A mindfulness walk in peace John Dear S.J.

On the Road to Peace National Catholic Reporter, October 23, 2012

A few weeks ago, I spent a lovely Saturday morning speaking on ‘Thomas Merton and the Wisdom of Peace and Nonviolence’ at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in southern Illinois. We had a good conservation on the connection between Merton's writings on contemplation, prayer and meditation; his thoughts on nonviolence, disarmament and peace; and what it all means for us today. Then we did something unusual. We went for a walk together in silence. We were trying to practice the resurrection life of peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist peacemaker and friend of Merton, has been teaching ‘mindfulness walking’ for years, but we rarely hear of Christians who practice this simple exercise. More than 100 of us walked out of the conference center in pairs very slowly, trying to be conscious of our breath, our steps, our thoughts, our feelings and our surroundings. We walked for 30 minutes to a small garden with a large statue of Jesus in prayer at Gethsemane and then slowly back to the conference center.

The goal was simply to experience the ordinary holiness of prayerful peace. By walking slowly in silence with others, we inadvertently encourage one another to be fully aware of our breathing, our walking, our prayer, our peaceableness. Try it, and you'll find how rewarding it is.

Mindfulness walking is a good exercise in the day-to-day practice of nonviolence. It forces us to slow down -- literally -- and to notice the trees, the bushes, the flowers, the sky and the birds, as well as to notice the resistance within us and how far short of ‘everyday peace’ we fall.

Daily exercises in mindfulness help develop our patience, peaceableness, prayer and nonviolence. They not only reduce stress, but can open us to the simple joys of living. This is the flip side to our resistance to the culture of war. While we resist the culture of war and violence, we try to live every minute of every day in peace, hope and joy. One could argue that's too high a goal, but isn't that precisely the journey of the spiritual life? Why not try to reach for the heights and depths and horizons of peace?

‘We walk slowly, in a relaxed way, keeping a light smile on our lips,’ Thich Nhat Hanh teaches in his writings about mindfulness walking. ‘When we practice this way, we feel deeply at ease, and our steps are those of the most secure person on earth. All our sorrows and anxieties drop away, and peace and joy fill our hearts. Anyone can do it. It takes only a little time, a little mindfulness, and the wish to be happy.’

He continues:

People say that walking on water is a miracle, but to me, walking peacefully on the earth is the real miracle ... Each step is a miracle. Taking steps on our beautiful planet can bring real happiness. As you walk, be fully aware of your foot, the ground, and the connection between them, which is your conscious breathing.

When we practice walking meditation, we arrive in each moment. Our true home is in the present moment. When we enter the present moment deeply, our regrets and sorrows disappear, and we discover life with all its wonders. Breathing in, we say to ourselves, ‘I have arrived.’ Breathing our, we say, ‘I am home.’ When we do this, we overcome dispersion and dwell peacefully n the present moment, which is the only moment for us to be alive.

When the baby Buddha was born, he took seven steps, and a lotus flower appeared under each step. When you practice walking meditation, you can do the same. Visualize a lotus, a tulip or a gardenia blooming under each step the moment your foot touches the ground. If you practice beautifully like this, your friends will see fields of flowers everywhere you walk.

If your steps are peaceful, the world will have peace. If you can make one peaceful step, then peace is possible ... Peace is every step.

After our walk, one participant said to me, ‘Everything I do has a purpose, even when I go for a walk. I walk my dog. I walk to get exercise. I walk to get the mail. This was a walk with no purpose, and I found it very hard.’ I told him that was a blessing, that it's a grace to learn to walk in peace for the sake of peace. This is the beginning of peace -- to let go of the outcome, to drop our American addiction for accomplishment, achievement and results, and to dwell simply in the peace of the Holy Spirit.

That's another way to understand walking meditation -- to see it as practice for living and breathing in the Holy Spirit of peace. We can do this any time day during our day: while running errands, doing work or at home. It will help inspire us to be more mindful throughout our day. The goal is to be mindfully centered in the Holy Spirit of peace when we make breakfast, drive the car, engage in work, talk on the phone, do the dishes, wash the laundry, feed the cat, meet with friends or do our chores.

More, this simple exercise in the rhythm of peace trains us to respond more peacefully in the face of pain, anger, rejection, despair, resentment, depression, grief or sickness. We can use this simple exercise to breathe in the Holy Spirit of peace, return to the Holy Spirit of peace and go through any crisis in the Holy Spirit of peace. As we train ourselves to be more peaceful and calm, we prepare ourselves, too, to be more peaceful for the inevitable experience of suffering and death that awaits us all, so that we might go to our deaths in a spirit of peace and mindfulness.

Walking in mindful peace is like prayer, like communion. As far as the world is concerned, it is a waste of time. As far as heaven is concerned, it's a foretaste of the heavenly life to come.

We all experience this mindful walking when we process up the aisle in church to receive Holy Communion. In that moment, we are centered on Jesus. That holy experience summons us to live every moment in peace, mindfulness and communion with Jesus.

I think Jesus did everything nonviolently, mindfully and peacefully. He was perfectly centered, conscious and awake. He taught us to be peaceful and mindful (‘Consider the lilies of the field ...’ ‘Study the fig tree ...’ ‘Notice the birds of the air ...’). He certainly taught, healed and walked with great grace and presence of mind. He was peaceful and mindful throughout his actions, conversations, civil disobedience and death, and certainly in his resurrection, when he breathed on the disciples. In light of Buddhist teachings, walking meditation helps us breathe in the breath of the risen Christ, that we might live in the Holy Spirit of peace.

Anyone who cares about humanity and the earth, who works for justice and peace, who resists injustice and war needs to take special care to practice the art of peace so we don't get swallowed whole by this violent culture of mindlessness. Daily peaceful living is essential if we are to offer the gift of peace to others. But what we're rarely told is how blessed the life of peace can be.

‘The God of peace is never glorified by human violence,’ Thomas Merton once wrote. What Merton forgot to add is that the God of peace is always glorified by human nonviolence. Like Thomas Merton and Thich

On the attack against 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai

Malalai Joya, now 34, has survived numerous assassination attempts and in 2007 was suspended from the Afghan Parliament because of her criticisms of warlords, fundamentalists and the NATO occupation of Afghanistan. Joya sent rabble.ca the following statement on the shooting of Yousafzai.

Once again we see a crime against women by dark-minded and brutal fundamentalists. Malala Yousafzai was shot by Pakistani Taliban because she did not remain silent about the ongoing crimes and brutalities against women; because, despite her young age, she had the consciousness to stand for her rights and say 'no' to the terrorism and misogyny of the creatures of the Stone Age.

I strongly condemn this disgraceful act of targeting an innocent 14-year-old girl. This is the real nature of Afghan and Pakistani fundamentalist Taliban. These dirty rascals pose as 'manly' but this heinous crime shows how unmanly and disgusting they are to kill a defenseless young girl.

Malala was targeted because, in her limited capacity, she wanted to inform the world about the brutalities going on against women by extremists. She wanted to wake up the women of the rural areas of Pakistan to stand up and defend their due rights.

This was a warning for those who only understand the language of the gun. This cowardly attack on her proves that these medieval-minded groups are aware of the potential power of awakened women and are afraid that she may become a role model for many more women. So they tried to stop her in the very beginning. But it was a failed attempt because, across Pakistan and around the whole world, people are on Malala’s side and they are condemning her enemies.

The world should know that the West, and in particular the U.S. government, have nurtured, supported and armed these dirty inhuman bands for the past three decades. They should know that still in our unfortunate Afghanistan, the U.S. and NATO rely on brothers-in-creed of the Taliban -- the Northern Alliance warlords such as Qanooni, Fahim, Ismael Khan, Atta Mohammad, Abdullah, Sayyaf, Mohaqiq, Khalili and others -- who have made life a torture for Afghan women. They should know that Karzai's puppet regime is calling the murderer Taliban ‘brothers’ and trying to share power with this anti-humanity band of killers.

I send my salutations to Malala Yousafzai and am sure that her great sacrifice will not be in vain. She marks the shining pages of history while her enemies will soon go into the dustbin of history.

