The grassroots anti-corporate tax-dodging group US Uncut has been quite busy lately—from organizing a weekend of “dance-ins” at Apple stores across the country to a “sleep-in” at a Brooklyn Bank of America. Even Fox Business News recently ran a favorable profile of US Uncut founder Carl Gibson, describing the 24-year-old as “smart, creative, college-educated — and has nothing better to do than cause trouble for big companies.”

But that trouble has only just begun. After working together back in April on a prank exposing GE’s tax-dodging efforts, US Uncut and The Yes Men are teaming up again—this time, for a trip to the Caymen Islands, which is “home” to some 19,000 registered corporations. As they explain on their Kickstarter fundraising page:

In order to understand why thousands of teachers are losing their jobs across the country, we set out to discover where the leak was in Uncle Sam’s revenue bucket… Could it be that all the money is just a few tropical waves south of Key West? Sitting in off-shore bank accounts, just waiting to be brought back to share with eager shareholders and upstanding citizens alike?

They are looking to raise $10,000 by the end of the month to finance the journey—complete with a video crew that will capture their efforts to “embarrass tax lobbyists and politicians” and “bring the money home.”

In an interview with The Nation, Gibson explained that they will be targeting companies participating in the Win America Campaign

“WAC lobbyists use language soaked in faux patriotism about how the money is ‘trapped overseas’ and the need to ‘bring the money home,’” says Gibson. “Well, we’re doing it for them. If our tax dollars are being held hostage in the Cayman Islands, then there should be a ragtag group of taxpaying citizens ready to swoop in and bring it home. And that’s what we plan to do.”

In a creative act of protest, as Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon delivered a commencement address to graduates of Stanford yesterday, according to the San Jose Mercury News:

…a small plane flew overhead pulling a banner protesting the president’s use of the military in his war against the drug cartels, which has cost some 40,000 lives so far. The banner read, “No + Blood — 40,000 dead. How many more?”

Outside the stadium, a handful of protesters, a few of whom traveled from Mexico City, criticized Calderon for spending resources on fighting cartels instead of on education and other social programs.

“People join drug cartels because they are poor,” said one protester who refused to give her name and instead identified herself as Margarita Zavala, the name of the president’s wife. She carried a sign that said, “Calderon stay here. Mexico is better off without you.”

“What are you going to do, kill all the cartels?” she said. “Well, that’s half your country.”

While I like this tactic, from the above video, it’s difficult to tell how easy it was for those attending the ceremony to read the banner. Had the plane been able to fly lower or closer (or even drop leaflets over the crowd) it might have caused more of a scene.

In an interesting article about the recent surge in “hactivism,” Adbusters senior editor Micah White mentions a new resource being developed for activists operating in repressive environments that looks like it could be promising:

Responding to the call for a non-commercial, anti-corporate, revolutionary alternative to Facebook, one programmer has released Wire. “In light of the fact that services like Twitter, Facebook, and SMS have been compromised by large companies pandering to government interests,” the developer explains, “and the vast amount of arrests of protestors that have been politically motivated and nothing to do with anyone actually doing anything wrong, then having ‘evidence’ from aforementioned messaging services used against them, I thought it was time for a system that would enable people to communicate … in a secure way, with a variety of options, such as messages self-destructing on receipt, messages that aren’t stored on a hard-disk anywhere … and other things one might find in a spy movie.” The platform is still in alpha state, but it is already showing great potential. Try it out.

I was on RT, Russia’s 24/7 English-language news channel, yesterday to talk about the news that the US has stepped up its covert war in Yemen in recent weeks with increased strikes by fighter jets and armed drones.

• On Tuesday, Greenpeace activists dressed as Ken dolls rappelled down the side of Mattel headquarters near Los Angeles to unfurl a banner saying Barbie packaging contributes to rainforest destruction.

• About 80 tents have sprung up in and around State Street in Madison, Wisconsin since Saturday in an effort to revive the protests against Governor Walker and his budget cuts that began four months ago.

• A group of hackers known as Anonymous has taken down a Turkish government website to protest recently introduced Internet filters that many consider to be censorship.

• Hundreds of Mexicans began a weeklong caravan on Saturday to protest the country’s bloody drug war, led by a crusading poet whose son was murdered by suspected cartel hitmen.

• The daughter of a North Carolina lawmaker and her third-grade class wrote to him and other elected officials protesting possible cuts in state education spending.

