CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Impeachment at Half-Time

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

December 23, 2019

 

Hello All – It's half-time at the Impeachment Super Bowl.  How are we doing?  While we can't undo what's been done, let's look at the scorecard and ask if there are any lessons to be learned.  First, thinking back to the beginning of 2019, when the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives, the Party leadership made the fateful decision to focus on investigating Trump and his crimes/misdeeds, rather than developing a bold legislative program as was suggested by advocates of the Green New Deal. Though Nancy Pelosi feared that impeachment would divide the Party, with most of the Party's eggs in the investigation basket, growing anger at Trump within the mainstream media and among the Democrats' suburban base became an unstoppable demand for impeachment when the Whistleblower's letter about the July 25^th phone call between Trump and the President of Ukraine became public.

 

Despite the many reservations – how could the Republican-controlled Senate be persuaded to convict Trump? --  at the outset there were reasons to be hopeful. Trump's personal popularity was low. The Mueller Report was damning.  Many Republican congressional representatives were choosing not to run for re-election.  Much of the mainstream media was in lockstep with the idea that Trump was a traitor. A collapse of the stock market was a reasonable fear/hope.  Public opinion polls showed that half the country favored impeachment and removal. And it was likely that Trump would do some indictable and/or disgusting things under the pressure of inquiry and judgment. Reasons to hope.

 

We need not review the last six months to see that each of these hopes/possibilities (and many more) failed to bear fruit.  While analysts offered a dozen Constitutional bases for Trump's impeachment, the Democrats narrowed the "high crimes and misdemeanors" in play to his phone call with the President of Ukraine, and then to the withholding of military aid to Ukraine. While this narrowing of the Articles of Impeachment may have been necessary for Democratic Party unity, the resulting impeachment process has not eroded Trump's support in either Congress or among his political base.  It's still hard to see how Trump's trial in the Senate will remove him.  Thus the Democrats will have secured an historic symbolic condemnation of Trump, but at the expense of much time lost and many opportunities for building a progressive program for 2020 foregone.

 

Will the second half of the Impeachment Super Bowl be different?  Will anything galvanize the   tsunami of activism that seems to be required to prevent a second term for King Trump?  It's hard to see the current leadership of the Democratic Party recognizing our problem, let alone correcting it.  We the People are on our own.  How can we bring the political focus of our national debates back to the real needs of real people, to a program for peace and climate sustainability and economic well being that will defeat the Trump Agenda?      

 

Impeachment: thinking outside the box

The Radical Underuse of Impeachment

By David Swanson, Counterpunch [December 20, 2019]

---- Trump has publicly threatened nuclear war on two countries, waged and escalated numerous illegal wars, and dramatically increased the drone murder program. He's abused the pardon power and the power to declare emergencies. He's promoted racism and hatred. He's separated children from their families. He's illegally torn up treaties and proliferated weapons technology to brutal dictatorships. He's intentionally exacerbated climate collapse. Congress has ignored indisputable public acts, and impeached Trump for demanding information about a political opponent while delaying a gift of money to Ukraine to buy U.S. weapons. … Launching the endless wars, imprisoning without trial, torturing, mass warrentless spying, secret laws, signing statements, domestic use of the military, and dozens of other outrages just don't measure up to bribing Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden (who himself publicly brags about bribing Ukraine for other purposes). Or so Congress would have us believe. Impeachment has not been overused. It has been underused and misused. It and we are the worse off for it. [Read More]

 

The Democratic Leadership's Strategy on Impeachment Is Doomed and Dangerous

By Aaron Maté, The Nation [December 19, 2019]

---- It would be easier to feel optimistic if Democratic leaders were mounting any sort of political agenda or movement that could win over voters that they lost in 2016. But that is not the case. … Trump has betrayed the voters who were led to believe he would "drain the swamp." His tax scam continues to favor the wealthy, real wages continue to stagnate, shuttered factories haven't returned, and skyrocketing health care costs are wreaking havoc—to take one example, half of people with diabetes are skipping their insulin. Far from ending "endless wars," he has expanded them, even in Syria after announcing a withdrawal. Contrary to his vow to "stop racing to topple foreign regimes," Trump has imposed murderous sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Syria in a brazen effort to starve besieged populations into submission. Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP continue to wage their class war on the most vulnerable: … None of this is anywhere near the top of the Democratic leadership's agenda. Instead, from the failed Trump-Russia conspiracy theory to its Ukrainegate sequel, the Democratic leadership's resounding message to voters is that, in Pelosi's words, "all roads lead to Putin."  .  [Read More]

 

News Notes

Prior to last week's presidential debate, a writer in The Nation observed that the previous five debates had had not one question about poverty in the USA. That silence rings loud when there are 131 million people – or 42 percent of "We the People" – living "below poverty" or "near poverty" in the richest country in the history of the world. Needless to say, keeping the state of the poor – and thus the needed for profound change – Off the Agenda of what this election is all about works to the advantage of centrists and timid reformists, and to the disadvantage of candidates Sanders and Warren, who say that this State of the Nation cannot continue.  Alan Minsky, author of The Nation piece noted above, was on Democracy Now! (min 47:00) the day after the debate to observe that, once again, the presidential debate had not had one question about poverty.

 

As someone who has been recently treated for cancer, I found the Democracy Now! program today especially interesting, as it features Dr. Azra Raza, author of a new book called The First Cell, who describes how and why the "slash-poison-burn" approach to cancer has failed.

 

For more than five years the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has been warning the world that Gaza could become uninhabitable by 2020 if the blockade does not end. Well, 2020 starts next week, and Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza continues. Basic human rights of Palestinians in Gaza are violated daily by the Israeli-imposed blockade, including the right to adequate housing, the right to education, the right to healthcare, the right to clean water and food, and in particular the right to freedom of movement. In recent years, citizen organizations like the Freedom Flotilla have attempted to break the blockade, and in May the next Freedom Flotilla will sail for Gaza. To learn how you/we can support this righteous cause, go here.

 

Buried in the recently passed $738 billion military policy bill was the establishment of a Space Force, a sixth branch of the US armed forces. So now we will move towards what Trump calls "the American dominance in space."  To learn why this is a very bad idea, and why more than three-fourths of the Democrats voted for it, go here.

 

Finally, each year at this time Nation writer Katha Pollitt publicizes info on a dozen worthy causes that deserve the attention of those seeking to make the world better.  And if you would like to support the work of CFOW, please send your check to PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

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 the climate crisis, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We (usually) meet on the first Saturday of each month, at 1:30 pm at the James Harmon Community Center (Hastings) [Note the change.] 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!

 

Rewards!

This week we have a Seasonal Reward for stalwart readers: the full-length film "What Would Jesus Buy?" featuring Reverend Billy.  Enjoy!!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

SOME USEFUL/INTERESTING ESSAYS

 

The Real Lesson of Afghanistan Is That Regime Change Does Not Work

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink & ZNet [December  20, 2019]
---- The trove of U.S. "Lessons Learned" documents on Afghanistan published by the Washington Post portrays, in excruciating detail, the anatomy of a failed policy, scandalously hidden from the public for 18 years. The "Lessons Learned" papers, however, are based on the premise that the U.S. and its allies will keep intervening militarily in other countries, and that they must therefore learn the lessons of Afghanistan to avoid making the same mistakes in future military occupations. This premise misses the obvious lesson that Washington insiders refuse to learn: the underlying fault is not in how the U.S. tries and fails to reconstruct societies destroyed by its "regime changes," but in the fundamental illegitimacy of regime change itself. … In 2019, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists kept the hands of its Doomsday clock at two minutes to midnight, symbolizing that we are as close to self-destruction as we have ever been. Its 2019 statement cited the double danger of climate change and nuclear war: "Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention." So it is a matter of survival for the U.S. to cooperate with the rest of the world to achieve major breakthroughs on both these fronts. [Read More]

 

Rich Nations, After Driving Climate Disaster, Block All Progress at U.N. Talks

By Kate Aronoff, The Intercept [December 18 2019]

---- Days before talks began, a report from the U.N. Environment Program noted the gap between countries' existing commitments under the Paris Agreement ("Intended Nationally Determined Contributions," or INDCs) and what it will take to stay within the "well below 2 degrees" Celsius threshold of warming its signatories committed to.  Existing INDCs will shoot temperatures up by 3.3 degrees, leaving major coastal cities and some whole nations underwater and collapsing crop yields worldwide. To get back on track for 1.5 degrees, per demands from the "global south," global emissions need to decline 7.6 percent each year between 2020 and 2030, 150 times greater than the largest single emissions drop in world history: the collapse of the Soviet Union. Every year. For a decade. "Common but differentiated" — per the UNFCCC — has generally been interpreted to mean this burden should be shared somewhat equitably. [Read More]

 

Why Jeremy Corbyn lost

By Louis Proyect [December 17, 2019]

