Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
November 4, 2018
Hello All – So Tuesday is Election Day. While each state or congressional election has its own meaning/character, they are also a referendum on President Trump and two years of the Trump Agenda. While off-year (non-presidential) elections usually favor the opposition party (now Democrats), one would think the Republicans should do well, given relatively full employment and stock-market prosperity. Yet this is not a Normal Country with a Normal President. Highly motivated supporters of both parties may give this election the largest voter turnout of any off-year election in recent history, with unpredictable results. Democratic candidate and political superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emailed Move On supporters the other day:
Six days from now, we can defeat the brutal white supremacist forces of anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant nativism, and racism. We can hold accountable the cold-hearted monsters who have repeatedly attacked our health care. We can send a message to the bigots and billionaires that this country belongs to all of us. We can win if we show up on November 6. We must end Republican control of Congress and begin to reclaim our nation. A Democratic majority will not bring back the eleven Jewish people in Pittsburgh, massacred while they prayed. Or the two Black people gunned down days before at a Kroger grocery store in Kentucky. It won't fully stop the relentless attacks against immigrants in America. But on Sunday evening, Pittsburgh mourners—angry and broken-hearted like us—chanted "Vote! Vote! Vote!" They understand the magnitude of the midterm election six days from today: that it affords us the chance to forge a powerful bulwark against Donald Trump's hate and hold accountable the Republicans who have been complicit in every step of his toxic, self-serving, and destructive agenda. We must offer a path out of the darkness.
The Cook Political Report, which I follow for my horserace handicapping, ascribes the likely win of the House of Representatives by the Democrats to the highly energized work of college-educated suburban women, itself largely a response to the awfulness of President Trump. Certainly this seems the case here in Westchester, where grassroots support for the Democratic Party surpasses anything in my memory. If the Democrats succeed in capturing control of the NYS Senate, and thus the Legislature, this will open the door to the possibility that many long-delayed progressive proposals can be voted on and become law. Then it will be time to see how progressive our Democrats really are, and to launch movements to encourage those who hope for business-as-usual to mend their ways.
If the Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives, but not the Senate, we may be living in Interesting Times. Little of the Trump Agenda will be able to become Law, while few Democratic initiatives coming from the House of Representatives will be likely to survive scrutiny by the Republican-controlled Senate. Perhaps the Democrats will use their control of House committees to launch investigations of the myriad Trump/Republican misdeeds of the last congressional session (e.g. Impeach Kavanaugh?), while the Republicans/Trump may be tempted to use Executive Orders and their control of the Supreme Court to get done what big business and rightwing ideologues want done. In any event, I think that there will be an important role to play for grassroots mobilization to stop the wars, defend civil liberties, fight to stop global warming, and much else.
Election Nuts & Bolts
For last-minute info about who's on the ballot and a few factoids about their positions, go to the League of Women Voters' site, https://www.vote411.org/.
If you would like to connect with get-out-the-vote efforts, check out the Facebook page of Indivisible Rivertowns.
For a long night of watching the election returns on Tuesday, Democracy Now! and The Intercept will be doing reporting and analysis and (alternative) hosting experts from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. at www.democracynow.org.
For the latest news about pre-election polling and all that, I use the Cook Political Report
News Notes
The deep thinkers at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have proposed that giant storm-surge barriers be built in New York Harbor. As Riverkeeper notes, "These barriers would cause permanent, catastrophic damage to the Hudson River while failing to protect our communities from sea level rise. The tide is the respiration and heartbeat of our estuary, and the barriers would restrict the tide and suffocate the Hudson River ecosystem. This is a life-or-death issue for the Hudson, and we need everyone." The deadline for comments on this bad idea is tomorrow, Monday, November 5th. To learn more, and to write/send your comment to the Army Corps of Engineers, go here.
Several weeks ago we noted that the Trump administration had succeeded in stopping the lawsuit by young people who claim that, by allowing global warming, the US government is depriving youth of rights to life, liberty, and property through an energy system contributing to climate change. The good news is that, by a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court has put the lawsuit back on track. Read more here.
On Thursday, a group of students presented a resolution to the NYU Student Government Assembly, calling on NYU to sever ties with Caterpillar, General Electric, and Lockheed Martin – companies they say are complicit in human rights abuses against Palestinians. Read more here; and on the same page there is a link to an interesting/useful video about the BDS movement and what successes it has had to date. [h/t BS and PR]
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!
