HOME • Chronology of Terror • Bibliographies • Valuable Websites • About This Site • SITE MAP
ACTION • NEWS • Solutions • Candles in the darkness • Revealing Quotes 1 2 3 4 • Letters • SEARCH

“Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.”

— General Alexander Haig
former Secretary of State
June 12, 1982

Civil Disobedience
and Tax Resistance

“Non-cooperation with injustice is a sacred duty.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”

— Abraham Lincoln
First Inaugural Address
March 4, 1861

The evil U.S. government must be overthrown. It has been fundamentally designed to support genocidal imperialism, mass-media deceit and pervasive corruption, and therefore it cannot be reformed. The total overthrow of the United States Corporate Mafia Government is a dire necessity. The only question is how to do it.

“This [corporate capitalist] system cannot be stopped by force. It is violent and ruthless beyond the capacity of any people’s resistance movement. The only way I can even imagine stopping it is through massive non-cooperation.”

— Judi Bari
social justice activist & forest defender
http://www.judibari.org/

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.
emancipator

The strategy of people like Mahatma Gandhi, Judi Bari and Martin Luther King, that of nonviolent civil-disobedience, is generally the most effective way for people, both within America and around the world, to battle the virtually demonic United States government and military.

The Strategy of Nonviolent Mass-Protest
and Local Media Takeovers

Massive peaceful protests are essential, and the bigger the better. When they’re big enough they serve to inform media-brainwashed Americans that widespread opposition to the criminal government does exist. That greatly encourages more and more people to speak out, creating a psychological snowballing effect. Massive anti-government, anti-war protests also serve to energize those who participate and give hope to all conscientious people who hear about them. Eventually the protests will get so massive, prolonged and pervasive that they will shut down the U.S. Corporate Mafia Government for good.

In order to accomplish that goal, one of the essential intermediate tactics will be the physical takeover of all corporate media outlets by the American people. All across the nation, in every locality, local anti-government people must physically occupy television stations, radio stations and newspapers, and permanently convert them from the dirty lie-machines they are today, to sources of truth and decency. The takeovers must be done nonviolently, and that will be possible only if enough people are involved. When entire communities back the takeovers, they will also have control of the local cops. And if this is done in thousands of localities across the nation, the U.S. Corporate Mafia Government will be overwhelmed, and it will be futile for them to single out any one town for punishment using the National Guard, the Army or any other evil military force.

When honest, anti-war, anti-government, local people have control of local media outlets, the truth will spread very rapidly, and the numbers of people who are coming out of their brainwashed stupor will grow to overwhelming proportions. This will give rise to larger protests and takeovers until the U.S. government loses control of the nation, city by city and state by state. Eventually all government buildings in Washington D.C. will be occupied and taken over by the human beings in America. War-crimes trials will be held for the Bush regime, the regimes which follow it, and the corporate/banking plutocracy which is behind them all.

Of course many of the freaks who run the government will retreat to their high-tech underground bunkers before they can be caught — and let them stay there! Seal the entrances! They can’t launch their missiles against everybody. Everything depends on massive numbers of people using nonviolent, focused, well-planned tactics. Tens of millions of people need to be involved in liberating themselves and each other to make it happen.

The bigger the various protests and takeover actions are, the less likely it will be that uniformed criminals will beat, arrest and torture large numbers of people. In a really massive demonstration there truly is safety in numbers. It’s essential though, that the people in the demonstration be self-policing, nonviolently neutralizing the agents-provocateur which the cops have planted in the crowds. Anyone who openly provokes the cops is very likely working with them. The cops are trying to create an excuse to attack the crowds because they know they have no legal or moral right to order the nonviolent crowds to disperse.

Drug-crazed cops:
The self-defeating U.S. government strategy of police brutality

WTO protests, Seattle, December 1999

Unfortunately it also happens that even without agents-provocateur, when the peaceful protestors do nothing to provoke the cops, the cops attack anyway. As with U.S. Air Force pilots, the criminal cops during demonstrations are actually high on drugs — amphetamines — given to them by their local police departments. So they attack without provocation.

Of course the crooked cops claim they have a right to attack when they order the crowds to disperse and the crowds refuse. But the cops have no right to order the crowds of protesters to disperse. That’s what they need to understand. The protesters have a legal right and a moral duty to protest injustice. They have a Constitutional right to freedom of speech and assembly. The cops are ordered by their superiors to attack the crowds, but those orders are illegal and immoral. Those orders should therefore be disobeyed.