© 2012 Malalai Joya
Malalai Joya is an Afghan activist and a former elected member of the Parliament from Farah province. Her books include Raising My Voice, and A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice. Her website: http://www.malalaijoya.com/

The dangers of sabre-rattling in Syria

The spread of the Syrian war to Turkey shows how lethal the internationalisation of conflicts can be.

Patrick Hayes

spiked October 8, 2012

Last week, the Syrian conflict entered a worrying new phase. Turkey engaged in cross-border fire with Syrian forces in retaliation for what appeared to be wayward Syrian army shells which killed five in the Turkish border town of Akcakale. This means an actual NATO member, and the nation with the most military clout in the region, is now being drawn into an increasingly messy civil war in Syria.

The UN Security Council president, Gert Rosenthal, ‘condemned in the strongest terms’ Syria’s shelling of Akcakale, and the ruling Assad regime in Syria has since apologised, stating it will not happen again. Even the head of the military council of the rebel forces in Syria, the Free Syrian Army, has not tried to exploit the situation, merely claiming that the shelling was likely a ‘grave mistake’. ‘It wasn’t intentional’, he was reported as saying, ‘[the Assad regime] didn’t want this’.

Yet last Thursday, Turkey’s parliament authorised further cross-border military action against Syria. Turkey has now exchanged fire for five consecutive days. Many on the international stage were similarly angry at the actions of Syrian forces. Rosenthal went as far as to demand, on behalf of the UN Security Council, that the ‘Syrian government… fully respect[s] the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbours’. This was a claim echoed in a statement by US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

Syria should indeed respect other countries’ sovereignty – and the death of a woman and her three children in Akcakale was tragic. However, it’s a bit rich for the UN, and the US in particular, to hector Syria about respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries. Leaving aside the West’s long history of disrespecting the sovereignty of states, from Kosovo to Libya, it has been intervening in Syria itself since the start of the current conflict.

This is evident even in the reactions to the shelling of Akcakale from Western officials, who were keen to seize the opportunity to heap pressure and moral condemnation upon the Assad regime. A US spokesperson for the Pentagon declared: ‘This is yet another example of the depraved behaviour of the Syrian regime, and why it must go.’ US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said: ‘All responsible nations must make clear that it is long past time for Assad to step aside, declare a ceasefire and begin the long-overdue political transition process.’

But Western intervention in Syria has gone beyond moral grandstanding and wars of words. Since the beginning of the conflict, the West has burdened Syria with crippling economic sanctions, bringing its economy to a near standstill. Despite no one really believing Syria is developing nuclear weapons, bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been demanding access to Syria to nose around, alongside UN ‘monitors’ who have been keeping an eye on Assad’s military operations. Western leaders have also been threatening to take Assad to the International Criminal Court, and have used the Arab League to monitor and impose sanctions on Syria.

Furthermore, there has been a concerted effort in the West to create an official opposition – the Syrian National Council – out of the rag-bag of disparate rebel groups in Syria, which include radical Islamist factions. In August this year, CNN reported that US president Barack Obama had signed a covert directive which authorised the US to give financial support – alongside other forms of unspecified assistance – to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), despite the US state’s admission that it knows little about the make-up of the rebel groups. While not necessarily directly providing arms to the FSA, the US is providing intelligence, and is ‘cooperating with countries that are arming the rebels, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to help find groups worthy of aid’. The New York Times has reported that CIA officers based in southern Turkey are working with other Assad-opposing countries in the region to provide rebels with ‘automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some anti-tank weapons’.

The level of hypocrisy from Western states is striking. On the one hand, they are preaching that Syria must ‘fully respect’ the sovereignty of other countries. On the other, they are doing everything possible, other than using military force, to undermine Syrian sovereignty and bring about regime change.

Given that the UN Security Council, containing both China and Russia, would be certain to veto any proposed UN intervention, there is speculation that Western countries may use the putative threat Syria poses to Turkey as a pretext for NATO intervention. Indeed, the Turkish prime minister has threatened to use charter five of the NATO treaty – what’s dubbed the ‘one-for-all and all-for-one’ article – which would mean NATO members would be obliged to intervene in Syria on Turkey’s behalf.

