Rothman: Where Did All the [fatwa] Apologists Go?

2022/08/17 Leave a comment

Legitimate call-out:

Salman Rushdie was stabbed ten times last Friday afternoon when a 24-year-old attacker rushed the stage of the Chautauqua Institution where the author was speaking. The attack was premeditated, and Rushdie’s injuries are severe. The interruption of this placid intellectual setting with an act of murderous violence—one that the Iranian regime has long encouraged—has shocked American consciences. At least, that’s what we can infer from the silence of those who attached themselves in recent years to the voguish notion that provocative speech is tantamount to violence.

It is reasonable to assume that Rushdie’s attacker was animated by the grievances that led Tehran to order devout Muslims to kill him on sight. That 1989 fatwa, issued shortly after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, is believed to have influenced his attacker. Indeed, this may have been a more “guided” attack than that, according to the NATO officials who spoke with Vice reporter Michael Prothero. “A Middle Eastern intelligence official said it was ‘clear’ that at some point prior to the attack,” Prothero wrote, the alleged assailant “had been in contact with ‘people either directly involved with or adjacent to the Quds Force.”

Perhaps the ambiguity over whether Rushdie’s attacker was acting on Iran’s orders, actively or tacitly, has led those who have argued for years that speech can produce trauma (and can, therefore, justify meting out trauma in equal measure) to hold their tongues. Maybe their silence is indicative of the fact that the target of this assassination attempt bears too much resemblance to themselves for comfort. If there was any intellectual consistency among those who subscribe to this proposition, though, they would be holding fast to their conviction that Rushdie had it coming.

“Words can have a powerful effect on your nervous system,” Northwestern University psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote in a 2017 New York Times op-ed. “Certain types of adversity, even those involving no physical contact, can make you sick, alter your brain — even kill neurons — and shorten your life.” The professor attempted to distinguish “abusive” speech from the “merely offensive,” the former of which can, she asserted, produce negative physical consequences. “We must also halt speech that bullies and torments,” she concluded.

This is the rationale that led college newspaper editorials in the last decade to argue that offensive speech constitutes “an act of violence” and to endorse “appropriate measures” to ensure controversial speech does not fall on fragile ears. It’s this logic that led a majority of college students who responded to a 2015 survey to agree with the idea that “choosing to use or not use certain words can constitute an act of violence.” It is this framing that convinced nearly one-fifth of college students to endorse the proposition that violence may be an “acceptable” way to prevent challenging ideas from ever being expressed.

This infantilizing notion has been trotted out to justify the violence committed by Islamist fundamentalists. “Charlie Hebdo has a long record of mocking, baiting, and needling French Muslims,” wrote Tony Barber in the Financial Times, after the bloody massacre of that French publication’s cartoonists and writers. After all, that’s “what happens when you get a culture that, rather than asking to what end we defend free speech, valorizes free speech for its own sake and thus perversely values speech the more pointlessly offensive it is.” Even then-Secretary of State John Kerry lent credence to this notion when he said of the murderers that they at least had “a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘Okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.’”

Four months after the bloodshed, American blogger Pamela Geller tried to repeat the behavior that supposedly led to this attack. Geller’s “cartoon drawing contest,” an act of solidarity with a famous stunt executed by the Danish publication Jyllands-Posten, had its intended effect. Two radicalized gunmen attacked the Dallas, Texas, venue hosting Geller, where they were killed by security. For successfully duplicating the conditions that inspire violence in the violent, Geller was pilloried. MSNBC host Chris Matthews accused her of “taunting,” “daring,” and “provoking” her would-be murderers. CNN’s Erin Burnett accused her of enjoying “being a target of these attacks,” and New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi said that it was Geller’s “wish” that there be “more dead Americans at the hands of radical Muslims.”

In 2015, following the bloodshed in Paris, the annual PEN American Center Literary Gala sought to award that year’s Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie Hebdo. In response, six well-known authors disassociated themselves from the organization. One of the boycotters, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Peter Carey, complained of PEN’s “blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation.” The slaughter of innocents over little more than having the temerity to offend the easily offended was not, he said, something the West should be “self-righteous” about.

Rushdie disagreed. “If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name,” he wrote. “What I would say to both Peter [Carey] and Michael [Ondaatje] and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.” Of course, no one did. Why would they? Their actions were in line with the intellectual fad of the moment. Dissociating from an organization that celebrated speech for speech’s sake required no courage because it incurred no consequences. Rushdie, by marked contrast, has bled for his consistency.

Source: Where Did All the Apologists Go?

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One in four border officers witnessed discrimination by colleagues: internal report

2022/08/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

One-quarter of front line employees surveyed at Canada’s border agency said they had directly witnessed a colleague discriminate against a traveller in the previous two years.

Of these respondents, 71 per cent suggested the discrimination was based, in full or in part, on the travellers’ race, and just over three-quarters cited their national or ethnic origin.

The figures are drawn from a survey conducted as part of an internal Canada Border Services Agency evaluation that looked at how the agency processed travellers, using a lens of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, and mental or physical disability, and the interaction between these factors.

The agency recently posted the results of the evaluation, which focused primarily on people flying into Canada, on its website.

As part of the research, 922 border services officers and superintendents were surveyed from March 2 to 22, 2020.

Of those who said they saw a colleague engage in discrimination, just over two in five did not report what they observed. Some mentioned fear of reprisal or simply feeling uncomfortable.

Sixteen per cent of those who witnessed discrimination reported what they saw. However, some of these respondents indicated that they faced challenges in doing so or that their reports were not taken seriously or acted on, the evaluation report says.

The CBSA’s traveller processing activities do not intentionally set out to target people based on perceptions around their race or ethnicity, the report says. The agency uses a combination of information sources, such as global trends and reports, in the development of scenarios, which are systematically reviewed for human rights and other considerations.

“However, certain practices can have unintended consequences that result in the overrepresentation of racialized communities in the law enforcement context,” the report says.

For example, when targeting rates are higher for certain origin countries, there could be unintended consequences for travellers of specific racial or ethnic groups when those groups make up a larger proportion of incoming travellers from those countries, it adds.

The reviewers found the agency could conduct only “very limited analysis” based on travellers’ racial or ethnic identities when using operational data.

“If faced with public complaints or claims of racial discrimination, the agency can neither prove nor disprove with its data whether its policies or practices discriminate against travellers, due to the complexity of this issue. If the agency were to attempt this type of analysis in the future, it would have to consider and develop new approaches on data collection, storage and analysis.”

The CBSA People Processing Manual provides personnel with guidance concerning awareness of a traveller’s culture, a prohibition on racial profiling and services provided to those with disabilities.

A large majority of survey respondents said they agreed or somewhat agreed that in order to do their jobs effectively, they need to recognize their personal and implicit biases.

The evaluation makes several recommendations, including a call to develop and implement a plan to improve the awareness and reporting of mistreatment and discrimination of travellers witnessed by border agency personnel, without fear of reprisal.

In a response included with the evaluation report, the border agency agreed to devise such a plan and set out a timetable to put changes in place this year.

