Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare | Hacker News Reader

Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare

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All that an no link to his seminal work itself, "From Dictatorship to Democracy". Free download. Or drop a dime on him.

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drop_a_dime ?

My idiomatic Earthspeak ain't always so hot.

"Spend a penny" apparently isn't quite what I had in mind either.

Fork over some bread to the guy is the sentiment I'm trying to get across.

Given the recent trend of yet-another-hipster-digital-doodad raising millions on Kickstarter hopefully enough socially progressive folks exist out there as well to drop a million or so on Gene and his team.

A dictator's worst nightmare is most likely a coup d'etat from some military general you've crossed or decreased funding for 10%. And if all you're going for is regime change, it's not clear that violent action is a bad route.

But what (good) people usually want is social change, not merely regime change. And achieving that is much, much more difficult through violence: justice is achieved by broadening civil society and strengthening its institutions, and violence always does harm to those.

This reminds me of a story I read as a kid, not exactly a fight against brutal regimes though (don't know if it is a true story either):

When shoe factory workers went on strike in Japan, they used a very interesting method - no shouting, or blocking roads etc. They simply made just one half of a pair (just the left side, I think). Thousands of shoes produced every day, but just the left shoe. Didn't take long for the management to sit down at the table to talk.

There are many many peaceful ways to protest, I guess.

I was told a story of a body of students who wanted to protest something in W. Germany in the '60s (I am recalling this from a night spent drinking so I might have every detail wrong!). As I recall it, instead of taking to the streets, they put on suits and amassed themselves at the relevant government office. A group of representatives then asked for a meeting, which was granted, and they put forward their case. They got what they wanted. I think the point was that the government officials thought they were respectable and reasonable and so their requests seemed so too.

That would normally result in mass firings or a lockout, both legitimate in a case like that.

Japan must have more reasonable labor laws.

Not to take anything away from Gene Sharp, but per CNN: He's been called the father of nonviolent struggle.

Should Gandhi be the father of nonviolent struggle, or someone before him.

Well Gandhi never wrote it in book form that could be read by others and implemented.

Gandhi could be the father and Gene could be the "Engineer" of non violent struggle ... :)

Gandhi was a prolific writer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Literary_works

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Primary_sources

Henry David Thoreau - On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)

http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Thoreau/Civil%20Disobedience.h...

Well, Gandhi's techniques aren't really generalizable to anything else - any other imperial power than the British Empire would simply have shot him and massacred his followers. You couldn't do it in China for example (remind me what happened to the guy in the photo in Tianenmen Sq, standing in front of the tank). By the time Gandhi started his movement, the British had learnt the secret that had eluded everyone else: empires are actually more trouble than they're worth, how do we get out of here?

That wasn't my point. My point was simply regarding calling someone the father of something, when clearly there were others who had been-there-done-that. Technique has nothing to do with it. In other words, there is clear and documented prior art.

Regarding the rest of your comment Britishers would have left India for sure, its just that things would have been a lot more bloody without Gandhi's non-violence movement.

True, but it is not the important focus of the article. Most of these people would not care as to whether they are being called the Father-of-whatever. Instead of focusing on who gets the credit for the idea, it should be more on implementation and outcome of the idea.

Gandhi's techniques aren't really generalizable to anything else

People frequently say this (right down to the cliché about how lucky he was to be facing the British), but it's obviously untrue. Gandhi's great insight was that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance. He is increasingly being proven correct. (Popular movements pretty much instantly lose their legitimacy when they turn violent.) That some authorities massacre people doesn't refute it.

Let's not forget that Gandhi's techniques were considered ridiculous and guaranteed to lose by most people at the time. It was only once he won that the "obvious" position had to be revised to "well of course it worked in that situation, but..."

Gandhi didn't invent these ideas but he demonstrated their practicality in a shockingly counterintuitive way. If his techniques truly weren't generalizable to anything else, they wouldn't have worked for him either.

It requires an opponent who is capable of being shamed.

Hitler wasn't shameable, nor Stalin. America wasn't in fighting the native tribes in the 19th century, or the Philippines at the turn of the 20th. The Japanese at Nanking and elsewhere. The Ottoman Empire in Armenia (a matter Turkey to this day will not acknowledge or discuss), in Greece, in Assyria, and Kurdistan following WWI. China in Tibet. Britain/Australia and the aboriginal populations.

Guatamala (1968-96). Pakistan (1971). Burundi (1972 & 1993). North Korea. Equatorial Guinea. Indonesian in East Timor. Agentina (1976-1983). Rwanda. Cambodia.

Nonviolence is a tool. It's not the only tool. It is frequently, but not always, disproportionately successful.

Nonviolence is a simple idea. It works when majority of people stop working, enough to cause loss to a company or the ruling party. It requires that the ruling party gains it power from the working class, which was the case in British ruled India and similarly in Iran.

It will fail if one nation is attacking another. It would have worked against Hitler if the German people had revolted (I guess they did not because they believed in Hitler's ideas, few minority that did not could be got rid off). Nonviolence would not have worked if British people used it against Hitler.

Being shameable is not necessary (but is helpful). For example, the occupy movement in America, even though nonviolent is not successful because the companies (or the top 1%) are not losing anything. There is not enough critical mass to the movement to affect the profits (enough that they take notice).

This is wrong. Nonviolence on its own doesn't work at all. Gandhi would have been forgotten by now if people like Bhagat Singh hadn't been making enough trouble to cause the venture to not be worth the cost. Martin Luther King would have failed had the black panthers not been effective with their violence (e.g. "the bomb blast heard 'round the world" mentioned in a King speech). Peaceful resistance probably was tried in Germany, but the Nazis had a habit of disappearing people who didn't toe the party line. You honestly believe the majority of people in Germany thought Hitler was wrong? It was dangerous to disagree.

I don't think Nonvioence and Game Theory play nice together. Nonviolence as a complete solution strikes me as an idea that we really want to believe but isn't actually true. There are many things in this world that are bad and I would like to see changed. I'd love to be able to just be nonviolent and cause it to change but I don't think history is very kind to this fantasy.

I think you're confusing what you'd like to be true with what actually is true.

>Gandhi's great insight was that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance.

Except: that isn't true. Or rather, it's true only in certain circumstances.

>Popular movements pretty much instantly lose their legitimacy when they turn violent

Perhaps, but "legitimacy" and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Power accumulates in the hands of whoever controls large numbers of men with guns.

>That some authorities massacre people doesn't refute it.

Actually it pretty much does. In the contest between a nonviolent movement with "legitimacy" and a violent authority without it, the violent authority wins every time.

The few times that nonviolent movements have succeeded, they have done so against a tired power that was pretty much in the process of withdrawing anyway -- the Soviet Union circa 1990 and Great Britain circa 1950.

Of course I don't mean that nonviolence beats violence every time (edit: though in fairness I do see what sounded like that). That would be magic fairy dust. The point about Gandhi is that what he did worked at all.

Power accumulates in the hands of whoever controls large numbers of men with guns.

If you're right, why would the military take Sharp seriously, as the article says they do? Don't they have all the guns?

The few times that nonviolent movements have succeeded, they have done so against a tired power

That smells like hindsight bias to me: if it works, the regime must have been "tired".

Well I personally contend that it's never worked at all. Do you have any specific examples?

Given that you credit Martin Luther King's success not to nonviolence but to the Black Panthers, who didn't even exist until 1966, I believe no example will convince you.

This is one of the low points of a thread with a lot of low points. I regret posting the article. It was borderline to begin with (political, but intellectually interesting), but the toxicity of the discussion it immediately gave rise to shows that I made the wrong call. It's not just that it's toxic, it's atypically toxic – significantly more malignant than usual. HN has enough local species of weeds to tend to; this is like an ecological invasion (or would be if it got out of hand).

Edit: a more positive spin is that this is a good limit case showing that the guidelines are about right.

I was quoting from memory. So it wasn't the Black Panthers but there was targeted violence going on. Of course if you're going to give in you want to give credit to someone like Martin Luther King so hopefully in future people will imagine that non-violence works and you can be safe to ignore them.

It was certainly wrong of you to try and forward the propaganda machine of claiming the nonviolence on its own is an effective mechanism against dictatorships. None of us want violence, but many of us don't want lies either.

I'm very glad you posted it, as I don't know if I would have heard of Gene Sharp any other way.

The fractiousness of the discussion is unfortunate, but nobody has to read it.

Thanks for saying so. I'm glad I peeked back in here and saw it. Yes, Sharp is genuinely interesting.

Power accumulates first in the hands of the people who make the guns and the bullets, who package them, ship them, write the accounting software, process the orders, pack the trucks, etc.

The only real violence we should worry about is the every day violence that is used against these people ( mainly the threat of starvation, unemployment, poverty ) if they don't do their jobs. And that violence is surprisingly effective considering that violence changes the world by making it every day, and remaking it, over, and over, and over. Making people choose to get out of bed before 8am instead of sleeping in and making love and eating pancakes. Over and over and over.

Any one who talks about revolution without talking about first about every day life has a corpse in their mouth. Debates about violence and non-violence represent a decision that represents maybe 0.0005% of the experience of human beings.

There are so many more interesting, probably 100x more revolutionary decisions one could make, where this debate isn't even relevant.

Should one work on optimizing life for the sustainability of multiple concurrent romantic relationships instead of for the stability and predictability of a mortgage payment? If so, how? What effects would this have on the economic and military stability of a country?

Want to topple a regime? Make its subjects fall in love and want to bone more than they want to go to work.

Start by writing an app for that.

> Let's not forget that Gandhi's techniques were considered ridiculous and guaranteed to lose by most people at the time. It was only once he won that the "obvious" position had to be revised to "well of course it worked in that situation, but..."

  1. First they ignore you.
  2. Then they laugh at you.
  3. Then you free India from them.

Hmm. You never claim that Gandhi said that, so now my pointing out that the quote actually comes from a garment union worker in 1914 and has no connection to Gandhi (other than how apropos it is) sounds even more pedantic than usual. Cunning bastard :)

>Gandhi's great insight was that nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance. He is increasingly being proven correct.

Citations? He wasn't even proven correct in India! It was people like Bhagat Singh who finally convinced Britian that it just wasn't worth the trouble. Do you honestly think Gandhi's peaceful protests did anything? If you had some land that you were exploiting for great profit and the only thing between you and more riches was Ghandi would you stop? Of course not, he's no threat to anything. His "great insight" guarantees he never will be. The only thing that could be problematic would be if a majority of the people you need to exploit started doing the same thing, but game theory tells us this probably won't be the case. Just shoot a Ghandi or two and most people will go back to the factories/fields.

I know of no country gaining independence or changing their government without violence or the threat of violence. Of course Britain wants to claim that Ghandi had something to do with it. Hopefully next time people will be stupid enough to believe it, only resist peacefully and we can just ignore them.

While I don't agree with the parent comment, arguing about 'Father of X' is bound to be futile, but I disagree with you. Gandhi's techniques are generalizable to some extent. Here's a simplistic outline of his technique:

1. Pledge not to endorse or resort to violence no matter what.

2. Travel around, survey the problem: understand core factors which allow the injustice to continue, despite mass discontent.