Western powers may have little appetite to intervene militarily in Syria, as they did in Libya last year. But recent developments in Turkey show just how volatile the situation is and how rapidly the instability in Syria could spread to a large section of the Middle East. Despite their public disavowals, NATO countries could well find themselves on a slippery slope towards ever-more direct intervention.

Western countries are quick to blame the embattled Assad regime for the internationalisation of the conflict. Yet they are seemingly oblivious to where the blame truly lies. What was a localised if brutal conflict between the Assad regime and disparate rebel forces has been intensified and internationalised by Western grandstanding, meddling and taking sides. There’s no easy solution to the Syrian crisis. But one thing is for sure: the increasing internationalisation of the conflict caused by Western forces looks set to destabilise things further, making a bleak situation even worse.

Patrick Hayes is a columnist for spiked. Visit his personal website here. Follow him on Twitter @p_hayes.

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/12952/

Sea Level Rise: Within A Decade Vulnerable Islands Have To Evacuate Their Populations

Countercurrents.org October 5, 2012

Vulnerable island states may need to consider evacuating their populations within a decade due to a much faster than anticipated melting of the world's ice sheets. The warning comes from Michael Mann, one of the world's foremost climate scientists [1].

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University , said the latest evidence shows that models have underestimated the speed at which the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets will start to shrink.

Mann says the Pacific islands, which are only 4.6 meters above sea level at their highest point, are facing the imminent prospect of flooding, with salt water intrusion destroying fresh water supplies and increased erosion.

Mann, who was part of the IPCC team awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2007, said it had been expected that island nations would have several decades to adapt to rising sea levels, but that evacuation may now be their only option.

His warning comes just weeks after the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado disclosed that sea ice in the Arctic shrank a dramatic 18% this year on the previous record set in 2007 to a record low of 3.41m sq km.

‘We know Arctic sea ice is declining faster than the models predict,’ Mann told the Guardian at the SXSW Eco conference in Austin , Texas . ‘When you look at the major Greenland and the west Antarctic ice sheets, which are critical from the standpoint of sea level rise, once they begin to melt we really start to see sea level rises accelerate.

‘The models have typically predicted that will not happen for decades but the measurements that are coming in tell us it is already happening so once again we are decades ahead of schedule.

‘Island nations that have considered the possibility of evacuation at some point, like Tuvalu , may have to be contending those sorts of decisions within the matter of a decade or so.’

Suggesting evacuations would accelerate a change in public consciousness around the issue of climate change, he said: ‘Thousands of years of culture is at risk of disappearing as the populations of vulnerable island states have no place to go.

‘For these people, current sea levels are already representative of dangerous anthropogenic interference because they will lose their world far before the rest of us suffer.

‘I think it is an example, one of a number, where the impacts are playing out in real time. It is not an abstract prediction about the future or about far off exotic creatures like polar bears. We are talking about people potentially having to evacuate from places like Tuvalu or the Arctic 's Kivalina, another low lying island which is already feeling the detrimental impacts of sea level rise.’

Mann, who is one of the primary targets for attacks by ‘climate deniers,’ said that there is still uncertainty about the speed of global warming as it is not clear what the impact of feedback mechanisms could be. In particular, he pointed to the release of methane that will come as the permafrost in the arctic melts.

‘We know there is methane trapped and as it escapes into the atmosphere it accelerates the warming even further,’ he said. ‘But we don't know quite how much of it there is, but there is definitely the potential to lead to even greater warming than the models predict.’

Mann said it was not only island states that were feeling the impacts of climate change and warned that the terrible drought and wildfires suffered by the US this year were just the precursor of far worse to come.

‘If you look at the US , some of these things are unfolding ahead of schedule and we are already contending with climate change impacts that were once theoretical,’ he said.

‘We predicted decades ago that this might eventually happen. We are watching them unfold and there are very real consequences to our economy and to our environment.

‘The climate models tell us that what today are record breaking levels of heat will become a typical summer in a matter of 20-30 years if we carry on with business as usual. Not only will this become the new normal but we will have to change the scale because we will see heat and drought far worse than anything we have seen before.’

