The Real CFOW Newsletter - Trump's tax bill; the war in Yemen

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

November 21, 2017

 

Hello All – At last Saturday's CFOW rally/protest in Hastings, we passed out leaflets about the legislation now in Congress that would reward the one-percenters supporting the Trump Agenda with hundreds of billions of dollars in reduced personal and corporate taxes.  Serious program cuts are needed to offset such a massive reduction of federal revenue, and these cuts will come from healthcare, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with the inevitable squeeze on programs meeting basic needs of lower income people.  Of particular interest to people in New York/Westchester, both the Senate and the House bills will cap or eliminate income tax deductions for state and local property taxes.  The only way this legislation can be defeated is if at least three Senate Republicans vote against it.  The vote may come as soon as next Monday, so your assigned task is to call Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine (202-224-2523), Bob Corker of Tennessee (202-224-3344) and Jeff Flake of Arizona (202-224-4521).  Just tell the person answering the phone that you would like the Senator to vote NO on the tax legislation, that it is important for your family and your community.  We would like the Republicans to know that, if this legislation is passed, they will face a wipeout in the 2018 elections.  Do it today!  Thanks.

 

The war in Yemen is now referred to as the world's worst humanitarian disaster.  Of course, this disaster is manmade, with most of the damage being caused by Saudi Arabia's intervention into a confusing civil war.  To our nation's great shame, the United States is aiding and abetting the Saudi's slaughter of Yemenis; in addition to those killed directly by bombing, the Yemenis suffer from the world's largest cholera epidemic and now a famine that has put millions of the edge of starvation.  As described in the articles linked below, famine is now even more likely because the Saudis have bombed Yemen's main airport and blockaded its main port, allowing no food or medicine to enter. 

 

What is the United States doing about this?  Refueling Saudi planes, helping with targeting and with the naval blockade, and in at least one instance sending Marines ashore.  And probably much more. Trump's support of the Saudis is well known; what is less known is that many Democrats, including our own Eliot Engel, are framing the war in Yemen as one between Saudi Arabia and Iran!  On November 14^th, for example, Engel told the House of Representatives that "We've heard about Saudi and Iranian involvement in the civil war in Yemen.  Sadly, Yemenis are caught in the crossfire. …So, the people of Yemen are facing a very dire situation. But, let's be clear: neither military action nor food aid will solve the conflict in Yemen.  A political solution is essential for moving Yemen toward stability."  [Link]. What is missing from this statement, made by the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is any sense that the United States could put a stop to these atrocities by refusing to assist Saudi Arabia militarily, and using some tough diplomatic talk, including intervention at the UN. The Trump-Engel axis justifies US Saudi killing on the pretext that it is directed against Iran.  Check out the reading about this war linked below and see if you agree.  And if you don't agree, please call Congressman Engel at 718-796-9700 and ask him to speak out in favor of ending US support to the horrible Saudi Arabian war against Yemen.

 

News Notes

It was exactly a year ago that our friend Sophia Wilensky nearly lost her arm when she was struck with a police-fired projectile out at Standing Rock, South Dakota.  Before heading out there, Sophia – who is in her early 20s and is from Riverdale – had been a stalwart in the anti-pipeline agitation up near Indian Point.  In this story in the New York Post, Sophia speaks for the first time about what happened that day and what/how she is doing now.

 

A significant number of Israeli men and women become conscientious objectors upon being drafted.  In this video, Mattan Helman speaks eloquently about "There is no moral occupation': Why I refuse to serve," a decision that will land him in jail.

 

President Trump and many members of Congress want to end the nuclear deal with Iran, and are looking for a good excuse.  Inconveniently, Iran has been steadily in compliance with the terms of the Agreement; the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog, puts Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium at 96.7 kg, less than half of the limit they're allowed to keep under the deal, and none of the uranium was enriched above the low level allowed under the pact. Sad.

 

For those trying to keep score at home, this cogent report from the Military Times looks at "What's inside the $700 billion defense budget plan headed to Trump's desk?"  It's all there – 20,000 more soldiers and lots of weapons – even more than the Pentagon and the White House asked for.  When the Pentagon budget is added to programs for other agencies – such as nuclear weapons (the Dept. of Energy), the total for military spending this year will be about $1.1 trillion. 

 

Things to Do/Coming Attractions

Tuesday, November 28^th – This program looks interesting: "Antisemitism and the Struggle for Justice," moderated by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Featuring Leo Ferguson, Lina Morales, Linda Sarsour, and Rebecca Vilkomerson (JVP).   At the New School (66 W. 12^th St.) starting at 7:30 p.m.  For more information, go here.

 

Saturday, December 2^nd – This year is the 20^th anniversary of WESPAC's Margaret Eberle Fair Trade Festival. The program is at the Memorial United Methodist Church (250 Bryant Ave.) in White Plains (from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.).  There will be music, good things to eat, and more than 30 fair trade arts and crafts vendors.  I've always enjoyed it, and think you will too!

 

Sunday, December 3^rd – CFOW's monthly meeting is held this day from 7 to 9 p.m.  Everyone is welcome at these meetings.

 

Tuesday, December 5^th – Stalwart Isabella Bannerman will be among the presenters at the launch meeting/party for the new issue of World War 3 Illustrated. She will talk about her new project, "'L'Aquiletta': How a girl in 1943 Italy fought fascism."  (Her mother's story, illustrated.)  At the SVA Amphitheater, 209 E. 23^rd St., room 311, from 7 to 10 p.m.

 

Ongoing – Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct has a new exhibition at the Keeper's House called "Existing Conditions," photographs of the trail from 20 years ago.  The fixed-up Keeper's House is also interesting, imo. – The building is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 noon to 3 p.m. It's at 15 Walnut St. in Dobbs Ferry.

 

This Newsletter

In addition to the excellent "Featured Essays," I strongly recommend checking out two excellent articles on the renewed importance of nuclear weapons in US military plans; a set of articles about the new US-Saudi Arabia-Israel threat to destabilize (even more) the Middle East; a good report on what's happening with the Keystone XL pipeline out in Nebraska; several articles on the recent COP23 climate conference in Bonn, Germany; an interesting article by Ralph Nader on sexual harassment and legal impunity for war crimes; an interview with a founder of the Palestinian BDS movement; and two super excellent articles about "Our History."

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  We meet for a vigil/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  Our leaflet and posters for our vigils are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or the Puerto Rico crisis are targeted from time to time, depending on current events. We meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society.  Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. 

 

Contributions, Please

Our treasury is getting a little low, so if you are able to support our work, please make your check out to "CFOW" and mail it to PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

Rewards!

Several CFOW stalwarts were among the 400 people who packed the Tarrytown Music Hall last week for WESPAC's wonderful program, "Made in Palestine."  Along with food, poetry, and dancing, we were treated to a very funny (and educational) performance by Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr.  He has lots of stuff online; for starters, check out his film, "We're Not White."  And for something completely different, I think you will like Stephanie Trick and Jorg Hegemann's rendition of Albert Ammons' piano classic, "Shout for Joy."  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

Thank You, Ed Herman

Diana Johnstone, Antiwar.com [November 14, 2017]

[FB – My friend Ed Herman died on Armistice Day.  He was a great man and a fierce critic of the war makers.  I had the good fortune to write two books with him, a life-changing experience.  He is best known for his collaboration with Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, which remains (imo) the most useful guide to the working/propaganda functions of the mainstream media.  Diana Johnstone is another stalwart critic of the powers-that-be, and was a friend of Ed's, and has written this warm memoir.]

