Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
March 28, 2017
Hello All – When we talk about "security," as in "National Security," what do we mean? Does "security" mean we're safer, not in danger, better off? That would be the common sense meaning of the word. But do wars or other things conducted in the name of "National Security" make us safer? Are we better off to spend a billion dollars on weapons or on health or education or clean water? This is a good question to ask on the day that President Trump has used his executive authority to rescind many Obama-era climate regulations, and after a few weeks of killing off funding support for many science and education programs.
To take a simple example, last week the New York Times ran an op-ed titled 'The Real Threat to National Security: Deadly Disease." It discusses the inevitable/constant evolution of microbes that are harmful/deadly to humans, and the consequent need to constantly develop new vaccines or medicines to prevent their harm. It reminds us, for example, that the "Spanish 'Flu" killed more people in the years after World War I than did the war itself. It would seem that transferring funds from medical research to military weapons in the name of "National Security" is endangering us, not giving us "real security" or "human security." Why do advocates of "National Security" only think about wars and weapons?
Several articles in this newsletter focus on global warming and climate change. This is another arena where questions about "real security" or "human security" are on the front burner. Climate change marches forward on a fairly predictable timetable, for example, adding X zillion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year, and enabling climate scientists to calculate fairly closely how many years we have (a few dozen) before we reach a "turning point" that will then mean global warming is unstoppable, even if no one exhales. One would think that "National Security" would dictate an emergency all-hands-on-deck program to do whatever must be done to end the burning of fossil fuels asap. But our political and economic elites act as though they have lots of time to do whatever. To me, this is the definition of "Global Warming Denial 2.0." Yes, humans are causing global warming; yes, we should do something about it; but what about heating our houses and running our cars? Somehow we are supposed to negotiate with Nature, so we can save our civilization without too much inconvenience. But let's move on for now….
News Notes
Today President Trump will sign executive orders rescinding many climate-change rules from the Obama era. Rebecca Solnit, one of our best writers on climate issues and Resistance, discusses all this on this morning's Democracy Now! program.
With "Trumpcare" dead and "Obamacare" under attack, New Yorkers might have a chance to sustain healthcare coverage via a state "single-payer" program. This useful Power Point presentation from the Physicians for a National Healthcare Program (PNHP) explains how it would work.
The United Nations has begun negotiations for a "legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons," implementing Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, which requires states with nuclear weapons to negotiate "in good faith" effective measures for nuclear disarmament. Obviously this is something that's way overdue. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the United States is leading several dozen nations, including some nuclear states, in a boycott of the talks.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions escalated the Trump administration's war against "Sanctuary Cities" yesterday with new threats to withhold federal funding to states that do not comply with demands from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to detain and otherwise help deport certain immigrants [Link]. Several segments of this morning's Democracy Now! program discuss this. [Link].
It is sometimes said that a definition of "chutzpah" is the boy who murders his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he is an orphan. In a more modern iteration of the same scam, the Republicans, who spent months falsely claiming that voter IDs were needed because of voter fraud, are now demanding that voter ID legislation be passed, not because it addresses a real problem, but because the faux controversy about voter fraud has caused our elections to be viewed with doubt. Hats off to that!
Coming Attractions
Saturday, April 1st – Please join CFOW family & friends for our weekly antiwar/pro-peace vigil/protest in Hastings. We meet at the VFW Plaza (Warburton Ave. and Spring St.) from 12 to 1. These days we're antiwar, pro-immigrant, for single-payer healthcare, and against global warming. We'll have some signs, but extra credit for making one yourself.
Monday, April 3rd – This week's "Justice Monday" in White Plains will focus on Trump's attack on the EPA and other horrors associated with his attack on the environment. The rally starts at noon at the fountain at Renaissance Plaza (Main St. and Mamaroneck Ave.). For more information, email gzarro@fwwatch.org.
Tuesday, April 4th - Statewide Lobby Day & Rally for the New York Health Act. The event starts at 9:30am at the Emmanuel Baptist Church, 275 State St,, and then moves on. For more information about the Lobby Day, and about how the state plan would work, go here. (If you would like to get involved with the CFOW healthcare committee, which is supporting the state plan, please send a return email.)
