Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
August 13, 2023
No newsletter next week – Vacation!
Hello All – In America, our lives are shorter than those of people living in other rich countries. We die sooner, and young people die more often. Why is this happening? What can we do to fix this?
Beginning in the 1980s, life expectancy in the USA began dropping behind other wealthy countries. Today we are below Albania and Algeria, and just ahead of Panama and Turkey. We are now 47th in the world; on average we live 5-6 fewer years than people in Japan, Hong Kong, or Switzerland.
A recent study found the 25% of more of deaths in the USA were "excess" compared to other wealthy countries; and that during the Covid pandemic this share jumped to one-third. "Excess" deaths are due to gun violence, drug overdoses, infant and child-birth mortality, traffic accidents, and workplace accidents. Hundreds of thousands more died unvaccinated from Covid. Native Americans and Black Americans die at a higher rate.
Each of these kinds of deaths has their own story, but taken together they demand a deeper answer. Is our national health system, so unprepared for the Covid pandemic, related to our very high rate of expenditure on the military and war? Is our lack of a social "safety net" related to the legacies of slavery and racism? Some commentators describe the tsunami of deaths from drug overdoses as a "crisis of despair" – is this a more general crisis, where our institutions and social systems are collapsing all around us? If living in America causes the average person to lose 5 years of their life, isn't it time to do something about this?
Further Reading on Deadly America
Why Is America Such a Deadly Place?
By David Wallace-Wells, New York Times [August 9, 2023]
---- You've probably heard about the mortality crisis in terms of its effect on average life spans — several years ago, after decades of steady improvements, life expectancy in the United States took an unprecedented turn for the worse, placing it not among its wealthy peers, but below Kosovo, Albania, Sri Lanka and Algeria (and just ahead of Panama, Turkey and Lebanon). But the loss is jaw-dropping by another measure — the sheer number of needless deaths. Before the pandemic, roughly a half million more people in America died each year than would have died, on average, in wealthy peer countries. In each of the first two years of the pandemic, the number surpassed one million. Those are conclusions of a paper, "Missing Americans: Early Death in the United States — 1933-2021," by a team of mortality researchers published in May that tabulated the number of "missing" Americans by comparing U.S. death rates to the average of 21 closely comparable countries, mostly pretty-rich nations across Europe. [Read More]
News Notes
On Monday the White Plains Common Council approved a $5 million settlement to "resolve" a decade-long lawsuit by the family of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., who was killed by a White Plains police officer in 2011 in the midst of a mental health crisis. Family and friends of Kenneth Chamberlain have sustained a fierce fight to get justice in this case of police murder. For some background, go here; for the settlement, go here.
The "Not On Our Dime" campaign seeks NY legislation to curb a handful of foundations that are channeling supposedly tax-deductible funds ($60 million annually) to support illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. The bill is sponsored by Zohran Mamdani and is supported by a coalition of civil rights organizations. Palestinian poet and activist Mohammed El-Kurd has a good article about this in The Nation.
For those keeping score at home, America's 5 biggest weapons contractors - Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, and General Dynamics – made $196 billion in 2022. 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!
This week the CFOW Newsletter time machine transports stalwart readers back 40 years to the time of the "Talking Heads." In these two numbers - "Once in a Lifetime" and "Life During Wartime" – the choreography complements the deep-thinking of the lyrics. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW Weekly Reader
Featured Essays
(Video) "We're Living the Climate Emergency": Native Hawaiian Kaniela Ing on Fires, Colonialism & Banyan Tree
From Democracy Now! [August 11, 2023]
---- We speak with Kaniela Ing, national director of the Green New Deal Network and seventh-generation Kanaka Maoli, Native Hawaiian, about the impact of this week's devastating wildfires and their relationship to climate change. The catastrophic fires have destroyed nearly all buildings in the historic section of Lahaina, which once served as the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. What is now being described as the worst natural disaster in Hawaii's history was created by conditions such as dry vegetation, hurricane-level winds and developers redirecting water and building over wetlands, which are directly related to the climate crisis. "Anyone in power who denies climate change, to me, are the arsonists here," says Ing. "We're living the climate emergency." [See the Program]
(Video) Horace Campbell on Opposing Military Intervention in Niger & Disastrous U.S./French Role in Africa
From Democracy Now! [August 10, 2023]
[FB – IMO, this is an excellent introduction to the complexities surrounding the military coup in Niger and the on-going African fight against neo-colonialism.]
---- West African leaders from ECOWAS, backed by the United States and France, met today to consider military action to restore the ousted Niger President Mohamed Bazoum following last month's military coup. Neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso have threatened that any intervention in Niger would amount to a declaration of war on them, as well. This comes as leaders of the coup in Niger have appointed a 21-member cabinet as they forge ahead with building a new government. The coup "is a consequence of the militarization of Nigerien society" by the United States and France, which both have strong military presence in the region, explains Horace Campbell, chair of the Global Pan African Movement, North American delegation. He notes anti-French sentiment is a powerful force in Niger and across Africa as people reject the former colonizer's influence: "The French are inordinately dependent on the exploitation and plunder of Africa." [See the Program]
The War in Ukraine
It's almost 18 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and peace seems no closer
By Rajan Menon, The Guardian [UK] [August 8, 2023]
[FB – Rajan Menon is an emeritus professor at the City College of NY and the co-author of Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order.
---- Both countries still believe they can prevail, and that belief is more powerful than any evidence suggesting that neither side can truly win. … ---- Initiatives aimed at ending the war that Russia started by invading Ukraine have been underway for months. On 24 February – a year to the day Russia started its attack – China unveiled a proposal containing 12 principles. In June, a group of African leaders met separately with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian president Vladimir Putin to present a 10-point peace plan. Most recently, this month, Saudi Arabia convened more than 40 countries, including Ukraine but not Russia, to find a way forward. With the war approaching the 18-month mark, efforts like these are understandable. Parts of Ukraine have become rubble. Reconstruction costs are estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars. Some 11 million Ukrainians are either refugees or "internally displaced people" – about a quarter of the country's population. More than 26,000 civilians have been killed or injured – some estimates run much higher – and military casualties may be four times greater. Anyone who has visited wartime Ukraine will attest that the enormity of devastation verges on the incomprehensible. [Read More]
War & Peace
(Video) Is Biden Risking War with Iran as U.S. Deploys Marines to Guard Commercial Ships in the Persian Gulf?
From Democracy Now! [August 8, 2023]
---- In an escalation of tensions, the Biden administration has deployed thousands of U.S. Marines and sailors to the Middle East in order to deter Iran from seizing oil tankers and other commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz. The move comes after the Navy said Iran tried to seize two commercial oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last month, after seizing dozens more since 2019. Iran responded by equipping its Navy with drones and missiles. "It's really baffling to see why we're taking such immense risks that could bring the U.S. into war for achieving things that are of little value when it comes to peace and stability in the region or U.S. interests in the region," says Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who says the Biden administration is risking a new war for stronger relations with Saudi Arabia. He argues the Biden administration has made critical mistakes in its relations with Iran by continuing Trump administration-era maximum-pressure sanctions. [See the Program]
The Nuclear Plan to Decapitate Russia and China (and the Planet)
Antiwar.com [August 10, 2023]
---- On June 16, the 92-year-old Daniel Ellsberg passed away. At RAND, he contributed to a top-secret 47-volume study of classified documents on the Vietnam War. Even though the war had been acknowledged to be "unwinnable" since the 1950s, successive presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon had lied about the conflict. As Ellsberg released copies of the classified documents, the 7,000 pages became known as the "Pentagon Papers." However, from 1958 to 1971, his primary job had been as a nuclear war planner for Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. In his view, nearly every US president from Truman to Trump has "considered or directed serious preparations for possible imminent US initiation of tactical or strategic nuclear warfare." Until recently, it was not known that Ellsberg also secretly copied files on Pentagon's nuclear plans to "decapitate" Russia, China and our planet. [Read More]
Some last thoughts on Hiroshima & Nagasaki
The US Nuked Nagasaki 78 Years Ago Today. "Oppenheimer" Barely Mentions It.
By Greg Mitchell, Mother Jones [August 9, 2023]
---- Seventy-eight years ago today, on August 9, 1945, the US military detonated a powerful atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, ultimately killing as many as 90,000 people, nearly all civilians. Yet Nagasaki today might as well be called the "forgotten A-bomb city." … In short, US military officials felt there was much to gain by getting the war over before the Russians advanced. In that sense, the Nagasaki bomb was not the last shot of World War II but the first blow of the Cold War. [Read More]
(Video) The Strangest Dream [Atomic scientist Joseph Rotblat]
By Eric Bednarski, National Film Board of Canada [2008]
---- This is the story of Joseph Rotblat, the only nuclear scientist to leave the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government's secret program to build the first atomic bomb. His was a decision based on moral grounds. The film retraces the history of nuclear weapons, from the first test in New Mexico, to Hiroshima, where we see survivors of the first atomic attack. Branded a traitor and spy, Rotblat went from designing atomic bombs to researching the medical uses of radiation. Together with Bertrand Russell he helped create the modern peace movement, and eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize. [Link] To see the film, go here.
The Climate Crisis
Behind All the Talk, This Is What Big Oil Is Actually Doing
By Jason Bordoff, New York Times [August 7, 2023]
---- If you've been listening to the world's major energy companies over the past few years, you probably think the clean energy transition is well on its way. But with fossil fuel use and emissions still rising, it is not moving nearly fast enough to address the climate crisis. In June, Shell became the latest of the big oil companies to curb plans to cut oil output, announcing that it will no longer reduce annual oil and gas production through the end of the decade. The company also raised its dividend, diverting money that could be used to develop clean energy. BP's share prices surged this year when the company walked back its plan to reduce oil and gas output. … The industry has spent less than 5 percent of its production and exploration investments on low-emission energy sources in recent years, according to the I.E.A. Indeed, the fact that many companies (with some notable exceptions) seem to be prioritizing dividends, share buybacks and continued fossil fuel production over increasing their clean energy investments suggests they are unable or unwilling to power the transition forward. Contrary to their rhetoric, the behavior of these companies suggests that they believe a low-carbon transition will not occur or they won't be as profitable if it does. [Read More] Also of interest is "Climate change is a threat to the planet: We must address it," by Senator Bernie Sanders [August 8, 2023] [Link]
The State of the Union
"Nurses Fight Godzilla" [New Jersey nurses on strike]
The Chris Hedges Report [August 8, 2023]
---- Nurses, battered by the almost inhuman demands put on them during the pandemic, have been especially hard hit. Almost one-third of New Jersey's nurses have left the profession in the last three years. … Judy Danella, president of United Steel Workers Local 4-200 — the union that represents Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital's more than 1,700 nurses — stands in a church basement before a room full of her union members. Her voice quavers slightly as she delivers grim news. The hospital management, whose top administrators earn salaries in the millions of dollars, has refused to concede to any of the nurse's core demands. Friday at 7:00 a.m. they will be locked out of the hospital and on strike. But it is not only the strike that concerns Danella, who is wearing a blue T-shirt that reads: "Safe Staffing Saves Lives." "It is 100 percent my belief that the goal is to break the union," says Danella, who has worked at the hospital for 28 years. "This is about the future of nursing." [Read More]
Israel/Palestine
How Israel occupied Itself: The Way the Crisis on the West Bank Came Home
---- On July 24th, the Israeli Knesset passed a measure forbidding the country's High Court of Justice from in any way checking the power of the government, whether in making cabinet decisions or appointments, based on what's known as the "reasonability" standard. In the Israeli context, this was an extreme act, since right-wing parliamentarians were defying massive crowds that had, for months on end, demonstrated with remarkable determination against such radical legislation. And that measure was only one part of a wide-ranging redesign of the court system unveiled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January, which deeply alarmed his critics. … The central motivation for that legislation, however, lay not in domestic politics but in the desire of extremists in the cabinet to ensure that the courts won't be able to interfere with their plans to vastly increase the number of Israeli squatter-settlements on Palestinian land on the West Bank and perhaps someday soon simply annex that occupied territory. Under such circumstances, members of the far-right Religious Zionist Party were recently excoriated by Tamir Pardo, a former head of Israeli intelligence, as Israel's "Ku Klux Klan." [Read More]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - The Israel Lobby's Useful Idiot
By Chris Hedges [August 12, 2023]
---- The Palestinians are poor, forgotten and alone. And this is why the defiance of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is the central issue facing any politician who claims to speak on behalf of the vulnerable and the marginalized. To stand up to Israel has a political cost few, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are willing to pay. But if you do stand up, it singles you out as someone who puts principles before expediency, who is willing to fight for the wretched of the earth and, if necessary, sacrifice your political future to retain your integrity. Kennedy fails this crucial test of political and moral courage. Kennedy, instead, regurgitates every lie, every racist trope, every distortion of history and every demeaning comment about the backwardness of the Palestinian people peddled by the most retrograde and far-right elements of Israeli society. [Read More]
Our History
The Audacity of Occupy Wall Street
By Richard Kim, The Nation [November 2, 2011]
---- But then in these grim times, something unexpected happened: at first scores met in parks around New York City this summer to plan an occupation of Wall Street, then hundreds responded to their call, then thousands from persuasions familiar and astonishing, and now more than 100 cities around the country are Occupied. In the face of unchecked capitalism and a broken, captured state, the citizens of Occupy America have done something desperate and audacious—they put their faith and hope in the last seemingly credible force left in the world: each other. …Since September 17, the first day of the Occupation, thousands of people have flocked to Liberty to follow this impulse to live life anew. To stay for even a few days there is to be caught up in an incredible delirium of talking, making, doing and more talking—a beehive in which the drones have overthrown the queen but are still buzzing about furiously without any immediately apparent purpose. Someone might shout over the human microphone, "Mic check! (Mic check!) We need! (We need!) Some volunteers! (Some volunteers!) To go to Home Depot! (To go to Home Depot!) And get cleaning supplies! (And get cleaning supplies!)" A handful of people might perk up and answer the call—or not, in which case it is made again and again. [Read More]
Black Study, Black Struggle
By Robin D. G. Kelley, Boston Review [
---- In the fall of 2015, college campuses were engulfed by fires ignited in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. This is not to say that college students had until then been quiet in the face of police violence against black Americans. Throughout the previous year, it had often been college students who hit the streets, blocked traffic, occupied the halls of justice and malls of America, disrupted political campaign rallies, and risked arrest to protest the torture and suffocation of Eric Garner, the abuse and death of Sandra Bland, the executions of Tamir Rice, Ezell Ford, Tanisha Anderson, Walter Scott, Tony Robinson, Freddie Gray, ad infinitum. That the fire this time spread from the town to the campus is consistent with historical patterns. The campus revolts of the 1960s, for example, followed the Harlem and Watts rebellions, the freedom movement in the South, and the rise of militant organizations in the cities. But the size, speed, intensity, and character of recent student uprisings caught much of the country off guard. … What I offer here are a few observations and speculations about the movement, its self-conception, and its demands, many of which focus on making the university more hospitable for black students. [Read More]
