China fruit seller death sparks riot in GuizhoU

Chinese police have quelled a mass riot sparked by rumours that a disabled fruit seller had been beaten to death by local officials.

State media reported that hundreds of people threw stones and clashed with police on the streets of Anshun, in the southern Guizhou province

The authorities said they would carry out an autopsy on the fruit seller to determine how he died.

Similar rumours sparked days of rioting in Guangdong province in June.

The Guangdong riot snowballed into a wider protest about official corruption and discrimination against migrant workers.

In Anshun, the unrest appears to have been limited to anger over the street trader's death.

The state-run China Daily quoted a statement from Anshun's local government confirming the hawker had died.

The statement did not comment on the cause of his death, but said "before the incident occurred, chengguan [urban management officers] were working in the area".

Local police had earlier told the Xinhua news agency that the trader had been involved in an argument with the officials.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14305484

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N.Korean Students Forced into Construction Labor

N.Korean Students Forced into Construction Labor

Some 100,000 North Korean college students have been press-ganged into construction work. "The regime is trying to finish redevelopment of the Mansudae District in Pyongyang by April next year," a source familiar with North Korean internal affairs said on Monday. "Because it couldn't finish construction before the deadline, the regime ordered colleges in Pyongyang and other major cities last month to close for 10 months and drafted students to construction sites." 

The regime twice before changed the academic calendar for a "200-day struggle" in 1988 and an "Arirang" mass calisthenics performance in 2008. But mobilizing so many students for construction work is unprecedented. 

The North has been carrying out a campaign since 2009 to build 100,000 new homes in Pyongyang ahead of regime founder Kim Il-sung's birthday on April 15 next year, the target year to become a "powerful and prosperous nation." But only nine apartment buildings with 500 units had been built as of late last year due to a shortage of money and building materials. 

When it became clear that the goal was unreachable, the regime recently drew up a new plan to redevelop at least the Mansudae District. It wants to spruce up the district, home to a 23 m Kim Il-sung statue, with 77-story apartment buildings with 3,000 units and recreational facilities including theaters and parks. 

But the mobilization of the students is unlikely to make much difference. "The problem is not manpower shortage but lack of money and materials," the source said. "Building sites are overflowing with laborers, but most of them are doing nothing because building materials don't arrive in time." 

The regime is not even giving the students a proper meal, the source added. Instead, it is reportedly forcing them to donate materials, such as sand, cement and gasoline, in exchange for a promise of membership in the Workers Party or a youth honor award when construction is complete. 

There are rumors that the real reason the students are being forced to work on building sites is to avoid an uprising emulating the Jasmine Revolutions in the Middle East, since students are among the most likely to have heard about the uprisings.

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/07/26/2011072600937.html

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China orders safety review after high-speed rail crash

China has ordered a two-month nationwide safety review of its railways amid public anger at a deadly crash between two bullet trains.

Rail minister Sheng Guangzu apologised for the collision in eastern Zhejiang province, saying the campaign would focus on China's high-speed network.

Thirty-nine people died in Saturday's crash, with nearly 200 people injured.

The government has begun compensating victims' relatives, paying one family $77,500 (£47,000), reports say.

The family of the victim, Lin Yan, was the first to reach a compensation deal with the local government, state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

The two trains collided during a storm, apparently after lightning knocked out power to the first, shunting four carriages from a viaduct and forcing two off the rails.

The cause of the crash is not yet known.

Lessons to be learned

Mr Sheng said railway officials would be deployed at frontline rail operations across the country to overhaul maintenance standards and checks on power connections to pre-empt outages.

All local railway bureaux were to draw lessons from the accident, a statement on the railways department website said.

The Zhejiang crash is the country's deadliest rail accident since 2008

Public fury and scepticism have been expressed in China's blogosphere, both about the death toll of 39 people - suggesting it is too low - and the safety of China's rail network.

State newspapers have also expressed concern. The Global Times ran a headline: Anger mounts at lack of answers.

"As the world is experiencing globalisation and integration, why can't China provide the same safety to its people?" an editorial read.

The official China Daily newspaper said there were "unanswered questions" about why the driver of the second train was not warned that the first had stalled.

Journalists have reportedly been told to focus on positive stories while an official investigation is carried out.

Meanwhile, more than 20 trains were delayed for up to three hours on Monday due to a power outage on the much-lauded high-speed link between Beijing and Shanghai.

The power cut was blamed on storms which blew an iron sheet onto a power line, cutting it.

Power outages and other malfunctions have occurred on the line since it opened in June.