---- Edward S. Herman died on November 11, 2017, at the age of 92. Fortunately, it was a peaceful death for a supremely peaceful man. In all he did, Ed Herman was a tireless champion of peace. Ed Herman could be considered the godfather of antiwar media critique, both because of his own contributions and because of the many writers he encouraged to pursue that work. Thanks to his logical mind and sense of justice, he sharply grasped the crucial role and diverse techniques of media propaganda in promoting war. He immediately saw through lies, including those so insidious that few dare challenge them, such as the arrogant presumption by the U.S. War Party of the "right to protect" and the "need to prevent genocide", to justify the oxymoronic "humanitarian war". [Read More]

 

We Supported Their Dictators, Led the Failed 'War on Drugs' and Now Deny Them Refuge

By Victoria Sanford, Bill Moyers.com [November 18, 2017]

---- President Donald Trump has tied his executive order giving Congress six months to "fix" DACA to constructing a wall between the US and Mexico as well as a rapid and massive deportation of unaccompanied children and families entering the US without a visa. Trump claims this will stop Central American and other undocumented immigrants from entering the United States. These policies might make it more difficult, but they will not stop the flow of migration because the United States is not the pull factor of migration. Violence in Central American countries is the push factor today, just as it was in the late 20^th century. … Today, northern Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras) has one of the highest homicide rates of any region in the world that is not at war. … As in the 1980s, Central Americans have responded by fleeing for their survival. In 2013 alone, over 900,000 Guatemalans migrated to the US together with 500,000 Hondurans and 1.2 million Salvadorans. And many of these are children — from Oct. 2013 to Aug. 2015, more than 102,000 unaccompanied minors were among those making the dangerous and expensive trek from Central America through Mexico to cross the US border. [Read More]

 

Investigation Reveals US-Led Bombings in Iraq Kill 31 Times More Civilians Than Reported

By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [November 17, 2017]

---- An 18-month investigation by a pair of New York Times reporters reveals far more civilians are killed in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—particularly in the air war—than the U.S.-led coalition reports. After visiting nearly 150 bombing sites in northern Iraq between April 2016 and June 2017, as well as the American base in Qatar where decisions are made about coalition air strikes, Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal "found that one in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition." … U.K.-based Airwars estimates at least 3,000 civilians have been killed, but the group's director told the reporters Airwars "may be significantly underreporting deaths in Iraq" due to lack of reliable reporting. [Read More] And read their powerful essay, "The Uncounted," which focuses on a single area and a single family. [Link].

 

Puerto Rico's DIY Disaster Relief

By Molly Crabapple, New York Review of Books [November 2017]

---- Two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit, aid remained a bureaucratic quagmire, mismanaged by FEMA, the FBI, the US military, the laughably corrupt local government. The island looked like it was stuck somewhere between the nineteenth century and the apocalypse. But leftists, nationalists, socialists were stepping up to rebuild their communities. Natural disasters have a way of clarifying things. They sweep away once-sturdy delusions, to reveal old treasures and scars. Over the next month, Luis, Christine, and ARECMA, took over the group's storm-ravaged hilltop center and set up the Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo (Project for Mutual Aid).  … Their Proyecto is one of a rapidly growing network of autonomous, self-managed Centros de Apoyo Mutuos (CAMs). [Read More]

 

WAR & PEACE

The Trump Doctrine: Making Nuclear Weapons Usable Again
By Michael T. Klare, Tom Dispatch [November 19, 2017]

---- The Pentagon has been fretting that the arsenal is insufficiently intimidating.  Accordingly, U.S. war planners and weapons manufacturers have set out to make that arsenal more "usable" in order to give the president additional nuclear "options" on any future battlefield. … Making the U.S. arsenal more usable requires two kinds of changes in nuclear policy: altering existing doctrine to eliminate conceptional restraints on how such weapons may be deployed in wartime and authorizing the development and production of new generations of nuclear munitions capable, among other things, of tactical battlefield strikes.  All of this is expected to be incorporated into the administration's first nuclear posture review (NPR), to be released by the end of this year or early in 2018. [Read More]  And an excellent essay by William Hartung – "Massive Overkill: Brought to You By the Nuclear-Industrial Complex," – adds some historical context to the complex of interests that have brought us to the edge of world destruction. [Link]

America's Renegade Warfare

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, Antiwar.com [November 17, 2017]

---- Across the world, it is obvious, and now well-documented, that US aggression and militarism are causing the very problems they claim to be trying to solve. By design or default, US policy is confusing cause and effect to justify military operations that turn civilians into combatants, fueling an ever-escalating, ever-spreading cycle of increasingly global violence and chaos. As the world confronts critical problems and demands on its resources, from climate change to poverty and inequality, it can no longer afford to follow the pied piper of American "leadership" that leads only to war and chaos. US leaders often raise the specter of "appeasement" to guilt-trip reluctant allies into supporting U.S.-led wars. But maybe it is time for world leaders to recognize that the real appeasement they have been engaged in is the appeasement of the United States, by actively or tacitly encouraging it in an illegal policy of militarism and serial aggression that is spreading violence and chaos across the world. [Read More]

 

Saudi Arabia's Desperate Gamble

By Alastair Crooke, Consortium News [November 10, 2017]

---- Furious over defeat in Syria, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is gambling again, arresting rivals at home and provoking a political crisis in Lebanon, but he may lack the geopolitical chips to pull off his bet, says ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke. No doubt about it: it has been a coup for Netanyahu. The question though, is whether it will turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory, or not: whichever it is, it is highly dangerous to throw grenades into combustible material. This U.S.-Israeli-Saudi-UAE project is, at bottom, an attempt to overturn reality, no less – it is rooted in a denial of the setback suffered by these states by their multiple failures to shape a New Middle East in the Western mode. Now, in the wake of their failure in Syria – in which they went to the limits in search of victory – they seek another spin of the roulette wheel – in the hope of recouping all their earlier losses. It is, to say the least, a capricious hope. [Read More]

 

For more on the Saudi-US-Israeli dangers – Patrick Cockburn, "The greatest dangers in the Middle East today are Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Salman," The Independent [November 15, 2017]

[Link]; and Trita Parsi, President, National Iranian-American Council  "Saudi Arabia Wants to Fight Iran to the Last American," [November 15, 2017] [Link].

 

The War in Afghanistan

Pentagon Claims 14,000 Troops in Afghanistan, Surge 'Completed'

By Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com [November 19, 2017]

---- The Pentagon has been keeping troop figures in Afghanistan a secret since President Trump ordered the escalation over the summer. Officials have occasionally tipped off troop levels, however, and at times contradict one another. … The reality though is all official figures are subject to change without notice, and lying to the American public about how many US troops are in Afghanistan is practically official policy at this point, so the lack of consistency is unsurprising. [Read More]  Also interesting/useful is "Afghan Army Recruitment Dwindles as Taliban Threatens Families," by Najim Rahim and Mujib Mashal, New York Times [November 18, 2017] [Link].

