The Ruger 10/22 takedown

Via Survival

Evidence that Trayvon Martin Doubled Back

Via Occidental Dissent

[Full-size version]

Key:

A – The Clubhouse for Retreat at Twin Lakes.
B – Community mailboxes.
C – Where George Zimmerman parked his truck.
D – Brandy Green’s Townhouse, where Trayvon was staying.
E – Zimmerman stopped and completed his 911 call for approximately eighty seconds.
F – The fight and shooting took place in this area.
G – Eyewitness “John’s” townhouse.

Let’s take a look at how events unfolded during the original 911 call Zimmerman made to report Trayvon as a suspicious person.

We can match things up on the map with the 911 call pretty much step-by-step.

More @ WAGIST

Who benefits...?

Blue
VERBATIM POST

So, I'm reading this over at Brock's place and it makes me think... (scary, I know)

Why is the media keeping the Trayvon Martin case alive for so long? There has been no obvious miscarriage of justice. The media and the race baiters are keeping it alive for their own selfish reasons.

There have been no charges filed, no arrest, and no trial. There is a reason for that, at this point in time. The evidence doesn't point to any wrongdoing. Will an impartial investigation lead to charges against Zimmerman, or will it conclude that there was no crime committed under the laws of the state of Florida? Now that Holder and the DOJ are involved, can there be an impartial investigation, or will a preplanned outcome prevail?

Will there be an investigation, trial, and, if found guilty, punishment, for the major media outlets that "modified" the recordings of the 911 call to fit their need? I think it's been pretty well proven that that occurred :) It's helping keep the fire burning.

There are a lot of threats being tossed about. Idiots like Al Sharpton, JJJr., Louis Farrakhan, Maxine Waters, Spike Lee, NBPP, and Oprah Winfrey (Notice that all of these people are black millionaires. What do you suppose would happen if a white person acted and spoke as incite-fully as these folks have?) are demanding that George Zimmerman be arrested, tried, convicted, and put to death. If the law won't do it, they will. They want their pound of flesh, whether it is deserved or not, and they will do anything to get it. Of course, they won't do it themselves. They will run their mouths until someone in "their" community does it for them. The outcome is the same. They are just as guilty as the guy who pulls the trigger, tosses the brick, or wields the knife.

The escalation of the rhetoric from the black "leaders" can only lead to one outcome. The inciting of violence. I wish I could say that this falls under the Law of Unintended Consequences, but it doesn't. They know exactly what they are doing. They can safely assume that if they continue with their hateful commentary that it will lead to racial violence. Probably on a large scale. Whom will that benefit? :)

The only option they give is to arrest, try, and convict George Zimmerman. It doesn't matter whether he is guilty or not. There doesn't even need to be any further investigation. They want to dispense with all the formalities and get to the execution. The retribution. The revenge.

Are their motives altruistic? Hardly. They are all self promoters. I don't think that anyone can argue that. They are all well versed in self-promotion. It has made all of them rich and powerful. Well, perhaps not powerful, but influential. What they are doing now by demanding "justice for Trayvon" is attempting to increase their street cred. That's all. If things get ugly they will sit back and say "y'all shoulda listened". They'll wash their hands of their involvement. They are untouchable. As untouchable as the politicians and bankers who have brought this country to the brink of financial disaster. These people can do or say whatever they want, without fear of consequences. I wonder why that is?

It seems that it all comes back to racism. It benefits them to keep racism alive. It makes them rich. What else can one believe after watching and listening to these rich black people?

They don't want you to know who rounded up their black brothers and sisters in Africa and sold them to the slave traders all those years ago. They don't want you to know that soooo many more of their brothers and sisters were sold into slavery to be shipped to Europe and South America than were ever brought to this country. They'd like you to believe that slavery was unique to the United States and that white Americans caused slavery. They want you to believe that white Americans of two and three centuries ago were evil and that white Americans are still evil today. They don't want you to realize that slavery in the United States ended when the War Between The States ended, almost 150 years ago. They keep racism alive by demanding special treatment for blacks in every aspect of life because their ancestor's ancestors sold their fellow blacks into slavery. This all occured between 7 and 15 generations ago. Slavery ended in this country 7 generations ago! Wrap your mind around that. They are promoting racism and strife and are actively preventing normal human discourse amongst the people of all races in this country. We can never get to a state of racial equality in this country as long as the race baiters continue to keep racism alive. Who does this benefit? :)

They promote racism and the blame the racism that they create on "Whitey". Pretty neat trick, if you can get away with it.

