• Millions of people, including members of the nation’s eleven largest trade unions, took to the streets across India today in a nationwide strike that seeks a remedy to rampant inflation, an end to the privatization of public entities, and increased labor protections — including calls for a social security system and a minimum wage.

• Tens of thousands of Muscovites wearing white ribbons ventured out under a light snow Sunday and formed a human chain along the entire 10-mile Garden Ring Road encircling the city center, creating a festive spectacle like nothing anyone remembers seeing before in the Russian capital.

• Thirteen Tibetans, detained last week for protesting against China in front of the United Nations office in Nepal, started an indefinite hunger strike on Monday to press for their release.

• Actress-turned-eco-warrior Lucy Lawless has been arrested with six Greenpeace activists after the group spent four days protesting aboard an oil-drilling ship docked in New Zealand.

• Dozens of women and young children from Kashmiri refugee camps holding placards inscribed with pro-freedom slogans staged a sit-in and a rally on Sunday to invite attention international community on Kashmir.

• In Pakistan, hundreds of tribesmen Saturday kicked off protests and a two-day sit-in against the U.S. drone attacks outside the Parliament House in Islamabad.

• Critics of the 22-year-old authoritarian rule of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev staged protests in four cities Saturday and were met by overwhelming police forces but little violence.

• Five disabled protesters in Bolivia have begun a hunger strike in their campaign demanding that the government pay an annual subsidy to disabled people. About 1,000 disabled Bolivians and their supporters rallied outside the country’s parliament building on Thursday following a 100-day protest journey to the capital to call for the $700 payment.

Several weeks ago, a 28-year-old Army vet, who had worked with drones during two tours in Iraq and is now a radical art student in New York, came up with a creative act of protest to raise awareness around the growing use of drones domestically by police forces across the country.

According to an article in last week’s New Yorker, over the course of several nights, the veteran (who remains anonymous) and a few friends posted eleven unusual street signs around New York City, which is apparently investigating using drones as a law enforcement tool.

Designed to look exactly like official street signs, the fake NYPD signs had several different messages: “ATTENTION: Drone Activity in Progress,” or “ATTENTION: Local Statutes Enforced by Drones,” or “ATTENTION: Authorized Drone Strike Zone, 8am-8pm, Including Sunday.”

Near each sign, they also stenciled a quote from a Founding Father, such as a warning from Ben Franklin that seems particularly apropos: “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

As Avaaz pledged to do as part of a recent petition, activists now need to buy or build their own drones and fly them over the city to back up these signs and make the reality of drones just a bit more tangible to an American public that often seems completely disconnected from the issue.

Nick Turse has published a revealing overview of the dramatic proliferation of US Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Unmanned Aerial Systems entitled “Inside our drone base empire.” As Turse, a senior editor of Alternet.org, writes:

They increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about.

And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide. Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous — until now.

Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and their proxies, these bases — some little more than desolate airstrips, others sophisticated command and control centers filled with computer screens and high-tech electronic equipment — are the backbone of a new American robotic way of war. They are also the latest development in a long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad — in this case, remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign “footprint” and little accountability.

Turse’s reference to drones and their “base empire” got me thinking again about the late Chalmers Johnson, the Cold Warrior who found himself making a fundamental shift in his later years. In so doing, he helped pull back the curtain on what he termed the United States’ “base world.”

Turse’s depiction of the growing presence of drone bases is just another piece of the puzzle that Johnson, who died last November, spent the last years of his life documenting and sounding the alarm about.

I was a latecomer to Chalmers Johnson. It was not until I read John Dominic Crossan’s book, God and Empire that I learned about this academic and former CIA consultant who underwent a profound metamorphosis and who produced a series of remarkable books peeling back much that hides the truth about the imperial musculature of this country.

Johnson had served in the US military during the Korean War, authored numerous books, and rose through the ranks of academia to become a department chair at the University of California at Berkeley. He later founded the Japan Policy Research Institute. His awakening came after the USSR collapsed. He was stunned to see that, instead of demobilizing its forces, the US strengthened them, and has carried on with one war after another since then.

