Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
February 24, 2019
Hello All – Yesterday's theatrical production of delivering "humanitarian aid" across Venezuela's borders failed in two respects. First, not only did the "aid" caravans not get through, but the imagined defection of the Venezuela military to the cause of the Opposition did not occur either. Second, while there were two (or four?) deaths in the confrontations at the border, there was not a sufficient level of carnage to justify a US military intervention. So far, therefore, the US intervention ploys have not produced much progress towards regime change in Venezuela; what will Trump do now?
We may know as soon as tomorrow, when the presidents of the Latin American nations comprising the US-friendly "Lima Group" will meet with US intervention strategists – including Vice President Pence and career criminal Eliot Abrams – in Colombia. One option – negotiations in Venezuela leading to a supervised election process – is obviously off the table. A second option – increasing economic and other sanctions against Venezuela until the economy completely collapses – would take too long. While the Trump people (the Venezuela Opposition has no voice in this) may decide to wait and see if some atrocity can be contrived that would supposedly justify armed intervention, it is entirely possible that they will decide to deploy a military strategy immediately. If Juan Guaidó is, according to Trump and many US allies, the "legitimate president" of Venezuela, surely he can request US military intervention to help him re-establish Order. There is a long history of US-appointed Presidents asking the United States to invade their country to put down rebels – Diem in Vietnam or Duarte in El Salvador, for example – so why not work with this well-established strategy?
After two years of exposing Trump and his team as lying liars, the mainstream media and our elite opinion makers show little curiosity or skepticism about the official reasons given in the Venezuelan regime change? Why is this? In part, I think, it is because hatred of Venezuela's "Bolivarian Revolution" was also the motivation for regime change efforts during the presidencies of George Bush and Barack Obama. There is nothing particularly "Trumpish" about the US campaign against the Venezuelan government other than it is doing it in broad daylight, rather than "covertly." Another reason, I fear, is that we as a people have long ago abandoned the belief that nations have a right to manage – or mismanage – their own affairs; and if a regime is sufficiently stigmatized – e.g. not only Venezuela, but also North Korea, Libya, Grenada, etc. – US intervention is simply doing a good deed.
It is also surprising – or is it? – how little the mainstream media reflects on the possibility that the reason why the Bolivarian Revolution and its governments have been so hated might have to do with the fact that Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves – more even than Saudi Arabia. As with the case of Iraq, so now with Venezuela; if the major export of these countries were bananas or cotton, it is unlikely that the USA would see an urgent necessity to invade. To imagine a comparable case, if China or Russia were threatening to invade another country, our political leaders and mainstream media people would immediately dismiss the idea that this intervention was in an effort to achieve the greater good. Instead, we would be immediately examining the economic or strategic gains being sought by Russia or China. A political analyst who failed to mention the prospect of a zillion barrels of oil would soon be out of work.
The alternative to invasion and war in Venezuela is peace negotiations, an end to economic sanctions, and a negotiated regime of real humanitarian assistance via legitimate relief organizations such as the Red Cross. A military intervention by the Trump team would illegal under international law. It would be in violation of the US Constitution. If "successful," it would establish a fascist government in Venezuela. If not immediately "successful," it would inflict a prolonged internal war, as in Syria, on the people of Venezuela. Peace now.
News Notes
On Tuesday Bernie Sanders announced that he was running for President in 2020. You can read a summary of his campaign plans here and see a video of his speech announcing his candidacy here.
Small grassroots agitation groups are angry at Gov. Cuomo's latest move to reduce their power. In his "executive budget" there is a proposal to require groups spending at least $500 on lobbying – rather than the present ceiling of $5,000 – to file lots of paper work. This is vindictive, harassing community-based organizations because they don't support everything he does. To read more, go here.
Also this week, Therese Patricia Okoumou, who climbed the Stature of Liberty last Fourth of July to protest ICE and Trump's policies on refugees and immigrants, climbed the Austin, TX headquarters of Southwest Key, the agency contracted by ICE to "house" immigrants in 24 facilities and thus enforce family separation. Read more about this daring woman's story here.
File this under "It Can't Be True." The Supreme Court of India just ruled that some eight million tribespeople and other forest dwellers must be evicted to support conservation efforts to save endangered animal species. The Director of Survival International, which works to protect the rights of native peoples, said: "This judgment is a death sentence for millions of tribal people in India, land theft on an epic scale, and a monumental injustice." Read more here.
Finally, Doonesbury has gone under cover to reveal how the new congressional "freshmen" are changing the culture of law-making in Washington, DC.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Every Saturday – Concerned Families of Westchester holds a peace & justice vigil (weather permitting) in Hastings, at the VFW Plaza (Warburton Ave. & Spring St.) from 12 noon to 1 PM. Please join us!
ASAP this week – We are urged to support of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who are facing 25 years in jail for their "attack" on world-destroying nuclear weapons at the the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia on the 50th anniversary of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The activists on trial are Elizabeth McAlister, Stephen Kelly S.J., Martha Hennessy, Clare Grady, Patrick O'Neill, Mark Colville, and Carmen Trotta. To learn more, go here and here. One of the defendants, Elizabeth McAlister, is the mother of Frida Berrigan, who wrote an illuminating/inspiring article in The Nation about the Plowshares action, "25 Years in Jail for Protecting the Planet?" [Link].
Monday, February 25th – The Ossining Mayor and two members of the Board of Trustees plan to vote this evening to repeal Ossining's "Emergency Tenant Protection Act" (rent stabilization law). This real estate-sponsored atrocity will lead to the eventual eviction of many low-income and/or elderly tenants, who cannot afford market rents in gentrifying Westchester. Two members of the Board of Trustees, Omar Herrera and Quantel Bazemore, oppose repeal. The public is encouraged to attend Monday's meeting, which will take place at Ossining Community Center, 95 Broadway in Ossining, starting at 7:30 PM. The public will have an opportunity to speak at the beginning of the meeting, so get there early! To learn more, go here.
Sunday, March 3rd – Please join us for the next (monthly) meeting of Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 PM. At these meetings we review the events/action of the past month and make plans for the month to come. Everyone is welcome at these meetings.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our rallies are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We (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. And if you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
This Newsletter
Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned. Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media. As always, we have some excellent "Featured Essays." I would like to call your attention esp. to package of articles on Venezuela; Charles Freeman's illuminating and comprehensive essay on the US and China ("War & Peace"); Bill McKibben's essay on the significance of Sen. Diane Feinstein's strange encounter with children asking her to support "the Green New Deal" ("Global Warming"); and on the 54th anniversary of his murder ("Our History"), another look at the last years of Malcolm X, and what he was trying to achieve for America.
Rewards!
The Newsletter's "Rewards" are idiosyncratic selections by the Editor intended to encourage Readers to pause and refresh before heading into the news/fray. As the Trump administration now has Cuba (as well as Venezuela and Nicaragua) on its mind, let's listen to the wonderful Buena Vista Social Club. And I think you will also like this short documentary film about "The Making of the Buena Vista Social Club Film." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
[Audio] Naomi Klein: The Green New Deal Is Changing the Calculus of the Possible
Naomi Klein is interviewed by Jon Wiener, The Nation [February 22, 2019]
JW: The Green New Deal, you've said, is not a question that will be settled through elections alone. What do you mean?
NK: In terms of winning the power to introduce a package as ambitious as the resolution, the only real historical precedent is the original New Deal. And the political dynamics that produced the original New Deal were not a benevolent politician handing reforms down from on high, from the goodness of his heart. Of course it mattered to have FDR in power instead of Herbert Hoover, but it mattered even more to have an organized population which was flexing its muscles in every conceivable way in the 1930s—from sit-down strikes in auto plants, to shutting down the ports on the West Coast, to shutting down entire cities with general strikes. And it mattered also to have more radical voices who were calling for more radical policies than the New Deal was offering, like a truly cooperative economy. All of that created the context in which FDR was able to sell the New Deal to elites. They were grudging about it, but the alternative seemed to be political revolution. So the only way that something like this happens is if it is accompanied by a huge grassroots mobilization, where every workplace, every sector, every movement is asking, "What would a Green New Deal mean for us? What would it mean in our workplace? What would it mean for the groups that we represent?" If we are going to succeed, they need to make it their own. So it's going to take a hell of a lot of grassroots organizing, mobilizing all of these sectors to really believe that the Green New Deal is going to make their lives better, coupled with politicians running at every level of government, including for president, with a promise to enact this on day one. [Read/hear the Interview]
Beyond the Rising Tide: Reparations for Slavery Have to Be More Than a Symbol
By Briahna Gray, The Intercept [
---- After committing overwhelmingly to the Democratic Party for decades, black Americans have seen the racial wealth gap widen, not shrink. As a result, some are increasingly skeptical of the value of programs that aren't narrowly tailored to accrue to our benefit. While it is true that the neoliberal strategies embraced by the Democratic Party since the 1980s have failed to close the racial wealth gap, the growing disdain for programs that don't accrue to the exclusive benefit of black Americans is a red herring. The problem isn't that universal or economically driven programs can't significantly close the racial wealth gap. It's that the means-tested programs backed by the Democratic Party simply don't go far enough. … Because the value of wealth compounds, capitalism rewards the historical possession of wealth; the ability to invest today is worth more than the ability to do so in the future. That being the case, how can black Americans, first enslaved and then legally barred from participating in capitalism for the overwhelming majority of this country's history, begin to catch up with a systemic adjustment to the system? The answer is we can't. There will be no racial equality under capitalism. [Read More]
American Democracy Has Been Eclipsed
By Bernard E. Harcourt, The Nation [February 21, 2019]
---- American democracy has just been eclipsed. The United States, at this moment, is no longer a democracy, conventionally understood as a political regime of majoritarian popular rule with counter-majoritarian checks. All three branches of US government are now formally counter-majoritarian. There is today no institutional counterpower to a presidential tyrant. This moment presents a constitutional crisis for the American people. … Thus, the majority of the American people are no longer formally represented by any branch of the government. And given the possible entrenchment of incumbent power, it is not clear when the light of American democracy will reappear—unless the majority of American people take matters into their own hands and constitute the only remaining counterpower to a presidential tyrant. … Trump's fake state of emergency reveals that American democracy is now fully eclipsed. The United States is at the precise point when its democratic lights have been turned off. At this moment, there is no longer a constitutional mechanism to check a rogue presidential grab for power. The majority of the American people are not represented any longer. The counterrevolution has effectively prevailed. [Read More]
The Myth of the Border Wall
By Greg Grandin, The Nation [February 20, 2019]
---- For over a century, the American frontier represented the universalism of the nation's ideals. It suggested not only that the country was moving forward, but also that the brutality involved in moving forward would be transformed into something noble. Extend the sphere of America's influence, as James Madison believed, and you would ensure peace, protect individual liberty and dilute factionalism. As our boundaries widened, all of humanity would become our country. There was no problem caused by expansion that couldn't be solved by more expansion. But today the frontier is closed. The country has lived past the end of that myth. After centuries of pushing forward across the frontier — first, the landed frontier, then the frontiers of expanding economic markets and sweeping military dominance — all the things that expansion was supposed to preserve have been destroyed, and all the things it was meant to destroy have been preserved. Instead of peace, there is endless war. Instead of prosperity we have intractable inequality. Instead of a critical, resilient and open-minded citizenry, a conspiratorial nihilism, rejecting reason and dreading change, has taken hold. [Read More] And speaking of border walls, here is the latest: "16 States Sue to Stop Trump's Use of Emergency Powers to Build Border Wall," by Charlie Savage and Robert Pear, New York Times i[February 18, 2019] [Link].
