On Sunday, the Washington Post ran a story on the  growing boycott by Palestinians of products that come from Israeli settlements, which not surprisingly included quotes from an unnamed “Western diplomat,” an Israeli official and a Palestinian grocer who question the motives and effectiveness of the tactic. Nevertheless, the boycott is clearly beginning to take a toll:

In Mishor Adumim, a bougainvillea-lined industrial zone inside this West Bank Jewish settlement, at least 17 businesses have closed since Palestinians began boycotting its products several months ago.

For the Israelis, it’s “an insufferable situation,” according to Avi Elkayam, who represents the settlement’s 300 factory owners. But for Palestinians, it might be the strategy they have been looking for.

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“We are definitely committed to a path of nonviolent resistance and defiance in the face of the settlement enterprise, and we are defiantly expressing our right to boycott those products and I believe it is working,” Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who has attended bonfires of settlement products, said in an interview last week. “We will continue to do more.”

In addition to forcing factories to close or relocate to Israel proper, the boycott is also deterring other Israeli businesses from moving to the settlements.

Interestingly, the Palestinian Authority is getting involved by enforcing a ban on selling settlement products. So far, more than $5 million worth of settlement goods have been confiscated and destroyed.

Nine environmental groups have agreed to end their boycotts of 21 forestry companies in exchange for a commitment to suspend logging and road building immediately on nearly two-thirds of Canada’s forests, stretching from British Columbia to Newfoundland. According to The Guardian:

The immediate gains include an end to highly destructive logging in the last remaining expanses of intact forests, protection for the remaining woodland caribou, whose population has shrunk to 36,000, and preservation of an important resource in fighting climate change. Scientists believe that the soil and trees in Canada’s coniferous forests store up to 20bn tonnes of carbon.

Unfortunately, we can’t expect that logging companies are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. So what’s the rub? According to Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, which represents the companies:

“We know that tomorrow’s markets are going to be judging forestry products on their environmental credentials. Having the environmentalist community on our side means that we are getting a huge branding advantage.”

Such bluntly opportunistic wording reminds me of how the World Wildlife Foundation came to the aid of IKEA when it was facing bad PR, as detailed in a recent great story by The Nation about the corruption of major conservation groups:

When it was revealed that many of IKEA’s dining room sets were made from trees ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund leapt to the company’s defense, saying–wrongly–that IKEA “can never guarantee” this won’t happen. Is it a coincidence that WWF is a “marketing partner” with IKEA, and takes cash from the company?

If we are to learn from this story, we must buffer our excitement over the news of this environmental victory with a commitment to make sure it isn’t later corrupted by corporate power.

• More than a thousand people affiliated with labor groups marched in Washington, DC on Monday to protest Wall Street lobbyists.

• Coal miners and other union workers protested in Richmond, Virginia on Tuesday against the Massey Energy company’s environmental record and treatment of workers.

• Residents of Madrid demonstrated on Monday in support of workers who are hurt by cyclical economic downturns.  They used the slogan, “Against the Europe of Capital, War, and Crisis.”

• People planted 6,000 hands marked “1000″ on a Rio de Janeiro beach in Brazil this past weekend in commemoration of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.  The planter-protesters are asking Brazil’s president to discuss human rights when he meets with Iran’s president, a Holocaust denier, later this week.

• Five students wearing caps and gowns staged a sit-in protest at Senator John McCain’s office in Tucson yesterday to protest the Arizona immigration bill and to ask specifically for a path to citizenship for young immigrants.  At least one of the protesters has been jailed.

• Last week, Mexicans in the town of Apaxco demonstrated against a toxic waste processing plant built in their town a year ago.

• Several groups have recently gone on strike in Bolivia, calling for pay increases higher than President Evo Morales proposes.

Greenpeace dubbed its campaign against Nestlé a success earlier this week when the food giant announced that it will no longer use products that drive tropical rainforest destruction, specifically palm oil that comes from companies like Indonesia’s Sinar Mas Group. Despite this success, which should by no means be overlooked, there is a lingering question: how does this effect the 10 million palm oil farmers in Indonesia?

I raised this point last month after coming across an article in the Jakarta Globe that said farmers were prepared to boycott Nestlé products and block all exports of crude palm oil to the US and the EU in an effort to save their jobs. While it doesn’t seem like anything came of these plans, the crisis facing a country with millions of low-wage workers dependent on a single crop that is no longer desired by a global food giant remains.

On the flip side, their silence could be evidence that Nestlé’s decision doesn’t have as dramatic an effect on palm oil production as we in the West would like to believe. For starters, Nestlé buys less than one percent of the global production of palm oil, which means there is still plenty of demand for the product. Secondly, Sinar Mas Group weathered an even greater loss in 2009, when Unilever, the world’s biggest consumer of palm oil, canceled its contract after learning about a dossier of evidence to be published by Greenpeace. As Media.Asia recently reported:

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The Free Gaza Movement has set sail on its ninth mission to Gaza in an effort less about the delivery of aid and more about posing a challenge to the ongoing Israeli siege and the “discourse of power” that gives the slow-acting international community control over Palestinians’ future.

The past three attempts have been blocked violently by the Israeli Navy, but according to Ewa Jasiewicz, a coordinator with the Free Gaza Movement, the activists are upping the ante by traveling with four vessels (instead of their customary one or two). There are 700 passengers and some 5,000 tons of reconstruction materials and medical equipment on board. They are also sailing a path that never enters Israeli territorial waters. But even so, as Jasiewicz pointed out, they are still a military target.

The Israeli government has responded to the “sea intifada” coming its way with saber rattling and accusations of serving Hamas. Israel has proscribed the Turkish human rights and relief group Insani Vardim Vakafi (IHH). IHH is responsible for sending a cargo ship and passenger ship in the Freedom Flotilla. Israel has accused it and Free Gaza of “supporting terrorism.” Half the Israeli navy is set to challenge the mission, with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the helm commanding the operation in person. The air force is on standby and “diplomatic pressure” is being applied behind the scenes. The message is clear from Israel: “We will stop you and we will use force to stop you.”

Jasiewicz and the Free Gaza Movement recognize what they’re up against and see the danger as part of their mission.

When Rachel Corrie stood in front of the bulldozer driver that killed her, she acted on radical trust — that the soldier would see her humanity. She lost, because the soldier had lost his humanity. Yet Rachel’s faith abides in each of us. Because if our oppressors are losing their humanity then we must never stop showing them that we have it. We are undertaking this mission in the spirit of those who have fought and sacrificed their lives for our collective humanity, and to remind everyone who can see of the need to act on it.

As mentioned last week, the new government in Britain announced that it would scrap plans to build a third runway at Heathrow, much to the delight of climate activists and Nimbys, who deserve most of the credit for their tireless activism. A piece in The Guardian explained how the campaign against the runway succeeded:

Indeed, what distinguished this whole campaign was the way in which it mobilised people into repeatedly taking direct action. Who will forget Leila Deen throwing green custard over Lord Mandelson, or those protesters rebranding the House of Commons as “BAA HQ” from the roof of the Palace of Westminster to highlight the government’s collusion with the air industry? John Stewart, the leader of the local residents group, HACAN, and the person who can take more credit than anyone for seeing off the runway says: “Direct action played an absolutely critical role in the campaign. Its edginess both dramatised the issues and plied new pressure on the authorities. It was when the Climate Camp came to Heathrow that the campaign literally went global.”

The most powerful tool in the armory of the critics of the runway was the fact that a movement existed, comprising all sectors of society. From the local residents and their councils, to WWF and the RSPB, through to Greenpeace, Plane Stupid and the Climate Camp. Working together they took on the combined might of British Airways, the CBI, and the government, and won. It was the galvanising of this coalition, which explains the success of the Heathrow campaign. The triumph now surely ranks alongside the stopping of Kingsnorth as one of the biggest victories for the British climate movement so far, and reminds me of something the founder of Greenpeace, Bob Hunter, said in 1978. “Big change looks impossible when you start and inevitable when you finish.”

On Saturday, miners with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 30 in California, voted to ratify a new agreement with Rio Tinto, the world’s forth largest mining company, to end their 107-day lockout.

