Going Medieval

Britishland:

Brits:  “If guns are banned, can we use swords?”
Britcops:  “No.”
Brits:  “How about crossbows, then?”
Britcops:  “We’ll get back to you on that*.”

*The Home Office has launched an eight-week consultation to see if there should be a licensing system to control the use, ownership and supply of crossbows.

Frogland:

The Principality of Monaco plans to follow in the footsteps of its surrounding French neighbours by organising a national day dedicated to the collection of weapons and ammunition that have been found or inherited by individuals.

At the end of 2022, France managed to collect more than 150,000 weapons without inflicting legal or administrative proceedings on the weapons’ former owners.

The head of the Administrative Police Division, Rémy Le Juste, addressed the topic at the Monaco Police’s well wishes for the New Year, saying “this is a major subject which deserves everyone’s attention, given the somewhat troubled international context that we are going through.”

Le Juste admitted that “It still happens that our services intervene with individuals who find themselves owners through inheritance of undeclared weapons dating from the Second World War,” and added: “We encourage, from now on, all people who find themselves, despite themselves, possessing weapons to call on our services: either to have them destroyed or to make them unfit for their use, and this, without these people being subject to criminal charges, subject of course to the agreement of the judicial authorities.”

Only knights, the King’s men and the king’s favorites may own weapons of war.  Peasants:  non.

U.S.:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

More Bastardy From California

I thought this nonsense had been declared illegal:

Several major credit card companies have decided to move forward with a plan to track purchases made at gun retailers in California, CBS News reported Monday.

American Express, Visa, and Mastercard will implement a new merchant code for firearm and ammunition retailers, allowing banks to track “suspicious” purchases to comply with a new California law.

As I’ve said before, whenever government needs a BJ, corporations have absolutely no problem falling to their knees.

Fuckers.

Cash.  Gun shows/estate sales.  Individual purchases.  (I don’t know how any of this would help CA residents, as they appear to be doomed, gun-wise.)


Update:  Seems like Idaho has the right idea, though.

More Gummint Bastardy

Oh, this is just priceless:

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.

Keeping It Anonymous

POTUS-wannabe Nikki Haley and some others have come right out and said that Internet anonymity should be banned.

I think that’s bullshit, despite the fact that I myself have eschewed Internet anonymity (for the most personal of reasons).  I think that while anonymity can breed mischief, it can also protect someone from retaliation when, for example, shining light on the inner workings of an institution.

Whistle-blowers in large institutions (especially government and large corporations) would almost certainly be silenced because of (justified) fears that they’d lose their job by so doing — even if they were exposing extreme malfeasance or negligence.  That cannot be a good thing.

Of course, anonymity affords trolls and other such excrescences the ability to say awful things — such as defamation or character assassination — not to mention unacceptable utterances such as… racism?

Oh yeah, and that’s the problem.  Because the minute you say “You can say this and not that”, there’s a little question of who decides the parameters of accepted speech.

We have a First Amendment that addresses that issue, I believe, and it was thoroughly covered in the Anti-Federalist by — ho! — the anonymous “Brutus”.

There is a vulnerability in that freedom, of course, just as there’s vulnerability in all our social and political freedoms.  But confining ourselves to speech for a moment, we know the old adage that a lie travels round the world before the truth can get out of bed, and anonymity is the prime facilitator thereof.

Online commenter “Fred_The_Wise” can post on Xwitter that he has proof that Bill Clinton is a serial molester of underage girls, and even Clinton’s feral lawyers would have a problem stopping that “untruth” from spreading and “contaminating” Clinton’s good name.  “Kim du Toit” can do no such thing, of course, unless he has the actual proof that Bill Clinton is such a pervert.

The problem, as we all know, is that “Fred_The_Wise”, even if he has actual proof of said molestation, is not going to be the next “suicide” at the hands of the Clinton “Hit Squad” because nobody knows who he is;  whereas “Kim du Toit” would have to be extremely careful of slippery soap in the shower and random nooses hanging from trees, if you get my drift.

That “Fred_The_Wise” might just be indulging in a little gratuitous character assassination is just a malevolent by-product of the freedom of speech.

Which is terrible, but unfortunately for goons like Nikki Haley, they’re just going to have to live with it, as we all have to do.

“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.