• A few hundred protesters marched on Waikiki Saturday as leaders of Pacific Rim nations gathered for a summit to discuss free trade agreements and other issues. During the gala dinner, renowned Hawaiian guitarist Makana spent almost 45 minutes repeatedly singing his new protest ballad “We Are the Many” instead of the expected instrumental background music. Over a dozen heads of state, including President Obama, heard Makana’s message that included lines such as “The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw…. And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw.”

• Police confronted an estimated 1,000 protesters in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday after clearing parks occupied by demonstrators for weeks. 50 were arrested after refusing to leave one of the parks. The demonstrators regrouped in the streets, blocking traffic for hours.

• Twenty-seven “Occupy St. Louis” protesters were arrested early Saturday morning after defying an existing park curfew.

• Portuguese civil servants and soldiers staged an anti-austerity protest in Lisbon on Saturday, a sign of the rising social tensions in debt-hit Portugal over deep cuts in spending.

• Thousands of demonstrators rallied in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday against oil legislation that could cost the port city and surrounding state billions of dollars in revenues.

• Angry over a range of environmental issues, about 250 protesters erected a mock coal-fired power station on the steps of Australia’s Parliament House before marching backwards to Treasury Gardens, arguing the government’s policies have taken Victoria backwards.

• More than 350 people linked arms to form a “human chain” on the Stirling Bridge in Fremantle, Australia on Sunday to protest the live animal export trade.

• About 100 peaceful marchers sent a clear message Sunday to vandals who torched cars and scrawled Nazi swastikas in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn. The march included about 25 people from the Occupy Wall Street movement in Manhattan, which put out a statement condemning the vandalism.

• More than 2,000 students marched through London last week to protest cuts to public spending and a big increase in tuition fees.

The world has had little reason to pay attention to the intensifying human rights meltdown in Fiji at the hands of the ruling military junta. After all, it hasn’t affected the bottom line: foreign exploitation of the island nation’s cheap natural resources or the discounted soldiers it supplies to the United Nations and American mercenary companies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fiji Water, one of the top imported bottled waters in the United States, still markets itself as an untarnished taste of paradise, while giving millions of dollars to the country’s brutal dictatorship and hiring a military-led company to run its security. Even Gibson Guitar, the favorite of rock-stars which just became the new darling of the Tea Party after federal raids on its imported wood, is busy courting the despotic regime for preferential access to Fiji’s mahogany riches, which were behind the country’s 2000 coup.

The draconian censorship of all media in Fiji means constant suppression of reports about the increasing surveillance, harassment, detentions, beatings, rape and murder of Fijian citizens at the hands of their dictatorship. International press has recently noticed that the junta is even censoring news of tourist deaths on the island in order to maintain the facade of idyllic calm.

But in the past few months, the discontent simmering in Fijian society has come spilling out through several key fractures. There have been high-level defections, calls for global solidarity by labor unions and on-the-ground protests. For the first time since the junta took power in a 2006 coup, many Fijians have hope that the ingredients of a revolution are coming together.

Fiji’s highest-profile defector yet, Lieutenant Colonel Ratu Tevita Mara, believes that Fiji is ripe for an Oceanic version of the Arab Spring. In a video posted on his site, he said the regime will be brought down by “peaceful means,” and that “we will use passive resistance, there will be no violence.” These are no doubt surprising words coming from the former fourth highest-ranking member of Fiji’s military and the army’s chief of staff. In a recent interview, I spoke with Mara, about the junta, its vulnerabilities, and what he sees as its inevitable downfall.

Mara was initially a key supporting official of Commodore Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama’s 2006 coup — the U.S. Embassy calls Mara a “coup ringleader” in Wikileaks cables — but he has since described his government as a “vicious and brutal illegal military junta” run by a “mafia of violent and corrupt terrorists.” Mara’s words carry additional weight with Fijians as he is the son of the founding father of modern Fiji, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara — the first prime minister of post-independence Fiji and later its president. He’s also the brother-in-law of Fiji’s current president, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, who answers to self-appointed Prime Minister Bainimarama. Mara was charged this spring with sedition and mutiny after a military officer reported him for making a critical comment about the regime.

