Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 4, 2019
Hello All – As described at length in today's New York Times, the Democrats – especially in the House – are embarking on an intensive campaign to investigate the Trump regime to death. Several Democratic committee chairs, most notably Jerry Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee, are demanding documents and preparing to subpoena witnesses that will pry into the workings of dozens of alleged crimes carried out by Trump, his family, and his associates.
Is this good or bad for the cause of peace & justice? It will certainly make for hours of interesting television-watching, of which the Michael Cohen testimony was only the appetizer. And it will doubtless compile a documentary record that will expose Trump & Co. for the lying liars that they are, producing a record of criminality as we/the Democrats approach the 2020 presidential election.
Yet the Democratic leadership has made it clear that wall-to-wall investigations are an alternative to early impeachment hearings, thus conceding that Trump will remain in office at least through 2020. Also, it is hard not to believe that the investigations of Trump's wrongdoing will crowd out other investigations and policy-making initiatives. For example, will the Green New Deal get breathing space and airtime? Will Trump's massive violation of the law and basic human rights re: those seeking refugee status at our southern border be part of the investigative mix? And will less-sexy things such as the rollback of environmental regulations, tax-reform and favors to big business, etc. be among the "crimes" under investigation? I may be wrong, but I fear not.
With the many investigations and resulting chaos in Trump-land as background, how will the many wars and potential wars now on deck be affected? Are we in wag-the-dog land? Tightly constrained by his limited ability to have his way with Congress, will Trump seek to be "presidential" by launching or escalating a war? Consider what pots are bubbling on the stove:
- The plans for a quick coup in Venezuela have been thwarted (see below). No country seems to be willing to join the USA in a military invasion. Will Trump, Bolton, and Abrams accept this impasse, or will they concoct some excuse to send in the troops?
- The collapse of the Hanoi summit, the meeting between Trump and Kim Jung-un, was apparently the work of John Bolton (see below). Will the USA walk away from negotiations and resume making military threats?
- Trump and his close advisers would like to maneuver Iran into a military confrontation. Trump's withdrawal from the Nuclear Agreement and the reimposition of economic sanctions last November, combined with his apparent interest in helping Saudi Arabia down the nuclear path, is causing great unrest in Iran. There are many ways that a war could start, accidentally or on purpose.
And there are other possibilities: conflicts with China and Russia, skirmishes in Africa or the Middle East, another Israeli war on Gaza, a war between India and Pakistan, etc. I think we must be prepared – indeed, we must assume – that military adventures are highly probable, as Trump and his people and their many crimes are exposed.
News Notes
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted on three counts of corruption. How will this affect his chances in the election scheduled for April 9th? Here is a useful summary and some guesses on what could happen next, from Israel's leading liberal newspaper Haaretz.
When the Kushner family needed a huge loan to bail out their property at 666 Fifth Avenue, the lender happened to be the company that owned Westinghouse, which also happens to be the US manufacturer of nuclear reactors. Could this possibly be linked to the Kushner/Trump efforts to sell dozens of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia? Read the New York Times story here.
Generally overlooked in the post-game analysis of Michael Cohen's testimony to Congress was his mention of Donald Trump's efforts some years ago to buy the Buffalo Bills football team for a billion (plus) dollars. It turns out Trump's efforts (and failure) uncovers lots of information about how he makes – and doesn't make – his money. Read an interesting piece about the investigation here.
While 90 percent of Facebook users live outside the United States, it is at the instigation of the USA that Facebook labels certain sites, such as RT, as "funded by Russia." While this is interesting to know, it is of course intended to warn Facebook users that they are looking at a government's propaganda. Not surprisingly, the good people at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) wonder why PBS, BBC, or Aljazeera are not similarly labeled, as they also get funding from their home government. Is it because there is good government funding and bad government funding? We report, you decide.
