CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Impeachment

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

September 29, 2019

 

Hello All - CFOW welcomes the long-overdue move to impeach President Trump. Trump's "crimes and misdemeanors" began on Day One, with his barring of refugees, and have continued ever since. For more than two years our nation has been emotionally battered by his racism, his sadism towards immigrants and refugees, his ignorance and recklessness towards efforts to stem our climate crisis, and his shoot-from-the-hip approach to foreign policy and war.  Impeach him now, as soon as possible.

 

However, we think the Democrats are using poor judgment in focusing impeachment only on his Ukraine phone call to get dirt on Joe Biden.  From the viewpoint of the Democratic Party leadership, it may make sense to a simple and what is believed to be a slam-dunk issue.  With no chance of impeachment passing the Senate, a quick process in the House will check the impeachment box – thus ensuring party unity – and get the congressional process out of the way as soon as possible in order to focus on the 2020 presidential election.

 

Certainly it would be more satisfying to conduct impeachment hearings against the Trump Agenda itself. Criminality runs through all Trump has done. Ending US participation in the Paris Climate Agreement ensures climate chaos will get dangerously worse. Pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Agreement endangers everyone in the Middle East and raises the prospects of war.  The illegal and sadistic policies directed toward immigrants and refugees on our southern border ("Children in Cages") are a national disgrace.  And there is much more. As many have remarked, impeaching Trump on a phone call to Ukraine is like jailing Al Capone for tax evasion.

 

Perhaps another reason for a short and sweet impeachment process is that (I suspect) there are many issues and much murkiness in this struggle at the top of the US power structure.  The role of Joe Biden in the Obama administrations support for the 2014 Ukraine coup and the subsequent US manipulation of Ukraine politics will be an interesting story someday.  The phone call itself was related to a belief – not crazy – that the Ukraine government of 2016 sought to support Hillary Clinton's candidacy.  And it seems naïve to anyone with a memory to think that the CIA has no stake in the power struggles of the day.  I've linked an article below (there are many) that pursues these and similar lines of thought.

 

Let us hope that, against the wishes of the Democrat leadership, the impeachment hearings come to include the more serious of Trump's crimes and misdemeanors. Indeed, it is likely that Trump, like Nixon, will melt down during investigation and that new discoveries will reveal unknown dimensions of his criminality. Cover-ups of the cover-up seem likely.  These are interesting times.

 

Some Useful Reading/Viewing on the Impeachment Crisis

A video/reading of Trump's phone call with Ukraine's President Zelensky can be read/seen here.

 

The Whistleblower's complaint can be read here.

 

(Video) James Risen: Whistleblower Complaint Shows "Trump Is a Habitual Criminal" Abusing His Office

From Democracy Now! [September 27, 2019]

---- Democrats are ramping up efforts to impeach President Trump for pressing the president of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Nearly 90% of House Democrats now support impeachment … For more on the unfolding scandal, we speak with James Risen, senior national security correspondent for The Intercept. [See the Program]

 

Another Day, Another Scandal. What the 'Trump-Ukraine Collusion' Is Really About

By Daniel Lazare, Antiwar.com [September 28, 2019]

---- From initial report to America's greatest scandal ever in just four days – surely this was some sort of Washington speed record. Since the moment Trump was elected, Democrats have been searching for "the Big One," as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it, the scandal "that's going to finally bring Donald Trump down" – and now at last they found it. … Now that Trump stood accused of conspiring or coordinating with the Ukrainian government – or at least trying to – surely the Big One was finally at hand. But it's not. One reason is that there's no sign of a quid pro quo. … Another reason for skepticism is that charges of a smear job clearly misplaced. If anyone's activities are suspicious, it's Biden's, and Trump can hardly be blamed for wanting to get to the bottom of them. [Read More] And for more skepticism, read "The Democrats' Impeachment Attempt Against Trump Is A Huge Mistake," from Moon of Alabama [September 25, 2019] [Link].

 

Save the VFW Park – Home of CFOW

In the fall of 2002, CFOW stalwarts began what became a weekly vigil/protest in Dobbs Ferry against the looming war against Iraq. During and after the war, our Saturday vigils continued; though about 10 years ago we moved from Dobbs Ferry to Hastings, assembling at the VFW Park each Saturday noon with posters, leaflets, and a banner-de-jour to protest war and injustice. And so over the past decade the VFW Plaza has become a CFOW home to some 500 weekly peace & justice gatherings.

 

For those not familiar with Hastings' VFW Park, it is in the center of the village, with an inviting green lawn descending a steepish hill to a small semi-circular stone amphitheater about 25' by 30'.  A few small steps separate the plaza or stage from the sidewalk, and each Saturday we line up on the plaza along the sidewalk to hold our signs and banner and give out leaflets to passersby.  There is also interaction with people in cars: honks, thumbs-up, and occasional shouts of disagreement.  Frequently people we know or don't know stop to discuss the issue of the day – on last Saturday, for example, impeachment.

