CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Trump as a Born-Again Authoritarian

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

February 24, 2020

 

Hello All – We go about our lives as though everything is OK and things are normal.  But we know this isn't true. Our president is unbalanced, at times a madman. His party, the Republicans, is terrified of crossing him, of even the mildest dissent.  The Democrats, having failed to convict Trump of impeachable crimes, can do little but wait for November and the election. Acquitted by the Senate, Trump feels invulnerable, unconstrained by law, free to fantasize that he has whatever powers he wants, that he knows best about everything, that loyalty is the Prime Directive for a subordinate.

 

Last week, for example, Trump declared that he was the nation's "chief law enforcement officer."  He is not, but that did not stop him from intervening in the sentencing of his crony Roger Stone to demand a lighter sentence than that recommended by the Justice Department's prosecuting attorneys, and when Attorney General – the real chief law enforcement officer – went along with this, more than 2,000 former federal prosecutors demanded that Barr resign or be fired.

 

In the Justice Department, as is true throughout all the federal agencies of Trump's America, a power struggle is being waged between the trained professional staff – be they scientists or regulators or whatever – and Trump's appointed executive leadership that is put in place to protect Trump's alleged right to run everything, with no brakes to check him. Yesterday, for example, Trump fired his acting Director of National Intelligence because a subordinate told a congressional committee things with which Trump disagreed; the new Acting Director, a well-known rightwing hack, promptly declared his intention to "clean house," launching a purge of intelligence staff who do not display sufficient loyalty to The Leader.

 

With impeachment behind him and clear sailing until the November elections, Trump has been born again.  His assumption of autocratic power, and the willingness of much of the nation's economic and political elite to allow Trump this, reminds one of the German Enabling Act of 1933, when the Reichstag gave Hitler dictatorial powers: "Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor and announced in the Reich Gazette." 

 

In short, we're in Deep Trouble. Through Executive Orders and firing people who displease him, Trump rules as a monarch, as a Maximum Leader. The Senate stands guard against unpleasant legislation, the courts – and especially the Supreme Court – have his back, and the Rich and Powerful are happy to look the other way as long as the stock market is booming.

 

What are we to do?  Clearly this is not a time to count on the System righting wrongs.  And while we must do what we can to defeat Trump and his party in the November elections, many bad things can (and will) happen before then.  We can't wait; and worse, we won't defeat Trump if we are passive until November.  Somehow we must wake up, mobilize ourselves, join with others, and make a clamor of dissent that will persuade the politically powerful of this country that they must curb the madman in the White House.  Can we do this?

 

Politics

The main political news this week focused on the caucuses/Democratic primary in Nevada.  And the main news in Nevada was that Sanders got almost half the votes, displaying the strength of a broad multicultural working-class coalition. For some good insights into what worked for the Sanders campaign, check out this segment from Democracy Now!, "A Stupendous Victory': Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada After Heavy Organizing in Latinx Communities"; and a good article from The Intercept, "How Young Latinos Delivered Nevada to 'Tío Bernie'" [Link]. Today's Democracy Now! had an interesting debate between Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and socialist economist Richard Wolff on Sanders as a "democratic socialist" [Link].  Finally, a poll of New York Democratic presidential candidate preferences shows that Bernie Sanders is (for the first time) in the lead with 25%, followed by Bloomberg (21%), Biden (13%), and Warren (11%).

 

News Notes

The World Health Organization warned today that the spreading coronavirus is rapidly approaching a tipping point in its effects. It will come as no surprise to Newsletter readers that the just-issued Trump budget for next year proposes cuts in ALL public health and healthcare funding, slashing $3 billion from last year's budget. [Read More]

 

Today, February 24^th, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will implement punitive changes in USA immigration laws. This is called the "public charge" rule. The new rule allows the government to deny green cards to legal immigrants who use or are deemed likely to use Medicaid, food stamps and other safety net programs. An op-ed in today's New York Times is headlined, "The New Wealth Test for Immigrants is Un-American." For local information, the New York Immigration Coalition has a useful website.

 

Last spring the New York State legislature and governor passed legislation largely eliminating cash bail and making other reforms that were beneficial to low-income people caught up in the criminal justice "system."  The reforms were to go into effect on January 1^st; but a strong backlash against the reforms (from police, prosecutors, and Republicans) has put the whole package in jeopardy.  For a good update on where this issue now stands, go here.

 

Today in London the first day of hearings took place on whether Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States. A second round of hearings will take place in May. If sent to the USA, Assange faces 18 charges in US courts, with maximum penalties of up to 185 years in prison. At the core of the complex legal case is whether, when he published "secret" US documents (available to three million people) on WikiLeaks, he was acting as a journalist or as a spy/traitor.  For a useful perspective on the case, read "With WikiLeaks, Julian Assange Did What All Journalists Should Do," by UK journalist Patrick Cockburn [Link].

