Feb/March 2001
It
Does Pay to Fight
by Jackie Alan Guiliano
Bipartisanship
at the Expense of the Citizenry
by Howard Zinn
The
Greens Great Opportunity
by Blair Bobier
DLC
Says Gore's Presidential Bid Ruined by Populist Message: Others Disagree
by Brian Hansen
Letter
from Porto Alegre
by Norman Solomon
Doing
the Right Things, Without Making Someone Wrong
by John Darling
Globalization
From Below
by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello & Brendan Smith
Book
Review by Suzi Aufderheide
No Logo: Money, Marketing and the Growing Anti-Corporate Movement
by Naomi Klein
Book
Review by Gerry Cavanaugh
Hannibal
by Thomas Harris
Money
Talks
by Kayla Starr
America's
Food Safety Crisis Intensifies
by Ronnie Cummins
Coming
Home
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
The
Secret of the Valentines Angel
by Peter Melton
A
Prescription for Well-Being
by Peter Moore
Age-old
Concepts Benefit Modern Babies
by Pamela Jorrick
Cancer:
An Unexpected Way to the New Being
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
Book
Review by Kent Shew
Quantum Touch
by Richard Gordon
Cosmic
Calendar
By Salina Rain
Money Talks
By Kayla Starr
What country …?
Has the largest jail population in the world.
Spends more on defense than any other.
Has intervened militarily in 49 other nations since World War II.
Is the only nation that has used or threatened to use nuclear weapons on another nation 15 times since 1945.
Refuses to ratify the international treaty to ban land mines.
What country …?
Buys its national elections through draconian electoral practices, yet calls itself a democracy of, by and for the people.
Won’t agree to ratify the international treaty on greenhouse gases/climate warming.
Poisons, beats and imprisons non-violent political protesters.
Allows corporations to degrade the environment and workers rights with impunity.
Promotes genetically modified foods without scientific testing or regulations.
Imprisons patients who seek the benefits of medical cannabis and won’t allow farmers to grow industrial hemp.
Could this
be the land of the free and the home of the brave?
No wonder half of the eligible voters stay home on election day. Even before
the revolting events this year in Florida, most of us realize that elections
are bought by the corporate elite. We see that even under the Democrats, Pentagon
funding grows, U.S. military intervention in other nations' civil wars continues,
the income gap widens between the rich and the rest of us, the last vestiges
of ancient forests are falling. So, most people try to ignore political and
social concerns, preferring to focus on their private lives where some semblance
of satisfaction may still be possible.
We don't have to stand by helplessly watching our cities deteriorate, our resources squandered, our life support systems poisoned. All over the world, millions of people are protesting corporate dominance/globalization. We can no longer tolerate obscene income disparities, corporate welfare, illegal and immoral military interventions, human rights and environmental abuses. There is a way we can take action for change that has the potential to be highly effective, while allowing us to be true to our moral convictions. It's called war tax resistance. We have a potent opportunity here to say "No" to policies of war and destruction while saying "Yes" to human services, peace and environmental restoration in a way the really counts. We can actually use our tax dollars for good purposes and refuse to pay for what is evil.
One of the best ways to challenge the abuse of power is to refuse to fund the system that maintains it. This amounts to a financial boycott of Federal military policies. Now more than ever, the time is ripe to demand real change. A form of conscientious objection, war tax resistance—holding back all or part of federal taxes in order to prevent their use for war and injustice—has a long and honorable history in the United States, dating back to the colonial era and including such famous resisters as Henry David Thoreau. Today, more that 10,000 US citizens are openly redirecting their tax dollars to life affirming purposes.
Last year the U.S. military spent 22 times as much as its 7 top "enemies" combined. Clinton added $15 billion to the military budget and then Congress threw in another $7 billion. The US spends $75 million each and every day preparing to wage nuclear war, yet there's not enough money for basic social programs. The U.S. military serves primarily to protect corporate interests overseas—keeping Third World people in poverty and virtual slave labor, while protecting the right of the wealthy to exploit them.
Even many military experts are critical of Pentagon spending. The Center For Defense Information (CDI), an independent research organization which monitors military affairs, questions the Clinton Administration's decision to add billions of dollars in Pentagon spending over the next five years. "This budget accelerates our return to Cold War spending levels," said Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, USN (Ret.), CDI's Deputy Director. The U.S. already spends substantially more for military forces than any other nation, with no significant threats to our national security. This is a time when we should be seriously addressing urgent national needs, not adding billions to the Pentagon's budget. The U.S. military budget remains the largest in the world and is still growing. According to the Center for Defense Information here’s how our military budget compares other countries:
United States
$305.4 Billion
Russia $55.0
Japan $41.1
China $37.5
England $34.6
France $29.5
Germany $24.7
Saudi Arabia $18.4
South Korea $11.6
Taiwan $10.7
India $10.7
In most of the military conflicts in the last half century, the U.S. was directly involved— either with covert or overt aid, advisors, and/or arms sales—to one or both sides. In nearly all of these, the U.S. preference was for "stability" and against popular democracy. This means protection for U.S. corporate interests, regardless of human costs, or the cost to the U.S. public through taxes and destroyed human services. As scholar Michael Parenti has put it, "When it comes to protecting their profits, your money is no object!" The U.S. now dominates the world's arms trade, selling over twice as many weapons as every other country in the world combined. Both development and sales of these weapons are subsidized by our tax dollars.
Now, with the Bush promise to cut taxes, social programs are even more endangered. And, you can bet he won’t be cutting the Pentagon budget. In fact, he is proposing a $21 billion increase in military spending including the infamous Star Wars/national missile defense program.
While the wealthy pay a disproportionately small and decreasing share of taxes, they reap a disproportionately large share of the benefit from the worldwide system. The U.S. military does not, as it claims, protect us from people who would take what is rightfully ours; instead it protects the people who take what is rightfully ours, from us. These trends have been pushed for years by Republicans and Democrats alike—social and fiscal policies which further enrich the wealthy at the expense of all of the rest of us. While $620 billion (in fiscal year 1999) was handed to the military and its contractors, only $360 billion was available for desperately needed and rapidly disappearing programs such as health care, job training, education, environmental protection, housing, and worker safety.
