Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday July 1 2007 - (813)

Sunday July 1 2007 edition
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Britain Raises Terror Threat To 'Critical' Following Attempted Car Bombing In Glasgow 2007-07-01 02:50:47 Britain was braced Saturday night for a fresh wave of terrorist attacks as the national threat level was raised to "critical" following an attempted car bombing of Glasgow airport in Scotland Saturday. Just four days into his premiership, Gordon Brown was dealing with the most dangerous situation facing Britain since the attacks on London in July 2005. Police and intelligence officers confirmed that there was a direct link between the Scottish attack and the attempted car bombing of London on Friday - confirming the reality of a renewed U.K. offensive by Islamist extremists. Saturday night the Prime Minister summoned intelligence chiefs and ministers before the Cobra emergency committee in Whitehall to discuss the deteriorating security situation. It was agreed to raise the threat level to the highest degree possible, a decision that confirmed another attack is expected imminently. In a televised address from Downing Street, a sombre-faced Brown urged people to be "vigilant" and support the police and security services. He said: "I know that the British people will stand together, united, resolute and strong." Read The Full Story Editorial: Abuse Of Executive Privilege 2007-07-01 02:50:23 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Sunday, July 1, 2007. After six years of kowtowing to the White House, Congress is finally challenging President Bush’s campaign to trample all legal and constitutional restraints on his power. Congressional committees have issued subpoenas for documents and witnesses in two major cases and have asked for the first - and likely not the last - criminal investigation of an executive branch official who might have lied to Congress. Predictably, the White House is claiming executive privilege and refusing to cooperate with the legitimate Congressional investigations, one springing from Mr. Bush’s decision to spy on Americans without a warrant and the other from the purge of United States attorneys. The courts have recognized a president’s limited right to keep the White House’s internal deliberations private. But it is far from an absolute right, and Mr. Bush’s claim of executive privilege in the attorneys scandal is especially ludicrous. The White House has said repeatedly that Mr. Bush was not involved in the firings of nine United States attorneys. If that’s true, he can hardly argue that he has the right to conceal conversations and e-mail exchanges that his aides had with one another and the Justice Department. Read The Full Story Saving Earth From The Ground Up 2007-07-01 02:49:04 You may have heard of the nematode, that microscopic gelatinous worm in your garden soil, but did you know that four out of every five living creatures on Earth is a nematode? The whole bloody planet is crawling. A gram of soil might also contain 5,000 species of bacteria and untold fungi in a secret universe separated only by the soles of our shoes and our sad ignorance of our global home. These and other marvelous revelations come from the celebrated Harvard University biologist Edward O. Wilson, who was in Washington, D.C., this week as lawmakers, government officials and scientists took a little time away from pressing matters of state to consider ... the plight and the future of bugs. Laughable? No, don't dis bugs - your very life depends on them, it turns out. Wilson, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his books on invertebrate life, lectured to more than 200 like-minded bug lovers as part of National Pollinator Week events and celebrations. At 78, he remains a lithe figure, crowned with a mop of steel-gray hair and disco-age translucent brown glasses, as if hewn from amber but missing the frozen prehistoric mosquito. At Wednesday's talk at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Wilson was focused on putting self-absorbed Homo sapiens in some ecological context. If humans were to disappear - he doesn't advocate this, for the record - the effects on the insect world would be minimal. "It's unlikely a single insect species would go extinct except three forms of body and head lice," he said. Close relatives of the parasites could still live on gorillas. The primal, complex web of life would continue "minus all the species we have pushed into extinction." Ouch. Read The Full Story Analysis: Only Iraqis Can Win The War 2007-07-01 02:48:12 The harder President Bush has pushed to win in Iraq, the closer he has come to losing. The question no longer is whether the U.S. military can fully stabilize Iraq. It cannot. That was a possibility four years ago, immediately after Saddam Hussein's government fell. Before the insurgency took hold. Before U.S. occupation authorities lost any chance to avoid the sectarian strife of today's Iraq. Now only the Iraqis can save Iraq. They need the U.S. military's help, no doubt. But the Bush administration has made no secret of the fact that the U.S. troop buildup in Baghdad is