Free Republic

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian forces swinging electrified batons and shouting the battle cry "God is great" swiftly chased off dozens of activists Monday who had refused to end four weeks of renewed protests at Tahrir Square to pressure the country's transitional military rulers. Hundreds of riot police backed by armored vehicles and soldiers moved in to tear down the camp of dozens of tents after a group of holdout activists — some of them relatives of people killed in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in February — refused pleas over loudspeakers to go home. Some in the crowd hurled...

China on Wednesday raised the death toll to 18 from a clash at a police station in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, saying that 14 "rioters" died along with two policemen and two hostages. Government officials previously said at least four people were killed in what they described as a terrorist attack but which the Germany-based exile group World Uyghur Congress said was an attack on peaceful protesters. The congress had said 20 Uighurs were killed - 14 beaten to death and 6 shot dead - and 70 arrested, when police opened fire on protesters, leading to fighting...

Europe ramped up pressure on the Greek parliament Tuesday to approve drastic austerity measures, warning that it would otherwise face a swift debt default that would rock the world economy. As Greek police clashed with protesters ahead of this week's vote, Brussels told Greece that no "Plan B" would be waiting if it failed to pass the measures demanded by creditors in return for loans needed to keep Athens afloat.

[snip] ....The college students have gone home, and public school teachers clearly are much more inclined to protest on days when school is actually in session. [snip] Down the sidewalk from the west wing, random speakers take turns holding court at a rigged-up PA system. A rotund woman with a large knee brace, clutching an American Federation of Teachers sign, starts a semi-lucid, profane speech in which she urges the crowd to “do your f—ing homework” at campaign time. For some people, P.J. O’Rourke once noted, free speech is a curse. Her screed is made even more bizarre by a...

The House Democrats’ campaign wing is trolling for Medicare protesters at town halls this week in 20 Republican-held congressional districts, The Caucus Blog of The New York Times reports. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DSCC), which has launched a website called Don’t End Medicare, will provide picket signs and budget talking points to anyone who wants to attend. DSCC robo-calls denouncing Medicare reform are going out to seniors in Florida, Arizona, and other states in an attempt to ratchet up the noise level at constituent meetings with pro-reform lawmakers. Republicans say House Democrats are showing more interest in GOP meetings...

MADISON, Wis. -- A report on damage to the Wisconsin Capitol that came following weeks of protests will not include any estimate of how much any repairs will cost. The restoration expert working on the report told The Associated Press on Thursday that what he submits to the state Department of Administration will only describe the damage done and the number of hours it would take to fix it, not the cost. Charles Quagliana said it will be up to DOA to provide the actual cost of repairs, which could include additional hours of work beyond his recommendation expected Monday....

Protesters hit high-end Obama fundraiser... Thurs April 21 2011 12:52:09 EDT Subject: Pool report #1 San Francisco -- ***Protestors in high-end fundraiser - see below*** Motorcade left the Intercontinental Hotel at 9 am local and arrived at the St. Regis for President Obama's last Bay area fundraiser. A couple dozen demonstrators are on a corner across the street from the hotel. They have signs - "Yes We Cannabis" and "Protect Marijuana Patients Rights" - and are chanting something your pooler couldn't make out. One of them also has sign of Uncle Sam's face with "LIAR" written on his hat. About...

Part of the regime’s survival strategy is to keep out foreign journalists. Agency reporters have been expelled, bloggers detained. Snippets of information leak out through furtive phone calls, Facebook and Twitter, revealing a partial picture of a regime trying to repress dissent with increasing desperation. Last week, however, I spent five days in Damascus and the south of the country where the protests began, talking to political activists, students and ordinary families. Some were too scared to discuss politics; others could not stop. On the surface, everything was normal. The sun shone, tourists trod the ancient streets of Damascus and...

Federal immigration authorities have decided not to take action against seven demonstrators who disclosed they were in the country illegally before they were arrested on charges of blocking downtown Atlanta traffic during a protest last week Asked whether her agency planned to deport the protesters, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released a statement saying ICE was not taking any “enforcement actions against the student demonstrators.” The activists blocked traffic on downtown Atlanta's Courtland Street for about an hour last week as they demonstrated against a ban on illegal immigrants attending some Georgia colleges. Earlier that day, the...

