We can hope nothing comes of it. It might be just the media having a slow day. But gun owners (and anybody who cares about freedom) should be aware: there’s apparently a campaign to draft Michael Bloomberg as the Dem candidate for president.
(Pretty ironic in light of yesterday’s blog about the other man who fancies himself to be something like our first Jewish president.)
Of course, aside from no-hoper Jim Webb, every Dem in the race is an anti-gunner to one degree or another. But Bloomberg? Forget Judaism. Gun control — and people control — is his real religion. Uber authoritarian! And given that he’s probably a more effective executive than the whole scurvy Dem field, he’d be a truly terrifying presidential prospect.
The draft-Bloomberg plan is supposedly being pushed by Wall Streeters. So it’s potentially backed by big money but might not have either popular support or Bloomberg’s cooperation.
This week marks the 73rd anniversary of the death of one of the most evil men who ever lived. He was also the only high Nazi official ever assassinated.
He had an iron fist, too. Immediately after being installed as “protector” of two eastern European regions, he ordered 400 people slaughtered just so he could enjoy some quiet space. Four hundred was nothing to him, though. “Disappearing” political opponents was one of his jobs. He was the architect of Krystallnacht and a planner of the Holocaust. He chaired the infamous Wannsee Conference.
British-trained Czech and Slovak assassins hit him on May 27, 1942. It took him eight well-deserved days of misery to die.
Of course, the Nazis retaliated. First there was Lidice. Then Operation Reinhard, the code name for the truly final part of the Final Solution. (That would have happened anyhow; but it was named in grotesque “honor” of Heydrich.)
One of the favorite libertarian mental games is “would you go back in time and assassinate Hitler if you knew it would save millions of lives and prevent a war?” Of course even if you could travel backwards, you couldn’t know what the outcome would be. With Heydrich, we do know the outcome. At least we know the outcome of assassinating him after he had grown to full monsterhood and woven himself deep within the deadly fabric of Nazi officialdom.
There’s a man who should have been strangled in his cradle. Or if not that, been given the death penalty by his first intended victim.
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ETA: Be sure to watch the video Y.B. posted below! It brings the brave story of the resisters to life.
A certain notoriously compromising gun-rights activist has begun what is billed as a brilliant new campaign to combat Michael Bloomberg, Obama, Hillary, et al. As far as we can tell, the campaign consists entirely of scare tactics to get other people to send him money.
Now, we at TZP are most certainly not opposed to receiving donations or memberships. We’re grateful for your contributions and we promise to put them to good use for freedom and gun rights (with emphasis, as always, on lifesaving, holocaust-preventing civil rights). Being funded is most definitely a good start!
However, we fail to see how “send us money” could ever be considered “the most important action you can take to protect your right to keep and bear arms.” Or how it could be construed, by itself, as being a powerful campaign against BloombergObamClintonian evil.
I hate to be cynical (and what follows is just my own personal view), but doesn’t it seem as if something more that “you give, we take” is required for a real campaign against gun grabbers?
This week is the 55th anniversary of the capture of Adolf Eichmann. It’s a story worthy of a Hollywood thriller.
Many people know its outlines. But did you know that after the war but before the Mossad decided to capture Eichmann alive and put him up for trial, there was an armed Jewish group called The Avengers that handled Nazis more directily?
At first they handed over the SS men to the Allied authorities, but many of the SS men “escaped in the chaos that followed the war or were released.” At one point the Russians released two Nazi Germans who had been turned over to them by the Jews. The Germans walked out into the street, laughing at their release. But not for long. The Avengers “cut the men down with a burst of sub-machine gunfire.”
From then on the Avengers simply tracked down and killed former Nazis. Perhaps 1000 Nazis were tracked down in this way after the war.
It seems that, following the war, allies had a habit of letting Nazis escape — not surprising when you consider how much some high-ups among the allies despised Jews.
It was also revealed a few years back that the West German government knew where Eichmann was hiding nearly a decade before the Israelis dragged him from Argentina.
Did the Israelis violate international law in conducting their unauthorized arrest of Eichmann? No doubt they violated many laws. But the keepers of the laws were busy either protecting or ignoring Eichmann — who (after the Nuremburg trials) was the only still-living senior official responsible for the Holocaust.
Eichmann was hardly the bland, colorless bureaucrat some have portrayed him as being. He was the chief administrator of genocide and a dedicated Nazi who continued to dream of setting up a new Third Reich in South America. His bureaucratic apparatus made mass murder possible. His lies persuaded hopeful Jews to believe they were merely being “relocated to the east” instead of being relocated to misery and death. His methods made mass murder go smoothly, with least resistance from the victims.
