Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
August 14, 2022
Hello All – Much of the world is on fire. Some corners of our world are wracked by drought, others by torrential rainfall and flooding. There can no longer be any question about when the world will be hit by the Climate Crisis – it has arrived. And so we welcome the passage of the "Inflation Reduction Act" – At last! – a re-branded version of watered-down Green New Deal legislation. Will this be enough to save us from climate disaster? What more do we need? And how can we get it?
The new legislation will invest $369 billion in energy projects that will promote renewable energy and cut costs to consumers. It will also make significant investments in affordable health care. To pay for all this, the legislation will add some new taxes on the wealthy. The legislation's supporters say that reductions in greenhouse gases envisioned in the bill's projects will go a long way toward meeting goals that will keep global temperature increases short of disaster. Perhaps.
Despite the large federal investments now passing into law, it is clear that in terms of what needs to be done, and what must be done to ensure "climate justice" to historically neglected communities, the legislation falls far short of what is needed. Yet the money to do what needs to be done is there. Congress is now passing a military budget for next year that will exceed $800 billion, and which includes tens of billions more dollars that even the Biden administration is requesting. This illustrates the basic fallacies of our national obsession with "military security" at the expense of "human security." The reasons for this failure are many, not least the lobbying by giant military contractors. To achieve real progress in avoiding the looming dangers of our Climate Crisis, our national religion of war and militarism must be ended. There is no other way.
News Notes
The Democratic primary election is on August 23, and early voting has begun. In the race to represent congressional district 16, CFOW is supporting the incumbent, Rep. Jamaal Bowman. While there is no polling (available to us, anyway), his main challenger appears to be Vedat Gashi, a county legislator from the Yorktown area who was recently endorsed by former congressional representatives Eliot Engel (whom Bowman defeated two years ago) and Nita Lowey. This week controversy arose over a mailing from Gashi that depicted Bowman as a much blacker man that in real life. This traditional campaigning trick, and the campaign itself, are discussed in this useful article from The Intercept.
Another article from The Intercept focuses on the campaign of State Sen. Allexandra Biaggi to defeat Democratic congressional leader Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in the Democratic primary for CD 17, currently held by Rep. Mondaire Jones but radically redistricted. Read "Cops Spend $400,000 to Save House Democrats' Campaign Chair," by Akela Lacy here.
National voter surveys are reflecting the looming crisis in rental housing, as thousands of tenants are facing eviction and thousands simply cannot afford the rent of what's on the market. Read this useful summary, "Voters Demand Biden Take Action to Address 'National Crisis' of Rising Housing Costs," by Julia Conley, here.
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. 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 blend some smooth jazz with our cooler, end-of-summer weather. The music is taken from the archive of "Café Society," New York City's first racially integrated night spot. Not surprisingly, Café Society became a home to political radicalism as well as good music. Check out this hour-long presentation about Cafe Society, including some music from Café stalwarts such as Teddy Wilson, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and more. And perhaps you will also like this short video with Café regulars Lena Horne, Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, and Teddy Wilson, "Boogie Woogie Dream." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
The Book Burning
By Salman Rushdie, New York Review of Books [March 2, 1989]
[FB - Salman Rushdie wrote the following in January 1989 after a public burning of copies of The Satanic Verses took place in Bradford, UK. Many demonstrations against the book took place in other locations. – News reports today say that Rushdie is no longer on a ventilator and is recovering from his injuries.]
----Muhammad ibn Abdallah, one of the great geniuses of world history, a successful businessman, victorious general, and sophisticated statesman as well as prophet, insisted throughout his life on his simple humanity. There are no contemporary portraits of him because he feared that, if any were made, people would worship the portraits. He was only the messenger; it was the message that should be revered. As to the revelation itself, it caused Muhammad considerable anguish. Sometimes he heard voices; sometimes he saw visions; sometimes, he said, the words were found in his inmost heart, and at such times their production caused him acute physical pain. When the revelations began he feared for his sanity and only after reassurances from his wife and friends did he accept that he was the recipient of the divine gift of the Word. The religion which Muhammad established differs from Christianity in several important respects: the Prophet is not granted divine status, but the text is. It's worth pointing out, too, that Islam requires neither a collective act of worship nor an intercessionary caste of priests. The faithful communicate directly with their God. [Read More]
The Stench of Neoliberalism
---- Noam Chomsky, the well-known linguist, author, and social critic, joins Asher Miller to discuss the failures and dominance of neoliberalism — which Chomsky describes as "class war" — since delivery of the Powell Memo 50 years ago. Chomsky responds to a critique of the political center and left for not developing viable alternatives to neoliberalism. Disagreeing, Chomsky discusses proposals developed by places like the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) that he believes would meet the needs of the poor and working classes while tackling the climate crisis. [Read More]
Chomsky refers to "the Powell Memo," perhaps the flagship statement of neo-liberalism, written for business interests by Lewis Powell, who was subsequently appointed to the Supreme Court by President Nixon. The "Memo" proposes a strategy by which pro-business interests should and could gain a more secure control of the state, defeating what conservatives at that time saw as the growth of a dangerous radicalism (Ralph Nader, civil rights, the "new left," etc.) Read the Memo here; and you can also read about the context that produced Powell's Memo in this essay by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.
