Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
July 8, 2018
Hello All – Intended to begin step-by-step negotiations to resolve differences between the United States and North Korea – and perhaps to head off a nuclear war – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's third visit to North Korea's capital did not go well, with North Korea accusing the United States of "robbery" and "gangster-like" demands. What is all this about? We hope to provide some clarity and context at a CFOW forum next Sunday, at the Hastings Community Center, starting at 2 p.m., when we present/hear from Korean expert Soobok Kim. Mr. Kim has made five visits to North Korea, and will be able to provide some perspectives sorely missing in our mainstream media.
This is very serious. Today's [UK] Financial Times headlines "Pompeo refuses sanctions relief as N Korea diplomacy hits roadblock." While details of what happened in North Korea are not available, the story suggests that preliminary discussion exposed two (at least) latent contradictions in the countries' negotiating positions. The first is that the United States will only remove economic sanctions after North Korea has complied with all of the US demands, rather than gradually, as step-by-step negotiations proceed. The second is that the United States and North Korea have different understanding of what "denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula means. For the United States, it means North Korea's "surrender" of its military defenses. For North Korea, it means that the United States must give security guarantees that it will not attack North Korea.
While these contradictions have been visible since Day One, US opponents of negotiating a diplomatic settlement with North Korea went on the offensive last week, adding further stress to the prospect of successful negotiations. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency apparently leaked a report to NBC, The Washington Post, and other cooperative news agencies that claimed that North Korea was insincere in its claims to be seeking peace, and was in fact continuing to enhance its nuclear program. As Korean expert Tim Shorrock explains in his article linked below ("War & Peace"), one wonders if the mainstream media is about to play the same role with pseudo-intelligence that it played in the run-up to the Iraq War. The Financial Times summarizes the prospects for the negotiations in this way: "Mr. Trump will probably maintain a positive spin on relations with Pyongyang in the run-up to the midterms, analysts say. There are, however, concerns that if Mr. Kim does not make concessions by then, Mr. Trump could return to considering military options on the peninsula." So we have been warned.
News Notes
On the day of President Trump's inauguration, January 20, 2017, police arrested 234 protesters and by-standers. Many were charged with felonies that carried sentences of up to 60 years in prison. Now, after an "epic failure to prove wrongdoing," all the charges have been dropped.
The New York Times recently published an interactive report showing that nearly a billion people in Asia would suffering under the impact of global warming. What caught my eye was that projections of "how emissions" or "low emissions" impacts showed that +/- 400 million people would suffer, depending on what we did now and in the near future. The lesson: climate chaos is inevitable, but hundreds of millions of people will be doomed sooner, depending on what we do now to stop global warming.
Surf's up, and in choosing a beach book, check out this suggested
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – CFOW holds a vigil/rally each Saturday at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring) from 12 to 1 p.m. Everyone invited; please join us!
Ongoing – Added to the Hastings farmers market on Saturdays is the opportunity to recycle food scraps, including meat and anything that was once alive, according to coordinator EZ. Look for the big bin at the market; and for more info email hastingscompost@gmail.com.
Sunday, July 15th – CFOW will host Korean expert Soobok Kim for a discussion about what's happening on the Korean peninsula. Soobok Kim is a South Korean army veteran and a member of Veterans for Peace. He has made five trips to North Korea, the most recent one in November 2107. The program will be at the Hastings Community Center, starting at 2 p.m.
Friday, July 27th – On the 65th anniversary of the Armistice of the Korean War, the Korean-American organization Nodutdol for Korean Community Development invites us to a teach-in/forum on the United States and the Korean peninsula, and what peace activists need to do now. At the Nodutdol office, 112 W. 27th St., 6th floor, NYC, starting at 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 5th – Please join us for our monthly CFOW meeting at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 p.m. Everyone is welcome at these meetings.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/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 rallies are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, 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. If you would like to make a financial contribution to our work, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
This Newsletter
Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned. Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media. In addition to the excellent "Featured Essays," I especially recommend the section of articles about our immigration disaster; an in-depth update on the background to the negotiations beginning now between the United States and North Korea; some articles that attempt to counter the mainstream media's misinformation about Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela; an interview with James Forman, Jr. the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his book "Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America"; and an insightful essay about the West Indian poet Aimé Césaire. Read on!