Eight members of Congress, including Sanders, Warren, and Ocasio-Cortez, have signed on to an effort by a veterans' organization called Common Defense to end America's "forever wars." Read about this interesting/hopeful lobbying effort and campaign here.
Finally, check out this 6-minute "trailer" for: a film in progress called "The Last Eyewitnesses." It's about the Nakba, the dispossession of Palestinians at the time when Israel became a state in 1947-48. The filmmakers interviewed Jews and Palestinians, all now quite old, and all with strong memories of those months. I thought it was very interesting; perhaps you will also.
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 – 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].
Sunday, March 10th – (Rescheduled from last Sunday) - 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 also encourage you to check out the set of essays on the US war against Venezuela; David Swanson's essay on what it will mean if the USA starts registering women for the draft; several insightful articles about what caused the breakdown of the US-North Korea summit in Hanoi; Al McCoy's (lengthy) piece on the global-warming-induced collapse of the US-dominated international order; an interesting article on the Israeli-state repression of the soldiers' organization Breaking the Silence; and a review of a new book by one of my own heroes-of-history, Victor Serge. Read on!
Rewards!
This week's Rewards are the usual eclectic mix of good stuff. I first heard The California Honeydrops' music on Democracy Now! last week; here is their very interesting video, 'The Only Home I've Ever Known." I often listen to Ry Cooder when doing the newsletter. This video – with Occupy and other action – is accompanied by his tune "Let's Work Together. Finally, I came across another (new to me) good mix of Django Reinhardt this week. Here is his version of "St. Louis Blues." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Kashmir Is Potentially The Flashpoint For A Future Nuclear War
By Arundhati Roy, Huffington Post [March 2, 2019]
---- With his reckless "pre-emptive" airstrike on Balakot in Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inadvertently undone what previous Indian governments almost miraculously, succeeded in doing for decades. Since 1947 the Indian Government has bristled at any suggestion that the conflict in Kashmir could be resolved by international arbitration, insisting that it is an "internal matter." By goading Pakistan into a counter-strike, and so making India and Pakistan the only two nuclear powers in history to have bombed each other, Modi has internationalised the Kashmir dispute. He has demonstrated to the world that Kashmir is potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the flash-point for nuclear war. Every person, country, and organisation that worries about the prospect of nuclear war has the right to intervene and do everything in its power to prevent it. … The war that we are in the middle of, is not a war between India and Pakistan. It is a war that is being fought in Kashmir which expanded into the beginnings of yet another war between India and Pakistan. Kashmir is the real theatre of unspeakable violence and moral corrosion that can spin us into violence and nuclear war at any moment. To prevent that from happening, the conflict in Kashmir has to be addressed and resolved. That can only be done if Kashmiris are given a chance to freely and fearlessly tell the world what they are fighting for and what they really want. Dear World, find a way. [Read More]
Also useful/illuminating for the India-Pakistan conflict - "Where the Mob is Without Fear" [on India-occupied Kashmir], by Radha Surya, The Nation [February 27, 2019] [Link].; "War-Weary Pakistan Is Ready for Peace," by Rafia Zakaria, The Nation [March 1, 2019] [Link].and "Israel is playing a big role in India's escalating conflict with Pakistan," by Robert Fisk, The Independent [March 2, 2019] [Link].
