Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
December 16, 2018
Hello All – On Tuesday, the Hastings Board of Trustees will deliberate and vote on CFOW's Resolution to end US support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. The reasons why we must end this war – "the world's greatest humanitarian disaster" – are by now familiar to CFOW newsletter readers. The number of civilians killed in the war now numbers in the tens of thousands, and the most recent information suggests that the number of Yemeni children who have died of starvation/malnutrition is close to 200,000. As US military support – weapons, intelligence, diplomatic cover, etc. – is critical to the Saudi war, our government can literally "pull the plug" on the war if it chooses to do so.
Of course, this is not Trump's choice. And so it is heartening that both Houses of Congress appear to have a solid majority poised to vote under the War Powers Act to end US participation in the Yemen war. Indeed, the Senate did so last week, and the House is expected to pass a similar Resolution when Congress returns in January and the Democrats assume control of the House of Representatives.
But it is not likely that President Trump will respect the right of Congress to intervene in war-making and foreign policy, and so we will then need to prepare for a protracted campaign to both enforce/support the Constitution and end US support for the war.
One of the "assets" available to Hastings and other Rivertowns' opponents of war is that our congressional representatives, Nita Lowey and Eliot Engel will chair important House committees come January. In these positions they will have the opportunity to hold hearings about the war, its conduct and expenditures, and to call witnesses, subpoena records, and so forth. Thus if they wanted to, they could play a role analogous to that played by Sen. William Fullbright, whose Senate hearings on the Vietnam War in 1966 helped educate the country about what our government was and wasn't doing in Vietnam.
This makes what we in the Rivertowns do of some significance. A clamoring for peace, for an end to the Yemen slaughter, will let our congressional representatives know that we back them in supporting the War Powers Resolutions that will end the war, and that we intend to keep their attention if they slacken or begin to waver in their commitment. This war won't be ended overnight, and so pressure has to be maintained until the last shot is fired – and beyond.
Finally, if/when the Hastings Board of Trustees passes the peace resolution and it is sent to Lowey and Engel (and perhaps to other politicians and municipalities), we hope that peace stalwarts in other Westchester towns and cities will demand that their own governments do something similar. Please join us in this effort.
The "Yellow Vest" Rebellion in France
We should pay attention to the Yellow Vest Rebellion. Like Occupy, like Brexit, like Syriza in Greece and Podermos in Spain, the French rebellion is revealing deep fissures in societies under great stress from the "neo-liberal" economic model imposed on the world over the past four decades. Income and other inequalities have become intolerable, and those not in the Top Ten Percent or whatever no longer think that their rulers and the upper echelons that support the government are legitimate. While the mainstream media delivers only pictures of teargas and burning cars in Paris, the movement is in fact widespread throughout France, and in its fifth week drawing support from just about all classes and sectors. Check out these interesting video reports – here and here – to meet the Concerned Families of France who are Fed Up and won't take it anymore.
Two weeks ago the CFOW newsletter included an insightful article by Paris-based writer Diana Johnstone. Among the best writing I've come across recently is "The Gilets Jaunes [Yellow Vests] have blown up the old political categories" from the Canadian magazine Roar. [Link]. (And S&BS just sent me a New Yorker interview with French novelist Edouard Louis on the Yellow Vests that they recommend highly). As Aurelie Dianara wrote from Paris this week: "To the demands of the gilets jaunes for participation in decision-making and greater control over their own lives, Macron has no response except declarations of vague intentions for 'consultations.'" This is the dilemma of "market economies" worldwide: The economic system can function only if/when the great majority of people have no power to effectively participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and accepts that fact.