Before his trial, a lot of politicians and thinkers believed the best course was just to forget the Holocaust. Stop talking about it. Let it fade into history as quickly as possible. The trial of Adolf Eichmann ended all that and started an examination of the process of state-perpetrated evil that continues to this day — more than half a century after his capture.
April 19th is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
For those that do not understand what Yom HaShoah and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising has to do with guns, look at all the hands in the photos. When there are hands in the air reaching skyward, you will see guns in the hands of those surrounding them. Guns are the defense against tyranny. For “Never Again” to be more than a slogan you need to be able to ensure that it isn’t by having the means to stop the attack.
At the memorial service I attended today the final speaker talked about something a holocaust survivor had implored him to do. To act, to scream, to talk to people, but no matter what, not to do nothing. To do nothing, to be frozen in inaction was to allow them (nazis) to succeed.
The Warsaw Ghetto Memorial at the JCC.
For the flame of liberty to continue to burn, there must be those willing to speak out against evil. There must be those willing to give their time, talent and treasure and pledge their sacred honor. Yes, that phrase comes from the American Revolution. The Battle at Lexington and Concord also occurred on April 19th. But if we do not show up and suit up in the battle for freedom, the flame of liberty becomes the Shoah, the holocaust, as well as the flames that devoured the Warsaw Ghetto, the other Ghettos throughout Europe and the death camps.
What do Yom HaShoah and the Warsaw Ghetto have to do with guns. Everything! The fearful cost of a disarmed people.
What happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans fled twice from the ghetto. One of our companies held its position for forty minutes, while the other one lasted – upwards of six hours… I cannot describe to you the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a handful will survive. All the rest will succumb, sooner or later. Their fate has been sealed. In almost all of the bunkers in which our friends are hiding one cannot even light a candle at night, for lack of air. Goodbye my friend. Perhaps we will see each other again. The main thing is this: My life’s dream has become a reality. I have seen the Jewish defense of the ghetto in all its strength and glory.
23 [21] April 1943 Mordechai Anielewicz
There is no need to ask “Why does this happen”. Nor is there a need to ask “How can something like this happen.” It’s a pattern, we know how.
One of our readers gave a link to a documentary, it is excellent and this is the longer version of it.
From Yad Vashem’s website, interviews with Fighters who survived the Warsaw Ghetto. What is the end result of Universal Background Checks and other “common sense” gun control? Listen, the survivors will tell you.
Tomorrow is Yom HaShoah. It is the Holocaust Remembrance day. In my area the memorial service will be Sunday. I intend to go. I can do nothing but go. It is my personal feeling, just mine, this is only my opinion, that for me to forget what happened, to allow the memory to become comfortably cushioned in the soft cotton of foggy faded distant memory is folly and disrespectful.
Folly because those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. I’ve learned some pretty painful long term physical lessons working with my horses. Weather changes bring about certain reminders, very clearly. Care to place a wager on me forgetting how I got them and what needs to be done to prevent a repeat performance? I don’t forget.
Disrespectful because the nazis* goal was to erase Judaism from the earth, to blot out all the names of the victims, to resign them to the faded pages of distant memory. As long as I have breath and am able, I will not be part of that. I will be there, I will pay my respects and I will try to keep their memory and their fate plain. The horrible cost of trusting and disarmed people.
No, I do not mean all of them, but too many. hitler* was elected after all. Not all those that died were Jews either. Estimates are six million Jews died, and five million others made up of groups of gypsies, Poles, Political dissenters, mentally and physically disabled, homosexuals and communists. I’m guessing some of those that died and their family members voted for hitler. Someone pointed out to me last year basically, the Holocaust wiped out the population of Israel. Israel’s Jewish population in 2014 was 6,218,000. The total population was 8,296,000.
Last year I was in Israel during Yom HaShoah. I went with my girlfriend that I stayed with to Ben Gurion University for the memorial service. Since she worked at BGU (אבג) getting in was not a problem. The courtyard where the ceremony was held was packed and people were standing in the windows of surrounding buildings to see the ceremony. We got there early and so sat in the chairs in the courtyard. One thing we noticed, of all the Arab and muslim students that attend there, none that we could see attended the services. It was a profoundly moving services. I didn’t understand a lot of it, it was all in Hebrew of course, and I would only catch words from time to time. But somethings go beyond words. They are universal. One was a dance that was performed.
The dancers were dressed in either white or black, and it was very very clear what the dance was about as the dancers dressed in black appeared to flog, beat and kill the dancers dressed in white. At one point during the dance one of the dancers dressed in white quietly slipped off the stage and disappeared behind a column. When she came back out in a bit it appeared she was being comforted by a staff member. She was unable to finish the dance. The dance finished with the dancers gathered around a pile of their shoes they had all taken off and placed in a corner as they came onto the elevated dance stage. Yeah, like that.
