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OffTopic > Shanghai gangs run amok, Authority acts ambiguously

#170064 - tianweizhang - Thu Aug 27, 2009 10:31 am

2009年5月10日凌晨,位于上海市淮海中路283号香港广场南座1楼商铺的舒适堡健身中心卢湾旗舰店突然遭到非法暴力入侵,数小时内该店铺1台价值近百万元的专用电梯被砸烂,一楼客人接待处、经理室、员工室、大理石接待台及玻璃隔墙等约200平方米空间被夷为平地。
By midnight of May 10, 2009, the flagship store of PHYSICAL Fitness & Beauty Centre situate at 1/F., South Tower, Hong Kong Plaza, No. 283 Huaihai Zhong Road, Luwan District, Shanghai., was broken in by some gangster. Within hours, the dedicated elevator of value nearly RMB 1 million was smashed. And, the hall on first floor of about 200 square meters where reception area, manager room, staff room, the marble reception desk and glass partition were razed to the ground.

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在现场被数十名身份不明的闯入者抡锤打砸后,舒适堡的相关人员迅速报警,但是警方赶到之后,却以警力不够为理由,拒绝舒适堡相关人员进入现场。随后,經舒适堡相关人员确认,数十名身份不明的闯入者其實是香港广场的保安人員,然而就在舒适堡请求警署立刻立案进行调查并保护现场的时候,淮海警署的警员采取的却是根本不予理睬的态度,并拒绝做出任何保护措施。
PHYSICAL reported the trespassers to the police for the unexpected violence right away. To everyone?s utmost surprise, the policemen arrived but refused to enter the crime scene. The policemen claimed that they did not have enough manpower to take control of the situation whilst dozens of unidentified intruders destroyed the hall with hammers. PHYSICAL soon found out the so-called unidentified intruders were, in fact, the security guards of the Hong Kong Plaza. Physical requested the police to file the case and seal the scene up immediately. The policemen of Huaihai Police Station neither investigated nor protected Physical?s interest. They just offered no help but brushed the relevant staff of Physical off.

事出有因,经过舒适堡相关人员的严密调查,5月10日凌晨的暴力打砸抢事件是一个有组织、有阴谋的非法活动,其幕后黑手相信就是香港广场即上海丽兴房地产有限公司。据悉,上海2010年世博会召开在即,香港广场则是巧借卢湾区政府关于迎世博需要提升该地段商业档次的要求為名,不顾双方在2002年签署的12年租赁合同,单方面强行要求收回1楼,同时要求舒适堡改变租赁场地和缩小租赁面积,意图借此机会毁约以谋取单方面私利。舒适堡本着相应政府号召的前提,希望在维持原租赁合同不变,租约关系不变的前提下,双方共同商议,互相密切配合,使香港广场的升级改造工作尽快顺利进行。殊不料,这一和平举措激怒了香港广场,使得在接下来的几个月内舒适堡的营運遭到了各种理由的干扰直到演变成5月10日凌晨的暴力打砸抢事件。
Later on, PHYSICAL carried out investigation by themselves and all the evidence pointed to the Hong Kong Plaza (The Shanghai Li Xing Real Estate Co., Limited). PHYSICAL had every reason to believe that the violent incident was a well-planned plot and the Hong Kong Plaza was the manipulator behind the scene. As we know, the 2010 Shanghai EXPO is around the corner and in the name of the Luwan District Authority?s requirement to enhance the commercial standing of the district for the Expo, the Hong Kong Plaza took the chance to seek personal interests by repudiating the lease agreement signed with Physical in 2002. They wanted to recover the first floor unilaterally and forced Physical to change the letting location and reduce the letting area. Physical sincerely expressed their willingness to cooperate closely with the Hong Kong Plaza on the upgrade innovation work but insisted on keeping the leasing terms of 12 years unchanged. However, this peaceful request unexpectedly irritated the Hong Kong Plaza and the business of Physical have been interrupted by various kinds of excuses in the following months, which evolved into the violent incident of May 10, 2009.