Rewards!
Devoted newsletter readers are encouraged to savor a Reward before plunging into the too-depressing news articles. This week's Rewards are taken from the play list of the TV series "Weeds." First up is the program's theme song, "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds. Next is "Terrible Things," by April Smith. And finally, here is/are The Be Good Tanyas with "Littlest Birds." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Real Border Security Comes From a Moral Foreign Policy
By Danny Glover and Rep. Ro Khanna, The Nation [July 6, 2018]
---- The horrific accounts of immigrant families being torn apart have inspired ordinary Americans to take to the streets, calling for an end to the Trump Administration's cruel detention policies. But while President Trump's recent actions have led to shockingly brutal child incarceration, mass arrests, and the criminalization of immigrants, the issues that push desperate migrants and refugees to our borders span many decades. Progressives must seize this historic moment to tackle the United States' long-dysfunctional relationship with its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors and build new, more perfect ties. [Read More]
(Video) From Geopolitical Conflict to Nuclear Abolition: A Talk by Noam Chomsky
From the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation NYC [July 7, 2018]
---- Acclaimed writer and activist Noam Chomsky delivered the keynote address "Fate of Humanity" as part of the program. Two Minutes to Midnight: How Do We Move from Geopolitical Conflict to Nuclear Abolition? Co-organized by the International Peace Bureau and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office. [See the Program]
'These Kids Are Watching Their Parents Die'
By Zoë Carpenter, The Nation [July 3, 2018]
---- Few states have been harder hit by these combined crises than West Virginia. The state has the highest rate of death by overdose, and of babies born dependent on drugs, in the United States. Each individual case of addiction is like a stone dropping into water, sending countless ripples outward through the wider community, disrupting families and straining public institutions that in many cases have already been weakened by years of disinvestment. There are 6,300 children in the foster-care system in West Virginia; nearly half were separated from their parents because of substance misuse. The secretary of the state's Department of Health and Human Resources has said that his agency has run out of homes in which to place these kids. A rising number of students at HJK have lost their parents, either to the prison system, overdose, or the haze of addiction, and many carry complex emotional needs with them into the classroom. [Read More]
More Devoted to Order Than to Justice
June 28, 2018]
---- Political moderates who counsel against confrontation and warn of incivility would abandon the tools that have changed America for the better. American politics is today a brutal boxing match of harassing confrontations. The disagreements renew two enduring questions: one philosophical, one historical. Is political harassment civil? And do the ugly political confrontations signal a sharp departure, or have they always existed in the United States of America? … Political confrontation and harassment is as civil as it is American. Evading confrontation as the children cry, as their oppressors cry for more cries, is as uncivil as it is un-American. Instead of encircling political confrontation and harassment in incivility, we should be recognizing the dividing line in American politics—a line that has continuously changed American history for better or worse, always to the chagrin of the gradual or do-nothing moderate Americans. The dividing line in American politics is constructive or destructive political confrontation and harassment. Today moderates are again whiting out this dividing line, and instead drawing a line between uncivil harassers and civil unifiers. [Read More]
IMMIGRATION CRISIS & BORDER CHAOS
Indefinite Detention of Migrants Violates International Law
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [July 6, 2018]
---- Pursuant to its "zero-tolerance" policy, the Trump administration separated some 2,300 migrant children from their parents at the US-Mexico border since May 5, 2018. Widespread international condemnation ensued. On June 26, a federal judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunite the families and established a timetable for reunification. On June 29, the Department of Justice filed a notice of compliance with the court order, but indicated its intention to indefinitely detain families together. Indefinite detention violates international law. "The Government will not separate families but detain families together during the pendency of immigration proceedings when they are apprehended at or between ports of entry," the Justice Department wrote in its notice of compliance. That would amount to indefinite detention as immigration cases can last for months or even years. A 1997 settlement called the Flores agreement requires that detained immigrant children be released after 20 days. In its notice of compliance, the Justice Department asked the court to modify the Flores agreement to allow indefinite detention of migrants. Meanwhile, on July 2, a federal judge in Washington ordered the government to give asylum applicants a meaningful opportunity to be released. More than 1,000 applicants have been incarcerated for months or years with no resolution of their cases. Indefinite detention violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. [Read More]
(Video) From Separating Families to Jailing Asylum Seekers, Trump Admin Accused of Criminalizing Migration
From Democracy Now! [July 5, 2018]
---- The Department of Health and Human Services still has not disclosed how many migrant children they are holding who have been separated from their parents at the border. Last week, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said 2,047 separated minors were still in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. But the department has refused to give updated numbers, even though the Trump administration is facing a July 10 court-imposed deadline to reunite all separated children under the age of 5 with their parents. Meanwhile, CNN is reporting the Department of Homeland Security has been taking DNA samples of immigrant children. Immigration officials have reportedly been swabbing DNA from the cheeks of children as young as 2 months old, without consent, ostensibly in a bid to later reunite children with their parents. Rights groups have condemned the move, saying it could allow the federal government to track young immigrants for the rest of their lives. We speak with Linda Rivas, executive director and lead attorney of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, an organization working with asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border. [See the Program]
(Video) Concentration Camps in the U.S.: Andrea Pitzer Decries Tent Cities for Detaining Kids Without Trial
From Democracy Now! [July 5, 2018]
---- Has the Trump administration set up concentration camps in Texas for migrants? The answer is yes, according to at least one expert: Andrea Pitzer, the author of "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps." In one of her latest articles, Pitzer writes, "While writing a book on camp history, I defined concentration camps as the mass detention of civilians without trial, usually on the basis of race, religion, national origin, citizenship, or political party, rather than anything a given individual has done. By this definition, the new child camp established in Tornillo, Texas, is a concentration camp." We speak with Andrea Pitzer in Washington, D.C. [See the Program]
Also useful/illuminating on the crisis – Julia Conway, "Outrage Grows as Trump Official Complains Deadline for Putting Kids Back in Parents' Arms Too "Extreme," Common Dreams [July 6, 2018] [Link]; Somil Trivedi, "The Family Separation Crisis Exposes America's Addiction to Incarceration," [Link]; Edward Murphy, "Immigration Enforcement Unbound," NACLA [North American Committee on Latin America], Part 1 and [Part 2]; Gus Bova, "The Trump Administration's Own Numbers Show "Zero Tolerance" Didn't Work," The Texas Observer [July 7, 2018] [Link];
WAR & PEACE
How Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons Changed the World
By Ray Acheson, The Nation [July 6, 2018]
---- On July 7, 2017, the world made history. Surrounded by atomic-bomb survivors, antinuclear activists, members of the Red Cross, and UN officials, 122 governments adopted a new international law banning nuclear weapons. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) outlaws all nuclear weapon-related activities, sets out measures for disarmament, addresses victim assistance and environmental remediation, demands that women play an equal role in arms reduction, and acknowledges the disproportionate impact these weapons have had on women and indigenous peoples. Its adoption was groundbreaking. As Setsuko Thurlow, atomic-bomb survivor from Hiroshima, said in her concluding remarks, "This is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons." … On the one-year anniversary of the TPNW's adoption, there is time for celebration but not self-congratulation. Just like the critics warned, this treaty has not magically eliminated nuclear weapons. But we always knew it would be difficult to eliminate nuclear weapons, and, after just one year, the treaty is showing results. [Read More]
Despite Anonymous Carping, US–North Korea Talks Continue
By Tim Shorrock, The Nation [July 3, 2018]
