================================================= Expat Worlds Bi-Monthly Digest ================================================= 21 July, 2004 Vol. 6, Issue 11 .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== THE STORY =================== -=Financial Privacy - You Ain't Got None=- ==== OTHER EZINES ================ ==== EW SPECIAL ================== -=International Drivers License=- ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... == -=Trivia=- -=News Story=- -=Traveller's Tales=- -=Jokes=- ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============= -=WorldTime 6.5=- ==== INSIDE THIS MONTH EXPAT WORLD == -=Table of Content=- ==== THE STORY ================================== FINANCIAL PRIVACY YOU AIN'T GOT NONE! (Part 2) AN EVERYDAY JOE'S ESSAY ON TAXES, PRIVACY, LAWSUITS, AND FREEDOM Few causes raise the ire of those so inclined as the issues of taxes, privacy, lawsuits, and freedom, except perhaps sex. There are lots of people with opinions about what you can do about them. Unfortunately, their opinions are like those posterior orifices; everybody has one. This message falls into the same category. Taxes -- Not many people like paying them. Most people probably feel they should be paying less. Most people probably would like a little more apparent control over where they're spent. Some people feel that the term "IRS" is a four letter word. There's a worn out statement that goes "There's no sure thing but death and taxes." Well, that's partly true. What can you do about it if you don't like paying quite as much as our dear Uncle Sammy would have you pay? Here's a few possibilities: a. Do nothing. After all, if you're a regular Joe Lunch-bucket your employer withholds your taxes, maybe you're not married, you don't have any kids, you rent, and besides, you can't fight city hall. b. Send some after-tax money to a tax reform group and hope they don't spend it all on executive salaries and administrative expenses before it actually does any good. c. Hire an accountant or tax attorney and hope he can come up with some "creative" ways for you to skirt the edges. If you get audited, you may just have to pay some of the back taxes - if you're lucky. If you're not lucky you might wind up testifying in front of a Congressional Committee conducting hearings into alleged IRS abuses of cooperative taxpayers. If you fall into the category of those that feel "I hate those expletive deleted, expletive deleted, expletive deleted and I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire!" you can: d. Start reading anything and everything you can about the tax code and the law. You find a way to work for yourself. Three years later, you'll come to the conclusion that the IRS is a complete and total fraud of a magnitude never before seen on earth. You learn that they're really unregistered foreign agents, that they really aren't an agency of your government, and that your tax dollars are being used to facilitate the rape of third world resources through the agreements with the Agency for International Development and the IMF. Your disgusted! Your next step might be to stop filing. Three years after that you start getting nasty-grams from some cretin who can't even spell your name correctly ordering you into some sort of "administrative hearing" which is really a de facto court. A Mexican stand-off ensues where you ask them to show you the law that makes you "liable" and they proceed to ignore you since there isn't any such law. You write letter after letter, all of which they refuse to acknowledge. One day a letter arrives saying that a "Notice of Levy" (which you know is bogus) has been filed with the county recorder's office on your house - if you're lucky. Since you know that the judge who's going to preside over the issue gets a percentage of whatever the state can steal from you, and he's not interested in having you teach anyone else how to cut into his retirement fund, he's not exactly going to have an incentive to be fair and let you present your case. Since you know that the IRS doesn't even obey their own law, much less what's Constitutional, you fully expect that since you make a tidy buck (and therefore they're drooling over the prospect of getting it - ALL OF IT) some day soon they're going to send down a squad of armor-plated, machine gun totting Ninjas to raid your house in the middle of the night. Maybe when they kick in your bedroom door at 4 am (unannounced, of course) you won't have time to reach for your pistol or shotgun and they won't be able to justify splattering you all over the wall in a hail of gunfire coming from a half dozen H&K MPS's and M-16's. That doesn't mean they wouldn't do it, it just means that they'd have to lie about it and then make sure your wife was sufficiently terrorized and broke so she wouldn't testify - which isn't that hard to do since they "steal" everything you worked hard for all your life, leaving your unfortunate widow with nothing but her wits to fall back on. If you tried to shoot them the consequences would be: "Illegal tax protester killed while firing on IRS agents - Details at 11! The public yawwwns ... e. You can learn what Rockefeller does to keep from paying taxes on his money and then do what he does. Not very