Tuesday, November 6th – Election Day. The website of the Westchester League of Women Voters lets you enter your address to find your polling place, who will be on your ballot, and where the candidates say they stand on some issues. Go to www.vote411.org for this info.
Tuesday-Thursday, November 6th – 8th – "Voices Rising for Yemen" Three days of action/protest at the Saudi and US Missions to the UN. Here's the website - http://vcnv.org/2018/09/26/voices-rising-for-yemen/.
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.
Saturday, December 1st – Each year WESPAC hosts the Margaret Eberle Fair Trade Festival and Crafts Sale. It's a good place to buy holiday presents, and it supports worthy causes. It goes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Memorial United Methodist Church, 250 Bryant Ave. in White Plains. $5 suggested admission.
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 Mike Klare's article ("War & Peace") on the new three-cornered struggle for world power; The Democreacy Now! interview with journalist Allan Nairn about the status of "incipient fascism" in the USA and what to do about it; the first two parts of the documentary film Aljazeera produced and then suppressed on "The [Israel] Lobby – USA"; and – in "Our History" – two excellent articles on Vietnam and the Tet Offensive (1968) and on Johnie Tillman and the Welfare Rights Movement (1966-70). 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!
The Rewards for stalwart readers this week have nothing to do with Tuesday's election. Or even with the 21st century. Here are some old favorites to help us (temporarily) forget it all: here are Dorothy Dandridge and the fabulous Nicholas Brothers in "Chattanooga Choo Choo"; Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers showing us what they did best; Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli with "Minor Swing"; and the Speakeasies' Swing Band with Bright Nights Late Nights." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
(Video) Noam Chomsky on Pittsburgh Attack: Revival of Hate Is Encouraged by Trump's Rhetoric
From Democracy Now! [November 2, 2018]
Q: {Amy Goodman] - Do you consider this one of the gravest times, in your lifetime, in U.S. politics, Noam?
A: (Chomsky) - It's one of the gravest times in human history. Humans have been around for 200,000 years. For the first time in their history, they have to decide—and quickly—whether organized human society is going to survive for very long. And that's not in the remote distance. Again, there are two existential threats, both being increased. One is the threat of nuclear war, which is terminal. The other is the threat of severe environmental catastrophe, which doesn't destroy all human life, but it does undermine the prospects for organized society. … The third [crisis] is what's called the sixth extinction, the extinction of species. The fifth extinction was around 65 million years ago, when it's assumed that a huge asteroid hit the Earth and ended the age of the dinosaurs. It destroyed most of the species on Earth. We're now in the midst of the sixth extinction, with very rapid destruction of other species and of the kind of environment in which they can survive, like wilderness, for example. We are pushing to the edge of not only our own survival, but that of much of the—much of life on Earth. So, is it the gravest moment in my life? Yes. But also in all of human history. And things like the election next week will have an impact on this. [Read More/See the Program]
Donald Trump's Unconstitutional Dreams
By Eric Foner, The New York Times [October 31, 2018]
---- President Trump announced that he plans to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship, the principle that everyone born in the United States, with a handful of exceptions, is automatically a citizen of the United States. In fact, such an order would undoubtedly be unconstitutional. It would also violate a deeply rooted American idea — that anybody, regardless of race, religion, national origin, or the legal status of one's parents, can be a loyal citizen of this country. Such an order would undoubtedly be unconstitutional. It would also violate a deeply rooted American idea — that anybody, regardless of race, religion, national origin, or the legal status of one's parents, can be a loyal citizen of this country. Birthright citizenship is established by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, still on the books today, and by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified two years later. … Long before the Civil War, abolitionists black and white had proposed an alternative understanding of national citizenship severed from the concept of race, with citizens' rights enforced by the federal government. Gatherings where northern free blacks agitated for equal rights called themselves conventions of "colored citizens" to drive home this idea. And by the conclusion of the war, the end of slavery and the service of nearly 200,000 African-Americans in the Union army and navy propelled the question of black citizenship to center stage of American politics. The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to provide, for the first time, a uniform national definition of citizenship, so that states would no longer be able to deny that status to blacks. It went on to require the states to accord all "persons," including aliens, the equal protection of the laws, as part of an effort to create a new egalitarian republic on the ashes of slavery. [Read More] The denial of birthright citizenship to Asian-Americans is described in this interesting essay: "This Isn't The First Time White Supremacists Have Tried to Cancel Birthright Citizenship," by Nina Wallace, Densho [November 2, 2018] [Link]. [h/t JG]
