New Clear Vision

Taking Responsibility for the Violence

A Diverse Field of Green Party Presidential Candidates for 2012

by Pat LaMarche

Comedic innovator, proud grandma and self-proclaimed domestic goddess Roseanne Barr has announced her candidacy for President of the United States as well as for Prime Minister of Israel.  Although some have argued that the former is so dictated to by the latter that holding both offices is unnecessarily redundant.

In less than 48 hours since Barr submitted her paperwork to the Green Party, a quick web search has yielded more than seven hundred links featuring news stories or commentary.

Many of the articles — like the one that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor — question Barr’s sincerity as she throws her hat into the ring.

And the wild fire of speculation on whether this was just another of Barr’s shenanigans or a true bid for the nomination representing the nation’s hundreds of thousands of Green Party members isn’t unique to the media outlets across the land, but in the discussion topic of rank and file greens as well. (more…)

Americans Are Less Nationalistic than Flag-Waving Politicians Think

by Lawrence Wittner

Are American politicians out of sync with the public when it comes to foreign policy?  There is considerable reason to believe so.

Throughout the scramble for the GOP presidential nomination, the major candidates have certainly been rabidly nationalistic.  In a major foreign policy address on October 7, 2011, Mitt Romney proclaimed that “the twenty-first century can and must be an American Century.”  Championing a vast military buildup, he argued that, to secure this “American Century,” the United States should have “the strongest military in the world.”  By contrast, he assailed the “shameful” role of the United Nations and other international institutions and declared that he did not see any reason to obey them — or the international law they represented — when it did not suit the U.S. government. (more…)

Overcoming Our Fears of, and Averting War with, Iran

by Winslow Myers

U.S. behavior long ago provided one causal context for our unease about the presumed nuclear aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran: the U.S. and Britain messed with Iran’s last authentically democratic election in 1953, fearing communist influence and the nationalization of oil.

Fast forward past the hostage crisis of 1979-81 to the present. The dynamic remains pretty much as it was sixty years ago: strategic jockeying for oil and natural gas, raw exercise of military competitiveness, and now the understandable impulse to acquire nuclear weapons on the part of nations fearing superpower dominance. Iranian leaders were quick to note that Saddam and Khaddafy were vulnerable because the U.S. and friends didn’t have to be concerned about nuclear retaliation (though Messrs. Bush and Blair were all too happy to use Saddam’s presumed nukes as a convenient casus belli). (more…)

Voting with Our Actions, Every Day

by Robert C. Koehler

Maybe they’re trying to remind us that democracy isn’t merely a matter of casting that little vote once every Leap Year — but, far, far more significantly, it’s about getting that right to vote in the first place, keeping that right, and having it matter.

Every one of these rights is in jeopardy as 2012 opens and another presidential election season gets serious. But this is nothing new.

After all, democracy is nothing if not a perpetual nuisance to the powerful. It asserts that public policy is everyone’s business, and that the concerns of even the most financially and socially marginal citizens are equal to those of the most elite. Indeed, no one is marginal in a democracy — a concept we embrace as a nation but don’t believe. And thus citizens are marginalized all the time. (more…)

Between the Sphinx and the Bank Vault

by Alon Raab

1929

“Between the sphinx and the bank vault, there is a taut thread that pierces the heart of all poor children,” cried Federico Garcia Lorca after visiting Wall Street in 1929. His vision sharpened by gathering storms of fascism, in his native Spain and across the European continent, compounded by new forms of corporate control in the US, and a broken heart over unrequited love, he poured his soul into the powerful “Poet in New York” poems. Visiting Wall Street, the sidewalks barely swept of fall leaves and the remains of leaping bodies — small‐time investors convinced that untold wealth shall be theirs only to see life‐savings vanish, and of the occasional banker who followed their lead ‐‐ his eyes pierced Capitalism’s many veils.

Wall Street ‐‐ built on Iroquois and Algonquin land, named for the wall that the Dutch colonists erected to keep the English and the Indians away. Soon, the Dutch West Indies Company, early and major importer of slaves, brought them to New Amsterdam, too. Auctions in human flesh were held nearby, a connection deepened by major banks and investment firms turning money from slave transactions to new gold and influence. Later, a place giving birth to economic shenanigans and scams, crises and broken dreams ‐‐ vast fortunes for the few, misery for the many. (more…)

War Is Over (Sort of), if We Want It…

by Robert C. Koehler

The war is over, sort of, but the Big Lie marches on: that democracy is flowering in Iraq, that America is stronger and more secure than ever, that doing what’s right is the prime motivator of all our military action.

And the troops will be home for Christmas. Hurrah! Hurrah!

(The men will cheer, the boys will shout, and we’ll all feel gay, except maybe Rick Perry.)

“The war in Iraq will soon belong to history,” President Obama told the troops at Fort Bragg last week. “Your service belongs to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you — men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.” (more…)