Black trio barred from Coachella because of racist name

We don't normally do "entertainment news" because that's an oxymoron, isn't it. However, the lickspittle media have buried reports of a controversy at the Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival, so it's up to us to bring it to the attention of those concerned that not enough has been done to ensure that the popular festival is fully DEI.

We have it on good authority that the three girl singers of the Black persuasion were kept off the stage because of the name they chose for themselves. We're told that when they were discussing what to call themselves, the conversation went something like this:

Velveeta: How about "the Pointer Sisters"?

Vizine: That name's already taken!

Vakeesha: What about "Andrews Sisters"?

Vizine: There's already "Andrews Sisters", and dey's white!

Velveeta: You so smart, you come up wid something!

Vizine: I got it! "The Three Niggers!"

Vakeesha: What's the matter wid you? That's racist! Why you want us to use a name like dat?

Vizine: Hey, dat's what they's gonna call us anyway!

UPDATED: Didn't this guy die, or at least retire?

It was kind of a boring day for yr obdt servant. Only 32 days until the mid-terms and all is (more or less) quiet on the political scene. American meeja are preoccupied with Ian, which is only right. So I've been surfing the net and came across the following item, which I repost, verbatim, from Canada's Global (sic) TV News.

To set this up, I need to explain that the Canucks used to call the equivalent of the US State Department the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When Blackie McBlackface came to power in 2015, the name was changed to "Global Affairs Canada", a clear statement of his support for George Soros' globalist agenda. 

Like all the other departments of the Liberal government, Global Affairs pays lip service to equity, inclusiveness, diversity, yada yada yada. But as with snivel servants, especially political appointees, everywhere, the performance rarely lives up to the rhetoric.

Spoiler alert! You have to read through to the fourth paragraph to discover the gender of the "executive" found guilty of numerous acts of workplace harassment. Once you know that, you'll know why the "executive" was promoted, rathen than fired.  

The watchdog for the federal public service has ruled that Global Affairs Canada committed "gross mismanagement" in the way it dealt with complaints about a senior employee accused of throwing objects, mocking colleagues and even pushing and slapping someone. 

The report from Joe Friday, the public sector integrity commissioner, tabled in Parliament Thursday said an earlier internal investigation by the department also found the executive director yelled in the workplace and once introduced a team member as a "terrorist colleague." The report concluded the department mishandled its response to the complaints, including by promising an action plan that was never put into place.

It said Global Affairs Canada promoted the executive, despite continued insults against staff, including comments about someone’s weight and once referring to a training session as a “concentration camp” while speaking with a Jewish colleague. The report said the executive testified during the investigation by the public sector integrity commissioner that she took the earlier findings seriously and was working hard to change, but the probe examined evidence suggesting the behaviour had continued.

The executive could not be reached for comment Thursday, and a man who answered the phone at her home said she is out of the country. Global Affairs Canada responded to the report by saying it will launch a fresh disciplinary process, assess the work climate in the branch involved and reinforce ethics training. "We are committed to working diligently to implement the recommendations that will assist in improving workplace health and well-being," spokeswoman Anabel Lindblad wrote Thursday. 

She said that means making sure staff undergo mandatory training and that follow policies on respect, whether they’re in Canada or abroad. "Global Affairs Canada strives to create a culture that protects psychological health, safety and well-being in all aspects of the workplace through collaboration, inclusivity and respect. That includes avoiding hateful and antisemitic comments in all circumstances."

UPDATE (and WOW!) ADDED at 1830: Ed. no sooner posted this than we got a call from Agent 3, who said that for some reason, Global News didn't give the name of the "executive". But the National Post did! To wit: Latifa Belmahdi subjected employees and co-op students to years of  "repetitive and sustained" degrading comments and insults, physical abuse and inappropriate jokes, report finds. 

Imagine that! Now all we need is something like a photo so we can determine which boxes on the diversity checklist -- race? religion? -- were checked when Ms Belmahdi was hired. I wonder... if "the executive" had been a straight white male (said to be an endangered species at Global Affairs), would he have been treated differently? Errr, could be!

Note from Ed.: "Joe Friday" is really the name of the investigator who blew the whistle of the unnamed executive's misconduct. Walt wouldn't make up something like that! Mr Friday's rank was not given.

Dealing with a real crisis? House Dems pass CROWN Act

America today confronts a number of extremely serious crises: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, record inflation, and mass immigration of "undocumented persons", to name just three. Citizens should be thankful and joyful, then, that the Democratic members of the House of Representative, led by Crazy Nancy Pelosi,  today voted to pass H.R. 2116, the Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act of 2021 (CROWN) Act of 2021.

What's that all about? What does it do? The legislation (if it makes it through the Senate) would prohibit alleged discrimination on a person's hair texture or hairstyle that is commonly associated with a particular race or national origin. Wut? They talkin' black hair, bro -- like the fox in the picsha.

The Dove company -- makers of soap, shampoo, deodorants, and other skin and hair care products -- claimed in their 2019 CROWN Research Study that a black woman is 80% more likely to change her natural hair to meet social norms or expectations at work. And black women are 1.5 times more likely to be sent home (or know of a black woman who was sent home) from the workplace because of her hair.

Obviously (the Dove people said) something had to be done. Never mind that federal law already prohibits disparate treatment of one individual compared to another based on race, colour, or national origin, which includes grooming and appearance policies if applied in a discriminatory manner.

The CROWN Act, House Republicans argued, is therefore unnecessary and duplicative. House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-OH) said on the House floor ahead of the vote that Americans already cannot be discriminated against because of their hairstyles, and that Congress should focus on pressing issues such as inflation, Russia, and rising gas prices.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) said the CROWN Act may prevent employers from regulating hairstyles for safety purposes. Walt wonders what could be "unsafe" about the hairstyle pictured, unless the wearer worked with machinery in which her `fro could get entangled. Or around open flames, like in a BBQ restaurant kitchen.

