Last week the Trump people abducted a Columbia University student and are working to deport him. His crime? Advocating an end to the war on Palestinians and urging Columbia to divest itself of investments in Israel and corporations supplying Israel with war materials. Mahmoud Khalil, the alleged criminal, is now in Louisiana, in prison, separated from his wife and his lawyers.
Mahmoud is what Trump promises to be the first of many students (and soon, others) who have protested the war on Gaza. Trump is claiming that speaking and writing against the war is an act of “terrorism”; and for students from other countries, this cancels their student visas (and for Mahmoud, his Green Card) and they can/will now be deported.
The underlying issue, of course, is the continuing war on Gaza. Our government is now supporting Israel’s refusal to implement the terms of the ceasefire, prolonging a “first phase” and refusing to move towards the next phases of the agreement and ending the war. Although the agreement called for ending the blockade on food and medicine into Gaza, for the past two weeks Israel has instead imposed a TOTAL BLOCKADE on Gaza, allowing no food to get in. According to a UN report issued Saturday, 1 in 2 children under the age of 2 years are suffering from severe malnutrition, and only 1 of 10 people in Gaza have access to clean water.
As Trump and Congress have failed the people of Gaza, public pressure and a popular uprising against the war is the only way that we can stop this genocide. Stopping Mahmoud’s deportation and ending his imprisonment is one step in supporting this Resistance.
Also last week, the Trump administration revealed its strategy to seize control of major US universities and colleges. As shown this week by demands sent to Columbia University, the government will use the threat of canceling grants and contracts to gain significant control. In the case of Columbia, $400 million in funding is on the line.
To do this, the government is using false claims that the universities are tolerating antisemitism on their campuses. On Thursday the Trump people sent Columbia a letter detailing nine steps the university must take before the government would consider negotiating to restore the funds that have been blocked. The demands in the letter go beyond a simple focus on policing alleged antisemitism; the demands would strip the university of its self-government. According to the Columbia student newspaper:
“The letter stated that the University must comply with required policy shifts, listing nine bullet points. Demands include the abolition of the University Judicial Board, the implementation of a mask ban, and the granting of “full law enforcement authority, including arrest and removal of agitators” to public safety officers. The University must meet the demands by March 20 in order to participate in “formal negotiations” with the federal government.” And much more.
Columbia University administrators have already started to comply with Trump’s demands, announcing the expulsion and other steps against 20 students who occupied a university building last spring. Similar steps to comply with the letter’s demands are in progress.
Also last week US government (Trump/Musk) agencies announced that some 20 US universities would have the funding reviewed in light of the school’s tolerance of pro-Palestinian protests and speech. Most of these schools (Harvard, etc.) are heavily dependent on US government funding, especially in the areas of scientific research. Will they comply or resist? A lot is at stake.
Finally, the other shoe has dropped. Today. For several weeks now, legal experts have been wondering if and when Trump or his circle would violate a court order. Until today, the Trump people have obeyed, or at least not openly defied, several dozen court orders. Today, however, after a judge ordered Secretary of State Rubio to NOT deport some 300 Venezuelan immigrants accused of being gang members, Rubio did so. He used a 1798 (!) law called the Alien Enemies Act to justify his action. If, as it appears, Rubio deported the Venezuelans in clear violation of the judge’s order, this will be a test case for what, if anything, the legal system can do the curb Trump. If the deportations are not successfully resisted, there is no stopping the Trump people from deporting Mahmoud Khalil, despite a judge’s order forbidding this.
