CFOW Newletter - Trump & Putin: Is Peace Possible?

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

July 16, 2018

 

Hello All – Those working for peace/no war find themselves in an extraordinary political vise.  Even the days when the John Birch Society accused President Eisenhower of being a card-carrying Communist cannot compare to our present moment, when a broad swath of the country believes that the President of the United States is "working for" Russia.  Moreover, one of the indications of President Trump's perfidy is his refusal to be as aggressive towards Russia as heretofore liberals would like.  Instead, Trump criticizes the European Union and NATO, says that the United States and Russia can be friends, and rejects the indictments of Russian intelligence officers on the basis of President Putin's assurances that the charges are false. Which way does peacemaking lie?

 

Several links to news articles and programs noted below in this newsletter try to regain some perspective on what's happening between the United States and Russia, and within the United States between those supporting President Trump and his opponents.  They remind us of the mainstream media narrative that framed the forthcoming Summit in recent weeks was one which was already "won" by President Putin, simply by gaining a meeting with a US president.  They remind us of the call by leading Democrats to cancel the Summit, in light of the indictments by the FBI of Russian intelligence officers.  And they remind us that so many of the aggressive calls to "confront" the Russians are coming from used to be liberal media outlets like The New York Times and MSNBD.  To illuminate the context in which the Summit is taking place, please look at the Democracy Now! debate linked below.

 

An underlying issue in the debate about the Summit and around Trump's performance in Europe is the question of Russia's role in "meddling" – or not – in the 2016 election.  In its extreme version, the prevailing argument among Democrats and much of the mainstream media is that the Russians attempted in multiple ways, including "hacking" of the emails of the Democratic party and leading officials, to tip the election in favor of Donald Trump, on whom they may or may not have "compromising" information that they could use to blackmail him.  While the recent FBI indictments of Russian intelligence officers was presented without any supporting evidence, the mere announcement of the indictments gives support to both the Russian "meddling" hypothesis as well as to the theory that there is a conspiracy by the US intelligence agencies to nullify the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton. Again, I've included below a useful debate about the "meddling" evidence and what it means.

 

Amidst the sound and fury over Trump and his presidency that is certain to ensue in the coming weeks, I hope that we peace and justice stalwarts can keep our eyes on the important developments going on in the world of economic predators, warlike power politics, and white supremacy that have been our focus since we started this CFOW project in 2001. This is a moment when our most useful "work" may be to understand and explain what's going on.

 

News Notes

Did you know that Congress has a Progressive Caucus?  You certainly might have missed it, for all the media it gets.  So check out this short, informative interview with Mark Weisbrot about the Caucus, its 78 members, and what it does.  And next time you run into Nita Lowey or Eliot Engel, ask them why they aren't part of it, as they are so progressive.

 

It's hard to satirize America, when reality itself is so loopy.  But Sacha Baron Cohen has done it, with this episode of his new Showtime series, "Who Is America?"

 

A bill now in the House of Representatives is called the "Anti-Semitism Awareness Act." As this useful article from The Forward explains, the Bill would put into stone a definition of anti-Semitism that equates criticism of Israel or its government with anti-Semitism. This kind of legislation is also happening at the state level. I have no information about the positions of Nita Lowey (202 225 6506) or Eliot Engel (202 225 2464) on this legislation; but call them and find out!

 

Things to Do/Coming Attractions

Ongoing – CFOW holds a vigil/rally each Saturday at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring) from 12 to 1 p.m.  Everyone invited; please join us!

 

Ongoing – Added to the Hastings farmers market on Saturdays is the opportunity to recycle food scraps, including meat and anything that was once alive, according to coordinator EZ.  Look for the big bin at the market; and for more info email hastingscompost@gmail.com.

 

Friday, July 27^th – On the 65^th anniversary of the Armistice of the Korean War, the Korean-American organization Nodutdol for Korean Community Development invites us to a teach-in/forum on the United States and the Korean peninsula, and what peace activists need to do now.  At the Nodutdol office, 112 W. 27^th St., 6^th floor, NYC, starting at 6:30 p.m.

 

Sunday, August 5^th – The next CFOW monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 p.m.  Everyone is invited to these meetings.  In addition to reviewing our work of the past month, current events, and plans for the next monthly, we can pause to remember the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings of August 6^th & 9^th, 1945.

 

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 climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We 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.  If you would like to make a financial contribution to our work, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!

 

This Newsletter

Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned.  Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media. In addition to the excellent "Featured Essays," I encourage you to read/view the debates linked below about the Trump-Putin Summit, about the evidence or lack of evidence re: Russian hacking and "meddling"; and about what has happened to the Nicaragua regime in the last two decades.  I also recommend Gareth Porter's excellent analysis of the media/US political elite attempt to sabotage peace negotiations between the United States and North Korea; a set of very good articles about US immigration policy; and a powerful article by Israeli reporter Gideon Levy about Gaza.  Read on!

 

Rewards!

As this is a full-size newsletter, reading stalwarts might want to pause and check out the Rewards! before chugging on.  Saturday was Bastille Day, the anniversary of the French Revolution (1789).  Each year this newsletter celebrates The Day with a re-run of a wonderful scene from the most romantic movie ever.  And for more fun, here's an Old Favorite from Frank Turner.  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

(Video) Bodies, Borders, Resistance, Rebirth: Arundhati Roy

From Democracy Now! [July 12, 2018]

---- India in the throes of a fascism that echoes what we have in America. The country is undergoing a political upheaval with PM Modi at its front, and fueled by increased violence towards Muslims, queers, Dalits, women, and more. Our returning guest, Arundhati Roy, covers this vast breadth of ground in her second novel in 20 years, 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,' now out in paperback. [Read More]

 

(Film) How a Brutal Immigration Raid Devastated an American Small Town — And How It Bounced Back

By Alice Speri, The Intercept [July 14 2018]

---- It doesn't get more American than Postville, Iowa. The small rural community looks like countless others across the country: tidy lawns lining anonymous streets around the one big business that keeps the town employed, teenagers working shifts at the local YMCA, families sharing frosted cake in a church basement after service, dressed up kids dancing in front of their parents in a school gym. Postville's youth, too, is as American as it gets: Minority students, from about 14 different countries, make up well over half the local high school's student body. When visitors come to the school and see Somali girls in their hijabs, "their heads turn so fast … I'm afraid they're hurting their neck," the principal said. "That doesn't faze our kids." … These and other stories from Postville are explored in "America First: the Legacy of an Immigration Raid," a new documentary from Univision, published in partnership with The Intercept, which tells the story of the small Iowa town a decade after a massive raid on the local meatpacking plant. The diversity and resilience of Postville's residents are a reflection of the country's strengths, just as the deep-seated racism, both casual and systemic, that shaped the town's story is a ubiquitous reality of American life. [Read More]

 

The Jewish Revolt [A profile of the new Jewish organization "IfNotNow"]

By Abraham Riesman, New York Magazine [July 2018]

