If the five activists are found guilty on charges of “conspiracy, trespass, destruction of property on a naval installation, and depredation of government property,” they could each face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The group’s website recaps the action and has some great quotes from the activists about how they’re taking the news:

…they entered Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in the early morning hours of November 2, 2009, All Souls Day, with the intention of calling attention to the illegality and immorality of the existence of the Trident weapons system.

During the action they held a banner saying…“Disarm Now Plowshares : Trident: Illegal + Immoral”,  left a trail of blood, hammered on the roadway and fences around Strategic Weapons Facility – Pacific (SWFPAC) and scattered sunflower seeds throughout the base.  They gained entry to the secure nuclear weapons storage facility known as Strategic Weapons Facility-Pacific (SWFPAC) where they were detained, and after extensive questioning by base security, FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), cited for trespass and destruction of government property, given ban and bar letters and released.

[...]

Bichsel said he feels compelled by his faith to continue risking his freedom for peace, despite two open-heart surgeries that require him to take frequent rests during even light exertion.  “The power of the resurrection is much stronger than our destructive ways,” he said. “I believe the presence of God made manifest through the witness of nonviolent action will break the bonds of fear, hopelessness, and death in which nuclear weapons imprison us.”

[...]

Kelly said he expects the Disarm Now Plowshares trial to be “another act of resistance” because the government will try to limit what the defendants have to say about nuclear weapons and war. The judicial body functions as a legitimizer of nuclear weapons, Kelly said. “Our actions, which could be part of the solutions, are deemed illegal, because nuclear weapons are legal,” so that courtroom becomes a place of further resistance.”

• At least 10,000 protesters marched through the streets of Paris Saturday to rally against the government’s crackdown on immigrants and the recent expulsion of hundreds of Roma.

• Hundreds of people took to the streets in northern Afghanistan to protest a US-led airstrike in Takhar province that killed civilians last Thursday. The demonstrators shouted slogans against American and foreign troops and called for them to be brought to justice.

• About 3,000 Muslims marched Saturday through Indonesia’s capital to the U.S. Embassy to protest plans by a Florida church to burn the Quran on Sept. 11.

• A small sit-in at the University of Connecticut’s administration building entered its third day on Thursday, and students vowed to remain in the building until the university promises to increase janitors’ pay.

• Gaza families of prisoners detained in Israeli jails held a protest Monday against the deduction of 170 shekels from prisoners’ salaries for electricity payments. The protesters gathered at Red Cross headquarters, and chanted slogans blaming the ruling Hamas party for the deduction, which they said increased prisoners’ suffering.

• London Underground workers started a fresh wave of 24-hour strikes, threatening travel chaos for days and costing the economy almost £50 million, in protest at plans to axe 800 jobs. The action, to be followed by further stoppages in October and November, will disrupt Tube services, used by millions of passengers every day.

• Shopkeepers observed a general strike and schools were shut for the day on Saturday in Quetta, Pakistan to mourn an overnight attack on minority Shiite Muslims that killed 68 people.

• Greenpeace members protested against Japan in front of its Ankara embassy Monday following the arrest of two group activists in that country after they exposed a whale meat scandal involving a government-sponsored whaling program in the Southern Ocean.

Western papers seem to take great pleasure in writing about protest movements in Russia. In fact, you’re far more likely to find a story about a small protest in Moscow or Siberia than you are to find news of a rally or insurrection in your own hometown. This is in part understandable: it’s difficult to stand up and make your voice heard in Putin’s Russia. When it does happen, it is newsworthy.

Take the successful campaign to stop the construction of a highway through an old growth oak forest just outside of Moscow. No one imagined that the administration would back down. After years of knocking on doors, handing out leaflets, filing lawsuits, and eventually setting up camp in the forest the environmental activists achieved their goal. It is a real possibility now that the highway will be rerouted to spare the Khimki forest. The campaign also managed to bring some 2,000 protesters onto the streets of Moscow for a concert and demonstration that was broken up by police and security forces. Several arrests were made.

Just days later, on August 31, a far smaller rally—estimates put the number at about 200 protesters—was quashed by an overwhelming display of force. The “Strategy 31” protesters have been staging rallies in Moscow’s Triumph Square for months, drawing attention to article 31 of the Russian constitution, which protects freedom of assembly. According to Agence France Press there were an astonishing 500 policemen at the latest rally and 70 protesters were detained. Moreover, several days before the scheduled protest the government announced that Triumph Square was to be converted into a massive underground parking garage. So they fenced it off. If you can’t stop the protesters from showing up you can just build a parking garage on top of the public square. At least that seems to be the strategy at the moment.

But is Russia’s opposition getting louder? And is their influence growing? Certainly, the case of Khimki was an effective campaign on several fronts. There hasn’t been a great deal of analysis as to why Medvedev suddenly backed down.

Boris Kagarlitsky, writing in the Moscow Times notes that, “a new factor in the equation is that people not previously affiliated with politics have joined the fray. The Khimki conflict does not fit into the usual paradigm of protests pitting the Kremlin authorities against the implacable opposition. In addition to Yevgenia Chirikova, leader of the Khimki forest preservation movement, music critic Artemy Troitsky, rock legend Yury Shevchuk and the country’s environmentalists have no direct connection to opposition groups. On the contrary, they tend to disassociate themselves from them.”

That seems to be another way of saying that the opposition is in fact growing. Or at least its base is and “ordinary” people like Chirikova as well as musicians and artists are more and more willing, for whatever reason, to speak out.

At bottom, though, it seems the Kremlin is losing its grip on bread and butter issues. Throughout Putin’s reign, his success has often been attributed to the fact that the economy has improved and stabilized; after the reckless pillaging of the Yeltsin years this was welcome relief. His popularity ratings soared and the Russian people were willing to put up with just about anything. But now there seem to be cracks in the walls of the Kremlin.

Witness what happened in Kaliningrad, where an unusually large protest earlier this year seems to have influenced the Kremlin’s decision to replace the exclave’s governor.

Once upon a time, governors were elected in Russia. Putin put an end to that in 2004, with little dissent or upheaval, and governors are now appointed by presidential decree, chosen from a list of candidates drawn up by the governing party.  But the people of Kaliningrad evidently weren’t impressed with their chosen leader, Georgy V. Boos. In January, 10,000 protesters took to the streets demanding that he be removed from power. In what appears to be a response to public pressure, and just plain common sense, Boos has not been offered a second term.

“On the one hand, this is a victory for the opposition thanks to the protests in January and December,” Konstantin Doroshok, the head of the Kaliningrad branch of the opposition group, Spravedlivost, told the New York Times. “On the other hand, it is important to understand that the people have not been given the most important thing: the real opportunity to independently elect governors.”

The political climate hasn’t changed—if anything it’s gotten worse—but it appears that opposition groups have been emboldened. After learning that their meeting place had been fenced off, the Strategy 31 protesters decided to simply relocate the demonstration: not only would people gather in Russian cities but they’d take to the streets elsewhere—in London, New York, Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Helsinki.

According to Bill Bowring writing in the Guardian:

“What is striking about the new protest movements is that they bring together household names of the older generation, like Alekseyeva and Lev Ponomaryov, who campaigned against Soviet repression, with the new generation of protesters and the much younger anarchists and anti-fascists, AntiFa. They match references to the constitution and to international instruments such as the European convention on human rights with direct action methods.”

Putin’s strategy, though, is the same as ever. In a recent interview with Kommersant, one of Russia’s leading dailies, he said that the issue is simple: protesters need a permit (he didn’t comment on the fact that obtaining one is nearly impossible if the authorities don’t approve of your message). Then, in typical Putin-speak—a kind of crass, juvenile messaging that he is famous for—he said, “If they go out without permission, they’ll take a cudgel to the head. That’s all there is to it.”