Trump Administration's Limits on Asylum for Domestic Violence Put Guatemalan Women in Peril
By Cora Currier, The Intercept [
---- Over the past few weeks, leading up to the midterm elections, President Donald Trump has stoked animus against immigrants from Central America by spreading falsehoods about refugee caravans currently making their way north through Mexico. He has ordered thousands of troops to the southwestern border, promised to hold asylum-seeking families in tent cities, and floated an executive order that would limit Central Americans' ability to request asylum. But the administration has already taken steps that have drastically impacted the prospects of one group in particular: Central American women fleeing domestic violence. Guatemala has one of the highest rates of deadly violence against women, or femicide, in the world — 7,357 violent deaths tallied between 2008 and 2017 by the nonprofit Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres (Guatemalan Women's Group, or GGM.) An unknown but certainly large number of those crimes, both physical and sexual, begin in the home, as domestic violence at the hands of husbands, partners, or relatives. The particular combination of factors that contribute to violence against women in Guatemala — a patriarchal culture, devastating poverty, racism against Indigenous Maya, and a society strained by the legacy of armed conflict and now riven with violence from gangs and drug traffickers — has been recognized internationally, including in the United States. … In Guatemala, the administration's attempts to close avenues for asylum have reverberated deeply. Multiple women's rights advocates interviewed in early August said outright that there was now no asylum for domestic violence in the United States. Despite that common belief — which attorneys in the U.S. say is incorrect — lawyers, shelter directors, and others argued forcefully that Sessions's decision rested on fundamental misunderstandings of how violence against women functions in Guatemala. [Read More]
U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don't Know How to Stop It.
---- White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist. The Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism has reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. … These statistics belie the strident rhetoric around "foreign-born" terrorists that the Trump administration has used to drive its anti-immigration agenda. They also raise questions about the United States' counterterrorism strategy, which for nearly two decades has been focused almost exclusively on American and foreign-born jihadists, overshadowing right-wing extremism as a legitimate national-security threat. … In this atmosphere of apparent indifference on the part of government officials and law enforcement, a virulent, and violent, far-right movement has grown and metastasized. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
The New Global Tinderbox
By Michael T. Klare, Tom Dispatch [October 30, 2018]
By Michael T. Klare, Tom Dispatch [October 30, 2018]
---- The original Cold War, which lasted from the late 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, posed a colossal risk of thermonuclear annihilation. At least after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, however, it also proved a remarkably stable situation in which, despite local conflicts of many sorts, the United States and the Soviet Union both sought to avoid the kinds of direct confrontations that might have triggered a mutual catastrophe. In fact, after confronting the abyss in 1962, the leaders of both superpowers engaged in a complex series of negotiations leading to substantial reductions in their nuclear arsenals and agreements intended to reduce the risk of a future Armageddon. What others are now calling the New Cold War—but I prefer to think of as a new global tinderbox—bears only the most minimal resemblance to that earlier period. As before, the United States and its rivals are engaged in an accelerating arms race, focused on nuclear and "conventional" weaponry of ever-increasing range, precision, and lethality. All three countries, in characteristic Cold War fashion, are also lining up allies in what increasingly looks like a global power struggle. But the similarities end there. Among the differences, the first couldn't be more obvious: The United States now faces two determined adversaries, not one, and a far more complex global conflict map (with a corresponding increase in potential nuclear flashpoints). At the same time, the old boundaries between "peace" and "war" are rapidly disappearing as all three rivals engage in what could be thought of as combat by other means, including trade wars and cyberattacks that might set the stage for far greater violence to follow. … Why are such dangers so rapidly ramping up? To answer this, it's worth exploring the factors that distinguish this moment from the original Cold War era. [Read More]
The War in Yemen
Will Jamal Khashoggi's Murder Help End the Ghastly War in Yemen?
