War-tax resistance: "as American as the Boston Tea Party"

The war on war tax

War-tax resistance is "as American as the Boston Tea Party," according to Peter Haney, cultural anthropologist and dynamic peacemaking director of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.

With a warm smile in the group's downtown office (kept fairly cold to conserve energy), local activist Esther Kisamore explains that virtually any of your individual federal income taxes and some excise taxes can be allocated to U.S. war operations.

One way to take a stand, she and Haney explain, is to live a simpler lifestyle; if you keep your income level low, you may be able to avoid filing a federal income tax return. Activists will talk about these and other, less drastic, methods of avoiding "war taxes" at the PPJPC this weekend.

Kisamore says the last time she chose to live above poverty line (over 20 years ago), she decided not to file. Doing this does put you at risk of legal retaliation. Kisamore — who knows of people who have suffered harsh consequences — says she was fined only about half of what was originally required to pay.

Whatever size the sacrifice may be, the PPJPC encourages people to act as the American occupation of Iraq approaches its fifth anniversary. Peace activists across the country are telling Congress that if it won't stop war funding, the citizenry will.

"We don't believe in war and we don't believe in killing," says Kisamore. "So why pay other people to do it?"

A protest of war by not paying taxes

The Colorado Springs residents were aware of such possible consequences when they deliberately snubbed tax time — not to have extra money in their pockets and not because they don't believe the government should tax citizens.

They don't want their taxes used to fund military spending and war efforts.

The Bush administration has received or requested $624 billion for the Iraq war from 2002 to 2009, according to this week's Senate committee hearing on the Department of Defense's 2009 fiscal year budget. And that doesn't sit well with war tax resisters.

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Not paying taxes as a form of protest against government policies has been practiced for centuries. In 1197, for example, St. Hugh of Lincoln refused to pay a tax to pay for King Richard the Lionhearted's war against the king of France. His property was seized.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the United States' invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the interest in war tax resistance has been revived, said Ed Hedemann, an organizer with the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, based in New York City.

“We know of people in all 50 states doing it, and we're seeing a trend toward people who are not the typical peace activist getting involved because the popularity of the war is waning.”

The organization estimates that each year at least 10,000 Americans refuse to pay all or some of their federal income taxes over objection to military spending.

The IRS does not know how many Americans do not file income taxes, or keep track of the reasons people do not pay their taxes, said Jean Carl, spokeswoman in the Denver IRS office. War tax resisters are just one kind of tax protester — others refuse to pay taxes because they believe the system is unfair, unconstitutional, invalid or voluntary.

Not filing tax returns or paying taxes can result in audits, liens and seizures of assets and wages, Carl said, and possible imprisonment.

Hedemann said although property seizure and imprisonment aren't unheard of for tax resisters, such actions are rare.

“We're not advocating fraud — we do this on principle,” he said. “We're up front about challenging not the tax system itself but how the money is being spent.”

There are several ways to be a war tax resister. The most common method, Hedemann said, is to file a 1040 tax return and withhold a percentage equal to the percentage the federal government spends on defense and military, past and present. His organization estimates that to be about 50 percent.

Most war tax resisters send a letter to the IRS, explaining that they oppose war and don't want to pay for it, said Durland, whose tax stance stems from being a Quaker.

Some do not file tax returns, or file a return but do not pay anything, or earn a wage below the taxable amount, which for a single person under age 65 is $8,750 for the 2007 tax year. Some resisters increase payroll exemptions so they don't have as much deducted from their paychecks for taxes, Kisamore said.
Many also boycott paying federal excise tax on telephone bills, which had raised money to pay for wars and now goes into the general federal budget.

Panel offers tips on tax protest

The facts and fears of war-tax boycotting will be addressed in a panel discussion presented by the Western Mountains Peace Action Workshop.

The discussion, titled Why Isn't Everyone Who's for Peace a War Tax Resistor?, will be held at 6:30 p.m. today in Room 202 of Ricker Addition at the University of Maine at Farmington.

A panel including Eileen Kreutz of Industry, Eileen Liddy of Wilton, Henry Braun of Weld and Larry Dansinger of Monroe will discuss their present and past experiences of withholding all or part of their federal taxes as a protest. The options of war-tax resistance, which range from symbolic amounts, such as $50 or $100, to refusing to pay all of the federal tax, will be addressed. The panel will also present ways to redirect the tax money, Liddy said Friday.

"I'm fed up with the war, and I want to do something more. As a citizen I have the right and obligation to do this," she said.

Nonviolent civil disobedience is a part of the nation's history, she added, citing the Boston Tea Party and the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Liddy wants to send a message to the government and the Maine congressional delegation to stop funding the war.

