After waiting for 3 long years, a story about FATCA was finally heard on some NPR stations around the Nation. This was created by PRI (Public Radio International). They have a daily radio show which they do in conjunction with the BBC, and it comes out of WGBH in Boston. It is appropriately called, The World. You can listen to the story here: What FATCA Did to American Bank Customers in Switzerland Coming on the heels of the CBC interview on Canada Day, it is good these stories are finally being heard by a wider audience.
More good media news
Thanks to ACA member, Dorothy, who brought Expats Radio to ACA’s attention, ACA now have relationship with them. The first ACA interview is NOW on their website. This will be the first of many and they will be working with them to help ACA reach a wider audience. You can listen to an interview with MaryLouise Serrato here.
Expats Radio informs ACA they have over 250,0000 visitors each month, plus they have a catalogue sharing agreement with NPR radio. This means ACA will be available to be heard on NPR and hopefully reach a deeper audience in the US.
That WGBH picked this up is great (they are one of the major NPR stations). What is not good is that the story doesn’t mention that people with Swiss nationality are also having problems, in Switzerland and the US. (Back to the Amy Webster story).
But this is a start.
By the way, I just posted a comment to the NPR site referencing the Amy Webster story with links to the GenevaLunch and IBS stories on her. The post has not appeared yet, I don’t know what the moderation policies are at NPR.
I hope all Brockers who have time would post their comments on that article.
@Jefferson
“Wänns d’unda schifft und oba seicht, s’isch guat s’wallser
wasser!” Sorry everybody,
just a Swiss joke about the weather we are having right now. Any way, I just
noticed something interesting on theworld site. My main browser is FireFox and
I have an add-on called “Ghostery” that blocks data mining tools from
gathering my information. When I’m on theworld site mentioned above and I have
Ghostery activated I can see certain comments than have either been blocked or
are still in moderation, they are somehow written over and therefore can’t be
read. The other thing I noticed is if I use the internet explorer I see
different comments, weird!!!!
@Tell 1. I like your avatar image. 2. In French, we call this weather we are having “Temps de chiotte”. (Weather [as if living inside] of toilet).
Anyway, back to the issue at hand, would anyone be willing to propose a radio interview with NPR? I have to stay ostrich for the moment, but there must be someone at IBS who has already gone public who would be willing? Petros?
@zuludogm My comments on the NPR site are not appearing even though your comment shows it was posted only an hour ago? Do they have moderators? How soon did your comment appear?
@UncleTell
That’s interesting. I use Google Chrome, but I have seen similar issues before between Roger and I. He tells me to look at comments, and I don’t see them, or visa versa. I think he is using explorer.
@Jefferson D. Tomas
My comment posted immediately and didn’t seem to go to moderation, although now when I look now, it is not there. Hmmm.
It says there are 4 comments but only 2 show up. One by Longshortman and one by zuludogm. I had some links in mine, and maybe they block it later after original posting. If it doesn’t show up by morning, I will repost without the links.
The story was a bit weak, but it was a start, and after all the messages I have written and emailed the last few years, with no success, it is nice to see anything finally hit the airwaves. BTW, I tweeted the reporter to thank him, and he must have liked it, as he immediately retweeted it. Like to give them kudos when I can even if I am not 100% satisfied.
@Jefferson
Like I said, if you are using FireFox then install the Ghostery addon and unblock the “Disqus” data mining tool.
@Just Me Can you tweet that reporter and ask him why our posts are not appearing? I tried to post one as a reply to zuludogm’s post (with no links) but that one didn’t show up either.
I would hope that after giving our issues some light, NPR would not try to censor prolific IBS writers.
This is what the site looks like with FireFox and Ghostery.
.
.
.
Sorry folks, i’m having problems inserting my print screen 🙁
@Just Me
I see your comment when I use FireFox, but not when I use MSIE 🙄
@Jefferson D. Tomas
I was about to shut down for the night when I saw your message. The reporter will not have anything to do with the PRI web site, but I will tweet him to alert him and see what happens. I will check in the morning, and hopefully they will show up by then. They obviously have some moderation in place, but there was nothing inflammatory in mine, so who knows why it is not showing. I kept a copy of what I posted, and will try again in the am. Good night…
@Just Me Well, in mine I stated that the banks were treasonous by not applying Swiss legal and constitutional principles overruling FATCA. Maybe that was too inflamatory.
@UncleTell
Well, I opened up Firefox, and I still don’t see mine. I wished I understood this mystery. It recognizes my avatar in Disquis where I liked the article, but still can not see my comment. I have tried the various sorts, but to no avail. Oh well, I am getting groggy, so maybe this will be clearer in the morning. 🙂
Here was the twitter response..
