Hello All - First, some words about the Coup of the Two Dictators. Some useful articles linked below sketch out the purge of federal workers, and the beginnings of the purge of private-sector workers, now underway. To me, a very important step in this coup-in-motion was the firing last week of senior military commanders and, yesterday, the firing of the chief legal officers for each branch of the armed services. By appointing Trump-loyalists to replace them, the Two Dictators have taken first steps to preempt any pushback from Pentagon leaders if/when Trump & Musk want to call out the military to coerce civilians, immigrants, or people protesting whatever bad things the Dictators are up to. This was flagged in The New York Times this morning by Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown Law, who wrote on X, “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.” I think this is a very dangerous step, and people who are denying that a constitutional coup is underway are fooling themselves.
The Shopping Boycott
Next Friday, February 28th, is the no-shopping day in the USA. In response to the coup of the two dictators, and esp. in response to the action by giant corporations to end whatever affirmative action programs (DEI) they had, zillions of people across the USA will do NO SHOPPING at these big stores for 24 hours. If absolutely necessary, make your purchases at local small stores. The boycotts are sparked in part by the surrender of big corporations to the Trump demand to end programs that attempt to create a fairer, more equal workplace. Some call this DEI – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. These are important goals, long overdue in a country with a history of white supremacy, segregation, and the exclusion of too many from good-paying jobs.
Economic boycotts are part of American history. The Boston Tea Party protested Britain’s unjust legislation against the American colonies. The Montgomery bus boycott (Alabama) protested against segregated buses. The boycott of South African goods and sports activities was in support of the liberation movement of Black South Africans. So economic boycotts are as American as apple pie. But do they work? Will the February 28th stop-shopping boycott have results? Perhaps. But we’re just getting started. The the organizers of the boycott have said that February 28th is only a first step; if giant stores continue to obey King Trump, more boycotts, perhaps longer ones, are the next step. For us in the Westchester, February 28th is practice, getting ready, learning to unite and act together. We are at the beginning of a long fight, but we can do this. No Kings!
THE COUP IN DC
How Trump Twisted DEI to Only Benefit White Christians
By Jessica Washington The Intercept [February 22, 2025]
---- With an assist from Elon Musk and his DOGE squad, Trump has made the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion a centerpiece of his new administration. For all the crowing about his early success — much of it greatly overinflated — Trump has simply flipped the script: Instead of creating a level playing field, he launched DEI for white Christians. Trump’s bid to dismantle the legacy of the civil rights movement while using its own language is part and parcel of the Christian right’s playbook, according to Christine Reyna, a psychology professor at DePaul University who studies extremism. … At the prayer event that morning, Trump announced the latest gift to his right-wing evangelical supporters: a task force on “anti-Christian bias,” helmed by his new Attorney General Pam Bondi. “[T]he task force will work to fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide,” he said. Trump’s war on “woke” is a realization of decades of political organizing that has always had civil rights in its crosshairs. Despite rhetoric about religious liberty, backsliding on civil rights and the far-right push to usher in a Christian theocracy are inextricably linked — and they always have been. [Read More]
(Video) “Grand Theft Government”: Federal Workers Send SOS over Musk-Led Mass Firings, Service Cuts
From Democracy Now! [February 20, 2025]
---- Amid the indiscriminate dismantling of the federal government by the Trump administration’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, federal workers, thousands of whom could lose their jobs, are fighting back. “All of us do something not only essential, but also mandated by Congress,” says union organizer and Army Corps of Engineers employee Chris Dols. Dols is part of a growing movement of federal workers and their allies staging mass protests to Save Our Services and warning of the long-term consequences of these extreme cuts to the bureaucracy. “They’re trying to immiserate the working class, and they’re doing it through the federal workforce,” says Dols, who is also a national coordinator with the Federal Unionists Network. “It’s about gutting the services that create a safety net in this country, because the more miserable we are, the easier it is for them to exploit us.” He calls on the larger public to join the worker-led movement resisting these radical cuts. “The whole public sphere is at stake.” [See the Program] ALSO OF INTEREST IS “Trump is Moving Rapidly to Destroy Workers’ Rights,” by Lawrence S. Wittner , Znet [February 22, 2025] [Link].
GET INVOLVED!
