Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
April 8, 2019
Hello All – It did not seem possible that the plight of immigrants and refugees coming to our southern border could get worse, but now it has. President Trump has fired the Secretary of Homeland Security because of her failure to make the refugee problem go away. He has withdrawn the nomination of a new head for the Border and Customs Patrol, supposedly, because he was "not tough enough." He cut off $500 million in aid going to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras – the source of most of the refugee families seeking asylum – that was to be used to fight gangs, whose violence drives so many families north. And it was only the screams of alarm from Wall St. and the Pentagon that prevented Trump from closing the border with Mexico completely.
I think this is a People-Get-Ready moment. While it is hard to distinguish our unhinged President from someone pretending to be unhinged, it really does seem that the man has lost his marbles around brown men and women seeking refuge from murderous violence in Central America. What escalation of terror he has planned against poor and desperate people trying to save their children and themselves from rape and murder can scarcely be imagined; but strong protests may be our only recourse to stop this.
If we step back a bit from the televised chaos at the border, please consider some facts. First, the number of those seeking to immigrate to the USA is far less than it was a decade ago. Second, the great majority of those coming from Central America and asking for "refugee status" are doing just what they are supposed to do: presenting themselves at a legal "port of entry" and asking that their claims to be a refugee be evaluated fairly. This is international law. Third, people from Central America are traveling in "caravans" for their own protection. They are fleeing violence. In a group, they are in less danger of being attacked by criminals along the way. It's common sense. And fourth, academic studies show that immigrants into the USA have a much lower crime rate than native-born Americans. The taxes they pay are much greater than the cost of the services they use. And US industry, esp. agriculture, needs the labor that immigrants provide to produce their crops or make their products. Immigrants do not steal "American" jobs. They help our economy.
The root of today's refugee crisis lies in what is happening in Central America. Economic changes have hurt farmers – after NAFTA, for example, two million Mexican farmers lost their land and livelihood. And governments in Central America have done little to stem the waves of violence – especially violence against women – that propel thousands of families to flee. (See here the Democracy Now! program, "Why the Real Migration Crisis is in Central America, Not at the Southern U.S. Border.)
Finally, Trump's war on immigrants and refugees is a disgrace to America and the values that most Americans share. Stripped of his racist rhetoric and his lies about the impact of immigration on our country, the President is saying that we have no obligation to treat people with compassion, or to follow international law on refugees. This is starting to look too much like Hitler's Germany.
News Notes
Last Thursday, April 4th, was the 51st anniversary of the assassination in 1968 of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Exactly one year earlier, on April 4, 1967, King spoke at Riverside Church in NYC on "Beyond Vietnam." This was King's most eloquent critique of war and Empire. It is still relevant to the USA today. Go here to remember/learn about the context in which he gave this speech, and hear the speech here.
The International Criminal Court was established in 2002 at The Hague (Netherlands). Its mandate is to "prosecute and bring to justice those responsible for the worst crimes - genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes." The court has global jurisdiction. It is a court of last resort, intervening only when national authorities cannot or will not prosecute. 123 countries have joined The Court, but the United States refuses to do so. Recently, the ICC decided to investigate war crimes in Afghanistan. Last week the US State Department revoked te visa of the ICC's prosecutor, preventing her from coming to the United States as part of the Court's investigation. (h/t JG)
Last Friday was the one-year anniversary of the Great March of Return, which became the weekly protest by Gazans at the border/fence separating it from Israel. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have participated in the marches, and more than 300 have been murdered by Israeli soldiers. This segment of Democracy Now! includes an interview with Ahmed Abu Artema, the Palestinian poet, journalist and peace activist who inspired the Great March and helped to organize it. For two more useful viewpoints on the Great March, go here and here.
Many thanks to LG for alerting me to the excellent series of Podcasts called "The Alien Chronicles." Created by Saadia Khan, the Podcasts focus creatively and insightfully on issues of immigrant life in the USA and elsewhere. The most recent broadcast focuses on the Israeli/Palestinian group, Combatants for Peace. The organization brings together former fighters from both sides of the Israel/Palestinian conflict in an attempt to understand, reconcile, and bring peace where there is now war. Please check this out.
