Russia’s Khimki forest defenders continue to face fierce repression. According to Greenpeace Forest Campaigner Asti Roesle, their camp was attacked over the weekend by “private security forces and unidentifiable thugs” who inflicted “serious injuries including head injury, broken nose, and broken jaw.” Since the Russian police have offered no help or security, Roesle is calling on the international community to pressure Vinci—the French multinational company that’s building the highway through the forest—to own up to its complicity in the destruction of nature and human rights. She suggests sending a letter to Vinci representatives in your country and sending a letter to your Russian embassy demanding security for these forest defenders, as well as adding your name to this petition.
In his New York Times review of Adam Hochschild’s important new history of World War I, To End All Wars, Christopher Hitchens writes:
Increasingly, modern historians have come to regard that bleak November ”armistice” as a mere truce in a long, terrible conflict that almost sent civilization into total eclipse and that did not really terminate until the peaceful and democratic reunification of Germany after November 1989. Even that might be an optimistic reading: the post-1918 frontiers of the former Ottoman Empire (one of the four great thrones that did not outlast the “First” World War) are still a suppurating source of violence and embitterment.
That is to say: today’s War on Terror has some of its roots in the guns of August, 1914. Even Hitchens, a youthful Marxist turned Iraq War supporter, can see that the pacifists had it right in the Great War. The debut of American mass interventionism there, in 1917, only made things worse:
If General Pershing’s fresh and plucky troops had not reached the scene in the closing stages of the bloodbath, universal exhaustion would almost certainly have compelled an earlier armistice, on less savage terms. Without President Wilson’s intervention, the incensed and traumatized French would never have been able to impose terms of humiliation on Germany; the very terms that Hitler was to reverse, by such relentless means, a matter of two decades later. In this light, the great American socialist Eugene V. Debs, who publicly opposed the war and was kept in prison by a vindictive Wilson until long after its ending, looks like a prescient hero. Indeed, so do many of the antiwar militants to whose often-buried record Hochschild has done honor.
All indications suggest that Hochschild’s book is not to be missed.
Last Wednesday, activists targeted the David Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City. As The Other 98% writes:
1,000 people gathered to launch Koch Brothers Exposed — a new project of Brave New Foundation and The Other 98% — by projecting a short film about the billionaire Koch Brothers onto the front of the Kochs’ own building. Simultaneously, a small team of pranksters placed the giant sticker pictured above on the front of the theater. The boisterous crowd featured a live marching band, free popcorn, and – most importantly – the truth about the Koch Brothers.
In addition to the film, other images, which can be seen here, were projected on the front of the building from a hotel across the street.
While I imagine this creative tactic of projecting images or films onto buildings is nothing new, I first came across it earlier this year when street artists in Los Angeles projected an image of an antiwar mural that had been removed from the wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) onto the side of the building. They also used an ingenious handmade laser graffiti gun to write messages against censorship on the museum for all passersby to see.
If you know of other examples where this tactic has been used, please share them in the comment section.
The May issue of Sojourners has several great articles on nonviolence that are worth reading if you have the chance.
In “People Power,” Erica Chenoweth succinctly explains the reasons why nonviolent movements have been significantly more successful over the last century, based off the results from her research on hundreds of violent and nonviolent movements over that period. Her forthcoming book with Maria Stephan, entitled Why Civil Resistance Works, will no doubt be an important addition to the academic study of nonviolence.
Sojourners assistant editor and friend of this site Rose Marie Berger has a great feature called “Nothing Spontaenous About It,” that discusses the extensive effort over several years by organizers and activists in Egypt that led to the nonviolent uprising that forced Mubarak from power in February.
And in “Freedom Fighter,” Sojourners web editor Jeannie Choi has a wonderful interview with Bernard Lafayette, in which he discusses the lunch counter sit-ins, his relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and his thoughts on nonviolence today. One of my favorite parts is where he talks about how he dealt with the fear of death during the civil rights movement. Lafayette says:
…when we left for the freedom rides, we knew that death was a possibility so we wrote wills just in case we didn’t come back. But you have to consider not how you’re going to die, but how you’re going to live. You have to live for a purpose and your life has to be meaningful, and you have to be doing those things that are most important to you in your life, rather than being wholly concerned about death.
The issue may still be available on newsstands or each of these articles, and a couple others on nonviolence, can be accessed online here.
Mandela, Gandhi, and King march together in Palestine. AP photo.
Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography of Gandhi, Great Soul, has been the occasion for a lot of pontificating by reviewers on what they take to be the man’s legacy—rather more, generally, than actually discussing the book. (Not having read the book myself, forgive me for following suit.) The latest entry is David Shulman’s essay in the June issue of Harper’s Magazine, “Salt March to the Dead Sea.” Formally, it’s a review of Lelyveld’s book. Actually, it’s an anecdotal survey of the progress of nonviolent action in occupied Palestine.
Shulman writes of his experience protesting against, and being arrested by, the occupation, most of all as a way to telling about people like Abdallah Abu Rahman and Ali Abu Awwad, men who have studied Gandhi’s writings and worked to apply them in Palestine. These stories become occasion for some beautiful passages on the prospects and promise of nonviolent action there and in general.
I can tell you from my own experience: there is something about nonviolent resistance that does away with fear.
[…]
[Quoting Ali:] Nonviolent protest is where you invest your pain, a place where this pain becomes active in accordance with your humanity. You cannot practice nonviolence without listening to the other side’s narrative. But first you have to give up being a victim. When you do that, no one will be able to victimize you again.
[…]
Palestinian and Israeli Gandhians are living out, day by day, the moral code that Lelyveld has rightly identified as Gandhi’s: Persist in the active pursuit of what is right and good, without thinking too much about the immediate results (“Silent plodding”). Above all, don’t underestimate the intrinsic force of a moral act.
Existence is Resistance & Nana Dankwa present: Hip Hop Is Bigger Than The Occupation, a documentary about a ten day journey of artists traveling through Palestine, teaching and performing Non Violent Resistance through the arts.
The tour included M1 of Dead Prez, Shadia Mansour, Marcel Cartier, Mazzi of Soul Purpose, DJ Vega Benetton, Lowkey, Jody McIntyre and Trinidad, Brandon and Lavie from the South West Youth Collaborative/University of Hip Hop Chicago.
Staying in the heart of Balata Refugee Camp @ the Yafa Cultural Center in Nablus the group witnesses night raids, toured places like Hebron where there are roads for the Arabs and roads for the Jews, they meet families of shaheeds as well as young Palestinians who have been jailed, shot, humiliated, the group visits Bi’lin where they get shot at and tear gassed and experience first hand what it felt like living under occupation.
If you’d like to see more of the film, and you’re around New York, there’s going to be a world premiere screening at the excellent Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn, on Monday, May 30th at 6:30 pm. Details here. I’m sure that for those not in New York other opportunities will arise.
To get a sense for the kind of messages they’re putting out there, take a look at this video by LowKey, an English-Iraqi rapper and activist who appears in the film. The second verse makes a clear pitch for the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, to the point of listing particular companies whose products should be avoided.
Emory students are pulled out of the Students and Workers in Solidarity “tent city” and taken to jail. Photo by Emiko Soltis.
Just two days after Janet Napolitano gave the commencement speech and accepted her honorary degree at Emory University, Emory’s President James Wagner was called into a packed room of faculty, staff, and students to discuss security issues of another kind. Numerous petitions containing hundreds of signatures forced Wagner to address the university’s ethical stance in arresting peaceful protesters just two weeks prior. The petitions also called on Wagner to publicly discuss Emory’s responsibility to sub-contracted campus food service workers, for whom the protesters were holding vigil.
The Students and Workers in Solidarity group (SWS), seven of whom were arrested on April 25th, were initially told that they had had over one week to maintain their “tent-city” vigil. Two days before this deadline, however, the students were unexpectedly approached by the university’s Vice President Gary Hauk and a crew of police officers. The students were given five minutes notice to remove everything—themselves included—or head to jail, which is where those who chose to remain, hands locked in song and prayer, ended up.
Emory’s campus SWS chapter began in January of 2010 after several founding members met to discuss the complaints of campus food-service workers sub-contracted by the food service corporation Sodexo. These included fear of losing work after a Sodexo-mandated “informative meeting on unions” indicated union organizing activity would not be tolerated; reports of discrimination against black workers including name-calling and derogatory treatment; the inability to access crucial health services; and the denial of basic benefits. SWS students then researched Emory University’s labor policies and learned that Emory maintains a two-tier labor system.
Those hired directly by the university enjoy protection under Emory’s Code of Business Ethics and Conduct, decent benefits, and participation in the university’s Employee Council. The other workers are employed by a company contracted by Emory to provide certain services. Sub-contracted workers are excluded from the Business Ethics Code, receive only a fraction of the benefits other campus workers enjoy, and have no explicit forum in which to address the quality of their labor experience on campus.
