RANDOM THOUGHTS CONCERNING THAT RAILWAY DERAILMENT
As most readers here know, I very seldom do "op-ed" pieces, where I ramble on about some contemporary story. I tend to avoid them because I suspect most people who are regular readers here know more or less what I think about such things anyway, and don't need any reinforcement.
But after watching this carnival develop more, I've reinvested in my circus peanut futures, and have decided to rant about it anyway, because I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm livid.
By now everyone has heard about that freight train derailment in the American state of Ohio. And by now most readers here, I assume, have heard just about every possible theory about who caused it and why.
It is, I suppose, a sign of our times and cultural degradation that many people now view such events not as "accidents" but as the result of deliberate sabotage and covert action, or at the very least, the result of deliberate government and/or corporate inaction. It certainly is the case with the derailment. There are theories ranging the whole gamut, from ideas about deliberately polluting and poisoning the water table, to disaster capitalism to force nearby Amish farmers to sell out and buy their land on the cheap, to more elaborate theories about computer chip production facilities, and so on. In other words, cultural perceptions have so shifted that when such events do occur, a significant portion of the population no longer first thinks of them as accidents, but as manifestations of sinister purpose and planning.
You can count me in that group, and it's very easy to see why people have come to such conclusions.
In the midst of this event, the Bai Den Jo misadministration sent no one to the area, as is customary in such incidents, and initially further denied that any emergency aid would be forthcoming, while the Secretary of Transportation took the opportunity to lecture the country about white racism, and to remind us that, unfortunately, while rare, railroad derailments happen all the time, and, in this country, there were about 1,000 last year, and that works out to almost three per day (or two and some decimal change).
His point being, I suppose, that there was no reason for everyone to get so worked up about the Ohio derailment.
I decided to snoop a bit, and looked up railway derailments in Europe per year, and I found one of those sites that allows you to look, but only once, before you have to pay to look again. But I did read that Germany, for example, had 294 derailments, or something like that. Germany led the rest of Europe in derailments. Other articles assured me that derailments are far more common than people think, and - good news for those of you living in the Acela corridor - your probability of being killed in a derailment are low. There were three take-aways from this brief excursion into statistics:
(1) derailments are far more common in the USA than they are in European countries (about 3 times the rate of Germany);
(2) that may be as much of a function of the USA having much more track mileage as anything else; and,
(3) derailments had a multitude of causes, but basically boiled down to poor equipment or track bed maintenance, usually a combination of both.
That, at least, is the overview.
But for anyone who has ridden Amtrak outside the high-speed Acela corridor between Swampington and Boston, and who has also had the experience of riding the rails in any European system, there is no comparison. America's rail system is, by and large, a joke. To be sure, there are major carriers whose track beds, and equipment, is in good condition, a necessity, since a lot more freight moves by rails in this country than in Europe. Still, one can glide along the rails in the Acela corridor and, for the most part, the track beds are in good condition. For me, as a passenger, the measure of a good track bed is the smoothness (or lack thereof) of the turnouts (or "switches"). Unfortunately, my experience riding the rails pretty much everywhere else in this country has been more like riding a Tilt-a-Whirl at a carnival. My last trip on a train in this country was years ago, and after breaking down in the middle of Kansas and sitting there in the middle of nowhere for three hours (rather like the moves Planes, Trains, and Automobiles) I vowed "never again." What used to be my favorite mode of long distance travel is no more.
All talk of high speed rail in this country by various politicians should, therefore, be greeted with a great deal of skepticism. High speed track and trains need constant maintenance, and if you've experienced this country's roads and freeways lately, you'll know that isn't much of a promise. I live quite near a major interstate interchange. That interchange until just a few months ago was the same interchange as built in the early 1960s, with, in one case, a bridge built at the same time. The bridge was so old the concrete itself was quite literally leeching and dripping. Fortunately the bridge was replaced and work begun on the interchange to replace the old-fashioned clover-leaf... but then it all stopped about a year ago, and the pylons for the new overpasses stand proudly, holding up... nothing. But back to Ohio and its beautiful rolling hills and rich farmland:
No...we were told initially that the region was not eligible for disaster aid.