 

One of the USA's highest profile political prisoners is Chelsea Manning.  She is held in jail in an attempt to coerce her to testify against WikiLeaks.  Manning says that she has nothing more to say about WikiLeaks, and that the USA is using the grand jury process illegally.  A good update on the case is "Hardships Chelsea Manning Has Endured Are Unlike Any Other Case Of Grand Jury Resistance" [Link]. Surprisingly, there is a landmark court case that, as applied to Manning, should immediately release her from prison.  Read "The Law Says Chelsea Manning Must Be Freed From Prison," by Natasha Lennard of The Intercept [Link].

 

Finally, in her congressional day job AOC is working on legislation to relieve poverty.  A threshold issue is to define poverty in realistic terms, so that it can be measured and applied to real-world cases.  For the last half century (at least!), the "poverty level" has been defined as an income three times the cost of a subsistence diet.  But today, housing and medical costs are huge, while the proportion of a household budget going to food has shrunk.  In this video, check out AOC's impassioned speech on the (simple) need to "recognize poverty."

 

Things to Do/Coming Attractions

Sunday, March 1^st – Westchester People for Bernie will hold an "informational rally" at the Mike Bloomberg for President headquarters, 140 Mamaroneck Ave. in White Plains, from 12 noon to 2:30 pm.  They write: "A peaceful, informational rally to educate Westchester voters. Let's have personal conversations about Bloomberg's track record, informing voters and electeds about what a Bloomberg candidacy means."  For more information, go here.

 

Saturday, March 6^th – The next CFOW monthly meeting will be at the Hastings Community Center, 54 Main St, from 1:15 to 3 pm (following our weekly vigil).  At these meetings we review our work for the past month, make plans for the next month, and have general discussions.  Everyone is welcome at these meetings.  For more info, email fbrodhead@aol.com.

 

Sunday, March 29^th – The annual Westchester Social Forum will take place at the Eastview Middle School, 350 Main St. in White Plains, from 12 to 6 pm.  For more information (about workshops, etc.) and to register, 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. Also, we (usually) have a general meeting on the first Saturday afternoon of each month. 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!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS

 

The Tyranny of the Minority, from Iowa Caucus to Electoral College

By Corey Robin, New York Review of Books [February 20, 2020]

---- It has been more than two weeks since the Iowa caucuses, and we still don't know who won. That should give us pause. We don't know in part because of a combination of technological failing and human error. But we're also in the dark for a political reason. That should give us further pause. No one disputes that Bernie Sanders won the most votes in Iowa. Yet Pete Buttigieg has the most delegates. While experts continue to parse the flaws in the reporting process, the stark and simple fact that more voters supported Sanders than any other candidate somehow remains irrelevant, obscure. [Read More]

 

A Very Hot Year

By Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books [March 12, 2020]

---- This year began with huge bushfires in southeastern Australia that drove one community after another into temporary exile, killed an estimated billion animals, and turned Canberra's air into the dirtiest on the planet. The temperatures across the continent broke records—one day, the average high was above 107 degrees, and the humidity so low that forests simply exploded into flames. … This year wouldn't have begun in such a conflagration if 2019 hadn't been an extremely hot year on our planet—the second-hottest on record, and the hottest without a big El Niño event to help boost temperatures. And we can expect those numbers to be eclipsed as the decade goes on. Indeed, in mid-February the temperature at the Argentine research station on the Antarctic Peninsula hit 65 degrees Fahrenheit, crushing the old record for the entire continent. It is far too late to stop global warming, but these next ten years seem as if they may be our last chance to limit the chaos. If there's good news, it's that 2019 was also a hot year politically, with the largest mass demonstrations about climate change taking place around the world. [Read More]

 

Also useful on our climate crisis – "'No Surrender': After Police Defend a Gas Pipeline Over Indigenous Land Rights, Protesters Shut Down Railways Across Canada," by Alleen Brown and Amber Bracken, The Intercept [February 23 2020] [Link]; "Canada Oil-Sands Plan Collapses Over Politics and Economics," by Clifford Krauss, New York Times [February 24, 2020] [Link]; and "Methane Emissions Crisis and Rapid Global Heating: It is all Fossil Fuel Drilling and Fracking, by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [February 20, 2020] [Link].

 

(Video) Yale Study Says Medicare for All Would Save U.S. $450 Billion, Prevent Nearly 70,000 Deaths a Year

From Democracy Now! [February 19, 2020]

---- As the Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to take to the debate stage tonight, we turn to a central issue of the campaign: Medicare for All. In a new study, Yale scholars have found that Medicare for All will save Americans more than $450 billion and prevent 68,000 deaths every year. The study in The Lancet — one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals — found that Medicare for All, supported by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will save money and is more cost-effective than "Medicare for All Who Want It, "a model supported by Pete Buttigieg. Sanders referenced the study at a campaign rally in Carson City, Nevada. For more, we go to New Haven, Connecticut, where we're joined by Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at Yale's School of Public Health. She is the lead author of the new Lancet study, "Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA." [See the Program]  Also useful: "Here's What 22 Separate Studies Found: Medicare for All Would Cost Less Than the For-Profit Status Quo," Common Dreams [February 24, 2020] [Link].