 

The War in Yemen

60 Minutes Imagines a Different War in Yemen

By Derek Davison, LobeLog [November 20, 2017]

[FB - Media Tutorial – As explained in Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky's standard work on media, Manufacturing Consent, one of the ways that media bias works is by establishing what is On the News Agenda and what is Off the News Agenda.  Here is a good example: while the famine/crisis in Yemen sometimes makes the mainstream US news media, the role of the United States in enabling the Saudi military campaign that is the cause of the famine is Off the Agenda.  In general (and to over simplify), the mainstream media follows the lead of the government in establishing the News Agenda for foreign policy, etc.  The occasions when dissenting views make their way onto the Agenda – in this case, for example, the US role in the Yemen famine – depends on the political elite being divided.  Sometimes a Democrat/Republican debate is enough, but in the area of foreign policy the Democrats and Republicans mostly – and right now – support Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen, and so the media sees no "debate."  An antiwar agitation might put the US role in Yemen in the news, but without news coverage, launching an antiwar agitation is difficult.  It's a very vicious circle.]

---- The November 19 episode of the CBS News program 60 Minutes devoted its first segment to covering the humanitarian atrocity taking place in Yemen. Or rather, it devoted its first segment to covering a fictional crisis loosely based on the humanitarian atrocity taking place in Yemen. Any similarity between that crisis and what's actually happening in Yemen was apparently coincidental. … It is no exaggeration to say that the Saudi operation in Yemen depends on this ongoing logistical support from the U.S. It also depends on arms, like American cluster bombs and British missiles, that U.S. and U.K. arms dealers eagerly sell to the Saudis. Which means that it's within American and British power to end this atrocity, to end the starvation, to force the Saudis to reopen the entire country to humanitarian aid. [Read More]

 

For more on the Yemen crisis and the US role - Nawal Al-Maghafi, "The Catastrophe of Saudi Arabia's Trump-Backed Intervention in Yemen," The New Yorker [November 17, 2017] [Link]; "Saudis Bomb Yemen's International Airport, Amid Devastating Blockade," from Informed Comment [November 16, 2017] [Link]; Kristine Beckerle, "Saudi Claims to Ease Yemen Blockade a Cruel Fiction,," Human Rights Watch [November 13, 2017] [Link]; and Juan Cole, "The Saudi-US war on Yemen is killing 130 Children a Day & Other Bleak Statistics," Informed Comment [November 19, 2017] [Link].

 

War with North Korea?

Is the Trump Administration Planning a First Strike on North Korea?

By Gareth Porter, Truthout [November 18, 2017]

---- Ever since the Trump administration began a few months ago to threaten a first strike against North Korea over its continued missile tests, the question of whether it is seriously ready to wage war has loomed over other crises in US foreign policy. The news media have avoided any serious effort to answer that question, for an obvious reason: The administration has an overriding interest in convincing the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un that Trump would indeed order a first strike if the regime continues to test nuclear weapons and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Therefore, most media have shied away from digging too deeply into the distinction between an actual policy of a first strike and a political ruse intended to put pressure on Pyongyang. … The linkage between the Trump administration's threat of a "military option" and US diplomatic pressure on North Korea was clear from its first suggestion that it might carry out a first strike.  …It isn't yet possible to know definitely whether the Trump administration intends to strike first against North Korea. [Read More]

 

Also useful on US-North Korea – Jason Ditz, "North Korea: No Negotiations If US Military Drills Continue," Antiwar.com [November 17, 2017] [Link];  and Tim Shorrock, "As Trump Slams Pyongyang, Seoul Begins Shift," Lobelog [November 17, 2017] [Link].

 

The War in Syria

Pentagon: ISIS 'Defeated' But US Will Stay in Syria

By Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com [November 17, 2017]

---- US military intentions in Syria have never been exactly transparent, but are becoming ever less so, as Pentagon officials loudly declare ISIS to have been "defeated" in the country, but insist that they intend to remain. This is a potential major legal issue, because Syria never authorized the US invasion in the first place. US officials always presented the authorization as being UN resolutions supporting the fight against ISIS, but that would no longer apply. Moreover, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has pointed out that Secretary of State Tillerson has repeatedly assured him that the "only" US goal in Syria is to fight ISIS. This is adding to Russian concerns about what the US is actually planning on doing next. [Read More]

 

The New War in Somalia

US Quietly Builds Up Troops in Somalia

By Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com [November 19, 2017]

---- One of the many quiet escalations in countries where US military operations on the ground hadn't really been well publicized in the first place, officials say that the US has more than doubled the number of ground troops in Somalia this year, and now have over 500 troops there. This is the most troops the US has had in the country since 1993, when the Black Hawk Down incident killed 18 US soldiers and led to a quick withdrawal from the nation. This year was also the first year since 1993 that any US troops died in Somalia. [Read More]

 

GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE BREAKDOWN

Nebraska Approves Keystone XL Pipeline as Opponents Face Criminalization of Protests

By Alleen Brown, The Intercept [November 20 2017]

---- Nebraska's Public Service Commission approved the Keystone XL pipeline Monday, eliminating a major regulatory hurdle to construction of a project that galvanized people across the U.S. into opposition. The decision comes days after the existing Keystone pipeline, to which the KXL will connect, spilled an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil onto agricultural land in South Dakota. To many pipeline opponents motivated by the inevitability of a spill, the contaminated land proves their point. Those who have been fighting the pipeline for more than five years, and many more drawn into opposition via last year's dramatic confrontation at Standing Rock, say the approval of KXL marks the beginning of the next phase of the pipeline battles. [Read More]

 

"Nature Has Rights": Activists Call for a Legal Transformation

By Mike Ludwig, Truthout [November 10, 2017]

---- "Water is life," declared the Native Water Protectors and allied activists at Standing Rock. Without clean water, clean air and a stable climate, the future of all life on Earth is in peril, including our own. This raises important questions: Is a river like the Colorado simply a collection of resources to be bought, sold and haggled over in courts and legislatures? Or do rivers and all ecosystems actually rise above monetary value? The answer to this question is central to a growing global movement of activists and attorneys who are forging a new kind of environmental law by proclaiming the legal "rights of nature." Since nature can't directly assert legal rights itself (although the Earth may punish us for disrupting the climate and other follies), these advocates also fight for the right of local communities to protect the natural systems around them from destruction and exploitation. [Read More]

 

The COP23 Climate Talks in Bonn, Germany

[FB - The daily news program Democracy Now! was in Bonn to cover the latest round of the climate talks, COP23.  The talks were notable for the non-participation of the United States, the only country in the world that is not supporting the world's common program to fight our climate breakdown.  (For comedy relief, the Trump people sent a team of people to argue that "Coal is the Answer!")  You can review the Democracy Now! offerings here.  Of particular interest might be the program's two interviews with climate scientist/researcher Kevin Anderson - here and here. For further reading, linked below are a report from The New York Times and an interesting survey of what the climate crisis is doing to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).]

