Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 31, 2019
Hello All – Yesterday the focus of the CFOW weekly vigil/rally was on support for the Green New Deal. Despite the substantial media coverage that the GND has been given, it seems that the "person-in-the-street" knows very little about what the GND actually is, what problem it is trying to solve, and how it could be implemented and paid for in our lifetimes.
It is too late to stop global warming and our climate crisis. It's here. We're living in it. But it is NOT too late to prevent the worst that can happen to us. Humans have made our planet warmer. We do this mainly by burning coal, oil, and natural gas. This pumps carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, where it stays for a century. This "greenhouse gas" traps heat, raising the temperature of both land and sea. Right now, humans put about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. We can calculate how much the Earth will warm each year if we keep this up. In about 10 years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will put us in great danger.
Americans are not so good about science, and the Republican Party rejects it altogether. But the fact is that the level of carbon dioxide now in our atmosphere is 410 parts per million, and growing by 2-3 parts each year. As one observer notes, "The last time it was 410 ppm was the middle Pliocene, stretching from 3.15 and 2.85 million years ago. Temperatures in the middle Pliocene were on average 3.6 – 5.8 degrees F. higher than today. The Arctic was 10 degrees C. hotter than today's. Seas were roughly 90 feet higher. Some places now wet were desert-like." This is what the Earth can expect, even if no more carbon dioxide were released.
The generic response to our crisis is to end the use of fossil fuels and switch to producing electricity with solar and wind energy. Can this be done? It's important to understand that the cost of solar power to produce electricity is now cheaper than the producing electricity from coal, oil, gas, or nuclear power. The problem is with what economists call the "sunk costs"; the privately owned energy companies have invested billions of dollars in plants, pipelines, etc., that would not be cost-effective if they were built today, but now that they have them, the giant energy companies want to use them until they fall apart. They will use their political and economic power to defend the status quo. Only a strong, frontal attack on these industries will open the door to alternatives to climate disaster.
Constructing plans and programs for the Green New Deal is a work in progress. Though stifled in part by the Democratic Party leadership, it has a strong congressional advocate in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her colleagues, and a strong planning team working outside Congress. Many parts, though not all, of the proposed Green New Deal have strong public support. While the Republicans and many Democrats make a big deal about the cost of the GND, the billion-dollar floods in the Midwest and the wiping out of whole cities in southern Africa this week illustrate the costs associated with not stopping global warming. It is disappointing that the supporters of the GND have not been stronger in demanding that billions of dollars from our bloated "defense" budget be used to finance the GND program; articles linked below note that we spend $32 million per hour, or more than 60 percent of the federal budget, on the military, while the real threat to the USA (and the world) comes from the breakdown of our climate.
In the summer of 2016, emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaign were published on WikiLeaks, and then in the mainstream media, to the Democratic Party's great embarrassment. A cyber-security firm hired by the Democrats quickly concluded that "hacking" had been done by agents of the Russian government. At about the same time, a "dossier" of allegations about Republican candidate Trump's connections with Russia – a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official hired by the Clinton campaign – found its way into the hands of the US media. Thus began "Russia-gate"; and 2 ½ years later, we (almost) have the report by former FBI head Robert Mueller, who was tasked in 2017 with investigating Trump's alleged connections with Russia. In addition to the (reasonable/proper) demand that the full report be made public, we can expect that the Democrats in the House of Representatives, as well as journalists and other researchers, will continue to search for evidence supporting Russia-gate; and that whatever is found/not found will play a role in the 2020 election.
However, it appears now that the fixation of the Democratic Party leadership and the hopes of millions of rank-and-file Democrats on Russia-gate have ended in disaster. A set of good/useful articles linked below spells out the many dimensions of this disaster. This newsletter has shared the skepticism about Russia-gate arising from the failure to investigate or make public evidence that the Democratic Party emails were "hacked," as opposed to being downloaded by an insider/employee, and the failure to be more inquisitive about the Christopher Steele memorandum. That is, in my opinion Russia-gate was built on a very weak, almost evidence-free foundation. The tragic outcome of this primal error, among other things, was a renewal of the Cold War with Russia, now rendered even more dangerous than the original because the US/NATO has advanced its military weapons and installations up to Russia's borders, putting accidental or deliberate nuclear war on a hair-trigger.
