civil disobedience & nonviolence

Sign your support to Disarm Now Plowshares

2009-12-14T09:36:00.000+01:00

Sign direct on the Disarm Now Plowshares blog!
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/support-us/

Support Letter for Disarm Now Plowshares

We support the nonviolent disarmament action that took place in the U.S. on November 2, 2009 at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor where Trident nuclear weapons are stored or deployed on Trident submarines. These weapons constitute the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the US. Bill Bichsel, S.J., 81; Steve Kelly, S.J.,60; Anne Montgomery, RSCJ, 83; Lynne Greenwald, 60; and Susan Crane, 66, carried hammers into the secure nuclear bunker area to symbolically carry out Isaiah's injunction to "hammer swords into plowshares." Plowshares actions call for conversion of weapons of war into what is necessary for human life. They also poured out their own blood from baby bottles to make clearly visible the violence the bunkers hide. They sowed sunflower seeds: seeds of hope and international symbols of nuclear disarmament. They walked in the nonviolence of Jesus whose message has often been obscured by the drumbeats of Empire.

During the civil rights and social change struggles in the US, South Africa, the Philippines, Poland, India and many other countries, nonviolent civil resistance has been recognized as a necessary and responsible method for people seeking real justice and peace. In the spirit of these international struggles, the Plowshares cut through the fences at the Strategic Weapons Facility-Pacific to draw attention to the presence and intended use of these weapons.

We join with these five to move away from the catastrophic path of self extinction and away from destroying all life on earth through the mining, production, research, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. Not only are these weapons killing people now through the funding that ought to be used for human needs, but the production, testing and use inflict indiscriminate slaughter, devastation of the environment, excruciating suffering, genetic damage for generations and wholesale destruction of cultural inheritance.

Nuclear weapons preparation, planning, threat or use violates the most basic tenets of humanitarian law, human rights law and environmental law including the Nuremberg Principles, Hague regulations, Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. In addition the International Court of Justice in 1996 declared that the threat or use of nuclear weapons stands in opposition to international law. Thus the threat of use of nuclear weapons, the cornerstone of US national security policy, is also a violation of international law.

Consequently, every person has a right and responsibility under the Nuremberg Principles to nonviolently oppose the existence of nuclear weapon systems and call for their abolition. All people can act responsibly in their local areas to eliminate nuclear weapons, as well as demand that the parties to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty at the May 2010 Review Conference set a firm date for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. International bodies such as Mayors for Peace are calling for all nuclear weapons to be eliminated by the year 2020. As nations turn their swords into plowshares, we become a human family that can eliminate war.

To sign this support letter
Fax Number if you want to put the letter on your letterhead and fax it: 253-272-6285
or mail to Disarm Now Plowshares, 1417 South G Street, Tacoma, Washington 98405
or, contact us (and sign the support letter) through http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com

New plowshares disarmament: 60-83 year old activists - Disarm Now

2009-11-03T16:20:00.001+01:00

(I was arrested with Anne Montgomery 1984 for hammering on Pershing II missiles in Florida. I was 22, she 57 then, and now 83! Sorry I missed your birthday! Here in Sweden, our three plowshares got released this summer. But we are just behind you guys in the US! Love Per)

Five People Arrested for Plowshares action on Naval Base Kitsap- Bangor

The Disarm Now Trident Plowshares Action

Bill Bix Bischel, S.J., 81, of Tacoma, Washington; Susan Crane, 65, of Baltimore MD; Lynne Greenwald, 60, of Bremerton, Washington; Steve Kelly, S.J., 60, of Oakland, CA.; Anne Montgomery RSCJ, 83, of New York, New York, were arrested on Naval Base Kitsap- Bangor November 2, 2009. They entered the Base in the early morning hours of November 2, 2009, All Souls Day, with the intention of calling attention to the illegality and immorality of the existence of the Trident weapons system. They entered thru the perimeter fence, made their way to the Strategic Weapons Facility - Pacific ( SWFPAC) where they were able to cut through the first chainlink fence surrounding SWFPAC, walked to and cut the next double layered fence, which was both chain link and barbed wire, onto the grounds of SWFPAC. As they walked onto the grounds, they held a banner saying ”Disarm Now Plowshares : Trident: Illegal + Immoral”, left a trail of blood and hammered on the roadway (Trigger Ave. and Sturgeon) that are essential to the working of the Trident weapons system, hammered on the fences around SWFPAC and scattered sunflower seeds throughout the base. They were then thrown to the ground face down, handcuffed and hooded and held there for 4 hours on the wet, cold ground. They were taken, hooded, and carried out through the very holes in the fence that they had made, for questioning by Base security, FBI and NCIS. They refused to give any information except their names, and were cited as of now, for trespass and destruction of government property, given a ban and bar letter and released.

There have been approximately 100 Plowshares Nuclear Resistance Actions worldwide since 1980. Plowshares actions are taken from Isaiah 2:4 in Old Testament (Hebrew) scripture of the Christian Bible, ”God will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many people. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not take up swords against nations, nor will they train for war anymore.”

Disarm Now Plowshares Bios

Steve Kelly, S.J. During his religious formation in our inner cities, in Sudan, Africa, as well as refugee work in Central America following ordination, he encountered the messiah, Jesus incarnate in the poor. At the same time, the relevance of Jesus as a real shepherd inserting himself between the danger of wolf or thief and the flock in his care inspired this Jesuit to try to imitate Jesus. His current collaboration with Catholic Workers and the Pacific Life Community confirms the analysis that the nukes represent, just in their making, a contemporary larceny from the poor, while the wolf, the imminent danger of their use, demands the embodiment of Isaiah 2:4. Will that hammering wake us, those professing faith in a loving God, from our idolatrous slumbers?