But since the cops are high on drugs, as well as adrenaline, they couldn’t care less if the orders they’re given are illegal and immoral. They attack because they want to keep their dirty jobs and because they are violent, criminal thugs to begin with. So America is a place where groups of violent criminals in uniform can get away with brutally attacking and abusing large groups of courageous, moral, law abiding people.

Philadelphia police-thugs attacking a protester at the Free Mumia rally, December 8, 2001. The pig with the gun first gratuitously held it to the head of the young man pictured. A crowd of worried people then gathered and demanded that the pigs let the man go, so the pig also threatened the people with his gun. See: Philadelphia Cops Ambush Rally

That’s what happened in the Battle of Seattle in 1999, and in the protests in D.C., Los Angeles and Philadelphia in 2000 and Portland, Oregon in 2001. The overwhelming majority of protesters were peaceful in every case, and yet the psychotic pigs descended into an adrenaline and amphetamine-fueled frenzy anyway, beating up with fists and batons everyone they could get their hands on, attacking city buses full of ordinary commuters and forcing them all to flee, slamming young women face down onto the concrete sidewalk and breaking their teeth loose, shooting rubber bullets into young men’s mouths at close range and breaking their teeth out, roaming like packs of wolves into residential neighborhoods and shooting rubber bullets at families, children, old people and anything else that moved, dropping concussion grenades from helicopters and firing them from shotguns into crowds of nonviolent people, tear-gassing and pepper-spraying everyone and everything in sight while old ladies with asthma choked and almost died. It’s a wonder nobody did die. Or maybe somebody did and it was covered up by the corporate “news” media.

This is what is known as a “pig riot”. The pigs are totally out of their minds, and later they get patted on the head for it by the corrupt local police chief and heartily congratulated on the corporate McNews. The same thing happened in Chicago in 1968.

In Portland, Oregon the crazed pigs even pepper-sprayed children and mothers with babies. As the children and babies screamed in pain and terror and their mothers cried, the pigs sneered and laughed about it. And afterwards the corporate “news” commentators blamed the parents, of course, for having the gall to bring their children to a peaceful, legal protest where they were exercising their Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and the only violent people were the lawbreaking, drugged-up pigs.

Makes perfect sense doesn’t it? No? Well here, take a few of these capsules, courtesy of the Police Department. You’ll see the light!

With scenes like these, therefore, it was no wonder that in 1999 a few young men in Seattle vented their rage by breaking Starbuck’s shop windows. What is a wonder is that nobody has yet killed any of these filthy, drug-crazed, criminal pigs. Guess who the good guys are? (Clue: they’re not wearing uniforms.) But the futile vandalism of a handful of enraged teenagers then provided golden opportunities for the corporate McNews media to characterize all the protesters as “violent” as they played videotapes of “all those terrible, drug-taking, commie, anarchist protesters” on the nightly “news” for the benefit of all the mind-controlled morons who were still politically retarded enough to trust what they see on the boob tube.

The self-defeating U.S. government strategy of stolen elections

Naturally that year of outrages succeeded only in deepening and intensifying a growing nationwide rebellion against U.S. government tyranny. So the corporate/banking plutocracy figured it would take care of business once and for all by openly stealing the election of 2000 and installing the fascist, war-criminal Bush regime. But that only succeeded in making the rebellion wider and deeper.

You know, the fascists can’t win. The only problem is, they don’t know it yet.

The self-defeating U.S. government strategy of false-flag terror attacks

So next on the agenda, the fascist Bush regime committed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and blamed it on “Moslems”, because Moslem countries just happen to be sitting on top of the world’s greatest oil reserves. And because the racist Zionist plutocracy which controls both America and Israel wants to destroy all Moslem countries in the Middle East. And because that same corporate/banking plutocracy figured that with 9-11 they’d play the old trick of uniting the country against a “common enemy” scapegoat.

It worked for awhile, long enough to slaughter several thousand innocent civilian men, women and children in Afghanistan who had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the 9-11 attacks.

But by 2002 the whole scheme began to unravel as it became clearer to growing numbers of Americans that the U.S. government has a whole lot to hide regarding its complicity in 9-11.

And so the nationwide rebellion has resumed growing with a vengeance and become truly worldwide, on a scale unprecedented in world history. The demonstrations of 2002, 2003 and 2004 have been so massive that they have even sobered the speed-intoxicated pigs somewhat. It looks like amphetamines just aren’t strong enough to convince them to attack a crowd 500,000 people all at once. Maybe the pigs will be issued LSD next.

As long as the protests continue to be this massive, the strategy of nonviolent non-cooperation will continue to be bearable, and will ultimately succeed in overthrowing the satanic ruling order.

