• Singing choruses of “we shall not be moved” while scattering sunflower seeds, 14 activists were arrested in Kansas City on Monday after blocking an earth moving vehicle on the site of a proposed nuclear weapons manufacturing facility.

• Last Friday, around 35 Palestinians demonstrated against Hallamish settlement with around 15 Israeli and international peace activists in the village of An Nabi Salih.

• German workers on Tuesday protested against what their union says are plans by the country’s central bank to have euro banknotes printed by foreign companies.

• Some Pakistani flood victims blocked highways to demand government help on Tuesday.

• Three television channels in Ukraine went on strike on Saturday in protest of steadily increasing pressure on media in Ukraine, with hundreds of other journalists declaring readiness to join the action.

• Students from various schools and universities in the Philippines traded the four corners of their classrooms for the streets last Friday to join the National Youth Walkout and appeal for more government support for the education sector.

• On Monday, hundreds of protesters started a sit-in outside the legislature, fueled by mounting anger over the government’s cross-strait policies and the expected passage of a controversial trade agreement with China later this week.

• The 19-day long protest in Bolivia’s Potosi province was finally brought to an end with the protesters lifting the blockade of the airport and major roads after a deal was struck with the government.

• The entire team of Sri Lanka’s government wildlife vets has gone on strike amid mounting controversy over an elephant conservation plan that has led to increased clashes between the animals and villagers.

• Public sector workers went on strike across South Africa Tuesday, closing schools and wreaking havoc on a wide array of public services. As many as 1.3 million people were expected to walk off their jobs. Between 10,000 and 100,000 workers also demonstrated Tuesday across five provinces.

• Dozens of construction workers building a subway in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, have vowed to begin a hunger strike today to demand three months of unpaid wages.

• On Monday, a few dozen Embassy Suites workers who claim they are routinely denied breaks walked off the job in Irvine, California.

• Anti-government protesters in Bolivia tightened their siege of Potosi on Saturday, launching a hunger strike and cutting rail links to Chile, as tourists began negotiating their way out of the mining city, 10 days into the blockade.

• Nine protesters were arrested for blocking the main gate to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor on Monday. They were among members and supporters of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, which holds an annual vigil at the base on the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• More than 30,000 truck drivers in the Dominican Republic went on a 24-hour strike yesterday to protest a government proposal to raise the fuel tax.

• Workers at the Post-Gazette walked out at Noon on Monday to protest pending staff cuts the paper says are needed to stay afloat.

• In India, Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev staged a sit-in protest at Haridwar with a demand to halt the hydropower projects across River Ganga and also to protect the river from further exploitation and pollution. Several Hindu monks also accompanied Baba Ramdev in this crusade.

• A three-day strike launched on Monday by customs workers in Ivory Coast over benefits that have been withheld is blocking exports of cocoa from the world’s top grower of the beans.

Friday marked the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. That’s 65 years of mourning for a city that lost 150,000 people in almost an instant. But it was the first year the city of Hiroshima marked the somber event with a US envoy present.

In a statement to the press, US Ambassador John Roos said, “For the sake of future generations, we must continue to work together to realize a world without nuclear weapons.”

As author and longtime opponent of nuclear weapons Robert Jay Lifton told Democracy Now! in the above video:

… the traditional American response to August 6th has been to justify the use of the weapon on many of the media, saying that this cruelest weapon ever devised saved lives rather than took lives. This is a reversal of that position. It’s joining in the commemoration of a tragedy and the embrace of an anti-nuclear position. So I take it to be extremely important.

Having attended Hiroshima anniversary vigils in past years—where even members of the Japanese Embassy were too uncomfortable acknowledging our presence for fear of embarrassing their modern-day US allies—I can appreciate the historic magnitude of this gesture by President Obama. At the same time, however, it is sad that such a simple—and no doubt, long deserved—act would carry such weight. After all, Obama hasn’t physically moved any closer to fulfilling his commitment to abolitish of nuclear weapons.

That being said, this is no time for activists to dampen this truly important moment. It’s an opportunity to keep the dialogue open about nuclear weapons and continue pushing for their abolition.

• Police arrested 37 people for entering a Tennessee nuclear weapons plant on Monday during a demonstration marking the anniversary of the landmark Plowshares protest in 1980 at a missile plant in Pennsylvania, where Dan and Phil Berrigan were able to get inside the General Electric facility, damage a missile nose cone and pour blood on various documents. Four of the original “Plowshares Eight,” each of whom served time in jails or prisons for their actions participated in the protest: John Schuchardt, Molly Rush, Anne Montgomery and Carl Kabat – as well as Liz McAlister, Phil Berrigan’s widow.

• Merchants in Tehran’s main bazaar gathered in protest on Tuesday to protest a government plan to dramatically increase taxes on their businesses. With threats of a general strike looming, authorities were forced to back down.

• Hundreds of people staged a demonstration in Rome on Wednesday to demand help from the government for the reconstruction of places damaged by the April 2009 quake.

• About 1,000 ex-militants in Nigeria, who last year laid down their arms under a government amnesty, drove a convoy of buses towards the Nigerian capital yesterday and blocked the highway for several hours to protest their exclusion from the on-going post-amnesty retraining program.

• Religious and immigrant rights activists gathered outside the White House yesterday to urge the Obama administration to approach immigration reform and voice support for the Justice Department’s recent challenge of Arizona’s hardline immigration policy.

• Four Earth First! protesters were arrested today after they temporarily stopped a semi-truck carrying a 140-foot wind turbine blade to Kibby Mountain in Maine. The protesters oppose alternative energy projects that profit corporations at the expense of sensitive ecosystems.

• The wife of a quadriplegic in Britain has gone on hunger strike to protest the lack of National Health Service care for her husband. She has vowed to starve to death to win the support he needs.

• Thousands of Italian farmers took part in a demonstration on the Austrian border to protest the importation of food with Italian-sounding branding that they feel harms Italy’s reputation for quality food.

As a New Zealander, I was both delighted and concerned to discover that my country is considered the most peaceful in the world by the 2010 Global Peace Index (GPI), a publication developed by an international panel of peace experts in collaboration with the Economist Intelligence Unit and published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

On one hand, I think the world needs initiatives like this. The study’s founder, Steve Killelea calls the GPI “a wake-up call for leaders around the globe”, and I hope he is right. But, given the factors it examines—such as levels of violence and crime within a country, plus military expenditure and wars—the GPI unfortunately glosses over some interesting realities.

First, if you do believe peace can be achieved at the end of a gun, it unfairly vilifies countries like the United States who, though they account for 54 percent of global military spending, tend to use this spending to ensure the “peace” of their allies and neighbors. So countries sheltering under the military wings of a world power can happily slide up the index by letting the US (and the other top spenders like Russia, the UK, France and China) slide down.

Being a strong believer in nonviolent solutions to conflict resolution, I commend the GPI for bringing people’s attention to the scale of military spending by these countries. Most of the time I think what the US would call “ensuring peace, freedom and stability,” is just another name for exploitation and empire-building. Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of this so-called “peace” are never challenged about their complicity in global conflict.

A New Zealand soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan's Bamiyan Province on July 8, 2008.

And complicit we are.

The New Zealand government sent troops to support the US-led invasion of Afghanistan immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks. They have been there ever since. According to Jonathan Steele of The Guardian between 20,000 and 49,600 people may have died of the consequences of the invasion. It is estimated that in Afghanistan there are 1.5 million suffering from immediate starvation, as well as 7.5 million suffering as a result of the country’s dire situation.

No matter. The NZ government uses rhetoric about “security” and “fighting terrorism” as a justification for the continued involvement of the NZDF (Defense Force). The language used by the government creates the image of altruistic action by the military. Soldiers are “peacekeepers” sent to do “reconstruction”—which obscures the reality that the Afghani government was installed by the US for economic reasons. It was only after the media revealed that the NZSAS (Special Air Service) was there that the government admitted to their involvement. They loudly trumpet the “reconstruction team” as “humanitarian aid” when in fact they are there to prop up the US military occupation.