Finally, the Trump/Pentagon announced recently that they would no longer make public the number of civilians killed by US drones. The practice of using drones to assassinate alleged enemies of the USA was widely deployed by President Obama, and has increased during the Trump presidency. The Pentagon reports always low-balled the "collateral damage" of drones; for example, when the Pentagon last reported that 1,257 civilians in Iraq and Syria had been killed in the war against ISIS, an independent monitoring group Airwars estimated that at least 7,500 civilians had been killed in this war. Perhaps this is the reason why official estimates are secret from the US public.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – Weather permitting, the CFOW stalwarts gather every Saturday from 12 to 1 PM at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring St.) to protest war and other evils. Please join us!
Saturday, April 11th – Next Saturday CFOW will hold its annual Tax Day vigil. As late-filers struggle with the paperwork, each year we put some numbers together to remind us all that 62 percent of our income taxes go to wars past, present, and future. Please join us at the VFW Plaza in the center of Hastings from noon to 1 PM to speak out against this madness.
Friday, April 19th – Take yourself in-town this night to see the film by CFOW friend James Dean Conklin called "Go Without Fear." The film is a "meditation on walking pilgrimage." It is based on the book Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha, by Marten Olthof. It was filmed over three years in India and Nepal. The program is at Tibet House US, 22 W. 15th St., from 7 to 9 PM. For more information, go here.
Sunday, May 5th – CFOW's next monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 p.m. At these meetings we review our work/the happenings 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 Stephen Cohen's article on the damage done by "Russia-Gate"; sets of essays ("War & Peace") on the Yemen War Resolution and the US war against Venezuela; an essay that updates us on why Chelsea Manning is back in prison; an update on the lingering disaster in Puerto Rico; some important essays on the latest lurch-to-the-Right in Israel; and a substantial essay ("Our History") on what Reconstruction after the Civil War did and didn't do for America. Read on!
Rewards!
This week's Rewards bring back Gil Scott-Heron, too long missing from this Newsletter. First up is his great message/song, "Work for Peace." And his 1977 song "We Almost Lost Detroit," (about the accident at the Fermi nuclear plant in 1966) reminds us of the fragility of Indian Point. Finally, here is his timely H2O Gate Blues, reflecting a USA in chaos back then as it is to today. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Nuclear Weapons Ruined My Life, And I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way
By Frida Berrigan, Waging Nonviolence [April 6, 2019]
---- I want to offer you something different than the barrage of facts and figures around nuclear weapons. But let's establish the basics. There are nine countries that possess them: France, China, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and — of course — Russia and the United States. Together these nine countries possess a total of 14,575 nuclear weapons, with the United States and Russia accounting for 92 percent of them. … Again, these are just the basics — things you already knew or aren't terribly surprised to learn. That's why I want to tell you a different story about nuclear weapons: My own. It comes through the lens of the nuclear fire and my relationships to the people who serve as a sort of bucket-brigade — offering sense, responsibility and sacrifice in an effort to douse the inferno. [April 1, 1974] - I am born. It's a home birth to a nun and a priest — in the basement of a tall three-story row house full of anti-nuclear activists. On the day of my birth, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock stands at 12 minutes to nuclear midnight, moved back from 10 minutes in 1972 after the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and Soviet Union developed a road map for reducing nuclear arsenals. [Read More]
Report from Rojava: What the West Owes its Best Ally Against ISIS
By Debbie Bookchin, New York Review of Books [April 2019]
---- The region, which now encompasses one third of Syria and some 30 to 40 percent of its population, is also known more informally as Rojava, from the Kurdish word for West, referring to its location as the western-most part of greater Kurdistan, the ancestral homeland of the Kurds that includes parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. This entity dates from the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2012, when the Kurds began to implement what would become a new form of political organization based on self-governing, confederated communities. "The project," as the Kurds sometimes refer to this region and its government, has pioneered a pluralistic, multi-ethnic political system—unique in the region—in which Arabs, Syriacs, Turkmens, Kurds, and other ethnic groups share all positions of power and govern their communities autonomously while participating in a broader democratic network. They view their model as the only hope for lasting peace and stability, and seek to work with Damascus to achieve recognition for the NES within a federated Syria. [Read More] Debbie Bookchin's father, the American anarchist Murray Bookchin, wrote books that were read by a Kurdish leader while in prison in Turkey. His "anarchist" framework for self-government was adopted by the Kurds who made the Rojava state. Read this incredible story, as told by Debbie Bookchin, in ""How My Father's Ideas Helped the Kurds Create a New Democracy," New York Review of Books [June 15, 2018] [Link].
