Demand, But Do Not Expect Apologies

But make them pay!

As many readers here are likely to know, much of what we have believed and said from the beginning, the very things that we were ostracized, ridiculed, laughed at or attacked for saying, have come true.  Recently many are calling for apologies.  I am among those who are.  However, I know that they will be few and far between.  Why?  How?  As I have said in the past, I have been done this road before, albeit in other vehicles.  Here is the latest addition to my trip down this path in a different chariot.

Below is a somewhat altered version of an email I sent to family and a few friends tonight sharing an email I received from another friend earlier in the day and more added thereafter.

There are times when I wish schadenfreude was an emotion I had.  I just learned that what I feared and tried warning people about for the past 9 and 1/2 years has come to pass.  While I just learned of it, it happened a few years ago, after I gave up trying to inform people about this madness in hopes of stopping it.  A friend of mine here is from Germany and has lived in Japan for some 30 years.  Today he sent the following.

“That is different now - totally different.

A huge number of countries, Germany and Japan included, have formed a network (OECD CRS?), they exchange information about

• the money available in each country (including credit cards)

• the earnings

I had to give my German banks even my Japanese tax number.

If there is income, the bank reports to a centre (e.g. in Germany), that centre sends these data to Japan. So, the Japanese tax office knows* exactly, how much I have and "earn" in Germany. (*could know)

The interests and earnings in Germany go together with the earnings from my sales (Of items related to our common hobby.) and other income in Japan. If everything together is more than 200000 Yen, I have to report it.

There have been a number of new tax agreements from Japan with other countries since 2021, US included. If this is only corporate or also for private citizens, I don't know the details. “

At the current exchange rate, that 200,000 JY is $1,468 USD.

I shared this with a woman from Australia I work with and she said that she too now has the “overlapping taxes” as she put it.  She is one of the many who, at best, dismissed my warnings.  Seeing how FATCA was likely to play out, I talked about it every week in the faculty lounge.  At one point about 7 years ago, they angrily asked why I was pestering them about an American problem.  I answered that if the US is allowed to bully every country on the planet into FATCA, then every country is going to come up with their own version.  Everyone will have to deal with similar.  At that point, a British born Canadian women slammed her books on the table and stormed out of the room. Just before the panic, I overheard her asking for advice on where to park her retirement money as her banks back home closed her accounts as she didn’t live in that country anymore.  I resisted the temptation to remind her of my warning a few years prior.  She did not offer an apology for her harsh words and behavior towards me due to my attempts to warn her.

My friend from Germany tells me that his accountant first warned him of it around 2013 and it became an obligation in 2017.  We met after I had stopped trying to tell every one about it, though it has come up in conversation before.  What I find funny is that the Aussie woman I work with, the person I have had the most contact with and for the longest, said nothing to me until today that what I was warning about had come to be.  Same with all the others who blocked my email,  just took to avoiding me, the ones who told me to “just pay it and shut up!”,  or stayed in touch but never told me that they too are now under the umbrella of complete financial transparency and double taxation as I warned they would be.  Kinda like how all the mad maskers refuse to give apologies for being wrong on masks, the drug pushers who will not accept that their beloved clot shot is causing any problems, you know the rest.

But it was not just lay people.  Experts including lawyers, accountants, retired officials who worked in relevant government agencies and legislative aides all said I was ignorant, uneducated, uninformed, misinformed and hyperbolic when I said that all US persons would have their personal financial data shared with the US.  It would take me opening a new account to learn for fact that they were wrong and I was correct.  It was in opening this account that I received the FATCA letter I shared with you a few postings ago under, “Part 2: The Horrors of the Bubble.”.  Additionally, to open that bank account I had to provide the bank with my US Social Security Number (SSN#), our Illegal national ID number.  This would be the only time I have ever had to provide my SSN# in the over 20 years of banking in Japan, first time ever to anyone outside the US for that matter.  While I would learn this in the summer of 2017, the FATCA letter given to me was dated June 2014.  Hardly new, but the “experts” called me crazy for stating that it must exist, given what was known about the law, its goals and reports of people dealing with it.  Sounds a hell of a lot like the “experts” telling us to do what we know is wrong with covid.  As these arrogant, insulting, over edjumacated “experts” have not apologized for their behavior towards me when I shared the FATCA letter with them in 2017, so too with these criminal, arrogant and insulting “experts” not even acknowledge their mistakes nor the fact that we were right.

Wish I could feel pleasure knowing that their disbelief and inaction on FATCA and the rest led to their situations.  If I could, I’d be in 7th heaven in pleasure.  Given the abuse they gave me, it would be nice to feel happy that they are now in their own privates hells.  Have you seen the German delegates laughing at Trump when Trump warned them of the danger of depending upon Russia for their fuel?  It was kinda like that and worse for years.

They, FATCA apologists and Covidians, will not apologize.  They will not acknowledge that they were wrong.  They will not give us recognition for being correct.   They will not apologize. Call for it.  Demand it.  Do not expect it.  But make them pay mightily for what they have done.

Other Covidian related news.   In an earlier post I told of  elderly neighbor who wanted to teach my son the festival dance my son was eager to learn.  Last week I saw him up on a ladder painting over his dry cleaning shop’s sign.  While I doubt the closure has anything to do with covid, he is in his 90s now, I can not ignore the fact that he has not attended any meeting the past 3 years out of fear of covid.  The last three years of his working life was consumed by the madness foisted upon us by the Covidians.   

Returning with my son from his cram school, we passed the shrine we are members of the festival group for and the Hokkaido bar across the street I have mentioned.  The bar keep is a member of the festival group and provided an awesome spread of fine dishes from his homeland way up north for our New Year’s party.  I was surprised to see it was dark.  Mondays are his days off.  A sign on his door informed us that he went out of business at the close of February and thanking his customers for their patronage.  Here too, I do not know the cause but it being sudden and unannounced, health of family member of some such seems likely.  However, had he not had to remain closed for most of the past 3 years, he would be far better situated to deal with what ever has befallen him, even if it a move upwards that led to him closing shop.

The last is the most painful and I fear will cause me to visit violence upon anyone who dares tells me to mask up again.  Since some time at the end of last year, my 9 year old has been comically missrepeating back what he hears.  As this is common with the comedy troupes he likes to watch on TV (Sunday nights only), we assumed he was mimicking them, especially as he was laughing.  Earlier this week, he did so again.  A smile crept across my wife’s face as he made fun of whatever was just said.  Then he stated, “Recently, I have been making lots of listening mistakes.”  The smile faded.  My heart froze.  He is 9.  For 1/3 of his life to date, the latest 1/3, he has not heard his native language spoken without something between the speaker and his ear except from his mother and only at home as she wears her mask outside, like a good little sheep.  As he has four 90+ minute swim lessons a week, two on weekdays and the fact that the coaches wear paper masks out of the pool and a clear plastic, face shaped, molded masks in the pool and he goes to cram school where masks are required on two other week nights, and that his mother works from home, cuz covid, from 8:30 am until 10 pm or later at night, the time he hears his own language not spoken through a mask is short indeed.  This was a known risk that the experts did their best to belittle those of us who raised the alarm over.  Even that masking, clot shotting Nazi, Dr. Wen has acknowledged that her own son has suffered in his education and I believe health from the policies she did her best to force us all to follow.  To hell with the whole bloody lot of ‘em.