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Series Of Bizarre Natural Events Preceded
Massive Earthquakes In China
YOUR
NEW REALITY
Thursday, May 15, 2008
This story from the Times
Online pings the word 'conspiracy' to these stories of weirdness
before the 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit China a few days ago, but
such stories are not rare. In fact, animals acting strangely before
earthquakes hit is fairly common.
From the London
Times:
One blogger from Shandong province, in eastern China, wrote that
more than a month ago, he went to his local earthquake resesarch
centre several times to report that his animals had been disturbed
and restless.
But, he wrote: "They not only ridiculed me, they accused me
of making up stories."
The Chutian Metropolis Daily reported that on April 26, 80,000
tonnes of water suddenly drained from a large pond in Enshi, Hubei
province. The province shares a border with Chongqing Municipality,
which was devastated by the earthquake on Monday.
On May 10, a Sichuan-based newspaper, the West China Metropolis
Daily, reported that hundreds of migrating toads descended upon
the streets of Mianyang, the second largest city in the province
which neighbours Wenchuan County, the epicentre of the earthquake.
In the city of Mianzhu, 60 miles from the epicentre, bloggers pointed
to reports just weeks before the earthquake of a mass migration
of more than one million butterflies.
On May 10, a Sichuan-based newspaper, the West China
Metropolis Daily, reported that hundreds of migrating toads (below)
descended upon the streets of Mianyang, the second largest city in
the province which neighbours Wenchuan County, the epicentre of the
earthquake.
The China quakes have killed more than 15,000 people, more than 25,000
remain trapped under collapsed buildings, schools and apartment blocks
as this is written, and 30,000 to 60,000 are missing. More than 1
million people are believed to have lost their homes.
The scale of the disaster and loss is staggering :
"The losses have been severe," said Wang
Yi, who heads an armed police unit sent into the epicentre zone. "Some
towns basically have no houses left. They have all been razed."
At least 7700 people died in the small town of Yingxiu alone. Only
2300 survived there.
Across Sichuan, countless thousands more people are
missing or buried under the rubble of homes, schools and factories.
The Premier, Wen Jiabao, said 100,000 military personnel and police
had been mobilised. "Time is life," he told rescuers.
Hundreds of survivors were pulled from rubble in Beichuan
county yesterday, including five kindergarten children who were carried
up the mountain road towards the city of Mianyang.
The road into Beichuan is blocked by boulders the size of houses
and it takes would-be rescuers one hour to walk three kilometres.
Hardly a building remains untouched, and many have
been buried beneath avalanches from the towering mountains on either
side.
Remarkably, the Chinese government has managed to turn an appalling
natural disaster into an international PR coup, by ramming almost
the entire force of its rescue services and military into emergency
service and allowing state media to run hours of footage of people
being dug out of collapsed buildings and apartment blocks.
As this
New York Times report explains, international criticism of China
over its anti-free speech Olympics agenda and its brutalisation of
Tibetans has disappeared from most media in the past 48 hours, replaced
by stories of the Chinese government responding swiftly to the disaster
:
Mothers wailing over the bodies of their children. Emergency workers
scrambling across pancaked buildings. And a grim-faced political
leader comforting the stricken and reassuring an anguished nation.
While such scenes are a staple of catastrophes in much of the world,
the rescue effort playing nonstop on Chinese television is remarkable
for a country that has a history of concealing the scope of natural
calamities and then bungling its response.
...China’s Communist Party leaders are keenly
aware that their approach to the earthquake will be closely watched
at home and abroad. And after two bruising months of criticism from
the West over its handling of Tibetan unrest, the government can ill
afford another round of criticism as it prepares to host the Olympic
Games in August.
...if China manages to handle a big natural disaster better than
the United States handled Hurricane Katrina, the achievement may
underscore Beijing’s contention that its largely nonideological
brand of authoritarianism can deliver good government as well as
fast growth.
Dali Yang, the director of the East Asian Institute in Singapore,
said the government might have come to the realization that openness
and accountability could bolster its legitimacy and counter growing
anger over corruption, rising inflation and the disparity between
the urban rich and the rural poor.
“I think their response to this disaster shows
they can act, and they can care,” he said. “They seem
to be aware that a disaster like this can pull the country together
and bring them support.”
The videos of rescue workers clambering over wreckage, hauling out
the living and the dead, and racing the injured out of the disaster
zones, along with footage of officials helping out and consoling the
devastated, were filmed, packaged and distributed around the world
by China's state propaganda services. The videos ran on every major
TV news channel or program across the EU, the UK, the US and Australia,
and the message from the Chinese government was
clear : "This is how you run rescue and recovery missions."
The contrast with the Bush White House's 'whatever' attitude to the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is stunning.
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