Chinese Earthquake Photos!!
- Thread starter bd popeye
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Nem116
Junior Member
4 stars = General/Colonel General, unless I'm mistaken.
What's wrong with the article? It looks pretty informative and unprovocative to me. I dont see any 'western propaganda', maybe you can point it out for me
Death toll is now over 1,100 as reported by CNN:
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ravenshield936
Banned Idiot
my anger's directed at the works, not you. dont worry. i appreciate everyone for the photos actually.
if you read the initial first few paragraphs, you'd notice the paragraphs have the pattern of reporting factual for on sentence, followed by a criticism the next
BEIJING -- A series of severe earthquakes in a remote Tibetan district of western China killed hundreds of people Wednesday and triggered a major rescue operation that highlighted the growing power of public opinion in a country that was once slow to acknowledge such calamities.
As temperatures in Qinghai province dipped below freezing, Chinese soldiers and paramilitary forces poured into the impoverished region to join rescue efforts and keep order. The death toll rose Thursday to 760, with 243 people still missing, according to authorities in Qinghai. More than 11,470 people have been injured.
The strongest quake hit at 7:49 local time Wednesday morning, flattening homes, offices, a hotel and parts of at least two schools in Jiegu Town, a settlement of about 70,000 people high on the Tibetan Plateau. Most of the residents in the town, located 1,200 miles from Beijing, are ethnic Tibetans who revere the exiled Dalai Lama, a native of Qinghai.
"The situation here is terrible. It's very cold. . . . I feel that half the people have died and half are injured," said Lamu, 21, a Tibetan reached by telephone in Jiegu Town, the hardest-hit urban area. "I'm scared. What can we do but sit in the open? Everything is buried. It's dark everywhere."
While locals complained of a shortage of food, tents for shelter and digging equipment, China's state media offered a more upbeat picture, describing rescue workers and medical staff as flooding into Qinghai from cities nationwide. (slight comparison of saying the CCP are decieving) State television reported that 900 people had been pulled from shattered buildings, including a student who was rescued from a flattened school in Jiegu Town after hours of digging.
But state media also provided far more than rigid propaganda.(if attached with the paragraph above, it implies the CCP are initiating propaganda. honestly, i dont know if the CCP are doing it or not, but for articles like this, there's no need for them to contribute their share of it. instead they should stick to factual details of more about the earthquake) Liu Long, a correspondent for CCTV, China's state television network, reported live from the quake area for much of the day, giving vivid accounts of the devastation. In one particularly emotional report, he told of groans heard in the ruins of the Jiegu Monastery hotel. He also reported that only 350 tents had arrived by nightfall.
The blanket coverage reflected a desire on the part of China's leadership to show itself responsive to the suffering of ordinary people, as well as a recognition that old-style propaganda is not as effective today as it was during the era of Mao Zedong and for much of the past several decades.(see the word "propaganda" returns?seriously, is the comparison to the Mao era even necessary to be in this article?)
While the Internet is heavily censored in this country, Web sites nonetheless buzzed Wednesday with skepticism about official accounts of the quake and its aftermath. Sina weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, which is banned in China, featured denunciations of the Seismological Bureau for not predicting the quakes, questions about whether structures that collapsed had violated building codes, and unconfirmed reports that the propaganda department of the Communist Party had banned all but selected Chinese journalists from visiting Jiegu Town.
Chinese are particularly sensitive to allegations that buildings were structurally unsound. Parents of children killed in the 2008 Sichuan quake -- in which more than 80,000 people died -- alleged that corrupt officials had allowed the construction of substandard schools. Unlike those schools, many of those that fell in Jiegu Town appear to have been traditional structures.
China's Earthquake Network Center put the magnitude of the strongest quake on Wednesday at 7.1, but the U.S. Geological Survey estimated it at 6.9. Chinese authorities reported six quakes and aftershocks during a four-hour period that started with a relatively minor quake at 5:39 a.m.
Chinese media reported that a concrete dam at a water reservoir near Jiegu Town had fractures as a result of the quake and that many residents had left town for higher ground.
In a statement issued along with China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, President Hu Jintao demanded "all-out efforts to save lives and provide assistance" and "efforts to safeguard social stability in the quake-devastated region," the official news agency Xinhua reported.
