Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
October 28, 2018
Hello All – Saturday's massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh was the 294th mass shooting in 2018. Its horror is compounded by it being an expressly anti-Semitic attack, as the shooter sought out Jews to kill. Coming just one day after the arrest of a Trump supporter who had mailed bombs to a dozen people on Trump's rhetorical enemies list, the synagogue massacre piles more madness on our nation's weary shoulders. Anger, fear, and despair engulf us.
Gun violence in the USA is simply astonishing. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 47,000 gun "incidents" and 12,025 deaths by gunfire this year. As of 7 p.m., there were 6 deaths and 31 people wounded. There are also about 25,000 suicides by gun each year; these deaths are not included in statistics such as those above. As is common, the synagogue shooter used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, one of the 21 guns that he owned. The shooter had no significant criminal record, nor had he ever been judged mentally impaired; he could buy all the guns he could afford. The fact that he spewed anti-Jewish hatred all over the place did not and would not bar him from being locked and loaded. This is crazy.
The mail-bomber self-identified as an avid Trump supporter. His tweets and posts and van stickers reflected the broad arc of Trump's nationalism. This is quite common; one study found that one out of five hate crimes between November 2016 and November 2017 were committed by people referencing a Trump slogan or policy theme. A study published this week lists and describes many hate criminals and crimes that were congruent with Trump's rhetoric or targets. Though not all of Trump supporters are crazed and violent, America has its share of these people. A useful study from last summer found that more than 5 percent of the USA's 198 million "non-Hispanic whites" "have beliefs consistent with the alt-right's world view." A Washington Post/ABC poll from last August found that 9 percent of Americans – about 22 million people – said that holding neo-Nazi or white supremacist views is "acceptable." More generally, during the Republican primaries Trump sustained a margin of 40-50 percent of support by Republican voters, i.e., about 15 percent of the electorate. This is about the same level of support that neo-fascist parties receive in multi-party elections in Europe. The "fascist" base, from which mail bombers and synagogue shooters is drawn, though far from a majority, is a significant minority in our country.
Anti-Semitism is alive and well within this fascist base. Recall that during the neo-Nazi marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, two years ago, one of the chants was "You will not replace us/Jews will not replace us." To me, at that time, this seemed utterly bizarre. Since that time I/we have become more aware of the persistence of the anti-Semitic ideological strand within the mix of slogans and beliefs that constitute the worldview of today's "neo-fascists." One response to this reminder of the persistence of anti-Semitism was addressed today in an essay by Westchester's Robert Herbst, with which I will conclude these thoughts. "My fear," he writes, "is that this incident will increase our communal sense of victimhood, the fear and trauma of which has, for the last 70 years, prevented us from seeing in our Semitic brothers and sisters – the Palestinians – potential partners in the Holy Land. In the wake of Pittsburgh, there is no Jewish future in turning inward, either physically, spiritually, or politically, here in the United States, or in the Middle East. The insecurities of the nation and world we have made and live in since the Second World War are widely shared by all except those who have accumulated the money and power to escape them. Rather than locking ourselves away, it is to the Others we must turn – white, black and brown, Christian and Muslim, poor, working and middle class – if we are to have any hope of Tikkun Olam."
News Notes
For several years, people from Westchester and elsewhere fought to stop construction of the Spectra/AIM pipeline. The contested segment of the massive 42" gas pipeline has now been completed, passing within 100 feet of the Indian Point nuclear reactor. In several actions, groups of stalwarts attempted to physically block construction of the pipeline. They were arrested and their cases have been concluded. This past week saw the final court hearing, this one of three people who crawled inside the pipeline, thus stopping construction for a day. For the first time in this series of trials, the judge (a new one) has allowed the protesters to argue the "necessity defense" – that their action was justified in order to prevent a greater harm. The judge will issue her verdict on January 8, 2019; if she finds in favor of defense – in favor of the "necessity defense" – this will be the first such victory and could have implications for communities trying to stop fossil fuel pipelines across the country. For more information and for some good pictures by Erik McGregor, go here.
