George Soros: Hungarian government posters ‘anti-Semitic’ – BBC News

2017/07/14 Leave a comment

Sad:

Financier George Soros has accused the Hungarian government of using “anti-Semitic imagery” in its poster campaign against him.

Mr Soros has been vilified in a campaign costing the right-wing Fidesz government an estimated 5.7bn forints (£16.3m; $21m).

Many Hungarian Jews fear that open or concealed anti-Semitism lies behind the campaign, which the government denies.

This is the first time US-based Mr Soros, 86, has echoed that fear.

However, he also thanked those who had made it their mission to tear the posters down.

The most recent series of posters – many of which have had anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled on them – show a grinning Mr Soros beside the words, “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh”.

The slogan is a reference to the government’s claim the philanthropist is working to settle a million migrants in the EU.

A poster showing George Soros, on which someone has written Image copyrightAKOS STILLER
Image captionA poster showing Mr Soros, saying “Let’s not allow Soros to have the last laugh!” Someone has written “dirty Jew” on his forehead

In a statement, Hungarian-born Mr Soros said: “I am distressed by the current Hungarian regime’s use of anti-Semitic imagery as part of its deliberate disinformation campaign.

“Equally, I am heartened that together with countless fellow citizens the leadership of the Hungarian Jewish community has spoken out against the campaign.”

Mr Soros has spent $12bn, mostly through his Open Society Foundations, on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world, especially in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, since the 1980s.

It has seen him come up against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has declared war on liberalism.

Most recently, the university Mr Soros founded has come under attack after MPs passed a bill which could force it out of Hungary.

The posters have also drawn anger from outside the country.

Guy Verhofstadt, the chief Brexit negotiator at the European Parliament and leader of the Parliament’s liberals, wrote on Facebook: “The Hungarian regime’s xenophobia and demonization of refugees are anti-European. The claim that Soros is promoting a scheme to import a million illegal immigrants into Europe is Victor Orban’s fantasy. Darkness falls in Hungary. We cannot let this happen.”

Source: George Soros: Hungarian government posters ‘anti-Semitic’ – BBC News

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Jagmeet Singh’s Quebec problem: Paul Wells

2017/07/14 1 Comment

There have been a series of articles on the problems posed by Singh’s candidacy in Quebec. This one by Paul Wells goes into more detail than most, other good ones are by Konrad Yakabuski ( Singh complicates the NDP’s Quebec quandary ) and John Ibbitson ( In Jagmeet Singh, a unifying figure with divisive potential ):

The second most-popular story on Le Devoir‘s website as I write this is about mounting anxiety in the Quebec wing of the NDP over Jagmeet Singh’s candidacy for the party’s leadership. “Several activists are panicking” at the thought, the story says.

The problem? Singh, a practicing Sikh, wears a turban and kirpan. “To have a leader who’d wear ostentatious signs” of his religious affiliation, “we are not ready,” Pierre Dionne Labelle, who was an NDP MP from 2011 to 2015, says on the record. “Would I be at ease with that? I don’t think so.”

This is the first time Le Devoir has found a New Democrat willing to speak on the record about concerns over Singh’s candidacy. Several others seem willing to share similar concerns off the record. The story also adds two cases where Singh’s positions in provincial politics could arguably have been influenced by his religious beliefs: a private member’s bill that sought to exempt Sikhs from having to wear motorcycle helmets, and a member’s statement over the provincial Liberal government’s controversial changes to the primary-school sex-education curriculum.

I could quibble with the latter of these examples. Singh’s statement on the sex-ed curriculum could have been made by Patrick Brown, the province’s Conservative leader, who is not Sikh. “The lack of inclusive consultation before announcing the curriculum was disrespectful to parents in my constituency,” part of Singh’s little speech, is a stock line in much of the opposition to the curriculum change.

But it’s less interesting to debate these points than to note that the anxiety Le Devoir chronicles exists, that it’s a challenge to the Singh candidacy, and to try to understand why these concerns are being expressed most loudly by the NDP’s Quebec wing.

Luckily we have a recent poll to guide us.

On June 26 the Angus Reid Institute published the results of surveys in the United States and Canada on attitudes towards diversity in political leadership. The Canadian results come from a randomized sample of 1,533 members of Angus Reid’s online panel; full methodology can be found here. Respondents were asked whether they would vote for a party led by a woman, a gay man, a man or woman wearing a religious head covering, and so on. This produced all sorts of fun cross-border comparisons—68 per cent of Canadians expect an atheist Prime Minister in the next 25 years, against only 37 per cent of Americans who expect an atheist President. But the internalsfrom the poll suggest other useful comparisons. Here’s the Canadian regional table showing responses for various questions that begin, “Would you yourself consider voting for a party led by a person who is…”

 

Screenshot 2017-07-11 13.20.30

Support for a Sikh-led party is only 46 per cent in Quebec, the lowest regional score in the country by eight points. On the generic “…man who wears a religious head-covering,” support is lowest in Quebec by 12 points. Support is also lowest in Quebec for parties led by Muslims, by Jews, and indeed by evangelical Christians.

