Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
December 15, 2024
Hello All - The news – the video streams – from Syria record a magnificent and heartbreaking world event. Jubilation in the streets, indeed everywhere, is mixed with scenes [Democracy Now!] of people streaming to the sites of Assad’s prisons, to find their loved ones or (more often) their dead bodies.
Many reports detail the nationwide mosaic of intense community discussions, as Syrians move towards rebuilding their country. Neighborhoods, student groups, professional groups and more appear to be meeting around the clock to build their future, clean up their streets, and find out the truth of what they have endured during a half-century of family dictatorship.
Meanwhile, the vultures circle the near-dead Syrian carcass. This weekend, while Syrians were taking significant steps to establish a transitional government and restore civic order, the “Great Powers” assembled in Jordan to divide the spoils. By reason of pseudo-history and wealth/armed power, NATO and Arab countries claim the right to demand that Syria establish an “inclusive” government, as if that wasn’t the goal of the Syrians themselves. Yet through long experience we know that by “inclusive,” the “Great Powers” mean a government amenable to the West’s strategic goals – shunning Iran, allying with Israel, and opening to door to foreign investment and economic control.
Americans should consider what our government can do to support democracy and self-determination in Syria. Right now, for example, the United States had been bombing sections of eastern Syria. There are also 950 US soldiers there, supposedly suppressing ISIS, but actually controlling Syria’s oil fields. While not a giant producer of oil, Syria’s fields are apparently sufficient for domestic consumption, but the oil and profits are in the hands of Western oil giants. Another issue is US economic sanctions on Syria. These sanctions are crippling to the Syrian economy, and their renewal is about to become law, as they are embedded in the new Pentagon budget legislation. Congress and President Biden could do something about that. And finally there is the issue of the US best-friend ally Israel, which has bombed more than 500 targets in Syria in the last few days, and has taken control of more Syrian territory in the Golan Heights, apparently planning to incorporate it permanently into its (illegal) annexation of the Golan.
And so. Do we want to help the Syrian people to achieve democratic self-determination? Stop the bombing, pull out of soldiers, end the sanctions, and stop Israeli aggression. We can do this.
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THE ABOVE
(Video) The Collapse of the Syrian Regime
With Mouin Rabbani & Noura Erakat, Jadaliyya [December 11, 2024]
---- The swift collapse of the Syrian regime took everyone by surprise, after 54 years of rule and a prolonged uprising. Within ten days, a Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS)-led coalition literally marched through Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus, as other armed groups mobilized in Der`a and Sweida. On Sunday, 8 December 2024, the Presidential residence and state banks temporarily became public property, notorious prisons were broke open. The regime had collapsed. The Syrian political class, army, party echelons, and the once infamously frightening security services’ heads were nowhere to be seen. Poof! Bashar Asad and family were now in Moscow. We will discuss the context of these developments as well as the notable absence of regime allies’ support, in addition to regional and international implications, including Israel’s continuing genocide. [See the Program]
Israel Expands Invasion of Syria, Launching Massive Airstrikes After Assad’s Fall
By Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Drop Site News [December 14, 2024]
---- As armed opposition militias marched into Damascus and overthrew the government of Bashar al-Assad, Israel wasted no time in unleashing a massive campaign of airstrikes across Syria. While statues of Assad and his father, Hafez, were being pulled down from city squares across the country and thousands of political prisoners were being freed, Israeli tanks crossed through the occupied Golan Heights and invaded deeper into Syrian territory, occupying a “buffer zone” created in 1974. By Tuesday, Israeli forces had penetrated farther into the country, occupying a swath of territory twice the size of the Gaza Strip. “It's showing Syrian people straight away, ‘Our problem is with you. It's with your sovereignty, it's with your existence, it's with your security. What we're doing now is making sure that you are totally defenseless. We're exploiting this moment of chaos to completely disarm you and make sure that you're completely defenseless in the future so that we can do whatever we like,’” said Robin Yassin-Kassab, a British-Syrian analyst and co-author of the book Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. “There's never been such crazy Israeli bombing in Syria. They're arranging to disarm Syria completely, to make it completely defenseless and to humiliate it. That's the way that Syrians are understanding it as well. They are humiliating Syria.” [Read More]
The Roads to Damascus
By Tariq Ali, New Left Review [December 9, 2024]
---- None but a few corrupt cronies will be shedding tears at the tyrant’s departure. But there should be no doubt that what we are witnessing in Syria today is a huge defeat, a mini 1967 for the Arab world. … Like Iraq and Libya, where the US has a lock on the oil, Syria will now become a shared American–Turkish colony. US imperial policy, globally, is to break up countries that cannot be swallowed whole and remove all meaningful sovereignty in order to assert economic and political hegemony. … The US and most of the EU have spent the past year successfully sustaining and defending a genocide in Gaza. All US client states in the region remain intact, while three non-clients – Iraq, Libya and Syria – have been beheaded. The fall of the latter removes a crucial supply line linking a number of anti-Zionist factions. Geostrategically, it is a triumph for Washington and Israel. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST – “The Fall of Syria Changes Everything,” by Chas W. Freeman, Jr., The Nation [December 11, 2024] [Link]; “Will Kurds Survive in the New Syria?” By Matt Broomfield, Jacobin Magazine [December 9, 2024] [Link]; and “As Civil War Heats Back Up, U.S. Troops Are Still Deployed in Syria — And Under Fire,” by Nick Turse, The Intercept [December 5, 2024] [Link]
NEWS NOTES
Last week in Congress, Rep. Bowman gave a short farewell address. In it he thanked many people, talked about things done and not done, and said a few things about how he hoped to continue in the struggle for justice. He concluded his remarks with a “Free Palestine.” You can see/hear his speech at this link, starting at 2 hours and 19 minutes. The speech is about 15 minutes long.
The amazing response of thousands of people to the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare – he and “they” deserve it – has put the failures of the US “healthcare’ system back on the public Agenda. Historians will treat this as a straw in the wind – but about what? An interesting place to stimulate more thinking and discussion about this is the new post by Michael Moore – “A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies” [Link]. In addition to some interesting thoughts about the issues and the Killer, Moore includes a link to his award-wining film “Sicko.” Lots of food for thought. And for an insider’s look at the failures of US “healthcare,” a Democracy Now! program this week – “Healthcare Is a Right: CEO’s Killing Ignites Calls for Reform Amid Trump’s Plan to Privatize Medicare” – provides many illuminating details.
The venerable Labor Notes is the go-to site for coverage of labor issues from a rank-and-file perspective. Their current issue has a very useful article on “The Big Union Contract Fights Coming in 2025.” In addition to the importance of these fights for the union members involved, I think that little of our Reform Agenda can be accomplished without a strong union movement. This is especially true for the Trump era, where grassroots labor action can disrupt his alleged base of support.
Last Friday, Democracy Now! briefly noted a new study by the charity War Child Alliance that found that “96% of Gaza Children Think Death Is Imminent.” For this new grandfather, the idea that just about every child in Gaza feels Death hovering over them is beyond horrible. The study also reported that half the children wished to die. What punishment would suffice for the terrorists who inflict such harm on a million children? And what retribution for those who supplied the bombs?
PEACE ACTION – THINGS TO DO
CFOW is an affiliate member of Peace Action New York State (PANYS), a network of a dozen community-based peace groups (like CFOW). One of the groups is located in Syracuse, where our friends the Syracuse Cultural Workers have a fine array of peace calendars, t-shirts and other such holiday-giftable things. Purchases from the Syracuse Cultural Workers “store” will generate a donation for PANYS if you shop using this code and use the discount code “PANYS” at check-out. Thanks!
The Unite States (and of course Israel) is/are bombing targets in Syria. The collapse of the Assad government has energized a half-dozen states to take military action to hold or improve their control of parts of Syria. Code Pink has put up a good petition calling on the Biden administration to stop their bombing and pull its 900+ troops out of Syria. You can see & sign Code Pink’s petition 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.) 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 make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
REWARDS!
