Concerned Families of Westchester
February 28, 2021
Hi All – Our editorial this week begins with some words by Code Pink's Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, who express the deserved outrage at President Biden's bombing of Syria last week better than I can. They write:
The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing "Iranian-backed militias" who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-à-vis Iran, why hasn't the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts? According to the Pentagon, the US strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the US military and injured a US service member. Accounts of the number killed in the US attack vary from one to 22. The Pentagon made the incredible claim that this action "aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq." This was countered by the Syrian government, which condemned the illegal attack on its territory and said the strikes "will lead to consequences that will escalate the situation in the region." The strike was also condemned by the governments of China and Russia. A member of Russia's Federation Council warned that such escalations in the area could lead to "a massive conflict." [Read More]
They go on to described the hare-brained "logic" of the Biden people that bombing is good for diplomacy, and that international law is nothing for Americans to get bothered about. And today we learned that the bombing of the Iranian-supported militia group in Syria came immediately after the Europeans had invited Iran to discuss the Iran nuclear agreement at a European location, with the US sitting in: in other words, jump-starting diplomacy. [Link]. Stalwarts of a certain age will remember that this was the pattern of US "diplomacy" during the Vietnam War, with Vietnamese proposals for cease fires or negotiations being met by renewed bombing. Indeed, there are many indications that the Biden team would not mind if negotiations to re-start the Iran nuclear agreement came to naught, as long as it was not too obvious that it was the Americans, and not the Iranians, who were refusing to negotiate. This, of course, would appease the Saudis and the Israelis, as well as the Republicans and many "moderate" Democrats. And having killed 17 or so Iranians – darker people – Joe Biden is now a "made man" and can join the fraternity of similar "world leaders."
News Notes
Concerned Families of Westchester is one of more than 100 organizations supporting the Invest in Our New York Act (a/ka "Tax the Rich"). A good article about the campaign, "Is New York Finally Ready to Tax the Rich?" made it to the front page of the New York Times this week. In a nutshell, the proposed legislation would raise $50 billion in revenue for basic services by tweeking the tax laws on what the very richest pay. Whether this legislation gets to a vote and passes depends on our state senator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Please take moment to call her (518-455-2715) or send her an email (scousins@nysenate.gov). Tell her that you support the "Invest in Our New York" legislation package and ask her to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. And for an in-depth look at the question of the Very Rich and their taxes, check out "Taxes on the Rich: One-Sixth of What They Used to Be" by Chuck Collins and Bob Lord, Institute for Policy Studies [February 12, 2021] [LInk].
The Senate parliamentarian threw a monkey wrench into the Biden administration's $1.6 trillion Covid relief machinery this week by declaring that the $15 minimum-wage part of the package was out-of-bounds for legislation headed for "reconciliation. But Democrats on the left are fighting back. ""I'm Sorry," Says Ro Khanna, "An Unelected Parliamentarian Does Not Get to Deprive 32 Million Americans the Raise They Deserve." [Common Dreams,
Democracy Now! segment, "'Not Ready to Give Up': Democrats Push Senate to Keep Popular $15 Minimum Wage in Stimulus Bill" [February 25, 2021]. For some deeper background, read "The Fake Debate Over a Minimum Wage" b [Link].
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 on the first Monday of the month (March 1st, etc.), from 5 to 5:30 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 4 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!