This would probably be a good time for this Maclean’swriter to say the Angus Reid data don’t show a generalized inability among Quebec respondents to show “openness” to “difference.” No, the results are way more interesting than that. In fact, Quebec respondents were markedly more likely than respondents in the rest of Canada to support parties led by a gay man, a lesbian or an atheist. And there was no marked difference between Quebecers and other respondents when the hypothetical party leader was transgender, Indigenous, black or a woman.

In no other part of the country do the results line up as they do in Quebec: markedly less likely to support parties whose leaders wear some visible sign of their religious affiliation, markedly more likely to do so if their difference is expressed in some other way besides religion.

There’s an obvious explanation for this, but it rarely gets mentioned whenever the debate over so-called “reasonable accommodations” rears its head in Quebec or outside. It’s that Quebec has a markedly different cultural history with organized and visible religion than much of the rest of Canada.

Many older Quebecers, those whose memories stretch back before the mid-1960s at least, have personal memories of a time when the Roman Catholic church had a strong influence over public affairs. Even most younger Quebecers will have been taught, in great detail, about the period before the Quiet Revolution. And the Catholic church was pretty big on ostentatious displays of religious affiliation.

(You needn’t take my word on any of this. Marie McAndrew, a professor at the Université de Montréal’s faculty of education, has written often and thoughtfully on the “reasonable accommodations” debate and its cultural roots. In this representative piece, she writes: “…[W]e must remember that the people of Quebec who are of French-Canadian origin have a specific and usually more negative relationship with religion than people in the rest of Canada…. For most people born before the 1960s, in fact, the association between religion and public space evokes bad memories or at least memories that are incompatible with their democratic ideals.”)

The Quiet Revolution in Quebec was specifically a rebellion against religious influence. Progressive politics in many other parts of the country has been a politics of generalized tolerance; in Quebec progressive politics was often a politics of specific resistance. I lived in Quebec for five years and have written about its politics in instalments for nearly a quarter-century since, and I find this is one element of the debate over religion and politics that’s hardest for many non-Quebecers to grasp: suspicion of religion in politics is often a progressive impulse in Quebec politics. (Emphasis on “often,” as in, “of course not always, in Quebec or anywhere else.”)

Source: Jagmeet Singh’s Quebec problem – Macleans.ca

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When words become weapons, repression follows: Paris

2017/07/13 Leave a comment

Good column by Erna Paris – words matter:

It appears we can become accustomed to anything, provided it’s repeated often enough. What may have appalled us last year, or the year before, eventually loses its edge and is rendered normal. Think of the way highway speeding ratchets up as drivers accelerate to maintain the faster flow of traffic.

Something similar happens with language. Words accelerate. Without thoughtful restraint, they are like speeding cars, prone to accident.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, there existed a tacit consensus in Western pluralist societies that generalizations about race and religion might be destructive to the public good: the living memory of 20th-century atrocities largely sufficed to keep the most extreme animosities in check. These unspoken taboos were frequently breached, but racist speech was ordinarily frowned upon and usually did not sink deep roots. When the protective umbrella of taboo failed, as in the former Yugoslavia after the death of Josip Tito, for example, predictable violence ensued. Words matter, especially when they emanate from people in high places.

Since 9/11 and the advent of “the war on terror,” open, or dog-whistle, anti-Muslim rhetoric has increased exponentially as taboos have loosened. In the immediate aftermath, governments in Russia, China and elsewhere were happy to label their troublesome minorities “terrorists,” thus whitewashing repression. It became common to hear insinuating generalizations about Muslims.

Just last month, Statistics Canada reported that hate crimes against Muslims rose 60 per cent in 2015, alone. This is not surprising. That year encompassed Stephen Harper’s niqab and “barbaric cultural practices” initiatives. It was also the year of the failed Quebec Charter of Values that directly targeted Muslims.

With his darkly nativist rhetoric, U.S. President Donald Trump has upped the ante. He need not attack directly; in order to communicate his discriminatory message, he need only exact a travel ban on people from six predominately Muslim countries, or make atavistic speeches about the decline of Western civilization, as he recently did in Poland. We don’t yet know where his unfettered rhetoric will lead. What we do know is that he has opened Pandora’s Box – the place where we have historically guarded our protective taboos. From his White House perch, he has liberated people who used to keep their prejudices to themselves, if only for fear of social reprobation.

Citizens in liberal democracies expect their leaders to wield power responsibly and – excepting the rhetorical opportunism of Mr. Harper and others, such as Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch – Canadians in high places usually do. That’s why it was particularly troubling to see Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard fall into a trap last month when he said, with regard to a terrorist act perpetrated by a Quebecois: “Unfortunately, you cannot disconnect this type of event – terrorism – from Islam in general.” Since Mr. Couillard is said to be a history buff, it is odd that he did not understand the import of language that conflated the entirety of Islam with the acts of a few. Wouldn’t he have known that the biblical texts of all three Mosaic religions contain writings in support of both war and peace, depending on one’s preference? It is not a defence of violence to note that, across history, all three religions have traversed periods of extremism, such as the Spanish Inquisition (Christianity) and, more recently, the fanatic Jewish settlers in Israel’s Occupied Territories whose religious claims to the land eschew the rights of others.

