The more violence, the less revolution

George Lakey writes for Occupy Washington DC:

...Movements have sometimes produced regime change with no real democracy and the same 1 percent still in charge. The American Revolution did that: King George was booted out and the resulting government, to its credit highly innovative, was still not a democracy for women, the enslaved, and working class people. A couple of centuries later, the 1 percent are still running the United States. A number of other anti-colonial struggles had a similar result.

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The good news is that regimes can be overthrown, even though dictators bring out the police and army to try to stay in power. The bad news is that the people didn’t always win; when they used violence they won only one time in four. They did, however, double their chances of success when they used a nonviolent strategy.

In our research for the Global Nonviolent Action Database, my students and I found a number of cases in which movements first tried violence, found it didn’t work, and then switched over to nonviolent struggle and won.

Researcher Anthony Phalen tells us, for example, that the Latvians tried guerrilla war against domination by the Soviet Union for years without success, then switched to a nonviolent strategy and succeeded...

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Papoutsis: “Tear Gas is the Mildest Form of Reaction Across Europe”

Former Minister for Citizens’ Protection and aspiring PASOK leader Christos Papoutsis defended his work at the ministry and the (often extensive) use of tear gas during protests in Athens and other Greek cities. He said that chemicals are better than water and that he never gave orders to police to dissolve demonstrations because they caused problems to the government.

“These chemicals are the mildest form of reaction throughout Europe. they are not rubber bullets, they’re not water. I was criticized because I did not allow that for what I was blamed to[sic]: a police state. If we would have police state, there would have been dead in Athens” Papoutsis said speaking in REAL FM.

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The Real Democracy

From VII VISIONAIRES:

An updated summary of the charming record of US foreign policy. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States of America has …
1.Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
2.Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
3.Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
4.Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
5.Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. ...
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