• Four Greenpeace activists breached a 1,650-feet security perimeter around an oil rig off western Greenland  yesterday. They then climbed up the rig and fastened themselves to it, effectively forcing it to stop drilling. As of this morning, they were still suspended 15 meters above the frigid Arctic waters of Baffin Bay.

• Russian police have detained more than 60 people demonstrating at a freedom of assembly rally in Moscow yesterday. The demonstrators chanted “Russia without Putin!” as the police led them away.

• Nearly 100 Afghan asylum seekers broke out of a detention centre in northern Australia on Wednesday to protest the long delay in processing their refugee applications.

• Four tree sitters have created a platform 100 feet up in the redwoods of Jacoby Creek California to prevent loggers from clearcutting the beautiful second growth forest.

• The Mobilization for Climate Justice West turned out 150 people on Monday afternoon in San Francisco’s financial district for a march on the offices of Chevron, the Environmental Protection Agency and BP. Their message was for Big Oil to stop harming our environment and communities and to pay for the damage they’ve caused.

• A small contingent of super heroes and one Sith Lord assembled outside the steps of City Hall Tuesday to protest the arrests made by LAPD of costumed characters along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

• Honduran police arrested some 150 people while using tear gas and water cannons to disperse a demonstration by teachers, students and others in Tegucigalpa on Aug. 27, the 23rd day of a strike by teachers over their pension fund and other issues.

• About a hundred net neutrality activists left their laptops at home Friday afternoon to gather at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters to protest the search giant’s perceived betrayal of the movement for federal internet openness rules. The protest group’s ranks included eager young activists, long-time technologists, first-time protesters and the ever-present Raging Grannies, who led anti-Google sing-alongs set to classic Americana songs.

• Around 1,000 Senegalese opposition supporters took to the streets on Saturday to protest President Abdoulaye Wade’s regime, saying they were fed up with power cuts, floods, and rising food costs.

• In Haiti, dozens of protesters held a sit-in at the National Palace Thursday to oppose the forced evictions of thousands of displaced residents from makeshift camps. The Haitian government has been urged to issue a moratorium on all forced evictions until alternative shelter options can be provided.

• Two Korean priests are publicly fasting outside a government building in the latest protest against the highly controversial Four Rivers project, which they believe will be detrimental to the environment.

• Iranian opposition members in Germany are staging a two-day hunger strike to demand a stop executions and an international investigation of prisons in their home country. A group of 20 on Friday chanted slogans such as “Stop stonings” and “Free political prisoners” on Berlin’s most prominent public spot at the Brandenburg Gate, two days after the purported TV confession of an Iranian woman facing death by stoning on adultery charges.

• On Saturday, all the taxi drivers in the provincial city of Dégolan‌ in Iranian Kurdistan went on strike parking their taxi cabs by the Bolbanabad terminal to protest a 20 day interruption in the compressed natural gas supplies.

• Sunday’s game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Washington Nationals was briefly interrupted by protesters urging commissioner Bud Selig to move the 2011 All-Star Game from Phoenix because of Arizona’s new immigration legislation.

• Men wearing face masks of British Prime Minister David Cameron gathered in London on Friday to call for a ban on the cloning of cattle for human consumption, following the discovery of a cloned U.S. cow that was slaughtered and eaten in Britain.

• Two members of the environmental group Six Degrees climbed onto the roof of Queensland parliament house in Australia last week to display an anti-coal mining banner that read: “Don’t undermine our farms.” Meanwhile, hundreds of farmers and green activists staged a peaceful protest outside parliament.

• The “We Are Guahan” coalition in Guam gathered at a major intersection in Tamuning on Friday to protest the use of historic and ceremonial lands for military buildup.

• Some 150 protesters gathered outside a federal prison farm in Kingston, Ontario this morning to protest its closure. They say the government is ignoring the rehabilitative and healing effects that farming offers low-risk inmates.

• Up to 60 people have been camping out in front of the county government building in Santa Cruz since July Fourth to protest the city’s camping ban, which prohibits sleeping on public or private property from 11 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. But deputies rousted the homeless protest camp just after midnight Saturday, arresting five people and handing out 17 other misdemeanor citations.

• Workers who were fired by a Brooklyn kosher food producer after demanding overtime pay have been protesting outside the owner’s house and a supermarket this summer, and preparing for a return to the National Labor Relations Board this fall.