Shoes
It was very emotional. I can speculate on what those around me felt. I know what I felt, and I suspect it might be different than the majority of those around me.
Following that was the portion where Holocaust survivors or family members came up and read something. I apologize, but my Hebrew just wasn’t/isn’t good enough to recount the stories. But at the end each of the six people went over and lit a candle. Each candle represented a million people. As they read their speeches you could hear something in the background. At first I thought it was suppose to be the sound of muted rifle fire. But then with each person it seemed to be a bit louder and more clear. Not rifle fire. Trains. The sound of trains on the tracks. Damn.
The Train, display at Yad Vashem
I was already angry from my visit to Yad Vashem just a few days before when I had been livid about the miniscule display of “Resistance during the Holocaust”. It was a miniscule display for more than one reason, but what was going through my mind was that the elected nazi government used all branches of government to target a group of people. And then they used already on the books common sense gun laws like universal background checks to more easily eliminate them.
Flame at Ben Gurion University
An article recently appeared that brought to light that among those who tried to help rescue the Jews, were other Jews. They feel that the concept of Jews saving themselves has been muted or lost. The article stated
Part of the mission of the Jewish Rescuers Citation is to re-instill the idea that Jews are not only capable, but prone to be hardened heroes.
The article raises some very interesting ideas. Even if you don’t read the linked article, you might want to check Yad Vashem for a short list and photos of nine people who served in the Resistance, many of them at the greatest cost to save lives. Their names and their lives deserve to be remembered. Their price was large, perhaps you can spare a couple minutes to meet them?
For people to live in freedom, freedom from slavery, from poverty, from annihilation, the first thing we need to do is to quit committing suicide.
By that I mean there is ONE JEWISH state, in all of the world, there is ONE. Look at your elected officials attitudes towards that one state and you will have an idea of their attitudes towards your group.
Look at remarks made towards your group, are they accurate and fair? I’m thinking of the last two years worth of comments at the annual prayer breakfast here.
Are branches of the government targeting certain groups of political dissenters?
Do you put money into the pockets of people that urge you to become disarmed and vulnerable to any of the above? Harry Weinstein, Babs Streisand, Tim McGraw or any of the many other anti-gun entertainers that will then use their bully pulpit to disarm you?
Saddle pads and skirts folks. Check your patterns
There is a stone in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations, it is to ALL, not Jewish, or non-Jewish, but ALL.
To Those, located in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem
Please G-d, may we need no more of them. The cost is far too dear.
* Some things and some people do not deserve capital letters. Not a typo.
This weekend, the crack reporting team of Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea (the bloggers who broke the Fast & Furious scandal) revealed another scandal-to-be. Or perhaps we should say “scandal that should be” since chances are this one will get swept under the rug, its significance ignored.
They’re reporting that the NRA made a deal to save the ATF’s bacon. Mike writes:
Sipsey Street Irregulars can now confirm the broad outlines of a story first disclosed two days ago by National Gun Rights Examiner columnist David Codrea. Last week, a secret deal involving the National Rifle Association lobbying arm and brokered by politicians of both national political parties was struck in Washington DC that would save the ATF from the political and legal consequences of its own regulatory errors. In the process, this deal would broaden the language of the 1968 Gun Control Act regarding “sporting purposes” and allow ATF to extract itself from the potentially catastrophic political damage of enforcing its arbitrary ruling that makes every owner of a pistol grip 12 Gauge shotgun like the Mossberg Cruiser a felon in possession of a “destructive device” subject to the penalties of the National Firearms Act of 1934 — currently up to 10 years in federal prison and a quarter million dollar fine. …
As explained by sources here and in the nation’s capitol, the outlines of what one called “this cynical deal with the Devil” are as follows:
1. The ATF will be let off the hook by broadening the “sporting purposes” language and legislatively negating their own determination that millions of heretofore legal pistol-grip shotguns produced over the past decades by companies like Mossberg are “destructive devices.”
2. The NRA will get to claim credit for, as one source said, “riding in out of the storm on a white horse and claiming to have saved millions of firearm owners from federal prison, even though,” he added, “everybody in the room with an IQ above room temperature understands that politically and legally there is no (expletive deleted) way that ATF can enforce this ruling on anybody. They can’t and they won’t . . so” he concluded, “the NRA will claim to have saved their members from a boogeyman that never really existed.”
