Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 24, 2023
Hello All – On September 13th, 400 climate scientists sent a letter to President Biden imploring him to take meaningful action to address the climate crisis. The letter was supported by statements from prominent client scientists. For example, "Given how bad global heating has now gotten, it's simply insane that President Biden still refuses to declare a climate emergency, and indeed, continues to make everything worse by expanding fossil fuels," said Peter Kalmus, PhD, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One of the scientists initiating to letter, Rose Abramoff, spoke to Democracy Now! last week about the scientists' action (which cost her her job). Here are some excerpts from the scientists' letter. The bottom line for concerned citizens is simple: if our leaders can't follow the paths to save us from climate disaster, as laid out by people who know what they are talking about, we need new – different – leaders.
Dear President Biden,
On your first day in office, you issued an executive order pledging that it is "the policy of my administration to listen to the science" in tackling the climate crisis. We welcomed this message. And yet more than two years later, it's clear that the crisis is spiraling out of control and the policies of your administration with regard to fossil fuels fail to align with what the science tells us must happen to avert calamity.
With the climate crisis raging all around us - in the form of fires, floods, hurricanes, drought, heat waves, crop failures, and more - we call on you directly, clearly, and unequivocally to stop enacting policies contrary to science and do what is needed to address the crisis. Embrace the demands of the March to End Fossil Fuels:
1. Stop federal approval for new fossil fuel projects and repeal permits for climate bombs like the Willow project and the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
2. Phase out fossil drilling on our public lands and waters
3. Declare a climate emergency to halt fossil fuel exports and investments abroad, and turbo charge the build-out of more just, resilient distributed energy (like rooftop and community solar)
4. Provide a just transition to a renewable energy future that generates millions of jobs while supporting workers' and community rights, job security, and employment equity.
So say 400 climate scientists. Is anybody listening?
Some useful reading on the climate crisis
Climate Change is our Biggest Security Threat: Our Federal Budget Should Reflect That
By Lindsay Koshgarian and Alliyah Lusuegro, Other Words [September 20, 2023]
---- As the hottest summer in human history approached its end, tens of thousands of climate marchers rallied in New York to call for bold climate solutions. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington lurched toward another fight over the federal budget. More than ever, the U.S. needs to get serious about climate. And to do that, we need to re-prioritize what's in that budget. As it stands, more than half of the discretionary budget that Congress allocates each year goes to the Pentagon. Until the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act last year, the average taxpayer gave $2,375 each year to the military — and just $6 to renewable energy projects. [Read More]
Welcome to the New Green Colonialism
By John Feffer, Tomdispatch [September 2023]
---- The classic ladder of development, industrialization itself, has become rickety and ever more dangerous. After all, it requires energy traditionally supplied by fossil fuels, now known to radically heat up the planet and endanger the very survival of humanity. Today, countries aspiring to join the charmed circle of the wealthy can no longer hope to climb that ladder in any usual fashion, thanks in part to the carbon-neutrality pledges virtually all nations made as part of the Paris climate accord. The Global South is divided on how to respond. For instance, as the world's second-largest consumer of coal and third-largest consumer of oil, India wants to grow in the old-fashioned fossil-fuelized way, becoming the last one up that ladder, even as its rungs are disintegrating. Other countries, like renewables-reliant Uruguay and carbon-neutral Suriname, are exploring more sustainable paths to progress. Either way, with global temperatures setting ever more extreme records and inequality worsening, poor countries face their last shot at following South Korea and Qatar into the ranks of the "developed" world. [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 in Yonkers on Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm 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!
The Rewards for stalwart readers this week come from funnyman/musician Roy Zimmerman. I think you will like his most recent music video, "Hannity Tonight." And as You-Know-Who is always topical, here is a report of (the fourth edition of) {Vote Him Away" (The Liar Tweets Tonight. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
(Video) UN Secretary-General Guterres issues dire warning at United Nations General Assembly | 'The world is becoming unhinged' [September 19, 2023]
---- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a dire warning to world leaders, saying humanity is facing existential threats and seems incapable of coming together to face the challenge. [See the Secretary-General's speech] Also of interest is "World peace and security require a stronger United Nations," by Lawrence Wittner, Peace Action NYS [September 24, 2023] [Link].
The dismantling of democracy in India will affect the whole world
By Arundhati Roy, Scroll.in [September 14, 2023]
[FB – This is the writer's speech as she received the 45th European Essay Prize on September 12.]
---- What makes me happiest is that it is a prize for literature. Not for peace. Not for culture or cultural freedom, but for literature. For writing. And for writing the kind of essays that I write and have written for the past 25 years. They have mapped, step by step, India's descent (although some see it as an ascent) into first majoritarianism and then full-blown fascism. … It is no longer just our leaders we must fear, but a whole section of the population. The banality of evil, the normalisation of evil is now manifest in our streets, in our classrooms, in very many public spaces. The mainstream press, the hundreds of 24-hour news channels have been harnessed to the cause of fascist majoritarianism. India's Constitution has been effectively set aside. The Indian Penal Code is being rewritten. If the current regime wins a majority in 2024, it is very likely that we will see a new Constitution. [Read More]
The Underground Historians Keeping the Truth Alive in China
By Ian Johnson, New York Times [September 21, 2023]
[FB - Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who spent two decades in China.]