Mr Bishop said America truly needs a bill to "unleash American energy independence." He also emphasized that in 2020, homicides rose by 30 percent or more, with black on black killings being the most common. Nevertheless, the legislation, which had failed under suspension of the rules on February 28th, passed by a vote of 235-189. Your Congress at work! 

Footnote: Walt wonders if the Dove company considered the law of unintended consequences. If black women can no longer be required by employers to keep their hair clean and tidy... if hairstyles life Afros and Rasta braids are allowed... what will that do the sales of Dove products? Just askin'....

Democrats prevailed,  

VIDEO: "The Birth of a Nation" (full) - a lesson for our times?

Just about 100% of the reviews you'll read for D.W. Griffiths' masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation focus on the racism, pro-South bias, "glorification" of the Ku Klux Klan, yada yada yada. There is no dbout about the bias, but there is also no doubt that the events depicted are real, a cautionary tale about what happens when you turn society on its head.

In another masterpiece, The Civil War, film-maker Ken Burns quotes a freed slave as telling his master "Bottom rail on top now!" As the film shows, the aim of many radical abolitionists before, during and after the Civil War was nothing less than to make downtrodden black Americans rulers over the privileged whites. To do so, they used rigged elections (in which whites were disenfranchised), mob violence, and occupation of southern cities and states by the federal army.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? The KKK was undeniably racist, but would not have come into being were it not for the necessity of defending southern society and, dare we say it, civilization, in a country which had descended into chaos. Watching The Birth of a Nation may make some people uncomfortable, but it would be foolish to let the political incorrectness blind us to the realities of the culture war which America experienced then... and now.

 

President Woodrow Wilson is famously rumored to have responded to the film with the remark: "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." His published works as a historian are closely aligned with the film's negative portrayal of Reconstruction. Some of his writings are even quoted onscreen in certain prints of the film.

Also worth watching (and free of bias!) Mississippi's War: Slavery and Secession, a production of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, 2014.

Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana)

Majority of Québécois want crucifix displayed in National Assembly, religious headgear banned in public sector

During September's provincial election campaign, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) vowed, if elected, to end once and for all the pandering to minorities that kept both the Liberals and the Parti Québécois from passing lawas to prohibit the display in public places of religious objects, including religious clothing, such as the Jewish kippah, Sikh turban and Muslim burqa/niqab/hijab. Banning such things was, they said, the will of the majority of Québécois, and sure enough, the people of la belle province gave the CAQ a strong mandate.

Ever since, the usual NPCs, SJWs and liberal chattering classes -- not your typical francophone Québeckers, but English speakers -- have been pissing and moaning about "minority rights", Islamophobia, and (of course) racism. Such discriminatory legislation, they whine, is not in keeping with real Québec values, and the election result didn't really reflect the will of the people.

The lamestream meeja and others hired a couple of pollsters to give Québeckers another chance to come up with the politically correct answers to a couple of decades-old questions:
Do you support a ban on the wearing of religious symbols by public-sector workers? and
Should the crucifix be removed from its place of honour above the Speaker's throne in the Assemblée Nationale?
You'll never guess how the real people responded...

Or maybe you will. A CROP poll taken from the 14th to 19th of November estimated that 72% of Québécois supported banning visible religious symbols for judges, 71% supported banning them for prosecutors and police officers, and 65% backed extending the ban to public-school teachers. CROP also found widespread support (55%) for leaving the crucifix in its place in the National Assembly; only 28% wanted to see it removed.

CROP's president told Radio-Canada (the French-language state broadcaster) that the results indicated unprecedentedly high levels of support for banning religious symbols. "I think we can conclude that the average Quebecer really wants to remove religion from the public sphere," he said, "especially for people who hold positions of authority.... The numbers are high but they are the product of a public discussion that has lasted since Bouchard-Taylor," he said, referring to the public commission into reasonable accommodation that wrapped up in 2008.

In the month after the October 1st election, Vox Pop, which polls for the CBC and Radio-Canada, surveyed 4000 people about identity issues. Respondents were shown images of various types of religious clothing and symbols and asked to choose different situations where they should be banned. The results suggested no less than 87% (!) in favour of preventing police officers and judges from wearing the burqa. If you're not sure what that is, check out "Hijab, niqab, burqa -- what's the difference?", WWW 28/7/10.

The number in favour of a ban dropped to only 65% for the turban and kippa. The Vox Pop findings also suggested Québeckers are divided about what religious symbols teachers should be allowed to wear in the classroom. The kippah was opposed by 49%, the turban by 51%, the hijab by 52% a large cross by 53%. Vox Pop summarized its findings by noting that a majority of survey participants -- 55% -- backed the Bouchard-Taylor consensus referred to above.

Tomorrow, the National Assembly begins its first session. The CAQ government has indicated that introducing a bill to replace the previous government's Bill 62 (which was never enforced) would not be its first order of business, but that it would tackle the issue early in the new year, confident that it is doing the will of the people of Québec.

Footnote: The burqa and other Islamic attire has already been banned in the Netherlands, Denmark and even Muslim-majority Morocco. The Québec government is behind the curve of public opinion on this one, but not so much as the government of Canada, which refuses to discuss the issue, let alone admit that the majority of Canadians would support such legislation. M-103.

Hiring based on merit "not really helpful to diversity”, sez prof

A long time ago in a Ford Galaxy far away, one of Walt's agents went to school with a chap named (((Alan Lenczner))). "Black Al", as he was known to his classmates, was an early champion of equal rights for homosexuals, same-sex marriage and diversity in all its other forms. [A loaded phrase, that. Ed.] He is also a first-class litigator, and founder of the Toronto law firm Lenczner Slaght.

