AlienLove

No Country for Rich Men

From Manhattan to Monaco, the world's wealthiest people are disconnecting into a class of stateless transients.

By Sam Pizzigati

Back in 1863, a short story took the American reading public by storm. Edward Everett Hale's The Man without a Country told the tale of a poor treasonous soul sentenced to spend the rest of his life endlessly sailing the world in perpetual exile, as a prisoner aboard Navy warships.

Today's awesomely affluent are just as transient � by choice.

Take Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. This billionaire renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2011, a move perfectly timed to potentially save him hundreds of millions in taxes when Facebook goes public.

Saverin has plenty of company. The number of Americans who formally renounced their U.S. citizenship soared to 1,780 last year from 235 in 2008.

The spark for this surge? U.S. tax officials have been clamping down on overseas tax evasion. ...

How the US Press Lost Its Way

By Robert Parry

Editor�s Note: From May 10 to May 12, journalist Robert Parry participated in a conference entitled, �From the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks: A Transatlantic Conversation on the Public�s Right to Know,� sponsored by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies in Heidelberg, Germany.

The conference consisted of media figures, legal scholars and freedom-of-information advocates � and included Neil Sheehan, the New York Times correspondent who got the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg, and Barry Sussman, the Washington Post editor who oversaw the newspaper�s coverage of the Watergate scandal.

Parry spoke on the last day and offered the following observations:

Much of this conference has focused on the glory days of American journalism in the 1970s. And rightly so. My talk, however, will deal with the more depressing question of why things then went so terribly wrong.

First, let me say it�s been an honor to be at this conference, especially with Neil Sheehan and Barry Sussman, who played such important roles exposing serious crimes of state in the early to mid-1970s. That was a time when U.S. journalism perhaps was at its best, far from perfect, but doing what the Founders had in mind when they afforded special protections to the American press.

In the 1970s, besides the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, there were other important press disclosures, like the My Lai massacre story and the CIA abuses � from Iran to Guatemala, from Cuba to Chile. For people around the world, American journalism was the gold standard.

Granted, that was never the full picture. There were shortcomings even in the 1970s. You also could argue that the U.S. news media�s performance then was exceptional mostly in contrast to its failures during the Cold War, when reporters tended to be stenographers to power, going along to get along, including early in the Vietnam War. ...

Meting out Injustice in Mississippi

Prisoners, some as young as 13, are being brutalized in facilities owned by private companies that exist solely to turn a profit.

By Booth Gunter

Two years ago, Mike McIntosh suffered brain damage as well as stab wounds, a broken nose, and other injuries when he was beaten nearly to death during a melee at a prison in Mississippi. A dozen others were hospitalized.

The fight, which the Justice Department says a guard at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility "endorsed," was just the tip of an ugly iceberg that has now been exposed.

What happened to McIntosh, who was 20 at the time and serving a four-year sentence for a nonviolent offense, was symptomatic of a youth prison � one run for profit by the nation's second-largest prison corporation � that was completely out of control.

A federal investigation and a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) uncovered what U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves called in a March 26 court order a "cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions" that had been allowed to fester under the management of GEO Group Inc. ...

Mother's Day

Julia Ward Howe's
Mother's Day Proclamation
(1870, Boston)

"Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
'We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. ...

Love That Dirty Water: Romney Water Pollution Record

Hundreds of Corporate Waivers to Dump Toxics into Massachusetts Water Supply

From: Peer.org

Boston � As Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney gave industrial wastewater dischargers free rein to discharge chemicals into municipal treatment systems unable to filter them out of the Commonwealth�s waters, according to documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Industries with high quotients of toxics in their wastewater, such as manufacturers, carpet cleaners and laboratories, did not even have to monitor chemicals deposited in their wastewater.

Under Romney and his two Republican predecessors, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) allowed industries to discharge 1.4 million gallons of wastewater per day into municipal sewage plants without monitoring or permitting. In 2006, PEER obtained copies of 278 �forbearance� letters from DEP telling companies that they need not even apply for sewer permits.

When PEER revealed the fact that this forbearance practice violated the Clean Water Act Regulations, the Romney administration abruptly proposed regulatory changes to formally exempt 90% of industrial sewer dischargers without even determining the amount of toxic chemicals in their wastewater. ...

The �Subsidized� Loan Charade:

The US Government is Profiteering on Struggling Students

by: Dave Lindorff

The Senate is currently deadlocked on taking action to prevent the interest on new Stafford guaranteed student loans from rising on July 1 from 3.4% to 6.8%, with Democrats saying they want to �pay for� keeping the current �lower� 3.4% rate by closing a loophole that allows some wealthy people to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, while Republicans want to �pay for� keeping the lower rate by eliminating a fund for preventative health care in the 2010 health care reform law.

But what is all this nonsense about �paying for� a supposedly �lower� interest rate of 3.4%?

