Earthquake Truth Beginning to See the Light

As we have already pointed out, isn’t it a bit hard to believe that Chinese authorities know nothing about such a devastating earthquake?

The only question remaining is this: will the whole truth come to light by accident, or will individuals from the bureaucratic machine risk everything to let the world know this truth - the Chinese dictatorship cares nothing about the vast majority of Chinese people.

Unmadeinchina recommends the following articles, surely to be followed by many, many others.

CCP Media Apologizes for Publishing 'Earthquake Truth'
Gansu Provincial Seismology Bureau reversed report to keep in line with party tune

The Epoch Times
2 June 2008

Since the devastating earthquake of May 12, the question of whether the Chinese regime received warning but failed to inform the public has become a haunting shadow.

On May 20, the regime's mouth piece, Xinhua News Agency, accidentally published a news report that the Gansu Provincial Party Chief praised the Gansu Seismological Bureau for having "made a prediction and reported its forecast to the Gansu Province Chinese Communist Party Committee and the Gansu government, before the earthquake."

The report contradicts the regime previously claims that no prediction was made before the earthquake.

The report was soon deleted after people noticed such a contradiction and made it public on the Internet.

Nine days later, on May 29, Gansu Provincial Earthquake Information Net published an "Important Correction" stating the previously published "important speech regarding the earthquake" by Provincial Party Chief Lu Hao contained an "editing error."

Ironically, the revised news report claims that the Gansu Seismological Bureau "has made a prediction AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE and reported to the Gansu Province Chinese Communist Party Committee and Gansu government, before the earthquake."

On May 30, The Epoch Times interviewed a mainland journalist who attended the meeting at which Gansu provincial Party Chief Lu Hao made the above speech. A lot of people in the meeting were shocked, including himself. The journalist carefully confirmed with others that what he heard was correct. "Although we did not discuss it, all journalist there knew someone was going to make a 'political mistake.'"

But the journalist cannot explain why this happened, "normally important speeches must go through strict checking, it must [be] that the Party Chief 'leaked the secret' by himself," said the journalist.

Read the full text at:
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-6-2/71299.html

Quake danger was well-known, Chinese scientists say
by Howard W. French
29 May 2008

For decades Chinese scientists have known of the risk of a potentially catastrophic earthquake in the very area where the Wenchuan disaster struck, and when the dust settles from emergency relief operations still underway, they say, one powerful question will still loom: Why was so little done to prepare for such a disaster?

Despite expressions of surprise in the early days after the March 12 quake there had been a longstanding consensus among scientists about the danger posed by seismic activity in the Longmenshan thrust belt.

As early as 2002, Chinese scientific papers specifically warned of an imminent threat of a major earthquake in this area. Despite such alerts, experts said little had been done to enforce adequate building standards or to educate residents about risk and require safety drills.

Gao Jianguo, a researcher with the China Earthquake Administration, is not a lonely voice in the seismology establishment. Rather, he is one of many specialists who have begun making the politically delicate point that clear warnings of a potentially catastrophic seismic event went unheeded.

"The earthquake administration didn't warn the government enough," Gao said. "We told them things should be built to withstand seventh degree crack resistance, but we should have insisted on nine degree, just as experts from the Soviet Union advised us back in the 1950s." Gao referred to an earthquake building-code standard used in China. A building would have required construction to an 11-degree standard to have escaped damage in this month's earthquake. Many Chinese experts invoked the high cost of building structures to withstand major earthquakes as a rationale for the failure to do so.

"The line of the middle fault is as clear as a string," said Li Yong, a geological expert at Chengdu University of Technology. "It suggests continuous and strong movement. Such a long and clear lineament should trigger a big quake. Other scientists have had similar ideas."

Scientists said that in areas which had suffered the worst damages, given the known risk, there should have been no settlement at all.

Read the full text at:

http://iht.com/articles/2008/05/29/asia/quake.4-279691.php

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