The SJWs at Lenczner Slaght have decided, a bit belatedly, to jump on the "blind hiring" bandwagon, and recently sent out a self-congratulatory press release celebrating their enlightenment.

The ultra-PC goal of blind hiring is to judge potential hires exclusively on their abilities. No personal information about the candidate is to be considered, so anything that might identify candidates by gender, race, ethnicity, nationality or virtually anything is carefully scrubbed from their résumés.

Lenczner Slaght plans to remove every name from every résumé submitted as part of its 2019 summer student hiring process. Partner Shara Roy says that should prevent unconscious bias from seeping into hiring decisions and knocking white women and men and women of colour out of the running on the basis of non-white and non-male sounding names. "It’s not a magic bullet," she says, but is the firm's way of "trying to translate diversity within law schools into diversity on Bay Street." And it's a good bit of virtue signalling, as well.

But does it work?Does name-blind hiring make it easier or harder to diversify industries dominated by white people? Professor Eddy Ng, of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, says the answer isn't that simple. "Name-blind hiring only works if you have implicit bias." In other words, if you're pure and righteous, colour-blind and gender-blind, it doesn't make any difference.

And there's an unintended consequence. If you're into affirmative action, not knowing the name, gender, race etc of applicants can defeat your efforts to put straight white males at the bottom of the totem pole. In 2017 the Liberal government of Canuckistan tried concealing personal information — name, citizenship, phone number, address, languages spoken, religious references, and educational institution — on job applications, and found fewer people of colour actually made it through the first screening round than when that information was front and centre.

That's where you have to really know why you're using it, says the good professor: Do you want to diversify or do you want to counter implicit bias? There's a risk of people using it to legitimize their hiring process without actually diversifying, he adds. "They can say, 'Hey look, we keep hiring certain groups of people but it's not our fault because we went through this process where we treated everybody fairly. It's sort of like hiring in the dark. You're hiring essentially based on merit and that's not really helpful to diversity."

I, Walt, added the emphasis to that last sentence. When it comes to treating people fairly in today's politically correct world, that's all ye know and all ye need to know.

Shocking new poll reveals Ontarians don't like poor people, Muslims, trannies and refugees

Agent 3, always on the lookout for examples of government waste, reports that the human rights industry is thriving in Ontario, particularly in the province's Political Correctness Police Commission [Human Rights Commission, surely! Ed.] Under the leadership of its SJW Chairthingy, Renu Mandhane (pictured), the OHRC has just spent an undisclosed [read: ridiculously large] sum on a poll to study discrimination.

The Environics Research Group (which has no connection whatever to Ontario's Liberal government), surveyed 1501 people from across the province, including 720 from the minority-majority Greater Toronto Area. The public opinion survey, touted as the first of its kind, is entitled Taking the pulse: People's opinions on human rights in Ontario. To the surprise of no-one other than Ms Mandhane and the progressive thinkers in the Liberal Party and the CBC, the poll found that the majority of Ontarians have negative feelings toward the poor, refugees, transgendered people, Muslims and Arabs.

The lowest approval score was given to those on "public assistance" [read: welfare]. Only 39% of those polled said they feel at least
somewhat positive towards this group. Arabs were second-lowest, with only 44% of respondents expressing at least somewhat positive feelings about them. Why Arabs and Muslims were treated as discreet categories is not made clear, but a slightly higher number -- 45% -- had positive feelings towards followers of the Prophet. Refugees and transgendered people came in at 46%.

There were some positives. 64% of those polled were favourable to people with disabilities, and 62% had positive feelings about "Asians". The survey question apparently did not distinguish between south Asians (like Ms Mandhane) and east Asians (Chinese and Japanese, for instance) or southeast Asians (like Filipinos). 57% of respondents had positive feelings toward Indigenous people (or First Nations, or whatever today's PC term is), although that group was the largest to complain about being discriminated against.

Agent 3 wonders why it was necessary to spend thousands or millions of beaverbucks to get opinions which could have been discerned by spending a few hours eavesdropping on conversations in Tim Hortons coffee shops. But doing that wouldn't have been scientific, EH!

Toronto "public" housing allowed to discriminate by religion, ethnicity, etc

Meet Austin Lewis. He's 21, and disabled by a disease that attacked his spinal cord when he was 8. And he's homeless. He needs to live in a wheelchair-accessible building, and has applied to more than 100 in the Greater Toronto Area, without success.

Mr. Lewis did succeed, a few months ago, in getting himself on the list at a building called the Ahmadiyya Abode of Peace, on Finch Avenue West in northwest Toronto. The 16-storey building is subsidized by the taxpayers as part of a programme to encourage religious and other non-profit groups to build affordable housing.

In the USA, if your organization gets public funds for something like a school or hospital or affordable housing, the facility must be open to all members of the public. In the USA, there's no discrimination on the basis of race, colour, "gender preference", religion or anything else.

One might think that in Canada, generally a more socially liberal society than the Excited States, the same rules apply. After all, Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protects the same "human rights" as those enjoyed and abused by Americans, eh?

If that's what one thinks, one would be wrong. Austin Lewis found that out last week when a letter arrived at his mother's house telling him that he had been removed from the waiting list at the Ahmadiyya Abode of Peace because... wait for it... he is not a follower of the Prophet Mohammed, i.e. a Muslim.

How can this be, Mr. Lewis wonders. "This letter came as a complete shock," he told a Toronto Star reporter. "Why would a government segregate its own building?"

A spokesthingy for the City of Toronto explained that "The City’s mandate policy allows social housing providers to restrict their housing to individuals belonging to an identifiable ethnic or religious group if specific conditions are met." The city provides a subsidy of C$1.7 million ($1.275 million real dollars) for 94 rent-geared-to-income units under an agreement that restricts tenants to "members of the Muslim Jama’at".

