Hello All - It is happening before our eyes. Israel’s slaughter of people in Gaza continues. Our government assists this killing, about 100 die each day. For example:
-- The few remaining hospitals in Gaza are running out of fuel. Israel, with US support, has not allowed fuel delivery since early March. Medical machinery is shut off to conserve electricity. Among the victims of the blockade are hundreds of people needing dialysis and many premature babies. They will die.
-- With US support, Israel has banned UN’s food aid program from Gaza. UNRWA has fed millions in Gaza for decades. The United States and Israel have now substituted a bogus feeding program called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. While UNRWA had hundreds of feeding points in Gaza, there is now only one, in the southern (destroyed) city of Raffah. More than 800 people have been assassinated by Israeli soldiers and US mercenaries while attempting to get food. But people have little choice – either starve or risk dying of starvation. This is truly obscene.
Last week, while Israel prime minister Netanyahu was in Washington, there were hopes that a ceasefire would be worked out. Now this has failed. Instead, with US approval, Israel is building a “humanitarian city” on the flattened rubble of Raffah. Up to 2 million Palestinians will be herded into this “city,” which is really only a concentration camp. Israel wants to deport Gazans to some other country. Trump wants to make beachfront property.
All this while the world watches, doing little. The dangerous antics of President Trump swamp the mainstream media and the attention of the world’s political elites. We have the paradox that the Gaza genocide is invisible while mainstreamed 24/7. People who care about this issue must speak up LOUDLY; neither the Democratic Party leadership nor the monthly Indivisible protests care to face this issue. How can we change this?
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THE WEEK THAT WAS
(Video) From Peter Beinart: Ahmed Moor and Mairav Zonszein on What's Next in Gaza
Our guests are Gaza-born Palestinian writer Ahmed Moor, a regular contributor to The Guardian and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and Mairav Zonszein, Israel analyst for the International Crisis Group, and a regular contributor to the New York Times. Topics discussed include…
How what people are calling a “ceasefire” might realistically play out
What Hamas’s current thinking might be
the visions for Gaza in the Israeli government, the military, and the Israeli public; and additional points/questions.
[See the Program]
(Video) Trump gives Israel "carte blanche" for Gaza atrocities: Gideon Levy
From Aljazeera [July 8, 2025]
---- Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy delivered a scathing critique of Israel's displacement plans for Gaza during his Al Jazeera interview, describing proposals to cram Palestinians into Rafah or force them out entirely as a "satanic programme" that would constitute another major war crime. The Israeli journalist argued that neither the Trump administration nor most Israeli citizens would oppose these measures, with Americans showing no concern for Palestinian welfare and Israelis largely viewing their nation as exempt from international law. Levy painted a disturbing picture of Israeli public opinion, where the prime minister's international arrest warrant barely registers and many consider legal frameworks to be "anti-Semitic tools". While predicting another temporary ceasefire might occur, he warned it would likely be violated like previous agreements, with no meaningful resolution to the conflict. The veteran columnist dismissed notions of Israeli victory, noting Hamas' continued resistance and the unresolved hostage crisis, but expressed alarm that many Israelis believe prolonging the bloodshed could somehow achieve the impossible. His bleak analysis suggested Israel's government has free rein to pursue increasingly extreme policies as the world looks on, with the mainstream population either supportive or indifferent to actions that would make the nation an international pariah. [See the Program]
How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power
By Patrick Kingsley, et al., New York Times, [July 11, 2025]
---- Why, after nearly two years, has the war yet to reach a definitive conclusion? Why did Israel frequently turn away chances for de-escalation, instead expanding its military ambitions to Lebanon, to Syria and now to Iran? Why has the war dragged on, even as the leadership of Hamas was decapitated and more Israelis called for a cease-fire? For many Israelis, the war’s protraction is mainly the fault of Hamas, which has refused to surrender despite Palestinians’ suffering unfathomable losses. Most Israelis also see the war’s expansion to Lebanon and Iran as an essential act of self-defense against allies of Hamas that also seek Israel’s destruction. But many increasingly believe that Israel could have struck an earlier deal to end the war, and they charge Netanyahu — who wields ultimate authority over Israel’s military strategy — with preventing that deal from being reached. ]Read More]
FRANCESCA ALBANESE FOR THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE?