---- For IfNotNow … disrupting the Jewish community is arguably the whole point. Formed during the 2014 conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces in Gaza, the group has experienced a stunning rise in prominence in the past year and a half. Their public demonstrations have drawn thousands of participants across the U.S., but they've recently moved into a new phase, one in which they emphasize pointed online campaigns that accuse the Jewish institutions their members emerged from — religious organizations, summer camps, youth groups, Birthright — of lying to them and supporting injustices against Palestinians. In response, critics from the right and (perhaps more notably) the center-left have become increasingly aggressive in their attacks on IfNotNow, inadvertently raising the group's profile and making it a candidate for the new face of the American Jewish left. Their criticisms are as potent as their goal is nebulous. "The occupation is a daily nightmare for those who live under it and a moral disaster for those who support and administer it," screams bold text at the top of their homepage. "Ifnotnow is working to transform the American Jewish community's support for occupation into a call for freedom and dignity for all." [Read More]

 

THE TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT

Summitgate and the Campaign vs. 'Peace'

By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation [July 11, 2018]

---- As a rule, American presidents have departed for summits with bipartisan support and well-wishes. Trump's upcoming meeting with Russian President Putin, in Helsinki on July 16, is profoundly different in two respects. US-Russian relations have rarely, if ever, been more dangerous. And never before has a president's departure—in Trump's case, first for a NATO summit and then the one with Putin—been accompanied by allegations that he is disloyal to the United States and thus cannot be trusted, defamations once issued only by extremist fringe elements in American politics. Now, however, we are told this daily by mainstream publications, broadcasts, and "think tanks." According to a representative of the Clintons' Center for American Progress, "Trump is going to sell out America and its allies." The New York Times and The Washington Post also feature "experts"—they are chosen accordingly—who "worry" and "fear" that Trump and Putin "will get along." The Times of London, a bastion of Russophobic Cold War advocacy, captures the mainstream perspective in a single headline: "Fears Grow Over Prospect of Trump 'Peace Deal' with Putin." [Read More]

 

Climb Down From the Summit of Hostile Propaganda

By Norman Solomon, ZNet [July 16, 2018]
---- Throughout the day before the summit in Helsinki, the lead story on the New York Times home page stayed the same: "Just by Meeting With Trump, Putin Comes Out Ahead." The Sunday headline was in harmony with the tone of U.S. news coverage overall. As for media commentary, the Washington Post was in the dominant groove as it editorialized that Russia's President Vladimir Putin is "an implacably hostile foreign adversary." … A bellicose stance toward Russia has become so routine and widespread that we might not give it a second thought — and that makes it all the more hazardous. After President George W. Bush declared "You're either with us or against us," many Americans gradually realized what was wrong with a Manichean view of the world. Such an outlook is even more dangerous today. … For human survival on this planet, an overarching truth appears in an open letter published last week by The Nation magazine: "No political advantage, real or imagined, could possibly compensate for the consequences if even a fraction of U.S. and Russian arsenals were to be utilized in a thermonuclear exchange. The tacit pretense that the worsening of U.S.-Russian relations does not worsen the odds of survival for the next generations is profoundly false." [Read More]

 

A Useful/Interesting Debate on Today's Summit Meeting

(Video) Debate: Is Trump-Putin Summit a "Danger to America" or Crucial Diplomacy Between Nuclear Powers?

From Democracy Now! [July 16, 2018] [See the Program]

 

And a debate on the significance of Mueller's indictment of the Russians

Indictment of Russian Intelligence Operatives Should Quell Harebrained Conspiracy Theories on DNC Hack

By James Risen, The Intercept [July 13 2018] [Link]

 

Memo to the President Ahead of Monday's Summit

By Ray McGovern and Bill Binney, Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity [VIPS] [July 16, 2018] [Link][.

 

WAR & PEACE

War with North Korea?

Media, Hardliners Play Up North Korean Nuclear 'Deception' Claim

By Gareth Porter, Antiwar.com [July 11, 2018]

---- Just as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was about to leave for denuclearization negotiations in Pyongyang, a spate of media stories reported that North Korea is deceiving the Trump administration by seeking to hide some of its nuclear facilities. Those stories suggest an effort by some Trump administration officials, led by National Security Adviser John Bolton, to derail the US-North Korea negotiations by pressuring Trump and Pompeo to embrace the narrative that Kim Jong Un is deceiving the US. Before becoming national security adviser, Bolton had made no secret of his opposition to any Trump effort to reach an agreement with North Korea. … The timing of the two stories, appearing within hours on June 29 and 30, suggests that the decision to leak the intelligence assessment to the two news outlets was part of an effort to create pressure on Trump to integrate the narrative of deception by Kim Jong UN into his negotiating policy. [Read More]

 

The War in Afghanistan

17 Years Into War, U.S. Opts for Direct Talks With Taliban

By Mujib Mashal and Eric Schmitt, New York Times [July 15, 2018]

---- The Trump administration told diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban, which could grow into broader negotiations. It's a significant shift in policy in Afghanistan. [Read More]

 

The War in Syria

Horror in Southern Syria, as 300,000 Flee a Government Assault

By Loubna Mrie, The Nation [July 11, 2018]

---- The Dera'a region was facing the worst military attack since the rebels took over in 2012. By the beginning of July, dozens of people had been killed, including children. Most health and educational facilities in Dera'a, which is in the southern part of Syria bordering Jordan, were either closed or entirely out of service due to the widespread airstrikes.  According to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the assault had forced more than 271,800 people to flee their homes as of July 2: 164,000 moved toward Quneitra, near the Israeli border, and 60,000 others ended up, like Saeed and his family, at the Jordanian border, hoping they would be allowed to cross (eventually, well over 300,000 fled). But officials in Jordan, which already hosts more than 650,000 Syrian refugees, will not allow any more to enter because of security and economic factors.  … On July 4, a truce between the Syrian government and the rebels was brokered by Russia. The Syrian government issued a statement asking people to leave the borders and go back home, claiming it will not arrest anyone. Saeed, like thousands of other Syrians on the Jordanian border, drove back with his family to his half-standing house, which he'd fled nine days earlier. Today, of the 60,000, only some 150–200 Syrians remain on the Jordanian border. … Now Dera'a, which was one of the first cities to rebel against the government, is showing its loyalty to President Bashar al-Assad—at gunpoint. The Syrian government has indeed won. It has won the war against its own people. https://www.thenation.com/article/horror-southern-syria-300000-flee-government-assault/

 

War with Iran?

