War Tax Resistance

A Palestinian State?

2011-09-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

A Palestinian State?

As the United Nations prepares to debate Palestinian statehood, this seems an auspicious time to suggest a potential solution to this intractable conflict. The ideas underlying this proposal are drawn from a variety of sources, most notably from the writings of the late Baruch Kimmerling, a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University who proposed a two-state solution and the admission of both states to the European Union, and to Mark A. Levine, who argued for the creation of a state based on the Swiss model of cantons. It seems that both perspectives can be combined to creates a system that will have the best chance of gaining support from moderates on both sides.

Kimmerling's plan calls for a two-state solution rather than a one-state solution. In this way, both sides avoid living under the dominance of the “other” and the tragic violence that often accompanies it. Each people would have its own army and police force, an important point for both sides, albeit for different reasons.

In accordance with Kimmerling’s ideas, both Israel and the new Palestinian state should be admitted to the European Union. Although this will not happen until after Europe regains its economic equilibrium, such a step would benefit both sides. Since any citizen of an E.U. country can live in any other E.U. country, Palestinians could live in Israel while Israelis could live in Palestine. This proposal affords Palestinians a right of return but one that safeguards the existence of a sovereign Israeli state, since Palestinians living and working in Israel would not be citizens there, but in Palestine. Of course, if Palestine could join the E.U., tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees would no doubt move to, for example, Italy or England to work instead of remaining in refugee camps on Israel’s borders, a fact that would ease tensions in the region considerably.

Similarly, the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers living on the West Bank would not be forced to leave homes that they have inhabited for years and, in some cases, for decades. While it is easy to stereotype settlers as kipah-wearing Kahanists, many are poor Israelis from Mizrachi communities who saw moving to the West Bank as their only opportunity to escape Israeli slums. This proposal protects their interests as well.

As Kimmerling points out, one of the major obstacles to a peace settlement is the fact that two relatively sizable populations lay claim to one relatively small peace of land. EU membership greatly increases the land on which both peoples could live and work, thus easing population pressures.

While Zionists of all stripes object to a Palestinian right of return, a genuine and lasting settlement is impossible without it, largely because Palestinians will not accept a solution that leaves millions of their kin in refugee camps. Then, there is the moral imperative: it is difficult to understand the position of people who claim a right of return after two thousand years but wish to deny this right to other people who have been absent only sixty-three years. It is even harder to accept the actions of the Israeli government when they grant admission to Russians who have no Jewish ancestry and who have never been persecuted as Jews while denying the right of return to people who were forced out of their homes by war. (If you doubt this, read Kimmerling's Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians for an account of events leading to the Nakba.) Then, too, if current birth rates continue, Palestinians will outnumber Israel within the 1967 borders sometime during this century. Barring massive immigration of Jews from Israel and Canada or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Jewish demographic dominance will cease. In this case, Israel will be in the position of white South Africans and will be forced into major concessions. It seems better for Israelis to negotiate a settlement now, one that includes a right of return, from a position of relative strength than to wait until their backs are against the wall.

While a two-state solution provides a model for the larger political questions, the Swiss system of cantons provides a model for organizing the internal politics of each state. The idea of giving a relatively high level of power to decentralized local communities has two advantages for Israelis.

The first is that Israelis would have less to fear from the “demographic bomb” as Israeli Arabs become more numerous due to their somewhat higher birthrate. Under this system, Arabs in the Galilee would have little say in the affairs of Jews living in Tel Aviv. All communities would still retain substantial levels of control over their own affairs, something that would be more difficult under a highly centralized political system.

The second is that the canton system could potentially ease the second most contentious issue in Israeli politics—the tension between the secular and the religious. Under this system, citizens living in secular cantons could spend their Saturdays enjoying cultural opportunities—and spend Yom Kippur on the beach in their bikinis—while citizens of religious cantons could enjoy the peace of Shabbat and the company of modestly dressed women wearing marriage wigs.

One of the strongest features of the canton system is that these political units can be subdivided should the need arise. If, for example, Russian and Moroccan Jews want separate cantons, this remains possible. Similarly, cantons could theoretically unite when conditions change.

While there are no perfect solutions to nasty ethnic conflicts over territory, the combination of a two-state solution, E.U. membership, and local autonomy on the Swiss model offers hope for ameliorating the worst features of this ongoing tragedy. The ideas of Kimmerling and Magnes combine the best features of both the one-state and two-state solutions in that they allow each side to have its own state while protecting the interests of both Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlers who, although they acted wrongly in settling the West Bank, nevertheless have deep roots there.

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Even though I have a deep sympathy for the Palestinians, I haven't followed this issue closely since the start of the Iraq War in 2003 -- something about the beam in America's eye and the mote in Israel's eye. As much as I don't like what happens in Israel/Palestine, what America is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan and probably other places I don't know about is far worse than what Israel is doing.

Nevertheless, I have written some ideas about what an "ideal" peace plan would look like, although I offer it knowing that it is more ideal for the Palestinians than for the Israelis.

Palestinian Students In Lebanon Learn English

2011-08-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

This film was made by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who are learning English with LEAP, the Learning English Advancement Program. Because many exams in Lebanon are conducted in English, knowledge of this language is an essential skill for students hoping to go on to higher education. You can support LEAP and help Palestinian young people have a better future by donating to the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund, which provides assitance to LEAP.

An Op-Ed Piece in Ha'aretz

2011-08-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

Diana Kimmerling's Op-Ed on the Israel-Palestine Conflict

A dear friend of mine, Diana Kimmerling, is a progressive Israeli who wrote an op-ed piece in Ha'aretz that was published today. Its subject is the massive Israeli demonstrations protesting the high cost of housing in Israel. In the article, she took Israelis to task for their willingness to organize and protest when financial issues were concerned but their unwillingness to protest the denial of the most basic rights to Palestinians. As I read her article, I couldn't help but draw parallels with the American oppression of Middle Eastern people and the silence of Americans on this issue compared to their often vocal protests against U.S. economic policies.

Every Saturday for years now, Tea Party adherents gather at a major intersection in Fort Lauderdale demonstrating for their cause. It would be easy, but wrong, to demonize them. They are, for the most part, middle class people who worked hard, saved for retirement, and played by the rules, only to have their standard of living decline precipitously because of faulty government policies. Many of the demonstrators seem to be in their late fifties or sixties, meaning that it will be virtually impossible for them to recoup their standard of living before old age and failing health make it difficult to work.

Even though I sympathize with their economic plight, I have to wonder why they were not protesting in favor of fiscal responsibility when the Iraq war was at its worst. Government and media propaganda in favor of the war was so intense, so total, that I can't blame anyone for his initial support of the war. Yet, even after the American public had learned that there were no WMD and the Bush administration had been informed of this fact by the CIA, the Tea Party supporters remained silent. They still said nothing, even after Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the war would cost 3 TRILLION dollars, an estimate that was revised upward to 5 trillion after his book was published. This estimate includes military expenditures, lost wages, health care for the troops, increased oil prices due to uncertainty in the oil markets, and the economic growth we forfeited because money was spent on war instead of being invested. This 5 trillion, which is about 1/3 of the deficit, will no doubt grow as the war continues--and American soldiers, to say nothing of Iraqis--continue to die in this country.

Yet, the Tea Party members rose up in indignation at health care reform. I don't know enough about the subject to say whether Obama's plan is a good one. I suspect that it isn't for a variety of reasons. I am not defending a particular plan but commenting on the irony of supporting lavish expenditures on an unnecessary war that probably made Americans less safe while objecting mightily to a program, however flawed, designed to help the poorest of Americans.

Diana Kimmerling's article unveiled an Israeli reality but also a human one. I wish to commend her for seeing this problem in her own society and taking the time to speak out about it. Now it is time for me to do the same in America.

Testimony of a War Tax Resister

2011-08-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

Randy Kehler, a long-time war tax resister, explains his philosphy. He files a tax return every year with the IRS, but doesn't pay taxes. Instead, he gives the money he would have paid in taxes to help the poor in the U.S., the victims of war in places like Iraq and Central America, and peace organizations. I found him impressive and think he is worth listening to.

A Video About Hiroshima and Nagasaki

2011-08-07T05:31:00.000-07:00

A video, filmed by two American servicemen, shows just a few of the human casualties of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima. This film footage is important, not only for historical reasons, but for modern ones. The U.S. has weapons that inflict the same amount of human damage--minus the radiation--on civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Yeman. We in the U.S. rarely see photos of Iraq civilians injured by U.S. military operations, but many have suffered severe burns similar to those shown in this footage.

Here is a video of injured Iraq children. Note the similarity of the injuries to those in the Hiroshima video.

As an aside, the only Iraq child whose injuries were widely covered in the U.S. was Ali Abbas, the boy who lost both of his arms in an American bombing. My impression is that the only reason his situation got press coverage was that it was covered so widely in other countries and, because of the Internet, millions of Americans learned of it, making it impossible for the U.S. press to ignore. The disgraceful 60 Minutes did two segments on him, both so upbeat and positive it made me want to retch. He has got to have post-traumatic stress disorder and bouts of severe depression. He will never embrace his wife or hold his children, if he ever has any. Yet the 60 Minutes pieces never mentioned those facts at all. Instead, they filmed him playing and saying he liked British girls. The underlying message was that it really wasn't so bad losing both your arms in an American bombing.

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox

2011-07-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Link to Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Archives

Over the months, I have listened to Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox and have been impressed by the quality of her guests and the skillful way in which Ms. Sheehan interviews them. Guests include Rachel Corrie's mother, a woman who was raped while serving in the military, and Susan Lindauer, a U.S. asset who has special knowledge of the Lockerbie bombings and 911. If you haven't listened to her show, please do so. She provides the information we need to keep us informed, focused, and better able to confront the empire.

Tax Deductions 101: A Nice Video Outlining the Most Common Deductions

2011-07-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you would prefer to watch a video rather than read my immortal prose. Enjoy.

A Few Commonly Overlooked Tax Deductions

2011-07-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

Regular followers of this blog know that I am advocating only legal tax resistance: I don't want to be responsible for someone going to jail. One strategy is simply doing one's homework by combing the tax codes for every deduction one can find. In that spirit, there is a valuable article on Marketwatch.com that provides a few useful pieces of advice. Read the article here.

Since I have written several times about tax credits for higher education, I wanted to pass along their tip in this regard. Many of these credits are phased out as your income increases. If you are at an income level at which the credit is minimal, you may want to let your son or daughter claim the credit, provided that he or she owes enough in taxes to make claiming the credit worthwhile. Your child will get more money back from the government, which will ultimately help you.

Updated Rules on Health Savings Accounts

2011-06-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

My article on updated Health Savings Account rules:

http://www.suite101.com/content/why-open-a-health-savings-account-a376127
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are one of the best ways of reducing your tax load. If you have a high deductible insurance policy -- with a deductible of over $1,200 for an individual or $2,400 for a family, you can set aside money, tax-free, to pay for medical expenses your insurance doesn't cover.

You can either put the money into a savings account, in which case it is FDIC insured, or you can invest it in stocks, where the money invested is not insured. Some financial advisors tell their clients to contribute to their HSAs even before they contribute to their IRAs. The reasons for this are two-fold. First of all, a couple on the verge of retiring can assume they will need at least $190, 000 if they both have a normal life expectancy. Secondly, money from an HSA is never taxed if it is used for medical expenses. Suppose you have a major illness and need to withdraw money to pay the related bills. If you withdraw from an HSA, the money is untaxed as long as it goes to pay medical bills. However, if you withdraw from an IRA, you will pay standard tax rates although the penalty is waived for health care costs.

A caveat: If you are older than 65 and want to use this money for non-medical expenses, you will pay regular tax rates. If you are under 65, you will pay regular tax rates PLUS a 20% penalty. Because this fee is a stiff one, you may want to establish an emergency fund for unexpected non-medical expenses before contributing to your HSA.

Link to Article on Self-Directed IRAs

2011-06-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

How to Set Up a Self-Directed IRA

Video on How to Set Up a Limited Liability Company

IRAs -- Individual Retirement Accounts -- are one of the easiest ways to save on taxes. If you are self-employed or not covered by an employer pension or 401k at work, you can deduct the contributions to your IRA on your taxes. You will benefit yourself in two ways: in increased retirement savings AND lower taxes.

Most IRAs are invested in mutual funds, leaving you with very little flexibility in how your money is invested. Although there are excellent funds that don't invest in war industries, perhaps you have other issues that concern you and want to invest with those causes in mind too.

A self-directed IRA enables you to choose your own investments. You will need a broker to serve as a custodian of the IRA and the fees can be somewhat higher than with conventional IRAs, but you will gain an enormous amount of flexibility. The following article gives advice about the kinds of self-directed IRAs and how to set one up: How to Set Up a Self-Directed IRA

Buying Health Insurance

2011-06-15T04:57:00.000-07:00

Since many of us doing war tax resistance are self-employed and are faced with the difficulties of buying our own health insurance, I thought I would share a link to an article I wrote about this subject for another publication: 8 Steps for Buying Good Health Insurance. Having once -- well, twice actually -- purchased bad health insurance, I know how expensive that can be. When I finally wised up, I got better coverage at a lower price.

As a tax matter, if you are self-employed, you can deduct your insurance premiums from your gross income, which will lower your adjusted gross income, which is the figure your taxes are computed on. If you are not self-employed, insurance premiums are a standard deduction. The moral of this story is to get yourself classified as self-employed.

Energy Tax Credits

2011-06-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

One of the easiest ways to reduce taxes is to qualify for tax credits. Tax credits, of course, are preferable to tax deductions because the credits are deducted from the actual amount of taxes you pay whereas a tax deduction might lower your taxes, on average, by 25% of the amount deducted.

This blog has already discussed the Lifelong Learning Credit for higher education. Another source of tax credits is for money spent to buy energy-saving appliances or to install geothermal heating, solar power or wind power.

Here is a link to a government website detailing tax credits. The rules are complex but there seems to be a maximum lifetime credit of 500 dollars for buying energy-efficient appliances. However, more complicated projects like installing geothermal, solar, or wind power systems allow credits of up to 30 percent of the purchase price and have no upper limit. On the one hand, these systems are expensive. Prohibitively so. On the other hand, if the international political situation leads to dramatic increases in energy prices or, perish the thought, oil embargoes, buying these systems may become the best thing you ever did. An added consideration is that, to the extent that are current wars are about oil and energy supply routes, making this country more energy-efficient lessens the possibility that the American people will accept wars for those reasons.

Here is a youtube video on geothermal systems that you might find interesting:

Another Post on the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund

2011-04-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by thanking the person who donated $50 to the fund. Your money will go to help students in Lebanon and to programs designed to promote awareness of the needs and rights of women, children, and the disabled in the Gaza Strip. Many Palestinian refugees are desperately poor and the types of programs supported by the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund provide much needed assistance to them. One need not love every action taken by Hamas or the P.A. to understand that most Palestinians are ordinary people caught up in a situation that is bigger than they are. They need all the help they can get.

Secondly, let me add the link to our Facebook page:Support the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund. If you go to this page and view an ad, the Chomsky Fund will earn 3 cents. Do this four times a month and the Chomsky fund earns 12 cents. If a thousand people do this four times a month, the Fund earns $120 per month or over a 1000 dollars per year -- and it won't cost you anything, just a minute of your time each week. Please forward this link to anyone concerned about Palestinian refugees. Thank you. Jessica

P.S. I can't believe I forgot the most important point for war tax resisters: any donations to the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund are tax-deductible.

Algeria cut off from the Internet

2011-02-14T03:43:00.000-08:00

A friend posted on my Facebook page that Algeria has been cut off from the internet. She posted dial-up numbers that people can use to bypass this action.

Please post on your own websites and do anything you can to spread the word. Thanks.

