Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] 34 billionaires pledge half of their fortunes
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Protect-Your-Assets-With-a-Foundation-Just-Like-Billionaires-Gates-Buffet Starting Your Own Charitable Foundation Donating to a foundation is one legal way to protect wealth for descendants. Assets transferred into a foundation are immune to capital gains taxes, plus the donator still gets a tax deduction for the contribution. Additionally, the charity receives more money than if the donator sold assets, paid the taxes, and donated the remainder. This may come as a surprise to some—that anyone, not just the super rich like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet--can set up a trust and/or foundation very inexpensively by doing all the research and drafting their own documents. There are many sources that provide templates. If your situation is straightforward, all you have to do is fill in the blanks. For those with more involved situations an experienced attorney is recommended. Even if you do it yourself, it’s not a bad idea to have an attorney review it. The final step is transferring your assets into the foundation or trust, otherwise all your hard work is for naught. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] 34 billionaires pledge half of their fortunes
The most interesting thing about this is people fall for the line that they are 'giving it away'. Not the case at all. What they seem to seek is some way to keep their fortunes intact after their death and still have some say over how the money is invested and used, even as they lie mouldering in the cold cold ground. Pity the poor Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. They lost 150 million dollars because they owned too much BP stock! If I were worth a billion dollar now, greedy person that I am, I would keep 10 million and retire and give the rest to people who could actually use it and whether I was alive or dead I wouldn't try to assert say over how they use it. NOW THAT WOULD BE CHARITY. F- Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and T. Boone Pickens and their crappy charitable foundations. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] US to Attend Hiroshima Memorial for First Time
>>CB: What would the US have done if Japan had not allowed same ?<< Most likely the US would have said it valued the US-Japan alliance more than an issue like that, and then lie and say it didn't have any nukes in Japan while bringing them here anyway. At least more Japanese would be aware that the US military was and still is armed with thousands of nukes, which they deploy all over the world. BTW, officailly the Japanese government didn't allow anything. They don't have the constitutional right to allow nuclear weapons in the country. Wait, you mean the leadership of Japan, US puppets that they are, are also a bunch of lying, unconstitutional criminals? CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] 34 billionaires pledge half of their fortunes
The greatest charity giveaway in history? 34 billionaires pledge half of their fortunes By Mail Foreign Service Last updated at 11:49 AM on 5th August 2010 https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1&ui=1&ov=0 Comments (199) Add to My Stories Thirty-four U.S. billionaires have today pledged to give away at least 50 per cent of their wealth to charity as part of a campaign by investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Among the billionaires joining the campaign are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entertainment executive Barry Diller, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, media mogul Ted Turner, banker David Rockefeller and investor Ronald Perelman. The Giving Pledge was started in June by Mr Gates, whose $53billion (£33.3bn) fortune places him second on the Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people, and Mr Buffett, who ranks third on the list. Campaign starters: Billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, right, are inviting others to join The Giving Pledge They wanted to persuade hundreds of U.S. billionaires to give away most of their fortune during their lifetime or after their death and to publicly state their intention with a letter of explanation. ‘We've really just started but already we've had a terrific response,’ Mr Buffett said in a statement. ‘The Giving Pledge is about asking wealthy families to have important conversations about their wealth and how it will be used. More...The top 100 billionaire list (thisismoney.co.uk) How to invest like Warren Buffett (thisismoney.co.uk) ‘We're delighted that so many people are doing just that - and that so many have decided to not only take this pledge but also to commit to sums far greater than the 50 per cent minimum level,’ he added. The full list of billionaires and their letters can be seen at www.thegivingpledge.org. The Giving Pledge does not accept any money but asks billionaires to make a moral commitment to give away their wealth to charity. EnlargeMr Bloomberg wrote in his Giving Pledge letter: ‘I am enthusiastically taking the Giving Pledge, and nearly all of my net worth will be given away in the years ahead or left to my foundation. ‘Making a difference in people's lives - and seeing it with your own eyes - is perhaps the most satisfying thing you'll ever do.’ The billionaires announcing their pledge today join real estate and construction billionaire Eli Broad, venture capitalist John Doerr, media entrepreneur Gerry Lenfest and former Cisco Systems chairman John Morgridge who have already committed to giving away most of their wealth. Mr Buffett, who made his fortune with insurance and investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc, Mr Gates and his wife, Melinda, held several dinners with a couple of dozen rich Americans in the past year to urge them to make the pledge. Mr Buffett pledged in 2006 to give away 99 per cent of his wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and family charities. Bill and Melinda Gates have so far donated more than $28billion (£17.6bn) of their fortune to their foundation. Since the foundation began in 1994, it has given away more than $22billion (£13.8bn) for health improvements in poor countries and to improve access for Americans to opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. ‘I've long stated that I enjoy making money, and I enjoy giving it away,’ Mr Pickens said in his Giving Pledge letter. ‘I'm not a big fan of inherited wealth. It generally does more harm than good.’ Forbes said the U.S. is home to 403 billionaires, the most in the world. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1300336/34-billionaires-away-half-wealth.html##ixzz0vk8aUZhY ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Closing of the Zionist Mind
> > http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/7984.html > > The Closing of the Zionist Mind > > Posted on July 30, 2010 by Juan > > It finally happened. The Jerusalem Post has declared archeology itself > anti-Semitic. > > To tell you the truth, I am frankly worried about some of my > colleagues who are committed Zionists having difficulty in dealing > with reality in the wake of the severe difficulties facing the Zionist > project in historical Palestine. > > Caroline Glick?s inaccurate and angry attack on me in the Jerusalem > Post reminded me again of why I am anxious about the Closing of the > Zionist Mind. > > Glick is actually alleging that anyone who practices critical history > of the ancient world or the Middle East in general is thereby an > anti-Jewish bigot. Glick, from Chicago, was a captain in the Israeli > army and a judge advocate-general during the first Intifada or > Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, > which the Israeli army brutally crushed. She seems to be going off the > deep end, having made herself notorious with the sick satirical video > ?We Con the World,? which made fun of the civilian aid workers killed > by Israeli commandos on May 31 of this year (and which appears to have > had some backing from the Israeli government itself). > > I don?t know if Captain Glick ever was not a zealot, but the > bitterness and extremeness of her comments are now to the point of > irrationality. > > It is not just she. I?ve been at conferences where committed Zionists > in the audience would afterwards approach me and, with a sort of > glazed look in their eyes, give me a little set speech, then abruptly > walk away. I initially always think they want to have a discussion. > They don?t. They want to engage in some sort of strange ritual speech > to exorcise the doubts I raised. They want to tell me off and then > escape before I can reply. > > One time some Orthodox students approached me at a conference to say > that in their reckoning, Israeli settlers on the West Bank had almost > never done any harm to anyone and maybe in total had killed 14 > persons, for which they were sorry. I was frankly outraged. I mean, > what world did these university students live in? Had they never read > even one academic book on the effects of the Israeli Occupation on the > Palestinians of the Palestinian West Bank? Why invent fairy tale > statistics, and what is with the passive aggressive ?apology?? There > is something wrong with this way of thinking, and it is a kind of > group think that reinforces itself in small, tight, communities of > discourse. > > Last month, I was at a conference where a prominent academic at a > prominent university gave a whole series of set speeches on various > occasions.. Hamas is a terrorist organization that says it will never > negotiate with Israel. Iran is near to being able and willing to nuke > Israel. It was like a series of mantras to ward off any real, critical > thought. When I told the person he was being essentialist, he was > taken aback, then in a passive aggressive way, said he ?hoped? that > what I was saying was true. It is so weird dealing with people who are > supposed to be critical thinkers by trade who, when it comes to > Israel, suddenly exhibit all the originality of a mynah bird. And they > don?t let you get a word in edgewise once they start. And they > constantly imply, with body language and innuendo, that you are > misinformed or actively lying. > > Other strange features of this discourse are the disregard for any > evidence that contradicts the set talking points, unwillingness to > seriously reconsider positions in the light of such evidence, the > repetition of key phrases in an impenetrable way, the allegation that > critics said things they never said, and insistence on demonizing the > source of the alternative evidence. > > I got exactly the same treatment in the 1970s from Maronite Christians > in Lebanon and in the 1990s from pro-Milosevic Serbs, and recognize > the condition. It is Failing Nationalism Syndrome (FNS). > > Not all national projects succeed. There are by some counts 5000 > ethnic groups in the world of a sort that could be the basis for a > nation-state, but there are only about 190 countries. Some political > projects, such as French Algeria (dominated by colons or colonists as > a privileged group) or a Christian-dominated Lebanon, get going but > just don?t have staying power. Algeria is now an almost wholly Muslim > country, and Christians in Lebanon, while still powerful and numerous, > are probably down to less than a third of the total population. But if > we went back in time to 1935, we could sit at cafes in Algiers or > Beirut and talk with these two about the future of their countries, > and the ones in Algiers would have said that Algeria?s fate was to > always be a part of France, and the Lebanese Maronites would talk have > talked about their majority being strengthened and about the >
