MLK: Love Your Enemies

Today, January 21st, is Martin Luther King, Jr. day in the United States.
Just over a half century ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a sermon on Loving Your Enemies at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, on November 17, 1957.
I just discovered this sermon a few days ago, but I think it is the [...]

“Saffron Revolutin” unfolding in Burma! - The Metta Center

From: “Saffron Revolutin” unfolding in Burma! - The Metta Center
“On Saturday, the Burmese military junta allowed 500 monks to visit Suu Kyi at her home-prison, yielding to the recent massive nonviolent demonstrations by monks, students, and civic leaders. It appears that the monks have set up a win-win situation, where the government is hesitating to [...]

Better Lessons to Draw from a Sex Scandal

Prof. Michael Nagler of the Metta Center in California has an interesting take on the recent Craig sex scandal. He draws two lessons which I haven’t seen elsewhere in the blogosphere:
The whole post is worth reading for placing the current Craig sex scandal in context of social scapegoating. But what I’d like to quote here [...]

Remember 9/11! 1906 that is.

One hundred and one years ago today, Mohandas K. Gandhi stood up before a crowd in South Africa and outlined Satyagraha, known in the West as nonviolence. Since then it has freed India from the British Empire, saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust where it was tried, given civil rights to African-Americans, brought down [...]

Study finds nonviolence more effective than violence - The Metta Center

I’ve often written about the futility of our military approach in Iraq. But my friends at the Metta Center issued this helpful reminder that in most cases, violence is worthless for terrorists as well:
“Their study of terrorist groups, guerrilla movements, and nonviolent resistance movements found that nonviolent resistance movements have achieved partial or full success [...]

Immersive Virtual Environments Versus Traditional Platforms: Effects of Violent and Nonviolent Video Game Play.

You have to be an EBSCOhost subscriber (If you live in Alaska, you are!) to see the abstract to this item:
“Title: Immersive Virtual Environments Versus Traditional Platforms: Effects of Violent and Nonviolent Video Game Play.
Authors: Persky, Susan1 perskys@mail.nih.gov
Blascovich, Jim2
Source: Media Psychology; 2008, Vol. 10 Issue 1, p135-156, 22p, 2 diagrams, 2 graphs”
The abstract makes it [...]

Movie Review: Where there is Hatred (1990)

Last night my wife and I watched an hour-long video from the Maryknoll missionaries called Where there is hatred.
The video that looks at three struggles - against Pinochet in Chile, against Marcos in Phillipines, and against Israelis in the West Bank from a non-violent perspective. It’s not totally kid friendly because there [...]

Libraries 5, Netflix 0

In this world of Netflix of which I’m happily a member, it is important to note times when libraries can outperform the commercial sector.
I’ve come to depend on Netflix for finding rare movies. But today Netflix disappointed me. I’ve been listening to the podcast of a nonviolence course at Berkeley “PACS 164B - Nonviolence [...]

Very. Funny. Movie

This week, my wife and I watched a hysterically funny movie that revolved around Mahatma Gandhi. The movie is called Lage Raho Munna Bhai. As implausible as it sounds, it’s a comedy revolving around Gandhi. It had me in continual laughter and my wife found it pretty funny too. It’s in Hindi with [...]

No one felt like critiquing nonviolence

After someone accused me of cherry-picking examples of successful nonviolence, I issued a challenge to anyone who felt similarly to send me examples of times that nonviolence/nonviolent resistance had failed, which it has at times. I gave people a week to send in their examples and my hope was that we could have some interesting [...]