Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 17, 2023
Hello All – Around the world, and here in the Rivertowns, hundreds of thousands of people marched today to demand an end to fossil fuels, which when burned end up raising the temperature of the Earth and threatening human civilization. July, and indeed all of 2023, are the warmest period since humans came into existence; and the science is now clear that we have only a few years to take the drastic action needed to move our economies away from fossil fuels and save ourselves. Yet elected leaders and authoritarian rulers alike are paying little attention and investing few resources in an attempt to curtail this rush to human self-destruction. All we hear from them, in the words of Greta Thunberg, is "blah, blah, blah." Why is this? How can democratically elected rulers fail to be moved by demands that something must be done about the climate crisis? How can a democratic electorate fail to mount enough force to persuade elected leaders to stop fueling the fires of self-immolation?
If our governments won't or can't act, what can we do to end the burning of fossil fuels? As an article linked below details, for decades Exxon and other fossil-fuel giants were well aware that their profits were at the expense of hastening the Earth towards a time when green house gases in our atmosphere would raise temperatures to the point where extreme weather conditions would become common and entire regions and continents would become uninhabitable. Yet they persisted in their crimes. Moreover, not content to just keep their knowledge and their criminal conspiracy secret, they invested millions of dollars in programs and organizations that spewed out false information, minimizing the dangers of global warming. Even in the time already lapsed, it is clear that the fossil fuel giants and their enablers are guilty of massive crimes against humanity, responsible for millions of deaths. For this they should be punished, to be sure. But more to the point, in light of the failure of our governing institutions to protect us, how can we take action to stop the fossil fuel danger short of utter calamity? Nationalization, martial law, and other drastic remedies suggest themselves, but these and other direct remedies require political power current out of our reach. To save ourselves, we must mobilize ourselves as never before, changing regimes and seizing corporations as necessary. We are up against the wall, and must fight back.
Some useful reading on the climate crisis
A Mass Climate Mobilization Is Taking Place Sunday. Here's Why It's Urgent.
An interview with economist Robert Pollin, Truthout [September 14, 2023]
---- A UN climate report ahead of the upcoming COP28 summit says that governments are failing to cut emissions fast enough for the planet to avoid an unmitigated disaster and calls in turn for the phasing out of fossil fuels. In the wake of the hottest summer on record, climate advocates have organized a "March to End Fossil Fuels" in New York City as part of the wave of global mobilizations with the aim of putting an end to the poisons that are killing the planet. Amid this crucial mobilization, the climate movement is working hard to expose the roots of this crisis and chart an alternate course, wrestling with questions such as: Why do governments continue to subsidize fossil fuels? Aside from the obvious resistance of the fossil fuel industry, what are the economic and technological challenges we would face by moving to a post-fossil fuel future? How do we actually get to zero emissions? [Read More]
New files shed light on ExxonMobil's efforts to undermine climate science
By Dharna Noor, The Guardian [UK] [September 14, 2023]
---- ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents revealed by the Wall Street Journal. The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York's attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. Many of the newly released documents date back to the 2006-16 tenure of former chief executive Rex Tillerson, who oversaw a major shift in the company's climate messaging. In 2006, Exxon publicly accepted that the climate crisis posed risks, and it went on to support the Paris agreement. Yet behind closed doors, the company behaved differently, the documents show. [Read More]
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!