But, the city's flak-catcher said, it's not like the Muslims are getting special treatment by being allowed to bar non-Muslims from their building, with its prayer rooms and other "facilities from which others would get no benefit". There are eight such buildings in Toronto, catering to Muslims, Macedonians, Germans, Chinese, Greeks, Hungarians, Lithuanians and "Christian seniors". So that's all right, then.

Final word comes from lawyer Barry Swadron (a classmate of Agent 3), who has extensive experience in disability law. "Here you have a building for Muslims, and normally that would be discriminatory because other religions could not be accommodated there," he told the Toronto Star. But the Ontario Human Rights Code says if it's a special-interests organization -- religious, philanthropic, educational or social -- they can discriminate in that way. It's very unfortunate, but that’s how the law was written."

But what about Austin Lewis? Mr. Swadron explained that, while the intention was to create safe spaces for minority communities, this kind of permissible "positive discrimination" inevitably produces collateral damage. Unfortunately for Mr. Lewis, he's "an unintended casualty of the system."

Mr. Lewis says the Ahmadiyya Abode of Peace is the only landlord who's had the courtesty to tell him in writing that he's inadmissible, and wonders how many others have refused his application without bothering to notify him. Seems to me the solution for him is obvious. Don't wait for the politically correct Ontario or Toronto government to change the law to make "public" mean truly public -- open to all. Convert to Islam!

"We're Vikings! We don't hire Christians!"

Meet Bethany Paquette, a clean-cut, outdoorsy girl with a love for camping, river rafting and suchlike pursuits. She's also a self-proclaimed born-again Christian, and has a degree in biology from Trinity Western University, a Christian university in Langley BC. According to Amaruk Wilderness Corp., a packager of wilderness tours, being a Christian isn't the kind of thing they want to see on the résumé of someone who'd like to work for them.

Ms Paquette applied to work for Amaruk's Canadian operation guiding tours in the Great White North. She was shocked to receive an e-mail from Olaf Amundsen, the company's HR thingy, rejecting her on the grounds that she wasn't qualified and "unlike Trinity Western University, we embrace diversity, and the right of people to sleep with or marry whoever they want."

Apparently Mr. Amundsen had heard that all TWU students must agree to a covenant prohibiting sexual intimacy outside heterosexual marriage, under pain of possible expulsion. That covenant has led to an ongoing controversy over the university's law school -- see footnote below -- since the busybodies in the human rights industry contend that TWU discriminates against the LGBT "community". So, according to the perverse "thinking" of progressive and fair-minded people like Mr. Amundsen, that makes it OK to discriminate against those old-fashioned and narrow-minded Christians.

We shall see. Ms Paquette has filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. Oh the irony! She told CBC News that the series of e-mails she received from Mr. Amundsen "really hurt me.... I did feel really attacked on the basis that I'm a Christian. My beliefs have developed who I am as an individual, but they don't come into play when I am doing my job."

Apart from defending "the right of people to sleep with or marry whoever they want", Mr. Amundsen wrote, "The Norse background of most of the guys at the management level means that we are not a Christian organization, and most of us actually see Christianity as having destroyed our culture, tradition and way of life."

Ms. Paquette replied defending her faith, saying "your disagreement with Trinity Western University, simply because they do not support sex outside of marriage, can in fact be noted as discrimination of approximately 76 per cent of the world population!!! Wow, that's a lot of diverse people that you don't embrace."

And she signed her e-mail, "God Bless, probably partially because I knew it would irritate them." It clearly irritated Mr. Amundsen, who wrote back, describing himself as "a Viking with a Ph.D. in Norse culture. So propaganda is lost on me."

Footnote: If you think it's hard for a Christian to get hired as a river rafting guide, try getting called to the bar (admitted to the practice of law) in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Lawyers in those provinces -- many of whom are secular humanists and/or, errr, non-Christians, have been besieging their law societies with demands that graduates of Trinity Western's law school not be admitted to the profession, because, errr... well... they're religious! See articles listed on the CBC News Topics page for Trinity Western University and "Queer students campaign against Christian law school".

How black do you have to be to be "black enough"?

What you have to understand, to appreciate the irony of this story, is that Canada's equal rights laws -- included in its "Charter of Rights", a part of the constitution -- are so progressive and righteous as to make America's seem like Jim Crow laws by comparison. Never should anything done by anyone in the Great Not-so-white North be tainted by the merest suggestion of discrimination on the basis of colour. Hiring/firing decisions, for instance, mustn't betray a hint of tint!

Poetic justice, then, that a woman of colour [person of colour, surely! Ed.] took to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission a complaint that she had been wrongfully fired by her employer because of the colour of her skin. Her employer was the Black Educators Association. And the problem with Ms Brothers's colour was that she was not black enough!

No, gentle reader, Walt is not making this up. Unfortunately, the Canuck lamestream media seems unable to find even a tiny picture of Ms Brothers, so we can see what colour she might be. Apparently she's not white, else she wouldn't have been hired in the first place, so Walt assumes she's what was once called a "high yeller". [Are you referring to the pitch of her voice? Ed.]

In a decision released this morning, the Human Rights Commission found that Brothers was "undermined by association staff whose 'colourist thinking' and behaviour created a toxic work environment at the head office in Halifax and the Annapolis Valley regional office in Kentville, where Ms. Brothers was employed as a regional educator."

The woman named in the report for discriminating against Ms Brothers was Catherine Collier, who was vying with Ms Brothers for the same regional educator position, a job which Ms Brothers landed. The HR police chief [Human Rights Commission Chairman, surely! Ed.] said in his report, "It is clear to me that Ms Brothers was undermined in part because she was younger than, and not as black as, Ms Collier thought Ms. Brothers should be.... In Ms. Collier's eyes, Ms. Brothers was not really black enough."

