A crisis is coming: If this many cross the U.S. border in February, how many will come by June? | Coyne

2017/02/23 Leave a comment

Another good column by Andrew Coyne, reminding that there is no easy solution for the refugees crossing the border, and the more realistic approach is a mix of measures:

I feel for Tony Clement. The Tory MP has been demanding the government “enforce the law” on the mounting numbers of asylum seekers who have been crossing the border from the United States, illegally, in recent weeks. But he found himself sputtering for air Tuesday when a CBC radio interviewer asked him what, specifically, he wanted the government to do, eventually hanging up in a snit.

It’s a good question, though: In what way are the police officers who have been arresting the would-be refugees as soon as they step on Canadian soil failing to enforce the law? The calls from Clement and other critics for a “crackdown” amount to a demand that illegal immigration should be made illegal, enforced by the arrest of all those who are currently being arrested.

But as I say I feel for Clement. Like him, I have no easy answers to this dilemma. Unlike him, however, I’m willing to admit it. The migration of peoples is one of the great motive forces of human history; when large numbers of people are determined to pick up and move somewhere, there isn’t a force in the world that can stop them.

That does not relieve us of the need to address what seems likely to grow into a considerable problem, if not a crisis. We Canadians have been congratulating ourselves at our greater tolerance as we watch Europe struggling with the sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, or the United States with the accumulated backlog of millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico and points south.

….That leaves … whatever it is the Tories are proposing. But what is that? The police are not empowered to arrest people until they are on Canadian soil — and the minute they do set foot, as asylum-seekers, they have rights, including the right to a hearing to adjudicate their claim.

Perhaps you believe they should be sent back without a hearing. But that is not Canadian law, and given Supreme Court rulings on the matter is unlikely to become law. And there is the little matter that in some cases this really would amount to condemning people to persecution, even death. A decent country — and a signatory to UN conventions — does not do such things.

The easiest of all answers — build a wall — would not just be expensive folly, as in the U.S.-Mexico example: it isn’t even a practical possibility. This is not a problem we are going to solve, but manage, by a combination of measures: by increasing our intake of immigrants and refugees; by adding more staff and resources to border control points; by prevailing upon the Americans, if we can, to preserve a humane and law-based immigration and refugee policy; and by turning back many of those who do apply, perhaps under a revised and extended Safe Third Country Agreement.

Source: A crisis is coming: If this many cross the U.S. border in February, how many will come by June? | National Post

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Barbara Kay: Actually, one needn’t be a hysterical bigot to have concerns with M-103, other commentary by Lorne Gunter and Chris Selley

2017/02/23 Leave a comment

Barbara Kay continues not to understand, or appear not to understand, what M-103 includes and what is do not. Coyne is on much sounder ground than she, despite her examples of unacceptable comments:

In December, for example, Georges Bensoussan, a Morocco-born scholar on Jewish communities in Arab countries, was prosecuted in France, because a complaint was filed against him for incitement to racial hatred by the “Collective Against Islamophobia.” His crime? Two quotations were cited in the charge, taken from an interview last year on a French cultural radio show. Bensoussan said, “Today, we are witnessing a different people in the midst of the French nation, who are effecting a return on a certain number of democratic values to which we adhere,” and “This visceral anti-Semitism proven by the Fondapol survey by Dominique Reynié last year cannot remain under a cover of silence.” (Here he was referring to a 2014 survey finding Muslims in France were nearly three times more likely to be anti-Jewish than French people as a whole.)

If these are not fair comments by Andrew Coyne’s standards, then I do not know what is. But Bensoussan is in the dock for them. His story frightens me — with reason.

Ironically, I happened to come across this story at the same time as it was revealed that in at least two sermons distributed on Youtube, imam Sayyid al-Ghitaoui of Montreal’s Al-Andalus Islamic Centre called for Allah to “destroy the accursed Jews,” to “kill them one by one” and to “make their children orphans and their women widows.” (Has he been fired yet? I ask because only Jewish media considered it a story worth covering.) It’s not as if this imam is unique here either. Imams all over the world say the same and much worse about Jews, citing sacred Islamic texts. ISIL members too tell journalists they are following the prophet Mohammed “in the strictest way.” They feel their Islam is as “real” as those who wrote E-411.
So I say to the petitioners of E-411 that I have received their opinion loud and clear. And now I would like to make up my own mind about Islam, as I do with all contentious issues: that is, according to primary sources, credible commentators, legitimate opinion surveys and so forth.