The Strategy of Mass Self-Defense

Nonviolence is a good way of life, and it doesn’t mean weakness and passivity. In times like these, passive wimpiness is a liability. If it gets to the point where the pigs and the various governmental goon squads start making massive nationwide arrests, kicking in people’s doors and dragging them away in the middle of the night, then it’s time for the American people to fight back aggressively and defend themselves and each other.

As Patrick Henry said: “Give me liberty or give me death!” I find that exclamation inherently liberating. With an attitude like that you can’t lose! I’d rather die than live as a slave. Slavery is a living death. And physical death is liberation from this world. So it’s better to live in freedom and die in freedom. We all have that opportunity, if only we will take it.

It is the long-term, daily passivity of so many Americans that has allowed the fascists to take over in the first place. It’s high time for that to change. The fact that so many people in America are well-armed and determined to defend themselves and their freedom is therefore a good thing. Obviously, isolated individuals and small groups can’t stand up to the firepower of the U.S. military, but again, the people’s greatest material strength lies in their massive numbers. When millions of Americans are prepared to fight the satanic U.S. government to the death to preserve their freedom, they will be invincible.

The regular U.S. military won’t slaughter large numbers of Americans because it’s composed of Americans. They’re happy to slaughter women and children in other countries, but most American military personnel would draw the line at murdering American women and children, at least those of their own race. If they were ordered to indiscriminately slaughter fellow Americans, there would be a massive mutiny within the ranks, and the government would be finished.

The government knows that, of course, and that’s the reason for all the heavily-armed covert agencies and secret armies it has been cultivating for many years. Many of these thugs are foreign mercenaries who would be only too happy to slaughter large numbers of Americans without hesitation. In that event, however, there’s a good chance that many regular U.S. military units would intervene, leading to a civil war within the U.S. military/government. Sooner or later, regardless of exactly how it finally works out, the government and corporate/banking plutocracy will be defeated and destroyed.

In addition, even though the American corporate/banking plutocracy cares nothing for the American people, there is an economic factor that will constrain the criminals. Massive state terrorism against the American people would create so much chaos that the economy would permanently collapse, if it hadn’t already. Then the war-criminals wouldn’t have the money to pay for all their weapons of mass destruction. And nations around the world would leap at the chance to finish the devils off. America is deservedly the most hated nation in the world.

The American economy is a very complex and delicate thing, utterly dependent on relationships of trust and voluntary cooperation. That is the only thing that protects Americans from the kind of massive government violence they inflict on the people of other countries. That is why the U.S. government works so hard to keep everybody mind-controlled through the schools and the corporate mass-media. In the fascist third-world countries which America controls, the governments can afford to terrorize and slaughter large numbers of their own people because those fascist governments are financed by American taxpayers. But the U.S. government is not financed by an outside source. It literally can’t afford to terrorize and mass-murder Americans on a large scale, because that would be “killing the goose that lays the golden egg”, destroying the government’s own source of income.

So vigorous self-defense by massive numbers of people is a good revolutionary strategy. Furthermore, any decent person who is murdered by the U.S. government will become a martyr, and the memory of them will deepen and strengthen the resolve of everyone else. The martyrdom of good people will be the powerful sparks that help to ignite the coming Revolution — and keep it burning until the oppressors are consumed.

People have a natural right to defend themselves, their loved ones, their friends, families, neighbors and anyone else they choose, by whatever realistic and moral means they choose, against any and all criminals, uniformed or not. Whenever possible the defense should be nonviolent. But when violently attacked, people have a perfect right to physically defend themselves, no matter who the attacker is. If that results in the injury or death of the attacker, the greater responsibility lies with the attacker, not the defender.

The greatest power people can have, however, is not material but spiritual. And that spiritual power depends on living by a higher moral standard and seeking higher guidance.

The deadly problem of false-flag state terrorism

History shows that the U.S. government and military have no qualms whatsoever about committing acts of massive state terrorism, on any pretext they choose, real or invented, against whole populations of innocent civilian people. And if any group or individual dares to give the American Empire a taste of its own medicine, that provides the Imperial world-rulers with precisely the public relations ammunition they need to continue their crimes against humanity.

For this reason there is no doubt that the U.S. government actually wants relatively small-scale terrorist acts to be committed against it. Such tiny and utterly useless acts of retribution provide the mass-media propaganda-machine with golden opportunities to distract the public from America’s own massive and relentless state terrorism.

