Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
October 2, 2022
Hello All – The war in Ukraine entered a new phase two weeks ago when Ukrainian forces broke through Russian defenses in eastern Ukraine, re-gaining much of the territory lost to Russia earlier in the war. Russia responded by calling up 300,000 military reservists, initiating the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces (the Donbas, Kherson), and threatening to use nuclear weapons if necessary. Last week these trends developed further, with a massive flight of hundreds of thousands of would-be soldiers exiting Russia, the completion of the incorporation of the four Ukrainian provinces into that state of Russia, and the seizure of yet another important Russian-occupied town by the Ukrainian military. Tensions were raised even further with the discovery that the NordStream2 gas pipeline had been sabotaged. Where is this going?
The war now appears even further from the possibilities of a cease fire and negotiations. The sudden military collapse has unleashed significant criticism of Russia's "military operation"' in Ukraine, blaming the military leadership for losses and even raising mild questions about the Dear Leader. Presumably Putin will respond with an escalation of the fighting. By incorporating Ukraine's four provinces, Russian propaganda can now claim that attempts to regain this territory by Ukraine would be an attack on the Russian homeland. As reported in the Washington Post, "Putin has previously threatened to resort to nuclear weapons if Russia's goals in Ukraine continue to be thwarted. The annexation brings the use of a nuclear weapon a step closer by giving Putin a potential justification on the grounds that 'the territorial integrity of our country is threatened,' as he put it in his speech last week." The capture of the Ukrainian town of Lyman yesterday suggests that the successes of the Ukrainian military offensive may continue. One military analyst
… believes that the Russian front in the Donbas is still in danger of imminent collapse. If this were to happen, Putin would need to escalate even further. This could take the form of more attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, but, if the goal is to stop Ukrainian advances, a likelier option would be a small tactical nuclear strike. [The analyst] suggests that it would be under one kiloton—that is, about fifteen times smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It would nonetheless be devastating, and would almost certainly lead to an intense reaction from the West. [Link].
It appears that the only possible barrier to a prolonged war and perhaps an existential disaster is a change-of-course by the US political and military leadership. Yet there is no sign of this at the moment; and the The New York Times reported on Thursday that "The US is planning to establish a new command base in Germany that will focus entirely on supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia." Antiwar.com reports that
While President Biden has insisted no US troops will be sent to Ukraine, establishing a command solely for the purpose of supporting the war is a step in that direction. There's no indication yet that the possibility is being discussed, but there is reportedly a CIA presence on the ground in Ukraine and some US allies have special operations forces deployed in Ukraine. Members of Congress have called for sending "military advisors" to Ukraine to facilitate the transfer of weapons.
Under the circumstances, we have no choice but to make all possible efforts to alert our friends and neighbors to the dangers we face, and to pressure our congressional representatives and the mainstream media to cease giving a blank check for this war, but to demand an immediate cease fire and negotiations to end the war.
Useful reading about the Ukraine War
Putin annexations mean US-Russian talks more critical than ever
By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft ]September 30, 2022]
---- The Russian government's move today to annex the territories it has occupied in Ukraine is absolutely illegal, as well as a very serious escalation of the conflict. The local "referendums" in support of this move were a sham and will quite rightly be condemned by the vast majority of states around the world. Even states like China that have been so far unaligned with the West and more sympathetic to Russia in this conflict have made clear that they will never accept forced annexations. The Russian action greatly complicates the search for an eventual peace settlement, as Ukraine and Western nations won't formally accept nor recognize the annexation. At the same time, once these territories have been officially accepted into Russia under the Russian constitution, it will be much more difficult for a future Russian government to give them up. Nonetheless, barring the very unlikely prospect of a complete victory for either side, at some stage a ceasefire to end full-scale war will still be necessary. Above all, the drastic nature of the Russian action makes it even more essential that Washington and Moscow enter into direct talks to prevent the war from spreading and escalating into a direct clash between the United States and Russia, which in the worst scenario could lead to a nuclear exchange that would destroy civilization. [Read More]
"End War in Ukraine" Say 66 Nations at UN General Assembly
---- We have spent much of the past week reading and listening to speeches by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York. Most of them condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a violation of the UN Charter and a serious setback for the peaceful world order that is the UN's founding and defining principle. But what has not been reported in the United States is that leaders from 66 countries, mostly from the Global South, also used their General Assembly speeches to call urgently for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine through peaceful negotiations, as the UN Charter requires. We have compiled excerpts from the speeches of all 66 countries to show the breadth and depth of their appeals, and we highlight a few of them here. …The 66 nations that called for peace in Ukraine make up more than a third of the countries in the world, and they represent most of the Earth's population, including India, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil and Mexico. [Read More]
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting, 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 is held each Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm in Yonkers at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. To learn about our new project, "Beauty as Fuel for Change," go here; and to make a financial contribution to the project, go here. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. 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 stalwart readers this week come from two early Miles Davis jazz albums that accompanied me while writing this Newsletter. One I like very much is the 1959 "Kind of Blue." The second album is from 1957, "Miles Ahead." Haven't heard these in awhile? Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
Extreme Events are the New Normal…and Not Just in the Weather
---- Extreme events are taking place not only in the physical climate. They take place as well in the political climate. January 6, 2021, the storming of the Capitol in the United States, was another such event. The return of the Marcoses, Trump's incitement to rebellion, Narendra Modi's ethnonationalist regime in India, Jair Bolsonaro's fascistoid government in Brazil, and just in the last few days, the electoral triumphs of the far right in traditionally Social Democratic Sweden and, horror of horrors, in the birthplace of fascism itself, Italy—all of these are extreme events, and they are, in turn, symptoms of a much larger extreme event: the deepening crisis of liberal democracy. Extreme events also mark the economic climate, and the current coincidence of galloping inflation and stagnation is one such event. Another is the emergence of extreme inequality. Another is the breakdown of global supply chains, threatening not just delays and derailments in manufacturing but also food insecurity and hunger, especially in the global South. All these three extreme events—stagflation, extreme inequality, supply-chain breakdown–stem from a bigger extreme event: the unraveling of the triad of financialization, globalization, and neoliberal ideology that have served as the pillars of the global capitalist economy over the last 40 years. [Read More]
"The Wind Knows Your Name": Remembering William Rivers Pitt
By Dahr Jamail, Truthout [September 30, 2022]
---- The title of William Rivers Pitt's unpublished book about the pandemic is: Please Take This, Because I Love You and I Might Die. A COVID Diary. He sent me the manuscript not too long ago so I could read it, and give him input on where it might make the most sense to have it published. With the pandemic, as he was consistently able to do, Will saw what was coming, knew the consequences could well be catastrophic, and behaved accordingly. Each of those things is a true gift. The ability (and willingness) to see what was coming before most people, knowing in his heart what the consequences could mean, and then taking appropriate actions to prepare. [Read More]
(Video) Freedom Dreams Revisited, with Robin D.G. Kelley
[Streamed live from the Schomburg Center on [September 13, 2022]
[FB] – For more than two decades Robin D. G. Kelley has been writing innovative and illuminating studies about Black America and racial capitalism. Freedom Dreams is one of his best. Enjoy!]
---- A conversation as we revisit Kelley's ground breaking publication Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, two decades after its publication. "...The book's title does not suggest wishful thinking or dreaming. The Black radical imagination is not a kind of dream state conjured and nurtured despite day-to-day struggles on the ground. It is rather forged in collective movements. My central point is that we cannot divorce critical analysis from social movements." [See the Program]
The Protests in Iran
(Video) "Women! Life! Freedom!" Iranian Women Lead Nationwide Protests After Death of Mahsa Amini
From Democracy Now! [September 27, 2022]
---- Dozens of people in Iran have been killed in a series of escalating women-led protests demanding justice for Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in the custody of the so-called morality police. Amini was detained on September 13 for allegedly leaving some of her hair visible in violation of Iran's hijab law. Iranian American writer Hoda Katebi calls the protests "exciting and beautiful," bringing together women from across economic and ethnic backgrounds and opening up conversations about the policing of women's bodies. She says the government is using the protests to "advance nationalist ideas," crack down on Kurdish communities and propel a false narrative of an uprising against Islam. Katebi's recent piece for the Los Angeles Times is titled "Iranian women are rising up to demand freedom. Are we listening?" [See the Program] Also of interest are "Protests Against Compulsory Hijab Sweep Iran, With Spotlight on Bodily Autonomy," by Frieda Afary, Truthout [October 1, 2022] [Link]; and "Iran on fire: Once again, women are on the vanguard of transformative change," by Vrinda Narain and Fatemeh Sadeghi, [September 26, 2022] [Link]. For the latest short videos of street protests, go to twitter.com and search for "Iran protests." Many, many.
Brazil's Election – Today!
(Video) Noam Chomsky & Vijay Prashad: A Lula Victory in Brazil Could Help Save the Planet
From Democracy Now! [September 30, 2022]
---- Noam Chomsky joins us from Brazil with Vijay Prashad, just back from Brazil, to discuss Sunday's Brazilian election between Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Chomsky and Prashad are co-authors of the new book, "The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power." [See the Program] Also of interest is (Video) "Brazil's Lula Goes into Sunday Election with Massive Lead. Will Bolsonaro Accept an Electoral Defeat?" from Democracy Now! [September 30, 2022] [See the Program].
War & Peace
UN Envoy Warns Fighting Will Rage in Yemen If Ceasefire Isn't Extended
, Antiwar.com [September 28, 2022]
---- The UN envoy for Yemen on Tuesday warned of the risk of more fighting breaking out in Yemen if the warring parties don't agree to extend the current ceasefire, which is due to expire on October 2. Fighting has been reported on the ground, and both sides have accused the other of violating the ceasefire. But Saudi airstrikes in Yemen and Houthi attacks inside Saudi Arabia have not been reported for months, marking the longest period of calm since the US-backed Saudi coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015. … The Saudis have eased the blockade on Yemen somewhat as some flights have left Sanaa airport and more fuel ships are entering the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. But the blockade has not been fully lifted, which has long been a demand of the Houthis as a condition for peace talks. … As the fragile ceasefire has held, war powers resolutions have been introduced in Congress to end US involvement in the war, which would effectively ground the Saudi air force since it relies on US maintenance. Resolutions have been introduced in both the House and the Senate and have over 100 bipartisan cosponsors. Call 1-833-Stop-War to tell your representative in Congress to support the legislation. The UN estimates that the US-backed war on Yemen and the conditions it has caused have killed at least 377,000 people, more than half of which are children under the age of five. [Read More]
The Death of the Iran Deal Was Entirely Avoidable
By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin Magazine [September 2022]
---- After a seemingly never-ending will-they-won't-they on the US-Iranian revival of the Iran nuclear deal, we seem to have an answer: they won't. As of today, officials from the United States, Europe, and Israel all say that the deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is dead, at least for the foreseeable future. Reentering the deal was a major campaign promise of Joe Biden's, it was something he didn't need Congress to do, and it would have meant restoring one of the signature achievements of his Democratic predecessor, whose accomplishments Biden virtually treated as his own on the campaign trail. So how did it fail? [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Hurricane Ian Is a Storm That We Knew Would Occur: Too much climate energy, too little climate action.
September 28, 2022]
---- Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in southwest Florida on Wednesday, may join that lineage of truly monster storms—Katrina, Sandy, Camille—whose names are repeated for generations. Ian hit Cuba on Tuesday as a Category 3 hurricane, causing an island-wide blackout that left eleven million people without power. The storm blessedly moved a little to the east overnight, sparing Tampa Bay a direct hit; it cursedly jumped in strength to the very border of Category 5 on the intensity scale, and so Floridians face a deadly combination of roaring wind, surging ocean, and pelting rain. Whatever the eventual damage, it's already another stark demonstration of what happens when there's too much physical energy in a closed system, and too little political energy. [Read More] And also by Bill McKibben, (Video) "Victory Over Big Oil as Sen. Manchin Forced to Drop 'Hideous Deal' on Energy," from Democracy Now! [September 28, 2022] [Link].
