Please join us for a rally in Hastings Saturday noon - Campaign for Parole Justice

Hi All - Please join us TOMORROW, Saturday, to support this important cause.  We meet at noon at the VFW Plaza in Hastings.  For more information about this issue, see the website of RAPP - "Release Aging People in Prison" - https://rappcampaign.com/

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on releasing aging people in prison

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

April 25, 2021

 

Hello All – Next Saturday – May Day! – CFOW will hold a rally in Hastings to demand New York legislature action on pending bills that would allow older prisoners to obtain parole hearings.  In this we will partner with RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison).  Please join us at the VFW Plaza at noon.

 

Just over 1.8 million people were in US prisons and jails in 2020.  In New York, prisons and jails held just under 49,000.  Both numbers have declined significantly since 2008, largely the result of the release of prisoners because of the Covid epidemic. However, while the NY prison population has declined, the number of prisoners age 50 and over has shown a slight increase.  Thus, while about 10 percent of the the prison population was 50+ in 2007, by 2021 it was about 20 percent.  And so the question is asked, if prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation, as well as about punishment and incarceration, what public good is served by confining elderly prisoners, often needing serious medical attention, to prison for the remainder of their lives?

 

Our partner at next Saturday's event, RAPP, "works to end mass incarceration and promote racial justice through the release from prison of older and aging people and those serving long and life sentences." They are one of more than a dozen NY organizations united in the  Parole Justice Campaign.  Our rally next Saturday will be in support of Fair and Timely Parole (S1415/A.4231) and Elder Parole (S15/A.3475). 

 

·    Fair and Timely Parole "would provide more meaningful parole reviews for incarcerated people who are already parole eligible.  The bill would change the standard of parole by centering release not on the original crime but on the person's rehabilitation while incarcerated. In other words, parole commissioners would no longer be able to deny release based solely on the crime for which the person is convicted."

 

·    Elder Parole "would allow incarcerated people aged 55 and older who have already served 15 or more years a chance to go before the Parole Board for a hearing. Roughly 1,000 people would immediately become eligible for parole with the passage of Elder Parole, and thousands more people would ultimately benefit in years to come. The Elder Parole bill does not provide automatic release but instead a meaningful review and evaluation by the Parole Board."

 

Even with a supermajority in the state legislature, the Democratic Party leadership in Albany is moving too slowing to bring these bills to a vote before the legislature wraps up business in June. Rivertown residents can support these bills by calling Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins at (518) 455-2585 and telling her staff you want Sen. Cousins to work for the passage of Elder Parole and Fair and Timely Parole. Please also make calls to AssemblymanTom Abinanti (Rivertowns - 518-455-5753) or Assemblyman Nader J. Sayegh (Yonkers - 518 455 3662). (And more legislators' contact info is found here.)

 

And please join us next Saturday for this righteous campaign!

 

News Notes

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (CD 16) is under attack by AIPAC for his support – one of 14 co-sponsors – of HR 2590, "Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act."  The bill, introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum, would prohibit US military aid to Israel ($3.8 billion) from being used to detain Palestinian children, demolish Palestinian homes, or annex Palestinian lands. (Read more about the bill here.)  Jamaal is under attack by the AIPAC people in Westchester, and by congressional "supporters of Israel" in Congress, for being "anti-Israel".  Let's show Jamaal that we have his back on this issue.  Email him here.

 

The largest anti-pipeline action since Standing Rock is going on in Minnesota, where activists celebrated Earth Day by blocking the "Line 3 replacement project" by locking themselves into concrete barrels at the entrance of an oil pumping station.  The protests are led by "Indigenous groups who see the project and the risk of a spill as a violation of treaty rights, as the project endangers wild rice lakes in treaty territories where the Anishinaabe have the right to hunt, fish, and gather."  For more on this evolving story/struggle, go here.

 

This week marks the 175^th anniversary of the US invasion of Mexico (1845-48), which resulted in seizing about half of Mexico, annexing California and much else.  As David Vine points out in this useful article, this was one of 10 invasions of Mexico.  Indeed, the US has invaded Latin America more than 70 times, leaving occupying armies for months, years, and in some cases decades.  While the US political elite wails about the "invasion" of the US by desperate refugees from Central America, we might pause to consider whether our nation has contributed to the distress of people fleeing poverty and violence.

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 5 pm, please send a return email. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page.  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!

With a focus on prison and (someday) prison abolition, it seems only right that this week's Rewards come from Johnnie Cash's album at Folsom Prison (1968).  For samples, here are "Folsom Prison Blues,"  "The Long Black Veil," and "Jackson."  Or listen to the whole thing here.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

OUR WEEKLY READER

 

War & Peace

The U.S. Could Have Left Afghanistan Years Ago, Sparing Many Lives

By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept [April 16 2021]

---- President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw most U.S. troops from Afghanistan marks a significant reduction in America's participation in the war. But it is unlikely to mean peace for Afghans themselves, who remain caught between a weak and corrupt central government long propped up by U.S. military might and a resurgent Taliban movement that is stronger than at any time since the United States invaded. The question of timing hung heavily over Biden's announcement Wednesday that America's "forever war" in Afghanistan would soon come to an end, with the remaining 2,500 American troops in the country scheduled to come home on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The violent disintegration of Afghan society began with the 1979 Soviet invasion of the country, but the decision in the early years of this century to occupy Afghanistan and try to transform it into a liberal democracy at great cost in lives and resources has made America a key force in Afghanistan's fate. … After 20 years, the U.S. is leaving Afghanistan in favor of a minimal counterterrorism footprint. Many haunting questions remain, including why this change in America's approach wasn't made decades ago, what has been accomplished by the huge loss of life and resources, and who is responsible for the ultimate failure of the U.S. project in Afghanistan. [Read More] For lots of statistics, read "The War in Afghanistan Has Cost Over $2.26 Trillion" from Brown University [April 20, 2021] [Link].

