A confession of a British racist







False Civil Rights  History

Ann Coulter

During his otherwise excellent commentaries on race in America, Bill O’Reilly, host of the No. 1 cable news show, claimed on Tuesday night that the one person who tried to help African-Americans more than any other was … Robert F. Kennedy!

No one laughed. I guess that’s what they’re teaching these days at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. (I can’t wait to hear how Ted Kennedy helped eradicate drunk driving!)

According to O’Reilly’s Bizarro-World history, Bobby Kennedy was “the guy who was really concerned about African-Americans” and “who really DID SOMETHING. … He went in with the federal government and he cleaned out the rat’s nest that was abusing African-Americans in the South.”

Although this myth has been polished to perfection by the Kennedy PR machine (requiring all Kennedy stories to illustrate either courage or adorableness), it is simply a fact that helping blacks was not the Democrats’ priority. Even the ones who wanted to, such as Bobby and John Kennedy, couldn’t risk upsetting the segregationists, more than 90 percent of whom were Democratic.

The job of actually enforcing civil rights and desegregating Southern schools fell to Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

Five years after Eisenhower had shown the Democrats how its done by sending federal troops to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., President Kennedy and brother Bobby still dragged their feet in helping James Meredith enter the University of Mississippi.

On Feb. 7, 1961, Meredith wrote a beautiful letter to the Department of Justice, describing his inability to enroll at the University of Mississippi, He wrote:

“Whenever I attempt to reason logically about this matter, it grieves me deeply to realize that an individual, especially an American, the citizen of a free democratic nation, has to clamor with such procedures in order to try to gain just a small amount of his civil and human rights, and even after suffering the embarrassments and personal humiliation of this procedure, there still seems little hope of success.”

The full letter is worth looking up. I would venture to guess there are not many college applicants of any race who write this well today. (You know why? Because Americans don’t read anymore. You watch cable news and fill your heads with nonsense history and false facts.)

In response to Meredith’s eloquent letter, Bobby Kennedy did nothing. And that’s how Bobby Kennedy “cleaned out the rat’s nest that was abusing African-Americans in the South”!

Remember: This was seven years after the Supreme Court had already handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education — a ruling expressly endorsed in the Republican Party platform, but not the Democratic platform, I might add.

But Democrats were in the White House, so Meredith had to take his case to the Supreme Court. Liberals were engaging in their usual massive resistance to court rulings they don’t like and neither Bobby nor John Kennedy would dare try to stop them.

You will notice that the Freedom Rides and civil rights marches all took place under Democratic presidents. It was the only way to get Democratic administrations to intervene against their fellow Democrats.

In June 1962, a federal appellate court ruled that Meredith had been denied admittance to Ole Miss because of his race and ordered the university to enroll him. (At least that’s how the two Republican judges voted; the segregationist FDR appointee dissented.) But one old segregationist on the court — who had not even sat on the case — kept issuing stays to prevent enforcement of the ruling.

Only when these illegitimate stays were appealed to the Supreme Court did Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department finally weigh in, asking Justice Hugo Black, the circuit justice, to lift the stays — nearly two years after Meredith had written to the Department of Justice asking for its help.

Needless to say, Justice Black came down on Meredith’s side in a matter of about six seconds. The full court had already decided the school segregation issue years earlier in Brown.

But the state still would not admit Meredith to Ole Miss.

With a showdown inevitable, President Kennedy, on the counsel of his trusted attorney general, Bobby Kennedy, wrote a letter to the segregationist Democrat governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett.

These were JFK’s stirring words on behalf of the constitutional rights of black Americans, redeemed with the blood of American patriots:

“White House, September 30, 1962

“To preserve our constitutional system, the Federal Government has an overriding responsibility to enforce the orders of the Federal Courts. Those courts have ordered that James Meredith be admitted now as a student at the University of Mississippi.”

So basically, his hands were tied. It reads like a letter from a Republican administration explaining why it’s forced to comply with a gay marriage ruling. (JFK’s weasel-word letter is also worth looking up.)

Yes, eventually the Kennedy brothers sent the National Guard to force the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith. It wasn’t hard to figure out what to do: Eisenhower had sent in the 101st Airborne to enforce desegregation back in 1957 against a much more tenacious segregationist (and Bill Clinton pal), Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas.

But in the rest of the South, schools remained segregated as long as Bobby Kennedy was attorney general and either JFK or LBJ was in the White House. (LBJ on the 1964 Civil Rights Act: “I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.”)

Black Americans may say hosannas to Bobby Kennedy, but they would have to wait for Richard Nixon to become president to win the promise of Brown v. Board.

Within Nixon’s first two years in the White House, black students attending segregated schools in the South declined from nearly 70 percent to 18.4 percent. There was more desegregation of American public schools in Nixon’s first term than in any historical period before or since.

It was not an accident that Nixon launched his comeback in 1966 with a column denouncing Democrats for trying to “squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.” It’s also not an accident that James Meredith was a Republican. (You’d know all this if you had read Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama, but you were busy watching TV.)

Crediting Bobby Kennedy for the great work he did on behalf of black Americans would be like calling Harry Reid the country’s greatest champion of the unborn. Sure, Reid says he’s pro-life, but he dare not act on it lest he upset the rest of his party. It was the same with Democrats and civil rights.

If you want to say something nice about Bobby Kennedy, remind everyone that he proudly worked for Sen. Joe McCarthy.

SOURCE





Was the Fort Hood gunman left unchecked because of political correctness?

Victims of mass shooting which killed 13 and injured 32 sue U.S. government over claims military failed to tackle soldiers' radicalisation

Survivors of the Fort Hood massacre are suing the U.S. government for allowing a jihadist soldier to rise through the ranks unchecked because of 'political correctness'.

Major Nidal Hasan, 42, is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder for after launching an attack at the Texas Army post in November 2009.

And on the eve of his trial, which is due to get underway on Tuesday, 148 victims and their relatives are launching a legal claim against the government for $750million (£491 million) for failing to prevent the killings from happening.

It is alleged military chiefs under the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations allowed Major Hasan to progress through the ranks despite his increasing jihad extremism because of 'political correctness'.

Reed Rubinstein, the lawyer acting for the group, told the Sunday Telegraph that Major Hasan w as awarded 'preferential treatment' because of his 'ethnicity and his religion'.

He said: 'The rules on the conduct of military officers were ignored. He was a terrible physician and had no business treating soldiers.  'Yet, because of where he came from, and how he prayed to his god, they promoted him and set him loose and ignored his open, very obvious jihadism.'

Mr Rubenstein added that the group wanted the government to meet 'its responsibilities to those harmed by its negligence' over Major Hasan.

Major Hasan doesn't deny that he carried out the November 2009 rampage at Fort Hood, one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

The attack occurred in a building where hundreds of unarmed soldiers, some about to deploy to Afghanistan, were waiting for vaccines and routine checkups.

Hasan walked inside with two handguns, climbed onto a desk and shouted 'Allahu Akbar!' - an Arabic phrase meaning 'God is great!' - then he fired, pausing only to reload.

There are dozens of witnesses who saw it happen but military law prohibits him from entering a guilty plea because authorities are seeking the death penalty.

If Hasan is convicted and sentenced to death there are likely years, if not decades, of appeals ahead. He may never make it to the death chamber at all.

Ahead of his trial, the Army psychiatrist spoke to the American media for the first time last week and said that the U.S. government is at war with Islam.

In the past, Major Nidal Hasan has only spoken via telephone with Al-Jazeera, the transcript of which is evidence in his upcoming trial.

'My complicity was on behalf of a government that openly acknowledges that it would hate for the law of Almighty Allah to be the supreme law of the land,' Hasan said in the lengthy statement released to Fox News on Saturday.  He then says in reference to a war on Islam, 'I participated in it.'

'I would like to begin by repenting to Almighty Allah and apologize to the Mujahideen, the believers, and the innocent. ... I ask for their forgiveness for participating in the illegal and immoral aggression against Muslims, their religion and their lands,' he said in the statement.

He has twice dismissed his lawyers and now plans to represent himself at trial. He's suggested he wants to argue the killings were in 'defense of others' - namely, members of the Taliban fighting Americans in Afghanistan. The trial judge, Col. Tara Osborn, has so far denied that strategy.

Thirteen officers from around the country who hold Hasan's rank or higher will serve on the jury for a trial that will likely last one month and probably longer. They must be unanimous to convict Hasan of murder and sentence him to death. Three-quarters of the panel must vote for an attempted murder conviction.

No active-duty U.S. soldier has been executed since 1961.  The last man executed in the military system was Pvt. John Bennett, hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl. Five men are on the military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but none are close to being executed.

SOURCE






How a Gypsy invasion of France sparked an explosion of crime -- leading to  revenge attacks on them

Two young tourists stroll lazily across Place Sainte-Opportune in Central Paris, using a map to navigate the quiet backstreets linking the Louvre with Notre Dame Cathedral. Halfway across the picturesque cobbles they are approached by a group of teenage boys, who appear to be the children of Roma gipsies. There are eight of them, smiling manically and blowing kisses.

The tourists, both American men in their 20s, attempt to wave the beggars politely away. But the youths refuse to leave: instead, they crowd closer. Within seconds, the two men are surrounded. Hands grab at their pockets, or reach for their rucksacks. Voices are raised and a scuffle ensues.

It takes perhaps 20 seconds for the confusion to clear. By that time, the shocked Americans have been relieved of their bags, which lie torn open on the pavement, surrounded by personal belongings. At least one camera has been stolen, along with a wallet. Mobile phones are missing. A pair of designer sunglasses lie twisted in the gutter.

Police are called, but the criminal gang is long gone. A detective shrugs apologetically as the victims dust themselves down and gather what remains of their belongings. We can safely assume that their summer holiday has been ruined.

The incident occurs at breakfast-time, at the start of another busy day in France’s capital, where the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and other famous attractions draw 16 million overseas visitors each year.

In August, when most locals are on holiday, the city centre is almost entirely given over to tourists, who form long queues outside museums and cathedrals, or sip coffee or ‘vin blanc’ on pavement terraces.

Yet as this ugly altercation last Friday suggests, a very different foreign invasion is now  threatening the bonhomie that these international tourists so enjoy.

In recent years, with the EU’s relaxation of travel restrictions across mainland Europe, hundreds of thousands of Roma gipsies, mostly from Romania and Bulgaria, have travelled west in search of a better life.

As many as half a million are estimated to be living in France, according to the European Roma Rights Centre. And many of them have chosen to take up residence in vast shanty towns that have sprung up on wasteland in the suburbs of Paris.

Each morning, a small army of women and children leave these illegal camps and catch trains into the city centre, where many spend the day trying to exploit, harass and steal from tourists.

Some sit begging by cashpoints — often with babies on their laps. Others tour the streets pretending to be deaf, dumb or otherwise disabled, and seeking donations for fictitious charities.

A few pick pockets. Others — like the group which struck in Place Sainte-Opportune — ‘swarm’ passers-by, using the ensuing confusion to brazenly steal from them.

Last month, an organised gang of gipsies upped the ante, attacking two minibuses full of Chinese visitors stuck in traffic as they travelled from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, stealing thousands of euros in cash.

Two months earlier, an immigrant ‘Fagin’ called Fehim Hamidovic was sentenced to seven years in prison for masterminding one of the biggest ever child pickpocketing rings. He was found to have sent 500 young gipsy girls onto the Paris streets each day, threatening them with beatings, cigarette burns to the face and even rape unless they stole the equivalent of £250 a day.

Now it should be stressed that these criminals represent only a small fraction of the Roma now in France, many of whom are decent, law-abiding citizens. But these high-profile cases, taken as a whole, are sparking a widespread social shift in attitudes across the country.

In short, hostility to the Roma is contributing to the re-emergence of the racist Right in France, so much so that the country’s National Front party is on the verge of taking a lead in national opinion polls.

The past fortnight has seen tensions spill over. Several violent ‘revenge attacks’ by demonstrators carrying baseball bats, iron bars and petrol bombs have been reported at Roma camps.

Meanwhile, even mainstream politicians have begun using inflammatory language to exploit widely-held public concern about immigration.

Only last month, for example, a member of parliament, Gilles Bourdouleix, made headlines after a visit to an illegal Roma encampment in the town of Cholet in Western France, where he is also Mayor.

In front of several journalists, Bourdouleix cast an eye around the squalid location before announcing that perhaps Adolf Hitler ‘did not kill enough’ Roma gipsies during the Holocaust.

The comment seemed especially chilling in light of the ugly thread of racism that runs through France’s modern political history. Untold numbers of Jews perished here during the Nazi occupation, many of them thanks to the Vichy regime and its anti-Semitic supporters.

Two decades later, during the Algerian War, scores of Arab immigrants protesting against the French authorities in Paris were killed by police officers in what became known as the 1961 massacre.

Such extreme attitudes to minorities have been a stain on the French character. Now, with the National Front gaining strength by the day, the European Union’s insistence on freedom of movement across borders means that such prejudice is again rearing its head.

