British environmental activists dressed as suffragettes left a steaming pile of horse manure at the mansion of BBC car-show host and climate-change-denier Jeremy Clarkson, who has called bike-riders "Lycra Nazis," suggested great white sharks should be eaten to extinction, and joked that global warming would get rid of Holland.

• At the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress yesterday, British trade unions representing 6.5 million workers agreed to support a boycott of goods from “illegal” Israeli settlements and called for an end to arms sales to Israel in protest at the military strikes on Gaza, in which 1,450 Palestinians were killed.

• University of California police arrested 14 raucous protesters who briefly shut down a regents meeting in San Francisco where a proposed tuition hike was being discussed. Faculty from every University of California campus are planning to walk out on Sept. 24 “in solidarity with students and staff to protest the defunding of public education and the UC administration’s mishandling of the budget crisis,” according to ucfacultywalkout.com

• Tamil political prisoners languishing in Magazine Prison and Colombo Remand Prison (CPR) for many years without being produced in the courts launched a hunger strike from 6:00 a.m Thursday.

• Belarussian police on Wednesday beat opposition protesters and detained 30 of them during a demonstration marking the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of opposition members.

• Angry residents arrived at the home of Coun Richard Brett, the head of the Leeds City Council, on Wednesday and left 16 bags of garbage on his doorstep, each bearing a poster stating “Solidarity with striking Leeds refuse workers.”

• Some Beijing students burned their uniforms in public and refused to endure the drills for the upcoming Oct. 1 parade celebrating the Chinese Communist Party seizing power.

• Dealers negotiating a union contract with the Caesars Palace hotel-casino for almost two years are planning to protest outside the Las Vegas Strip resort to highlight lack of progress on a deal.

London’s Telegraph did a captivating profile of folk icon and activist Joan Baez earlier this week. One of the more interesting points that Baez addressed was Bob Dylan’s abandonment of the protest song after his early years:

For her part, Baez was smitten by Dylan’s anthems of protest and social change. ‘It was as if he was giving voice to the ideas I wanted to express, but didn’t know how,’ she would later recall. She began to include his songs in her own repertoire, and invited him to tour with her. They became lovers, and his fame blossomed under her patronage. But once people began anointing him the ‘king of protest’ he quickly declared his abdication, abandoning what he called the ‘finger-pointing songs’ and refusing to lend his name to any cause. The growing distance between her political convictions and his apparent lack of them would eventually become the fault-line dividing them.

In her 1989 autobiography, And a Voice to Sing With, Baez remembers once asking Dylan what was the difference between them; simple, he replied, she thought she could change things, and he knew that no one could.

So who, I ask her, does she think was right?

‘I would say we both were. Certainly for him, he’s right. But he’s not in the business of changing things. He never was. And that’s where my mistake was with him. I kept pushing him, wanting him to want to do that. Exhausting for him, and futile for me. Ridiculous. Until I finally put it together in my head that he had given us this artillery in his songs, and he didn’t really need to do anything aside from that. I mean, he may resent it, but he changed the world with his music.’

Resent it?

‘Well, just because he doesn’t want to think about that sort of thing. He doesn’t want the responsibility. On the other hand, I have enough intelligence to know I don’t understand him, and that’s why it’s so futile to keep talking about him.’

Although, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Dylan is such a pessimist, given his rather withdrawn personality, it is nevertheless sad that he doesn’t see the power of his early work and lost that initial spark, which drove him to the spotlight.

Thankfully, we have Joan, who, perhaps more than anyone other than Pete Seeger, has used music to express a hope for peace and justice. And it’s no wonder why she still feels as though she can change the world:

Someone else asks her if she still considers herself a protest singer. ‘The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10,’ she says. ‘Non-violence.’ If there is something she can do, then she will do it, she tells me later.

Was the Greenpeace action in Alberta, Canada that forced Royal Dutch Shell to suspend production at its oil sands mine for six hours earlier this week a success? The Vancouver Sun had some interesting quotes and comments that could convince you either way. On the plus side:

News of the Muskeg River protest leaked into global coverage of the Harper/Obama summit, with outlets such as MSNBC running stories on oilsands opposition.

Paul Joosse, a sociologist at the University of Alberta, said that kind of coverage may have been the goal of the Greenpeace protest all along.

“The interesting thing about this story is the strategy of communication Greenpeace uses,” he said in an e-mail. “First, they release their new report, then they conduct their action (complete with helicopter to produce great visuals) at the Shell site to draw attention to (it) ahead of Harper’s meetings in Washington. The measure of success for the protest is therefore whether or not they are able to penetrate these high-level discussions.”

On the down side, Shell played the situation rather coolly and may have escaped with few scratches to its image:

Paul Hagel, a spokesman for Shell, said the company agreed not to pursue charges, a move he doesn’t think will encourage future protests.

“We feel strongly that we want to get these reasonable critics to the table and explain our views,” he said. “We acknowledge the impact of climate change. So we come on an even foot with Greenpeace. And we thought that would be enough to sit down and listen to their views and have them listen to our views.”

