• The pilots’ union of Lufthansa began a 4-day strike today after a last-ditch effort at negotiations over pay and job security failed.

• In Thailand, truck operators will stage a stoppage on roads today in protest at alleged extortion by highway police, saying incidents have doubled since last year.

• Thousands of protesters in Ivory Coast call for the resignation of President Laurent Gbagbo as clashes with security forces leave an undisclosed number of people dead and wounded.

• All 600 detainees at a prison in Iraq’s southern city of Basra have gone on hunger strike to protest conditions that are “not fit for animals,” a local politician said on Friday.

• Strikes at French refineries looked likely to spread as Exxonmobil employees Friday were called to join a protest at oil giant Total that has shut down seven plants and raised fears of supply cuts.

• Greece faces a growing fuel shortage as a customs workers’ strike halts the flow of petrol into the country. Customs workers have extended their strike against wage freezes and bonus cuts until this Wednesday, when unions across Greece will hold a general strike that is set to bring the country to a standstill.

• Dozens of Egyptian women and human rights activists staged a protest last Thursday in Cairo against a recent decision that bars women from holding judicial positions.

• Last Wednesday, Kenyans marched to vent their anger at a coalition government slowly falling apart over graft allegations and its inability to further key reforms pledged two years ago.

• Last week, A group of lawyers from the Law and Democracy Platform, an Turkish NGO working to strengthen the rule of law while respecting democratic values, protested against the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) decision to strip prosecutors conducting a probe into jailed Erzincan Chief Prosecutor İlhan Cihaner of their special authorities.

• Three activists began an occupation of Marfork Coal Company’s main offices in West Virginia yesterday. Marfork is a subsidiary of the coal extracting giant Massey Energy. The protesters plan to present a citizen’s arrest warrant and list of violations on the Marfork processing plant.

• About 400 demonstrators gathered in Aldermaston England on Monday to block the entrances of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, where warheads for Trident submarines are made. Twenty-six were arrested, including Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire.

• About 1,200 Iranians signed a statement against a bill that would further curb women’s rights.

• Greek customs workers announced 48-hour rolling strikes yesterday—the day that was supposed to be the last of a three-day strike to protest government austerity measures designed to pull Greece out of a debt crisis.

• Belgian train drivers went on strike Tuesday to protest safety conditions after the collision of two commuter trains left at least 18 people dead.

• About 300 protesters, mostly doctors dressed in white coats, chanted “the health-care system is in danger” and waved soccer-style red cards in the direction of the building where Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has his office.

• Some 600 workers shut down a pulp and paper mill in southern Finland on Wednesday to protest UPM-Kymmene Corp.’s plans to lay off 200 workers.

In Phoenix, more than 20,000 people marched on Saturday to protest the indiscriminate attacks and race-based raids conducted by Sheriff Joe Arpaio against residents of Maricopa County. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

• On Sunday, more than 25,000 people took to streets in protest against the government’s labor policies when the Confederation of Turkish Labor Unions, or Türk-İş, staged a wide-ranging demonstration called “Democracy and Rights for Livelihood, Peace and Freedom.”

• A group of Greenpeace activists interrupted a speech by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff in Vancouver on Friday when several protesters stood up and began chanting loudly against his stance on Canada’s oilsands.

• More than 7,000 workers at steel giant ArcelorMittal’s plant in Algeria will intensify a strike aimed at forcing the management to revamp the ageing El Hadjar complex. Workers went on strike on Tuesday to protest the planned closure of the coking plant, which employs 320 people.

• Worker blockades of the Belgian breweries of Anheuser-Busch InBev, which began after the world’s largest beer maker announced it planned to cut 263 jobs out of its 2,700 Belgian workforce, were set to continue into a second week after the collapse of mediated talks last Thursday.

• Monday marked the third day of a hunger strike by students demanding housing for homeless tsunami survivors in West Aceh district in Indonesia.

• Jordanian prisoners in Iraq, most of whom are university students, drivers and traders, have embarked on an open hunger strike to press for their release.

• Hundreds of Proshika employees in Bangladesh staged a sit-in in front of their head office for the fifth consecutive day on Saturday and also held a protest march against police barring them from entering the building in the city’s Mirpur.

• In India, leaders of all-party Joint Action Committee (JAC) of Telangana Saturday began a hunger strike to demand that the central government immediately initiate the process for formation of the state.

• British graffiti artist Banksy popped up with 4 new murals on the Regent’s Canal in London last week, one of which was this protest of global warming denialism.