 

The West Displays Its Insecurity Complex

By Diana Johnstone, Consortium News [February 19, 2020]

---- "The West is winning!" U.S. leaders proclaimed at the high-level Annual Security Conference held in Munich last weekend. Not everybody was quite so sure. There was a lot of insecurity displayed at a conference billed as "the West's family meeting" – enlarged to 70 participating nations, including U.S. -designated "losers". Trump's crude Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made nobody feel particular secure by treating the world as a huge video game which "we are winning". Thanks to our "values", he proclaimed, the West is winning against the other players that Washington has forced into its zero-sum game: Russia and China, whose alleged desires for "empire" are being thwarted. … The term "the West" could mean a number of things. The conference organizers define it by "values" that are supposed to be essentially Western: democracy, human rights, a market-based economy and "international cooperation in international institutions". In fact, what is meant is a particular interpretation of all those "values", an interpretation based on Anglo-American history. And indeed, in historic terms, this particular "West" is essentially the heir and continuation of the British empire, centered in Washington after London was obliged to abdicate after World War II, while retaining its role as imperial tutor and closest partner. [Read More] For some second thoughts on "the West is Winning!" read this useful article on the Democrats and the Afghanistan War: "Democrats Want to End Endless Wars, With a Catch," by Alex Emmons, The Intercept [February 19 2020] [Link].

 

How Do You Document Something As Unimaginable as a School Shooting?

By Rebecca Bengal, Lightwork [February 24, 2020]

[FB – This is a review of American Origami by Andres Gonzalez]

---- In the weeks and months after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which took the lives of 20 students between the ages of 6 and 7 and of six adults on the staff, the residents of Newtown, Connecticut, were flooded with thousands of physical expressions of condolence from the public. Many of them were addressed to the whole town. They were delivered to the Newtown Municipal Center and from there to a nearby airplane hangar, where bins overflowed with flowers, quilts, drawings, banners, postcards, and letters from around the world… The inadequacy of "thoughts and prayers" as a response to mass shootings in America rings hollowly throughout debates on gun control and how to prevent future tragedies. … Words and images, like thoughts and prayers, are merely representations too; they can't solve anything, but, this book implies, they can push us closer. [Read More]

 

Our History

(Video) Malcolm X's Daughter Ilyasah Shabazz on Her Father's Legacy & the New Series "Who Killed Malcolm X?"

From Democracy Now! [February 21, 2020]

---- Fifty-five years ago today [Friday], Malcolm X was assassinated. The civil rights leader was shot to death on February 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. He was only 39 years old. Details of his assassination remain disputed to this day. Earlier this month, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said he was considering reopening the investigation, just days after a new documentary series about the assassination was released on Netflix called "Who Killed Malcolm X?" It makes the case that two of the three men who were convicted for Malcolm X's murder are actually innocent and that his uncaught killers were four members of a Nation of Islam mosque in Newark, New Jersey. [See the Program]

 

How Mexico's Muralists Lit a Fire Under U.S. Artists [Lots of pictures]

---- "Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945" at the Whitney Museum of American Art represents a decade of hard thought and labor, and the effort has paid off. The show is stupendous, and complicated, and lands right on time. Just by existing it accomplishes three vital things. It reshapes a stretch of art history to give credit where credit is due. … That story, a hemispheric one, begins in Mexico in the 1920s. After 10 years of civil war and revolution, that country's new constitutional government turned to art to invent and broadcast a unifying national self-image, one that emphasized both its deep roots in indigenous, pre-Hispanic culture and the heroisms of its recent revolutionary struggles. The chosen medium for the message was mural painting — monumental, accessible, anti-elitist, in the public domain. And three very differently gifted practitioners quickly came to dominate the field: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros: "Los Tres Grandes" — "the three great ones" — as they came to be known among admirers. [Read More]

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Saving the Rule of Law

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

February 17, 2020

 

Hello All – It was predictable, following his impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate, that President Trump would feel even less restrained by law and customary behavior than usual, and in the last week we have seen this unfold.  Like any mobster crossed by his enemies, his first impulse is to get even.  A New York Times article last week was headed: "Vengeance is Mine, Saith the President," and then goes on to say:

 

John Bolton, Joe Manchin, Adam Schiff, Hunter Biden, Doug Jones, Gordon Sondland, Alexander Vindman, Yevgeny Vindman, Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Jerry Nadler, Debbie Dingell, New York air travelers, federal prosecutors, the F.B.I. It's been a mere week since Senate Republicans acquitted President Trump in his impeachment trial — assuring him once and for all that he needn't fret about congressional accountability — but he has already made significant progress on his enemies list.

