Pelot led a group of about 120 men who used small boats to slip alongside the Water Witch undetected. Their numbers gave them a healthy advantage over the ship’s crew of 65 sailors.
Taken by surprise, the Union sailors still put up a fight, engaging the Confederates in close-quarters combat with sabers and revolvers. Luther Billings, the assistant paymaster aboard the Water Witch, later estimated 40 men were killed or wounded in the raid.
The dead included Pelot, who led the assault, and Dallas Moses, a slave who was also paid a $100 monthly salary as a Confederate river pilot.
Moses piloted the lead boat in the sneak attack, and was supposed to steer the captured Water Witch back to Savannah — under the flag of the Confederate Navy."
Pvt. James Needham Alexander
Private James Needham Alexander enlisted on 1 February 1862 at the age of 28 for the War Between The States. As a soldier in Company A, 11th Regiment of NC Troops, he spent considerable time in the Lenoir County, NC area.=================================================================
North Carolina retained strong Unionist sentiments until Lincoln’s provocations at Fort Sumter resulted in open warfare. Governor John W. Ellis was well aware of Constitutional limitations of presidential authority, and knew a president could not wage war against a State – an act of treason. Read more about “A State Forced Out of the Union” at the North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial website, www.ncwbts150.com.
Part 1 of a Series
Mike Scruggs
In the last several months, three prominent European leaders—German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy—have declared that multiculturalism is a failure and that their national immigration policies must change. All three represent center-right political parties in their respective countries. This must have knocked the socks off the liberal-socialist establishment in Europe, who have been touting the moral imperative and happy clappy virtues of multiculturalism and diversity for decades.
Until recently, few European politicians, even of the center-right parties, have had the courage to speak out against what a Danish professor in 1999 bravely called a “foolish experiment.” However, the fiscal and social consequences of open-door immigration and happy clappy multiculturalism are now becoming visible to enough European voters to ring alarm bells in many European parliaments. There is also a growing realization, even on the left that, as Milton Friedman warned, you cannot have a welfare state and open-door immigration, except for a few short years before economic collapse.
On August 29, 1999, (the) Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper in Jutland (Jylland), published an article by demographics professor Poul C. Matthiessen warning of Denmark’s impending demographic crisis. This powerful analysis of the scale and future consequences of Muslim immigration to Denmark was given the newspaper’s top billing. Matthiessen said that present Danish immigration policies “would change Denmark—it would bring results that nobody seemed to want to discuss, but that would affect the country’s culture, religion, and way of life. Denmark would undergo a comprehensive transformation—and the crucial factor would be the Muslim population.” Matthiessen warned that by 2020 Denmark would be nearly 14 percent Muslim
He also predicted that as the Muslim population of Denmark increased, the Muslims would intensify demands for respect for Islamic traditions and customs. Jyllands-Posten is the same newspaper that published the Muhammad cartoons in 2005.
Matthiessen’s message hit the usual political correctness wall, and he was branded a racist and charged with arrogance and poor scholarship. Social Democrat Danish Prime Minister P. N. Rasmussen and many other Danish politicians snubbed him and dismissed his views as irrelevant. But a member of Rasmussen’s own party, Karen Jepersen, clipped the Jyllands-Posten article and saved it. Six months later she was made Interior Minister. This new post included responsibility for immigration policy. Based on Matthiessen’s research, she proposed a government commission to study the matter, especially the problem of “spouse fetching.” Spouse fetching is the widespread practice among Muslim men in Europe of importing Muslim brides from their country of origin. Jepersen’s proposal was, however, swept under the rug, and the Social Democrats refused to change course despite increased public concern and mounting evidence that Matthiessen was correct in his analysis and projections.
The Social Democrats consequently lost their parliamentary leadership in 2001, but they continued their cowardly inaction on immigration policy and were beaten again in 2005 and 2007. Prime Minister L.L. Rasmussen has led a center-right parliamentary coalition since 2001.
In 2005, Matthiessen, writing again in Jyllands-Posten, revealed that although Muslims were only four percent of the population, they received almost 40 percent of the social-welfare budget. In addition, less than half of adult non-Western immigrants in Denmark had jobs, and their crime rate was double that of native Danes. He also expressed concern that the Muslims occupied enclaves in Denmark that adhered to Muslim culture and rejected Danish culture. Moreover, he pointed out the unpleasant truth that the Muslim immigration wave impacting Denmark was the first by people who were explicitly antagonistic to Danish values and culture. He summarized: “In reality we have dome something terribly bold.”—terribly foolish.
Denmark is the first European country in recent memory to make a drastic change in its immigration policies. Immigration policies must now benefit Denmark and the Danish people. Political correctness, multiculturalism, and diversity for diversity’s sake are no longer valid considerations in immigration policy. The previous Danish immigration policies were costing taxpayers 36 billion kroner ($7 billion) per year, a large expenditure for a nation of only 5.5 million people.
The worldwide Muslim rage over the 2005 Muhammad cartoons in Jyllands-posten also revealed some things about Muslim leadership in Denmark. Danish imams act in a dual role of religious leader and community organizer. Furthermore, they do not want to accommodate to Danish values or secular democracy. They want to force Sharia (Islamic Law) on Danish Muslims and then Denmark. Their long-term goal is a European Caliphate. During the cartoon crisis, they proliferated lies and deceptions to weaken Denmark’s international reputation and promote their own.
The assimilation problem in Denmark is similar to other European countries. More than 53 percent of Danish Muslims identify almost entirely with Islam rather than Denmark. Indeed, given the huge cultural and religious differences between Muslims and Danes, especially the magnitude of Muslim immigration, it was extremely naïve to believe Muslim assimilation or Danish multiculturalism would be successful.
Norwegian author Hege Storbaug points out that one of the costs for Danes, Norwegians, and other Europeans in this massive immigration experiment is that it forces Europeans to deny their own values and even to tolerate intolerance. It is politically correct social tyranny.
"[I]n 2009, Obama took itemized deductions of $514,819, a foreign tax credit of $59,372, and a deduction for interest on his home of $52,195. He was also able to take a deduction for $49,000 he contributed to his self-employed retirement fund. If he had not taken these deductions, he would have paid taxes on an additional $675,386, which in his income bracket would have meant he owed somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 more in taxes at the top marginal tax rate of 35 percent. Furthermore, he instructed the Nobel committee to donate his entire $1.4 million Nobel Prize directly to 10 charities, thereby avoiding the necessity of declaring the money as income on which he would have owed an additional $490,000 in taxes. If the president is so appalled at the rich and their ability to hire accountants to take advantage of each and every deduction, why doesn't he simply take the standard deduction on his tax return, like most Americans?"
--columnist Linda Chavez
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"Already dead," he drawled.
There is no room for mistakes, such as trading security for sleep, in the dense woods of sector 9124 near Asheboro.
Out here, Papa Doc is known as the hardheaded chief of the guerrilla forces, the natives of the fictional country Pineland. But in reality, he is retired Sgt. Maj. Willie McLeod Jr., one of several hundred role-players who take part in Robin Sage, the final test of the Special Forces Qualification Course.
Special Forces candidates have spent an entire year going through intensive language, cultural immersion and combat training. They have spent months away from their families. But passing Robin Sage and graduating from the course means getting to wear the green beret that candidates crave.
The Soldier caught napping at his post is one of 110 Special Forces candidates who had spent two weeks tracking targets, planning recon missions and living in this unforgiving wilderness.
The lessons learned in these woods keep Special Forces Soldiers alive in the real world.
