Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
February 20, 2022
Hello All – As I write, the headline of the on-line New York Times has jumped to "US Learned of Kremlin Order to Proceed with Invasion, Officials Say." And so there you have it. Or do we…? A few hours ago, Aljazeera reported that Prime Minister Macron of France and President Putin of Russia had discussed diplomacy via phone, and that several meetings were scheduled for early next week. European spokespeople are reported to be vexed that the US will not share details of any intelligence about an "imminent invasion" with them. Needless to say, Congress and the US people are in the dark.
I do not share the apparent confidence of the heads of state involved in this mess that a shooting war, involving even a small portion of military resources now on the ground, can be contained so that diplomacy can be restarted. A recent article from The Nation, "Ukraine and the Threat of Nuclear War: Why do we fail to consider the danger?," asks the obvious question: Are we nuts? The Nation's publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel poses the question differently: "Putin's goal is the status quo: Keep Ukraine out of NATO. We have already made clear we aren't prepared to defend Ukraine militarily. Isn't it time for a deal that guarantees Ukraine's sovereignty and independence in exchange for guaranteeing its neutrality?"
Veteran Australian journalist John Pilger, in an article linked below, recounts Russia's (and Ukraine's!) horrible experiences in World War II, and encourages us to imagine how the Russians might feel threatened by the NATO's drive to the east, almost to Russia's borders. Former US ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock (now 92) recounts his warnings to the US Senate 25 years ago about the dangers of NATO expanding to the east; and now the dangers have arrived.
Thus Russia's demands (as summarized by Pilger):
· NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missiles in nations bordering Russia. (They are already in place from Slovenia to Romania, with Poland to follow)
· NATO to stop military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
· Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
· The West and Russia to sign a binding East-West security pact.
· The landmark treaty between the US and Russia covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be restored. (The US abandoned it in 2019)
The United States, and under its direction NATO, have already rejected these demands, and are unlikely to even discuss them further until Russia withdraws its troops from their forward deployment. Thus war/peace hangs by a thread, with little protest from citizens of the USA, Europe, Russia, or Ukraine. We have been lucky before; let us hope we are lucky again.
Some useful reading on the USA-Ukraine-Russia Crisis
A path out of the Ukraine crisis
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, [former editor and now publisher of] The Nation [February 15, 2022]
---- Putin's goal is the status quo: Keep Ukraine out of NATO. We have already made clear we aren't prepared to defend Ukraine militarily. Isn't it time for a deal that guarantees Ukraine's sovereignty and independence in exchange for guaranteeing its neutrality? [Link].
What Is Going to Happen in Ukraine?
---- There are three possible scenarios: The first is that Russia will suddenly launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The second is that the Ukrainian government in Kyiv will launch an escalation of its civil war against the self-declared People's Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), provoking various possible reactions from other countries. The third is that neither of these will happen, and the crisis will pass without a major escalation of the war in the short term. So who will do what? [Link].
War in Europe and the Rise of Raw Propaganda
---- Marshall McLuhan's prophecy that "the successor to politics will be propaganda" has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain. … The war hysteria that has rolled in like a tidal wave in recent weeks and months is the most striking example. Known by its jargon, "shaping the narrative", much if not most of it is pure propaganda. … Having dragged European "allies" into American wars that do not concern them, the great unspoken is that NATO itself is the real threat to European security. [Link].
News Notes
In a mere 15 years, Alexandra Ocassio-Cortez moved from Yorktown High School to Congress, where she is now in her third year as an "insider." The current New Yorker magazine has an in-depth interview, by David Remnick, in which she tells us how the legislative sausage factory looks from the inside. Read it here.
I was unaware that, as the US lifts basic pandemic emergency measures, millions of "immunocompromised people" face difficulties and dangers. Pulitzer Prize-winning science editor of The Atlantic Ed Yong described the health risks for this compromised population on Democracy Now! last week. I found it very interesting, and perhaps you will too.
