The New York Times reported this week that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will resume military action against Iran after the US elections. Others warn that military action may come before the elections. Why is this happening? What to do?
Starting with the US-Israel attack on February 28th, the war has been a disaster for Trump. Rather than the promised quick war, it seems that Trump has no way of ending this war without conceding to most of Iran’s demands, codified in the 14-point “Memo of Understanding” agreed to on June 17, 2026. The issues at stake include ending military action, ending the US blockade of Iran, opening the Strait of Hormuz, and making significant concessions to Iran regarding economic sanctions, frozen funds, etc.
According to the New York Times, the US and Israel will conduct ferocious military action for only a few days, believing that this would be sufficient to make Iran surrender on terms favorable to the US and Israel. Very few experts believe this would happen; instead, Iran will expand the war, both to countries supporting the US and into new areas such as cutting overseas communication cables. In other words, the US bombing would lead to a lot more war, with no end in sight.
If the Democrats regain control of one or both houses of Congress, will they – can they – stop this war? Even though a great majority of US voters, especially Democrats, oppose the Iran war, the Democratic leadership continues to be strongly pro-Israel and dismissive of the strong opposition within their party to pro-Palestinian viewpoints. Not unless the “grass roots” forces them to make ending war a priority. It will be up to us to make it happen.
WHERE IS THE WAR ON IRAN GOING?
Can Trump and Iran ever reach a deal again?
By Trita Parsi, Substack [October 19, 2025]
---- The question now is: In light of reports that Trump is eyeing a strike on Pickaxe Mountain using the Mother of All Bombs, how has the situation evolved, and would a new deal look very different? Consider the following developments: In February and June, the Iranians still believed a deal with Trump was possible. They saw Trump as a president who yearned to be historic - either by striking a deal with Tehran or by becoming the president who got rid of the Islamic Republic. If the latter proved impossible, Trump was still attracted to the idea of a deal. Tehran no longer holds this view. Instead, Trump is seen as an inherently unstable and immature person who may want a deal, but does not have the discipline to secure one or the strength to keep it in the face of attacks from Israel and pro-Israeli forces in the US. Moreover, Tehran no longer believes even a face-saving exit for Trump would work and, as a result, is far less inclined to offer him one than it was in June. In their view, he has already committed acts that could allow him to declare such a “win,” including striking Fordo or assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As such, he doesn’t need to strike Pickaxe Mountain to build a legacy. Instead, Tehran sees such a strike as a stepping stone toward a larger regime-change or collapse operation. [Read More]
Iran’s new Military Doctrine is Designed to Make an Israeli-US Victory Pyrrhic
By Ronny P. Sasmita, Middle East Monitor [October 24, 2026]
---- Iran’s latest military doctrine rests on a dangerous proposition: a country does not have to defeat a superior enemy on the battlefield to deny it a meaningful victory. By threatening broader retaliation, expanding the geography of conflict and exploiting vulnerabilities in regional trade, Tehran is attempting to make the political rewards of military action increasingly difficult to secure. On Oct. 21, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that Iran’s military doctrine would move beyond retaliatory strikes towards offensive and asymmetric operations…. This strategy could raise the costs of another attack, but it could also deepen the insecurity that makes another war possible. The central question is no longer simply who can inflict greater damage. It is whether either side can turn military force into a political settlement that lasts. [Read More]
How the upcoming U.S. and Israeli elections could lead to the third round of war
By Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss [October 23, 2026]
---- There is little doubt that the United States and Israel are about to renew the war on Iran that they started without provocation, or any real planning, back in February. The question is only about the timing. In fact, by the time you read this, the war may have resumed in full force. More likely, though, it will be delayed until after the U.S. midterm elections. That will put it after Israel’s elections as well. Israel may find itself with an entirely new leadership after its upcoming elections on October 27, which, while still seeing Iran as a hated enemy, might have different ideas about how to attack that enemy. The United States is even more uncertain following the midterm elections on November 3. Donald Trump will remain president and free of electoral concerns, as he will not be allowed to run in the next election. But a Congress hostile to this war can make it harder for him to continue his current course. Conversely, an indecisive Congress unwilling to confront Trump on the war could unleash his worst tendencies. [Read More]
IN YONKERS, CFOW ENDORSES…
There are two races for seats on the Westchester County Legislature that are up for grabs this year, and in each of them highly qualified young women are up against Spano-backed men. In District #17, we support Leslye Oquando-Thomas, who lost in the Democratic primary by 4 votes and is now (the more progressive candidate) running on the Working Families Party line. To learn about her campaign and how you can support her, go here. In District #15, we support Kisha Skipper, head of the Yonkers NAACP. To learn about her campaign and how to support it, go here. Earlier this week, Kisha was harassed by supporters of her Republican opponent, and when the police came they “detained” Kisha. Par for the course for the Yonkers police, as described in the publication Black Westchester. Yonkers residents: Don’t forget to vote!
