• Arab and Bedouin Israelis held a state-wide general strike on Sunday as several thousand demonstrators gathered at the Prime Ministry to express their outrage at a government plan that would relocate Negev Bedouins out of their homes into impoverished townships.

• In cities all across Russia, unauthorized demonstrations were ongoing Sunday after anti-Putin protesters escalated their dissent in Moscow at a massive rally on Saturday as tens of thousands marched for free elections.

• On Sunday, Syrians in some regions observed the opposition’s call for a general strike, despite reports that police in the capital forced shop owners to reopen.

• After leading scores of protesters inside of Durban climate talks on Friday, Greenpeace activists posed as representatives of wealthy corporations on Sunday to call attention to the beneficiaries of failed action at the ICC.

• Bangkok, Thailand saw a rare second rally in two days Saturday as a throng of marchers engaged in a ‘fearlessness walk’ reiterated their objections to laws that punish those who speak out against the monarchy.

• A flash mob erupted in a Pittsburgh Target on Saturday as Occupy organizers briefly flooded the store in protest of the company’s hiring policies.

• For the second day in a row, hundreds of Indian teachers in Bangalore boycotted classes on Friday in protest of low wages.

• Demonstrations condemning the NATO airstrike in Pakistan have been ongoing for two weeks across the country, and were sparked anew after prayers Friday.

• Tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets again Friday chanting ‘no partnership with the murderers’ after a new Cabinet—half filled with pro-regime politicians—was announced.

• In the Dominican Republic on Thursday, hundreds of activists rallied against the government’s practice of confiscating or annulling birth certificates for those of Haitian descent.

• Protests were ongoing Sunday in Tahrir Square after thousands of protesters rallied on Friday for an end to the Army’s rule in Egypt.

• Despite strict controls on public speech, Singapore saw a rare public demonstration on Sunday as hundreds of activists participated in the global “Slut Walk” movement, calling attention to violence against women.

• Jordanian environmentalists staged a sit-in Saturday at the Prime Ministry, objecting to the country’s atomic program.

• Friday marked the seventh day of protests in Pakistan as demonstrators decried a NATO airstrike in Pakistani territory which killed 24 soldiers.

• On Wednesday, a mass rally took place in Bulgaria as thousands demonstrated against austerity measures, including a government plan to raise the retirement age.

• In India, several fired workers agitating for their union’s recognition were arrested Wednesday after protesting in front of a Hyundai plant’s gate.

• Millions of shop owners in India closed their doors on Thursday, striking and marching in protest of a bill which would allow foreign superstores like Walmart to have greater access in their country.

• In the United Kingdom, Wales was the center of one of the largest public sector strikes in a generation Wednesday as around 170,000 workers—including teachers—abandoned their posts in ongoing protests against government pension reforms.

• In the Philippines, hundreds of inmates continued a hunger strike Thursday, instigating noise barrages to agitate for faster case disposition, the release of political prisoners, and to address other grievances.

• Thousands of Greek workers participated in this year’s seventh general strike on Thursday, continuing their calls to end government austerity programs.

• Students from three high schools in Seattle staged a walk out on Thursday to gather at City Hall in protest of a Washington state proposal to fill budget holes with cuts to education funding.

• Building on a series of protests this month against Bank of America’s poor environmental record, a Thursday rally in Asheville, NC culminated in the arrest of several nonviolent resisters who wanted to call attention to BOA’s support of the coal industry.

Protesters against Guantanamo in Washington, D.C., on January 11, 2008. Photo by Keith Ivey, via Flickr.

In a world full of injustice—from battered women to clubbed seals to the Club of Europe, from neglected children to nuclear weapons to mountain top removal, from torture at Guantanamo to torture at Bagram to torture in Chicago’s prisons to the torture of the death penalty, from famine in Somalia to deforestation to families being broken by Arizona’s immigration laws—how do you choose what to work on?

Most people choose what affects them most personally, what they feel like they can change, what breaks their heart. Some people choose what seems most strategic: if this small thing changes here, it might move all these other things along in the right direction. Some people race from topic to topic to topic, needing to be everywhere and in the middle of everything. Some combo of the first and second stance seems like the right place to be, right?

I start with all this because I have been thinking about Guantanamo. The notorious and often forgotten gulag is in the news again this week because the Senate voted on Tuesday to retain a provision within the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the military detain terror suspects on U.S. soil and hold them indefinitely without trial. In addition, the measure—which passed in a bipartisan show of fear-mongering and brutality—would close the door to civilian trials for terror suspects and place restrictions on resettling the dozens of men at Guantanamo who have been cleared for release.

“Congress is essentially authorizing the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge. We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) as her fellow Democrats voted down Mark Udall’s (D-CO) amendment that would have killed the measure.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Feinstein’s words were true? But we don’t have to look as far at Guantanamo or Bagram to see people being locked up without charge. In fact, one of the tactics of the police’s response to Occupys around the country has been arresting people and then releasing them without charge—locking people up just to get them out of the way.

