I have a good friend who is an event planner. One if her favorite events she told me in enthusiastically great detail was the planning of a murder mystery dinner party.  A fun loving family hired her to plan the and get all the necessities for the party. There was catered food, appropriate costumes to acquire, a really great venue to rent …… and a murder to plan.

My friend did an amazing job of planning, organizing and orchestrating the entire evening for the large family. The party was a smash hit for all. Upon arrival everyone received an envelope. Inside the envelope was a note that gave them their identity for the evening and just enough about their role and the other characters to set the stage for an evening filled with mystery and murder. Each person was told who they were to be that evening and where they fit in the fictional family. Costumes were donned and the evening began.

This event was one part play and one part improvisation.  As the party progressed everyone knew they were part of the entertainment although they did not know the bigger picture. They only knew details like you will meet your brother Charles Stanley III in the library for a cup of tea promptly at 9:10 p.m.

Everyone knew someone was going to die that night.

Various events went on during the evening. Some seemed perfectly normal and some seemed rather random. Everyone knew there would be a victim and a murderer. The way this event was choreographed the victim and the murderer did not know that part of their role until absolutely necessary. This way they could enjoy most of the suspense that night too.

The fun part was trying to piece the events of the evening together and wondering if you were going to be victim/murderer (or neither) knowing full well you have no choice in the matter. The evening had already been planned out in advance by the event planner. Your job was just to show up, play your part and enjoy watching the eventful evening to unfold. Some things were in your awareness and a lot were not.

So you might be asking yourself right about now so what?  Why do I care about a murder mystery?

Consider all the parallels with the Leap philosophy.  Consider how many ways this analogy actually relates to your life if you choose to interpret it this way:

• It was all designed to be fun!
• It has all been prearranged for your enjoyment.
• You made a conscious decision to play the game before it started.
• You are given an identity when the game started and you accepted it to play the game.
• You don’t know what’s going to happen… will you be the murderer or the victim? Or neither?
• Surprises make the game work and make it fun.
• Within the game the consequences are huge: This is life and death… and you still played because you think of it as fun.
• No one playing the game said “Hey I don’t want to play a game where someone dies”
• You know you are not really going to “die”… it’s just a game.
• You know whoever the victim is isn’t going to die and they are just playing the part… at the end of the evening everyone goes home happy.
• You know the murderer is just playing their part too… after all what is a murder mystery without a murderer?!

1. What would life be like if you could apply this analogy to your everyday life?
2. Do you think you would be empowered? Peaceful?
3. Would you be able to enjoy each moment as it is?
4. Do you think it would shift your experience of life?

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Life is…..

1. …..a game. This is my personal favorite, in part because I have a lot of experience both playing and programming virtual worlds which are, in a certain sense, alternate lives. What do you think of the idea that maybe a higher entity is “controlling” you, in the same way you might control Super Mario or a monopoly token? That sounds a little sinister, but it could be that that “entity” is that mysterious and intangible phenomenon which is your soul. When you view life as a game, you take things less seriously and you’re generally less stressed out. Things can’t get you down that much, cuz it’s all just a game. This is a good thing. Another empowering thing about this metaphor is that in any game, there are cheats and bug exploits

It's not real… it's just a game~

2. .….a dream. “Row row row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream!” The dream model has the advantage that it offers a very simple, intuitive answer to the question of the afterlife: when you die, you just “wake up”! Another interesting consequence is that everything here is a product of your own mind. Believe it or not, in my own life, I’ve experienced certain “miracles” which seem more readily explainable in the “dream reality” than using standard laws of physics. Like the game metaphor, the belief that this is all just a pleasant reverie makes you take things less seriously. Many fears dissolve when you consider you might be dreaming. The credibility of the dream model goes up a lot if you manage to experience lucid dreams.

3. …..a movie. Bring the popcorn, this is the most awesome blockbuster ever set on the silver screen! Sit back and enjoy the drama of life. Did anyone ever tell you “the world doesn’t revolve around you”? Well, they were clearly wrong, because look! The distance in front of you is the same as the distance behind you and in every other direction, therefore you’re at the center of the universe! This interpretation is great for explaining things like character, identity, and ego: everyone’s just following a script! …but now that you know it’s all a script, you have the power to step out of character and ad-lib. Enjoy the sheer chaos which unfolds!!