THE WAR AGAINST VENEZUELA
(Audio) Venezuela Crisis – An Interview with Eva Golinger
From CounterPunch Radio [February 18, 2019]
---- This week CounterPunch Radio continues its coverage of the attempted US-backed coup in Venezuela by chatting with author and attorney Eva Golinger. Eva was a close adviser and confidante of Hugo Chavez, and had a front row seat for the development of the Bolivarian Revolution. Eric and Eva discuss the situation unfolding in Venezuela today and examine how it got to this point. Eva provides her analysis of the domestic and international issues that have led to the crisis, including mismanagement and corruption on the part of the Maduro government, as well as the ongoing US attempts to undermine, destabilize, and ultimately overthrow Maduro and destroy the Bolivarian Revolution. Eric and Eva explore the impact of sanctions on the Venezuelan economy, how the collapse of oil prices impacted the country, Chavez's vision versus today's reality, and the ignorance of the Trump administration as to the level of resistance of the Venezuelan people. This in-depth discussion provides the sort of analysis on Venezuela you're unlikely to find anywhere else! [See the Program]
(Video) This Is Not Humanitarian Aid: A Maduro Critic in Venezuela Slams U.S. Plan to Push Regime Change
From Democracy Now! [February 22, 2019]
---- We go to Caracas, Venezuela, for an update on the escalating standoff between President Nicolás Maduro and opposition leader and self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó. Guaidó claims he is preparing to deliver humanitarian aid from the Colombian border Saturday. Maduro has rejected the plan, saying the effort is part of a broader attempt to overthrow his regime. This comes as Trump's special envoy to Venezuela and right-wing hawk, Elliott Abrams, is leading a U.S. delegation traveling by military aircraft to the Colombian border, supposedly to help deliver the aid. The United Nations, the Red Cross and other relief organizations have refused to work with the U.S. on delivering that aid to Venezuela, which they say is politically motivated. We speak with Venezuelan sociologist Edgardo Lander, a member of the Citizen's Platform in Defense of the Constitution. "This certainly is not humanitarian aid, and it's not oriented with any humanitarian aims," Lander says. "This is clearly a coup carried out by the United States government with its allies, with the Lima Group and the extreme right wing in Venezuela." https://www.democracynow.org/2019/2/22/this_is_not_humanitarian_aid_a
The War on Venezuela is built on lies
By John Pilger, ZNet [February 22, 2019]
---- Watching Chavez with la gente made sense of a man who promised, on coming to power, that his every move would be subject to the will of the people. In eight years, Chavez won eight elections and referendums: a world record. He was electorally the most popular head of state in the Western Hemisphere, probably in the world. Every major chavista reform was voted on, notably a new constitution of which 71 per cent of the people approved each of the 396 articles that enshrined unheard of freedoms, such as Article 123, which for the first time recognised the human rights of mixed-race and black people, of whom Chavez was one. One of his tutorials on the road quoted a feminist writer: "Love and solidarity are the same." His audiences understood this well and expressed themselves with dignity, seldom with deference. Ordinary people regarded Chavez and his government as their first champions: as theirs. This was especially true of the indigenous, mestizos and Afro-Venezuelans, who had been held in historic contempt by Chavez's immediate predecessors and by those who today live far from the barrios, in the mansions and penthouses of East Caracas, who commute to Miami where their banks are and who regard themselves as "white". They are the powerful core of what the media calls "the opposition". [Read More]
---- Watching Chavez with la gente made sense of a man who promised, on coming to power, that his every move would be subject to the will of the people. In eight years, Chavez won eight elections and referendums: a world record. He was electorally the most popular head of state in the Western Hemisphere, probably in the world. Every major chavista reform was voted on, notably a new constitution of which 71 per cent of the people approved each of the 396 articles that enshrined unheard of freedoms, such as Article 123, which for the first time recognised the human rights of mixed-race and black people, of whom Chavez was one. One of his tutorials on the road quoted a feminist writer: "Love and solidarity are the same." His audiences understood this well and expressed themselves with dignity, seldom with deference. Ordinary people regarded Chavez and his government as their first champions: as theirs. This was especially true of the indigenous, mestizos and Afro-Venezuelans, who had been held in historic contempt by Chavez's immediate predecessors and by those who today live far from the barrios, in the mansions and penthouses of East Caracas, who commute to Miami where their banks are and who regard themselves as "white". They are the powerful core of what the media calls "the opposition". [Read More]
