The word” isaacbrocksociety” appears to have been added to the profanity filter at the Expat forum. In the following, it can be seen that the word was removed, causing links to the site to become invalid:
I have no idea what the motive for this could be, but they can be contacted at:
http://www.moveforward.com/contact
*This happened late last year, also many post were purged if they mentioned or hinted at renunciation of US citizenship
Sounds rather odd for it being a UK site. Why would one in the UK care if Americans or former Americans express opinions on controversial US issues?
Ok, I found another post on the topic:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/01/12/expat-tax-forum-hijacked/
*Nothing new here – the Expat Forum will likely never allow ANY mention of the Isaac Brock Society. It is a commercial site run by some rather thin-skinned apologists for all things Obama and Democratic Party. Too many inconvenient truths were beginning to intrude upon their idyllic portrayals of expat life as an ongoing series of benign coffee klatches and recipe-sharing clubs. The final straw for us was the escalating censorship of posts and, finally, the outright banning of a number of our founding members, including one notable troublemaker who goes by the name of Petros. In a way the Expat Forum should be praised for they were the main catalyst for the formation of IBS.
1st Amendment. What happened to it?
1st amendment refers to actions by the government. Actions by individuals and businesses are not subject to it. Simple as that really.
@Swiss,
Perhaps our Expat Forum history should be part of our “About” page.
I think that the straw that broke the camel’s back was the joke about how expat forum moderators keep their nylons up by back combing their leg hairs or perhaps our usage of Canadian French. I thought it was lighthearted humor in the face of it, but as Deckard mentioned, they are the thin-skinned imperious types over there. That joke (which I put on my participant profile page visitors’ messages) forced them to take down a thread on Renunciation of US citizenship with over 4000 posts. Later, they said that renunciation was an extreme measure in their special page of rules created for expat tax discussions (emphasis BevdeForges):
But it was clear to me earlier than for the other brockers who were participating over there, that it was not a safe place to have this conversation. And they proved themselves completely unworthy by taking down several threads with thousands of posts.
@Jeff, as Dan says, the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply. They are in UK. I don’t think the Expat Forum folks have heard of the first amendment. Anyway, I did write a little about our experience at the Expat Forum:
A Censored Forum is an Oxymoron: Why the Expat Forum is not a safe place for conversation and what we can learn from our experience thereWeirdly, after the fuss died down, they started allowing much more discussion of renunciation and related issues: see this recent thread:
http://www.expatforum.com/expats/expat-tax/119595-american-expat-relief-coming-september-1st.html
also
http://www.expatforum.com/expats/google-search.php?cx=partner-pub-7147593545947707%3Aqdu48uf7joi&cof=FORID%3A10&i.e.=ISO-8859-1&q=8854&sa=&siteurl=www.expatforum.com%2Fexpats%2Fexpat-tax%2F&ref=&ss=471j120497j4
http://www.expatforum.com/expats/google-search.php?cx=partner-pub-7147593545947707%3Aqdu48uf7joi&cof=FORID%3A10&i.e.=ISO-8859-1&q=renunciation&sa=&siteurl=www.expatforum.com%2Fexpats%2Fexpat-tax%2F&ref=&ss=2848j1739794j12
http://www.expatforum.com/expats/google-search.php?cx=partner-pub-7147593545947707%3Aqdu48uf7joi&cof=FORID%3A10&i.e.=ISO-8859-1&q=renounce&sa=&siteurl=www.expatforum.com%2Fexpats%2Fexpat-tax%2F&ref=&ss=975j188297j8
Looking at their site more broadly, it seems to be directed at British expats in a few places: Spain, Italy, the Persian Gulf.
How can one avoid US taxation by renouncing US citizenship, unless of course it’s to avoid future taxation?
Found an interesting entry for the “Ex-PATRIOT Act” at Wikipedia, and mentions a Canadian theologian by the name of Peter W Dunn…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-PATRIOT_Act
@bubblebustin, The Wikipedia mention is thanks to Eric, our regular contributor here. It shows how brockers can have a influence in the new media.
Kudos to Eric. I thought it had a familiar flavour.
Well, don’t mean to be a complete party-pooper but there are still lots of posts still up that mention us. And for those of you with us since then, you will remember I was extremely unhappy that they deleted over 40% of my posts.
I take it swisspinoy tried to post the link now? I’m not surprised they would disallow it but anyone who is really looking, could easily find us from there.
Petros, even though you’ve been “banned,” a lot of your posts are still up and as feisty as ever! You must not have deleted your account; those of us who did are always listed as “guests.” Your influence lives on! ;-P
Petros –
But it was clear to me earlier than for the other brockers who were
participating over there, that it was not a safe place to have this
conversation.
One up on you. (-: Expat Forum always looked repressive to me, so I only lurked there.
Yeah well, maybe you’re right about the 1st amendment. Expat forum is just that, a forum, a club and they can have their own decorum rules, unfortunate as they might be. That’s why we exersize our 1st amendment rights here at IBS.
@Jeff, well to the extent that Canadian law permits. I don’t want to be prosecuted here in Canada. Yet I think we are achieving a certain dialogue here. But we violate the free speech of about 1000 spam messages every day.
But those spam messages mostly have nothing to do with what we are talking about? If they were published we couldn’t have any meaningful dialogue here because we’d have to sift through the stuff.