The author, Arthur Silber, takes the opportunity for some meditation on
responsibility, consent, obedience, support, and other such subjects, and
caught my eye by dropping in some of Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on the subject.
I have to confess that between being out-of-the-country for a month and then
a variety of things eating up my time in the days since I got back, I haven’t
followed the Wikileaks/Manning saga at all closely, and I haven’t even
had time to do much more than glance at this particular series of articles.
I read enough to convince me to donate some money to Bradley Manning’s defense fund though.
Reading about another IRS office evacuation caused by a “suspicious package” received in the mail,
I mused a bit on how formidable authoritarian bureaucracies can be successfully
damaged by small acts that induce large, costly, and crippling reactions. Like
in an autoimmune disorder, the body’s own protective mechanisms are hijacked to
attack the body itself.
Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society
found a quote to this effect from
Julian Assange, the current spokesman and editor-in-chief for Wikileaks,
which has been doing a bang-up job of freelance declassification of
U.S. classified war
documents:
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear
and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in
minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in
cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline
resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands
adaption.
Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems
are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by
their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand,
mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace
them with more open forms of governance.
So when you hear people discussing the value of the leaks, remember that the
value may not only be in what specifically was leaked, but in the leakage
itself, and in subsequent efforts to plug the leaks.
If you’re enjoying the sight of Hillary Clinton whining and the various Sheikhs and diplomats of the world cringing and spinning in the face of the ongoing Wikileaks disclosures, you can show your appreciation by contributing financially to the people who took great risks to help make it possible:
The Bradley Manning Defense Fund is a project of Courage to Resist, which helps refuseniks of all stripes.
Bradley Manning is the number one suspect in the leaks and is currently a prisoner of the United States government.
Wikileaks is supervising the release of the documents and trying to maintain a safe haven for people who want to bring other such secrets to light.
If you follow this blog at all, you know I’m not one for enthusing about new activist campaigns and certainly not one to go around exhorting folks to donate to some cause or other.
I tend to err on the side of (perhaps overly-cynical) aloofness: preferring to let campaigns and groups put some proof in the pudding before I serve it to my friends.
And these past several years, the pudding served up by the organizations and actions opposing the warfare state has been pretty thin.
But WikiLeaks is the real thing, folks.
It is taking bold, dangerous, big, deliberate steps to strike at the root of the problem.
The best evidence of how they’re succeeding where so many have failed is in the frothing-at-the-mouth of the warfare states’ biggest offenders.
(They ignored and ridiculed Cindy Sheehan and hoped she’d go away; they’re openly plotting the murder of Julian Assange.)
And Wikileaks could certainly use our help.
As you may be aware, government authorities, throwing their weight around outside of ordinary legal channels, have been successfully pressuring companies providing internet service for WikiLeaks to cut them off.
Because of this, for example, the wikileaks.org domain no longer works (you can still reach the site at other addresses, like wikileaks.de, and at the numerical IP address 213.251.145.96).
Amazon web services, a “cloud” service and storage provider, shamefully bowed to U.S. government pressure to stop hosting WikiLeaks data, and the U.S. has even forbidden many of its employees to view or link to the WikiLeaks-released diplomatic cables — to the extent of blocking the site to public web browsers at the Library of Congress.
WikiLeaks computers are under a sustained distributed denial-of-service attack from enraged private and government entities.
The Washington Times and others have publicly called for the assassination of WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, and he is being sought on criminal charges that have all the fingerprints of a dirty trick.
While none of these things are going to be able to stop WikiLeaks from continuing to release the U.S. diplomatic cables that sparked all this retaliation (they’re too crafty for that), it gives you some idea of the strength and fury of the forces arrayed against them — forces that are determined to degrade the ability of WikiLeaks (or anyone else encouraged by their success) to pull off any similar feats in the future.
So I encourage you to put some skin in the game.
There are several ways to donate money.
