Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
August 25, 2019
Hello All – This week the Amazon basin, the home to 20 percent of our oxygen and a critical "carbon sink" for keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere, was also the home to more than 70,000 fires, many caused by lightening but many more set by ranchers, loggers, and miners to "clear the land." This is not new: over the past fifty years, one-fifth of the Amazon has been "cleared" for cattle ranching and extractive industries.
While the world watched in horror as the Amazon burned, the Democratic National Committee met in California. One of its acts was to defeat two attempts to persuade the Committee to allow a presidential candidates' debate focused solely on the climate crisis, something that the candidates themselves endorsed and was supported by thousands of grassroots climate activists. In its wisdom, the Committee maintained that the climate crisis was but one important issue of many – guns, vote rigging, infrastructure, etc. – and should not be given special privilege.
And this is where we are now. While the "moderates" in control of the Party hope to manipulate "moderate" Joe Biden into the presidential nomination, the more liberal or radical wing of the party centers itself around the Green New Deal and issues that would resonate with lower-income Democrats. This liberal opposition says that maintaining a livable climate is a pre-requisite to all our other aspirations. Additionally, the liberal opposition takes seriously the consensus among climate scientists that we have only a decade or so to solve this problem before the window of opportunity closes forever. Thus the job will be accomplished under the President elected in 2020, or it won't be done at all. So Trump must be defeated; but ALSO the victorious Democratic candidate must come into office with a mandate to take the revolutionary measures if we are to save ourselves. Winning is good, but not enough; the victory must represent a strong national consensus to transform what much be changed to greatly diminish the threats that face us. As Naomi Klein explained in an "Open Letter" to the DNC:
"Here is why setting an emergency tone at this crossroads is so important. Imagine that the party does absolutely everything right between now and November 2020. It elects a beloved candidate to lead the party with a bold and positive platform; that candidate goes on to defeat Trump in the general election. … Even in that long-shot, best-case scenario, a new administration would come to power with the climate clock so close to midnight that it will need to have earned an overwhelming democratic mandate to leap into transformative action on day one. The timeline we face is nonnegotiable. … Global emissions need to be slashed in half in the decade that follows a new U.S. administration taking office. Not 10 years to agree on a plan or 10 years to get started on the plan. It will have 10 years to get the job done."
We have never done this before; even the economic conversion from peace to a war economy in 1941 is dwarfed by the changes that we have to make. At the moment, the idea of a "Green New Deal" and the detailed program put forward this week by Sen. Bernie Sanders (linked below) look like the most useful set of ideas on the table. But here we are, trying to persuade the Democratic Party leadership that the climate crisis is more than "a single issue." We have only six months or so to change this.
Last week activists and politicians in Iceland gathered to memorialize the loss of a massive glacier, the first such loss in the current crisis. The assembly heard speeches and poems about the death of the glacier, and erected a memorial plaque. The message it left for future generations reads: ""In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it." Is this our future?
News Notes
David Koch died this week. One half of the "Koch Brothers" team, the billionaire racist and climate denier caused immense damage in his lifetime. For a review, here is a 2016 Democracy Now! interview with Jane Mayer, author of a book about the Kochs and other rightwing billionaires. For more background, check out "How the Koch Brothers and Other Family Capitalists Are Ruining America" by Steve Fraser, The Nation [September 11, 2014] [Link].
The anti-government protests in Hong Kong continue, and the government refuses to negotiate or make concessions. For a useful review of the struggle, read "Why There's No End in Sight to the Hong Kong Protests," by Ilaria Maria Sala, The Nation [August 21, 2019] [Link].
This Newsletter has linked many articles about the weaknesses in the Russia-gate conspiracy theory. One of the entertaining facets of Russia-gate is the corrupt and colorful Trump associates and hangers-on who seem at home in both Ukraine and the CIA. One such minor character is Felix Sater, who is frequently mentioned in the Mueller Report, mainly in connection with the Trump organization's wish/plan to build a high-rise in Moscow. But there's much more to Felix; read "Unsealed Filings Detail Felix Sater's Work as an Intelligence Asset, With Significant Gaps" [Link] and "Did Felix Sater's 20 Years as an Informant Help Land Him at the Center of the Trump-Russia Story?" [Link]. And for some previews of things to come, read "10 declassified Russia collusion revelations that could rock Washington this fall," by John Solomon, The Hill [August 20, 2019] [Link].
Finally, yesterday was the birthday of Howard Zinn, the American historian and author of A People's History of the United States. Zinn's work, popularizing the radical struggles and government repression that are normally buried in school history curricula, is now carried on by the Zinn Project, where you can read more about his life and legacy. One of Zinn's books was You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, a call for commitment and participation in making history. And this also became the title of a very good documentary film about his life and times, which you can see here.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Thursday, September 5th – "Climate Emergency and the Green New Deal: Centering the Voices of Movements" is the title of a forum sponsored by Bronx Climate Justice North and other organizations., The panel discussion will feature several of the leaders in the NY-area fight for a Green New Deal. The event will be at the Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive (125th St.), from 7 to 9:30 PM More information.
Sunday, September 8th – The next CFOW monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 PM. At these meetings we review our work & the events of the past month, and make plans going forward. Everyone is welcome at these meetings.
Week of September 20-27 – Global Climate Strike. Local info tbd. For the action's website, go here.
September 21st – "We the People" is the name for a March on Washington. So far the content or "demands" of the March are wide open; but this is likely to take shape over the next month. Check out https://wethepeoplemarch.org and their Facebook page for further developments. WESPAC will have a bus leaving North White Plains at 6 AM; for tickets ($50) and 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 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!
This Newsletter
Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned. Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media. As always, we have some excellent "Featured Essays," I also highly recommend the set of articles on the crisis in Kashmir ("War & Peace"), Conn Hallinan's essay on the future of (no) water ("Climate Crisis"); journalist Dave Lindorff memoir of being at an airport and on the terrorist watch list ("Civil Libertiesi"); and an essay about shooting a documentary film in Jerusalem, with two short videos from the project ("Israel/Palestine"). And of course there's lots more. Enjoy!
Rewards!
The Newsletter's "Rewards" offer a brief moment of cultural sanity before plunging into a review and analysis of the week's news. This week's Rewards are taken from the song bag of the popular television series "Weeds." As the program centered on unorthodox entrepreneurship, their music was similarly nouveau for the time. First up, the program's theme song, "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds. I hope you also like "Terrible Things" by April Smith, and "Celia" by Toots and the Maytalls. And there's lots more on-line!
Best Wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Chomsky: By Focusing on Russia, We Ignore Trump's Existential Threat to Climate
Interviewed by David Barsamian, Truthout [August 21, 2019]
---- In this continuation of an extensive interview, world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky discusses the growing extremism of the Republican Party, Trump's ongoing trade war with China, Democrats' abandonment of the working class and impending threat of the climate crisis. Read Part 1 of this interview here, and Part 2 here. [7/18 and 7/28]
David Barsamian: Talk about the present occupant of the White House. In some ways, his boorish and grotesque behavior is a pretty easy target. People can feel very virtuous about denouncing Trump. But Public Citizen warns, "Every day we witness a further slide toward authoritarianism under Trump." Are you concerned about that?
Noam Chomsky: I'm less concerned than they are. I think the system is resilient enough to withstand a figure who is defying subpoenas, defying congressional orders and so on. I think Trump is in many ways underestimated. He's a highly skilled politician who is very successful in what he's doing.
He's got two major constituencies. One is the actual, standard constituency, the Republican Party — both parties, but much more the Republicans — private wealth, corporate power. You've got to keep them satisfied. Then there is the voting base. Here, what's happened to the Republicans over the years is pretty interesting. [Read More]
The Significance of the "1619 Project"
By Jesse Jackson, Counterpunch [August 23, 2019]
---- On Sunday, the New York Times unveiled "The 1619 Project," a journalistic series in the Sunday magazine that seeks to tell the "unvarnished truth" about slavery and its impact on America's history.
