The Picket Line — 16 March 2006

16 March 2006

At Counterpunch, Winslow Wheeler notes that lots of things are being snuck in to the latest, $92.2 billion supplemental funding request for the wars.

Wheeler has done his homework, and in recent months he has written up an informative series of articles on Pentagon pork (and a little Googling will get you even more):

Inside the Pork Shop: The Defense Budget and Congressional Earmarks (30 January 2006)
Pentagon Pork: What is It? Who Cooks It Up? (31 January 2006)
Pentagon Pork: How to Eliminate It (2 February 2006)

Ah, pork. Congress has to spend that money you worked so hard for somehow. Might as well be so a big concrete bull can get its ass spackled.

Just in case you thought the U.S. had decided to sit back and let Iraqis do all of the Iraqi-killing:

American forces have dramatically increased airstrikes in Iraq during the past five months, a change of tactics that may foreshadow how the United States plans to battle a still-strong insurgency while reducing the number of U.S. ground troops serving here.
A review of military data shows that daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased by more than 50 percent in the past five months, compared with the same period last year. Knight Ridder’s statistical findings were reviewed and confirmed by American Air Force officials in the region.
The numbers also show that U.S. forces dropped bombs on more cities during the last five months than they did during the same period a year ago. Airstrikes hit at least 11 cities between Oct. 1, 2004, and Feb. 28, 2005, but were mostly concentrated in and around the western city of Fallujah. A year later, U.S. warplanes struck at least 22 cities during the same months.

Not great news, but it is nice to see some actual journalism on the wires…

It’s a strange surprise when a piece of network television entertainment decides to weave tax resistance into the plot, as the law opera Boston Legal just did.

In the “Stick It” episode, the secretary of one of the main characters gets hauled into court for tax resistance, and her boss defends her — giving a courtroom soliloquy about the lies that the country went to war on, the torture and abuse of detainees, and the decline of civil rights in America that I’m sure left many viewers cheering and wondering why they see only fictional characters saying such things on television.

I didn’t see the show, so can’t comment on any of the nuances, but if you’d care to, you can see the closing arguments here. A commercial for war tax resistance that went out to some ten million viewers… not bad.

A couple of months back I noted the recent arrest of Ernest McQueen for deserting the military in 1969 during the Vietnam War. I speculated that the government was digging up an old case like this as a way of sending a message to the current mess of troops, who seem to be nervously eyeing the exit themselves.

The Democracy Now show has tracked down some other recent cases and comes to similar conclusions.