Read the rest of this article »

• Workers gathered and made traditional Chinese funeral offerings yesterday at Foxconn headquarters in China after a series of suicides and suicide attempts.  Protesters say the company, which makes Apple’s iPad, has unhealthy working conditions.

• Members of the Fishermen Cooperative Society in coastal Pakistan gathered yesterday to protest recent police actions against villagers protesting the occupation of an ancient graveyard.

• On Monday off the Louisiana coast, seven Greenpeace members boarded an offshore drilling support ship and painted anti-drilling messages in oil on the side of the ship.  They have since been arrested and charged with unauthorized entry.

• Thousands of people marched in Switzerland on Monday to protest the building of nuclear power stations in the country.

• Members of the group Manchester Plane Stupid chained themselves to the wheels of a plane on Monday to protest the expansion of the World Freight Centre at Manchester Airport, which they say will be an environmental disaster.

• The Kayapo indigenous group in Brazil continues their month-long blockade of an Amazon highway to protest the building of a dam they say will destroy their communities and livelihoods.

Over at Danger Room, Noah Shachtman had a post recently poking fun of protester James Richard Sauder, who was recently arrested after scaling a fence at a nuclear missile silo.

While Sauder was apparently well intentioned, his outfit and the complicated explanation of his elaborate headdress, obviously make it very easy to dismiss him.

Honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine who would take someone dressed that way seriously.

What really surprised me, however, was when Shachtman wrote that Sauder’s “loony symbolic protest,” paled in comparison to how crazy some of our plowshares friends are, who dressed in clown suits a few years back and broke into a nuclear base.

While I was at first disappointed to read this, maybe he has a point. Shachtman from my experience is a pretty reasonable guy. The fact that he saw the clown suits as even more “loony” than Sauder’s outfit isn’t good. Perhaps dressing as clowns isn’t the best way for plowshares activists to highlight the absurdity of war and the ease with which people can get into a nuclear facility. Figuring out which symbols everyday folks will connect to is no easy task.

As we’ve written about here before, how demonstrators present themselves matters and will seriously influence the likelihood that passers-by will be moved by a protest. By dressing normally or even in our Sunday best, and keeping our message focused and simple, I think we will have a much greater chance of reaching those who think differently.

As the United Nations’ Nuclear Non-Proliferation Conference was beginning just a few blocks away, activists came to New York City’s Grand Central Station this rainy morning to take a stand for real and rapid nuclear disarmament. The direct action followed a weekend of talks, workshops, and actions led by the War Resisters League. A handful of protesters were arrested by police for taking part in a die-in on the floor of the station with signs in their hands.

The action began at 8 am, at the height of the morning rush. Protesters—including those from the War Resisters League, the Catholic Worker, Veterans for Peace, the Granny Peace Brigade, and Think Outside the Bomb—marched in a circle around the information desk at the middle of the station’s Main Concourse, under the blue, constellationed ceiling overhead.

Read the rest of this article »

In 1982, the War Resisters League initiated a “Blockade the Bombmakers” series of mass actions in New York City at the UN Missions of the five nuclear powers of the time. It was day one of the UN Special Session on Disarmament, and nearly 1,700 people were arrested in the blockades. The day before, one million people crowded into Manhattan to press for nuclear disarmament.

Times have changed…. alot.

Most people don’t know that 27,000 nuclear warheads still menace the world. Most (95%) are held by the United States and Russia. If they do know, they think they are some distant issue that does not affect daily life.

But for 2011, President Obama is proposing $8 billion in nuclear weapons research and development funding while schools and hospitals are closing or cutting staff, roads and bridges crumble and public services are desperate for money.

Even more alarming, the United States maintains that nuclear weapons play an “essential” role in U.S. national security and the Obama administration has not ruled out “first use” of nuclear weapons. This “right” allows the United States to drop the first bomb in an atomic war, thus leaving U.S. global dominance through military power unchallenged and unchecked. Another key Pentagon document, the Quadrennial Defense Review, suggests that as nuclear reductions are completed, more powerful conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) weapons capabilities — called “Prompt Global Strike” — will be necessary.

So, we might not have a million in the streets, but that does not mean we can be passive and complacent! On May 2, the “Disarm Now: For Peace and Human Needs” march across 42nd St. will bring the world’s message of disarmament to the UN.

The War Resisters League, a secular pacifist organization founded in 1923, invites everyone to Grand Central Station to declare NYC a “nuclear weapons free zone,” and imagine what our city would look like without the billions spent on nuclear weapons and the terrorism of the nuclear threat.

For more information visit: http://www.warresisters.org/NPTactions, and for a full schedule of the events and actions around the NPT conference click here.

• Four Czech activists climbed the Krusnohorske theatre in Teplice on Saturday to protest the planned cancellation of coal mining limits by the Social Democrats, who were hosting a conference inside.

• Hundreds of demonstrators gathered near the Erez (Beit Hanoun) border crossing on Sunday to mark the 1,000-day Israeli blockade imposed on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

• Around 1,000 men and women gathered outside the Jerusalem home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday to protest gender discrimination on some bus routes in ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, where women are made to sit at the back.

• About 1,000 people took part in an anti-nuclear protest in Edinburgh calling for the scrapping of Trident, saying money would be better spent public sector jobs and services.

• More than 300 Bahraini fishermen and their relatives demonstrated outside the Fishermen’s Protection Society in Muharraq on Saturday to protest the rapid decline in marine stocks due to a lack of regulation for fishing licenses and sand dredging of the seabed.

• A few hundred people gathered in the streets of Valletta, Malta on Saturday to protest the lack of enforcement of environment protection laws, such as encroachment on outside development zones, illegal hunting, air pollution, unauthorized groundwater extraction and other local issues.

Vredesactie (Peace Action), a “movement that radically acvocates a society in which conflicts are settled without violence or the threat to use violence,” posted this video on YouTube on Monday of a group of Bombspotters sneaking into the Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium, where they say around 20 NATO nuclear warheads are stored.

According to their website:

April 3rd will be a European Day of Action to ban nuclear weapons. Mass actions will take place at every European NATO nuclear weapons base in Germany, The Netherlands, France, Italy, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Belgium.

To learn more about the history of Bombspotting actions, which involve widespread “civil disobedience by trespassing and inspecting military bases and headquarters,” click here.

One of our good friends, Sr. Anne Montgomery told Kairos – a local peace group that I’m a part of in New York City – at our last meeting about this great satirical video that the Seattle Times made about the Disarm Now Plowshares action that she participated in, along with four others, at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base in Washington State.

For a brief recap of their action:

They entered the base in the early morning hours of November 2, 2009, All Souls Day, to call attention to the illegality and immorality of the existence of the first strike Trident weapons system.  They entered through the perimeter fence, and walked through the base for four hours.  During that time they made their way to the Strategic Weapons Facility – Pacific (SWFPAC) where they cut through the first chain link fence surrounding SWFPAC. They then walked to and cut the next double layered fence, both chain link and barbed wire, and entered the grounds of SWFPAC.  This bunker area holds the largest nuclear weapon stockpile in the United States.

As they walked they held a banner saying…… “Disarm Now Plowshares: Trident: Illegal and Immoral”.  The Plowshares activists knew that they were in a shoot to kill zone, but they also remembered the many people who live in shoot to kill zones all the time because of US occupation of their country.

The unarmed activists were then held on the ground face down, handcuffed and hooded for over three hours. They were carried out, still hooded, through the very holes in the fence that they had made, and questioned by FBI and NCIS for several hours.

Although they gave only their names, they were given Ban and Bar letters and citations for trespass and destruction of government property.

The last I’ve heard on the status of their case is that the misdemeanor charges were dropped, but the government is currently exploring whether it should file felony charges against the group. To learn more about their action, follow their case as it develops or show your support, visit their blog.

• In San Diego, three single-payer health care supporters were arrested Monday after protesting outside the Mission Valley office of Blue Shield of California. Three others were arrested at a sit-in yesterday in St. Louis outside of Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield as part of the same campaign, organized by Mobilization for Health Care for All.

• Five peace activists were arrested Monday for entering a naval base in Bangor, Washington as part of a Plowshares action. The activists cut a hole in a fence to access the base. As they walked onto the grounds of the base, they left a trail of blood and hammered on the roadway and fences, and scattered sunflower seeds throughout the base. The base is used to service Trident nuclear missiles carried by US submarines.

• Following a landmark referendum, students at the UK’s Sussex University in Brighton this week voted to boycott Israeli goods.

• In the UK, 1,500 Unite union members at Fujitsu have voted in favour of striking in protest at planned cuts to jobs, pay and pensions.

• A union of workers at Greece’s largest commercial port has called a strike today and tomorrow to protest a concession to the Chinese company Cosco Pacific, saying the deal will lead to job losses.

• On Tuesday, seventeen people were arrested at the New York offices of the insurance giant Aetna. The activists linked arms and chanted slogans “People Not Profits, Medicare for All.” The action was the first in a campaign by the group Mobilization for Health Care for All to hold sit-ins at insurance company offices nationwide.

• The World March for Peace and Nonviolence kicks off today in New Zealand, marking the start of the world’s first six-continent peace march calling for the elimination of wars, nuclear weapons and violence of all kinds.

• Stores, schools and other establishments were shuttered on Thursday in predominantly Arab communities in Israel, including the Biblical city of Nazareth, as 90 percent of the Arab Israeli population took part in a general strike to protest what organisers called “racist” policies and to mark the ninth anniversary of demonstrations at which police killed 13 Arabs.

• In San Juan, members of the Puerto Rican Workers union, SEIU Local 1996SPT, were violently removed by SWAT team agents and arrested for protesting the Governor’s announcement on Friday to lay off 16,970 government employees .

• On Wednesday, the Ecuadorian Police staged a violent raid on a group of indigenous people  blockading the bridge to protest proposed new war and land rights laws. The attack has left at least one confirmed dead, a teacher and member of the Shuar nation, and some 49 civilians and police injured.

• In India, over 10,000 engineers and account officers of state-owned telecom firm BSNL will go on hunger strike today on Gandhi Jayanti Day demanding absorption of officers on deputation and pay revisions, nearly one and a half months after engineers struck work for four days.

• About 150 immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India who had been living and working  for years in Greece began a mass hunger strike on Sunday at the airport in Athens after being detained.

• In Vermont, four women were arrested earlier this week after blocking entry to a nuclear plant in the town of Vernon. The four members of Vermont Yankee Shut It Down Affinity Group entered the plant housing the Vermont Yankee reactor and sat down on folding chairs. The group includes the ninety-year-old peace activist Frances Crowe.

• A group of migrants from Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Palestine, and Egypt, began a highly visible hunger strike on Wednesday in France that they plan to continue until Western countries co-operate to offer them asylum.

• The pilots of Air India ended their five-day-old strike after an assurance over payment of allowances from Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel.

A recent New York Times piece about the anti-nuclear weapons work of Rev. Carl Kabat, included a picture that says it all.

Cara Degette/Colorado Springs Independent, via the New York Times

The story tells of his early work with the Berrigan brothers during the Vietnam War. Despite a life of hardship and imprisonment for his convictions, he continues the struggle into his old age:

At 75 he continues his crusade against nuclear weapons at missile silos across the United States, armed with a hammer and a pair of bolt cutters. He usually wears a clown suit, in homage, he says, to St. Paul’s words: “We are fools for Christ’s sake.”

Though his actions are mostly symbolic — the authorities have always seized him before he could damage a live missile — he has spent half of the last three decades in state and federal prisons.

His most recent protest unfolded on a quiet dawn last month, when he drove down a country road outside Greeley, a few hours north of Denver, used the bolt cutters to cut a hole in a chain-link fence, wedged his aging body through and stepped atop the silo of a Minuteman III nuclear missile coming up from the ground. He had enough time — about 45 minutes — to drape antiwar banners from the fence, say a prayer and try without success to open a hatch leading to the silo before he was arrested by Air Force security personnel.

Don’t miss the rest of the article. We are, indeed, fools if we fail to hear Kabat out.