Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 19, 2023
Hello All – Monday, March 20th, marks the 20th anniversary of the US war against Iraq. Many Rivertowns resident will recall the petitioning and protests in the months before the war, culminating in the great million-person antiwar rally at the UN on February 15, 2003. However, despite the worldwide protest of many millions that day, our government launched its illegal war a few weeks later. The war was illegal and immoral, a disaster, and we live with the consequences still.
In retrospect we see clearly that the antiwar protesters in 2003 were right and those who assured us that the war against Iraq was just and necessary were wrong. History has revealed that the arguments for going to war were mainly based on lies about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." We will never forget this.
Nor was the war the easy victory predicted by the Bush administration; indeed, it lasted for many years with almost 5,000 US soldiers killed, tens of thousands wounded, and tens of thousands of veteran suicides. The US war and war machine caused hundreds of thousands of "excess deaths" of Iraqi civilians. And the war cost at least $3 trillion. (What else might that have provided us?)
On this, the 20th anniversary of the war against Iraq, let us pledge to redouble our efforts to stop the many wars now on-going, and to prevent future wars from taking place. Peace is possible.
Some useful reading about the Iraq War
Who's in Control of How We Remember the Iraq War?
By Jeremy Earp, ZNet [March 17, 2023]
---- As mainstream U.S. media outlets pause to remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it's clear that there's a lot they hope we'll forget – first and foremost, the media's own active complicity in whipping up public support for the war. But the more you dig into mainstream news coverage from that period, as our documentary team did last week when we put together this five-minute montage from our 2007 film War Made Easy, the harder it is to forget how flagrantly news networks across the broadcast and cable landscape uncritically spread the Bush administration's propaganda and actively excluded dissenting voices. … The result was a barely debated, deceit-driven, headlong rush into a war of choice that would go on to destabilize the region, accelerate global terrorism, bleed trillions of dollars from the U.S. treasury, and kill thousands of U.S. servicemembers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians. Yet two decades later, as we hurtle ever closer to potentially catastrophic new wars, there's been virtually no accountability or sustained reporting in mainstream news media to remind us of their own decisive role in selling the Iraq war. [Read More]
We Iraqis had survived Saddam Hussein. It was the US invasion that destroyed our lives
By Balsam Mustafa, The Guardian [UK] [March 17, 2023]
---- Twenty years ago, around this time, the US-led military operation to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein's regime finally seemed inevitable for Iraqis. With it, the idea of leaving started to sink in. By leaving, I do not mean fleeing the country. That was not even an option. After the 1990s Gulf war, and the international sanctions that followed it, Iraqis were isolated from the rest of the world. For many, there was no exit. Leaving meant departing schools, universities or workplaces, saying goodbye to friends and colleagues, and moving to relatively safer places within the country, away from the areas targeted by strikes and bombings. But my parents decided to stay at home in Baghdad. … We did not anticipate the trajectory that Iraq would follow after the invasion. We shared some cautious optimism about a better future despite our mixed emotions towards the war. [Read More]
Iraqis Tortured by the U.S. in Abu Ghraib Never Got Justice
By Elise Swain, The Intercept [March 17, 2023]
---- Before the "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq launched and the contrived toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue, U.S. special forces, private contractors, and intelligence agents had begun sweeping up suspects in the new "war on terror." The brutalization of so-called enemy combatants was a well-established practice by the time American boots hit the ground in Iraq 20 years ago next week, and it would be carried onto Iraqi soil. Tens of thousands of Iraqis in the early years of the war would pass through interrogation and detention sites where CIA agents, military intelligence, military police, private contractors, special operation, and ordinary soldiers inflicted abuse that no longer gets cloaked by euphemisms: It was torture. … As is the American playbook, those in the highest seats of power, who played dumb while making torture a matter of policy, evaded any accountability. No criminal court indictments, no personal or professional repercussions, no travel restrictions, and no sanctions would flow up the chain of command. [Read More]
The Not-So-Winding Road from Iraq to Ukraine
By
---- March 19th marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. This seminal event in the short history of the 21st century not only continues to plague Iraqi society to this day, but it also looms large over the current crisis in Ukraine, making it impossible for most of the Global South to see the war in Ukraine through the same prism as U.S. and Western politicians. …Today, nations in the Global South have overwhelmingly refused U.S. entreaties to send weapons to Ukraine and are reluctant to comply with Western sanctions on Russia. Instead, they are urgently calling for diplomacy to end the war before it escalates into a full-scale conflict between Russia and the United States, with the existential danger of a world-ending nuclear war. [Read More]
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 (winter schedule) on the first Monday of each month; the next vigil will be April 3rd from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. 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 join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. 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!
Stalwart readers are rewarded this week with a package of recordings by the amazing pianist Yuja Wang. Within the world of classical music, she has emerged as a "rock star"; check out her renditions of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," Dimitri Shostakovich's "Concerto No.1 for Piano and Trumpet," and Vladimir Horowitz's variations on gypsy dances from George Bizet's "Carmen." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
The CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Witness, Resilience, Accountability
An interview with Rabab Abdulhadi, Against the Current [March-April 2023]
[FB – Rabab Abdulhadi lives in Westchester and is a professor at San Francisco State University, where she developed the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) program. She is also a member of JVP-Westchester.]