(Video) “Economy of Genocide”: U.S. Sanctions U.N. Expert Who Reports on Corporate Profits from Israel’s Gaza War
From Democracy Now! [July 10, 2025]
---- We speak with United Nations expert Francesca Albanese, one day after the Trump administration announced it is imposing sanctions on her over her advocacy for Palestinian rights. Albanese has served as the U.N. special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2022. She recently released a report highlighting dozens of companies aiding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and fueling its genocidal war machine in Gaza, including U.S. tech giants. Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized Albanese’s work as “political and economic warfare” against the United States and its allies. “It seems that this administration is quite allergic to justice,” says Albanese, speaking to Democracy Now! from Slovenia. “It’s trying to distract us from where our focus should be: What’s happening to the Palestinians in the little that remains of their tormented land, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.” [See the Program]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The Persecution of Francesca Albanese,” by Chris Hedges, [July 11, 2025] [Link]; and “US sanctions UN expert Albanese over Israel criticism,” by Ali Harb, Aljazeera [July 9, 2025] [Link].
NEWS NOTES
Zohran Mamdani’s win in the NYC Democratic primary for Mayor continues to shake up Democratic Party politics. Mamdani supporters and a broad spectrum of Democrat voters want more, not less, or the winner’s reform, left-of-center politics. Yet Democratic Party “leaders” and their business associates fear both/either that radical politics would led to electoral losses and perhaps take a bite out of the wealth of Big Donors the Democrats count on the contest elections. For some insights on this (unending) battle, read “After Mamdani’s Win, Some Democrats Are Determined To Stop Him,” by Jeffery C. Mays and Nicholas Fandos, Portside [July 7, 2025] [Link]; and “‘New York Times’ Mamdani smear shows how out of touch the paper is with progressives, especially on Palestine,” by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [July 7, 2025] [Link].
Land mines are back. A UN treaty banning land mines came into force in 1999. The treaty led to the destruction of more than 55 million antipersonnel mines buried and forgotten in many countries. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has stimulated the use of mines, reports the New York Times in good aricle by Andrew Higgins, “Land Mines, a Cold War Horror, Could Return to Fortify Europe’s Borders” [Link].
Solar power. How big is big? As the Trump administration works to end the use of solar power and other “renewables” from the US energy portfolio, this pictures from China show a completely different approach to the use of solar energy production by a government. We’re talking mega-acres of solar panels. Check out these amazing pictures 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.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter has resumed its weekly Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW 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.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
The Jewish State Is Building a Ghetto
By Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz [Israel] [July 10, 2025]
---- If Mordechai Anielewicz were alive today, he'd have died. The leader of the Jewish Combat Organization during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising would have died of shame and disgrace at hearing the defense minister's plans – with the full backing of the prime minister – to erect a "humanitarian city" in the southern Gaza Strip. Anielewicz would never have believed that anyone would dare conceive of such a diabolical plan 80 years after the Holocaust. … The Jewish state is erecting a ghetto. What a horrifying sentence. It's bad enough the plan was presented as if it could be in any way legitimate – who is for a concentration camp and who is against it? – but from there the path may be shortened to an even more horrific idea: someone might suggest next an extermination camp for those who do not get through the screening process at the ghetto's entrance. Israel is killing Gaza's residents en masse anyway, so why not streamline the process and spare the lives of our precious soldiers? … Nothing prepared us for the idea of the "humanitarian city." Israel no longer has any moral right to use the word "humanitarian." Whoever turned the Gaza Strip into what it is – a mass graveyard and a wasteland of ruins – and treats it with equanimity has lost all connection to humanity. Whoever sees only the suffering of the Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip and fails to see that every six hours the Israel Defense Forces kills as many Palestinians as there are living hostages has lost all of their humanity. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Stop Israel’s Dystopian “Humanitarian City” Plan—Before It’s Too Late,” by Medea Benjamin, Znet [July 12, 2025] [Link].
Did You Know That the Risk of Nuclear War Is Greater Now Than in Decades?
