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]
---- 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
----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 [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]