• More than 100 cars blocked a 2-kilometer stretch of Independence Avenue in Minsk on Wednesday to protest rising gasoline prices. It was the first show of public dissent in the Belarus since demonstrators were jailed for protesting the results of last year’s elections.

• A train carrying waste from a Dutch nuclear plant was delayed three hours on Tuesday by 10 Greenpeace activists who chained themselves to the rails. Police made 33 arrests during the protest.

• 200 teachers gathered outside the capitol in Austin, Texas on Monday to protest the state Senate’s passing of a bill that empowers districts to cut teacher salaries and institute more furlough days.

• Iraqi and Kurdish refugees held in a British detention center in Oxford have started a hunger strike to protest plans to deport them to Baghdad.

In a recent piece for Yes! Magazine, environmental journalist and author Bill McKibben argues that despite President Obama’s sad support for the expansion of coal mining on federal land and Canada’s tar sands, “the geography of this beautiful North American continent is on our side.” What he means is that all this extra coal—which equates to the opening of 300 new coal-fired power plants—and Canadian oil—of which there’s enough to nearly double the current atmospheric concentration of carbon—still needs to get to market and that’s no easy task when the only viable ports are thousands of miles away.

In the case of coal, McKibben says, regional groups are rising to the occasion.

Climate Solutions and other environmentalists of the northwest are moving to block port-expansion plans in Longview and Bellingham, Washington, as well as in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since there are only so many possible harbors that could accommodate the giant freighters needed to move the coal, this might prove a winnable battle, though the power of money that moves the White House is now being brought to bear on county commissions and state houses. Count on this: It will be a titanic fight.

As for Canada’s tar sands, Obama has already permitted a pipeline into Minnesota and Wisconsin, making the job of sending the toxic sludge south considerably easier. But the oil barons are still landlocked and desire another pipeline dubbed Keystone XL, that stretches from Canada straight down to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must approve it, and has indicated that she’s “inclined” to do so. But, as McKibben points out, activists have a few things going for them. For starters, “documents show that the pipeline will probably cause the price at the pump to rise across the Midwest.” Furthermore, when the smaller pipeline was approved in 2009, “we got a taste of the arguments that the administration will use this time around, all masterpieces of legal obfuscation.”

This information allows for the identification of pillars of support, which activists can then strategically target as weaknesses of the state. As McKibben says in the conclusion of his piece:

Tough terrain aids the insurgent; it slows the powerful. Though we’re fighting a political campaign and not a military one, we need to take full advantage.

Support keeps rolling in for Tim DeChristopher—the recently convicted environmental activist who disrupted a federal oil and gas auction in 2008. The latest effort is a music video for a song by Alex Ebert—singer of the prominent indie rock band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. The song is not directly about DeChristopher, but its hopeful title (“Let’s Win!”) seems appropriate. The video, meanwhile, is comprised of footage from the protests outside the Salt Lake City courtroom where he was convicted last March. At the end, people are asked to visit the website of DeChristopher’s activist group Peaceful Uprising, which is calling for action on the day of his sentencing, June 23. The date also happens to be the 23rd anniversary of the day that NASA scientist James Hansen first testified to Congress about the threat of climate change. So, it is a momentous day, if not, as the organizers say on their website, “a turning point in the climate movement.” They also say:

Consider this our call to you. On June 23rd, show the world that we will not be intimidated; that it is our right to challenge the status quo; that we embrace peaceful civil disobedience as a tradition and as a vital tactic, if it means standing in the way of corporate rape and pillaging of our planet; that we will demand jury trials and empower our peers to be the true conscience of their community.

If you can come to Salt Lake City, we welcome you with open arms. If you cannot, find a federal courthouse near you. Demonstrate. Stand in joy and resolve. Show your outrage that one of our brothers could face the most severe sentence in history for a nonviolent direct action— raising a bidder paddle.

Reclaim your voice. Because you are not alone. The entire climate justice movement is standing behind you.

Hundreds of miners, activists, students, academics, environmentalists, and other citizens are marching to West Virginia’s historic Blair Mountain in an effort to save it from mountaintop removal. They are currently on day three of their five-day 50-mile march, which will culminate in a rally at the foot of the mountain on Saturday, with Robert Kennedy Jr. and other notable speakers lined up. More importantly, a direct action is also excepted to take place.

