Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
February 19, 2023
Hello All – The nuclear power plants at Indian Point are now closed down. They are being "decommissioned." That is, the plant's reactors and nuclear fuel are being removed and (supposedly) sent to a safe storage place. But in August – or before – more than a million gallons of radioactive water may be dumped into the Hudson River. How can this be prevented?
The radioactive water has been used to cool – keep from burning – the radioactive fuel that was used in the reactors. The used fuel contains many radioactive elements that are dangerous and can cause cancer. These elements are now in the water that Holtec - the giant corporation that is managing the "decommissioning" – plans to dump into the river.
Most of the radioactive materials in the water can be filtered out. But not tritium, a radioactive version of hydrogen that bonds with oxygen to become water. Holtec says the tritium will be dispersed in the water, and will not be dangerous to humans. Scientists disagree. Much is unknown. One danger is that 7 towns on the Hudson get their drinking water from the river. Ingesting even a small amount tritium is certainly dangerous. Other dangers arise as tritium is absorbed by fish that may be eaten; and using the river for swimming or recreation may no longer be safe. Also, because the Hudson River is an estuary below the Troy dam, the water flows back and forth with the tides; the tritium will not be simply washed out to sea.
Environmentalists and communities along the river are fighting back to stop the dumping of radioactive water. A place to start learning more is the network that has hosted two Zoom forums with scientists/experts, and has posted links to videos and other resources. Apparently only the courts can stop this dumping; there is no other regulatory body in sight. Therefore, we will have to raise a strong protest and galvanize our Mayors, Boards of Trustees, state representatives, and everyone else to protest this outrage. Please join the fight!
News Notes
If you are perplexed by the intersection of aid/relief to the Syrian victims of the earthquake and US sanctions that are impeding this aid, you are not alone. Here is a useful primer/explanation of the consequences of US economic war against Syria, "US Sanctions Against Syria Explained" [Link].
After Russian president Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, his statement/threatened action was condemned by more than 1,000 scientists. Their statement included the warning that "Once nuclear weapons are used in a conflict, particularly between nuclear-armed adversaries, there is a risk that it could lead to an all-out nuclear conflagration." To learn more about the scientists, their coalition, and their new project, ""Help Us Shrink the Global Risk from Nuclear Weapons," go here.
"It's time to take Cuba off the terror list," writes veteran scholar William LeoGrande. In an essay surveying the USA use of sanctions and their more than six decades' deployment against Cuba, LeoGrande observes that "Now that President Biden has apparently decided to improve relations with Havana, taking Cuba off the terrorism list is a logical next step." To read more, go here.
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 (winter schedule) on the first Monday of each month; the next vigil will be March 6th, from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. 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 join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. 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's Rewards for stalwart readers come, once again, from one of my favorite bands, Tuba Skinny. From New Orleans, they have a nice mix of jazz and Dixie that guides the writer through his task. Here are some of their new/recent recordings: "It Hurts Me Too"; "It Gets Easier"; and How Do They Do It That Way." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
20 Years Ago, the World Said No to War
By Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies [February 15, 2023]
---- Twenty years ago — on February 15, 2003 — the world said no to war. People rose up in almost 800 cities around the world in an unprecedented movement for peace.
The world stood on the precipice of war. U.S. and U.K. warplanes and warships — filled with soldiers and sailors and armed with the most powerful weapons ever used in conventional warfare — were streaming towards the Middle East, aimed at Iraq. Anti-war mobilizations had been underway for more than a year as the threat of war against Iraq took hold in Washington, even as the war in Afghanistan had barely begun. Opposition to the war in Afghanistan was difficult following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Even though none of the hijackers were Afghans and none lived in Afghanistan, most Americans saw the war as a legitimate response — a view that would change over the next two decades, with the vast majority saying the war wasn't worth fighting when American troops were withdrawn in 2021. But Iraq was different from the beginning. There was always opposition. And as the activist movement grew, its grounding in a sympathetic public expanded too. By the time February 15, 2003 came around — a year and five months after the 9/11 attacks — condemnation of the looming war was broad and fierce. [Read More] For more memories/analysis, read "The Impact of the Anti-War Movement 20 Years After the US Invaded Iraq," by David Cortright, The Nation [February 14, 2023] [Link]]; and "," by Thea Paneth, Common Dreams [February 15, 2023] [Link].
'It's inequality that kills': Naomi Klein on the future of climate justice
By Madeleine de Trenqualye, The Guardian [UK] [February 13, 2023]
---- Naomi Klein published her first book on the climate crisis, This Changes Everything, almost a decade ago. She was one of the organisers and authors of Canada's Leap manifesto, a blueprint for a rapid and justice-based transition off fossil fuels. In 2021, she joined the University of British Columbia as professor of climate justice in the Department of Geography and co-director of Canada's first Centre for Climate Justice.