I do not wish to be told by a petition or by the recommendations of a study based on that petition what I must think — or say in a considered and thoughtful way — about any ideology or belief system in deference to the sensibilities of a specific group in order to earn a seal of non-Islamophobic approval from agenda-driven advocacy groups and their political allies.

I greatly admire Andrew Coyne for his exegetical brilliance in the hermeneutics of electoral reform, but on the subject of creeping Shariah-based blasphemy laws across the Western world, it grieves me to say that he has revealed himself as an authority of rather lesser stature.

Source: Barbara Kay: Actually, one needn’t be a hysterical bigot to have concerns with M-103 | National Post

Lorne Gunter picks up the same slippery slope argumentation:

After arguing it was wrong to tar all Muslims – extremists and moderates – with the same brush, Prof. Kutty then added I was way off base for linking the treatment of suburban Montrealer Antonio Padula with the effects M-103 may have.

Padula is just some guy from the Montreal-area community of Kirkland. One evening shortly after the horrific murders at a Quebec City mosque, Padula saw three police cars pull up outside his home. He was arrested, taken away in cuffs and put in jail for the night, all because police misinterpreted some tweets he posted as promoting hatred toward Muslims.

Kutty said Padula’s treatment had nothing to do with the intent of M-103, that he was being charged under hate crimes and other laws, not under a Parliamentary motion offering support for Muslims.

But that’s how these things start. Too often they begin with well-meaning intentions. Yet once they get into the hands of politically correct bureaucrats, Parliamentary committees and human rights commissioners, they morph into something unrecognizable.

Tremont asked me whether, perhaps, Padula’s treatment was justified given that his indelicate tweets came just days after the bloody shooting. But isn’t that just promoting a climate of fear – fear that everyone who posts politically incorrect tweets is a potential murderer who deserves to be arrested and throw in a cell, and possibly face months of expensive legal defence to clear his name?

The supporters of M-103 insist there is an increasing public climate of hatred and fear against Muslims. But wasn’t the treatment of Padula just as much an overreaction based on fear?

If Muslims shouldn’t be condemned for the actions of a few extremists in their faith, shouldn’t it also hold that Antonio Padula shouldn’t be arrested just because officials are suddenly acting out of fear that everyone who tweets unkind ideas is a potential killer?

Prof. Kutty also said it was wrong to focus on the word Islamophobia because he had a good definition of it. And, I’ll admit, his wasn’t bad. But that’s the problem – everybody has his or her own definition. Give that much leeway to the human rights police and the broadest possible definition will be upheld. There will be more, not fewer, Antonio Padula’s rousted from their beds in the middle of the night for the “crime” of being politically incorrect, or even just ironic.

Source: M-103 could morph into something unrecognizable

Chris Selley nails it beautifully in this commentary, contrasting the federal conservatives with their Ontario counterparts:

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown says he will support Liberal MPP Nathalie Des Rosiers’ private member’s motion asking the legislature to “condemn all forms of Islamophobia.”

“I think it’s pretty straightforward to condemn any form of hate,” Brown told reporters Tuesday morning. “In terms of Islamophobia, it is real.” He said he would encourage his MPPs to vote likewise. And there is no sign of significant dissent in the ranks.

That’s a good thing. Private members’ motions compel the government to do precisely nothing. They are not the soil in which legislation grows, nor are they fertilizer. They are farts in the wind. And on thorny issues like Islamophobia or Israel or transgender rights, their primary purpose is often to expose one’s political opponents as holding unsuitable positions and then denounce them.

Nothing good can come from falling into that trap — and if there was any doubt about that, Brown’s former colleagues in Ottawa are proving it in spades.

It is now lost forever in a toxic fog, but there were legitimate debates to be had about Liberal MP Iqra Khalid’s private member’s motion M-103, which calls on the government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination,” and to “develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.”

