Saturday, Jul 06th
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Headquartered in a former Rothschild chateau in an affluent Parisian neighborhood, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is best known for earnest conferences on economic and social policy.
With little outside attention, it also plays a pivotal role enabling global corporations such as Google Inc. (GOOG), Hewlett- Packard Co. and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN). to dodge taxes by shifting profits into offshore subsidiaries, costing the U.S. and Europe more than $100 billion a year.
As Americans mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a majority said the country erred in sending troops there, a Gallup poll indicated.
Fifty-three percent of Americans said they believe the country "made a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq" while 42 percent said it wasn't, poll results released Monday indicated. Gallup said it was the first time it asked this question since U.S. troops pulled out in December 2011.
The Democrats who voted to support the war and rationalized that vote by making false claims about Iraq's WMD programs - a minority of Democrats, but much over-represented in Democratic leadership councils - were responsible for allowing the Bush administration to get away with lying about Iraq's alleged threat.
Here on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, it is important to remember that it was not just those in the Bush White House who were responsible for the tragedy, but leading members of Congress as well, some of whom are now in senior positions in the Obama administration.
Puerto Rico occupies a space between foreign and domestic status with U.S. citizenship for residents, its own Olympic team and a tax system that allows individuals and companies the chance to elude the IRS.
The U.S. territory’s leaders are seeking to lure mainland residents such as hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson. Moving to Puerto Rico could allow Paulson and other top-earning taxpayers to shield future income from the Internal Revenue Service without giving up their passports.
In establishing natural gas and fracking as the clean alternative to coal and the “bridge” to a low-carbon future, the natural gas industry has relied on PR to smooth its way. While the most visible anti-fracking campaigns remain regional and local, tied to the politics of exploding water and poisoned wells, gas companies and lobbyists are moving to globalize the debate. Their message: rational environmentalists should embrace gas, because gas will save us from climate change.
That message was stimulated by 99 words in a 492-word press release from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Though it was contradicted in the same week by an IEA spokesperson and a much longer IEA report, the message spread — from the conservative press and gas lobbyists to the halls of government. Now, it’s simply taken as fact.
An Army staff sergeant was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing $1 million from the government in a scam while she was serving in Afghanistan.
Tonya Long, a 13-year Army veteran, pleaded guilty to stealing at least $1 million in cash payments meant for Afghan drivers of trucks delivering supplies to U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Forty-five years ago today, March 16, roughly 100 U.S. troops were flown by helicopter to the outskirts of a small Vietnamese hamlet called My Lai in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam. Over a period of four hours, the Americans methodically slaughtered more than 500 Vietnamese civilians. Along the way, they also raped women and young girls, mutilated the dead, systematically burned homes, and fouled the area’s drinking water.
On this day, I think back to an interview I conducted several years ago with a tiny, wizened woman named Tran Thi Nhut. She told me about hiding in an underground bunker as the Americans stormed her hamlet and how she emerged to find a scene of utter horror: a mass of corpses in a caved-in trench and, especially, the sight of a woman’s leg sticking out at an unnatural angle which haunted her for decades. She lost her mother and a son in the massacre. But Tran Thi Nhut never set foot in My Lai. She lived two provinces north, in a little hamlet named Phi Phu which—she and other villagers told me—lost more than 30 civilians to a 1967 massacre by U.S. troops.
A Jesuit priest whose kidnapping by the Argentine military in 1976 has raised the issue of what role newly named Pope Francis played in that country’s so-called “dirty war” said Friday that he was “reconciled to the events” and wished the pope well, but he did not explicitly absolve the pope of involvement in his detention.
In a statement posted on a website in Germany, where the Rev. Francisco Jalics now lives, Jalics recounted the details of his detention, saying he was held for five months, blindfolded and shackled. At the time, the pope, then the Rev. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was Jalics’ Jesuit superior.
“I’m unable to comment on the role of Father Bergoglio in this matter,” the statement said.
When the Rev. Rafael Escala served at St. Timothy Catholic Church in West Kendall in the late 1980s, he caught a teenaged altar boy stealing $60 from the collection.
Escala threatened to report the teen to his father and the police. But rather than carry out the threat, the priest sexually abused the 16-year-old boy, according to the victim, who obtained a financial settlement from the Archdiocese of Miami in January.
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