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How you can resist funding the government → other forms our opposition can take → disrupting the military → refuseniks, deserters, soldiers defying orders: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; 27 air force pilots in Israel have put conscientious objection on the public agenda there — what would it take for that to happen in the United States? Also: was tax resistance ever used as a tactic in the Israel-Palestine conflict?; Yesterday I wrote about individual tax denier schemes — today: How do huge, profitable corporations get away with paying nothing or getting refunds? Also: I follow up on earlier stories about Julia “Butterfly” Hill, Thomas Jefferson and about military refuseniks and conscientious objectors.; The occupation troops are increasingly cynical and unmotivated (a whole platoon was recently placed under arrest for refusing orders). Their enemies are motivated by revenge, patriotism and religious fervor. How much training, organization and expensive equipment does it take to compensate for that gap? Also: Did the anti-war movement really think it was going to be as easy as marching in the streets with banners?; The I.R.S. is cracking down on war tax resisters in Austin, Texas, but it isn’t yet clear whether this is coincidence or the signal of a larger policy change. Also: U.S. deserters, refuseniks, and “stop-loss” protesters are making the news. And: Arundhati Roy tells us that spectacle will only get us so far in the fight between people and empire.; Combine what has come to light about atrocities and prisoner abuse & torture with this week’s new evidence about the vigor of cover-up attempts, then add in the Dubya Squad’s penchant for secrecy and foot-dragging about FOIA disclosures, and then estimate the size of the iceberg we’re seeing the tip of.; If America is so gung-ho about this war, why is it that military recruiters are pulling out the whole used car salesman shuck-and-jive and they still can’t get a full house? Also: Navy sailor Pablo Parades gets his day in court and makes his case for conscientious objection to the Iraq debacle.; Have peace activists ever stopped a war? Probably so, but they have to get off of their butts and stop singing Kumbayah first. And: Americans spent six billion hours trying to comply with the federal income tax laws last year. Also: signs that the U.S. military is getting nervous about deserters. And: how the whole world became Injun country.; Russell Kanning sends out a report from his “palatial 7'×13' maximum security state room”. Also, Lieutenant Ehren Watada pleads with Americans to stand in solidarity with other members of the military who are refusing to fight in Iraq.; Ehren Watada challenges his civilian counterparts to follow his example and refuse to participate in the war on Iraq. Also: Cynthia Foster was stil resisting taxes when she died at 99. And: A columnist for M.S.N. Money experiments with semi-poverty and writes a “poor like me” column. And: did any of that 363 tonnes of shrink-wrapped $100 bills Washington shipped to Iraq and tossed around like so much confetti once belong to you?; Dissident American soldiers are telling a relentlessly awful story about a degrading, cruel establishment that lies to them, betrays them, and makes covering the asses of the chain of command a higher priority than their lives, their families, or any of the noble stories about their mission that you hear from the politicians and propagandists. Also: reviews of “Sir! No Sir!” and “Standard Operating Procedure.”; You might think deserting from the Nazi military and being convicted for treason would make you a hero in post-war Germany; actually it just means you have to fight sixty plus years for a pardon. Also: new education-related tax credits and deductions. And: fiscal conservatives promote tax resistance in Britain. Also: Is virtue its own reward? Aristotle says yes, with reservations, but Job came to disagree.; Tricking the I.R.S. into issuing you a big refund by overpaying your taxes with a bad check — it happened 15,000 times last year, to the tune of $20 million. Also: if you’re a tax resister can you still sponsor someone for citizenship? And: what’s with these “Oath Keepers”? Also: is the I.R.S. about to crack down on sole proprietors? And: you can download improved P.D.F.s of Google Books scans of books about the Nicomachean Ethics.; Some dispatches from a mass tax-strike and municipal government shutdown in the south of France in 1907.; Enjoying the sight of Hillary Clinton whining and the various Shiekhs and diplomats of the world cringing in the face of the ongoing Wikileaks disclosures? Now it’s time to do your part. Also: a report on Vyborg Manifesto-era tax resistance in Russia.; WikiLeaks is the real thing, folks. It is taking bold, dangerous, big, deliberate steps to strike at the root of the warfare state. And it needs your help. Finally citizens and refuseniks have struck a major blow against the empire. You’re going to want to look back at this moment and remember being on the right side.; Claire Wolfe on the dangers of lifestyle purity