His intellectual honesty being what it was, he had to re-think everything.

The result was a trilogy that outlines how the US empire is not rooted in colonies but what he names a “base world”—in 2005, he documented 737 US bases around the planet that function to establish and maintain US military, political, and economic preeminence. (Since then, Nick Turse has documented that the US now likely possesses over 1,000 bases worldwide.)  Johnson is somber about the karma this entails—the equal and opposite reaction this base world sparks and the whirlwind it will reap.

Hence the weight and meaning of his three books: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire; The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic; and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

There are many ways to “wage nonviolence.” Chalmers’ activism was rooted in his cogent and painstaking academic research, the results of which he not only published but promoted in numerous venues. He connected the dots of American empire and offered us a more clear understanding of the infrastructure of total dominance and its consequences.

This in itself was a profound act of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent change.

Such active analysis will be crucial to what I like to call the “nonviolent shift”—the long-term process of creating a culture of justice and peace using tools of nonviolent transformation. It is not the process of creating a utopia. Instead, it is a slow construction of an environment—a human “family system” —that entertains the nonviolent option as the default. Building such a culture entails political, sociological, psychological, and artistic work. But these must, in turn, be grounded in a deep spiritual transformation—what eco-philosopher Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning.

This is why I regard Chalmers Johnson’s work as a critical step in a required existential therapy of our time. It brings the reality with which we must contend into sharp focus.

For Gandhi, Johnson’s chilling analysis would lead, first, to the question: In what ways have I propped this up? What implicit or explicit consent? What is it inside that has helped keep this going? How are we supporting this? And how do we loosen those chains inside – so that we may remove the pillars of support that keep such a policy in place?

Chalmers Johnson’s legacy invite us to glimpse the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Then, in the spirit of Gandhi, it prompts us to explore all the ways we have consented to and supported this macabre charade. Finally, it calls us to act—to recognize that we are at the crossroads and to take action to renounce the lethal allure and accelerating momentum of empire.

This will be no simple thing. But the task is made just a bit easier by the kind of engaged research that Chalmers Johnson—and others like Nick Turse—have gifted us with.

May we have many more examples of this form of nonviolent action.

The 792nd consecutive weekly vigil outside of Alliant Techsystems in Minneapolis in August.

As I mentioned in this space earlier, I was recently in Barcelona at the War Resisters International’s seminar on War Profiteering and Peace Movement Responses. It was a really interesting time to be a Yankee abroad. The streets in the city center filled up with protests against budget cuts each evening, and everyone at the meetings was talking about OccupyWallStreet in slightly awed and disbelieving tones—as though to say “even the U.S. of A. is getting with the program.”

I was repeatedly asked where I thought the Occupy Movement was headed, a question I cleverly avoided—“look, is that a tapas bar over there? How do you say, ‘more wine, please’ in Spanish?” It is a good question, but as Donald Rumsfeld used to say: “that’s above my pay grade.”

At the end of each long day participating in different seminar tracks (war and exploitation of natural resources, exposing the bad guys, new trends in war profiteering) and workshops on how to research the arms trade, use social media and campaign against drone warfare, we gathered in the city center for the Trobada, convened by the Center for Study of Justice and Peace (Centre d’Estudis per a la Pau JM Delàs). Lots of people turned out for these nightly events, the one at which I presented drew more than one hundred people on a Friday night (but no one in Barcelona eats dinner before 10 pm anyway).

I spent my 20 minutes trying to sharing some of the peace movement responses to war making and war profiteering. The people of Barcelona found this helpful and inspiring (at least those who were there, or at least that is what they told me) and so I thought I would use my blog post this week to share some of what I said there.

