This excerpt from Nicholas Sarkozy’s victory speech may be of special interest to VDARE.COM readers:

The Mediterranean and Africa

I want to issue a call to all the people of the Mediterranean to tell them that it is in the Mediterranean that everything is going to be played out, that we have to overcome all kinds of hatred to pave the way for a great dream of peace and a great dream of civilization. I want to tell them that the time has come to build together a Mediterranean union that will form a link between Europe and Africa.

What was done for the union of Europe 60 years ago, we are going to do today for the union of the Mediterranean.

I want to issue a call to all Africans, a brotherly call, to tell Africa that we want to help it, to help Africa to vanquish illness, to vanquish famine, to vanquish poverty, to live in peace. I want to tell them that we are going to work together on decisions concerning a policy of controlled immigration and a policy of ambitious development.

To put it in context, here is an earlier statement of Sarkozy:

“I think that the French people expect a new France (…) a France where the expression ‘ethnic Frenchman’ will no longer exist.”

I suspect the Le Pen supporters essential to Sarkozy’s victory aren’t going to be very happy with Sarkozy for very long. I’m sympathetic to the idea of African development–but there is a lot of investment in human capital, and technical innovations, needed to make that idea at all practical. I question whether Sarkozy has the vision to pull this off–or come even close.

From Instapundit.com:

SO i SEE THIS HEADLINE and it reads “Rep. Poe Quotes Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard On House Floor.”

Big deal, I think: Everybody quotes Robert Byrd eventually. Then I find out it’s about quoting Nathan Bedford Forrest. Well, he knew more about military matters than Byrd, anyway. The whole stink is one of the most contrived in recent memory, which is saying a lot. Come on, guys. You can come up with better cheap shots than that.

Of course, what Representative Poe was saying was “Fustest with mostest,” still a good maxim for winning battles. although many contemporary accounts have him saying “Get there first with the most men.”

But if you ask me, one of the most contrived stinks in recent memory is when the former Senate Majority leader made a joke at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, saying

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”

This is a joke that could have been made at a 100th birthday party for Eugene McCarthy, Pat Paulsen, or George McGovern. (McGovern might still get there, and if anyone says that, I’ll try not to bring up the Vietnam war.) All the fuss being made by the “Righteous Right” simply sabotaged a Republican leader for offending neoconservative and liberal sensibilities. Occasionally you can see them appealing to the Democrats to stab one of their own people in the back in return, which they somehow decline to do.

That was the most contrived stink in recent memory, and Glenn Reynolds was right there piling on. And that’s saying a Lott.

Author Mary Grabar was the daughter of traditional Eastern European immigrants who believed in repressing females as a matter of course. But she was able to leave that constraint behind and grow into a free individual because she attended an American school and was exposed to books that respected women and girls. As a result, she is a big supporter of the civic education around US values that schools used to accomplish, back before political correctness was discovered and multiculturalism became the paradigm.

In this piece, she notes with alarm the quiet invasion of misogynous Muslims into her community. She sees a little girl in a burqa, and fears that today’s classroom will not provide that child with the liberation that schools of Grabar’s time allowed.

One afternoon, deep in the poetic reverie the lake and trees and birds inspire, I came across a sight spooky against this natural sunny backdrop: a woman completely swathed in black with only slits for her eyes. The incongruous sight of women, peering out of slits of cloth, in full Islamic regalia, behind the wheels of minivans or paying for goat meat at the Publix is no longer that unusual in my neighborhood, though it still takes me aback. But here on a sunny afternoon, amidst ducks and geese, and gazebos and picnic tables, came this creature who looked like the Ghost of Christmas Past with two small children: the boy around four years old dressed in typical Western clothing of pants and a shirt. The girl, about age seven, wore the traditional headscarf and long dress.
[Little Girls in Headscarves, American Spectator 4/24/07]

Grabar understands that the burqa and similar garments (“a prison of black cloth”) are not about “modesty” as Islam falsely claims, but they aim to destroy individuality and inculcate servitude (“But there was the girl, already being trained by the scarf for a reclusive life of subservience”).

Below, a scene of burqa-inclusive diversitude
from 2005 on a Glasgow park bench:

Meanwhile in Denmark, an immigrant imam has opined against women’s freedom: “All Women Should Wear A Veil”

According to Mostafa Chendid of the Danish Islamic Society (Islamisk Trossamfund), not only Muslim women but other women too should wear a veil. Why? Because five up to ten percent of all men cannot control themselves when they see a woman without a veil.

Am I the only woman who thinks that welcoming millions of these seventh-century misogynous cretins via immigration is as dumb as it gets?

This press release from the Foundation For Individual Rights in Education is about a professor who is being persecuted for emailing George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day proclamation. However, it’s not that the proclamation mentioned God, although George Washington would be in a lot of trouble if he tried to make that proclamation today. No, it’s the fact that it was posted on Pat Buchanan’s website, and they felt that anything posted on Buchanan’s website must be harassment.