You can also follow @wikileaks on Twitter, which can be a good way to stay informed about things you can do to help, which may include downloading data to your home computer so that WikiLeaks data is duplicated and widely-distrubuted so that it is less-vulnerable to attack.
If you have the time and interest, you can also spend some time reading through some of the released cables, summarizing them and contrasting them with official government statements from the period.
But don’t sit this one out.
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.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
You can read more (en español) about Spanish war tax resister Jorge Güemes (see ♇ ) at Utopia Contagiosa
and Insumissia.
You’d think there would be nothing easier for the government than preventing people they’ve already put behind bars from taking money from the government by filing fraudulent tax returns.
Apparently not. Despite this being a problem that has attracted news stories and congressional hearings and such for as long as I remember, the amount of money the IRS gives to prisoners for lying on their tax returns continues to rise.
It has been illuminating and disturbing how the world’s governments and large corporations have obsequiously bowed to the bleatings of the American hatriarchy and joined in the attack on WikiLeaks.
But WikiLeaks has already won this round, and Clinton’s state department are just punch-drunkedly swinging their gloves in the air after the bell.
You may have heard that Visa and PayPal have shut off the flow of funds through their services to WikiLeaks and to the legal fund that helps to protect its team.
But there are still several other ways you can help fund their important work.
If you want to understand more about the theory behind the WikiLeaks strategy, which is strikingly different and more radical than the commonly-deployed references to The Pentagon Papers and such would lead you to believe, you could do worse than read the analysis at zunguzungu.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Prisoners in at least six Georgia state prisons have gone on strike, refusing to leave their cells to work in government-run prison slave labor industries.
The unusual strike is being organized by the prisoners via contraband cell phones.
I’ve been working on a series of pages for NWTRCC under the tentative title of “Where Else Does the Government Get money to Make War, and What Can We Do About It?”
These pages are meant to supplement the current NWTRCC site focus on the federal personal income tax and telephone excise tax, and to talk about other government funding sources and the resistance strategies appropriate to them.
It is slow going, and surprisingly controversial (there is debate about to what extent taxes like the payroll tax are really dedicated to non-military trust fund spending and to what extent this is an illusion).
Prison labor is one way governments extract value from people at gunpoint (and, seeing as how the Department of Defense is a big user of prison labor-produced products, I suppose it counts as a “war tax” also).
Another tactic governments have often turned to is seigniorage — simply printing up money and spending it and implicitly taxing people by making their money-denominated savings less valuable.
But according to a recent article in Forbes, seigniorage doesn’t work as well as it used to, as investors now have more tools to evade or counteract its effects.
The Initial Public Offering of stock from the formerly-public, then government-owned General Motors is another odd source of government revenue.
According to a Treasury Department press release, the government brought in $13.5 billion in by selling GM stock.
(Actually, according to the press release, “Taxpayers” received the money, but that’s only true in government fantasy-land.)
Did you buy any?
Did the mutual funds in your 401k or IRA?
If so, you helped the federal government get a return on its investment.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration publishes a list of management priorities for the IRS every year.
This year they’ve got a new top priority: keeping their employees safe from “a surge of hostility towards the federal government” from irate taxpayers.
One of the recently-WikiLeaked U.S. diplomatic corps cables concerns the “addio pizzo” tax resistance movement in Sicily.
Excerpts:
¶3. (U) Business owners have been emboldened by the continuing string of law enforcement victories, with more and more reportedly refusing to pay extortion money (known in Italian slang as the “pizzo”), particularly since [Bernardo] Provenzano’s arrest.
According to the recent annual report issued by the National Traders Association (Conferescenti), up to 80 percent of businesses in Palermo and Catania paid protection money in , and the cost of extortion is higher in Sicily than any other part of the country.
Several anti-racket associations have been formed, reportedly with good results.
