Crackdown

Re "Reform, stat!," editorial, March 7 I fully agree that a crackdown on inappropriate financial ties between drug makers and doctors is imperative. But how about a crackdown also on ties between drug makers and legislators? In 2008, "Big Pharma" and medical device companies reportedly gave more than $28 million in campaign contributions to candidates. Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, received contributions of $71,600 from the industry last year.

An appeals court cleared the way for Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader, to be tried for imposing martial law in 1981 as part of a brutal crackdown on democracy activists. Eight other former communist officials also will be tried over the crackdown, which put thousands of democracy activists in internment camps. About 100 Poles died during the clampdown. Jaruzelski, 84, has long argued that martial law was the only way to prevent a Soviet invasion to crack down on the pro-democracy Solidarity labor movement.

About 100 Buddhist monks in a western Myanmar city staged a peaceful march to mark the anniversary of last year's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. Meanwhile in Yangon, recently released political prisoners helped celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the party led by detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi, while police and other security personnel kept a close watch. No protests directly related to the crackdown were noted in Yangon, where last year's protests attracted as many as 100,000 people.

Austrian police said they had broken an Internet child pornography ring that stretched across 170 countries, charging nearly 200 men and confiscating 14,000 computers, hard drives and disks. The site was visited 12 million times before it was shut down. Officers said it was the biggest crackdown on child pornography in Austria.

Premier Li Peng said today that none of the nations criticizing China's suppression of dissidents would have shown as much restraint, and he honored as martyrs three soldiers killed in the crackdown. "For more than 50 days our government, army and party were restrained," Li told the families of the dead soldiers at Communist Party headquarters, apparently referring to the weeks preceding the June 3-4 crackdown. "Some countries have attacked us, abused us and created rumors," he said.

A newspaper said today that Pablo Escobar, a reputed leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel, has kidnaped the son of President Virgilio Barco's closest adviser. El Tiempo said it was the latest in a series of abductions aimed at pressuring the government to end its crackdown on drug lords and raising money from ransom payments to make up for losses caused by the crackdown.

Japanese Foreign Minister Hiroshi Mitsuzuka left Sunday for meetings with President Bush and U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III in Washington to discuss Japan's response to China's bloody crackdown on dissidents and U.S.-Japanese trade friction. Mitsuzuka, a former trade minister who became foreign minister in the new Cabinet formed June 2, will meet with Bush, Baker, U.S. Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills, Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.

Gang crackdown in Westwood! I agree. I am a black, working-class woman living adjacent to South-Central Los Angeles. There should be crackdowns on gangs wherever gangs are found, and I espouse the position that if gangs had not been allowed to exist outside Westwood, they would not now be venturing into Westwood. JANICE I. GRAY Los Angeles