News Notes
While preparing some black "peace symbol" armbands to wear at the Hastings Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, the CFOW costume department did some research and learned that this armband first appeared in the Historical Record in 1965, when three students in Des Moines, Iowa wore them to school to protest the war in Vietnam. Needless to say, they were immediately suspended; but much later the US Supreme Court decided that the students had the right to wear peace-symbol armbands under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
On March 18, 2017, 15 protesters in the UK locked themselves around a deportation charter flight at London's Stansted Airport to prevent it from taking off. Last week they were convicted of a terrorism-related offense, which carries a potential life sentence. About a dozen of the 60 immigrants thus saved (temporarily) from deportation were able to successfully navigate their appeals to stay in the country. You can read interviews with some of the Stansted Fifteen stalwarts here and here.
From the organization Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, we learn that New York's Jewish Communal Fund contributed more than two million dollars to anti-Muslim hate groups between 2013 and 2017. Among the groups funded were Pamela Geller's American Freedom Defense Initiative and the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The report that develops this information calls on the JCF to make a firm, public commitment to stop contributing to these anti-Muslim groups and to others that share their ideology." Read more about this here.
Extinction Rebellion is a direct-action climate group that has blocked roads and occupied bridges in London to draw some media attention to the climate crisis. On Thursday the New York chapter of Extinction Rebellion held its first meeting. Read about it here.
Dr. Seuss for the defense! Last week a federal court in Virginia sided against the US Forest Service for granting an energy company permission to build a natural gas pipeline across two national forests. Channeling Seuss's children's classic The Lorax, the federal judges stated that the Forest Service must "speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues." Read more about this here. [h/t JaniG]
In another bold foray into international diplomacy, last week every single member of Congress approved sanctions and financial restrictions.against Nicaragua. This is the same country destroyed by the Reagan regime in the illegal and war-criminal contra war back in the 1980s. Another country smacked down for displeasing The Godfather.
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, December 18th – The Hastings Board of Trustees will meet at Village Hall at 7:30 p.m. for the weekly meeting. In the Agenda is the CFOW Resolution addressed to congressional representatives Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey calling on them to take steps to end US support for the Saudi war against Yemen.
Sunday, December 30th – Please join CFOW at our annual holiday party. See old friends and make new ones, and catch up on the Radical Doings in the Rivertowns! We will be at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 6 to 9 p.m. Potluck - please bring something to eat or drink to share.
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.
Please Support CFOW
CFOW's expenditures are very small, but if you would like to support our work financially, please send a 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 David Swanson's speech about the abolition of war ("War & Peace"); a selection of articles about the climate conference in Poland; an update on the progress of the Mueller investigation ("State of the Union"); an interesting/thought-provoking article on the sad transformation of small-town life (also in "State of the Union"); and an essay by Jonah Raskin on his friend Doris Lessing, whose 100th birthday is coming soon. Read on!
Rewards
For this week's Rewards, stalwart readers have some favorite covers by Diana Krall. Here are 'S Wonderful (Gershwin, Adele Astaire); Peel Me a Grape (Anita O'Day); and (in case you're feeling hungry) Frim Fram Sauce (Nat "King" Cole). Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
From Arizona to Yemen: The Journey of an American Bomb
By Jeffrey E. Stern, New York Times Magazine [December 11, 2018]
---- At the well site, at the moment of impact, a series of events happened almost instantaneously. The nose of the weapon hit rock, tripping a fuse in its tail section that detonated the equivalent of 200 pounds of TNT. When a bomb like this explodes, the shell fractures into several thousand pieces, becoming a jigsaw puzzle of steel shards flying through the air at up to eight times the speed of sound. Steel moving that fast doesn't just kill people; it rearranges them. It removes appendages from torsos; it disassembles bodies and redistributes their parts. A sphere of expanding gas coming off the bomb, meanwhile, fills a body's hollow parts with energy, rupturing eardrums, collapsing lungs, perforating abdominal cavities and making hidden things bleed. The blast wave pushes air to such extraordinary speeds that the wind alone can cast limbs off bodies…. We have been able to find out a wealth of information about the bomb's provenance. The data plate had a Department of Defense Identification Code that indicated it was part of a fin on a guided bomb. It also had a manufacture date, showing that it had rolled off an assembly line in October 2015. It had a stock number that, when combined with an assembly number, revealed that the data plate belonged to part of the control mechanism for something called a Paveway II laser-guidance system. This sort of kit is designed to attach to a 500-pound MK82 warhead, a bomb manufactured in Garland, Tex., at a General Dynamics facility. [Read More]
