OT: Celebrity advice

[Tom Plunket]

Alex Martelli wrote:

> > Just as a question of biology, a person can be locked in handcuffs, or
> > in a metal cage, and be neither dead nor have the power to kill others.
> > This limit comes not out of the compromise and will-power of the
> > detained person, but simply out of physics and anatomy.  In most
> > "ultimate" cases of state-sponsored violence, this is what happens...
> > not someone being killed.
> 
> That depends on the determination of said person and his friends to
> resist arrest -- with what means and to what extent.  If the state's
> power to arrest is not to be merely theoretical, it must be backed by
> military ability (and will to exercise it) which exceed those of the
> people's meant to be arrested.

How did Gandhi do it then?  Was it just that the British decided
that they weren't mean enough to take it to its "ultimate"
extent, or was it truly that there was a way to "go to the
ultimate" and take back India in a nonviolent way?

-tom!

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