Now underway is "Trident Juncture," NATO military maneuvers in northern Europe that are a rehearsal for war against Russia. These are the largest military exercises since the end of the Cold War, involving 50,000 troops from 29 countries. Haven't heard about this? Although "Trident Juncture" has had extensive (and enthusiastic) coverage in military publications, I can find no reporting about it in any of the mainstream media. But now you can read about it here.
The Cook Political Report is a user-friendly source for polls and analysis about how congressional and other political contests are going. A report published the day before the mail bombs and before yesterday's synagogue shooting finds Trump's approval ratings edging up. A report published earlier this week finds the Democrats likely to end up with a majority in the House of Representatives, but less likely than was previously thought to win control of the Senate. I think it likely that we will see lots of post-election legal and other conflicts, with perhaps the balance of power/control of Congress hanging in limbo.
On Thursday seven peace stalwarts were arrested at Creech AFB in Nevada, where they were protesting USA drone warfare. Creech AFB is where some of the operators are based who pilot the remote-controlled drones used to kill people in Afghanistan. For more on this action, go here. To learn more about drone warfare and the anti-drone protests in the USA, go to www.knowdrones.com, operating by Hastings' own Nick Mottern.
Oops. Hurricane Michael, perhaps a product of the Chinese-inspired hoax called global warming, damaged $6 billion worth of F-22 stealth fighters at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Democracy Now! has the story here.
Finally, the New York Times reports that Todd Bol died recently at the age of 62. Bol was the initiator of the "Little Free Library" boxes that you may have seen around; I believe there is one on the Aqueduct path in Hastings. Beginning nine years ago in Wisconsin, Bol constructed doll-house-sized structures to be placed in public areas and used for book exchanges. Today it is estimated that there are some 75,000 "little free libraries" around the world, in all 50 states and 88 countries. A good idea gone viral. RIP Todd Bol, and thanks.
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!
Sunday, November 11th – [Note change of date] - CFOW's monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m. At these meetings we review our work over the past months and make plans for what's coming next. Everyone is welcome at these meetings!
Sunday, November 11th – CFOW favorites Hudson Valley Sally, along with CFOW stalwart Jenny Murphy, will be performing at the Society for Ethical Culture, 4450 Fieldston Rd. in Riverdale, from 3 to 5 p.m. Suggested donation is $15. To check out Hudson Valley Sally, go here.
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 several articles on Trump's withdrawal from the "Intermediate Nuclear Force" Treaty (very important); two good essays on the potential for a shake-up of the US-Saudi relationship in the wake of the Khashoggi murder; an in-depth look at the apparently endless imprisoning of people in Guantanamo; some good essays on voter suppression, especially in Georgia; and excellent essays ("Our History") on Frederick Douglass and on the 20th century history of White Supremacy. Read on!
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 (usually) 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 support our work financially, please end a check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
This week's rewards are some favorites from Phil Ochs. First up is "The War is Over" ["So do your duty, boys, and join with pride/ Serve your country in her suicide/ Find a flag so you can wave goodbye/ But just before the end even treason might be worth a try/ This country is too young to die."] And I also like "When I'm Gone" ["Can't add my name into the fight while I'm gone/ So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here."] Enjoy!
Best Wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Bernie Sanders: We Must Stop Helping Saudi Arabia in Yemen
By Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York Times [October 24, 2018]
---- The United States is deeply engaged in this war. We are providing bombs the Saudi-led coalition is using, we are refueling their planes before they drop those bombs, and we are assisting with intelligence. In far too many cases, the bomb's targets have been civilian ones. In one of the more horrible recent instances, an American-made bomb obliterated a school bus full of young boys, killing dozens and wounding many more. A CNN report found evidence that American weapons have been used in a string of such deadly attacks on civilians since the war began. Yet last month, responding to congressional concerns, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially certified to Congress — and Secretary of Defense James Mattis affirmed — that the Saudis and Emiratis are making "every effort to reduce the risk of civilian casualties." … People inside the administration understand these facts. Several days after Mr. Pompeo issued the certification, The Wall Street Journal reported that he had overruled the State Department's own regional and military experts, siding instead with members of his legislative affairs staff who argued that not certifying could endanger United States arms sales to the Saudis and Emiratis. President Trump himself echoed this logic when asked about the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, claiming that the Saudis are spending "$110 billion" on military equipment. [Read More] Also very useful/important is "Congress must end U.S. military aid to Saudi war in Yemen," b[Link].