Climate Change Is Here—and It Looks Like Starvation
By Ben Ehrenreich, The Nation [March 1, 2019]
---- The long history of colonial-era expropriation, exploitation, and theft echoes loudly in this new dispensation, in which the sectors of humanity that profited the least from industrialization suffer the most from its environmental impacts. The conditions that drive climate change have been created in one part of the world. The consequences have so far overwhelmingly been suffered in another. The longstanding invisibility of the majority of the planet's poor to its privileged few has been compounded and amplified as well. Myopia and blindness meet rising temperatures and rising seas to form yet another catastrophic convergence. … We, living humans of the planet Earth, can no longer afford not to see one another, and not to listen to each other's cries, shouts, demands. Our fates have always been linked. Now, they are more than ever. The failure of the planet's wealthy to act is amputating not only the future but also the present-tense possibilities of many millions here among us. [Read More]
Reckoning With Violence
By Michelle Alexander, New York Times [March 3, 2019]
---- Despite the abysmal failure of "get tough" strategies to break cycles of violence in cities like Chicago, reformers of our criminal justice system in recent years have largely avoided the subject of violence, instead focusing their energy and resources on overhauling our nation's drug laws and reducing penalties for nonviolent offenses. And yet, if we fail to face violence in our communities honestly, courageously and with profound compassion for the survivors — many of whom are also perpetrators of harm — our nation will never break its addiction to caging human beings. Fifty-four percent of the people currently held in state prisons have been convicted of a crime classified as violent. We will never slash our prison population by 50 percent — the goal of a number of current campaigns — much less get back to levels of incarceration that we had before the race to incarcerate began in the early 1980s, without addressing the one issue most reformers avoid: violence. [Read More] For more on this subject, The Times also published today a review of a new book by Alex Kotlowitz, An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago.
(Video) The Infiltrators: How Undocumented Activists Snuck Into Immigration Jail to Fight Deportations
From Democracy Now! [March 4, 2019]
---- An immigrant rights activist has been detained in Florida just weeks after he appeared in an acclaimed film at the Sundance Film Festival about activists infiltrating and exposing for-profit immigrant detention jails. Claudio Rojas was apprehended on Wednesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an annual check-in and is now being held at Krome Detention Center, where he faces immediate deportation. His lawyer says his arrest is linked to the film featuring his activism. It's called "The Infiltrators." The gripping hybrid documentary/dramatic feature was a smash success at Sundance and will play at the Miami Film Festival Tuesday. But Claudio Rojas will not be there to see it. "The Infiltrators" is based on the incredible true story of undocumented immigrants who purposely got themselves arrested by federal authorities in order to infiltrate the Broward Transitional Center in Florida and organize the detainees within its walls. Democracy Now! spoke with the film's co-director, Alex Rivera, and two activists featured in the film, Viridiana Martinez and Mohammad Abdollahi, at the Sundance Film Festival. [See the Program]
THE WAR ON VENEZUELA
(Video) An Ocean of Lies on Venezuela: Abby Martin & UN Rapporteur Expose Coup
From Empire Report [February 22, 2019] – 39 minutes
---- On the eve of another US war for oil, Abby Martin debunks the most repeated myths about Venezuela and uncovers how US sanctions are crimes against humanity with UN Investigator and Human Rights Rapporteur Alfred De Zayas. [See the Program]
(Video) The Coup Has Failed & Now the U.S. Is Looking to Wage War: Venezuelan Foreign Minister Speaks Out
From Democracy Now! [February 25, 2019]
---- Venezuela's opposition is calling on the United States and allied nations to consider using military force to topple the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. … We speak with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, who has recently held secret talks with Trump's special envoy Elliott Abrams. [See the Program]
Trump's Other 'National Emergency': Sanctions That Kill Venezuelans
By Mark Weisbrot, The Nation [February 28, 2019]
---- There are no estimates of the death toll from the sanctions, but given the experience of countries in similar situations, it is likely in the thousands or tens of thousands so far. And it will get rapidly worse if the most recent sanctions continue. How do economic sanctions kill people? In general, they do so by damaging the economy. This includes loss of employment and income for people living on the margin, and, most importantly, reduced access to life-saving necessities such as medicines, medical supplies, and health care… The Venezuelan people have been even more vulnerable to US economic sanctions than Iraqis were. Venezuela is dependent on oil exports for almost all of the dollars the economy needs to import necessities such as medicine and food. This means that anything that reduces oil production is primarily hitting the general population by cutting off the dollars that both the private sector and government use to import goods for people's basic needs, as well as for transport, spare parts, and most goods that the economy needs in order to function. [Read More]
