The Real CFOW Newsletter - Trump's tax bill; the war in Yemen

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

November 21, 2017

 

Hello All – At last Saturday's CFOW rally/protest in Hastings, we passed out leaflets about the legislation now in Congress that would reward the one-percenters supporting the Trump Agenda with hundreds of billions of dollars in reduced personal and corporate taxes.  Serious program cuts are needed to offset such a massive reduction of federal revenue, and these cuts will come from healthcare, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with the inevitable squeeze on programs meeting basic needs of lower income people.  Of particular interest to people in New York/Westchester, both the Senate and the House bills will cap or eliminate income tax deductions for state and local property taxes.  The only way this legislation can be defeated is if at least three Senate Republicans vote against it.  The vote may come as soon as next Monday, so your assigned task is to call Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine (202-224-2523), Bob Corker of Tennessee (202-224-3344) and Jeff Flake of Arizona (202-224-4521).  Just tell the person answering the phone that you would like the Senator to vote NO on the tax legislation, that it is important for your family and your community.  We would like the Republicans to know that, if this legislation is passed, they will face a wipeout in the 2018 elections.  Do it today!  Thanks.

 

The war in Yemen is now referred to as the world's worst humanitarian disaster.  Of course, this disaster is manmade, with most of the damage being caused by Saudi Arabia's intervention into a confusing civil war.  To our nation's great shame, the United States is aiding and abetting the Saudi's slaughter of Yemenis; in addition to those killed directly by bombing, the Yemenis suffer from the world's largest cholera epidemic and now a famine that has put millions of the edge of starvation.  As described in the articles linked below, famine is now even more likely because the Saudis have bombed Yemen's main airport and blockaded its main port, allowing no food or medicine to enter. 

 

What is the United States doing about this?  Refueling Saudi planes, helping with targeting and with the naval blockade, and in at least one instance sending Marines ashore.  And probably much more. Trump's support of the Saudis is well known; what is less known is that many Democrats, including our own Eliot Engel, are framing the war in Yemen as one between Saudi Arabia and Iran!  On November 14^th, for example, Engel told the House of Representatives that "We've heard about Saudi and Iranian involvement in the civil war in Yemen.  Sadly, Yemenis are caught in the crossfire. …So, the people of Yemen are facing a very dire situation. But, let's be clear: neither military action nor food aid will solve the conflict in Yemen.  A political solution is essential for moving Yemen toward stability."  [Link]. What is missing from this statement, made by the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is any sense that the United States could put a stop to these atrocities by refusing to assist Saudi Arabia militarily, and using some tough diplomatic talk, including intervention at the UN. The Trump-Engel axis justifies US Saudi killing on the pretext that it is directed against Iran.  Check out the reading about this war linked below and see if you agree.  And if you don't agree, please call Congressman Engel at 718-796-9700 and ask him to speak out in favor of ending US support to the horrible Saudi Arabian war against Yemen.

 

News Notes

It was exactly a year ago that our friend Sophia Wilensky nearly lost her arm when she was struck with a police-fired projectile out at Standing Rock, South Dakota.  Before heading out there, Sophia – who is in her early 20s and is from Riverdale – had been a stalwart in the anti-pipeline agitation up near Indian Point.  In this story in the New York Post, Sophia speaks for the first time about what happened that day and what/how she is doing now.

 

A significant number of Israeli men and women become conscientious objectors upon being drafted.  In this video, Mattan Helman speaks eloquently about "There is no moral occupation': Why I refuse to serve," a decision that will land him in jail.

 

President Trump and many members of Congress want to end the nuclear deal with Iran, and are looking for a good excuse.  Inconveniently, Iran has been steadily in compliance with the terms of the Agreement; the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog, puts Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium at 96.7 kg, less than half of the limit they're allowed to keep under the deal, and none of the uranium was enriched above the low level allowed under the pact. Sad.

 

For those trying to keep score at home, this cogent report from the Military Times looks at "What's inside the $700 billion defense budget plan headed to Trump's desk?"  It's all there – 20,000 more soldiers and lots of weapons – even more than the Pentagon and the White House asked for.  When the Pentagon budget is added to programs for other agencies – such as nuclear weapons (the Dept. of Energy), the total for military spending this year will be about $1.1 trillion. 