Source: One in four border officers witnessed discrimination by colleagues: internal report

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Trudel: Les mots et leur contexte

2022/08/17 Leave a comment

Indeed. Context and intent are essential:

Cet été, le CRTC a fait fi de la loi qu’il a pourtant mandat d’appliquer et condamné l’usage d’un mot faisant partie du titre d’un livre sans même prendre la peine de considérer le contexte. Dans le même esprit, le festival Osheaga s’est senti tenu de s’excuser parce qu’un rappeur invité portait un chandail dénonçant le fascisme, mais… qui arborait une croix gammée… Ce refus de considérer le contexte des mots ou des images est l’un des principaux verrous à la mise en place de mesures pour lutter contre les propos préjudiciables en ligne ou ailleurs.

Tenir compte du contexte est une condition de la possibilité de débattre et de discuter. Les mots peuvent blesser, humilier ou exclure. Mais le refus de considérer le contexte d’énonciation d’un mot ou de la diffusion d’une image constitue une grave menace à la liberté d’expression. Il est impossible d’appliquer quelque règle limitant des activités expressives si on postule que le contexte d’énonciation d’un mot ou de diffusion d’une image est sans pertinence.

Les normes d’usage du langage reflètent les évolutions qui se manifestent sur le plan des sensibilités. Celles-ci reflètent les changements dans la reconnaissance de certaines réalités. Par exemple, en 2022, une personne raisonnable n’utilisera pas à tort et à travers des mots portant une charge douloureuse pour des personnes appartenant à des minorités raciales. Alors qu’au début du XXe siècle, certains mots aujourd’hui jugés péjoratifs étaient consignés même dans les documents officiels, il est admis de nos jours qu’une personne raisonnable doit les utiliser avec un minimum de précautions.

Il est légitime de critiquer quelqu’un qui fait le choix de s’exprimer comme on le faisait il y a plusieurs décennies en faisant fi des significations douloureuses de certains mots ou certaines images. Chacun a la faculté de faire des reproches à une personne qui s’exprime de façon maladroite.

Par contre, les autorités publiques ne peuvent punir que les propos contrevenant à une règle de droit, c’est-à-dire une règle connue édictée par les élus. La possibilité pratique d’appliquer les lois requiert de regarder le contexte des mots et des images. Lorsque la liberté d’expression a valeur constitutionnelle, il est essentiel de convenir des raisonnements par lesquels on détermine si un propos a dépassé les limites permises par les lois. Cela est impossible si on ne prend pas la peine de considérer le contexte d’énonciation d’un propos.

De fait, toutes les lois qui punissent ou interdisent des propos prescrivent de regarder le contexte d’énonciation. Au regard de la loi, il n’y a pas de mots ou d’images qui seraient interdits en toutes circonstances. Mais selon le contexte, l’usage d’un mot peut se révéler fautif au regard de la loi. Par exemple, la loi fait une différence entre le fait d’apostropher une personne en lui lançant le mot en n précédé du mot « sale » et le fait de citer le titre d’un livre comportant le mot.

C’est pourquoi l’appel à des sanctions pour avoir prononcé un mot ou exhibé un signe sans égard au contexte est un indice affligeant de la détérioration des conditions qui permettent d’appliquer les limites aux libertés expressives. C’est une entrave à la possibilité de débattre.

Cibler les propos malveillants

En quoi le fait d’accabler ceux qui s’expriment en dehors de tout dessein malveillant permet de faire avancer la lutte contre le harcèlement, l’exclusion et les discriminations ? Il est plutôt à craindre que cela contribue à légitimer les positions de ceux qui s’opposent à la mise en place de mesures proportionnées destinées à lutter contre les propos vraiment abusifs.

Ici et dans d’autres pays, les autorités publiques s’apprêtent à mettre de l’avant des mesures législatives afin de lutter contre le harcèlement et l’intimidation raciste, homophobe ou sexiste, notamment dans les environnements en ligne, où c’est un fléau. Certains sont prompts à crier à la censure aussitôt que de telles mesures sont mises de l’avant. On brandit en exemple les sanctions imposées ou réclamées à l’encontre de ceux qui font un usage parfaitement légitime de certains mots.

Dans une société qui reconnaît la liberté d’expression, il est essentiel de distinguer l’usage malveillant et les usages légitimes des mots et des images. Les lois limitant la liberté d’expression ne peuvent s’appliquer qu’en examinant le contexte d’énonciation des mots et de diffusion des images. Faire fi de cela conduit à censurer dès lors qu’une personne se met à affirmer que certains mots lui sont choquants. C’est incompatible avec la liberté d’expression.

Il est légitime de rappeler, comme on le fait chaque fois qu’éclate une controverse, que des mots sont associés à des souffrances et sont trop souvent utilisés dans un contexte malveillant. Mais pendant que l’on s’épuise à multiplier les condamnations pour des mots et des images pris hors contexte, les propos haineux — les vrais — continuent de sévir. Confondre les propos méprisants et ceux diffusés sans malveillance contribue à délégitimer la mise en place de mesures efficaces contre les propos vraiment préjudiciables. Ce sont les victimes de harcèlement raciste, sexiste ou homophobe qui paient le prix de ce refus de considérer le contexte des mots et des images.

Source: Les mots et leur contexte

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

Atwood: If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny: Salman Rushdie shows us that

2022/08/16 Leave a comment

I was in working at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran when Rushdie spoke in Toronto and appeared on stage with then premier Bob Rae. We were worried regarding potential fall-out and possible threats but fortunately none materialized. (I read The Satanic Verses in Tehran, adding another personal twist to my time there).

Usual trenchant commentary by Atwood:

A long time ago – 7 December 1992, to be exact – I was backstage at a Toronto theatre, taking off a Stetson. With two other writers, Timothy Findley and Paul Quarrington, I’d been performing a medley of 1950s country and western classics, rephrased for writers – Ghost Writers in the Sky, If I Had the Wings of an Agent, and other fatuous parodies of that nature. It was a PEN Canada benefit of that era: writers dressed up and made idiots of themselves in aid of writers persecuted by governments for things they’d written.

Just as the three of us were bemoaning how awful we’d been, there was a knock on the door. Backstage was locked down, we were told. Secret agents were talking into their sleeves. Salman Rushdie had been spirited into the country. He was about to appear on stage with Bob Rae, the premier of Ontario, the first head of government in the world to support him in public. “And you, Margaret, as past president of PEN Canada, are going to introduce him,” I was told.

Gulp. “Oh, OK,” I said. And so I did. It was a money-where-your-mouth-is moment.

And, with the recent attack on him, so is this.

Rushdie exploded on to the literary scene in 1981 with his second novel, Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker prize that year. No wonder: its inventiveness, range, historical scope and verbal dexterity were breathtaking, and it opened the door to subsequent generations of writers who might previously have felt that their identities or subject matter excluded them from the movable feast that is English-language literature. He has ticked every box except the Nobel prize: he has been knighted; he is on everyone’s list of significant British writers; he has collected an impressive bouquet of prizes and honours, but, most importantly, he has touched and inspired a great many people around the globe. A huge number of writers and readers have long owed him a major debt.