ILLUMINATING SOME EVENTS OF THIS WEEK
How a Columbia Student Activist Landed in Federal Detention
By Michael Wilson, et al., New York Times [March 16, 2025]
---- Crowds of masked student protesters raging against the war in Gaza filled the Columbia University lawns last spring, while counterprotesters and journalists surrounded the tent city that had been erected there. One man stood out. He was Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student in his 20s, older than most of the students around him. Mr. Khalil, a Syrian immigrant of Palestinian descent, quickly emerged as a vocal and measured leader during rallies and sit-ins, doing on-camera interviews with the media in a zip-up sweater. And he was unmasked. Many other international students wore masks and kept to the background of the protests, for fear of being singled out and losing their visas. … Mr. Khalil’s friends and family have expressed outrage at his detention and possible deportation. But they also say they are not surprised by his activism in a movement that he was born into, nor his relatively calm presence amid a swarm of noise. As he moved through the world, Mr. Khalil could often come across as the adult in the room. [Read More]
We Will Not Comply
By Abby Zimet, Common Dreams [March 15, 2025]
---- Freefalling through our authoritarian takeover, this week saw New York police in the grotesque faux-gold belly of the beast arrest 100 Jews of conscience chanting "Free Free Palestine" to protest the ICE abduction of a Palestinian peace advocate for likewise standing against Israeli genocide - both acts of Constitutionally-protected free speech this dark regime deems criminal. Jews on detainment for expressing the wrong political ideas: "We know our history, and we know where this leads. This is what fascists do." The Jewish Voice For Peace protest - at the start of the Jewish holiday of Purim, which celebrates a long-ago, truth-telling queen who spoke out against another slaughter of innocents, in this case Jews - came after last weekend's nighttime arrest by ICE of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old leader and mediator of pro-Palestinian campus protests at Columbia University where he'd just earned a Master's degree in international affairs. … Still, disappearing people now is evidently not enough, so a berserk regime keeps cracking down, with Dept, of Education plans to investigate over 50 universities for "racial discrimination." Trump keeps tormenting Columbia, maybe because its city keeps hating him. He's threatened to pull $400 million in contracts and "review" $5 billion more if it doesn't get pro-Zionist, cuts already affecting research at the medical school; his DOJ plans to probe if Columbia "was harboring or concealing immigrants (in) the US illegally" or committing "terrorism crimes”; ICE thugs are roaming the campus searching rooms and reportedly detained at least two more students. [Read More]
Resistance to Trump is everywhere — inside the first 50 days of mass protest
By Rivera Sun, Waging Nonviolence [March 13, 2025]
---- It’s been a long six weeks since Donald Trump was sworn into office amid a Nazi salute and a machine-gun barrage of 89 executive orders. We’ve been struggling for our lives, our country and our world ever since. From boycotts to mass noncompliance to street demonstrations, the response to the Trump administration’s policies has consisted of an impressive range of nonviolent tactics. More than just outraged protests, people are thwarting raids, refusing to obey unjust orders, standing up to bully politics and taking risks to do the right thing. The resistance is diverse, multi-stranded and feisty — and some of it is working. It has forced Trump to reverse course or push the brakes on numerous issues, including his original plan for 25 percent tariffs, funding freeze, federal worker buyout deal, firing USDA and CFPB workers, and more. And while there have been a deluge of unjust policies coming out of the administration, the hundreds of thousands of people taking action are showing that resistance is not futile. In fact, it may be crucial. If your friends are sinking in defeatism and wondering if there’s any point in protesting, here’s a detailed look at the astonishing amount of resistance happening — and why it makes a difference if they join in. [Read More]
Pay Less Attention to That Man in Front of the Curtain
By Zephyr Teachout, The Nation [February 13, 2025]
---- Everybody has a job at this moment, and it is the job of Democrats in Congress to use their substantial resources and the power they already have to make sure that every illegal executive order and action is accompanied by a flood of lawsuits—procedural sticks jamming up the works of the Trump agenda. Members of Congress have a unique capacity to take the microphones that reporters thrust in their faces to focus public attention on the most direct and awful impacts of what Trump is doing, and on his targets with the broadest public support. … All three of these assaults on American democracy can be stopped, and all three must be stopped by lawsuits, protests, and slowing down every single step of the assault. Time and delay—and a forceful public rejection of his chaotic control—all make it harder for Trump to succeed. Yet initially the two current leaders of the Democratic Party seemed determined to broadcast their own weakness. … What could they have done? Here are four suggestions: [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST is “Appeasement Is Failing: Why Fighting Back Against Trump Is the Only Option,” by Jessica Washington, The Intercept [March 15 2025] [Link].
