Month: February 2010

Are volags applying a religious litmus test to volunteers?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update March 10th:  World Relief won’t hire a Muslim, here.

Update March 9th:  Reader defends World Relief, says there is no ‘litmus test’ in Atlanta, here.

Hummm!   Here is a letter in The Argonaut, a publication at the University of Idaho, suggesting  just that.  Is it legal? For new readers, the word volag applies to the Top Ten (now nine) FEDERAL CONTRACTORS that have the inside track and a monopoly on resettling all the refugees (asylees too) that are admitted to the United States by the US State Department.   (Asylees are different, they are not admitted by the State Department, they get here on their own steam and then a judge grants them asylum if they can prove they would be persecuted back home, as in the case of Obama’s Aunt Zeituni).

Back to the opinion piece in The Argonaut:   the student wishes to work for one of the volags (or volag affiliates) but can’t find one that doesn’t ask about her religious views. 

For the last couple years, I have found myself enjoying volunteering and non-profit work more and more. It started during the 2008 presidential election and blossomed from there, and now I am contemplating a career involving non-profit organizations.

Since I’m graduating in a year, I’ve started looking into volunteering and internship opportunities with non-profit organizations, specifically those that help resettle refugees in cities like Spokane. I have discovered a theme in these organizations in that they are heavily tilted toward religious affiliation. I say affiliation, but it is also engrained into the fibers of their entire organization. On their applications they ask you to be committed to their values, which include dedication to the mission of Jesus.

One of the applications for an organization called World Relief had an entire section on their application titled “Spiritual Assessment,” asking about the applicant’s present spiritual relationship with the Lord. They wanted the applicant to describe a situation where they had to be fully reliant on the Lord, and what areas they feel they could continue to grow spiritually. While I understand this particular organization is geared toward missions for church members, it is one of two refugee-oriented groups in the area, leaving those not affiliated with a church little to no options.

Since World Relief is largely funded by the taxpayer, I don’t know how they can legally ask prospective volunteers about their relationship with Jesus.   See World Relief Corporation of National Association of Evangelicals most recent Form 990 and note that they are getting around 62% of their funds from government (taxpayers).  Maybe it’s legal, I don’t know, but I recommend that the student call the ACLU and find out!

To World Relief and your ilk:  if you had remained a private organization funded through the good will of private charity, you would have every right to promote your religious views and run your organization as you wish (within the law of course), but once you take money through confiscatory taxes, then we who are paying for your organization have every right to question your practices.

Note that Friends of Refugees has reported this story too.  Chris Coen goes into the issue of how these “religious” volags at times attempt to indoctrinate refugees, something we know is illegal.

Feel the love in Lewiston, newspaper editor told to leave meeting by prevention of hate group

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a must read for the folks in Frederick, MD, Boise, ID, Manchester, NH and Ft. Wayne, IN!  The managing editor of the Sun Journal, Lewiston Maine’s daily newspaper, has written a scathing editorial about what happened when she attended the multiculturalism-is-beautiful-and-thriving-in-Maine conference.

I reported to you ten days ago about the conference and how this group, the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence from Portland, ME  was going to take Lewiston’s story about the “welcoming” city’s adjustment to the huge Somali population there on the road to lecture other cities on how to be nice to immigrants.  The targeted cities are Frederick, MD, Boise, ID, Manchester, NH and Ft. Wayne, IN.

This is how Judith Meyer, Sun Journal editor, began her editorial two days ago:

I have a little news for advice-givers who attended last week’s Advice for America conference hosted by the Center for Preventing Hate. They may believe the Somali integration post-2006 here has been a success worthy of national model, but that view is not wholly shared in the Twin Cities [Lewiston and Auburn, ME].

Near the end of the day-long conference, the Center’s executive director, Steve Wessler, asked the predominantly white, social-working audience how many had heard a negative comment about Somalis in the past week. Less than a dozen of the 90 seated there raised their hands.

I hear negative comments every day. Every. Day. It’s distressing, but it’s real.

I can only guess that these social workers, educators and others working in the public sector do not always hear what I hear on the street because they can be insulated in their programs, focused on their mission, and too many do not — themselves — integrate with the community at-large. [Zing!]

You must read the whole thing!    I cannot do it justice! 

And, get this delicious irony!  Meyer was asked to leave the meeting when her presence made people uncomfortable  because they were criticizing the Sun Journal’s  refreshingly straight-forward  coverage of the many problems the Somalis* have brought to Lewiston.

* For new readers:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US (this linked post continues to be one of the most widely read posts we have ever written) in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened (that we know of), but will be soon. 