Yet, we have enough money to send billions to the Ukraine to prop up another corrupt and criminal misadministration and talk about guaranteeing their pensions, and to abandon billions of dollars of military equipment in Afghanistan (which, incidentally might have been used to help the Ukraine, which we're supposed to be interested in helping), but, oh, wait, we can't send any of our latest stuff to them because it might fall into Russia's hands and they'd learn all about our technology, but it's ok to let it fall into the hands of the Taliban and thereby, everyone else. And people like Thoroughly Modern Milley at the Pentagram wonder why enlistments are down.)
My point in all of this is simply to say that I join with those Ohioans and Pennsylvanians affected by this derailment, and share their hurt, their anger, and their frustration. Whatever the cause of the derailment, from poor maintenance or deliberate and malicious planning and intent, one point has clearly emerged from the incident, and it has reinforced the growing conviction that this government no longer cares - at all - for its people. The perception has been building for at least two decades. But for many people in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the rest of the country, it was just confirmed by its cold indifference. As far as it's concerned, there was no disaster. We're to pay our taxes, and shut up and wear our masks, pay billions to the corrupt Ukraine, support a war we don't want, and watch the infrastructure of this country fall apart, while more bills are passed in Congress that supposedly are designed to fix it, but only end up lining the pockets of corrupt criminal political dynasties. You know their surnames; they begin with B's, and C's, the fronts for the G's, S's, and M's.
But the pylons on the new interstate interchange near me are still holding up... nothing.
And they talk about all those empty crumbling cities in China....
Ok. Rant over.
See you on the flip side...
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A possible smoking gun (literally) at East Palestine rail crash is the fact that 5 of the tankers carrying vinyl chloride were still intact and undamaged.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64749041
The authorities remained concerned that 5 railcars, still intact, carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride might explode, so they conducted a controlled burn of the substance, sending a huge plume of black smoke over East Palestine.
The question needs to be asked whether the controlled burn was necessary and what poisoning risk it presented to the residents of East Palestine. Why destroy the evidence of what load the train was carrying?
“The authorities remained concerned that 5 railcars, still intact, carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride might explode”. This excuse never made sense to me as to the reason they gave that the cars might explode. They said that they were afraid that the surrounding fires would cause the cars to overheat and explode. Did these authorities not have fire suppressant equipment with them? I mean the fires around the cars could have been controlled with just a few shovels to smother the local fires with dirt and fire extinguishers. These fires weren’t out of control raging fires. If they were then how did they manage to drill into the tanks and pour out the contents into a covert. Then they called the Governor to ask if they should set the fires and were given permission. Did the Governor not have authorities that he could ask what the potential of setting fire to vinyl chloride would do? This doesn’t make sense either. Because of these two glaring discrepancies I have come to the conclusion that this was done of purpose. A farmer recently found a dynamite cap in his pasture that was next to the spill area. What was it doing there? Were these tanks originally rigged to explode and for some reason the explosion didn’t take place. This would also explain why the train was allowed to continue on it’s journey even after a fire was detected under one of these cars 20 miles outside of the area.
The Ohio train derailment was basically an industrial “accident” that affected the surrounding area outside the grounds owned by Norfolk & Southern. Fox News reported that FEMA assistance was delayed because Gov. DeWine hadn’t asked for it. Since the Reagan administration, republicans have been complaining about government regulation. Why? Because big business, and the US Chamber of Commerce, don’t want to be told they have to take safety precautions to protect workers, product users, and the communities where they spill their toxic wastes. Business is against anything that stands in the way of profit-making. And when you cut corners, and don’t maintain your rails and track beds, you get accidents like this derailment of toxic chemicals, and the only conspiracy is among big business and neoliberal politicians who want business to be free to do business any way it wants, free of government regulation. If you want small government and no regulation or no budget to enforce the regulations on the books, this is typical of what you get. If this had been a case of derailment due to terrorism or sabotage, we probably would have heard something by now. In a year or two, the DOT may tell us why this happened. Until then, or until evidence of sabotage is brought to light, this looks like one more example of a business cutting corners to cut costs, cutting its work force and its railway/track bed inspections to increase its profit margin while jeopardizing the health and safety of the people living in the communities along N&S’s railways. This is typical of industrial accidents that happen every day, where big business sees workers and communities as disposable, damages are a cost of doing business, and you and your friends and families are not lives to be protected by reasonably safe business practices but liabilities to be paid after profiteering from cost cutting practices, if it ever comes to that. This is why accountability matters.