And when the U.S. government fails to elicit such valuable terror attacks from foreign terrorists, it simply creates them itself, and makes it look like foreign terrorists are responsible. This is known as a “false-flag operation” or a “false-flag recruitment”.

Terror attacks have an incalculable propaganda value for the “victim” nation. This is why the U.S. government has planned and committed false-flag terror attacks in the past and will continue to do so. In 1962, U.S. military leaders had a plan for conducting terrorist acts against Americans while blaming Cuba. Codenamed “Operation Northwoods”, the plan was intended to provide the propaganda necessary to create popular sentiment for an invasion of Cuba. “Operation Northwoods” was never carried out, but other plans have been.

When the terrorist incident is international it provides the needed excuse for a pre-planned campaign of American state terrorism that advances the American plutocracy’s geopolitical strategy in some way. When the incident is domestic it provides a perfect excuse for increased police-state oppression within the U.S. for the purpose of crushing all domestic opposition. In the case of the September 11 attacks, it provided both.

There is a growing body of evidence which makes it absolutely certain that the U.S. military/government itself committed the September 11 attacks with the help of the Israeli Mossad.

See:

The United States Government Committed the September 11 Attacks

9-11, Mossad, the CIA and “False Flag Operations”

9-11 Was a Mossad “False Flag Operation”

Fake Terror: the Road to Dictatorship

The Israeli Connection To 9-11

Fox News Special Report: Israeli Spying on the U.S.

Massive Israeli Spy Ring Linked to September 11

Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS

The CIA, Insider Trading and the WTC Terror Attack

It is entirely in the self-interest of the United States government to covertly commit limited acts of terrorism against American citizens, and even against its own expendable employees in embassies and bureaucratic offices, while blaming it on any convenient scapegoat it chooses. Without some kind of Divine Intervention to stop them, the U.S. government and corporate/banking plutocracy will be sure to continue this strategy. They can’t afford not to, if they want to cling to their power.

This U.S. government strategy of false-flag terrorism is a deadly threat to the currently-evolving Revolution. As the nationwide rebellion continues to grow, all the U.S. government has to do is commit another covert terrorist attack on Americans and again blame it on “Moslem terrorists”. It will thereby enlist the aid of millions of ignorant, brainwashed, brain-dead flag-wavers in destroying all opposition to government tyranny. It’s a foolproof strategy that has worked countless times before for thousands of years, used by many a bloodthirsty monster, from Caesar to Hitler to Ariel Sharon.

Until the U.S. government is overthrown, therefore, the only human defense against this is an intelligent, well-informed population that absolutely refuses to be fooled. For that, people must inform themselves and each other of real history, of the true nature of the U.S. military/government and the corporate/banking plutocracy which owns them. When people know the truth they will know that these war criminals are genocidal beasts that will stop at absolutely nothing to cling to their evil power, including the mass-murder of Americans.

The nature of the Beast

People who don’t want to believe that the U.S. military/government is that ruthless should stop to think for a moment about what America has done throughout the 20th century, and continues to do into the 21st. Any government and military that will commit several bloody genocides totalling millions of people is not going to feel the slightest bit of guilt over violently murdering a few hundred or a few thousand people, even its own people, in a self-created, politically helpful, false-flag terror attack.

Those who don’t already know need to understand that the American military and CIA are composed of people who, by any clinical standard, are literally homicidal psychopaths. They are quite happy to slaughter the civilian men, women and children of entire nations that dare merely to be independent of the United States. The bloodthirsty butchery, torture and terrorization, by the CIA and the American military, of millions of helpless civilian people in Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Yugoslavia, the Philippines, Libya, Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia and many other countries are prime examples.

The historical record makes it very clear that human life has no value for the U.S. government and military. They and their corporate/banking masters are in fact an utterly ruthless, corporate capitalist mafia which will murder and torture anyone at all who is a serious threat to their wealth and power. And the greatest threat to their wealth and power exists not outside the borders of the U.S., but within it.

That is the real reason why the various militarized urban police forces, county sheriff’s departments, the National Guard, FEMA, the FBI, ATF, DEA, the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and many covert government agencies and secret armies have been training for urban warfare for many years. They have become very well armed and prepared to enforce a violent and fascist American police state.

The FBI’s murder of White men, women and children in Waco and Ruby Ridge, the Philadelphia pigs’ murder of Black men, women and children in the MOVE house and the FBI terrorism and murder of Lakota men, women and children on the Pine Ridge Reservation provide some relatively well-known examples of what is done to people who dare to be very publicly defiant of the U.S. government. The police brutality of nonviolent protestors in Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are examples of how the U.S. Corporate Mafia Government deals violently even with peaceful public protest.

