Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 18, 2019
Hello All – On Friday, March 15th, more than a million students marched, in more than 100 countries, to protest their government's failure to take our climate crisis seriously. The students' manifesto says that we only have a few years – perhaps 12 – before our planet becomes so warm that global warming can't be stopped. They say: "We will not accept the world's decision-makers' inaction that threatens our entire civilization. We will not accept a life in fear and devastation. We have the right to live our dreams and hopes." That's the message in a nutshell. The generation now running the planet will be dead before the worst effects of our climate crisis kick in. People now young will suffer it, and their children will live in a world in upheaval. They say this is unfair; are they wrong? The disaster is worldwide. What can we do in our part of the globe, the USA? The consensus of those working for change calls their plan "the Green New Deal." It would rebuild our economy with a focus on renewable energy and economy justice. Yes it would be expensive – we would have to cut our military budget, for example – but not doing anything will be much more expensive.
I am puzzled that this action seemed to elicit little/no participation among Westchester students. Why was this? One year ago, when a zillion students demonstrated against gun violence after the shooting at Parklands, Florida high school, Westchester students were part of the action. What is it that separates participation last year from little/no participation this year? Climate crisis v. gun safety? Perhaps. It's something that we need to think about. Among the good/useful reading linked below about the student climate strike, there is an essay from the UK Guardian titled "If children don't join the climate strike, their schools are underachieving." Food for thought, imo.
In any case, the students who marched were full of energy and determination. Hope mixed with anger. And fun. Photographers Erik McGregor and Gina Randazzo posted some great pictures of the NYC action on the CFOW Facebook page. Here's some good video of a student march in Brighton, UK. And Democracy Now! was out and about in NYC talking with the young marchers: "This country needs to get its priorities straight!"!
The Mosque massacre in New Zealand
A self-described white supremacist killed 51 worshipers Friday at a mosque in New Zealand. Democracy Now! had some useful initial coverage and analysis on Friday morning. As several/many commentators have pointed out, governments and internal security people have paid insufficient attention to the right wing and white supremacy extremists, who are responsible – especially in their attacks on Muslims worldwide – for the great majority of terrorist murders. The reasons for this security blind spot are many, not excluding the right wing and Islamophobic culture of the security apparatus itself. As noted in an article linked below, President Trump shares this worldview himself. And just as the Nazi hardcore did not need explicit orders from Hitler to do their deeds – but practiced "working towards the Fuehrer" – so the supporters of Trump know what he wants from them, even without written orders.
The response to the massacre by people and their government in New Zealand contrasts in some ways to what happened – for example – after the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. There were certainly the same forms or rituals of mourning, but in New Zealand the issue of guns and gun control was immediately on the table, and it appears that further limits on gun purchases and the kinds of guns that people can buy will be part of the legislative outcome. And there was also an immediate demand for discussion and action to counter white supremacy, including statements by the NZ prime minister herself, something that is unimaginable coming from the Trump White House.
Finally, I encourage everyone to take a minute or two to listen to these remarks by an Islamic presenter on an Australian talk show. "You'll have to forgive me," he said, "these won't be my best words…." (h/t Eva G.)
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
News Notes
Tomorrow, March 19th, is the anniversary of the 2003 beginning of the US war against Iraq, one of the most horrible events in history. Previously, in October 2002, New York's Senators Clinton and Schumer, and Representatives Engel and Lowey had voted to give President Bush the power to use military force against Iraq. Prior to this vote, CFOW collected hundreds of signatures on petitions urging Sen. Clinton, at that time supposedly "undecided," to vote No, which we then faxed in. Once, speaking to one of her staff people, I asked how the comments coming into her office were going. "About 95 percent against war," I was told. But Sen. Clinton refused our good advice. Of course, all four NY political leaders have since apologized, and so everything is OK now and we shouldn't hate them. To mark the anniversary of the Iraq War, the War Resisters' League and others will hold a short march and demonstration tomorrow, March 19th, from noon to 1 PM, at 26 Federal Plaza, lower Broadway between Duane and Worth Sts.
On Saturday there was a "No War for Oil" march in Washington, DC against US intervention in Venezuela. Among the speakers were Daniel Ellsberg and the Green Party's Jill Stein. You can see some footage from The Real News Network here. There's also a good report and more video at Common Dreams.
If you need to get up to speed on how to block bridges to protest global warming, this Extinction Rebellion video about last November's action in London is for you. Just like here in the USA, organizing is like herding cats, but with a better sense of humor.
