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Social Upheaval, How Close Are We? Politics / Social Issues Oct 24, 2009 - 02:33 AM By: Michael_T_Bucci Many authors who have contributed to The Market Oracle have expressed concern - some overtly and some in passing - about the possibility of social upheavals in the US caused by economic dislocations and what impact these events would have on the markets. How close are we? An excellent synopsis by Mr Andre Damon of the current status of economic conditions extant in the US and the world on the eve of the G20 conference contains a prescient conclusion: "These different factors...

Advice on Being Prepared for BugOut National Guard forced all people out of their grid locked vehicles and put them onto buses which took them to the airport for transport. Gone were all the survival goods that the family had packed. Granted, they were not survivalists and only packed family mementos, but if they had, the survival goods would have been forced to be left behind in the car. The National Guard were armed and ready to shoot if the people did not comply. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." If there is a...

Rumblings in China’s rust-belt BEIJING, July 28 — The merger of two steel companies has been scrapped after a manager was beaten to death last Friday, said state media yesterday.The incident is one of China’s most violent labour disputes in recent years and threw the spotlight back on the country’s rust-belt region, which had been a cauldron of agitation a decade back.The riot took place in Jilin province, one of three north-eastern provinces known collectively as “Dongbei” in China, a region which has suffered the most from the country’s privatisation of state-owned enterprises since the 1990s. Last Friday, privately-owned firm...

Will China Implode? by Isabel Hilton Obama and Chinese officials met this week for high-level policy talks, and avoided exchanges on human rights. But China expert Isabel Hilton says minority revolts in China recently show it is an empire in crisis. There is a story that the Chinese government likes to tell: that China is the world’s oldest continuous, unchanging civilization (the dates vary, according to the exuberance of the moment, from 2,000 to a mythical 5,000 years). This unique history, the story continues, will determine China’s future. In this narrative of Chinese exceptionalism, the leadership remains immune to demands...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - In an implicit rebuke to Iran's ruling elite, a conservative presidential candidate warned Sunday that the political and social rifts opened by the disputed June 12 vote and subsequent crackdown could lead to the nation's "disintegration" if they were not resolved soon. The candidate, Mohsen Rezai, made his warning in a long statement about the election and its bloody aftermath, in which he called for reconciliation and spoke about the danger of "imprisoning" the legacy of the Islamic Revolution in divisive and shortsighted politics. The statement was posted on his Web site. Although his message was largely...

Embassies on alert amid fear of rising social unrest Suzy Jagger, Politics and Business Correspondent David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, has activated an early warning system to monitor economies at risk of suffering political and social unrest triggered by the global credit crisis, The Times has learnt. Teams of economists working within Britain’s embassies worldwide have been told to assess the risk of social unrest within their borders as a result of the global recession and then to report back to London. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is worried that the next chapter of the downturn will involve unrest in...

Police on guard in Tibetan areas in China, phone lines cut: watchdog Matthew Lee (c) 2009 Kyodo News HONG KONG, March 2 -- As many as 2,000 police officers are on guard in a Tibetan region in central China's Sichuan Province while telephone communications have been cut since last month, a human rights watchdog said Monday. The paramilitary police have been stationing in Aba and Ruoergai counties where Tibetans reside and government officials have been monitoring monasteries in the area on a 24-hour basis, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. The Hong Kong-based watchdog said mobile phone...

Economic Crisis Poses Threat To Global Stability by Tom Gjelten Morning Edition, February 18, 2009 · Around the world, unemployment is rising and incomes are falling, and it isn't clear how long the recession will last or how deep it will get. The global economic situation is so serious that the head of U.S. intelligence agencies now says it has surpassed terrorism as the top threat to national security. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair's dramatic report last week — that the economic crisis is now the United States' top "near-term security concern" — caught some members of Congress by surprise....

The 72-hour Kit: Gotta Rosary for the run? By Ben Fisher - Jesus Be With Us Published February 13th, 2009 In the event of an emergency, do you have a 72-hour or Bug-out Kit? Gotta Rosary for the run? A 72-hour kit is a bag, bucket, or box of everything you will need (food, water, medicine, …) to survive 72-hours as you flee a natural disaster, terrorist event, or civil unrest. The idea is that you should be able to get where you’re evacuating to within three-days, or that civil authorities (police, national guard, etc.) will have brought the unrest...

Britain’s bankers plumb new depths Patrick Hosking: On the money Jon Moulton, the private equity chief, warned a City lunch this week that he feared serious civil unrest. There was, he said, a 25 per cent chance of one of the 15 member countries of the eurozone pulling out of the currency club. That, he said, would be a catastrophic shock leading to a “far greater financial crisis” than the current one. The mind boggles at a financial crisis far worse than the current one. Is such a thing possible? Even with this one, it may already be too late...

Situation "very tense", unrest possible in Tibet: Dalai Lama AFP[Wednesday, February 11, 2009 23:00] BADEN BADEN, Germany - The Dalai Lama warned Wednesday of a fresh uprising in Tibet in the "very tense" run-up to the 50th anniversary of the failed rebellion against Chinese rule that prompted his flight into exile. "Today there is too much anger... The situation is very tense," said the 73-year-old Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader during a visit to the German spa town of Baden Baden. "At any moment there can be an outburst of violence," he told a group of journalists. "This is my worry...