US Media Erase Years of Chavismo's Gains
By Gregory Shupak, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [February 20, 2019]
---- Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, which took off with the election of President Hugo Chávez in December 1998, frequently and even quite recently received praise for its social gains from the United Nations, international humanitarian organizations and economists. This aspect of the country's story has been almost entirely written out of media coverage of the effort to overthrow the Venezuelan government by the US, Canada and their right-wing partners in Venezuela and the region. … The starting point for discussions about Venezuela involving anyone who purports to care about the welfare of the people of the country ought to be the question, "What steps can be taken for Venezuela to resume making the impressive strides that it made for the majority of the time that Chavismo has held power?" as opposed to, "How can we disempower the social forces that gave birth to those gains, namely Venezuela's poor and disproportionately mestizo, indigenous and black populations?" To their discredit, corporate media have framed their coverage around the latter rather than the former–a question whose answer necessarily involves lifting the draconian sanctions. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
After the Trade War, a Real War With China?
Posted on February 19, 2019
---- Today our government is trying to break apart Sino-American interdependence, weaken China, and prevent it from overtaking us in wealth, competence, and influence. We have slapped tariffs on it, barred investment from it, charged it with pilfering intellectual property, arrested its corporate executives, blocked tech transfers to it, restricted what its students can study here, banned its cultural outreach to our universities, and threatened to bar its students from entering them. We are aggressively patrolling the waters and air spaces off its coasts and islands. Whether China deserves to be treated this way or not, we are leaving it little reason to want to cooperate with us. Our sudden hostility to China reflects a consensus – at least within the Washington Beltway – that we need to wrestle China to the ground and pin it there. But what are the chances we can do that? What are the consequences of attempting it? Where are we now headed with China? [Read More]
(Video) Trump Admin's Secretive Talks to Sell Saudi Arabia Nuclear Technology Spark New Fear of Arms Race
From Democracy Now! [February 20, 2019]
---- House Democrats are accusing the Trump administration of moving toward transferring highly sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in potential violation of U.S. law. Critics say the deal could endanger national security while enriching close allies of President Trump. Saudi Arabia is considering building as many as 16 nuclear power plants by 2030, but many critics fear the kingdom could use the technology to develop nuclear weapons and trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California and Isaac Arnsdorf, a reporter with ProPublica. Arnsdorf first wrote about the intense and secretive lobbying effort to give nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in 2017. His reporting was cited in the House report. [See the Program] Also useful is "How Kushner and other Key Trump Officials Plotted to Give Saudis the Atom Bomb in Return for Billions," by , Informed Comment [February 21, 2019] [Link].
Are Trump and Putin Opening Pandora's Box? [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Missiles]
February 19, 2019]
---- In Greek mythology, Pandora had a box she had been warned to never open. With no understanding of the consequences, and despite the warning, she opened the box, irreversibly releasing the plagues that would affect all of humanity forever. The American threat to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibits possession of missiles capable of striking targets at ranges from about 300 to 3,400 miles, will have similar consequences for humanity if it is also executed in spite of warnings and without considering the consequences. One particularly difficult aspect of this situation is that the Russians and the Americans each accuse the other of flouting the treaty's purpose in Europe by planning for, or deploying, nuclear-capable weaponry that could have a dual use — defensive on its face but potentially offensive after quick modification. It is fair to say that each side has given the other a reason to fear its ultimate intent and that Americans must take the Russian position seriously. … Unless both sides back away from their threats, accusations and suppositions about the other side, both will be in peril if the treaty is abandoned. [Read More]
This Week's US-North Korea Summit
Why Are Democrats Trying to Torpedo the Korea Peace Talks?
