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category: Regions

Experiments with truth: 3/12/10

  • Workers belonging to CGIL, Italy’s biggest labor union, will walk off their jobs today for four hours to protest cuts at companies such as Fiat SpA, Alcoa Inc. and Antonio Merloni SpA. The strike called by CGIL, with a membership of 5.5 million people, and a demonstration in city centers will cripple traffic and cause delays in public transport and air travel.

The Waihopai Ploughshares take issue of New Zealand spy base to court

The jury trial of three Ploughshares peace activists, Adrian (Adi) Leason, Peter Murnane and Sam Land is being held in Wellington, New Zealand this week. People are coming from around New Zealand and Australia to support them and to give voice to the issue behind their trial—the need to close the Waihopai Spy Base and end New Zealand’s links with the US war machine. Waihopai is New Zealand’s most important contribution to that war machine, far more so than any Special Air Service presence in Afghanistan, and has been operating as an outpost of US intelligence 24/7.

Lets rewind, to 6 a.m. the morning of the April 30, 2008. Adrian, Peter and Sam have entered the Waihopai Spy Base in Blenheim, New Zealand, and used a sickle to deflate one of the two 30 meter domes covering satellite interception dishes. The group then build a shrine and pray for the victims of the war with no end—the so-called “War on Terror” led by the United States, a war that has resulted in illegal military invasions, illegal detention and torture and an unprecedented attack on civil liberties in all Western democracies.

The use of the sickle in deflating the dome was significant. It is taken from the vision of the prophet Isaiah in the Hebrew scriptures:

“They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into sickles; nation shall not lift sword against nation; and there shall be no more training for war” (Isaiah 2:4).

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Mending the tear in society


Twenty-three-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie died seven years ago when she was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza as she stood before a Palestinian home facing demolition. Democracy Now! devoted yesterday’s show to an interview with her sister Sarah and two parents, Cindy and Craig, who are currently in Haifa for the start of a civil trial against the state of Israel over the unlawful death of their daughter. I was struck by Craig Corrie’s words when Amy Goodman asked if the family would get a chance to meet the man who drove the bulldozer.

We would like to meet that person. There are lots of victims, Amy, when you look at a war and what happens. And we lost Rachel, and that hurts every day, but that bulldozer driver lost a lot of his humanity when he crushed Rachel. We’re told by B’Tselem, for instance, that in 2004, I believe, the highest—the cause, proportionately, of deaths in the Israeli soldiers, the highest one is suicide. There’s a big toll to soldiers. And I guess I have to hold out my hand, in some way, that if that man could understand what he’s done, in terms of our loss, if he could mourn our loss of Rachel, I could mourn his loss of humanity.

There’s a lot of steps, as Sarah says, that would have to happen that way. But yeah, I’d like to meet him. And it’s not about trying to put him in jail. It doesn’t do me any good if his children don’t have a father, if he has children. But some way, like Desmond Tutu talks about, of mending the tear in society, and I think it’s more like a wound in your arm, and to expect that one half of a wound would heal and the other half stay unhealed is impossible. Both halves have to heal.

Forgiveness is obviously at the very core of nonviolence, but it is often a difficult task to carry out. The fact that someone like Craig Corrie is ready and willing to do this should motivate anyone who harbors anger toward another human to repair the divide. His gesture also shows that good has come from Rachel’s untimely death and perhaps even more is on the way, should he ever meet the driver.

A winning strategy for Iran

On Tehran Bureau, an interesting new blog on PBS’s website about Iran, an Iranian friend of ours -  writing under a pen name – published an important article last week with some sound strategic advice on nonviolence for the Green Movement.

The goal is to erode the pillars of support for the regime until loyalties shift, practical power begins to drain away, and the regime starts crumbling from within. Civil disobedience is thus not primarily aimed at demonstrating the moral superiority of the opposition movement — though that is admittedly one objective — but rather to disrupt the “normal” flow of commerce, politics, and everyday life. Clearly, a violent struggle against a much stronger foe has little chance of disrupting “normal” conditions except for fleeting moments, since violence gives the state license to stamp out its opponents with the full range of instruments at its disposal.