Green New Deal Advocates Should Address Militarism
---- The existential question is whether our elected officials, with the reins of power, are going to sit by helplessly as our planet experiences more devastating fires, floods, droughts, and rising seas or will they seize this moment and take monumental action as we did when the United States abolished slavery, gave women the vote, ended the great depression, and eliminated legal segregation. Some members of Congress are already showing their historic mettle by supporting a Green New Deal. This would not only start to reverse the damage we have inflicted on our collective home, but it would create hundreds of thousands of good jobs that cannot be shipped overseas to low wage countries. Even those congresspeople who want to seriously address the climate crisis, however, fail to grapple with the simultaneous crisis of militarism. The war on terror unleashed in the wake of the 911 terrorist attack has led to almost two decades of unchecked militarism. … If climate change is not addressed rapidly by a Green New Deal, global militarism will ramp up in response to increases in climate refugees and civil destabilization, which will feed climate change and seal a vicious cycle fed by the twin evils militarism and climate disruption. That's why a New Peace Deal and a Green New Deal should go hand in hand. We cannot afford to waste our time, resources and intellectual capital on weapons and war when climate change is barreling down on all of humankind. If the nuclear weapons don't destroy us than the pressing urgency of catastrophic climate will. [Read More]
Another Mass Extinction Is Underway: And this time we're solely to blame.
By Subhankar Banerjee, The Nation [December 11, 2018]
---- If you've been paying attention to what's happening to the nonhuman life forms with which we share this planet, you've likely heard the term "the Sixth Extinction… Whether the sixth mass species extinction of Earth's history is already (or not quite yet) underway may still be debatable, but it's clear enough that something's going on, something that may prove even more devastating than a mass of species extinctions: the full-scale winnowing of vast populations of the planet's invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants. Think of it, to introduce an even broader term, as a wave of "biological annihilation" that includes possible species extinctions on a mass scale, but also massive species die-offs and various kinds of massacres. Someday, such a planetary winnowing may prove to be the most tragic of all the grim stories of human history now playing out on this planet, even if to date it's gotten far less attention than the dangers of climate change. In the end, it may prove more difficult to mitigate than global warming. Decarbonizing the global economy, however hard, won't be harder or more improbable than the kind of wholesale restructuring of modern life and institutions that would prevent species annihilation from continuing. [Read More]
Ahed and Malala: Why we revere some girl activists and not others
By Sarah Kastner, The Conversation [December 4, 2018]
---- After Israeli forces shot her 15-year-old cousin in the head with a rubber bullet last December, Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian girl from Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, stood up to the occupying Israeli forces and was arrested and charged for slapping a soldier. The story of the activist went viral. But what Ahed was fighting for was largely buried beneath sensationalized media representations of her. Her story is unlikely to circulate in the same elevated spaces granted to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who survived a brutal attack on her school by the Taliban, even though both Ahed and Malala are fighting for similar rights and freedoms. Both are young women facing down brutal military repression at the hands of fully-armed men, yet their stories could not have been received more differently. The reasons for our complicated responses to Malala and Ahed's stories are as multi-layered as the political realities that shape their lives. They encapsulate a range of ideas about gender and the girl-child, nationalism and education, and about forms of activism that are palatable and therefore deemed legitimate and those which are not. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
The Abolition of War Requires New Thoughts, Words, and Actions
. It leaves few stones unturned.]
----There's action happening now in the U.S. Senate on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen. There's a big loophole in the bill. There's the matter of selling Saudi Arabia its weapons. There's the House of Misrepresentatives to worry about. There's the veto threat. There's the question of getting compliance out of a president you've pretty well promised never to impeach, at least not for any of dozens of documented offenses unrelated to Russia… If the U.S. Congress were to stand up to a president on one war, people might raise the question of every other war. If the U.S. were to stand up to Saudi Arabia, not by giving it weapons and military assistance and protection from international law while asking it gently to mend its ways, but by refusing to be its partner in crime, somebody might ask why the same couldn't be tried with Israel or Bahrain or Egypt, and so on. But you can't just end a war, can you? What should we replace the war on Yemen with? This is a question I get asked. [Read More]
War Is Not Part of Human Nature
By R. Brian Ferguson, Scientific American [September 1, 2018]
---- Do people, or perhaps just males, have an evolved predisposition to kill members of other groups? Not just a capacity to kill but an innate propensity to take up arms, tilting us toward collective violence? The word "collective" is key. People fight and kill for personal reasons, but homicide is not war. War is social, with groups organized to kill people from other groups. Today controversy over the historical roots of warfare revolves around two polar positions. In one, war is an evolved propensity to eliminate any potential competitors. In this scenario, humans all the way back to our common ancestors with chimpanzees have always made war. The other position holds that armed conflict has only emerged over recent millennia, as changing social conditions provided the motivation and organization to collectively kill. The two sides separate into what the late anthropologist Keith Otterbein called hawks and doves…. Any discovery of ancient killings grabs headlines. The news items ignore innumerable excavations that yield no signs of violence. And a comprehensive screening of reports from a particular area and time period, asking how many, if any, show even hints of war, paints an entirely different picture. War is hardly ubiquitous and does not go back endlessly in the archaeological record. Human warfare did indeed have a beginning. [Read More]
Saudi Arabia, Armaments and Conflict In The Middle East
By Pieter D. Wezeman, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI] [December 16, 2018]
----Throughout the Middle East, many governments have placed a heavy emphasis on military force as a central tool for pursuing their political agendas and foreign policy aims and for dealing with perceived threats internally and abroad. Many states in the region have used their militaries in violent conflicts that have led to widespread destruction and hampered economic development. Militarization in the region is at a high level, as demonstrated by the fact that several states have steeply increased their arms imports in the past 10 years and that, in 2017, 7 of the 10 countries in the world with the highest military burden were in the Middle East. This topical backgrounder puts a spotlight on armament developments in Saudi Arabia, the country with the highest levels of military spending and arms imports in the Middle East. It aims to contribute to the efforts by SIPRI to gain a better understanding of the impact of militarization on security, conflict, peace and development in the region. [Read More]
The War in Yemen
The Senate's Yemen Vote Proves A More Democratic Foreign Policy Is Possible
By Evan Hill, The Nation [December 13, 2018]
---- In the end, it is Congress that sits at the heart of the issue. Elected representatives need to harness the recent surge of support for more just and equitable policies at home to create a more just and equitable world outside the nation's borders, too. The connection the American public made between the suffering of one man and the war in Yemen is a theme that senators and representatives can expand to other failings, such as the response to the crisis in Central America or our support for authoritarians in the Middle East. [Read More]
War Crimes in Our Name: An Interview with Shireen Al-Adeimi [Yemen]
By Chris Gelardi, The Nation [December 14, 2018]
---- Since the Saudi strikes began in 2015, Shireen Al-Adeimi, a professor of education at Michigan State University, has been at the forefront of anti-intervention efforts. For her, this activism is personal; she grew up in Yemen, and her extended family remains scattered across the country. I caught up with her recently to ask about her advocacy and the urgency of the situation.
What misconceptions about the war in Yemen are most commonly held by Americans, and how might advocates counter them?
SA: For the longest time—up until this summer, really—when Yemen was mentioned, the role of the US was really not highlighted. The US is not an observer; they are incredibly involved. It's up to journalists to challenge the role of the US more aggressively, so that people here can know that they can do something to stop it. The other thing is the incredible focus on Iran. Iran has no stake in the game when it comes to Yemen. But it has been framed from the beginning as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and that's just taking the Saudi narrative without challenging it. [Read the interview here] Last May, Shireen Al-Adeim wrote an interesting article on "What the Deployment of Green Berets to the Saudi-Yemen Border Tells Us About America's Dirty War." Read it here.