 

At Bonn Climate Talks, Stakes Get Higher in Gamble on Planet's Future

By Brad Plumer, New York Times [November 18, 2017]

---- Virtually everyone at the Bonn conference acknowledged that the world's nations are still failing to prevent drastic global warming in the decades ahead. "We need more action, more ambition, and we need it now," said Patricia Espinosa, the United Nations climate chief. … Under the Paris agreement, nearly every country submitted a voluntary pledge for constraining its emissions. Yet those pledges are modest: even with them, the world is still on course to warm at least 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, an outcome that carries far greater risks of destabilizing ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, drastic sea-level rise and more extreme heat waves and droughts.  [Read More]

 

As the MENA Region Heats Up, UN Climate Change Talks are Under Pressure

By Christophe Maroun, Global Voices [November 12, 2017]

---- As the world's nations meet in Bonn, Germany for the 23rd annual conference of the parties (COP23) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2017 is set to be one of the hottest years on record. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have predicted a harsh fate for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Jordan currently faces one of the most severe droughts in recorded history. In the absence of international climate policy action, the country could receive 30 percent less rainfall by 2100 and annual temperatures could increase by 4.5 Celsius. [Read More]

 

CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"

'The Torture Report: A Graphic Adaptation' illustrates the grim reality of CIA interrogation techniques post 9/11

By Vera Castaneda, Los Angeles Times [November 4, 2017]

---- "Deplorable," "disturbing" and "embarrassing" are adjectives some members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence used almost three years ago in response to a report investigating the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques after 9/11. The declassified portion of the report is available on the Senate panel's website. Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón's "The Torture Report: A Graphic Adaptation," is a graphic-novel style version that is equally difficult to read. [Read More]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

The Rule of Power Over the Rule of Law

By Ralph Nader, Counterpunch [November 17, 2017]

---- #Me Too is producing some results. At long last. Victims of sexual assault by men in superior positions of power are speaking out. Big time figures in the entertainment, media, sports and political realms are losing their positions – resigning or being told to leave. A producer at 60 Minutes thinks Wall Street may be next. Sexual assaults need stronger sanctions. Only a few of the reported assaulters are being civilly sued under the law of torts. Even fewer are subjects of criminal investigation so far.

Perhaps the daily overdue accounting, regarding past and present reports of sexual assaults will encourage those abused in other contexts to also blow the whistle on other abuses. Too often, there are not penalties, but instead rewards, for high government and corporate officials whose derelict and often illegal decisions directly produce millions of deaths and injuries. [Read More]

 

The Shocking Math of the Republican Tax Plan

By Adam Davidson, The New Yorker [November 17, 2017]

---- The numbers are in and it's clear: this tax bill helps the rich and hurts everybody else. Just ask the very people who wrote it. The U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Taxation's reports of this week make startling reading, or as startling as a series of spreadsheets of tax revenue data can be. The report shows that this bill is much like a teaser rate on a new credit card: there are some goodies in the first couple of years, but those disappear fairly quickly, at least for those below the median income. … With each passing year the benefits shift upward, toward the rich. By 2021, those making between twenty thousand and thirty thousand dollars a year are paying considerably more in taxes, those between thirty thousand and two hundred thousand see their benefit shrinking, and those making more start to see their taxes falling. By 2027, every income level below seventy-five thousand dollars a year sees a tax increase, while everybody above that level sees a continued decrease, with the greatest cut in taxes accruing to those making more than a million dollars a year. [Read More].  Also useful is Paul Krugman, "Everybody Hates the Trump Tax Plan," New York Times [November 16, 2017] [Link].

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel: How Effective Is It?

From The Real News Network [November 19, 2017]
---- The Israeli government, which adopted a very aggressive counterstrategy, "likes to believe it is somehow winning the fight against BDS," but that view is "quite delusional," says Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, who co-founded the BDS movement

---- Barghouti: The Israeli government likes to believe it is somehow winning the fight against BDS. Quite delusional, if you look at the facts. The Israeli government has a lot of influence with Western governments, with the U.S. Congress, with the White House, with Brussels, the European Union. Indeed, we recognize that. … What it's doing is that it's losing the grassroots level. It's beginning to lose the liberal mainstream that is utterly disgusted by all this McCarthyism, all this intimidation. Conditioning the hurricane humanitarian relief in Texas on loyalty to Israel and refusal to support the boycott of Israel has hit a raw nerve among liberals in the mainstream in the United States, with many, many liberal organizations going up in arms and condemning the lobby's corrupting influence in various state legislatures in the U.S. [See the Interview]  For some interesting perspectives on the BDS movement, read Jeremy Ben-Ami (Executive Director of J Street), "Penalizing BDS Is Un-American," The Forward; and "Anti-BDS Laws and Pro-Israeli Parliament: Zionist Hasbara Is Winning in Italy," by Romana Rubeo and Ramzy Baroud, Antiwar.com [November 17, 2017] [Link].

 

Palestinian rights make a rare appearance in Congress

By Samer Badawi, +972 Magazine [Israel] [November 15, 2017]

---- A first-of-its-kind bill introduced this week focusing on the rights of Palestinian children could pave the way for greater transparency and accountability in America's dealings with Israel.  Members of Congress on Tuesday introduced a bill requiring the U.S. Secretary of State to certify that funds bound for Israel "do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children."  … According to a statement issued yesterday by DCI-Palestine, in the West Bank alone, some 10,000 Palestinian children — defined as those between the ages of 12 and 17 — have been "subject to arrest, detention, interrogation, and/or imprisonment under the jurisdiction of Israeli military courts since 2000." And during Israel's 2014 war on Gaza, 535 Palestinian children were killed "as a direct result of Israeli attacks," according to a report posted on the organization's website. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

The Poet of Ill Tidings [Bertolt Brecht]

By Noah Isenberg, The Nation [November 15, 2017]

---- Although far better known internationally as a playwright than as a poet, Bertolt Brecht had a supreme gift for language. He applied much of the same plucky, rebellious spirit to his poems that he did to his world-class theater productions of the late Weimar years, which included The Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny … One shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Brecht wrote the majority of the poems in War Primer while exiled in the United States—a place that he'd once admired from afar during his Weimar years but that proved difficult for him to embrace. Unlike quite a few of his compatriots, who were enamored of the ocean breezes and lush vegetation, Brecht was no fan of Southern California. "Almost nowhere has my life ever been harder than here in this mausoleum of easy going," he wrote in his journal soon after his arrival. [Read More]

 

On the 800th Anniversary of the Charter of the Forest

By Peter Linebaugh, Counterpunch [November 20, 2017]

[A Keynote Address, Delivered in the State Rooms at the House of Commons, 7 November 2017.]

