CFOW w/Jenny Murphy sings peace & justice songs - Saturday noon in Hastings. - Pleaes jooin us!.

Hi Stalwarts - Saturday is the RiverArts music tour in Hastings and other towns.  So instead of our usual peace & justice vigil, please join Jenny Murphy and the CFOW Singalongs for an hour of peace and justice SONGS.  That's at the VFW Plaza, Warburton & Spring St., in Hastings. Please join us!

 

And following this/our set, the Walkabout Clearwater Chorus will be singing at 1 pm, followed at 2 pm by Hudson Valley Sally at the Upstream Gallery.

 

For the official announcement, go to http://2019musictour.riverarts.org/concerned-families-of-westchester-singalong-with-jenny-murphy/?fbclid=IwAR2f-0Da1U_J5uEFeav0joBGuyULrbKKAQE-W94Js1VJvJUNCMxs198GsUg

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

CFOW Newsletter - On This Memorial Day ....

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

May 27, 2019

 

Hello All – Memorial Day has morphed from a day of grief and remembrance, a day spent in decorating soldiers' graves, to one that remembers fallen soldiers for "serving their country," celebrating patriotism.  Until shortly after World War II, it was still called "Decoration Day"; but then, as with so much of our culture, it was caught up in the Cold War.  And thus our Memorial Day parades, as in yesterday's parade in Hastings, are addressed by a General, rather than – for example – a Gold Star Mother.

 

One wonders what would happen to Memorial Day if we attempted to remember and grieve for ALL of those who died in war, and not just Americans.  Can we imagine doing this?  I think only a few Americans have been killed in the war in Yemen, for example, yet the body count in that war is now at 233,000.  Would prayers about the "fallen dead" be extended to these Yemenis?

 

The Memorial Day decorations that festooned the village of Hastings remembered especially the World War II era.  Neither the Korean nor the Vietnam Wars, nor the recent wars in the Middle East, received much attention.  In part that is because, with the end of the draft, today's fallen soldiers tend to be young men and women from impoverished small towns, not middle-class suburbs.  Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and career military officer, wrote this week about his visit to the town of Marseilles, Illinois (pop. 5,000). Marseilles is the home of the Middle East Conflicts Wall Memorial, to Bacevich's knowledge the only memorial in the USA devoted to commemorating the fallen soldiers of our recent wars.  There, on Panel 5B he found the name of his son, who was killed in Iraq.

 

We observe that Memorial Day and Veterans Day have become increasingly the Theater of Memory for older men; young men from the Middle East wars and even from the Vietnam War don't seem drawn to civic patriotism.  This was vividly demonstrated recently when some well-meaning US Army official sent out a Twitter message asking veterans, "How has service impacted you?" The responses, of course, were not what the Army was looking for.  "My wife will never see her brother again.  Thanks Iraqi Freedom." "The agent orange my grandfather was exposed to in Vietnam caused his cancer & death. … The army and government knew the dangers of agent orange when they started using it." "The Combat Cocktail': PTSD, severe depression, anxiety. Isolation. Suicide attempts. Never ending rage. It cost me my relationship with my eldest son and my grandson. It cost some of my men so much more. How did serving impact me? Ask my family."  And there are hundreds more responses that are similar.

 

Finally, we read this week that President Trump is considering using the occasion of Memorial Day to pardon soldiers who were convicted of war crimes. The war crimes in question were typically murdering civilians or soldiers who had surrendered. To my knowledge Trump's actions have not yet occurred (7 pm), but a search on Google News shows horrified reactions from all branches of the military at the possibility that pardons of convicted war criminals might take place. An essay by Camillo Mac Bica, a Marine Corps officer in Vietnam and now an antiwar writer and activist, helps to put the thin line between war criminals and disciplined soldiers in context. The horrors of war drive people crazy and put some soldiers over the edge, becoming bad killers instead of good killers. The Twitter responses from soldiers described in the paragraph above are presumably from those who are not convicted war criminals, but suffered greatly during and after their wars.  Where is their "pardon," their renewal and resuscitation?  Where is their Memorial Day? Work for peace.

 

News Notes

The Journal News reports that ICE arrests in New York are "surging," with two people arrested in Putnam and Westchester.  Read the story [May 27^th] here.

 

Here's another report on the racial disparities in wealth and poverty in the USA. This report finds that black college graduate families have 33 percent less wealth than white high school dropouts. "It's not individual behavior that drives the racial wealth divide," concludes the report, "it's a system that many folks pretend doesn't exist."

 

The Russophobia of the mainstream media is starting to get out of hand.  Now NBC has discovered that the Russians "plan to give African Americans combat training." Read all about it here.

 

Finally, Democracy Now filled in its Memorial Day timeslot with a rebroadcast of Noam Chomsky's talk last month at Boston's Old South Church.  Posted previously in the Newsletter, now is another chance to learn what Chomsky is saying these days.  The first section, "We Must Confront the 'Ultranationalist, Reactionary" Movements Growing Across Globe," can be read here; the following parts are on nuclear weapons, climate change, Julian Assange, Israel's election, and much more.

 

Election Integrity

The CFOW Election Integrity team invites us to join them in Albany on Thursday, June 6^th, for a rally organized by Smart Elections.  The rally will demand that the NY State Board of Election Commissioners say YES to hand-marked paper ballots and secure, well-maintained ballot-marking devices for voters with disabilities; and NO to risky "hybrid" voting machines, NO to touch-screen voting machines, and NO to counting votes with barcodes. The rally will take place at the NY State Board of Elections meeting at 40 North Pearl St. in Albany at 11 AM.  For more information and to RSVP, go here..

 

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!

 

Tuesday, May 28^th – A NYS Senate hearing on rent regulation and tenant protection legislation will be held at Greenburgh town hall (177 Hillside Ave. in Greenburgh) from 10 AM to 2 PM.  For more information call Sen. Shelley Mayer's office at 914-934-5250.

 

Wednesday, May 29^th – CFOW friend Susan Rubin will speak on "Heading for Extinction and What to Do About It" at the WESPAC office, 77 Tarrytown Rd., #2W, beginning at 7 PM.  The focus will be on the organization Extinction Rebellion.

 

Sunday, June 2^nd - 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.

 

Thursday, June 6^th – Rally at the NY State Board of Elections in Albany.  For info, go here..

 

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," notably by Noam Chomsky and Michelle Alexander.  I also recommend the essay by Robert Fisk, one of our era's great journalists, on the on-going mystery of chemical "attacks" in Syria; useful articles on Iran (law and sanctions); a useful update on the children's climate strike in Europe; further developments in the sadistic behavior of ICE; and in "Our History," a fine article by Tom Engelhardt on the US tradition of "meddling" in foreign elections, and a memorial essay on Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California (1977) who was murdered while in office.

