An Australian icon stands up to the ATO

Croc Dundee stands up to the Australian tax authorities. I fully support him and wish him the best of luck.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — “Crocodile Dundee” star Paul Hogan challenged Australian tax authorities Friday to track him down in the United States after a newspaper report that he was under investigation for tax evasion.

The 68-year-old actor has repeatedly denied that he dodged taxes.

The Australian national newspaper reported that Australian tax authorities had asked for help from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in obtaining Hogan’s banking records. Four companies related to Hogan have been ordered to hand over documents, it said, citing court documents.

“What is Property?” seminar

Shawn P Wilbur of the Libertarian Labyrinth is organising and coordinating a reading of Proudhon’s famous “What is Property?”  I will be doing my best to participate in the reading, but if you wish to participate follow the link at the end of this page for more information.  For now, here is an extract from his post over at the Libertarian Labyrinth.

As announced, I’ll be doing a close reading of Proudhon’s first memoir from What Is Property? during the month of July, and I am inviting one and all to read along. I have set up a discussion list and wiki page on the anarchylist.org site. Please subscribe to the list if you are interested in participating in the main discussion. If you’re not up to that kind of commitment, I will be posting material on this blog, and compiling a running list of seminar-related material on the wiki page.

My ambitions for the reading are fairly simple: I would like to provide an opportunity for individuals, anarchists of whatever school or non-anarchists, to read (or reread) this very important text, in a context where it is also possible to develop a reading of the material. Developing a reading—really coming to terms with the text—is a bit more complicated process than just going the distance through it. But if Proudhon’s argument, that “property is theft,” is to be more than just an empty slogan, it is necessary to engage with the complexities involved. There are all kinds of complicating issues: Proudhon’s very specific definitions of “property” and “possession,” potential inconsistencies in Proudhon’s various treatments of the question of “property,” subsequent developments in Proudhon’s property theory, idiosyncratic or period-specific use of terms, etc. The text treats certain conventional libertarian approaches to property, such as “self-ownership,” rather obliquely…

Read the full post here.

Valuable Statistics

Next time anyone tries to tell you that war is profitable, point them to this article.

For the Record: Wars have cost $700B since 9/11

A new Congressional Research Service report says the U.S. government has spent about $700 billion on “military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks.”

The report covers the “global war on terrorism,” known as GWOT, and the government’s pre- and post-invasion operations in Iraq. About 75% of that money has been devoted to the war in Iraq, according to CRS estimates contained a report republished by the Federation of American Scientists.

All that money stolen from taxpayers, flushed down the toilet to go oppress a bunch of Iraqi’s.  If you are an American, imagine what you could have done with the money you contributed to such a cause.  Imagine what wealth you have lost.  Then imagine where your money went; you paid to train soldiers to murder, then paid to ship them out to a foreign country and kill innocent people.  Your money may have even bought the bullets that took that man or women’s life.  This organisation steals the fruits of your labour and uses that money to do such things.  Is this organisation really worth defending?

War destroys wealth and prosperity.