For news of the uprising in Burma, and ways to help: Free Burma click here Articles by Maung Zarni, founder of the Free Burma Coalition in the New Statesman and Opinion Asia Michael’s op-ed on Common Dreams ; Cynthia Boaz and Schaazke Beyerle also in Common Dreams.… read more
Posts by Prof. Michael Nagler
Michael Nagler wins Bajaj Award
We are proud to announce that Metta’s founder has received the Jamnalal Bajaj international award for “promoting Gandhian values outside India.” For a brief account of this year’s awards click here. Michael joins such distinguished contributors to nonviolence as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and peace scholar and activist Johan Galtung in receiving this honor. To Support… read more
Support the Gandhi Tour!
Michael will take six students (they’re also Metta volunteers) to India to tour Gandhian centers and ashrams and get a first-hand sense of how Gandhi’s work and values are alive in India today. A full report will be posted on this site. To help us defray the expenses for the students, just click on our… read more
“Saffron Revolution” Reaches Critical Stage in Burma
Burma and the Press As of this writing (Thursday, September 27) a nonviolent movement is reaching its crisis in Burma. In 1988 over 3,000 students were killed — massacred would not be too strong a word — when they protested the military takeover of their country. Their courageous, charismatic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, though… read more
The Sad-Go-Round of Sexual Exploitation The latest issue of the New Internationalist — a journal I read and recommend — featured an exposé of one of the most tragic and demoralizing — and growing — crimes of our world: trafficking women and girls for various kinds of exploitation. If ‘globalization from above’ describes the cancerous… read more
“Saffron Revolution” unfolding in Burma!
Thousands of Monks Peacefully Confront Military in Burma Students of principled nonviolence have long upheld Aung San Suu Kyi, Buddhist and leader of Burma’s democracy movement, as a luminary of nonviolent social change. On Saturday, the Burmese military junta allowed 500 monks to visit Suu Kyi at her home-prison, yielding to the recent massive nonviolent… read more
The village of Bil’in wins a major victory for justice
Those of you who have been following the courageous sustained nonviolent protests against the ‘Apartheid Wall’ encroaching on the Palestinian village of Bil’in will be encouraged by the recent Israeli Supreme Court decision. Click here for more.… read more
“A mind is a terrible thing to waste”
Why not cut down a little more on our consumption of mainstream media? It’s a joy to substitute alternative media for the news (alternet is a place to start) and real interaction with live people for the ‘entertainment.’ Click here for a powerful exposé of how our dismal politics have been, and still are, shaped… read more
Sex and Scapegoats
Those of us who believe in karma, in its Eastern or Western forms (“As ye sow, so shall ye reap”), must have seen more than hypocrisy in the recent airing of Senator Craig’s performance during the impeachment process against then-President Clinton. The Senator’s self-righteous call for the Democratic President’s removal from office for his “immorality”… read more
Civilian-Based Defense
Civilian-based defense (CBD) is a nonviolent form of defense against invasion or revolutionary overthrow of a government. This technique has been well documented and made somewhat known to the public by Gene Sharp in his books The Politics of Nonviolent Action (3 vols. 1973) and Civilian-Based Defense: a Post-Military Weapons System (1990). In CBD citizens… read more