Lynne Greenwald is the mother of three children and has worked professionally as a Registered Nurse, Family Therapist and Social Worker for nearly 40 years. She has also been actively involved in the Nonviolent Peace Movement since the mid-1970s. Lynne moved to Kitsap County in Washington State 26 years ago to join Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and to become a neighbor to families involved with the Trident Base and other facilities in this predominately military community. ³While the existence of Trident is obvious, the truth of Trident's nuclear threats and illegality remains hidden. My action of conversion today is one committed out of love for all life.³

Anne Montgomery is an eighty-three year old Religious of the Sacred Heart and former teacher in high schools and programs for dropouts and learning disabled children. As a member of the Gulf Peace Team in 1991 and of Christian Peacemaker Teams from 1995 to 2009 she served in Iraq and Palestine. Since 1980 she has been active in the Plowshares movement and other forms of civil resistance to U.S. militarism, especially nuclear weapons. Since 2005 she has also participated in Witness Against Torture and the Free Gaza boat trip to open the port of Gaza. She acts now to support all efforts to convert weapons of death into resources for human life, especially for the most neglected and oppressed of the threatened earth.

Susan Crane is the mother of two sons, and has taught at a school for marginalized youth in California. More recently she has lived at Jonah House, a nonviolent community in Baltimore, which speaks out against all warmaking, and specifically nuclear weapons. Aware that we take better care of nuclear weapons than of our nation's children, and that we spend more than half of every federal tax dollar on warmaking rather than human needs, she acts to transform these weapons of mass destruction to life- giving materials.

Bill Bichsel, a Tacoma native, entered the Jesuit Order in 1946 and after studies and teaching was ordained a Jesuit in 1959. He has served in parishes, taught in high schools, and was Dean of Students at Gonzaga from 1963-1966. In 1969 he returned to Tacoma where he served at St. Leo's Parish for over 7 years and then co-founded the Tacoma Catholic Worker (Guadalupe House) which offers hospitality and transitional housing to the homeless. The Guadalupe Community lives in the nonviolent tradition of Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker foundress. Bichsel still resides and serves at the Tacoma Catholic Worker-one mile from where he was born and raised. He has served jail and prison terms many times for his resistance to the violence of the Trident nuclear weapon system and the violence of the S.O.A. training at Ft. Benning, GA. He believes that unless we, the American people, actively work to abolish nuclear weapons we as a people will continue to threaten destruction to the global community and continue to deprive the poor of the world of resources necessary for life.

Resistance manuals for net-activism

2009-10-10T14:52:00.000+02:00

Some net-activist friends (filesharing, hacking, free software etc) have developed different activist-manuals on internet-tools which can be used for resistance on-line. Please, feel free to use, add, rewrite and share back:

Activist manuals for internet-activism

Homeless people who connect via internet

2009-09-05T18:24:00.000+02:00

Here's an interesting photo reportage on homeless people in San Francisco that connect via the Internet. Key problems seems to be how to get power and wireless connection. Some solutions are shown in the photo reportage: Homeless and Online in San Francisco.

Send letter to Carl Kabat in prison for plowshares action at Hiroshima day at Missile Silo

2009-08-10T09:44:00.002+02:00

Fr. Carl Kabat OMI has spent 17 years in jail for nonviolent resistance to nuclear weapons. Carl was arrested last Friday on Hiroshima Day cutting into a Minuteman 3 nuclear weapon silo in Colorado/USA and beginning a plowshares action. The first strike missile is on hair trigger alert.

Please send solidarity letters and postcards to

Fr. Carl Kabat OMI
Weld County Jail
2110 O Street
Greeley, CO 80631
USA

Full plowshares action report .
Photos of Fr. Carl Kabat cutting into the silo.
News articles on the action .

Carl-Gustaf granade launchers & Haubitz cannons disarmed

2009-04-26T14:58:00.002+02:00

October 16, 2008, saw two coordinated disarmament actions at leading weapon factories in two different cities in central Sweden. Equipped with hammers and bolt cutter the disarmers gained access to the manufacturing halls where they found and disarmed fourteen Carl-Gustaf bazookas, granade launchers, used in the American led war on Iraq and one Haubitz cannons destined for India.

Read the story of the disarmament actions
Videos and
pictures from the disarmament

Plowshares trial in Sweden - Hope & Resistance Festival

2009-02-20T13:36:00.002+01:00

You are invited to
the SAAB Microwave 'Becoming² Ploughshares' trial
and the Hope & Resistance festival
31 March to 1st April, 2009, in Gothenburg, Sweden

On April 1^st, 2009, Ulla Røder and Per Herngren will be standing trial for disarming parts of the test range and a military radar. The ploughshares disarmament happened on June 24 and 26 in 2008, at Saab Microwave factories in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The ploughshares group calling themselves SAAB Microwave Becoming2 Ploughshares did their action together with Deleuze philosophy seminars in Gothenburg. The philosophers additionally took part in the intervention. Becoming resistance, becoming justice, and the becoming of becoming, are important parts of the philosophy of Deleuze.

