Author Archives: Petros

In a February 6, 2015 TedTalk, Sharyl Attkisson explains what astroturfing is and how it affects information on the internet:

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

Attkisson a few days earlier testified about how the Obama uses astroturfing and other intimidation methods to stifle freedom of the press and to suppress information:

Sharyl Attkisson: If You Cross Obama Admin They Will Treat You Like “Enemies Of The State”

As victims of propaganda and media of control, we should understand the obstacles that we face when trying to spread our message.

Corruption American Style:

Bill Clinton scored paid speeches while Hillary made official State Dept. visits

Kent Cooper, a former federal election regulator and respected political ethics analyst, said the blurred lines between State and the foundation in the Clinton world validated the axiom that “there are many pockets in a politician’s coat to line.”

“There are the official pockets, the political pockets, in this case the foundation’s pockets and then their own private pocketbooks, and you can see how special interests subtly work all of them with invitations, pressure and money to try to get what they want,” he said.

“There seem to have been no ethical boundaries or double checks on conflicts of interest between the activities of the secretary of state as a government official, the fundraising of a private foundation, the fees of a private consultant, and the personal income of a former government official, that being the former president.”

It is axiomatic that if government is run by criminals then law enforcement hunts down innocent people to make it look like they are doing something. Government officials cannot go after real criminals or they would have to put themselves in jail first.

I’ve noticed that some of the people on Facebook really like Bernie Sanders. But let’s make one thing clear: this senator is a demagogue:

“a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary., Eleventh ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2003).

I have myself given up US citizenship. I know lots of people personally who have given up US citizenship. I do not know a single billionaire. I am not a billionaire. I did not leave the United States to avoid paying taxes. For crying out loud, I live in Canada where taxes are much higher than they are in the United States. This man has vilified me and others like me who have become targets of the Obama administration of exorbitant fines, destroying our rights of due process and presumption of innocence.

LM has posed the following query to readers. It is another true life scenario in which the Canadian government and Canadian banks have put certain Canadian citizens at risk by promising to expose them to the US Federal government.

OK Brocker folks, I have a situation and need support /answers / information.

I invest with a Canadian FFI (for example, RBC-Dominion) and just got a W-8BEN from them that “has to be” filled out and signed; otherwise, they will no longer allow me to trade/invest with them. I spoke with my investment counselors associate (who knows my situation totally and has discussed much about FATCA with me) and told her I found it outrageous that I should be required to sign a US IRS form to say to my Cdn investment firm that I am not a US citizen. They (the FFI) got this exact same information from me back in 2013 via a “Substitute W-8BEN” when I transferred all my accounts there and I would be happy to sign an additional “Substitute W-8BEN” from them now. I’d even be willing to provide a copy of my CLN.
My recollection is that the IGA includes wording that allows Canadian FFIs to use their own equivalent of a W-8BEN (in this case, the “Substitute W-8BEN” with a page heading of XYZ Wealth Mgmt, ABCD Securities”) rather than the actual US form (which has, at the top “Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service”, so that any signature is “under penalty of perjury” to the US).

I don’t intend to perjure myself or in any way lie, but is it required, under Cdn law now, that I must sign a US legal document to prove that I am not a US citizen to my Canadian financial institution? I would hate to lose my investment advisor of many years but this has really angered me and I’m sure I am not the only one who will be getting this document to sign now that the FFIs are beginning to look more thoroughly at “established” accounts.

Any advice / information / links to the part of the IGA stating that FFIs are not required to use the US form / etc would be very greatly appreciated.

Someone sent me this letter and asked me to post it. It is a timely reminder that the current government is not doing all that it can do to avoid the extraordinary rendition of the financial information of Canadian citizens to the IRS.

2015-09-21 Letter – Cullen to CRA-Fin re FATCA

As a child I heard my dad use this expression , “Everyone and his brother”–to say that a large amount of people will be at a certain store at a certain hour, so we were going to go at a different time.

I had to relinquish my US citizenship in 2011. I have told my sisters. One of my sisters is politically active. Neither give a rat’s tush about what has happened to me. Both are democrats. My brother doesn’t give a damn about politics and doesn’t vote. He gives less than a rodent’s hiney about my problems since he not infrequently has his own concerns with the IRS, as do all Homelanders.

Can we be surprised that the Senate Finance committee downplayed the 347 submissions regarding FATCA, most of which came from “US citizens” abroad? If we cannot get our brothers and our sisters to write to their representatives, Congress will dismiss our pleas out of hand. But how do we mobilize the members of our own family. My own experience, and what I’ve heard from others, is that our families care a little about our situation than Barack Obama cares for his own brother living in Kenyan poverty. So how do we mobilize people who think we are crazy or have their own problems and no time to put into lobbying their government on our behalf. I believe it can’t be done–but perhaps others have more empathetic brothers and sisters. I certainly don’t have siblings who empathize with my situation;  apparently, neither does George Obama.

Barack Obama’s ‘half-brother discovered in Kenya, living on a dollar a month’

Juggernaut: “any terrible force, esp one that destroys or that demands complete self-sacrifice ” (dictionary.com)

Three years ago I came to the conclusion that it was irrational to believe that the USA was going to change for the better on expat issues. Roger Conklin had recounted that a congressman lost re-election on account of his support for expat issues, and that made me realize that the no one could turn the USA from its present course. It was a juggernaut, and it is best just to get out of the way. A few weeks ago I started using the term “juggernaut” to depict the USA. Then this evening, I looked up the derivation of the term, from an idolatrous practice in India (s.v., juggernaut):

a crude idol of Krishna worshipped at Puri and throughout Odisha (formerly Orissa) and Bengal. At an annual festival the idol is wheeled through the town on a gigantic chariot and devotees are supposed to have formerly thrown themselves under the wheels

When patriotism becomes idolatry it is nearly impossible to change the course of a nation. Criticism becomes disloyalty. My critiques are “America-bashing“. But it seems to me that true loyalty too often requires throwing oneself under the chariot. Many times has these United States required its citizens to do this very thing: the Civil War, Viet Nam War, and now FATCA–to name just a few examples.

Well, if you don’t like the juggernaut metaphor to describe the United States, today Zero Hedge has recently repeated an article by John Chuckman, America as Dangerous Flailing Beast, but even Chuckman cannot help but see the religious devotion in America’s collective sociopathy:

Continue reading →

The secret to grass-roots movements is legitimating people’s anger and pain and steering them into serious plans of action which will have a realistic chance of success.

In my post about my recent ousting from the American Expatriates Facebook Group (henceforth “AE”), I tried to be factual, rational and cerebral. I intentionally avoided incendiary or foul language; rather I tried to simply recount what happened at AE, without undue emotion. In a later post, one of the contributors at AE posted that my post was “not so nice“:

This group is a valuable resource for many and I greatly appreciate all those who work hard for all of us. However, it does not excuse the nastiness which occurred yesterday. If I played a part in the nastiness, I offer my apologies. The only excuse I have is that I was at the end of my rope with certain individuals. One of the individuals has posted a not so nice piece on the Isaac Brock Society site about this group and Keith Redmond. For me, it shows the true colors of this person and this person will do anything to ram their way of doing things down everyone’s throat. So please make sure that we can have a level of decorum which can make this group the best that it can be.

Here are some other characterizations from various commenters:

1. “I missed the discussion but I totally support you, Keith Redmond. Mr. Petros is free to start his own group for whiners and America bashers.”
2. “The departed whiners went way beyond US bashing. To say more about my opinion would enter into subjective judgments regarding personalty traits and would not be productive.”
3. The blog poster [Petros] has the right to say what he likes, but I think he’s crossed a line using the names of the admin in his post Keith. You don’t start randomly posting hate blogs using people’s names unless you can back up what your saying, even then it’s just best to stop and think before you post. The Internet is written in ink not in pencil what is said can’t be removed. Best to really think before you post, after all this group isn’t secret or closed the whole world can see it!!!!

A hate blog? Really? I do express my disagreement with the policy of deleting comments and entire discussions. But I did not express hatred for these people. Well I do admit that the term “Homelander Abroad” is pejorative, particularly in the manner that I used it. I’ve been asking myself if this characterization is merely inflammatory. What made me think it was an appropriate to call AE administrators “Homelanders Abroad”.

So today I’d like to set out my reflexions on what characterizes Homelanders Abroad. Here is what I came up with: Continue reading →

Shadow Raider makes some thoughtful and thought-provoking comments on my post and the ensuing conversation:

I’d like to make some constructive criticism for all sides:

1. Many commenters on this website seem to assume that US residents are patriotic “homelanders” who support CBT. I live in the US and I can tell you that this is not true. The vast majority of Americans don’t even know that CBT exists. When I inform them, I get various responses: some say that the US should not tax foreign income or demand information on foreign assets because it’s none of their business; many sympathize with the problems of Americans abroad (complex paperwork, fear of penalties, financial restrictions); some try to justify CBT with consular services or the right of return, but when I reply that these things are not funded by taxes (or don’t actually cost anything, in the case of the right of return), they concede; only a few invoke patriotism, but as a joke.

2. Many here also seem to believe that “homelanders” see Americans abroad as “tax cheats”. I don’t know where you got this idea. I’ve only seen this as a brief mention by a US politician from the 19th century, and I don’t think anyone else believes that. I’ve certainly never heard anyone say that here. US residents correctly assume that people move abroad for various reasons. Many of them have family or friends who lived or are living abroad.

3. Condemning US patriotism while praising Canada is inconsistent and alienates those who are not from Canada. CBT applies equally to all countries outside the US, and the Canadian government has done the same as the rest of the world regarding FATCA, it’s not a special case. I’ve also seen some commenters focus too much on issues in specific countries such as the various 4-letter Canadian accounts or Australian superannuation. People outside these countries have absolutely no idea what these things are. The problem is CBT in principle, not the details of how it affects specific investments.

4. Some people, like Republicans Overseas, are focusing way too much on FATCA. Blocking or repealing FATCA is very unlikely, and even in that case it would not solve the myriad other problems caused by CBT.

5. Expatriate lobbying groups seem to be ridiculously afraid that the US government will not pay attention to their demands if it looks like they don’t love the US. Seriously? Michael Kirsch cleverly pointed out the inconsistency of identifying yourself as part of US society while requesting to be taxed as someone from outside that society. It would make much more sense if they just stated the truth: they are actually more attached to the countries where they live, but want to keep US citizenship simply for the peace of mind that they could return to the US one day. Maybe the CBT debate should be centered on whether the right of return constitutes membership in the society or merely the eligibility for membership.

I had a couple of my posts taken down by Keith Redmond at the American Expatriates Facebook Group.

The first made use of Lebron James comment, ‘I’m the best player in the world’.

I wrote, “Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the best basketball player of them all?” Keith Redmond, the co-administrator of the Facebook group asked me what relevance it had to the group and I said it is analogous to American exceptionalism, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the most exceptional of them all?” It is really about the National Narcissistic Personality Disorder from which Americans suffer as a nation. It leads to the USA unilaterally imposing FATCA on the rest of the world as so beautifully captured in this video, which is still the best explanation of FATCA ever:

The second censored post reported on the State Department’s denunciation of Dominican Republic citing the United Nations human rights provisions. I said the USA was hypocritical because it violates the human rights of its own expats. 

Then as Deedee Gierow, the Democrats Abroad co-administrator of the American Expatriates Facebook group, posted that she was sick and tired of all the bashing of the USA and that she, Keith and others were working very hard to lobby Washington (Facebook link). This solicited a discussion in which Redmond and Gierow heroically defended the purpose of the group and that they would henceforth delete any America-bashing content.

The American Expatriates group’s mission is to inform, educate, and provide the most up to date information regarding United States government policies affecting the lives of Americans living overseas. It is extremely important to mitigate the misconceptions about Americans living outside the United States vis-à-vis the public at large

It remains unclear to me how it is possible to have a group which discusses Citizenship Based Taxation and FATCA  from an expat’s perspective without being anti-American. This is the conundrum–either the content is irrelevant (e.g., cookie recipes) or it is anti-American–e.g., discussions of the lives that are being ruined by FATCA and CBT. How do you stand by and allow innocent people to be destroyed by a foreign government and say positive things about that government?

There was some back and forth between myself and some of the other active members of the group, in which I learned that I am argumentative and offensive. Really? That really surprised me.

My third censored post was a comment: if we can’t really complain about how the USA is treating us, then we are supposed to be like a battered spouse, who quietly accepts abuse, and so I posted a link to the following page and suggested the situation was comparable to spousal abuse: Intimate Partner Violence Dynamics.

It seemed like Expat Forum deja vu, when I concluded that a censored forum is an oxymoron. So later when I suggested that some people would indeed leave the group because it wasn’t a safe place anymore, Redmond told me to leave. So I suppose my days are numbered.

I guess that is all I can write for now. My knee is bothering me and it is hard to stand up at my desk. In any case, it is good that some people are trying to lobby the US government, but I have no faith that that will change anything. So perhaps my cynicism and pessimism is not welcome in best of all worlds–but certainly not on certain “forums”. Cheers to you all.