According to a decision issued on Monday, a Utah federal court handed a victory to activists who imitate corporate spokespeople and websites in order to make a political point. (See, for instance, the recent Yes Men action against GE’s tax evasion.) The case was between the group Youth for Climate Truth and the infamous Koch Industries. According to analysis from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
The case has its origin in a brief action carried out by members of Youth For Climate Truth (YFCT), a group concerned about climate change. The action targeted Koch Industries, a billion dollar company that has publicly challenged the science behind climate change theories. Borrowing “identity correction” techniques pioneered by groups such as the Yes Men, YFCT issued a press release, purportedly from Koch, in which the company promised to stop funding organizations that deny climate change. The release was posted for a few hours on a website (www.koch-inc.com) that partially imitated Koch Industries’ own website. The action received some media coverage, but no press organization thought the release was real. If Koch were sensible, that should have been the end of it.
But Koch was not sensible. It sued YFCT for trademark infringement, cybersquatting, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (for allegedly not complying with the terms of service on the real Koch website) and assorted state claims, then issued subpoenas seeking the identities of the YFCT members. With help from lawyers at Public Citizen, YFCT moved to quash the subpoenas and dismiss the case.
Judge Dale Kimball granted the motion and threw the whole thing out. On the trademark claims, the judge noted that YFCT’s activities were clearly noncommercial and, therefore, governed by the First Amendment, not state or federal trademark law.
YFCT’s lawyer, Deepak Gupta of Public Citizen, told The New York Times that he thought the primary motivation for the lawsuit was to expose the identities of the anonymous perpetrators.
“It’s the tail wagging the dog,” Mr. Gupta said of using such accusations “to unmask your critics.”
And it’s more common than you may think, he said, adding that he was able include more than a dozen cases on the subject in his court filing. And tellingly, he notes that some of these cases were withdrawn once an anonymous critic had been exposed.
I asked Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men about this, and he said the decision didn’t surprise him. But, he added, “it’s always a relief when things happen according to common sense. A decision in Utah is a great place to start—now on to the rest of the world!”
The Global War on Terror. Click image for details.
The War on Terror has made defining itself tricky enough; the name of a human emotion makes for no simple criterion for what we’re actually against. For the past decade, that moniker has licensed wars and rumors of wars in all sorts of unlikely places, from Iraq and Af-Pak, to the Philippines and the Horn of Africa. But now there’s a bill in the House Armed Services Committee that promises to expand the scope of the War on Terror even further. Reports Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room:
To its supporters, the proposal catches Congress up to the reality of today’s war. There aren’t many al-Qaida members in Afghanistan, but the war there rages onward. Meanwhile, the Obama administration wages a series of secret wars against al-Qaida entities in Pakistan and Yemen. Since last fall, Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the committee, has argued that Congress, which hasn’t voted on the war in a decade, needs to go on record approving or disapproving of the 2011-era war. Essentially, his proposal would bring the secret wars in from the cold.
But some counterterrorism analysts are worried that there’s no way to win a war this broad — only a way to expand it.
“Associated forces” could place the U.S. at war with terrorist entities that don’t concern themselves with attacking the United States. Think Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group aligned with al-Qaida that pulled off the Mumbai bombings of 2008. Under the House language, there’s nothing to stop Obama or his successors from waging war against them. It comes close to “terrorism creep,” says Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University.
Even the Obama administration, believe it or not, is opposed to this kind of expansion of executive authority.
Three people were killed when Yemeni security forces opened fire on demonstrators and launched rocket-propelled grenades at an office building Monday as they cracked down on a protest in the flashpoint city of Taiz in the country’s south.
About 300 Iraqi oil workers staged a brief walkout in the southern oil hub of Basra on Monday, protesting a lack of financial benefits and threatening to halt production at some fields if their demands were not met.
Mauritanian secondary schoolteachers on Sunday launched a three-day strike to demand health insurance coverage, new social housing and other benefits.
Thousands of people rallied in Japan Saturday to demand a shift away from nuclear power after an earthquake and tsunami sparked the world’s worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl a quarter-century ago.
Palestinian prisoners in four Israeli jails went on a hunger strike on Sunday in protest against the Israeli solitary confinement policy applied against tens of prisoners who have been denied their basic human rights and mainly the right to get family visits.
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