Fish Yu gave us some great insights into computer use in China and the Greenpeace campaign against disposable chopsticks there. And James Stewart’s exceptional liveblogging skills captured the whole thing.

Now, how big a problem are disposable chopsticks, you might ask. Well, when you make 67 BILLION of them every year for one-time use, that’s a lot of resources.

But the chopstick campaign is also following in a long tradition that our former chairman David McTaggart advocated: always have a soft, easy to understand issue which draws a wide spectrum of supporters. Establish a relationship with them, and then work them up to the harder stuff. This is one of those simple concepts that make stepping across that magic line between passive witness and taking action easy.

But all this has nothing to do with the title of this blog, which refers to the trials and tribulations of our US office, which Mother Jones has revealed was targetted by former secret service agents. Dark ops and dumpster-diving: worth a read for anyone looking to get an inside glimpse of the laurel and hardy antics of SpyWorld. I especially liked the internal email about how they were going to fiddle their invoice. World needs more upstanding folk like this protecting democracy.