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China Economy Plan Meets Political Needs By Michael Lelyveld 2008-11-19 China's $586-billion stimulus plan serves economic and political needs, experts say. BOSTON--China is committing enormous resources to avert serious job losses and social unrest, economists say. On Nov. 9, the State Council announced a huge 4-trillion- yuan ($586-billion) stimulus plan with commitments to spend the funds in 10 sectors over the next two years. The investment in areas such as housing, roads, and earthquake reconstruction is aimed at stemming a slide in the country's growth as recession threatens economies worldwide. But unlike Western economies, China is still recording high rates...

Military coup looms as civil unrest paralyses Thailand Published Date: 27 November 2008 By Nopporn Wong-Anan in Bangkok PRESSURE is building on Thailand's military to intervene in a political crisis threatening to descend into widespread civil unrest after prime minister Somchai Wongsawat last night rejected calls to quit. Speaking on national television, Somchai said his government was democratically elected and would continue to work for the "good of the country" despite claims by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) he is a puppet of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Somchai's refusal to call a snap election, as army chief Anupong...

Police Get Orders to Crush Crisis Unrest 10 November 2008 ST. PETERSBURG — President Dmitry Medvedev ordered police on Friday to stamp out any social unrest or crime arising from the global financial crisis. "We have a stable state … We do not need a return to the 1990s when everything was boiling and seething," Medvedev told a meeting of senior officials. "The law enforcement agencies should keep track of what is happening," he said. "And if someone tries to exploit the consequences of the financial crisis … they should intervene, bring criminal charges. Otherwise, there won't be order." The...

Just as I have predicted in earlier posts. Watch and see folks. The Polls are Skewed thus creating a false sense of Victory for the Dems and everyone is weary of what the actual result will be. If Mccain wins it will be attribited to racism period. No other way around it. The whole claim on palin is ridiculous. The MSM is to blame. Watch the Polls WILL shrink and be more represetive soon! These are DANGEROUS waters folks! Read More: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/police-prepare-for-unrest-2008-10-21.html

Petrol panic looms as protesters threaten blockade, strike closes major refinery and oil hits new high By PAUL SIMS - More by this author » Last updated at 12:27pm on 21st April 2008 Fears are growing today that Britain could lurch towards another fuel crisis. As forecourt prices hit record levels and oil went above $117 a barrel, campaigners said they were secretly planning a series of blockades in an attempt to bring the country to its knees. Angered by the Government's planned 2p rise in fuel duty, they pledged to recreate the chaotic scenes which saw tens of thousands...

Soaring food costs risk 'starvation and unrest' By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 2:41am BST 14/04/2008 The world's poorest countries face starvation and civil unrest if global food prices keep rising, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said. There have been serious disturbances in more than a dozen developing countries, including Haiti [pictured] Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in Washington that "hundreds of thousands of people will be starving". "Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives," he said. He predicted that increasing food prices would push up the cost of imports for poor countries,...

After Tibet, it’s Xinjiang Monika Chansoria 13 April 2008, Sunday HOWEVER MUCH the Chinese government may disagree, but the crisis in Tibet appears to be gradually spreading to other parts of the country. The sensitive Xinjiang province too is experiencing the turbulence of political and social unrest in the weeks following the violence incurred due to anti-government protests led by the monks in Tibet. Signs of ethnic unrest in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang have begun to emerge in the past few days with incidents of sporadic protests by Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region and of police...

Curfew in Xinjiang Town After Police Raids 2008.04.10 An all Chinese women special police unit demontrates their fighting skills in Urumqi, farwest China's Xinjiang region on April 9, 2008. AFP HONG KONG—Chinese authorities in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang have imposed a curfew following a series of police raids near the city of Gulja (in Chinese, Yining) looking for weapons and explosives, local residents said. One woman living in the area of Yengiyer township said a curfew had been in effect since March 30, when police detained up to 40 people in raids on a number of houses belonging...