---- Two winds have propelled me here to you, to this House of Commons. One wind, a hurricane and diabalo, brought flood and fire threatening the destruction of petrochemial civilization, call it capitalism. Homelessness or prison accompany the wind from Detroit, Michigan, to Houston, Texas, from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean to northern California at the Pacific edge. A second gentler, softer wind, a zephyr, has renewed my spirit from the Lacandón jungle in Chiapas where the Zapatistas have vowed to protect the forest and reclaim the land, or from the Great Plains of the American continent where pipe lines of oil and gas endanger the pollution of land and the rivers.  Encampments of indigenous people and their allies by prayer and by protest have become, in their words, "water protectors." … So, propelled by these winds of disaster and memories of defense I have become one of the scholarly vectors of a planetary discussion of the commons that began before 6 November 1217 when the Charter of the Forest was sealed and has continued ever since.  We do that work again for commons of housing and health care for all as we commemorate the Charter of the Forest, the little companion to the bigger, Magna Carta. [Read More]

 

 

 

CFOW Newsletter attached

Sorry for attaching; I'm having some computer trouble.
Frank

CFOW Newsletter - New War Danger-Saudi Arabia

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

November 13, 2017

 

Hello All – Suddenly it appears that a new and dangerous war may be just around the corner.  The instability in Saudi Arabia, the detention of Lebanon's prime minister by/in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi call for its citizens now in Lebanon to leave the country portend a military attack on Lebanon under the guise of a war against Hezbollah. This newsletter includes a cache of good/useful reading that tries to clarify this dangerous situation.  In a nutshell, I believe the Saudi/Israeli goal is to suck Iran into the Lebanese cauldron in defense of its ally Hezbollah.  Whether Iran would do this, and whether Israel would see this as an opportunity to launch a war against both Hezbollah and Iran "in self-defense," would determine whether the war could be confined to Lebanon.  And if war should spread beyond Lebanon's boundaries, what roles would be played by Syria, Russia, and the United States?

 

Confining our remarks just to the possible/likely paths open to the Trump administration, we note that Trump and his son-in-law have spent a lot of time in Saudi Arabia, that contracts for $100 billion in arms sales have been signed between the two countries, that the Trump administration has continued President Obama's policies of supporting the Saudi war against Yemen, and that Trump has loudly focused on Iran and Hezbollah as dangers to the United States and its interests in the Middle East.  Moreover, the Trump administration has given strong support to the blooming alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel.  Under all these circumstances, I fear that Trump will use the US veto-power at the United Nations to prevent peace efforts in the Security Council if Saudi Arabia should attack Lebanon.  I also fear that the Trump people have made a commitment to Saudi Arabia and/or Israel to come to their support if Iran becomes militarily involved.  And I fear that the United States will continue to support the Saudi genocidal war in Yemen, now completely blockaded by Saudi Arabia with US support, and with the threat of famine just around the corner.

 

Antiwar people in the Rivertowns: please let our congressional representatives know that these are terrible developments, that the United States should give no cover to Saudi Arabia at the UN if hostilities break out, and that our country must immediately stop its assistance to the war against Yemen.  As you may (or may not) know, Representatives Lowey and Engel, and Senator Schumer, have supported strong measures against Iran and Hezbollah, and have refused to speak out against the genocidal war in Yemen. This week, before it's too late, please send an antiwar message to Schumer (212-486-4430), Gillibrand (212-688-6262), Lowey (914-428-1707) and Engel (718-796-9700).

 

News Notes

Project SHARE seeks "to end social stigma surrounding homelessness and share in our common humanity."  Among their many projects is the Thanksgiving Dinner for the Homeless; and on November 21^st some 800 people will share a Thanksgiving dinner at Hastings High School   Project SHARE needs some financial help asap to make this work.  If you can afford a donation, please send a check to SHARE the Project, inc., 161 Broadway, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Or you can use their GoFundMe page at https://www.gofundme.com/tdfth2017.

 

Among the nice things about last Tuesday's election was the Peekskill victory of some friends we made during the fight to stop the Spectra pipeline in northern Westchester.  Here's a happy video shot just after our friends learned they had won the election.

 

The New York Times' headline was something like "Trump Sends Conspiracy Theorist to CIA …." Etc.]  The man in question was William Binney, who had worked for US intelligence for many years and was among the former intelligence professionals who had put forward strong claims that the alleged Russian hack of the DNC's emails was a myth/understanding.  Why did Trump send him to talk to the head of the CIA? Will this have any effect on the CIA's endorsement of the Russiagate story?  Read about this strange twist of fate here.

 

Why does the United States have more mass shootings than any other country?  After a lot of deep thinking, the experts have decided that it is because we had so many, many guns.  A no-brainer you might say, but some of the charts and thoughts used to arrive at this conclusion are interesting and scary.

 

Things to Do/Coming Attractions

November 14^th – Our friends in Croton will be showing the film, "SEED: The Untold Story."  They write: "Few things on Earth are as miraculous and vital as seeds. They've been worshipped and treasured since the dawn of humankind. In the last century, 94% of our seed varieties have disappeared. The film, SEED: The Untold Story, follows passionate seed keepers protecting our 12,000 year-old food legacy."  It's at the Croton Free Library at 7 p.m.  "Discussion and refreshments to follow the screening."

 

Sunday, November 19^th – Save the date for WESPAC's "night of comedy, dance, and music," "Made in Palestine."  It's at the Tarrytown Music Hall; doors open at 5 p.m.  For more information, including ways you can help support/sponsor this program, go here.

 

Sunday, December 3^rd – CFOW's monthly meeting is held this day from 7 to 9 p.m.  Everyone is welcome at these meetings.

 

Ongoing – Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct has a new exhibition at the Keeper's House called "Existing Conditions," photographs of the trail from 20 years ago.  The fixed-up Keeper's House is also interesting, imo. – The building is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.  It's at 15 Walnut St. in Dobbs Ferry.

 

This Newsletter

Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned.  Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media.  In addition to the "Featured Essays" and the collection of articles about Saudi Arabia's war drive, I especially recommend Frieda Berrigan's article on the war budget and the austerity crisis at home; two good articles about Iran and the Iran nuclear agreement; Bernie Sanders' comments on the need to change the Democratic Party; and (under "Our History") China Miéville's autopsy on the Russian Revolution in the years after 1917.

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  We meet for a vigil/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  Our leaflet and posters for our vigils are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or the Puerto Rico crisis are targeted from time to time, depending on current events. We meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society.  Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. 

 

Contributions, Please

Our treasury is getting a little low, so if you are able to support our work, please make your check out to "CFOW" and mail it to PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

Rewards!

