Roach and Forcese: The government’s new speech crime could undermine its anti-terror strategy

2015/02/12 Leave a comment

A different and valid take:

Here’s why: the data suggests that our most promising means of combating radicalization is with on-the-ground programs that anticipate threats and steer people away from violence. Thus the RCMP has launched its new counter-violent extremism (CVE) program, an all-of-civil-society initiative designed to navigate people away from trouble in the “pre-criminal space” — that is, before they violate the law.

This is an uncertain and challenging undertaking. However, it may be the most rational response to a social problem that no prosecutor or penitentiary will ever solve, and may actually make worse. And the government’s new speech crime could undermine it. Let us illustrate why, with a very plausible hypothetical situation.

The new CVE program reaches out to a mosque, wishing to involve it and its membership. It wants people to assess honestly the merits of, and confront squarely, the Al-Qaeda-inspired world view that says Islam is under attack by “Western crusaders,” and that it is the duty of good Muslims to act in defence, even with violence. This airing of views will require, at minimum, a venue in which people can speak freely, and the mosque is asked to provide it.

The imam is aware of the new speech offence, and is worried that some of his members, though they show no propensity for violence, nevertheless hold radical views. He fears what will happen if the RCMP hear statements such as, “the use of violence in defence of Islam is just and religiously sanctified and should be supported.” Some community members are also keen to send money to groups overseas whose conduct may include acts of violence.

And so, wisely, the imam decides to consult with a local lawyer, who concludes that statements like the one above might well be seen as knowing and active encouragement of the concept of “terrorism offences in general.” And he concludes that in making these statements at the CVE meeting, the speaker may be aware that some of his fellows may commit some terrorist offence, including perhaps sending money to group listed as, or associated with, a terrorist group.

Reasonably, the lawyer concludes there is a risk that the meeting could violate the new speech crime. The RCMP’s “pre-criminal” CVE space then turns into a “criminal space.” The imam has no choice but to cancel the meeting.

Roach & Forcese: The government’s new speech crime could undermine its anti-terror strategy

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Jewish groups criticise German panel on antiSemitism

2015/02/12 Leave a comment

Does seem a bit odd – but it also depends on the experts selected:

Jewish groups have strongly criticised the German government for creating a commission to tackle anti-Semitism that does not include a single Jew.

A spokesman for the Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European-Jewish Studies in Germany said it was a “scandal”.

The centre announced on Tuesday that it was creating a rival panel of experts.

Germany’s interior ministry set up the independent commission to fight anti-Semitism and support Jewish life.

A spokeswoman for the ministry told The Associated Press news agency that the question of religious affiliation was not part of the panel’s selection process.

Anetta Kahane from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation criticised the decision. “Nobody would even think of creating a conference on hatred of Islam without Muslims or a round table on the discrimination of women without women,” she said.

The Moses Mendelssohn Centre announced that it, along with two other leading Jewish groups, would be creating an alternative commission.

Spokesman Julius Schoeps said that they would include both Jewish and non-Jewish experts on the panel.

The group of eight experts appointed by Germany’s interior ministry are due to submit a report to parliament within two years that will be the basis for a discussion on how to tackle anti-Semitism.

BBC News – Jewish groups criticise German panel on anti-Semitism.

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RCMP counter-terrorism outreach efforts are ‘piecemeal and disjointed’: U.K. report

2015/02/12 Leave a comment

A bit surprising, given all the work and thinking by Public Safety, the RCMP and CSIS, and the lessons learned by the various iterations of the British PREVENT program and those of other countries:

Knowing that it can’t fight terrorism alone, the RCMP has reached out to Canada’s diverse communities — participated in Muslim youth forums, attended cultural events and dinners, even held yoga classes for women of different cultural backgrounds.

But is any of this feel-good community outreach working?

A report released Tuesday at a public safety conference in Ottawa suggests while the Mounties have made inroads, its outreach initiatives are “piecemeal and disjointed” and suffer from a “lack of a clear overall strategy.”

Some community members remain suspicious when police show up at gatherings, according to the report by researchers at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defence and security think tank.

Even Mounties are confused as to what the overall aims of community outreach are: is it to project a smiling face and inform people what the RCMP does or is it to collect hard intelligence? Should success be measured by the number of cultural events attended or the number of leads generated?

What’s not helping, one Mountie told the authors, is that some CSIS intelligence agents are using the RCMP “brand” to gain access to community members, further hindering trust-building efforts.

Lead author Charlie Edwards said the allegation has not been substantiated but was included in the report to reflect the fear among some RCMP members that the “firewall” between community outreach and intelligence gathering may be “difficult to maintain.”

A CSIS spokeswoman said agents do not pass themselves off as RCMP.

“I see no value,” added Ray Boisvert, a former CSIS assistant director. “CSIS officers have developed their own unique narrative to approach and engage people.”

An RCMP spokesman said the force was still reviewing the report’s findings and unable to comment.

The study, which received funding from the Canadian government, wasn’t all bad news. The RCMP’s outreach to the Muslim community around the time of the arrests of two men for allegedly plotting to derail a Via passenger train in Ontario was “universally hailed” as a great success, the study reported.

Comment about ‘firewall’ between RCMP and CSIS, and how this can weaken outreach and engagement efforts, interesting in light of proposed new powers for CSIS.

RCMP counter-terrorism outreach efforts are ‘piecemeal and disjointed’: U.K. report

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Montreal imam has passport revoked; was once named as ‘subject of interest’ in probe

2015/02/12 Leave a comment

Seeing how the policy is being applied and what (public) risk factors are considered:

The case is spelled out in documents filed last week in the Federal Court of Canada, where Mr. Goldberg is arguing the government “erred in law” by revoking the cleric’s [Sheikh Ali Sbeiti’s] passport “and denying him passport services for an unspecified time.”

In his application, Mr. Goldberg claimed the decision violated Mr. Sbeiti’s mobility rights and was based on “erroneous findings of fact it made in a perverse and capricious manner.” Passport Canada also failed to observe procedural fairness, he said.

The case is the latest test of federal regulations that allow the government to revoke or refuse passports on several grounds, including if it is deemed “necessary for reasons of the national security of Canada or another country.”

A 46-year-old Shi’ite cleric, Mr. Sbeiti was born in Najaf, Iraq, and studied religion in Lebanon and Iran, according to the Centre Communautaire Musulman de Montreal website, which identifies him as its imam, although a person who answered the centre’s phone said he no longer worked there.

“He immigrated to Montreal, Canada, in 1988 and went back to Qom, Iran, to continue his religious studies. Few years after he came back to Canada to serve the community,” it said. He founded “associations and community centres all across Canada,” including in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Edmonton and Vancouver, the CCMM biography said, adding he was an “active member of several committees and bodies involved in the community and religious activities across North America.”

According to Quebec corporate records, Mr. Sbeiti is president of the Association El-Hidaya, a Montreal non-profit group founded in 1997. The association’s address, according to provincial records, is the same as that of the CCMM.

In 2006, he told a self-styled “People’s Committee on Immigration Security Measures” about “his personal and community experiences of harassment” by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Quebec activist group wrote in its report.

“He has been interviewed tens of times by CSIS (starting well before 11 September 2001), often for hours at a time,” and people who arrive in the country are regularly asked about him and whether they plan to attend his prayers; they are made to feel as though he is dangerous,” the committee’s report said.

Mr. Sbeiti “began having problems at airports” and complained about delays getting his boarding passes and being “asked to stand aside and wait while others were processed,” it said. “Eventually, he found out that he had been placed on the no fly list in the United States and that this was affecting him even when he was flying in Canada.”

Montreal imam has passport revoked; was once named as ‘subject of interest’ in probe | National Post.

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Adopting a Chinese Name Helps Win at the Polls – NCM

2015/02/11 Leave a comment

For those interested in language and branding, Tung Chan’s column on choosing a Chinese name, whether for politicians or companies, is well worth reading:

The third method, beautified phonetic translation, is the most commonly used method. This is a modified approach of the pure phonetic translation method. The starting point of this method is the phonetic pronunciation of the name followed by choosing culturally meaningful homonyms. The official Chinese name for the aforementioned LaPointe, 賴普德, was arrived at by such a method. The three Chinese characters are pronounced in Cantonese as Lai Po Dug and approximate LaPointe.