 

The Climate Crisis

Biden Is All About Zero Emissions, but Who Do You Think Has Been Fueling Them?

By Kate Aronoff, The New York Times [April 22, 2021]

[FB - Kate Aronoff is the author of "Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet — And How We Fight Back."]

---- "We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil … preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft," Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in 1965. That ethos would inspire a generation of environmentalists to see the fates of this planet's inhabitants as intertwined. By contrast, the ecologist Garrett Hardin, who was labeled a white nationalist by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 1974 urged a "lifeboat ethics": for rich countries to be "on our guard against boarding parties" from predominantly nonwhite countries whose residents he saw as an intolerable strain on the planet's resources. Racked by ever-worsening fires and floods, our little craft is not doing well. This week, the White House is welcoming world leaders to a virtual summit on curbing climate destruction. Countries will present their plans to meet the goal inscribed in the Paris Agreement to cap warming at "well below" 2 degrees Celsius. President Biden has pledged to cut emissions at least in half from 2005 levels by 2030, aiming for "net zero" emissions by 2050. But accounting for the United States' outsize responsibility for the climate crisis requires much bolder action, according to a recent recommendation from several groups, including Friends of the Earth U.S. and ActionAid USA: "a reduction of at least 195 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions" compared with 2005 levels by 2030 — 70 percent cuts within U.S. borders and "the equivalent of a further 125 percent reduction" by providing support for emissions reductions abroad. The question, then: Does the White House want to helm a spaceship or a lifeboat? [Read More]  On Friday, Kate Aronoff was a guest on Democracy Now! to talk about Biden's pledge at the virtual Climate Summit to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions to 50% below the 2005 level:  "This is well, well below what the United States really owes the rest of the world," she said, "based on its historical responsibility for causing the climate crisis and the massive, massive resources this country has to transition very quickly off of fossil fuels."

 

Israel/Palestine

The Reorientations of Edward Said

By Pankaj Mishra, The New Yorker [April 19, 2021]

---- "Professor of Terror" was the headline on the cover of the August, 1989, issue of Commentary. Inside, an article described Edward Said, then a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, as a mouthpiece for Palestinian terrorists and a confidant of Yasir Arafat. "Eduardo Said" was how he was referred to in the F.B.I.'s two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-page file on him—perhaps on the assumption that a terrorist was likely to have a Latin name. V. S. Naipaul willfully mispronounced "Said" to rhyme with "head," and asserted that he was "an Egyptian who got lost in the world." Said, an Arab Christian who was frequently taken to be Muslim, recognized the great risks of being misidentified and misunderstood. In "Orientalism" (1978), the book that made him famous, he set out to answer the question of, as he wrote in the introduction, "what one really is." The question was pressing for a man who was, simultaneously, a literary theorist, a classical pianist, a music critic, arguably New York's most famous public intellectual after Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag, and America's most prominent advocate for Palestinian rights. … Said had pushed for negotiation with Israel and for a two-state solution long before Arafat accepted both, in 1988. This major compromise by the Palestinian leader, which Said helped draft in Algiers, implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist and cleared the way for the peace process that led, in 1993, to the first Oslo Accord. However, by the time that Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hesitantly shook hands on the South Lawn of the White House, Said was denouncing the accord as "an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles." In his view, an old, exhausted, and increasingly venal Palestinian leadership had succumbed to American and Israeli blandishments and pressure. Palestinian leaders, ignorant about facts on the ground created by Zionist settlers in the West Bank and Gaza—Arafat hadn't even seen the occupied territories since his departure in 1967—had consented to a new and quasi-permanent form of occupation. [Read More]

 

Our History

Slave Rebellions and Mutinies Shaped the Age of Revolution

By Steven Hahn, Boston Review [April 23, 2021]

[FB – This essay reviews three new books: The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution, by Julius S. Scott; Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, by Vincent Brown; and The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution, by Niklas Frykman.]
---- The Age of Revolution (1770–1850), bookended by the American and French Revolutions on the one side and the Revolutions of 1848 on the other, is widely viewed as the progenitor of the modern Euro-Atlantic world. Its intellectual energy fused the liberal and republican ideas of John Locke with the ideals of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment; its political energy fed off the struggles between the bourgeois and their aristocratic enemies. Although visionary hopes could meet crushing defeats—as they did during the popular risings of 1848—by the end, there were new parliamentary regimes, emerging nation-states, declarations of rights, and the eruption of an industrial age. Until recently, Caribbean slave rebellions have been treated as sidebars to the Age of Revolution. In part this is because of a Eurocentrism that has long diminished the role of Black people in shaping history. But equally, enslaved people didn't fit the image of political actors. And yet, this classic narrative leaves out the most radical of the revolutions that exploded neither in continental Europe nor in North or South America, but in the Caribbean, on the island the French called Saint-Domingue and the victorious rebels would call Haiti (Ayiti), after its indigenous name. [Read More]

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on leaving Afghanistan - or are we?

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

April 18, 2021

 

Hello All – After almost 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the war is coming to an end.  Or is it? While President Biden has announced that US troops will be gone by September 11, 2021, many questions remain unanswered.  Similar questions surround Biden's announcement some weeks ago that the US would no longer support "offensive operations" by Saudi Arabia in Yemen.  In both cases, the President's statements and policy maneuvers seem to reflect a divided government – President v. Pentagon v. State Department v. CIA v. Congress, etc. – as well as an understanding that the American people have had enough.

 

In the case of Afghanistan, it is important to recognize that the decision to "leave" by September 11^th means abrogating the agreement Trump made with the Taliban to leave by May 1^st.  As for the Taliban, they may reasonably think the agreement they made, which included a pledge to refrain from attacking US troops, is no longer binding on them.  Additionally, the President did not say that the US would no longer bomb the Taliban; rather, he pledged that "we will keep providing assistance to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces."  Nor is it clear whether all or how many of the 18,000 "contractors" or "mercenaries" – some American, many not – will be leaving and when.  And apparently some forces from other NATO countries may remain in Afghanistan after September 11^th.  On Tuesday, The New York Times cited current and former US officials who said the US "will most likely rely on a shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives" to conduct operations inside Afghanistan." We have been warned.

 

The war that began nearly 20 years ago was illegal and immoral from day one. Rather than pursue the Taliban's offer to apprehend Osama bin Laden if the US would provide some evidence of his complicity in the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration chose to wage war on a country and its people.  Throughout these two decades, the United States has dropped more than 80,000 bombs on Afghanistan and waged a secret war with Special Forces, CIA operatives, mercenaries, and paramilitary units.  Approximately 100,000 Afghan civilians and some 2,300 US service personnel have been killed, and trillions of dollars have been wasted. Even at the last moment, diplomacy that might have involved Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia, and China – Afghanistan's neighbors – has been disregarded. The incoherence of US policy in Afghanistan reflects a US government divided over the basic question of whether War or Peace is in the "National Interest."

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  Another vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 5 pm, please send a return email. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page.  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!

Happy birthday, American Revolution!  Tomorrow, April 19^th, is the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord (Mass.), the opening salvos of the Revolution.  On that day, the British sent a routine search-and-destroy mission from Boston to seize political leaders in Lexington and stores of gun powder and ammo in Concord.  Notified of the attack ("one if by land, two if by sea"), Paul Revere rode ahead to awaken the "Minutemen," the patriotic stalwarts of the day.  I grew up in Lexington, and so every April 19^th we marched and waited for "Paul Revere" and watched "the battle" on the town green/commons.  Anti-imperialism was taught in the elementary schools. A good beginning for any child. – Here is some rare, documentary footage of that "April morn."

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

"Marx's Old Mole is Right Beneath the Surface" – An interview with Noam Chomsky

Interviewed by David Barsamian

[FB – Marx picked up the idea of "the old mole – burrowing under the ground and suddenly popping up – from Shakespeare; and it has become a favorite metaphor for revolutionaries re: the surprises of historical developments.]

---- U.S. politics has recently been roiled by converging crises, from the pandemic and uprisings over racial justice to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. What are the prospects for progressive politics under the new Biden administration? Noam Chomsky takes on climate, race, immigration, and revolution in this edited version of a radio conversation between Chomsky and Alternative Radio host David Barsamian, conducted on March 15, 2021, in Oro Valley, Arizona.

 

DB: You write in the preface [of his new book], "Will the species survive? Will organized human life survive? Those questions cannot be avoided. There is no way to sit on the sidelines."

NC: Like it or not, that's a fact. It's this generation that will decide whether human society continues in any organized form, or whether we reach tipping points that are irreversible, and we spin off into total catastrophe. Same question with regard to the growing threat of nuclear weapons: there's just no alternative to deciding right now. There are other problems. The pandemic will somehow be controlled at enormous and needless cost of lives, but there are others coming. And they could be more serious unless we take serious steps to prepare for them—both the scientific work and the social background. Then there will be other major issues of species survival—not just the human species. We are racing forward to destroying other species on an incredible scale, which hasn't been seen for 65 million years. And now it's happening much faster than it did then. That's what's called the fifth extinction. We're now in the midst of the sixth extinction. [Read More]

 

(Video) American Insurrection: Deadly Far-Right Extremism from Charlottesville to Capitol Attack. What Next?

From Democracy Now! [April 14, 2021]

---- A scathing new report by the Capitol Police's internal watchdog reveals officials knew Congress was the target of the deadly January 6 insurrection, yet officers were instructed to refrain from deploying more aggressive measures that could have helped "push back the rioters." Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports domestic terrorism incidents surged to a record high in 2020, fueled by white supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government extremists on the far right. The Post found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks, leading to 91 deaths. Reporter A.C. Thompson, who explores the threat of far-right extremism in the new PBS "Frontline" documentary "American Insurrection," says there was a "massive pool of radicalized individuals" ahead of the January 6 attack who were being pushed toward violence by "an abundance of lies by the former president, by this entire conspiratorial right-wing media and social media ecosystem." [See the Program].  And to watch the 85-minute PBS documentary, "American Insurrection," go here.

 

Building Asian American Liberation from Below: Linking Antiracism and Anticapitalism

By Promise Li, Spectre Journal  [April 16, 2021]

---- Anti-Asian violence is hitting a new high, fueled by the racialization of the Covid-19 virus as a "Chinese virus" by the Trump administration and more recently, by the Biden administration's "tough on China" stance. Last month, 6 Asian massage workers, who have long been criminalized and stigmatized, were brutally murdered. Nearly 3000 firsthand reports of anti-Asian attacks were logged by Stop AAPI Hate between just March and December of last year, with countless other incidents gone unreported by local police departments. Asian American organizations have responded with rallies and vigils in major cities and suburbs with large Asian American populations. … Asian American leftists, like those in Los Angeles-based grassroots organization Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED) to New York's Asians 4 Abolition, have called for an alternative: connecting the recent surge of violence to other symptoms of capitalist exploitation from gentrification to poor labor conditions that daily harm communities of color. [Read More]

 

WAR & PEACE

Starving Yemen

By Charles Pierson, Counterpunch [April 16, 2021]

---- Yemen is starving to death. More accurately, Yemen is being starved to death.  The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf States, has deliberately chosen to weaponize starvation in its war against Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.  The Saudi-led coalition has imposed a land, sea, and air blockade of Yemen which keeps desperately needed food, fuel, and medicine from the 90% of Yemenis who are completely reliant on humanitarian aid from the outside world. … The war would not be possible without US support.  The Brookings Institution's Bruce Riedel declares that if the US and UK cut off logistic support the Royal Saudi Air Force would be "grounded."  [Read More]  For the broader context, Human Rights Watch has put out a report, "Biden Needs a Middle East-Wide Human Rights Policy" [Link].

