…but we’ll let you off lightly, this time.
Category: Government Thugs
More Gummint Bastardy
The Treasury Department, on behalf of federal law enforcement after January 6, 2021, asked banks to snoop through customers’ transactions for signs of “extremism,” such as purchases of “small arms” or from gun retailers Dick’s Sporting Goods, Bass Pro Shop, or Cabela’s.
Dunno why they’d include Dick’s, which doesn’t sell any guns anymore (or shouldn’t, given their track record), but whatever. It’s Gummint, so their lists are probably way out of date. But it gets worse, by Rep Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) estimate:
According to the analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of “extremism” indicators that include “Transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets. for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,” or the purchase of books — including religious texts — and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.
“In other words, FinCEN urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression,” Jordan wrote.
Jordan said FinCEN also distributed slides prepared by one bank explaining how other banks could use MCCs to detect customers whose transactions may reflect “potential active shooters, [and] who may include dangerous International Terrorists / Domestic Terrorists / Homegrown Violent Extremists (‘Lone Wolves’).”
This, by the way, is why you should never give the government any information, if you can — they’ll just use it, and not always (or ever) to your advantage.
I shouldn’t have to remind anyone of this, but: cash purchases, individual sales, gun shows, and you know the rest, Anything to prevent the fucking Gummint from seeing what’s under your fingernails.
As for the travel part: drive, buy gas with cash, disable any tracking bullshit on your phone (Google Maps, for instance) and leave as little trace as possible.
Range time, Kim? Yes, indeed.
No Common Sense
I’ve been following this situation for a while, in a more-or-less disinterested fashion — “disinterested” because I don’t really need much more proof that the FBI as it stands is a corrupt and immoral organization that needs to be disbanded and rebuilt from the ground up minus every single senior manager.
The FBI agents who drafted a memo proposing targeting “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology admitted to relying on politically biased sources of information when drafting the memo, according to a new House report.
Here’s my thought: where is the common sense among the agents who, when told to investigate Catholics as a “radical-traditionalist” group, didn’t say to their superiors, “Look, this is really fucking stupid. Of course some Catholics are radical traditionalists; but it’s idiotic to think that these people are a danger to society comparable to, say, radical Islamists.”
I’m not talking about the rank-and-file agents, here; I’m talking about their mid-level managers who were obviously given the job by their superiors, and who have a duty to question obviously-ridiculous directives.
Or has the FBI been so thoroughly corrupted and “weaponized” to the extent that all of them truly believe in the Justice Department’s ideological pursuit of anyone who might be in disagreement with The Narrative?
And has the FBI become like the military, where one cannot question orders but simply must comply with them? (Yeah, I know, but most organizations either don’t remember that the “Nuremberg defense” was completely denied, or think that it doesn’t apply to them.)
You know, at some point it becomes obvious that people like myself (not even a Catholic) can become disenchanted with government and specific government agencies like the FBI, and therefore become de facto enemies of said agencies.
The problem is that when these agencies start acting like the Soviet NKVD or German Gestapo, of course they’re going to create enemies of people like me.
Which, frighteningly, may be the whole point of their activity: like whipping a dog until it becomes vicious, then using that very viciousness as justification for its destruction.
Bastards.
Immigration Bastardy Update
From HSLDA comes this email:
Dear Kim,
We just received news from ICE that the Romeikes are going to be given a one-year stay of deportation on Wednesday. This is excellent news! According to our friends on Capitol Hill, this outcome is the direct result of your calls, your petition signature, and your outreach to Congress on this issue. Now the reality is that until this is signed on Wednesday this is not guaranteed, but we do expect a positive outcome. We are sending our attorney, Kevin Boden, to join the Romeike family while they meet with ICE next week.
According to Kevin, “I spoke personally with the ICE officer in Knoxville, who told me we can anticipate them signing the order of supervision out for another year. And while we are very grateful for this news, we are continuing to advocate for a long-term solution for the Romeike family to allow their permanent stay in the United States.”
As Kevin said, this stay is not a permanent solution. It’s a bandage, but a very important one—and one that could not have happened without your diligent efforts on the Romeikes’ behalf.