A Letter to Brazil, From a Friend Living Under Duterte
By Walden Bello, The Nation [October 25, 2018]
---- I think it's no exaggeration to say that the fate of Brazil hangs in the balance. It's also hardly hyperbole to assert that the election will have massive geopolitical significance, since if Brazil votes for Jair Bolsonaro, the extreme right will have come to power in the Western Hemisphere's two biggest countries. Like many of you, I'm hoping for a miracle that will prevent Bolsonaro from coming to power. … It's amazing to many of us here in the Philippines how similar Bolsonaro is to our president, Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte has spoken about how he wished he'd raped a dead female missionary. Bolsonaro told a fellow member of parliament that she didn't deserve to be raped by him. Duterte has spoken in admiration of our dead dictator Ferdinand Marcos and decreed his burial at our heroes' cemetery. Bolsonaro has depicted the military rule in Brazil over three decades ago as a golden age. … One cannot explain the emergence of Duterte without taking into account the terrible disappointment with the record of the liberal democratic republic that came into existence with the ouster of Marcos in 1986. A deadly stranglehold on the democratic process came about owing to several developments. [Read More] I found this article, about the most radical region of Brazil, very interesting: "Brazil's Northeastern Resistance," by Kaspar Loftin, The Nation [October 24, 2018] [Link]. A New York Times overview on today's election can be found here.
If You Build a Left Movement, the Candidates Will Come
By Gary Younge, The Nation [October 26, 2018]
---- The indecent haste with which the punditocracy moves from horse race to horse race, obsessed by who will win rather than what will change, is infuriating but hardly new. The credulousness that allows so many progressives to be distracted by that obsession is equally familiar but more frustrating. … At the best of times, this can be written off as the kind of irritating obstacle that we simply have to navigate and negotiate: meeting people where they are in the hope that you might persuade them to go to a better place. The trouble with this approach is twofold. First, these are not the best of times. … The second problem is that concentrating on candidates and their personal qualities in this moment is no longer meeting people where they are. … The fact that the Democrats have not yet decided on the "who" shouldn't concern us. If progressives keep on building movements and making compelling arguments, an electoral champion will emerge who is willing to embrace them. What is far more urgent at this moment is the "what" and the "why." If the left wants people to turn out, it has to stand for something more than power; and if it wants to prevail, it has to do more than simply hang on to that power once it's achieved. [Read More]
Debora Barrios-Vasquez Took Sanctuary in a Manhattan Church to Avoid Deportation. Then she wrote a play about it—and gave the story a happier ending.