 

Going forward, we can expect that our unbalanced president will expand his Enemies List to include not only individuals who cross him, but also whole populations – such as immigrants, refugees, women, people of color, hungry people, etc. – and countries – Iran, Venezuela, and so on, anyone or any group that appears to be disobedient.

 

While Presidents past have routinely violated the rule of law to get what they wanted, especially in foreign policy and war, they seldom flaunted their lawlessness as a matter of presidential entitlement.  Trump is different, and especially since the failure of the Senate to convict, there is a fear in the land that he will feel invulnerable to legal or customary restraints that might inhibit his every impulse. Among the many issues that face us, standing up for the Rule of Law should be at the core of our protests.

 

Does the pushback by Attorney General Barr against Trump's meddling in the affairs of the Justice Department indicate a hopeful trend?  Has the revolt of the prosecuting attorneys whose sentencing memo in the case of Trump crony Roger Stone was overruled put some brakes on the lawless White House?  Let us hope so, though yesterday a former head of the Republican National Committee opined that Barr's actions were simply for show, reflecting a coordinated move by Barr and Trump to take some heat off Trump's inflammatory tweeting. We'll see.

 

Trump's defiance of the Rule of Law has a lot of recent history to build on.  Choosing topics almost at random, we find:

 

·         As has been routine in the USA since the end of World War II, Trump does not feel that the UN Charter or international law should inhibit his ability to wage war or aggression;

 

·         Attacks on the rights of The Other, whether (for example) people of Islamic faith or refugees at our southern border, are justified by the rule of White Nationalism; and

 

·         While dissent is a Constitutional right that we boast of, it is disallowed in cases where significant interests of national or corporate power are jeopardized. Thus we find Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange languishing in prison, supporters of the BDS movement on behalf of Palestinians now facing penalties in 26 states, fracking and pipeline opponents facing conspiracy changes, and Sanctuary Cities under attack.

 

Rejection of the Rule of Law is woven into the DNA of the Trump Agenda. Much more is coming; let's fight back!

 

Politics

In this week's news from the Democratic presidential campaigns, I liked "The New Hampshire Democratic Primary in One Graph," showing Sanders' support by towns with larger or smaller  median incomes [Link]; and "The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders" by Sanders supporter Norman Solomon [Link].  Today's Democracy Now! previewed a short but very strong new documentary, "Worth the Price?  Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War" [Link]  And Jeremy Scahill interviews Ralph Nader, who has a lot of interesting things to say about the Democratic Party [Link].  The Democratic race is now greatly changed with the entry of billionaire Mike Bloomberg. Useful for understanding Bloomberg, his views, and his campaign is "Bloomberg's Billions: How the Candidate Built an Empire of Influence" from Friday's New York Times [Link]; and this Democracy Now! segment following up on the Times' story.  And for some more useful reading, check out these articles:

 

Why This Election Is Different

By David Swanson, World Beyond War [February 14, 2020]

Bernie Sanders is a million miles from perfect. But he is radically superior to who he was four years ago, to the other Democratic candidates, and to the past 45 presidents. A greatly enlarged movement will need to move him and the Congress and the whole society in the right direction, but such a movement will be in a far better place with him than with any of the other candidates. If we must be tokenists, let's just declare it time to elect a Jew. But if we care about the earth, let's declare it time to stop being morons. [Read More]

 

What We Already Owe to Bernie Sanders

By Robert L. Borosage, The Nation [February 13, 2020]

---- As the New Hampshire primary results came in, political pundits designated Senator Bernie Sanders the Democratic Party's front-runner. He's the only one of the three current leaders who has demonstrated any support from people of color; the only one with the resources and organization to compete nationally. This realization will inevitably ignite a furious assault by the Democratic establishment and the mainstream media to take Sanders down.  Whether they can succeed remains to be seen, but before the scurrilous barrage is unleashed, let us pause to pay tribute to what Sanders has already won—and the scope of his ambitions going forward. [Read More]

 

News Notes

Last week the Senate passed a War Powers resolution forbidding the Trump administration to attack Iran without prior congressional authorization.  Eight Republicans joined the Democrats in passing this bill [Link].  As the House has already passed similar legislation, a War Powers resolution will soon land on Trump's desk.  Trump has vowed to veto the resolution, which would need a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate to override, unlikely at this point.  Juan Cole has a good background piece on congressional efforts to limit Trump's war making here.

 

On Monday of last week the Trump administration issued its draft budget for the fiscal year beginning next October.  As this useful article from the National Priorities Project explains in detail, "Trump's 2021 budget cuts all federal agencies—except militarized ones." Within the military budgets, a priority is being given to new developments in nuclear weapons, as this New York Times analysis explains.  So what's the bottom line for the average citizen? Some user-friendly graphics answer this question here.