The Saudi Regime's Other Victims
By Katherine Zoepf, New York Times [December 13, 2018]
---- Despite continuing anger over Mr. Khashoggi's fate, too little attention is being paid to the crown prince's treatment of dissidents inside the kingdom, who often lack the resources to consider lives in exile, and who are now being imprisoned in record numbers. More than 2,600 Saudi dissidents, including prominent scientists, writers, lawyers and women's rights campaigners, are in detention in Saudi Arabia, according to Prisoners of Conscience, a Saudi group that tracks political prisoners. Most were convicted under the kingdom's counterterrorism laws, receiving sentences for such nonviolent offenses as "criticizing the royal court" and "ridiculing religious figures." Few of these people are as well known in Western capitals as Mr. Khashoggi was, but their stories are no less important. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CONFERENCE IN POLAND
Despite US, Russian & Saudi Opposition, Climate Summit Reaffirms Paris Goals
---- The Climate Summit at Kotwice, Poland, ended on a positive note, with the 195 countries present committing themselves to financing instruments in a quest to cut carbon dioxide emissions and keep global heating to 1.5 degrees C. (2.7 degrees F.). Given that so many countries are producing so much CO2, that goal may not be practical. The next best thing would be to stop heating at 2 degrees C. (3.6 degrees F.) … The agreements reached are wholly inadequate and do not reflect the urgency of the climate crisis we are in. But they might have a positive psychological effect, in keeping the Paris goals alive and encouraging governments to encourage companies and consumers to take action. … The US has recently seen a mammoth flood in Houston, the flattening of Puerto Rico, and enormous wildfires in California that even forced the stars to flee Malibu. Your 24 hour cable news program either doesn't remind you of these tremendous extreme weather events or of how their frequency and intensity is being reinforced by heat-trapping gases like CO2 that human beings are putting into the atmosphere by burning oil, gas and coal. The climate crisis isn't in the future– it is here and we are living it. COP24 will be judged a success or a failure depending on its practical effect in helping humankind get off fossil fuels. Sorry, Russia and Saudi and Trump, you are the past (and a stupid one), not the future. [Read More]
From Obama to Trump, Climate Negotiations Are Being Run by the Same Crew of American Technocrats
By Kate Aronoff, The Intercept [
---- On Monday, the Trump administration hosted an event on behalf of the fossil fuel industry at the United Nations climate talks in Poland, known as COP24. It was almost identical to the one it hosted at last year's climate talks in Germany: trying to write coal, oil, and gas into the world's response to climate change, and bemoaning "alarmism" on climate. Both were disrupted by organizers from the United States voicing their opposition, and both received more media coverage than just about anything else happening at either talks, which this year are focused on arriving at a deeply technical rulebook to implement the Paris agreement. What the flashy White House sideshow obscured, though, is that the U.S. position in Poland, when it comes to the substance of the talks, is indistinguishable on many fronts from the approach taken by the Obama administration. In fact, that agenda is being carried out by many of the very same people, a largely overlapping crew of career technical negotiators keeping a lower profile than Donald Trump team's at the White House. That's not necessarily good news. While the rhetoric coming from the Obama administration was 180 degrees from that of the Trump administration, American negotiators under President Barack Obama were not intent on driving the world toward the most aggressive climate action possible. Quite the opposite. [Read More]
MORE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
12 Reasons Labor Should Demand a Green New Deal
By Jeremy Brecher and Joe Uehlein, In These Times [December 12, 2018]
---- Workers have gotten a raw deal. Employers and their Republican allies are trying to eliminate workers' rights both in the workplace and at the ballot box. But even when Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, they did little to protect, let alone expand, the rights of working people. Workers need a new deal. Now, an alliance of social movements and members of Congress are proposing a Green New Deal to create millions of jobs by putting Americans to work making a climate-safe economy. This program meets the needs of—and has the potential to unite—the labor movement, environmentalists, and all those who have been the victims of inequality, discrimination, racism and, now, climate change. … The Green New Deal is poised to become a factor in the 2020 elections. Labor unions should take this opportunity to embrace the proposal—and fight to make sure it's a strong vehicle for advancing workers' rights. [Read More]
