Reparations? President Trump does the math

Walt guesses you've never heard of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. [Indeed we haven't. Lifetime pct .990. Ed.] Well sir, the UNPFPAD is yet another anti-white, anti-American agency of the Disunited Nations, created to advocate for a "global reparations agenda" to "compensate Africa and the African diaspora for the enduring legacies of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid and genocide between the 16th and the 19th centuries."

Need we add that it has tied itself to the currently fashionable causes espoused by the anti-white left, claiming that "efforts to advance climate action" must be grounded in “racial equity", because "climate justice cannot succeed without addressing historical and structural forms of injustice." Isn't that obvious?

But wait (as Vince Offer used to say) there's more! The UNPFPAD's delusional advocacy has also branched into emerging technology fields like artificial intelligence, where the forum declared only "reparatory justice" could halt "technology-enabled racism." We'll pause here so you can stop ROFL.

Readers whose tax dollars would be spent on reparations if politicians like California Governor Gavin Newsom [Isn't he the that used to lead the Tonight Show band? Ed.] get their way will be glad to know that President Trump has called BS on this anti-white nonsense. 

Yesterday, POTUS signed an executive order to pull the US of A out of UNPFPAD. According to Trump administration officials, the racial grievances and "victim based social policies" promoted by the oranization are contrary to the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

Tommy Pigott, principal spokesthingy for the State Department, said "America will no longer lend its credibility to racist organizations. Radical activists who embrace DEI ideology and seek to compel the United States to adopt policies mandating race-based wealth redistribution, in organizations such as the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent will no longer be entertained." He added, "The United States is proudly withdrawing from racist organizations such as this forum."

Thanks to BCF for the tip to this under-reported story. Ed.

Panic in Gotham as socialist Muslim wins Dem primary for Mayor

Cazart! The BSDs of Wall Street and the denizens of Crown Heights, Borough Park and Williamsburg are in full panic mode -- "Can you get me on a flight to Miami Beach, today?!" -- after Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani's shock victory over the former governor Andrew Cuomo to become the presumptive Dimocratic nominee for mayor of the Wormy Apple.

Mr Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, and a devout follower of the Prophet, ran on a platform that has terrified some in the business and certain religious communities. Their idea of an acceptable leftist candidate was someone like (((Bernie Sanders))). But this? Oy, oy, oy!

Mr Mamdani wants to raise corporate taxes to 11.5% and add a 2% income tax on New Yorkers making more than $1 million. He has said he would make the city more affordable by freezing rents on rent-stabilized apartments, investing $70 billion in publicly subsidized housing for the flotsam and jetsam who wind up in the "sanctuary city", providing free bus service and opening government-operated grocery stores -- the kind they used to have in the Soviet Union where you had to bribe someone to get a six-month old turnip.

Wall Street quickly started to worry.Some financial executives spoke of backing Mayor Eric Adams, clearly the lesser of the two weevils. Corporate leaders held a flurry of private phone calls to plot how to fight back against Mr Mamdani's primary victory and discussed backing an outside group with the goal of raising around $20 million to oppose him. Dan Loeb, chief executive of hedge fund Third Point, and a major Cuomo backer, wrote on X, "It’s officially hot commie summer."

Yeah. And if Mr Mamdani wins the mayoralty, what happens next? The real insane voters of New York may think that he, being an oppressed person like them -- all Muslims are oppressed, you know -- will bring them equity, justice and freedom in a socialist workers' paradise. LMAO. 

Those who can read would do well to check out "All socialism involves slavery" (WWW 14/6/25), in which we posted a quote from Left Luggage, by C. Northcote Parkinson, author of the eponymous Law, on the motivation and actions of today's leftists. 

They came to realize...that the lower classes cannot be resued from the slum unless they will do as they are told. This, they came to see, is a basic principle of existence. 

You cannot help an old woman to cross a busy street unless she will accept your guidance. The very act of going to the rescue makes you superior to the person rescued. And just as folk in danger must obey the orders of the lifeboatman or fireman, the victims of the industrial slum must follow the social reformer's advice. 