Suddenly, they owe him another one. He has long defended freedom of artistic expression against all comers; now, even should he recover from his injuries, he is a martyr to it.

In any future monument to murdered, tortured, imprisoned and persecuted writers, Rushdie will feature large. On 12 August he was stabbed on stage by an assailant at a literary event at Chautauqua, a venerable American institution in upstate New York. Yet again “that sort of thing never happens here” has been proven false: in our present world, anything can happen anywhere. American democracy is under threat as never before: the attempted assassination of a writer is just one more symptom.

Without doubt, this attack was directed at him because his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, a satiric fantasy that he himself believed was dealing with the disorientation felt by immigrants from (for instance) India to Britain, got used as a tool in a political power struggle in a distant country.

When your regime is under pressure, a little book-burning creates a popular distraction. Writers don’t have an army. They don’t have billions of dollars. They don’t have a captive voting block. They thus make cheap scapegoats. They’re so easy to blame: their medium is words, which are by nature ambiguous and subject to misinterpretation, and they themselves are often mouthy, if not downright curmudgeonly. Worse, they frequently speak truth to power. Even apart from that, their books will annoy some people. As writers themselves have frequently said, if what you’ve written is universally liked, you must be doing something wrong. But when you offend a ruler, things can get lethal, as many writers have discovered.

In Rushdie’s case, the power that used him as a pawn was the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. In 1989, he issued a fatwa – a rough equivalent to the bulls of excommunication used by medieval and renaissance Catholic popes as weapons against both secular rulers and theological challengers such as Martin Luther. Khomeini also offered a large reward to anyone who would murder Rushdie. There were numerous killings and attempted assassinations, including the stabbing of the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi in 1991. Rushdie himself spent many years in enforced hiding, but gradually he came out of his cocoon – the Toronto PEN event being the most significant first step – and, in the past two decades, he’d been leading a relatively normal life.

However, he never missed an opportunity to speak out on behalf of the principles he’d been embodying all his writing life. Freedom of expression was foremost among these. Once a yawn-making liberal platitude, this concept has now become a hot-button issue, since the extreme right has attempted to kidnap it in the service of libel, lies and hatred, and the extreme left has tried to toss it out the window in the service of its version of earthly perfection. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to foresee many panel discussions on the subject, should we reach a moment in which rational debate is possible. But whatever it is, the right to freedom of expression does not include the right to defame, to lie maliciously and damagingly about provable facts, to issue death threats, or to advocate murder. These should be punished by law.

As for those who are still saying, “yes, but …” about Rushdie – some version of “he should have known better”, as in “yes, too bad about the rape, but why was she wearing that revealing skirt” – I can only remark that there are no perfect victims. In fact, there are no perfect artists, nor is there any perfect art. Anti-censorship folks often find themselves having to defend work they would otherwise review scathingly, but such defending is necessary, unless we are all to have our vocal cords removed.

Long ago, a Canadian member of parliament described a ballet as “a bunch of fruits jumping around in long underwear”. Let them jump, say I! Living in a pluralistic democracy means being surrounded by a multiplicity of voices, some of which will be saying things you don’t like. Unless you’re prepared to uphold their right to speak, as Salman Rushdie has done so often, you’ll end up living in a tyranny.

Rushdie didn’t plan to become a free-speech hero, but he is one now. Writers everywhere – those who are not state hacks or brainwashed robots – owe him a huge vote of thanks.

Source: If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny: Salman Rushdie shows us that

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CRTC CBC License Renewal: “equity-seeking communities” requirements

2022/08/16 Leave a comment

Of interest and thanks to Sarkonak for noticing this change and The Line for bringing it to wider attention.,

Significant change from softer encouragement to hard targets, one that suggests the government may adapt a similar approach to employment equity in the public service and possibly federally-regulated sectors (e.g., bank, communications and transport), even if the original policy based on self-declaration and annual reporting has resulted in a much more diverse public service.

I also think their caution that such overt political goals run the risk of undermining the perceived independence of the CRTC and the CBC, one that a future government may use for its own political priorities:

We at The Line have a confession: we don’t slavishly follow every item coming and going out of the CRTC — although it is becoming increasingly clear that we ought to. So we admit that we missed, in June, the decision that came from this regulatory body that renewed CBC’s broadcasting license for another five years. 

Because, frankly, this is usually pretty rubber stamp stuff. 

So credit where it is due, we must tip the hat to Jamie Sarkonak for noticing some pretty significant changes in this renewal notice. 

Jamie Sarkonak @sarkonakjThe CRTC @CRTCeng just imposed DEI requirements onto CBC programming. CBC must dedicate 30% of its independent programming budget to the following identity categories: Indigenous, language minorities, visible minorities, disabled, and LGBTQ. #cdnpoli crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/20…

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We read through the renewal notice ourselves and, yeah, she is correct. The CBC has a vague public mandate to inform and entertain Canadians for the purpose of creating a kind of shared national identity. Implicit in this mandate is the notion that the public broadcaster ought to broadly reflect and represent the Canadians who pay its bills. To that end, although previously the CBC could certainly choose to devote resources to “Canada’s equity-seeking communities” (and it certainly has!) never before to our knowledge has it been required to devote specific expenditure requirements to those communities as part of its license renewal. 

From the ruling: 

“As such, the Commission is imposing on the CBC the following requirements to ensure that equity-seeking communities are not only reflected in the public broadcaster’s programming, but that the programming is relevant to them.”

The CRTC is demanding a “fixed portion of independent programming expenditures directed to official language minority communities (OLMC), racialized Canadians, Canadians with disabilities, and Canadians who self-identify as LGBTQ2.” Additionally, it will grant a: “‘woman intersectionality credit’ to incentivize expenditures on productions produced by Indigenous Peoples, racialized persons, persons with disabilities, and persons who self-identify as LGBTQ2, who also self-identify as women.”

There are additional requirements for French language programming, of course. 

This line also caught our attention from the notice: 

“The Commission supports the Government of Canada’s commitment to renewing the relationship with Indigenous Peoples, based on the recognition of rights, respect, co-operation and partnership. On a broader level, the Commission also recognizes that Call to Action 84 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) tie into some of the objectives of the Broadcasting Act in that they refer to the reflection of Indigenous Peoples in the programming broadcast by the CBC.” 

The CRTC is demanding changes to the election of the CBC ombudsman to ensure he or she is “sensitive to issues surrounding Indigenous people, racialized Canadians and other equity-seeking communities.” 

It is also setting out “new expectations regarding the CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices to help ensure that journalists can provide relevant feedback and equity-seeking communities are consulted in any future review of the JSP.” 

(The JSP is basically the bible of CBC journalism and guides its employees in how it approaches reporting, analysis and opinion. The JSP has come under particular scrutiny in recent years when it was alleged that the expectation of “objective” journalism would distort how the outlet approaches racism. Attentive readers will note the obvious allusion to “moral clarity” here.)

Whether or not you agree with the outcomes being sought, what is clear is that the CRTC (which is appointed by the governor general, on advice of the privy council) is having explicitly political goals written into its license renewals. 

Now, don’t misread us, here. The CBC ought to be free to pursue equity goals in programming, or reviews of its JSP, or whatever it feels necessary to meet its mandate according to its own discretion. We happen think these outcomes are best exercised by trusted leaders and experienced producers who have the latitude to use editorial discretion, rather than by rigid quota or expenditure goals. 

To have these demands placed on it by an external regulator in order to fulfil the political goals of that regulator and, ultimately, its political masters, is playing with fire in the worst kind of way. 

For starters, one of the first pieces we ran here at The Line was from a documentary filmmaker who noted the ways in which diversity quotas shifted incentives in filmmaking. Just as students write to the test, quotas of this sort shift the focus in content production, forcing creators to produce content that checks a box, rather than fulfil a real audience desire. This creates a CBC that is dooming itself to be less relevant to the general public even as its relevance is growing more crucial thanks to the economic collapse of private media. The system is all the more insulting considering there is, in fact, a real audience desire for different voices and perspectives in our media landscape. 

(The Line can think of two such examples of CBC shows that were compelling and worth watching regardless of their diversity requirements: check out Sort Of and Trickster if you haven’t already. Unfortunately, the latter was cancelled when it was revealed that director Michelle Latimer was not as Indigenous as previously stated.) 

The second most obvious problem with all of this falls under the maxim “Do not give your enemies the weapons they will use to kill you.” In other words, having established this norm, do you not think that Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre, having done his damndest to stack the CRTC, will not do the same thing in turn? What is the CBC going to do when its license renewal is subject not to fulfilling the requirements of UNDRIP, but rather to concepts like “viewpoint diversity” and “journalistic objectivity,” as defined by Poilievre’s crew? The pendulum always swings back, friends, and it usually swings back harder when pushed. 

Source: The Line Dispatch 13 August

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Passport delays spur some Canadians to game the system with fake travel plans

2022/08/16 Leave a comment

Ongoing saga. Understandable that some would feel need to game the system or engage line-up placeholders:

Canadians are getting creative trying to cut the long waits for passports that have been dragging on for close to five months after a surge in post-pandemic travel demand overwhelmed the system.

By Aug. 11, a total of 1,092,560 passport applications had been filed this year – with more than 550,000 of those applications flooding in since April.

Service Canada said it’s prioritizing the applications of people traveling imminently, increasing staff and processing sites.

Despite all this, applicants say they are spending thousands of dollars to travel to less-busy passport offices — or even faking travel plans to speed the process to beat the 340,000-application backlog.

Federal officials say they are working to fix the problem.

Fake trips impact entire system

Karina Gould, the minister responsible for passport services, said Canadians are getting their passports on time, and there’s no need to “fake” travel — booking a flight you do not plan to take — to be eligible for Passport Canada’s urgent 48-hour approval mechanism.

“That impacts the whole system. There are a lot of people who did the right thing. They sent off their passports well in advance. Their applications are impacted by anyone who books fake travel,” Gould told CBC in a phone interview on Friday.

She had heard of the practice, but doubts it is widespread.

“I would be very disappointed to hear that, because that would be putting additional pressure on a system that is already pressured,” said Gould.

Meanwhile in Toronto, a man who CBC agreed to call Robert, said he has spent the past 59 days organizing 10 staffers to hold spots in lineups for about 500 absent passport applicants.

He said he has earned up to $1,000 per day offering this service.

No passport number needed to book many online flights

“Most of my customers book fake flights just to get their passports so they can drive across [the border],” said Robert.

“You’re going through more hoops to drive across [the border] than to fly. So what they do is just book a fake flight. It’s usually Toronto to New York or Toronto to Miami, and within 24 hours, they cancel it,” he said of his customers.

Multiple travel agents and Air Canada confirmed that many flights can be booked online without a passport number, and full-fare or business class ticket is often refundable.

Other travellers head to out-of-province Service Canada offices where the lines are not so long, with some citing shorter waits in Halifax or St. John’s.

St. John’s photographer Robert Young often gets called on for passport photos.

He said lately more travellers from other parts of Canada are utilizing the passport processing services in at Newfoundland.

“We’ve always gotten people from the edges of the world — like Pangnirtung (Baffin Island) — but now they are showing up from bigger cities,” said Young.

Government promises fix is working

Gould said lineups have decreased with the hiring of 500 new staffers, extended hours and the prioritizing of applicants with imminent travel plans, within 48 hours.

Back on July 25, Service Canada expanded passport pick-up services, adding five more locations in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and B.C. to the 29 existing passport offices.

In Ontario and Quebec, a business has popped up to deal with the long waits for passport applications. Line standers charge about $40-$60 per hour or a flat fee of about $240 to line up at dawn and hold applicant’s place so they can apply to get a Canadian passport or renewal. (Roger Thompson)

This and other measures – like transferring application files to one of the 300 Service Canada offices upon request — aimed to reduce passport processing waits.

But many who mailed in applications last spring say the turnaround remains sluggish.

It’s difficult to get anybody on the phone or get an accurate status on an application, according to many applicants, including Paula Langley, a Canadian living in the U.S. who applied for a new passport in April.

Updates difficult to get

“The biggest problem is people being unable to get an answer about where in the process their passport is. I think the issue is partially technology. They are likely using outdated software. Other countries let you check your status in an online portal,” said Langley.

“It is very difficult to even get somebody on the phone to ask questions. The 1-800 number just cuts off after the queue of callers gets too high.”

On Passport Canada’s website, delivery is promised in 46 days or six and a half weeks. But anyone needing a passport within two business days can go to specialized sites offering urgent service, if they have proof of travel.

The government’s plan was to ease backlogs, but it’s given some a chance to jump the queue by booking and then cancelling travel.

Broken system

“It’s upsetting,” said Leanne MacLeod who runs Getaways by Leanne out of Toronto and offers passport advice online. What’s not helping, she said, is booking a “fake” trip that you cancel to get travel documents.

“I’ve seen people recommend booking a refundable hotel, then cancelling,” she said. “It’s really what’s holding up the whole process right now. For every person who gets ahead, one gets bumped.”

Taylor Bachrach, the New Democratic Party’s transport critic, said the fact that people are trying to work around the system is evidence it’s not working.

“It shows how frustrated people are and the lengths they are willing to go,” said Bachrach.

“If people are having to ‘game’ the system to get their documents, that shows how broken the system is.”

People in his Skeena Bulkley Valley constituency in Northern B.C. live a 12-hour drive from the nearest passport office.

Bachrach has one staffer who has spent the past several weeks devoted to helping constituents secure passports.

Family trips at risk

“I have a constituent whose family needed to travel to the United States, and we were able to work with the federal government to arrange for the passports to be picked up. But he had to incur $2,000 in extra travel costs to get from here in Smithers, B.C., all the way to Victoria to pick up the passports. … This obviously has a big impact on people.”

Bachrach said these months of passport chaos are “unacceptable.”

“The increased demand for passports was entirely predictable. But the Liberals failed to act even though they had months to prepare for travel to return.”

That lack of foresight has left many Canadians apprehensive, with only a few weeks of summer left. Joseph Ivens of Terrace, B.C., applied to renew his two teens’ passports back on April 4.

