Richard Nixon’s Honest Take on the Shah | #shorts

Nixon: The Shah was trying to move Iran into the twentieth century.

Les mots durs de Richard Nixon sur les Juifs, les Irlandais et les Noirs
LE POINT: Des propos péjoratifs tenus par le président américain Richard Nixon sur les Juifs, les Noirs, les Irlandais et les Italiens figurent dans des enregistrements audio de la Maison-Blanche qui viennent d'être rendus publics. "Les Juifs ont certaines caractéristiques", déclare Richard Nixon, qui fut président de 1968 à 1974, au cours d'une conversation avec un conseiller en 1973 qui figure dans les 265 heures d'enregistrements sur des bandes publiées par la Bibliothèque présidentielle Richard Nixon en Californie. "Les Juifs ont une personnalité très agressive, mordante et odieuse", déclare le président, tout en faisant une distinction entre les Juifs israéliens - qu'il admirait - et les Juifs américains. Les enregistrements ont été mis en ligne et le New York Times en a publié des extraits samedi. >>> Par Source AFP | Dimanche 12 Décembre 2010

President Richard Nixon Said It Was 'Necessary' to Abort Mixed-race Babies, Tapes Reveal
THE TELEGRAPH: President Richard Nixon believed it was 'necessary' to abort mixed-race babies, newly released tapes have revealed.

Commenting privately on the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe vs Wade, which decriminalised abortion in the US, the then-president said he worried that access to a legal abortion could lead to "permissiveness" because "it breaks the family" but thought them justified in certain cases.

"There are times when an abortion is necessary," he told his aide Chuck Colson. "I know that. When you have a black and a white." Mr Colson offered that rape might also make an abortion legitimate, prompting Mr Nixon to respond: "Or a rape."

The comments were revealed in more than 150 hours of tape and 30,000 pages of documents made public this week by the Nixon Presidential Library, part of the United State National Archives.

They were recorded by secret microphones in the Oval Office from January and February 1973 and provide fresh insights into Mr Nixon's tumultuous presidency, which ended with his resignation in August 1974 over the Watergate scandal.

Mr Nixon was widely believed at the time to be privately opposed to abortion rights, though he declined to take a public stance on the issue.

The tapes capture mundane conversations about daily life in the White House but also offer new insight into changes in US society. >>> Toby Harnden in Washington | Wednesday, June 24, 2009