The word 賴 is a common Chinese surname; 普 means general, universal or popular, while 德 means virtue or moral. Thus, 賴普德 is far better than the pure phonetic name 拉波特 used by one of the local Chinese language newspapers. Another such example is the Chinese name for the Toronto Dominion Bank. It dropped the pure phonetic name of 道美寅 in favour of the beautified phonetic name of 道明. Both of the Chinese names were based on the word “dominion”. 道美寅 has no consequential meaning while 道明 means a “bright pathway”.

The Chinese name for Coca-Cola, 可口可樂, is another wonderful example. The four Chinese characters are pronounced in Mandarin as Kē Kou Kē Lè and can roughly be translated as, “pleases your mouth, makes you happy.”

The fourth method, trans-creation, is by far the most powerful, but less used one. This method is used almost exclusively for commercial entities and rarely used by individuals. The starting point of this method of name generation is to crystallize the essence of the resulting image one wants to project onto the consumer. The second step is to pick a name that best reflects that essence, but doesn’t necessarily bear any relationship to the actual English name. Thus the HK and Shanghai Bank becomes 匯豐銀行 (plentiful remittance bank), the Bank of Nova Scotia becomes 豐業銀行 (plentiful business bank) and Manulife Financial becomes 宏利財務 (grand profit financial). The Chinese names of all three examples cited above resonate with people who understand Chinese and is by far the most effective way to brand a product unless you are working with a pan cultural name like “Apple” 萍果.

Good luck in picking a powerful Chinese name this election.

Adopting a Chinese Name Helps Win at the Polls – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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New immigration rules risk leaving international students behind

2015/02/11 Leave a comment

Curious and wonder what the rationale was:

“Students are the worst done by in this Express Entry system because, how do you prove for someone with [little] work experience that there is no Canadian to do the job?” said Evan Green, a partner and immigration lawyer at Green and Spiegel LLP in Toronto.

Students are still able to apply for permanent residence through other avenues, such as provincial nominee programs (PNP), which prioritize applications from international students with Canadian postsecondary credentials and professional work experience. The majority of Ontario’s 2,500 PNP spots are filled by international students, for example.

But tens of thousands of students have stayed in Canada as a result of the federal program, and those spots cannot be transferred to the provinces without negotiations.

The changes to how applications from those eligible under the Canadian Experience Class would be processed were announced last winter but the exact details were only released by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander in early December.

“This is a radical move that is devastating to international students that relied on policies that were put into place by this government to help post-graduate international students transition to permanent residence, based on their findings that these were the best people to adapt to life in Canada,” said Robin Seligman, a Toronto-based lawyer who has international student clients.

Along with removing credit for students for pre-permanent residency time for citizenship, likely reduces the attractiveness of Canada compared to other jurisdictions.

New immigration rules risk leaving international students behind – The Globe and Mail.

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France: Teaching the Holocaust

2015/02/11 Leave a comment

Film worth watching and history of French involvement in Holocaust.

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On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, France 2 broadcast, over one week, an eight-part documentary series—totaling seven-and-a-half hours—on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, “‘Jusqu’au dernier’: La Déstruction des Juifs d’Europe,” by the French filmmakers William Karel and Blanche Finger (English title: Annihilation: The Destruction of Europe’s Jews; English trailer is here). I missed it on TV but managed to see all eight episodes streamed on France 2’s website (before they disappeared, as French television regulations unfortunately only allow the viewing of programs on the web for a week after their broadcast). I’ve seen numerous documentaries on the Holocaust over the decades—and read plenty on the subject—but this one is particularly remarkable. The series, which begins with the 1933 Nazi seizure of power and closes with the memory of the Holocaust over the decades following WWII, is almost entirely composed…

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Taiwan’s Growing Multiculturalism

2015/02/11 Leave a comment

Numbers still small, but the debates and discussion interesting:

Migration trends over the past two decades have seen an impressive increase in the number of foreign permanent residents in Taiwan from 1,649 in 2005 to 10,811 at the end of 2014 (excluding residents from mainland China). In 2014, for the first time, the number of first and second-generation immigrants living in Taiwan exceeded the population of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples.

Two of the biggest factors leading to the recent increase in immigration to Taiwan include the creation of permanent residence in 1999 and the relaxation of rules applying to the financial, health, and criminal records of immigrants. Some of the largest groups of foreign residents now living in Taiwan include Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese, and American-born nationals.