Mr. Couillard claimed to be echoing a speech made by French President Emmanuel Macron, but the situation in France is not comparable. France has miles to go before there is trust enough to enable co-operation between its Muslim population and the country’s political leadership, while in Canada, mutual co-operation already exists to a high degree. When Mr. Couillard held Islam and the Muslim community responsible for the acts of some of its members, he accelerated the traffic on the rhetorical highway, encouraging bigotry.

My husband, Tom, likes to rail about the damage that’s been done across time by the little word “all” – as in “all Muslims are ‘X’” or “all Jews are ‘Y.’” He’s right; words are not innocent. We are each responsible for maintaining the civility of public discourse, but people in positions of leadership hold a special trust. They set the rhetorical standard. And they must be held accountable.

Source: When words become weapons, repression follows – The Globe and Mail

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Douglas Todd: Forgotten struggle for Canadian ‘unity’ leads to ‘silos’

2017/07/13 Leave a comment

The language-related tensions in Richmond have been simmering for some time, whether over Chinese-language signage only or this disturbing example of condo board proceedings (even if private bodies are not required to use English or French).

In terms of how widespread these kinds of issues are, Dan Hiebert’s various studies indicate Canada’s ethnic enclaves more diverse than you think, study finds. And overall, I don’t find the government’s message only being about diversity given the common values language that it also uses.

This may be more of an issue in Richmond (that should be taken seriously) than widespread, which is, accordingly to the 2011 NHS, 53 percent of East and Southeast Asian origin:

Andreas Kargut moved out of Richmond forever on the weekend that Canada marked its 150th anniversary.

The effort that Kargut, his immigrant wife and others put into fighting for the right to have their strata council meetings conducted in English, not Mandarin, had caused too much grief.

Kargut and six others filed a complaint last year with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal because they couldn’t participate in the Mandarin-only meetings in their 54-unit complex.

Former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh lamented how the strata council’s discrimination against Kargut illustrated the rise of ethnic and language “silos” in Canada. But Kargut said local politicians ignored their plight.

The language battle in Richmond, where half of residents are ethnic Chinese, is one of many challenges to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and many small-l liberals who proclaim that diversity can only be celebrated.

While creativity definitely can emerge within the many manifestations of diversity, liberal platitudes censor questions about the real tensions that can also be provoked by diversity, a word that means difference.

Trudeau is among those heading into dangerous territory because he is not following the example of his prime minister father, Pierre, in standing up for English and French — and for the ideal of unity.

“When my parents immigrated from Germany, they knew there was an expectation for them to learn English so they could join the workforce and earn a living to provide for their family,” Kargut said in a posting on a Facebook page called Richmond’s Changing Neighbourhoods.

“Why is it then if a person immigrates from China they don’t need to learn English and can discriminate against English-speaking Canadians to the point of causing financial hardship?”

Many Canadians are asking similar questions. The Pew Foundation discovered only 21 per cent of Canadians believe place of birth is important to whether one is an authentic citizen (one of the lowest rates in the world).

But Canadians do care about English and French. Three in five Canadians agreed “being able to speak our national language(s) is very important for being truly Canadian.”

The dispute over language barriers is not only worrying whites. Longtime resident Ken Tin Lok Wong told Richmond News many of the city’s controversial Chinese-only signs are in a dialect known mainly to newcomers from the People’s Republic of China, which Wong says signals many are not willing to integrate.

Yet it’s Kargus’s departure from Metro Vancouver that is one of the more stark illustrations of self-segregation in this city, in Toronto and in Montreal, which are becoming increasingly defined by ethnic and language enclaves, whether South Asian, Chinese or European.

The kind of frustration felt by Kargut is something liberals in the U.S. are finally starting to note — as they try to come to terms with why the diversity-celebrating Democrats are constantly losing election campaigns.

Atlantic magazine has two articles in this month’s edition exploring why Hillary Clinton alienated former supporters among the white suburban and working classes, while methodically wooing Hispanic and black voters.

In “How the Democrats’ Lost Their Way on Immigration,” Peter Beinart notes one of Clinton’s prominent campaign images showed her surrounded by Spanish-language signs.

“Americans know that liberals celebrate diversity. They’re less sure that liberals celebrate unity,” says Peter Beinart, who credits Barack Obama with the ability to do both. Justin Trudeau doesn’t perform the balancing act, but his father stood up for ‘national unity.”

Barack Obama would not have done that, Beinart says. The former president once said he felt frustration when he’s “forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car.”

With the National Academies of Sciences recently reporting new immigrants to the U.S. are learning English more slowly than their predecessors, Beinart maintains Democrats should put teaching immigrants English at the centre of their immigration agenda.

“Americans know that liberals celebrate diversity. They’re less sure that liberals celebrate unity. And Obama’s ability to effectively do the latter probably contributed to the fact he — a black man with a Muslim-sounding name — twice won a higher percentage of the white vote than did Hillary Clinton.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Forgotten struggle for Canadian ‘unity’ leads to ‘silos’ | Vancouver Sun

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Citizenship For Military Service Program Under Fire : NPR

2017/07/13 Leave a comment

The Conservative government introduced a comparable provision in C-24 (residency requirements were waived for military personnel who had served three years with an honourable release):

A debate has broken out at the Pentagon and in Congress over a proposal to dismantle an 8-year-old program that gives fast-track citizenship to immigrant soldiers who were recruited because they have critical skills in languages and medicine.

