Well, I hope that our technical problems have finally come to an end. Problems Wednesday were about changing our domain registration to a new ISP (internet service provider), which required time for “prorogation”. I myself didn’t have access until Thursday morning. Then the normal Brock traffic simply overwhelmed our shared server service which was promoted by the ISP but turned out to be thoroughly inadequate for our needs. That’s when we started getting the account suspended message–and no, that wasn’t because you put some bad language in a comment. So we had to change to a new platform which is more robust and will hopefully carry us into the next year.
For those naysayers of Isaac Brock–and boy do we ever have them, I have a message. Take for example Kim Moody, who wrote:
In today’s day and age, anyone with a microphone and access to the Internet can provide their opinion, and while free and open democracies need freedom of speech in order to function, sometimes the loudest opinions are inaccurate, incomplete and, in the FATCA world, inflammatory.
Who could she mean but the Isaac Brock Society? Have we not used our free speech to say that people like Kim Moody have no business in Canada collecting taxes in our sovereign nation on behalf of the serial rights abuser called the United States of America? Is she not paid handsomely to enforce IRS compliance on innocent Canadian citizens? So isn’t that act itself inaccurate, incomplete, and inflammatory.
I have this to say to the Kim Moodys and to the Honourable Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his merry band of thugs: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” Our new platform is now sufficiently powerful to handle the traffic that you folks are going to force our way.
In the meantime, I had a number of messages from loyal Brockers. One said, “I am going through IBS withdrawal. It is worse than being an alcoholic.” Another claimed to be happy it was down because reading posts here destroys optimism. Another, who works in a psychiatric hospital, said that their emergency room was quite overwhelmed with Brockers who were beside themselves. I am so relieved that we can provide once again the only treatment that seems to work against the disease of clinging US nationality. Welcome home.
Did Kim Moody have a sex change? After the events of yesterday, nothing surprises me anymore.
Thanks goodness. I was getting worried there. Thought you know who might have been interferring with the site for some strange reason.
I felt withdrawal symptoms too!
There must be some identity confusion regarding Mr. Kim Moody, who in the original post was “Ms. Kim Moody”. Well that just proves his/her point about inaccuracy, doesn’t it?
That is a fairly annoying article. Not only due to the arrogant tone but also to the false dichotomy between positivism and normativism. Furthermore, I guarantee you if the US government decided to regulate all offshore tax preparers providing services to US persons and/or required them to be licensed, he would quickly drop his positivist approach and spend endless hours writing about bad policy.
Whew! I was worried yesterday when I saw that account suspended screen.
@Petros,
Do you think it is possible for IBS to add a proper Internet forum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum
for more complex discussions/advice etc between brockers? Digging through tons of comments to blog posts is quite tedious.
Rma
We had a forum that was maintained for about a year. It was little used compared to the blog.
@ Petros @ RMA
Yes!! I hate that when I click on recent comments I’m sent back to comments made months ago.
But if it’s between what we have now and no site at all, I’m more than happy to click through pages of comments. Glad we’re back up and running.
I was trying to get my fix by reading the Maple Sandbox site yesterday. It worked pretty well most of the time but crashed once or twice for me. I guess even the small overflow from Isaac Brock is more than most sites can handle.
I watched the hearing yesterday about the amendments which the Conservatives defeated. The amendments were supposed to protect Canadian citizens and legal residents from FATCA. The Conservatives pissed me off so much with their the Americans are their masters stance I had to walk away from my computer with disgust.
The NDP and Elizabeth May once again were strongly in our corner. They mentioned the court challenge several times. That didn’t seem to reach the Conservatives who had zero empathy for us. They cared so little for us you would think they were being held hostage by terrorists. Oh wait, they are. The terrorist is the US government.
Sometimes I think why is the US government so intent on destroying the lives of people who don’t even live in their country. Then I remind myself they are also pretty good at destroying the lives of people who DO live in their country. Examples: VA scandal, IRS scandal, Obamacare fiasco that cost some patients receiving cancer treatment to lose their insurance. They have very little empathy for them also. The US government is corrupt at it’s core. A corrupt government that is also broke is the most dangerous beast on earth.
I too am relieved to see it back up and running though was a ways optimistic that it would soon be back because I also frequent another special forum (about something unrelated) that also sometimes shows the ‘account suspended ‘ sign; however, it’s always back up after a time so was 99% optimistic that our IBS would be back up and running! Hallelujah!! 😀
While it appears that my own personal situation has finally been resolved (and with my final tax return and 8854 seemingly done pro bono so kindly by my accountant!! ), I will still not be fully out of the woods till my statutes of limitations close in 2017-2020….But having gone through such a harrowing experience, I will nonetheless always feel a deep empathy for everyone else still effected by all this. I will continue to take a deep interest and try to help when I can, even if mainly to provide emotional support. 🙂
@Kathy, if you edit the address bar you can get to the most recent comments right away without having to go through pages and pages of old comments. I think Em mentioned this awhile ago and ever since I’ve had a much easier time navigating the site.
For example when you are looking at the comments for this thread you should go to the address bar and delete the follolwing and hit enter:
comment-page-1/#comment-1888137
That way you only see the latest comments.
Monalisa: of course you are not the notorious Petros who has gone on the record for not filing FBARs. So you have little to worry about. I on the other hand should indeed wait out the statute of limitations before showing my face in the USA. About four years to go for me. Of course, I did go last summer, but that was a huge emergency.
@ omgheestillanamerican
Thanks! That should save me much future frustration (not to mention mouse clicks!).
Don’t know where to put this- but go to youtube and put in: Edward Karr on Fatca.
Elizabeth May and Mike Schreiner have a rally going tonight Friday May 30th at 700pm (doors open 6:30pm) for the Federal By Election. She has requested support for this rally located at the University of Toronto Auditorium Room 2158, Medical Science Building. 1 Kings College Circle. If you can send her a note should you be able to attend her email address is: rsvp@greenparty.ca. Harper has scheduled this Trinity-Spadina election for June 30/14 smack between June 12th Provincial Election and Canada Day so everybody will be busy and he can sneak through one of his buddies. She has been so supported of us that this would be a great way to give back.
I see everything is back working, including the archive which I was particularly worried about. Thanks for all the hard work…
Still would be nice to have an edit function on comments for 30 minutes or so to clean up typos. How hard is that to do. It is so common on other blogs, (and previously on this one) that I think it would be a nice improvement.
@Kathy
Yes, that is an annoyance, but it is simple to overcome by just looking at the web address in your browser and delete anything after the last slash that begins with comments…
For example…
If you get this response in your address bar…
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/consulate2/comment-page-25/#comment-1888030
Just delete it down to
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/consulate2/
That will take you to the last page of comments.
Not sure why this anomaly exists, but that is a work around.
@Ann,
GwEvil and I are going to the Green Party rally tonight in Toronto.
We should all try to thank Elizabeth May at the rally for her good efforts yesterday at the Finance Committee.
Just Me, I will put that into question for the revamping of the website. Our volunteer developer (a true Brock warrior) is hoping to help us to do that. But the first step was to get the site moved to a more suitable ISP that could handle our traffic.
Petros–isn’t the statute of limitations “tolled” while you’re out of the US–in other words, the statute of limitations will never run out since you haven’t gone back to the U.S.
@ brockers
thank god the site is back. I was doing my nut….. definite withdrawal symptoms. i felt bereaved from my IBS family !!!
groucho, I think only if there are outstanding charges or an arrest warrant issued. There are no warrants or charges against me that I know of.
Moody and Berg are modern day carpetbaggers — nothing more than parasites preying on Canadians with US taint.
They should be deported to Eritrea.