This week's Rewards come from Ry Cooder's "Paris, Texas" soundtrack. Do you know the film? Here's the opening scene. And here's some more. And more on line. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Why I Support an International Treaty to Ban Weaponized Drones and Drone Surveillance By Kathy Kelly, BanWeaponizedDrones [February 28, 2021]
---- I asked our guest if he could ever imagine people in his village being willing to converse with ordinary U.S. people about possibilities for peace. He looked at me as though I were a bit off my rocker. "Who would ever be so crazy," he asked, "as to not want peace? We would only ask you to leave your weapons outside. … If President Biden wants to end endless wars, he should completely scrap reliance on militarism and weapons to solve problems. Taking weapons out of the toolkit pushes people in powerful places to stop provoking cold wars and the proxy wars they spawn. People who fought for and negotiated treaties banning land mines, cluster bombs and nuclear weapons should now guide international momentum to ban weaponized drones through means of a treaty prohibiting the development, sale, storage or use of these pernicious weapons. Banning weaponized and surveillance drones would enhance our capacity to work toward meeting human needs. [Read More]
India Targets Climate Activists With the Help of Big Tech
By Naomi Klein, The Intercept [
---- The case against Ravi and her "co-conspirators" hinges entirely on routine uses of well-known digital tools: WhatsApp groups, a collectively edited Google Doc, a private Zoom meeting, and several high-profile tweets, all of which have been weaponized into key pieces of alleged evidence in a state-sponsored and media-amplified activist hunt. At the same time, these very tools have been used in a coordinated pro-government messaging campaign to turn public sentiment against the young activists and the movement of farmers they came together to support, often in clear violation of the guardrails social media companies claim to have erected to prevent violent incitement on their platforms. In a nation where online hatred has tipped with chilling frequency into real-world pogroms targeting women and minorities, human rights advocates are warning that India is on the knife edge of terrible violence, perhaps even the kind of genocidal bloodshed that social media aided and abetted against the Rohingya in Myanmar. [Read More]
(Video) Progressives Must Revitalize the Labor Movement – An Interview with Noam Chomsky
With Paul Jay, The Analysis [February 24, 2021]
----If you think about it, we're entering into a major class war on the international level of the pandemic. This is going to end sooner or later. Hundreds of thousands of needless deaths with little end, and then comes the post-pandemic world. What's it going to be? Well, the people who created the situation for which all this arose, they're relentless, the business community and its agents in the political system are working very hard to ensure that the post-pandemic world is an extension of the neoliberal bonanza for them and disaster for everyone else. They don't give up their class conscious, relentless, know what they're doing. The question is whether competing forces, popular forces will be able to overcome them. [See the Program]
What Lawrence Ferlinghetti Means to Me
---- The anarchist, pacifist poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whom I knew for forty years was shy and introverted, even while he was a public figure who wanted to be recognized and appreciated as an artist. A decade older than me, he cared deeply about his friends in the city, in Bolinas and in Big Sur. He also valued his own privacy. … I will remember him as editor, publisher, poet and painter who invigorated the literary scene in San Francisco and who connected the city and its citizens to the cultures of the world. Perhaps Ferlinghetti had no single finest moment, but rather many of them spread across a lifetime. Perhaps, too, it's his longevity that matters as much as anything else about him. The publisher who gave birth to the Beats, by giving their books to the word, outlived the Beat Generation writers he promoted, and yet never joined their circle. That's part of the paradox of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was more complicated than he seemed to be. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
Why the US needs to get out of Syria: Biden orders Bombing that kills 17 in Proxy dance with Iran
---- Washington is describing the airstrike as revenge for the Shiite militia bombardment last week of a base at Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan that has US contractors and troops. One non-American contractor for the US on that base was killed and a US soldier suffered a concussion from a rocket blast. The Brigades of the Party of God denied responsibility for that attack, though in the past it has been happy to assert it undertook a rocket strike on a base with US personnel. Another shadowy group, the Brigades of the Guardians of Blood, said it did the Erbil bombing. … The US interprets any action by Iraqi Shiite militias as directed from Tehran, but this assumption is unsafe. Iran does not have command and control over these militias. … Members of the hoary foreign policy "blob" inside the Beltway told the Washington Post that the strike was intended to let the Iranians know that the US could not be pushed around, in advance of the opening of negotiations over the US return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. That's the most damn fool thing I've ever heard. The US tore up the nuclear deal in 2018 and never had abided by its part of the bargain, to lift economic sanctions on Iran. President Biden should concentrate on nuclear issues if he wants a nuclear accord, and avoid extraneous distractions like militias. [Read More]
