Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
October 3, 2021
Hello All – Next Thursday, October 7th, will be the 20th anniversary of the start of the bombing of Afghanistan. In 2001, October 7th was a Sunday afternoon. In Dobbs Ferry, people were gathering for another meeting of the newly formed Concerned Families of Westchester. Meeting several times a week since the day after 9/11, we had grown to about 25 participants, meeting to talk about the news, our fears, what we might do. Most of those meeting in living rooms were older, and almost all had participated in protests against the Vietnam War. We had given ourselves the name "Concerned Families" in the hope that it would enable a meeting with our conservative congressman, to express our opposition to a war of revenge. For the past several meetings we had been talking about the likelihood of massive civilians casualties in Afghanistan if the Bush/Cheney people launched a war.
The news that bombing had begun framed our meeting that day. Our anger and sadness at the news was overshadowed by the fear that this would be a long and stupid war. So little did we know. . . On October 7, 2001 US and British planes bombed 31 targets, and over the next 76 days dropped 17,500 bombs on another 250 targets. By mid-November the Taliban gave up and fled to Pakistan or went into hiding. Was the war over? Not by a long shot, and for the next 20 years, the longest war in US history, the USA spent $300 million a day to continue the war, killing 71,000 civilians. 2,298 US soldiers were killed in the war, and more than 20,000 were wounded. Thousands of soldiers committed suicide after they returned the war. As the recently published book The Afghanistan Papers confirmed, successive US presidential administrations had no idea what to do with the war in Afghanistan, except not to lose it on their watch. Let the next guy take the blame for "cutting and running."
Is it really over? On September 21st President Biden addressed the UN General Assembly. I stand here today," he said, "for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war." But as Marjorie Cohn points out, "The day before, his administration had launched a drone strike in Syria, and three weeks earlier, the U.S. had conducted an air strike in Somalia. The commander-in-chief also apparently forgot that U.S. forces are still fighting in at least six different countries, including Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Niger. And he promised to continue bombing Afghanistan from afar." [Link].
The US war for Afghanistan, like the US war for Empire itself, is far from over. The US military regards its exit from Afghanistan to be one of "repositioning," while it "pivots to Asia" to confront the real enemy, China. Regarding Afghanistan, I think some of the front-burner issues are well illustrated by the articles linked below – on memory, on women, and on Afghanistan's mineral wealth. As usual, "the past is never dead; it's not even past."
Some Useful Reading about Afghanistan
"Will We Remember the Victims of the Kabul Drone Strike?" by Nick Turse, The Nation [September 29, 2021] [Link].
"For Afghan Women, the Frightening Return of 'Vice and Virtue.'" from Human Rights Watch; and "Three Lessons to Chart a Path Forward in Solidarity With Afghan Women" from MADRE.
"Impoverished Afghans live amid enormous riches," by Vijay Prashad [Asia Times]; and "Mapping Afghanistan's untapped natural resources" from Aljazeera.
News Notes
Are fascist/authoritarian right-wing forces gaining or losing strength in the USA? Was January 6th a set-back or a recruiting moment for the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and similar groups? Some bad news/answers to these questions come from Robert Pape, an expert on terrorists, suicide bombers, etc. Based on surveys taken last June, Pape finds that "47 million American adults – nearly 1 in 5 – agree with the statement that 'the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.[ Of those, 21 million also agree that 'use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency.'" And of course one-third of those ready to use force own a gun, 3 million served in the military, etc. Read more here.
Harvard University's recent announcement that it will divest its huge endowment fund from fossil fuels was a victory for the students who fought hard for many years to make it happen. Harvard's divestment also seems to have triggered other institutions to take divestment action. Read a good overview of these developments here.
How many people are killed by police each year? How many of them are Black or Hispanic? A report published in the prestigious UK medical journal The Lancet finds that half of these killings are mislabeled or not reported at all. The report also finds that Black people are 3.5 times more likely to be killed than white people. Read more here.
Finally, The Intercept put up a short video this week about USA women working during the Covid shutdown. Called "Precarity," it highlights the importance of the emergency government payments made to many low-income people. What will happen as these programs are shut down? A well-made film, imo.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each 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 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our 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!
This week's Rewards for stalwart readers come from a singer to whom I was introduced in one of Democracy Now's break between news segments. They are usually new to me and often send me looking to learn more. This week the program played Sara Thomsen's "Is it For Freedom?" On her website, Sara writes, "This song was written in response to hearing the stories told by U.S. citizens who traveled to Iraq to bring food and medicine and bear witness to the suffering sustained by our foreign policy. At the time of this song's writing (1999), there were 5,000 to 6,000 children dying each month as a direct result of UN/US imposed economic sanctions." You can hear a lot more of her songs here. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Bearing witness in Afghanistan — a conversation with Kathy Kelly on ending war and listening to its victims
From Waging Nonviolence [September 28, 2021]
---- This week, Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook [Nonviolence Radio Team] talk to Kathy Kelly, life-long nonviolence activist, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and co-coordinator of the Ban Killer Drones Campaign. She discusses her extensive experience in and thoughts about Afghanistan. American intervention, she believes, was — and indeed, continues to be — entirely misguided, escalating rather than resolving the violent conflicts there. ... Only when we truly look at Afghanistan, when we see it and its people in all their rich complexity can we come to a better understanding of what they want and need. Only by actively listening to individuals and groups on the ground will we learn how we might be able to join them in finding ways to resolve conflicts and rebuild. And all this depends on a firm commitment to nonviolence, genuine humility and honest self-reflection. [Read/hear the Interview]
(Video) Meet Mansoor Adayfi: I Was Kidnapped as a Teen, Sold to the CIA and Jailed at Guantánamo for 14 Years
From Democracy Now! [September 27, 2021]
[FB – This is an incredible story, told with great skill. As a memoir, I think it is in the same class as Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz.]
---- We speak with Mansoor Adayfi, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who was held at the military prison for 14 years without charge, an ordeal he details in his new memoir, "Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo." Adayfi was 18 when he left his home in Yemen to do research in Afghanistan, where he was kidnapped by Afghan warlords, then sold to the CIA after the 9/11 attacks. Adayfi describes being brutally tortured in Afghanistan before he was transported to Guantánamo in 2002, where he became known as Detainee #441 and survived years of abuse. Adayfi was released against his will to Serbia in 2016 and now works as the Guantánamo Project coordinator at CAGE, an organization that advocates on behalf of victims of the war on terror. [See the Program]
The U.S.'s Long History of Mistreating Haitian Migrants
September 24, 2021]
[FB – Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-born writer of fiction. She came to the USA at the age of 12 and has published many novels and short stories, usually set in Haiti or the Haitian Diaspora.]
---- This past week, while looking at the heart-wrenching images of Haitian migrants—packed by the thousands under the Del Rio International Bridge, in Texas, or crossing at shallow points of the Rio Grande, or being chased by Border Patrol agents on horseback, or landing back in Haiti for the first time in years—I thought of some of my family's own migration nightmares. I remembered my mother telling me how, while living in New York on an expired tourist visa, in the nineteen-seventies, she was arrested during an immigration raid at a garment factory. She was pregnant at the time with one of my younger brothers. Spotting and cramping, and held in a crowded cell, she thought that she'd miscarried, until she was finally seen by a doctor a few days later. … I also remembered the hundreds of men and women I have seen at Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture Airport over the past decade, heading out of the country toward newer destinations, as hopeful and determined as my parents once had been to travel abroad, find work, send money home to their families, and eventually offer a better life to their children. [Read More] Also of great interest is "The U.S. – Haiti Border: How the United States Blocks Haitians Wherever They Go" b [Link].
The Climate Crisis
If we don't get climate justice, shut it down
By Patrick Mazza, The Raven [September 24, 2021]
[FB – If the Glasgow climate summit doesn't result in dramatic action, what will we do? We could wait until the next election, and the one after that. Or …?]
