CFOW Newsletter - Focus on 20 years of war in Afghanistan - and what's next?

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

October 3, 2021

 

Hello All – Next Thursday, October 7^th, will be the 20^th anniversary of the start of the bombing of Afghanistan. In 2001, October 7^th was a Sunday afternoon. In Dobbs Ferry, people were gathering for another meeting of the newly formed Concerned Families of Westchester.  Meeting several times a week since the day after 9/11, we had grown to about 25 participants, meeting to talk about the news, our fears, what we might do. Most of those meeting in living rooms were older, and almost all had participated in protests against the Vietnam War. We had given ourselves the name "Concerned Families" in the hope that it would enable a meeting with our conservative congressman, to express our opposition to a war of revenge.  For the past several meetings we had been talking about the likelihood of massive civilians casualties in Afghanistan if the Bush/Cheney people launched a war.

 

The news that bombing had begun framed our meeting that day. Our anger and sadness at the news was overshadowed by the fear that this would be a long and stupid war. So little did we know. . . On October 7, 2001 US and British planes bombed 31 targets, and over the next 76 days dropped 17,500 bombs on another 250 targets.  By mid-November the Taliban gave up and fled to Pakistan or went into hiding.  Was the war over? Not by a long shot, and for the next 20 years, the longest war in US history, the USA spent $300 million a day to continue the war, killing 71,000 civilians.  2,298 US soldiers were killed in the war, and more than 20,000 were wounded. Thousands of soldiers committed suicide after they returned the war. As the recently published book The Afghanistan Papers confirmed, successive US presidential administrations had no idea what to do with the war in Afghanistan, except not to lose it on their watch.  Let the next guy take the blame for "cutting and running."

 

Is it really over?  On September 21^st President Biden addressed the UN General Assembly. I stand here today," he said, "for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war."  But as Marjorie Cohn points out, "The day before, his administration had launched a drone strike in Syria, and three weeks earlier, the U.S. had conducted an air strike in Somalia. The commander-in-chief also apparently forgot that U.S. forces are still fighting in at least six different countries, including Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Niger. And he promised to continue bombing Afghanistan from afar." [Link].

 

The US war for Afghanistan, like the US war for Empire itself, is far from over.  The US military regards its exit from Afghanistan to be one of "repositioning," while it "pivots to Asia" to confront the real enemy, China.  Regarding Afghanistan, I think some of the front-burner issues are well illustrated by the articles linked below – on memory, on women, and on Afghanistan's mineral wealth.  As usual, "the past is never dead; it's not even past."

 

Some Useful Reading about Afghanistan

 

"Will We Remember the Victims of the Kabul Drone Strike?" by Nick Turse, The Nation [September 29, 2021] [Link].

 

"For Afghan Women, the Frightening Return of 'Vice and Virtue.'" from Human Rights Watch; and "Three Lessons to Chart a Path Forward in Solidarity With Afghan Women" from MADRE.

 

"Impoverished Afghans live amid enormous riches," by Vijay Prashad [Asia Times]; and "Mapping Afghanistan's untapped natural resources" from Aljazeera.

 

News Notes

Are fascist/authoritarian right-wing forces gaining or losing strength in the USA?  Was January 6^th a set-back or a recruiting moment for the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and similar groups?  Some bad news/answers to these questions come from Robert Pape, an expert on terrorists, suicide bombers, etc. Based on surveys taken last June, Pape finds that "47 million American adults – nearly 1 in 5 – agree with the statement that 'the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.[ Of those, 21 million also agree that 'use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency.'"  And of course one-third of those ready to use force own a gun, 3 million served in the military, etc.  Read more here.

 

Harvard University's recent announcement that it will divest its huge endowment fund from fossil fuels was a victory for the students who fought hard for many years to make it happen. Harvard's divestment also seems to have triggered other institutions to take divestment action.  Read a good overview of these developments here.

 

How many people are killed by police each year?  How many of them are Black or Hispanic?  A report published in the prestigious UK medical journal The Lancet finds that half of these killings are mislabeled or not reported at all.  The report also finds that Black people are 3.5 times more likely to be killed than white people.  Read more here.

 

Finally, The Intercept put up a short video this week about USA women working during the Covid shutdown.  Called "Precarity," it highlights the importance of the emergency government payments made to many low-income people.  What will happen as these programs are shut down? A well-made film, imo.