By Robin Wright, The New Yorker [November 2, 2018]
---- Among Khashoggi's friends and family, Western powers allied with the kingdom, and even some Saudis, there is a growing cynicism about there ever being a full Saudi accounting—or, even more important, real justice—for Khashoggi's murder. Yet there are growing signs that his death has spurred a diplomatic initiative to leverage the monarchy's vulnerability, specifically to contain the aggressive foreign policy of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. U.S. officials deny it, but the diplomatic buzz in Washington is that the kingdom's de-facto ruler will pay a price in other ways, most notably in Yemen. It's a kind of unspoken arrangement, potentially even a quid pro quo for accepting that the crown prince will retain his position. … On three fronts, there's growing urgency to end the Yemen war, which the crown prince launched shortly after he became the defense minister (just one of many portfolios he now holds), in early 2015. Physically, Operation Decisive Storm has produced catastrophic conditions—the worst famine anywhere in the world in a hundred years, and the worst humanitarian crisis of the twenty-first century. … Yemen's deteriorating physical condition could be worsened by political upheaval, which adds pressure to jump-start peace talks. … Militarily, the war has been in a virtual stalemate for more than two years. … The United States has also been sucked into the war by arming, aiding, and advising its Gulf allies. Under both the Obama and Trump Administrations, Washington has provided intelligence, aircraft, bombs, and other armaments to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. [Read More] Is this a head fake or a change of US policy? – "'This has Got to End': Trump Admin. Gives Saudis 30 Days to Start Yemen Talks," by[Link].
The War in Afghanistan
Is Peace at Hand in Afghanistan?
By , Foreign Policy in Focus [November 1, 2018]
---- The news that the Americans recently held face-to-face talks with the Taliban suggests that longest war in U.S. history may have reached a turning point. But the road to such a peace is long, rocky, and plagued with as many improvised explosive devices as the highway from Kandahar to Kabul. That the 17-year old war has reached a tipping point seems clear. The Taliban now controls more territory than they have since the American invasion in 2001. Casualties among Afghan forces are at an all time high, while recruitment is rapidly drying up. In spite of last year's mini-surge of U.S. troops and air power by the Trump administration, the situation on the ground is worse now than in was in 2017. … Why things have gone from bad to worse for the U.S./NATO occupation and the Kabul government has less to do with the war itself than a sea change in strategy by the Taliban, a course shift that Washington has either missed or ignored. … A path to end the war might look like this: First, a ceasefire in Afghanistan between the Taliban and the Kabul government and a pull back of American troops. The argument that if the U.S. withdrew, the Kabul government would collapse and the Taliban take over as they did during the civil war in 1998 is really no longer valid. Things are very different locally, regionally, and internationally than they were two decades ago….. [Read More]
The "Cold War " with Venezuela
US Sanctions Cost Venezuela $6B Since August 2017, Sparking Humanitarian Catastrophe
By Randi Nord, Geopoliticsalert.com [November 2, 2018]
---- United States sanctions against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela have cost the Latin American nation $6 billion since August of 2017, leaving the fate of healthcare and access to basic goods in jeopardy for millions of already struggling Venezuelans. According to a report from Canadian analyst Joe Emersberger, U.S. sanctions have quite literally starved Venezuelans out of a staggering $6 billion since the latest round took effect in August of 2017, cutting Venezuela off from the global market. To put this figure into perspective, $6 billion is over 130 times the $46 million requested by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for the "Venezuela Situation" in March of this year, which likely wouldn't be needed if Caracas had financial support to provide for its citizens. [Read More]
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
Rebellious Scientists Issue Urgent Appeal
---- On October 31st a select group of UK scientists launched a Declaration of Rebellion against the UK government at the Houses of Parliament: "For criminal inaction in the face of climate change catastrophe and ecological collapse." According to the scientists, now is the time to act as a planetary emergency is already upon us. Nearly 100 British scientists, academics, and writers are willing to go to jail to make their point that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a surefire provocateur that's already starting to decimate ecosystems. … According to ExtinctionRebellion the sixth mass extinction is already strutting its mettle in spunky fashion, for example, a recent Worldwide Fund for Nature report claims a wipeout of 60% of animal populations has already occurred over the past 50 years alone. All of which begs the provocative question: What does it imply for the next 50 years as climate change/global warming indicators firmly crank up to rapid-acceleration mode, in some cases exponentially? Thus, the next 50 yrs zoom-zoom will be supercharged. What then? … Ecosystems from the Arctic to Antarctica are starting to crumble right before our eyes, but nobody lives where it happens. So, nobody sees it first-hand, as for example:[many shocking examples]. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