(Video) Meet the Family Suing Boeing in First U.S. Wrongful Death Suit Since Ethiopia Crash Kills 157
From Democracy Now! [April 5, 2019]
---- The first American lawsuit has been filed against Boeing for its role in the Ethiopian Airlines crash that left 157 people dead last month. The family of 24-year-old Samya Stumo, who died in the crash, sued Boeing and filed a claim against the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday. They filed the suit in federal court in Chicago, where Boeing is headquartered. It reads in part, "Blinded by its greed, Boeing haphazardly rushed the 737 MAX 8 to market, with the knowledge and tacit approval of the United States Federal Aviation Administration … Boeing's decision to put profits over safety … and the regulators that enabled it, must be held accountable for their reckless actions." Samya Stumo's father, mother and brother spoke alongside their lawyer at a press conference announcing the lawsuit. [See the Program] Unfortunately for the Boeing people, Samya Stumo's great uncle was Ralph Nader. See the next segment of the Democracy Now! program, "(Video) "Corporate Homicide": Ralph Nader Demands Boeing Recall Jets After Ethiopia Crash Kills His Niece," [April 5, 2019] [See the Program]
In Defense of Pieing: When they go low, we go pie.
By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, The Nation [April 1, 2019]
---- The conditions for cake warfare in Germany are good: The country's parliamentary democracy allows for a broad range of political targets, and ammunition is rich and plentiful, with an abundance of Black Forest cakes, linzer tarts, and apple, pear, and cherry strudels. Yet these criteria aren't the be-all end-all of Tortalerkrieg. Around the world, and across a range of culinary and political traditions, we'd all do well to treat the haters among us to a little more sugar. Pieing is a particularly fitting form of political action in our troubled times. It is as ridiculous as its victims are malicious. It is guaranteed to go viral, especially when set to music, like a mazurka or a nice waltz. Pieing is safe for work, suitable for children, and highly unlikely to cause long-term damage to its victims (besides, perhaps, Pie-TSD.) It's more Marx Brothers than Engels; more slapstick than ice-pick. It combats hateful speech not with no-platforming, but with butter, cream and sugar. What, dear liberals, could be more civil? [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
The Fictitious 'Russian Attack' vs. the Real Imperative to 'Cooperate With Russia'
By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation [April 4, 2019]
---- Today's perilous reality is unprecedented and twofold. On the one hand, never have Washington-Moscow relations been so multiply fraught with the possibilities of war. American and Russian forces are in close and increasingly hostile military proximity from Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Georgia to Syria, and now possibly Venezuela. On the other hand, the "cooperation" and "contacts" known as détente that kept the United States and Soviet Union safe from war in the 20th century, conceivably nuclear war, have been anathematized, even criminalized, by nearly three years of false Russiagate allegations. So much so that a 2018 Trump summit meeting with the Kremlin leader, a traditional presidential practice since President Eisenhower, was called "treason," and more recently his diplomacy with Russia generally branded "appeasement." None of these allegations is more recklessly dangerous or fictitious than that "Russia attacked America during the 2016 presidential election"—an act repeatedly equated with Pearl Harbor and 9/11. If true, America, like any great power, must eventually strike back, which would mean we are now living in a state of impending war with Russia, again conceivably nuclear war. But it isn't true. [Read More] For more on the Russia-gate fiasco, read "It's Time To Reckon With Clinton Democrats Who Pushed Russiagate," by Kevin Gosztola, Medium.com [March 26, 2019] [Link]; and "The Primordial Ooze of the Collusion Conspiracy," by [Link].