 

The Hawks Who Want War With Iran Are Working Overtime

By Ariel Gold and Medea Benjamin, Code Pink [April 2021]

---- [The recent] cyberattack on an Iranian nuclear facility, reportedly by Israeli intelligence, is the latest gambit from the coalition of Israeli leaders, Christian fundamentalists, and hawkish Washington neocons who want to block a US return to the Iran nuclear agreement. If they're successful, millions of ordinary Iranians suffering under draconian sanctions will pay the price. … The opponents of the Iran deal are trying to keep in place the draconian wall of sanctions that the Trump administration imposed precisely to make it more difficult for a future US administration to rejoin the JCPOA. But these sanctions are causing immense suffering for ordinary Iranians, including runaway inflation and skyrocketing food and medicine prices. [Read More]

 

(Video) Biden Sanctions Russia for Cyber Espionage While Remaining Silent over Israeli Cyberattack on Iran

From Democracy Now! [April 16, 2021]

---- The United States has imposed new sanctions on Russia and expelled 10 Russian diplomats after the Biden administration accused Moscow of being involved in major cyberattacks. The Treasury Department claimed Russia interfered in the 2020 election and was behind the SolarWinds hack, which compromised the computer systems of nine U.S. government agencies and scores of private companies. The sanctions target 32 Russian entities and individuals and bar U.S. banks from purchasing Russian government debt. Russia vowed to retaliate against the new sanctions and accused the Biden administration of degrading bilateral relations. "The most dangerous aspect of this is it introduces something new into international relations, because despite the way that it's being described, this was not an attack on the U.S.," says Anatol Lieven, senior fellow for Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. "Never previously have sanctions been imposed in response to an espionage case, for the very good reason that every country, including the United States, engages in espionage." [See the Program]. Anatol Lieven spelled out his views on sanctioning Russia in "Why Biden's new Russian sanctions are shortsighted, and dangerous," Responsible Statecraft [April 15, 2021] [Link].  And Glenn Greenwald reviews the atrocious performance of the USA media Establishment in swallowing the false story about Russian bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan: "Journalists, Learning They Spread a CIA Fraud About Russia, Instantly Embrace a New One" [Link].

 

Tax Resisters Divert Their Money From War to Human Welfare

By Ella Fassler, Truthout [April 15, 2021]

---- Howard Waitzkin, a medical doctor, a professor focusing on social medicine, and an activist, believes mass war tax resistance could serve as a wrench. For about four decades, Waitzkin has withheld federal income taxes proportional to the amount that would go toward military spending. He redirects some of his income tax funds toward "creatively constructive purposes that move beyond capitalism," including a program he coordinates that provides medical and mental health services to active-duty GIs who can't access them in the military. Waitzkin hasn't been arrested or fined. In fact, most tax resisters haven't faced severe consequences. … An estimated 20,000 antiwar activists were resisting income taxes in the early 1970s, while hundreds of thousands refused to pay telephone taxes. Others vowed to live modestly, by earning salaries below the federal income tax threshold. Today, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people in the U.S. participate in various war tax resistance tactics. [Read More]

 

THE CLIMATE CRISIS

(Video) Remembering LaDonna Brave Bull Allard: Standing Rock Elder Helped Lead 2016 Anti-DAPL Uprising

From Democracy Now! [April 12, 2021]

---- LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Standing Rock Sioux tribal historian, has died of cancer at the age of 64, and we look back on her work, through interviews on her land and in the Democracy Now! studio. Allard co-founded the Sacred Stone Camp on Standing Rock Sioux land in April 2016 to resist the Dakota Access pipeline, to which people from around the world traveled, making it one of the largest gatherings of Indigenous peoples in a century. "I don't understand why America doesn't understand how important water is. So we have no choice. We have to stand. No matter what happens, we have to stand to save the water." [See the Program]

 

Ten Reasons to Oppose Militarism & War on Earth Day

By John Miksad, World Beyond War [April 18, 2021]

1.      The U.S. military is the largest institutional polluter in the world. Since 2001, the U.S. military has emitted1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual emissions of 257 million cars on the road. The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest institutional consumer of oil ($17B/year) in the world, and the largest global landholder with 800 foreign military bases in 80 countries.

 

2.      The U.S. military emits more greenhouse gas emissions than 150 nations.

 

3.      The majority of "Superfund" sites in the U.S. are current or former military- related installations, sites designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where extreme hazardous waste threatens human health and the environment.

[And seven more – read them here.]

