Upon graduating nearly two decades ago with a degree in political science from Gustavus Adolphus in St. Peter Minnesota, Peter began a career as an environmental activist lobbying and engaging in voter education with Clean Water Action which is one of the largest environmental organizations in the country with a sizable presence in Minnesota. Within a year Peter rose to become a field Manager, cross-trained with other grass-root groups around the country and worked on health care, insurance reform and other issues pertinent to a clean and sustainable environment. Peter quickly became known for his ability to develop powerful messages which mobilized people to act. Through Clean Water Voter Education Project, Peter worked indirectly with nearly all the CWA endorsed candidates at both the state and federal level from 1989-1994. Leaving the non-profit sector Peter began his first foray in the market place by pursuing a career with Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which is the largest car rental company in North America . Peter joined Enterprise during its rapid growth in the early 90’s. The enterprise model taught Peter how to run and grow a successful business and the importance of excellent customer service. During his career at Enterprise Peter rose to management in record time receiving numerous awards culminating his five year career with the rental company by running the Airport Branch, the largest enterprise location in Minnesota .

Having conquered the rental industry in 1999, Peter became one of the first African American to be employed with Hayden and Associates, then the largest executive search firm in Minnesota . After contributing to the success that led Hayden to be acquired by TMP Worldwide(NASDAQ:TMPQ), Peter joined Hudson Global Resources when it was later carved out of TMP Worldwide as a recruiter for Engineering, Operations and Industrial practice professionals. Here again, Peter gained key knowledge on the inextricable connection between a sound economy and a growing job market. By listening to the directors, CFO’s and VP’s of operations, Peter came to understand managements’ trials and triumphs of running a business, plant layoffs, downsizing, using finite resources to accomplish more and recruiting top talent to compete in a global economy.

Between 2004-2006, while working in the private sector as a consultant, Peter ran more than once for office, one serious enough to take him all the way to the end of the caucus process as one of two candidates vying for the DFL nomination for Congress in 2004. That particular race stirred up the hearts and minds of the people in the second district and beyond. It inspired a new generation of candidates some of whom are now serving in the state legislature. Long before national figures today Peter preached the politics of inclusion on the ‘real’ issues that concerns us all.

Please visit:
http://www.peterforcongress.org/PoliticalIssues1.htm

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Several weeks later however, Josh’s messages suddenly became cruel and in a note to Megan said: “I don’t know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I’ve heard that you are not very nice to your friends.” This and other cruel comments were posted on the internet relating to Megan and she became highly upset. Shortly afterwards, Megan Meier hanged herself in her closet and died the next day.

Six weeks after her death, Megan Meier’s parents were informed that the mother of one of their daughter’s friends - with whom Meier had a falling out - had created the “Josh Evans” account. The parent, Lori Drew, who created the fake account, admitted that she and her daughter had the password to the account, and characterized the hoax to a reporter as a “joke.” Initially, Drew denied knowing about the offensive messages that were sent to Meier. She told the police that the account was aimed at “gaining Megan’s confidence and finding out what Megan felt about her daughter and other people”.

The Meiers do not plan to file a civil lawsuit. Here’s what they want: They want the law changed, state or federal, so that what happened to Megan - at the hands of an adult - is a crime.

Since Megan’s death, there has been some changes made locally by the Board of Aldermen for the City of Dardenne Prairie, which passed an ordinance on 22 November 2007, in response to the incident. The ordinance prohibits any harassment that utilizes an electronic medium, including the Internet, text messaging services, pagers, and similar devices. The city of Florissant, Missouri also passed a “Cyber Harassment” law, with other municipalities, counties, and states considering following suit. The state of Missouri is to revise its harassment laws in response to the case, updating them to cover harassment through computers and mobile phone messaging, and creating a new crime to cover adults 21 and over harassing children under the age of eighteen.

The Megan Meier Foundation was created in loving memory of Megan, to promote awareness and positive change in response to the ongoing bullying of children.

Please visit:
http://www.MeganMeierFoundation.org

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Their newest book, Revolutionary Wealth, attacks key features of conventional economics as it paints the emerging global “wealth system” of the decades ahead.

Known for having forecast the acceleration of daily life, the decline of the nuclear family, the spread of loneliness and rise of religion, the Tofflers decades ago also anticipated cloning, virtual reality, niche markets, information overload, work-at-home, product customization, the “de-massification” of the mass media, the threat of terrorism and many other features of contemporary life. But in the Tofflers’ works, these disparate forecasts are all mere details of a far larger canvas. Some of them have missed themark. We are still waiting for the “paperless office.” But few today challenge the central, sweeping thesis of their work since the mid-1960s - that a knowledge-based new economy was arising to replace the industrial age. This concept is now accepted currency among governments, economists and thinkers around the world.

What differentiates the Tofflers from others who today echo this view is their insistence that there can be no economic transformation without a corresponding upheaval in our social, political and cultural institutions and values.