---- In reviewing articles about Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn over the past two days, I was struck by the similarities between British and American politics. With all proportions guarded, Corbyn and Boris Johnson are the counterparts of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Since I regard the Labour Party as qualitatively different from the Democratic Party in class terms, I was much more open to Corbyn's electoral ambitions than I am to Sanders's. The Labour Party is still a working-class party. Or at least it was until Tony Blair got a hold of it. If it was still in New Labour's clutches, there would be not a dime's worth of differences between the DP and Labour. Starting with New Labour, you can say that—dialectically speaking—it was responsible for the emergence of Corbynism in the same way that Clinton/Obama were responsible for the Sandernistas. By the same token, New Labour's neglect of working-class interests helped fuel the Brexit campaign and Johnson's election in the same way that the post-LBJ Democratic Party paved the way for Donald Trump. Beneath all these political convulsions was the economic transformation of the UK and the USA. [Read More]

 

Our History

The Radical James Baldwin

By Laura Tanenbaum, Jacobin Magazine [December 2019]

[FB – This is a review of James Baldwin: Living in Fire, by Bill Mullen (Pluto, 2019).]

---- After returning to the United States in 1957, Baldwin achieved prominence as a journalistic chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement and an advocate for its aims. He wrote an important early profile of Martin Luther King in Vogue and spoke throughout the South at rallies for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), donating his speaking fees to the movement. During this period he also moved away from the elements of Cold War liberalism that had shaped some of his earlier writing: the FBI first put Baldwin squarely in its sights when he signed on to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and used his platform to push for urgent causes, such as the imprisonment of Carl Braden, a left-wing organizer jailed for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and a new trail for the "Harlem Six," a group of young men sentenced to life in prison after being beaten and tortured into confessions while in police custody. The evolution of Baldwin's political thought and writing during this stretch belies the familiar narrative of a hopeful movement toward desegregation followed by disillusionment: Baldwin saw things through an anti-colonial lens early on, shaped by an interest in the nonaligned movement and the years he spent witnessing the impact of the Algerian War on France during his formative years there. When he condemned the Vietnam War, he did so in terms similar to Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech: as a participant in Bertrand Russell's tribunal which sought to document and condemn war crimes. [Read More]

 

Now We Can Begin: Crystal Eastman's revolution.

By Vivian Gornick, The Nation [December 16, 2019]

[FB – This is a review of Crystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life, by Amy Aronson (2019). Vivian Gornick is the author of many interesting books: my favorite is The Romance of American Communism, portraits of some interesting radicals from back in the day.]

---- In the first decades of the 20th century, there were gathered in Greenwich Village a few hundred women and men of radical temperament—artists, intellectuals, activists—bent on making a revolution in cultural consciousness. European modernism had crossed the Atlantic, and a great refusal to conform to the dictates of a worn-out American bourgeoisie was filling the air, one that made art and transgression and politics seem (as they always do in times of social rebellion) interchangeable. What was wanted, as one of them put it, was a "regeneration of the just-before-dawn of a new day in American art and literature and living-of-life as well as in politics." They were organizing in the name of experience, direct experience. To know oneself through unmarried sex, transgressive opinion, eccentric dress—these became the startling conventions of downtown radicalism in the years surrounding World War I. Among the women and men then flocking to the Village were many whose names are now inscribed in the cultural histories of the time: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O'Neill, Margaret Sanger, John Reed, Randolph Bourne, Max Eastman, and his sister, Crystal. Actually, it was Crystal who got there first. [Read More]

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the Afghanistan Papers

Concerned Families of Westchester

December 15, 2019

 

Hello All – This week The Washington Post published the results of its investigation into how, over the last decade, the Pentagon understood the war in Afghanistan: Were we winning or losing?  How can we measure progress?  What should we keep doing and what should we change?  The takeaway from The Post's publication of 600+ documents and some cogent analysis is that the war in Afghanistan has had no coherent strategy, has achieved none of its self-described "metrics," and that the Pentagon has hidden their failure from the public (and the Congress?) with an avalanche of lies.  Many have compared The Post's reporting to the "Pentagon Papers" of the Vietnam War, which also reflected the military's conclusion that it was not winning that war and did not see any way that it could do so.

 

A good introduction to the "Afghanistan Papers" – how they originated and how the Post got them – can be seen in this video.  Several good analyses of the Papers can be read in the articles linked below.  I think the immediate question is whether the Papers will have any effect on public opinion, media coverage and analysis going forward, debate in Congress, and of course the war itself. New York's Senator Kirsten Sen. Gillibrand, a member of the Armed Services Committee, has called for the Committee to hold hearings on the disaster portrayed in the Afghanistan Papers.  Rep. Eliot Engel could/should do the same thing at the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and if you are in CD16, please give him a call - (202) 225-2464.

