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Newtown and Guangshan county: A tale of two massacres

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 15:47:00 +0000

News watchers were quick to point out the two coinciding school attacks that happened Friday, in China and the U.S.: Hours before Adam Lanza began his carnage in Newtown, knife-wielding Min Yingjun went on a rampage in a central China village school. Lanza killed 28 people, including himself. Min didn’t manage to kill anyone, though he left one child with a fractured skull, and several others had to be treated for “cut off fingers and ears,” according to state news media Xinhua.

It’s probably one of the few occasions when some Americans might prefer China’s more heavy-handed rules, where private gun ownership is rare, and even sales of certain knives require permits.

But while American news media has been ablaze with stories on Newtown, Chinese mainstream media have downplayed coverage of their own domestic tragedy.

Online magazine TeaLeafNation noted that state-run China Central Television led the December 14 broadcast with news of the Newtown massacre, despite CCTV’s tradition of reporting domestic news before international news. Notes the piece: “Incredibly, days after the occurrence of the Guangshan knife attack, reporters still do not know the names of the children attacked.”

“Doomsday Preppers”: Living like you’re gonna die tomorrow

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 21:15:00 +0000

The envy was fairly palpable among the gathered “Doomsday Preppers” as the 25-ton, 10-foot-tall, 18-inch-thick doors swung open, leading into a huge, long-secret bunker in a West Virginia mountain.

Carved 720 feet into the hillside, at an untold cost to taxpayers, was a Cold War “relocation facility” built to fit every member of Congress (and an aide). The two-level, 112,500-square-foot facility, fully stocked and at the ready from 1961 to 1992, went out of commission only after it had been exposed by the Washington Post. Otherwise, it might be operating yet.

“Pretty awesome,” concluded Braxton Southwick, a spiky-haired former professional motocross racer who has prepped his family of eight for a terrorist smallpox attack. He’s armed them with bug-out bags and hazmat suits, but, alas, no bunker hideout. But if he had a bunker to hide in, this was certainly the way to do it; done with a level of paranoia and preparation the visiting Preppers could surely appreciate.

No wonder the historic Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., which houses the huge bunker beneath one of its wings, was chosen for Doomsday Preppers Weekend.

“Revolution”: The apocalyptic zeitgeist

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:11:00 +0000

Even before Sandy took out a chunk of power on the East Coast, the top-rated new network series of the season was a show whose central concern was the total loss of electricity. For “Revolution,” society doesn’t operate without electricity — and not just those delivered in wires, but the sparks in automobiles and generators as well. Society breaks down, militias spring up and the rest of your life is roaming round in bands looking for family, redemption or both. Fifteen years later, when we pick up the story, the world’s monuments are engulfed in advanced greenery, as people have for some reasons neglected their gardening hand tools, but they have advanced skills in bows and arrows and swashbuckling swordfighting.

What in “Revolution” was speaking to TV viewers even before the hurricane hit? It can’t be just because it follows the biggest overall hit of the season, “The Voice,” whose fans are just too exhausted after the two-hour episodes to change the channel. More likely, it builds on the irrational fear of total global meltdown that feeds the success of everything from “The Hunger Games” and “The Walking Dead” to “Doomsday Preppers.”