Algeria has been cut off from the internet. Please spread: Algeria users Dial-up on +16504194196 - +390662207294 Or use Speak To Tweet by calling +16504194196 - +390662207294 #Feb12

#Algeria: IP addresses bypass gov't blocking websites - Spread the word ~ Twitter "128.242.240.52" Facebook "69.63.189.34" #12fev #feb12

Palestinian Girl in Urgent Need of Medical Treatment

2011-01-15T15:41:00.000-08:00

Hi Jessica,

I think that if you and\or anyone from abroad calls or writes to the Israeli authorities about the needed permits, the pressure will be more effective.

Thanks

D

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Mailbag: Let The Child Be Treated!

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 07:21 AM PST

This just in from Gershom Gorenberg:

I am trying to help a three and a half year old Palestinian girl from the West Bank who suffers from CP get essential care at an excellent hospital in Jerusalem. The girl's name is Dalal Rusrus. According to Dr. Eliezer Be'eri of Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem, if Dalal is treated, there is even a chance that she might eventually be able to walk. If she is not treated, she will not even be able to use a wheelchair.

The Civil Administration is refusing to give her parents permission to enter Jerusalem, which makes it impossible for her to receive care. You can help by contacting the relevant spokespeople and asking why they aren't getting permits. If the authorities know the world is interested, there is a reasonable chance that they could grant the permits to avoid the embarrassment. Please note: The girl needs to get a permit by Monday. So send an email today, and take ten minutes when you get up Sunday to make a phone call or three.

The Israeli hospital wants to help her. Israelis and foreign donors have contributed for her care. Instead of letting this humanitarian cooperation take place, the military bureaucracy is standing in the way.

After Dr. Be'eri examined Dalal in the West Bank in October, Alyn hospital invited her to come for a full examination. Two appointments were canceled because her parents could not get permits. Finally, her mother was given a permit and Dalal was given a multi-disciplinary examination on Dec. 20.

Now Dalal is supposed to go to Alyn on Monday, Jan 17 for a preliminary treatment, and then be hospitalized on Jan 23 for two weeks. In order for the treatment to happen, permits are needed for her parents, especially for her father. The mother is caring for a 9-month-old infant and it would be extremely difficult for her to be the one to accompany Dalal. The family has no immediate relatives in the area who would be able to help out.

So what you do is write or call both of the spokespeople below and the Civil Administration health official, say that you are writing a story, and you want to know if the Osama, Sunya and Dalal Rusrus have received permits to enter Jerusalem and if not, why not. The name of the spokespeople link to their email addresses. You should include the ID numbers of Osama, Sunya and Dalal, which you will find below.

IDF Spokesman's Office (Foreign Press Branch):

Lt.-Col. Avital Leibovitz: 972 2-5485807/2, Fax: 972 2-5485825, Mobile: 972 57-8186248

Civil Administration, Judea and Samaria:

Capt. Amir Koren: 972 2-9977372, Fax: 972 2-9977341, Mobile: 972 50-6234081

Civil administration health coordinator:

Dalia Basa: 972-2-9977084, or 972-2-9977022, Fax: 972-2-9977041

Here are the ID numbers:

Osama Rusrus 909512386

Sunya Rusrus 903627057

Dalal Rusrus 420037004

You can find more information on her story at these links:

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/twilight-zone-the-long-road-to-treatment-1.332683

http://southjerusalem.com/2010/12/saving-dalal/

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=crossing_borders_10

For all further info to build the story, you can contact the B'Tselem human-rights organization's fantastic health staffer, Suhair Abdi.

Warmly, Gershom

SIDRA'S LETTER:

I am writing in connection with the child, Dalal Rusrus, who lives in the West Bank and needs to be treated urgently for her CP. As you no doubt know, the doctors at Alyn have offered to treat her, money has been raised internationally to cover the expense, and the only obstacle is that the military authorities are refusing to give her and her parents the necessary permit to allow her to enter Israel.

Having had a very dear friend who was born with CP and, because of the care he received, became a prominent professor at the University, I can attest personally to the effect of proper medical treatment on such patients.

I am myself a professor at Hebrew University and am writing to my colleagues abroad about this incident and the fact that, even with the unresolved situation on the West Bank, Israel is a compassionate country that has achieved wonders in treating its own citizens and many Arabs inside Israel and in the occupied territories. I hope to be able to report that the proper permits have been issued BEFORE January 17, when she has her first medical appointment.

Please answer that indeed these permits have been issued to her and her parents; here, below, are their i.d. numbers:

Osama Rusrus 909512386

Sunya Rusrus 903627057

Dalal Rusrus 420037004

Yours sincerely, Professor Sidra Ezrahi

Tips for Last-Minute Tax Savings in 2010

2010-12-22T06:25:00.000-08:00

IRS Rules Regarding IRAs

Here are some simple ways for reducing your tax bill:

Open an IRA if you haven't already. If the purpose for opening one is war tax resistance, you want to open a simple IRA rather than a Roth IRA because a simple IRA allows you to deduct up to $5,000 per year and $6,000 if you are 50 but less than 70 1/2. Since IRA contributions are deducted from gross income in computing Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), contributing to an IRA can help lower the thresholds needed to make your eligible to deduct medical expenses.

If you are covered by a retirement plan at work, you can still contribute to an IRA if your income is below a certain limit. The limits are:

Less than $56,000 for a single individual. If you earn more than that, the deductions are phased out. If you earn more than $66,000, no tax deductions are allowed.
Less than $89,000 for married couples filing jointly. Deductions are phased out over that limit. Couples earning more than $109,000 may not deduct their IRA contributions.

Be sure to avoid IRAs that invest in defense contractors. I like Pax World. They don't invest in military industries and endeavor to invest in companies that are environmentally conscious and sensitive to women and Third World countries.
Here is a website that will help you research socially responsible investment companies: Invest Responsibly

If you contribute regularly to a religious institution or charity, contribute as much as possible before the end of this year. Charities of all kinds prefer to receive contributions in lump sums because it reduces the handling fees charged by banks.
If you think that your medical bills will be more than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income (See this page for definitions) you might want to pay for next year's services by the end of this year. For example, many people have regular bills for orthodontists, chiropractors, or acupuncturists. If you pay by December 31, you can deduct them from this year's taxes and your medical practitioners will no doubt be happy.
. If you have a high-deductible insurance policy, open a health savings account. You can contribute the amount of your annual deductible. Best of all, if you withdraw from the account for medical expenses, the money is never taxes. Many banks offer health savings accounts.
As mentioned in an earlier post, get a tax credit by registering and paying for college courses now, even if they begin by March of next year.

These are just some basic ideas to get you started. Keep your money for yourself--your retirement, your medical needs, and for religious institutions and charities that give you a sense of community. It is much better than sending the money to Uncle Sam to use for blowing up civilians and indefinitely detaining, without trial, individuals who may be innocent.

Pay Less in Taxes by Minimizing Adjusted Gross Income

2010-12-13T06:39:00.000-08:00

Adjusted Gross Income Calculator by CNN

(I want to acknowledge that nearly all of the information in this post was taken from the CNN money site.)

This post may be the best cure for insomnia yet. It contains the definitions of gross income, adjusted gross income (AGI), and modified adjusted gross income (MAGI). While you probably won't want to talk about this at parties--your date will go to the ladies' room and never come back--understanding these concepts is vital if you want to reduce your taxes.

The secret to paying less in taxes is to get one's adjusted gross income (AGI) to be as low as possible. This is important for a variety of reasons. Aside from the fact that you will be less in taxes if your AGI is lower, it is also the case that deductions for charitable contributions and medical expenses are phased out over a certain income level. Currently, this level is $132,000 for single taxpayers or married taxpayers filing jointly. That level is $66,000 for married taxpayers filing singly.

Adjusted Gross Income = Gross Income -- Certain Allowable Deductions

Gross income includes:

Salary or other wages
Tips
Taxable Interest from Savings Accounts
Taxable portions of pensions and annuities
Capital Gains (capital losses may be subtracted)
Stock Dividends
Other: This is a broad category including alimony paid to you, royalties, pension and annuity payments, farm income, rental income, royalties, income from partnerships, and a few others.

To compute adjusted gross income, total all the income listed above and then subtract the following:

Payments to IRAs, SEP Simple Plans, and other qualifying, tax-deferred retirement plans
If you are self-employed and buying your own health insurance, you can deduct the premiums on tis part of your tax return. If you are not self-employed and paying your own medical insurance, you can claim it as a deduction if you itemize your return.
Student loan interest
Moving expenses
One-half of self-employment tax

Then, there is MAGI, modified adjusted gross income. This is used primarily for computing how much of your contribution to tax-deferred retirement funds is deductible. To calculate MAGI, calculate your adjusted gross income (AGI) and add foreign income, student loan deductions, foreign housing deductions, IRA contribution deductions, and a few other item. This link to Investopedia explains MAGI in a clear and succinct way.

A few points are obvious from reviewing the data. The two easiest ways to reduce your AGI are:

Contribute to IRAs or other tax-deferred retirement plans.
Become self-employed because you can deduct your health insurance costs from your gross income, thus lowering your AGI and preserving eligibility for other tax deductions.

Perhaps I should add a disclaimer: Do not rely on me for tax advice. I have spent most of my life as an algebra teacher. Consult a tax professional. What this blog can do for you, however, is raise points for you to consider.

Save on Taxes THIS Year by Going to School NEXT Year.

2010-12-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

If you enroll in school--and it may not be too late to enroll in a community college or apply for re-enrollment in a university you have already attended--you can save on THIS year's taxes. Do so by paying for the courses this year and attending the courses that start within the first three months of next year.

You will get a TAX CREDIT--better than a mere deduction. You will also sharpen your mind, add something to your resume, make yourself more competive in a tight job market, and support higher education. .
NOTE: In this post, I am borrowing heavily from the IRS web page on deductions for educational expenses.

Link to IRS page on educational deductions

For war tax resisters, tax credits are even better than tax deductions because deductions are subtracted from your gross income while tax credits are subtracted from your actual tax bill.

The logic of this is that war tax resisters should get themselves to a university. The advantages of doing so are legion--and for regular readers of this blog, I apologize for the repetition:

A lovely, $2,000 tax credit if you take advantage of the Lifetime Learning Credit. The only real requirements are that your adjusted gross income must be under $60,000 if filing singly and $120,000 if filing jointly. You can claim this credit for for an unlimited number of years. That is why it is called a lifetime learning credit.
The amount of the credit is for the amount of tuition paid that year up to a maximum of $2,000.
Being a registered university student makes you eligible for free or reduced price services including:

Low-cost medical insurance
Low-cost or free medical care at university clinics
Use of the school gym. If you like to work out, taking one course per term will practically pay for itself.
Use of a wonderul library and free access to a wide variety of peer-reviewed journals with the newest research on important topics.
A broader social life. Students are some of the most interesting people in the world because they are interested in a wide variety of issues.
A chance to do political organizing among a large population of young people. Universities are particularly good places to do counter-recruitment, war tax resistance, and organizing for demonstrations.
Free or reduced-cost access to plays, concerts, museum exhibits, and other cultural activities.

Here are the details of the American Opportunity Credit and Lifetime Learning Credit taken straight from the IRS website:

Caution. You can claim both the American opportunity credit and the lifetime learning credit on the same return—but not for the same student.

American Opportunity Credit: (Note that if you qualify, this credit is a better deal but qualifying is more difficult:

Up to $2,500 credit per eligible student
Persons claiming deduction may earn up to $180,000 (modified adjusted gross income) if filing jointly or $90,00 if single.
40% of any credit may be refundable. In other words, if your taxes are less than $2500, you may get the difference back as a refund.
Available ONLY for the first four years of higher education. If you need more education than four years--and even high school teachers have to take courses to update their licenses--this credit will not work.
Credit available only for four tax years.
Students MUST be pursuing an undergraduate degree or other recognized certification.
Students must be enrolled at least half-time for one academic period during the tax year.
No felony drg convictions.
Covers tuition and required enrollment fees. Books and other supplies do not need to be purchased from the institution.
Deduction available for payments made in 2010 for courses beginning in the first three months of 2011.

Lifetime Learning Credit

Up to $2000 credit per return. If more than one person claimed as a dependent on the return is pursuing higher education, you may want to see if you qualify for the American Opportunity Credit, which offers $2500 per eligible student.
Modified Adjusted Gross Income has a maximum of $120,000 for joint returns and $60,000 for singles. Note that the MAGI for singles for the Lifetime Learning Credit is lower than that for the American Opportunity Credit.
Credit limited to the amount of tax you owe. You do NOT get a refund if your tuition costs exceed the amount you owe in taxes. This differs from the American Opportunity Credit.
Available for an unlimited number of years for those pursuing post-secondary education or those taking courses to improve job skills.
Student need not be pursuing a recognized educational credential. This makes the credit perfect for teacher maintaining their licenses or for those whose professions require continuing education credits.
Available for one or more courses. No requirement for full- or half-time studies.
Felony drug convictions do not disqualify you.
Covers tuition and required enrollment fees. However, if you want to deduct books and other supplies, those costs must be paid to te institution itself and not to a private business.

Which credit you apply for depends on what educational program you are taking, what your educational background is, how many people listed on your tax return are going to school, and your legal history. However, these two credits have one thing in common. You can lower this year\s taxes by enrolling and paying this year, even if you go to school early next year. Pay yourself and not the war machine by going back to school.

Tax-Deductible Medical Expenses

2010-12-08T07:43:00.000-08:00

IRS web page on tax-deductible medical expenses

In the last few months, I have segued into topics other than tax resistance but thought I would return to it since the end of the year is almost here and it seems like a good time to review tax reduction strategies. This post focuses on which medical expenses are tax-deductible and which are not.

Note that you may only deduct medical expenses if they exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. Adjusted gross income is the amount of money you earn minus certain allowable deductions like contributions to retirement funds. Note that if you are self-employed and have a net profit for the year, you may deduct the cost of insurance premiums for you and your family in the adjusted gross income portion of the tax return.

Deductible expenses for yourself, a spouse, or a dependent declared on your tax return include:

All fees paid to doctors, dentists, psychologists, psychiatrists, chiropractors, and acupuncturists.
Costs of all prescription drugs
Cost of insulin, even if it is not specifically prescribed
Costs of registering for and attending medical conferences and symposia related to a diagnosed illness. Note, however, that the costs of lodging and meals are not deductible.
Cost of orthodontic care
In general, you may deduct the costs of premiums for health care insurance or long-term care insurance unless you have paid for them through a cafeteria plan because money in cafeteria plans is usually not taxed anyway.
Cost of weight loss programs if you have been diagnosed as obese by a doctor. You may not, however, deduct the cost of any foods provided by the program.
Costs of false teeth, prescription eye glasses, hearing aids, guide dogs for the blind and deaf.

In calculating your medical deductions, you must subtract the cost of any reimbursement, regardless of whether the reimbursement is paid directly to you or to a health care provider. For example, if you have a medical bill for $1,000 and insurance pays $800, you can only deduct $200 on your taxes.

Medical expenses that are not tax-deductible include:

Over-the-counter medications
Cosmetic surgery or other procedures unless they are part of treatment for specific medical conditions
Premiums for life insurance policies or policies that provide money for lost wages due to illness.
Funeral or burial expenses
Cost of programs for the general improvement of health as opposed to the improvement of specific conditions.

A good way of pushing medical costs over the magic 7.5% limit of adjusted gross income is to pay medical expenses you know you will have next year before the end of this year. For example, pre-pay the orthodontist who is straightening your kid's teeth or the chiropractor you see regularly for your bad back. This is especially useful if you expect to have fewer medical expenses the next year and are fairly certain you won't be able to cross the 7.5 % threshold the next year.

Skip Schiel: Photographer and Peace Activist

2010-12-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

Sunset in the Gaza Strip

Approximately a year ago, I was privileged to hear a lecture given by Skip Schiel, a photographer and human rights activist, about his experiences in the Gaza Strip. The photo above is one that he took.

Through his photography, he has managed to capture the natural beauty of a place that even war, severe poverty, and overcrowding cannot extinguish. He has also managed to depict the Palestinians of Gaza in all of their complexity and humanity.

Too often in the West, photographic images of Palestinians are of guerrilla fighters but rarely of students, mothers, doctors, and firemen. In short, we often fail to see the ordinariness of the people who are central to one of the world's most difficult and enduring conflicts.

I highly recommend Skip Schiel's work, more of which is available here. Please see a collection of his photographs, not only about Gaza but about American struggles for civil rights and peace. There is also a moving collection about the bombing of Hiroshima. You may want to consider purchasing some of his prints. They make Christmas gifts that are both beautiful and socially conscious. Click here to purchase signed prints by Skip Schiel.

P.S. I don't profit from this at all. This is posted in an effort to aid a fellow peace activist.

An Update on the Chomsky Fund

2010-11-30T15:10:00.000-08:00

Notice of initial Public Launch: November 29th, 2010 (anniversary of the 1947 Partition Plan and a day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People) to December 10th, 2010 (anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Link to the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund, Inc.

War Tax Resistance:

The Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund, Inc.

welcomes your donations this holiday season.

By donating to the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund, you can save lives, increase hope and provide the means for Palestinians to work for a better future.The Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund exists to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon*. Partnerships with individuals and aid agencies on the ground in Lebanon, Gaza, in Europe and the United States will assure that your tax-deductible contributions get to the people for whom they are directly intended. You can make a difference. See www.chomskyfund.org and read below for more information.

*People contributing to this fund may request that their donations are earmarked for Gaza or Lebanon. Funds for Lebanon will initially serve to support educational programs in the refugee camps for students seeking admission to universities. Other projects will be available soon. Funds for Gaza will serve a wide variety of purposes, humanitarian, educational, medical, psycho-social and more. You may request that your contribution be directed to a specific group of people (children, women, workers, the elderly, for example) or that they are directed to specific types of programs such as those mentioned above.

GAZA: War, siege and sanctions in the Gaza Strip mean that children suffer from food insecurity and are often malnourished. Some suffer from stunted growth. Many others, perhaps a majority, suffer from some level of post-traumatic stress disorder. Others need costly rehabilitation because of war wounds. An electricity crisis continues to plague the people of Gaza daily exacerbating the difficulty of obtaining clean drinking water and services most of us take for granted. The Gaza Strip lives an environmental nightmare. Cut off from the outside world, Gaza's internal deterioration has affected its physical, social and economic infrastructure pushing Gaza and its 1.5 million people backwards to where they are forced to survive and subsist in ways that hearken back to an earlier century: donkey carts pull wagon-loads of goods to market; a once thriving fishing industry has been ruined by the occupation as fishermen are forced to stay closer inshore where fish are smaller and contaminated from raw sewage pouring into the Mediterranean sea. Businesses are failing, schools are overcrowded and lack sufficient supplies and adequate facilities at all levels. Hospitals and clinics barely function with inadequate medical equipment and supplies. Businesses are failing even as farmers are forced off their once arable lands, lands that now comprise the latest "buffer zone" -- a no man's land patrolled and guarded by Israel 3 kilometers into the Gaza Strip along the entire landed border of the territory. Israeli gunboats patrol the border by sea. Inside the Gaza Strip human rights and solidarity groups work overtime in an effort to help a society purposefully wrecked and impoverished maintain a collective sense dignity.

LEBANON: In the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon, close to 300,000 people live abandoned even by the society that acts as their host. As war and economic hardship hit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank more severely than in nearly 6 decades, the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon remain confined to a state of psycho-social and political limbo by their status as voiceless, stateless people lacking the most fundamental rights. In the squalid, still war-ruined refugee camps across the country and unwelcome by many outside the boundaries of their condemned homes, these non-people live ostracized or disqualified from receiving the most basic services provided by the state and even some aid agencies. The Palestinians of Lebanon, prevented from returning to their homes in historic Palestine, are banned from working in over 70 professions inside the country. Without the requisite, nearly unobtainable travel documents, they often cannot leave to seek better lives elsewhere, and if they were to obtain them where would they go? No less are they prohibited by law from repairing the crumbling camps to which they have been condemned like common criminals since the Nakba or Catastrophe of 1947-48. These refugees are the forgotten people of the Middle East. The struggle to maintain a viable, dignified present is offset by the future-less void in front of so many of them. Education, the chance to develop one's individual and creative potential is one of the few avenues open to these non-people -- especially if we can improve their chances of success.

An Economist Article on the Costs of the Iraq War

2010-11-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

2002 Economist Article on the Cost of the Iraq War

The above link is to an article in the Economist about the cost of a war in Iraq. It is notable primarily for its optimism. The worst case scenario--setting aside the use of WMD--was for a war that lasted six months. In hindsight, it makes astonishing reading because the experts underestimated the cost of war so terribly.

A think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argued that, at worst, the war might last six months and cause oil prices to spike at 80 dollars a barrell and then remain at 40 dollars a barrel for a long time. Most economists predicted a cost of tens of billions of dollars and that this cost would be recouped by cheaper oil. One economist--one of the few with any sense--predicted that a war that went horribly wrong could cost up to 1.6 trillion dollars.

How did things turn out? Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the cost of the war at well over 3 TRILLION dollars if one includes disability payments to veterans, lost wages, and other such factors. . Oil prices did not spike to 80 dollars but, at their highest, to 145 dollars. Stiglitz wrote an article discussing the amount of the price increase in oil that was due to the Iraq war and calculated the total cost here. It is sobering reading. The US is hundreds of billions of dollars poorer because of the war's impact on oil prices.

An oil economist calculated that oil would have cost only about one-third of its current value if the US had not invaded. He also pointed out that Saddam Hussein offered the US a very generous deal on oil in return for lifting sanctions but the US refused. I corresponded with the late Israeli sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling, until his death in 2007. Before the Iraq war started, he wrote me that he doubted the war was about oil because cutting a good deal with Saddam Hussein would be much cheaper than fighting a war. As usual, he s right. He was incredibly wise and I never knew him to be wrong.

The Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund

2010-11-29T08:24:00.000-08:00

The Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund

War and sanctions in the Gaza Strip mean that children lack clean drinking water and are often malnourished. Some suffer from stunted growth. Many others, perhaps a majority, suffer from some level of post-traumatic stress disorder. Others need costly rehabilitation because of war wounds.

By donating to the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund, you can save lives and provide the means for Palestinians to work for a better future.

The Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund exists to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon. The fund aims to provide:

Food and clean water for residents of the refugee camps:

Housing for people whose homes have been demolished during war and who are forced to live in tents

Medical aid for people injured in wars:

English instruction to enable Palestinian students to study abroad.

Please help the young people of the Gaza Strip obtain the basic requirements for a dignified life by donating generously to the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund.

Hands-free texting

2010-11-07T14:04:00.000-08:00

FDI hands-free texting

A former student of mine is trying to make his way in a very difficult economy. One of the ways he is trying to support himself is by promoting a cell phone service offering hands-free texting. If you are concerned about you--or your son or daughter--texting while driving, you might want to look into this service.

This service is, I belive, $9.95 per month while the company offers a full cell phone plan including unlimited calling within the US, unlimited texting, and unlimited internet for $69.95 per month. It sounds like a good deal.

If you are in the market for this kind of service, please help my former student, Daniel Sejour.

Thanks.

Dismantling the Lies that Led to the Iraq War

2010-10-23T18:07:00.000-07:00

Often, we read about major foreign policy issues in bits and pieces. We learn one significant bit of information and then, months or years later, we learn another. These gaps make it difficult to piece together exactly what has happened and why.

In this post, I want to explore some of the lies that were told to the American people in the months leading up to the Iraq war.

1. "Saddam Hussein tried to kill my dad. This article in Common Dreams written by Jim Lobe, an excellent journalist who has devoted much of his career to studying the neoconservatives, indicates that Saddam Hussein believed the CIA had infiltrated his government. Therefore, he would have been unlikely to believe that he could get away with such a plan. Furthermore, after the 1991 war, he sent out peace feelers to Washington and was baffled when they were rebuffed. Presumably, if he had tried to kill Bush I, he would not have been surprised. Lobe based his conclusions on a paper by the Iraq Study Group known as the Duelfer Report.

2. Bush honestly believed that Saddam Hussein had WMD. According to Tyler Drumheller, a former high-ranking CIA agent who spent 26 years in the agency before retiring, Bush had been told that Iraq had no WMD and that sources indicating that he did lacked credibility. Drumheller insists that the war was not the result of an intelligence failure but of a policy failure. The Bush administration wanted to go to war and was only interested in intelligence that seemed to verify the WMD claim. It turned a blind eye to intelligence indicating that Iraq had no WMD.

As early as 1995, the US had reliable evidence that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his WMD. Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected and told his debriefers that they had been destroyed after the 1991 war. A high-ranking military official who defected with him confirmed the story.

Think carefully about this. The US had credible evidence that the WMD no longer existed yet we continued the crippling sanctions for nearly 8 more years. The total death toll for the sanctions is over one million excess deaths, half of those among children under five. While I don't know how many people died after 1995, as opposed to before 1995, the number had to be in the hundreds of thousands. The US government starved people for no reason.

3. Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat to Israel. According to Israel Shahak, in his book Open Secrets, Saddam Hussein repeatedly approached Israel through intermediaries before the 1991 war and offered peace on Israel's terms. Shahak relied on the reports of Ze'ev Schiff, the best military correspondent in Israel who wrote for Ha'aretz. This chapter in Shahak's book is available on the web but the website posting it is viciously anti-Semitic and I don't want to link to it. However, this is really Shahak's work.

4. Saddam gassed his own people. In fact, what happened in Halabja in 1988 is anything but clear. Reports are contradictory. It is not certain whether Iran or Iraq gassed the Kurds. Furthermore, it is not clear that the Kurds were the main target. The main targets may have been the soldiers on the other side and Kurds were what the US likes to call "collateral damage." In any case, even if Saddam Hussein is guilty, the US government did nothing at the time to punish this act. It is odd go to war over this fifteen years later. It would be analogous to Japan attacking the US now in revenge for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

5. We had to go to war to liberate the Iraqi people from a tyrant. First of all, this claim is the classic "bait and switch." This was not the rationale for the war before it started; this reasoning only emerged when the US failed to find WMD. In fact, evidence indicates that Sddam tried to negotiate a peace deal in which he would open the country up to weapons inspectors AND hold elections within two years. The US rejected this deal because Saddam Hussein would have stayed in power. This story indicates that Richard Perle played a role in these negotiations and was instrumental in rejecting them.

Later on, Saddam Husseinoffered to go into exile if he could take one billion dollars and documents about Iraq's WMD program, documents that no doubt proved that the US helped Iraq develop them.

Put all of this together. The US government under a Democrat, Bill Clinton, had credible evidence that Iraq no longer had WMD and yet chose to continue a brutal sanctions program, one that punished the innocent and defenseless while letting Saddam stay in power. George W Bush went to war while knowing that the WMD claims were bogus. He went to war even though he could have removed Saddam Hussein from power and "liberated" Iraq without bloodshed. If this war had been about oil, as is often claimed, I don't understand why the US could have insisted on favorable oil contracts in exchange for letting Saddam Hussein leave the country and live. It would have been cheaper than war.

Remember this entire series of lies the next time the US government tries to sell you on another war.

An Important Victory for the Constitution

2010-10-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Judge refuses to allow testimony obtained by torture

The above link is to an article by Nat Hentoff on U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who refused to allow testimony that may have been obtained by torture. In his ruling, he wrote the following:

“The Court has not reached this conclusion lightly,” said the judge. “It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not only when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction.”

In the article, Hentoff quotes Glenn Greenwald as saying the Obama administration brought him to trial because they were sure they could win. Other detainees, with less evidence against them, are simply held in indefinite detention. You will recall that a former State Department official claimed that Cheney knew many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but refused to release them because it was damage his plans to invade Iraq. Few experiences are more difficult than imprisonment, and to be held when you are innocent and people know you are innocent is cruel beyond words.

Holding people known to be innocent has happened many times. I live in Florida and a few decades ago, two men named Pitts and Lee were held for years when the government knew there was reason to doubt their guilt. At the time, this case caused great shock in Florida and throughout the nation. Alas, it seems that such behavior on the part of government officials is becoming routine.

On Remembering that Our Heroes Have Feet of Clay

2010-10-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

Several of my last posts have dealt with Israel Shahak, the late Israeli human rights activist who, while not opposed to war always--it was war that liberated him from Bergen Belsen--opposed the Israeli invasion f Lebanon and a great many othe wars in the Middle East. He also advocated equal rights for women and gays. This friend of mine identifies herself as a Mizrachi Jew, meaning that her family came to Israel from Arab countries and not European ones. Her grandmother, in fact, spoke Arabic as her first language. My friend identifies herself as a non-Zionist, a feminist, and a lesbian. She first became aware of Shahak when she read a statement of his supporting equal rights for gays. In other words, she had a basic sympathy for him.

Yesterday, she called me because she wanted to discuss something in Shahak's book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. In the book, he wrote that Mizrachi Jews were unable to create a political party that was both viable and secular and that Mizrachi were less fully modern than other elements in Israeli society. She objected to this on both factual and moral grounds. There have been progressive Mizrachi groups. Beginning in the 1970s, there was the Black Panthers, which was named after the famous American group. The Israeli Black Panthers sought greater rights for Mizrachi Jews. There was also a progressive political movement called the Mizrachi Democratic Rainbow and a political party that, if I remember correctly, did manage to get some seats in the Knesset but is no longer in existence.

What upset her the most, though, was to have the community with which she identifies described as "less fully modern." As someone who loved Shahak dearly, I am tempted to say that this statement should be taken with a grain of salt. English was his third language, after Polish and Hebrew. He never quite mastered it and his English writings required heavy editing. It may be that his imperfect English and the heavy editing it required subtly changed his point. I recently did some work for someone who wanted to publish a book that she translated from Hebrew into English. My job was to polish the English. It was extraordinarily difficult and we spent hours on the phone (Thank goodness for Skype numbers!) trying to find phrases that expressed the original Hebrew accurately and sounded good in English. Even after months of work, I am sure that the writer, were he still alive would perhaps disagree with some of the choices he made.

On the other hand, my friend raised valid issues about his book. To say that a culture is not fully modern is to cast an implicit, negative light on it. It is tempting to blame a group with traditional religious values for the ills of society and blaming the Mizrachim for the faults in Israeli society is too much like blaming the Fundamentalists for all the faults in American society.

I am no longer Protestant--although I still love the individualism that is implicit in it-- because I believe that this religion has been taken over by the Fundamentalists and I refuse to believe that everyone with a different theology is going to hell. I also don't like their often extreme emphasis on the physical punishment of children and their high level of support for American military adventurism. On the other hand, most Fundamentalists in many ways lead lives that embrace better values than many in secular America. A number of years ago, I had a series of kidney infections with fairly high fevers. I missed a lot of work and, because I felt too exhausted to read, I watched a lot of TV. The next time you are home sick, try comparing daytime programming on secular networks with daytime programming on religious television. On religious television, there was a nutrition show urging viewers to avoid sugar and trans fats and eat whole grains and vegetables. There was also a Christian exercise show and another show about restoring troubled marriages. In contrast, secular daytime television was filled with Maury Povich and Jerry Springer. Povich likes to do those paternity test shows that exploit young women who are usually from very poor backgrounds--rural whites and inner-city minorities. These young women reveal their sexual indiscretions on the show in exchange for getting a paternity test and maybe a trip to a big city. These shows go into syndication and can haunt these young women for the rest of their lives. All they get in return is "a mess of pottage" while Povich makes millions of dollars. In spite of my disagreements with Fundamentalism, I prefer programming about nutrition, good marriages, and the Bible to shows that exploit vulnerable teenage girls.

