CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Rep. Jamaal Bowman's support for Amazon workers in Alabama

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

March 7, 2021

 

Hello All – For the last four weeks workers at Amazon's giant warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama have been voted Yes or No for a union.  The union campaign has been underway for several months, headed by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union.  Amazon has never had one of its workplaces unionized, and it is spending $10,000 a day on consultants to keep its 5,800 Bessemer workers from voting for the union.  The voting continues until March 29^th.  The workers have received support from throughout the USA, including from our own Congressman Jamaal Bowman.  Here are some excerpts from his article published Friday in the magazine Jewish Currents.

 

Amazon employs at least one million people, making it the second-largest employer in the US. If workers in Bessemer take the incredibly brave and difficult step of forming a union and standing up to the atrocious greed of their employer, it could help catalyze the next wave of workers reclaiming their power across the country from corporate overlords.  In other words, the significance of the Amazon workers' struggle goes far beyond their workplace, or even the company. It's about the power of unions to remake the landscape of work. Unions deliver real, direct, material benefits to their members. Union workers on average make at least 11% more than non-union workers, controlling for education, occupation, and experience. A new wave of unionizations would also be a big step forward for racial justice. Workers of color benefit most from being represented by a labor union, and families of color with union members have five times the median wealth of families of color who are not union members. A successful union drive at Amazon would also embolden workers seeking better conditions at other exploitative tech companies. The problem isn't just that Amazon mistreats, underpays, and undervalues people; it's that Amazon sells that mistreatment of workers to investors and business elites as innovation. … When I touch down in Alabama, I will tell the Amazon workers I am proud of them—for taking the first step toward a union and for speaking out against injustice. We don't have to settle for an economy that treats workers as expendable. We can build a system that respects the inherent power and dignity in every single one of us and that puts people ahead of profits. I'm standing with workers in Bessemer because the time for racial and economic justice is now, whether Amazon likes it or not.  [Read More]

 

The progressive movement in the United States can't make the gains that we need to make without a strong and successful union movement.  Is an "American Spring" in the making?  If this happens, an important role will have to be played by the socialist and progressive Democrats in Congress.  The voters in CD 16 (the Bronx and Westchester) can be proud that we have a congressman in Jamaal Bowman who is supporting the Amazon workers.  Give Jamaal a shout-out on his website.

 

News Notes

Rep. Mondaire Jones (CD 17) was on Democracy Now! this week, speaking about HR 1 and its "foundational importance" to US democracy.  He also stated his belief that Israel was obligated to share its supply of Covid-19 vaccine with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, something that it has not done.

 

Hundreds of NY organizations have joined forces to press for some much-needed relief for immigrants battered by the Covid Economy.  One of these campaigns is #FundExcludedWorkers, which calls on the state legislature to provide funds for those who did not receive federal stimulus checks because of the immigration/legal status.  A week ago hundreds of New Yorkers shut down the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges in support of this demand.  For a good article from MSN, go here.

 

After the Senate parliamentarian stripped the $15/minimum wage from the Covid relief legislation, Sen. Bernie Sanders offered it as an amendment.  It lost because 8 Democratic Senators joined with the Republicans to vote it down.  To learn who these 8 Senators are, who should be primaried asap, go here.

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  Another vigil takes place on the first Monday of the month (April 4^th), from 6 to 6:30 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 4 pm, please send a return email. 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 support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

Rewards!

Tomorrow, March 8^th, is International Women's Day. Here is a useful/interesting short film on the origins and history of the Day. March 8^th (1917) is also the anniversary of the (first) Russian Revolution.  Several films were produced for the 1927 Soviet 10^th-anniversary celebrations; my personal favorite is "The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty," a documentary pieced together from newsreel fragments and home movies by Esther Shub, the Soviet Union's leading film editor in the 1920s.  Check it out here.

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

GOP Embraces Trump and His Steal Elections Strategy

By Max Elbaum, Organizing Upgrade [March 3, 2021]

---- Even before the semi-formal anointment of Trump as the GOP's post-2020 top leader at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Feb. 28, the twice-impeached former President had been awarded the crown. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, considered Trump's most powerful opponent in the media-proclaimed "Republican Civil War," had surrendered without a fight. On Feb. 13 he had told the country, "Trump's actions that preceded the [Jan. 6] riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty." Four days later he said on FOX News that he would "absolutely" support Trump for President if he was the 2024 GOP nominee. That's game over. The Trump-provoked, Confederate-flag-waving assault on the Capitol Jan. 6 didn't split the GOP. Rather, it revealed that from bottom to top the Republican Party has become even more Trumpified than it was while Trump was President. [Read More]

 

Last Exit from Afghanistan

By Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker [March 1, 2021]

---- The peace talks began last September, in Doha, Qatar, a Persian Gulf microstate that sits atop the world's largest natural-gas field. For seven years, Qatar's leaders have hosted several of the Taliban's most senior members in luxurious captivity, housing them and their families with all expenses paid. At the opening ceremony, delegates from the Taliban and the Afghan government gathered at the Doha Sheraton, in a cavernous convention space staffed by an army of guest workers. … As Americans have lost patience with the war, the U.S. has reduced its presence in Afghanistan, from about a hundred thousand troops to some twenty-five hundred. Seven months before [the Doha meeting], Doha, officials in the Trump Administration concluded their own talks with the Taliban, in which they agreed to withdraw the remaining forces by May 1, 2021. The prevailing ethos, a senior American official told me, was "Just get out." [Read More]

 

WAR & PEACE

Withdrawing US Troops From Afghanistan Is Only a Start. We Have to End the Air War Too.

By Phyllis Bennis, The Nation [March 5, 2021]

---- In recent months talk of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan has increased once again. It's not the first time during the course of the nearly two-decades-long war that we've heard this, and at several points since the war began in 2001, some troops have actually been withdrawn. … Pulling out the ground troops is important. They're not keeping Afghans safer. They're not building democracy. They've been there far too long, and we signed a peace deal promising to get them out. But pulling out the ground troops is not enough. If we're serious about ending the US role in the war, and we must be, we need to get serious about ending the war that's still killing Afghans almost two decades after the United States invaded the country. Calling the air war "counterterrorism" isn't a sufficient reason to continue military campaigns that kill civilians. [Read More]

 

Biden's War Policy Offers Chance for Change — or More of the Same [Esp. Drones]

By Alex Emmons and Nick Turse, The Intercept [March 7, 2021]

---- Less than two months after taking office, most of President Joe Biden's national security policy is under review. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is reexamining worldwide troop deployments, and the administration is taking a hard look at global counterterrorism operations. Biden's team is also reviewing the Trump administration's peace deal with the Taliban and the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, which Biden, like Barack Obama before him, has promised to close. Meanwhile, a Pentagon task force is reviewing China policy, and the State Department has paused arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. …Perhaps no review will have a more significant impact on national security policy over the next four years than the administration's comprehensive reexamination of Trump-era rules governing counterterrorism drone strikes and commando missions outside of conventional war zones. [Read More]

 

Also illuminating on War & Peace – "Trump and Biden's Secret Bombing Wars" by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [March 5, 2021] [Link]; "The Military's Failure to Reckon With White Supremacy in Its Ranks" by Melissa del Bosque, The Intercept [March 7 2021] [Link]; and "Time to Repeal, Not Replace War Authorizations" from Common Dreams [March 5, 2021] [Link].

 

THE CLIMATE CRISIS

'Good Jobs for All': Sunrise Movement Launches Campaign to Fight Climate Crisis With Work Guarantee

By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams [March 5, 2021]

---- Amid the ongoing climate emergency and the devastating coronavirus pandemic that has resulted in more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. alone as well as an economic meltdown that has left millions of people unemployed, the Sunrise Movement on Thursday launched its "Good Jobs for All" campaign to demand that lawmakers pursue a robust recovery that guarantees a good job to anyone who wants one and puts the country on a path toward a Green New Deal. … During the campaign launch, Sunrise—joined by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sara Nelson, president of the the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO—introduced their Good Jobs for All Pledge, which calls on President Joe Biden and members of Congress to immediately enact economic recovery legislation that meets the scale of the overlapping crises society is facing and paves the way for a Green New Deal that puts millions of people to work to fight against catastrophic climate change. [Read More]

 

CIVIL LIBERTIES

As the Insurrection Narrative Crumbles, Democrats Cling to it More Desperately Than Ever

By Glenn Greenwald, Substack [March 5, 2021]

---- The key point to emphasize here is that threats and dangers are not binary: they either exist or they are fully illusory. They reside on a spectrum. To insist that they be discussed rationally, soberly and truthfully is not to deny the existence of the threat itself. One can demand a rational and fact-based understanding of the magnitude of the threat revealed by the January 6 riot without denying that there is any danger at all. … The argument then, and the argument now, is that the threat was being deliberately inflated and exaggerated, and fears stoked and exploited, both for political gain and to justify the placement of more and more powers in the hands of the state in the name of stopping these threats. That is the core formula of authoritarianism — to place the population in a state of such acute fear that it acquiesces to any assertion of power which security state agencies and politicians demand and which they insist are necessary to keep everyone safe. [Read More]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

If We Want to Renew Democracy, We Need to Tax the Ultra-Wealthy

By Madeleine Johnsson, Inequlity.org [March 2, 2021]

---- Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Pramila Jayapal's Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2021, introduced March 1, could not be a more timely reminder that the United States needs serious policy changes to address massive wealth and income inequality. While eight million Americans slipped into poverty and half a million lives were lost to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic — all with a disproportionately large impact on communities of color — the wealth of U.S. billionaires almost doubled, up $1.3 trillion. … For most Americans fortunate enough to own their own home, it is by far their greatest source of wealth, so in a sense, middle-class people already pay a wealth tax. The Ultra-Millionaire Wealth Tax would ensure that the super-rich pay taxes on all their assets, not just their New York mansions or Florida getaways, but their stocks, bonds, jewelry, sports cars, and art collections. [Read More]

 

The Private Health Insurance Industry: Should It Be Eliminated?

By John P. Geyman, Counterpunch [March 5, 2021]

---- Many Americans assume that the private health insurance industry is an unmovable fixture in the U. S. health care system, but there is a growing need to re-examine that premise. Over recent decades, its performance has been increasingly profit-driven to the point of now becoming unaffordable for patients, their families, employers and taxpayers. The time has come to consider whether or not it should continue as the major way to finance health care in this country. …. Under a new system of national health insurance through Medicare for All, we will find health care much more affordable than today. The current high premiums, deductibles, copays, co-insurance, denied pre-authorizations, large out-of-pocket payments, and ruinous medical bills will be long gone. With moderate progressive taxes that we all share by income level, 95 percent of Americans will pay less for health care than they do now. [Read More]

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

(Podcast) Building the Palestine solidarity movement

An interview with US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid, from Mondoweiss [February 26, 2021]

---- Ahmad Abuznaid was recently named the Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. In the wake of Trayvon Martin's murder in 2012, Ahmad co-founded the Dream Defenders. He has interned at the International Criminal Court, presented before the United Nations' Human Rights Committee and was the Director of the National Network for Arab American Communities. [We] spoke to him about the future of the Palestine solidarity movement, challenges to expanding BDS work, and how the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights is engaging with Jewish anti-occupation groups. [Listen to the Program]

 

A State That Has Nothing to Hide Has No Reason to Fear an ICC Investigation

Editorial, Haaretz [Israel] [March 5, 2021]

---- The International Criminal Court's announcement that it will investigate prima facie war crimes committed by Israel predictably elicited angry responses, which reached their peak with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement, "The biased court in The Hague made a decision that constitutes undiluted antisemitism and the height of hypocrisy." … No attempt to tar the investigation as antisemitic and wage a campaign against the court can serve as a substitute for Israel's obligation to conduct its own honest investigation into the incidents that gave rise to the complaint against it, halt the kinds of actions that put it on a collision course with the international community and cooperate with the court. A state that doesn't consider itself to be guilty has no need to fear an investigation. [Read More] Also interesting is "Palestinians Should Drag Architects of Settlements to the ICC" by Amira Hass, Haaretz [Israel] [February 17, 2021] [Link]

 

OUR HISTORY

Remembering the First Gulf War

By Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence [March 2, 2021]

---- Thirty years ago, when the United States launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, I was a member of the Gulf Peace Team. The group consisted of seventy-three people from fifteen countries, aged twenty-two to seventy-six, living in a tent camp close to Iraq's border with Saudi Arabia, along the road to Mecca. Our mission: to nonviolently interpose ourselves between the warring parties. In this capacity, we witnessed the dismal onset of the air war at 3 a.m. local time on January 17, 1991, huddled under blankets, hearing distant explosions, and watching anxiously as war planes flew overhead. With so many fighter jets crossing the skies, we wondered if there would be anything left of Baghdad. Ten days later, Iraqi authorities told us to prepare to evacuate to Baghdad. Not all of us could agree on how to respond. [Read More]  And for an excellent overview of the 1991 Gulf war, read "The Gulf Crisis" by Noam Chomsky, Z Magazine [February 1991] [Link].

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on President Biden's Bombing-Crime in Syria

Concerned Families of Westchester

February 28, 2021

 

Hi All – Our editorial this week begins with some words by Code Pink's Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, who express the deserved outrage at President Biden's bombing of Syria last week better than I can.  They write:

 

The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing "Iranian-backed militias" who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-à-vis Iran, why hasn't the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts? According to the Pentagon, the US strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the US military and injured a US service member. Accounts of the number killed in the US attack vary from one to 22. The Pentagon made the incredible claim that this action "aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq." This was countered by the Syrian government, which condemned the illegal attack on its territory and said the strikes "will lead to consequences that will escalate the situation in the region." The strike was also condemned by the governments of China and Russia. A member of Russia's Federation Council warned that such escalations in the area could lead to "a massive conflict." [Read More] 

 

They go on to described the hare-brained "logic" of the Biden people that bombing is good for diplomacy, and that international law is nothing for Americans to get bothered about.  And today we learned that the bombing of the Iranian-supported militia group in Syria came immediately after the Europeans had invited Iran to discuss the Iran nuclear agreement at a European location, with the US sitting in: in other words, jump-starting diplomacy. [Link]. Stalwarts of a certain age will remember that this was the pattern of US "diplomacy" during the Vietnam War, with Vietnamese proposals for cease fires or negotiations being met by renewed bombing. Indeed, there are many indications that the Biden team would not mind if negotiations to re-start the Iran nuclear agreement came to naught, as long as it was not too obvious that it was the Americans, and not the Iranians, who were refusing to negotiate.  This, of course, would appease the Saudis and the Israelis, as well as the Republicans and many "moderate" Democrats.  And having killed 17 or so Iranians – darker people – Joe Biden is now a "made man" and can join the fraternity of similar "world leaders."

 

News Notes

Concerned Families of Westchester is one of more than 100 organizations supporting the Invest in Our New York Act (a/ka "Tax the Rich"). A good article about the campaign, "Is New York Finally Ready to Tax the Rich?" made it to the front page of the New York Times this week.  In a nutshell, the proposed legislation would raise $50 billion in revenue for basic services by tweeking the tax laws on what the very richest pay.  Whether this legislation gets to a vote and passes depends on our state senator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Please take moment to call her (518-455-2715) or send her an email (scousins@nysenate.gov).  Tell her that you support the "Invest in Our New York" legislation package and ask her to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. And for an in-depth look at the question of the Very Rich and their taxes, check out "Taxes on the Rich: One-Sixth of What They Used to Be" by Chuck Collins and Bob Lord, Institute for Policy Studies [February 12, 2021] [LInk].

 

The Senate parliamentarian threw a monkey wrench into the Biden administration's $1.6 trillion Covid relief machinery this week by declaring that the $15 minimum-wage part of the package was out-of-bounds for legislation headed for "reconciliation. But Democrats on the left are fighting back. ""I'm Sorry," Says Ro Khanna, "An Unelected Parliamentarian Does Not Get to Deprive 32 Million Americans the Raise They Deserve." [Common Dreams, February 25, 2021]

For some useful background, see the (Video) Democracy Now! segment, "'Not Ready to Give Up': Democrats Push Senate to Keep Popular $15 Minimum Wage in Stimulus Bill" [February 25, 2021].  For some deeper background, read "The Fake Debate Over a Minimum Wage" by Richard D. Wolff, Counterpunch [February 23, 2021] [Link].

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  Another vigil takes place on the first Monday of the month (March 1^st, etc.), from 5 to 5:30 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 4 pm, please send a return email. 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 support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

Rewards!

This week's Rewards come from Ry Cooder's "Paris, Texas" soundtrack.  Do you know the film?  Here's the opening scene. And here's some more. And more on line.  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

Why I Support an International Treaty to Ban Weaponized Drones and Drone Surveillance By Kathy Kelly, BanWeaponizedDrones [February 28, 2021]

---- I asked our guest if he could ever imagine people in his village being willing to converse with ordinary U.S. people about possibilities for peace. He looked at me as though I were a bit off my rocker. "Who would ever be so crazy," he asked, "as to not want peace? We would only ask you to leave your weapons outside. … If President Biden wants to end endless wars, he should completely scrap reliance on militarism and weapons to solve problems. Taking weapons out of the toolkit pushes people in powerful places to stop provoking cold wars and the proxy wars they spawn. People who fought for and negotiated treaties banning land mines, cluster bombs and nuclear weapons should now guide international momentum to ban weaponized drones through means of a treaty prohibiting the development, sale, storage or use of these pernicious weapons. Banning weaponized and surveillance drones would enhance our capacity to work toward meeting human needs. [Read More]

 

India Targets Climate Activists With the Help of Big Tech

By Naomi Klein, The Intercept [February 27 2021]

---- The case against Ravi and her "co-conspirators" hinges entirely on routine uses of well-known digital tools: WhatsApp groups, a collectively edited Google Doc, a private Zoom meeting, and several high-profile tweets, all of which have been weaponized into key pieces of alleged evidence in a state-sponsored and media-amplified activist hunt. At the same time, these very tools have been used in a coordinated pro-government messaging campaign to turn public sentiment against the young activists and the movement of farmers they came together to support, often in clear violation of the guardrails social media companies claim to have erected to prevent violent incitement on their platforms. In a nation where online hatred has tipped with chilling frequency into real-world pogroms targeting women and minorities, human rights advocates are warning that India is on the knife edge of terrible violence, perhaps even the kind of genocidal bloodshed that social media aided and abetted against the Rohingya in Myanmar. [Read More]

 

(Video) Progressives Must Revitalize the Labor Movement – An Interview with Noam Chomsky

With Paul Jay, The Analysis [February 24, 2021]

----If you think about it, we're entering into a major class war on the international level of the pandemic. This is going to end sooner or later. Hundreds of thousands of needless deaths with little end, and then comes the post-pandemic world. What's it going to be? Well, the people who created the situation for which all this arose, they're relentless, the business community and its agents in the political system are working very hard to ensure that the post-pandemic world is an extension of the neoliberal bonanza for them and disaster for everyone else. They don't give up their class conscious, relentless, know what they're doing. The question is whether competing forces, popular forces will be able to overcome them. [See the Program]

 

What Lawrence Ferlinghetti Means to Me

By Jonah Raskin, Counterpunch [February 26, 2021]

---- The anarchist, pacifist poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whom I knew for forty years was shy and introverted, even while he was a public figure who wanted to be recognized and appreciated as an artist. A decade older than me, he cared deeply about his friends in the city, in Bolinas and in Big Sur. He also valued his own privacy. … I will remember him as editor, publisher, poet and painter who invigorated the literary scene in San Francisco and who connected the city and its citizens to the cultures of the world. Perhaps Ferlinghetti had no single finest moment, but rather many of them spread across a lifetime. Perhaps, too, it's his longevity that matters as much as anything else about him. The publisher who gave birth to the Beats, by giving their books to the word, outlived the Beat Generation writers he promoted, and yet never joined their circle. That's part of the paradox of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was more complicated than he seemed to be. [Read More]

 

WAR & PEACE

Why the US needs to get out of Syria: Biden orders Bombing that kills 17 in Proxy dance with Iran

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [February 26, 2021]

---- Washington is describing the airstrike as revenge for the Shiite militia bombardment last week of a base at Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan that has US contractors and troops. One non-American contractor for the US on that base was killed and a US soldier suffered a concussion from a rocket blast. The Brigades of the Party of God denied responsibility for that attack, though in the past it has been happy to assert it undertook a rocket strike on a base with US personnel. Another shadowy group, the Brigades of the Guardians of Blood, said it did the Erbil bombing. … The US interprets any action by Iraqi Shiite militias as directed from Tehran, but this assumption is unsafe. Iran does not have command and control over these militias. … Members of the hoary foreign policy "blob" inside the Beltway told the Washington Post that the strike was intended to let the Iranians know that the US could not be pushed around, in advance of the opening of negotiations over the US return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. That's the most damn fool thing I've ever heard. The US tore up the nuclear deal in 2018 and never had abided by its part of the bargain, to lift economic sanctions on Iran. President Biden should concentrate on nuclear issues if he wants a nuclear accord, and avoid extraneous distractions like militias. [Read More]

 

Democrats Pressure Biden on U.S. Backing for Saudi War in Yemen

By Alex Emmons, The Intercept [February 25 2021]

---- Weeks after President Joe Biden announced he would end U.S. support for "offensive" military operations in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of progressive lawmakers are asking his administration to clarify what forms of U.S. support will continue. In his first foreign policy address earlier this month, Biden said his administration was "ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales." But he also promised that the U.S. would continue to help Saudi Arabia defend itself against missile attacks, including from Iranian-backed militias like the Houthis in Yemen. In the following weeks, his administration has yet to explain how it distinguishes between offensive and defensive forms of support. On Thursday, 41 members of Congress sent a letter to Biden expressing support for his decision to limit U.S. backing for the war but asked him to clarify what forms of "military, intelligence, [and] logistical" support it defines as "offensive" activities and what forms of support will continue. [Read More]

 

US counterterrorism operations touched 85 countries in the last 3 years alone

By George Petras, et al., USA Today [February 26, 2021]

---- Nearly 20 months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier under a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner and declared "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Nearly 18 years later, the U.S. is still entangled in military action in the Middle East and beyond. After the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11, much of the U.S. military activity has been focused on counterterrorism efforts, either in direct combat, through drone attacks, border patrols, intelligence gathering or training other nations' security forces. These globe-spanning operations have cost the U.S. in blood and treasure and had a massive impact on populations around the world. Newer nonmilitary threats from climate change to cyberattacks raise questions about the utility of holding on to hundreds of foreign bases and deploying tens of thousands of troops overseas. [Read More]  For a good analysis of this research, go here.

 

THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Returning to the Paris Agreement is a Start, Now We Need New Internationalism on Climate

By Lorah Steichen, National Priorities Project [February 19, 2021]
---- For the United States to do its fair share of the global effort to keep temperature rise to 1.5°C, rapidly reducing its own emissions on a scale that matches its outsized contributions to the crisis is a good start. But we can't stop there. The path to a livable future requires new internationalism rooted in global cooperation, resource sharing, and solidarity. The first step on that path is accepting and then addressing our role in the climate crisis.  According to an analysis from the U.S. Climate Action Network, the U.S. fair share of the global action needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C is the equivalent of reducing U.S. domestic emissions 195 percent by 2030. Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal Proposal asserted that reducing emissions by about 160 percent by 2030 would be the U.S. fair share. How does a country reduce its emissions by more than 100 percent? By pairing ambitious domestic targets with significantly ramped up contributions to international climate funds that support poor countries' efforts to decarbonize. [Read More]

 

A New Cold War on a Scalding Planet: Biden, Climate Change, and China

By Michael T. Klare, Counterpunch [February 26, 2021]

---- Slowing the pace of climate change and getting "tough" on China, especially over its human-rights abuses and unfair trade practices, are among the top priorities President Biden has announced for his new administration. Evidently, he believes that he can tame a rising China with harsh pressure tactics, while still gaining its cooperation in areas of concern to Washington. As he wrote in Foreign Affairs during the presidential election campaign, "The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China's abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change." If, however, our new president truly believes that he can build an international coalition to gang up on China and secure Beijing's cooperation on climate change, he's seriously deluded. Indeed, though he could succeed in provoking a new cold war, he won't prevent the planet from heating up unbearably in the process. [Read More]

 

(Video) Fossil Fuel Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on Deadly Deregulation & Why Texas Needs the Green New Deal

From Democracy Now! [February 22, 2021]

---- Millions of Texans are still suffering after severe winter weather devastated the state's energy and water systems. About 8 million Texans remain under orders to boil water, and 30,000 homes still have no power. Around 70 deaths have now been linked to the winter storms, including at least 12 people who died inside their homes after losing heat. Republican lawmakers in Texas are facing increasing criticism for their handling of the crisis, their decades-long push to deregulate the state's energy system, and their unfounded attacks on renewable energy and the Green New Deal. Naomi Klein, senior correspondent at The Intercept and a professor at Rutgers University, says Republicans' reaction is "because of panic" over their own culpability. "The Green New Deal is a plan that could solve so many of Texas's problems and the problems across the country, and Republicans have absolutely nothing to offer except for more deregulation, more privatization, more austerity." [See the Program]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

American Gulag [Prisons}

By Eve Ottenberg, Counterpunch [February 26, 2021]

---- The U.S. tops any other country in the world for its number of prisoners – over 2,300,000. China, by contrast, has roughly 200,000 prisoners. But the U.S. general population is only 330 million, while China's is 1.4 billion. American prisoners constitute a much larger percentage of the population than those in any other nation. The U.S. has clung to this dubious distinction for decades. Equaling the Soviet gulag at its height in the 1950s in numbers of prisoners, the U.S. also locks away 61,000 of them in the torture called solitary confinement and 2700 in the terror called death row. These are not the policies and actions of a civilized society. This is barbarism. [Read More]

 

In Statehouses, Stolen-Election Myth Fuels a G.O.P. Drive to Rewrite Rules

By Michael Wines, New York Times [February 27, 2021]

---- Led by loyalists who embrace former President Donald J. Trump's baseless claims of a stolen election, Republicans in state legislatures nationwide are mounting extraordinary efforts to change the rules of voting and representation — and enhance their own political clout. At the top of those efforts is a slew of bills raising new barriers to casting votes, particularly the mail ballots that Democrats flocked to in the 2020 election. But other measures go well beyond that, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans; clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives; and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November vote. And although the decennial redrawing of political maps has been pushed to the fall because of delays in delivering 2020 census totals, there are already signs of an aggressive drive to further gerrymander political districts, particularly in states under complete Republican control. [Read More]

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Was the Killing of Ahmad Erekat an Extrajudicial Execution?

By Noura Erakat, Mouin Rabbani and Angela Davis, The Nation [February 26, 2021]

---- On June 23, 2020, Ahmad Erekat, 26, was shot and killed by Israeli forces at the Container checkpoint in the central West Bank after he emerged unarmed from his car, which had crashed into the checkpoint. The Israeli authorities have consistently claimed that its personnel were acting in legitimate self-defense against a deliberate attack. As is their practice in such circumstances, they seized Ahmad's body and have to this day refused to release it to his family for a proper burial. Ahmad's family, as well as Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations, have called the Israeli version of events into question from the very outset, citing evidence that the crash was an accident, that Ahmad was unarmed and moving away from his killers before he was repeatedly shot, and pointing out that it made little sense for Ahmad to have carried out an attack on the day of his sister's wedding. … Contrary to persistent Israeli claims, the report concluded that the available evidence indicates that the incident was an accident, and Ahmad's death a case of "extrajudicial execution." Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya and an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, interviewed Noura Erakat, an assistant professor at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and a cousin of Ahmad Erekat, to get a better understanding of the case and the recent investigation. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

(Video) The Assassination of Malcolm X: Ex-Undercover Officer Admits Role in FBI & Police Conspiracy

From Democracy Now! [February 26, 2021]

---- The FBI and New York Police Department are facing renewed calls to open their records into the assassination of Malcolm X, after the release of a deathbed confession of a former undercover NYPD officer who admitted to being part of a conspiracy targeting Malcolm. In the confession, Raymond Wood, who died last year, admitted he entrapped two members of Malcolm's security team in another crime — a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty — just days before the assassination. This left the Black civil rights leader vulnerable at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, where he was fatally shot on February 21, 1965. Raymond Wood's cousin Reggie Wood, who released the confession last week at a press conference, tells Democracy Now! his cousin's involvement in the plot haunted him for much of his life. "Ray was told by his handlers not to repeat anything that he had seen or heard, or he would join Malcolm," says Reggie Wood. "He trusted me enough to reveal this information and asked me not to say anything until he passed away, but at the same time not to allow him to take it to his grave." [See the Program]

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Taxing the Rich to Save the NYS Budget; No Austerity!

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

February 21, 2021

 

Hello All – Concerned Families of Westchester invites you to join us, and more than 100 New York State organizations, to "Tax the Rich" and rescue our economy/services from disaster. Also known as "Invest in Our New York, the campaign advocates for the passage of a package of six pieces of legislation that would raise $50 billion to restore/maintain services needed by millions of New Yorkers.  Without additional sources of revenue may soon be on the chopping block.

 

The "Tax the Rich" legislation would raise this money by relatively small tax increases on the very wealthiest New Yorkers.  (Details of each piece of legislation can be found here.) The bills would:

 

1. Increase tax rates for those making more than $1 million a year;
2. Place a small fee on each Wall St. transaction;
3. Establish an inheritance tax on very large estates;
4. Add a tax on very large capital gains, equivalent to the tax breaks received from Trump;
5. Increase corporate tax rates to the level they were at four years ago; and
6. Begin work on a state constitution amendment that would allow taxing great wealth.
   

The key to successful passage of this legislation lies with the State Senator who represents most of the readers of this Newsletter, Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins.  Advocates of this legislation believe that Stewart-Cousins will allow the legislation to come to a vote ONLY if she perceives MASSIVE support for it throughout the state.

 

Please take a few minutes to contact Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins.  Via phone (518-455-2715) or email (scousins@nysenate.gov), tell her that you support the "Invest in Our New York" legislation package, and ask her to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote.  Thanks!

 

News Notes

"The past is never dead," wrote William Faulkner. "It's not even past."  And here it is again!  Impeachment didn't work, but Donald Trump might still be prevented from future office-holding via the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution, which "disqualifies from public office any individual who has taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and then engages in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or has given aid or comfort to those who have." This strategy is gathering steam, as reported by The Nation's John Nichols [Link].  And as The New York Times' Charles Blow points out, the NAACP and others are going after Trump and Rudy Giuliani for their roles in the January 6^th insurrection on the basis of a 1871 law intended to stop the Ku Klux Klan from derailing elections.  Once again, History is not even past.

 

The barbarous spectacle of 13 federal prisoners put to death in the last weeks of the Trump era may, possibly, result in the end of the death penalty.  A useful explanation of where things stand and what might be possible is laid out in a New York Times article by Elizabeth Bruenig, "The Government Has Not Explained How These 13 People Were Selected to Die." [Link]

 

The hard-working people at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in NYC have put up a dozen incisive reports outlining "A Progressive Agenda in the Biden Era." Check them out here.

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester.  Taking the Covid Crisis into account, we meet (with safe distancing) for a protest/rally on Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  Another vigil takes place on the first Monday of the month (March 1^st, etc.), from 5 to 5:30 pm, in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  In this time of coronavirus, we are meeting by Zoom conference; if you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, Tuesday and Thursday at noon and/or Saturday at 4 pm, please send a return email. 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 support our work by making a contribution, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706.  Thanks!

 

Rewards!

The Rewards for readers of this week's Newsletter are pulled from the song bag of Black History Month.  There are so many great ones! – Here are Nina Simone with "I wish I knew (how it would feel to be free)";  the Resistance Revival Chorus with "Ella's Song"; and Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday," which helped to make MLK's birthday a national holiday.  And there are so many more.  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

THE COVID-19 CRISIS

Trump Is Guilty of Pandemicide

By Laurie Garrett, Foreign Policy [February 18, 2021]

---- At long last, we see glimmers of hope. The COVID-19 epidemic in the United States has fallen below the numbers of daily new cases tallied on the eve of the presidential election, the point at which this viral nightmare soared. Using the New York Times' coronavirus data tracker, on Nov. 1, 2020, there were 74,195 new cases counted in the country; by Feb. 16, new case reports came in at 64,376. But in between those dates, a national horror unfolded, peaking on Jan. 8 with 300,619 new cases reported in just 24 hours. This staggering wave, one full year into the pandemic, was completely unnecessary for the world's richest country. Achieving any sense of closure will require holding Donald Trump accountable for the failure. … According to a new Lancet Commission report compiled by an international team of august scientists and public health leaders, some 40 percent of America's COVID-19 death toll during the Trump administration was needless, meaning it could have been averted with available nonmedical interventions. [Read More] To illustrate Garrett's point, check out the graphic on today's NYTimes' front page, showing how more than half of US Covid deaths took place while Trump was focus on overturning the November 2020 election.

 

(Video) Lancet Report: 40% of U.S. COVID Deaths Were Preventable. The Country Needs Universal Healthcare Now

From Democracy Now! [February 15, 2021]

---- As the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 approaches half a million, a new report says nearly 40% of the deaths were avoidable. By comparing the pandemic in the U.S. to other high-income nations, the medical journal The Lancet found significant gaps in former President Donald Trump's "inept and insufficient" response to COVID-19, as well as decades of destructive public policy decisions. [See the Program].  And to read the Lancet report, "Public policy and health in the Trump era," go here.

 

Inside the Worst-Hit County in the Worst-Hit State in the Worst-Hit Country

By Atul Gawande, The New Yorker [February 8, 2021]

---- Every day seems to bring another test of whether our democracy can succeed in managing the problems of a country as big, varied, and individualistic as ours. In Minot, a city of forty-eight thousand people in Ward County, North Dakota, the twice-monthly city-council meeting was into its fourth hour when an alderwoman named Carrie Evans put forward an unexpected motion: she wanted Minot to adopt a mandatory-mask policy. It was Monday, October 19th, two weeks before the Presidential election. … I wanted to understand what made it so difficult for people to come together and address a deadly crisis. [Read More]

 

FEATURED ESSAYS

How Can We Revive Herd Immunity to Fascism?

By Gilbert Achcar, The Nation [February 20, 2021]

---- The onset of this far-right pandemic goes back to the 1980s and was powerfully boosted in the following decade. Like the classical fascism of the three decades that followed the First World War, this "neofascism"—arguably the best designation, as it refers to both historical affinities and the renewal of forms in tune with our times—takes different shapes according to the countries in which it develops. … There is indeed a clear and undeniable correlation between the neoliberal onslaught that started in the 1980s, led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan—an onslaught that made "deregulation" one of its main goals, along with privatization, reduction of social spending, and tax cuts for the rich—and the rise of phenomena such as neofascism and religious fundamentalism after decades of marginalization. Likewise, the Great Recession, triggered in 2007, gave a major boost to neofascist forces, as did the major wave of mostly Syrian refugees pouring into Europe in 2015…. Achieving a new state of herd immunity to fascism, like that of the postwar years, requires not only a political defeat of the most prominent neofascist movements and an uncompromising fight against their ideologies. It also requires, most crucially, a global shift away from the neoliberal paradigm that has been dominant over the past four decades. [Read More]

 

The Trumpers Among Us

By Katha Pollitt, The Nation [February 18, 2021]

---- What are we going to do about the 74 million of our fellow citizens who voted for Donald Trump? After he won the White House in 2016, Democrats were told we had to understand them. "Economic anxiety" was the preferred left explanation—no matter how often one pointed out that Trump voters had a higher median income than Clinton voters or wondered out loud how come Black and Latino people's economic anxieties didn't make them cast ballots for a reactionary reality-TV clown. The Trumper was always the small farmer, the miner, the worker whose factory had closed. Except for the occasional piece marveling at women and evangelicals who didn't care about Trump's pussy-grabbing, nobody was too interested in interviewing dentists or realtors or supermarket owners—the regular Republicans who were the vast majority of his supporters. [Read More]

 

The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits Women. She Already Knew. [Silvia Federici]

By Jordan Kisner, New York Times [February 19, 2021]

---- Silvia Federici, the 78-year-old scholar and theorist of domestic labor, one of the most influential socialist feminist thinkers of the last century. … I had asked to meet because the pandemic and its cascade of economic, social and political breakdowns had led to a profusion of Federician thinking in places I had never encountered it before. Suddenly notions and phrases from her work were all over my social media feeds, op-ed pages and exchanges with friends, as people confronted what kinds of labor are considered essential and why. Federici is a longtime advocate of the idea that domestic work is unwaged labor and was a founder of the Wages for Housework movement in the early 1970s. [Read More]

 

The Arab Spring Failed But the Rage Against Misery and Injustice Continues

By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [February 17, 2021]

---- Ten years ago, people across the Middle East and North Africa rose up in protest against their rulers, demanding freedom and democracy. Despotic rulers were toppled or feared that power was being torn from their grasp in countries across the region, as millions of demonstrators surged through the streets, chanting that "the people demand the fall of the regime". There was nothing phoney about this mass yearning for liberty and social justice. Vast numbers of disenfranchised people briefly believed that they could overthrow dictatorships, both republican and monarchical. … Out of the six countries where the Arab Spring had the greatest impact, three – Libya, Syria and Yemen – are still being ripped apart by endless civil wars. In two of them – Egypt and Bahrain – state violence and suppression are far worse than in the past. Only Tunisia, where the protests began after a street vendor burnt himself to death, has so far escaped tyranny or anarchy, though the uprising has largely failed to deliver a better life for its people. [Read More]

 

Where is the US Border?

FB – A few weeks ago the Newsletter linked an imo insightful article by Harsha Walia called "The Long Arc of the US Border Policy."  In the article Walia summarized one of the themes of her new book, Border & Rule, arguing that "borders" were more than lines on the map, and reflected power relations and some legacies/current features of imperialism.  Two articles on this very topic caught my eye this week; see what you think.

 

Guatemala Takes a Hard Line Against Migrants—With US Support

By Jeff Abbott, The Nation [February 16, 2021]

---- As tens of thousands of desperate Hondurans and Salvadorans streamed through Guatemala on their way to the United States, the Trump administration increased pressure on the Central American country to control migratory routes. In response, the Guatemalan government has increasingly deployed the military, backed by police, to disband caravans and "irregular" migration. … The United States has for years exported the control of migratory routes to Mexico and Central America. The repression of the most recent Honduran migrant caravan highlights this shift, but the effort began much earlier, during the Obama administration.. [Read More]

 

If It Were A Narco Lab, It Would Be Working [Honduras]

By John Perry, London Review of Books. [February 17, 2021]

---- On the day he was inaugurated, Joe Biden halted the construction of Trump's Mexican border wall. A few days earlier, 1500 miles to the south, a new 'caravan' of at least eight thousand Honduran migrants had set off northwards, partly in the hope that by the time they tried to cross into Texas, Biden's promised softening of immigration policy might have taken effect. Obstacles left by Trump still stand in their way. … Why do people take these risks? The truth is that Honduras is a failed state and, unless US policy towards it changes radically, many thousands more will head north. [Read More]

 

WAR & PEACE

[FB – It is too early to be discouraged, but President Biden's foreign policy moves suggest that he will at best move too cautiously to end US military support/action for our half-dozen wars around the world.  To ambiguities about his statements about withdrawing support from Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen must be added concern that his statements about Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan suggest hopes for US troop withdrawals may be only that, "hopes."  Biden's statements about Venezuela seem to reaffirm the US commitment to the hostility of the Obama/Trump regimes, and his statements on Israel/Palestine give the Palestinians nothing.  His "diplomacy" on the Iran Nuclear Agreement seems to be a recipe for failure, as the articles linked below explain.  "Progressives" must speak out; "not being Trump" is not enough.]

 

Will the US restore the Iran Nuclear Agreement?

First steps toward returning to the Iran nuke deal — but what's next?

By Joe Cirincione, Responsible Statecraft [February 18, 2021]

---- Something is going very wrong with President Joe Biden's Iran policy and it's not clear why. Unless he corrects course, Biden risks losing a vital agreement and putting the two nations back on a path towards war — at precisely the time he wants to focus on the multiple domestic crises gripping America. In his first month in office, Biden quickly reversed the most damaging of Donald Trump's policies on climate, immigration, health care, and many others. But he has left untouched Trump's Iran policy. He has retained all of Trump's onerous sanctions and has not renewed the diplomatic exchanges between the two nations that were routine during the last years of the Obama-Biden administration. Biden is, in effect, continuing Trump's failed "maximum pressure" campaign. Why? … The greatest danger of Donald Trump's Iran policy was that the two sides would stumble into a war that neither government wanted. Now the greatest danger of Joe Biden's policy is that the two sides could fumble away a deal that both governments actually want. [Read More]

 

Is Biden Committing Diplomatic Suicide Over The Iran Nuclear Agreement?

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [February 17, 2021]

---- As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on America's new president and his foreign policy, after successive U.S. administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system. Cautious international optimism toward President Biden is very much based on his commitment to Obama's signature diplomatic achievement, the JCPOA or nuclear agreement with Iran. Biden and the Democrats excoriated Trump for withdrawing from it and promised to promptly rejoin the deal if elected. But Biden now appears to be hedging his position in a way that risks turning what should be an easy win for the new administration into an avoidable and tragic diplomatic failure.  [Read More]

 

Also useful reading on the US and Iran – "Why Is Biden Creating Himself An Iran Quagmire?" from Moon of Alabama [February 18, 2021] [Link]; and "US Ready to Meet With Iran if Invited by the EU" by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [February 18, 2021] [Link].  For some good satire, check out "How to Write About Iran: A Guide for Journalists, Analysts, and Policymakers" by Ladane Nasseri, McSweeney's [February 16, 2021].

 

Will Biden End the 20-Year War in Afghanistan?

Trump was right: Get out of Afghanistan

By Stephen Kinzer, Boston Globe [February 18, 2021]

---- A truly historic moment is fast approaching. Under an accord signed last year, our two-decade war in Afghanistan will finally conclude in May. Afghans will be left to shape their own future, and American blood and treasure will no longer flow in Central Asia. It is President Trump's one and only claim to diplomatic glory: ending a war. Oh, wait — not so fast! The prospect of withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan has struck terror into many hearts in Washington. Arms makers, retired generals, and the think tanks that love them have launched a multipronged campaign aimed at President Biden. They want him to renounce last year's agreement and keep troops in Afghanistan. [Read More]

 

THE CLIMATE CRISIS

The US Returns to the Paris Agreement Today—With Lots of Work Ahead for the World

By Tom Athanasiou, The Nation [February 19, 2021]

---- Today, the United States formally reenters the Paris Agreement. Signed in December of 2015 by the Obama administration and abandoned in 2017 by then-President Trump, the accord was and remains a landmark achievement in global climate diplomacy. … As the United States reenters the Paris circle, a bit of reflection is in order. Scientists are terrified, and delivering messages that are difficult to hear, particularly now, when we have good reasons to doubt that our political systems will rise to the challenge. Despair, with the complacency it can breed, is a real danger. It's easy to see why many people believe the accord's weaknesses is more evidence of the larger institutional impotence. In fact, though, the Paris Agreement can work, but the first crucial steps must be completed, soon. [Read More]

 

The Real Reasons Texas's Power Grid Is So Vulnerable

By Zoë Carpenter, The Nation [February 19, 2021]

---- Millions of people across Texas have now spent as many as five days without electricity and water, thanks to a blast of Arctic air that plunged much of the Southern Plains into bone-chilling temperatures and overwhelmed the state's power grid. The reasons the system failed are complex, though that's not the impression you'd get from Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and other conservative politicians and media personalities, who've spent the week blaming one particular scapegoat: wind turbines. … But what's happening in Texas is not an indicator that renewable energy is less reliable, or that climate change is insignificant: It's a signal that our infrastructure is frighteningly unprepared for the kinds of extreme weather events that are driven by climate change. [Read More] And from 350.org's founder Bill McKibben, "Blaming the Wind for the Mess in Texas Is Painfully Absurd," The New Yorker [February 18, 2021].

 

CIVIL LIBERTIES

The Atrocious Prosecution of Julian Assange

By Eve Ottenberg, Counterpunch [February 19, 2021]

---- There is no doubt: Assange is being prosecuted for practicing journalism, for his 2010 publication of military documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, revealing U.S. war crimes in Iraq. Most damning was the classified, nearly 40-minute video, released by Wikileaks and Assange, called "Collateral Murder" and filmed from the gun-sight of a U.S. Apache helicopter shooting at and killing over a dozen Iraqi civilians, among them two Reuters journalists on a suburban street. That video shocked the world. That video sealed Assange's fate. [Read More]  And for an update, read "On the Matter of Assange's Lawyers Considering a Cross Appeal" by Alexander Mercouris, Antiwar.com [February 19, 2021] [Read More]

 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Freedom From Poverty Should Be a Human Right

By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, The Nation [February 20, 2021]

---- In a moment of unprecedented crisis, when 140 million people in the richest country on the planet are poor or low-income, when tens of millions of them are on the verge of eviction and millions more have lost their health care in the midst of a pandemic, at a moment when Congress and the president are debating the next Covid-19 relief package, isn't it finally time for human rights and guarantees to become the standard for any such set of policies? … Today, Congress is being driven to respond to a crisis that has this country in its grip with a $1.9 trillion relief package. The lesson of history, however, is that such measures, when they align with the basic demands of justice, should not be piecemeal or temporary. [Read More]  And to amplify one of Rev. Theoharis's points, read "Yes we need the $1.9 Trillion Stimulus: Real Unemployment is 3 times what they're telling us" by John Buell, Informed Comment [February 16, 2021]. Also relevant is (Video) "'Work Won't Love You Back': Sarah Jaffe on Toxic U.S. Work Culture & the Fight Against Inequality" from Democracy Now! [February 17, 2021] [Link].

 

(Video) "Not Doing This Is a Choice": Biden Drags His Feet on Canceling Student Debt Despite Campaign Pledge

From Democracy Now! [February 18, 2021]

---- Students, campaigners and top Democrats have been pushing President Joe Biden to use executive authority to cancel at least $50,000 in student loan debt per person. Student loan debt in the U.S. stands at $1.7 trillion, with some 45 million people owing money. Filmmaker and organizer Astra Taylor, an author, documentary director and organizer with the Debt Collective, says Biden has clear legal authority to cancel student debt. "Not doing this is a choice," she says. [See the Program]  Also useful is "What Joe Biden Gets Totally Wrong About Student Debt" by Elie Mystal, The Nation [February 19, 2021] [Link].

 

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Noam Chomsky: Solidarity movements key to changing US Middle East policy [Interview]

By Lilach Ben David, +972 Magazine [Israel] [February 17, 2021]

---- Professor Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and one of the most important political thinkers of last half century, may have celebrated his 92^nd birthday late last year, but his intellect and instincts are as sharp as ever. Among many areas of his impact on the global left, he has remained a fierce critic of American empire, global capitalism, and Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. I sat down with Chomsky for a conversation over Zoom in December 2020, just a few months after Israel signed normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and just weeks after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the U.S. election. We discussed the effects of the Abraham Accords, what Biden can do to stop Israel's apartheid policies, and the possibility of a widespread solidarity movement to support the Palestinian people. [Read More]

 

OUR HISTORY

The roots of revolutionary nonviolence in the United States are in the Black community

By Joanne Sheehan, Waging Nonviolence [February 15, 2021]

---- Many are wondering how to respond to the current white supremacist threat. We only have to look to history — to those who organized against the brutal culture and laws of segregation in this country — for inspiration on the importance of relationship building, creative strategies and training to dismantle it today. Few people today know that it was transnational solidarity between Black and white Christian clergy in the United States and Indian activists fighting for independence from British colonial rule that introduced the philosophies and strategies of revolutionary nonviolence to the United States, and that this work would build the foundation leading towards the civil rights movement. … Many of the participants had met through civil rights activities during the '40s, and were World War II resisters. Members of this group went on to organize and train CORE's DC Summer Workshops, including Bayard Rustin, Wally Nelson and George Houser. Wally and Juanita Nelson and Ernest and Marion Bromley, along with Ralph Templin — and many who had been involved in the Harlem Ashram and CORE — founded the Peacemakers in 1948, and organized the present-day war tax resistance movement. [Read More]

 

(Video) Democracy Now! Turns 25: Celebrating a Quarter-Century of Independent News on the Frontlines

From Democracy Now! [February 19, 2021]

---- Democracy Now! first aired on nine community radio stations on February 19, 1996, on the eve of the New Hampshire presidential primary. In the 25 years since that initial broadcast, the program has greatly expanded, airing today on more than 1,500 television and radio stations around the globe and reaching millions of people online. We celebrate 25 years of the War and Peace Report with an hour-long retrospective, including highlights from the show's early years, some of the most controversial interviews, and groundbreaking reports from East Timor, Standing Rock, Western Sahara and more. [Read More]