• Baristas and community supporters shut down a Starbucks in Omaha last week demanding that management reverse all cuts to healthcare, staffing, and benefits that have been imposed during the recession. The baristas claim that executives have no justification to squeeze working families with Starbucks raking in profits of $977.2 million in the past four fiscal quarters.

• Members of the youth climate group Consequence hosted a Big Oil Carnival for Senate staffers on the steps of Union Station in Washington DC on Tuesday. The event was complete with oil-themed games, Tony Hayward clowns, a stilt walking Uncle Sam and a message to the Senate: “Stop playing games with our clean energy future.”

• Greenpeace U.K. shut down at least 30 BP stations in London on Tuesday, fanning out to as many as 50 BP stations and posting banners that said, “Closed: Moving beyond petroleum.” They also pulled safety switches that cut off fuel supplies at the stations — and removed the switches so they couldn’t be turned back on again.

• Four supporters of the federal DREAM Act stood before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in full cap and gowns at a Netroots Nation luncheon in Las Vegas last week to protest his lack of conviction on a bill that would allow a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth.

• An animal rights activist was arrested in Jordan’s capital on Sunday after covering herself in lettuce in a square along one of Amman’s trendiest streets. She held a placard reading “Let vegetarianism grow on you.”

• Rights activists, including celebrities such as Bianca Jagger and actors from James Cameron’s film Avatar, gathered outside the venue of the annual general meeting of the mining company Vedanta in London on Wednesday to protest its controversial plans to mine tribal land in the Orissa region of India.

• Eight people were arrested during a sit-in staged by the direct action group GetEqual in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday as part of an effort to push for a vote on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which would outlaw workplace discrimination based sexual orientation and gender identity.

• 15 people from a small town in North Queensland, Australia blocked a coal export terminal by camping on it for two nights to protest pollution and noise from the coal trains that pass through the town 15 times a day.

The last month has seen 6 Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, bringing our country’s total to seventeen. Yet even with a federal election looming and 61% of Australians wanting troops brought home our involvement in the war has bipartisan support. In fact, far from raising questions over our mission there, these deaths seem to only strengthen the government’s resolve to remain. The same seems to be true of the U.S. and many other NATO countries.  It strengthens their resolve not because it makes the mission there any more necessary, or more strategically important, but because of a principle called “the sacrifice trap.”

This psychological principle works through an escalating commitment to a failing course of action, ironically in order to justify that course of action.  The more one sacrifices in pursuit of a particular objective, the more difficult it is to change course from that objective, and the more stridently it will be defended.  Often we experience this when they are put on hold by a telephone company. Our dogged commitment to the call seems to grow the longer they make us wait.  This is not because we don’t want to hang up, but because we feel the time spent will have been a waste if we do.

The more soldiers who are killed in the course of this war, the more committed some governments seem to be to it.  It is partly a matter of saving face – no one likes to admit they have made a mistake, let alone governments or countries.  But greater than that is the sense of investment, which must be seen to bear fruit, even in the most fruitless course of action.  Furthermore, the greater the “investment,” the more the prize seems to be inflated in importance.

During the Talisman Sabre joint US/Australian military exercises in 2009, my friends and I had many conversations with soldiers from Australia and the U.S., many of whom had spent time in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. To my surprise, almost without exception, they expressed the futility of the task there.  Some had lost good friends. But they were under orders, they said, and their families relied on the income they generated from the army.

It is believed that as many as 25 percent of US soldiers are looking for a way out of the military, yet don’t feel able to leave.  Having committed their lives to the military – and in many cases, committed acts they regret – the stakes have been raised to unacceptable levels to admit that they have been wrong.

The only way out of the sacrifice trap is to give those involved – soldiers, the military hierarchy, and government – a way out that enables them retain their dignity and reduces the cognitive dissonance between knowing their actions are wrong or counter-productive and doing it anyway.  Ironically, the more stridently the left pillories their actions, the less likely it becomes that it will change course, because it forces them deeper into the jaws of the sacrifice trap.

I wonder then whether the latest Wikileaks scandal might actually backfire on the voices for ending the war. If it leads to demonization and harshness, it almost certainly will.

Of course, toning down the criticism of the war does not mean that people should not be held accountable for immoral actions, but demonizing them will only hinder the process of necessary change.

There seems to be a delicate balance in this between personal pride and personal cost. Several countries have of course already backed out of their involvement in the war, but they have been countries with relatively little invested in terms of personal pride. Nations seem to have seen their way clear to withdraw when the cost outweighed the pride element.

