Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
October 14, 2018
Hello All – The apparent murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi leads off this week's CFOW newsletter. Khashoggi's torture and execution in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, while he was seeking to gain documents that would allow him marry his fiancée, has shocked the world. While many facts about the murder remain to be discovered, the trending question now is What will Donald Trump and his pro-Saudi administration do to make this problem go away, or at least diminish in size? As some of the good/useful reading linked below reveals, Trump's moral dilemma now centers on whether the $200 billion pending in US arms sales to Saudi Arabia might be jeopardized if protests against Khashoggi's murder become too shrill. (For its part, the Saudi media are claiming that Khashoggi's disappearance is a hoax and a conspiracy, and that the Washington Post, Khashoggi's former employer, is owned by rival state Qatar; which is not true.)
While murder and dismemberment of a prominent civilian might seem about as bad as a bad state can get, many observers are pointing out that the Saudis, under the leadership of Prince Bin Sultan, have murdered thousands and threatens the death of tens of thousands more in Yemen. A more jaded observer might add that this follows the law of "worthy" and "unworthy" victims: that the murder of thousands of sub-human Yemenis may pass without much of a stir, but the murder of an educated professional, a close confident of some of Saudi Arabia's inner circle, stops the news cycle in its tracks. This in some ways parallels the recent media treatment of Brett Kavanaugh and his nomination to the US Supreme Court. As with in the Khashoggi case, so with Dr. Blassey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh very credibly of attempted rape. While this was certainly heinous, compared to Yale's Brett Kavanaugh, Dr. Blassey Ford did not make the "worthy victim" cut-off. She was a woman; QED.
Naomi Klein's very interesting article (linked below) about Trump and the large number of our political elite who inherited great fortunes raises interesting questions about the moral compass of this group. Like the Saudis, like Brett Kavanaugh, Trump, the Koch brothers, and other leading lights in the rightwing firmament were born to wealth and feel entitled to rule. As former Texas governor Ann Richards said memorably about George Bush, he was "born on third base and thought he hit a triple." So with Trump and the Kavanaughs of this world, and so with the Saudis. Some 40 years ago, in the concluding volume of his series on "The Children of Crisis," psychiatrist Robert Coles wrote about The Privileged Ones: The Well-off and the Rich in America" – rich kids. He described the way in which children in wealthy families came to believe while very young that their superior circumstances, when compared to other children or to their servants, was because they were morally better people, or that un-wealthy people were less worthy. Thus Kavanaugh's outraged expressions of entitlement, Trump's free association with facts and history, or the Saudi's license to kill – born to rule, unburdened by conventional norms. Masters of the Universe.
News Notes
This just in. The National Park Service is proposing severe restrictions on protests in Washington, D.C. Demonstrators will have to pay steep fees and "planning" may be close to impossible. Though the federal Rule was published in August, it received no notice that I know of until Thursday. And "Comments" are due tomorrow! Read more about this here and whip off your "Comment" here.
Gaza residents have been protesting Israel's harsh, virtual Occupation of Gaza since March 30th. During these Friday protests at the Israeli fence, more than 200 people have been killed (7 last Friday) and more than 20,000 wounded, a great many by gunfire. Read about the context and about Friday's protest here. The New York Times' version is here.
Last week's CFOW newsletter included a useful article surveying the worldwide rise of the extreme Right: Europe, the Philippines, Brazil, and of course Trump. So it is very good news that yesterday, in Berlin, several hundred thousand people marched against the far right, which is a serious problem in Germany. Read about it here, and here; and NPR also had a good report.
Jadaliyya (meaning "dialectic" in Arabic) is a scholarly magazine published by the Arab Studies Institute. While some of their English-language articles are aimed at scholars, many are of general interest. Their current issue includes a useful, annotated (and not too long) reading list of books that are recommended for an introduction to the Arab world of the Middle East and North Africa. Check it out here.
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!
Sunday, October 21st – The Resist Spectra film & music festival will take place in Peekskill, at the Bean Runner Café (201 S. Division St.), from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Lots of talent performing, including CFOW favorites Fred Gillen, Jr. and Monica Hunken. Admission is free, but donations are seriously requested, as this is a fund-raiser for the legal defense described just below. For more information go to
Tuesday, October 23rd – What will probably be the final court case in the Stop the Algonquin Pipeline campaign will be heard at the Cortlandt town court, 1 Heady St. in Cortland, starting at 9 a.m. This case involves defendants who crawled into a pipeline to halt construction. They defendants face serious charges, but the case is also important because the judge has stated she will allow the "necessity defense," allowing the defendants to argue that what they did was not illegal, because they were attempting to stop a greater harm. I'll post more about this as details emerge.
Sunday, November 4th – CFOW's monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m. At these meetings we review our work over the past months and make plans for what's coming next. Everyone is welcome at these meetings!
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. This week's "Featured Essays" a great article by Naomi Klein about the Rich Boys' world of Trump and Kavanaugh, and what it means to have people like them running the country. I also highly recommend the article by Jeff Halper, long a leader activist in Israel against home demolitions, but now writing an in-depth piece on what might be done to bring a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israel's Jews and Palestinians. Further down, please check out the set of articles about Saudi Arabia and the Khashoggi murder; journalist Charles Glass' interesting overview of the retro features of US military strategies in the post-9/11 world; several good articles on what's included and what's missing in the UN's new (and alarming) climate report; and several good articles on the state of the Democrats as we approach the November elections. And don't miss Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman as he reviews his Allende-era anti-imperialist classic, How to Read Donald Duck ("Our History").
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.
Please Support CFOW
CFOW runs on a shoestring; but with the price of shoestrings these days, we're asking for your support. If you can make a financial contribution to our work, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
Quite often, beneath the most mundane and banal of Establishment mythology lurks a subterranean history of striving for something better. A good example of this is the song "America the Beautiful." Originally a poem called "Pike's Peak" written in 1895 by Katharine Lee Bates, with music added later by a church organist from Newark, the song was sanitized over the years to become what school children now sing. Here is the original version, truly beautiful imo, sung by the Canadian Chaim Tannenbaum. And just in time for the November elections, here is CFOW's favorite singing funnyman Roy Zimmerman, this time with something serious, "My Vote, My Voice, My Right." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and the Rule of Pampered Princelings
By Naomi Klein, The Intercept [October 14, 2018]
---- "Boring." That was Donald Trump's instant verdict on the New York Times's blockbuster investigation into the rampant tax fraud and nepotism that undergirds his fortune. Sarah Huckabee Sanders heartily concurred, informing the White House press corps that she refused to "go through every line of a very boring, 14,000-word story." … The Times investigation, published as a standalone supplement on Sunday, is about as boring as a car accident. It shows in lavish detail that Trump's creation myth is and always has been a work of fiction. No, he did not take a "very, very small" million-dollar loan from his father and use his deal-making acumen to parlay it into a $10-billion global empire, while paying the original loan back with interest. …What makes the Times' revelations more important is that they are a rare window into an even larger story about the growing political and economic role of inherited money in the United States — the culmination of decades in which a handful of sons and daughters of bequeathed wealth waged a fierce and relentless battle of ideas against the very concept of equality and majority rule, all based on the same corrupting belief in their own inherent superiority. …All of this was foretold. Almost two years ago, Trump held his first television interview after the 2016 elections. It was for "60 Minutes," and he lined up the entire family on golden, throne-like chairs. That should have been our first clue that American capitalism was entering a new stage: the Age of the Pampered Princeling. [Read More]
The Deportation Crisis: Report From Long Island
----Both federal and local policy changes have been developed under the theory of "deterrence logic". The U.S. currently refuses to be a refuge for people with problems in their countries of origin. AmerIcans are often unaware of the tumult in Central America, that people quite literally are running for their lives as their own countries are filled with corrupt governments, domestic violence, gang violence, MS 13, and sex and drug trafficking. However, the arduous trip to cross into the U.S. is STILL preferable to remaining where they are. While fewer people may be attempting to cross, terrorizing these immigrants, many of whom are here legally, calls into question the acclaimed American narrative of a "nation of immigrants." This narrative has been replaced by an "immigrant emergency" narrative which gained traction in the aftermath of 9/11. We are not a melting pot, but rather a pressure cooker here in Suffolk County, New York. [Read More]
Choices Made: From Zionist Settler Colonialism to Decolonization
----In the end, analysis matters. Seemingly arcane discussions of issues in academic language impenetrable to most readers and outside the activist discourse at time spawn ways of conceiving the political situation that open up new possibilities of reaching a political settlement while eliminating others. Such is the power of settler colonialism, a relatively recent focus of study, maybe twenty years old. Although totally absent from the considerable public discourse and political debate (even as a term "settler colonialism" is too academic and awkward to integrate into popular discussion), it clarifies more than any other term ("occupation," for instance) the situation in the entirety of Israel/Palestine while pointing the way to decolonization, the only just and feasible political resolution. … Only a justice-and-peace process based on decolonization defines a political settlement in terms that address the deeper issues involved, and thus lends the claims of the weaker indigenous greater moral weight as well as equal political weight and visibility. What, then, would the true decolonization of Palestine entail? What would have to be done for an indigenous/settler accommodation, if not reconciliation, to be realized? [Read More]
Brazil's Bolsonaro-Led Far Right Wins a Victory Far More Sweeping and Dangerous Than Anyone Predicted. Its Lessons Are Global.
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept [October 8, 2018]
---- As a result of last night's truly stunning national election in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has been instantly transformed from marginalized clown into the overwhelmingly dominant force in the country's political life. Bolsonaro himself fell just short of winning the 50% needed to win the presidency without a run-off. But given the margin of victory, he is the overwhelming favorite to win on October 28 against the second-place candidate … The extent of Bolsonaro's new power extends far beyond his likely ascension to the presidency. His party, and those most aligned with it, swept to victory all over the country with shocking margins. … What was most startling was how wildly inaccurate Brazil's typically reliable polling data turned out to be, under-estimating the far-right wave by such a massive quantity that it's difficult to describe in words. … In sum, it is virtually impossible to overstate the threat level posed to democracy and human rights in the world's fifth most-populous country as a result of last night's election. And unlike in the U.S. or in the UK, which have old, strong, long-established democratic institutions that can limit the excesses and worst abuses of demagogues and authoritarians, Brazil has none of that. Spiraling from multiple crises – suffocating economic inequality, an epidemic of violence worse than many war zones, and a corruption scandal so sweeping that it has infected the core of almost every faction of the ruling class – this is a country with little to no ability to impose limits on what Bolsonaro wants to do. [Read More]
SAUDI ARABIA, JAMAL KHASHOGGI, AND THE USA
Is This the Beginning of the End of the U.S.-Saudi Alliance?
By Zaid Jilani and Ryan Grim, The Intercept [
---- The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi last Tuesday is threatening to upend the terms of the decades-long alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the nine days since Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian resident of Virginia and a Washington Post columnist, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, politicians, media figures and foreign policy elites – even those who have fawned over the authoritarian Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman — have grown increasingly critical of the U.S.-Saudi alliance. The U.S. has long given the Saudis a blank check, politically and militarily, and there have been voices advocating for a rethinking of that decades-old relationship for nearly as long as it has lasted. But the widespread belief that the Saudis assassinated Khashoggi inside their consulate has brought those voices squarely into the center. Suddenly, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States is being called into fundamental question. … The United States is currently providing material and intelligence support to the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has created a humanitarian disaster in that country. As Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, a leading expert on Saudi affairs, has testified, "if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King Salman that this war [on Yemen] has to end, it would end tomorrow because the Royal Saudi Air force cannot operate without American & British support." Sanders opposes this support for Saudi Arabia, which has come from both the Obama and Trump administrations. Efforts in Congress to limit or terminate this support have so far been unsuccessful. [Read More]
Pulp Fiction in Istanbul, or, the Looming Turkey-Saudi Cold War
By Juan Cole, The Nation [October 11, 2018]
---- What is increasingly looking like the gruesome murder and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, as described by Turkish police, has dominated the headlines in Turkey this week. If the Turkish government builds what it views as an airtight case for this mob-style hit on Turkish soil—which many Turks are convinced was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself—relations between the two countries are likely to crater. This Turkey-Saudi face-off has been building throughout this decade and may be about to reach a crescendo. Given the US entanglements in the Middle East, these developments will affect Washington as well. … Indeed, the Saudi decision to whack the globe-trotting Khashoggi, whom they may have tracked via his phone or Apple watch, in Turkey may have itself been intended as a taunt to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been a consistent thorn in their side. If so, Mohammed bin Salman might have been confident he could withstand Erdogan's fury because of the crown prince's friendship with Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. [Read More]
Also useful/insightful on this mess – "As Demands for US Probe Into Alleged Murder of Khashoggi Grow, Trump Says Halting Saudi Arms Sales 'Very Tough Pill to Swallow,'" by [Link]; and "Jamal Khashoggi Wasn't the First — Saudi Arabia Has Been Going After Dissidents Abroad for Decades," by Sarah Aziza, The Intercept [[Link].
WAR & PEACE
World War II's Covert Ops Failing in Post-War World
By Charles Glass, ZNet [October 13, 2018]
---- Before President Barack Obama authorized clandestine operations to defeat Syrian President Bashar al Assad in 2013, he asked the CIA to write the history of its secret wars. The classified document, say those who have read it, is a record of failure from Albania to Cuba to Angola to Nicaragua. Yet Obama went ahead with the covert program for Syria, which the CIA ran from Turkey and Jordan. Like its predecessors, Operation Timber Sycamore failed. It neither toppled Assad nor prevented Salafi jihadi fanatics from dominating the Syrian opposition. President Trump cancelled the program in July last year, but he is not immune to the siren call of another secret war – in his case, against Iran with as much chance of a positive outcome as Syria. Why the fascination with arming foreign insurgents and proxy armies to fight wars that the US won't fight itself? [Read More]
The War in Syria
The Syrian Chess Board
, Antiwar.com [October 12, 2018]
---- The Syrian civil war has always been devilishly complex, with multiple actors following different scripts, but in the past few months it appeared to be winding down. The Damascus government now controls 60 percent of the country and the major population centers, the Islamic State has been routed, and the rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are largely cornered in Idilb Province in the country's northwest. But suddenly the Americans moved the goal posts and – maybe – the Russians have fallen out with the Israelis, the Iranians are digging in their heels, and the Turks are trying to multitask with a home front in disarray. So the devil is still very much at work in a war that's lasted more than seven years, claimed up to 500,000 lives, displaced millions of people, destabilized an already fragile Middle East, and is far from over. There are at least three theaters in the Syrian war, each with its own complexities: Idilb in the north, the territory east of the Euphrates River, and the region that abuts the southern section of the Golan Heights. Just sorting out the antagonists is daunting. Turks, Iranians, Americans, and Kurds are the key actors in the east. Russians, Turks, Kurds, and Assad are in a temporary standoff in the north. And Iran, Assad, and Israel are in a faceoff near Golan, a conflict that has suddenly drawn in Moscow. [Read More]
War With Iran?
Trump Has Put US On Path To War With Iran While Nobody is Paying Attention
By Ben Armbruster, LobeLog [October 10, 2018]
---- This march to war with Iran is happening. Because of the chaos that is this Donald Trump presidency, it's not getting the widespread attention it needs. Indeed, as if reading right from the Iraq-War playbook, and without offering any evidence, Pompeo said last week he has "solid" intelligence that Iran is responsible for attacks on Americans in the Middle East. "We can see the hand of the Ayatollah and his henchmen supporting these attacks on the United States," he said. Given the widespread media attention on the Supreme Court nomination circus, Pompeo's remarks barely made a blip in the national media. Although some in Congress have recognized that Trump has put the United States back on the path to war, the alarm bells aren't as loud as they should be. And that recalls [North Dakota Senator] Kent Conrad's disturbing warning: "If the president of the United States wants to take this nation to war, he can take this nation to war. And stopping that is incredibly difficult." [Read More]
There is No Legitimate Reason to Impose Sanctions on Iran
---- There is no reason why the United States should ramp up its sanctions against the 82 million people of Iran. Against all evidence, the United States – and other Western powers – continue to reiterate the view that Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. But, there is no evidence of Iran's interest in nuclear weapons apart from the statements by Western and Israeli leaders. … The UN's position against Iran is in bad faith. All the member states and the UN secretariat know that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Yet, they have allowed the US and Israel to push against Iran. They have allowed Iran's people to suffer under an intolerable sanctions regime and are now allowing Iran to go through an even tighter sanctions policy. No legal shield from Europe is going to help. No mild criticism of the United States is sufficient. My friends in Tehran – who have their own differences with their government – appeal to the world, asking for a break with the US-Israeli position on Iran, an opening to the people of Iran who are being strangled by the sanctions. [Read More]
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
Confronting Climate Change in a Deeply Unequal World
By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org [October 11, 2018]
---- Two meticulously sourced — and deeply disturbing — warnings about our shared global future have appeared over the past week. One has terrified much of the world. The other hasn't, not yet at least, but most certainly should. You've most likely already encountered the first of these warnings, a grim report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a broad and distinguished panel of the world's top climate scientists. They're advising us that the level of global warming governments once saw as "safe" would, if ever reached, trigger catastrophic dangers. Humanity has, the scientists tell us, about a dozen years to get our environmental act together. Or else . . . The second warning came from researchers at Oxfam, the global anti-poverty charity that has emerged as a top critic of our world's increasingly concentrated income and wealth. Oxfam and the nonprofit Development Finance International have been working over recent years to develop an index that tracks how well the world's nations are moving "to tackle the gap between rich and poor." … The bottom line of the new Oxfam analysis: Nations aren't doing nearly enough. Oxfam's researchers examined the records of 157 nations. Of these 157, 112 "are doing less than half of what the best performers are managing to do." And even those "top performers," Oxfam emphasizes, aren't doing "particularly well." In Oxfam's top-ranked Denmark, for instance, inequality has increased by 20 percent since 2005. [Read More]