Think of a planetary criminal organization operating under name of the British Empire but in reality, the British East India Company makes organized crime seem kind small by comparison.
Marcos –
Re: the BEIC… couldn’t agree more!
Ever notice how difficult it is to find a history of the British East India Company?
Anyone got a lead on a good book about it?
Are they the Venetians/Phoenicians gone off on a London holiday?
The real problem won’t be the Vinyl Chlorise but the combusted by products. Burning VC in presence of any other thing organic or oxygenated inorganic materials can create 2,3,7,8-TCDD, TCDD. This is very, very nasty, in fact it is such a robust molecule it does not disappear, ever. There is realy no safe level as it is a arcinogen and reproductive amongst other hazards and it is unsafe in tiny amounts. It might actually be better to have a cesium contamination. TCDD is fat/lipid soluble so every living thing in the affected area will likely bioaccumulate TCDD (think Agent Orange like substance), possibly indefinitively. The last thing you would do is burn VC in a natural/external environment or where it is simulatenously exposed to other materials. It may be a better approach to evacuate completely any area found to have TCDD present.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/tcdd
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/2_3_7_8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-P-dioxin
So let me lay this out to you in Hazmat we use a guide the ERG Emergency Response Guide and it details chemical and other hazardous materials and what to do with large events like this. Their protocol in the event of a large spill on a train car is to set the evacuation zone to one mile (the bare minimum) they followed that part. However then they decided to burn it off, horrible idea cause with combustion it converts multiple chemicals which I’ll highlight two. Phosgene and Hydrogen Chloride. If you remember when they burned it off it was around 4pm, really bad news because at night it becomes worse and the inversion layer holds it in closer to the ground. You notice in the footage the smoke column is going straight up which means there’s low wind, even worse. The maximum evacuation zone after combustion should have been set to 6.3 miles. If you want it’s free to download in any app store just look for ERG, you can look up what I’m talking about. So if me, someone who’s in Hazmat training understands this and knows about it, they damn well should have.
Some of these destructive big events seem intentional, some seem random outcomes of decades of systems and infrastructure neglect.
Either way, they serve to degrade day to day life and the ability of people to think, plan and act beyond the immediate problems they face.
I think it was Lenin while trying to seize power during the Russian Revolution, who coined the phrase: “the worse the better”
I live 270 miles east/ southeast of the town. We are terrified. Will our little victory garden poison us? What about our Amish farmers across the river in Lancaster? We’ve been trying so hard to find good sources of food. We filter our drinking water. We booked a mini vacation to the Poconos next month. Should we cancel it? This guy is saying we (and everyone east of the Mississippi) should leave. We don’t have the money to move just like that. Livid and depressed.
https://veryvirology.substack.com/p/there-is-fire-in-our-crowded-theater
Jay Trout –
Hoping this link calms the waters some for you.
I can not vouch for her assessment of the toxicity of the chemicals involved, but she suggests skepticism of the “peak fear” the Great Wurlitzer wishes to build up.
Video of Dr Lee Merritt, from yesterday, saying we don’t have good info, mostly panic and speculation intended to generate more panic (ie terrorism, basically).
Monday FEB 20,2023
“Ohio Chemical Spill–It’s not what you think”
https://sageofquayblog.blogspot.com/2023/02/ohio-chemical-spill-its-not-what-you.html?m=1
Best wishes for you and your family.