By Tim Shorrock, The Nation [February 22, 2019]
---- As US diplomats prepare for the second summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un next week in Hanoi, senior Democrats in the House and Senate, joined by a few Republicans, have been sounding alarm bells, warning that South Korean President Moon Jae-in is moving too fast in reconciling with North Korea by seeking a premature lifting of sanctions on the nuclear-armed state. They are also expressing strong reservations about the US and South Korean negotiations with Kim and warning Trump not to budge on his "maximum pressure" sanctions campaign until Kim has completely dismantled North Korea's nuclear-weapons and missile program. Kim temporarily halted the program nearly 500 days ago by suspending all testing of his "nuclear force." [Read More]
War With Iran?
Iran still holding up its end of nuclear deal, IAEA report shows
By Francois Murphy, Reuters [February 22, 2019]
---- Iran has remained within the key limits on its nuclear activities imposed by its 2015 deal with major powers despite growing pressure from newly reimposed U.S. sanctions, a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog showed on Friday. The International Atomic Energy Agency is policing the deal, which lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on Tehran's atomic activities aimed at increasing the time Iran would need to make an atom bomb if it chose to. Iran has stayed within caps on the level to which it can enrich uranium, as well as its stock of enriched uranium, the IAEA said in a confidential quarterly report sent to its member states and obtained by Reuters. [Read More]
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
The Hard Lessons of Dianne Feinstein's Encounter with the Young Green New Deal Activists
By Bill McKibben, The New Yorker [February 23, 2019]
---- One imagines that Senator Dianne Feinstein would like a do-over of her colloquy with some young people on Friday afternoon. A group of school students, at least one as young as seven, went to the senator's San Francisco office to ask her to support the Green New Deal climate legislation. In a video posted online by the Sunrise Movement, she tells them that the resolution isn't a good one, because it can't be paid for, and the Republicans in the Senate won't support it. She adds that she is at work on her own resolution, which she thinks could pass. … But Feinstein was, in fact, demonstrating why climate change exemplifies an issue on which older people should listen to the young. Because—to put it bluntly—older generations will be dead before the worst of it hits. The kids whom Feinstein was talking to are going to be dealing with climate chaos for the rest of their lives, as any Californian who has lived through the past few years of drought, flood, and fire must recognize. This means that youth carry the moral authority here, and, at the very least, should be treated with the solicitousness due a generation that older ones have managed to screw over. [Read More]
(Video) The Uninhabitable Earth: Unflinching New Book Lays Out Dire Consequences of Climate Chaos
From Democracy Now! [February 21, 2019]
---- "It is worse, much worse, than you think." That's the opening line of a damning new book by journalist David Wallace-Wells that offers an unflinching look at the growing climate catastrophe. "The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming" sounds the alarm about the climate crisis and the need for swift and radical action to save the planet from unimaginable destruction. We speak to Wallace-Wells about the rapid heating of the planet, which he says could reach more than 4 degrees Celsius by 2100. [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
US Foreign Policy Is for Sale
By Ben Freeman, The Nation [February 21, 2019]
---- Those who run Washington generally trust the inhabitants of think tanks of their political bent to provide the intellectual foundations upon which much of public policy is built. At least in some cases, however, that trust couldn't be more deeply misplaced, since cornerstones of the ever-expanding think-tank universe turn out to be for sale. Every year foreign governments pour tens of millions of dollars into those very institutions and, though many think tanks are tax-exempt nonprofits, such donations often turn out to be anything but charitable gifts. Foreign contributions generally come with critically important strings attached—usually a favorable stance toward that country in whatever influential work the think tanks are doing. In other words, those experts you regularly read or see on screen, whose scholarship and advice Washington's politicians and other officials often use, are in some cases being paid, directly or indirectly, by the very countries on which they are offering advice and analysis. And here's the catch: They can do so without ever having to tell you about it. [Read More]
Health Care and Insurance Industries Mobilize to Kill 'Medicare for All'
By Robert Pear, New York Times [February 23, 2019]
----- Even before Democrats finish drafting bills to create a single-payer health care system, the health care and insurance industries have assembled a small army of lobbyists to kill "Medicare for all," an idea that is mocked publicly but is being greeted privately with increasing seriousness. Doctors, hospitals, drug companies and insurers are intent on strangling Medicare for all before it advances from an aspirational slogan to a legislative agenda item. They have hired a top lieutenant in Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign to spearhead the effort. And their tactics will show Democrats what they are up against as the party drifts to the left on health care. [Read More]
Defying US Borders, Native Americans Are Asserting Their Territorial Rights
By Michelle Chen, The Nation [February 22, 2019]
---- "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." That's the message from communities who live with the troubled legacy of colonialism today—the descendants of Native peoples who have survived in defiance of the national divides that strafe their lands and run counter to their cultural inheritance.