The most prominent is “Addio pizzo” (“Goodbye, pizzo”), formed in , which counts 210 traders and entrepreneurs as members and over 9,000 consumers committed to buy only at shops belonging to the “pizzo-free” list.
Palermo police and the prefect have agreed to discreetly look after the member shops.
“Addio pizzo” has organized programs in more than 90 schools and educational institutes, with the participation of prosecutors and police, and also conducted a “pizzo-free” festival in one of Palermo’s main plazas in .
(One of the association’s leaders has been selected for a State Department International Visitor program in , which will focus on awakening public opinion to rule of law and supporting NGOs who fight organized crime.)
¶4. (U) In , the Sicilian branch of the industrialists’ federation (Confindustria) voted unanimously to expel any of its members who continue to pay the Mafia’s tax.
The vote came in support of Andrea Vecchio, a well-known construction company owner who told the Cosa Nostra he would no longer pay.
Since taking this bold decision, he has received four death threats and two of his building sites have been sabotaged.
Vecchio and his family are now living under police protection.
¶5. (U) On , forty Sicilian business owners launched a new “anti-pizzo” association to assist entrepreneurs who refuse to pay extortion money.
The group is called “Libero Futuro,” which translates “Free Future,” but also pays homage to Libero Grassi, a Sicilian businessman who was murdered in for refusing to pay the “pizzo.”
In response to the organization’s founding, Palermo mayor Diego Cammarata promised 50,000 euros to assist merchants who have been victims of extortion.
The association’s inauguration was attended by national political leaders; in fact, the auditorium was packed, whereas when a similar launch was attempted two years ago, only around 30 people showed up.
¶6. (U) During the night of , the offices of Confindustria in the central Sicilian city of Caltanissetta were broken into, and computer disks containing confidential details of business owners backing a campaign against the payment of protection money were stolen.
Confindustria leaders immediately blamed the Mafia and declared that they would not be intimidated by the act.
Tax resistance campaigns like this one can get a real leg up if they have the support of a competing government that would rather have all of the tax revenues itself.
Another cable adds further details:
¶12. (C) Lo Bello, the President of the Sicilian Confindustria, took the bold step in of instituting a policy (adopted by unanimous vote) of expelling members who have paid protection money to the Mafia and not complained to police.
Since that time, around 35 members have been asked to leave the Confederation.
This courageous move has been praised by business owners, the media and political leaders.
Lo Bello told us in that “The time has come [for Sicily] to move from an archaic, feudal past to modernity.”
When we met with them in late , the Calabrian Industrialists were much more timid, looking over their backs before telling us that the time is not right for business owners to take a public stand against extortion there.
(In , one of the founders of the Calabria anti-racket association, Fedele Scarcella, was brutally assassinated; his charred corpse was discovered in his burned car in what authorities described as “very probably a Mafia homicide.”)
Nonetheless, the media reported in on talks between the two regions’ Industrialists Confederations on collaborating against organized crime.
Lo Bello was quoted as declaring, “It may seem simple, but what has happened has changed the framework of the entire region: the idea that the fight against the Mafia cannot be delegated only to the State, but needs to include an assumption of responsibility on the part of Southern Italian society: in this case, the world of entrepreneurship.”
Also in , the Industrialists Confederation in Caserta (Campania) took initial steps toward a similar policy, drawing praise from the anti-Mafia prosecutor.
Lo Bello hopes to enlist other business and trade associations to adopt similar rules.
Unfortunately, most Sicilian business owners are still unwilling to complain about extortion.
In , a prominent businessman, Vincenzo Conticello, who has refused to pay protection money for his Palermo focaccia restaurant, told the CG that he had heard (probably from his police escort) that of 170 companies named in the accounting books of apprehended Mafia boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo, only three have owned up to it, while the others claim the accounts are in error.
¶13. (SBU) Sicilian businesses, emboldened by the arrests of top Mafia bosses, are openly defying the Mafia by signing on with a grassroots organization called “Addiopizzo” (Goodbye “Pizzo,” the Italian word for extortion payments), which brings together businesses in Palermo that are resisting extortion.