In short, while Greenpeace got the press it wanted (always a good thing, considering there are still people unaware of the oil sands issue), Shell appears to have learned that it pays to play it calm. To the unsuspecting public, Shell might seem like a totally reasonable company, committed to hearing out its adversaries, and backing up its claim to environmental care. Does this mean Greenpeace should work harder to draw out the nastier reactions Shell is known for?

Last week protesters in London targeted the annual Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition, the world’s largest arms fair.

One anarchist group, called the Space Hijackers, claimed to have acquired a helicopter and threatened to somehow shut down the weapons bazaar “by swooping in from the sky,” according to Danger Room. While that sounds ridiculous, London police actually had a reason to take the group seriously.

At the DSEi in 2007, the Space Hijackers threatened to bring a tank and auction it outside the show. What ended up happening is really wonderful.

“The police intercepted a tank approaching the Excel exhibition site,” David Hambling reported at the time, “but this turned out to be a decoy and a second tank (pictured) got through.”

I would personally love to hear more about how in the hell they managed to pull off this stunt. Pretty hilarious.

Well this year it turns out they didn’t actually have a helicopter, but they still managed to cause a stir. “It was VERY funny watching the police panic everytime one flew near the DSEi arms fair and Delegates Dinner,” the group says on their website. “Not to mention the extra helicopters they had flying around looking for ours.”

A full report on their involvement this year will be coming soon, so check back on their site if you want to know the full story.

While there were apparently peaceful protests during the arms fair, some unfortunately decided to turn to property destruction and vandalism. According to DISARM DSEi, the protesters’ main website, windows were smashed and paint bombs were thrown at “some of the biggest backers of the arms trade, including Barclays, Legal and General and Axa. British Telecom, who have a £59 million share in the arms trade were also occupied.”

Read the rest of this article »

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While Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited President Obama at the White House yesterday, members of the DC Action Factory staged their own photo-op outside. One person wearing an Obama mask received a giant milkshake labeled "dirty oil sands" from a person inside a Big Foot costume bearing Harper's face, symbolizing his large carbon footprint.

• An empty building in Bristol, England has been taken over by the anarchist group Co-Mutiny for a week of “autonomous actions and events” featuring discussions on workers’ solidarity, anti-militarism, and climate justice–plus workshops on radical knitting and radical song writing.

• Fifteen indigenous leaders were arrested in Borneo for protesting dams that would flood their lands and destroy crops and burial sites.

• College students from Missouri to Oregon mounted a Sierra Club-led campaign targeting coal-based power at colleges on Wednesday, while a group of college presidents rallied in Washington in support of clean energy legislation.

• Twelve Greenpeace activists chained themselves to a ship off the coast of New Zealand yesterday to protest its shipment of palm kernel, which is used as animal feed, but is harvested at the expense of rain forests.

• Hundreds gathered for a demonstration on Tuesday to protest a police raid on an Atlanta gay bar last Thursday in which patrons and staff were forced to the floor and roughly frisked while officers made derogatory comments.

• Nurses picketed outside Central Michigan Community Hospital on Wednesday to protest a lack of progress on a new contract with the hospital.

A recent New York Times piece about the anti-nuclear weapons work of Rev. Carl Kabat, included a picture that says it all.

Cara Degette/Colorado Springs Independent, via the New York Times

The story tells of his early work with the Berrigan brothers during the Vietnam War. Despite a life of hardship and imprisonment for his convictions, he continues the struggle into his old age:

At 75 he continues his crusade against nuclear weapons at missile silos across the United States, armed with a hammer and a pair of bolt cutters. He usually wears a clown suit, in homage, he says, to St. Paul’s words: “We are fools for Christ’s sake.”

Though his actions are mostly symbolic — the authorities have always seized him before he could damage a live missile — he has spent half of the last three decades in state and federal prisons.

His most recent protest unfolded on a quiet dawn last month, when he drove down a country road outside Greeley, a few hours north of Denver, used the bolt cutters to cut a hole in a chain-link fence, wedged his aging body through and stepped atop the silo of a Minuteman III nuclear missile coming up from the ground. He had enough time — about 45 minutes — to drape antiwar banners from the fence, say a prayer and try without success to open a hatch leading to the silo before he was arrested by Air Force security personnel.

Don’t miss the rest of the article. We are, indeed, fools if we fail to hear Kabat out.

Ahead of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's first official visit to the White House, a small team of climate activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls and dropped this vivid 70-foot banner against tar sands.

• A strike by a citizens’ “pressure group” Monday partially paralyzed work in cities across Bangladesh and issued an ‘ultimatum’ to the government to roll back its decision to award contracts to foreign firms for oil and gas exploration in the Bay of Bengal.

• Staff at the University of Melbourne will hold a rally today during a “24 hour strike” action planned by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to protest continued job cuts. Union members at 16 universities across Australia will launch similar actions at their schools.