Why is it that blacks who have "white" friends, blacks who live in "white" neighborhoods, and blacks who have made the effort to educate themselves and make a good life for themselves are seen as outcasts. They are seen as traitors to their race. Tell me why?

Wouldn't the world be better off if, instead of sowing the seeds of hate and racial division, the race baiters spent their time and energy teaching their followers that there is a set of behavioral rules that must be followed to survive on your own and to achieve success in this world? If the race baiters would teach their followers that everything given to you comes with a price? Personally, I don't think that the race baiters care about these things. I think they care about getting richer and more influential. I think they like the power and I think that the people that they are keeping in chains are an easy target for them.

Anyway...

What does the media gain from all of this? They get ringside seats to the big show. They get to choose whom to interview from the sidelines to get the message that they want to convey out to the people. They get to sell advertising between scenes of death and mayhem. They will make lots and lots of money. They are the whores to the political class. That's another story for another time.

What? You thought that they reported only the truth and only for the good of the people? That there is nothing in it for them other than the satisfaction of sharing the truth? That they are motivated by some altruistic ideal? Kinda like politicians?

I'm currently reading "Injustice: Exposing The Racial Agenda Of The obama Justice Department" by J. Christian Adams. Mr. Adams was an attorney in the Voting Rights section of the obama Justice Department.

Let me quote a few lines from the Introduction of this book:

"For much of his life, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. carried around something peculiar. While most people carry cash, family photos, and credit cards in their wallets, Holder revealed to a reporter in 1996 that he keeps with him an old clipping of a quote from Harlem preacher Reverend Samuel D. Proctor. Holder put the clipping in his wallet in 1971, when he was studying history at Columbia University, and kept it in wallet after wallet over the ensuing decades.

What were Proctor's words that Holder found so compelling?

Blackness is another issue entirely apart from class in America. No matter how affluent, educated and mobile (a black person) becomes, his race defines him more particularly than anything else. Black people have a common cause that requires attending to, and this cause does not allow for the rigid class separation that is the luxury of American whites. There is a sense that every black man is as far from liberation as the weakest one if his weakness is attributable to racial injustice.

When asked to explain the passage, Holder replied, "It really says that ... I am not the tall U.S. Attorney, I am not the thin United States Attorney, I am the black United States attorney. And he was saying that no matter how successful you are, there's a common cause that bonds the black United States attorney with the black criminal or the black doctor or the black homeless person."

Has anyone ever asked Holder what exactly is the "common cause" that binds the black attorney general and the black criminal? More important, what should the black attorney general do about this common cause? Should the black criminal feel empathy for the black attorney general, or more likely, do the favors flow in one direction?

Holder's explanation of Proctor's quote offers some key insights into our attorney general's worldview. First, being "more particular" than anything else, skin color limits and defines Americans-in other words, race comes first for Holder. Second, despite Americans' widespread belief in trans-racial principles such as individual liberty and equal protection, blacks are expected to show solidarity with other blacks. And third, black law enforcement officers are expected to show this solidarity with their racial compatriots, including black criminals."

You can read more of the Introduction over at Amazon.com.

And then there is barack obama who believes the Critical Race Theory teachings of his professor, the late Dr. Derrick Bell. Critical Race Theory teaches that all of the problems befalling blacks are the fault of, and attributable to, the white man. No personal responsibility, no individual accountability.


Read more on Dr. Bell and CRT here.

Here are obama's feelings on The Constitution from a 2001 NPR interview and repeated almost verbatim during a Barbara Walters interview in October of 2008:

"If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that."


Anyway... The Trayvon thing is a distraction.

You may want to stop by and wish Ken and Miss Lisa the best on the happy occasion of their marriage.

Link here.

Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?

Old, but right on target considering the latest fiasco.

Via Western Rifle Shooters Association

The race industry and its elite enablers take it as self-evident that high black incarceration rates result from discrimination. At a presidential primary debate this Martin Luther King Day, for instance, Senator Barack Obama charged that blacks and whites “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, [and] receive very different sentences . . . for the same crime.” Not to be outdone, Senator Hillary Clinton promptly denounced the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more African-Americans proportionately than whites.”

If a listener didn’t know anything about crime, such charges of disparate treatment might seem plausible. After all, in 2006, blacks were 37.5 percent of all state and federal prisoners, though they’re under 13 percent of the national population. About one in 33 black men was in prison in 2006, compared with one in 205 white men and one in 79 Hispanic men. Eleven percent of all black males between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison or jail. The dramatic rise in the prison and jail population over the last three decades—to 2.3 million people at the end of 2007 (see box)—has only amplified the racial accusations against the criminal-justice system.

More @ City Journal

The Murders That Don’t Count

Delric Miller IV died in a hail of bullets a month ago. When someone fired 37 AK-47 rounds into his Detroit home at 4:30 a.m., he was mortally wounded while dozing on the couch. He was nine months old. No one made the multicolored teething ring he got for Christmas or his toy hammer into a national symbol of random violence.

Last year, Charinez Jefferson, 17, was shot and killed on a Chicago street. “She begged the shooter not to shoot her because she was pregnant,” a pastor explained. The alleged assailant, Timothy Jones, 18, shot her in the head, chest and back after seeing her walking with a rival gang member. New York Times columnist Charles Blow did not write a column about Jefferson’s killing as a symbol of the perils of being a young black woman in America.

Last June, a stray bullet from a confrontation on a Brighton Beach, N.Y., boardwalk killed 16-year-old Tysha Jones as she sat on a bench. A 19-year-old man, out for revenge after an earlier scuffle on the boardwalk, was charged in the shooting. Tysha’s heartbroken mother was not featured on all the national TV shows.

In January, 12-year-old Kade’jah Davis was shot and killed when, allegedly, 19-year-old Joshua Brown showed up at her Detroit house to demand the return of a cellphone from Davis’ mother. When Brown didn’t get the phone, he fired shots through the front door. No one held high-profile street protests to denounce gunplay over such trifles.

Everything about the Trayvon Martin case is a matter of contention. About this, though, there should be no doubt: If Martin had been shot by a black classmate, if he had been caught in a random crossfire, if he had looked at a gang member the wrong way, his death would have been relegated to the back pages of the local newspaper. Not a cause, not even a curiosity: Just another dead young black man. Nothing to see here. Please, move on.

More @ NRO

A commie president and the Trayvon tragedy

This past weekend I was asked by my friend and Fox News commentator T.J. McCormack to visit with him on his radio show and comment on a column he’d written concerning the Trayvon Martin shooting. Pretty much anyone with a forum (whether television, radio, online publications or social media) who’s commented on this issue has taken heat either from the right or the left. In this case, it was both.

T.J.’s take on the shooting, subsequent media feeding frenzy and rash of activism was a little different than most being bandied about. It was a sincere appeal for prominent parties on both sides of the issue to unite amicably in light of the incident’s grave potential repercussions.

“Coming together” for the good of the nation would certainly hold the moral high ground, but I opined that this was probably about as likely as my becoming a volunteer at the local Obama campaign office.

More @ WND

UNC: We have standards ... double standards

You would think a university so offended over Rush Limbaugh's reference to reproductive-rights activist Sandra Fluke as a "slut" that it took steps to prevent radio stations from mentioning its sports program during the radio icon's daily program would likewise refuse to allow a speaker on campus who has said he "wished all republicans were f---ing dead" ... a speaker whose vile descriptions of conservatives make "slut" sound like a compliment ... a speaker paid big bucks to appear.

