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Praetorium Honoris

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Dangerously Disingenuous

"Selection" of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz-II-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland, May/June 1944, during the final phase of the Holocaust. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber.
Certain words or phrases affect the way people react. To wit:



If you say "detention center," people will say "What?" If you say "concentration camp," then, to paraphrase the fictional mayor of Amity, you've got a panic on your hands. It is unfortunate that most Americans are abysmally ignorant of history, particularly non-US history. (Though there are "scholars" these days who are destroying US history via outright lies.)

We have a problem along our southern border, anyone who does not realize that probably lives no where near that border. Or is woefully ignorant of certain facts. To wit:
8 U.S. Code § 1325. Improper entry by alien 
(a) Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection; misrepresentation and concealment of facts 
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.

(b) Improper time or place; civil penalties Any alien who is apprehended while entering (or attempting to enter) the United States at a time or place other than as designated by immigration officers shall be subject to a civil penalty of—
  • (1) at least $50 and not more than $250 for each such entry (or attempted entry); or
  • (2) twice the amount specified in paragraph (1) in the case of an alien who has been previously subject to a civil penalty under this subsection.
  • Civil penalties under this subsection are in addition to, and not in lieu of, any criminal or other civil penalties that may be imposed.
(c) Marriage fraud 
Any individual who knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or fined not more than $250,000, or both.

(d) Immigration-related entrepreneurship fraud 
Any individual who knowingly establishes a commercial enterprise for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, fined in accordance with title 18, or both. (Source)
Emphasis above is mine.

Clearly, entering the United States illegally as set forth above, does make the individual violating that law subject to imprisonment. As in other incidents of possible criminal behavior, the suspected individual may be subject to detention, that is, being held against their will until such time as discharged by the relevant authorities. For someone illegally in the United States, that discharge may be by transference to the country from which they illegally entered the United States, or it may be by transference to a Federal penitentiary. The latter, of course, is dependent on a jury trial by one's peers, it cannot be arbitrary or by the say of any one person.

Nowhere in the law cited above is an individual convicted under those circumstances noted above liable to punishment by death.

I was going to talk about the historical background of the concentration camp, but faithful reader Paweł provided an excellent synopsis in yesterday's comments., which I reproduce here for convenience -
Paweł Kasperek June 24, 2019 at 3:35 PM
"Puts on historian's hat"
Well, to put things into perspective:

1. Germans did not invent concentration camps. Brits did, during the Boer War (the final one). It worked brilliant as COIN strategy, depriving Boer commandos of the economic base of supply from the civilian population. Cost in humanitarian terms was high, but not even bordering upon genocide.

2. Germans did borrow the phrase, and initially the camps were similar in idea: a place to collect the undesirables - be it Communist, socialist, liberal, homosexual or Jehovah witnesses, of all people. And of course Jews, though those were initially quite rare inhabitants.

3. Jews in conquered Poland were initially instead cornered into Ghettos, walled and guarded city districts. At some point, probably around the start of Barbarossa, the goal turned from isolation to extermination. Mass murders followed German conquest in the East, in the form of the infamous Einsatzgruppen.

4. Eventually, Germans being Germans and industrial efficiency being their hallmark, they took this attitude to the mass murder and instituted extermination camps (which often kinda coexisted in same place as previous concentration camps). The Ghettos were systematically emptied into those, with notable event being Warsaw Ghetto uprising, where Jews did resist more as a point of honor and matter of principle than as hope of win. Polish underground gifted them some weapons of their meager stockpile, and evacuated as many as possible via sewers and gaps in the walls.

5. Meanwhile, Soviets ran their own vast concentration camps net known as GULAG. There, death toll was rather a byproduct of hard work, harsh climate and insufficient food and healthcare, rather than immediate goal. When Soviets wanted to exterminate some group they did it the old-fashioned and messy way: mass shootings (as at Katyn).

6. The Japanese did something similar with their civilian internment camps in Asia, but there it was more of a lack of resources and ineptitude in management coupled with the brutality of the soldiers that did the fatal work.