 

Things to Do/Coming Attractions

Tuesday, November 28^th – This program looks interesting: "Antisemitism and the Struggle for Justice," moderated by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Featuring Leo Ferguson, Lina Morales, Linda Sarsour, and Rebecca Vilkomerson (JVP).   At the New School (66 W. 12^th St.) starting at 7:30 p.m.  For more information, go here.

 

Saturday, December 2^nd – This year is the 20^th anniversary of WESPAC's Margaret Eberle Fair Trade Festival. The program is at the Memorial United Methodist Church (250 Bryant Ave.) in White Plains (from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.).  There will be music, good things to eat, and more than 30 fair trade arts and crafts vendors.  I've always enjoyed it, and think you will too!

 

Sunday, December 3^rd – CFOW's monthly meeting is held this day from 7 to 9 p.m.  Everyone is welcome at these meetings.

 

Tuesday, December 5^th – Stalwart Isabella Bannerman will be among the presenters at the launch meeting/party for the new issue of World War 3 Illustrated. She will talk about her new project, "'L'Aquiletta': How a girl in 1943 Italy fought fascism."  (Her mother's story, illustrated.)  At the SVA Amphitheater, 209 E. 23^rd St., room 311, from 7 to 10 p.m.

 

Ongoing – Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct has a new exhibition at the Keeper's House called "Existing Conditions," photographs of the trail from 20 years ago.  The fixed-up Keeper's House is also interesting, imo. – The building is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 noon to 3 p.m. It's at 15 Walnut St. in Dobbs Ferry.

 

This Newsletter

In addition to the excellent "Featured Essays," I strongly recommend checking out two excellent articles on the renewed importance of nuclear weapons in US military plans; a set of articles about the new US-Saudi Arabia-Israel threat to destabilize (even more) the Middle East; a good report on what's happening with the Keystone XL pipeline out in Nebraska; several articles on the recent COP23 climate conference in Bonn, Germany; an interesting article by Ralph Nader on sexual harassment and legal impunity for war crimes; an interview with a founder of the Palestinian BDS movement; and two super excellent articles about "Our History."

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  We meet for a vigil/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  Our leaflet and posters for our vigils are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or the Puerto Rico crisis are targeted from time to time, depending on current events. We meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society.  Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. 

 

Contributions, Please

Our treasury is getting a little low, so if you are able to support our work, please make your check out to "CFOW" and mail it to PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

Rewards!

Several CFOW stalwarts were among the 400 people who packed the Tarrytown Music Hall last week for WESPAC's wonderful program, "Made in Palestine."  Along with food, poetry, and dancing, we were treated to a very funny (and educational) performance by Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr.  He has lots of stuff online; for starters, check out his film, "We're Not White."  And for something completely different, I think you will like Stephanie Trick and Jorg Hegemann's rendition of Albert Ammons' piano classic, "Shout for Joy."  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

Thank You, Ed Herman

Diana Johnstone, Antiwar.com [November 14, 2017]

[FB – My friend Ed Herman died on Armistice Day.  He was a great man and a fierce critic of the war makers.  I had the good fortune to write two books with him, a life-changing experience.  He is best known for his collaboration with Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, which remains (imo) the most useful guide to the working/propaganda functions of the mainstream media.  Diana Johnstone is another stalwart critic of the powers-that-be, and was a friend of Ed's, and has written this warm memoir.]

---- Edward S. Herman died on November 11, 2017, at the age of 92. Fortunately, it was a peaceful death for a supremely peaceful man. In all he did, Ed Herman was a tireless champion of peace. Ed Herman could be considered the godfather of antiwar media critique, both because of his own contributions and because of the many writers he encouraged to pursue that work. Thanks to his logical mind and sense of justice, he sharply grasped the crucial role and diverse techniques of media propaganda in promoting war. He immediately saw through lies, including those so insidious that few dare challenge them, such as the arrogant presumption by the U.S. War Party of the "right to protect" and the "need to prevent genocide", to justify the oxymoronic "humanitarian war". [Read More]

 

We Supported Their Dictators, Led the Failed 'War on Drugs' and Now Deny Them Refuge

By Victoria Sanford, Bill Moyers.com [November 18, 2017]

---- President Donald Trump has tied his executive order giving Congress six months to "fix" DACA to constructing a wall between the US and Mexico as well as a rapid and massive deportation of unaccompanied children and families entering the US without a visa. Trump claims this will stop Central American and other undocumented immigrants from entering the United States. These policies might make it more difficult, but they will not stop the flow of migration because the United States is not the pull factor of migration. Violence in Central American countries is the push factor today, just as it was in the late 20^th century. … Today, northern Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) has one of the highest homicide rates of any region in the world that is not at war. … As in the 1980s, Central Americans have responded by fleeing for their survival. In 2013 alone, over 900,000 Guatemalans migrated to the US together with 500,000 Hondurans and 1.2 million Salvadorans. And many of these are children — from Oct. 2013 to Aug. 2015, more than 102,000 unaccompanied minors were among those making the dangerous and expensive trek from Central America through Mexico to cross the US border. [Read More]

 

Investigation Reveals US-Led Bombings in Iraq Kill 31 Times More Civilians Than Reported

By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [November 17, 2017]

---- An 18-month investigation by a pair of New York Times reporters reveals far more civilians are killed in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—particularly in the air war—than the U.S.-led coalition reports. After visiting nearly 150 bombing sites in northern Iraq between April 2016 and June 2017, as well as the American base in Qatar where decisions are made about coalition air strikes, Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal "found that one in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition." … U.K.-based Airwars estimates at least 3,000 civilians have been killed, but the group's director told the reporters Airwars "may be significantly underreporting deaths in Iraq" due to lack of reliable reporting. [Read More] And read their powerful essay, "The Uncounted," which focuses on a single area and a single family. [Link].

 

Puerto Rico's DIY Disaster Relief

By Molly Crabapple, New York Review of Books [November 2017]

---- Two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit, aid remained a bureaucratic quagmire, mismanaged by FEMA, the FBI, the US military, the laughably corrupt local government. The island looked like it was stuck somewhere between the nineteenth century and the apocalypse. But leftists, nationalists, socialists were stepping up to rebuild their communities. Natural disasters have a way of clarifying things. They sweep away once-sturdy delusions, to reveal old treasures and scars. Over the next month, Luis, Christine, and ARECMA, took over the group's storm-ravaged hilltop center and set up the Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo (Project for Mutual Aid).  … Their Proyecto is one of a rapidly growing network of autonomous, self-managed Centros de Apoyo Mutuos (CAMs). [Read More]

 

WAR & PEACE

The Trump Doctrine: Making Nuclear Weapons Usable Again
By Michael T. Klare, Tom Dispatch [November 19, 2017]

---- The Pentagon has been fretting that the arsenal is insufficiently intimidating.  Accordingly, U.S. war planners and weapons manufacturers have set out to make that arsenal more "usable" in order to give the president additional nuclear "options" on any future battlefield. … Making the U.S. arsenal more usable requires two kinds of changes in nuclear policy: altering existing doctrine to eliminate conceptional restraints on how such weapons may be deployed in wartime and authorizing the development and production of new generations of nuclear munitions capable, among other things, of tactical battlefield strikes.  All of this is expected to be incorporated into the administration's first nuclear posture review (NPR), to be released by the end of this year or early in 2018. [Read More]  And an excellent essay by William Hartung – "Massive Overkill: Brought to You By the Nuclear-Industrial Complex," – adds some historical context to the complex of interests that have brought us to the edge of world destruction. [Link]

America's Renegade Warfare

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, Antiwar.com [November 17, 2017]

---- Across the world, it is obvious, and now well-documented, that US aggression and militarism are causing the very problems they claim to be trying to solve. By design or default, US policy is confusing cause and effect to justify military operations that turn civilians into combatants, fueling an ever-escalating, ever-spreading cycle of increasingly global violence and chaos. As the world confronts critical problems and demands on its resources, from climate change to poverty and inequality, it can no longer afford to follow the pied piper of American "leadership" that leads only to war and chaos. US leaders often raise the specter of "appeasement" to guilt-trip reluctant allies into supporting U.S.-led wars. But maybe it is time for world leaders to recognize that the real appeasement they have been engaged in is the appeasement of the United States, by actively or tacitly encouraging it in an illegal policy of militarism and serial aggression that is spreading violence and chaos across the world. [Read More]