 

This is a classic example of a "public sphere," now rapidly vanishing from the urban and suburban architectural scene.  This public space is used for official events – the home port for the Veterans' Day and Memorial Day parades, for example – or as a venue for unofficial events such as a rally against white-nationalist graffiti found near our schools; or a rally against Trump's banning of refugees, which was attended by many local politicians; or for a display of baby strollers, a protest against Trump's policy of separating families at our southwestern border.  It is also a place where the Girl Scouts sell cookies, young entrepreneurs set up a lemonade stand, and skateboarders practice new tricks.  As a public sphere, I can think of no similar location in Westchester. It gives the village a true center, something lacking in most villages; and we can view it with pride as a symbol of the village's public support for citizen activism.

 

It is therefore truly disappointing to learn that the Village of Hastings is seeking federal funding to replace the VFW Plaza and the lawn behind it with a new park. In the funding application submitted to the County, the plaza/amphitheater bordering the sidewalk would be removed, and the lawn would be brought down to the sidewalk, with many changes on what is now the grass area. The submitted plan can be viewed at here, with a sketch of the site plan on page 45.

 

Certainly the VFW Plaza could use some repairs – new benches, for example – and the lawn behind it could use more chairs and some trees to replace those recently lost.  But the possibility of "free money" (a grant of $200K), to be matched by $200K of Village money, has lured our Board of Trustees into proposing a big project, one that can attract federal funding. The grant proposal has been submitted, after a "process" that was rushed and included little time for thought or community input, and we will know in January if the plan has been funded.  While the Village committee working on this assured a meeting last Monday that if the proposal was funded the plan could be changed, we are concerned that the plaza/amphitheater and beautiful green lawn will be lost. The VFW Park is one of the things that make Hastings unique among the Rivertowns, and it should be preserved and maintained, not dug up and replaced. If you would like to express an opinion about the Village plan, please call our mayor, Nikki Armacost, at 914 478 3400 ext 651; or you can send a letter to the Board of Trustees, Hastings Municipal Building, 7 Maple Ave., Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.

 

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 the climate crisis, 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!

 

That's it for this week.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

GOOD READING/FEATURED ESSAYS

Snowden in the Labyrinth

By Jonathan Lethem, New York Review of Books [October 24, 2019 Issue]

[FB – This is a review of Edward Snowden's just-published autobiography, Permanent Record]

---- Snowden's book is straightforward, admirably so. He has taken the risk of assuming that his reader is interested not only in his "moment of vision" and the brazen act that earned his fame and notoriety, but also in the formation of his personality, and the slow growth of his understanding of technology, espionage, surveillance, and human rights. Despite his gifts at computer programming, he has no interest in persuading you that he's unusual; quite the opposite. A clean-cut, apolitical child of a military family, his father a Coast Guard officer, his mother a federal employee—his parents divorced in 2001—Snowden is a gentle and conforming type, and he's consistently amazed that more people don't feel as he does about the intelligence community's crimes. … How does one decide to become the dissident, the scapegoat, the whistleblower? Snowden seems as mystified as we are. [Read More]

 

Sanders and Warren: The need for a progressive front

By The Organizing Upgrade Editorial Collective [September 28, 2019]
---- As the Democratic primaries unfold, clear patterns are emerging in the polls. Joe Biden has held on to a steadily diminishing but still significant lead. Bernie Sanders has held a relatively steady proportion of support. Elizabeth Warren has emerged from the pack to be level or sometimes ahead of Sanders, while all other candidates lag behind. While there is much to be said about how to read these early polls, the most important takeaway is that the two candidates with the most progressive visions and campaigns have together surpassed the party's centrist standard-bearer. … We believe that base building groups should assert themselves in the primary process and we believe firmly that the different decisions groups reach to endorse either Sanders or Warren should not produce irresolvable contradictions. Instead, we contend that building a primary-stage front against the party's conservative wing should be our rallying cry. [Read More]

 

Stepping Away From a Disastrous War Over Kashmir

By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept [September 28, 2019]
---- At a massive rally in Houston this past weekend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a stadium packed with supporters that India had bade "farewell" to a constitutional clause granting autonomy to the Himalayan region of Kashmir. "Article 370 had deprived people of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh of development," Modi told the crowd. "Terror and separatist elements were misusing the situation. Now, people there have got equal rights." The crowd responded with roaring applause. Modi's remark about "equal rights" was a jarring contrast to the news reports that have come in from Kashmir describing thousands of detentions, cases of torture and death, and a communications blackout that has severed Kashmir from the rest of the world. The de facto annexation of the long-contested region has further strained relations between India and Pakistan. It has also raised the specter of a full-blown insurgency pitting the Indian government against disaffected Kashmiris. For those to whom these ratcheted-up tensions look like another flare-up in a troubled area of the world, the situation bears a caveat: This time is different. [Read More]

 

Ending GM's Two-Tiered Labor System Is UAW Members' Top Demand — and Part of a Bigger Fight Against Worker Misclassification

By Rachel M. Cohen, The Intercept [September 26 2019]

---- Since last week, nearly 50,000 GM workers have been on strike, in part against a two-tiered system enforced by the auto giant that leaves "temporary" workers doing the same jobs as permanent staff for substantially less pay and fewer benefits. The striking workers, represented by the United Automobile Workers union, or UAW, are demanding a defined path to "permanent seniority" for GM's temporary workers — who make up about 7 percent of GM's U.S. workforce. GM has also entrenched inequality in its ranks by contracting out some jobs, like custodial work, that were traditionally staff roles. … The workers' demands are part of a broader push against worker misclassification, a tactic used by employers to lessen their labor costs. [Read More]  Also illuminating/useful for this important strike, read "GM Strikers Say 'No More Tiers!'" by Jane Slaughter and Chris Brooks, Labor Notes [September 18, 2019] [Link]; and "What's at Stake in the General Motors Strike," by Nelson Lichtenstein, Dissent [September 20, 2019] [Link]

