Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
May 21, 2023
Hello All – Last Tuesday 14 US military and diplomatic experts published a full-page open letter in The New York Times calling the war in Ukraine "an unmitigated disaster." While condemning Russia's invasion and occupation, they cited the 30-year expansion of NATO to the east, and noted that the USA has provided $37 billion in military aid to Ukraine (with more on the way). They warned that "future devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever closer toward open war." The letter, entitled "The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World," urged the Biden administration to pivot towards pursuing a negotiated solution to end the war "speedily."
As antiwar dissent emerges on the left edge of the Democratic Party and on the right edge of the Republican Party – with similar developments within NATO nations – the USA and NATO leaders are doubling down on arming Ukraine in the hope of military victory. President Biden has now given the go-ahead for the delivery of US-made F-16 jets to Ukraine, while Britain and Germany this week pledged billions more in weapons deliveries. A year ago, the Biden administration cautioned against sending powerful advanced weapons to Ukraine, warning that Russia might be provoked into attacking NATO, with potentially disastrous consequences. But now another significant step has been taken in that direction.
For public consumption, the USA states that its war aim in Ukraine is to support the Ukrainians until they achieve military victory or Russian surrender and withdrawal. But military leaders like Secretary of Defense Austin have also stated that the US goal is to weaken Russia as a military adversary, and consequently the USA has discouraged talk or efforts at negotiation. Thus a long war might be better than a short war, for US interests in Europe. But the failure of Ukraine to mount a successful counterattack against Russian forces in the Donbas and southeast of Ukraine has begun to divide "real hawks" from "moderate hawks" among the small circle of Biden advisers directing the war. This week, Politico reported discussions within the Biden administration about a "frozen conflict," an end-game in which fighting would be suspended, perhaps for many years, while negotiations creep along. Think Korea, where the 1950-53 war has still not ended. This would have the advantage, notes Politico, of soon ending public awareness of the war; a timely step to take as the 2024 presidential election approaches.
Some useful reading on the Ukraine War
"A Timely Call for Peace in Ukraine by U.S. National Security Experts," by Medea Benjamin and Nicholas S. J. Davies, Code Pink[Link].
"The Latest Flash Point Among Ukraine's Allies Is Whether to Send F-16s," bLara Jakes and
"Ukraine could join ranks of 'frozen' conflicts, U.S. officials say," by Nahal Toosi, Politico [May 18, 2023] [Link].
Events of Interest
On Thursday, May 25th, at 4 pm, the Westchester Alliance for Sustainable Solutions will hold an event/press conference in Yonkers, at the Westchester Wastewater Treatment Plant (1 Fernbrook Rd.), to call for full passage of the Climate, Jobs, and Justice legislation in Albany. To learn more about the event and register to participate, go here.
On Friday, June 2nd, at 7 pm, Everytown and Moms Demand Action will hold an action against gun violence in Nyack, at Memorial Park (4 Depew Ave.). Called "NY-Wear Orange Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge Lighting and Picnic," this is one of many events being held across the country as part of National Gun Violence Awareness Day and Wear Orange Weekend. To learn more, go here.
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 in Yonkers on Monday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm at the intersection of Warburton Ave. and Odell. 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 join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. 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!
In the pursuit of happiness, this week's Rewards for stalwart readers bring back the Nicholas Brothers for a tap-dancing encore. Here they are with Dorothy Dandridge in "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (1941) and now with Cab Calloway and "Stormy Weather" (1943) for their famous "stairs dance." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
America's Cold Civil War
By David A. Love, LAProgressive [May 15, 2023]
---- In the US, the right-wing voter suppression efforts reached a level not seen since the era of segregation, when white supremacists in the South had passed laws to deny Black Americans the right to vote and threatened everyone who dared to resist with violence. The nation is now divided between people who want a multiracial democracy in which every American is allowed and encouraged to vote and those who yearn for an anti-democratic system in which an extremist white minority has unchecked control over everyone else. The latter group is represented by the Republican Party, which is brazenly waging a cold civil war by pushing for unprecedented voter suppression measures targeting minority and marginalized communities. In response to the Democratic Party's victory in the 2020 presidential and congressional elections, Republican-controlled state legislatures have proposed 253 bills in 43 states that aim to prevent millions of Americans, and especially Americans of colour, from voting in federal and state elections. [Read More] Republicans are attacking almost every institution of US life that nurtures thinking – read "Republicans Want to Defund Our Libraries," by Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute [May 20, 2023] [Link].
Goodbye to the American Century: China India and the Emerging New World Order
---- Not so long ago, political analysts were speaking of the "G-2" — that is, of a potential working alliance between the United States and China aimed at managing global problems for their mutual benefit. … That notion would become the basis for the Obama administration's initial outreach to China, though it would lose its appeal in Washington as tensions with Beijing continued to rise over Taiwan and other issues. Still, if the war in Ukraine teaches us anything, it should be that, whatever the desires of America's leaders, they will have little choice (other than war) but to share global governance responsibilities with China and, in a new twist on geopolitics, with India, too. After all, that rising nuclear-armed nation is now the most populous on the planet and will soon possess the third-largest economy as well. In other words, if global disaster is to be averted, whether Americans like it or not, this country will have little choice but to begin planning for an emerging G-3. [Read More]
Khader Adnan's Last Hunger Strike
By Mouin Rabbani, London Review of Books [May 8, 2023]
---- According to a 2001 US Department of Justice report, the percentage of adult male African-Americans who had ever served time in a state or federal prison rose from 8.7 to 16.6 per cent between 1974 and 2001. Although similarly reliable statistics for Palestinians are unavailable, it has been estimated that 40 per cent of adult male Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have seen the inside of an Israeli prison since 1967. During the 1987-93 popular uprising, the occupied territories boasted the world's highest per capita incarceration rate…. Khader Adnan died in prison on 2 May, aged 45, after an 87-day hunger strike. A former spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement from the town of Arraba in the northern West Bank, Adnan had been repeatedly held in administrative detention since 1999. Despite vilifying him as a terrorist, Israel never charged him with involvement in military activities. [Read More]
(Video) The Corporate War On Science: Artificial Intelligence
By
[See the Program] Also of interest is (Video) "AI Expert: We Urgently Need Ethical Guidelines & Safeguards to Limit Risks of Artificial Intelligence," from Democracy Now! [May 18, 2023] [Link].
War & Peace
The Yemen War Can Be Over — If Biden Wants It
By Ryan Grim, The Intercept [May 18 2023]
---- I've always thought of the famous John Lennon refrain, "War is over, if you want it," as mostly a thought experiment meant to shake us out of the learned helplessness that can lead to forever wars. But in the case of the war in Yemen, the war really is over if we want. Everybody else directly or indirectly involved — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Houthis, China, Oman, Qatar, Jordan, etc. — appears to want to put the war behind them. A ceasefire has held for more than a year, and peace talks are advancing with real momentum, including prisoner exchanges and other positive expressions of diplomacy. Yet the U.S. appears very much not to want the war to end. [Read More] Also of interest/importance is "Dozens of House Democrats Tell Biden to Support Ending Yemen War," Antiwar.com [May 18, 2023]. Rep. Jamaal Bowman is among the 39 Democrats signing on to this letter to Biden. [Link].
How a small activist sailing ship successfully challenged the nuclear arms race
May 19, 2023]
---- In today's polarized context, progressive movements need their best strategic thinking. One source for inspiration should be the Golden Rule, a historic sailing ship that's currently visiting ports along the Eastern U.S. Organized by Veterans for Peace, this national tour puts the 1958 Golden Rule voyage back in the news. Nearly 65 years ago, the Golden Rule defiantly sailed toward the Pacific Ocean site where U.S. nuclear weapons were being tested, sparking a movement that forced the U.S. government to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. … The planners of the 1958 voyage were tuned into what was working for the emerging civil rights movement in the Deep South, and that gave them a powerful strategic perspective on the issue they were aiming to impact. The strategy deployed by the voyage of the Golden Rule — and the civil rights movement before it and the Phoenix after it — builds the kind of power more activists could be using today. It comes from a tactic I call a "dilemma demonstration," which basically puts the opponent in a lose-lose situation. [Read More]
The Good, the Bad, and the Befuddling [A biography of Vladimir Putin]
[FB – This book is in the WLS. I think it gives a picture of Putin/Russia much different (and much needed) than that available in the US mainstream media.]
---- British journalist Philip Short has written a long, in-depth biography of Vladimir Putin. … Putin is an arbiter of several different interests in Russia. Two of those interest groups have been the pro-Western neoliberal technocrats and the military and security services who were always much more hardline and suspicious of the US-led west. Over the years, as Russia got the short end of the stick in its relations with the west, despite its cooperation in many areas, and no consideration of its most basic security interests, the hardliners appeared vindicated in their criticisms of Putin from the right for not being proactive enough in dealing with the US-led west's machinations. These machinations include NATO expansion up to its borders, active support of the 2014 coup in Ukraine that installed a government that was hostile to Russia, and abrogation of several key nuclear arms treaties, to name a few. [Read More]
The Climate Crisis
Global Heating to Bring a Record-Breaking Hot Year by 2028 — Probably our First above the 2.7F /1.5C Threshold
By Andrew King, The Conversation [May 20, 2023]
---- One year in the next five will almost certainly be the hottest on record and there's a two-in-three chance a single year will cross the crucial 1.5℃ global warming threshold, an alarming new report by the World Meteorological Organization predicts. The report, known as the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, warns if humanity fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, increasingly worse heat records will tumble beyond this decade. So what is driving the bleak outlook for the next five years? An expected El Niño, on top of the overall global warming trend, will likely push the global temperature to record levels. Has the Paris Agreement already failed if the global average temperature exceeds the 1.5℃ threshold in one of the next five years? No, but it will be a stark warning of what's in store if we don't quickly reduce emissions to net zero. [Read More]
