New Clear Vision

Let’s Activate and Innovate, Before It’s Too Late

by David Swanson

Sibel Edmonds Finally Wins…

by David Swanson

Sibel Edmonds’ new book, Classified Woman, is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.’s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I’ve read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as “page-turners” and “gripping dramas,” but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.

The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell.  This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through. (more…)

Points of Agreement on the Right and the Left?

by Diane Lefer

Civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander reported in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, that largely as an intentional consequence of the war on drugs, there are more African American men under correctional control now than were enslaved in 1850. People of color have been rounded up en masse for relatively minor, non-violent drug offenses. Alexander concluded all this came about in part as a strategy to deprive African Americans of rights, including the right to vote.

William J. Stuntz, Harvard Law professor, evangelical Christian and self-identified conservative (who sadly died much too young, before his book, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, was published in 2011) argued that black people are disproportionately imprisoned because they commit more crimes, that incarceration rates have risen in part because the system used to be too lenient, that incarceration keeps at least the incarcerated from committing more crimes, and that police carry out drug sweeps in certain neighborhoods as a strategy to get gang members off the streets when threats against witnesses and the no-snitch culture create daunting obstacles to the arrest and prosecution of violent criminals. (more…)

Peace and Justice Activists, Assemble!

by Matt Meyer

It has been one of those life-affirming weeks. When something that has been a part of you for decades finally gets the attention and admiration you’ve felt it has deserved all along, a special pride is evoked; you can now pass it coolly and smoothly on to your own children and to the next generation. I’m speaking, of course, of the new, mainstream Hollywood blockbuster: the Avengers.

OK, by now the reader may be wondering if they are viewing the correct website, where movie reviews of major new releases, especially apparently militaristic ones, are not commonly lauded. Allow me to explain, or rather — to confess. Since about age eight, now more than forty years ago, I have been a more-than-avid Avengers fan-boy. At first, it was just a simple reader’s favorite, one of many comic books which sparked my imagination at a young age. As I grew older, however, and the others were swept aside and replaced by passionate interests in music, and then my grown-up commitment to the movements for social change, the Avengers remained a faithful reminder of fun things past and maybe possible; I’d take my vacations each August finding a comic book shop and buying the past years’ worth of stories, catching up on old friends. When I landed my first substantial paycheck, one of my first acts (after paying numerous bills!) was to go to a local comic convention and fill in the “blanks” of my still-preserved Avengers collection — including the rare and wonderful “first issue.” (more…)

2011’s Global Protests Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere…

by Anya Barry

It was not sheer coincidence, journalist Paul Mason explains in Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions, that drove people from places as varied as Egypt, Greece, Britain, New York City, and Wisconsin to stand up and speak out against injustice in 2011. Rather, a cascading international financial crisis brought the disconnect between governments and citizens into sharp relief, which ultimately resulted in a massive series of protests in all corners of the map.

Although many reporters have written off the protesters as radicals without any real vision, Mason gets down in the dirt with the people issuing the outcry, serving as an articulate and smart mouthpiece to help the rest of society understand the importance of these ongoing movements throughout the world. As a way of explaining the inspiration behind movements like Occupy Wall Street, Mason quotes Franco Berardi, a contemporary writer who states, “There is only one way to awake the lover that is hidden in our paralyzed, frightened and frail virtualized bodies. There is only one way to awake the human being that is hidden in the miserable daily life of the softwarists: take to the streets and fight.” (more…)

Oral History Collection Gives Voice to Incarcerated Women

by Victoria Law

The new book Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons (McSweeney’s, 2011), edited by Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman, delves into injustices inside women’s prisons through firsthand accounts from the women themselves. These are painful stories. Many are tales of violence and abuse, most often from family and loved ones. Some are stories of parents who, at best, were not emotionally present for their children; at worst, they not only abused their daughters but allowed others to abuse them in exchange for drugs. There are stories of addiction. These stories are intense and, even though I am well-acquainted with prison horror stories, I needed to put the book down, several times. And then there are the stories from within the prison, which often repeats and exacerbates the horrors the women encountered before their arrests.

These stories illustrate the myriad ways that prisons attempt to erase their personhood: One woman entered prison while pregnant; because her due date fell on a holiday weekend, medical staff forced her into a Caesarean section. She was handcuffed throughout the surgery; she held her newborn for the first time while in cuffs. Another woman was given a hysterectomy without her knowledge or consent. Others discuss the lack of medical care, ranging from the lack of a diabetic diet to staff withholding necessary medications. Women’s humanity is assaulted in other ways as well: In 2010, Colorado prison staff instituted a demeaning search procedure known as the “labia lift” (p. 158): “We had to spread our labia and staff would make us cough while they were looking.” (more…)