Over at the Huffington Post, our good friend John Jackson, who co-authored Small Acts of Resistance, which we reviewed here, has a very interesting piece about the dirty tricks dictators employ to undermine their nonviolent opposition.

We often only learn about these tactics after the fact from those who were targeted, and rarely get to see in detail how dictators plan on thwarting their opposition in the middle of a conflict. That, however, is apparently what has been leaked in Syria and its fascinating. As Jackson writes:

In April a top-secret document, said to be from the Syrian Department of Intelligence, became public. The paper lays out a detailed strategic plan for the regime of President Assad to undermine, weaken and destroy the country’s pro-democracy movement. It identifies three key areas of operation – Media, Security and Political. The Media front includes: posing as opposition activists and advocating anti-regime violence to tarnish the movement’s reputation; fueling traditional ethnic and sectarian fears to create disunity; doctoring footage filmed by opponents to contradict and discredit their stories; and having professionally trained ‘eye-witnesses’ feed the regime’s propaganda to foreign journalists.

On the security front the plan says “it is acceptable (for snipers) to shoot some of the security agents or army officers” to “provoke the animosity of the army against the protesters”.

The political tactics, some of which have been used in Iran, Egypt and elsewhere, call for: mass pro-regime counter protests; the offer of dialogue (that some in the opposition will accept and some will reject) in order to expose divisions; ‘temporarily’ satisfying the demands of some groups but not others in order to splinter the movement; and, presenting a coherent image of all the “pillars of the regime”. This last point, a direct counter to the non-violent strategy of winning over key sections of society (“pillars”) that keep the regime in place.

Looking back at what has happened in Syria over the last few months, it’s easy to see which of these strategies are being implemented. Nevertheless, this devious plan hasn’t been able to stop the call by Syrians for change. In fact, although the death toll continues to grow, there are signs that the tide is turning in the pro-democracy movement’s favor.

Rather than splintering the opposition, as is often the case in nonviolent struggle, the violent crackdown by Syrian security forces seems to have only fueled the fire of resistance and led to an increasing number of defections by soldiers who are refusing to kill their own people.

As Hussein Harmoush (posing above with his army ID card), a Syrian colonel who has defected and fled to Turkey, told Al Jazeera: “Our current aim is the protection of the protesters who are asking for freedom and democracy.”

Those who attempt to work for social change, especially in terms of peace work, are no strangers to despair. The task can seem so great, and our efforts so small, that victories seem impossible, the problems insurmountable. People’s attitudes take forever to change, if they change at all. Malevolent forces seem to have all the power, the weapons, the resources, the inertia, the media, and even the culture captive. Many refuse even to begin the work for this reason.

Gandhi also noted this fact in his book Hind Swaraj (or Indian Home Rule) in a section I think it is worth quoting at some length. In it he explains why he believes that the force of “love” (which he says “is the same as the force of the soul or truth”) is the greatest power in history:

The fact that there are so many still alive in the world shows that it is based on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love. Therefore, the greatest and most unimpeachable evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars in the world, it still lives on. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little quarrels of millions of families in their lives disappear before the exercise of this force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of this force of love or of the soul…History, then, is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul-force, being natural, is not noted in history.

Gandhi’s observation was based not just on a knowledge of history but also of the daily reality of people the world over. Grievances are forgiven, mercy is shown, differences worked out.

This is different from mere blind optimism because it is based on a more balanced observation of reality.

On a recent trip to Afghanistan with a Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation, I too was struck by the apparent intractability and irreducible complexity of the histories, conflicts and powers at play in the country. With so many grievances over so many years, how does a country heal and move forward? With so many stubborn powers vying for supremacy, how does conflict de-escalate? With such a lack of trust between even ordinary Afghans, how do you build capacity for cooperation?