Democrats Pressure Biden on U.S. Backing for Saudi War in Yemen
By Alex Emmons, The Intercept [
---- Weeks after President Joe Biden announced he would end U.S. support for "offensive" military operations in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of progressive lawmakers are asking his administration to clarify what forms of U.S. support will continue. In his first foreign policy address earlier this month, Biden said his administration was "ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales." But he also promised that the U.S. would continue to help Saudi Arabia defend itself against missile attacks, including from Iranian-backed militias like the Houthis in Yemen. In the following weeks, his administration has yet to explain how it distinguishes between offensive and defensive forms of support. On Thursday, 41 members of Congress sent a letter to Biden expressing support for his decision to limit U.S. backing for the war but asked him to clarify what forms of "military, intelligence, [and] logistical" support it defines as "offensive" activities and what forms of support will continue. [Read More]
US counterterrorism operations touched 85 countries in the last 3 years alone
By George Petras, et al., USA Today [February 26, 2021]
---- Nearly 20 months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier under a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner and declared "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Nearly 18 years later, the U.S. is still entangled in military action in the Middle East and beyond. After the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11, much of the U.S. military activity has been focused on counterterrorism efforts, either in direct combat, through drone attacks, border patrols, intelligence gathering or training other nations' security forces. These globe-spanning operations have cost the U.S. in blood and treasure and had a massive impact on populations around the world. Newer nonmilitary threats from climate change to cyberattacks raise questions about the utility of holding on to hundreds of foreign bases and deploying tens of thousands of troops overseas. [Read More] For a good analysis of this research, go here.
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Returning to the Paris Agreement is a Start, Now We Need New Internationalism on Climate
By Lorah Steichen, National Priorities Project [February 19, 2021]
---- For the United States to do its fair share of the global effort to keep temperature rise to 1.5°C, rapidly reducing its own emissions on a scale that matches its outsized contributions to the crisis is a good start. But we can't stop there. The path to a livable future requires new internationalism rooted in global cooperation, resource sharing, and solidarity. The first step on that path is accepting and then addressing our role in the climate crisis. According to an analysis from the U.S. Climate Action Network, the U.S. fair share of the global action needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C is the equivalent of reducing U.S. domestic emissions 195 percent by 2030. Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal Proposal asserted that reducing emissions by about 160 percent by 2030 would be the U.S. fair share. How does a country reduce its emissions by more than 100 percent? By pairing ambitious domestic targets with significantly ramped up contributions to international climate funds that support poor countries' efforts to decarbonize. [Read More]
---- For the United States to do its fair share of the global effort to keep temperature rise to 1.5°C, rapidly reducing its own emissions on a scale that matches its outsized contributions to the crisis is a good start. But we can't stop there. The path to a livable future requires new internationalism rooted in global cooperation, resource sharing, and solidarity. The first step on that path is accepting and then addressing our role in the climate crisis. According to an analysis from the U.S. Climate Action Network, the U.S. fair share of the global action needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C is the equivalent of reducing U.S. domestic emissions 195 percent by 2030. Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal Proposal asserted that reducing emissions by about 160 percent by 2030 would be the U.S. fair share. How does a country reduce its emissions by more than 100 percent? By pairing ambitious domestic targets with significantly ramped up contributions to international climate funds that support poor countries' efforts to decarbonize. [Read More]
A New Cold War on a Scalding Planet: Biden, Climate Change, and China
---- Slowing the pace of climate change and getting "tough" on China, especially over its human-rights abuses and unfair trade practices, are among the top priorities President Biden has announced for his new administration. Evidently, he believes that he can tame a rising China with harsh pressure tactics, while still gaining its cooperation in areas of concern to Washington. As he wrote in Foreign Affairs during the presidential election campaign, "The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China's abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change." If, however, our new president truly believes that he can build an international coalition to gang up on China and secure Beijing's cooperation on climate change, he's seriously deluded. Indeed, though he could succeed in provoking a new cold war, he won't prevent the planet from heating up unbearably in the process. [Read More]