 

Saudi Arabia's Desperate Gamble

By Alastair Crooke, Consortium News [November 10, 2017]

---- Furious over defeat in Syria, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is gambling again, arresting rivals at home and provoking a political crisis in Lebanon, but he may lack the geopolitical chips to pull off his bet, says ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke. No doubt about it: it has been a coup for Netanyahu. The question though, is whether it will turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory, or not: whichever it is, it is highly dangerous to throw grenades into combustible material. This U.S.-Israeli-Saudi-UAE project is, at bottom, an attempt to overturn reality, no less – it is rooted in a denial of the setback suffered by these states by their multiple failures to shape a New Middle East in the Western mode. Now, in the wake of their failure in Syria – in which they went to the limits in search of victory – they seek another spin of the roulette wheel – in the hope of recouping all their earlier losses. It is, to say the least, a capricious hope. [Read More]

 

For more on the Saudi-US-Israeli dangers – Patrick Cockburn, "The greatest dangers in the Middle East today are Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Salman," The Independent [November 15, 2017]

[Link]; and Trita Parsi, President, National Iranian-American Council  "Saudi Arabia Wants to Fight Iran to the Last American," [November 15, 2017] [Link].

 

The War in Afghanistan

Pentagon Claims 14,000 Troops in Afghanistan, Surge 'Completed'

By Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com [November 19, 2017]

---- The Pentagon has been keeping troop figures in Afghanistan a secret since President Trump ordered the escalation over the summer. Officials have occasionally tipped off troop levels, however, and at times contradict one another. … The reality though is all official figures are subject to change without notice, and lying to the American public about how many US troops are in Afghanistan is practically official policy at this point, so the lack of consistency is unsurprising. [Read More]  Also interesting/useful is "Afghan Army Recruitment Dwindles as Taliban Threatens Families," by Najim Rahim and Mujib Mashal, New York Times [November 18, 2017] [Link].

 

The War in Yemen

60 Minutes Imagines a Different War in Yemen

By Derek Davison, LobeLog [November 20, 2017]

[FB - Media Tutorial – As explained in Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky's standard work on media, Manufacturing Consent, one of the ways that media bias works is by establishing what is On the News Agenda and what is Off the News Agenda.  Here is a good example: while the famine/crisis in Yemen sometimes makes the mainstream US news media, the role of the United States in enabling the Saudi military campaign that is the cause of the famine is Off the Agenda.  In general (and to over simplify), the mainstream media follows the lead of the government in establishing the News Agenda for foreign policy, etc.  The occasions when dissenting views make their way onto the Agenda – in this case, for example, the US role in the Yemen famine – depends on the political elite being divided.  Sometimes a Democrat/Republican debate is enough, but in the area of foreign policy the Democrats and Republicans mostly – and right now – support Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen, and so the media sees no "debate."  An antiwar agitation might put the US role in Yemen in the news, but without news coverage, launching an antiwar agitation is difficult.  It's a very vicious circle.]

---- The November 19 episode of the CBS News program 60 Minutes devoted its first segment to covering the humanitarian atrocity taking place in Yemen. Or rather, it devoted its first segment to covering a fictional crisis loosely based on the humanitarian atrocity taking place in Yemen. Any similarity between that crisis and what's actually happening in Yemen was apparently coincidental. … It is no exaggeration to say that the Saudi operation in Yemen depends on this ongoing logistical support from the U.S. It also depends on arms, like American cluster bombs and British missiles, that U.S. and U.K. arms dealers eagerly sell to the Saudis. Which means that it's within American and British power to end this atrocity, to end the starvation, to force the Saudis to reopen the entire country to humanitarian aid. [Read More]

 

For more on the Yemen crisis and the US role - Nawal Al-Maghafi, "The Catastrophe of Saudi Arabia's Trump-Backed Intervention in Yemen," The New Yorker [November 17, 2017] [Link]; "Saudis Bomb Yemen's International Airport, Amid Devastating Blockade," from Informed Comment [November 16, 2017] [Link]; Kristine Beckerle, "Saudi Claims to Ease Yemen Blockade a Cruel Fiction,," Human Rights Watch [November 13, 2017] [Link]; and Juan Cole, "The Saudi-US war on Yemen is killing 130 Children a Day & Other Bleak Statistics," Informed Comment [November 19, 2017] [Link].