3. Cripple those core factors by means of non-cooperation and/or civil disobedience still adhering to rule no. 1

In summary: Maintain moral higher ground to gain popular support and attack the institutional machinery.

Behind the legend surrounding Gandhi people tend to forget that, unlike the man who stopped the tank in Tiannenmen, he was a statesman. By the time his movement gained momentum, even if he would have been assasinated, he had already infected a good segment of the population to the point of being overzealous with his program.

>By the time Gandhi started his movement, the British had learnt the secret that had eluded everyone else: empires are actually more trouble than they're worth, how do we get out of here?

This is wrong. For example Winston Churchill, 1931[1] and any of his speeches as late as 1945 he vehemently opposed the idea of an independent nation. It was Gandhi that made the empire economically unfeasible, and not until then were Churchill and others ignored.

[1]http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-w... A Quote: "I am against this surrender to Gandhi. I am against these conversations and agreements between Lord Irwin and Mr. Gandhi. Gandhi stands for the expulsion of Britain from India."

remind me what happened to the guy in the photo in Tianenmen Sq, standing in front of the tank

He became a legend. Dissenters in China have that image burnt firmly in their mind regardless of however hard the government tries to erase it.

Sharp's (and Gandhi's) thesis holds in this case - the Chinese government has popular support (probably because people are ready to sacrifice long-term social freedom for short-term economic gains - that's a problem in India as well with different effects, though - but, in the long term, as Keynes said, we're all dead) - and that's primarily because everyone has links to the CCP or the PLA.

Remember, their government has ultimate authority because it has the largest military in the world under its control. But the members of that military also have family members - whose welfare is paramount to them (except for, maybe a few ideologue nutcases) - if civilian support for the government ever went away, the army would soon follow.

That's a great advantage -- to know what you don't know. You have a chance of learning -- if you want to and you're not arrogant. --Gene Sharp

That's going up on my wall. My real wall, with the tacks and whatnot.

A contrary opinion. This blogger has repeatedly stated that these puff pieces about Gene Sharp (of which the CNN article is only the most recent example) are total BS.

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/06/oh-arab-influence-of-g...

A friend told me that for awhile, the Welsh separatist movement protested by translating road signs -- from English to Welsh, then removing the English version. (Which to me is nonviolent, so long as no information about hazards was obscured.)

The article didn't mention the billions of Dollars that (for example) Egyptian dictators have been getting every year to keep the Egyptian people under the boot and to make sure they don't push Israel to end its military occupation or to allow the Palestinian refugees to return.

Egypt is the 2nd highest recipient of US aid after Israel. The 1000+ civilians that the Egyptian military regime has killed were killed with US-made bullets and were showered with US-made teargas canisters, the armored cars they were run over with were US-made and paid for by us American taxpayers.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5309.htm "U.S. military aid to Egypt totals over $1.3 billion annually."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/biden_01-... "JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he's been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel.

And I think that it would be -- I would not refer to him as a dictator."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0AUd8U_8jY 'Egypt bullets made in US' January 2011

http://publicintelligence.net/u-s-tear-gas-rubber-bullets-su... U.S. Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets Suppress Peaceful Uprisings Around the World June 30, 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/21/tahrir-square-us... US firm's teargas used against Tahrir Square protesters

Egypt's military junta fired CS gas cartridges made by Combined Systems Inc of Pennsylvania, say demonstrators

The story of the murdered civilians of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel/Palestine and Bahrain is the same; American taxpayers' money is used to fund the brutal dictatorships as long as the dictators are willing to follow orders. Same story, different faces, different numbers. As long as they are "Our sons of bitches."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_García Though the Somozas were generally regarded as ruthless dictators, the United States continued to support them as a non-communist stronghold in Nicaragua. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) supposedly remarked in 1939 that "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."[4][5][6]

Edit: The only country that gets more aid than the Egyptian junta is Israel which gets more than $3 billion in military aid as well as diplomatic shielding for its nukes (as opposed to Iran which is an NPT-signatory, has the right to civilian nuclear power and is under sanctions since 1979 when they kicked out the US-installed dictator Raza Shah Pehlvi who was installed in the 1953 coup carried out by CIA and MI6), diplomatic shielding against any UN resolutions against its 40+ years old military occupation and 60+ years of denial of right of return to the UN-registered 1948 non-Jewish refugees that made up about 65% of the country until 1947 and many more billions of dollars in the form of direct and indirect subsidies (google up if you're curious, US has used some 40 vetoes in UN since 1970, almost all of them to protect Israeli occupation). Democrats and Republicans agree; no money for grandpa's healthcare or student loan bailouts but we'll fund and arm the butchers of Israel, Egypt, Saudi, Yemen and more.

Um. Why on earth would the article mention that? What does US foreign policy have to do with the life and work of one academic/writer?

Are you under the impression that all Americans (e.g. the Executive branch, and Dr Sharp) are equivalent? Because they're not; they're actually pretty varied, and pursue opposing goals sometimes!

To paraphrase Jamie Zawinski, all online conversations about geopolitics expand until the United States is at fault.

That's a fabulous line, I'm going to remember that one.

No, it's a useless line that sounds like ignorant whining. "Boo hoo, every time I go online someone complains about the US, why don't they just be quiet!"

Simple one-liners often work well to brush aside the real issues, you don't need an argument, just a simplistic phrase that plays with emotions is enough.

May I suggest that you read about who was at fault at what place and when? The current Syrian dictatorship is not US-supported, neither are Iran and North Korea. Does that mean that Britain and US have no part in bringing Iran to where it is today (i.e. 1953)? Do you deny that 2 million Koreans were brutally murdered as a part of an imperial struggle in 1940s? Should we not mention that our one part Republo-crat government gives billions of dollars to dictators around the world and at the same time denies social services to its own citizens because we don't have enough money?

I suggest another link if you're not familiar: https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+us+interventions+sin...

I am on board with most of your points, I just wouldn't place too much emphasis on the "diplomatic" actions of America's past. You don't blame a country for its history, you learn from it, identify flaws in the system and change them.. (ie: Germany and Nazism, or U.S and slave trade). However, a major problem I think is willing blindness, for example: how many Iraqi deaths have been caused by Bush's WMD charade? A lancet study suggests 100,000's... but the American consciousness finds such a figure unconscionable, so it is not reported.

satu, I agree with you, if the American support for dictatorships had ended then it would have been futile to mention the past. The problem is that this is how the situation is today and it's the same as it was 10 or 20 or 50 years ago.

The Bush's WMD charade surely was indirectly responsible for killing far more than 100k Iraqi civilians, perhaps more than a million. The infamous leaks showed us that the US gov and military were lying about the numbers, the actual number of Iraqis they directly killed was close to 109k back then (no minutes of silence for them on any September day).

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wikileaks-109000-deaths-iraq-...

Since you mentioned that, what is even less well-known is that Bill Clinton's administration "saved" 500k Iraqi infants from the Saddam regime between 1991 and 1996 by sanctions that refused everything including life-saving drugs into Iraq. What's reported even less frequently is that Secy of State Madeline Albright thought about it: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084/ Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Remember who was in Iraq shaking hands with Saddam and delivering killing machines in 1980s? https://www.google.com/search?q=saddam+rumsfeld

I'm not blaming fellow Americans for it, we're too busy watching celebrity gossip, who cares whether our tax money goes to kill thousands of protesters via dictators or to kill millions of civilians through our own machines.

You bring up some very interesting facts. Certainly being indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions should probably be keeping big time bureaucrats awake at night, but I sincerely doubt it. There are all sorts of psychological mechanisms that people employ to defend against this sort of cognitive dissonance... and unfortunately it is an easy and (sadly) natural part of being human. In the same way that Americans can eat meat while being blissfully ignorant of the environmental impact (let's not even talk about animal rights), Americans can also ignore what is occurring in dark rooms within foreign countries. It's the proverbial tree falling in the forest. My hope is that better data collection and live streaming will make global situations more 'real' to people. (ie: Abu Ghraib)

Young man.

I have been in your exact shoes and tried this exact strategy. Hated the exact same things you do. Told every internet forum that would accept me that the US Government has worked in order to support economic interests and supremacy through out the world and in the process has benefitted from and knowingly participated in serious crimes against humanity. I gave hundreds of examples backed by our own documentary record and declassified history. Chomsky style. I could go on for hours on just central America.

It doesn't work. Your words are going to fade into a black hole and eventually only you will remember them. And probably not, even.

This is not going to help you achieve your goals. Detach and think about why. It is obvious.

Sad. But true.

As satu said below, there's a lot of ways to avoid thinking in what their well-being costs all around the world. Most people just see gadgets, ignoring the kids killed in Coltan wars. We like to feed our vehicles without thinking about all kind of problems that the very same oil we are using is causing elsewhere. And it's natural, otherwise, we'd get crazy.

But then again, it's amusing when (just to put a silly example) a company changes something in their EULA, and lot's of people start calling for a boycott.

Our values scale is so damn wrong.

Sad indeed, the news of a a cat being rescued from a tree or Lindsay Lohan on drugs again is more important, that another 4 or 14 Afghan kids were just killed by NATO is not worthy of prime time, not when we are the ones killing kids.

>It doesn't work. Your words are going to fade into a black hole and eventually only you will remember them. And probably not, even. This is not going to help you achieve your goals. Detach and think about why. It is obvious.

It's not about "working" or "success", it's about doing the right thing and telling it like it is.

Also, the "not working" part? Not that true, anyway. It maybe have not worked for US leftists and the SDS et al, but it has worked wonders in many countries, for getting rid of dictatorships, colonialism and such.

@datapimp,

I know what you're saying, but I think that now the average American knows a lot more than she did 20 years ago, thanks to the internet. If it was up to the big media corporations the average Joe would never have found out about the other side, they would only know that we are liberating Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela etc. I think you must have change the mindset of some of the people that read your stuff, maybe you sowed some seeds of change (and no I'm not talking about Obama who is carrying out some of the same policy and taken some of the Bush policies even further, and has prosecuted more whistle-blowers than all other US presidents combined).

Normally I try to stay out of politics, but this one is really off-the-mark --

> Do you deny that 2 million Koreans were brutally murdered as a part of an imperial struggle in 1940s?

That's... not even close to a correct understanding of what happening.

Without the U.S. forces in the Pacific, Korea gets Japanized by Imperial Japan and Korean culture very possibly would have been eradicated and the Koreans assimilated as entirely as the Empire could have.

Similarly, the Korean War kept South Koreans out from under Kim il-Sung's and Stalin's rule. All of the Korea would be the quality of North Korea without the Korean War...

There's (relatively minor) USA/ROK tension right now, but the two countries have been so incredibly good for each over the last 50 years it's not even funny. South Korean culture is vibrant, the people are strong, inventive, and hard-working, and there's an excellent blend of traditional Korean values and culture along with a selection of Western values, modernity, technology, and infrastructure.

All war is terrible, but America's role in South Korea has hands-down been one of the most positive things the USA has done in Asia, perhaps one of the most positive things the USA has done ever in terms of foreign relations.

I agree. If UN ever did the right thing by military intervention, Korean war was it.

I live in South Korea. Thank you all nations which helped us.

I think that your message shows one side of the story and that's the official US side. Like Gore Vidal said that in United States of Amnesia people don't remember anything that happened before last Monday.

Ever read about the 1980 Gwangju massacre? That was a massacre of 2000+ civilians in US-occupied South Korea, carried out by the US supported dictator General Chun Doo-hwan while Carter continued to support him.

http://www.workers.org/2005/world/gwangju-0526/ "They came to the U.S. on the 25th anni versary of the massacre because this is the country that has had the ultimate authority over the South Korean military since the end of World War II. It is the country that allowed a succession of military dictatorships to abuse the people even while nearly 40,000 U.S. troops were occupying the country. And it is the country that explicitly—and this has now been proven— gave the orders that allowed the Gwangju massacre to happen. And they came here, said Kim Hyo-Seok, to demand of the U.S. government that it “speak the truth, then apologize and pay reparations to the victims.” Kim spent time after the uprising and massacre as a political prisoner.

The U.S. government and the establishment media never talk about the Gwangju massacre. But in South Korea, that terrible event marked a turning point in the people’s acceptance of U.S. military occupation. Today, the majority of South Koreans say in polls that the biggest threat to peace in their country comes from the U.S.

May 18, the day that the uprising began in 1980, is now a national holiday in South Korea and Gwangju reverberates to demonstrations and rallies calling for U.S. troops out. Since the Iraq War began, a focus of those rallies has also been the demand that no Korean troops be sent to the Middle East."

You are correct in that Gwangju is the watershed moment of anti-Americanism in South Korea. It indeed confirmed that US is not on the side of democracy in South Korea, as they legitimized Chun regime and condoned the massacre.

On the other hand, while US formally held (still holds) "the ultimate authority over the South Korean military", what it meant in practice is questionable. US troops "occupying the country" is not really the correct description. I'd say "assented when consulted" rather than "explicitly gave the orders". Many description is possible, but I think the best description of what US did about Gwangju is "nothing".

It is certainly arguable that US should have done something instead of nothing, but unfortunately I don't think that is the normal standard. Also Korean war should be evaluated separately from Gwangju.

Eh... because the United States often is at fault?

You should live outside USA for a while to check out why that happens...

You don't have to go as far as the middle east, just go anywhere south of the border. Almost every coup in Central and South America was orchestrated with help, support and/or acceptance from the CIA and Pentagon.

They trained and supported dictators (School of americas, national security doctrine, and so on), that ruled in support of their interests.

That's why that's the sentiment in most of the world about the US government. Some people realize that it's not the main portion of the population the one to blame about this. But given that government after government has followed the same foreign policies, involving in every other nation's internal affairs, it's fair to ask: If the vast majority of the US population would have really opposed to this, there would have been a change by now. The only reason left, aside from indifference, is just that "the defense of the american way of life" seems to be far more important.

The United States, with less than 5 % of the global population, uses about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources—burning up nearly 25 % of the coal, 26 % of the oil, and 27 % of the world’s natural gas.[1, 2]

That explains it all. It doesn't really matters what happens in other countries as long as resources keeps moving, and money keeps flowing. Even if that means placing dictators all over the world.

And that is why you end up with that kind of statements. It won't change, unless your governments start to change. And it doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.[3]

[1] http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810 [2] http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-con... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-...

I can't tell if this is a parody or not! A perfect example of kprobst's point with the added comedy bonus that you threw a rant about oil in there too!

If you can't tell that probably means you haven't spent any real time outside the US (and being on a military base in a foreign country doesn't count). I'm glad all the suffering that the US military causes is humorous to you though.

And I'm not even from the US...

> You should live outside USA for a while

That's amusing, considering I was born in Mexico. Keep trying to 'school' me though, you're doing great.

Which means nothing.

What he meant with "You should live outside USA for a while" is not actually literally living outside the USA, but seeing from the viewpoint of other countries. As in, the viewpoint of the MAJORITY of population of said countries.

In all those countries where the US staged coups or intervened there is a fat-cat pro US establishment. Actually, that goes without saying for coups --you need local allies.

There are also apolitical people all around. HN is not really the best sampling space to get the national sentiments of Latin America.

> Which means nothing.

It means that the OPs implied assertion that I fit his (probable) stereotype of the ignorant gringo is obviously incorrect.

> the viewpoint of the MAJORITY of population of said countries

Not sure how you get that, or even what it means, really.

>It means that the OPs implied assertion that I fit his (probable) stereotype of the ignorant gringo is obviously incorrect.

No. You could still be fitting his stereotype to a T. It's just that his way of determining it was inaccurate (but it wasn't meant to be taken literally in the first place).

"Try living there" should be read as "try walking in their shoes / understanding them", not as "live in that physical space".

One could be living in a country and have no fucking clue how the population thinks and feels. Westerners, with their expat clubs and little isolated houses, are very good at this. But even a local can achieve this ignorance. How many rich americans really know how "the other half lives", be it blacks, hispanics, white trash, etc?

>Not sure how you get that, or even what it means, really.

It means the "general sentiment" about something in a place.

If you doubt that such a thing exists about the issue of american intervention in latin countries, then you don't have a very good grasp of politics and/or reality (at least in this matter).

Why on earth would an article about struggle against dictatorship mention the main force that keeps the dictators in place (i.e. money, the weapons, diplomatic support) when talking about the "dictator's worst nightmare?"

I never suggested that Gene Sharp represents the government or that all Americans are equivalent but it's funny to attribute the recent Arab protests to some book written by Gene Sharp, these movements are homegrown.