• More than 1,000 people marched in Islamabad on Friday as part of a nationwide campaign that took place in 53 other Pakistani cities and towns to protest both Taliban bombings and the American drone strikes.

• Hundreds of demonstrators rallied on opposite sides of an Israeli-Gaza border crossing on Thursday to protest at the blockade of the strip imposed by Egypt and Israel. In Gaza, about 100 international activists staged a rally with some 500 Gazans, chanting and carrying signs denouncing the blockade. A small number of anti-Zionist, Orthodox Jews were among them.

• Hundreds of relatives of prisoners in a Mexican jail protested the expected transfer of inmates to make way for a film shoot with director Mel Gibson next year.

• Internally displaced people at a campsite in Nakuru, Kenya demonstrated along a highway to protest their poor living conditions following the onset of rains and demanded building materials.

• Dozens of Jordanians held a sit-in near the Egyptian embassy in the Jordanian capital on Sunday to protest Egypt’s plan to construct a steel wall along its borders with the besieged Gaza Strip.

• Thousands of people in Hong Kong took to the streets on New Year’s Day to demand full democracy in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. The Chinese government ruled in 2007 that the territory cannot directly elect its leader until 2017 and its legislature until 2020.

• Police detained dozens of people at an anti-Kremlin protest on Thursday, including 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva, one of Russia’s most respected rights activists.

• Hundreds of activists with the Gaza Freedom March are staging continued demonstrations and sit-ins in Cairo to protest the Egyptian government’s refusal to allow them to cross the border into Gaza. Organizers say an offer by Egyptian authorities this morning to allow just 100 members of the group to go to Gaza was not sufficient.

• A ‘day of mourning’ was observed across Sindh on Tuesday, including a general strike in Hyperabad, in protest against the killing of over 40 people in a suicide attack on the central procession of Ashura in Karachi on Monday.

• The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has called on consumers to boycott Coca-Cola for four hours a day in support of soft drink workers picketing in Pretoria. This follows a march by 700 Amalgamated Beverage Industries (ABI) workers, affiliated with the Food and Allied Worker’s Union (Fawu), at the company’s Pretoria plant on Tuesday following collapsed talks with management. 3,500 Fawu workers are already on strike, and may soon be joined by an additional 4,500 workers.

• Journalists in Mauritania held a protest on Monday in Nouakchott to call for the release of the jailed editor of a leading opposition website.

• Several Jordanian families began a hunger strike on Monday and said they would appeal to Amman’s governor through the Arab Organisation for Human Rights (AOHR) to erect a tent in front of the Iraqi embassy in Amman to call for the release of their family members who are imprisoned in Iraq.

I just discovered a website called Listserve that specializes in top ten lists. Most of them are pretty random, like “Top 10 Failed McDonald’s Products” or “Top 10 Fascinating Facts About Cheese.” But there are some serious ones too. The one that naturally caught my eye was titled “Top 10 Individual Protests.”

Given the recent success of Aminatou Haidar’s hunger strike, I thought this to be a wholly appropriate time to share the list and see what people think. Who else should have been on it? Once you get beyond some of the obvious names it gets tough.

In general, I think Listserve did a great job. I learned about two people I had never heard of before: Zackie Achmat, an HIV campaigner who refused to take antiretroviral drugs until all four million of his fellow South Africans had the same opportunity, and Vedran Smailovic, who played his cello in public during the midst of the seige on Sarajevo in 1992. Nor did I know about Louis Armstrong’s refusal to represent the US in Russia because of what happened in Little Rock.

I look forward to reading what other names folks come up with…

After being on hunger strike for 32 days and coming dangerously close to death, Aminatou Haidar, the activist who has been struggling for Western Sahara’s independence from Morocco, was finally allowed to return home on Friday.

“There were no conditions. My positions cannot be sold at auction,” Haidar told French television channel France 24 by telephone.

“This is a triumph for international law, for human rights, for international justice and for the cause” of Western Sahara, she said from the airport in Lanzarote before leaving.

(To recap Haidar’s harrowing story: After landing in Western Sahara on her way home from a trip to the US last month, where she received a prestigious human rights award, the Moroccan authorities refused her entry, confiscated her passport and put her on the next flight to the Canary Islands,  saying that she could not return until she swore loyalty to the King of Morocco. Upon arriving at the airport, Haidar immediately began a hunger strike that drew increasing international attention as her health deteriorated.)

Morocco finally decided to let Haidar return home after the United Nations and several countries – including the US and France – intervened on her behalf. Her hunger strike will also likely give a boost to the independence movement in Western Sahara. According to allAfrica.com:

…United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in New York [last week] that the situation arising from the hunger strike “really requires that the United Nations needs to do more on political negotiations” over the territory’s future.