4. …..a dance. Finally a break from the more “solipsistic” metaphors, the dance representation of life puts social interactions and other players in the foreground. According to this model, things like money and material accomplishments are of minimal importance. Instead, the measure of life is the way we interact with everyone around us.

5. …..a battle. Not all metaphors for life are “positive”. The battle perspective is often assumed by people who feel like the whole world is against them. If you hold this school of thought, you’re very liable to experience a lot of stress, anger, and conflict. But there is one advantage of even this dire outlook: it hardens your skin and toughens you up. Spending time through the eyes of the soldier is hard, but that means when you finally shift to another perspective, things are that much easier by comparison.

6. …..a song. Of course, it’s a bit of a stretch to incorporate every aspect of human experience into actual music. What the “song” metaphor is really getting at is that everything’s about creative expression. The idea that from birth until death, you’re contributing toward some great magnum opus. All the things you create and imagine and give birth to contribute ultimately toward one giant work of genius: and that’s what the “song” here stands for.

7. …..a journey. What sort of vessel are you travelling in– a car, a ship, an airplane? And where are you going? We’re on a great journey together, following a path with many twists and curves. Most people around us are going on autopilot, but since we’ve woken up to the reality of things, we have the power to grab the wheel and take control!

8. …..a mystery. This is often a “transitional” model, held by people whose previous reality has been shattered, while they try to explain the mysteries surrounding them with another model. The mystery model is one full of questions: Why are we here? What is the nature of this universe? What is the nature of consciousness? What lies beyond death? As long as you continue peering through this perspective, you can ponder these conundrums endlessly and never come up with an answer: an answer would not be a mystery! Therefore, to actually solve the riddles of the mystery model, you must shift to another perspective. The answer you reach will depend on which perspective you assume.

9. …..a party. According to “Party Theory”, the whole point of being alive is just having fun. Have a blast, whatever it takes. While this may sound shallow at first, it’s actually refreshingly honest. After all, everyone is always ultimately acting either to gain pleasure or to avoid pain. When people donate to charity, or even devote their life to some inspired cause, at some level it’s because they believe this is how they can gain pleasure. Even masochists believe that by inflicting harm upon themselves, they’ll feel better. If you subscribe to the party perspective, you’re just being more forthright about the quest for fun and pleasure.

10. …..an opportunity. Whatever our time in this world might be, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to grow, to learn, to change, to develop, to create, to enjoy.

It’s good to vary your representations of life from time to time.

Different perspectives give different insight into different aspects of this thing we do called living.

No single lens gives us a perfect view, neither is there any single right, “objective” answer to the question of what life might be.

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Here is what is written on his site:

“Unemployable Hobo is a lifestlye change. Google “hobo lifestyle”, etc, it is not a bum, it is a choice. You own a new plasma tv and an expensive house. Last year when things were going extremely well as they are about to again, I wanted to purchase a $4 million home in Great Falls. Now, I want to own nothing, owe nothing, and have a large offshore bank account and live at resorts, on boats I don’t own, and Ritz Carlton’s I don’t own, and get room service.”

“Do you realize, they make your bed for you every morning and clean and mow the grass, take care of the pool, do your laundry, wait on you hand and foot, give you food and drinks, pay the utilities, all written off as business expense, park your car,( mine they always hold out in front with no ticket)-a tip goes a long way, and at anytime you can leave at a moments notice to lay in a hammock at a cabana on a Caribbean beach, and they’re all your office. Why would anyone ever quit?”

“Unemployablehobo is about removing people from a lifestyle they’ve learned which has become sitting in a cubicle one third of their life, sitting in traffic more than 10% of their life, and sleeping 8 hours, one third, what does that leave for drinking one of those umbrella drinks? I think you get the idea. We are branding ME. Then, people will qualify for different levels of hobo for a ring or different colored golf shirt, etc, recognition, which some people want more than money.” -end

I couldn’t have said it any better myself, what a unique lifestyle!  Another phrase for this type of lifestyle is a PT, aka ‘perpetual traveler‘, ‘permanent tourist‘ or ‘prior taxpayer‘ or one could even call themselves a World Citizen.  In a nutshell, a PT merely arranges his or her paperwork in such a way that all governments consider him a tourist.  A person who is just “Passing Through.