The family of five has saved for a trip to Mexico for four years. The flight is booked for Aug. 27, but the passports have not come.

Minister promises family passports are coming

The father of three said he’s made hundreds of calls, several requests for a file transfer and appealed to his member of parliament. He may be forced to travel to Calgary or Vancouver at the last minute to try to secure the travel documents so the holiday is not lost.

“It’s causing my family massive stress with loss of sleep. It’s breaking us,” said Ivens. “I have no recourse.”

Gould, the minister responsible for passport services, told CBC on Friday that Ivens will get travel documents on time.

“He will get his passport. I understand people are stressed, but everyone is getting their passport on time,” said Gould.

Source: Passport delays spur some Canadians to game the system with fake travel plans

Filed under Multiculturalism, Passports Tagged with

McWhorter: The default should be to extend grace to those who’ve breached woke etiquette

2022/08/15 Leave a comment

Agree:

Paul Laurence Dunbar was perhaps the pre-eminent Black poet of the era after Reconstruction. In a new biography, the Princeton University English professor Gene Andrew Jarrett takes Dunbar’s rather glum, shortish life and pulls off a book that pulls you along like an open bag of potato chips; for the first 100 or so pages, I could barely put it down. But there’s one thing that jars like a wrong note every time it comes up: Dunbar regularly and casually referred to Black people of a lower social class than his with the N-word. An example: “I dressed at the hall dressing room in all clean linen, but had to send a [N-word] out for a standing collar because mine were all lay-downs.”

Sadly, this wasn’t atypical for more fortunate Black people of the era. Dunbar’s erudite and accomplished wife, Alice Dunbar Nelson, also used the word freely in their letters. The mother of the late-19th- and early-20th-century Black composer and conductor Will Marion Cook used the word in dismay at her classically trained son’s pursuing popular music with sometimes salty lyrics.

That kind of open classism — particularly when directed by middle- and upper-class Black people of the Victorian era toward working-class Black people — can be startling for contemporary readers. Today, for a well-heeled Black person to denigrate a less well-off Black person in this way would be deemed malicious at worst or elitist respectability politics at best.

Knowing this about Dunbar might sour someone’s opinion of him as an individual, but his use of the N-word and the sentiment behind it are unlikely to reduce his stature as a literary figure. And almost no one would consider this as grounds for a retroactive reckoning, reconsideration or, yes, cancellation of the kind to which the legacies of various historical figures are now subject. If for no other reason, then probably because his is a case of intra-Black offense being given.

One can quibble about what being canceled really means; the answer probably lies somewhere between Woodrow Wilson’s name being removed from Princeton’s public policy school and Gina Carano being dropped from the cast of “The Mandalorian.” But with Dunbar, it’s hard to imagine anyone kicking up much dust or writing, let’s say, a think-piece asking us to affix his condescension toward fellow Black people to him like a Homeric epithet, nullifying or adulterating his intellectual contributions.

That’s a good thing. We should be able to evaluate various figures, past and present, by noting their indecorous or hateful views and continuing to appreciate, even celebrate, their achievements without making them candidates for cancellation. And Dunbar’s case gets me thinking about people with less immediately dismissible stains on their records for whom the almost recreational hostility of cancel culture has held off.

Being Black and a woman seems to discourage the mob, for example. And my point, to be very clear, isn’t that Black women wrongly benefit from some kind of special pleading. It’s that, on the contrary, the forbearance that’s been extended to a number of prominent Black women in recent times should be the norm.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker has produced writing and made statements that are readily interpreted as antisemitic, and while there have been a few protests and disinvitations and criticism aplenty, no real movement has arisen to demand that her artistic achievements be viewed through this prism. As The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan argued, Walker has been treated rather “gently” about this issue, specifically in a New Yorker article written this past spring, whereas few could imagine similarly gentle treatment of J.K. Rowling for views many interpret as transphobic. Flanagan notes that in contrast, in 2020 The New Yorker asked, about another literary figure, “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?”

A few weeks after apologizing for her anti-Israel “Benjamins” tweet in 2019, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota got the chance, in the pages of The Washington Post, to clarify her stance on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and remains a hero to many on the political left; this week, she won her Democratic primary.

In 2015 the actress Phylicia Rashad said of her former co-star Bill Cosby’s accusers, “Forget these women.” Last year, when Cosby’s sexual assault conviction was overturned, she tweeted, “FINALLY!!!!” before deleting it, tweeting a walk-back and apologizing to the Howard University community. She remains the dean of Howard’s college of fine arts.

The MSNBC host Joy Reid was revealed to have written homophobic blog posts in the aughts, and her later attempts to explain them away weren’t terribly convincing. This blotted her record, but after a brief outcry, her career as a progressive oracle on prime-time TV remains intact.

Contrast Reid’s situation to the Emmy-winning actress Roseanne Barr being fired from the sitcom she starred in because of a racially demeaning tweet about the former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett. Try to imagine a white male university official getting so smooth a ride as Rashad after caping for Cosby. Ponder the stock response of Democratic voters to a white male member of Congress accused of antisemitism.

Is there a sense on the left — where it seems the canceling impulse is strongest — that Black women should get more of a pass on transgressions of social justice etiquette because of the double burden of being female and Black? I’m not sure.

But whatever our verdict on that, I am sure that this measure of forbearance should be the default for public or historical figures. Of course, it’s fair, maybe necessary in some instances, to chastise these figures. Of course, sometimes there will be transgressions so widely condemned that the transgressors are irredeemable. But most of the time, emphasizing people’s contributions despite their flaws — seeing them in totality and not boiling down their lives to their specific missteps — is just civilized rationality. The idea that an isolated breach of social justice etiquette should derail a career is calisthenic. So when we see that happening, we should hesitate and, in most cases, root for outcomes where people get criticized, perhaps, for their wrongthink but not shoved out of the public square.

I recommend Walker’s “The Temple of My Familiar,” a book that left me ashamed of being a man and yet wanting to read it again. Reid’s career as a broadcaster outweighs any parochial views about gay people she now disavows. I’d happily see Rashad in acting roles forever, despite my disappointment in her take on Cosby. I, frankly, wouldn’t vote for Omar but accept that voters in her district see things differently.

We know, certainly, there are situations where people other than Black women have avoided cancellation. Dave Chappelle comes to mind. My point, again, is that some degree of grace is called for in most cases — for the college professor who says something impolitic in class and the historical figure whose words are appalling now but were consistent with his times.

We need to rethink the entire practice of treating unpretty sentiments as if they summed up anyone’s life or work, whether you’re talking about a political titan or a contemporary celebrity. That Thomas Jefferson was an enslaver and thought of Black people as inferior is a sad aspect of his totality, and his hypocrisy on race should be noted. But it doesn’t negate all else he accomplished, including drafting the Declaration of Independence, a document that guides and governs our very way of life.