In support of this idea, the Tofflers draw not merely on economics, but on social psychology, military history, politics, pop culture and religion, revealing the hidden or unnoticed relations among them - and their implications for the decisions we make today.

In Revolutionary Wealth, too, the Tofflers introduce another round of new concepts - such as the “deep fundamentals” that lie behind the everyday “fundamentals” of business and economics. They explain the role of “prosumers” - whose unpaid work as parents, do-it-yourselfers, NGO volunteers, hobbyists and open-source software programmers pumps “free lunch” into the economy Revolutionary Wealth separates industries into those that are “singly” and “doubly” intangible and probes the six “truth filters” that shape our daily behavior and the choices we make in our family life, work, values and politics.

The book also explores the future of Asia, Europe, Latin America and the U.S. as America struggles to maintain its tenuous lead as the world’s sole superpower and most advanced economy.

Their work has impacted many fields ranging from business and politics to military affairs and the arts.

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In 1977, he was appointed as the military assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the hawkish assistant to the president (Carter) for national security affairs. Primary issues he focused on at this time included American-Soviet relations, including the SALT nuclear weapons talks, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iran hostage crisis, presidential directives on the situation in the Persian Gulf, terrorism and hijackings, and the executive order on telecommunications policy.

From 2 November 1981 to 12 May 1985, Odom served as the Army’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. From 1985 to 1988, he served as the director of the National Security Agency, the United States’ largest intelligence agency, under president Ronald Reagan.

General Odom specializes in military issues, intelligence, and international relations. He is also an adjunct professor at Yale University and Georgetown University, where he teaches seminar courses in U.S. National Security Policy and Russian Politics.

Since 2005 he has argued that US interests would be best served by an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, calling the Iraq war the worst strategic blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy. He has also been critical of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping of international calls, saying “it wouldn’t have happened on my watch”.

General Odom is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

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This proved to help embolden others to oppose the Party’s pressure to ‘present a unified front’ about their decision to be quiet about Iraq–(the same as they are doing today by ignoring the 58% of Maine Democrats who said in October that they want the Party to support impeachment).

It’s five years later and I am running again, because I don’t think Congress has gotten the message now, either, that people want out of this war. It’s only getting worse and there is a serious risk that the Bush Administration will keep the war policy going, even starting WWIII, while Democrats are not doing all they can to end the wars we have and the perpetual war policy for these wars to keep on coming. We are being bled dry and it must stop.

If you vote for me you’ll be voting for a fighter. I’m a mother bear in defense of my children and their future–and the future of all of the next generation. I cannot imagine leaving them alone to deal with this huge war debt and the financial disasters that they will be burdened with; I have to do what I can to ease this burden, to help give them the best possible legacy and outcome. We can’t leave a world of problems we created to the future residents of the planet to deal with, not when we can do something now to make a better life for them possible.

My husband, who is a brain tumor survivor, and I are both committed to this Senate race. It’s unconventional to try for something this big with something already on our plate, with this fight against cancer, but it has prepared us and made us tough and clear about what is most important in life. We have chosen, as a family, that by refusing to turn our country over to warmongers and enablers we are fighting for the future of our country. We accept that regardless of our personal circumstance, this is our time to join this fight: this is where we are pitching our tent. We do this for love of our family our home our country, and, actually, for immortality.

I am running to win the Senate seat away from those who haven’t done their best for us and who thusly do not deserve to win it from the people. I do this with true hope for the betterment of the lives of my fellow men–and women, and on behalf of the State of Maine.

For the sake of all who came before us, and for those who will come after we have done our part, I hope you will support my campaign for the Senate. Thank you.

–Laurie Dobson, Independent U.S. Senate candidate

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She left everything and everyone behind and set out for Kuwait and Iraq to be a truck driver for KBR. She felt Iraq would give her the opportunity she needed to make some changes in her life. Her three sons, then ages 18, 16, and 15, along with the rest of her family, supported her decision, but made her promise that she would always tell them the truth about what she was going through as a driver in Iraq. Drawn in part from the emails she posted home and the journals she kept, Cindy in Iraq re-creates in vivid detail how Morgan overcame the stigma of being one of the rare female truck drivers and quickly rose through the ranks to become a convoy commander. She led her fellow Reefer Cowboys — “reefer” is short for “refrigerated truck” — in convoys that delivered necessary goods to soldiers stationed in such notorious hot spots as Baghdad Airport, Camp Anaconda — a place as dangerous as its name — and Fallujah. A moving target for insurgents and with virtually no training, and unarmed as well, she faced being ambushed and shot at, all while learning how to navigate Iraq’s difficult terrain. As the insurgency heated up, contractors were in more and more peril, increasingly kidnapped and executed. By the time Cindy’s year in Iraq was up, she had shrapnel in her arm. She also discovered that there are times when the enemy can be someone you know.

