On the topic of shortages here, water periodically goes in and out here as well. Waking up to no water is definitely a bummer. We also had a lightbulb explode last week. But no worries, I fixed it with a sock and a potato, using a modified technique that I saw improperly demonstrated on Home Improvement once.
Until yesterday there was still some fighting in Mahalla going on, the industrial town north of here where the idea for the strike first started. The government has promised to appease them, for now. There has been at least one death in Mahalla, and a large number of injuries and arrests. A number of organization leaders and online activists were also arrested--including bloggers and even the creator the facebook group announcing the strike. That's right, he's in jail for starting a facebook group. Seeing as facebook was the first line of communication for large scale real time networking after the Virginia Tech shooting, and now this, I'm starting to really see facebook not just as the guilty pleasure, sometimes addicting, most times quite vain, generally a bit scary (do you know who owns facebook and how he makes his money?), social networking site, but as a useful and hardly regulated tool for grass-roots (sometimes I hate that phrase) networking engine. The biggest problem with it here? The people who use facebook are only the rich and educated with access to computers, not the people that are being hurt most by this economy.
There is a new facebook group announcing the next general strike to be May 4.
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