Moreover, violence he argues would only cede the religious “center,” which includes most clergy and millions of everyday citizens, to the hardliners. He then enumerates several critical strategic principles, including:

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Experiments with truth: 3/10/09

  • A parade of Indian people from many nations gathered in Seattle on Monday to commemorate the invasion of Fort Lawton 40 years ago, when more than 100 Indian people and their allies stormed the property and took a portion of the land “by right of discovery.” After a month of protests the government decided to donate a portion of the land for a cultural center.
  • About 30 people gathered outside the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Denver, Colorado on Sunday to protest a decision by the archdiocese not to re-enroll a child in a Catholic school in Boulder next year because the child’s parents are lesbians.

Wall Street Journal calls CA student protesters self-absorbed

Peter Robinson, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week condemning the student protests in California for invoking the spirit of social justice movements from the 1960s and 70s. According to Robinson, the protests “demonstrated the entitlement mentality and self-absorption that has come to dominate much of higher education.”

We have here the vocabulary of the peace movement, of the struggle for decent conditions for migrants and other exploited workers, and of the civil-rights movement. Yet what did the protesters demand? Peace? Human rights? No. Money. And for whom? For the downtrodden and oppressed? No. For themselves. At a time when one American in 10 is unemployed and historic deficits burden both the federal government and many of the states, the protesters attempted to game the political system. They engaged in a resource grab.

Yeah, these whiny college students have it all: massive loan debt and a shrinking job market. Why should they complain about being exploited by the student loan industry or being victims of poorly managed state funds? So what if they have to spend more money to go to school longer or possibly not at all for a job that’s likely not waiting for them.

And what about the issues facing minority students that have also bubbled to the surface? I guess that doesn’t show that these protests are about more than just money or that they have something in common with the struggles of minority groups in the 60s and 70s.

It’s clear we all need a lesson in economic justice from Peter Robinson. How else are we going to understand why it’s not “entitlement mentality and self-absorption” when wealthy conservatives like Robinson and his colleagues at the Hoover Institution oppose taxing the rich?

Yup, if there’s one thing history has proven it’s that self-absorbed people love to protest, engage in nonviolent direct action, face possible arrest or even police brutality. Those are clearly the traits of people who feel a sense of entitlement, not people who feel burdened, exploited and marginalized.

Environmental activists may soon benefit from “paradox of repression”

According to The Guardian, the head of a right wing group known as the Young Britons’ Foundation has called for trespassing environmental activists to be “shot down” by police.

In October last year, when Greenpeace activists scaled the Palace of Westminster to protest against climate change policy, he called on police to “next time shoot them down … start with water cannon and if that doesn’t work, maybe crank it up a level or two”.

His words are more than just bluster, however, considering that the Young Britons’ Foundation is in the business of training Tory parliamentary candidates.

So what if police did start using water cannons on climate protesters? My hunch is that such brutality would result in what Michael Nagler calls a “paradox of repression.” Environmentalists might gain more public sympathy than they have ever enjoyed before, much like the civil rights movement did after Birmingham.

Does that mean they should welcome the water cannons? No. But it does mean that protesters shouldn’t let threats such as these scare them away from taking action. They pose a threat of their own if they remain committed to action.

What do you think? Am I being to optimistic? Would the general public ignore, or perhaps even applaud the use of water cannons against a Greenpeace activist who scaled a government building or national monument? Would the mainstream media not be sympathetic?

Experiments with truth: 3/8/10

  • In Pakistan, the workers of the National Programme for Improvement of Watercourses (NPIW) continued their protest and sit-in in front of Karachi Press Club on Friday, protesting against the Sindh government over delay in regularizing the services of employees.
  • In the Philippines, Gabriela – the country’s foremost alliance of progressive women’s organizations -  has declared March 8, International Women’s Day, as a “day off” for Filipinas, to be spent out in the streets, marching, protesting and asserting their rights.

Students take to the streets to defend public education

Hundreds of thousands took part in the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education yesterday. It was the largest day of coordinated student protest in years. While much of it was focused on the university and state college campuses of California, where students face a 32 percent tuition hike, there were protests at campuses across the country on issues ranging from minority representation to privatization. According to Amy Goodman:

At the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, police used pepper spray to break up a student protest organized by Students for a Democratic Society. Fifteen students were arrested. At SUNY Purchase in New York protesters took over the Student Services Building. Students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill staged a sit-in at the chancellor’s office. In Washington state, the Olympia Coalition for a Fair Budget held a mock funeral for public education and healthcare and brought a coffin to the state Capitol building. And here in New York City, students and teachers at the City University of New York rallied outside Governor David Paterson’s office.