The silver lining in all the bad news is that while the political system is gridlocked when it comes to confronting climate change, public attitudes are starting to change.

‘It is going to take a little while to sink in,’ says Mann ‘but there is evidence of a dramatic shift in awareness and the public increasingly recognises climate change is real and if the public becomes convinced of this, they will demand action and they are connecting the dots because we are seeing climate change playing out in a very visible way.

‘I think we are close to a potential tipping point in public consciousness and what will tip it, you never quite know, but another summer like the one we just witnessed we will see a dramatic shift in public pressure to do something about this problem.’

One reason that attitudes are changing slowly, according to Mann, is that scientists are tending to be conservative in their forecasts out of fear that they will be attacked for overstating evidence.

He said the tactics of those who question climate change was not only to intimidate scientists already in the public arena, but also to warn off others from taking part in the public discourse.

But Mann believes the power of the Koch brothers and others in the fossil fuel lobby, whom he believes have been responsible for poisoning the whole climate change debate, is on the wane.

‘I am optimistic,’ he says. ‘The forces of denial will not go down with a whimper and as the rhetoric becomes more heated and the attacks become more concerted, we see the last vestiges of a movement that is dying. The effort to deny the problem exists will have set us back decades but it is still possible to avoid breaching 450 parts of per million of CO2 if concerted action is taken.’

While he is severely critical of those private businesses that are seeking to deny climate change exists, he said there were other businesses who were starting to wake up to the need to change behavior.

‘I personally don't believe captains of business are villains and who don't care about the legacy of the world, even though there are a few bad apples,’ he says. ‘Just look at the reinsurance industry where they face devastating losses if climate change moves.

‘There are an increasing number of companies like Walmart which are ideologically conservative but have a real commitment to sustainability as they realise that as people become more concerned, they will reward companies that are part of the solution.’

The developments are making climate-change denial more difficult to defend.

Glen M. MacDonald, chair of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and professor of geography and of ecology and evolutionary biology, writes in Los Angeles Times [2] on October 4, 2012 :

The United States experienced the warmest July in its history, with more than 3,000 heat records broken across the country. […] the summer was the nation's third warmest on record and comes in a year that is turning out to be the hottest ever. High temperatures along with low precipitation generated drought conditions across 60% of the Lower 48 states, which affected 70% of the corn and soybean crop and rendered part of the Mississippi River non navigable.

This was the 36th consecutive July and 329th consecutive month in which global temperatures have been above the 20th century average. In addition, seven of the 10 hottest summers recorded in the United States have occurred since 2000. Such rising temperatures and climate anomalies have been documented around the world.

But there's also one bit of good news: The increasingly powerful evidence of a long-term warming trend is making climate-change denial more difficult to defend.

Take ‘Climategate’ — the argument that scientists have based their evidence for global warming on fraudulent science. The Koch Foundation provided funding to physicist Richard Muller of UC Berkeley, a longtime climate-change skeptic, to disprove the widespread consensus on global warming. Instead, his re-analysis showed the exact same warming trend found by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other scientists.

Since completing his research last year, Muller has been vociferously speaking out on the reality of human-caused climate change, including in testimony before Congress. The publication this spring of an expanded weather station analysis by Britain 's Hadley Centre further confirms the trend and suggests Northern Hemisphere surface warming was about 0.1 degree Celsius greater than previously thought. With Muller's and the Hadley Centre's re-analysis, the idea of Climategate has become virtually impossible to take seriously. The planet is warming.

But that hasn't silenced the climate-change deniers entirely; they've simply shifted their arguments. Increasingly, they are accepting evidence of recent warming, but they deny that it is largely caused by humans, attributing it instead to natural factors such as solar variability or the El Niño system. But these arguments don't fly any better than their original ones.

Research by Grant Foster of the United States and Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany has shown that recent variations in the solar cycle, volcanic activity and El Niño/La Niña events actually had a tempering effect on warming. Similarly, Markus Huber and Reto Knutti of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich found by using simulation models that non-greenhouse gas factors could have accounted for only about 1% of the warming experienced since 1950. And this summer a team headed by Peter Gleckler of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provided strong evidence that the recent warming of the ocean surface could be traced to human activities. The evidence is now overwhelming that by and large the warming we are seeing has an anthropogenic cause.