Back to O’Connor and the racism that has caused some to reconsider her work. Yes, she used the N-word freely in letters and wrote, “About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind. Very ignorant but never silent.” It reflects a bigotry and a parochialism not unlike Dunbar’s. (And she’s just wrong about Baldwin.) But that doesn’t dilute the brilliance or literary value of a story such as her “Parker’s Back.” And it won’t work to claim that the difference between O’Connor and Dunbar is that his objectionable remarks were intra-Black. By today’s woke standards, wouldn’t classism tinged with racism be an intersectional double whammy? If there’s room to look beyond his flaws, O’Connor should get the same treatment.

One more: The biologist E.O. Wilson, who died last year, faced accusations of racism, a charge that continues to be explored. One article describes an epistolary cordiality with the Canadian psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, who had openly racist views about Black people. In one such letter, Wilson reportedly praised Rushton’s paper arguing that “Black and non-Black people pursue different reproductive strategies.” That’s far from ideal, but even less ideal is any sense that this aspect of Wilson must be ongoingly considered amid our assessment of his pioneering genius. I was knocked out by his book “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge,” about the progress of our understanding of the world, and considering how he may have felt about Black people would have been quite irrelevant to the experience.

Whether we’re talking about the past or the present, the idea that being insufficiently progressive or sensitive can wind up being the measure of a person’s worth is a call to disavow intelligent assessment in favor of gut-level impulses. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of thinking that, in the guise of insight, teaches a form of dimness. We seem to spontaneously understand this in some instances. We need to extend that basic common sense, that basic ability to make distinctions and see the whole picture, when evaluating trespasses by people of all walks of life and across time.

Source: The default should be to extend grace to those who’ve breached woke etiquette

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How a Quebec student’s hijab became the target of a political and cultural storm

2022/08/15 Leave a comment

Groundhog Day…

The photograph on the Montreal business school’s website was intended to demonstrate a young woman’s possibility and her academic success.

“A rewarding international presence,” reads the blurb beside the photo, written in a black font to match the black cloth hijab wrapped around the head and neck of the woman’s smiling face.

There is not much more that would stand out as unusual in the promotional image of the Algerian exchange student at the HEC Montréal — an image the school uses to tout its international programs, a deep and important revenue stream for the institution, as it is for most other Canadian universities.

But when Jean-François Lisée, a prominent Quebec academic, writer and former politician, viewed the image last weekend, he saw it not as a ploy by a public institution in search of private funds.

Instead, the former leader of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois flared at what he took to be a breach of the secular codes that Quebec governments have been trying to establish over the past two decades to separate religion and the state.

Those efforts culminated in 2019 with the passage into law of Bill 21, which enshrines state secularism, mainly by banning public-sector workers from wearing items of religious clothing or decoration, including crucifixes, turbans and hijabs, while at work.

“University students can display their convictions, religious or not,” Lisée wrote on Twitter. “But for a public institution that is by definition secular, pro-science and pro-gender equality to normalize a misogynistic religious sign in an ad is unacceptable.”

The rebuke from a man who has straddled Quebec’s media and political realms for more than 40 years cast the province back into a fraught debate that it cannot seem to resolve.

Increasingly present in the form of turbans, hijabs and kippahs, at least in part due to immigration patterns in the province, many of Quebec’s white, francophone majority would apparently prefer that religion be neither seen nor heard from in the public sphere.

But each instance of religion rearing its head, reigniting the debate over the place of religious expression in a secular society, is like a freshly formed scab over a cut that is pulled away, exposing the wound to the sting of fresh air.

Kimberley Manning calls them “moments of punctuation” that revive the frequently noxious debate that, in her opinion, risks revictimizing religious minorities in Quebec.

“They contribute to and exacerbate an ever-present experience of not being fully Quebeckers,” says the associate professor of political science at Montreal’s Concordia University. “This is what seems to be coming through in the polling and the research.”

Manning has done her own work, notably a March study of students that found feelings of discrimination that respondents linked to the province’s secularism law.

A more extensive study of Bill 21’s impacts in Quebec, released this week, contends that the law has created a frightening, oppressive and grim environment for religious minorities.

In surveys, Jews, Sikhs and Muslims reported a deterioration in their likelihood to participate in social and political life in the province, in their sense of personal safety, and in their confidence for future prospects.

“(The law) promises all kinds of very noble values, and when we measured those up against the results in the study, we see that it doesn’t achieve those values of neutrality, equality and social harmony,” says Miriam Taylor, director of publications and partnerships with the Association of Canadian Studies.

What the law — most any law — does do is normalize and concretize the biases which underpin it, Taylor says.

Survey respondents said they had experienced a rise in verbal abuse, threats and physical confrontations since the law was adopted.

This jibes with anecdotal evidence and a general sense of uncertainty and anxiety in Quebec’s Muslim communities, says Lina El Bakir, Quebec Advocacy Officer for the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

“When you set out a law that is discriminatory, you allow that to permeate society and people’s views,” she says.

“It affects mental health, it affects security, it affects the ability to just be, you know?”

Lisée, who declined an interview request, said in his criticisms that his beef was not with the Algerian exchange student in the hijab, but with the business school.

The website content in question does not breach any aspects of the provincial law, but he said it sends a message to young Algerians standing up to the pressure of imams and fundamentalists that the school “is not your ally.”

An HEC Montréal spokesperson says the only goal of the image was to show off the diversity of its student body, which includes 3,746 international students from 142 countries. The image will come down from the site next week — not because of Lisée’s indignation but because that’s when its previously scheduled two-week publication run ends.

That may come as a relief to the student, who came to Montreal to obtain a business degree and now finds herself in a debate that is part polisci, part sociology — one that has been going on so long that at least part of it belongs to the annals of history.

Speaking to La Presse columnist Rima Elkouri, the 22-year-old, who declined the Star’s interview request, explained she was initially nervous about coming to study in Canada. She had heard about the killing of four members of the Afzaal family of London, Ont., who were run down by the driver of a pickup truck on June 6, 2021, in what police allege was a hate-motivated attack.

But, Nouha, who was identified only by her first name, said she quickly warmed to her new home in Montreal.

“I have never suffered from discrimination or a lack of respect,” she told the Montreal newspaper.

She said that wearing the hijab was a personal decision, not one forced upon her by her family, though she acknowledged the women who have no choice in the matter.

“I’m against that,” she said, adding that she considers herself a feminist.

“I’ve never found (the hijab) to be a symbol that diminishes the value of a woman. Personally, I consider myself to be a very strong woman. In a few years, I’ll be managing a team of workers. I can’t afford to see myself as a weak person.”

She also said she acknowledges and understands the principles of secularism in Quebec.

“I understand that the school must be truly neutral. But from my point of view, it’s also important to display people from minority groups because those minorities look for a place where they feel at peace.”

The issues on display are not going away.

Before the end of the month, Quebec will be into a provincial election campaign and parties have often fallen back on identity issues to stir up the passions of their voters.

Taylor said she worried about the negative consequences of a campaign in which religion and secularism, majority views and minority rights were “instrumentalized for political gain.”

Before the end of the year, Quebec’s court of appeal is expected to hear a legal challenge to Bill 21. And in Ottawa, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has already promised to challenge the provincial secularism law at the Supreme Court.