By Laura Gottesdiener, The Nation [October 22, 2018]
---- It was the first day of rehearsal for Barrios-Vasquez's debut production, which she was preparing to mount inside the church that has become her temporary home. Nearly two months earlier, under threat of deportation to Guatemala, Barrios-Vasquez had taken refuge at St. Paul and St. Andrew as she continued to fight for asylum. It was the height of the family-separation crisis and, to Barrios-Vasquez, deportation represented not only a risk to her own life, but also thousands of miles of distance between her and her 10-year-old son, a US citizen who was desperate to stay in the only country he's ever known. By taking refuge in the church, Barrios-Vasquez has become part of a growing number of undocumented immigrants who have sought physical sanctuary inside religious institutions across the United States, even as they know full well that the cost of safety is self-imprisonment. But if the church walls have offered Barrios-Vasqueza a fraught form of protection, it's inside the church's small theater—just down the hall from her temporary bedroom—that she has also found mental and emotional refuge, full of laughter, distraction, and an alternative reality that she has the unique power to create. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
A Chance for the US to Distance Itself From Saudi Arabia
By Gareth Porter, Middle East Eye [October 25, 2018]
---- The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi now seems very likely to prompt Congress to impose some sanctions on the Saudi government, and it may finally act to end the active US role in the Saudi-UAE war on Yemen. Perhaps more significantly, some senior Democratic Party figures in Congress have called for the first serious reconsideration of the whole US-Saudi "special relationship", citing the need for fundamental changes in the relationship. Such a critical reappraisal is long overdue. For decades the United States has been providing political-diplomatic cover for Saudi policies that have caused far more disastrous consequences for the United States and for the entire Middle East than any of the countries that Washington has designated as "adversaries". More than any other American ally, the way Saudi Arabia operates is completely at odds with the values the US professes to champion and embody. … The US alliance with Saudi Arabia must be understood not in terms of normal geopolitical interest but in terms of the bureaucratic interests of the CIA and the Pentagon, which have dovetailed well with those of the House of Saud. [Read More] Also useful/illuminating is "The Khashoggi Affair and the Future of Saudi Arabia," by Daniel Lazare, Consortium News [October 25, 2018] [Link].
Donald Trump's actions in the Middle East will damage his position far more than the Russia probe ever could
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [October 19, 2018]
---- Just for once, Trump's highly developed survival instincts may be at fault. His close alliance with Saudi Arabia and escalating confrontation with Iran is the most radical new departure in Trump's foreign policy. He withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in defiance of the rest of the world earlier this year on the grounds that he can extract more concessions from Iran by using American power alone than Barack Obama ever did by working in concert with other states. This struggle is so important because it is not just between the US and Iran but is the crucial test case of Trump's version of American nationalism in action. … Above all, the anti-Trump portion of the US media and the Democrats smell political blood and sense that the Khashoggi affair is doing the sort of serious damage to the Trump presidency that never really happened with the Russian probe. [Read More]
The Abolition of Nuclear Abolitionism?
By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation [October 24, 2018]
---- The INF Treaty was focused on Europe, which was targeted by Soviet missiles and which was where US counter-missiles were based. It was a major step in a diplomatic process of grand détente that both Reagan and Gorbachev thought would end the Cold War and nuclear arms races forever. The treaty's larger significance is that it was the first, and still only, act of nuclear abolitionism—until now, a historic 31-year tangible symbol of what more could, and should, be possible. If carried out, however, Trump's decision relegates the historic INF Treaty to the status of just another failed or discarded international agreement. … Trump's decision could also affect American politics. It might revive the once-important but long-dormant, or dead, anti-nuke movement in grassroots politics. It might redirect Democratic and other opposition to Trump from largely bogus Russiagate allegations to actual substantive issues like the danger of nuclear war. Nor should we forget that more than two years of Russisagate allegations, which have demonized both Trump and "Putin's Russia," have probably made it easier, if not tempting, for Trump to quit the INF Treaty. But the biggest political fallout will almost certainly be in Europe, which was the focal point of the original conflict over intermediate-range nuclear missiles. [Read More]
For more on Trump's withdrawal from the INF Treaty – "Trump Surrenders to John Bolton on Russia and Arms Control," by [Link]; and "What Trump and John Bolton Don't Understand About Nuclear War," by Jon Schwarz, The Intercept [[Link].
