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0:03 exactly one year ago I left Russia I didn't go on vacation I didn't go on a 0:09 business trip I left for good burning the bridge behind me 0:15 I divided my life on before and after I 0:22 some say I fled some say I escaped I say I run away 0:28 and I think that all three definitions are right somewhat 0:34 the loss thing I want to do is 0:41 the last thing I wanted to do was to run away I liked living in Russia I was born and 0:47 raised there I am...

Tired of all this #WINNING yet? Hah! Fat chance. – For the fourth time in the last seven trading days, all three major stock market indexes attained record high closes on Tuesday. This was the 10th record-high closing day in November alone, and…wait for it…the 100th record high closing day for the Dow Jones Industrials since Donald John Trump was sworn in as President of the United States. Great. Now do Antifa – Speaking of President Trump, he told Bill O’Reilly in an interview released on Tuesday that he will soon designate Mexico’s governing party, er, major drug cartels as...

We may not be able to easily deport illegals and alien criminals ....

Senator Ted Cruz isn’t one to throw a bone to the Obama administration. But a new bill that he introduced would give the government enormous new powers when it comes to national security. It’s called the “Expatriate Terrorist Act” and on the surface its intentions seem good enough. It allows the United States to revoke the citizenship of anyone fighting for or aiding a terrorist group like ISIS. “If we do not pass this legislation, the consequence will be that Americans fighting alongside ISIS today may come home tomorrow with a U.S. passport, may come home to New York or...

More Taxpayers Are Abandoning the U.S. Year's Tally for Expatriations Sets Record; Increase Comes Amid Tax Crackdown on Offshore Assets This year will set a record for expatriations by U.S. taxpayers, with at least a 33% increase from the previous high in 2011. The Treasury Department published the names of 560 people who either were U.S. citizens renouncing their citizenship or long-term residents who turned in their green cards during the third quarter. That brings the total so far this year to 2,369, according to Andrew Mitchel, a tax lawyer in Centerbrook, Conn., who tracks the data. For all of...

A year ago, in Action Comics, Superman declared plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship. "'Truth, justice, and the American way' - it's not enough anymore," the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran. Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and...

According to the latest Internal Revenue Service report, the number of Americans renouncing their U.S. citizenship (or terminating their long-term permanent residency) has increased nearly ninefold since 2008. In the first quarter alone, 499 Americans expatriated through the IRS, meaning they probably won’t have to pay U.S. taxes anymore, according to data that first appeared on Andrew Mitchel’s International Tax Blog. That compares with a quarterly average of 384 in 2010. And 2010 marked a significant jump from 2009 and 2008, with quarterly averages of 186 and 58, respectively. -----SNIP----- One argument is that they are leaving because of President...

Just when New Zealand seemed like the place to move, with the centre-right government, "considering cutting income tax rates," and all, and the European Union comes out with a proposal that makes it hard to chose where expatriates should go when fleeing the US. Americans used to think that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness encompassed the basis for human rights and now the European Union confuses the issue by declaring, "traveling a human right."  That's right, we can now add traveling to the list directly behind the right to universal health care. The EU is so dedicated...

Norwegian Oyvind Aamot says his first memory in life was speaking Chinese on a train in China at age 27. He didn't realize he was on a train, that he was speaking Chinese or that he was a foreigner. He didn't know what any of these things meant. He also didn't remember who he was, where he came from or anything about his identity or past. "People would point to me and call me a waiguoren (foreigner), and I'd say, 'OK, I'm a waiguoren', but I didn't know what that concept meant," Aamot says in an articulate manner, which doesn't...

Bad times at home keep English teachers here June 15, 2009 Alexis Cuperus, an American living in Korea, says she won’t be going home this year, and maybe not the next year either. Teaching English in the city of Jinju, South Gyeongsang, Cuperus had planned to head back to school and seek her teacher licensure in Texas next March. But, like many expatriates here, fear of sinking into debt without a job to help dig her out have led her to re-evaluate. “I’m definitely in the boat of many English teachers in South Korea,” she says. As North America continues...

That is why judges toss out certain cases -- because the plaintiffs weren't able to show they suffered concrete harm. That was the circumstance when an Internet-fueled rumor sparked several lawsuits seeking to bar Honolulu-born Barack Obama from the presidency because the plaintiffs doubted he was, as the Constitution requires, "a natural-born citizen." In dismissing one such suit, Judge R. Barclay Surrick, of federal district court in Philadelphia, said an aim of the standing doctrine is to prevent courts from deciding questions "where the harm is too vague." He observed that a disgruntled voter who suffered no individual harm "would...