Its top speed had already been lowered, from 350km/h (217mph) to 300km/h (186mph) for safety reasons.

China has plans to link remote parts of the country by high-speed rail; it also wants to develop sales of its train technology around the world.

Alongside the safety concerns have been revelations of corruption and the sacking of senior officials.

A German tourist is being hailed as a hero for rescuing at least 20 people from a gunman's rampage on Utoya island in Norway, according to media reports.

Marcel Gleffe, 32, was with his family Friday at a campground across the water from the island when he heard gunshots, Der Spiegel reported. He and his family looked out from the shore, thinking it might be fireworks, but instead they saw a plume of smoke and a girl swimming frantically in the water and screaming.

Gleffe got into the boat he had rented and set off, Der Spiegel said. He was the first person to reach the island where Anders Behring Breivik gunned down dozens of youngsters at a summer camp.

"I just did it on instinct," Gleffe told The Telegraph newspaper.

"You don't get scared in a situation like that, you just do what it takes. I know the difference between fireworks and gunfire. I knew what it was about, and that it wasn't just nonsense."

He said many of the youths were suspicious and shouted, "Are you police, are you police?" Some of them reportedly shouted, "terrorist, terrorist, terrorist," as others tried to explain that the shooter was dressed in a police uniform.

"They were happy to get help, but they were unsure whom they could trust," he told the local Dagbladet newspaper, according to The Telegraph.

"There were people swimming everywhere in the water. I threw them lifejackets and pulled those into the boat who were having the most trouble. Everyone was screaming, but they were also helping each other," he told Der Spiegel.

Gleffe made several trips to the island to rescue around six people each time for about an hour, when police finally arrived, a German English-language news website The Local reported. Other people from Gleffe's campsite also joined him and ferried people back to the mainland with their boats.

"Cooperation with the police and rescue crews afterwards was very good, but it all came too late," he said.

When police arrived, Gleffe stopped to think about himself for the first time, he told The Local.

"I was myself so frozen that I had to first warm myself up. I was turning blue," he said.

Meantime, the alleged killer appeared in court Monday , telling a judge that his bomb attack in Oslo and the camp shooting rampage was aimed at saving Europe from a Muslim takeover.

Police revised the death toll downward to 76 from 93, saying eight people were now known to have died in the bomb blast in central Oslo, and 68 on Utoya.

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.

In the document he posted online,Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.

His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.

More broadly, the mass killings in Norway, with their echo of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by an antigovernment militant, have focused new attention around the world on the subculture of anti-Muslim bloggers and right-wing activists and renewed a debate over the focus of counterterrorism efforts.

In the United States, critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously playing down the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives repeated on Sunday his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.

The revelations about Mr. Breivik’s American influences exploded on the blogs over the weekend, putting Mr. Spencer and other self-described “counterjihad” activists on the defensive, as their critics suggested that their portrayal of Islam as a threat to the West indirectly fostered the crimes in Norway.

Mr. Spencer wrote on his Web site, jihadwatch.org, that “the blame game” had begun, “as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.” He did not mention Mr. Breivik’s voluminous quotations from his writings.

The Gates of Vienna, a blog that ordinarily keeps up a drumbeat of anti-Islamist news and commentary, closed its pages to comments Sunday “due to the unusual situation in which it has recently found itself.”

Its operator, who describes himself as a Virginia consultant and uses the pseudonym “Baron Bodissey,” wrote on the site Sunday that “at no time has any part of the Counterjihad advocated violence.”

The name of that Web site — a reference to the siege of Vienna in 1683 by Muslim fighters who, the blog says in its headnote, “seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe” — was echoed in the title Mr. Breivik chose for his manifesto: “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” He chose that year, the 400th anniversary of the siege, as the target for the triumph of Christian forces in the European civil war he called for to drive out Islamic influence.

Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”

“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”

Dr. Sageman, who is also a forensic psychiatrist, said he saw no overt signs of mental illness in Mr. Breivik’s writings. He said Mr. Breivik bears some resemblance to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who also spent years on a manifesto and carried out his mail bombings in part to gain attention for his theories. One obvious difference, Dr. Sageman said, is that Mr. Kaczynski was a loner who spent years in a rustic Montana cabin, while Mr. Breivik appears to have been quite social.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/us/25debate.html?_r=4&ref=global-home

I wrote a Norwegian post explaining my experience at Utøya. I had taken this blog for dead, and had entirely forgotten that it was syndicated on Planet Debian. I don’t want to let Google Translate make this disaster any worse than it is – the translation of “bullets” into “balls” being particularly bad – so the international attention the massacre has garnered in consideration, I am writing an English translation of my experiences. I feel somehow duty-bound to make people aware of what happened, but I don’t want to get into anything else but a sober description of the events and some very brief reflections. There are many details I have chosen to omit.

