THE NUKE CIRCLE OF ONE

From a Letter to the New York Times from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: "There are currently no restrictions on the president's single handedly deciding to use nuclear weapons for whatever reason...."

As urgently noted here before: a small, shrinking circle will make the ultimate decision "to Launch" - killing all of us, "indiscriminate slaughter" on a global scale.

The circle at the crucial moment will be a Circle of One: Pres Trump in the USA, V Putin in Russia, Pres Xi in China.

                                                    

                                                   

  
The billions of the rest of us will have no say in this ultimate, final Omnicide of the human race.


                                                  

                                                           

UNLESS, we abolish these Weapons Now and Forever. End them In OUR TIME before we run out of time and THEY END US

SUPPORT THE NEW UN TREATY BANNING NUCLEAR WEAPONS


                                                   http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=57139#.WYEbndQrLoA

READ NYTS LETTER

TRUMP'S NUCLEAR "SHOCKER" NEW YORK TIMES,MARCH 6, 2017

PLEASE SEE TODAY's NYTS EDITORIAL



We can only hope that the world avoids Nuclear Armageddon until January 2021 when Nuclear Weapons sanity will once more prevail as our "Would be President" storms off into Early Retirement.

And now thanks to Mr. Trump's comments like "What Treaty?" and "What's the Triad?" the European Union itself is now considering its own Nuclear Weapons Force!

SEE NYTS

                                                     

                                                     

Trump's Address, Lincoln, and Protectionism

After reading President Trump's full address to the United States Congress on 28 February 2017, I was struck by a particular quote he included:

"abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government [will] produce want and ruin among our people."  President Trump was quoting President Abraham Lincoln, who he described as "the first Republican President."  What is interesting about this is that both are technically correct, Lincoln did indeed pen that quote, and Lincoln was the first Republican President of the United States.  However linking those two made it sound like that quote was representing a policy of President Lincoln in office, and that is not exactly the case.

President Lincoln in the 1860s did support a higher United States tariff, however the quote was taken from his writing on the subject in 1846, when he was about to enter Congress.  During his election for the Presidency Lincoln was a great deal more circumspect on the issue of the tariff, due to regional political issues and also the rising tension with the southern states, which remained broadly opposed to tariff protections.  More critically though, although the tariff was a means of protecting domestic United States industry at the time, it played a more critical role to the federal government in the early to mid 19th century - mainly as the primary source of revenue for the United States government.

Meet Hiram Barney, the Collector of the Port of New York from 1861 to 1864, President Lincoln's appointee to handle one of the key revenue points in the United States' federal revenue stream.  Prior to the legalization of direct income tax one of the key sources of non-borrowing revenue for the United States was tariff revenues, which were broadly collected across all goods imported into the United States.  The various tariff bills in the 1850s onward were oriented towards collecting uniform revenues whose purpose was to fund the federal government without favoring one area of the economy over another.

To put it more bluntly, the kind of tariff system designed to generate federal revenue, not to shield the United States economy from foreign competitive trade.  Because the economy of the United States in the 1860s was very different than the United States economy of the 1840s, when the quote President Trump is citing was written.

The debate on United States trade policy and the value of tariffs is a fine topic for debate and discussion, economists around the world have varying positions on the subject.  But it certainly should not be justified by a quote from 1840s Abraham Lincoln, talking about a fundamentally different way to organize the United States economy and its sources of federal revenue.

Sources:  Wikipedia entries on Hiram Barney and U.S. Tariff policy, Abraham Lincoln classroom on Lincoln and the Tariff, the University of Michigan library collected works of Abraham Lincoln (and quote source), and the transcript of President Trump's speech

NYTS NUKES EDITORIAL

See today's New York Times.

See our Jan 26 Post below on Pres Trump and the Markey/Lieu No Nuclear First Strike Bill.

Contact your Reps and Senators to support this now very necessary measure.

ABOLITION IN OUR TIME

                                                       

                                                      

STOPPING PRES. TRUMP'S FIRST STRIKE NUCLEAR OPTION!

Just two days ago, Jan. 24, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a  Senate Bill (S-200) to do just that!
                                         

                                               

"RESTRICTING FIRST USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS ACT 2017".
                                                  

                                                

The same bill (HR-699)was introduced in the House of Reps by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).
                                                    

                                                   

The bills would prohibit POTUS from launching a world-ending Nuclear First Strike without a Congressional Declaration of War - as required by our US Constitution.
                                                    

                                                   

This legislation is introduced while the Bulletin of Atomic scientists has reset the "Doomsday Clock" to two and a half minutes until Midnight! The closest the clock's hands have been to Midnight since 1953 and the advent of the world's first hydrogen/thermonuclear bombs.
                                                 

                                             https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/science/doomsday-clock-countdown-2017.html    


The legislation has the strong support of former Sec of Defense William J Perry who stated that launching a First Strike "would likely bring about the end of civilization", "a decision that momentous... should have the checks and balances called for by the US Constitution."
                                                

                                                  

If we care about our world, our lives and future and the lives and futures of our children and grandchildren - we must support this Bill. It is a Moral Imperative.

END THIS ONE MAN NUCLEAR MONARCHY NOW
                                                   

You can sign petitions and/or contact your Congressional senators and representatives directly or through various organizations dedicated to a sane Nuclear Weapons Policy:

https://www.wagingpeace.org/https://www.wagingpeace.org/

http://www.globalzero.org/http://www.globalzero.org/

Physicians for social responsibilty