April 3, 2008 Tibet unrest spreads to Muslim separatists in China who demand home rule Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang say that women are banned from wearing headscarves Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang Province have been accused by the Chinese government of posing a terrorist threat to the Olympics Jane Macartney in Beijing Muslim separatists demanding independence for China’s westernmost region have massed in a southern Silk Road oasis to protest against Beijing rule, stirred up by recent riots in Tibet. Officials in Khotan said that about 100 people had been detained after several hundred members of the Uighur Muslim minority staged...

China sets deadline for Tibet rioters to surrender By Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim 32 minutes ago China set a "surrender" deadline after riots in Lhasa that it said killed 10 innocent people, launching a crackdown on Saturday after the worst unrest in Tibet for two decades. The response came after torrid protests on Friday which flew in the face of official claims the region was immune from unrest as Beijing readies to hold the Olympic Games in August. Xinhua news agency said 10 "innocent civilians" were shot or burnt to death in fires that accompanied street clashes in...

China's inflation jumps to nearly 12-year high, raising risk of unrest before Olympics By JOE McDONALD,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 12BEIJING - China's inflation surged to a nearly 12-year high in February, the government said Tuesday, squeezing exporters and adding to the threat of unrest ahead of the Beijing Olympics. ADVERTISEMENT The 8.7 percent rise in the consumer price index over February 2007 was driven by a 23.3 percent jump in food costs, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. Price rises for some individual goods were even more dramatic: Pork was up 63.4 percent and vegetables 46 percent....

Twenty-year high in rice prices sparks fears By Javier Blas in Vienna and Raphael Minder in Hong Kong Published: March 4 2008 00:19 | Last updated: March 4 2008 02:41 Rice prices have surged to a 20-year high in the latest sign of global food inflation, creating policy headaches in Asia, where more than 2.5bn people depend on cheap and abundant supplies of the grain. Thai rice prices, a global benchmark, surged last week above the level of $500 a tonne for the first time since at least 1989, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, prompting importing...

Soaring soyabean price stirs anger among poor By Raphael Minder in Hong Kong, John Aglionby in Jakarta and Jung-a Song in Seoul Published: January 18 2008 02:29 | Last updated: January 18 2008 02:29 During the ancient Zhou dynasty, soyabeans were among China’s five sacred grains. Thousands of years later soyabeans maintain their importance to the Chinese and most other Asians, but they have recently triggered much more down-to-earth preoccupations. On Monday, 10,000 Indonesians demonstrated outside the presidential palace in Jakarta after soyabean prices soared more than 50 per cent in the past month and 125 per cent over the...

These are some of the most extraordinary and unsettling times in Kenya's post-independence history. The country is in the middle of a boom, its 5.7 percent annual growth rate among the highest in Africa. And while the country is still plagued by corruption, tribalism and poverty, the one-party rule that gripped Kenya for four decades -- first under Jomo Kenyatta, then under President Daniel arap Moi, who voluntarily stepped down in 2002 after 24 years in power -- has given way to one of Africa's liveliest multiparty systems. At the same time, militant Islam has also found a foothold. A...

U.S. Steps Up Confrontation With Myanmar’s Rulers By DAVID E. SANGER and STEVEN LEE MYERS WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The Bush administration stepped up its confrontation with the ruling junta in Myanmar on Friday, and officials said they were searching for ways to persuade China and other nations to cut off lending, investment and trade into the country. But in a sign of how limited Washington’s leverage is against the country, which has long been the target of American sanctions, officials said they were concerned that China, a trading partner and neighbor of Myanmar, would block any serious effort to...

Communist China Fears Trouble Is Brewing at Home BY NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT - Staff Reporter of the Sun September 21, 2007 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/63118 Fearful of a repeat of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of 1989, which were brutally put down by the military and drew worldwide condemnation, the communist government of China has issued an order freezing the prices of state-controlled commodities until the end of the year in a bid to slow galloping inflation. The Chinese Communist Party is afraid that growing unrest among workers may lead to protests to coincide with next month's Communist Party Congress, a meeting held...