At the end of 2014, important draft amendments to the Nationality Act were announced. Under the proposed reforms, foreigners applying for Republic of China (ROC) citizenship will not have to renounce their original citizenship. These changes would mean that foreigners could be dual-nationals.

This is a very important step in the right direction. But Taiwan faces large challenges as it grows into a more cosmopolitan society.

Taiwan’s past immigration policies have reflected a perception that Taiwan is essentially a mono-cultural society based on a narrow shared ethnicity and culture. Public and political discourse on multiculturalism has solely focused on the indigenous population, Chinese mainlanders, the Hokkien and the Hakka people. Combined with Taiwan’s isolated political situation, this has not aided Taiwan in becoming more open, competitive, and vibrant.

One of the most common questions asked of foreign students in Taiwan today is “Why did you choose to study in Taiwan over China?” Questions such as these exhibit the lack of international self-awareness that still plagues the Taiwanese people. Taipei’s new Mayor, Ko Wen-je recently accurately described this situation, suggesting, “Taiwan is like a car with very powerful engines but no steering wheel.”

In addition to this, Taiwanese people themselves have little experience with international travel outside the narrow confines of East Asia. Travel data collected by the Taiwanese Tourism Bureau confirmed that the Taiwanese still prefer to visit countries very close by, with 88 percent of international travel in 2013 being to Asian countries, primarily China (32 percent) and Japan (26 percent).

Despite these challenges, the cultural landscape in Taiwan is changing and this shift has also been reflected in the media. Until recently, foreigners were largely excluded from representation in Taiwanese media, but now they are increasingly being featured in films, television dramas, and documentaries. Films such as Homesick Eye illustrate the hardships faced by Southeast Asian migrant workers in Taiwan. My Imported Wife is a documentary about the victimization of immigrant wives and the issues that come along with transnational marriage. These creative representations are an interesting reflection of the changing cultural dynamic in Taiwan and point to a trend toward an increasing acceptance of multiculturalism.

Taiwan’s Growing Multiculturalism | The Diplomat.

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New Anti-terrorism Bill May Fragment Community Relationships

2015/02/11 Leave a comment

Graham Hudson, in New Canadian Media, makes the valid point that much of the rhetoric and reality of C-51 may reduce the resilience within communities to combat radicalization and undermine some of the outreach efforts of the various police and security forces, key to increasing resilience:

The proposed advocacy or promotion of terrorism offence, for instance, will have a “chilling effect” on the communication of political and religious ideas within the Muslim community. While at first glance it may be seen as a net gain from the government’s perspective, fear of being associated with criminal activity may discourage community members from talking to each other about the issue of radicalization, interacting with high-risk persons in an effort to counter radicalization, or reporting information to police.  This will negatively impact the internal social dynamics of communities, including the viability of community-based programs, self-regulation and other means of “collective efficacy” that have been shown to help counter radicalization and facilitate integration into broader social networks.

New Anti-terrorism Bill May Fragment Community Relationships – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Does Skin Colour Matter in News and Entertainment? Yes it Does – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/02/10 Leave a comment

An inconvenient truth – “colourism”:

It has significant implications as people with darker skin tones are stereotyped, and as a result, treated differently throughout society. For example, various studies have shown that employers prefer to hire Black males with lighter skin tones, less education and work experience over Black males with higher levels of education and past work experience, but with darker skin tones. There are also studies that show that immigrants with lighter skin tones earn more than their darker-skinned counterparts.

Colourism plays out in the school system, with a recent American study showing that school discipline for girls differs by race and skin colour, with girls with darker skin tones being disciplined more harshly than their lighter-coloured counterparts. Similar patterns are also evident in the criminal justice system. One recent study found that women with lighter skin tones were more likely to receive shorter prison sentences than their darker-skinned counterparts.

Charges of colourism also reverberate throughout Hollywood. There is criticism that women with darker skin tones are cast in episodes of police shows dealing with the inner city while lighter-coloured women are cast in roles in which the beauty of the character is important. Lighter-skinned women are also disproportionately featured in People magazine’s annual “Most Beautiful” list. Some fashion magazines have been accused of lightening the photos of Beyoncé and Gabourey Sidibe. Similarly, darker-coloured Black men are portrayed in the entertainment industry in roles that are more violent and threatening.

Does Skin Colour Matter in News and Entertainment? Yes it Does – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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