Another common theme of the skeptics recently is that even if anthropogenic climate change is real, projections overstate future warming. Writing in August in the Wall Street Journal , physicists Roger Cohen (a retired ExxonMobil executive), William Happer of Princeton and Richard Lindzen of MIT — all noted climate skeptics — asserted that greenhouse gases, though possibly having a warming effect, were ‘unlikely to increase global temperature more than about one degree Celsius.’

That 1-degree Celsius, or 1.8-degree Fahrenheit, projection is based largely on a 2011 paper by Lindzen and contradicted by much other research. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5, for example, which represents about 20 climate modeling groups, has in 2012 generated more than 200 submissions and peer-reviewed publications testing and analyzing the newest climate models. The sum result of these improved models reaffirms the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel's projections of an increase in global temperature of 4 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. It is important for scientists to further refine such projections, but it's clear that increasing greenhouse gases are likely to cause a significant rise in global temperatures.

Speaking recently on MSNBC , Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) underscored what has fueled much of the skepticism aimed at climate science: ‘I thought it must be true,’ he said, ‘until I found out what it cost.’ It's true that mitigation and adaptation will be costly. But inaction could carry even higher costs. Economists Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth Stanton calculated that putting off adaptation and mitigation efforts could cost the United States 1.36% of its gross domestic product by 2025, and 1.84% by 2100.

The question is no longer whether the climate will change because of increased greenhouse gases. Now we have to ask what we can do about it, and how much we can afford to spend. It's crucial for scientists like me to provide dispassionate estimates of what the climate is doing now and will do in the future. But in the end, we won't be the ones making the decisions about how best to deal with the warming and its consequences. This will require a broad public conversation and a well-informed public.

Source:

[1] ‘Climate change may force evacuation of vulnerable island states within a decade’, October 4, 2012 ,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/polar-arctic-greenland-ice-climate-change?newsfeed=true



[2] ‘Climate-change denial getting harder to defend’,

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-macdonald-climate-change-20121004,0,5256621.story

Swan Island Convergence 2012

28/09/2012
Citizens blockade SAS training facility on Swan Island
by Sarah Hathway

From Sunday 23rd to Thursday 27th of September, roughly 40 concerned citizens opposed to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, and Australia’s role in said conflict, gathered in Queenscliff on the Bellarine Peninsula (30km from Geelong) to blockade the only entrance to the Island.

“We believe that all troops, including the SAS troops trained here in Swan Island, need to come home now and allow Afghans to start rebuilding their own country” stated Reverend Simon Moyle, one of the organisers and a participant in the blockade.

Whilst a lot of the activities were planned and lead by Baptist Reverend Simon Moyle, those who gathered to help slow down the Australian/US war machine varied in their beliefs, age, occupation and area of residence. Participants haled from Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Geelong, and there were two participants who travelled directly from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where they were supporting Julian Assange.

Occupationally wise, there were nurses, teachers, ex-police, and ex-military. With some having decades of experience with non-violent direct action and for others this was their first time participating in such an event.

To start off the week, participants got stuck into banner making and did a letter box drop around Queenscliff about why they were there and what they planned to do throughout the week. They also attached “WAR” stickers in red and white to STOP signs, so that each sign around the centre of Queenscliff read “STOP WAR”.

Sunday night participants watched a 14min documentary by Fairfax media titled ‘Australia’s Quiet War’ which detailed some of what the SAS training facility is being used for. This was followed by a discussion about the various groups using the training facility.

The groups mentioned were the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Special Air Service (SAS), Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Additionally the facility is used as an intelligence communications hub, for debriefing SAS troops returning from Afghanistan and other countries, and for intelligence seminars for Foreign Affairs and other bureaucrats from Canberra.