"There are ways to do it safely, even with just smaller amounts," she said, quoting author Anita Roderick: "If you don't think small things do make a difference, then you've never been in bed with a mosquito."

War-tax boycotters are part of a growing movement of taxpayers led by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, she said.

But people need to be aware and plan accordingly, Liddy said.

Meanwhile, back across the Atlantic...


Tax resistance

Joe Jenkins reports on the the Peace Tax Seven, a group of conscientious objectors seeking a judicial review of the war tax policies in Britain

It is difficult these days to find apologists - particularly in Gordon Brown's cabinet – who supported the invasion of Iraq. However, alongside the 50 per cent or so of the population who supported the war in 2003, it is no exaggeration to say that millions protested, held vigils, went on marches, lobbied MP's and signed petitions to try and stop the war, but the government went ahead and executed their war, in our name, and with our taxes. As Alexander Haig, US Secretary of State said, when confronted by the historic anti-nuclear marches in 1982, 'Let them march all they want as long as they continue to pay their taxes'.

Some taxpayers however - following the examples set by the American writer Thoreau in the nineteenth century, Joan Baez during the Vietnam war and pacifists in Britain in the 1980's and 1990's – withheld the military portion of their taxes maintaining that in matters of deliberate killing, personal conscience reigns supreme and no state can over rule the individual conscience and force its citizens to pay to kill. The courts however ruled that 'war tax resisters' have no option but to pay up.

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In 2004 seven taxpaying citizens decided to form a group - calling themselves the Peace Tax Seven campaign - to obtain a Judicial Review for a change in the law so that conscientious objectors can have the military portion of their taxes redirected to peace building and conflict resolution initiatives. Their lawyers, led by Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, maintain that since the Human Rights Act and the right to freedom of conscience has now been enshrined in British law, British citizens have the right to translate an ancient and compelling conscientious objection directly into tax policy on this specific issue, yet, UK tax policy ignores this fact.

The group, are taxpayers from all walks of life - a retired teacher, an accountant, a psychiatrist, a writer, a toymaker, a university lecturer and a single mother who argue that they have a legal right to have the military portion of their taxes put in a ring-fenced fund solely for peaceful purposes. Their campaign has taken its toll on all seven given that alongside individual legal proceedings, bailiffs, fines and possible bankruptcy and imprisonment, they have had to raise over £50,000 to take this case all the way to the High Court for a Judicial Review. Such has been the public outrage about the invasion of Iraq that the group managed to raise the money and in July 2005 their case was heard in the High Court.

Building a culture of peace
Although the judge found the Peace Tax Seven arguments 'forceful' their request for a Judicial Review of current UK tax policy was turned down. At an appeal court hearing in March 2006 it became plain that the British judges acknowledged the validity of the arguments, particularly when three Lord Justices, while refusing permission for a judicial review, cast doubt on previous rulings that had previously prevented cases like this moving forward; recommending that having exhausted the British legal process the group are now in a position to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Earlier this year papers were lodged with the European Court at Strasbourg and the group is currently waiting on a decision as to when they will have their case heard. Already the legal bills are mounting and the group must raise another £70,000 to successfully fight their case in Europe.

Information as Novelty

...Philosopher Robert Anton Wilson defined information as data and ideas that are new to you. If it's something you already know, then it's propaganda or dogma, not information. Philosopher Terence McKenna had a similar view: He used the terms "information" and "novelty" interchangeably. If you're not surprised, he said, if your curiosity isn't piqued, then the messages streaming your way don't qualify as information...

~ From Free Will Astrology: February 20, 2008 ~

"I am here to fight the lies as long as I can"

" ... When the truth is too horrible to acknowledge, then it becomes very easy to believe in a series of lies instead. If the truth is that our leaders are really monsters, who have purposely manufactured a planned genocidal world war, in order to preserve America's fading position in the world, then the truth becomes almost impossible to believe.

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Bush and both of his Congresses have chosen to ride the raging river of lies known as the war on terrorism like lunatic "surf-Nazis," blinded to the dangers swimming just beneath the surface, oblivious to the destruction left in their wake. The bill for the war and for the destruction that we have sown is coming due, before the end goals are met – before the world war can be jump-started. Strategic alliances are falling apart in reaction to America's obvious goal of total world domination. Old friends are turning their backs on us, in revulsion to the bloody misery that our leaders are intentionally inflicting upon the world. The lying mainstream media is content to bask in the glorious presence of the American Reich, while they spread the official lies which are meant to divide the American people and keep them ignorant, everyone apparently oblivious to the diabolical nature of the plot and the costs that the world will pay for us to preserve our bloated "way of life."