The larger point is that whether we are talking about Mizrachi culture or Fundamentalist culture, it is very easy to compare the best in our own culture with the worst in other cultures. For example, we as Americans often see the cruelty in Afghani and Iraqi culture while ignoring their traditions of hospitality and generosity, for example. Or, we ignore our own history of displacing Native Americans, bombing civilians, and experimenting on people in Guatemala. Instead, we focus on our democracy, the building of an economy that until the recent economic collapse was one of the best in the world, and our high level of personal freedom.

My friend made another point about Shahak's views on Judaism's treatment of women. She said that many observant women do not feel oppressed at all and that their views should be taken seriously. I personally feel sorry for women who have ten children but perhaps the women love their children and are happy to have them in their lives. Is it really worse to spend one's life as a wife and mother than it is to spend one's life as a corporate executive? All major choices involve the sacrifice of other options. A life dedicated to family and a religious community does contain substantial satisifactions along with very great hardships. (On the other hand, in my heart I sympathize with Shahak. I was once in Jerusalem and had some interactions with Orthodox women. Their lives are hard! And maybe this is my non-Jewish bias showing, but I think that a lot of the rules imposed on women by ultraorthodox Judaism are degrading and humiliating. Maybe the women don't feel oppressed because they are so closed off from other waysof life that they can't imagine another way of living. Maybe they have, as the expession goes, internalized their oppression.By the way, many of the women in these cultures when speaking candidly do admit dissatisfaction with their way of life.)

Nevertheless, I share my friend's pain at having her culture described as not fully modern, a formulation that ignores that decades of progressive Mizrachi movements and ignores the great variation of opinion within the Mizrachi community.

For me, this was a reminder that even progressives can be mistaken in their views of other cultures and the fact that someone is a humanist or a human rights activist does not mean that all of his or her interpretations of other cultures are therefore valid.

A Brief Anecdote About the Suppression of Dissent in this Country

2010-10-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

This story is ridiculously small but it tells you something. Some time ago, I joined a Myspace group dedicated to the writings of Noam Chomsky. I wrote a post asking what the American people would have had to do to stop the Iraq war before it started. The post contained no profanity, no threats,, no incitement to violence, no ethnic slurs, and no personal attacks on anyone. Within hours, I got an email from Myspace telling me that one of my pictures had been deleted because the site has a strict policy against pornography. I have uploaded only one picture: my profile picture. I have attached the picture to this post. You can judge for yourself if it is pornographic. I will add, however, that I have worn that outfit to work and to church and no one has said anything. By the way, my MOTHER took this picture.

I wrote them back, explaining that I had not uploaded anything even remotely pornographic. I got a form letter in response. Myspace deleted my post about the Iraq war but left my "pornographic" profile picture on my page.

A few weeks ago, I finally understood why this had happened. Myspace is owned by the same company that owns Fox News. It figures.

Thus is dissent suppressed--even dissent as mild as asking a question. On a site owned by Rupert Murdoch's corporation, asking the "wrong" political question is considered pornographic.

The "Death" of the Antiwar Movement

2010-10-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

Several times, I have read comments by conservative about the lack of antiwar activity during the Obama presidency. The conclusion they have drawn is that liberals think war is okay if a Democrat does it. On the surface, they do have a point. Identical actions by Obama are greeted with silence while the same actions by Bush would have occasioned howls of protest. I suspect, also, that if Obama is "right" about key Democratic issues like abortion or gay rights, liberals may be more willing to tolerate bad foreign policy. The objection's to Bush's foreign policy may simply have resulted not from war itself but from the totality of liberal disagreement with all of his policies. War simply pushed liberals past the point of toleration. I have often been dismayed by people who opposed Bush because, for example, they disliked his stand on gay marriage but were completely indifferent to the war

On the other hand, the silence of the antiwar movement--the genuine antiwar movement, not the people who wanted to jump on an anti-Bush bandwagon--is not due to approval. The silence is due to despair and confusion. Antiwar sentiment was largely responsible for putting Democrats in control in 2006 and Obama in the White House in 2008. Now that Democrats are in control and the wars seem to be escalating in Afghanistan and Pakistan ( and Yemen and Somalia) it is clear that we have simply elected the liberal wing of the war party.

To stop the war, there is a need for opponents of the war to acquire a more sophisticated sense of political strategy. This is not so easy. I personally don't know anything beyond writing my congressman, demonstrations, tax resistance, and counter-recruitment. The effectiveness of tax resistance is limited by the fact that the government can fund the war through borrowing or through tinkering with the money supply--tactics that war tax resistance does not address. Veteran activists assure me that the way to ending the war lies through Congress as this is the branch of the government most responsive to public pressure. However, I doubt that the antiwar factions can muster the money for campaign contributions to tilt the balance. I am not sure that the oil companies themselves want war--I suspect this may be a leftist canard--but control over oil supply routes and the desire to keep oil away from foreign powers no doubt plays a role. I have also read that nearly every congressional district in the country has either a military base or a place of business tht does business with the Pentagon. This is a powerful economic incentive for war, especially in these tough times.

As a preliminary strategy, may I suggest a boycott of G.E. G.E., of course, owns NBC. G.E. is a big defense contractor and it owns the network that denied the antiwar Kucinich a place in the debates by changing the ground rules after he had qualified under the original guidelines. A friend in Jewish Voice for Peace informs me that G.E. is also involved in supplying goods necessary to maintain the occupation of the West Bank.

But how does one start a boycott of a company as big as G.E.? And would it hurt the little guys more than the CEOs?

Food forthought.

Old Interview with Israel Shahak, human rights activist and Holocaust survivor

2010-10-11T06:54:00.000-07:00

Those of us who were lucky enough to have known Israel Shahak remember him wiwith affection. This is an old interview done in 1994. While the specific issues are dated, the spirit in which he approached the important questions is eternal.

He is somewhat edgy in this video, perhaps because of jet lag or ill health--he had diabetes that was especially hard on him because he was left with permanent health problems due to the Holocaust.

Since he criticizes Judaism harshly, let me add that there is nothing he says about it that cannot also be said about Christianity. It is also necessary to add, I believe, that many observant Jews do not hold the views that he criticizes.

A Very Old Essay Written by Israel Shahak, of blessed memory

2010-10-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

Equal Justice for Every Human Being

written by

Israel Shahak

from

Arabs and Jews: Possibility of Concord

Published by the

Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc.

North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, January 1974

Information Papers No. 11

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I want to argue a thesis which may appear most paradoxical and improbable: that it is possible to establish a lasting concord between Jews and Palestinians, between the Jewish community and Arab communities of the Middle East. And I am convinced that the way to establish such a concord is really quite simple. I believe that the principle of equal justice for every human being, if taken seriously and not merely declaimed, can form the basis of such a concord.

I must distinguish between a slogan and a principle. A slogan is shouted at demonstrations, or perhaps is repeated to journalists, but it is not adopted as a doctrine. People who have shouted slogans return home and act in many ways contrary to what they shouted. They never criticize their friends and allies, their leaders, or themselves in the name of the slogan they shouted, but only their enemies. A principle is different. People reform their own lives and their traditional opinions in support of a certain principle; they argue with their friends about it; in short, they are true to it. At present, only very small minority groups in the Middle East believe in equal justice for every human being as a principle.

Therefore, my first task is one of ruthless criticism. A principle, if it is a principle and not a slogan, must serve as a yardstick for everyone's behavior, and for the behavior of friends and potential friends first of all. I see such criticism as my most important duty; and only after such criticism does a lasting concord based on agreement to a commonly held principle become possible and, indeed, probable.

However, in criticizing, I do not pretend to be "symmetrical." I distinguish very sharply indeed between the conqueror and the conquered, between the power that denies freedom, and the people who struggle for freedom. And because I am not "symmetrical," I am going to be ruthless in criticizing both sides. Those who want to abolish oppression must adopt the way of principle; experience has shown that with muddled thinking nothing can be achieved. I want to examine three particular problems in light of the principle of equal justice for every human being: the problem of terror, the problem of conditions for any "political solution," and the problem of possible allies of any movement that believes in this principle.

When speaking of "terror" I am referring to any indiscriminate act of power, on behalf of a state, a group, or a movement, which causes death to civilians. It does not matter whether the act is carried out by people in or out of uniform. I am quite conscious, as an Israeli citizen, that the Israeli government is responsible for the greater part of deaths caused by terror in the Middle East. I condemn such acts of terror--for example, the Beirut raids of April, 1973--as war crimes, and it is my hope that those responsible will yet be brought to trial as war criminals. Not in the interest of any "symmetry," but in the interest of honesty and truth, I condemn also, on the same terms, any and every act of indiscriminate terror carried out by Palestinian organizations.

When Israeli forces have committed an act of terror against a Palestinian or an Arab population, the usual excuse has been that "Arabs understand only the language of force." But no group of human beings submits for a long time to force. The bombing of London by the Nazis and the bombing of the Vietnamese by the United States are only two cases in which the use of indiscriminate terror has only hardened the will of the population to resist, has only united the people behind the government. And the same is true for the other side. To suppose that bombs in the cinemas of Israel will persuade Jews not to support the oppression of Palestinians is absurd. Any movement which accepts the principle of equal justice for every human being, which looks on the people of the Middle East, whoever they may be, as human beings, must dissociate itself completely from acts of indiscriminate terror, and must support instead the common political struggle of Jews and Arabs alike on behalf of this principle.

The second problem concerns the conditions for a political solution. All parties involved spend much effort advocating various "solutions," various "states," present or future, and little if any effort deciding what the lot of human beings in such states is or will be. This is, for me, the most important question; and I will examine both the existing and the proposed structures in the light of my principle. Any state or states which are just, and which will lead to a lasting concord, must belong only to their citizens, with no restrictions placed on any race, religion, or nationality. On that principle I condemn the whole idea of the so-called Jewish state as unjust, as leading necessarily to subjection, oppression, and unlimited war. I especially condemn the infamous Law of Return, which, with other similar laws, causes the greatest discord between Jews and Palestinians. As long as such unjust and inhuman laws exist--as long as a Palestinian born, let us say, in Haifa is prohibited from returning to his home town, while a recently converted Mexican Jew is readily admitted to that city--there is, in my opinion, no possibility for a just and lasting solution.

But I must add that I am not fighting to replace one injustice with another. I oppose the Law of Return. And, by the same token, I oppose the notorious Paragraph Six of the 1968 Palestinian Covenant, which states that only Jews who arrived in Palestine "before the beginning of the Zionist aggression" will be offered Palestinian citizenship. Just as I am against a "Jewish state," I am against an Arab state as well. Any movement committed to equal justice for all human beings must repudiate this paragraph, just as it must repudiate the Law of Return and similar laws. And I tell you that in Jerusalem and Nazareth, in Tel Aviv and Haifa, there do exist various groups, integrated groups of Palestinians and Jews who, however they differ in ideology, apply the same standards of justice to every human being, and that these groups oppose both the Law of Return of the state of Israel and Paragraph Six of the 1968 Palestinian Covenant. I differ from them in many points, but I do not differ in this: I can entertain many possible political solutions, and I can and will take my place in any common struggle, but the struggle must be common in humanity, common in principle, common in equality. Only such a way is possible.

The last problem I want to discuss is the problem of possible allies of any movement based on the principle of equal justice for every human being. One thing must be made clear: principles are not to be given up for the sake of any alliance, no matter how profitable that alliance may be in terms of money or other material help. The experience of the Jewish community has shown time and again that any alliance with Zionists, any tolerance of racism, leads straight to disaster, and the "profits," in terms of long-range objectives, turn out to be imaginary. A Zionist party cannot be part of a positive movement; a kibbutz has to be criticized for the anti-Arab, racist organization that it is; and those who support the Israeli government support all the crimes of Dayan.

I trust that it is axiomatic in this forum that women are human beings, entitled to equal justice. Every movement which believes in this as a principle, and not as a slogan, should act on it. Declarations like that of President Kaddafi about the "biological inequality of women" should not be overlooked. Moreover, any movement devoted to human rights for men and women must fight for women's rights as an inherent part of its struggle. Women must participate fully in demonstrations, in elections, in all activities. In short, no consideration of money or other help should prevent any movement based on this principle from fighting for equal rights for women, or from resolutely and openly opposing all those who deny this principle.

Another factor that sometimes leads to the pardoning of unworthy allies is to rely on the past, and to entertain foolish ideas of bringing back some imaginary "golden era." The principle of equal justice for all human beings is not found in the Jewish past; nor is it found in the Arab past. The roots of this principle do not go further back than the American and the French revolutions. I am devoted to many aspects of the Jewish past and culture, but political theory is not one of them. King David and King Solomon may have been poets and prophets, but they were also tyrants; and all who idealize them politically are dangerous as political allies. I admire many aspects of the Arab heritage, but I do not accept the rule of Caliph Haroun al-Rashid, or that of any other caliph, as a model to be followed. We all are the children of modern times; our beginnings are in "liberty, equality, fraternity ," and "government of the people, for the people, and by the people." Allies who are devoted exclusively to the past are dangerous and must be repudiated.

Many other problems can be discussed in the light of this principle, but I think that the way I propose has been made clear. It is a hard way, one that demands that we all--Jews, Palestinians, Israelis, and Arabs--fight against the mores of our own societies and our own peoples, and that we carry out this fight first of all in our own minds and in our own hearts. I think that this way, which perhaps seems to you long, will turn out to be long but short. Let me conclude by telling you my favorite Talmudic story. Rabbi Yehoshua Ben-Hananya used to tell how once, as he was walking on his way, he came to a crossroad where a small boy was sitting. He asked the boy, "Which is the best way to town?" The boy answered, "One way is short but long, and the other is long but short." The rabbi took the short but long way and found that close to the town the road got lost among the orchards. He returned and rebuked the boy, but the boy answered, "Did I not tell you that that way is short but long? You should have taken the long but short way!" And, indeed, when the rabbi took this advice, he arrived safely in town.

I offer you the advice of this small boy. The way of the principle of equal justice for every human being, of being true to it in all its consequences, may be the hard way, may be the long way, but it is the long but short way and will lead us to our common aim: to lasting concord between Palestinians and Jews, to lasting cooperation between the Jewish community and the Arabs in the Middle East.

Israel Shahak

1974

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Alabaster's Archive

Clash of Identities

2010-08-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

Shortly before his death, Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling compiled a book of his best essays spanning his entire academic career.

Kimmerling was simply one of the best writers on the Middle East that there is. He was not afraid to break taboos and shatter myths. For example, he advocated scrapping the Israeli flag and the national anthem because they were specifically Jewish in their content and inherently excluded the Arab citizens of Israel who comprise approximately 20% of the population. He also proposed a peace plan that combined the best features of both the one-state and two-state solutions.

He rarely criticized the Palestinians. "In general I never criticize the other side.It is too easy," he once wrote me. Instead, he examined the policies of his own country and criticized them fearlessly. His critics accused him of being anti-Israel but in fact, he loved his country the way I, a dissident American, love mine. In this way, he is a model for all people who love their land, their language, and their culture and yet disagree with the policies of their government.

An Interesting Blog on Taxes and Financial Planning for the Self-Employed

2010-08-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

Tax and Financial Consultant to the Self-Employed

Since many war tax resisters are self-employed as a way to avoid paying withholding taxes, this advice may prove valuable. Her section on medical insurance for the self-employed is helpful, too.

The Mosque Near Ground Zero

2010-08-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

There are no doubt a number of Americans who have had loved ones killed in Northern Ireland by one faction or another, yet Protestants could not reasonably argue against a Catholic church in their neighborhood because of their pain. Neither could Catholics whose family members had been killed by Protestant terror groups argue against building a Protestant church. Part of the reason that such a reaction is unthinkable is that, whatever our personal opinions, we all know that the numbers of Protestants and Catholics who would never even dream of committing an act of terrorism far outnumber the brutal fanatics who would.