[Marxism-Thaxis] Divide Afghanistan at your peril
His reply to the recent proposal of Robert Blackwell, fmr amb. to India] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ce86498c-9f13-11df-8732-00144feabdc0.html August 3 2010 Financial Times Divide Afghanistan at your peril By Ahmed Rashid Over the past 32 years, Afghans have fought a series of wars to keep their country together. For all the machinations of great powers and neighbouring states, no Afghan warlord or leader has ever succumbed to outside pressure for partition. The war in Afghanistan just got more complicated with the release of secret military files by the Wikileaks website -- a big embarrassment to the US, Nato and Pakistan. Yet despite their damaging content, the leaks should not distract from some powerful positive elements that have helped Afghanistan to survive in the past. Afghanistan has been a nation state since 1761 -- a good deal longer than four of its immediate neighbours (Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). Even though Afghanistan has suffered severe internal wars and coups, falling victim to the entire gambit of 20th-century ideologies, the country and its people have shown remarkable resilience. The latest attempt to suggest partition comes from an American, Robert Blackwill, a former official in the Bush administration and former US ambassador to India. Mr Blackwill wrote recently in the FT that as the US cannot win the current war in Afghanistan, it should consider a de facto partition of the country, handing over the Pashtun south to the Taliban and propping up the north and west where Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras live. Such a partition, he writes "is now the best that can realistically and responsibly be achieved''. Really? Not a single Afghan will ever support such a demand. In 1988-89, as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the KGB tried hard to convince the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum to create a buffer state to protect Soviet central Asia from the Mujaheddeen. Gen Dostum described to me how he gruffly refused. In the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, Iran tried to persuade its Shia and Hazara protégées to create a Shia corridor linking western and central Afghanistan with Iran. Afghan leaders turned Iran down. In the mid-1990s some of Tajikistan's leaders tried, and failed, to persuade the Afghan Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud to build a Greater Tajikistan. In 1996, when the Taliban captured Kabul but initially failed to take the north, Pakistan's Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) suggested that the Pashtun group create their own state in the south. The Taliban refused, despite their dependence on the ISI. Twenty years ago, Gen Dostum told me that the first Afghan who suggests partition would have his throat slit. Before the attacks of September 11 2001, Taliban leaders told me the same thing. The same holds true today. The first thing to note is that Afghanistan's ethnic mix is extremely complex, with millions of Pashtuns living in the north amidst the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Likewise, the south has its fair share of non-Pashtuns. Partition could lead to worse horrors than witnessed at India's division in 1947. Mr Blackwill blithely writes that "small islands of non-Pashtuns in the south and east would be an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence". Moreover, abandoning the south would betray those Pashtuns who have resisted the Taliban. Partition would relegate the Pashtuns to pariah status, ignored and forgotten except when the US finds it necessary -- as Mr Blackwill suggests it sometimes will -- to send in the drones. Such a policy would seriously undermine Afghanistan by fuelling inter-ethnic war. It would endanger Pakistan, encouraging some of the 40m Pashtuns in Pakistan to link up with their 15m Afghan Pashtun brothers and forge an extremist ethnic state that gives refuge to terrorists. The tragedy of the Bush administration was that for too long after September 11 all Pashtuns were treated as the enemy, and the south and east of Afghanistan became a free-fire zone for US forces. Only recently, under President Barack Obama, has there been a decisive attempt by the US and Nato to woo the Pashtuns and also to strengthen those Pashtun tribes, peoples and women who have been resisting the Taliban all this time. In Pakistan, several thousand moderate Pashtuns have been gunned down by the Pakistani Taliban. They too need to be bolstered and supported as the Pakistan army is now, finally, belatedly trying to do. Afghans and Pakistanis have seen the bloody results of 20th-century partitions -- not only in India but also Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Yugoslavia, even Pakistan, with the separation of East Pakistan in 1971. To play around now with the borders of a region beset with extremism, terrorism and ethnic conflict would be to throw a match on a ready-made bonfire. Yes, the situation in Afghanistan is critical, the war against the Taliban is being lost and western forces want to pull out soon. However, the only solution is dialogue between the genuine