Back to Guantanamo. I have been working hard on this issue for six years. At just about this time in 2005, I was getting ready to fly to Cuba with 24 friends. We planned to walk to Guantanamo—right onto the U.S. naval base and visit the prisoners, spend time with the guards, and bring letters from the men out so that we could send them to their families. We got as close as the Cuban military zone that surrounds the base and there we fasted and prayed and maintained a 24 hour vigil for five days. We held a press conference and international journalists from many outlets based in Havana came to speak with us. We called U.S. Southern Command and the base constantly, alerting them to our presence and requesting permission to enter the base. We hoped that somehow—between our persistent prayer and our constant contact with authorities—the men imprisoned there would find out we were there and why. And they did. We don’t know how, but a month or so later, through a lawyer for a group of detainees, we received a message of gratitude and hope.

A lot has changed in those six years. Back then, there were more than 700 men at Guantanamo. George W. Bush was in the White House. Most Americans didn’t know much about the issue.

Today, there are 171 men who remain at Guantanamo, more than 60 of whom have been cleared for release but remain in detention because of White House cowardice, political horse-trading and Congressional intransigence. President Barack Obama, who campaigned on a promise to close Guantanamo, has replaced Bush in the Oval Office but not shuttered his terrible extra-legal creation. There are dozens of award-winning documentaries, countess important and informative books and thousands of column inches of news coverage of the prison, and even Harold and Kumar got in (and out) of Guantanamo.

But a lot hasn’t changed. Not for Shaker Aamer and the 170 others who are still at Guantanamo. But, we are still at it. Still trying. Why? Because we have been changed, maybe. Because the times demand our action and our effort. Why do I still care? Why am I still passionate about this issue after six years? Because in the name of justice for men at Guantanamo I have been pushed to do things I would have thought laughable and terrifying. To walk far and sleep on the ground, to go without food for days at a time, to court a big fine and possible jail time by flying to Cuba, to speak before thousands of people, to get arrested at the Federal Court, the Supreme Court, the Capitol, the White House, to stay up late and get up early and walk around in a decidedly unflattering orange jumpsuit in the January snow and July humidity. Because I have found an amazing community of people to work and struggle and weep and laugh with. Because no one is free when others are oppressed and shutting eyes and ears and hearts is not an option.

Right after New Year’s, Witness Against Torture is going to Washington again. I’ll be there. We begin our “Hunger for Justice” fast on January 2 and will fill the courtroom at Moultrie Superior Court the next day to support 14 friends who were arrested interrupting the House of Representatives with the call “shut down Guantanamo” in July. We’ll fast through January 11, which will mark 10 long years of detention and torture and lawlessness for so many. We’ll stand with Amnesty and Pax Christi and so many other groups in a human chain that will stretch from the White House to the Capital. We hope to have 2,771 people stand on that day, one for each of the men detained at Guantanamo and Bagram. The Center for Constitutional Rights will hold a press briefing and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture will host an interfaith service. There will be activities throughout the city to draw attention to this shameful anniversary. And then we will break the fast on January 12th.

To be honest, I would rather not go. I will be cold and uncomfortable and hungry. I will miss my husband and our little girl. But there are men at Guantanamo who paint amazing pictures of a life they can hardly imagine anymore. There are men who write poetry and who pray to God for justice, for release and for people like me not to forget them. So I won’t. That is my passion right now. Not forgetting, not getting comfortable with the suffering of others.

In my child’s mind, I did not understand why anyone would do all of this—isn’t being in jail bad enough? Later I learned that they refused to eat or cooperate until they were recognized as political prisoners. The British government, which was occupying Northern Ireland, treated them like common criminals—no different from anyone else who had broken the law—but they saw themselves as a rival military force who, once apprehended, had to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions strictures on holding prisoners of war. That is why Bobby Sands died, because the British would not treat him like a prisoner of war.

Dad and his brothers were not allowed to visit the men. Soon after, Bobby Sands died—starved to death in jail. Ten men ultimately died of starvation in the British jail—Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O’Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Tom McElwee, Kieran Doherty and Mickey Devine. Some activists gave Dad a leather wallet hand-tooled with Irish symbols that was made in the prison. My sister carries it now—worn, splattered with paint, splitting from decades of use and still beautiful.

The first men were brought to Guantanamo on January 11, 2002—almost ten years ago today. In the early days of the War on Terror, as American bombs pummeled Afghanistan and the Northern Alliance thugs, and corrupt Pakistani security forces rounded up Arabs and Muslims as terrorists, the Bush administration found Guantanamo a convenient off-shore prison, far from American law. The administration created the convoluted term “Enemy Combatant” so as to do just what the British did—avoid the Geneva Conventions laws around the treatment of prisoners of war. Cut off from their families, abused and tortured on unfamiliar and foreign territory, and isolated from the media and lawyers, the men at Guantanamo found that the hunger strike was one of the few tools they could use. By 2005, as many as 200 men were engaged in hunger strikes at the U.S. naval base.

“My wish is to die,” Adnan Farhan Abdullatif, a 27-year old Yemeni, told his lawyer. “We are living in a dying situation.”

“We don’t have any rights here, even after your Supreme Court said we had rights,” Majid al-Joudi, one of the hunger strikers reportedly told a military doctor. “If the policy does not change, you will see a big increase in fasting.”

It was a harrowing and somewhat effective tool of political protest—a violence done only to one’s self, a self-inflicted violence that dramatizes and makes visible the over-arching violence of indefinite detention, constant interrogation, hateful scape-goating and worse.

The first wave of hunger strikes ended when the Guantanamo turnkeys met with the men and conceded to allow them to pray, promised to give them Qur’ans, and offered better living quarters. The men resumed their hunger strike when those promises were broken. The Center for Constitutional Rights documented the waves of hunger strikes in a 2005 report. Over the years, men at Guantanamo have continued to hunger strike and have been subjected to forced feeding regimes.

In September of 2011, the BBC received a letter from Shaker Aamer and eight other Guantanamo prisoners, who stated their commitment to hunger striking. Aamer, a British resident who has been at Guantanamo for nearly 10 years, writes:

After these years of hardship that we have spent here—we want you to consider our cases as soon as possible and give us the right to a just and a public trial or set us free without conditions.

The men go on to describe their situation:

Inhumane treatment is taking place at the hospital among other areas, especially affecting the sick and those who are on (hunger) strike and our deprivation of real treatment, health, diet and appropriate clothing which are not provided to us, nor we are allowed to provide them for ourselves.

These strikes are part of a long tradition. Conscientious objectors to World War I and World War II went on hunger strikes for better conditions in their prisons. In the Lewisburg Federal Pen during World War II, Ralph Di Gia and other white conscientious objectors refused to eat until the dining hall was integrated and black and white prisoners were allowed to eat together. They won.

Much more recently, prisoners throughout the California system launched a hunger strike to protest long periods of solitary confinement and other forms of mistreatment. At the height of the hunger strike, which began in July, there were as many as 12,000 inmates skipping meals in at least eight California prisons according to the Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity Group.

“We believe our only option of ever trying to make some kind of positive change here is through this peaceful hunger strike,” said Todd Ashker, one of the strike organizers who is incarcerated at the Pelican Bay prison and who organized the strike. “And there is a core group of us who are committed to taking this all the way to the death if necessary.” No one has died, and the strike was called off a few weeks ago after prison authorities agreed to review the policies for solitary confinement.

Half a world away, Maikel Nabil Sanad continues to go hungry. The young Egyptian is a pacifist and conscientious objector, whose blogging and reporting was critical of the military before, during and after the revolution. In April of this year, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment by an Egyptian military court. His crime: reporting about ongoing human rights violations and political influence of Egyptian military. He began his hunger strike on August 23, explaining in a brief statement that he would refuse to eat until he died or was set free. On November 1, hearings in Sanad’s case were again adjourned until the 13th, even though he has already been on a hunger strike for more than 70 days.

Just this week, the mother of another imprisoned Egyptian writer and activist, Alaa Abdel-Fattah, began a hunger strike. On day four, Laila Soueif told the Associated Press that she was good:

My blood pressure is stable, but I will continue the hunger strike until Alaa is freed … It is becoming clearer and clearer that the military council is against the youth of the revolution and wants to make an example of Alaa so the rest will be silenced.

Her daughter added that the 57-year-old woman is drinking tea without sugar or milk and smoking cigarettes to keep going.

Again and again throughout history, in every corner of the globe—from Lagos to Los Angeles and everywhere in between—suffragists, civil rights activists, advocates for the homeless, prisoners and farm workers, stop eating and start organizing. They’re hungering for more than food, hungering for justice, peace and recognition as human beings. As the New Mexican author Sharman Apt Russell writes in Hunger: An Unnatural History, “What else can the powerless, the weak and disenfranchised offer up to the world but their own soft bodies?”

The Sept. 11 attacks, which most of us remember as a series of visual images, repeatedly televised and published, originate with an earlier series of images. For Bin Laden, there was a strange kind of visual justice in 9/11, the retributive paying back of an image for an image, an eye for an eye. … The wheel of violence and counterviolence spins without end and leads inevitably to destruction.

Now, in no small sense, after 10 years of wars on terror waged against phantoms in ourselves and mainly innocents abroad, the United States’ eye for an eye has made the whole world blind—as Gandhi predicted. Fair enough. I think we knew that already, whether or not one is willing to admit it.

But then Critchley offers a more hopeful proposition.

Ask yourself: what if nothing had happened after 9/11? No revenge, no retribution, no failed surgical strikes on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, no poorly planned bloody fiasco in Iraq, no surges and no insurgencies to surge against; nothing.