Mara spoke to me from Australia, where he’s a declared fugitive from Fiji after being picked up at sea by the Tongan navy in May. (Being related to Tonga’s royal family, he was given citizenship there.) The junta has filed extradition papers for him all over the South Pacific, where he’s been on a speaking tour airing their dirty laundry to regional governments and Fijian expatriate democracy groups. He has also put a series of videos on his website in which he appeals directly to soldiers and police officers to end Bainimarama’s reign, calling some out by name. According to Mara, Bainimarama’s inner circle has become increasingly insular, and that it’s this inside group of soldiers and bodyguards that has been behind the physical assaults on dissidents, including Fiji’s infamous nighttime arson attacks on the homes of perceived critics. “It’s not the whole of the military that’s doing these atrocities in Fiji, it’s only a select number of people under Bainimarama,” Mara explained.

Recently-released Fijian Wikileaks cables — explored in depth by the Australian press — document the torture, rape, and even murder of detainees that constitute the reign of Bainimarama’s henchmen. A 2007 cable reported that Bainimarama privately confirmed to EU diplomats that “if someone insults the President or the RFMF [Republic of Fiji Military Forces], of course we must have them taken to the barracks and have them beaten up.” In another 2007 cable, the U.S. Embassy related Fijian human rights reports that Bainimarama himself had joined in the beating of a senior government official, barking “don’t f*** with the military” as he did. The U.S. Embassy also reported on an incident when the military had handed over the bruised, dead body of a detainee to the police.

Fijians are arrested not only for public statements against the junta, Mara explained, but are now even taken to barracks for comments made in private conversation — a tactic he described in one of his internet videos as “more like Nazi Germany and the Gestapo, or the Soviet Union and the KGB.” A more contemporary comparison, however, would be China, where Fiji’s chief censor — the secretary of the Ministry of Information —is attending workshops on how to control the flow of information to the public.

Mara confirmed to me that “the mobile phones are tapped, the landlines are tapped.” He also confirmed that the internet is indeed monitored — a fact that I discovered on my own in 2009 after my emails were intercepted by Fiji police at an internet cafe and I was arrested for them.

“There is control on the internet, they control that. The internet monitoring is done by the internet company Connect,” which the government owns, said Mara. “I’ve sat in meetings where transcripts of conversations have been brought up to Bainimarama. Civil servants have even been sent from their jobs for phone conversations criticizing the government.” People who appear to be civilians are paid by the military to monitor their neighbors: “Reserve soldiers, they get put on the payroll. They remain in civil society, continue their normal civilian jobs, and send information back to military headquarters.” Mara recalled taxi drivers calling military headquarters with tips about seditious passengers.

The surveillance apparatus, the censorship of media — which the regime has dubbed the “journalism of hope” — and a climate of fear around public protest have led many Fijians to use anonymous methods to communicate to each other and to the world that they’ve had enough. The capital city of Suva and other parts of the main island were recently tagged in the middle of the night with graffiti like “PM MURDERER,” “BAINIMARAMA U EVIL LEADER,” and “PM YOUR TIME IS OVER – NEW GOV’T SOON,” followed by the torching of police huts. A group calling itself the Viti Revolutionary Forces emerged to take credit, and managed to send out a nationwide text message urging Fijians to “start passive resistance now.” The military has started to arrest suspects, and five men appeared in court this month to plead not guilty to charges of sedition.

Anti-regime blogs by well-connected dissidents have flourished, and are becoming the go-to drops for whistleblowers with inside scoops about the junta. Satirical accounts masquerading as the regime have been created on social media, such as a junta Twitter account which tweets at unsuspecting foreigners who’ve made comments about Fiji (“As long as you do not criticise us you are welcome to stay. Smile for the men with the guns.”) A former Fijian government minister was arrested, and says he was beaten, for distributing an anti-regime DVD to villagers. Fijians abroad have started displaying upside-down Fijian flags at public events, as they’ve been doing at this month’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. (Rugby is Fiji’s national sport.)

