An arrest warrant has been issued by Japan for Captain Paul Watson, founder of the anti-whaling Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, for endangering the lives of Japanese whaling crews in the Antarctic this winter. According to The Guardian:

The Canadian, who founded Sea Shepherd in 1977, has proved a formidable nemesis for Japan’s whalers in recent years.

Earlier this month, the leader of Japan’s whaling fleet said the group’s guerilla tactics had forced it to return to port with just over half its intended catch of 935 minke whales.

Watson, 59, said the move was a “desperate” attempt to prevent Sea Shepherd from pursuing the whaling fleet during its next expedition to the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary at the end of this year.

While there’s no doubt the intentions of the Japanese whaling industry are malevolent, Sea Shepherd operates in murky waters as well. For instance, they have admitted to owning a cache of non-lethal weapons, such as sound cannons and photonic disrupters, both of which temporarily impair their target. They also throw stink bombs and slime that makes the ship’s deck too slippery to walk on—an especially dangerous weapon in the freezing Antarctic waters.

Yet, Sea Shepherd maintains it has a “strict policy of nonviolence, to not cause injury to those we oppose.” And they claim to have “an unblemished record in this regard.”

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Peace activists can hasten an end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan by demanding a timetable for U.S. military withdrawal. A bill in the U.S. Congress introduced by Representatives McGovern and Jones, requires such a timetable. In the Senate, a similar bill has been introduced by Senator Feingold. Arguments in favor of a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan should include readiness to examine disturbing patterns of misinformation regarding U.S./NATO attacks against Afghan civilians.

It is worth noting that even General McChrystal acknowledges that U.S. forces have killed civilians who meant them no harm. During a biweekly video conference with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, he was quite candid. “We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force,” said General McChrystal. “To my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I’ve been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it.”

Those families and individuals that General McChrystal refers to should be our primary concern. We should try to imagine the sorrow and horror afflicting each individual whose tragic story is told in the “timetable” of atrocities committed against innocent people. How can we compensate people who have endured three decades of warfare, whose land has been so ravaged that, according to noted researcher Alfred McCoy, it would cost $34 billion dollars to restore their agricultural infrastructure. We should notify our elected representatives that the $33 billion dollar supplemental funding bill sought by the Obama administration to pay for U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could be directed toward helping Afghanistan replant its orchards, replenish its flocks, and rebuild its irrigation systems. We should insist on an end to atrocities like those which follow.

The list below describes, in part, the suffering and agony that people in Afghanistan have endured since April, 2009. To focus on this list doesn’t excuse atrocities committed by Taliban fighters. It does indicate our own responsibility to urgently educate others and ourselves about a deeply disturbing pattern: U.S./NATO officials first distribute misleading information about victims of an attack and later acknowledge that the victims were unarmed civilians.

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• On Tuesday, five activists were arrested after climbing onto the massive coal pile in front of the Valmont Power Plant in Colorado while a rally took place outside the gates. They unfurled an enormous banner reading “RENEWABLES NOW” and erected two large mock wind turbines on top of the coal pile.

• Thousands of people turned out for a protest on Wall Street Thursday to denounce the taxpayer-funded bailout and the role of large financial firms in the nation’s economic crisis.

• Demonstrators burned tires and blocked traffic in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday after U.S.-led forces killed an armed relative of an Afghan lawmaker during a night raid on her home

• As of Apr. 25 students were continuing an occupation of the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) in San Juan to protest plans to cut next year’s budget by $100 million.

• Hundreds of food service workers went on strike, launched a sit-in and blocked traffic this week outside of the University of Pittsburgh because they claim they are being intimidated and are not getting affordable health care from Sodexo.

• On Thursday, teachers in Oakland went on a one-day strike to protest the school board’s decision to impose a contract with no raises.

• Immigrant rights activists chanting “Boycott Arizona” and “Reform, Not Racism” demonstrated Thursday outside Chicago’s Wrigley Field as the Cubs opened a four-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Waging Nonviolence is participating in a teach-in on Iran at New York University’s Tisch School this Sunday, May 2nd. The event begins at 1pm with an introductory panel on the current situation in Iran. Then at 2pm, Eric and I will be taking part in an hour-long workshop on the politics of the Green Movement. I will be talking about strategies, tactics and ways for the movement to gain new traction, while Eric will confront the issue of economics within the movement and the importance of preventing a neoliberal agenda from taking hold. There will then be a short break with refreshments, followed by a keynote from Iranian historian Ervand Abrahamian. For more information or to register for this free event visit the Platypus Affiliated Society.

