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Retiring Abroad? Making a list and checking it thrice. They will find out who's naughty or nice

By John C. Dyer, UK correspondent

It seems every summer I read an article which asserts a growing number of Americans choose to retire abroad. 

I am not sure of the statistics but I can certainly understand the interest.  When I decided to relocate to the UK all I could really tell you is I have had an itch to do so for as long as I can remember.   Had Uncle Sam not come along in 1969 I was all set to attend the University of London on a Marshall to study economics and politics.

The draw for me was as much cultural ease, personal identity and family as a calculation of benefits.  The annual “Americans retire to blank” articles, on the other hand, always cite the benefits of living in lower cost economies. 

In the off chance these articles are more than puff pieces for travel agencies I thought I might share some thoughts concerning due diligence. Had I known this information before relocating to the UK last year I still would have done so, but I would have been better prepared.

Cost of Living is only one and one very temporary consideration.

Especially in this era of economic and social upheaval.   Those of you who have followed my articles (or indeed the general press) know that Europe, in general, is in crisis.  Particularly in crisis are Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Greece, all of which I understand have been retiree destinations, as has Egypt. We all know about Egypt. 

Mexico is another destination mentioned in the articles.  Although the drug wars and corruption may give some pause, I know from friends and at least one cousin who retired to Mexico that the enclaves of US retirees there feel relatively insulated.   But they are not relatively insulated from cultural isolation and boredom.   After a while the rush of new and exotic settles in to the day-to-day.  It always does as the exotic becomes the familiar. Then the new arrival begins to feel a) out of place, b) with nothing meaningful to do, c) except with other Americans. Americans one knows, who were there throughout the ups and downs of life, are all back home.  And home is where the heart is.

Taxes can have a significant impact.

One’s tax obligations are in almost all cases governed by a Tax Treaty between the US and the retirement country.   While a boiler plate is at the base of all these treaties, be advised they are not the same from country to country. While all bill themselves as treaties to prevent double taxation, they are often, in fact, the facilitator of double taxation.  I point this out not to argue for change but to bring it to the attention of the retiree considering a foreign retirement.

One particular clause can make a whopping difference. It is the “reservation” clause.  In some treaties the US reserves the right to tax its citizens, wherever they may be, in accordance with annual changes in US law rather than the express terms of the Treaty. So, for example, under an express provision of the boiler plate Treaty social security and pensions are taxed “only” by the country of residence.   But, if the particular treaty has the reservation clause I mention, despite the Treaty’s apparent meaning, IRS will expect a check. You have a US tax liability.

 Watch out for the term “meaning of residence” 

Pakistan and the U.S.: the Red Dot is on the Haqqanis Now

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Dealing with Pakistan, diplomatically and militarily, presents a very special challenge. All governments lie sometimes, but the truth in Pakistan co-habits promiscuously with its more frequently expressed opposite.  Presented with offical statements from Islamabad, the question that should arise is: what do they really mean this time?  Right now Prime Minister Gilani appears to be angry.  But who knows?

A Question of I.S.I. Complicity in Embassy Assault

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appearing before a Senate Armed Services Committee on the eve of his retirement, fired a wow of a parting salvo which clearly hit home in Islamabad, too.  This is what he said:

“With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack [on the Intercontinental hotel in Islamabad], as well as the assault [last week]on our embassy.”  All in all, he emphasized, “the Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.”

U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker has corroborated the assertion that the Haqqanis were behind the embassy attack. He has not been reported to have made the explicit I.S.I. connection. 

Many times in the past American officials have insinuated that the ties between violent extremists and the military in Pakistan are too cozy for comfort, a legacy of the first Afghan war and Pakistan’s proxy war against India in Kashmir, but this is the first time, to my knowledge, that such a bald accusation of complicity in anti-American attacks has been made by a high level American official for public consumption.  Unlike General David Petraeus, who was something of a political general before he shed his uniform and became head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Adm. Mullen has not specialized in splashy statements and does not seem to have a reputation as a loose cannon, which gives considerable credibility to his accusations.  It also suggests that he has been chosen by the Obama administration as the vehicle for letting Pakistan know that the game is up.  The time for creative ambiguity is over  An attack on an American embassy isn’t just a reflection of some mild divergence in national interests.  It’s an attack of the U.S. itself.

Interpreting Pakistan's Denial

The Pakistani government’s official responses to Admiral Mullen’s charges have been predictably full of fury, but it’s difficult to know what this means because the Pakistani establishment regularly says one thing to the Pakistani public and another in private to the U.S.  Case in point: drone attacks on targets in the F.A.T.A. areas bordering Afghanistan, which serve as safe havens for Taliban fighters and their allies.  The Pakistani public wants them stopped.  Government officials, quoted in the Pakistani press, denounce drone attacks as unacceptable violations of national sovereignty. Meanwhile, the Pakistani military is helping to guide U.S. drones to mutually agreed upon targets.

Back to Gilani.  In the case of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul,  is the Pakistani government (1) innocent of the charges and justifiably outraged by the accusation of complicity, (2) guilty as charged of using the Haqqani network to achieve goals directly antithetical to those of the U.S. while vigorously denying complicity or (3) guilty, but only of using the Haqqanis to punish the U.S. for cutting back on military aid for reasons I won’t go into here and now.

It’s easy to believe that the long-standing relationship between the very useful Haqqani clan and I.S.I. was never fully severed.  What's more, Pakistan is very clever about not denying the existence of contacts.  Just keeping tabs, as good intelligence operatives should, the I.S.I. says.  Right!  However,  I have to wrestle with the idea that the highest Pakistani officials were party to a decision to attack the U.S. embassy, even as it seems to me that an act as serious as an embassy assault could only happen with approval from the top.  Assuming any complicity, of course.  And, indeed, why not?  The U.S. could be a very nasty thorn in Pakistan’s side when it comes to determining the political future of Afghanistan, which Pakistan would dearly love to control, to the total exclusion of India, whether or not that means a reTalibanization of the country.  Perhaps there are those who think that the U.S. will skedaddle more quickly and more completely if the costs are escalated. 

No Time to be a Haqqani

If so, what a mistake!  The wrong target was chosen.  No one attacks an American embassy with impunity.  Bin Laden was a dead man as soon as he was associated with the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam.  The 9/11 debacle simply provided extra motivation for hunting him down.  It took ten years, but he was found, in Pakistan, and not in a mountain hideout, which raised a number of very interesting questions as well as Pakistani hackles.  Was the the government of Pakistan providing him with the far from palacial safehouse?   The official Pakistani respons, naturally, is negative.  That said,  I wonder if the leading members of the Haqqani network are pondering Bin Laden’s fate.  They should be.  They are going to be hunted down, whether or not the I.S.I. loves them, whether or not the Pakistanis complain about territorial violations. 

Which gives rise to another thought: is it possible that the Paskistanis want the U.S. to do exactly this?  Get rid of the Haqqanis for them.  Have the Haqqanis got too big even for their baggy Pathan britches, now that Pakistan itself is being ravaged by religion-inspired violence?  Not just to help the U.S., but also on their own account, the Pakistani army has mobilized against militants in the frontier area.  They have even collaborated in the capture of figures sought by the U.S.  But taking on the Hakkanis alone would be daunting, even if Pakistan were willing to withdraw more troops from the Indian border.  Do they possibly want the U.S. to do their dirty work for them?

Meanwhile, of course, Pakistan’s civilian politicians are loudly warning the U.S. not to violate Pakistani territory in search of the embassy attackers: no boots on the ground they say.  No sane American could disagree with this demand.  Do the warnings apply to drones, too?  Proabably.  At least for public consumption.  The politicians must insulate themselves from public outrange when drones hit the wrong target.