The Association has been ordered to pay Brothers C$11,000 -- $10,000 in real money -- plus interest, for general damages and lost income. The Black Educators Association is, errr, taxpayer-funded, so the award, the lawyers' costs, the Commission's costs -- the whole ball of wax -- comes out of the pockets of the thrifty New Scotlanders.

But never mind. Tracy Williams, CEO of the Commission, assures taxpayers that "This decision addresses an important human rights issue. The commission needs to explore this sensitive subject to better understand its impact and identify ways we can be of assistance." If you pay taxes in Nova Scotia and you disagree, send a postcard saying "I'm a sucker and I'm tired of being licked!" to Human Rights Commission, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Footnote: It's worth reading the decision made by Donald Murray, Q.C., in its entirety, in order to appreciate the kind of thinking that has created the latest in a long line of sins against human rights. The new sin is called "colourism" (or "colorism" if you're in the USA). A bit of good news: apparently people of colour can be just as GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY or colourism as us whiteys.

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.

The end of affirmative action? Charles Krauthammer talks about the Schuette case

Affirmative action is a fraud, a sham, a dirty trick played on the people of the USA in the name of "racial equality" and "fairness". From the getgo, it was a plot by the usual gang of "progressive thinkers" and "anti-racists" to get even with the white people of America for "centuries of oppression of people of colour".

The argument was that African-Americans -- not all vizmins, just the blacks -- weren't getting ahead in society and in life because they were being held back by things like segregated schools. A decade after Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation, blacks were still found to be under-represented in US colleges and universities because, evidently, they couldn't cut the mustard on the admissions tests.

The solution proposed by the guilt-wracked liberals was not to help the poorly educated African-Americans with things like, say, Remedial English, but to make the "Eurocentric" tests easier! When that didn't work, hundreds of "civil rights" laws and regulations were put in place to effect give "minorities" preferential treatment in getting into school, getting government jobs, getting public housing, and so on.

America being the most litigious country on earth, it didn't take long -- about a decade -- for hundreds of lawsuits to be brought challenging this state-mandated reverse discrimination. Eventually one such action reached the United States Supreme Court: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In that landlmark case, Justice Lewis Powell found "diversity in the classroom" to be "a compelling state interest". So, he said, affirmative action was allowed under the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act.

But, a majority of the justices found, the university's programme went too far, so it was struck down and Mr. Bakke (a white man) was admitted to the U.C.-David medical school. The practical effect of Bakke was that most affirmative action programs continued without change.

But was Bakke a binding precedent -- the law of the land -- or merely a non-binding plurality opinion? In 2003, the majority of the Supreme Court upheld Powell's position in Grutter v. Bollinger. They found that a "race-conscious admissions process that may favor underrepresented minority groups" did not amount to a "quota system", which would have been unconstitutional under Bakke.

However, Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by three other justices, dissented. He called the University of Michigan Law School's system a thinly veiled and unconstitutional quota system, citing the fact that the percentage of African-American applicants closely mirrored the percentage of African-American applicants that were accepted. Still, the 5-4 decision was hailed by the usual suspects as a victory for progressive thinkers over racists, yada yada yada, and reverse discimination was apparently enshrined as the law of the land.

Last week, however, the Supreme Court appeared to reverse itself. Its just-released decision in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action upheld the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban race conscious admissions at the state’s colleges and universities, and in many other governmental activities as well.

The phrase which I've emphasized is the key. The Supreme Court is saying, in Schuette, that the final decision as to the necessity for or rightness of schemes like affirmative action rests with the people, not the courts!

Two propositions were accepted by the parties and the Court:
(1) In certain limited circumstances, the constitution permits race-conscious admissions (affirmative action), and
(2) Although the Constitution permits affirmative action it does not require it.
The second proposition means that a public university can decide not to engage in affirmative action, and that a university’s board of trustees or regents can forbid the university it governs from considering a student’s race in the admissions process.

That is essentially what the Court said -- although not so clearly -- in Grutter. Here's how Charles Krauthammer explains it.



Here's how Mr. Krauthammer put it in his syndicated column. "After 36 years since the Bakke case, years of endless pettifoggery — parsing exactly how many spoonfuls of racial discrimination are permitted in exactly which circumstance — the court has its epiphany: Let the people decide. Not our business. We will not ban affirmative action. But we will not impose it, as the Schuette plaintiffs would have us do by ruling that no state is permitted to ban affirmative action." [The emphasis is mine. Walt]

Does this mean that a judicial stake has at last been driven through the heart of affirmative action? Hardly. What is clear, though, is that the majority of Americans (and their British and Canadian cousins) are fed up with anti-white racism. If the majority is allowed to have its say and have its way, as the US Supreme Court now says it should be, the end of reverse discrimination may well be in sight.

Further reading: "Ethnic politics, public opinion forcing a second look at U.S. affirmative action: Two recent Supreme Court decisions throw the ball to state legislatures", a well-balanced analysis by Neil Macdonald on the CBC News website.

Footnote: Walt has just acquired a copy of Charles Krauthammer's latest book, Things That Matter (Crown Forum, 2013). In a blurb on the back cover, David Brooks says that Mr. Krauthammer's writing "transcends the crush of daily events and can be read, with profit, always." Indeed.

What happens, now that the black "redeemer" has died?

Nelson Mandela died today, at the age of 95. RIP. Now that he's gone to his reward, you can expect an outpouring of breast beating and maudlin sentiment such as has not been seen since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Mandela would be a candidate for instant sainthood, if only he were Catholic. [In today's Church, do you really have to be Catholic? Ed.]

Mixed in with all the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth will be a large dose of anti-colonial, anti-white rhetoric. Comparisons will be made with the plight of the Jews in the Egypt of the Pharaohs. The Afrikaners will be cast in the role of the evil oppressors, while Mandela is portrayed as the Holy Moses who led his people out of bondage and into... well... into what? Into the promised land of black empowerment, equal rights for all (even queers), and all the blessings a "rainbow nation" can bestow.