A new report from the U.S. military warns of globalization and urbanization fueling social unrest, as well as a potential collapse of the Mexican government as that country deals with violence and corruption induced by drug cartels and organized crime. The military report also discusses concerns about global water scarcity, including in the American Southwest, and a weakened U.S. globally if there are major reductions in U.S. defense spending. The Joint Operating Environment 2008 report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command outlines potential short- and long-term security worries, including terrorist networks obtaining nuclear and biological weapons, as well as instability...

Civil unrest in Russia mounts In spite of security fears, activists try to capitalize on discontent caused by economic decline. By Miriam Elder - GlobalPost Published: February 4, 2009 07:10 ET Updated: February 4, 2009 08:45 ETMOSCOW — Maxim, a 20-year-old university student and political activist, refuses to give his last name and masks his face when he appears in public. "People fear the pressure of the security forces in Russia," he said. "They don't know who to be scared of, and who is meant to protect them." "That leads them to be scared to open up, to have a...

By Afghan WhigIn Russia, more than a dozen rallies were held over the weekend, calling for the nation’s leaders to resign. Fueling the fire among Russian activists are concerns over their government’s approach to the worldwide economic crisis. They’re angry about growing unemployment; half a million Russians lost their jobs in December. They’re angry about protectionist used car tariffs, which will raise the price and diminish the supply of foreign cars in Russia. They’re angry about the rising costs of food and other consumption goods, and unrelated to the economy, they’re upset about the Kremlin’s suspected murder of political...

Chinese government worries about social unrest Senior official says mass unemployment poses challenge for government By MarketWatch Last update: 9:29 a.m. EST Jan. 23, 2009 Comments: 35 NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- In a rare admission of the threat of widespread social unrest, a top Chinese official said Friday that the government must carefully handle public complaints in the face of new challenges posed by the financial crisis. State Councilor Ma Kai was quoted by China's state-run Xinhua news agency as saying officials need to deal with the problem by smoothing communications with the public through letters, visits and the careful...

We’re all (quite possibly) doomed David Cox on the social consequences of recession Wary of sparking panic, politicians are neglecting to acknowledge the true scale of the catastrophe that may await us, says David Cox By David Cox FIRST POSTED JANUARY 15, 2009 There is something oddly muted about current discussion of our economic difficulties. The Government fears we may have to wait until the second half of the year for an upturn. The Opposition warns that counter-recessionary measures may mean higher taxes in future. We should be so lucky. Doubtless those in charge of our destiny are wary of...

Russia braced for unrest By Isabel Gorst in Moscow and Anuj Gangahar in New York Published: December 26 2008 19:53 | Last updated: December 26 2008 19:53 Russia is bracing for further unrest as the rouble on Friday slid to a new low against the euro after a succession of moves to devalue its currency. A cut on Friday extended six weeks of devaluations by Russia’s central bank designed to offset the impact of the global economic crisis and falling oil prices as the country’s main export commodity approached its lowest level since 2004. Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader,...

China Braces for Social Unrest 2008-12-22 The head of China's judiciary calls on courts to maintain social stability amid the economic crisis. HONG KONG—As waves of laid-off migrant workers continue to head home from China's once-booming coastal cities, the authorities are bracing for a winter of discontent sparked by the global economic downturn. Wang Shengjun, president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), called at an annual conference of China's top judicial officials for courts to maintain social stability amid the global economic slowdown. "The most urgent task is to resolve economic, civil, and administrative disputes caused by the financial crisis,"...

With Strikes, China's New Middle Class Vents Anger By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, December 17, 2008; A01 CHONGQING, China -- When 9,000 of Shin Guoqing's fellow taxi drivers went on strike early last month, he felt he had to join them. Soaring inflation had undermined what his $300-a-month income could buy for his family, and Shin said he was frustrated that the government had done nothing to help. "After running around the whole day, you have only a few renminbi for it," he said, referring to China's currency. "You don't feel good about your life." For...

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks. “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report. The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique...

Signs of a Kremlin Fearful Of Unrest 12 December 2008 By Nikolaus von Twickel / Staff Writer Sociologist Yevgeny Gontmakher has painted a disturbing picture of what might emerge from the financial crisis. As Gontmakher sees it, a provincial industrial town will see huge protests after massive layoffs at its main factory next year. The authorities scramble haphazardly to contain the unrest. Violence will spread, ultimately reaching Moscow. The scenario, published under the headline "Novocherkassk 2009" in Vedomosti last month, is purely fictitious. But it triggered a very real reaction from the authorities. The government's media watchdog fired off a...

Chinese Communist Regime Provides Anti-Protest Training for Local Officials By Li Mei Epoch Times Staff Dec 8, 2008 Chinese protesters surrounded government buildings, threw stones at the gate, broke riot shields and even destroyed the government name plates on the buildings. Tens of thousands of onlookers roared their support. “Good job!” they shouted in Jishou in (The Epoch Times) Recently the Chinese Communist government scheduled six training seminars for 2,000 county-level party officials, each lasting seven days. The purpose of the seminars was to train party officials to handle large anti-government demonstrations. These seminars drew a lot of media attention...

Gao Shuhuan points to the house that has been home to her for most of her life China's rapid economic growth has benefited millions of people, but it also increasingly has become the source for much domestic unrest as the widening wealth gap helps solidify a growing sense of social inequality. One flashpoint for Chinese people who are not wealthy is the loss of their homes, often by local authorities who seize the land and then sell it for big profits.  Forty-two-year-old Gao Shuhuan has lived in this home for nearly half her life. "This is my house. Within...

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...