Commondreams has an article by Rev. John Dear about efforts to promote nonviolence and nonviolence training in Iraq.
Category Archives: By Will Alone
Brief update on the situation in Thailand
Parliament chose the brother-in-law of ousted Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra as the new prime minister. The anti-government protests continue.
Thailand – 11 Days and Counting
Thailand is 11 days into the (largely?) nonviolent attempt to overthrow the current government. The government opponents escalated the conflict with an attempt to take over the Police HQ and various airports. They continue the occupation of the prime minister's office building.
The government reacted by attempting to arrest 9 protest leaders, and tried to evict the protesters from government buildings.
The prime minister said that he would not use force, but, after supporters of his party (which has support largely from the rural areas) attacked the protesters. The BBC quote is "when a screaming crowd of government supporters – armed with sticks and slingshots – ploughed into a group from the PAD". Street clashes resulted and the PM called a state of emergency in Bangkok.
The military doesn't seem eager to get involved with police staying on the sidelines during clashes or attempting to keep the two sides apart. I haven't had time to look up other sources than the BBC, so it is possible that the military and police are using harsher methods with government supporters since the military overthrew the previous government by the PM's party.
The foreign minister has left the government and the PM has called for a referendum that will "ask a range of questions including whether the
government should resign, whether it should dissolve parliament and
what people thought about the ongoing protests." (BBC) The protest leaders opposed it, though considering that they don't want an elected parliament, it doesn't seem that surprising.
The BBC has pictures from the latest clashes.
Uploaded 2007 playtest version of the rules
I moved the 2007 playtest version of the rules to this site. You can find them at:
That will have to do until I get around to updating them.
Anti-government protesters in Thailand
The BBC has pictures of the anti-government protesters in Thailand. They want Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and his cabinet to resign. The BBC claims that the protesters want to end Thailand's democracy and allow the military a large roll in the government.
Thousands occupied government buildings and a state-run TV station.
A thought about what to update in By Will Alone
Thankfully during my period of inactivity w.r.t. By Will Alone, my subconscious has been thinking. One thing I need to add is some way to determine who "won". My subconscious suggested that the winner of a confrontation should get a certain number of "victory" points. If the winner resorted to violence, then the get fewer "victory" points as they used more violence to win the confrontation.
The presence of media would serve to magnify the gain or loss. If the winner was nonviolent, then their points would be magnified. If they used violence, then the loss of points due to the use of violence would be magnified.
Another possibility would be to weigh the gain or loss depending on who is doing the reporting. Media friendly to the government would reduce the loss of victory points due to its use of violence. Media opposing the government would magnify the loss of victory points.
By Will Alone is Reborn
Well it has been awhile since I last posted. I decided that this blog should focus on By Will Alone, my miniatures game on nonviolent direct action. As a result, I registered the domain bywillalone.org, and pointed it at this site. Both bywillalone.org and www.bywillalone.org will get here.
So welcome to the reborn site. Over the next few months I will update the By Will Alone rules and post occasionally about nonviolent direct action – where it is occurring, how to do it, where it might be applied, etc. Enjoy!
Escalating the level of nonviolence
My son recently engaged in nonviolent direct action when he took over the bathroom after he was denied dessert. I decided to escalate the level of nonviolence by threatening to deal with one's personal needs in his room. He relented and I ended up reading him Saul Alinsky's retelling of the threatened O'Hare Airport Poop-in . We both laughed very hard and a lesson was learned, hopefully.
1st Convention Game of By Will Alone
After two playtests of the rules, I finally ran a convention game using the By Will Alone rules at Havoc XXIII. The rules can be found at the rules website. While pictures from the game are here.
A good time was had by all, but more remains to be done including:
- polish the rule book;
- improve the winning conditions;
- possibly revise the conflict results to better deal with prolonged fraternization and the effectiveness of violence by authority forces;
- write up scenarios.
More on Lebanon
The link from SBS below about what is happening in (generally) nonviolent struggle in Lebanon hasn't been updated, so for more info I suggest you read Robert Fisk from the Independent in the UK.