More @ WND

WHITE HOUSE INSIDER: Obama Election Team Preparing For “Healthcare Warfare” Campaign

Via The Dorkfish Express

The Ulsterman Report
VERBATIM POST

A brief heads up from a longtime D.C. political operative indicates “serious” discussions among high ranking members of Barack Obama’s re-election team on how to handle a possible Supreme Court ruling against Obamacare – discussions that include a “Healthcare Warfare” operation that will purposely create widespread chaos throughout the American healthcare industry – putting you and your loved ones at risk.

First few days of SC going well for us. Yesterday rocked them back. Today not as explosive but real panic setting in among the Obama people. Discussion last night with -Name Deleted - told me his contact at -Deleted- indicated administration is already putting up warnings regarding summer chaos plan if SC decision goes against them. Called it a “Healthcare Warfare” plan. Muck up the administrative machine so badly there will be delays, confusion, and then anger. They are serious about it.

Obama will then point to the chaos and make an “I told you so” move to the American people. They plan to have him run against Congress, run against the SC, run against alleged racism, run against Wall Street. He is running for nothing and against everything.

Wanted to let you know on the Healthcare Warfare thing. Help get the word out. Tell others to watch for signs of it unfolding if it looks like the SC is going to rule against Obamacare. Right now the mandate is about 80% gone. The rest of Obamacare is about 50/50 according to -Name Deleted- and he sat in on the pharma meetings with the administration so likely solid judgement on this.

So add healthcare riots to the race riots that are coming this summer.

F*ck him.

F*ck all of them.

Hold the line. I’ll do the heavy lifting. You just help spread the word. I want people to know when they see it.

Legal Gun Defense offers $10,000 for Zimmerman's defense

Last three of 288 comments.

ping211 at 6:00 PM March 31, 2012

divide the country and conquer , welcome to the new world order

RebeccaLeighRandolph at 5:58 PM March 31, 2012

moral of the story, don't start a fight with someone you don't know then reach for his gun telling him he was gonna die that night

Tot Mom at 5:56 PM March 31, 2012

Moral of the story: Never bring Skittles to a gunfight.

========

Via III Percent Patriots

The National Association for Legal Gun Defense wants to contribute $10,000 toward George Zimmerman's legal expenses, a member said today.

The group represents gun owners involved in self-defense shooting cases, said attorney Blue Rannefeld of Fort Worth, Texas.

Rannefeld said he has not been able to contact Zimmerman, 28, and is trying to reach Zimmerman's attorney, Craig Sonner of Altamonte Springs to make the group's offer of assistance.

More @ Orlando Sentinel

Obama Kills Atlantic Offshore Drilling For Five Years

Doofus.

Via Your Crazy Uncle


Yesterday the Obama administration announced a delaying tactic which will put off the possibility of new offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic coast for at least five years:

The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell notes that a planned lease sale, which the administration cancelled last year, will now be put off until at least 2018. As you might expect, Republicans were not impressed with the decision:

More @ BreitBart

Race Riots II

October Baby

I read that many places are scared to show this, but the ones who are are breaking records.

Via Hard Times Prepardness

7 Black Teens Accused of Hate Crime in Videotaped Attack on Latino Boy

Via Occidental Dissent

Seven black teenagers are facing assault and hate crime charges after allegedly attacking a Latino youth as he walked home from school.

It happened around 4 p.m. March 14 near Cactus Middle School in the 3200 block of East Avenue R-8. According to investigators, the 15-year old victim was approached by a group of up to 10 male black teenagers who challenged him to a fight, said

"The suspects surrounded the victim and began punching him while several other juveniles watched," according to Deputy Robbie Royster of the L.A. Co. Sheriff's Dept.

The victim reportedly fell to the ground while trying to defend himself and the suspects allegedly continued to beat him "by punching and kicking him in the face and head," Royster said.

The victim was eventually able to get away, but was later hospitalized for multiple head wounds, including shoe impressions left in his skin.

The victim is also undergoing surgery to repair several of his teeth which were kicked out during the attack.

More @ KTLA

Neighbor defends George Zimmerman

Via Occidental Dissent

One of George Zimmerman's neighbors is speaking out, saying looks can be deceiving.