Perhaps the platonic ideal of this legislatively inconsequential motion would not single out any one religion. Perhaps it would be worded differently: were he still an MP, Irwin Cotler said he would have proposed replacing “Islamophobia” with “anti-Muslim bigotry” or “anti-Muslim hatred.” That’s perfectly reasonable. To some people Islamophobia means “anti-Muslim bigotry” or “anti-Muslim hatred,” but to others it means what it says: fear of Islam.

You’re allowed to be afraid of religions (though I wouldn’t recommend it), and you’re certainly allowed to criticize religions. Some Canadians spent the entire Stephen Harper era being afraid of evangelical Christians, for example. On Monday the Masjid Toronto mosque apologized for a supplication recorded on its premises asking Allah to “purify Al-Aqsa Mosque (on the Temple Mount) from the filth of the Jews.” (That’s as translated by Jonathan Halevi of CIJ News.) I’m certainly not going to sit here and condemn Jews for “fearing” Islam.

But these are delicate arguments to make even in a regular political climate. It’s quasi-suicidal in today’s political climate — one in which six parishioners were recently gunned down at a mosque in Quebec City; in which protesters have descended on Toronto mosques with signs reading “ban Islam,” “Muslims are terrorists” and the like; and in which some portion of Canadian conservatives who were already leery of Islam have followed Donald Trump’s tire tracks into a ditch of conspiracist madness.

Among the ditch-dwellers and those who flog merchandise to them, M-103 is an “Islamic blasphemy law” that prohibits criticism of Islam or it is the first step (or another!) toward the implementation of Shariah law in Canada. Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media held an entire “free speech” rally based on those premises last week, and four Conservative leadership candidates actually showed up — including whichever demons have seized the bodies of well-regarded diplomat Chris Alexander and orthopaedic surgeon Kellie Leitch. Enough has transpired in the past couple of weeks to fill an entire campaign’s worth of attack ads for the Liberals; they must be thrilled to pieces.

Back at Queen’s Park, there are many grounds on which to question whether Patrick Brown is the best man for the job of ending nearly 14 years of Liberal rule. The Liberals will cast him as the worst Conservative bogeyman since the last worst Conservative bogeyman: anti-abortion, anti-sex-ed, anti-government, the whole lot. Many conservatives, meanwhile, wonder whether there’s much conservatism to Brown at all — or much of anything that outranks political expediency.

But Brown’s outreach to immigrant communities remains one of his key accomplishments; there is no reason to believe he isn’t sincere in supporting Des Rosiers’ motion on principle. And if there are Ontario Tories who do have minor concerns, the Ottawa precedent makes it clear how best to proceed: express those minor concerns by all means, but vote for the motion. There is nothing to be gained by doing otherwise.

This is a low bar the Ontario Tories are clearing here, and it shouldn’t be a surprise. Given that their federal cousins are currently beating themselves around the mouth and ears with that same bar, however, it is nevertheless a reassuring sign of basic political competence, leadership and sanity. It’s quite a world Canadian Conservatives are living in all of a sudden.

Source: Chris Selley: On Islamophobia, Ontario Tories look to pass the very easy test their federal cousins failed

 

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Liberals unveil resettlement plan for 1,200 Yazidis and other victims of ISIS

2017/02/23 Leave a comment

One of the few areas that the Conservative opposition has made a positive contribution. Michelle Rempel deserves full credit for pushing the government:

Canada plans to resettle 1,200 Yazidi refugees and other survivors of ISIS by the end of this year.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen announced today that nearly 400 survivors have already arrived in Canada in the last four months since the House of Commons unanimously supported a Conservative motion that called on the government to provide asylum to an unspecified number of Yazidi women and girls.

Of those, about 74 per cent are Yazidi.

Canada has been given consent from the Iraq and Kurdish regional governments, which are supporting and co-operating with the plan, Hussen said.

The motion recognized that ISIS, also called Daesh, is committing genocide against the Yazidi people and holding many of the group’s women and girls as sex slaves.

Hussen said many of the newcomers will have far greater needs than other refugees who have come to Canada.

“Many have experienced unimaginable trauma and vulnerability, both physical and emotional, and many will have unique physical, psychological and social needs, such as trauma counselling,” he told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa Tuesday.

Survivors arriving at ‘controlled pace’

The survivors have been arriving on commercial flights at a “controlled pace” to avoid over-burdening support services. The federal government will also work with provincial, territorial and municipal governments to ensure unique ongoing needs are met.