That they are incapable of saving themselves is the most obvious result of their ill-treatment. Kindly but firmly they must be shows the way to escape. A better environment can be theirs but only if they will obey orders. It is this kindly coercion that has come to be known as Socialism. [My emphasis. Walt]

Shortly after that post appeared, Agent 3 was on the horn to tell us that socialism also involves poverty. As surely as day follows night (he said), the socialists achieve "equity" not by raising the standard of living of the masses, but by reducing everyone to the same level of bare subsistence. Like this.

Walt has dear friends, refugees from Cuba, who remember how the Marxist Castros plunged their country into dire poverty. The voters of New York City, many of whom are Americans [geddit? Ed.] and therefore ignorant of the realities of places like Cuba and Venezuela, must think that Islamic socialism would somehow be better than the Latin American variety. If so, they are wrong.

"All socialism involves slavery." (Herbert Spencer)

[Who Herbert Spencer? Ed.] Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. He originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in Principles of Biology after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species.

In Left Luggage (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1967), C. Northcote Parkinson (author of The Law), says: "In his approach to sociology and policisa, Herbert Spencer had one tremendous advantage over rival theorists.... He knew what he was talking about." 

At page 35, he (Parkinson) writes: "In The Man Versus the State (1884), Spencer distinguished clearly between 'the regime of status' and the 'regime of contract'.... To give people greater freedom should enable them to benefit themselves. To benefit them directly, by contrast, one must insist, first of all, on obedience."

There follows a lengthy quote from Mr Spencer's book, from the section headed "The Coming Slavery", at page 314.

There is that increasing need for administrative compulsion and restraints which results from the unforeseen evils and shortcomings or preceding compulsions and restraints. Moreover, every additional State-interference strengthens the tacit assumption that it is the duty of State to deal with all evils and secure all benefits. 

Increasing power of a growing organisation is accompanied by decreasing power of the rest of the society to resist its further growth and control. The multiplication of careers opened by a developing bureaucracy tempts members of the classes regulated by it to favour its extensions.... 

The people at large, led to look on benefits received through public agencies as gratis benefits, have their hopes continually excited by the prospects of more. A spreading education, furthering the diffusion of pleasing errors rather than of stern truths, renders such hopes both stronger and more general. 

Worse still, such hopes are ministered to by candidates for public choice, to augment their chances of success; and leading statesmen, in pursuit of party ends, bid for popular favour by countenancing them. 

Getting repeated justifications from new laws harmonizing with their doctrines, political enthusiasts and unwise philanthropists push their agitations with growing confidence and success. 

Journalism, ever responsive to popular opinion, daily strengths it by giving it voice; while counter-opinion, more and more discouraged, finds little utterance.

Thus influence of various kinds conspires to increase corporate action and decrease individual action. And the change is being on all sides aided by schemers, each of whom thinks only of his pet plan and not at all of the general re-organisation which his plan, joined with others such, are working out. 

It is said that the French Revolution devoured its own children. Here [in Great Britain], an analogous catastrophe seems not unlikely. The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with the numerous others presently to be made, will by-and-by be all merged in State-socialism -- swallowed in the vast wave which they have little by little raised.

"But why is this change described as 'the coming slavery'?" is a question which many will still ask. The reply is simple. All socialism involves slavery.

Elsewhere in Left Luggage, Mr Parkinson gives his own explanation of the motivation and actions of today's leftists.

They came to realize...that the lower classes cannot be resued from the slum unless they will do as they are told. This, they came to see, is a basic principle of existence.

You cannot help an old woman to cross a busy street unless she will accept your guidance. The very act of going to the rescue makes you superior to the person rescued. And just as folk in danger must obey the orders of the lifeboatman or fireman, the victims of the industrial slum must follow the social reformer's advice.

That they are incapable of saving themselves is the most obvious result of their ill-treatment. Kindly but firmly they must be shows the way to escape. A better environment can be theirs but only if they will obey orders. It is this kindly coercion that has come to be known as Socialism.

The emphases are mine. WW

"Negro" or "black" or "Afro-American"? American historian weighs in

Joseph Chamberlain Furnas (24/11/1905 – 3/6/2001) was an American freelance writer, whose works include a trilogy of social histories of the United States: The Americans (covering the period 1570-1914), Great Times (covering the period 1914-1929) and Stormy Weather: Crosslights on the 1930s (which covers the time between the stock market crash and the attack on Pearl Harbor.) 