Another commentator mentioned Gandhi, his nonviolence didn't force the British out, the threat of violent independence struggle was very real if the British didn't leave. Behind Martin Luther King there was Malcolm X. Nelson Mandela's ANC was called a "terrorist group" by the US in their struggle against apartheid (Mandela's name was on terror list until mid 2008). https://www.google.com/search?q=mandela+terrorist+list

>Um. Why on earth would the article mention that? What does US foreign policy have to do with the life and work of one academic/writer?

Because 99% of "academics writers" on such issues push US foreign policy, with very few exceptions, like Chomsky (which is not an academic in those fields of study, anyway). Think tanks even more so.

This very article, for example, targets US's target du jour, Iran.

For Israel, the nukes are almost a survival necessity. Nukes in the hands of Israel are less worrying to many than nuclear technology (that could be translated to nuclear weaponry) in the hands of a theocracy.

Additionally, the Palestinian refugees of 1947 have all lived in other countries for 3 generations now. Having the "refugee" status persist through the generations is without precedent. The UN has a special body for refugees, and another special body for Palestinian refugees whose interest is perpetuating the problem rather than solving it. If the countries the descendants of Palestinian refugees gave them basic rights and assimilated them, the problem would be solved. If Israel allowed the descendants to enter ("Return" is really an inaccurate word choice given that most of them were never in Israel) it would destroy it.

Yeah, nukes were almost a survival necessity for apartheid South Africa, weapons were necessary for white supremacists in US to continue killing any black people that demanded equal rights.

A country that continues to reject a peace treaty being offered by dozens of its neighbors, refuses to return the occupied land to its neighbors (for example, Syria's Golan Heights, Lebanon's land, not to talk of the Palestinian occupied land) surely needs nukes or a visit to the shrink. Look up the resolution that is brought up by Arab countries every year since 1980 or so, every year the whole world is on one side, and two countries on the other side (Israel, US, occasionally joined by Australia, Canada, Micronesia, Palau Islands etc). http://www.google.com/search?q=peaceful+settlement+of+the+pa...

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/resolving-the-israel-palest... Year Vote [Yes-No-Abstained] Negative votes cast by…

1997 155-2-3 Israel, United States

1998 154-2-3 Israel, United States

...

2006 157-7-10 Israel, United States , Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau

2007 161-7-5 Israel, United States , Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau

http://www.google.com/search?q=south+africa+nukes+israel

"Additionally, the Palestinian refugees of 1947 have all lived in other countries for 3 generations now. Having the "refugee" status persist through the generations is without precedent... If Israel allowed the descendants to enter ("Return" is really an inaccurate word choice given that most of them were never in Israel) it would destroy it."

Oh yeah, just like in South Africa giving equal rights to those within Israel/Palestine would destroy it, so keep denying the right of return to natives, and keep bringing in Jews only. Build more nukes rather than give equal rights, sounds like a plan. Just ask the South Africans who say that Israel is worse than apartheid South Africa because in SA they weren't using helicopters and F-16s to bomb the blacks. www.google.com/search?q=desmond+tutu+israel+worse+than+apartheid

Let me make sure you understand what you are saying, you are saying that the Jews of Europe, or North Africa or Australia who never lived in historic Palestine, whose ancestors never lived in historic Palestine in 1000+ years, they have the right to "return" to Israel/Palestine but those who were kicked out in 1948 and those who still have deeds and the keys to their homes do not have the right to return to where they were born or their parents were born?

Are you not aware that any person with no link to Palestine/Israel can convert to Judaism and get instant citizenship of Israel and immigrate there based on the right of "return"? Are you saying that a converted Jewish person has more right to "return" to a Jewish-only settlement (i.e. the settlements which are being built on 22% of the remaining Palestine which was occupied in 1967, not the Israel proper which was occupied in 1948)?

And that the non-Jews of occupied Palestinian territories and of Israel proper are justifiably kicked out of their homes? Forget about the 750,000 natives that were kicked out in 1948 and their descendants, have you ever heard about the hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians whose residency has been cancelled since 1967 occupation began?

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-admits-... "Israel stripped more than 100,000 residents of Gaza and some 140,000 residents of the West Bank of their residency rights during the 27 years between its conquest of the territories in 1967 and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994."

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/anglo-file/former-thug-who-fo... "Marcus Hardie grew up in an African-American community in Los Angeles, where his nickname was "American Thug."

"I was a tough gangster," he says.

But after a religious awakening that brought him to Judaism and eventually led him to immigrate to Israel, his street name changed to "American Faith.""

I am not sure if you are a victim of the hasbara propaganda or if you're part of it, but either way you should read what Israel has been doing before you justify its actions.

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/israels-pret... http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-is-more-foc... http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/israeli-stud... "The National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS) has become a full-time partner in the Israeli government’s efforts to spread its propaganda online and on college campuses around the world.

NUIS has launched a program to pay Israeli university students $2,000 to spread pro-Israel propaganda online for 5 hours per week from the “comfort of home.”"

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/peled-the-only-way-forward-is-...

Peled: The only way forward is ‘transformation’ of a racist apartheid state into a democracy

I am an Israeli - and am quite disheartened that you are bringing /r/worldnews style comments to HN.

Let's keep it focused and avoid the useless flame wars, shall we?

Whether you agree with Israel's actions or not, it needs its nukes to survive and Iran does not.

The conflict is two-sided. Israel is responsible for a lot of unacceptable actions, as are each of its neighbors. Singling Israel out is not honest and is in fact a form propaganda.

Jews are not returning to Israel -- they are being welcomed in Israel, in an act of voluntary consent between the two sides.

