WWIII Trending On Tax Day -- Coincidence?

It is hardly a coincidence that WW3 is the top trending term on Twitter this morning in conjunction with U.S. citizens being forced to pony up an average of $1,748 each to line the pockets of the Pentagon's contractors. That figure is just part of the $5,109 the average taxpayer spent on militarism in 2023.

WW3 is trending ostensibly because Iran finally launched direct attacks on Israel's ability to continue waging genocide in Gaza. What's that have to do with U.S. taxpayers?

Israel receives at least $3.8 billion every year, and considerably more in 2023-24 since it began carpet bombing and starving Gaza. It is the wealthiest and also largest recipient of U.S. military "aid" over time, and could not continue the violent occupation and subjugation of Palestinians without U.S. support.

Here in Maine we came together last Saturday in Brunswick to demand an end to U.S. support for Israel and its war crimes. 

Latest in a series of statewide protests with an anti-war and anti-imperialist focus, we joined with Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine to march through downtown. Students, kids, dogs, teachers, social workers, and retirees marched before circling up to share our thoughts. At least four people in the group said, I was passing by and saw your signs so I decided to join in. 

Evidence that there is a lot of pent up desire to oppose the war machine and the suffering it creates for profits.

Four thousand miles away, about a dozen folks had a lively discussion yesterday after viewing my webinar on Climate & War (previously shared with UNAC and viewable on YouTube). How to halt climate crisis that is a direct consequence of massive military spending and government captured by billionaires? How to effect a just transition away from harmful forms of energy usage in way that protect rather than penalizes the most vulnerable? 

Electing members of either corporate party was seen as a dead end by this group, Peace Action of San Mateo County. 

General strike, anyone?

People across the U.S. who are able to do so will engage in a tax strike today. 

In addition, here in Maine people will be at the federal building in Bangor to protest how our taxes keep funding genocide in Gaza. 

Others will protest in Portland at a KeyBank branch downtown to highlight that bank's role in selling Israel Bonds.

People everywhere are rising up and there is little the federal government can do about it. 

Rest in power, Aaron Bushnell, who famously said: "I will no longer be complicit in genocide."

ERRATA: Corrected to restore a missing decimal point to the minimum amount Israel receives from the U.S. each year i.e. $3.8 billion.

Mainers Turn Out On Tax Day To Say NO $$ For Ukraine War

About 50 people and 2 dogs turned out April 15, 2023 (not all stayed for our group photo)

A slew of new people, many of them young and many of them first-time protesters, came to our tax day protest yesterday in Topsham, Maine. 

One told me they have family in Germany who see the Ukraine war as a reenactment of WWI with its trench warfare stalemate dragging on indefinitely. 

One told me they drove almost two hours to join us after seeing me the previous evening on the Jimmy Dore Show promoting the event. 

One told me they'd been reading my blog and looking for the next opportunity to get out and protest. 

One told me how excited they were to be joined by fellow members of the UU Church. 

 

And a group from the Party of Socialism & Liberation brought cool signs, a megaphone, and indicated they plan on returning each time we do this. 

Hooray!!

What I learned yesterday: there is a LOT of pent-up desire to resist supporting the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. And many people don't know where or how to express it.

In some cases, this is because the groups they belong to don't object to this war in particular, or imperial wars in general (for example, Peace Action Maine is siding with NATO in the overture to WW3).

In some cases, they're individuals who engage on social media but for the first time came out on the pavement to communicate with the thousands of people who drove through the intersection.

Several people who may not be the expected audience for the Ric Tyler George Hale show listened to my interview there Friday morning, and felt motivated to join us.

It was great to see so many Veterans for Peace out with us yesterday, stalwarts of the resistance to imperial wars for decades now.

One lovely person I've been standing with for years observed that passing around the megaphone at our closing circle was a smart idea. They said,

"Some shaky voices spoke up for the first time. Today was a gust of fresh air!"

Can You Support Nazis Over There But Fight Them Over Here?

Video source: NewsCenterMaine

Portland, Maine's largest city, is in turmoil about the lack of response from the city and its police force to a neo Nazi group attacking counter protestors on April 1. This occurred on the steps of City Hall and was amply documented and reported in mainstream media here, here, and here. 