By all means, let's get hold of the Mueller Report and find out for ourselves what it has to say, and let's use its evidence and every other piece of evidence about the corruption of the worst/most dangerous presidency in US history to defeat Trump in 2020. But it is important now to push back against Russia-gate; pursuing fantasies of reversing the 2016 election or finding an impeachment-ready smoking gun is not worth the risk of nuclear war with Russia.
News Notes
Recently, Code Pink/Global Exchange organized a trip of US people to Iran, where they met people high and low and learned a lot. (And the FBI gave them a reception when they got back!) A one-hour video report/conversation about what they did and saw, featuring Newsletter regulars Medea Benjamin and Stephen Zunes, can be seen here.
This newsletter includes a selection of good articles about what's happening with immigrants and refugees on our southern border. Photographer Fred Ramos has spent the last five years chronicling the many reasons that drive migration from Central America: see his story and pictures here.
The climate stalwart at 350.org have put together a useful "scorecard" showing where the many Democratic presidential hopefuls stand on the major climate-crisis issues: "Supporting a Green New Deal to create millions of good jobs transitioning to the 100% renewable energy-powered economy we need, opposing climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects, and refusing to take big polluters' money." Check it out
In 1977 Scott Harris lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut and thought he would start up an independent, alternative radio station. He was recently interviewed about what happened next. Read "Four Decades of Radical Radio."
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – Weather permitting, the CFOW stalwarts gather every Saturday from 12 to 1 PM at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring St.) to protest war and other evils. Please join us!
Sunday, April 7th – CFOW's monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, from 7 to 9 p.m. At these meetings we review our work/the happenings of the past month and make plans for the month to come. 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 (usually) 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. And if you would like to support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
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. As always, we have some excellent "Featured Essays." I also encourage you to check out the scorecard-evaluation of Democratic presidential hopefuls on issues of war & peace; an in-depth article about the prospects (or not) for peace in Afghanistan; an update on Julian Assange's imprisonment in the Ecuadorean embassy in London; two good articles on the immigrant/refugee crisis at our southern border; and a blockbuster article from The New York Times that develops some hard facts about the role of pro-Israel money in US politics. Read on!
Rewards!
It's time for some nice tunes. Like most Americans, I enjoyed the family-friendly TV series "Weeds." One of its splendors was a weekly music clip, almost all from groups/people I had never heard of. I had heard of Malvina Reynolds, of course, the lefty from Berkeley whose "Little Boxes" ("houses made of ticky-taky") became the series theme song. But of the many unknown to me before "Weeds," here are nice songs from "The Be Good Tanyas," "Xavier Rudd," and an especially silly number from "The Real Tuesday Weld." Enjoy!
Best Wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
NATO Turns 70
By James Carden, The Nation [March 28, 2019]
---- On April 4, 1949, representatives of the United States, Canada, and 10 European countries, including the United Kingdom and France, gathered in Washington to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, a defense pact created at the urging of wartime allies France and Britain as a means to, in the words of NATO's first secretary general, Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." President Harry S. Truman pledged that the treaty would serve as a defensive one in the face of Soviet expansion, "against aggression and the fear of aggression—a bulwark which will permit us to get on with the real business of…achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens." Next week, to mark the 70th anniversary of that occasion, NATO foreign ministers will descend on Washington for a ministerial meeting, various think-tank panels and commemorations, all to be topped off by an address from NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg to a joint meeting of Congress. … But not everyone will be celebrating. [Read More] For some reasons why this is not something to celebrate, read "Pelosi and McConnell Are Inching Us Closer to Nuclear War," bMarch 30, 2019]
The Real Costs of Russiagate
By Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation [March 27, 2019]
---- Contrary to a number of major media outlets, from Bloomberg News toThe Wall Street Journal, nor does Mueller's exculpatory finding actually mean that "Russiagate…is dead" and indeed that "it expired in an instant." Such conclusions reveal a lack of historical and political understanding. Nearly three years of Russiagate's toxic allegations have entered the American political-media elite bloodstream, and they almost certainly will reappear again and again in one form or another. This is an exceedingly grave danger, because the real costs of Russiagate are not the estimated $25–40 million spent on the Mueller investigation but the corrosive damage it has already done to the institutions of American democracy—damage done not by an alleged "Trump-Putin axis" but by Russsigate's perpetrators themselves. [Read More]
For some more interesting reading about the Mueller Report and Russiagate – (Video) "Deep Faith in the Deep State Gives Dems a Set Back," an interview with Jeff Cohen and Jacqueline Luqman on The Real News Network, hosted by Paul Jay [March 31, 2019] [Link]; and an Editorial from The Nation, "What We Should Learn From the Mueller Report" [March 28, 2019] [Link]. Matt Taibii of Rolling Stone has published three interesting/must-read articles about the failure of the mainstream media in its coverage of "Russiagate" over the last 2 ½ years. They are: "It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD" [March 23, 2019] [Link]; "As the Mueller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin" [March 24, 2019] [Link]; and "On Russiagate and Our Refusal to Face Why Trump Won" [March 29, 2019] [Link]. In an interview with Vox.com published today, Taibii is challenged on some of his assertions, and has some useful responses [Link].
