I just got caught up on China so you can understand why I don't like coverage anymore.
"Private charities raising more for China quake victims than state" New York Times, April 23, 2013
BEIJING — The devastating earthquake that struck southwest China last weekend has drawn a flood of donations from across the country.
But in contrast to the pattern after a major quake in the same region five years ago, those eager to bolster relief efforts are looking to donate to private charity organizations, not to official groups, which have a reputation for corruption.
The Red Cross Society of China, a state-run organization that is the country’s largest charity, has yet to recover from a 2011 scandal that struck a serious blow to China’s nascent notions of philanthropy, especially philanthropy guided by the government.
And where did all the Red Cross 9/11 money go here, anyway? Or the Haiti fund stolen by Bill and George Bush? Or the Katrina dough? And wasn't there a United Way scandal once? In fact, pick up a paper sometime; thing is loaded with looting and liars.
“Compared to the opaque system that most state-supported charity organizations have, nongovernmental organizations and the newly emerged so-called micro-charities follow a more transparent system,’’ said Deng Guosheng, director of the NGO Research Center at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
On its microblog, the Red Cross said....
On Monday, relief and rescue efforts continued in the broad area around Ya’an in Sichuan province....
Oh, yeah, about that.
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Maybe they could take some time covering that rather than ripping China?
"160 killed, 6,700 injured as strong quake hits China; Spurs landslides in area damaged badly 5 years ago" by Gillian Wong | Associated Press, April 21, 2013
YA’AN, China — Residents huddled outdoors Saturday night in a town near the epicenter of a powerful earthquake that struck the steep hills of China’s southwestern Sichuan Province, leaving at least 160 people dead and more than 6,700 injured.
Saturday morning’s earthquake triggered landslides and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county five years after a quake wreaked widespread damage across the region.
The village of Longmen was hit particularly hard, with authorities saying nearly all the buildings there had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.
In nearby Ya’an town, where aftershocks could be felt nearly 20 hours after the quake, residents sat in groups outside convenience stores watching the news on television sets. Wang Xing, 14, sat with her family on chairs by the roadside in the cool night air, a large blanket on her lap.
Wang and her relatives said they planned to spend the night in their cars. ‘‘We don’t feel safe sleeping at home tonight,’’ said Wang, a student. She said the quake left tears on the walls of her family’s house. ‘‘It was very scary when it happened. I ran out of my bed and out of the house.’’
Along the main roads leading to the worst-hit county of Lushan, ambulances, fire engines, and military trucks piled high with supplies waited in long lines, some turning back to try other routes when roads were impassable.
Rescuers turned the square outside the Lushan County Hospital into a triage center, where medical personnel bandaged bleeding victims, according to footage on China Central Television. Rescuers dynamited boulders that had fallen across roads to reach Longmen and other damaged areas.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived Saturday afternoon by helicopter in Ya’an to direct rescue efforts, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
‘‘The current priority is to save lives,’’ Li said, after visiting hospitals, tents and climbing on a pile of rubble to view the devastation. The government deployed about 7,000 soldiers and emergency equipment to assist the effort.
How sad is it that I believe them and not my own government or its mouthpiece media?
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"Rescuers scour rubble for survivors of deadly earthquake" Associated Press, April 22, 2013
LUSHAN, China — Relief teams brought in helicopters and dynamited through landslides Sunday to reach some of the most isolated communities hit by a powerful weekend earthquake, as rescuers led search dogs through piles of brick, concrete, and wood debris to search for survivors.
In my nation the government is carrying out false flag drills in Boston as the nation's heartland and breadbasket floods.
Oh, yeah, and there are all sorts of mini-earthquakes across the country due to hydraulic fracking.
Saturday’s earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan killed at least 186 people, injured more than 11,000 and left nearly two dozen missing, mostly in the rural communities around Ya’an city.
The quake struck along the same fault line where a devastating quake to the north killed more than 90,000 people in Sichuan and neighboring areas five years ago.
Hmmmm. Another HAARP?
Lushan and Baoxing, the districts hit hardest on Saturday, had escaped the worst of the damage in the 2008 quake, and residents there said they benefited little from the region’s rebuilding after the disaster, with no special reinforcements made or new evacuation procedures introduced in their remote communities.
At least they had one. Go down to New Orleans some time and see the elite center and the rest.
Many residents complained that although emergency teams were quick to carry away bodies and search for survivors, they had so far done little to distribute aid....
The quake — measured by China’s earthquake administration at magnitude 7.0 and by the US Geological Survey at 6.6 — struck shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday. Tens of thousands of people moved into tents or cars, unable to return home or too afraid to go back as aftershocks continued to jolt the region.
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I can see why my government mouthpiece is upset at the Chinese:
"China censures America on human rights; Report issued in response to US global study" Associated Press, April 22, 2013
BEIJING — China slammed the human rights record of the United States in response to Washington’s report on rights around the world, saying that US military operations have infringed on rights abroad and that political donations at home have thwarted the country’s democracy.
The report released Sunday in China, which defines human rights primarily in terms of improving living conditions for its 1.3 billion people, also cited gun violence in the United States among its examples of human rights violations, saying it was a serious threat to the lives and safety of America’s citizens.
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012 report said the US government continues to strengthen the monitoring of its people and that political donations to election campaigns have undue influence on US policy.
Not really much to complain about. It's an accurate assessment.
‘‘American citizens do not enjoy a genuinely equal right to vote,’’ the report said, citing a decreased turnout in the 2012 presidential election and a voting rate of 57.5 percent.
Even if we did we have rigged voting machines.
The report from the information office of the State Council, or China’s Cabinet, which mostly cited media reports, said there was serious sex, racial, and religious discrimination in the United States and that the country had seriously infringed on the human rights of other nations through its military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.
And now, FLIP!
The United States’ annual global human rights report issued Friday by the State Department said China had imposed new registration requirements to prevent groups that might challenge government authority from emerging.
Chinese government efforts to silence and intimidate political activists and public interest lawyers continued to increase, the report said, and authorities use extralegal measures such as enforced disappearance to prevent the public voicing of independent opinions.
It also said there was discrimination against women, minorities, and people with disabilities; people trafficking; the use of forced labor; forced sterilization; and widespread corruption.
China’s authoritarian government maintains strict controls over free speech, religion, and political activity — restrictions that the United States considers human rights violations.
Sure are enough angry Chinese protests over there for that, but WHATEVER!
In a separate development, Chinese authorities said they have detained six anticorruption activists in recent days, expanding their crackdown on a citizen-led campaign against official graft.
The detained activists, including a prominent rights lawyer, had been demanding that senior Communist Party officials publicly disclose their personal wealth, according to lawyers and rights advocates.
Four of the six activists are still being held, according to their lawyers.
They said the police had raided the homes of at least two detainees and confiscated laptops, video cameras, and other items.
The populist campaign, dubbed the New Citizens Movement by its organizers, begun late last year with a petition drive that collected thousands of signatures.
It has attempted to dovetail with a pledge by President Xi Jinping to clean up the corruption that he says poses a threat to the ruling Communist Party.
In January, Xi promised to remove high-ranking officials and midlevel bureaucrats, but the public clamor for asset disclosure has so far received a tepid response from Chinese leaders.
The campaign has picked up steam in the five weeks since Xi consolidated power by adding the title of president to his other titles, Communist Party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission.
The change in leadership has given liberals at least a faint hope that Xi will follow through on promises to increase government transparency.
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