This week’s Reward for stalwart readers remembers the poet Nikki Giovanni, who died last week at the age of 81. She was described by a New York Times writer as t”he charismatic and iconoclastic poet, activist, children’s book author and professor who wrote, irresistibly and sensuously, about race, politics, gender, sex and love” [Link]. She appeared several times on Democracy Now!, reading her poetry and discussing issues such as gun control and the life of Nelson Mandela. Her last appearance was a year ago, when she talked about “Poetry, Grief, and Her New Book, ‘Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid’’” [Link]. Nikki Giovanni, thank you.
Best Wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ESSAYS
‘How many dead Palestinians are enough?’ The unbearable prescience of the late poet Refaat Alareer
By Sarah Aziza, The Guardian [UK] [December 10, 2024]
---- “As a Palestinian, I have been brought up on stories and storytelling,” writes Alareer. “It’s both selfish and treacherous to keep a story to yourself.” First written in 2022, these lines now sit at the heart of If I Must Die, a posthumous collection from Alareer’s eclectic and compelling oeuvre. Published by OR Books to mark a year since the writer’s death by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, If I Must Die contains a selection of journalism, literary criticism, essays and poems written between 2010 and 2023. Taken together, they provide a glimpse into a restless political and literary mind, one that was still rising to the height of its powers. Many readers and students knew and loved Alareer while he lived, but it was his death that brought his name into the global consciousness. In the hours and days after his killing, Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die” went viral, resounding from social media to the streets. Written to his daughter Shymaa in 2011, the seemingly simple verses vibrate, stretched taut between tragedy, tenderness and resolve: “If I die / you must live / to tell my story … let it bring hope / let it be a tale.” [Read More]
Why I’m voting against the military budget
By Bernie Sanders, The Guardian [December 8, 2024]
---- Today in the United States, 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and 21.5m households are paying more than 50% of their income on housing. We have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost any developed country on Earth, and 25% of older adults are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. In other words, the US has fallen far behind other major countries in protecting the most vulnerable, and our government has failed millions of working families. But while so many Americans are struggling to get by, the United States is spending record-breaking amounts of money on the military. In the coming days, with relatively little debate, Congress will overwhelmingly pass the National Defense Authorization Act, approving close to $900bn for the Department of Defense (DoD). When spending on nuclear weapons and “emergency” defense spending is included, the total will approach $1tn. We now spend more than the next nine countries combined. … In this moment in history, it would be wise for us to remember what Dwight D Eisenhower, a former five-star general, said in his farewell address in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” What Eisenhower said was true in 1961. It is even more true today. I will be voting against the military budget. [Read More]
Israel's Fear Campaigns Have Made Us Think That Everyone's Out to Destroy Us
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [December 15, 2024]
---- We have ingested the fear with our mother's milk. We have been subjected to the fear campaigns since the dawn of our youth. Israel's history is also the history of the fear campaigns regarding anything moving (or not moving) in the Middle East. And each time, the fear campaigns disintegrate in a puff when it turns out they scared us over nothing, blowing things out of proportion, over barefoot soldiers and scarecrow armies. But the fear continues to flow through the veins of every Israeli that it has penetrated – that everyone's out to destroy us. … The time has come to finally free ourselves from the baseless existential dread that every Israeli has from the day they are born until the day they die. After we free ourselves from the fear, it will be possible to start thinking differently. [Read More]
IMMIGRATION DEFENSE
[FB] – CFOW will join with others in Westchester to do what we can/what we must to defend immigrants from Trump’s vicious deportation tsunami. Last week some of us attended a “know your rights” training presents by the NYC group Make the Road.
(More than 300 people attended the Zoom training.) There will be more trainings coming up, from Make the Road and other organizations. To see some of the programs and resources for immigrant defense available from Make the Road, go here.