An Inside Look at Veterans' Health Care Now Under Attack
---- As a Vietnam veteran who served in the Marines between 1968 and 1972, I am all too familiar with wounds of war. Like so many people who served in Vietnam, on both sides, I live with PTSD, health issues from Agent Orange exposure, the skeletal wear and tear from lugging heavy packs in the jungle for 18 months, and hearing loss. I'm much luckier than many I served with, unluckier than some. I know how hard it was to get Congress and the Veterans Administration to recognize these—and other—service related conditions. Thanks to the organizing efforts of veterans' themselves over many decades, eligibility for VA medical coverage has been expanded to nine million people and the care they receive has steadily improved. Unfortunately, those gains are now at risk, due to a Trump Administration push to out-source more VA services to private hospitals and doctors and, if possible, privatize our entire national system of veterans' hospitals and clinics. The anti-VA agenda of the White House, a Republican-controlled Congress, and rich donors like the Koch Brothers has benefited from much negative coverage of the VA in right wing media outlets and even mainstream publications like the New York Times. [Read More]
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
Exxon Faces Consequences For Climate Denial
By Scott Zimmerman, Center for Media and Democracy [October 27, 2018]
---- ExxonMobil, the $78 billion fossil fuel giant, has been lying to its shareholders about the threats of climate change, according to New York Attorney General, Barbara Underwood, following a multi-year investigation. The New York state lawsuit, filed Wednesday, accuses Exxon of a "longstanding fraudulent scheme" to mislead investors on "the company's management of the risks posed to its business by climate change regulation," according to The New York Times. Citing messaging to the public that was inconsistent with internal practices, Underwood brought the lawsuit under the Martin Act, which empowers her to investigate and prosecute securities fraud. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported on Exxon's illegal and unethical efforts to undermine climate science and hide the global impact of its operations for years. … Evidence presented in the joint CMD/Common Cause IRS filing showed that Exxon had pumped more that $1.7 million into ALEC between 1998 and 2014 to finance lobbying activities that cast doubt on climate science and promoted public policies benefiting the corporation. The Exxon/ALEC scheme arose from a 1998 "Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan," authored by the American Petroleum Institute (API). The stated mission of the API plan was to "inform the American public that science does not support the precipitous actions Kyoto [International Climate Treaty] would dictate, thereby providing a climate for the right policy decisions to be made." [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
The Forever Prisoners of the US's Forever War
By Aisha Maniar, Truthout [October 25, 2018]
---- In the early years of the war in Afghanistan, thousands of men, women and children were taken prisoner. Afghan militias allied to the US or in joint US-militia efforts killed many. Thousands of others simply "disappeared" in Afghanistan, as well as in neighboring Pakistan. In the first three years alone, more than 50,000 people were detained by the US as terror suspects. Others were rendered to Afghanistan by the US military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from other countries to be held, interrogated and tortured in a secret network of torture prisons the US set up under its extraordinary rendition program. The label "terror suspect" averted questions of accountability for the "disappearances," mass killings and the torture of prisoners, who were not granted prisoner-of-war status. The fate of the thousands of "disappeared," including small children, remains unknown. Investigations and the hard work of activists, lawyers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and families have revealed the fate of some prisoners. … Guantánamo has been synonymous with arbitrary detention and torture for the past 17 years, and it appears that the "misguided experiment" is about to be expanded and repeated for a new generation. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
The World's Richest Got 20% Richer in 2017
[October 28, 2018]
---- In 2017, just over 2,150 people have seen their wealth increase by 20 percent, many doing so through various forms of inheritance and asset transfers. About 200 of the new billionaires on the list are entrepreneurs. Nearly 90 of them are from China, which has seen the greatest increase in individual wealth, unrelated to GDP. Almost 2,000 persons on the list have inherited their wealth with some families having kept hold of their massive fortunes for five to six generations. According to the report, over the next 20 years, $3.4 trillion dollars in assets will be handed down to various family heirs…. The richest one percent own about 50 percent of the world's wealth. [Read More] Disney heiress Abigail Disney has some wry observations on the very rich and their ways in this short, entertaining video.
Trump Has Found a New Way to Make Immigrant Families Suffer
By Chris Richardson, The Nation [October 25, 2018]
---- By dramatically expanding whom the United States deems likely to become a "public charge," the Trump administration will deny entry to more immigrants while punishing hundreds of thousand of immigrants who are here legally. Set to take effect in January, new rules will direct immigration officers to reject naturalization, visa petitions, and green cards for individuals who have taken advantage of assistance like Medicaid, food stamps, or even Earned Income Tax Credits. … The public-charge designation has long been a racist, classist tool. But with these new regulations, the Trump team has found a way to use government bureaucracy to maximize the suffering of immigrants. Far from expanding the public-charge ineligibility, we should abandon it, just as we renounced discriminatory immigration policies like literacy tests and statutory bans on those with HIV/AIDS. … The people most affected by public-charge regulations are American citizens and permanent residents trying to reunite with their foreign-born spouse, children, parents, or siblings. Immigration officials have already interrogated these individuals about medical, criminal, and security issues. The public-charge criteria has nothing to do with safety. [Read More]
Why Is Russiagate Rumbling Into the 2018 Midterms?
