]by Joe Kandra, Kathleen Malley-Morrison, Pat Daniel
Tag: Uncle Sam
Cartoon: Too much winning
by Joe Kandra & Kathie Malley-Morrison*
*With thanks, and a big tip of the hat, to Pat Daniel, for her usual great input to the creation of this cartoon.
Which way will you go?
To ring in the New Year, with its new choices and pathways, here is the fourth post in our current series from guest author Dr. Anthony Marsella.*
Beyond Propaganda, Media Deception and Abuses, and Lies
The United States of America and its closest international allies have chosen the path of war, with tragic consequences for the survival of humanity and our natural world. Our foreign and domestic policies are destructive — serving the political, economic, and financial interests of a limited number of individuals and organizations. Unless we retreat from this path, and choose the path of peace, we will find ourselves doomed to endless domestic and international violence and war.
The US government has fashioned an explicit global domestic and foreign policy that encourages endless fractures and divisions between and among nations, regions, genders, religions, ethnic groups/races, and social-economic classes. The government is pitting humanity against itself and against the natural world, promoting global chaos and collapse.
Efforts by the US power structure to use the deceptive “patriotic” attractions and seductions of war — blindly mantled in glory, soldiers’ bravery, and martial domination, replete with songs, parades, banners, and celebrations of victory and nationalism — are deceptive attractions and seductions of our bodies, minds, and spirits.
How many more must die from this lie that finds virtue in war? How many more must be wounded, traumatized, and punished by starvation, torture, and social upheaval and dislocation? Have we no conscience? Have we lost all sense of human dignity and worth? Have we no awareness of our assault on nature? Have we no sense of the exploitation and exhaustion of our natural resources?
Our leaders come before us, offering plaintive explanations designed to sculpt their destructive legacy in our minds as legacies of brilliant strategy, moral and ethical choices, and wise and learned tactics and actions. Through daily exposure to these messages, will humanity continue to accept such lies? Or can we choose a different path in 2015?
*This post is adapted from an essay originally published by Transcend Media Service at
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/10/two-paths-in-the-wood-choice-of-life-or-war/
Uncle Sam wants YOUR money!
Correction: Uncle Sam wants your money unless you are among the country’s largest U.S. corporations (e.g., GE, Microsoft, IBM, Exxon, Chevron). As reported in that radical rag, the Wall Street Journal, 60 of those large corporations “parked a total of $166 billion offshore last year” shielding anywhere from 40 percent to 100% of their profits from U.S. taxes.
While avoiding payment of taxes in the U.S., these corporations relied on the U.S. government to protect their interests from, for example, those who object to extraction of their natural resources by American companies.
Today is April 15. You have probably filed your 2012 income tax return, but in the coming year it would be wise to attend to proposals being made by the President and Congress regarding who will pay taxes and how the money will be spent.
You may have heard about proposed cuts in Social Security and medical and social welfare programs. Do you also know that President Obama is proposing a half billion dollar shift of funds from nuclear nonproliferation programs to upgrading the U.S. nuclear program?
Are your priorities the same as the government’s?
Historically, Americans have found many nonviolent ways to protest or rebel against taxes they judged to be unfair or immoral.
- In 1773, to protest the tea tax imposed by the English government to finance its wars, colonists in Boston dumped English tea into Boston Harbor;
- During and after the Revolutionary War, many Quakers, Mennonites, and members of other peace-oriented religious denominations refused to pay taxes intended for military expenditures;
- Henry David Thoreau refused to pay a toll tax levied to support the Mexican War, spent a night in jail, and wrote about it in the essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.”
- Since World War II, many individuals (e.g., Noam Chomsky) have formed groups to protest using tax dollars to finance war. You can learn more from the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (http://www.nwtrcc.org/ ).
War tax resistance may not be the right choice for you, but do consider this question: Are the issues raised here important enough so that you will make your own voice heard?
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology