'The war is illegal. I can't pay for a government killing machine'

[darkmaestro019]

I don't make new posts much, especially not of actual news. I'm uncomfortable doing so, convinced I've missed a dupe despite the fact that I practically LIVE here, and much better at editorializing (read: bitching and ranting and being silly) but this makes me proud, and makes me wish John Lennon were here to see this man.

A man has vowed to go to prison rather than pay taxes which he believes would fund a "blatantly illegal war" in Iraq.

Robin Brookes, 52, appeared at Swindon County Court for refusing to pay a £580 income tax bill. Describing an imminent seizure of his goods as "blood money", the doll's house designer, from Market Lavington in Wiltshire, said: "I don't want to break the law, and I want to contribute to education and health, the law and the police force, but I cannot pay for a government's killing machine.

(snip)

(Mr. Brookes)appeared in court three years ago over his refusal to pay taxes. In October 2003, magistrates in Chippenham told Mr Brookes he was able to express his opinion through the ballot box and gave him three months to pay £550. Bailiffs seized the money from Mr Brookes' home, where he lives with his wife Gil, in January 2004. He had pinned the money to a board, over which he wrote a banner stating: "Every 10 seconds, Britain spends this much on occupying Iraq."

So why post this? Because it moved me. Because he's brave and this is so simple, and he's doing it with such kindness and dignity and civility. I admire the Hell out of him. Any UKers around here who know this man, please, buy him a pint for me, or if you're in the market for a dollhouse, please keep him in mind.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article356034.ece

EDIT: I suck more at HTML than anybody! Woohoo!

[boobooday]

1. We need to emphasize his point, over and over again

While the right-wingers get their panties in a wad over every dime of tax money that might go to the poor or to education, they are happy to contribute their share to the making and marketing of machines of mass death.

[Earth_First]

2. The War Resisters League encourage War Tax Resistance...

and I emphatically support anyone that does. Unfortunately I am self-employed and under enough scrutiny from the government, I cannot afford to lose my business and my income to support my two girls.

Kudos to Mr. Brookes!

[darkmaestro019]

6. Yep. They have us by the short hairs--

and that's yet another reason they're so freakin picky about how much money everyone has, where it comes from, etc. They can sing about how it's to Prevent Terra or to continue the War On Drug Users And Certain Rebellious Plant Life, but I don't believe it for a second. It's to keep us under Their thumbs. They have our kids and our loved ones hostage, in essence, and that's a Hell of a lever to use to shove people's ethical convictions aside.

[jbnow]

3. It is inspiring. We can't

do much, don't have the power to stop this war, couldn't keep it from starting.

We all feel we need to do something. He did. Didn't stop the war but it made a statement.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. A principled man who's had all he's gonna take...

...I sure wish 50 or 60 million of us would follow his lead. Noncooperation will do it, but we have to have the numbers.

[darkmaestro019]

5. That's the problem. Organizing. Just like any strike--

the problem is getting EVERYONE to do it and not everyone can afford prison or auditing or to refuse to work. Kids to feed.

A charismatic leader, someone who could really get something to move like Lennon's bed-in would help, which is why I suspect the Regressives are coming down with Gestapo force on artists and people like Dean that have that kind of charisma.

I said in another thread someplace here, that we are touring with a small UK band May-Aug this year. We had two Canada dates. We cancelled them. Bands very similar to the one we'll be working for have had serious problems getting BACK into the US after the tour wanders over the border--they're refusing them for stuff like having a SONG called "terror list" on a cd in a personal CD wallet.

(I believe that was Grendel--this happened to them and I'm pretty sure another band I can't remember the name of. Sorry no link, but it was here that I first found out about it, and sending that info to the tour manager is what sealed it that we weren't going to Canada. Thanks, DU, you may have saved the tour and our only job this year that we didn't organize ourselves)

I don't think for a second that's about preventing terrorists from coming into the country. What kind of disguise is a scary "Satanic" rock band for a terrorist? Hardly sub-radar.

I know that looks off my own topic, but I think crushing artists and politicians and activists are all the same purpose: they don't want us to unite, to organize, because if we all could, we could stop them dead in less than a week. In fantasyland, anyway. In the real world, it comes back to kids to feed. We cancelled the Canada dates because it was that or no tour at all. They won that one, sort of--we get to play America, yeah, as long as we stay inside the walls, and out of the crosshairs of people who want to silence the noisy rabble.

I'm so un/self employed I don't even know what I'll do when it comes time to file taxes, and I suspect the IRS would NOT simply politely take the money from this board he's using and go away.

[shenmue]

7. Brave man

:patriot:

[400Years]

8. the basis of government is a monopoly on the use of violence

If you don't give in to the extortion er...I mean pay your taxes they will use violent means for getting it.

[Gregorian]

9. It's a rare person who is brave enough to sacrifice for others.

Thoreau went to jail when he refused to support the Mexican annexation with his taxes. We feed them with our money.
Man, this is one of the most pertinent paragraphs I've read in thirty years.
from this webpage:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/thoreau.html


Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)


..."The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. . . .If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now."

[Fiendish Thingy]

10. I'm not brave enough to risk jail time...

but if things don't turn around this year (Dems in control of House/Senate, investigations/impeachment), then I will begin the process of removing my portion of funding from the War/Torture/Corporate Welfare machine by emigrating from the US.
I will continue to fight through out this election year, but enough is enough, and I'm not going to wait for things to get worse than they already are...

[file83]

11. "Now, I’d like to have a say on the income tax...."

"...Don’t want to help build bombs and that’s the facts,
No money for health care so what’s the catch
The man got you locked with no key to the latch..."

--Beastie Boys, Alive

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. Good for him! nt

[bush_is_wacko]

13. I've had the ongoing fantasy that any new tax legislation include a

check-off list as to what area you wished your tax dollars to go toward. That would really be representative government!