Concerned Families of Westchester Newsletter
June 4, 2018
Hello All – On Friday Palestinian volunteer medic Razan al-Najjar was murdered by an Israeli sharpshooter in Gaza as she was rushing to help a wounded protester. She was 100 yards from their precious fence, she was wearing her medic clothing, and she (and the other medics) had their hands in the air. She was 21 years old; and she had gained fame in Gaza as among the most stalwart of those attending to the needs of the wounded. On the 10th day of the weekly protest, Razan was the 116th person killed; some 13,000 Gazans have been wounded in the protests.
It is likely that Razan al-Najjar was specifically targeted, and that her murder was intended to deliver a message to the Gazans: "Stay in your Ghetto, die like dogs." The cruelty of Israel's blockade of Gaza is almost beyond belief. Earlier last week, the Israel navy stopped a small boat leaving Gaza, bound for Cyprus with wounded people on board, reasserting its position that no one and no thing can enter or leave Gaza without permission (which is rarely granted). Gaza has thus become what many call "the world's largest open-air prison," with two million people on a near-starvation diet, without access to clean water or adequate medical supplies, and with little ability to construct a viable economy. Another name for what Gaza has become would be Ghetto; and on the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, it should come as no surprise that people – especially young people – trapped and waiting for their death, might choose to rise up. The willingness of Gazans to court death in their protests – or the heroism of someone like medic Razan al-Najjar – needs no special explanation. It needs no "Hamas" to give orders; it is what many people would do, and have done, in a similar situation.
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke these words in 1967, in his famous speech against the Vietnam War. In defying the mainstream of the civil rights movement, which had remained silent on Vietnam in order to avoid breaking with the Democrats and President Lyndon Johnson, King simply stated the obvious: that it would be immoral to remain silent when the murderous injustice of the Vietnam War was apparent to all. Are we not now in an analogous situation in Gaza? Unlike many state crimes against dissenters or oppressed minorities, the crimes of the Israeli government in Gaza are committed in broad daylight. Yet in Westchester our politicians, our churches and synagogues, our Democrats and Indivisibles, are simply silent in the face of two million people facing extermination, caged in their ghetto with no means of escape. Can anyone doubt, if the dynamics underway in Israel/Gaza continue on course, that History will record this as one of the great crimes of our era? Is there some legitimate reason why we are not demanding that our government – which has so much leverage over the Israeli government in terms of military aid and diplomatic protection – intervene to stop this humanitarian disaster? Let us ponder the question asked by T. S. Eliot after the First World War – "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"
News Notes
Cindy Sheehan and her powerful voice for peace and justice are back! Sheehan is spearheading a Women's March on the Pentagon, putting "the 'pro' back in 'protest.' The action starts in October and will culminate with an "Occupation" of the Pentagon on Veterans' Day, November 11th. Read more here.
Often in this newsletter I include articles that describe how media bias works. This interesting video describes the work of Alexandra Bell, who has developed "a public-art practice that exposes biases in print journalism," a "counter-narrative" that focuses on how pictures, size, placement on the page, etc. convey a political message independent of the text. Very instructive, imo.
For a concise and insightful analysis of the way that the Trump administration distracts the masses while implementing its fascistic "plans," check out this video with Noam Chomsky.
A likely winner for "Best Documentary" in this year's Emmy awards is the PBS Vietnam War series by Ken Burns and Lynne Novick. Veterans for Peace is campaigning against this selection, citing the absurd pro-war bias that saturates the production. Read about the issues and the planned actions here.
Yet another BS Memorial Day in liberal Hastings, glorifying war over the dead bodies of the (US only) fallen. Alternatives? How about "It's time we have a holiday to honor those who try to stop wars, too."
Finally, I think you will find this short video on the "Racist History of Loitering" interesting and thought-provoking.
Things to Do/Coming Attractions
Ongoing – CFOW holds a vigil/rally each Saturday at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton and Spring) from 12 to 1 p.m. Everyone invited; please join us!
Ongoing – Sign the "People's Peace Treaty"! Code Pink writes: "Inspired by the Vietnam-era People's Peace Treaty, we have initiated a People's Peace Treaty with North Korea, to raise awareness about the past U.S. policy toward North Korea, and to send a clear message that we, the people of the U.S., do not want another war with North Korea. This is not an actual treaty, but rather a declaration of peace from the people of the United States." To sign the Treaty, go here.
Ongoing – The Poor Peoples' Campaign is now under way, with actions across the country. For more information and to get involved with the action in Westchester, contact Rev. Joya Colon-Berezin.
Wednesday, July 4th – Come one and all to the CFOW 4th of July picnic. Celebrate true Independence in the company of peace & justice stalwarts. We'll assemble in the afternoon at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society, 12 Elm St. in Dobbs. More details forthcoming.
CFOW Nuts & Bolts
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. We meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, from 12 to 1 p.m., at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our leaflet and posters for our rallies are usually about war or climate change, but issues such as racial justice or Trump's tax cut legislation are often targeted, depending on current events. We meet on the first Sunday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society. Our weekly newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com/; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. If you would like to make a financial contribution to our work, please send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Rewards!
2018 seems to be the 50th anniversary of so many interesting things. This week's Rewards for stalwart readers singles out Pete Seeger, as this is the 50th anniversary of his famous appearance on the Smothers' Brothers Show. What made the show so controversial was that Seeger sang his antiwar song,
"Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," with the LBJ-reference lines, "and the big fool said to push on." Feathers flew! And thanks to CFOW newsletter culture editor JaniG for all this, here is a beautiful number from Seeger at the end of his life, "Quite Early Morning." What a hero. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Seymour Hersh's New Memoir Is a Fascinating, Flabbergasting Masterpiece
By Jon Schwarz, The Intercept [
---- If Hersh were a superhero, this [Chicago police/media corruption] would be his origin story. Two hundred and seventy-four pages after the Chicago anecdote, he describes his coverage of a massive slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians by the U.S. in 1991 after a ceasefire had ended the Persian Gulf War. America's indifference to this massacre was, Hersh writes, "a reminder of the Vietnam War's MGR, for Mere Gook Rule: If it's a murdered or raped gook, there is no crime." It was also, he adds, a reminder of something else: "I had learned a domestic version of that rule decades earlier" in Chicago. "Reporter" demonstrates that Hersh has derived three simple lessons from that rule:
- The powerful prey mercilessly upon the powerless, up to and including mass murder.
- The powerful lie constantly about their predations.
- The natural instinct of the media is to let the powerful get away with it.
"Reporter" provides detailed explications of how Hersh has used these lessons, making it one of the most compelling and significant books ever written about American journalism. Almost every page will tell you something you've never heard before about life on earth. Sometimes it's Hersh elaborating on what he's already published; sometimes it's new stories he felt he couldn't write about when he first learned of them; and sometimes it's the world's most intriguing, peculiar gossip. [Read More]
Amid 'Russiagate' Hysteria, What Are the Facts?
By Jack F. Matlock Jr., The Nation [June 2, 2018]
---- Instead of facing the facts and coping with the current reality, the Russiagate promoters, in both the government and the media, are diverting our attention from the real threats. I should add "dangerous" to those three adjectives. "Dangerous" because making an enemy of Russia, the other nuclear superpower—yes, there are still two—comes as close to political insanity as anything I can think of. Denying global warming may rank up there too in the long run, but only nuclear weapons pose, by their very existence in the quantities that are on station in Russia and the United States, an immediate threat to mankind—not just to the United States and Russia and not just to "civilization." The sad, frequently forgotten fact is that, since the creation of nuclear weapons, mankind has the capacity to destroy itself and join other extinct species. [Read More]
They're Right. If Palestinians in Gaza Don't Shoot, No One Listens
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [June 2, 2018]
---- We have to say it simply and honestly: They're right. They have no choice but to fight for their freedom with their bodies, their property, their weapons and their blood. They have no choice, except for the Qassam and the mortar. There is no way open to them except for violence or surrender. They have no way of breaching the fences that pen them in without using force, and their force is primitive and pathetic, almost touching. A people that is fighting for its freedom with kites, tunnels, mirrors, tires, scissors, incendiary devices, mortar shells and Qassam rockets, against one of the most sophisticated war machines in the world, is a people without hope. But the only way they can change their situation is with their pathetic weapons. … They're right, because after all the diversions and deceptions and lies of Israeli propaganda, nothing can blur the fact that they have been thrown into a huge cage for the rest of their lives. An unbelievable siege, 11 years without respite, which is the greatest war crime in this arena. No propaganda can conceal their identity – their past, their present and their future. Most of them live in the Gaza Strip because Israel made them refugees. Israel expelled their forefathers from their villages and their land. Others fled for fear of Israel, and afterwards were not allowed to return – a crime no less serous than the expulsion. [Read More]
Duck-and-Cover America: Advice to College Graduates in the Age of Trump
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch [June 2018]
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch [June 2018]
---- Perhaps I could suggest something else for you, class of 2018. Perhaps now is the perfect moment for you, your parents and grandparents, your friends and relatives to stand up, form yourselves into your serried ranks, gowns on and caps in hand ready to be tossed. Perhaps now is the moment to stand tall, be proud, and head for one of the very exits to this campus, which are really entrances to our world -- of the sort that so many are so eager to shut down and armor up. Perhaps now is the moment to begin your procession off this campus into a world where the entrances and exits should be opened, not closed, and things should truly be so much better than they are. Now is the time to enter our beleaguered world and go to work. We need you, class of 2018, not under some desk but out there ready to change our world for the better. [Read More]
PUERTO RICO: TRAPPED IN THE EMPIRE
(Video) Deadlier Than Katrina & 9/11: Hurricane Maria Killed 4,645 in Puerto Rico, 70 Times Official Toll
From Democracy Now! [May 30, 2018]
---- A stunning new study by researchers at Harvard has revealed the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria may be 70 times higher than official count of 64. The new research, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, says the death toll is at least 4,645—and perhaps as high as 5,740. President Trump has so far not responded to the new study. But in October, during a visit to Puerto Rico, Trump boasted about the low official death count. With a death toll of at least 4,645, Hurricane Maria would become the second-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history—behind only the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 which killed as many as 12,000 people in Texas. [See the Program] For more insights on this new report, read "The New Estimate of Deaths in Puerto Rico Reflects a Broader and Shameful Neglect." by Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker [May 31, 2018] [Link].
Also useful on Puerto Rico today – John Nichols, "Puerto Rico Matters More," The Nation [May 31, 2018] [Link]; and Alice Speri, "Student Protesters in Puerto Rico Face Trial as Government Criminalizes Dissent," The Intercept [[Link].
WAR & PEACE
Rebuilding the Antinuclear Movement
By Ray Acheson, Loreta Castro, et al., The Nation [June 2, 2018]
---- Now Trump is talking about restarting nuclear testing and building new nuclear weapons—including so-called "low-yield" weapons that the military hopes could be used in conflict. He trashed the Iran deal, and John Bolton, his national-security adviser, seems intent on sabotaging any hope of denuclearization in the Korean peninsula. Trump's vision is terrifying, but it is built on the foundations laid by previous leaders of the United States. The leaders of the United States are not alone in this mad pursuit. In Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel, generations of governments have upheld their nuclear arsenals as providing the "ultimate security," and have spent billions on maintaining these weapon systems for the indefinite future. Each has built their nuclear arsenal on backs of human beings, testing their weapons on the bodies and lands of the most marginalized of their own or other societies. [Read More]
How Corporate Media Are Undermining a US-North Korea Nuclear Weapons Deal
By Gareth Porter, Truth Out [May 22, 2018]
---- It has now become clear that one major media outlet is allying with Bolton's position on the summit. On May 20, The New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger, who has consistently dismissed the idea of a denuclearization with North Korea, wrote that Trump's aides "have grown concerned" that Trump "has signaled that he wants the summit meeting too much." Those same unnamed "aides," Sanger wrote, "also worry that Kim, seeing the President's eagerness, is preparing to offer assurances that will fade over time." The only two officials involved in the maneuvering for influence on Trump's policy toward the summit are Bolton and Pompeo, and the fear that Trump is eager for the summit and too prone to accepting "assurances" from Kim are clearly coming from Bolton, not Pompeo. So, Sanger can be expected to reflect the views of John Bolton (without attribution) in his coverage of the North Korea summit over the next few weeks. [Read More]
Google Employee Opposition Derails Military AI Project
By Kate Conger, Gizmodo [June 3, 2018]
---- Google will not seek another contract for its controversial work providing artificial intelligence to the U.S. Department of Defense for analyzing drone footage after its current contract expires. … Google's decision to provide artificial intelligence to the Defense Department for the analysis of drone footage has prompted backlash from Google employees and academics. Thousands of employees have signed a petition asking Google to cancel its contract for the project, nicknamed Project Maven, and dozens of employees have resigned in protest. Google, meanwhile, defended its work on Project Maven, with senior executives noting that the contract is of relatively little value and that its contribution amounts merely to providing the Defense Department with open-source software. But internal emails reviewed by Gizmodo show that executives viewed Project Maven as a golden opportunity that would open doors for business with the military and intelligence agencies. The emails also show that Google and its partners worked extensively to develop machine learning algorithms for the Pentagon, with the goal of creating a sophisticated system that could surveil entire cities. [Read More]
Also useful/illuminating - Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eric Schmitt, "Special Operations Forces in Africa Likely to Face Cuts in Major Military Review," New York Times [June 4, 2018] [Link]; and Adam Johnson, "Washington Post Editors: We Have to Help Destroy Yemen to Save It," Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] May 31, 2018] [Link].
GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHAOS
Stopping Pipelines Means Challenging Systems That Threaten Our Existence
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance [June 3, 2018]
---- Although not as well-known as the struggle at Standing Rock to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, there are bold and active campaigns going on to stop pipelines from British Columbia to the Bayou to the Appalachian Mountains. If constructed, the pipelines will contaminate the water and food upon which indigenous and poor communities depend. They will unleash the extraction of vast amounts of carbon at a time when there is a desperate need to reduce climate emissions. The pipelines being built and the processes being used to permit them illustrate deeper crises of capitalism, colonialism, and democracy. They stand in the way of adequate actions being taken to address the growing climate and environmental crises. Examining the political environment helps us understand these crises and how to be more effective in challenging systems that threaten our existence. [Read More]
Tropic of Cancer: The Climate Change War of Rich Cold Nations on Poor Warm Nations
[Venezuela] [June 3, 2018]
---- Temperate nations closer to the poles will escape the increased temperatures of climate change, compared to countries along the equator. The study published in the Geophysical Research Letters concludes that if average surface temperatures increase to the 1.5°C or 2°C cap set by nations in the Paris agreement, typically poorer nations – those located around the equator – will suffer the most from increased heat compared to the wealthy nations closer to the poles. "The results are a stark example of the inequalities that come with global warming," said lead author Andrew King from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes at the University of Melbourne in Australia. "The richest countries that produced the most emissions are the least affected by heat when average temperatures climb to just 2°C, while poorer nations bear the brunt of changing local climates and the consequences that come with them," said King. The same is true even if temperatures reach 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. According to the research, the temperate United Kingdom will come out ahead of all nations, and countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and countries that wrap the global equator will feel climate change effects the worst. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES/"THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR"
Reality Winner Has Been in Jail for a Year. Her Prosecution Is Unfair and Unprecedented.
By Peter Maass, The Intercept [June 3, 2018]
---- Reality Winner was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act – the first leak case of the Trump era, the first head on a pike. Two days after her arrest, The Intercept published an article about a top-secret NSA document that described what the agency knew about Russian attempts to hack the U.S. voting system. The Intercept was not aware of the identity of the source who provided the document, though other news organizations connected it to Winner. The document, dated May 5, 2017, described a monthslong effort by Russian military intelligence to hack elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure through a combination of tactics that included phishing attempts against local election officials. At the time, the document was the most detailed account to emerge from the Trump administration about the Russian hacking efforts – and it emerged only because someone had leaked it. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
How Higher Education Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps
By Debra Leigh Scott, Junct Rebellion [June 2018]
---- In the last few years, conversations have been growing like gathering storm clouds about the ways in which our universities are failing. There is talk about the poor educational outcomes apparent in our graduates, the out-of-control tuitions and crippling student loan debt. Attention is finally being paid to the enormous salaries for presidents and sports coaches, and the migrant worker status of the low-wage majority faculty. There are movements to control tuition, to forgive student debt, to create more powerful "assessment" tools, to offer "free" university materials online, to combat adjunct faculty exploitation. But each of these movements focuses on a narrow aspect of a much wider problem, and no amount of "fix" for these aspects individually will address the real reason that universities in America are dying. [Read More]
(Video) Origins of the Opioid Epidemic
From Democracy Now! [June 1, 2018]
---- An explosive New York Times report has revealed that manufacturers of the drug OxyContin knew it was highly addictive as early as 1996, the first year after the drug hit the market. The Times published a confidential Justice Department report this week showing that Purdue Pharma executives were told OxyContin was being crushed and snorted for its powerful narcotic, but still promoted it as less addictive than other opioid painkillers. This report is especially damning because Purdue executives have testified before Congress that they were unaware of the drug's growing abuse until years after it was on the market. Today, drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50…. We speak with Barry Meier, the reporter who broke this story for the Times, headlined "Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused." Meier was a reporter at The New York Times for nearly three decades and was the first journalist to shed a national spotlight on the abuse of OxyContin. [See the Program]
