[We now have a NEW POST taking us up to February 1, 2015. This post will be retired from service.]
THE AUTUMN 2014 UPDATE
Dear Donors,
Together, we reached our goal of $100,000 to pay the November 1 legal bill 11 days ahead of schedule!
Thank you Canadian donors from coast to coast and our friends from around the world for your generosity, support and determination — and especially for not being afraid.
The name of our non-profit corporation is the “Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty.”
We were very deliberate in including in our name the word “sovereignty”, which forms a cornerstone of our Claims against the Government of Canada.
Canada and dozens of other countries throughout the world gave into a bully because their “leaders” were afraid of harm caused by a trading “partner” — and they gave their sovereignties away.
Help us convince by example the Leaders and Governments of all countries worldwide that they should return their sovereignties back to their Peoples.
Please continue to support our lawsuit.
“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” (Helen Keller)
— Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen, and the ADCS-ADSC team
Chers donateurs,
Ensemble, nous avons atteint notre but d’amasser 100 000 $ pour payer notre facture légale du 1er novembre 11 jours d’avance !
Un gros merci à vous, donateurs canadiens, et à nos amis de tous les coins du monde pour votre grande générosité, soutien et détermination. Et surtout pour votre courage.
Le nom de notre organisme sans but lucratif est « l’Alliance pour la défense de la souveraineté canadienne ».
Nous avons choisi délibérément le mot « souveraineté » puisqu’il constitue la base fondamentale de nos revendications envers le gouvernement du Canada.
Le Canada et des dizaines d’autres pays se sont pliés devant l’intimidation des États-Unis parce que leurs « leaders » ont eu peur des menaces de notre « partenaire » commercial. Ils ont donc vendu leur souveraineté à rabais.
Aidez-nous à convaincre les dirigeants et les gouvernements de tous ces pays qu’ils se doivent de remettre leur souveraineté à leurs peuples.
S’il vous plaît, continuez à soutenir notre cause.
« Seuls, nous pouvons faire si peu. Ensemble, nous pouvons faire beaucoup. » (Helen Keller)
— Ginny, Gwen et toute l’équipe de l’ADCS-ADSC
DONATE to www.adcs-adsc.ca (ADSC en français).
@ADCS (all), @Brockers, @BC_Doc. I need to say thank you and then explain why.
I relinquished many years ago and it was a very clear cut relinquishment but the nature of it and a couple of you know what it is, meant that I had to move on in my life and that is what I did. I had to put the US behind me.
Then the unknown event in 2010 happened. Sometime after that there was the, “will this affect me?” We know what happens from there….
First came the hypertension and I am otherwise pretty fit.
Then the panic attacks came which upped the blood pressure even more.
Then depression.
My GP did not have a clue and did not understand. The suggestion at the office was a long trip to the sunshine in the USA would do me a world of good. They really said “Go back to America for a few months.” I literally broke down in tears at that thought.
The GP did provide some help and the prescriptions helped a little. But the above created an even worse cycle of GP/white coat hypertension….
What does typical middle age and middle class do with the above? The glass of wine on the weekend became the half bottle of wine every day. Just because that is what we do…. If I was in Canada, I would have been cracking a few Labattts…
And again being typical middle class and typical middle age, was very responsible! Drank only in the evening, never ever when driving or when having to do work. My life otherwise was good and I am thankful.
Though drinking heavily but being middle age and middle class and because of my prior history, I kept eating right, weight under control and exercised every morning. Yes, I was very “responsible.”
Though I was doing other things right, I sensed my body was starting to say NO and in due course would have started a vicious state of decline. I knew the alcohol was eating away at my body and I did not care.
On 23 February 2014, I stopped the drinking.
Why? All of you helped me see some light and hope. That was the day YOU took the first step of a major fightback. That would be the day that I could do something material to help, even if was only money in an envelope. Some of you are thinking I may be downgrading the money I have sent, well I am in relation to what Stephen, Carol, Lynne, Peter and others have done and are doing.
