Tax Resister Insurance

An interesting idea, found here.


Agorist Toolkit - Tax Resister Insurance

An Example Tax Resister Insurance Calculation

Hostility to the Truth

From FSK'S GUIDE TO REALITY:

Most people react with extreme hostility when confronted with the truth. Try mentioning any of these ideas to someone, and notice the reaction:

• Taxation is theft!
• The USA has a corrupt monetary system!
• Government is just a humongous extortion racket!
• Government is terrorism!
• Government licensing requirements for doctors are harmful, because they restrict supply and raise prices!
• Who needs a government anyway? A true free market would be superior, where nobody has a monopoly of violence.
  

Most people don't just say "Your argument is stupid." and move on. They get outright hostile, especially if you're explaining the truth well and if you're persistent.

When you try discussing the above subjects, then the functioning of the Matrix is totally obvious.

Most people don't notice the Matrix, because they don't question the lies that people have been brainwashed to believe. If you go around speaking the truth, then the people around you react with hostility. This causes the superficial conclusion "There's something wrong with the person speaking the truth!" instead of "Nearly everyone is a brainwashed idiot!"

You only see the Matrix when you start questioning things. Most people don't question the Matrix all at once, like I can now. They question bits and pieces at a time. Then, they are forcibly brought back in line by the pro-State trolls around them.

As a child, you're sharply corrected by the adults around you whenever you question official State propaganda. Over time, you internalize this, and learn to not question the State. It doesn't happen all at once, but the cumulative effect over many years is very damaging. State brainwashing centers (schools) encourage this process.

Why are people so hostile to the truth?

Summary of Smedley Butler’s ‘War is a Racket’

[Major General Smedley Butler served in the US Marine Corps from 1898-1931. During this time, he fought in several conflicts, including the Boxer Revolution and World War I, and earned two Medals of Honor. Upon his retirement, Butler began traveling the country and speaking out against war profiteering. In 1935, he penned his now-classic work, War is a Racket. Source: Wikipedia.]

Smedley Butler begins his masterpiece:

War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

What’s that? Evidence? You want evidence? Well, Butler is more than happy to deliver.

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people -- didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.

Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump -- or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!

Butler goes on to chronicle how numerous other companies profited from the war. And all of their bills, he notes, were footed by the majority of Americans, by the taxpayers. Of course, American soldiers paid the biggest price.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital, at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Moreover,

…they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam -- on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. They paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain -- with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

The families of soldiers have also paid, and continue to pay, for the war.

They pay it in the same heart-break that he [the soldier] does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly -- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.

So how can we end the war racket? Butler offers three solutions. First, we should

…conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted -- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders -- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!

Second, Butler proposes that only soldiers should be allowed to decide whether or not they go to war.

There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant -- all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war -- voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms -- to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

Finally, Butler claims that we should “make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.”

The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.

Writing shortly before World War II, Butler knew that the next war would be fought, “not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.” He continues:

If we put them [scientists] to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war -- even the munitions makers.

So...I say,

TO HELL WITH WAR!

And to that, I can only add a heartfelt, Amen!

Juan Cole: the government's ten biggest lies about Iran

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US

Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.


Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.

Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.


Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."

Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of "no first strike" to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.

Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to 'wipe Israel off the map?'

Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.

Read the rest here. And don't believe a word of the propaganda the state is feeding its corporate media puppets. The government crooks are lying through their rotten, yellow teeth, as usual.

On my lack of posts

I haven't been posting much lately, mostly because I've accepted a new job. Of course, the second I decided to take it several other employers decided to contact me, complicating things. If I get a better offer I suppose I can just switch.

Later this week I'm going to India (to visit my mom), where I'll stay for about 10 days. So it might be a little while before I post again. Just thought I'd give y'all a heads-up!

Fall

I work on Sundays, and I like it. Sure, I miss a lot of football that way, but I've never been that big of a fan anyway. What I like about working on Sunday is there is almost no one else at work. The building, which the company I work for shares with other businesses, is nearly empty on weekends. To me, it's just more calm and less stressful that way.