Civil Liberties/"The War on Terror"
The forever war on Julian Assange
By Belén Fernández, Aljazeera [May 14, 2023]
---- Imagine, for a moment, that the government of Cuba was demanding the extradition of an Australian publisher in the United Kingdom for exposing Cuban military crimes. Imagine that these crimes had included a 2007 massacre by helicopter-borne Cuban soldiers of a dozen Iraqi civilians, among them two journalists for the Reuters news agency. Now imagine that, if extradited from the UK to Cuba, the Australian publisher would face up to 175 years in a maximum-security prison, simply for having done what media professionals are ostensibly supposed to do: report reality. Finally, imagine the reaction of the United States to such Cuban conduct, which would invariably consist of impassioned squawking about human rights and democracy and a call for the universal vilification of Cuba. Of course, it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to deduce that the above scenario is a rearranged version of true events, and that the publisher in question is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The antagonising nation is not Cuba but rather the US itself, which is responsible for not only the obliteration of Assange's individual human rights but also a stunning array of far more macro-level assaults on people across the world. [Read More]
The State of the Union
It's time to guarantee healthcare to all Americans as a human right
By Bernie Sanders, The Guardian [May 18, 2023]
---- Let's be clear. The current healthcare system in the United States is totally broken, dysfunctional and cruel. It is a system which spends twice as much per capita as any other major country, while 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, one out of four Americans cannot afford the cost of the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe, and where over 60,000 die each year because they don't get to a doctor on time. It is a system in which our life expectancy is lower than almost all other major countries and is actually declining, a system in which working-class and low-income Americans die at least ten years younger than wealthier Americans. It is a system in which some 500,000 people go bankrupt because of medically related debt. It is a system in which large parts of our country are medically underserved, where rural hospitals are being shut down, and where people, even with decent insurance, have to travel hours in order to find a doctor. … All of that has got to change. The function of a rational and humane healthcare system is to provide quality care for all as a human right. It is not to make tens of billions of dollars every year for the insurance companies and the drug companies. [Read More]
A Tale of Two Teachers Unions [NYC and Chicago]
By Norm Scott, The Indypendent [May 8, 2023]
---- Why have teachers unions in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York taken such divergent paths? What is New York City losing by having a neutered teachers union that eschews militant grassroots organizing in favor of insider politicking? What would it look like for New York City to have a teachers union with deep ties to its school communities as well as other social movements and that was ready and willing to throw down against our local billionaires in order to elect a bold progressive to lead the city? After all, the UFT has almost 200,000 members, making it almost 10 times larger than its sister union in Chicago and has more financial and personnel resources at its disposal. [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
Palestine was destroyed in 12 months - but the Nakba has gone on for 75 years
By Ilan Pappe, Middle East Eye [May 15, 2023]
---- At the beginning of February 1947, the British cabinet decided to end the mandate over Palestine and leave the country after nearly 30 years of rule. …The die was cast in a cabinet meeting on 1 February 1947 and the fate of Palestine was entrusted to the UN – an inexperienced international organisation back then, already affected by the onset of the cold war between the US and the USSR. Nonetheless, the two superpowers consented, exceptionally, to allow other member states to offer a solution to what was called "the Palestine question", without their interference. …This enraged the Palestinians and member states of the Arab League, as they expected post-mandatory Palestine to be treated in the same way any other mandatory state in the region – namely, allowing the people themselves to democratically determine their political future. Nobody in the Arab world would have agreed to allow European settlers in North Africa to take part in determining the future of the newly independent countries. Similarly, the Palestinians rejected the idea that the settler Zionist movement – consisting mostly of settlers who had arrived just two years before the UN Palestine refugee agency (UNRWA) was appointed in 1949 – would have a say in the future of their homeland. [Read More] Also of interest is "Nakba at 75: Israel's State-Building Project Is Unraveling – From Within," by [Link]; and "Nakba denial is at the heart of pro-Israel lobbying," byMay 21, 2023] [Link]
Our History
(Video) Malcolm X at 98: Angela Davis on His Enduring Legacy & the "Long Struggle for Liberation"
From Democracy Now! [May 19, 2023] = FB additional segments]
---- We dedicate the show to remembering Malcolm X on what would have been his 98th birthday Friday. We begin with an address by world-renowned abolitionist, author and activist Angela Davis on Malcolm's legacy, attacks on the teaching of Black history by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and more. "This is a time to reflect deeply on the long struggle for liberation," Davis said. "And Malcolm asked us to keep our eyes on the future, future worlds, radical democratic futures for all beings who inhabit this planet." [See the Program]
The Midwest Academy Is Still Training the Organizers Who Make Another World Possible
By John Nichols, The Nation [May 19, 2023]
---- In 1973, at one of the most turbulent moments in American history, veterans of the civil rights and anti-war movements were facing the reality that changing the status quo would not come as easily as they had hoped. Luckily, some of them had a great idea for how to keep fighting, and to start winning. They started the Midwest Academy. The vision for the academy was the same then as it is now: Grassroots struggle that empowers working-class people can and will shape a new America. At the heart of the academy's vision has always been an understanding that activists need training and encouragement and, perhaps above all, connections with one another, in order to realize the promise of founding director Heather Booth: "If we organize, we can change the world." [Read More]
