Will all Pink Floyd fans please stand up and tune into Roger Waters’ message for today? Pretend like you just got home from the record store after purchasing the newest, highly-anticipated Pink Floyd album and you’re about to sit in front of your stereo and listen to the complete album without interruption. Listen up, this is gonna be good.

The Guardian just published a column by Roger Waters in which he declares his support for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to be levied against Israel until the occupation ends and Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal rights:

Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel until the day comes – and it surely will come – when the wall of occupation falls and Palestinians live alongside Israelis in the peace, freedom, justice and dignity that they all deserve.

Waters’ public stance is huge. He is the highest-profile musician to declare his support for the BDS movement to date. The nonviolent struggle against Israeli apartheid is going mainstream, and not in some soft, cuddly, watered-down manner; but BDS is a means of nonviolent struggle that really has some teeth, as was seen in South Africa. A cultural boycott of Israel, where artists would refuse to entertain and whitewash Israeli apartheid, is a nonviolent tool with the power to rapidly erode the moral standing of Israel in the world.

Waters doesn’t beat around the bush when speaking about the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and the diaspora, that has brought him to publicly supporting BDS.  Instead, Waters concisely describes the injustice inflicted on Palestinians and challenges people of conscience to wake from their slumber:

In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair-minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance.

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• In Wisconsin, more than 100,000 people packed the area around the state’s capitol Saturday to continue a month-long campaign against Governor Scott Walker’s attack on worker rights.

• Massive demonstrations rattled Yemen’s major cities on Saturday after police stormed a sit-in of nearly 100,000 protesters outside Sanaa University in the capital at dawn, leaving at least four protesters dead and over 300 others injured.

• More than 200 Saudis protested outside the Interior Ministry on Sunday to demand the release of detainees in the largest demonstration in the capital since the regional outbreak of pro-democracy unrest.

• In Kuwait, amid heavy security presence and in defiance of the warning issued by the Interior Ministry, the stateless residents (Bedouns) staged demonstrations after Friday prayers in Sulaibiya, Taima and Ahmadi areas demanding their civil rights.

• On Friday in Russia, 150 hunger strikers protested what they say is police pressure on Bashkir nationalists in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan.

• In Bahrain, thousands of people held a protest against the Bahraini monarchy outside one of the king’s palaces near Manama on Saturday, a day after a failed attempt to march on another royal palace.

• On Saturday, Azerbaijan police detained more than 30 activists of the opposition Musavat Party when nearly 200 of its members took to the street of Baku to protest against the ruling elite following a similar rally a day before.

• In Spain, thousands of employees of the high-speed AVE trains in Madrid have joined airline staff in their strike against privatization on Sunday.

• In Germany, tens of thousands formed a human chain on Saturday between the Neckarwestheim nuclear plant and the southwestern city of Stuttgart, which are 28 miles (45 kilometers) apart- some waving yellow flags with the slogan “Nuclear power – no thanks.”

The New York Times recently asked Gallup to come up with a statistical composite for the happiest person in America based on its efforts over the past three years to measure the components of “the good life.”

Gallup’s answer: he’s a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year.

This of course raises several questions. First off, is there actually anyone who fits this description? Surprisingly, there is. His name is Alvin Wong and according to the Times, he’s a 5-foot-10, 69-year-old, Chinese-American, Kosher-observing Jew, who’s married with children and lives in Honolulu, where he runs his own health care management business and earns more than $120,000 a year.

Next couple questions: What does this mean for the rest of us non-Asian-American Jews, living in the continental United States and making less than $120,000 a year? Do we have a chance at happiness?

While I’m certain the answer is yes, I’m less certain that the Gallup research is of any help. Happiness is not exclusive to a particular race, gender, body type or income. As Darrin M. McMahon, the author of Happiness, A History, explained in an excellent Yes! Magazine piece last year, it has more to do with how we live our lives.

Happiness has increasingly been thought to be more about getting little infusions of pleasure, about feeling good rather than being good, less about living the well-lived life than about experiencing the well-felt moment…

Indeed, if you think about it, this idea of happiness as a natural state creates a curious problem. What if I’m not happy? Does that mean that I’m unnatural? Am I ill, or bad, or deficient? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with the society in which I live? These are all symptoms of a condition that I call the unhappiness of not being happy, and it is a peculiarly modern condition.

To cure this condition, we might focus less on our own personal happiness and instead on the happiness of those around us, for relentless focus on one’s own happiness has the potential to be self-defeating.

There is much to be said about the kind of happiness that is generated by focusing more on the needs of others than ourselves—particularly, that it creates something more sustainable.

As a country, the United States ranks pretty low on happiness, according to models like Gross National Happiness—which seek to replace traditional measurements of progress, like GDP. It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to people reading this blog that national wealth has little to do with fostering happiness. It’s the strong human connections in our day-to-day lives, as well as basic economic security and health.

Being that nonviolence thrives on interconnectedness, it’s no wonder that people engaged in nonviolent action seem to have better outlooks on life and the results of their work tend be more positive and long-lasting.

With the Libyan uprising against Qaddafi turning more and more toward violence in recent days and weeks, we have not been reporting on the daily developments of the struggle – like we did during the predominately nonviolent pro-democracy movement in Egypt – because this site is devoted to covering nonviolent resistance.

In the New York Times yesterday, Erica Chenoweth had a timely op-ed that explained why the Libyan resistance would have a greater likelihood of bringing down Qaddafi had it remained nonviolent.

Unfortunately for the Libyan rebels, research shows that nonviolent resistance is much more likely to produce results, while violent resistance runs a greater risk of backfiring.

[...]

Indeed, a study I recently conducted with Maria J. Stephan, now a strategic planner at the State Department, compared the outcomes of hundreds of violent insurgencies with those of major nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006; we found that over 50 percent of the nonviolent movements succeeded, compared with about 25 percent of the violent insurgencies.

Why? For one thing, people don’t have to give up their jobs, leave their families or agree to kill anyone to participate in a nonviolent campaign. That means such movements tend to draw a wider range of participants, which gives them more access to members of the regime, including security forces and economic elites, who often sympathize with or are even relatives of protesters.

What’s more, oppressive regimes need the loyalty of their personnel to carry out their orders. Violent resistance tends to reinforce that loyalty, while civil resistance undermines it.

To anyone who is up on this field of study, Chenoweth’s arguments are not new, but it is exciting that she had such a prominent venue to air them. (It’s hard to imagine her being able to publish this piece in the Times had the nonviolent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt not happened.)

In anticipation of the backlash and recognizing the limitations of an op-ed, Chenoweth, who is an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, wisely posted an extremely helpful “Skeptics Guide to Nonviolent Resistance,” on her university website to expand on her points and address likely questions.

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With protests continuing to spread throughout the Arab world, Nonviolence International and the Holy Land Trust have compiled a very useful list of books, pamphlets and films about nonviolent struggle in Arabic, many of which are available for free online.

Please share these resources, which will be regularly updated as more works are translated, with anyone in the region who might be interested. And if you know of anything that is missing, but should be added to the list, let me know and I’ll pass the word on.

Over at Working In These Times, Carl Finamore reports that last Thursday, San Francisco Hilton General Manager Michael Dunne:

…broke from the pack of 59 other hotels still in a contract dispute with 8,000 workers and signed a tentative agreement with UNITE-HERE Local 2 in San Francisco, ending an 18th month labor dispute that has rocked this city.

The contract settlement—which is subject to a ratification vote this Friday—was reached during negotiations last Thursday, and was finalized over the weekend. It is a four-year agreement, back to August 2009 and forward to August 2013. It provides for continued, fully-paid health benefits, pension improvements, two dollars in total hourly wage increases, and workload reductions.

[...]

A union leaflet congratulates “everyone whose efforts made this settlement possible, especially the STRIKERS at the Grand Hyatt, Palace, St. Francis, Hyatt Regency, and the Hilton (twice!!). These most militant actions and the countless picketlines, civil disobedience, marches, rallies and delegations are the fuel which power our BOYCOTT machine.”

[...]

In fact, Hilton Worldwide also reached agreement with workers in Chicago and Honolulu.

This short video by Voice of America looks at “People Power: The Game of Civil Resistance,” a video game that has just been released by York-Zimmerman. The TV and film company, which has also produced several important documentaries on nonviolent action, including Bringing Down a Dictator, about Otpor and the student-led movement that brought Slobodan Milosevic down in 2000:

…hired [Optor leader Ivan] Marovic to help create video games – that show non-violent strategies to help remove oppressive governments.  The second, and most recent game is “People Power – The Game of Civil Resistance.”  It contains fictional scenarios in which the leader of a non-violent movement uses tactics such as street protests, strikes and boycotts.  Speaking from Belgrade, Serbia, Marovic said people who play the game are likely to be young and educated.