Sadism at the Border: ICE and the US Border Patrol
ICE Is Sending a Message to the World's Asylum Seekers: The US Is No Place of Refuge
By John Washington, The Nation [May 29, 2018]
---- By all national and international legal standards, seeking asylum is a lawful act, and asylum seekers should not be punished or detained for doing so. According to an analysis conducted by Yale Law School's Human Rights Clinic, "administrative detention of asylum seekers beyond the time necessary to establish identity is an impermissible penalty under the Refugee Convention, except in the rare situations in which there are compelling reasons of safety or flight risk." US regulations stipulate that asylum seekers can be paroled out of detention after passing a Credible Fear Interview if they "present neither a security risk nor a risk of absconding," according to a 2009 ICE directive, which is still in effect. Rosa, however, along with tens of thousands of other asylum seekers, while checking neither of those boxes, languishes in detention. … US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is, by all accounts, using today's asylum seekers to send a message to deter future asylum seekers. Instead of processing individual claims on their own merits or releasing asylum seekers on parole as they fight their cases—respecting their humanity and upholding international and national laws—instead of offering them protection, ICE is using asylum seekers as a billboard: the United States is no place of refuge. [Read More]
Claudia Gómez González Wasn't Killed by a Rogue Border Agent—She Was Killed by a Rogue Agency
By Daniel Altschuler and Natalia Aristizabal, The Nation [May 29, 2018]
---- The killing of Claudia Patricia Gómez González on May 23 by a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent has sparked outrage across the United States. Gómez Gonzalez, a 20-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, embodied the aspirations of so many who come to this country: Trained as a forensic accountant, she left her homeland because she wanted to keep studying. With no way to earn the money to further her education at home, she traveled north to earn a living and reunite with her boyfriend in Virginia. Her dreams were met with a bullet in the head. Americans are right to be horrified by the murder at the hands of a federal border agent and to demand justice for Ms. Gómez Gonzalez's family. But, as the horror seeps in, we must also realize that this is not just a case of a rogue agent; rather, it is the latest killing by a rogue agency whose abuses must be stopped. [Read More]
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Love Is as Strong as Death
June 2, 2018]
---- Truth is that the Israeli army has no answer to nonviolent resistance. In such a campaign, all the cards are in the hands of the Palestinians. World public opinion condemns Israel and praises the Palestinians. Therefore, the army's reaction is to open fire, in order to induce the Palestinians to start violent actions. With these the army knows how to deal. Nonviolent resistance is a very difficult method. It demands enormous willpower, strict self-control and moral superiority. Such qualities are to be found in Indian culture, which gave birth to a Gandhi, and within the black American community of Martin Luther King. There is no such tradition in the Muslim world. Therefore it is doubly astonishing that the demonstrators on the Gaza border are now finding this power in their hearts. The events of Black Monday, May 14, surprised the world. Masses of unarmed human beings, men, women and children, braved the Israeli sharpshooters. They did not draw weapons. They did not "storm the fence", a lie spread by the huge Israeli propaganda apparatus. They stood exposed to the sharpshooters and were killed. [Read More]
Thus shall it be done: How Israel punishes boys for protesting their confinement to Gaza
From B'Tselem [Israel] [May 31, 2018]
---- Since 30 March 2018, Gazans have been holding a series of protests along the Gaza perimeter fence, with anywhere between hundreds to tens of thousands of people participating. To date, scores of people, including at least 12 minors, have been killed by live ammunition Israel security forces fired; more than 3,600 have been wounded by live gunfire. According to figures published by the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 22 May 2018, Gaza doctors had performed 32 amputations, 27 of them of lower limbs. Testimonies collected from Palestinians injured during the protests indicate they were shot while posing no mortal danger to anyone, including some who were shot when they were hundreds of meters away from the fence. In at least some cases, Israeli security forces fired at persons who were trying to reach the wounded to help them. This mindboggling number of casualties at protests is virtually unprecedented. It is the result of the manifestly unlawful orders given to security forces, allowing the use of live fire against unarmed protestors who pose no danger to anyone and are on the other side of the fence, inside Gaza. All relevant Israeli officials refuse to change these orders, even in the face of their predictable outcome. They continue to argue that the orders are legal and even defend them in court, where the justices of the Supreme Court have given this reality their seal of approval. [Read More]