On Saturday March 8th, International Women’s Day, CFOW will host a rally in Hastings as part of the nationwide protests – “Unite & Resist” - organized by the Women’s March. We’re taking to the public square to fight back against the fascist takeover. Join us to defend our rights, our bodies, and our future. The rally will take place at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (558 Warburton Ave. and Spring St.) from 12 noon to 1:30 pm. We will have an “open mic,” so that all can speak who wish to do so. Know that when we come together we can achieve change. And, the more people that come along to these kind of events, the more our movement will grow. If you are coming, please RSVP here.
AT THE OSCARS
Two very interesting documentary films are in contention for an Oscar at this year’s awards on March 2nd. Democracy Now! aired very interesting segments on both of them this week. Here are brief capsules:
(Video) Palestinian Director Basel Adra: As “No Other Land” Gets Oscar Nod, Israel Ramps Up West Bank Attacks
From Democracy Now! [February 18, 2025]
---- The Israeli-Palestinian film No Other Land is nominated for an Oscar for best documentary at this year’s awards, to be held March 2. It follows the struggles of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta to stay on their land amid violent attacks by Jewish settlers aimed at expelling them. Since the film’s nomination was announced in January, that violence has continued, with co-director Basel Adra sharing video on social media of settlers rampaging through the village under the protection of Israeli soldiers. Adra, who joins us from London, says the goal of the documentary was not just winning awards but “to get to the people’s hearts” through film. [See the Program]
(Video) Congo, Jazz & the CIA: Oscar-Nominated “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” Revisits Lumumba Assassination
From Democracy Now! [February 17, 2025]
---- The Oscar-nominated documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat recounts the events leading up to Black American jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach’s 1961 protest at the United Nations of the CIA-backed killing of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. The first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lumumba was an icon of the Pan-African and anti-colonial movements. He was tortured and killed shortly after the formation of the first government of independent Congo following a military coup supported by Belgium, the United States and powerful mining interests. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat's Belgian director Johan Grimonprez explains that Lumumba's assassination was “the ground zero of how the West was about to deal with the riches of the African continent.” [See the Program]
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!
Several summers ago I was fortunate to visit the Glover, Vermont home of the Bread and Puppet Theater. In a beautiful rural setting, I visited spaces devoted to the work and history of Bread & Puppet, about whom I had only known their giant puppets marching in peace parades in NYC long ago. The founder of Bread and Puppet is Peter Schumann, now 90 years old. He is the subject of a long interview (“I’m a Papier-Mâché Revolutionary!”) in this week’s edition of Counterpunch. Before setting out on the (lengthy) interview, you might want to learn more about what Bread & Puppet mainly does: Here is a link to 2022 (?) film by Dee Dee Halleck and Tamar Schumann, “Ah! The Hopeful Pageantry of Bread & Puppet.” The first 60 minutes of the film shows how “the crew” gets ready for a performance; to see the Bread & Puppet show, start about minute 60. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
What Did the War in Gaza Reveal About American Judaism?
Peter Beinart interviewed by IsaacChotiner, The New Yorker [February 13, 2025]
--- In a new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, Peter Beinart argues that many American Jews who defend Israel have lost their moral bearings. He makes the case, in a series of linked essays, that Jews in America and around the world should push for a single state comprising Israel and the Palestinian territories which grants everyone equal rights. “This book is about the story Jews tell ourselves to block out the screams,” Beinart writes. “It’s about the story that enables our leaders, our families, and our friends to watch the destruction of the Gaza Strip—the flattening of universities, the people forced to make bread from hay, the children freezing to death under buildings turned to rubble by a state that speaks in our name—and shrug, if not applaud.” During our conversation, we discussed what he misjudged about the U.S.’s unwillingness to change its relationship to Israel, whether a one-state solution is really a more likely alternative than two states living side by side, and how debates over Israel have warped conversations about antisemitism in America. [Read More]
The Price of American ‘Safety’ [Afghanistan]
By Suzy Hansen, New York Review of Books [March 13, 2025 issue]
