Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
January 23, 2022
Hello All – When the last US soldier left Afghanistan, the country's economy and service-infrastructure was held together only by massive US spending and the funding of international NGOs. Now this funding has been removed and, according to the United Nations, millions of people live on the edge of starvation. Why is this happening? Does the USA have a moral obligation to address this disaster? And what are the obstacles to it doing so?
There is little argument over the severity of the crisis. The United Nations estimates that only 2% of the population is getting enough to eat. The head of the World Food Program in Afghanistan estimates that 3.2 million children face acute malnutrition and 23 million people are in crisis. "It's on the brink," say the head of the WFP. "There is no province in Afghanistan today with less than 30% of their population either in crisis or emergency food insecurity." Two-thirds of the population lives in conditions of famine [Link]. Similarly, the World Health Organization says the country's hospital and medical infrastructure is on the brink of collapse [Link]. And this month the United Nations is attempting to put together a $5 billion aid program to avert a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, the biggest single-country appeal in the organization's history [LInk].
The failure of the world's international organizations to address the crisis in Afghanistan parallels their failure to adequately address the climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. And in each case some (but not all) of the bottlenecks are in the USA. In the case of Afghanistan, The imposition of economic sanctions on the Taliban prevents payments from donor organizations to NGOs from functioning; and the impounding of some $9 billion of Afghanistan government money in the USA blocks government action. Of course the Taliban is not a typical government, and from many quarters come demands to not release Afghanistan's money to the government until it has met certain conditions (e.g. women's freedom and girls' education), or to release the money only to a non-governmental agency. And there's the rub, as described in a useful article from The Intercept about conflicting strategies in Congress to secure the release of the $9 billion. For by the time a system of "conditions" for aid to Afghanistan and the Taliban has been structured and the conditions supposedly met, millions of people may well have died. "Unconditional aid" is the only responsible way to address the crisis, but the political prospects of this happening face an uphill battle.
Useful Reading on the Famine/Crisis in Afghanistan
(Video) Afghanistan Faces "Tsunami of Hunger" as U.S. Sanctions Crash Country's Economy, from Democracy Now! [January 21, 2022] [See the Program]
Democrats Dicker in Congress as Biden Flirts With Afghan Genocide
By Ryan Grim and Sara Sirota, The Intercept [January 19, 2022] [Link].
(Video) Afghanistan in Freefall: Deadly U.S. Sanctions Blamed for Shocking Humanitarian Crisis, from Democracy Now! [January 14, 2022] [See the Program]
Hospitals are collapsing in Afghanistan. At this rate sanctions will kill more people than the Taliban, by Dr. Paul Spiegel, Washington Post [December 16, 2021] [Link].
News Notes
This Newsletter has reported previously on the strike of some 3,000 graduate-student workers at Columbia University, and on the relatively successful outcome of their strike. Graduate student and part-time workers increasingly provides the bulk of university instruction in the USA. In "Columbia University Has Lost Its Way" by Columbia Law School professor, Katherine Franke, the author gives us an overview of this Brave New World of higher education. [Link].
In June the Supreme Court will announce its decision in the case of a Mississippi law that could end the legal right to abortion. If the Court upholds the law, some two dozen states are poised to enact similar legislation, returning much of the USA to the pre-Roe world of a half century ago. In those Dark Days of abortion criminalization, one alternative for women seeking an abortion was the underground service called "Jane," which initially provided referrals to cooperating doctors and later became abortion providers themselves. This year's Sundance Film Festival offers two films that look back on "Jane," described in this interesting article from The New York Times.
Buddhist Monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh died last week at the age of 95. Born in the Vietnamese city of Huế, in the 1960s he founded the Youth for Social Services in Vietnam and traveled to the United States to study. A strong critic of the Vietnam War, Nhất Hạnh was barred from returning home for decades and spent much of his life in France, where he established Plum Village, which became Europe's largest Buddhist monastery. To learn more about this remarkable man, go here..
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather/covid permitting, 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 will be held on Monday, February 7th 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 for the link. 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!
Some stalwart readers have asked for another round of selections from the New Orleans blues/jazz band Tuba Skinny, which accompanied me during the writing of this Newsletter, so here's a selection that I like. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Why I Almost Didn't Read My Poem at the Inauguration
By Amanda Gorman, New York Times [January 20, 2022]
---- It's told like this: Amanda Gorman performed at the inauguration, and the rest is history.