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,é Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
This week’s rewards for stalwart newsletter readers come from Rev. Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir. They are selections from their recent album, “The Sun is a Star Thet Keeps Me Warm.” First up is “Because.” Next we have “Machines.” And finally here is “Fabulous Unknown.” Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
(Video) Nobel Peace Laureate Navi Pillay on ICC, Gaza, Rape as War Crime, Her South African Roots & Mandela
From Democracy Now! [October 20, 2026]
---- We speak with the acclaimed South African human rights lawyer and international jurist Navi Pillay, who was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Pillay has been the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and a judge at both the International Criminal Court and at an international tribunal investigating the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Most recently, she led the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry that concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Hours after Pillay was announced as winner of the Nobel Prize, the United States imposed sweeping new sanctions against the International Criminal Court. “It’s extremely shocking to me, totally unacceptable, that the United States administration can today impose sanctions against the International Criminal Court,” says Pillay, speaking to Democracy Now! from The Hague. Navi Pillay is now 85 years old. She was born into an Indian Tamil family in apartheid South Africa in 1941. The first woman to start a law practice in Natal, South Africa, in 1967, Pillay began her legal career defending anti-apartheid activists including Nelson Mandela, exposing torture, and helping establish key rights for prisoners on Robben Island. Mandela, as president, later appointed Pillay to the High Court of South Africa, making her the first woman of color on that bench. [See the Program]
(Video) “A Spark from the Cockroaches”: Arundhati Roy on India’s Youth Protests & Modi’s Crackdown
From Democracy Now! [October 29, 2026]
---- A court in India on Wednesday ordered the release of two leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party, the youth-led movement that has led historic waves of protests in India since the summer. Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das were detained amid massive protests last week after they scaled a barricade to enter a site popular for protest, unfurled the national flag and called for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Kumar oversaw the deletion of 130 million names from the voter rolls in India since June of last year. Opposition parties say those impacted are primarily Muslims and other minorities less likely to support the BJP, the Hindu nationalist ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “You have a deep and wide — an ideologically wide — historical culture of resistance in India,” says acclaimed writer and activist Arundhati Roy. At the same time, the Modi government “has three things in its playbook: One is false-flag attacks, two is engineering communal riots, and the third is massive repression. And I don’t think we’ve seen its hand yet.” [See the Program]
(Video) “When the Bubble Bursts”: Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor on Reclaiming Democracy from AI Oligarchs
From Democracy Now! [October 21, 2026]
----We’re joined by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors of the book End Times Fascism, for a wide-ranging conversation on the multitrillion-dollar global investment in artificial intelligence and its reverberating effects around the world. Klein recently spoke at the People’s AI Assembly, alongside other critics of the artificial intelligence industry, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former chair of the Federal Trade Commission Lina Khan. “The resistance to AI is taking many forms, and it’s really a resistance to oligarch power, which is concentrated in the hands of these tech companies,” Klein tells Democracy Now! “After 50 years of outsourcing and hollowing out of public functions of the state, the very last stage is the outsourcing of thinking, of intelligence itself.” [See the Progrm]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The Plot to Delete Democracy,” By Sue Halpern, New York Review of Books [November 5, 2026 issue] [Link]; and (Video) “Arundhati Roy: Artificial Intelligence Is Capitalism’s Final Destination,” from Democracy Now! [October 23, 2026] [Link].