Monday was a day for learning. Workshops were held at the Queenscliff Uniting Church on non-violent direction action, and the group explored ideas of what violence and non-violence entailed. Members of the group shared some of their experiences participating in non-violent direct action and together they discussed if such experiences were Principled or Pragmatic/Reformist or Revolutionary. Participants were introduced to the work of Gene Sharp, who has researched and catalogued 198 methods of non-violent action.

Later on in the afternoon participants returned to the church to plan the blockade of the bridge to Swan Island. Everyone introduced themselves and stated how they were feeling in regards to the planned blockade. The general feeling seemed to be mixed emotions of anxiety and excitement for the following morning. It was then demonstrated how to lock on to others, and the various formations, ie. In a line, back-to-back etc.

At 5.15am Tuesday morning, participants proceeded from their accommodation (which luckily was a 5min walk) to the gate to Swan Island. Candles in jars were placed across the road, forming the initial blockade, followed by some sitting down holding photos of Australia soldiers and Afghanistan civilians who have died so far in the 11 year “War on Terror”. Behind those sitting down were banners reading “KEEP THE SAS OUT OF ASSASSINATION”, “NO US WARS NO BLOOD FOR OIL”, “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS”, “END THE AFGHANISTAN WAR” and “AFGHANISTAN WISHES TO LIVE WITHOUT WAR”. The last banner was created by the children of those who were participating in the blockade.

The police managed to clear bodies twice to make way for a few cars, with some being turned away and told to come back at 8am. At 8.15am the cars were backed up Bridge Street and around the corner on to Wharf Street. The sound of breaking glass echoed around the street as frustrated police began disposing of the candles laid across the road. They then attempted to once again clear bodies off the street. Those holding banners stepped to the sides willingly however roughly 25 protestors had to be physically dragged or carried off the street. Once dragged off, blockaders continued to come back and sit or lie in front of cars, again and again. Until one frustrated police officer was clearly heard saying “This isn’t working.”

It was then explained to each car that the road could not be cleared, as the police were unwilling to resort to harsher means of keeping bodies off the road, or arrest. All cars were turned around, and those who were determined to get to the base, were boated across from the main wharf. By 8.30am, it was time to celebrate and all participates loudly sang and danced along to ‘You’re the Voice’ by John Farnham until the police relayed a noise complaint.

The gate was declared theirs’ and they were told by police that they had won. Participants of the Swan Island Peace Convergence maintained a presence at the gate throughout the night, until they were joined by the majority to repeat the action on Wednesday. In a show of good will blockaders allowed 4 cars through, who were greens keepers of the Golf Course on Swan Island. The Golf Course had been closed for the duration of our stay at the say so of the Department of Defence (DoD).

It was believed that the Police were directed by the DoD to down play the situation as much as possible by not making arrests. Unlike the previous year, there were no mounted police, even though those blockading had doubled in number for the previous blockade.

The irony, as participants discovered that night, was that our efforts (despite those of the police to avoid media attention) made the Channel 10 news on Tuesday night, with the coverage of the day’s events being rather positive. “Not bad for a nonviolent protest with no arrests…” Reverend Simon Moyle posted on Facebook along with the Channel 10 coverage of the event.

All those who participated in the blockade, are to be commended for their resolve in being non-violent throughout the blockade. Even when sleep deprived, dehydrated and sun stroked by day two. The police also handled the situation well, apart from one officer who was over enthusiastic about moving blockaders off the road, who was put on other duties after complaints were made.

Jessica Morrison, the police liaison, was vital in keeping the communication going between police and those participating in the blockade. “Nonviolent discipline has been spectacular. First-timers especially impressive. Courageous and tenacious.” Was tweeted by Reverend Simon Moyle on Tuesday morning.

Participants finished the week’s activities with a march down the main street of Queenscliff to the old Fort, then back down the main street to their accommodation. The march was met with an equal measure of applause and frowns as participants were lead down Hesse Street by a Highway Patrol car.

To view footage from the week’s events please visit the Swan Island Peace Convergence channel on YouTube www.youtube.com/user/swanislandpeace

There are also photos as well as comments from those who participated in the event on the Swan Island Peace Facebook page www.facebook.com/SwanIslandPeace , and on the official page www.swanislandpeace.org