The police showed up but allowed the masked group to maintain their anonymity and to disperse without being questioned or having charges filed.

I should explain that Portland is not my home but it's where several people I love call home. Some of them are little kids who attend the public schools alongside students of many ethnicities and races. They tell me they don't like people "being mean" to (i.e. threatening the physical safety of) the Black city councilor who represents their part of Portland. So, I have a stake in the safety of Portland. 

My husband and I at an anti-racist rally in February. Source: Southern Maine for Racial Justice tweet

The safety of people of color, along with LGBTQ+ people and people of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, are at risk when neo Nazis show up shouting the racist N word, the homophobic F word, and knocking to the pavement people holding a gay pride banner.

From coverage by the Portland Phoenix:

..Leo Hilton, a Portland resident who said he was one of four people who were attacked by Neo-Nazis outside City Hall on April 1.

As Hilton and others at the event described, police officers let the bad actors go without even asking for identification. A spokesperson for the police department said that none of the members of the group were identified on scene, and “none have officially been identified at this point.”..

According to Hilton, the assault occurred on April 1 when he and three others held up a pride flag, and the protesters — who were all masked — tried to tear the flag out of their hands. One member of Hilton’s group was then punched, and Hilton was thrown to the ground.

“They knew they could hit us and get away with it,” Hilton said.

I host a monthly community tv show with Portland City Councilors Victoria Pelletier and Roberto Rodriguez. How the institutions of local government uphold white supremacy is a topic we've addressed a few times, most recently in February which show you can view here or listen to as a podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Since that show, recruiting for neo Nazi and other white rights groups has popped up all over town. Several public demonstrations about white victimhood have been organized, drawing their own counter demonstrations. And Monday night's city council meeting drew at least a hundred protesters demanding that the city and the police walk the walk rather than just talk the talk of making Portland safe for everyone. 

(I've been trying to listen to the whole meeting as a zoom recording but the playback is so choppy I gave up. Any readers with tech hints on how I can solve this problem, please post in the comments. Here's a link to the page listing the recording of the April 10 city council meeting with two hours of testimony from the public.)

I'm starting to think that my most useful contribution to political conversations is examining the conundrum of false dichotomy thinking. 

The inherent contradiction of U.S.ians who want to fight neo Nazis over here but support neo Nazis over there is emerging in the state I call home. 

To have this discussion we need to address the question: How could Ukraine be run by neo Nazis if its president is Jewish? Investigative journalist Aaron Maté (also Jewish, for what it's worth) addressed this when he wrote last year about the threats and intimidation President Zelensky received to prevent his implementing the peace platform he ran on.

The U.S. government has forced taxpayers to send over $100 billion to Ukraine's neo Nazi aligned government and for the most part both Democrats and Republicans have supported this. But Democrats would be the first to denounce hate crimes like attacking people for being openly gay. 

Then there are the fragile white rights folks in Maine who say they oppose the war but also say they oppose the city providing services to Black asylum seekers rather than services to white homeless people. They also publicly oppose the notion that Black Lives Matter, countering it with the message "It's OK to be white." Councilor Pelletier drew threats of violence back in February when she responded on social media, "When has it not been ok to be white in this country?"

One of the white rights activists posted this mini-manifesto to explain:

This same activist retweets videos glorifying violence, for example, hitting "commies" in the head with a frying pan.

All the false dichotomy ideologies aside, there are economic facts. White people own the vast majority of the wealth in the U.S. by any measure, while neo Nazis in Ukraine become wealthy on hundred of billions provided with no accountability for how it is spent.

The reason that Democrats in the U.S. have become so confused at this point in history is that they fell for the falsehood that the Russia's President Putin is "Hitler." This was a natural outgrowth of their conflation of our 45th president and his outspoken white supremacist beliefs with Putin, a descendant of those who literally defeated Hitler in WWII. Many Dems still cling the belief that Russia interfered in 2016 to get Trump elected, even though this has by now been thoroughly debunked by investigative journalists. And when Democrats stay in the echo chamber of corporate media that serves government interests, they don't have enough real information to draw useful conclusions.

