Gene Sharp: Author of the nonviolent revolution rulebook 22. februar 2011. - 12 -

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Postovani,

Literatura za Irenu i ostale revolucionare koji misle to da budu (ili misle da su bili).
Obratite paznju na "srpski" deo price.

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A moja omiljena zemlja: Libija - se raspada.

Gene Sharp: Author of the nonviolent revolution rulebook

In an old townhouse in East Boston an elderly stooped man is tending rare orchids in his shabby office. His Labrador Sally lies on the floor between stacks of academic papers watching him as he shuffles past.
This is Dr Gene Sharp the man now credited with the strategy behind the toppling of the Egyptian government.
Gene Sharp is the world's foremost expert on non-violent revolution. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, his books slipped across borders and hidden from secret policemen all over the world.

Key Steps on the Path to Revolution

• Develop a strategy for winning freedom and a vision of the society you want
• Overcome fear by small acts of resistance
• Use colours and symbols to demonstrate unity of resistance
• Learn from historical examples of the successes of non-violent movements
• Use non-violent "weapons"
• Identify the dictatorship's pillars of support and develop a strategy for undermining each
• Use oppressive or brutal acts by the regime as a recruiting tool for your movement
• Isolate or remove from the movement people who use or advocate violence

As Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine fell to the colour revolutions which swept across Eastern Europe, each of the democratic movements paid tribute to Sharp's contribution, yet he remained largely unknown to the public.
Despite these successes and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2009 he has faced almost constant financial hardship and wild accusations of being a CIA front organisation. The Albert Einstein Institution based on the ground floor of his home is kept running by sheer force of personality and his fiercely loyal Executive Director, Jamila Raqib.
In 2009 I began filming a documentary following the impact of Sharp's work from his tranquil rooftop orchid house, across four continents and eventually to Tahrir square where I slept alongside protesters who read his work by torchlight in the shadow of tanks.
Gene Sharp is no Che Guevara but he may have had more influence than any other political theorist of his generation.
His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern - and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble.
For decades now, people living under authoritarian regimes have made a pilgrimage to Gene Sharp for advice. His writing has helped millions of people around the world achieve their freedom without violence. "As soon as you choose to fight with violence you're choosing to fight against your opponents best weapons and you have to be smarter than that," he insists.
"People might be a little surprised when they come here, I don't tell them what to do. They've got to learn how this non-violent struggle works so they can do it for themselves."
Catching fireTo do this Sharp provides in his books a list of 198 "non-violent weapons", ranging from the use of colours and symbols to mock funerals and boycotts.

Designed to be the direct equivalent of military weapons, they are techniques collated from a forensic study of defiance to tyranny throughout history.
"These non-violent weapons are very important because they give people an alternative," he says. "If people don't have these, if they can't see that they are very powerful, they will go back to violence and war every time."
After the Green uprising in Iran in 2009 many of the protesters were accused at their trials of using more than 100 of Sharp's 198 methods.
His most translated and distributed work, From Dictatorship to Democracy was written for the Burmese democratic movement in 1993, after the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi.

It was important because some of the Gabonese were talking about a violent option - I was able to say: 'Hang on guys there's another option here'”

Because he had no specialist knowledge of the country he wrote a guide to toppling a dictatorship which was entirely generic. But Sharp's weakness became the strength of the book allowing it to be easily translated and applicable in any country of the world across cultural and religious boundaries.
The book caught fire figuratively and literally.
From Burma word of mouth spread through Thailand to Indonesia where it was used against the military dictatorship there. Its success in helping to bring down Milosevic in Serbia in 2000 propelled it into use across Eastern Europe, South America and the Middle East.
When it reached Russia the intelligence services raided the print shop and the shops selling it mysteriously burned to the ground.
The Iranians became so worried they broadcast an animated propaganda film on state TV - of Gene Sharp plotting the overthrow of Iran from The White House.
President Hugo Chavez used his weekly television address to warn the country that Sharp was a threat to the national security of Venezuela.
Serbian connectionAfter recent allegations of vote rigging in her home country of Gabon, supermodel and activist Gloria Mika travelled to Boston to meet Sharp.

• Born January 1928 in Ohio
• Jailed for nine months in 1953-4 for protesting against conscription of young men to fight in Korean War
• Albert Einstein wrote the foreword to his first book - Gandhi Wields the Weapon of Moral Power: Three Case Histories - published in 1960
• His 1968 Oxford University D Phil, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, formed the basis of a book with the same title, published in 1973
• Professor (now emeritus professor) of political science at the University of Massachusetts since 1972, while simultaneously holding research positions at Harvard University
• Founded the Albert Einstein Institution in 1983, a non-profit organisation advancing the use of non-violent action in conflict around the world

"I felt like I was going to meet the main man in terms of non-violent resistance in the world," she says. "It was important because some of the Gabonese were talking about a violent option. They were saying, let's go and kill some people and I was able to say: 'Hang on guys there's another option here.'"
The Serbs who had used his books as a theoretical base for their activities founded their own organisation called the Centre for Applied Non Violence (CANVAS), and alongside their own materials have carried out workshops using Sharp's work in dozens of other countries.
When I met Srdja Popovic the director of CANVAS in Belgrade in November he confirmed that they had been working with Egyptians. "That's the power of Sharp's work and this non-violent struggle," he says. "It doesn't matter who you are - black, white, Muslim, Christian, gay, straight or oppressed minority - it's useable. If they study it, anybody can do this."
Photocopies in ArabicBy the time I arrived in Tahrir square on 2 February many of those trained in Sharp's work were in detention. Others were under close observation by the intelligence services and journalists who visited them were detained for hours by the secret police. My own camera equipment was seized as soon as I landed.

When I finally reached one of the organisers he refused to talk about Sharp on camera. He feared that wider knowledge of a US influence would destabilise the movement but confirmed that the work had been widely distributed in Arabic.

"One of the main points which we used was Sharp's idea of identifying a regime's pillars of support," he said. "If we could build a relationship with the army, Mubarak's biggest pillar of support, to get them on our side, then we knew he would quickly be finished."
That night as I settled down to sleep in a corner of Tahrir square some of the protesters came to show me text messages they said were from the army telling them that they wouldn't shoot. "We know them and we know they are on our side now," they said.
One of the protesters, Mahmoud, had been given photocopies of a handout containing the list of 198 methods but he was unaware of their origins. He proudly described how many of them had been used in Egypt but he had never heard of Gene Sharp.
When I pointed out that these non-violent weapons were the writings of an American academic he protested strongly. "This is an Egyptian revolution", he said. "We are not being told what to do by the Americans."
And of course that is exactly what Sharp would want.
Ruaridh Arrow's film, Gene Sharp: How to Start a Revolution, will be released in spring 2011

Irena: 

Poznata mi je ova teorija i njen autor. Taj tip "revolucije" vodi u Sojic- demokraciju. Meni se to bas i ne cini neka pozitivna promjena.


PS:
Zasto zagovornici "nonviolent revolution" nisu u Afgansitanu i Iraku primijenili taj recept?

Vuki:
Recept sluzi za dolazenje na vlast. Za ostanak na vlasti moras pogledati Makjavelija. 

A propos Afganistana i Iraka - stvar je kompleksnija. Tamo ima previse ucesnika sa strane koji to nisu samo kao savetnici i pametnjakovici, nego sa oruzjem, parama, placenicim i sl. Irak jos i ima neke sanse uz sve podle koje ce uslediti. Afganistan - tuzna prica. Tezak gradjanski rat tradicionalista i modernista + Pakistan + Iran. 
U biti najveci problem su Iran i Pakistan. Svaki na svoj nacin. 