Israel/Palestine
An Open Letter to American-Jewish Intellectuals
By Edward Said, Jewish Currents [September 21, 2022]
[FB] – Before his untimely death in 2003, Edward Said was a leading intellectual in both Palestine and the USA, where he taught at Columbia. As part of the Palestinian Diaspora, and as a member of the Palestinian National Council, he advocated for effective, non-violent strategies that would advance Palestinian self-determination. This essay, written in the midst of what is now known as the First Intifada (uprising), remained unpublished until now. For some context, Jewish Currents has also published useful essays by Nubar Hovsepian and Peter Beinart.
---- [ES] - When Jews speak of Israel as a place they come home to, you will allow that their word "home" to Palestinian ears has a death-like effect. I do not minimize what for Jews is an age-old problem of persecuted alienation and exile, but you also must understand the wounding immediacy for us of quite literally witnessing our home turned into someone else's house, country, even as the number of Palestinian dead—shot, beaten, asphyxiated—by Israel for the past five decades continues to increase and is now in the uncounted thousands. During the intifada alone the toll has gone beyond the 600-person mark. So what was decided at the Algiers PNC meetings therefore has an import little short of national self-amputation, done consciously and, I would want to insist, courageously in the interests of peace and some measure of justice for a deprived, much aggrieved and suffering nation. Palestinians of my generation knew Palestine as a predominantly Arab country, albeit one held by the British and, to us, gradually infiltrated by European Jews, who for all their theoretical protestations seemed to be coming to a land they knew principally via religion and ideology. The sudden cataclysmic rupture whereby a land and home once ours were declared to be the Jewish state of Israel cannot be contemptuously dismissed since its definitiveness affected every single Palestinian. [Read More]
The Return of the Two-State Solution Illusion
By
----For Democrats in the United States and the political "centrists" in Israel—represented by Joe Biden and Yair Lapid, respectively—the loss of credibility for the two-state solution has meant losing more and more support for Israeli policies. Younger Democrats are increasingly supportive of Palestinians and less so of Israeli policies.
These facts explain the theater we have witnessed in recent days at the United Nations General Assembly and in the American media scene, where the lone Palestinian woman ever elected to Congress has come under unrelenting attack from her own party as well as the opposition. … The U.S. will advocate for lasting negotiations, the hallmark of the Oslo process; endless negotiations that lead nowhere while Israeli settlements spread farther across the West Bank, Gaza slowly dies of poverty, and the status quo in East Jerusalem gradually fades into Jewish dominance. And above all, Israeli "security" is guarded "full stop," and if there is any room left for any Palestinian rights, those will be considered according to Israel's wishes. [Read More]
Our History
The U.S. and the Holocaust, PBS [available until 10/16]
---- [FB] I highly recommend the documentary by film by Ken Burns and his team, "The U.S. and the Holocaust, now available (free) on PBS until October 16. The film "examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the context of global antisemitism and racism, the eugenics movement in the United States and race laws in the American south." Much of the film (some incredible footage) is about the situation and fate of Jews in Germany, Poland, and points east from 1933 to 1945. But the focus returns again and again to how and why the United States was unwilling to allow Jewish (indeed, all) refugees into the USA; and through interviews with members of several Jewish families we learn what these barriers meant for their chances for survival. See the three-part documentary film here.
Because the film is so critical of the USA, though perhaps a bit soft on FDR himself, it will probably generate a lot of controversy. To get started, read the "All Things Considered"/NPR interview with Ken Burns here; and The Nation has an interesting dialogue on the film with two well-informed historians, "Ken Burns Gets at the Nasty Underbelly of American History," here.