Despite booking video from the Sanford Police Department that many say shows George Zimmerman largely unscathed from his encounter with Trayvon Martin, the neighbor said he saw Zimmerman with obvious injuries.

The neighbor is talking for the first time about what he saw on George Zimmerman's face less than 24-hours after Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

"I saw George. He was banged up. His head had two big bandages, that weren't flat, had a bump on them," the neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said.

He described where the injuries were.

"I seen him have a big bandage on his nose and his nose swollen. On the side, where his eyes were at, it was swollen," he said.

He points out exactly where on a picture.

"I seen the bandage right here, and this side of his nose and this side of his nose was swollen.

The surveillance video was released by Sanford police of Zimmerman when he was brought in for questioning after the shooting. Bruises and bandages aren't visible, but you can see an officer looking at the back of his head.

"Once you get into a fight you don't show bruises that day, it shows the next day," he said.

The neighbor says Zimmerman had to have acted in self-defense.

More @ My Fox Tampa Bay

"Food Stamp Friday"

Theo Spark
VERBATIM POST

No, this is NOT photoshopped or faked.
- You simply cannot make this kind of stuff up!

This is a promotional flyer for a "Food Stamp Friday" party in Alabama.
- I kid you not.

So the party is definitely ON for half the people (the tax eaters) who are living off the other half of the people (the tax payers), courtesy of the politicians (the tax spenders) who only take a modest 'cut' for themselves for handling this arrangement.
- Can you say "spreading the wealth around?" I knew you could.

PARTAY!!!!!

Brutal week for Obama, the worst of his presidency

Via Billy

The past seven brutal days will go down as one of the worst weeks in history for a sitting president. It certainly has been, without any doubt, the worst week yet for President Obama.

Somehow, Mr. Obama managed to embarrass himself abroad, humiliate himself here at home, see his credentials for being elected so severely undermined that it raises startling questions about whether he should have been elected in the first place — let alone be re-elected later this year.

Consider:

• Last Friday, Mr. Obama wandered into the killing of Trayvon Martin. Aided by his ignorance of the situation, knee-jerk prejudices and tendency toward racial profiling, Mr. Obama played a heavy hand in elevating a tragic situation in which a teenager was killed into a full-blown hot race fight.

More @ The Washington Times

The Sand Flea

Via Global Guerrillas

O'Reilly: NBC, Media Inciting Racial Violence

Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly lambasted the media Friday night, singling out MSNBC and CNN, saying the media "is exploiting the terrible death of 17-year-old Trayvon by convicting the man who shot him, George Zimmerman, of wrongdoing on television."

"It was pathetic watching the prime-time cable programs whip up the Trayvon Martin case to dangerous levels," O'Reilly said in his Talking Points Memo. "The media exploiting the terrible death of 17-year-old Trayvon by convicting the man who shot him, George Zimmerman, of wrongdoing on television."

O'Reilly speculated on what would happen if the Florida special prosecutor decided there is not enough evidence to prosecute Zimmerman.

"What if that happens? It could, because Florida's complicated stand your ground law has muddled the case. MSNBC, and CNN to some extent, have a vested interest in seeing Zimmerman punished because they have already found him guilty on the air. So they are not going to respect any verdict but guilty.

"Therefore, those entities tell the American public that racial injustice has been done if there is not a conviction, and that could very well lead to violence as we saw in the Rodney King case."

More @ NewsMax

Awesome Boomerang Tricks

Re-post

Via Cousin Colby

HERE

High court justice: Obama birth certificate fishy

An Alabama State Supreme Court justice earlier this week agreed that findings suggesting Barack Obama presented a forged birth certificate to the nation “would raise serious questions about the [document's] authenticity” if presented as evidence in court.

Though the Alabama court denied a a petition filed by Hugh McInnish seeking to require an original copy of Obama’s birth certificate before the sitting president would be allowed on the state’s ballot in November, Justice Tom Parker filed a special, unpublished concurrence in the case arguing that McInnish’s charges of “forgery” were legitimate cause for concern.