The truth is I almost declined to be the inaugural poet. Why? I was terrified. I was scared of failing my people, my poetry. But I was also terrified on a physical level. Covid was still raging, and my age group couldn't get vaccinated yet. Just a few weeks before, domestic terrorists assaulted the U.S. Capitol, the very steps where I would recite. I didn't know then that I'd become famous, but I did know at the inauguration I was going to become highly visible — which is a very dangerous thing to be in America, especially if you're Black and outspoken and have no Secret Service. [Read More]
Anti-Vaxxers Maintain Persistent Presence in the Hudson Valley
By Will Solomon, The River [January 4, 2022]
----By most accounts, COVID-19 vaccination efforts in the Hudson Valley have been successful. As of January 3, about 70 percent of the population in the Mid-Hudson Valley and Capital regions are fully vaccinated, including nearly 80 percent of those over age 18. Thanks in large part to vaccination, deaths statewide have correspondingly declined from the highs of the initial surge and last winter's wave. … One enduring obstacle is opposition to COVID-19 vaccines. Resistance to both vaccination and mitigation measures, like masks, is stronger than it might appear in the region, where in the Upper Hudson Valley, anti-vaxxers have a persistent voice in the group Do We Need This? The Columbia County coalition, which appears to operate more as a loose network than an actual organization, is at the center of regional opposition to COVID-19 vaccines, spreading misleading and often false information on vaccines and COVID mitigation measures, and exhibiting disturbing ties to extreme right movements and trends. [Read More]
War & Peace
After a Year of Biden, Why Do We Still Have Trump's Foreign Policy?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [January 20, 2022]
---- President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump's foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama's diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to resolve long-standing foreign policy problems and provided models for the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that Biden was promising. Tragically for America and the world, Biden has failed to restore Obama's progressive initiatives, and has instead doubled down on many of Trump's most dangerous and destabilizing policies. It is especially ironic and sad that a president who ran so stridently on being different from Trump has been so reluctant to reverse his regressive policies. Now the Democrats' failure to deliver on their promises with respect to both domestic and foreign policy is undermining their prospects in November's midterm election. Here is our assessment of Biden's handling of ten critical foreign policy issues: [Afghanistan]; [Russia/Ukraine] [and 8 more.] [Read More]
---- President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump's foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama's diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to resolve long-standing foreign policy problems and provided models for the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that Biden was promising. Tragically for America and the world, Biden has failed to restore Obama's progressive initiatives, and has instead doubled down on many of Trump's most dangerous and destabilizing policies. It is especially ironic and sad that a president who ran so stridently on being different from Trump has been so reluctant to reverse his regressive policies. Now the Democrats' failure to deliver on their promises with respect to both domestic and foreign policy is undermining their prospects in November's midterm election. Here is our assessment of Biden's handling of ten critical foreign policy issues: [Afghanistan]; [Russia/Ukraine] [and 8 more.] [Read More]
The War in Yemen
Biden's Shameful Silence on Saudi Arabia's War in Yemen
By Trita Parsi and Annelle Sheline, The New Republic [January 13, 2022]
---- Last February, in his first major foreign policy speech, President Biden declared, "The war in Yemen must end." But nearly a year later, the U.S.-enabled death and destruction in Yemen continue apace. … This latest round of violence demonstrates that U.S. support continues to embolden the Saudis, Emiratis, and the Hadi government, perpetuating a war that has already claimed 377,000 Yemeni lives. … Biden appears to maintain the same flawed logic that kept the U.S. mired in Afghanistan for 20 years: that the situation on the ground in Yemen will change with a U.S. thumb on the scales. But the only change is for the worse. More civilians are dying, whether of violence or disease or starvation. Institutions and services are eroding and collapsing. The currency is depreciating. Already classified as a "failed state" before the war began, Yemen is slipping further into ungovernable chaos, precipitating further military intervention by foreign powers. [Read More]
USA – Russia - Ukraine
Russia Reacts to NATO…and History
, Counterpunch [January 21, 2022]
---- In mid-December 2021, the Russian government publicly announced that it would "seek legally formulated guarantees of security" from the United States and its allies that would end NATO military activity in eastern Europe as well as military support for the Ukraine. U.S. media reporting on this event, characterized by the New York Times, framed it as a Russian attempt to "wind back the clock 30 years to just before the collapse of the Soviet Union," and thus Russian demands were "echoes of the Cold War." Little media credence has been given to Russian President Vladimir Putin's repeated insistence that his country is "threatened" by NATO activities close to its borders. … It would seem that while Washington and its allies, to say nothing of the media, heard the Russian demands, they displayed no evidence of understanding them within an accurate historical context—a history that goes back considerably further than the dissolution of the Soviet Union 30 years ago. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Brazil Is On Fire
By Marina Milos, Extinction Rebellion [January 12, 2022]