(Video) Rep. Delia Ramirez: Trump’s Immigration Plans Are “Un-American, Unconstitutional & Undemocratic”
From Democracy Now! [December 11, 2024]
---- President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to abolish birthright citizenship, which he cannot do unilaterally because it is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. But his rhetoric has still alarmed immigrant rights advocates who are concerned about Trump’s mass deportation plans and how they would impact mixed-status families. Trump and his “border czar” Tom Homan have both suggested deporting the U.S. citizen children of parents who are undocumented. “No one is safe under Donald Trump,” says Illinois Congressmember Delia Ramirez, whose husband Boris Hernandez came to the United States at 14 as an undocumented immigrant and only recently received a green card. She calls Trump’s immigration plans “un-American, unconstitutional and undemocratic.” [See the Program]
“Who’s Willing to Get Arrested?” Immigrant Activists Ready for Trump Deportation Plans
By Jonah Valdez, The Intercept [December 9, 2024]
---- President Joe Biden spent most of his term widening the government’s ability to incarcerate and deport people; inflating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget by millions; increasing the number of beds in prisons; and expanding the use of private prisons, some of which have been plagued with poor living conditions and allegations of sexual assault and abuse. In this past fiscal year, Biden has deported more than 700,000 people — the most within a single year since 2010, which were largely in response to a major increase in people crossing the border during his term…. With less than 50 days until his inauguration, immigrant community groups and rights activists are taking his word for it and bracing for the worst. They face drastically different conditions for organizing, depending on their state and local governments, but share some common struggles: lack of funding and public support compared to Trump’s first term in office, and potential burnout from previous fights against deportation. [Read More]
THE WAR ON GAZA
How a hostage family leader became one of the loudest anti-war voices in Israel
By Edo Konrad and Oren Ziv, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [December 6, 2024]
---- Forty-one members of Nir Oz and 11 Thai workers were killed in the kibbutz that day, while 71 residents and five more workers were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza. But Metzger doesn’t view herself as simply the groundskeeper of a plaque-less memorial; as the daughter-in-law of Yoram Metzger, whose body was brought back to Israel in a military operation after he was killed in Hamas’ captivity in February, and of Tamar Metzger, who returned alive in November last year in the hitherto only hostage deal, she knows time is not on the side of the remaining hostages. … Metzger is not merely a relative who occasionally joins protests in support of a hostage deal. Within several months of the war breaking out, she had come to believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the “main obstacle” to bringing back the hostages, choosing to prolong Israel’s onslaught on Gaza at their expense. Today, she is one of the most prominent voices among the hostage families, demanding an immediate end to a war that has killed over 44,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 100,000 others — transforming her, as she puts it, into an “anti-regime dissident.” [Read More]
The West Bank villages wiped off the map by Israeli settler violence
By Oren Ziv, +972 Magazine [December 4, 2024]
--- Several weeks before October 7, +972 Magazine published an investigation into the seizure by Israeli settlers of a vast area of the occupied West Bank, stretching east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho. In that investigation, we reported on the forcible displacement of four shepherding communities within a period of four years, totaling several hundred people. But over the past 14 months since the Gaza war began, what was already a dramatic process of ethnic cleansing has accelerated exponentially. According to new data gathered by the left-wing Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, which monitors Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian land in the West Bank, at least 57 Palestinian communities have been forced to flee their homes since October 7 as a result of Israeli settler attacks. Of these, seven have been partially displaced — meaning the expulsion of at least one residential cluster, located several hundred meters away from the next — and 50 have been wiped off the map entirely. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST – “Israel Is Also Waging an Economic War Against Palestinians,” By Assaf S. Bondy, Jaacobin Magazine [December 2024] [Link]
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Ukraine: Massive surge of violence against civilians and humanitarians in third winter of war
From the Norwegian Refugee Council, Aljazeera [December 12, 20224]
---- A thousand days of war in Ukraine has driven millions to the edge. As the third winter takes hold, civilian homes and infrastructure, aid workers and ambulances, are all being targeted. Fear, exhaustion, and indiscriminate violence are devastating lives in Ukraine, warns Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Secretary General Jan Egeland, on a visit to the country. … Since mid-July, Kherson and neighbouring villages have been subjected to more than 9,500 attacks with small drones, killing at least 37 people and injuring hundreds more. The attacks have also often directly struck humanitarian activities and personnel. In recent weeks, a humanitarian distribution centre was hit, which resulted in casualties amongst the aid workers and civilians present there. “Increasing attacks are creating terrible consequences for the communities I have met this week. In recent months, the number of civilian casualties has reached the highest level since October 2022. Millions of families have been driven from their homes, deprived of their livelihoods, as the struggle for daily life and safety has eclipsed everything else. Many have lost their supplies of water, food, and heating in the midst of this cold winter,” Egeland said. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST is “McCarthyism, European Style: The Elite Crackdown on Ukrainian Dissent,” by Eldar Mamedov, Responsible Statecraft [December 2, 2024] [Link]
CIVIL LIBERTIE/”THE WAR ON TERROR”
Congress Revives Cold War Tactics With New Anti-Communism School Curriculum
By Alan MacLeod, Mint Press News [December 15, 2024]
---- Congress has just passed a new bill that will see the U.S. spend huge sums of money redesigning much of the public school system around the ideology of anti-communism. The “Crucial Communism Teaching Act” is now being read in the Senate, where it is all but certain to pass. The move comes amid growing public anger at the economic system and increased public support for socialism. The Crucial Communism Teaching Act, in its own words, is designed to teach children that “certain political ideologies, including communism and totalitarianism…conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy that are essential to the founding of the United States.” Although sponsored by Republicans, it enjoys widespread support from Democrats and is focused on China, Venezuela, Cuba and other targets of U.S. empire. The wording of the bill has many worried that this will be a centerpiece of a new era of anti-communist hysteria, similar to previous McCarthyist periods. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Trump Does Not Have Mandate
By Peter Dreier, Talking Points Memo [December 11, 2024]
---- Newspaper headlines have called Donald Trump’s victory “decisive,” “massive,” “resounding,” “historic,” and “sweeping.” Trump himself has described his win as a “landslide.” On election night, he claimed that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” None of those things are true. Moreover, recent public opinion polls reveal that Trump’s professed policy agenda is very unpopular. … That is the paradox of the 2024 election: that Trump won despite the unpopularity of his and his allies’ agenda. It is a puzzle Democrats will need to solve. But they cannot solve it by understanding Trump’s win to be an embrace of his ideas and a resounding rejection of Democrats’. It is not. Americans still do not support Trump’s ideas, nor was Republicans’ victory resounding. [Rea More]
It’s Still Not Too Late for Biden to Deliver Debt Relief
By Astra Taylor, The Nation [December 13, 2024]
---- The Debt Collective has always viewed student debt relief as something of a litmus test—an indicator of an administration’s overall dedication to actually improving working people’s lives. The executive branch has various legal tools that can be used to eliminate federal student loans, whether for targeted groups or across the board, without waiting for Congress to act. All that’s required are public officials who want to do what is right. Yet both the Obama and Biden administrations showed that they would rather make technocratic tweaks at the margins than effectively come to the aid of student debtors—even those who are victims of fraud, disabled or destitute, or elderly and out of hope. With the clock ticking before Trump takes office, those are the student debtors we are now focused on trying to help. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Reflections on Pancho Villa and the Fall of Dictators
By Jonah Raskin, Counterpunch [December 13, 2024]
---- Dictators – whether in Spain, South Africa, Romania or Syria —retain power for decades. They can seem impregnable and invulnerable. But they always fall, and when they do fall the world acts surprised. It ought not to be. The demise of dictators is woven into the fabric of history. Bashar al-Assad with his prisons and his police and the backing of Putin also seemed to be a nearly eternal dictator. When his time came, he ran to Russia. Dictators have escape routes. No one played a more decisive role in the overthrow of Porfirio Diaz than the charismatic, photogenic Villa, the only 20th century revolutionary to be the subject of a Hollywood movie while real bullets were flying, and also the only 20th century revolutionary to invade the United States. [Read More]