The war based on lies is fought on many national battle fronts, where carefully constructed lies (grand conspiracies) are inserted into unsuspecting populations in order to further the myth of an international terrorist conspiracy. The preferred method of transmission is to use gossip "grapevines" to spread new distorted versions of conspiracy theories. This is most successfully accomplished if the disinformation is spread by trusted locals. This is true for introducing damaging misleading rumors into like-minded communities, no matter the size of the rumor, or its nature. A rumor's source determines its credibility just as much as the truth of the rumor itself. The purpose is always to create division within the group, by the use of false information to cover-up vital knowledge, which would otherwise unite and inspire the people.

The basis of the psyops campaign directed at the world (war on terrorism) is the big lie, a lie that is so big as to make it incomprehensible. The big lie always concern a conspiracy theory, created through a series of "whispering campaigns." The people are subjected to a series of self-confirming lies which serve to corroborate each other when brought together, giving convincing proof of a design that cannot be explained by "coincidences." The aim of the real all-encompassing grand conspiracy theory is to hide proof of its existence, for as long as possible. By pumping-out semi-true information about lesser conspiracies, real information is obscured in the ensuing uproar, truth-seekers are successfully discredited and mislabeled as "conspiracy theorists."

Here in America, where we have not yet crossed the threshold of unbridled government violence, the deception is aimed at the political opposition groups who are digging-away at the official lies and cover-ups that have made the insanity of the war on terrorism possible. The anti-war movement, the Constitutionalist movement and the 911 Truth movements all threaten to derail the machinery that is carrying us into the police state, the ghettoized America that awaits everyone outside of the elite. The time will come when the secret army of truth-seekers will overcome the official lies that cover-up the truth about what has been done to America, and America has done to the world. When the thousands of patriotic Americans and the even greater number of truth-seekers worldwide who hate us manage to break through the wall of official lies, the government of the United States will fall. It is inevitable.

In searching for proof of state terrorism in the 911 attacks, too many people have proven themselves to be more than willing to abandon logic, whenever unfolding answers to the vital questions lead them into uncomfortable territory. There is ample proof here of a conspiracy between national intelligence services to kill thousands of Americans, as a first step in a plan to commit genocide on a global scale. To say otherwise is to participate in another big lie. The power of the big lie is that it immobilizes decent people, who cannot believe that there are other humans, their fellow countrymen, who could be so inhumane as to join a plot to kill half the human race.

Out of sheer laziness and overwhelming fear, motivated by an organized campaign of hyper-patriotism, the American people have embraced a plan for the wholesale slaughter of innocent people, the scope of which, would have embarrassed Hitler's most grandiose dreams. The ugly truth is that our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, are going to be conscripted in a perpetual war to kill half of the world. The innocent children of the world do not deserve what we are about to do to them. Our grandchildren deserve a better inheritance than this.

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It is standard operating procedure for our government to never divulge the truth to the American people, unless it cannot be avoided. Press conferences and news releases are tailored to hide the truth behind the official lies. Entire electoral campaigns are composed of nothing but orchestrated lies. The State of the Union message is a compilation of the noblest lies, meant to inspire the people with lofty-sounding pseudo-truths, arranged in a colorful message of hope, tied-up with the applause of "bi-partisan" approval. Nothing is more chilling than the sight of 535 elected leaders applauding a leering, pompous, would-be emperor of the world, as he sends the world's most powerful military force, to slaughter millions of the world's most defenseless people, all in the name of maintaining inflated profits.

There is nothing more threatening to tyrants than an informed public. That is why there is no place for truth in our collapsing democracy today. If, in the end, a shrine to truth cannot be erected within our government, then our Republic may still remain standing, but there will be nothing democratic about it.... "

~ From Warfare of the Whisper – dividing the people and keeping them ignorant ~

War and the 'Dawn of the Cognetic Age'

Amazingly, the author of this diatribe sees Islamic terrorism as the only opposition to U.S. ideological supremacy. He does have one conclusion that compensates for this narrow point of view: "If our policies support the objectives, we should stay with them; if they do not, we must change them."


" ... Editorial Abstract: Colonel Johnson uses the term “cognetic” to mean putting thought into motion, ideally with global impact. Militant Islam has proven very adept at exploiting the cognetic realm to foment disillusionment and advance its agenda. The author urges the United States, starting with policy makers responsible for national security, to adopt and apply cognetic thinking in order to reorient US grand strategy so that the nation can wage and win ideological warfare.