面对此等暴力事件在警察视而不见的情况下,舒适堡毅然选择了上访政府,他们坚信卢湾区政府会还他们一个公道。可是万万没想到的是,卢湾区政府的态度更是模棱两可,一方面声称将尽快处理此事,另一方面却按兵不动,对于舒适堡的多次催促,政府内有关人员更是给了舒适堡一个所谓的?忠告?:官司你们还是不要打了,香港广场的老板是人大代表,你们就是打也是输的。
Faced with the Huaihai police?s ignorance to such violent incident, Physical believed the Luwan District Authority could do justice to them and resolutely chose to appeal to the Authority. Beyond all our expectations, the attitude of the Authority was more ambiguous; they alleged to deal with the issue as soon as possible but took no actions. After Physical?s repeated urges, an ?ADVICE? was given by certain officials of the Authority that ?Physical are destined to lose so better not to lodge any lawsuits against the Hong Kong Plaza because their boss is a representative of the NPC.?

舒适堡面对政府的所謂?忠告?陷入了进退两难的局面。在此期间,香港广场故意拖延處理屋顶漏水事故,经投诉多次后,仍然不予维修,无奈之下,舒适堡的员工只好打着雨伞執勤。
Physical was in a dilemma over the so-called ?Advice? from the Authority. During this period, the Hong Kong Plaza refused to repair the water leakage of roof despite Physical?s numerous complaints. Physical?s staff were so helpless but to put their umbrellas up for work.


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7月7日在健身馆的上空更上演了一幕空中飞人。香港广场施工队的工人,突然穿过天花跳进4楼舒适堡的健身场馆。此舉當然又是另一種騷擾並在天花留下一個大缺口。
There was even an acrobatics staged on July 7, 2009. A worker of the construction team of Hong Kong Plaza suddenly jumped through the ceiling onto Physical?s gymnasium on the fourth floor and of course, it was just harassment which left a big hole on the ceiling.

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诸如此类飞跃,漏水等恶意破坏事件从暴力砸烂事件發生那刻起,就沒完沒了。香港广场恶意停水停电,目的只有一个,那就是逼走舒适堡,来达到他們在不违约、不赔偿情况下的改造计划。而卢湾区政府所做的一切只能当做是助纣为虐,到底香港广场的后台有多大,有多深,从区政府的态度就可見一斑!
Such malicious destructive incidents as leap, water leakage have never ended ever since the violent incident happened. The only aim of intentional water and power suspension in Hong Kong Plaza was to force Physical to quit and attain its innovation scheme without violations and compensations. All the Authority of Luwan District did have only abetted an ill-doer. Also, it could learn from the attitude of the Authority how powerful the background of the Hong Kong Plaza was.

舒适堡相关人员称,他们将上诉到底,上海不行,就上访北京,他们不信全中国的政府都如此黑暗。
Physical claimed they shall appeal by all means even if they need to file the case to the Central Authority in Beijing as they still believe in the China Government.

#170068 - sgeos - Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:41 pm

> tianweizhang

This post is very off topic. As it is your first and only post, it comes across as spam. Having said that, can you link to any source documents? There are no references and google did not pull anything up.

#170069 - gauauu - Thu Aug 27, 2009 5:25 pm

Those were my thoughts as well.

Heh, I remember when I lived in China that gbadev was blocked by the great firewall. I always wondered why. But now we have stuff like this... :)

#170071 - sgeos - Thu Aug 27, 2009 8:10 pm

The Chinese government is very corrupt, but I'm very leery of people who draw attention to foreign corruption without mentioning local corruption. I guess I'm not convinced the OP is actually a Chinese national, with the Great Firewall and all.

As an aside, it is interesting that China blocks Wikipedia. FWIW, the quality of wikipedia amounts to a bunch of D papers written by high school students. Spending less time on Wikipedia is probably a good idea, but censoring it seems like the wrong way of doing things to me.

#170074 - Optihut - Thu Aug 27, 2009 10:39 pm

sgeos wrote:
FWIW, the quality of wikipedia amounts to a bunch of D papers written by high school students.


What's up with all the Wikipedia-hatred? I found the quality to be quite good, especially compared to paper based encyclopedias.