Other than if my physical health had collapsed, I could not and do not see that I would have sought help otherwise on the drinking. But I do know the reason why I drank and it was because of FATCA and the attacks that are so similar to those used against the Jews in 1930’s Europe. And I do know why I stopped that day in February, I drank because there was no hope, I stopped drinking because there was hope.
I have no doubt that many Brockers and Friends of Brockers are doing some pretty serious drinking over this.
Drying out was not fun and it was likely exacerbated because I was drinking lots of caffeine in the morning and afternoon to combat the hangovers from the half bottle of wine the evening before! And I really cut my caffeine consumption at the time I went dry! That was not pretty……and not recommended. Seriously, the FATCA stories were still coming out which I was reading but at the same time the physical effect of alcohol and caffeine withdrawal.
I have been donating since the beginning and it has done me a world of good of which I am so thankful.
The greatest thing I/we can do is pray.
The next greatest thing are those personal efforts on the front line.
Down from that is very important and that is money.
Donating has been part of my therapy and in a couple more weeks it will have meant five months of sobriety.
I can not stress enough how valuable it is no matter where you live in the world, to support the challenge in Canada. We are ALL Canadians with maple syrup in our veins. The good people at ADCS will be grateful but the action of donating and then continuing that support will do far more good for you than you can even think of.
Oh, at first the ADCS donations were coming out of the family vacation fund for Disney (Paris) but it has worked out that the savings on bottles of wine has been covering the ADCS donations so the family vacation is back on. I actually discovered that on my excel budget sheet the other month, as the “grocery bill” had been dropping!
My health today in July? I am dry, caffeine is down, exercise regimen is solid, taking prescription for hypertension, and have a prescription for anxiety as needed. I would like to get off the hypertension medication in time but I do not think that will be possible until the day comes in Court.
Time to walk to the post office to put another envelope in the mail.
My grateful appreciation.
God bless you all.
@ George
Your comments on the distress this caused you – and the way you turned this situation around through positive action – touched me deeply. Well done! God bless you and grant you continued good health. My grandmother always said, “God helps them who help themselves.”
Lessons from history: I highly recommend: “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin” by Erik Larson (2011).
Larson recounts the career of American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, particularly the years 1933 to 1937 when he and his family lived in Berlin. In Chapter 26, Larson writes about the distress, illness and suicide among the German Jews who were stripped of their citizenship and economic rights by the rising Nazi regime. The Nazis passed laws that disenfranchised German citizens who had any remote Jewish tie of birth or ancestry. In response, many Jews fled Germany; others became ill, depressed and there was a sharp increase in suicides of German Jews in the 1930’s.
Here he describes the events leading to suicide of German Jewish journalist Were von Huhn in 1933 after she discovered her Jewish ancestry, which would bar her from working in journalism:
“ ‘Finally (von Huhn said) , I found out that my grandparents were Jewish…’ At that news her life had been abruptly, irrevocably altered. In January she would join a wholly new social stratum consisting of thousands of people stunned to learn they had Jewish relatives somewhere in their past. Automatically, no matter how thoroughly they had identified themselves as Germans, they became reclassified as non-Aryan and found themselves consigned to new and meager lives on the margins of the Aryans-only world being constructed by Hitler’s government.”
@George, thank you for sharing with us your journey through all this. It could not have been easy but, it will help many others who are struggling. I am now on anti depressants and anti anxiety meds myelf over this. I wasn’t sleeping at all. Not because I was worried I did something wrong but, because of the incredible amount of stress involved in resolving this situation for my families sake. The comments are accurate in that people are being stripped of their citizenship and of course this does not matter to home landers because to them we were second class Americans anyway so who cares what tortures we have to go through?
The largest damage from all of this has not yet been calculated when you multiply these stories over and over. I cannot imagine what you have been through and am glad that you find hope here. So do I. I still think the health problems are incalcuable and if I could I’d sue the U.S. government for boxing me into a relinquishment of my citizenship and for emotional damages too. However, why waste time with those who seek to criminalize the innocent?