What if the government had simply decided to turn the other cheek and forgive those who sought to attack it, not seven times, but seventy times seven? What if the grief and mourning that followed 9/11 were allowed to foster a nonviolent ethics of compassion rather than a violent politics of revenge and retribution? What if the crime of the Sept. 11 attacks had led not to an unending war on terror, but the cultivation of a practice of peace—a difficult, fraught and ever-compromised endeavor, but perhaps worth the attempt?

I’m tempted to convene an art show, or call for an essay contest, or declare a hashtag. It’s a good exercise. A great exercise. On September 12, as Americans rallied around their leaders, only one response was made to seem possible or even conceivable: attack. Revenge. But that was a failure of imagination, the result of years and decades and centuries of practice with failed imaginations, which took bellicosity as the only response to tragedy. It’s not, though, and if we’re going to act differently next time, we’d better start practicing now.

So, what do you think the last ten years could have been like?

I recall an email that John Paul Lederach circulated just days after the Twin Towers fell. Based on his decades of the study and practice of international conflict transformation, Lederach (currently a professor of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame who also teaches at Eastern Mennonite University) counseled us not to seek accountability through war but by thinking and acting differently than expected.

As he wrote at the time:

To face the reality of a well organized, decentralized, self-perpetuating source of terror, we need to think differently about the challenges. The key does not lie in finding and destroying territories, camps, and certainly not the civilian populations that supposedly house them. Paradoxically that will only feed the phenomenon and assure that it lives into a new generation.

Instead, he advised a peacebuilding approach that emphasized regional development, resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and getting at the root causes. “The single greatest pressure that could ever be put on Bin Laden,” he wrote, “is to remove the source of his justifications and alliances.”

Change up the script of retaliation and military dominance, Lederach advised five days after the attack, and we’ll have a better chance of creating both justice and peace.

The 9/11 anniversary provides an opportunity to assess the road we actually took: a decade of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and beyond; the unimaginable suffering experienced by many in the region and in the US, including the soldiers sent to fight this protracted conflict; and the monumental financial cost of ten years of modern warfare, which has likely played a central role in the severe economic crisis facing the US and the world today.

But even more damaging has been the new infrastructure of US “war-building.”

We not only possess the legacy of human and financial ruin in the US and throughout the Middle East, we now live in a world where the institutions, strategies, networks and structures of permanent war have multiplied over the past decade. The US geo-politico-military posture has been a powerful global presence since World War II. However, its ability to make sustained war has increased dramatically in the post-9/11 world.

Some of this has been relentlessly visible, but there is an enormous dimension of this new militarism that has been largely shadowy, secret, and invisible. Three recent newspaper articles highlight this growing and often behind-the-scenes infrastructure.

On September 1, the Washington Post published “CIA shifts focus to killing targets.” This report documents the dramatic growth in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and its drones program that has killed 2,000 people since 2001, with about 20% of CIA analysts working as “‘targeters’ scanning data for individuals to recruit, arrest or place in the cross­hairs of a drone.” The story quotes an anonymous former official who characterized the new CIA this way:

“You’ve taken an agency that was chugging along and turned it into one hell of a killing machine”… Blanching at his choice of words, he quickly offered a revision: “Instead, say ‘one hell of an operational tool.’”

Even more revealing is a Washington Post story published on September 4 titled “‘Top Secret America’: A Look at The Military’s Joint Special Operations Command.”

This story is an excerpt from a chapter in a book resulting from a nearly two-year project detailing the national security buildup in the US since 9/11, including the fact that 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, intelligence, and homeland security across the United States. This piece highlights the explosive growth of the Military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which has become America’s secret army. Using sophisticated technology and weaponry, JSOC has conducted thousands of shadowy raids in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in over 1,400 deaths. It is busy creating new “targeting packages” for other places. Mexico, according to the story, is at the top of its wish list.

JSOC has incorporated US Special Forces, including the Navy SEALS. Here’s how one anonymous Navy SEAL is quoted as describing his outfit: “‘We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen.’” (Click here to see a detailed, interactive graphic offering a detailed overview of “Top Secret America”)

A third recent story offers a glimpse into how this national security script is seeping into the weave of life here at home. On August 31, the Los Angeles Times published “9/11 spawned big changes on campus,” which details the impact homeland security funding is having on universities across the US. The article is upbeat about the “growth industry” of national security studies on campus and how this trend is yielding innovation and employment opportunities. Aided by federal funding, courses, institutes, certificate programs, even whole departments are being contemplated. One university is looking to the future by offering a “homeland security summer camp for middle school and high school students.”

These three reports only offer a glimpse of the emerging infrastructure of the post-9/11 world. There is much more to learn about the growing proliferation of surveillance, targeting, counterterrorism at home and abroad, space war, and many other tools of military, economic and political threat and counter-threat.

The mechanics of domination will continue to grow and widen unless we take steps to challenge and transform it. While this process of change will include learning about this “dominance growth industry,” more importantly it means building an infrastructure fostering peacebuilding and a fundamentally different orientation to life on the planet. Just as the largely unarmed Arab Spring has demonstrated the ability of nonviolent power to trump expensive and technologized military forces and strategies, so people everywhere are being invited at this key turning point to take another road.

September 11, 2001 presented us with a crossroads. As we pause this week to mark 9/11, we realize that we are at a new crossroads. We can continue down the well-grooved path of the past decade, or we make a turn and accept John Paul Lederach’s unfulfilled challenges from a decade ago: to do the unexpected and to build an infrastructure of peace that, unlike the path of the past ten years, is transparent and sustaining.

The choice for a new path, while not easy or simple, is ours.

Again.

Afghan children play with plastic guns in Bagram. Massoud Hossaini / AFP/Getty Images.

On Sunday The Washington Post ran a harrowing story about the “era of endless war” that the United States is settling into—in its politics, its military, its society as a whole.

Today, radical religious ideologies, new technologies and cheap, powerful weapons have catapulted the world into “a period of persistent conflict,” according to the Pentagon’s last major assessment of global security. “No one should harbor the illusion that the developed world can win this conflict in the near future,” the document concludes.

Later on, after a discussion of veteran’s lives and video games, the article turns to what has become of what used to be normal:

“Peace” … has become something of a dirty word in Washington foreign-policy circles. Earlier this year, the House voted to cut all funding for the congressionally funded U.S. Institute of Peace.

Although the money was eventually restored, the institute’s leadership remains convinced that the word “peace” in its name was partially to blame for its woes. The word is too abstract and academic, said Richard Solomon, the institute’s president.

[…]

“Peace doesn’t reflect the world we are dealing with,” he said.

The kind of hubris that leads to this perverted view of the world is captured eloquently, of all places, in the video game Modern Warfare 2:

“We are the most powerful force in the history of the world,” an American general bellows at his soldiers. “Every fight is our fight.”

No, actually, it isn’t.

That’s the idea behind 10 Years and Counting, a new initiative hatched in the Adirondack compound of the Blue Mountain Center, an activist and artist residency community nestled beside a high-country lake. 10YAC’s goal is this: between September 11th and October 7th of this year—marking the 10-year anniversaries of the 9/11 attacks and the start of the war in Afghanistan—launch an artistic groundswell by coordinating protest and arts events around the country. Their network includes activist groups, including Code Pink and the War Resisters League, as well as arts organizations and galleries. To see some of the visual art, poetry, music, and performances they’ve been gathering, take a look around the 10YAC blog.

But art, for 10YAC, is not quite an end in itself. “One of the most important visions” of the project, according to Alice Gordon, program director at Blue Mountain, is to see “as many Americans as possible getting onto the streets for peace around the anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan.”

Just as the project’s duration comes to a close, an ambitious occupation will begin—endorsed by many of the same organizations, in fact—in Washington DC on October 6th. This convergence may be a chance to see whether 10YAC can really translate its art into mobilization. The October 6ers, anyway, could do worse than take as a rallying cry a poem like this one, recently posted on the 10YAC blog, by Holly Karapetkova:

LOVE AND THE NATIONAL DEFENSE

If love were a dirty bomb, you could set
it off in Washington and it would spread
into the suburbs unseen, contaminate
the air and water. People would breathe it, feed

on it unknowingly and slowly love
would infiltrate their lungs, make their fingers burn.
In a week, you’d see them start to pair up, leave
the office early for lunch and not return;

even the evangelists are born again—
this time to love—they grab the nearest nun,
and scientists are too involved to look
for cures, not that anyone cares. Attack

on US, the foreign press reports
with real concern, seeing the SUVs
abandoned on the interstates, the airports
unguarded, army generals on their knees.

Don’t they know love is always like that,
tearing you out of the spaces you once thought
meant something, making you forget each
last defense, the guns rusting along the beach.

When a country is shaken by violence, most people expect it to react in kind with force. We’re certainly reminded of that now, as we in the US approach the tenth anniversaries, respectively, of the 9/11 attacks and the hot-on-the-heels launching of the War on Terror. So what about the most recent act of terrorism in the news—Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage in Norway?

I was struck by a comment left here at Waging Nonviolence the other day by Susanne Kromberg, who wrote, “I am a Norwegian who is vainly trying to get The New York Times to cover the passive resistance that has sprung up in Norway as Norwegians under good leadership decide to demonstrate that only love is powerful enough to overcome hatred.” I didn’t know Susanne personally, but I wrote to her and asked to hear more.

Susanne, it turns out, is a Quaker (and Quaker blogger) currently living in Seattle, where she’s a hospital chaplain. As a way of coping with the attacks on her home from far away, she explained to me, she has been collecting news of how people have been reacting to Breivik’s atrocities in Norway, much of which has been ignored in the US media. Instead, the focus of American journalists has been on how the country has supposedly “reignited” its immigration debate and has been “reassessing” its relatively measured policing policy—implying that things are moving in a bellicose direction. Yet, as Susanne wrote in a poignant letter to the New York Times Public Editor:

I have read more stories than I care to about “innocent”, “idyllic” and “naïve” Norway in the last week. What evidence is there to support that opinion?

My best guess is that any response that doesn’t involve increased security measures and weaponry seems naïve to [reporter Michael] Schwirtz. He appears not to recognize that people can be thoughtful as they choose another strategy to combat violence.

While Susanne hasn’t yet had time to collect all the evidence she’s been gathering into a single piece of writing, she has been continually posting it in Facebook status updates. In the spirit of our recent “Texting from Madison” series, I thought I’d share (selected, but uncensored and unaltered) some of her recent posts to give a sense of the courageously nonviolent responses to this attack mounted by her fellow Norwegians:

July 22

07:39 terrorism finds its way to Norway. apparent car bomb blew up outside prime minister’s office building damaging bottom three floors. PM is safe, no word yet on how many others dead or wounded. aauugh.

11:36 right now the mayor of oslo is saying we’re not going to allow fear to take a hold, because then we would have handed the victory to the terrorists.

11:38 prime minister now saying the same thing. violence will not frighten us and we will not allow anyone to try to intimidate us out of legal political activity

11:39 Muslim leaders in Norway swiftly condemned the attacks. “This is our homeland, this is my homeland; I condemn these attacks and the Islamic Council of Norway condemns these attacks, whoever is behind them,” said Mehtab Afsar, secretary general of the Islamic Council of Norway.

12:58 Norway made a conscious decision not to heighten the protection for politicians and other public figures after attacks elsewhere in Scandinavia. “We see it as a key political value in itself not to have that kind of militarized society,” says Iver Neumann, research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI).. “Whether we can still afford such an open society, is now up for debate.” Yes, Norway is at a fork in the road. I hope we don’t change much.

14:07 Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg: “Our answer is more democracy, more openness to show that we will not be stopped by this kind of violence. At the same time we shouldn’t be naive, we should understand that violence can attack our society – we’ve seen that today.”

July 23

18:54 on a per capita basis, Norway lost twice as many people as the USA did on 9/11, according to a story in The Atlantic.

July 24 

09:14 I have seen more grown men cry on Norwegian TV the last three days than in my entire life up to now. That includes the King of Norway and Prime Minister.

09:15 so grateful that they model the appropriate behavior: grief, not vengeance.

11:43 “On Monday the perpetrator of the horrific attack on innocent Norwegian citizens will be given the opportunity to explain his actions in an open court. He has written in his “manifesto” that he will use the courtroom as a propaganda tool… Close the doors to the hearing. He wants to have open doors so that the recording can then be shown on TV stations worldwide.” from the event “Steng doerene.”

15:39 “If one man can create that much hate, you can only imagine how much love we as a togetherness can create.” Stine Renate Håheim, survivor from Utoeya, in an interview on CNN

July 25

01:30 Wow. We learned today that Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s step-brother was one of those who was killed on Utøya (he worked as security officer and was among the first to be killed). It blows my mind that the Royal family, with the media’s help, chose not to reveal this information until today. I’m thinking they wanted to ensure that no victims be singled out as “special” lest it detract from national mourning.

July 26

16:09 Crown Prince Haakon and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gahr Støre at a mosque in Oslo to express their sadness that Muslims were erroneously blamed for the attacks on Friday. The imam confessed that he also made the same wrong assumption. The Lutheran bishop of Oslo, Ole Christian Kvarme also participated.

16:12 I should point out that they apologized on behalf of everyone who made that mistake – Norwegian authorities did not themselves entertain any theories despite media pressure to theorize.

22:00 All 7 political parties and their youth groups have been flooded with new members this past week – all of them, across the entire political spectrum in Norway.

22:33 A Facebook poll in Norway reveals that 80% oppose the death penalty. I wish I had comparison numbers, but my guess is that opposition to the death penalty has increased after events on 22.7.2011.

22:37 ‎10,000 Norwegians have joined a Facebook support group for the killer’s mother, acknowledging that she is suffering too, encouraging her to accept the love we offer.
next day at 07:49 Update: 38,000 have joined

23:44 I cried watching a video snippet of Norwegians gathered at the Islamic Mission Mosque in Oslo to remember the Norwegians who died last Friday. The imam and those interviewed talked about how proud they were to be Norwegian. Notice how many times I said “Norwegian”? The emphasis was on this shared identity.

July 27

20:09 The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation has decided not to provide coverage of the upcoming Norwegian Rifle Championship (July 30 – August 6).

20:23 I am SOOO grateful to the Crown Prince, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Lutheran Bishop for going the World Islamic Mission Mosque for a memorial event yesterday!