There are actually two kinds of Stafford loans: subsidized and unsubsidized. The unsubsidized loans, and Stafford loans taken out by graduate students, already carry a whopping -- some might say usurious -- 6.8% interest rate. It�s only the so-called �subsidized� loans that carry a 3.4% rate, and it�s only those loans that would see their rate rise if the two parties cannot come to an agreement to extend the �subsidy.�

But what subsidy are they talking about, anyhow?

Inflation, according to the government�s own statistics, is running at 2.7%. In other words, the government, which is the lender in the case of Stafford Loans, is already making 0.7% on its �subsidized� loans to undergraduates. And the inflation rate has been considerably lower in prior years, so the government has actually been making out like a bandit longer term. If it were to start earning 6.8% on these loans, like it's already making on older loans, unsubsudized Stafford loans and Perkins Loans, the Treasury would be raking in huge profits on a loan program which is supposed to be helping make college affordable for lower income and middle-income students.

Some deal! ...

Food Stamp Foolishness

Rep. Paul Ryan's trying to justify his abuse of the poor with religious lip service.

By Jim Hightower

Maybe you thought the lowest possible point of Republican miserliness was reached when Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Agriculture proposed that ketchup be counted as a vegetable in the school lunch program. If so, you've not taken a peek at the GOP's astoundingly penurious budget proposal recently pasted together in a fit of ideological extremism by the party's budget guru, Rep. Paul Ryan.

Of all things, GOP lawmakers hacked $8 billion from next year's food stamp funds � a well-run, widely popular, and effective program that helps millions of hard-hit American families stave off some of the pain of poverty. Maybe so, concede Ryan & Company, but the program is out of control, having added some 13 million people in the last three years. Well, gosh, Paul, welcome to the real America � where joblessness is rampant, wages are down, and the middle class is tumbling into poverty. Food stamp use is supposed to increase in such times. It means the program is working. ...

Another 10 years for our military in Afghanistan?

You've got to be kidding!

From: United For Peace and Justice, unitedforpeace.org

On May 1st President Obama and Afghan President Karzai signed a 10 year Strategic Partnership Agreement paving the way for U.S. military involvement beyond the scheduled 2014 troop withdrawal date. Presented as a way to end the war, the plan continues to rely on military solutions rather than the peaceful alternatives desperately needed by the Afghan people.

Meanwhile the House of Representatives is poised to vote on a FY 2013 Defense Authorization bill, which contains another $88.4 billion to continue the war in Afghanistan.

Over the course of more than a decade, almost 2,000 U.S. troops have died and over 15,000 have been injured (many maimed for life) trying to create a stable Afghanistan at the cost of over half a trillion dollars. In the year since Osama bin Laden was killed, 381 more soldiers have died. The toll of death and destruction for the people of Afghanistan has been far worse. With all the loss of blood and treasure the U.S. has not been able to stop the Taliban nor create an effective Afghan government. ...

Wall Street's Speed Freaks

The high-frequency trading that dominates the stock market could trigger another global financial crisis.

By Sarah Anderson

The power suits making billions off the stock market are always trying to assure us that their trading serves a socially redeeming purpose. They steer money to companies and industries that make our economy more productive, they claim.

In reality, the majority of stock trading today has absolutely nothing to do with helping companies raise capital to innovate and create jobs. Thoughtful investors don't drive today's Wall Street. Computers do.

About 55 percent of all U.S. stock trading last year was performed by computers programmed to make trades at speeds measured in the millionths of seconds. The goal of these "high-frequency traders"? To move faster than the next guy to exploit microscopic differences in stock prices on different exchanges.

If you can buy a stock in New York and sell it in London a split second later for a fraction of a penny more, and do that millions of times per day, those pennies can add up. One hedge fund alone, Citadel, made $1 billion in profits off such games in 2009. ...

The Anti-Empire Report - May 2012

by William Blum, www.killinghope.org

What you need to succeed is sincerity, and if you can fake sincerity you've got it made. (Old Hollywood axiom)

"A few months ago I told the American people that I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not." � President Ronald Reagan, 1987 1

On April 23, speaking at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, President Barack Obama told his assembled audience that as president "I've done my utmost ... to prevent and end atrocities".

Do the facts and evidence tell him that his words are not true?

Well, let's see ... There's the multiple atrocities carried out in Iraq by American forces under President Obama. There's the multiple atrocities carried out in Afghanistan by American forces under Obama. There's the multiple atrocities carried out in Pakistan by American forces under Obama. There's the multiple atrocities carried out in Libya by American/NATO forces under Obama. There are also the hundreds of American drone attacks against people and homes in Somalia and in Yemen (including against American citizens in the latter). Might the friends and families of these victims regard the murder of their loved ones and the loss of their homes as atrocities?

Ronald Reagan was pre-Alzheimer's when he uttered the above. What excuse can be made for Barack Obama? ...