---- The first time the Taliban asked Omari to place a bomb beneath a convoy of American soldiers, he was happy the detonator used a motorcycle battery rather than a cell phone battery because the latter often blew up in people’s faces. He buried the bomb in the sand moments before four American Humvees passed over it, and hiding in tall grass he watched as a door flew over his head and American bodies fell to the ground. It was 2011, he was sixteen, and he had been seeing Americans for seven years of what was then a ten-year occupation. The first time he saw them, they were friendly in their silly gear and armadillo backpacks, openly peeing on the side of the road; the next time, rounding up old men in black-and-white turbans, forcing them to kneel, and hitting them with the butts of their rifles; another time, pulling off the headscarf of an old woman who was begging to know why the Americans had detained her son.… The problem with immersion journalism is its implication that it can tell the whole story, that the writers can fully know their characters if they do enough reporting, spend enough time. As a journalist myself, I am skeptical that anyone can fully access another’s experience. But I am even more skeptical that anyone can fully understand the realities of occupation or the “war on terror” if they haven’t themselves been on the receiving end of it. The facts may be the same, but the knowledge comes from a different place. That may have always been true, but I wonder if it’s truer now, with the emergence of new drone and booby-trap weaponry, and with the increasing extremity of wars between ruthless DIY terror groups and unhinged nuclear powers. Maybe only a specific population can fully convey what this era of hyperatrocity is like: the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Palestinians. [Read More]
Laughter and Fears in Germany
By Victor Grossman, Berlin Bulletin #231 [February 21, 2025]
---- Despite many complexities, one thing has been clear in recent years; the main ruling powers in Europe, most menacingly its strongest, Germany, have shown a greed, indeed a craving, for military adventurism, for spending ever more euro-billions on armaments, frightful air power, naval maneuvers in all surrounding waters, Baltic outposts. All are based on eastward expansion, with one declared enemy, whose ruler is denounced, derided, and demonized daily in most of the media. Hardly a page or newscast fails to warn that Russia, if it wins out in the Ukraine, is an awful threat not only to Poland, the Baltic countries, all its neighbors but even to “our Germany” which, though without a common border, seems to somehow want to feel equally threatened. … Then suddenly an unloved vice-president and even more repugnant Secretary of Defense came to Europe with the news that Trump had telephoned with Putin and the two wanted to negotiate on peace in the Ukraine. The greatest danger to Europe, they were told, was not Russia, not China, but the “danger from within.” The shock was visible in their faces. What? Peace? Has the USA gone completely off its rocker? How can we justify our build-up? Our strategies? Our maneuvers? To make matters worse, Vance not only threatened with peace, but criticized the European countries for repressing oppositional ideas. True, the object of his concern and support was the far-rightist Alternative for Germany (AfD), with whom Musk has become so chummy. [Read More]
Ed Yong Wants to Show You the Hidden Reality of the World
By David Marchese, The New York Times [February 22, 2025]
---- His Covid journalism — which documented the earliest stages of the pandemic and made him one of the first chroniclers of long Covid — established Yong as a key and trusted public interpreter of the illness and its many ripples. It also won him a Pulitzer Prize. (Additionally, Yong’s 2022 book about animal perception, An Immense World, became a best seller. A young reader’s edition will be published on May 13.) But despite having achieved a level of success and attention that most writers can only dream of, Yong’s immersion in Covid left him feeling as utterly depleted as many of the health care professionals and patients he was covering. So much so that in 2023, he decided to leave his prestigious perch at The Atlantic. Since then, in addition to working on a new book, he has found a measure of salvation, even transcendence, in birding, a pastime that he, like so many others, took up in the wake of those grim days of social distancing and time stuck inside. [Read More]
THE WAR IN GAZA
The Weird, Fraudulent and Immoral 'Justifications' for Trump's Gaza Takeover Plan
By Dahlia Scheindlin, Haaretz [Israel] [February 19, 2025]
---- When U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he intended to gut Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants and take over the Strip for a vast American real estate renovation project, it was natural to think he didn't really mean it. The wisest of analysts held that Trump was dropping a calculated bombshell designed to generate leverage. He wanted to kick everyone's rear, so that Arab countries would produce and support better plans. In this clever strategy, such plans would be more favorable to Israel, but not as bad as that. Such plans may yet be forthcoming, but in the meantime, the right-wing public sphere in Israel and abroad has exploded with public arguments to back Trump's ideas. Hebrew and English voices are seeking to brand and buoy constant reaffirmation by the top leaders themselves, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A sample of these public arguments exposes how bereft of logic or fact they are. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST IS “Media Afraid to Call Ethnic Cleansing by Its Name,” by Gregory Shupk, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [February 2025] [Link]
THE WEST BANK
‘Worse than the Second Intifada’: West Bank refugees reel from Israeli offensive