Protesting Politics in Algeria
By Amir Mohamed Aziz, Middle East Report [March 26, 2019]
---- It is unclear if the protests will lead to any substantive revolutionary change in Algeria. They may pave the way for a new political future or end up being suppressed by security forces—any number of outcomes is possible. Despite Bouteflika's announcement that he will no longer seek a fifth term, protesters show no signs of stopping. Algerians are cognizant that politics in the country does not begin and end with Bouteflika; power is wielded by a shadowy circle of army generals, legislators, politicians and loyal party nationalists hidden from public scrutiny. But what can be seen is remarkable: Algerians across generations and social divisions mobilizing peacefully, singing, chanting, dancing and brandishing slogans with conviction, humor, wit, eloquence and creativity. They are gathering on the streets, connecting with one another, exchanging ideas, building collective memories and holding space for the generation of new solidarities, friendships and intimacies. They are deploying technology and social media in diversified ways while drawing upon the Algerian people's rich historical tradition of revolutionary protest, forging new forms of political consciousness. While police and state violence against protesters remains a stark reality, the moment of protest itself is revolutionary. The message that protesters are conveying to the elite is loud and clear: Enough is enough, no more empty promises—the Algerian people want concrete change. [Read More] Several imo very interesting essays were published this week about the Algerian uprising. Recommended are "Algerian protesters reject military's gambit to maintain power," bMarch 27, 2019] [Link]; "Algeria's Joyful Revolution," by Lahouari Addi, The Nation [March 28, 2019] [Link]; and "Algeria Seen from the Sea," b[Link].
The Frightening Lessons of Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America"
By Richard Brody, The New Yorker [February 1, 2017]
[FB – Today The New Yorker put up some older articles about "dystopias." This one caught my interest; it takes another look at Philip Roth's 2004 novel about a semi-Nazi takeover of the USA, writing from the perspective of the Trump election victory.]
---- [The novel] dramatizes two vast and contradictory principles simultaneously: on the one hand, the susceptibility of American individualism to the cult of celebrity, and of American faith in democracy to a tyranny of the majority, leading to a particular vulnerability to unscrupulous politicians who win widespread popular support and gain a grip on the three branches of government; and, on the other, the distinctively American sense of freedom, stiffening the will to resist such political depravities, a will that's integral to the country's values, heritage, and history. The novel's great tragic power lies precisely in the clash between the two. (It also shows America's unshakable links to its European heritage—the latent and looming inclination to anti-Semitism.) "The Plot Against America" is about how it can happen here; about how, if it were to happen here, American Jews and, for that matter, many other courageous Americans would rise up, organize, and resist; and about how their altogether American resistance against an altogether American abuse of power might nonetheless not suffice. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
War, Peace and Presidential Candidates
---- What hope is there that one of the parade of Democrats seeking the presidency in 2020 could be a real "peace candidate"? Could one of them bring an end to these wars and prevent new ones? Walk back the brewing Cold War and arms race with Russia and China? Downsize the US military and its all-consuming budget? Promote diplomacy and a commitment to international law? … While we can't guarantee that candidates will stick to their campaign promises, it is important to look at this new crop of presidential candidates and examine their views – and, when possible, voting records – on issues of war and peace. What prospects for peace might each of them bring to the White House? … We need to hear a much more vigorous debate about war and peace in this campaign, with more specific plans from all the candidates. This vicious cycle of US wars, militarism and runaway military spending drains our resources, corrupts our national priorities and undermines international cooperation, including on the existential dangers of climate change and nuclear weapons proliferation, which no country can solve on its own. We are calling for this debate most of all because we mourn the millions of people being killed by our country's wars and we want the killing to stop. If you have other priorities, we understand and respect that. But unless and until we address militarism and all the money it sucks out of our national coffers, it may well prove impossible to solve the other very serious problems facing the United States and the world in the 21st century. [Read More]
The War Against ISIS
How the Islamic State's Brutal Project Was Finally Overthrown
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [March 24, 2019]
