• On Thursday, thousands of Nigerian women took to the streets in protest of religious violence that left at least 200 dead last weekend, singing and waving branches full of green leaves — a traditional sign of protest. They also carried Bibles and crosses made out of scrap lumber.

• The mass protest intended to paralyze Bangkok and topple the Thai Government began at exactly 12:12 pm today with a huge round of applause followed by the sound of gongs and Buddhist chanting.

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

• The third general strike was underway in Greece yesterday. Public services were shut down and air traffic controllers sealed off national airspace.

• Zimbabwe’s striking civil servants say they are now resorting to a hunger strike after the cash strapped government ignored their month long job boycott.

• The National Programme for Improvement of Watercourses (NPIW) workers – led by Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader Marvi Memon – ended their seven-day long protest and sit-in in front of Karachi Press Club after the Sindh government assured the protesters that it will regularise 1,547 temporary NPIW employees.

• Affected villagers of Barapukuria coal mining areas in Bangladesh started an indefinite hunger strike on Wednesday to realize their compensation.

• At least 70 detainees at the West Japan Immigration Control Center, which has long been criticized by human rights groups and Diet members, have been on a hunger strike since Monday.

Robert Jensen: I’ve heard you use the term “long-distance runner” before. Is that the key—the notion that we have to be in it for the long haul and not expect things to change dramatically all at once?

Abe Osheroff: Not the long haul—the endless haul.

RJ: What’s the difference between long and endless?

AO: Oh yeah, there’s a difference. We will never win the fight. We will influence the players. We may be able to make life better in many ways. We will blunt the shit that the government and the corporations throw at us. But we’ll always be coping with things. My view is that there’s no destination for the train I’m on. No destination, just a direction. No final station on that train. There’s no final destination, no socialist society where we will all be able to sit back and have a wonderful life. Bullshit!

RJ: No utopias.

Read the rest at Killing the Buddha.

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

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

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

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

Ploughshares is not an organization or even an organized movement—it is simply a name invoked by different groups of people who are committed to peace and disarmament and who nonviolently, safely, openly and accountably disable a war machine or system so that it can no longer harm people.

Ploughshares actions started in 1980 in the US and have taken place in many different countries with weapons as diverse as rifles, warships, missiles, submarines and aircraft being dismantled or damaged. Most people involved with Ploughshares actions would say they are people of faith and followers of Jesus, but supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds and worldviews.

Sam, Adi and Peter took this action because they felt compelled to nonviolently respond to the Bush Administration’s admission that intelligence gathering is the most important tool of the “War on Terror.”

The ECHELON spy network, including Waihopai, is an important part of the US government’s global spy network. Despite New Zealand’s opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq, Waihopai is funded by New Zealand taxpayers and its activities are shrouded in secrecy. All that is needed for Waihopai’s continued operation and our subsequent complicity to the “War on Terror” is our silence.

Since this action hundreds of people have been asking to join the list of Ploughshares supporters. While personal, prayerful, logistical and financial support for Ploughshares is essential and encouraged, the three individuals involved have expressed hope that many others are inspired to undertake even more creative and courageous actions in Aotearoa New Zealand, and across the world.

If you wish to know how to support the Waihopai Ploughshares, there are some ideas on their website. For up-to-date information on the trial as it unfolds this week, check out Bryan Law’s blog. And for a concise description of the issues surrounding Waihopai check out the Anti-Bases Campaign website, as well as this extensive statement by Waihopai researcher Nicky Hager.

Kia tau te rangimarie ki a tatou katoa (peace alight upon us all).

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

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

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

The second event is the ICNC’s fifth annual Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict at Tufts University. This week-long Institute “brings together international professionals and journalists from around the world to learn from top practitioners and scholars about strategic concepts and present applications of civil resistance.” It will take place June 20-26. Go to the ICNC website to learn more about the application, which is due March 15th.

If you want to be notified of more events put on by the ICNC sign up for their bi-weekly emails, which also include links to many great stories about nonviolence.