 

One difference between the Pentagon Papers (1971) and the Afghanistan Papers is that the former were published during a time when the antiwar movement was strong and many members of Congress were calling for the war to end.  And with no draft today, few beyond military families care about the wars and are aware of what's happening.  Perhaps another difference is that the Pentagon Papers detailed the assessments and decisions made about the war primarily during the presidencies of JFK and LBJ; and in that innocent time a great many people were dismayed that they had been lied to about the war by the liberals who they had worked so hard to elect.  And, of course, another main difference between then and now is that today's media environment, though in many ways far more capable of gathering facts and reporting them in real time, is completely bogged down with their 24/7 addiction to the antics of President Trump.  I believe it will take a mighty effort from an aroused public to get even a few minutes of Congress' attention for the stupid and horrible bloodbath in Afghanistan.

 

Nevertheless, I encourage everyone to pay attention to the Papers, to what they show us about how the Pentagon and the White House run a needless war, and how little we can count on our mainstream media to give us an honest picture of how we are spending a trillion dollars and killing tens of thousands of people, including 2,400 of our own soldiers.  Though History doesn't "repeat" itself, between the Pentagon Papers and the Afghanistan Papers, I think we have more than enough evidence to say No to War when the next one comes over the horizon.

 

Some useful/illuminating reading about the Afghanistan Papers

We Have Just Been Handed the Pentagon Papers of Our Generation

By Danny Sjursen, The Nation [December 13, 2019]

---- Earlier this week, we learned that our leaders also knew the war was a fiasco, doomed to fail. But, unlike many of us, they chose not to speak out. Instead, as The Washington Post revealed in a series of stunning articles based on what it has labeled the Afghanistan Papers—a trove of previously classified documents that it is calling a "secret history of the war"—dozens of consecutive generals and senior US officials had repeatedly lied about, omitted, and obfuscated the facts to give an illusion of progress in that war. … The Afghanistan Papers don't try to answer these bigger questions, and perhaps they can't, but their significance is nonetheless profound. At 2,000 pages, they are nothing less than the Pentagon Papers of my generation. … In a real republic, these papers would be explosive, triggering investigations, denunciations, and serious policy conversations. The Senate would hold a lengthy inquest, such as the Fulbright hearings on Vietnam or the Church Committee on CIA abuses, in addition to producing substantive reports similar to the 9/11 commission or the McCain/Feinstein CIA torture report. But I'm skeptical. If this Afghan disclosure doesn't generate thorough investigation and accountability, can the concerned citizenry ever again count on Congress? Probably not. [Read More]

 

Also useful on the Afghanistan Papers – "We didn't need the documents: America's Trillion $ Failure in the Afghanistan war has been obvious all along," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [December 12, 2019] [Link]; "Where Is the Outrage Over the War in Afghanistan?" by Jeet Heer, The Nation [December 13, 2019] [Link]; and "The Perils of Embedded Journalism: 'Afghan Papers' Wouldn't Be Needed If We Had a Real Independent News Media," by Dave Lindorff, Counterpunch [December 13, 2019] [Link].  To learn how civilians in Afghanistan are faring during this war, go here.

 

News Notes

Moments after Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year, she give this speech deploring the missing sense of urgency in the UN/COP25's climate summit in Madrid.  And with UK climate activist George Monbiot, she made an excellent short video (please share) about some of the natural solutions to our climate crisis.

 

As was expected, the COP25 in Madrid achieved little. The progressive news program Democracy Now! broadcast from Madrid all last week; and perhaps the best summary of what happened at COP25 can be found in the programs that bookended the climate debates: (Video) "The U.S. Has Almost No Official Presence at COP25 But Is Still 'Obstructing Any Progress'" [Link] from Tuesday and (Video) "COP25: Developing Countries Charge Ahead with Bold Climate Plans as Rich Countries Drag Their Feet" [Link] from Friday.

 

Finally, Israel will now head for a third election, following the failure of either of the two leading candidates to find enough allies to form a cabinet.  It is hard to see how Prime Minister Netanyahu can emerge from the third election with sufficient support to form a new government; and failing that, it is hard to see how he can avoid conviction in some/all of the criminal cases now pending against him. Thinking towards the day when Netanyahu, after so many years, will no longer be Israel's prime minister, Haaretz correspondent Gideon Levy dares to imagine "Life After Netanyahu."

 

After the Brexit election, what's next for the UK?

Last week's disastrous election in the UK – a win for Brexit and Tory PM Boris Johnson – puts a question mark next to all future efforts to elect a socialist agenda in the "advanced" countries of the northern hemisphere. To start our mental gears going, let's begin with two hopeful assessments: "What do we do now?" from the excellent UK publication Red Pepper; and – from representatives of many migrant communities in the UK (before the election) –  "We stand with Jeremy Corbyn - just as he always stood with us." The Nation's UK correspondent D.D. Guttenplan has a more downbeat assessment, which you can read here.  Labour Party alleged antisemitism – a fabricated issue that was featured prominently in the UK and USA media – is discussed in a useful article by a writer for the (US) Electronic Intifada, "Don't let the smears that sank Corbyn tank Bernie Sanders." Finally, you can read an interesting assessment of how the economic changes sweeping Europe and the USA worked to detach traditional working-class Labour supporters from the Party and its election pledges and socialist manifesto/platform.