---- But could the thousands of dispersed Isis fighters that the Pentagon says are hiding out in the vast deserts and semi-deserts between Syria and Iraq reorganize and stage a convincing counter-attack? After all, the US "Surge" in Iraq in between 2007 and 2009 was trumpeted at the time as marking the final defeat of al-Qaeda in there, which was Isis under another name. Isis commanders are reported to draw inspiration from that period, arguing that they have come back before and they will do so again. It is not very likely that favorable circumstances will once more combine in such a way that Isis could relaunch itself. It has lost the advantage of surprise and has too many enemies who may not like each other but know what Isis can do given half a chance. In 2014 it enjoyed a certain tolerance and even support from Sunni states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar which is no longer there. But this not quite the same as saying that Isis is finished. The deserts of Syria and Iraq are vast and impossible to police in their entirety. Occupation forces, be they Kurds in Raqqa or Iraqi Shia troops in Sunni parts of Iraq, are resented and often hated by Sunni Arabs and Isis could benefit from their disaffection. And even if Isis does not regain such popularity as it once enjoyed in these places, its reputation for homicidal fury means that it does not have to do very much to spread terror. [Read More]
The War in Yemen
Progressive Surge Propels Turning Point in US Policy on Yemen
By Danny Postel, Middle East Report [March 30, 2019]
---- The US House of Representatives passed a potentially historic resolution on February 13, 2019, calling for an end to US military support for the Saudi-led coalition's intervention in Yemen that began in 2015. Although the US government has never formally declared its involvement in the war, it assists the coalition with intelligence and munitions and supports the aerial campaign with refueling and targeting. The United States is therefore complicit in the myriad atrocities the coalition has committed against Yemeni civilians, which Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have characterized as war crimes. What is already historic about the resolution and its Senate counterpart is their invocation of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which restrains a president's capacity to commit forces abroad. Aimed to prevent "future Vietnams," the act gives Congress the authority to compel the removal of US military forces engaged in hostilities absent a formal declaration of war. The House resolution was the first time Congress flexed its War Powers muscle in the 45 years since that resolution's passage. [Read More]
The War in Afghanistan
One Step Closer to an Elusive Peace in Afghanistan
By Ahmed Rashid, New York Review of Books [March 27, 2019]
---- On March 12, after sixteen straight days of talks in Doha, the capital of Qatar, US and Taliban negotiators wrapped up a significant part of the complex deal that could finally bring an end to the fighting in Afghanistan that has continued with scarcely a pause in the more than seventeen years since the US invasion of 2001. Both sides announced they had draft agreements on two issues critical to the US: the timetable of a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and a Taliban pledge to cut ties with all extremist groups—al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and Central Asian jihadist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekitan—and eventually eliminate them from Afghanistan. … But now comes the hard part: a ceasefire and the "intra-Afghan dialogue." President Ashraf Ghani is deeply frustrated that the Taliban are still refusing to hold talks with him or his government. He is angry, according to those who have met him recently—his bitterness fed by speculation in Ghani's camp that the Americans are conspiring to keep him out of the process as a favor to the Taliban, although there is little basis for this belief. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
A Year of Silencing Julian Assange
By Elizabeth Vos, Consortium News [March 28, 2019]
---- One year ago Thursday, Ecuador's government under President Lenin Moreno silenced Julian Assange. WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter Wednesday: "… March 28, marks one year that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has been illegally gagged from doing journalism—any writing that expresses a 'political opinion'? even on his own treatment, after pressure from the U.S. on Ecuador." On this date in 2018 Moreno imposed on Assange what Human Rights Watch's legal counsel Dinah Pokempner described as looking "more and more like solitary confinement." Moreno cut off Assange's online access and restricted visitors to the Ecuador embassy in London where Assange has had legal political asylum since 2012. Moreno cited Assange's critical social media remarks about Ecuador's allies, the U.S. and Spain. Assange's near-total isolation, with the exception of visits from legal counsel during week days, has been augmented by the Ecuadorian government's imposition of a complex "protocol," which, although eased slightly in recent months in respect of visits allowed, has not improved Assange's overall status over the last 12 months. In some respects, it seems to have worsened. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Trump wants to give 62 cents of every dollar to the military. That's immoral
By Reverend William Barber, Dr Liz Theoharis and Lindsay Koshgarian, The Guardian [UKk] [March 27, 2019]
---- Donald Trump recently unleashed his dark vision for our nation and our world, in the form of his budget request to Congress. … With this budget, Trump takes more than $1tn in taxpayer money and disperses fully $750bn to the military. Out of every taxpayer dollar, in other words, 62 cents go to the military and our militarized Department of Homeland Security. (Veterans' benefits take another seven cents.) That leaves just 31 cents for all the rest: education, job training, community economic development, housing, safe drinking water and clean air, health and science research, and the prevention of war through diplomacy and humanitarian aid. The budget also cuts billions from non-discretionary anti-poverty programs outside of this $1tn. Medicaid and food stamps would be cut and disfigured beyond recognition. At every turn, the Trump budget finds vast billions for militarization, while it cuts much smaller poverty and other programs, claiming the goal is to save money. [Read More] For another perspective, read "We Have Spent $32 Million Per Hour on War Since 2001. 15 years after the invasion of Iraq, what are the costs?" by [Link]
House Democrats to Unveil Plan to Expand Health Coverage
From The New York Times [March 25, 2019]
---- On Tuesday, Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will put aside, at least for now, the liberal quest for a government-run "Medicare for all" single-payer system and unveil a more incremental approach toward fulfilling those campaign promises. Building on the Affordable Care Act, they would offer more generous subsidies for the purchase of private health insurance offered through the health law's insurance exchanges while financing new efforts to increase enrollment. … The legislative package, put together by Ms. Pelosi and several House committee chairmen, builds on the health law that the speaker was instrumental in passing — and that was signed by President Barack Obama almost exactly nine years ago. And it seems to answer a question facing Democrats since they took control of the House: How would they balance the expansive demands of their most liberal members with the needs of more pragmatic Democrats elected in seats that were held by Republicans? [Read More]
A NYC Nurses' Strike?
Patients 'Hit the Call Bell and Nobody Comes.' Hospital Nurses Demand 'Safe Staffing' Levels.
By Patrick McGeehan, New York Times [March 30, 2019]
[FB – Many labor-organizing victories reflect the close ties between workers and the community in which they are striking. I think it is interesting/hopeful that two of the most militant working-class sectors – teachers and nurses – are putting up front the needs of those they are serving/helping – students and patients – in their contract demands. Their strikes appear to be "with" and "for" the community, not just about self-interest. Lots of food for thought here.]
---- More than 10,000 nurses are demanding a sharp increase in their ranks at three of the city's biggest hospital systems — Mount Sinai, New York-Presbyterian and Montefiore. Their union, the New York State Nurses Association, has threatened to strike over staffing levels, an issue that has become an increasing source of contention at hospitals around the country. … Negotiators for the hospitals recently offered $50 million toward the hiring of more nurses, a move that spurred the union to postpone a strike date that had been set for Tuesday. Though negotiations have resumed, the two sides remain far apart. The union, however, has not set a new strike date. [Read More]
The US War on Immigrants and Refugees
What I Saw at the Dilley, Texas, Immigrant Detention Center
By Martin Garbus, The Nation [March 26, 2019]
---- When I first started to write this, I was crying. I was flying back from Dilley, Texas, the site of the largest family-detention center in the United States. It is 75 miles from the Texas-Mexico border. The center is actually a prison—an internment camp. I see the faces and hear the voices of the women and children I just left. Nearly every woman I saw seeking asylum came from the northern triangle of Central America: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. They had come, primarily, not to save their own lives, not even to save themselves from hopeless poverty or endless physical and sexual abuse, but to save their daughters and sons. … I spent one week at Dilley, leaving early in February, as a volunteer lawyer to help these families with their asylum applications. Nearly every one of the almost 500 people that I saw in the detention center was sick. [Read More] Also useful/interesting is "How to Make a Difficult Situation Awful: Or Why Donald Trump's Great Wall Is Viagra for Him, But a Border Disaster," by William deBuys, Tom Dispatch [March 25, 2019] [Link].
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics
By Nathan Thrall, New York Tmes [March 28, 2019]
---- The B.D.S. movement was founded in 2005 with a statement of principles, written collectively and known as the B.D.S. call. Signed by more than 170 Palestinian organizations from around the world, it made three demands of Israel, one for each of the three major Palestinian constituencies. For residents of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem: an end to the military occupation that began in 1967. For Palestinian refugees: the right to return to their homes and property, in keeping with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, which was adopted near the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when 83 percent of the Palestinians in the territory that became Israel fled or were forced to flee. And for Palestinian citizens of Israel: full equality with Jews. … Among American and Israeli Jews alike, there is growing concern that the most likely future for Israel-Palestine is neither two states nor one but continued Israeli occupation and Palestinian subjugation. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of settlers has surpassed 600,000, a population many times greater than any Israeli leader ever contemplated pulling out. Since 2017, polls have found that majorities of both Israeli Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza oppose a two-state solution, though there is no widespread support for any alternative either. [Read More] For some useful commentary on the importance of this article, read "'New York Times' reports that Jewish donors shape Democrats' regressive position on Israel," by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [March 28, 2019] [Link].
Israeli Snipers Kill 4, wound 207 as 40,000 Palestinians March Peacefully in Gaza for Right to Return
---- As an unprecedented 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza marched for the right to return, marking the one-year anniversary of the beginning of weekly such marches, Israeli snipers shot into the Gaza Strip, killing 4 youth and wounding at least 207. The Israeli army uses military-grade tear gas on the crowds, and the tear gas canisters fired into crowds often hit individuals, killing them or causing severe injuries. Lazy journalists keep talking about border "clashes," but most of the thousands of Palestinians wounded in the past year have been shot on Gaza soil at a distance from the fence. … Shooting civilian protesters who pose no realistic danger to troops is a war crime. Systematically doing so, as Israeli snipers have been ordered to do in the past year by the fascist Likud government of Binyamin Netanyahu, amounts to "crimes against humanity." Netanyahu and his henchmen (which now include terrorist Kahanist elements) should be indicted by the International Criminal Court under the Rome Statute, ratified by most countries in the world by 2002, [Read More] For some useful background/context, read "The Great Return March is rekindling Palestinian resistance," by Ryvka Barnard, Red Pepper [UK] [March 31, 2019] [Link]. Are there any prospects of holding the Israeli killers accountable? Read "Lawyers Worldwide Urge International Court: Investigate Israeli Crimes," by Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [March 29, 2019] [Link]
OUR HISTORY
Rediscovering Nelson Algren
By Dan Simon, The Nation [March 19, 2019]
[FB – American culture in the first years after WWII had so much promise; but anti-Communism, the "black list," segregation, and a Great Fear of dissent destroyed the careers of many creative talents. Nelson Algren was one of them. ]
---- In 1950, the year he won the first National Book Award for Fiction for The Man with the Golden Arm, Algren stood out as the best of American character: virile, direct, taciturn and also very funny, identified not with the American worker but with the man in the street who was denied the dignity of work yet had dignity nonetheless—a subversive notion if ever there were one. Algren's characters were the men and women who were left behind by the striving, upwardly mobile American middle class. It was as if Algren's folk belonged, not to the past, but to a different America. … Algren's fall came soon after, orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover himself, and it was arguably as swift a fall from grace as has ever occurred to someone who had climbed to the pinnacle of the American literary pantheon. Hoover considered Algren to be perhaps the leading Communist sympathizer among American writers. And because Algren in 1950 was our most famous writer, Hoover saw Algren, perhaps rightly, as the single greatest threat to the body politic of Hoover's idea of what America stood for. [Read More]
"While I Live, I Remember": Agnès Varda's Way of Seeing
By Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker [March 30, 2019]
[FB – I was lucky to arrive at college just as films from the French "New Wave" were coming to America. Goddard, Truffaut, et al. became well known, but Agnès Varda … not so much. The WLS has many of her films; learn about her here and check out one of her great films.]
---- Varda has long been called the Godmother of the French New Wave; when she made her first two films, "La Pointe Courte," in 1955, at the age of twenty-six, and "Cleo from 5 to 7," in 1961, both considered proto-examples of the movement, she effectively wrote the headline of her obituary. The truth is that, in more than sixty years of filmmaking, she charted a course unlike any other. Her wave was her own.. … One of the things that is so moving and exciting about Varda's way of making films is how transparent she made her own fanciful, critical, witty process of looking. Even more than other filmmakers, she made the camera her eye—searching, zooming, lingering on the sorts of things that other people might see as part of the background, if at all. [Read More] Also interesting are "Agnès Varda, Influential French New Wave Filmmaker, Dies at 90," New York Times [Link]; and "Agnès Varda: The 'Mother of the French New Wave,'" The Guardian [UK] [March 29, 2019] [Link].