 

Our History

The Desperate Plight Behind "Darkness at Noon"

By Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker [September 23, 2019]

---- On December 1, 1934, Sergei Kirov, the head of the Communist Party in Leningrad, was shot and killed in the hallway outside his office. The assassin, an unemployed man who had been expelled from the Party and bore a grudge against its leadership, was apprehended on the spot, but the case still raised questions. How did the killer get his pistol? Who had called off the bodyguards who usually surrounded Kirov at all times? Today, most historians agree that it was Joseph Stalin himself who ordered the murder, in order to eliminate a potential rival. But the official investigation came to quite different conclusions. During the next four years, it metastasized into a conspiracy-hunt that claimed to expose shocking villainy at the highest levels of Russia's government, military, and industry. In a series of trials that were publicized around the world, some of the oldest and most trusted Bolshevik leaders—men who, with Lenin, had led the Russian Revolution—were accused of being traitors. … That novelist was Arthur Koestler, and the book that the Moscow Trials inspired him to write was "Darkness at Noon," which became one of the most important political novels of the twentieth century. Telling the story of a veteran Bolshevik who is awaiting trial for treason, the book originally appeared in December, 1940, just two years after the events that it drew on, and became a worldwide phenomenon. [Read More]

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the Global Climate Strike - And What's Next

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

September 22, 2019

 

Hello All – Yesterday's worldwide Global Strike for Climate was one of the largest protests ever.  Led by students and young people demanding a future, some 2,500 protests were held in 117 countries.  Estimates are that four million people demonstrated around the world, and that 250,000 people joined the NYC march and rally. Here are some good pictures from Erik McGregor and good pictures and some video from CFOW's Susan Rutman. What's next for this student-led movement, and how can those of us from an older generation support this movement?

 

Why a Climate Strike?

While scientists and political leaders have known for 40 years that human activity is making our planet warmer, and that global warming is changing our climate, governments have failed to act effectively. And the planet has gotten warmer and our climate has changed – mostly for the worse.  In general, wet parts of the world have become wetter and dry parts have become dryer.  Storms have become more intense, because warmer air holds more water. Glaciers are melting, seas are warming, and spring comes earlier.  Plants and birds are confused.

 

The UN climate-change scientists say that we have to reduce the causes of global warming – carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" – by half by 2030.  Otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to stop global temperatures from rising beyond a dangerous and perhaps unstoppable point. It's a timed test. The point is to recognize that there is an emergency and to act on this understanding.  But governments have failed to do anything effective to stop or even slow climate chaos. And so young people have decided that only they can save themselves, and that there is no time for "moderation."

 

What's Next for the Climate Movement?

Tomorrow there will be a special session at the UN to review and consider how the nations of the world are doing with the climate-related promises they made at the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.  This will not be a pretty picture, as the Trump team has said it will withdraw from the Agreement, and only a few nations have taken effective steps towards the goal of reducing emissions by 50 percent by 2030. Paying close attention, we will see if the US mainstream media has absorbed the urgency about our climate crisis that was on display during Friday's demonstrations, and whether the mainstream media reflects this urgency in its reporting of the UN meetings, or whether it returns to business as usual, with "climate change" being but one of it many agenda items, usually at the bottom of a long list.

 

We will also see if the energy generated by the Climate Strike influences political leaders.  At the protest in NYC there was strong support for a Green New Deal that would launch federal funding for programs to move the USA away from fossil fuels. This idea has been opposed by the Democratic Party leadership and of course rejected by the Republicans.  In the streets of New York many young (but old enough to vote) people vowed to turn up at the polls to do what they can to save the planet; and as the primary elections approach, candidates may feel the pressure to support effective climate programs. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party leadership will predictably push hard to channel the climate momentum into electing a Democrat in 2020, downplaying the importance of mass movement momentum on the climate issues themselves.

 

So – between now and November 2020 - what else can young people do besides voting?  The major climate group 350.org will hold an open conference call on Sunday (this) evening at 8:30 PM, where climate action leaders will talk about Next Steps. In addition to educating and a focus on critical primary elections, I think we can look forward to a season of imaginative exercises in direct action – sit-ins, school campaigns and protests, demonstrations at media outlets and corporate headquarters, etc. Some of this action will be led by the young peoples' Sunrise Movement, and also by the Extinction Rebellion.  At CFOW we will do our best to circulate info about these actions in our Newsletter and our Facebook page.  At this stage in the fight, I think we want to give as much support as we can to the youth-led climate justice movement.

 

Some Useful/Illuminating Reading on the Global Climate Strike

How the youth-led climate strikes became a global mass movement

By Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence [September 16, 2019]

---- It began as a call to action from a group of youth activists scattered across the globe, and soon became what is shaping up to be the largest planet-wide protest for the climate the world has ever seen.  The Global Climate Strike, which kicks off on Sept. 20, will not be the first time people all over the world have taken action for the climate on a single day. But if things play out the way organizers hope, it could mark a turning point for the grassroots resistance to fossil fuels. "Strikes are happening almost everywhere you can think of," said Jamie Margolin, a high school student from Seattle who played a role in initiating this global movement. "People are participating in literally every place in the world." "Suddenly there's this entire new generation of activists calling out everyone no matter who they are for not doing enough, and that's woken people up." [Read More]

 

Climate Protesters and World Leaders: Same Planet, Different Worlds

By Somini Sengupta, New York Times [September 21, 2019]

---- This is the world we live in: Punishing heat waves, catastrophic floods, huge fires and climate conditions so uncertain that children took to the streets en masse in global protests to demand action. But this is also the world we live in: A pantheon of world leaders who have deep ties to the industries that are the biggest sources of planet-warming emissions, are hostile to protests, or use climate science denial to score political points. … At the current pace, global temperatures are set to rise beyond 3 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels by the end of the century even if every country on Earth meets its goals under the 2015 Paris pact, which calls on nearly 200 nations to set voluntarily targets to reduce their emissions. Many big countries, including the United States, are not on track to meet their commitments. [Read More]

 

Why Next Monday's UN Climate Action Summit Matters

By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation [September 16, 2019]

---- As world leaders converge on New York City for the United Nations Climate Action Summit on September 23, they enter what may be the most consequential week in climate politics since Donald Trump's surprise election as president of the United States in 2016. Trump, of course, announced soon after taking office that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, the landmark treaty signed at the last big UN climate summit in 2015. …The events of the coming days—including a global climate strike on September 20 by the activists whose protests in the past year have pushed the term "climate emergency" into news reports around the world—may help answer a question that has loomed over humanity since Trump's election: Can the rest of the world save itself from climate breakdown if the richest, most powerful nation on earth is pulling in the opposite direction? [Read More]

 

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 the climate crisis, 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!

 

That's it for this week.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

GOOD READING/FEATURED ESSAYS

 

The Green New Deal: A Fight for Our Lives

By Naomi Klein, New York Review of Books [September 17, 2019]

[FB – This essay is excerpted from Naomi Kleins new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. I'm about half-way through and recommend it highly.  It sells for $27 and is available from Book Culture (NYC) and many other stores.]

---- One month before the young Sunrise Movement activists first occupied the office of then-soon-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in November 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report that had a greater impact than any publication in the thirty-one-year history of the organization. The report examined the implications of keeping the increase in planetary warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7°F). Given the worsening disasters we are already seeing with about 1°C of warming, it found that keeping temperatures below the 1.5°C threshold is humanity's best chance of avoiding truly catastrophic unraveling…. Pulling off this high-speed pollution phaseout, the report establishes, is not possible with singular technocratic approaches like carbon taxes, though those tools must play a part. Rather, it requires deliberately and immediately changing how our societies produce energy, how we grow our food, how we move around, and how our buildings are constructed. What is needed, the report's summary states in its first sentence, is "rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society." It was against this backdrop that 2019's cascade of large and militant climate mobilizations unfolded. [Read More]

 

The War On Yemen Has Failed; Time For Peace, Not More War

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies, Popular Resistance.[September 17, 2019]

---- On Saturday, September 14th, two oil refineries and other oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia were hit and set ablaze by 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles, dramatically slashing Saudi Arabia's oil production by half, from about ten million to five million barrels per day. On September 18, the Trump administration, blaming Iran, announced it was imposing more sanctions on Iran and voices close to Donald Trump are calling for military action. But this attack should lead to just the opposite response: urgent calls for an immediate end to the war in Yemen and an end to US economic warfare against Iran. … The Houthis' newfound ability to strike back at the heart of Saudi Arabia could be a catalyst for peace, if the world can seize this opportunity to convince the Saudis and the Trump administration that their horrific, failed war is not worth the price they will have to pay to keep fighting it. But if we fail to seize this moment, it could instead be the prelude to a much wider war. So, for the sake of the starving and dying people of Yemen and the people of Iran suffering under the "maximum pressure" of U.S. economic sanctions, as well as the future of our own country and the world, this is a pivotal moment. [Read More]

 

Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: Building on the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty

By Joseph Gerson, Common Dreams [September 17, 2019]

---- On September 20, in a formal U.N. ceremony, the Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty will be opened for signatures. The Treaty further stigmatizes nuclear weapons and seeks to outlaw their use, threatened the use, development, testing, production, manufacture, acquisition, possession or stockpiling nuclear weapons, transfer and deployment. ... This is important. But it will be law for only those states that sign and ratify it. All the nuclear powers boycotted the Ban Treaty negotiations. … Thus, we could be entering an era of nuclear weapons proliferation not abolition. Our future depends on how people and governments respond, and it dictates a global division of labor among nuclear weapons abolitionists. Nations that negotiated the Ban Treaty must sign and ratify it as quickly as possible.  This will reinforce the momentum created by its negotiation. But, winning nuclear weapons abolition still requires building mass movements, in alliance with other social movements, within the nuclear weapons and "umbrella" states: NATO nations, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.  These nations and their disarmament movements lie at the center of the struggle. If just one or two of these governments are led by their people to take advantage of the opening provided by the Treaty and reject the strictures of their nuclear and potentially omnicidal alliances, the world's nuclear architecture will be weakened. That in turn could lead to a global disarmament dynamic. And, for those of us in the world's nuclear weapons states, the imperative of resistance remains.  [Read More]

