• Environmental campaigners planted trees, collected rubbish and rallied against pollution on Sunday for what is being billed as the world’s biggest day of climate-change activism. Some 7,000 community events in 188 countries were logged for the Global Work Party.

• Hundreds of scientists rallied outside Britain’s finance ministry on Saturday to protest planned government cuts they say will harm the country’s international reputation as a research hub.

• Tens of thousands of people turned out on the streets of Munich on Saturday, forming a human chain about 10 kilometers long through the center of the city to protest the German government’s plans for nuclear power.

• About 300 LGBT activists staged a flash mob die-in at New York City’s Grand Central Station on Saturday to call attention to LGBT victims of murder and suicide driven by bullying, violence and homophobia.

• UC Berkeley students and employees gathered for a rally in front of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall to protest rising student fees, cuts in the number of classes offered, and the state’s plan to cut $3 billion from education funding.

• Thousands of people ringed Salt Lake City’s Temple Square on Thursday night to stage a silent protest against recent remarks by LDS apostle Boyd K. Packer that same-sex attraction is “impure and “unnatural.”

• More than a thousand people rallied in Iraqi cities on Friday to demand that officials accelerate the process of forming a new government.

• Two weeks after Newark schools received a $100 million donation from the founder of Facebook, students in one high school there used the social networking site to stage a walk-out protest against unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

• Two activists in Missoula, Montana were charged with “criminal mischief” after recently painting bike-lane symbols on the pavement of a particularly treacherous spot for bikers.

On Wednesday, Code Pink, Foreign Policy In Focus and Pax Christi staged a mock drone attack in Washington DC’s Dupont Circle. To watch what transpired, check out the above video.

This type of street theater – which reminds me of the Iraq Veterans Against the War’s brilliant Operation First Casualty – is a creative way to give passersby just a hint of what people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been living through as the Obama administration dramatically escalates the use of unmanned drones in our many wars. (Over the month of September, for example, there were a record 21 drone strikes in Pakistan. And this at the same time that the country is reeling from the flooding that has affected at least 18 million people.)

If this type of action is to be replicated, which I hope it is, I have one recommendation. To make the experience more real for those who accidentally walk into such an protest, I think there needs to be a more realistic drone that is actually flying in the sky.

One thought off the top of my head would be to have a kite in the shape of a drone that can be flying high enough that you just might at first glance mistake it for a real aircraft. The person flying the kite would need to be out of view, if possible, so that people didn’t know where it was coming from. Combine that with the sound of a drone, which they had playing on a stereo, and people shrieking and pointing to the sky, and you’ve created an experience that make take people a little more by surprise – and hopefully get them to think about what it would be like to live under the drones.

If he were alive, John Lennon would be celebrating his 70th birthday tomorrow, October 9. Instead we get to celebrate his legacy. In honor of that I present the above video—a short archival piece entitled “I Met the Walrus,” the making of which has a great little story unto itself. The sound was recorded in 1969, by a 14-year-old Beatles fan, who managed to sneak into Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto during the famous “bed-in” episode and conduct an interview. Lennon was in a particularly pensive mood that day, dissecting the American war machine, dissing militant revolutionaries, and promoting nonviolence.  The interview was unearthed 38 years later and turned into an animated short that was nominated for an Academy Award in 2008.

While I always figured Lennon was a proponent of nonviolence (after all, he wrote the words “if you talk about destruction, you can count me out”), I would have never guessed he had such a keen understanding of its dynamics. As he says in the video, “They got all the weapons. They got all the money. And they know how to fight violence because they’ve been doing it for a thousand years. And the only thing they don’t know about is nonviolence and humor.”

While Lennon could often be consumed by the demons of his personal life, he also clearly lived by this belief and devoted much of his public life, creativity and money to various antiwar and peace-related causes. Were he alive today, perhaps the world would know a little more about nonviolence.

• The group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War demonstrated in Washington, DC, Thursday to launch “Operation Recovery,” the first veteran-led campaign to stop the deployment of soldiers traumatized by multiple tours of duty. The veterans gathered outside the Walter Reed Army Medical Center before marching to Capitol Hill.

• Gaza City residents organized a sit-in on Thursday, demonstrating collective anger over a home video of an Israeli soldier belly dancing beside a bound and blindfolded Palestinian woman in the West Bank.

• About 60 Greenpeace activists cordoned off part of the European Parliament headquarters yesterday to protest the widespread use of nuclear technology.

• Thousands of prisoners across Venezuela have ended a hunger strike after authorities agreed to some of their demands, a watchdog group said Thursday.

• Food service workers at Tulane University walked off the job at 6:00 AM yesterday morning to showcase their outrage over the unfair labor practices of their employer, the French outsourcing giant Sodexo. Cafeteria workers at Morehouse College went on strike Tuesday to protest Sodexo as well.