Did you know that the USA refuses to join the International Criminal Court? Not only that, but they threaten to invade any place that puts Americans on trial for human rights crimes. AND not only that, but the Trump people are refusing visas to jurists/investigators from The Hague who want information on the US war in Afghanistan. (Afghanistan IS a member of the Int. Crim. Court.) Read this sorry story here.
Finally, dissenting voices from Israel seldom appear in the US mainstream media. Israel's main liberal daily newspaper is Haaretz, and their star reporter Amira Hass covers the Occupied Territories. This week she was interviewed on a Haaretz podcast about the week's events in Israel/the Territories. I think you will find it interesting; check it out.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – Weather permitting, the CFOW stalwarts gather every Saturday from 12 to 1 PM at the VFW in Hastings (Warburton and Spring St.) to protest war and other evils. Please join us!
Tuesday, March 19th – The (Rivertowns) League of Women Voters will hold a forum and discussion on the topic of "New York Election Law Reform: Unfinished Business." It's at the Jazz Forum Club, 1 Dixon Lane in Tarrytown, from 8-30 to 10 AM. Speaking will be John Nonna. For information email info@lwv-rivertowns.org.
Wednesday, March 20th – In response to the massacre in New Zealand, we are invited to join the Chappaqua Interfaith Council for an interfaith vigil. 7 PM at the Centennial Hall, First Congregational Church/UMWS, 210 Orchard Ridge Road in Chappaqua.
Friday, March 22nd through Sunday, March 24th – On the 51st anniversary of the My Lai (Vietnam) massacre, there will be an excellent exhibit about the events at the Quaker Meeting House, 15 Rutherford Place, in NYC (near Union Square). There will be an Opening Event on Friday March 22, 7pm, with speakers from Vietnam and American Vietnam veterans, including Vietnamese music. The exhibit will be open on Friday, March 22, 6–9:30 pm; Saturday, March 23, 11 am-8 pm; Sunday, March 24, 1–4 pm. The event is sponsored by Veterans For Peace - NYC Chapter 34, & the Full Disclosure Campaign of Veterans For Peace. For more information, go here and here.
Sunday, March 24th – The 2019 Westchester Social Justice Forum will be held in the Music Building at SUNY Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road in Purchase. The event opens at 12 noon, and the first plenary starts at 1:30. Among the speakers will be Democracy Now!'s host Amy Goodman. Following the plenary, there will be workshops on social-justice topics. To learn more go here.
Sunday, March 31st – "Muslims in America: The History of … And the Resistance to … Islamophobia" is the topic of a forum to be held at the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester, 7 Saxon Woods Road in White Plains. Sponsored by the Westchester Coalition Against Islamophobia. Free.
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 articles on the student climate strike and the US war against Venezuela; a Chris Hedges article on the latest imprisonment of Chelsea Manning; an excellent article by Westchester's Phil Weiss on the role of the "Israel Lobby" in the USA since 1947; and ("Our History") a Women's History Month remembrance of the novelist Tillie Olsen, and also the story of Woody Guthrie and "This Land is Your Land." Read on!
Rewards!
For those who have read all the way to here, your rewards this week are some tunes from the great Sidney Bechet. There is lots of his music on YouTube; and you might have heard at least one song in a Woody Allen movie. My favorites this week are "Si Tu Vois Ma Mėre"; "Petite Fleur"; and "Blues My Sweetie Gives to Me." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
We told you the threat is white supremacy. You ignored us
By Randa Abdel-Fattah, The New Arab [March 16, 2019]
[FB – Randa Abdel-Fattah writes novels and is a researcher on the subject of the generational impact of the war on terror on post 9/11 youth at Macquarie University in Australia.]