A serious disappointment with the Biden presidency is his failure to do with the stroke of a pen what he could do to reduce/end student debt, which now entangles 44 million people to the tune of $1.5 trillion. In an interesting article, Thom Hartmann informs us how the student debt crisis got its start under Governor and then President Reagan, whose motive was to punish "liberal" college students. American "should not subsidize intellectual curiosity," he said.
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, March 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!
This week's Rewards for stalwart readers come from our friends Hudson Valley Sally. Choosing some of my favorites, here are Sister Moon, Annie, and Billy in Air: Billionaire. There are lots more on linen; enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
If Joe Biden Doesn't Change Course, This Will Be His Worst Failure
By Ezra Klein, New York Times [February 20, 2022]
---- Ninety-five percent of Afghans don't have enough to eat. Nearly nine million are at risk of starvation. The U.N.'s emergency aid request, at more than $5 billion, is the largest it has ever made for a single country. "The current humanitarian crisis could kill far more Afghans than the past 20 years of war," David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, wrote recently. And we bear much of the blame. We have turned a crisis into a catastrophe. … This is how it looks to me, and to many analysts I spoke to: Over 20 years, the United States built an aid-dependent economy in Afghanistan. When we left, we withdrew the aid on which it depended. When the Taliban took over, we turned the sanctions and financial weapons we'd wielded against them against the government and country they now controlled. We comfort ourselves by saying we are the largest donor to the Afghanistan relief effort, but we are also a major reason the crisis is dire in the first place, and we continue to be. [Read More]
Freedom Comes to Canada
By Bryan D. Palmer, Verso Books [UK] [February 15, 2022]
---- Everything happening in the United States comes to Canada, only a little later and a tad more politely. The rage that erupted in a Presidential-endorsed riot in Washington on 6 January 2021 has now exploded to the north. Fueled by a confused swirl of resentment against the array of pandemic protocols that all advanced capitalist states have invoked to curb and contain Covid-19 – including vaccination passports, mandatory masking, business lockdowns, and cross-border restrictions – so-called "Freedom Convoys" have descended on the nation's capital Ottawa, holding the city hostage. … "Freedom" in the face of the pandemic we have all been living through has a nice ring to it. But the politics of these Canadian convoys do not. They are animated by a Breitbart-like appreciation that destabilization of the status quo is the first step in halting the rush to a Marxist-inspired, totalitarian world order and the restoration of a political economy of acquisitive individualism. [Read More] For another perspective, read "Why the Freedom Convoy Is More American Than Canadian," by Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute [February 19, 2022] [Link].
Chile's Bold Adventure in Democracy
By Ariel Dorfman, New York Review of Books [February 18, 2022]
---- Like so many countries around the world, Chile, my country of origin, is facing a series of intersecting crises. What is encouraging is the democratic, creative, and responsible way it has found to deal with this situation: a Convención Constitucional (constitutional convention) that has been tasked with creating a new Magna Carta to replace the military dictator Augusto Pinochet's constitution, which, since its fraudulent approval in 1980, has thwarted indispensable reforms. The convention was born as a response to a widespread revolt in October 2019, during which millions of enraged citizens demanded a drastic change in the way their nation is governed and, indeed, in its very self-conception. [Read More]
Mass Murder in Afghanistan
(Video) "Adding Insult to Injury": Afghan Activist & 9/11 Mother Condemn Biden's Seizure of Afghan Funds
From Democracy Now! [February 15, 2022]
---- President Biden is facing mounting criticism for seizing $7 billion of Afghanistan's federal reserves frozen in the United States. Biden is giving half of the money to families of September 11 victims while Afghanistan faces a humanitarian catastrophe. We speak to two of the founders of a new campaign called Unfreeze Afghanistan, a women-led initiative to lift sanctions and other economic restrictions on Afghanistan, and a woman who lost her son in the World Trade Center attack, who says the money should stay in Afghanistan. "The suffering of the Afghan people at the hands of the United States and its allies is reprehensible. This is adding insult to injury," says Phyllis Rodriguez, a member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, whose son Greg was killed in the World Trade Center attack and who says 9/11 families want "information, not remuneration." Afghan American activist Masuda Sultan says continued lack of access to money and basic services in Afghanistan will inspire a new wave of underground terrorism in the country, "endangering the entire world." Biden's order is gravely hypocritical, adds Medea Benjamin, critiquing the administration for "putting themselves forward as these great saviors of Afghanistan" for releasing Afghan-owned assets as "aid" while taking no punitive action against Saudi Arabia, whose citizens led the 9/11 attack. [See the Program]
Additional reading – For the convoluted explanations/dynamics by which the Biden administration is "releasing" Afghanistan's money and not releasing it, read "White House Shifts Blame to Courts as Afghans Endure Winter Famine, Says It's Being "Proactive," by Austin Ahlman and Ryan Grim, The Intercept [[Link]. The mainstream media's handling of the impending deaths of tens of thousands of Afghans is surveyed in "Biden's Multi-Billion Afghan Theft Gets Scant Mention on TV News," by Julie Hollar, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [February 15, 2022] [LInk]. A petition signed by Noam Chomsky and other luminaries, demanding that the Afghanistan money be released, can be read here.