By David Cortright, The Nation [July 8, 2025]
---- The risk of nuclear war is greater now than in decades—and rising. Russia is upgrading its missile systems and has threatened to use nuclear weapons. The United States is engaged in a massive program to rebuild and upgrade its entire nuclear arsenal, costing taxpayers an estimated trillion dollars over the next decade. The US weapons-making spree will include new nuclear bombs and upgraded delivery systems that enhance the capacity to wage nuclear war. China is expanding its nuclear weapons systems, India and Pakistan are locked in a deadly arms race, and North Korea is continuing its nuclear program. Israel has bombed Iran to block its uranium enrichment program but remains silent about its estimated arsenal of 80 nuclear weapons. The arms limitation treaties that previously guarded against unconstrained nuclear competition between the US and Russia have been discarded. The remaining agreement, New START, expires in February with no negotiations underway for renewal, as Washington and Moscow dither and delay talks that could reduce nuclear risks. Absent new constraints, the two sides could upload new warheads and double the number of deployed nuclear weapons in the coming years. Despite the growing danger, public awareness remains low. Media coverage of nuclear risks has been limited, with the notable exception of William Hennigan’s “At the Brink” series for The New York Times. Public attention rose slightly last year with release of the film Oppenheimer and the publication of Annie Jacobsen’s best-selling book Nuclear War: A Scenario, but the moment passed. [Read More]
The Dismantling of American Health Care
By Adam Gaffney, et al., New York Review of Books [July 8, 2025]
---- On July 4 President Donald Trump signed into law a piece of legislation that amounts to a declaration of war on the working-class and the sick. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will slice more than $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, stripping health coverage from more than 11 million lower-income Americans by 2034 and sending tens of thousands to an early grave—all in exchange for tax reductions for corporations and the wealthy. Despite Trump’s promises to the contrary, the law will also cut nearly $500 billion from Medicare over the same period by making the deficit surge past a point at which the Office of Management and Budget “is required to order a sequestration to eliminate the overage.” … The three fronts of this assault—on tax-funded medical coverage, public health, and medical research—have overlapping aims. The campaign to slash Medicaid—relied on by the poor since its establishment in 1965—follows a long neoliberal tradition of prescribing austerity for the working class and largesse for the rich. Trump and his allies seem to view public health, for its part, as waste that can be excised (DOGE-style) to fund tax cuts, as a source of regulatory excess that constrains profit-making, and as a locus of “woke” ideology and inconvenient facts. The assault on medical research is driven by similar concerns, with the added benefit of dominating rival centers of power like universities and the professions. Yet such economic and ideological motivations do not explain the full measure of the administration’s agenda. It rests, too, on a Dark Ages disdain for science, part and parcel of Trump’s claim to be the arbiter of facts and truth. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Trump Seeks to Cut Basic Scientific Research by Roughly One-Third, Report Shows,” by William J. Broad, New York Times [July 10, 2025] [Link]; and “America Is Sliding Into the Abyss,” by Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [July 10, 2025] [LInk].
Breaking the Blockade of Gaza: An interview with Rima Hassan
An interview by Christophe Domec, Jacobin Magazine [July 2025]
---- A member of the European Parliament, Rima Hassan was detained by Israel in June after she joined the aid flotilla to Gaza. She told Jacobin about her experience — and why another aid mission is setting off this Sunday. … Ahead of this Sunday’s mission, Amazon labor organizer Chris Smalls is the latest figure to announce he will be joining the crew. It will attempt to bring lifesaving supplies to Palestinians in Gaza who are facing famine as well as daily Israeli military assaults. Smalls, an outspoken critic of Israel’s blockade, will board the vessel named after an iconic Palestinian cartoon character, Handala. It, like the last voyage, will set off to Gaza from Sicily. As Palestine becomes a rallying cry for left-wingers around the world, it’s no surprise to see union organizers like Smalls become prominent actors in the solidarity movement. Hassan, whose parents were refugees of the Nakba, argues that Palestine is a “structuring” struggle for the Left, as many of its core tenets are profoundly linked with Marxism and anti-imperialism. [Link].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
(Video) US fully ‘engaged’ in attacks on Gaza: Analysis
From Aljazeera [July 8, 2025] - 7 minutes
---- Annelle Sheline, a former US State Department official, says it is not only Israel committing “horrific crimes” in Gaza, but the United States is also an accomplice. She noted that American mercenaries are now on the ground in Gaza as part of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. “There’s been whistleblowers reporting these Americans are firing on Palestinians seeking aid. So to be clear, it is not only the Israeli government and members of the Israeli military who are engaged in these crimes,” said the research fellow for the Middle East at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. [See the Program]
A Surgeon on the Desperation in Gaza: ‘They’re Prepared to Die for a Bagful of Rice’
By Lizzie Dearden, New York Times [July 9, 2025]
---- On the morning of June 1, Dr. Victoria Rose was nearing the end of her 21-day stint as a volunteer in Gaza when she saw news of a mass shooting of Palestinians near a food distribution point. A senior plastic surgeon in London, Dr. Rose, 53, had come to the enclave with a small British charity that has sent medical workers to humanitarian crises in countries including Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sri Lanka. … All the patients Dr. Rose treated on June 1 said they had been shot by people guarding the food distribution point. Several people, she said, told her they were shot by “crowd control” while running away, although it is not clear what that phrase referred to. Their accounts were consistent with bullet wounds she treated to the back of people’s legs, she said, as well as to the torso and abdomen. “We’re in that point where people have been reduced to such a level of deprivation that they’re prepared to die for a bagful of rice and a bit of pasta,” she said. [Read More]
With West Bank annexation in the air, settlers revel in their impunity
By Oren Ziv and Shatha Yaish, +972 Magazine [July 9, 2025]
---- Over the span of two days, one of the last remaining Palestinian communities between Ramallah and Jericho was uprooted from its land. On the evening of July 2, dozens of Israeli settlers descended on the West Bank shepherding village of Al-Muarrajat. They broke into homes, stole around 60 sheep, and erected a small outpost inside the village. By the next morning, settlers were seen sitting alongside Israeli soldiers at the newly built outpost, now moved just meters from the village school. Fearing further theft, residents began evacuating their livestock. By Friday, families were packing their belongings and leaving en masse. Thirty families — 177 people in total — were forced out, all but erasing the community. … Even before the war began in October 2023, this vast stretch of land, roughly 150,000 dunams from east of Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho, had already been largely emptied of Palestinians. Communities like Ras a-Tin, Ein Samia, and al-Qabun were forcibly depopulated through coordinated settler violence and state-sanctioned land grabs. … Since the war, the pace of violence and displacement has only accelerated. Settlers now appear to be targeting the very villages that sheltered those previously displaced. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “‘Like a video game’: Israel enforcing Gaza evacuations with grenade-firing drones,” by Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [July 10, 2025] [Link]. Jeff Harper and his International Campaign Against Home Demolitions” puts out a useful and interesting monthly report on Israel’s demolition programs in Palestine. His July report is titled “We’re in the End Game.” You can read the report and learn about the ICAHD here.
THE STUDENTS
Canary Mission: How US uses a ‘hate group’ to target Palestine advocates
By Ali Harb, Aljazeera [July 11, 2025]
---- The United States government has acknowledged its use of Canary Mission — a shadowy pro-Israel website — to identify pro-Palestine students for deportation, sparking anger and concern by rights advocates. Activists have long suspected that the administration of US President Donald Trump is gathering information from the Canary Mission website to target students and professors. But on Wednesday, that suspicion was confirmed when a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official testified in a court case challenging Trump’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian student protesters. Peter Hatch, an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said the department had assembled a specialised group — dubbed a “tiger team” — to work on removing pro-Palestine college students from the country. He indicated to the court that some tips about students were communicated verbally, before explaining that the team had also combed through the nearly 5,000 profiles Canary Mission had compiled of Israel’s critics. “You mean someone said, ‘Here is a list that the Canary Mission has put together?'” Judge William Young asked Hatch, according to court transcripts. The official answered with a simple “yes”. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Mahmoud Khalil sues Trump for false imprisonment,” by Michael Arria, Mondoweiss [July 11, 2025] Link]. Columbia’s student newspaper, The Spectator, has assembled a user-friendly archive of the paper’s articles on the events at Columbia since October 2023. You can read it here.
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
What Are the Chances for Peace in Ukraine Right Now?
An interview with Anatol Lieven, by David Goessmann, Common Dreams [July 9, 2025]
---- Anatol Lieven: I see no prospect for an end to the war at present. Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on peace terms, and the Trump administration has not put forward a compromise proposal of its own. The Russian generals are reportedly telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine will collapse by early next year, and Putin is willing to fight on, at least for a while. We will have to see what happens on the battlefield, and to the Russian economy. … Ukraine will never legally recognize Russian sovereignty over the occupied territories, but cannot reconquer them. So a cease-fire will have to take place along the existing battle line, and the question of their legal status will have to be left for future negotiation—as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed soon after the start of the war. In my judgment, internal political factors make it impossible for the Ukrainian government to make a peace offer that Russia could accept—just as the French establishment could not make peace with the Communists in Vietnam long after the war there was clearly lost. The Europeans are far too divided to make a coherent joint proposal. So the initiative for peace will have to come from the U.S. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - (Video) “Vladimir Putin Is Not Interested in a Peace Deal”: Matt Duss on Trump’s Stalled Ukraine Diplomacy, from Democracy Now! [July 9, 2025] [Link]
WAR WITH IRAN?