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com, and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
REWARDS!
Spring is coming; time to stand up, with a little help from the Resistance Revival Chorus. The energy this group radiates is wonderful. Check out "This Joy," and "Ella's Song," (a homage to civil rights leader Ella Baker.) And in the spirit of the moment, I think you will like "All You Fascists Bound to Lose," a Woody Guthrie song; the Chorus is joined by Rhiannon Giddens. Enjoy!
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Bow and Scrape or Stand and Fight?
By Michael Albert, Founder of Znet [March 12, 2025]
---- At times like these, —who am I kidding, when were there times like these?—one wants to stay in bed, bury one’s head, dream another dream. Or perhaps to privately twist and shout. Or what? I am not going to report what Trump and his lackeys are doing, nor even the ramifications of what they are doing yet again. Such reports are abundant. More, the broader implications have begun to register. Events are no longer just academic factoids. Implications have become felt awareness. Our condition is serious. Our situation is spiraling. Trump and Co. are not fooling around. We are not dead yet, but we are getting there. So—now what? The time has come. We must make choices. We must turn the tide. Do we bow and scrape, do we ignore and act like nothing is happening, or do we stand and fight? If we cling to the world we knew, that choice—and it is a choice—will not lead to a better world but to a much worse one. Bernie Sanders has been speaking to major audiences in Trump territory to report trends and implications that are not yet widely known there, and to emphasize that resignation is not an option. You can see him speak thusly on YouTube anytime. He says he gets the fear. He gets the depression. But he also says surrender in any form is not an option. Too much is at stake. And if Sanders can fight, you can, I can, we all can. We don’t have to bow and scrape. We must not ignore. To stand and fight is our choice to make. But what constitutes to bow and scrape? What constitutes to stand and fight? [Read More]
From Gaza to Syria: The Unyielding Reality of Israeli Settler Colonialism
By Ramzy Baroud, Counterpunch [March 11, 2025]
---- The conversation on settler colonialism must not be limited to academic discussion. It is a political reality, clearly demonstrated in the everyday behavior of Israel. Israel is not merely an expansionist regime historically; it remains actively so today. Additionally, the core of Israeli political discourse, both past and present, revolves around territorial expansion. Frequently, we succumb to the trap of blaming such language on a specific set of right-wing and extremist politicians or on a particular US administration. The truth is vastly different: the Israeli Zionist political discourse, though it may change in style, remains fundamentally unchanged throughout time. Zionist leaders have always associated the establishment and expansion of their state with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, later referred to in Zionist literature as the “transfer.”[Read More]
Cuba Sends Doctors, the US Sends Sanctions
By Helen Yaffe, Jacobin Magazine [March 8, 2025]
---- On February 25, US secretary of state Marco Rubio announced restrictions on visas for both government officials in Cuba and any others worldwide who are “complicit” with the island nation’s overseas medical-assistance programs. A US State Department statement clarified that the sanction extends to “current and former” officials and the “immediate family of such persons.” This action, the seventh measure targeting Cuba in one month, has international consequences; for decades tens of thousands of Cuban medical professionals have been posted in around sixty countries, far more than the World Health Organization’s (WHO) workforce, mostly working in under- or unserved populations in the Global South. By threatening to withhold visas from foreign officials, the US government means to sabotage these Cuban medical missions overseas. If it works, millions will suffer. Rubio built his career around taking a hard line on Cuban socialism, even alleging that his parents fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba until the Washington Post revealed that they migrated to Miami in 1956 during the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. As Trump’s secretary of state, Rubio is in prime position to ramp up the belligerent US-Cuba policy first laid out in April 1960 by deputy assistant secretary of state Lester Mallory: to use economic warfare against revolutionary Cuba to bring about “hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “European Leaders Plan Massive Increase in Defense Spending,” by Gary Olson, ZNet [March 11, 2025] [Link]; “Kurds sign deal in Syria: Case for US troops there 'weaker than ever',” by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Responsible Statecraft [March 11, 2025] [Link]; and (Video) “Imperialism and Totalitarianism Go Hand in Hand”: M. Gessen on Trump’s Policies at Home & Abroad,” from Democracy Now! [March 14, 2025] [See the Program]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
This Is the Greatest Threat to Free Speech Since the Red Scare
By Michelle Goldberg, New York Times [March 10, 2025]
---- Today, pro-Palestinian campus demonstrators are widely despised, just as leftists were during the Red Scare. I wouldn’t be surprised if Khalil’s arrest proves popular, but that won’t make it any less shameful or alarming. The nearly 13 million green card holders in the United States — not to mention foreign students and professors — have been put on notice that they need to watch what they say. “Any foreign student here, I think, has to be worried if they’ve engaged in pro-Palestine protests over the past couple of years,” said Hauss. Nor can citizens rest easy; a government this willing to disregard the First Amendment is a danger to us all. [Read More]
Trump’s New Muslim Ban Poised to Sweep Up Immigrants Already in the U.S.
