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Anonymous flyers provide practical and tactical advice for confronting riot police, and besieging government offices Egyptians have been urged to come out after Friday prayers tomorrow and demand the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's government, along with freedom, justice and a democratic regime.Anonymous leaflets circulating in Cairo also provide practical and tactical advice for mass demonstrations, confronting riot police, and besieging and taking control of government offices. Signed "long live Egypt", the slickly produced 26-page document calls on demonstrators to begin with peaceful protests, carrying roses but no banners, and march on official buildings while persuading policemen and soldiers to join their ranks.
Protests by Tibetan students in China over the right to study in their language have spread, according to a rights group and state media. Thousands marched in Qinghai province on Wednesday, following a peaceful demonstration in Tongren a day earlier.It follows unconfirmed reports of plans to curb the use of the Tibetan language in classrooms in favour of Chinese.Qinghai province is home to many ethnic Tibetans and was the scene of anti-Chinese riots in 2008.Thousands of students, many of them in their early teens, are expressing their desire to continue to study and learn in their native Tibetan, said the London-based Free Tibet.
ST ANDREWS, Scotland (Reuters) - Twenty activists donned suits and ties and buried their heads in the sand on a Scottish beach on Saturday to protest against a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of 20 powerful nations.The protest on West Sands, where beach scenes in the 1980s Oscar-winning movie "Chariots of Fire" were filmed, began a peaceful march that attracted more than 200 people.Demonstrators will be holding a rival People's G20 in St Andrews, a few miles from the hotel where finance ministers and central bankers of the world's most powerful developed and emerging nations are meeting to discuss the global economy.
As the debate in Congress continues over health care reform, activists are continuing to put the pressure on. In a new article at The Nation, Peter Dreier writes that momentum for reform is growing, with groups like Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and MoveOn having organized hundreds of protests in front of insurance company offices around the country, at the homes of insurance company CEOs, and at the annual conference for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) in Washington, D.C. over the last month, calling for a robust public option.Rather than simply providing an alternative to the private insurance, other organizations – like the California Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Mobilization for Health Care for All – have continued to fight for a universal single-payer health care system that would get rid of insurance companies altogether. Over the last month, more than 100 people have risked arrest at sit-ins at the offices of insurance companies in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Minneapolis.
MADISON, W.Va. - A Climate Ground Zero activist has been sentenced to 20 days in jail for blocking a road to a Massey Energy office during a mountaintop removal mining protest. The group has been committing acts of civil disobedience all year, many targeting Virginia-based Massey. Twenty-two-year-old Joseph Hamsher is the first to get jail time instead of fines. Hamsher pleaded guilty to conspiracy and trespassing in Boone County Magistrate Court on Tuesday, and will serve 10 days on each charge. A court official said Wednesday he could have been fined more than $1,800.
About 200 citizens, including health care providers and patients, supported Medicare for All, a single payer plan, by marching to the Aetna office in New York City on Tuesday, September 29, 2009. This video shows some of the marchers on their way from the downtown office of Bristol-Meyers Squidb to the office of Aetna, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies.The marchers were in solidarity with 17 who were arrested at the Aetna office earlier in the day, staging a sit-in in the lobby of the building to call for an end to insurance abuse and support real health care reform, Medicare for All.
On September 27th, the Mobilization for Health Care for All launched a national campaign of "Patients Not Profit" sit-ins at insurance company offices to demand an end to a system that profits by denying people care. We want the real "public option": Medicare for All, a single payer plan that cuts out the profit and puts patients first.Together, through this campaign, we can turn the tide and win the fight for health care for all. To succeed, we need to organize sit-ins in as many cities as possible in the month of October. The campaign began with the local leadership of Private Health Insurance Must Go (PHIMG) in New York City on September 29th and continued in Chicago on October 8th and in 9 cities across the country on October 15th. The next wave starts on October 28th and we will continue to organize actions in as many cities as possible until we win health care reform that ensures that the insurance companies no longer stand between the American people and the health care that we need. It's time to cut out the profit and put patients first with Medicare for All.
Sam Pullen, 31, was arrested on Thursday, October 15, in Los Angeles at a sit-in at the Blue Cross health insurance office. He is refusing to give information to police, vowing to stay in jail until Blue Cross stops denying care to those who need it most. He is being supported by the group Mobilization for Health Care for All, which coordinated sit-ins and rallies in nine cities across the country yesterday in which 54 people were arrested to end insurance abuse and win health care for all.Pullen was inspired to action by his mother, who was denied coverage for a lifesaving bone marrow transplant by Blue Cross when he was a teenager. Weakened by her cancer treatments, Pullen’s mother staged a one-woman sit-in at the insurance company office, resulting in the approval of the transplant that extended her life for years. Thanks to the transplant, she lived long enough to see Pullen reach 18 years of age.Here is Sam’s story.
More than 20 environmental campaigners are still on the roof of the Palace of Westminster in a protest over climate change, while another 20 are being held by police.The Greenpeace activists hope to greet politicians as they arrive for the start of Parliament with a 12-point manifesto calling for zero carbon emissions by 2030, a stop to airport expansion, more wind power and new pollution taxes.The group is looking to upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen as the ideal opportunity to address the climate problem.The demonstrators climbed on to the roof, ramparts and a turret on top of Westminster Hall at the weekend, unfurling yellow banners which read: "Change the politics, save the climate".They said there was little resistance from police when they moved quickly to prop ladders against the wall and climb on to the roof.