On a day trip north of Kabul to the Panjshir Valley, our car stopped for a moment beside a scene of spectacular beauty: a shepherd tending to his sheep, on the fresh spring grass, with layers of misty mountains forming the backdrop. To our surprise and delight, we looked on as here, beside a busy highway, a new lamb was born. The shepherd turned his head towards us, smiled and waved. And then it struck me: this is how Afghanistan goes on. A day at a time, with the inevitability of the sheer will to live and love and create anew. It’s not the stuff of headlines perhaps, but it’s the necessary context of the headlines that concentrate almost entirely on power plays and military endeavors.

That is not to say that we don’t also need to continue the struggle for peace and justice. “To be hopeful,” veteran activist Fr. John Dear often says, “one must do hopeful things.” We are all part of living the reasons to see our despair transformed into hope, in our own seemingly insignificant actions, whether in the form of public political action or in our homes, communities and relationships. This daily reality has become the backdrop that informs my advocacy for an end to the war in Afghanistan – the sheer persistence of love and the resilience of the Afghan people. Every day people get up in the morning; every day they go to work in the fields, tend their vines, play with their children, forgive grievances. It is the almost inevitable working of this force which gives texture, shape, practicality, to the hope of a better future for Afghanistan, and the whole world.

Life is persistent amongst the ruins. Love is winning, but it can always use some help.

In late June 2011, I’m going to be a passenger on “The Audacity of Hope,” the US boat in this summer’s international flotilla to break the illegal and deadly Israeli siege of Gaza. Organizers, supporters and passengers aim to nonviolently end the brutal collective punishment imposed on Gazan residents since 2006 when the Israeli government began a stringent air, naval and land blockade of the Gaza Strip explicitly to punish Gaza’s residents for choosing the Hamas government in a democratic election. Both the Hamas and the Israeli governments have indiscriminately killed civilians in repeated attacks, but the vast preponderance of these outrages over the length of the conflict have been inflicted by Israeli soldiers and settlers on unarmed Palestinians. I was witness to one such attack when I was last in Gaza two years ago, under heavy Israeli bombardment in a civilian neighborhood in Rafah.

In January 2009, I lived with a family in Rafah during the final days of the “Operation Cast Lead” bombing. We were a few streets down from an area where there was heavy bombing. Employing its ever-replenished stockpile of U.S. weapons, the Israeli government sought to destroy tunnels beneath the Egyptian border through which food, medicine, badly-needed building supplies, and possibly a few weapons as well were evading the internationally condemned blockade and entering Gaza.

Throughout that terrible assault, Israel pounded civilians in Gaza, turning villages, homes, refugee camps, schools, mosques and infrastructure into rubble. According to a report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, the attack killed 1,385 Palestinians, nearly a quarter of them minors, with an uncountable number more to succumb, in the months and years following, to malnutrition, disease, and suicidal despair, the consequences of forced impoverishment under a still continuing siege that salts Gaza’s dreadful wounds by preventing it from even starting to rebuild.

All I could feel at the time was that the people in the Gaza Strip were horribly trapped, almost paralyzed.

The day of the cease-fire, when the sounds of bombing stopped, my young friends insisted that we must move quickly to visit the Al Shifaa hospital in Gaza City. Doctors there were shaken and stunned, after days of trying to save lives in a hopelessly overcrowded emergency room, with blood pooling at their feet. Dr. Nafez Abu Shabham, head of Al Shifaa’s burn unit, put his head in his hands and spoke incredulously to us. “For 22 days, the world watched,” he lamented, “and no country tried to stop the killing.”

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• Tens of thousands of Greek workers from all age groups and professions marched on parliament in Athens yesterday to vent their anger at the country’s politicians and their austerity plans. Meanwhile unions held a nationwide general strike – Greece’s third this year. Despite violent clashes between police and rioters, the vast majority of the demonstrators remained peaceful.

• A small group of women rallied outside the Saudi embassy in Washington DC on Wednesday to protest the kingdom’s ban on female drivers. The demonstrators wanted to express support for a planned nationwide protest in Saudi Arabia Friday.

• Several thousand people gathered in downtown Chicago on Tuesday to protest bank bailouts and tax cuts for the wealthy and demand jobs and funding for schools.

• Czech transportation workers went on a one-day strike yesterday to protest government plans to overhaul public finances with measures including a value-added tax increase.

• Up to 1,000 people turned out in the capital, Minsk, on Wednesday in a rare protest of economic hardship, defying a warning by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko that he would “strike hard” against them.

• Hudreds of Yemenis rallied in the capital, Sanaa, on Thursday to call on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

• Activists dressed as Transportation Security Administration agents staged a mock TSA pat-down at the Capitol in Austin, Texas on Tuesday as part of an effort to bring a bill into the special session that would make it a misdemeanor for TSA agents to pat-down passengers at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

• About 200 demonstrators gathered outside New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s offices on Monday to push for rent control. State Sen. Bill Perkins and a dozen others were arrested for blocking the entrance to the governor’s office.

• On Tuesday night, a collection of labor officials, students and social service workers began a sleep-in outside City Hall, vowing to stay there, nonstop, “till Bloomberg’s budget is defeated!”

Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic congressman from Ohio, is leading a biparistan effort to end the US military intervention in Libya. Earlier this month, he was instrumental in compelling Republican leaders in Congress to pass a resolution criticizing President Obama’s refusal to seek approval for the conflict from the Capitol. Now, he’s leading a group of ten members of Congress who are filing a lawsuit against the president’s disregard of the War Powers Resolution in continuing the conflict.

At 2:17 in the above clip, Kucinich says:

This is about stopping a war now. This is not an academic question. This is about the primacy of the constitution in the affairs of our nation.

And more. Democrats like Kucinich, and Republicans like Ron Paul, are each finding reasons to oppose the war: questionable constitutionality, the absence of moral authority, and the spiraling cost—$10 million per day, reportedly.

Yesterday, the White House tried to explain itself with some crafty reasoning that the War Powers Resolution doesn’t really apply in this case because of the nature of the conflict:

U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.

Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith isn’t buying it. Nor is Cynthia McKinney, the former congresswoman who is currently on the ground in Tripoli, and who rejects the report’s downplaying of the hostilities—or, excuse me, “kinetic action”:

The people of the United States are not getting the truth from the government or the media about the massive destruction in Libya, including the killing of civilians by the NATO bombing campaign. I am here in Libya and we can see the carnage.

Besides, as David Swanson points out, “The Obama report to Congress spends half its time claiming that the United States is not part of the NATO operation in any major way, and the other half warning that the NATO operation would collapse without the United States.” The report continues:

If the United States military were to cease its participation in the NATO operation, it would seriously degrade the coalition’s ability to execute and sustain its operation designed to protect Libyan civilians and to enforce the no-fly zone and the arms embargo[.]

At worst, a contradiction; at best, a convenient gray area for the White House. The report’s logic is troubling to those of us who have noticed how the technologies of war-at-a-distance—like drones, cruise missiles, and smart bombs—only makes killing easier for governments to justify. It also raises important questions about the nature of engagement in multinational military coalitions.

Swanson has organized a statement of opposition to Obama as long as he continues supporting the wars. And, meanwhile, more than a quarter of the Senate has called on the president to scale back operations in Afghanistan next month, as promised.

Over at The Arabist, Ursula Linsey writes that street art in Egypt, which to her knowledge wasn’t prevalent before the revolution this year, has really taken off around the country:

It’s not just the scrawls of “Down with Mubarak” that remain as reminders of that first surreal morning when we all woke up to a city whose reality had been shattered. Street art in in full bloom today, ranging from beautiful murals to stencils of martyrs to clever visual jokes and swipes at the military council.

[...]

Now the latest issue of the literary magazine Akhbar Al Adab is dedicated to the phenomenon. As is this excellent Facebook group, where you can spend hours perusing snapshots of clever, moving, ephemeral works from around the country.

I followed her advice and checked out the Revolution graffiti Facebook group she links to, and although I couldn’t understand some of the graffiti because it is in Arabic, there are many very creative and powerful images that don’t require any knowledge of the language. I’d definitely recommend checking it out if you have the chance.

A battle unfolded on the high seas last weekend just north of Libyan waters. The engaged parties belonged neither to NATO nor Gaddafi’s forces. They were instead Tunisian fishermen and the crew members of the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Fighting broke out when Sea Shepherd, which is on a mission to defend the extremely endangered bluefin tuna from illegal fishing, attempted to inspect the catch of five fishing boats.

Despite the justness of Sea Shepherd’s cause and the sincere bravery of the crew, the following report from the Associated Press reads like a how-not-to guide for waging nonviolent struggle—from the activists’ use of water canons and stink bombs, which hurt the chance of gaining widespread sympathy for the cause and increase the likelihood of fatalities, to the complete indifference toward the Tunisians. These are people who, after all, just overthrew a dictator, in part because of a jobs crisis. Is it possible these fisherman were fighting Sea Shepherd more for job security than for a terrible industry that’s going to send the fish to some expensive Western sushi restaurant anyway?

The Sea Shepherd environmentalists – who have no official enforcement powers – deployed a small launch to inspect the cage, while the Tunisians suddenly scrambled two, then three small dinghies to protect their net. Others tried to cut off the Steve Irwin [Sea Shepherd's ship] or chase it away.

Fishermen in the larger boats threw heavy links of chain at the environmentalists – hitting no one, but eventually forcing the dinghies to retreat without being able to determine if there were tuna in the cage.

A larger Tunisian boat pulled along the port side of the Steve Irwin and the crew pelted the environmentalists with chain links. The crew of the Irwin responded with water from fire hoses and stink bombs containing, they said, rancid butter.

A Tunisian dinghy also towed a rope in front of the Steve Irwin, hoping it would get tangled in the propeller and disable the ship.

Meanwhile, the cries of the Tunisians could be overheard radioing the French military for help, saying environmentalist divers were in the water trying to cut their nets.

That was not the case. However, the Sea Shepherd volunteers are prepared to do exactly that to free the tuna, if they determine the fishing to have been illegal – and they have done it in the past.

The Irwin’s officers deemed sending in divers at this point too dangerous. The Tunisians were aggressive, and they had deployed divers to protect their cage – which could have led, in effect, to hand-to-hand combat in the sea.

A French military jet appeared on the scene in short order and flew over the area at an altitude of a couple of hundred feet as the drama unfolded below.

Eventually, the Steve Irwin broke off contact so it could continue to research whether the fishing was illegal.

Despite Sea Shepherd’s hostile tactics, founder and captain Paul Watson believes his organization to be nonviolent. In a recent interview with the San Francisco Examiner, Watson used the term “aggressive nonviolence” to describe Sea Shepherd’s tactics, adding, “We don’t break laws and we don’t hurt people.”

There are several problems with that logic. First off, breaking laws is oftentimes a nonviolent act, particularly when the law is unjust or not doing its job, as in the case of allowing the illegal fishing of bluefin tuna. So, there would be no shame in Sea Shepherd breaking the law if it were done for the purpose of saving a life without endangering another.

That brings us to Watson’s concept of aggression. Many nonviolent activists would argue that nonviolence is aggressive—certainly in respect to being forceful and going after something with the intent to win. Aggression ceases to be nonviolent, however, when the opponent’s health and safety are threatened. It may be that Sea Shepherd has never physically harmed anyone, but their tactics seem to be ever-escalating in that direction—especially with the revelation that they possess non-lethal weapons.

So why does Sea Shepherd insist on calling itself nonviolent? Perhaps it rightly understands that nonviolence is the most widely accepted form of resistance. What it doesn’t seem to undersand, however, is that beyond the veneer are proven strategies and tactics that also make nonviolence the most effective form of resistance. Rather than make up its own rules and engage in actions that defy the very dynamics that make nonviolence work, Sea Shepherd should actually study what it proclaims itself to be.