 

Rewards!

I think the best way commemorate Memorial Day, to honor the fallen dead, is to work to ensure that no more people will die in war.  To put these thoughts to music, here are some of my favorites: Freda Payne's "Bring the Boys Home"; Bob Dylan's "Masters of War"; and Phil Ochs' "I Ain't Marching Anymore."  Sing Out!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

Noam Chomsky: We Must Stop War with Iran Before It's Too Late

BY Noam Chomsky, In These Times [May 21, 2019]

---- The threat of a U.S. attack on Iran is all too real. Led by John Bolton, the Trump administration is spinning tales of Iranian misdeeds. It easy to concoct pretexts for aggression. History provides many examples. The assault against Iran is one element of the international program of flaunting overwhelming U.S. power to put an end to "successful defiance" of the master of the globe: the primary reason for the U.S. torture of Cuba for 60 years. The reasoning would easily be understood by any Mafia Don. Successful defiance can inspire others to pursue the same course. The "virus" can "spread contagion," as Kissinger put it when laboring to overthrow Salvador Allende in Chile. The need to destroy such viruses and inoculate victims against contagion—commonly by imposing harsh dictatorships—is a leading principle of world affairs. Iran has been guilty of the crime of successful defiance since the 1979 uprising that deposed the tyrant the U.S. had installed in the 1953 coup that, with help from the British, destroyed the parliamentary system and restored ­obedience. The achievement was welcomed by liberal opinion. As the New York Times explained in 1954, thanks to the subsequent agreement between Iran and foreign oil companies, "Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism." [Read More]  For a closer look at some of the so-called "intelligence" justifying US war threats, please read "Do Iranian 'Threats' Signal Organized U.S.-Israel Subterfuge?" by Gareth Porter, The American Conservative [May 21, 2019] [Link]

 

My Rapist Apologized: I still needed an abortion.

By Michelle Alexander, New York Times [May 23, 2019]

---- My 12-year-old daughter recently asked me what I think about abortion. She walked into the kitchen, poked around the refrigerator, then spun around and blurted it out: "I can't decide what I think about abortion. I want to know what you think." My daughter is an avid consumer of the news. Unlike myself at her age, she's genuinely interested in political news — news about climate change, racial and gender justice, and the next election. As her question hung in the air between us, I knew immediately that she had read the news that our home state, Ohio, had just banned nearly all abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest. Kentucky had already done so, in a law that's since been blocked by a federal judge. Alabama would soon follow. Several other states were lining up in the queue, eager to strip women of the right to choose. I took a deep breath. Her question took me by surprise, and yet I had been waiting for it since the day she was born. I always knew the time would come when I would have to tell my daughters the truth: I was raped. And I had an abortion. One day, you may face these challenges too. [Read More]

 

The Indictment of Julian Assange Under the Espionage Act Is a Threat to the Press and the American People

By James Risen, The Intercept [May 24 2019]

---- A true democracy does not allow its government to decide who is a journalist. A nation in which a leader gets to make that decision is on the road to dictatorship. That is why the new U.S. indictment of Julian Assange is so dangerous to liberty in America. The Trump administration has charged Assange under the Espionage Act for conspiring to leak classified documents. The indictment, released yesterday, focuses on his alleged efforts to encourage former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak classified documents to him and WikiLeaks about a decade ago. Many of those documents, including U.S. military reports and State Department cables, were later published by WikiLeaks, but they were also the basis of reporting by major news organizations like the New York Times and The Guardian, which published some of them. … The indictment says that Assange and WikiLeaks "repeatedly sought, obtained, and disseminated information that the United States classified due to the serious risk that unauthorized disclosure could harm the national security of the United States." That is almost a textbook definition of the job of a reporter covering national security at a major news organization. Take a look at the tips pages of most news outlets, and you'll see a remarkable similarity between what journalists ask for and what WikiLeaks sought. [Read More]

 

Also useful/interesting about the US indictment of Assange - (Video) "Julian Assange's Attorney Decries Espionage Charges as "Grave Threat to Press Freedom," from Democracy Now! [May 24, 2019] [See the Program - several parts]; Editorial, "Julian Assange's Indictment Aims at the Heart of the First Amendment," New York Times [May 23, 2019] [Link]; and "Now, the Swedish Arrest Warrant for Assange," by Craig Murray, Antiwar.com [May 23, 2019] [Link].

 

Prof. Noura Erakat on the "Kushner Peace Plan" for Palestine

---- FB - Noura Erakat is the author of a new book called Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.  IMO it is terrific, profound, and clarifying about the role of law (and lawlessness) in the unfolding of the Zionist project in the former British "mandate" of Palestine since 1917.  In a half-hour podcast interview last week, Prof. Erakat addressed the issues raised by Jared Kushner's proposed plan for Israel/Palestine, which will be rolled out in the next few weeks.  The interview with Erakat begins at 39 minutes into the program.  Highly recommended.

 

WAR & PEACE

The Evidence We Were Never Meant to See About the Douma Gas Attack [Syria]

By Robert Fisk, The Independent [UK] [May 27, 2019]
---- For in the last few days, there has emerged disturbing evidence that in its final report on the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime in the city of Douma last year, the OPCW deliberately concealed from both the public and the press the existence of a dissenting 15-page assessment of two cylinders which had supposedly contained molecular chlorine – perhaps the most damning evidence against the Assad regime in the entire report. The OPCW officially maintains that these canisters were probably dropped by an aircraft – probably a helicopter, presumably Syrian – over Douma on 7 April 2018. But the dissenting assessment, which the OPCW made no reference to in its published conclusions, finds there is a "higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft". It is difficult to underestimate the seriousness of this manipulative act by the OPCW. In a response to the conservative author Peter Hitchens, who also writes for the Mail on Sunday – he is of course the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens – the OPCW admits that its so-called technical secretariat "is conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised [sic] release of the document". [Read More]  For another view of this important development, read "The western media is key to Syria deceptions," by Jonathan Cook, ZNet [May 27, 2019] [Link].

 

War Against Iran?