In 1619, just 12 years after the founding of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, the Jamestown colonists bought the first slaves, 20 to 30 enslaved Africans, from English pirates.
The Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, issued America's founding creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, … among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." As Nikole Hannah-Jones writes in her stunning introduction in the New York Times Magazine, at 43, she is part of the first generation of black Americans in the history of this country to be born into a society in which blacks had equal rights of citizenship. [Read More]
How the US Exported Its Border Around the World
By Aaron Bady, The Nation [August 20, 2019]
[FB – This is a review of Empire of Borders, by Todd Miller.]
---- Trump didn't make the heinous immigration enforcement apparatus we've had for so many years. He's a manifestation of it. But an interesting thing Trump has done is denormalize what had been normalized in previous administrations. Many people are seeing the utter brutality of the border and immigration apparatus for the first time, when it has been going on for so many years. Certainly, Trump is ratcheting part of it up, like forcing families apart right on the border. And he's doing it in front of TV cameras, like a performance for his constituency. But there is a danger of treating Trump like an anomaly, which is what much of the media seems to be doing. Erasing the long history also erases how this bipartisan system of exclusion was created, the countless billions invested in it since Bill Clinton took office in the early 1990s, how the Border Patrol went from 4,000 to 21,000, how 650 miles of walls and barriers have already been constructed, how more than 30,000 people have been incarcerated on any given day in an assortment of prison camps, and 400,000 people expelled and banished from the country per year, not to mention the 23 CBP attachés around the world. That long predates Trump. If you think this border immigration apparatus only came when Trump took power, the solution then seems to be as simple as voting Trump out. It's not that simple. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
The World Is Uniting For International Law, Against US Empire
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance [August 11, 2019]
---- "We oppose the extraterritorial application of unilateral measures." That is not Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Russia, or China talking about the most recent unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States against Venezuela, i.e. economic sanctions that have become an economic blockade, but the European Union. Even allies who have embarrassed themselves by recognizing the phony "interim president" Juan Guaido are saying the US has gone too far. All of the countries listed above and many more have stated their opposition to the escalation of the US economic war against Venezuela. Venezuela, along with Iran, has become a prime target of US regime change, and both are uniting the world in opposition to US bullying behavior, which is hastening the demise of US domination. Popular social movements are growing against US unilateralism and violations of international law. [Read Morfe]
Peace in Afghanistan?
Terrorist 'safe havens' are a myth — and no reason for continuing the war in Afghanistan
John Glaser and John Mueller, Los Angeles Times [August 19, 2019]
---- America's longest war may be coming to an end. Although major obstacles remain, the Trump administration's negotiations with the Taliban, led by U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, have made progress toward an agreement that would include a U.S. military withdrawal. In July, President Trump said "it's ridiculous" that we're still in Afghanistan after almost two decades of stalemate. His 2020 Democratic challengers seem to agree — most have called for an end to the war — and fewer and fewer Republicans are willing to defend it. But one persistent myth continues to frustrate the political momentum to end the war and may inhibit the impending debate over withdrawal. It is by far the most common justification for remaining in Afghanistan: the fear that, if the Taliban takes over the country, the group will let Al Qaeda reestablish a presence there, leaving the terrorist organization to once again plot attacks on the United States. … Trump reflected this thinking as well when he authorized an increase of troops to Afghanistan in his first year in office. His "original instinct," he noted, was "to pull out," but his advisers had persuaded him to believe that "a hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists … would instantly fill, just as happened before" the Sept. 11 attacks. This key justification for staying in Afghanistan has gone almost entirely unexamined. It fails in several ways. [Read More]
The War Against Iran
Trump's Persian-Gulf Car Crash
By Daniel Lazare, Consortium News [August 19, 2019]
