Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
February 14, 2022
Hello All – "Curiouser and Curiouser," exclaimed Alice, as her Adventures in Wonderland began to unfold. And this might be the way a modern Alice would feel as the President of the Greatest Power on Earth states that Russia might begin a war on Wednesday, or perhaps after China's Winter Olympics are finished – and no one outside the mainstream media seems to be paying any attention. Americans go about their business, taking in the Super Bowl, with no sense of Impending Doom or even stocking up on supplies. The "Ukraine Crisis" seems surreal, and Ukraine's government asks the Americans to lower the volume, as 24/7 crisis talk is bad for foreign investment.
Alice experienced her Wonderland directly, but Americans take in the Looming War mainly through media owned by giant corporations that devote few resources to actual news gathering. "News" has become mainly reports of what government officials are saying, spiced by "intelligence" leaks about false-flag operations or insights into Vladimir Putin's interior monologues. The context of current events – the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" of 2004, or the overthrow by mob action of Ukraine's elected government in 2014 – are simply Off the Agenda. Ukraine's complicated history? Off the Agenda. The vicissitudes of NATO, and why it still even exists? Off the Agenda. And so on.
The reading linked immediately below addresses some perspectives on events from inside Ukraine and Russia; speaks to the diplomatic disaster that failed to incorporate Russia into Europe after the end of the Soviet Union; notes that the "Minsk" agreement of 2015 – again under discussion by Ukraine, France, Germany, and Russia – provides a sensible path towards settling the immediate conflicts; reminds us that nuclear disarmament has so far left in place thousands of nuclear weapons that, if used, would destroy civilization; and asks whether the US leadership in NATO is not mainly to "deter" Russia or China, but to sustain US hegemony in the capitalist world. Perhaps in the days remaining until World War III breaks out, we can bring ourselves up to date on what the events now unfolding – "Curiouser and Curiouser" – are all about.
Some Useful Reading on USA-Ukraine-Russia
A Ukrainian Sociologist Explains Why Everything You Know About Ukraine Is Probably Wrong
An interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko, Jacobin Magazine [February 14, 2022] [Link]
The Strategic Blunder That Led to Today's Conflict in Ukraine
By Rajan Menon, The Nation [February 10, 2022] [Link].
Memo to Congress: Diplomacy for Ukraine Is Spelled M-i-n-s-k
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [February 9, 2022] [Link]
Ukraine and the Threat of Nuclear War. Why do we fail to consider the danger?
By Ira Helfand, The Nation [February 8, 2022] [Link].
A New Project by CFOW
It's called The Beauty as Fuel for Change Project. As Community leaders of this initiative, Concerned Families of Westchester stalwarts hope to inspire an exploration of expressive, creative visioning. We want to plant seeds of positive representations, to interrupt the negative, divisive patterns we live with today; A project to change the conversation, with creative expression that is hopeful and helpful and inspires us to create a better world! This is a vehicle for positive imaginings & a way to reach out beyond borders to build bridges between activists in all arenas and to let us unleash the power of creativity in our human community! Color Your Imagination! CFOW is asking people of all ages to show, in all manner of Art imaginable, what our beautiful future looks like. Show us your vision of a truly working Democracy, a more perfect union! Join the peaceful visionaries of Concerned Families of Westchester in this project to help manifest positive change. – And more details coming soon!
News Notes
On Thursday CFOW published a statement expressing our outrage at the attack by Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano on Rep. Jamaal Bowman of NY's CD16. You can read the statement here.
Included in Spano's attack on Rep. Bowman was an attack on bail reform. Passed by the NYS legislature almost three years ago, the reforms eliminated cash bail in cases of misdemeanors and non-violent felonies. The reform has helped tens of thousands of people avoid incarceration while awaiting trial, with only a very small "failure" rate. But "Law 'n' Order" forces are pushing back, and NY Mayor Adams is in Albany today to press for the reinstatement of bail. For more about this issue, read "Bail Reform is Working" by Rodney Holcombe,
Connie Hogarth, founder of WESPAC and a stalwart for peace and justice, died last week at the ago of 95. On Democracy Now! today Amy Goodman spoke about Connie's life and work. Her presentation was accompanied by pictures of Connie over the years by Westchester's Andrew Courtney. You can see this brief clip on today's program (Monday), starting at 13:00.