Although the motion referred only to providing asylum to Yazidi women and girls, the 1,200 refugees will include male family members. Hussen said ISIS also deliberately targets young boys, so the program will help resettle all child survivors of ISIS.

The government will also facilitate private sponsorships of Yazidi refugees, he said.

Source: Liberals unveil resettlement plan for 1,200 Yazidis and other victims of ISIS – Politics – CBC News

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La laïcité déculottée [Pelletier on Charles Taylor’s revisiting Bouchard-Taylor recommendations]

2017/02/23 Leave a comment

Good piece by Francine Pelletier on the further reflection of Charles Taylor:

Mais où commencer ? Les malentendus sont nombreux et combien enchevêtrés ! D’abord, cette notion voulant que la Révolution tranquille ait transformé le Québec en terre de la laïcité. Oui, la province s’est rapidement sécularisée dans les années 60 ; il y a eu une grande « perte d’influence de la religion », pour ne rien dire de la déconfessionnalisation des écoles. Mais la laïcité implique une séparation de l’Église et de l’État autrement plus pointue, une qui passe par l’ordre juridique et qui aurait exigé, excusez-moi de le souligner à gros traits, le retrait du crucifix à l’Assemblée nationale.

La laïcité comporte un deuxième volet, plus important encore : la neutralité de l’État. Contrairement aux interprétations souvent véhiculées, cela n’implique pas une désaffection religieuse. Loin de récuser, la neutralité « accueille » toute religion seulement sans favoritisme ni parti pris. Comme le suggère le sociologue belge Marc Jacquemain, il ne s’agit pas  d’une valeur en soi, mais d’un dispositif qui garantit une valeur, celle de la liberté de pensée et de religion. L’important n’est pas la neutralité ni l’absence de religion, en d’autres mots, mais bien la liberté de conscience. La possibilité pour chacun d’entre nous de vivre selon ses croyances, en toute liberté. Pour que ce foisonnement individuel puisse se réaliser, l’État, lui, doit offrir une page blanche.

Rien de ça n’a été officiellement discuté, encore moins légiféré, sous le gouvernement Lesage. Il ne l’a pas été beaucoup plus lors de la commission Bouchard-Taylor qui, de toute façon, se penchait sur un à-côté de la laïcité, les accommodements religieux. Les commissaires ont beau avoir inscrit la notion de « laïcité ouverte » dans leur rapport, celui-ci, on le sait, a été grossièrement tabletté. La notion n’a donc guère de sens pour l’ensemble des Québécois aujourd’hui. Si elle avait été bien comprise, aurait-on fait un tel gâchis de la « charte des valeurs » cinq ans plus tard ?

La législation proposée par le gouvernement Marois offrait un premier exercice, en bonne et due forme, sur la laïcité. À la bonne heure. Mais plutôt que de discuter de la neutralité de l’État et du type de laïcité que nous voulions, le débat s’est enlisé sur la question de l’identité nationale. C’est la raison pour laquelle l’exercice a été rapidement rebaptisé « charte des valeurs québécoises ». Il ne s’agissait pas d’établir rationnellement, juridiquement, le « rapport entre le politique et le religieux » ; il s’agissait de dire ce qu’on ne tolérait pas au Québec. C’est chaque fois, en fait, la même chose. Que ce soit dans la foulée de la Révolution tranquille, du « code de vie » d’Hérouxville ou de la charte des valeurs, le sentiment antireligieux, la hantise du passé prennent le dessus et dictent les résultats.

Comme le note Marc Jacquemain, il n’y a que la France qui opte pour cette laïcité dite républicaine, nourrie de suspicion envers la religion (Révolution française oblige) et où, au nom d’une supposée cohésion sociale, on a comme mission « l’émancipation » du croyant. Or, le type de laïcité proposée par MM. Bouchard et Taylor, aussi appelée laïcité libérale, est aux antipodes de cette laïcité française où, plutôt que de défendre « le droit de l’individu face à l’État » on défend « le droit (et même le devoir) de l’État de défendre l’individu face à la religion ».

Ce qui nous amène au consensus que M. Taylor aurait malencontreusement fait voler en éclats, celui d’interdire aux juges, magistrats et policiers le port de signes religieux.

