New Clear Vision

Toward a Nonviolent Resolution of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

by Julia Chaitin

Once again we find ourselves in the all-too-familiar nightmare. Rocket attacks follow rocket attacks, air strikes follow Grad attacks, which follow more air strikes, more Kassam rockets and more air strikes. The scenario is intimately known and the outcome is tears and fears on both sides. It is past time a responsible adult step in and put an end to this unnecessary conflict.

Here in the Western Negev, we have known 10 years of rocket attacks, snipers and attempted terrorist infiltrations. We go to sleep wondering if we will be woken up by the familiar rocket alert, if we will be instructed by the IDF to remain in secure rooms (which many of us do not have), or begin our morning with terrifying booms and close encounters with exploding metal and glass. We jump when we hear a sound that approximates an alert; we dread driving on roads that put us in direct danger. (more…)

Savoring the Perfection in Every Moment

by Mary Sojourner

This is Eskimo Nell’s story.  I barely know her.  We met at a gem and mineral show in the Little America hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona at least fifteen years ago.  I have not seen her since then.

I bought a raw opal from her.  She gave me two more for free — a brown opal and a sunfire.  She had dug them from her little claim in Australia.

The brown opal was the size of the nail on my fourth finger.  It was a tiny puddle of glint, green and pale blue against the rough brown of its matrix.

The sun fire opal was a rough blue cylinder no bigger than the first joint of my little finger.  The surface was matte.  She had chipped off a sliver so the gleaming interior was visible.  “Put it in water,” she said, “and set it in a window in natural light. That way you’ll see the fire.”

I can’t remember the nature of the third opal.  I think I gave it to someone — a gift beyond measure. (more…)

Out of Darkness Comes Light

by Ahmed Afzaal

Last year, a small crisis was created by Mr. Terry Jones, pastor of a nondenominational church Gainesville, FL, when he announced his plans to burn a copy of the Qur’an on the anniversary of September 11, 2001. Public outcry, not to mention the disapproval of General David Petraeus, eventually persuaded Mr. Jones to abandon his plan.  Those of us who thought that the story had reached its conclusion have just been proven wrong, as Mr. Jones has once again found his way back into the news after he actually carried out what he had threatened to do last fall.  This time around, the pastor conducted a mock trial of the Qur’an in which the jury, consisting of twelve members of his church, found the Islamic scripture guilty of “crimes against humanity,” including the promotion of terrorism.  (more…)

Consider a ‘Truth Surge’ Instead

by Randall Amster

It has been equal parts bemusing and bedeviling to watch as many liberals and moderates get on board with the latest episode of U.S. military adventurism. Equally fascinating has been the ostensible conservative response firmly opposing U.S. actions in Libya, since in a not-too-far bygone administration this faction never met a war they didn’t like. These fickle vicissitudes of partisan politics point to a singularly troubling principle underlying our collective moral compass when it comes to foreign policy — namely that we lack such a compass, and thus principle is subsumed by expediency.

Has it always been so? “There never was a good war, or a bad peace,” Benjamin Franklin once said. Most might agree with the latter, but the former is a more challenging proposition. (more…)

And the Rise of a New American Radicalism?

by Matt Meyer

If “democracy” is understood to mean a process of inclusion, equalizing diverse peoples such that power and resources are distributed fairly, then democratic movements have a potentially positive role to play in furthering revolution, liberation, justice and peace. By any definition, though, the experiment known as democracy in the USA today is in dire trouble. Nowhere is that trouble more strikingly evident than in the national campaign to do away with public schools. After little more than 150 years of federally-mandated and coordinated schooling-for-all, the US commitment to publicly supported teachers and students is quickly coming to an abrupt end. The global corporate penchant for the privatization, commoditization, and enclosure of practically everything is having particularly chilling effects in policies that Henry Giroux suggests “seek nothing less than the total destruction of the democratic potential of American education.” (more…)

The Pun is Mightier than the Sword

by Randall Amster

Discerning readers of the “progressive blogosphere” will likely have noticed a growing tendency to title articles in the form of “Top 10 Best…” or “10 Reasons to…” or “10 Ways to a Better…” Not only does this subtle push to headline articles in such a manner impact the habits of readers, but encouraging this sort of framework affects the ways that writers craft their essays. The resultant linearization of our attention spans and creative impulses alike is a disturbing trend that merits serious critical attention.

But you won’t find that here today. Instead, I’d like to explore this practice in such a way as to (hopefully) wear it out altogether. This may well be the last “10 Best…” article I ever write, and I feel compelled to do so with a methodology that is commensurate with the level of the trend itself. In other words, I am going to mock it mercilessly, in a vain attempt to render this one of the year’s “Top 10” pieces. I might dislike the tendency to quantify and rank, but since it exists I would at least like to be good at it! (more…)

From Thanatopolitics to the Great Refusal

by Devon G. Peña

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. — Warren Buffett

When the history of the early 21^st century is debated a hundred years hence, perhaps a central point of contention will be the variant forms used by capitalists to wage class war against other human beings during the so-called Neoliberal epoch. But capitalist strategy is not indeterminably variant when it comes to matters of life and death.  “Structural violence” boils down to the principle that capitalism is irrevocably a system of thanatopolitics — the rule of the dead over the living.

The dead labor of accumulated surplus labor time, machines, and the fancy abstract financial instruments of cognitive capital rule over the living labor of actual bodies. Increasingly, the working class is the same as the condition of a bare life; the new permanently unemployed and devalued service sector proletarians are the generalized Homo sacer subject to a state of economic exception. (more…)