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our 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 for stalwart readers come from a singer to whom I was introduced in one of Democracy Now's break between news segments.  They are usually new to me and often send me looking to learn more.  This week the program played Sara Thomsen's "Is it For Freedom?"  On her website, Sara writes, "This song was written in response to hearing the stories told by U.S. citizens who traveled to Iraq to bring food and medicine and bear witness to the suffering sustained by our foreign policy. At the time of this song's writing (1999), there were 5,000 to 6,000 children dying each month as a direct result of UN/US imposed economic sanctions."  You can hear a lot more of her songs here.  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

Bearing witness in Afghanistan — a conversation with Kathy Kelly on ending war and listening to its victims

From Waging Nonviolence [September 28, 2021]

---- This week, Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook [Nonviolence Radio Team] talk to Kathy Kelly, life-long nonviolence activist, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and co-coordinator of the Ban Killer Drones Campaign. She discusses her extensive experience in and thoughts about Afghanistan. American intervention, she believes, was — and indeed, continues to be — entirely misguided, escalating rather than resolving the violent conflicts there. ... Only when we truly look at Afghanistan, when we see it and its people in all their rich complexity can we come to a better understanding of what they want and need. Only by actively listening to individuals and groups on the ground will we learn how we might be able to join them in finding ways to resolve conflicts and rebuild. And all this depends on a firm commitment to nonviolence, genuine humility and honest self-reflection. [Read/hear the Interview]

 

(Video) Meet Mansoor Adayfi: I Was Kidnapped as a Teen, Sold to the CIA and Jailed at Guantánamo for 14 Years

From Democracy Now! [September 27, 2021]

[FB – This is an incredible story, told with great skill.  As a memoir, I think it is in the same class as Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz.]

---- We speak with Mansoor Adayfi, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who was held at the military prison for 14 years without charge, an ordeal he details in his new memoir, "Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo." Adayfi was 18 when he left his home in Yemen to do research in Afghanistan, where he was kidnapped by Afghan warlords, then sold to the CIA after the 9/11 attacks. Adayfi describes being brutally tortured in Afghanistan before he was transported to Guantánamo in 2002, where he became known as Detainee #441 and survived years of abuse. Adayfi was released against his will to Serbia in 2016 and now works as the Guantánamo Project coordinator at CAGE, an organization that advocates on behalf of victims of the war on terror. [See the Program]

 

The U.S.'s Long History of Mistreating Haitian Migrants

By Edwidge Danticat, The New Yorker [September 24, 2021]

[FB – Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-born writer of fiction.  She came to the USA at the age of 12 and has published many novels and short stories, usually set in Haiti or the Haitian Diaspora.]

---- This past week, while looking at the heart-wrenching images of Haitian migrants—packed by the thousands under the Del Rio International Bridge, in Texas, or crossing at shallow points of the Rio Grande, or being chased by Border Patrol agents on horseback, or landing back in Haiti for the first time in years—I thought of some of my family's own migration nightmares. I remembered my mother telling me how, while living in New York on an expired tourist visa, in the nineteen-seventies, she was arrested during an immigration raid at a garment factory. She was pregnant at the time with one of my younger brothers. Spotting and cramping, and held in a crowded cell, she thought that she'd miscarried, until she was finally seen by a doctor a few days later. … I also remembered the hundreds of men and women I have seen at Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture Airport over the past decade, heading out of the country toward newer destinations, as hopeful and determined as my parents once had been to travel abroad, find work, send money home to their families, and eventually offer a better life to their children. [Read More] Also of great interest is "The U.S. – Haiti Border: How the United States Blocks Haitians Wherever They Go" by Todd Miller, Borderlands [October 1, 2021] [Link].

 

The Climate Crisis

If we don't get climate justice, shut it down

By Patrick Mazza, The Raven [September 24, 2021]

[FB – If the Glasgow climate summit doesn't result in dramatic action, what will we do?  We could wait until the next election, and the one after that. Or …?]

---- Uprooting the system, shutting it down, looks like what we're going to have to do. The Glasgow climate summit, the 26th such meeting since 1995, is being framed as the last chance to do something serious about the onrushing climate catastrophe. But based on the record, Glasgow is likely to fail. Carbon pollution and fossil fuel use have steadily climbed upwards, as the following charts show… This clearly isn't working. It is time for the sane people to get in the way of business as usual, and on a sustained basis. Glasgow is the last chance for the global climate process to retain a shred of credibility. If COP26 doesn't produce a solid plan to deeply cut climate-twisting pollution beginning immediately, which I hate to say is the likely outcome, it is time for serious, mass direct action.  [Read More]  The poster-boy for fossil-fuel industry obstruction is West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.  Read "Joe Manchin, America's Climate Decider in Chief, Is a Coal Baron" by Mark Hertsgaard, The Guardian [UK] [September 30, 2021] [Link]

 

Civil Liberties

(Video) Kidnap or Kill: The CIA's plot against WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

From Aljazeera [October 2, 2021] [Link].

---- Why isn't the CIA's plan to kidnap Julian Assange making more headlines? An exposé detailing the CIA's war on WikiLeaks – a Trump administration plan to silence Julian Assange and the organisation – has been published. But like so much of the Assange story, it's got nothing like the media coverage it deserves. [FB –The first 10 minutes of this Aljazeera program "On the Media" concern the Julian Assange case; and this is a good introduction to more in-depth stories linked here.]

 

Also very good on the Julian Assange case – (Video) "The Plot to Kill Julian Assange: Report Reveals CIA's Plan to Kidnap, Assassinate WikiLeaks Founder," from Democracy Now! [Link]; and "CIA Plan To Poison Assange Wasn't Needed. The US Found a 'Lawful' Way To Disappear Him" by Jonathan Cook, Antiwar.com [October 2, 2021] [Link];

 

(Video) Don't Pursue War, Pursue War Crimes: Michael Ratner's Decades-Long Battle to Close Guantánamo

From Democracy Now! [October 1, 2021]

---- We look at the life and legacy of the late Michael Ratner, the trailblazing human rights lawyer and former president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. … Michael Ratner spent decades opposing government abuse and fought to close the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, first in the 1990s when it was used to hold thousands of Haitian asylum seekers and later when the George W. Bush administration opened a military prison there to detain hundreds of people from the so-called war on terror. Ratner died in 2016 at age 72. His posthumous memoir, "Moving the Bar: My Life as a Radical Lawyer," has just been published. [See the Program]

 

Israel/Palestine

Water Justice for Occupied Palestinians is demanded by UN, as Israeli Squatters Use 87% of Aquifers

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [October 3, 2021]

[FB – Settler colonialism.  Ethnic cleansing.  Take the land and the water.  It's the same all over the world.]

---- The United Nations High Commission on Human Rights formally reported on Friday on the unjust water situation in the Palestinian West Bank, which is under Israeli military occupation and subject to an illegal colonization effort by Israel to displace the indigenous population with Israeli squatters. … Now, the 5 million Palestinians under Israeli military control in the West Bank and under Israeli blockade in Gaza are stateless and without basic human rights. One of those basics is the right to water. … The age of oil wars is subsiding as we turn to electric cars. The age of water wars is only beginning, and in this case Israel is waging a water war on Palestinians who can't fight back. [Read More]

 

Our History

The Politician-Scholar - Eric Williams and the tangled history of capitalism and slavery

By Gerald Horne, The Nation [October 2, 2021]

---- A new edition of Capitalism and Slavery reminds us in particular of Williams's independent political and intellectual spirit and how his scholarship upended the historiographical consensus on slavery and abolition. Above all else, in this relatively slender volume, Williams asserted the primacy of the enslaved themselves in breaking the chains that bound them, putting their experiences at the center of his research. Controversially, he also placed slavery at the heart of the rise of capitalism and the British Empire, which carried profound implications for its successor, the United States. The same holds true for his devaluation of the humanitarianism of white abolitionists and their allies as a spur for ending slavery. … Williams's most disputed thesis was his downgrading of the heroic role of the British abolitionists. In his telling of their story, he argued that naked economic self-interest, more than morality or humanitarianism, drove England's retreat from the slave trade in 1807 and its barring of slavery in 1833. Like The New York Times' 1619 Project, this part of Williams's argument pricked a sensitive nerve in the nation's self-conception. [Read More]

 

 

 

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on "Ban Killer Drones"

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

September 25, 2021

 

On August 29^th, a US drone fired a missile in Kabul that killed a suspected ISIS "terrorist" and nine members of his family.  Weeks later, the Pentagon admitted that the killings were "a tragic mistake." As U.S. citizens whose tax dollars went into buying the drone that made that attack, and the missile it fired, the blood of Zemari Ahmadi and his three children, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 10; Ahmadi's cousin Naser, 30; the children of Ahmadi's brother Romal: Arwin, 7, Benyamin, 6, and Hayat, 2; and two 3-year-old girls, Malika and Somaya is on our hands.

 

The deaths in Kabul are ten more reasons, if more are needed, for banning killer drones, just as treaties have banned land mines, cluster bombs, and nuclear weapons as unacceptable weapons because of the civilian casualties that are certain to ensue.  The Pentagon will not provide accurate information about civilian casualties, but one responsible agency estimates that up to 48,000 Afghanistan civilians were killed by air strikes, some portion of these by drones. Drone whistle blower Daniel Hale, now serving a 45-month sentence for leaking classified documents about the drone program to The Intercept, estimates that 90 percent of the casualties in drone strikes are civilians.

 

Over the last decade, drones have become the preferred US weapon of war.  US soldiers are at little risk, and the US population and Congress give the Pentagon a blank check to fight four, five, six wars as long as US casualties low.  The Biden administration has made clear that it intends to continue using drones as the weapon-of-choice for his wars, promising to launch them from "over the horizon" to attack targets in Afghanistan and elsewhere. (Please sign a petition to President Biden demanding no more US air attacks in Afghanistan.)

 

Yesterday, CFOW stalwarts held a small rally in Hastings to demand a ban on the use of killer drones, joining actions in more than 20 communities that host drone operating or training centers, such as Creech Air Force base near Las Vegas, and bases in Syracuse and Niagara Falls, NY. "Shut Down Creech" is co-sponsored by CODEPINK, Veterans For Peace and Ban Killer Drones, and many of those participating will be post-911 veterans.  For more info about the issue and the planned actions, go to Code Pink and Ban Killer Drones, which is working for an international treaty to ban weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance.

 

News Notes

Afghanistan is rightly called "the graveyard of Empires," as the USA has just learned to our sorrow (or the sorrow of some).  The new would-be ruler of this graveyard is China, which is attempting to form a consortium with Russia, Pakistan, and Iran to manage Afghanistan's chaos and exploit its wealth.  What is this wealth? A useful map and several charts published on Aljazeera this week show the locations of mineral resources estimated to be worth $1 trillion. According to a geologist cited in the article, "the country requires a minimum of seven to 10 years to develop large-scale mining to become a major source of revenue."  Will such a period of peace ever come to pass?  Let us hope so.

 

We recently observed the 10^th anniversary of "Occupy Wall St."; and last week's Newsletter included articles debating the successes and failures of this seminal event.  This week The Nation published an interesting and insightful debate on "Was Occupy Wall Street More Anarchist or Socialist?"  I found this interesting, and perhaps you will too.

 

As the congressional (and national) debate on President Biden's "Reconciliation Bill" moves to a vote, Senator Bernie Sanders, Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, made a strong defense of the legislation, needed "to address the crises facing working families all over this country." An excellent primer on what we need, imo.

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our 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!

Acknowledging the crisis of Haitian refugees at our southern border, today's first Reward is 'Freedom Bound" by Haitian singer Emeline Michel.  Free associating around "Caribbean" brought me to "Sitting in Limbo" by Jimmy Cliff, from his great film "The Harder They Come."  Enjoy!

 

Best wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

U.S. Militarism's Toxic Impact on Climate Policy

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [September 22, 2021]

---- President Biden addressed the UN General Assembly on September 21 with a warning that the climate crisis is fast approaching a "point of no return," and a promise that the United States would rally the world to action. "We will lead not just with the example of our power but, God willing, with the power of our example," he said. But the U.S. is not a leader when it comes to saving our planet. Yahoo News recently published a report titled "Why the U.S. Lags Behind Europe on Climate Goals by 10 or 15 years."  The article was a rare acknowledgment in the U.S. corporate media that the United States has not only failed to lead the world on the climate crisis, but has actually been the main culprit blocking timely collective action to head off a global existential crisis. The anniversary of September 11th and the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan should be ringing alarm bells inside the head of every American, warning us that we have allowed our government to spend trillions of dollars waging war, chasing shadows, selling arms and fueling conflict all over the world, while ignoring real existential dangers to our civilization and all of humanity. [Read More]  For more on the cost of these wars, read "Afghanistan and Beyond: End U.S. War-Making Everywhere," by Azadeh Shahshahani, In These Times [September 21, 2021].

 

Four Months Ago, Biden Said Haiti Wasn't Safe. Now He's Deporting Thousands There.

By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [September 20 2021]

---- Just four months ago, the Department of Homeland Security designated Haiti for temporary protected status. The rare designation applies to immigrants in the United States who are temporarily unable to safely return to their home country because of conditions of extreme political upheaval, conflict, or natural disasters. The U.S. government thus asserted, in no uncertain terms, that Haiti was not a safe place. Temporary protected status was extended and expanded for Haitians just five weeks ago. Yet in the last 24 hours, 320 Haitians were placed on planes by the Biden administration and expelled back to Haiti, having been removed from the huge border camp that has amassed around a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Six more flights are expected to land in Haiti on Tuesday, and then as many as 10 per day from Wednesday onward. Around 14,000 Haitians will be expelled from the U.S. over the coming three weeks — almost the exact number currently gathered at the Del Rio encampment. [Read More]

 

For more on the US response to Haiti's crisis – (Video) "People Are Desperate": Biden Vows Mass Deportations as Thousands of Haitian Refugees Shelter in Del Rio," from Democracy Now! [September 20, 2021] [Link]; "Biden's Envoy to Haiti Resigns in Protest Over 'Inhumane' Deportations" by Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams [September 23, 2021] [Link]; and "The departing special envoy to Haiti undiplomatically tells the truth about US policy" by Amy Wilentz, The Nation [September 24, 2021]  [Link].

 

The Art and Torture of the Empire

By Hamid Dabashi, Columbia Universityi [September 23, 2021]

---- Who remembers Abu Ghraib? Why should we remember Abu Ghraib? Abu Ghraib represents an era of imperial conquest that began in 2003 in Iraq and before that in 2001 in Afghanistan. With its forces now out of Afghanistan, the United States has no reason to remember Abu Ghraib. But the world at the mercy of the whims of this dysfunctional empire does. Abu Ghraib was a prison complex that took the name of the city near Baghdad where it was built. For years, Saddam Hussein used it to unlawfully imprison, torture, maim and murder dissidents and political opponents. Then the US took it over to do more of the same.  … There remained something deeply familiar about these pictures American torturers took of their Iraqi inmates – they looked like those white racist murderers took of their victims when they lynched them, hanging them from a tree. "… There is, therefore, a direct link between the rush to aestheticise and exhibit the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the sudden disappearance of a troubling memory that should have remained indecipherable and troubling for a much longer time. But forgetfulness is precisely how this memoryless empire best survives, by least caring about the trail of terror and destruction it leaves behind as it wages its endless "war on terror"- now its paramount ideology of world domination, at a time when in that very world there is very little left to dominate.[Read More]

 

War & Peace

It's Time to Break Up the Military-Industrial Complex

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor, The Nation [September 21, 2021]

---- Two days after the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, the House Armed Services Committee voted to set the Pentagon's 2022 budget. Given that U.S. officials claim to be winding down decades-long wars, even maintaining current levels of military spending would seem a mystifying choice. But the committee didn't just vote to maintain current spending levels. It voted to increase them by a whopping $24 billion. Which begs the question: Are we spending this money because we need to, even though our military budget is already higher than those of the next 11 largest countries combined? Or are there other incentives at play? Ties between the government and the private sector — what President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously called the "military-industrial complex" — form the foundations of our national defense. … With just the proposed $24 billion in new Pentagon funds, the federal government could support almost 14 million Americans behind on rent, or help rural and urban communities rebuild from Hurricane Ida, or finance nearly 8 billion covid-19 vaccination doses. … When Eisenhower first cautioned the world about the influence of the military-industrial complex, he warned of "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power." The past two decades of war have fueled that disastrous rise. As we wind down foreign conflicts, our country faces a choice. We can double down on the war-profit cycle — or we can cut it off, and give priority to our citizens, our economy and our integrity on the global stage. [Read More]  Also useful is "Ocasio-Cortez Slams Congress for "Senselessly" Boosting Defense Budget Each Year" by Sharon Zhang, Truthout [September 23, 2021] [Link].

 

(Video) United States of War: How AUKUS Nuclear Submarine Deal Could Inflame Tension, Provoke War with China

From Democracy Now! [September 23, 2021]

---- Criticism is growing of AUKUS, a new trilateral military partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States that the countries say is needed to counter China's growing power in the Indo-Pacific region. As part of the agreement, the U.S. has agreed to help Australia build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, replacing a previous deal Australia had with France. China has denounced the deal, saying the countries are "severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race, and damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts." Anthropologist David Vine, who tracks U.S. military bases overseas, says AUKUS will not only intensify regional tensions but also grow the U.S. military footprint in Australia. "There is no reason to be building new military bases in Australia or any part of the world," he says. [See the Program]

 

Our History

[FB] The media furor over "Critical Race Theory" has diminished, but interest in re-framing history and its institutional development around race and white supremacy should not.  Last week we lost philosopher/historian Charles Mills, author of The Racial Contract and other insightful writings about racism and liberalism.  In today's New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie writes: "Throughout his long and fruitful career, Mills worked to show how, despite its pretenses to universalism, liberalism as a political tradition and philosophy has historically been strongly biased toward the material interests of white people and white polities to the detriment of nonwhite peoples and nonwhite polities." Read more about Charles Mills here.

 

 

CFOW Newsletter - Focus on Biden's "Pivot to Asia" - and why the peace movement must pivot also

Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter

September 19, 2021

 

Hello All – Beginning with President Obama, and continuing now under President Biden, the US military-foreign policy elite has attempted to extract itself from the quicksand of the wars in the Middle East and make a "pivot to Asia."  This has been accompanied by a media and White House drumbeat of alarm over China's "aggression," and – more mutedly – over China's economic challenge to US post-Cold War hegemony in the world.  With the extraction of US troops from Afghanistan, the USA may be on the cusp of a dangerous escalation of conflict with China.  What to do?

 

It has been said that "war is God's way of teaching American's geography."  True or not, we must bite the bullet and spend some time with a map of the South China Sea.  We will note that this is in fact adjacent to China, and very far from California or Washington, DC.  Next, we should make a stop at the admirable website of the Committee for a SANE US-China Policy.  There we learn that, since January 1, 2021, there have been 40 "provocative military maneuvers and close encounters" between US and Chinese planes and ships in the South China Sea, near Taiwan, or elsewhere; of which 25 were initiated by the USA. Could something go wrong?

 

Other indicators of the intensifying US-China conflict are the add-ons to US military budget proposals that supposedly counter China.  A report from Brown University's Watson Center notes: "The China threat argument has been utilized to justify the quest for a 350 ship Navy—up from about 300 ships currently; major Air Force purchases like a new bomber and the F-35 combat aircraft; the Pentagon's $1.5 trillion, three decades-long proposed nuclear weapons upgrade plan" … and much more.

 

Yet USA collaboration with China is essential to address significant problems of mutual interest.  For example, the looming food crisis in Afghanistan requires collaboration between the USA and Afghanistan's neighbors, including China, now with significant influence in Afghanistan.  An even more pressing issue is the climate crisis, which requires collaboration and significant cooperation between the US and China if humanity is to survive.  In short, just as the Biden administration is launched on its "pivot toward China," the US peace movement needs to match this new development, learning and educating others about the nuts and bolts of war and peace in the South China Sea.

 

News Notes

This week the US military retracted its previous claims and admitted that its drone attack that killed 10 people in Kabul was "a horrible mistake," and not a "righteous" assassination of a would-be ISIS suicide bomber.  In a statement, BanKillerDrones said, ""The Pentagon's and Biden administration's efforts to cover-up the truth about the slaughter of 10 civilians in Kabul on Aug. 29, seven of them children, is simply an example of the on-going cover-up of killer drone atrocities that have been perpetrated by every U.S. administration since the first U.S. drone attack, in Afghanistan, on October 7, 2001, the day the U.S. invaded that tortured nation."  To sign a petition urging President Biden to end drone attacks on Afghanistan, go here.

 

Growing US aggressiveness towards China and Russia underscores the importance of preventing conflicts that could lead to nuclear war.  Last week Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal led a group of 28 Democrats to push back against President Biden's intention, exemplified by his 2022 budget proposal, to build up US nuclear weapons. The build-up takes off from the already inflated budget numbers of the Trump regime, and adds billions more. We are happy to note that CD congressional representative Jamaal Bowman is one of the signatories of the Democrats' anti-nuclear effort.

 

What may be the most set of congressional votes of Joe Biden's presidency will soon take place re: the linkage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill to the much bigger budget reconciliation process.  In a nutshell, progressive Democrats in the House have committed to withholding their votes from the bipartisan bill unless and until the infrastructure bill is passed.  If large enough, this group – though now numbering only 16 – may exercise the congressional muscle needed to push through both, rather than only one, of these important pieces of legislation.  The Rivertowns should be proud to note that Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones among the progressives who have bravely committed themselves to this "both or none" strategy.

 

Finally, if you – like me – are among those who find maps useful and helpful in opening the door to new ways of looking at "familiar" things, I recommend The Decolonial Atlas. The curators of the site say "It's based on the premise that cartography is not as objective as we're made to believe. The orientation of a map, its projection, the presence of political borders … are all subject to the map-maker's bias – whether deliberate or not."  Enjoy! (h/t JS)

 

CFOW Nuts & Bolts

Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.)  A "Black Lives Matter/Say Their Names" vigil takes place every Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell.  If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email. Our 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 Newsletter's "Rewards!" are usually lighter fare, a way station for stalwart readers before diving into Serious Business.  This week, however, I offer what was to me an extraordinarily interesting video interview between Sarah Schulman, author of a new book on the history of ACT-UP, and Rebecca Vilkomerson, a leader of Jewish Voice for Peace.  The subject is how ACT-UP succeeded and failed in developing strategy and tactics for a movement composed (primarily) of hundreds of New Yorkers facing likely death due to the AIDS epidemic.  Schulman's giant archive of interviews with activists was also instrumental in developing the earlier documentary film "United in Anger: A History of ACT-UP." I learned a lot from the Schulman-Vilkomerson discussion, and I think others may also.

 

Best Wishes,

Frank Brodhead

For CFOW

 

CFOW Weekly Reader

 

(Video) Who Rules Asia?: An Interview with Noam Chomsky

Interviewed by Jenny Li, New Bloom Magazine [June 2021]

---- We have an enormous responsibility today to prevent the kinds of conflicts that are coming, that are brewing, that are developing. And if permitted, the current course is pursued, will very likely lead to extremely dangerous situations, possibly even nuclear war. And a nuclear war between major powers is simply unthinkable. It would essentially destroy everything. It would leave the kind of world nobody would want to live in. How is it happening? Just take a look at what's happening right off the coast of China. Chinese warplanes have penetrated the air defense system of Taiwan. The United States has sent a huge naval armada, two major aircraft carrier groups into the South China Sea, an area of enormous strategic importance for China. Any of these things could blow up at any moment off the coast of China. Notice, it's not in the Caribbean Sea. It's not the Eastern Pacific, the Eastern Pacific off the coast of California. It's off the coast of China. China is ringed with nuclear bases, a circle of containment, nuclear missiles aimed at China from U.S. bases all through the Pacific. What's called "The Quad," the four major Asian U.S. allies, Japan… The United States itself is devoting enormous efforts to try to prevent China's development. It's pretty shocking to look at it. We should be cooperating. It is necessary for China and the United States, two major economies, to be cooperating on all sorts of issues, crucial issues like global warming, pandemics, nuclear weapons." [See the Program] For a transcript, go here.

 

A Legendary Abortion Rights Activist on What Comes After Texas

By Heather Souvaine Horn, The New Republic [September 8, 2021]

---- When Heather Booth helped a friend's sister obtain an abortion in 1965, she thought it would be a one-off situation. Instead, it became the start of a legendary underground operation known as the Jane Collective, or simply Jane. In the years leading up to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Jane Collective helped thousands of pregnant people in the Chicago area and beyond obtain abortions in defiance of strict statewide bans—establishing procedures to protect and support those seeking them and those providing them, and also to promote safety. Now, following Texas's law to ban abortions after six weeks (before many people know they are pregnant) and award private citizens $10,000 for suing anyone remotely involved in a procedure beyond those weeks, the right to an abortion, already something that existed more in theory than reality for much of the country, seems ever more uncertain. Many activists are turning to earlier generations for lessons on how to resist restrictions and get care to those who need it. I called up Booth to ask her about Jane's history and her perspective on the new law. [Read More]

 

(Video) "Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire": How Racism Fueled U.S. Wars Post-9/11

From Democracy Now! [September 14, 2021]

---- According to the Costs of War Project, the wars launched by the United States following 9/11 have killed an estimated 929,000 people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. The true death toll may never be known, but the vast majority of the victims have been Muslim. "Racism is baked into the security logic of the national security state in the U.S., as well as in terms of how it operates abroad," says Islamophobia scholar Deepa Kumar, a professor of media studies at Rutgers University. "The war on terror was sold to the American public using Orientalist and racist ideas that these societies are backward." [See the Program]

 

The Climate Crisis

[FB – It's hard to overstate the importance of the Glasgow climate summit, which will start on October 31^st and go through November 12^th.  As the articles linked below show, the Earth is rapidly warming towards a 2 degree Celsius temperature increase, now viewed as guaranteeing catastrophe.  Two days ago, the head of the United Nations warned that the summit risked failure: "There is still a level of mistrust, between north and south, developed and developing countries, that needs to be overcome. We are on the verge of the abyss."  In the USA, the "Green New Deal" – the most hopeful climate policy now on the legislative table – is bound up with President Biden's infrastructure proposal, whose legislative success is in doubt.  We must renew our efforts to demand effective policies to prevent climate catastrophe.]

