China Quake Death Toll nearing 50,000
 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080513/...ina_earthquake

Add to this the believed over 100,000 deceased and and the 1 million homeless in the Myanmar cyclone over the weekend... and that's a lot of dead bodies and ruined lives. Wow.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080516/...ina_earthquake

The sad thing is that most of the casualties were school children. :(

The pictures of kids getting trapped limbs amputated at the scene are particularily awful.

I will have to give it to the Chinese government though, it seems like they are handling this the best that they can... which is different from how the Myanmar Junta is handling the concerns of their own people.

If there is any good cause for the US to investigate and intervene in Myanmar, it would probably be the regime's lack of "motivation" to help or even let other countries help their own people.

50,000...man thats terrible. But from what I can see, it does seem the government is genuinely concerned for their people and acting accordingly.

My original thought when I heard about the earthquake, and it's magnitude and epicenter, was that this might very well end up being 300,000 people. I hope I'm wrong.

Fixed.

FWIW......the residents of the affected areas have been very critical of the government's response. The citizens were responding better than the government.

Also, most of the deaths are due to the government failure to make sure the buildings in the area were up to code. These buildings couldn't have withstood a 6.0 earthquake. They were death traps if a major earthquake ever hit.

Based from what I've seen through the media the Chinese government's response is x1000 better than what the US Government did during the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

Well, I would suspect with the amount of devastation & chaos, NO amount of response by the government is going to be enough to completely erase the destruction and save enough lives for every person to agree the government did a "good" job. You're talking about a pretty major earthquake...there just isnt enough anybody can do to make that an "easy" fix.

As far as the buildings being capable of withstanding 6.0 or greater...I dont know that I would hold China to the same expectation level as some(not all) US cities are built for. This is not to say they get a break because I expect less from them, morally & ethically(which happens to be true, but irellevant to my point), but because of economics and logistics involved with supporting a country that large(both in population and size).

This is a country of 1.3 BILLION people(depending on your source), and despite their economic improvements, it just isnt reasonable to expect a country with 4x the US's population(~300mil) to more effectively protect against one specific problem with 1/5th of the wealth (in GDP, anyway). You can argue whether GDP is an accurate measuring stick of wealth I suppose, but it isnt completely off base for comparison purposes.

But I would agree that my opinion is, and can only be, primarily based on what the Chinese government allows us to see. So, there is certainly a great deal of propaganda to sift through. Between that, and what the US media reports, you dont have many more options really.

This ought to make the relatives and friends of the 80,000+ dead Chinese people happy:

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegrap...007132,00.html


"Karma" would be the policy makers of the Chinese government being affected personally by this, not 80,000 largely innocent citizens you dolt.

It's not like your "friend" the Dalai Lama (who seems to enjoy collecting famous friends) has the cleanest hands in the world, either.

Only in the Hollywood lifestyle do you "name drop" the Dalai Lama on the red carpet in France. :rolleyes:

You think Stone has a Free Tibet bumper sticker on her limo?