This Think Tank is Pushing Regime Change in Iran—and the White House is Listening

By James Carden, The Nation [July 12, 2018]

----- Described by the journalist Mark Perry as "perhaps the most powerful outside influencer of the Trump White House today," the Foundation for Defense of Democracies FDD is credited, even by its opponents, as being among Washington's most effective proponents of neoconservative ideas. In the estimation of Trita Parsi, the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, "FDD certainly punches above its weight."  Over the past several years, FDD had helped lead the opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear agreement, and is currently spearheading a push to wage economic warfare not only against Iran, but also against European countries too should they decide to part from the Trump administration's policy on Iran. Today, FDD's chief executive is Mark Dubowitz. Dubowitz is widely seen as "the architect of many of the sanctions that we have against Iran right now, who advised Congress on how to draft that legislation and has also advised Treasury and the White House on his opinions about sanctions." The Washington Post's neocon blogger Jennifer Rubin calls him a "sanctions guru."  [Read More]

 

Evaluating Nicaragua: A Debate

The Open Veins of Nicaragua

By Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ZNet [July 13, 2018]
---- I belong to that 1980s generation that enthusiastically welcomed and actively supported the Sandinista Revolution. The progressive drive which had been revived by Cuba's 1959 revolution had been largely brought to a halt by the US imperialist intervention. … The Sandinista revolution heralded the emergence of an auspicious counter-current, its significance stemming not only from the very concrete transformations it brought about (unprecedented popular participation, agrarian reform, a UNESCO award-winning literacy campaign, a cultural revolution, the establishment of a public health service, etc.) but also from the fact that all this was carried out under the difficult circumstances of the extremely aggressive blockade imposed by Ronald Reagan. … Democrats in general, and the political forces of the left in particular, have reason to be perplexed. But before anything else they have the duty to re-examine the recent choices of the supposedly left-wing governments of many countries in the continent and to question their silence in the face of so many and so drawn- out abuses of political ideals. That is why the present text is partly self-critical. [Read More]

 

Correcting The Record: What Is Really Happening In Nicaragua?

By Kevin Zeese and Nils McCune, Popular Resistance [July 10, 2018]

---- There is a great deal of false and inaccurate information about Nicaragua in the media. Even on the left, some have simply repeated the dubious claims of CNN and Nicaragua's oligarchic media to support the removal of President Ortega. The narrative of nonviolent protesters versus anti-riot squads and pro-government paramilitaries has not been questioned by international media.  This article seeks to correct the record, describe what is happening in Nicaragua and why. As we write this, the coup seems to be failing, people have rallied for peace (as this massive march for peace held Saturday, July 7 showed) and the truth is coming out (e.g., the weapons cache discovered in a Catholic Church on July 9th). It is important to understand what is occurring because Nicaragua's is an example of the types of violent coups the US and the wealthy use to put in place business dominated, neoliberal governments. If people understand these tactics, they will become less effective. [Read More]

 

GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS

This Hurricane Season, Puerto Ricans Are Imagining a Sustainable Future

By Celia Bottger, The Nation [July 13, 2018]

---- Nine months after Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean island faces another potentially devastating hurricane season, while much of its infrastructure and land still remain in tatters. The Category 5 hurricane that ripped through the Caribbean last fall not only caused nearly 5,000 deaths, but also exposed the fragility of the island's social, political, and economic underpinnings. The truth behind Maria's devastation and the United States' laggard response to the hurricane lies in centuries of colonial exploitation—first by Spain and then by the United States—and in its perpetual subjugation to the whims of American elites. … Despite its catastrophic impacts, Hurricane Maria provides a kind of tabula rasa upon which a new, economically regenerative, and politically empowered Puerto Rico can be built. Several international and local organizations are already working in Puerto Rico to transition it away from an extractive and mainland-dependent economy and toward a self-sufficient, socially just, and ecologically sound one—while at the same time enhancing local economies, reclaiming sovereignty, and boosting climate resilience. [Read More]

 

July 9th, 2018 — New York State's Day of Fracked Gas Infamy

"I grant Millennium Pipeline Company, LLC's (Millennium) July 6, 2018 request, as supplemented on July 9, 2018, to place into service the Valley Lateral Project in Orange County, New York."

- J. Rich McGuire, Director, Division of Gas-Environment and Engineering

With this one short sentence, J. Rich McGuire, an obscure technocrat within an obscure agency — The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — just lashed the planet to 40+ years of significant climate wrecking greenhouse gas emissions, and New York State to unprecedented levels of dangerous ground level ozone and various hazardous air pollutants (HAPS). A short digest of events leading to this unmitigated disaster reveals the duplicity and unsuitability of federal, state and local agencies and actors, as well as 'big greens', in defending the public's interests caught in the path of Marcellus Shale fracked gas determined to dominate the Northeast. [Read More]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Do You Care About the Rule of Law? Then Act Like It

By Sonia Nazario, The New York Times [July 11, 2018]

---- Opponents of immigration have long had one rallying cry: rule of law! But most of the people seeking asylum at the Adelanto Detention Facility followed the law to a T. They presented themselves at ports of entry on our southern border and asked for asylum. The Trump administration seems to be using every tactic possible to prevent them from gaining that asylum, even if they clearly qualify. … Instead of supporting people running from harm, we have built a machine designed to psychologically break them in the hopes that they will give up and go home. This gutting of our asylum system has been going on for some time. In the immigration courts, which decide asylum cases for people who are caught or turn themselves in at the border, 45 percent of applicants were rejected in the 2012 fiscal year. In 2017, asylum denials jumped to 62 percent. [Read More]

 

We Need to Offer More Than Asylum

By Roberto Suro, New York Times [July 14, 2018]

---- A lasting solution must recognize that these surges are not isolated events but rather desperate developments in a decades-long migration. People who make up nearly 10 percent of the populations of those countries are already living here. It is a migration with momentum, and it comes from close by. They can walk to our border. Enforcement alone won't stop them, certainly not enforcement consistent with our laws. So the root causes must be addressed. In the meantime, the families will keep coming. As we're seeing yet again, our asylum system is dysfunctional. What we need is a new visa program designed for the number and characteristics of the people arriving at the American border. [Read More]

 

Also useful/illuminating on our immigration crisis – Kate Aronoff, "Andrew Cuomo's Biggest Donors Rake in Millions From ICE," The Intercept [July 12 2018] [Link]; Julianne Hing, "What Can $20 Million Buy? Activists Attempt to Post Bond for 2,500 Parents in Immigration Detention,"" The Nation [July 11, 2018] [Link]; Ashley Curtin, "Detaining Immigrant Children – A Billion-Dollar Industry," NationofChange [July 15, 2018] [Link]; and Julianne Hing, "What Does It Mean to Abolish ICE?" The Nation [July 11, 2018] [Link].

 

What Happens if the Gender Gap Becomes a Gender Chasm?