Parker writes, “Mclnnish has attached certain documentation to his mandamus petition, which, if presented to the appropriate forum as part of a proper evidentiary presentation, would raise serious questions about the authenticity of both the ‘short form’ and the ‘long form’ birth certificates of President Barack Hussein Obama that have been made public.”

More @ WND

Powerful: NBC Is The Skittle Network

The Market Ticker
VERBATIM POST

Are you*****ed off yet? You will be.

NBC News is being excoriated in some circles – with competitor Fox News Channel leading the charge – for selectively editing audio of the 911 call placed by George Zimmerman just before he killed Trayvon Martin.

Yep. They got caught too.

In the NBC segment, Zimmerman says: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

So Zimmerman is a racist, right? Uh, not quite.

The full version, though, unfolds like this:

Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”

911 operator: “Okay. And this guy, is he white black or Hispanic?”

Zimmerman: “He looks black.”

What do you call it when the media invents things? That's not reporting folks.

Maybe NBC is trying to incite a race riot. Or maybe it's just pure slander. Incidentally there's no defense available to a news organization (or any journalist) when they intentionally do something like this. Zimmerman ought to consider suing their ass to somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars.

More to the point, however, this sort of invention of a conversation that never happened by splicing together two pieces of tape means that nothing the media is telling you can be accepted as true without independent proof irrespective of which side of the debate the alleged "report" is on.

While we're at it I have some more questions, but I'll keep it to just two for right now. Both would help understand what actually happened that night, and neither, to my knowledge, has been investigated and reported upon.

Let's ask "why not?"

First, ABC reported that Trayvon's body was kept in the morgue as a "John Doe" for three days. However, Martin's father called the Sanford police department the morning after the shooting when he noted his son was not home, and they came out and made the identification. Where did that discrepancy come from and was ABC trying to intentionally smear the Sanford police department? There is an adjunct question to this -- we know Trayvon had a cellphone with him because he was allegedly talking with his girlfriend. Were there numbers with the tags "Mom" and "Dad" in it? Wouldn't you have expected the police to look over what was inventoried, assuming that Trayvon wasn't carrying ID and call any obvious contact number such as one tagged "Mom" or "Dad"? Now maybe the cellphone had a passcode on it or something similar, but there's an obvious open question on the delay in identification and contact with the parents, and it deserves an answer.

Second, Trayvon Martin was allegedly out at night, on foot and in a rainstorm getting iced tea and skittles. Ok, here's the address where the altercation took place from the police report:

2381 Retreat View Cir
Sanford, FL 32771

Now go to Google Maps and type in that address.

Next, find me a convenience store -- you know, a place to buy skittles and an iced tea. Just type in "convenience store" in the "Search Nearby" box.

Where's the closest one and how far is it on foot?

In a rainstorm, for a bag of skittles and can of iced tea, both ways? Possible? Sure. Plausible? That story ought to be able to be checked, and rather easily -- all convenience stores these days have video recorders.

So has anyone checked to see if indeed the deceased hiked the anywhere from 2-4 miles to and from one of the half-dozen convenience stores in the general area (none closer than about a mile on foot, incidentally, and all somewhat of a pain in the ass to get to due to what appears to be a limited access highway -- 417 -- between the location and the stores which would force you to walk quite a bit further than you could go "as the crow flies".)

These are pretty basic questions. In fact the closest convenience store is a Murphy USA; to reach the others north of the location (the ones south are a LOT further) you'd have to walk past it, so it's highly likely that's the store -- if the story of going out for skittles and iced tea holds up.

Does it? Has anyone checked?

We'll start there; I've got more queued up.

New Masters Descend from New England

Northern troops did not liberate black slaves as much as they denied their valuable labor to Southern planters, and then re-employed them under new masters as the British had done in the Revolution and War of 1812. The British called them “Pioneer Corps” and set them to hard labor on fortifications, the blue-clad New Englanders called them “labor battalions” and set them to hard labor on fortifications. Prior to the Northern invasion, slaves were well-fed and given medical treatment, but were yet to suffer blanket-tossing at the hands of the lusty descendants of New England slave traders.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

New Masters Descend from New England:

[In the spring of 1862, Northern General John G. Foster was] in command of a mere 9,500 troops – scarcely enough for defensive security, and far below the number needed to conduct significant offensive operations. To maximize the effectiveness of his troops, Foster set to work, turning New Bern [North Carolina] into an impregnable stronghold.