simply buying time for the Iraqis to sort out their differences, create a government of national unity and show they can defend themselves. So it is not whether the U.S. can win the war. It is whether the Iraqis can, which is in great doubt. With limited sign of progress in Baghdad, U.S. officials are asking themselves how long it makes sense to tolerate an escalating rate of U.S. casualties - at least 3,576 dead since the war began in March 2003 - while the Iraqis debate and delay. Read The Full Story Kidnapped BBC Reporter's Fate Hangs On Clan Feud 2007-07-01 02:47:23 The arrest of two militants from the radical group holding BBC correspondent Alan Johnston hostage has put the journalist's life in great danger, according to sources in Gaza and within the group itself. Johnston, who was kidnapped on March 12, Sunday endures his 111th day in captivity. Last Monday a video of him wearing what seemed to be an explosives vest was released by his captors. Late Saturday night, members of Jaish al-Islam were due to meet to discuss his fate after two of their members were arrested earlier by Hamas security forces hoping to pressure the group - led by Mumtaz Dogmosh - into releasing the journalist. The revelation came even as members of the Dogmosh family - a notorious clan supplying most of the members of "The Army of Islam" - continued desperate efforts to convince the group not to kill the 45-year-old Scot. However, moderate insiders said the radicals were in charge and out of patience with Hamas, the British government, and the BBC. "We have tried to keep them talking and delaying, but now I fear they will not listen. We will know tonight," said one Dogmosh member with close ties to Jaish al-Islam and who has been working to end the crisis for months. Read The Full Story Commentary: Dick Cheney's Dangerous Influence 2007-06-30 16:32:54 Intellpuke: The following commentary by Eleanor Clift appears in Newsweek's Capitol Letter column. Ms. Clift's commentary follows: A longtime confidant of the Bush and Cheney families describes the dangerous influence of the vice president. Dick Cheney is like "Zelig," the Woody Allen character with the uncanny ability to turn up everywhere. We always suspected his dark influence throughout the government, and now it's been documented chapter and verse in an exhaustive series in The Washington Post. Cheney operates largely in secret, and because he is such a skilled bureaucratic infighter, he's able to do end runs around everybody, including President Bush, who does nothing to rein in his evil twin. Under the guise of national security, Cheney has gotten away with curbing civil liberties, condoning torture and launching an unnecessary war. He's also chipped away at environmental regulations and done myriad favors for his friends in the business world. His stealthy intervention undermined former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman and led to her resignation. He shapes tax policy and energy policy and whatever else strikes his fancy, installing himself as president of Corporate America. Cheney's above-the-law arrogance finally met its match this week, when he declined to give national archivists who oversee the handling of classified data in the executive branch access to his papers. Cheney's argument: that he's not part of the executive branch because he also serves as president of the Senate. The claim was ludicrous on its face and opened up Cheney to ridicule. Democrats can't muster the votes to cut off funding for the war, but when House leader Rahm Emanuel threatened to cut off funds for the vice president's operation, Cheney backed down. Read The Full Story Commentary: When Is Enough Enough? 2007-06-30 16:32:32 Intellpuke: The following commentary by New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, appears in the New York Times edition for Saturday, June 30, 2007. In his commentary, Mr. Herbert provides Americans with what can best be described as a wake-up call, and reminds them that they need to take their country back from the big special interest and those politicians who seem hell-bent to destroy -  and not, as their respective oaths of office require, preserve and protect - the U.S. Constitution and, with it, democracy. Mr. Herbert's commentary follows: Chances are you didn't hear it, but on Thursday night Senator Hillary Clinton said, "If H.I.V./AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country." Her comment came on the same day that a malevolent majority on the U.S. Supreme Court threw a brick through the window of voluntary school integration efforts. There comes a time when people are supposed to get angry. The rights and interests of black people in the U.S. have been under assault for the longest time, and in the absence of an effective counterforce, that assault has only grown more brutal. Have you looked at the public schools lately? Have you looked at the prisons? Have you looked at the legions of unemployed blacks roaming the neighborhoods of big cities across the country? These jobless African-Americans, so many of them men, are so marginal in the view of the wider society, so insignificant, so invisible, they aren't even