More than 4,000 immigrant soldiers recruited through the program — mostly from China and South Korea — are serving in uniform, including on overseas tours. Another 4,000 recruits have enlisted and are awaiting training.

The program is known as MAVNI, for Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest. It was frozen last year amid security concerns about inadequate vetting of the recruits.

Pentagon and national intelligence officials say the recruits could have connections to foreign intelligence services or become insider threats, according to an internal memo obtained by NPR. The officials also said it would be both expensive and time-consuming to investigate these recruits more carefully.

Those officials are now proposing additional scrutiny of soldiers already serving and dropping those who have not yet shipped to basic training or been assigned a military unit. Some could be deported because their visas have expired.

A Pentagon spokesman, Johnny Michael, would not comment on the memo or the program.

Win-win or security risk?

The proposal has stoked a debate over how to balance national security concerns with the need for specialized skills and how to keep faith with recruits who pledged to serve their adopted country.

Several Defense Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss the program publicly, said mismanagement has been a problem.

In some cases, the officials said, the military didn’t use the MAVNI recruits effectively because they weren’t placed in jobs in which they used their language skills. And some recruits have been investigated for suspected ties to foreign spy agencies, one official said.

By some metrics, the program — which grants citizenship in exchange for eight years of honorable military service — has been successful.

According to a Pentagon breakdown, soldiers recruited through the program have educational levels that exceed the Army average, and their re-enlistment rates are higher than soldiers who are already citizens.

Most of the recruits with foreign language skills speak Chinese and Korean. The rest speak about three dozen other languages, ranging from Arabic and Thai to Indonesian, Turkish and Swahili.

The program also helps fill the medical ranks. About two-thirds of dentists in the Army Reserve are part of the MAVNI program. Others serve as nurses or hold other jobs in the Army Medical Corps.

One-third of the recruits have been in the United States for at least three or four years, according to the Pentagon’s breakdown, with one-quarter living in the U.S. for more than seven years.

One of those recruits is Jeevan Pendli, 34, who came to the U.S. from India on a student visa, earning a master’s degree from Carnegie-Mellon University. He stayed on a visa for tech workers and co-founded a company that helps people with chronic illnesses manage their health.

And last year he decided to join the Army, inspired after running the Marine Corps Marathon and seeing competitors in wheelchairs and using prosthetics.

“Things seemed fine when we signed and did the oath in May,” Pendli told NPR, “and it just fizzled out in a couple of weeks or months.”

Like some 2,000 other MAVNI recruits, Pendli is still waiting to be shipped to basic training.

That long wait is more than just an annoyance. If a recruit doesn’t make it to Army basic training by 730 days after signing a contract, the recruit “times out” and is kicked out before serving. Hundreds will reach that deadline by the end of the year. And each month after that hundreds more will “time out.”

No consensus in Congress

“Military recruits in the MAVNI program should not have to wonder whether the United States will honor the contract they signed,” wrote Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

“If we fail to hold up the contracts we made with MAVNI applicants, this will not only have a significantly deleterious effect on recruiting, it will also be met with a strong, swift Congressional reaction.”

But other lawmakers say there are legitimate concerns.

“Even with the MAVNI program, where it’s supposed to meet some of the vital national interests, the program has been replete with problems to include foreign infiltration, so much so that the Department of Defense is seeking to suspend the program due to those concerns,” said Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., a retired Army officer, during a recent hearing on the defense policy bill.

“And I can’t really discuss some of that here in this setting, but there are some major issues when it comes to vetting,” said Russell, who serves on the Armed Services Committee.

In the next few weeks, Mattis is expected to receive final recommendations from Pentagon personnel and intelligence officials about the way ahead.

Source: Citizenship For Military Service Program Under Fire : NPR

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The never-ending argument over what is “real Islam”

2017/07/13 Leave a comment

Good piece and advice from The Economist:

IN THE commentariat, the world of higher learning (religious and otherwise) and the corridors of political power, the long-running, hot-tempered debate about the real nature of Islam shows no sign of reaching a conclusion. The temperature rises every time some ghastly act of violence is perpetrated by people who say they are inspired by their Muslim beliefs. Broadly it pits those who think that killers who practise violence in Islam’s name are traducing the faith and perhaps mis-stating their own motives, up against those who insist that Islam’s core beliefs (and not just some idosyncratic version of them) can easily prompt people to take up the sword.

Sam Harris, an atheist public intellectual, is among the best-known advocates of the second view. Despite the change of guard at the White House, and the apparent conversion of Donald Trump to a slightly more emollient view of Islam, Mr Harris is still pouring scorn on Barack Obama for insisting that Islam was at heart a religion of peace. Another person whose views Mr Harris excoriates is Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim thinker who combines leftist political ideas with fairly traditional religious ones. Mr Ramadan incurs the American writer’s contempt when he argues that political, economic or geopolitical grievance, rather than any Muslim beliefs, motivate the terrorist group known as Islamic State (IS).