To understand why the Roma have become the Far Right’s favourite whipping boys, you need only spend a few hours in central Paris. One morning this week, I saw more than a hundred gipsy gang members at work within a couple of square miles.

Small groups could be seen at every tourist spot. Some were even begging outside the city’s police headquarters, and a few attempted to stop people passing the Palais de Justice, France’s High Court.

‘They’re everywhere, they behave with impunity, and everyone — particularly visitors — has to be incredibly careful not to become one of their victims,’ said Michael Graham, a British expat living in Paris.

‘The latest scam I’ve seen is they see a tourist sitting at a café with their mobile phone out, so they go over and pop a clipboard down on the table with some message or petition on it about a disability charity.

‘When the person tells them to go away, they scoop up the clipboard and take the phone, too. It happens all the time.’

Begging is illegal in France. Yet French police seem powerless to stem the rising tide of lawlessness. They arrested 1,769 minors for street crimes in Central Paris last year, but admit that represents only a tiny proportion of the active criminals shoehorned daily into a few miles of the city.

‘Welcome to Europe’s open borders,’ an exasperated senior police officer told me this week. ‘All of these kids are ultimately members of gangs from Romania and Bulgaria. They pitch their caravans on the outskirts of town.

‘Hundreds of them are trying to steal — and they’re becoming increasingly confident in how they do it. We can barely touch the kids because they’re considered too young in the eyes of the law.’

Recent infighting in Sarkozy’s former Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, along with the failure of Hollande’s Socialists to kick-start the country’s ailing economy, has left a gap in the market for the far-right National Front to surge in popularity.

The party, which currently has two MPs in the National Assembly, was founded by the convicted racist and Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has for years vilified Muslims, backed the burka ban, and recently made headlines by describing gipsies in Nice as ‘smelly’ and ‘rash-inducing’.

Despite — or perhaps because of — his extreme language, the most recent opinion poll put the National Front on 21 per cent, equal first with both the UMP and the Socialists. That support, if mirrored at an election, would make the party — now run by Le Pen’s daughter Marine — kingmakers in negotiations for a coalition government.

Little wonder, then, that politicians from mainstream parties have begun using similarly inflammatory rhetoric to discuss immigrants.

Last month, Christian Estrosi, a UMP MP who is also the mayor of Nice, was threatened with prosecution for inciting racial hatred against the Roma by saying he ‘wanted cameras everywhere’ to monitor ‘these criminals’.

A short train ride from central Paris is the crime-ridden suburb of St Denis, home of the international sporting venue Stade de France.

Last Saturday night, a small group of gipsies who live by a canal in the shadow of the stadium, were attacked by a large group of residents from a nearby housing estate. Three were hospitalised, and one remains in intensive care.

‘We were drinking and listening to music,’ recalls Mario Marin, who lives in the camp with his wife Beatrice and three children.

‘A man pulled up on a scooter and asked us to turn the music down. It didn’t happen, and half an hour later a gang of 20 youths from the estate arrived with baseball bats and iron bars and started smashing up our cars. The police did nothing to catch the attackers. They didn’t care.’

Today, their cars and caravans remain on the street, their windows broken.

Laurent El Ghozi, spokesman for the Romeurope group which represents the interests of the gipsies in France, says there have been dozens of similar unreported attacks around Paris in recent weeks, many involving the use of petrol bombs.

A mile away from Marin’s home is a larger ‘Bidonville’, or shanty town, on a patch of wasteland between two dual carriageways. The place looks as if it might belong in the Third World. Houses are made from plywood and tarpaulin, or are tents pitched on wooden pallets. Rudimentary pit toilets are surrounded by corrugated iron walls.

Not long ago, Claude Capillon, the local UMP Member of Parliament, led a march to the site behind a banner reading ‘Expulsion Now’. He blamed its 300 residents for an upsurge in muggings and petty crime. Days after the march, a petrol bomb was lobbed into the camp.

‘The police never came,’ says a resident who gives his name as Nelson Blondel. ‘Every night, more of us have been attacked in the streets here. How many have been arrested for these crimes? None.’

Blondel looks up towards the Stade de France, looming in the background. Built for the 1998 Football World Cup, it’s supposed to be symbol of national unity.  ‘When I look at the France of today, unity is the last thing I see,’ he says.

One thing seems indisputable: there is a worrying collision of ugly forces at work here. And you don’t need to be a pessimist to believe that these violent flashpoints will only get worse as the political rhetoric escalates, and the cracks in this troubled nation grow ever wider.

SOURCE

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS,  DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

***************************