Watch the above Democracy Now! segment for more details.

Big Banks take a hit as Move Your Money campaign gains momentum

The Move Your Money campaign started earlier this year seems to have gained some serious momentum. According to John Zogby, writing for Forbes:

Fourteen percent of all adults said that in the past year they have actually moved some of their banking from a large national bank to a community bank or credit union. We asked them why they moved their banking and listed several possible reasons. They could choose more than one reason. Based on that question, we found that 9% of all U.S. adults have taken some of their business away from big banks as a protest.

While this seems pretty encouraging, Zogby also noted that it’s hard to tell what effect the protest is having on the banks, as well as whether more people will get involved. But both sides of the political spectrum are taking part.

Our survey found Democrats more likely to be interested in moving their money out of big banks, but one-quarter of Republicans have also considered doing the same.

For Zogby, the ultimate question is whether this “big bank backlash” will force the Obama administration and Congress to reform the nation’s banking and finance. He isn’t holding out hope.

Bank reform is a much more an inside game with rules that are even more complex than those of health care. That, and the campaign contributions of bankers, gives the financial industry much more ability than any of the players in healthcare reform to shape legislation. Congressional challengers will hammer incumbents who voted for the bailouts, but their election won’t likely change how banks and Washington relate.

But he closes on this encouraging thought:

If enough Americans are serious about making big banks more accountable, they will need to do it themselves by taking their business elsewhere.

Experiments with truth: 3/4/10

  • An Irish town council has removed a page in its guestbook signed by the Israeli ambassador to protest Israel’s diplomatic record after the alleged use of fake Irish passports by the Jewish state’s spies.
  • Students at Sussec University in England are staging a sit-in to protest plans to make 115 staff redundant, which will close the environmental science degree and impact on English, history and life science departments.

UC San Diego protest growing against racism on campus

Yesterday, Democracy Now! covered escalating tension and protest at the University of California San Diego over a spate of racist incidents over the last few weeks on campus, including the hanging of a noose in the main library.

Towards the end of the interview, which is cut off on the Youtube video above, Professor Daniel Widener says:

And I think that it’s very important that people throughout the country try to do what they can to mobilize to help us, whether that’s emailing our chancellor, chancellor(at)ucsd.edu, calling her office at (858) 534-3135, or looking at a website that the students have put out called stopracismucsd.wordpress.com. These are all things that people can do immediately now to help us build pressure for change.

Experiments with truth: 3/2/10

  • Carrefour SA’s 116 stores in Belgium were closed Saturday because of a strike over planned job cuts, said a company spokesman who put the resulting sales loss at the company-owned outlets at 14 million euros ($19 million).
  • Three Chinese death-row inmates who say they were tortured into confessing to crimes they didn’t commit have staged a hunger strike to draw attention to their case.
  • Tens of thousands of protesters calling themselves the Purple People took to the streets of Rome on the weekend in a sign of mounting opposition to the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The group, Il Popolo Viola, wore purple sweaters and scarves, Berlusconi masks or striped prison dress to protest against what they say is the undermining of Italian democracy by Mr Berlusconi in his battle with the country’s legal system.

Some simple reasons to join the BDS campaign

In his latest comic for World War 3 Illustrated, Ethan Heitner, a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and a member of Jews Against the Occupation (JATO-NY) and Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Middle East Justice, describes the reasons that he supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Israeli occupation.

Last year, Naomi Klein wrote an important piece for The Nation in which she counters several arguments that are often made against this campaign, that is well worth a read. She argues that BDS is the “best strategy” in the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine, and that surrendering these nonviolent tools “verges on active complicity.”

To learn more about how you can get involved in the campaign in your community or on your campus, click here.

Experiments with truth: 2/26/10

  • Hundreds of students from several Jordan, Utah district schools walked out of their classes Thursday morning to protest announced budget cuts that could slash teacher ranks, increase class sizes and impact extracurricular activities.
  • Nine days after an off-campus student party mocked Black History Month, UC San Diego went through a day of protests, on Wednesday, drawing attention to the small number of African American students enrolled at the beachside campus.