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April 18, 1906: Natural Disaster

A hundred years ago to the date, San Francisco was destroyed in a 7.9-magnitude quake on the San Andreas fault.

Scientists and earthquake experts believe The Big One could be coming. There are nearby faults which are equally dangerous: The Hayward fault running beneath Oakland, Berkeley and the crowded East Bay suburbs across the bay from San Francisco.

Mary Lou Zoback, regional coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, said a 7.0-magnitude shock on the Hayward fault, where 2 million people live, would move the earth 4 to 8 feet (1.2 to 2.4 metres) and sever highways, gas pipelines, the power grid, pipes that carry drinking water to San Francisco from Yosemite Valley, and commuter rail lines.

USGS has prepared the '1906 Ground Motion Simulations' to illustrate ground shaking from the 1906 earthquake, based on 3D geologic and seismic velocity models it developed in collaboration with LLNL, UC Berkeley, and Stanford University.

San Francisco is the main port of entry in most of my visits to the US, I know and enjoy the city too well. When I picked up the April edition of National Geographic earlier this month, it sent chills up my spine.

April 18, 2006: Human Rights Abuse

Tonight, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will host Chinese President Hu Jintao to dinner at his home in Seattle at the start of Hu’s visit to the United States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued an open letter urging Gates to raise the issues of online censorship and the repression of cyber-dissidents when Hu shows up for dinner.

Of the 56 cyber activists imprisoned throughout the world, 48 are found in China.

RSF we have written several letters to executives in Microsoft expressing concern about certain Microsoft practices, but the letters have not been answered.

RSF had expressed its disapproval of Microsoft’s decision to censor the Chinese version of its blog tool, MSN Spaces. This service automatically rejects search strings such as “4 June” (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre) or “human rights in China.” Last December, Microsoft also chose to close down the blog of a very popular Chinese blogger, Michael Anti, as a result of pressure from the Chinese authorities.

There is a need for Internet sector companies to begin to reflect about the consequences of their activities in countries such as China, says RSF.

RSF has pledged its support for the Global Online Freedom Act, a bill proposed to the US House of Representatives in February by Rep. Christopher Smith that would regulate the operations of Internet companies in repressive countries.

My personal appeal to Hu is: Free Hao Wu, Global Voices China Editor.

I would have chosen a Chinese headline for this blog entry: 天灾人祸, which means 'Natural Disaster and Human Catastrophe'.