Also useful/illuminating about the US war on Venezuela –"The Trojan Horse of US "Aid" to Venezuela," b[Link]; and "Venezuela: US increasingly isolated as allies warn against use of military force,' by Joe Parkin Daniels, et al., The Guardian [UK] [February 25, 2019] [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
Draft Registration Will Be Either Ended or Imposed on Women
By David Swanson, ZNet [March 1, 2019]
---- A choice must now be made. It is officially unconstitutional to discriminate against 18-year-old women by not forcing them to sign up to be forced against their will to kill and die for Venezuela's oil or some other noble cause. Yes, the fine U.S. judiciary has declared for-men-only Selective Service registration to be verboten. That's not to say there isn't debate on the matter. One side holds that women should be treasured as the delicate witless pieces of property they are because the Bible says so, and therefore they must be kept out of war entirely. The other side says that good modern liberal progressive feminists should demand the right of every woman to be forced, on pain of prison or even death, to help murder a million Iraqis for the cause of creating ISIS or some similar high purpose. Enlightened women demand not only equal pay, but equal moral injury, PTSD, brain injury, suicide risk, lost limbs, violent tendencies, and the chance to board airplanes first while everybody thanks them for their "service." [Read More]
---- A choice must now be made. It is officially unconstitutional to discriminate against 18-year-old women by not forcing them to sign up to be forced against their will to kill and die for Venezuela's oil or some other noble cause. Yes, the fine U.S. judiciary has declared for-men-only Selective Service registration to be verboten. That's not to say there isn't debate on the matter. One side holds that women should be treasured as the delicate witless pieces of property they are because the Bible says so, and therefore they must be kept out of war entirely. The other side says that good modern liberal progressive feminists should demand the right of every woman to be forced, on pain of prison or even death, to help murder a million Iraqis for the cause of creating ISIS or some similar high purpose. Enlightened women demand not only equal pay, but equal moral injury, PTSD, brain injury, suicide risk, lost limbs, violent tendencies, and the chance to board airplanes first while everybody thanks them for their "service." [Read More]
The Trump-North Korea Summit
(Video) "The Korean People Want Peace": Christine Ahn on Trump Walking Away from N. Korea Nuclear Talks
From Democracy Now! [February 28, 2019]
---- A historic summit to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula ended without an agreement Thursday, after talks between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un fell apart. Their second summit meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, failed after Kim Jong-un demanded that the U.S. lift all sanctions on North Korea in exchange for dismantling the Yongbyon enrichment facility—an important North Korean nuclear site. We speak with Christine Ahn, founder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War. [See the Program]
Why the Hanoi Summit Failed [Trump & North Korea]
---- A probable explanation for the hardened American position is the fact that John Bolton, who distrusts paper agreements, was unexpectedly part of the American delegation in Hanoi and sat alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the negotiating table. Bolton presented the additional demands, possibly because of all the warnings from East Coast experts about Trump's unpredictability. … Although both Kim and Trump lost face, the major loser at Hanoi was Seoul. President Moon Jae In wanted to see a relaxation of sanctions so that he could encourage South Korean businesses to operate in the North, promoting prosperity within both halves of the Korean peninsula, something of considerable significance for the people of North Korea, where there is an expected shortfall of 1.4 million tons of food during 2019. Both Koreas had already issued peace declarations and undertaken demilitarization measures around their joint border. They were awaiting the United States to join the de-escalation, the first step toward development of a comprehensive peace treaty that would finally end the last vestige of the Cold War. Now President Moon will have the mediatory task of pursuing the compromise that could have made the Hanoi Summit a success. [Read More]
Also useful on decoding the Hanoi summit – "Failed Hanoi Meeting Has U.S. Allies in Region Asking: What's Next?", New York Times [March 1, 2019] [Link]; "Trump Sticks To Sanctions - U.S., North Korea Summit Fails," from Moon of Alabama [February 28, 2019] [Link].