Hope & Resistance Festival

A ploughshares trial is to create a resistance community - there are no spectators. Lizzie and Les from the British ploughshares will bring art tools to make the trial into an art workshop. The day before the trial we start with a party! So you are invited and welcome to participate in the Hope & Resistance Festival from March 31 - April 1st 2009 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Please contact Per Herngren at the following email address: Contact: herngrenper(at)gmail.com.

Potluck and resistance techniques in biology

In the potluck supper on March 31st, the evening before the trail starts, the biologist Adam Brenthel will be reflecting with us on "What can ploughshares learn from resistance in biology and in the body". (this is regarding seed ideas like; cascades, creating niche spaces, implanting, singularities, non-linear dynamics, rhizome, etc.)

Organizers

The organisers of the disarmament intervention and the trial support come from the Fig-Tree Jona House Resistance Community in Gothenburg and also the local Fellowship of Reconciliation, Sweden.

Web page with pictures from the disarmament action

See pictures and read more about the ploughshares disarmament at Microwave: http://ickevald.net/plowshares/

Plowshares action in Sweden hammering on military radar

2008-06-28T19:28:00.002+02:00

Press release

Ploughshares action in Sweden

With blacksmith hammers, Ulla Røder and Per Herngren disarmed a military radar and parts of the Test Range at SAAB Microwaves in Sweden, Thursday 26June, 2008.

The Ploughshares group calling themselves, SAAB Microwave Becoming² Ploughshares were arrested inside SAAB Microwave after half an hour. Beside the disarmament they also planted figs and talked with workers and guards.

“The word of the prophet Micah makes us move”, explains Ulla Røder. “We beat swords into ploughshares. We do not protest against the missile firing system of SAAB Microwave or the military radar system. We choose to drop the protest as it becomes reactive and negative. The time has come to intervene and become creative.”

See the side bar for the words of Micah.

“ We do have the ability of direct intervention”, Ulla Røder believes. “It becomes a duty when there are violence and suffering in the world. We use nonviolence. Contrary to my friend Per, I do not believe that we are practicing civil disobedience, but rather upholding international law. It is SAAB Microwave which breaks the law delivering the missile firing system used during the war in Iraq.”

”Becoming²” (like a mathematical 'becoming-squared'⁾ in the middle of our name might look strange,” says Per Herngren. “During the ploughshares action, we worked together with Deleuze philosophers from Gothenburg University in Sweden. We were during one day plugged into each other. Together we examined how resistance and Deleuze’s philosophy will intensify each other. Deleuze highlights the double becoming rather than being: To become becoming, rather than to become something. To produce production rather than isolated actions! Resistance and philosophy are ongoing processes giving no final result. Deleuze forces us in the ploughshares to avoid thinking in "means and ends", or the Big Action. An action are not the destination, but rather where we get on the train. For Deleuze resistance is about movement, speed, rest, slowness and intensity.”

Pictures of the ploughshares action

Beating swords into ploughshares

“they will hammer their swords into plowshares And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they train for war. Each of them will sit under his vine And under his fig tree, With no one to make them afraid,” Micah 4:3-4

This quote is found in text tradition from Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

Ulla Røder

Ulla Røder, 53, from Denmark, disarmed a test laboratory for the nuclear submarine Trident system at Loch Goil, Scotland in 1999 together with the Trident Three Ploughshares group. They won the trial. In the week before the war on Iraq in 2003 Ulla Røder disarmed a Tornado jet going to be used for the attack in Iraq. Ulla has spent more than a year in jail for these actions and other non-violent direct actions.

Per Herngren

Per Herngren served 15 months of a eight year sentence in the US having in 1984, together with seven others in Pershing Plowshares, disarmed a Pershing II nuclear missile. During the first war on Iraq 1991, he and Gunfactory Plowshares disarmed two Carl Gustaf bazookas at FFV, Eskilstuna in Sweden. Together with people from Sweden and Germany Per Herngren initiated the Ploughshares movement in Europe in the mid eighties. He is 46 years old and lives in Fig Tree – a Jona House resistance community in Hammarkullen, Sweden. His books have been published in Swedish, Polish, and English.

The Ploughshares Movement

The Ploughshares have since 1980, disarmed hundreds of weapons, airplanes, helicopters, nuclear weapons, trident submarines. According to the estimated, and not scientific account of Per Herngren, the ploughshares movement has with blacksmith hammers disarmed more explosive powers than what have been used during all wars from the stone age until today.

Contact and information

Web site for SAAB Microwave Becoming² Ploughshares

Ulla Røder: bur200854 (at) hotmail.com

Per Herngren: perherngren (at) post.utfors.se

Deleuze and resistance

Per’s web page

Path of Resistance (the whole book on internet)

Post protest (article)

Deleuze & Becoming resistance

2008-07-09T14:31:00.002+02:00

During the disarmament of military radar, June 26, SAAB Microwave Becoming² Ploughshares worked together with Deleuze philosophers from Gothenburg University in Sweden. During one day they were plugged into each other to examine how resistance and Deleuze’s philosophy could intensify each other. On the web site I have collected Deleuze quotes which might be interresting for developing postprotest resistance. Here are some on becoming; other quotes on rhizome and multiplicity are collected on the site.