“Where’s our bomb?” – An interview with Trita Parsi [Iran]
By Rajan Menon, Boston Review [July 10, 2025]
---- What exactly did Israel’s and the United States’ bombings of Iran last month accomplish? As the dust begins to settle, it is clear that neither of the stated intentions of the attacks’ architects—to unravel the Iranian regime and to decapitate the country’s nuclear capabilities—have been realized. On the contrary, argues Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an expert on Iranian foreign policy, the brazen attacks have only united Iranians around the flag and made the task of Iranian pro-democracy activists far more difficult. “Israel and the United States didn’t obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” he says, “but they may have obliterated the confidence in diplomacy needed to pursue a diplomatic outcome.” How did we get to this point? Last week Rajan Menon spoke with Parsi to discuss the history of U.S. and Israeli relations with Iran, the current geopolitical situation, and more.
Rajan Menon: The attacks’ proponents framed them as a matter of self-defense: Israel, up against the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, had no choice but to preemptively strike the country that has called for its destruction. But can Israel’s actions be justified in any way by international law?
Trita Parsi: When it comes to where international law falls on this, there is no debate. This is not a scenario in which an imminent attack in any way, shape, or form could be pointed to. Israel has not provided any evidence for that. Even its statements that by 2026, the Iranians would have X, Y, and Z nuclear capability—this is not anything that could be categorized as imminent. European official statements on Israel’s attack are not even trying to make references to international law, because they know it’s a completely lost cause. They’re making political arguments. But we’re not in a political conversation because international law was unclear and indecisive. We have moved into a world in which international law is no longer the cornerstone of even countries in Europe. The timing of Israel’s strikes had almost nothing to do with fear of an imminent attack. In fact, the statements that are referencing international law are coming from the Global South. That’s a part of a larger trend: Western states will increasingly either deviate toward a fake rules-based order rather than a law-centered order, while the countries in the Global South will take up the banner of international law. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Iran’s President Says the US Pledged Israel Wouldn’t Attack During Previous Nuclear Negotiations,” By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [July 7, 2025] [Link].
TRUMP’S WAR ON IMMIGRANTS
ICE Campaign of Violence Will Lead to More Deaths
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [July 12, 2025]
---- After weeks of brazen rights violations and outright impunity from America’s secret police force, a federal judge in Los Angeles on Friday issued a sharp rebuke of the racist tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong blocked ICE’s “roving” patrols in Southern California, halting agents from carrying out unconstitutional arrests based on racial profiling alone. Going forward, they’ll need to have specific grounds for believing someone to be undocumented before they can make an arrest. “Is it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status?” the judge wrote. “Yes, it is.” [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Fight ICE. Build the Union. How Labor is mobilizing to defend workers from federal raids,” by Natascha Elena Uhlmann and Sarah Lazare , Workday Magazine [July 8, 2025] [Link] ; and “A Pattern of Violence: Documenting ICE Agents’ Brutal Use of Force in LA Immigration Raids,” by Jonah Valdez [July 7 2025] [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
(Video) “Frontal Assault” on Climate Justice: Rolling Stone’s Antonia Juhasz on Trump’s Budget Law
From Democracy Now! [July 7, 2025]
---- We speak with investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz about how President Trump’s major tax and spending bill hurts environmental justice efforts in Louisiana communities affected by the climate crisis and pollution from oil and gas facilities. The Trump administration had already canceled much of the funding for local environmental monitoring and advocacy, and the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill further entrenches the power of the fossil fuel industry. “It’s a frontal assault on environmental and climate justice, and it will set us back significantly unless we take action to confront the climate crisis,” says Juhasz, who wrote about the bill’s impact for Rolling Stone. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Nuclear Power’s Hot Streak,” (Nuclear power warms the atmosphere), by Karl Grossman and Harvey Wasserman, Counterpunch [July 8, 2025]
[Link].
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Lessons UnLearned: Portland in 2020, Los Angeles Today, the United States Tomorrow?
