Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 26, 2023
Hello All – While California is buried in snow and millions of "climate refugees" scramble to find food and shelter, the United Nation's watchdog on the climate crisis has issued its "Sixth Assessment Report." Thousands of climate scientists, networked in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have created a climate assessment that had to be acclaimed by a consensus of the world's nation states – i.e., Saudi Arabia and other oil-dependent states had to go along. Thus, this is a conservative document.
The Report strives to find rays of optimism in an increasingly dark and stormy picture of our future world. The bottom line is that the agreed-upon red line for global warming – an increase in the world's temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures – must be maintained. Surpassing this red line would mean a volatile, unstable climate. Yet, as has been known for at least a decade, the likelihood of achieving this goal has been slim; and it now appears that the barrier will be broken soon. After that, rising temperatures may be irreversible and unstoppable.
The article by climate scientist Kevin Anderson linked below illuminates one part of the tragedy that has been unjustly ignored. Much of the controversy at recent climate conferences has been the consequence of the great inequalities of wealth and levels of development among the world's nations. In essence, the poorer nations of the world can only develop a reasonable standard of living, while the world remains limited to warming no more than 1.5 degrees, if the industrialized parts of the world are willing to reduce our own standards of consumption. This of course is inconceivable, given our current political horizons. Moreover, as Anderson maintains, continued world inequality has been built into the work of the UN climate scientists, who are overwhelmingly themselves from the wealthier countries. Our salvation, therefore, lies not only with advances in technology and social arrangements far in advance of what now seems possible, but in a worldwide revolution of values that also seems unimaginable. Yet abandoning the struggle to maintain what we value in our civilization is also unimaginable. We can't give up.
Some useful reading on the depths of the climate crisis
Facing Up to the Climate Reckoning Ahead
By Samuel Miller McDonald, The Nation [March 24, 2023]
---- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released the "summary for policymakers" section of the group's forthcoming Synthesis Report, the final portion of its massive Sixth Assessment Report. Two messages in particular have stood out in both media coverage and the report itself. The 1.5 degrees C warming threshold scientists say is the line between relative stability and extreme volatility—which may be irreversible—is more likely than not to occur within around five years, even under scenarios positing very low carbon emissions. This has accompanied the urgent message that there's still time to avert calamity. … Are world leaders likely to reverse their historical behavior in the next few years? Given this grim pattern of noncompliance, it does not seem prudent to rely on them. It may even be reasonable to assume that the COPs have prevented meaningful action by providing world leaders the appearance of acting while avoiding doing anything of substance. [Read More]
IPCC's conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change
---- For over two decades, the IPCC's work on cutting emissions (what experts call "mitigation") has been dominated by a particular group of modellers who use huge computer models to simulate what may happen to emissions under different assumptions, primarily related to price and technology. I've raised concerns before about how this select cadre, almost entirely based in wealthy, high-emitting nations, has undermined the necessary scale of emission reductions. In 2023, I can no longer tiptoe around the sensibilities of those overseeing this bias. In my view, they have been as damaging to the agenda of cutting emissions as Exxon was in misleading the public about climate science. [Read More] Also useful on this topic is "How Scientists From the "Global South" Are Sidelined at the IPCC," by Christopher Ketcham, The Intercept [N[Link].
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. (Thereafter, the vigil will be held weekly.) 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!
This week's Rewards for stalwart readers come from two of my favorites. First up is Teddy Wilson and his orchestra, with Billie Holiday. I believe this is the first (1935) of their many wonderful collaborations. Also this week, I found a new (to me) set from Tuba Skinny, playing at the French Quarter Fest (New Orleans) in 2018. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Prophesies, Then and Now: My Life at World's End
By
---- But more than 60 years later, it strikes me that we kids who had learned to "duck and cover" at school — to dive under our desks, hands over our heads (with CONELRAD warnings blaring from the radio on our teacher's desk) — in preparation for a Russian nuclear attack, already had a deep sense not of future promise but of doom to come. In those days, it wasn't that hard to imagine ourselves in a future devastated world returned to the Stone Age or worse. And at the time, I suspect that was hardly out of the ordinary. After all, there were, in a sense, mushroom clouds everywhere on the horizon of our lives to come. By 1962, America's victory weapon that, in two blinding flashes in August 1945, took out the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, had become a weapon (in other hands) of potential defeat. Everywhere in our lives there lurked the possibility that "we," not "they," might be the next victims of nuclear extermination. Consider it an irony indeed that our country's nukes would chase Americans through the decades to come, infiltrating so many parts of our world and our lives. [Read More]
I Am Haunted by What I Have Seen at Great Salt Lake
[FB – I have family in Salt Lake City, and have been hearing this story for years. Not emphasized in this powerful article is the fact that most of the water being diverted from Great Salt Lake is used for agriculture, mostly for hay and alfalfa (for cattle-meat), and that much of this is exported to China to feed their cattle. IMO this is a prime example of the way in which the private/corporate control of water is endangering us all. The author, Ms. Williams, is a writer who lives in Utah and grew up near Great Salt Lake.]
