In other news, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson Arun is going to Palestine to try to encourage the revival of nonviolent resistance there. His visit will include a meeting with Yasser Arafat.
Brian Whitaker in The Guardian speculates as to why Gandhi’s model of non-violent resistance has met with suspicion and repression in the Middle East.
It sounds like Gandhi’s grandson’s trip to visit Yasser Arafat wasn’t just one of those for-the-cameras gestures. According to ’s Guardian, “The Palestinian leadership has announced a three-point programme of non-violent resistance in an attempt to wrest the diplomatic initiative from Israel. They hope to push Israel into allowing elections, to lead mass protests against the separation barrier and the maltreatment of prisoners, and to challenge Israel in the international courts.”
Various Palestinian resistance groups are currently in negotiation to determine to what extent they will be suspending violent resistance during the campaign.
Apparently Hamas isn’t going along with the shift to nonviolent tactics being promoted by elements of the Palestinian resistance. In the International Herald Tribune, Israeli journalist Jonathan Cook discusses why he thinks nonviolent protest doesn’t offer much hope for the Palestinian cause.
Brian Whitaker, whose article about nonviolent resistance in the Middle East I cited on , revisits the topic in the light of Sistani’s march in Najaf and Arun Gandhi’s visit to Palestine.
(I’ve discussed the campaign of tax resistance by the residents of Beit Sahour in a couple of previous Picket Line entries: and .)
Soj at Flogging the Simian brings us the latest news on “People Power” in Eastern Europe. It seems that the Ukrainian group Pora, which was instrumental in unstealing the election there this winter, is hoping to open some franchises elsewhere — Belarus and Moldova to start with.
This campaign is being encouraged by Dubya and probably underwritten by U.S. intelligence. Would that more of Dubya’s alleged democratization agenda was pursued in an empower-the-people fashion rather than in the blow-them-up style.
The geniuses in the Dubya Squad seem to think that the best path to democracy for Eastern Europeans is to rise up and overthrow their governments nonviolently, while the best path for those in the Middle East is to be bombed into rubble and then to submit to the quasi-democratic constitution we airlift in after the attack (or to forget about the whole democracy thing and patiently submit to those dictators we arm to the teeth).
Gene Sharp’s thoughts on the nonviolent resistance tactic of “revenue refusal” can be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.
With the way People Power forced the U.S. to allow for popular elections in Iraq, and with the recent People Powered collapse of the occupation government in Lebanon, there’s a possibility of a democratic renaissance in the Middle East that has no resemblance to democratization via shock-and-awe.
The Albert Einstein Institution, Gene Sharp’s nonviolent resistance think-tank, has been busily translating its how-to guides for nonviolent revolution into dozens of languages. Some of the readers of these booklets will be in the running for covert U.S. aid; others will face soldiers armed with “Made in the U.S.A.” weaponry.
I’m back! The people of Tultepec really know how to have a good time. I’ve had a wonderful vacation of fireworks and food and more Virgins of Guadalupe than I could count. I don’t think I thought about taxes the whole time I was south-of-the-border.
But now it’s back to work. is coming up, and along with it my recap of , and is a little more than a month away, so tax resistance news will be coming in fast like so many buscapies from a Tultepec megatorito.
For , though, just a handful of quick updates — low-hanging fruit from my underpruned email tree:
Researchers Isak Svensson, Jonathan Hall, Dino Krause, and Eric Skoog of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala Uniersitet have examined the role of nonviolent civil disobedience among the conquered subjects of the Islamic State movement. They summarize their conclusions in today’s Washington Post. Excerpt:
A more common type of resistance was to withdraw one’s full cooperation with the Islamic State authorities. After seizing control of Mosul, the Islamic State established a sophisticated bureaucracy and tax system. Public institutions were largely taken over and operated under the Islamic State’s control, including schools, universities and courts. Some residents manifested their defiance by not paying taxes, refusing to cooperate with the Islamic State’s legal institutions, or withdrawing from schools and universities.
Our survey shows that this type of resistance was common and widespread: If we put all types of noncooperation together, 62 percent of the respondents reportedly engaged in at least one of them. While generally less risky because it was less visible, this type of resistance still entailed significant risks if detected. The Islamic State is known to have publicly whipped people for alleged tax evasion or because they taught private classes.