A Sober but Short-Sighted Military Reaction

The military response has been more nuanced.   At an "unprecedented" Sunday meeting, the High Command decided that the war of words needs to be “de-escalated” considerably.  Karachi’s daily Dawn reports a source as saying that “escalation is harmful.  In the cost benefit analysis there appears to be no benefit of a confrontation” with the U.S.  Cost-benefit analysis indeed!  The Pakistani army certainly doesn’t want to slaughter the goose that lays hundreds of millions of dollars of golden eggs.  The source also reported that the meeting ended with “nothing to suggest that the army had agreed to act against the Haqqani network under U.S. pressure.”

Shrugging off U.S. complaints in the confident belief that the status quo will quickly reassert itself might have been the sensible way to go in the past.  Over and over again the U.S. has granted the Pakistani government immunity for outrageous double-dealing.  This time, however, complacency may be the wrong reaction. 

The UK Coalition and the “moral hazard” of a failing economic and fiscal policy

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

 On 21 September, the UK government admitted it had borrowed £15.9 billion in August, the most in any August of any year.

Borrowing year-to-date hovers at something like £51.5 billion, less than last year’s borrowing by all of £ 3.9 billion of the £55.4 billion borrowed during the same time period last year.  This despite the Coalition’s destabilizing and draconian austerity programme.  The same day leaders of both partners in The Coalition asserted there would be no retreat from that austerity programme. Because it is working so well?    

I hear a lot about “moral hazard” from my conservative friends.  How about the letter that came out from the government this week warning terminally ill patients that their benefits will expire at the end of 12 months regardless of their condition?  The policy hasn’t yet become law yet but the government just could not wait to spread the cheer.

Or how about the moral hazard of failure? 

The UK economy is in the tank, over 2.5 million are unemployed, over a million are under employed, and the average Brit stands to lose both services and purchasing power.   The Coalition austerity programme has not succeeded in bringing down the deficit by a substantial amount, much less the national debt.  But it has demonstrably weakened the economy, damaged the common people, and endangers the country’s social stability.  Even its much touted strength of the pound versus other currencies has reversed, the pound falling over 10 cents against the dollar in the last month.

Top economists all but plead for the Coalition to change course, to develop a Plan B of stimulus. See (my plan b article). Even the IMF gingerly raised the idea this past week.  But the Coalition pronounces its Plan A as the only option. Have they inhaled what they have been smoking?  The austerity programme failed. Get over it.

 Time for a substantial stimulus.  

Recently Business Secretary Vince Cable pronounced the economic crisis as the moral equivalent of war. Let’s have the practical equivalent of Victory Bonds, then.  Offer British citizens only –that is, private human beings not entities (corporate, partnership, or trust) - the opportunity to purchase a maximum of £30,000 per year in bonds. Set the interest at just 2 points below the prevailing rate at which the government can borrow commercially, to mature in 5 years.

Both the government and private savers win with that rate as it is higher than commercially available savings but lower than the rate at which the governmentborrows.   Use the proceeds to invest in job generating, labour intensive projects, especially construction of housing, infrastructure, and schools.       Give the people a chance to invest in and save themselves.

 But whatever you do, Coalition, lead, follow, or get out of the way.  Try something, do something, fix it. 

 

The Saudis Talk Back to an Out-of-Touch U.S.

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The winner of the just-created Ostrich Award goes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  That’s the prize for sticking your head in the sand while your neighbors transform the neighborhood.  Netanyahu and colleagues also get the prize for truly brazen hostage-taking.   Hostages—isn’t that what the government-subsidized settlers on the occupied West Bank are, ever-proliferating pawns moved forward to create sympathy-arousing “facts on the ground” so that Israel can prevent the formation of a viable sovereign Palestinian state?  Every negotiating delay buys time to plant more hostages, i.e., more bodies to "protect" should Palestinians get impatient about the continued theft of their land. 