The Arctic's Warmest 5 Years on Record: 2014-Present
By John Schwartz, New York Times [December 11, 2018]
---- The Arctic has been warmer over the last five years than at any time since records began in 1900, and the region is warming at twice the rate as the rest of the planet, scientists said Tuesday. The rising air temperatures are having profound effects on sea ice, and on life on land and in the ocean, the scientists said. The changes can be felt far beyond the region, especially since the changing Arctic climate may be influencing extreme weather events around the world. Those assessments were part of the latest "Arctic Report Card," issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency, and presented Tuesday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington. … The warmer Arctic air causes the jet stream to become "sluggish and unusually wavy," the researchers said. That has possible connections to extreme weather events elsewhere on the globe, including last winter's severe storms in the United States. The jet steam normally acts as a kind of atmospheric spinning lasso that encircles and contains the cold air near the pole; a weaker, wavering jet stream can allow Arctic blasts to travel south in winter and can stall weather systems in the summer, among other effects. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Don't Let Russophobia Warp the Facts on Russiagate
By Aaron Maté, The Nation [December 14, 2018]
---- Despite the media hoopla, Mueller's latest filings do not bring us any closer to proving the long-sought Trump-Russia conspiracy. Over the course of the Russia investigation, the procession of key associates "flipping" on Donald Trump has raised expectations that special counsel Robert Mueller would turn up proof of collusion. In just a few weeks, a flurry of activity by Mueller has brought these cases to their final act, and the prevailing media reaction leaves the impression that they lived up to the hype. Mueller's latest court filings include "potentially devastating new information about Trump's ties to Moscow," writes James Risen of The Intercept. This makes it "reasonable to conclude that Mueller does, indeed, believe he can prove that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government," Adam Davidson reckons in The New Yorker. But Mueller has not issued any charges, provided any evidence, or made any collusion allegations. If there does exist a case, Mueller hasn't revealed it yet. For all of the excitement, what has been disclosed in the cases of Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn does not bring us any closer to the long-sought Trump-Russia conspiracy. [Read More] Also interesting/useful is "Mueller's Investigation is Missing One Thing: A Crime," by [Read More]
Wall Street, Banks, and Angry Citizens
By Nomi Prins, Tom Dispatch [December 13, 2018]
---- As we head into 2019, leaving the chaos of this year behind, a major question remains unanswered when it comes to the state of Main Street, not just here but across the planet. If the global economy really is booming, as many politicians claim, why are leaders and their parties around the world continuing to get booted out of office in such a sweeping fashion? One obvious answer: the post-Great Recession economic "recovery" was largely reserved for the few who could participate in the rising financial markets of those years, not the majority who continued to work longer hours, sometimes at multiple jobs, to stay afloat. In other words, the good times have left out so many people, like those struggling to keep even a few hundred dollars in their bank accounts to cover an emergency or the 80% of American workers who live paycheck to paycheck. In today's global economy, financial security is increasingly the property of the 1%. No surprise, then, that, as a sense of economic instability continued to grow over the past decade, angst turned to anger, a transition that — from the U.S. to the Philippines, Hungary to Brazil, Poland to Mexico — has provoked a plethora of voter upheavals. In the process, a 1930s-style brew of rising nationalism and blaming the "other" — whether that other was an immigrant, a religious group, a country, or the rest of the world — emerged. [Read More]
---- As we head into 2019, leaving the chaos of this year behind, a major question remains unanswered when it comes to the state of Main Street, not just here but across the planet. If the global economy really is booming, as many politicians claim, why are leaders and their parties around the world continuing to get booted out of office in such a sweeping fashion? One obvious answer: the post-Great Recession economic "recovery" was largely reserved for the few who could participate in the rising financial markets of those years, not the majority who continued to work longer hours, sometimes at multiple jobs, to stay afloat. In other words, the good times have left out so many people, like those struggling to keep even a few hundred dollars in their bank accounts to cover an emergency or the 80% of American workers who live paycheck to paycheck. In today's global economy, financial security is increasingly the property of the 1%. No surprise, then, that, as a sense of economic instability continued to grow over the past decade, angst turned to anger, a transition that — from the U.S. to the Philippines, Hungary to Brazil, Poland to Mexico — has provoked a plethora of voter upheavals. In the process, a 1930s-style brew of rising nationalism and blaming the "other" — whether that other was an immigrant, a religious group, a country, or the rest of the world — emerged. [Read More]