Ending the War in Afghanistan?
Afghan women's voices must be heard in US-Taliban peace talks
By Caroline Davies, The Guardian [UK] [February 26, 2019]
---- Arundhati Roy and Margaret Atwood are among a group of international writers and activists backing claims that US peace talks with the Taliban are excluding Afghan women's voices and risk pushing back the rights of women in the country. In an open letter published in the Guardian, Atwood, the author of the dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale, and Roy, who won the Man Booker prize for The God of Small Things, along with hundreds of Afghan women and young people, call for "global solidarity to keep women's voices alive". "We, the women of Afghanistan, will not go backwards," the letter states. "History has taught us the bloody lesson that you cannot have peace without inclusion." The letter has also been signed by other international figures including the playwright Eve Ensler, the author Neil Gaiman, the film director Ken Loach, the author and physician Khaled Hosseini, the feminist activist Gloria Steinem and five Nobel peace laureates. [Read More]
The US-supported War in Yemen
How America facilitates the UAE's occupation of southern Yemen
By Jonathan Fenton-Harvey, The New Arab [February 28, 2019]
---- Medieval torture methods, kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, empowerment of Salafist groups and figures, and foreign military occupation of their country. Just a few of the things afflicting Yemenis as the United Arab Emirates expands its influence in southern Yemen, thanks to the help of the United States. The UAE has used its position in the anti-Houthi coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, as an opportunity to fulfill its long-term ambitions to control southern Yemen's resources and the port city of Aden, which would expand Abu Dhabi's global maritime trade and give it greater access to East Africa. Though part of Saudi Arabia's coalition on paper, it has divergent aims, as the Saudi-backed President Abdrabbo Mansur Hadi actually hinders the UAE's ambitions to control Aden. While other countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Belgium sell the UAE weapons and provide military support, the United States plays a larger and more direct role in facilitating Emirati control of south Yemen. [Read More]
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
What Does It Take to Destroy a World Order?
By Alfred W. McCoy, Tom Dispatch [February 28, 2019]
---- If we translate those sparse words into a future scenario, sometime before 2040 when average global warming is likely to reach that dangerous 1.5 degrees Celsius mark, the Middle East will likely experience a disastrous temperature rise of 2.3 degrees. Such intense heat will produce protracted droughts far worse than the one that destroyed those Bronze Age civilizations, potentially devastating agriculture and sparking water wars among the nations that share the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, while sending yet more millions of refugees fleeing toward Europe. Under such unprecedented pressure, far-right parties might take power across the continent and the EU could rupture as every nation seals its borders. NATO, suffering a "severe crisis" since the Trump years, might simply implode, creating a strategic vacuum that finally allows Russia to seize Ukraine and the Baltic states. As tensions rise on both sides of the Atlantic, the U.N. could be paralyzed by a great-power deadlock in the Security Council as well as growing recriminations over the role of its High Commissioner for Refugees. … Of course, on a planet on which by 2100 that country's agricultural heartland, the north China plain with its 400 million inhabitants, could become uninhabitable thanks to unendurable heat waves and its major coastal commercial city, Shanghai, could be under water (as could other key coastal cities), who knows what the next world order might truly be like. Climate change, if not brought under some kind of control, threatens to create a new and eternally cataclysmic planet on which the very word "order" may lose its traditional meaning. https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/what-does-it-take-to-destroy-a-world-order/