Mr Furnas was a Quaker, and a believer in the equality and brotherhood of man. Two of his books, The Road to Harper's Ferry and Goodbye to Uncle Tom, deal with "black" issues, notably slavery, which he viewed as an evil institution which degraded (black) slaves and (white) masters alike.

The Road to Harper's Ferry is an account of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, which delves into the lives and motivations of the "Secret Six" who gave him a great deal of his support. Goodbye to Uncle Tom examines how Uncle Tom's Cabin, both as a novel and in its many stage adaptations, has shaped American attitudes towards "Afro-Americans" and slavery.

I've put quotation marks around "black" and "Afro-Americans" for a reason. Mr Furnas wrestled throughout his writing with what to call people of the coloured persuasion. In a footnote at pp 405-6 of The Americans (G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1969), he explains his preference for the word "Negro" to those terms which came before ("coloured") or later ("black"). 

Most of this book had been drafted before the recent shift frm "Negro" to "black" to designate Americans with discernibly West African genetic traits. Many Northern politicians and most of the communications industry [today we'd say "media". Walt] have adoped the term. I have...considered making the change throughout this book. Several rasons have deterred me.

For instance, there is no reliable way to learn how acceptable the term "black" may be to the many million Americans most directly affected. It has been used contemptuously for centuries, particularly by the British. 

Then the change seems pointless as a matter of logic. "Negro" is simply Spanish-Portuguese for "black". Neither term accurately describes either the skin pigmentation or (if "Negro" is used as anthropologists sometimes use it) the genetic makeup of most of the Americans to whom it is applied.

Either word could apply to the many Melanesians who are very disttantly if at all related to the West Africans from whom American Negroes descend. So "black" is no improvement if intelligibility is the test.

There is good reason to believe that the actual motivation, maybe often unconscious, of the current sponsors of "black", of the militant separatist-minded leaders a mong them, is to express alienation from all whites, even their most earnest well-wishers, instead of an effort toward higher accuracy of group-definition. 

Were I to make the shift in this book, I might well find within a year or two that a new token of alienation, maybe "Afro-American", had succeeded "black". 

And that's exactly what happened, except that "African-American" was more widely used than "Afro-American". Then, as "African-Americans" began to visit their ancestral homelands, as members of the Peace Corps or just as tourists, they discovered that they were strangers there, just as much as the evil whites. 

So we don't hear/read "African-American" any more. The current politically correct term is "Black", with a capital "B", as in "Black lives matter." I guess that's better than "black" because the capital shows that progressive people are giving "Black" folks mo' respeck... or something like that. [Should we call ourselves "White"? Ed.] Too bad Mr Furnas didn't live to comment on the current wokeness.

Alexandria church removes Washington AND Lee memorials to create "safe space" for everyone, no exceptions

Walt never darkens the doors of Episcopal churches for religious reasons, but occasionally visited some of the fine old churches dotted around the USA to admire the architecture or take a trip back in time to bathe in the warm waters of history. [Please don't try to be poetical. Ed.] One church well worth a visit for either reason is Christ Church, just off North Washington Street, in Alexandria, Virginia. It's just a couple of blocks west of historical Gadsby's Tavern, where both George Washington and I ate (although not at the same table or time).

George Washington worshipped at Christ Church. A small nameplate still adorns the family pew. Robert E. Lee was confirmed there, and his place is similarly marked. Larger plaques on either side of the sanctuary memorialized both men.

"Why the past tense?", I hear you ask. Why not "memorialize"? Because, dear reader, both plaquest were removed this weekend by order of the vestry, the committee which administers the church. According to a letter circulated to members of the parish this week, the plaques were taken down in order to make Christ Church more "welcoming", and to prevent people from feeling "unsafe" in the sanctuary. Seriously? Well, this is what the vestry said.

"Hebrews 13:2 says, 'Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.' Christ Church lives into this call, feeding the hungry with our Lazarus ministry, welcoming the stranger in our refugee ministry, and inviting all to worship with us. The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome. Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques."

