Migrant Workers Riot in China

SHANGHAI, China) — Hundreds of migrant workers angry over mistreatment of a fellow worker rioted for three days in eastern China, surrounding a police station and smashing cars and motorbikes, a Hong Kong-based human rights organization said Monday.
The riot began Thursday in Kanmen town in coastal Zhejiang province, said the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Three hundred military police arrived Sunday and 30 migrant workers have been detained, the group said. No injuries were reported.
A woman who answered the telephone at Kanmen's public security bureau denied that workers broke into the police station or burned vehicles, saying they only gathered in the streets and shouted in protest. The woman did not give her name as is common with officials in China.
The Hong Kong-based rights group said the unrest in Kanmen was centered around a migrant worker who was beaten by a security guard while trying to get a temporary residence permit.
The violence comes just weeks after a crowd of 30,000 people in southwest China set fire to a police station, angry over what many believed was a cover-up of the death of a teenage girl by local authorities.
Such incidents are an embarrassment to officials, especially in the run-up to the Aug. 8 Beijing Olympics.
According to the rights group, when the worker went to police with a group of other workers to complain about the man who beat him, he was detained, triggering the protest in which hundreds of workers converged outside the police station, burning police cars and motorcycles and later throwing stones.
The report did not give any other details about the incident, including why the worker was beaten.
A notice posted on the Web site of Yuhuan County, which oversees Kanmen, said the July 10 "incident" was being investigated but did not describe what the incident was.
It "has caused a strong backlash by society, and the public is very concerned about the truth, and about how it was dealt with, and how the local offices have recovered," the notice said.
Thousands of migrant workers have flocked to the area and the situation has put pressure on the government, it said.
Also Monday, the official Xinhua News Agency said police in Guizhou province detained 100 people, including 39 members of local gangs, for involvement in last month's protest over the death of the student.
It quoted Peng Dequan, vice director of provincial public security, as saying they were still looking for other "gangsters" who were in hiding.
Authorities accused local gangs of fomenting the unrest and have urged offenders to surrender, Xinhua said.

Giving "Peace" a Chance

I was told yesterday that we should "give peace a chance," and that the sanctions against Iran are working. We just need to give it time. I asked the person who told me that what makes them so certain the sanctions are working, even as Iran continues to amass and enrich uranium and conduct missile tests? I asked what are the criteria for success? I did not get an answer. Ahmadinejad is openly laughing at the U.N. In a televised interview four months ago, he said “If they want to continue with that path of sanctions, we will not be harmed. They can issue resolutions for 100 years.”
While we are "giving peace a chance," Ahmadinejad is building a nuclear arsenal.
Another person told me today that, if we were to take military action against Iran, the world would condemn us because they already think we're a bully. Apparently, some people believe we need to wait for Iran to make the first strike, so the world will "approve" when we retaliate. How many American and/or Israeli lives are we willing to sacrifice to world opinion?
It's frustrating to know what your enemy is up to (because he has brazenly told you), but be unable to do anything about it because you don't want to look bad to somebody else, while your enemy gloats because he knows your hands are tied by public opinion.
Within the past three months, Iran has been installing 6000 new super high efficiency centrifuges for enriching uranium, that work five times faster than the old centrifuges. Some people are willing to believe Ahmadinejad when he says he's going to use all that enriched uranium for nuclear energy just to produce electricity, but are unwilling to believe him when he declares the time is very near when America (the Great Satan) will be destroyed and Israel will be wiped off the map.
I'm not suggesting we should jump into a war with Iran tomorrow. But I have a great deal of concern over the confluence of:
Their recent dramatic increase in uranium enrichment capabilities.
Their mounting increase in apocalyptic rhetoric against both the U.S. and Israel.
Their recent saber rattling exercises, indicating that they feel invincible.All of this concerns me a great deal. It also concerns me that so many people seem determined to ignore these facts, or refuse to consider their potential underlying significance. Any one, by itself, might be dismissible but, taken together, there appears to be a certain momentum building.
I acknowledge that we're too overextended militarily right now to be able to effectively engage in direct military action against Iran. I see that as a huge problem, as Iran shores up it's military might in obvious preparation for a conflict we are not prepared to undertake. I also grasp the urgency to take some kind of action to thwart their build-up of nuclear capability before it gets to the point that we cannot, without exacting a retaliatory strike. (Or first strike, as some would have it.) Once they have a nuclear arsenal in place, it's too late.
How ironic that "giving peace a chance" might lead us down the path to a nuclear war that could have been avoided...