---- North Korea, according to three NBC reporters and "more than a dozen" unnamed US officials familiar with the new assessment, has reportedly increased production of fuel for its nuclear weapons "at multiple secret sites" and "may try to hide those facilities" in its upcoming talks with the Trump administration. NBC's exclusive was quickly updated by The Washington Post, first under the provocative headline "North Korea plotting to deceive U.S. on nuclear program" on its opening page. … The dueling accounts were reminiscent of the role played by the US media in the lead-up to the Iraq War, when anonymous intelligence experts quoted by The New York Times and elsewhere helped build the case for a US invasion. And for NBC, the story was a continuation of the extremely alarmist style of reporting about Kim Jong-un it has adopted since the latest North Korea crisis began in the spring of 2017. Moreover, given the widespread acceptance of the leaked intelligence report, the DIA's sinister conclusions indicated that the stories were a clear attempt by anonymous officials in Washington to derail a negotiating process they fundamentally disagree with. Another motivation may have been to persuade the public that Kim has already broken the terms of the broad and somewhat vague agreement he signed with President Trump in Singapore on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. If that's the case, both the intelligence leakers and their media enablers could be deliberately deceiving the public about the actual status of the US–North Korea talks. They are set to begin shortly after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visits Pyongyang for the third time on July 5. [Read More]
Our Country, Our Stories: In New Memoirs, Syrians Describe Life — and Death — in Wartime
By Maryam Saleh, The Intercept [
---- The war in Syria, now in its eighth year, has been punctuated by a series of grisly massacres — so many that it has become nearly impossible to keep track. But the massacre of August 21, 2013, the day that Bashar al-Assad's regime unleashed sarin gas on the suburbs of Damascus, is one that will not easily be forgotten. For those following the geopolitics, it is the day that the Syrian dictator crossed President Barack Obama's infamous "red line." For the families of the upward of 1,000 people who died a bloodless but painful death, it was a day of darkness and mourning. For Kassem Eid, it was the day he died and was born anew. In his new book, "My Country: A Syrian Memoir," Eid, a Palestinian-Syrian activist from the Damascus suburb of Moadamiya, describes waking up that August morning. "My eyes were burning, my head was throbbing, and my throat was rasping for air. I was suffocating," he writes, painting a scene of an experience that is too often debated in the abstract. "Suddenly my windpipe opened again. The air ripped through my throat and pierced my lungs. Invisible needles stabbed my eyes. A searing pain clawed at my stomach." A few hours later, he awoke again — on the ground of a field hospital, where he learned he had been counted among the dead. [Read More]
Promoting Some Understanding of Latin America
(Video) Mexico's Leftist President-elect AMLO Promises Sweeping Changes on Corruption, Poverty, Drug War
From Democracy Now! [July 3, 2018]
---- In a landslide, voters have elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador to be Mexico's next president. The former mayor of Mexico City—who is known as AMLO—will become Mexico's first leftist president in decades. On Monday, López Obrador and President Donald Trump discussed immigration and trade in a phone call. Trump called on Mexico's president-elect to collaborate on border security and NAFTA, telling reporters, "I think he's going to try and help us with the border. We have unbelievably bad border laws, immigration laws, the weakest in the world, laughed at by everybody in the world. And Mexico has very strong immigration laws, so they can help us." We speak with John Ackerman and Irma Sandoval in Mexico City. Irma Sandoval is a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Corruption at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is set to become comptroller general in President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador's government. John Ackerman is the editor of the Mexican Law Review and a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is also a columnist for Proceso magazine and La Jornada newspaper. [See the Program]
Understanding the Conflict in Nicaragua: the Long Battle Against US Imperialism
---- As of June 28, the death toll in Nicaragua has reached 285, with more than 1,500 wounded. The country is divided, trying to make sense of the violence and the political climate that surrounds it. In the United States, making sense of the current narrative is nearly impossible. It seems that there is one narrative passing through the mainstream news cycle on repeat like an echo chamber. According to this narrative, President Daniel Ortega is authoritarian. He cut pensions. People protested. Ortega responded violently, killing still climbing numbers of protestors. Ortega must go, and the United States must support him, in the name of democracy. But reality is rarely that simple. This article is not a defense of the Ortega administration. It does not seek to condone or overlook the recent deaths. It is an attempt from one human being to another to push against the walls of this echo chamber and give historical context to the current conflict. [Read More] Also useful is "What's Happening In Nicaragua?," a report from the Task Force on the Americas [July 4, 2018] [Link].