An Attack on Iran Would Violate US and International Law

By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [May 23, 2019]

---- As President Donald Trump, National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rattle their sabers, there is no evidence that Iran poses a threat to the United States. It was Trump who threatened genocide, tweeting, "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran." The Pentagon is now considering sending 10,000 additional troops to the Gulf region for "defensive" purposes and not in response to a new threat by Iran. Threats to use military force — like the use of force itself — violate U.S. and international law. Last week, Pompeo said U.S. intelligence had determined that Iranian-sponsored attacks on U.S. forces "were imminent." The Trump administration asserted, "without evidence," according to The New York Times, that new intelligence revealed Iran was sponsoring proxy groups to attack U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon announced its intention to deploy a Patriot antimissile battery to the Middle East. Three days later, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the United States would send up to 120,000 troops to the region if Iran attacks U.S. forces or speeds up work on nuclear weapons. But on May 14, Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, a senior British military official and deputy commander of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS, told reporters at the Pentagon that "there has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or Syria." [Read More]

 

US is Already Attacking Iran--Severe Sanctions are Hurting the Wrong People

By David Cortright, The Conversation [May 2019]

---- Many are worried about the risk of war with Iran after the Trump administration leaked discussions of a troop deployment in response to claimed threats to U.S. warships in the region.

And in recent days, the rhetoric has only gotten more heated, with President Donald Trump saying a war would be "the official end of Iran." Iranian officials responded in kind. But the truth is, the U.S. has been fighting a war with Iran for decades – an economic war fought via sanctions that has intensified over the past year and has already been devastating to innocent civilians in the country. … Many nations have recognized that sanctions work best as tools of persuasion rather than punishment. Sanctions by themselves rarely succeed in changing the behavior of a targeted state. They are often combined with diplomacy in a carrots-and-sticks bargaining framework designed to achieve negotiated solutions. Indeed the offer to lift sanctions can be a persuasive inducement in convincing a targeted regime to alter its policies, as was the case when successful negotiations involving the U.S. and Europe led to the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, which ended sanctions in exchange for Tehran shutting down much of its nuclear production capacity. [Read More]

 

For more on the Iran war buildup – "A War Without Allies," by Mark Parry, LobeLog [May 27, 2019] [Link]; and "Media Setting Up Iran as New 'Threat' That Must Be Confronted," by Janine Jackson, FAIR [May 19, 2019] [Link].

 

The Saudi-US War in Yemen

The Trump Administration Is Declaring a Fake Emergency to Sell Weapons to Saudi Arabia

By Alex Emmons, The Intercept [May 24 2019]

---- The Trump administration chose the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend to invoke an obscure state-of-emergency provision that would allow it to sell billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without giving Congress a chance to block the sale. A Democratic congressional source told The Intercept on Friday that the administration was using the measure to clear a backlog of more than 20 proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, many of which would be blocked if they came to a vote in the Senate. Under the 1976 Arms Export Control Act, the State Department must notify Congress 30 days before concluding an arms sale, which gives Congress the chance to vote on halting the weapons transfer. Under the rarely used provision, however, the president can certify that "an emergency exists" and that an immediate transfer is necessary for "the national security interests of the United States." [Read More]  This article is one in a series published in The Intercept called "Making a Killing."  For more on the profits being made by the Yemen War, read "Here's Exactly Who's Profiting from the War on Yemen," by Alex Kane, In These Times [May 20 issue] [Link]; and "Saudi Warplanes, Most Made in America, Still Bomb Civilians in Yemen," by Declan Walsh, New York Times [May 22, 2019] [Link].

 

Mainstream Media Tutorial – Hezbollah in Venezuela!!

New York Times Parrots US Propaganda on Hezbollah in Venezuela

By Luca Koerner and Ricardo Vaz, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) [May 24, 2019]

---- In a recent piece headlined "Secret Venezuela Files Warn About Maduro Confidant, the Times' Andes bureau chief claimed, on the basis of a leaked Venezuelan intelligence "dossier" that only his paper has seen, that Venezuela's Industry minister and former Vice President Tareck El Aissami has active links to Hezbollah and drug trafficking. Casey wrote: "The dossier, provided to the New York Times by a former top Venezuelan intelligence official and confirmed independently by a second one, recounts testimony from informants accusing Mr. El Aissami and his father of recruiting Hezbollah members to help expand spying and drug trafficking networks in the region." Unsurprisingly, the article has been endorsed by Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, widely considered the point man for Trump's Latin America policy, … The claims of an alleged relationship between Caracas and Hezbollah are, however, entirely unoriginal, having been repeated by corporate journalists and national security pundits without evidence for years. [Read More]

 

HUMAN-CAUSED CLIMATE CHAOS

Schoolchildren go on strike across world over climate crisis

By Matthew Taylor, The Guardian [UK] [May 24, 2019]

---- Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across the world have gone on strike in protest at the escalating climate crisis. Students from 1,800 towns and cities in more than 110 countries stretching from India to Australia and the UK to South Africa, walked out of lessons on Friday, the organisers of the action said. This is the latest school climate strike, inspired by teenager Greta Thunberg, who has become a global figurehead since protesting outside Sweden's parliament in 2018. The young people are demanding politicians take urgent action to avoid catastrophic ecological breakdown. In London, thousands gathered in the sunshine in Parliament Square chanting, "Where the fuck is the government", and "This is what democracy looks like", before staging a sit-down protest outside the department of education. … Writing in the Guardian they said: "We're asking adults to step up alongside us … today, so many of our parents are busy discussing whether our grades are good, or a new diet or the Game of Thrones finale – whilst the planet burns," they write. "But to change everything, we need everyone. It is time for all of us to unleash mass resistance … if we [demand change] in numbers we have a chance." Before Friday's strikes, organisers said the number of young people taking part would top the 1.4 million people who participated in the last global day of strikes in March. [Read More]

 

Pipeline Opponents Strike Back Against Anti-Protest Laws

By Alleen Brown, The Intercept [May 23 2019]

---- Opponents of oil and gas pipelines in three states are fighting back against new anti-protest laws aimed at suppressing fossil fuel industry dissent. Two lawsuits in Louisiana and South Dakota, and a promised suit in Texas, are the first signs of a concerted pushback against a nationwide, industry-led effort to halt the most confrontational arm of the climate movement. Since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, at least 17 states have introduced laws that create new penalties for pipeline protesters. … "After the world saw the collective power of Indigenous communities coming together at Standing Rock, big oil felt that they had to do something to stop future protests like Standing Rock from happening," said Falcon, who works with the Indigenous Environmental Network, in addition to organizing in Texas. "We see states stepping in and passing bills like this because they see our power as well, and they see that America is on the brink of climate chaos." [Read More]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

(Video) How ICE Is Using Solitary Confinement to Punish Asylum Seekers, Including LGBT & Disabled Immigrants

From Democracy Now! [May 22, 2019]