 

The Liberatory Potential of Local Action

By Brian Tokar, Roar Magazine [September 19, 2019]

---- Today we are seeing an inspiring resurgence of progressive action at the local level, even as reactionary nationalist movements in Europe and beyond seek to position themselves as the true voices of a renewed localism. What are the prospects for such locally centered political engagement in a time of rising political polarization and conflict? How can local action help advance personal liberation and social justice? More broadly, how can it further our goals for global transformation? … At their best, local solutions to social and environmental problems may be more amenable to an open and accessible democratic process, and their implementation can remain more accountable to those most affected by the outcomes. Local measures can help build closer relationships among neighbors and strengthen the capacity for self-reliance in a time of increasingly extreme climate-related disruptions. Local actions enable us to see that the ruling institutions that often dominate our lives may be far less essential than people tend to believe, and that we can effectively challenge regressive policies at the national and supranational levels that favor powerful outside interests. At the same time, local initiatives often raise the question of how to spark a broader social transformation that can offer a systemic change greater than the sum of its dispersed local expressions. Read More]

 

Our History

Silent Spring

By Rachel Carson, The New Yorker [June 16, 1962 issue]

[FB – In support of the worldwide climate mobilization, The New Yorker made available some excellent articles from its archives.  Linked here is the first of a three-part essay by Rachel Carson that became her path-breaking book, Silent Spring. Written more than a half century ago, it is still relevant to our climate-chaos world.]

---- There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to be in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards, where white clouds of bloom drifted above the green land. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wild flowers delighted the traveller's eye through much of the year. Even in winter, the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall, people came from great distances to observe them. Other people came to fish streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days, many years ago, when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns. Then, one spring, a strange blight crept over the area, and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community; mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, and the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was the shadow of death. The farmers told of much illness among their families. In the town, the doctors were becoming more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness that had appeared among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among the adults but also among the children, who would be stricken while they were at play, and would die within a few hours. And there was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? [Read More]

 

CFOW Weekend Update - Info on the Global Climate Strike, in NYC and Westchester

CFOW Weekend Update

September 19, 2019

 

Hello All – The focus of this Update is on tomorrow's Global Climate Strike march and rally in NYC.  The last time I looked there were more than 2,500 events in 150 countries.  Here in Westchester, there will be several rallies on Friday, as well as the big rally and march in Foley Square, NYC starting at noon.  I've posted a calendar of events below, as well as links to a few good/useful/interesting bits of reading and viewing.

 

For those going to the Foley Square rally, a CFOW contingent is going together on the Metro North train leaving Dobbs at 10:48 and Hastings at 10:50.  This train does not stop at Greystone, but there is another train leaving Greystone at 10:37 that will arrive at GCS at 11:30, as will the first train.  I hope we can join up and also meet up with the Wespac contingent arriving at the same time.  The rendezvous point is the clock/kiosk in the middle of the GCS waiting room.  Good luck with that!

 

See you tomorrow.

Frank Brodhead

914-478-3848

 

Tomorrow's Climate Strike Events

As noted, the main event in our area is a rally and march in NYC.  We'll assemble in Foley Square, near City Hall, from noon until 1 pm, and then march to Battery Park for a rally starting about 2 pm.  Among the speakers will be 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who addressed the US Congress yesterday. NYC school students have been given permission to skip school to attend these events, so it could be pretty BIG.

 

In Westchester, I know of the following events.  If you hear of additional events, please send a return email or post info about the event on the CFOW Facebook page.

 

In Hastings, there will be an event outside the Hastings high school starting at 11:55 and going until 12:30.

 

In Irvington, there will be two events/rallies at Village Hall. "Support the global movement of students"; from 11 am to 1 pm and from 3:15 to 4:30 pm (so students can attend).

 

In Peekskill, Mothers Out Front and other groups are hosting a rally outside Sen. Chuck Schumer's office at 9 am at 1 Park Place in Peekskill. More info.

 

In Croton, the Blue Pig (12 Maple Street) will host a rally starting at 11:30.  The rally is titled "Action Steps," and will include many active/prominent speakers from the Croton/Peekskill area. For lots more information, go here.

 

In White Plains, there will be a gathering at the White Plains Presbyterian church, 39 N. Broadway, starting at 6:30 pm.

 

And NB, on Saturday, September 21^st, the CFOW weekly vigil/protest/rally will also focus on the Global Climate Strike.  As usual, we will meet at the Hastings VFW Plaza, Warburton Ave. and Spring Street, from 12 noon to 1 pm.

 

An active weekend!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

914-478-3848

 

SOME GOOD/ILLUMINATING CLIMATE READING/VIEWING

 

Just out this week is a book by climate activist/stalwart Naomi Klein, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. I'm about halfway through and like it very much. The book is reviewed and Naomi is interviewed in The Nation: "Naomi Klein Knows a Green New Deal Is Our Only Hope Against Climate Catastrophe"; and Naomi also spoke about her book and other things on Democracy Now! last Tuesday [Link]. The book is available ($27) from Book Culture (NYC) and many other stores.

 

'Americans are waking up': two thirds say climate crisis must be addressed

By Oliver Milman, The Guardian [UK] [

---- Two-thirds of Americans believe climate change is either a crisis or a serious problem, with a majority wanting immediate action to address global heating and its damaging consequences, major new polling has found. Amid a Democratic primary shaped by unprecedented alarm over the climate crisis and an insurgent youth climate movement that is sweeping the world, the polling shows substantial if uneven support for tackling the issue. More than a quarter of Americans questioned in the new CBS News poll consider climate change a "crisis", with a further 36% defining it as a "serious problem". Two in 10 respondents said it was a minor problem, with just 16% considering it not worrisome at all. More than half of polled Americans said they wanted the climate crisis to be confronted right away, with smaller groups happy to wait a few more years and just 18% rejecting any need to act. But while nearly all of those questioned accept that the climate is changing, there appears to be lingering confusion over why and scientists' confidence over the causes. There is a consensus among climate scientists that the world is heating up due to human activities such as burning fossil fuels for electricity generation and transportation, as well as cutting down forests. However, just 44% of poll respondents said human activity was a major contributor to climate change. More than a quarter said our impact was minor or nonexistent.

There is an even starker split on the findings of climate scientists. According to the CBS poll, 52% of Americans say "scientists agree that humans are a main cause" of the climate crisis, with 48% claiming there is disagreement among experts. [Read More]

 

Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns

By Bill McKibben, The New Yorker [September 19, 2019]

---- Some of us have begun to change our own lives, pledging to fly less and to eat lower on the food chain. But, whatever our intentions, we're each of us currently locked into burning a fair amount of fossil fuel: if there's no train that goes to your destination, you can't take it. Others—actually, often the same people—are working to elect greener candidates, lobbying to pass legislation, litigating cases headed for the Supreme Court, or going to jail to block the construction of pipelines. … But what if there were an additional lever to pull, one that could work both quickly and globally? One possibility relies on the idea that political leaders are not the only powerful actors on the planet—that those who hold most of the money also have enormous power, and that their power could be exercised in a matter of months or even hours, not years or decades. I suspect that the key to disrupting the flow of carbon into the atmosphere may lie in disrupting the flow of money to coal and oil and gas. [Read More]

 

Trump v. Climate Emergency: A Formula for Catastrophe in the Arctic

By Michael T. Klare, Tom Dispatch [September 13, 2019]

---- The scramble for the Arctic's resources was launched early in this century when the world's major energy firms, led by BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Russian gas giant Gazprom, began exploring for oil and gas reserves in areas only recently made accessible by retreating sea ice. Those efforts gained momentum in 2008, after the U.S. Geological Survey published a report, Circum-Arctic Resources Appraisal, indicating that as much as one-third of the world's undiscovered oil and gas lay in areas north of the Arctic Circle. Much of this untapped fossil fuel largess was said to lie beneath the Arctic waters adjoining Alaska (that is, the United States), Canada, Greenland (controlled by Denmark), Norway, and Russia — the so-called "Arctic Five." … Pompeo claimed that we were now in a new era in the Arctic. Because climate change — a phrase Pompeo, of course, never actually uttered — is now making it ever more possible to exploit the region's vast resource riches, a scramble to gain control of them is now officially underway. That competition for resources has instantly become enmeshed in a growing geopolitical confrontation between the U.S., Russia, and China, generating new risks of conflict.   [Read More]

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Friday's Global Climate Strike

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

September 15, 2019

 

Hello All – The focus of this week's CFOW newsletter is on our climate crisis and next Friday's "Global Climate Strike," which will take place in 117 countries, with more than 2,500 events, including some in Westchester and a big rally and march starting in NYC's Foley Square (near City Hall) at noon. (Find events near you here.) CFOW stalwarts and friends will be heading down to the event on the Metro North train leaving Dobbs Ferry at 10:48 and Hastings at 10:50; (at GCS we will meet the train leaving Greystone at 10:37). Please join us!

 

Why a climate strike?

Yesterday, in front of the White House, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and dozens of other young people held an 11-minute "die-in" to dramatize the rule-of-thumb timeline that we have only 11 years to turn around our climate crisis before it may be too late. While "how long do we have?" before it is too late to head off extreme disaster is somewhat uncertain, over the past decade the proposed timelines have been getting shorter and shorter, and now the year 2030 seems to be the most hopeful deadline.  (It could well be much shorter, including "yesterday.") – What this means is that, as greenhouse gases (mostly carbon dioxide and methane) accumulate in our atmosphere), our climate will warm at a predictable rate, and that before too long the Earth's temperature will have risen more than 2.7 degrees (Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, and we will reach a tipping point of extreme danger and possibly runaway warming.