• Seven local college students used tables to barricade themselves inside a University of New Orleans classroom building early Wednesday, both to protest pending budget cuts and voice their desire for “free education … for everybody.”

• On Wednesday, South African tire and component workers staged a mass strike that has seen 70,000 employees down tools in protest at wages and conditions.

Chilean art collective Casagrande brought its “Poetry Rain” project to Berlin last weekend, dropping 100,000 poems over the city as a protest against war. Casagrande has done this several times since 2001, focussing on cities that have been bombed during actual warfare, such as Santiago de Chile, Dubrovnik, Guernica, and Warsaw. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any video of the drop, just the perparation for it. But if it was anything like the one they did in Warsaw, it was no doubt a spectacle to behold.

According to The Guardian:

Organisers say that just as wartime bombings were intended to “break the morale” of the inhabitants of a city, so the poetry bombing “‘builds’ a new city by giving new meaning to events of her tragic past and therefore presenting the city in a whole new original way”.

The Berlin project, for which Casagrande worked with Literaturwerkstatt Berlin as part of the Long Night of Museums, took place in the city’s Lustgarten, where a crowd of thousands had gathered to hear readings and performances by Latin American artists.

Poems dropped from the helicopter circling the area were by poets including Ann Cotten, Karin Fellner, Nora Gomringer, Andrea Heuser, Orsolya Kalász, Björn Kuhligk, Marion Poschmann, Arne Rautenberg, Monika Rinck, Hendrik Rost, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Tom Schulz, Thien Tran, Anja Utler, Jan Wagner, Ron Winkler and Uljana Wolf, according to Lyrikline.org, one of the organisations supporting the project.

Ode Magazine has a great story about three young filmmakers who made a documentary about the thousands of children abducted and enslaved by a Ugandan rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The film, Invisible Children, led to the founding of an organization by the same name, which has gone on to raise some $30 million to help survivors and inspire a movement that has successfully pressured Congress to pass legislation giving President Obama authority to put an end to the LRA’s atrocities.

What’s most impressive, as the Ode piece points out, is how much support, both financially and physically has come from young people here in the States. Some 80 percent of the $30 million collected by Invisible Children came from high school students. And back in 2006, 80,000 young people took part in a 126-city country-wide direct action by lying down and sleeping in the streets in order to call attention to the nightly trek of so many Ugandan children.

The founders of Invisible Children are not so surprised at their ability to get young Americans involved in a battle for social justice in Africa. “I think everyone wants to be swept up by an adventure, a story that gives life a meaning or purpose,” says [Jason] Russell. Surprising or not, it is miraculous. After all, so many things compete for young people’s time and attention that good causes seldom win out.

[...]

They attribute the success of Invisible Children—which works closely with organizations like Resolve Uganda and The Enough Project—to a healthy dose of naïveté. If the friends had known that Congress had passed only 3 percent of all the bills presented over the last six years, they probably would have given up before they started. “We don’t want to be ignorant,” Poole says, his eyes shining, “but there’s definitely bliss in it.”

The whole 52-minute film can be watched online at Google Video.

• Four Greenpeace activists breached a 1,650-feet security perimeter around an oil rig off western Greenland  yesterday. They then climbed up the rig and fastened themselves to it, effectively forcing it to stop drilling. As of this morning, they were still suspended 15 meters above the frigid Arctic waters of Baffin Bay.

• Russian police have detained more than 60 people demonstrating at a freedom of assembly rally in Moscow yesterday. The demonstrators chanted “Russia without Putin!” as the police led them away.

• Nearly 100 Afghan asylum seekers broke out of a detention centre in northern Australia on Wednesday to protest the long delay in processing their refugee applications.

• Four tree sitters have created a platform 100 feet up in the redwoods of Jacoby Creek California to prevent loggers from clearcutting the beautiful second growth forest.

