New Clear Vision

Old-Fashioned Activism to Confront the Food Monopoly

by Evaggelos Vallianatos

In the twentieth century, American agriculture abandoned its traditions of family farming. This was no small change. Like the centuries-long enclosure movement in England whereby the landlords used the law and violence to privatize the commons and throw out of the land uncounted number of peasants, American large farmers have been using the power of the state to bring about a civilization shift in rural America.

They transformed a way of life for raising food and sustaining democratic society to a massive factory industrializing both farming and food and farmers, making rural America a colony for the extraction of profit.

This tragedy left behind millions of broken family farms, contaminated water and land, and a wounded rural America.

According to the 1884 “Transactions of the California State Agricultural Society,” “there will be too few farms and these too large. A republic cannot long survive when the lands are concentrated in the hands of a few men. Any man will fight for his home, but it takes a very brave man to fight for the privilege of working for half wages.” (more…)

Good for Low-Energy Survival on a Changing Planet

by Jan Lundberg

The changing world leaves behind the money = wealth syndrome. We can see the trend gaining momentum in accord with the slow but sure shift in values toward universal ecological living.

The too-successful human species catches up with nature-based realism upon questioning the side-effects of destructive technologies. We are not yet all on the same page, but human consciousness may turn on a dime, like global climate when it reaches a tipping point. The latter may have to happen to enable the former.

Knowledge of the global trend to redefine wealth and security helps sustain those who understand and welcome fundamental change and its associated challenges. But many who staked their lives on jobs, property, consuming, owning stocks, etc. will be bewildered as they discover what their ancestors knew: wealth is much more than money. (more…)

Building a Society that Protects Everyone

by Robert C. Koehler

“Everywhere near the building, the stench of death was overpowering. Men in surgical masks sprayed disinfectant in the air.” We move from tragedy to tragedy with hellish regularity.

“The scope of injuries,” Jim Yardley writes in the New York Times, “was horrifying: fractured skulls, crushed rib cages, severed livers, ruptured spleens. One survivor lost both legs. . . . A teenage girl named Sania lost her right leg. Another teenager, Anna, lost her right hand.”

This wasn’t from a bomb in Boston. It was from a collapsed building outside Dhaka, Bangladesh — another shocking sweatshop disaster, this one claiming the lives, according to the most recent count, of 385 people, with many more missing and at least 1,000 injured. Eight people, including the owner of the building, which housed five separate garment operations employing more than 3,000 people, were arrested. Workers, the Times reported, saw cracks in the walls of the building the day before it collapsed. They were told to go to work anyway. (more…)

A Reminder of U.S. Progress on Workers’ Rights

by Laura L. Finley

May 1 is International Workers’ Day. It is a day to be reminded that “just and favorable” work conditions, “equal pay for equal work,” workplaces “free of discrimination,” and “protection against unemployment” are fundamental human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately, May 1st is a day to recognize the many ways the U.S fails to enact the human right to work. I offer here just a few of the many ways the U.S is falling short, recognizing the many other workers who toil in poor conditions for low pay that remain marginalized and often voiceless. (more…)

Time to End the Epidemic of Violence and War

by David Swanson

I’m honored to have accepted the position of Secretary of Peace in the newly formed Green Shadow Cabinet. Of course, I cannot contrast my positions with those of the actual Secretary of Peace, as the United States has no such position.

There is a Secretary of War, although that title was changed to Secretary of Defense 66 years ago.  It was changed the same year George Orwell wrote his masterpiece, 1984, in which he suggested that language is sometimes used as a disguise.  In fact, ever since the War Department became the Defense Department, its business has had less than ever to do with defense and more than ever to do with promoting the use of war-making as an instrument of national policy.  President Dwight Eisenhower observed and warned of this worsening situation 52 years ago in one of the most prescient but least heeded (even by Eisenhower) warnings since Cassandra told the Trojans to be wary of giant horses. (more…)

Faces of Eco-Tourism in the Rift Valley

by Charlene R. Apok

Post colonization, some of the most valuable lands of vast Rift Valley have been enclosed as private ‘protected reserves’. This has led to intense conflicts over the future of these lands and their rightful heirs, the indigenous Maasai people. A contentious debate has intensified with the growth of tourism and, especially, eco-tourism, which has become deeply entangled with this region. Anthropologists and other social scientists have joined the debate. Honey (2009) looked at so-called community eco-tourism at the national level and reveals numerous shortcomings, but is still in favor of the promotion of tourism and seeks equitable distribution of economic assets to more directly benefit the indigenous communities. (more…)

Conference Remarks: Building Bridges and Creating the Beloved Community

by David Swanson

Several years ago a bunch of peace activists were eating in a restaurant in Crawford, Texas, and we noticed George W. Bush.  He was actually a cardboard version of George W. Bush like you might get your photo with in front of the White House, but he was almost as lifelike as the real thing.  We picked him up and stood him in the corner of the restaurant, facing the corner.  We asked him to stay there until he understood what he’d done wrong.  For all I know he’s still standing there.

Of course, a piece of cardboard wasn’t going to really understand what it had done wrong, and the real president probably wouldn’t have either.  The benefit of standing him in the corner, if there was one, was for everybody else in the restaurant.  And the benefit of impeaching or prosecuting Bush for his crimes and abuses would have been, and still would be, for the world — not for him and not for those who are angry at him. (more…)