Coffee, Social Stratification and the Retail Sector in a Small Maritime Village
---- In 2007, when Starbucks took over a cavernous storefront formerly occupied by a children's clothing store, it resulted in a sprawling interior space with comfortable chairs and sofas niched around the pillars; banquettes lined a wall decorated with local art work, some of the tables and easy chairs facing the bay and park across the street. The effect was upscale almost, and very urban, each seating area affording a measure of privacy in a public space. There was plenty of room for everyone. The employees paid little attention to what went on in the customer area. After school let out, teenagers filtered in and settled in a section toward the back, where they hung out with friends and could use the unlocked bathroom. …This used to be a town. Used to have a hardware store; a shoe store; a five and ten; a diner; a camera store; a stationary store; a basket shop; a kitchenware store; a framer; a soda fountain; a coffee shop. Men went out in fishing boats. Cleaned oysters. Hired other people to clean oysters. Knew everyone. … The flood of summer and weekend tourists are proving too much even for some of the second home owners—the well-heeled, largely professional folks who keep meeting each other out here because they all live (mainly) in the city as well as here; are invited to parties with people who live here and there; and do things with people who do things, They drive out here and then go back there week after week and meet with people who also go back and forth.
ISRAEL PALESTINE
The Pro-Israel Push to Purge US Campus Critics
By Katherine Franke, New York Review of Books [December 12, 2018]
---- There are signs that we've reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel's suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campuses across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, and hold it to the same human rights scrutiny we apply to other nations around the globe. … Discussions on college campuses about the complexities of freedom, history, and belonging in Israel and Palestine are under increasing pressure and potential censorship from right-wing entities. In fact, new policies adopted by the US and Israeli governments are intended to eliminate any rigorous discussion of Israeli–Palestinian politics in university settings. Not since the McCarthyite anti-Communist purges have we seen such an aggressive effort to censor teaching and learning on topics the government disfavors. … All of these incidents are part of a larger effort by both the US and Israeli governments and their supporters to undermine the university's civic role as a crucial forum of democratic engagement. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Doris Lessing: What's There to Celebrate?
---- In 2019, fans of Doris's books are planning to celebrate, in Chicago and in Beijing, the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth in 1919 in what was then known as Persia, but that's now called Iran. She was born Doris May Tayler, the daughter of a veteran of World War I, whose life was upended by "The Great War." She took the name of her second husband, Gottfried Lessing, a German-born Communist she married in Africa. I wonder if her fans know who and what they'll be celebrating on the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth, and why. In fact, there is no Doris Lessing. There are only a series of identities that she assumed and discarded and then took on new ones, as a colonial girl, a Communist, a Sufi, a global traveler, a Cassandra and as a mother to several generations of misfits and outcasts. … Having lived through World War II and the Cold War, she was almost always against war, and grateful to the unknown, unheralded women in all counties who protested against bombs, armies and the lies that accompany them. "Our side was often as bad as their side," she explained. "We completely destroyed Dresden." After 9/11 we talked on the phone. "It's going to be bad for Muslims," she said. "There's going to be a big backlash." She was right about that. "Bad things always happen," she said. "If you predict the worst you won't be wrong." At the same time she wanted to be upbeat. "I try not to say 'No' to new things simply because they're new," she said. [Read More]