18th Tir anniversary of the bloody Student uprising of several years ago, was pretty quite in Iran this year. One reason was that at least 10 of the leaders of the Student Unity group from around the country were arrested in advance as have been other dissidents to prevent any demonstrations against the Ahmadi Nutjob regime. In the first video you can see how a handcuffed prisoner is mistreated while being "arrested". Public floggings (whippings) to set an example have been held in the streets in various parts of cities to terrify inhabitants.

Muslim unrest as police carry out new raids By Nick Britten and Nigel Bunyan Last Updated: 8:08am GMT 03/02/2007 Police raided three more addresses in Birmingham yesterday as they continued to question nine men over their involvement in the alleged plot to kidnap and behead a serving British Muslim soldier. Men leave Birmingham Central mosque after Friday prayers No further arrests were made but West Midlands Police said that a "significant quantity of exhibits" taken from the 12 other properties were being examined following Wednesday's arrests. Officers were granted an extension to hold the men until Feb 5 and said...

Thousands of local residents have converged on an upscale hotel in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, setting fire to the building in protest at the death and alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl who worked there. Mobile phone footage taken outside the hotel in Dazhu township showed confused and raucous crowds in darkness in front of a burning building as crowds gathered outside. Witnesses said the crowd reached 20,000 at its peak late Wednesday. “There are still around a few thousand people on the scene and they protested outside the hotel this afternoon,” a shop owner near the Nest...

LAGOS (AFP) - Unrest in Nigeria's southern oil region the Niger Delta, the theatre of a spate of kidnappings in recent months, is set to continue through the elections scheduled for April, analysts and security experts say. "I see violence in the delta staying at the current levels right through these elections", a Lagos-based risk consultant told AFP. The people of the delta complain that while their region generates 95 percent of Nigeria's foreign currency earnings, they have little to show for this in terms of development or living standards. A leading security contractor cited the country's "North-South sectarian divide...

Note: the Cornerstone Ministries, Korean missionary organization, which does a lot of clandestine cross-border missionary works from Chinese areas bordering N. Korea had the following post in its website today. It said that multiple unrests broke out in N. Korea. No words on the scale or exactly when they broke out. As it stands, strictly speaking, it is an allegation. However, it may worth disseminating. /begin my translation Urgent Prayers for N. Korea From our worker in the field, an urgent request for a prayer. According to our worker who came back from N. Korea, unrests broke out in a...

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kolesnikov) - Public unrest recently swept through Hungary. Triggering it were revelations by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, which revealed that the Cabinet had been lying to the nation about the economic situation. As often happens with public action, Hungarians chanted diverse, and often mutually exclusive, mottoes. The activists were also a motley crew, including hoodlums. The figure "1956" loomed behind the drama. Hungary possesses a dynamic civil society, which exploded with indignation at the revelation that the government was telling it fairly tales-an instance of politics shrugging off morals. The public thirst for the...

A storm is brewing in Surgut, the seemingly sleepy hometown of Kremlin-friendly oil company Surgutneftegaz. Discontent over wages and management tactics is driving thousands of workers onto the streets in protest. Managers at the closely held company may be sitting on a cash pile estimated at more than $13 billion from sky-high oil prices, but the sense of prosperity is not felt by many of the firm's thousands of workers, say workers at the company, who have set up a fledgling independent union to make their case for better conditions. The frustrations first broke out into the open during the...

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftwing candidate in Mexico’s presidential elections, refused on Thursday night to accept defeat at the hands of his centre-right rival, Felipe Calderón. He called instead on his supporters to gather for a mass rally in the capital on Saturday. “It is clear that there was manipulation [of the counting],” Mr López Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution party (PRD), said, hours after Mr Calderón had taken a wafer-thin lead. “We are not going to sit back with our arms crossed.” With 99.9 per cent of the vote counted last night, Mr Calderón, of the ruling National...