Patience Isn't Its Own Reward

Now the PLA’s Mahmoud Abbas is calling Netantanyu’s bluff.  He’s going to present an explicit statehood bid to the U.N. Security Council, and Israel is crying foul.  Ditto the U.S., which plans to veto any such effort on the grounds that statehood would mean nothing because the details will still have to be hammered out through direct negotiations.  This, of course, is an absurd response, which has already received a trumping reply.  Negotiations make more sense if the partners are equal in terms of sovereignty.  What’s amazing to me is that the Palestinians have waited so long to demand the sort of  U.N. imprimatur that Israel enjoyed at its foundation.  What’s sauce for the Israeli goose is sauce for the Palestinian gander.

But the U.S. seems to have forgotten that it was supposed to be an honest broker—or at least pose as one, which would explain the tiresome dissonance between U.S. words and deeds in re Palestine.  For a long time, the game worked, sort of.  But that was when the U.S. kept its financial house in order and still had a certain moral authority or soft power.  Even so, as my colleague has recently written, the U.S. still manages to pull Israel’s chestnuts out of the fire with some regularity.  This continues to give Israel a delusive sense of invulnerability to the laws of cause and effect.  But the game can’t go on.  The Arab spring was real.  And, as America once again bows to do Israel’s bidding at great cost to its own interests in the Middle East and the Muslim world in general, it would seem that the U.S. also merits an Ostrich award. 

Elephant Mysteries: On Safari in Tanzania III

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I promised to write about elephants, but there's a problem. Although I’m fond of elephants, I’m not so good at hyper hype, and elephants are definitely not beautiful.  Viewing an elephant from the side, what I see is  a billboard body with marble-sized eyes.  Elephant tusks are weapons, as are the huge canines of a lion, but for some reason tusks lack the power to horrify at sight.  Maybe that's because elephants, being vegetarians, never hunt humans.  No thrill of fear.  As for that trunk, it’s a sensitive, useful appendage with an earthworm's visual charm.

So, how can I do justice to these strange yet captivating creatures, which I hoped my grandson would also fall in love with?  Let’s begin with big.  Elephants are bulky, baggy and more stately than sprightly as they file through the landscape.  Oftentimes they thread along through thickets, in which case it's very hard to see them at first.  Their unshapely legs

turn into tree trunks, their bodies into shadowy blobs. In tall grass, their steel gray backs hump up like boulders. 

Then those big ears waggle.  Or that funny trunk does a little waving or curling.   Ah ha!  An elephant!  Motion is the giveaway, though they aren’t exactly hiding.  As adults, they have nothing to fear.  Nada.  So maybe, lost in greenery, they’re just following the food trail.

Elephants aren’t discriminating diners. They specialize in the tornado effect: small trees and branches snapped, leaves ripped off.  Thanks to a very inefficient digestive system, elephants have to stuff in bushel after bushel after bushel, which means they also excrete a lot. This is not entirely bad.  Elephant-processed seeds germinate very nicely, thank you.  What’s more, elephant dung is so full of undigested twigs and cellulose that sunlight passing through a few drops of morning dew may set it aflame.  The resulting fires help to maintain the savanna's fertility. 

Pulling Netanyahu's Chestnuts Out Yet Again?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

It’s not quite roasted chestnut season in the Eastern Mediterranean but it’s getting closer to the time when city streets are filled with the distinctive aroma that spells autumn wafting from vendors’ glowing charcoal grills. Nevertheless, over the past week the Obama administration has had to pull Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s chestnuts out of the fire not once but twice so that the volatile region doesn’t burst into flames once again.

First the US President had to intervene with enraged Turks who were threatening to send an armed naval flotilla to accompany Turkish aid ships running Israel’s blockade of Gaza in retaliation for the Netanyahu government’s refusal to apologize for killing eight Turks and one Turkish American in an excessive and uncalled for use of force summer 2010.