 

And so this is The Emergency, and it confronts us all.  But what has changed in recent years is that young people have reframed The Emergency, pointing out that the Leaders of the Free World, and not incidentally their own parents, will be dead and gone before the worst impacts of the climate crisis arrive, and that it is they – those today under 30, for example – who will bear the brunt of this existential crisis, a crisis that they had no personal role in creating.  This is obviously unfair; and the anger of young people is compounded by the universally acknowledged truism that their parents' generation has done virtually nothing to address the crisis.  And if righteous anger needed any other fuel, the election of climate-vandal Donald Trump takes the cake. And so first in Europe, and now all over the world, young people are acting to try to save themselves from a horrible fate.  In the USA, we have the Sunrise Movement, the Green New Deal, and now a Global Climate Strike.  This is a desperate moment, and all of us need to do as much as we can to support our children and grandchildren.

 

But isn't The Green New Deal too expensive?

Whenever someone proposes ways to deal with our climate crisis, the mainstream media highlight the cost of the proposal and ask, "How could we possibly pay for this?" To which Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg replies, "If we can save the banks, then we can save the World."  And so yes, it's expensive, but it's not like we haven't done something big before.  Another answer is that the cost of doing not enough is greater than the cost of being serious about the climate crisis. Recently, in The Nation, Joshua Holland wrote, "The Green New Deal is Cheaper Than Climate Change."  "Even if we set aside the human and biospheric costs of climate change," he writes, "the economic cost of allowing temperatures to rise even a couple of degrees above that target is simply staggering." Scientists working at the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, estimated that "a fraction of the potential risks and damages" to the USA economy in 2090 will be costing $224 billion per year if global warming is not effectively slowed and stopped.  Examples of the economic losses of our climate crisis are all around us; for example, a report cited in The New York Times this week claimed that "extreme weather displaced a record 7 million in first half of 2019."  Another article in The Times – about the Great Flood [USA] of 2019 – reported "this year's flooding across the Midwest and the South affected nearly 14 million people. … The causes of flooding are complicated, but climate change is increasingly an exacerbating factor. Warmer air can hold more moisture, and that moisture can fall back out of the sky, whether as rain or snow, in greater amounts." (And this excellent article includes maps and pictures that show how extensive and disastrous were the Midwestern floods in the first half of this year.)

 

The Global Climate Strike is not just on Friday

What can we do?  How can I help?  These are the questions we need to be asking (and answering) in the months and years ahead.  We are up against the fossil fuel companies, who are investing billions of dollars in exploration and new drilling, when we will certainly bring ourselves to doom if we even burn the fossil fuels now ready for market.  We are up against a political system that refuses to consider the Green New Deal or similar proposals; and we are up against a media system that continues to ignore our climate crisis (for example, only one climate question during the last presidential candidates' debate). So it won't be easy; but when our grandchildren ask us, "What did you do in the great war to save our climate?" what will we answer?  "A lot," I hope.

 

Read more about the Global Climate Strike

 

(Video) Greta Thunberg on the Climate Fight: "If We Can Save the Banks, Then We Can Save the World"

An interview with Naomi Klein, The Intercept [September 13 2019]

---- We are living through some scary times. As Greta has told us so often: "Our house is on fire." And I firmly believe that there are three things that have to align if we are going to douse the flames. First, we need the courage to dream of a different kind of future. To shake off the sense of inevitable apocalypse that has pervaded our culture. To give us a destination, a common goal, a picture of the world we are working towards. But those dreams are useless unless we are willing to embrace the other two forces. One is the need to confront the truth of our moment in history — the truth of how much we have already lost and of how much more we are on the brink of losing if we do not embrace revolutionary levels of change. The other thing we have to do is this: We have to find our fight. We have to come together across differences and build credible, unshakable power. In the face of the fires roiling our world, we have to find our own fire. Truth and fire. [Read More]

 

(Video) "We Are Striking to Disrupt the System": An Hour with 16-Year-Old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg

From Democracy Now! [September 11, 2019]

---- In her first extended broadcast interview in the United States, we spend the hour with Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has inspired millions across the globe. Last year she launched a school strike for the climate, skipping school every Friday to stand in front of the Swedish parliament, demanding action to prevent catastrophic climate change. Her protest spread, quickly going global. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the globe have participated in their own local school strikes for the climate. Since her strike began in 2018, Greta has become a leading figure in the climate justice movement. [See the Program]

 

There's Only One Antidote for Climate Despair—Climate Revolt

By Ben Ehrenreich, The Nation [September 9, 2019]

---- What could it mean to "act now," when we have so little time? How to find the will to fight when everything seems doomed? It's hard even to move when temperatures break 100, and harder still when you know that the sweat soaking your shirt means the Gulf Stream is failing, the permafrost melting, that Alaska's sea ice is already gone, that we're running out of arable land, out of water, out of time.  The left has rarely been comfortable talking about despair, much less about faith—of the religious sort or any other. But who ever expected to have to mourn a planet, to watch the shadow of extinction fall on so many living things? Our demise is not yet fated, but even without Bolsonaro and Trump, we are running headlong towards it. Carbon emissions continue to climb. Despair hangs heavy, stifling, grey as meltwater rushing off a Greenland glacier. Sometimes it feels more frantically debilitating, a roaring orange, like the Arctic and the Amazon in flames. It has its own feedback loops, too: If we don't act, we know that all will certainly be lost; but all action feels inadequate, so we muddle on as the ground collapses in front of us. From the beginning, Extinction Rebellion—"XR" in movement shorthand—has sought a way out of this bind. [Read More]

 

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 the climate crisis, 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!