---- Uprooting the system, shutting it down, looks like what we're going to have to do. The Glasgow climate summit, the 26th such meeting since 1995, is being framed as the last chance to do something serious about the onrushing climate catastrophe. But based on the record, Glasgow is likely to fail. Carbon pollution and fossil fuel use have steadily climbed upwards, as the following charts show… This clearly isn't working. It is time for the sane people to get in the way of business as usual, and on a sustained basis. Glasgow is the last chance for the global climate process to retain a shred of credibility. If COP26 doesn't produce a solid plan to deeply cut climate-twisting pollution beginning immediately, which I hate to say is the likely outcome, it is time for serious, mass direct action. [Read More] The poster-boy for fossil-fuel industry obstruction is West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Read "Joe Manchin, America's Climate Decider in Chief, Is a Coal Baron" by Mark Hertsgaard, The Guardian [UK] [September 30, 2021] [Link]
Civil Liberties
(Video) Kidnap or Kill: The CIA's plot against WikiLeaks' Julian Assange
From Aljazeera [October 2, 2021] [Link].
---- Why isn't the CIA's plan to kidnap Julian Assange making more headlines? An exposé detailing the CIA's war on WikiLeaks – a Trump administration plan to silence Julian Assange and the organisation – has been published. But like so much of the Assange story, it's got nothing like the media coverage it deserves. [FB –The first 10 minutes of this Aljazeera program "On the Media" concern the Julian Assange case; and this is a good introduction to more in-depth stories linked here.]
Also very good on the Julian Assange case – (Video) "The Plot to Kill Julian Assange: Report Reveals CIA's Plan to Kidnap, Assassinate WikiLeaks Founder," from Democracy Now! [Link]; and "CIA Plan To Poison Assange Wasn't Needed. The US Found a 'Lawful' Way To Disappear Him" b[Link];
(Video) Don't Pursue War, Pursue War Crimes: Michael Ratner's Decades-Long Battle to Close Guantánamo
From Democracy Now! [October 1, 2021]
---- We look at the life and legacy of the late Michael Ratner, the trailblazing human rights lawyer and former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. … Michael Ratner spent decades opposing government abuse and fought to close the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, first in the 1990s when it was used to hold thousands of Haitian asylum seekers and later when the George W. Bush administration opened a military prison there to detain hundreds of people from the so-called war on terror. Ratner died in 2016 at age 72. His posthumous memoir, "Moving the Bar: My Life as a Radical Lawyer," has just been published. [See the Program]
Israel/Palestine
Water Justice for Occupied Palestinians is demanded by UN, as Israeli Squatters Use 87% of Aquifers
, Informed Comment [October 3, 2021]
[FB – Settler colonialism. Ethnic cleansing. Take the land and the water. It's the same all over the world.]
---- The United Nations High Commission on Human Rights formally reported on Friday on the unjust water situation in the Palestinian West Bank, which is under Israeli military occupation and subject to an illegal colonization effort by Israel to displace the indigenous population with Israeli squatters. … Now, the 5 million Palestinians under Israeli military control in the West Bank and under Israeli blockade in Gaza are stateless and without basic human rights. One of those basics is the right to water. … The age of oil wars is subsiding as we turn to electric cars. The age of water wars is only beginning, and in this case Israel is waging a water war on Palestinians who can't fight back. [Read More]
Our History
The Politician-Scholar - Eric Williams and the tangled history of capitalism and slavery
By Gerald Horne, The Nation [October 2, 2021]
---- A new edition of Capitalism and Slavery reminds us in particular of Williams's independent political and intellectual spirit and how his scholarship upended the historiographical consensus on slavery and abolition. Above all else, in this relatively slender volume, Williams asserted the primacy of the enslaved themselves in breaking the chains that bound them, putting their experiences at the center of his research. Controversially, he also placed slavery at the heart of the rise of capitalism and the British Empire, which carried profound implications for its successor, the United States. The same holds true for his devaluation of the humanitarianism of white abolitionists and their allies as a spur for ending slavery. … Williams's most disputed thesis was his downgrading of the heroic role of the British abolitionists. In his telling of their story, he argued that naked economic self-interest, more than morality or humanitarianism, drove England's retreat from the slave trade in 1807 and its barring of slavery in 1833. Like The New York Times' 1619 Project, this part of Williams's argument pricked a sensitive nerve in the nation's self-conception. [Read More]