Sixty Catholic Workers and friends from the Midwest held a demonstration to contrast the Works of Mercy and the Works of War outside the Federal Building in Chicago, Illinois on April 26, 2010.  The nonviolent protest was the culmination of a weekend gathering known as the Midwest Catholic Worker Resistance Retreat that happens every spring and ends in nonviolent direct action.  This year’s retreat, “The Cost of War: At Home and Abroad” had over 200 people in attendance from all over the country.

The Midwest Catholic Worker Community is representative of a nationwide movement of Catholic Worker houses which have practiced the works of mercy since the movement was founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin on May 1st, 1933. These works include providing hospitality to the homeless, feeding the hungry and practicing simple living.

Civil resistance is a part of our tradition and one rooted in hospitality.  We take to the streets because people are hungry and homeless because of an ever-increasing U.S. military budget.  At 9:00 a.m. Monday morning, seven activists sprawled out in front of the building–dramatizing the human costs of war– while twelve others, in shirts reading “Stop Funding U.S. Wars”, entered the building and refused to leave.  Seventeen Catholic Workers ended up being arrested. Others handed out food and offered coffee to passers-by to engage in the Works of Mercy and educate about the devastating effects of U.S. militarism.

Through our witness, we hope to highlight an alternative vision for building society that is based on a philosophy of personalism and works of compassion.  We are calling for an end to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and U.S. military aid to Israel.  Let us replace the Works of War by practicing the Works of Mercy.

• Farmers from all over France drove their tractors to Paris yesterday to protest rising costs and lower profits of agriculture.

• Thailand’s Red Shirts shut down the Bangkok commuter system yesterday after the government canceled negotiations with protesters. The protests are now spreading to the provinces.

• Seven environmental activists were arrested after they chained themselves to a railroad outside of a coal mine in Wales.

• Women gathered in Washington, D.C. yesterday in their most revealing tops, protesting an Iranian cleric who said female immodesty causes earthquakes.

• UNC students walked out of a speech and protested conservative politician Tom Tancredo, in particular his stance on immigration. Demonstrators shouted, “Education not deportation!”

• Thousands of students across New Jersey walked out of class yesterday to protest budget cuts.

• Telecom employees in India are on hunger strike after their company transferred many workers to rural areas and refused to transfer them back per an accord.

The draconian immigration law signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer in Arizona last Friday is rightfully generating nonviolent resistance of various forms across the country.

According to an op-ed by Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”:

…requires police to question anyone they “reasonably suspect” of being an undocumented immigrant — a mandate for racial profiling on a massive scale. Legal immigrants will be required to carry papers proving that they have a right to be in the United States. Those without documentation can be charged with the crime of trespassing and jailed for up to six months.

It honestly reminds me of the law Gandhi resisted in South Africa, which required people of color to carry identification which could be checked at any time.

During an interview on Democracy Now! today, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva said that the there is also a part of the law that would “require school teachers to become immigration officers and keep a list of potentially undocumented kids… which is another clear violation of federal protection.”

In response Grijalva – along with other Democrats, religious leaders and activists – has called for an economic boycott of the state aimed specifically at getting organizations that are planning on coming to Arizona for conferences or conventions to back out. At least one group, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, has already responded by moving their convention planned for this fall to another state.

In his weekly sports column, Dave Zirin has proposed extending the boycott to the Arizona Diamondbacks, because its executives are a major funder of the state Republican Party, which pushed this immigration bill.  I personally don’t see why the boycott should be limited only to baseball.

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German soldiers have begun protesting their country’s involvement in Afghanistan by wearing a badge on their sleeve. According to the Daily Mail:

Some troops have taken to wearing the cloth accessory that states – ironically – ‘I fight for Merkel’ in a bid to persuade the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to explain exactly what they are fighting and dying for.

Four more troops were killed, and five badly injured, in Afghanistan last week.

Seven soldiers have died there so far this month, bringing the total to 43 in all since they were first deployed eight years ago.

Unable to engage the Taliban directly on the ground, frustrated by their government’s inability to acknowledge they are even engaged in a war and angered by the lack of popular support for their mission, the badges are a low-key mutiny that has sent shock waves through the top brass of the Bundeswehr.

• More than 90,000 people rallied in Okinawa, Japan on Sunday against the relocation of an American military base to the area.