Conveniently overlooked will be the fact that, for the vast majority of its people, South Africa is no better -- and in some respects worse -- than it was in the days of apartheid. The education system is in freefall, corruption is rife, and violent crime threatens virtually everyone. In other words, South Africa has become like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa under black rule.

Walt hopes that in the last couple of years of his life, Mr. Mandela's faculties were so dimmed by illness and old age that he was unaware of what a shambles his people have made of his beloved country.

Here's a quote from an early work by V.S. Naipaul, an ethnic Indian native of Trinidad, with some experience of Africa and the failings of countries, including his own, in the post-colonial era. This is from "Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad", which appeared in a fine little collection entitled The Return of Eva Peron, with the Killings in Trinidad (André Deutsch, 1980).

Black Power -- away from its United States source -- is jargon...a sentimental hoax. In a place like Trinidad, racial redemption is as irrelevant for the Negro as for everybody else. It obscures the problems of a small independent country with a lopsided economy, the problems of a fully "consumer" society that is yet technologically untrained and without the intellectual means to comprehend the deficiency. ] [Emphasis mine. Walt]

It perpetuates the negative, colonial politics of protest. It is, in the end, a deep corruption: a wish to be granted a dispensation from the pains of development, an almost religious conviction that oppression can be turned into an asset, race into money.

While the dream of redemption lasts, Negroes will continue to exist only that someone might be their leader. Redemption requires a redeemer; and a redeemer, in these circumstances, cannot but end like the Emperor Jones: contemptuous of the people he leads, and no less a victim, seeking an illustory personal emancipation.

In Trinidad, as in every black West Indian island, the too easily awakened sense of oppression and the theory of the enemy point to the desert of Haiti.

Hmmm. Haiti. Yes. And Mr. Naipaul wrote that in the mid-70s [when you could still use the word "Negro". Ed.]. Look at Haiti today -- more of a "desert" than it was 40 years ago. Look too at Zimbabwe, whose "redeemer", Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, is only 90, but determined to hang onto power until the desertification of his country is complete. Mr. Mandela, at least, was spared that.

The value of a racist insult? More than a year's pay, in Ontario

Here are some numbers for Canadian readers to think about.

$21,320 - A year's pay, before taxes, for a 40-hour week, at the Ontario minimum wage.

$23,500 - Amount awarded by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to a migrant worker who was fired and sent home for complaining about being called a monkey.

Adrian Monrose is a citizen of St. Lucia, a tiny dot in the Caribbean. Like many other islanders, he has been coming to Canada for some years to work on the tomato farms in the very southwestern corner of Ontario. He and his mates do the jobs that Canadians won't do.

Mr. Monrose is -- need we say it? -- black. Or dark brown at least. Which may have something to do with why, in May of 2009, his employer, Benji Mastronardi, shouted at Monrose and his fellow workers, "You're like monkeys on a branch."

The defendants said they fired Monrose for constantly complaining about not being paid his full wage, and for being prone to violence. In a decision released last week -- the wheels of "justice" grind mighty slow in Ontario -- the human rights adjudicator said "his termination was more likely in response to his having raised concerns about being referred to as a monkey."

Result? A rather large payout for injured feelings. In addition to the monetary damages, the farm corporation is required "to hire an expert to develop a comprehensive human rights and anti-discrimination policy within 120 days. It must also ensure all of its supervisory staff complete an online human rights course."

Perhaps they would do better, next year, to import a ship-load of actual monkeys.

No more special treatment for Jews and Muslims at Six Flags Montréal park

La Ronde is a popular amusement park in Montréal. Kids love it, including, of course, the many children of Montréal’s large orthodox Jewish community. For the boys who attend Camp Gan Israel in the Laurentians, the trip to La Ronde is one of the highlights of the summer.

One of the reasons Jews (and Muslims) like La Ronde is that they’re allowed to bring their own kosher (and halal) snacks, contrary to the park’s policy that visitors have to buy the food sold in the park. The park doesn't sell kosher (or halal) food, so Jewish and Muslim kids are exempt from the rule, as a deep bow to "celebrating diversity" and "religious accommodation".

This was revealed by Le Journal de Montréal in "Lunchs interdits à la Ronde sauf pour les juifs et les musulmans", a feature story which ran on July 16th.  But now the concession to "those of other faiths" is over.

In a statement released yeseterday, spokesthingy Catherine Tremblay told the media "After hearing feedback from our guests, La Ronde would like to clarify that only guests with special medical dietary needs will be considered to bring outside food with them as they enter the park."

The escalating pushback against "reasonable accommodation" of Québec’s religious minorities comes as the government of la Belle Province prepares a new charter to protect "Québec values" against assault by minority religious groups and the "human rights industry".

As reported here ("PQ not so PC as TROC?"), the Québec Soccer Federation made headlines when it tried to ban turban-wearing Sikhs from playing. It was forced to reverse the rule ban after FIFA -- "football"’s international governing body -- said they had nothing against the headgear.

A month earlier, Bernard Drainville, the minister responsible for the values charter, denounced another policy of the city of Montréal, under which Jews are allowed to park wherever they like during their high holidays.

Le Journal de Montréal has been accused by the usual suspects of "accommodation vigilantism". Looks to Poor Len as if they just want to know when the pandering is going to end. The 19,000 Québecois who signed an Internet petition against special treatment for minorities would like to know too.

Footnote: La Ronde is owned by Six Flags Entertainment Corp., in the news this week for allegedly failing to take proper care of morbidly obese people who like to ride its roller coasters. Stay off the La Ronde coaster, eh!

Affirmative action: an idea whose time has come... and gone

Yesterday, in an update to "Hey whitey! You'll never work for the CBC again!", Walt mentioned that the cover story in this week's Economist is a briefing entitled "Time to scrap affirmative action". The "briefing" consists of three articles, examining the reasoning (?) behind and consequences of affirmative action policies in the USA, South Africa and Malaysia. Here are the titles and a few select quotes.