A World Citizen is someone who decides to stop seeing the world as something segmented by nation, and look at it as the home of humanity where we’re all entitled to enjoy, and mandated to be responsible for, the territory of each nation. The world citizen doesn’t see any sense in national citizenship and decides to stop seeing things through the lens of patriotism or from the perspective of the country they grew up in.

An alternate perspective:  Slave Labor Camps

In the United States of America lies a large industrial city which is the site of one of the world’s largest slave labor camps.

Located in and around the center of this city are community settlements where the slaves live.

Each morning the slaves move herd-like from their quarters into the slave labor camps.

Each one is at his or her station by 7:30 AM. Here they report to their master for the day’s duties. And here they remain chained until 5:00 PM when they’re released to go home.

The slaves have no choice as to how many hours they must labor. Sometimes they are required to work overtime until their master tells them they may leave and go home.

Each year the slaves are told when to take their vacations, for how long, and when they must return.

They have little choice as to how much money they earn as they are paid not what they are worth, but what the job is worth.

They are allowed very little time for lunch and coffee breaks during the labor hours.

The slaves will remain in their chains in great fear because the master can punish them with the “firing” or “layoff” whip.

It is said that even some of the older slaves who have been good and faithful have felt the sting of the whip.

Day by day, year-by-year, the slaves toil and grow older until the master decides it is time to release them to the retirement camps where they’re forced to sit idle and wait for death.

It’s a well-known fact that the old slaves who try to keep working are sometimes whipped with a “stop-their-pension” whip.

I know these slave camps exist for I once was a slave.

But now I am a free man who lives among the slaves.

The reason I am free is because I am in business for myself as a Network Marketer.

Yes, I am truly free. I arise in the morning at the hour called for by my schedule.

I decide my own hours. I can even sleep in late while the slaves are at work.

I can vacation when, where, and for how long I please.

I’m free to take my coffee break and lunch when I decide.

And of course, I can decide my own paycheck because I am not a slave.

I can choose to work when and where I please and with whom I please.

I’m free to stay in the city for as long as I want, or to move on to greener pastures if I decide to.

I’ve seen many slaves sadly pack their belongings to leave their city in search of a new master, but it is always the same.

There is, however, a ray of hope for the slave.

He or she can buy their own freedom.

The cost is not high, yet it seems high to those who do not have the courage to pay the price.

What is the price?

One must be willing to be ones own master.

ONE MUST BE WILLING TO BE ONES OWN MASTER.

- Author Unknown

—–

Are you your own master?

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“We built a mobile recording studio, equipped with all the same equipment used in the best studios, and traveled to wherever the music took us. As technology changed, our power demands were downsized from golf cart batteries to car batteries, and finally to laptops. Similarly, the quality with which we were able to film and document the project was gradually upgraded from a variety of formats– each the best we could attain at the time—finally to full HD.

One thing that never changed throughout the process was our commitment to create an environment for the musicians in which they could create freely and that placed no barriers between them and those who would eventually experience their music. By leading with that energy and intent everywhere we traveled, we were freely given access to musicians and locations that are usually inaccessible. In this respect, the inspiration that originally set us on this path became a co-creator of the project along with us!”

http://www.playingforchange.com/journey/introduction

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2. They have built in breakage to ensure longevity;
3. They have an expert legal team making sure they are compliant;
4. They appear to be laying the groundwork for longevity;
5. My sponsor knows the owner and talks with him regularly;
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It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own, without moving to hide it
or fade it,
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy,
mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful,
to be realistic,
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul;
if you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty
even when it’s not pretty,
every day,
and if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure,
yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up,
after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you,
from the inside,
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

by
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

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Message from Oriah Mountain Dreamer…

In the spring of 1994 I went to a party-an ordinary party-and I made an effort, a real effort, to be sociable. I asked and answered the usual questions: What do you do for a living? How do you know the host? Where did you study? Where do you live? And I came home with the familiar hollow feeling of having gone through the motions. So, I sat down and did what I often do to sort out what is going on–I wrote.