In a new twist of the argument, Mr Harris has published a podcast, lasting nearly two hours, in which he discusses these matters with Graeme Wood, an author and reporter who has travelled the world interviewing prominent members or supporters of IS and probing their motives and intentions. Both broadly agree that some widely held Muslim beliefs, especially those connected with the world’s end times and the battles portending that era, are important drivers of violent behaviour. But this emphasis has been dismissed as “deeply wrong” by Phil Torres, author of a book entitled “The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse”. His book argues that apocalyptic ideas could easily become self-fulfilling. But he also observes that bloodshed (and other dramatic events) in the here-and-now are the real reasons why people suddenly start to think about the final acts in history.

All participants in this discussion merit a hearing. Mr Harris and Mr Wood do a decent job of demolishing some of the more simplistic arguments used to support the views they dislike. For example, the point is often made that many of the people who become jihadis, whether they are converts or Muslim by birth, lack theological sophistication. Indeed, at least one was found to be studying a book with the self-explanatory title, “Islam for dummies”. So, the argument goes, being extremely Muslim and being extremely violent do not seem to go together.

The point about non-sophistication may be true as far it goes, but as both Mr Harris and Mr Wood agree, a person can be very passionate about a belief system without fully understanding its details. And there is no guarantee that even if those details were fully mastered, they would prompt the learner to behave in more peaceful ways. To put it bluntly, jihadis may indeed be theologically ignorant, but that does not prove that a sound theological education would make them more peaceful. (That said, there may be plenty of other reasons for encouraging nuanced theological awareness.)

Mr Wood’s research has reinforced his view that IS is much more apocalyptic in its mentality than earlier jihadi movements such as al-Qaeda. IS propagandists take seriously the notion that Dabiq, a location in northern Syria, will witness a titanic battle between Islamic forces and those of “Rome”—which might mean anything from NATO to the Christian world to the constitutionally secular republic of Turkey. Also widespread is the expectation that an Antichrist figure known as Dajjal will emerge (possibly from an island in the Red Sea) and kill Muslim fighters until Jesus returns to earth and leads the faithful to victory. (Jesus is the second-most-revered prophet in Islam after Muhammad.)

Mr Torres agrees that these beliefs are widely held and significant, but also asks why this is now the case. It was the 2003 assault by America and Britain on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq which turned many Sunni Muslims to end-time thinking, he notes: “prior to the US invasion, Sunni Muslims were uninterested in apocalypticism.” He points out that apocalyptic thinking is most widespread in the two countries where American-led armies have entered in force, Iraq and Afghanistan. As Mr Torres sees things, apocalyptic obsessions can be both a result and a cause of real-world violence.

So how can the “true nature” of Islam, or any other religion, be determined? It might be helpful to divide statements about this into two categories. First, there are value judgments, usually made from inside the boundaries of one’s belief system. This includes statements from religious authority figures such as: “Having studied and reflected on the matter, I believe the real message of our religion’s founder(s) is…” Such messages can have moral force even if they run completely counter to the way in which most followers of a religion have, in practice, acted.

In the second basket are historical or sociological statements, which can be made by any fair-minded observer. These are on the long lines of: “Whatever the prophets and scriptures of this religion may teach, it’s an observable fact that hundreds of millions of followers of this faith behave in certain ways, and that they root this stance in their religious world view.” You might call it a behaviourist approach. In the case of modern Islam, one would have to concede that a not-insignificant number of Muslims are, in some cases, prepared to condone religious violence. But they are far outnumbered by the hundreds of millions of Muslims who live peaceful, law-abiding lives and hope that others will do the same. These are statements which can be debated, investigated, affirmed or falsified in a way that religious statements cannot.

For figures of secular authority, be they American presidents, counter-terrorism officials or even opinion-makers, it is often best to stick to the second kind of statement. The “real” nature of a religion, if such a concept has any meaning at all, is hard for an outsider to determine, and certainly well beyond the remit of a more-or-less secular state.

Source: The never-ending argument over what is “real Islam”

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Cimetière musulman: Saint-Apollinaire sous tension | Le Devoir

2017/07/13 Leave a comment

Hard to understand the nature of the opposition and we will know on Sunday the results of the referendum:

On saura dimanche si le projet de cimetière musulman de Saint-Apollinaire sera accepté ou non par référendum. Plongée malgré elle au coeur du délicat débat identitaire, la petite ville espère maintenant qu’elle n’en sortira pas trop désunie ou étiquetée.

« Dans n’importe quelle petite communauté comme la nôtre, tu aurais eu le même débat », a dit le maire Bernard Ouellet lors d’une rencontre à son bureau mardi. « J’ai reçu des courriels des quatre coins de la province là-dessus. »

Pour lui, le débat qui secoue la petite ville aurait dû se faire à une plus grande échelle. « Que voulez-vous, c’est nous qui sommes au bâton avec ça… »

Saint-Apollinaire se trouve dans la région de Chaudière-Appalaches, à une trentaine de minutes de Québec. La consultation a ceci de particulier que seulement 47 personnes sur 6000 habitants pourront voter, puisque les anciennes règles encadrant les référendums municipaux ne permettent qu’aux voisins immédiats de se prononcer.

Ces dernières semaines, les camps du «Oui» et du «Non» se sont succédé dans le rang de la Prairie-Grillée pour rallier les électeurs. « On est rendus à sept visites, sans compter les fois où on n’était pas là », a raconté un résidant favorable au projet qui a préféré taire son nom. Pourquoi rester anonyme ? « Parce que j’ai des voisins qui se sont prononcés contre, je ne veux pas brasser tout ça. […] Ma plus grande crainte, c’est pour Saint-Apollinaire. C’est une belle municipalité, et j’ai peur qu’on lui accole une étiquette. »

De l’autre côté du rang, un jeune homme nous a carrément envoyés paître. « Je ne veux rien savoir », a-t-il lancé sans préciser s’il ne voulait rien savoir du cimetière… ou des médias.

Rappelons que le projet vise à construire un cimetière musulman à côté d’un site funéraire multiconfessionnel déjà existant près de l’autoroute. Il est piloté par la grande mosquée de Québec, celle-là même qui a été frappée par l’attentat du 31 janvier.

« On se bat contre le racisme », affirme sans ambages le promoteur Sylvain Roy du centre funéraire Harmonia. « Ils sont contre l’implantation d’une culture dans un milieu qu’ils veulent conserver 100 % québécois. »

Photo: Francis Vachon Le DevoirSylvain Roy, du centre funéraire Harmonia, offre le terrain derrière lui pour la réalisation du cimetière musulman espéré depuis longtemps par la grande mosquée de Québec.

« Les gens ont véhiculé toutes sortes de faussetés, déplore-t-il. On a dit que les musulmans enterraient leurs morts sans cercueil, trop près de la surface du sol… Tout ça, c’est faux. »

Le voisin immédiat du complexe funéraire, M. Henri Baril, ne voit quant à lui aucun problème à cette cohabitation éventuelle. « Ça ne devrait déranger personne, on a tous droit à un enterrement respectueux », résume-t-il. « De toute façon, que ce soit des musulmans, des Anglais, des Italiens, des Russes, des catholiques ou des non-catholiques, on meurt tous un jour. »

Que voulez-vous, c’est nous qui sommes au bâton avec ça…

Bernard Ouellet, maire de Saint-Apollinaire

Le « Non » pressenti

Sur place, la plupart des gens s’attendent à une victoire du « Non ». « J’ai bien peur que ça ne passe pas, nous a dit le maire. Je serais agréablement surpris si ça fonctionne. »

Le propriétaire d’Harmonia est du même avis. « Si les gens favorables vont voter, ça risque de passer, mais d’habitude, les gens qui sont contre vont plus voter. »

M. Baril, lui, croit que les opposants ne sont « pas si nombreux », mais se font « plus entendre ». Il a aussi trouvé les partisans du « Non » très insistants lors de leur passage chez lui. « C’était presque du harcèlement. Ça ne finissait plus. »

De son côté, la représentante du comité du « Non », Sunny Létourneau, dit n’avoir aucune idée des résultats auxquels on doit s’attendre. Cette commerçante aussi a hâte qu’on passe à autre chose. « Ça crée un malaise terrible dans la municipalité. Ça crée des divisions, des tensions familiales. »

Si certains membres de son groupe n’ont pas hésité à tenir des propos ouvertement racistes dans le débat, Mme Létourneau se défend bien d’en être.

« On ne dit pas non aux musulmans, on dit non au projet actuel de la mosquée [de Québec]. » « Je ne veux pas qu’on associe le comité du “Non” au racisme, parce qu’il y en a seulement quelques-uns. On dit non à un changement de zonage, ce n’est pas juste pour une question religieuse. »

Elle-même dit qu’il ne faut pas « mettre tous les musulmans dans le même panier ». En entrevue, elle s’interroge sur l’expertise d’Harmonia à faire des enterrements et dit craindre que les gens de la grande mosquée de Québec négligent l’entretien de leur cimetière une fois qu’il sera installé.

La grande mosquée de Québec devrait selon elle s’insérer dans un cimetière multiconfessionnel comme à Saint-Augustin, où des familles ont acquis des lots dans un cimetière catholique. Elle a d’ailleurs pris part à l’inauguration du carré musulman à Saint-Augustin.

Or c’est complètement différent, rétorque M. Roy. « La communauté musulmane veut un cimetière confessionnel, une terre sacrée où ils peuvent déposer leurs morts selon les principes du Coran. » Le porte-parole de la mosquée, Mohammed Kesri, a d’ailleurs été choqué d’entendre que l’initiative de Saint-Augustin constituait un cimetière musulman.

Quand on fait remarquer qu’il aurait pu miser sur un lieu plus habitué à la présence d’immigrants que Saint-Apollinaire, M. Kesri rétorque qu’il n’avait pas le choix. « Ça fait 10 ans, 15 ans qu’on cherche. C’est la seule place où on a eu une offre ! » dit-il.

Les résultats du référendum doivent être dévoilés dimanche vers 20 h. Les terrains de ce genre son si ardus à trouver, assure M. Kesri, que même si le « Non » l’emporte, il est prêt à continuer à défendre le projet à Saint-Apollinaire. « Mais c’est sûr que si le 17 il y a un maire quelque part près de Québec qui nous dit que c’est possible d’établir un cimetière musulman ailleurs, ce sera avec plaisir ! »

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

In Blow to Tech Industry, Trump Shelves Start-Up Immigrant Rule – The New York Times

2017/07/12 Leave a comment

Building more opportunities for Canada and others:

The Trump administration said it would delay, and probably eliminate down the line, a federal rule that would have let foreign entrepreneurs come to the United States to start companies.