Europe's Energy Crisis May Get a Lot Worse
By David Wallace-Wells, New York Times [August 10, 2022].
[FB – Sanctions on Russia – the ultimate weapon in the Ukraine war – have begun to backfire on Europe and, to some extent, on the USA. If US pressure to continue sanctions through the winter is rejected by some/many NATO countries, or if sanctions are recognized as a failed strategy, what will happen to US/NATO support for Ukraine? Inquiring minds want to know. This article is a good outline of the possibilities.]
---- I don't think many Americans appreciate just how tense and tenuous, how very touch and go the energy situation in Europe is right now. For months, as news of the Ukraine war receded a bit, it was possible to follow the energy story unfolding across the Atlantic and still assume an uncomfortable but familiar-enough winter in Europe, characterized primarily by high prices. In recent weeks, the prospects have begun to look darker. ... I think there's been a gradual and growing recognition that we are headed into the worst global energy crisis at least since the 1970s and perhaps longer than that. It's increasingly clear that Vladimir Putin is using gas as a weapon and trying to supply just enough gas to Europe to keep Europe in a perpetual state of panic about its ability to weather the coming winter. Europe has been finding all the supplies that it can, but governments are realizing that's not going to be sufficient. There are going to have to be efforts taken to curb demand as well and to prepare for the possibility of really severe energy rationing this winter. I think now you're seeing — in terms of the efforts toward efficiency and rationing — some countries are more willing than others. If things become really severe this winter, I fear that you could see European countries start to look out for themselves rather than one another. [Read More]
War & Peace
Pelosi's Taiwan Visit Launched a New Era of Military Competition With China
By Michael T. Klare, The Nation [August 10, 2022]
---- Long before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plane touched down in Taiwan on August 2, relations between China and the United States had been on a downward spiral. The Biden administration had been working to encircle China with a network of hostile military alliances, while China had been increasing its aggressive military maneuvers in the East and South China Seas. Still, bilateral relations had not deteriorated to the point where it had become impossible for US and Chinese leaders to discuss cooperation on climate change and other vital matters, as Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping did in their teleconference of July 28. But Pelosi's visit produced a new chasm in the US-China relationship: From now on, all prospects for cooperation have been swept away, and all that remains is intensified military competition and increased risk of war. [Read More]
To Move Back From the Brink, Restart Nuclear Talks
By Daryl G. Kimball, Arms Control Association [August 11, 2022]
---- Over the long course of the nuclear age, millions of people—from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the United States, Russia, and around the globe—have stood up to demand meaningful action to halt arms racing, end nuclear weapons testing, reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons, and move toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. But without renewed public pressure and focused international demands for renewed disarmament diplomacy between Washington and Moscow, a dangerous, unconstrained global nuclear arms race is on the horizon. Already unsteady and dangerous relations between Moscow and Washington would become far worse.
