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posted by takyon on Sunday August 16 2015, @01:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the free-market dept.

Common Dreams reports:

The death toll from this week's fiery explosions at the Chinese port of Tianjin climbed above 100 on Saturday, while confusion spread over whether authorities had ordered the evacuation of everyone within two miles amid fears of chemical contamination.

[...] Anti-chemical warfare troops have entered the site, according to the BBC.

[...] Two Chinese news outlets, including the state-run The Paper, reported that the warehouse was storing 700 tons of sodium cyanide--70 times more than it should have been holding at one time--and that authorities were rushing to clean it up.

Sodium cyanide is a toxic chemical that can form a flammable gas upon contact with water.

[...] "The company that owned the warehouse where the blasts originated, Rui Hai International Logistics, appears to have violated Chinese law by operating close to apartment buildings and worker dormitories", journalist Andrew Jacobs reports for [NYTimes] (paywall). "Residents say they were unaware that the company was handling dangerous materials."

About 6,300 people have been displaced by the blasts, with around 721 injured and 33 in serious condition, Xinhua news agency said. At least 21 firefighters are reported dead.

Related: Large Warehouse Explosions Injure 300-400 in Tianjin, China

For the adulterated baby formula abuses of 2008 (4 infants dead; 12,892 hospitalized), 2 people were executed. One wonders what will come of this case.


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  • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday August 21 2015, @05:27PM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 21 2015, @05:27PM (#225946) Journal

    You make some interesting posts. I don't think you're remotely right but I'm glad you wrote what you did because I think a lot of people would say something akin to what you did even though they're unlikely to have your experience from China.

    Written proposals, or contracts, guarantees, laws, or even “supreme court” rulings don't neccessarily make any difference as to who or what is funded or at what level or who gets away with what and often doesn't seem to make any difference at all (good luck trying to get a government to follow a ruling against it unless you're “powerful” or “connected”, I know how that “works” from personal experience). Your description of China sounds exactly like the supposedly well run “super duper democratic” country I live in (northern Europe) and everywhere else.

    /Except/ you make the Chinese seem more honest (!) (and even though they're probably not) about not following their own rules and less regimental about how things actually work. And of course they did it because they like you i.e. whatever you did was something they wanted, possibly desperately.

    The fantasy of somehow being better is kind of strange considering how governments as well as everyone trying to do anything is always openly talking (or even “shouting”) about the importance of “networking”. Just what do you suppose that “networking” is? I can tell you it has nothing to do with writing proposals (formalities for the most part) and everything to do with scratching backs and trading favors (including criminal ones) and maybe some payback or mutual/reciprocal sharing of future endeavors. Sometimes some idiot involved actually takes straight cash but since that's so obvious and comparatively easy to unravel it's rare, only criminals are that dumb or only the dumb are/become criminals :P

    Hopefully you work in something like physics¹ but have a close look at all the academic research that gets funded in the US and Europe that is nothing but advanced covert corruption and pay for fudged or obfuscated “correct” results: it's epidemic, governments and political parties do it just as often if not more so as private entities do, often they do it together or through each other, often we're talking about exactly the same people anyway and the only difference is what role they're wearing at that moment.

    ¹ Although if you work in HEP then don't kid yourself about ITER and other megaprojects like it. Massive spending == massive corruption.

    All that aside (and more towards the original topic rather than a reply to your posts) consider Euopean and US examples of things blowing sky high; it's not uncommon at all with fuel trains/freight of hazardous chemicals (more than four in the last year or so? Not counting other lethal derailments nor the ones without casualties), firework factories/storage (at least three), fuel depots (at least one huge one in England not that long ago), chemical plants, and that's just from memory of the recent years. Once in a while there is also the odd workplace accident (deaths in industrial ovens and smelters come to mind from recent news) which I guess only make the news when they're extremely disturbing. And of course there's the whole US CDC/bio-labs nightmare. Sure this Chinese tragedy is bigger than usual but similar things are not at all uncommon “here” either.

    --
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