WASHINGTON, May 29, 2006 – A deadly traffic accident involving a coalition convoy in the Afghan capital of Kabul today sparked civil unrest in its aftermath, Combined Forces Command Afghanistan officials reported. Initial reports indicated one Afghan civilian was killed and at least six others were injured in the accident. There was no report of coalition casualties or of any casualties resulting from the subsequent unrest. Later news reports say eight people were killed and more than 100 were injured, but military officials have yet to release an estimate beyond their initial report. Coalition spokesman U.S. Army Col. Thomas Collins...

InTech 17 May 2006China close to edge The U.S. economy in 2007 will be OK, but things will start to slide in 2008, and there will be a recession in 2009, said economist Alan Beaulieu at the 13th annual Control Systems Integrators Association Executive Conference in Panama City, Fla. “So no big capital investments after this year and don’t hire that corporate VP unless you’re really comfortable with and can afford to lay people off,� Beaulieu warned. While the recession will, of course, be unwelcome in the U.S., it may have profound effects in China. When the West pulls back...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Street riots, decapitations of police officers by drug gangs and the worst union conflict in years have raised tension in Mexico's presidential race with the government under fire for its handling of the violence. Thousands of police swarmed a town near Mexico City this week to free fellow officers taken hostage in riots that left a 14-year-old boy dead and led to scores of arrests. The violence, triggered by a dispute with police over unlicensed flower sellers, came two weeks after two steel workers were killed during running battles with police sent in to break a...

I've never posted a new thread before and was going to put this with Santa Ana but now there are details so I think it needs it's own thread. Reports for help from all police to respond to Vista, California for unrest related to the immigration protests. I'd been hearing sirens racing north on 15 for over the last 50 minutes and was trying to find out what was going on, as after hearing and seeing groups of 2-6 patrol cars racing up the freeway sirens wailing every 4-8 minutes made it apparent something was going on.

A judge in Afghanistan said today that Abdul Rahman, the man charged with converting to Christianity, would face the death penalty, or worse, if convicted of the crime. “We could behead him and then throw the book at him,” said the judge presiding over the case, raising the specter that the punishment could include intentional abuse and damage to Mr. Rahman’s copy of the Bible. The threat to the Bible comes as retribution for reported incidents of Koran desecration last year by Americans at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility. Those allegations sparked deadly Muslim riots worldwide. Meanwhile, state governors...

DUBAI - Construction on a building expected to be the world’s tallest was interrupted on Wednesday after Asian workers angered by low salaries and mistreatment rioted, smashing cars and offices and causing what a government official said almost US$1 million in damage. The stoppage triggered a sympathy strike at Dubai International Airport also Wednesday, when thousands of labourers building a massive new terminal also laid down their tools, airport and labour officials said. Some 2,500 workers on the emerging Burj Dubai tower and surrounding housing developments chased and beat security officers Tuesday night, broke into temporary offices and smashed computers...

Hundreds Flee Northwestern Pakistan Unrest Sunday March 5, 2006 6:31 PM By BASHIRULLAH KHAN Associated Press Writer MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan (AP) - Hundreds of Pakistanis lugging bags and bundles of clothes fled a northwestern town Sunday after pro-Taliban tribesmen and foreign militants battled security forces in clashes near the Afghan border that left at least 53 people dead. The fighting, which started Saturday and largely died down early Sunday, was the worst in two years in the lawless North Waziristan region, where well-armed, fiercely independent tribes have long resisted government control. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said sporadic gunfire...

China's internal problems haunt US 2 hours, 37 minutes ago When President George W. Bush was asked at a recent public forum about his strategy to contain China's geopolitical ambitions, the US leader dwelled instead on the internal problems confronting Beijing, such as unemployment and energy shortage. The United States is concerned by the increasing social, environmental and other domestic issues facing China's leadership and wants to work with Beijing to help shape some of the choices it makes to sustain rapid economic growth, officials say. Washington is anxiously watching how Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao...