Unequal protection (on access to universities in the USA)

Lino Graglia, holder of an endowed chair at the University of Texas at Austin law school, thinks "lower[ing] standards to admit members of preferred groups" is "a bad idea".
Black law students fail the bar exam at four times the rate of whites.

A study...found that black students with average grades and test scores were almost three times more likely than Asians with similarly average qualifications to get into medical school.
More black than white high-school seniors aspire to science and engineering careers, but once in college twice as many black students as white abandon those challenging fields.

Universities can ensure diversity without race-based affirmative action. If [the Supreme Court's] ruling...helps bring America's experiment with well-intentioned discrimination in universities to a close...it will not be because the country has entered...a "post-racial" period. It has not. Blacks and Hispanics will still lag behind white in income and education levels, and still exceed whites in incarceration rates. But one set of injustices does not excuse another.

Fool's gold (on South Africa's black empowerment policy)

Black empowerment has not worked well. Nor will it end soon.

The white elite at the top of South African business has been joined by a sliver of super-rich blacks. ...Cyril Rampaphosa, a union-boss-turned-tycoon who is now the ANC's number two (and therefore perhaps the next president of South Africa), is worth $675 million.
The lot of poorer blacks, however, has not improved much.

The binding constraint on greater black participation in the economy is education.... It is no good setting quotas if there are not the skilled workers to fill them....

A Never Ending Policy (on policies favouring ethnic Malays in Malaysia)

The policies which favour ethnic Malays and other indigenes at the expense of Malaysia's ethnic Chinese and Indian citizens are an oddity. [These citizens] chafe at being second-class citizens. Quotas in university admissions are particularly resented. Chinese and Indian students flock to private and foreign [universities]. Those who leave often stay away.

Critics of [the policy] worry that it dulls [Malays'] incentives to excel. There is evidence of a skills gap.
A survey...found that 71% of Malaysians agreed that "race-based affirmative action" was "obsolete" and should be replaced with a "merit-based policy".

Further reading in this week's Economist, and by far the leader in online comments is this week's editorial, "Time to scrap affirmative action"

Note from Ed.: The Economist has a paywall, so the links may or may not work for you. If they don't, and the fallacy of affirmative action concerns you, consider buying a copy of the print edition, if you can find a newsstand or other store that still sells magazines.

Or you might think about subscribing. The Economist is the one and only magazine Walt actually pays to get. And no, we're not getting paid to say so.  

And one more note... This is Walt's 1500th post. Congratulatory messages may be written on the back of a cheque (or "check", if you're American) and sent to the usual address.

Hey whitey! You'll never work for the CBC again!

Canadians who listen to the CBC -- and yes, there are many -- are aware of its blatant liberal (and Liberal) bias in favour of all things politically correct.

Examples include CBC Radio's Toronto flagship station, proudly "sounding like Toronto looks", which means speaking with incomprehensible Caribbean and South Asian accents. For a while there they couldn't figure out how to pander to the LGBT community, but recently they've hired a couple of audibly gay "news reporters" -- Jermaine and Trevor -- who lisp their way through their cute little stories.

Even Hockey Night in Canada -- happy 60th anniversary!!! -- has a PC lineup of "analysts", including one blonde bimbo who seems unfamiliar with the players, and one black ex-player who is very careful not to sound too black.

That's right, nobody celebrates diversity like the CBC. But now we finally  have confirmation of our suspicions that diversity and "minorities" are being promoted to the exclusion of straight white males. If you're one of those -- now an endangered species in Toronto -- you can forget about working for the CBC.

Where's Walt's proof? Why, right here!

That's a recruitment ad for the host of a children’s show -- Patty and Mamma Yama. It was placed on Craigslist by Larissa Mair Casting and Associates Inc., a casting agency hired by "Kids'CBC", whose logo appears in the ad.


In case you're having trouble reading it, the ad says you should "...only submit [an audition tape] if you match the following criteria: Male between the ages of 23-35 years; Any race except Caucasian."

A new version of the ad removes the race reference, but maintains the sex and age criteria, which Agent 3 says is contrary to Ontario's labour standards laws and the province's human rights code.

Why would the casting agency flout the laws enacted years ago to protect everyone from discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, age etc etc? Larissa Mair, the agency's chief cook and bottlewasher, is prepared to take the fall. She told the National Post "We were asked to seek a cast of diversity. We mistakenly took that to mean that the production was not seeking Caucasian actors. This was a mistake that was made entirely by the casting company."

Pretty big of Ms Mair to carry the can, because the truth is that the original ad is right on the money in its description of the kind of on-air personalities the CBC wants -- any race except white! Let's hear from Chuck "Chuck" Thompson, head of media relations for CBC English Services:
"At CBC, inclusion and diversity is a priority. This means reflecting Canada and its regions as well as the country’s multicultural and multiracial nature... We are now reaching out to our partners in production to ensure that a concerted and documented effort be made…to cast actors who reflect Canada’s diversity."

In other words, no whites need apply. Any white man who has applied for this or any other in-front-of-the-camera job at CBC and got as far as the interview stage is invited to let Walt know. I'm always happy to set the record straight. (Lifetime pct .990)

Update: Further proof positive of the CBC's anti-white anti-male bias emerged today. Check out "The CBC’s ‘no whites’ policy is a mistake, but no accident" by Matt Gurney, in today's National Post. Matt! Take it to the Human Rights Commission!

And just by coincidence... the mailman [letter carrier! Ed.] brought Walt's Economist today. Its cover story is a "briefing" called "Time to scrap affirmative action". There's an editorial (or "leader", as the Brits say) with the same title. Here's a quote: "If Barack Obama's daughters apply to a university, judge them on their academic prowess, not the colour of their skin." More on this anon.