#170082 - sonny_jim - Fri Aug 28, 2009 12:13 pm

I've just spent 20 minutes stripping out superlative words from a Pinball designers wikipedia biography.

The problem is that the people who are likely to write an article on wikipedia are generally biased one way or another, so it's hard to get a neutral point of view.
_________________
Quote:

Would that be the internet driver for the program?

#170086 - Optihut - Fri Aug 28, 2009 6:12 pm

sonny_jim wrote:
I've just spent 20 minutes stripping out superlative words from a Pinball designers wikipedia biography.

The problem is that the people who are likely to write an article on wikipedia are generally biased one way or another, so it's hard to get a neutral point of view.


It's certainly a problem when people are biased, but you've also just mentioned a great point of wikipedia: When reading articles, anyone can make a quick improvement. So far I've corrected a few conversion errors in science articles - these mistakes also exist in paper based media, but I wouldn't take out a pencil and correct them there. After all, they'd still be wrong in the next edition.

As a rule of thumb, I'd say wikipedia is not good when it comes to politics and such due to special interest groups trying to influence the content. However, a lot of science related articles are great, if you want to look up a quick fact. Due to the general wiki-scepticism it'd be professional suicide to cite it, though.

#170117 - sgeos - Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:17 pm

Optihut wrote:
What's up with all the Wikipedia-hatred? I found the quality to be quite good, especially compared to paper based encyclopedias.

Wikipedia is fine if all you want to get is a very general feel for a particular topic.

A Criticism of Wikipedia: Wikipedia and Japanese Archaeology
Charles T. Keally (author of above) wrote:
The quality of the Wikipedia content in the field I know best leaves me no choice but to assume that that is the quality of the Wikipedia content in ALL other topics in that vast electronic encyclopedia. I have no choice but to assume all 7,000,000 Wikipedia articles in 250 different languages are equally unreliable sources of information.

...

Wikipedia is supposed to be the ultimate in one-stop knowledge shopping. However, it is not and cannot be used as a source of valid knowledge. It is a production by the mob. Its content can be mangled by anybody so inclined. And sorting out the reliable from the unreliable or outright wrong information is far too time-consuming to be worth the effort. It might even be impossible.

And just for fun... Criticism of Wikipedia - Wikipedia Article =)

#170133 - keldon - Tue Sep 01, 2009 4:49 pm

Hmm, well:
- http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm
- http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html

Sure, Wikipedia could be greatly improved with an improved structure, but the only reason it has so much scrutiny is because it has reached (or is reaching) the same level as the published Encyclopaedias.

#170148 - sgeos - Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:47 pm

keldon wrote:
Sure, Wikipedia could be greatly improved with an improved structure, but the only reason it has so much scrutiny is because it has reached (or is reaching) the same level as the published Encyclopaedias.

I think this merely supports the position that encyclopedias are not and can not be authoritative sources of information. Encyclopedias can not beat high end specialist journals and websites when it comes to quality.

Anyone can edit a wiki. The theory is that it keeps improving. If an expert tries to correct a widely held misbelief, it may be reverted by a well meaning casual reader. Anyone can add errors to a wiki. The theory is that the community is self policing, but what is to be done when the experts are too busy to constantly correct entries (as they should be; otherwise they would not have time to be experts) and the police have conflicts of interest? Wikipedia is a useful source of information, but I can not ever see it being an authoritative source of information.

#170151 - Optihut - Thu Sep 03, 2009 8:28 pm

The point about encyclopedias in general is completely different from your intial "D papers written by high school students" though.

I'm basically in agreement with your latest post, which acknowledges that wikipedia is indeed a useful source of information. Of course it's not an end-all source of knowledge and often times you do have to consult specialist sources. However, for what it is, it's really not bad at all. There is a lot of common and factually solid stuff out there that would be a big nuisance to look up elsewhere and on those occasions it's just so convenient to go to wikipedia.

