Jonathan Kay: Jihad’s amateur hour

2014/12/01 Leave a comment

I think Jon Kay has it right:

In at least one case, the 9/11 masterminds apparently recruited, and then rejected, a jihadi because they lost confidence in his terrorist tradecraft: This was Zacarias Moussaoui, often referred to as “the 20th hijacker,” who reportedly met with KSM in Afghanistan in 2000. Examine Moussaoui’s methods, and you find that he was an infinitely more dangerous, methodical and sound-minded killer than Zehaf-Bibeau.

There’s the fact that lies at the heart of my optimism: Today’s most deadly domestic terrorists do not even rise to the level of yesterday’s al-Qaeda rejects. Just because we use the same broad term — terrorist — to cover both species of killer, doesn’t mean that the threat they pose is comparable within even several orders of magnitude.

AA Flight 11 hijacker-pilot Mohammed Atta stares out at the world from photos like a sort of robotic jihadi Terminator. He did not give fiery public speeches, or offer lurid manifestos, or seek social approval. All he wanted to do was kill and die. And it seems highly unlikely that the lone wolves who try to follow his example will — even taken collectively — ever inflict a significant fraction of the death and destruction meted out on September 11, 2001.

Jonathan Kay: Jihad’s amateur hour

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Ex-student of ultra-orthodox Jewish school system in Quebec wants compensation for poor education

2014/12/01 Leave a comment

Interesting, and not particularly surprising, when a fundamentalist philosophy prevails:

Yonanan Lowen can read and write in Aramaic, the 3,000-year-old language that likely served as the mother tongue of Jesus Christ.

But despite being raised and schooled for most of his life in the cloistered Hassidic Jewish community of Boisbriand, north of Montreal, the 37-year-old cannot read or write in French, stumbles through English texts and is confounded by the most basic tasks asked of grade-school students.

Lowen’s years of frustration have led him to denounce Quebec’s education ministry, a local school board, the province’s director of youth protection and his two former schools, with demands for $1.25 million in compensation by Dec. 15. Through their collective actions, or failures to act, he argues, he has been deprived of his right to an education under Quebec’s charter of rights and the province’s education law.

“I feel like a child of six years old, alone in the world, who doesn’t have parents, who doesn’t have somebody to take care of him. A child is helpless. He can do nothing by himself and this is how I feel,” Lowen said in an interview, adding he is prepared to launch legal action if necessary.

Despite all of Quebec’s existential debates about laïcité, Quebec provides funding to faith and community based private schools.

Ex-student of ultra-orthodox Jewish school system in Quebec wants compensation for poor education | Toronto Star.

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New rules for federal live-in caregivers program

2014/12/01 Leave a comment

Changes to the live-in caregivers program and reaction from some of the caregiver advocacy groups:

The changes are bad news for caregivers, says Pura Velasco, a spokesperson with the Caregivers Action Centre, a Toronto-based group with 1,000 plus members.

“The pathway to permanent residency has been revoked,” says Velasco, a former caregiver herself. “It’s gone.”

Under the terms of the old program caregivers had a “guaranteed pathway to permanent residency,” Velasco says. But not anymore, thanks to the annual cap.

The caregivers advocacy group says what’s needed is permanent residency upon arrival for all caregivers. It’s the only thing that would protect workers from abuse and allow them to speak up about abuses without risk of deportation.

According to the group’s website, the annual average of caregivers who have come to Canada over the past five years is over 8,000 — well above the cap Ottawa has set.

To qualify for permanent residency caregivers must now have one year-post secondary study in Canada or a foreign diploma or certificate that has been given equivalency here.

Caregivers must also pass stringent language requirements — a Level 5 language test in either English or French, or if the caregiver is a registered nurse or a psychiatric nurse he or she must pass a Level 7 language test.

Under the new program Ottawa has removed the requirement that caregivers must live in — a move that has pleased some.

Level 5 language test is not that stringent (Level 5 – Centre for Canadian Language Benchmark) but the removal of a pathway to permanent residency and the caps will likely have a larger impact.

New rules for federal live-in caregivers program | Toronto Star.

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Leaving anti-Semitism and unemployment behind, French Jews make Montreal home | Haaretz

2014/12/01 Leave a comment

Interesting:

Although up-to-date data on French Jewish immigration does not exist, Monique Lapointe, director of Agence Ometz, Montreal’s primary Jewish social services and resettlement organization, told JTA she has noticed a significant increase in newcomers, especially over the past year. Inquiries, Lapointe said, have poured in through Ometz’s email system and Facebook page — including from French Jews currently living in Israel.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a huge number of [immigrants],” Lapointe said. “But it’s a trend. We’ll be anticipating more.”

Lapointe described the average immigrant as single, between the ages of 25 and 35, “very well educated and looking for a new kind of life.”

The wider Montreal Jewish community, Lapointe said, is now in the early stages of crafting a coordinated approach to handle the inflow. Thus far, it has been difficult to track newcomers, she added, partly because French Jews keep looser ties to Jewish community organizations than do their North American counterparts.

“In France, people don’t talk about Jewishness,” Lapointe said. “They’re not used to community organizations. Some will never come to see us. They don’t have this reflex.”

…The data, however, suggests that Quebec anti-Semitism is on the wane. Last year the province saw its number of reported anti-Semitic incidents fall to 250, a nearly 26 percent drop from 2012, according to B’nai Brith Canada, which tracks anti-Semitic activity across the country.

Leaving anti-Semitism and unemployment behind, French Jews make Montreal home – Jewish World Features Israel News | Haaretz.

Filed under Antisemitism, Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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