Others have written their experiences of the events at Utøya. I wanted to write mine down as well, and “get it out there”. Partly, I want to write this down because I’m unsure if I will remember all the details at a later point in time, although I think I’d prefer it if I couldn’t. I’m also writing this because people are asking about my experiences and it’s much better to have an URL to give them, lest I have to keep going through the same spiel over and over again.

Our former Prime Minister and current labour movement demigod Gro Harlem Brundtland had recently left the island. I had been the cameraman for a video interview of her talking about Utøya, and I was in the media group room encoding the video into a file suitable for YouTube, when someone else in the room startled and said that Twitter was full of messages about a loud explosion in Oslo. As the newspapers brought us information about the extent of the damages, a consensus arose that an informational meeting was in order. As soon as the current round of talks finished, we were gathered into the main hall.

The meeting was duly held, and after the statement was made that a TV feed would be made available, I took it upon myself as the local alpha geek to make it happen. Of course, the situation caused both the wireless network and the GPRS networks to become totally unusable. As I was waiting for someone to set up a password, I took the opportunity to face the consequences of having eaten two bits of a microwavable dish called “Hold-It” – the local equivalent of a Hot Pocket – and went to the toilet.

As I was in there, I first heard agitated shouting, then screams, then gunshots coming from just outside the toilets. More than anything else, it sounded like a toy gun. I was convinced that someone was making a joke in incredibly bad taste and I stormed out of the booth with the intent of halting it. As I tore the door open, I saw two of my comrades hiding in a recessed corner. Their facial expressions left absolutely no doubt that this was no toy. They signalled for me to get back in the booth. I closed the door, did a mental double-take in utter, complete confusion, and opened it again. They were still signalling. Had they not stood there, I would have run straight into the gunman; they saved my life. I looked out into the hallway, and I made eye contact with a young boy lying in a pool of blood. He was motioning for me to help him. I heard more gunshots from inside the building and retreated back inside.

As I was trying to think through my next move, I realized that the decidedly insubstantial wood-fiber door would not resist any kind of bullets. I made my way out into the hallway, with the intent of escaping outside. At that point, I was of course not aware that there was an intention to kill as many as possible, so I thought that the open spaces outside would be a place of relative safety. Of course, this proved to be wrong – and my life was probably saved a second time by one of the café volunteers taking me into a hard-to-spot employee’s bathroom.

We sat there for ninety minutes. Always ready to make a run for it, ready for just about anything. A peculiar group dynamic arose with these two people with whom I had barely previously spoken. We came to share a strange sense of common destiny and gallows humour. One of them had seen the shooter and described the police uniform. I perceived it to be realistic that we were the only ones aware of the wounded outside the toilet. I tried to reach the emergency services, but all their lines were busy; the terror attack in Oslo had probably clogged their lines. I finally got through to the fire services, who could inform me that the police did know about the situation and were on their way. This was to take 90 minutes – and by the time we evacuated, the young boy outside my door had perished. The despair I first saw in his eyes as I passed him, fleeing from one room to the other – and the empty, blank stare as we left, are burned into me and they are images I will never in my life forget.

Finally, the real police arrived. We walked out. I chose the path through the minor conference hall – something I now regret. The sight was simply beyond my capacity to describe fully, and so terrifying that I barely remember the sight – only the terror it struck in me. There were several people bunched up in a corner, a big amorphous heap of bodies. Some were conscious and yelled at me not to do anything that could startle the police, others lay still. Their bodies were all covered in blood, and a thick pool of blood extended at least a half-metre in all directions around them. The policeman across the hall was screaming orders at me, but he was screaming so loudly that I couldn’t make out his words at first.

We were first moved into the camp newspaper’s offices. There were about eight of us there, I think, in addition to one girl who lay wounded. Towards the end she was drifting in and out of consciousness. We covered her with sweaters to keep her warm and one of us tried to at least temper her bleeding. The bullet had missed her heart, but by the entry wound it was clear that it was not by far. I do not know who this girl was or how she is now. I sat behind and never saw her face. The wounded were evacuated first. I don’t remember how long we remained; I had lost all concept of time.

In spite of protests from the group who knew him, one kid was put in handcuffs. At the time I didn’t understand why, and the policeman seemed to say something almost to the effect that there was no reason for it at all. I didn’t see when they undid his cuffs, but I remember thinking that this treatment made a terrible experience even worse for him. I tried my best to comfort him but knew it would be little help. Later, when things stabilised a little, we were told that he was handcuffed because he had come from an unsecured area. The police was extremely good at carefully explaining what was happening and why; this was a big help and I am grateful for it.

Eventually we were moved out into the main corridor of the building, where we joined up into a group of about fifty. Only when I saw the two people who saved my life did any emotion other than mild confusion arise. I broke down shivering in tears in one of their arms. After a few seconds, I came back to my senses and realised that this was not the time. I quickly gathered myself, got the shaking under control, and sat down. We were given some chocolate and soda from the kiosk. I remember making an offhand remark that an inability to find joy in free candy was a sure sign of a bad situation. We all laughed out loud. Gallows humour is a coping mechanism, but in retrospect one almost feels guilty for it.

We were shown out in a single file with hands above our heads. I remember an intense concern that someone would slip in the steep, muddy slope and create a misunderstanding. Outside, there were more bodies. Some under improvised covers – a tarpaulin from the waffle stand, the deflated bouncy castle – but some simply lay there.

Everyone I met displayed a courage, a mental discipline and unity of purpose far beyond anything one would ever wish to expect from people this young. Everyone conducted themselves with an attitude that could almost be described as “stiff upper lip”.

Safely across the fjord we were offered blankets. I was asked if I was aware of any injuries, and asked to lift my shirt and show my abdominal region. We were shown into the bus which took us to the hotel used by the survivors and their family. I simply cannot describe in any words the relief I felt when I was able to embrace my living comrades. It was completely unlike anything I had ever felt before in my life. The euphoric feeling was tempered only by the realisation that there would be many I could never see again, comrades whom I had taken great pride in calling my friends, with futures in the service of all mankind, futures I had previously found such great joy in pondering and guessing about. The feeling which continues to upset me the most, is the feeling that so many of my comrades left behind grieving families and friends. Torn away senselessly.

I do not know how much more than this relatively sober account of the events on Utøya I can muster. I would, however, like to offer some reflections.

First of all, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank the police who saved the lives of so many still on the island, the holidaymakers who took aboard swimmers into their boats – and the rescue services staffed primarily by volunteers who have spared no effort in trying to soften the blow as much as they can. The opportunity to spend time with those comrades who underwent the same experience as myself has also been an immeasurable aid. I was also so relieved to find my very closest friend among the survivors, which has also been an indescribable help.

If I can name a single positive in this tragedy: Had he arrived with his automatic weapon fifteen or twenty minutes prior, he would have arrived during the informational meeting, at a time when the major hall was absolutely jam-packed – the death toll would be many times what it ended up being. I am agonisingly aware of the meager comfort this provides to those who have been bereft of their closest, but I do find some solace in this.

We cannot sweep under a rug that this was – without question! – a political attack on the labour movement. But  it is thankfully also an attack which has been perceived by everyone as an attack on the Norwegian society, and on a symbol of the wide recruitment to the participatory democracy which lies at our very national soul. I cannot thank the Norwegian people, and indeed the people in other nations who have offered their condolences, enough for their shows of support and shared grief. It really has been a tremendous help to me knowing that so many people feel with us.

I also want to thank from the bottom of my heart the rock-steadiness of everyone in both the national and local wings of the Labour Party and Labour Youth in supporting us, and the political milieu in general for their resolute steadfastness saving me from losing yet more that I cherish; our freedoms in a participatory democracy.

Our Party has lost many of its very brightest youngsters. Personally I feel an angry spite, a deep restless urge to get the wheels of society going again. I want to show his kind that we will not be broken. We’re stronger than that. I will not be frightened into silence and passivity. I want to remember the dead, and honor them by carrying on our common work.

I want to end this with a request to everyone who reads this, echoing a statement I read by one of my good friends and comrades: Please, don’t let me see any messages of hatred, wishes for the death penalty, anything like that. If anyone should be of the belief that anything will improve by murdering this sad little person, they would be profoundly wrong. All attention now should be plowed into caring for those victims and their relatives who did not share my luck, and not giving an audience to a perpetrator who wants one.

Tore Sinding Bekkedal

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http://gunkies.org/blog/?p=91

Twitter rages: Murdoch's Times of London famine cartoon 'most offensive' thing yet?

If you thought the outrage over the phone-hacking scandal was starting to die down, The Times of London, one of Rupert Murdoch's own papers, may have brought it straight back into the spotlight.

An editorial cartoon published Thursday morning in the paper with the title "Priorities" shows starving people in Somalia saying "We've had a bellyful of phone-hacking ... " It's causing quite a firestorm on Twitter. You can access the newspaper's site here, but you won't be able to get past the pay wall without a subscription. The paper has not yet returned calls for comment.

The Guardian's Deputy Editor Katharine Viner (@KathViner) tweeted a link to a photo of the cartoon this morning and asked what people thought of it.

And boy, did she get a response. From regular citizens in the U.S. and UK, to politicians, media specialists and PR folks, the responses are rolling in at a mile a minute.

The responses generally fall in one of two directions: utter disgust or the notion that while the cartoon makes a point, having it come from a Murdoch-owned newspaper makes it just straight ridiculous. For some, it's being seen as an attempt to try to get readers to move away from the story and focus on something else.

The cartoon does come a day after the questioning of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has also become a part of the phone-hacking story, during which several UK lawmakers argued that perhaps it was time to move on to more pressing issues.

Emma Gilbey Keller, who is married to New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller and is a contributor to Vanity Fair Daily, had one of the most retweeted responses to the cartoon.

She tweeted the following: @EMMAGKELLER: "Anyone else wondering if this cartoon from today's London Times is part of the Edelman strategy? http://yfrog.com/kezx9np"

Keller is referring to the giant public relations firm that is now working with Murdoch and his team to try to repair their damaged image after the phone-hacking scandal.

There's been a lot said in the media and online about how the Murdoch empire has handled the scandal. In a post on media blog Mediaite about the cartoon, writer Alex Alvarez calls it a "tacky, potentially offensive cartoon" and says it probably isn't the right way to divert attention.

"There are several methods of dealing with a much-publicized scandal, some less advisable than others. Issuing a public apology for mistakes or poor judgment? Pretty much always a good idea. Holding individuals responsible for their roles and dealing with them accordingly? Usually works out pretty well," she writes. "Publishing a tacky, potentially offensive cartoon making light of serious allegations AND life-threatening poverty? Oddly enough, that rarely ever works."

She does, however, agree that more attention needs to be paid to the crisis in Somalia and elsewhere - and she's got a suggestion for what The Times of London may do to really make a statement about the issue.

"We agree that eradicating childhood hunger is still a global priority and that outlets diligently, even obsessively, covering the phone hacking scandal were probably not devoting too many headlines to the plight of starving, saucer-eyed children in the first place? Although, hey. Maybe the Times of London can change the tide by donating to charities fighting to end hunger, or devoting an issue to poverty instead of offering up condescending, out of touch editorials that only work to reflect poorly on its already beleaguered employer."

And there is indeed a major problem in Somalia. The president has issued an urgent appeal for international aid as his drought-stricken country faces a famine that has left half of the population in dire need.

Anna Holmes, founder of the popular news blog Jezebel.com, which caters to women, acknowledged in response to someone else that she believes there's truth in the cartoon that the famine news has been buried. But she tweeted (@AnnaHolmes) "the media/public can walk and chew gum at the same time. They can talk about hacking *and* famine."

Ryan Bourne, an economic and statistical researcher at the UK Centre for Policy Studies, tweeted (@RyanCPS) "I know the point The Times are getting at, but I find this cartoon very distasteful."

Was it an attempt to guilt-trip readers into changing their focus? Political Scrapbook, a political blog, tweeted (@psbook) that the cartoon was an attempt to tell us to "move on," and in an post on its site, it said "the third and most tasteless prong of resistance has come from a graphic in The Times depicting children in Somalia, suggesting that talking about phone hacking has prolonged their starvation. No one is stopping The Times covering both stories."

Jeff Jarvis, well-known media critic, journalism professor and creator of the BuzzMachine blog, (@jeffjarvis) simply tweeted:  "Good God. Murdoch's troops no bounds" in response to Viner's search for feedback on the cartoon.

Others, like Tim Karr, campaign director of the Free Press, a media reform group, called it "shameless." A lengthy search through the responses finds similar synonyms and sentiments, including that it was "brutal."

One of the most retweeted comments in response to Emma Gilbey Keller's tweet was from (@TeresaKopec), who said the "Cartoon in Murdoch's London Times may be most offensive thing they've done yet."

There's no doubt the comments will keep coming, and in a variety of forms, just as the tentacles of the story continue to grow and the implications of the scandal continue to murk the media waters.

Let us know what you think of the cartoon and the meaning behind it in the comments section below.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/21/twitter-rages-murdochs-times-of-london-famine-cartoon-most-offensive-thing-yet/comment-page-18/#comment-716806

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