By Matt Sledge, The Intercept [March 12 2025]
---- Upon taking office during his first term, one of Donald Trump’s opening moves was a bigoted travel ban on people from Muslim-majority countries. This time around, Trump is preparing another ban that could go into effect in days. Advocates warned Tuesday that it will sweep up not just Muslims living abroad, but also immigrants living in the U.S. that hold what Trump deems “hostile attitudes” toward the country. The forthcoming travel ban would become the latest of Trump’s draconian anti-immigration policies, many of which rehash the same themes about national security and public safety. Trump issued a January 20 executive order that used the language about “hostile attitudes” to target immigrants for deportation. The phrase has been echoed in remarks from U.S. officials justifying the arrest over the weekend of the Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil, said Yasmine Taeb, the legislative and political director for the Muslim advocacy group MPower Change. “All of these policies are interconnected,” she said, “and the travel ban that is going to be coming out is going to serve as another basis for the targeting of activists advocating for Palestinian human rights.” [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Trump Rushes Deportations Using a Wartime Law With a Shameful History,” by Nick Turse, The Intercept [March 16 2025] [Link]; and “DOJ Deploys ‘Antisemitism Task Force’ to Four US Cities as Part of Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Protests,” by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [March 13, 2025] [Link].
THE WAR ON GAZA
Starvation Is Not a Negotiating Tactic
By Megan K. Stack, New York Times [March 13, 2025]
---- Israel has clamped Gaza back under near-total siege, barring desperately needed humanitarian aid and other goods from entering the hungry and bomb-decimated enclave. Food, medicine, tents, fuel — for the past week and a half, supplies have not been permitted into Gaza, where some two million Palestinians are trying to survive in the wreckage. And Mr. Netanyahu keeps tightening the screws: On Sunday, Israel cut off the last trickle of electricity into Gaza, forcing a key desalination plant that provides drinking water to slow operations. With hunger setting in, people reduced to living in tents or in the precarious shelter of half-crushed buildings, and clean water and fuel in vanishing supply, it feels too generous to say that Gaza is on the brink of collapse; in many respects, Gaza has already collapsed. Israeli officials are essentially starving Gaza as a negotiation tactic. [Read More]
(Video) As U.N. Accuses Israel of Genocidal Acts, U.S. Surgeons in Gaza Denounce Aid Blockade, Jailing Of Doctors
From Democracy Now! [March 3, 2025]
---- A new report by United Nations experts says Israel has carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians in Gaza, including the destruction of women’s healthcare facilities, intended to prevent births, and the use of sexual violence as a strategy of war. This comes as talks on resuscitating the ceasefire deal continue in Qatar and as Israel continues its total blockade of food, fuel, medicine and other humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory. For more, we speak with two American doctors volunteering at Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza. “It’s a very difficult situation, and the attacks on the healthcare system that were done in the past 16 months have really undermined its ability to help people,” says trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa. We also speak with Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic and hand surgeon, who says about 350 Palestinian medical workers who remain in Israeli prisons without charge must be freed. Many who have been released describe horrific abuse. “The physical and mental torture … presents a tremendous weight on the healthcare system here,” says Dr. Perlmutter. [See the Program] ALSO OF INTEREST is “New bombshell UN report accuses Israel of sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians,” from Mondoweiss [March 14, 2025] [Link].
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Evidence That The US-UK Scuppered Productive Peace Talks In Spring 2022 To End The Russia-Ukraine War
By Ian Sinclair, Znet [March 13, 2025]
---- I thought it would be useful to set down some of the evidence for the argument that peace negotiations to end the Russian-Ukraine war in spring 2022 were close to being agreed, and that the UK-US tried (and possibly succeeded) to scupper them:
-- In an interview with CNN Turk on April 2022 Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who organised the Istanbul negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, noted “there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia gets weaker.” (Middle East Monitor, 21 April 2022)
-- In May 2022 the Ukrainian online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, citing “sources close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy,” reported UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson “appeared in the capital [Kyiv] almost without warning” on 9 April, bringing “two simple messages.” “The first is that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.” [FB – And many more examples.] [Read More]
The Economics of Ukraine’s War Overshadow the Quest for Peace
By Stewart Lawrence, Counterpunch [March 14, 2025]
---- It’s still not clear whether the powerful, though largely hidden, or at least hushed-up, economic drivers of the Ukraine war will ultimately lead all powers involved to arrive at something resembling “peace.” The outlines of a settlement are abundantly clear – a cease-fire, a Russian pull-back, a mineral rights deal, a treaty over still-contested territory, and the exclusion of Ukraine from NATO. But getting there requires a shift from the reckless neo-conservative paradigm that sees the United States promoting democracy and regime change everywhere in the world to the more old-fashioned “realist” paradigm that places primary emphasis on regional balances of power and the achievement of regional peace and stability. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence
By Marc Martorell Junyent, Informed Comment [March 16, 2025]
[FB – This is a review of Peter Schwartzstein, The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence (London: Footnote Press, 2024)].
–– Although climate change does not directly cause conflict, it makes violence more likely to occur and to be more intense. The effects of climate change act as ‘threat multipliers’ that intensify already-existing conflict patterns. The link between climate change and conflict is by now well-established, but most explorations of this connection are found in academic studies that are likely to come off as dull to the general public. A far livelier account of this problematic link is on offer in Peter Schwartzstein’s recently published book, “The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence”. … If climate change is a ‘threat multiplier’, this is partly because it acts as an accelerator of long-running inequalities in wealth and political power. The World Economic Forum notes that “the lowest income countries produce one-tenth of emissions but are the most heavily impacted by climate change.” Schwartzstein offers a good example of this dynamic in his chapter on Sudan, a country responsible for only 0.06% of global CO₂ emissions. Sudanese villagers have suffered displacement or been left without water for agriculture as Gulf countries heavily invest in major farming exploitations in Sudan after filling their coffers with the export of polluting fossil fuels. [Read More].
Introduction: (Almost) everything you wanted to know about tipping points, but were too afraid to ask
By Jessica McKenzie, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [March 12, 2025]
---- One of the most pressing questions facing climate scientists, and the world at large, is whether human-caused global warming could trigger changes in the climate system that will radically reshape the Earth as we know it. The evidence is mounting that these vast changes are not only possible, but increasingly likely as the Earth warms. But how close the world is to crossing these so-called “tipping points” is a matter of vigorous scientific debate…. The idea that there could be sudden and irreversible changes within the Earth’s climate system was not new. In the mid-20th century, scientists studying ice and sediment cores found evidence of abrupt warming and cooling periods in the Earth’s geologic history and inferred that abrupt climatic shifts could happen again. In past reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, these were called “climate surprises,” or the more cumbersome “large-scale discontinuities in the climate system.” But the tipping point metaphor caught on in a way these other phrases didn’t. Even now, the exact definition of a tipping point varies somewhat, although there are broad commonalities. [Read More]