This article introduces the term cognetic, coined by the author from the root words cognitive (relating to thought process) and kinetic (relating to, caused by, or producing motion). Currently, the term lacks a single, accepted meaning. I intend to use it in a unique way in order to define the essence of today's fast-moving, unrestrained, nonstop global media (the Internet and transnational television) and their effect on public opinion and behavior. To be cognetic is to put thought in motion with impact. Thought takes the form of messages created by specific arrangements of images, sounds, and words. Motion signifies the global media's unrestrained and rapid movement of messages to a target audience. Impact represents the effect on public opinion and behavior caused by perceptions generated by the message. Violent public reactions in the Muslim world to the publication of cartoons depicting Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and to Pope Benedict XVI's remarks about Islam epitomize the term cognetic—putting thought in motion with a global impact.¹

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The nature of warfare in the Cognetic Age is ideological—something inherently antithetical to conventional war because “an idea cannot be destroyed with a bullet or a bomb; it must be replaced by a better idea.”

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Unlike bombs and bullets—the effective conventional weapons of the Industrial Age—imagery, sounds, and words serve as the effective ideological weapons of the Cognetic Age.
Target: Public Opinion
Abraham Lincoln once observed that “our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.”¹⁰ His message cuts to the heart of a major lesson of war, namely, that those who most effectively master the medium of communication which influences public opinion can determine the outcome of wars. Many examples from our own short history reinforce this statement.

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Warfare by maneuver stems from a desire to circumvent a problem by attacking it from a position of advantage rather than meeting it straight on. With its goal the application of strength against weakness, maneuver, by definition, relies on speed and surprise because without either, one cannot concentrate strength against an enemy's weakness. Tempo, itself a weapon—often the most important—in turn requires decentralized control. Although attrition operates principally in the physical realm of war, maneuver produces both physical and moral results. Maneuver seeks not so much to destroy physically as to shatter the enemy's cohesion, organization, command, and psychological balance.¹⁵
Maneuver warfare focuses on the human (moral-psychological) element—the true center of gravity of any type of warfare—making it an excellent basis for cognetics. On close inspection, the principles of maneuver warfare largely apply to the way militant Islam employs global media to carry out cognetic attacks on public opinion.

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Samuel B. Griffith's translation of The Art of War offers insight into how Sun Tzu sought to win without fighting, eerily paralleling how militant Islam and other US foes employ cognetics to divide and conquer America and its allies. According to Griffith, “The master conqueror frustrated his enemy's plans and broke up his alliances. He created cleavages between sovereign and minister, superiors and inferiors, commanders and subordinates. His spies and agents were active everywhere, gathering information, sowing dissension and nurturing subversion. The enemy was isolated and demoralized; his will to resist broken. Thus without battle his army was conquered, . . . his state overthrown” (emphasis added).

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By its very nature, every form of warfare is competitive. Winning requires finding and employing the most effective means of gaining an advantage over the opponent. In the Cognetic Age, the global media's power to influence vast numbers of people worldwide gives militant Islam an advantage over the West in the ideological war.
Continuing at a disadvantage by emphasizing conventional military solutions to fight an ideological war will only draw out this conflict. Thus, counteracting the long-war premise requires a decisive change in thinking to reorient our current grand strategy away from its heavy emphasis on conventional military force toward one that focuses on fighting an ideological war. This does not mean abandoning the punishing stick of military force. We will still need it for coercive effect to some degree, but it will not win the war. To win, we must neutralize militant Islam's advantage in the global media.

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We must adopt cognetic thinking to create a shared, systematic way of conceptualizing, communicating, and carrying out ideological warfare against militant Islam. The top US strategy documents all recognize that winning the war against this foe requires winning the battle of ideas. Cognetics provides the terminology, concepts, principles, and system needed to harmonize diverse government entities into a coherent and cohesive whole, thus enabling the government to mount a well-coordinated and effective ideological assault on militant
Islam. ... "

~ From Fighting Ideological War by Putting Thought in Motion with Impact ~

New U.S. Army Field Manual: 'Soldiers and leaders must master information'

Winning battles and engagements is important but not decisive by itself; shaping the civil situation in concert with other government agencies, international organizations, civil authorities and multinational forces will be just as important to campaign success, according to the new FM.

The new operations manual institutionalizes the need for cultural awareness, which is critical to understanding populations and their perceptions to reduce friction, and prevent misunderstanding, thereby improving a force's ability to accomplish its mission.

Soldiers and leaders must master information. To the people, perception is reality. Altering perceptions requires accurate, truthful information presented in a way that accounts for how people absorb and interpret information with messages that have broad appeal and acceptance. This is the essence of information engagement in the new FM.

"We have come to recognize that in the 21st Century, the information domain is a critical component," said Caldwell. "It is how you perform information operations, how you perform psychological operations, how we take and embed and link all of these together while we are performing non-lethal forms of stability operations. This is a major change and one of our key elements of combat power."

~ From Army Unveils New Field Manual for Operations ~