Cindy’s journey to Iraq was also a voyage of self-discovery: “I knew that I would find out who I am and what I am made of here…. Honor, integrity, pride, and humanity can all be discovered. I know that I still am a very passionate person when it comes to the things I believe in…. I am still me, but more…. So my story of being over here is not just one of a female truck driver driving in a war zone in Iraq. It is a story of me finding the world, and of me finding me.”

Her son, Kenny Elliott, will be joining us as well.

Kenny Elliott served 3 months with E Troop, 151 Cav., of the 39th Infantry Brigade in Iraq. He could have come home when they did in March 2005, but volunteered to stay. “It just doesn’t make sense to only stay 3 months, mom.” he said to his mother, Cindy, about his decision. He then was attached to the 256th Infantry out of Louisana, who then attached him to E Troop, 101 Cav., which was an attachement from New York.

He came home in September 2005. After several months home, he decided to go regular Army and went to Ft Hood and was with I Troop, 3rd Squardron, 3d ACR. While preparing to return to Iraq, his symptoms of PTSD worsened and he was discharged in October 2007. He is going through the VA in Biloxi, MS to help for his PTSD.

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Flying Close to the Sun, is about the times of the Weather Underground that “relates a trajectory not very different from most middle-class and wealthy members of the U.S. radical movements.” It is the story of hopes dashed by elected leaders preaching democracy, frustration with supposedly democratic channels that do more to prolong war and racism than end those ills and the growing awareness of the power of the people.

We came to understand that to be “mentally qualified” really meant to be privileged, white, and well off. The Government mobilized the country for war and for profit. The middle and upper class got special benefits while the lower class had to actually go to war without much say. It is the story of the moral dissonance created on realizing your family’s financial well being depends on other families misery. It is also the story of Cathy Wilkerson, a young girl from a well off family from the U.S. that develops a political conscience. It is a personal look at how one’s political growth is part of one’s political development; how the development of a moral standard can drive one to accept and commit actions that seem contradictory to that conscience.

The Pacific Free Press called the book exciting and reflective. “The discussions of her internal, emotional, and intellectual conflicts complement the descriptions of the political discussions within the movement.” It examines how the personal becomes intertwined with the political. The book also examines the absence of the women’s voices; the incompetence and the egos; the hundreds of bombs detonated in protest, which caused little loss of life but were also ineffective in revolution.

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In an interview with Counterpunch on April 16, 2006, Abourezk called the groups Hamas and Hezbollah “resistance fighters”. He repeated this statement in a 2007 interview on Hezbollah’s Al Manar television network and stated that that he “marveled at the Hezbollah resistance to Israel. … It was a marvel of organization, of courage and bravery.

In th Counterpunch interview, Abourezk also argued that America’s support of Israel endures because “the Congress is pretty much reliant on money from radical Zionists”.

He reiterated this statement in an editorial for Electronic Intifada on July 30, 2006, where he wrote:

“…the U.S. Congress is despicable in its silence. They are all bought off by the Israel lobby and are afraid to criticize. If this were happening in any other country by any other country, there would be speeches on the floor of Congress, legislation introduced to stop aid and other help to whomever would be committing this cruelty. But since their campaign money comes from the Israeli lobby, we hear only silence.”

In a letter dated December 2006, Abourezk wrote:

“I can tell you from personal experience that, at least in the Congress, the support Israel has in that body is based completely on political fear—fear of defeat by anyone who does not do what Israel wants done. I can also tell you that very few members of Congress—at least when I served there—have any affection for Israel or for its Lobby. What they have is contempt, but it is silenced by fear of being found out exactly how they feel. I’ve heard too many cloakroom conversations in which members of the Senate will voice their bitter feelings about how they’re pushed around by the Lobby to think otherwise. In private one hears the dislike of Israel and the tactics of the Lobby, but not one of them is willing to risk the Lobby’s animosity by making their feelings public…

I see no desire on the part of Members of Congress to further any U.S. imperial dreams by using Israel as their pit bull. The only exceptions to that rule is the feelings of Jewish members, who, I believe, are sincere in their efforts to keep U.S. money flowing to Israel.

I believe that divestment, and especially cutting off U.S. aid to Israel would immediately result in Israel’s giving up the West Bank and leaving the Gaza to the Palestinians. Such pressure would work, I think, because the Israeli public would be able to determine what is causing their misery and would demand that an immediate peace agreement be made with the Palestinians.”

In an August 30, 2007 interview on the Hezbullah TV network Al-Manar, as translated by MEMRI, Abourezk stated that “the Arabs who were involved in 9/11 cooperated with the Zionists. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs.”

In 1980, Abourezk founded the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, a grassroots civil rights organization. In 1989, he wrote Advise and Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the U.S. Senate and he is the co-author of “Through Different Eyes: Two Leading Americans — a Jew and an Arab — Debate U. S. Policy in the Middle East.”

Abourezk now works as a lawyer and writer in South Dakota.

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