Category Archives: Issues regarding US persons abroad

There has been a lot of dissatisfaction expressed in recent months, on the site and in e-mails to the moderators, regarding irrelevant/off-topic comments. It’s also important that Brock provides a place for people to express their thoughts.  To strike a balance, we have installed a “move comment” function, with which we can move a comment to a different thread.

This should help keep things more focused while, at the same time, the person’s comment still appears on the site and discussion can ensue without overwhelming the original, unrelated, thread.

Moving a comment from one thread to another keeps both threads more useful to persons seeking help or information or simply having a coherent discussion on a topic.

We do not intend to eliminate thread drift from the site, just to keep certain threads focused, such as a post that deals with a project or a post focused on a specific type of information but someone posts a comment way off-topic; say, consulate problems on the FATCA thread.

Many topics overlap a lot, so don’t expect perfection — and every one of us undoubtedly has a different sense of just where “on-topic” ends and “off-topic” begins (can’t please everyone all of the time), so you may still see some comments you feel are out of place but to a lesser degree.

Thread drift is inevitable on a site that values sharing of ideas and opinions.  It can be pesky and annoying, but sometimes it’s a good thing which expands discussion; and exchanging thoughts is important part of the Brock community.  We don’t want to quench that!  But this should keep parts of the site on target.

Swedish media, in a 5 day prime-time series, and the Swedish population explodes when finding out that their Swedish company operating in Europe did not respond to U.S. local law enforcement inquiries. Article from:

- https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/american-financial-authority-investigates-swedbank-in-money-laundering-case

- https://www.svt.se/special/swedbank/english/investigators/

“The New York State Department of Financial Services has initiated an investigation into Swedbank, according to a document presented to Swedish Television, SVT. The suspicions relate to misleading information in connection with the DFS demanding an answer from Swedbank about the notorious law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The New York authorities delivered the “request” to the New York local branch, and asked for a global answer.

The Swedish public is aghast that the Swedish bank operating in Europe would not have provided full criminal evidence to the U.S. legal agency.

The whole affair is related to the now-closed Mueller investigation, previously-prosecuted Manafort FBAR conviction, and the long-ago Soros/US-Aid funded Panama Papers affair.

It seems that the bank was “caught” handling Manafort-related bank transfers…….this despite the fact that Manafort was not convicted of money laundering–He got caught with FBAR violations, bank fraud, and tax cheating.

It also alleges that payments were sent by Swedbank to companies (including Manafort’s in the Caribbean.  Never mind that many Swedish companies’ parent and daughter companies and ships are also registered there, and that global transactions go back and forth all the time. In these stories, the bank transfers are summarized as “money laundering” although there is no crime to launder.

So, when a U.S. legal agency “requests” information about any European transactions of anybody including any American, the Swedish media, authorities, bank officers, and public will all spank themselves if they don’t hand it over.

So much for those European constitutions and all that innocent-til-proven guilty stuff they’ve got written in there. Sweden had once held a spark of FATCA resistance, reversed itself, til it finally celebrated its FATCA surrender. Crying is now long over.

As a result of it all, Swedbank stock tanked (did Soros short Swedbank stocks too?) and depositors are jittery.

The Obama administration & the DopeState had orchestrated a gigantic expat-bashing propaganda campaign to smear expat US citizens, leading up-to the intro of FATCA and continuing through its rollout.

ICIJ, the Soros/USAid “Offshore” propaganda outlet, is itself a spiderweb of offshore shell corporations and shady offshore financing.

The oldstock Brockers remember the large doses of offshore propaganda brought in by the DopeState partnership of government figures, media outlets, and the Financial Industrial Complex….when expats were daily barraged by FATCAT articles about Offshore Offshore Offshore. (rather than today’s Russia Russia Russia propaganda campaign).

Many remember the related hit articles on the revelations of Swiss bank accounts of rich Americans such as Tina Turner (resident and eventual citizen of Switzerland) due to Panama papers and ICIJ(International Consortium of Investigative Journalists).

Well, it turns out that the hypocrites of ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) was funded by a spiderweb of Offshore-Shell –Company DopeState actors (including USAid in critical years, but its current donors are listed below). The article below highlights it.

from the article:

“it’s curious that ICIJ’s Pulitzer-winning series featured Putin so many times given that Putin didn’t even have an offshore account with Mossack Fonseca. It’s also curious that so few Americans were exposed by ICIJ.

It’s even more curious that ICIJ didn’t report much on Browder, the former American turned Irish citizen, apparently for tax purposes, who has used plenty of offshore accounts to lighten his fiscal load. Browder — who was recently exposed in this story by 100Reporters — was for Putin, when he was raking in vast profits from his Moscow-based Hermitage Capital Management holding company, before he was against him, when he was accused by Putin of tax fraud. (Putin is a tyrant but he is, incidentally, right to be suspicious of journalists and NGOs, which he rightly views as agents of regime change.)

Browder is just one of many ICIJ donors to utilize offshore vehicles. In fact, according to 100Reporters, (Browder’s) Hermitage Capital Management “was built on corporate registrations authored by the Mossack Fonseca law firm.” “

…. Oh yeah, did I mention that Browder is suspected of (USAid) funding the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a partner of ICIJ? And that the much-praised OCCRP has written extensively about Browder, in the most fawning terms imaginable, without disclosing that suspected funding? “

The Oldstock Brockers had also harbored hopes that Glenn Greenwald might have fought for the rights of expats, but the article shows that his DopeState connections well show that he is an establishment lackey

Read about it in this article

https://washingtonbabylon.com/14472-2/

All Rights Reserved

All Respect Deserved

On February 28 2019 John Richardson published a post in TaxConnections entitled: “The USA Of The 21st Century Is Like Britain In The 19th Century”.