The Times of India ran an interesting article yesterday which claimed that fasting as a nonviolent tactic has its roots in India and Ireland:

Historical evidence as well as mythological and religious texts indicate the use of fasting as a method of protest in India and pre-Christian Ireland. Consequently, some of the world’s longest and most politically significant hunger strikes have been done by people from these two countries. The first of such strike was done by Terence Joseph MacSwiney, the Irish playwright, author and politician who was arrested by the British on charges of sedition. To protest against his custody and the trial by a military court, he started a hunger strike which lasted for 74 days and resulted in his death. Mahatma Gandhi credited him as one of those who influenced him and used this tool to protest not only against the British but also Indians during communal riots.

[...]

One of the most famous hunger strikes of recent times was by Bobby Sands, an Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The prisoners were demanding to be recognized as political prisoners rather than criminals, but the Margaret Thatcher government did not agree. The strike got international publicity as during the strike, Sands got elected as an MP. The strike was called off after the death of 10 prisoners, including Sands.

I honestly don’t know enough about the history of hunger strikes to confirm or refute this. If you have any evidence to the contrary let us know in the comment section.

In a piece for the Washington Post’s On Faith blog, Chicago Theological Seminary professor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite wrote on Friday about a conference at Cairo University called “The Nonviolent Revolution in Egypt: Learned Lessons” that she had just returned from.

One of the speakers was Saad Bahaar, a trainer with the Academy for Change, a group of Egyptian expats that has published resources on nonviolence in Arabic and helped train activists in Egypt prior to the revolution, who she quotes at length:

“Since 2004, many attempts were made to make change but we couldn’t. We studied the Serbian model, applied in 160 countries including the U.S., and we made the Kifaya Movement that means “Enough” in English. It crossed an invisible line and criticized Mubarak himself, which was a taboo. We did many nonviolent trainings. We read Gene Sharpe’s writings, we found German scholars on the science of nonviolence, people started to translate these into Arabic, I translated Gene Sharpe. We had to change the culture of violence and the culture of fear. We learned from Sharpe you have choices, either give power your obedience, or withdraw your support for the regime, be disobedient. But, the rule is, strategies cannot be copied, they have to be adapted for the demands of the location.”

Thistlethwaite also mentions a presentation by our good friend Maciej Bartkowski from ICNC, which she called a “bright spot in the concluding sessions and one that seemed to provoke great interest among the Egyptians.”

Bartkowski has researched the role of nonviolent revolutions and the transition to democracy, and had several very concrete observations and suggestions for the Egyptians. Chief among these is that nonviolent civil resistance movements often produce democratic transitions when the “lessons learned” are to keep up public mobilization and build up new civil institutions that can keep reform going. Of special interest to the symposium was the history of Solidarity in Poland, and how the Polish did small constitutional reforms for more than decade.

• On Friday, nearly 100,000 Yemenis protested in a main square of the capital, demanding the president’s ouster in the biggest rally since Ali Abdullah Saleh left for Saudi Arabia after he was wounded in an attack on his palace.

• Thousands of Shiite Bahrainis rallied Saturday answering a call from their largest opposition group, Al-Wefaq, in the first demonstration since a mid-march crackdown on Shiite-led pro-democracy protests.

• Thousands of Syrians demonstrated all over the country on Friday, especially in smaller cities and rural towns. Some 7000 came out in downtown Homs. Troops fired on crowds and responded with brutality against protesters.

• On Sunday, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) staged a sit-in in Quetta to protest against the safe passage allowed to NATO supplies through Pakistan.

• On Sunday, at least 15,000 Greeks protested in front of parliament over the government’s economic policies and called for mass participation in a general strike this week.

• In Peru, Aymara activists announced on Friday that they will resume their strike civil strike indefinitely, and thousands immediately joined roadblocks on the main highway to Bolivia near the border town of Desaguadero.

• On Friday, thousands of college students and supporting citizens continued a protest, which has brought people to the streets every night over the last month, demanding South Korean President Lee Myung-bak fulfil his presidential election pledge to cut tuition fees by half, and provide solutions for youth unemployment.

• About 20 pro-independence demonstrators have kept an all-night vigil at a colonial fort in Puerto Rico to protest during President Barack Obama’s visit to the island.

• Some 500 Indian inmates ended a two-day hunger strike at the CRS No. 5 prison in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas after officials granted their demand for better conditions.