Taylor’s study found that support for the law among Quebeckers would drop considerably if the Supreme Court ruled that it violated the Constitution.

This bolsters El Bakir’s contention that Quebeckers, like other Canadians, value human rights, despise discrimination and strive for equality.

But she reverts to her native French, and invokes the most Quebecois of expressions, to explain that an older segment of the Quebec population support secularism because they remember when the Catholic Church exerted strict control over all aspects of the province —from schools to hospitals to politics to family life.

“It doesn’t take the head of Papineau!” she says, in reference to Louis-Joseph Papineau, a leader of the rebel Patriote movement in 19th century Lower Canada who was reputed for his intelligence.

“I do understand where older generations are coming from, however societies evolve and we need to understand that realities do change, and one narrative doesn’t always apply.”

Source: How a Quebec student’s hijab became the target of a political and cultural storm

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The Darkness Down Under: Australia Still Reckons With Racism [Indigenous focus]

2022/08/15 Leave a comment

Surprised Canada not used also as a comparison as parallels and differences more comparable:

Uluru—a monumental, cathedral-like rock that stands alone in the western deserts of Central Australia—may seem an unlikely place from which to reflect on the scourge of violence against Black Americans that stains the U.S. body-politic today. But understanding the consequences of one event that happened far away in 1934 is a powerful reminder that the struggle to make Black lives matter and counter white supremacist violence transcends national boundaries.

In June 1931, Constable Bill McKinnon arrived in Alice Springs to take up his appointment as a police officer in central Australia. He was barely thirty—lean, brash, and tough—a no-nonsense raconteur with a sharp tongue and unyielding determination.

In 1934, after chasing down six Aboriginal men for the killing of an Aboriginal man that had taken place under tribal law, he cornered one man in a cave and shot and killed him at Uluru, a place that has long been sacred for the Anangu, its traditional owners, and is now spiritually significant for the entire nation.

In 1935, an Australian government Board of Inquiry, which exhumed the man’s body and eventually took his remains back to Adelaide, found that the killing was “ethically unwarranted” but “legally justified.” Remarkably, McKinnon claimed that he had fired his pistol into the cave in “self-defense.” Now, almost 100 years later—after the discovery of new evidence that proves he lied to the Inquiry—the murder of one defenseless Aboriginal man in the heart of Australia highlights the entrenched inequalities in societies rooted in violence and oppression.

There’s a reason that so many Aboriginal people identified with George Floyd. Australia’s First Nations people—twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than white Australians—continue to see themselves as victims of state-sanctioned violence, often involving police.

Today, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 3.2 percent of Australia’s total population, yet they account for almost 30 percent of the country’s prison population. Their chances of dying in custody are almost six times greater than other Australians. Nationally, their suicide rates are more than double that of other Australians. Crucial social indicators such as life expectancy, health, housing, education, and employment—many of them impervious to the policies of successive governments to “close the gap”—continue to illustrate the alarming inequalities between Indigenous and other Australians. Despite the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Indigenous deaths in Custody (a large number of which are yet to be implemented), more than 500 Aboriginal people have died in custody since the Commission’s report was handed down.

Given the violent history of Australia’s colonization—Aboriginal lands were taken without treaty, consent, or compensation—and the protracted struggle for equality and justice, it’s not surprising that First Nations people view police with deep fear and suspicion. For more than 150 years, it was police and their trackers (both black and white) who were responsible for many of the massacres of Aboriginal people. It was governments and their police who often turned a blind eye to the vigilantes who “cleared” the country of its rightful owners. It was police who took children from their families and facilitated their “re-education” in state and religious institutions. And it was police who represented the brutal imposition of whitefella law over the laws and cultures of First Nations people. Despite numerous investigations and inquiries over the years, no police officer has ever been convicted for the murder of an Aboriginal person.

In 2019, at Yuendumu, an Aboriginal community in central Australia, Aboriginal teenager Kumanjayi Walker died after being shot three times by Police Constable Zachary Rolfe. In a disturbing echo of the events at Uluru in 1934, Rolfe claimed he had acted in self-defense when Walker resisted arrest and attacked him with a pair of scissors. In March this year, an all-white jury found Rolfe not guilty of Walker’s murder, a decision that sparked a wave of grief and anger at Yuendumu and in Aboriginal communities across the country.

Local elders pleaded with police to consult them and respect their law before entering their homes. They also asked them not to bring their guns into the community. If racial profiling and unnecessary deaths were to be avoided, policing, they argued, must be carried out in collaboration with community elders and without the need for firearms.

For many Aboriginal people at Yuendumu, the 1928 Coniston massacre, a wave of indiscriminate killings led by Constable George Murray (one of Bill McKinnon’s colleagues), was still in living memory. Similar stories of profound rupture and horror can be found throughout Australia.

In 2016, esteemed Yolngu elder and respected Indigenous leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu recalled how his father, Mungurrawuy, was present “when the massacres occurred in [East Arnhem Land] in the 1920s and 1930s.” He was also “shot by a man licensed to do so.” “These events and what lies behind them are burned into our minds,” he explained. “They are never forgotten. Such things are remembered. Like the scar that marked the exit of the bullet from my father’s body.” These scars—memories of forced removal, murder, frontier warfare, resistance, and survival—are etched into the bloodlines of Australia’s historical imagination.

Both America and Australia are grappling with the white supremacy at their roots and the challenge of recognizing the fundamental truth at the heart of their history–the racism and violence embedded in the creation of both the American Republic and the Australian Commonwealth. But to understand this shared struggle involves recognizing both points of similarity and difference between the two countries. In the U.S. today, it would be unthinkable for a white policeman charged with the murder of a Black man to be tried by an all-white jury. Yet this is what happened in Australia.

Even the frequently made point that the U.S. can learn from Australia’s gun laws needs to be tempered by the glaring disparities between the two nations. In 1996, after 35 people lost their lives to a lone gunman at Port Arthur in Tasmania, conservative Prime Minister John Howard acted decisively to prohibit automatic and semiautomatic weapons and restrict the ownership of firearms. Howard was able to achieve this swiftly and effectively because in Australia, the possession of firearms is not connected to individual, community, and political identities in the same way as it is in the U.S. Australia has no constitutional right “to bear arms,” nor do large numbers of its citizens believe that gun ownership is necessary to protect their liberty and security.

Some of the strongest parallels between the two countries lie in their treatment of First Nations people. Like Native Americans, Indigenous Australians suffered the dispossession of their lands. They were massacred and “dispersed” at the barrel of a gun. They were denied the wealth wrought from the white establishment’s appropriation of their lands. They were long denied citizenship in their own country, and they struggled against pernicious racial hierarchies and oppressive legislation, adapting creatively nonetheless, and ensuring their cultures’ survival. Although treaties allegedly accorded Native Americans the status of nations and sovereign governments, they were often little more than legitimizing devices for the colonizer’s appropriation of territory, or part of a strategy to ward off rival European powers. Indigenous Australians, however, do not have an established history of treaty-making to fall back on. More than 230 years after the first wave of the British invasion began in 1788, they are still waiting for their sovereignty as First Nations people to be recognized.