• The Mobilization for Climate Justice West turned out 150 people on Monday afternoon in San Francisco’s financial district for a march on the offices of Chevron, the Environmental Protection Agency and BP. Their message was for Big Oil to stop harming our environment and communities and to pay for the damage they’ve caused.

• A small contingent of super heroes and one Sith Lord assembled outside the steps of City Hall Tuesday to protest the arrests made by LAPD of costumed characters along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

• Honduran police arrested some 150 people while using tear gas and water cannons to disperse a demonstration by teachers, students and others in Tegucigalpa on Aug. 27, the 23rd day of a strike by teachers over their pension fund and other issues.

On Sunday, Boston Globe senior assistant business editor Mark Pothier wrote about his feelings regarding a boycott of The Upper Crust, one of his favorite pizzerias in Boston, that has been targeted because of allegations that the company has not paid its employees for overtime.

After a few minutes of “soul-searching” about whether he should join the boycott, he says he decided to follow his taste buds. Pothier then gives a string of standard justifications for his actions:

Sure, it nags at my conscience a little to think I support a company that could be profiting at the expense of these good employees and dozens more like them. But I’m not naive, either – how would I know whether the competing family-owned pizza maker I decided to patronize instead treats its employees any better? Mom and Pop can be greedy capitalists, too.

Nowadays, it seems, the preferred tactic activists use to fight corporate misconduct, whether genuine or perceived, is the boycott. Thanks to social media, they can spread faster than a YouTube video of a cat playing the piano. But what is a boycott supposed to accomplish? Too often, such campaigns are knee-jerk reactions to a company’s blunders. They almost always inflict more harm on front-line workers than corporate culprits in tailored suits. Before the first British Petroleum tar balls fouled the Gulf Coast, for instance, drivers were urged to steer clear of BP gas stations (a “Boycott BP” Facebook page has been “liked” by nearly 850,000 people). Trouble is, most BP stations in the United States are independently owned. If you stop filling up on BP-brand unleaded, departing chief executive Tony Hayward won’t sleep any worse that he already does.

[...]

In the case of Upper Crust, if business at its 17 locations drops sharply because of an ill-advised boycott, you won’t need an economist to figure out the likely consequences: fewer hours for employees, then fewer employees, and, eventually, fewer restaurants. That means more people on unemployment, more dark spaces on Main Streets.

By making this final point, Pothier reveals his true ignorance of the history and power of boycotts. While hypothetically his scenario could play out, an effective boycott could also push Upper Crust to do the right thing and compensate its employees properly.

Almost nine-months later, having been imprisoned in weather-beaten tents at the Ofer military detention camp, prosecutors (failing to provide a single piece of documentary evidence) convinced a military courtroom to convict Abdallah Abu Rahmah for his involvement in coordinating “illegal” weekly marches and “incitement” with the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. These charges, although unreasonable, are not as ridiculous as the ones he was acquitted on, which were taking Israeli tear gas grenades and canisters (weapons that recently killed activist Basem Abu Rahma and have injured others) to create an artistic peace sign.

Protests against the conviction have already begun with large gatherings outside Bil’in where many waved Palestinian flags and yelled out the injustice in Arabic and Hebrew. Israeli soldiers hiding behind clouds of suffocating smoke and ballistic shields regrouped to drive off the demonstrators.

Since 2004, Abdallah Abu Rahmah has organized and led Bil’in demonstrations with the grassroots movement Bil’in Popular Committee that pushes for nonviolent resistance against the illegal fence/wall and the Israeli occupation. These nonviolent movements have become inviolable and more widespread in the West Bank over the years. Despite human rights violations, Israeli soldiers continue to arrest, kidnap, torture, threaten with deportation or even kill those who demonstrate for self-determination.