D’abord, est-ce vraiment une victoire d’ériger ce principe en loi alors qu’on ne comprend guère sur quoi une telle restriction repose ? Il s’agit, après tout, de bafouer les droits fondamentaux de certains individus. La « neutralité d’apparence » en vaut-elle vraiment la chandelle ? Je suis plutôt disposée à le croire, mais je trouve suspect qu’on veuille applaudir seulement à ce qui restreint ici les droits individuels alors que c’est silence radio sur ce qui garantirait leur épanouissement. Plutôt qu’un geste réfléchi en vue d’une laïcité réelle, un tel consensus n’agit-il pas plutôt comme un gros diachylon sur la plaie béante de l’identité nationale ?

Charles Taylor a raison de nous forcer à y réfléchir à deux fois.

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ICYMI: Trump’s dangerous delusions about Islam | Christopher de Bellaigue | The Guardian

2017/02/23 Leave a comment

Good long read by Christopher de Bellaigue, taken from his latest book, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason (conclusion excerpt):

Even accounting for the new arrivals of recent years, Muslims amount to just 6% of Europe’s population, and 1% of that of the US. But proportionality of response is not considered a virtue among the new nationalists – and even if the Muslim immigration figures were to start to fall, and all fear of submergence under a Muslim tide was demonstrated to be empirically groundless, who’s to say the populists would allow the thrill of fear to abate?

What seems more likely is that today’s proponents of harsh anti-Muslim measures will find retroactive justification in any virulent reaction they excite, leading to even more and harsher measures against Muslims – much as the European powers whose interventions helped hasten the collapse of the Islamic Enlightenment at the start of the last century felt their actions were vindicated by the violence that followed.

For those whose primary concern is the perpetuation of cultural homogeneity, the pressing question is a simple one: what is to be done with the Muslims? The clashist version of history makes their antipathy to modernity indisputable; integration and assimilation are therefore impossible. This would seem to be the position of the 60% of Germans, for example, who have been found in surveys to agree with Frauke Petry’s AfD that Islam does not belong in their country.

This is the kind of polling that converts easily into action by a decisive commander-in-chief. And it is surely legitimate to observe that Islamism of a strident and intermittently violent sort has made inroads in European societies, bringing a combative intolerance to parts of the continent where the socio-economic indicators are in any case low.

But the question for anyone concerned for the overall health of society is a more complicated one; the answer will have to address the actual threat of jihadism, calm the fears of those who believe an intangible and precious part of their culture is endangered, and revive the dimming faith in the possibility of inclusive, multi-ethnic liberal democracy.

We already know what Trump’s reaction to the next atrocity will be. “I told you so,” he will say, and give the screws a turn. Electronic tagging; deportations; orders to shoot illicit refugees (a suggestion of the AfD’s Petry) – the menu of vengeful retributions before the clash-mongers is long and mouthwatering.

For those grappling with the second of the two questions, the options are already limited. The European refugee crisis has hardened the continent’s heart, probably forever, and sectarian identity has been placed at the heart of western political debate. All of this happened before Trump entered the White House; under Obama, it was already hard enough for anyone hailing from a Muslim-majority country to gain entry to the US.

But as Trump and his allies are eager to demonstrate, there is a vast difference between the existing regimes of stringent border security – which effectively served as a moratorium on any mass Muslim migration – and the new environment of official vilification. The scapegoating of Muslim communities in Europe and America is the road to pogroms, and it is that road that we are starting down, even if we can still turn back.

Relish for the clash is in the air. Bannon is up for it. So are the jihadis; Trump is doing their work for them, proving that the west hates Islam for xenophobic reasons, which is what they said all along. The entrenchment of clashism – as an observation presented to a few academics in 1957 becomes the creed of a new ruling class – will only draw more and more people into believing its truth. •

Source: Trump’s dangerous delusions about Islam | Christopher de Bellaigue | News | The Guardian

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The Culture of Nastiness – The New York Times

2017/02/22 Leave a comment

Good reflections and commentary by Teddy Wayne:

Social media has normalized casual cruelty, and those who remove the “casual” from that descriptor are simply taking it several repellent steps further than the rest of us. That internet trolls typically behave better in the real world is not, however, solely from fear of public shaming and repercussions, or even that their fundamental humanity is activated in empathetic, face-to-face conversations. It may be that they lack much of a “real world” — a strong sense of community — to begin with, and now have trouble relating to others.

