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
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 10th 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]
---- 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]
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
n, 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]
