Why do people spend so much time saying the Palestinians should forsake violence and adopt non-violent tactics and yet spend so little time saying that the Israelis (Mossad, IDF, et. al) should forsake violent tactics and adopt non-violent tactics?

The reality is that dispossession of poor Palestinians dates back to the first time Ottoman deeds were sold in the early 20th century, the mass dispossession of Palestinians dates back to 1947, and the occupation of very large Palestinian population centers dates back to 1967. The majority of Palestinians for a majority of those decades were pretty nonviolent, and the first intifada was characterized by only symbolic violence (stonethrowing) which was met with lethal force, and it's only in the last decade and a half now that we've seen organized Palestinians resist in ways that *aren't* nonviolent.

I think a sad reality is that most of the world who is suffering resists nonviolently every day, and most of the world is absolutely blind to the suffering.

I would argue that those who are concerned about offshoring (and that should be all of us in IT) should be looking towards unions. Unions are a way for workers voices to come together and be heard at the table. There are quite a few jobs that can't yet easily be offshored, and if we had an industry-wide union and thought it made (economic, political, practical) sense we could do something like demand that no more than N% of jobs be outsourced, and if they don't listen to us, ALL union workers could walk out.

To put it another way, you are implying that a union *must* attempt to alter their wages, and nothing else, and that it must attempt to raise the wages. Well, the way it should be, in my opinion, is that the union should be working for what we want: maybe that's higher wages because we think we can do that and keep our jobs, or maybe it's just a contract and a guarantee we won't be thrown out at the end of the fiscal year, or maybe it's just ergonomic chairs. The union should be working for what the workers want - if you think what the workers want isn't a productive thing to get, in a democratic union you can convince workers and make your argument rationally and if the majority agrees with you, well, hey, that's democracy.

To say nothing of the fact that workers should be responding to a globalized workforce with a globalized union! People should be paid and treated fairly, and I suspect there are a lot of workers in Mumbai who would benefit from the entire industry being union.

Now it's true that many unions aren't democratic and consequently don't really represent the workers. A lot of this is intentional and has to do with the Taft-Hartley act neutering the unions. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

They tried that already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_tests