On a related note, I've fixed an outdated link in a wikipedia article today and read the discussion of the article in question, which contained the remark "this was a common misconception in the field 15 years ago, but I'm surprised to see it still propagating now". So that's an example for what you wrote about outdated knowledge being perpetuated, but I still found it great to receive a link to a specialist article in the first place and then be able to point to the new location of the article once the wiki listed a dead link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_wave_expansion_method).

#170153 - sgeos - Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:48 pm

Optihut wrote:
The point about encyclopedias in general is completely different from your intial "D papers written by high school students" though.

I stand by my initial position. D papers written by high school students are all you need if you know nothing about a topic and only want the general idea. I should, however, credit Charles T. Keally with the statement.

Charles T. Keally wrote:
The first thing I look at in any journal article or student research paper is the list of references cited, in order to see if the writer has done his homework or not. If not, then I discard the article or grade the paper F, without reading it. There is not sense in reading something if the author has not done his homework.

The references cited in this Wikipedia article on the "Jomon Period" are barely adequate for a high-school term paper; I would fail this paper for a college student who could not do better at finding references, both hard-copy and Internet sources; and I would fail a graduate student for the whole course if he turned in a paper with such a poor list of references.

...

These pairs of text show that the writer of the Wikipedia article is plagiarizing from the Library of Congress source. There are no citations given with the statements, only a comment in the references cited list that material comes from the Library of Congress source. And the Wikipedia wording is almost identical to the Library of Congress wording, only a few words having been changed. Further, a close comparison of the rest of the Wikipedia text and the Library of Congress text shows other plagiarized statements.

I would grade a high school paper D with a warning about plagiarism; I would fail a university student for the course for this kind of plagiarism, and, if the degree of plagiarism were extensive enough, which it is, I would move to have the student expelled. A graduate student would earn immediate expulsion from the university for this degree of plagiarism.

Emphasis mine.

Wikipedia does not have academic quality writing. I suspect professional encyclopedias do have proper references. This is important because the references do point to specialized material. This is material that might actually be useful to anyone who is more than just a casual reader. Citations are also just as important. One need not plagiarize if someone else has already put it perfectly. The reader might be interested in other things the real author has to say. This holds true even if the writer is the original author.

Paper encyclopedias go out of date. Wikipedia does have an advantage here, but this is an advantage any electronic encyclopedia could have.

#170154 - Optihut - Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:38 pm

sgeos wrote:
Wikipedia does not have academic quality writing. I suspect professional encyclopedias do have proper references.


The paper based encyclopedias I am familiar with hardly have any references at all, if my memory serves me right. EDIT: Actually that is probably just my memory playing tricks on me. I bet they did have references, but alas since I didn't have a whole library at my disposal, these references were for the most part useless. I shall look it up, next time I have a paper based encyclopedia in front of me.

This is not a problem, nor is it a problem when wikipedia is not having academic quality writing: Wikipedia is NOT an academic journal, therefore it does not need to have academic writing.

If a page on wikipedia is very extensive and looks like more of a scientific paper, rather than the blurbs that are typically encyclopedia entries, then that's a boon. Wikipedia should still be compared with encyclopedias and not with journals and their papers.

Also, I can only shake my head at that Charles T. Kealy quotation: First he throws around the heavy accusation of plagiarism and then mentions that the source is indeed attributed. Whatsmore, elsewhere I've read that said source is copyright-free...

#170161 - sgeos - Fri Sep 04, 2009 8:29 pm

Optihut wrote:
This is not a problem, nor is it a problem when wikipedia is not having academic quality writing: Wikipedia is NOT an academic journal, therefore it does not need to have academic writing.

The problem is that a lot of people seem to treat wikipedia as a source of high quality information, and it is not. It is contains a vast amount of low quality information. This set up is good enough for most people most of the time.

Optihut wrote:
Also, I can only shake my head at that Charles T. Kealy quotation: First he throws around the heavy accusation of plagiarism and then mentions that the source is indeed attributed. Whatsmore, elsewhere I've read that said source is copyright-free...

His criticism struck me as consistent when I read it from start to finish. The quotation was taken out of context to illustrate a point; I pulled a little from the top and a little from the bottom. I may not have done his opinion justice.