---- Last September, I co-organized with emergent scholars two international conferences and a delegation to Lebanon and Tunisia as part of our multi-year project, Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice. We focused in 2022 on the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the September, 1982 Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres that took place after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut. We also commemorated the 20th anniversary of both the Israeli invasion of Palestinian areas under Palestinian Authority (PA) control (at the height of the Aqsa Intifada), the 2002 Jenin massacre and the start of the Apartheid wall. … Teaching Palestine entails centering the voices and lived experiences of the marginalized who bear witness to radical changes taking place. This captures the sense that resilience is a major contributing factor to victories. These reciprocal solidarity trips highlight more than ever the need to seriously commit to justice-centered knowledge production. [Read More]
Hope Amid Climate Chaos: A Conversation with Rebecca Solnit
Stella Levantesi, DeSmogBlog [February 21, 2023]
---- In Hope in the Dark you wrote that hope requires imagination and clarity, and in your latest essay published by the Guardian you said that every crisis is a storytelling crisis. … How do we reconcile these three dimensions: the climate crisis, imagination, and hope? And if we succeed in reconciling them what can that lead to?
Rebecca Solnit: I always feel it's very important to clear up the distinction between hope and optimism. For me, optimism is a form of certainty: everything will be fine, therefore, nothing is required of us, which is really the same as cynicism and pessimism and despair. Hope, for me, is just recognizing that the future is being decided to some extent in the present, and what we do matters because of that reality. I think the fundamental role of imagination and hope is just the ability to imagine a world that's different from what it is now. … I find that so many people around me are very good at imagining everything falling apart, everything getting worse; they're good at dystopia, they're bad at utopia. There are a lot of reasons why people find dystopia very credible and utopia or improvements hard to comprehend. I think some of that comes from amnesia. If you don't know how much the world has been changed, to some extent for the better, how much the climate movement has achieved, then you don't really have a picture of how change works either. [Read More]
War & Peace
Are We Manufacturing a Taiwan Crisis Over Nothing?
By Michael T. Klare, The Nation [March 17, 2023]
---- Is China really on the verge of invading the island of Taiwan, as so many top American officials seem to believe? If the answer is "yes" and the United States intervenes on Taiwan's side—as President Biden has sworn it would—we could find ourselves in a major-power conflict, possibly even a nuclear one, in the not-too-distant future. But what if the answer is "no," which seems at least as likely? Wouldn't that pave the way for the US to work with its friends and allies, no less than with China itself, to reduce tensions in the region and possibly open a space for the launching of peaceful negotiations between Taiwan and the mainland? How that question is answered has enormous implications for us all. Yet, among policy-makers in Washington, it isn't even up for discussion. Instead, they seem to be competing with each another to identify the year in which the purported Chinese invasion will occur and war will break out between our countries. [Read More]
(Video) China's Middle East Deal: Iran & Saudi Arabia Reestablish Relations as U.S. Watches from Sidelines
From Democracy Now! [March 13, 2023]
---- Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations after seven years and reopen their respective embassies within months, in a deal brokered Friday by China and signed in Beijing. The rapprochement between the two rivals is the latest sign of China's growing presence in world affairs and waning U.S. influence in the Middle East amid a shift in focus to Ukraine and the Pacific region. "If we have a more stable Middle East, even if it's mediated by the Chinese, that ultimately is good for the United States, as well," says author and analyst Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He adds that the U.S. focus in the Middle East is mainly on helping Israel normalize relations with Arab states while "all of the pressure is taken off of Israel to end its occupation" of Palestinian territory. [See the Program]
Also of interest re: war & peace – "View from the Ukrainian Left," by Denys Bondar and Zakhar Popovych, Against the Current [March-April 2023] [Link]; "Biden Administration Splits on Prosecuting Russia for War Crimes in Ukraine," by Alice Speri, The Intercept [March 15, 2023] [Link]; "The Arctic is the next frontier in the new cold war," by , Geopolitical Economy Report [February 28, 2023] [Link]; and "There's No Settlement of the War in Ukraine Without China," by Gilbert Achcar, The Nation [March 16, 2023] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Biden just betrayed the planet – and his own campaign vows
By Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian [UK] [March 14, 2023]
---- The Willow project is an act of terrorism against the climate, and the Biden administration has just approved it. This massive oil-drilling project in the wilderness of northern Alaska goes against science and the administration's many assurances that it cares about climate and agrees that we must make a swift transition away from fossil fuel. … I call it an act of terrorism, because this drilling project in Alaska produces petroleum, which will be burned, which will send carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it will contribute to climate chaos that will affect people in the South Pacific, the tropics, the circumpolar Arctic, will affect the melting of the Greenland ice shield …. [Read More]. Also of interest is this program from Democracy Now!, "Climate & Indigenous Activists Decry Biden's Approval of Willow Oil Drilling Project in Arctic" [March 13, 2023] [Link].