Because I have known many Muslims in my life and know them to be decent and compassionate people--and also because I didn't lose anyone I cared about in the 911 attacks--it is easy for me to sympathize with the Muslim community in their desire to build a mosque. I am totally sure that 99.9% of Muslims in America would not have been able to even imagine--much less carry out--the criminal attacks in 2001. In fact, the imam who wants to build this community center has been a critic of religious violence and a proponent of closer relations between the U.S. and Muslim countries.

Yet, the very real pain of the 911 families should not be ignored. If you have never known Muslims and have lost your loved ones to people who claim to be acting in the name of Islam, the sight of a mosque near to Ground Zero has to be excruciatingly painful.

Is a compromise possible? For example, can the directors of the Islamic Community Center commission a memorial of some kind to the victims and include a statement denouncing all acts of violence committed in the name of religion by anyone? It seems to me that a beautiful and dignified memorial to the victims of 911 could go a long way toward easing some of the pain. While this is not well-known, some of the 911 victims were themselves Muslims. A memorial at the Islamic Center commemorating all victims of all faiths would be perhaps the best way to honor the Muslim victims--and all victims--of 911.

Trivial Post: How to Save Money on Phone Bills

2010-08-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

Part of doing war tax resistance is learning to live on a budget. Because I do copyediting for an overseas client, my phone bills were huge until I purchased a Skype number. For $13.99 a month, I can make unlimited calls to land lines to nearly anywhere in the world. If you use Skype to talk via computer with your contact, the call is free.

This is a boon to people with family or business contacts overseas. I have set the Skype number up to call from my home phone, my cell, and my mother's phone. There is a fair use policy--I can't give the number out to all my friends on Facebook--but the system is flexible and user friendly.

Saving money is important to people doing war tax resistance and this has helped a lot.

The Madonna of Nagasaki

2010-08-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

This story speaks for itself.

The Madonna of Nagasaki

In Memoriam: The Victims of Nagasaki

2010-08-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

The bombing of Nagasaki on August 9. 1945, stands out as one of the greatest acts of senseless cruelty in the annals of modern warfare. Aside from the fact that targeting civilian population is always and everywhere wrong regardless of military considerations, this bombing was unnecessary from a military point of view also.

Contrary to the lies told by the U.S. government to the American people, the A-bombs were not needed to avoid a ground invasion and save the lives of American troops. I have taken the following quotations from an American studies web page publshed by a university in Colorado..

Admiral William D. Leahy described America's use of the A-bomb in the following words:

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." (William D. Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441).

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945:

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 329, Chapter 26) . . . [Nimitz also stated: "The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . ."]

Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946: [With apologies for the ethnic slurs]

The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before. (See p. 331, Chapter 26)

In his "third person" autobiography (co-authored with Walter Muir Whitehill) the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated:

The President in giving his approval for these [atomic] attacks appeared to believe that many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan, and in this he was entirely correct; but King felt, as he had pointed out many times, that the dilemma was an unnecessary one, for had we been willing to wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials. (See p. 327, Chapter 26)

On September 20, 1945 the famous "hawk" who commanded the Twenty-First Bomber Command, Major General Curtis E. LeMay (as reported in The New York Herald Tribune) publicly:

said flatly at one press conference that the atomic bomb "had nothing to do with the end of the war." He said the war would have been over in two weeks without the use of the atomic bomb or the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 336, Chapter 27)

Because this bombing was clearly both immoral and did nothing to hasten te end of the war, the carnage is especially horrible.

Survivors relate the following stories:

A woman who had taken cover in a bomb shelter recalled seeing what looked like two lizards coming at her. She realized as they drew closer that they were two human beings whose skin had been seared off by the heat of the bomb. Other survivors report seeing people with grotesquely swollen faces, torsos covered with blisters, with great sheets of skin hanging off of their bodies. This photograph depicts a situation that must have happened tens of thousands of times, as 87,000 people were killed in this bombing. http://www.exploratorium.edu/nagasaki/photos.html#journey/30.jpg

Much of the city was leveled:

The Urakami Cathedral, the larges church in east Asia, was destroyed in the blast. Nagasaki had one of the largest Christian communities in Asia.

The Cathedral was later rebuilt:

In 1985, the mayor of Nagasaki sent a replica of the Angelus bell found in the original Cathedral to the city of Richland. This "bell of peace" is rung every year on August 9 in memory of those who died at Pearl Harbor and those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The origial bell of peace rings in the reconstructed cathedral in Nagasaki.

GI Rights Hotline

2010-08-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I wrote about Bradley Manning and the effort to raise funds for his defense. Because the internet is an easy medium for con artists, I decided to check out Courage to Resist by calling the GI Rights Hotline in San Francisco. Yesterday, I received a very nice call from one of the men who works there. He verified that Courage to Resist is indeed a reputable organization. He also told me a little bit about the GI Rights Hotline. Please check out the link to their website. If you live in the San Francisco area, the organization can always use help. You can train to be a telephone counselor and help GIs explore their options.

If you live on the East Coast, I recommend Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They have a GI hotline too. I have been on their mailing list forever and they have an excellent newsletter that they send out. It is full of good information on war resistance and it is not only informative, it is well-written and a joy to read.

Bradley Manning Needs Your Help

2010-07-31T11:50:00.000-07:00

Click here to sign petition for Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning is the soldier accused of giving a copy of the video showing soldiers in a helicopter shooting Iraqi civilians, including children He will apparently be charged in the latest Wikileaks release of 90,000 pages of classified documents. He is currently arrested and being held in Quantico Virginia.

There are four things you can do to help him:

1. Write to Bradley Manning at the following addres: Inmate Bradley Manning, 3247 Elrod Avenue,Quantico, VA, 22134

2. Sign the petition at the link above.

3. Donate to his defense fund using the above link.

4. Write to your Congress person on his behalf

I have contacted Cindy Sheehan and she is familiar with the organization, Courage to Resist, that is hosting this site. She states that Courage to Resist is highly credible and that she has donated to them. You don't have to worry about being scammed or giving money to a con artist.

Bradley Manning is the Daniel Ellsberg of our time. Manning faces up to 56 years in a military prison for these charges. Ellsberg also faced significant prison time but was not tried, apparently because the government decided the resulting publicity would only make things worse. Fortunately for Ellsberg, the media had largely turned against the war by the time he released the Pentagon Papers. Manning is not so lucky in this regard. The media mostly underreport the war. However, most Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan and if we generate enough publicity, we can turn this around for Mr. Manning.

Please do what you can: sign the petition, donate to his defense fund, write or call Congress, write letters to the editor--and most of all, spread the word about Manning's courage and what the government is trying to do to him. If enough people oppose the government's attempt to silence him, he will be freed. Don't let a courageous man spend 56 years in prison for trying to stop a war that is devastating the civilian populations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

My Latest Blog--totally unconnected to war resistance

2010-07-29T07:47:00.000-07:00

Macrobiotic Healing Magazine

Eons ago, before I started doing war tax resistance and still had disposable income, I studied macrobiotics at the Kushi Institute and am actually a certified macrobiotic instructor. I have started a blog on this topic and am perusing some of the peer-reviewed journals at the university library and writing about some of the studies that are relevant to natural eating and living. The blog is in its infancy but I am planning articles on infertility, autism, and other topics from a natural health point of view. If this interests you, you might want to check it out.

Lieberman's Bill to "Pull the Plug" on the Internet

2010-07-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

Those of us who were even minimally active in the antiwar movement know that it would not have been
possible without the internet. The internet made it possible for those of us who opposed the war to read articles by Robert Fisk, Robert Sheer, Eric Margolis,Jim Lobe and others--the type of journalists who are not usually syndicated in American newspapers but who provide an antidote to America's often slavishly pro-government press. The internet made it possible for antiwar activists to arrange demonstrations, petition drives, and letter-writing campaigns. We were not able to stop the war but Noam Chomsky has stated that the war was less brutal than it might have been because of the enormous opposition expressed even before the war began.

Because the internet is one of the few remaining avenues for the expression of dissent, activists must view with alarm the bill proposed by Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut, to give the government the power to shut down the internet during times of national emergency. The rationale is, of course, terrorism. But, as Phil Giraldi stated in this article, terrorists rarely use the internet because it is so carefully monitored and terrorism flourished well before the internet existed. If the internet were to be shut down, terrorists would find other means of communication. Shutting down the internet would primarily hamper citizens opposing their government from communicating their opposition to government policies.

Updated Rules on Health Savings Accounts

2010-07-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

2010 Rules on Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).
The situations that lead ordinary people into financial catastophe are unemployment, illness, divorce, financing an education, and illness. This post covers tax-free ways of saving for medical expenses by using Health Savings Accounts. Note, though, that if you have an IRA, you can withdraw from it without penalty--although you must pay taxes on the money--to pay for medical expenses.

Another tax-deductible program--the Health Savings Account- (HSA)-can provide partial protecion against illness if the person has a high-deductible health insurance program. You can contribute, tax-free--the amount of your deductible into a Health Savings Account. Provided that the money is used for qualified medical expenses, you need never pay taxes on the money at all. If you meet the eligibility requirements, you may contribute, tax-free, up to $3050 per person per year or $6,150 per family per year.

Who is eligible:

Anyone with a high-deductible insurance plan, defined as a plan having a deductible of $1200 or more per individual per year or $2400 per family per year.
Is not covered by other health insurance, including medicare.
Anyone who is not listed as a dependent on someone else's tax return. Children cannot have their own HSAs but spouses can establish their own if they are eligible.

There are no income limits on who may establish an HSA and the money used to fund them need not be earned income.

The 2010 annual out-of-pocket expenses (deductibles, co-payments, and other amounts) for a high deductible health insurance plan (HDHP) cannot exceed $5,950 for self-only coverage or $11,900 for family coverage.

A table publishe by the Examiner summarizes the differences between 2009 and 2010 contribution limits and expenses.
Summary of 2009 and 2010 HSA Rules

Because you may never pay taxes on this money at all if you have an HSA and use the contributions for medical expenses, establishing an HSA is a good strategy for people with predictable medical expenses. If you do not use the money, it is not lost as it is in certain cafeteia plans and flexible spending arrangments. THe money rolls over and can be used another year. After you retire, the account can also be used as part of your retirement savings although at that point, you must pay taxes.

John Yoo and Jay Bybee

2010-07-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

If you have followed the issue of torture, you will recognize Yoo and Bybee as authors of a Justice Department memo allowing the "limited" use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. And what ever happened to two advocates of torture? John Yoo is teaching law at UC Berkeley and Bybee is a federal judge. Torture pays. Now that even jobs for highly skilled workers like computer scientists, engineers, and radiologists are being outsourced, torture is starting to look more and more like a "viable career option."

Revealing the "War on Terror" as a Lie

2010-07-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

If the United States government were really serious about reducing terrorism and the attendant human costs, it would have welcomed the acts of the Humanitarian Law Project. In this article by Nat Hentoff entitled Court in Contempt of First Amendment, details the activities of this NGO. He quotes from Justice Breyer's dissent: :

"The plaintiffs, all United States citizens or associations," declare "they can (1) 'train members of the PKK ( the Turkish initials for the Kurdistan People's Party)on how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes"' (2) "engage in political advocacy on behalf of Kurds who live in Turkey; (3) teach PKK members how to petition various representative bodies such as the United Nations for relief; and (4) engage in political advocacy on behalf of Tamils who live in Sri Lanka."

Obviously, the Humanitarian Law Project is trying to reduce the use of terrorism as a political tactic by training groups in the use of non-violent strategies. One would think that the government, which is spending trillions of dollars on two wars that everyone recognizes are quagmires, would welcome this kind of strategy. Instead, the Obama administration took the organization to court, charging it with material aid to terrorist groups. After a lower court ruled that the statute in question is unconstitutionally vague, the Obama administration directed Eric Holder to take the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the Obama administration's favor.

Since not even the Obama administration has claimed that the Humanitarian Law Project advocated violence, the government's agenda in bringing suit is clearly not motivated by national security concerns.

The consequences of this decision are four-fold. First, it clearly limits First Amendment guaranteees of freedom of speech and association, even when their purpose is to reduce terrorism and violence. Secondly, persons violating this provision face up to fifteen years in federal prison for the "crime" of trying to prevent violence and encourage the rule of law, a provision that criminalizes one form of meaningful dissent and reduces us all to writing letters to our congressmen and putting bumper stickers on our cars. Thirdly, it makes meaningful peace work with "enemies" almost impossible. Most importantly, the government's action gives the lie to its claim that its wars are defensive ones designed to reduce terrorism. A government that was serious about reducing terrorism would support the activity of the Humanitarian Law Project, not threaten its members with fifteen-year jail terms.

While I can only guess at the government's motivation, teaching the PKK to use non-violent strategies to attain its ends would boost its credibility as a human rights or liberation movement. This goes against the interest of Turkey which has a large and restive Kurdish population that has clamored for greater autonomy. The entire case is seemingly motivated, not by the desire to reduce terrorism, but by the desire to pacify a close ally that the US hopes to call on for various political favors. What are the favors? No doubt they are military in nature. Turkey is a NATO member and a long-time US ally. Turkey also shares a border with Iran and the US could benefit from cooperation with Turkey if it decides to strike Iran. If that is their motive, that ramifications are chilling. The Obama administration has left the option of bombing Iran "on the table" and is pacifying a potential ally, Turkey, in anticipation of such a strike.

Hope and Change? Not much hope but things certainly have changed.

A Calculator for Determining How Much You May Contribute to an IRA

2010-07-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

One of the easiest ways to reduce the taxes you pay is to contribute to a retirement plan that allows you to make tax-deductible contributions. Such plans include 401k's, IRAs and 403b's. IRA eligibility rules are rather complex. Whether or not you are eligible to contribute to an IRA and how much you may contribute depends on a myriad of factors such as whether you participate in other retirement plans, your adjusted gross income, and your age, to name just three.

In general, you may contribute up to $5000 per year if you are under the age of fifty and up to $6,000 per year if you are over 50. If your modified adjusted gross income is over a certain level, you may be eligible to contribute less than those amounts. Very high incomes combined with participation in another retirement plan may make you ineligible for IRAs altogether.

Smart Money has created a convenient IRA Eligibility Calculator to help you determine what you can contribute. Remember that if you are investing in an IRA for tax resistance purposes, you will want to nvest in a traditional IRA. With a traditional IRA, you are able to deduct the contributions from your current taxes but will have to pay taxes on the money when you withdraw it after retirement. Most financial advisers believe Roth IRAs are a better deal: you pay taxes on the money now but withdrawals are tax-free after retirement. Roth IRAs, however, are useless as tax resistance strategies in the short term. Of course, if you believe that we will be in Iraq until we suck the last oil out of their sand, a Roth IRA may make sense for war tax resistance purposes too.

I am not a stock analyst and have no idea what the stock market will do in the future. My own gut feeling, though, is that it will not do too well. In that case, you may want to invest in commodities like oil and silver. However, please, please don't stake your retirement on my ideas.

US Hands Over Camp Cropper to Iraqis

2010-07-15T14:34:00.000-07:00

US Hands Over Last Prison in Iraq to Iraqis

This article from the Guardian seems to encapsulate many stories about America's withdrawal from Iraq. The last US-held detention facility is being handed over to Iraqis BUT (you knew this was coming, right) the US will continue to hold 200 prisoners who will be housed in a separate section of the prison. In other words, we are not really, truly completely out of Camp Cropper.

Camp Cropper, it is worth noting, has a controversial history and many detainees have alleged abuse and torture at the hands of the Americans. Ungrateful so-and-sos who don't appreciate the fact that we have liberated them. (Irony, obviously.)

Video interviews of former CIA Agents Critical of War in Afghanistan

2010-07-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

Some publications on war tax resistance

2010-07-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

Paying for Peace:war Tax Resistance in the United States

Guide to war tax resistance

WAR REGISTERS LEAGUE GUIDE TO WAR TAX RESISTANCE

Ain't gonna pay for war no more

Options & consequences (War tax concerns)

War tax manual for counselors and lawyers

Miscellaneous Tax Deductions

2010-07-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

Miscellaneous Deductions

To understand how to handle miscellaneous deductions on your taxes, it is necessary to understand what is meant by adjusted gross income. Adjusted gross income is the sum of all your sources of income such as wages, tips, royalties, and dividends MINUS contributions to IRAs or 401k’s, some business expenses, moving costs, alimony payments and other similar expenses.

Suppose your adjusted gross income is $50,000. In order to deduct miscellaneous expenses from your taxes, your total miscellaneous deductions must total over 2% of your adjusted gross income. In our example, 2% of $50,000 is $1,000. You can deduct any miscellaneous expenses that exceed $1,000. For example, suppose you have $1500 in allowable miscellaneous deductions. You may deduct $500 from your taxes.

Now that you know how miscellaneous deductions are computed, you need to know what kind of deductions qualify.

Miscellaneous expenses related to home and car ownership.

Everyone who owns a home realizes that mortgage interest and property tax are deductible. Also deductible are expenses related to selling your home like real estate commissions, closing costs, and other assorted fees. Also, the fee to register your car every year is deductible.

Charitable contributions: charitable contributions are deductible as are appraisal fees incurred when you donate big ticket items like cars and appliances. Travel expenses to the place a charitable activity is performed is also deductible.

Business travel is tax deductible. Also, if you have your business attire dry cleaned while you are on the road, this is deductible also. You may also deduct business expenses for the shipping of items you need while traveling such as documents and equipment. Additionally, if you need to stay in touch with the office or with clients while traveling, you may also deduct telephone and fax expenses. Union dues are also deductible.

A good strategy is to time your contributions to maximize deductions. For example, you can pay your favorite charity or religious institution in one lump sum before December 31 for the next year and deduct that whole amount on the current year’s taxes. Also, you can pay your child’s orthodontist off before the end of the year instead of making monthly payments stretched out over several years. Strategies like these will give you miscellaneous deductions that will exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income and will give you big tax savings.

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox: Requiem for the Antiwar Movement by Cindy Sheehan

2010-07-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox: Requiem for the Antiwar Movement by Cindy Sheehan

How wars are financed

2010-07-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

How wars are financed

This article, published in the American Conservative, gives a brief history of how wars are financed. I won't even attempt to summarize it because my knowledge of economics is so limited but it is scary reading. Basically, the author is arguing that the goverment avoids, as much as it can, financing wars through taxes because the public soon grows weary of such wars. The government prefers instead to use monetary policy and "create" money to finance the wars. The citizens still pay but in a hidden way--through inflation, for example, and other types of economic dislocation. Perhaps this will give us some of the background we need to find more effective ways of opposing war.

A review of basic tax-reduction strategies

2010-07-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

Some basics of tax planning

This blog started off as a war tax resistance blog and has segued into other issues that are off-topic but just as important, like resisting military recruiters. I want to return briefly to the subject of war tax resistance by posting the above link, which gives the basics of tax-reduction strategies like retirement savings and taking college courses, which are tax-deductible and in certain cases provide tax credits.

The economy is so uncertain that I hesistate to even hint at offering investment advice but I don't mind advising people to go back to school. The government has two major tax credits for educational expenses. They are the Hope/American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Lifelong Learning Credit.

Remember the difference between a deduction and a credit. A deduction allows you to deduct that amount from your gross income. The amount of tax you owe is calculated on your gross income after that amount is subtracted. A tax credit is an amount subtracted from the actual amount of tax that you owe. Obviously, in nearly all cases, a tax credit is better than a tax deduction.

I am including a summary from the College Board about how these provisions work.

Details from the College Board about Tax Credits for Tuition

The Hope/American Opportunity Tax Credit

With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, also known as the Stimulus Bill), Congress has expanded the existing Hope tax credit, now called the American Opportunity Credit. The expanded terms will apply to tax years 2009 and 2010. While the Hope Credit could be applied to two years of postsecondary education, the expanded program allows the credit to be claimed for four years, and also expands income eligibility.

To claim this credit, the student must be enrolled at least half-time in a program leading to an undergraduate degree or other legitimate education credential.

The maximum yearly credit per eligible student is $2,500.

The American Opportunity Credit is partially refundable, which means up to $1,000 could be paid back to lower-income taxpayers when the credit exceeds their total tax bill.

There is no limit on how many family members can receive the credit.

The amount of the credit begins to phase out if your modified adjusted gross income (AGI) is between $80,000 and $90,000 or more for a single return and between $160,000 and $180,000 or more for a joint return.

For parents or guardians to claim a Hope credit for their child's college expenses, the student must be listed as a dependent on the tax form. If the student is not listed as a dependent on another person's tax form, he or she can claim the credit.

For exact directions for claiming the American Opportunity credit, and information about a further credit available to students in specified Midwestern disaster areas, consult IRS Publication 970, Tax Benefits for Education

The Lifetime Learning Tax Credit

This credit is available for all years of postsecondary education and for courses (even a single course) to acquire or improve job skills.

The Lifetime Learning credit can only be used for tuition and fees. The credit can be claimed for 20 percent of the amount you pay (see maximum limits below).

A taxpayer may claim a tax credit for 20% of up to $10,000 in a combination of tuition and fees. This equates to a $2,000 tax credit in 2008 and 2009.

The amount of the credit begins to phase out if your AGI is between $50,000 and $60,000 for a single return and between $100,000 and $120,000 for a joint return.

Consult IRS Publication 970 for specific rules on eligibility and claiming this tax credit.

Here is a link to the IRS publication with all the details: IRS publication about tax credits for educational expenses.

What courses you take are entirely up to you but to obtain a tax credit, it is usually better to take courses that can improve your job skills. I suggest classes in technical writing and foreign languages. Since many jobs now require applicants to be bilingual, if you take a foreign language course, you are improving your job skills and getting either a deduction or credit, depending on what you are eligible for.

There is an additional reason for taking a foreign language course. One of the reasons the U.S. government can get away with its foreign policy is that many Americans lack the means to inform themselves of what is really going on in the world. The American government can count on the US news media not to report the truth in order to preserve their access to government officials. That leaves us at the mercy of Fox News and NBC, which is owned by the defense contractor General Electric. If more Americans could read foreign newspapers in foreign languages, we would be better-informed and less easily bamboozled.

Noam Chomsky makes the point that the sorry state of the American educational system is NOT an accident. The government wants people who lack the skill to understand what is happening to the economy, who lack the ability to read foreign languages and expose themselves to different points of view, and who don't know enough about the way the government operates to change what it does.

Educate yourself with courses in economics and foreign languages. Studying politics and government will help you learn how the system works and what you need to do to change it. Courses in logic will help you frame your arguments more effectively. Classes in writing, public speaking, and marketing will help you communicate effectively to the widest possible audience. If you are interested in environmental issues, classes in math and science will give you the necessary background. If you like caring for others, study one of the medical professions--nursing, dental hygiene, radiology, or physical therapy. As the population ages, there will be a constant demand for these specialties.

I rather doubt you could deduct the tuition for a P.E. course but if you are not academically talented, you could take a course in basketball, soccer, golf, or tennis. It would improve your health and your social life. You would be contributing to an educational institution that is experiencing budget cuts and lean economic times.

An added bonus is that when you take college courses, you will nearly always meet wonderful people who want to learn and improve themselves. Adult college students are some of the best people in the world. We live in a society that increasingly promotes what Noam Chomsky calls atomization--a culture that leaves us alone in front of our computers or TV sets instead of being with other human beings. Taking college courses helps you establish a social network of people who are of above average intelligence and who are engaged and aware. Your life will be much better if it is filled with intellectually stimulating, caring people.

There is now some debate about whether a college education is really a good investment economically. A lot depends on the quality of the school you go to and what you major in. However, taking the courses I have suggested will lower your tax bill, widen your social life, and equip you to better resist a government that is squandering lives and resources for what seem to be imperialistic designs on the wealth of other countries.

Jews and Muslims in Israel and Palestine Unite to Oppose Settlements

2010-07-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

Non-Violent Opposition to Settlements

One of the good things to come out of the attack on the Gaza flotilla is a renewed interest in non-violent political activism. The above link, from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, tells the heartening story of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims joining together to oppose settlement expansion. Here is an excerpt from Bradley Burston's column describing a non-violent march:

But there is very definitely something new here. The protest was not, as the brief news item hinted, one more example of radical Islamists inciting hotheads to violence against Israelis. Far from it. What actually happened was a march in which settlers stared in wonderment and a certain anxiety at a large and unified force of Jews and Arabs taking a powerful stand against occupation.

When one Palestinian youth picked up a rock to throw at the settlers, Arabs and Jews alike stopped him and distanced him from the march.

There is a lesson here for Americans opposed to our conflicts, too. Non-violent protests in which large numbers of disparate people unite to oppose government policy would have our leaders "staring in wonderment and a certain anxiety" as Burston puts it. What a possible dream.

Anti-Semitism in Sweden

2010-07-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

Anti-Semitism in Sweden

Regular readers of this blog realize that I am solidly pro-Palestinian and highly critical of the Israeli government. Nevertheless, some actions taken by some critics of Israel are wrong and should be denounced loudly and repeatedly. The link above illustrates that kind of actions that are clearly wrong. In Malmo, Sweden, ordinary Swedish Jews are being harassed and in some cases physically threatened just for being Jewish. Young people, most of them Muslims, are giving Jews the Hitler salute. A Hasidic rabbi and his wife were nearly hit, deliberately, by a car. Jewish youths have been beaten up.

It must be emphasized that the leading Muslim cleric in Malmo has strongly condemned the harassment and that the harassers are only a small minority of the Muslim population. The perpetrators are mostly under eighteen and do not represent the majority of Swedish Muslims who probably just want to lead ordinary lives.

As an American who strongly opposes U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world, I expect Muslims to realize that many Americans oppose US foreign policy and to evaluate me as an individual, not as an unofficial representative of the American government. Jews are also entitled to be judged as individuals, not as representatives of the Netanyahu government ,which is indeed awful.

On a practical level, just as American bombing of Muslim countries creates bitterness toward America and makes it easier for al-Qaeda-like factions to recruit, violence against Jews pushes some Jews into the arms of right-wing Israeli political parties. One young man who was severely beaten by Muslim youth has decided to immigrate to Israel and join the army.

If I were a Muslim, this post would irritate me. After all, settlers have been brutalizing and humiliating non-violent Palestinians on the West Bank for decades and the western press has largely been silent. Still, those of us involved in organizations working for Middle East peace know that there are many Jews and Muslims who are working together to create a just peace. Violent Jewish settlers and rock-throwing Muslim youth only prolong the agony for the innocent people on both sides.

A Strategy to Complement War Tax Resistance

2010-07-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

In 2004, Tom Hayden wrote an article about how to end the Iraq war. Drawing on his experience as an activist during the Vietnam era, he laid out a strategy for activists and organizers to follow.

1. The most important action we can take is to encourage Congress to stop funding the war. According to Hayden, when caught between the imperial elites and their own voters, Congress will go with the voters because that, ultimately, is how they get elected. This is why the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia finally ended. Communicate, politely but firmly, to our members of Congress that your vote depends on their opposing funding of the Iraq war.

To find out how to contact your representative, go to Contact Elected Officials Enter the state and zip code and hit enter. You will then be taken to a page with contact information for your representative. (As of this writing, my congressman has announced his resignation and when I enter my zip code, I get the result that I am represented by the Honorable Vacancy. )

Scroll to the bottom of the page for contact information. Then write the person a letter. If you are one of the lucky few with a congressperson who opposes funding, write to thank him or her.

Pressuring Congress to halt funding seems to be the best chance we have for halting the war.

2. Begin at the grassroots to build a progressive, antiwar Democratic party. A good place to start is by attending precinct meetings. Since few people bother to attend, those who do have a disproportionate influence. Most local chapters of the party have websites that enable you to find your precinct.

3. Try some counter-recruiting tactics. Wars need both money and people willing to die in them. For counter-recruitment advice, go to the Coalition for Alternatives to Militarism in our Schools: Resisting Recruitment

The No Child Left Behind act requires schools to turn over student information to recruiters unless the parents submit an opt-out form. This site offers an opt-out form that you can download and print out. Even if you don't have kids, the parents of high school kids might be interested in having them.

Code Pink also has a useful counter-recruitment page on its website:

The War Resister's League offers an excellent counter-recruitment flyer available in both English and Spanish at Resist Military Recruitment

Just some ideas to get started.

2010-07-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

This is my response to a local columnist who claimed Iraq owed us cheap oil because we "liberated" them. I was surprised the paper printed it. Brief Summary of US foreign policy toward Iraq
=============================================================================

Iraq owes us nothing
July 03, 2010

Rachel Patron is one of the best columnists the Sun Sentinel has, but unfortunately, I am in disagreement with her assertion that Iraq owes us cheap oil because we liberated the country from Saddam Hussein. The obvious rejoinder is that Iraq has tens of thousands of foreign troops on its soil who are stationed there against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people. A country that has unwanted foreign troops on its soil has not been liberated; it is being occupied.

It is difficult to think of a country that has been more brutally treated than Iraq was by the United States. Saddam Hussein was "our bad guy" for many years, and we gave him aid during the Iran-Iraq war that strengthened his regime to the detriment of the Iraqi people. During Operation Desert Storm, U.S. forces mowed down retreating Iraqi soldiers and bombed water and sewage treatment plant, leading to the deaths of many Iraqis from disease.
After the war, we implemented a draconian sanction regime that killed an estimated 500,000 children aged 5 and under. Two UN officials heading the "food for oil" program resigned in protest at the way the sanctions were handled. One called it genocide.

The war of "liberation" was a catastrophe for the Iraqi people. We overthrew their government, but didn't commit enough forces to keep order in the country. The result is that hundreds of thousands of people have died, 15 percent of Iraq's citizens are refugees, and there are several million Iraqi orphans.

The Iraqi people have been starved, bombed, maimed, killed, orphaned and reduced to refugee status by U.S. government actions. Do we really have to loot them, too, by demanding that they sell us oil at below-market prices?

Jessica Ramer, Pompano Beach

Google Ads

2010-07-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

After navigating to this blog, I saw a Google ad for close-combat training. This ad gives exactly the opposite message of the one I wish to convey. It is ironic and a little bit funny.

Of course, the ads change all the time. The latest one is for American Military University. Is this some kind of accident? The search engine reads "war" and inserts military ads?

2010-07-01T09:31:00.001-07:00

The Kimmerling Plan for Peace in the Middle East

2010-06-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

The Kimmerling Plan: The Road to Peace in the Middle East Runs Through Europe

A just resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem is perhaps the thorniest issue preventing a comprehensive solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinian leadership cannot agree to an accord that does nothing for their countrymen who have been languishing in refugee camps for decades while Israelis cannot agree to undermine the Jewish character of the state by repatriating them.

Shortly before the Second Intifada broke out, Baruch Kimmerling, the late Israeli sociologist and co-author along with Joel Migdal of The Palestinians: The Making of a People, proposed a plan to satisfy the Palestinian aspiration for return while preserving the Jewish character of Israel. Because suicide bombings during the Second Intifada quelled Israeli aspirations for peace, his proposal was ignored. Now that the crisis has eased somewhat, perhaps it is time to give his plan the proper consideration it deserves.