easy to do since he doesn't sit around the bar talking about how he rigged the system so you fork over 40% of your money in taxes and he doesn't. f. Figure out a way to make so much money that even if they steal 75% of it, you'll still be comfortable. g. Write your Congress BureauRat. Hold your breath for him to do something about the problem. Privacy -- What privacy? The Social Security Administration has a policy in place to have your children "enumerated" at birth- sometimes before! There's no law requiring you to get a SSN for your kid or to have one as an adult for that matter, but if you fall into categories (a) to (g) above, it gets very expensive not to. Once you get that number it's like a persistent sexually transmitted disease. Even if you don't see it every day, it's ALWAYS there and there's no way to get rid of it. Periodically it reappears and you have to pay somebody to make it go away, temporarily. Government and corporate pimps like the IRS, credit bureaus, and the Department of Motor Vehicles then use that number to track you and everything you do from cradle to grave. Even a DUMB P.I. can get more information on you than you ever imagined. YOU ARE AN OPEN BOOK. There are already 2 or 3 states requiring FINGERPRINTS for driver's licenses. All of them are required to issue you a biometrically encoded, secure identification card in the next several years. You won't be able to get a job without one. This is federal law, folks, not the ruminations of a conspiracy nut. Have you tried to open even a non-interest bearing checking account lately? The bank wants a SSN even though there's NO requirement for that type of account. Why? Ever tried to get a few money orders that exceed $3000 to pay for that new computer? Expect to fill out a federal currency transaction report. It's now illegal to carry out your affairs in non-traceable cash - even if you worked a legitimate job to get it and paid every nickel of tax due on it - in advance. By the way, don't buy a cash ticket to Miami to buy that 68 Mustang you've always wanted. You'll be relieved of the burden of carrying the $10 grand you saved up to purchase the Mustang before you get on the plane. Later, you'll wind up producing another 10% of what the state stole from you just to try and get it back. Maybe in the end you'll get it back and maybe you won't. Odds are you won't. You fit the profile of a "drug courier" and they don't need ANYTHING to take whatever you have. Besides, all of that money has traces of cocaine on it. Be thankful they don't charge you with felony drug possession and then go after your house. Any number of federal alphabet soup agencies can do a "mail cover" on you on a mere "suspicion" of wrong doing, where they record the names and addresses of who you send and receive mail to/from. It doesn't take much more than that to fire up a "pen register" on you to record who calls you and who you call. Pending legislation and technology is going to mean that a federal wiretap won't involve some agent sitting around in the basement of the telephone company drinking cold coffee and eating stale donuts while he listens to you talking to your wife. He's going to be able to sit at his comfy bureaucrat desk 500 miles away listening to you on the laptop that your tax dollars paid for. Ever notice that you don't have to push the "pound key" any more when you inquire about your bank balance? It isn't much of a stretch to figure out that the computer can listen to your conversation, pick up a "key word" and then flag your number for special attention. The British have been doing this for years, folks. When was the last time you heard about a Ninja squad kicking in the door of the wrong house on the word of some sniffing punk who can't remember his own name? After they destroyed your front door, stuck a shotgun in your wife's mouth, and inventoried your entire house, you'd be lucky to get an "oooops" assuming they don't find something else to charge you with while you're chewing on the carpet. Lawsuits -- The only place these days where you'll see a sign ending with the words "...at your own risk" is a sign put up by the state. They have reserved this requirement for common sense for themselves. I don't care how utterly ridiculous a charge against you is, there will be an attorney that will try to take you to the cleaners. That is not to say that someone who has been legitimately injured shouldn't be able to collect. The problem is that the country has been trained to be a nation of whiners unable to accept responsibility for their own stupidity and the nation's courts and attorneys are all to happy to accommodate them. What about the legions of parasites who make a living faking injuries for the insurance claims? You've seen it a hundred times on television. Tap dancing cripples, ski bums collecting workers comp. I find it hard to get choked up about a multinational insurance company having to pay but when your insurance rates double because a weasel decided to make you a target, that bothers me. It should bother you before it happens to you. Freedom -- Frankly, I don't think we have many freedoms left and we don't have much time to get what we've lost back before they're gone forever. I think it's possible to correct