3. In return for allowing NRA to claim the credit, the Democrats demanded another ammunition import ban on “specialty ammunition,” to include tracers. Some sources agreed that this last “gimme” was a “throwaway,” in the words of one. “Look, their M.O. is to always demand more than they know they can get in to get the thing they really value. They’d like to get it but what they really covet is knocking a bigger hole in the Constitution by (widening the ‘sporting purposes’ language) . . . this deal will give them one big enough to drive Diane Feinstein’s limousine through.”
More at the link. It will be interesting to learn the details, including which politicians were involved in the deal. But in short, the ATF has (once again) inflicted damage on itself through its own incompetence and arbitrary rulemaking — and the National Rifle Association has stepped in to save that most despised anti-gun arm of the fedgov from itself. The deal has a price, which gun owners will pay in the long run.
Now of course news of yet another NRA sellout would hardly be news to anybody who’s been watching. (UPDATE: So far, after days of refusing to comment, the NRA’s Chris Cox denies everything, which may mean that the backroom deal has fallen apart.) That’s not my point.
I’m just here to observe that any organization that truly represented gun owners would never do anything to make the ATF look better or have a greater chance of survival. The ATF is the enemy of gun owners, always has been, and always will be. Making it “better” does us no favors.
Also, this reported backroom “fix” revolves around the obscene “sporting purposes” rule that that the ATF has used as one of its major tools against gun owners for decades and will continue to use as long as it can get away with it. And you remember where the “sporting purposes” rule came from, right?
Yeah. It came from Nazi law. It came via the Gun Control Act of 1968. Prior to 1968, no such thing as a “sporting purposes” test had appeared in U.S. federal law. “Sporting purposes” was imported along with much of the rest of the GCA by Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-CT) via a 1938 Nazi gun law that he brought with him after his experience as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. Aaron Zelman and Richard Stevens proved this conclusively when they laid out the text of the two laws side-by-side in Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny.
The original (now late, lamented) Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership revealed the Nazi origins of GCA ’68 to the world. The texts are there for anyone to see. Why do so many “pro-gun” mainstreamers choose not to see them?
Any organization that claims to be pro-gun should want GCA ’68 gone. Not “improved.” Not “interpreted in a more favorable way.” Certainly not “broadened.” Any organization that claims to be pro-gun should also want the ATF thrown into the dustbin of history. Not rescued from itself. Not made more efficient or more popular.
The old JPFO, Aaron Zelman’s JPFO, was vocal in wanting both these obscenities banished, vanished, booted, and gone forever. Our brand new Zelman Partisans continues the tradition. We advocate and agitate for the principles on which Aaron based his mission. We’re a small voice — now. But we speak for the principles of individual rights. And we always will.
Banish, vanish, boot the ATF! In the meantime, go ahead and let it shoot itself in the foot with its long history of idiotic, unfair, catastrophic regulations. Let the entire bogus “sporting purposes” rule go … well, where it belongs. Don’t merely make obscene rulings on an obscene rule a little more favorable to us peasants in exchange for dirty political favors. Freedom isn’t a sport. Nor is it something to be compromised away in backroom political deals.
I’m posting this for our TZP colleague, Ilana. Over at WND.com, she writes about freedom of association in her own unique way:
The individual living in America as it was meant to be is free to run his business as he wishes, associate with those he likes, dissociate from those he dislikes or disapproves; hire, fire, rent to or evict from, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will.
This hypothetical free man is at liberty to bruise as many feelings as he likes, so long as his mitts stop at the next man’s face. So long as he harms nobody’s person or property, our mythic man may live as he wishes to live.
Americans have been propagandized for so long; they no longer grasp the basic building blocks of liberty. A crude reductio ad absurdum should help:
A retail store selling Nazi memorabilia opens its doors in my neighborhood. I enter in search of the yellow Star of David Jews were forced to wear during the Third Reich. The proprietor, decked out in Nazi insignia and regalia, says, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve Jews.” “Don’t be like that,” I say. “Where else can I find a pair of clip-on swastika earrings?” The Nazi sympathizer is polite but persistent: “Ma’am, I mean no disrespect, but back in the Old Country, Jews murdered my great grandfather’s cousin and used his blood in the leavening of the Passover matzah.” “Yeah,” I reply. “I’m familiar with that blood libel. I assure you my own mother’s matzo balls were free of the blood of brats, gentile or Jewish. No matter. I can see where you’re coming from. I’m sorry for your loss. Good luck.”
We just got word yesterday that New Jersey governor Chris Christie has finally signed a pardon for Shaneen Allen, who was arrested in October 2013 for carrying her legally-owned pistol from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
All we have to say is, “what took him so long?”
