[Buddha-l] [T.I.C] overthrowing authoritarian governments

[jkirk]

The BBC website gives a recipe for overthrowing authoritarian governments:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7021567.stm
---

Widespread public protests, bringing in many different social and economic
groups 

An opposition leadership with clear ideas around which people can rally 

The ability to use the media in some form to get a message across 

A mechanism for undermining the existing regime - whether by internal coup
in the case of a military junta, the emergence of reformers, or the simple
exhaustion of an existing government leading to its collapse 

External pressure from key countries able to exert influence. 

Experience has shown that a combination of the above is usually necessary
for success.
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Hopefully American Buddhists will make good use of this information to
overthrow their authoritarian goverment.
=========================
The one type of action that is not accomplishing anything much anywhere in
the world today is no 1) widespread public protests. We have had huge demos
off and on agains the Iraq war in D.C. and Seattle, with smaller ones in
other big cities, to no avail so far the the administration of Congress are
concerned. 
As for 3) the media, we have plenty of alternative media, but these don't
get on mass media like TV or radio talk shows, which are dominated by the
Republican party's right wing because the Republican admin. of GW has
allowed media to acquire monopolies in public air waves. In Burma, the media
are tightly controlled by the dictators, much worse than here. If as they
did the military cuts off the internet, very little communication among
resisters ispossible.
5): I don't see that "key countries" like Denmark, Norway, France and
Germany, or the stinking rich Saudis, have exerted influence on the USA of
any consequence, at all. They all are actually complicit in the Iraq war,
one way or th eother. 

How quaint: the way the BBC assumes the right to preach about overturning
dictators, when demos against the Iraq war in Trafalgar Sqaure and Blair's
poodleing with Bush led to no changes of policy whatsoever. 
Joanna
 

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