---- If we translate those sparse words into a future scenario, sometime before 2040 when average global warming is likely to reach that dangerous 1.5 degrees Celsius mark, the Middle East will likely experience a disastrous temperature rise of 2.3 degrees. Such intense heat will produce protracted droughts far worse than the one that destroyed those Bronze Age civilizations, potentially devastating agriculture and sparking water wars among the nations that share the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, while sending yet more millions of refugees fleeing toward Europe. Under such unprecedented pressure, far-right parties might take power across the continent and the EU could rupture as every nation seals its borders. NATO, suffering a "severe crisis" since the Trump years, might simply implode, creating a strategic vacuum that finally allows Russia to seize Ukraine and the Baltic states. As tensions rise on both sides of the Atlantic, the U.N. could be paralyzed by a great-power deadlock in the Security Council as well as growing recriminations over the role of its High Commissioner for Refugees. … Of course, on a planet on which by 2100 that country's agricultural heartland, the north China plain with its 400 million inhabitants, could become uninhabitable thanks to unendurable heat waves and its major coastal commercial city, Shanghai, could be under water (as could other key coastal cities), who knows what the next world order might truly be like. Climate change, if not brought under some kind of control, threatens to create a new and eternally cataclysmic planet on which the very word "order" may lose its traditional meaning. https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/what-does-it-take-to-destroy-a-world-order/
Climate Crisis: Glacier Melt, Droughts, Floods require Indo-Pak Cooperation to Avoid Disaster
By Omair Ahmad, Informed Comment [March 3, 2019 | –
---- With glacier retreat, permafrost melt, and extreme rainfall events, ICIMOD's HIMAP report suggests that the countries of the Hindu Kush Himalayas have to start cooperating far more closely, or pay a huge price. Water in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is going through large and dramatic changes, caused by both climate change and human intervention, and the countries around it are unprepared for it. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
The Migrant Caravan: Made in USA
By Roberto Saviano, New York Review of Books [March 7, 2019 Issue]
---- The migrant caravan that left Honduras and headed north toward the US last October is the largest flight from drug trafficking in history. Though the phenomenon of Central American caravans isn't new, never before have thousands of people decided to flee from criminal organizations in such numbers. It is, in a sense, the biggest anti-mafia march the world has ever seen. … Together with El Salvador and Guatemala, Honduras forms the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America, one of the most dangerous non-war zones on the planet. What has made this region such a hell on earth is the fact that it is situated between the main producers of cocaine—Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia—and the main seller, Mexico. Honduras, furthermore, has two coasts, one on the Caribbean and one on the Pacific, making it a convenient point of arrival and departure for shipments of cocaine, and thus a very attractive base for traffickers. The migrant caravan is following the same land route as the cocaine that enters the US every day. [Read More]
Congress Is Unlikely to Stop Trump's "Emergency," But Lawsuits Could
By Marjorie Cohn, TruthOut [February 26, 2019]
---- Today, the House of Representatives is poised to adopt a resolution overturning Donald Trump's trumped-up "national emergency" proclamation, in which he claims authority to fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall at the southern border. The National Emergencies Act requires Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring the House resolution to a vote within 18 days. In order to prevail in the Senate, four Republicans would have to defy Trump. If the bill passes both houses of Congress, Trump has pledged to veto it and there is little chance Congress could muster the two-thirds necessary to override his veto. In the likely event the legislature fails to void Trump's "emergency" declaration, the judicial branch will have the opportunity to check and balance the executive. Six lawsuits have already been filed in federal courts around the country. [Read More]
America faces many emergencies. The 'border crisis' isn't one of them
By Reverend William Barber and Dr Liz Theoharis, The Guardian [February 25, 2019]
---- In declaring a national emergency to fund an unnecessary border wall this month, Donald Trump has provoked a conversation about what the word "emergency" actually means. Forget the manufactured border crisis, let's talk about the real emergencies facing the nation today. Right now in America, there are 140 million people living in poverty or just one paycheck or emergency away from poverty. Thirty-seven million people live without healthcare and 62 million are paid less than a living wage. Fourteen million families cannot afford water and millions are living with poisoned water and without sanitation services. We suffer under an impoverished democracy that has less voting rights today than it did after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. In other words, there is a national emergency of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
(Video) U.N. Finds Israel Intentionally Shot Children, Journalists & the Disabled during Gaza Protests
From Democracy Now! [March 4, 2019]
---- A United Nations inquiry has found Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by targeting unarmed children, journalists and the disabled in Gaza. The report, released by the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday, looked at Israel's bloody response to weekly Great March of Return demonstrations, launched by Palestinians in Gaza nearly a year ago, targeting Israel's heavily militarized separation barrier. The report found Israeli forces have killed 183 Palestinians—almost all of them with live ammunition. The dead included 35 children. Twenty-three thousand people were injured, including over 6,000 shot by live ammunition. We speak with Sara Hossain, a member of the U.N. independent commission that led the Gaza investigation; and with Norman Finkelstein [See the Program]
Breaking the Silence: Inside the Israeli Right's Campaign to Silence an Anti-Occupation Group
By Mairav Zonszein, The Intercept [March 3, 2019]
---- For Breaking the Silence, the discovery of a network of spies was just the tip of the iceberg. The small whistleblower organization has found itself at the epicenter of a well-orchestrated, ongoing campaign by a spectrum of right-wing groups, individuals, media outlets, and senior politicians to quash its exposure of Israel's occupation and human rights violations. The attacks have included incitement and threats. They have been called liars, traitors, and enemies. The political persecution of Breaking the Silence is a testament to the settler right's consolidation of power and permeation into the mainstream… The political persecution of Breaking the Silence is a testament to the settler right's consolidation of power and permeation into the mainstream over the last decade; allegations against the group have found their way into the talking points of Israel's most powerful leaders. The state has put a heavy price tag on calling for an end to the occupation, and Breaking the Silence has found itself on the front lines of this battle. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Victor Serge: Indispensable Critic of Leftist Illusion
By Mitchell Abidor, New York Review of Books [February 28, 2019]
[FB – In the Pantheon of my memory, Victor Serge stands in the front rank. Get to know him: freedom fighter, novelist, analyst of the world of post-revolutionary Russia. This is a review of a new publication, Serge's "Notebooks 1936 – 1947"; crucial years, to say the least, for revolutionaries.]
---- When Victor Serge died of a heart attack in the back of a Mexico City cab on November 17, 1947, there were said to be holes in the soles of his shoes. They spoke of the poverty of his last six years in Mexico, but they also symbolized the peripatetic life of this perpetual exile. But it is a life with lessons, for Serge and his rethinking of socialism and the left have a particular resonance today… Serge's politics changed with every change of country, and it was in Mexico that he undertook his final political shift. The Notebooks 1936–1947 offer the clearest account of this shift and of just how radical it was; read along with his correspondence and articles of the period, they provide us with a complex picture.. … The final dream of Victor Serge, an exile at the end from revolutionary illusion, was a democratic, socialist-leaning Europe. It was as if he realized that in the world emerging from World War II, the truly radical position, the idea worth fighting for despite it all, was that expressed in Orwell's lapidary definition in The Road to Wigan Pier: "Socialism means justice and common decency." [Read More]
Trump and Fascism. A View from the Past
November 17, 2016]
---- Is Trump a fascist? Let's start with another question: why do we want to know? Is it simply to stick him with the most damning political label available? Or is it because his ideas, his actions, his support really put him in the same genus as the fascist movements and regimes of interwar Europe? … Anyone who studies modern history always has at least one corner of one eye trained on the present; and there are moments when the encounter between present and past suddenly forces itself to the centre of our field of vision. The moment of Trump is one of these. But this eruption does not mean simply that we should paste bits of the past onto the present and see if they fit. The point is how the history we already know can be used to make sense of the present. I'll focus on three of the most pressing issues where I think the history of fascism offers us something usable. This leaves a lot out, and in any case the aim is not to play a taxonomic game, but to try to identify points of risk and resistance. If I use the case of Germany, this is not to substitute Nazism for fascism in all its guises, but to disclose some of the crucial mechanisms through which power can be translated into tyranny. [Read More]