But perhaps the most critical mass of resistance comes from Fiji’s trade unions, whose leaders have been repeatedly arrested and beaten by the military. They’re now taking the risk of being publicly quoted by Australian and New Zealand press about their ordeals, while the unions are persecuted for holding public meetings due to Fiji’s martial law forbidding unpermitted gatherings.

International trade unions have raised the alarm about the junta’s abuses and called for global solidarity. As a result, the Australian Transport Workers Union, along with their New Zealand counterparts, have even considered shutting down flights to Fiji.

The regime escalated its war against Fiji’s workers last month with the release of its Essential National Industries Decree, a hugely controversial law designed to shred workers’ rights. An Air Pacific pilot was just arrested and charged with cyber-crimes for releasing internal documents to an anti-regime blog showing that the airline, which is nearly half-owned by the Australian giant Qantas, had helped to draft the decree and paid a New York law firm tens of thousands of dollars to consult on it.

While workers continue to step up their resistance in the face of repression, there are signs that the military is losing its moral authority. This developing situation — to be discussed in part two of this series — has heightened prospects of a popular uprising. As Secretary General of Amnesty International Salil Shetty told regional press this month, “In all these places, we are talking currently about Syria, Yemen, I don’t see how Fiji is such an exception. If this level of violation of human rights continues and if people don’t have a voice and if they have no basic freedoms, in my view it’s a matter of time.”

• Greeks walked off their jobs across the nation today and as many as 20,000 marched through Athens’ central square to protest Prime Minister George Papandreou’s 6.6 billion-euro ($8.7 billion) austerity plan, challenging a government seeking European bailout funds to stave off default.

• On Monday, hundreds of activists stopped pedestrian traffic at the Perth Cultural Centre with a flash mob dance to raise awareness on climate change and push for the state to be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy.

• Madrid secondary school teachers launched a second round of strikes on Tuesday to protest what they say is an attempt by the local centre-right government to use the debt crisis to strangle public schools and benefit private ones.

• In Lebanon, residents of a neighborhood in Baalbek held a sit-in Sunday to protest a lack of  government action on the poor state of roads in the area.

• Advocates for California prison inmates conducting a hunger strike said the number of participants has swelled to 12,000, making it possibly the largest prison strike in recent U.S. history. State corrections officials said the number of striking inmates is far lower than reported by advocates.

• On Monday, over a thousand Palestinians converged on the International Committee of the Red Cross building in Gaza, Palestine, continuing a tent protest that began outside the walled compound on Sunday and bolstering a weekly sit-in by the families of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails have joined a hunger strike to protest against worsening prison conditions.

• Hundreds of Egyptian Copts and supporters organised an angry protest and started a sit-in Tuesday night to voice fury over their renewed feeling of persecution and injustice in the wake of last month’s sectarian tensions in Aswan, Upper Egypt.

• More than 1,000 Jordanians demonstrated in central Amman on Friday to demand “satisfactory” constitutional reforms as parliament debates amendments proposed last month.

• Several hundred environmental activists and homeowners packed the sidewalks outside a natural gas industry conference in Philadelphia last Wednesday and called for a moratorium on drilling, which they said was contaminating water, harming animals and creating a public health hazard.

• Thousands of Greek tax collectors and customs officials walked off the job Monday in the first day of a two-day strike over plans to cut civil service salaries, the latest in a string of protests over Greek government reforms.

• Demonstrators dumped mussel shells in front of Italy’s parliament on Saturday, accusing politicians of squeezing workers with an austerity package while clinging to their privileges like mussels cling to rocks.

• Thousands of anti-nuclear protesters took to the streets of Tokyo and other cities on Sunday to mark six months since the March earthquake and tsunami and vent their anger at the government’s handling of the nuclear crisis set off by meltdowns at the Fukushima power plant.

• Anti-mining protesters chained themselves together in the Melbourne, Australia office of a mining company’s financial underwriter over the weekend as they stepped up their campaign against exploration of brown coal in Bacchus Marsh.

• About two thousand students and workers at the American University in Cairo began an open-ended strike on Sunday to protest the recent hike in tuition fees and continuing low salaries, amid silence from the university’s administration.

• Classrooms have remained shut for more than 10 million Kenyan students at the start of the term when students sit national exams after about 200,000 members of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) stayed away. Teachers marched through the streets of Nairobi Wednesday on the second day of a nationwide strike.

• Thousands of people marched on Thursday against the appointed government in Swaziland, Africa’s last absolute monarchy.

• In Australia, unions are claiming victory in their campaign against the state government after an angry crowd of about 30,000 marched on State Parliament yesterday to protest the O’Farrell government’s controversial legislation that limits public sector workers’ pay raises.

• Thousands of teachers and students took to the streets of several of  Colombia’s  major cities Wednesday “in defense of public education.”

• At least 10 young illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States almost all their lives could be deported after being arrested Tuesday during a boisterous sit-in rally during which about 300 people blocked a busy intersection near uptown Charlotte to protest immigration law.

• About 1,200 workers at Freeport McMoRan’s Sociedad Minera Cerro Verde SAA unit, Peru’s third-largest copper producer, began a 48-hour strike on Wednesday over pay increases and will hold a second strike from Sept. 14 if no accord is reached.

• About 3,000 hotel workers started a week-long strike against Hyatt yesterday as part of a campaign in four cities—Honolulu, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles—over the subcontracting of jobs and poor working conditions.

• In Jordan, scores of journalists staged a sit-in on Wednesday in solidarity with colleagues discharged from service by Nourmina TV earlier this month.

• Bahrain yesterday released doctors and medical personnel who have been behind bars since March after increased international condemnation and a series of hunger strikes by supporters inside and outside the country.

• Normal life across Kashmir was disrupted on Tuesday, the first day of a 2-day general strike to press for release of political prisoners and to protest the fresh wave of arrests across the valley.

• About 10,000 people marched through a restive village near the capital of Bahrain on Thursday for the funeral of a 14-year-old boy killed during a protest against the government the day before.

• At least 11 people were shot dead by Syrian security forces, backed by the army, when thousands demonstrated across the country today against the Baathist regime’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

• Another 137 people were arrested yesterday in the rolling sit-in outside the White House against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry oil from Canada’s tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries. Thus far, 843 people have been arrested since August 20.

• Hundreds of Australians and New Zealanders in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Wellington have taken part in protests against deteriorating human rights in Fiji today.

• A strike in provinces close to Metro Manila that was launched on Wednesday to protest continuing increases in oil prices was successful in paralyzing transportation routes in many parts of two regions—Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) and Bicol.

• Kurds in Turkey, which number around 20 million, have taken to the streets in Istanbul and elsewhere in the country to protest against political repression, cultural suppression, discrimination and a decision by Turkey’s election board to ban prominent Kurdish politicians from upcoming elections.

• Hundreds of relatives and family members of those who went missing over the period of 20 years of unrest in Indian-controlled Kashmir staged a sit-in protest in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital on Tuesday demanding the whereabouts of there loved ones.

• An estimated 80,000 Hong Kongers marched Sunday in honor of eight locals killed in a bus hijacking in Manila, denouncing the Philippine government for botching the rescue operation and demanding justice for the dead.

• In the largest civil disobedience protests in the environmental movement’s recent history, 50 more people were arrested Thursday outside the White House in a protest against the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Since Saturday, 322 people have now been arrested.

• Seven hundred transport workers blocked a main road in western Sydney yesterday to demand new federal work safety laws.

• Some retrenched workers of the Ghana Cotton Company (GCC) in Bolgatanga are on hunger strike and they and their colleagues on Thursday reiterated their appeal to government to ensure that their severance awards are paid them.

• Police arrested undocumented students who were holding a demonstration Wednesday outside the immigration offices in Los Angeles against Secure Communities, a controversial  immigration enforcement program.

• Police turned away a half-dozen protesters on Wednesday who had occupied Rep. Paul Ryan’s Kenosha office since last week.

• Around 100 lawyers in Syria defied Bashar al-Assad’s regime as it continues a violent crackdown against country-wide protests, by holding coordinated sit-ins outside bar associations in at least four regions of the country on Tuesday.

• The Pakistani city of Karachi was brought to a standstill on Tuesday after a “day of mourning” strike was called by a political party to protest against weeks of violence.

• Greek tourism workers walked off the job Tuesday in a 24-hour strike over government pension cuts, as dozens demonstrated outside three luxury hotels in the Greek capital to protest the cutbacks.

• In San Francisco, authorities arrested 45 people Monday during another protest against BART, the operators of the Bay Area train system.

• In New York City, an 82-year-old resident of Brooklyn facing foreclosure was allowed to stay in her house last Friday after more than 200 people gathered in front of her home to block the eviction.

• Hundreds of foreign exchange students walked off their jobs at a Hershey’s chocolate plant in Pennsylvania to protest low pay and physically draining work.

• Latino activists held a protest outside President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign headquarters on Tuesday to ask him to end a criminal deportation program they say is snaring large number of illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes.

• Syrian security forces fired at thousands of protesters who poured into the streets throughout the country Friday killing at least two, activists said, a day after the United States and its European allies demanded that President Bashar Assad step down.

• Indian activist Anna Hazare began a public hunger strike in the country’s capital Friday, accompanied by thousands of cheering supporters, who want to see stronger anti-corruption measures in India.

• Hundreds of striking Verizon workers held a candlelight vigil outside their CEO’s Mendham, New Jersey mansion Thursday, hoping to draw a stark contrast between the contract demands of blue-collar workers and the quality of life enjoyed by the company’s executives.

• What began as the latest public hearing organized by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security task force to address deportation policy concerns ended in the arrest of 10 immigration reform activists Wednesday evening in Chicago.

• Protesters gatecrashed a mining and exploration conference organised by the New South Wales government in Australia yesterday, abseiling off the balcony of a Sydney hotel to unfurl a banner against coal seam gas.

• Thousands of residents of the Northeastern Chinese port city Dalian took to the streets on Sunday to demand the relocation of a petrochemical plant that threatened to spill toxins into the city last week when a typhoon breached a nearby dike. Chinese authorities have complied and ordered the closure of the plant.

• Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis poured into the streets of major cities and towns across the country on Friday, keeping the pressure on the nation’s embattled president to step down.

• About 100 people participated in a two-mile march in Santa Cruz, California on Sunday to demand a halt to construction of 32 homes on what is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Native American burial site.

• More than 1,000 people led by the poet turned activist Javier Sicilia have joined a march in Mexico City to protest the government’s strategy in the fight against drug gangs.

• Tunisian security forces used tear gas and truncheons Monday to disperse several hundred protesters in the capital demanding that the government step down for failing to prosecute supporters of the ousted president.

• Thousands of people turned out at rallies across Australia on Sunday to call on federal MPs to support a ban on live animal exports.

• Thousands of people took to the streets of Dublin yesterday to demand civil marriage equality.

• Tens of thousands of people gathered across Israel on Saturday to call for lower living costs in an effort to show the government their protest movement has countrywide support.

• Ten people were arrested Monday after blocking the road to the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort near Flagstaff in an attempt to prevent construction on a new snowmaking system out of sewage that they say will defile a mountain held sacred by all the region’s indigenous people.

• Anti-fracking activists wearing gas masks and lab coats gathered in Cape Town city center on Tuesday to protest Shell’s plans for shale gas exploration in South Africa’s Karoo region.

• Tribal groups in the Philippines marked International Day of Indigenous Peoples on Tuesday with protests calling for an end to human rights violations, land grabbing and environmental destruction.

• About 125 people gathered outside Speaker of the House John Boehner’s office in West Chester, Ohio on Tuesday to demand more jobs for people in his district.

• Some 1,000 people took part in a protest in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland last weekend over plans by the Health Service Executive to replace the town ambulance service with a first responder paramedic car.

• Dozens of Togolese journalists marched in the capital, Lomé, on Saturday to call attention to reported allegations that government security agents planned to retaliate against critical reporters.

• Miners at Anglo American’s Moranbah North coal mine in Australia are protesting what they describe as a “dangerous practice” of sharing camp rooms, which would require workers to drive home after 12-hour shifts.

• Activists with Rising Tide Australia scaled a 15-metre-high coal conveyor belt this morning at Kooragang and suspended a banner that read: “We’re sorry Somalia. Coal = climate change and starvation.”

• Tens of thousands of Syrians poured out of mosques after prayers on Friday to join anti-government protests, defying the threat of a brutal crackdown to express their rage at the killings by security forces this week in the city of Hama.

• 51-year-old South Korean labor activist Kim Jin-sukis about to enter her eighth month atop a 15-story crane where she has been protesting layoffs at a major shipping company.

• A one-day general strike called in Indian Kashmir by separatists to protest the death of a shopkeeper in police custody Wednesday closed down shops, schools and offices.

• Protesters pitched tents and laid down in the middle of one of the busiest streets in the Haitian capital Monday to protest efforts to remove them from a private lot where they have been living since the January 2010 earthquake.

• More than a thousand workers at a Finnish steel making plant downed tools on Thursday morning for two days to protest low wages paid to Polish bricklayers working at the site.

• Thousands of Chinese taxi drivers in Hangzhou went on strike earlier this week to demand higher fares, pensions and the establishment of a labour union.

Last week, from July 4-8, some 50 people travelled to Queenscliff, Victoria, as part of the Swan Island Peace Convergence to enter into a week of protest and nonviolent civil disobedience to the war in Afghanistan. They came from as far away as Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane and as close as the small, sleepy seaside town of Queenscliff itself. The nonviolent resistance focused on hindering the operations of the Swan Island military base, a facility from which the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) operates, and one which trains the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR), the elite fighters playing most of Australia’s combat role in Afghanistan.

Our goal was total Gandhian transparency – as we said at our first meeting together, we didn’t know if there would be police present, but if they were they would be welcomed as we had nothing to hide. Plans and reflections were put up on our website. We had been liaising with police for weeks beforehand, telling them everything we knew, which precipitated what they called “Operation Swan 2,” a containment force of approximately 180 police members including water police, the dog squad and mounted police. Given there were never more than 20 of us at the gates at any one time, this amounted to a serious overreaction on the part of the state, a trust deficit we were keen to undo.

Part of the reason for transparency was reduced fear – on the part of the participants (many of whom were attending their first “resistance” action) and on the part of the base staff and police. It is only in the context of reduced fear that people are open to changing their minds, and build the trust which is essential for working together and building an inviting movement.

Another factor was honesty and truth – if nonviolence is “truth force” then the force of truth must be given a chance to win the day. If as Gandhi said, “we each have a piece of the truth and the untruth” then it is only in putting our truths together that we both discover a larger truth, and discern the untruth.

The challenge is to design actions which most clearly demonstrate our truth, in a way which also makes clear our opponents’ truth, for people to discern. We chose to blockade as a way of publicly and visibly demonstrating our truth that those perpetuating the war through involvement in this base should not continue to do so. As such we began our blockades at 5:30am, when base staff begin to enter the facility.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the freezing weather, our relations with police quickly became warm and amicable (as an example, we received numerous song requests, one officer even researching his song choice on his home computer between shifts). Instead of the usual one day action, five consecutive days enabled us to establish a pattern of disciplined behavior despite individuals coming and going over that time. Conversations revealed that more than half of the police agreed with our stance on the war (which is representative of the Australian population generally).

But this difference between their personal views and their police role as agents of the state raised two questions: firstly, what does it mean that police individually believed the war should end, yet were prepared to defend this base and its involvement in that war? And two, how do we engage in a way which is friendly, open, and reduces fear, yet does not represent strategic collusion in the defeat of our aims?

Regarding the first question, part of our challenge was to expose the myth that police were “just doing their jobs,” and were therefore a neutral presence. That happened through respectful but vigorous conversations, made easier by the more robust relationships we had built. We pointed out that their current role was not neutral, but had taken the side of allowing the military to continue its role in this war. We asked what they would have done in Nazi Germany, and cited the inspiring examples of police and military in Egypt and elsewhere, refusing orders which perpetuated injustice. We respectfully asked them to join us, giving them a range of options from turning a blind eye to some of our actions, to openly refusing orders, to quitting their job.

The answer to the second question, of how you retain openness without colluding in your own policing, has been much more difficult. The relationship between the short term resistance to war and long term resistance movement-building (including police and military) is a complex and shifting one requiring constant discernment.

On the one hand, being entirely open allowed police to plan to neutralise our blockading strategy somewhat, physically moving us off the road without too much difficulty (here some stronger techniques would have helped). Even then, with such disproportionate resources (people, money, time) at their disposal, police will likely outnumber and outdo us for sheer physical force for some time to come.

On the other hand, not being entirely open also carries significant costs. Meetings need to be secretive, meaning only a certain elite have all the information, breeding mistrust, paranoia and internal power struggles. Police don’t know what they are dealing with, and may crack down harder out of fear-based reaction. This raises the bar of fear for everyone, making the participation of those on the edges of the movement less likely, reinforcing elitism and keeping the movement small. It also makes police and military collusion with us less likely as they are not even given a realistic opportunity to make considered choices.

Personally, I’m keen to build a mass movement of embodied changemakers who will put their bodies on the line to stop or hinder war preparations or warmaking. I love the small group of people I work with and want to be working with them in 50 years time; but I’d also like us to be surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of others. I’m under no illusions as to how difficult that will be in this deflated political environment, or how long it will take, but it seems to me to be a worthwhile project to which to commit my life.

The Swan Island Peace Convergence ended with 10 arrests over four consecutive days of blockades but perhaps more importantly with some 50 people having been involved in a challenging, inspiring, empowering, fun series of events. We will continue to wrestle with these questions of strategy, principle and experimentation. But we will do so in the only way worthy of the struggle – actively, seriously, joyfully, and nonviolently.

Photo: Jon Osborne

Over the last year and a small group of antiwar activists from Melbourne have been escalating our nonviolent resistance to the war in Afghanistan, focussing on the Swan Island Military Base off Queenscliff, Victoria. Australia has 1550 troops in Afghanistan; most are involved in mentoring and training Afghan National Army, but approximately 350 are the elite SAS, who are doing the targeted killings. Swan Island is one of two major training facilities for SAS troops, as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

We have chosen the tool of nonviolent direct action to disrupt and expose this secretive facility and its involvement in this ten year war. This allows us to have a disproportionate effect for the amount of time, effort and people involved, and to have a concrete, measurable, local impact on Australia’s war effort.

In March 2010, four of us entered the base; two blocked the gate with a banner reading “Base Closed: War Out of Order,” while two went inside and switched off power grids and a satellite. Our charges of Commonwealth trespass were dismissed by a magistrate on June 16.

Immediately after court we returned to Swan Island with 40 supporters, and this time nine people were arrested blocking the gate. Their charges were also dismissed by a magistrate in October 2010.

From July 4-8 we have planned a week of activities, including daily blockades of the base, children’s activities, film nights and a public stall in Main Street. The intention is to build a community of resistance in a way which is fun, empowering and effective.

The week of activity is planned to coincide with the beginning of the Talisman Saber U.S./Australia joint military exercises. There will be a series of protests and civil disobedience actions around the site of those exercises as well.

In the space of a year the Melbourne movement has grown from just eight people being involved to more than 80. In the deflated Australian political environment, where apathy and self-interest rule the day, this is a significant achievement, though one on which we will seek to build. My sense is that this growth is largely due to the personal witness of those who have put themselves on the line and repeatedly borne witness to an alternative method of political engagement, which has expanded people’s imaginations and provided a focal point.

Each time we have engaged the Swan Island facility, we learn more about tactics and strategy, and adjust our actions accordingly. A huge strategic advantage with this facility is the fact that there is only one way on or off the island, and that is via a narrow bridge and causeway. This makes simple disruption vastly easier.

We’ve learned from mistakes – at last year’s blockade police asked us to move so that a staff member could get off the island to pick up their child from school. We refused, believing it to be a police tactic to clear the road. We have since acknowledged that as a mistake and apologised. We have changed that tactic; from now on during blockades, people will be able to leave, but not enter.

This lack of trust has led to us wanting to build it more deeply with police and base staff. As a result we have decided that we have nothing to gain by being secretive, and have accordingly made the week’s activities entirely open and transparent. This means there is no ‘in’ group and ‘out’ group, no need for closed meetings, no need to worry about who is listening. It also reduces the fear for those who participate, as everything is known beforehand. And strategically we cannot lose as there is no legal way the police can prevent a blockade being set up. As well as a website that describes everything we intend to do we have intentionally contacted base staff to build relationship, as well as police and others in the community. In this way we also hope to give them an opportunity to join us, or at least to act in ways that do not hinder us, as previous magistrates have done.

To this end, we have adopted the slogan: “Be brave – resist the war!” Our society has become so accustomed to war that it takes great courage to wake from that slumber. For those in the base whose lives revolve around war and military action, it will take enormous courage to even begin to extricate themselves. And for those of us who dare to resist a war that we could easily ignore without it affecting our lives, it takes at least a small amount of courage to step outside of mainstream behavior, and perhaps even bear some small costs for our truth. We have enormous political freedom in Australia, and this is one way we can use it in defense of those who are in positions far more vulnerable than us.

You can follow the events of the Swan Island Peace Convergence on Twitter: @simonmoyle, @matonman1 and @SwanIslandPeace as well as Indymedia Melbourne.

• About 20,000 people assembled in the Greek capital’s central Syntagma Square on Sunday, responding to calls on social networking sites for gatherings across Europe to demand “real democracy”.

• Tens of thousands of mostly liberal protesters again filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday to call on the military council to end the practice of sending civilians to military trials, to expedite legal action against former President Hosni Mubarak and his associates, and to start governing with some civilian presidential council.

• Five protesters were arrested by U.S. Park Police at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC on Saturday after taking part in a flash mob to protest a recent court decision that upheld a ban on dancing within the memorial. A second protest is being planned for this weekend—and over 2,300 people say they’ll attend.

• Russian police detained more than 60 activists in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Tuesday at demonstrations against restrictions on freedom of assembly.

• Several people were arrested for participating in a banned gay-pride event in Moscow on Saturday.

• Up to 100 protesters blocked the driveway to the Brisbane, Australia hotel where mining bosses from the coal seam gas industry were holding an annual summit yesterday.

• Several dozen opponents of shale gas marched through Quebec, Canada on Monday to warn of its possible environmental impact. Training sessions on how to organize sit-ins and occupy exploration sites are also being planned.

• 15,000 people gathered in the Sbata district of Casablanca on Sunday to demand more democratic freedoms, jobs and better social conditions. But security forces intensified their hardline crackdown.

• Dozens of supporters of hunger-striking retail cleaning workers, joined by U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, rallied Sunday in south Minneapolis to demand higher wages for supermarket floor cleaners.

• Around 3,000 people marched through central Tokyo on Sunday to protest the Hamaoka nuclear-power plant, which is located about 200 kilometers southwest of Tokyo in Shizuoka Prefecture—the heart of a region that seismologists believe is well overdue for a massive undersea earthquake of a magnitude 8 or higher.

• After Bahrain’s interior ministry acknowledged that two political prisoners had died in custody last week, the daughter of a detained human rights activist began a hunger strike on Monday, calling on the authorities to release her father and other members of her family who have been arrested.

• Tens of thousands of Yemenis filled the streets of Sanaa, Taiz, Hudaydah, Ibb and the southeastern province of Hadramaut on Monday to protest the Gulf Cooperation Council’s plan for Saleh’s removal.

• Soldiers and police moved into Cairo’s main square on Tuesday to end a five-day sit-in by protesters demanding civilian rule and swifter prosecution of Egypt’s former president and his allies.

• Irish Greenpeace volunteers held a protest outside Facebook’s Dublin office yesterday, calling on it to phase out its use of coal power.

• Protesters chained themselves to a ladder inside the State Government’s offices in Melbourne, Australia on Monday and called on the Government to withdraw its support for a proposed coal and gas-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley.

• Workers at Buenaventura’s Uchucchacua silver mine in Peru have lifted an eight-day strike seeking higher bonuses and better working conditions, but a protest by villagers with their own set of unresolved problems stemming from the mining company kept the workers from returning.