Becoming

"becoming is creation" Thousand Plateaus p 106

"A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification." Thousand Plateaus p 237

"Above all, becoming does not occur in the imagination" "They are perfectly real." "Becoming produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself" "it is in the domain of symbioses that bring into play beings of totally different scales and kingdoms, with no possible filiation." "Becoming is involutionary, involution is creative." Thousand Plateaus p 238

"Becoming is certainly not imitating, or identifying with something; neither is it regressing-progressing; neither is it corresponding, establishing corresponding relations; neither is it producing, producing a filiation or producing through filiation. Becoming is a verb with a consistency all its own; it does not reduce to, or lead back to, "appearing," Thousand Plateaus p 239

"powers (puissances) of becoming that belong to a different realm from that of Power (Pouvoir) and Domination" Thousand Plateaus p 106

"become operative and lines of deterritorialization positive and absolute, forming strange new becomings, new polyvocalities. Become clandestine, make rhizome everywhere, for the wonder of a nonhuman life to be created." Thousand Plateaus p 191

"to have dismantled love in order to become capable of loving. To have dismantled one's self in order finally to be alone and meet the true double at the other end of the line. A clandestine passenger on a motionless voyage." Thousand Plateaus p 197

"The genius is someone who knows how to make everybody/the whole world a becoming" Thousand Plateaus p 200

"becoming-molecular that undermines the great molar powers of family, career, and conjugality" Thousand Plateaus p 233

"Although there is no preformed logical order to becomings and multiplicities, there are criteria, and the important thing is that they not be used after the fact, that they be applied in the course of events, that they be sufficient to guide us through the dangers." Thousand Plateaus p 251

Resistance is not to awaken consciousness

2008-11-02T14:29:00.004+01:00

Interesting dialog between Foucault and Deleuze:

FOUCAULT: The intellectual’s role is no longer to place himself “somewhat ahead and to the side” in order to express the stifled truth of the collectivity; rather, it is to struggle against the forms of power that transform him into its object and instrument in the sphere of “knowledge,” “truth,” “consciousness,” and “discourse. “

In this sense theory does not express, translate, or serve to apply practice: it is practice. But it is local and regional, as you said, and not totalising. This is a struggle against power, a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most invisible and insidious. It is not to “awaken consciousness” that we struggle (the masses have been aware for some time that consciousness is a form of knowledge; and consciousness as the basis of subjectivity is a prerogative of the bourgeoisie), but to sap power, to take power; it is an activity conducted alongside those who struggle for power, and not their illumination from a safe distance. A “theory ” is the regional system of this struggle.

DELEUZE: Precisely. A theory is exactly like a box of tools. It has nothing to do with the signifier. It must be useful. It must function. And not for itself. If no one uses it, beginning with the theoretician himself (who then ceases to be a theoretician), then the theory is worthless or the moment is inappropriate.

Reference
Foucault blog
The whole conversation
“Intellectuals and Power” a 1972 conversation between Foucault and Deleuze. It was previously published in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (ed. Donald Bouchard, 1977), and in Foucault Live ( ed. Sylvere Lotringer, 1996).

How we should prioritize resistance

2007-05-14T20:35:00.000+02:00

This map shows where the nonviolent movement should escalate civil disobedience. The size of a territory shows how much that country spends on war, weapons and soldiers.

Military Spending
Mapped here is state military spending. This covers the costs of military personnel, including recruitment and training, supplies, weapons and equipment, and construction. Also included is spending on military assistance to other territories.

In 2002 state military spending was estimated at US$789 billion worldwide. In 2002 the United States was the largest military spender, spending almost 9 times more than the second biggest spender, Japan. In that year the United States spent US$353 billion; 45% of all state military spending worldwide.

from worldmapper

Foucault & resistance

2008-06-08T10:54:00.001+02:00

"Foucault denied two crucial commonplaces of political thought: one, that there was a singular locus of power that could be contested and countered by those who were subject to specific rules of power, and two, that there were specific singular principles that organize such resistance. In his view, acts of resistance generally were not singular instances of binary oppositions or antinomies, but rather were multiple, mobile and transitory."

"Thus, for Foucault, 'when one defines the exercise of power as a mode of action upon the actions of others' (i.e. as government in the broadest sense) then one must of necessity include resistance as an exercise of freedom (Foucault, 1982: 790; 000d: 292). Thus . . . power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individuals or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized.

. . . [A]t the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly rovoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. (Foucault, 1982: 790)"

"While power relations are determined within the diagram, understood as a non-unifying immanent cause, resistance arises from the fold in the outside of thought. Here the resonance with Spinoza is too strong to ignore. In rejecting transcendental concepts of reason, sovereign power and transitive causality in favour of constitutive power and immanent causality Spinoza foreshadowed a mode of political engagement that wasbrought to fruition by Deleuze and Foucault."

Source

James Juniper and Jim Jose, "Foucault and Spinoza: philosophies of immanence and the decentred political subject", History of the Human Sciences 2008, 21, 1.

Foucauldian Reflections

Ploughshares disarmament in New Zealand

2008-04-30T15:08:00.002+02:00

Waihopai Spy Base Penetrated

by WAIHOPAI ANZAC PLOUGHSHARES

“The morning, 30 April 2008, we entered the Waihopai Spy Base near Blenheim.

Our group, including a Dominican Priest, temporarily closed the base by padlocking the gates and proceeded to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes.

At 6am we cut through three security fences surrounding the domes - these are armed with razor wire, infrared motion sensors and a high voltage electrified fence. Once inside we used sickles to cut one of the two 30-metre white domes, built a shrine and knelt in prayer to remember the people killed by United States military activity.

We have financed our disarmament through personal savings, additional part-time employment and a small interest-free loan from one of our supporters."

"Sam, Peter and Adi have been denied bail and will remain in custody. The next hearing at Blenheim District Court."