(Video) How Trump's Call for More Military Spending by NATO Countries Benefits U.S. Weapons Manufacturers
From Democracy Now! [April 5, 2019]
---- As President Donald Trump pushes for more defense spending from NATO countries, we speak with Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, about how Trump's foreign policy benefits weapons manufacturers. During an Oval Office meeting Tuesday with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, President Trump demanded Germany and other NATO countries increase their military spending from 2 to 4% of GDP. But Cirincione says NATO's biggest problem is not insufficient funding. "The biggest problem NATO faces is the president of the United States, who keeps putting in doubt U.S. commitment to the alliance, who keeps putting in doubt whether the U.S. will come to the aid of NATO allies if they're attacked," he says. Cirincione also calls national security adviser John Bolton a "serial arms control killer." [See the Program]
India, Pakistan, and a Planet in Peril
By
---- It's still the most dangerous border on Earth. Yet compared to the recent tweets of President Donald Trump, it remains a marginal news story. That doesn't for a moment diminish the chance that the globe's first (and possibly ultimate) nuclear conflagration could break out along that 480-mile border known as the Line of Control (and, given the history that surrounds it, that phrase should indeed be capitalized). The casus belli would undoubtedly be the more than seven-decades-old clash between India and Pakistan over the contested territory of Kashmir. …And in the background always lurks the possibility that a war between the two neighbors could lead to a devastating nuclear exchange. Which means that it's time to examine how and why, by arraying hundreds of thousands of troops along that Line of Control, India and Pakistan have created the most perilous place on Earth. [Read More]
Also useful on War & Peace – "The Secret Death Toll of America's Drones," Editorial, New York times [March 30, 2019] [Link]; "To Ramp Up Fear of Russia in Africa, NYT Downplays Massive US Military Presence on Continent," by Adam Johnson, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) [April 4, 2019] [Link];
The Yemen War Resolution
Congress Slaps down Trump-Saudi War on Yemen
---- According to Lauren Gambino and Julian Borger of The Guardian, the White House is resisting the vote on the grounds that it will harm US relations with Saudi Arabia and other allies and that it raises serious constitutional issues. Actually, the Constitution gives Congress the right to declare war, not the president, and the Imperial Presidency of the past century has violated the Constitution by relabeling wars "police actions" around the world and running them all from the Executive. So Congress is functioning constitutionally with regard to a foreign war for the first time in a long time. … Congress will likely be over ruled by Trump's veto, and does not have the two thirds majority in both houses to overturn that veto. But at least the Yemen War has been identified as a problem and some steps have been taken to end it. Saudi Arabia and its allies are sensitive to their relationships with official Washington, and this congressional dismay with their war may well put pressure on them to wrap it up. Yemen can't take much more without breaking down as a society, and the world cannot deal with 28 million desperate refugees from the Red Sea littoral. [Read More]
For more on the Yemen War and the Yemen Resolution – "'Historic' Yemen Vote Puts Power to End US Complicity in World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis in Trump's Hands," by [Link]; "U.S. Role in Yemen War Will End Unless Trump Issues Second Veto," by Catie Edmondson, New York Times [April 4, 2019] [Link]; and "Britain could stop the war in Yemen in days. But it won't," b, The Guardian [UK] [April 3, 2019] [Link].
The US War Against Venezuela
(Video) The Origins of Venezuela's Economic Crisis
From The Real News Network [April 2, 2019]
---- Venezuela has become a popular argument against socialism amongst conservatives because of the deep economic crisis it is currently traversing. Defenders of the Bolivarian project, though, say that US sanctions and economic war are to blame for the crisis. Greg Wilpert presents an analysis that tries to take all the factors into account. [See the Program] [12 minutes]. Also useful is "US Is Manufacturing A Crisis In Venezuela So That There Is Chaos And 'Needed' Intervention," by Eva Bartlett, Information Clearinghouse [April 1, 2019] [Link].
