NB: This is related to a posting by Steven DenBeste.
Faith Fippinger: victim of American repression of dissent? Hardly. But they're threatening her with a million dollar fine and 12 years in jail, and the loss of her house and pension! Oh no they're not.
While the 21 September article talks only of "up to a million dollars and up to 12 years in jail" it is not telling the whole truth. You see, on 11 August the BBC informed us that "A retired US teacher [Faith Fippinger] who served as a human shield in Iraq has been told she faces fines of $10,000"
So the penalty for travelling to Iraq in breach of the sanctions is a $10,000 fine, with no mention of jail. So where does this "$1M and 12 years" come from? Well, if she refuses to pay the fine then penalties kick in for not paying the fine (as tends to happen with non-payment of fines), which is why she was also sent a "warning that if she did not pay the amount, she faced up to 12 years' imprisonment or a lengthier legal battle that could run to over $1m in costs." The 12yrs and $1M is for non-payment of the fine, not for going to Iraq.
In fact it isn't even that. Reading it again it says "12yrs jail or a legal battle costing up to $1M". The $1M isn't a fine at all - it's the likely maximum cost of the legal fees to defend herself from going to jail.
And quite how a $10,000 fine would result in her losing her house and her pension is not explained: the pension is paid according to a contract between her and the pension company - they can't take that away from her. And it sounds like she owns a house, so it would be trivial for her to borrow $10,000 secured against the house. At her age the loan company would probably be quite happy to waive monthly repayments and instead settle for some arrangement where they take a cut of the value of the house when it is sold after her death: this sort of thing happens fairly routinely with what are called "equity release schemes" in the UK - I don't know whether similar products are available in the US.
So she needn't go to jail, she needn't lose her house and she won't lose her pension and the penalty for travelling to Iraq is $10,000 instead of 12 yrs in jail and a million dollars. But apart from that the story's pretty accurate.