Hello All – When the Scroll of History writes about this week, it may be in a bold face font. It may be that in the rear-view mirror of history, we will see this week as one of tragic choices and lost opportunities. Referenced in the reading/links below are useful essays about the UN’s capitulation to Trump’s plans for US control of Gaza, the new US plan for ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, the first steps in Trump’s war on Venezuela, and the climate disaster coming out of the failed conference in Brazil. Interesting times, indeed!
Of the issues referenced above, the US war against Venezuela is the one in which concerted dissent and protest may possibly affect what happens in the next weeks. For Trump’s war on Venezuela has begun. 80 people have been killed, 20 speed boats have been bombed. Dozens of US Navy vessels lurk off shore Venezuela, and US spy planes are testing Venezuela’s airspace. Trump has authorized “covert actions” against Venezuela, while a “wanted” reward has been posted for the death of Venezuela’s president Maduro.
Why is this happening? Trump says military action against Venezuela is legal because Venezuela is led by a drug cartel that is sending drugs to the USA. This is clearly false: Venezuela neither produces nor transports drugs to the US. This is not rocket science. So why is Trump about to start a war?
Like the war against Iraq, it would be naive to think that Venezuela’s huge amount of oil has nothing to do with Trump’s war plans. This is not about being able to purchase Venezuela’s oil; it’s about US oil companies seizing, controlling, and profiting from Venezuela’s oil fields, a war for money, not peace
Venezuela is also a target of US imperialism because for decades it has been what Noam Chomsky calls “the threat of a good example.” Since the Chavez presidency it has become an alternative to US domination like Cuba has been. Indeed, the US is also threatening Colombia and Mexico for their refusal to comply with US orders. But this war has little support. According to a recent poll, only 21 percent of Americans support military action to oust President Maduro of Venezuela. Before Trump turns Latin America into another Vietnam war, we need to protest and speak up.
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING OUR WEEK
The UN Embraces Colonialism: Unpacking the Security Council’s mandate for the U.S. colonial administration of Gaza
By Craig Mokhiber, Mondoweiss [November 19, 2025]
---- More than two years into the genocide in Palestine, the UN Security Council has finally acted. But rather than acting to enforce international law, protect the victims, and hold the perpetrators accountable, it adopted a resolution that openly flouts key provisions of international law, disempowers and further punishes the victims, and rewards and empowers the perpetrators. Most disturbingly, it hands control of Gaza and the survivors of the genocide over to the United States, a co-perpetrator of the genocide, and provides for the participation of the Israeli regime in decision making. Under the plan, Palestinians themselves are to be granted no such participation in decisions on their own rights, governance, and lives. In adopting this resolution, the Council, in effect, has become a mechanism of U.S. oppression, an instrument for the continued unlawful occupation of Palestine, and a complicit actor in Israel’s genocide. [Read More]
Trump’s reported 28-point Ukraine peace plan
By SotirisMetralexis, Geotrends [November 22, 2025]
---- The Trump administration’s stance on the Ukraine war is quite the roller-coaster. Initially, the Russo-Ukraine war would end “within 24 hours.” According to Donald Trump, President Zelenskyy is “a dictator without elections” who is “gambling with World War III” — in February. Following this, “talks are proceeding very well” and “many elements of a final agreement have been agreed to” — in March 2025. In April, “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on Kyiv. Vladimir, STOP!”; discussions with President Putin were “excellent” in May, yet in July Trump was “very disappointed with President Putin”; “it’s a disgrace.” Then there was the August summit in Alaska. And in September, Trump noted that “Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form”; Russia is a “paper tiger” that “has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years”; “Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!” All this is to say, the reader should not feel obliged to hold their breath concerning the finality of the United States’ current position on the matter. [Read More]
The COP30 Climate Meet had One Job, and Totally Crashed and Burned
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [November 23, 2025]
---- COP30 in Belém, Brazil, has ended without an agreement by member states to reaffirm the phasing out of fossil fuels, which is the only way to avert rolling climate catastrophes. COP28 at Dubai had included such language. The vague advice to countries to cut down on their carbon dioxide emissions is useless without fingering the main culprit in those emissions. It is like urging people to cut down on their lung cancer rates without bringing up the need to reduce the use of cigarettes, or urging less drunk driving without mentioning the need to avoid imbibing alcohol before getting behind the wheel. When corporations engage in this sort of duplicity, we call it greenwashing. And that is what the whole COP30 became, an exercise in greenwashing the world’s nations, all of which bear responsibility for a looming set of disasters that is already befalling countries like Bangladesh and Jamaica, and will inevitably strike all humanity over the coming decades. We have it in our power to reduce the severity of those calamities substantially. We have decided, on the whole, not to bother. Our children and grandchildren will quite rightly curse our memories. [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.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com, and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group 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!