SHANGHAI, Jan. 16 - A week of protests by villagers in China's southern industrial heartland exploded into violence over the weekend with thousands of police officers brandishing automatic weapons and using electric batons to put down the rally , residents of the village said today. As many as 60 people were injured, residents of Panlong village said, and at least one person, a 13-year-old girl, had been killed by security forces, they said. The police denied any responsibility, saying that the girl had died of a heart attack.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Armed police have sealed off a village in southern China after violent clashes with residents that rights group Amnesty International said marked the first time Chinese police had fired on protesters since 1989. Residents said riot police had opened fire on Tuesday on protesters in the village of Dongzhou in Guangdong province after they moved in to quell demonstrations over lack of compensation for land lost to a wind power plant.

French unrest spreads outside Paris Staff and agencies Friday November 4, 2005 A firefighter stands by at a warehouse fire in the early hours of this morning. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty A disabled person was badly burned in an attack on a city bus and more than four hundred cars were torched during an eighth night of rioting in Paris suburbs. Government officials cited a falling number of direct clashes with police to claim that the situation was becoming calmer, but the violence also spread out of the capital's immediate vicinity. Reports of unrest surfaced in Rouen in Normandy, Dijon...

Al-Azhar University in Gaza City has been shut down after gunmen belonging to the ruling Fatah party beat the institution's president and some of his aides. The attack took place on Wednesday when some 20 gunmen stormed the offices of university president Dr. Adnan al-Khaldi and forced him to flee after assaulting him. Eyewitnesses said the attackers also dragged an employee from the university's public relations department and dumped him outside the campus. The attack was not the first of its kind on the university. Earlier this year another Fatah group stormed the campus and threatened to lynch the university...

At least two Palestinian Authority policemen were killed in fierce clashes that erupted on Sunday evening between PA security forces and Hamas gunmen in various parts of the Gaza Strip. PA security sources said the two victims, including the commander of the Palestinian police station in Shati refugee camp, Ali Makkawi, were killed when hundreds of Hamas gunmen attacked the station with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic gunfire. They said another 30 people, mostly Hamas members and civilians, were injured in the confrontations. The attackers also set a number of PA police vehicles on fire. The clashes began in the Sheikh...

Teachers and Students Decimate Hubei Province Battery Factory The Epoch Times Oct 02, 2005 Hubei Province, China – Locals took matters into their own hands in Hubei Province last week when they broke into and decimated a battery factory responsible for polluting the nearby area. Thousands of students and teachers from Songhe town Second Middle School in Jianshan county, Hubei province surrounded the factory in anger due to local governments' lack of response to the situation. According to Xingdao Daily, at around 9am on September 29th, over a thousands students and nearly one hundred teachers gathered in front of the...

China is preparing for nuclear war with the United States over Taiwan, and a conflict is likely in the near future because of divisions among Beijing's leaders, a Chinese democracy activist says. Wei Jingsheng, a leading international advocate for political reform in China, said in an interview with The Washington Times that President Bush and other U.S. leaders do not fully understand the chance of a conflict breaking out and must do more to avert it.

The Iranian government is facing a new security challenge from a small, armed Iranian Kurdish group emboldened by the political gains of Kurds in neighbouring Iraq. Pejak, the Party for a Free Life in Iranian Kurdistan, has emerged as behind recent unrest in the predominantly Kurdish north-west of the country, renewing a separatist armed struggle that halted a decade ago. Of Iran's 70m population, about 10 per cent is estimated to be Kurdish. Iranian Kurds were suppressed during Iran's 1979 revolution. But the main Kurdish opposition groups in the Islamic republic, including the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and...

China's widening income gap threatening social stability: governmentMon Aug 22, 1:17 AM ET BEIJING (AFP) - China's rapidly widening income gap has reached dangerous levels, risking social instability by 2010 if the present trend continues, a government report warns. "China's growing income gap is likely to trigger social instability after 2010 if the government finds no effective solutions to end the disparity," the Ministry of Labour and Social Security warned in the China Daily. Su Hainan, president of the ministry's income research institute, found income disparity in China had reached the crucial "yellow" stage -- the second most serious in...