The New UN Climate Report
Fossil Fuels Are a Threat to Civilization, New U.N. Report Concludes
By Kate Aronoff, The Intercept [
---- Around the middle of the last century, the chemical DDT was found to pose a risk to human and animal health. The ultimate response — after a prolonged fight between environmentalists and the chemical industry — was a federal ban on all uses of the substance found to be unsafe. On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a daunting report, suggesting that we are currently on track for around 3 degrees Celsius of warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC authors promise that we will see coastal cities swallowed by the sea, global food shortages, and $54 trillion in climate-associated costs as soon as 2040. That fast-approaching catastrophe is the motivation for the demands of Global South residents and their allies, for whom rising tides and superstorms are already a reality. They've long chanted "1.5 to survive" through the fluorescent-lit halls of U.N. climate talks, and this new report — which outlines pathways to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — is a testament to that work. The figure is in line with the "well below 2 degrees" target outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement and, according to the co-chair of one of the IPCC working groups that crafted the report, Jim Skea, hitting that target "is possible within the laws of physics and chemistry." A social reaction on par to the approach to DDT, in other words, could yet salvage human civilization. It'll be enormously difficult — far more so than getting a single chemical banned. And we'd eventually have to do it everywhere. Capitalism, moreover, wasn't built around DDT the way it was around fossil fuels. "Limiting warming to 1.5 is not impossible," IPCC chair Hoesung Lee said in a press conference last night, "but will require unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society." [Read More]
Response to the IPCC 1.5°C Special Report
By Kevin Anderson, University of Manchester [October 8, 2018]
---- The IPCC report meticulously lays out how the serious climate impacts of 1.5°C of warming are still far less destructive than those for 2°C. Sadly, the IPCC then fails, again, to address the profound implications of reducing emissions in line with both 1.5 and 2°C. Dress it up however we may wish, climate change is ultimately a rationing issue. The responsibility for global emissions is heavily skewed towards the lifestyles of a relatively few high emitters – professors and climate academics amongst them. Almost 50% of global carbon emissions arise from the activities of around 10% of the global population, increasing to 70% of emissions from just 20% of citizens. Impose a limit on the per-capita carbon footprint of the top 10% of global emitters, equivalent to that of an average European citizen, and global emissions could be reduced by one third in a matter of a year or two. [Read More]
For more useful reading/viewing – (Video) "A "Marshall Plan" for Climate Change" (interview with Kevin Anderson), Democracy Now! [October 10, 2018] [Link]; (Video) "Ex-NASA Scientist Dr. James Hansen: We Need to Act Now to Preserve Our Planet for Future Generations," Democracy Now! [October 10, 2018] [Link]; and "Climate Report Understates Threat," by Mario Molina et al., The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [October 9, 2018] [Link].
THE STATE OF THE UNION
The Trump Administration Carried Out Thousands More Family Separations Than Previously Acknowledged
By Ryan Devereaux, et al., The Intercept [October 11, 2018]
---- More than a year after the Trump administration quietly began a program of separating migrant children from their families along the U.S.-Mexico border, the full number of people impacted remains unclear. According to a new report, however, the government's own data indicates that the campaign was far more expansive — and far more destructive — than previously acknowledged. Figures provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection detail the separation of 6,022 "family units" from April 19, 2018 to August 15, 2018, according to a report published by Amnesty International on Thursday. Noting that the term "family unit" has varying applications in the U.S. immigration enforcement world — sometimes referring to individuals in a family, and other times referring to family groups containing multiple people — Amnesty observes that even on the low end, the figure reflects the largest total ever disclosed by the border enforcement agency in the context of the family separation crisis. [Read More]
The Democrats and the November Elections
Democratic Autopsy: One Year Later
By Norman Solomon, et al., The Nation [October 12, 2018]