Andrew Reiner, an English professor at Towson University who teaches a seminar called “Mister Rogers 101: Why Civility and Community Still Matter,” attributes much of the decline in civility, especially among younger people, to Americans’ living in relative sequestration. The majority of his students tell him they barely knew their neighbors growing up, corroborating thinkers like Robert Putnam, who in his 2000 book, “Bowling Alone,” argued that civic engagement is diminishing. Consequently, Professor Reiner believes they have little experience in working through conflicts with people with whom they must figure out a way to get along.

“Civility is the idea that you’re not always going to agree but you still have to make it work,” he said. “We fear our ideas clashing with somebody else’s, even when we’re all ultimately pulling for the same thing.”

This leads to a vicious cycle in which the breakdowns of civility and community reinforce one another.

“People think, ‘If I disagree with you, then I have to dislike you, so why should I go to a neighborhood meeting when it’s clear I’m going to disagree with them?’” he said.

Professor Reiner also chalked up some of the devolution of basic courtesy to people’s increasingly digitized existence and engagement with their phones, not one another. For an assignment, he asks his students to experiment with old-fashioned civility by committing random acts of kindness and eating with strangers.

“It’s about trying to get beyond our own insecurities and get past the possibility of rejection, and that never has to happen with our online lives,” he said. “It reintroduces the idea of social risk-taking, which not that long ago was the norm, and learning how to be uncomfortable and relearning the skills of how to talk face to face.”

Though the internet receives the brunt of censure for corroding manners, other elements of popular culture aren’t much more elevated. In my neighborhood subway station a few months ago, two posters near each other for the TV shows “Graves” (about a former president) and “Those Who Can’t” (a comedy about teachers) both featured lightly obscured depictions of the middle finger. After the election, as I looked at the one depicting Nick Nolte in front of an American flag with the presidential seal covering his offending hand, it no longer seemed so shocking that Mr. Trump would soon occupy the Oval Office.

And the putative employer wielding all the power over labor is a trademark of reality TV, where Mr. Trump honed his brand for 14 seasons on NBC and trained us to think of a blustery television personality like him as a regular and revered figure in contemporary America. We have long had game and talent shows, but elimination from them used to be gentler — or, in the case of “The Gong Show,” at least goofier — than being brusquely told, “You’re fired,” “You are the weakest link” or receiving Simon Cowell’s withering exit-interview critiques.

In the dog-eat-dog environments of these programs, cooperation and kindness are readily abandoned for back-stabbing and character assassination. Short-term strategic alliances sometimes form among rivals, but the rules of the games preclude the possibility of something like collective bargaining. Likewise, union membership has drastically shrunk in the private sector over the last four decades. Why sacrifice for another person when there can be just one top chef or model or singer, one bachelorette with the final rose, one survivor — or in your own workplace, one promotion this financial quarter amid a spate of layoffs?

As evinced by the long-running “Real Housewives” series, calm conflict resolution does not make for good ratings. Even cake baking is now a fight to the finish.

Rather than seeking the comfort of known faces with the fictional, loving families and buddies from “The Brady Bunch,” “Cheers” and “Friends,” we now crave the company of supposedly “real” squabbling family members or acquaintances from documentary-style shows, perhaps as consolation for most likely watching them by ourselves, on a small laptop or phone screen.

“We would rather watch families on reality TV than do the hard work of being in a community with our own families,” Professor Reiner said.

Many critics of Mr. Trump have drawn parallels between this era and 1930s Germany. But when it comes to incivility and the 45th president, a more apt epoch may be 1950s America and its Communist witch hunts, specifically a quotation from the lawyer Joseph N. Welch in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. (The chief counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy was Roy Cohn, who later went on to become a close friend and business associate of Mr. Trump’s.)

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Mr. Welch asked Mr. McCarthy after Mr. McCarthy alleged that one of Mr. Welch’s fellow lawyers was a Communist.

It is a question many would like to pose to Mr. Trump — and one we all, nasty sirs and women alike, should be asking ourselves.