But protest we must, in every nonviolent way possible. And one of the most essential forms of peaceful protest is the withholding of taxes. If enough people would do this it would bring down the Beast very quickly — and thereby save a lot of innocent lives.

The Honorable Tradition of Tax Resistance

Do you really want to pay for the orgy of murder, rape and torture of men, women and children in Central and South America? That is precisely what American tax dollars have paid for in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala throughout the 20th century, and most intensely from the 1970s to the present day. And precisely that sort of bloody evil is what $1.3 billion of American taxpayers’ money is paying for in Colombia right now.

Is it okay with you that you’re working every day to pay the debts for the expensive, high-tech slaughter of helpless civilian men, women and children in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq? Those cruise missiles with which the heroic U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force butcher children cost over $1,000,000 each. Those who pay taxes to the U.S. government have blood on their hands.

If you’ve got a genuine moral conscience you will be a tax resister.

Every dollar that taxpayers obediently surrender to the genocidal U.S. military/government is a dollar it can use for its vicious military campaigns around the world. Therefore if you pay taxes to the U.S. government you must admit you are directly supporting their evil. There are no two ways about it — U.S. taxpayers are accomplices to U.S. military/government crimes against humanity. But we don’t have to be accomplices. We aren’t slaves (yet) and we can definitely do something about these horrors. To really “get ’em where they live” we’ve got to kick ’em in their budgets.

“Never do anything against conscience — even if the state demands it.”

— Albert Einstein

“If...the machine of government...is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”

— Henry David Thoreau
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
1849

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

— Benjamin Franklin
July 1776

Tax resistance is an old and highly honorable tradition in the United States. This country was founded by people who refused to pay taxes to the oppressive British government. Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay taxes for the unjust and brutal Mexican-American War. His famous essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, has inspired people for over a century-and-a-half, people like Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If a thousand [people] were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”

— Henry David Thoreau
during Mexican-American War of 1846-48

“When there’s a single thief, it’s robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it’s taxation.”

— Vanya Cohen

“When we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without a government, our calamities are heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”

— Thomas Paine
Common Sense

 
A few facts about tax resistance ¹

“Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.”

— General Alexander Haig
former U.S. Secretary of State
June 12, 1982
referring to the unprecedented
crowd of one million people
who were rallying at the U.N.
for global nuclear disarmament

“If they had started to refuse to pay their taxes, I don’t know what we would have done.”

— “Lord” Mountbattan
British Viceroy of India
referring to the people of India
and Mahatma Ghandi’s
movement for independence

As of 2001, it was estimated that at least 10,000 morally courageous American citizens were openly withholding their tax dollars from the criminal U.S. government, and redirecting their money toward positive, decent purposes. The number of tax resisters is certain to be much higher now.

The U.S. government and its unconstitutional IRS depend on psychological intimidation to prevent that number from growing into a massive, nationwide tax revolt by tens of millions of good people. The U.S. government is literally a mafia, and like all mafias it relies on violence and threats of violence to keep people under control.

The IRS would like you to think it can legally throw you in jail for refusing to pay taxes, but it has no such legal power. All it can legally do is recommend criminal prosecution, but it does so only in cases of so-called “serious and flagrant violation”, and then only after a full investigation. It does eventually extort money from about 50% of tax resisters, but it costs the IRS about $4000 for every $1000 they extort. That’s what makes tax resistance a very effective strategy, even if they do eventually steal your money. If millions of people refused to pay their taxes the IRS would be as confounded as “Lord” Mountbattan. And war criminals like Al Haig would be very upset.

There are tax resisters who have never been pursued after more than 10 years of open, courageous resistance. Of the tens of thousands of tax resisters who have refused, on moral grounds, to pay taxes over the years, only about twenty have ever been jailed. In each of those cases there were other alleged violations involved beyond the refusal to pay taxes that go to military purposes.

In the summer of 2000 seven tax resisters made a public show of trying to turn themselves in to IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C. IRS officials refused even to talk to them, locking them out of the office and hoping to avoid any more publicity.

Varieties of tax resistance

• You can choose to live in simplicity, making below the taxable income. Highly recommended — if you can live in a tolerable environment. This is my personal choice, and I’m richer because of it. The beauty of this approach is that you have nothing to hide, no IRS collection suits to battle, and there is absolutely nothing (so far) the U.S. government can do about it.

  There are personal psychological benefits as well. If you are not addicted to materialism you know that the fewer possessions you have the freer you feel. Time, freedom, satisfying activity and real friends are infinitely more valuable than all the money and possessions in the world.