Murderer pleads "Don't send me back to Jamaica!"

Brendaly "Jenny" Figueroa was murdered about 12 years ago. She was a victim of Canada's liberal immigration policy, and of John McLeod, the Jamaican who killed her in a fit of rage after she threatened to end their short relationship. He stuffed her body in a suitcase and left it at the side of Ontario's highway 401.

In 2001 McLeod was convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to life, with no possibility of parole for 12 years. He became eligible for day parole and is now eligible for full parole.

But does he want it? No! Mr. McLeod wants to stay in jail -- a nice Canadian jail if you please. Why? Because, not being a Canadian citizen but a Jamaican, at the time of his sentencing he was ordered to be deported from Canada immidately on being released from prison.

Now the convicted murderer has filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Canada, another of those "Charter rights" cases so beloved of victims of every imaginable form of discrimination. And their taxpayer-remunerated lawyers, of course.

Mr. McLeod's claim is that Canada's laws discriminate against foreign nationals by robbing them of a chance for conditional release after they've paid their debt to society. It all depends, he says, on what it means to "complete" a prison sentence.

Under the Immigration and Refugee Act, a foreign national who engages in serious criminality is subject to removal once a prison sentence "is completed", which means "as soon as any form of conditional release is granted."

However, under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, a sentence for a non-citizen is not considered complete until the expiration of every day of the sentence, even if they're on parole before that very last day.

In dismissing McLeod's action, Mr. Justice Donald Rennie of the Federal Court said, "Parliament has the right to prescribe the conditions under which foreign nationals who are convicted in Canada will be removed from Canada.... As the applicant has no right to remain in Canada, he has no right to access Canadian society under terms and conditions that are available to Canadian citizens; hence no Charter issue arises.

"[Deportation] does not deprive him of anything he has not, by his own conduct, already lost," the judge added. While citizens and non-citizens may be treated differently, he opined, it does not equate to discrimination. "Since the applicant has no right to remain in Canada there can be no differential treatment. A Canadian citizen has a right to remain in Canada. Therefore, a foreign national and a [Canadian] national are not [the same.]"

All that may come as a shock to the lawyers, counsellors and other do-gooders who do well out of helping to bogus refugees, asylum-seekers and criminals remain in Canada. They may take some comfort, though, in learning that Mr. McLeod plans to appeal.

There goes the neighbourhood

You may have heard that there's been a little unpleasantness in the Sinai peninsula recently. Nominally, it's part of Egypt, but the Egyptians haven't shown a lot of interest in the vast expanse of scrub and desert since their "army" was chased out of it in 1967. Suddenly, though, the Egyptian forces have been asserting themselves, ostensibly to deal with nests of Islamic militants, smugglers, terrorists and other undesirables.

An AP report from Cairo today suggests there's a bit more to the story. Seems the undesirables include 1000s of Africans, and it now appears that what the Egyptians are doing is driving them in a northeasterly direction, into Israel.

You might think that Israel, the homeland of the oppressed and dispossessed, would welcome these newcomers with open arms, much as it "welcomed" the black Jews of Ethiopia back in the 90s. You would be wrong.

Instead of giving refugees houses and cars [as the Canadians would do. Ed.], the Israeli government is sending its own troops into the Sinai to stop the migrants before they reach the ill-defined and ill-defended border. About 60,000 Africans -- most come from Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea -- have already got through, probably at night when, if they don't smile, they can't be seen.

AP says the chosen people are worried that the influx could harm the Jewish character of their state. The Israelis didn't put it quite that way themselves. In a statement released today, the military spokesthingy's office said Israeli forces are working "to prevent the infiltration of both hostile terror elements as well as criminal smuggling."

The statement went on to say that Israeli soldiers have stopped groups several times and held them "until the arrival of Egyptian forces that took the infiltrators." They had no comment on where this took place, but Walt is guessing it wasn't Dade County.

Walt is also guessing that this news from the Sinai will not put even a temporary stop to American Jews' yammering about how African-Americans (and themselves, of course) are the victims of decades of discrimination and racism, and must be compensated. After all, America is not Israel. Why, there's no comparison!

Muslims admit discrimination in Pakistan aid

Pakistani bishops have called again for an end to discrimination in aid to the non-Muslim victims of recent flooding. A spokesman for the bishops' Commission for Justice and Peace said, "The discrimination in aid distribution is still taking place.... It’s time the government officially admitted it, speaking out with clear words of condemnation and implementing a strategy to avoid it."

A missionary priest, Fr. Robert McCulloch, told Fides "We continue to see and receive news on discrimination in the management of humanitarian aid, at the expense of Hindus and Christians from lower social classes. The poor are in rural areas, people have generally looked down upon, which today are not even considered worthy of concern."

But the most startling part of the Fides report is the testimony of two Pakistani Muslim intellectuals.

According to Junaid Khanzada, former president of the Press Association in Hyderabad, "Some government officials and Islamic fundamentalist organizations deliberately ignore the needs of the tribal Sindh. They are Christians and Hindus of the lower social classes; in Pakistan, they are classified as belonging to 'scheduled castes', in India called 'dalit'.... In many cases religion, rather than the actual needs, has become the criterion for giving aid."

Another resident of Hyderabad, Ishaq Pangrati, a member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told Fides "I am shocked and alarmed by the discrimination in the distribution of food to refugees, which I have seen with my own eyes in the Jati area, strongly affected by the floods."

Click here to read the bishops' statement, and keep it in mind when you're thinking about donating. Any organization that gives aid to or through the Pakistani government is disregarding strong evidence that donations are being diverted to corrupt government officials, with whatever's left at the bottom of the trough being used only to help Muslims.

Is this what you really want to happen to your charitable contributions? Give only through the Church or Christian charities.