---- In 1959, a group of university students in the northwestern Chinese city of Tianshui embarked on a quixotic plan. China was in the midst of the Great Famine, a catastrophe caused by government policies that would kill as many as 45 million. These young people had witnessed farmers starving to death and cannibalism; they also saw how the government had brutally punished or killed people who appealed for help. They felt someone needed to do something to spread word of what was happening. They decided to publish a journal. … There would be no second issue. Within months, 43 people associated with the magazine were arrested. Three were later executed, and the rest sentenced to years in labor camps. … Spark could have been forgotten, nothing more than one of countless small acts of outrage against the party's unchecked powers. Instead, for many Chinese people, its story is now synonymous with resistance to one-party rule. How? Through the efforts of China's counterhistorians, a group of citizens united in their desire to tell the whole story of Communist Party rule, to include in China's collective memory events like the famines of the last century and the virus outbreaks of today. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
CFOW recently joined Code Pink's "Peace in Ukraine" coalition. To learn what the coalition is doing, go here. To learn more about Code Pink, go here. The coalition is launching the "Global Days of Action for Peace in Ukraine" from Saturday, September 30 through Sunday, October 3rd. To learn more, go here. For a user-friendly "Background on the crisis in Ukraine,"go here.
[FB] - This week Ukraine president Zelensky addressed the UN General Assembly and visited the White House, lobbying for more weapons and fending off complaints that Ukraine's "counter-offensive" had reached a stalemate. For his efforts he was awarded a new round of military equipment (worth $325 million) that included more cluster bombs, with hints that a shipment of much-debated ATACMS artillery shells (also fitted with cluster bombs) will be on their way soon.
The Ukrainian battlefront continues to expand, and new weaponry has escalated the lethality of the war. Ukraine attacks on Russian bases in Crimea have caused considerable damage, and The New York Times this week published an extended analysis of the growing success of Ukraine's drone warfare.
Last year the Biden administration appeared to hold intense discussions before sending new weapons systems to Ukraine, evaluating the possibility that the weapons would be used to attack Russian forces inside Russia, thus causing a Russian reaction that might eventually lead to clashes with NATO troops. (In each case, of course, the weapon was eventually approved.) Two weapons systems now on the front burner, the ATACMS artillery shells, with a range of more than 150 miles, and the provision of F-16 jet bombers, with a range of 500 miles, fit this dangerous profile. Yet the Deep Thinkers at the White House have apparently decided that, if the last escalation of weaponry did not provoke a Russian escalation in the war, the next one probably won't either.
Finally, there were three other developments in the war this week that I think bear watching. It appears that European pledges to provide more ammunition to Ukraine have run into an obstacle, in that European countries simply lack the capacity to produce more than their own needs. Second, Ukraine appears to have succeeded in finding an alternative route to export its grain through the Black Sea. The downside of this is that it extends the potential combat zone to the territorial waters of Romania, a NATO country. And finally, Ukrainian farmers, blocked from shipping their grain through Odesa and other Black Sea ports, have been shipping it to Poland and other Eastern European countries. This has created a backlash from farmers in the importing countries, and this has become a big issue in the soon-to-be-held elections in Poland, where the ruling party has banned imports for Ukraine in a vote-getting maneuver.
Some useful/interesting reading on the Ukraine War
Russia is taking my friends one by one – and now I struggle even to write about them
By Oleksandr Mykhed, The Guardian [UK] [September 23, 2023]
---- The pantheon of our national myth is being formed before our eyes. Our friends, teachers, brothers are already in it. And the only thing I dream of is that the living will take their places in the pantheon after victory…. Olena asked whether we can write about the dead without mentioning ourselves and our feelings. I said we can't. Because Russia is taking away my friends and loved ones from me personally. Tearing out my heart piece by piece. [Read More]
Zelensky's "Bad Moment"
By Seymour Hersh [September 21, 2023]
---- The Ukrainian leader resorts to lies and threats at the tail end of a failing counteroffensive. The war between Russia and Ukraine, with the White House continuing to reject any talk of a ceasefire, is at a turning point. … The reality is that Volodymyr Zelensky's battered army no longer has any chance of a victory. [Read More]
The Morality of Ukraine's War Is Very Murky
By Stephen M. Walt, Famous professor at Harvard [September 22, 2023]
---- What is the morally preferable course of action in Ukraine? At first glance, it seems obvious. Ukraine is the victim of an illegal war, its territory is occupied, its citizens have suffered mightily at the hands of the invader, and its adversary is an autocratic regime with any number of unsavory qualities. Strategic calculations aside, surely the proper moral course is to back Ukraine to the hilt. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a gathering at the Yalta European Strategy meeting in Kyiv this month: "When we are talking about this war, we are always talking about morality." Not surprisingly, he conveyed the same message when he visited Washington this week. If only the moral calculus were that simple. [Read More]
War with China?