By Hanno Hauenstein, +972 Magazine [February 21, 2025]
---- Abu Rmeleh is one of 20,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homes in Jenin camp in recent weeks as a result of an ongoing Israeli military operation in the area. Taking what little they could carry, families fled on foot in the early days of the invasion along a dirt road, torn up by Israeli bulldozers, while soldiers choked off movement in and out of the camp. Since then, roads throughout the camp have been gutted, including key access routes to Jenin Government Hospital. Israeli forces have also destroyed water, sewage, and telecommunications infrastructure, and even leveled an entire residential block through controlled detonations. Now in its fifth week, “Operation Iron Wall” has since expanded to three more refugee camps in the northern West Bank, displacing an additional 20,000 people from Tulkarem camp, Nur Shams camp, and Al-Far’a camp. The Israeli military claims to be targeting armed resistance groups in these areas, but has produced meager evidence of its achievements in this regard. And as soldiers lay waste to civilian infrastructure on the ground, fighter jets and drones drop missiles from the sky. [Read More]
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Trump Doesn’t Care About Ukraine or Russia — Just Money
By Aida Chayez, The Intercept [February 19, 2025]
---- As part of his proposed peace plan in Eastern Europe, President Donald Trump is demanding the full-scale economic colonization of Ukraine. The terms of Trump’s initial proposal, detailed in a leaked document obtained by The Telegraph, call for U.S. control of Ukraine’s natural resources, ports, and infrastructure, including $500 billion of Ukraine’s mineral wealth as “payback” for the military aid. After years of military aid, Trump has decided now is the time to cash in. Trump’s proposal asks Ukraine for exclusive rights “in perpetuity” over its natural resources and infrastructure. … As a result of the West’s refusal to seriously consider diplomacy, Ukraine is left with impossible choices: fight a losing war without U.S. support, or submit to economic vassalage under the very powers that prolonged its suffering. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
What anti-Palestinian legislation to look out for in the new Congress
By Michael Arria, Mondoweiss [February 18, 2025]
---- In recent years we have seen an increasing amount of congressional legislation targeting criticism of Israel and boycotts of the country. This push only increased when the genocidal assault on Gaza began last year. We can anticipate further efforts as the GOP now controls the presidency, the Senate, and the House. However, many of these bills were pushed during the Biden administration and have found support on both sides of the aisles. Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) President Lara Friedman. Friedman’s weekly Legislative Round-Up is required reading for anyone who wants to stay informed on the latest bills in Congress and the discussion in Washington, DC. In the conversation Friedman discusses Trump’s pro-Israel Executive Orders and what anti-Palestinian bills people should watch during this congressional session.
Mondoweiss: What has stood out to you about the administration so far?
Lara Friedman: In terms of the Executive Orders, they clearly came in much better prepared this time with the intention to hit the ground running and fire in all directions. As we saw during the first Trump term, there is a lot of controversy over some of his executive orders, but the ones connected to Israel/Palestine are not getting a lot of pushback from Democratic lawmakers. There’s largely a bipartisan consensus that it’s okay for Trump to go after students who are critical of Israel, that it’s okay for him to impose far-reaching sanctions that undermine the very viability of the ICC in defense of Israel. This is just where we are. During the first Trump term, and even in the Biden era, we saw a comfortable bipartisan consensus on legislation that is either ardently in support of Israel or ardently attacking those who are viewed as not supportive of Israel. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The Counterculture That Sprang From San Francisco
By Jonah Raskin, Counterpunch [February 21, 2025]
---- Paul McCartney heard rumors of the wild goings-on in the Haight and visited on April 4, 1967. At the Fillmore Auditorium, he listened to a rehearsal by the Jefferson Airplane. At Marty Balin’s and Jack Casady’s apartment and along with his girlfriend at the time, Jane Asher, he played an acetate (a type of phonograph) of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s” album, which would be released later that year. How counter was the counterculture? And if you were alive then and there how counter was your own personal culture? Not sure? You might be able to decide on your own when the Counterculture Museum opens this spring on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in the neighborhood where hippies and their friends reigned supreme for about two years in the late 1960s. … If the Counterculture Museum succeeds it will send visitors into the streets of the Haight and beyond. It will turn into its opposite, not a museum with artifacts but a cradle of resistance and rebellion with ideas and tools for insurrections. After all, museums are usually repositories of the past, and as such they are innately conservative and rarely innovative. It’s time to bring about a cultural revolution in the world of the counterculture. [Read More]