A recent posting of Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers featured the work of the amazing Elle Cordova. Many appreciative emails followed; and so Elle is back for an encore. I think you will like this rendition of Shania Twain’s “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” with Elle’s partner Toni Lindgren; the latest version of the thrilling duel “Grammarian versus Errorist”; and, from Elle’s science fiction book club, a discussion of the early sci-fi, gender-bending novel from Ursula LeGuin, “The Left Hand of Darkness.” Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
THE TRUMP-UN PLAN FOR GAZA
Weapons of Willpower: Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Trump’s Gaza Plan
By Jeremy Scahill and Jawa Ahmad, Drop Site News [November 23, 2025]
---- Israel is continuing to lay siege to Gaza despite the “ceasefire” that officially took effect on October 10. On a daily basis, Israeli forces attack Palestinians in the enclave, killing more than 340 since President Donald Trump hailed his “peace” plan as a monumental accomplishment that would usher in a new era. The majority of the dead are women and children. Over the past week, Israeli forces, which still occupy more than 50% of Gaza, have penetrated deeper across the “yellow line” and Israel is threatening to restart its full-scale siege if Hamas does not disarm and surrender. Israel has also refused to allow in the agreed upon food, medicine and other life essentials to the enclave. On November 17, in an unprecedented move, the UN Security Council formally endorsed Trump’s neo-colonialist plan for Gaza, including the deployment of an international force that would fall not under the command the UN, but operate at the direction of private board controlled by Trump. This force, according to Trump, would be tasked with disarming the Palestinian resistance and demilitarizing Gaza in an effort to strip Palestinians of their right to self defense. In the latest in Drop Site’s series on the Palestinian resistance since October 7, Palestinian resistance leaders reflect on the path that got them here. [Read More]
Gaza: The Threat of Partition
By Sari Bashi, New York Review of Books [November 23, 2025]
---- On Monday the United Nations Security Council endorsed President Donald Trump’s twenty-point peace plan for Gaza, which creates a “Board of Peace,” chaired by Trump and with the participation of foreign leaders including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, to oversee governance of the Strip. Trump hailed the approval as “a moment of true Historic proportion” and a harbinger of “further Peace all over the World.” The plan, which is appended to the UN resolution, sidelines the Palestinian Authority, rejects Hamas governance, and promises “jobs, opportunity and hope” for Palestinians in Gaza; it also affirms their right to choose whether to stay or leave, and the right of those who have left Gaza to return. But in reality, by putting the possibility of rebuilding homes and civilian infrastructure out of reach for many Palestinians in Gaza, the plan may make it impossible for them to remain. The crux of the issue is a demand, now codified in the Security Council resolution, that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups give up their weapons. If they refuse—as they have to date, given their decades-long commitment to armed struggle—the UN resolution permits the Israeli military to retain direct control over an area it calls a “security perimeter.” That is a strange choice of words. The area in question currently amounts to 53 percent of the Strip, not just covering its entire border with Israel but extending deep into the territory, and including most of its arable land and industrial zones. [Read More]
Who Is Ready to Die for Trump’s Gaza Plan? So Far, Nobody
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [November 20, 2025]
---- On November 17th, 2025, the UN Security Council passed a resolution to endorse President Trump’s plan for Gaza, including a transitional government headed by Trump himself and an International Stabilization Force (ISF) that is expected, among other tasks, to disarm Hamas, a task that Israel has failed to do through two years of genocide and mass destruction. The ISF will be tasked with securing the borders in a way that confines Palestinians, stabilizing Gaza’s security environment by suppressing resistance, demilitarizing Gaza while leaving the Israeli regime untouched, and training the Palestinian police to control the population. Yes, the force is also mandated to “protect civilians” and assist humanitarian aid. But under U.S. supervision, can anyone honestly expect it to restrain Israel when Israel simply refuses to comply—as we see with the current so-called “ceasefire”? … The UN General Assembly can and should respond to Israel’s failure to comply with any of these rulings and resolutions by meeting in an Emergency Special Session to organize a UN-backed arms embargo, trade boycott and other steps to enforce them, until Israel ends its illegal occupation and starts complying with international law and UN resolutions. … The Israeli and U.S. governments are feeling the pinch. If the world was passively accepting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Trump would not have felt compelled to conjure up his fake peace plan. It is a victory for people of conscience everywhere that he felt he had to try to change the narrative. So this is not the time to give up on the real solutions to this crisis: justice and freedom for Palestine, and accountability for Israel. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - (Video) Rashid Khalidi on Trump’s Plan, Hamas, the PA & Why Russia and China Abstained at the UN - 60 minutes - from India and the Global Left [November 22, 2025] [Link] ; “No more custodians and colonialists, Palestinians will reject even a benign western control,” by Ranjan Solomon, Middle East Monitor [November 18, 2025] [Link]; and “First Raze Gaza, Then Build a Playground for Global Capital,” by Abe Asher, Jacobin Magazine [November 19, 2025] [Link].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
Israeli violence in the West Bank is spiraling
From Aljazeera [The Listening Post] [November 22, 2025]
[FB – This program features Hastings high school graduate Jasper Nathaniel, whose journalism and pictures from the West Bank has informed news media worldwide.]
---- Violence is out of control in the West Bank – and the few covering it are being assaulted. In the West Bank, record levels of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians are unfolding with little mainstream coverage. The few journalists who try to report on it often face attacks themselves. When the violence is covered, the settlers are often framed as fringe actors, despite clear backing from the Israeli state. A de facto annexation is under way in the West Bank, and yet much of the international media continues to look away. [See the Program]
The ‘Blessed Curse’ Redefining Israel: Global Limits, Gaza Shift and a New Order
By Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz [November 19, 2025]
---- The Israelis and the Palestinians are undergoing an accelerated internationalization of the conflict; the United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution that points in the right direction; Israel is being returned to its true dimensions at an encouraging speed and the fate of the Palestinians is increasingly being removed from its exclusive control. It’s hard to ask for more. What was presented in Israel as a series of humiliating defeats is actually a collection of encouraging developments. The most important of these is the restoration of Israel to its true dimensions. The superpower has returned to being a superpower and its client state has returned to its natural place. The state of affairs in which it was hard to know who was in whose pocket, the blurring of roles between the superpower and its client state, which lasted for decades, has come to an end. This is good news for Israel. The megalomania is dead, the state’s delusion of grandeur, of omnipotence, is finished. That’s a good thing. Israel can no longer do whatever it pleases. The genocide in Gaza had to end – not because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted it, but because U.S. President Donald Trump ordered it. If not for him, the slaughter would have continued. [Read More]
Israel’s Slaughter of Journalists Can’t Go Unpunished
By Neve Gordon and Muna Haddad, Counterpunch [November 21, 2025]
---- Israel’s killing of at least 225 Palestinian journalists since 7 October 2023 briefly attracted international attention after it was calculated that more journalists have died in Gaza than in the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined. As part of its effort to eliminate witnesses and control the narrative, Israel has, as one commentator wrote, transformed Gaza into journalism’s graveyard. [Read More]
THE WAR ON UKRAINE
Ukraine Faces an Unbearable Choice
By Olexsandr Kyselov,
---- Exhausted by over three years of Russian attacks, Ukrainians are increasingly ready to accept unfair political compromises and harsh territorial concessions to end the war. Yet it’s far from clear that this hard choice will actually bring lasting peace. … As speculation mounts about another Trump-brokered peace plan for Ukraine, much of today’s debate feels like déjà vu. There are the same denunciations of “vested interests” in the conflict, the condemnations of warmongers, and the cries for “urgent talks.” In Ukraine, we didn’t just hear these arguments. We made them ourselves. In summer 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and the war in Donbass was already flaring, activists from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus issued a “New Zimmerwald” declaration criticizing the surge of chauvinism and xenophobia in their countries. They called for a broad antiwar movement, an immediate ceasefire, and mutual disarmament. Ukraine’s newly formed Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) echoed that spirit in 2015, advocating direct negotiations involving trade unionists and rights defenders from both sides, and the disbandment of security agencies. It was a genuine attempt at internationalist peace — and it failed. None of it stopped Russia’s aggression in 2022. Yet Russian leftists, apart from a brave minority, again retreated into pacifist formulas, blaming the war on both sides and pointing fingers at NATO, Boris Johnson, and the “neo-Nazi oligarchic regime in Kyiv.” Ukrainians, under fire, had no such luxury. They resisted the occupying troops, and too many have already lost their lives. The Left internationally, when not limiting itself to short boilerplate statements, largely oscillates between instinctive revulsion at injustice and the desperate plea for peace. But can either be a guide to action? [Read More]
WAR ON VENEZUELA?
Corporate Media Parrot Dubious Drug Claims That Justify War on Venezuela
By Ricardo Vaz, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [November 19, 2025]
---- Since August, the US has been amassing military assets in the Caribbean. Warships, bombers and thousands of troops have been joined by the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, in the largest regional deployment in decades. Extrajudicial strikes against small vessels, which UN experts have decried as violations of international law, have killed at least 80 civilians (CNN, 11/14/25). Many foreign policy analysts believe that regime change in Venezuela is the ultimate goal (Al Jazeera, 10/24/25; Left Chapter, 10/21/25), but the Trump administration instead claims it is fighting “narcoterrorism,” accusing Caracas of flooding the US with drugs via the Cartel of the Suns and Tren de Aragua, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Over the years, Western media have endorsed Washington’s Venezuela regime-change efforts at every turn, from cheerleading coup attempts to whitewashing deadly sanctions/. Now, with a possible military operation that could have disastrous consequences, corporate outlets are making little effort to hold the US government accountable. Rather, they are unsurprisingly ceding the floor to the warmongers. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
(Video) The Race to Save the Amazon: Top Brazilian Scientist Says Rainforest Is at “Tipping Point”
From Democracy Now! [November 20, 2025]
---- As we broadcast from the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, we are joined by one of Brazil’s most prominent scientists, Carlos Nobre, who says the Amazon now produces more carbon emissions than it removes from the atmosphere, moving closer to a “tipping point” after which it will be impossible to save the world’s largest rainforest. “We need urgently to get to zero deforestation in all Brazilian biomes, especially the Amazon,” he argues. [See the Program]
(Video) No Fossil Fuel Phaseout, No Deal! At COP30, Vanuatu Climate Minister Joins 30+ Dissenting Nations
From Democracy Now! [November 21, 2025]
---- As negotiations draw close to a conclusion at the COP30 U.N. climate summit, nations are still sharply divided over the future of fossil fuels. Delegates representing dozens of countries have rejected a draft agreement that does not include a roadmap to transition away from oil, coal and gas. Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change, says a number of nations refused to “entertain any mention of fossil fuels” in the outcome statement from COP30. “The fact that they are refusing to accept the best scientific evidence and legal obligations … is quite astounding to countries that want to see real action.” [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Trump, Border Patrol Retreat in Failure from Chicago
By Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario [November 17, 2025]
---- In the last few days, roving Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino decamped from Chicago, where his military-style raids have terrorized that community for weeks, for Charlotte, North Carolina. The Border Patrol retreated from Chicago in defeat, not victory. … Today, Bovino is leading a mounted raiding unit that descends, unwanted, on targeted communities, terrorizes the residents, and then — unable to break and defeat the hostile residents and ill-positioned to fight a sustained losing battle — withdraws, always trying to stay just a couple steps ahead of the judicial orders and court showdowns that have blocked its worst tactics. We’ve seen this pattern now unfold in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and now Charlotte, as well as smaller raids in places like Sacramento, and Bovino’s force has been defeated in each of them. There’s a national trail of court orders left behind in each jurisdiction finding and enjoining their tactics as illegal, unnecessary, and overly violent. In neighborhood after neighborhood, they face resistance and then, literally, pop tear gas canisters and retreat. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Are Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson Democratic Socialists or FDR Democrats? They Are Both
By Peter Dreier, Talking Points Memo [November 21, 2025]
---- Between now and next year’s midterm elections, the “S” word, and even the “C” word, are going to get a workout. President Trump and his allies have called New York’s socialist mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a Communist, a Marxist, a terrorist, and even a jihadist. They’re warning that the U.S. is experiencing a wave of “socialism,” a term that they hope still carries its hoary Cold War connotations. They hope to make Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party, a tactic intended to discredit its candidates in swing races. During the Red Scare hysteria of the 1950s, American socialism fell on hard times. … Over the last decade, however, something has started to shift. Republicans have not stopped red-baiting, and they will continue to shout “socialism” as they attempt to defeat Democrats next year and in 2028. But the political climate has dramatically changed. Americans, particularly those under 50, are more open to candidates who call themselves socialists, so long as they have practical ideas for solving their problems. They are reassessing their understanding of socialism, and its place within American identity. This is fitting: For more than a century, socialism has been integral to American progressivism, championing early many of the reforms that would eventually come into vogue on the center left. We are seeing that dynamic play out again today. [Read More]
Let Me Live: The Angelo Herndon case and the radical politics of free speech.
By Randall Kennedy, The Nation [November 11, 2025]
---- Brad Snyder’s You Can’t Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads revisits one of the more dramatic episodes in this ongoing saga of repression and resistance: the story of Angelo Herndon, a young, Black communist organizer who was prosecuted in Georgia in 1932 for attempting to incite an insurrection, sentenced to imprisonment after an egregiously unfair trial, and then freed after a nationwide campaign by civil libertarians and anti-racist activists that occasioned two trips to the Supreme Court and an important vindication of First Amendment freedoms. Snyder’s excellent book is both inspiring and sobering. It portrays vividly the exertions of a wide range of people who rallied to save Herndon. But it also reminds us of the relative recency of this judicial solicitude for the freedom of expression as well as the instability of that protection. … In 1930, in Birmingham, Herndon attended a meeting of the Unemployed Council, a communist organization that encouraged white and Black workers to cooperate in demanding “economical equality” and an end to racial tyranny. Hooked immediately, he began reading communist tracts and attending demonstrations. He joined the Young Communist League and became a full-time organizer for the Trade Union Unity League. For seeking to educate and mobilize workers, Herndon became a target of the police and was repeatedly arrested, convicted of vagrancy, and incarcerated. [Read More]