perfectionism, a new tax resistance campaign in the Ivory Coast, a writing competition on the theme of financial integrity, Fred Reed on America sticking its paws in the monkey trap, and Kevin Zeese on the courageous stand of Bradley Manning. Also: paleocon tax resister Irene Whetstone goes to jail in 1952.; Greg Reagle touts tax resistance on Adam Kokesh’s show, Wendy McElroy ponders tax resistance in light of the Planned Parenthood funding debate, the I.R.S. is noticing more tax evasion and fraud this year, “Bushel Bob” shuts down his produce market to avoid paying war taxes, more Tax Day action reports, 10 reasons not to pay U.S. taxes, and the curious case of the Oath Keepers. Also: A Quaker in 1900 takes pains to avoid revenue stamps. And: a dispatch from the Hut Tax War of 1898.; A new book tells the stories of America’s new military refuseniks — brave men and women in uniform who turned their backs on the wars and faced down the wrath of the military — in their own words.
How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → media → television: ▶; ♦ ♦; A documentary about a war tax resistance civil disobedience stand-off may be coming to a television near you. Also: Thoreau’s fellow-citizens buy new locks for their doors, for their protectors are coming.; Two war tax resistance films — “Paying for Peace” and “An Act of Conscience” — are released on-line. Also: the story of The Bezuidenoudt Affair, an act of tax resistance that triggered the first Boer War.
Have things really gotten that bad? → U.S. government is cruel, despotic, a threat to people → civilian casualties, urban bombardment, etc.: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; I think I’m going to go get completely tanked. Then I’m gonna borrow my friends Hummer and drive down to the Farmer’s Market, honking my horn the whole way and screaming obscenities out the window. I think I’ll ignore some stop signs, and of course the speed limit is only for people who care. It sounds dangerous, I know, but I promise to do this in a way that minimizes civilian casualties…; I think if George Bush had to personally burn, dismember, and crush the victims of his war, he would lose the heart for it. He would beg for excuses to try some other way with even more desperation than he in fact searched for reasons to go to war. The gruesome technology that allows him and people like him to rain death on people from a distance shields them from seeing the consequences of their actions.; Remember all that talk about minimizing civilian casualties? The most comprehensive report on Iraqi deaths during the recent war was just released — it shows that almost 30% of those killed by coalition forces were unarmed civilians.; Last weekend the winds shifted and now the politicians are all trying to hint that they’re not all that crazy about war and that they’re going to bring our troops home in a hurry. Also: if a terrorist kills a bunch of innocent people by dropping a really expensive bomb from a really expensive plane, is it still terrorism? And: Some of those really expensive bombs are being purchased by Israel, but not by Israel’s taxpayers but by U.S. taxpayers.; Michael Neumann recounts how terrorism kept from going out of style. Also: Some opposition to Alberto “Obsolete & Quaint” Gonzales emerges (no, not among the Senate Democrats, silly). And: Tolstoy says we should stop listening to the endless liberal blah-blah and instead strike at the root of government power (with tax resistance!); Speak truth to power? What do the powerful care? And: there are very good reasons, even in a time of war, not to melt the skin off of children. Also: making the concept of “evil” respectable in liberal intellectual circles. And: lowering your electricity bills so we can save up enough money to pay the Chinese back for this war they loaned us.; The bad news is that Loompanics is going out of business (the good news is they’re having a sale). Also: again the news is full of “precision”, “targeted” U.S. airstrikes on civilian homes in which the innocent suffer most — and this awful result is more the rule than the exception.; Tax-advantaged retirement plans for the self-employed, driving a stake through the heart of Slobodan Milosevic’s corpse (literally), the I.R.S. substitutes racial profiling for terrorist hunting, kickbacks and bribes connect the neocon war profiteers and the Saudi royal family, U.S. aerial bombardment of Iraq kicks into high gear, and leading Democrats pledge to further bloat the gigantic blood-filled tick that is the U.S. military.; The cost of the latest war hits the trillion dollar mark, and the American Friends Service Committee reminds America what they could have bought instead. Also: what does the U.S. mean when it says it does everything it can to avoid civilian casualties?; From Israel to Vietnam to Iraq to Git’mo: the news in brief.; A military intelligence captain writes to tell me that my article about civilian casualties and human shields in Iraq gives the wrong impression. Also: Ben Metcalf pens a satirical thank you letter from the U.S. government to a dear taxpayer.; An American libertarian-oriented tax resistance