Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare

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.

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.

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.

@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).