Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
November 17, 2019
Hello All – Americans watching the impeachment hearings may be pardoned if they were surprised to learn that Ukraine was a major security ally of the United States. Starting from the simple premise (now beyond dispute) that President Trump tried to coerce the newly elected president of Ukraine into investigating the Bidens and the alleged Ukrainian origins of "Russiagate" – the Impeachable Offense – the State Department witnesses kicking off the public testimony aimed a spotlight on the US-Ukraine alliance. According to them, Trump had withheld $400 million in military aid already appropriated by Congress to coerce Ukraine to do what he wanted. For the State Department people, this was the real crime: jeopardizing the security of our Ukrainian ally, and thus our own security, in the face of Russian aggression.
The history of Ukraine, and of its relation to Russia and the Soviet Union, is about as complex a story as History offers. The Ukraine that separated from Russia in 1991 includes large numbers of people, mostly in the center and east of the nation, who speak Russian and regard themselves as part of Russian culture. An equally large number of people, mostly in the western part of the country, hate Russia and its centuries of domination of Ukraine. Since 1991, Ukraine's politics have been dominated by alliances of corrupt oligarchs; and the coup/uprising of 2014 ousted the Russian-leaning President Yanukovych and installed a government dominated by oligarchs from the western part of the country, one favorable to integration with the European Union and NATO.
This spring Ukraine elected a new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, now famous because of Trump's phone call. Zelensky's successful election campaign had focused on ending the fighting/civil war in eastern Ukraine, and forging better relations with Russia. Yet since 1991 US policy toward Ukraine (and all of the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe) had focused on extending the EU and NATO eastward, up to Russia's borders. From the Russian viewpoint, Ukraine is the last domino that shields Russia from the nightmare of Western encirclement; thus the "existential necessity" of keeping Ukraine within its orbit. And thus the State Department testimony at this week's impeachment hearings that in effect raise the significance of the US-Ukraine relationship to that of a "strategic ally," will have implications long after the impeachment drama is over. I think a peaceful outcome is there if we want it.
For some user-friendly reading on what's happening with Ukraine-Russia and the post-Cold War perspectives of the US military/political Establishment, I suggest "Ukraine for Dummies" by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern [Link]; "Meet Ukraine: America's Newest "Strategic Ally," by Melvin Goodman, another former CIA analyst and now a professor at Johns Hopkins University [Link]; and many writings by Stephen F. Cohen, a noted scholar of Russian history, such as "Peace in Ukraine? - The friends and foes of a Kiev-Moscow settlement" [Link] and "Why Are We in Ukraine?" [Link].
News Notes
Last week CFOW stalwarts joined thousands of people across the USA who protested the impending execution in Texas of Rodney Reed, who was scheduled to die next Wednesday for a crime he did not commit. On Friday, a Texas court stopped the execution, citing the mountains of new evidence showing Reed was innocent. To read about this case, which stole 23 years of freedom from Reed, go here.
Stephen Miller is the pilot for much of the Trump administration's immigration policies, all of which seem designed to inflict the maximum possible cruelty on people seeking refuge and a better life. The impending end of DACA, in a case heard in the Supreme Court this week, is his work. Bad luck for Stephen; this week the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch released excerpts from emails Miller sent to rightwing Breitbart news prior to the 2016 election. White nationalism in the raw.
It is often said that action at the United Nations does not register in the News of the World if the United States is not among its supporters. As an illustration of this, last week the USA, accompanied by Israel and a few small islands, were the lone dissenters on draft resolutions calling for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, measures to stop an arms race in outer space, and an end to the blockade of Cuba. For a rare report on how the US is isolated from the Community of Nations, go here.
Finally, the Museum of Modern Art's branch showcase in Queens has a new exhibit that may be of interest to antiwar stalwarts and others. It's called "Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011." The program exhibits the work of several Western artists and more than 30 artists from Iraq, Kuwait, and their diasporas." For an interesting NYTimes article about what's on display and where to see it, go here.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Saturday, November 23rd (12-4 pm) and Sunday, November 24th (12-3 pm) – Grace Episcopal Church (Broadway & Main St.) will hold its 25th annual "Alternative Gifts Market." Always lots of nice stuff, benefiting worthy artists and programs.
Sunday, December 1st – CFOW meets (usually) on the first Sunday of the month at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 pm. We review our work of the previous months and make plans for the month to come. Everyone is welcome at these meetings.
Saturday, December 7th – WESPAC'S annual "Margaret Eberle Fair Trade and Crafts Festival" will be held from 10 am to 4 pm at the Memorial United Methodist Church, 250 Bryant Ave. in White Plains. Fair-trade crafts and good food for sale; suggested admission $5, but no one wll be turned away. Live music through the day; always an enjoyable visit/event.
Sunday, December 8th – Dr. Elizabeth Rosenthal of the New York Metro chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program will speak about "Universal Healthcare: The Road Ahead," at the Riverfront branch of the Yonkers Public Library, 1 Larkin Center in Yonkers, from 2 to 4 pm. The program is sponsored by NYCD-Indivisible, Indivisible Westchester, Indivisible White Plains and BlueBlast! Free. To Register (necessary), 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!
Rewards!
What is it that makes a good antiwar song? The horrors of war? The beauties of peace? This week's Rewards come from an interesting article by Manual Garcia, Jr. called "Heartrending Antiwar Songs," in which he links a dozen antiwar music videos that are loved by many, and comments on what makes them effective and popular. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
SOME USEFUL/INTERESTING FEATURED ESSAYS
Naomi Klein on Climate Chaos [and much more]
By Will Meyer, In These Times [November 13, 2019]
---- When I was writing The Shock Doctrine, I was in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and watching the way our current economic system actually responds to the shock of the kind we are going to see more of in a warming world. What I was writing about then was the infrastructure of disaster capitalism descending onto this still-flooded city—the privatization of the school system, of the hospitals, of public housing, and realizing that there wasn't a counter response really. During that time, I researched why [economist] Milton Friedman and others were so obsessed with the need to have a strategy for different kinds of crisis, what became clear was that they believed that everything had gone wrong during the New Deal. That the great crash of 1929 had been used to push this radical agenda. They actually understood that when capitalism produces these crises, it's much more organic for societies to move to the left than it is for them to move to the right. You have to work really hard to get them to move to the right. So it's fitting in a way that we're talking about a Green New Deal because it brings this full circle. [Read More]
Why Aren't People in the US Rising Up Like Those Elsewhere in the World?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies, Code Pink [November 14, 2019]
---- The waves of protests breaking out in country after country around the world beg the question: Why aren't Americans rising up in peaceful protest like our neighbors? We live at the very heart of this neoliberal system that is force-feeding the systemic injustice and inequality of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism to the people of the 21st century. So we are subject to many of the same abuses that have fueled mass protest movements in other countries, including high rents, stagnant wages, cradle-to-grave debt, ever-rising economic inequality, privatized healthcare, a shredded social safety net, abysmal public transportation, systemic political corruption and endless war. We also have a corrupt, racist billionaire as president, who Congress may soon impeach, but where are the masses outside the White House, banging pots and pans to drive Trump out? Why aren't people crashing the offices of their congresspeople, demanding that they represent the people or resign? If none of these conditions has so far provoked a new American revolution, what will it take to trigger one? … So why is the American public so passive? [Read More]
Big Oil Needs to Pay for the Damage It Caused
By Tamara Toles O'Laughlin and Bill McKibben, Yes! Magazine [November 15, 2019]
---- Framing the climate crisis as a matter of equity and another opportunity for justice doesn't mean we stop thinking about it in other ways, too. In the end, this is a tussle with chemistry and physics, and clearly the most urgent goal is to slow down the planet's heating. Building solar panels and wind turbines in the end ultimately benefits the most vulnerable. If the Marshall Islands have a chance at surviving, if the rice farmers of the Mekong Delta have any prayer of passing on their land to their sons and daughters, then it depends on a rapid energy transition for the whole planet. But at this point, even the best-case scenarios are relentlessly grim; lots of damage has been done, and far more is in the offing. We're going to have to remake much of the world to have a chance at survival. And if we're going to try, then that repair job shouldn't repeat the imbalances of power and wealth that mark our current planet. Justice demands a real effort to make the last, first this time around. [Read More]
A Visit with Arundhati Roy
---- Last Tuesday, several CFOW members attended the Cooper Union program that featured a speech by the great Indian writer/activist Arundhati Roy, followed by a discussion between her and Naomi Klein. Roy's talk was an extensive and alarming description of what is happening in India today, with a focus on the recent events in Kashmir and Assam. In a nutshell, Hindu fascism is on the rise, and comparisons with the Third Reich of the 1930s are on the money. On Monday, Roy appeared with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! – "The Silence Is the Loudest Sound: Arundhati Roy Condemns Indian Crackdown in Kashmir." [Link]. Her speech at Cooper Union on Tuesday evening was live-streamed; you can see it here, beginning at 14:00 into the video.
The Chicago Teachers Strike Was a Lesson in 21st-Century Organizing
By Sarah Jaffe, The Nation [November 16, 2019]
---- In 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union wrote the playbook that has been successfully used by teachers around the country to reform their unions and win at the bargaining table and on the picket line. That was the year Chicago's teachers waged a new kind of strike, one that redefined solidarity and began to change the narrative around the public good. Now, seven years later, the CTU has shown us all how it's done, reclaiming its place at the center of the conversation about union power in the United States. [Read More]
The Coup That Ousted Bolivia's Evo Morales Is Another Setback for Latin American Socialism
By Elise Swain, The Intercept [November 15, 2019]
---- Morales's journey into self-imposed exile marked the end of a remarkable era in Bolivian politics. The first Indigenous president in the modern Americas rode a populist wave to power in 2006, when Bolivia's Movimiento al Socialismo — Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS — rose amid a reshuffling of South American politics to the left in the wake of the Cold War's end. Part of this "pink tide," Morales's 14 years in power saw economic gains for many Bolivians. By 2017, Bolivia's middle class had grown dramatically, and the country of around 11 million people had the region's highest growth rate — but at a cost. Deforestation rates in Bolivia spiked, and Morales pivoted to the center while embracing natural gas and mining projects. The October 2019 election virtually guaranteed trouble for Morales's presidency long before it took place. [Read More]
Also illuminating about the Bolivian coup - "The Bolivian Coup Is Not a Coup—Because US Wanted It to Happen," by Alan MacLeod, Fairness and Accuracy in the Media [FAIR] [Link]; and "Evo Morales: the fall of the hero of the Bolivian transformation," by Nick Dearden, Open Democracy [November 15, 2019] [Link].
Remembering Noel Ignatiev
Noel Ignatiev's Long Fight Against Whiteness
By Jay Caspian Kang, The New Yorker [November 15, 2019]
---- A fifty-four-year-old Marxist radical, Ignatiev had come to the academy after two decades of work in steel mills and factories. The provocative argument at the center of his book [How the Irish Became White]—that whiteness was not a biological fact but rather a social construction with boundaries that shifted over time—had emerged, in large part, out of his observations of how workers from every conceivable background had interacted on the factory floor. Ignatiev wasn't merely describing these dynamics; he wanted to change them. If whiteness could be created, it could also be destroyed. … In his conception, white privilege wasn't an accounting tool used to compile inequalities; it was a shunt hammered into the minds of the white working class to make its members side with their masters instead of rising up with their black comrades. White privilege was a deceptive tactic wielded by bosses—a way of tricking exploited workers into believing that they were "white." [Read More] And for a memoir by a fellow radical, read "Noel Ignatiev: Remembering a Comrade and a Friend," by Louis Proyect, Counterpunch [November 15, 2019] [Link]