He called for the granting of full human, civil, and social rights to the Palestinians of Israel, arguing that giving them an equal stake in the society would make them more likely to accept the state’s existence and to live in peace with their Jewish neighbors. He believed that Israel should change its symbols like the flag and national anthem, which effectively communicate to Arabs that they are not fully equal citizens, in favor of a flag and anthem whose symbolism includes Jews and Arabs equally. While such changes might make the state less Jewish in the currently accepted definition of the term, it would make the state more democratic and more able to survive in the long run.

He further argued for an immediate end to the occupation, a withdrawal to the 1967 borders, with minor adjustments, and the dismantling of the occupation regime that he regarded as colonialist in its essence. There should be a two-state solution, he wrote, with Jerusalem as its shared capital.

Kimmerling’s most original insight was that the road to peace in the Middle East does not run through the U.S. as is commonly thought, but through the European Union. He proposed that in the last phase of a negotiated agreement that both Israel and the new state of Palestine be admitted to the European Union. EU membership would, Kimmerling argued, enhance the security of both states and provide a suitable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.

The refugee issue is intractable largely because many people claim the right to live on the same small piece of land. Because citizens of European Union countries can live and work anywhere within the EU, there will be more land available for both peoples to live on. Open borders and free movement would mean that Palestinian refugees could hold Palestinian citizenship, work throughout the EU, and visit family still remaining in Israel, while Jews wishing to live in the West Bank or pray at holy places there would be able to do so. This solution thus enables Israel to avoid the ugly spectacle of their soldiers forcibly expelling Jews from sites regarded as holy.

Both Israel and Palestine could retain their identities as Jewish and Arab states respectively as the EU permits multiculturalism. Neither Palestinian citizens in Israel nor Israeli citizens in Palestine would be able to alter the political balance in those countries because they would be unable to vote in countries of which they were not citizens.

It is worth noting that even though Jewish fertility rates have increased while those of Israeli Arabs have decreased, Israeli Arabs still have, on average, more children than do Israeli Jews. If this trend continues, Arabs living in the pre-1967 borders of Israel will eventually outnumber Jews. Once that point is reached, the end of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state is only a generation away. On the one hand, there is more than a little bit of racism in a fear of having more Arab citizens; on the other hand, this fear of the "demographic bomb" can motivate some Israelis to advocate a genuine peace settlement. This “demographic bomb” can be made less powerful through an arrangement that eases population pressures by allowing both Israelis and Palestinians to work throughout the EU. Additionally, a durable peace and the economic benefits of EU membership would enable Israel to attract more immigrants and lose fewer of its young people to emigration.

Because of population pressures, the Israel-Palestine conflict seems destined to become even more difficult to resolve than it is now. Since the United States has failed repeatedly in solving this problem—and since both Israelis and Palestinians have a stake in securing peace—it may be in the best interest of both peoples to turn to the European Union for the solution to this previously insoluble conflict.

Against the Economic Boycott of Iran

2010-05-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

Boycotts and sanctions are draconian tactics that should be used only as a last resort. One need only remember the sanctions on Iraq that led to the unnecessary deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five while Saddam Hussein never missed a meal as long as the sanctions were in effect. People, especially children, died because of malnutrition and the lack of clean water and basic medical care. Many of those who survived have lasting physical and cognitive deficits. It is estimated that over one million people of all ages died prematurely because of the sanctions. Sanctions are a collective punishment that afflicts the poor and helpless more than the powerful.

Here is a description in the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal of what the Iraq people, especially children, suffered:

http://www.emro.who.int/publications/emhj/0604/20.htm

As of May/June 2000, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed there were still about 800 000 children under 5 years who were chronically malnourished. The report also indicated a high prevalence of anaemia in schoolchildren. The occurrence of rickets (vitamin D deficiency) is still being reported. Diarrhoea contributing to malnutrition is high and wasting (low weight-for-height) in the under-5s is over 10% in Baghdad, Kerbala and Diyala governorates. There were 30 232 cases of kwashiorkor registered in 1998 and 264 468 cases of marasmus, while an estimated 1 910 309 children were suffering from other protein-, calorie- and vitamin-related malnutrition in 1998. These figures confirm the general evidence that stunting in children is a clear expression of chronic low nutrition over a long period of time. What is even more alarming is that there is a real possibility that many of these children will fail to catch up and achieve their potential intellectual growth and development in later life. Particularly significant are the unacceptably high infant mortality rate and deaths of children under 5 years (Figure 1).

Now there is a strong movement to impose draconian sanctions on the Iranian people. For years, there has been a federal law barring direct business with Iran but now the California Insurance Commissioner, Steve Poizner, has released a list of 50 insurance companies that don't do business with Iran directly but underwrite foreign companies that do. While I do not believe in supporting military and nuclear industries, many of these insurance companies are underwritting industries involved in oil and shipping. The Iranian people may live under an execrable government but they have a right to have a sustainable economy that meets their basic human needs and certainly have a right to sell and profit from their oil.

Here is a list of companies indirectly or directly doing business with Iran. I urge everyone who is in a position to do so to do business with these companies as a way of resisting the imposition of brutal sanctions on innocent people.

http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20100514/NEWS/100519938

I personally will be buying gas from Shell Oil whenever possible. Here is a list of other companies who are refusing to buckle under to pressure to harm innocent Iranian people:

Metlife
Safeco
Hartford Financial Services
Siemens
Royal Dutch Shell
Hyundai

Concerns about Iran's military programs are indeed legitimate and I am sympathetic to attempts to boycott military and nuclear industries as long as those boycotts are specific and targeted to those industries only. However, normal commerce should not be punished.

Resist the campaign to inflict hardship and suffering on the Iranian people. Buy from the non-boycotters.

From Activism to Organizing

2010-01-07T04:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.markrudd.com/?organizing-and-activism-now/how-to-build-a-movement.html

War Tax Resistance is a personal statement of opposition to the war. Although it must be part of any sustained strategy to end the wars promoted by the U.S. empire, it is obviously insufficient, in itself, to end the wars, especially since the government finances the war through borrowing and does not "pay as it goes."

An article written by a former weather underground member, Mark Rudd, who has since renounced the use of violence as a political tactic, wrote about the important difference between activism and organizing.

He makes a valuable point: the major protests against the war in 1968 and 1969 did not come from nowhere. They were the fruit of years of organizing and relationship building among students and others. Much of this work was the day-to-day tedious work of base-building and teaching people how to assume leadership roles. Many of the tactics originated in the civil rights movement in which African-American women active in churches used participatory democracy to encourage, train, and empower the oppressed. White activists learned these strategies and applied them to the antiwar movement.

Here is a link to his article: http://www.markrudd.com/?organizing-and-activism-now/how-to-build-a-movement.html

Organizing seems like a daunting task, especially now after the hopes many of us have had for Obama have been dashed. By way of encouragement, I offer the following passage from a lecture by Noam Chomsky:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/chomsky-on-everything-and-more/

Chomsky stressed that public pressure in the ‘West’ can make a positive difference for people suffering from the aggression of ‘Western’ governments.

“There is a lot of comparison between opposition to the Iraq war with opposition to the Vietnam war, but people tend to forget that at first there was almost no opposition to the Vietnam war,” said Chomsky.

“In the Iraq war, there were massive international protests before it officially stated… and it had an effect. The United Sates could not use the tactics used in Vietnam: there was no saturation bombing by B52s, so there was no chemical warfare - (the Iraq war was) horrible enough, but it could have been a lot worse,” he said.

“And furthermore, the Bush administration had to back down on its war aims, step by step,” he added.

“It had to allow elections, which it did not want to do: mainly a victory for non-Iraqi protests. They could kill insurgents; they couldn’t deal hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. Their hands were tied by the domestic constraints. They finally had to abandon - officially at least - virtually all the war aims,” said Chomsky.

“As late as November 2007, the US was still insisting that the ‘Status of Forces Agreement’ allow for an indefinite US military presence and privileged access to Iraq’s resources by US investors - well they didn’t get that on paper at least. They had to back down. OK, Iraq is a horror story but it could have been a lot worse,” he said

“So yes, protests can do something. When there is no protest and no attention, a power just goes wild, just like in Cambodia and northern Laos,” he added.

(Chomsky states, no doubt correctly, that there is no chemical warfare in Iraq. However, we still don't know the long-term consequences of using depleted uranium in civilian areas.)

Our actions do make a difference. Perhaps they do not make as much of a difference as we would like but they have, apparently, made the Iraq war less awful than it might have been.

Powerful Antiwar Speech from Iraq Veteran

2009-12-29T11:29:00.000-08:00

Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund

2009-12-08T10:21:00.000-08:00

Those of you who follow Middle East politics are familiar with the work of Noam Chomsky. His wife Carol died in December of 2008. A fund to assist Palestinians in Gaza has been established in her name.

The fund is set up to provide cash assistance to the poorest families in Gaza.

If you would like to contribute, you can make checks payable to the Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund, Inc. and mail them directly to the bank handling the fund. Mail the checks to:

Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund
C/o University of Wisconsin Credit Union
P.O. Box 44963
Madison, WI 53744-4963

If you would like a receipt on letterhead stationery for tax purposes, you may send it to

Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund
c/o Jennifer Loewenstein,
1102 Shorewood Boulevard
Madison, WI 53705

Operation Cast Lead, the name of the latest military operaton in the Gaza Strip, has created massive suffering in the Gaza Strip. This is in addition to the blockade that the U.S., Israel, and Egypt are cooperating to enforce.

Innocent people are caught up in a political situation that is beyond their control. Please help them.

If you would like informaton about wire transfers, please contact me at jmramer@bellsouth.net. Put the words Carol Chomsky Memorial Fund in the subject line.

If you cannot donate, please pass the information on to people who might be able to.

Thanks.

Jessica Ramer

Chomsky Interview on Hard Talk

2009-11-09T07:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-UeKaN7w7J3k/noam_chomsky_in_hardtalk_3_3/

This clip contains an interesting observtion by Noam Chomsky. According to him, the antiwar movement, though unable to prevent the war, did make it less severe in comparison to the war againt Vietnam. The U.S. would not have dared to to something similar to Iraq because the American public--and the world--would not have stood for it.

This provides motivation to continue opposing the war. Even if the wars--Iraq and Afghanistan--will no doubt continue formany years, our opposition can make it less awful for civilians in these countries.

Parallels with Vietnam

2009-10-19T17:28:00.001-07:00

Noam Chomsky once wrote that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was brought to an end because the business community turned against the war. This was partly the result of a dedicated and persistent antiwar movement which did manage to persuade even conservatives and partly a result of the realization that the war was unwinnable.

The bad news is that Chomsky has stated that it will be much more difficult to turn the business community against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, Vietnam was poor in resources--except, if I remember correctly, tin--while Iraq is swimming in oil. Afghanistan borders oil-rich Iran and is potentially a route for natural gas pipelines.

What is needed is a strategy to turn the business community against the war. But how? Any suggestions?

War with Iran

2009-10-19T16:54:00.001-07:00

Those of you who follow foreign news know that there was a suicide bombing in Iran killing several soldiers and others as well. The responsible party was Jundallah, a separatist group from the province of Balochistan.

Apparently, the group has U.S. backing. The only thing in doubt is the extent of it.

The brother of one of the leaders who was arrested after the bombing claims that the U.S. financed and ordered the bombing.

If this is true, we are now at war with Iran, albeit by proxy.

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/18/at-least-31-killed-in-iran-suicide-bombing/

U.S. Government Planned Iraq War Before 911

2009-09-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

Although this post departs from the war tax resistance theme, I am adding it to my blog because it reinforces a necessary lesson for peace activists: that governments will manipulate people using tragedies like 911 in order to advance their war aims.

This post links to an interview with Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, who claims that Pentagon officials were discussing a war against Iraq with Turkish officials four months BEFORE 911. In fact, there was a rather crass plan to divide Iraq between the U.S. and England.

The US wanted Turkish cooperation in the venture. According to Edmonds, Brent Scowcroft, an official of the Bush I administration, was also in contact with Turkey. Turkey wanted a slice of Iraqi Kurdistan, no doubt as part of its effort to keep its own Kurdish population in check.

Edmonds's story includes revelations of bribery and the passing of information, much of it about military and nuclear systems, to foreign powers. Some of this was done by Congressmen.

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/nov/01/00006/

I urge you to read this article. It is very important.

I also urge you to read the interviewer's own comments on the story:

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/09/23/listening-to-sibel-edmonds/

Please read these stories and share them with your friends. This is a story that needs to be told.

John Kerry's Bad Joke

2006-12-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

John Kerry received a lot of criticism when he told students that if they didn't study hard, they would end up in Iraq. His comment was widely viewed as an insult to the troops.

In many ways, his comment was unfair. Often, people join the military because they are smart, ambitious and are looking for a way to improve their position.

The high school I taught at had two army recruiters. One was an African-American male who had grown up in an impoverished community. When he walked into my classroom, he saw my sign "Knowledge is Power" and knew that Francis Bacon had written that. I gave him points for that. He also had a real sense of humor and a deep concern for the kids. He wanted to mentor them even if they didn't enlist. The second was a woman from a working class background who had been to Iraq and was trained to handle unconventional weapons. After a few years in the army, she was offered a job for $80,000 a year. She turned it down to stay in the military.

On the other hand, I have noticed that many kids who were the most susceptible to recruiters' pitches were the academically unmotivated students and the class clowns. They had few options and knew it. Hence, they went into the service.

My impression was that the military attracted students at the extremes: the highly motivated and the "lost souls."

All of the kids I knew who went in seemed vulnerable. One kid, one of the brightest students I had ever taught, was from a broken home. His father was out of the picture and he lived with his mom and stepdad. His mom signed for him to enlist when he was 17. I can't help but suspect that she thought her new marriage would be easier if her son from a previous marriage was out of the home.

The other kids I knew who went in were immigrants. I don't know what their green card status was. Maybe this is some kind of bias on my part but I always felt that my immigrant students were especially vulnerable because they were going through the painful process of acculturation during adolescence. Immigration is a brutally difficult experience. Our faith in the American dream obscures how the poverty and culture shock inherent in being an immigrant stress families.

A major reason this war is criminal is that its principal victims are the poor.

List of Top 50 Defense Contractors

2006-12-07T08:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Defense_contractors

You may want to increase your level of war resistance by refusing to buy products from defense contractors.

Most of the companies on this list seem to focus mostly on military goods. I have never heard of most of them. A few, however, are familiar. IBM and Verizon are the most obvious.

I personally am unsure of what to do. I avoid using cell phones anyway because about some scientific studies show adverse health effects while others do not. However, maybe Verizon allows the communication needed to save a wounded soldier's life. On the other hand, maybe their communication systems help coordinate attacks.

Therefore, I offer this list for your consideration.

Home Office Deductions: a warning

2006-12-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.quicken.com/cms/viewers/article/taxes/54900

If you deduct home office space on your taxes, you may be liable for taxes if you sell the home. The link above gives details.

The bottom line seems to be that you should be very careful about trying this strategy unless you plan to hang on to your home for a long time.

Establishing Conscientious Objector Status

2006-07-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't read these ideas anywhere, but these ideas seem like they are worth pursuing.

1. Establish a history of making documented financial contributions to peace organizations. Write a check AND request a written receipt from the charity. Sometimes, the government is not happy with a canceled check alone.

2. If your CO beliefs are religously motivated, establish a pattern of "religious behavior." This includes making regular financial contributions to a religious body, attending servoces regularly and perhaps going to their retreats, workshops, conventions and other activities. If the minister, priest or rabbi knows you, he or she will be more likely to write a letter on your behalf.

It seems to me that the government would give greater weight to claims based on religous belief than on individual conscience.

3. If you are in high school or college, if you have a class that allows this, write a term paper on a "peace theme." For example, if you take a religion class, you can write on Buddhism, Catholic just war theory, Quaker peace witness, etc. If you are taking an American history class, you can write about Quaker opposition to the revolutionary war, opposition to the Mexican-American war, Mark Twain's oppositon to the Spanish American war and so on.