 

New Wind and Solar up 50% globally in 2020, as China beats US by over 4 to 1

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [April 17, 2021]

---- The new report on 2020 by the International Renewable Energy Agency reveals that the world's renewable energy generation capacity increased by an astonishing 10.3% in 2020 despite the global economic slowdown during the coronavirus pandemic. It beats the previous record for an annual increase in this sector by a healthy 50%. The bad news for Americans is that most of this increase took place in Asia, especially China. In this strategic set of technologies, China is eating America's lunch. … In 2020, the global net increase in renewables was 261 gigawatts (GW). That is the nameplate capacity of some 300 nuclear power plants! There are actually only 440 nuclear power plants in the whole world, with a generation capacity of 390 gigwatts. So let's just underline this point. The world put in 2/3s as much renewable energy in one year as is produced by all the existing nuclear plants!  [Read More]

 

CIVIL LIBERTIES

(Video) U.S. Lawyer Steven Donziger Speaks from House Arrest in NYC After Suing Chevron for Amazon Oil Spills

From Democracy Now! [March 15, 2021]

---- Decades of reckless oil drilling by Chevron have destroyed 1,700 square miles of land in the Ecuadorian Amazon, but the company has refused to pay for the damage or clean up the land despite losing a lawsuit 10 years ago, when Ecuador's Supreme Court ordered the oil giant to pay $18 billion on behalf of 30,000 Amazonian Indigenous people. Instead of cleaning up the damage, Chevron has spent the past decade waging an unprecedented legal battle to avoid paying for the environmental destruction, while also trying to take down the environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who helped bring the landmark case. Donziger, who has been on house arrest for nearly 600 days, says Chevron's legal attacks on him are meant to silence critics and stop other lawsuits against the company for environmental damage. [See the Program].  For more on Donziger and Chevron, read this interview with Donziger in Jacobin Magazine: "The Kafkaesque Nightmare of Attorney Steven Donziger, a Literal Prisoner of the Chevron Corporation" [Link].

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

An Asylum Mirage: As Biden Continues Trump's War on Asylum, Danger Mounts in the Deadly Sonoran Desert

By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept [April 18 2021]

---- With national political and media attention returning to the U.S.-Mexico border in recent weeks, most of the focus has been on the record numbers of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Texas. Thousands of those children have been moved into facilities well beyond capacity. Republican lawmakers have seized on the moment to file midnight dispatches from the banks of the Rio Grande reporting that Biden and the Department of Homeland Security are presiding over the humanitarian crisis that stems from a break with the policies of Trump. Biden and DHS, in turn, have run with a message that the border is closed and asylum-seekers should stay away until further notice. The processing of unaccompanied children in the United States presents clearly urgent questions of human rights, law, and policy. It is also just one facet of the larger story of Biden's first months in office on the border. [Read More]

 

What Happened at Amazon?

FB – After raising the hopes of so many, the failure of the union drive at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama was a great disappointment.  Why did the union lose, and what does this mean for labor organizing in the South or against giant corporations like Amazon?  In the last Newsletter I printed a highly critical view of the union's campaign by veteran organizer Jane McAlevey.  McAlevey is not alone in her criticism of the union's campaign, but I would like to call your attention to two more positive views of the campaign that present a more optimistic picture of where the union movement might be going:  "The BAmazon Loss and the Road Ahead" by Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Labor Notes [April 14, 2021] [Link]; and "Bessemer was just the beginning" by Luis Feliz Leon, In These Times [April 15, 2021] [Link].

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Rep. Betty McCollum Leads Effort to Block Israel From Using U.S. Aid to Destroy Palestinian Homes

By Alex Kane, The Intercept [April 14 2021]

[FB – Rep. Jamaal Bowman, CD-16, is among the sponsors of this legislation.]

---- Since 2015, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., has been the leading congressional critic of Israel's military detention of Palestinian children, introducing multiple pieces of legislation that would bar Israel from using U.S. military aid to arrest Palestinian youth. By targeting Israel's detention of Palestinian children — just one aspect of Israel's military occupation, but one that involved a highly vulnerable population — McCollum was attempting to make her bills appeal to the widest swath of Democrats possible. For most others in her party, the check the U.S. wrote to Israel every year was not up for debate. McCollum is now planning to introduce legislation on Thursday that would bar U.S. aid from subsidizing a wider array of Israeli occupation tactics, an indication of just how far the debate over U.S. aid to Israel has come in the past six years. "There is nothing out of the ordinary about conditioning aid. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

B. Traven: Fiction's Forgotten Radical

By Clinton Williamson, The Nation [April 14, 2021]

[FB – We know "B. Traven" best through his novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, made into a great film with Humphrey Bogart.  This essay focuses on Traven's story, The Cotton Pickers; but his magnum opus, imo, is the six volumes comprising "The Jungle Novels," which tell the story of the Mexican Revolution that began in the early 20^th century.]

---- Despite writing a remarkably diverse body of work focused upon the multiple, intersecting freedom struggles of the poor, nearly every discussion of B. Traven begins with the enigma of his identity. The man behind the pseudonym sent his manuscripts from and received his royalty checks in Mexico, living there from at least 1924 through 1969. According to an anarchist comrade, Erich Mühsam, and decades later seconded by Traven biographer Rolf Recknagel, he most likely was Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarcho-communist writer who briefly served as the director of the press division of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. … It appears that Ret Marut, too, was also a pseudonym, just like Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, two other identities he seems to have adopted while in Mexico. [Read More]

 

(Video) Ramsey Clark, Former U.S. Attorney General Turned Fierce Critic of U.S. Militarism, Dies at Age 93

From Democracy Now! [April 12, 2021]

---- Former U.S. attorney general and longtime human rights lawyer Ramsey Clark has died at the age of 93, and we look back on his life. Clark was credited as being a key architect of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He served as attorney general from 1967 to 1969, during which time he ordered a moratorium on federal executions and opposed J. Edgar Hoover's wiretapping of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., though he was also involved in the prosecution of antiwar activists. After leaving office, Clark became a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy. "The world is the most dangerous place it's ever been now because of what our country has done, and is doing, and we have to take it back," Ramsey Clark said while addressing a protest against the inauguration of George W. Bush on January 20, 2005. We also play an excerpt from an interview with Clark about defending the Hancock 38, a group of peace activists arrested at a U.S. drone base near Syracuse, New York. [See the Program]