 

That's it for this week.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

This Week's Featured Essays

 

Observe 9/11 Anniversary by Calling for an End to the Afghan War

By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [September 10, 2019]

---- The U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan violated the United Nations Charter, which mandates that countries settle their disputes peacefully. The Charter forbids the use of military force except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization. The invasion was not lawful self-defense, as it did not respond to an armed attack by Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks were not carried out by the Afghan government. And although the Council passed Resolutions 1368 and 1373 in response to the 9/11 attacks, neither resolution authorized the United States to use military force against Afghanistan. Instead, the resolutions condemned the 9/11 attacks; ordered the freezing of assets and criminalization of terrorist activity; urged steps to prevent terrorist activity, including sharing of information; and advocated ratification and enforcement of international conventions against terrorism. … The 18-year U.S. war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of 139,000 Afghan civilians and combatants, and more than 6,300 U.S. soldiers and mercenaries. And the carnage in Afghanistan is only getting worse. July 2019 was the deadliest month of the past two years, with 1,500 civilians killed or wounded. During the first half of 2019, nearly 4,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, and it was primarily the United States that caused most of the civilian deaths in that time period. [Read More] For an interesting appraisal of the deeper background behind the Afghanistan war, read "A century after the Anglo-Afghan peace treaty, the Fourth Afghan War is about to escalate," by Robert Fisk, The Independent [UK] [August 2019] [Link].

 

(Video) Noura Erakat: Netanyahu's Proposed West Bank Annexation Is Logical End to Israel's Apartheid Policy

From Democracy Now [September 12, 2019]

---- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing worldwide condemnation for vowing to annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank if he wins next week's snap election. The United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union and Russia have all criticized Netanyahu's plan, which he unveiled Tuesday. Netanyahu's pledge comes just a week before Israeli voters return to the polls on Tuesday for new elections after Netanyahu failed to form a coalition government following Israel's April 9 election. Netanyahu's annexation plan would crush hopes of an eventual Palestinian state. We speak with Noura Erakat, Palestinian human rights attorney and an assistant professor at Rutgers University. [See the Program]

 

For more insights on the Israeli annexation plan – "Netanyahu Openly Boasts About Stealing vast Swathes of Palestine, but US Pols Won't Acknowledge It," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [Link]; "A declaration of war on the two-state solution," by Gershon Baskin, Jerusalem Post [September 12, 2019] [Link]; and "Why Bibi Fears Arab Voters," by Yardena Schwartz, New York Review of Books [September 10, 2019] [Link]. You can also listen to Noura Erakat on a podcast from +972 Magazine, "Has international law failed Palestinians?" [August 30, 2019]  [Link] - 48 minutes.

 

The Question That Never Gets Asked About Kashmir

By Charles Glass, Stratfor [September 9, 2019]

---- In 1998, the CIA subjected India to strict surveillance to ensure it was complying with its commitment not to test nuclear weapons. The agency used satellites, communications intercepts and agents to watch the nuclear facility at Pokhran in Rajasthan state. India could not detonate warheads, which would inevitably lead Pakistan to follow suit, without the United States knowing in advance. Or so the United States thought. Washington went into shock on May 11, 1998, when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced that his country had just detonated not one, but five nuclear warheads at Pokhran. "India is now a nuclear power state," Vajpayee declared. … If the CIA is watching India and Pakistan now, it will have to do better than it did in 1998. In 2019, with passions high over India's abrogation of Kashmir's legal, if fictitious, autonomy, the outcome would not be waking up to discover one side or the other had tested weapons. It would be the sight of nuclear war taking millions of lives. Although the stakes in Kashmir could not be higher, the United States and much of the international community call the dispute India's "internal affair" or a "bilateral" issue between India and Pakistan. It isn't. A potential nuclear conflagration cannot be anything other than a matter of international peace and security. The Indian and Pakistani armed forces possess both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, which local commanders could use on the battlefield in populated areas. This would be the first use in war of atomic weapons since the U.S. destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  [Read More]  India's fascist government is not neglecting the rest of India: read "'Everywhere is Kashmir': Unraveling Weaponized, Corporatized Hindustan in India's Northeast," by Sarang Narasimhaiah, Counterpunch [September 6, 2019] [Link].

 

Latest Russian spy story looks like another elaborate media deception

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone [September 13, 2019]

---- The story was broken by CNN Monday, September 9th, under the headline, "Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017": "In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN." … If the mole was even that important, it seems more than possible we lost this "asset" because our intelligence chiefs felt it necessary to spend late 2016 and early 2017 spilling details about our capabilities in the news media. This story wasn't leaked to tell the public an important story about a lost source in the Kremlin, but more likely as damage control, to work the refs as investigators examine the origins of the election interference tale [Read More]

 

Our History

Salvador Allende's Last Speech

[FB – Chilean President Salvador Allende died 46 years ago (September 11, 1973) in a US-backed coup. As a socialist, he moved his country in a progressive direction.  With his overthrow, the country plunged into a nightmare of fascist violence.  Here's his final address, broadcast over the radio while he was barricaded in the presidential palace.]

---- My friends, surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the towers of Radio Portales and Radio Corporación. My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself commander of the Navy, and Mr Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the government, and who also has appointed himself chief of the Carabineros [national police]. Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history. [Read More]