Left/Right/Libertarian Anti-War Coalition Emerges

That emerging left/right/libertarian anti-militarist coalition now has a homepage. There’s not much there yet (some more write-ups of the inaugural meeting from some of the participants), but there’s an RSS feed if you want to be notified when things get moving.

Paul Buhle, whose anti-militarist activism goes back to his time with Students for a Democratic Society in the Vietnam years, writes of the group’s first meeting: “There never was such a boundary-crossing event before, at least not in my 50 year political lifetime or any historical incident that I can recall.”

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• Mencius Moldbug, who has established himself as the voice of the contemporary anti-Whig movement, turned me on to Vaclav Havel’s essay on The Power of the Powerless. It eloquently describes one of the forms that coerced consent took in communist Eastern Europe. “Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
• National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen Kelley says that the Joe Stack kamikaze attack seems to have proven an inspiration: “There were calls where taxpayers said they were thinking of ‘taking flying lessons’ in the context of an audit or a collection. There are 70 that have been reported. I have to tell you that the first time I heard the one about ‘taking flying lessons,’ I cannot imagine in any scenario, following the Austin attack, where that’s an appropriate comment to make.”
• The IRS is so fearful of taxpayer retaliation that it has started to develop a sort of paranoid autoimmune disorder, in which it shuts down and heads for the bunkers at the sign of anything in the least bit unusual — this time, “a suspicious package found near the IRS building — the contents of which were soon found to be harmless.”
• Here’s another example of inmates raking in bogus tax refunds while still behind bars. Prisoner Shawn Clark was caught on tape discussing his scheme: “I’m through with the street crime. I’m strictly white collar from now on. I love the IRS.” The scheme netted over $100,000 before they got caught.

Thanks to Queer Equality Revolution for plugging The Picket Line.