Tony Ganzer @tony_ganzer
@FATCA_Fallout not sure. Maybe the webmaster needs to manually publish? Not sure though!
To which I said…
@tony_ganzer It must be a browser thing. Someone else sees it on Firefox but I do not, or on Google Chrome. A mystery! 🙂 Thnx for reply
@just me out of curiosity, do you see my post at NPR now?
@Jefferson
Mine showed up as soon as I verified my Disqus identity. That took about 10 mins. I just checked and your’s is not there still. You may need to repost under a different identifier (e.g. facebook, disqus, etc.). When you post, it will ask you to log-in to one of those identifiers.
*I saw comments overwritten by jibberish text. Now I see only 2 comments
@ Jefferson D. Tomas: I happen to agree that a case could be made that the Swiss are allowing violation of their criminal law by permitting discrimination against US Persons. As you may know, Swiss criminal law, Article 261bis, does not permit discrimination by businesses offering goods and services to the general public based on ethnicity, race or religion. There have been a number of cases where restaurants and other establishments have been investigated and prosecuted for refusing to serve or refusing to allow entry to Albanians, Arabs, people from ex-Yugoslavia, etc. I do not see a difference between such cases and banks refusing or essentially refusing service to US Persons.
For the record, ethnicity is a broad term which can include nationality as well as language, culture and religion. In cases cited above, the Swiss have interpreted ethnicity to mean nationality.
I recall that the Swiss have allowed auto insurance pricing based on nationality. On the other hand, I am not aware that the auto insurance companies have refused insurance based on nationality.
This is a pertinent topic for me – as of last Friday, I am being tossed out of my bank. It looks like I will be opening a current account at Postfinance, which is by law still required to take anyone living in CH. In March I read that the Postfinance applied to have its charter changed to allow specific groups to be excluded, e.g., US Persons, but have not heard anything about this requested charter change since then.
I only see the same two comments in Chrome, Firefox & Explorer, but alsosee a mention up top that there are supposed to be four.
*http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/letters/story/2012-07-02/july-fourth-freedom/55988840/1
USe the link to see what letters to USA today about what Freedom is to them in USA. I didn’t find the way to send my comments, so I sent them to letters@usatoday.com
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/How-to-send-letters-to-USA-TODAY.htm
@Innocente
This is supposed to be illegal under wider European law as well, but as others have mentioned I don’t think that the Swiss, EU or any other government is going to lift a single finger to do what is necessary – They’re all terrified of the US, and I imagine that the Swiss government is particularly intimidated at this point. The best that we can do now is to look out for ourselves and not wait for the system to change or for someone to stand up to it.
Also, I have seen several mentions that Postfinance has indeed altered its charter, but I can’t produce any substantial proof of this. It might just be information that was leaked and has been floating around, but it doesn’t look good. This is coming from someone who was dropped from a bank in Germany, so believe me I know how it feels 🙁
@Don Pomodoro
Why is the EU so terrified of the US while Jim Flaherty isn’t? Do they desperately want a bailout from the US to get them out of their Greek problems. Is it that basically all of the EU banks are dead flat insolvent and need a US Dollar bailout.
@Tim
I don’t really know. I don’t think that anyone here is seriously expecting the US to bail out Europe at all, so something else must be going on.
Pandering to the US is definitely not pervasive in all areas though, I mean I literally just heard that the European Parliament officially denounced ACTA and it won’t be valid in the EU. Yet they all seem to be jumping over themselves here to please the US when it comes to FATCA and bank info sharing. Could it maybe really be that EU countries want to see who is hiding money in Delaware and Florida. Who knows.
All I know is that the way that the rights of legal residents and citizens of the EU are being completely ignored currently is one of the first times that I have truly been completely ashamed and dissappointed of what the governments here are doing. I don”t see any relief from either the EU or US, which is why I think that everyone in the EU and CH will be faced with the choice in the following years to renounce or move to the US. I don’t see how anyone could survive here otherwise and I just hope that it never gets this bad in Canada and in other countries…
I get the sense the EU is also being very secretive about this I heard that FATCA was the subject of much of a two day council of Ministers meeting in Brussels but everything was hush hush.
@Jefferson
Well, it is morning here, and I still don’t see the comment. Maybe I will sign in using a different ID and post again. There is still just 2 showing, and neither are yours or mine, but maybe they don’t have a web master on the 4th of July to fix things.
@Just Me
Wow – I just realised that I had no idea that it was the “4th of July”, in that I mean I knew that it was “4 July” but that this date didn’t strike me as of any particular importance when I woke up and went to work today. Definitely haven’t lived in the US for a long time it would seem 🙂
Also, there is probably just some technical problem at the site or no moderators are present. I imagine that as long as you aren’t trying to sell Nike knockoffs or dodgy pills that your post will be allowed through considering the two that are already visible!