campaign that calls itself the “Slave Uprising” gets ready to launch. Also: more impressions of the recent international conference on war tax resistance and peace tax campaigns, highlighting the differences between the United States and European countries. And: the Wall Street Journal profiles Gene Sharp, wrist-slaps for murderous soldiers, and the release of the Peace Tax Seven movie.; Nicholas Ayers, who was featured in an article on the tactical innovations of junior officers in Iraq that I quoted from back in 2004, writes in with some clarifications.; Today I’m thankful for Fafblog, The Joy of Curmudgeonry, and A Tiny Revolution. (Includes observations from Thomas Carlyle and John Adams.); It can be hard to find a hero these days, but Bradley Manning fits the bill… and he did it while being a U.S. soldier, which is an especially hard trick these days.; The lovable dolts who donate money to pay down the federal debt are, of course, getting conned. Also: the victims of the U.S. shadow war in Pakistan include health care workers and their patients. And: many federal excise taxes on air travel are temporarily suspended. Also: Fred reed on “domestic expatriation.”
Have things really gotten that bad? → U.S. government is cruel, despotic, a threat to people → robbing the public and spending irresponsibly → bloated military budget → hiding pork in the military budget: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; Links-a-plenty: A new torture memo says “the gloves are coming off… we want these individuals broken.” A pork-hungry Congress loads the defense budget with billions of dollars of worthless crap. Jon Else revisits a nuclear weapons test site and checks on our priorities. A town in Vermont wants to join the gulchers from the Free State Project and move to New Hampshire. And if a mountain of debt is keeping you from getting below the tax line, here’s some news you can use.; Bob Harris thinks the war is the less important thing the U.S. is losing. Milton Mayer wonders what you can do if tyranny sneaks up on you gradually. Chalmers Johnson suggests that “only bankruptcy will stop the American imperialist juggernaut.” And McCaffrey & Cohen suggest that Congress conspires to assemble citizens into “special-interest groups” and dangle frightening or lucrative legislation in front of their noses in order to shake them down for campaign contributions.; Adding insult to the biggest military budget America has ever seen, the Dubya Squad request another $82 billion in supplemental war funding. Oh, if only Kerry had won in November! (Well, you try saying it with a straight face.); The Picket Line commemorates an important anniversary with some vintage rhetoric and a bunch of links.; Help lay the groundwork for a “People Power”-style freedom movement in the U.S. by adding to the project’s strategic estimate. Also: Americans renouncing their citizenship to become “taxpatriates”, waste and pork in the military budget, and upscale dumpster-diving in Berkeley.; Yesterday was my first day as a VITA volunteer this tax season, and the government is $2,314 poorer. Also: a heaping helping of miscellany, including grass roots action against domestic torture enablers, Democratic plans to increase military spending, Homeland Security pork, Possum living, attacks on tax collectors, the Coalition to Get the Stop Funding the War Coalition to Stop Funding the War, federal employees who moonlight as tax evaders, and tax policy by merry men in tights.; The I.R.S. Data Book gives a hint at how their collections efforts are going. Also: direct action against war material shipments, construction recycling, the down side to tax efficiency, an increased I.R.S. enforcement budget, a new war tax resistance blog, Iraq War supplemental funding pork, and more leisure for the poor.; SmartMoney covers the war tax resistance beat. And: Cindy Sheehan is urging Americans to resist their taxes. Also: I fill my home for free, and some people fill their bellies much the same way. And: if it oinks like a pig and it wallows like a pig it’s probably the latest Iraq War emergency supplemental funding legislation.; War tax resistance on a video blog, military spending as corporate welfare, another take on the Render Unto Caesar koan, stealing stolen money from the I.R.S., and a radical Muslim cleric preaches tax resistance. Also: a review of Crispin Sartwell’s book “Extreme Virtue: Truth and Leadership in Five Great American Lives.”; Tax-advantaged retirement plans for the self-employed, driving a stake through the heart of Slobodan Milosevic’s corpse (literally), the I.R.S. substitutes racial profiling for terrorist hunting, kickbacks and bribes connect the neocon war profiteers and the Saudi royal family, U.S. aerial bombardment of Iraq kicks into high gear, and leading Democrats pledge to further bloat the gigantic blood-filled tick that is the U.S. military.; A survey of anti-war activists reveals a surprising ignorance about war tax resistance, but an encouraging willingness to give it a try. A one-year, large-scale, organized tax strike may be in the cards.

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