counted in the government's official jobless statistics. Read The Full Story Commentary: Judges Behaving Badly 2007-06-30 16:31:43 Intellpuke: The following commentary appeared in The Economist's website on Thursday, June 28, 2007. In the commentary, The Economist writes that low pay and partisan elections are threatening judicial integrity in America. The Economist's commentary follows: A $54 million lawsuit over a pair of pinstriped trousers that went missing from a Washington, D.C., cleaners was thrown out by a judge this week. It had attracted worldwide ridicule. The fact that the case was brought, not by a random loony, but by a former judge has added to the sense that something is wrong not just with America's litigation laws, but with the kind of men and women Americans choose to sit in judgment over them. A whole series of judicial misdemeanors, ranging from the titillating to the outrageous, has emerged over the past year. Take the Florida state judge, John Sloop, who was ousted after complaints about his “rude and abusive” behaviour. This included an order to strip-search and jail 11 defendants for arriving late in traffic court after being misdirected. Or the Californian judge, José Velasquez, sacked in April for a plethora of misconduct, including extending the sentences of defendants who dared question his rulings. Then there was the Albany city judge, William Carter, in New York, censored for his “utterly inexcusable” conduct after jumping down from the bench during a trial, shedding his robes and apparently challenging a defendant to a fist-fight. Another time, he suggested that the police “thump the shit out” of an allegedly disrespectful defendant. Mr Carter wasn't carrying a gun; many judges now do. In Florida, Charles Greene, chief criminal judge in Broward County, had to step down after describing a trial for attempted murder involving minority defendants and witnesses as “NHI” (No Humans Involved). Then there are the sexual peccadilloes. In Colorado, a (male) judge resigned after admitting having sex with a (female) prosecutor in his chambers. In California, a former judge was jailed for 27 months for downloading child pornography. And in Oklahoma Donald Thompson, a judge for more than 20 years, was jailed for four years for indecent exposure and using a “penis pump” to masturbate during trials. Read The Full Story Turkey Warns Of Plans To Invade Northern Iraq 2007-06-30 02:15:46 Turkey has prepared a blueprint for the invasion of northern Iraq and will take action if U.S. or Iraqi forces fail to dislodge the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) from their mountain strongholds across the border, Turkey's foreign minister Abdullah Gul has warned. "The military plans have been worked out in the finest detail. The government knows these plans and agrees with them," Gul told Turkey's Radikal newspaper. "If neither the Iraqi government nor the U.S. occupying forces can do this [crush the PKK], we will take our own decision and implement it," said Gul. The foreign minister's uncharacteristically hawkish remarks were seen as a response to pressure from Turkey's generals, who have deployed some 20,000-30,000 troops along the borders with Iraq, and who are itching to move against the rebels they say are slipping across the border to stage attacks inside Turkey. Among other things, Turkish military planners have been working on a scheme to establish a buffer zone on Iraqi soil to try to stop the rebels' movements. Read The Full Story Commentary: I Have A New Hero And Her Name Is Mika Brzezinski 2007-06-30 02:15:15 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by Guardian correspondent David Adams, writing from Washington, D.C., about the media "kerfuffle" on Paris Hilton's release from jail. It appears in the Guardian newspaper's edition for Saturday, June 30, 2007. Mr. Adams commentary follows: It was Peter Finch, in the 1976 movie "Network", who first played a newsreader suffering an on-air breakdown. Driven to madness by poor ratings, Finch's character snaps and tells viewers to shout: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more." It's hard not to think of Finch, who won an Oscar for his performance, when watching a similar implosion by the newsreader Mika Brzezinski on the cable news channel MSNBC on Wednesday morning. Despite goading from her co-hosts, including the former Republican congressman turned rightwing talkshow host Joe Scarborough, Brzezinski stood her ground and refused to read her segment's lead news item on Paris Hilton. After a media frenzy that saw even arch-publicist Michael Moore elbowed off CNN's Larry King show to make way for Hilton's first post-jail interview, Brzezinski has become a cyberspace star. Clips of her shredding the script were the lead item on the Technorati search, while the blogosphere was alight with praise. "I have a new hero, and her name is Mika Brzezinski," wrote one. Read The Full Story Car Bombs Come To London 2007-06-30 02:14:13 British police were Friday night hunting a suspected al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell after the discovery of two "Iraqi style" car bombs, which United Kingdom officials