 

In immigration/repression news, "Trump to Deploy Heavily Armed Border Patrol Tactical Units to Help With Immigration Arrests in Sanctuary Cities" [Link].  (The New York Times' version is here.) This move is seen as both sadism-as-normal against immigrants, and as an attack on the Sanctuary Cities that just happen to be run by Democrats; thus this is part of Trump's post-impeachment tantrum to get back at his enemies, and so we can expect some months of ICE on steroids.  To learn more about Sanctuary Cities, I recommend the website of the  New Sanctuary Coalition.

 

Finally, in climate chaos news, on February 10^th the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere hit a record level of 416 parts per million (ppm).  Recall that the aspirational goal for human comfort is 350 ppm, a number now looking way small in the rear view mirror.  As the headline of this good article in Common Dreams observed, "The Saddest Thing Is That This Won't Be Breaking News."

 

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. Also, we (usually) have a general meeting on the first Saturday afternoon of each month. 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!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

 

THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS

 

Can the World's Second Superpower Rise From the Ashes of Twenty Years of War?

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [February 13, 2020]
---- February 15 marks the day, 17 years ago, when global demonstrations against the pending Iraq invasion were so massive that the New York Times called world public opinion "the second superpower." But the U.S. ignored it and invaded Iraq anyway. So what has become of the momentous hopes of that day?  … Despite the lack of a draft, a new anti-war movement—this time with global reach—sprung up in the period between the crimes of 9/11 and the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The February 15th, 2003, protests were the largest demonstrations in human history, uniting people around the world in opposition to the unthinkable prospect that the U.S. would actually launch its threatened "shock and awe" assault on Iraq. Some 30 million people in 800 cities took part on every continent, including Antarctica. This massive repudiation of war, memorialized in the documentary We Are Many, led New York Times journalist Patrick E. Tyler to comment that there were now two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion. The U.S. war machine demonstrated total disdain for its upstart rival, and unleashed an illegal war based on lies that has now raged on through many phases of violence and chaos for 17 years. With no end in sight to U.S. and allied wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Yemen and West Africa, and Trump's escalating diplomatic and economic warfare against Iran, Venezuela and North Korea threatening to explode into new wars, where is the second superpower now, when we need it more than ever? [Read More]

 

The War in Questions: Making Sense of the Age of Carnage
By Tom Engelhardt, Tom Dispatch [February 13, 2020]

---- My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions? Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I'd like to know, for instance, who's been fired for them? Who's been impeached? Who's even paying attention? I mean, if another great power had been so fruitlessly fighting a largely undeclared set of conflicts under the label of "the war on terror" for so long, if it had wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars with no end in sight and next to no one in that land was spending much time debating or discussing the matter, what would you think? If nothing else, you'd have a few questions about that, right? Well, so many years later, I do have a few that continue to haunt me, even if I see them asked practically nowhere and, to my frustration, can't really answer them myself, not to my satisfaction anyway. In fact, since 2001 — with the exception of the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq when America's streets suddenly filled with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators asking a range of questions ("How did USA's oil get under Iraq's sand?" was a typical protest sign of that moment) — our never-ending wars have seldom been questioned in this country. So think of what follows not as my thoughts on the war in question but on the war in questions. [Read More]

 

Against Despair: A Case for Optimism After the Impeachment Trial

By Anna Galland, The Nation [February 14, 2020]

---- Anxiety and dread spiked for many progressives this month, as Republican senators let Trump off the hook and as the Democratic primary roller coaster continued. Some observers announced the imminent death of democracy. Others declared that Trump would almost certainly be reelected. This kind of pessimistic emotional response is understandable, given the political news, but it misses a bigger picture—and risks spiraling into a kind of self-fulfilling defeatism. It's essential to remind ourselves of the many reasons for justified hope, reasons why you can and should remain optimistic about defeating Trump and renewing our democracy in 2020. Here are seven reasons to feel optimistic. … Of course, none of these reasons for hope will bear fruit without hard work. But with hope and hard work, we can defeat Trump in November, hold GOP senators accountable for enabling him, and renew our democracy. But we'll have to believe in ourselves, and to remain hopeful about could lie ahead for our country. Luckily for all of us, that sense of hope is firmly grounded in reality. [Read More]

 

The Importance of Being Anti-Fascist

By Cari Luna, The Nation [February 14, 2020]