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
Carbon Levels Are Higher Than They've Been in Past 3 Million Years, Scientists Reveal
---- Human activity has helped cause carbon levels to rise to a rate that hasn't been seen on planet Earth in three million years, researchers have revealed. A study published Wednesday by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany showed that the last time carbon dioxide was detected in the planet's atmosphere at the level it is now was during the Pliocene epoch, which took place 2.6 to 5.3 million years ago. … According to the computer simulation the Institute used in the study, CO2 levels "should not be higher than 280 parts per million without human activity." Carbon levels are currently at 410 parts per million and rising. [Read More]
We Don't have a Global Emissions Problem, we Have a Rich Peoples' CO2 Problem
By Nicholas Beuret, The Conversation [April 2, 2019]
---- Most of the world's population produces very little in the way of either carbon emissions or broader environmental impacts. We can go further here by also looking at imported carbon emissions – that is, the emissions that come from the production of goods and services in countries such as China that are then consumed in the wealthy countries of the global north. If we include imported emissions, the UK's overall emissions have only marginally decreased since 1990. When we approach carbon emissions this way, it's clear the problem isn't overpopulation or China, but the richest people on earth. After all, being rich, especially ultra-rich, means being directly responsible, either through consumption or control, for the majority of the world's carbon emissions. For instance, the charity Oxfam has found that the richest 10% of people produce half of the world's carbon emissions, while the poorest half contributes just 10%. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/ "THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
Chelsea Manning's 'Don't Tread on Me' Moment
By
---- Chelsea Manning, the Army whistleblower who released hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents to Wikileaks in 2011 and who called attention to war crimes committed by U.S. troops, is back in jail. In fact, she's been there for a month—not that the mainstream media cares. What's another whistleblower locked up? … What Manning is doing, in my view, is heroic for myriad reasons. There is no need to rehash what she—then Private First Class Bradley Manning—did in 2011. You don't have to like Chelsea to acknowledge that she's a whistleblower. There's a legal definition of whistleblowing. It is bringing to light any evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or safety. That's exactly what she did when she downloaded and delivered to Wikileaks thousands of pages of government documents that exposed the real truth about the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most damning of these for the government were the "Collateral Murder" video, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and the Guantanamo files. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Trump's Disdain for Puerto Rico Should Be His Undoing
By
---- Puerto Rico's death toll of about 3,000 from Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 ought to be the biggest strike against President Donald Trump. The majority of deaths on the island occurred in the days and weeks following the hurricanes, largely due to inadequate health care and the admitted failures of the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA), suggesting that these were preventable deaths. And yet to Trump, Puerto Rico is the recipient of fantastical amounts of undeserved money. In many ways, Trump sees the U.S. colony as a personification of his usual enemies. Puerto Rico is brown skinned, non-English speaking, foreign, Democratic, and poor—whether or not any or all of these things are entirely true. Therefore, if it does not accept his patronizing gestures with undying gratitude, it deserves nothing but disdain. That disdain has been apparent right from the start.[Read More]
The Only Way White Supremacy Is Defeated
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig.com [April 6, 2019]
[An interview with Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah]
---- The election of Donald Trump has emboldened white supremacists across the country. Hate crimes have been on the rise for several years now and racism, ingrained in U.S. institutions since the nation's founding, has become glaringly apparent even to those who had believed the election of a black president had made it a thing of the past. …. Abdullah takes the fight for social justice everywhere, from our streets to our courtrooms and classrooms. Not only is she a professor of black studies, an academic discipline that is turning half a century old, but she is also an impassioned activist who is often openly critical of the Los Angeles Police Department and was arrested during a May 2018 protest. [Read More]
Out of Patience: NYC Nurses Take On Hospitals For Better Staffing
By Peter Rugh, The Indypendent [March 28, 2019]