---- Graffiti on the walls: 'Go back home terrorists.' It was the first Gulf War. We told you the threat is white supremacy. You ignored us and said: 'Prove your loyalty.' Arab and Muslim Australians spent the 90s proving themselves not-Saddam, not-terrorist, not-barbaric, not-unAustralian, not-enemy alien, not fifth-column. We scrubbed the name of our Islamic school off the buses. We wiped the spit off our hijabs. We Anglicised our names to get jobs. The highest court of the land declared this land was never terra nullius. The blood stains on this stolen continent could no longer be bleached. Race could not be denied. We told you the threat is still white supremacy. You ignored us and said: 'Prove you're not terrorist.' … We were told that the price for conditional belonging was the sacrifice of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and every other broken, exploited third-world body and soul that paid the price for the West's wealth and 'freedom'. We were expected to forgive Abu Ghraib, forget Guantanamo Bay, be silent about Gaza. We were told the borders would be patrolled by whiteness, not the indigenous owners of this land. Our mosques were vandalised, our hijabs ripped off our heads, our leaders seduced into accepting we needed to be spied on, racialised and marked as a suspect community at-risk of 'radicalisation' via countering violent extremism programmes. We told you the threat is still white supremacy. You ignored us and said: 'Accept Australian values or go back to where you came from.' [Read More] Who/what is responsible for the toxic cloud of Islamophobia? For starters, read "It Isn't Complicated: Trump Encourages Violence," by David Leonhardt, New York Times [March 17, 2019] [Link]; and "Don't Just Condemn the New Zealand Attacks — Politicians and Pundits Must Stop Their Anti-Muslim Rhetoric," by Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept [[Link].
We Must Apply Our Universal Values to All Nations. Only Then Will We Achieve Peace.
By Rep.
---- I believe in an inclusive foreign policy — one that centers on human rights, justice and peace as the pillars of America's engagement in the world, one that brings our troops home and truly makes military action a last resort. This is a vision that centers on the experiences of the people directly affected by conflict, that takes into account the long-term effects of U.S. engagement in war and that is sincere about our values regardless of short-term political convenience. This means reorienting our foreign affairs to focus on diplomacy and economic and cultural engagement. At a time when we spend more on our military than the next seven countries combined, our global armed presence is often the most immediate contact people in the developing world have with the United States. National security experts across the political spectrum agree that we don't need nearly 800 military bases outside the United States to keep our country safe. Valuing human rights also means applying the same standards to our friends and our enemies. We do not have the credibility to support those fighting for human rights in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua if we do not also support those fighting for human rights in Honduras, Guatemala and Brazil. Our criticisms of oppression and regional instability caused by Iran are not legitimate if we do not hold Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to the same standards. [Read More]
A Future Without Fossil Fuels
By Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books [April 4, 2019 issue]
---- Over the last decade, there has been a staggering fall in the price of solar and wind power, and of the lithium-ion batteries used to store energy. This has led to rapid expansion of these technologies, even though they are still used much less than fossil fuels: in 2017, for instance, sun and wind produced just 6 percent of the world's electric supply, but they made up 45 percent of the growth in supply, and the cost of sun and wind power continues to fall by about 20 percent with each doubling of capacity. Bond's analysis suggests that in the next few years, they will represent all the growth. We will then reach peak use of fossil fuels, not because we're running out of them but because renewables will have become so cheap that anyone needing a new energy supply will likely turn to solar or wind power. …Yet overall the benefits would be immeasurable. Imagine a world in which the tortured politics of the Middle East weren't magnified in importance by the value of the hydrocarbons beneath its sands. And imagine a world in which the greatest driver of climate change—the unrelenting political power of the fossil-fuel industry—had begun to shrink. The question, of course, is whether we can reach that new world in time. [Read More]
THE STUDENT CLIMATE STRIKE
Think We Should Be at School? Today's Climate Strike Is the Biggest Lesson of All
By ,
[FB – The authors of this statement are among the leaders of the global student climate strike.]