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ICYMI: Mark Zuckerberg warns against reversal of global thinking – The Globe and Mail

2017/02/22 Leave a comment

Interesting comments and growing public role:

Facebook Inc. chief executive Mark Zuckerberg laid out a vision on Thursday of his company serving as a bulwark against rising isolationism, writing in a letter to users that the company’s platform could be the “social infrastructure” for the globe.

In a 5,700-word manifesto, Zuckerberg, founder of the world’s largest social network, quoted Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. president during the country’s 19th century Civil War known for his eloquence, and offered a philosophical sweep that was unusual for a business magnate.

Zuckerberg’s comments come at a time when many people and nations around the world are taking an increasingly inward view. U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to put “America first” in his inaugural address in January. That followed Britain’s decision last June to exit the European Union.

“Across the world there are people left behind by globalization, and movements for withdrawing from global connection,” Zuckerberg wrote, without naming specific movements.

The question, the 32-year-old executive said, was whether “the path ahead is to connect more or reverse course,” adding that he stands for bringing people together.

Quoting from a letter Lincoln wrote to Congress in the depths of the Civil War, he wrote to Facebook’s 1.9 billion users: “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present.”

Zuckerberg said that Facebook could move far beyond its roots as a network for friends and families to communicate, suggesting that it can play a role in five areas, all of which he referred to as “communities,” ranging from strengthening traditional institutions, to providing help during and after crises, to boosting civic engagement.

In comments on Facebook, some users praised Zuckerberg’s note for staying positive, while others declared “globalism” dead.

Facebook has been under pressure to more closely police hoaxes, fake news and other controversial content, although the concerns have had little impact on its finances. The company reported 2016 revenue of $27.6-billion, up 54 per cent from a year earlier.

One area where Zuckerberg wrote that Facebook would do better would be suggesting “meaningful communities.” Some 100 million users are members of groups that are “very meaningful” to them, he wrote, representing only about 5 per cent of users.

Facebook is also using artificial intelligence more to flag photos and videos that need human review, Zuckerberg wrote. One-third of all reports to Facebook’s review team are generated by artificial intelligence, he wrote.

Zuckerberg’s letter was “a bit more ambitious and a bit more of the 30,000-foot view than I see from most tech company CEOs,” Peter Micek, global policy and legal counsel at Access Now, an international digital rights group, said in a phone interview.

But Zuckerberg stayed away from certain subjects on which Facebook could be vulnerable to criticism, mentioning the word “privacy” only once, Micek said.

Source: Mark Zuckerberg warns against reversal of global thinking – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism

After Pedophilia Comments, Milo Yiannopoulos Loses CPAC Invite, Simon & Schuster Book Deal : NPR

2017/02/22 Leave a comment

So it took this for CPAC and Simon & Shuster to act, while ignoring all his hate speech?

Breibart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos lost both a speaking gig at a prominent conservative event and a book deal in less than 24 hours.

First, Monday afternoon the American Conservative Union rescinded its invitation to the right-wing provocateur — noted for his political posts on the Internet — to speak at its annual Conservative Political Action Conference this upcoming weekend. Then, a few hours later, Simon & Schuster announced that it was canceling the publication of Yiannopoulos’ upcoming book, Dangerous.

These actions come in the wake of a social media backlash against Yiannopoulos after the conservative news outlet The Reagan Battalion tweeted videos on Sunday in which Yiannopoulos appears to condone statutory rape and sexual relationships between boys and men.

Yiannopoulos sought to clarify his comments Monday in a Facebook post citing the video clips as “deceptive editing” and blaming his own “sloppy phrasing” for any indication that he supports pedophilia. He goes on to defend himself by referencing his own relationship when he was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the U.K. is 16.

There were several references to sex between boys and men in the video.

Source: After Pedophilia Comments, Milo Yiannopoulos Loses CPAC Invite, Simon & Schuster Book Deal : The Two-Way : NPR

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

ICYMI: Conservative MPs laugh at Amarjeet Sohi’s past as city bus driver

2017/02/22 Leave a comment

So ironic, if not hypocritical, as the Conservatives, in government or opposition, always take aim at “elites.”

(My recent analysis of Senate appointments confirmed that senators appointed by PM Trudeau have more “elite” backgrounds than those by former PM Harper – Diversity in the Senate – Policy Options):

A federal cabinet minister who learned to deal with the public while driving an Edmonton transit bus was laughed at this week in the House of Commons, apparently for that very reason.