Civil Liberties
(Video) Julian Assange's Father & Brother Speak Out on His Jailing, Press Freedom & New Documentary "Ithaka"
From Democracy Now! [March 17, 2023]
---- We continue our coverage of the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by looking at the imprisonment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been jailed for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. One video released by WikiLeaks showed a U.S. helicopter gunship in Baghdad slaughtering a dozen civilians, including a Reuters journalist. Assange has been held in London's Belmarsh prison since 2019 as he fights the U.S. campaign to extradite him to face espionage charges. If convicted, the publisher faces as much as 175 years behind bars. His legal fight is documented in the new film Ithaka that centers on Assange's father John Shipton, who has been crisscrossing the globe to raise awareness of the case and the danger it poses to press freedoms. We speak with Shipton, as well as filmmaker Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange's brother and a producer of the documentary. [See the Program]. And for more information about the film, go here.
The State of the Union
Biden Has Now Embraced Republican Restrictionism on Immigration
By Gaby Del Valle, The Nation [March 16, 2023]
---- The Biden administration will soon implement a policy that will "encourage migrants to avail themselves of lawful, safe, and orderly pathways into the United States, or otherwise to seek asylum or other protection in countries through which they travel, thereby reducing reliance on human smuggling networks that exploit migrants for financial gain." One could be forgiven for thinking that this regulation, slated to go into effect in mid-May, expands access to the asylum process. In fact, it does the opposite. The new policy "encourages" lawful pathways by further criminalizing the most common existing pathways. Once the rule goes into effect, anyone who passes through another country on their way to the United States and crosses the border between official entry points will be deemed ineligible for asylum unless they applied for asylum in that other country first. There are a few exceptions, but the new policy will affect virtually all non-Mexican nationals who arrive at the border. [Read More]
It's a New Day in the United Auto Workers
By Luis Feliz Leon and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes [March 17, 2023]
---- Nearly 80 years of top-down one-party rule in the United Auto Workers are coming to an end. Reformer Shawn Fain is set to be the winner in the runoff for UAW presidency. There are around 600 unresolved challenged ballots. (This story will be updated with the final vote tally when we have it.) "… Once Fain's victory is conclusive— after remaining challenged ballots are counted—he will join Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, who ran on the Members United slate and won outright in the first round, and a majority of the International Executive Board, giving reformers control of the direction of the union. The UAW Members United slate won every race it challenged—a clear rebuke to the old guard. [Read More] Also of interest is this interview with Shawn Fain, "Challenger Shawn Fain Set to Win UAW Presidency," In These Times [March 17, 2023] [Link].
Israel/Palestine
Do Palestinian citizens want a place in Israel's anti-gov't protests?
By Samah Salaime, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [March 13, 2023]
---- The Palestinian Arab public in Israel has had very mixed and complex feelings about the mass protests against the far-right government's plans to overhaul the judiciary. On the one hand, the hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews filling city squares and streets every week have been surprisingly persistent, inspiring appreciation, reflection, and even a modicum of jealousy. On the other hand, it isn't easy for Palestinians to watch what appears like a nationalist Flag March washing over the country. … Seeing all this, three main camps of thought have emerged among Palestinian citizens on how to respond to the anti-government protests. [Read More]
Twenty years later, Rachel Corrie lives
By
---- Twenty years ago, on March 16, 2003, an Israeli military bulldozer crushed American solidarity activist Rachel Corrie to death a few kilometers away from my home in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. She was one of several International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activists trying to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes there. Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had launched a campaign to destroy thousands of Palestinian homes to establish a buffer zone on the Palestinian-Egyptian border. ISM activists arrived in the area to express humanitarian solidarity with civilians facing Israel's occupation machine. … The intentional killing of Rachel Corrie was a message of intimidation to solidarity activists, telling them to stop hindering Israeli soldiers during their daily ritual of house demolition and killing civilians. [Read More] Of course the home demolitions continue: read "Number of demolitions by Israel of Palestinian property doubles," from Middle East Monitor [March 18, 2023] [Link].
Our History [Remembering Kenzaburo Oe]
(Video) Japanese Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe on 70th Anniv. of US Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
From Democracy Now! [August 6, 2015]
[FB – Kenzaburo Oe, a Nobel-prize winner for literature many years ago, and one of Japan's leading campaigners for peace, died this week [[Link]. Eight years ago Democracy Now! interviewed him in connection with the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.]
---- Seventy years ago today, at 8:15 in the morning, the U.S. dropped the world's first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Destruction from the bomb was massive. Shock waves, radiation and heat rays took the lives of some 140,000 people. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing another 74,000. President Harry Truman announced the attack on Hiroshima in a nationally televised address on August 6, 1945. Today, as the sun came up in Hiroshima, tens of thousands began to gather in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park to commemorate the world's first nuclear attack. We are joined by the acclaimed Japanese novelist and winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, Kenzaburo Oe, whose books address political and social issues, including nuclear weapons and nuclear power. [See the Program] Also of interest is this interview from 2010, "Nobel Prize novelist Kenzaburo Oe talks about 'Hiroshiima'," [Link].