"There have been over 100 Ploughshares actions over the last twenty years around the world. Ploughshares direct actions are linked through the common factors of: entry to locations connected to military activity, and involve some form of property destruction, which is called disarming weapons or dismantling weapon systems."

http://ploughshares.org.nz/

See the video:

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1320238/1755601

Revolutions without causal explanations - Foucault

2007-12-15T16:32:00.001+01:00

Here is an interesting Foucault-quote undermining the notion that revolutions are causally explained:

Foucault: "The man in revolt is ultimately inexplicable. There must be an uprooting that interrupts the unfolding of history, and its long series of reasons why, for a man ’really’ to prefer the risk of death over the certainty of having to obey."

Per Herngren

Source

Foucauldian Reflections

Hacktivism and postprotest

2007-11-03T17:47:00.001+01:00

In ”Abstract Hacktivism” (2006) von Busch and Palmås use the difference between hacking and cracking to illustrate a break between the protest era of ’68 and the constructive hacking era of ‘99.

“In line with Eric Raymond’s distinction between hackers (who ‘build things’) and crackers (who ‘destroy things’) , the hacktivism discussed in this publication is concerned with construction rather than (…) destruction.” “The traditional, cracker-inspired meaning of hacktivism is, after all, largely an extrapolation of the 1968 ideas (culture jamming, detournement, (…)). As already hinted, contemporary theorists are increasingly moving towards a break with this era.” (p 17)

Protest stuck in the metaphor of a motor with steering wheel

Busch and Palmås also show how the metaphor of a motor which someone is steering is explaining how the protest gets caught in reactive, counter-activism:

‘68 “was actually not a radical departure from the worldview that they revolted against. The countercultural revolution maintained the view of society as a motor – based upon reservoirs of fuel, differentials in pressure, circulation.” (p 76)

As “new types of machines enter the social world, they may end up changing our ways of seeing the world. The logic of the motor did not only appear in the contraptions studied by engineers and natural scientists: it also shaped the theories of modern social scientists, philosophers and artists.” (p 21)

“As late as in the 1960s, the field of management was still preoccupied with how to steer the giant corporate hierarchies that had emerged during the first half of the century. Thus, management theorists were elaborating upon how the new breed of salaried professional CEOs was to plan and thus control these huge structures. This preoccupation with bureaucracy, planning and control was clearly reflected in the vocabulary they used in their key texts.” (p 67)

“For the countercultural youth, the only way out of this total system (which operates as a motor) was to throw gravel into the machinery, jamming its modes of operation, thus baring the monstrosity of the machine for all of the world to see. Public demonstrations, (…) and various ways of ‘dropping out’ mainstream culture were all different approaches to achieve this effect.” (p 75)

Blockading is the paradigm for the motor era

With the motor worldview blockades (jamming) and demonstrations (ask the leader steering to turn the wheel) would be the paradigmatic methods for change.

“Counterculture activists do not strive for piecemeal introductions of ways to make the motor circulate in new, and hopefully better, ways. Instead, they aim to ‘jam’ mainstream culture, blocking its circulation.” (p 76)

Innovations are collective processes rather than entrepreneurs and chief engineers

Hacktivism is, for Busch and Palmås, not about computers. They use the concept to show a shift from reactive methods for change to more innovative ways of rearranging products and societies. “Capitalism – no longer a closed, motor-like machine that circulates capital and desire – is seen as an open structure, subject to rearrangement.” (p 79) “The aim is (…) to modify (…) in a very tangible manner.”

Hacktivism, as productive innovation and rearrangement, doesn’t come out of the creativity of a few leaders, chief engineers or entrepreneurs, it is rather a collective process. Busch and Palmås “bring out the fact that users or consumers are engaging in the process of innovation. This body of work has shown that ‘user innovation’ has been around for a long time: There are many of examples of not-so-recent innovations – in automobiles, sports equipment etc. – that have emerged from users’ tinkering with readymade products. It is just that before the ‘widely publicized’ success of the Linux project, researchers simply could not conceive of such processes of innovation. Thus, interestingly, Linux has alerted researchers of a previously unseen mode of innovation.” (p 71)

Per Herngren

2007-11-03, version 0.1

Sources

Otto von Busch and Karl Palmås, abstract hacktivism: the making of a hacker culture, London and Istanbul, 2006, copyleft by the authors, ISBN: 9780955479625.s

Stephen Hancock and Per Herngren, Beyond protest-resistance, 2005.

Per Herngren, Postprotest resistance, 2005.

Postprotest and Baudrillard

2007-10-28T12:25:00.000+01:00

Jean Baudrillard is important for the reflection on postprotest. Postprotest sometimes proposes a combination of civil disobedience and production of positive alternatives, to create some kind of constructive or proactive resistance. In this text, however, Baudrillard criticizes the focus on “alternatives” as a way to defeat a dominant system; instead he suggests singularities. Here he also criticizes reactive protest movements:

”Who can defeat the global system? Certainly not the anti-globalization movement whose sole objective is to slow down global deregulation. This movement's political impact may well be important. But its symbolic impact is worthless. This movement's opposition is nothing more than an internal matter that the dominant system can easily keep under control. Positive alternatives cannot defeat the dominant system, but singularities that are neither positive nor negative can. Singularities are not alternatives. They represent a different symbolic order. They do not abide by value judgments or political realities. They can be the best or the worst. They cannot be "regularized" by means of a collective historical action. [6] They defeat any uniquely dominant thought. Yet they do not present themselves as a unique counter-thought. Simply, they create their own game and impose their own rules.”