---- Since 2012, ICE has used solitary confinement as a routine punishment for thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers locked up in immigration jails across the country. We look at a new, damning investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that has revealed this widespread abusive use of solitary confinement in immigration jails overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture says solitary confinement should only be used in exceptional circumstances, and defines extended use of solitary as "inhuman and degrading treatment." Despite this, a review of more than 8,400 reports of solitary confinement in ICE detention found that immigration officers repeatedly used isolation cells to punish gay, transgender and disabled immigrants for their identities and to target other jailed immigrants for actions like kissing consensually or hunger striking. Almost a third of the people held in solitary confinement suffered from mental illness. In at least 373 cases, immigrants were put in isolation for being potentially suicidal. In nearly 200 instances, immigrants were held in solitary confinement for more than six months. The investigation is called "Solitary Voices." We speak to one of its lead authors, Spencer Woodman. [See the Program]

 

Across the Country, Progressives Are Pushing for Universal Rent Control — and New York Is Next

By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [May 14 2019]

---- On June 15, New York's current rent regulation laws — in place since the early 1990s — will expire. With a Democratic-controlled state Senate and a cadre of left-wing figures elected in last November's midterm elections, the expiration date offers an opportunity for the greatest expansion of tenant protections in decades. What was once a left-wing pipe dream of "universal rent control" is on the table in a package of nine bills. The proposals are being sponsored by progressive freshman Democrats like state Sens. Julia Salazar and Zellnor Myrie, and born of tenants' rights organizing around the state by the Upstate/Downstate Housing Alliance. … The nine bills include measures to eliminate renovation bonuses for landlords, disallow rent decontrol for vacant apartments, and prevent rent hikes for existing tenants paying preferential rents (rents that are less than the legal maximum, but vulnerable to major hikes when leases are renewed). These reforms would close a number of loopholes landlords have used to work around already weakened rent regulation, while protecting tenants already in rent-stabilized housing. [Read More]

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Trump Doesn't Want Peace. He Wants Palestinian Surrender.

By Saeb Erekat, New York Times [May 22, 2019]

[FB - Mr. Erekat is the chief negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization]

---- The Trump administration says it has a peace plan for the Middle East. Those behind it claim that they are offering a new approach to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one focused on an "economic vision," and that it deserves a chance. Yet none of what has been revealed so far has addressed the real issues: the end of the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and the preservation of the internationally recognized inalienable rights of the people of Palestine…. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump's son-in-law and one of the architects of the plan, has said the administration does not want to mention the "two-state solution." It certainly doesn't want to mention the alternative: one democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens. If the Trump administration doesn't want to talk about a two-state solution on the 1967 border or about one democratic state for everyone, what it is actually talking about is the consolidation of a "one-state reality": one state, Israel, controlling everything while imposing two different systems, one for Israeli Jews and another for Palestinians. This is known as apartheid. [Read More]

 

Is Israel Planning Total Annexation of Jerusalem and Jordan Valley of Palestine?

By Hamada Fara'na, Middle East Monitor [May 24, 2019]

---- The Israeli government and its agencies are launching a concerted programme, with great urgency, to achieve the complete annexation of Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. They want to be able to impose a fait accompli through superior firepower and America's diplomatic, economic and military cover. Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, which supports the Palestinian people and the restoration of their rights and freedom and rejects the occupation, is working to expose what Israel is doing. … Israel uses a number of measures to force the people off the land. According to B'Tselem, 45 per cent of the Jordan Valley is designated as military firing zones and 20 per cent is called "nature reserves". Moreover, there are 64 minefields in the area and 12 per cent of the land is occupied by Israeli settlements, which are not only illegal but also regarded as deliberate obstructions to any Palestinian presence, development or normal life in the area considered to be the "food basket" and a source of agricultural livelihood for Palestinians across the West Bank. … This Israeli war is targeting the entire West Bank as well as Jerusalem, alongside the destructive war against the Gaza Strip. This is the painful reality of the people of Palestine. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

Don't Let Russiagate Fool You—America Is Still the Ultimate Election-Meddler

By Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch [May 21, 2019]

---- In this country, reactions to the Mueller report have been all-American beyond belief. … But let me mention just a few of the things that we didn't learn from the Mueller report. We didn't learn that Russian agents appeared at Republican Party headquarters in 2016 with millions of dollars in donations to influence the coming election. (Oops, my mistake! That was CIA agents in the Italian election of 1948!) We didn't learn that a Russian intelligence agency in combination with Chinese intelligence, aided by a major Chinese oil company, overthrew an elected US president and installed Donald Trump in the White House as their autocrat of choice. (Oops, my mistake again! That was the CIA, dispatched by an American president, and British intelligence, with the help of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later BP.) … No, none of that happened here. Still, even though most Americans might find it hard to believe, we weren't exactly the first country to have an election meddled with by an intrusive foreign power with an agenda all its own! And really, my examples above just begin an endless list of events the Mueller report didn't mention, ones that most Americans no longer know anything about or we wouldn't have acted as if the Russian election intervention of 2016 stood essentially alone in history. [Read More]

 

Hope Will Never Be Silent [Remembering Harvey Milk]

By Abby Zimet, Common Dreams [May 23, 2019]

---- A belated heartfelt happy birthday to Harvey Milk, killed in 1978 for daring to come out of the closet, be who he was and insist on his rights, who would have turned 89 on Wednesday. To commemorate this year's Harvey Milk Day, established in 2010 by his nephew Stuart Milk and the Harvey Milk Foundation, the California Senate unanimously passed a resolution honoring "his critical role in creating the modern LGBT movement" and a legacy that "left an indelible mark on the history of our nation." Born May 22, 1930, Milk was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York who played football, joined the Navy, worked on Wall Street and for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign before finding himself a new American Dream - reinvention. In 1977, he became the first openly gay elected official in California - and one of the first in the country - when he won a spot on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. At the still-onerous time, Anita Bryant was vowing to "Save Our Children" and John Briggs was pushing a ballot to ban gay and lesbian teachers, a measure Milk helped defeat by tirelessly debating Briggs around the state. "If I turned around every time I was called a faggot," he once said, "I'd be walking backwards, and I don't want to go backwards." In these similarly dark times, his life-giving message resonates more than ever:  "You stand up and fight." [Read More]

 

 

 

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Is Iran Still in the Crosshairs?

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

May 20, 2019

 

Hello All – Our media-savvy president nailed it last weekend when he said that the Iranians must be "totally confused" if they are relying on US news reports to figure out what our government plans to do about Iran.  And we share the pain. After a week of rhetorically taking us to the brink of war, the end of the week brought us Official Rollback, as Trump met with his military team to declare that he did not a war with Iran.  (And neither did Iran want a war with us.)  Yet Sunday brought another threatening tweet from the Godfather; while there was lots of punditry that National Security Adviser John Bolton had gone too far (N. Korea, Venezuela, and now Iran), and may be on the way out.  Yes, total confusion!