---- This movement had to happen, we didn't have a choice. The vast majority of climate strikers taking action today aren't allowed to vote. Imagine for a second what that feels like. Despite watching the climate crisis unfold, despite knowing the facts, we aren't allowed to have a say in who makes the decisions about climate change. And then ask yourself this: wouldn't you go on strike too, if you thought doing so could help protect your own future? So today we walk out of school, we quit our college lessons, and we take to the streets to say enough is enough. Some adults say we shouldn't be walking out of classes – that we should be "getting an education". We think organising against an existential threat – and figuring out how to make our voices heard – is teaching us some important lessons. Other adults keep saying: "We owe it to the young people to give them hope." But we don't want your hope. We don't want you to be hopeful. We want you to panic and we want you to take action. We want you to join us. [Read More]
Thank you, Climate Strikers. Your Action Matters and Your Power Will Be Felt
By
---- I want to say to all the climate strikers today: thank you so much for being unreasonable. That is, if reasonable means playing by the rules, and the rules are presumed to be guidelines for what is and is not possible, then you may be told that what you are asking for is impossible or unreasonable. Don't listen. Don't stop. Don't let your dreams shrink by one inch. Don't forget that this might be the day and the pivotal year when you rewrite what is possible. What climate activists are asking for is a profound change in all our energy systems, for leaving fossil fuel in the ground, for taking action adequate to the planet-scale crisis of climate change. And the rules we are so often reminded of by those who aren't ready for change are not the real rules. Because one day last summer a 15-year-old girl sat down to stage a one-person climate strike, and a lot of adults would like to tell you that the rules say a 15-year-old girl cannot come out of nowhere, alone, and change the world. Sweden's Greta Thunberg already has. [Read More]
If children don't join the climate strike, their schools are underachieving
, The Guardian [UK] [March 14, 2019]
----Activism is more important than grades. Any responsible teacher should be encouraging their pupils to walk out. Rather than calling schoolchildren truants when they show up for society in a way that puts the rest of us to shame – we should be using the strikes as a measure of school performance. In my book, any secondary school that doesn't have pupils informed enough to join the protests is underachieving. Perhaps that sounds like irresponsible, progressive nonsense. But it is fully in line with the education policies that those opposing the strikes have spent the last decade championing in schools. … The real problem with the climate strike is not a conflict between education and campaigning. Schools have been doing campaigns for decades. The problem is that this time, the children mean it – and this time, they're doing it on their own terms. … This leave us with a choice. We can either redesign education so that change-making is a normal part of growing up; or we can keep pushing young people to the sidelines of society and hope they'll leave things to the grownups. Given the state of the world today, why on earth would we want that? [Read More]
Also of interest on the student climate strike – 240 scientists signed a statement in support of the student strikers; read "An Open Letter Endorsing the Global School Strike for Climate," published in Scientific American, here. An article from Inside Climate News considers "School Strike for Climate: What Today's Kids Face If World Leaders Delay Action" [Link]. And Frida Berrigan asks, "Can Global Youth Revolt force the Trump Generation to tackle Climate Crisis?" [Link].
WAR & PEACE
The Pentagon's Bottomless Money Pit
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone [March 18, 2019]
[FB – For an article about the dry-as-dust military budget, this is readable and pretty interesting.]
---- Despite being the taxpayers' greatest investment — more than $700 billion a year — the Department of Defense has remained an organizational black box throughout its history. It's repelled generations of official inquiries, the latest being an audit three decades in the making, mainly by scrambling its accounting into such a mess that it may never be untangled. Ahead of misappropriation, fraud, theft, overruns, contracting corruption and other abuses that are almost certainly still going on, the Pentagon's first problem is its books. It's the world's largest producer of wrong numbers, an ingenious bureaucratic defense system that hides all the other rats' nests underneath. Meet the Gordian knot of legend, brought to life in modern America. [Read More]
Saudi Crown Prince's Brutal Drive to Crush Dissenters Began Before Khashoggi
By Mark Mazzetti and Ben Hubbard, New York Times [March 17, 2019]
---- Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters — which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens — over a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign. At least some of the clandestine missions were carried out by members of the same team that killed and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi in Istanbul in October, suggesting that his killing was a particularly egregious part of a wider campaign to silence Saudi dissidents, according to the officials and associates of some of the Saudi victims. Members of the team that killed Mr. Khashoggi, which American officials called the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group, were involved in at least a dozen operations starting in 2017, the officials said. [Read More]
US and Iranian Hardliners Continue the Suffering
By Ann Wright, Consortium News [March 14, 2019]
[FB - Ann Wright reports on a citizen peace delegation's recent trip to Iran, which included a meeting with the country's foreign minister. Ann Wright was in the U.S.Army/Army Reserves for 29 years and was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years. She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to Bush's war on Iraq.]
---- As citizen diplomats, we have been labeled as "naïve tools of repressive governments" when we visited Iran, North Korea, Gaza, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, countries where U.S. interference, invasion, occupation or support for other countries' wars, have made life miserable and dangerous for their citizens. We encounter ordinary citizens who are concerned about the future of their children, their health and education because of military conflict or sanctions touted as a humane substitute for military conflict. We return with their stories, determined to resolve whatever political disagreement is occurring between the U.S. and the particular country. … In the nine days we were in Iran, from Feb. 26 to March 6, we talked with Iranians in schools, bazaars and markets, on squares and in mosques. Many people in Iran speak English. English is taught from elementary school. Young students ran up to us to practice their English. The Trump administration's travel ban on Iranians means that students who have been accepted to U.S. universities cannot get student visas to study in the U.S. Families with members in the U.S. cannot visit them. Iranians are turning to Europe and Asia. The U.S. travel ban on Iran and the six other countries may have been intended to isolate Iran, but instead America is isolating itself. [Read More] Alex McDonald was also on the trip to Iran. Read his interesting short essay, "U.S. Iran Policy: What is Great?" Counterpunch [March 15, 2019] [Link].