7. To complete the picture, the USA itself did something akin to the original Brit concentration camps, with relatively few fatalities, but still shameful in hindsight - to its own citizens of Japanese origin. Considering how the Nisei who managed to get into the US armed forces served with distinction, this was completely needless and counterproductive, yet perhaps understandable in an era of total war. Better safe than sorry...
 Dziękuję Paweł! (Please excuse my minor edits.)

Certain politicians, "journalists," and "scholars" are being disingenuous when they use the term "concentration camp" when referring to the detention of illegal aliens along our borders.

Dangerously so.
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up. Hosea 8:7 (KJV)



36 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. His synopsis was very nice, wasn't it?

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    2. So yes, I "borrowed" it as a basis for a post. I am so lazy sometimes!

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  2. Hey Old AFSarge;

    I have seen the concentration camps while I was stationed in Germany, it turned me from someone that was apathetic about the 2nd amendment into a believer, when the state has the power to herd people at gun point into a boxcar for extermination and the people went along because they had no means to resist and people being hopeful prayed for a miracle and usually it never happened. When I see politicians comparing the illegals coming across the borders encouraged by government policy and NGO's and they get caught and sent to a holding facility and it is called a "Concentration camp"...Really? people look to escape a camp , not cross a border to get picked up because they are fleeing whatever economic problems they have to deal with. Very good post :)

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  3. Well said Pawel. I would add that the walled Ghettos for Jews date back to beyond Shakespearean times, viz “The Merchant of Venice”.

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    1. Let us also remember the Pale of Settlement in Imperial Russia where Jews were "allowed" to live Not in all of the Pale but they were pretty much excluded from the rest of Russia, though a university degree would let them live elsewhere. The Jews have ever been ill-treated in Europe.

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    2. Good to see you around town HD..
      vx/

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  4. Good post Sarge. However for many Socialists that are more concerned with "feels" FACTS mean zip to them. For those embracing Socialism it won't end the way they believe (can't use think, once again feels) it will. Oh under section C above, Rep Omar may have some trouble there considering her two "marriages" and her filings with the IRS.

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    1. We can but hope that she has massive trouble coming her treasonous way.

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  5. Good post, but, I would argue, like H, similar camps have been around since recorded history. Just differently named. The so called political " ism's" denegrade anyone " not of the faith", they are not" humans like us", they are different, they don't believe in the same magical beings, they eat fish on Fridays, they like the sun, whatever. Is that bad? They want away from " bad" things happening. The epic of Gilgamesh, mentions the same.

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    1. That is correct, however, the term "Concentration Camp" is now hardened in most people's minds to refer specifically to the WWII German Version. That was the point I was trying to make yesterday. They get more political traction that way. "OMG Trump has Concentration Camps. He's literally Hitler!" Calling them Detention centers just doesn't ring as well. And when you've got nothing but emotion to support your position.....

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    2. Jim - True, but not with the explicit intention of murdering an entire group of people. It was planned by the Nazis, look up the Wannsee Conference.

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    3. juvat - Which is why I went with the clip from Jaws, I thought it was an excellent analogy.

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    4. It's also why I want AOC to call them "Barracuda's" which is what, figuratively, they are.

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  6. Our current holding cells are anything but a concentration camp in the extermination camp definition. BTW, The ghettos were staging areas. They were filled up and emptied at times.

    I read most of a book about the guys that rounded up the Jews in Poland and either shot them or sent them on. "Ordinary Men" is chilling. ordinary policemen (and guys too old or unfit to fight) took about 2 months to become ruthless murderers. A few opted out at first, and some quit during the first mass murders, but it was amazing how many stayed right through. And how they hardened into real killers. They were interviewed in the 60's about what they'd done.

    With the merciless mindset of the leftists: punch nazis, everyone but me is a nazi, you don't have the right to speak.... they are working their way into this same mindset. It's not a big step to think your enemies don't have a right to breathe after you convince yourself they are beyond being a human.

    The "power at all costs" games they leftists are playing is gonna end badly, for most if not all Americans. I don't know if you can put the genie back in the can.

    Ordinary Men => https://tinyurl.com/kww8lwu

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    1. We are of like mind STxAR.