I’m mentioning this because there was an earlier kerfuffle three years ago, when Professor Walter Kehowski got in trouble for emailing people articles from Vdare.com. I did a column about it at the time. [ Angst in Arizona— Caused By VDARE.com?June 16, 2004] Please note that this does not mean Walter Kehowski has reoffended. It’s the Maricopa County Community College that has reoffended. Eugene Volokh had an interesting counterfactual in 2004, asking in effect, why, if professors can’t be disciplined for anti-American speech, they can be disciplined for anti-Mexican speech…by an American college.

UPDATE:

You can contact the administration here:

Rufus Glasper, Chancellor, Maricopa County Community College District: 480-731-8100; r.glasper@domail.maricopa.edu
Velvie Green, President, Glendale Community College: 623-845-3012; velvie.green@gcmail.maricopa.edu

 

Professor on Brink of Being Fired for E-Mailing George Washington’s Thanksgiving Address

May 7, 2007

FIRE Press Release

GLENDALE, Ariz., May 7, 2007—The Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) has placed a professor on forced administrative leave and has recommended that he be terminated for e-mailing a Thanksgiving message to his colleagues last November. On the day before Thanksgiving, Professor Walter Kehowski sent out the text of George Washington’s “Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789” and a link to the webpage where he’d found it—on Pat Buchanan’s web log. After several recipients complained of being offended by the e-mail, MCCCD found Kehowski guilty of violating the district’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy and technology usage standards. Kehowski then contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

 

“It simply boggles the mind that a professor could find himself facing termination simply for e-mailing the Thanksgiving address of our first president,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “This situation is an embarrassment to MCCCD and would be laughable if a professor’s most basic rights and very livelihood weren’t on the line.”

 

On November 22, 2006, tenured mathematics professor Walter Kehowski at Glendale Community College—part of the MCCCD system—sent an e-mail containing Washington’s “Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789” to all MCCCD employees using a district-wide listserv designated for “announcements.” Within weeks, five MCCCD employees filed harassment charges against Kehowski, claiming his message was “hostile” and “derogatory” because it contained a link to Buchanan’s website, where the conservative Buchanan had also posted his criticisms of immigration policies.

 

MCCCD’s Initial Assessment found on January 3, 2007 that Kehowski was guilty of violating MCCCD’s EEO policy and policies limiting e-mail usage to messages that “support education, research, scholarly communication, administration, and other MCCCD business.” These policies also prohibit “[m]ailings to large numbers of people that contain unwanted solicitations or information.” However, MCCCD employees commonly use the “announcements” listserv to send out unsolicited information. Recent e-mails sent over this very listserv include an advertisement for purchasing goats for orphans in Uganda, quotes about Women’s History Month, and a reminder about the health benefits of eating bananas. To FIRE’s knowledge, not one of the senders of these e-mails has been forced to cease teaching or threatened with dismissal.

 

On March 9, MCCCD Chancellor Rufus Glasper placed Kehowski on administrative leave and recommended to the MCCCD Governing Board that he be dismissed. Kehowski has since appealed that decision and will defend himself at a hearing before a panel of three faculty members on June 5. That panel will then make recommendations for Chancellor Glasper to present before the Governing Board.

 

FIRE wrote to Chancellor Glasper on April 25 to protest the actions against Kehowski, stressing that e-mailing a proclamation from George Washington or including a link to Pat Buchanan’s website does not constitute punishable harassment. FIRE reminded Glasper that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that for workplace expression to be considered “harassment,” it must be “severe or pervasive enough to create an objectively hostile or abusive work environment.” Sending a link to a website, which readers can either visit or simply ignore, does not fit this exacting standard. FIRE further wrote that even if the Thanksgiving e-mail was unsolicited, numerous other employees had sent unsolicited, non-work-related announcements over the same listserv. Chancellor Glasper responded with a letter on April 30, but failed to address any of FIRE’s concerns.

 

“It is dark day for free speech and common sense in Arizona. If the MCCCD believes at all in the importance of the right to free expression, or even just in basic fairness, it will undo its illiberal actions and exonerate Professor Kehowski immediately,” Lukianoff said.

Of course we have to presume that the Albanian immigrants just arrested for allegedly conspiring to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey are innocent until proved guilty. And I must say it puzzles me why would-be terrorists would engage in such a precarious plot when they can see the havoc that the two Washington snipers caused in 2003 just with an old car and a couple of rifles. (Hmm, must add Jamaican Lee Malvo to our examples of Immigrant Mass Murder Syndrome).

But, googling around to see if the MSM was using the word “immigrant” in connection with this new plot (answer: no), I found this report from 1999:

The sounds of Islamic calls to prayer echo across Fort Dix, temporary host to thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled war-ravaged Kosovo. But the U.S. Army base will soon play final taps for the refugee resettlement program that should end this month.

“I feel like I’m in a paradise,” one Kosovar explained, as she described the base that has been a haven for about 4,000 refugees

(Fort Dix speeds up relocation of Kosovo refugees, by Deborah Feydrick, CNN.com, June 6 1999)

Another case of no good deed going unpunished? How suitably symbolic of America’s immigration disaster!