Our friends at the Metta Center posted a great video discussion between Metta president Michael Nagler and Alex Hildebrand of Peace Brigades International. The focus is mainly on unarmed civilian peacekeeping, but there are also some other great side conversations. For instance, at the very beginning Dr. Nagler describes what first drew him to nonviolence and the teachings of Gandhi—which is a type of story I always enjoy hearing from any peacemaker.

• La Via Campesina—the world’s largest federation of peasant and smallholder farmers—held what they called the “1,000 Cancún Global Day of Action for Climate Justice” in which several thousand people took to the streets to march in protest of the UN climate summit.

• Indigenous and youth groups demonstrated both inside and outside the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun yesterday to call for their inclusion in the negotiations.

• In a country where walkouts are very rare, Czech public sector workers went on strike against the government’s austerity measures on Wednesday.

• Public transport in Athens and train services across Greece are shut down today as state workers protest cuts in wages and bonuses and the reorganization of state-controlled companies.

• Hair salons across France turned off their sound systems on Tuesday in a nationwide protest against a tax on background music.

• Iranian students have defied a security clampdown to stage anti-government protests throughout the country. Unconfirmed reports say about a dozen people have been arrested, including at Tehran University in the capital.

• More than 10,000 supporters of Macedonia’s leading opposition party protested in the country’s capital to call for early elections, accusing the conservative government of mismanaging the economy and criticizing its failure to bring the country closer to the EU and NATO.

President Obama and the State Department are considering the permit for a 2,000-mile dirty tar sands oil pipeline, known as the Keystone XL, that would run from Canada through six US states to refineries along the Gulf Coast. With 900,000 barrels of dirty oil flowing across the heartland every day, public water supplies, crops, and wildlife habitats will be at great risk.

Opposition to the pipeline has already begun to take shape, with protests, town hall gatherings and press conferences taking place in Detroit, Chicago, Lincoln, Houston and Missoula. There’s even a TV ad (shown above) calling on President Obama to “prevent the next oil disaster” that’s set to air on CNN, MSNBC, and Comedy Central.

For more information, check out the No Tar Sands Oil campaign website.

Pro-democracy protesters holding banners bearing photos of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo march to the Chinese government liaison office in Hong Kong on Sunday, Dec. 5, 2010. Protesters rallied in Hong Kong for the release of the jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner. (Kin Cheung/AP)

According to an article today in the Toronto Star, at least nineteen countries have declined their invitation to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in Norway this Friday. While most are countries you might assume would side with China, whose government has threatened that there will be “consequences” for countries that attend, I was honestly surprised by a couple on the list, such as the Philippines.

Here is the full list of those countries that have already declined: China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Serbia, Vietnam, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine and Morocco.

This is possibly the highest number of countries to not attend a ceremony for the Nobel Prize in its history.

Over at the Guardian, there is a nice video report on how Palestinians are using rap music as a form of protest in the Palestinian territories, Syria and Lebanon. The 5-minute long video, which can only be seen on their site, includes interviews with several of the most popular Palestinian hip-hop artists, footage from concerts -which look very lively – and clips from their music videos. As Stephen Flohr, who spent time in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement, wrote for this site last year:

In the US, we are witnessing the infiltration of hip hop by forces of materialism and greed. In Palestine, the essence of hip-hop still remains close to the root of active struggle and resistance against on oppressive order. Palestinian hip-hop reminds us that the poverty of the South Bronx shares a common cause with the poverty of Jenin. It calls us back to the realization that we are all a people in struggle against the war machine.

Today, as Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange has been taken into the custody of British police, the BBC has word that Anonymous, the informal online hacker community has launched an attack. Its targets are companies, like Paypal and a Swiss bank, that have participated in attempts to shut Wikileaks down by withdrawing services from Assange and his site.

A member of Anonymous who calls himself Coldblood told the BBC that “multiple things are being done”.

“Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets,” he said.

“As an organisation we have always taken a strong stance on censorship and freedom of expression on the internet and come out against those who seek to destroy it by any means.”

“We feel that Wikileaks has become more than just about leaking of documents, it has become a war ground, the people vs. the government,” he said.

So far the denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), which swamp a site with so many requests that it becomes overwhelmed, have failed to take any sites offline although that is not the point of the attack, according to Coldblood.

“The idea is not to wipe them off but to give the companies a wake-up call,” he said. “Companies will notice the increase in traffic and an increase in traffic means increase in costs associated with running a website.”

DDoS attacks are illegal in many countries, including the UK.

Coldblood admitted that such attacks “may hurt people trying to get to these sites” but said it was “the only effective way to tell these companies that us, the people, are displeased”.

The environment of digital activism certainly raises new questions of where to draw lines between violence and nonviolence, between Satyagraha and a riot. A sample of Anonymous mottos suggests how hard it might be, in this case, to do so:

Anonymous is devoid of humanity, morality, pity, and mercy.

Anonymous works as one, because none of us are as cruel as all of us.

Anonymous only undertakes Serious Business.

Anonymous has no weakness or flaw.

Anonymous exploits all weaknesses and flaws.

Anonymous is humanity.

Anonymous are created as equals.

Importantly, Anonymous is not just an online phenomenon; the idea—the “meme“—has expressed itself in real-world demonstrations with people wearing Guy Fawkes masks. (The masks are a reference to the book and film V for Vendetta, a dystopian story whose hero is a violent revolutionary.) The masks are perhaps best known for appearing at protests against the Church of Scientology, which has been a consistent focus of Anonymous’ attention. In that case, as in many others, including the present defense of Assange, the group’s wrath has been brought on by anger against perceptions of censorship. For the same reason, they’ve also been supporters of Iran’s Green Movement. In 2007, a Fox News report in Los Angeles accused Anonymous of being “domestic terrorists.”

When Anonymous’ actions are compared to those of Assange himself, there seems to be some bit of sense to that accusation. Assange’s work, for all the terror it strikes in the hearts of certain diplomats, is freeing information, not bombarding anybody with it. However haphazardly and partially, Wikileaks allows truth to come to light. DDoS attacks, by contrast, are a protest against censorship that, by potentially shutting down certain corporate websites, looks eerily like censorship in its own right.

Both Assange and Anonymous appear to share a similar ideology, one with deep roots in hacker culture, according to which causing chaos can become a privileged means to vaguely-defined ends. A bit of chaos, it is true, can go a long way toward shaking those perpetuating an unjust status quo into their senses—or, at least, out of power. But it can also pave the way to new forms of domination. Everything depends, therefore, on the kind of actions and communities that bring it about. A revolution launched by a Bolshevik vanguard will lead to a Bolshevik-vanguard state. Chaos by means of openness, if it succeeds, will leave us with a more open society when the dust settles. Chaos by means of denial-of-service leaves us with victors convinced that silencing opponents is a useful way of getting what they want.

Last week, in acknowledgment of World AIDS Day, the New York Times ran a piece about a new breed of AIDS activism:

Roughly a quarter-century after gay men rose up to demand better access to H.I.V. medicines, a new breed of AIDS advocate is growing up on college campuses. Unlike the first generation of patient-activists, this latest crop is composed of budding public health scholars. They are mostly heterosexual. Rare is the one who has lost friends or family members to the disease. Rather, studying under some of the world’s most prominent health intellectuals, they have witnessed the epidemic’s toll during summers or semesters abroad, in AIDS-ravaged nations like Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

College activism, and AIDS activism in particular, is nothing new. On Wednesday, World AIDS Day, students across the nation will participate in speeches, fund-raisers and the like. But a loose-knit band of about two dozen Ivy Leaguers, mostly from Harvard and Yale, is using more confrontational tactics, as well as some high-powered connections, to wangle encounters with top White House officials in a determined, and seemingly successful, effort to get under Mr. Obama’s skin.

Their protests — which have drawn a sharp rebuke from the president (not to mention some disapproving parents) — come as many in the AIDS advocacy community are wondering aloud whether Mr. Obama is as devoted to their cause as his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush.

The Times focused on the efforts of one Yale student, David Carel, who heckled President Obama at a Democratic campaign rally in October and recently sparred with bioethicist and health adviser to the president Ezekial Emanuel at a campus event. Like his obstinate brother Rahm, Emanuel heartily defended the half-efforts of the President.

“To be honest, and this is no put-down to the sincerity of the students, I didn’t hear a new argument that I haven’t heard for months,” Dr. Emanuel said in an interview after his breakfast with Mr. Carel. “I’ve not seen a blog post on the number of people we have circumcised, or the number of mothers we treat in maternal-child health. Those are real performance measures.”

Dr. Emanuel would not discuss any conversations with the president about the students, but Mr. Obama’s reaction when he was disrupted in October at the rally in Bridgeport made clear he was irked. “You’ve been appearing at every rally we’ve been doing,” the president complained, telling them it was not “a useful strategy.”

While it is certainly worth debating the effectiveness of a verbally abrasive approach, the students did manage to elicit a response—albeit negative—from the president, which is far more than most activists get. Perhaps, now that they have his ear, they can try out a more inviting tactic—one that does recognize the laudable efforts Obama has made toward fighting AIDS, but continues to underscore the urgency for bolder action. The heckling incident was afterall Carel’s first demonstration. And though he and his fellow protesters insist they thought long and hard about it, this is clearly a learning experience. With the level of commitment they’ve already exhibited at such a young age, it will be interesting to watch them fine-tune their approach in the years to come.