July 28

08:40 Opponents of a multi-faith center at Stiklestad have dropped their objections.

08:45 Askøy Mayor Knut Hanselmann (The Progressive Party, the political party that opposes immigration to Norway) says the consequence of the terror attacks must be that Progressives stop claiming that immigration destroys Norwegian culture. Instead, they will focus on use of resources.

09:00 The Hacker group Anonymous is encouraging people to download Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto, make playful editorial changes and publish the altered version. They hope that, in the end, no-one will know what the original manifesto said – and prevent ABB’s manifesto from becoming the permanent legacy he was hoping to create. (Dagbladet 28.7.2011) I confess to having mixed feelings about this proposal, but finally come down on the side of opposing making changes – that would be censorship and is not compatible with democracy.

19:08 I have been wondering what it is like for Norwegian soldiers bombing Libya and soldiering in Afghanistan to hear our Prime Minister and other Norwegians going crazy over how the only way to respond to violence is with love. Ahem.

23:01 Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg just said in an interview that one of the things that gives him joy now is that he sees people hugging each other everywhere he goes.

23:23 Life is beginning to return to a regular rythm in Norway (not “normal”). Just listened to a fascinating discussion on whether Norwegians would have chosen the route of love and civility in response to hatred if the killings had been done by a Muslim. The responses varied, but everyone agreed that we were lucky not to have been tested in that way.

July 29

13:23 There’s a facebook page in support of the Norwegian killer’s lawyer, commending him for serving the principles of democracy by ensuring his legal rights are honored: 46,000 supporters. Then there’s a facebook page for those who don’t think any lawyer should agree to represent the killer: 7 supporters.

July 30

07:17 Norway is bringing its F-16s home. No more bombing Libya. Apparently the decision was announced to the press on 7/22, before the killings, but it didn’t make it into the papers because everyone’s attention was on the killings. The reason given was “Mission accomplished” – Gaddafi’s ability to haarm the civilian population is dramatically reduced.

July 31

14:48 Secondly, [Verdens Gang] has been doing the “aren’t Norwegians wonderfully loving” coverage for 10 days. After 10 days, they do an “aren’t Norwegians bigots?” story. How about we do more nuanced writing all along, rather than alternating between worshiping and reviling people. No-one is all hero (not even Gandhi or MLK), no-one is all villain (not even ABB).

14:58 Despite the crisis in Norway last week, Norwegians sustained or may even have increased donations to relief agencies that support those who are starving in Somalia and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa.

18:51 Anders Behring Breivik’s father has said he wishes his son had committed suicide. His mother does not wish to see him. A facebook group has sprung up in support of the parents. It has 70,000 members.

19:45 Although some Norwegian Muslims were harrassed in Oslo last Friday (before everyone knew that the terrorist is a Norwegian), many Muslims now say that “ethnic Norwegians” are going out of their way to smile, acknowledge, engage, encourage.

20:05 Ole Jørgen Anfindsen, right wing blogger and Islam critic, says the anti-Muslim rhetoric that pre-dates 7/22 is now “unusable” and he acknowledges that the hard line that he and his colleagues took could contribute to “crazy people running amuck”.

20:11 Grocery store chain Coop has stopped selling violent computer games as a gesture of respect to those whose loved ones died on 7/22.

22:06 NRK tv reports on a poll showing that 26% have a more positive view of multiculturalism now, 9.3% more negative, 49.1% are unchanged. Researchers caution against reading too much into it, as many may just be trying to distance themselves from Ander Breivik’s actions.

August 4

07:20 Erna Solberg, leader of Hoeyre (Conservative, pro-Israel party) says attitudes towards Muslims in recent years are reminiscent of the ways Jews were treated in the 1930s.

07:25 I: Whenever Anders Behring Breivik’s picture appears on the front page of a newspaper, ordinary customers are increasingly turning the papers around in the displays, so his face is hidden. Journalists and editors are pleading with people not to do that, as they consider it a form of censorship.

II: But regular people don’t think ABB should be rewardedfor his acts by having his pictures everywhere, and they want survivors of the trauma to be free to enter public spaces without seeing the face of the killer.

The authorities soon got tired of him, though. Westminster Council tried to remove him because he was a nuisance and “obstructing the pavement”. It failed. By 2005 Tony decided he’d had enough of the name-calling. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act said Mr Haw had to give six days’ notice, if you please, of any demonstration within a kilometre of Parliament. How could he do that? The High Court ruled against it, and said he was legal. But the police never acted as though he was. Any morning they might wake him up with a siren, whoop, whoop, Are you there Brian, yank up his plastic, rifle through his private property right in front of Parliament. Who was abusing whom then? In 2006 78 of them came to tear down his wall of pictures, smashed it, trashed it, left it like a bomb site. Left him with one sign. He stayed, of course.

Those familiar with war protesting in Washington DC will liken him to the great Concepcion Picciotto, “The President’s Neighbor.”

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.

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.

The Global War on Terror. Click image for details.

The War on Terror has made defining itself tricky enough; the name of a human emotion makes for no simple criterion for what we’re actually against. For the past decade, that moniker has licensed wars and rumors of wars in all sorts of unlikely places, from Iraq and Af-Pak, to the Philippines and the Horn of Africa. But now there’s a bill in the House Armed Services Committee that promises to expand the scope of the War on Terror even further. Reports Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room:

While the original Authorization tethered the war to those directly or indirectly responsible for 9/11, the new language authorizes “an armed conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and associated forces,” as “those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens.”

To its supporters, the proposal catches Congress up to the reality of today’s war. There aren’t many al-Qaida members in Afghanistan, but the war there rages onward. Meanwhile, the Obama administration wages a series of secret wars against al-Qaida entities in Pakistan and Yemen. Since last fall, Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the committee, has argued that Congress, which hasn’t voted on the war in a decade, needs to go on record approving or disapproving of the 2011-era war. Essentially, his proposal would bring the secret wars in from the cold.

But some counterterrorism analysts are worried that there’s no way to win a war this broad — only a way to expand it.

“Associated forces” could place the U.S. at war with terrorist entities that don’t concern themselves with attacking the United States. Think Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group aligned with al-Qaida that pulled off the Mumbai bombings of 2008. Under the House language, there’s nothing to stop Obama or his successors from waging war against them. It comes close to “terrorism creep,” says Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University.

Even the Obama administration, believe it or not, is opposed to this kind of expansion of executive authority.

For my part – as so many peace-loving people around the world – the thousands killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks were tragic and scary.  That sentiment does not matter if I also sympathize with the Afghan or Iraqi people who, too, have been traumatized.  It does not matter if I care about certain adherents of international law that prevent summary executions of people.  There is something wrong with me, says America, that I am disturbed by bin Laden’s death, Obama’s comments, and Americans’ responses.  Again, all of this does not condone anything about bin Laden or al Qaeda – but that does not matter in the age where critical thinking, moral authority, and creative nonviolence are weakness and stupidity at best.

The events of May 1, 2011 held a mirror up to our faces, showing the real depravity – “the banality of evil” to borrow Hannah Arendt’s famous indictment of complicity with authoritarian violence – of who we are as a nation.  I will certainly be labeled any number of grotesque names that one dare not utter in front of grandma, but such is the nature of these kind of events where our true colors bleed through whatever facades we cast upon ourselves.  I have learned more about myself and those around me by how they have responded to the news of bin Laden’s death and the national reactions.  I am heartened, even surprised, that so many others are troubled by the celebrations in the streets.  I find solace that others do not feel more safe that the apparent mastermind of al Qaeda – a claim worth disputing, but, again, such criticality is not welcome in the mainstream political discourse – has been dispatched.

But even the kindred spirits of peacemakers, in the U.S. and abroad – cannot shake the terrifying feeling that I feel on my shoulders and weighing in my stomach.  Sure, the possibility of another terrorist attack exists (but very few of us, I reckon, are actually cognizant of that kind of fear on a regular basis).  But what I find most terrifying is that I now believe justice no longer has a home in the United States of America.  I had long wondered, but now I know.  America – as a nation at its core – believes in vengeance and violence.  There is something fundamentally wrong when the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize orders and supervised the assassination of an unarmed man who was under indictment by a U.S.Grand Jury on terrorism charges.  As judge, jury, and executioner, both the Bush and Obama administrations, their JSOC cohorts, and the military industrial complex they represented decided a long time ago that someone needed to die for 9/11.

For me, the spiral of violence continues, making peaceful resolution and management (nonviolent options) nigh impossible.  There is no shortage of criticisms and ad hominem attacks on those of us who reject the logic of violence – even if our opponents, like al Qaeda, do not.  Somehow, such a perspective makes us the morally reprehensible ones when all we call for is space for dialogue and critical conversation that puts bin Laden, 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan in its proper context.  This is not liberal hogwash of leftist conspiracy but the heartfelt wish of those of us who have friends, family, and loved ones on all sides of these conflicts.  Sure, the causes and effects of international terrorism are necessarily complicated.  And to honestly examine those cause means not just pointing the finger at others but looking at our own prejudices and policies, as a nation.  None of this is easy, but neither was the JSOC operation that killed bin Laden.

I reject that the American habits of violence and imperialism is inevitable, but unless we seriously believe in a fundamentally different way of resolving conflict – and committing ourselves, our resources and our energy to developing alternatives to violence – the war on terrorism is bound to continue.  The popular response of bin Laden’s death, in spite of all the prominence that nonviolence received this past Spring (a deadly blow to al Qaeda-type, violent resistance), reveals how deeply embedded violence is in the soul of America; “it’s as American as cherry pie.”