Using the format of a writing exercise that had been given to me by poet David Whyte I wrote about the party conversations–what really did not interest me and what I really did want to know about others, about myself.

 I went to the centre of the ache for something more between myself and the world and the prose-poem, “The Invitation”, poured onto the page.

A week later I included the piece in a newsletter I was sending to eight hundred students who had, over the previous ten years, come to workshops I had facilitated on spirituality, sexuality and creativity. I sent it exactly as it had been written that night. I didn’t think much about it. I’d shared many pieces of writing with folks on my mailing list over the years, often hearing back from those who felt a particular piece spoke to them.

But this time, something different happened. People started copying and sharing “The Invitation” and I began hearing from hundreds of people I didn’t know. A woman wrote from New Zealand where the piece had been read at a large spiritual gathering. A man in the States wrote of reading the piece at the funeral of a dear friend who had died of AIDS. Individuals as far away as Romania, Iceland, Greenland and South Africa wrote that someone had sent them“The Invitation” on e-mail, handed it out at a wedding or read it aloud at workshop or conference. The piece seemed to have a life of its own.

 It was Joe Durepos, a literary agent in Chicago who had contacted me to ask permission for the piece to be used in Jean Houston’s book, “A Passion for the Possible”, who suggested that I consider writing a book based on “The Invitation.” I started writing and Joe sold the first few chapters to Harper San Francisco.

The prose-poem had touched others with a voice that cut through to what really matters. I didn’t want the book to be a watered-down version of the original piece or a heady analysis of its heart-felt sense of urgency. I wanted the book to be as raw and as real as the prose-poem, to offer the receptive reader a chance to actually go to the places mapped out by “The Invitation” To fulfill this promise I had to go to those places myself.

I went to a cabin owned by some friends and started writing, using each segment of the original piece as a doorway into deeper places-the longing, the joy, the sorrow, the fear- reflecting with ruthless honesty on the meaning and struggles of a human life. I wrote what I need to remember, what I need to hear again and again: that life is full of beauty and pain; that the world will break your heart and heal it, over and over, if you let it, and that letting it do both is the only way to live fully; that we are not alone but deeply connected to that which create, and sustains all life.

Aided by Harper San Francisco editor Karen Levine I distilled the stories down to their essence and offered meditations at the conclusion of each chapter, meditations that had helped me walk through the doorways “The Invitation” had opened.

Life is hard. And life is wonderful. “The Invitation” is about finding what we need-the inspiration, the intimacy, the courage and the commitment to live fully, every day.

    –Oriah Mountain Dreamer

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Emerson now introduces a contrasting idea to the portrait he has drawn of the intuitive individual: the characteristics and behavior of the “thoughtless man,” who cannot see the depth of truth being used by the self-reliant, intuitive person. Thoughtless people cannot understand self-reliant individuals’ seeming inconsistencies because thoughtless people are too worried about being consistent—as society oppressively wants them to be.

In the paragraphs leading up to this section’s conclusion, Emerson moves from analysis to exhortation, offering suggestions on how we should act. Although everyone can become a model of self-reliance for the improvement of society, he asserts that “we”—the lazy, non-self-reliant individuals—are a “mob.” Too many people, he says, are led by suggestions, by desires, and by feelings of responsibility.

Instead of practicing independent self-reliance, we give in to others’ demands. He urges us to place truth before politeness, value integrity more than comfort, and abandon hypocrisy in favor of honesty. Acknowledging that the self-reliant individual risks being misunderstood as merely selfish or self-indulgent, he vows that individuals who rigorously follow their consciences will be more “godlike” than individuals who follow society’s laws.

In the final third of “Self-Reliance,” Emerson considers the benefits to society of the kind of self-reliance he has been describing. His examination of society demonstrates the need for a morality of self-reliance, and he again criticizes his contemporary Americans for being followers rather than original thinkers.

