Experiments with truth: 10/3/11

The Editors October 3, 2011

Hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets of Kabul to condemn the recent shelling of border towns by Pakistan’s army and accusing its powerful spy agency of involvement in the killing of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the country’s influential former president.

Corrections officials in Sacramento said Thursday that they would discipline inmates who participated in a renewed hunger strike to protest conditions in the state’s highest-security prisons, where some prisoners have been held in virtual isolation for decades.

Hundreds of people filled a small town gymnasium in Nebraska on Thursday to protest at a State Department hearing on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. Residents fear it will pollute the Ogallala Aquifer, a major U.S. drinking water source.

Tens of thousands marched in Lisbon and Porto on Saturday to protest austerity measures imposed under the terms of an EU/IMF bailout, the first major rallies since a center-right government took power in Portugal in June.

U.S. actor Sean Penn joined thousands of Egyptian activists who packed downtown Cairo on Friday demanding that military rulers speed up the transfer of power to civilians and end emergency laws once used by Hosni Mubarak against his opponents.

Hundreds of indigenous Bolivians angry at plans to build a highway through an Amazon nature preserve resumed their protest march Saturday after a violent police crackdown a week ago.

Thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Friday in demonstrations against the regime. Human rights activists said that at least 13 people were killed when troops opened fire.

More than 1,000 people gathered in Savannah, Georgia on Saturday to attend the funeral of Troy Davis, the recently executed death row inmate many believe was innocent. They pledged to keep fighting the death penalty.

Dutch police forcibly dispersed around 200 squatters in the center of Amsterdam on Saturday during a protest on the first anniversary of the introduction of a law formally outlawing squatting.

Thousands Hungarians rallied in central Budapest against the measures of Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a demonstration organizers dubbed “D-Day.” Their demands included “fair” taxation, the constitutional protection of early retirement, the restoration of the right to strike, social dialog and the scrapping of retroactive laws.

More than 200 Tibetans, including monks, protested in a tense area of southwestern China on the country’s 62nd National Day after a Tibetan flag and a photo of the Dalai Lama were torn down, a news report said Sunday.

British unions organized a rally of 35,000 protesters against government budget cuts Sunday in Manchester where the Conservative Party opened its annual conference.

Tags: Afghanistan, China, Death penalty, Economic policy, Experiments with Truth, Incarceration, Protests, Self-determination, United States, War

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