Today, Valentine's Day, is also the 20th anniversary of the important peace organization September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrow's. Composed of people who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks, and who immediately stood up against calls for war and revenge – "Not in Our Name!" – for two decades Peaceful Tomorrows has worked in solidarity with civilian victims of war, "turning our grief into actions for peace." Three of the founders of CFOW attended the Valentine's Day press conference in 2002 when Peace Tomorrows was launched, beginning a long-lasting friendship. Read about Peaceful Tomorrows 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, 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!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
America's Real Adversaries are Its European and Other Allies
----- The sanctions that U.S. diplomats are insisting that their allies impose against trade with Russia and China are aimed ostensibly at deterring a military buildup. But such a buildup cannot really be the main Russian and Chinese concern. They have much more to gain by offering mutual economic benefits to the West. So the underlying question is whether Europe will find its advantage in replacing U.S. exports with Russian and Chinese supplies and the associated mutual economic linkages. What worries American diplomats is that Germany, other NATO nations and countries along the Belt and Road route understand the gains that can be made by opening up peaceful trade and investment. If there is no Russian or Chinese plan to invade or bomb them, what is the need for NATO? [Read More]
The Martyrdom of Afghanistan
Biden Hammers a $7 Billion Nail Into Afghanistan's Coffin
By Cheryl Benard, Medea Benjamin, and Masuda Sultan, The National Interest [February 14, 2022]
[FB – The authors are founders of an important new organization, Unfreeze Afghanistan. Learn about who they are and what they do here.]
---- On February 11, President Joe Biden issued an executive order regarding the Afghanistan Central Bank's funds. This exercise in autocratic, superpower muscle-flexing delivers yet another blow to the struggling civilian population of Afghanistan. The order is ill-informed, unjust, and damaging to vital U.S. interests—and it will have devastating consequences. With the stroke of a pen, Biden decided that the $7 billion of Afghan funds invested in the U.S. Federal Bank would not be returned to Afghan's Central Bank. Instead, it would be divided in two, with half going to compensate 9/11 families who had been suing the Taliban for colluding with Al Qaeda and the other half going to humanitarian aid. … The first problem with this executive order is that it disposes of money on the assumption that it belongs to the Taliban. But it does not. It belongs to the Afghan people, many of whom have their life's savings invested in their Central Bank. We should also be clear that it is not their fault that the Taliban are in control. The present Taliban rule is the outcome of a poorly conceived and badly executed twenty-year social engineering experiment by the United States, accompanied by a war-fighting strategy that failed, and culminating in a chaotic exit. Another problem with Biden's order is that it entirely misconstrues the purpose of a national reserve. It is not some slush fund that you can hand out to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for humanitarian aid or use to settle court cases. It's the backbone of a country's fiscal stability. [Read More]
'Thank You for Hearing Our Afghan Pain'
By Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence [February 11, 2022]
---- Recently, I received an email from a young friend in Kabul: "Living conditions are very difficult for people who do not have bread to eat and fuel to heat their homes," the young friend wrote. "A child died from cold in a house near me, and several families came to my house today to help them with money. One of them cried and told me that they had not eaten for forty-eight hours and that their two children were unconscious from the cold and hunger. She had no money to treat and feed them. I wanted to share my heartache with you. … For two decades, the United States' support for puppet regimes in Afghanistan made that country dependent on foreign assistance as though it were on life support. 95% of the population, more than three-quarters of whom are women and children, remained below the poverty line while corruption, mismanagement, embezzlement, waste and fraud benefited numerous warlords, including U.S. military contractors. After the United States invaded their country and embroiled them in a pointless twenty-year nightmare, what the United States owes the Afghan people is reparations, not starvation. [Read More]
What We Must Do for Afghanistan," b , Maryland Peace Action [February 11, 2022] [Link]; The Terrible Fate Facing the Afghan People," by Vijay Prashad, The Globetrotter [February 12, 2022] [Link]; "'Death Sentence for Untold Numbers of Civilians': Biden to Permanently Seize Afghan Assets," by Jon Queally, Common Dreams [February 11, 2022] [Link]; and "Ilhan Omar Blasts 'Unconscionable' Biden Plan to Seize Afghan Assets" by Brett Wilkins,Common Dreams [February 11, 2022] [Link].
The War in Yemen
(Video) Rep. Ro Khanna: The U.S. Could End the Yemen War Tomorrow. It's Time to Stop Arming the Saudis, from Democracy Now! [February 10, 2022]
President Joe Biden had promised to end support for offensive operations by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and stop all "relevant" arms sales, but the U.S. continues to service Saudi warplanes, and the administration recently approved the sale of $650 million in air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia. Congressmember Ro Khanna, one of the most outspoken congressional critics of the war, says the U.S. has the power to stop the fighting. "We could ground the Saudi Air Force to a halt tomorrow if we stopped supplying them with tires and parts," says Khanna. "Instead, we continue to authorize arms sales to the Saudis." [See the Program]. Also useful is "Joe Biden Still Hasn't Stopped Supporting the War in Yemen" by Luke Savage, Jacobin Magazine [February 2022] [Link].
