DETROIT, MI — Federal agents seized thousands of dollars from a woman at an airport because she didn’t tell them how much she had. Now the government seeks to keep the cash seizure, without placing a criminal charge against the woman.
This was the situation for 78-year-old Victoria Faren of Clearwater, Florida. According to reports, she had recently retired and sold her house and planned to move to live with her daughter in the Philippines. The woman was then faced with the decision of how to move her money internationally.
She decided to take a dual-pronged approach. Some of the money she sent via wire transfer, and the rest she decided to transport herself when she flew over.
On April 2, 2014, Ms. Faren tried to board Delta Air Lines Flight 275 to the Philippines. At Detroit Metropolitan Airport, she was stopped at a federal checkpoint by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and scrutinized about what she, as an American citizen, was carrying out of the country.
The federal agents reacted when they discovered an alleged contradiction in the amount of money Ms. Faren declared verbally and in writing. Agents then took the opportunity to rummage through every belonging she had — including the clothes on her body — to find additional cash.
It turns out that the septuagenarian had decided to stow her cash savings throughout her luggage and even hidden within her worn garments.
She believed it would be safer to keep it hidden. Safe from thieves or government agents; whichever appeared first. But her efforts to protect her cash failed.
After finding wads of cash in her wallets and carry-on bag, the agents went so far as to remove the woman’s brassiere and girdle to find the rest. In total they seized $40,977 from the woman, which were proceeds from the recent sale of her $120,000 home.
“She stated that she did not wire the proceeds to the Philippines this time because she thought it was safer to carry the money,” according to the government’s version of events.
The federal agents decided to keep the money using a tactic known as civil asset forfeiture. The government let her go — minus her cash — without any criminal charges.
She’ll now have to fight in court to have any hope of getting her savings returned. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gjon Juncaj has already filed a “Complaint for Forfeiture” on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice. The government’s intent is to permanently keep her money, just because it can.
The theft has been formalized in the Code of Federal Regulations. Americans are not allowed to freely move their money without federal government’s knowledge. Customs enforcers demand that sums of cash over $10,000 be declared with the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). FinCEN form 105 points to the places where the police state criminalizes moving money.
Disclosure of this information is mandatory pursuant to 31 U.S.C. 5316 and 31 CFR Chapter X. Failure to provide all or any part of the requested information may subject the currency or monetary instruments to seizure and forfeiture, as well as subject the individual to civil and criminal liabilities.
Ms. Faren’s plight makes it all the more apparent why reforms in civil asset forfeiture — such as the currently proposed “FAIR Act” — are essential for Americans to live with liberty and justice under the federal government.
You don’t need a time machine to kill Hitler. His spirit is all around us. Everywhere the devil incarnates in proudly pressed uniforms to steal the life savings of elderly widows.
Zod save the state
http://prolecenter.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/us_uk_nazi.jpg
O beautiful panopticon,
For amber waves of pain,
For fast and furious drone patrols
Above the bloodied plain!
ameriKa! ameriKa!
Zod smash thine enemy
And grind thy boot on criminals
Each infidel’s face thou see!
O Beautiful all seeing eye
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster prisons gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
ameriKa, The dutiFul – Lyrics by Katharine Lee “Misery” Bates – 1913
Zod save our gracious State!
Long live our noble State!
Zod save the State!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
Zod save the State.
New Soviet Heroes Anthem In English
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
I do not see in religion the mystery of the incarnation so much as the mystery of the social order. It introduces into the thought of heaven an idea of equalization, which saves the rich from being massacred by the poor.
When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire… or preserve his freedom.
Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you’re making progress.
It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.
I have no particular love for the idealized ‘worker’ as he appears in the bourgeois’ mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Fellow Prisoner: “A man has to come to terms with life as it is!”
Cervantes: “Life as it is? I have lived for over forty years, and I have seen life as it is. Pain, misery, cruelty beyond belief. I’ve heard all the voices of God’s noblest creature: moans from bundles of filth in the streets. I’ve been a soldier and a slave. I’ve seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash. I’ve held them at the last moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams – this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! And maddest of all – to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
Don’t tell me what you believe; show me what you do,
and I’ll tell you what you believe.
I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth.
The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true in itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
Personally, when it comes to rights, I think one of two things is true. I think either we have unlimited rights, or we have no rights at all. Personally I lean towards unlimited rights, I feel for instance I have the right to do anything I please, BUT! If I do something you don’t like I think you have the right to kill me. So where are you gonna find a fairer fucking deal than that? So the next time some asshole says to you “I have the right to my opinion.” You say, “oh yeah? Well I have the right to my opinion and my opinion is you have no right to your opinion!” then shoot the fuck and walk away…
Seek money to get power, gain power to protect money.
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.
Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.
Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit… not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in what we believe is evil.
Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. Throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
With or without religion, good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things — that takes religion.
In another recent post (12AUG) on Lew Rockwell, John Whitehead refers to our current form of ‘government’ as pathocracy – rule by sociopaths and psychopaths.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/08/john-w-whitehead/horror-movie-nanny/