Source

Jean Baudrillard, The Violence of the Global, Translated by François Debrix, Initially published as "La Violence du Mondial," in Jean Baudrillard, Power Inferno, Paris: Galilée, 2002, pp. 63-83.

You are wanted for civil disobedience in Sweden

2007-05-25T10:28:00.000+02:00

Welcome to plant vines and fig trees

on the premises of the weapon factory Microwave

with civil disobedience, nonviolence training, swimming and walking in beautiful nature

Gothenburg, Sweden 4-9 August 2007

“ Every man and woman will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid” - Micah 4:4

Non violence for a world where people can live in safety
Together with you we would like to plant a garden where people can live in safety. We want to build the world that the prophet Micah speaks of (Micah 4:4); where vines and fig trees give shelter, food and drink. Where everyone can sit in safety under their vine and where oppression is no more. This is a part of ”the Vine and Fig Tree Planters”, which started in 2005 and has planted in Holland, England and Sweden.

Non violence training and planting

We will start on August 4 with two days of nonviolence training. We will practice and plan in friend groups. A friend group consists both of support persons and of those who will conduct acts of civil disobedience. The group will be a support during action, trial and sentence.

After the training we will start laying a vine- and fig tree garden on the premises of Saab Microwave in Mölndal (close to Gothenburg), Sweden, who makes radar systems for weapons. This will be done as a proactive action, where we initiate constructive change without using negative messages of protest. All our actions are conducted in the spirit of nonviolence: we take responsibility for our actions and we treat everyone with respect.

Civil disobedience means a breach of the law in a spirit of sincerity and nonviolence where we take the consequences of our actions.

We will also have time for prayer, reflection and conversation. We plan to reflect on nonviolence as a liberation theology for the rich part of the world, with the book “I vänliga rebellers sällskap” by Annika Spalde and Pelle Strindlund as a point of departure.

After the civil disobedience action we will have time for stillness and meditation, as well as time to reflect on our actions and on how we can support each other during trial and sentence.

Welcome!
Lodging will be arranged in Rosa Huset, which is accessible for wheelchairs. Rosa Huset is situated close to a beautiful nature area in Gothenburg, Sweden, with swimming possibilities in a lake. Vegetarian/vegan will be served.

Expected personal consequences of the planting are a fine or a short prison sentence, as well as reparations. In case of prison sentence you’ll automatically get a leave from your work without using your vacation, according to Swedish law. The employer is not allowed to fire you because of your sentence.

Organizers

Fellowship of Reconciliation Gothenburg, Black Smith Fellowship of Reconciliation, The Fig Tree Resistance Community – Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, Speak Civil Disobedience & Nonviolence.

Registration and/or questions

vinfikonplantering2007@gmail.com

or call Jonas at +46 735 97 09 58. Registration latest by 1 July, 2007

Mention address, telephone, e-mail and special requests regarding food or lodging.

Transfer at the same time the registration fee to bank account: 9020 41 413 99 (9020 is clearingnumber), name of bank: Länsförsäkringar, Sweden. Mention your name.

The registration fee is at cost price and is 1200 SEK for employed and 900 SEK for students, unemployed and retired. The fee includes lodging and food for six days, as well as action costs. If you engage in the preparation of the event, you will get a reduction of the fee. Contact us!

Schedule

Gathering and breakfast at Rosa Huset, Gothenburg @ 9.00 AM, Saturday 4 August 2007. Non-violence training and the creation of friend groups: Saturday 4 August and Sunday 5 August. During the week we will also have time for reflection, swimming and walking in beautiful scenery. Support and trial preparations: Thursday 9 August. End: 4.00 PM, Thursday 9 August

Seven Peace Activists Acquitted by Jury

2007-07-24T11:30:00.001+02:00

Right to Dissent Inside Senate Office Building Upheld

From CommonDreams.org News Center

WASHINGTON - JULY 13 - Seven peace activists were acquitted today by a jury of their peers in a criminal case stemming from an anti-war protest inside a Senate office building.

The group of activists from three different states and the District of Columbia were arrested on March 29, the same hour the U.S. Senate voted to spend $95 billion more on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were charged with unlawful conduct.

"Today was a victory for justice and the people of this nation," said Gordon Clark one of the seven defendants pro se, and the coordinator of the National Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance.

The jury deliberated for four and a half hours Thursday before returning a unanimous not guilty verdict. The defense successfully argued their group was not any more disruptive than a comparable sized group of tourists, school groups or others.

The protest was organized by organizers of the National Campaign of Nonviolent resistance and a couple local peace activists.

"It wasn't just us who won today," said Eve Tetaz, 75, a retired D.C. public school teacher. "A jury of our peers decided that we had a right to dissent and to petition our government for a redress of grievances."

Tetaz faces several other charges for nonviolently protesting the war including contempt of court since she has violated two stay away orders from the Capitol area.

"I will not remain silent as long as people are being killed in this illegal and immoral war," she said.

The other defendants pro se in this trial were David Barrows, Gordon Clark, Joy First, Ellen Barfield, Samuel Crook and Malachy Kilbride. The seven had faced a maximum sentence of 6 months in prison and a $500 fine.

