Indeed Ballerinas are RENOWNED Worldwide for Their Fighting Spirit . . .

German designer Barbara Walter created a collection of unique tulle-skirts for soccer fans to express the sporting and fighting spirit either in ballet or soccer.

Yeah, sure.

My purpose for visiting Xinhua.net wasn't to find oddly worded passages about unfortunate German fashions, rather I followed Drudge's link to Xinhua, the state owned press agency of The People's Republic of China for their coverage of the major earthquake near Chengdu (one of those 10+ million person metropolitan areas in China and India that you've never heard of till now), and browsing through their pages is like looking in a funhouse mirror.

Besides the previously unbeknownst to me reputation of balletic pugnaciousness, there's also Xinhua's coverage of the Burma crisis, which takes great care not to challenge or refute the claims made by their fellow despots.

China may have opened up their economy some, but it's still a very closed society in most aspects. The problem with States that promise to be everything for its people, is that when bad things happen, their citizens may lash out. Past outlandish claims about being able to forecast earthquakes days in advance aren't helping matters now.

When a state demands complete control, and asserts near divine authority over its people, and even claims the ability to predict the unpredictable, or command the weather at its whim, you can expect a serious bout of collective cognitive dissonance when these claims prove to be utter bunk.

This was a terrible disaster, but earthquakes are a fact of life in many parts of the world (being from sunny SoCal I've been through a few myself), they can't be prevented or predicted within a small window of time, but they can be anticipated. Strong building codes, rigorously adhered to, and informing the population that in the event of a major quake you'll likely to be without services of any kind for up to a week is essential. This was a very powerful quake, but it was centered a considerable distance from Chengdu, so the death toll seems a bit outsized, unless many of the buildings weren't built to withstand the shaking, which seems likely.

Poorly managed responses to disasters (comingled with authoritarian hubris) are the things revolutions are made out of . . .

(and for some info from the USGS, here's a link to a 6 minute podcast discussing the event)

UPDATE: Poking around some more at the USGS site (and after listening to the podcast) there's a new tool their called PAGER, which superimposes shake maps with population data so you can quickly surmise the number of people in the worst effected areas. According to their table that over 1 million people were in areas at a X or IX Modified Mercalli Intensity which would suggest even well built places could suffer serious damage, and poorly built structures are likely uninhabitable for over 1 million people, and possibly as many as 5 million people (if those in the VIII area, are also experiencing some structure failure). This would test any government's ability to respond, but I think China will be especially challenged, given its paternalistic relationship with its people. When you promise to be mother, father, and protector to your people, letting something awful happen (even the parts that are out of your control) will inevitably lead to a backlash.