Saturday, April 8th – CFOW and its new Healthcare Committee will sponsor a rally in Hastings, at the VFW Plaza, in support of "Improved Medicare for All," or "Single-Payer." The rally will begin at 11 a.m. and will focus on legislation now pending in Albany. Please join us!
Sunday, April 9th – The next CFOW monthly meeting will be held at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs, for 7 to 9 p.m. Wall-to-wall excitement; don't miss it!
Contributions Still Accepted!
For a limited time, CFOW will gladly accept contributions from those who for some reason were not able to contribute to our previous several requests for financial support. It you would like to contribute this time, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thank you.
Rewards!
As there are many new readers on the newsletter list, today's rewards for stalwart readers recycle some old favorites. First up is a 1941 clip with Dorothy Dandridge and the fabulous tap dancers, the Nicholas Brothers. And next up we have Lester Young and Teddy Wilson with "Pres Returns." Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Famine Could Kill 20 Million in Africa and Yemen—Why the Deafening Silence?
By Patrick Lawrence, The Nation [March 24, 2017]
---- On March 10, Stephen O'Brien stood up at the UN Secretariat in Manhattan to announce that 20 million people in four countries—three in Africa, the other next door—are about to starve. A multiple of this number urgently need assistance to survive. O'Brien is the UN's director of humanitarian affairs. Home from inspections in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, and Nigeria, his descriptions of famine conditions in each were—what can one say?—altering of one's idea of the world we live in. … We need to ask ourselves how dependent—we as a society, we all of us—have become on a global order that lands us with Somalias and South Sudans and Yemens as more or less a "new normal." [Read More]
Also useful/infuriating about the war & famine crises – Jeffrey Gettleman, "Drought and War Heighten Threat of Not Just 1 Famine, but 4," [Link]; Kathy Kelly, "Reality and the US-Made Famine in Yemen," Voices for Creative Nonviolence [March 20, 2017] [Link]; and from Reuters, "Time Short to Avert Starvation in Yemen and Somalia, Red Cross Says," [Link].
How to Turn an Outpouring of Progressive Activism Into a Winning Social Movement
By Astra Taylor, The Nation [March 23, 2017]
---- One advantage we have in this moment over when Reagan was elected, for instance, is that that came after a period of decline and crisis for the left. The resources that the left had at its disposal to figure out how to respond to Reagan were pretty thin. The contrast now is that Trump took office after years of rising activism, starting with Occupy, continuing with Black Lives Matter, the movement at Standing Rock, and the important immigrant=rights work that's been building for years. There's not only an existing base of movements, but there are a wealth of existing resources available to the new resistance. [Read More]
The Jewish Voice at the Heart of the Boycott Israel Movement
Allison Kaplan Sommer, Haaretz [Israel] [March 28, 2017]
---- Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson isn't your typical BDS activist: she spent three years in Israel, is married to an Israeli and has relatives in the West Bank. Despite many critics in the organized Jewish community, she says JVP is thriving in the Trump era and doesn't need the establishment's stamp of approval. She sees BDS as a means to an end: "In our analysis, the United States is playing the key role in allowing Israel to continue its policies of oppression toward the Palestinian people, and the U.S. uses all of its diplomatic, economic and military leverage to allow Israel to do that. It's our job as American Jews to change that equation," she asserts. As she sees it, BDS is the most effective method so far of effecting change. And so, in tandem with other pro-Palestinian groups on the left, a range of companies, governments and universities are pressured to cut ties with Israel, or entities they tie to Palestinian oppression, ranging from equipment manufacturers to insurance firms.
After an Immigration Raid, a City's Students Vanish
By Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker [March 23, 2017]
---- On February 15th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducted a raid in Las Cruces, arresting people at a trailer park on the outskirts of town. The raid came a few weeks after President Trump signed two executive orders, signaling his plans to fulfill a campaign promise of cracking down on undocumented immigrants. Rumors spread that there were further raids planned, though none took place. On February 16th, a Thursday, Las Cruces's public schools saw a sixty-per-cent spike in absences compared to the previous week—twenty-one hundred of the district's twenty-five thousand students missed school. Two thousand students stayed away again the next day. Attendance returned to normal the following week, which made the two-day rash of absences all the more pronounced. [Read More]
The Plant Next Door: A Louisiana Town Plagued by Pollution Shows Why Cuts to the EPA Will Be Measured in Illnesses and Deaths
By Sharon Lerner, The Intercept [
---- When the Environmental Protection Agency informed people in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, last July that the local neoprene plant was emitting a chemical that gave them the highest risk of cancer from air pollution in the country, the information was received not just with horror and sadness but also with a certain sense of validation. For years, many of the people living on this little square of land between the train tracks and the Mississippi River levee have felt they suffered more than their share of illnesses. … The air pollution crisis in St. John the Baptist may be the best illustration of why we need the EPA — and how the imminent slashing of the federal agency's budget will be measurable in illnesses and deaths. [Read More]
WAR & PEACE
Trump's War on Terror Has Quickly Become as Barbaric and Savage as He Promised
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept [
---- From the start of his presidency, Donald Trump's "war on terror" has entailed the seemingly indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people in the name of killing terrorists. In other words, Trump has escalated the 16-year-old core premise of America's foreign policy — that it has the right to bomb any country in the world where people it regards as terrorists are found — and in doing so, has fulfilled the warped campaign pledges he repeatedly expressed. … Data compiled by the site Airwars tells the story: The number of civilians killed in Syria and Iraq began increasing in October under Obama but has now skyrocketed in March under Trump. [Read More] On
U.S. General Urges Nuclear Upgrade as Russia Grows 'More Aggressive'
---- The general who oversees the United States' atomic weapons arsenal has expressed concern over what he described as "much more aggressive" behavior by Russia in recent years, saying it justifies the need for a strengthened and modernized nuclear deterrent force in this country. Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein of the Air Force made the remarks against the backdrop of a reassessment by the Trump administration of American nuclear policy, including whether nuclear disarmament, as advocated in 2010 under President Barack Obama, is a realistic goal. [Read More]
The Threat of War with North Korea
This Is What's Really Behind North Korea's Nuclear Provocations
By Bruce Cumings, The Nation [March 23, 2017]
---- Even more infuriating is Washington's implacable refusal ever to investigate our 72-year history of conflict with the North; all of our media appear to live in an eternal present, with each new crisis treated as sui generis. Visiting Seoul in March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asserted that North Korea has a history of violating one agreement after another; in fact, President Bill Clinton got it to freeze its plutonium production for eight years (1994–2002) and, in October 2000, had indirectly worked out a deal to buy all of its medium- and long-range missiles. Clinton also signed an agreement with Gen. Jo Myong-rok stating that henceforth, neither country would bear "hostile intent" toward the other. The Bush administration promptly ignored both agreements and set out to destroy the 1994 freeze. Bush's invasion of Iraq is rightly seen as a world-historical catastrophe, but next in line would be placing North Korea in his "axis of evil" and, in September 2002, announcing his "preemptive" doctrine directed at Iraq and North Korea, among others. The simple fact is that Pyongyang would have no nuclear weapons if Clinton's agreements had been sustained. [Read More]
Also useful/interesting and the US and North Korea – Jonathan Marshall, "North Korea Fears 'Regime Change' Strike," Consortium News [March 8, 2017] [Link]; Pepe Escobar, "North Korea: The really serious options on the table," Asia Times [March 23, 2017] [Link]; Adam Johnson, "Right-Wing Foundation Drives Narrative on North Korea 'Threat'," Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] [March 25, 2017] [Link]; and Rick Gladstone, "U.N. Takes Step Toward Future Prosecutions Against North Korea," New York Times [March 24, 2017] [Link].
The Wars in Syria and Iraq
Congress Needs to Stop Trump's Escalation of the War on Syria
By James Carden, The Nation [March 23, 2017]
---- During the 2016 GOP presidential primaries and on through to the end of last year's general election campaign, candidate Donald J. Trump repeatedly derided the fact that the United States had spent upward of $6 trillion dollars on wars in the Middle East because we, in his words, "have nothing to show for it." One might then have reasonably expected Trump to begin the process of unwinding our overstretched positions in the region when he became president. But alas. On March 9, The New York Times reported that the United States is sending 400 troops to Syria to bolster the small number of American troops that are already on the ground there. A week later, March 15, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has drawn up plans to send a 1,000 more troops within the coming weeks. Meanwhile, in anticipation of the coming (and perhaps final) stages of the operation against the Islamic State, the administration has decided to send "an additional 2,500 ground combat troops to a staging base in Kuwait from which they could be called upon to back up coalition forces battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria." [Read More]
Isis's losses in Syria and Iraq will make it harder for it to recruit another Khalid Masood
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [UK] [March 25, 2017]
---- The total elimination of Isis and al-Qaeda type movements in Iraq and Syria depends whether the wars that have torn apart these two countries are coming to an end. Isis and the al-Qaeda clones grew out of the chaos of war in both countries. They also relied on the toleration or covert support of Sunni states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in their early growth period. Without such backing they will have difficulty in doing more than harrying Iraqi and Syrian government forces. We are seeing the end of Isis in Iraq and Syria as a force powerful enough to threaten established governments in Baghdad and Damascus as it was capable of doing less than three years ago. [Read More]
US Bombing and Civilian Casualties in Syria and Iraq
War Correspondents Describe Recent U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen
By Malak Habbak, The Intercept [
---- Sentiment in Washington may not reflect that the U.S. is at war, but two war correspondents described the astonishing extent and toll of recent U.S. military strikes in Iraq, In Iraq, U.S. forces are helping Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers in their months-long battle to drive ISIS out of western Mosul. As many as 600,000 civilians are trapped there, amid widespread hunger and destruction, and more than 1,000 civilians were killed or injured last month in Iraq. "There are American Special Forces on the ground but much more important than that is U.S. airpower, without which the Iraqi forces would not be able to get very far," explained author and journalist Anand Gopal. … [Journalist Ilona] Craig said the only winner is the defense industry. "Well, it's good business," she said. "In the first year of the war [in Yemen], the U.S. sold $20 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia has been buying more and more weapons as a result of this war, and the same goes for the British government as well," she said. [Read More]
For more about civilian casualties in these wars – Tim Arango, "At Site of Deaths, Our Reporters Find Cost of U.S.-ISIS Battle," New York Times [March 27, 2017] [Link]; Anne Barnard, "U.S. Airstrike in Syria Is Said to Kill Dozens of Civilians," [Link]; Tim Arango and Helene Cooper, "U.S. Investigating Mosul Strikes Said to Have Killed Up to 200 Civilians," [Link]; and Evan W. Sandlin, "If Aleppo Was a Crime Against Humanity, Isn't Mosul?" Foreign Policy in Focus [March 24, 2017] [Link]. The website http://airwars.org is an excellent, comprehensive source for US bombing in Syria and Iraq. It estimates that at least 2,715 civilians have been killed by "Coalition" bombing.
The War in Libya
The Big Lie About the Libyan War
By Micah Zenko, Foreign Policy [March 22, 2016]
---- The Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start. The threat posed by the Libyan regime's military and paramilitary forces to civilian-populated areas was diminished by NATO airstrikes and rebel ground movements within the first 10 days. Afterward, NATO began providing direct close-air support for advancing rebel forces by attacking government troops that were actually in retreat and had abandoned their vehicles. … The intervention in Libya shows that the slippery slope of allegedly limited interventions is most steep when there's a significant gap between what policymakers say their objectives are and the orders they issue for the battlefield. Unfortunately, duplicity of this sort is a common practice in the U.S. military. [Read More]. Also insightful about the Libyan war is this article by Vijay Prashad, "The US-NATO Invasion of Libya Destroyed the Country Beyond All Recognition," Alternet [March 22, 2017] [Link].
The War in Afghanistan
Strategic District in Southern Afghanistan, Sangin, Falls to Taliban
---- The Taliban captured the strategic district of Sangin in the southern province of Helmand on Thursday, the culmination of a yearslong offensive that took the lives of more combatants than any other fight for territory in Afghanistan, according to local officials. … More British and later American Marines died in Sangin than in any of Afghanistan's roughly 400 other districts, until the international military coalition finally turned it over to Afghan military forces in 2013. Since then, hundreds of Afghan soldiers and police officers have lost their lives defending Sangin, while American Special Operations soldiers and aerial bombing tried to prevent the collapse of the district, apparently without success. [Read More]
CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING
A Record-Setting Climate Going Bonkers
---- Across the board, record-setting climate data has been identified by the World Meteorological Organization Highlights of Global Climate 2016, Geneva, published March 21, 2017: "Climate Breaks Multiple Records in 2016, With Global Impacts," to wit: (1) Global warming new record; (2) Atmospheric CO2 new record; (3) Global sea-ice drop new record; (4) Global sea level rise new record; (5) Global sea-surface temperatures new record; (7) Arctic sea ice new record low; (5) Severe droughts displace hundreds of thousands; (8) 18,000,000 people seek drought-related emergency assistance, and more…. Everything that can go wrong with the climate is happening altogether at the same time, including an overheated overtaxed ocean, exerting maximum stress on the ecosystem, prompting the question of the century: Can our trusty life-supporting biosphere hang in there? [Read More]
Also useful/interesting on global warming – J. B. MacKinnon, "Can We Slow Global Warming and Still Grow?" The New Yorker [March 27, 2017] [Link]; Joshua Frank, "Global Coal in Freefall, Tar Sands Development Drying Up (Bad News for Keystone XL)," [Link]; and a Real News interview with climate scientist Michael Mann [Link].
Natural Gas Power Plants Emit up to 120 Times More Methane Than Previously Estimated
By Steve Horn, DeSmogBlog [March 20, 2017]
---- Researchers at Purdue University and the Environmental Defense Fund have concluded in a recent study that natural gas power plants release 21–120 times more methane than earlier estimates. Published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, the study also found that for oil refineries, emission rates were 11–90 times more than initial estimates. Natural gas, long touted as a cleaner and more climate-friendly alternative to burning coal, is obtained in the U.S. mostly via the controversial horizontal drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"). [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
The Life and Death Issue Ignored at Judge Gorsuch's Confirmation Hearings
By Liliana Segura, The Intercept [
---- Over two long days before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, Gorsuch was never asked his views on the death penalty. More time was spent discussing fly-fishing and rodeos, along with more serious (if redundant) questioning on life and death issues like abortion and euthanasia. … With Gorsuch yet to turn 50, he stands to be a conservative force on the Supreme Court for decades to come. Yet Supreme Court justices have very different experiences with death penalty cases. …It's possible that Judge Gorsuch, if confirmed, would eventually become more sympathetic to capital defendants — but it's far too early to tell. [Read More]
The Florida debate over the Death Penalty – Jordan Smith, "Florida Governor Rick Scott Is Punishing a Prosecutor for Opposing the Death Penalty," The Intercept [March 24, 2017] [Link]; Rebekah Barber, "Challenging the death penalty in the South," March 24, 2017] [Link]; and from Democracy Now! (Video) "Florida's First Black State Attorney Faces Death Threats After Refusing Death Penalty for Cop Killer," [March 24, 2017] [See the Program].
Right-Wing Billionaires Are Funding a Cynical Plot to Destroy Dissent and Protest in Colleges Across the US
March 25, 2017]
---- Violence against a speaker, a professor or an onlooker is certainly unacceptable. So is inviting a white supremacist to speak at an institution of higher learning, and so is preventing students and faculty from protesting such a speaker. Plenty of right-wing billionaires likely don't agree with white nationalist ideas, and by funding these so-called campus free speech bills they're trying to advance free-market principles. But regardless of motivation, this campus "free speech" movement is spreading the hate of white nationalism, the racist "alt-right," Islamophobia and homophobia -- not to mention climate change denial and economic policies that benefit only the very wealthy -- on campuses filled with young students. Conservative, corporate millionaires and billionaires are at fault. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Deaths of Despair
By Sarah Lazare, Alternet [March 26, 2017]
---- In 2015, Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton released a bombshell study that revealed a dramatic rise in mortality among non-Hispanic, middle-aged white people in the United States. Their paper found that the increase in deaths among middle-aged white Americans between 1999 and 2013 is "comparable to lives lost in the U.S. AIDS epidemic through mid-2015." Their latest report, published in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, explores the forces behind this spike in deaths, which they say most severely impacts middle-aged white people with a high-school education or less. … Instead of identifying a single culprit, the scholars point to a number of reinforcing factors, including a rise in "deaths of despair," such as drug overdoses, suicide and alcoholism, as well as an overall decline in the working class. These lethal conditions are decades in the making and cannot easily or immediately be undone, they conclude. [Read More]
Donald Trump's Rise Has Coincided With an Explosion of Hate Groups
By Michelle Chen, The Nation [March 24, 2017]
---- According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) annual census of "extremist" groups, "The number of hate groups in the United States rose for a second year in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump." The number of explicitly anti-Muslim groups has nearly tripled since 2015 alone, to over 100 nationwide. There has also been a spike in reported incidents of "hate" violence, including harassment and physical assault, alongside rising anti-Muslim hostile behavior and bullying in schools. Of nearly 1,100 "bias incidents," SPLC reports, "37 percent of them directly referenced either President-elect Trump, his campaign slogans, or his infamous remarks about sexual assault." [Read More]. Also good is this article by Peter Beinart, "The Dangers of Blaming Trump for Anti-Semitism," The Atlantic [March 24, 2017] [Link].