When we spend all our time focused on exactly what is wrong and how big and powerful the wrongdoers are, we can inadvertently give short shrift to the people organizing and struggling and (sometimes) winning, so I want to share some snapshots of U.S. resistance. The international news media has focused some attention on the Occupy Movement, but here are some things you are probably not hearing about:

A few weeks ago, a small group gathered in Washington to protest the annual weapons showcase at a fancy hotel. Representatives from every major weapons manufacturer came together, looked at the latest killing technology and made deals. They also ate very expensive meals—the Air Force Association and Lockheed Martin sponsored a $330 a plate banquet. Outside protesters held signs and read from a statement:

We cannot let the arms merchants, who are displaying the latest killing technology and weapons, conduct their gala banquet without protest.  We seek to give voice to the victims who have suffered and died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere as a direct result of U.S. warmaking, and weapons, like the Drone “Predator” and “Reaper” bombing planes, produced by the arms contractors participating in the Arms Bazaar.

At the beginning of the month, there was a week of action against nuclear weapons and the militarism of space organized out of a small town in Maine that is home to General Dynamics’ military ship building enterprise. The week of action encompassed thousands of people around the world. I like thinking about this group of people in particular. It seems like the script of a sci-fi movie—the battle between the powers that have colonized the heavens for military domination and the communities that want to see the billions of dollars and brilliance of scientists and engineers harnessed for the good of this world.

And on October 2, in Minneapolis, a small group of activists celebrated Mahatma Gandhi’s 142nd birthday and discussed what will happen next, now that Alliant Techsystems—the weapons manufacturer they have protested and vigiled and trespassed at is closing its operations in Minnesota and moving to the Washington, DC area. This cluster bomb maker wants to be closer to its customers. The group has been there every Wednesday morning for 798 weeks. If you know of a good place to vigil, give Alliant Action a call.

Also, last weekend, on the other side of our huge nation, Catholic Worker communities from around the country gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada. The acolytes of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, who believe in the works of mercy, personalism and adhere to a radical vision of redistribution of wealth and power out of the hands of the bosses and bishops and experts and intellectuals and into the hands of the poor gathered in the city that best exemplifies my country’s quest of mindless entertainment, wealth without labor and rapacious consumption of resources. They met and prayed and shared and resisted. Many occupied the Nevada Test Site where nuclear weapons were tested above and below ground for decades and Creech Air Force base where military drones operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are based.

Inspired by the Arab Spring, another group began an open-ended occupation in Washington, DC in a park called “Freedom Square” last Thursday.

These are just a few of the peace movement responses. And there are so many more! Despite the bleak outlook and the dark times, the United States is a nation up in arms: struggling, resisting, and organizing. It is a cause for hope.  We cannot get overwhelmed, we cannot get tired or despondent in the face of all of this. We must continue. We must share information and analysis, we must strategize together. We must.

A friend of mine once called Las Vegas “the Lourdes of America.”  People come looking for a miracle, but it’s the casinos that mostly cash in.  This doesn’t stop the 36 million pilgrims who travel annually to this neon oasis, searching for some indefinable fulfillment, away from home, untethered from their habitual routines and inhibitions, a little off-balance, spending money like the water that is rapidly disappearing in this overbuilt desert.

Las Vegas always feels a little like Wall Street on steroids—or is it the other way around?  This past Saturday, October 8, more that 1,000 people made this point intentionally or not as they brought the Occupy movement to the Strip.  Setting off from the New York New York casino, they voiced a common frustration at the deepening economic inequality in the United States and the increasing financial pain in their city, where the home foreclosure calamity grows daily.

This demonstration, like those spreading across America in over 1,300 cities, sharpened one facet of the crisis we face today.

Two protests the next morning highlighted another one.

Peace and justice advocates caravanned north from Las Vegas along Interstate 95 on Sunday, October 9 to take action together at the Nevada National Security Site (formerly the Nevada Test Site) and Creech Air Force Base, which operates drone aircraft being used around the world.

Members of the Nevada Desert Experience, Code Pink, and the Catholic Worker movement who had traveled from 26 states dropped in on these two high security sites to protest ten years of war in Afghanistan, a runaway military establishment, and a rapidly multiplying drone fleet.