---- More than 10,000 members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) at the city's three major private hospital systems — New York-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai and Montefiore — who, as The Indypendent goes to press, have been working without a contract since December. On March 6, the union voted overwhelmingly to walk off the job. It was almost unanimous: 8,533–230. Twelve days later, they gave the New York City Hospital Alliance, which represents the three hospital chains at the bargaining table, notice of an impending strike. The walkout, originally slated for April 2, was suspended after the Alliance indicated it was prepared to make concessions on NYSNA's key demands, which revolve around patient care. … The Hospital Alliance warns that "[r]igid staffing ratios would lower patient care and drastically increase costs for not-for-profit hospitals — resulting in layoffs of other important members of patient-care teams." Yet the hospitals in question are not hard up. According to the latest publicly available figures, New York-Presbyterian made $404.5 million after expenses in 2017. Mount Sinai took in $205.2 million and Montefiore Health System $55.3 million. Executive compensation at these nonprofits runs in the millions and comes with perks like a housing allowance and, in some cases, personal chauffeurs. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
The birth of the state of Palestine in Gaza
By Gershon Baskin, The Jerusalem Post [April 5, 2019]
---- Now we are witnessing the final stages of the implementation of the plan devised by Sharon, and likely to be completed if Netanyahu wins the elections on April 9. Gaza will be recognized as a Palestinian state and Hamas will be transformed from a terror organization into a state with a no-war, no-peace relationship with Israel. Hamas will gain international recognition, and any possible international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank or east Jerusalem will be removed. Netanyahu and his right-wing government will begin their plan for the annexation of the West Bank. Sooner, not later, Israeli control and annexation over the West Bank will become officially a new form of apartheid – a state with two separate legal structures: one for citizens and one for several million non-citizens. These steps will mark the beginning of the next stage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It will not end, and the Palestinian demand for full equality will be formally launched as the two-state solution is abandoned – either seen as already implemented with Gaza being the Palestinian state, or seen as irrelevant with the occupation and Israeli control continuing over the West Bank and east Jerusalem – and Gaza still under almost full Israeli control and domination. https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-birth-of-the-state-of-palestine-in-gaza/
---- Now we are witnessing the final stages of the implementation of the plan devised by Sharon, and likely to be completed if Netanyahu wins the elections on April 9. Gaza will be recognized as a Palestinian state and Hamas will be transformed from a terror organization into a state with a no-war, no-peace relationship with Israel. Hamas will gain international recognition, and any possible international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank or east Jerusalem will be removed. Netanyahu and his right-wing government will begin their plan for the annexation of the West Bank. Sooner, not later, Israeli control and annexation over the West Bank will become officially a new form of apartheid – a state with two separate legal structures: one for citizens and one for several million non-citizens. These steps will mark the beginning of the next stage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It will not end, and the Palestinian demand for full equality will be formally launched as the two-state solution is abandoned – either seen as already implemented with Gaza being the Palestinian state, or seen as irrelevant with the occupation and Israeli control continuing over the West Bank and east Jerusalem – and Gaza still under almost full Israeli control and domination. https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-birth-of-the-state-of-palestine-in-gaza/
Why Does the US Continue to Grovel to Israel?
By Robert Fisk, The Independent [April 1, 2019]
---- Is there any other country on Earth with which America would dare collude on such a scale? Forget the "special relationship" with the crackpots in Britain, or the New World coming to the rescue of the Old World in the Second World War. There's only one special relationship that matters right now – and we all know what that is. Having given its blessing to all Jerusalem as Israeli property and having now handed Golan to Israel as a possession – for "to annex" means "to take possession", does it not? – Donald Trump has undermined the entire foundation of "land for peace" enshrined in Security Council Resolution 242. And Israel is happy. A gift for Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election, we are told. … Today, we must learn again that old phrase "facts on the ground". Israel annexed Jerusalem and Golan in 1980 and 1981 – all the world (and a lot of Israelis) condemned this at the time – but now Trump has snapped the "land for peace" equation in half. Washington has given its imprimatur to illegal land acquisition, to territorial theft. And why not when congress is in thrall to Israel? Yet why get worked up about this? By recognising Israel's annexation of Golan, Trump merely recognised that Israel has annexed America. [Read More] For more on this disaster and US embarrassment, read "The Golan Heights: Expected US Policy Shift Reflects Disdain for Rights," from Human Rights Watch [March 25, 2019] [Link]; "Golan Heights: Trump signs order recognising occupied area as Israeli," from The BBC [UK] [March 25, 2019] [Link]; and "All 28 EU Nations Reject Israeli Annexations of Golan Heights," from [Link]. Newsletter regular Phyllis Bennis spoke about the Golan Heights on Sojourner Radio this week [28 minutes].