The decision, announced by the federal government on Monday ahead of its official publication on Tuesday, was quickly slammed by business leaders and organizations, especially from the technology sector, which has benefited heavily from start-ups founded by immigrants.

“Today’s announcement is extremely disappointing and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the critical role immigrant entrepreneurs play in growing the next generation of American companies,” Bobby Franklin, the president and chief executive of the National Venture Capital Association, a trade association for start-up investors, said in a statement.

He added that even as other countries are going all out to attract entrepreneurs, “the Trump administration is signaling its intent to do the exact opposite.”

The policy being delayed by the Department of Homeland Security, known as the International Entrepreneur Rule, was to go into effect next week, after being approved by President Obama in January during his final days in office.

The rule was enacted to give foreign entrepreneurs who received significant financial backing for new business ventures the ability to come temporarily to the United States to build their companies. Silicon Valley leaders had praised the rule as a kind of “start-up visa.”

The department said it would delay the start date of the rule until March 14 of next year, during which time it will seek public comments on a plan to rescind the rule. The department said it decided to delay the rule after President Trump signed an executive order on improvements to border security and immigration enforcement on Jan. 25, shortly after taking office.

The order required the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to take action to ensure that “parole authority” — through which the department can temporarily allow individuals into the country without being formally admitted with a visa — be used only on a case-by-case basis and “when an individual demonstrates urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit derived from such parole.”

The International Entrepreneur Rule was designed to use that authority to effectively give a lift to start-ups. Under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that nearly 3,000 entrepreneurs would be eligible to come to the United States annually under the rule. They were to be granted stays of up to 30 months, with the chance of extending the stays another 30 months if the entrepreneurs met certain criteria.

To qualify, they had to show that they had raised $250,000 or more for their businesses from established American investors or $100,000 or more in grants from government entities.

Steve Case, an investor who was a founder of AOL, blasted the decision on Twitter. “Big mistake,” he wrote. “Immigrant entrepreneurs are job makers, not job takers.”

Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association, a trade group representing the consumer technology industry, said the delay of the rule would damage American innovation and job creation.

“The 44 immigrant-founded billion-dollar start-ups now in the U.S. have created an average of 760 American jobs per company,” Mr. Shapiro said in a statement. “Without these immigrant entrepreneurs, it is unlikely America would stand as the beacon of innovation that it is today.”

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Canadian tech companies say they value diversity — but what are they doing about it? 

2017/07/12 Leave a comment

Good and needed reporting – particularly surprised with the lack of response of the larger companies (to be fair, Blackberry had bigger survival issues):

After U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January blocking citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S., a long list of Canadian tech companies signed a pledge opposing the ban.

Members of Canada’s tech community saw Trump’s move as a rejection of the diversity on which they felt their industry was built and decided to speak out.

“We believe that this diversity is a source of strength and opportunity,” read the open letter admonishing the ban, which was signed by executives and employees from some of the most well-known companies in the country — BlackBerry, Hootsuite, Shopify and more.

But when CBC News sought to gauge what this commitment to diversity looks like in practice, Canada’s tech community had remarkably little to say.

In May, we asked 31 Canadian technology companies if they collected data on the diversity of their employees, and if so, whether they would share this data with CBC News.

Only two companies — OTTO Motors, the commercial division of Waterloo, Ont.-based Clearpath Robotics, a maker of self-driving warehouse robots, and the Toronto-based investing app Wealthsimple — were willing to do so.

A third company, the Toronto-based online retail marketing startup Hubba, said it was preparing to conduct its first diversity survey and release the results in the coming month. It expects to publish a report on its progress every six months thereafter.

The sheer number of holdouts came as a surprise to Y-Vonne Hutchinson, founder of Oakland, Calif.-based diversity solutions firm ReadySet, in particular, given the number of U.S. companies that have published annual reports since 2014.

“It does make me question their commitment to diversity and inclusion,” said Hutchinson, who is also on the team behind Project Include, which guides tech startups toward more diverse and inclusive practices. The project’s founding members include well-known diversity advocates such as Ellen Pao and Tracy Chou.

“By publishing these numbers, you increase transparency and accountability around how the organization looks and the way in which it prioritizes diversity and inclusion,” Hutchinson said.

Mostly white, mostly male

Many companies in tech and beyond have realized the key to building successful products and services is to have a range of employees — ones who think and look differently from one another — working together to solve problems.

The idea is that employees with varying backgrounds and skills can bring unique perspectives that aren’t necessarily represented by the tech sectors white, male majority.

That’s where diversity reports can help. One way for a company to better understand the types of people it employs — and where the gaps are — is to quantify that information and use it to build more diverse teams.

But that’s not to say measuring the problem alone leads to change. As recently as 2016, we learned that just 145 of Facebook’s nearly 8,500 employees are black. We learned that 12 per cent of Apple employees are Hispanic, versus just four per cent at Google.

And we learned that Uber has an engineering department where only 15 per cent of employees are women — a telling statistic for a company still smarting from a searing indictment of its workplace culture by one of its former engineers and the sexual harassment investigations launched in its wake.

Among the industry’s biggest players, there has been little progress in recent years.

