Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

March 6, 2017

Hello All – President Trump’s renewed executive order that bans immigrants from several Muslim countries sets the theme for this week’s newsletter.  In addition to an explanation of the order, today’s good/useful reading includes some interesting essays about the history and procedures of ICE and of the US Border Patrol, and some stimulating essays on the sanctuary movement (then and now) and the growing resistance to Trump’s immigration agenda on college campuses.  Perhaps we will be in for a warm/hot spring!

To protest once again against the Trump agenda and its ethnic cleansing program, please the CFOW stalwarts for our weekly pro-peace/anti-Trump vigil on Saturday, in Hastings, at the VFW Plaza, from 12 noon to 1 pm.  We’ll have some leaflets and good signs and banners, or bring something of your own!  Also this weekend, CFOW holds its monthly meeting on Sunday, March 13^th, at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 pm (sharp) to 9 pm (very sharp).  At our monthly meeting we review our work of the past month and make plans for what we’ll do next.  Everyone is welcome at these meetings!

This newsletter also focuses on the ominous situation on the Korean peninsula. President Trump is now considering several “options” presented to him by the Pentagon intended to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear and long-range missile programs.  As noted in the good/useful readings below, missing from these “options” is the suggestion of returning to negotiations, which were temporarily successful in the late 1990s.  Apparently, only an increase in economic sanctions or a resort to military action is among the paths under consideration. – How bad is this?  Very. In the near past, the erratic behavior of North Korea’s leader Kim Jun-Un was considered a significant problem. To this we now add the erratic Donald Trump; and did we mention that President Park of South Korea has been impeached, and the nation’s attorney general announced over the weekend that she would be indicted for receiving massive bribes? In other words, an historically difficult relationship is now under consideration by three crazed “world leaders.”  This is very dangerous.

Before moving on, we should note that Wednesday, March 8^th, is both International Women’s Day and the 100^th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.  In fact, the revolutionary events of that day were linked to Women’s Day protests about the price of bread.  For a brief, useful history of International Women’s Day, here is a Democracy Now! broadcast on the Day’s 100^th anniversary, while this article details some of the nationwide activities that will mark this year’s anniversary. And we will celebrate the centenary of the Russian Revolution with this short segment from Vsevold Pudovkin's 1927 film, The End of St. Petersburg.

CFOW Activities

We invite all newsletter readers to jjoin our new Google group. This is (so far) a low-traffic means for emergency mobilizations (e.g. for immigrant issues) or for short-notice alerts about meetings, etc.  If you would like to be on the group, click this link and follow the easy-to-follow instructions.

In addition to coming to Saturday’s vigil/rally in Hastings in opposition to Trump’s executive order about immigrants, please down load and distribute the legal defense for immigrants leaflets attached to this newsletter.

The committee to fight the Coast Guard’s proposal, on behalf of the oil industry and the maritime industries, to establish 43 “anchorages” in the Hudson River has gotten underway. If the fossil fools have their way, we could have 18 “long-term” anchorages off the shores of Hastings and Dobbs. The CFOW anti-anchorage committee plans to hold a forum on the issue in Hastings on May 7^th, with outreach and education between now and then.  If you would like to get involved in the efforts to Stop the Barges!, please email CFOW stalwart Deb Bobson [debbobson@aol.com].

The CFOW Healthcare Committee’s next meeting is on March 23rd, at the Hastings library, from 7 to 8:30 pm.  The work of the committee is focused on moving forward with “single-payer” or “improved Medicare for all,” as an alternative to the soon-to-be-announced Republican disaster to replace the deficient-but-better-than-nothing Affordable Care Act. (Democratic congressional staffers just issued a district-by-district report on what the end of the ACA would mean for residents of each congressional district.) For a good article about what “Medicare for all” would mean and how it would help bring our healthcare system in line with other “modern” countries, read Michelle Chen’s article, “Amid GOP Attacks on Health Care, the Movement for Single Payer Is Growing” [Corrected link]. Another good source is a report from the Physicians for a National Healthcare Program called “Single-payer reform is ‘the only way to fulfill the president’s pledge’ on health care: Annals of Internal Medicine commentary,” which points to a savings in administrative costs alone of $504 billion annually. If you would like to get involved in campaigning for “single payer,” or “improved Medicare for all,” please send a return email.

Although the Spectra pipeline is now under the River and on its way through northern Westchester, the fight isn’t over yet.  To keep up to date with the fight against the section “segment” of the pipeline – the Atlantic Bridge – check out the website of Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (www.sape2016.org) and SAPE’s Facebook page. There are two things you can do to help out.  1) Call the Commissioner Seggos of the NYS Dept of Environmental Conservation (518-402-8545) and ask that he reject the water permit for Spectra’s illegally segmented Atlantic Bridge pipeline project; 2) Sign this petition asking Governor Cuomo to reject the water permit for the Atlantic Bridge project.

Coming Attractions

Thursday, March 9^th – Derickson Lawrence and the Westchester County Homeowners Coalition will present a “Town Hall” on “Healthcare: What’s the Solution?”  It will take place at the Gatz Conference Center – Wartburg, One Wartburg Plaza in Mt. Vernon from 7 to 9 p.m.  To learn more and to register (required), go here.

Sunday, March 12^th – The Lower Hudson Valley Progressive Action Network (LHVPAN) will hold a community meeting at the Yonkers Riverfront Library, 1 Larkin Center, in Yonkers from 12:30 to 4:30.  To learn more about the event and to register to attend, go to their event page here.

Tuesday, March 14^th - Community Voices Heard, Westchester for Change, and Indivisible Westchester invite us to join in learning organizing skills to transform communities. Juanita Lewis, Hudson Valley Organizing Director of Community Voices Heard, and Stephanie Low, Consultant and Trainer with the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI), will train us in resisting bigotry, racism, misogyny and other forms of oppression. Dominant Narrative, Power, Self-Interest and One to One meetings will be the focus of the workshop.  The training will be held at the Yonkers Riverfront Library, 1 Larkin Center, in Yonkers, from 6 to 9 pm (5:30 for pizza). RSVP (required) at westchester4change@gmail.com.

Friday, March 24^th – There will be a screening of four short film segments from The Hudson: A River at Risk at the James Harmon Community Center, 44 Main St., starting at 6:30 pm. Filmmaker Jon Bowermaster will lead a community conversation on the proposed and current uses of the Hudson as a fossil fuel conduit, including the barges, pipelines and "bomb trains" along with representatives from Scenic Hudson and Riverkeeper. The event is free

Sunday, March 26^th – Hastings RISE (“Racial Inclusion and Social Equality”), a new organization that recently held an important rally in Hastings against “white supremacist” posters targeting young people, will hold its first big meeting at the Hastings library at 1:30 p.m.  The goal of the meeting is to start subcommittees and generate action. You can sign up for their Facebook page here.

Ongoing Activities – Our other local “Indivisible” organization is “Indivisible Westchester-Rivertowns,” which covers communities from Hastings and to Tarrytown.  To learn more about what they do, and/or to get involved, see their Facebook page.

Rewards!

For readers who have made it this far, here are some well-deserved rewards. If (as I suspect) Trump is searching for a “small” war to distract Americans from his collapsing regime, here and here and here are some short clips from the classical work on that subject, “Wag the Dog.”  For those looking for something completely different, here is some “soul and swing” from Ben Webster.  Enjoy!

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

FEATURED ESSAYS

Trump’s Obsession With Generals Could Send Us Straight Into War With Iran

By William D. Hartung, The Nation [March 6, 2017]

---- Given the way President Trump has outfitted his administration with generals, the already militarized nature of foreign policy is only likely to become more so. … Policy-by-general is sure to create a skewed view of policy-making, since everything is likely to be viewed initially through a military lens by men trained in war, not diplomacy or peace. For the military-industrial complex, however, many of Trump’s national-security picks are the best of news. [Read More]

How U.S. Support for Syrian Rebels Drove the Refugee Crisis That Trump Has Capitalized On

By Rania Khalek, AlterNet [March 1, 2017]

---- Many of Trump’s most high-profile liberal opponents have failed to articulate to the American public the political and historical context behind the crisis. The uncomfortable reality is that American wars of regime change in Iraq, Libya and Syria directly contributed to the growth of Al Qaeda and ISIS, sometimes intentionally, while spawning the worst refugee crisis since World War II. The resulting flood of refugees into Europe combined with the gruesome bloodletting by groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda has fueled anti-Muslim hatred—helped in no small part by a well-funded Islamophobia industry that seeks to conflate the actions of extremist groups with Muslims everywhere—and galvanized reactionary forces across the West.  [Read More]

Why the system will still win

By Perry Anderson, Le monde diplomatique [March 2, 2017]

[FB – Perry Anderson was for many years the editor of the important British publication New Left Review.  An historian and a prolific author, Anderson’s work can seem overwhelming in its erudition; but give it a try, it’s important stuff.]

---- The British referendum and the US election were anti-systemic convulsions of the right, though flanked by anti-systemic upsurges of the left (the Bernie Sanders movement in the US and the Corbyn phenomenon in the UK), smaller in scale, if still less expected. What the consequences of Trump or Brexit will be remain indeterminate, though no doubt more limited than current predictions. The established order is far from beaten in either country, and, as Greece has shown, is capable of absorbing and neutralising revolts from whatever direction with impressive speed. … For anti-systemic movements of the left in Europe, the lesson of recent years is clear. If they are not to go on being outpaced by movements of the right, they cannot afford to be less radical in attacking the system, and must be more coherent in their opposition to it. [Read More]

Remembering Selig Harrison

From Zoom in Korea [January 4, 2017]

[FB – In a newsletter that includes a focus on the latest iteration of the crisis on the Korean peninsula, a memoir about the late Selig Harrison is timely. A journalist and author, and a lifelong stalwart for peace and justice, Harrison played a particularly important role in bringing clarity to the ways forward to peace in Korea.  This short essay includes some remarks by Harrison’s son Cole, with whom I worked on a project about the war in Afghanistan some years ago.]

---- Journalist and scholar Selig Harrison, a staunch proponent of peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula, died at the age of 89 on Dec. 30, 2016. Harrison, who met with the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in 1994, urged President Obama at the start of his presidency in 2009 to declare his support for peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula and “set to rest North Korean fears that the United States will join the right-wing elements in Japan and South Korea now seeking reunification by promoting the collapse of the North Korean regime.” Today, as Obama leaves office after eight years of a failed policy that has brought North Korea closer to developing a deliverable nuclear weapon, Harrison’s words, delivered in a statement to a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, seem prescient– “If the United States is unwilling to give up the option of using nuclear weapons against North Korea, it will be necessary to live with a nuclear-armed North Korea while maintaining adequate U.S. deterrent forces in the Pacific.” [Read More]

The Debate about Trump, the Democrats, and Russia (Continued)

FB – The turmoil within the US political elite about Trump and his inner circle and their contacts with Russians before Trump’s inauguration continued last week.  The most important contribution to the debate was a long article called “Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War” be a trio of writers for The New Yorker [Link]. The article asked, “What lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election – and what lies ahead?”  Needless to say, the assumption that Russia interfered with the 2016 is at the heart of the matter, and hacking-skeptic Glenn Greenwald answered The New Yorker article in a strong essay in The Intercept called “The New Yorkers Big Cover Story Reveals Five Uncomfortable Truths About the US and Russia” [Link]. And another New Yorker article asks, “If these contacts were legal, why did Sessions lie about them?” All very interesting and – if/as it leads to increasing conflict with Russia – worrying. Also good this week:….

Democrats Now Demonize the Same Russia Policies that Obama Long Championed

By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept [March 6 2017]

---- The Democrats’ obsession with Russia has not just led them to want investigations into allegations of hacking and (thus far evidence-free) suspicions of Trump campaign collusion – investigations which everyone should want. It’s done far more than that: it’s turned them into increasingly maniacal and militaristic hawks – dangerous ones – when it comes to confronting the only nation with a larger nuclear stockpile than the U.S., an arsenal accompanied by a sense of fear, if not outright encirclement, from NATO expansion. Put another way, establishment Democrats – with a largely political impetus but now as a matter of conviction – have completely abandoned Obama’s accommodationist approach to Russia and have fully embraced the belligerent, hawkish mentality of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Bill Kristol, and the CIA. [Read More]

IMMIGRANTS & ETHNIC CLEANSING

FB – Today President Trump issued a revised executive order about immigrants and refugees.  Similar to the original order but slightly revised in the hope of avoiding being struck down again by the judiciary, the executive order temporarily bans travelers from several Muslim countries and prohibits entry by refugees from Syria for a limited time.  This useful article by scholar David Cole explains what’s new and – as a Muslim ban – what’s unconstitutional about Trump’s order.

Here’s the Reality About Illegal Immigrants in the United States

By Vivian Yee, et al., New York Times [March 6, 2017]

---- There are 11 million of them, the best estimates say, laboring in American fields, atop half-built towers and in restaurant kitchens, and swelling American classrooms, detention centers and immigration courts. In the public’s mind, the undocumented — the people living here without permission from the American government — are Hispanic, mostly Mexican and crossed the southwestern border in secret. In the eyes of their advocates, they are families and workers, taking the jobs nobody else wants, staying out of trouble, here only to earn their way to better, safer lives for themselves and their children. … Eleven million allows for considerable range, crosshatched with contradictions. [Read More]

“Bad Dudes”: Immigrants, Illegality, and Human Rights

By Julie Greene, Huffington Post [February 25, 2017]

---- On February 23rd, President Trump declared that his new immigration priorities would get the “really bad dudes out of this country.” By sweepingly associating immigrants who overstayed their visa or crossed the border improperly with criminal activity, the President built upon a long tradition in U.S. political culture.  … Forty some years of strategies to criminalize unauthorized immigration have made President Trump’s new regime possible. Now his policies will promote even more robustly the idea that illegality and unauthorized immigration cannot be separated from one another. Yet the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants are not criminals, nor are they “bad dudes.” By pulling the noose of criminality ever tighter around the necks of certain immigrants, the administration makes the human cost of a broken immigration system far greater, and far more difficult to fix. [Read More]

Also interesting/useful on the immigration crisis – Cora Currier, “The Long History of Deportation Scare Tactics at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” The Intercept [February 26 2017] [Link]' this (Video) Democracy Now! interview with Prof. Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Currier’s source for much of her article [Link]; a very interesting article about “Central Americans and Asylum Policy in the Reagan Era,” by Susan Gzesh, Migration Policy Institute [April 1, 2006] [Link]; “What Happens When the 'Bad Hombres' Are ICE Agents?” by Sandra Hernandez, Los Angeles Times [February 27, 2017] [Link]; and a report on a scary new data-collection program, “Palantir Provides the Engine for Donald Trump’s Deportation Machine,” by Spencer Woodman, The Intercept [March 2, 2017] [Link].

The Resistance Organizes, Fights Back

As Politicians Target Sanctuary Cities, Faith Communities and Campuses Seek to Become Refuges

By Rebekah Barber, Facing South [March 4, 2017]

---- Dating back thousands of years, the concept of sanctuary stems from the custom of offering hospitality to the stranger. In recent years, dozens of U.S. cities and counties became part of this tradition by adopting so-called "sanctuary policies" that bar local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. The policies aim to build safer communities by strengthening undocumented immigrants' trust in local police. Though the South has disproportionately fewer sanctuary communities compared to other regions, they include major cities like New Orleans and Austin, Texas. But these sanctuary policies are now under attack at the federal and state levels. [Read More] And for an interesting video about “sanctuary” in the 1980s and again now, go here.

From #SanctuaryCampus to a National Strike

By Rodrigo Saavedra, The Nation [March 6, 2017]

---- When DACA was announced in June 2012, my life changed dramatically. DACA meant I could finally work and pay to attend Clark University. It meant I could study abroad in Shanghai. These opportunities arose after years of organizing by students and activists who were tired of living in a country where they could not pursue their dreams. When Trump was elected, it meant the real possibility that DACA would be taken away—as he had promised on the campaign trail. … Now, one month into the new administration, Trump has passed executive orders making it easier for ICE agents to deport immigrants en masse. Agents have launched an onslaught of raids terrorizing immigrants across the country. They are waiting in vans outside immigrant churches for Sunday mass to let out. It’s clear that we have to take the fight beyond college campuses. But how? [Read More]

WAR WITH NORTH KOREA?

FB - On Saturday morning the leading story in The New York Times revealed that the Obama administration had been engaged in a prolonged cyberwar with North Korea. The target of US cyber attacks was the North Korean missile program, and the strategy was to disrupt attempts at launching missiles by hacking the computer launch systems.  The story went on to say that “experts” now doubted the efficacy of this strategy, because North Korea seemed to have been able to overcome US cyberwarfare, and their missiles were headed towards the capability of reaching California with a nuclear warhead. The alternative, “Plan B,” was an escalation of sanctions and possibly military attacks against North Korea until it abandoned its nuclear program and ceased testing long-range missiles. Needless to say, no one in the Pentagon or in Trump’s inner circle, or among North Korea “experts,” is concluding that negotiations might be called for.

As is so common, the Times article was largely stripped of context. Missing was the successful negotiations between the US and North Korea during the late 1990s and then the abandonment by the Bush administration of what had been agreed to.  Missing was the annual (and now ritualized) military provocations of the US-South Korean military exercises (practicing how to invade North Korea) and North Korea’s military counter-threats, all of which are now underway again.  Missing also was the US rush to install an advanced antimissile system in South Korea before the departure of its current (impeached) president, a system which is seen as a threat to China, with no relevance to the military capabilities of North Korean.  And, finally, also missing from the Times was the relation of the manufactured crisis between the US and North Korea to the larger issue of Trump’s strategies toward China, which he views as the main US rival today.

For dissenting insight and analysis, a useful place to look is the website "Zoom In Korea." Staffed by an assembly of established Korean analysts, Zoom in Korea offers a weekly email newsletter as well as the publications on its website. Below I’ve linked two recent articles that help frame what’s happening between the two Koreas, and between the United States and North Korea, and between China and the US. – For more historical perspective, the best (imo) writer on Korean history is Bruce Cumings.  His general history, Korea’s Place in the Sun, and his book of a decade ago, North Korea: Another Country, are both excellent.

Cops of the Pacific? The U.S. Military’s Role in Asia in the Age of Trump

By Tim Shorrock, [December 14, 2016]

---- Despite the attention being given to America’s roiling wars and conflicts in the Greater Middle East, crucial decisions about the global role of U.S. military power may be made in a region where, as yet, there are no hot wars: Asia. Donald Trump will arrive in the Oval Office in January at a moment when Pentagon preparations for a future U.S.-Japan-South Korean triangular military alliance, long in the planning stages, may have reached a crucial make-or-break moment. Whether those plans go forward and how the president-elect responds to them could help shape our world in crucial ways into the distant future. [Read More]

North Korea: Trump’s First Foreign Policy Test in Asia

By Hyun Lee February 15, 2017]

---- Trump’s new defense chief James Mattis hit the ground running, so to speak, and top on his agenda was meeting with his counterparts in South Korea and Japan. Just two weeks after being sworn in as Secretary of Defense, he was in South Korea, the initial stop on his first itinerary abroad, presumably to reassure the U.S.’ historical ally of the Pentagon’s continued commitment to the alliance between the two countries.  … As far as Asia is concerned, U.S.’ alliance with Japan, not South Korea, will likely be the anchor of Trump’s security policy in the region. Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe was the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his November election win and met him again this past weekend over a round of golf at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. So why, again, did Mattis cross the Pacific in such a hurry to visit Seoul? [Read More]

WAR & PEACE

Nuclear Midnight Is Closer Than Ever – So Where’s the Resistance?

By Allison McGillivray, Common Dreams [March 1, 2017]

---- I watched from the front gates of Vandenberg Air Force Base at 11:39 pm PDT on February 8, 2017 as a pencil-thin beam of light shot above the treeline and disappeared into the atmosphere. The United States had conducted the first test launch of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile under Trump’s administration. Windows rattled in neighboring towns. As I traveled the twenty miles back home, the missile met its target over 4,000 miles away. I considered the devastating power of the triadic warheads crowning the Minuteman III, a load total twenty times that of Little Boy which decimated Hiroshima. I considered Rick Perry’s nomination to oversee the nuclear stockpile as Energy Secretary despite his earlier stated desire to dismantle the department. I considered the readily displayed ignorance of our Commander-In-Chief regarding the US nuclear arsenal, his bullying arrogance in international diplomacy, and the xenophobic company he keeps. My head spun. [Read More]  Also informative is this New York Times editorial, “Why Mess With a Nuclear Treaty, Mr. Trump?” [March 6, 2017] [Link].

Trump’s Proposed Defense Splurge Flunks Basic Math

By Linda Bilmes, The Boston Globe [March 3, 2017]

---- The centerpiece of Trump’s proposals is a $54 billion bump in military spending. This is the amount that the Pentagon budget has allegedly lost due to budget caps Congress put in place back in 2011. But the Pentagon has bypassed those restrictions through a parallel budget called “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO). This fund, originally established to pay for post-9/11 war spending, has morphed into a slush fund. More than $400 billion in extra OCO money has been funneled to the military since 2011, much of it with little or no direct relationship to the wars. If you add OCO spending to the regular defense budget, the military is already funded at close to its highest level since World War II. [Read More]  For more bad news, read “McCain, Thornberry: Trump's Proposed Defense Spending Hike Not Enough,” from Stars and Stripes [February 28, 2017] [Link].

The War in Syria

Why Does the US Continue to Arm Terrorists in Syria?

By James Carden, The Nation [March 3, 2017]

---- Incredibly, after nearly six years of war, the US government continues to fund rebel groups that, far from being moderate, often subscribe to an Islamist ideology long funded and propagated by the Gulf State tyrannies Saudi Arabia and Qatar—with, in recent years, a healthy assist from Erdogan’s Turkey. … Tulsi Gabbard’s bill takes on an even greater urgency in light of recent events. Last Thursday UN-backed peace talks between representatives of the Syrian government and rebel factions resumed in Geneva, but progress, such as it was, stalled over the weekend when suicide bombers loyal to a the rebel alliance Tahrir al-Sham killed 42 people in the government-held Syrian city of Homs. [Read More]

The War in Afghanistan

Losing a War One Bad Metaphor at a Time: Thrashing About in the Afghan Petri Dish
By William J. Astore, Tom Dispatch [March 5, 2017]

---- America’s war in Afghanistan is now in its 16th year, the longest foreign war in our history.  The phrase “no end in sight” barely covers the situation.  Prospects of victory -- if victory is defined as eliminating that country as a haven for Islamist terrorists while creating a representative government in Kabul -- are arguably more tenuous today than at any point since the U.S. military invaded in 2001 and routed the Taliban.  Such “progress” has, over the years, invariably proven “fragile” and “reversible,” to use the weasel words of General David Petraeus who oversaw the Afghan “surge” of 2010-2011 under President Obama.  To cite just one recent data point: the Taliban now controls 15% more territory than it did in 2015. [Read More]

The War in Iraq

If this battle for Mosul ends in defeat for Isis, we shouldn’t feel too optimistic

By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [March 3, 2017]

---- Iraqi officials and officers announce only advances and victories, reports that often turn out to be premature or untrue. But there is no doubt that the Iraqi security services are winning the struggle for Mosul, though fighting could go on for a long time amid the close-packed buildings and narrow, twisting alleyways. …The crucial question concerns whether or not the fall of Mosul means the effective end of the caliphate declared by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The caliphate’s significance was that at one time it ruled territory with a population of five or six million people in Iraq and Syria, where it sought to establish a truly Islamic State. It is this dream – or nightmare – that is now being shattered. Isis may still control some territory in Iraq and more in Syria, but it has nothing like the human and material resources it enjoyed at the height of its power when it controlled territory stretching from the Iranian border almost to the Mediterranean coast. [Read More]

The War in Yemen

Downplaying US Contribution to Potential Yemen Famine

By Adam Johnson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [February 27, 2017]

---- For almost two years, the United States has backed—with weapons, logistics and political support—a Saudi-led war in Yemen that has left over 10,000 dead, 40,000 wounded, 2.5 million internally displaced, 2.2 million children suffering from malnutrition and over 90 percent of civilians in need of humanitarian aid. But missing from most of these reports is the role of the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia—whose two-year-long siege and bombing have left the country in ruins. … A first step to putting political pressure on Trump to mitigate the suffering in Yemen is for the US public to speak out about their government’s role—a condition unlikely to be met if corporate media never bother to mention it. [Read More]

CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING

Get Ready for the Trump Pipeline Boom

By Alexander Sammon, Mother Jones [March 1, 2017]

---- The rush to build massive pipelines began before the election of President Trump, spurred in part by Congress's repeal of a 40-year-old ban on oil exports in December 2015 (backed by then-President Barack Obama). Even before that decision, the United States was already the world's largest exporter of diesel, gasoline, and aviation fuel, and a net exporter of coal. With a glut of oil and gas discoveries in the Marcellus, Barnett, and Bakken shale formations, an increase in American large-scale fossil fuel production has long been in the works and is expected to flourish in the coming years. Pipeline construction will likely expand under President Trump's new infrastructure plan; maps of pending projects for crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids show just how extensive this development will be. And the rollback of environmental regulations will only encourage new construction. [Read More]

(Video) Trump’s Proposed EPA Cuts Threaten Health and Lives of Tens of Millions of Americans

From Democracy Now! [March 3, 2017]

---- New details have emerged on the Trump administration’s plans to dramatically reduce the power of the Environmental Protection Agency. According to a leaked copy of the EPA’s 2018 budget proposal, the agency’s overall budget would be slashed by 25 percent. "The bottom line, if these cuts go through, we can almost guarantee with certainty that there will be more premature deaths and more sicknesses throughout the country," says Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. "The public should be outraged at that." This comes as the Trump administration has vowed to roll back Obama-era EPA actions, and the White House continues to grapple with its position on the Paris climate agreement. We are also joined by Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. [See the Program]

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Our Political Economy Is Designed to Create Poverty and Inequality

By Dennis Kucinich, The Nation [March 6, 2017]

---- In America today there are tens of millions of people with a hard-luck story. Tens of millions out of work, in ill health, in search of affordable rent, having neither a place nor a home to call their own; millions of people for whom, as Langston Hughes put it, life “ain’t been no crystal stair.” No one who escapes such an environment physically or economically does it alone. There are teachers, coaches, doctors, lawyers, aunts, uncles, neighbors who appear as angels in our lives, who catch us when we are about to fall, who lift us up at the right moment, who show us a different path, who guide us in a new direction, who transport us to new possibilities, new futures. But for every person upon whom fortune smiles, opportunity calls, and destiny stirs, there are many others for whom the future is obscured, for whom society is harsh, punitive, and unwelcoming. [Read More]

Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think

By Ralph Nader, Common Dreams [March 2, 2017]

---- Back in Congress following February recess’s raucous town meetings, Republicans are shuddering. Instead of nearly empty auditoriums, where legislators’ staff often outnumber voters in attendance, meetings were packed with citizens determined to block the “take away” agenda of the Trump Republicans. It takes provocation for people to show up for face-to-face confrontations with their Senators or Representatives. So when out of touch politicians in safe electoral districts are seen attempting to take away people’s health insurance, social security benefits or other protections—watch out! … My estimate is that, apart from the huge demonstrations on January 21, 2017—the day after Donald Trump’s Inauguration—less than 200,000 people, showing up at Congressional town meetings or demonstrations, have changed the political atmosphere among 535 members of your Congress. It just took one week of a few riled up voters expressing the “enough is enough” fury of many more voters who for now are still a part of the “silent majority”. [Read More]

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

On Anti-Semitism, Israel, and the Palestinians: Speech to this year's J Street conference

By Bernie Sanders, Common Dreams [February 28, 2017]

---- This decades-long conflict has taken so much from so many. Nobody gains when Israel spends an enormous part of its budget on the military. Nobody gains when Gaza is obliterated and thousands are killed, wounded, or made homeless. … Our vision, a vision we must never lose sight of, is creating a Middle East where people come together in peace and democracy to create a region in which all people have a decent life. I understand that, given the realities of today, that vision appears distant and maybe even far-fetched. But it is a vision and a dream that we cannot afford to give up on. So what should we as progressives – American progressives, Israeli progressives and progressives globally -- demand of our governments in bringing this future about? [Read More]

Gaza 2017: Israeli Watchdog Can Already Start Collecting Evidence for Next Post-war Report

From Haaretz [Israel] [March 2017]

---- The daily hardships in Gaza are like a ticking bomb that could eventually push the Hamas government into a new clash with Israel. If that happens, Netanyahu and his ministers won’t be able to say they didn’t know. Many of the volatile elements that led Israel into war in the Gaza Strip in summer 2014, enumerated in the state comptroller’s report on Operation Protective Edge, are back in place in the spring of 2017. The report quotes warnings that the cabinet ministers heard from the coordinator of government activity in the territories, Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, and his successor, Maj. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai, in the year and a half before the war. Both warned of the implications of the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza and said the serious infrastructure problems there – problems with the water and electricity supply – very high unemployment levels and sense of being choked off could lead to a violent eruption.  [Read More]

OUR HISTORY

(Video) "Decade of Betrayal": How the U.S. Expelled Over a Half Million U.S. Citizens to Mexico in 1930s

From Democracy Now! [February 28, 2017]

---- This is not the first time people of Mexican descent have been demonized, accused of stealing jobs, and forced to leave the country. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, more than a million people residing in the United States were deported to Mexico—about 60 percent of them were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. … During the Great Depression, a period of vast unemployment and underemployment, at least over a million individuals, Mexican nationals and American citizens of Mexican descent, were swept up and expelled out of this country. And it covered the entire United States. From Alabama and Mississippi to Alaska, from Los Angeles to New York, this mass expulsion occurred, and of a population that included Mexican nationals, many of them that had lived in this country 20, 30 years, but increasingly important is the 60 percent or more of American citizens of Mexican descent. In other words, what occurred here was unconstitutional deportation. [See the Program]

Dorothea Lange’s Censored Photographs of the Japanese American Internment

By Linda Gordon, The Asia-Pacific Journal [February 2017]

---- Shortly after Franklin Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942, the War Location Authority hired photographer Dorothea Lange to document the process. I strongly suspect that whoever made the decision knew little about her previous work, but learned that she had worked for the federal government and that she lived in California, where most of the internees lived. She is now recognized as one of the greatest American documentary photographers, even a major influence on the very definition of documentary photography, but in 1942 very few knew her name. … Lange’s photographic critique is especially impressive given the political mood of the time--early 1942, just after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Hysterical fears of further Japanese attacks on the west coast of the US combined with a century of racism against Asians, including Chinese, Filipinos, Indians as well as Japanese, to create a situation in which, as Carey McWilliams, later to become the editor of The Nation, remarked, you could count on your fingers the number of "whites" who spoke publicly against sending Japanese-Americans to concentration camps. [Read More]