• Some 2,000 disabled people protested in central Athens on Friday against benefit cuts made by the government to lower the national debt load.

• Indian villagers on Saturday protested at the site of a nuclear power plant to be built with French help, as France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in the country for a visit.

• Management staff of ExxonMobil in Nigeria have begun an indefinite strike to protest the sack of about 84 Nigerian employees of the United States oil major.

• In Korea, some 200 disabled people occupied the headquarters of the National Human Rights Commission, Friday, to stage a sit-in protest, denouncing what they claimed to be backpedalling of human rights conditions of their peers.

A couple weeks ago, Robert Naiman, Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy and a friend of this site, wrote a thought-provoking piece, in which he asks:

What if Afghans adopted a strategy of nonviolent resistance against the night raids? Could they be stopped?

Unlike US air strikes, US night raids require human contact.

Let’s suppose, for the purposes of our thought experiment, that there were a well organized popular movement in Afghanistan against the night raids. Let’s suppose that this movement went around to respected Islamic scholars and got legal judgments that the night raids are an offense against Islam. Let’s suppose that this movement prepared to defend villages where US night raids are being carried out, and organized committees of unarmed women to implement this defense. And let’s suppose that when a US night raid began, a call would go out from the mosque, and a group of unarmed women would surround the house and say to the US soldiers: you’re not coming in, and if you try, we will not move. And let’s suppose that some Western NGO issued these women video cameras, as the Israeli human rights group B’tselem has issued Palestinians video cameras. And let’s suppose that a group of people in the United States and Western Europe agreed that they would try to support this movement, by vigorously raising their voices in protest whenever US Special Forces tried to break the line of protesters.

Could the night raids be stopped?

I would argue that they could be thwarted by nonviolent resistance, because, despite their training to kill, US soldiers are still human beings whose hearts can be touched by the power of love and nonviolence. In the literature on nonviolence, there are countless examples of soldiers from all over the world being persuaded to disobey orders or even change sides when faced with nonviolent opposition, and members of the US military aren’t an exception. But it would require a level of organization that seems to not exist at the moment. However, that doesn’t mean that Afghans could not or should not start organizing around this goal.

What do you think? Would this type of resistance be possible or effective against the US occupation? And do you have any other ideas about how Afghans might bring an end to not only the night raids, but the entire occupation, through nonviolent action?

I have some very exciting news to share. Next Thursday, I will be traveling to Afghanistan with a small delegation from Voices for Creative Nonviolence, which will include Kathy Kelly, Ret. Col. Ann Wright and Veterans for Peace president Mike Ferner, among several other wonderful people.  I will be returning to the US on December 30, spending my first Christmas away from home in Kabul.

The purpose of our trip will be to witness first hand what is happening at the other end of our foreign policy, to hear directly from the Afghan people how they are being affected by the war and occupation, and to share their stories when we return through our writing and public speaking. I intend,when possible, to blog for WNV while I am there.

While our itinerary is still coming together, we already have plans to meet with Afghan civilians and politicians, humanitarian workers, and an amazing group of youth peacemakers in Bamiyan that we’ve covered on our site here. In addition, we plan to visit a hospital in Kabul and a camp for the internally displaced to talk to those who have been injured during the conflict or who have fled their homes due to the violence.

A good friend has already contributed enough to cover the cost of my flight to and from Kabul, and I’ve received several other donations over the last few days. That said, I still  need to raise about $2000 to cover accommodations, food, travel and other expenses during my three weeks in Afghanistan. It is important that we will not be a burden on our hosts in this country whose infrastructure and economy has been so devastated by decades of war. If at all possible, please consider helping with a donation.

I will also be looking for opportunities to speak to whoever will listen upon our return, so if your church, school or any other group would be interested in hearing about the trip, please let me know. They might consider sending a contribution now as an “advance” on a speaking honorarium.

I’ve never gone on a trip like this before. Despite being nervous and a little scared about putting myself in harm’s way, I feel that this is something I must do. I have long believed it is essential that people working for peace experience the ugly reality of war themselves and bring back the personal stories of its victims, which the American public is almost never exposed to by the government and mainstream media.

Your donation would mean the world to me and would go a long way to easing the burden of this trip. And whether or not you can contribute financially, please keep the entire delegation in your thoughts and prayers. Thanks so much for your support!

Donations can be made by credit card at my PayPal account: