Slouching Towards The Cataclysm

There is a news report in the public media which states that certain celebrities are now considered the "most influential". These include (and feature at the top) such luminaries as Leonardo de Caprio and Rosie O'Donnell.

I'm horrified.

Where are the Einsteins of our current times? Where are the people who have actual brains and have spent their time thinking clearly about our present problems and have a vision centered towards solving our world's problems? They're not here. Instead we get Rosie, a woman who oogles Tom Cruise on daytime T.V. and who spouts her views in outrageously loud and poorly thought-out tones. Instead we get an actor who has studied nothing of import and who's main talent is impersonating other people.

At the very least we should be looking at people like the musician Sting who, taking the large amounts of money he has earned as a popular music star, spends his time practicing yoga, meditating and teaching himself how to play medieval instruments in order to stretch his brain.

We are guilty of worshipping false idols and I'm afraid that perhaps our punishment for this basic fault will be as biblical as the warnings.

We need to wake up and smell the Apocalypse.

Seven Points Of Change - Necessary For The Future

1. DISMANTLE RACIALLY SELECTIVE MASS INCARCERATION, beginning with action to sunset or repeal all mandatory sentencing legislation, eliminate the differential in penalties for crack and powdered cocaine, and halt privatization of prisons and prison health services. America's prison population has multiplied eight-fold since 1970. African Americans are one-eighth of this nation, but fully half of her prisons and jails. Mass Black incarceration is a national public policy that destroys the prospects for progress in every arena of African American life.

2. AID AND EMPOWER THOSE DISPERSED AND DISPOSSESSED BY KATRINA through legislation that specifically recognizes the rights of hundreds of thousands of exiles to return to their communities under conditions of adequate housing, schools, health care, and social support. The Gov't must demand that destruction of public housing and other affordable dwellings cease, and that affordable housing be constructed for the 70 percent of uprooted residents who were renters. Not one federal dime should be spent for programs that lead to further gentrification of New Orleans. The Gov't should establish its own permanent Watchdog Unit to monitor all reconstruction activities.

3. END THE WAR IN IRAQ NOW through support of the Woolsey-Waters-Lee "Bring the Troops Home and Iraqi Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2007"; H.R. 508, and renunciation of George Bush's pre-emptive war doctrine in all its manifestations. The Bush war policy is a formula for endless global conflict, deterioration of the rule of law among nations, and growing impoverishment, indebtedness and evisceration of civil liberties at home. Further, the Gov't must resist all attempts to draw the U.S. into war with Iran, and block covert and overt U.S. schemes for "regime change" elsewhere in the world, most notably in Venezuela.

4. GET THE U.S. MILITARY OUT OF AFRICA by withholding funds and authorization for a permanent string of U.S. military bases throughout oil-rich regions of Africa, from Djibouti and Ethiopia in the east to the Gulf of Guinea in the west. In January, the White House created a Pentagon Africa Command as part of its so-called Global War on Terror, thus targeting the continent for further militarization and de-stabilization. The Gov't must create its own Watchdog Unit to monitor and expose administration plans to make Africa the next front in its wars to seize the world's resources.

5. TRANSFORM THE CITIES AND CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS through a massive program similar to the U.S. post-war Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe, or the much larger federal programs that established national infrastructure necessary for the creation of an almost exclusively white American suburbia during the same period. Integral to this project must be creation of GOOD JOBS AT GOOD WAGES for the residents of the cities, good schools to educate young people who will fill those jobs, and democratic participation of residents in the transformation of their neighborhoods and hometowns. The Gov't must unequivocally support the Employee Free Choice Act and other measures that allow employees on any job to organize unions wherever and whenever they choose.

6. ESTABLISH TRULY UNIVERSAL, SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE for all Americans, by endorsing HR 676, co-sponsored by Reps. John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich, as a first step toward a single payer system of national health insurance. 15-30% of every American health care dollar pays for advertising, shareholder profit and other non-health care costs. Medicare, Medicaid and single payer systems like the Canadian one spend 97 to 99 cents of every dollar on health care. These are the only practical ways to deliver health care to all Americans. Any proposal that further entrenches private profit further delays the advent of a genuine national health care program, thus making inevitable the unnecessary death of millions of Americans.

7. ENSURE VOTING RIGHTS through measures to require verifiable paper trails, along with enforceable guarantees that every citizen has an equal opportunity to vote, and an equal chance to see that vote counted. The 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were both thrown by the selective nullifications of tens of thousands of black votes in Florida and Ohio. The Gov't must support all measures that reinstate the franchise to persons who have served out their criminal sentences.