The letter, signed by all 13 members of the governing council, goes on to insist that the eras in which the two famed men lived are "much different than our own." It continues:

"We understand that both Washington and Lee lived in times much different than our own and that each man, in addition to his public persona, was a complicated human being, and like all of us, a child of God. Today, the legacy of slavery and of the Confederacy is understood differently than it was in 1870. For some, Lee symbolizes the attempt to overthrow the Union and to preserve slavery. Today our country is trying once again to come to grips with the history of slavery and the subsequent disenfranchisement of people of color.

"Many in our congregation feel a strong need for the church to stand clearly on the side of 'All are welcome — no exceptions.' Because the sanctuary is a worship space, not a museum, there is no appropriate way to inform visitors about the history of the plaques or to provide additional context except for the in-person tours provided by our docents."

The original focus of this exercise in virtue-signalling was the plaque honouring Robert E. Lee. Unfortunately for the SJWs and do-good weenies, some churl pointed out that George Washington, too, had been a slave-owner. So both memorials had to go, although church officials covered themselves with the figleaf that both plaques are being removed because the two occupy opposite areas of the sanctuary and the aesthetic look of the church would have been "unbalanced" if only the Robert E. Lee plaque were to be removed.

DON'T tear down this flag!

Walt is incensed -- putting it mildly -- by the increasingly strident demands of the usual suspects (including Mitt Romney and a starlet posing as Governor of South Carolina) to remove the Confederate battle flag from its position next to the SC state capitol. Their argument is that since the "Southern Cross" (as it is sometimes known) has been appropriated by some racists and social misfits, including the nutbar who murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston last week, the flag which the South has loved for a century and a half is no longer worthy of respect. They are wrong.

The Confederate battle flag was not intended to stand for racial supremacy, let alone slavery. THIS is what it stands for.

For over 150 years, the Confederate battle flag has been displayed throughout the Old South (and all over America) to honour the 260,000 Southerners who died in the War of the Secession fighting for the Cause in which they believed. That cause was not slavery, but the right of the people of the sovereign states to decide for themselves what form of society they wished to live in, and what form of government they wished to have.

Slavery only became an issue when Abraham Lincoln made it so, in his Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863. He did this for political reasons, not because he was a believer in the equality of the races. Here, from "Abraham Lincoln Never Believed in Racial Equality", is a direct quote from a speech by "the Great Emancipator" at Springfield IL in 1858:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality ... I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negros and white men.

But the civil war -- regarded by blacks as a white man's war -- was going badly. In the North, anti-war sentiment was growing, enlistments were declining, and morale was bad. However, there was a strong abolitionist faction in Congress and in the upper strata of Northern society, and Lincoln felt that making the conflict about slavery, rather than about states' rights, would get the "progressive thinkers" more engaged. So, "Free the slaves!" became the new war cry -- "the battle cry of freedom".

And so it was that the Stars and Stripes was made to represent "freedom" and the Confederate flag slavery, a mischaracterization which is being revived in the heat of overreaction to the Charleston shootings. The deranged kid had a Confederate flag sewed to his backpack. So what? Many of the cops, white and black, who shoot innocent people, black and white, have the Star-spangled Banner sewed onto their uniforms. Does that make them evil racists or advocates of a return to slavery? [Well? Does it? Ed.]

And how about the Sandy Hook massacre? The Stars and Stripes was flying outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on the day Adam Lanza shot 26 adults and children. The same flag was flying -- and still flies -- at the CT state capitol in New Haven. Does anyone seriously suggest it was the sight of that flag that fuelled the killer's depravity? Ridiculous?! Certainly. Just as ridiculous as the notion that banning the display of the Confederate flag will somehow end race hatred in America.

Footnote and recommendation: For an even-handed commentary on the reasons for the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Walt can think of no better reference than Ken Burns's superb TV mini-series, The Civil War, available as a boxed set  from Amazon and other sources.

Sikhs in Canada - from "boat people" to slave-keepers

Two stories appearing in the Canadian lamestream media this weekend tell us a lot about how far The Land of the Maple Leaf has come in banishing racism, promoting multiculturalism and celebrating diversity. We also learn something about white liberal guilt and the persistence of racism and slavery in other "communities".

