Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
August 29, 2022
Hello All – Tuesday's Democratic primary election for Congress resulted in an impressive victory for incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the 16th Congressional District. According to the "unofficial tally" posted by the county Board of Elections, Bowman received 19,012 votes, or 52% of the total votes cast. Bowman's rival Vedat Gashi received 26% of the vote and Catherine Parker got 20%. We await with interest the publication of voting results broken down by towns/municipalities, but incomplete reports show Bowman capturing a majority of votes in Westchester, as well as 90% of the 2,000 votes cast in the Bronx.
One of the features of this election was the reluctance of most local Democratic parties (with the exception of Hastings) to support the incumbent, Bowman. If Democratic leaders thought this was the politically astute thing to do, Bowman's sweeping victory should encourage a course correction in their thinking. If their reluctance to support Bowman was based on disagreement with his program, the election showed that – faced with clear choices – the electorate did not vote for "moderation," but for a clear, progressive program. If the reluctance of local Democratic leadership to support Bowman was based on their belief that the electorate would prefer a "white" congressional representative to Bowman, here again the election proved them wrong. In any case, the August 23rd congressional primary should be a wake-up call to many Democratic Party activists that Rep. Bowman's activist record and strong progressive program commands the support of a majority of Democrats in the 16th District.
And now for Rep. Bowman. Having stated our support for him, his candidacy, and his program, let's look at the email he sent to his supporters last Friday, asking for input and support for campaign program going forward to the November 8 general election. His draft program includes many things we support: "full student debt cancellation, passing the Green New Deal for Public Schools, abolishing the filibuster, codifying Roe, fighting for voting rights, expanding the Supreme Court, and so much more." Excellent! But presumably folded into "so much more" is the US role in the world, our trillion-dollar "national defense" budget, our participation in a half-dozen wars around the world, and our growing involvement in the dangerous war in Ukraine. Certainly "so much more"!
In the judgment of even the most radical Democrat, the reality of our political system is that the elephant in the room – the US economic and military Empire – is simply Off the Agenda. Not worth discussing. A "third rail." Sadlyl, this response to a looming danger that could end us all is, among other things, a devastating criticism of decades of peace-movement activism. We haven't been able to get war & peace on the list of issues normally discussed in politics. Going forward, we have to change this, perhaps starting by putting more pressure on Rep. Bowman, letting him know that his supporters are looking for leadership in preventing and ending war. Give him a call!
News Notes
The Democratic Socialists of America supported quite a few candidates for state government in the recent Democratic primary elections, and several of them were successful. For a round-up of what the socialists did and didn't do, read "New York's Socialists Were Largely Victorious in Last Night's Elections," by Nick French, Jacobin Magazine [August 2022] [Link].
News bias refers not just to words, but to pictures as well. The way that Facebook decides which pictures are "appropriate" and which are not makes an interesting mainstream media tutorial. In this useful article from The Intercept, Facebook's instructions to its content censors reveal different standards for pictures about the war in Ukraine and Israel's attacks on Gaza. Instructive … but standard stuff for readers of the Herman and Chomsky primer on media bias, Manufacturing Consent. Check it out!
Part of the negotiations that led to the Inflation Reduction Act was a side agreement with Sen. Manchin and the fossil fuel industry that would "expedite" permits for pipelines and other environmental dangers by eliminating steps that allow public participation or environmental studies. To learn more about this, go here; to take some action, call Sen. Schumer at 855-980-2321 and tell him this side deal stinks.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather 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 is held each Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. To learn about our new project, "Beauty as Fuel for Change," go here; and to make a financial contribution to the project, go here. 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. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. 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!
Once again, the Newsletter's "Rewards" for stalwart readers come from our favorite New Orleans ensemble, Tuba Skinny. Here is a concert recorded last month, and new to me. Enjoy!
The Newsletter staff will be on vacation next week. See you next on September 11th.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Has the Fight Against Antisemitism Lost Its Way?