Naomi Klein - I always think about climate justice as multitasking. We live in a time of multiple overlapping crises: we have a health emergency; we have a housing emergency; we have an inequality emergency; we have a racial injustice emergency; and we have a climate emergency, so we're not going to get anywhere if we try to address them one at a time. We need responses that are truly intersectional. So how about as we decarbonise and create a less polluted world, we also build a much fairer society on multiple fronts? … But if you can connect the issues and show how climate action can create better jobs and redress gaping inequalities, and lower stress levels, then you start getting people's attention and you build a broader constituency that is invested in getting climate policies passed. [Read More]
(Video) In Conversation with Noam Chomsky
By
---- This Public Health Conversation Starter features Noam Chomsky. Dr. Chomsky shares what it was like growing up during the Great Depression, discusses the interplay of power, politics, and public health, and reflects on what gives him hope. [See the Program]
The War in Ukraine
How Spin and Lies Fuel a Bloody War of Attrition in Ukraine
By
---- This war involves Russia, Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies. No party to this conflict has leveled with its own people to honestly explain what it is fighting for, what it really hopes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it. All sides claim to be fighting for noble causes and insist that it is the other side that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution. They are all manipulating and lying, and compliant media (on all sides) trumpet their lies. It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. But spinning and lying has real-world impacts in a war in which hundreds of thousands of real people are fighting and dying, while their homes, on both sides of the front lines, are reduced to rubble by hundreds of thousands of howitzer shells. … Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda. But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a full-scale war between Russia and the United States that could escalate into nuclear war. [Read More]
Crimea Is a Powder Keg
By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft [February 10, 2023]
---- Whether the Ukraine war brings on a global catastrophe will hinge in large part on whether Washington decides to back a Ukrainian effort to retake the Crimean peninsula. The greatest threat of nuclear catastrophe that humanity has ever faced is now centered on the Crimean peninsula. In recent months, the Ukrainian government and army have repeatedly vowed to reconquer this territory, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014. The Russian establishment, and most ordinary Russians, for their part believe that holding Crimea is vital to Russian identity and Russia's position as a great power. As a Russian liberal acquaintance (and no admirer of Putin) told me, "In the last resort, America would use nuclear weapons to save Hawaii and Pearl Harbor, and if we have to, we should use them to save Crimea." In the eyes of all the participants in the war, Crimea is freighted with crucial strategic significance. … As to the Biden administration, it seems divided on the subject of how far to defeat Russia. … This strategy is however extremely risky, because it requires a strong degree both of military fine-tuning and of control over Ukrainian actions — and neither is guaranteed. [Read More]
For more on the "invading/liberating Crimea" question- "U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea," bHelene Cooper, et al., New York Times [January 18, 2023] [Link]; "Blinken Warns Attempting to Retake Crimea Is a 'Red Line' for Putin," b, Antiwar.com [February 16, 2023] [Link]; and "Ukraine can't retake Crimea soon, Pentagon tells lawmakers in classified briefing," by Alexander Ward, et al., Politico [February 1, 2023] [Link].
Paying Homage to Russian War Resisters
By Lawrence S. Wittner, LA Progressive [February 13, 2023]
---- Beginning on the evening of February 24, 2022, the date of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many thousands of Russians, defying threats from the authorities, staged nonviolent antiwar demonstrations across their nation. On the first night alone, police made 1,820 arrests of peace demonstrators in 58 Russian cities. Over the ensuing weeks, the mass protests continued, with the intrepid demonstrators chanting or holding up signs reading "No to War." As the authorities viewed any mention of "war" as a crime, even elementary school children were arrested when they said the forbidden slogan. Some peace demonstrators took to holding up blank signs, but they, too, were arrested. By March 13, according to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights group, the police had made at least 14,906 arrests of these and other Russian peace demonstrators. … The most dramatic response to Putin's military mobilization was the sudden, massive exodus of young men, sometimes accompanied by family members, from Russia. According to one detailed analysis, nearly 700,000 Russians fled their country between late September and early November 2022. … The example of these and other courageous war resisters should remind us that, despite the violence of the Putin regime, a better Russia is possible. [Read More] For some background on pre-war Russian dissent, read "Putinism's Defeated Opposition," a review of Dissidents among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and the Left in Post-Soviet Russia, by Ilya Budraitskis. [Link].
The Climate Crisis
Global Challenges Require Global Solutions: How We Can Prevent a Complete Climate Catastrophe
By Jacopo Demarinis and Drea Bergman, LA Progressive [February 15, 2023]
---- When it comes to the climate crisis, we are running out of time. In 1994, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change established the Conference of the Parties (COP) to encourage UN member states to meet annually to discuss scientific data and technological advances related to climate change and implement international environmental agreements. Despite the global interest in addressing climate change, the next 29 years would be characterized by lukewarm international efforts to divert a climate catastrophe. In line with this record, the recent COP27 hosted by Egypt failed to secure cooperation on key issues and induce the necessary commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. …Most climate change experts say that countries' emissions reduction plans are not sufficient and will not be executed quickly enough to contain temperature increases to 1.5°C. What lies behind the failure of international climate treaties to secure meaningful action? [Read More] Also of interest is "Do we Have Until 2050 to become Carbon Neutral? What if 27 Climate Feedback Loops are Working together to Shorten our Deadline?" b[Read More]
The State of the Union
DeBamboozling the Social Security Scare Talk
By
---- … How often the press accounts of the financing of the program itself remain trapped in GOP talking points. In X number of years, we hear again and again, Social Security will become "insolvent." But this isn't true. At best, it's a totally misleading way to describe how the federal government pays for things. Social Security and Medicare are funded (almost entirely) by a payroll tax of approximately 15% on wage and salary income up to a statutory cap, which currently stands at $160,200. That tax is split between the employer and the employee. It funds the two programs. A couple generations ago, Congress increased the tax to build up a surplus to pay for the benefits of the baby boom generation. That's the "trust fund." Social Security "lent" that extra money to the rest of the federal government, i.e., it purchased government bonds. Eventually the Trust Fund will run out of bonds to cash in. The current estimate is that that will happen in the mid-2030s. This is when Social Security supposedly becomes "insolvent." But that's a meaningless term. … This doesn't mean it's a non-issue. It means there will be a funding gap and that's just a budgetary issue to be resolved. It's not "insolvent." That's just scare talk. [Read More]
For more insights on the Social Security "crisis" – "The Frozen Politics of Social Security," by James G. Chappel [a review of two recent books], Boston Review [February 13, 2023] [Link]; and "Ending The Social Security Tax Break For The Rich," by David Sirota, Lever News [January 24, 2023] [Link].
Israel/Palestine
You Can't Save Democracy in a Jewish State
By Peter Beinart, New York Times [February 19, 2023]
---- The warnings come every day: Israeli democracy is in danger. Since Benjamin Netanyahu's new government announced plans to undermine the independence of Israel's Supreme Court, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated in the streets. All of Israel's living former attorneys general, in a joint statement, have warned that Mr. Netanyahu's proposal imperils efforts to "preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." Liberal American Jewish leaders are cheering on the protests. … On the surface, the battle between Mr. Netanyahu and his critics does indeed look familiar. In recent years, from Brazil to Hungary to India to the United States, anti-government protesters have accused authoritarian-minded populists of threatening liberal democracy. But look closer at Israel's political drama and you notice something striking: The people most threatened by Mr. Netanyahu's authoritarianism aren't part of the movement against it. The demonstrations include very few Palestinians. [Read More] Also of interest is this video, "Israel's government and rising violence against Palestinians," from Al Jazeera [UpFront] [February 10, 2023] [Link].
We Can't Let Antisemitism Be Weaponized to Criminalize Solidarity With Palestine
By ,
---- As Jewish students and anti-Zionist organizers, we know that it is in no way antisemitic to support the fight for Palestinian liberation. False accusations of such should not be used to silence Palestinian solidarity activists. That's why we were glad to see the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights ditch a misleading and discredited definition of antisemitism in its recent fact sheet on protecting students from discrimination. While the Office for Civil Rights decision marked an important victory, the Biden administration is currently leaving the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism on the table for potential adoption in December 2023. The struggle is not over yet. … Adopting the IHRA definition would have been harmful because rather than addressing the roots of antisemitism in Christian hegemony and white supremacy, the definition acts as though criticism of Israel is the source of antisemitism. In fact, 6 out of 10 examples of antisemitism offered within the IHRA definition involve speech that is critical of Israel. For instance, it suggests that a primary example of antisemitism involves "claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor." The IHRA definition's harm is twofold: First, it weaponizes the idea of antisemitism as a tool for criminalizing the speech and advocacy of Palestinians and those working in solidarity with them; and second, it obscures what actual antisemitism is actually about. And in doing so, it wrongly and dangerously pits Palestinian liberation against Jewish safety. [Read More]
Our History
Who's Afraid of Black History?
[FB - Dr. Gates is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard.]
---- Lurking behind the concerns of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, over the content of a proposed high school course in African American studies, is a long and complex series of debates about the role of slavery and race in American classrooms. "We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don't believe they should have an agenda imposed on them," Governor DeSantis said. He also decried what he called "indoctrination." School is one of the first places where society as a whole begins to shape our sense of what it means to be an American. It is in our schools that we learn how to become citizens, that we encounter the first civics lessons that either reinforce or counter the myths and fables we gleaned at home. … [DeSantis's] intervention falls squarely in line with a long tradition of bitter, politically suspect battles over the interpretation of three seminal periods in the history of American racial relations: the Civil War; the 12 years following the war, known as Reconstruction; and Reconstruction's brutal rollback, characterized by its adherents as the former Confederacy's "Redemption," which saw the imposition of Jim Crow segregation, the reimposition of white supremacy and their justification through a masterfully executed propaganda effort. [Read More]