Stay strong.
Thank you 🙏😊
Most welcome.
Jay Trout
I am so sorry for what you are going through, we are watching the US implode from afar and feel helpless – we pray for all of you obviously, but wish we could do more. Don’t know if this is a valid angle or not, but has anyone looked into phytoremediation solutions? It’s using plants to clean up polluted areas and it’s done for land, water and soil. I’ve read superficially about this over the years so am no expert, but a quick search reveals some solutions available for various toxins. I was under the impression that some plants are excellent at picking up certain elements from the soil – like rice will draw arsenic from the soil if it’s there. Please check it out, perhaps people can group together to come up with a solution to salvage the land at the very least if you can’t live there, you can exploit it somehow. Isn’t this what billionaires and industry would do?
A few links to get you started (not that these are the best, just a sample of what I came across):
https://land8.com/5-best-plants-for-phytoremediation/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100301091550.htm
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/08/30/trees-can-do-dirty-work-waste-cleanup
God Bless you all
Thanks for those links. Perhaps it’s something we can do smaller scale for ourselves. And I will share it with some Amish folk who don’t use internet.
What are a few hundred, or a few million, “Deplorable” lives to a Swamp creature? To them, it’s just flyover country — and flyover country that votes the wrong way, to boot. Having lived in some of the coastal urban centers, I’d say that, in those big Blue cities, there is widespread and very real disdain for (or, at best, utter lack of sympathy for) the rest of the country. And Swampington’s attitude is aligned with that of the aforementioned urban centers.
I sympathize with anyone who is livid with the way the federal government has neglected the infrastructure and general well-being of the vast majority of this country’s territory. I’m originally from Ohio, yet I’m past being livid, shocked, or scandalized by anything that comes out of the U.S. government anymore; the behavior I see is exactly what I’ve come to expect.
Addendum: Oddly, I see a connection to central bank digital “currencies” (CBDCs) here that I hadn’t seen before. The justifiable lividness felt by many in this country about how the federal government has spewed forth trillions upon trillions to fund endless wars and subsidize a handful of mega-grifting corporate contractors — while letting the country’s infrastructure crumble — seems like it could eventually make lots of people very angry about the federal taxes they pay. Could the rush to implement CBDCs be, among other things, to head off a tax revolt? If CBDCs replace money, then a tax revolt or anything similar (like putting taxes in an escrow fund at the state level) becomes impossible.
Very wise angle brother.
For the saboteurs to have tought it would be a true feat of strategic intelligence, and cannot be discarded.
“All we need is the next major crisis and the world will be ready for the New World Order”
– David Rockefeller, “Memoirs”
I lived in Mt. Shasta , Cal when the nineties Vapan spill in the Sacramento occurred, which wiped out all life within and beside the Sacramento River from Mt. Shasta to Redding for years. A lot was hidden, no one allowed near the site, all that crap.
Anyway, this train was already on fire twenty miles before it reached Palestine.
Two decades?? Aw. Come on….a review? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzYgiL2HiM
So far Dan Bongino and Tim Pool (2 podcasters with a large audience) have pointed out that a Netflix show seems to have forshadowed the Ohio train derailment. Here’s Bongino giving minutes on the subject – https://youtu.be/6ij9UX_aT-o
The Trump deregulation bonanza is one big area I disagree on him with but the rail saftey regulation he repealed only applied to tankers carrying oil so even if that brake regulation was still in place it wouldn’t have matter for E. Palestine.
Here’s an AP exclusive on Trump’s transportation saftey deregulation. Nothing you wouldn’t expect from any other Republican president, but plenty of industry executives in positions of government authority. I still personally think Trump’s main goal was to prepare to defend the nation from a hostile war so he gave heavy industry a whole lot of slack except this was at the expense of safety.
https://apnews.com/article/wv-state-wire-north-america-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-2e91c7211b4947de8837ebeda53080b9mp-us-news-ap-top-news-transportation-1936e77a11924c909880f1ef014c7ca7
Not only that, the movie was shot in the town, and the locals hired as extras….let that sink in, in both senses.