This Charter Challenge is morally the right thing to do. It is a way to fight back but, not even just on our behalf. Once Canada begins to give away it’s sovereignty and violate the Charter for the sake of laws not even made here there is no reason for them not to make excuses to do it again and again. Every person around the world who believes the U.S. has no right to go about the business of making the laws of other nations should donate and help to fight this.
Further to: “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin.”
What I especially want to stress is the laws that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and economic rights in the 1930’s were LAWS.
That is to say they were not merely the twisted edicts of a madman. They were LAWS drafted carefully by bureaucrats and lawyers, debated in committees and passed into LAW by the democratically elected national assembly of a modern, sophisticated and highly literate state.
That they were duly constituted LAWS of a modern democratic state did not prevent them from having evil intent and heinous effect.
POST NOW UPDATED JUNE 10, 2014:
George, you are one of my heroes — for your bravery in recognizing and finding the way you could deal with what was happening in your life. Thanks so very much for sharing with the many of us who can see the same workings in dealing with all of this in our lives.
*No one but those of us going through this* will ever understand it was a life-changing moment when we learned about US citizenship-based taxation (for which few of us were educated, no matter what some say — as it just doesn’t make sense!) and how we are now affected by that CBT plus the hunt for US Persons Abroad via FATCA law overriding our own country’s laws to reach us.
Our whole sense of the person we believed we were changed in a split second. I think the first reaction of most of us was disbelief — we just could not believe that anything like this could happen. Thus, the term ‘my OMG moment’ — the moment we realized that the rights that we thought we had and perhaps took too much for granted were indeed empty promises.
From that moment, our reactions in how we cope have been different but similar. I see over and over again, online and offline, that compromise of our health, mental or physical, is a common thread. Some of us are stronger than others in how we are able to deal with this, because of our own make-up or because of other challenges in our lives. I think that also the length of time that our own government representatives and our own media don’t hear what we are saying and not protecting our rights as citizens and residents of where we live wears on us. We just cannot understand why that is, so obvious to us the injustice. Some cannot deal with it at all. I want someone to be accountable why ALL (and especially those persons most vulnerable) are not protected by their government through their government representatives. I want someone held accountable for why we feel so betrayed. I want such rights as we in Canada thought we had through the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to apply to all of our countries’ peoples.
I will never be able to thank you enough for the actual contributions you have and I’m sure will continue to make to ADCS-ADSC. Even more importantly, thank you for the example you set for us all that contributing to ADCS-ADSC is a powerful way to help ourselves and lessen our related-to-US CBT health issues. We all need to get back on track as best we can to be able to give full energy to our families and our societies. Our contributions as human beings cannot be defined by US CBT taxation issues that steals our self-worth as much as it does our financial privacy and right to save for our futures and what we will pass on to our children.
The contributions that we all make here are significant. They weave a powerful narrative of what is happening. My fight in this is the only way I stay sane. My fight is my own therapy. I have, until these past few years, been a very private person. I am humbled that any of my own therapy will help others. George, you will never know how much YOUR many wise words to me / to us have strengthened me and my resolve. And, how you have just strengthened anyone who read the comment I answer. It all boils down to “thank you — how much I appreciate you relating your path in this”.
ADCS-ADSC — litigation is the only real weapon we have. Thank you for all who have donated and will continue to donate until we reach our goal. Our fight in Canada is for all US Persons wherever abroad they reside.
@George
Your story give ALL of us hope. Thank you for your wonderful gift today!
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/07/09/stunning-hypocrisy-canada-threatens-closure-of-eritrean-consulate-over-diaspora-tax/comment-page-1/#comment-2207475
Read and re-read this post by Anne Frank – giving us many reasons to donate and fight FATCA as imposed inside Canada. And, for other countries with similar legal systems, consitutions and values, the same/similar arguments are worth exploring as they may also apply.
@George, I just read your post here and was very moved by it. Your story, and the stories of us all are the reason why this challenge must succeed. For me, discovering IBS, and the information and support here are the only things that got me this far. And the Challenge for me will be vindication – that a great wrong and injustice is being perpetrated by the US, and now perpetuated by the Government of Canada.
We must prevent this kind of suffering from harming all those untold others in Canada and elsewhere who are not aware of this yet, or who have had the OMG moment, but don’t know what to do or for whom there is no bearable path around or through it.
All best wishes for your wellbeing, and for your health. As I wish to all those here who despaired or are despairing.
We will and must prevail.
Take care.
@George – It was with your poignant story in mind that I composed the detailed posting that @badger provided the link to above. In hindsight, I probably should have put it in this thread to begin with (mea culpa site curators!). I would encourage you to contact the ADSC folks to see if there is anything you might be comfortable in providing to Mr. Arvay for him to consider using in his arsenal. Your story is one that I think a Canadian judge would appreciate hearing if possible (but obviously not at the cost of further angst). Nothing in my post will be a surprise to him and, to the contrary, he will certainly have gone quite a bit deeper in his analysis than my little fly-over.
This will take a while folks. I hope I have helped in a small way to give everyone reasons to be patient, confident and, of course, TO DONATE!
George: Your testimony is one of the most moving that I have read. Thank you for sharing it with us.
I have tweeted what George said as the world needs to know what the toll of the insane and criminal US policies is upon ordinary folks around the world. The damage they have wrought is immoral!
Absolutely, correct, Atticus:
Here’s a paraphrase of the aforementioned quote from Larson’s book.
His observation of the creation of “new social stratum” of 2nd class citizens is chillingly precise:
“Their lives had been abruptly, irrevocably altered. On July 1, 2014 they would join a wholly new social stratum consisting of hundreds of thousands of Canadians stunned to learn they were actually just “US tax residents abiding in Canada.”
“Automatically, no matter how thoroughly they had identified themselves as Canadians, they were now reclassified as “US persons” and found themselves consigned to new and reduced lives on the margins of Canadian society; due to US birth or ancestry or other tenuous tie, they were now 2nd class citizens in their own country.”
Can one of you on the Charter Challenge team see if my email money transfer sent early this morning is in your inbox? I just want to make sure it has gone through for you!
@George, I agree I believe a judge should hear of your suffering.
Hi Atticus,
Your kind donation has just been processed with many thanks!
Today was not a bad day.
Stephen
Thanks to everyone who has donated, large and small! Keep up the good work everyone! It’s amazing what a group of determined ‘little people’ can do when they band together for a common cause! 🙂
Imagine, Wondering, your first ever note from the US to be:
Welcome to America,
We welcome you with open statute.
– the IRS
@George, thank you so much for sharing your very personal struggle with us. That was not an easy thing to share. We’ll never know how many people you’ve helped by sharing your story. Based on the page views for this website I think we have a very large number of lurkers who read but never post.
I’ve been sober for 20 years and this is the first time I’ve seriously contemplated falling off the wagon. Fortunately and with the help of my psychiatrist I have remained sober. Thank God for Canada’s healthcare system.
When you said you were drinking half a bottle of wine a day I thought “Ha amateur!” Back when I was a drinker I could easily drink 2 bottles of wine at night and go to work the next day. I was what they call a functioning alcoholic. I’m holding on tight to the sides of that wagon!
@Wondering:
There are a number of parallels between what is happening under FATCA to Americans abroad and what happened to Jews in the Third Reich, e.g.,:
1) Suicide: “There were so many suicides that Goering said that he didn’t have enough policemen to stand behind every Jew who wanted to commit suicide. The fear of arrest and worse was so overpowering.” (a).
2) Divorces and separation of assets: Similar to what has been reported on “mixed marriage” couples of an American and a non-American living outside the US, many mixed couples in Nazi Germany divorced or transferred assets to the non-Jewish spouse in an attempt to hold on to their assets. If the non-Jewish spouse did not divorce the Jewish spouse, the non-Jewish spouse was treated as a Jew with assets subject to confiscation (b).
3) Identification of Jews: Many Jews identified under the Nazi racial laws as Jews did not consider themselves Jews. Many had assimilated, were non-religious or had even converted to Christianity over the past century. The number of people considered as Jews under the Nazi racial laws was far higher than was expected (b). There are many people outside the US who do not consider themselves to be Americans but who are classified as such under US citizenship laws.
(a) “Erinnerungen eines Mathematikers”, Rudin
(b) “Unser Wien”, Walzer, Templ
I wish there was a list of therapists, psychaitrists and other helpers in the side bar. Trying to find someone empathetic to these issues is no easy task. My family doctor was useless and simply said “uh huh” and moved on to the next topic. I think given the magnitude of these problems and with everyone’s life being turned completely upside down and the age of a lot of us *Pre exisiting health issues aggravated* it would be good if some reliable helpers would come forward. Maybe you will laugh at that idea but, I’ve not spoken to one person yet who has not told me that their health was affected. Every single person has brought this up. Some of the stories I’ve heard such as the one George so bravely shared above are heart wrenching. This group is excellent support but, it’s not a substitute for real professional help to cope. Just a thought.
I do say though that donating does seem to help take your power back. At least it is doing something and not feeling totally helpless while you are run over by the FATCA train. Thanks for the confirmation, Stephen! I really appreciate that. I wish it were in the thousands but, I suppose every little bit helps.
@Innocente
After reading Larson’s acclaimed “In the Garden of the Beasts” history, I’ve been exploring those parallels as well. My partner’s ancestors were German Jews who left in advance of the Holocaust, migrating first to Ireland than to Canada. Their branch of the family survived; the rest remained in Germany and perished.
I learned that after the 1935 Nuremberg laws that stripped Jews of German citizenship, a valued document was a “certificate of non-Jewish nationality” obtained through a bureaucratic “reclassification procedure” to “certify” non-Jewishness – according to the pseudo-scientific and racist “bloodlines” criteria that the the Nuremberg laws used to define who was Jewish.
Essentially, this was a certificate of non-Jewish nationality or “Deutschblütigkeitserklärung”(German Blood Certificate).
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/nurlaws.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischling#Reclassification_procedure
@AtticusinCanada, these days it’s really hard to get a referral to a psychiatrist who will accept you as a patient. You pretty much have to be jumping off a bridge or taking an overdose of something for that to happen. Even if you are lucky enough to be assigned to a psychiatrist they can only see you about once every 3 to 4 months, rationing being what it is. But still I find it very helpful that I am able to see him and he “gets” me. The low dose of anti anxiety meds plus the antidepressant he has me on is keeping me off the ledge.
I had a previous long term relationship with a psychiatrist who works out of a hospital in a major city. When I started telling my family doctor how anxious I was she prescribed anti anxiety meds but wasn’t willing to do it on an ongoing basis. She did suggest however that it would be great if my old psychiatrist would agree to start seeing me again. So I got a referral from her and phoned the psychiatrist’s office a couple of times asking politely if the doctor would agree to take me back as a patient. Fortunately he remembered who I was from when I used to see him 20 years ago and said yes. I’ve been seeing him for several years now.
@Omghestillamerican, Oh you certainly don’t have to tell me. When my started having problems with OCD and severe panic disorder we sat on a wait list for NINE months before he could get any help. This was a kid who was so severe he missed 150 something days of the eleventh grade. When we did finally get our appointment the woman was the meanest human I have ever encountered. So though we tried we could not work with her. First words out of her mouth upon first appt.? “Not everyone can work with me, I’m very blunt!” not “hello”, nothing. It went down hill from there. So we know that even in severe cases getting in and getting proper help is just a race with time. This is one of my other crusades. No family or person should have to suffer in that manner for that long at such a high risk. If it were a physical ailment that severe it would be unthinkable to be treated that way. We were lucky in that our son eventually did improve and get some help, mostly medications though. Some aren’t so lucky and lose their fight. It’s disgraceful.
I still do think this battle is dangerous physically, emotionally and mentally. Out reach for those who come here and don’t want to discuss as openly as say George was so bravely able to do would be wonderful.
Sorry, for the derailment. DONATE what you can if at all possible!
I made a second contribution this afternoon. Let’s go for it!