If you agree with me that neo Nazis cross a legal line shouting insults that are followed by assault, it may be time to abandon false dichotomy thinking. I've criticized Democrats here, but that doesn't make me a Republican. I've also criticized Ukraine here, but that doesn't make me a spokesperson for Putin despite being accused of this almost constantly over the past year.

Protest organized by a statewide coalition on March 18 in Westbrook that drew 50 people (photo credit: Mary Beth Sullivan)

I'll be out again this Saturday April 15, "tax day." People from many political parties and tendencies will be with me in Topsham at the corner of Routes 196 and 201 from 1:30pm. Join us to uphold our coalition demands:

• Peace in Ukraine - No weapons, no money for the Ukraine War

• Abolish NATO – End U.S. militarism & sanctions!

• Fund people’s needs, not the war machine!

• No war with China!

• Protect Earth's environment from the deadly insult of war!

• End U.S. aid to racist apartheid Israel!

• Fight racism & bigotry not war!

• U.S. hands off Haiti!

• End AFRICOM!

The Costs of War: Crumbling Infrastructure, Moral Injuries #GDAMS

Photo source: Portland Press Herald

Martha Spiess produced this video of speakers at Portland, Maine's Global Day of Action Against Military Spending (GDAMS) on April 19, 2016.



The final speaker, Bruce Gagnon from Bath, talks about an action at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard on June 18 where yet another destroyer will be launched. Bruce also mentions the crumbling infrastructure in Maine that does not get fixed with the money flowing to the Navy to build more and more costly weapons of mass destruction. (He also subsequently issued this correction: In my words I made one factual mistake.  I said space technology is costing $100 million per year, I meant to say $100 billion per year.)

A particularly relevant point as the crumbling infrastructure in Bath recently caused a vehicle driven by a mother carrying her 12 year old son to plunge through a deficient guardrail on an viaduct near the BIW shipyards. The SUV fell and crushed a pickup truck on the street below. 

Miraculously, no one died.

Maine has a lot of days when weather events make our roadways slippery, and April 4 was one of them. Dennis Hoey reported in the Portland Press Herald:

After the accident, the Maine Department of Transportation closed the viaduct to all traffic for about two hours. The department said its road crew had salted the road just a few minutes before the crash because snow was falling. “We don’t know yet if speed was a factor. We don’t know if roadway surface was a factor,” Field said. He said alcohol does not appear to have been a factor.

Now the state's Department of Transportation (DOT) is being investigated for its failure to respond to two dire warnings by its own inspectors about the state of the guardrails on the viaduct. Initially, the DOT insisted the guardrails were in fine condition but digging by actual investigative journalist Matt Byrne turned up a scandal. From his April 22 report in the PPH:

State failed to act on inspector’s call for repairs to Bath bridge where SUV fell 40 feet
Dozens of railing bolts were broken or missing nuts on the viaduct where the SUV carrying a mother and child from Windham broke through the barrier on April 4.

Photo source: Portland Press Herald

What does all this have to do with war taxes paid to the federal government?

As I note in the video above, Maine taxpayers sent $148 Billion to the Pentagon for its base budget in Fiscal Year 2015, plus an additional $88 Million to the Overseas Contingency Fund to continue its many ongoing wars. How many viaduct bolts and crews to install them would that have funded? 

The roadway in question is within sight of the BIW shipyards, and its workers are among the 18,000 vehicles traveling over it every day.

The state and the town of Bath both give massive tax relief to General Dynamics, an out of state Pentagon contractor that builds weapons of mass destruction at great profit to its shareholders each year.

As Rosie Paul says in her introduction in the video above, people pay their taxes in the belief that they are contributing to the common good: roads, schools, health care and the like.

As polls indicate time and again, taxpayers would prefer to spend money on things like viaduct bolts and not on things like another mansion for the owners of General Dynamics. 

Its current CEO formerly worked for the CIA and while working for General Dynamics was married to a staffer on the House defense appropriations subcommittee. This is  typical of the revolving door between government and the private sector. So much for democracy. So much for the common good.

Photo credit: National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee