In the Israeli Palistinian conflict I can not call it peaceful protest. I also thought of this example and that was why I asked what you felt in the case of peaceful protest specifically.
Oops. That'll teach me to read more closely.
Um, in the case of an entirely peaceful protest on one side with the government on the other side using violence, then no, I don't think it would be a civil war. It would be a non-violent independence and/or resistance movement against a rather immoral government. Come to think of it, we don't usually call the resistance during WWII as a civil war, perhaps because of the concurrent inter-state war or perhaps because it wasn't a "traditional" war. Though, I suppose, many people do think of the conflict in Northern Ireland as a civil war. (And please, I do _not_ want to discuss/argue over that struggle.
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In terms of Israel/Palestine, I think that Israel is deliberately restraining it's level of force somewhat (though only somewhat) in an attempt to retain some semblance of world respect. Frankly, as someone of jewish ethnicity and who has relatives in Israel, I'm ashamed at the way the government has, in my opinion, needlessly escalated the confict at many points. As far as resolution, I would hope that the peace process can continue. It'll take work and good faith on all sides, but there's no reason another generation of children need to be raised to fear and hate eachother. That's not on topic, however.
Re Rummel & Polsby
To preface, I'm not a big fan of powerful governments. In my theoretical politics, I lean towards anarchism more than anything else. That said, I think you, or Rummel, slightly misrepresented his data in terms of "In the 20th century he estimates governments have murdered 169,000,000 from 1900-1987, OUTSIDE OF WAR!!" For example, when Rummel lists people killed by the Japanese government (and these are included in his 169 million) he includes half a million each for the catagories of "bombing/CB warfare" and "POWs/Internees." These numbers almost certainly refer to WWII and the preceding invasion of Manchuria, undeniably a foriegn country even if the war in China was a little uneven. The numbers for the PRC are not broken down by type but I strongly suspect he followed the general U.S. custom of including deaths from famine during the "Great Leap Forward" in his total. The Soviet numbers do include people who died from stupid and/or uncaring policies which caused starvation. That's somewhat valid, but if he does so then the number of people killed by stupid and/or uncaring policies by European colonial powers in the first half of this century should also be included in the chart. Whether deaths caused by stupid and/or uncaring corporate policies should be included is a question up for debate.
My other grave reservation about this data is that it is cut off at 1987, thereby perhaps deliberately excluding the United States' responsibility for a million Iraqi deaths from sanctions in this decade (forced starvation & deliberate denial of basic medical neccesities).
Oh, by the way, if you're including those who died from starvation as a result of absurd taxes, drafting of all the men, and deliberate burning of crops, the warlord period in China almost certainly claimed a higher toll than 1 million. By comparison to other periods it was rather mild (such as the 1870s(?) when an estimated 60-90 million people died in warfare, murder and starvation), but still higher than 1 million.
I agree that more constrictive governments tend to be more repressive. My definition of "constrictive" is more 'controlling of political dissent' than controlling of economic situations. I think the evidence for the former is clear, for the latter is decidely mixed. (For example, in Latin America right-wing capitalist governments killed far more people (with U.S. help) than left-wing governments.)
As far as guns-as-canary goes, I think that when a government restricts freedom in general guns are one of the things which go. There's probably a cause-and-effect of repressive government-taking guns but I haven't seen enough evidence of the reverse to convince me.
Bam Bam
I'm assuming you're refering to the corporate globalism protests when you say my position is neo-luddite. (I doubt you think I'm a neo-luddite for opposing a powerful government, though some people might.) To answer your implicit challenge
, I don't oppose trade progress. What I oppose is the dismantaling of a country's social safety and education systems at the demand of the IMF's structural adjustment programs. I also oppose the wholesale trend to eliminate and/or undercut basic worker protections (right to organize, ability to see a doctor, minimum wage) in the race of countries to compete for foriegn capital to enrichen the coffers of the elite, often at the expense of the majority. There's more I'd like to go into about the wisdom of completely free and unregulated movement of capital between countries and unregulated currencies, but that's probably a different thread. I'd be happy to participate in one here or elsewhere if it's too off-topic for TFL.