---- Several hundred anti-fascist activists gathered in Lownsdale Square, a small park in downtown Portland, Oregon, on February 8 to oppose a Ku Klux Klan rally organized by Steven Shane Howard, a former imperial wizard of the North Mississippi White Knights. But after local anti-fascist groups mobilized to counterprotest, Howard contacted the Portland Police Bureau to cancel his event. When the KKK didn't show up, we held a victory party instead. … For all of the right-wing hand-wringing over people dressed in black wielding silly string and oranges, nearly all the domestic terrorists in the United States emerge from the extreme right. A 2019 report from the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism showed that all 50 of the extremist killings in the United States in 2018 had links to right-wing extremists. Since 2001, the extreme right has killed 109 people. Over that same time period, anti-fascists are responsible for zero deaths.  The goals of anti-fascism are simple: oppose hate and prevent its spread. … When we counterprotest white supremacists in Portland, we're working to cut off white nationalists' recruitment and radicalization tools as early as possible. If you are opposed to fascism, you are an anti-fascist, and our fight is your fight. As a favorite chant at these anti-fascist rallies goes, "We are many! They are few!" We need to prove that nationwide. [Read More]

 

Sanders and AOC's Fracking Ban Angers Centrists and Their Fossil Fuel Backers

By Mike Ludwig, Truthout [February 13, 2020]

---- House Democrats have finally unveiled a flurry of climate bills aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but activists say only one proposal represents the "gold standard" for tackling the climate crisis: Legislation introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that would ban fracking nationwide. While none of these bills are likely to become law under President Trump, together they form the contours of a fierce debate among Democrats and environmentalists over the future of energy in the age of climate disruption. … Fracking has enabled an oil and gas boom that prompted public backlash and made the U.S. a fossil fuel powerhouse capable of dominating global production for decades. Centrist Democrats have long seen fracked gas as a cheap, cleaner burning "bridge fuel" to replace coal. However, environmentalists argue that methane leaking from fracking infrastructure contributes to global carbon emissions, and allowing the boom to continue will lock in climate-warming fossil fuel pollution for decades.  [Read More]

 

Our History

Television's War

By Michael J. Arlen, The New Yorker [May 20, 1967]

[FB – In the late 1960s Michael Arlen wrote articles about television and the Vietnam War for The New Yorker, which were eventually published as The Living Room War.  This was before cable, and at a time when "the Evening News" had just expanded from 15 minutes to a half hour.  In today's world of a 24/7 news cycle, let's look back….]

---- Summertime now, or very nearly. The other Saturday, just back from a trip, and for some reason conscious more pointlessly than ever of that miserable war, I made a mental note to watch, at five o'clock that afternoon, an N.B.C. program called "Vietnam Weekly Review" for whatever it might have to offer, and went outside, toward Fifth Avenue and the Park, past which close to one hundred thousand men, women, and children were marching as part of a "Support Our Boys in Vietnam" parade. Lots of people in the streets. Lots of American Legion posts. Lots of those Catholic high-school bands. A flatbed truck went by full of teamsters, many of them holding aloft placards reading, "It's Your Country! Love It Or Leave It!" The Putnam County John Birch Society went by singing "America the Beautiful." An American Legionnaire went by in a wheelchair, carrying a placard reading, "Victory over Atheistic Communism." The crowd applauded. [Read More] 

Please join us tomorrow in Hastings - Restore the Rule of Law!

Hi All - Please join Concerned Families of Westchester (CFOW) on Saturday, at noon, in Hastings to protest the Lawlessness of the Trump administration and to demand a return to the Rule of Law.  We've invited some media, and as usual we will have an open mic so all who wish to can speak.  So please join us at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring St.) at noon.  Thanks!

Frank Brodhead for CFOW

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Trump's new military budget

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

February 10, 2020

 

Hello All - Just out today, the Trump administration's proposed $4.8 trillion budget for FY2021 (starting October 1) lays out the blueprint for where the President will take us if re-elected in November. It's not a pretty picture. As this useful article from Common Dreams sums up, "Trump Budget to Propose 'Savage' Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security While Hiking Pentagon and Wall Funds."  The cuts are the familiar Republican wish list: just about everything that helps lower-income or middle-class people are on the chopping block. But the Pentagon and the Forever Wars do well in the proposed budget, and as a peace organization, we need to shine a spotlight on this. 

 

While centrist Democratic presidential candidates criticize proponents of improved Medicare for All or canceling student debt because "we can't afford it," none of them look to the military/war budget, which is huge and will increase in the next fiscal year if Trump has his way. The record is clear: a report out this week shows that spending on the Iraq war alone – not all our wars, and not the basic Pentagon budget – has cost the USA $1.9 trillion over the last 16 years. This extraordinary expenditure is the result not only of an evil and misguided war policy back in 2002-2003, but also part of the USA's "business-as-usual."  Neither Congress nor the elite media ask serious questions about whether all of this money is to defend us, or is it to undertake adventures like the Iraq war that may enrich e.g. Big Oil, but end up increasing the dangers to US people rather than to defend us.  Prof. William Hartung is one of the handful of analysts who actually asks this question; and here's what he has to say about Trump's new budget"