The Climate Crisis
Humanity Subsidizing 'Our Own Extinction,' Warns Study
By Julia Conley, Common Dreams [February 17, 2022]]
---- Releasing a new study showing that world governments spend at least $1.8 trillion annually to subsidize activities which worsen the climate crisis, global subsidies experts on Thursday said leaders must eliminate or redirect the financial supports as part of an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework at an upcoming summit in China. "Reforming the $1.8 trillion a year of subsidies that are harming the environment could make an important contribution towards unlocking the over $700 billion a year needed to reverse nature loss by 2030." … The report identifies at least $640 billion in annual fossil fuel subsidies, $520 billion used by the agricultural sector, $350 billion in water management and wastewater infrastructure, and $155 billion subsidizing logging and unsustainable forest management, all of which account for the majority of annual subsidies. [Read More] Also useful is "The Fossil Fuel Industry Doesn't Create Nearly as Many Jobs as it Says It Does," by Wenonah Hauter, In These Times [February 14, 2022] [Link].
Israel/Palestine
Israeli Reactions to Amnesty's Apartheid Report
---- In late January 2022 the human rights organization Amnesty International released a 278-page evidence-based report entitled Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity. The report covers Palestinians both in the Occupied Territories and in Israel within the Green Line. It even notes Israeli attempts to limit the rights of Palestinians living in other countries. … The Amnesty International report does not stand alone. It follows similar investigations by Human Rights Watch, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, and Palestinian organizations as well. … If reports like those of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem and various Palestinian agencies cannot change the behavior and practices of Israeli governments, neither can Israel's dismissal of such reports as anti-Semitic make the reality of its apartheid society invisible to the rest of the world. The real challenge is to turn the awareness of Israeli apartheid into political and economic action in support of the oppressed Palestinians. [Read More]
Our History
To Fight Attacks on "Critical Race Theory," Look to Black History
By Keisha N. Blain, The Nation [February 18, 2022]
---- While the obsession over "critical race theory" is a new manifestation, it represents long-standing efforts to keep Black history—and the perspectives of Black writers—out of the classroom. For many conservatives, the attack on "critical race theory" is rooted in a desire to shield their children from the uncomfortable aspects of history and evade "sensitive" topics such as racism, white supremacy, and inequality. As this wave of anti-Blackness and anti-intellectualism grows, Black educators and their allies must be prepared to oppose these forces, building on a long tradition of Black protest. For as long as white politicians have employed these tactics, Black educators in the United States have vigorously resisted. Through a myriad of strategies—including creative lesson plans and the production of anti-racist books and articles—Black educators have worked to counter the spread of misinformation and ensure that students have access to texts and perspectives that represent the diversity of the nation—and the world. [Read More] Also very interesting is "It's Time for the Left to Embrace the Critical Race Theory Debate," by Linda Martín Alcoff, The Indypendent [NYC] [February 14, 2022]