said were designed to cause mass murder. One was outside a London nightclub, and a second nearby. Only luck and probable faults in the bombs' construction meant that the first device, inside a metallic green Mercedes, could be disarmed, while the second, in a blue Mercedes 280E, failed to explode. Police say both were capable of causing severe casualties and were intended to have been detonated remotely, most likely by a mobile phone. Counter-terrorism officials said the first device - made up of 60 liters of petrol, several propane gas cylinders, nails and a detonation mechanism - was similar to those used by al-Qaeda in Iraq. [Intellpuke: You might want to read my comment at the end of this article.] The second car, containing similar lethal materials, was given a parking ticket at 2:30 a.m. before being towed to a car park in Park Lane, central London. Read The Full Story Hamas Takeover In Gaza Leaves Israel Facing Tough Calls 2007-06-30 02:11:48 Since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, Israel has faced an increasingly complex set of military options to stop attacks from the territory, and a debate over its humanitarian responsibilities for the strip's 1.4 million people. The political split between the West Bank and Gaza has also strengthened calls in Israel to abandon the idea of a Palestinian state, which was at the core of the Oslo peace accords signed in 1993. Gaza is now ruled by an ascendant Islamic movement that calls for Israel's destruction, and the West Bank by a disorganized secular party seeking immediate peace negotiations. That divide has cast doubts on whether the formula of a Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel is still viable. "What is starting to emerge is a Palestinian Authority with two heads - one that accepts the two-state solution of Oslo lock, stock and barrel, and the other that does not," said Ron Pundak, an Israeli architect of the Oslo  agreement. "And there is concern the West Bank could become a new battleground between Fatah and Hamas. But is Oslo dead? No. Is it threatened? Yes." Read The Full Story	Tourists Going To And From U.K. Face Airport Chaos 2007-07-01 02:50:35 Holidaymakers are being warned to brace themselves for a summer of travel chaos as security measures become far tighter, creating longer queues in departure lounges and at check-ins. Following the attempted car bombing at Glasgow airport, thousands of holidaymakers hoping to jet off to a sunnier climate were facing a miserable few days as the closure of Scotland's busiest airport caused travel chaos. Airports around Britain were also affected Saturday night with much tighter security arrangements. Liverpool's John Lennon airport was closed until further notice, while safety checks were stepped up at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, with passengers facing double scrutiny of their passport details. Scotland Yard said last night in a statement: "Security at Heathrow airport has been thoroughly reviewed, in conjunction with key partners, and we have introduced enhanced levels of policing and security. This includes increased patrols by armed officers and the closure of access to the forecourts." Read The Full Story U.S.-NATO Air Assault In Afghanistan Kills 100, Or More, Civilians 2007-07-01 02:50:02 Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being "careless," Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault. The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, said Afghan officials. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad. "More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there," said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area. "The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government." Another parliament member from Helmand, Mahmood Anwar, said that the death toll was close to 100 and that the dead included women and children. "Very few Taliban were killed," he said. Read The Full Story Los Angeles Set To Record Driest Year In More Than A Century 2007-07-01 02:48:36 Barring a surprise arrival of the kind of gully washers Texas is getting these days, Los Angeles's driest year in 130 years of recordkeeping will go into the books this weekend. The nation's second-largest city is short nearly a foot of rain for the year from July 1, 2006, to June 30. Just 3.21 inches has fallen downtown in those 12 months, closer to Death Valley's numbers than the normal average of 15.14 inches. It is much the same all over the West, from the measly snowpack and fire-scarred Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada to Arizona's shrinking Lake Powell and the shriveling Colorado River watershed. The weather that is withering Los Angeles and drowning Texas are connected, said Bill Patzert, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist who researches the ocean's role in climate variations and has watched a Western drought grow for seven years. Stationary high pressure has pushed the moisture-bringing jet stream to the north, which has also allowed moist air to linger over Texas, he said. Read The Full Story U.K. Floods Bring Fears Of Looting 2007-07-01 02:47:49 British residents who have