Toxic waste sparks violent protest at China factoryMon Aug 22, 3:05 AM ET BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese protesters set fire to factory buildings and police cars in a clash sparked by toxic waste, police and residents said on Monday, the latest illustration of a growing wave of public dissent. Saturday's violence at the Tian Neng Battery Co. was also the third protest in the eastern province of Zhejiang in recent months caused by pollution, highlighting the environmental price of China's rise to become the world's seventh-largest economy. "It's very serious. There was a clash between protesters and the police. Some...

Iran accused the US and Britain of stoking the unrest that has broken out among its Kurdish and Arab minorities. FM spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi offered little evidence for his allegations, but he suggested that Washington and London were giving encouragement to Arabs and Kurds who have rioted in western and northwestern Iran. "This is not acceptable at all," Asefi told a news conference. Asefi said the United States is "stuck" in Iraq and is trying to divert attention from its plight by sowing unrest across the border. Under U.S. protection, Iraq's Kurds have enjoyed autonomy and a booming economy,...

Unrest has rocked Iran's northwestern region of Kurdistan in recent weeks leading to the deaths of more than a dozen civilians and several members of the country's security forces. The protests are the largest in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, when Kurdish rebels seeking autonomy fought government forces. Last Sunday, shops in more than a dozen Kurdish towns closed their doors to protest what Kurds regard as discrimination by the government in Tehran and hundreds of people were arrested. Human Rights Watch reported that 17 people had been killed in three weeks of violence in several towns. A Kurdish...

The Iranian government has deployed large numbers of troops in cities in the northwestern region which borders Iraq in an effort to quell three weeks of civil unrest that has left up to 20 people dead and more than 300 wounded, according to reports from dissident groups. They said as many as 100,000 state security forces, backed up by helicopter gunships, had moved into the region to crack down on pro-Kurdish demonstrations. The claims, from Kurdish groups in Iraq, could not be independently verified, and Iranian officials remained silent about the unrest. The state-owned news agency IRNA said the trouble...

LOS ANGELES -- A crowd assembled around a motorist being forcefully subdued by police eventually dispersed early Thursday, not far from demonstrators protesting an officer-involved shooting that left a baby dead, police said. The gathering of the two groups prompted the LAPD to go on citywide tactical alert, which was later scaled down to a South Bureau tactical alert, a Los Angeles police officer said. The incident involving the motorist started when a man who led police on a short pursuit that ended in his driveway at 84th Street and Towne Avenue shortly after 10 p.m. The man, whose name...

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of noise on China-related English language blogs about Microsoft censoring the words for "democracy" and "freedom" from its Chinese blogging platform. This led to discussion about the ways in which American corporations are aiding the Chinese government to control the flow of information over the Internet. Much of this discussion was widely reported in the Western media, but probably unnoticed by the average Joe in Paris and New York, and most certainly unnoticed by the average Zhou in Chengdu and Beijing.

Six months after Ukraine's Orange Revolution, growing rivalries among its leaders are threatening planned political and economic reforms. ADVERTISEMENT Allies of Viktor Yushchenko, the mild-mannered president, and Yulia Tymoshenko, the firebrand prime minister, are splitting into competing camps. Mr Yushchenko himself has tried to stay above the fray and assert his authority over both factions. But he is struggling to hold together a disparate alliance that united to overthrow former president Leonid Kuchma but is now starting to come apart. Mr Yushchenko said this week: "I'm happy to have the dialogue [with my colleagues]. But if somebody questions a decision...

Unrest 'could double' oil price By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Filed: 27/06/2005) A warning of a possible near doubling in the cost of oil was issued yesterday as UK prices rose to more than £4 a gallon and the AA Motoring Trust said the price of diesel was approaching £5 a gallon. Further rises were expected next week, it said. The price of crude oil could soon reach $100 a barrel, compared with the present historic high of $60, if there was further supply disruption in Russia or a political upset in Saudi Arabia, a leading German institute said. The IFW World...

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