Last month, as part of their preparation, the marchers received training in the basic skills and strategy of nonviolence. While this may not seem like a remarkable fact in the current era of grassroots organizing, it’s actually quite interesting, given the historical significance of the march.

In late August and early September 1921—almost 90 years ago—10,000 miners walked the same route. They were trying to organize union mines after years of exploitation in the southern West Virginia coalfields and they were prepared to do so with guns. By the end of August, the Battle of Blair Mountain—the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War—was underway.

Although the miners outnumbered the local anti-union sherriff and his forces, they lost decisively. Between 50 and 100 miners were killed, compared to 30 on the sherriff’s side. This seems to underscore one of the more basic arguments for nonviolence: the state is always better armed. In this case, the sheriff had access to private planes that dropped homemade bombs, as well as gas and explosive bombs leftover from WWI. Following the battle, 985 miners were indicted on murder and treason charges and union membership plummeted dramatically until the New Deal breathed life back into the United Mine Workers Association.

Nevertheless, the bloody battle did expose the plight of the miners to a national audience and led to a revision of union tactics—ones that focused more on getting the law on labor’s side. In this context, the destruction of Blair Mountain by a mining company is tantamount to erasing a people’s history. No wonder there are people trying to save it, as well as the natural beauty and health of the region.

As one of the current marchers, whose grandfather helped lead the miners in 1921, wrote for the March on Blair Mountain website:

Today, my connection is even more personal as I march alongside so many brave men and women who have become my friends and compatriots. Thus, to the rest of the country, I say this:

If you have witnessed the recent attacks on labor in Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states, and want to preserve the American middle class, now is the time to stand up. If you believe in environmental justice and wish to save communities from pollution and deprivation, now is the time to stand up. If you wish to preserve our historic landmarks for the education of our children, now is the time to stand up. The coal companies are trying to stop us by throwing obstacles and propaganda in our way. Still we march on. The time is now. The place is Blair Mountain, West Virginia.

Hopefully, this time around, armed with nonviolence, instead of guns, the marchers will acheive victory, if not usher in a new and more peaceful chapter in the region’s history of resistance.

Last Thursday, over at Informed Comment, Juan Cole wrote this puzzling paragraph about the Arab Spring:

In Tunisia and Egypt, the military refused for the most part to fire on peaceful noncombatants, and so the dictator had to go. But in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain, the regimes showed themselves willing to use brutal methods. Libya’s Qaddafi has killed and wounded thousands. Syrian troops have probably killed about 1000 persons. Yemen must be nearing 200. Bahrain’s security forces killed less than 30.

This makes absolutely no sense. According to an Egyptian government investigation, at least 846 people were killed and another 6,400 people injured during that country’s 18-day uprising.

That means far more people were killed in Egypt than Yemen or Bahrain. And while the death toll in Syria is now higher than Egypt, the protests there have dragged on for more than four months. Mubarak stepped down after less than three weeks. (Libya can’t really be included in this list because very quickly the conflict there devolved into an all-out civil war, which means many more deaths.)

Therefore, it is pretty clear that the Egyptian regime did not fall because it was softer or less willing to use “brutal methods” than the governments of Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. The fact is that there are different reasons why those regimes have not fallen. Each country has a unique history and each pro-democracy movement has a different make up and dynamic.

In a great interview in April with Jadaliyya, Egyptian journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy offered one explanation for why the Mubarak regime folded so quickly, which makes a lot of sense to me:

But what pushed matters in our favor and pushed Hosni Mubarak to realize OK, that he had to leave power, were the beginning of  labor strikes on the Wednesday and Thursday prior to the Friday he stepped down…  The entry of the working class as an independent social force with its independent general strikes, that’s what ended the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

How to Start a Revolution, the documentary being made on Gene Sharp and the influence of his work on democracy activists around the world, is nearing completion. After 18 months of filming, including time spent in Tahrir Square at the height of the uprising, the filmmakers have finished and moved on to the editing process. However, in order to pay for expensive archival footage, specialist post-production techniques and the publicity necessary to make an impact at festivals, they are raising money through the online funding platform Kickstarter. Based on the latest trailer, which really captures the drama of the subject matter, and what I’ve heard from friends involved in the production, this film will be a great asset to the field of civil resistance. So helping the filmmakers exceed their fundraising goal is no doubt a worthy effort. To learn more about how you can donate (and the tokens of appreciation you will receive) visit the Kickstarter page.