• You can refuse to pay the 3% federal excise tax on your phone bill. Thousands of good people in America are already doing this. Phone companies will not turn off your phone. In fact, they even have their computers set up to delete this amount from your next bill. This eliminates several million dollars per year from the military budget. Of course that’s a microscopic fraction of the $400 Billion the Pentagon bloodsucks from taxpayers every year, but it’s worth doing anyway on moral principle. So many people are now doing this that there is no way the government can enforce payment.

  The only risk involved is that your government file (and everybody with a Social Security number has one) will definitely be amended to label you as some kind of unpatriotic “subversive”. But hey, that’s an honor!

• Some people refuse to pay a percentage of their federal income tax, such as the 50% (at least) that is currently vampirized by the Pentagon death machine. Others are making the token gesture of withholding $9.11 of their income tax, in protest against U.S. government complicity in the 9-11 attacks. Unfortunately, that makes their consciences worth exactly $9.11. Not much of a conscience.

  Withholding a percentage or a token amount doesn’t change the reality that whatever amount of money you do pay to the IRS, over half of it goes straight to the genocidal U.S. military. Therefore the only honestly moral course of action is to refuse to pay 100% of the illegal federal income tax. Only by refusing 100% are you not paying for the mass-murder, torture, rape and impoverishment of people all over the world.

• When you refuse to pay one red cent to the babykillers, there are two approaches you can take:

  1. Not filing a tax return at all. This might be the best course of action in most cases. When you file a tax return you are waiving your Fifth Amendment right to not be a witness against yourself. Federal income taxes are actually voluntary. There is no law that requires you to file a federal income tax return or to pay taxes.

  2. If you choose to file a return without payment and waive your Fifth Amendment right, it’s recommended that you send a letter along with your tax forms explaining why you are refusing to pay. The letter should also have the formal “CC:” (carbon copy) notation at the bottom, listing everyone to whom you’re sending copies, such as your elected representatives. This is just to make it all as public and “on the record” as possible, not because your representatives will be helpful in any way. In all likelihood your so-called “representatives” are venal whores of the federal government, and they may well be hostile to your act of morality. So a copy should certainly go to a good tax-resistance lawyer too.

     The risk is that the IRS may initiate collection procedures within 1 to 3 years. If so, they’ll send you letters demanding payment, including interest and penalty charges. This harassment will likely continue for several years. There is the possibility that at some point the IRS will simply stop harassing you and shelve your case. But if they decide to pursue it they will start threatening to “seize” (steal) your assets, such as your bank account, your paycheck and your property in any amount they say you owe. Many people hide their assets from the Infernal Rip-off Service in a variety of ways, including overseas accounts. But the U.S. government is putting increasing political pressure on the nations that profit from being overseas “tax havens”, so I would guess that using them will be increasingly risky in the future.

  Even if they eventually manage to steal your money or assets, you will still have won, particularly if you dragged it on for as long as possible. On average it costs the IRS $4000 for every $1000 they extort from tax resisters. The longer you fight them the more you make them pay. And every dollar you force them to spend going after your taxes is a dollar they can’t spend to butcher children in impoverished countries around the world.

• You can take the money you refuse to squander on the Pentagon and put it in a special escrow account for “refused military taxes” such as those listed below. Your money earns interest and is combined with other un-squandered tax monies to fund non-profit projects that serve peace, environmental and human rights programs. As of 2001, the Seattle fund had about $350,000 of refused tax dollars invested in such projects. Your money can be withdrawn at any time if it’s needed.

• You can use the money you have rescued from the tax collector and put it to good use supporting projects of your own choosing. It’s recommended that you keep detailed records of this to show the IRS, if you filed a tax return without payment. The records are helpful for your legal defense, demonstrating your support of positive, healthy social programs that, unlike those of the Pentagon, actually don’t murder people. (What a concept!)

• You can support other tax resisters in demonstrations, letters to newspapers and financial contributions to tax resistance groups.

 
Note:

1. Many thanks to Kayla Starr for her article, Money Talks, Sentient Times, February-March 2001, from which the above section, “A Few Facts About Tax Resistance”, has been adapted.   [Back]

Below are some organizations that offer information and support for war tax resisters, as well as funds and escrow accounts for refused military taxes:

National War Tax Resistance
Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC)
http://www.nwtrcc.org/
P.O. Box 6512
Ithaca, NY  14851
(800) 269-7464
email: nwtrcc@nwtrcc.org

“The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is a coalition of groups from across the U.S., formed in 1982 to provide information and support to people involved in or considering some form of war tax resistance (WTR).