If a rigorous cost-benefit analysis were to be undertaken – including accounting for the reality of property destruction, injury, and loss of life on all sides – I am certain it would reveal that the war in Afghanistan is really in no one’s national interest, and that there are numerous other, less costly options to achieve the stated objectives.  But until such advice is heeded, further commitment to this “war without end” will continue to be a disservice to us all – especially to those soldiers putting themselves at risk at the behest of their government.

• On Friday, a million workers belonging to Italy’s largest union went on strike across the nation to protest proposed austerity cuts by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government.

• Despite some acts of violence, 25,000 peacefully protested the policies of the G20 in Toronto over the weekend amidst a heavy police presence.

• Tens of thousands of opposition supporters marched in Taiwan’s capital Saturday to protest the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a trade agreement with China opponents said will undermine the island’s self-rule and harm its economy.

• On Saturday, people gathered and held hands to form a symbolic line in the sand for 15 minutes as part of the “Hands Across the Sand” demonstrations organized in the US and abroad to pressure elected officials against any expansion of offshore drilling and to promote “clean” energy. In the U.S. nearly 700 rallies took place in all 50 states.

• Egyptian dissident Mohamed El Baradei led over 4,000 in a protest in Alexandria on Friday demanding an end to police brutality.

• In Michigan, thousands rallied on the state Capitol in Lansing on Thursday to urge lawmakers not to cut funding for public education.

• On Friday, 40 demonstrators greeted Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean at a Melbourne hotel when he arrived at a meeting to approve a deal to export up to 20 million tons of polluting La Trobe Valley brown coal to Vietnam.

Inspired by Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s call to be prepared to bear significant costs for peacemaking, my small group of antiwar activists in Melbourne, Australia decided to “up the ante” and try some actions that might be potentially more costly than anything we had done before resisting the war in Afghanistan. This was back in October 2009.

We spent months researching Afghanistan—the geography and politics, as well as the war. We also spent some time placing these events in the context of our Christian faith, asking some hard questions about our activism: were we too focused on symbolism and not enough on effectiveness? Were we too focused on effectiveness and not enough on means?

This culminated in our action at Swan Island, a highly secretive military base in southern Victoria, Australia, near the entrance to Port Phillip Bay. The island also houses a yacht club and public golf course, all accessible via a bridge which is guarded during the day and locked at night. The base itself provides training for Australia’s elite SAS troops, who are playing most of our combat role in Afghanistan, as well as ASIS, or Australian Secret Intelligence Service (our equivalent of the CIA in the US). We figured if we could disrupt the activities of this base, we could probably disrupt some of the preparation for and implementation of the war.

So in the early hours of March 31 (the week before Easter) Jacob Bolton, Jessica Morrison, Simon Reeves and myself went to Queenscliff and swam the short distance to Swan Island.

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

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

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

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

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

And complicit we are.

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

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

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• Tens of thousands of people are gathering for a sit-in in Bangkok as anti-government protests continue.  The red-shirted Thais, whose action is seriously affecting the city’s economy, show no sign of retreat after they returned to peaceful methods this week.

• Bail Out the People Movement activists and the mostly Haitian-origin staff of Steelworkers Local 8751 unfurled a banner as Sarah Palin took the stage at Boston’s Tax Day Tea Party gathering at Boston Common. The banner read: “Union jobs & healthcare for all! Stop the pro-war, racist, sexist, anti-LGBT Palin/Tea Party attack!”

• Survivors of the Bhopal, India gas tragedy protested in New Delhi on Thursday, 26 years  after the accident, still asking for medical care from the government.

• Residents outside the San Cristobal mine in Bolivia have been blocking rail access to the silver/lead/zinc mine all week, demanding that the government provide electricity, among other things, to the area.

• Strikes and marches occurred throughout the United States in the last few days, as hundreds of workers, students, and community members rallied against labor rights violations committed by national food service company Sodexo.

• A hundred people, including Aboriginal elders, marched on Mumbulla State Forest in Australia on Wednesday to protest logging.  Logging continued, however, throughout the day, on land that is home to a koala colony.

• Food and poverty activists are staging a sit-in in India in response to a Food Security Bill currently facing Parliament.  The activists say the bill does not go far enough to protect poor families.

• Russian air traffic controllers are on hunger strike this week in protest of company violations of union agreements.

• Argentine meat-industry workers marched to the labor ministry in Buenos Aires yesterday, protesting anticipated lay-offs.

• American Airlines employees picketed at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport on Thursday in protest of high executive compensation.  Rallying against corporate greed has become an April tradition for the airline workers.

