New Clear Vision


constructive commentary for the chronically farsighted


Object Permanence

September 02, 2013 By: NCVeditor Category: Current Events, Missy Beattie, Politics

Inured to the Propaganda?

by Missy Beattie

The Empire marches on. Next stop and drop, Syria. Accomplishing missions.

The top stories on Google News this morning (Monday) are chemical weapons in Syria and Miley Cyrus’s gyrations and crotch grabbing as she performed “We Can’t Stop.” We. Can’t. Stop.

We can’t stop is the order of the day from the commander in chief whose weapon of choice is a drone. And while polling indicates most Americans oppose US military involvement in Syria, they support intervention if there’s proof of chemical weapons use. I’ve read the comment sections beneath mainstream articles to take the nation’s pulse and those chemicals are “game changers”. On and on it goes with WMD propaganda. We can’t stop till we get enough. Never enough.

I’m seeing dead people.

I’m seeing the war profiteers direct their maids to dial down the thermostats as the planet boils, dial up during the bitterly cold winter that’s predicted, unconcerned about climate change, oblivious to the poor and middle class. I’m seeing them limo their way to board a private plane to paradise while there’s still some sand left on beachfront property. (more…)

Toward a Maroon Society

June 12, 2013 By: NCVeditor Category: Ecology, Fred Ho, Matt Meyer, Politics

Working Together to Build a New World

by Fred Ho, with Matt Meyer

{MM: The following piece was written by a founder and a supporter of the organization Scientific Soul Sessions, a majority oppressed nationality revolutionary group. Wrestling with the question of white membership, they have been engaged in recent struggles which have revealed how pervasive, entrenched and odious “whiteness” is even in these contexts. This article was penned in the course of those struggles.}

“Anti-racist whites” are against some of the right things, but what are they for? As we fight for a society of more than just tolerance and “equality” but for true justice and liberation, our goal is to escape the Matrix of the current systems. Like the historic maroons of the past, and the contemporary political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz who continues to resist from behind enemy lines, we must build for a Maroon militancy that fully rejects the shackles of the past as we build for a new tomorrow.

“Anti-racist whites” may believe in color-blindness, but we know that this is an impossibility in American society. Any obfuscation that believes that a “post-racial” society can be achieved simply by ignoring or eradicating the notion of “race” is fundamentally mistaken about the roots of racism and the function it serves: the social reproduction of assimilation (and therefore control) within the American Empire. (more…)

Empire and Its Consequences

October 15, 2012 By: NCVeditor Category: Culture, Politics, Robert C. Koehler

The Morality of Domination Has Caught Up to Us

by Robert C. Koehler 

Ever notice the way certain basic human values quietly transform into their opposite on their way to becoming national policy?

At the human level, the immorality of murder is fundamental, and most people understand the insanity of armed hatred. Keeping these dark forces under wraps is essential to the existence of human society. So why is it, then, that at the abstract level of nationalism, those forces are honored, worshiped, saluted, extolled as glorious, and given command of an enormous budget?

Why is it that their perpetuation via increasingly sophisticated technology is equated with national security and no one talks about the completely predictable negative consequences of basing security on murder and hatred?

And why does it feel so naïve to be asking such questions? (more…)

The (Un)Realists

June 13, 2012 By: NCVeditor Category: Culture, Politics, Robert C. Koehler

‘Protecting’ Us from a More Just and Humane World

by Robert C. Koehler

St. Augustine blesses the kill list. And liberalism is just a nicer, slicker, more PR-savvy way of carrying on the brutal work of empire.

Behold President Obama, on the second day of his presidency, flanked by retired generals and admirals, signing an executive order to ban torture and declaring that the prison at Guantanamo Bay would soon be closed — fulfilling, in other words, some serious campaign promises.

“What the new president did not say,” a recent New York Times story explains, in gleeful servitude to the ironies of military-industrialism, “was that the orders contained a few subtle loopholes.” (more…)

A Tale of Two Soldiers

March 26, 2012 By: NCVeditor Category: Culture, Current Events, Guest Author

Choosing Another Path, Before It’s Too Late

by Terri Shofner

There are two soldiers that represent so much of what is wrong in our war culture. One is Bradley Manning and the other is Robert Bales.

Bradley Manning, a queer boy bullied at home and abroad, in a final bid to fit the expected “tough boy” mold, joined the Army. In a futile attempt to suppress his feminine side, the very side that yelled every time he watched innocent people die needlessly, he finally succumbed in a desperate hope and belief that if American people could see the horror of war they would stop it. The kinds of atrocities that tore at the soul of Manning were exactly that very evil allegedly committed by Robert Bales.

Robert Bales is the Army Sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers as they slept, including nine children. What drives a father of two to kill the sleeping children of others? (more…)

Political Decay

January 30, 2012 By: NCVeditor Category: Economy, Evaggelos Vallianatos, Politics

Moving to Overcome Violence and Restore Democracy

by Evaggelos Vallianatos

Political decay is a disease afflicting all societies. Like Aristotle said, all men are political animals but rarely honest political animals.

The Greeks invented political theory and democracy. They practiced democracy for centuries but their political failure to unite did them in. They succumbed to the Romans who used what they learned from them against them.

The Romans thought of themselves as exceptional people destined to rule others. Athenaios, a Greek of the second century on excellent terms with Romans, tells us that the Romans sucked the life out of their subject people. In 410, barbarians captured Rome.

Now America is uttering the slogans of Rome. Republican politicians competing for the opportunity to “defeat” the Democratic president Barack Obama in the November 2012 elections, ceasesly proclaim the “exceptionalism” of America.

The two millionaire Republican Mormons, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, want to further expand the hegemony of corporations and gut environmental, health and social protection. Romney keeps repeating his love for corporate America as well as his determination to expand the global reach of the Pentagon. (more…)

Pax Occupata

November 14, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Culture, Ecology, Economy, Politics, Randall Amster

From Relative Peace to Universal Wellbeing

by Randall Amster

Decades ago, on the eve of a period of widespread societal upheaval, Bob Dylan famously intoned that “the order is rapidly fading.” For a time, this appeared to be so: around the world people were in the streets, revolution was in the air, and structures of oppression were being openly contested. The headiness of those days brought many advances and opened up significant space for later movements to operate, yet in the final analysis somehow it all delivered us into even higher degrees of wealth stratification and greater consolidation of power. The order had flickered, but not quite faded, and in the end reasserted itself stronger than before.

Today we stand poised at a not-dissimilar crossroads. While perhaps no one has yet penned a Dylan-esque anthem of the movement — although stalwarts such as David Rovics and Emma’s Revolution have dropped some poignant opening stanzas — a mass chorus of voices is drawing lines in the sand literally everywhere: public spaces, workplaces, shipping ports, shopping malls, community centers, corporate banks, schoolrooms, boardrooms, and more. The Occupy Movement has transcended the narrow confines of Zuccotti Park, and in doing so has seemingly asserted itself wherever the forces of elitism and subjugation rear their heads. As Frederick Douglass said, “power concedes nothing without demand,” and whatever else transpires in the days ahead it can at least be said that the movement has reminded us all of this basic tenet. (more…)

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