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Montreal Tunneling Association of Canada Conference
23 October 2012
By Robert Hux (CRC) – The Tunneling Association of Canada held a conference in Montreal, attended by over 180 tunnel builders, civil/mining engineers, manufacturers of tunnel boring machines, with participants from Canada, the United States, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Iran, and South Korea, as well as two Committee for the Republic of Canada organizers. The keynote presentation opening the conference was given by Dr. In-Mo Lee, a professor of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Seoul, South Korea and president of the International Tunneling and Underground Spaces Association (ITA). He gave an overview of the many different ways in which tunnels and underground spaces are being used – everything from railways, metro lines, and highways, to underground markets and public buildings, to storage warehouses, to water supply and storage, flood control systems, waste transport, spillways for hydroelectric projects, storage for crude oil, storage for radioactive waste. He made the point that underground structures are much less vulnerable to damage from earthquakes than structures above ground, using the example of the 1995 Kobe earthquake (Magnitude 6.9) which did a lot of damage to the above ground floors of Kobe City Hall, but did not harm the shopping mall beneath it. Whether intentionally or not, his presentation evoked the conception of Russian biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky: mankind as a powerful geological force which is transforming the nature of the Lithosphere. We aren’t limited to the available surface of the Earth but can occupy regions within the planet (and eventually other planets). He highlighted the completion in December 2010 of the world’s longest (3.7 kilometers) underwater seabed tunnel connecting Busan, South Korea and Jungjuk Islet, which together with two bridge connections to Jeo island provides a 8.2 kilometer highway link between Busan and Geoje Island. Finally he mentioned his “dream projects” a) an undersea railway tunnel connecting the Korean Pennisula with Jeju Island, b) undersea tunnels connecting the Korean peninsula with China as well as Japan. The second keynote presentation, by Felix Amberg, M.Sc., President of Amberg Engineering Ltd., Switzerland, dealt with the progress on construction of the Gotthard Tunnel. He explained that there are two rail corridors connecting Germany through Switzerland to Milan, Italy which have been, or are in the process of being, upgraded by the construction of new lower elevation tunnels cutting through the Alp mountains. The western route through Switzerland connecting Basel, Bern, Frutigen, Steg, and on to Milan includes the 34.6 kilometer Lötschberg Base Tunnel between Frutigen and Steg which became operational in December of 2007. The eastern route from Zürich to Milan involves three tunnel projects: the Zimmerberg Base Tunnel (20 kilometres from Zürich to Zug, construction currently suspended), the Gotthard Base Tunnel (57 kilometres from Erstfeld to Bodio) and the Ceneri Base Tunnel (35 km between Bellinzona and Lugano). The [Gotthard Base Tunnel] cuts through the mountains near the base rather than the existing Gotthard Railway Tunnel which has to climb 600 meters to travel the route. The excavation and lining of the Gotthard Base Tunnel have been completed, and the railway technology is currently being installed. These tunnel projects which have been mentioned, as well as others described by many of the speakers at the conference, ironically owe their existence not only to the hard work of the engineers, scientists, construction workers and many others involved in designing the engineering plans, organizing the production of the construction materials and specialized machinery required to build the tunnels. They are manifestations of an historical process to lift mankind up to what American economist Lyndon LaRouche has called a higher “economic platform.” For example, up until relatively recently the dominant human cultures on the planet were those capable of navigating the oceans through knowledge of astronomy. The ability to extend ocean navigation into river systems interconnected by canals, as occurred under Charlemagne, represented a leap to a higher economic platform. Later the transition to continental railroad systems, as under Abraham Lincoln in the United States, was again a transition to a higher platform. We have not yet made the leap to the next platform, characterized by international railroad systems, as for example the implications of the Bering Strait Tunnel between Alaska and Russia. Nor, have we even more than scratched the surface of the economic platform associated with man’s ability to travel to and begin to manage our local neighborhood in the Solar System, between the orbits of Venus and Mars (where a lot of nasty asteroids are just waiting for a chance to cause us trouble). The necessary context for ourselves as well as those we had a chance to meet at the conference, is the historic battle of Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche to eliminate the bankrupt financial system of globalism and empire through a return to the principles of Franklin Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall Banking Act, a system of government directed public credit channeled into the necessary great project of infrastructure (the World Land-Bridge) which are required to support the present 7 billion population in the world, and soon a lot more. The World Wide Land-Bridge This video presents a series of projects of the World Landbridge Watch Video here |