• A New Zealand man locked himself to a silo for a day this weekend in protest of factory farming.  Police cut him down from the silo at a pig farm while animal-rights supporters watched.

• In Togo’s capital on Saturday, people gathered, as they have nearly every week since the March 4 election, to protest the re-election of Faure Gnassingbe, who took office fraudulently and whose father was a dictator.

• In Hollywood on Sunday, protesters marched for Social Security benefits for gay couples.  700 people marched and were ultimately told that legislation would be introduced to equalize benefits.

• At least two hundred people gathered at a San Francisco BART station on Saturday to engage in various forms of protest against police violence, in response to the killing of Oscar Grant last year by a police officer. People chanted “no justice, no rush!” and peacefully confronted BART law enforcement.

• Thirty to fifty Sri Lankan and Afghan men seeking asylum began a hunger strike in their camp in Sydney yesterday, in protest of Australia’s suspension on new asylum claims from those countries.  They seek to meet with officials to discuss their cases and the policy.

• Workers and people with physical disabilities continued protesting outside of Cairo’s parliament yesterday.  The sit-ins, which have lasted between 4 and 58 days so far, are in response to the closing of factories and Egypt’s lack of provision of handicapped housing.

• Dock workers in Iran protested after their company was privatized and their jobs were jeopardized.  Several hundred people gathered in front of a central building and in prayer spot to protest the change.

• About 25 people gathered in Asheville, North Carolina on Saturday to protest racial profiling done by immigration officials against Latinos.  They said they want their city to become a “sanctuary,” where people who work and pay taxes are in no danger of deportation.

• Thousands of red-shirted protesters in Thailand are camping out near the Government House compound in Bangkok in preparation for another massive rally on Saturday, as part of their effort to restore democracy.

• Hundreds gathered in front of the Vinoy Hotel in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida yesterday to protest President Obama’s plans to expand oil drilling into the Eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico.

• Russian police detained dozens of anti-Kremlin activists in St. Petersburg on Wednesday after 300 gathered to protest restrictions on the constitutional right to free assembly.

• More than 4,500 bus and tram drivers in Bucharest went on strike yesterday to protest wage and bonus cuts.

• Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail went on hunger strike yesterday, demanding a better quality of life while in the justice system, including more education and family visits.

• Farmers across the state of Assam, India staged sit-ins yesterday in response to a recent police action and upcoming construction of harmful dams.

• Australia’s Pirate Party organized a flash mob yesterday after the government censored certain politically sensitive websites.  Thirty protesters met in Sydney wearing symbolic gags.

• After the military briefly arrested Guinea-Bissau Prime Minister Carlos Gomes yesterday morning, hundreds of people gathered in protest, supporting democracy.  The West African group dispersed after the military commander threatened to kill Gomes if they did not leave.

• In Somalia, hundreds of people protested violent insurgent group Shabab in a demonstration led by Sufi clerics on Monday.  The gathering was one of the biggest in recent years.

• Hundreds of people gathered in Moscow yesterday to protest the reopening of a factory environmentalists say will lead to waste being dumped into the world’s oldest lake.

• Hundreds of protesters, many in kayaks, took to the water off Horseshoe Beach in Newcastle, Australia yesterday morning to prevent shipping movements at the world’s top coal port. Rising Tide Newcastle said the protest stopped ships from entering and leaving the port between 10am and 5pm, but the Newcastle Port Corporation denies these claims.

• Landmarks around the world—including Beijing’s Forbidden City, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Sydney Opera House—went dark Saturday evening to observe Earth Hour, a global effort to raise awareness of climate change. 126 countries and more than 4000 cities and towns took part worldwide.

• Greenpeace activists unfurled banners of every size today outside the offices of Dell in Bangalore, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, just as Dell executives meet to discuss a roadmap to finally remove the worst toxic chemicals from their electronics. The message around the world to Dell’s founder and CEO: “Michael Dell: Drop the Toxics!”

• Covered head-to-toe in black, a Saudi woman lashed out at hard-line Muslim clerics’ harsh religious edicts in verse on live TV last week at a popular Arabic version of “American Idol.”

• Students at two New Jersey high schools cut class yesterday morning to protest Governor Chris Christie’s State school-aid cuts.

• More than 7,000 people gathered in the main park of the northern Mexico city of Monterrey yesterday to protest a wave of violence that has affected the country’s third largest city in recent weeks. Most of the protesters wore white and some released white balloons and a white dove as signs of peace.