Anyway, along with the digital medical tracker system that was introduced after the movie shooting, and the plot of the movie….anyone in their right mind would get the heck out of there. Well, I would.
In the video at this link
https://mobile.twitter.com/DollArntzen/status/1627536931642044417
A woman points out a long line of full rail cars holding unknown substances. The rail line is in the middle of agricultural land in California not far from water infrastructure.
Seems like the strict California environmental laws should apply. How could anyone see speculative climate change models as a more serious threat than hazards moving over inadequate infrastructures?
Transfer of any hazardous material seems like a serious vulnerability.
‘Would ECP brakes have reduced the severity of this accident? Yes, Mr Ditmeyer told Lever News.’
The man is a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration, who also says that ‘the braking system technologies date back to the Civil War era in some places.’
Is this happening in America or in Burkina Faso? Is there a difference in present times?
My sentiments exactly!
Even the traffic signs are corroded!
Definitely corrupting signs of the times!
For me, the most deeply corrupted and corroded, are the media.
They need to reflect an uncomfortable presence.
As if their talking heads; are sweating bullets of heat,
from their scorching their hot seats. Knowing that they are,
are painting as red bold-face-liars Traitors to all of humanity.
The only way out of hell, for these talking heads?
Totally digital reporters; supported only by Hollywood special-effects.
https://jonrappoport.substack.com/p/ohio-train-disaster-podcast-part-1?publication_id=806546#details
Great insight on the Ohio derailment
@anakephalaiosis I’ve often wondered when/if they’d return ‘home’. Do you think they’ll drop the ‘jew’ name (since they’re anything but imo) and go with a new one such as khazarian or stick with zionist as it includes other organized religions and the misidentification ruse can continue?
Zionists are pushing for a reverse Haavara Agreement, abandoning the fake Israel, in an attempt to claw themselves a Khazarian hole in the Ukraine.
Demolition of the US empire is required, for the fake Israel to implode, so that force majeure can spur deportation of Jews, to the Holy Roman Khazaria.
It has taken half a millennium, for papacy to prop up an American empire, to weaken the European continent, by consecration through the backdoor.
With centre in the Ukraine, Zionist Jews are plotting to emerge out of Catholicism and Jesuit-controlled Freemasonry, as a Khazarian empire, to rule the world.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ccsirsai003ocg3/featherless-chicken.jpg
@anakephalaiosis I’ve often wondered when/if they’d return ‘home’. Do you think they’ll drop the ‘jew’ portion of their (since they’re anything but imo) name and go with a new one such as khazarian or zionist?
The Judahite identity ceased to exist after the crucifixion, because exodus to Britain was a kindred tribal assimilation.
Those, who label themselves Jews today, are not of Israelite descent, and are using a fake identity for what it’s worth.
Original Israelites stipulated jubilee amnesty every seventh year, whereas the modern miser promotes perpetual debt enslavement.
When a copycat is exposed as identity theft, its new identity becomes whatever derogatory label one may choose.
2:24 a lady asks President Trump a question – “There’s an alarming rise of anti-Semitism across America”….. he agrees with her, brings up the Abraham Accord, making Jerusalem the capital and building the embassy that he accomplished.
It’s all a script, pre planned, perpetual wars. https://www.bitchute.com/video/o6NBx4xdCNMG/
Donald Trump worships a golden calf, whereas Moses scraped off the Khazarian mafia, because the Ten Commandments didn’t allow for the CIA to lie, steal and cheat.
Same thing happened, before the ten tribes seceded, because David and Solomon were both golden calves, whose egos had set themselves above the law.
After the 10th century BC, the ten tribes used the 32-point compass, to determine highest ranking patriarchal authority, amongst Scythians-Israelite descent.
Today, those wailing wallers turn pillars of salt, over an abandoned position, because Abram is Adon/Odin.