“Affiliate organizations and individual supporters are joined together in a common struggle for a more just and peaceful society. We oppose militarism and war and refuse to participate in the tax system which supports such violence.

“NWTRCC sees poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, economic exploitation, environmental destruction and militarization of law enforcement as integrally linked with the militarism which we abhor. Through the redirection of our tax dollars NWTRCC members contribute directly to the struggle for peace and justice for all. NWTRCC promotes war tax resistance within the context of a broad range of nonviolent strategies for social change, and is firmly embedded in the peace movement.”

“NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals. These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability. WTR actions are undertaken in accordance with each individual’s moral, religious or political conscience, and are hoped to contribute toward changing the priorities and policies of the U.S. government.”

NWTRCC makes available the book: War Tax Resistance: A Guide To Withholding Your Support From The Military

“The most comprehensive guide to war tax resistance (WTR), including philosophical and political questions, information on the federal budget, the history of WTR, personal WTR stories, methods, consequences, international WTR, WTR organizing, and more.”

War Tax Resistance:
How to Stop Paying for Militarism
http://www.nacc.info/wtr-fly.htm

“...about half of all federal spending goes to the military, by far the highest such percentage of any industrialized country in the world. The federal budget reflects the government’s warped priorities: to protect vast corporate wealth by military force, whatever the costs.”

Northern California War Tax Resistance and People’s Fund
P.O. Box 2422
Berkeley, CA  94702
(510) 843-9877

Conscience and Military Tax Escrow Account
4554 12th NE
Seattle, WA  98105
(206) 720-0952

War Resisters League
http://www.warresisters.org/
339 Lafayette Street
New York, NY  10012

Peace House
P.O. Box 524
Ashland, OR  97520
(541) 482-9625

War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
http://www.nonviolence.org/archivedsites/resource/wtrpf.htm

“War tax resisters in the United States have a long history of witness against war. Just as conscientious objectors have resisted military service, war tax resisters have refused to pay for war as far back as colonial times.”

Related pages

Solutions: American Revolution 2
and a Humane Future of International Socialist Democracy

The social and political facts of life are exactly the opposite of the smooth-talking capitalist propaganda that is incessantly beamed at you through the mind-controlling mass-media. The televised, corporate, Disneyland version of reality is always trying to sell you the fantasy that America is basically a righteous “democracy” run by honest, God-fearin’ “elected representatives” who have “only your best interests at heart.” Meanwhile, in the hard, cold, real world, America is being run into the ground by a criminal plutocracy which ruthlessly exploits everybody else for as much as it can get away with. The plutocracy which invariably rules every capitalist society is in fact a greedy parasite of the working classes — who are the vast majority of people.

International socialist democracy is the natural next step in the world’s political evolution. Corporate capitalism is a morally degraded political dinosaur that is retarding the social and political evolution of the entire human race.

Thomas Jefferson Calling: The Time for Revolution is NOW
by John Kaminski

Socialism, real and fake
by Noam Chomsky

An Appeal to All Working People

This is the September 1996 election statement of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), and it’s every bit as relevant today as it was then. Although the SEP is a Marxist party, and thus hampered by the conceptual limitations of scientific materialism, this election statement is nevertheless the best primer I’ve found so far on the political, economic and moral ideals of international socialism.

A Note to the Reader in America

Only massive, nonviolent civil disobedience and tax resistance have the power to bring down the most violent, predatory empire in the world today.

Know Your Enemy:

The United States Government Committed the September 11 Attacks

The Israeli Connection To 9-11

War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick

Neighborhood Bully: American Militarism
interview with Ramsey Clark

The CIA, Insider Trading and the World Trade Center Terror Attack

Fake Terror: the Road to Dictatorship

Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS

U.S. Government Surveillance

U.S. Government Domestic Oppression

The Battle of Seattle

Terrorism Begins At Home: Police Brutality in America

America’s Techno-Fascist Future

Related sites

National War Tax Resistance
Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC)
http://www.nwtrcc.org/

“The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is a coalition of groups from across the U.S., formed in 1982 to provide information and support to people involved in or considering some form of war tax resistance (WTR).

“Affiliate organizations and individual supporters are joined together in a common struggle for a more just and peaceful society. We oppose militarism and war and refuse to participate in the tax system which supports such violence.

War Tax Resistance:
How to Stop Paying for Militarism
http://www.nacc.info/wtr-fly.htm

“...about half of all federal spending goes to the military, by far the highest such percentage of any industrialized country in the world. The federal budget reflects the government’s warped priorities: to protect vast corporate wealth by military force, whatever the costs.”