THE CRISIS IN EUROPE
Youth in Revolt: A Roundup of Protests in Europe and Around the World
By Diego Lung, Znet [October 24, 2026]
---- Faced with austerity measures, the dismantling of public education, precarious living conditions, authoritarianism, and — particularly in Europe —opposition to rapid… From India to Chile, with France at the center, youth protests have put class struggle on the international stage. The struggles differ by country, but young people are taking to schools, universities, and streets in response to deep anger. This past weekend, hundreds of thousands marched in France and clashed with police for hours. For now, repression has not stopped the movement, which is also growing in Italy, Albania, Spain, and Portugal.... The return of young people to the streets cuts against those who hastily predicted that this generation had turned to the right. Far-right governments in Europe, the United States, and Latin America may try to set the agenda, but resistance to their reactionary plans is growing, as are calls for the labor movement to enter the struggle with its decisive strategic weight. The final word has not been spoken. A new wind is blowing from different corners of the globe, and it is the struggle that will ultimately define the spirit of the age. [Read More]
Europe in Revolt: Military Spending and Austerity Amidst Skyrocketing Energy Costs and the Destruction of the Welfare State
By Michael Leonardi, Counterpunch [October 23, 2026]
---- The line runs from the Strait of Hormuz and the Ukrainian front to the underfunded classroom, the stagnant wage, and the family that can no longer make ends meet. The same state that can find 550 million for the drivers this week has already committed the larger sums to the weapons that will still be moving when the rebate ends. NATO’s hypocrisy is the gap between its talk of security and the fact that the security it funds is the security of arms makers, of the war in Ukraine, of confrontation with Iran, and of Israel’s impunity, while both wars set the price of the fuel and the shape of the budget. … These are not the same movements, but they are linked by a shared calculation that the existing arrangements will not deliver relief without disruption. French students started with their schools and widened to the cost of living. Italian students took the buildings and carried Palestinian flags into the squares while the government prepared to send troops. Italian drivers and farmers are fighting the price of diesel and the price of staying in business. Port workers are preparing to stop the ships that carry the weapons. Portuguese and Spanish protesters are defending the possibility of renting or owning a place to live. … The boiling point is the recognition that the system has chosen the weapons, the profits, and Israel’s impunity over the people still expected to pay for them. [Read More]
The Students – Country Reports
There are many excellent videos and reports about the student movements in Europe, updated daily. Here is a selection: from France, Spain, Albania, and Serbia, where student-backed political parties might win a national election today.
France, Spain, Belgium, Albania, Brazil, Serbia, India, Nepal, Bangladesh…
By Michael Albert, Znet [October 20, 2026]
---- Reports show activism of many minds, addressing many topics and reaching considerable scale erupting in many places. Education, housing, corruption, jobs, prices, immigration, regimentation, fascism, war, data centers, weather, electoral campaigns, and more. France, Spain, Belgium, Albania, Brazil, Serbia, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and more. … What to do?On the one hand, where you are, if it arrives, participate. If it hasn’t yet arrived, try to initiate it. So far, so obvious. But a larger, overarching possibility beckons. Spread the eruption. Enlarge each outbreak. Make it all last. Still obvious. But how? What can turn a temporary eruption that may or may not win some specific immediately focused local aims into a sustained wave of activism that grows, persists and finally wins not only various initially sought aims, but whole new societies in a revolutionized world? Isn’t that the strategic question we must now address? [Read More\
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
Four More Years of Netanyahu Will Finally Bring Israel to Its Knees
By Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz [Israel] [October 25, 2026]
---- Two days before the polls open, one thing must be clear: Four more years with the current government is a terrifying prospect. The first bad omen has already been supplied by Donald Trump: Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory, the U.S. president promised, would be followed immediately by another war with Iran. That alone should be enough to terrify all reasonable Israelis and to keep them awake at night … The fact that Trump believes that the promise of another round of fighting will boost support for Netanyahu is deeply depressing. In Netanyahu’s later years in power, war has become the only promise on offer. This is the first irreversible damage the right has inflicted in Israel through the mainstream media: normalizing the promise of war. Four more years will leave an indelible mark on Israel’s image. By their end, one fears, these words may be prohibited from publication. Perhaps Haaretz itself will be banned. [Read More].