Much of the labor was done by hundreds of “contraband” Negroes. Foster organized the ex-slaves into quasi-military formations, gave them a fife and drum, had a special flag created for them, and saw to it they were well-fed and given medical treatment. In return for this unusual policy, the labor battalions worked diligently and in high spirits, fortifying, as it were, their own newly gained freedom.

The Yankee soldiers felt secure behind Foster’s earthworks…lived in decent quarters, ate good food, worked reasonable hours, suffered less disease…and had ample opportunity for recreation. Their recreation ranged from concerts to literary clubs, with an outside chance of enjoying female companionship now and again.

Throughout the surviving letters and regimental histories, the attitude of the occupiers toward the Negro population seems rather contradictory. On the one hand, the Yankees enjoyed playing the liberators….On the other hand, they were quite eager to obtain for themselves the services of a low-paid “pickaninny” servant, and apparently saw no contradiction. Negroes were also a constant source of wonder and bemusement, which tended to express itself in utter condescension. They are often described in minstrel-show terms, complete with the eye-rolling darkie stereotypes, and their keen, completely natural, interest in their new masters prompted the soldiers to think of the Negroes as “the novelty-loving sons of Africa.”

Sometimes the Negroes were nothing more than the butt of amusement for bored soldiers, as this excerpt from the official history of the 24th Massachusetts indicates:

“Late in the afternoon, the regiment was mustered for pay, and later still the men had a spell of that almost universal horse-play known to those days as “tossing niggers” in a blanket. “While it was fun for the tossers, and very likely did not hurt those tossed, it was for the latter a period of intense fear, not to say horror. Of course the poor victims screamed and yelled, but the louder the cries, the greater the fun for the lusty fellows at the blanket’s edge….”

(Ironclads and Columbiads, William R. Trotter, John F. Blair, Publisher, 1989, pp. 157-160)

New Masters Descend from New England

Insulting the Flying Tigers

Capt. Dominic S. Gentile and Col. Donald M. Blakeslee after both men received the Distinguished Service Cross from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 11,1944. Gentile flew with the 336th Fighter Squadron, 4th Fighter Group and Blakeslee was the Commanding Officer of the 4th Fighter Group. Note that both men are wearing their RAF wings as well as their USAAF wings. They both served in the RAF "Eagle Squadrons" prior to the U.S. entering the war.

The Army Air Force's blunder effectively dissolved the only fighter group that was winning against the Japanese

“The victories of these Americans over the rice paddies of Burma are comparable in character, if not in scope, with those won by the Royal Air Force over the hop fields of Kent in the Battle of Britain.”

—Prime Minister Winston Churchill

The American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers, had captured the Allied nations’ imagination with its successful David-against-Goliath battles flying P-40 fighters under the Nationalist China flag against the Japanese. With the United States now officially at war, the decision was made to integrate the Flying Tigers and its counterpart in England, the Eagle Squadrons, into the Army Air Force. But repatriating the expatriates was not as straightforward as it first appeared.

With the Eagle Squadrons, all had been civilians prior to joining the RCAF and RAF, which was where they had qualified as fighter pilots. Several issues had to be resolved, including the transfer of comparable rank and pilot’s wings. In addition, the Eagle squadrons, whose members included Don Gentile and Donald Blakeslee, refused to be broken up in order to provide an experienced cadre to lead the green Army Air Force (AAF) squadrons arriving in England. And Britain, facing the prospect of losing three experienced squadrons, wanted compensation. These and other concerns were ironed out, and by the end of September 1942 the Eagle Squadron pilots became members of the U.S. Eighth Air Force. The situation with the Flying Tigers, however, did not end as harmoniously.

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