Finding the truth amid Israel's lies
The Electronic Intifada [May 30, 2018]
----This moving description [of a column of refugees] was not written by a human rights activist, a UN observer or a caring journalist. It was written by Moshe Carmel and appears in his book Northern Campaigns – first published in 1949. He toured the Galilee at the end of October 1948, after commanding Operation Hiram, in which Israeli forces committed some of the worst atrocities in the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The crimes were so serious that some leading Zionists described them as Nazi actions. Carmel's book and dozens like it – brigade books, memoirs and military histories – could be found on the shelves of Israeli Jewish homes from 1948 onwards. Revisiting them, 70 years on, reveals an elementary truth: it would have been possible to write the "new history" of 1948 without a single new declassified document, but only if these open sources, as I call them, had been read with non-Zionist lenses…. Rereading these open sources, especially in tandem with the numerous oral histories of the Nakba, reveals the barbarism and dehumanization that accompanied the catastrophe. The barbarism is common to settler communities in the formative years of their colonization projects and can sometimes be obscured by the dry and evasive language of military and political documents. … Such a rereading exposes the settler-colonial DNA of the Zionist project and the place of the 1948 ethnic cleansing within it. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Standing on the Brink: The Secret War Scare of 1983
By Jill Kastner, The Nation [May 31, 2018]
---- As the United States and Russia teeter toward a new Cold War, it is paramount to reflect on the lessons of the old one. The danger of accidental war in a world bristling with nuclear weapons was one of the factors that made the old Cold War so perilous. Over a series of cold November nights in 1983, that danger was higher than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis—and the Reagan administration didn't have a clue. The British historian and filmmaker Taylor Downing's new book, 1983: The World at the Brink, is the most readable version to date of an episode that holds lessons for today. During the nadir of Soviet-American relations in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration's tough foreign policy and massive military buildup convinced the Soviet leadership that Washington might be preparing a preemptive nuclear strike against Moscow. Throughout 1983, an extraordinary succession of events ratcheted up the tension. In early November, NATO began an annual war game, Able Archer, designed to simulate a nuclear attack on Warsaw Pact targets. The Soviet response was unprecedented. Nuclear-capable bombers and Soviet fighter groups in East Germany and Czechoslovakia were placed on unusual levels of alert. All non-reconnaissance flights over Warsaw Pact territory were grounded. Soviet nuclear submarines raced for the protective cover of the Arctic ice. Western leaders were largely unaware of Moscow's reaction at the time and divided over its meaning after the fact. [Read More]
58 Years Later, Alabama Apologizes for Expelling Black Students After Lunch Counter Sit-In
By Matthew Haag, New York Times [May 30, 2018]
---- Just before noon, 29 black students from Alabama State College strolled into the Montgomery County Courthouse and into the basement snack room. The all-white customers were aghast — "The Negros are here!" one said — as the students crowded the restaurant, sat at the lunch counter and demanded to be served. On that morning on Feb. 25, 1960, the students knew they were risking everything, perhaps even their lives in a defiant act in the heart of the Jim Crow South: the first known sit-in in Alabama. … The Alabama State students waited nearly six decades for the apology, which comes in a time of heightened sensitivity to racism. For 58 years, the expulsions clung to them through college transfer applications, job interviews and in most cases to the grave. Six of the nine are dead. The three survivors spoke to The Times this week. … The men do not remember who came up with the sit-in idea, but the group chose the segregated county lunchroom because it was taxpayer funded. They adopted Dr. King's nonviolent principles, recruiting a group of students large enough to make a statement, determined to keep the planning a secret and able to resist fighting back. The students left campus around 11 a.m. for the courthouse, entered the lunchroom and refused to leave. The white customers panicked. The staff members cut off the lights. The police arrived within minutes. [Read More]
