Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
May 7, 2023
Hello All – Some inconvenient truths prevent the US government and the political elite from defining clear goals to guide US participation in the Ukraine War. As Ukraine and its allies prepare for the long-awaited "spring offensive," this lack of clarity and unity will be subject to many stresses. For much of the political elite, and perhaps the Biden administration, its continuing support for Ukraine – with vast amounts of military equipment and Pentagon guidance – depends on how the "spring offensive" goes. In a nutshell, Ukraine is on probation, and the level of continued US support may depend on Ukraine's military performance in the months ahead.
On the USA home front, the coming stress test coincides with the looming presidential election of 2024. Already, within the fringes of both the Republican and Democratic parties, there is growing dissent about continuing to write blank checks for Ukraine and its war. Additionally, within the politico/military elite, serious questions have arisen about whether it is still in the US interest to support Ukraine's professed war aims of recovering all territory lost to Russia since 2022, as well reclaiming Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. The recently leaked Pentagon documents quote US military leaders as expressing fears that a military stalemate will be sustained in Ukraine through 2023. Last January, the military think-tank Rand Corporation released a study that concluded:
"Territorial control, although immensely important to Ukraine, is not the most important dimension of the war's future for the United States. We conclude that, in addition to averting possible escalation to a Russia-NATO war or Russian nuclear use, avoiding a long war is also a higher priority for the United States than facilitating significantly more Ukrainian territorial control."
If the portion of the US military/political elite that sees US interests in Ukraine as not the same as the Ukrainian government goals gains support, the outcome of debates in the US Congress and elsewhere about continued funding or limiting certain kinds of weapons may move to the center of the presidential campaigns. Can President Biden run successfully if he continues to provide life-support for Ukraine's military effort, even while large portions of the USA are calling for an end to the fighting? The actions of US peace activists may gain importance in the months ahead.
News Notes
Thursday, May 4th, was the 53rd anniversary of the murder of four students at Kent State University – May 4th, 1970. The protest at which they were killed was one of thousands taking place across the USA in response to the Nixon-Kissinger invasion of Cambodia. Killed that day were Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Willilam Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheuer. Their murders were memorialized in the CSNY song "Ohio." We will remember them always.
The fight to stop the dumping of a million gallons of radioactive water into the Hudson River at Indian Point continues. Once again, CFOW's weekly vigil in Hastings focused on this, with signs and leaflets. And on Saturday afternoon a large "Save Our River" event was held in Cortlandt Park in Verplanck. During this positive report from Channel 12 News, the newscaster stated that Holtec is now planning to dump the water in August. The struggle continues.
The headline of the New York Times article was astonishing (to me) – "900,000 New Yorkers Lost at Least 3 Loved Ones to Covid." The article goes on to say that "An estimated two million New Yorkers — nearly one in four — lost at least one person close to them to Covid within the first 16 months of the virus's arrival." Can such trauma ever be "processed"? Read the article here.
Once again, Congresswoman Betty McCollum has introduced a bill that would prohibit US aid from contributing to the detention of Palestinian children and to military activities that would facilitate "further unilateral annexation" of Israel's occupied West Bank. The measure is backed by 17 Democrats, including our own Jamaal Bowman. To read about this bill and the problems it tries to address, 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 in Yonkers on Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm 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!
In the pursuit of happiness, this week's Rewards for stalwart reading offer some recent posts from New Orleans band Tuba Skinny. I think you like "Hot Town" from the Gumbo Gumbas (1929); "Gimme Some"; and "You Can Have My Husband, But Please Don't Mess with My Man" (Irma Thomas, 1959). Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Can the U.S. Adjust Sensibly to a Multipolar World?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink
---- In his 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy reassured Americans that the decline the United States was facing after a century of international dominance was "relative and not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order." Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, and the rise of a formidable Global South. But the United States has indeed failed to "adjust sensibly to the newer world order," using military force and coercion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter in a failed quest for longer lasting global hegemony. [Read More]
Resisting Cannibal Capitalism
By Nancy Fraser, Red Pepper [UK] [May 3, 2023]
[FB – Several months ago a CFOW book group read Nancy Fraser's Cannibal Capitalism with much interest. Check out her updating of Marx's framing of what capitalism is and how it works.]
---- To understand where we are and to figure out a strategy for radical change, we need to recognize that capitalism as an economic system depends on several non-capitalist systems of social and natural reproduction. Most fundamentally, and perhaps most timely, is nature and the planet. Then the family, education and health, the polity and political order and the possibility of plunder from populations outside the system. The term 'polycrisis' that is now bandied about in the seminar rooms of Davos implies that each of these crises, afflicting a variety of these systems, are separate from another – as if it were just bad luck that they were occurring at the same time. We must understand that this is a fallacy and capitalism is the crisis. [Read More]
'We've discovered the secret of immortality. The bad news is it's not for us': why the godfather of AI fears for humanity
By Alex Hern, The Guardian [UK] [May 5, 2023]
---- Once [Geoffrey Hinton] accepted that we were building intelligences with the potential to outthink humanity, the more alarming conclusions followed. "I thought it would happen eventually, but we had plenty of time: 30 to 50 years. I don't think that any more. And I don't know any examples of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things – at least, not since Biden got elected. … "You need to imagine something more intelligent than us by the same difference that we're more intelligent than a frog. And it's going to learn from the web, it's going to have read every single book that's ever been written on how to manipulate people, and also seen it in practice."
He now thinks the crunch time will come in the next five to 20 years, he says. "But I wouldn't rule out a year or two. And I still wouldn't rule out 100 years – it's just that my confidence that this wasn't coming for quite a while has been shaken by the realisation that biological intelligence and digital intelligence are very different, and digital intelligence is probably much better." [Read More]
War & Peace
The first boat to protest nuclear weapons is back to inspire a new generation
May 1, 2023]
[FB – More than 60 years ago I was fortunate to meet and hear Albert Bigelow describe his efforts to sail The Golden Rule into the nuclear test zone. A great man – and now the project has a 2nd life!]
---- There was more to this broken-down old ship than what the eye could see. This vessel was a piece of history — having once played a consequential role in making the world safe from above-ground nuclear weapons testing. In 1958, the Golden Rule's former owners, a group of peace activists, tried to sail it into the American nuclear weapons testing zone in the Pacific as a form of protest. While the authorities cut their voyage short, the Golden Rule still managed to spark an upsurge of opposition to nuclear testing, leading five years later to the adoption of the Partial Test Ban Treaty. When Champagne learned this history, he was shook. "I was standing there. It was real quiet at the shipyard… And I felt the boat was talking to me. I felt the boat's spirit. And you know what it said? I sensed that the boat was telling me, 'Get off your ass and do something.'" So, do something he did. Champagne set about restoring the boat along with a small team of several other VFP members. Five years later, the Golden Rule was sailing down the West Coast to the 2015 VFP National Convention in San Diego. Now, in the midst of its Great Loop Tour circling the entirety of the eastern United States, the 21st century Golden Rule aims to be more than a history lesson. Veterans for Peace and the project's many supporters are working for nothing less than igniting a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons altogether. [Read More] For some VFP info on the Golden Rule project and its current itinerary, go here.
Also of interest – "This is not Your Grandfather's Military-Industrial Complex: Unwarranted Influence," by Ben Freeman and William D. Hartung, Tom Dispatch [May 2023] [Link]; and "To End All Wars, Close All Bases," by[Link].
The War in Ukraine
(Video) Noam Chomsky interview: Russia "more humane" in Ukraine than US in Iraq
FB – Chomsky answers some pointed/hostile questions from the liberal [UK] magazine New Statesman [May 1, 2023] - [See the Program]
The Nord Stream Explosions: New Revelations About Motive, Means, and Opportunity
By James Bamford, The Nation [May 5, 2023]
[FB – Historian/analyst James Bamford offers a strong case for an alternative to Seymour Hersh's framing of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage operation.]
---- US and European intelligence agencies have reportedly obtained intelligence indicating that the attack was state-sponsored and carried out by a group affiliated with Ukraine, possibly an intelligence unit. Four days after the sabotage, the German publication Spiegel International reported that the CIA had months earlier warned their German intelligence partners, the BND, about a possible attack. … But beyond such allegations, there has been little reporting on Ukraine's covert capabilities and hostile intentions when it came to the pipeline, or whether other nations might have acted as co-conspirators. Did Ukraine have the means, motive, and opportunity to commit such a violent and audacious act? Nor has there been any insight into what US intelligence may have known before and after the blasts, and how they knew it. [Read More]
Also of interest re: Ukraine War - [Nation Magazine podcast] "Anatol Lieven Reports from Ukraine" - [Link]; and "How Gas Corporations Capitalise from War in Ukraine," by Greenpeace International [April 27, 2023] [Link].
Civil Liberties
On World Press Freedom Day, State Department Refuses to Acknowledge Julian Assange Is a Journalist
May 3, 2023]
---- The State Department refused to acknowledge on Wednesday, which marked World Press Freedom Day, that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a journalist. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel was asked by AP reporter Matt Lee if he considers Assange to be a journalist. "Matt, I am just not gonna offer a prescriptive assessment from here. Our view on Mr. Assange is that he's been charged with serious criminal conduct," he said. Lee retorted by pointing out that anyone can face criminal charges, including Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter recently arrested by Russia. Patel said the cases were "completely different" and refused to say whether the State Department considers Assange a journalist. [Read More] For some illuminating insights into the Assange case, read "After Years Of Refusing To Comment, State Department Backs Assange Prosecution" from The Dissenter [Link].
The State of the Union
(Video) People In The US Were Once Promised Affordable Education For All
Chris Hedges interviews Ellen Schrecker, The Real News [May 6, 2023]
---- The 1960s were a decade of intellectual and political ferment on college campuses. Anti-war, feminist, and racial justice movements all found a foothold in higher education, with student activists often playing a pivotal role in social movements that extended far beyond the university. A crucial condition for the student radicalism of the time was the affordability of public higher education and the recent dissolution of barriers that prevented students of minoritized backgrounds from attending college. Today, these conditions have all but disappeared. Collectively, college graduates owe some $1.6 trillion in student debt. The most elite institutions have been cordoned off from students of working class backgrounds by astronomically high tuition fees. Even public universities demand staggering rates from their students. When did this change occur, and why? Retired professor of history Ellen Schrecker joins The Chris Hedges Report to explain the long assault on public, affordable higher education detailed in her new book, The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s. Schrecker is a retired professor of history at Yeshiva University. She is the author of several books on McCarthyism and higher education. [See the Program]
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: After Title 42, U.S. Border Enforcement Will Push Further South
---- On April 11, the United States, Panama, and Colombia announced a joint two-month operation to "end the illicit movement of people and goods" through the Darien Gap. While he was arriving to Panama, DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas explained in a tweet that the three countries would work together to "target criminal networks, build lawful pathways, and save lives." … These ideas have been incorporated into border strategy, and this is no secret. U.S. Border Patrol strategy documents constantly talk about a "layered approach." According to the Homeland Security agency, the border and its enforcement apparatus go well beyond the U.S.-Mexico divide. This includes not only interior enforcement in the United States (the 100-mile zones along the borders and coasts, and inland ICE operations), but also the aggressive pushing out of the U.S. border into other countries across the hemisphere and beyond. The U.S. has done training operations in more than 100 countries, and made many transfers of equipment and technology to these countries to assist in border enforcement. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
Who Said BDS Has 'Already Failed'?: European Cities Boycott Apartheid Israel
By
---- A succession of events starting in Barcelona, Spain, in February, and followed in Liège, Belgium, and Oslo, Norway, in April sent a strong message to Israel: The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is alive and well. … Indeed, while a growing number of European cities are siding with Palestine, those who side with Israeli apartheid find it difficult to defend or even maintain their position, simply because the former predicate their stances on international law, while the latter on twisted and convenient interpretations of anti-Semitism. … While BDS is a political movement that is subject to miscalculations and mistakes, it is also a grassroots campaign that labors to achieve political ends through incremental, measured changes. To succeed over time, such campaigns must first engage ordinary people on the street, activists at universities, in houses of worship, etc., all done through calculated, long-term strategies, themselves devised by local and national civil society collectives and organizations. [Read More]
(Video) "Automated Apartheid": How Israel Uses Facial Recognition to Track Palestinians & Control Movement
From Democracy Now! [May 4, 2023]
---- A new report by Amnesty International documents how the Israeli government is using an experimental facial recognition system to track Palestinians and control their movements. The findings are part of "Automated Apartheid," which reveals an ever-growing surveillance network of cameras in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron and in East Jerusalem — two places in the Occupied Territories where Israeli settlements are expanding within Palestinian areas. "Surveillance has been ramping up as illegal settler activity has also been ramping up," says Amnesty researcher Matt Mahmoudi, who adds that the surveillance technology is part of an overall coercive structure used against Palestinians by Israel. "Effectively, facial recognition is augmenting, reinforcing, entrenching aspects of apartheid." [See the Program]
Our History
History Bright and Dark
By Adam Hochschild, New York Review of Books [May 25, 2023 issue]
---- Americans have often been politically divided, never more so than during the Civil War, in which we managed to kill more than 600,000 of each other. But have the divisions over how we recount our history ever been so deep? Following the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country in 2020, at least four states, three of them in New England, have required Black history to be part of school curriculums; seven more have established new courses on Native American or Asian American history. Meanwhile Florida governor Ron DeSantis has gotten far more attention for forbidding the state's high schools from offering the Advanced Placement course in African American history, which he criticized as "woke" and "indoctrination." … If the 1776 Curriculum is in one corner of the ring in this round of the history wars, in the other corner, coming out swinging, is the latest incarnation of the 1619 Project. The project argued that slavery and its legacy have profoundly shaped American life in the four centuries since then. This effort has now taken new shape as a six-part documentary series on Hulu, which will undoubtedly be used in many classrooms as well. [To read this essay, paste this link into your browser - https://archive.ph/DSnUB]
Martin Luther King Jr. 'Birth of a New Nation' [1957] [h/t NM]
[FB - King delivered this extraordinary speech in Montgomery, Alabama on April 7, 1957. The Montgomery bus boycott had been victorious only a few months earlier. The occasion for this speech was King's return from Ghana, where he had witnessed the founding of a new state – Ghana – formerly the British colony of The Gold Coast. Posted by NM on the day that Charles III was crowned in England, King's speech puts the British Empire in perspective, in all its horror, and he relates the African struggle for freedom and the end of colonialism to the on-going [1957] struggle for civil rights in the USA.] [Hear the Speech].