This week's rewards for stalwart readers include some songs by Tom Neilson, new to me (h/t JG).  Here's just a sampling: [The Pipeline] "Ain't Gonna Pass," "Only Outlaws Will Be Free," "Heroes of the Cold War."  And check out his website for much more.  And for something completely different, here is an Everly Brothers tune, requested by old friend DM. Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

Meet the Courageous Woman Standing Up to All Sides in Yemen's Conflict

By Sarah Aziza, The Nation [November 10, 2017]

---- In the final days of August 2017, a coalition of over 60 nongovernmental organizations submitted an urgent letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council, urging action on what they called the "world's largest humanitarian crisis," in Yemen. After more than two of civil war, at least 3 million Yemenis have been displaced, 7 million are on the brink of famine, and at least 20 million are in need of humanitarian aid. With the widespread collapse of sanitation and basic services, hundreds of thousands have been stricken by cholera in a country where fewer than half the health-care facilities are operational. … At the forefront of the campaign for this independent inquiry was Radhya al-Mutawakel, a self-described "human-rights defender" and the co-founder of Mwatana, a civilian-led organization working to document human-rights violations on the ground in Yemen. [Read More]

 

Reviving the Spirit of Existential Rebellion in a World of Propaganda, Lies and Self Deception

By Edward Curtin, Counterpunch [November 9, 2017]

---- Like existential freedom, honesty and truth-seeking demand a perpetually renewed commitment. No one ever fully arrives, and all of us are blown off course on the journey.  Even when we think we have reached our destination, we are often startled by the enigma of arrival, and must set sail again.  We are all in the same boat. The search for truth is a process, an experiment, an essay – a trying without end. … Those of us who write about the U.S.-led demented wars and provocations around the world and the complementary death of democracy at home are constantly flabbergasted and discouraged by the willed ignorance of so many Americans.  For while the mainstream media does the bidding of the power elite, there is ample alternative news and analyses available on the internet from fine journalists and writers committed to truth, not propaganda. … The problem is the will to know.  But why, why the refusal to investigate and question; why the indifference?  [Read More]

 

SAUDI ARABIA'S DRIVE TOWARD WAR

(Video) Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman Consolidates Power & Purges Rivals Under "Anti-Corruption" Pretense

From Democracy Now! [November 9, 2017]

---- Saudi authorities arrested scores of prominent officials over the weekend, including 10 princes, four ministers and dozens of former ministers, in a massive shakeup by King Salman aimed at consolidating power for his son, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the main architect of the kingdom's war in Yemen. Among those arrested was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world's richest people, with an estimated net worth of at least $17 billion. Talal has investments in many well-known U.S. companies, like Apple, Twitter, Citigroup—and Rupert Murdoch's media empire, News Corp. The arrests, on unspecified "corruption" charges, came just hours after the crown prince convened a new anti-corruption committee with wide-ranging powers to detain and arrest anyone accused and to search their homes and seize their assets. Meanwhile, the White House said President Trump called King Salman to offer thanks for the kingdom's purchases of billions of dollars in U.S. weaponry, while praising what it called the kingdom's "modernization drive." [See the Program]

 

Saad Hariri's resignation as Prime Minister of Lebanon is not all it seems

By Robert Fisk, The Independent [UK] [November 9, 2017]

---- When Saad Hariri's jet touched down at Riyadh on the evening of 3 November, the first thing he saw was a group of Saudi policemen surrounding the plane. When they came aboard, they confiscated his mobile phone and those of his bodyguards. Thus was Lebanon's prime minister silenced. It was a dramatic moment in tune with the soap-box drama played out across Saudi Arabia this past week: the house arrest of 11 princes – including the immensely wealthy Alwaleed bin Talal – and four ministers and scores of other former government lackeys, not to mention the freezing of up to 1,700 bank accounts. Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman's "Night of the Long Knives" did indeed begin at night, only hours after Hariri's arrival in Riyadh. So what on earth is the crown prince up to? Put bluntly, he is clawing down all his rivals and – so the Lebanese fear – trying to destroy the government in Beirut, force the Shia Hezbollah out of the cabinet and restart a civil war in Lebanon. [Read More]

 

Also interesting/useful about the turmoil in Saudi Arabia - Patrick Cockburn, "The anti-corruption drive in Saudi Arabia," The Independent [UK] [November 12, 2017][Link]; Paul Pillar, "Saudi Arabia, Wellspring of Regional Instability," The National Interest [November 7, 2017] [Link]; and Beverley Milton-Edwards, "Contagion effect and the Saudi grand game in the Middle East," Open Democracy [November 8, 2017] [Link]

 

The Saudi War Against Yemen

Saudi Arabia urged to end Yemen blockade: Fear of Unprecedented Famine, Disease

By Jonathan Fenton-Harvey, Informed Comment [November 9, 2017

---- In a move to further suffocate Yemen, Saudi Arabia announced on Monday that it would close all land, air and sea borders to Yemen. Now the UN and others have warned that the blockade will harm restrict vital humanitarian aid to Yemen's civilians.  A statement from Saudi news agency SPA reported it was to stem the flow of arms to Houthi rebels. "The Coalition Forces Command decided to temporarily close all Yemeni air, sea and land ports," the statement on SPA said, adding that aid workers and humanitarian supplies would continue to be able to access and exit Yemen. … The country suffers from the fast growing and largest ever recorded cholera crisis, which is predicted to reach a million cases by Christmas. NGOs widely blame it on a breakdown of Yemen's healthcare system – caused by the bombing campaign. [Read More]

 

Also useful/insightful about the blockade of Yemen - Bonnie Kristian, "The Saudi blockade of Yemen is starving kids and killing thousands, so why is Washington still defending it?" Rare [November 2017] [Link]; and from Democracy Now! (Video) "Yemeni Journalist: Saudi Arabia's Total Blockade on Yemen is "Death Sentence" for All" [November 9, 2017] [See the Program].

 

US Policy towards Saudi Arabia v. Iran

Does Trump Want a New Middle East War?

By Bob Dreyfuss, Rolling Stone [November 9, 2017]

---- Does Donald Trump want a new Middle East war, pitting Saudi Arabia against Iran in a conflict that could lay waste to the world's oil region and drag the United States into a conflict that would make the war in Iraq look like a minor skirmish? It sure looks like it. ... It's reasonable to suspect the Trump administration had a direct hand in Saudi Arabia's newfound muscular policies.  ,,, It seems clear beyond any doubt that Trump, who has a penchant for foreign dictators and authoritarian rulers, sees Saudi Arabia as a vital part of his ill-conceived anti-Iran jihad. Perhaps Trump and Kushner, neither of whom have the slightest experience in world affairs, believe that by buddying up with the Saudis they can put pressure on Iran to reign in its actions in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. But it's a risky strategy, since Iran is certain not to accede to Saudi threats and bluster, and it's very possible the two Persian Gulf powers could find themselves quickly entangled in a regional war that would draw the United States in on Saudi Arabia's side. [Read More] For some dissent in Congress, read "Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna: Stop All Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia Now," The Intercept [November 9 2017] [Link]

 

Israel's Policy towards Saudi Arabia's Drive for Regional Power

Israel instructs diplomats to support Saudis: Cable

By Jonathan Cook, Aljazeera [November 10, 2017]

----Israel has instructed its overseas embassies to lobby their respective host countries in support of Saudi Arabia and its apparent efforts to destabilise Lebanon, a recently leaked diplomatic cable shows. The cable appears to be the first formal confirmation of rumours that Israel and Saudi Arabia are colluding to stoke tensions in the region. … In a column in Israeli daily Haaretz this week, Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, argued that the Saudis were trying to move the battlefield from Syria to Lebanon after their failure to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. … Analysts have suggested that renewed sectarian conflict in Lebanon - a possible outcome of Hariri's resignation - could also leave it more vulnerable to Israeli aggression. In September, in a sign that Israel may be preparing for a confrontation on its northern border, the Israeli army held its biggest military drill in 20 years, simulating an invasion of Lebanon. [Read More]

 

WAR & PEACE

How can we turn military spending into a budget for the people?