Haidar’s ordeal provides a good case study of how nonviolent action can convert the opponent. As Thomas Weber, a leading Gandhian theorist from Australia, concluded after looking at the vast literature on the subject, self-suffering often leads to conversion indirectly “through the agencies of third parties” by moving public opinion or the opinion of those at a closer social distance “to the perpetrator of the suffering to the side of the sufferers.” I would argue that this pretty accurately describes how Haidar’s hunger strike worked.

• Greenpeace activists posed as the Four Horsement of the Apocalypse and rode through downtown Copenhagen yesterday to remind world leaders of the consequences of inaction on climate change. Each represented one of the potential impacts of climate change: death, pestilence, war and famine.

• The G77, a group which represents 130 developing countries, staged a walkout at the UN Climate summit yesterday to protest what they called inadequate aid offers from rich countries.

• Saharawi non-violent activist Aminatou Haidar, known by many as the “Saharan Gandhi” entered the 29th day of her hunger strike yesterday. Doctors say she may be hours away from death, a risk she is willing to accept unless her single demand—to be allowed to return to her country—is met.

• Iranian men are posting pictures of themselves on the Internet wearing women’s head scarves in an effort to protest the recent arrest of a male anti-government protester, who was shown in a press photo wearing a female garment. Bloggers believe the photo was manipulated to embarass the man. So they are showing that there is nothing wrong with women or veiling.

• Native Hawaiians staged a protest yesterday morning near the Hawaii State Capitol over alleged attempts by Hawaii’s U.S. senators to sneak the Native Hawaiian Recognition Act onto one of the large federal appropriations bills. They say it reduces Native Hawaiians to a tribal status and does not address the true issue of the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

• Dozens of children from a Jewish Sunday school marched from Boston Common to the Hyatt Hotel in center city, chanting denouncements of Hyatt’s firing of 98 housekeepers in August. Upon reaching the hotel, the leaders of the march read a statement to hotel workers before handing over a petition.

• 1,000 homeowners occupied the lobby of 1 Chase Plaza, in New York’s financial district, where JPMorganChase has offices, to protest the bank’s broken promise of modifying troubled mortgages.

• Gay rights activists marched in front of New York State Sen. Carl Kruger Brooklyn home Sunday to protest his decision to vote against gay marriage. Organizers of the event say they intend to protest at the homes and offices of many of the 38 senators who voted against the bill.

• British Airways cabin crew voted to strike for almost two weeks over Christmas and New Year in protest over cost-cutting measures introduced by the airline.

Several hundred women, many holding pictures of murdered relatives, took to the streets of Kabul to demand that President Hamid Karzai purge anyone connected to corruption, war crimes, or the Taliban from his government. In a rare display of men allowing women to lead, about 500 men followed the protest group in support. (Photo: Tony Perry / Los Angeles Times)

• Over 20,000 members of the South Africa Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu) are planning on taking part in strike action against listed retailer Pick n Pay today, to protest alleged racial discrimination at the company.

• In Norway, thousands of people took to the streets of Oslo Thursday as President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

• Police arrested 33 people who were protesting budget cuts and fee hikes at San Francisco State University to end a sit-in at a campus building.

• Several thousand people in Indonesia, many of whom were students, marched through the capital of Jakarta on Wednesday against government corruption.

• More than 400 Queensland Rail workers walked off the job in Rockhampton on Wednesday to protest against the State Government’s decision to publicly list the company.

• On Tuesday, “Hungry for Justice at Vassar College,” began a hunger strike aimed at getting the school to reverse planned job cuts that have or will hit 13 support workers. Also, the Campus Solidarity Working Group held a sing-in at the main building for the same cause, that was followed by a vigil.

• World No. 1 copper producer Codelco said an indefinite union worker blockade that began on Wednesday has halted mining activities at its massive Chuquicamata mine complex.

• A Canadian citizen, who had staged a hunger strike to protest his planned deportation from Australia, has won a reprieve.

In China, more than 1,000 people took to the streets in a district of Guangzhou to protest against the building of a waste incinerator near their homes.

• Over 250,000 public sector workers in Ireland, including teachers, nurses and civil servants, went on strike on Tuesday in protest against government plans to cut pay and prevent the national debt from spiraling out of control.

• In Turkey, public employees across the country are set to take part in a nationwide strike today to protest the government for failing to meet their demands on collective bargaining and strike rights.

• The first education sector strike in France since the beginning of the academic year got underway Tuesday. The educational professionals were joined by striking postal workers, who are protesting the privatisation of postal services.