In a literature class, write a paper on All Quiet on the Western Front or A Farewell to Arms.

If you take a class on WW II, write about the small German resistance to Nazi Militarism, the White Rose movement, the refusal of Jehovah Witnesses to submit to Nazi authority. You get the idea. You will have both a paper and, one hopes, a letter from a teacher testifiying to your long interest in peace issues.

4. Join Amnesty International or participate on Oxfam America activities. While these are not antiwar organizations per se, it shows a serious interests in human rights and human welfare.

To me, it seems like a person who is willing to "put his money where his mouth is" establishes credibility in a unique way. Even if you don't make huge contributions to peace and human rights groups, make small ones.

If the Draft Returns

2006-07-16T07:40:00.000-07:00

As I write this, the Middle East is in turmoil and it is uncertain if the conflict will result in deeper U.S. involvement. If the current conflict does deepen US involvement, it is possible that the draft will be instated.

It may then become important for young people to be able to establish their position as conscientious objectors.

Here is some advice.

How to establish Conscientious Objector Status.

Remember the words: Document, Document, Document. Here are a few ways to do this. http://www.oz.net/~vvawai/CtC/co-info.html

1. When registering for the selective service, which males are required to do, write the words "I am a conscientious objector" on the form. Photocopy this card. Mail the photocopy to yourself so that it has the postal service's postmark on it. Keep this in a safe place.

The most important issue is establishing themselves by properly notifying the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the federal government.

1.Write a statement of your beliefs.

2. Get supporting letters from clergmen, teachers and others who can attest to your beliefs.

3. Keep a log of books read, movies seen that helped form your beliefs. May I suggest a few readings: All Quiet on the Western Front, the religious writings of Leo Tolstoy, anything by Gandhi, Quaker writings by Fox and Penn. Also the autobiography of John Woolman, a Quaker abolitionist.

4. A record of events that show your lifestyle is compatible with your beliefs. This could include antiwar protests. It may also include religious activities, membership in antiwar groups, financial contributions to humanitarian groups and so on.

5. Send certified letters to your congressman and senators declaring yourself to be a conscientous objector based on deeply held religious or moral beliefs. Be sure to keep a copy of the letter and any responses received.

6. If you have not yet registerd with the Selective Service System, write them and declare yourself to be a conscientious objector.
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At the time they actually register, and it is important that everybody registers who is over the age of 18, the objector needs to write on the registration form, " I am a conscientious objector to war..." The objector needs to make copies of the letter to the SSS and the registration form they have written on because the SSS will destroy these documents. If the objector is 18 to 26 the SSS will confirm receipt of the registration and this needs to be kept by the objector. If the objector is one of the estimated 350,000 males over the age of 26 who have never registered he still needs to go through the motions and keep copies of the registration form because the SSS will not even confirm its receipt.

If the objector is registered with the SSS but has not sought CO status is important to write the letter of CO declaration to their congressional delegation and to notify the SSS of a change in status.

Every time the registered objector changes address they need to notify the SSS within 10 days and at the same time repeat the declaration that they are a "conscientious objector to war..."

The persistent repetition is very important and will help to solidify the objector's claim.

7. Next the objector needs to prepare an Affidavit, which is sworn before a Notary Public and witnessed by two registered voters who are not related to the objector. The letter of declaration to the objector's congressional delegation and the notification to the SSS must be attached as supporting documents to the Affidavit because it affirms:"I am a conscientious objector to war based on deeply held moral, ethical and religious beliefs and have informed my congressional delegation and the Selective Service System accordingly as proven by the attached documents." This Affidavit can be filed in federal district court or in any civilian or military proceeding related to the objector's claim. Copies of the Affidavit should also be provided to the parents of the objector, teachers, religious leaders and legal counsel because these individuals may be contacted by Selective Service or military investigators and asked to confirm the objector's claim.

A VERY IMPORTANT ACTION THE OBJECTOR NEEDS TO TAKE IS TO TELL FAMILY, FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES ABOUT BEING A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR TO WAR. Tell the people who are most likely to write letters in support of the CO application and keep these letters as part of a permanent file in addition to the documents described above.
More information on selective service registration can be found at: www.objector.org/conscription/draft-registration.html and http://www.nisbco.org/

Happy Fourth of July

2006-07-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

I just received this letter from an Israeli friend.

HAPPY 4th of July....
America is a great nation. You'll overcome the Bushs and Bushism.
Baruch.

Happy Fourth of July. Please join me in wishing for an end to military adventurism and the occupation of Iraq.

Long live America.

A list of socially responsible investment companies

2005-09-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

The following link http://www.socialfunds.com/funds/chart.cgi?sfChartId=desc provides a chart of companies that do "socially responsible investing". You can peruse this list to see which companies adhere to your particular set of values.

Many have IRA programs. I recommend IRAs because they allow tax savings and because retirement accounts are virtually immune to bankruptcy judgments. They are a good way of protecting your assets, quite apart from war tax issues.

From Protest to Resistance

2005-06-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

From Protest to Resistance

Years ago, I watched a documentary about ordinary Germans who resisted Nazi tyranny. A woman engaged in an act of resistance combining both courage and simplicity: she told the truth in public. As she stood in supermarket lines, she told her friends that the Jews who disappeared from their neighborhoods were being murdered, not resettled as government propaganda claimed. Oh, her friends replied, you have been listening to Allied propaganda. When she returned home, she told her husband what she had done. “My dear,” he replied, “if you want to kill a snake, you must step on its head. If you step on its tail, it will turn around and bite you. You have stepped on the snake’s tail.”

Those of us who opposed the war on Iraq by protests, letters, and phone calls to our leaders have too often embraced tactics that have been merely irritating to the authorities. We have stepped on their tails. Since our government is a hyper-power, it has chosen to ignore us rather than bite us and has slithered on, killing an estimate 100,000 Iraqis in a war based on lies, imprisoning thousands without charge or trial, and practicing small-bore tortures on men unlucky enough to be trapped in our “gulags”.

While the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan fails to approach the brutality of the Nazi and Soviet regimes, our government’s crimes have been severe enough to compel Americans of conscience to “resist, resist, resist” as Karen Kwiatkowski urged in her article “Unleashing the Resistance”.

Resistance begins by refusing to fund the Bush administration’s odious activities through our taxes. Following Kwiatkowski’s observation that Iraqi dissidents work hard to stay out of law enforcement’s “dangerous and lumbering way,” I am advocating only legal strategies for reducing one’s tax burden. I was able to reduce my 2004 tax payments by 40% compared to my 2003 payments by following simple strategies available to everyone. I contributed $500 a month to a 403b plan—like a 401k only for public sector employees. I started an IRA, being careful to choose a company that did not invest in defense stocks. Moreover, I bought a book on the tax code and looked for every legal deduction and loophole I could fine. Until I did the research, I did not know that I could deduct my union dues or that the government allowed teachers a $200 deduction for the supplies that teachers invariably buy for their classes. I haven’t tried starting a home-based business yet but other tax resisters use this strategy effectively to write off part of their housing costs as a business expense.

The effectiveness of this strategy is multiplied if one advertises the fact that you have legally and deliberately tried to reduce your tax obligations as a way of reducing your support for oppressive government policies. Tell your tax preparer, your family, and your colleagues about your strategy. Encourage them to try it.

Resistance continues by strengthening civil society, Give more money to charities and religious institutions. Not only is the money tax-deductible, your donations serve to strengthen civil society—the sum total of social activities not connected to the government. I am a convert to Catholicism and like to give money to the Archbishop’s Charities and Development Drive not only because my donations help the needy but because I am helping to strengthen an institution that has courageously opposed the war on Iraq. I would not tell you where to spend your money but urge you to find a cause that you believe in deeply and give tax-deductible donations to it.

Patronize “mom and pop” businesses instead of large chains. Pay cash. This saves the owner the credit card fees and it gives him the option of not reporting his income from you. I always report my income and urge others to do so too but I am the business owner’s customer, not his conscience and in any case, I regard not paying taxes as more moral than paying them.

The beauty of tax-reduction strategies is that they are moral on all levels. By saving for retirement with tax-free dollars, you have benefited not only yourself but younger people who would otherwise sacrifice to care for you. Wisely invested, this money can create economic growth and increased prosperity. Charitable donations can be used to strengthen organizations that act as a counterweight to the state and make your community more pleasant and livable. Most importantly, you are not spending your wealth to blow the arms off of Iraqi children.

Resist by withdrawing your support from our lying media. This is easy—turn off the television and don’t buy newspapers and magazines whose editorial staffs were enthusiastic proponents of war. The “Faux News Channel” and the “War Street Journal” should pay a price for lying us into war. When media outlets begin losing advertising revenue, they will become reluctant to act as mouthpieces for government propaganda.

Buy newspapers that report critically on the government's agenda.

Resist in the courts. If you get a chance to serve on a federal jury, take it. If the defendant is accused of a crime whose only victim is the state—drug law violations, tax improprieties, lying to the FBI ala Martha Stewart—vote to acquit him. The government spends thousands of dollars trying a case. Make them lose the money. Deny the government the ability to enforce its laws with the consent of ordinary citizens. If other jurors pressure you, act like an OJ juror: define “reasonable doubt” as “any doubt at all.”

Resist by thwarting military recruitment. Did you know that the No Child Left Behind Act requires that schools receiving federal funds make information about their students available to recruiters? Few parents know this and even fewer know that they can keep their child's records from being given to recruiters if they send a letter to the child's school requesting that their children's records be kept confidential. If you have high-school age children, send the letter as soon as possible. Send it via certified mail.

Talk to your children about not serving in the military. Help them establish the documentation they will need if the draft resumes and they choose to become conscientious objectors. When they register for the draft, have them note on the form that they are conscientous objectors. Photocopy the form before mailing it and keep a record. Encourage your kids to join a church with a peace witness. Urge them to participate in peace activities of various kinds and keep records you can use to document their claims to CO status.

Submit your ideas for war resistance on this site.

Health Savings Accounts

2005-01-16T06:36:00.000-08:00

Health Savings Accounts are tax-deductible savings programs to pay for health care expenses not covered by insurance.

Their importance to war-tax resisters is that the money in these accounts is never taxed if it is used for approved medical expenses not covered by insurance. If you contribute to the HSA yourself, you get an "above the line" deduction on your income tax. If your employer makes the contribution in lieu of wages paid to you, the money is considred non-taxable and is not counted as income. Unlike IRAs, the money is not taxed upon withdrawal as long as it is spent to pay medical bills. These accounts allow war-tax resisters to save for medical emergencies and legally avoid taxes.

To quality for an HSA, you must have a high-deductible health plan (HDHP). In other words, your deductible must be at least 1, 000 per year. The maximum allowable contribution to the HSA is limited to the size of your deductible, up to to $2,650 in the year 2005 for an individual and $5,250 for a family. These amounts are adjusted annually for inflation so be sure to check the limits each year. The advantage to HSAs over Flexible Spending Accounts is that with HSAs, the money rolls over from year to year. You always have the money, even if it is not spent within a year.

Generally, anyone with a HDHP is eligible for this account. The unemployed or self-employed may set one up also. If you are self-employed, you may also deduct your insurance premiums from your taxes. Many banks, insurance companies, and credit unions offer these accounts.

For further information, see the following government website: http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/public-affairs/hsa/faq2.shtml#hsa20

A letter from a Libertarian Opponent to the War

2005-01-16T06:28:00.000-08:00

Ms. Ramer,

I believe that there are many things that we can do to fight government incursion into our lives or the lives of other innocent people around the world - including spreading knowledge and ideas about the government and its effects on all of us. The point is to identify the ultimate cause of the problem and attack it. The lack of information among our political leaders about public opinion is not the cause of war - but that is the only problem protesting attempts to solve.

Everyone engages in little behaviors that, in aggregate, support the system that spreads grief and misery to all. If we can identify any of these behaviors and eliminate them the system is bound to collapse. One of them is paying taxes. Any reduction in taxes would be a positive step. Another is voting for a major party candidate. Bush and Kerry were both pro-war. The only difference was their rhetoric. Yet another is supporting our troops. Everytime our troops get sent a care package from a concerned citizen or see signs proclaiming how heroic they are, they feel a little better about the shitty situation they are in. If feelings are the only important thing, by all means support the soldiers. But if all the soldiers felt hated by half the population or more, they'd be bound to tell people what a bad deal being a soldier is, and the army, which is, after all, volunteer (for now) would shrink. If the politicians were faced with the choice of draft or not fight war, they might be more inclined to slow down. Nobody wants to be drafted, and drafts instigate even more civil disobedience.

The more you think about the little things that go into supporting government and war, the more ways you'll have to fight personally for what you believe in - peace and freedom. Usually this type of thought requires challenging established views - like the "against the war, for the soldiers" mentality that allows our army to recruit more victims. But in the end it will pay off.

Neal Zupancic

Don't Pay for This War!

2005-01-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King used to say "No one can ride your back unless its bent." It is time for the American people to unbend their backs and stop paying for a war that is robbing us of our sons and daughters, bankrupting the country, and creating so much anger against us in the world that we may be in greater danger of terrorism than ever before.

In the coming weeks, I will be researching and posting tips for reducing the amount of money we spend financing this immoral war. Please feel free add your comments and tips for liberating ourselves from the war mongers.

Realistically, it is impossible to entirely avoid contributing toward this war. If you buy a winter jacket, no doubt somewhere along the line, the federal government gets its cut. Still, the more your reduce your tax bill, the harder it is for Uncle Sam to finance the weapons that blow arms off of children.

I am offering a set of suggestions ranging from the highly conventional to the more radical.

1. Open a traditional IRA and contribute the maximum amount to it. You can deduct the amount of money contributed--up to $3, 000--from your taxes. If your purpose for opening an IRA is war tax resistance, don't open a Roth IRA as you cannot deduct money invested in these accounts from your taxes.

It is important to avoid investing this money with defense contractors. You may want to consider investing in mutual funds administered by Pax World Funds. Their website is located at http://www.paxworld.com. This company refuses to invest in military industries and favors investing in companies which are eco-friendly, have fair-hiring practices, and promote international development. Investing in the stock market is always risky, but then again, so is war.

2. If you have children you are planning to send to college, you may want to open a Coverdell account, which is specifically set up to meet educational expenses. The money you contribute to these accounts is not tax-deductible, but money in the account grows without being taxed until withdrawal. In a conventional savings account, you would be required to pay taxes on the interest. While this is not a great way of avoiding taxes, it is better than sticking the money in a CD.

3. If you are an employee of a non-profit institution--like a school teacher--you can open a 403b. These accounts allow you to save much more than an IRA does. You can save up to $13, 000 a year and the money going into these accounts is not taxed until withdrawal. The programs available for investment vary from region to region and must be researched carefully.

4. Hang up on war. Refuse to pay the federal excise tax on your phone bill. Usually, there are two separate taxes, one for local service and one for long distance service. If your local and long distance service are provided by the same company, you have to look for the taxes in two places on the bill.

Every month when paying your phone bill, simply deduct the amount of the excise tax from the total due and pay the full bill minus the federal excise tax. Enclose a note with your check, explaining that you are refusing to pay the tax as a statement of opposition to the war. Ask that the company deduct this amount from your bill. The company will report to the IRS that you are not paying the tax. Usually, this report is done on a quarterly basis.

For more information, visit the website: http://www.hanguponwar.org/

Generally, the risk of doing this is small. The cost to the IRS of collecting such small sums of money is greater than the benefit; hence, they rarely pursue people engaging in this form of resistance.

5. Reduce your purchases. There are various kinds of taxes already hidden in the goods you buy. These are usually paid by the producers of those goods. By reducing your consumption, you are reducing the taxes you pay.

For more information, see the website of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. http://www.nwtrcc.org/