Witnesses say Syrian troops have opened fire on anti-government protesters in Daraa Friday as thousands take to the streets demanding reforms and mourning dozens of protesters who were killed during a violent, weeklong crackdown. A resident, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, tells the Associated Press heavy gunfire can be heard in the city center and witnesses have reported several casualties.

Bahrain on Friday tore down the protest movement’s defining monument, the pearl at the center of Pearl Square, a symbolic strike that carried a sense of finality. The official news agency described the razing as a facelift. “We did it to remove a bad memory,” Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, said at a news conference. “The whole thing caused our society to be polarized. We don’t want a monument to a bad memory.” The destruction of the monument was part of a chain of events that, in a matter of days, turned Bahrain from a symbol of...

In 1989, a jogger was beaten, raped, and left for dead in New York City’s Central Park. When she arrived at the courthouse to testify, a swarm of protesters led by Al Sharpton greeted her with shouts of “whore!” and “drug addict!” She was just a rape victim, an acceptable casualty of Sharpton’s beloved race warfare. “It’s typical of the left to make a convicted rapist a hero,” Susan Brownmiller told an interviewer in 1975. The feminist author was referring to the Left’s embrace of Eldridge Cleaver, the 1960s Black Panther radical who called his rape of white women “an...

Updated Thursday, March 10, 2011 3:46:18 a.m. After learning the state Senate passed the collective bargaining portion of the budget repair bill without the 14 missing Democrats, the Capitol erupted Wednesday evening as protesters flooded the closed building against a court order. The hearings where the Senate passed the bill lasted less than a half hour, prompting the building to officially close around 6:30 p.m. Protesters outside chanted in frustration, “Let us in.” ...DOA spokesperson Tim Donovan said law enforcement officers attempted to prevent forced entry from happening but were unable to because of the large volume of people. “We’re...

Thousands of union supporters protested Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposals on Saturday at the state capital, a day after the state's chief executive followed through on his threat to issue layoff warning notices to unions representing state workers. Joining the crowd was liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, who praised the protesters gathered in the battle over union bargaining rights as joining the history of the American labor movement. Walker, a Republican, has proposed increased payments for health care and pension benefits for public workers ... (snip)

A judge weighing whether state officials overstepped their bounds by restricting protesters' access to the state Capitol nearly ordered all the demonstrators out on moments' notice Wednesday evening before state and union attorneys talked him out of it. Dane County Circuit Judge John Albert has been listening to two days of testimony on whether he should make a temporary court order ensuring full public access to the building permanent. He is expected to rule on the matter Thursday. He told the packed courtroom shortly after 6 p.m. that he wanted to test the state Department of Administration's contention that building...

Ok, I haven't been reading much the last couple of days, so many be I missed something. My hubby just told me that one of his friends relatives son is being paid by SEIU to protest at the Capitol in Wisconsin. Has there been news about this? Or am I a day late and a dollar short?

Poll link is in the Source URL of this post.

As Wisconsin flips its wig, there has been a great deal of dishonest, ill-informed, and indeed knavish commentary on the relationship between public-sector unions and the fiscal conditions of the states. The thrust of these unenlightening analyses has been that public-sector unions are not to blame for the dire fiscal situation facing Wisconsin and many other states. The general shape of the Left’s argument here has been that of a compound error with two distinct components: 1) the inability to distinguish between the short-term problems facing states as a result of the recent recession and their long-term fiscal problems; 2)...

Crowded into an empty classroom which was stinking of unwashed bodies and reeking of fear, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's defeated mercenary killers awaited their fate. A week earlier the men – Libyan loyalists of the dictator and black African recruits – had been landed at airports throughout eastern Libya and sent out into the streets to shoot protesters in a murderous rampage... The survivors were exhausted, filthy, far from home, and fearful of execution, even though they had been assured of good treatment....Most looked dazed. Some were virtually children. "A man at the bus station in Sabha offered me a job...

MADISON, Wis. – The occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol by protesters fighting efforts to strip public workers of union bargaining rights carried on Sunday after police decided not to forcibly remove demonstrators and end a nearly two-week-long sit-in...