In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of people traveled to the Nevada Test Site to call for an end to nuclear weapons testing at a site where 928 nuclear bombs had been detonated above and below ground.  In one ten-day stretch in 1988, for example, 8,000 people crossed the line and were cited for trespass.  (In the early days of the protests, Nye County meted out jail sentences of a few weeks to several months to arrestees.  After a year or two, it found this too expensive, and in most cases issued citations that were never acted on.)

These actions played an important role in creating the political conditions for the passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which most nations have signed.  (While the US has never signed this treaty, it has maintained a moratorium on conducting a nuclear test that goes to “full criticality.”)  However, the newly renamed site continues to “support the country’s nuclear weapons programs, has a mandate to restart full-scale nuclear bomb tests within two years if so ordered by the President, and receives and stores radioactive waste on land that belongs to the Western Shoshone Nation,” as Nevada Desert Experience coordinator Jim Haber reports.

On Sunday, after an interfaith service at the entrance to the Nevada National Security Site, 59 women and men crossed into this top-secret facility and were arrested and cited by Nye County Sheriffs.  After they were released, many of them traveled some thirty miles to Creech, where 18 were arrested by Clark County police.

“It is a thing of great beauty to see people peacefully blocking the entrance to the Creech Air Force Base, speaking a quiet but thundering ‘NO!’ to the drones delivering death around the world,” my Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service colleague Peter Ediger said, reflecting on his experience at the protest.

Over the past few years a growing series of nonviolent civil disobedience actions have taken place at Creech, which is the headquarters of the USAF’s 432nd Air Wing of Predator and Reaper drones that operates armed remotely piloted aircraft in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere.

Unlike officials at the test site, Creech and Clark County authorities have prosecuted those risking arrest at the drones facility.  Last January, Las Vegas Judge William Jensen found 14 anti-drone activists guilty of trespass at Creech but then sentenced them to time served.  This verdict stemmed from a nonviolent witness at the base in April 2009.  The trial had been held in September 2010, but the judge ruled that he needed to take three months to consider the protesters’ claim that their action met the test of the “necessity defense.”

The eighteen people arrested at Creech on Sunday—Toby Blome, Matt Campbell, Jim Haber, John Heid, Huntley Hoffman, Theo Kayser, Betsy Lamb, Rebecca Lambert, Robert Majors, Nancy Mancias, Mary Moody, Christine Nelson, Rosalie Riegle, Brian Terrell, Friar Louis Vitale, Rachel Winch, Mike Wisniewski, and Fr. Jerry Zawada—have a court date in Las Vegas on December 5, 2011.  (For more information about this upcoming court appearance, contact Jim Haber at haber.jim@gmail.com or Brian Terrell at brian@vcnv.org.)

With growing public awareness of both drone attacks and the next generation of drones that are being designed, tested and deployed—including one the size of a hummingbird—there is also beginning to be a bit more media coverage of drone protests.  Sunday’s witness garnered coverage PBS’s News Hour, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, KTNV television in Las Vegas, and Fox News, also in Las Vegas.

The Occupiers in Las Vegas and all over the country stand in a venerable tradition of “occupations,” including the innumerable nonviolent occupations by peace activists of the Nevada Test Site since the early 1980s.  Like many of the new occupiers, those who have taken action in the Nevada desert over the past three decades have also called for a reordering of economic priorities that privilege military spending and give short shrift to human needs.

But an even more fundamental value that ties this long-time tradition to the emerging movement against financial inequality is the adamant commitment to the infinite worth of every human being.

If that infinite worth is ignored, threatened, or attacked (because of the economic injustice of unemployment, the increasingly technologized terror that modern war and weapons represents, or the inextricable connection between the two, where a martial society means money for war and not for the things that make for life) then determined and compassionate action must follow.

Such action will include challenging Wall Street’s gambling addiction—with its roulette tables and slot machines where only a few of us win—and the national security state where the stakes are even higher.

This will be a long and arduous process, and will take nothing less than a thoroughgoing transformation, within and without.  But, like those crossing the line at Creech—and those finding their new “occupations”—each of us can embark on this powerful and demanding pilgrimage of deep and fundamental change.

The people who’ve come from around the country to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. helped fulfill their promise to “Stop the Machine” by entering, and ultimately closing down for the day, the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. They chose the museum for its glorification of weaponry in general, its special exhibit on unmanned flying drones in particular, and the tribute it pays to the arms industry by naming its IMAX theater after Lockheed Martin.

Today’s action was proposed at Friday night’s General Assembly meeting on the plaza, most vocally by David Swanson—creator of, as well as much else, WarIsACrime.org. Some initially objected that its meaning might be lost on onlookers, but the idea prevailed.

The march itself—or “stroll,” as it was called, to avoid militaristic jargon—started around 2 p.m. today and reached the museum about half an hour later. Swanson was leading the march, together with members of Code Pink and a contingent of young Wisconsinites. (Also in the lead was confessed agent provocateur Patrick Howley, one of the “hundreds of earnest and principled reporters” whose careers The American Spectator claims to have launched.) Several protesters made it inside and, from the second floor, dropped a pink banner that said, “NO DRONES / END AFGHAN WAR.” But when as many as 500 “strolling” people surged up into the museum carrying signs and chanting, guards used pepper spray to repel them as they got just inside the doorway.

Protesters approach the doors of the Air and Space Museum.

Within seconds, those entering the building turned back, coughing and holding their eyes and writhing in pain. People outside, themselves breathing in the peppery air and coughing, poured water on their faces. Soon, there was a short standoff with police officers, followed by a rally on the steps of the museum and a performance by the Bread and Puppet Theater. Somebody provoked the man playing music across the street to go on a loud rant in his microphone against the protesters, but then he played songs for them. There was an assembly-style discussion. Several model drones—realistic-looking and otherwise—accompanied the group.

When word had come that some of those who had been apprehended would be released on the other side of the building, a group of marchers went there to greet them. They staged a sit-in, blocking the back entrance and singing songs like “This Little Light of Mine” and “If I Had a Hammer.” All the doors of the museum were already locked anyway, and it was closed for the rest of the day. Tourists continued to approach it and many went away angry.

Sit-in on the south side of the Air and Space Museum.

One woman was arrested in the incident, the first arrest of the ongoing occupations in D.C.: 19-year-old Thi Le of Madison, Wisconsin. She was released within a few hours and received by fellow protesters who waited for her outside the precinct.

Protester after trying to wash off the remains of pepper spray.

The outcome of the confrontation remains to be seen—especially in whatever crowds might come to Freedom Plaza on Sunday. An incident with pepper spray was of course a turning point for winning public sympathy for Occupy Wall Street, and it may be again in D.C. But in the case of Wall Street there was no apparent justification. At Air and Space, however, despite the use of probably excessive force by the guards, many outside observers might also see it as a necessary measure of crowd control to protect a national museum. The protesters say they had no intention to damage anything—later on they chanted to police officers and guards, “We are peaceful!”—but this might have been made clearer from the outset.

According to messages on Twitter, members of the separate occupation that began on October 1 at McPherson Square on K Street have made a point of distancing themselves from the action.

Despite some complaints that the reason for targeting the Air and Space Museum weren’t obvious enough, the action surely made a lot of people think about the museum and what it represents in a new way. The signs and props protesters carried conveyed their opposition to ongoing wars abroad and to the celebration of weapons that goes on inside. There were a large number of people visibly identified as veterans taking part, as well as military family members. The idea of going to a museum to admire technologies designed for killing was certainly called into question by this action. Unlike the sites of Occupy Wall Street confrontations, which have occurred on roadways, the target here made sense.

Less successful at first glance, however, was the tactic that ultimately met with pepper spray. The protesters could have sent a powerful message without appearing so threatening to guards, much less to visitors inside. The banner-drop was an example of this. So was the sit-in. But when a large, loud crowd leaves the street and moves toward a building, those leading it should be aware of the effect that they’re having on those in their path, and of the ways they might be antagonizing the very people they’re intending to win.

Movement-building, though, isn’t always pretty. Sometimes it burns.

• Hundreds of people have gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against the recent expansion of the Egypt’s emergency law, amid palpable anger over the military’s handling of transition from autocratic rule.

• Eighteen people were killed today in Syria by security forces following Friday prayers, as scores of demonstrators are reported to have gathered in important cities and towns demanding an end to Bashar al-Assad’s rule and chanting “Death rather than humiliation.”

• Tens of thousands of Yemenis held a protest in the  southern city of Taiz on Friday, a day after security  forces opened fire at demonstrators leaving 10 people dead.

• Thousands of workers at Freeport-McMoran’s gold and copper mine in eastern Indonesia kicked off a monthlong strike Thursday to protest low wages, bringing production and shipments to a standstill.

• On Tuesday, about 50 activists protested drones outside the new London offices of General Atomics as part of the Day of Action by the ‘Stop the Arms Fair Coalition’ against DSEi (Defence & Security Equipment International) on its opening day.

• About 50 transit workers and union leaders barged into an MTA office building in downtown  Brooklyn Monday morning for a brief but boisterous protest rally over wages and benefits.

• Oil workers went on strike on Tuesday, halting construction of Colombia’s Bicentennial  Pipeline, which will be the country’s longest once completed.

• In Boulder, Colorado, more than 60 homeless people and activists took part in a protest and flash mob on Wednesday to raise awareness about the issue of homelessness.

• On Monday, locals protested in front of the municipality of Carthage calling for the halt of construction on the archeological site in Tunisia as a reaction to the resumption of activities in the site.

• Prospective homeowners in the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk are demanding apartments or their money back — and have gone on hunger strike to push their point.

Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic congressman from Ohio, is leading a biparistan effort to end the US military intervention in Libya. Earlier this month, he was instrumental in compelling Republican leaders in Congress to pass a resolution criticizing President Obama’s refusal to seek approval for the conflict from the Capitol. Now, he’s leading a group of ten members of Congress who are filing a lawsuit against the president’s disregard of the War Powers Resolution in continuing the conflict.

At 2:17 in the above clip, Kucinich says:

This is about stopping a war now. This is not an academic question. This is about the primacy of the constitution in the affairs of our nation.

And more. Democrats like Kucinich, and Republicans like Ron Paul, are each finding reasons to oppose the war: questionable constitutionality, the absence of moral authority, and the spiraling cost—$10 million per day, reportedly.

Yesterday, the White House tried to explain itself with some crafty reasoning that the War Powers Resolution doesn’t really apply in this case because of the nature of the conflict:

U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.

Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith isn’t buying it. Nor is Cynthia McKinney, the former congresswoman who is currently on the ground in Tripoli, and who rejects the report’s downplaying of the hostilities—or, excuse me, “kinetic action”:

The people of the United States are not getting the truth from the government or the media about the massive destruction in Libya, including the killing of civilians by the NATO bombing campaign. I am here in Libya and we can see the carnage.

Besides, as David Swanson points out, “The Obama report to Congress spends half its time claiming that the United States is not part of the NATO operation in any major way, and the other half warning that the NATO operation would collapse without the United States.” The report continues:

If the United States military were to cease its participation in the NATO operation, it would seriously degrade the coalition’s ability to execute and sustain its operation designed to protect Libyan civilians and to enforce the no-fly zone and the arms embargo[.]

At worst, a contradiction; at best, a convenient gray area for the White House. The report’s logic is troubling to those of us who have noticed how the technologies of war-at-a-distance—like drones, cruise missiles, and smart bombs—only makes killing easier for governments to justify. It also raises important questions about the nature of engagement in multinational military coalitions.

Swanson has organized a statement of opposition to Obama as long as he continues supporting the wars. And, meanwhile, more than a quarter of the Senate has called on the president to scale back operations in Afghanistan next month, as promised.

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.

• Over 80,000 people took to the streets of Athens late Sunday on the 12th consecutive day of protests against the government’s draconian austerity measures. Some 3,000 people also gathered in Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki, according to the police.

• Syrians poured into the streets on Friday in some of the largest antigovernment protests yet despite the shutdown of much of Syria’s Internet network. At least 96 people have died over the past three days in the continued crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

• In Israel, thousands of people rallied in Tel Aviv to denounce Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. It was one of the largest pro-peace rallies Israel has seen in years.

• Up to 23 people were killed and over 350 wounded on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators stormed the border area from Syria.

• The March on Blair Mountain, with more than six hundred people setting out from Marmet, West Virginia on a fifty-mile, five-day journey began today to protest mountaintop removal, strengthen workers’ rights, and support investment in sustainable jobs for Appalachia.

• A two-day sit-in staged to protest against drone attacks concluded on Sunday with a warning to the relevant authorities that supplies to Nato forces in Afghanistan would be blocked if drone attacks continued.

• At least 30 people were injured when Indian police used teargas and batons to break up a mass anti-corruption protest led by India’s most famous yoga guru on Sunday.

• Approximately 250 supporters —including many veterans—converged on Saturday at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to rally for the release of alleged whistleblower U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning.

• Sri Lanka’s powerful Buddhist clergy demonstrated Friday urging the president to restore rights of workers and students days after a violent police crackdown on a labour protest killed one factory worker.

• Three gay rights activists, including a former Democratic Senate candidate, were arrested last Thursday for their protest on the floor of the North Carolina House of Representatives.

• Fourteen students were arrested at the University of Washington on Wednesday evening on charges of criminal trespass after they refused to leave a building that was closed, as part of the ongoing protests over the UW’s contract with food-services provider Sodexo.

One might think that three wars—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya—would be enough. Apparently, for the United States military apparatus, it’s not. Last month we noted that Congress is trying to amend the War on Terror authorization so as to include conflicts that have no direct relationship to attacks on US soil. Now, there’s word from the Pentagon that cyber attacks on US interests could be grounds for armed retaliation too. Reports the BBC:

In future, a US president could consider economic sanctions, cyber-retaliation or a military strike if key US computer systems were attacked, officials have said recently.

The planning was given added urgency by a cyber-attack last month on the defence contractor, Lockheed Martin.

A new report from the Pentagon is due out in a matter of weeks.

“A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters on Tuesday.

AntiWar.com points out that, by this logic, the Iranians are already justified in attacking the US with missiles, considering all the hackers the Pentagon has pointed at them.

When they come, the Pentagon seems to be assuming, we’ll be ready for ‘em. That’s why it has also just announced a plan to vastly expand its fleet of unmanned arial vehicles—armed, remote-controlled drones. These are the same weapons that have made it possible to carry on a shadow war for years now on the Pakistani frontier without need to officially declare that it is happening. With every new gizmo, apparently, it becomes easier and easier to justify killing.

It is a common hope that the latest technologies—smart bombs, stealth bombers, drones, cyber-attacks, and more—will save lives. In the short term, and in a narrow view of whose lives we’re concerned about, this may be true. But each makes violence easier to justify politically, by promising victory at the expense of fewer lives on one’s own side, and therefore each has the effect of bringing us closer to—if we’re not there already—a dystopian scenario of perpetual war. Opposing weapons like this is ostensibly tougher than opposing, say, nuclear weapons; there’s no instant cataclysm, no blinding light. What they promise, instead, is the dull hum of tit-for-tat killing—manageable, profitable, ignorable, almost sustainable, and yet a total, indefensible waste.

• President Ali Abdullah Saleh has agreed to a proposal from Gulf Arab mediators that calls for him to transfer power and resign within 30 days. But thousands of angry demonstrators have rejected the 30-day succession plan, with huge crowds taking to the streets in the capital Sanaa to demand Saleh’s immediate resignation.

• In Syria, at least 20 people were killed yesterday in the city of Daraa after thousands of troops backed with tanks opened fire on protesters. On Sunday, at least 13 civilians were shot dead in the town of Jableh. And at least 112 people were killed in Syria on Friday in the deadliest day since anti-government protests began last month.

• Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul Sunday to protest any extension of U.S. military presence in the country. The protesters also denounced corruption and pressed for the release of detainees.

• The main supply route for NATO troops in Afghanistan was temporarily closed on Sunday after thousands of people blocked a key highway in Pakistan to protest against US drone strikes.

• Some 3,000 protesters took to the streets after Friday prayers in Oman’s southern port of Salalah in one of the biggest pro-reform demonstrations since scattered unrest began in the sultanate two months ago.

• Senegalese fishermen staged a one-day strike Thursday to protest at a decision by the Dakar government to allow foreign boats to fish in their coastal waters.

• Over 1,500 Armenian-American and anti-genocide activists flooded the streets of Culver City, California on Thursday to protest President Obama’s failure to honor his pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

By Gary Waits, for the Syracuse Post-Standard.

On Friday, during a protest against the use of armed drones at Hancock Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York, some activists chose to violate the conditions of their permit and lie down on the road, blocking entrance to the base. 37 were arrested. Syracuse’s YNN network gives just one short paragraph to explain the protesters’ point of view, but it does give considerable space to the military and law-enforcement side of things:

Anthony Bucci, the 174th Fighter Wing Public Affairs Officer, countered, “While it is disappointing because we do think the MQ[-]9 is a great weapons platform, it is part of what we do wearing the uniform is to protect their constitution and their right to do exactly what they’re doing.”

As the permit expired, people refused to leave and began laying down in the street to represent the people killed by [R]eaper drones, blocking the entrance to the Air National Guard Base.

“They were given numerous instructions to get up. They refused to. Again, they were asked to get up. They refused to. At this point, the commanding officer made a decision to arrest them,” said William Gabriel, an Onondaga County Sheriff’s Deputy.

Kevin Walsh, the Onondaga County Sheriff, added, “People want to make a point. Part of making their point is the fact that they’re willing to be arrested. And we accommodated that.”

How accommodating. Read the full text and watch the video at YNN’s site.

Protesters included Retired Colonel Ann Wright and Waging Nonviolence contributor Kathy Kelly. Says Wright, on Democracy Now!:

As a former colonel, as a retired colonel, as a former government official who has been with the government 40 years, I think my greatest public service is now challenging the government and challenging these things called drones. These drones—and you might as well just call them assassination machines, that’s what these drones are used for: targeted assassination, extrajudicial ultimate death for people who have not been convicted of anything.

One person’s “great weapons platform” is another’s “assassination machine.”

I was on Russia Today (RT), Russia’s 24/7 English-language news channel, on Friday to discuss the use of drones in Libya, the growing financial cost of the war and its impact on oil prices.

On Wednesday, Code Pink, Foreign Policy In Focus and Pax Christi staged a mock drone attack in Washington DC’s Dupont Circle. To watch what transpired, check out the above video.

This type of street theater – which reminds me of the Iraq Veterans Against the War’s brilliant Operation First Casualty – is a creative way to give passersby just a hint of what people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been living through as the Obama administration dramatically escalates the use of unmanned drones in our many wars. (Over the month of September, for example, there were a record 21 drone strikes in Pakistan. And this at the same time that the country is reeling from the flooding that has affected at least 18 million people.)

If this type of action is to be replicated, which I hope it is, I have one recommendation. To make the experience more real for those who accidentally walk into such an protest, I think there needs to be a more realistic drone that is actually flying in the sky.

One thought off the top of my head would be to have a kite in the shape of a drone that can be flying high enough that you just might at first glance mistake it for a real aircraft. The person flying the kite would need to be out of view, if possible, so that people didn’t know where it was coming from. Combine that with the sound of a drone, which they had playing on a stereo, and people shrieking and pointing to the sky, and you’ve created an experience that make take people a little more by surprise – and hopefully get them to think about what it would be like to live under the drones.