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the Brave New World of military and surveillance drones

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

April 11, 2021

 

Hello All – On Friday, veteran peace advocates launched a new website/project called BanKillerDrones.  In introducing their site, the creators say: "In BanKillerDrones.org we hope to provide you with basic information and arguments that will persuade you of the need for an international treaty to ban weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance.  And we hope to provide you with inspiration to help you, working with thousands of others, to achieve this goal."  And they do this with user-friendly website sections on "Proliferation," "Dangers," and "Action."  Thus we learn about the amazing/horrible proliferation of military and surveillance drones since the beginning of the new century, their increasing sophistication and targeting abilities, and their threats to (primarily) civilians and non-combatants. They state:

 

… This officially sanctioned, racially based, drone vigilantism in support of colonial invasion, occupation and intervention has led not only to increased drone killing but to increased military and police drone surveillance.  … This international vigilantism, championed by the U.S., is leading to the development of a new wave of more powerful, dangerous drones, guided more and more by artificial intelligence (AI), drones that will enable not only more colonial repression but will quite likely will lead to war among the world's major colonial powers, such as the U.S. and China.

 

The website is especially useful in combating some of the so-called justifications for the use of drones.  For example, do they really protect US ground troops in combat areas?  Can they/the drone operators discriminate between combatants and non-combatants? Or do drones actually increase the likelihood of military combat by allowing killing without risking US troops?  It is clear from reading the material included on this website that we are entering a Brave New World of military combat and domestic surveillance/repression.  Our long-range goal must be to ban these weapons, especially before they are fully taken over by Artificial Intelligence (coming soon).  In the here-and-right-now, we need to open our eyes to what's happening and school ourselves and others about what needs to be done to reduce and ultimately end this menace.

 

News Notes

Undocumented workers and others who had been excluded from federal relief or stimulus payments during the Covid-19 pandemic achieved a dramatic victory last week when Gov. Cuomo conceded the creation of an assistance $2.1 billion fund.  The victory was the outcome of thousands of "excluded workers" and their supporters in dozens of statewide organizations.  While some important details remain to be worked out, the scope of the victory and the way in which it was achieved can be read about here and here.

 

Many reports praise the film/program "Exterminate All the Brutes" now playing on HBO. The 4-part program surveys the history of western imperialism towards indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere. Based on Sven Lindqvist's "Exterminate All the Brutes" and other documentation, the film receives an excellent overview from Louis Proyect here. Also of interest is a roundtable discussion including the film's director, Raoul Peck, who also produced "I Am Not Your Negro" and "The Young Karl Marx."

 

How to Help

On Monday, April 12^th, "Smart Elections" and their supporters will phone Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (914-423-4031) and Speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie (718-654-6539) to ask them to allow two important pieces of legislation to come to a vote and to support their passage.  The bills – A1115 (Assembly) and S309 (Senate) – would ban voting machines that security experts say can change votes on our ballots. For some basic info on why these machines are dangerous to democracy, click here; to sign up to make some calls, click here.

 

On Tuesday, April 13^th, the People's Campaign for Parole Justice will be calling legislators in support of two pieces of legislation: the Elder Parole and the Fair & Timely Parole bills.  The bills would establish the right to a parole hearing for older prisoners who have already served long sentences, working to "prevent aging, sickness, and death in prisons, reunite families and communities, and help to uproot NY's racist criminal legal system."  To learn more about the campaign and the issues, go here; to participate in the faith-based Advocacy Day in honor of Second Chance Month, click here.

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  Another vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 5 pm, please send a return email. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page.  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

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

Blowout in Bessemer: A Postmortem on the Amazon Campaign

By Jane McAlevey, The Nation [April 9, 2021]

---- Earlier today the National Labor Relations Board announced the results of the vote on whether workers at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., would join a union. The vote was 738 in favor to 1,798 against. It's bad news, but it doesn't mean workers in future Amazon campaigns won't or can't win. They can. The results were not surprising, however, for reasons that have more to do with the approach used in the campaign itself than any other factor. … Three factors weigh heavily in any unionization election: the outrageously vicious behavior of employers—some of it illegal, most fully legal—including harassing and intimidating workers, and telling bold lies (which, outside of countries with openly repressive governments, is unique to the United States); the strategies and tactics used in the campaign by the organizers; and the broader social-political context in which the union election is being held. … To stand any chance of reversing the diminishing fortunes of America's workers, HR 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize [PRO] Act of 2021, which just passed the House, is desperately needed. Support for unions today is at record highs, and support for big business is at historic lows. Sadly, popular support for any proposal has little if nothing to do with legislation getting approved by Congress. [Read More]

 

"Capitalism has become a weapon of mass destruction": Seven questions with Arundhati Roy

By Emily Tamkin, The New Statesman [UK] [April 2021]

Q. Are there things that have surprised you? That got worse (or better) faster and more intensely than you thought they would?

