Nuclear Rays From My Halogen Haze

The devastation in China from the horrible earthquake a few days ago is heartbreaking.  But apparently a Chinese seismologist knew in advance the quake was coming, yet his government didn’t heed the warning.

The same night of Sichuan’s May 12 earthquake, Chinese scientist Li Shihui revealed on his blog that Chinese seismologist Geng Qingguo accurately predicted the quake and warned authorities about the disaster in late April. According to Li, Geng’s report was ignored by Chinese authorities.

According to Li, on April 26 and 27, the Committee of Natural Disaster Prediction, an organization under China Geophysical Institute, discussed Geng’s findings and further predicted that a quake measuring 6 to 7 will occur between May 2008 and April 2009 in the area south to Lanzhou City where Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces meet. The committee’s report was turned into China Seismology Bureau as a confidential document on April 30.

In addition, Geng Qingguo clearly pointed out that in Aba region a quake of 7 or higher magnitude is most likely to occur in 10 days before and after May 8, 2008. His prediction has been proved accurate in every aspect: magnitude, location, and time. But his report received no response from the authorities.

It really upsets me that the Chinese government chose to stick their heads in the sand and let over 50,000 people die!  This is worth dozens of 9/11′s in terms of lives lost and negligence by the authorities in power.

Then again, the blind eye our own government under Bush has turned towards the environmental catastrophe that will soon be on our doorstep will likely result in not just hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, but also the end of whole cities, glaciers, ecosystems, you name it.  We’re in a very perilous situation, and yet our government doesn’t heed the warning of our own scientists.  Some guy in China will no doubt be blogging about our stupidity a couple decades hence, when our coastal cities are flooded and our desert cities are abandoned. 

While I think that some Chinese there and abroad are being overly sensitive about criticism from outside China (you realize the West is not ganging up on you, right? We worry about your government, but we worry more about our own governments and the forces of evil within our own borders, and we talk shit about every country), I never understood until recently the complexity of the Tibet issue, and the many valid concerns people in China have regarding Tibet, not the least of which is that possession is nine tenths of the law. And there is reason to feel that Tibet has been a part of China for centuries, and that Tibet before the 50′s had its own share of human rights abuses, even quasi-slavery in the form of feudalism (perhaps even some sex slavery), so perhaps the Westerners chanting “Free Tibet!” at the Olympic Torch rallies don’t really know the history of the issue they’re fighting.

On the other hand, the quelling of dissent in Tibet does seem to me a bona-fide human rights issue, even if independence is going to be considered off the table. And Tibet’s perceived past does not necessarily mean China should be forgiven for indiscretions and abuse now, nor does the ethnic Tibetans’ one slightly out-of-hand protest at an embassy in Nepal mean that Tibet is at all violent in the way the Communist Party in China has been, especially in our parents’ lifetimes.

In fact, the issue is so complex that the best summary of each position’s stance is this bizarre YouTube video I found.  It’s by what seems to be a Chinese American student who’s really upset but who also has Tibetan friends and wants to ask if we can’t all just get along. If you can sit through it, he gives all the arguments and passionate emotions of the Chinese diaspora and then attempts to give the opposing side’s viewpoint (or she, it could be a female yootoober):

P.S. In other news, my sympathies go out to those in China who today suffered from the brutal earthquake that hit the Sichuan province.  It’s so catastrophic in scope that I don’t know what to say.  Hopefully the help on the ground is adequate to help the survivors find shelter, food, and emergency services.

I know that this is not a political blog (I leave that up to the more qualified bloggers out there who know what they’re talking about) but this really bothers me (from the Pasadena Star-News):

 Citing security concerns, Police Chief Bernard Melekian on Tuesday rejected a proposal by critics of China to precede the Tournament of Roses parade with a human-rights march down Colorado Boulevard.

The decision was made during a morning meeting of Tournament officials, the chief and John Li, head of Caltech’s Falun Gong club, which has opposed a float linked to the People’s Republic of China’s in the internationally televised Rose Parade.

Li and other critics of China’s human-rights record proposed allowing a 100-person marching band and a Human Rights Torch Relay about two hours before the parade.

More significantly, they said, they won the Tournament’s support for what could have been the first such procession before the tradition-steeped parade.

“Everything was settled until Bill Flynn presented the timesheet to the Police Department,” Li said of their detailed proposal.

Accommodating a band, a double-decker bus and other vehicles inside the security zone on Jan. 1 was unworkable, Melekian said.

So, a city such as Pasadena that’s bristling with cops and has no crime can’t handle baby-sitting a bus and a band at seven in the morning on New Year’s Day?  All the criminals and roustabouts will be sleeping off their booze!  What’s to protect against?  And the protestors themselves are not young yippie radicals–they’re concerned citizens, with an average age (I’m guessing) of about 50.  They probably could have gotten Polident to sponsor the event!

And, most importantly, the parade organization already approved the plans, a first in the history of the Rose Bowl parade.  This is just the police chief being a jerk.

If anything needs a protest, it’s China’s float in our goddam Rose Bowl parade.  As a child,  I was visiting Beijing on the very first day of the Tiananmen Square protest (way before the crackdown that came a week later).  I remember first hand the horror and brutality we saw on TV, as China proved itself in no uncertain terms an enemy of the people, a regime as savage and intolerant as Franco’s or Mussolini’s.  And though diplomacy with a nation as powerful and populous as China has to be delicate, I do wonder why we kiss their government’s ass so much without condemning their continued human rights abuses.  That goes double for corporations such as Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, who are openly complicit in crushing freedom of speech over there.  Even their government’s plans for the 2008 Olympics are causing people in China to be displaced and trampled upon, and no one is talking about this.  And now, the one organization that is talking about it is being silenced for no good reason.

This displacement of protest from the common forum, of freedom-of-speech zones and off-site marginalization (not to mention the complicity of the press in not covering protests) has got to stop.  I wasn’t even going to use the Rose Bowl as a vehicle for self-expression (I was going, but only to take my folks, because parades are good ol’ family fun!) but now I am definitely going to bring a picket sign!

Update: Apparently there are LOTS of people talking about China and the Olympics, and the situation’s worse than I thought:

 In December, Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to the Beijing Olympic committee calling for an end to mass arrests and increased speech restrictions. “Human rights violations have taken place even in direct relation to the organization of the games,” it reads, alleging that some 300,000 Beijing residents have been evicted from their homes during redevelopment efforts.