• 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.

• Century City’s business as usual came to a standstill Thursday afternoon as the janitors who lost their jobs cleaning JPMorgan Chase-owned Century Plaza towers were joined by 500 janitors, community activists, and union supporters at a march and protest in Los Angeles. Thirteen people were arrested for blocking an intersection in an act of civil disobedience.

• Some 10,000 people gathered outside historic Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. on Saturday for the “Reclaim the Dream” march commemorating the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a Dream Speech.”

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

• Teachers on Thursday staged a 24-hour strike and paralyzed Puerto Rican public education to protest what they say is a general deterioration of the school system.

• On Thursday, two protesters associated with Climate Ground Zero blocked the entrance to the headquarters of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to bring attention to what they believe is the DEP’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act by permitting mountaintop removal mining.

• A protest of Nigerian women shut down a Shell plant last Wednesday, just one week after a group of Ugborodo women blockaded a Chevron natural gas pipeline.

• Oil workers calling for compensation for recently fired employees maintained a blockade at a storage plant in southern Argentina on Friday.

• More than two dozen Bremerton Coca-Cola Enterprises employees went on strike Monday as part of a walkout that involves nearly 500 employees around Washington state.

• In Kazakhstan, a threatened hunger strike by 48 workers building the Almaty subway has succeeded in getting them three months’ back pay. The workers, all from one shift, went on a general strike for three days last week, refusing to work until they got their salaries.

• On August 23, about 100 steel workers at the Hormozgan Steel Complex in Southern Iran staged a protest gathering. The workers were protesting 300 workers not having received back wages in the last three months.

• Around 160 garment workers in Cambodia continued to strike on Monday outside the gates of a factory in Meanchey district, where they have camped out day and night since Thursday to agitate for improved working conditions.

• Thousands of Honduran workers marched in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula on Aug. 18 to demand an increase in the minimum wage and to show solidarity with teachers who were in the 14th day of an open-ended strike.

• Last Thursday, the workers at Kian Tire in Iran went on strike closing down the gates of the factory warehouses. The workers were demanding back wages.

• Women bared their breasts to fight for the same right to go topless as men, during protests in Venice Beach, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Denver, Miami Beach and Seattle on Sunday.

The promotion of ideas is something that societies need more of, not less, and figuring out sustainable models in tough economic times is crucial. I hope that marketers of “good” ideas continue to push them and get people to verify that they are indeed that good. For that, there needs to be increased transparency to see where the money is going and what is being done under the banner of idealism.

If the earthquake in Haiti leads to the election of a musician as president, one whose organization was found to have embezzled money before the donations in January started rolling in, then of course it’s nerve-racking to see all the groups that funneled money into Yéle Haiti, aggregated from clicks and text messages. But the most powerful story to me of digital activism in Haiti remains the Ushahidi deployment, where people trapped under the rubble could text message a number, have their position appear on a public map, and lead to someone saving their life. A system like this requires a lot of moving parts. For a message in Haiti in Creole to be translated, mapped and sent to response teams on the ground there, volunteers from around the world had come together to chip in. This had only become possible recently.

The true power of digital tools is to engender digital resistance. Whether resisting the devastation of your community, accessing information despite limits on freedom of expression, or being able to mobilize people around an injustice in seconds, technology is a creative tool that can be used. There might be many more marketers trained, but that doesn’t mean that these tools can’t be more creative, nor that they’re working against us.

• Singing choruses of “we shall not be moved” while scattering sunflower seeds, 14 activists were arrested in Kansas City on Monday after blocking an earth moving vehicle on the site of a proposed nuclear weapons manufacturing facility.

• Last Friday, around 35 Palestinians demonstrated against Hallamish settlement with around 15 Israeli and international peace activists in the village of An Nabi Salih.

• German workers on Tuesday protested against what their union says are plans by the country’s central bank to have euro banknotes printed by foreign companies.

• Some Pakistani flood victims blocked highways to demand government help on Tuesday.

• Three television channels in Ukraine went on strike on Saturday in protest of steadily increasing pressure on media in Ukraine, with hundreds of other journalists declaring readiness to join the action.

• Students from various schools and universities in the Philippines traded the four corners of their classrooms for the streets last Friday to join the National Youth Walkout and appeal for more government support for the education sector.

• On Monday, hundreds of protesters started a sit-in outside the legislature, fueled by mounting anger over the government’s cross-strait policies and the expected passage of a controversial trade agreement with China later this week.

• The 19-day long protest in Bolivia’s Potosi province was finally brought to an end with the protesters lifting the blockade of the airport and major roads after a deal was struck with the government.

• The entire team of Sri Lanka’s government wildlife vets has gone on strike amid mounting controversy over an elephant conservation plan that has led to increased clashes between the animals and villagers.

• 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.

• Public sector workers went on strike across South Africa Tuesday, closing schools and wreaking havoc on a wide array of public services. As many as 1.3 million people were expected to walk off their jobs. Between 10,000 and 100,000 workers also demonstrated Tuesday across five provinces.

• Dozens of construction workers building a subway in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, have vowed to begin a hunger strike today to demand three months of unpaid wages.

• On Monday, a few dozen Embassy Suites workers who claim they are routinely denied breaks walked off the job in Irvine, California.

• Anti-government protesters in Bolivia tightened their siege of Potosi on Saturday, launching a hunger strike and cutting rail links to Chile, as tourists began negotiating their way out of the mining city, 10 days into the blockade.

• Nine protesters were arrested for blocking the main gate to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor on Monday. They were among members and supporters of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, which holds an annual vigil at the base on the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• More than 30,000 truck drivers in the Dominican Republic went on a 24-hour strike yesterday to protest a government proposal to raise the fuel tax.

• Workers at the Post-Gazette walked out at Noon on Monday to protest pending staff cuts the paper says are needed to stay afloat.

• In India, Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev staged a sit-in protest at Haridwar with a demand to halt the hydropower projects across River Ganga and also to protect the river from further exploitation and pollution. Several Hindu monks also accompanied Baba Ramdev in this crusade.

• A three-day strike launched on Monday by customs workers in Ivory Coast over benefits that have been withheld is blocking exports of cocoa from the world’s top grower of the beans.

• Through a series of well-choreographed steps, a tiger-themed flash mob called “Freeze Tiger Trade” spearheaded by WWF-Malaysia turned heads and attracted attention on the status of our Malayan tigers here in Kuala Lumpur.

• In Turkey, nongovernmental organizations in the eastern province of Batman held a silent march and sit-in demonstration yesterday in protest of a mine explosion that claimed the lives of four people on Monday.

• On Wednesday, unionized workers of the West Indies Paper Products Limited in Jamaica walked off the job to protest against what they claimed was the failure of the management to improve wage and fringe benefits.

• More than 100 people at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in England went on hunger strike on Wednesday.

• In Azerbaijan, ten opposition activists jailed for participating in an unsanctioned rally calling for free elections in central Baku on July 31 have declared a hunger strike.

• Around 120 Chinese seasonal berry pickers in northern Sweden went on a 15-kilometre (9.3-mile) march overnight to Friday to protest their salaries

• In Malaysia, police forcefully broke up peaceful candlelight vigils held on August 1, against the Internal Security Act (ISA), and arrested 36 people in Petaling Jaya and Penang.

More importantly, CONAIE’s demonstration was to focus on the government’s approach to neoliberal policies that only enriches themselves and foreign companies while impoverishing others. The CONAIE, like many other indigenous tribes protecting their lives and Pachamama (Mother Earth), protest against one of their most difficult opponents—global production.

To counter the Ecuadorian government’s unfriendly policies, CONAIE demands to be recognized as a sixth level of government. They want the ability to debate and veto the neoliberal business decisions that are aimed at damaging their territory.

These damages are done by the government’s allowance of Canadian mining companies coming into indigenous areas to exploit minerals on a large-scale (a gigantic open-pit copper mine), privatize water (forty-five percent of Ecuador’s water is under private control) and oil extraction in the Amazon. This would further displace communities, bring about deforestation, dry up or contaminate rivers, destroy the pristine landbase they’re dependent on and deteriorate the health of those living in the area.

In ongoing attempts to demonize CONAIE, the group and its members have been falsely marked as “terrorists” by Ecuador’s four-year President Rafael Correa on suspicion of trying to overthrow the government. A recent case of this supposed “terrorist” activity involved people breaking “through a police line” while marching at the ALBA summit and “allegedly” taking “a pair of handcuffs.” Somehow the theft and destruction of land and killings of indigenous people by the government doesn’t make it into this reality.

CONAIE resistance has consisted of hunger strikes, demonstrations, roadblocks and open negotiations with Ecuadorian government officials. Despite president Correa’s so-called progressive stance, his government tries to divide and dismantle the indigenous movement. In a Reuters interview, Correa dismissed those who resist as “‘infantile’ leftists, environmentalists and indigenous groups unwilling to modernize,” and says “The ecologists who say ‘no mines, don’t use non-renewable resources [petroleum].’ That’s like being a beggar while sitting on a sack of gold.”

Last year, while speaking to hundreds of Ecuadorians, President Correa clearly stated that he would not tolerate roadblocks: “With this law in hand, we will not allow these abuses, we will not allow uprisings, roadblocks, attacks on private property, or obstacles to an activity (mining) that is legal and that is being regulated.”

His concern over the roadblocks effectiveness has been demonstrated. In 2006, paramilitaries deployed by Falericorp (a communication equipment company) hired by Copper Mesa Mining (formerly known as Ascendant Copper Corporation) and possibly with the support of the Ecuadorian and Canadian government, invaded the Intag valley in Ecuador seeking concessions. During their entry into Intag, the hired guns were met by a peaceful blockade of villagers and a single-linked chain on the narrow Junin dirt road. A sign posted on a nearby tree read: “Mining companies are prohibited here. We don’t sell our land, we defend it.”

Without warning and unprovoked, the gunmen used pepper spray and then fired their weapons at the defenseless villagers. Although villagers were injured, they did not back down from the violent attacks. The thugs, stunned by the villager’s defiance, instead retreated themselves. Afterwards, 56 of the gunmen were held under citizen’s arrest until local authorities arrived. This eventually led to a peaceful takeover of the paramilitary’s camp in Chalguayacu Bajo and permanently stopped Copper Mesa Mining concessions.

However, events like this have altered how President Correa politically and strategically approaches the CONAIE and the indigenous tribes that are aligned with them. Correa excludes CONAIE and indigenous communities from constitutional state rights (contrary to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Correa doesn’t acknowledge CONAIE demands), and recently approved the New Ecuadorian Mining Law that lifted a ban on mining and labeled members from CONAIE as terrorist. This not only gives the government more excuses to arrest and prosecute, but to employ the use of lethal force.

In response to Correa’s tactics Marlon Santi who heads CONAIE remains optimistic and says that the movement will not become violent. CONAIE continues collective leadership instead of caudillismo (big man leadership), garners media attention to support their progressive protests and involves indigenous people, teachers, students, leftist and socialist movements. While only making up twenty percent of the population, indigenous people are the ones that President Correa should be representing, not the business elite who are the source of their corruption and deterioration. The structure that traditional indigenous tribes march for will help save Ecuador from becoming another country that cannibalizes itself in the name of economic prestige.

• After teaching at the Bangladesh International School (English Section) in Jeddah, at least six teachers suddently found themselves to be jobless and staged a sit-in protest at the school premises to challenge their termination allegedly without any prior notice.

• In Nepal, around 50 Bhutanese refugees started relay hunger strike in Beldangi-I camp on Monday to demanding refugee status and donor’s support for their livelihood.

• Fiat workers went on strike Friday to protest against the size of a bonus and the firing of five of their colleagues in a sign of mounting tensions over Fiat’s plans for its operations in Italy.

• A protest by Greek air traffic controllers entered its second day Monday, forcing delays at scores of flights at Athens international airport as a separate walkout by truckers choked fuel supplies.

• The unexplained disappearance of a Coptic priest’s wife in Upper Egypt led to a sit-in staged by thousands of Copts at the Coptic Patriarchate in Cairo last Friday, to protest what they consider “collusion by the state security services.”