By Peter Beinart, New York Times [August 26, 2022]
---- Over the past 18 months, America's most prominent Jewish organizations have done something extraordinary. They have accused the world's leading human rights organizations of promoting hatred of Jews… In a terrible irony, the campaign against "antisemitism," as waged by influential Jewish groups and the U.S. government, has become a threat to freedom. It is wielded as a weapon against the world's most respected human rights organizations and a shield for some of the world's most repressive regimes. We need a different struggle against antisemitism. It should pursue Jewish equality, not Jewish supremacy, and embed the cause of Jewish rights in a movement for the human rights of all. In its effort to defend the indefensible in Israel, the American Jewish establishment has abandoned these principles. It's time to affirm them again. [Read More]
Chomsky: Maintaining Class Inequality at Any Cost Is GOP's Guiding Mission
An interview with C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout [August 27, 2022]
---- It was observed long ago that the U.S. is basically a one-party state: the business party, with two factions, Democrats and Republicans. Now there is one faction: the Democrats. The Republicans hardly qualify as an authentic parliamentary party. That's fairly explicit under McConnell's rule. When Obama took office, McConnell made it clear that his primary goal was to ensure that Obama could achieve virtually nothing, so that Republicans could return to power. When Biden was elected, McConnell reiterated that position even more strongly. And he's lived up to it. On virtually every issue, the GOP is 100 percent opposed, even when they know that the legislation is popular and would be very valuable for the population. With a handful of right-wing Democrats joining the uniform GOP opposition, Biden's platform has been cut down very sharply. Perhaps he could have done more, but he's being unfairly blamed, I think, for the failure of what would have been constructive programs, badly needed. … The political situation is ugly, and very likely to get much worse in November if the GOP manages to take over. It is likely to get so much worse that it will literally threaten survival, "as no thoughtful person can question," to quote the estimable Justice Powell. [Read More]
War & Peace
Six months after Russian invasion, a bloody stalemate, a struggle for peace
By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft [August 25, 2022]
---- Six months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the war has apparently settled into a stalemate. The front line has hardly moved in two months. Casualties on both sides have been immense. In a fashion almost reminiscent of the First World War, recent advances in military technology have greatly strengthened the power of the defensive, while weakening the massed armored forces backed by airpower that in the generations after 1939 were responsible for "Blitzkrieg" style offensive victories. …Nor does it seem likely that this picture is likely to change much in the foreseeable future. The factors that have worked against Russia will do the same to Ukrainian forces if they launch mass offensives. … What we therefore need to recognize is that Ukraine — with massive military help from the West — has already won a great victory, though not a complete one. As a result, Ukraine has achieved its most vital goal, that of securing its independence and its chance to move towards membership of the West. This success has been achieved on the battlefield, but perhaps even more importantly through the demonstration of the strength and unity of Ukrainian nationalism. This is therefore arguably no longer an "existential" struggle for Ukraine. It is a battle for limited amounts of territory in the east. By the same token, Russia has suffered a massive historic defeat. Moscow's hope of turning the whole of Ukraine into a client state has been destroyed for all foreseeable time. [Read More] Lieven also discussed these issues last week on Democracy Now!
The West's Dangerously Simple-Minded Narrative About Russia and China
By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Dreams [August 23, 2022]
---- The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an attempt to manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and pressing diplomacy. Europe should reflect on the fact that the non-enlargement of NATO and the implementation of the Minsk II agreements would have averted this awful war in Ukraine. The essential narrative of the West is built into US national security strategy. The core US idea is that China and Russia are implacable foes that are "attempting to erode American security and prosperity." … There is only one country whose self-declared fantasy is to be the world's dominant power: the US. It's past time that the US recognized the true sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible cooperation with the rest of the world, rather than the illusion of hegemony. With such a revised foreign policy, the US and its allies would avoid war with China and Russia, and enable the world to face its myriad environment, energy, food and social crises. Above all, at this time of extreme danger, European leaders should pursue the true source of European security: not US hegemony, but European security arrangements that respect the legitimate security interests of all European nations, certainly including Ukraine, but also including Russia, which continues to resist NATO enlargements into the Black Sea. Europe should reflect on the fact that the non-enlargement of NATO and the implementation of the Minsk II agreements would have averted this awful war in Ukraine. At this stage, diplomacy, not military escalation, is the true path to European and global security. [Read More]
Last Chance For America and Iran
By Trita Parsi, Responsible Statecraft [August 26, 2022]
[FB – Trita Parsi has written several books on the US-Iran standoff, including Losing an Enemy, about the Obama diplomacy that led up to the Iran Nuclear Agreement in 2015.]