The whole purpose of Israel was creating a refuge for Jews from around the world, because it became historically clear that Jews need it.

I don't think in 2012 we should still be "solving" the refugees crisis of the 1940's. They should have been accepted into their host countries long ago. Instead, they live without rights and under apartheid in Lebanon, Syria and other Arab countries. Those that immigrated to Western countries did get their full citizenship rights.

I agree Israel should end the occupation and return to 1967 lines (and agreements about land swaps for large settlement blocs are probably possible).

And I agree nobody should be kicked from their homes.

Peaker, I brought up Egypt, Israel, Yemen and other dictatorships and I did not intend to start a flame war. I have no argument with "all Jews" or "all Israelis" and I admire that you oppose evicting people and you support at least some solution even if it is a two state solution that gives the non-Jews the remaining 22% of the land that was occupied in 1967, that would be a good start.

"The conflict is two-sided." The South African conflict was a two-sided conflict and so was the American Civil rights struggle. In case of Israel I don't think any Palestinian military is occupying Israeli civilian population, I don't think Palestinians are denying food to enter Israel, I don't think Palestinians are shooting Israeli fishermen in Israeli waters, or shooting pro-Israelis in International waters, it's Israel that's doing all of that to Palestinians. One side is the occupying power and the other is occupied.

"The whole purpose of Israel was creating a refuge for Jews from around the world, because it became historically clear that Jews need it."

It did not have to be at the cost of Palestinians. In late 1800s the Jewish population of Palestine was less than 3%, even as late as 1914 the Jewish population was only 8%, in 1948 it was 34% and that population kicked out 750,000 of the local population (about 80% of the total Palestinian population) and declared Israel on 78% of the land.

Here's a hardcore Zionist Israel Zangwill in 1905:

"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ..... [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us." (Righteous Victims, p. 140 & Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 7-10)

"Singling Israel out is not honest and is in fact a form propaganda."

I did not single out Israel, I mentioned about half a dozen names. No one here justified Saudi, Yemeni or Bahraini repression, why are you singling out justifying Israeli repression? I don't like $1.3+ billion of my tax dollars being sent to Egyptian dictators nor $3+ billion of my tax dollars to Israeli occupation and apartheid, nor the weapons to Bahraini apartheid, I'm not singling out Israel. Even if someone is more vocal against Israel, you should know why it is so, Israeli is getting more US taxpayer money and indirect subsidies than all other countries of the world combined (the direct aid alone is more than what we give to entire Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, given the GDP per capita of Israel, we should be outraged at that military aid Israel or Egypt or Bahrain are getting).

They may not attack fishermen, but they do kill Israeli families, fire rockets at Israeli civilian cities, and otherwise engage in horrific violence towards Israeli citizens.

How could it not be at anyone's expense? There is no free and open land for the taking. If the Jews wanted to survive, they had only one choice, creating a homeland and that means somebody else will lose his control over that piece of land. It is necessarily at the expense of someone else. That someone happened to be the Palestinians.

When I am talking about singling out, I am referring to the single-sided view of the conflict you are presented, whereby you ignore Palestinian violence towards Israelis, the reason Israel had to be formed and accept Jews from around the world.

No one says that whites were the victims of Mandela's ANC, why do you insist on justifying an occupying military that is enforcing an apartheid?

Probably a few of the Egyptian military and police have been killed by protesters but I only mentioned the 1000+ civilians killed by the police and military, no one insisted that mention the dictator's side of the story, why do you say that I am giving a one-sided story of Israeli occupation?

As we are talking Israel has been bombing Gaza and killing children, women and men, I did not mention that either. Do you know that home-made Palestinian rockets have killed less than 50 people in decades? The number of Israeli civilians killed by rockets from 2001 to 2012 is 31 and Israel has killed more Palestinians in the last few weeks alone. Which side is the victim?

Do you know that Israeli attacks have killed far more people than Palestinian attacks no matter what time-frame you pick? The ratio is usually 4 to 10 times. I don't think killing 50 people with F-16s is any more noble than killing 10 people with a suicide jacket.

In the last major assault on Gaza in December 2008 Israel killed more than 1400 civilians (more than 700 women and children) and systematically destroyed mosques, UN hospitals, UN food depots, livestock and flour mills. 13 Israelis were killed during Gaza massacre of 2008, 10 Israeli soldiers and 3 civilians. (If you are unaware of any of the above you should google up human rights organizations reports, Amnesty, HRW, Israel's own B'Tselem) It has been called a massacre by human rights organizations, it was not a war; the Palestinians had no military, no F-16s, no white phosphorus that they rained down on Israeli schools, it was Israelis who did that.

Given that it was Israel which violated the ceasefire in November 2008 Which side am I supposed to criticize?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepale...

Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen 5 November 2008

Before that Israel killed more than 20k during Lebanon invasion in 1980s, killed more than 1300 Lebanese in 2006 (injured 400+). Before that Zionist militias killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and British civil servants in 1930s and 1940s, at what point were Israelis the victims in Palestine?

"It is necessarily at the expense of someone else. That someone happened to be the Palestinians."

If you are acknowledging the injustice then why do you insist that I am singling out by mentioning the injustice alone and not being sympathetic to the military occupier?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058946/quotes

Journalist: M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?

Ben M'Hidi: And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.

> Do you know that home-made Palestinian rockets have killed less than 50 people in decades?

Now this is an outright lie. Please try to remain honest in this debate, it is full of enough misinformation.

The rockets are not home-made. They are Grad BM-21's, military-grade improvement of the Katyusha rocket.

The reason they don't kill many Israelis is because Israel builds bomb shelters and every Israeli home has one. Israelis have an alarm system that lets people find shelter in time for the strike.