Democrats Trade Places on War and McCarthyism
By Robert Parry, Consortium News [March 23, 2017]
---- Given the paucity of evidence – both regarding the claims that Russia hacked Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks, and the allegations that somehow Trump's advisers colluded in that process – it would appear that what is happening is a political maneuver to damage Trump politically and possibly remove him from office. But those machinations require the Democratic Party's continued demonization of Russia and implicitly put the Democrats on the side of escalating New Cold War tensions, such as military support for the fiercely anti-Russian regime in Ukraine which seized power in a 2014 U.S.-backed putsch overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych. [Read More]
The healthcare debate continues
Sanders to offer single-payer health care plan
By Cristiano Lima, Politico [March 27, 2017]
---- Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday he planned to introduce a single-payer health care plan to Congress, inviting Republican leaders to negotiate the measure. "I'm going to introduce a Medicare-for-all single-payer program," Sanders told anchor Dana Bash on CNN's "State of the Union." The Vermont senator, who has repeatedly stated his support for such a plan in the past, said he hoped to garner bipartisan support for the plan. The former Democratic presidential candidate said such a plan could help to deliver on President Donald Trump's pursuit of lowering prescription drug prices, adding that he'd look to work with the White House on the legislation. [Read More] For more on this topic, Lauren McCauley, "Democrats Urged to Go Bold with Medicare-for-All," Common Dreams [March 25, 2017] [Link].
Infographic: How Does U.S. Health Care Stack Up to the Developed World?
By Robbie Gramer, Foreign Policy [March 24, 2017]
---- The United States spends twice as much per-capita as other developed countries on average, and nearly three times as much as the average for countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. U.S. citizens spend an average of $9,024 a year on healthcare, compared to an OECD average of $3,620 according to the OECD's data on healthcare from 2016. … But spending more money on health care must mean better health care, right? Wrong again. Numbers from online publication OurWorldInData.org show the United States is a stark outlier in life expectancy vs. healthcare expenditure over time — and not a good kind of outlier…. The United States is also the only industrialized country in the world not to have paid maternity leave — a statistic some U.S. lawmakers lambast. The dismal healthcare outlook jumps the gender divides, too. Mortality rates have skyrocketed for white American males, who comprise the biggest reservoir of Trump's political support. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
FB – For several months, bomb threats against Jewish community centers in the United States and other countries elicited concerns about a new wave of anti-Semitism, possibly directed against the policies of Israel's government, possibly a consequence of Trump's election, etc. – Now it turns out that the primary responsibility for the threats came from an Israeli teenager. Why this happened, and what the discovery of the culprit's identity will mean, remains to be seen. Here are two preliminary assessments from the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz and from The New York Times.