Although we might question Emerson’s relating travel—or culture—to religion, both substitute an external source of wisdom for an individual’s inner wisdom. The person who travels “with the hope of finding [something] greater than he knows . . . travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things.” The reference to youth reminds us that the self-reliant individual is childlike and original, whereas a person who travels for the wrong reasons creates nothing new and chooses instead to be surrounded by “old things.”

The urge to travel is a symptom, according to Emerson, of our educational system’s failure: Because schools teach us only to imitate, too often we travel to experience others’ works of art rather than create them ourselves. In “The American Scholar,” Emerson advises young scholars to break with European literary traditions.

Finally, Emerson urges the individual to be a risk taker. No external event, he says, whether good or bad, will change the individual’s basic self-regard. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” Self-reliance, then, is the triumph of a principle.

Like many thinkers, Emerson’s thought evolved through his lifetime.  He later came to value social reform movements and group action more than he did in his early life. This was perhaps partly due to the maturity one gains in the life cycle, perhaps partly due to the failure of individual phanthropy the increasing social problems of his age, perhaps partly due to the issue of slavery, in which the individual interests of slave vs. slaveholder were in stark contrast.  But certainly, Emerson’s later writing was more interested in relationships among people, and ethical behavior, than early works like “Self-Reliance” may indicate. 

Nevertheless, the worldview expressed in “Self-Reliance” is not, we would contend, one of radical separation of the individual from the rest of the universe, though Emerson has sometimes been accused of that view.

Quotes:

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.”

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

My thoughts:

I believe this essay holds more true today then ever.  Today’s society is so ‘brainwashed’ thru so many methods it isn’t any wonder why so many people conform and try to ‘fit in’.  From school to work to media to Hollywood, it seems everywhere you turn someone or something is telling you what to wear and how to act or worse yet, how to think.

For change to occur we don’t need a new puppet President in the White House to dictate to us about change.  Rather, we need to become Self-Reliant and not depend on anyone else or any governent to take care of us or say what is best for us.  We need to start to think for ourselves, express our own personalites, do our own research and not just depend on what some mouthpiece on the 6 o’clock news tells us what the version of reality is that they want us to believe… what the so-called truth is. 

Who ever made the mainstream media the information authority anyway?  And why do so many people care about what goes on in Hollywood and who is dating who? What about your life?  Are you a conformist?

It’s my opinion that one of the reasons society is where it is at today is because too many people have forgotten who they are; individual expressions of the same infinite source energy having a human experience. And we are here to express our own individual genius, not to keep up with the Jones’ next door.  Where is the self expression in that?

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“Self-Reliance” is an essay written by American Transcendentalist philosopher and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most solid statement of one of Emerson’s repeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas.

Click on image to view full essay

The first hint of the philosophy that would become “Self-Reliance” was presented by Emerson as part of a sermon in September 1830 a month after his first marriage. His wife was sick with tuberculosis and, as Emerson’s biographer Robert D. Richardson wrote, “Emerson’s belief in immortality had never been stronger or more desperately needed.” From 1836 into 1837, Emerson presented a series of lectures on the philosophy of history at Boston’s Masonic Temple.

These lectures were never published separately but many of his thoughts in these lectures were later used in “Self-Reliance” and several other essays. Later lectures by Emerson, especially the “Divinity School Address”, led to public censure for Emerson’s radical views; the staunch defense of individualism in “Self-Reliance” may be a reaction to that censure. “Self-Reliance” was first published in his 1841 collection, Essays: First Series.

Emerson presupposes that the mind is initially subject to an unhappy nonconformism. However, “Self-Reliance” is not anti-society or anti-community. Instead, Emerson advocates self-reliance as a starting point, not as a goal.

Emerson begins his major work on individualism by asserting the importance of thinking for oneself rather than meekly accepting other people’s ideas. As in almost all of his work, he promotes individual experience over the knowledge gained from books: “To believe that what is true in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.”

The person who scorns personal intuition and, instead, chooses to rely on others’ opinions lacks the creative power necessary for robust, bold individualism. This absence of conviction results not in different ideas, as this person expects, but in the acceptance of the same ideas—now secondhand thoughts—that this person initially intuited.