Irena: 

Meni se cini da su najveci problem SAD. Za vrijeme  bobardiranja 1999, moja mama je rekla da ce nas sve istrijebiti kao sto su to naparavili sa Indijancima. Mislim da je bila u pravu.
U sustini, problem je kapitalizam sa svojom logikom rasta bez granice. S obzirom da na konacnoj Zemlji ne moze biti beskonacnog rasta, ili se mijenja sistem ili sve skupa ide do djavola. Kapitalizam se ponasa kao rak. U prirodi samo rak ima tendenciju beskonacnog rasta,a znamo kako to zavrsi.  Kad bi prica zavrsila samo sa nestankom ljudi ne bi mi bilo ni zao, ali zao mi zivotinja i biljaka.

Ovaj svijet je lijep i interesantan i zaista je steta sto je nastanjen glupim stvorenjima zvanim ljudi. Sramota me sto pripadam toj vrsti.

Vuki:

Nisu najveci problem SAD nego kapitalizam. Kapitalizam nije americki izum, mada je u vreme nase mladosti i srednjeg doba Amerika bila paradigma kapitalizma. Sada to vise nisu. Ono sto su belci u Americi ucinili Indijancima, sada razne druge velike rase i nacije cine drugima - pocev od sopstvenih naroda. Sa raznim razlikama nastalim iz geografskih, materijalnih (sirovinskih) pa i historijskih razloga. Dakle, i Kina i Indija i Rusija i Amerika i Brazil i razne druge srednje i manje sile. Naravno, postoji vremenska dimenzija problema, sve je prilicno dinamicno. I ubrzavace se zbog raznih problema: fosilana goriva, voda, hrana, rast stanovnistva, uticaj na klimatske promene, virusi, religije...itd.
Kapitalizam na to nema odgovor jer se protivi logici eksploatacije i pravljenja profita. 
Da te podsetim: Marx (a jos vise Engels) je smatrao da su periodicne krize kapitalistickog sistema neizbezne i da ce sve vise dovoditi do jacanje drzave jer ona mora brinuti o sopstvenom narodu na drugi nacin nego sto cine kapitalisti. Kapitalisti smatraju da se drzava treba brinuti o stvarima koje nisu isplative za kapitaliste. (Mada neoliberalizam i drzavne poslove hoce da podvrgne korporacijama - pa su npr. iracki rad vodile najvece americke korporacije). Sto bi rekli zastupnici pojednostavljene historijsko-materijalisticke logike: najpre podrzavljenje pa podrustvljenje. Otud: diktatura proletarijata kao prelazni period - preuzimanje drzave od strane kapitalista pa onda postepeno podrustveljenje.(Kinezi zvanicno i dalje govore da su u visoj fazi socijalizma - a komunizam samo sto nije). Bijeda te logike vec se pokazala na primjeru propalog Sovjetskog Saveza pa donekle i Jugoslavije. 

Sta je onda izlaz? Mislim da ne postoji univerzalno resenje. Mozda se vise treba baviti mikro resenjima. Drustvene zajednice poput Novog Zelanda i/ili Australije, Kanade nude resenja koja izgledaju humano. Ali to su sve useljenicke zemlje koje planski godisnje useljavaju ljude sa raznih strana (sve vise se orijentirajuci ka profesijama). To nece moci do beskraja, ali imaju vremena da se prilagodjavaju. 
Ima dosta inspirativnih primjera. Mislim da ce lokalne zajednice imati sve vecu ulogu. Uostalom, svjetli primjer antickih grckih polisa je solidan primjer (premda ne treba zaboraviti da je to bilo robovsko društvo - sto ne znaci da se prema robovima postupalo okrutno). 
Svasta ce se desavati. 
Zato ja sa zadovoljstvom promatram arapska zbivanja jer se i tu pojavljuju mlade snage koje ne misle da je mjesto Arapa u ropskom slijedjenju zapadnih modela ili pak u fundamentalizmu srednjeg vijeka. To uopce ne mora da znaci da ce uspjeti. Malo sta zavisi od obrazovanih, mladih i naivnih. 

No, odoh da saznam sto vise o zbivanjima u Libiji. Sto nije lako jer su mnoge komunikacije u prekidu. medjutim, nacina ima ali se mora covjek potruditi i posvetiti prilicno vremena.