The union was able to beat back many of the Rio Tinto’s demands – including the right to convert full-time jobs to part-time, cut pay at any time and outsource – and won annual wage increases for the next six years and a $5,000 signing bonus for new hires.

According to a recap on the miner’s long nonviolent struggle in Labor Notes:

Four factors contributed to the win:

• community and labor movement support. Tons of food were delivered from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and others. The ILWU got doctors to volunteer for a free clinic. The local credit union—the only financial institution in Boron—let workers slide for three months on house and car notes, Martz said.
• the union’s pressure, with allies, on Rio Tinto around the world. Protesters dogged company executives from Boston to London to Australia.
• poor production by scabs. “They admitted less than a month ago they were on their third group of scabs,” said Martz. “The scabs haven’t worked out for them.” Much of the Boron workforce is highly skilled and familiar with the operation, coming from generations of mining families.
• political pressure from the union that stopped a federal handout of tribal lands

• Thousands of people formed a human chain in Okinawa, Japan yesterday to protest the movement of a US military base there.

• 500 Afghan villagers demonstrated outside their governor’s office on Friday to protest a recent US-backed raid that killed civilians.

• Thousands of villagers in India facing displacement by steel giant POSCO are staging sit-in protests during what they have dubbed “resistance week,” which lasts through May 21.

• Communications worker union members marched through Johannesburg, South Africa demanding wage increases.

• Women vendors in Nagamapal, India staged a sit-in yesterday to protest continued price hikes. The sit-in condemned a government official’s visit to the region and shops and businesses were also closed in protest

• 160 Russian tractor factory workers have begun a hunger strike after not being paid for five months. They are also fundraising for a plane ticket for President Medvedev to come and mediate.

• A gay pride parade meant to protest rights violations against sexual minorities was violently disrupted by police in Belarus on Saturday.

• People gathered in the Maldives last week, clad in red shirts, to protest rising electricity tariffs.

• Saturday was International Day of Protest for Lolita’s Retirement, in support of an orca whale at Miami’s Seaquarium, who lives in the smallest whale tank in North America and possibly the world.

• Gun control activists protested outside an NRA conference in Charlotte, NC, saying discussion of gun violence was missing from the conference.

The political crisis in Thailand seems to have devolved into total chaos and violence (on both sides) since last week, when the promise of a compromise between the opposition Redshirts and the government was said to be imminent. For those looking to understand the situation better, check out this piece in The Guardian called “Q&A: Who and what is causing the Thailand confrontation?”

It confirmed several points for me. On the negative side, the Redshirts are not committed to nonviolence and have a paramilitary wing. This seems to have contributed to their failure thus far, as the Thai military is better armed and looking for an excuse to crackdown.

On the positive side, the Red Shirts do have a just cause, in that they represent the poor and disenfranchised majority. With people power on their side, the Redshirts have a shot at winning, but again, violence is not their strong suit and will likely undermine their cause. They need to focus and remain committed to the successes they have achieved thus far, which have come through nonviolent tactics like the occupation of Bangkok’s business district, a main pillar of support to the government.

• Thousands rallied at the Victoria legislature in Canada last week called for greater protection of wild salmon and friendlier aquafarming methods.

• 15 protesters were arrested during a sit-in against the Arizona ban on ethnic studies classes on Wednesday.

• Thousands of Afghans protested in the eastern city of Jalalabad against the alleged executions of a number of Afghan refugees in Iran.

• About two hundred protesters marched through Reno, Nevada against what they say is an epidemic of local jobs going to out-of-state workers. Nevada’s unemployment rate is 13.4%, the second highest in the country.

• Protesters gathered in twenty cities throughout the U.S. on Wednesday against the BP oil spill.  They called for the government to seize BP’s assets in order to pay for the damage of the Gulf Coast spill.

• Hundreds of protesters marched through Sulaimaniyah, Iraq this week to protest the murder of Kurdish journalist Sardasht Othman.

• Dozens of people rallied in front of the Irish parliament on Tuesday, clashing with police as they protested bank bailouts.

• Disabled athletes protested in New Delhi Wednesday, calling for better management and training facilities for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in India.