Moral Failure at the UN
---- On 15 March 2017 the United Nations' Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) published a report on Israeli practices and policies toward the Palestinians. Using international law as its comparative criterion, the report came to a "definitive conclusion" that "Israel is guilty of Apartheid practices." The term Apartheid was not used in the report merely in a "pejorative" way. It was used as a descriptor of fact based on the evidence and the accepted legal meaning of the term. Such was the immediate uproar from the United States and Israel that U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in a moment of moral failure, ordered the report's withdrawal. … The moral failure at the U.N., represented by the withdrawal of the ESCWA report, is the result of Secretary General Guterres's decision to acquiesce in a denial of reality – the reality of Israel's practice of Apartheid. [Read More]
Also useful/interesting about the UN report and its repercussions – Mehdi Hasan, "Top Israelis Have Warned of Apartheid, so Why the Outrage at a UN Report?" The Intercept [March 22, 2017] [Link]. One of the report's authors, Richard Falk, gives his own assessment in "The anger at my UN 'apartheid' report shows Israel's weakness," Middle East Eye [March 27, 2017] [Link].
The debate on "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" (BDS)
FB – As readers may recall, the Westchester County Legislature is working its way through a condemnation of the BDS movement. What first was to be a law penalizing businesses that supported BDS has now morphed into a "resolution" condemning BDS; at least that's what I have been told. The resolution has yet to be introduced into the legislative committees that will consider it and, once approving it, send it on to the full Legislature for a vote. This shameful effort to shut down constitutionally protected free speech was apparently initiated by Ken Jenkins. The US Congress is also working on anti-BDS legislation. For information, go here.
The Bipartisan Effort against Campaigns for Corporate Responsibility [BDS]
By Stephen Zunes, The Progressive [March 23, 2017]
---- The Trump Administration's efforts to legitimize the Israeli occupation and illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories have received surprising bipartisan support. A series of bills passed or under consideration in Washington and in state capitols seeks to punish companies, religious denominations, academic associations, and other entities which support the use of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to challenge the occupation of Palestinian land. … While most of the BDS efforts on college campuses and within religious denominations have focused primarily on U.S.-based companies which directly support Israel's repressive occupation and colonization efforts in the West Bank, the formal BDS call by Palestinian civil society groups also supports academic, commercial and other forms of boycotts and sanctions of Israel itself. However, a number of the recent anti-BDS legislative initiatives in the United States, have also failed to distinguish between the two by legally defining Israel as including the occupied territories and illegal settlements. [Read More] Also interesting about the BDS issues: Uri Blau, "Inside the clandestine world of Israel's 'BDS-busting' ministry," Haaretz [Israel] [March 26, 2017] [Link]. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who spoke in Greenburgh two years ago, voices his support for the BDS movement in this short video.
OUR HISTORY
The Civil Rights Movement Had One Powerful Tool That We Don't Have
By Jon Else, The Nation [March 26, 2017]
---- What many Americans think of as the civil rights movement — something in our black and white past, back there, back then — is, in fact, a deep running project launched long before we were born and sure to endure long after we are gone. In one now-historic decade, civil rights organizers brilliantly identified the levers of government power they could seize, but most of those levers are today out of reach.
In response, will activism translate into concrete results the way it once did? Surely, a new generation of organizers now rising with a resolve and passion not seen in years, having broadened the civil rights project into a human rights one, will develop new strategies. Surely, they will discover or invent new means of stopping what threatens to be a contraction of democracy. Surely, with the power of social media — a veritable television station in the hands of every citizen — they will find their own ways of ensuring that oppression can't dodge the spotlight. … Does reform still demand powerful allies, and if so, who might they be? … As organizers have discovered more than once since the early days of the republic, new levers lie waiting somewhere deep in the grand clockwork of our democracy. The only question is: Where? [Read More]
A Frontline Nurse for the Vietcong
By Tong Thi Xuyen, New York Times [March 21, 2017]
[FB – Those moved by this short memoir might also want to read "Last Night I Dreamed of Peace," one of the best accounts I know of about the war from the Vietnamese perspective. The book is the diary of a nurse, Dang Thuy Tram, who was with the North Vietnamese forces in the South, and was killed in 1970. Her story, as well as the story of how her diary was found and eventually returned to her family, is extraordinary. The book is in the WLS.]
---- For many in Vietnam, memories of what took place remain vivid. I recently visited Nguyen Thi Do, a former nurse with the National Liberation Front, also known as the Vietcong. After 10 years of wartime service, Ms. Do moved to Qui Nhon, a beachfront city in her home province on Vietnam's Central Coast, where she helped administer a fishing company until retiring in 1989. She invited me into her living room with its stylish wooden furnishings, poured two cups of green tea, and shared her story. [Read More].