---- As war rages on in Ukraine, diplomacy is on the cusp of prevailing in Vienna. Against the odds, negotiators are poised to revive the Iran nuclear agreement and block Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon—a crucial U.S. interest. According to officials who are familiar with the draft of the agreement circulated in Europe and Tehran in the latter half of August, Iran will once more give up its stockpile of enriched uranium, apart from 300 kilograms enriched at lower levels. It will also cease all enrichment above 3.67 percent and remove thousands of advanced centrifuges from operation. Iran will also have no pathway to a plutonium-based nuclear weapon. Perhaps most importantly, its nuclear program will once more be fully open to intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. … Yet the main reasons why the new JCPOA is more fragile are not internal to the deal but external. There is now deepened mistrust, both in Tehran and in other capitals around the world, about Washington's ability to uphold international agreements. The current U.S. and Iranian political leaderships also have few domestic incentives to move beyond their shared enmity. As a result, the new Iran deal may come into existence in a strategic context that reduces rather than bolsters its longevity. [Read More]. For additional insights into this precarious situation, read "Why the Right Wingers in Israel and the US Really Oppose Iran Nuclear Deal: They Want Regime Change Instead," b[Link].
Also of interest re: war & peace – "Two Decades Into Forever Wars, the Pentagon Finally Unveils Plan to Reduce Civilian Casualties," by Nick Turse, The Intercept [August 25, 2022] [Link]; and "The legacy of Shinzo Abe: a Japan divided about nuclear weapons," by Sayuri Romei, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [August 24, 2022] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Pakistan: Climate Emergency-Driven, biblical Floods affect 33 million People Leave Millions Homeless
---- Heavy flooding in southern Pakistan has destroyed or damaged 670,000 homes, according to Reliefweb. During an ordinary monsoon season in Pakistan beginning in June and ending in September, there would be four waves of precipitation. There have been eight such waves since June. Balochistan has been drenched by five times its average rainfall (averaged over 30 years) and Sindh has been inundated by 5.7 times its 30-year average. Extra heat in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea are largely responsible for this massive flooding. Some 2 million acres of crops and orchards have been destroyed or damaged, leaving millions bereft of a livelihood. Nearly 800,000 livestock animals have been killed, on whom many rural families depend for earning their living. The collapse of some infrastructure has interfered with the escape of populations from the rising waters. Nearly 2,000 miles of roads have been washed out and 145 bridges have been pulled down. These are the worst floods since a similar extreme whether event in 2010, and perhaps they are the most destructive in recorded history. [Read More] The Pakistan disaster is being covered closely on Al Jazeera. And from Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, read "Pakistan's Floods Beggar the Imagination" [Link].
The State of the Union
Mar-a-Lago Affidavit Shows Trump Kept Some of America's Top Secrets, Is in Huge Trouble
By Fred Kaplan, Slate [August 27, 2022]
---- Even with about half of its 38 pages blacked out for security reasons, the Justice Department's affidavit to get a warrant to search Donald Trump's residency at Mal-a-Largo is more damning than many of the former president's critics expected. The affidavit, written on Aug. 5 and released by a judge on Friday, reported that 15 boxes of documents, which had already been retrieved from the Florida estate early in 2022, contained 184 documents, including 25 marked Top Secret—and that some of those were marked HCS, SI, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN. In these acronyms lies a scandalous, perhaps literally incriminating story. HCS means HUMINT Control System, and HUMINT means Human Intelligence—in other words, intelligence gathered from spies. Documents marked HUMINT may contain the identities of spies, as well as information obtained from them. … In other words, at least some of the documents in Mar-a-Lago were among the most sensitive in any president's files. The FBI special agent who filed the affidavit wrote that he had "probable cause" to believe there were more boxes, containing more highly classified documents, still hidden away at Mar-a-Lago, many of them in unsecured locations. The judge who approved the request agreed. [Read More] Also useful, from today's Democracy Now!, is (Video) "Ex-Agent: FBI Has Long History of Abuse, But Trump Probe Shows Better, 'more Effective" Path for Agency'" [Link].