At the Tribal Border Summit, an annual gathering of Indigenous communities hailing from all corners of the Western Hemisphere, from the tip of the Northwest Arctic to the Rio Grande, representatives of North America's Native communities discussed how to move freely in a world of borders. And although they are pressing their respective state governments for reforms to how borders are policed by national authorities, their larger vision seeks to carve out new legal avenues and territorial rights from some of the world's most unforgiving border regimes. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
The Israel lobby is built on the biggest guilt trip in the world
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [February 19, 2019]
---- I've been reading Amos Oz's books since his death, and one of the feelings he leaves me with is: Self-contempt. Many of Oz's characters look on American Jews with disdain. "To be without power is, in my eyes, both a sin and a catastrophe. It's the sin of exile, and Diaspora," says one. Another says that Diaspora Jews "shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of… life." The message is clear. Jews in the west are half-made because they never had to fight. They haven't served in the Israeli army, at the front line of reborn Jewish sovereignty. But those exiled Jews derive pride and strength from the armed Jewish nation; Israel has given them international prestige. Because once Jews went like sheep to slaughter, we formed lines to get on the cattle cars. Now we are a proud nation. But those exiled Jews have no skin in the game. They are living comfortable idle existences. Getting up like me this morning and going to my desk. This is the core truth of the Israel lobby. The American Jews feel guilty that they are not on the front lines. They are lesser; the Hebrew language even describes Jews who leave Israel as such: yordim, lower. So they must do everything they can for the higher, fighting Jews of Israel. Raise money for Israel, buy off politicians, make sure that the U.S. government sticks by Israel through thick and thin and every massacre too. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The fraught and unforgettable: How Malcolm X's legacy lives on in America
By Azad Essa, Middle East Eye [February 20, 2019]
[FB – Malcolm X was murdered 54 years ago this week, on February 21, 1965]
---- In a letter sent from Mecca, Malcolm wrote: "There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colours, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white. "You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions." His call for Black empowerment veered into larger, wider critiques of American imperialism and capitalism. … "People think that his willingness to make alliances meant that he was succumbing to ["integration"] but he just meant that he wouldn't hold blanket prejudice on all people of European descent … he wanted to dismantle systems of oppression." [Read More]
(Video) "The Green Book: Guide to Freedom": How African Americans Safely Navigated Jim Crow America
From Democracy Now! [February 22, 2019]
---- The Academy Awards take place this weekend, and one of the top contenders is the movie "Green Book," which has renewed interest in the history of "The Negro Motorist Green Book." So today we look at a remarkable new documentary called "The Green Book: Guide to Freedom," that offers a real look at the history of a travel guide that helped African Americans safely navigate Jim Crow America. The film premieres Monday on the Smithsonian Channel and details the violence, insults and discrimination black travelers faced on the road, as well as the pride and sense of community they felt in the safe spaces they created around the country, in the form of restaurants, hotels and vacation retreats. We feature excerpts and speak with writer and director Yoruba Richen, professor in the documentary program in the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. [Read More]