By Alan MacLeod, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [October 19, 2018]
---- The November 6 midterms are fast approaching, yet much of the media is still looking back to the 2016 elections, and specifically the alleged Russian interference in them. The New Yorker published a 7,000-word article headlined "How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump." Considering other explanations for Trump's victory and Clinton's loss, such as her tactical campaign errors, gerrymandering, vote suppression, racism and the actions of James Comey for only a paragraph, it quotes one expert claiming, "It stretches credulity to think the Russians didn't" win it for him. Meanwhile, the New York Times released an intensive 10,000-word history and analysis of the Trump/Russia story, explaining to its readers that it was Putin's "seething" ambivalence towards the West and his "nostalgia for Russia's lost superpower status" that were the driving forces behind Russia's nefarious actions. There is also a great deal of fear about supposed hacking of the upcoming midterms. … The question is not whether Russia, like other countries with extensive intelligence apparatuses, seeks to influence the elections of foreign nations. The question is why corporate media are concentrating on foreign interference, and not the other threats to democracy. [Read More]
Voting and Voter Suppression
How Voter Suppression Could Swing the Midterms
By Ari Berman, New York Times [October 27, 2018]
---- The fight over voting rights in the midterms is a reminder that elections are not solely about who is running, what their commercials say or how many people are registered to vote. They are about who is allowed to vote and which officials are placing obstacles in the way of would-be voters. … Since the 2010 election, 24 states overwhelmingly controlled by Republicans have put in place new voting restrictions, such as tougher voter ID laws, cutbacks to early voting and barriers to registration. Republicans say these measures are necessary to combat the threat of widespread voter fraud, even though study after study shows that such fraud is exceedingly rare. Many of these states have hotly contested races in 2018, and a drop in turnout among Democratic constituencies, such as young people and voters of color, could keep Republicans in power. … Despite rampant suppression efforts, there is some hope. In seven states, ballot initiatives would restore voting rights to ex-felons, make it easier to register to vote and crack down on gerrymandering. If these pass, we could see 2018 as a turning point for expanding voting rights, instead of an election tainted by voter suppression. But first people need to have the right to cast a ballot. [Read More]
Fighting to Vote
By Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books [November 8, 2018 Issue]
[FB - This is a review of the new book, The Embattled Vote in America: From the Founding to the Present]
---- If you grew up, as I did, in the 1960s and 1970s, watching (albeit through a child's eyes) the civil rights movement notch victory after victory, you could be forgiven for thinking at the time that that happy condition was normal. … In other words, from the moment that black Americans finally won voting rights equal to those of white Americans, a significant number of white Americans started fighting to undo them. My teenage self was quite naive. Forty years later, it appears that what I thought was the new normal was in fact an aberration, a quick little burst of sunshine punctuating an otherwise bleak sky. There is no new consensus and never has been. There is just the old racist consensus, which was successfully pricked for a couple of decades but reasserted its dominance with the help of the many millions of dollars pumped into right-wing foundations and think tanks and activist groups like the Federalist Society. … The great value of Lichtman's book is the way it puts today's right-wing voter suppression efforts in their historical setting. He identifies the current push as the third crackdown on African-American voting rights in our history. [Read More]
For more on voter suppression - (Video) "Stacey Abrams Slams Brian Kemp on Suppressing Vote as He Worries Too Many Georgians Will Vote," from Democracy Now! [October 24, 2018] [Link]; and "Election expert Greg Palast: Thanks to GOP voter suppression, "Democrats may have effectively lost," by Mtthew Rozsa, Salon [October 28, 2018].