suffered the worst of June's extraordinary rains and floods are on alert for potential looting in areas where homes have been left empty and cars abandoned. South Yorkshire police said extra-high-visibility patrols had been brought in because of residents' concerns and warned they would bring "the full might of the law" down on anyone caught looting. Bob Dyson, the force's deputy chief constable, said: "There have been rumors of burglary and theft in empty homes but we have not received any reports of this. No one deserves to be a victim of crime but to take advantage of people affected by the flooding would be viewed severely by us. Our officers would bring the full might of the law to bear on anyone caught doing that." In Toll Bar, near Doncaster, resident Mark Birkby said four to six men from the village were keeping watch 24 hours a day because police were not doing enough. Residents said they had caught people trying to break into a car and stopped outsiders from entering the flooded area. "We had nothing here at all; no help from police or council, nothing at all for days," added Birkby. Read The Full Story Rep. Filner Says PTSD Misdiagnoses Cheats Veterans 2007-06-30 16:33:03 The chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee plans a summer attack on the military's disability review system, hoping that congressional hearings focusing on what he called the "terrible scandal of deliberate misdiagnosis" of mental health problems could lead to an overhaul of government policies. Rep. Bob Filner, D-California, said he expects to have veterans testify they were improperly diagnosed as having pre-existing personality disorders rather than post-traumatic stress disorder, a move that denies service members military disability benefits and could, under some circumstances, even leave them with no post-service veterans' benefits if their mental health problems have led to misconduct, such as abuse of alcohol or drugs. "This is a real scandal, in my opinion, to save a few dollars ... that wrecks lives," Filner said Thursday in a meeting with reporters to talk about committee plans. Dates for the hearings have not been set, but he mentioned August - when Congress generally takes a break - as a possibility in order to draw extra attention to the testimony. Read The Full Story Oil Over $70 A Barrel As U.S. Fuel Stocks Decline 2007-06-30 16:32:43 Oil prices rose above $71 a barrel on Friday as investors focused on falling gasoline and crude stocks in key regions of the United States, the world's top consumer. London Brent crude settled up 89 cents at $71.41 a barrel. U.S. crude oil settled $1.11 at $70.68, the highest settlement since August 25. Oil gained following a U.S. government report Wednesday that showed gasoline stocks off 700,000 barrels last week. Crude inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for the U.S. crude benchmark, dropped 1.4 million barrels. "The inventory numbers are giving the pattern for the rest of the week," said Kevin Blemkin, an oil broker at Man Financial. Read The Full Story 26 Die As U.S. Raids Baghdad Slum 2007-06-30 16:32:00 American soldiers rolled into Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City slum on Saturday in search of Iranian-linked militants and as many as 26 Iraqis were killed in what a U.S. officer described as "an intense firefight". But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused U.S. forces of firing blindly on the innocent. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault into a district where he has barred U.S. operations in the past. Separately, two American soldiers were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis, the U.S. military said Saturday; and in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of the capital, police said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a crowd of police recruits, killing at least 23 people and wounding 17. A U.S. soldier was killed Friday and three wounded when a sophisticated, armor-piercing bomb hit their combat patrol in southern Baghdad, the military announced a day later. Read The Full Story Breaking News: Burning Car Driven Into Glasgow Airport 2007-06-30 13:09:19 Four people were Saturday arrested following an apparent attempt to drive a burning car into Glasgow airport. Witnesses described seeing the vehicle, a green Jeep Cherokee, in flames as it approached the main terminal and one of the men who was inside it on fire. The airport was closed and passengers cleared amid fears of a deliberate attack. Roads around the airport were shut off and flights in and out of Glasgow were also suspended until further notice. Glasgow is Scotland's busiest airport. BBC News executive Helen Boaden, who was at Glasgow airport, told BBC News 24 that at least at two of the men were restrained by the public. Read The Full Story House, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairs Tell Bush To Justify Executive Privilege 2007-06-30 02:15:33 The chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees Friday ratcheted up their fight with President Bush over documents on the firing of U.S. attorneys, sending the White House a barbed letter demanding that