• A protest by hundreds of students led organizers to cancel a Tuesday night speech by American conservative commentator Ann Coulter at the University of Ottawa.

• Hundreds of Argentine workers demanding a rise in salary occupied Buenos Aires province’s Department of Culture and Education building for six hours Tuesday. The protesters, all members of the Association of State Workers, said they would stage a strike on April 7.

• In Rockford, Illinois, hundreds of District 205 students walk out of class Wednesday to protest teacher layoffs. The protests are tied to the announcement that all “nontenured” teachers in the school district will be laid off.

• A bright red, 71-foot yacht will sail into Newcastle Harbour at midday tomorrow, arriving for Sunday’s People’s Blockade of the World’s Biggest Coal Port. The Amsterdam-registered Gaia’s Dream will moor at Carrington before joining a mass community protest on Sunday that aims to prevent the passage of coal ships in Newcastle Harbour.

• Two hundred union members occupying the basement of the Pearl Continental Karachi Hotel ended their 25-day sit-in on Saturday night, March 20 when a direct representative of the hotel’s owner directly intervened in the conflict for the first time ever in the more than 8-year history of the conflict.

• In the UK, civil servants in Cornwall and Devon have gone on strike for a third day in protest over redundancy pay packages. The action follows a two-day strike earlier in March which saw thousands of civil and public servants across the south west stay away from work. Courts, ports, job and tax centers are among venues being hit by the strike.

I write this article just a few minutes walk from the district court here in Wellington, New Zealand, where I was delighted to witness the jury’s unexpected “not guilty” verdict in the trial of the three Ploughshares activists in Wellington District Court last week. Adrian Leason, Father Peter Murnane and Sam Land—the three men who were charged with intentional damage and unlawful entry at Waihopai spy base in Blenheim, New Zealand—were acquitted of all charges against them.

At the conclusion of the trial, Father Peter, Sam and Adrian said they felt privileged to have helped uncover the true nature of the spy base. “Our actions in disabling the spy base and stopping the flow of information helped save lives in Iraq,” added Adrian.

“What has been humbling for us to realize is how our witness has impacted on so many people around the world and at home,” said Sam.

Father Peter Murnane speaks to press

“We did not try to avoid the consequences of our actions, because we respect the rule of law although we do believe we are ultimately accountable to a higher authority. We damaged property at the spy base in order to save victims of war and torture. It’s all about Jesus’ command for us to treat all people as our brothers and sisters,” said Father Peter.

Commenting at the conclusion of the trial Waihopai Ploughshares media spokesperson Graham Bidois Cameron said this Ploughshares action is part of an ongoing tradition: “The practice of non-violent resistance and direct action in the cause of peace has a long history in this country—the peaceful resistance to the invasion of Parihaka, and non-violent direct action against nuclear armed warships entering our harbors being just two examples.”

“The actions of Waihopai Ploughshares also need to be understood in relation to an international movement for disarmament and peace,” said lawyer Moana Cole, herself a Ploughshares activist. “Adrian, Sam and Father Peter are part of a rich history of activism in support of those without a voice and the movement is certainly growing.”

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• Thousands marched through the nation’s capital on Saturday to urge immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. At least eight people, including activist Cindy Sheehan, were arrested by U.S. Park Police at the end of the march, after laying coffins at a fence outside the White House.

• Activists with Rainforest Action Network erected two 20-foot-tall, purple tripod structures in front of the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in Washington to pressure EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to enforce the Clean Water Act and halt mountaintop removal coal mining. They stayed on the tripods for 32 hours before deciding to leave.

• 130 people took part in the two-hour Melbourne World Naked Bike Ride in Australia yesterday to protest oil dependency and highlight bike safety.

• More than 1,000 union members, workers and activists gathered in downtown Philadelphia on Friday to challenge the nation’s six largest banks to pay for their bailouts by contributing to job creation and doing their part to restore the economy.

• More than 100 workers gathered outside the Department of Water Management in Chicago on Friday to protest forced furloughs.

• Around 500 protesters marched through the town of Bideford in south-west England to “reclaim” it from rising street violence.

• More than 60 Harlem middle and high school students walked out of class on Friday, while another 50 chose to stage a sit-in to protest the planned dismissal of about 150 teachers and staff members.

• More than 7,000 protesters made their way through Togo’s capital on Saturday to protest presidential election results.

• British Airways employees began a three-day strike on Saturday to protest a pay freeze and proposed changes to working conditions.