• In Trinidad and Tobago, nineteen labour unions have joined forces to protest against Government’s plan to move the San Fernando Industrial Court.

• In Guam, members of the Chamorru Nation held a sit in protest at the legislature today on Wednesday over the issue of indigenous fishing rights.

• In Portland, Oregon, roughly 100 students walked out of class Tuesday at Marshall High School to protest the proposed closure of their school in the district’s latest re-design plan.

• A prominent Iranian human rights lawyer is engaged in a hunger strike since September 25, to protest her detention in solitary confinement on suspicion of spreading propaganda against the ruling system, her husband said Wednesday.

When Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced Monday that the White House will soon be installing solar panels and a solar hot water heater, climate activists must have felt slightly offended despite the good news. After all, it was only a month ago that the Obama administration turned down Bill McKibben and a group of college students who had traveled all the way to DC from Maine with the objective of returning the solar panels that Jimmy Carter installed on the White House (and were later removed by Ronald Reagan).

At the time, many speculated that the White House simply didn’t want to be associated with anything from the Carter administration. As Salon put it:

The Obama administration’s reluctance to put a Carter-era solar panel on the White House roof was understandable, even if repulsively pusillanimous. The last thing the White House wanted to do was to give the right another talking point comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter. You can see the wheels turning — Carter put solar panels on the White House, and ended up a one-term president mocked for decades by Republicans…. run away!!!

Apparently the White House figured if it waited a month (after everyone forgot about the student activists) and announced its own plan to install solar panels (new ones, untarnished by the Carter Administration) it could claim all of the glory and none of the conservative backlash. But best laid plans seldom work.

The Drudge Report was quick to post a big black-and-white photo of Carter next to its headline about the latest solar panel announcement. And climate activists are still planning to hold a rally at the White House for the 10/10/10 Global Work Party, where they will attempt to re-present the original Carter solar panels.

Of course, had the White House handled things more openly, as Salon pointed out, this announcement could have been the positive gesture everyone (minus right-wing pundits) wanted it to be.

When McKibben and his cohorts arrived at the White House, the “bureaucrats” could have politely told them that, while it didn’t make sense to install some 30-year-old technology on the premises, they did nonetheless intend to make a big solar push. There would still be a hit from the right-wing news cycle, but, more important, Obama would have given his own supporters a reason to feel good.

Instead, the White House managed to bum environmentalists out, and then, a few weeks later, go ahead and invite the Carter-Obama comparison anyway. That’s just bungled political management.

Over on PBS’s POV website, you can now watch The Most Dangerous Man In America, the Academy Award-nominated documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and the courageous release of the 7,000 page Pentagon Papers in 1971, until October 27. So check it out while you can!

Starting yesterday, signs like the one above can be seen in Chicago’s “El” public transit cars. The ads are being paid for by the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine and will be up for the next month.

The campaign’s website has a lot of useful information about why cutting US military aid to Israel is a prerequisite to peace in the region, and how taking such a step would benefit not only the Palestinians, but Israelis and Americans as well.

Following Chicago, there are plans to take this campaign to other cities around the US. If you’d like to get involved in the effort and see these signs around your town, click here for ideas on how to get the ball rolling.

Even though it shouldn’t be a controversial message, I can image a serious backlash to these signs and am really pleased that the Chicago Transit Authority agreed to display them.

I’ve long been of the belief that until we stop arming Israel to the teeth, or until the Israeli government senses that US aid may be jeopardized by their actions, they will have little incentive to seriously work for peace.

Hopefully this campaign will catch on and get Americans to reconsider how giving Israel $30 billion worth of weaponry over the next decade is compatable with a just resolution to the conflict there. (h/t Mondoweiss)

• Organizers with Environmental Justice Toronto unfurled a banner yesterday at Enbridge Day – a forum for investors – stating “Enbridge Invests in Oil Addiction: Community Resistance is the Cure.” Enbridge is asking investors to support the expansion of tar sands oil pipelines across North America despite a record of spills, accidents and breaks, including one of the largest spills in US history earlier this summer in Michigan.

• Greenpeace activists in France put on bathing suits and doused themselves with mock petroleum on Saturday to protest deep-water drilling and a controversial plan to extract oil from oil-bearing sands.

• Approximately 8,000 people gathered outside the Icelandic parliament Monday night to disrupt a keynote speech from Icelandic PM Johanna Sigurdardottir marking the start of parliament. Political tension has risen since people affected by the country’s 2008 financial crisis have been forced to sell their homes.

• About 5,000 Romanian teachers and education employees protested in the capital on Tuesday over austerity measures implemented by the government to trim the budget deficit amid a deep recession.

• About 100 people gathered in front of the FBI office in Minneapolis on Tuesday to protest the recent raiding of homes belonging to anti-war activists.

• The Union of Local Authorities in Israel organized demonstrations in intersections throughout the country on Tuesday, in conjunction with strikes to protest government budget cuts.

Ten years ago, on October 5, 2000, hundreds of thousands of Serbian protesters descended on the streets of Belgrade and pushed past the indifferent security forces to seize control of the Parliament building, effectively ending the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosovic. It was the final act of a two-year nonviolent struggle led by the youth movement known as Otpor, or “Resistance,” whose iconic clenched-fist led the way toward free elections and newfound democracy.

One of the leaders of this movement was 27-year-old Srdja Popovic, who after Milosevic’s overthrow was elected to the Serbian Parliament. In 2004, Popovic left politics to found the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in Belgrade, an organization that has trained activists in dozens of countries around the world – from those involved in the successful pro-democracy movements in Ukraine and the Maldives to the ongoing struggles in Burma and Iran.

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Popovic and ask him about the role that humor played in the struggle against Milosevic, how they were able to win over his feared security forces and the ways in which Otpor lives on today.

Waging Nonviolence: Why was it important that resistance to Milosevic be nonviolent?

Srdja Popovic: Nonviolent discipline is one of the key principles of success in nonviolent struggle. Once violence is unleashed, a movement will lose numbers, momentum and credibility—putting the overall goals of a struggle in danger. It was crucial for Serbs, being labeled as “violent” during the 1990s, to prove to themselves and the world that we are more than capable of changing our government in a civilized manner, through elections and nonviolently protecting election results.

Also, if you look to the great Freedom House study published in 2005 called “How Freedom Is Won”, it analyzes political transitions covering 35 years of the last century—some by violent means, some by nonviolent means. It clearly proves that those transitions won by nonviolent struggle are far more likely to guarantee human rights, democracy and long-term political stability.

WNV: How important was creativity and humor in the struggle to bring down Slobodan Milosevic?

SP: Absolutely crucial. Humor and satire, trademarks of Otpor, were efficient in pushing a positive message, attracting the widest possible audience, making our opponents—those grey and square-headed bureaucrats—look stupid and ridiculous. Most importantly, it broke the fear and inspired the tired, disappointed and apathetic Serbian society at the end of the 90s.

WNV: How important was appearance and image for the movement in deflecting criticism from the regime and media?

SP: Spin-doctors say “perception is reality,” which is definitely not far from true. Having in mind that regime propagandists would try to portray Otpor as “mercenaries of The West”, “non-patriots” and “right-winged traitors,” we were able to prepare for this early in the process. We used the clenched fist, a leftist symbol deriving from the old communist times of our grandfathers, sound patriotic slogans, bright young faces as front-liners for Otpor, which were similar to what MLK was performing in his Nashville marches. The regime had spent a lot of time persuading the public that we were actually worse than real terrorists, but seeing young bright faces wearing Otpor t-shirts made this accusation look ridiculous and, in the end, it clearly backfired on them.

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Last week, the New York Times ran a story entitled, “Water Drops for Migrants: Kindness, or Offense?” about the contentious act of putting out water for migrants. In September, The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a “littering” conviction of Dan Millis, a No More Deaths volunteer, for setting out sealed, gallons jugs of water. A victory indeed for the many humanitarian groups providing direct aid to migrants year round, but particularly during the deadly summer months: 238 people died along the Arizona-Mexico border this past year.

But, as the article reports, “The issue remains far from settled, though. The court ruled that Mr. Millis probably could have been charged under a different statute, something other than littering. And the Fish and Wildlife Service continues to forbid anyone to leave gallon jugs of water in the refuge — a policy backed by this state’s immigration hardliners, who say comforting immigrants will only encourage them to cross.”

It is a fallacy to argue that humanitarian aid contributes to immigrant’s willingness to cross. Those who make such arguments probably do not have to worry about their children starving or not being able to go to school. Steve Johnston, another No More Deaths volunteer argues that the current immigration “crisis” has its roots in the open door economic policy known as NAFTA.

Since Operation Gatekeeper [Part of extensive Border Patrol operations in 1994, the same year as NAFTA, that built physical barriers and increased personnel in El Paso, Texas, San Diego, California, and Nogales, Arizona] and other efforts to stop the flow of migrants, it has become too risky and expensive (creating a vast criminal smuggling cartel to rival the drug cartels) to return and many migrants have brought their families to the US to reunite. The walls only make it more dangerous. Twice as many people migrate today as did before they were forced out into the desert.

It is irresponsible to talk about immigrants crossing into the U.S. without also indicting the NAFTA consequences on local Mexican economies. NAFTA depressed local agricultural markets which displaced former farmers toward border maquilladoras. After many of these factories left town, many Mexican workers were faced with few viable economic options other than crossing into the U.S. Whatever the case, it remains clear that federal border policy – in both theory and practice – is contributing to the deaths of many innocent people. To prosecute those who simply wish to save lives in both unjust and distracting from the true causes of global migration.