By Frida Berrigan, Waging Nonviolence [October 20, 2017]

---- Connecticut is the only state in the union that does not have a budget, and the state's bills are being paid in emergency supplementals — or going past due. The state is budget-less, so my town of New London — one of its smaller urban communities — doesn't have a budget either. That means a hiring freeze at our local schools, budget cuts and tax increases from City Council, the farmer's markets not accepting senior citizen vouchers this summer, the downtown library cutting its hours, a smaller pool of money to pay for the heating needs of low-income people this winter and several other important city-funded offerings. … The General Dynamics Electric Boat corporation isn't tightening its belt or trimming its excess or trying to make more with less. It just got a $5 billion contract to build a new class of nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines. Have you been worried about the United States not having enough nuclear submarines? Me neither. But Electric Boat is booming. The same can be said for most of the bad old military-industrial complex. [Read More]

 

The War in Afghanistan

Into the Afghan Abyss (Again)
By Alfred W. McCoy, Tom Dispatch [November 13, 2017]

---- After nine months of confusion, chaos, and cascading tweets, Donald Trump's White House has finally made one thing crystal clear: the U.S. is staying in Afghanistan to fight and -- so they insist -- win. "The killers need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond the reach of American might," said the president in August, trumpeting his virtual declaration of war on the Taliban. Overturning Barack Obama's planned (and stalled) drawdown in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced that the Pentagon would send 4,000 more soldiers to fight there, bringing American troop strength to nearly 15,000. … So why has America's ambitious $9 billion counter-narcotics program fallen into failure again and again? When such illegality corrupts a society as thoroughly as opium has Afghanistan, then drug trafficking comes to distort everything -- giving even good programs bad outcomes and undoubtedly twisting Trump's headstrong plans for victory into certain defeat. Think of the never-ending war in Afghanistan as Washington's drug of choice of these last 16 years. [Read More]

 

War with Iran?

How US Blunders Strengthened Iran

By Jonathan Marshall, Consortium News [November 5, 2017]

---- Behind only North Korea, Iran is the country the Trump administration vilifies most. The White House endorses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's injunction that "We must all stand together to stop Iran's march of conquest, subjugation and terror." Parroting Netanyahu's claim that Iran is "busy gobbling up the nations" of the Middle East, CIA Director and conservative GOP stalwart Mike Pompeo warned in June that Iran — which he branded "the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism" — now wields "enormous influence . . . that far outstrips where it was six or seven years ago." In an interview with MSNBC, Pompeo elaborated, "Whether it's the influence they have over the government in Baghdad, whether it's the increasing strength of Hezbollah and Lebanon, their work alongside the Houthis in Iran, (or) the Iraqi Shias that are fighting along now the border in Syria . . . Iran is everywhere throughout the Middle East." [Read More]

 

Can we survive Trump's Rage-Based Iran Policy?

By Daniel Brumberg, Informed Comment [November 8, 2017]

---- One can't help feeling that the an emerging media campaign against the nuclear agreement is creating a war drumbeat not unlike that which led to, or helped justify, the 2003 US Iraq invasion. Perhaps this is alarmist, but a sense of déjà vu seems justified. This is all the more reason to recognize the hazards that could ensue from an anger-driven, a-strategic Iran policy. … The menu of policy options is short and not very enticing: diplomacy/engagement, containment/deterrence or military confrontation/war. Containing Iran is unlikely to succeed if the US simply keeps selling more arms to our Arab Gulf allies—especially Saudi Arabia. More weapons, as I have noted above in reference to Yemen, often only encourages escalation which in turn emboldens Tehran's allies. … But the prospects for a serious US-Iran collision, or a wider war, will accelerate if the US abandons the nuclear agreement. Indeed, war with Iran will intensify internal conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon, sending violent tremors throughout the region. [Read More]

 

The War in Syria

Syria: If ISIL is dire threat, why isn't its Defeat bigger News?

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [November 9, 2017]

---- The Syrian regime announced Wednesday that its army, supported by the Lebanese Shiite militia, Hizbullah and Iraqi Shiite militia, took control of the city of Al-Bu Kamal, the last base for ISIL on the Syrian-Iraqi border, after battles with the terrorist organization. At the same time, an Iranian official affirmed that these forces, having proven victorious in the far east of the country, will now be redeployed to the northwest, to Idlib province, the last bastion of the armed resistance (which is dominated in Idlib by the al-Qaeda-linked Syrian Conquest Front or Nusra Front. … As ISIL declines into insignificance as a military force even as it remains a significant terrorist threat, I expect the hype around it to survive, like a ghost haunting us. [Read More]

 

Did Al Qaeda Dupe Trump on Syrian Attack?

By Robert Parry, Consortium News [November 9, 2017]

---- A new United Nations-sponsored report on the April 4 sarin incident in an Al Qaeda-controlled town in Syria blames Bashar al-Assad's government for the atrocity, but the report contains evidence deep inside its "Annex II" that would prove Assad's innocence. If you read that far, you would find that more than 100 victims of sarin exposure were taken to several area hospitals before the alleged Syrian warplane could have struck the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Still, the Joint Investigative Mechanism [JIM], a joint project of the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW], brushed aside this startling evidence and delivered the Assad guilty verdict that the United States and its allies wanted. [Read More]

 

Armistice Day and Veterans Day

Bring Back Armistice Day and Honor the Real Heroes

By Arnold Oliver, Antiwar.com [November 11, 2017]

---- How in heck did Armistice Day become Veterans Day? Established by Congress in 1926 to "perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations, (and later) a day dedicated to the cause of world peace," Armistice Day was widely recognized for almost 30 years. As part of that, many churches rang their bells on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – the hour in 1918 that the guns fell silent on the Western Front by which time 16 million had died in the horror of World War I. To be blunt about it, in 1954 Armistice Day was hijacked by a militaristic US congress and renamed Veterans Day. Today few Americans understand the original purpose of Armistice Day, or even remember it. The message of peace seeking has been all but erased. Worst of all, Veterans Day has devolved into a hyper-nationalistic quasi-religious celebration of war and the putatively valiant warriors who wage it. [Read More]  Also interesting/useful on 11/11 are Kathy Kelly, "Let's Celebrate Peace," The Progressive [November 12, 2017] [Link]; and Danny Sjursen, "The Best Way to Honor a Vet is With the Truth" American Conservative [November 9, 2017] [Link]  The Nation has a list with links to the top-ten-veterans-day-songs/

 

GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE BREAKDOWN

Climate change victims need official refugee status: Oxfam

By Marion Candau, EURACTIV [November 12, 2017]