----I'm a Brazilian biologist and I actually cannot believe what I'm seeing...Brazil is on fire! We are losing biodiversity, killing and displacing wild animals and producing smoke, a lot of smoke. Our forests are adding carbon to the atmosphere instead of absorbing it. And, year after year, the situation seems to get worse, and the burning season extends for a longer period. … As a biology student, I visited the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest. As a nature lover, I went to the Amazon Rainforest. All these biomes are unique and so exotic. As I watch the fires consuming trees more than 1000 years old, I think "How can there be people who in their right minds let this happen?" A skyscraper goes up in a few months, a city is built in a few years, but a forest takes millennia to form! We urgently need to stop consuming the planet's resources so wildly. Sometimes, I think of humanity as if we are a swarm of grasshoppers consuming everything in sight until there is nothing left. [Read More]
Civil Liberties/"The War on Terror"
Gitmo's Shameful Twentieth Anniversary
By January 19, 2022]
---- The U.S. prison at the Guantánamo Bay naval base reached its shameful 20th anniversary of operations on January 11 — with a legacy marked by the detention of nearly 800 Muslim men and boys, the majority of them held without charge or trial for years and many subjected to torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment. President Biden has so far failed to take consequential action during his first year in office to fulfill his pledge of closing the prison before his term ends. His administration has in fact done the opposite and is now reportedly spending millions of dollars to upgrade it. Without taking bold action, Biden risks following in President Obama's footsteps of empty promises that ultimately perpetuate an untenable status quo. Meanwhile, the remaining 39 prisoners and our nation's rule of law still languish. [Read More] For a deeper dive into the legal issues re: Guantánamo read "America's Prison from Hell" by Karen J. Greenberg, Tom Dispatch [Link].
The State of the Union
As Immigration Plummeted, Conservatives Falsely Accused Biden of Fueling a Crisis
By James Risen, The Intercept [
---- Throughout 2021, Republican politicians and conservative pundits hammered the Biden administration over what they claimed was a crisis of uncontrolled immigration. Images of migrants seeking to cross the border from Mexico in the early months of the new administration, which played in a seemingly endless loop on cable news, led to growing acceptance on the right of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, claiming that President Joe Biden was throwing open the nation's borders to nonwhite immigrants who would steal white Americans' jobs — and vote for Democrats. … But rarely has such a long-running and widely accepted political and media narrative been so at odds with reality. In fact, immigration into the United States in 2021 plunged as a result of both a decline in international travel brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic and restrictive U.S. immigration policies, according to new report from the Census Bureau. The nation's political and media classes were seemingly so obsessed over the images of migrants at the border that they failed to grasp the truth, which was that immigration levels collapsed in 2021. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
The Cruel, Petty Killing of an Anti-Occupation Activist
By Ben Ehrenreich, The Nation [January 21, 2022]
---- No one can complain of a shortage of funerals in the West Bank lately. In the last year, Israeli forces have killed more than 300 Palestinians, nearly a quarter of them children. Hajj Suleiman was well into his 70s, but his death hit me hard, and not only because I knew him. His nephew Tariq Salim al-Hathaleen once told me, "There are not many people like Suleiman on Earth." And he was right. Hajj Suleiman was a whirlwind in human form. His pure anarchic dignity, his defiance, and his courage were the sort that cannot be confined to a political program. The circumstances of his killing are almost too painful to recount—too cruel, too petty, too cowardly, too perfectly typical of Israel's occupation. … It is Umm al-Kheir's misfortune to be located within the more than 60 percent of the land in the West Bank that falls under the complete administrative control of the Israeli military. Israeli authorities routinely refuse to grant construction permits to Palestinians, which means that almost every structure in the village is illegal. [Read More] Also of interest is this report from the on-going fight against house demolitions in Sheikh Jarrah, from Mondoweiss. The Israel and Palestine chapter from the latest Human Rights Watch report can be read here.
Our History
Smedley Butler Helped Build American Empire. Then He Turned Against It.
By Jonah Walters, Jacobin Magazine [January 2022]
[FB – This is a review of Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire by Jonathan M. Katz.]
---- Born into a family of congressmen and millionaires in 1881, Smedley Butler was destined to succeed in the career of his choice while promoting the interests of his class. And that's what he did, at first. … Butler was the youngest major general in Marine Corps history, and at the time of his death, he was the most decorated Marine who had ever lived. But accolades were not enough to ease his troubled conscience. As the fearsome roar of the early century faded into the unease of the Great Depression, Butler exchanged his military garb for a civilian suit and jacket, leaving the Marine Corps behind to pursue a new vocation as the most prominent antiwar orator in America. Turning his back on the defense establishment, Butler forcefully rejected not only the military command hierarchy but also the entire project of US warmaking. In the process, he became an avatar of the rumbling discontent that gripped the country in those years, as hundreds of thousands of aggrieved war veterans demanded relief from an intransigent government and, in doing so, ended up challenging the legitimacy of the American political system. [Read More] Also of interest is this Podcast interview with the book's author, from
