My Peace City | nonviolence & social change

This week we learned that the Magnetar Hedge Fund bought risky bonds (CDOs) and bet against them (with a credit-default swap) aiding in the financial meltdown and misleading investors. In addition, Goldman Sachs is being accused by the S.E.C. of defrauding investors in a similar fashion.

More news of civilians murdered in Afghanistan.  Are Nato forces winning over the Afghan hearts and minds?  Are they getting the bad guys? This quote from General McChrystal says it all:
However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I’ve been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident [...]

I just watched an excellent Frontline episode on the financial crises, credit default swaps and the deregulation of the Clinton era.  It turns out that there were people who warned against the problems of credit default swaps.  Brooksley Born, former chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, repeatedly warned the Clinton adminstration and congress about the dangers of unregulated [...]

Obama still doesn’t get it:
The president’s only political chance is to take on the too big to fail banks directly and clearly. He needs to explain where they came from (answer: the Reagan Revolution, gone wrong), how the problem became

Are you wondering how Obama’s job performance is going these days? It’s difficult to gauge how he is faring for a couple reasons. First, because he is so new on the job, there is not much to judge him on. Second, because we are going through such unprecedented times, it’s difficult to compare the present to other periods of history.

It’s been awhile.
For good reason.
After the RNC, I was a little burned out with activism in and of itself.  I felt wronged, defeated, exhausted.  I write today renewed in my faith toward humanity!  I write looking forward to the inevitable revolution!
The experience I had in front of Mickey’s Diner in Saint Paul Minnesota on the [...]

An effort by people in 90 countries to eradicate nuclear weapons, withdraw occupying armies and end wars.

As I see it, we (the human race) are in a frenzy of development. Development mobilizes our economy. And as I look around I can’t help notice that there’s not much left out there to develop. Our home, earth can old hold so much, we have maxed out the limit of human development on our planet. As a result, development has naturally slowed, but we refuse to accept limitations, and continue pushing for more space – crowding, clashing and crashing.

This movie is about the impact Vispassana meditation has on prisoners at Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama. The director of the movie, Jenny Phillips, was recently featured on Oprah.

Check out the healthcare graphic made here, I modified it below.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich voted no on the “Affordible Health Care for America Act”, which barely passed in the House 220-215 with a weakened public option. He has been a strong supporter of Single Payer Heath Insurance. The Senate’s version of the bill has still yet to be passed.

President Obama will speak at the Target Center in Minneapolis tomorrow, Saturday, September 12 at 9 a.m. Single payer activists will be rallying outside the Target Center to demand – single payer now!

Check out this great family bike ride to commemorate Gandhi’s birthday and the International Day of Nonviolence. The bike ride will occur on October 4th!

The Mad as Hell Doctors will be in St. Paul today. The Mad as Hell Doctors are promoting a Single-Payer health Care system by advocating the following:

This news comes from the MN Coalition for a People’s Bailout and the Minnesota Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign: Yesterday around 2pm the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department officially evicted Rosemary Williams, removing all occupants and locking many of Rosemary’s possessions into her home.

I went to a town hall meeting in suburban New Orleans recently. It was sponsored by Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter. I think I was the only one of the roughly 500 people in the building in favor of a public option. Yet, it seemed to me that about least 75% of the people in the room were already part of a public or government plan, whether as veterans or as Medicare recipients.

Barack Obama looks back to Lincoln, and in doing so identifies with a President regarded as our greatest. Lincoln presided over one of the most brutal conflicts in history. Barack also looks back to that preacher from Atlanta who sang We Shall Overcome and espoused nonviolence.

In times of trouble, we are told to go shopping. President Bush told us to go shopping in the wake of 9/11, and here we are told it again. Without delving into the details about how shopping may or may not stimulate the economy