Fritz pointer
Democratic World Federalists | Vice-President
And, because “the enemy is always at the gate” Americans, and sovereign nations and governments around the globe, can exclaim, effusively, they don’t have the money for, so can do nothing about: universal health care, homelessness, crumbling infrastructure and public school systems, tax-supported college and university education, poverty that accompanies income and gender inequality, infant mortality and child well-being, mass incarceration and extrajudicial police murders (especially of unarmed black males) mass school shootings or renewable energy – a Green New Deal. And, because “the enemy (for decades fear of Communism, now fear of Russia and China, of Iraq and Iran and any country that can be labeled Terrorist, or Enemy or even Competitor) is always at the gate” Americans are petrified in a state of fear while over half of United States discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon. Money spent for death, not life.
“The Russians (or Communists) are out to get us” is such an old and tired American hoax you would think Americans with their supposed and assumed exceptionalism would have matured, outgrown such infantilism… evolved by now. This Russian “Bogeyman” foolishness perpetuates the infantile refrain, “The enemy is at the gate.” It allows sovereign governments around the world to choose their “Bogeyman” and prioritize military spending over the needs of its people: “There just isn’t enough money for people’s needs and to fight the “Bogeyman.”
THE SAN FRANCISCO PROMISE
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From F-35 lunacy to NNSA’s Life Extinction Program
Two examples of wasting US taxpayers’ money include first, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. This program is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the course of its life. Unnecessary and flawed the planes have failed test after test and it is doubtful that it will ever be “combat-ready.” Second, is the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear arms Life Extension Program, aka, Life Extinction Program of modernizing its 1,650 strategic nuclear warheads at a cost of $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years. These plans are lunacy, dreamed-up by lunatics. It only takes one nuclear bomb to bring on nuclear winter, certainly if the other side retaliates with its own nukes. At the UN (March 2018) 122 countries voted in favor of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons. Their votes should matter.
This insane spending on military and military weapons is, we are frequently and repeatedly told, because they (the Russians, the Muslims, etc.) are out to get us: to subvert US so-called democratic elections, convert Americans to Sharia law, and other such childish nonsense. Yet, all these Department of Defense and Pentagon expenditures on sophisticated weapons couldn’t stop angry and determined hijackers with box-cutters on 9/11. Taxpayers’ 1.7 trillion over the next 30 years should be taken from the Pentagon’s “life extinction” program and put into “life extension” programs: publicly supported healthcare, technical college
What is World Federalism?
World Federal Government (WFG)
Appeal at UN for human rights turned away by U.S .
In Eyes Off The Prize (2003) Carol Anderson tells the story of The United Nations and the African American struggle for Human Rights, 1944 – 1955. Not Civil Rights but Human Rights. As World War II drew to a close and the world awakened to the horror produced by white-supremacists in Nazi Germany, African American leaders of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins, Walter White and Thurgood Marshall, seized the opportunity to launch an offensive against the conditions of Jim Crow segregation and inequality in the United States and take the case of 22 million Black Americans to the United Nations.
The “prize” they sought was not civil rights; it was human rights. Only the idea of Human Rights, shaped by the Holocaust and defined by the United Nations, contained the language and the moral power to address not only the political and legal inequality, but also the education, health care, housing, and employment needs of America’s Black communities. But, by evoking the spirit of “Communists (enemies) at the gate” U.S. leaders were able to cast Human Rights as Soviet-inspired and a threat to the American “way of life.” This same “tactic” was repeated in the 1960s and, now, again in the 2000s. A popular song in the 60s asks: “When will we ever learn…when will we ever learn?”
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The Challenge: A “New UN” that can protect human rights
The defects in the UN Charter prevent the UN from protecting universal human rights when they are violated, such as seen, even, in the U.S. where Black Americans suffer obvious discrimination in economic opportunity, healthcare, education, and more. That is part of the importance of THE SAN FRANCISCO PROMISE, a campaign by Democratic World Federalists who are demanding a review of the UN Charter. Now is the time! 2020! The 75th Anniversary of the United Nations.
The obsolete UN Charter was legally supposed to be reviewed in order to fix its deficiencies (e.g. the undemocratic veto power of the Security Council, but this legal promise has yet to be fulfilled. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is the Earth Constitution designed to serve as an ideal model for giving the UN Charter the structures it needs to actually expand human rights protection, not just in the U.S., but in all nations. We have found the enemy, and it is us.
Solving Global Problems
We can work together to make the world better
Original Publisher
Democratic World FederalistsFritz Pointer taught at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, California for 30 years, in the Departments of English and African American Studies. He received Masters in African History from UCLA and in African Literature from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. His books include: A Passion to Liberate: La Guma’s South Africa – “Images of District Six” (2001); and, African Oral Epic Poetry: Praising the Deeds of a Mythic Hero (2013). He currently (2019) serves as Vice President of Democratic World Federalists of San Francisco.
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