The Waihopai Ploughshares take issue of New Zealand spy base to court

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.

Hat-tip: The Waihopai Ploughshares take issue of New Zealand spy base to court (at WagingNonviolence.org)

Interview with Gene Sharp

I am a huge fan of Gene Sharp, Director of the Albert Einstein Institution and the world’s leading scholar of the politics of nonviolent struggle. He literally wrote the book on the topic! How someone who’s books have been used as training manuals for democratic revolutions and other nonviolent campaigns of worldwide significance has been ignored by academic scholars remains one of life’s great mysteries to me.

Anyway, Dr Sharp recently gave a (rare) interview to Boston’s PBS radio on his take on nonviolent action, what’s going on in Iran, and far-left critics who think he’s a secret government agent (one of my favourite conspiracy theories). You can listen to the interview here.