Through the Cold War years, Soviet and American leaders from time to time responded to public calls for action to eliminate the nuclear threat and recognized the value arms control in creating more stable and predictable international relations. In the wake of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, they began to work together to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons through the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to slow the arms race through a series of bilateral arms control and arms reduction agreements. These agreements constrained nuclear competition, reduced nuclear stockpiles, and reduced the threat of nuclear war. But there is no room for complacency. The nuclear weapons threat has not gone away. Nuclear competition is accelerating, and the danger of a conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries is growing. [Read More]
The State of the Union
(Video) Biden to End Trump-Era "Remain in Mexico" Border Policy; Immigrants Face Ongoing Trauma, Separation
From Democracy Now! [August 10, 2022]
---- The Biden administration says it is officially ending the controversial Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy that forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases wind through court, often in grueling conditions for months or years. We speak to attorney and activist Efrén Olivares with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project about the impact of this policy, as well as ongoing efforts to reunite families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy in 2018. Olivares represented some of the children and their parents, and wrote about them in his new book, "My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines." [See the Program]. For Part 2 of this interview, (Video) "My Boy Will Die of Sorrow": Efrén Olivares on His Memoir of Family Separation Under Trump & Beyond," go here. Also very interesting is "The Secret History of the US Government's Family-Separation Policy," by Caitlin Dickerson, The Atlantic [August 7, 2022] [Link]
The Photographs of the Border
By Aviva Chomsky August 11, 2022
["We died in your hills, we died in your deserts, / We died in your valleys and died on your plains. / We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes, / Both sides of the river, we died just the same," Woody Guthrie sang in his 1948 classic "Deportee"]
---- While Guthrie's song referred to the bracero guest workers imported for California's harvests between World War II and the 1960s, the bracero program was just one incarnation of the uses of the US-Mexico border. In More Than a Wall / Más que un Muro, labor journalist and documentary photographer David Bacon offers a lavishly illustrated and politically rich bilingual compilation of photographs and oral histories (as well as Bacon's own historical and interpretive text) that serves as a fitting update to Guthrie's song. Many people are still dying in all those places, on both sides of the river/border, and not by chance. Their deaths are the result of the arbitrary and exploitative nature of US-Mexico relations, which pulses through the volume's narratives and photographs. [Read More].
(Video) The Chris Hedges Report: We Don't Need The CIA
By Chris Hedges, The Real News Network [August 13, 2022] - 33 minutes
---- The CIA, from its inception, carried out assassinations, coups, torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including of US citizens, many of which were exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House. Congress attempted to enact laws to curb the widespread criminal activity by the CIA. Senate and House intelligence oversight committees were created, and after the Iran-Contra scandal a statutory Inspector General at the CIA was appointed. But this oversight has largely collapsed following the attacks of 9/11 and the so-called war on terror. The activities of the CIA have once again reverted to the shadows. The CIA, at the same time, has transformed itself into a paramilitary organization, with its own armed units and drone program. The US allocates a secret black budget of about $50 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. Chris Hedges and John Kiriakou discuss the CIA, how it has evolved, how it sees its mission, what it does, how it works, and the effects of its clandestine operations around the globe. [See the Program]
Israel/Palestine
Israel's Pyrrhic Victory in Gaza
ByAugust 14, 2022]
---- While U.S. support for the most recent Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip was more muted than usual, there was still no mistaking American backing for the bombing which left dozens of Palestinians dead and hundreds wounded. This attack stands out among many on Gaza as being particularly orchestrated and the timing, on the heels of Joe Biden's recent visit to the region, as well as the White House's statement that "the United States has worked with officials from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, and others throughout the region to encourage a swift resolution to the conflict" raise the question of how deeply the Biden administration was involved in that coordination. … Much speculation has centered around the upcoming Israeli elections as the prime motivating factor for Lapid's insistence on attacking Gaza now. No doubt, this was a major part of Lapid's and Defense Minister Benny Gantz's thinking, as both men are vying to become Israel's next prime minister in November. But it may also be a case of "be careful what you wish for." While killing Palestinians in Gaza does tend to help in Israeli elections, it may be a pyrrhic victory for Lapid and Gantz [Read More]. Also of interest – "Israel's friends struggle to justify unprovoked attack that killed 17 children," byAugust 12, 2022] [Link].
AIPAC vs. Democracy
By Ruth Messinger and Mik Moore, The Nation [August 12, 2022]
---- The benefits of democracy in the United States have never been shared equally, despite ongoing rhetoric claiming otherwise. African Americans, women, some immigrant groups, the formerly incarcerated and other marginalized populations have, at different times, been denied equal citizenship. But for most Jews, liberal democracy in the US, designed both to protect vulnerable minorities and to provide avenues for the average citizen to shape their government, has been consistently great for us. We thrive under democracy and do badly under authoritarian regimes. American Jews don't agree on everything, but on this question we are largely aligned. US democracy is a system of government that we should want to protect and expand. So it has been outrageous to see some of the most politically engaged American Jews, including AIPAC and its allies, taking steps that effectively weaken our democracy by engaging in unlimited spending to overwhelm unaligned candidates, supporting candidates who are opposed to democratic laws and norms, and seeking to limit free speech if it is critical of Israel. Let's start with the matter of unlimited spending. [Read More] Also of interest – "How AIPAC went from Lobbying for Israel to quashing Progressives and backing Jan. 6 Insurgents," b[Link].
