Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
July 1, 2019
Hello All – Last week's Democratic Party debates were dominated by the party's liberal wing. The New York Times queried, "Liberal Democrats Ruled the Debates. Will Moderates Regain Their Voices?" So, progressive Democrats are off to a good start. What to do now? IMO, our task at this moment is to agitate for progressivism and progressive ideas in general, and not waste time on bolstering individual candidates. As Naomi Klein wrote recently,
For leftists and progressives, the name of the game is not canceling out each other's candidates. It's doing everything possible not to end up with a Wall Street-funded centrist running against a president with the power of incumbency. That means making the case against the idea that candidates positioning themselves as the "safe choice" are in any way safe, whether at the polls or once in office. And it means helping to bring more and more people to one of the genuinely progressive frontrunners. There's plenty of time to worry about vote-spitting down the road — the task now is to enlarge the number of votes available to be split (or combined).
Sadly, even progressive Democrats have taken very little antiwar baggage on board. Aside from Tulsi Gabbard, war & peace issues were barely mentioned in either debate; and the Democratic Party leadership's approach to war with Iran, the war against Yemen, etc., is that Congress should be allowed to vote on war first, instead of proclaiming that the wars are/will be disastrous crimes against humanity. Trump played on popular antiwar sentiment in 2016, and this may have been important in his winning. We can't let this happen again; there is no popular support for war with Iran, the Yemen war, etc. We must get war & peace higher up on the Democrat's agenda.
Pushing strongly for a progressive consensus within the Democratic Party is important not only because it will move corporate losers like Joe Biden to the sidelines, but also because the structure of the Democratic Party's candidate-selection process favors party insiders and career politicos. As The Intercept's Lee Fang reminds us in an article linked below, with so many candidates running, it is very possible that the Nominating Convention's first ballot will not produce a candidate with a majority. In that case, according to Democratic Party rules, the party's 764 "superdelegates" will be casting their votes in the 2nd and subsequent rounds of voting for a party nominee. These superdelegates are not bound by anything except their own wishes; nobody votes for them, and they do not have to take the opinion of any voters into account. For this reason, in addition to electing convention delegates pledged to this or that progressive candidate, if Democrats are to win in 2020 – which imo will require a progressive candidate –Right Now we have to start moving the party as a whole to the Left.
Gerrymandering – Justice Kagan's Dissent
Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling that it did not have the power to even consider a gerrymandering case may be one of the Court's worst decisions in US history. Here are some things that Justice Kagan had to say about this blow to democracy. Her full Dissent can be read here.
- "The majority's abdication comes just when courts across the country, including those below, have coalesced around manageable judicial standards to resolve partisan gerrymandering claims."
- "Maybe the majority errs in these cases because it pays so little attention to the constitutional harms at their core. After dutifully reciting each case's facts, the majority leaves them forever behind, instead immersing itself in everything that could conceivably go amiss if courts became involved."
- "The majority's idea instead seems to be that if we have lived with partisan gerrymanders so long, we will survive. That complacency has no cause. Yes, partisan gerrymandering goes back to the Republic's earliest days. (As does vociferous opposition to it.) But big data and modern technology—of just the kind that the mapmakers in North Carolina and Maryland used—make today's gerrymandering altogether different from the crude line-drawing of the past."
- "For the first time in this Nation's history, the majority declares that it can do nothing about an acknowledged constitutional violation because it has searched high and low and cannot find a workable legal standard to apply."
- "[I]n throwing up its hands, the majority misses something under its nose: What it says can't be done has been done. Over the past several years, federal courts across the country—including, but not exclusively, in the decisions below—have largely converged on a standard for adjudicating partisan gerrymandering claims (striking down both Democratic and Republican districting plans in the process)."
- "Of all times to abandon the Court's duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court's role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections. With respect but deep sadness, I dissent."
Remembering Harry
Our friend Harry Epstein was taken from us just a year ago, after a long illness. A talented actor, Harry was a funny guy. For many years he enlivened our weekly peace & justice vigils with his Honk for Peace poster. We were lucky to know him, and he will live in our memory.
News Notes
The celebration of "50 Years after Stonewall" was marked not only by a huge official Parade, but by a dissenting March as well. To accompany his trove of pictures from the "Queer Liberation March," peoples' photographer Erik McGregor noted: "The annual Heritage of Pride Parade has become a bloated, over-policed circuit party, stuffed with 150 corporate floats. This does not represent the "Spirit of Stonewall" on this 50th anniversary year of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion…. At this historic milestone, the Reclaim Pride Coalition's inaugural Queer Liberation March will return this event to the people, celebrating our victories and recommitting to fight our current battles."
ACT UP Changed Everything. Writing in The Nation, filmmaker Jim Hubbard writes: "In the years following Stonewall, diverse and vibrant queer cultures flourished, not necessarily hidden, but unknown to most straight people. AIDS devastated those communities, brutally killing so many and unleashing relentless attacks from religious and governmental homophobes. Queer people responded by establishing social-service organizations and all varieties of care and support groups, but it was ACT UP that challenged the homophobic regime and forced the changes necessary to mitigate the AIDS crisis. Read his article here and check out his powerful film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP.
Oregon's Republican legislators fled to Montana or wherever last week. They did this to prevent a legislative quorum being established, which would have allowed a (successful) vote on climate legislation. If that's all you heard in the mainstream media, you will find this article by The Nation's Zoë Carpenter illuminating: "Behind Oregon's GOP Walkout Is a Sordid Story of Corporate Cash."
In what (I hope) could be a sign of Things to Come, the workers of a Massachusetts company walked off their jobs last week to protest their boss's contract with an immigrant detention center in Carillo Spring's, Texas. Read "Wayfair Workers Walk Out" here.
In a close vote in the race for Queen's DA, progressive Tiffany Cabán won the Democratic Party nomination last week. Many view this as of national importance, showing that the election of AOC last year was not a fluke. The New York Times wrote, "Why Tiffany Caban's Win for Queens DA is Good News For Progressive Dem Presidential Candidates." Juan Cole has a similar analysis. You can learn more about Cabán and her views in this segment from Democracy Now!, which interviewed her a week before the election.
Climate News Update
You have surely heard of/seen activists from the Sunrise Movement. This is the group of young climate activists that sat in at Nancy Pelosi's office on the opening day of Congress last fall. Their current agitational focus is their demand that the Democratic Party hold at least one candidates' debate about our climate crisis. This is right on the money, as the two debates last week produced only a few minutes of climate discussion. As a result of grassroots pressure, the Democratic National Committee has scheduled a vote on a resolution "calling for the Democratic Party to either host a climate debate or stop preventing any independent climate debates." (We will reserve for another time why the DNC has adopted this insane policy.) To get involved – especially for younger activists - tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8 PM, Sunrise is holding a phone conference to discuss "how to turn up the heat on the DNC." To learn more, sign up for the call. [Thanks to Iris Hiskey Arno, climate stalwart.]
Thing to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – Weather permitting, the CFOW stalwarts gather every Saturday from 12 to 1 PM at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring St.) to protest war and other evils. Please join us!
Please sign a petition to Eliot Engel that urges him to take action of arms sales to Saudi Arabia. While Engel supports blocking these arms sales – and is attacking the fake "Iran Emergency" that Trump is using to circumvent the need for congressional approval – this petition supports the efforts of some DC-based peace groups to get "No Arms to Saudi Arabia" put into the National Defense Authorization Act, which can't easily be vetoed by Trump. So please sign the petition and – for extra credit – give Engel's office a call at 202-225-2464 – Put No Arms to Saudi Arabia in the NDAA! Thanks.
Thursday, July 4th – Mark your calendars for the more-or-less annual CFOW 4th of July Picnic. All CFOW friends are invited to a picnic on the lawn/porch of the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 1 to 5 p.m. We'll have a grill and hot dogs and maybe a few other things. Come see old friends and make new ones!
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/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 rallies are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We (usually) 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. And if you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
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. As always, we have some excellent "Featured Essays," I also highly recommend Nick Turse's article on spectators and war (in Libya); good sets of articles on the US war against Iran, the Democratic Party debates, and last week's important decisions at the Supreme Court; and (at the very end) an interesting interview with Noam Chomsky about his work with the late Edward Herman on understanding mainstream media and the publication of Manufacturing Consent some three decades ago.
Rewards!
The Newsletter's Rewards are designed to encourage stalwart readers to make it to at least page 3, with the hopes that they will journey on. This week, accompanying our focus on the humanitarian crisis created by our government's immigration "program," we offer a powerful video accompanied by "Un Besito Más" ("One More Kiss") from Jessie & Joy. (And English lyrics) Unacceptable.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
American Concentration Camps?
By Henry Siegman, LobeLog [June 28, 2019]
[FB – Henry Siegman is the former executive director of the American Jewish Congress. Google him and you find links to many articles and interviews with him about proposals for understanding/resolving the situation in Israel/Palestine.]
---- The Holocaust was invoked this month, first by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and then by a group called The World Values Network. The latter is headed by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who modestly crowned himself "America's Rabbi," and is financed by the Las Vegas gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson, who is also one of Donald Trump's largest contributors. Ocasio-Cortez invoked Nazi concentration camps in her condemnation of internment camps to which Donald Trump consigns refugees seeking asylum from threats in their home countries from criminals, rapists, and murderers.
In a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, Boteach, and presumably his financier, come to the rescue of Donald Trump by accusing Ocasio-Cortez of desecrating the Holocaust by "comparing the United States to the Third Reich." But that is a lie. For it is not Ocasio-Cortez but Trump and his supporters who are guilty of the comparison—not rhetorically but with their actions. They do so by defending the treatment of migrants fleeing for their lives and the lives of their children at the U.S. border, imprisoned in camps that are not much different than the concentration camps that Jews in Germany were imprisoned by the Nazis in the 1930's. [Read More]
History Has Taught Us That Concentration Camps Should Be Liberated. We Can't Wait Until 2020.
By Shaun King, The Intercept [
---- If we have doctors, historians, and leading congresspeople calling these facilities "torture facilities" and "concentration camps," and we all see the deaths piling up, and the conditions growing perilous, the question becomes: What exactly are we going to do about it? For all the years that we've read and heard about concentration camps in other countries under other regimes, I don't think many of us fully considered what we would do if such camps were built and operated in our nation, by our government, on our watch, on our dime. But that's exactly where we are right now. … My soul is uncomfortable with where we are. It seems like our game plan is to focus on defeating Trump, and in the meantime, sue the administration until it incrementally agrees to start allowing kids to brush their teeth or wash their hands with soap… I always wondered how concentration camps lasted for so many years during the Holocaust, but now that we have our own, I see how. It's a mix of fear, indifference, and lack of political will. We see the consequences of doing nothing, but it seems as though we've put all of our eggs into the basket of a far-off election. And I just don't feel good about it. [Read More]
For more on our government treats immigrants and refugees – and an alternative – (Video) "DHS Whistleblower Who Spoke Out Against Obama-Era Immigration Jails Condemns Conditions on Border, from Democracy Now! [June 26, 2019] [Link]; and "What Should We Do About Concentration Camps in Trump's America?" by Jennifer Lunden, The Progressive [June 27, 2019] [Link].
Supporting dictators is not anti-imperialism
By Meredith Tax, Roar Magazine [June 26, 2019]
---- What does "imperialism" mean in today's globalized world? Since the Vietnam War, the default position of many who call themselves anti-imperialists has been simply to oppose anything done by the United States or its Western allies. But does the old anti-colonial binary — "the West and the rest" — still work at a time when economic rule is exercised not by national governments but by a global neoliberal elite of unthinkably rich men whose main allegiance is not to any country but to their offshore bank accounts? One could see neoliberalism — sometimes called "market fundamentalism" — as one form of imperialism, another being a more old-fashioned nationalism of, say, a Donald Trump or Viktor Orbán, who want to turn the clock back to a time when borders were walls and tariffs the rule. That is roughly the position of Rohini Hensman, a Sri Lankan activist living in India, whose recent book Indefensible: Democracy, Counter-Revolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism (Haymarket Books, 2018), gives rise to such questions. She also insists that anti-imperialists today must pay attention to Russian, Iranian, UAE and Saudi economic deals and military adventures. Indefensible is an important book for anyone on the left who cares about foreign policy and human rights. By asking why so many leftists have ended up siding with dictators, Hensman puts together the pieces we need in order to break with Stalinist traditions and a version of anti-imperialism that lets everybody except the US off the hook. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
Watching another of America's Forgotten Wars from Libyan Rooftops
---- Sometimes war sounds like the harsh crack of gunfire and sometimes like the whisper of the wind. This early morning — in al-Yarmouk on the southern edge of Libya's capital, Tripoli — it was a mix of both. All around, shops were shuttered and homes emptied, except for those in the hands of the militiamen who make up the army of the Government of National Accord (GNA), the U.N.-backed, internationally recognized government of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj. The war had slept in this morning and all was quiet until the rattle of a machine gun suddenly broke the calm. … One hundred and fifty years after [Judith Carter] Henry became the first civilian casualty of the Civil War [at the battle of Bull Run], Libyans began dying in their own civil strife as revolutionaries, backed by U.S. and NATO airpower, ended the 42-year rule of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Before the year was out, that war had already cost an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 lives. And the killing never ended as the country slid into permanent near-failed-state status. The current conflict, raging on Tripoli's doorstep since April, has left more than 4,700 people dead or wounded, including at least 176 confirmed civilian casualties (which experts believe to be lower than the actual figure). All told, according to the United Nations, around 1.5 million people — roughly 24% of the country's population — have been affected by the almost three-month-old conflict. [Read More]
The US War Against Iran
(Video) As Trump Imposes New Sanctions, Iran Says U.S. Has "Permanently Closed Path to Diplomacy"
From Democracy Now! [June 25, 2019]
---- President Trump announced Monday his administration is imposing a new round of sanctions on Iran, targeting several prominent Iranians including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran's top diplomat, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Iran said the move "permanently closed the path to diplomacy" between Iran and the United States. The latest tension comes after the downing of a U.S. drone by Iran on Thursday. Iran maintains the drone had entered its airspace, while the U.S. claims the drone was in international waters. The U.S. military prepared to directly attack Iran in retaliation, but Trump reportedly called off the bombing at the last minute. We speak with Iranian-American author and analyst Trita Parsi, former president and founder of the National Iranian American Council. [See the Program]
United States Is in No Position to Lecture Iran
By Kathy Kelly, The Progressive [June 25, 2019]
---- Rather than punish Iran, the United States should immediately return to the Iran nuclear agreement and support proposals regularly advanced at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty conferences for a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the Middle East. The U.S. government claims it is threatened by Iran. Yet, according to David Stockman writing in Antiwar.com, the United States surrounds Iran with forty-five U.S. bases, and Iran's defense budget of less than $15 billion amounts to just seven days of money spent by the Pentagon. The United States, which claims Iran is supporting terrorism, continues to enable Saudi Arabia's aerial terrorism as it regularly bombs civilians in Yemen. On June 24th, a ship bound for Saudi Arabia departed from Wilmington, North Carolina carrying bombs, grenades, cartridges and defense-related aircraft. The United States also supplies weapons to Bahrain, the UAE, Sudan and other countries which actively participate in the Saudi-led Coalition making war against Yemen. The Saudi government directly supports the military government in Sudan, which recently killed at least 100 peaceful protesters who were part of Sudan's Democratic Uprising. Rather than planning cyberattacks and new means of aggression, the United States should heed calls for dialogue and negotiation, relying on Albert Camus's conclusion to his profound anti-war essay following World War II: "The only honorable course will be to stake everything on the formidable gamble, that words are more powerful than munitions." [Read More]
Also useful/illuminating on the US-Iran War – "Trump May be in Too Deep to Avoid War with Iran," by Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [June 23, 2019] [Link]; "After Trump's Breach, Iran said it Would Withdraw from Some of the Nuclear Deal: It Hasn't," b[Link]; and "The Hybrid War Against Iran: Sanctions, the information war, and the American sabotage," by [Link]. This short video by an Iranian spokesperson is also informative.
THE DEMOCRATS & THE DEBATES
(Video) Sen. Elizabeth Warren: We Need to Make Structural Changes to Our Government & Economy
From Democracy Now! [June 27, 2019]
---- Senator Elizabeth Warren pushed for structural changes to the U.S. government in Wednesday's presidential debate, saying she would make college free and eliminate private insurance altogether. We speak with Anand Giridharadas, editor-at-large at Time magazine and author of "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World," about Warren's debate performance and the issues facing the 2020 candidates. He joins a roundtable discussion with Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash, She the People founder Aimee Allison and Ana María Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy. [See the Program]
Also useful/interesting on the Democrats and 2020 – "How Lobbyists and Insiders Could Override Voters to Choose the Democratic Presidential Nominee," by Lee Fang, The Intercept [[Link]; "Bernie to Student Loan Sharks: Drop Dead," by Ben Beckett, Jjacobin Magazine [June 2019] [Link]; and "The Democratic Primary's Moving Margins," by Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker [June 30, 2019] [Link].
THE SUPREME COURT'S BUSY WEEK
(Video) Supreme Court Hands GOP Big Victory on Gerrymandering, Ensuring "Massive Election Rigging"
From Democracy Now! [June 28, 2019]
---- The Supreme Court hands down two major decisions. The first is a victory for Republicans, allowing extreme partisan gerrymandering to continue. The other temporarily blocks the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question on the 2020 census. We get response from Ari Berman, senior writer at Mother Jones, a reporting fellow at the Type Media Center and author of "Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America." He says the ruling that federal courts can't resolve claims of partisan gerrymandering is "almost guaranteed to facilitate massive election rigging in the future." [See the Program] And for some strong words from Justice Kagan, read "'Tragically Wrong': 6 Brutal Lines from Justice Kagan's Gerrymandering Dissent," by Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone, [June 27, 2018] [Link].
Calling Trump's Rationale "Contrived," Supreme Court Halts Citizenship Question
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [June 28, 2019]
---- In a surprise decision, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the four liberal members of the Supreme Court — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — halted the Trump administration's plans, at least temporarily, to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The Court thought the stated motive for adding the question seemed "contrived," and sent the case, Department of Commerce v. New York, back to the federal district court.. … The Census Department estimated that 6.5 million people could be uncounted if the question was added. This is significant because the census is used to determine the number of seats each state gets in the House of Representatives, the number of Electoral College votes each state will have in the presidential elections starting in 2024, and how $900 billion in annual federal funds will be distributed to the states for health care, hospitals, schools and infrastructure for the next decade. [Read More]
HUMAN-CAUSED CLIMATE CHAOS
This Is Really Not a Drill
By David Swanson, ZNet [June 30, 2019]
---- Extinction Rebellion in the UK has just published a book called This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. I'd like to recommend it to U.S. presidential candidates. Half the book is about where we are, and half about what we must do. It's a British book, but I expect it to be useful in various ways to anyone on earth. When I say that it's a British book, I mean that it does things a U.S. book might not. It dedicates itself to nonviolent action, drawing on the wisdom of U.S. scholars in a manner that U.S. movements tend not to. It declares itself in open rebellion against an illegitimate UK government and declares the social contract broken and null and void, the sort of statement that most people in the United States have a wee bit too much of that nationalism I mentioned to try. It speaks openly of protesters trying to get arrested, rather than carefully claiming to be only risking getting arrested. It expects popular acceptance (and cooperation from police) at a level one could not expect in the United States; and it includes sections by two members of Parliament. It demands not only immediate honesty and immediate action by an existing government but also the creation of a Citizens' Assembly (apparently modeled on actions in Porto Alegre and Barcelona) to lead government action on climate; a move that U.S. culture is too antidemocratic to take seriously. [Read More] For the views of a UK activist, read "Net zero emissions by 2050? It's a sham," by Lola Fayokun, Red Pepper [UK] [June 21, 2019] [Link].
---- Extinction Rebellion in the UK has just published a book called This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. I'd like to recommend it to U.S. presidential candidates. Half the book is about where we are, and half about what we must do. It's a British book, but I expect it to be useful in various ways to anyone on earth. When I say that it's a British book, I mean that it does things a U.S. book might not. It dedicates itself to nonviolent action, drawing on the wisdom of U.S. scholars in a manner that U.S. movements tend not to. It declares itself in open rebellion against an illegitimate UK government and declares the social contract broken and null and void, the sort of statement that most people in the United States have a wee bit too much of that nationalism I mentioned to try. It speaks openly of protesters trying to get arrested, rather than carefully claiming to be only risking getting arrested. It expects popular acceptance (and cooperation from police) at a level one could not expect in the United States; and it includes sections by two members of Parliament. It demands not only immediate honesty and immediate action by an existing government but also the creation of a Citizens' Assembly (apparently modeled on actions in Porto Alegre and Barcelona) to lead government action on climate; a move that U.S. culture is too antidemocratic to take seriously. [Read More] For the views of a UK activist, read "Net zero emissions by 2050? It's a sham," by Lola Fayokun, Red Pepper [UK] [June 21, 2019] [Link].
The Pentagon's Outsized Part in the Climate Fight
By Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books [June 27, 2019]
[FB – Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org and the author of many books on our climate crisis, most recently Falter, a warning about where we seem to be heading.]
---- I have often been asked, at the end of a talk on climate change, if the problem couldn't be solved by shrinking the size of the US military—which, questioners will sometimes assert, is the world's "number one carbon emitter." A comprehensive new report from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, "Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War," authored by Neta Crawford, a professor of political science at Boston University, helps provide an answer to that question, or rather a series of answers. What they add up to is the idea that the Pentagon can play an outsized part in the climate fight—but only in part by cutting the amount of energy it uses. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
The Day After: What if Israel Annexes the West Bank?
---- Calls for the annexation of the Occupied West Bank are gaining momentum in both Tel Aviv and Washington. But Israel and its American allies should be careful what they wish for. Annexing the Occupied Palestinian Territories will only reinforce the current rethink of the Palestinian strategy, as opposed to solving Israel's self-induced problems. … According to a joint poll conducted by Tel Aviv University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in August 2018, over 50% of Palestinians realize that a so-called two-state solution is no longer tenable. Moreover, a growing number of Palestinians also believe that coexistence in a single state, where Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs (Muslims and Christians, alike) live side by side, is the only possible formula for a better future.
The dichotomy for Israeli officials, who are keen on maintaining Jewish demographic majority and the marginalization of Palestinian rights, is that they no longer have good options. First, they understand that the indefinite occupation of Palestinian territories cannot be sustained. Ongoing Palestinian resistance at home, and the rise of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement abroad is challenging Israel's very political legitimacy across the world. Second, they must also be aware of the fact that, from an Israeli Jewish leaders' point of view, annexing the West Bank, along with millions of Palestinians, will multiply the very "demographic threat" that they have been dreading for many years. Third, the ethnic cleansing of whole Palestinian communities – the so-called "transfer" option – as Israel has done upon its founding in 1948, and again, in 1967, is no longer possible. Neither will Arab countries open their borders for Israel's convenient genocides, nor will Palestinians leave, however high the price. The fact that Gazans remained put, despite years of siege and brutal wars, is a case in point. … Finally, the illegal annexation of the West Bank can only contribute to the irreversible awareness among Palestinians that their fight for freedom, human rights, justice and equality can be better served through a civil rights struggle within the borders of one single democratic state. [Read More]
Jared Kushner's Steal of the Century: Stolen Land, Stolen Water, Stolen Images
By Bill Law,
---- The message, in all its arrogance, was clear: if you don't take what is on offer, it is going to get a hell of a lot worse. However, we know we have made it impossible for you to take what is on offer, so guess what? The two state solution is well and truly dead; the path to a greater Israel is secured; welcome to the new reality of Palestinian Bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza. And, oh yes, we promise to throw cash at you, $50 billion; that's a lot of dosh, if you do what is commanded of you. If you don't, well that money is off the table. …There you have it: in the eyes of Kushner, Netanyahu, et al, the path to peace lies through the annexation of what is left of most of the West Bank, including its most valuable agricultural asset, the Jordan Valley. [Read More] Want to read the Plan for yourself? Go here. For background, read "Jared Kushner's 'deal of the century' was designed to fail from the start," by Bill Law, Middle East Eye [June 6, 2019] [Link].
OUR HISTORY [Our Media]
In Praise of I.F. "Izzy" Stone
---- In this era of Donald Trump—with its widespread corruption and abuse of power—the world of journalism could use the voice of I.F. Stone, one of America's greatest muckraking reporters, who died 30 years ago today at 81 on June 18, 1989. From the 1930s through the early 1970s, Stone was an indefatigable researcher and an uncompromising critic of political oligarchy, crony capitalism, racism, and American militarism. He challenged mainstream journalism's conservative "he said/she said" approach to reporting and, in doing so, inspired several generations of investigative journalists to follow his example. … Without a job, he began I. F. Stone's Weekly in 1953 and continued its publication through 1971. He never accepted advertisements for what he called his "four-page miniature journal of news and opinion," designed with a simple lay-out and without photographs. … From the start, its influence was much greater than the size of its readership, because other journalists, politicians, and activists read it dutifully and picked up on his leads. [Read More]
Still Manufacturing Consent: An Interview With Noam Chomsky
By Alan MacLeod, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [June 19, 2019]
Alan MacLeod: I would first like to ask you about how Manufacturing Consent came about. How did you know Edward Herman? What was the division of labour with the book? What parts did you write and what parts did he write?
Noam Chomsky: Ed wrote the basic framework, the institutional analysis, the corporate structure, the relations to government programs and the fundamental institutional structure of the media—that was basically him. He also did parts on some of the specific studies, like on the coverage comparison of a hundred religious martyrs in Latin America with one Polish priest. He did the comparison of the elections, which was partly drawn from a book that he had already done on demonstration elections. I did all the parts on Vietnam and on the Freedom House attack on the media. Of course, we interacted on all the chapters, but the main division of labor was that.
AM: And what was the reaction to it when it came out? Was it celebrated? Ignored? Attacked?
NC: The reaction was quite interesting. Mostly the journalists and the media did not like it at all, of course. And, interestingly, they did not like the defense of the integrity of journalism: the last part, which investigated Peter Braestrup's major, two-volume Freedom House attack on the media for having been treacherous, for having lost the Vietnam war, and so on (which turned out to be a total fraud). The idea that the United States was carrying out a major war crime by invading another country and destroying the indigenous resistance…. the facts were there, but not the framework of discussion. [Read More]