On my breaks and lunch I usually head outside for some fresh air, and it's nice to be greeted by an empty parking lot. Recently we've had some hot weather, and though I do like a little warmth of the Sun, I can do without excessive heat, which is any extra heat that makes me less than comfortable. But yesterday when break time arrived and I made my way to the trunk of my car, it looked as though autumn had finally arrived, with partly cloudy skies and cool breezes, and little to no sunshine. Colder is not uncomfortable at all to me (unless we're talking really cold) and I certainly prefer it to the heat. In fact, I've been waiting all summer for this time of year to arrive. It's more difficult to stay cool (especially without air conditioning) in the heat than it is to stay warm in the cold. Outside I can just wear a jacket, and at home, if the temperature drops too much, a small electric heater, in addition, if necessary, to wearing extra layers of clothing, works just fine. The heat is not as kind, and a fan plus open windows and near nudity does not do the same job as the little heater and sweatshirts do in winter.

So I'm celebrating, and hoping no more heatwaves are coming this way for a while.

Guns and Magic

Sometimes a fallacy becomes accepted if enough people repeat it: Guns deter crime. Are people who own guns putting signs on their lawn, like people with security systems? Ginx recently asked the above question, and I replied with the following comment:

They don't have to put up a sign, it's enough if the criminal can't be sure which house has a gun-owner living in it and which doesn't. That is the deterrent. It's also why burglary and home invasion occur at higher rates in Britain and Canada (with their strict gun control laws) than in the US.

If you're a sicko creep who wants a victim, someone's private home is safer than somewhere out in public, if, that is, you can be pretty sure there are no guns inside the house that your potential victims might use to defend themselves.

Criminals in the US are more afraid of targeting occupied homes for one reason; they know that about half of the homes here have guns, and that makes every break-in a coin toss. After all, they don't want to get shot.

Now, Ginx asserts that it's some kind of magical thinking to believe that guns can deter crime, but if we are objective and are basing our thinking on the facts of reality rather than a wish or a whim, then it becomes apparent that guns deterring crime is not a belief based on fantasy or on the imaginations of gun-toting nuts (Ginx brings up the tired -and frankly, racist in reverse- cliche that it's got something to do with the white man's fear of a well-endowed black man raping his wife) but about simple facts, such as that your car is less likely to be stolen if you lock it than if you leave it running with the keys in the ignition and the windows down. Is it magical thinking to believe that locks deter theft?

Let's say you're an armed thug looking for an easy score and you want some quick cash. On the same block you see two small stores, one a liquor store with an armed owner behind the counter (maybe you read a news report of his recent shoot-out with a robber) and a chain convenience store with an anti-gun policy that doesn't allow armed employees, with a pimply clerk manning the cash register. Which would you choose to try and steal from?

If anything, it's magic to believe the police are there to protect you, when in fact they are nothing but security guards for whatever municipality employs them, and usually only manage to show up after a crime has been committed, when of course it's too late, especially if you're dead. The right to self-defense is a basic human right, and to take it away from anyone is evil.

To believe that somehow wearing a government-issued cop clown costume makes carrying a gun okay, but that it's just too dangerous to let average citizens carry the means to protect themselves, is the height not only of magical thinking, but of the statist fallacy (belief in the wisdom of a centralized, collective authority, which in the end comes down to might makes right, because the state, after all, has the bigger guns and the legal monopoly to use them against its opponents) generally.

Doublespeak and Double Standards

video via Kenny's Sideshow

At least Iran has publicly declared it has a new uranium enrichment facility. And it will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect it. Israel, though, has yet to make such announcements or gesture. For decades Israel has refused to confirm the now well-documented fact that it has a significant arsenal of nuclear warheads — the only country in the Middle East known to have successfully developed such a program. Estimates suggest it has as many as 200 warheads, putting every Arab state within range of a nuclear strike.

With the connivance of the West, Israel has been allowed to do all this unchecked at its nuclear weapons factory at Dimona in the Negev, and without signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

IAEA and Israel

What Does the Cube Contain?

via Debunking Christianity

A history of repulsive statism

I'm reading Chris Harman's A People's History of the World, and have to admit that I really, really like it. Sure, the author is a Marxist, but he hates every historical state, empire, war and ruler so badly that it reads like something by Tom DiLorenzo. Good stuff.