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

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

2. Co-optation: One of the most important goals must always be to co-opt elements of the regime’s forces to the movement’s side. We will NOT win unless this happens. The strategy of co-optation requires maximum attentiveness to the nature of our message and the language we employ. Any gestures that reduce the ability of those not currently part of the movement to shift their loyalties must be avoided. For example, “death to the Islamic Republic” chants, openly atheistic acts, and threats of violence are all deeply counterproductive.

3. Neutralization: Clearly, not all, and perhaps not even most, of the regime’s supporters can be won over. But that doesn’t mean they should all be counted as perennial enemies. We must convince some of them that this regime has no future, that they are much better off by disassociating themselves from it, and that they may continue to work and live as normal citizens as long as they do not try to dominate the rest of society again.

4. Persistence: Civil disobedience is a drawn-out process. The movement should prepare for the long haul and not expect the regime’s sudden, precipitous collapse. Of course, if such an event did occur, we would all be very happy, but we cannot build our strategy on such a model. To do so would be to court disaster. We should prepare for a drawn-out fight. Whichever side — the Green Movement or the regime — designs a strategy better adapted to a prolonged struggle will win in the end. The wave of demoralization that followed the events of February 11 would not have occurred had there been a more sober assessment of the situation and a clearer understanding of the nature of the struggle.

With regards to this final point, I’ve made a similar argument on this blog with regards to the antiwar movement here in the US, and how deflated many felt after the massive protests on February 15, 2003, failed to stop the invasion of Iraq.

The rest of this strategic think piece is worth a read, so check it out if you have the time.

• A parade of Indian people from many nations gathered in Seattle on Monday to commemorate the invasion of Fort Lawton 40 years ago, when more than 100 Indian people and their allies stormed the property and took a portion of the land “by right of discovery.” After a month of protests the government decided to donate a portion of the land for a cultural center.

• About 5,000 left-wing activists and Palestinians gathered Saturday to protest the eviction of four Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

• About 30 people gathered outside the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Denver, Colorado on Sunday to protest a decision by the archdiocese not to re-enroll a child in a Catholic school in Boulder next year because the child’s parents are lesbians.

• Thousands of health care reform advocates gathered outside the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington yesterday, where the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans was holding its annual policy conference. They chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Insurance companies have got to go!” and staged a mass “citizens’ arrest” of the insurance executives.

• Days after staging protests on campus as part of the national March 4 Day of Action, a small group of students at Stony Brook University sat down in the hallway outside of President Stanley’s office for hours and begged passersby for spare change to cover the rising costs of tuition.

• People who care for injured inmates at California’s Alameda County’s jails are went on a one-day strike yesterday to protest what medical workers call “bad faith” contract negotiations.

• Hundreds of people rallied outside a Manhattan hotel Tuesday to protest a fundraiser held by the group Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

NS: Since Augustine, Catholic tradition has upheld just war theory. Does Sant’Egidio see itself, like the Catholic Worker movement in the United States, as a challenge to that tradition? Or does its approach to peacebuilding fit within the just war framework?

AB: Augustine discusses peace about 2,500 times and war a couple of dozen. Everybody discusses what Augustine said about just war, but they usually fail to recognize that he speaks about just peace much more. Sant’Egidio focuses on the parts of Augustine that focus on peace. War is a possibility. War is a human choice. But from our perspective, the Christian position cannot be but a peaceful one, both in terms of being peaceful ourselves and in terms of being peacemakers. We don’t begin with theories. We work for peace because, to the poor, war is the worst of all conditions—Andrea Riccardi called it “the mother of all poverty.” Rather than holding a theoretical argument in favor of, or against, war, we need to be bound to practice. We’re more concerned with orthopraxis than orthodoxy. We want to be orthodox, but we have an even greater desire to actually practice the gospel.

Read more about Sant’Egidio’s remarkable work in our  full interview at The Immanent Frame.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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