Emerson conitnues and now focuses his attention on the importance of an individual’s resisting pressure to conform to external norms, including those of society, which conspires to defeat self-reliance in its members. The process of so-called “maturing” becomes a process of conforming that Emerson challenges. In the paragraph that begins with the characteristic aphorism “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist,” he asserts a radical, even extreme, position on the matter.

Responding to the objection that devotedly following one’s inner voice is wrong because the intuition may be evil, he writes, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature . . . the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.” In other words, it is better to be true to an evil nature than to behave “correctly” because of society’s demands or conventions.

In a subdued, even gentle voice, Emerson states that it is better to live truly and obscurely than to have one’s goodness extolled in public. It makes no difference to him whether his actions are praised or ignored. The important thing is to act independently: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think . . . the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Society is not the measure of all things; the individual is. “A true man,” Emerson’s label for the ideal individual, “belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of all things. Where he is, there is nature.” Nature is not only those objects around us, but also our individual natures. And these individual natures allow the great thinker—the ideal individual—to battle conformity and consistency.

Stay tuned for Part 2…

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

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How does the asset protection corporate veil get pierced regarding an offshore bank account? Well a court order to get the information regarding a bank account, a trust, a corporation or a foundation is going to be required.

Such court orders are generally reserved for serious criminal matters like narcotics, terrorism etc. Civil matters from countries outside of the jurisdiction where the bank is would rarely if ever result in the production of a court order for information.

Be Prepared

Civil financial enemies would have trouble ascertaining that you had a bank account in another country. If they got into your bank account in your home country and saw a wire transfer to a bank account in a tax haven privacy jurisdiction this would hardly qualify as grounds to get into the bank or corporate records.

The corporation should be an anonymous bearer share corporation and the financial adversary would have no way of connecting you to the ownership of the offshore corporation.

Offshore corporations and foundations have assets and debts separate from those of the person(s) controlling them.

If your financial enemies had a foreign judgment from another country against you this would not alter the facts. They do not have a judgment against the offshore corporation whose debts and assets are separate from yours.

Another problem the creditor has is that once they file an action in the offshore tax haven the person they are pursuing will know of it and they can just depart with their funds so it is sort of a waste of time and money.

The offshore privacy tax haven knows that once they start letting foreign creditors collect against assets in the banks of their country, their banks will start to lose clients big time.

Asset Protection and Government Pursuit of your Money

What if a governmental agency of another country were to try to get at your money protected in an offshore bank account? Well this again is a different matter.

These cases start with a request for information, which is made pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) or through a Tax Treaty (TIEA). Embassy officials in your offshore banking jurisdiction will receive a request.

It is a formal procedure requiring the requesting country to state specific reasons for the information, which usually means providing evidence of a criminal prosecution in the requesting country. Pure tax information requests are based on the specific tax treaty if any in place between the two countries. (Panama for example, has no tax treaties).

Approval of such a request in civil matters (divorce, lawsuits, etc) never takes place because the proceedings go through official government channels in both countries. Governments simply don’t get involved in such matters unless they become a matter of national security. For jurisdictions with tax treaties (not Panama as it has no tax treaties), requests for information are not popular with the offshore tax haven jurisdictions but they will comply some day if the treaty terms are met.

They can challenge the request and ask for more information. The time frame for these treaty requests can be from six months to several years for this type of request to be granted. Sometimes the statue of limitations runs out and the request becomes moot. The courts in the tax haven jurisdiction would eventually issue an order to produce the bank, corporate records and they would then serve the requested information on the requesting country embassy pursuant to the terms of the treaty.

These tax haven generated court orders are typically for information only. A request to sequester or freeze the funds in the bank is much less common and a much more difficult procedure. The government in a tax haven jurisdiction will generally not respond to a request from a local government. They would refer them to their national government and told to have them make the request, which is usually not going to be possible.

If a law enforcement official on a national or local level contacts a bank in an offshore tax haven and requests information they will be abruptly cut off with no answer even indicating that you had or did not have an account at that bank. To do otherwise would be illegal for the bank to do in a bank secret tax haven. If a national or local law enforcement official presented himself or herself at the offshore bank and displayed credentials they would be told to leave the bank and reminded they have no authority in that country.

Asset Protection & Taxes

A good asset protection structure will take into account taxes in the offshore jurisdiction or we should say the lack of taxation on income in the offshore jurisdiction.

You want to use a jurisdiction that has no taxation of income at all or one that does not tax offshore-derived income. This of course eliminates any filing requirements with the country, which the offshore bank is located in.

A good example of such a tax haven jurisdiction is Panama where companies or individuals which do not carry out activities within the Panamanian territory and which do not obtain income from a Panamanian source, are only subject to the payment of a fixed annual tax of US$300.00.

This $300 per annum tax holds true even if you have an office in Panama, a telephone number in Panama, a website in Panama, a personal or corporate bank account in Panama.

Proper Structure

Foundations

This is an approach to wrap an additional layer of privacy over the ownership of the corporation. Typically the foundation or trust (a trust is a similar instrument but they have differences) is in one country and the corporation in another country while the bank account is in yet a third country.This makes it extremely difficult, time consuming and expensive for someone to try to determine ownership and they would probably never sort things out even after spending a small fortune and wasting months or even years of time trying.

We do not recommend going to all this trouble, just do everything in Panama since the legal environment is so favorable for asset protection, privacy and security in Panama.There is really no actual owner of a Panama Foundation and that by itself makes things complicated and confusing for your financial enemies. Now when you add in a bearer share corporation, which is practically impossible to determine the ownership of, you have a very secure situation unique to Panama.

The use of a Foundation combined with a S.A. Panama Corporation (bearer share) can be a powerful asset protection strategy; the words bullet proof comes to mind.

Earmarks of a Good Asset Protection Plan   

Don’t settle for an immature asset protection package.  An offshore corporation and foundation by themselves will not do a good job.  Sadly most companies and law firms providing offshore asset protection services fail to understand that a good asset protection structure requires attention to detail when it is being setup if it is going to be effective.  A good asset protection package will give you advanced warning before any of your money or assets are at risk.

Advanced Warning of an Attack on Your Assets

Each layer of an asset protection structure should provide both warning if an attack is underway and protection.  The outer layers of a good structure are designed to provide a warning signal, without allowing the attacker to gain access to any of your assets.  The outer layers should provide at least 1 to 3 months protection, giving you ample time to make any changes to the location of your assets, long before the attacker gets through the outer layer.

It all comes down to Ownership

Separate yourself from your assets.  Most offshore law firms have no idea how to get this done.  INSTEAD THEY SELL YOU A FOUNDATION AS THE PANACEA OF ASSET PROTECTION.  THEY FAIL TO TELL YOU THAT IF YOU ARE THE BENEFICIARY IN A FOUNDATION YOU ARE DEEMED TO OWN THE FOUNDATION BY MOST ONSHORE COURTS.  Yes bank secrecy protects you, but wouldn’t you sleep better at night knowing that your assets are protected by not just bank secrecy, but a proper, legal, structure that won’t get you into hot water if your secrets are somehow revealed.

Individuals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, are surprisingly poor on paper.  They use sophisticated techniques to separate themselves from their assets, while retaining all the benefits of ownership.  We have taken the same sophisticated strategies and adapted them to be affordable for those wishing to protect their assets properly. 

When it is all said and done, every asset protection package comes down to ownership. Generally people are looking for a way to protect assets, by disassociating the assets from themselves.  Lawsuits and other attacks come against a person, or company, not the assets themselves.  An attack on you should not result in an attack on your assets. 

The only way to make this possible is to legally separate you from your assets, yet leave you in complete control of the assets.

Here are some facts about the legal climate today:

Over 19 million lawsuits are filed in the U.S. each year. We (USA) have 5% of the world’s population and 80% of the world’s lawyers. Ninety percent of all lawsuits in the world happen right here in the U.S. and it’s getting worse. According to the American Bar Association, there are close to 700,000 lawyers in practice at present. That’s one lawyer for every 400 men, women and children! So if you own property, a business, own investment properties or practice a profession you have a one in three chance of being named in a lawsuit THIS YEAR!

What is the best way to achieve asset protection? It can be summed up in three words: Don’t Own Anything!

“Control everything, own nothing.”  — John D. Rockefeller

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