Why Venezuela Reporting Is So Bad
By Joe Emersberger, Venezuelanalysis [July 2014]
[FB – This is a review Alan MacLeod's book Bad News From Venezuela. This website is the go-to place for reliable information about Venezuela.]
---- For almost 20 years, the US government has been trying to overthrow Venezuela's government, and establishment media outlets (state, corporate and some nonprofit) throughout the Americas and Europe have been bending over backwards to help the US do it. Rare exceptions to this over the last two decades would be found in the state media in some countries that are not hostile to Venezuela, like the ALBA block. Small independent outlets like VenezuelAnalysis.com also offered alternatives. In the US and UK establishment media, you are way more likely to see a defense of Saudi Arabia's dictatorship than of Venezuela's democratically elected government. Any defense of Venezuela's government will provoke vilification and ridicule, so both Alan MacLeod and his publisher deserve very high praise for producing the book Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting. It took real political courage. [Read More] Also illuminating is "Trump Pressed Aides On Venezuela Invasion, US Official Says," by Joshua Goodman, Apnews.com [July 5, 2018] [Link].
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
'A Good Day To Protect The Things You Love': Anti-Pipeline Climbers Block Trans Mountain Oil Tanker
By July 5, 2018]
---- As green groups and Indigenous leaders continue to raise alarm about the ecological and economic threats of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project—which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced the government is taking over after protests led Kinder Morgan to halt construction—12 activists on Tuesday launched an aerial blockade at the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge in Vancouver to stop an oil tanker from leaving the pipeline's terminal. Opponents of the expansion project are especially concerned that, if completed, it would trigger a nearly seven-fold increase in the number of tar sands tankers that depart from the company's terminal in Burnaby, British Columbia, increasing the risk of a major oil spill and degrading marine conditions along the "tanker superhighway." [Read More]
Young Leftist Candidates Are Breathing New Radicalism Into Stale Climate Politics
By Kate Aronoff, The Intercept [
---- Climate change hasn't been a big part of the conversation about the blue wave. But if it's successful, and the party finds itself with enough seats to push through ambitious legislation next January, what to date have been seen as minor differences between Democrats on climate could become the grounds for legislative battles. That is, if Ocasio-Cortez's election marks a new era for the Democratic Party, what will that mean for its climate politics? After all, there's a lot of room for Ocasio-Cortez to maneuver in the space that opens up when Bloomberg suggests the government deal with some companies like this: "Put them out of business by driving down demand, through taxes that address their true societal cost, regulations that mitigate the harm they cause, and public awareness advertising that makes plain the dangers they pose." While there's been ample attention paid to insurgent candidates' bold stances on "Medicare for All" and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, no natural analog has emerged when it comes to preventing the potential end of human civilization. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Democracy Dies in the Blinding Light of Day
By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept [July 4, 2018]
---- A new book by Cambridge University professor David Runciman, provocatively titled "How Democracy Ends," charts a number of trends in the United States and Europe that he believes foretell the approaching end of democracy as we know it. Among the threats we face are global problems like climate change and inequality, which our dysfunctional democratic systems have proven incapable of responding to. Yet the end of democracy does not mean a return to any recognizable, pre-democratic past. Unlike many other gloomy predictions of democracy giving way to something like 1930s European fascism, Runciman argues that the unique nature of our modern societies means that, if the end comes, it will happen in a much more subtle way. Rather than a military coup d'état or the unilateral annulment of a vote by a strongman, in the West, democracy is more likely to simply fracture and fizzle out over time. As our political institutions become less and less able to deliver meaningful results and the speed of technological change continues to warp and remake society, democracy could effectively die while continuing to appear alive for years to come. [Read More]
The Politics of Poverty in America
---- This summer, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston presented his observations on the state of international poverty to the UN Human Rights Council. The country at the center of his most recent report wasn't a developing one — it was the United States. In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Alston found, many Americans live without access to water and public sewage services. More alarmingly, at a time when 40 million Americans live in poverty — including over 5 million experiencing "developing world" levels of poverty — congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are jeopardizing access to the social safety net for millions, the report concluded. [Read More] For an interesting alternative, read "Trump Should Just Give People Money," by Annie Lowrey, New York Times [July 7, 2018] [Link].
(Video) James Forman Jr. on "Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America"
From Democracy Now! [July 4, 2018]
---- Yale University law professor and writer James Forman Jr. won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category for his new book, "Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America." The prize committee praised the book for its "examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color." Forman is the son of civil rights activists James Forman Sr. and Constancia Romilly, who met in the 1960s while organizing with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. [See the Program]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Khan al-Ahmar: Protests and condemnation as Israel moves to demolish Bedouin village
From Middle East Eye [July 5, 2018]
---- Israel faced mounting international condemnation on Thursday as its security forces continued preparations to demolish the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank. Residents and activists climbed onto bulldozers on Wednesday and waved Palestinian flags in a bid to stop the demolition. Videos and photos showed Israeli security forces dragging protesters and residents away. In a statement posted on Twitter, the office of Nikolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said that the proposed demolition was contrary to international law and urged Israel to stop. The European Union also condemned Israel's actions in a statement on Thursday. It said Israel's actions and its plans to build more illegal settlements in the same area undermined hopes for a two-state solution and a viable peace. [Read More] For some more background on this atrocity, read "Israeli demolition of entire Palestinian village days away, villagers fear," from +972 Magazine [Israel] [July 1, 2018] [Link]; a petition from the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem can be signed here.
Israel Banned Me For Documenting The Occupation
July 3, 2018]
---- "What Palestinians do you know? Let me see the contacts in your phone. Who gave you a visa to be here?" the police woman demanded. "Your government gave it to me," I replied. "The Israel consulate in New York City." This was round three of questioning in the Ben Gurion airport as I was attempting to enter Israel. About two hours later, I was informed that my visa was being revoked and I was being placed on a flight back to New York City. Two Ministers — Gilad Erdan, the Minister of Internal Security, and Aryeh Deri, the Minister of the Interior — were involved in the decision not to let me, an American Jewish woman, enter the country. Erdan charged me with being a BDS activist. "Gold distributed videos on social networks, in which she harasses IDF soldiers and Border Police officers in Hebron, accusing the soldiers of apartheid and oppression, and that their actions do not conform to Jewish values," he said. And Deri said that he was again using his "authority to prevent the entry into Israel of a woman who came to act against Israel and call for its boycott." [Read More]
A Lab and a Showroom; The Israeli Military Industries and the Oppression of the Great March of Return in Gaza
From the Coalition of Women for Peace, [June 2018]
[FB – Israeli industries include world-leading manufacturers of equipment used by police and governments to oppress subject and/or disruptive peoples. Operations in the West Bank and Gaza function as sales pitches to governments/would-be buyers for what works to suppress dissent and armed/unarmed opposition. This detailed report is very interesting.]
OUR HISTORY
At the Living Heart: Translating Aimé Césaire.
By David B. Hobbs, The Nation [July 3, 2018]
[FB – Some of the groundwork for the post-World War II colonial liberation movements was laid in the pre-war period by colonial intellectuals, among them the Martinique poet and political leader Aime Césaire. Césaire and other intellectuals developed the concept of "negritude" in an attempt to define the unifying culture and experience of the African diaspora and Africa itself. This article is a useful introduction to this immense intellectual effort that had a profound effect on world history.]
---- Aimé Césaire was one of the foremost French poets of the 20th century. He was also one of the foremost leftists on his home island of Martinique and in the French National Assembly. … Although Césaire published eight books of poetry and several plays, his artistic legacy continues to be defined by Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal. First appearing in 1939, in the avant-garde magazine Volontés, this modernist epic narrates an unfolding personal and political crisis: Its speaker is returning to the Antilles from France with an intense awareness of how colonialism has not only damaged his home but also infiltrated his sense of history, geography, and language. … Defining "negritude" outside of this passage, however, is more difficult, and yet it brings us closer to understanding how these new translations can illuminate current debates in black ontology and cultural criticism. [Read More]