The Newsletter's rewards for stalwart readers aim to provide a rest stop for those who might choose to go on to "the weekly reader." This week's offerings start off with Willie Nelson and Sinéad O'Connor singing "Don't Give Up," perhaps an anthem for our times. (Also of interest is an earlier version of "Don't Give Up," sung by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.) This week I also liked Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Universal Soldier." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
(Video) UAW on Strike: In Historic Move, Auto Workers Target All Big Three Automakers at Once
From Democracy Now! [September 15, 2023]
---- For the first time in history, the United Auto Workers has launched a strike against the Big Three U.S. automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler — all at once. UAW President Shawn Fein announced targeted strikes at three facilities: a General Motors plant in Wentzville, Missouri; a Stellantis complex in Toledo, Ohio; and a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan. The action could grow to more locations in the coming days to ramp up pressure on the companies. … As the three auto companies made a combined $21 billion in profits in the first six months of 2023, the UAW is looking to take back contract benefits they conceded in the 2008 financial crisis so manufacturers would not go bankrupt. [See the Program]
Also of interest – "The UAW Strike Matters for the Entire US Working Class," by Alex N. Press, Jacobin Magazine [September 2023] [Link]; "Auto Workers Strike Plants at All Three of the Big 3," by Luis Feliz Leon and Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes [September 15, 2023] [Link]; and "Polling shows exceptionally wide support for the union's bold demands," by John Nichols, The Nation [Link].
(Video) Naomi Klein on Her New Book "Doppelganger" & How Conspiracy Culture Benefits Ruling Elite
From Democracy Now! [September 14, 2023]
---- We spend the hour with acclaimed journalist and author Naomi Klein, whose new book Doppelganger out this week explores what she calls "the mirror world," a growing right-wing alternate universe of misinformation and conspiracies that, while identifying real problems, opportunistically exploits them to advance a hateful and divisive agenda. Klein explains … "It's so hard to look at the reality that we are in right now, with the overlay of endless wars and climate disasters and massive inequality. And so whether we're making up fantastical conspiracy theories or getting lost in our own reflections, it's all about not looking at that reality that is only bearable if we get outside our own heads and collectively organize." [See the Program]
Our Global Maui Moment: Climate Crisis and a World Afire
By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch [September 11, 2023]
---- From the earliest kingdoms to late last night, history has been the story not just of the rise of great powers but of their decline and fall. So, normally, there would be nothing particularly out of the ordinary about the aging America of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a classic imperial power distinctly in decline and threatening to split into pieces. As it happens, though, there's something all too new about the twenty-first-century decline and fall of that other great power of the Cold War era — you know, not the Soviet Union. After all, the present downhill slide of this country is happening on a planet that itself is distinctly in trouble in terms of what's always passed for a decent human life — and that, believe me, is something new under the sun. In fact, in some fashion, the scenario all of us, each in our own fashion, are now living through may be the least known ever.[Read More]
Africa-France: nine theses on the end of a cycle
By Achille Mbembe, Le Grand Continent [France] [September 2023]
---- How should we interpret the long-term transformations that are currently taking place in Africa? How do internal factors enter in? What are the key contradictions induced by the new political economy now in the process of crystallizing on the continent? … This exercise in collective intelligence is all the more urgent if we are to address the issue of security, peace and stability on the continent in the most useful way possible, and also to open up new avenues for future relations between Africa, France and Europe. … As crises follow one after another at such a pace that there will be no respite, there is a real risk of getting bogged down in a long-term tug-of-war that would pave the way not for a new global consciousness, but for the partition of the world. [Read More]
The War in Ukraine
FB - There has been little forward movement this week by Ukraine's "counter-offensive," but the war continues to escalate both in terms of the intensity of the conflict and the expansion of the conflict. President Biden's intention to send an additional $24 billion in military aid to Ukraine may be thwarted by the far right within the House Republicans. And NATO is reinforcing its military presence inside Romania and Bulgaria, following Russian attacks on Ukrainian grain export terminals on the Danube River. Also ….
Hyping Ukraine Counteroffensive, US Press Chose Propaganda Over Journalism
By Bryce Greene, FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting] [September 15, 2023]
---- It has been clear for some time that US corporate news media have explicitly taken a side on the Ukraine War. This role includes suppressing relevant history of the lead-up to the war, attacking people who bring up that history as "conspiracy theorists," accepting official government pronouncements at face value, and promoting an overly rosy picture of the conflict in order to boost morale. For most of the war, most of the US coverage has been as pro-Ukrainian as Ukraine's own media, now consolidated under the Zelenskyy government. Dire predictions sporadically appeared, but were drowned out by drumbeat coverage portraying a Ukrainian army on the cusp of victory, and the Russian army as incompetent and on the verge of collapse. [Read More]
Blinken: US Does Not Oppose Ukraine Targeting Russian Territory With US-Provided Missiles
By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [September 11, 2023]
---- Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that it was up to Ukraine whether or not to target Russian territory with US-provided weapons, a policy that brings the US and Russia closer to a direct clash. Blinken made the comments after ABC News reported that it's likely the Biden administration will soon arm Ukraine with Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles. While appearing on ABC's 'This Week,' Blinken was asked if he was OK with Ukraine using ATACMS to hit targets deep inside Russian territory. "In terms of their targeting decisions, it's their decision, not ours," Blinken replied. As the war has dragged on, the Biden administration has been less and less concerned about the risk of Ukrainian attacks inside Russia escalating the war. [Read More]
War with China?
The US Is Fanning the Flames of War With China
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [August 31, 2023]
---- The United States is gunning for war with China. By cozying up to Taiwan and arming it to the teeth, President Joe Biden is undermining the "One China" policy which has been the cornerstone of U.S.-China relations since 1979. The Biden administration is enlisting South Korea and Japan to encircle China. The U.S. military is conducting provocative military maneuvers that exacerbate the conflict in the South China Sea. Biden is escalating tensions with China and intensifying the danger of nuclear war in the Asia-Pacific. And Republican presidential candidates are also fanning the flames of war with China. … Since the Obama administration's "pivot to Asia" in 2012, 60 percent of U.S. naval forces have been transferred to the Asia-Pacific, and 400 of the 800 U.S. military bases worldwide and 130,000 troops "are now circling China," Chun wrote. The U.S.'s "goal is to force China's hand by triggering and escalating a hybrid war on multiple fronts, including military, technology, economy, information and media." [Read More]
The South China Sea's Resource Wars and Environmental Collapse
By Joshua Frank, Tomdispatch [September 13, 2023]
---- According to those who want to mine our way out of the climate crisis, such highly sought-after metals and minerals will remain crucial to weaning the world off dirty fossil fuels. Yet, count on one thing: they will come at a grave cost — not only geopolitically but environmentally, too — and perhaps nowhere will such impacts be felt more devastatingly than in the world's fragile seas, including the South China Sea where major armed powers are already facing off in an unnerving fashion, with the toll on both those waters and the rest of us still to be discovered. [Read More]
Civil Liberties/
(Video) Julian Assange and the end of American democracy
By Chris Hedges, The Real News [September 13, 2023]
---- The US government has hounded Julian Assange since WikiLeaks first revealed the extent of US war crimes in 2010. In the process of persecuting Assange, the federal government has used every tool at its disposal and even pushed beyond the boundaries that supposedly restrict state power in defense of civil liberties. One of the most insidious tactics is the use of the Espionage Act, which had not been used for against whistleblowers and journalists for almost a century before Assange's case. In the first part of a two-part conversation, lawyer and human rights defender Stella Assange, spouse of Julian Assange, joins Chris Hedges for a look at the vast and vicious campaign by the US to silence Julian Assange, and what it all portends for our democracy [See the Program] To watch part two of this interview, go here.
The State of the Union
America's Short-Lived Safety Net Has Almost Fully Unraveled
By Bryce Covert, The Nation [September 15, 2023]
---- When Joe Biden took office, he didn't just take aggressive steps to contain the Covid-19 pandemic; through the American Rescue Plan, signed into law in March 2021, he wove together one of the strongest safety nets the country has ever seen. But now, only two years later, that net has rapidly unraveled. … Pandemic safety net spending allowed Americans to accumulate a buffer of savings, but it's now dwindling and could run out entirely this fall. Biden seized the pandemic crisis to push through programs that the country has long desperately needed—and then let them fade away, leaving Americans once again to fend for themselves. [Read More]. Also of interest is "Poverty Rate Soared in 2022 As Aid Ended and Prices Rose," by Ben Casselman and Lydia DePillis, New York Times [September 13, 2023] [Link].
(Video) "Capitalism Is an Insecurity Machine": Astra Taylor on Student Debt & Our Radically Unequal World
From Democracy Now! [September 12, 2023]
---- As the COVID-19 era pause on federal student debt payments comes to an end and some 40 million Americans will resume payments next month, we speak with Debt Collective organizer Astra Taylor about Biden's new Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan and her organization's new tool that helps people apply to the Department of Education to cancel the borrower's debt. … She notes organizing is about "the alchemy of turning our vulnerabilities, turning our oppression, turning our insecurities into solidarity so that we can change the structures that are undermining our self-esteem and well-being." [See the Program]
Israel/Palestine
'It was set up to fail us': Palestinians reflect on 30 years of the Oslo Accords
By Yumna Patel, Mondoweiss [September 2023]
---- On September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Arafat shook hands in front of a belated U.S. President Bill Clinton on the White House lawn. It was the day that the Declaration of Principles (DOP), or the first Oslo Agreement (Oslo I) was signed, kicking off the so-called peace process that was meant to culminate with "peace" in the region and resolve the so-called "conflict." But the Oslo Accords never actually promised an independent Palestinian state, or even something that remotely resembled it. In reality, it carved the occupied Palestinian territory up into bantustans with limited self-autonomy for Palestinians on a minuscule portion of their homeland. It paved the way for Israel to swallow up more land, resources, and tighten its grip on the borders and the people living within it. [Read More]
Also of interest – "Mahmoud Abbas Holocaust Controversy Spotlights Deep Disillusion With Palestinian Authority," by Alice Speri, The Intercept [September 15 2023] [Link]; and "Palestine in Pictures: August 2023," from The Electronic Intifada [September 6, 2023] [Link].
Our History [Chile: "The Other 9/11"]
[FB - Our memorials about "9/11" last weekend should have included a focus on "the other 9/11," the 50th anniversary of the fascist coup against the social-democratic government in Chile. We know now (and partially understood then) that the coup was approved by and supported by the Nixon-Kissinger government in the USA. Ironically, the number of people killed in the US 9/11 and that of Chile was about the same: 3,000. But of course they were very different; and as fascism haunts/stalks the USA, the memory of Chile's 9/11 becomes increasingly relevant.]
50 Years After "the Other 9/11": Remembering the Chilean Coup
By Ariel Dorfman, The Nation [September 11, 2023]
[FB – Ariel Dorfman was part of Allende's government at the time of the coup, and having escaped arrest and death, became a well-known writer during his life of exile.]
---- The violence that Allende had tried to avoid was visited ferociously on the building where he had taken his last stand in defense of dignity and democracy. And if the military had dared to bomb La Moneda from the air and set it ablaze with tanks from the ground, what would they not do to the Chileans (I was one of them) who were fervent followers of Allende? His many supporters—and their vulnerable bodies—soon found out. … I am still haunted today by these violations, those broken and twisted and unfinished lives. I cannot walk the streets of Santiago without constantly being reminded, 50 years later, of the pain perpetrated on the friends I lost and continue to mourn, and of the compañeros whose names and stories I never knew but who marched with me on our common quest for a better land. [Read More]
Also of interest - (Video) "50 Years After Coup in Chile: Peter Kornbluh on How U.S. Continues to Hide Role of Nixon & Kissinger," from Democracy Now! [September 12, 2023] [Link]; "Remembering Salvador Allende and the Chilean Counterrevolution," by [Link]; and "50 Years After Chilean Coup, Let's Remember Pinochet Resisters' Inspiring Legacy," by Margaret Power, Truthout [September 11, 2023] [Link].