Diversity reports also don’t include as much information as some would like — for example, how long employees stay, which can tell a story of its own, or how many employees are disabled or identify as LGTBQ. In their most basic form, they typically provide a snapshot of how tech’s most-influential companies are doing across job categories in terms of gender and race.

Yet in Canada, there have been no comparable public efforts to date.

Little to say

The companies approached by CBC News ranged from some of the largest and well-known in the country — including BlackBerry, Shopify and Hootsuite — to up-and-coming players such as ecobee, Thalmic and Breather.

We sent each company the following questions:

  • Does your company collect data on the diversity of your employees?
  • ​How is this data collected?
  • Why do you collect this data?
  • Can you provide your company’s most recently collected diversity data to CBC News?
  • Can you offer any details about programs/initiatives to support diversity and inclusion at your company?

The overwhelming majority of companies declined to participate while two of the biggest names in Canadian tech, BlackBerry and Hootsuite, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Provided-Info.png

E-commerce company Shopify said it was still analyzing its employee data and was hoping to have more information to share by the fall “or early next year.”

Others, such as the messaging app Kik and the satellite imaging company Urthecast, said they didn’t have the resources to collect this sort of information and would not say how long it would take to do so.

Many more, including ecobee, Wave, WattPad, Vision Critical, Lightspeed, Bench, TopHat, Vidyard, Sandvine and Hopper, said they didn’t formally collect diversity information.

Source: Canadian tech companies say they value diversity — but what are they doing about it? – Technology & Science – CBC News

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Former Canadian flag, the Red Ensign, gets new, darker life as far-right symbol | National Post

2017/07/12 Leave a comment

Sigh …:

When five members of the anti-immigration, alt-right Proud Boys strode into a Halifax park on Canada Day to confront Indigenous protesters, the Canadian flag they carried was more than 50 years out of date.

With a Union Jack in the corner and a coat of arms on a red background, the Canadian Red Ensign held aloft by one member has largely disappeared from public view since it was replaced in 1965 by the Maple Leaf.

But the Red Ensign, a variation of which Canadian troops fought under in both world wars, has recently taken on a darker symbolism, adopted as Canada’s equivalent of the Confederate flag by some extremists here.

The perversion of the Red Ensign was first observed among white supremacists, who saw it as a throwback to a time when Canadians were overwhelmingly white and of European extraction.

Anti-immigrant protests by the Aryan Guard in Calgary featured the Red Ensign as far back as 2008, and photos showed group members decorated their apartments with the flag alongside a Nazi flag and a Confederate flag.

When John Beattie, who founded the Canadian Nazi Party in the 1960s and remains a white supremacist, ran for municipal office in 2014, a reporter noted that he flew the Red Ensign flag at his home.

 Notorious white nationalist Paul Fromm has campaigned to have the Red Ensign returned as Canada’s flag, calling it “the flag of the true Canada, the European Canada before the treasonous European replacement schemes brought in by the 1965 immigration policies.”

Northern Dawn, a Canadian alt-right website launched last year to defend Western heritage against “chaos,” has used the Red Ensign as its Facebook cover photo. In a July 1 essay on the site, Gerry Neal decried the 1965 replacement of the Red Ensign with the current flag as evidence of a Liberal revision of national symbolism “to eliminate reference to our British heritage.”

Anti-Racist Canada has been tracking the growing popularity of the Red Ensign among extremist groups for years. A spokesperson, who for safety reasons asked to be identified only as Chris, said racists have adopted the Red Ensign “to represent a time when Canada was a ‘white man’s country.’ They view the flag that flies in Canada today as an abomination representing multiculturalism and diversity.

“If you attend any far-right rally or march in Canada, there is a very good chance that, along with ‘white pride,’ Nazi, and Confederate flags, you will also see the Red Ensign being flown rather than the Maple Leaf.”

For the Royal Canadian Legion, which flies the Red Ensign outside its headquarters and includes the flag in its official colour party, the idea that it has been adopted by extremists is hard to stomach.

“There is significant and genuine affection for the Red Ensign in the veterans’ community of Canada for the reason that wars were fought and lives were lost under that flag,” Bill Maxwell, secretary of the Legion’s Poppy and Remembrance Committee, said.

“Canadians fought for the freedoms we enjoy today. I don’t think they fought to have the Red Ensign denigrated in such a manner, quite frankly.”

Caitlin Bailey, executive director of the Canadian Centre for the Great War, in Montreal, said the Red Ensign was a symbol of unity as a young nation went to war. It was the flag that flew over Vimy Ridge to signal its 1917 capture by Canadian troops.

“It’s unfortunate that it has turned into a white nationalist symbol,” she said. “It’s not right, and it flies in the face of what the Red Ensign means.”

C.P. Champion, editor of the history journal the Dorchester Review, recently wrote in support of greater prominence for the Canadian Red Ensign, arguing it should fly permanently at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

He said in an interview that he was disappointed when the self-described traditionalists of the Proud Boys were captured on video provoking Indigenous protesters with the flag.

“It looked like it was trivializing, or treating as a kind of talisman of defiance, a flag that has a much more venerable and mainstream role,” Champion said. “I’ve always thought it’s important not to let traditional symbols be appropriated by fringe elements.”

Source: Former Canadian flag, the Red Ensign, gets new, darker life as far-right symbol | National Post

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