Today, both countries cling tenaciously to creation myths of innocence and virtue. Australia has struggled to dispel the myth of peaceful British settlement—the idea that the land was simply “taken up” by settlers without fierce resistance from First Nations people. For many Australians, “war” is something that happened overseas. In 2003, Prime Minister John Howard told a gathering at the Supreme Court of Victoria that Australia had “formed a nation without strife or warfare,” as if the frontier wars were a mere “blemish” in an otherwise heroic narrative of widening democracy and material prosperity.

In 2022, Australia is approaching a reckoning with its history; one that finally begins to address the structural inequalities that are a direct consequence of white supremacy and colonization. In 1901, when the Australian colonies federated under the British Crown, they did so without negotiating with Indigenous Australians, a people they believed to be destined for extinction. With the election of a new Labor government under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the country will soon hold a national referendum seeking approval for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, “a body enshrined in the Constitution that would enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to provide advice to the Parliament on policies and projects that impact their lives.”

The idea of the “Voice” arose after a long process of consultation between Aboriginal communities throughout the country and in 2017 culminated in a convention of Indigenous Australians held at Uluru. “The Uluru Statement from the Heart”–an eloquent, almost constitutional fusion of the poetic and the pragmatic–called not only for a “First Nations Voice enshrined in the constitution” but also for the establishment of a “Makarrata Commission,” which will supervise the making of treaties and truth-telling.

Recently, the South Australian Museum asked the Central Land Council, which represents the Traditional Owners of Central Australia, to consult with relevant Traditional Owners and the families involved in the events of 1934. When that process is completed, one small but significant step in truth-telling will take place when the remains of the Aboriginal man shot by Bill McKinnon will finally be repatriated to Uluru. His name was “Yukun” (aka “Yokununna”) – “Desert Oak No.1” – and his homecoming promises to highlight the urgency and rightness of the referendum to come.

In 2022, Australia is approaching a reckoning with its history; one that finally begins to address the structural inequalities that are a direct consequence of white supremacy and colonization. In 1901, when the Australian colonies federated under the British Crown, they did so without negotiating with Indigenous Australians, a people they believed to be destined for extinction. With the election of a new Labor government under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the country will soon hold a national referendum seeking approval for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, “a body enshrined in the Constitution that would enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to provide advice to the Parliament on policies and projects that impact their lives.”

Source: The Darkness Down Under: Australia Still Reckons With Racism

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Attack on Salman Rushdie prompts Canadians to highlight author’s relentless fight for free speech

2022/08/15 Leave a comment

As someone posted to Iran when the fatwa was issued, and as a fan of his writing, this attack strikes close to home along with the importance of free speech. We will see if some in Canada defend or excuse the indefensible:

Canadian writers, publishers and literary figures doubled down on the right to freedom of thought and expression on Saturday, one day after an attack in the U.S. on award-winning author Salman Rushdie that has left him on a ventilator in hospital.

Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses drew death threats from Iran’s leaders in the 1980s, was stabbed in the neck and abdomen Friday by a man who rushed the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in western New York.

Louise Dennys, executive vice-president and publisher of Penguin Random House Canada, has published and edited Rushdie’s writings for over 30 years. She condemned the attack on her longtime friend and colleague as “cowardly” and “reprehensible in every way.”

“He is without doubt one of the greatest proponents of freedom of thought and speech, and debate and discussion in the world today,” Dennys said in a telephone interview. “I have hopes of his recovery. He’s a great warrior and fighter, and I hope he is fighting back.”

Rushdie, 75, a native of India who has lived in Britain and the U.S., is known for his surreal and satirical prose style

The Satanic Verses drew death threats after it was published in 1988, with many Muslims regarding as blasphemy a dream sequence based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, among other objections. Rushdie’s book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.

A 24-year-old man is in custody, facing charges in Friday’s attack. The accused was born a decade after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Police said the motive was unclear. Investigators were working to determine whether anyone else could be linked to the incident.

After the publication of The Satanic Verses, often-violent protests erupted across the Muslim world against Rushdie. At least 45 people were killed in riots over the book, including 12 people in Rushdie’s hometown of Mumbai. In 1991, a Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death and an Italian translator survived a knife attack. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times and survived.

The death threats prompted Rushdie to go into hiding under a British government protection program, though he cautiously resumed public appearances after nine years of seclusion, maintaining his outspoken criticism of religious extremism overall.

‘He couldn’t be silenced by fear’

“We all depend on the storytelling, power and imagination of writers,” Dennys said. Rushdie “came out of hiding because he realized he wanted to play a role in the world we live in, defending those rights, she said.

“He couldn’t be silenced by fear, and I think that point is something he will continue to make if, as we all hope, he survives.”

Dennys said the attack is already having the opposite effect of its suspected intentions given the outpouring of support from the international literary community, as well as activists and government officials, who cited Rushdie’s courage for his longtime free speech advocacy despite risks to his own safety.

“It’s brought everyone together to realize how precious and fragile our freedoms are and how important it is to speak up for them,” Dennys said.

The president of PEN Canada, an organization that defends authors’ freedom of expression, condemned the “savage attack” on their “friend and colleague,” Rushdie, who is a member.

Canadian writer John Ralston Saul, who has known Rushdie since the 1990s, said the author was always aware that someone might attack him, but he chose to live publicly in order to speak out against those trying to silence free expression and debate.

“[Rushdie’s] work and whole life are a reminder of what the life of the public writer is in reality,” he said. “This would be the worst possible time to give in or show any sense that we must be more careful with our words. We’re not really writers if we give in to that kind of threat.”

The accused, Hadi Matar, was arrested after the attack at the Chautauqua Institution, a non-profit education and retreat centre. Matar’s lawyer entered a not guilty plea in a New York court on Saturday to charges of attempted murder and assault.

After the attack, some longtime visitors to the centre questioned why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, given the threats against Rushdie and a bounty on his head offering more than $3 million to anyone who killed him.

Saul, who spoke at the Chautauqua Institution years before Rushdie’s attack, said it has an “open tradition” of debate, free expression and anti-violence going back over 100 years.

“It’s one of the freest places to take advantage of our belief in freedom,” he said.

Witnesses to the attack on Salman Rushdie Friday in western New York recount how a man approached the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where the author was about to give a lecture, attacked him and was later pinned down by people from the audience.

Roland Gulliver, director of the Toronto International Festival of Authors, tweeted Saturday that literary festivals and book events are “spaces of expression, to tell your stories in friendship, safety and respect.”

“To see this so violently broken is incredibly shocking,” he wrote.

Expressions of sympathy came from the political realm as well, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemning the attack as a “cowardly … strike against freedom of expression.”

“No one should be threatened or harmed on the basis of what they have written,” read a statement posted to Trudeau’s official Twitter account. “I’m wishing him a speedy recovery.”

Rushdie suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in his arm, and is likely to lose an eye as a result of the attack, the author’s agent, Andrew Wylie, said Friday evening.

A physician who witnessed the attack and was among those who rushed to help described Rushdie’s wounds as “serious but recoverable.”

Source: Attack on Salman Rushdie prompts Canadians to highlight author’s relentless fight for free speech

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