• Workers at Repsol’s La Pampilla oil refinery in Peru said on Tuesday they had started a two-day strike to pressure the company for better benefits and to end forced overtime.

• Players from a lower-league Portuguese football club have vowed to continue with a hunger strike, which began on Friday, in protest at the fact they have not been paid for six months.

• The Pompidou Centre was forced to shut down on Monday after staff went on strike to protest planned job cuts at the Parisian mecca of modern and contemporary art.

• In Nepal, thirteen student unions on Monday announced a five-day long agitation protesting Tribhuvan University’s recent decision to hike tuition fees ten fold in all its constituent and affiliated colleges.

• A hunger strike by opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has grown, with 24 university students vowing not to eat until the Organization of American States sends a delegation to Venezuela to review allegations of human rights abuses.

• In South Africa, Musina municipal workers staged a sit-in on Tuesday in protest against alleged corruption and financial mismanagement by officials.

The Iranian opposition movement resumed mass street protests on Wednesday and faced a violent crackdown by the security forces, as official rallies mark the 30th anniversary of the storming of the US embassy in Tehran.

• About 14,000 port workers in Peru started a two-day nationwide strike yesterday to protest the government’s privatization push and to pressure it to revoke a recent agreement for the modernization of an important port.

• Angry Afghan villagers protested Thursday against what they said was the killing of 11 civilians by foreign troops.

• Thousands of Opel workers have gone on strike to attend a protest over General Motors’ decision to abandon the company’s sale to new owners who staff hoped would save jobs.

• A daylight hour protest fast involving about 800 women in Tonga is continuing. Tongan Women’s National Congress members have been fasting for about three weeks between six am and six pm to protest against what they describe as poor governance of the prime minister, Feleti Sevele, and to call for his and his deputy’s resignation or removal.

• A one-day rail strike across Belgium caused widespread disruption for commuters Thursday, forcing many people to stay home and leaving some highways jammed.

• Workers of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) yesterday in Abuja, Nigeria began a protest strike over issues that are presumably connected to welfare.

• Chanting “People are dying every day!” and “Everyone in and no one out!”, nine protesters who support universal health care were arrested and dragged out of the office of Joe Lieberman yesterday.

• Strike action by the sugar workers represented by the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) continued this week even as both the union and the sugar corporation await the start of the arbitration process.

• About 100 pupils and students in Mabutsane, Botswana have gone on strike over alleged inadequate food and general maltreatment at their Rural Area Dwellers (RAD) hostels.

• Palestinian hunger strikers at Israel’s Nafha prison have faced “repressive” action and been denied family visits since the start of their protest on Monday against constant bunk raids and maltreatment by Israeli prison guards.

• Four Moroccan teachers’ unions paralysed public schools nationwide on Thursday (October 29th) by striking to protest problems that include shortages of instructors and overcrowded classrooms.

Several hundred Transit Workers Union members and their supporters in New York marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall Wednesday to protest the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s refusal to implement a new contract established by arbitrators earlier this year.

• A general strike paralyzed Royal Mail on Thursday, with unions launching a phased walkout involving up to 120,000 workers in a protest against job cuts. The Communication Workers Union said the walk off would last until Saturday.

• At least 50 Iron Cast Pipe Manufacturing workers in Iran were arrested and a number were injured by security guards after refusing to end their four-day long protest against a ten-month delay in wage payments.

• A Guinean activist says the military has arrested 10 demonstrators who were on a hunger strike to protest last month’s massacre.

• In the UK, Iraqi refugees locked up in Brook House and Colnbrook detention centres have been on hunger strike since October 19, to protest against their inhumane treatment and demand their immediate release.

• Human rights activists in Indonesia protested on Thursday over a district-wide ban on women wearing tight pants scheduled to take effect in West Aceh in January, saying it is a violation of women’s rights.

• In India, members of various trade unions in the state of Manipur, employees and workers staged a sit-in-protest on Wednesday against the price hike of commodities, downsizing of employees and irregular release of salaries to employees and workers.

In San Francisco, about 200 people rallied in front of the 425 Market Street, where United HealthCare has clandestine offices. They then moved on to Blue Shield of California, where more than 30 people blocked the entrances, delaying workers coming to work and making a clear demand for insurance companies to get out of the way of health care.

• Tens of thousands of workers in Guinea went on strike Wednesday to mark the one-month anniversary of a massacre in which troops fatally shot pro-democracy demonstrators and raped women in broad daylight. Meanwhile, organizers said that dozens of people were going on a five-day hunger strike to protest the Sept. 28 violence in the West African nation.

