Some links from here and there…
An editorial cartoon shows Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega trying to take down tax resistance leader Irlanda Jerez, while his wife, vice president Rosario Murillo yells “Bite her, pinch her, pound her, but do something!”
- Nicaraguan tax resistance leader Irlanda Jerez was released from prison as part of a government amnesty of political prisoners in the run up to negotiations with the opposition. Jerez says she was drugged, tortured, and sexually assaulted while in prison, and that her home was sacked and her family attacked by government-aligned paramilitary forces soon after her release. Her children are now refugees. Torture, arbitrary arrests, and repressive brutality are frequently relied upon by the Ortega regime, amounting to “crimes against humanity,” according to Amnesty International. She has renewed her call for mass civil disobedience. “We’re ready to pay any price necessary to free Nicaragua.”
- The 15th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns is scheduled for in Edinburgh, Scotland.
- The international human revolt against the traffic-ticket robots continues, with new attacks in France and Australia in recent weeks.
- Residents of Faradje, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are threatening a tax strike to pressure the government to take action against the incursions of Wodaabe nomadic cattle-herders from neighboring South Sudan into the land they use for agriculture.
- In the United States, individual taxpayers paid $93 billion more in federal income taxes than . “Interestingly, that number stands close to the tax break amount that corporations received from the TCJA in , big businesses paid $91 billion less in taxes than they had in , prior to the new law’s passage.”