---- Traffic accidents normally take just a second or two. But the coming collision in the Persian Gulf, the equivalent of a hundred-vehicle pile-up on a fog-bound interstate, has been in the works for years. Much of it is President Donald Trump's fault, but not all. His contribution has been to take an insane policy and make it even crazier. The situation is explosive for two reasons. First, the Iranian economy is in a free fall with oil exports down as much as 90 percent from mid-2018 levels. As far as Iran is concerned, this means that it's already at war with the United States and has less and less to lose the longer the U.S. embargo goes on. Second, after Trump denounced the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord from the moment he began his presidential run, it's all but impossible at this point for him to back down. The result is a classic collision between the immovable and the unstoppable with no apparent way out. How did the world bring itself to the brink of war? The answer, ironically, is by bidding for peace. The process began in early 2015 just as the nuclear talks were entering their final stages. Despite last-minute hand-wringing, it was clear that success was in sight simply because the participants – China, France, Russia, Germany, Britain, the European Union, Iran and the U.S. – all wanted it. But other regional players felt differently, Saudi Arabia first and foremost. [Read More] A possible flashpoint for military escalation is the Iranian oil tanker, now off the coast of Greece; for background, read "Why the World Is Watching the Fate of an Iranian Tanker in the Mediterranean," by Vijay Prashad, Common Dreams [August 20, 2019] [Link]
---- Traffic accidents normally take just a second or two. But the coming collision in the Persian Gulf, the equivalent of a hundred-vehicle pile-up on a fog-bound interstate, has been in the works for years. Much of it is President Donald Trump's fault, but not all. His contribution has been to take an insane policy and make it even crazier. The situation is explosive for two reasons. First, the Iranian economy is in a free fall with oil exports down as much as 90 percent from mid-2018 levels. As far as Iran is concerned, this means that it's already at war with the United States and has less and less to lose the longer the U.S. embargo goes on. Second, after Trump denounced the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord from the moment he began his presidential run, it's all but impossible at this point for him to back down. The result is a classic collision between the immovable and the unstoppable with no apparent way out. How did the world bring itself to the brink of war? The answer, ironically, is by bidding for peace. The process began in early 2015 just as the nuclear talks were entering their final stages. Despite last-minute hand-wringing, it was clear that success was in sight simply because the participants – China, France, Russia, Germany, Britain, the European Union, Iran and the U.S. – all wanted it. But other regional players felt differently, Saudi Arabia first and foremost. [Read More] A possible flashpoint for military escalation is the Iranian oil tanker, now off the coast of Greece; for background, read "Why the World Is Watching the Fate of an Iranian Tanker in the Mediterranean," by Vijay Prashad, Common Dreams [August 20, 2019] [Link]
India and Pakistan: War for Kashmir?
Why Kashmir Is Suddenly a Potential Global Point of Conflict
By Vijay Prashad, Common Dreams [August 14, 2019]
---- On August 5, India's Home Minister Amit Shah introduced the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill in the Indian Parliament. The bill divides the Indian State into two parts: the Union Territory of Ladakh and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The Legislative Assembly in the state has been suspended. Its elected officials have been placed under house arrest. The press has been gagged, protests have been violently disbanded, and social media has been shut down. A bill in parliament suggests the normal function of democracy; the actual situation on the ground in Jammu and Kashmir is undemocratic. T.K. Rangarajan, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) member of parliament, condemned the government's decision. "You are creating another Palestine," he warned. Despite the gag on the press, news began to filter out. Before Shah introduced this bill, his government sent tens of thousands of Indian troops into Kashmir. There is no official number, but it is often said that there are nearly 600,000 Indian troops in the state. That a population of 12 million people needs this kind of armed action suggests that they are an occupied people. Rangarajan's parallel with Palestine is credible. As each day passes, Kashmir resembles the West Bank. [Read More] For more background, read "What's behind the protests in Kashmir?" by Sumit Ganguly, The Conversation [August 20, 2019] [Link]; and "'Kashmir Has Been Turned Invisible'," by Samreen Mushtaq and Mudasir Amin, Jacobin [August 2019] [Link].
The War in Yemen
The Deeper Meaning in a Lost War
By Alastair Crooke, Antiwar.com [August 21, 2019]
---- It's pretty clear. Saudi Arabia has lost, and, notes Bruce Riedel, "the Houthis and Iran are the strategic winners." Saudi proxies in Aden – the seat of Riyadh's Yemeni proto-"government" – have been turfed out by secular, former Marxist, southern secessionists. What can Saudi Arabia do? It cannot go forward. Even tougher would be retreat. Saudi will have to contend with an Houthi war being waged inside the kingdom's south; and a second – quite different – war in Yemen's south. MbS is stuck. The Houthi military leadership are on a roll, and disinterested – for now – in a political settlement. They wish to accumulate more "cards." The UAE, which armed and trained the southern secessionists has opted out. MbS is alone, "carrying the can." It will be messy. So, what is the meaning in this? It is that MbS cannot "deliver" what Trump and Kushner needed, and demanded from him: He cannot any more deliver the Gulf "world" for their grand projects – let alone garner together the collective Sunni "world" to enlist in a confrontation with Iran, or for hustling the Palestinians into abject subordination, posing as "solution." [Read More]
OUR HUMAN-CAUSED CLIMATE CRISIS
Rivers of Dust: The Future of Water and the Middle East
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus [August 1, 2019]
---- … But while the instruments of war have changed, the issue is much the same: whoever controls the rivers controls the land. And those rivers are drying up, partly because of overuse and wastage, and partly because climate change has pounded the region with punishing multi-year droughts. Syria and Iraq are at odds with Turkey over the Tigris-Euphrates. Egypt's relations with Sudan and Ethiopia over the Nile are tense. Jordan and the Palestinians accuse Israel of plundering river water to irrigate the Negev Desert and hogging most of the three aquifers that underlie the occupied West Bank. According to satellites that monitor climate, the Tigris-Euphrates basin, embracing Turkey, Syria, Iraq and western Iran, is losing water faster than any other area in the world, with the exception of Northern India. … Whether nations will come together to confront the planet wide crisis is an open question. Otherwise, the Middle East will run out of water — and it will hardly be alone. By 2030, according to the UN, four out of 10 people will not have access to water. [Read More]
THE DEMOCRATS AND THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Why Democratic Presidential Candidates Need to Listen to American Muslims
By Linda Sarsour, The Nation [August 23, 2019]
---- Since childhood, I have never been the quiet one in a room. But on the night Donald Trump was elected president, I sat in my living room speechless. Perhaps it was that I had no words to console my children—three beautiful souls who were already struggling to navigate what it meant to be unapologetically Muslim and Palestinian-American in a country that wasn't built for them. Or perhaps I was silenced by the weight of the community I had been organizing for 18 years—mothers, fathers, and children in Brooklyn who were now questioning whether they would be safe to pray at their local mosque or wear a hijab in public. For Muslim Americans, the election of Donald Trump was more than just an unprecedented expression of hate and fascism in our country. It was a threat to our very existence.
We had a choice: We could try to blend in and protect our families from the violence and hate around us, or we could rise up, organize, and call for an America that embodied the values of democracy my children read about in their textbooks. We chose the latter. [Read More]
Bernie Sanders's Climate Plan Is More Radical Than His Opponents' — And More Likely to Succeed
By Kate Aronoff, The Intercept [August 22 2019]
---- If you tried to design a program with the aim of offending the top brass of the world's most powerful corporations and the politicians whose careers they bankroll, you'd get something like what Bernie Sanders unveiled today in his $16.3 trillion Green New Deal platform. That's part of the point. "We need a president who has the courage, the vision, and the record to face down the greed of fossil fuel executives and the billionaire class who stand in the way of climate action," the plan's opening salvo states, going on to echo a famous line from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "We need a president who welcomes their hatred." Sanders outlines an expansive system, building on the resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey in April, that would generate publicly owned clean energy and 20 million new jobs, end fossil fuels imports and exports, revivify the social safety net, redress historical injustices like environmental racism, and make prolific investments toward decarbonization at home and abroad — among many, many other things. It would not only transition American society away from fossil fuels but renegotiate decades-old nostrums, championed by the right, about the respective roles of the government and the economy. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
Are Terrorism Watch Lists Expanding Under Trump?
By Dave Lindorff, The Nation [August 20, 2019]
---- My wife, Joyce, and I recently traveled to Vienna for a week, where she had been invited to perform on Austrian state radio. Passing through Heathrow on our way home, we were separated by an automated security gate. The gate, which required you to scan your boarding pass, allowed Joyce through, but when I ran my pass it flashed "Invalid." A security attendant pointed me to a transit desk where I could get a new boarding pass printed. An agent there ran a new card and then pressed a rubber stamp on it before handing it to me. Spotting, in fresh red ink, the words "ICE Security," I asked, "Why's a stamp from the US Immigration and Customs service being put on my boarding pass here in the UK? I'm not an immigrant." The ticketing agent replied, "That's being done at the request of your Homeland Security Department, sir. You are on their list." …Sixteen years after it was created in the post 9-11 hysteria of the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Terrorist Watch List is alive and, apparently, going off the rails, with increasing numbers being kept from boarding, while others are simply harassed, seemingly for political activism of one kind or another. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Immigration Is for Rich People
By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, The Nation [August 15, 2019]
---- Starting in October, the Trump administration's new definition of who constitutes a "public charge" will likely thwart thousands of low-income immigrants from obtaining legal permanent resident status in the United States. The rule, which in the past has only affected applicants who leaned heavily on cash aid to get by, will make it harder for recipients of Medicaid, housing vouchers, food stamps, or other basic subsidies to obtain green cards—even if they have no criminal records, pay their taxes, and reside in this country legally. When immigrants are denied permanent residence and their prior legal status expires, they're supposed to leave, often abandoning families, jobs, and communities. This new measure, then, effectively criminalizes poverty. Lawyers and advocates reported a drop in immigrants' willingness to rely on life-saving state benefits even before the rule was made official, and they now worry that the policy will push more and more families into the shadows: They won't get the help they need to feed their families, stay healthy, and feel safe. The public charge rule has been criticized as unfair, undemocratic, and above all, un-American. It is all of those things—but it's also unsurprising. [Read More]
Puerto Rican People's Assemblies Shift from Protest to Proposal
By Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza and Roberto Vélez-Vélez, NACLA [August 20, 2019]
---- A microphone sat in the center of a crowd under some trees in Plaza Las Delicias in Ponce, the largest city on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. Some of the people present occupied the concrete benches in the outer perimeter of the circle around the microphone. Others had brought beach chairs or sat on the ground, and some stood along the edges, arms crossed, looking in. It was a little past six in the evening. Veronica, a young woman from the University of Puerto Rico at Ponce, called the assembly to order and welcomed the crowd of some 80 people, noting that many had crossed paths during recent protests. This was the first of many people's assemblies, called by diverse groups across the island to discuss the next stage in Puerto Rico's newly acquired experience in popular democracy. The exercises of direct democracy that sprouted in the streets through massive protests—taking from dance to motorcycle demonstrations, among others—led to the resignation on July 25th of governor Ricardo Rosselló and crystallized for Puerto Ricans a consummation of popular power. The outcome confirmed that an organized group of citizens can exert enough pressure to force a detente on the state. Following Rosselló's resignation, however, many have expressed concerns about possible demobilization. Some fear that as people return to the routines of life, the fiery resistance struggles of July will gradually fade from our collective memory. Were the protests and marches the beginning and end of this political awakening? How far can this newly acquired power be taken? [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
The Trip Rashida Tlaib Didn't Get to Take
By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Haaretz [Israel] [August 22, 2019]
---- The tens of thousands of Israelis who whizz by here every day in their cars on their way to Jerusalem, or, if they're traveling in the other direction, to Tel Aviv, probably don't notice the small, old stone house that stands a few dozens of meters away from Highway 443, on the other side of the security barrier. A little house in the West Bank, with a covered verandah, a few plastic chairs and fruit trees in the yard; a solitary house set between two villages, east of the city of Modi'in: Beit Ur al-Fauqa (Upper Beit Ur) and Beit Ur al-Tahta (Lower Beit Ur). It's to this house that U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (Democrat, Michigan) was planning to come, to visit her grandmother, possibly for the last time. It's to this house that she didn't come, as Israel initially prohibited her from entering the country, and afterward set humiliating conditions for a visit that she could not abide. In this house we find Tlaib's grandmother, Muftiya Tlaib, who is 90, and her uncle, Bassem Tlaib, disappointed and angry. If Israel blocked this roots journey of the promising and courageous congresswoman solely because of her political views, and Tlaib wasn't able to get to the village, we will bring the sights of the village to her. [The original article, with lots of pictures, may be blocked by a pay wall; in that case, read the here.]
For some background – "Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar's support for Palestinians is like the Anti-Colonialism of George Washington," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [August 20, 2019] [Link]; "GOP's Biggest Donors Laid Groundwork for Trump and Netanyahu's Targeting of Muslim Congresswomen," by Eli Clifton, LobeLog [August 21, 2019] [Link]; and "To please Trump, Netanyahu turned Omar, Tlaib and BDS into prime time news," by Amir Tibon, Haaretz [Israel] August 20, 2019] [Link].
Shooting Jerusalem: A glimpse into life in a segregated city
By Awad Joumaa, Aljazeera [August 18, 2019]
---- US President Donald Trump's policies on Palestine have sharpened the existing divisions stemming from the world's longest modern occupation. His controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2017 and the relocation of the US embassy there were met with protests. Jerusalem, which hosts sites holy to all three monotheistic faiths, is at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. While Palestinians aspire to make it the capital of their future state, Israel says it wants total sovereignty over the city. The film A Rock and A Hard Place was born out of that historical development back in 2017. I wanted to explore why so many people worldwide are so attached to the city of Jerusalem. More importantly, I wanted to find out what the people who live there have to say about the challenges facing their city. What does it mean to live in and identify with the city of Jerusalem? What I found was a deeply segregated city. There is one set of rules that applies to Jews and another that applies to Palestinians. Jerusalemites who have been living there for decades told me ancient Jerusalem as people know it is disappearing. [Read More] Check out this fascinating video, "Jerusalem: A Rock and a Hard Place." Here is Part One, ("There Israel, Trump & future of Jerusalem"), and Part Two, ("Jerusalem: Can Jews, Christians, Muslims live together?").
OUR HISTORY
We Have Been Here Before: Japanese American incarceration is the blueprint for today's migrant detention camps.
By Brandon Shimoda, The Nation [August 20, 2019]
---- On Saturday, June 22, a group of Japanese Americans gathered in front of Bentley Gate, on the edge of Fort Sill, an army base outside Lawton, Oklahoma, to protest the Trump administration's plan to use the base to incarcerate approximately 1,600 asylum-seeking migrant children from Central America. Among the Japanese Americans were several elders in their 70s and 80s, for whom the site possessed a harrowing correspondence to their own childhoods. The first to speak was Satsuki Ina, a writer, filmmaker, therapist, and activist. "I am a former child incarceree," she began. Seventy-seven years ago, "120,000 of us were removed from our homes and forcefully incarcerated in prison camps across the country." Ina was born in one of the prison camps: … Concentration camps are basic units of space the United States has devised for the populations it sees as inassimilable, incongruous with—and threatening to—its self-image. Concentration camps can be, and have been, invented, at will, from sites—military bases to empty box stores—retained for use in the event of a crisis, sometimes real, though more often manufactured. They are outposts of the border wall, therefore materializations of the white settler hatred and rage by which the border wall, and its innumerable chimeras, are motivated. And we are, right now, watching the United States resurrect, with frightening ease, its system of concentration camps, and all the crimes against humanity such a system entails. [Read More]