Senator from Massachusetts, USA, John Kerry, right and on the large screen, wipes his eye while speaking during a session 'The Future of the Middle East' at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday Jan. 27, 2007. Kerry criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy during the session, saying it has caused the United States to become 'a sort of international pariah.' From left to right Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, Iraq's Vice-President Adil abd al-Mahdi, Moderator David Ignatius, and Former President of Iran Mohammad Khatami. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

LOS ANGELES Many expatriate Mexicans who supported presidential winner Felipe Calderon weren't celebrating Thursday. Instead, they worried that the refusal of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's to accept the official results could spark violent protests back home. "Calderon might have won, but the people have lost," said Roxana Escarcega, 35, a massage therapist in Los Angeles who cast an absentee ballot for Calderon. "Many won't trust the results, and that could create problems." Absentee voting was low among expatriates, who were allowed to cast ballots for the first time in a presidential election. More than 58 percent supported Calderon,...

Retired Army Col. David Hackworth, a decorated Vietnam veteran who spoke out against the war and later became a journalist and an advocate for military reform, died Wednesday in Mexico, where he was receiving treatment for bladder cancer, his wife said. He was 74. "He died in my arms yesterday morning," his wife, Eilhys England, said Thursday. Hackworth, a syndicated columnist for King Features, advocated a streamlined military and improved conditions for troops.

That was quite an extraordinary statement yesterday by incoming Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. First, he gave the lie to those wishful Americans who have suggested that Zapatero and his voters wished only to appease jihadi terrorism in Iraq while stoutly resisting jihadi terrorism everywhere else: “Fighting terrorism with bombs, with Tomahawk missiles, isn't the way to beat terrorism, but the way to generate more radicalism.” Well of course there’s nobody, least of all in the Bush administration, who thinks that bombs and Tomahawks alone are right way to fight terrorism. And indeed, if the Bush administration did...

Terrorism has won a mighty victory in Spain. The culprits who detonated those bombs of murder on 3/11 intended to use murder to alter the course of Spanish democracy – and they have succeeded. In the months since the attacks on the World Trade Center attacks, we have all heard – and ourselves often repeated – much brave talk about how terror cannot prevail, how justice must inevitably win through, etc. etc. etc. The news from Spain suggests how very wrong those hopes were. People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing,...

FEB. 29, 2004: PASSIONATA Early Thoughts on the Passion On the Other Hand On the other hand, I have to say I was very disturbed by something Gibson said in his interview with Peggy Noonan in Reader’s Digest. Gibson’s father is of course a notorious Holocaust denier and trafficker in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Noonan offered Mel Gibson an opportunity to separate himself from his father’s views. Here is Gibson’s reply: “I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in...

Maybe some of you worldly, travelled FReepers can give your nickels' worth of free advice. I am seriously thinking of expatriation. So far I have started research on New Zealand and Philippines. I speak English only, don't have too much money (enough for plane fare and a couple of months of living), am not married and do not have kids. My goal is to find a place where the nanny laws and taxes aren't as high, and the culture is less commercial and more easy-going. HELP!

Expatriates. You see them in back-street bars of Bangkok, Manila, Guadalajara, along third-world waterfronts, in up-country Thailand, anywhere living is cheap and rules scarce. Some are old guys in their sixties and seventies with fading tattoos from other lives, lives that also fade into fewer and fewer living memories. Some are in their thirties and run little businesses, often legitimate. They are a bit rough-looking or maybe just eccentric, congenitally what they are and not concerned about what you think of them. You find them heisting a brewski in out-of-the-way spots, chaffing with the barmaids who maybe or may not...

Setting the Story Straight: The Truth About Corporate Inversions BY: Grover Norquist and Damon AnsellDATE: May 15, 2003SECTION: WORD COUNT: 1066For a PDF version of this document, please click here. Several Members of Congress have recently proposed offsetting the tax cuts in the Bush Economic Growth Package with something they are referring to as "revenue raisers." Unfortunately, despite the rosy image that these Members have attempted to create, the revenue raisers are, in fact, nothing more than a list of unjustifiable and unethical tax increases. One of the intended targets of the new legislation is the practice of corporate inversion....