Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
September 15, 2019
Hello All – The focus of this week's CFOW newsletter is on our climate crisis and next Friday's "Global Climate Strike," which will take place in 117 countries, with more than 2,500 events, including some in Westchester and a big rally and march starting in NYC's Foley Square (near City Hall) at noon. (Find events near you here.) CFOW stalwarts and friends will be heading down to the event on the Metro North train leaving Dobbs Ferry at 10:48 and Hastings at 10:50; (at GCS we will meet the train leaving Greystone at 10:37). Please join us!
Why a climate strike?
Yesterday, in front of the White House, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and dozens of other young people held an 11-minute "die-in" to dramatize the rule-of-thumb timeline that we have only 11 years to turn around our climate crisis before it may be too late. While "how long do we have?" before it is too late to head off extreme disaster is somewhat uncertain, over the past decade the proposed timelines have been getting shorter and shorter, and now the year 2030 seems to be the most hopeful deadline. (It could well be much shorter, including "yesterday.") – What this means is that, as greenhouse gases (mostly carbon dioxide and methane) accumulate in our atmosphere), our climate will warm at a predictable rate, and that before too long the Earth's temperature will have risen more than 2.7 degrees (Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, and we will reach a tipping point of extreme danger and possibly runaway warming.
And so this is The Emergency, and it confronts us all. But what has changed in recent years is that young people have reframed The Emergency, pointing out that the Leaders of the Free World, and not incidentally their own parents, will be dead and gone before the worst impacts of the climate crisis arrive, and that it is they – those today under 30, for example – who will bear the brunt of this existential crisis, a crisis that they had no personal role in creating. This is obviously unfair; and the anger of young people is compounded by the universally acknowledged truism that their parents' generation has done virtually nothing to address the crisis. And if righteous anger needed any other fuel, the election of climate-vandal Donald Trump takes the cake. And so first in Europe, and now all over the world, young people are acting to try to save themselves from a horrible fate. In the USA, we have the Sunrise Movement, the Green New Deal, and now a Global Climate Strike. This is a desperate moment, and all of us need to do as much as we can to support our children and grandchildren.
But isn't The Green New Deal too expensive?
Whenever someone proposes ways to deal with our climate crisis, the mainstream media highlight the cost of the proposal and ask, "How could we possibly pay for this?" To which Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg replies, "If we can save the banks, then we can save the World." And so yes, it's expensive, but it's not like we haven't done something big before. Another answer is that the cost of doing not enough is greater than the cost of being serious about the climate crisis. Recently, in The Nation, Joshua Holland wrote, "The Green New Deal is Cheaper Than Climate Change." "Even if we set aside the human and biospheric costs of climate change," he writes, "the economic cost of allowing temperatures to rise even a couple of degrees above that target is simply staggering." Scientists working at the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, estimated that "a fraction of the potential risks and damages" to the USA economy in 2090 will be costing $224 billion per year if global warming is not effectively slowed and stopped. Examples of the economic losses of our climate crisis are all around us; for example, a report cited in The New York Times this week claimed that "extreme weather displaced a record 7 million in first half of 2019." Another article in The Times – about the Great Flood [USA] of 2019 – reported "this year's flooding across the Midwest and the South affected nearly 14 million people. … The causes of flooding are complicated, but climate change is increasingly an exacerbating factor. Warmer air can hold more moisture, and that moisture can fall back out of the sky, whether as rain or snow, in greater amounts." (And this excellent article includes maps and pictures that show how extensive and disastrous were the Midwestern floods in the first half of this year.)
The Global Climate Strike is not just on Friday
What can we do? How can I help? These are the questions we need to be asking (and answering) in the months and years ahead. We are up against the fossil fuel companies, who are investing billions of dollars in exploration and new drilling, when we will certainly bring ourselves to doom if we even burn the fossil fuels now ready for market. We are up against a political system that refuses to consider the Green New Deal or similar proposals; and we are up against a media system that continues to ignore our climate crisis (for example, only one climate question during the last presidential candidates' debate). So it won't be easy; but when our grandchildren ask us, "What did you do in the great war to save our climate?" what will we answer? "A lot," I hope.
Read more about the Global Climate Strike
(Video) Greta Thunberg on the Climate Fight: "If We Can Save the Banks, Then We Can Save the World"
An interview with Naomi Klein, The Intercept [
---- We are living through some scary times. As Greta has told us so often: "Our house is on fire." And I firmly believe that there are three things that have to align if we are going to douse the flames. First, we need the courage to dream of a different kind of future. To shake off the sense of inevitable apocalypse that has pervaded our culture. To give us a destination, a common goal, a picture of the world we are working towards. But those dreams are useless unless we are willing to embrace the other two forces. One is the need to confront the truth of our moment in history — the truth of how much we have already lost and of how much more we are on the brink of losing if we do not embrace revolutionary levels of change. The other thing we have to do is this: We have to find our fight. We have to come together across differences and build credible, unshakable power. In the face of the fires roiling our world, we have to find our own fire. Truth and fire. [Read More]
(Video) "We Are Striking to Disrupt the System": An Hour with 16-Year-Old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg
From Democracy Now! [September 11, 2019]
---- In her first extended broadcast interview in the United States, we spend the hour with Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has inspired millions across the globe. Last year she launched a school strike for the climate, skipping school every Friday to stand in front of the Swedish parliament, demanding action to prevent catastrophic climate change. Her protest spread, quickly going global. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the globe have participated in their own local school strikes for the climate. Since her strike began in 2018, Greta has become a leading figure in the climate justice movement. [See the Program]
There's Only One Antidote for Climate Despair—Climate Revolt
By Ben Ehrenreich, The Nation [September 9, 2019]
---- What could it mean to "act now," when we have so little time? How to find the will to fight when everything seems doomed? It's hard even to move when temperatures break 100, and harder still when you know that the sweat soaking your shirt means the Gulf Stream is failing, the permafrost melting, that Alaska's sea ice is already gone, that we're running out of arable land, out of water, out of time. The left has rarely been comfortable talking about despair, much less about faith—of the religious sort or any other. But who ever expected to have to mourn a planet, to watch the shadow of extinction fall on so many living things? Our demise is not yet fated, but even without Bolsonaro and Trump, we are running headlong towards it. Carbon emissions continue to climb. Despair hangs heavy, stifling, grey as meltwater rushing off a Greenland glacier. Sometimes it feels more frantically debilitating, a roaring orange, like the Arctic and the Amazon in flames. It has its own feedback loops, too: If we don't act, we know that all will certainly be lost; but all action feels inadequate, so we muddle on as the ground collapses in front of us. From the beginning, Extinction Rebellion—"XR" in movement shorthand—has sought a way out of this bind. [Read More]
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 the climate crisis, 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!
That's it for this week.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
This Week's Featured Essays
Observe 9/11 Anniversary by Calling for an End to the Afghan War
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [September 10, 2019]
---- The U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan violated the United Nations Charter, which mandates that countries settle their disputes peacefully. The Charter forbids the use of military force except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization. The invasion was not lawful self-defense, as it did not respond to an armed attack by Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks were not carried out by the Afghan government. And although the Council passed Resolutions 1368 and 1373 in response to the 9/11 attacks, neither resolution authorized the United States to use military force against Afghanistan. Instead, the resolutions condemned the 9/11 attacks; ordered the freezing of assets and criminalization of terrorist activity; urged steps to prevent terrorist activity, including sharing of information; and advocated ratification and enforcement of international conventions against terrorism. … The 18-year U.S. war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of 139,000 Afghan civilians and combatants, and more than 6,300 U.S. soldiers and mercenaries. And the carnage in Afghanistan is only getting worse. July 2019 was the deadliest month of the past two years, with 1,500 civilians killed or wounded. During the first half of 2019, nearly 4,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, and it was primarily the United States that caused most of the civilian deaths in that time period. [Read More] For an interesting appraisal of the deeper background behind the Afghanistan war, read "A century after the Anglo-Afghan peace treaty, the Fourth Afghan War is about to escalate," by Robert Fisk, The Independent [UK] [August 2019] [Link].
(Video) Noura Erakat: Netanyahu's Proposed West Bank Annexation Is Logical End to Israel's Apartheid Policy
From Democracy Now [September 12, 2019]
---- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing worldwide condemnation for vowing to annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank if he wins next week's snap election. The United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union and Russia have all criticized Netanyahu's plan, which he unveiled Tuesday. Netanyahu's pledge comes just a week before Israeli voters return to the polls on Tuesday for new elections after Netanyahu failed to form a coalition government following Israel's April 9 election. Netanyahu's annexation plan would crush hopes of an eventual Palestinian state. We speak with Noura Erakat, Palestinian human rights attorney and an assistant professor at Rutgers University. [See the Program]
For more insights on the Israeli annexation plan – "Netanyahu Openly Boasts About Stealing vast Swathes of Palestine, but US Pols Won't Acknowledge It," by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [Link]; "A declaration of war on the two-state solution," by Gershon Baskin, Jerusalem Post [September 12, 2019] [Link]; and "Why Bibi Fears Arab Voters," by Yardena Schwartz, New York Review of Books [September 10, 2019] [Link]. You can also listen to Noura Erakat on a podcast from +972 Magazine, "Has international law failed Palestinians?" [August 30, 2019] [Link] - 48 minutes.
The Question That Never Gets Asked About Kashmir
By Charles Glass, Stratfor [September 9, 2019]
---- In 1998, the CIA subjected India to strict surveillance to ensure it was complying with its commitment not to test nuclear weapons. The agency used satellites, communications intercepts and agents to watch the nuclear facility at Pokhran in Rajasthan state. India could not detonate warheads, which would inevitably lead Pakistan to follow suit, without the United States knowing in advance. Or so the United States thought. Washington went into shock on May 11, 1998, when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced that his country had just detonated not one, but five nuclear warheads at Pokhran. "India is now a nuclear power state," Vajpayee declared. … If the CIA is watching India and Pakistan now, it will have to do better than it did in 1998. In 2019, with passions high over India's abrogation of Kashmir's legal, if fictitious, autonomy, the outcome would not be waking up to discover one side or the other had tested weapons. It would be the sight of nuclear war taking millions of lives. Although the stakes in Kashmir could not be higher, the United States and much of the international community call the dispute India's "internal affair" or a "bilateral" issue between India and Pakistan. It isn't. A potential nuclear conflagration cannot be anything other than a matter of international peace and security. The Indian and Pakistani armed forces possess both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, which local commanders could use on the battlefield in populated areas. This would be the first use in war of atomic weapons since the U.S. destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. [Read More] India's fascist government is not neglecting the rest of India: read "'Everywhere is Kashmir': Unraveling Weaponized, Corporatized Hindustan in India's Northeast," b [Link].
Latest Russian spy story looks like another elaborate media deception
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone [September 13, 2019]
---- The story was broken by CNN Monday, September 9th, under the headline, "Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017": "In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN." … If the mole was even that important, it seems more than possible we lost this "asset" because our intelligence chiefs felt it necessary to spend late 2016 and early 2017 spilling details about our capabilities in the news media. This story wasn't leaked to tell the public an important story about a lost source in the Kremlin, but more likely as damage control, to work the refs as investigators examine the origins of the election interference tale [Read More]
Our History
Salvador Allende's Last Speech
[FB – Chilean President Salvador Allende died 46 years ago (September 11, 1973) in a US-backed coup. As a socialist, he moved his country in a progressive direction. With his overthrow, the country plunged into a nightmare of fascist violence. Here's his final address, broadcast over the radio while he was barricaded in the presidential palace.]
---- My friends, surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the towers of Radio Portales and Radio Corporación. My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself commander of the Navy, and Mr Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the government, and who also has appointed himself chief of the Carabineros [national police]. Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history. [Read More]