We The People Organization: Taxes – Showdown
http://www.givemeliberty.org/features/taxes/showdown.htm

“The federal income tax and social security tax are unconstitutional and illegal; the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the income tax amendment) never even came close to being ratified in 1913; federal income taxes are voluntary, not compulsory, and there is no law that requires citizens to file and pay federal income taxes...”

War Resisters League
http://www.warresisters.org/

International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism!
http://www.internationalanswer.org/

“Build a united and active anti-war movement!”

This site has a great deal of information for anti-war activists, including leaflets and flyers you can download. The International ANSWER Coalition is one of the main organizers of the recent massive protests.

Refuse & Resist!
http://www.refuseandresist.org/altindex.html

“Refuse & Resist is the organization for everyone who refuses to go along with today’s national agenda of repression and cruelty, poverty and punishment.”

International Action Center
http://www.iacenter.org

“Information, activism and resistance to U.S. militarism, war, and corporate greed, linking with struggles against racism and oppression within the United States.”

Bibliography

War Tax Resistance:
A Guide To Withholding Your Support From The Military
Available from the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee

“The most comprehensive guide to war tax resistance (WTR), including philosophical and political questions, information on the federal budget, the history of WTR, personal WTR stories, methods, consequences, international WTR, WTR organizing, and more.”

Body of Secrets:
Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
by James Bamford

In 1962, U.S. military leaders had a top-secret plan for committing terrorist attacks on Americans in Miami and Washington D.C., while blaming Cuba. Codenamed “Operation Northwoods”, the plan was intended to provide the propaganda necessary to create popular support for an invasion of Cuba.

Nonviolent Resistance (Satyagraha)
by Mohandas K. Gandhi
Dover Publications; ISBN 0-486-41606-2

Mahatma Gandhi was the leader of India’s great movement of independence from the bloodsucking British Empire, a liberation which was accomplished by means of nonviolent revolution in spite of British massacres. Gandhi and his followers thus gained the deep respect and admiration of millions of people around the world for their disciplined adherence to the policy of passive resistance, and his ideas were a driving force behind the American civil-rights movement.

This volume focuses on Gandhi’s vision of Satyagraha, whereby one appeals to reason and conscience and puts an end to evil by converting the evil-doer. The book begins with an explanation of the principles of Satyagraha and proceeds with detailed discussions of the self-training and courage necessary for it. Includes discussion of the use and effectiveness of such techniques as non-payment of fines and taxes, social boycotts, fasting, sympathetic strikes, and other forms of non-cooperation.

Autobiography:
The Story of My Experiments with Truth
by Mohandas K. Gandhi
Dover Publications; ISBN 0-486-24593-4

“Personal account of the life of the man who freed India from colonization through the Satyagraha (nonviolent protest) movement. His early boyhood life, legal studies, purification, and the ultimate salvation of his homeland are carefully recounted in this inspiring and critical work of insurmountable importance.”

War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick

101 Things To Do ’Til The Revolution
by Claire Wolf

“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”

“The ideal citizen of a tyrannical state is the man or woman who bows in silent obedience in exchange for the status of a well-cared-for herd animal. Thinking people become the tyrant’s worst enemies.

“Before their thunder roars, there is a period of anticipation, in which more occurs than the literal-minded tyrant can ever understand. A few overt acts of sedition shatter the heavy peace. But the greater force, unrecognized, rolls forward in near silence, as millions of individuals quietly withdraw their consent from the state. The pundits call it apathy. They could not be more wrong.

“That time is now. And we are those people.

“This book is dedicated to you, the enemy of the state.”

Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet):
101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom
by Claire Wolf

“Are you... fed up with the Powers That Be encroaching on your freedom?

“Have you... tried everything — voting, peaceful protest, letter writing, petitions — and found that it just didn’t work?

“Are you... beginning to think violent rebellion might be the ultimate, dreaded answer?

“Stop! Wait! There are a lot more things you can do!”

Against Empire
by Michael Parenti

“The history of imperialism is also, however, a history of resistance, struggle, and achievement; Against Empire offers compelling alternatives for progressive change.” .... “Precise, rational ways to transform public policy to build democratic institutions.”

Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum

The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark

Desert Slaughter:
The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky

Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti

The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee

To Kill A Nation:
The Attack on Yugoslavia
by Michael Parenti

Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum

Apocalypse 1945:
The Destruction of Dresden
by David Irving

What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky

Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan

The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman

Further bibliography:
Today’s Fascist America