---- In October 2017, a team of progressive researchers published "Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis," which probed the causes of the disastrous 2016 election defeat. The report came in the wake of the party leadership's failure to do its own autopsy. In a cover story for The Nation, William Greider wrote that the "Autopsy" is "an unemotional dissection of why the Democrats failed so miserably, and it warns that the party must change profoundly or else remain a loser." Now, "Democratic Autopsy: One Year Later" evaluates how well the Democratic Party has done in charting a new course since the autumn of 2017. This report rates developments in each of the seven categories that the original report assessed. The upsurge of progressive activism and electoral victories during the last year has created momentum that could lead to historic breakthroughs in the midterm elections and far beyond. Realizing such potential will require transforming and energizing the Democratic Party. [Read More]
A Chance to Swing the Senate
By Rebecca Gordon, Tom Dispatch [October 12, 2018]
---- It's hard to overstate the importance of this campaign in Washoe, Nevada's second-most-populous county, where Reno is located. In 2008 and 2012 — together with Clark County, home of Las Vegas — Washoe helped swing the state for Barack Obama. In 2016, its voters did the same for Hillary Clinton. In this year's mid-term election, it holds the key to possibly turning the Senate. For almost a decade, Washoe and Clark counties have put Nevada in the "blue state" column, but the margins have grown slimmer each year. According to figures assembled by UNITE HERE, Barack Obama beat John McCain in this state by almost 120,000 votes. Four years later, he beat Mitt Romney by a little less than 68,000. In 2016, Clinton won Nevada by only 27,200 votes. As is so often the case in a mid-term campaign, turnout is the crucial factor. It's not easy to get people to vote in a non-presidential election year, even when their own. interests are very much at stake. And that's where the union's approach is crucial. [Read More]
---- It's hard to overstate the importance of this campaign in Washoe, Nevada's second-most-populous county, where Reno is located. In 2008 and 2012 — together with Clark County, home of Las Vegas — Washoe helped swing the state for Barack Obama. In 2016, its voters did the same for Hillary Clinton. In this year's mid-term election, it holds the key to possibly turning the Senate. For almost a decade, Washoe and Clark counties have put Nevada in the "blue state" column, but the margins have grown slimmer each year. According to figures assembled by UNITE HERE, Barack Obama beat John McCain in this state by almost 120,000 votes. Four years later, he beat Mitt Romney by a little less than 68,000. In 2016, Clinton won Nevada by only 27,200 votes. As is so often the case in a mid-term campaign, turnout is the crucial factor. It's not easy to get people to vote in a non-presidential election year, even when their own. interests are very much at stake. And that's where the union's approach is crucial. [Read More]
Nate Silver and 538's Measurable 3.5% Democratic Bias and the 2018 House Race
The most straightforward and defensible reading of the data we have now, a reading that does not adjust or unskew polling in favor of Democrats and does not project that they will somewhat magically win or dozen or so individual seats that the FiveThirtyEight model currently has them behind in, suggests a much fiercer and more closely contested contest for control of 218 seats, or perhaps a few more, by one party or the other. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Broken Homes: Record Year of Home Demolitions in Occupied East Jerusalem
From Aljazeera [2017]
---- Starting in January 2016, we plotted each demolition point on the East Jerusalem map and recorded the case details, including how many Palestinians were displaced or affected. We profiled one family in detail each month, conducting interviews and capturing 360° images of their demolished homes. Each story in the below timeline helps to reveal the scale and scope of Israel's policy of home demolitions - from the destruction of Palestinian gravesites and doghouses, to families being forced to tear down their own homes as a cost-effective alternative to having it done by Israeli authorities, to children living in tents atop the rubble. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
How We Roasted Donald Duck, Disney's Agent of Imperialism
By Ariel Dorfman, The Guardian [UK] [October 5, 2018]
----I should not have been entirely surprised when I saw How to Read Donald Duck, a book I had written with the Belgian sociologist Armand Mattelart, being burned on TV by Chilean soldiers. It was mid-September 1973 and a military coup had just toppled Salvador Allende, the country's president, terminating his remarkable experiment of building socialism through peaceful means. I was in a safe house when I witnessed my book – along with hundreds of other subversive volumes – being consigned to the inquisitorial pyre. One of the reasons I had gone into hiding, besides my fervent participation in the revolutionary government that had just been overthrown, was the hatred the Donald Duck book had elicited among the new authorities of Chile and their rightwing civilian accomplices. … What had we done to incur such enmity? Armand and I had denounced Walt Disney as an agent of American cultural imperialism, incarnated in the life, adventures and misdeeds of Donald Duck, that innocuous icon, then one of the most popular characters in the world. Probing hundreds of Disney comic strips – sold by the million on newsstands in Chile and countless other lands – we had tried to reveal the ideological messages that underlay those supposedly innocent, supposedly apolitical stories. [Read More]