AR. Yes. People. People have surprised me in two very different ways. On the one hand, I have been surprised by just how fertile and receptive the ground was when the seeds of hatred were sown and how quickly that dense forest has grown around us. It's not uncommon for people to feel that this very uniquely Indian form of fascism is a partnership between the political establishment and the "masses". … On the other hand, while political parties in the opposition and the various institutions that are meant to serve as checks and balances have abdicated their responsibilities almost entirely, ordinary people have stepped into the breach. The courage and imagination of protestors, just when it seemed that hope was lost, has surprised me. The massive protests against the anti-Muslim citizenship law and the National Register of Citizens, which has resulted in two million people being stripped of their citizenship in the state of Assam alone, and the ongoing protests against the three new farm bills say something about a simmering, brewing rebellion. … We'll have to see what happens. Either way, I don't think it's possible to exaggerate what a dangerous situation India is in right now. How do you unpoison a river? You let it unpoison itself, I guess. The current will do that, eventually. We have to be a part of that current. [Read More]

 

Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang [China]

By Raffi Khatchadourian, The New Yorker [April 5, 2021]

----When Anar Sabit was in her twenties and living in Vancouver, she liked to tell her friends that people could control their own destinies. Her experience, she was sure, was proof enough. She had come to Canada in 2014, a bright, confident immigrant from Kuytun, a small city west of the Gobi Desert, in a part of China that is tucked between Kazakhstan, Siberia, and Mongolia. "Kuytun" means "cold" in Mongolian; legend has it that Genghis Khan's men, stationed there one frigid winter, shouted the word as they shivered. During Sabit's childhood, the city was an underdeveloped colonial outpost in a contested region that locals called East Turkestan. The territory had been annexed by imperial China in the eighteenth century, but on two occasions it broke away, before Mao retook it, in the nineteen-forties. In Beijing, it was called New Frontier, or Xinjiang: an untamed borderland. Growing up in this remote part of Asia, a child like Sabit, an ethnic Kazakh, could find the legacy of conquest all around her. [Read More]

 

To better understand the complexities – "Fighting anti-Asian violence cannot include apologism for the Chinese state" by Promise LI, Lausan [Hong Kong] [April 8, 2021] [Link]; (Video) "China, the U.S. and the Risk of Nuclear War," from the Committee for a SANE US – China Policy – 90 minutes [April 7, 2021] [Link]; "Senate Unveils Sweeping Legislation To Confront China" by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com. [April 9, 2021] [Link]; and "Western Media Incite Anti-Asian Racism When They Join in Cold War Against China" by Joshua Cho, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [April 8, 2021] [Link].

 

Fears of White People Losing Out Permeate Capitol Rioters' Towns, Study Finds

By Alan Feuer, New York Times [April 6, 2021]

---- Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture. If Mr. Pape's initial conclusions — published on Tuesday in The Washington Post — hold true, they would suggest that the Capitol attack has historical echoes reaching back to before the Civil War, he said in an interview over the weekend. In the shorter term, he added, the study would appear to connect Jan. 6 not only to the once-fringe right-wing theory called the Great Replacement, which holds that minorities and immigrants are seeking to take over the country, but also to events like the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 where crowds of white men marched with torches chanting, "Jews will not replace us!" … Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists. This finding held true, Mr. Pape determined, even when controlling for population size, distance to Washington, unemployment rate and urban or rural location. [Read More]

 

WAR & PEACE

Hunting in Yemen: The War Must End

By Kathy Kelly, Waging Nonviolence [April 10, 2021]

---- Since March 29^th, in Washington, D.C., Iman Saleh, age 26, has been on a hunger strike to demand an end to the war in Yemen. She is joined by five others from her group, The Yemeni Liberation Movement. The hunger strikers point out that enforcement of the Saudi Coalition led blockade relies substantially on U.S. weaponry. … While UN agencies struggle to distribute desperately needed supplies of food, medicine and fuel, the UN Security Council continues to enforce a resolution, Resolution 2216, which facilitates the blockade and inhibits negotiation. … Now, in the seventh year of grotesque war, international diplomatic efforts should heed the young Yemeni-Americans fasting in Washington, DC We all have a responsibility to listen for the screams of children gunned down from behind as they flee in the darkness from the rubble of their homes. We all have a responsibility to listen for the gasps of little children breathing their last because starvation causes them to die from asphyxiation. The US is complying with a coalition using starvation and disease to wage war. With 400,000 children's lives in the balance, with a Yemeni child dying once every 75 seconds, what US interests could possibly justify our further hesitation in insisting the blockade must be lifted? The war must end. [Read More]  As for the Biden administration's current policy, read "Biden Mum on Yemen Action as War Rages" by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [April 5, 2021] [Link].

 

(Video) Destroying Syria: 10 Years of Intervention

From Massachusetts Peace Action – [FB – This 90-minute program gives imo an excellent summary and overview of the Syrian civil war and its many outside interventions.  With Prof. Joshua Landis, whose "Syria Comment" website is invaluable in attempting to understand what is going on in Syria. – NB I recommend skipping the introduction; Prof. Landis starts about 10 minutes into the program.] [See the Program]

 

THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Greening Earth and creating Jobs, Biden to slash Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Extend Wind, Solar Credits

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [April11, 2021]

---- President Biden intends to slash tax subsidies for fossil fuels like coal and petroleum and to use taxes instead to encourage renewable energy. Since jobs in the coal industry are plummeting, and since job growth in renewable electricity is over 3 percent a year, Biden's plans will actually increase employment. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen explained that cutting fossil fuel subsidies would realize a revenue for the government of $35 billion over ten years. The exact subsidies to be cut were not identified, but an important one would be the provision that allows oil companies to write off the cost of new drilling. Keep it in the ground. …So, why can we tie these changes in taxes and subsidies to jobs? Because Biden is backing the winners. [Read More] And NB Prof. Cole reports "More CO2 in our Atmosphere now than any time since 3.6 mn Years Ago, when Oceans were 90 feet higher (that's our fate)" [Link].