• In Sri Lanka yesterday, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) launched a protest campaign demanding an immediate salary increment.

• Normal life was crippled across Kashmir valley for the second consecutive day on Wednesday in response to a strike called by Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led faction of Hurriyat Conference to protest the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

• In Jerusalem, the Civil Association is planning a sit-in on Friday in support of the city and Al Aqsa Mosque

Today is the International Day of Climate Action and likely the largest day of environmental action ever. Over 5,200 events in 181 countries are planned thanks to the organizing efforts of 350.org.

With the make-or-break UN climate meeting coming up in December activists are staging demonstrations around the world to promote the number 350, which most scientists consider to be a safe level of carbon in the atmosphere (as measured in parts per million). We’re already well past that number and fast approaching 400. So it’s crucial that the big polluters of the world agree to a climate treaty that brings us back to the safety zone of 350. But the only chance of that happening is if we use mass action.

So check out 350.org and search for actions in your area. Some parts of the world have already begun. 20,000 school children marched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia yesterday. And 350 activists in New Zealand–shown above–welcomed the rising sun this morning.

Former Polish President and Solidarity founding leader Lech Walesa speaks to workers during a strike at the Gdansk shipyard in this August 8, 1980. (REUTERS/Forum/Erazm Ciolek)

In the current issue of Yes! Magazine, Stephen Zunes has a great piece, entitled “Weapons of Mass Democracy,” which strongly makes the case that nonviolent resistance is the most effective tactic against oppressive regimes.

I’ve seen many articles like this before and they are no doubt important, especially for those who are just learning about this alternative history. But lately, my thinking about how we can most honestly discuss many of the success stories that Zunes cites has been evolving.

Whether we’re talking about the nonviolent movements that brought down dictators or repressive governments in the Philippines, South Africa, Poland or probably many others countries, the story is actually far more complicated than we often admit.

Yes, Ferdinand Marcos was driven from power, Nelsen Mandela was elected president, and trade unionist Lech Walesa brought the Communist government in Poland to its knees, but what was the real effect on the ground of these victories? In each of these cases, unfortunately, the economic elite that controlled their respective countries before the nonviolent uprising managed to do so afterwards as well, and the plight of the poor was exacerbated.

As Naomi Klein documents in extensive detail in The Shock Doctrine, as these countries were moving towards democracy, the new leaders – in various ways and for various reasons – effectively sold out.

For example, in Poland the Solidarity movement that Walesa led covertly abandoned their progressive economic program of worker ownership, and enacted economist Jeffrey Sach’s neo-liberal recommendations – a 15-page plan which he drew up in one night. That meant eliminating price controls, slashing subsidies, and selling off state mines, shipyards and factories to the private sector.  The results of the country’s embrace of the free market are grim, but not surprising.

“Most dramatic are the number of people in poverty: in 1989, 15 percent of Poland’s population was living below the poverty line; in 2003, 59 percent of Poles had fallen below the line,” Klein writes.

A very similar and tragic story unfolded in South Africa as well. For 35 years, the African National Congress (ANC) advocated for radical economic change, including the right to work, to decent housing, and the nationalization of much of the country’s wealth and industry. As the exciting transition to democracy was taking place there, however, the ANC effectively caved on their platform. They made concessions when negotiating the new constitution, signed on to the GATT – the precursor to the World Trade Organization – which severely constrained their economic policy, and let the old apartheid bosses keep control of the central bank.  As Klein notes, the results again are telling.

As for the “banks, mines and monopoly industry” that Mandela had pledged to nationalize, they remained firmly in the hands of the same four white-owned megaconglomerates, that also control 80 percent of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. In 2005, only 4 percent of the companies listed on the exchange were owned or controlled by blacks. Seventy percent of South Africa’s land, in 2006, was still monopolized by whites, who are just 10 percent of the population… Perhaps the most striking statistic is this one: since 1990, the year Mandela left prison, the average life expectancy for South Africans has dropped by thirteen years.

So while these nonviolent movements were able to nominally gain power, the folks who actually owned and controlled these countries, seemed to only get richer.

Now to be clear: I’m not making the argument that we shouldn’t reference these examples as victories for nonviolence, but that the stories shouldn’t end where we normally end them. There is no doubt something to be celebrated in these movements, but we must also take a very critical look at how democratic the regimes that followed actually were, and most importantly, how the folks at the bottom fared.

Acknowledging that the potential economic gains from these transitions to democracy can and often have been lost at the last moment will only help us stop such scenarios from playing out again in the future.