---- For 13,000 years, the lake has existed with no outlet to the sea, her large deposits of salt left behind through evaporation. Lately, evaporation from heat and drought accelerated by climate change, combined with overuse of the rivers that feed it, have shrunk the lake's area by two-thirds. A report out of Brigham Young University and other institutions earlier this year warned that if we do not take emergency measures immediately, Great Salt Lake will disappear in five years. … Great Salt Lake's death and the death of the lives she sustains could become our death, too. The dry lake bed now exposed to the wind is laden with toxic elements, accumulated in the lake over decades. On any given day, dust devils are whipping up a storm in these "hot spots," blowing mercury and arsenic-laced winds through the Wasatch Front where 2.6 million people dwell, with Salt Lake City at its center. … Yet I do not believe Utahns have fully grasped the magnitude of what we are facing. We could be forced to leave. [Read More]
(Video) Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin – [2019]
[FB – For many of us, the writings of Ursula Le Guin – especially The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed – opened new ways of thinking about how the world was and how it could be different. You can see this excellent documentary film on the platform of "Kanopy," if you have a library card, for free. Just follow the link.]
---- Best-known for groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy works such as A Wizard of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin defiantly held her ground on the margin of "respectable" literature until the sheer excellence of her work, at long last, forced the mainstream to embrace fantastic literature. Her fascinating story has never before been captured on film. [See the Film].
War & Peace
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [March 25, 2023]
---- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on state television Saturday plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus—an escalation anti-war campaigners had been warning about and that alarmed disarmament advocates and experts. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) "condemns this extremely dangerous escalation which makes the use of nuclear weapons more likely," the group declared in a series of tweets. The deployment decision comes 13 months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine and after the United Kingdom this week revealed plans to provide the invaded nation with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium (DU). [Read More]
The U.S. Is Not an Indispensable Peacemaker
---- Over the years, as America's foreign policy became more militarized and as sustaining the so-called rules-based order increasingly meant that the United States put itself above all rules, America appears to have given up on the virtues of honest peacemaking. We deliberately chose a different path. America increasingly prides itself on not being an impartial mediator. We abhor neutrality. We strive to take sides in order to be "on the right side of history" since we view statecraft as a cosmic battle between good and evil rather than the pragmatic management of conflict where peace inevitably comes at the expense of some justice. This has perhaps been most evident in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but is now increasingly defining America's general posture.
War with China?
Useful this week are "Pentagon Leaders Say New Budget Will Help Prepare for War With China," by [Link]; and "y Joseph Gerson, Common Dreams [March 26, 2023] [Link].
War with Russia?
New this week, in addition to Putin's threat/plan to move nuclear weapons to Belarus, is an update on the Seymour Hersh story alleging US responsibility for the sabotage of the Russian "Nord Stream" gas pipeline to Germany: "Russia Calls for U.N. Investigation of Nord Stream Attack, as Hersh Accuses White House of False Flag," by Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [March 25, 2023] [Link]. Those just tuning into this swamp might want to read "Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot," also by Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept [March 10, 2023] [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Biden Betrays Youth With Willow Project—and Breaks His Own Promise
From In These Times [March 2023]
---- Despite our generation saving Democrats year after year at the ballot box, despite the more than 650 million views on TikTok of mostly young people screaming to #StopWillow, the White House made a decision to throw a middle finger to our generation. Many are now throwing their hands up, proclaiming that government does not work, that Biden's choice to move forward with Willow is proof of the inadequacies of our government system. Biden's choice isn't a reason to give up on our government — it is only proof that the fossil industry is winning and that we must get serious about building the type of leverage and power that can compete with them. [Read More]
The Intertwined Food and Climate Emergencies: Culpability
[former president of Science for the People] [March 24, 2023]
---- Contrasting images come to mind when it comes to hunger and climate: the haunting silhouetted dance of death in Bergman's movie The Seventh Seal, the Last Supper scene with a blind Jesus, set to Handel's Hallelujah Chorus in surrealist director Luis Bunuel's Viridiana. Unfortunately, this image isn't fiction — "Scenic Eclipse Ultra-Luxury Ocean Cruising" to melting Antarctica offering "private degustation – 2500 recipes". Nigerian novelist Wole Soyinka speaks of the haywire loss of morality, a world in which UN Right to Food expert Jean Ziegler reported that a child under age ten dies of hunger every five seconds and the oligarchs of agri-food and finance decide every day who on this planet will die and who will live. This article is about loss of both morality and of thinking. [Read More]
Civil Liberties
By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams [March 23, 2023]
---- Civil and digital rights groups this week joined a trio of progressive U.S. lawmakers in opposing bipartisan proposals to ban the social media platform TikTok, arguing that such efforts are rooted in "anti-China" motives and do not adequately address the privacy concerns purportedly behind the legislation. The ACLU argues that, if passed, legislation recently introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate "sets the stage for the government to ban TikTok," which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and is used by more than 1 in 3 Americans. The Senate bill would grant the U.S. Department of Commerce power to prohibit people in the United States from using apps and products made by companies "subject to the jurisdiction of China" and other "foreign adversaries." [Read More] Also of interest is "Social Media Surveillance by the U.S. Government," by Rachel Levinson-Waldman, et al., The Brennan Center [January 7, 2022] [Link].