By Thomas B. Edsall, The New York Times [July 12, 2018]

---- For nearly 40 years, the gender gap in voting has been the subject of continued speculation. How much does it matter? Would it be wide enough to put Democrats in office? Now, with President Trump ascendant, the question becomes still more urgent: What happens if the gender gap becomes a gender chasm? … The potential gender gap in congressional voting has risen from 20 and 22 points in 2014 and 2016, according to exit polls, to 33 points in a Quinnipiac Poll published earlier this month. Men of all races say they intend to vote for Republican House candidates 50-42, while women of all races say they intend to vote for Democratic candidates 58-33. Significantly, white women, a majority of whom backed Trump in 2016, now say they intend to vote for Democratic House candidates in 2018 by a 14-point margin, 52-38, according to Quinnipiac. White men say they intend to vote for Republican House candidates 56-38 in 2018. … Men's commitment to protecting their status — their dominant position in the social order — cannot be counted out in 2018 or 2020. Elections have become a sexualized battlefield, and men have repeatedly demonstrated their determination to win no matter the social cost. The outcome of the next two elections will show whether women are equally determined to fight tooth and nail. [Read More]

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

We Should Be Saluting the Gaza Strip

By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [July 15, 2018]

---- Were it not for the Gaza Strip, the occupation would have been long forgotten. Were it not for the Gaza Strip, Israel would have erased the Palestinian problem from its agenda and continued on blithely with its crimes and annexations, with its routine, as if 4 million people were not living under its heel. Were it not for the Gaza Strip, the world would also have forgotten. Most of it already has. This is why we must now salute the Gaza Strip — mainly the spirit of the Gaza Strip, the only one that is still breathing life into the desperate and lost cause of the Palestinian struggle for liberty. The resolute struggle of the Gaza Strip should also spark admiration in Israel. The handful of people with a conscience who still remain here should give thanks to the unbroken spirit of the Gaza Strip. The spirit of the West Bank crumpled after the failure of the second intifada, as did the spirit of the Israeli peace camp — most of which shattered long ago. Only the spirit of the Gaza Strip stands steadfast in its struggle.  [Read More]

 

The Maps of Israeli Settlements That Shocked Barack Obama

By Adam Entous, The New Yorker [July 2018]

[FB – This useful article caught my attention, in part, because the map of Palestine/Israel that so "shocked Barack Obama" had been posted by a pro-Palestinian group as a billboard advertisement along the MetroNorth train line.  What was a "shock" to Obama was part of the daily commute for thousands!]

---- One afternoon in the spring of 2015, a senior State Department official named Frank Lowenstein paged through a government briefing book and noticed a map that he had never seen before. Lowenstein was the Obama Administration's special envoy on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, a position that exposed him to hundreds of maps of the West Bank. (One adorned his State Department office.) Typically, those maps made Jewish settlements and outposts look tiny compared to the areas where the Palestinians lived. The new map in the briefing book was different. It showed large swaths of territory that were off limits to Palestinian development and filled in space between the settlements and the outposts. At that moment, Lowenstein told me, he saw "the forest for the trees"—not only were Palestinian population centers cut off from one another but there was virtually no way to squeeze a viable Palestinian state into the areas that remained. Lowenstein's team did the math. When the settlement zones, the illegal outposts, and the other areas off limits to Palestinian development were consolidated, they covered almost sixty per cent of the West Bank. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

Two Intellectual Giants of the American Left

By Paul Buhle, Monthly Review [June 1, 2018]

[FB – This is a review of the correspondence of the founders of the venerable US/left magazine, Monthly Review, my first "radical" subscription when I was starting out. - Nicholas Baran and John Bellamy Foster, editors, The Age of Monopoly Capital: Selected Correspondence of Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, 1949–1964]

---- A young person happening upon Monthly Review around 1960 would discover a field of thought dramatically distant from anything else then available in the United States, even within the left. That young person would possibly come to Baran's Political Economy of Growth and find the magazine's insights further consolidated, with staggering results. As Baran's book revealed, the world economy was truly a political economy, and the magic formulae of the day ("development") promoted and rationalized the domination and exploitation of the third world. In the mainstream vision, especially popular with the Kennedy administration, the United States would dictate the terms of development. Behind the seemingly kindly offer of assistance lurked the reality of counterinsurgency, with hundreds of thousands of dead and so many millions of poor left behind by the "pacification" of Latin America in the 1960s alone. Baran and Sweezy began their shared project with few illusions. The brilliance of the two men stands out in these letters, as they discuss, back and forth, agreeing and disagreeing, theories of economy and issues of contemporary society in ways then unthinkable to other commentators. [Read More]

CFOW Weekend Update - Program Sunday in Hastings on North & South Korea

CFOW Weekend Update

July 12, 2018

 

Hello All – We have a busy weekend ahead.  Please join us for our weekly rally/vigil on Saturday, from 12 to 1, at the VFW Plaza in Hastings.  This week our signs and leaflet will reflect the chaos of Trump's meeting with NATO, as we critique our government's many wars – Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. – supported by Republicans and Democrats alike.

 

And on Sunday, please join us to hear Mr. Soobok Kim, an expert on what's happening in North and South Korea.  The event will take place at the James Harmon Community Center in Hastings, 44 Main St., starting at 2 p.m.  Mr. Kim has visited North Korea five times – most recently last November – and will provide useful context to the talks underway between the United States and North Korea.

 

In the last newsletter I pointed out that the United States and North Korea seem to have different understandings about what "denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula means, and whether concessions/agreements by North Korea must be met by concessions by the United States.  These differences were apparent at the third meeting between US and North Korean negotiators last week, when North Korean spokespeople accused the United States of "bullying" and "gangster tactics."  From the sketchy details that have been reported, it appears that the United States demanded a full and verified list of North Korean military and nuclear sites before negotiations will proceed.  Secretary of State Pompeo also announced that no US economic sanctions would be lifted until North Korea had completely dismantled its nuclear program.

 

Does this hard-line approach to the negotiations represent a change in US goals and strategies?  In the good/useful weekend reading linked below, I have included an article by Gareth Porter about the U.S. dimension/background to these important talks.  Please read it, as it presents a view not readily available in the US mainstream media.  Porter describes an apparent split among US policymakers regarding the US-North Korean negotiations, with recently appointed National Security Adviser John Bolton taking steps to derail the prospects for success.  Porter points out that Bolton used a similar strategy in an attempt to derail the semi-successful negotiations that took place in the 1990s. To this end, an "intelligence" report from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was fortuitously "leaked" to NBC and to the Washington Post, which put into play the claims that North Korea was "insincere" in stating that it would end its nuclear program, and that North Korea was actually taking steps right now to expand and strengthen its nuclear weaponry.  Whether such claims derail the next rounds of nuclear negotiations remains to be seen, but we hope that Sunday's forum on North and South Korea will strengthen our defenses against pro-war misinformation coming from John Bolton and the mainstream media.

 

The other pieces of good/useful weekend reading linked below are also timely. Nation magazine Katrina vanden Huevel speaks on Democracy Now! about Trump's performance at the NATO meeting, and the threats of war embodied in current NATO doctrine and practice; immigration activist Sonia Nazario writes about the violations of the rule of law in the drama underway at the US southern border; and Nation writer Julianne Hing asks, "What do we mean when we say "Abolish Ice"?

 

Rewards!

Although this "Update" is a mere note, it nevertheless includes a Reward for faithful readers.  As Saturday is July 14^th, the anniversary of the French Revolution (1789), our rewards honor this great event.  First up, as it is each year, is the scene from Casablanca in which Resistance leader Victor Laslo (also husband of Ingrid Bergman – complications!) strikes up the band with the French national anthem, La Marseillaise.  But what are they actually singing?  Next up, as it is each year, we have the chanteuse Mireille Mathieu singing the song, but now with some translation!  As you see, this is not a pacifist song, but a marching song against the Royalists and their European allies who are trying to destroy the new French Republican: blood soaks the earth, etc. – Finally, for context, here is some documentary footage from Jean Renoir's great 1938 film, La Marseillaise.  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

SOME GOOD/USEFUL WEEKEND READING

 

Media, Hardliners Play Up North Korean Nuclear 'Deception' Claim

By Gareth Porter, Antiwar.com [July 11, 2018]

---- Just as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was about to leave for denuclearization negotiations in Pyongyang, a spate of media stories reported that North Korea is deceiving the Trump administration by seeking to hide some of its nuclear facilities. Those stories suggest an effort by some Trump administration officials, led by National Security Adviser John Bolton, to derail the US-North Korea negotiations by pressuring Trump and Pompeo to embrace the narrative that Kim Jong Un is deceiving the US. Before becoming national security adviser, Bolton had made no secret of his opposition to any Trump effort to reach an agreement with North Korea. … The timing of the two stories, appearing within hours on June 29 and 30, suggests that the decision to leak the intelligence assessment to the two news outlets was part of an effort to create pressure on Trump to integrate the narrative of deception by Kim Jong Un into his negotiating policy. [Read More]  Porter's previous articles on this topic are also very useful.  Read "How Corporate Media Are Undermining a US-North Korea Nuclear Weapons Deal" [May 23], "How Corporate Media Got the Trump-Kim Summit All Wrong" [June 11], and "An Elite Coalition Emerges Against a Trump-Kim Agreement" [June 21].

 

(Video) Katrina vanden Heuvel on NATO Military Spending & Avoiding Cold War Nuclear Catastrophe with Russia

From Democracy Now! [July 12, 2018]

---- At the NATO summit, President Trump called on member states to double their military spending to 4 percent of gross domestic product, and hailed the meeting as a success. He is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, joins us to discuss NATO, the militarization of U.S. foreign policy and avoiding a second Cold War with Russia over allegations of election meddling. "I would argue that the bipartisan establishment consensus is bankrupt. … We believe you can have secure elections and avoid nuclear catastrophe," said vanden Heuvel. [See the Program]

 

Do You Care About the Rule of Law? Then Act Like It

By Sonia Nazario, The New York Times [July 11, 2018]

---- Opponents of immigration have long had one rallying cry: rule of law! But most of the people seeking asylum at the Adelanto Detention Facility followed the law to a T. They presented themselves at ports of entry on our southern border and asked for asylum. The Trump administration seems to be using every tactic possible to prevent them from gaining that asylum, even if they clearly qualify. … Instead of supporting people running from harm, we have built a machine designed to psychologically break them in the hopes that they will give up and go home. This gutting of our asylum system has been going on for some time. In the immigration courts, which decide asylum cases for people who are caught or turn themselves in at the border, 45 percent of applicants were rejected in the 2012 fiscal year. In 2017, asylum denials jumped to 62 percent. [Read More]

 

What Does It Mean to Abolish ICE?

By Julianne Hing, The Nation [July 11, 2018]

---- Activists and politicians want a total overhaul of immigration enforcement—but do we have a real plan? People's outrage at ICE and politicians' public statements are now feeding off each other, accelerating the movement to overhaul immigration enforcement. Trump's practice of tearing children from their parents has woken up the country like little else in the president's extreme anti-immigration agenda or in Barack Obama's record-setting deportation spree before that. But what does "Abolish ICE" actually mean? Is the slogan just a hashtag-friendly social-media phenomena? Can this rallying cry make the jump to a successful policy agenda? [Read More]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Renewed danger in Korea; Immigration chaos continues

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

July 8, 2018

 

Hello All – Intended to begin step-by-step negotiations to resolve differences between the United States and North Korea – and perhaps to head off a nuclear war – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's third visit to North Korea's capital did not go well, with North Korea accusing the United States of "robbery" and "gangster-like" demands.  What is all this about? We hope to provide some clarity and context at a CFOW forum next Sunday, at the Hastings Community Center, starting at 2 p.m., when we present/hear from Korean expert Soobok Kim.  Mr. Kim has made five visits to North Korea, and will be able to provide some perspectives sorely missing in our mainstream media.

 

This is very serious.  Today's [UK] Financial Times headlines "Pompeo refuses sanctions relief as N Korea diplomacy hits roadblock." While details of what happened in North Korea are not available, the story suggests that preliminary discussion exposed two (at least) latent contradictions in the countries' negotiating positions.  The first is that the United States will only remove economic sanctions after North Korea has complied with all of the US demands, rather than gradually, as step-by-step negotiations proceed.  The second is that the United States and North Korea have different understanding of what "denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula means.  For the United States, it means North Korea's "surrender" of its military defenses.  For North Korea, it means that the United States must give security guarantees that it will not attack North Korea.

 

While these contradictions have been visible since Day One, US opponents of negotiating a diplomatic settlement with North Korea went on the offensive last week, adding further stress to the prospect of successful negotiations. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency apparently leaked a report to NBC, The Washington Post, and other cooperative news agencies that claimed that North Korea was insincere in its claims to be seeking peace, and was in fact continuing to enhance its nuclear program.  As Korean expert Tim Shorrock explains in his article linked below ("War & Peace"), one wonders if the mainstream media is about to play the same role with pseudo-intelligence that it played in the run-up to the Iraq War.  The Financial Times summarizes the prospects for the negotiations in this way: "Mr. Trump will probably maintain a positive spin on relations with Pyongyang in the run-up to the midterms, analysts say. There are, however, concerns that if Mr. Kim does not make concessions by then, Mr. Trump could return to considering military options on the peninsula."  So we have been warned.

 

News Notes

On the day of President Trump's inauguration, January 20, 2017, police arrested 234 protesters and by-standers. Many were charged with felonies that carried sentences of up to 60 years in prison.  Now, after an "epic failure to prove wrongdoing," all the charges have been dropped.

 

The New York Times recently published an interactive report showing that nearly a billion people in Asia would suffering under the impact of global warming.  What caught my eye was that projections of "how emissions" or "low emissions" impacts showed that +/- 400 million people would suffer, depending on what we did now and in the near future.  The lesson: climate chaos is inevitable, but hundreds of millions of people will be doomed sooner, depending on what we do now to stop global warming.

 

Surf's up, and in choosing a beach book, check out this suggested reading list from Ralph Nader.

 

Things to Do/Coming Attractions

Ongoing – CFOW holds a vigil/rally each Saturday at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring) from 12 to 1 p.m.  Everyone invited; please join us!

 

Ongoing – Added to the Hastings farmers market on Saturdays is the opportunity to recycle food scraps, including meat and anything that was once alive, according to coordinator EZ.  Look for the big bin at the market; and for more info email hastingscompost@gmail.com.

 

Sunday, July 15^th – CFOW will host Korean expert Soobok Kim for a discussion about what's happening on the Korean peninsula.  Soobok Kim is a South Korean army veteran and a member of Veterans for Peace.  He has made five trips to North Korea, the most recent one in November 2107. The program will be at the Hastings Community Center, starting at 2 p.m.

 

Friday, July 27^th – On the 65^th anniversary of the Armistice of the Korean War, the Korean-American organization Nodutdol for Korean Community Development invites us to a teach-in/forum on the United States and the Korean peninsula, and what peace activists need to do now.  At the Nodutdol office, 112 W. 27^th St., 6^th floor, NYC, starting at 6:30 p.m.

 

Sunday, August 5^th – Please join us for our monthly CFOW meeting at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 p.m.  Everyone is welcome at these meetings.

 

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 climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's immigration policies are often targeted, depending on current events. We 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.  If you would like to make a financial contribution to our work, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!

 

This Newsletter

Articles linked in the CFOW newsletter are intended to illuminate some of the main action-issues about which we are concerned.  Coming mostly from the "dissenting media," they provide an alternative to the perspectives of the mainstream media. In addition to the excellent "Featured Essays," I especially recommend the section of articles about our immigration disaster; an in-depth update on the background to the negotiations beginning now between the United States and North Korea; some articles that attempt to counter the mainstream media's misinformation about Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela; an interview with James Forman, Jr. the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his book "Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America"; and an insightful essay about the West Indian poet Aimé Césaire.  Read on!

 

Rewards!

Devoted newsletter readers are encouraged to savor a Reward before plunging into the too-depressing news articles.  This week's Rewards are taken from the play list of the TV series "Weeds."  First up is the program's theme song, "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds.  Next is "Terrible Things," by April Smith. And finally, here is/are The Be Good Tanyas with "Littlest Birds."  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

Real Border Security Comes From a Moral Foreign Policy

By Danny Glover and Rep. Ro Khanna, The Nation [July 6, 2018]

---- The horrific accounts of immigrant families being torn apart have inspired ordinary Americans to take to the streets, calling for an end to the Trump Administration's cruel detention policies. But while President Trump's recent actions have led to shockingly brutal child incarceration, mass arrests, and the criminalization of immigrants, the issues that push desperate migrants and refugees to our borders span many decades. Progressives must seize this historic moment to tackle the United States' long-dysfunctional relationship with its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors and build new, more perfect ties. [Read More]

 

(Video) From Geopolitical Conflict to Nuclear Abolition: A Talk by Noam Chomsky

From the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation NYC [July 7, 2018]

---- Acclaimed writer and activist Noam Chomsky delivered the keynote address "Fate of Humanity" as part of the program. Two Minutes to Midnight: How Do We Move from Geopolitical Conflict to Nuclear Abolition? Co-organized by the International Peace Bureau and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office. [See the Program]

 

'These Kids Are Watching Their Parents Die'

By Zoë Carpenter, The Nation [July 3, 2018]

---- Few states have been harder hit by these combined crises than West Virginia. The state has the highest rate of death by overdose, and of babies born dependent on drugs, in the United States. Each individual case of addiction is like a stone dropping into water, sending countless ripples outward through the wider community, disrupting families and straining public institutions that in many cases have already been weakened by years of disinvestment. There are 6,300 children in the foster-care system in West Virginia; nearly half were separated from their parents because of substance misuse. The secretary of the state's Department of Health and Human Resources has said that his agency has run out of homes in which to place these kids. A rising number of students at HJK have lost their parents, either to the prison system, overdose, or the haze of addiction, and many carry complex emotional needs with them into the classroom. [Read More]

 

More Devoted to Order Than to Justice

By Ibram X. Kendi, The Atlantic [June 28, 2018]

---- Political moderates who counsel against confrontation and warn of incivility would abandon the tools that have changed America for the better. American politics is today a brutal boxing match of harassing confrontations. The disagreements renew two enduring questions: one philosophical, one historical. Is political harassment civil? And do the ugly political confrontations signal a sharp departure, or have they always existed in the United States of America? … Political confrontation and harassment is as civil as it is American. Evading confrontation as the children cry, as their oppressors cry for more cries, is as uncivil as it is un-American. Instead of encircling political confrontation and harassment in incivility, we should be recognizing the dividing line in American politics—a line that has continuously changed American history for better or worse, always to the chagrin of the gradual or do-nothing moderate Americans. The dividing line in American politics is constructive or destructive political confrontation and harassment. Today moderates are again whiting out this dividing line, and instead drawing a line between uncivil harassers and civil unifiers. [Read More]

 

IMMIGRATION CRISIS & BORDER CHAOS

Indefinite Detention of Migrants Violates International Law

By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [July 6, 2018]

---- Pursuant to its "zero-tolerance" policy, the Trump administration separated some 2,300 migrant children from their parents at the US-Mexico border since May 5, 2018. Widespread international condemnation ensued. On June 26, a federal judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunite the families and established a timetable for reunification. On June 29, the Department of Justice filed a notice of compliance with the court order, but indicated its intention to indefinitely detain families together. Indefinite detention violates international law. "The Government will not separate families but detain families together during the pendency of immigration proceedings when they are apprehended at or between ports of entry," the Justice Department wrote in its notice of compliance. That would amount to indefinite detention as immigration cases can last for months or even years. A 1997 settlement called the Flores agreement requires that detained immigrant children be released after 20 days. In its notice of compliance, the Justice Department asked the court to modify the Flores agreement to allow indefinite detention of migrants. Meanwhile, on July 2, a federal judge in Washington ordered the government to give asylum applicants a meaningful opportunity to be released. More than 1,000 applicants have been incarcerated for months or years with no resolution of their cases. Indefinite detention violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. [Read More]

 

(Video) From Separating Families to Jailing Asylum Seekers, Trump Admin Accused of Criminalizing Migration

From Democracy Now! [July 5, 2018]

---- The Department of Health and Human Services still has not disclosed how many migrant children they are holding who have been separated from their parents at the border. Last week, HHS Secretary Alex Azar said 2,047 separated minors were still in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. But the department has refused to give updated numbers, even though the Trump administration is facing a July 10 court-imposed deadline to reunite all separated children under the age of 5 with their parents. Meanwhile, CNN is reporting the Department of Homeland Security has been taking DNA samples of immigrant children. Immigration officials have reportedly been swabbing DNA from the cheeks of children as young as 2 months old, without consent, ostensibly in a bid to later reunite children with their parents. Rights groups have condemned the move, saying it could allow the federal government to track young immigrants for the rest of their lives. We speak with Linda Rivas, executive director and lead attorney of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, an organization working with asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border. [See the Program]

 

(Video) Concentration Camps in the U.S.: Andrea Pitzer Decries Tent Cities for Detaining Kids Without Trial

From Democracy Now! [July 5, 2018]

---- Has the Trump administration set up concentration camps in Texas for migrants? The answer is yes, according to at least one expert: Andrea Pitzer, the author of "One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps." In one of her latest articles, Pitzer writes, "While writing a book on camp history, I defined concentration camps as the mass detention of civilians without trial, usually on the basis of race, religion, national origin, citizenship, or political party, rather than anything a given individual has done. By this definition, the new child camp established in Tornillo, Texas, is a concentration camp." We speak with Andrea Pitzer in Washington, D.C. [See the Program]

 

Also useful/illuminating on the crisis – Julia Conway, "Outrage Grows as Trump Official Complains Deadline for Putting Kids Back in Parents' Arms Too "Extreme," Common Dreams [July 6, 2018] [Link]; Somil Trivedi, "The Family Separation Crisis Exposes America's Addiction to Incarceration,"  American Civil Liberties Union [July 6, 2018] [Link]; Edward Murphy, "Immigration Enforcement Unbound," NACLA [North American Committee on Latin America], Part 1 and [Part 2]; Gus Bova, "The Trump Administration's Own Numbers Show "Zero Tolerance" Didn't Work," The Texas Observer [July 7, 2018] [Link];

 

WAR & PEACE

How Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons Changed the World

By Ray Acheson, The Nation [July 6, 2018]

---- On July 7, 2017, the world made history. Surrounded by atomic-bomb survivors, antinuclear activists, members of the Red Cross, and UN officials, 122 governments adopted a new international law banning nuclear weapons. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) outlaws all nuclear weapon-related activities, sets out measures for disarmament, addresses victim assistance and environmental remediation, demands that women play an equal role in arms reduction, and acknowledges the disproportionate impact these weapons have had on women and indigenous peoples. Its adoption was groundbreaking. As Setsuko Thurlow, atomic-bomb survivor from Hiroshima, said in her concluding remarks, "This is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons." … On the one-year anniversary of the TPNW's adoption, there is time for celebration but not self-congratulation. Just like the critics warned, this treaty has not magically eliminated nuclear weapons. But we always knew it would be difficult to eliminate nuclear weapons, and, after just one year, the treaty is showing results. [Read More]

 

Despite Anonymous Carping, US–North Korea Talks Continue

By Tim Shorrock, The Nation [July 3, 2018]

---- North Korea, according to three NBC reporters and "more than a dozen" unnamed US officials familiar with the new assessment, has reportedly increased production of fuel for its nuclear weapons "at multiple secret sites" and "may try to hide those facilities" in its upcoming talks with the Trump administration. NBC's exclusive was quickly updated by The Washington Post, first under the provocative headline "North Korea plotting to deceive U.S. on nuclear program" on its opening page.  … The dueling accounts were reminiscent of the role played by the US media in the lead-up to the Iraq War, when anonymous intelligence experts quoted by The New York Times and elsewhere helped build the case for a US invasion. And for NBC, the story was a continuation of the extremely alarmist style of reporting about Kim Jong-un it has adopted since the latest North Korea crisis began in the spring of 2017. Moreover, given the widespread acceptance of the leaked intelligence report, the DIA's sinister conclusions indicated that the stories were a clear attempt by anonymous officials in Washington to derail a negotiating process they fundamentally disagree with. Another motivation may have been to persuade the public that Kim has already broken the terms of the broad and somewhat vague agreement he signed with President Trump in Singapore on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. If that's the case, both the intelligence leakers and their media enablers could be deliberately deceiving the public about the actual status of the US–North Korea talks. They are set to begin shortly after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visits Pyongyang for the third time on July 5. [Read More]

 

Our Country, Our Stories: In New Memoirs, Syrians Describe Life — and Death — in Wartime

By Maryam Saleh, The Intercept [July 8 2018]

---- The war in Syria, now in its eighth year, has been punctuated by a series of grisly massacres — so many that it has become nearly impossible to keep track. But the massacre of August 21, 2013, the day that Bashar al-Assad's regime unleashed sarin gas on the suburbs of Damascus, is one that will not easily be forgotten. For those following the geopolitics, it is the day that the Syrian dictator crossed President Barack Obama's infamous "red line." For the families of the upward of 1,000 people who died a bloodless but painful death, it was a day of darkness and mourning. For Kassem Eid, it was the day he died and was born anew. In his new book, "My Country: A Syrian Memoir," Eid, a Palestinian-Syrian activist from the Damascus suburb of Moadamiya, describes waking up that August morning. "My eyes were burning, my head was throbbing, and my throat was rasping for air. I was suffocating," he writes, painting a scene of an experience that is too often debated in the abstract. "Suddenly my windpipe opened again. The air ripped through my throat and pierced my lungs. Invisible needles stabbed my eyes. A searing pain clawed at my stomach." A few hours later, he awoke again — on the ground of a field hospital, where he learned he had been counted among the dead. [Read More]

 

Promoting Some Understanding of Latin America

(Video) Mexico's Leftist President-elect AMLO Promises Sweeping Changes on Corruption, Poverty, Drug War

From Democracy Now! [July 3, 2018]

---- In a landslide, voters have elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador to be Mexico's next president. The former mayor of Mexico City—who is known as AMLO—will become Mexico's first leftist president in decades. On Monday, López Obrador and President Donald Trump discussed immigration and trade in a phone call. Trump called on Mexico's president-elect to collaborate on border security and NAFTA, telling reporters, "I think he's going to try and help us with the border. We have unbelievably bad border laws, immigration laws, the weakest in the world, laughed at by everybody in the world. And Mexico has very strong immigration laws, so they can help us." We speak with John Ackerman and Irma Sandoval in Mexico City. Irma Sandoval is a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Corruption at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is set to become comptroller general in President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador's government. John Ackerman is the editor of the Mexican Law Review and a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is also a columnist for Proceso magazine and La Jornada newspaper. [See the Program]

 

Understanding the Conflict in Nicaragua: the Long Battle Against US Imperialism

By Celina Stien-della Croce, Counterpunch [July 6, 2018]

---- As of June 28, the death toll in Nicaragua has reached 285, with more than 1,500 wounded. The country is divided, trying to make sense of the violence and the political climate that surrounds it. In the United States, making sense of the current narrative is nearly impossible. It seems that there is one narrative passing through the mainstream news cycle on repeat like an echo chamber. According to this narrative, President Daniel Ortega is authoritarian. He cut pensions. People protested. Ortega responded violently, killing still climbing numbers of protestors. Ortega must go, and the United States must support him, in the name of democracy. But reality is rarely that simple. This article is not a defense of the Ortega administration. It does not seek to condone or overlook the recent deaths. It is an attempt from one human being to another to push against the walls of this echo chamber and give historical context to the current conflict. [Read More]  Also useful is "What's Happening In Nicaragua?," a report from the Task Force on the Americas  [July 4, 2018] [Link].

 

Why Venezuela Reporting Is So Bad

By Joe Emersberger, Venezuelanalysis [July 2014]

[FB – This is a review Alan MacLeod's book Bad News From Venezuela. This website is the go-to place for reliable information about Venezuela.]

---- For almost 20 years, the US government has been trying to overthrow Venezuela's government, and establishment media outlets (state, corporate and some nonprofit) throughout the Americas and Europe have been bending over backwards to help the US do it. Rare exceptions to this over the last two decades would be found in the state media in some countries that are not hostile to Venezuela, like the ALBA block. Small independent outlets like VenezuelAnalysis.com also offered alternatives. In the US and UK establishment media, you are way more likely to see a defense of Saudi Arabia's dictatorship than of Venezuela's democratically elected government. Any defense of Venezuela's government will provoke vilification and ridicule, so both Alan MacLeod and his publisher deserve very high praise for producing the book Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting. It took real political courage. [Read More]  Also illuminating is "Trump Pressed Aides On Venezuela Invasion, US Official Says," by Joshua Goodman, Apnews.com [July 5, 2018] [Link].