Those Antisemitic Olive Trees! Israel’s Gaslighting Military Language Whitewashes Settler Violence
By Amira Hass, Ha’aretz [Israel] [October 22, 2026]
---- His skills seem rusty. He forgot that an American journalist and European diplomats aren’t Palestinians, whose heads and knees Jewish rioters habitually smash with stones and clubs. Maybe he wanted to curry favor with the settlers, as his words echoed the false representation of reality in their media. It is something along the lines of: The antisemitic olive trees just appeared next to our peaceful Jewish farms! Our olive harvest from their trees is a mitzvah from the Torah! Their olive harvest is a provocation! The anarchists are joining Arabs picking olives to force the holy Jews to carry out pogroms against them and stoke a campaign against the entire settlement enterprise! [Read More]
Most voters in key states want to block US arms transfers to Israel
By Jim Lobe, Responsible Statecraft [October 21, 2026]
---- A majority of likely voters in each of six key swing states — Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas — say they approve of measures to block the transfer of bombs to Israel, according to a new poll released Wednesday by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) and conducted by the YouGov data analytics firm. The poll also found that majorities or strong pluralities of 3,200 respondents in the six states favor “cutting $3.3 billion in taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel” and believe the war in Iran benefits Israel more than the United States. [Read More]
THE WAR ON UKRAINE
A Framework for Peace in Ukraine
By Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Dreams [October 22, 2026]
---- The war in Ukraine can be ended permanently on terms that protect Ukraine’s statehood, meet Russia’s security concerns, and lay the foundation for a durable European security order. As another round of negotiations gears up in Norway, I propose a settlement concluded as a single package, signed by Ukraine and Russia, adopted by a vote of the United Nations Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter, and guaranteed jointly by the five permanent members of the Council together with other states that choose to join. The proposal rests on the principle of indivisible security set out in the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris. The package would have four core commitments. The first is Ukraine’s permanent neutrality, The second is that Ukraine would pursue its candidacy for membership in the European Union as a permanently neutral state, The third is an armistice line drawn along the line of contact on the date of signature. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “The War in Ukraine Is Spiraling Out of Control,” by Branko Marcetic, Jacobin Magazine [October 2026 [Link].
THE WAR IN YEMEN
Yemen: The Endless Siege
By Nicolas Niarchos, New York Review of Books [November 5, 2026 issue]
---- Since 2014, after the Houthis seized power and Saudi Arabia responded with air strikes, Yemen has been pounded into near oblivion by warring factions. Iran has strengthened its support for the Houthis, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have armed and enabled a crew of militias that occasionally masquerade as an “internationally recognized government” and just as frequently fight one another for territory. Figures are hard to come by, but in 2018 Save the Children estimated that some 85,000 children under five had starved to death in the conflict, and in 2021 the UN projected that around 154,000 people would have been killed in the fighting and some 223,000 would have died from famine and preventable diseases such as cholera and diphtheria if the war continued through the end of that year. It has gone on for almost five more years. The real toll of this war is likely much higher, but there are no updated and authoritative nationwide assessments because the systems for counting deaths no longer exist. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The Sheer Size of It All
By Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books [November 5, 2026 issue]
---- In his effort to understand our time on earth, the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky had to figure out how to chronicle its single most important element. Oil unleashed the mobility that rewrote the American landscape and produced both the highest concentrations of wealth and its greatest and most democratic spread; it powered the militaries of the twentieth century and also gave them something to fight over. But it’s not the easiest thing to take a picture of: the “mining” happens deep underground, where a drill bit punctures a reservoir, and the resulting product is (hopefully) contained inside a series of pipes and tanks up to the moment when it leaves your tailpipe in a (largely invisible) cloud of carbon dioxide and various trace gases. Burtynsky took some haunting images of fields full of oil derricks, both in California and in Baku, Azerbaijan, the site of the world’s first big offshore oil fields. He also photographed in the tar sands of Alberta, perhaps the single biggest scar humans have inflicted on the planet. But I think his more important achievement was to figure out how to depict the consumption of oil. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
What Are Democrats Prepared to Do if Trump Rigs the Election?