(Video) The U.S. Is Facing Incipient Domestic Fascism, But Rightist Revolution Can Be Stopped
An interview with Allan Nairn – from Democracy Now! [November 1, 2018]
---- The 2018 U.S. midterm elections mark a critical point in the era of President Donald Trump, as the potential Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives has unleashed a torrent of white supremacist vitriol in the run-up to November 6. In the past week alone, a militant Trump supporter was accused of mailing three pipe bombs to CNN and 12 bombs to people Trump frequently criticizes; two African-Americans were murdered by a white supremacist outside Louisville, Kentucky; and 11 Jewish worshipers were massacred in a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white supremacist who railed on social media against Jews who help refugees. Both the gunman and Trump have called immigrants "invaders." Meanwhile, Trump has sharply escalated his attacks on immigrants, threatening to send as many as 15,000 U.S. troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and to rewrite the Constitution to revoke birthright citizenship. We speak with investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who says that fascism is on the rise in the U.S. Nairn has been a fierce longtime critic of the Democratic Party and its support for war and neoliberal policies, but he is calling for the public to mobilize to elect Democrats in the midterm elections. [See the Program]
How Voting-Machine Errors Reflect a Wider Crisis for American Democracy
By Sue Halpern, The New Yorker [October 31, 2018]
---- The voting machines purchased back in the early two-thousands were never meant to last this long. They have a shelf life of ten, maybe fifteen years. Many are no longer made, or the companies that manufactured them have gone out of business, or both. To get spare parts, election officials have had to scour eBay and Craigslist, looking for old machines that other municipalities have discarded. Those municipalities have the funds to buy new voting equipment. Under-resourced communities do not. What we're getting, as the Brennan Center has pointed out, is a "two-tiered" electoral system, bound to larger economic and social inequalities. Decrepit and broken machines result in long lines, and long lines result in people walking away without voting. This is not voter suppression—it's voter depression, but the consequences are the same. In 2012, for instance, somewhere between five hundred thousand and seven hundred thousand people were shut out of voting by long wait times. And long lines, according to researchers at the Caltech/M.I.T. Voting Technology Project, undermine public confidence in the election system, "even when individuals do not experience the long lines themselves." … Voting machines that flip votes don't need to be hacked by a malicious foreign actor to undermine public confidence in the integrity of our democracy. That's being done for Americans, by Americans. [Read More] Also very interesting is "With Just Days to the Midterms, Russiagate Is MIA: And That's A Good Thing," by Aaron Maté, The Nation [October 29, 2018][Link]
The Refugee "Caravan" from Central America
Why the Refugee Caravan Is So Big—and What We Need to Do About It
By Laura Carlsen, The Nation [November 2, 2018]
---- "Central America couldn't take it anymore." That's how Ruben Figueroa describes the October exodus of thousands of people from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala fleeing north. "After decades of US intervention, chronic poverty, corruption, and structural violence, Central America just couldn't take it." Figueroa is in Mexico City after traveling up from the Mexico-Guatemala border with the caravan that is slowly making its way, mostly by foot, up through southern Mexico, even as a new group of refugees strives to catch up with it. By sending troops to the border and threatening to abolish birthright citizenship, Donald Trump has been generating headlines in his attempt to make political hay out of these desperate refugees. … lthough hundreds of people leave Honduras every day to go north, the number in this particular exodus is unprecedented. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that Mexican officials registered 7,233 people crossing the Rodolfo Robles border bridge from Guatemala on October 19 and 20, which they reached after leaving San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on October 12. …After years of war and devastation, modern civilization agreed on norms that guarantee the basic rights of people seeking refuge and a safe place to work and raise families. Some would tear down that architecture of decency by stoking irrational fears and the opportunistic use of misfortune. The idea that families forced to flee their homes by violence and crushing poverty constitute a threat would be ludicrous if it weren't lethal. [Read More]
Also useful/illuminating on the refugee caravan – "The Military's Justification for Sending Thousands of Troops to the Border Is the Opposite of the Truth," by Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept [ [Link]; "Where We Stand on the Caravan: Five Things You Should Know," b [Link]; "The inconvenient truth about the US-bound migrant caravan," by Belen Fernandez, Aljazeera [October 27, 2018] [Link]; and "Your Commander-in-Chief Is Lying to You: Veterans Issue Open Letter to Active Duty US Soldiers," by and [Link].