• Royal Dutch Shell has suspended production at its Canadian oil sands mine after 25 Greenpeace activists blockaded a massive dump truck and mining shovel on Tuesday to protest the impact of oil sands development.

• Security forces in Madagascar fired tear gas on Friday to try to disperse hundreds of supporters of ousted President Marc Ravalomanana who had gathered for a rally in the capital of the Indian Ocean island.

• Following a recent militant attack on government officials in Manipur, a state in India, local residents staged a sit-in protest at Kongba Bazaar in Imphal appealing for an immediate end to violence.

• Protesters armed with banners saying, “Our Blades, Our People”, got in to Empress Dock in the UK, and attached themselves to cranes to stop wind turbine blades being loaded on to a ship. They were calling for the reinstatement of sacked Vestas workers and government intervention to protect wind-power jobs. Four were arrested.

• Around 7,000 Coptic Christians gathered at the Father Kyrillos church on the outskirts of Cairo to pray for an end to “discriminaton” during the celebration of the Egyptian Coptic New Year this weekend.

• In Missouri, abortion opponents held a rally Monday to launch a 40-day campaign that will include prayer and fasting, a peaceful vigil and community outreach.

Originally designed after the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 to help the US Navy repel unwanted approaching boats, the non-lethal Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) has not surprisingly worked its way down to the level of local law enforcement.

At two different town hall meetings and a sand castle building competition in San Diego recently, local police had the LRAD – which generates a narrow beam of intense sound that can be physically painful and even permanently damage hearing – on the ready in case any shenanigans broke out.

This is the first I’ve heard of this weapon being deployed domestically at political gatherings, although I’m sure it won’t be the last.

In a recent episode of Bang Goes The Theory, a new popular science show on the BBC, the team sees whether the LRAD can be defeated by a ridiculous looking sound proofed helmet. To see what happens, check out the video.

David Hambling over at Danger Room puts this latest effort at “foiling non-lethal crowd control weapons” in context:

Ever since police and security forces started using non-lethal weapons for crowd control, people have been looking for ways to counter them, trying everything from onions, tinfoil and Viagra.

Take tear gas, which has been around in various forms since the First World War and has been a regular feature of demonstrations from Seattle to Tehran to Khartoum. Experienced protesters expecting a blast of tear gas bring eye protection in the form of goggles and use a bandanna soaked in water or vinegar as an improvised gas mask. Real pros bring actual gas masks. An alternative approach is to use onion juice, which allegedly reduces the effect, a technique which is used everywhere from Israel to Iran. Read the rest of this article »

Our friends at Nonviolent Peaceforce have been busy. First of all, if you’re not familiar with their work, check out this new 18-minute video about what they do:

Ready to do something about it? Starting in a few days, leading up to Gandhi’s birthday, NP is organizing a “12 Days of Peace” campaign as a way for people to take part in the struggle for peace. Each day, there is something you can do, in coordination with others around the world:

Monday, Sept. 21
Celebrate United Nations’ International Day of Peace by working a day for peace – donating all or a portion of your day’s wages to a non-profit, non-governmental organization seeking to foster nonviolent peacekeeping worldwide.

Tuesday, Sept. 22
Sign the Peace Alliance’s petition to create a Department of Peace with a cabinet level Secretary of Peace on the presidential staff (www.thepeacealliance.org).

Wednesday, Sept. 23
Write a blog post and/or a status update on Twitter and Facebook noting that you are marking The 12 Days of Peace.

Thursday, Sept. 24
Re-establish and re-connect with a past friend, relative or colleague with whom you’ve had conflict.

Friday, Sept. 25
Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, and/or a letter to your Congressperson expressing support for nonviolent, unarmed peacekeeping in conflict zones worldwide.

Saturday, Sept. 26
Visit a community park with your friends and family for a picnic or gathering in celebration of peace and harmony among those closest to you.

Sunday, Sept. 27
Conduct a prayer for, or meditate upon, peace.

Monday, Sept. 28
End your day by enjoying a piece of music that demonstrates peace to you, such as “Imagine” by John Lennon or “Peace on Earth” by U2.

Tuesday, Sept. 29
Watch the 18-minute film Civilian Unarmed Peacekeeping: Building a Nonviolent Peaceforce, documenting the social and economic benefits of unarmed civilian peacekeeping as trained Nonviolent Peaceforce workers seek to create a safe space for peace within conflict areas. View at: http://tinyurl.com/n7xvl9.

Wednesday, Sept. 30
Spend time with your children and family discussing the social and healthful benefits of practicing peace among their friends and community.

Thursday, Oct. 1
Plant a rock for peace. www.plantingrocksforpeace.org

Friday, Oct. 2
Celebrate Gandhi’s birth anniversary – and the U.N. International Day of Nonviolence – by borrowing Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth – from your local public library.

If you’re interested in taking part, let us know. We’d love to hear about it, and we’d be happy to be your blog of choice for September 23′s activity. Send in your experiences and we’ll post them.