 

How Debt and Climate Change Pose 'Systemic Risk' to World Economy

By Somini Sengupta, New York Times [April 7, 2021]

---- How does a country deal with climate disasters when it's drowning in debt? Not very well, it turns out. Especially not when a pandemic clobbers its economy. Take Belize, Fiji and Mozambique. Vastly different countries, they are among dozens of nations at the crossroads of two mounting global crises that are drawing the attention of international financial institutions: climate change and debt. They owe staggering amounts of money to various foreign lenders. They face staggering climate risks, too. … The United Nations said Thursday that the global economic collapse endangered nearly $600 billion in debt service payments over the next five years. Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are important lenders, but so are rich countries, as well as private banks and bondholders. The global financial system would face a huge problem if countries faced with shrinking economies defaulted on their debts. [Read More] And from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "Report: Big banks still pouring trillions into fossil fuel" [March 28, 2021] [Link].

 

CIVIL LIBERTIES

Two Years After Assange's Arrest, Biden Can End Trump's Assault On Press Freedom

By Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter [April 11, 2021]

---- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been detained at the high-security Belmarsh prison in London for two years. During that time, Assange became the first publisher to be indicted under the United States Espionage Act and prevailed after a district judge denied the U.S. government's extradition request. … The U.S. Justice Department dramatically escalated the political prosecution against Assange on April 11, 2019, when it unsealed a single charge indictment against the WikiLeaks founder. Ecuador allowed British police to enter their London embassy and drag him to a van. … Those who support freedom of the press may also recall the U.S. war crimes in Iraq that Assange helped to expose by publishing disclosures from Pfc. Chelsea Manning… [FB – and much more] [Read More]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Their Lawsuit Prevented 400,000 Deportations. Now It's Biden's Call. [Temporary Protective Status - TPS]

By Marcela Valdes, New York Times Magazine [April 7, 2021]

---- For years, Morales met with local police and government officials to advocate for the undocumented parishioners in her church. Now, faced with the possibility of her own deportation, she decided it was time to advocate for herself.  Morales contacted a local committee of the National T.P.S. Alliance, a grass-roots organization that began advocating for T.P.S. holders during the final months of the Obama administration. Soon she and her daughter, Crista Ramos, became the lead plaintiffs in Ramos v. Nielsen, a suit with 14 plaintiffs representing T.P.S. holders from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan as well as their U.S.-citizen children…. Some 2.3 million Hispanic Americans now trace their roots to El Salvador, more than to any other place except Mexico and the U.S. territory Puerto Rico. Many people point to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 as the catalyst for this immigration. But according to testimony given by a Census Department official before Congress in 1985, Salvadorans did not begin to leave their country en masse until April 1980, 15 years after that act was passed. According to the Pew Research Center, in 1980 there were an estimated 92,000 foreign-born Salvadorans living in the United States. By 1990, that number had rocketed to 459,000. Why did hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans move to the United States in a single decade? The answer to this question is the history of T.P.S. [Read More]

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

[FB – The apparently abstruse debate over the definition of antisemitism is actually of great practical importance, as the definition preferred by Israel and adopted by Europe and the USA finds criticism of Israel to be unacceptable.  An attempt at a new definition – "the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism" – tries to detach the concept from the State of Israel, but this in turn has raised questions that pro-Palestinian advocates – here the Jewish Voice for Peace – attempt to remedy.  The debate over definitions is connected with anti-BDS legislation and much else.  Read on!]

 

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism: Why the oldest hatred needs a new definition.

By Brian Klug, The Nation [April 1, 2021]

---- Confronted with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), published on March 25, 2021, it is tempting—especially for Jews at this time of year—to ask: Why is this definition of anti-Semitism different from all other definitions? Actually, the question to ask is more specific. In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental body, produced its "working definition of antisemitism." The IHRA definition has been endorsed by the secretary general of the United Nations and adopted by governments, political parties, public agencies, universities, and other bodies (including numerous Jewish organizations) in countries around the world. The European Parliament has called upon all member states to adopt the definition. The JDA is written, in large part, as a response to the IHRA text. So, a better question might be: How is the JDA different and why does the difference matter? In short: Why the JDA?

[Read More]

 

Five Principles for Dismantling Antisemitism: A Progressive Jewish Response to the Jerusalem Declaration

From Jewish Voice for Peace [April 5, 2021]

---- We write this statement with urgent concern about the ongoing attempts of the Israeli government to evade accountability for its human rights abuses and violations of international law by levying accusations of antisemitism at Palestinians and those who advocate for Palestinian rights. Not only does this silence Palestinians and their advocates, but it also jeopardizes Jewish safety and the struggle to dismantle antisemitism. The most prominent example of this dangerous campaign is the attempt to impose the flawed and widely discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism on governments, public institutions, universities, and civil society. The IHRA definition is not designed to protect Jewish communities from the rising bigotry and racist attacks we face, predominantly carried out by white supremacists. Instead, it has been employed in many countries as a bludgeon to suppress advocacy and academic freedom. … However, in attempting to remedy the deceptive claims of the IHRA definition, the JDA falls into the trap of situating Israel-Palestine at the centre of conversations about antisemitism. If the drafters required this special scrutiny to respond fully to IHRA, then they should have included representative Palestinian perspectives and analyses in shaping the document, without which the JDA remains incomplete.  [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

(Video) Eric Hobsbawm: The Consolations of History

From London Review of Books [April 2021]

[FB – The late Eric Hobsbawm was one of the 20^th century's great historians. His writing was influlenced by his membership in the communist movement, which he joined as a teenager in pre-Hitler Germany and continued throughout his professional career in England.  Thus his connection with workers' and revolutionary movements influenced all of his work, while avoiding the pitfalls of Stalinist orthodoxy posed additional challenges. And he was a very interesting man, to say the least.]

----In this feature-length documentary, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Hobsbawm's life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany as Hitler came to power and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s Soho and the makings of New Labour, taking in Italian bandits, Peruvian peasant movements and the development of nationalism in the modern world, with help from the assiduous observations of MI5. [See the Program]