PITTSBURGH Police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke at marchers protesting the Group of 20 summit Thursday after anarchists responded to calls to disperse by rolling trash bins and throwing rocks.The march turned chaotic at just about the time that President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrived for a meeting with leaders of the world's major economies.The clashes began after hundreds of protesters, many advocating against capitalism, tried to march from an outlying neighborhood toward the convention center where the summit is being held. The protesters banged on drums and chanted "Ain't no power like the power of the people, 'cause the power of the people don't stop."
WASHINGTON — Wednesday was the 50th day of their hunger strike, but Hamid Goudarzi, 26, and his fellow Iranian-immigrant protesters here swore they would never give up.Two Iranian immigrants, Reza Haghelahi, left, and Khalil Parsae, are part of a hunger strike outside the White House. “I’m getting weaker every day,” said Mr. Goudarzi, who gave up his job in San Antonio to join the protest. “But I’m here to the end.”He is among two dozen hunger strikers encamped a stone’s throw from the White House to protest the deaths in Iraq of at least six members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, an exile group based in Iraq and committed to the overthrow of the Islamic revolutionary government in Tehran. Similar sympathy strikes are under way in Ottawa, London, Berlin, Stockholm and The Hague.
Chilean police have arrested some 25 former officials for allegedly helping to purge critics of former ruler General Augusto Pinochet.A judge on Tuesday issued 129 warrants against former members of Chile's secret police agency, Dina. They are accused of taking part in the killings and disappearances of dozens of leftists and opposition activists.
Argentine farmers marked on Friday the end of an eight-day sales boycott with rallies and marches promising to “keep fighting” in support of aid for peers suffering from the worst drought in decades and to eliminate the current export tariffs system which distorts production and threatens several crops.Farmers were particularly aggressive towards the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner attitude and members of Congress, described as “cowards and inept” which act with “total submission”.
Citizen Initiative for Constant Light mobilized 30 million people in Turkey to turn off and on their lights to demand that the government act against corruption. The action resulted from public outrage after a car crash openly revealed connections between government, police and the mob. Turkey is a secular nation with a tradition of democracy. But it also has a tradition of human rights abuse. The influence of corruption extends throughout society through local patronage systems undeterred by any investigative reporting from a mass media industry, which is itself complicit in the corruption. As a result, the corruption issue has historically sparked only apathy and hopelessness in Turkish civil society.
A group of Non-Government Organizations in Cebu City bonded together and created an alliance which formed the Task Force Tawhanong Pagpuyo (TFT) to respond to the growing numbers of victims who experienced evictions and demolitions of their houses. This problem resulted from the onset of globalization and the government’s development framework which often violated urban poor communities’ rights to housing. In Cebu City, more than 70% of the population in Cebu City is urban poor – they are unemployed or underemployed, have no land or security of tenure, and live in houses made-up of improvised and light materials. Despite the already inhumane conditions the urban poor experience, the government was demolishing their houses without an arranged relocation site.
CARACAS — Venezuela's top prosecutor said Saturday that recent street protests were legally tantamount to "rebellion" against President Hugo Chavez's government and that demonstrators will now be charged.The dramatic move by Attorney General Luisa Ortega capped a week of huge street protests, mostly directed against a new education law that critics say is politically charged.
On a sunny patch of Pennsylvania Avenue a half-block from the White House, middle-aged men and women recline on beach lounge chairs under four canopies festooned with colorful flags. They haven't eaten solid food in a month. Before them stands a row of large photographs of 11 men, each draped with a wreath of red flowers. A soft-spoken woman carrying a light-blue umbrella hands out leaflets.Sound familiar? Ho-hum? Demonstrations like this are so common in Washington that we rarely honor them with more than a glance. A drive down Embassy Row typically passes protesters angry over some event deemed worthy of perhaps two paragraphs in the Foreign pages last week.
There aren't many individuals in history whose names are taken in vain more than Capt. C.C. Boycott, the notorious Irish landlord who cut the wages of his tenant farmers and got himself ostracized -- and the English language enriched -- in return.The captain's name has seldom been out of public circulation since then. Yet every new boycott inspires vigorous discussion over whether this sort of pressure on the powerful is effective or fair. Currently on the table are two such actions: an advertisers' boycott of Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, and a shoppers' boycott of the Austin, Texas, grocery chain Whole Foods Market.
With detained video bloggers Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli now facing an additional charge in their native Azerbaijan, The Collegian says that support for the two imprisoned youth activists yesterday transcended the digital world and spilled out thousands of miles away onto the streets of Washington DC. Elmar Chakhtakhtinski, organizer of “Rally in support of Adnan Hajizada and Emin Milli” and member of Azerbaijani-Americans for Democracy (AZAD) led a group of roughly 30 protesters, mostly native Azerbaijanis, as they advocated from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. for the youths’ release, pleading the prisoners’ right to a fair trial and touting an overall message that called for the end of suppression of free speech in Azerbaijan.
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