Passed over in silence was a message from the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing regularly denounces as a "splittist" bent on separating Tibet from China. In a message posted on his Web site, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, who has lived in India since fleeing China in 1959, said he was "exploring how I, too, can contribute" to relief work.
"We pray for those who have lost their lives in this tragedy and their families and others who have been affected," he said.
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i dont care if the criticisms are objective and factual, as in the sichuan thing. in fact, the more of these exposed, the better. but if it's biased, non-factual,when they're going "chinese communists blah blah, human rights blah blah, propaganda blah blah", then there's something wrong.
how can people even believe what they're written or to assess and improve a situation when what they're writing have integral problems at the first place?
instead of earning stars, it will only backfire, and it's only getting worse as more and more people are aware. direct propaganda only works on narrow and closed-minded ignorants.
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Please moderate your future language ravenshield, but otherwise yes I agree with the thrust of your of your complaint and have noticed much the same in the reporting that I have seen.
Most of it quite subtle with attempts to minimise the activities and presence of the military and state assistance and a magnified exposure of Monks rescue efforts.
I also note that all monks that have come to the area to help are being described as Tibetan, while in fact some of the images I have seen show quite diverse denominations.
I also note that most of the destroyed buildings are the old and traditional type while most of those still standing are more modern, which is why early attempts to repeat some of the Sichuan criticisms were quickly discontinued.
The ongoing petty and snide commentary is however very annoying and it was quite gratifying to see a pontificating Damian Grammaticus from the BBC get shoved aside, by clearly annoyed relatives, as he got in the way of the family of the rescued girl from one of the above pictures.
Most of it quite subtle with attempts to minimise the activities and presence of the military and state assistance and a magnified exposure of Monks rescue efforts.
I also note that all monks that have come to the area to help are being described as Tibetan, while in fact some of the images I have seen show quite diverse denominations.
I also note that most of the destroyed buildings are the old and traditional type while most of those still standing are more modern, which is why early attempts to repeat some of the Sichuan criticisms were quickly discontinued.
The ongoing petty and snide commentary is however very annoying and it was quite gratifying to see a pontificating Damian Grammaticus from the BBC get shoved aside, by clearly annoyed relatives, as he got in the way of the family of the rescued girl from one of the above pictures.
ravenshield936
Banned Idiot
You're correct
especially the thing about the lamas. Not all are Tibetan. My parents are very devote Buddhists and they've went to this region and met some of the lamas. They are all very nice, but all of them are Tibetan. Some are even Han.
I do apologize for my strong use of language, but I'm sure everyone here understands my feeling. When someone's dying and then these immorals just start cooking up those types of articles, it's the most heartless thing they can do. Totally putting salt on the wound. Patriotism or not, it's unnecessary and completely irresponsible and unacceptable. Pretend it's the aftermath of Katrina or 9/11 and the same thing occurs, I'm pretty sure they will be as angry to see the same types of things happening.
Two Lines With 4 Bronze(Actually Brass Color) Stars = Senior Colonel.
Position could be vary from a Brigade, a Division up to a full Army Commander or Political Commissioner in China. Most likely, in China, a Senior Colonel is a division level commander or political commissioner. In Chinese military universities, most full professors are senior colonel ranking levels.
China, currently, does not have a four star general. Major Gen. = 1 gold star without lines; Lieutenant Gen. = 2 gold stars; Gen. = 3 gold stars.
Second Lieutenant = 1 bronze star with one line; Lieutenant 2 bronze stars with one line; Captain = 3 bronze stars with one line (China used to have a Senior Captain rank, 4 bronze stars with one line.
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Get over yourself ravenshield.. Remember hurricane Katrina in the US?? The very same type of comments were made and the same sort of critique is made every time there's some sort of disaster major crime etc any where in the US..Get over it..
And next time watch your language. Hong Kong people have more class than that..
solarz
Brigadier
Well, except you know, the US government *did* drop the ball in Katrina...
ff.True FEMA did really screw up. Not the US DoD..but here in the US anything the government be it city , state or federal is involved in the media will find some reason to criticize what ever happened. Here in Cedar Rapids along with much of eastern Iowa we suffered a major flood in 2008. Which was the second largest disaster in terms of property damage in the history of the US. The media still is criticizing the city, state and Federal governments two years later. We are use to it..
ff- Status