Amarjeet Sohi, the minister of infrastructure and Liberal MP for Edmonton Mill Woods, rose in the house Tuesday to speak about transportation.

He began his remarks by acknowledging that as a former transit driver he was especially shocked to learn that a bus driver in Winnipeg had been stabbed to death earlier in the day.

“Mr. Speaker, as a former bus driver, I want to convey our thoughts and prayers,” Sohi said.

On the video recording of the proceedings of the House of Commons, loud laughter could be heard coming from the opposition benches.

Sohi’s colleagues on the Liberal side could be seen shaking their heads in disbelief.

“What I heard was laughter,” Sohi said Wednesday during an interview from Ottawa.

The former transit bus driver went on to serve two terms on Edmonton city council, before winning a seat as a Liberal member of Parliament in the 2015 federal election.

“I take pride in my background,” Sohi said.

“I think it does demonstrate a streak of elitist attitude in the Conservative party, where maybe they don’t appreciate we have working-class people in Parliament in the Liberal government who are making a difference in the lives of Canadians.”

Adam Vaughan, a Liberal MP from Toronto, raised a point of order in the House on Wednesday and asked that the laughter be “withdrawn,” which would strike it from the record.

“This is offensive to the values of this House, to the values of Canadians and the diversity of all of us,” Vaughan said.

But Conservative House leader Candice Bergen refused.

“There’s all kinds of laughter that occurs here,” Bergen responded in the House. “So we absolutely respect and honour all of the jobs that we’ve done, and the experience we bring to this house.”

Sohi said he wasn’t personally upset by the laughter, but he thought Bergen’s statement fell short of what was required.

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The Latest Trend In Zionism? AntiSemitism. – Forward.com

2017/02/22 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary by Matthew Gindin of Vancouver:

When Rabbi Matt Rosenberg courageously confronted Richard Spencer, the white nationalist and alt-right pseudo-hipster wunderkind, asking to study a Torah of love with him, of “radical inclusion,” Spencer cynically and brutally shut him down: “Do you really want radical inclusion into the State of Israel?” Spencer responded as Rosenberg said nothing. “Jews exist precisely because you did not assimilate to the Gentiles… I respect that about you. I want my people to have that same sense of themselves.”

What I wish Rosenberg, thoroughly a diaspora Jew, had said, was something like this: “Israel is a tiny state with a landmass equal more or less to the state of New Jersey which accommodates a multi-ethnic society of Jews as a place of refuge for them from a world which has repeatedly tried to persecute or destroy them. Israel grants religious freedom to its citizens and has a 20% Arab population, as well as a robust Christian and Muslim population, all after only 70 years of existence governed by groups of quarreling refugee Jews speaking different languages who came from all over the world. Israel imperfectly attempts to defend itself from terrorism and conflict, sometimes upholding it’s best ideals and sometimes failing miserably. I support an Israel which welcomes the stranger and defends the rights of all of its citizens while maintaining its fundamental character as a Jewish homeland. My Israel has nothing in common with your ethnically cleansed white winter wonderland.”

The Trump administration, and it’s alt-right homeboys, combine seemingly authentic sympathy for militant ethnic nationalism with sincere hostility to Muslims (perceived by them as the common enemy that makes Israel a friend) together with an antipathy to non-white, non-Christian minorities at home and to “progressive elites”, a double identification that potentially renders diaspora Jews twice damned. That is their Zionist anti-Semitism: affection for a cartoon understanding of Zionist Israel paired with hostility to a cartoon understanding of the diaspora Jew.

Now to our horror, we have an Israeli Prime Minister who seems to be siding with the Zionist Jew against the Diaspora Jew, choosing to advance the strong-arm answer to Israeli problems pushed by the Israeli right-wing while dismissing the fears and ethical concerns of the diaspora Jew (as he does to the Israeli left-wing at home). Choosing might and security over Jewish values- choosing Zionist strength over the Jewish soul- Bibi too appears to be joining the ranks of the Zionist anti-Semites, a deal with the devil which may haunt us for years to come.

Source: The Latest Trend In Zionism? Anti-Semitism. – Scribe – Forward.com

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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