Keep Pushing: The Real Heroes Behind Biden's Student Debt Announcement
By Astra Taylor, The New Republic [August 26, 2022]
--- Though not nearly enough, the president's move is a good one—and is the result of a decade-plus of activism by thousands of brave Americans. On Wednesday, President Biden announced that he would use his executive power to wipe out up to $10,000 in student loans for 43 million Americans, and up to $20,000 for those who received Pell Grants to attend college. Make no mistake about it, this represents a landmark victory for student debtors. Through years of tireless and often thankless organizing, borrowers and their allies pushed a reluctant administration to deliver broad-based student debt cancellation—to bail out regular people, not big banks or businesses. Approximately 20 million people will have their balances completely wiped out, and many have been sharing emotional messages of shock and jubilation online. … we need to ensure that this announcement is a stepping stone, not a destination—a milestone on the path to full student debt abolition and an overhaul of our higher education system, including making public college free for all who want to attend. I believe that this is possible because I've seen what it took to get to this point. [Read More] Astra Taylor talked about the Biden plan and the need for full student debt relief on Thursday's Democracy Now! On Saturday, AOC said that Biden could abolish all student debt by reversing Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the rich and large corporations.
Israel/Palestine
Deliberate misrepresentation: Western media bias makes Israeli war on Palestinians possible
By Ramzy Baroud,Middle East Monitor ]August 23, 2022]
---- While US and western mainstream and corporate media remain biased in favour of Israel, they often behave as if they are a third, neutral party. This is simply not the case.
Take the New York Times coverage of the latest Israeli war on Gaza as an example. Its article on 6 August, "Israel-Gaza Fighting Flares for a Second Day" is the typical mainstream western reporting on Israel and Palestine, but with a distinct NYT flavour. For the uninformed reader, the article succeeds in finding a balanced language between two equal sides. This misleading moral equivalence is one of the biggest intellectual blind spots for western journalists. If they do not outwardly champion Israel's discourse on 'security' and 'right to defend itself', they create false parallels between Palestinians and Israelis, as if a military occupier and an occupied nation have comparable rights and responsibilities. Obviously, this logic does not apply to the Russia-Ukraine war. For NYT and all mainstream western media, there is no question regarding who the good guys and the bad guys are in that bloody fight. [Read More]
Our History
Howard Zinn at 100: Remembering "The People's Historian"
By Robert Cohen and Sonia Murrow, The Nation [August 24, 2022]
---- Today marks the centennial of historian Howard Zinn's birth. More than a decade after Zinn's death in 2010, his best-selling A People's History of the United States (1980) remains the most popular—and radical—introduction to American history, having recently surpassed 4 million copies sold. Zinn did more than any other historian to popularize the historiographical revolution of the Long 1960s, bringing from the campuses to the public its spotlight on the oppression of groups formerly marginalized in US history textbooks: African Americans, workers, Native Americans, women—and on their liberation movements. In place of traditional textbook triumphalism, Zinn's People's History offered a scathing account of American capitalism's role in promoting economic, racial, and sexual inequality. … Also enduring is Zinn's concern that too many high schools lack the academic freedom to debate dissident historical interpretations, which led him in 2008 to cofound the Zinn Education Project (ZEP). Today, with its impressive online presence, ZEP reaches more than 100,000 teachers, and not only promotes people's history and progressive pedagogy but has also spearheaded resistance to the recent bans imposed by Republican legislatures and governors on critical race theory and on candid teaching about race and gender in history classrooms. [Read More] Last Wednesday, on Zinn's 100th birthday, Democracy Now! devoted its whole program to Zinn: (Video) "War Poisons Everybody": Remembering Legendary Historian Howard Zinn on His 100th Birthday [Link].