THE WAR AGAINST VENEZUELA
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance [March 18, 2019]
---- We are completing what became more than a week-long peace delegation to Venezuela organized by the US Peace Council and the Committee for International Solidarity in Venezuela (COSI). The trip was complicated by American Airlines cancelling all flights in and out of the country, leaving us scrambling for ways to get there and get home. We also arrived in the midst of the attack on Venezuela's electrical system, which caused further complications. Our delegation met with community groups, political parties and members of the government, including a private meeting with President Maduro. It is evident the US coup is weak. They have a weak leader in Guaido. They depend on lies because the truth undermines their every turn. They cannot participate in elections because they have very little democratic support. This contrasts with the strength of Maduro, who has the support of the people. … The popular movement is positioned to stop the Venezuela coup and prevent a military attack. Our solidarity efforts in the US may prevent them from having to suffer more. [Read More]
(Video) Regime Change Via Sanctions? U.S. Uses International Finance System to Strangle Venezuelan Economy
From Democracy Now! [March 14, 2019]
---- Venezuelan officials say power will be largely restored in the country today after a week-long blackout across much of the country. The cause of the blackout remains in dispute. The United States blamed it on years of neglect of the Venezuelan energy system, but Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused the U.S. military of launching a "cyberattack against the electrical, telecommunication and internet systems." The blackout comes amid a growing political crisis in Venezuela as U.S.-backed opposition groups attempt to topple Maduro's government. On Monday, the United States announced it was withdrawing remaining diplomatic staff from its embassy in Caracas. [See the Program]
Exposure of Pro-War Lie Doesn't Make Media More Skeptical
By Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [March 18, 2019]
----Listeners will likely know by now, that the late February story, complete with vivid video footage, about the forces of elected Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro burning trucks that were trying to bring the besieged country food and medicine was false. Weeks later, the New York Times reported that the humanitarian trucks were not set on fire by Maduro's forces, but instead by anti-Maduro protestors who threw a Molotov cocktail. The Times outlined how the fake story took root, passing from US officials to media that simply reported their claims as fact with no investigation—and does any of this sound familiar? … This false story arrived embedded within another false story: that the Venezuelan government is blocking needed humanitarian aid to the country. The Venezuelan government has and does allow aid into their country—from countries that are not actively and vituperatively threatening to overthrow the elected president with an external coup. Groups from the Red Cross to the UN have challenged the US's earnest claims of humanitarian concern. [Read More] The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald points out that the basics of the New York Times "exposé" were published more than a week earlier in the dissenting media (including this Newsletter). See his illuminating explanation on Democracy Now!
----Listeners will likely know by now, that the late February story, complete with vivid video footage, about the forces of elected Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro burning trucks that were trying to bring the besieged country food and medicine was false. Weeks later, the New York Times reported that the humanitarian trucks were not set on fire by Maduro's forces, but instead by anti-Maduro protestors who threw a Molotov cocktail. The Times outlined how the fake story took root, passing from US officials to media that simply reported their claims as fact with no investigation—and does any of this sound familiar? … This false story arrived embedded within another false story: that the Venezuelan government is blocking needed humanitarian aid to the country. The Venezuelan government has and does allow aid into their country—from countries that are not actively and vituperatively threatening to overthrow the elected president with an external coup. Groups from the Red Cross to the UN have challenged the US's earnest claims of humanitarian concern. [Read More] The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald points out that the basics of the New York Times "exposé" were published more than a week earlier in the dissenting media (including this Newsletter). See his illuminating explanation on Democracy Now!
