It’s not violence, insurrection. It’s not guns and bombs and prison camps and purges. The conventional wisdom is wrong and ahistorical. There is only one defensible means of social change at the general level. That is the use of nonviolent resistance and noncooperation.
(article)
For info about nonviolent resistance- the popular seizure of political power through mass democratic action- check out Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy (free PDF, just under 100 pages) and the superb new book by Srdja Popovic, Blueprint for Revolution. I read the latter over the weekend, it’s a quick, funnier, and less technical version of From Dictatorship to Democracy.
Unspoken Politics 
Did you read the NYT a few days ago on the slave trade of Yaezidi women? What non violence whould you suggest to them?
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Well it’s not “them” but “us” since the people enslaving them are armed by the United States and funded mostly by private Saudi citizens with tacit government approval. That’s how the slave trade happens, and it’s in the power of the people involved in those to stop IS from gaining money and arms. Then the whole monstrosity collapses. You know what hasn’t collapsed it? Years of violence, in fact the violence created that level of degredation.
Also the Kurds and Turkish people who control the only sorta-open border for the radical Islamists can (and have in some cases) attempted to shut down crossings where oil is smuggled and finances- and weapons are smuggled in return.
Could we arm the Yazidi? Sure. Would that help? No, they’d be massacred. They’re massively outnumbered. We’ve armed everyone else, how is that going?
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