The campaign was launched in by a group of youths thinking of opening a pub.
They started off by plastering Palermo with anti-pizzo fliers, reading “AN ENTIRE PEOPLE THAT PAYS THE PIZZO IS A PEOPLE WITHOUT DIGNITY,” and eventually brought their campaign online where it struck a chord with Sicilians fed up with Mafia bullying.
The rebellion has since spread to other strongholds of the most ruthless Mafia clans, including places such as Gela, an industrial coastal town, where some 80 business owners in recent months have denounced extortion attempts.
This is a dramatic turn since the early 1990’s, when a Gela merchant who denounced extortion was slain by the Mafia, and a Gela car dealer, whose showroom was repeatedly torched, had to move his family and change his name after he testified in court.
“Addiopizzo” has recently launched a supermarket selling products certified as being “pizzo” free, and maintains a public list on the internet of businesses rejecting extortion.
Another NGO was launched by forty Sicilian business owners to assist entrepreneurs who refuse to pay extortion money.
The group is called “Libero Futuro,” which translates “Free Future,” but also pays homage to Libero Grassi, a Sicilian businessman who was murdered in for refusing to pay protection money.
In response to the organization’s founding, Palermo mayor Diego Cammarata promised 50,000 euros to assist merchants who have been victims of extortion.
“This rebellion goes to the heart of the Mafia,” says Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia, who has investigated extortion cases for years.
“If it works, we will have a great advantage in the fight against the Mafia.”
Another cable complains that in another part of the country, Calabria, it is the mafia that seems to have gotten the upper hand in the tax war:
¶5. (C) The Prefect of Vibo Valentia province, Ennio Sodano, has practically written Calabria off.
In his view, “the entire Calabrian society is involved” in perpetuating an intractable situation.
“Business owners pay extortion, but don’t complain.
They don’t pay their taxes,” he said.
“It’s a cultural problem, this indifferent society.”…
You may remember , when a NATO helicopter crew in Afghanistan attacked ten children, ages 9 to 15, who were out collecting firewood, and successfully killed all but one of them.
Or you may not have heard of it. It made the Times, but from my friends and relations I heard nothing about it but plenty of allusions to something or other that Charlie Sheen said.
The gunners mistook the children for Taliban belligerents, which was easy for them to do while following the modern superpower modus operandi of killing people from as far away as possible — continents away if need be — so that you don’t have to take any unnecessary risks yourself, but you instead can pass the unnecessary risks on to children collecting firewood and other such unimportant people.
This is the sort of courageous warrior virtue we have in mind when we “support the troops.”
Not all NATO troops are bad.
One of them, Bradley Manning, reformed and took a serious turn for the good.
He thought that maybe it was because the American public was unaware of the repulsive acts of its government’s military that they permit it to continue.
So he leaked the Collateral Murder video, which was taken from an Apache helicopter while its crew were killing children and journalists, and, if reports are true, also leaked many diplomatic cables detailing shenanigans of the U.S. government and various foreign officials it has rented.
Manning may have been too optimistic about the possibility that sunlight would prove a potent disinfectant of the American soul, but his heart was in the right place, and he showed admirable courage and initiative — no drone pilot he.
The powers that be are furious, and they have decided to hit him with the full force of American justice, which, if you have been paying attention these last several years, you will know means taking someone captive and tormenting them heartlessly and ruthlessly in the hopes of utterly breaking them, while saving anything like a “trial” in the formal sense for some far off future when the damage has already been done.
Certainly some of this is just from a sadistic desire to hurt Manning, and to break him and turn him against those who helped him get the word out.
But much of it is also a tactic designed to discourage other whistleblowers and dissenters:
Screw with us and we’ll make your life a living hell and no law or lawyer or code of honor or sense of decency will stand between you and our wrath.