 

GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS

'A Good Day To Protect The Things You Love': Anti-Pipeline Climbers Block Trans Mountain Oil Tanker

By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams [July 5, 2018]

---- As green groups and Indigenous leaders continue to raise alarm about the ecological and economic threats of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project—which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced the government is taking over after protests led Kinder Morgan to halt construction—12 activists on Tuesday launched an aerial blockade at the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge in Vancouver to stop an oil tanker from leaving the pipeline's terminal. Opponents of the expansion project are especially concerned that, if completed, it would trigger a nearly seven-fold increase in the number of tar sands tankers that depart from the company's terminal in Burnaby, British Columbia, increasing the risk of a major oil spill and degrading marine conditions along the "tanker superhighway." [Read More]

 

Young Leftist Candidates Are Breathing New Radicalism Into Stale Climate Politics

By Kate Aronoff, The Intercept [July 5 2018]

---- Climate change hasn't been a big part of the conversation about the blue wave. But if it's successful, and the party finds itself with enough seats to push through ambitious legislation next January, what to date have been seen as minor differences between Democrats on climate could become the grounds for legislative battles. That is, if Ocasio-Cortez's election marks a new era for the Democratic Party, what will that mean for its climate politics? After all, there's a lot of room for Ocasio-Cortez to maneuver in the space that opens up when Bloomberg suggests the government deal with some companies like this: "Put them out of business by driving down demand, through taxes that address their true societal cost, regulations that mitigate the harm they cause, and public awareness advertising that makes plain the dangers they pose." While there's been ample attention paid to insurgent candidates' bold stances on "Medicare for All" and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, no natural analog has emerged when it comes to preventing the potential end of human civilization. [Read More]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Democracy Dies in the Blinding Light of Day

By Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept [July 4, 2018]

---- A new book by Cambridge University professor David Runciman, provocatively titled "How Democracy Ends," charts a number of trends in the United States and Europe that he believes foretell the approaching end of democracy as we know it. Among the threats we face are global problems like climate change and inequality, which our dysfunctional democratic systems have proven incapable of responding to. Yet the end of democracy does not mean a return to any recognizable, pre-democratic past. Unlike many other gloomy predictions of democracy giving way to something like 1930s European fascism, Runciman argues that the unique nature of our modern societies means that, if the end comes, it will happen in a much more subtle way. Rather than a military coup d'état or the unilateral annulment of a vote by a strongman, in the West, democracy is more likely to simply fracture and fizzle out over time. As our political institutions become less and less able to deliver meaningful results and the speed of technological change continues to warp and remake society, democracy could effectively die while continuing to appear alive for years to come. [Read More]

 

The Politics of Poverty in America

By Ebony Slaughter-Johnson, Counterpunch [July 6, 2018]

---- This summer, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston presented his observations on the state of international poverty to the UN Human Rights Council. The country at the center of his most recent report wasn't a developing one — it was the United States. In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Alston found, many Americans live without access to water and public sewage services. More alarmingly, at a time when 40 million Americans live in poverty — including over 5 million experiencing "developing world" levels of poverty — congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are jeopardizing access to the social safety net for millions, the report concluded. [Read More]  For an interesting alternative, read "Trump Should Just Give People Money," by Annie Lowrey, New York Times [July 7, 2018] [Link].

 

(Video) James Forman Jr. on "Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America"

From Democracy Now! [July 4, 2018]

---- Yale University law professor and writer James Forman Jr. won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category for his new book, "Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America." The prize committee praised the book for its "examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color." Forman is the son of civil rights activists James Forman Sr. and Constancia Romilly, who met in the 1960s while organizing with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. [See the Program]

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Khan al-Ahmar: Protests and condemnation as Israel moves to demolish Bedouin village

From Middle East Eye [July 5, 2018]

---- Israel faced mounting international condemnation on Thursday as its security forces continued preparations to demolish the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank. Residents and activists climbed onto bulldozers on Wednesday and waved Palestinian flags in a bid to stop the demolition. Videos and photos showed Israeli security forces dragging protesters and residents away. In a statement posted on Twitter, the office of Nikolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said that the proposed demolition was contrary to international law and urged Israel to stop. The European Union also condemned Israel's actions in a statement on Thursday. It said Israel's actions and its plans to build more illegal settlements in the same area undermined hopes for a two-state solution and a viable peace. [Read More]  For some more background on this atrocity, read "Israeli demolition of entire Palestinian village days away, villagers fear," from +972 Magazine [Israel] [July 1, 2018] [Link]; a petition from the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem can be signed here.

 

Israel Banned Me For Documenting The Occupation

By Ariel Gold, Co-Director of Code Pink [July 3, 2018]

---- "What Palestinians do you know? Let me see the contacts in your phone. Who gave you a visa to be here?" the police woman demanded. "Your government gave it to me," I replied. "The Israel consulate in New York City." This was round three of questioning in the Ben Gurion airport as I was attempting to enter Israel. About two hours later, I was informed that my visa was being revoked and I was being placed on a flight back to New York City. Two Ministers — Gilad Erdan, the Minister of Internal Security, and Aryeh Deri, the Minister of the Interior — were involved in the decision not to let me, an American Jewish woman, enter the country. Erdan charged me with being a BDS activist. "Gold distributed videos on social networks, in which she harasses IDF soldiers and Border Police officers in Hebron, accusing the soldiers of apartheid and oppression, and that their actions do not conform to Jewish values," he said. And Deri said that he was again using his "authority to prevent the entry into Israel of a woman who came to act against Israel and call for its boycott." [Read More]

 

A Lab and a Showroom; The Israeli Military Industries and the Oppression of the Great March of Return in Gaza

From the Coalition of Women for Peace, [June 2018]

[FB – Israeli industries include world-leading manufacturers of equipment used by police and governments to oppress subject and/or disruptive peoples.  Operations in the West Bank and Gaza function as sales pitches to governments/would-be buyers for what works to suppress dissent and armed/unarmed opposition. This detailed report is very interesting.]

 

OUR HISTORY

At the Living Heart: Translating Aimé Césaire.

By David B. Hobbs, The Nation [July 3, 2018]

[FB – Some of the groundwork for the post-World War II colonial liberation movements was laid in the pre-war period by colonial intellectuals, among them the Martinique poet and political leader Aime Césaire.  Césaire and other intellectuals developed the concept of "negritude" in an attempt to define the unifying culture and experience of the African diaspora and Africa itself. This article is a useful introduction to this immense intellectual effort that had a profound effect on world history.]

---- Aimé Césaire was one of the foremost French poets of the 20th century. He was also one of the foremost leftists on his home island of Martinique and in the French National Assembly. … Although Césaire published eight books of poetry and several plays, his artistic legacy continues to be defined by Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal. First appearing in 1939, in the avant-garde magazine Volontés, this modernist epic narrates an unfolding personal and political crisis: Its speaker is returning to the Antilles from France with an intense awareness of how colonialism has not only damaged his home but also infiltrated his sense of history, geography, and language. … Defining "negritude" outside of this passage, however, is more difficult, and yet it brings us closer to understanding how these new translations can illuminate current debates in black ontology and cultural criticism. [Read More]