I will send the following letter to peace groups in mid-February. I appreciate your examination for recommendations.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Ed
War Abolition Goals for 2024 and Beyond
To achieve the seemingly impossible, you must be unafraid to dream the seemingly impossible.
Vaclav Havel
The difficult we do today. The impossible takes a little longer.
Father James C. Collins, CSB
We would like to live as we once did but history will not let us.
JFK
Ask all the peace groups to become war abolition organizations with the following 8 specific proposals.
Humans can start the path to lasting peace by:
1) starting a world-wide anti-poverty program,
2) taxing international arms sales,
3) beginning a moratorium on weapons research,
4) reducing the bloated US military budget by 90%,
5) training our armed forces for disaster relief,
6) establishing a cabinet level War Abolition Department,
7) reducing nuclear weapons to zero, and,
8) negotiating for all the world’s nuclear weapons to go off hair trigger alert.
Recruit the environmentalists who have to this day totally ignored the Pentagon footprint. Inform Al Core, Greta Thurberg, Naomi Klein, Bill McKribben and other famous people.
Contact leading intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, Jerry Kroth, Yuval Noah Harari, Martin Rees and others.
Since Pope Francis and the previous two Popes have been increasingly favorable to environmental concerns and non-violence, ask Pope Francis to write an encyclical (official letter) on war abolition. I have written a draft which you can see in the attachment.
Even though the Soviet Union closed its doors on December 26, 1991, the Pentagon budget is equal to the next 10 countries in line. The US has 750 military bases overseas. The US has 5,000 nuclear weapons. A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan will bring nuclear winter.
Close 650 overseas military bases and keep 100.
Decommission 4,000 nuclear weapons and keep 1,000.
The One Percent have carried out the biggest con job in human history. They have accumulated $50 trillion with few people paying any attention. The disadvantaged, who have had their pockets picked, did not seek revenge on the One Percent. They see immigrants, black people, gays, feminists and gun control advocates as enemies rather than as fellow victims. In the United States, three men have the same wealth as 160 million. Nearly 4 households in 10 do not have $400 for an emergency. One family in 6 is food insecure. The top 0. 1 percent have as much wealth as the lower 90 percent.
The super-rich put their money in tax havens, a term for countries that encourage tax evasion. The IRS does not have enough people to audit their returns which are far more complicated than the returns from plumbers and school teachers.
According to Oxfam, 58 men own the same amount of wealth as the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people.
Impose income tax rates on rich individuals and major corporations as President Eisenhower did. I was a child in those days and I remember prosperous times.
Start a Green New Deal everywhere in the world. This will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the illegal aliens flow. Who will cross Mexico´s northern deserts or the Mediterranean when they have good jobs at home?
It takes $25,000 – 50,000 to adopt a child in Texas. Make it $500. Give a 5 year subsidy to adopting families. Make the Child Tax Credit permanent.
Abolish the War on Drugs. Regulate most drugs like we do for alcohol and tobacco. Establish treatment centers for people in all income levels.
The Long Haul
In 2025, I will ask everybody to abolish war. It is an old idea. Isiah asked us to turn swords into ploughshares. General Douglas MacArthur told the US Congress in 1951 that humans must abolish war or war will abolish humans. Pope Paul VI asked the world to abolish war when he visited the United Nations headquarters in 1965.
The United Nations Charter Preamble
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and…
War belongs in the same category with slavery, torture, wife beating, child abuse and animal cruelty. All these practices were normal until they became barbaric and later illegal.
There are only a few times in history when you come face to face with Absolute Evil and overcome it. The Allied nations did exactly this in World War II. They faced slavery and genocide.
When I was a teenager I wondered what it was like to have lived during the Second World War. For most of the war, the Axis Powers were victorious. Life on our precious planet is in a death spiral. Business as usual is leading us to catastrophe. The good news is that millions are working on solutions. May be we reach the point that the Allies reached in February, 1943. The Axis Powers would go no further. It was a long way from Stalingrad to Berlin and from Guadalcanal to Tokyo but they had to start from somewhere.
There was a wide spread feeling in Allied nations to seek not just a military victory but a better world. There has been progress. The United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Marshall Plan reflect this feeling.
The Big Three not only mobilized for victory. They transformed their societies to produce the food, aircraft carriers, landing craft, fighter aircraft, machine guns and everything else.
If humans are to survive on our precious planet, we will abolish poverty and reverse global warming. Religious and humanitarian motives combine with realpolitik.
Today humans have a responsibility and calling to overcome Absolute Evil again. Nuclear winter, global warning and poverty threaten all life on earth.
Man people everywhere write their own platforms. New ideas will come and others will leave the current list. May Forever Trumpers and Never Trumpers work together. Start demanding the seemingly impossible. Then we will all walk in broad, sunlit uplands.
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