“The game allows you to see all the complexities of a political struggle, and to kind of focus on all the nuances, and all the details that are necessary, in order to make the right move,” he said.

When I attended the Fletcher Summer Institute last year I had the opportunity to try the game out before it hit the market and look forward to spending more time with it now that it’s finally out.

The game can only be downloaded online at peoplepowergame.com and is reasonably priced at $10.

And if you can’t afford that price and would like the game for educational purposes, you can contact the company and get a copy for free. Currently it’s only available in English, but it’ll soon be available in Arabic, Farsi, Russian and Spanish.

• After Wisconsin Republicans pushed through Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union bill in the State Senate yesterday, an estimated 7,000 people entered the Capitol building. Many remain inside after staying overnight. The Wisconsin State Assembly is expected to vote on the measure today.

• On Wednesday, tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators were outside Sanaa University in Yemen. In Taiz, tens of thousands of protesters continued their sit-in protest, calling for Saleh’s ouster. Thousands were also in the streets of Ibb, Aden, Hodeidah, and Dhamar.

• Some 1,700 workers at a shoe factory in Rangoon have been on strike demanding better pay conditions since Tuesday, according to the factory workers.

• Nearly 300 illegal immigrants have ended a six-week hunger strike after the Greek government, fearing the death of one or more protesters, agreed not to begin deportation proceedings against them.

• Workers in Bulgaria’s ailing state railways staged a one-hour warning strike on Thursday to protest against job cuts planned as part of a restructuring programme to secure a 300 million-euro World Bank loan.

• Hundreds of protesters on Tuesday gathered at a parking lot in Kuwait City to demand for reforms and swift changes in the oil-rich emirate.

• Hundreds of employees and laborers of the Jordanian Electricity company protested on Wednesday in front of the company headquarters in Amman demanding increased wages.

• About 3,000 employees from the Yamaha Motor plant in Hanoi walked off the job on Monday. Workers are seeking an increase in the basic monthly salary from 1.65 million dong ($78.57) to 2.03 million dong along with a rise in their housing and other social allowances.

• Nine members of the Earth Quaker Action Team were escorted out of the Philadelphia Flower Show by Convention Center Security today after staging a protest at the PNC Bank Exhibit inside.

• In Iran, more than seventy political prisoners in Oroumieh prison have launched a hunger strike in protest to the restrictions and pressures implemented by the regime’s agents, including a ban on family visits.

• In Costa Rica, various union organizations have banded together to call for a general strike today and a protest march to demand better pay for the public and private sectors.

All across the occupied Palestinian territories, women took to the streets on Tuesday in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.

In Gaza city, an estimated 500 women marched through the city center calling for national unity and an end to the rift between rival political factions, Fatah, which governs the West Bank, and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.  Women called for a unified Palestinian voice, while hoisting a 10-meter long Palestinian flag, as a necessary step in resisting Israel’s expanding settlement project that includes the ongoing judaization of Jerusalem.

Palestinian women also led protests across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, dozens of women blocked an Israeli bypass road – a crucial piece of the transportation infrastructure built to connect Israeli settlements, a transportation system to which Palestinians have limited access – in protest of Israel’s vast system of roadblocks that limit Palestinian movement.

At Qalandia checkpoint, a monstrosity of a checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, 150 Palestinian women demonstrators attempted to pass through to Jerusalem.  Israeli border guards formed a human wall to prevent the women from proceeding through the checkpoint, demonstrating Israel’s restriction of Palestinians’ movement, including the denial of access to areas supposedly under Palestinian control such as East Jerusalem.

In Hebron, a broad swath of women’s civil society, including representatives from non-governmental organizations, schools, labor unions, and women’s cooperatives organized to distribute flowers to a  large number of women across the city.

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With the billionaire Koch brothers using their muscle to back Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker both during his run for office and now as he moves to strip state workers of their right to collective bargain, a boycott of Koch Industry’s consumer products is growing. For example, the Boycott and Defeat Koch Industries Facebook page now has close to 16,000 followers.

Here is a list of the company’s products which are being boycotted:

Angel Soft toilet paper
Brawny paper towels
Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
Mardi Gras napkins and towels
Quilted Northern toilet paper
Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
Sparkle napkins
Vanity fair napkins
Zee napkins
Georgia-Pacific paper products and envelopes

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