Protest trapped in transport-metaphor

2007-09-19T08:52:00.001+02:00

The protest movement is trapped in the metaphor of transport. The protesters have special information, an insight or knowledge, which needs to get out and then transport itself through some kind of medium into the consciousness of those in power or the public. Speakers, leaflets, web pages or actions, are supposed to transmit the protest message to an audience. Something is then happening inside the recipient and the result will be change. Political work, actions, dialogues are understood as a transportation of information or insights to somewhere else - instead of ways to live the society one wants. I would propose more constructive metaphors like production, imprint and tools. And I still think the resistance metaphor from electricity and biology for disobedience and obstruction is useful. Displacement might be a metaphor to connect resistance and constructive work.

Per Herngren

September 10, 2007, version 0.11

The difference between postprotest and positive resistance

2007-05-15T21:12:00.001+02:00

For analytical reasons, I think it is important to see the difference between positive resistance and postprotest resistance. At the Disarmament Camps 92, 93 and 95 in Sweden, we had a rule against all protests and negative messages, which we felt made the resistance camps more constructive and attractive for both locals and the workers from the fighter-bomber company. But it wasn't until the Vine & Fig Tree plantings 2005; the Swedish plowshares started to experiment with a more consistent postprotest/proactive approach.

The narrative and symbolic strength of proactive/postprotest resistance, from what I understand, is that one is directly solving the problem (for a moment, or in a specific place, or by disarming a few weapons, or by dismantling some machines). The focus for proactive resistance would be: How do we solve the problem (at least for a moment)? This is actually the same technique they would teach in creative writing for writing a good book: Show, don’t tell!

Positive resistance, on the other hand, is not actually solving a problem, it is promoting a solution. It doesn’t show us what it wants, it tells us. Then positive resistance is indirect like the negative protest (which is being against something). The focus for positive resistance, which also makes it different from negative protest, would be: How do we as clearly as possible articulate our visions for a better world?

Postprotest doesn't contradict the positive approach; we are not constructing a dichotomy; it is more of an analytical distinction. Postprotest/proactive resistance includes the positive message, but positive resistance doesn't have to include the proactive part: be “doing the solution”.

Ok, this is a quick reflection which helps me understand the dynamics of resistance.

Per Herngren

First published May 15, 2007, at Resistance Studies

Antistrategic resistance according to Foucault

2007-07-19T07:50:00.001+02:00

"If someone ask me what it is I think I am doing, I would answer: if the strategist is a man who says "what importance does a particular death, a particular cry, a particular uprising have in relation to the great necessity of the whole, and of what importance to me is such-and-such a general principle in the specific situation in which we find ourselves?" then it is indifferent to me whether the strategist is a politician, a historian, a revolutionary, someone who supports the Shah or the ayatollah. My theoretical morality is the opposite. It is "antistrategic": be respectful when singularity rises up, and intransigent when power infringes on the universal."

Source: "Is it useless to revolt" (Inutile de se soulever?). Quoted here from Foucauldian Reflections. Who quoted from Eribon, Michel Foucault, (pp. 290-91).

How does Foucault use "strategic"?

2007-10-16T14:15:00.000+02:00

Undermining the idea that the meaning in a political action are placed somewhere else in, an instrumental reason, and that this “other” meaning is defining the value of the action, Foucault regards himself antistrategic.

In his own texts though, he is using strategic in different ways. Ali Rizvi suggests three distinct meanings of strategic in Foucault’s usage:

“1) Strategic as related to the space of freedom. In this sense Foucault contrasts strategic to what he calls “techne.”

2) Strategic in the sense of instrumentalism (explained earlier here).

3) Strategic as belonging to an ethos, certain value system. This belonging is strategic to the extent that one cannot give ultimate justification for it.”

Per Herngren

2007, version 0.1

Play about Carl Kabat - 15 years in prison

2007-05-06T20:02:00.000+02:00

Something about father Carl Kabat who spent 15 years in prison for different plowshares actions. And watch a video about the play that is about him.

Mass media fabricates noncommunication

2007-02-16T18:17:00.001+01:00

Jean Baudrillard understands face to face talks as communication and massmedia as noncommunication. Alternative or left mass media would then also be noncommunication. A dialogue can use noncommunication, as quotes or references, but we shouldn’t replace talking and dialoguing with radical speakers or mass media. If you are going to a workshop compare how much time is used to create communication (where you are talking to someone) and how much is used to create noncommunication (listening to the speaker). To create audience instead of talking is a power technique in social movements.

From “The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media” By Jean Baudrillard

""Requiem for the Media." In that I (Baudrillard) described the mass media as a "speech without response." What characterizes the mass media is that they are opposed to mediation, intransitive, that they fabricate noncommunication if one accepts the definition of communication as an exchange, as the reciprocal space of speech and response, and thus of responsibility. In other words, if one defines it as anything other than the simple emission/reception of information. Now the whole present architecture of the media is founded on this last definition: they are what finally forbids response, what renders impossible any process of exchange (except in the shape of a simulation of a response, which is itself integrated into the process of emission, and this changes nothing in the unilaterality of communication). That is their true abstraction. And it is in this abstraction that is founded the system of social control and power. To understand properly the term response, one must appreciate it in a meaning at once strong, symbolic, and primitive: power belongs to him who gives and to whom no return can be made. To give, and to do it in such a way that no return can be made, is to break exchange to one's own profit and to institute a monopoly: the social process is out of balance. To make a return, on the contrary, is to break this power relationship and to restore on the basis of an antagonistic reciprocity the circuit of symbolic exchange. The same applies in the sphere of the media: there speech occurs in such a way that there is no possibility of a return. The restitution of this possibility of response entails upsetting the whole present structure; even better (as started to occur in 1968 and the 70s), it entails an "antimedia" struggle.