[Marxism-Thaxis] rightwinger criticizes Israel
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/07/how-is-this-not-apartheid.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Beinart on ADL & chickens coming home to roost
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-02/the-anti-defamation-leagues-ground-zero-mosque-hypocrisy/full/ August 2, 2010 The Daily Beast Hateful Ground Zero Hypocrisy Peter Beinart The other day, when the Anti-Defamation League came out against building a mosque near Ground Zero, I think I heard a sound--the sound of chickens coming home to roost. The ADL calls itself "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency." Coming from an explicitly Jewish organization, that's an audacious claim. But it's an inspiring one, too. The ADL was born in 1913, after a Georgia jury falsely convicted a Jewish factory owner named Leo Frank of murdering a Christian employee. The men who defamed, and later lynched, Frank were anti-Semites. But they were not only anti-Semites. Three months after Frank's murder, some of his tormenters met on Georgia's Stone Mountain to refound the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that would now dedicate itself not merely to terrorizing African-Americans, but to terrorizing Catholics and Jews as well. What if white victims of African-American crime protested the building of a black church in their neighborhood? Or gentile victims of Bernie Madoff protested the building of a synagogue? Against this backdrop, the founders of the ADL made their organization a kind of mirror image of the Klan. If the Klan saw anti-Semitism as one component of the struggle to maintain white, Protestant supremacy, the ADL would make its opposition to anti-Semitism one component of the struggle against white, Protestant supremacy. If bigotry was indivisible, anti-bigotry would be indivisible too. "The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people," declared the ADL's charter. "Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens." For much of the 20th century, the ADL lived this mission well. It opposed Joe McCarthy, lobbied for civil rights, and denounced the anti-Catholic bigots who insinuated that John F. Kennedy would take orders from Rome. Then came the creation of the state of Israel. For the ADL, Israel posed a conundrum: the conundrum of Jewish power. In the United States, it was relatively easy to oppose all forms of discrimination while still serving particular Jewish interests, since Jews--by virtue of their place in society--were bigotry's victims but rarely its main perpetrators. But Israel was different. While Israel's Jews certainly suffered from Arab bigotry and violence, the Jewish state also perpetrated a great deal of bigotry and violence itself, especially after 1967, when it made itself occupier of millions of Palestinians to whom it denied the vote. Had the ADL genuinely tried to apply its universalistic mandate to the Jewish state, it would have become something like the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) or B'Tselem (full disclosure: I'm on B'Tselem's American board): Israeli human rights organizations that struggle against all forms of bigotry, and thus end up spending a lot of time defending Muslims and Christian Palestinians against discrimination by Jews. But the ADL hasn't done that. Instead it has become, in essence, two organizations. In the United States, it still links the struggle against anti-Semitism to the struggle against bigotry against non-Jews. In Israel, by contrast, it largely pretends that government-sponsored bigotry against non-Jews does not exist. When Arizona passes a law that encourages police to harass Latinos, the ADL expresses outrage. But when Israel builds 170 kilometers of roads in the West Bank for the convenience of Jewish settlers, from which Palestinians are wholly or partially banned, the ADL takes out advertisements declaring, "The Problem Isn't Settlements." For a long time now, the ADL seems to have assumed that it could exempt Israel from the principles in its charter and yet remain just as faithful to that charter inside the United States. But now the chickens are coming back home to America to roost. The ADL's rationale for opposing the Ground Zero mosque is that "building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain--unnecessarily--and that is not right." Huh? What if white victims of African-American crime protested the building of a black church in their neighborhood? Or gentile victims of Bernie Madoff protested the building of a synagogue? Would the ADL for one second suggest that sensitivity toward people victimized by members of a certain religion or race justifies discriminating against other, completely innocent, members of that religion or race? Of course not. But when it comes to Muslims, the standards are different. They are diff
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] US to Attend Hiroshima Memorial for First Time
On 8/4/10, CeJ wrote: > > > > Japan, the only country that has ever been attacked with > > atomic bombs -- first on August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima, and > > three days later in Nagasaki -- has pushed for the abolition > > of the weapons of mass destruction ever since. > > > > > Which is why the governments of Japan have knowingly allowed/acquiesced to > the US storing, transhipping and deploying nukes in Japan, right? Which is > why their government never protests the US deploying nukes on the Korean > peninsula, right? > > CJ ^^^ CB: What would the US have done if Japan had not allowed same ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