 

New Climate Analysis Shows Near Total Global Failure to Meet 1.5°C Targets

By Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams [September 15, 2021]

---- A new analysis reveals a near total global failure of governments to have climate action and targets on track for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Released Wednesday by the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), the assessment rated just one nation, The Gambia, as "1.5°C Paris Agreement compatible," and found the United States' overall climate action—despite a welcome "U-turn on climate change" since the Trump administration—to be "insufficient." The analysis, which covered policies of 36 nations and the European Union, framed the widespread failings as particularly glaring given the "absolute urgency" of climate action made clear by the most recent IPCC report, a publication United Nations chief António Guterres declared "a code red for humanity." [Read More]

 

Also informative is "What's Up With COP26?" by Robert Hunziker, Counterpunch [September 17, 2021] [Link]. Famed climate scientist James Hansen warns that the worldwide decline of air pollution could increase the rate of global warming significantly. A recent international survey found that "Climate Inaction Has Left Majority of Young People Believing Humanity Is 'Doomed.'" But Friday's great action by Extinction Rebellion, protesting the continuing practice of major banks in investing in fossil fuels, shows that the fight back against the climate crisis is alive and well.

 

The State of the Union

We Are on the Precipice of a Housing Disaster

By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, The Poor People's Campaign [September 17, 2021]

[FB – Once again, we need to deploy a strong "inside-outside" strategy:  intense community-based agitation for housing justice coordinated with work inside local, state, and federal legislatures to prevent homeless for millions of people.]

---- "The coronavirus pandemic could result in some 28 million Americans being evicted.… By comparison, 10 million people lost their homes in the Great Recession." These predictions come, in part, from Emily Benfer, the chair of the American Bar Association's Task Force Committee on Eviction and cocreator with the Eviction Lab at Princeton University of the Covid-19 Housing Policy Scorecard. She observes, "We have never seen this extent of eviction in such a truncated amount of time in our history." … Those facing eviction, those underpaid and excluded, and many of the 140 million people who are poor and low-income can't wait for those in power to act (if they ever do). Grassroots efforts like the National Union of the Homeless, Housing Justice for All, Cancel the Rents, Homes Guarantee, and other networks promoting rent strikes and eviction resistance will continue to organize to ensure that all Americans have a place to live, thrive, and build the sort of society we know is possible. [Read More]

 

Our History – The 10^th Anniversary of "Occupy Wall St."

Life can be different: 10 years ago, Occupy Wall Street changed the world

By Rebecca Nathanson, The Guardian [September 15, 2021]

---- Occupy Wall Street politicized an entire generation – one that grew up under George W Bush in the post-9/11 years, pinning all their hopes on Barack Obama. Let down when his message of "hope and change" failed to manifest after the 2008 global financial crisis, they began to question American political and economic institutions themselves. I was one of those millennials. The movement upended my life, introducing me to new politics and people. It also upended the world, part of a string of uprisings that spread from Tunisia and Egypt to Spain and Chile to, finally, the United States. Occupy's rise in 2011 marked the re-entry of class consciousness into mainstream American politics. Occupy had two pillars: its critique of inequality, and its vision of an alternative way of organizing society. The former moved from the fringe to the center, bringing inequality into the national discourse; the latter has been largely overlooked. The movement made decisions by consensus, which was messy and slow, but it also challenged the idea that the way we live is a given. [Read More]

 

(Video) "Another World Is Possible": How Occupy Wall Street Reshaped Politics & Kicked Off New Era of Protest

From Democracy Now! [September 17, 2021]

---- On the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, we examine the legacy of the historic protests with three veterans of the movement: Nelini Stamp, now the director of strategy and partnerships at the Working Families Party; Jillian Johnson, a key organizer in Occupy Durham who now serves on the Durham City Council and is the city's mayor pro tempore; and writer and filmmaker Astra Tayor, an organizer with the Debt Collective. Occupy Wall Street "broke the spell" protecting the economic status quo and marked a major shift in protests against capitalism, Taylor says. "Occupy kind of inaugurated this social movement renaissance," she tells Democracy Now! "We've been in an age of defiant protest ever since Occupy Wall Street. [See the Program{

 

Also of interest – "Did Occupy Wall Street Make a Difference?" by Ruth Milkman, et al., The Nation [September 17, 2021] [Link]; "What Occupy Wall Street Organizers Would Do Differently. Do they still stand by the leaderless revolution?" The Nation [Link]; "The Impact of Occupy Wall Street Continues to Grow" by John Tarleton, The Indypendent [September 15, 2021] [Link]; and "Occupy Memory" by Molly Crabapple, New York Review of Books [Link].