Within a country that speaks to Palestinians with firearms, bulldozers, and land encroaching, Abdallah Abu Rahmah has been lauded by many as the “Palestinian Gandhi” for his devotion to maintaining a nonviolent stance as he leads the movement. But now Abdallah Abu Rahmah is facing up to 10 years imprisonment for “legitimately exercising [his] right to freedom of expression in opposing the Israeli fence/wall,” according to Amnesty International.

The first appearance of movements taking up Gandhian tactics in the struggle against Israel’s control was during the 1967 the Six-Day War. After Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Palestinians countered with acts of civil disobedience against biased textbooks that Israel issued for Palestinian schools. Many protested in the streets, others closed down their businesses and teachers stopped showing up for work. Israel then adapted by criminalizing all forms of resistance, which limited Palestinians.

Decades later this remains the same. When Palestinians, Israelis or internationals confront Israeli forces, soldiers are trained to respond with violence by indiscriminate usage of sound bombs, rubber coated bullets (Abdallah Abu Rahmah, like many others, has been intentionally targeted and even shot in the head by these so-called “non-lethal” bullets), live ammunition, tear gas canisters, baton beatings and water cannons. This is done regardless if Palestinian youths instigate with stone-throwing (something that Abdallah Abu Rahmah is unable to control) or keep their demonstrations entirely peaceful.

Nonviolence that’s practiced by Palestinians is met with intensified violent measures from Israeli soldiers. These disproportionate methods of aggression against the Bil’in Popular Committee’s unarmed struggle are an ongoing attempt to stoke fear, intimidation and to break the will of the community resistance group in the West Bank area. Special diligence should be given to the probability that Israel may want to provoke another armed uprising. This would then be used to mislead the public and build support for the use of Israel’s overpowering military against Palestinians.

Unsurprisingly, the American media has let these sufferings go unreported, though it doesn’t go completely ignored elsewhere. Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s imprisonment has garnered outrage from Catherine Ashton, the foreign affairs chief of the European Union (EU), who considers Abdallah Abu Rahmah a “human rights defender committed to non-violent protest against the route of the Israeli separation barrier” and has said that “the EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal.”

Up against growing opposition from international diplomats (some from the US, Germany, Sweden and Spain), the Israeli government is running out of excuses for what it has done. As they repeatedly use violence while masking their crimes with lies, they gradually lose the little creditability they have. The mounting pressure from nonviolent movements in the face of the Israeli government will only garner sympathy from others who renounce the Israeli occupation.

In January 2010, following the New Year, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, awaiting a bleak outcome in the decrepit prison of Ofer, wrote in a heartfelt letter to his friends and supporters:

We are engaged in an international fight against oppression […] Ordinary people enraged by the occupation have made our struggle their own, and joined us in solidarity. We will surely join together to struggle for justice in other places when Palestine is finally free.

• Century City’s business as usual came to a standstill Thursday afternoon as the janitors who lost their jobs cleaning JPMorgan Chase-owned Century Plaza towers were joined by 500 janitors, community activists, and union supporters at a march and protest in Los Angeles. Thirteen people were arrested for blocking an intersection in an act of civil disobedience.

• Some 10,000 people gathered outside historic Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. on Saturday for the “Reclaim the Dream” march commemorating the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a Dream Speech.”

• On Sunday, an estimated 80,000 Hong Kongers marched in honor of eight people killed in a bus hijacking in Manila, attacking the Philippine government for botching the rescue operation and demanding justice for the dead.

• Teachers on Thursday staged a 24-hour strike and paralyzed Puerto Rican public education to protest what they say is a general deterioration of the school system.

• On Thursday, two protesters associated with Climate Ground Zero blocked the entrance to the headquarters of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to bring attention to what they believe is the DEP’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act by permitting mountaintop removal mining.

• A protest of Nigerian women shut down a Shell plant last Wednesday, just one week after a group of Ugborodo women blockaded a Chevron natural gas pipeline.

• Oil workers calling for compensation for recently fired employees maintained a blockade at a storage plant in southern Argentina on Friday.