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    2. juvat - Concur, most wholeheartedly!

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    3. Thanks for the link to the book. It is a hard read. I have put is second only to "A Woman of No Importance". The latter being quite interesting and should be made into a movie, if it hasn't already.

      "The heart is deceitful above all things,
      and desperately sick;
      who can understand it?" Jeremiah 17:9

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    4. I will have to read that. The role of the police in Nazi Germany is often overlooked. And I don't mean the "normal" police (Kriminalpolizei in German), they were implicated in many Nazi crimes. Often willingly.

      A shameful period for the nation which gave us Goethe and Beethoven. But most nations have a period in their history which is shameful, though not quite to the extent of Hitler's Germany.

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    5. I still haven't finished that book. Started it over a year ago. I went into it, knowing full well, I was capable of what they did. I've been mildly surprised at what I've thought of in the privacy of my own mind. Going into a read like that realizing that we, all of us, are able to be monsters is eyeopening. Made me sick, realizing all I need is the "proper" rationalization to do the same.... or worse.

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  7. Many detention centres in Germany were built before the National Socialist came to power. The NS just industrialised the process with devastating and horrific consequences.

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    1. Dachau was opened in 1933, it was intended to house political prisoners. The concentration camp system expanded after that.

      Of course Germany, like most nations, had detention centers (prisons) prior to the Nazis taking power. The death camps in Poland (Sobibor, Maideneck, Auschwitz, etc.) were built expressly to implement the "Final Solution." Their sole purpose was to murder Jews, though others perished there as well.

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  8. Having listened to what I thought were sane people but turned out to be frothing-at-the-mouth leftists, anyone who thinks the current crop of left-wing, socialistic, Che-loving moonbats don't want to round up all the 'dangerous right-wing murdering idiots' (actual quote, by the way) and Trump supporters and put them in actual concentration camps are sorely mistaken.

    From forced seizure of personal property, up to and including bank accounts and physical property-property, and of course including the pew-pew property, to sterilization, forced abortion of right-wing babies, all the way up to forced work camps and outright death camps.

    All from a supposedly sane and gentle librarian... It's like she didn't read "1984" or any history books....

    Funny, never heard the same from any of the right-wing extremist nut-jobs I knew. Those mainly centered on assassination fantasies and 'From my Cold Dead Hands' porn. All talk, action pending.

    The leftists? Not all talk, they openly want anyone to the right of Lenin rounded up and gulaged, where 'Work will make you Free' is the operative phrase. Actually listened to a bunch of normal-looking people discuss how much better 'Amerika' would be if the evil right-wingers were worked to death doing things like hand-building roads, cleaning up garbage, hand-sorting garbage into recyclables and non-recyclables, and other such wonders.

    This is from people in this country, as late as the 2016 election. Since then I've hid from people.

    And I pray reality and sensibility would return.

    As to immigration, well, gee, the illegals are criminals. Let's treat them as such. And start going after the criminals in government that are supporting this invasion.

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    1. It is frightening. Though I doubt they will see their dreams come to fruition, too many armed Americans who will fight back. Especially in "flyover country."

      But those types are enemies of freedom, no doubt.

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  9. I wear a "BLUE LIVES MATTER" rubber wristband. It honors my son's commitment to 30 years of police work and a safe retirement. I get "the look" from people here in the condo and elsewhere. No words, because they don't want to know about it and facts might destroy their safe place. Just a look and then a quick eye contact.

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    1. No, they don't want to know about it, they expect their masters to take care of them. They are not citizens, they are subjects.

      God Bless your son!

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  10. Wow, you're really delving into my area of soapboxness- Concentration camps, calling people Hitler, racist, misogynistic, etc., are all just tactics to demonize their opponents and rile up their base. They don't give a flying firetruck about them, they only care as much as their votes count. The truth shall set you free, but the truth is so rare these days, that what really is and how things really are, is almost lost. They don't actually have solutions, they just want the power.

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  11. I don't have anything to add; all of those above have written it.

    Thanks for the post
    Paul L. Quandt

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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