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Watch the film the Israel lobby didn't want you to see
From The Electronic Intifada [November 2, 2018]
---- The Electronic Intifada has obtained a complete copy of The Lobby – USA, a four-part undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into Israel's covert influence campaign in the United States. It is today publishing the first two episodes. The Paris-based Orient XXI and Beirut-based Al-Akhbar are publishing the same episodes with French and Arabic subtitles, respectively. The film was made by Al Jazeera during 2016 and was completed in October 2017. But it was censored after Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate that funds Al Jazeera, came under intense Israel lobby pressure not to air the film. Although Al Jazeera's director-general claimed last month that there were outstanding legal issues with the film, his assertions have been flatly contradicted by his own journalists. In March, The Electronic Intifada was the first to report on any of the film's specific content. We followed this in August by publishing the first extract of the film, and shortly after Max Blumenthal at the Grayzone Project released others. Since then, The Electronic Intifada has released three other extracts, and several other journalists have watched the entire film and written about it – including Alain Gresh and Antony Loewenstein. Now The Electronic Intifada can reveal for the first time that it has obtained all four parts of the film. You can watch the first two parts in the video embeds above and below. [Read More/See the Videos]
OUR HISTORY
Forgotten Feminisms: Johnnie Tillmon's Battle Against 'The Man'
By Judith Shulevitz, New York Review of Books [June 26, 2018]
---- In a nice, if perhaps pat, coincidence, two of the most consequential women's groups of the 1960s share an official date of birth: June 30, 1966. One group came into existence quietly, a few blocks from the centers of national power in Washington, D.C., where Betty Friedan was attending a conference on the status of women and feeling disgruntled about the delegates' failure to pass a resolution opposing sex discrimination. On June 30, Friedan invited some two dozen like-minded conference-goers back to her hotel room. There, she showed them a paper napkin on which she'd scrawled three letters: N O W. The National Organization for Women. The other group emerged out of a much more visible campaign to raise awareness about the inadequacy of welfare benefits. The effort had begun ten days earlier with the Walk for Decent Welfare, a 155-mile march from Cleveland, Ohio, to Columbus, the state capital. A majority of the hundred or so marchers who trudged the roads were single black women and their children, though far from everyone on welfare at the time was a single black mother or her child. Some two million Americans received Old Age Assistance; a few thousand got Aid to the Blind; half a million people got disability checks; and slightly more than that number of adults without children were on general assistance. But the largest group of beneficiaries, by far, consisted of single mothers and children, more than eight million of them, supported (barely) by what was then called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Two thirds of them were white. [Read More]
The Significance of the Tet Offensive [Vietnam 1968]
---- Fifty years ago the world received a lesson in the revolutionary power of protracted people's war when some 84,000 Vietnamese communist peasants stunned the world's greatest military power, the United States, with an astounding offensive considered impossible by America's Army generals who had only weeks before declared the communist revolutionaries of South Vietnam essentially defeated. This amazingly shocking assault was the Tet Offensive of January-February 1968. … The significance of Tet was that it compelled the American leadership to make the decision to quit Vietnam; it was thus the pivot point in the war. Often described as a military loss for the communist forces, it was nonetheless a political loss for the Americans and their Saigon client regime – a loss so great that the United States eventually began a process of gradual, yet brutally violent, disengagement. The study of how that definitive decision to disengage came to be and how it was subsequently interpreted after the war offers important lessons regarding the contradictions of the war exposed by Tet – contradictions involving the imperatives of international finance, the exercise of political power, the dishonesty and incompetence of military leadership, the erosion of America's moral legitimacy at home and abroad, the reemergence of communist politics within the United States, the dramatic upsurge in leftist resistance globally, and the rewriting of history to hide the failures of the American military. [Read More]