Israeli oil and gas exploration in disputed waters?  Another red flag for Turks

Israel’s agreement with the Cypriots to begin oil and gas exploration off the coast of Lebanon in disputed waters didn’t help matters with the Erdogan government either. Turks are quite protective of that undersea shelf.

Then the Israeli Foreign Minister’s inept attempt at sending a warning shot by publicly threatening that Israel might play footsy with Armenian-Americans and Kurds – two of Turkey’s vulnerabilities – is another part of the equation.

This suggestion was certain not only to raise Turkish government hackles but, if it were to happen, would likely backfire on the Israelis who continue to do an excellent job of alienating even the best of friends.  In this case however, if the threat were to be realized it would far more likely close the gap between the feuding Turkish military and AK, the country’s mildly Islamic ruling party, in joint defense of the Turkish nation.     

As I’ve written on WhirledView before, and will doubtedless do so again, it is a really bad idea to provoke the Turks – especially unnecessarily as in this case.  Turks are slow to boil but when they do – watch out.

Netanyahu and his Moldovan ex-night club bouncer turned Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman did everything they could to throw petrol on Turkish coals in a fit of small time pique rather than thinking strategically as to what would be best for Israel in the long term– as Turkish foreign policy makers traditionally do with respect to Turkey.

Why should the Obama administration have to play mediator - twice in the past few days?

Meanwhile, why should President Obama have had to play mediator on behalf of the Israeli Government with its once-upon-time best ally in the Muslim world?  What would it have taken - what would it take - for Netanyahu to apologize for murders that should never have happened? 

Exactly who profits most from this little spat?  Iran, per chance?  Republican candidates via ELU, an ultra- wealthy right-wing Jewish pressure group in the US that is closely aligned with the GOP – unlike most Jewish American voters?   

You'd think the Netanyahu government would call off its surrogates and thank Obama and his administration for their help in resolving Israel's self-made problems - but obviously not.

Who Knows What’s Best for Libya?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

What’s wrong with these opening lines from an article entitled “Libyan Nation Building After Qaddafi?  It’s dated 8/23/11 and it appeared in Foreign Affairs.

With the fall of the Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in sight, the United States and its allies face the familiar challenges of post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction.  As in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and its allies have prevailed militarily and Western governments must now assume some role in helping establish a new order.

What’s wrong?  Let me help. 

•    Who “faces those challenges”?  Who needs to “stabilize and reconstruct” Libya?  Not “the U.S. and its allies.”  Libya and the Libyans.

•    Who “prevailed militarily”?  The Libyan rebels prevailed—with the very considerable help of the “U.S. and its allies,” no doubt.  But the Libyan rebels on the ground did the daring and dying.   

•    Whose proper “role” is it to establish “a new order”?  Not “Western governments’.”  The Libyan people’s.  Western governments may be of some assistance,  but what outsiders “must” do is wait to be invited and listen carefully to what’s wanted. 

Misplaced focus is what’s wrong with the opening paragraph.  The writers of the article assign the most important post-revolutionary tasks in Libya to non-Libyans, never representing Libyans  as actors or responsible parties.  A similar assumption that the locals are insignificant bit players in their own national lives all too often disfigures and compromises U.S. foreign assistance efforts.  It guarantees we won’t get our money’s worth, even in the absence of massive corruption.

Now, how about the article’s conclusion:

For its part, the United States and the international community must apply the lessons of past reconstruction efforts tempering its expectations for rapid progress and responding to local needs while avoiding the impulse for unwanted intervention.   Libya’s limited size, favorable location, relative wealth and homogeneous population should help ease a transition to peace and democracy, but absence of both government institutions and an established civil society suggest that the road may nevertheless be long and rocky.

Once again, the writers put the emphasis on the “U.S. and the international community.”   As for the locals, they have only “needs,” not requirements, not specifications, not visions, not goals.  The beneficiaries of post-revolutionary assistance are seen as little more than stunned victims of an earthquake or a tsunami, not as the proud authors of a political change.

Commemoration of the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11