 

As we await the release of the Pentagon's latest budget proposal on Monday, the same foreign policy elites that sold us the Iraq war and the Afghanistan surge are at it again, telling us that more money equals more security. But in this century more spending has made us less safe, not more. Those who are clamoring for more military money are ignoring the fact that the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department Energy already costs taxpayers nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars every year and that the Pentagon is getting more now than it did during the peaks of the Korean or Vietnam Wars or the Reagan buildup of the 1980s. The principal culprit for this overspending isn't the actual threats we face, it's the threats foreign policy elites imagine. The Pentagon's misguided National Defense Strategy, for example, never met a threat it couldn't inflate or a challenge it didn't see as requiring a military solution [Link]

 

As we listen to the Democratic debates, to what is said and not said, it is clear that a winnable Agenda for the Democrats depends on offering the electorate programs that we need – and that many other countries have – but this can only be done by raising taxes on the rich or cutting the military budget.  So far, we have heard little in either direction.  But if we are to defeat Trump – and if we are to implement a Green New Deal and end the reckless military adventures that risk nuclear war – we don't really have a choice.  We Can't Wait.

 

Politics

The eruption of disaster of the Iowa Caucuses last week now raises the question of whether this unique bit of Americana has not been a fraud for many years.  A New York Times investigation found dozens of errors in Caucus documents that recorded votes and the allocation of delegates to the several candidates. The Times' authors note that what happened last Tuesday "was a total system breakdown that casts doubt on how a critical contest on the American political calendar has been managed for years."  On top of the creative arithmetic and long-division failures unearthed by The Times, we also have "the Ap" produced by the shadowy but well-connected organization Shadow, whose DNA calls out for a conspiracy theory.  However, though it would be entertaining to linger in Iowa, we must rush off to New Hampshire.

 

News Notes

On Thursday, The New York Times published an article headed "Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?"  The article reported on the investigation by the Iraqi government that found that the rocket attack on a US military base in late December – which led to a US "retaliation" against an Iraqi militia base – was in fact carried out by ISIS. The importance of this is that the attack on the Iraqi militia base led to the assassination led to massive Iraqi protests at the US embassy in Baghdad, and then to the assassination of Iranian General Suleimani, leading to heightened fears of a war between Iran and the USA.  If this is true, was the US "mistake" real or genuine?  In either case, Congress should be asking questions.  For more on this near-disaster, read "Did Washington Use a False Pretext for Its Recent Escalation in Iraq?" by veteran Middle East journalist Helena Cobban [Link] and this useful summary – "'Bombshell': Iraqi Officials Say ISIS—Not Iran—Likely Behind Rocket Attack Trump Used to Justify Soleimani Assassination" – from Common Dreams

 

Also last week, the temperature in an Antarctic peninsula reached a record-breaking 65 degrees, warmer than the UK.  The prospects of a major glacier collapse are accelerating; perhaps leading to a significant increase in the sea-level sooner than anticipated.

 

Some good news at last. A federal judge in Tucson, Arizona, reversed the conviction of four humanitarian aid volunteers on religious freedom grounds Monday, ruling that the government had embraced a "gruesome logic" that criminalizes "interfering with a border enforcement strategy of deterrence by death." Their crime? Leaving food and water in the dessert for migrants coming across our southern border. For an update on this story, go here.

 

But some bad news, too.  The practice of the Trump administration is to return asylum seekers at our southern border to Central America, claiming that their fear of death in their home countries is not genuine.  A report from Human Rights Watch this week found that at least 200 such asylum seekers from El Salvador were either killed, raped, or tortured after being deported from the USA back to El Salvador. This Democracy Now! segment interviews the author of the report, who states that the information they have represents only the tip of this horrible iceberg.

 

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. Also, we (usually) have a general meeting on the first Saturday afternoon of each month. 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!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS

 

(Video) "Our Very Existence Is the Resistance": An Hour w/ AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib & Ilhan Omar

From Democracy Now! [February 10, 2020]

---- On Friday, Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh sat down for a rare joint interview with the Squad, the group of four freshmen Democratic congresswomen who have taken Capitol Hill by storm: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Omar and Tlaib are the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Omar is a former refugee from Somalia, and Tlaib is the first female Palestinian-American member of Congress. Ayanna Pressley is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Ocasio-Cortez was just 29 years old when she took office last year, making her the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress. [See the Program]

 

Voices From the Front Lines of a Climate Direct Action Campaign

By Wen Stephenson, The Nation [February 7, 2020]

---- I think the further we get into the climate crisis, eventually we will reach a point where people are not going to be scared out of trying to defend a livable future for themselves and the people that they care about. Where there's no jail sentence that's going to get people to just go quietly to their own destruction, and where the power of the state can no longer make people compliant. With every passing year, with every new wildfire and hurricane, it becomes more and more insane to think that people are just going to give up or back down and allow this to continue on the path that it's on. [Read More]

 

The Lords of Finance Dominate the Media, Arms & Big Oil (and Threaten Our Existence)

By Paul Jay, The Analysis [February 2020]
---- Our fate is in the hands of a class that considers risking Armageddon an acceptable part of their business model. Big oil companies ignore the dire consequences of climate change to maximize return on their investment in fossil fuels. The military-industrial-congressional complex risk nuclear annihilation and regional war, for profit and as an 'economic development strategy.' Climate crisis and nuclear weapons threaten life on earth, yet a climate denier is President and the bloated military budget includes a trillion-dollar investment in a new generation of nuclear weapons. The Trump administration is a dangerous cabal of conmen, criminals, extremist billionaires, and far-right ideologues – but it's not an aberration. It's the inevitable product of extreme parasitical capitalism which has created activist billionaires who manipulate elections and concentrated ownership of most major corporations into massive investment firms. [Read More]

 

Trump's Bantustan-Lite Palestine Plan Shows the 'Two State' Solution Was Always a Lie

By Craig Murray, former UK diplomat [February 4, 2020]

 ----I have read through the entire 181 pages of Trump's "peace deal" for Israel, and it is breathtaking. It is not just that the "solution" it proposes is ludicrously one-sided, it is the entire analysis of the problem to be solved which reads as pure, unadulterated Zionist propaganda. For example, the word "violence" is used repeatedly. But it only ever refers to violence by Arabs. There is not one single mention of violence by Israel against the Palestinians, even though the ratio of killing between Israelis and Palestinians over the last ten years is approximately 80:1 . The only mention of violence against Palestinians at all relates to Kuwaiti expulsion of Palestinian refugees after the first Gulf war.  The analysis of the refugee issue is the same. Nowhere can the paper bring itself to note the key historic fact, that the Palestinian refugees were expelled from Israel. The paper treats Palestinian refugees as if they had simply materialized as an inconvenient phenomenon, like a plague of locusts. [Read More] Also illuminating is "Crisis and Opportunity: The 'Deal of the Century' Challenge for Palestinians," by Ramzy Baroud, Counterpunch [Link].

 

Our History

The Erasure of Palestinians From Trump's Mideast "Peace Plan" Has a Hundred-Year History

By Rashid Khalidi, The Intercept [February 1, 2020]

[FB – This is an excerpt from Prof. Khalidi's book The Hundred Years' War on Palestine."  Khialidi is a professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia Univ.  I am reading the book now with great interest and recommend it.  This essay was originally to be published in The Wall St. Journal, but the WSJ backed out at the last minute.  But you can read it here!]

---- The erasure of the Palestinians on display this week as President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a one-sided "vision for peace" might have been an unusually blatant act of disregard, but it was in no way new. The omission is the essence of the conflict. I was reminded of this back in the early 1990s, when I lived in Jerusalem for several months at a time, doing research in the private libraries of some of the city's oldest families, including my own. I spent over a year going through dusty worm-eaten books, documents, and letters belonging to generations of Khalidis, among them my great-great-great uncle, Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi. … Yusuf Diya would have been more aware than most of his compatriots in Palestine of the ambition of the nascent Zionist movement, as well as its strength, resources, and appeal. He knew perfectly well that there was no way to reconcile Zionism's claims on Palestine and its explicit aim of Jewish statehood and sovereignty there with the rights and well-being of Palestine's Indigenous inhabitants. On March 1, 1899, Yusuf Diya sent a prescient seven-page letter to the French chief rabbi, Zadoc Kahn, with the intention that it be passed on to the founder of modern Zionism. [Read More]

 

What We Want

By Stokely Carmichael, The New York Review of Books [September 22, 1966]

[FB – In 1966, Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was participating in a civil rights march in Mississippi.  At a rally, he used the term Black Power and scared the socks off of much of liberal white America.  In this essay, published in the New York Review of Books, Carmichael explained what he meant by "Black Power" and how it related to the nonviolent political perspective of SNCC, at that time one of the most important political groups in the nation.]

---- One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young blacks. None of its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to. In a sense, I blame ourselves—together with the mass media—for what has happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha. Each time the people in those cities saw Martin Luther King get slapped, they became angry; when they saw four little black girls bombed to death, they were angrier; and when nothing happened, they were steaming. We had nothing to offer that they could see, except to go out and be beaten again. We helped to build their frustration. … An organization which claims to speak for the needs of a community—as does the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—must speak in the tone of that community, not as somebody else's buffer zone. This is the significance of black power as a slogan. For once, black people are going to use the words they want to use—not just the words whites want to hear. And they will do this no matter how often the press tries to stop the use of the slogan by equating it with racism or separatism. An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community—as SNCC does—must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan. [Read More]