(Video) Fossil Fuel Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on Deadly Deregulation & Why Texas Needs the Green New Deal
From Democracy Now! [February 22, 2021]
---- Millions of Texans are still suffering after severe winter weather devastated the state's energy and water systems. About 8 million Texans remain under orders to boil water, and 30,000 homes still have no power. Around 70 deaths have now been linked to the winter storms, including at least 12 people who died inside their homes after losing heat. Republican lawmakers in Texas are facing increasing criticism for their handling of the crisis, their decades-long push to deregulate the state's energy system, and their unfounded attacks on renewable energy and the Green New Deal. Naomi Klein, senior correspondent at The Intercept and a professor at Rutgers University, says Republicans' reaction is "because of panic" over their own culpability. "The Green New Deal is a plan that could solve so many of Texas's problems and the problems across the country, and Republicans have absolutely nothing to offer except for more deregulation, more privatization, more austerity." [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
American Gulag [Prisons}
---- The U.S. tops any other country in the world for its number of prisoners – over 2,300,000. China, by contrast, has roughly 200,000 prisoners. But the U.S. general population is only 330 million, while China's is 1.4 billion. American prisoners constitute a much larger percentage of the population than those in any other nation. The U.S. has clung to this dubious distinction for decades. Equaling the Soviet gulag at its height in the 1950s in numbers of prisoners, the U.S. also locks away 61,000 of them in the torture called solitary confinement and 2700 in the terror called death row. These are not the policies and actions of a civilized society. This is barbarism. [Read More]
In Statehouses, Stolen-Election Myth Fuels a G.O.P. Drive to Rewrite Rules
---- Led by loyalists who embrace former President Donald J. Trump's baseless claims of a stolen election, Republicans in state legislatures nationwide are mounting extraordinary efforts to change the rules of voting and representation — and enhance their own political clout. At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote. And although the decennial redrawing of political maps has been pushed to the fall because of delays in delivering 2020 census totals, there are already signs of an aggressive drive to further gerrymander political districts, particularly in states under complete Republican control. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Was the Killing of Ahmad Erekat an Extrajudicial Execution?
By Noura Erakat, Mouin Rabbani and Angela Davis, The Nation [February 26, 2021]
---- On June 23, 2020, Ahmad Erekat, 26, was shot and killed by Israeli forces at the Container checkpoint in the central West Bank after he emerged unarmed from his car, which had crashed into the checkpoint. The Israeli authorities have consistently claimed that its personnel were acting in legitimate self-defense against a deliberate attack. As is their practice in such circumstances, they seized Ahmad's body and have to this day refused to release it to his family for a proper burial. Ahmad's family, as well as Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations, have called the Israeli version of events into question from the very outset, citing evidence that the crash was an accident, that Ahmad was unarmed and moving away from his killers before he was repeatedly shot, and pointing out that it made little sense for Ahmad to have carried out an attack on the day of his sister's wedding. … Contrary to persistent Israeli claims, the report concluded that the available evidence indicates that the incident was an accident, and Ahmad's death a case of "extrajudicial execution." Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya and an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, interviewed Noura Erakat, an assistant professor at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and a cousin of Ahmad Erekat, to get a better understanding of the case and the recent investigation. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
(Video) The Assassination of Malcolm X: Ex-Undercover Officer Admits Role in FBI & Police Conspiracy
From Democracy Now! [February 26, 2021]
---- The FBI and New York Police Department are facing renewed calls to open their records into the assassination of Malcolm X, after the release of a deathbed confession of a former undercover NYPD officer who admitted to being part of a conspiracy targeting Malcolm. In the confession, Raymond Wood, who died last year, admitted he entrapped two members of Malcolm's security team in another crime — a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty — just days before the assassination. This left the Black civil rights leader vulnerable at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, where he was fatally shot on February 21, 1965. Raymond Wood's cousin Reggie Wood, who released the confession last week at a press conference, tells Democracy Now! his cousin's involvement in the plot haunted him for much of his life. "Ray was told by his handlers not to repeat anything that he had seen or heard, or he would join Malcolm," says Reggie Wood. "He trusted me enough to reveal this information and asked me not to say anything until he passed away, but at the same time not to allow him to take it to his grave." [See the Program]