Civil Liberties
The Supreme Court is Helping Consolidate White Political Power in America
By April England-Albright, et al., The Guardian [February 10, 2022]
---- On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court in its Merrill v Milligan decision, upheld Alabama's racially gerrymandered congressional map, which see Black people represented in only 14% of congressional districts, despite making up about 27% of Alabama's population. This ruling is reminiscent of the holding in the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision that Black people "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect". Even though the two cases addressed two different situations, the overall disregard of the rights of Black people in America by the highest court in the country is the same. And just as the Dred Scott decision laid the groundwork for similar rulings that led to the continuation of white political power at the expense of Black political power, so too does the Miller case lay the groundwork for ending voting rights and political power for Black people in this country and a path towards white political power at all levels of government. Some reading this will gasp and accuse us of misusing an explosive pre-reconstruction case to make a racially charged argument. But the reality is that the conservative gang of justices, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, had already joined its pre-1954 brethren who had indoctrinated Jim Crow policies and the disenfranchisement of Black voters. [Read More]
Also of interest – "Dear President Biden: Clemency for Leonard Peltier Now" by Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, Democracy Now! [February 13, 2022] [LInk].
The State of the Union(s)
A Rhodes Scholar barista and the fight to unionize Starbucks
By Greg Jaffe, Washinton Post [February 12, 2022]
---- The omicron variant was racing through the Starbucks on Elmwood Avenue so fast that by early January one-third of the store's 30-person workforce was sick or isolating at home. The worried, angry and exhausted workers who remained had asked Starbucks for KN95 masks, better protocols to inform them when co-workers tested positive for the coronavirus, and the right to deny service to customers who refused to comply with their county's mask mandate. Their concerns were no different from those of many of the other 383,000 Starbucks employees stuck laboring through the latest wave of the pandemic. The Elmwood baristas, though, believed that they had leverage that others lacked. Three weeks earlier, they had voted to become the first unionized Starbucks in the country, an improbable victory that overcame stiff resistance from the coffee giant and caught the attention of baristas in Boston, Chicago, Knoxville, Seattle and Baltimore, who were requesting their own votes, just like the one in Buffalo. Congratulations were pouring in from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former labor secretary Robert Reich, who called their win "a watershed for the biggest coffee seller in the world" and "a small step on the long trail toward rebalancing such power in America." With the virus tearing through their workforce, the baristas were ready to make their demands. [Read More]
Also of interest – (Video) "Workers at Largest GM Plant in Mexico Win Historic Vote for New Independent Union After 2019 Reforms," from Democracy Now! [February 9, 2022] [Link]; and "Rest in Power Mike Parker, Labor Movement Activist," by Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes [January 20, 2022] [Link].
Israel/Palestine
Israeli Law & Torture: From Detained Minors to a Prison "Torture Room"
By Mohammed El-Kurd, The Nation [February 11, 2022]
---- The sun had not yet risen on January 21 when 30 Israeli soldiers arrested 12-year-old Ammar at his home in the Naqab. … According to Adalah, a Haifa-based legal center working to protect the rights of Palestinians, 150 Palestinian Bedouins (some 40 percent of whom are minors) have been arrested and accused of "rioting" during protests against their expulsion from the area. The push is being led by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a para-public organization, and is the latest chapter in the decades-old colonial effort to "make the desert bloom." … To Fayrouz Sharqawi, the goal of Operation Law and Order was obvious: "It is to explicitly terrorize people…to deter them," she said, noting that all the Israeli attempts of "domesticating" Palestinians with "soft policies" have failed. Yet this crackdown achieved another result. We saw a resurgence of mutual aid efforts and popular committees, especially within communities hit hardest by the Israeli regime's violent crackdown on anti-colonial dissent. … The collective punishment and repression meant to reinforce a national fragmentation in which Palestinians fight for their lands on isolated fronts has instead reaffirmed that Palestinians, no matter the legal status, suffer from and will continue to struggle against the same colonial violence. [Read More]
Also of interest – "Human Rights Groups Agree: Israel is Practicing Apartheid" b Israeli apartheid: an international consensus" by Ben Jamal, UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign [February 10, 2022] [Link].
Our History
What If the U.S. Hadn't Gone to War After 9/11?
By Nick Turse, The Intercept [
---- On September 19, 2001, CIA officers collected cardboard boxes filled with $3 million in nonsequential $100 bills to buy off Afghan warlords, beginning America's martial response to the 9/11 attacks. A day later, President George W. Bush stood before Congress and declared a "war on terror" that would "not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated." Over the next 20-plus years, the tab on that conflict, which began in Afghanistan but spread across the globe to Burkina Faso, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen, has ballooned to more than $6 trillion. The payoff has been dismal: To date, the war has killed around 900,000 people, including more than 350,000 civilians; displaced as many as 60 million; and led to humanitarian catastrophes and the worst U.S. military defeat since the Vietnam War. American cash has built armies that have collapsed or evaporated when challenged; meanwhile, the number of foreign terrorist groups around the world has more than doubled from 32 to 69. It didn't have to be this way, according to a new study of counterterrorism approaches from Brown University's Costs of War Project. [Read More]