 

The fundamental problem for the Trump-Bolton-Pompeo team is that the US project for a war on Iran is almost universally rejected.  Unlike the build-up for the war in Iraq, when President Bush had the support of several members of the UN Security Council, many European nations, most of the mainstream media, and about half of the Democrats in Congress, President Trump has zilch.  Despite Secretary of State Pompeo's two trips to Europe, only Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE support war against Iran. Domestic propaganda efforts have generated little enthusiasm for war, and inner-circle diplomatic players (here,  

here, and here) reject the US claims that Iran poses a threat to the United States. Indeed, if war against Venezuela or Iran appeared to have "Wag the Dog" usefulness, this moment may have passed.

 

The war scares re: Venezuela and now Iran are pointed reminders that the USA lacks and desperately needs an antiwar movement.  Our mainstream media is no more equipped to deal with manufactured intelligence and war propaganda than it was back in the days of the run-up to the Iraq war.  The leadership of the Democratic Party presents only tepid demurs to the war advocacy of the Trump team, and only a minority of the Party's presidential candidates has spoken out against war on Iran. A Bill in the Senate (S. 1039 - the "Prevention of Unconstitutional War with Iran Act of 2019.") now has 17 co-sponsors; but New York's Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer are missing from the list.  Congressman Eliot Engel, whose Foreign Affairs Committee could hold televised hearings on the threat of war, has issued only an ambiguous statement of "concern"; while Congresswoman Nita Lowey, who, like Engel, supported the Iraq War and opposed the Iran Nuclear Agreement, has been silent.  Peace advocates may be able to make a difference by calling our elected representatives and letting them know that War on Iran has no support in Westchester: Senator Gillibrand – (202) 224-4451; Senator Schumer – (202) 224-6542; Rep. Engel – (202) 225-2464; Rep. Lowey – (202) 225-6506.  Thanks!

 

News Notes

Supporters of the Venezuelan government who had occupied the Embassy in Washington, DC to protect it from a takeover by supporters of the faux "interim president" Juan Guaido were arrested Thursday morning by DC police. The five-week occupation was organized by Code Pink and others, who claimed the police entry into the Embassy and the arrests of people who were there with the permission of the legitimate government of Venezuela, was illegal.  Code Pink statement on the arrests can be read here; useful news articles about the Embassy occupation and the arrests can be read here and here.

 

An interesting report by Public Citizen, "Plutocrat Politics: How Financial Sector Wealth Fuels Political Ad Spending" shows that the Democrats raised more money from outside groups than did the Republicans for the 2018 mid-term elections. The most significant source of this largesse came from "wealthy individuals who earn their livings as hedge fund founders, bank executives, and other key positions in the financial industry." The finance industry donors in the top 100 gave $264 million to Democrat-supporting outside groups in 2017-18, according to the report. …"The influence of ultra-wealthy donors makes it harder to advance popular policies such as addressing inequality, imposing wealth taxes, strengthening worker protections, raising the minimum wage, ensuring health care for all and strengthening white collar law enforcement," writes Public Citizen.

 

French journalists could face up to five years in prison and be fined up to $83,000 for using secret documents to reveal that country's involvement in the war in Yemen. The series of reports can be read  here. According to a useful news story, "the documents, authored by France's Directorate of Military Intelligence (DSGI), showed that senior French officials had lied about the role of French weapons in the Yemen War." This is/will become a French version of the WikiLeaks controversies re: freedom of the press, etc.

 

Natasha Lennard, who writes interesting articles for The Intercept, has a new book out called On Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life.  In an interview published this week in The Nation, she "considers the meaning and the fearful reception of anti-fascist organizing today."  Check it out!

 

Election Integrity

The CFOW Election Integrity team invites us to join them in Albany on Thursday, June 6^th, for a rally organized by Smart Elections.  The rally will demand that the NY State Board of Election Commissioners say YES to hand-marked paper ballots and secure, well-maintained ballot-marking devices for voters with disabilities; and NO to risky "hybrid" voting machines, NO to touch-screen voting machines, and NO to counting votes with barcodes. The rally will take place at the NY State Board of Elections meeting at 40 North Pearl St. in Albany at 11 AM.  For more information and to RSVP, go here..

 

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!

 

Sunday, May 26 – Our friends at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society invite everyone to the  Historical Society's 3^rd Community Picnic, next Sunday from 1 to 4 PM at the Mead House, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs Ferry.  Hot dogs, baked beans, and drinks provided; a side dish or dessert will be appreciated.  A 50-year-old tradition, let's keep it up!  Please rsvp to Maria Harris - mharrisdf@yahoo.com.

 

Sunday, June 2^nd - 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.

 

Thursday, June 6^th – Rally at the NY State Board of Elections in Albany.  For info, go here..

 

CFOW Nut & 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." including a selection of articles on the attack on abortion rights.  The editorial remarks on the Iran war are bolstered ("War & Peace") by links to several good/useful articles about this crisis.  I also like the several articles about our climate crisis, some horrifying reading about the attacks on immigrants and their supporters at our southern border, and some trenchant remarks about Joe Biden.  Israeli correspondent Amira Hass has a powerful essay on Germany, Israel, and the BDS movement ("Israel/Palestine").  Finally, the end of publication for the French journal "Les Temps Modernes" marks the end of an intellectual era, one that implanted the existentialist concept of "commitment" and the activist role of the intellectual into the heads of a generation, more than a half century ago.  Read on!

 

Rewards!

The newsletter's Rewards are for stalwart readers who need a brief rest before proceeding to the heavy news and analysis.  This week's Rewards come from the jazz-pop group Dave's True Story. Back in the early days of CFOW (and the Iraq war), co-founder Melissa Rosen put together many concerts that drew substantial crowds and raised money for groups such as September 11^th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.  Dave's True Story was one of my personal favorites, and perhaps you will like them also.  Here are "Crazy Eyes" and "Marissa."  There are more on YouTube.  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

On Hostile Coexistence with China

[FB - Former ambassador Charles W. Freeman gave this speech at Stanford University on May 3, 2019]

---- President Trump's trade war with China has quickly metastasized into every other domain of Sino-American relations.   Washington is now trying to dismantle China's interdependence with the American economy, curb its role in global governance, counter its foreign investments, cripple its companies, block its technological advance, punish its many deviations from liberal ideology, contest its borders, map its defenses, and sustain the ability to penetrate those defenses at will. The message of hostility to China these efforts send is consistent and apparently comprehensive.  Most Chinese believe it reflects an integrated U.S. view or strategy.  It does not. There is no longer an orderly policy process in Washington to coordinate, moderate, or control policy formulation or implementation.  Instead, a populist president has effectively declared open season on China. …We are now entering not just a post-American but post-Western era.  In many ways the contours of the emerging world order are unclear.  But one aspect of them is certain: China will play a larger and the U.S. a lesser role than before in global and regional governance.  The Trump administration's response to China's increasing wealth and power does not bode well for this future. [Read More]