Yesterday (March 13), he published a NEW post entitled: “The United States Imposes A Separate And Much More Punitive Tax On U.S. Citizens Who Are Residents Of Other Countries”

You can read and contribute to the new post on this link.

We’ll be getting together for lunch Saturday, 9 February, at 1:00 pm at Montana’s BBQ Restaurant, 1750 Ogilvie Road.  Plenty of free parking on site, also accessible by city bus.

We’re currently expecting 9 people — hope you can come, too!   Please rsvp by posting a comment here or e-mail me at pacifica at isaacbrocksociety dot ca

[The critical Section 1 of Canada's Charter of Rights is mentioned below: Canada says in a lawsuit submission for our January 28 FATCA trial in Federal Court, that if compliance with the U.S. FATCA law is "found to limit any Charter right, any such limitation can be justified under s.1 of the Charter" [and that] In order to be justified the Impugned Provisions must have a pressing and substantial objective” …”.

— Canada argues that avoidance of economic “catastrophic effects” that will be inflicted on Canada if she does not comply with the U.S. FATCA demand is a “pressing and substantial objective”.

— But Plaintiffs point out in their submission that: “Kevin Shoom, Canada’s witness who participated in the negotiations with the United States that ultimately resulted in the IGA, agreed [in cross examination] that any consideration of what would transpire if any part of the Impugned Provisions were declared of no force or effect would be highly speculative. He agreed that it would depend on “a whole lot of considerations,” that Canada would negotiate with the United States to achieve the best possible outcome, and that “we don’t know how the US would respond.””.

More generally, Plaintiffs say: “Canada effectively maintains that it enacted the Impugned Provisions under duress from a foreign state. The Court should be very slow to accept this as a justification for infringements of the Charter. Canada is expected to defend the constitutional rights and freedoms of its citizens and not bargain them away or capitulate to threats from a foreign bully state.” and, what “if another state’s laws required a person residing in Canada to report to that state obviously private, personal details about their lives – such as their religious practices…”?

[See: http://www.adcs-adsc.ca/CourtSubmissions.html ]

Canada is a Westminster Parliamentary democracy. Historically it has had a constitution (British North America Act) which defined how Canada was to be governed. In simple terms: the Federal Government has the jurisdiction to legislate in some areas (example criminal law). The Provincial Governments have the right to legislate in other areas (property and civil rights). These laws are made by democratically elected legislatures. Prior to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (April 17, 1982), the only limits on the legislative bodies were jurisdictional. Any law could be enacted. It was just a question of whether it was the Federal Government or the Provincial Government that could enact the law.
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Before Obama FATCA and before FBAR, there was Caesar Augustus and the ROMAN Empire–with its capitol far away.

“Now it happened in those days, that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment made when Quirinius was governor. All went to enroll themselves….”

And so it was….an ancient FATCA. The capital of the government was far away….however each of the lands was governed by some puppet of Rome. The subjects had no benefit of census or taxation—-they were only subject to both.

From those times of oppression, was there a great birth which is celebrated today. For this, there are no parallels. Let us celebrate this day for what it is and separate the glory of this day from the tyranny of the kingdom.

The empire is not on our side. The pharisees of the media and congressional halls continually whip up propaganda against us. The empire digs us a hole and requires a “scoring” to be allowed to get us out of the hole.

The empire is led by men. If and when the earthly, human leaders of empire realizes their moral, constitutional, and godly responsibility to their population, the expats will rise from the tyranny.

We celebrate today. Tomorrow, we must remember our mortal code: God only helps those that help themselves. We must rise up and resist the government tyrannies of FATCA, the tyranny of discriminatory extra-territorial, person-based taxation, the tyrannies of GILTI and transition tax, and the tyranny of FBAR all emanating from the Empire.

Merry Christmas to all !

Congressman Holding has introduced the “Fair Taxation for Americans Abroad Act” in the United States House of Representatives.

“In 2019, Republicans Overseas will focus on getting the Tax Fairness for Americans Abroad Act passed….The TFFAAA will amend the Internal Revenue Code by offering overseas Americans a status similar to that enjoyed by corporations where foreign-sourced income is taxed in the country where it is earned. ” says Solomon Yue, of Republicans Overseas, who spearheaded this effort.

The direct link to the video (found in Embee’s comment) is HERE:

Here is John Richardson’s description of the Bill:

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In order to keep the comments on Stephen’s post on topic, please direct your comments regarding Barbara’s comment, to this post.

Barbara says
December 18, 2018 at 12:18 am (Edit)
@BB: “We need to get people coming back to Brock.”

First step: how lovely it would be if someone actually moderated the forums and simply culled the repetitive and incessant chatter on some of the (formerly) useful threads. Many of the most essential threads have turned into a free-for-all which veer way off topic, raking over the same-old-same-old coals that have been raked over in every one of the other popular threads. It’s become so that I don’t even come to IBS much anymore. I check for new top-level posts and anything new on the “Current Media and Articles” thread and skip the rest of the bla-bla-bla because I’ve read it all so many times before.

Sorry to be so negative. When I first joined IBS a couple years ago, it was a clean, mean source of wisdom. I wonder how I’d feel if I joined now, with so much of the useful discussion buried under so much steamy hot air. I wish there were a separate thread called “The IBS Pub” where all the windy conversations can cheerfully continue, while those who simply need clarity about renunciation, etc., don’t have to comb through page after page of blather to find the few nuggets.

I still very strongly support the principles here, and the actions of the brave souls who put their time, money and lives on the line for the rest of us, and therefore I am happy to offer financial support.

**************

Thanks.