[quote=“Ermintrude”]No hypocrisy: the ‘west’ doesn’t give a flying shit about Tibet either.
Students this morning were asking me why the BBC put quotation marks around the word ‘terrorist’ in a news story. This is the latest whiny-boy shite that China has come up with to capitalise on the deaths of civilians. Nothing like a silly ‘hurt the feelings of the Chinese people’ campaign.
After I’d finished stifling my chuckles, I explained that British people use the word ‘terrorism’ differently since the Prevention of Terrorism act of 2005 and don’t use the word ‘terrorism’ to describe all mass killings with political / protest motivation, especially in news reporting because it’s a term of judgement and the media is supposed to be at least nominally neutral. All in one breath.[/quote]
That’s some arrogant BS explanation there. So if you asked a random British person about their understanding of the term “terrorism”, they would refer to some BS British Act of 2005? Do you really mean to say that putting the word “terrorism” in quotation marks is not a “term of judgment” all by itself, that it would somehow signal neutrality? Basically, the judgment from the British (media/government) perspective then is that what happened at Kunming is NOT an act of terrorism and by extension that Chinese lives are less deserving than British lives. I mean, I can totally understand why people in China would see this kind of attitude of the “West” as an insult (pls note I put “West” in quotation marks).
Don’t be silly. Offense taken where none is intended is silly. You’re dismissing the British context by insisting on a globlish definition of English. It’s simply not a critical position to take towards any text, be it a media report or whatever. I teach my first years to be critical, not oppositional.
The BBC and the British media often quote ‘terrorism’ out of an understanding that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Quotes also indicate, well, quotes, not simply derision.
Don’t be silly. It does directly affect how people feel about policing and reporting on events in Britain, though.
Were you living in a bubble in 2008 :loco: Pretty much all Western media painted the rioters as freedom fighters, followed by mass protests at the Olympic torch relay in Western cities across the world. Still a major source of animosity today, innocent Chinese civilians killed and Western governments respond by threatening to boycott the Olympics.
[quote]Six people were wounded in a knife attack at a Chinese train station on Tuesday after a string of violent episodes at transport hubs authorities blame on “terrorists” from the restive region of Xinjiang.
Three witnesses at the Guangzhou Railway Station told the South China Morning Post that at least two women and three men, including a Westerner who appeared to be in his 50s, were among the six injured in the attack shortly after 11am on Tuesday.
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This is the third deadly attack at a mass transport hub in China in as many months.
It comes less than a week after a deadly explosion left two attackers and a civilian dead, and 79 people wounded, at a railway station in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, the vast western region home to the ethnic minority group of Uygurs.
It also follows a March attack at a railway station in the southwestern city of Kunming, in which machete-wielding attackers killed 29 people and wounded 143 in what many in China have dubbed the country’s “9/11”. Four attackers were shot and killed by police in the Kunming attack, and four more were captured.
[/quote] scmp.com/news/china/article/ … ife-attack
[quote]Hong Kong (CNN) – A series of explosions struck a market Thursday in the capital of the volatile western Chinese region of Xinjiang, killing 31 people and wounding more than 90 others, state media reported.
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Two SUVs plowed into people gathered at the open market in Urumqi at 7:50 a.m., and explosives were thrown out of the vehicles, China’s official news agency Xinhua said.
One of the SUVs then exploded, according to Xinhua, which cited a witness in the market who said he heard a dozen big bangs.
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The attack at the market comes less than a month after an explosion hit a train station in Urumqi, killing three people and wounding 79 others.
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Chinese officials have linked a mass knife attack in March that killed 29 people at a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming to Islamic separatists from Xinjiang.
They have also blamed separatists for an attack in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in October in which a car rammed into a pedestrian bridge and burst into flames, killing two tourists and the three occupants of the vehicle.
[/quote]
From CNN
What’s the chance you can cancel? I’m guessing not very high. Be safe – and let us know when you get back.[/quote]
One more attack and I will not go. At least not Urumqi.
Had to cancel Western Tibet cause the Chinese closed it off this year. Then had to cancel Qinghai as 4 men broke into our condo the night I left for China and held my fiancee at knifepoint while they ransacked the place (she was unharmed thank God but traumatized and I flew back the next day). And now, when we decided it was best for her to join me in China for a few weeks to get her mind off the break in, we are flying into a terrorist zone. Life, wtf?
It does directly affect how people feel about policing and reporting on events in Britain, though.