A labor organizer who helped ABC News expose brutal working conditions in Bangladeshi clothing factories was tortured and killed last week, according to authorities:

“All indications are that Aminul Islam was murdered because of his labor rights work,” said Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an American group working to improve conditions at factories abroad that make clothes for U.S. companies. “This depraved act signals the deterioration of an already grim labor rights situation in Bangladesh, which is now the fourth largest exporter of apparel to the U.S.” [ABC]

Islam, a senior organizer with the Bangladeshi Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), had been working to organize the Shanta Group, which makes clothes for such well-known American brands as Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, and Ralph Lauren.

When ABC News reported on a deadly factory fire, Islam helped to arrange interviews with survivors of the blaze. Death by fire remains a common occupational hazard in Bangladesh’s clothing industry. Nearly 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in factory fires over the last five years.

[Photo credit: Workers in an unnamed garment factory in Bangladesh, jankie, Creative Commons.]

• The police officer who shot and killed 68-year-old retired Marine Kenneth Chamberlain in his White Plains home has been identified. Officer Anthony Carelli is due to face unrelated police brutality charges in court next month. He is accused of beating two arrestees of Jordanian descent and calling them “ragheads.” [Democracy Now! exclusive.]
• Big banks are showering Congress with cash, hoping to water down financial reform. [Bill Moyers.com/AlterNet]
• Corporations are trying to hijack publicly-funded job training programs to provide quick fixes that are immediately profitable for industry, instead of skills that will provide long-term employability for graduates.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

Dave Weigel of Slate interviews some residents of Sanford, Florida about how the Trayvon Martin shooting has affected their town of 53,000:

SANFORD, Fla.—McRobert’s Auto Center, a 54-year-old shop on the outskirts of downtown, has one of those movie-theater-style marquees with bold letters, perfect for slogans. On one side, the sign advertises tire-balancing service. On the other side—the side you see driving in from the suburbs—it reads SANFORD IS STILL A GOOD LITTLE TOWN.

It means what you think it means. Mark Carli, who’s worked here for four years, is sick of media frenzies, sick of marches, sick of race-baiting.

“I’m sympathetic that there was a life taken,” he says. “Central Florida’s just gotten over the—what was it, the Susan B. Anthony thing?” He’s trying to remember the murder case that gripped Orlando last year. “Sorry, no, Casey Anthony. My understanding of the problem there was that they jumped to conclusions and it hurt the prosecution.”

It’s a good piece of reporting, understated and darkly funny. Weigel lets his subjects speak for themselves and challenges us to draw our own conclusions.

Still, I would have liked to see Weigel challenge his subjects on their reflexive belief that Sanford is being unfairly blamed. After all, nobody remembers what town Casey Anthony came from. We remember the crime, but not the town. Caylee Anthony’s death had no effect on the town’s reputation because we understand that dangerous people can crop up anywhere.

Sanford is under a cloud because the police department is suspected of mishandling the shooting. The original chief of police stepped down. The Justice Department stepped in because the local authorities didn’t seem willing or able to pursue justice.

Police surveillance video of George Zimmerman being taken into custody conflicts with the police report. The police report claims that Zimmerman was bleeding from his nose and the back of his head at the scene and that his back was covered in dew and grass. In the video, Zimmerman appears clean, dry, and completely unscathed, just half an hour after the shooting. A digitally sharpened version of the video may show some lumps on the back of Zimmerman’s shaved head, but it’s not clear that those are injuries. They may just be bumps. If all human skulls were perfectly smooth and regularly-shaped, phrenology never would have gotten off the ground. Whatever they are, they don’t look like fresh trauma. The discrepancy between the video and the police report is key because Zimmerman claims he shot in self-defense after Martin began slamming his head into the pavement.

The official municipal line is that it’s unfair to blame Sanford for what is strictly an isolated incident between two people:

Spokespeople for the city have taken up a sort of mantra, the first sentence in every media conversation: This is about the actions of two individuals in a city of 53,000 people. The victim, Trayvon Martin, was in town visiting his father’s fiancée at the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Taking this, making it about the sins of Sanford—it’s not fair.

If George Zimmerman had been charged with the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the story never would have spread beyond the local news. The criminal justice system could have heard all the evidence, weighed his claim of self-defense, and meted out punishment accordingly. Instead, the police put him back out on the street after an investigation so flawed and cursory as to raise questions about a coverup.

By insisting that the conduct of the Sanford police has no bearing on the reputation of Sanford, the city fathers are reinforcing the suspicion that the city has problems that run much deeper than a single shooting in a gated community. Of course it’s unfair to blame the average citizen of Sanford, who didn’t pick the bureaucrats or the police. But it’s outrageous for a city to preemptively exonerate itself for a scandal involving its own police department.

The residents of Sanford should be embarassed, and frightened, to live in a system with so little accountability.

[Photo credit: Dave Weigel.]

Guest post by Jin Zhao, reprinted with permission from Things You Don’t Know About China.

March 31, 2012. This morning, Chinese government’s cracking down on websites and arresting six netizens for spreading the rumor of a military coup in Beijing became a headlining story in many major Chinese and international media. AP and The Washington Post both reported that two microblogging websites Sina Weibo and TencentWeibo were “punished” and comments have been temporarily suspended until next Tuesday. The report by both news organization, however, is not accurate.

According to Xinjing Bao, a Beijing based newspaper, the government shut down 16 websites because of their “creating and spreading rumors and negligence in management” which have resulted in “extremely negative social impact.” However, Beijing and Guangdong Internet administrative agencies only “severely criticized” Sina Weibo (based in Beijing) and TencentWeibo (based in Guangdong) and “punished them accordingly.” However, there is no information about the specifics of the “punishment.” Xinjing Bao also reports that “the two websites have agreed to abide the relevant laws, implement corrective measures, and further strengthen management.”

I tested both microblogging websites this afternoon and it appears that users can post, comment and repost microblogs as usually. As to what measures the websites are going to implement to “strengthen” their management, I haven’t seen any signs of stricter censorship or blockage.

It is possible that the commenting and reposting functions on weibo sites were suspended and recovered shortly, for some netizens have complained the blockage of comments on these sites. A journalist posted in the group “Chinese Journalists” on Sina Weibo, criticizing the government for “fabricating a harmonious society.” “It’s fine that you (the government) are shameless,” he wrote, “but what makes you really shameless is to block weibo‘s comments.”

It is still unclear what is going to happen to these websites. It will be hard for the government to flat-out close or directly censor these websites largely because of economic reasons. Moreover, like the journalist mentioned earlier, many Chinese are no longer willing to accept whatever imposed on them, and those who see weibo a freer and more open space for information sharing and public debate, many of whom are opinion leaders in China, will not let it to be smothered without a fight.

Updates:

April 1, 1:15 PM EST – As of now, Sina Weibo disabled commenting, but still allows reposting. On Sina Weibo, a message says when one clicks on “comments”: “From March 31, 8 PM, to April 3, 8 PM, commenting is suspended temporarily. We apologize for the inconvenience.” The reason for suspension, according to Sina Weibo, is so that website can “cleanse” the website of “harmful” and “illegal” information.

On Tencent Weibo, it seems commenting and reposting are both still functioning.

[Photo credit: BWJones, Creative Commons.]