The long-term solution is that the Romeikes need to be granted either asylum or permanent residency status. While we still have work to do, we are very grateful for this temporary reprieve. Please continue to support the Romeikes as we move forward. To do that, please go to hslda.org/Romeike.
We will update you as to the result of the Wednesday meeting. Thank you so much for your signature, calls, emails, donations, and prayers.
Sincerely,
I don’t like the fact that this is only a temporary stay of deportation. I bet that ICE and the apparatchiks who “changed” the original orders are hoping that in a year’s time we’ll all have forgotten about them and their persecution of this family. But I’m going to be following it closely.
For the back story of this saga, here are Part One and Part Two.
“Change Of Orders”
Here’s a “connect the dots” moment. I’ve mentioned this sad case before. First, courtesy of Annie Holmquist, some background:
Would you be willing to risk arrest by the government in order to choose the best education for your child?
That’s the situation the Romeike family faced a number of years ago when they lived in Bissingen, Germany. They chose to homeschool their young grade school age children even though homeschooling was illegal in Germany. The reason? Their children were bullied and scared about the violence they were facing in their local state school.
That choice resulted in a visit from police, and soon three of their children, ages six to nine, were hauled off in a police vehicle and forced to attend the official state school. Recounting the 2006 incident, father Uwe Romeike told one media outlet that he “felt very helpless,” going on to note, “My children were crying, the police were shouting.”
Faced with hefty fines, the Romeikes fled Germany for America in 2008, seeking asylum. Settling in Tennessee, the family continued homeschooling while they fought for protection from their German persecutors. In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security allowed the family to stay in the U.S. “under order of supervision and indefinite deferred action status,” according to the Homeschool Legal Defense Association.
The family—which has now grown to include two more children and two in-laws since the trauma in Germany—has continued to dwell in the U.S. for over a decade, living peacefully and homeschooling their children.
Until now.
Let the Government bastardy begin.
On Sept. 6, 2023, the Romeikes went in for their annual immigration visit and were shocked when they were told they had four weeks to get their passports in order and self-deport to Germany. “The family had no prior warning, and was offered no explanation, other than that there had been a ‘change of orders,’” a Home School Legal Defense Association media posting explained.
What could possibly have caused this “change in orders”? Let us now connect the dots, with this little statement from the Biden Cabinet Secretary of Education:
“I don’t have too much respect for people that are misbehaving in public and acting like they know what’s right for kids.”
Seriously?
Here’s the thing. Tennessee is a homeschool-friendly state — i.e. the state government has no problem with people homeschooling their kids. But: immigration is a federal issue. So if the Dept. of Education drops a little whisper in the ear of INS, the federal government can step in and fuck with people like the hapless Romeike family, essentially making Tennessee’s jurisdiction meaningless.
There is, of course, another interesting aspect to all this. Since arriving in the U.S., the Romeikes have had two more children — and according to U.S. law, the two kids are U.S. citizens (yeah, they’re “anchor babies”). So can the federal government deport U.S. citizens when in fact neither they nor any of their family have broken any American laws?
I hope the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSDLA) climbs into this with might and main — because this is precisely the kind of matter that is in their remit.
Read all of Annie’s article, because The Naked Communist is clearly fast becoming part of official U.S. government policy.
In the meantime, let us think about the proper treatment for an unelected gauleiter government official who thinks that parents don’t know what’s best for their kids, but the government does.
Just to make my own position clear on this issue: if I were being put in a similar position when homeschooling my own kids, I’d be making that difficult decision about calling in the HSDLA, or just going to the guns. My kids belong to me, not to the State, no matter what the State thinks.
Oh, and Annie: welcome back to Intellectual Takeout. You have been sorely missed.
Vileness
Well, when you see a headline over this article, you have to follow the link to see what all the fuss is about, and to ascertain for yourself the depth of the vileness:
FIVE former Met Police officers have pleaded guilty for sending a string of “grossly offensive” racist WhatsApp messages. The messages included vile jibes about Rishi Sunak, Meghan Markle and Queen Elizabeth II.
Of course, the article itself doesn’t tell us what the actual messages were — I know, it’s just a clickbait tactic, shame on me — so because I live in a country where offensive messages are (for now) not subject to official censure, here’s what they might have been:
And for the Britishland censors and scolds:
Kiss my African-American ass.