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Israel: The Alternative
By Tony Judt, New York Review of Books [October 23, 2003]
[FB –Recently the on-line New York Review of Books linked some articles pulled from its archives. This one, about Israel/Palestine, was written 15 years ago by the late historian Tony Judt. It is imo especially prescient when seen in the rear-view mirror of History.]
---- The time has come to think the unthinkable. The two-state solution—the core of the Oslo process and the present "road map"—is probably already doomed. With every passing year we are postponing an inevitable, harder choice that only the far right and far left have so far acknowledged, each for its own reasons. The true alternative facing the Middle East in coming years will be between an ethnically cleansed Greater Israel and a single, integrated, binational state of Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. That is indeed how the hard-liners in Sharon's cabinet see the choice; and that is why they anticipate the removal of the Arabs as the ineluctable condition for the survival of a Jewish state. [Read More]
Imposing 'Balance' Requires Distortion of Palestine/Israel Struggle
By Gregory Shupak, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [October 23, 2018]
---- Since the Palestinians' Great Return March began on March 30, Israel has killed 217 Palestinians in Gaza, 163 of whom were participating in the demonstrations. Among the dead are 33 children, three paramedics and four people with disabilities; Israel has injured a further 11,155 Palestinians, many of whom will be maimed for life. The media's attempt to present a "balanced" version of these events is a fundamentally flawed approach, because it erases myriad, consequential differences: between colonizer and colonized; between oppressing people and people resisting oppression; between, on the one hand, the regional military superpower backed by the global hegemon and, on the other, unarmed and lightly armed protestors. These inequities are buried when Palestine/Israel is presented as though it were a civil war, or a "he said, she said" story where the reality of what's happening—ethnic cleansing, apartheid and resistance to these—is impossible to unravel. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The Double Battle: Frederick Douglass's Moral Crusade.
By Eric Foner, The Nation [October 24, 2018]
---- Douglass was born in 1818, and his life spanned almost the entire 19th century. He experienced both rural and urban slavery and played a crucial role in the abolitionist movement and the Civil War. He became a leading proponent of Reconstruction, when the Constitution was amended to create, for the first time in this country, an interracial democracy, and he lived to witness the imposition of a new system of racial inequality in the South. He edited newspapers and delivered thousands of speeches. He also went to great lengths to control his visual image. The most photographed American of the 19th century, Douglass was fully aware of the widespread circulation of demeaning caricatures of black Americans. His own portraits, dignified and arresting, unadorned with background accoutrements, embodied the claim of African Americans to freedom and equality. To tell Douglass's story, then, one must possess excellent research skills, a full command of the voluminous literature on his era, and a humane appreciation of the issues central to his career, which reverberate down to the present. [Read More]
White Supremacy Has Always Been Mainstream
By Stephen Kantrowitz, Boston Review [October 2018]
[FB]– This is a review of three books: The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, by Linda Gordon; Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy, by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae; and Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, by Kathleen Belew.] [h/t LS]
---- White supremacy is a language of unease. It does not describe racial domination so much as worry about it. White supremacy connotes many grim and terrifying things, including inequality, exclusion, injustice, and state and vigilante violence. Like whiteness itself, white supremacy arose from the world of Atlantic slavery but survived its demise. Yet while the structures are old, the term "white supremacy" is not. Although it first appeared in British abolitionist critiques and U.S. proslavery defenses in the first half of the nineteenth century, it only became commonplace—and notably not as a pejorative—in U.S. whites' post-emancipation calls for a racial order that would reinstitute slavery's political and economic guarantees. … The effort to transform the phrase from a slogan into a fact has been a massive social and political project, involving the witting and unwitting labor of many millions of people. White supremacy has always been hard work. … The myth that white supremacy is a marginal political phenomenon has proved so durable that many people find it easier to deny its overt expression than confront a more troubling reality: "very fine people"—and not just fathers, husbands, and sons, but mothers, wives, and daughters as well—have always been central to the work of advancing white supremacist causes. [Read More]