• More than two thousand people protested in Phoenix on Friday against the passage of the new Arizona immigration bill, which demonstrators said will lead to civil rights abuses.  The demonstrations continue and even Congressman Raul Grijalva is asking people to boycott his state to protest the law.

• On Saturday in Berlin, tens of thousands of people joined hands to protest against nuclear energy.  The human chain, organized by a group of environmental, political, youth, religious, and union activists, stretched 75 miles and urged Germany to close its nuclear plants.

• In Kiev, Ukraine on Saturday, thousands of people protested a new deal extending Russian military presence into the former Soviet Republic.

• Activists gathered last week in Washington, DC to protest the annual IMF/World Bank meetings.  They used some unusual tactics, including a 5K run and tug-of-war, in addition to rallies.

• A hundred residents of a community in Phnom Penh, Cambodia gathered on Saturday to protest plans for a drainage system that would impact homes without compensation from the government.

• More than 150 people protested at military recruiting sites in Minnesota on Friday.  Activists unfurled banners that read “Jobs not war” and marched across campuses during “Zero Recruitment Day.”

• Day laborers and domestic workers protested in San Francisco on Saturday in an ongoing movement against a “no sit/lie” city ordinance.

• Hundreds of people marched on Saturday to protest the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City.  The closure means one fewer ER in Manhattan as well as one fewer home-birth friendly hospital.

• Several hundred people gathered in New York on Friday to protest a limit on the number of vendors who can sell art in city parks.

• A group of Armenians demonstrated near the White House this weekend, asking President Obama to recognize the Armenian genocide and stop Turkish military force against Kurds.

• Artists gathered in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Friday to creatively demonstrate against the indiscriminate destruction of green areas in their city.

Want to learn the tools of nonviolent action from the leaders of a movement that actually brought down a brutal dictator, and earn a real academic degree in the process?

That is exactly what Srdja Popovic hopes to offer at “Democracy Island,” a campus in the Maldive Islands “where activists can study nonviolent resistance amid coconut trees, white sand, and lagoons the color of Cool Mint Listerine,” according to a great profile of him by Nicholas Schmidle in the March-April issue of Mother Jones.

For those that aren’t familiar with Popovic, he was one of the leaders of Otpor (“Resistance”), the nonviolent movement that forced Slobodan Milosevic from power in Serbia in 2000.

After that incredible victory, Popovic served as an member of Serbia’s parliament and in 2004 co-founded the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in Belgrade to “give pro-democracy activists the nitty-gritty tools for nudging intransigent leaders and, if necessary, toppling governments without firing a shot.” Since its start, CANVAS has been busy, training activists in:

…Georgia, Ukraine, and Lebanon who went on to lead the Rose, Orange, and Cedar revolutions, respectively. CANVAS staff has also worked with activists from Azerbaijan, Palestine, Egypt, Western Sahara, Zimbabwe, and Burma.

Now Popovic has his sights set on starting Democracy Island, which grew out of his:

…recent success in the Maldives, where, in 2008, a former political prisoner named Mohamed Nasheed defeated the country’s longtime strongman in a multiparty election held after three years of nonviolent agitation. CANVAS had worked closely with Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party, and in gratitude, the 42-year-old president has agreed to help it and a handful of environmental and human rights NGOs establish a campus in the archipelago.

Besides attracting rabble-rousers, Popovic wants Democracy Island to be a legitimate academic institution where Maldivian and foreign scholars, activists, and politicians can get a master’s degree in nonviolent political change.

While the article says that this school of nonviolence could get off the ground this spring, if everything goes according to plan, a quick google search doesn’t turn up much about the project. So, if you’re itching to get on that first roster, it unfortunately doesn’t appear to be up and running quite yet. (We’ll try to get more details on how things are developing and report back soon.)

My only concern is with the long-term viability of anything in the Maldives, which are already sinking, and could be completely submerged by the end of the century, due to rising ocean levels caused by climate change.

Interestingly, Schmidle also asks Popovic about those on the fringe who accuse his organization and other proponents of nonviolent action, like Gene Sharp and the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, of working in cahoots with the US government to help overthrow regimes it dislikes.

…Popovic says such claims are baseless. Not only would American support jeopardize CANVAS’s nonpartisan stance, but for him, it’s personal: In 1999, NATO warplanes bombed the Belgrade offices of Serbian state TV, where his mother was an editor. She wasn’t there that evening, but 16 of her coworkers were killed. “Do you think I would ever collaborate with the government that tried to kill my mom?” he once asked.