 

The "Yellow Vests Movement," Six Months Later

By Richard Greeman, ZNet [May 19, 2019]

---- I am writing you from France, where I am a participant-observer in the Yellow Vest movement, which is still going strong after six months, despite a dearth of information in the international media. … This unique, original social movement has enormous international significance. It has already succeeded in shattering the capitalist myth of "representative democracy" by unmasking the lies and violence of government and media, as well as the duplicity of representative institutions like political parties, bureaucratic unions and the mainstream media. Moreover, the Yellow Vests represent the first time in history that a spontaneous, self-organized social movement has ever held out for half a year in spite of repression while retaining its autonomy, resisting cooptation, bureaucratization and sectarian splits. All the while, standing up to full-scale government repression and targeted propaganda. … The immediate cause of this spontaneous mass rising was to protest an unfair tax on fuel  (fiscal justice) but the Yellow Vests' demands quickly expanded to include restoration of public services (transport, hospitals, schools); higher wages, retirement benefits, healthcare for the poor, peasant agriculture, media free of billionaire and government control, and, most remarkably, participatory democracy. Despite their disruptive tactics, the Yellow Vests were from the beginning wildly popular with average French people (73% approval), and they are still more popular than the Macron government after six months of exhausting, dangerous occupations of public space, violent weekly protests and slanderous propaganda against them. [Read More]

 

It's Never Really about the Bread

By Eleanor Goldfield, Roar Magazine [May 17, 2019]

---- The tip of the iceberg is not what sank the Titanic. The US is not an empire in decline just because of Trump's presidency. Our environment is not collapsing because of one particular megafarm or one particular oil company. The tea tax was not what the American Revolution was about, just as the rise in the cost of bread after a long, harsh winter was not the cornerstone of the impending French Revolution. Like the top of the iceberg, these are the visible, overt and easy culprits to problems, rather than the deep and manifold causes. We can easily regard them and neatly write them into history books where jagged French peasants hold angry baguettes over their head as they march toward Versailles. The reality, of course, is that they were carrying so much more than just baguettes — they were carrying decades of oppression, rage and resentment. Fast forward to the 21^st century and the echoes of history are apparent. Kings and baguettes may not be the talk of the town, but we still have top-heavy governments fomenting revolutionary ire. Yet, it is just as easy to fall into the same singular and lazy mindset with current events as with historical ones. … Talking about these issues as singular, flat and shallow not only removes context to understanding them, but removes our own experiences from the larger picture. It blinds us to our solidarity, the similarities between our fights to build something better. It places issues in silos that ignore the overarching realities of living in the age of late-stage capitalism and climate change. It erases the intersections of issues like racism, poverty, sexism, imperialism and more. It paints citizens as extremists, casts our fellow sick and tired as fanatics. After all, it seems like quite an overreaction to demand an entire regime be toppled simply for the price of bread. On that deeper level where we find the ties that connect movements, that build real solidarity and support, we must remember: it is never really about the bread. [Read More]

 

A Different Kind of Emergency [Militarizing our southern border]

By Jonathan Stevenson, New York Review of Books [May 23, 2019 issue]

---- President Trump appears to be testing the American political system's tolerance for soft dictatorship through the cavalier—and potentially illegal—use of presidential emergency powers. On February 15, after months of blustery threats, he declared a national emergency on the southern US border and dispatched the Army Corps of Engineers to administer the construction of a wall by private contractors in order to stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the country from Mexico. …Trump's transformation of the immigration enforcement agencies may affect very few ordinary Americans, but opposing immigration has become one of the main elements of his calls to "Make America Great Again." His prime motivation for building the wall is to fulfill a campaign promise he made to his political base to improve border security. While that base may not exceed 40 percent of voters, Trump's actions have not merely reinforced its support; they have also harnessed the zeal of civil servants with similar anti-immigration views in ICE and the US Border Patrol, the uniformed enforcement arm of US Customs and Border Protection. [Read More]

 

The Attack on Abortion Rights

Post-Roe America Won't Be Like Pre-Roe America. It Will Be Worse.

By Michelle Goldberg, New York Times [May 16, 2019]

---- This week, Alabama's governor signed legislation banning most abortions without exceptions for rape or incest, with sentences of up to 99 years in prison for abortion providers. … Georgia's governor….  Missouri's Senate … Louisiana … You can see, in the anti-abortion movement, a mood of triumphant anticipation. Decades of right-wing politics have all led up to this moment, when an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court could end women's constitutional protection against being forced to carry a pregnancy and give birth against their will. … As we watch Donald Trump remake this country in ways that once seemed unimaginable, it's tempting to reach for historical analogies to grapple with what's happening. It's why, as people struggle to understand how his abuses of power might be constrained, there's been renewed interest in Watergate. Yet, as in the comparison between Richard Nixon and Trump, the past can prove inadequate to understanding the depredations of the present. Rather than moving backward, we're charting awful new frontiers. [Read More]

 

(Video) What Does a Post-Roe America Look Like?

From Democracy Now! [May 19, 2019]

---- Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer issued what many considered a dire warning from the bench this week, implying that Roe v. Wade — the landmark ruling that recognizes the constitutional right to an abortion — is in danger. He wrote the comments in a dissent for an unrelated case in which the court voted to overturn a 40 year-old precedent. Breyer wrote "Today's decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the Court will overrule next." We speak to journalist Robin Marty about what a post-Roe America would look like, and how many people are already cut off from abortion access across the country. [See the Program]

 

For more on the attack on abortion rights - (Video) "Millions of Women Already Live in a Post-Roe America: A Journey Through the Anti-Abortion South," by Jordan Smith, The Intercept [January 18, 2019] [10 minutes] [See the program]; "Trump takes war on abortion worldwide as policy cuts off funds," by Sarah Boseley, The Guardian [UK] [May 17, 2019] [Link]; and this cartoon from The Nation hits the nail pretty hard.

 

WAR & PEACE

Trump and the Middle East: a Long Record of Personal Failure

By Melvin Goodman, Counterpunch [May 17, 2019]

---- Many American presidents have blundered in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, but Donald Trump's personal involvement in the region has been particularly disastrous.  President Eisenhower introduced the CIA to the world of covert action, when he ordered the overthrow of the legitimate government of Iran in 1953.  President Reagan endorsed a U.S. troop presence in Lebanon in 1982 in order to pull Israeli chestnuts out of the fire there due to their war crimes in Beirut, offering proof to the Arab nations of Washington's one-sided support for Israel.  President George H.W. Bush went ahead with Desert Storm in 1991 although Soviet President Gorbachev had gained a commitment from Saddam Hussein to withdraw his forces from Kuwait.  Worst of all, President George W. Bush used phony intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq in 2003 that has created sixteen years of disarray throughout the region. But Trump has made numerous decisions that have compromised U.S. interests in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. [Read More]

 

The War in Yemen

The Death Lobby in Washington and the Yemen War from Hell

By Mashal Hashem and James Allen, Tom Dispatch [May 17, 2019]

---- Reports indicate that, at the sites of many Saudi-UAE coalition airstrikes in Yemen, evidence of munitions produced by the big four American defense contractors — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon — can be found. These four companies represent the largest suppliers of weapons to the Saudi and UAE coalition and have spent millions of dollars on lobbying efforts to retain political support in Washington. Their arsenal of lobbyists works tenaciously on the Hill, securing meetings with top officials on key congressional committees to advocate and push for increased arms sales. …oday, with the President's veto and Congress's failure to override it, the Saudi-UAE coalition, U.S. defense contractors, and their American lobbyists have, in essence, been given a green light to proceed with a business model that counts innocent Yemenis' deaths as the cost of doing business. Still, though yet another battle has been lost in that war at home, opposition to it may not yet be relegated to the dustbin of history. Certain members of Congress are still looking for new ways of tackling the issue, including the possibility of defunding American involvement in the war and the human rights violations that go with it.  [Read More]

 

War Against Iran?

(Video) Will John Bolton's Dream to Bomb Iran Come True?

An interview with ex-Iranian Ambassador, Who Warns About U.S. Escalation [

From Democracy Now! [May 14, 2019]

----- The Pentagon has reportedly drawn up a plan to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East if President Trump decides to take military action against Iran. The New York Times reports the Pentagon presented the proposal on Thursday after National Security Advisor John Bolton requested a revision to an earlier plan. Bolton has long advocated for attacking Iran. …The U.S. has attempted to cut Iran off from the global economy, even though Iran has remained in compliance with the nuclear deal. We speak with Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He served as spokesperson for Iran in its nuclear negotiations with the European Union from 2003 to 2005. [See the Program]  Also useful is this podcast from The Intercept, "Will John Bolton Finally Get His War With Iran?" [May 16, 2019] [Hear/read the program]

 

Iran Notes

By David Barsamian, Counterpunch [May 17, 2019]

"Boys go to Baghdad, but real men go to Tehran" – Bush official, 2003

Gibbon in his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire writes of the Romans, "They endeavored to convince mankind that their motive was not the temptation of conquest but was actuated by the love of order and justice." West Asia, the Middle East is probably the most unstable part of the world – thanks largely to U.S. policy. And because of the region's importance to U.S. hegemony people here are saturated with propaganda. Today, the drumbeats of war are getting louder and louder. … Iran is accused by the U.S. of many things but far and away the most absurd charge is that Iran is somehow allied with Al-Qaida and the Taliban. Both these fundamentalist fanatical groups, and let's include ISIS, detest Iran and regard its Shia Islamic faith as heresy. This is what negotiations look like. It's right out of the Mafia playbook. The U.S. is holding a gun to Iran's head. Tehran must concede all of Washington's demands in advance then and only then will we sit down and talk. Obey the Godfather or else. [Read More]

 

More useful reading on "War against Iran?" – "Four Simple Steps the U.S. Media Could Take to Prevent a Trump War With Iran," by Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept i[May 17 2019] [Link]; "Democrats Running for President Are Waking Up to the Danger of War With Iran," by Alex Emmons, et al., The Intercept [May 17, 2019] [Link]; and "Congress Must Deny Trump a Blank Check for War With Iran," by John Nichols, The Nation [May 15, 2019] [Link].

 

HUMAN-CAUSED CLIMATE CHAOS

Are ExxonMobil Executives the most evil people in the 200K-yr-long History of Humanity?

By Juan Cole, Informed Comments [May 17, 2019]

---- Internal ExxonMobil documents show that the company's scientists predicted in 1982 that by 2020, parts per million of carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere would reach 410-420 ppm. For the first time this spring ppm of CO2 exceeded 415. They understood that the full effect of this vast increase in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere would cause enormous changes, though much of the damage would occur centuries down the line. The company covered up these memos and staged a multi-million-dollar disinformation campaign to throw doubt on the reality of human-made climate change, to ensure that ExxonMobil could go on making billions in profits each year from selling gasoline. The scientists nailed it. ExxonMobil nailed it. They can be proud of their scientific prowess and predictive abilities, right? Wrong. They are evil. They are the most evil human beings to walk the earth since Homo Sapiens emerged in southern Africa around 200,000 years ago. CEOs of ExxonMobil such as Lee Raymond or Rex Tillerson or currently Darren Woods are banal in their evil, as Hannah Arendt would lead us to expect. They probably aren't even interesting to talk to. They are like wind-up toys, their springs being profit, that can't change direction, driving toward extinction. But they are much worse in the practical effect of their evil than Hitler or Pol Pot or any of the other genocidal maniacs we've seen in the past century. … Their names will be vilified for as long as human beings live. [Read More]

 

Does the Climate Movement Really Mean What It Says?

By Howie Hawkins, The Green Party [May 17, 2019]

---- Why do so many in the climate movement invoke climate science to demand a target of 350 ppm carbon in the atmosphere—and then turn around and support legislation and candidates that fall far short of that demand? That's what is happening in New York. A bill that says right in its text that its target is 450 ppm may be enacted in the current legislative session that ends on June 19 with the support of much of the climate movement… The New York debate among climate activists over the last few years has been between two bills: the stronger New York Off Fossil Fuels Act (NY OFF) introduced in 2015 and the weaker Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA) introduced in 2016. … The political momentum in the legislature is with CCPA. Nearly every Democratic Senator and more than 50 of 150 Assemblymembers are co-sponsors. The new Democratic majority in the state Senate made the new chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee the new lead sponsor of CCPA. He is pushing to get the Senate to adopt the CCPA, which the Assembly is expected to also pass again. Climate legislation this year will likely be the CCPA. The question now is whether in can be strengthened by amendments. [Read More]

 

Also useful/insightful on the climate crisis – "The Political Power of the Green New Deal," by Zoë Carpenter, The Nation [May 17, 2019] [Link]; and "A Major Coal Company Went Bust. Its Bankruptcy Filing Shows That It Was Funding Climate Change Denialism," by Lee Fang, The Intercept [May 16, 2019] [Link]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

