Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
May 17, 2020
Hello All – On Friday, May 15th, Palestinians commemorated the Nakba – the catastrophe – by which some 800,000 Palestinians were forced from their land between 1947 and 1949 as Jewish Zionists established the State of Israel. For a half century, the Zionist project had sought to create a state in what was then the British-controlled Mandate of Palestine. Also, since the beginning, the Zionist project intended to remove/dispossess as many of the native/Arab inhabitants of that territory as possible. In the course of this ethnic cleansing, some 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed – literally leveled with bulldozers – and on many of them new Jewish settlements were built.
In recent years, the Nakba has grown in salience, in part because Palestinian and other historians have found documents and recorded memories that now give us a highly detailed picture of the horrible fate inflicted on those whose removal was necessary for Israel to be founded as a Jewish state. Increasingly, resistance to Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands has not been limited to lands (the West Bank and Gaza) occupied after the 1967 war, but have also challenged the legitimacy the expansive Jewish state that in 1948 reached far beyond the UN's partition agreement of 1947.
Palestinians now face a new Nakba, as the newly formed government led by indicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that, perhaps as soon as July, Israel will (illegally) annex some 30 percent of the West Bank. In addition to once again violating international law concerning Occupied Territories, the annexation would effectively/de facto end any prospect for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza – the hallowed "two-state solution." Though the massive (and illegal) squatter or settlement projects in the West Bank have already made any projected Palestinian state look like a Swiss-cheese archipelago, the annexation of 30 percent of what remains of the non-Jewish West Bank is the last nail in the coffin of any dreams for a Palestinian state.
Prime Minister Netanyahu's planned annexation has wide support among Jewish Israelis. It was given a boost by the move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and by Jared Kushner's "Deal of the Century." We can assume that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's trip to Israel last week was related to the planned July annexation. The annexation is something that a US administration committed to the rule of law and Palestinian rights could have stopped years ago; but nothing has been done nor is there any hope that the Trump administration will take any action. Those in Westchester who find the annexation an outrage might target some of their energy towards our politicians and demand that they recognize that their "two-state" solution/mantra is dead, and that US policy must pivot toward demanding political and civil rights for Palestinians inside a single Israeli state, with an end to US aid to Israel and an end to the policy of protecting Israel at the UN and in other international forums if they persist in building an apartheid state.
For further reading on The Nakba – "72 Years of Birthdays for Israel, 72 Years of Catastrophe for Palestinians," by Asa Winstanley, Middle East Monitor [May 17, 2020]; "The future of the Nakba," by The Electronic Intifada [May 13, 2018]; and (Video) "Rashid Khalidi on why a century of settler colonialism with American support has failed to defeat Palestinians," an interview with Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [May 12, 2020]
News Notes
Grassroots activism, the hard work of thousands of people for several years, has resulted in the defeat of the Williams pipeline, which would have brought tons of dangerous natural gas into New York City via underwater pipes at a cost of $1.4 billion. The next target for climate-change stalwarts is New York's Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, which targets the NYS pension fund, which has $12 billion invested in the fossil fuel industry, including more than $4 billion in fracking operations. Advocates point out that not only is this the right thing to do for our climate, but it is also good business as well, as fossil fuels are no longer a "good investment." Indeed, if divestment from fossil fuels had taken place a decade ago, the NYS pension fund would be $22 billion richer. As usual, Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins is the gate-keeper on this legislation. Please give her a call at 518-455-2585 and ask her to bring the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act (S.2126A) to a vote this session. And for some useful background information on fossil fuel divestment, go here.
Prof. Juan Cole hits the nail on the head with a useful article called "If only we Had that $6.4 Trillion we wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan to Lift the Economy and Fight Coronavirus" [Link]. The disconnect between Human security and National security, which we've written about often in the Newsletter, has been made crystal clear during our pandemic. Trump has raised annual military spending by $200 billion, but our society and economy is collapsing because we can't produce something as simple as face masks. For some background on how/where this all started, I recommend "War and Plagues" by Conn Hallinan, an article about "military spending during a pandemic."
Ralph McGehee died last week. McGehee was a dissenting CIA officer who, after he resigned from "The Company," wrote a powerful book in 1983 called Deadly Deceits that exposed much of the malevolence of the CIA in Vietnam. McGehee's importance in the world of ex-spooks is attested to by the fact that his sympathetic and informative New York Times obituary was written by Tim Weiner, the CIA's major historian. Unknown to me is that Ralph had maintained/curated an on-line trove of documents and books relevant to the CIA and its role in subverting democracy. Check out "Our Hidden History."
While the Media Establishment works itself into a lather about the "pardoning" of Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, since the beginning of the "Flynn Affair" there have been serious questions about the role of the FBI (and others behind the scene) in Flynn's ouster. We need not revisit what a horrible choice Flynn was for any government office; but the Flynn Affair ties into the machinations that produced Russia-gate, which has served as the wallpaper for much of Trump's presidency. At The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald produces a video series called System Update, and the current program on offer is "The Sham Prosecution of Michael Flynn." And on the same general topic, we learned this week that the House Intelligence Committee has known for more than two years that the private company (Crowd Strike) that first fingered the Russians in the alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee computers admitted they had no evidence that the emails in question were cyber-hacked – as opposed to e.g. downloaded onto a thumb drive (i.e., an inside job). Read more about this in "Twin Pillars of Russiagate Crumble" bMay 11, 2020] [Link]
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Until shut down by the virus, we have been meeting for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting (by Zoom conference) each Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. If you would like to join our meeting, please send a return email to get the meeting's access code. 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!
Perhaps like many Newsletter readers, I have been watching lots of films/videos on line. A special treat I would like to share/recommend is "Stitching Palestine," which consists of interviews with 12 very interesting Palestinian women who recall the dispossession of their families during the Nakhba of 1948, and what has happened to them since then. Integrating the film another way is that many of them are embroiderers, making clothing and other things in a traditional Palestinian women's mode. A beautiful and moving film that you can see here. And as a guide to more films to watch, check out "Visions of a Future Beyond Capitalism: Revolutionary Films to Watch Under Quarantine"
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
Annals of the Plague Year
(Video) Naomi Klein: Healthcare Industry Sees "Potential Bonanza" of Profits in COVID-19 Crisis
From Democracy Now! [May 13, 2020]
---- As the top infectious disease expert testifies to the Senate that needless death and suffering could result from reopening too quickly, author and journalist Naomi Klein says a "pandemic shock doctrine" is beginning to emerge. "The fact that a large sector of the economy, the healthcare industry, sees a potential bonanza here … that's a win for them." [See the Program]. Last week, Naomi Klein published an important article in The Intercept: "Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia" [Link]; she spoke about her findings when she was on Democracy Now!: (Video) "Screen New Deal: Naomi Klein on How Companies Like Google Plan to Profit in High-Tech COVID Dystopia" [Link].
What Mutual Aid Can Do During a Pandemic
o, The New Yorker [May 11, 2020]
---- In March, even before widespread workplace closures and self-isolation, people throughout the country began establishing informal networks to meet the new needs of those around them. …And, in New York City, dozens of groups across all five boroughs signed up volunteers to provide child care and pet care, deliver medicine and groceries, and raise money for food and rent. Relief funds were organized for movie-theatre employees, sex workers, and street venders. Shortly before the city's restaurants closed, on March 16th, leaving nearly a quarter of a million people out of work, three restaurant employees started the Service Workers Coalition, quickly raising more than twenty-five thousand dollars to distribute as weekly stipends. Similar groups, some of which were organized by restaurant owners, are now active nationwide. … [Read More]
More useful/thoughtful news about Our Times – "Reopening: A Chronicle of Needless Deaths Foretold," by Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [May 14, 2020] [Link]; "Why Unemployment under Trump is way worse that even the Depression-Era Numbers Suggest," b[Link]; "What Does Opportunity Look Like Where You Live?" by David Leonhardt and May 13, 2020] [Link]; and "The Virus, the Press, and the Comfortable Class," by Michael Massing, The Nation [May 15, 2020] [Link].
The Democrats Regroup
Biden Taps AOC and Jayapal to Help Shape Party Policy. Isn't This a Win for Progressives?
By Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept [
---- If you were to draw up a list of the most plain-spoken, passionate, and progressive women in American public life, you would have to include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and Sara Nelson somewhere near the top. All of them, of course, were loud and ardent advocates for Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primaries. Imagine my surprise then — or was it disbelief? — to discover on Wednesday morning that they had been appointed as co-chairs of three of the six "joint task forces" that are meant to unify the Democratic Party on policy in the run-up to November. [Read More]
For more on the Democrats, read – "Would You Buy a Used Progressive Agenda From This Man?" by Jeet Heer, The Nation [May 15, 2020] [Link]. For the New York Times' version, "Seeking: Big Democratic Ideas That Make Everything Better," go here. Sarah Vowell, whose observations are always interesting, writes "How Democrats Win in My Red State (and They Do Win)" [Montana], [Link].
Featured Essays
Why Bombs Made in America Have Been Killing Civilians in Yemen
By Michael LaForgia and May 16, 2020]
---- President Trump sees arms deals as jobs generators for firms like Raytheon, which has made billions in sales to the Saudi coalition. The Obama administration initially backed the Saudis too, but later regretted it as thousands died. The intervention, which has not been previously reported, underscores a fundamental change in American foreign policy under Mr. Trump that often elevates economic considerations over other ones. Where foreign arms sales in the past were mostly offered and withheld to achieve diplomatic goals, the Trump administration pursues them mainly for the profits they generate and the jobs they create, with little regard for how the weapons are used. … After the Yemen war began in 2015 and the Obama administration made a hasty decision to back the Saudis, Raytheon booked more than $3 billion in new bomb sales, according to an analysis of available U.S. government records. Intent on pushing the deals through, Raytheon followed the industry playbook: It took advantage of federal loopholes by sending former State Department officials, who were not required to be registered as lobbyists, to press their former colleagues to approve the sales. And though the company was already embedded in Washington — its chief lobbyist, Mark Esper, would become Army secretary and then defense secretary under Mr. Trump — Raytheon executives sought even closer ties. [Read More] The authors of this article have prepared a short summary of their findings here. Also of interest is "Finding U.S. Fingerprints in the Bomb Sites of Yemen," [Link].
Secrets, Surveillance and Snowden
By Barton Gellman, Washington Post [May 11, 2020]
---- [FB - After receiving top-secret documents from the NSA whistleblower, reporter Barton Gellman broke the news that the National Security Agency was spying on Americans. Here's how it happened.] It was the second half of May 2013. Nearly four months had passed since Laura Poitras, an independent filmmaker, had reached out to me for advice about a confidential source. Verax, as I came to know him later, had brought her an enigmatic tip about U.S. government surveillance. Poitras and I teamed up to see what would come of it. The previous night, months of suspense had come to an end. Verax delivered. The evidence was here. His story was real, the risks no longer conjecture. The FBI and the National Security Agency's "Q Group," which oversees internal security, were bound to devote sizable resources to this leak. For the first time in my career, I did not think it was out of the question that U.S. authorities would try to seize my notes and files. Without doubt we were about to become interesting to foreign intelligence services. [Read More]
Let Our People Go [Re: letter from a prisoner in Marion penitentiary]
By
---- Our nation's prison population has quintupled over the last few decades; we lock up and lock out more people than any other country on earth — overwhelmingly poor people and people of color. Viewed in this light, cutting the prison population by less than half in order to prevent unnecessary suffering and death is hardly an unreasonable demand. … We now face a choice regarding what kind of country we want to be in the months and years to come. Rather than imaging that the lives of those locked in cages are less valuable than our own, perhaps we ought to get down on our knees and say, "There but for the grace of God go I." I do not even consider myself a Christian and yet those are the only words that spring to mind when I think of all those at Marion Correctional, including our letter writer, as well as all those in prisons and jails nationwide, whose lives have been discarded in the era of mass incarceration. …If we, as communities and as a nation, fail to free people in this pandemic because we'd rather risk their lives than allow them to come home earlier than our criminal injustice system originally planned, we should consider ourselves guilty of utter disregard for human life. Let our people go. [Read More] Also of interest is "New Model Shows Reducing Jail Population Will Lower COVID-19 Death Toll for All of Us," from the ACLU.
The Sickness in Our Food Supply
Michael Pollan, New York Review of Books [June 11, 2020 issue]
---- "Only when the tide goes out," Warren Buffett observed, "do you discover who's been swimming naked." For our society, the Covid-19 pandemic represents an ebb tide of historic proportions, one that is laying bare vulnerabilities and inequities that in normal times have gone undiscovered. Nowhere is this more evident than in the American food system. A series of shocks has exposed weak links in our food chain that threaten to leave grocery shelves as patchy and unpredictable as those in the former Soviet bloc. The very system that made possible the bounty of the American supermarket—its vaunted efficiency and ability to "pile it high and sell it cheap"—suddenly seems questionable, if not misguided. But the problems the novel coronavirus has revealed are not limited to the way we produce and distribute food. They also show up on our plates, since the diet on offer at the end of the industrial food chain is linked to precisely the types of chronic disease that render us more vulnerable to Covid-19. How did we end up here? The story begins early in the Reagan administration…. [Read More]
Our History
A Mon Valley Memoir
By Steve Early, ZNet [May 17, 2020]
---- Many younger radicals today are trying to figure out how to relate, personally and collectively, to the labor movement. … Fifty years ago, campus and community radicals who came of age in the 1960s grappled with the same strategy questions during their initial challenges to the labor bureaucracy. Some had the foresight to transition into rank-and-file activism in the education, healthcare, and service sectors, where college backgrounds were useful and job security good. Under the guidance of left-wing parties and sects, other student radicals got jobs in steel mills, auto plants or coal mines, at the phone company or in the trucking industry. Unfortunately, in the late 1970s and 1980s, de-regulation, de-industrialization, and global capitalist restructuring produced enormous job losses. Many who made a "turn toward industry" lost any blue-collar union foothold they had briefly been able to attain. As we learn in Homestead Steel Mill—the Final Ten Years (PM Press, 2020), ex-steel worker Mike Stout journeyed down the same path but it didn't become a personal or political dead end. [Read More]
---- Many younger radicals today are trying to figure out how to relate, personally and collectively, to the labor movement. … Fifty years ago, campus and community radicals who came of age in the 1960s grappled with the same strategy questions during their initial challenges to the labor bureaucracy. Some had the foresight to transition into rank-and-file activism in the education, healthcare, and service sectors, where college backgrounds were useful and job security good. Under the guidance of left-wing parties and sects, other student radicals got jobs in steel mills, auto plants or coal mines, at the phone company or in the trucking industry. Unfortunately, in the late 1970s and 1980s, de-regulation, de-industrialization, and global capitalist restructuring produced enormous job losses. Many who made a "turn toward industry" lost any blue-collar union foothold they had briefly been able to attain. As we learn in Homestead Steel Mill—the Final Ten Years (PM Press, 2020), ex-steel worker Mike Stout journeyed down the same path but it didn't become a personal or political dead end. [Read More]
Remembering Denis Goldberg
A lesson in fighting apartheid from a Jewish South African dissident
By Amjad Iraqi, +972 Magazine [May 6, 2020]
---- Denis Goldberg, the Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist, died last week on April 29, just two weeks after his 87th birthday. I had the fortune of seeing Goldberg speak at Oxford University in February 2014, thanks to a friend who I was visiting at the time. The event itself was just under two hours, yet it remains one of the fondest and most profound moments of my political education. An engineer by training and a longtime member of the African National Congress, Goldberg was a leading technical officer making weapons for Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's military wing. He was arrested and charged alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, and other leaders at the Rivonia Trial in 1963-4, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Goldberg, of course, was sent to a white prison in Pretoria, his black comrades to Robben Island near Cape After 22 years behind bars, Goldberg was released in 1985, due in part to a campaign by a group of Israeli activists, including his daughter Hilary who lived in a kibbutz, working to free Jewish prisoners worldwide. The campaign helped press Israel and the U.K. to intervene for his release, coupled with Goldberg's own letter to South African president P.W. Botha. Exiling himself to London instead (Goldberg was a fierce critic of Zionism, Israel's policies against the Palestinians, and its relations with Pretoria), he continued to lobby on the ANC's behalf. After South Africa's first free elections in 1994, Goldberg pursued philanthropic ventures alongside his political activism. [Read More]
