UPDATE: See comment #3 for links to site where you can make a donation.
Also, as has been noted in the comment section, the earthquake happend yesterday afternoon.
Original post: China was just hit by a huge earthquake (CNN):
An earthquake powerful enough to be felt Monday throughout most of China killed and trapped thousands of people, including children buried under the rubble of their schools.
The Chinese government said nearly 10, 000 people were dead, and the death toll was sure to rise as authorities began to reach some of the worst-hit areas.
The earthquake has blocked roads leading to the most damaged area, which means things could be much worse.
The quake is just as powerful as the Great San Francisco Earthquake, which leveled that city in 1906.
If you are the praying kind, now would be a good time.
22 Comments
Earthquakes of this magnitude that hit China have an alarming tendancy to end up being counted among the deadliest natural disasters in human history. My heart goes out to anyone unlucky enough to have been caught in this thing.
Andy, oddly enough,you posted this thread and linked it to the CNN news release. Everyone knows that CNN is anti-China and biased thus this makes me wonder if this really happened or not.
Donate to the Korean Red Cross for help in Myanmar and China:
http://www.redcross.or.kr/redn.....p;seq=3977
Donate to the American Red Cross’s International Response Fund:
http://www.redcross.org/news/i.....clone.html
http://american.redcross.org/s.....c=F8DWA001
Just hit? The earthquake happened Monday afternoon local time. I read online a few hours ago that troops were walking to devastated areas because of the road conditions. I certainly hope the death toll doesn’t rise much more, but the present situation doesn’t sound good.
Elgin, please. Your attempt at humor is misplaced on this thread.
R. Elgin, what’s with the schadenfreude? Do you just not see Chinese as human beings?
I am not joking. Consider the comments of more than a few people about the bias of CNN regarding things Chinese then consider posting a reference to this awful disaster through the same source. It is almost surreal.
“user”, I see the Chinese as in need of reconsidering their definition of humanity because, as of late, it is quite biased and conditional.
Most people would not wish this sort of disaster to happen and neither would I.
Okay, but you were making smartass remarks about the killer quake hours before Andy put up the CNN link. From where I sit it looks like you’re pleased that something bad happened to a bunch of people in a country where you don’t like what some unrelated people there say or do.
“The Chinese”? As if all 1.3 billion Chinese think exactly the same way as PRC nutizens and the worst of the Chinese student hooligans in Seoul. Your schadenfreude is inappropriate at a time like this. Thanks, Sonagi, for me not being the only one to say it.
The drive-by C-borgs are gone, so I think it’s safe to link to CNN again.
I’m nonplussed at your further comments.
That’s the result of what they have been doing to N. Koreans. You know, God exists.
The earthquake in China balances out a great deal of blogging of late.
Natural disasters inside China are a seasonal event. There are massive floods and droughts that effect millions of Chinese every year. Any natural or man-made disaster such as this earthquake or the massive blizzard over last winter will show the facade.
China is a 3rd world country with the pretty ribbon packaging of first class technology.
Also, it is almost humorous the attempt to show China as an expansive aggressive military power. Because the so-called great Chinese military is trained mostly to provide internal disaster relief, building flood walls, and other humanitarian assistance.
The internal conditions of the Chinese people would never allow the CCP to be militarily aggressive for very long.
R.Elgin, you had a point a few weeks ago. But now you appear to be vindictive and hateful, even to those that were supportive on your many blog posts about the Chinese. From BBC website below. (sorry don’t know how to link)
“There were harrowing reports from the scene of a school collapse in Dujiangyan city - south-east of the epicentre - where 900 students were buried and at least 50 dead.
Teenagers buried beneath the rubble of the three-storey Juyuan Middle School building struggled to break free, while others cried out for help, Xinhua reported.
At another school in Dujiangyan, fewer than 100 students out of 420 are reported to have survived after their building collapsed.”
In light of your recent comments you are probably in need of some self reflection. Do you really want to be that guy that finds this funny or appropriate response to the actions of a select few adults?
I also forgot my hat.
Speaking of hats, you’re an asshat. God did not kill over ten thousand people because of policies made a thousand miles away in Zhongnanhai.
So R.Elgin’s gone from being merely tedious (in his Olympic Torch posts) to patently offensive. I suppose everyone has off-days.
#13,
I would have argued that God is just a primitive anthropomorphism.
Inkevitch wrote:
Did I say the earthquake is funny!? It is not, it is tragic and not deliberately evil as what the CCP has done in the past either.
Perhaps you are one of the people who would have been offended at A Modest Proposal?
“Zonath”, if I failed to offend you, then I must be having an “off-day”, indeed.
“I also forgot my hat.
Speaking of hats, you’re an asshat. God did not kill over ten thousand people because of policies made a thousand miles away in Zhongnanhai.”
Stupid comment I’ve ever read.
I probably would’ve found it hilarious as a teenager. But as an adult I do find it offensive, and it is most likely not the satire you imagine it to be. Jonathan Swift was a well known misanthrope and quite likely those were acurate reflections of his opinions.
You’ll notice I offered two options. One was that you found it funny. Demonstrated by the flippant nature of your comments and that you found irony in the reporting of the incident. The second that you found it an appropriate response by a higher being (buddha, karma, God) upon the Chinese for the actions of their government. I was merely illustrating that children were hurt, maimed and killed on a mass scale. And I doubt those children had been going around committing CCP evil. And unfortunately when you take a disaster like that lightly it is impossible to differentiate between those that deserve their fate and those that do not. You have yet to demonstrate this sensibility and come across as callous.
I should actually thank you, as in the past few weeks I had been becoming very anti-chinese. Now I realise that I was becoming bigotted and close minded. It seems it is easier to get caught up in mass hysteria than I realised. I doubt that I will approve of the humanitarian abuses that they are accused of, but neither will I write off an entire ethnicity of people based on the actions of their ruling elite. Because doing such would make me like you.
“Inkevitch”, do not put words into my mouth you pompous, mis-educated jackass.
I have never written “off an entire ethnicity of people based on the actions of their ruling elite”. If you had the wit to read my post, you would have noticed I never condemned the Chinese as a people. I referred to the many Chinese who, rather, criticized CNN for reporting false and misleading reports, namely everything about China, which seems to have been part of an orchestrated campaign of misinformation — much like your arrogant misinterpretation of my comment, regarding the CNN reference.
Yes indeed, you have not become “close minded” for you have not the mind to close and have not even the quality of character or ability to question the motives of Swift’s essay, which was to shame the English who mis-ruled Ireland during his time. Swift was not a “misanthrope” and neither have I acted as a bigot. Rather than worrying about your precious self reflection, you should try to be honest enough to worry about the time you have wrongfully wasted in indulging your pride and poor sensibilities at the expense of others.
Swift was an intelligent and gifted writer.
#20,
So was Kafka. I recommend that CCP cadres read his novels.
PS. If you understand German or ever learn German, you (will) have the opportunity to experience his texts as they were originally intended to be read, with all the innuendo that comes from using words that can be interpreted in a number of ways and the way he exploits German grammatical features, such as positioning of the verb at the end of a sentence, to create incredibly complex sentences.
I always thought that earthquarkes were the smallest possible single unit to move in any given shift of the earth’s tectonic plates, while earthquakes were the larger geological shifts often associated with such catastrophe as seen in China today.