 

War with North Korea?

Is the Trump Administration Planning a First Strike on North Korea?

By Gareth Porter, Truthout [November 18, 2017]

---- Ever since the Trump administration began a few months ago to threaten a first strike against North Korea over its continued missile tests, the question of whether it is seriously ready to wage war has loomed over other crises in US foreign policy. The news media have avoided any serious effort to answer that question, for an obvious reason: The administration has an overriding interest in convincing the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un that Trump would indeed order a first strike if the regime continues to test nuclear weapons and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Therefore, most media have shied away from digging too deeply into the distinction between an actual policy of a first strike and a political ruse intended to put pressure on Pyongyang. … The linkage between the Trump administration's threat of a "military option" and US diplomatic pressure on North Korea was clear from its first suggestion that it might carry out a first strike.  …It isn't yet possible to know definitely whether the Trump administration intends to strike first against North Korea. [Read More]

 

Also useful on US-North Korea – Jason Ditz, "North Korea: No Negotiations If US Military Drills Continue," Antiwar.com [November 17, 2017] [Link];  and Tim Shorrock, "As Trump Slams Pyongyang, Seoul Begins Shift," Lobelog [November 17, 2017] [Link].

 

The War in Syria

Pentagon: ISIS 'Defeated' But US Will Stay in Syria

By Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com [November 17, 2017]

---- US military intentions in Syria have never been exactly transparent, but are becoming ever less so, as Pentagon officials loudly declare ISIS to have been "defeated" in the country, but insist that they intend to remain. This is a potential major legal issue, because Syria never authorized the US invasion in the first place. US officials always presented the authorization as being UN resolutions supporting the fight against ISIS, but that would no longer apply. Moreover, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has pointed out that Secretary of State Tillerson has repeatedly assured him that the "only" US goal in Syria is to fight ISIS. This is adding to Russian concerns about what the US is actually planning on doing next. [Read More]

 

The New War in Somalia

US Quietly Builds Up Troops in Somalia

By Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com [November 19, 2017]

---- One of the many quiet escalations in countries where US military operations on the ground hadn't really been well publicized in the first place, officials say that the US has more than doubled the number of ground troops in Somalia this year, and now have over 500 troops there. This is the most troops the US has had in the country since 1993, when the Black Hawk Down incident killed 18 US soldiers and led to a quick withdrawal from the nation. This year was also the first year since 1993 that any US troops died in Somalia. [Read More]

 

GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE BREAKDOWN

Nebraska Approves Keystone XL Pipeline as Opponents Face Criminalization of Protests

By Alleen Brown, The Intercept [November 20 2017]

---- Nebraska's Public Service Commission approved the Keystone XL pipeline Monday, eliminating a major regulatory hurdle to construction of a project that galvanized people across the U.S. into opposition. The decision comes days after the existing Keystone pipeline, to which the KXL will connect, spilled an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil onto agricultural land in South Dakota. To many pipeline opponents motivated by the inevitability of a spill, the contaminated land proves their point. Those who have been fighting the pipeline for more than five years, and many more drawn into opposition via last year's dramatic confrontation at Standing Rock, say the approval of KXL marks the beginning of the next phase of the pipeline battles. [Read More]

 

"Nature Has Rights": Activists Call for a Legal Transformation

By Mike Ludwig, Truthout [November 10, 2017]

---- "Water is life," declared the Native Water Protectors and allied activists at Standing Rock. Without clean water, clean air and a stable climate, the future of all life on Earth is in peril, including our own. This raises important questions: Is a river like the Colorado simply a collection of resources to be bought, sold and haggled over in courts and legislatures? Or do rivers and all ecosystems actually rise above monetary value? The answer to this question is central to a growing global movement of activists and attorneys who are forging a new kind of environmental law by proclaiming the legal "rights of nature." Since nature can't directly assert legal rights itself (although the Earth may punish us for disrupting the climate and other follies), these advocates also fight for the right of local communities to protect the natural systems around them from destruction and exploitation. [Read More]

 

The COP23 Climate Talks in Bonn, Germany

[FB - The daily news program Democracy Now! was in Bonn to cover the latest round of the climate talks, COP23.  The talks were notable for the non-participation of the United States, the only country in the world that is not supporting the world's common program to fight our climate breakdown.  (For comedy relief, the Trump people sent a team of people to argue that "Coal is the Answer!")  You can review the Democracy Now! offerings here.  Of particular interest might be the program's two interviews with climate scientist/researcher Kevin Anderson - here and here. For further reading, linked below are a report from The New York Times and an interesting survey of what the climate crisis is doing to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).]

 

At Bonn Climate Talks, Stakes Get Higher in Gamble on Planet's Future

By Brad Plumer, New York Times [November 18, 2017]

---- Virtually everyone at the Bonn conference acknowledged that the world's nations are still failing to prevent drastic global warming in the decades ahead. "We need more action, more ambition, and we need it now," said Patricia Espinosa, the United Nations climate chief. … Under the Paris agreement, nearly every country submitted a voluntary pledge for constraining its emissions. Yet those pledges are modest: even with them, the world is still on course to warm at least 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, an outcome that carries far greater risks of destabilizing ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, drastic sea-level rise and more extreme heat waves and droughts.  [Read More]

 

As the MENA Region Heats Up, UN Climate Change Talks are Under Pressure

By Christophe Maroun, Global Voices [November 12, 2017]

---- As the world's nations meet in Bonn, Germany for the 23rd annual conference of the parties (COP23) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2017 is set to be one of the hottest years on record. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have predicted a harsh fate for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Jordan currently faces one of the most severe droughts in recorded history. In the absence of international climate policy action, the country could receive 30 percent less rainfall by 2100 and annual temperatures could increase by 4.5 Celsius. [Read More]

 

CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"

'The Torture Report: A Graphic Adaptation' illustrates the grim reality of CIA interrogation techniques post 9/11

By Vera Castaneda, Los Angeles Times [November 4, 2017]

---- "Deplorable," "disturbing" and "embarrassing" are adjectives some members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence used almost three years ago in response to a report investigating the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques after 9/11. The declassified portion of the report is available on the Senate panel's website. Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón's "The Torture Report: A Graphic Adaptation," is a graphic-novel style version that is equally difficult to read. [Read More]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

The Rule of Power Over the Rule of Law

By Ralph Nader, Counterpunch [November 17, 2017]

---- #Me Too is producing some results. At long last. Victims of sexual assault by men in superior positions of power are speaking out. Big time figures in the entertainment, media, sports and political realms are losing their positions – resigning or being told to leave. A producer at 60 Minutes thinks Wall Street may be next. Sexual assaults need stronger sanctions. Only a few of the reported assaulters are being civilly sued under the law of torts. Even fewer are subjects of criminal investigation so far.

Perhaps the daily overdue accounting, regarding past and present reports of sexual assaults will encourage those abused in other contexts to also blow the whistle on other abuses. Too often, there are not penalties, but instead rewards, for high government and corporate officials whose derelict and often illegal decisions directly produce millions of deaths and injuries. [Read More]

 

The Shocking Math of the Republican Tax Plan

By Adam Davidson, The New Yorker [November 17, 2017]

---- The numbers are in and it's clear: this tax bill helps the rich and hurts everybody else. Just ask the very people who wrote it. The U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Taxation's reports of this week make startling reading, or as startling as a series of spreadsheets of tax revenue data can be. The report shows that this bill is much like a teaser rate on a new credit card: there are some goodies in the first couple of years, but those disappear fairly quickly, at least for those below the median income. … With each passing year the benefits shift upward, toward the rich. By 2021, those making between twenty thousand and thirty thousand dollars a year are paying considerably more in taxes, those between thirty thousand and two hundred thousand see their benefit shrinking, and those making more start to see their taxes falling. By 2027, every income level below seventy-five thousand dollars a year sees a tax increase, while everybody above that level sees a continued decrease, with the greatest cut in taxes accruing to those making more than a million dollars a year. [Read More].  Also useful is Paul Krugman, "Everybody Hates the Trump Tax Plan," New York Times [November 16, 2017] [Link].

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel: How Effective Is It?

From The Real News Network [November 19, 2017]
---- The Israeli government, which adopted a very aggressive counterstrategy, "likes to believe it is somehow winning the fight against BDS," but that view is "quite delusional," says Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, who co-founded the BDS movement

---- Barghouti: The Israeli government likes to believe it is somehow winning the fight against BDS. Quite delusional, if you look at the facts. The Israeli government has a lot of influence with Western governments, with the U.S. Congress, with the White House, with Brussels, the European Union. Indeed, we recognize that. … What it's doing is that it's losing the grassroots level. It's beginning to lose the liberal mainstream that is utterly disgusted by all this McCarthyism, all this intimidation. Conditioning the hurricane humanitarian relief in Texas on loyalty to Israel and refusal to support the boycott of Israel has hit a raw nerve among liberals in the mainstream in the United States, with many, many liberal organizations going up in arms and condemning the lobby's corrupting influence in various state legislatures in the U.S. [See the Interview]  For some interesting perspectives on the BDS movement, read Jeremy Ben-Ami (Executive Director of J Street), "Penalizing BDS Is Un-American," The Forward; and "Anti-BDS Laws and Pro-Israeli Parliament: Zionist Hasbara Is Winning in Italy," by Romana Rubeo and Ramzy Baroud, Antiwar.com [November 17, 2017] [Link].

 

Palestinian rights make a rare appearance in Congress

By Samer Badawi, +972 Magazine [Israel] [November 15, 2017]

---- A first-of-its-kind bill introduced this week focusing on the rights of Palestinian children could pave the way for greater transparency and accountability in America's dealings with Israel.  Members of Congress on Tuesday introduced a bill requiring the U.S. Secretary of State to certify that funds bound for Israel "do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children."  … According to a statement issued yesterday by DCI-Palestine, in the West Bank alone, some 10,000 Palestinian children — defined as those between the ages of 12 and 17 — have been "subject to arrest, detention, interrogation, and/or imprisonment under the jurisdiction of Israeli military courts since 2000." And during Israel's 2014 war on Gaza, 535 Palestinian children were killed "as a direct result of Israeli attacks," according to a report posted on the organization's website. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

The Poet of Ill Tidings [Bertolt Brecht]

By Noah Isenberg, The Nation [November 15, 2017]

---- Although far better known internationally as a playwright than as a poet, Bertolt Brecht had a supreme gift for language. He applied much of the same plucky, rebellious spirit to his poems that he did to his world-class theater productions of the late Weimar years, which included The Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny … One shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Brecht wrote the majority of the poems in War Primer while exiled in the United States—a place that he'd once admired from afar during his Weimar years but that proved difficult for him to embrace. Unlike quite a few of his compatriots, who were enamored of the ocean breezes and lush vegetation, Brecht was no fan of Southern California. "Almost nowhere has my life ever been harder than here in this mausoleum of easy going," he wrote in his journal soon after his arrival. [Read More]

 

On the 800th Anniversary of the Charter of the Forest

By Peter Linebaugh, Counterpunch [November 20, 2017]

[A Keynote Address, Delivered in the State Rooms at the House of Commons, 7 November 2017.]

---- Two winds have propelled me here to you, to this House of Commons. One wind, a hurricane and diabalo, brought flood and fire threatening the destruction of petrochemial civilization, call it capitalism. Homelessness or prison accompany the wind from Detroit, Michigan, to Houston, Texas, from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean to northern California at the Pacific edge. A second gentler, softer wind, a zephyr, has renewed my spirit from the Lacandón jungle in Chiapas where the Zapatistas have vowed to protect the forest and reclaim the land, or from the Great Plains of the American continent where pipe lines of oil and gas endanger the pollution of land and the rivers.  Encampments of indigenous people and their allies by prayer and by protest have become, in their words, "water protectors." … So, propelled by these winds of disaster and memories of defense I have become one of the scholarly vectors of a planetary discussion of the commons that began before 6 November 1217 when the Charter of the Forest was sealed and has continued ever since.  We do that work again for commons of housing and health care for all as we commemorate the Charter of the Forest, the little companion to the bigger, Magna Carta. [Read More]