Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
October 9, 2022
Hello All – Where is this war in Ukraine going? The Deep Thinkers in the US media are discussing whether Russia's President Putin might use "tactical" nuclear weapons if he felt cornered and defeated, with further discussion about whether this would escalate to an all-out nuclear war. Of course this is insane, and a sign that our governing class is demented and out of control. Dozens of Pentagon studies have confirmed that, once nuclear weapons are used, escalation to the final destruction of civilization may be unstoppable. Are we OK with this?
This week President Biden warned of "Armageddon" [the Biblical battle at the end of the world] if President Putin continued on his present course. Right now the Pentagon and NATO seem to have only one answer to this threat: raise the ante and defeat the Russians before they can end the world. Nowhere, as far as anyone can tell, are there the customary "back channel" negotiations that secretly explore peace or negotiating possibilities. Let us fervently hope that there is something going on, behind the scenes, perhaps involving China or further efforts by Turkey, which is working to stop this madness before it runs off the cliff. But any success in braking the military escalation depends on a decision by the USA to a) abandon the idea of using the war to destroy or cripple Russia, and b) a willingness to use its leverage to coerce Ukraine to accept some loss of territory in exchange for an end to the fighting. Neither of these conditions is in sight.
A major incident this week was the sabotage of the giant gas pipeline, "Nord Stream," which sends Russian gas to Europe. While the gas flow had been turned off (by Russia) at the time it was blown up, it seems unlikely that it will/could be repaired in time to provide gas to Europe. Many consequences, and many unknowns, follow from this; but of immediate interest is the question of "Who done it?" Two articles linked below argue that the sabotage was done by the United States, or by actors working on behalf of NATO. If true, this is quite astounding, and raises further questions about the war aims of the USA in guiding the war to defend Ukraine against Russia.
Some useful reading about the war in Ukraine
Who Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize in Ukraine?
Ariel Gold [FOR] and Medea Benjamin [Code Pink], Antiwar.com [October 7, 2022]
---- When Russia invaded in February 2022, Ukraine suspended its citizens' right to conscientious objection and forbade men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country; nevertheless, since February, over 100,000 Ukrainian draft-eligible men managed to flee instead of fight. According to a source inside Russia's Federal Security Service, within three days of Russia's announcement that it was drafting 300,000 more recruits, 261,000 men fled the country. Those who could booked flights; others drove, bicycled, and walked across the border. … Had the Nobel Peace Prize awardees been the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian organizations that are supporting war resisters and peacemakers, it would have drawn global attention to the courageous young men taking this stand and perhaps opened more avenues for them to get asylum abroad. It could have also initiated a much-needed conversation about how the US is supplying Ukraine with an endless flow of weapons but not pushing for negotiations to end a war so dangerous that President Biden is warning of "nuclear Armageddon." It certainly would have been more in line with Alfred Nobel's desire to bring global recognition to those who have "done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies." [Read More]
The CIA Thought Putin Would Quickly Conquer Ukraine. Why Did They Get It So Wrong?
