Experiments with truth: 2/16/11

The Editors February 16, 2011

Police fired tear gas and violently dispersed hundreds of protesters in Libya this morning who gathered in front of police headquarters of in Benghazi demanding an end to Gaddafi’s 41-year rule.

Anti-government protests in Shia villages around Manama, the Bahraini capital, left several people injured and one person reported dead on Monday.

In Iran, clashes have erupted today at the funeral of a protester killed on Monday, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets in the largest Iranian protests since the aftermath of the nation’s disputed 2009 election.

In Yemen, protests against longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh are escalating as they continue for a sixth consecutive day. Earlier today government supporters attacked pro-democracy demonstrators as they set off on a march from a university in the capital of Sanaa.

Labor unions across Egypt have taken the country’s revolution as a cue to stop work and demand better pay and conditions. More than 12,000 workers at state-owned Misr Spinning and Weaving went on strike on Wednesday. In the coastal city of Damietta, about 6,000 spinning and weaving workers were also striking. And thousands of workers and employees from the Upper Egyptian city of Assiut have organized sit-ins.

On Tuesday, an estimated 10,000 people gathered at the capital building in Madison, Wisconsin to protest against a bill that would eliminate almost all collective bargaining rights for public workers and slash their pay and benefits.

Eighteen people were put in handcuffs and detained by sheriff’s deputies in San Francisco Monday afternoon after a sit-in at the county clerk’s office. The act of civil disobedience was carried out by gay and lesbian couples to protest same-sex marriage bans in California and other states.

On Tuesday, the train schedule was badly disrupted while 13 locomotives were stranded at the Pakistan Railways Mughalpura workshops as workers went on strike and laid on the railroad tracks in protest against non-payment of salaries.

Public transport came to a halt in Athens on Tuesday once again due to a 24-hour strike over the controversial new law which envisages a partial privatization of the debt-ridden Greek Railways, the restructure of the sector and transfers of employees to other public companies to save costs.

“We pay taxes, Why don’t you?” protesters chanted as they carried signs and Valentine’s Day balloons on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of America building in downtown Hartford Monday in a demonstration designed to embarrass Connecticut’s largest bank into greater cooperation with delinquent homeowners.

A strike by Portuguese train engineers on Tuesday caused severe disruption for commuters in the latest protest against government spending cuts designed to ease a debt crisis.

One of Equatorial Guinea’s most prominent authors, Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, entered his fifth day on a hunger strike yesterday to protest the policies of Equatorial Guinean dictator Teodoro Obiang.

Tags: Blockades, Experiments with Truth, Labor, LGBTQ rights, Pakistan, Protests, Sit-ins, Strikes, United States

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