenge on the present generations, because of the sins of past generations. And that is highly relevant for this country, as well as elsewhere in the world.

But then again, Leftists (Progessives) do not gain power when everyone gets along with each other. They depend upon infighting (along with "free bread and circuses") to serve as a distraction.

It may take a few years to unfold, as it did with Zimbabwe, but if this genocide against established white farmers continues in South Africa, famine will likely follow, especially if there happens to be a coinciding drought or unusual cold spell. These days, with the ability to move food worldwide, most famines may begin with a natural event, but they are exaggerated and continued by political vendettas.

This doesn't have to happen.

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Posted by: on-the-rocks / 7:38 AM 0 comments
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