Homes are destroyed by these grads. Even the "home-made" Qassams (which are actually made in specialized factories in Gaza, hard-to-say "home" made) carry more than 20 pounds of TNT.

It's hard to take your argument seriously when you are repeating these propaganda talking points, and that's where I stopped reading.

>Now this is an outright lie.

No Sir, you're BSing. I showed dozens of links that document the racism, apartheid and murder of "the other" that your state is carrying out and you seem to justify it. Show me how many people have been killed by Qassam or other rockets, show me a time period when Israel did not kill 4-10 times more people than killed by primitive rockets.

> because Israel builds bomb shelters

Israel refused to allow cement into Gaza for years even to build hospitals and schools that were destroyed in the 2008 massacre. Stop justifying the murder and terror that the Israeli regime is carrying out. Egyptian murders are bad, Israeli murderers have killed far more people than Egyptian tyrants. No one here justified Egyptian butchers, stop justifying Israeli terrorism.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/07/01/us-palestinians-is...

Gaza gets chocolate but no cement as embargo eases

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/help-replace-welshingazas-came...

Help replace @WelshinGaza’s camera destroyed by the Israeli navy

"On Monday, we published a harrowing account from @WelshinGaza about their standoff with the Israeli navy off the coast of Gaza. During the encounter, Welsh's camera was destroyed by a stream of water the navy shot at the human rights observation boat Welsh was traveling on."

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=498678

Israel demolishes Bedouin village for 39th time

<-- Al Araqib is a village which is inside the 1948 Israel boundary and its citizens are Israeli citizens but since they are not Jewish their houses are being demolished again and again so that other Jews can be brought in to settle in their place. The residents have deeds that predate the Zionist settler movement that accelerated in 1900s.

You've just dodged the subject and went on to talk about something else.

Will you first admit that your claim about "home made" rockets or small amount of deaths are inaccurate and misleading?

There's no point in debating with someone who's made up his mind and only then goes looking for evidence to justify it.

There is no point debating with an apologist of an ethno-religiou-racist state. You blatantly say that non-Jews should not be allowed to return while Jews should continue to migrate there. Is there any argument left?

Here are your statements for reference:

>If Israel allowed the descendants to enter ("Return" is really an inaccurate word choice given that most of them were never in Israel) it would destroy it."

>Jews are not returning to Israel -- they are being welcomed in Israel, in an act of voluntary consent between the two sides.

You don't have a problem with the murder of tens of thousands (by Israelis) and you are crying about a few dozen murders (by Palestinians).

Again, I am copying my request for evidence: >>No Sir, you're BSing. Show me how many people have been killed by Qassam or other rockets, show me a time period when Israel did not kill 4-10 times more people than killed by primitive rockets.

Show a link or apologize for exaggerating the terror of Qassam / whatever rockets, and apologize for justifying the terror of Israeli nukes, F-16s, white phosphorus, cobra gunships.

You said "home-made" rockets. True or false?

You support Israeli murder and terror, I oppose all murder and terror. Yes, I called them homemade rockets. They are primitive rockets, many of them are literally homemade.

http://boingboing.net/2009/01/15/how-homemade-rockets.html

These homemade rocket attacks are terror attacks and they are evil and they have killed about 50 people. If one values one non-Jewish life as equal to one Jewish life, the Israeli terror attacks on Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians are far more evil because Israelis have killed tens of thousands, they usually claim 4-10 times more lives, sometimes 100 times more lives in any given time period; the Israeli terrorist attacks have rained down precisely guided missiles on hospitals, schools, food depots, flour mills and chicken farms.

Again, I am copying my request for evidence:

>>No Sir, you're BSing. Show me how many people have been killed by Qassam or other rockets, show me a time period when Israel did not kill 4-10 times more people than killed by primitive rockets.

Again, you refuse to acknowledge that Grads are used.

You put words into my mouth.

You fail to engage in minimally-honest debate.

This does not belong on Hacker News, and we probably both have better things to do.

>It's hard to take your argument seriously when you are repeating these propaganda talking points, and that's where I stopped reading.

You are repeating Israeli military's propaganda. You are justifying the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and crying crocodile tears over Qassam rockets. Life is sacred, my problem is that I consider every single life sacred. To me the terrorism that kills tens of thousands (by nuclear-armed Israelis with white phosphorus, F-16s, Cobra Gunships) is far worse terrorism than the terrorism that kills 50 (by Qassam or other primitive, unguided rockets).

I'm not interested if you keep repeating your IDF propaganda. If you are sure you are correct then link to a credible source that shows Qassam killed more than Israeli F-16s, Gunships etc killed.

The post you're replying to is completely factual.

His claim was an oft-repeated lie. I corrected it. Apologizing for lies is a litmus test for an honest debater. There's no point debating someone who would lie and when corrected, would yell "propaganda" instead of apologizing.

Which lie are you pointing to and what did you correct? Read the response above and post a reliable link that shows what you claim.

Claiming Grad rockets are "home-made" and implying they are not a deadly threat (when in fact the reason they killed few people is the Israeli warning system and extensive bomb shelters).

Amazing that CNN is this scared of the people to be pushing the CIA-funded method of social resistance.

You mean Sharp himself is funded by the CIA?

What are your sources for this claim?

Besides, even if it were "funded by the CIA", that would mean the CIA would be helping ordinary people avoid ending up face down with a boot on their neck. I would have very few problems with that.

No, he's saying Sharp is irrelevant. Change only comes through violence or threat of violence so the Parent apparently meant that uprising is so feared that Sharp's methods are being trumpeted as being effective in the hopes of keeping everyone peaceful and controllable.

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