Nevertheless, thousands of Somali Muslims continue to be resettled as I write this. We recently learned that we will be taking 6000 Somalis this year from one camp in Uganda and as many as 11,000-13,000 total from around the world.

A short symposium on the Geert Wilders trial

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I want to bring to your attention a symposium on National Review Online of knowledgeable conservatives giving their comments on the trial of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands for  “inciting hatred and discrimination toward Islam.”  It’s called Western Civilization on Trial and participants include experts on radical Islam like Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, and Bat Ye’or, as well as others. They’re all worth reading — and all are brief and to the point.  Here’s some of Robert Spencer’s contribution: 

The Geert Wilders trial ought to be an international media event; seldom has any court case anywhere had such enormous implications for the future of the free world. The case against him, which has all the legitimacy of a Stalinist-era Moscow show trial, is a manifestation of the global assault on free speech sponsored chiefly at the U.N. by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). If Wilders loses, the freedom of speech will be threatened everywhere in the West.

Even if he wins, a dangerous precedent has been set by the fact of the trial itself: It is a sad day for the freedom of speech when a man can be put on trial for causing another man offense. If offending someone were really a crime warranting prosecution by the civil authorities, the legal system would be opened up to absurdities even greater than the Wilders trial.

All of our posts on Geert Wilders are here.

Tancredo kerfuffle at the Nashville Tea Party Convention in Nashville

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update February 22nd:  CAIR criticizes Tancredo, here.

Tom Tancredo (I wrote about him here two days ago) spoke at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Thursday night and caused a stir in the mainstream media for remarks he made about how immigrants need to know how to speak English before voting.

I laughed that he did this in Nashville where businesses and leftwing open borders groups had joined forces in a heavily funded ( I researched the funding at one point and it was huge) campaign last year to defeat English-only for Nashville.

He also called Obama a socialist.   Here is a portion of a text of an e-mail from Bay Buchanan a colleague of former US Representative Tom Tancredo at Team America:

The other night, Tom gave the opening remarks at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville. And the controversy was immediate. Not with attendees, let me clarify; they gave Tom three standing ovations.

He was so great! Speaking from his heart, as Tom always does, he spoke of the Founding Fathers and how they were part of a country divided into three groups–the Patriots, the Tories, and those who didn’t care. It is no different today, Tom told the crowd. Today’s Patriots, including the attendees of this convention, are fighting for our Republic, our religion and our civilization.

But those that won this election, Obama and his Democratic cronies in Washington, will bring about the destruction of our Republic if they have their way. And then there are those who don’t want to get involved in the battle.

We can’t worry about those who don’t care, Tom said, we must focus on winning this fight. We can do it, but only if we give it everything we have, and not give up until we have won. The stakes are too high for us to do less. But it can be done, and the great spontaneous uprising that has been spawned by Obama and his left wing policies proves we can win!

Tom called for the US to change the law on who can and can not vote. He said in this past election, people who couldn’t even spell “vote” or say it in English voted in our election and they voted for Obama, a “committed socialist ideologue.” He called for “Civics Literacy” tests for all citizens who want to vote.

It was this paragraph that got most of the press’ attention. The media still can’t abide any reference to Obama as a Socialist and they were laying in wait to characterize the Tea Party as racist and extremist. But there is no denying the fact that President Obama is a “committed socialist ideologue!“

And no matter how radical the Left attempts to portray Tom, the Tea Party or Americans who went to the town hall meetings and rallies and voted to throw out the Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, they can’t change the fact that the revolution has begun. And Tom and Team America is going to do everything we can to keep it rolling, and we will not stop until American Patriots have taken the reins of power from the establishment politicians in both parties.

And I know we can count on you to be right by our sides in this battle for the heart and soul of our nation. Tom has been asked by a number of Tea Party leaders to speak to their state conventions and he has agreed to go wherever he can help build this movement.

We will let you know as soon as Tom’s speech is up on YouTube, so you can see it for yourself.

I’ll post the link to his speech when I find that it is posted at YouTube, and we can all see what the fuss is about.   From what I know about Tea Partiers, his speech hit the mark.   Immigration is a big issue for conservative grassroots who got their first taste of power in the summer of 2007 when the Kennedy/McCain amnesty bill went down to defeat because of a citizens’ revolt against it.

Amnesty International accused of supporting Jihadists

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  Gita Sahgal, the whistleblower, has been suspended from her job, here.

An insider, no less, has accused the organization of supporting terrorists’ rights before human rights. 

From the UK Times:

A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.

Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.

In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic. [Political correctness is going to be the death of us!].

Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.

There is more!