By Elie Mystal, The Nation [October 23, 2026]
---- In this week’s Elie v. U.S, our justice correspondent challenges Democrats’ lack of a plan if Trump steals the midterms. Plus: the most racist, and honest. ---- Indeed, almost nobody paying attention to this election thinks it will be on the up-and-up. The question is, what are we supposed to do about it? And to that, the answers seem scarce to nonexistent. In the WaPo article, Robertson says the secret national security group is trying to “raise awareness” among lawmakers and “harden election protocols” among state boards of election. But most people are already really freaking aware of the threat. And I don’t know how you can harden a voting machine to prevent Trump’s goons from just stealing it, which they might try to do. I guess I just can’t think of many historical examples of when an authoritarian regime has tried to steal an election and been stopped. What I can think of are situations where an authoritarian regime tried to steal an election, was successful at stealing it, and then, later, that illegitimate regime was overthrown by the people. But even that situation is rare. Most of the time, the party that steals the election is rewarded with power, even when everybody knows the election was rigged. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Surrealism Against Fascism
By Naomi Klein, Equator [November 26, 2025]
---- The history lessons and fascism checklists could prepare us to spot today’s attacks on the courts, press and opposition forces, as well the normalisation of sadism. But they didn’t prepare us for this. Nothing prepared us for a nation perpetrating a genocide, while claiming to be protecting themselves from genocide, all in the name of learning from a previous century’s genocide. As I have tried to make sense of these derangements, I have often taken refuge in the work of the Jewish-German writer Walter Benjamin, particularly his On the Concept of History, also referred to as Theses on the Philosophy of History. One of its key insights is his description of history not as “a chain of events” but rather as “one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage”. Benjamin wrote the essay in 1940, shortly before trying to escape from Vichy France, where he was at risk of being handed over to the Gestapo. According to Benjamin, the wreckage of history forms a “pile of debris” that “grows skyward”. Later that year, the fascists caught up with him and he took his own life in a small town in Catalonia. The idea of history as “wreckage upon wreckage” (rather than that ever-repeating loop) goes a long way towards explaining how we could have arrived at what Palestinian historian Sherene Seikaly has termed “the age of catastrophe”, with one genocide used to justify another, and the intersections of climate breakdown and surging neo-fascist movements promising much more in store. As Benjamin knew, wreckage is not an inert substance. It has a life force, it changes, its elements interacting with each other to create volatile new compounds and toxic chain reactions. No one is protected from the weight of history’s accumulation – not even the political forces we might expect to be rousing people to fight fascism. Today’s left, radicalised by genocide and ecocide, has no difficulty articulating disillusionment with Western humanism and the liberal international order, but we have not coalesced around a shared political alternative, another way of living with one another that is genuinely non-fascist. [Read More]
Do The Beatles belong to the Left?
By Alex Niven, Jacobin Substack [October 24, 2026]
---- As we enter the late 2020s, the legacy of the Beatles — history’s biggest band, by any measure — is facing a final reckoning. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the group’s last surviving members, are now eighty-four and eighty-six, respectively. This should remind us that what might be called the “Beatles generation” is reaching the end of its natural lifespan, its icons departing the stage to become musty archival heritage. All things, as the late George Harrison once acknowledged, must pass. … To understand the Beatles’ political side, we must first examine their tribal roots. While the Irish ancestry of the band members is well-known, surprisingly little has been made of the fact that both Lennon and McCartney were descendants of migrants from Ulster, one of many violent historic epicenters of British colonialism. This was hardly irrelevant. While McCartney responded to the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry by composing the strident “Give Ireland Back to the Irish,” Lennon (who had once claimed the Beatles were “all Irish”) offered vigorous support for the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the same period. … Despite much easy sneering about the millionaire who dreams of a world without possessions in “Imagine,” Lennon was authentic in his engagement with the radical left. His political journey in these years is yet to be fully mapped, but the dialogue he maintained with New Left Review editors Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn in the early ’70s and the products of this relationship — the ultraleft “Power to the People,” and attendance at a 1972 Troops Out of Ireland demonstration with a “For the IRA, Against British Imperialism” banner — are well attested. [Read More]