---- With the COP23 climate conference ongoing in Bonn, Oxfam published a troubling report on people displaced by climate change. EURACTIV France reports. Since 2008, about 26 million people have been displaced each year due to natural disasters. The figure for 2016 was 23.5 million, according to Oxfam's report "Uprooted by climate change", published on 6 November. This figure doesn't take into account all people displaced by "slow" catastrophes, like progressive drought and rising sea levels. Oxfam reports that people in developing countries are five times more at risk than people in developed countries, who are largely responsible for man-made climate change. "It is not up to poorer countries to deal with climate change impacts for which they are not responsible." [Read More]  Another and interesting perspective re: climate refugees is this essay by Theiva Lingam and Yuri Onodera, "'Climate Justice Means No Walls': Sharing Untold Stories of Climate Migration," Common Dreams [November 11, 2017] [Link]

 

(Video) Bill McKibben on Future of the Paris Climate Accord & U.S. Role at COP23 Climate Talks in Germany

From Democracy Now! [November 10, 2017]

---- As Democracy Now! heads to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, we speak with 350.org's Bill McKibben. Several U.S. delegations are scheduled to attend despite the fact that President Donald Trump says he is pulling the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord. The Trump administration is sending officials to push coal, gas and nuclear power during a presentation at the U.N. climate summit. Meanwhile, a coalition of U.S. cities, companies, universities and faith groups have opened a 2,500-square-meter pavilion outside the U.N. climate conference called "We are Still In"—an effort to persuade other countries that wide swaths of the United States are still committed to the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord. [See the Program]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

We Need a Truly Grassroots Democratic Party: A Call for DNC Chair Tom Perez To Implement Findings Of #UnityReformCommission

By Bernie Sanders, Common Dreams [November 9, 2017]

---- In an email sent on Monday, November 6, 2017, Senator Bernie Sanders emphasized that we need to rebuild the Democratic Party. We need a Democratic Party that is as open, as inclusive, and as progressive as it can possibly be. In the email, he also asked supporters to sign a petition calling on DNC Chairman Tom Perez to accept, support, and implement the findings of the Unity Reform Commission.

The text from the email in full follows: "Politics is not a baseball game, and it is not a soap opera. People are hurting in this country, and our job is not to be distracted by political gossip and Donald Trump's tweets. Our job is to revitalize American democracy and bring millions of people into the political process who today do not vote and who do not believe that government is relevant to their lives."  [Read More]

 

Drilling, Drilling, Everywhere... Will the Trump Administration Take Down the Arctic Refuge?
By Subhankar Banerjee, Tom Dispatch [November 2017]

---- What happens in the Arctic doesn't just stay up north.  It affects the world, as that region is the integrator of our planet's climate systems, atmospheric and oceanic. At the moment, the northernmost places on Earth are warming at more than twice the global average, a phenomenon whose impact is already being felt planetwide.  Welcome to the world of climate breakdown -- and to the world of Donald Trump. The set of climate feedbacks contributing to further warming in the Arctic are about to be aided and abetted by President Trump, his Interior Department, and a Republican-controlled Congress.  The impact of their decisions will be experienced around the world. [Read More]

 

We're Sick of Racism, Literally

By Douglas Jacobs, New York Times [November 11, 2017]

---- More than 700 studies on the link between discrimination and health have been published since 2000. This body of work establishes a connection between discrimination and physical and mental well-being. With all of these effects, it is no wonder that more than 100,000 black people die prematurely each year. … We shouldn't need the specter of disease to denounce hatred in all its forms. Racism, bigotry, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, should have no place in our society. But the illness associated with discrimination adds injury to insult and magnifies the suffering of these times. [Read More]

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

UN rapporteur urges sanctions on Israel for driving Palestinians 'back to the dark ages'

By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [October 31, 2017]

---- Last week [i.e. the week of 10/22] there was a significant development in the international response to the Israeli occupation when the UN rapporteur for human rights in the occupied territories came out with a harsh report saying the world was too passive about the occupation. The "duration of this occupation is without precedent or parallel in today's world," the report said. Israel has "driven Gaza back to the dark ages" due to denial of water and electricity and freedom of movement. There is a "darkening stain" on the world's legal framework because other countries have treated the occupation as normal, and done nothing to resist Israel's "colonial ambition par excellence," which includes two sets of laws for Israelis and Palestinians. [Read More]

 

Israel's New Historians, Hamas, and the BDS Movement

An interview with Avi Shlaim, from Jadaliyya [October 23, 2017]

[FB – During the first intifada – the late 1980s and early 1990s – a number of Israeli historians used newly opened archives to initiate a painful discussion in Israel and among many historians about the true nature of Israel's borning moment in 1947, 1948, and 1949. The research results were not a pretty picture, and were available to attack the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and to support the Palestinian narrative of a "nakbah" (disaster) in 1948-49.  Among these "new historians" was Avi Shlaim, whose book The Iron Wall, a history of Israel and the Arab world from 1948 to 1998, is a standard and very readable text.]

---- Avi Shlaim is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. One of Israel's foremost "New Historians", he is the author of, among other works, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (1988), and The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000). A vocal critic of Israel and its policies and despite acknowledging the "gross injustice" that befell the Palestinians in 1948, Shlaim nevertheless insists there are fundamental distinctions between Israel before and after 1967. In this wide-ranging interview with Jadaliyya, he discusses Israel's New Historians, his current support of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his Iraqi heritage, and his troubled relationship with Israel of which he remains a citizen. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

Epilogue to a Revolution

By China Miéville,

[FB – China Miéville is best known (to me at least) as a writer of strange and interesting science fiction novels.  So it was a surprise to learn that he had written a "straight" history of the Russian Revolution.  This is an excerpt from his new book, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution.  It is the last chapter, in which the author attempts to account for how and when the revolution went off the rails, and degenerated into "Stalinism." – Back in the day, among some leftists there was a heated discussion about how? why? and especially when? the radical hopes of the 1917 revolutionaries were lost.  Was it during the Civil War and thus in Lenin's lifetime?  Or was it not until Stalin gained complete domination over the Party and the bureaucracy, say in 1929?  Or was it …?   I think the author has produced a lucid picture of the odds against the revolution's success, and how these long odds couldn't be overcome.  But we report and you decide.]

---- Late evening of October 26, 1917. Lenin stands before the Second Congress of Soviets. He grips the lectern. He has kept his audience waiting — it is nearly 9 PM — and now he waits himself, silent, as applause rolls over him. At last he bends forward and, in a hoarse voice, speaks his first, famous words to the gathering. "We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order." That provokes new delight. A roar. …  "The war is ended!" comes a hushed exclamation. "The war is ended!" …But the war is not yet ended, and the order that will be constructed is anything but socialist. Instead, the months and years that follow will see the revolution embattled, assailed, isolated, ossified, broken. We know where this is going: purges, gulags, starvation, mass murder. October is still ground zero for arguments about fundamental, radical social change. Its degradation was not a given, was not written in any stars. The story of the hopes, struggles, strains, and defeats that follow 1917 has been told before and will be again. That story, and above all the questions arising from it — the urgencies of change, of how change is possible, of the dangers that will beset it — stretch vastly beyond us. These last pages can only offer a fleeting glance. [Read More]