 

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 the climate crisis, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. Also, we (usually) have a general meeting on the first Saturday afternoon of each month. 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!

 

Rewards!

Pianist Yuja Wang returns to the Newsletter with a great performance of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7 ("Stalingrad"), which was composed during the winter of 1942/43, when the great battle took place.  Wang plays only the third/final movement of this piece. Curious, I looked for the whole of "Stalingrad," and found this terrific video production using German and Soviet footage from back in the day.  (In general, the Germans wear the helmets and the Soviets wear the fur hats.) I think the final scene may be/represents the encirclement of the Germans by a Soviet offensive that ended the battle and – many believe – defeated the Nazis in World War II.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

SOME INTERESTING/INFORMATIVE READING

 

The Inspector General's Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media

By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept [December 12, 2019]

---- Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday's issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice's Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds. Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI's gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims. … But the revelations of the IG Report are not merely a massive FBI scandal. They are also a massive media scandal, because they reveal that so much of what the U.S. media has authoritatively claimed about all of these matters for more than two years is completely false. [Read More]  For another look at this debacle, read "We Just Got a Rare Look at National Security Surveillance. It Was Ugly," by Charlie Savage, New York Times [December 11, 2019]

[Link].

 

Beyond Changing Light Bulbs: 21 Ways You Can Stop the Climate Crisis

By Rivera Sun, Counterpunch [December 13, 2019]

---- We can all pitch in to help save humanity and the planet. And I don't mean just by planting trees or changing light bulbs. Climate action movements are exploding in numbers, actions, and impact.  Groups like Youth Climate Strikes, Extinction Rebellion, #ShutDownDC, the Sunrise Movement, and more are changing the game.  Join in if you haven't already. As Extinction Rebellion reminds us: there's room for everybody in an effort this enormous. We all make change in different ways, and we're all needed to make all the changes we need. Resistance is not futile. As the editor of Nonviolence News, I collect stories of climate action and climate wins. In the past month alone, the millions of people worldwide rising up in nonviolent action have propelled a number of major victories. … Is it any wonder Collins Dictionary made "climate strike" the Word of the Year? Beyond planting trees and changing light bulbs, here's a list of things you can do about the climate crisis: [Read More]

 

The Popular Assemblies at the Heart of the Chilean Uprising

By Bree Busk, Roar [December 11, 2019]

[FB – With the end of the Soviet-oriented communist parties in the 1990s, the modes of peoples' uprising/protests today are often largely "leaderless," that is, without a unified structure or Central Committee.  In the case of Chile, it is the rising up of hundreds of community or workplace organizations that are leading the charge.  Is the absence of a centralized structure or leadership a benefit to the uprising or a drawback? Here is another case that demands our attention and thinking, imo.]

---- More than fifty days have passed since the Chilean uprising burst into existence. For those living it on the ground, it feels like much longer. The movement has already gone through several upheavals, alternately evolving and disintegrating in response to the changing terrain of struggle. The Piñera administration and its sympathizers have called — without success — for a return to normality. In response, the people have unequivocally stated that "normality" was the problem. Throughout the capital city of Santiago, graffiti reads: "I prefer the chaos." In a time when even the most peaceful of marches are broken up with tear gas and water cannons, protesters have learned to take care of each other, forming a rough new community in the face of repression. This recently discovered practice of solidarity has taken many forms, from volunteer medical brigades to people's kitchens to better-coordinated acts of property destruction. …In the intimacy of the capital's many residential neighborhoods, the people who first left their homes to join in the cacerolazos (public noise demonstrations) have since found other reasons to gather: raising their own popular assemblies and town halls as a first step towards imagining a new Chile, one built around the well-being of its people rather than the profits of a few. The Chilean uprising, still proudly leaderless, has provided a path to social activism for those who had previously stood on the sidelines. [Read More]

 

Those Torture Drawings in the New York Times

By John Kiriakou, Consortium News [December 12, 2019]

[FB – John Kiriaku, a former CIA counterterrorism officer, was jailed by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act (World War I) and spent 23 months in prison for his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program. He was also the person who captured the Guantanamo prisoner whose drawings about torture were recently published by the New York Times.]
---- The New York Times last week published shocking drawings by Guantanamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah showing in graphic detail the types of tortures he endured at the hands of CIA officers and contractors at secret prisons around the world.  The drawings were sickening.  With a child's simplicity, they showed the irrational cruelty of the CIA's torture program, which weakened our country, violated domestic and international law and ended up saying so much more about us, as Americans, than it did about the terrorists who wished us harm. The Times did its duty of reminding us what monsters the CIA produced in the early years of its so-called war on terror, people introduced to most Americans in the Senate's torture report.  … And in the photos of Abu Zubaydah's drawing that the Times ran, the CIA dutifully blacked out even the stick-figure sketches of the actual torturers, those CIA officers who sold their souls to break the law, all in honor of that false god called "national security." With that said, the Times article, although revelatory in terms of Abu Zubaydah's personal story, was woefully inadequate.  It never mentioned, for example, how the Obama administration did literally nothing to make any of this right. Remember former President Barack Obama's decision to hold no one accountable for the torture program and instead "look forward, not backward?"  That didn't serve justice.  It just protected the torturers and the criminals who supported them. Remember the promise to close Guantanamo?  It never happened. [Read More]

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on the Climate Crisis and the Conference in Spain

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

December 9, 2019

 

Hello All – The nations of the world (minus the USA) will meet in Spain next week to discuss our climate crisis and what can be done. As President Trump will withdraw the USA from the Paris Climate Agreement (2015) on January 1^st, it is unlikely that our news media will give the climate summit much airtime.  But our climate situation remains desperate, as the Earth's temperature inches up, carbon emissions are high and remain steady, rightwing climate deniers are gaining power in the world, and the fossil fuel industries are holding their own, despite the growing grass-roots environmental movements.

 

Here are some notes on three developments that will have a great bearing on whether we can save ourselves from climate disaster. To keep up with what's happening at COP25, the best news coverage available will be via Democracy Now!, which will be broadcasting live from Spain all this week.

 

Fossil Fuel Subsidies

At a time when we desperately need to cut back on burning coal, gas, and oil, the United States, and the governments of many other countries, subsidize their fossil fuel industries.  Without these subsidies the fossil fuel industries would struggle to survive.  The United States, for example, helps out with about $20 billion each year; globally, the figure is about $500 billion.

 

And these are only the direct subsidies. If our coal companies were required to meet modern pollution standards, 98 percent could be unprofitable. For all US industries, allowing them not to pay for the costs of pollution and cleaning up their mess adds $200 billion per year (and $1.3 trillion globally) to the taxpayer help the fossil fuel industries get from our  governments.

 

In addition to lining the pockets of investors, the subsidies make the cost of gas, oil, and coal lower, thus making it harder for renewable energies (wind and solar) to attract customers.  In this way, state subsidies lock us into using fossil fuels.

 

Sharing the Costs of Fixing This

Since the start (1992) of world climate negotiations, governments have debated the question of "Who should pay?' Less-developed countries point out that the United States, Europe, and Russia have been polluting for centuries, and have caused the climate crisis we have now. If saving the planet meant less economic development and using renewable energy, the more developed countries should provide some financial help to less-developed countries to share the burden of transition. In 1992, a Green Climate Fund was created to address this problem: richer countries would contribute, and poorer countries would receive subsidies.

 

The (so far) failure of this project involves ethical as well as practical issues.  Should India and China, for example, delay raising the standard of living of their people to a moderate (not dirt poor) level, in order to not use coal and other fossil fuels? These (and similar) countries did not cause our climate crisis; indeed, even today, the per capita annual carbon emissions in India and China are 1.9 and 5 metric tons annually, while the capita emissions from the United States are 16.1 metric tons.  How can we find a just solution to the dilemma of raising the standard of living of the world's poor, while preventing a crisis of over-heating our common world?

 

Grassroots Mobilizations

Please read the article by Brian Tokar linked just below. It includes an excellent summary of COP25 expectations and summaries of the many reports about our climate crisis that will inform the delegates, while also pointing to the Other Superpower in the room, the world's grassroots climate movements.  He writes: "The most promising responses to the climate crisis are not being handed down by UN agencies or national governments, but rather emerge from the grassroots, popular efforts to resist continued fossil fuel development and other forms of accelerated resource extraction, and also to build local alternatives that can help inspire and facilitate like-minded efforts around the world. More than 2500 cities around the world have submitted plans to the UN to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, frequently in defiance of their national governments' far more cautious proposals, and well over 9000 municipalities have joined a Global Covenant of Mayors to reinforce their commitments to climate action. As US cities and towns have defied the Trump administration by declaring themselves as sanctuaries for refugees and immigrants, many are also advancing the most meaningful climate responses." 

 

Some Useful/Interesting Reading about Our Climate Crisis

Climate Talks in Madrid: What will it take to prevent climate collapse?

By Brian Tokar, ZNet [December 6, 2019]
---- The two-week marathon of the annual UN climate conference is underway in Madrid, and the world's expectations have perhaps never been lower. The Amazon is burning and unprecedented storms are raging worldwide, but the world's climate diplomats are still mostly talking business-as-usual. Never mind that this year's 25^th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Climate Convention (UNFCCC) almost didn't happen, after it was disinvited by the fascistic Bolsonaro regime in Brazil and almost derailed again by the recent upheaval in the streets of Santiago, Chile, where it had been rescheduled to occur. And Trump's effort to withdraw US participation is not the most serious problem. The main obstacles have much more to do with how emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other climate-destabilizing gases are increasing again after appearing to plateau for a couple of years. [Read More]

 

Savoring What Remains: Taking in a Climate-Changed World
By Dahr Jamail, Tom Dispatch [December 8, 2019]

---- Recently, I was in Homer, Alaska, to talk about my book The End of Ice. Seconds after I had thanked those who brought me to the small University of Alaska campus there, overwhelmed with some mix of sadness, love, and grief about my adopted state -- and the planet generally -- I wept. I tried to speak but could only apologize and take a few moments to collect myself. … It's no secret that vast numbers of climate scientists are now grieving for the planet and humanity's future, with some even describing their symptoms as a climate-change version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. … Listening to him describe the climate convulsions wracking his home state recently, I couldn't help but think of interviews I had done with family members in Iraq who had lost loved ones to U.S. military attacks. People with PTSD — and I know this from my own personal experience with it — tend to repetitively tell stories about the trauma they've experienced. It's our way of trying to process it. [Read More]

 

News Notes

War is good business.  A new report from the Swedish think tank SIPRI ("Weapons boom shows no signs of slowing") says that the 100 biggest weapons makers last year had $420 billion in sales, up 5 percent over the previous year and up 47 percent since 9/11.  The USA led the way, with the five biggest arms makers (Lockheed, Raytheon, etc.) have total sales of about $150 billion, or 35 percent of the world's total sales last year. [Link].

 

Anthony Swofford, the author of the Persian Gulf-war memoir Jarhead, has an insightful essay in the MIT Technology Review called "Drones and robots won't make war easier—they'll make it worse."  "It is that this reliance on technological cool," he writes, "the assumption that it lessens or alters the lethality of war, allows zero accountability for how, when, and why we fight. … When we believe the lie that war can be totally wired and digitized, that it can be a Wi-Fi effort waged from unmanned or barely manned fighting apparatus, or that an exoskeleton will help an infantryman fight longer, better, faster, and keep him safe, no one will be held responsible for saying yes to war." [Read More]

 

The Trump administration has changed the rules about who can get food stamps, with the results that 688,000 will lose their benefits soon, and millions more may be cut in the near future.  Read more here.

 

Is President Trump sending 14,000 new troops to the Middle East?  Is the USA planning a new confrontation with Iran from its bases in Iraq?  All is confusion in the mainstream media and probably in the White House.  Check out two good articles by Juan Cole and Gareth Porter for some clarifying analysis.

 

On November 18^th Secretary of State Pompeo announced that the US government was abandoning a 1978 State Department legal opinion that determined that settlement expansion in the occupied territories of the [Israel/Palestine] West Bank was in violation of international law.  Ten days ago, over 100 Democratic members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to President Trump strongly criticizing this step.  Sadly, Westchester's Reps Lowey and Engel did not sign this letter, nor did a majority of the House Democrats.  For some background on the settlements, Trump's policy, and the divisions among Democrats on the Israel/Palestine issue,  go here.

 

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 the climate crisis, 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!

 

Rewards!

Your Rewards for reading our newsletter this week include a wonderful short history about "How Turkish Muslims at Atlantic Records Marketed Motown, Jazz, Black Music to America" [Link]  Yes, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, Arethea Franklin and many more giants of music found a home at Muslim-owned Atlantic.  For an equally wonderful short video, "25 Years: A History of Atlantic Records," go here.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

THIS WEEK'S FEATURED ESSAYS

 

Trump Was Right Before He Was Wrong: NATO Should Be Obsolete

By Medea Benjamin, Code Pink [December 9, 2019]

---- The three smartest words that Donald Trump uttered during his presidential campaign are "NATO is obsolete." … Rather than being a strong alliance with a clear purpose, this 70-year-old organization that is meeting in London on December 4 is a stale military holdover from the Cold War days that should have gracefully retired many years ago. … In an age where people around the world want to avoid war and to focus instead on the climate chaos that threatens future life on earth, NATO is an anachronism. It now accounts for about three-quarters of military spending and weapons dealing around the globe. Instead of preventing war, it promotes militarism, exacerbates global tensions and makes war more likely. This Cold War relic shouldn't be reconfigured to maintain US domination in Europe, or to mobilize against Russia or China, or to launch new wars in space. It should not be expanded, but disbanded. Seventy years of militarism is more than enough. [Read More]

 

Trump's Legacy Is Being Written Right Now [Impeachment … for what?]

By Carolyn Eisenberg, New York Times [December 5, 2019]

---- For House Democrats, there is a powerful temptation to narrow the grounds for impeachment. By adhering to a simple narrative about President Trump's criminal actions in relation to Ukraine, they hope it will be easier to mobilize public support than if they levied a more complex set of charges. In the impeachment of Richard Nixon, the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee faced a similar choice … For Nixon's impeachment, there was actually a fourth article of impeachment. It encompassed more serious offenses and incited intense debate among the members. Introduced by Representative John Conyers of Michigan, it charged the president with "the submission to the Congress of false and misleading statements concerning the existence, scope and nature of American bombing operations in Cambodia in derogation of the power of Congress to declare war, to make appropriations and to raise and support armies." … In introducing Article IV, Mr. Conyers and other liberal colleagues were trying to show how the crimes of Watergate were directly tied to the excesses of the Vietnam War. Yet it was partly for this reason that the committee chairman, Peter Rodino, wanted to scrap the item. In his assessment, too tight a link between the process of impeachment and the Vietnam War would be needlessly divisive at a time when he was seeking consensus and bipartisanship. [Read More]

 

The Effects and Consequences of Congress' Endless Permissions for War

By Matthew Hoh, Antiwar.com [December 9, 2019]

---- For the first time in decades, passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has been delayed due to disagreements between Democrats and Republicans. … This delay in passage of a reconciled NDAA between the two houses of Congress, however offers an opportunity, because buried within the NDAA are possibilities to repeal the pieces of legislation that have brought mass human, financial and moral consequences to the US, have wrecked entire nations and societies abroad, and have made the United States less safe…. With the NDAA stalled in conference committee an opportunity now exists for members of Congress to hear from their constituents that the wars must come to an end. While revoking the AUMFs would by no means wave a magic wand that would end the bloodshed, it would be a crucial first step in forcing the Trump administration, and subsequent administrations, to return to Congress for approval to start another war or to even continue with those wars that are now well into their second decade. [Read More]

 

From Now On, Every Palestinian Is an anti-Semite

By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [December 8, 2019]

---- The plague is spreading. Under cover of the (just) war against anti-Semitism, Europe and the United States silence every voice daring to criticize Israel. Under cover of this war, they are undermining their freedom of speech. Incredibly, this new phenomenon is not triggering any protest, as one would expect. Laws labeling anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and the anti-occupation movement as anti-Semitic, are passed with overwhelming majorities. Now they are playing into the hands of Israel and the Jewish establishment, but they are liable to ignite anti-Semitism when questions arise about the extent of their meddling. Last week, the phenomenon hit France, cradle of the revolution. The French National Assembly passed by a sweeping majority a bill that adopts the definition of anti-Semitism issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Liberty? Equality? Fraternity? Not when it involves Israel. Here, these values are rendered mute. [Read More]

 

Our History

The Way We Live Now [The AIDS crisis/panic of the early 1980s]

By Susan Sontag, The New Yorker [November 16, 1986]

---- At first he was just losing weight, he felt only a little ill, Max said to Ellen, and he didn't call for an appointment with his doctor, according to Greg, because he was managing to keep on working at more or less the same rhythm, but he did stop smoking, Tanya pointed out, which suggests he was frightened, but also that he wanted, even more than he knew, to be healthy, or healthier, or maybe just to gain back a few pounds, said Orson …. [Read More]

 

How the Battle of Seattle Made the Truth About Globalization True

By Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus [December 4, 2019]

---- The Battle of Seattle in late November 1999 is, for me, memorable in many ways. … But for me the main takeaway from Seattle was that it takes action to make the truth true. In the decade prior to Seattle, there were a lot of studies, including United Nations reports, that questioned the claim that globalization and free market policies were leading to sustained growth and prosperity. Instead, the data showed that globalization and pro-market policies were promoting more inequality and more poverty and consolidating economic stagnation, especially in the Global South. However, these figures remained "factoids" rather than "facts" in the eyes of academics, the press, and policymakers, who dutifully repeated the neoliberal mantra that economic liberalization promoted growth and prosperity. … Then we had Seattle. It was not just a World Trade Organization ministerial that collapsed, but also a creed that had been widely believed to be true. After Seattle, the press began to talk about the "dark side of globalization" — about the inequalities and poverty being created by globalization. [Read More]