In reality, even if I did not share the technological optimism of McLuhan, I always recognized and considered as a gain the true revolution which he brought about in media analysis (this has been mostly ignored in France). On the other hand, though I also did not share the dialectical hopes of Enzensberger, I was not truly pessimistic, since I believed in a possible subversion of the code of the media and in the possibility of an alternate speech and a radical reciprocity of symbolic exchange.

Today all that has changed. I would no longer interpret in the same way the forced silence of the masses in the mass media. I would no longer see in it a sign of passivity and of alienation, but to the contrary an original strategy, an original response in the form of a challenge; and on the basis of this reversal I suggest to you a vision of things which is no longer optimistic or pessimistic, but ironic and antagonistic."

Jean Baudrillard "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media," trans. Marie Maclean, New Literary History, vol. 16, no. 3 (Spring 1985), pp. 577-89.

Hang jury in ploughshares trial - B52two

2006-10-17T10:11:00.000+02:00

B52two home page http://www.b52two.org/

Court blog http://www.b52two.blogspot.com/

11th October 2006: Jury Discharged: Prosecution fail to prove bomber disarmament action a crime: Peace activists face retrial at Bristol Crown Court

The judge in the case of two Oxford based peace activists charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage has today discharged the jury after they were unable to reach a verdict. In a trial lasting 8 days the prosecution failed to prove that the planned disarmament action was a crime. The jury at Bristol Crown Court heard how Phil Pritchard and Toby Olditch broke into RAF Fairford 3 and half years ago with the intention of grounding US Airforce bombers bound for Iraq. Last month the trial of two other peace activists also resulted in a hung jury. Both cases are likely to go to retrial next year.

Background: Phil and Toby entered RAF Fairford on 18th March 2003 with the intent of disarming B52 bombers bound for Iraq. They carried paint, nuts and bolts to gunk up the engine and fencing pliers intended to damage the aiming mechanism on the bomber. Following their arrest they were held on remand in HMP Gloucester for 3 months. Since then they have been involved in a series of legal hearings culminating in this trial. In February 2006 after a five day hearing in the House of Lords the Law Lords ruled out the defence that they were acting to prevent a crime of aggression. In that trial the defendants argued that they acted lawfully to prevent war crimes and damage to property. The trial of Paul Milling and Margaret Jones also arrested at RAF Fairford on similar charges resulted in a hung jury in September 2006.

Giving evidence last week, Pritchard (a self-employed carpenter and father) and Olditch (a self-employed builder) argued that their actions were justified and lawful because they were protecting Iraqi property and aiming to prevent war crimes. It was their belief that the dropping of cluster bombs and depleted uranium bombs[1] on Iraq would constitute a war crime because of the disproportionate damage these weapons cause to civilians and the infrastructure. As part of their defence, international expert and Nobel Laureate Rae McGrath gave evidence of the horrific effects of the bombs that were to be used in the 48 hour "Shock and Awe" operation. The court was told that the number of bombs to be used would be equivalent to the total used in the whole of the first Gulf war.

In a video they took with them on their disarmament action Pritchard and Olditch detailed their many anti-war protests leading up to the action, and explained how they had planned to ensure that their peaceful actions saved lives In Iraq whilst causing no risk to military personnel in this country.

Philip Pritchard said;
“It is devastating that our politicians took the road to war; we took responsible action and set out to stop B52 bombers. I stand by our decision to try to stop the bombing of Iraq and hope that cluster bombs and depleted uranium will never be used again. I hope the jury will hear our evidence at the next trial and acquit.”

Contact for media: 07910 329 211
For further info see – daily court blog
Email: inspiraction2003@yahoo.co.uk

Editor Notes: Venue: Bristol Crown Court, Small Street Bristol BS1 1DA

civil disobedience & nonviolence

Sign your support to Disarm Now Plowshares

New plowshares disarmament: 60-83 year old activists - Disarm Now

Resistance manuals for net-activism

Homeless people who connect via internet

Send letter to Carl Kabat in prison for plowshares action at Hiroshima day at Missile Silo

Carl-Gustaf granade launchers & Haubitz cannons disarmed

Plowshares trial in Sweden - Hope & Resistance Festival

You are invited to the SAAB Microwave 'Becoming2 Ploughshares' trialand the Hope & Resistance festival31 March to 1st April, 2009, in Gothenburg, Sweden

Hope & Resistance Festival

Potluck and resistance techniques in biology

Organizers

Web page with pictures from the disarmament action

Plowshares action in Sweden hammering on military radar

Deleuze & Becoming resistance

Resistance is not to awaken consciousness

How we should prioritize resistance

Foucault & resistance

Ploughshares disarmament in New Zealand

Revolutions without causal explanations - Foucault

Hacktivism and postprotest

Protest stuck in the metaphor of a motor with steering wheel

Blockading is the paradigm for the motor era

Innovations are collective processes rather than entrepreneurs and chief engineers

Sources

Postprotest and Baudrillard

You are wanted for civil disobedience in Sweden

Seven Peace Activists Acquitted by Jury

Protest trapped in transport-metaphor

The difference between postprotest and positive resistance

Antistrategic resistance according to Foucault

How does Foucault use "strategic"?

Play about Carl Kabat - 15 years in prison

Mass media fabricates noncommunication

Hang jury in ploughshares trial - B52two

You are invited to
the SAAB Microwave 'Becoming² Ploughshares' trial
and the Hope & Resistance festival
31 March to 1st April, 2009, in Gothenburg, Sweden