---- Is there any other country on Earth with which America would dare collude on such a scale? Forget the "special relationship" with the crackpots in Britain, or the New World coming to the rescue of the Old World in the Second World War. There's only one special relationship that matters right now – and we all know what that is. Having given its blessing to all Jerusalem as Israeli property and having now handed Golan to Israel as a possession – for "to annex" means "to take possession", does it not? – Donald Trump has undermined the entire foundation of "land for peace" enshrined in Security Council Resolution 242. And Israel is happy. A gift for Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election, we are told. … Today, we must learn again that old phrase "facts on the ground". Israel annexed Jerusalem and Golan in 1980 and 1981 – all the world (and a lot of Israelis) condemned this at the time – but now Trump has snapped the "land for peace" equation in half. Washington has given its imprimatur to illegal land acquisition, to territorial theft. And why not when congress is in thrall to Israel? Yet why get worked up about this? By recognising Israel's annexation of Golan, Trump merely recognised that Israel has annexed America. [Read More] For more on this disaster and US embarrassment, read "The Golan Heights: Expected US Policy Shift Reflects Disdain for Rights," from Human Rights Watch [March 25, 2019] [Link]; "Golan Heights: Trump signs order recognising occupied area as Israeli," from The BBC [UK] [March 25, 2019] [Link]; and "All 28 EU Nations Reject Israeli Annexations of Golan Heights," from [Link]. Newsletter regular Phyllis Bennis spoke about the Golan Heights on Sojourner Radio this week [28 minutes].
How the Israeli Army Shot Dead a Palestinian Paramedic in a Refugee Camp
By Amira Hass, Haaretz [Israel] [April 6, 2019]
---- Sitting in the divan, Mizher's father talked about his son. For about an hour, continuously, almost without pause, and surely for the hundredth time, he described how worried he was that his son wouldn't make it to the exam if he went out to treat the wounded, how his son reassured him that he'd be on time, how he heard that a paramedic had been wounded and his heart told him it was his son, how he and his wife ran to one hospital, then another, and how nobody thought he would die. … "The military state is so afraid of a teenage paramedic?" he asked, his eyes dry. "A Palestinian boy becomes a man when he's still a child. Did I not want my son to be like all the other children in the world? For him to play like them, and travel to beautiful places like them, and study and come home with a diploma, and not be afraid to sleep at night because the army breaks into houses and he has to treat gunshot wounds when he's 17? [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
How the South Won the Civil War
By Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker [April 8, 2019]
---- Not so long ago, the Civil War was taken to be this country's central moral drama. Now we think that the aftermath—the confrontation not of blue and gray but of white and black, and the reimposition of apartheid through terror—is what has left the deepest mark on American history. Instead of arguing about whether the war could have turned out any other way, we argue about whether the postwar could have turned out any other way. Was there ever a fighting chance for full black citizenship, equality before the law, agrarian reform? Or did the combination of hostility and indifference among white Americans make the disaster inevitable? Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in his new book, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, rightly believes that this argument has special currency in the post-Obama, or mid-Trump, era. [Read More]
How the US Navy Sold the Vietnam War
---- Dr. Tom Dooley, whose best-selling book Deliver Us From Evil helped create a favorable climate of opinion for U.S. intervention in South Vietnam, has long been linked to legendary CIA officer Edward G. Lansdale and his black operations in Vietnam between 1954 and 1955. But the real story about Dooley's influential book, which has finally emerged from more recent scholarly research, is that it was engineered by an official of the US Navy's Pacific Command, Capt. William Lederer. Lederer is best known as the co-author, with Eugene Burdick, of the 1958 novel "The Ugly American," which was turned into a 1963 movie starring Marlon Brando. Far more important, however, is the fact that from 1951 through 1957 Capt. Lederer was on the staff of the commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC), Adm. Felix Stump. The Pacific Command was intensely interested in Dooley, because the US Navy had the greatest stake of all the military services in the outcome of the conflict between the communists and U.S.-backed anti-communist regimes in Vietnam and China during the mid-1950s. And the Pacific Command was directly involved in the military planning for war in both cases. [Read More]