A useful site for learning about China, and about US-China military tensions, is the Committee for a SANE US-China Policy. Two of their website's sections for "learning more" are "TAIWAN, THE U.S., & CHINA" [Link] and "CHINA, THE U.S., & THE WAR IN UKRAINE" [Link]. Another useful resource is Code Pink's, "China is not our enemy" campaign. Some useful reading on "War with China?"
(Video) What Should U.S. Policy Toward Taiwan Be?
With Mike Mochizuki and Zhiqun Zhu – March 29, 2023
---- Challenging Washington's group think toward China and Taiwan, these exceptional scholar not only laid out the forces leading toward a conflict over Taiwan, but a range of policy options that the U.S. can and should be adopting to reduce tensions, defend Taiwan's democratic system, and over time patiently negotiate reunification in ways that provide greater guarantees than "one country two systems" for a just and peaceful resolution of the Taiwan crisis and the legacies of China's unfinished civil war. [See the Program]
Blasting Bullhorns and Water Cannons, Chinese Ships Wall Off the Sea
By Hannah Beech, New York Times [September 23, 2023]
---- The world's most brazen maritime militarization is gaining muscle in waters through which one-third of global ocean trade passes. Here, on underwater reefs that are known as the Dangerous Ground, the Chinese People's Liberation Army, or P.L.A., has fortified an archipelago of forward operating bases that have branded these waters as China's despite having no international legal grounding. China's coast guard, navy and a fleet of fishing trawlers harnessed into a militia are confronting other vessels, civilian and military alike. [Read More]
Civil Liberties
The Fate of the "Dreamers" Is Likely Headed to the Right-Dominated Supreme Court
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [September 18, 2023]
[FB – Marjorie Cohn is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild.]
---- If the Supreme Court agrees with the new decision by a Texas federal judge, it will be devastating to 600,000 Dreamers. Eleven years after Barack Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, six years after the Trump administration tried to rescind it, and five years after it began wending its way through the courts, the fate of the "Dreamers" is now likely headed to the Supreme Court. On September 13, Judge Andrew Hanen of the Federal District Court in Houston ruled in Texas v. U.S. that Obama did not have the legal authority to create DACA, a program which has protected hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth from deportation. [Read More]
The Autoworkers' Strike
FB – The autoworkers' strike is now 10 days old. Originally three assembly plants (one each for Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis) went on strike, with a total of 13,000 workers in Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri. On Friday, an additional 5,000 workers struck 38 parts distribution centers across 20 states. These distribution centers (including one in Tappan, NY, just across the river from Irvington) were part of the General Motors and Stellantis companies. The union did not strike distribution centers connected with Ford, because Ford "was bargaining in good faith." The UAW strike comes after a long-term decline in autoworkers wages, and on the heels of an insurgent campaign in the union that elected (for the first time, by direct election) a slate of more militant leaders. The UAW strike also follows successful contract negotiations by Teamsters at UPS, with the now lengthy strikes of writers and actors in film and TV, with the prospect of more big strikes by 57,000 medical workers in California, and with the possibility of a strong union forming at Delta airlines. In this context, a win for the autoworkers would be of tremendous significance for ALL progressive movements; without a strong labor movement, it's hard to see many of our other issues being successful. Here is an essay of interest illustrating the tactics of "the new unionism": "Work Extra During a Strike? Auto Workers Say 'Eight and Skate'," by Keith Brower Brown and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes [September 18, 2023] [Link]
Israel/Palestine
Netanyahu-Biden meeting illustrates the political madness of the U.S.-Israeli relationship
By Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss [September 21, 2023]
---- The long-awaited meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took place on Wednesday. It hardly looked like what one might have expected years ago, but the tone and tenor should be cause for concern for many reasons. Meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, both leaders were trying to balance the reality of significant differences over policy and their desire to maintain a strong U.S.-Israel relationship despite the fact that many of their constituents have lost faith in that relationship. . Despite the distaste with which many Democrats view the current Israeli government — including many who still define themselves as "pro-Israel" — Biden and the rest of the Democratic leadership continue to court Israel's favor. [Read More]
Our History
Biden Is the Latest President To Tout the Vietnam War as Proud History
By Norman Solomon, Antiwar.com [September 19, 2023]
[FB – Norman Solomon's most recent book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.]
---- When Joe Biden flew out of Hanoi last week, he was leaving a country where U.S. warfare caused roughly 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths. But, like every other president since the Vietnam War, he gave no sign of remorse. You might think that – after killing such a vast number of people in a war of aggression based on continuous deceptions – some humility and even penance would be in order. But no. As George Orwell put it, "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And a government that intends to continue its might-makes-right use of military power needs leaders who do their best to distort history with foggy rhetoric and purposeful omissions. Lies and evasions about past wars are prefigurative for future wars. [Read More] 