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
Chelsea Manning and the New Inquisition
By Chris Hedges, Truth Dig [March 18,2019]
---- The U.S. government, determined to extradite and try Julian Assange for espionage, must find a way to separate what Assange and WikiLeaks did in publishing classified material leaked to them by Chelsea Manning from what The New York Times and The Washington Post did in publishing the same material. There is no federal law that prohibits the press from publishing government secrets. It is a crime, however, to steal them. The long persecution of Manning, who on March 8 was sent back to jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury, is about this issue. … Manning has always insisted her leak of the classified documents and videos was prompted solely by her own conscience. She has refused to implicate Assange and WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, although President Barack Obama in 2010 commuted her 35-year sentence after she served seven years, she was jailed again for refusing to answer questions before a secret grand jury investigating Assange and WikiLeaks. Her moral probity and courage are perhaps the last thin line of defense for WikiLeaks and its publisher, whose health is deteriorating in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been holed up since 2012. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Don't accept the rules for how to criticize the Israel lobby
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [March 15, 2019]
---- I think the Israel lobby is a baleful influence that has helped to make the Middle East a violent neighborhood and to involve the U.S. in quagmires; and so we need to talk about it. It's too important not to. And if you accept all the rules, it means you will never really take on the lobby out of fear of saying the wrong thing about money or allegiance and being labeled an anti-Semite. Which is sort of the point, right? Here, for the faint of heart, is my quick list of instances in which the Zionist lobby skewed US foreign policy at the highest level, going back to Israel's creation. … I'd argue that the sum and substance of this record is that the Israel lobby is essentially the foreign ministry of Israel in the capital of the most powerful country in the world and it exists, as it has stated itself, to make sure that there is no daylight between the US government and Israel. And if you think that has ever meant changing Israeli policy, I have a bridge to sell you. It means shifting U.S. policy. If you believe this is the pattern, as I do, then why wouldn't you throw yourself into opposing it? And why would you ever fight with one hand behind your back? That's what the lobby wants. [Read More]
Erasing Occupation: The Pernicious Role of Congress
By Lara Friedman, LobeLog [March 18, 2019]
[FB – This is Part 2 of a two-part article. Part 1, which focuses on Trump and his team, can be read here.]
---- The past two years have seen a wholesale shift in U.S. policy aimed at erasing the foundations on which the peace process was built—mutual recognition, agreement to resolve core issues only through negotiations, acceptance of Israel's right to exist, and the Palestinians' right to self-determination—and resetting U.S. policy to relegate Palestinians to the status of an internal Israeli matter, to be handled exclusively in the context of the U.S.-Israel bilateral relationship. Some will want to lay all blame (or credit) for these U.S. policy shifts on Trump. The reality, however, is that Congress is playing a key role supporting and enabling these shifts. In fact, this role dates back to the Obama era. … In short, in the name of fighting boycotts of Israel, Congress legislated away U.S. recognition of "occupation" and mandated U.S. support for settlements. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Who To Read For Women's History Month: Tillie Olsen
By Aiden Pink, The Forward [March 18, 2019]
---- Tillie Olsen can be difficult to read. The Nebraskan daughter of immigrant Russian Jews, she presented warped and struggling characters just as they are. For readers, the ensuing tangle of language in her writing — most importantly her short story collection "Tell Me a Riddle," literary treatise "Silences" and novel "Yonnondio" — as an exercise in patience, even as it rewards. … These sentences intimidate. They insist on being heard. But they're honest about reality, an integrity that was essential to Olsen. Her parents were socialists, and Olsen joined the Young Communists League in 1930, when she was 18. Her affiliation was a matter not of filial obedience but of deeply-held values. In Nebraska and then San Francisco, Olsen was twice jailed for her work as a labor organizer. … This was the 30s. History makes predictable the personally devastating result of Olsen's rage. Olsen was as active in attempting to improve San Francisco's schools as she was in the fight for worker's rights, and during the years of Senator Joseph McCarthy's persecution of alleged communists, one McCarthyite sympathizer accused her of being an "agent of Stalin working to infiltrate the city's schools through the PTA." … It was around this time that Olsen began to publish her writing, starting with "I Stand Here Ironing," which initially appeared in 1956. [Read More]
How 'This Land Is Your Land' Roamed And Rambled Into American Life
By Elizabeth Blair, "All Things Considered" [March 14, 2019]
---- "This Land Is Your Land" is sung in all kinds of settings: elementary schools, political campaigns, parades. During the tense period of President Trump's proposed travel ban, protesters sang it to passengers who'd been detained at JFK and Philadelphia International Airport. Bruce Springsteen called it "one of the most beautiful songs ever written." And although it's been recorded hundreds of times, most people don't learn it from a recording. When Woody Guthrie wrote the song in February 1940, he was 27 years old, sitting in his room in a fleabag hotel in midtown Manhattan called Hanover House. His daughter, Nora Guthrie, says her father was a no-frills kinda guy — but also a deeply curious wanderer, who would go out for a pack of cigarettes and not come home for a week or two. So when he sings "this land," she explains, he's not just talking about deserts and wheat fields. "The whole idea of a 'land' is your spot on earth," Nora says. "A spot where you can claim safety, sanity." [Read More]