No More Deaths Trial Opens as More Bodies Discovered Along Arizona-Mexico Border

By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept [May 14, 2019]

---- Dozens of people turned out in support for Scott Warren at the federal courthouse in Tucson, Arizona, last week. But as friends and family filled the benches, there was a noteworthy absence: A team of Warren's fellow humanitarian aid volunteers were out in the field. They were searching for a man reported missing on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge — the same remote desert area where Warren was accused of leaving jugs of water, food, and medical supplies for migrants in distress. … The grim work provided an apt backdrop for the court proceedings in Tucson, where Warren's defense team argued that deeply held spiritual beliefs compel the 36-year-old geographer to confront the death and disappearance that encircle Ajo, Arizona, the tiny, unincorporated community where Warren lives and concentrates his humanitarian efforts — and where the remains of hundreds of migrants have been discovered in recent years. To prosecute Warren for those efforts would violate his religious freedom rights, the lawyers argued. Facing six months in prison on federal littering and trespassing charges, the misdemeanor trial was the first of two for Warren this month. The stakes are even higher in the second case, set to begin on May 29, with Warren fighting multiple felony smuggling and conspiracy charges and facing up to 20 years in prison for allowing two undocumented men access to food, water, and a place to sleep for two nights last year. [Read More] Also useful is "Border Official Admits Targeting Journalists and Human Rights Advocates With Smuggling Investigations," by Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept [May 17 2019] [Link]; and (from last week's newsletter) (Video) "Let Them Have Water" [Link].

 

THE DEMOCRATS AND THE 2020 ELECTION

Does Anyone Actually Want Joe Biden to Be President?

By Jill Filipovic, New York Times [May 17, 2019]

---- The most important requirement for the Democratic Party's presidential nominee? Electability. It matters more, we keep hearing, than nominating a candidate who has good policies. It matters more than nominating a candidate with a track record of passing progressive legislation. It certainly matters more than nominating a candidate who could be the first female president. Unfortunately, very few people who say they are putting electability first seem to understand what "electability" means, or what today's electorate actually looks like. Case in point: In a field crowded with nearly two dozen candidates, no answer to the electability question is offered more regularly and with more conviction than "Joe Biden." … But getting elected is not about appealing to the bland median. It's about appealing to the people who actually feel motivated to turn out and vote. The Democratic Party of 2019 does not look much like Joe Biden. Women, African-American, Latino and Asian voters are all much more likely to say they support Democratic candidates than Republican ones. White voters, male voters and especially white male voters generally support Republicans. Statistics on who votes Democratic also suggest that the Democratic Party is more diverse than the experts deciding who is electable. [Read More]  For more of this wonkish stuff, read "Analysis of Undecideds Suggests Biden's Support May be Exaggerated," by Doug Johnson Hatlem, Counterpunch [May 17, 2019] [Link].

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Israel Claims Victory After Germany's BDS Ban at the Expense of Minimizing the Holocaust

By Amira Hass, Haaretz [Israel] [May 19, 2019]

---- The resolution passed last week by the German parliament defining the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement as anti-Semitic is nauseating. As the daughter of survivors of the cargo trains, who only by chance did not reach the end planned for them by the Third Reich, this resolution above all reeks of minimization of the objectives and results of Nazi anti-Semitism. Any comparison between the Jews in Germany during the 1930s and today's Israel is an act of minimization in its concern for the agenda of the state that was established in 1948 through the expulsion of the nation that lived here, and that is now a military power that rules over 5 million Palestinians without rights. … The decision is also a source of despair. If there was a slight chance of saving Israelis from themselves and from the job with which they identify so strongly – that of prison wardens belonging to the master race – it was only by means of boycotts, divestment and sanctions. Not against some performance by an artist, but against international corporations, against Israeli tourism abroad, against smiling receptions for racist Israeli politicians in world capitals, against commercial ties with Israeli arms developers who sell their wares to the most murderous regimes in the world today. [Read More] For more on Germany and the BDS Resolution, read "Germany, Shame on You and Your anti-BDS Resolution," by Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [May 19, 2019] [Link].  The New York Times version is here.

 

OUR HISTORY

The Truth-Teller: From the Pentagon Papers to the Doomsday Machine

An interview with Daniel Ellsberg, Tellus Institute [May 18, 2019]

---- Your recent book, The Doomsday Machine, describes "a very expensive system of men, machines, electronics, communications, institutions, plans, training, discipline, practices and doctrine designed to obliterate the Soviet Union under various circumstances, with most of the rest of humanity as collateral damage." How did this system come about? 

Ellsberg: World War II created a highly profitable aerospace sector upon which the U.S. military relied for strategic bombing of cities, thereby setting the stage for the idea of bombers as a delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons. As orders precipitously declined by the end of the war, the industry was in dire financial straits, facing bankruptcy within a year or two. Accustomed to the guaranteed profits of the war years, they found themselves unable to compete with corporations experienced in building non-military products for the market, and demand for civilian aircraft on the part of commercial airlines was insufficient to replace the wartime military business. With the benefit of hindsight, I now see the Cold War as, in part, a marketing campaign for the continual, massive subsidies to the aerospace industry. That's what it became after the war, and that's what we are seeing again today. The contemporary analog is the idea of China as an existential enemy, which, I believe, is the dream and expectation of the U.S. Defense Department. [Read More]

 

'Les Temps Modernes': End of an Epoch

By Mitchell Abidor, New York Review of Books [May 17, 2019]

---- Reading old issues is to reexperience the intellectual life of the postwar world, when France set the tone and Les Temps Modernes set the terms for every debate of any importance, not just in France, but around the world. Until its death, the review remained stubbornly faithful to the project Sartre elaborated in his "presentation" in the review's first issue in October 1945. He wrote that though "all writers of bourgeois origin have known the temptation of irresponsibility… our intention is to assist in producing certain changes in the society around us." On the political issues of the day, the review, he promised, would "take a position in every case." Few publications remained as true to their initial goals as Les Temps Modernes, and few demonstrated the rigor and openness and bravery it did in fulfilling it. Fewer still could boast of contributors of the caliber of those who wrote for the journal, especially in its early days, and the quality and durability of their contributions. It was in the pages of Les Temps Modernes that we first find Sartre's "Portrait of the Anti-Semite," his "What is Literature," and political writings like his fellow-traveling "The Communists and Peace," and his post-Hungarian invasion rethinking of communism, "The Ghost of Stalin." His co-director Simone de Beauvoir was of course also a regular contributor, and in May 1948 we find "Women and Myths," described in a note as an "excerpt from a work to appear on the situation of the woman"—what would be The Second Sex. [Read More]