The first story is an eye-splitter from Canada's self-styled "national newspaper", the Globe and Mail. In "Behind the Komagata Maru’s fight to open Canada’s border", Michael Bird tells how his grandfather, J. Edward Bird, led the fight to open Canada's borders to immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers from every corner of the Third World, including India. Especially Sikhs, who Bird believed were persecuted because of their religion.

This followed the rejection by the terrible racist Canadians of a bid to land at Vancouver the 376 passengers of the tramp steam Komagata Maru, all of them Sikh immigrant wannabes. "We are British citizens and we consider we have a right to visit any part of the Empire," said Gurdit Singh, a Hong Kong-based Sikh businessman who had chartered the Komagata Maru, told reporters earlier.

At the time (1914), third-worlders had not yet learned that all you have to say to Canadian immigration officers is "Refugee! Refugee! Where is the welfare office?" Anyway, in a display of political incorrectness remarkable even for the time, the Sikhs of the Komagata Maru were turned away, and the ship left Canadian waters, watched closely by the HMCS Rainbow.

Even a century ago, there were white liberals who felt guilty! guilty! guilty! about how badly their race had treated the poor vizmins of the American south and the British Empire, forcing on them such evils as roads, railways, schools and hospitals. J. Edward Bird championed the cause of unfettered immigration all the way to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which opined that the government was entitled -- and perhaps wise -- to impose limits.

It wasn't until the great "civil rights" uproar of the hippy-dippy 60s that the Canadian government removed racial and ethnic considerations from the country's immigration policies. This was done by order-in-council, by the way, without reference to the Parliament which supposedly expresses the will of the Canadian people.

But feelings of white liberal guilt persist, in the Groan and Wail, the Toronto Red Star, and of course the ultra-PC CBC. And in Steve Harper's allegedly conservative Canadian government, which recently caused a stamp to be issued to (in the words of Sikh24 News & Updates) "honour the Sikh pioneers who faced racism from Canada".

Since the floodgates were opened in 1962, Sikh immigrants have succeeded in creating their own little Kalistans ["ghettos", surely. Ed.] in places like Surrey BC and Brampton ON. See "Saying the unsayable about the unspeakable in Brampton, Canada"

Now that they're established in Canada, enjoying the many benefits provided by Canadian taxpayers -- including, believe it or not, Hockey Night in Canada in Punjabi on the CBC -- you would think, wouldn't you, that they would welcome and assist other victims of colonialism and discrimination from other Third World hellholes.

You would be wrong. The second story which caught Walt's eye this weekend was "55 tree planters win $700K over 'slave-like' discrimination in B.C.", which reports a decision of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal finding the operators of a tree-planting business in Golden BC guilty of racial discrimination against 55 temporary foreign workers from the so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Khaira Enterprises, of Surrey BC, which was run by Pakistani-Canadian Khalid Bajwa and Indo-Canadian Hardilpreet (Sunny) Sidhu -- a Sikh -- was been ordered to pay each worker $10,000 for "injury to dignity and self-respect" plus $1,000 per 30-day period worked or portion thereof between March 17, 2010, and June 17, 2010.

Tribunal member Norman Trerise said in his 114-page ruling that Bajwa​ and Sidhu taunted and harassed the 55 workers with racial slurs and had a blatant disregard for employment standards. When officials from the provincial Ministry of Forests arrived at the site, the tree planters told them they had not eaten in two days, were living in squalor and were not getting paid for their work.

One of the workers testified that the camp was divided down racial lines, and that black employees were forced to plant on rougher terrain and were fed inferior food. "It was a kind of slave life," the worker told reporters. "I swear to God, it was so bad, trust me. We ate some expired food. Can you imagine? We slept in a container, with no washroom, no toilet."

Bajwa and Sidhu have since declared bankruptcy. In his ruling, Trerise wrote, "The chances of them actually receiving any money over and above that already obtained by the ESB on their behalf [is] extremely remote." About as remote, Walt thinks, as the chances of the Sikhs and other sub-continentals treating others according to the standards of the society which welcomed them.