the president back down from a claim of executive privilege - or give Congress a detailed explanation for withholding each document. In the letter to the White House counsel, Rep. John conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan) and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont) accused the administration of a "veil of secrecy ... unprecedented and damaging to the tradition of open government." The correspondence came a day after the White House invoked executive privilege, for the second time in Bush's tenure, to block the release of internal e-mails and other documents that congressional investigators are seeking to clarify what role Bush's senior staff played in the Justice Deparment's removal of nine chief federal prosecutors last year. The firings have triggered bipartisan calls for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalesto resign. Friday's letter marks Congress's first move toward enforcing subpoenas issued by the committees this month. The lawmakers had sought documents and testimony from former White House political director Sara M. Taylor and former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers. Internal Justice e-mails show they were involved in the dismissals. Read The Full Story Emergency Chiefs In Britain Fear The Worst With Warnings Of New Downpours 2007-06-30 02:14:33 Hundreds of extra emergency staff, troops and police special constables have been mobilized in flood-stricken regions of Britain as control centers prepare for a possible 60 millimeter (2.4 inches) of rainfall - the same as Monday's devastating weather - although police and fire service commanders are hoping that lower estimates of 20 millimeters prove accurate. "Even that level would have consequences, falling on ground which is waterlogged and rivers which are very high," said Meredydd Hughes, chief constable of South Yorkshire, whose gold command center has run the country's biggest crisis operation for the past six days. The Sheffield-based operation is getting updates from the Meteorological Office on two depressions tracking in from the Atlantic. Similar bulletins have gone to the other main flood area, the low-lying basin of the river Severn. The current forecasts predict a second band of rain on the west coast today, larger than a system which caused the prolonged downpours Friday in southern England before moving northwards Friday night. Read The Full Story Democrats Plan To Press GOP On Iraq 2007-06-30 02:12:29 With the immigration bill dead, troop-withdrawal deadlines vetoed and other high-profile initiatives stalled, Democratic leaders closed six months in control of Congress mired in low approval ratings and plotting a legislative blitz on an issue they once tried to escape: Iraq. Defeated last month on a war funding bill, Democratic leaders had hoped to spend June delivering on prominent domestic issues, such as homeland security, ethics rules and immigration. Instead, they limped out of Washington for a week-long Fourth of July break with few successes to boast about while complaining bitterly of Republican tactics that had stymied their higher-profile efforts. "Because of the obstructionism of the Republicans in the United States Senate, I'm not happy with Congress either," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California). On Thursday alone, parliamentary trench warfare helped torpedo President Bush's immigration bill. Hours later, two of the same warriors - Sens. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) - blocked Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada) as he tried to finish work on ethics legislation and a bill instituting most of the homeland security recommendations of the blue-ribbon committee that studied the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Read The Full Story China Enacts Strong New Labor Law To Protect Migrant Workers 2007-06-30 02:11:24 The Chinese legislature passed a law Friday to provide more protection to the millions of farm youths who leave home and become cheap labor in the factories and construction sites that have mushroomed in China's booming economy. The Standing Committee of the China People's Congress, in approving the law, presented it as a bulwark against widespread abuses of the often-uneducated migrant workers, such as forced labor, withholding of pay and unwarranted dismissal. The country was alarmed two weeks ago, for example, by the discovery that hundreds of Chinese were forced to work in conditions resembling slavery at dozens of brick kilns in Shanxi province while local Communist Party officials did nothing to stop it. In reaction, lawmakers at the last minute added a provision to the long-discussed labor code to mandate punishment for officials who are shown to be negligent or corrupt in allowing entrepreneurs to abuse workers. This and the unusual public rollout of the new law seemed designed to show the Chinese public that the central government of President Hu Jintao is determined to crack down on corrupt officials and protect those left behind by the swift economic growth of the past 25 years. Read The Full Story
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