Author Archives: usxcanada

 
The following brief excerpts from A Maze of Death — Philip K Dick  (1970) offer up some pretty spooky overtones and correspondences:

 
* * *

There was one class of people who did not carry a copy of Specktowsky’s Book — did not carry it because they were not allowed to read it. The ostriches shut up in the planetwide aviary at Terra; those who lived in the sandpile because they had crumbled under the enormous psychological pressure suffered while emigrating. … The Interplan West military base, where General Treaton operates, is on Terra, tangent to the aviary. What a coincidence. … And then a gross, vivid, terrifying thought came to him. Suppose we’re all ostriches from the aviary, he said to himself. Suppose we don’t know; Interplan West cut a memory conduit in our friggin’ brains. … So we are an experiment, then, he thought. I now know what we wanted to know. And it might explain why I have that tattoo stuck away on my right instep.  [Chapter 10]

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Wade Frazer said, “But there’s nothing on Terra except the aviary! And nobody except ostriches!”

“Plus Interplan West military barracks and research installations,” Seth Morley said, but his voice ebbed; it lacked conviction and enthusiasm. “We’re an experiment,” he said, anyhow. “As we guessed last night. A military experiment being carried out by General Treaton.” But he did not believe it either. “What kind of military personnel wear black leather uniforms?” he said. “And jackboots … I think they’re called.”

Russell, in a modulated, disinterested voice, said, “Aviary guards. A sop to keep up their morale. It’s very discouraging to work around ostriches; introduction of the new uniforms, three or four years back, has done a great deal of morale-boosting for the personnel.”  [Chapter 14]

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A few years ago, in another context, for another purpose, I did a piece of drudgery with the annual series publication Canadian Citizenship Statistics [0575-8033] 1952-1991. Unfortunately the issuance of that series terminated in 1991 just as an interesting trend seemed to be developing. Here is the overall of the results from that compilation effort. These numbers are for persons who immigrated to Canada and also had United States as “country of former allegiance.”

Some people I’ve met and talked to in the past year are still “US only” and not dual — here’s guessing, on the basis of the data below, that the great majority of US-born having non-Canadian parents are still US only and therefore subject to IRS enforcement within Canada, not least of which is Form 8938 new in 2011. It would be a lot of fun to see these same figures for 1992-2011 and forward.
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Cross-posted from better formatting at USxCanada InfoShop

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The “us” at Brock are all individuals who have suffered the impact, directly or indirectly, of the peculiar United States attitude toward its own nonresident nonaliens, and especially the perverse contortions of that attitude since 9/11.

That is going only by the Brock tag line. We attract some resident aliens, and various others as well.

The main “them” is the unsympathetic homelanders, above all those with power: the ones who manufacture a morass of so-called law; and the ones who enforce it, through taxation — the IRS, and through citizenship — Dept. of State.

A big part of our special agony is self-division. Each of us is also them, even after concluding the formalities of severing citizenship and filing the final paper. For those who stop short of that clear divorce, the duality is likely to fester, and to become ever more agonizing in times that will not even be “semi good.”
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Plenty of Brockers will be old enough to remember Steve McQueen trekking his way through the weekly TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive as bounty hunter Josh Randall toting a sawed-off rifle. So American. No doubt a childhood hero of the Dubya flyboy who famously went MIA in Texas airspace during the Vietnam era — already on his way to accomplishing his mission!

Today zuludogm mentioned in passing that some British banks are incorporating IRS snitch activity into their business planning as a new profit center.
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A poke around in the FAQs at the admirable website of http://www.renunciationguide.com/ brought up this tidbit that never seems to have surfaced or been kicked around at Brock — memory of nothing on the topic has further tested out against a no-result word search on “Carlton”:
 

An interesting question would be whether the IRS would attempt to retroactively apply the potential Congressional law change. Retroactive law is against the constitutions of most countries of the world. Nonetheless, in a 1994 case, U.S. vs. Carlton, the U.S. Supreme Court held in an unanimous decision that changes in tax law — and only tax law — can be applied retroactively if the law has a rational legislative purpose and is not arbitrary, and the period of retroactivity is not excessive. These criteria are extremely broad; as Justice Scalia wrote in a concurring opinion, the Court’s vague criteria effectively “guarantee[] that all retroactive tax laws will henceforth be valid.”

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As reports flood in from stalwart Brockers — CLNs arrive for Peg11 and recalcitrantexpat, Don Pomodoro gets a second appointment and renounces — and advanced backstories trickle in from lurkers and indirect reporters, it is still the case that almost all are still somewhere in the middle. Few share the absolute closure of schubert1975.
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Smoke ’em out … whatever means necessary …

George W. Bush — 25 Sept 2001

 
Recent Brock discussions of Form 8854, dates of cessation of US citizenship, and incoherence of the formal statements and instructions that emanate from both Department of State and Department of Treasury/IRS — all of these look like nasty aftermath to 9/11. A case can be made that over the past decade the United States has turned from hot pursuit of handy political “enemies” to cynical redefinition of its own extraterritorial persons as resources of interest who can help to foot the bill for the unspeakable financial costs of their extravaganza of idiot revenge. FATCA and passport revocation sure smell like smoke!
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In the past day or so, it has been interesting to juxtapose the anxieties of first-time posters with the ongoing perceptions and ruminations and strategems of longer-term crew on the Brock.

On the one side: How can this be? I don’t want this! How can I simultaneously clear this up while not stumbling into radar that will take me out? Surely there must be some solution. Where does this circle begin? Is there any reasonable way out? This is such a mess — certainly someone will have to fix it! Maybe I can just wait for this to clear up? Or keep on hiding indefinitely?

On the other side: (1) This is election year in the United States, and maybe we can make the extraterritorial predicament an issue, and maybe Romney would be better than Obama. (2) FATCA is so overreaching and fantastic, and it just has to damage the US economy, and the rest of the world will have to realize that national sovereignty and human rights can’t take a back seat, and the incredible details mean that the project just has to fail. (3) Surely Canada will have to treat US persons just like everybody else, and it will help if we work hard to lobby this or that branch of officialdom. (4) This is a big important story suppressed by mainstream media, and sooner or later it has to break anyway, and we can advance the cause by commenting and corresponding in all possible directions.
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