By Karen J. Greenberg, Tom Dispatch [July 7, 2025]
---- Donald Trump is once again president, and immigration raids across the country are hurrying to meet the White House target of 3,000 arrests per day. This time around, Los Angeles has become the focal point of the resulting battle over federal versus state authority. In early June, responding to an outbreak of protests challenging the administration’s brutal immigration raids, Trump sent 700 active-duty Marines and 4,100 National Guard into that city to counter the protesters. … How this will play out at the Supreme Court the next time around is anyone’s guess and may turn on the issue of whether that court assesses that there really was a rebellion in Los Angeles — the government’s premise for bringing in federal troops. Nonetheless, this should certainly be considered a frightening moment. After all, that presidential memorandum authorizing the federal deployments to L.A. was in no way limited to California. In fact, there was no geographical specificity to it at all and no specific type of protest named in the memo. It was a blanket authorization for deploying federal troops, based on unspecified acts of violence, disorder, and protests. If California is a sign of the future, it seems ever clearer that the courts have little appetite for standing in the way of this president. In addition, as loyalty to him is the first requisite of government officials, any pushback from within the ranks of his administration seems essentially inconceivable. So here we are, once again learning that the restraints Americans could rely upon in the past are fast disappearing. And while protests from democratic leaders abound, it’s the courts that, at this moment, hold the power. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
No ordinary solidarity — inside Chicago’s hunger strike for Gaza
By Joseph Mogul, Waging Nonviolence [July 10, 2025]
---- Ash Bohrer sat in a wheelchair outside of the Chicago Federal Plaza, where they had been arrested for refusing to leave Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s office hours earlier — and where six Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago organizers had launched a hunger strike for Gaza 18 days prior. Reflecting on the highlights to that point, Bohrer, a JVP-Chicago organizer and Notre Dame peace studies professor, said it wasn’t the teach-ins, solidarity demonstrations or political wins that came to mind first, but a message they received from a mother in Gaza named Alaa. “When someone in Chicago chooses to face hunger willingly that is not ordinary solidarity,” she wrote. “It is a profound act of pure humanity.” For Alaa, her three children and 2.1 million Gazans living in constant danger of Israeli bombs, starvation is the other grave threat. On March 2, Israel blocked all aid, including food and baby formula, from entering Gaza. In May, the World Health Organization stated that the entire population of Gaza faces prolonged food shortages and 500,000 people are battling catastrophic hunger. “Hunger here is not a choice or a political stance,” Alaa’s message read. “Hunger here is a decision made against us.” She wanted the hunger strikers to know, “from the heart of this catastrophe, I say: We see you, we feel you, and your actions reach us even when the borders remain closed.” [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Veterans & Allies Fast for Gaza: 40 days of solidarity and compassion,” by Mike Ferner, Znet [July 7, 2025] [Link].
OUR HISTORY
Trump’s Immigration Policy Falls in Line with Racist U.S. History Towards Immigrants
By Abraham Marquez, Counterpunch [July 11, 2025]
---- President Trump started his second term exactly where he left off in 2021, waging an everyday psychological and physical war on immigrants. Joe Biden’s Presidential term was no help because he continued Trump’s immigration policies and did not provide a pathway to citizenship as he had campaigned, abandoning an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants to their fate under the more openly fascist Trump regime. As a result, it has brought more attention to our undocumented community and our immigration policies. The tug and pull by Democrats and Republicans of whether immigrants should have some rights to a dignified life has left us with a dysfunctional, incoherent immigration system for working-class people to understand, leaving people lost in how our system works or should work. Consulting history reveals that our government does not work for the people; it works for the ruling class, the capitalist class. This is their system, not ours. [Read More]
Remembering Robert Alvarez: A Life in Activism
From The Institute for Policy Studies [July 5, 2025]
---- For decades, Bob worked as an activist and expert both in and out of government — not just to fight nuclear proliferation, but to witness, document, and rectify the extraordinary crimes against marginalized U.S. communities and the environment by the nuclear weapons complex. As a writer, organizer, Senate staffer, and Department of Energy official, Bob traveled the country making common cause with “downwinders” sickened by U.S. nuclear tests, Navajo uranium miners suffering the effects of exposure, and nuclear workers abandoned by the government that employed them. … In the years before he died, Bob shared a series of vignettes with us — short memoirs from his extraordinary life in public service. In his honor, we’ve collected a few of those below. In an age when the progressive movement needs hope, determination, and victories, Bob’s decades of work offered all three. [FB – Links and introductions to a dozen non-wonkish, interesting articles written by Alvarez,]
[Read More]
