New Clear Vision

What’s Next for Peace Activism in the U.S.?

by David Swanson

Five years ago was a high point for participation in the peace movement in the United States.  This was because the Iraq war was young and violent, but also because the pitiful, poorly funded organizations driven by opposition to war were joined by the major well-funded organizations and individuals and funders who oppose the Republican Party in any way available, including through opposition to wars that are identified as Republican wars.  The Democratic Party was in the minority in Congress and not in the White House.  It didn’t promise peace and justice, but its supporters poured money and time and energy into bashing the Republicans for their wars and injustices. (more…)

U.S. Mayors Call for End to Wars and Nuclear Weapons

by James Russell

Peace activists won a major victory on June 20th when the US Conference of Mayors voted to adopt two resolutions that call for a drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Both resolutions also demand the reprioritization of defense spending, including the $126 billion spent each year in Iraq and Afghanistan, toward the needs of municipalities.

The group, which represents mayors of municipalities with 30,000 or more residents, has not passed such a resolution in 40 years. (more…)

Can the Israel-Palestine Conflict Provide a Path to Peace?

by Randall Amster

(Editor’s Note: This is the final installment in our thematic series on Israel and Palestine. By presenting varied perspectives — including Michael Walzer on Israeli politics, Kathy Kelly on conditions in Gaza, Ahmed Afzaal on political discourse, Julia Chaitin on historical narrative, and Michelle Chen on Palestinian youth — our aim has been to stimulate dialogue and suggest ways forward.)

Despite the obvious and intractable nature of the problem, it appears that something of a consensus has been reached on what to do about the Israel-Palestine conflict. From President Obama to Professor Chomsky, there is broad agreement that any potential path to peace in the region ought to devolve upon a “two-state” scenario in which Palestine is afforded national sovereignty and Israel engenders international (and perhaps more importantly, regional) recognition. Details about precise boundaries and territorial contiguity will of course need to be settled, not to mention issues of economy and culture, but overall this plan is widely embraced by nearly everyone except the rabid hardliners on either side. (more…)

The Siege of Gaza Must End

by Kathy Kelly

(Editor’s Note: This week on NCV, as part of a thematic series, we are featuring articles focusing on the Israel-Palestine conflict and attendant issues, hoping to stimulate a dialogue and suggest potential ways forward.)

Later this month, I’m going to be a passenger on “The Audacity of Hope,” the USA boat in this summer’s international flotilla to break the illegal and deadly Israeli siege of Gaza. Organizers, supporters, and passengers aim to nonviolently end the brutal collective punishment imposed on Gazan residents since 2006 when the Israeli government began a stringent air, naval and land blockade of the Gaza Strip explicitly to punish Gaza’s residents for choosing the Hamas government in a democratic election. Both the Hamas and the Israeli governments have indiscriminately killed civilians in repeated attacks, but the vast preponderance of these outrages over the length of the conflict have been inflicted by Israeli soldiers and settlers on unarmed Palestinians. I was witness to one such attack when last in Gaza two years ago, under heavy Israeli bombardment in a civilian neighborhood in Rafah. (more…)

Investing in Nonviolence, Not Dictatorships

by David Swanson

(Editor’s Note: This coming week, we will be running a thematic series of articles focusing on the Israel-Palestine conflict and attendant issues. This essay helps to establish a framework for U.S. engagement in the region.)

I recently flew from California to Washington, D.C., and when the plane landed, the pilot came on the intercom to tell everyone to celebrate: our government had killed Osama bin Laden. This was better than winning the Super Bowl, he said.

Set aside for a moment the morality of cheering for the killing of a human being — which despite the pilot’s prompting nobody on the plane did. In purely Realpolitik terms, killing prominent individuals whom we’ve previously supported has never resolved anything. (more…)

Humanity’s Future Hangs by the Delicate Threads of Our Resistance

by Winslow Myers

“Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.” — John F. Kennedy, U.N. Speech, 1961

In 1984, when I started volunteering for the organization Beyond War, it was not so difficult to gather an audience in a living room and have a dialogue about the obsolescence of war.

The horror of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had not yet faded. Short-range tactical nuclear weapons were proliferating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Most citizens were willing to entertain the notion that not only could we not win a full-scale nuclear war, but there were three lesser levels of war that we had to prevent: even a limited nuclear war could bring on “nuclear winter.” A conventional war could bring in the nuclear powers. Even small “local” conflicts could escalate into general conventional war and then upward to the nuclear level. War, all war, was a potential extinction machine. It still is. (more…)

Why Aren’t We ‘Raising Hell’ for Sustainability, Peace, and Prosperity?

by David Swanson

Yes, yes, poverty exists, just as war does, and the two feed off each other.  When I titled a book War Is A Lie I meant that the justifications offered for wars were false and that the idea that we must always have wars is false.  Our government doesn’t market new poverty campaigns in the same way it does wars.  It markets campaigns to dismantle healthcare and pension systems or to eliminate foreign aid or to restrict organizing rights.  But our culture pushes the false notion that poverty must always be with us.

The fact is that our nation and our world are capable of environmental sustainability, peace, and the eradication of poverty.  We’ve spent a decade racing headlong away from these goals in response to dramatic crimes that killed 3,000 people.  The fact that 10,000 people have died from perfectly preventable causes in Africa alone every single day for those 10 years somehow gets lost in our self-obsessed, short-sighted, fear-driven, greed-excusing, corporate communications system. (more…)