The State of the Union
Fear-Mongering Threatens a Plan to Build More Suburban Housing
By Mara Gay, New York Times [March 22, 2023]
---- In an insult to New Yorkers suffering from spiraling rents and home prices, both houses of New York's Democratic-controlled Legislature rejected an ambitious set of proposals from Gov. Kathy Hochul last week that would begin to address the crisis in available housing. The legislators appear to be capitulating to the panic of their suburban members, as well as a smaller but persistent group of NIMBYs who oppose development in New York City. Lately, those voices have proven stubborn. Some of the backlash to the effort to build more housing in the suburbs has evoked euphemistic language that might have brought a smile to a Southern segregationist in the era of "states' rights." [Read More] For some background, a report from the Furman Center, Ending Exclusionary Zoning in New York City's Suburbs looks useful. A report from the University of California-Berkeley found that 80 percent of US metro areas were more segregated in 2019 than in 1990 [Link].
(Video) Cop City: Judge Denies Bond to People Rounded Up in Mass Arrest for Opposing Police Training Facility
From Democracy Now! [March 24, 2023]
---- In Atlanta, a judge has denied bond for most of the people indiscriminately arrested at a music festival against the proposed "Cop City" police training facility in the Weelaunee Forest. Jailed since March 5, they are charged with domestic terrorism based on scant evidence like muddy clothes or simply being in the area at the time of the festival. We're joined by Micah Herskind, an Atlanta community organizer, who calls the charges "political prosecutions" and a blatant "attempt to repress this social movement that is trying to stop Cop City." [See the Program] To learn more, a useful website is https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/.
Israel/Palestine
Israeli protest movement must dismantle the foundations of society to be successful
By Rachel Beit Arie, Mondoweiss [March 26, 2023]
---- The Israeli protest movement against planned judicial reforms is entering its 12th week, with little sign of slowing down. The Netanyahu government has passed its initial plans, and the protest movement is redoubling its efforts with growing support from Jewish communities in the United States. In many ways, this is an extraordinary moment for Israel and Jewish communities' connection to it around the world. Still, in the midst of the struggle against the current government, we must remember that the root of the problem lies with the colonialist regime as a whole rather than bemoan a democracy that has never existed here. [Read More]
(Video) The Candidate and the Spy: James Bamford on Israel's Secret Collusion with Trump to Win 2016 Race
From Democracy Now! [March 24, 2023]
---- In his new book, Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence, investigative journalist James Bamford reveals that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatched a secret Israeli agent to the United States in the spring of 2016 to help Donald Trump win the presidential election. The agent met with advisers to Trump and offered to share secret intelligence with the campaign against Hillary Clinton. Bamford's investigation finds that while American media fixated on Russia's role in swaying the 2016 election, Israeli interference was completely ignored. [See the Program]. Also of interest is Bamford's article in The Nation, "The Trump Campaign's Collusion With Israel" [Link].
Our History [The Invasion of Iraq]
(Video) War Made Easy: Norman Solomon on How Mainstream Media Helped Pave Way for U.S. Invasion of Iraq
From Democracy Now! [March 21, 2023]
----As we continue to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we look at how the corporate U.S. media helped pave the way for war by uncritically amplifying lies and misrepresentations from the Bush administration while silencing voices of dissent. Longtime media critic Norman Solomon says many of the same media personalities and news outlets that pushed aggressively for the invasion then are now helping to solidify an elite consensus around the Ukraine war. "In the mass media, being pro-war is portrayed as objective. Being antiwar is portrayed as being biased," he says. Solomon is author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and the forthcoming War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. [See the Program]
Also of interest re: the US invasion of Iraq – "20 Years of Iraq Denialism: The New York Times Continues to Get it Wrong on U.S. Empire," b [Link]; "Iraqis Deserve Justice in the Form of Reparations," by Noha Aboueldahab, Democracy in Exile [March 17, 2023] [Link]; and "The Architects of the Iraq War: Where Are They Now?," by Jon Schwarz, The Intercept [ [Link].