By James Risen and Ken Klippenstein, The Intercept [October 5, 2022]
---- When Putin invaded in February, U.S. intelligence officials told the White House that Russia would win in a matter of days by quickly overwhelming the Ukrainian army, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, who asked not to be named to discuss sensitive information. By the time of the February invasion, the CIA was already planning how to provide covert support for a Ukrainian insurgency following a Russian military victory, the officials said. … Yet clandestine American operations inside Ukraine are now far more extensive than they were early in the war, when U.S. intelligence officials were fearful that Russia would steamroll over the Ukrainian army. There is a much larger presence of both CIA and U.S. special operations personnel and resources in Ukraine than there were at the time of the Russian invasion in February, several current and former intelligence officials told The Intercept. Secret U.S. operations inside Ukraine are being conducted under a presidential covert action finding, current and former officials said. The finding indicates that the president has quietly notified certain congressional leaders about the administration's decision to conduct a broad program of clandestine operations inside the country. [Read More]
Also of interest re: the war in Ukraine – "Putin's Draft Order Has Inspired a Russian Exodus," bOctober 5, 2022] [Link]; and "A Guide to "Tactical" Nuclear Weapons and Why Putin is Unlikely to Use Them in Ukraine," b [Link]. The Financial Times [UK] publishes frequently updated maps of the military situation in Ukraine; very useful, imo.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting, we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil is held each Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. To learn about our new project, "Beauty as Fuel for Change," go here; and to make a financial contribution to the project, go here. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
The Rewards for stalwart readers this week are some music from Loretta Lynn, the "Coal Miner's Daughter," who passed away this week. Many of her songs were about difficult personal situations, such as "Another Man Loved Me Last Night" or "Wings Upon Your Horns." I also like the duets she recorded with Conway Twitty, not least "You're the Reason Our Children Are Ugly." Lots more on line. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
What You Don't Have and Why
By
---- In a multitude of ways, we're known for having a far weaker social safety net than many other wealthy countries and behind that lies a history in which the Espionage Act played a crucial role. … Why hasn't our country done better, compared to so many others? There are certainly many reasons, not least among them the relentless, decades-long propaganda barrage from the American right, painting every proposed strengthening of public health and welfare — from unemployment insurance to Social Security to Medicare to Obamacare — as an ominous step down the road to socialism. This is nonsense, of course, since the classic definition of socialism is public ownership of the means of production, an agenda item not on any imaginable American political horizon. In another sense, though, the charge is historically accurate because, both here and abroad, significant advances in health and welfare have often been spearheaded by socialist parties. [Read More]
Optimism of the Will: Noam Chomsky on Organizing, Labor and taking on the Corporations
From Tomdispatch.com [October 2022]
---- [The following is excerpted in shortened form from Chapter 9 of Notes on Resistance by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian, published by Haymarket Books.]
David Barsamian: What we are facing is often described as unprecedented — a pandemic, climate catastrophe and, always lurking off center stage, nuclear annihilation. Three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Noam Chomsky: I can add a fourth: the impending destruction of what remains of American democracy and the shift of the United States toward a deeply authoritarian, also proto-fascist, state, when the Republicans come back into office, which looks likely. So, that's four horses. And remember that the Republicans are the denialist party, committed to racing to climate destruction with abandon in the hands of the chief wrecker they now worship like a demigod. It's bad news for the United States and for the world, given the power of this country. [Read More]
Omerta in the Gangster War [Ukraine and Russia's pipeline]
By Diana Johnstone, Consortium News [September 28, 2022]
[FB] For about a half century, Diana Johnstone has been an ex-patriot in Europe, writing informative books and articles of (imo) great interest. This article is headed "The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has virtually announced that the war in Ukraine can only intensify with no end in sight." Read on.
---- Imperialist wars are waged to conquer lands, peoples, territories. Gangster wars are waged to remove competitors. In gangster wars you issue an obscure warning, then you smash the windows or burn the place down. Gangster war is what you wage when you already are the boss and won't let any outsider muscle in on your territory. For the dons in Washington, the territory can be just about everywhere, but its core is occupied Europe. By an uncanny coincidence, Joe Biden just happens to look like a mafia boss, to talk like a mafia boss, to wear a little lopsided half smile like a mafia boss. Just watch the now famous video:
Pres. Biden: "If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
Reporter: "But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany's control?"
Biden: "I promise you, we will be able to do that."
Able for sure. [Read More] Also of interest for further investigation is "Can Europe Afford To Turn a Blind Eye to Evidence of a US Role in Pipeline Blasts?" bOctober 6, 2022] [Link]. For more background, read "The battle over Nord Stream 2: How to sabotage a pipeline," by Pierre Rimbert, Mondodiplomatique [May 9, 2021][Link].
War & Peace
War or Peace Is the Most Neglected Issue on the November Ballot
By John Nichols, The Nation [October 6, 2022]
---- Often, when the most significant questions of war and peace should be up for discussion, they are neglected. That's been the case so far this year, as 2022 midterm races have been focused almost entirely on domestic issues. Amid the lingering challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, and with inflation unsettling the economy and abortion bans spreading across the country, that's understandable. But neglecting issues of war and peace doesn't make them go away. The fact is that the question of war or peace is on the ballot this year, whether or not most politicians and the media choose to pay attention to the very real threats that exist. The brutal Russian assault on Ukraine continues, with signs that Russian President Vladimir Putin is growing ever more desperate. Tensions in countries that neighbor Russia and Ukraine have contributed to a reshaping of the European order, as nations that had once resisted joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are now rushing to do so. … A big part of the problem is with the media, which is ever more rigidly focused on domestic policy debates in general, and on the latest misdeeds of Donald Trump in particular. It is important to keep an eye on Trump and his right-wing nationalist allies. But doing so to the exclusion of all other issues, especially issues of war and peace, is a mistake—one that could ultimately cost American lives and treasure. Yet, by every evidence, it is a mistake that most media outlets are making. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
From Blah, Blah, Blah to Blood, Blood, Blood
[Holding the COP27 Summit in Egypt's Police State Creates a Moral Crisis for the Climate Movement]
By Naomi Klein, The Intercept [
---- No one knows what happened to the lost climate letter. All that is known is this: Alaa Abd El Fattah, arguably Egypt's highest profile political prisoner, wrote it while on a hunger strike in his Cairo prison cell last month. It was, he explained later, "about global warming because of the news from Pakistan." He was concerned about the epic floods that displaced 33 million people at their peak, and what that cataclysm foretold about climate hardships and paltry state responses to come. A visionary technologist and searching intellectual, Abd El Fattah's first name — along with the hashtag #FreeAlaa — have become synonymous with the 2011 pro-democracy revolution that turned Cairo's Tahrir Square into a surging sea of young people that ended the three-decade rule of Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak. Behind bars almost continuously for the past decade, Alaa is able to send and receive letters once a week. [Read More]
Free Julian Assange!
'End the War on Journalism and Free Assange': Thousands Demand Release of WikiLeaks Founder
By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams [October 8, 2022]
---- Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange held a massive transatlantic protest on Saturday to demand freedom for the incarcerated journalist. In London, thousands of people formed a giant human chain around Britain's parliament and called for Assange's immediate release from the nearby maximum-security Belmarsh prison, where he has suffered for years under conditions that experts have condemned as torture. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., people gathered outside the Department of Justice (DOJ) and implored Attorney General Merrick Garland to end the United States government's attempt to extradite Assange, who faces up to 175 years behind bars on espionage charges stemming from his publication of information that exposed war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Thames. [Read More]
The State of the Union
Puerto Rico's War on Its Poor
By
---- In February 1993, war was declared in Puerto Rico. In a special legislative address, Governor Pedro Rosselló pronounced that the time for half measures was over. The criminals and drug syndicates behind Puerto Rico's surge in violent crime had "asked for war . . . and war they will have." In a dramatic step, the governor would be deploying the National Guard to assist police in drug busts and patrols. This would be a critical component of his government's new crime-fighting platform, Mano Dura Contra el Crimen (Iron Fist Against Crime). … Puerto Rico has had a long history as a laboratory for U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Indeed, the foundation of the contemporary Puerto Rican state—the commonwealth agreement between Puerto Rico and the United States—was conceptualized, in part, as a vehicle to showcase U.S. development strategies to the Third World during the Cold War. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Rico was mobilized as an example of the progress that could be achieved through economic and political alignment with the United States. [Read More] Also of interest is "Puerto Rico: A Microcosm For The Worst Kind Of Capitalist Ideas," by Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [October 8, 2022] [Link].
Our History
Nuclear Annihilation Is a Threat Again [The Cuban Missile Crisis]
By Michael Dobbs, The New York Times [October 5, 2022]
[FB] – This month is the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Michael Dobbs is a former correspondent for the Washington Posts and the author of a good book about the Cuban Missile Crisis, "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War." Are there lessons for today? Compare and contrast.
---- Two nuclear-armed states on a collision course with no obvious exit ramp. An erratic Russian leader using apocalyptic language — "if you want us to all meet in hell, it's up to you." Showdowns at the United Nations, with each side accusing the other of essentially gambling with Armageddon. For six decades, the Cuban missile crisis has been viewed as the defining confrontation of the modern age, the world's closest brush with nuclear annihilation. The war in Ukraine presents perils of at least equal magnitude, particularly now that Vladimir Putin has backed himself into a corner by declaring large chunks of neighboring Ukraine as belonging to Russia "forever." As two countries proceed up an escalatory ladder, mistakes become increasingly likely — as the Cuban missile crisis made clear. [Read More] Also of interest is "Lessons From the Cuban Missile Crisis" b [Link].