Allen says she wasn’t aware that her legally-purchased, legally-concealed firearm was not legal to carry in New Jersey. During a routine traffic stop, she dutifully informed the officer that she had what she thought was a legally-carried pistol in her car.
She was then arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and hollow-point bullets which were in the gun – a second-degree felony in New Jersey, which holds a minimum sentence of three-years in prison.
Make no mistake. This young, single mother was punished for being honest, and doing what she felt was the right thing. “The judge tried to tell me that telling the truth messed me up, my life up and the cop said the same thing. Me opening my mouth and speaking out he said I’m one out of ten people that spoke up and was honest and that got me in trouble.”
Initially, the prosecutor in the case was going to throw the book at this young lady. Then – after a considerable amount of blowback, which included a comparison to the slap on the wrist received by NFL’s Ray Rice for cold-cocking his now-wife in an elevator in Atlantic City – the prosecutor decided to revisit his decision.
Through all of this Christie stayed silent. It’s well known the porcine tyrant supports the state’s absurd gun control laws, and now that he’s thinking about advancing his political career and implanting his corpulent fourth point of contact in the White House, it sure wouldn’t look good for him to stand idly by while the appointed prosecutorial swine raked a woman over the coals for a victimless crime.
Good for Ms. Allen! I’m glad she was cleared of both the gun possession charge and the related ammunition charge.
At the same time, that cynical part of me wants to flip Christie that international body language sign that tells him what I really think of this opportunistic move! He’s responsible for what I’m fairly sure was a year and a half of Allen’s life spent stressing over whether or not she would go to prison, whether or not she would wind up with a criminal record, whether or not she would be forever branded as a felon and have her life ruined!
He could have done this a long time ago, but hey… aren’t elections coming up soon?
Quite a few TZP posts since the first of the year have looked at bigotry against Jews. It’s dangerous. It’s growing. And unfortunately it’s no surprise.
But there’s one good thing about hatred of Jews: decent, educated human beings in the Western world know how wrong and deadly it is.
There are other kinds of bigotry, on the other hand, that are becoming acceptable. Worse, they’re becoming especially acceptable to the very people who ought to know better: young, well-educated Americans.
Take, for example, Ms Andrea Grimes. Earlier this month this lefty ‘zine editor and prolific social media user advocated taking firearms away from all white men.
Her long-term goal is to take away everybody’s guns (I invite you, Ms Grimes, to come to my house and try it). But for now, just white males.
She envisions all the white guys weeping as they line up to turn in their weapons. (Apparently a desire to make men cry is somewhat of a meme among feminists. And apparently Ms Grimes has no freakin’ clue as to who’d end up crying — and bleeding — in the future she envisions.)
Unfortunately, she’s not just part of some uninfluential fringe. Everywhere on the left, bigotry against some group or another is being not only excused but justified. The respected “progressive” journal, The Daily Kos is one of many that has twisted reality to “prove” that only whites can be racist. A prominent Georgetown University professor teaches the same bilge
In this thinking (if I may call it thinking at all), if a black or Hispanic or Asian person hates whites, it’s somehow okay. Or at least not as bad. (Never mind that every form of racial hatred can be deadly.) The idea is that only powerful people can be racist, and somehow all whites (even blue-collar bottom-of-the-heapers) are powerful, while all chosen minorities (even professors, lawyers, lobbyists, and journalists) are powerless. Basically, the whole notion boils down to “if any designated minority has hateful thoughts, white people, especially white males, caused it.”
Of course, this very broad brush of bigotry against white people or white males also encompasses most Jewish people and most Jewish males. But the real problem isn’t which group it’s “okay” to hate and who is included in the target group.
The problem is the mainstreaming of bigotry — and more scarily, the mainstreaming of bigotry in influential media and in the academic world.
People are so willfully short-sighted! When they want to smear a particular group — whether it be blacks or males or Jews or women or redheads or whatever — they choose not to see that the very act of hating people just because they belong to some group by birth or culture is wrong. It’s wrong no matter what group you choose to revile.
Justifying your own bigotry on the grounds that someone else was bigoted first just perpetuates the vicious cycle. And educated people should know this.
Once you’ve said “group hatred is okay” you’ve declared on principle that bigotry is acceptable. That discrimination is okay.* That depriving entire classes of people of their rights is just fine. You have, in short, opened the gates of hell — and you’d better not be surprised at what comes pouring through.
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* This was really a terrible word choice on my part and has led some readers to believe that I’m against freedom of association. For the record, it’s obvious to me that in a free society individuals and individual businesses have every right to discriminate in any way they wish and others have a right to respond. I’m upset that this one ill-written, ill-thought sentence appears to have demolished the real points I was attempting to make in this post.
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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