the situation, but not if you're broke or in jail. What's required to correct this sorry situation? Education and money - both of which the state and their cronies in the media are working overtime to deprive you of. What can you do about it? -- What can you do about all of these problems? If you're going to effect any change, it means education. Whether that means running a web site devoted to your particular cause, starting a political action group to elect freedom minded politicians (there's an oxymoron for you), running newspaper ads (assuming you can get through the mainstream press' filter), mailing leaflets, donating to some group that's already doing what you would like to do but don't have the time, the bottom line is: IT TAKES MONEY. Now, if you could have figured out how to make enough money to do all of that, you would have done it already. So where is that money going to come from? The answer is to deny Uncle Sam his "fix" legally. Learn how to do what the wealthy do with their money - use trusts, offshore trusts, charitable foundations, IBC'S, limited liability corporations, and the rest of the techniques that the wealthy use to keep more of their money. They don't seem to have a problem not pouring their wealth into the black hole called federal taxes. Why should you? They do it legally, you can to. You are not bound to pay one cent more in taxes than is legally required. Structure your affairs so that you don't. Take the money you would have paid in taxes and put it to work in your community educating people about how they can restore our liberties; put that money to work where it will do something USEFUL. If it's unjust lawsuits you're concerned about, think about how difficult it would be for someone to attack an asset of a trust that is based in a foreign country that doesn't recognize U.S. judgements. Lots o' luck, Charlie. Even if they got at one asset, you won't have all of your eggs in one basket - like you do now... think about it. Whether you talk to EW about how you can deal with issues or you find someone else, DO IT - time marches on. EW is one place you can learn how to do what the wealthy do with their money and assets. Contact our Consultation Department for a reasonable priced fax or email consultation on your problem. NOTE: Part 1 was in last EW Digest issue (Vol: 6, Issue 10). ==== OTHER EZINES =============================== ASIAN TIMES ONLINE Asia most trusted source for news, business,commentary and analysis from throughout Asia and our world. (www.atimes.com). ----- Subscribe now to the "Timely Time Management Tips" newsletter. Free tips sent to you to help you get more done in less time, with less stress. Send your email now to: mailto:timemanagement-subscribe@topica.com ----- japan-guide.com Extensive, up to date online guide on Japan living and travel related information. http://www.japan-guide.com/ ==== EW SPECIAL ================================= INTERNATIONAL DRIVERS LICENSE Solve all your driving hassles with this 100% bonafide International Drivers License that is valid in over 160 countries as per the United Nations agreement world-wide. Why you need one ?? If you plan to travel, have present "problems" with your local license, need a photo ID, or you need another form of ID. There is absolutely NO I.D. or documentation required to be issued this drivers license and can be ordered and delivered through the mail. This license is valid for FOUR years. For details email us at office@expatworld.net and put "IDL" in the subject header. ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... ================ NEWS STORY Museum Considers Excrement Power LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Science Museum says it is considering a radical way of paying its hefty energy bills -- using visitors' excrement. The central London museum said it was considering taking the waste from its 14 toilet blocks and converting it into electricity. "With free admission it would be a great way for visitors to give something back to the museum and help keep the overheads down," said the museum's head Jon Tucker. "We have almost 3 million visitors each year and have huge electricity bills." The museum said the plan would be to siphon off waste from the toilets, store it and then either burn it as fuel in a mini-power station or turn it into electricity using a microbial fuel cell. The power produced from the excrement of 100,000 visitors could produce enough to power 500 light bulbs, while also breaking down harmful organic matter, it said. --- Thief lulled to sleep A MAN who tried to rob a grandmother in her own home, fell asleep on a couch after she began showing him family pictures. Juan Garcia Vasquez tried to burgle the 73-year-old's San Francisco home but woke her when he smashed a window. He put a cloth over her mouth but she managed to calm him down and offered him some food. Policeman Paul Zill said: "He didn't speak English that well and she didn't speak Spanish so they used the international language of pointing and nodding." The woman showed the intruder pictures of Saint Theresa, prayed next to him and showed him photos of her grandchildren. When he nodded off, she locked herself in the bathroom and rang for help. --- Heady Stunts If you can't get a job using your head, you could get one using your forehead. Cunning Stunts — a British media company — rents advertising space on young adults, typically college students. It's a $7-an-hour-gig. Students who sign on are required to wear ads in the form of temporary tattoos when they go out to pubs and concerts. "The idea came when we realized how much coverage students gained in the newspapers during recent demonstrations over debt," Nikki Horton of Cunning Stunts told Reuters news service. Cunning Stunts has used such techniques to promote the Cartoon Network and men's magazine FHM in Britain. The company recently opened a U.S. office. Last month, Toyota hired Cunning Stunts to flood New York's Times Square with tattooed kids ballyhooing Toyota's new Scion tC Coupe. Some New Yorker's might have questioned why so many young men had "$16,465" scrawled on their forehead. It's the car's suggested retail price, and not how much the kid is behind on his college loan. ----- TRAVELLER'S TALES THEM AND US: Japanese authorities have set up a Web site residents can use to complain about suspicious foreigners. Locals can get foreigners into trouble while staying anonymous. The site includes a menu which complainers can use to select a motive for their actions, such as foreigners are "a nuisance to the community" or their presence is "a cause for concern." The government wants to cut the number of illegal immigrants in Japan (estimated at 250,000) by half within five years, the Mainichi Shimbun reported. Amnesty International has complained that the Web site encourages xenophobic sentiments, but the Immigration Bureau denies the charge, of course. ----- Oxymoron: Original Copy ----- "A psychiatrist is a man who goes to a strip club and watches the audience." -- Merv Stockwood. ----- "Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied." -- Otto Von Bismark. ----- Laws around the World In Athens, Greece, a driver's license can be lifted by the law if the driver is deemed either 'poorly dressed' or 'unbathed'. In Michigan, it is illegal to chain an alligator to a fire hydrant. It is against the law to whale hunt in Oklahoma. According to a british law passed in 1845, attempting to commit suicide was a capital offense. Offenders could be hanged for trying. It is illegal to sell an ET doll in France. They have a law forbidding the sale of dolls that do not have human faces. ----- A blonde began a job as an elementary school counsellor, and she was eager to help. One day during recess she noticed a boy standing by himself on the side of a playing field while the rest of the kids enjoyed a game of soccer. She approached and asked if he was alright. The boy said he was. A little while later however, she noticed the boy was in the same spot, still by himself. Approaching again, the blonde said, "Would you like me to be your friend?" The boy hesitated, then said, "Okay", looking at the woman suspiciously. Feeling she was making progress, she then asked, "Why are you standing here all alone? Why don't you go and join those boys playing soccer over there?" "Because," the little boy said with great exasperation, "I'm the goalie!" ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============================ Privacy.net This great site provides a variety of privacy related information, tools, links, etc. Privacy Analysis of your Internet Connection - Some Information that is collected about you when visiting a web site Ways You Are Traced When Using The Net - There are several ways to trace users via the Internet Internet Privacy-Related Software - Personal "Firewalls" - System "cleaners" that remove history trails, temporarily directories, cookies, etc. - Cookie managers/blockers and ad blockers - Anti-Virus Links to Privacy Resources Check it out at ==== INSIDE THIS MONTH EXPAT WORLD =============== EXPAT WORLD NEWSLETTER (VOL.16 ISSUE 06) Table of Content: - PANAMA IS HOT - A WORLD CLASS RETIREMENT HAVEN THAT'S RIPE FOR PROFITABLE REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT - BITS & PIECES - THE RED LIGHTS OF SEOUL - YOUR PRIVACY IS BEING SLICED, DICED, CUT, SHREDDED AND HOMOGENIZED UNTIL THERE IS VIRTUALLY NOTHING LEFT OF IT. - PASSPORTS BY MAIL UPDATE - ISLANDS LURED TO SELL PASSPORTS - DOMINICA PASSPORTS - SERBIAN CUSTOMS SEIZE FAKE BELGIUM PASSPORTS - EUROPEAN UNION SEEKS VISA-FREE TRAVEL TO THE USA FOR ALL EU MEMBERS - TURKS-CAICOS SERIOUSLY CONSIDER BECOMING CANADA'S 11 PROVINCE - THE EMPLOYEE TAX-FREE TAKE HOME PAY INDEX - AROUND THE WORLD WITH EXPAT WORLD - INTERNATIONAL SNIPS & CLIPS - CRAPPER RAPPER - THE PERILS OF BEER - HOUSE OF PRICKS - "JOHN" WAYNE YOU MISSING SO MUCH Each week the EXPAT WORLD DIGEST gives you just a smattering of what you can find in the EXPAT WORLD newsletter that we produce once a month. Why not get the whole story and subscribe now to our electronic version for just US $30 per year. Go to our website: www.expatworld.net to sign up. ********************************************************************* EXPAT WORLD - the newsletter of international living URL - http://www.expatworld.net Email - office@expatworld.net ---------- End of Expat World Digest -------------------------------- To unsubscribe, write to unsubscribe-digest@expatworld.net