Edward Alden: Crackdown by U.S. Customs and Border Protection likely to drive a deeper wedge between Canada and U.S.

2020/02/07 Leave a comment

Canadian governments have always been worried about the “thickening” of the border and this commentary highlights the large discretion that regional authorities have and arguably, their abuse of that discretion:

On Saturday evening, Jan. 4, I was driving back from visiting family in Vancouver to my new home in Bellingham, Wash., when I ran into a massive line of border traffic at the Peace Arch crossing. Just two days prior, a U.S. drone strike had killed Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, and it occurred to me I might be witnessing a small piece of a security crackdown all along the U.S. borders.

But the truth has turned out to be far stranger. As was reported last week by Blaine’s The Northern Light newspaper, the border crackdown was not a national operation. It was a local one. At the direction of top officials in the Seattle Field Operation office, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers were pulling aside all crossers of Iranian origin, including many Canadian and U.S. citizens. Dozens of people were held at the border for as long as 12 hours and interrogated extensively before finally being released.

The operation was not just an isolated occurrence. Those entering the United States at Peace Arch and other western border ports of entry are facing a stepped-up enforcement regime that creates significant risks for all southbound travellers.

From 2018 to 2019, for example, the number of border crossers slapped with five-year bans barring them from entering the United States more than tripled from 91 to 309 at crossings overseen by the Seattle office, according to CBP data provided to CTV News. Even with the stepped-up border enforcement under the Trump administration, that was a far bigger increase than anywhere else along the U.S. border with Canada.

The legal provision, known as “expedited removal,” (ER) is an extreme measure that allows front-line CBP officers to bar re-entry to anyone who arrives at the border without valid entry documents, or is thought to be making fraudulent claims. Canada has no law that permits comparable penalties against U.S. citizens.

Lawyers for business groups in B.C. and Washington State say the expanded use of the provision is chilling trade and travel across the border. For example, some 18 Canadian truck drivers were recently hit with ER orders. They were engaged in a long-permitted practice of driving goods from the northern U.S. to the border with Mexico, where the goods were then picked up for delivery in Mexico.

The Seattle office is now ruling that this constitutes illegal transport within the United States, and that U.S.-based drivers must carry those loads. Instead of hitting the companies or drivers with fines, CBP is barring the drivers from entering the U.S. entirely. One Canadian trucking company says it lost about $1 million in business last year due to the loss of its drivers.

The new crackdown is quite different from the one that many Canadians and others experienced after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Then, the U.S. government tightened inspections and document requirements across all its land borders and airports. Indeed the number of Canadians crossing the land border has never recovered to the pre-9/11 peaks.

But local officials also possess expansive authority to launch their own crackdowns, as the operation to detain Iranians showed. CBP officers are free to ask border crossers any questions they wish, search vehicles, cell phones and other personal possessions, and even review social media accounts before permitting entry. The actions of the Seattle Field Office, which administers 54 border crossings all the way from Point Roberts, Washington to International Falls, Minnesota, show the discretion that local officials have to interpret CBP’s legal authorities in harsher ways.

An internal CBP memo leaked last week showed that the local office issued a “high threat alert” directing that anyone born in Iran, Lebanon or the Palestinian territories between 1961 and 2001 would be pulled into secondary screening for extensive vetting. CBP headquarters in Washington, D.C. said the actions by the local office are under investigation, and that “there is no rule that would permit us to target or stop individuals based on their nationality alone.”

One woman held at Peace Arch on Jan. 4 was born in Iran, but left 20 years ago with her family and is now a Canadian citizen, a U.S. green card holder, and holds a Nexus card, which required extensive security background checks by U.S. and Canadian authorities. Nonetheless, CBP officers pulled her into secondary screening at 5 p.m. on Saturday evening, interrogated her about family, friends and travel history, and did not release her until 5 a.m. the following day.

The recent actions should trigger much harder questions from both the B.C. and Washington State governments, and from Ottawa as well. If left unchecked, these initiatives by local CBP officials are likely to further chill cross-border travel and commerce, and drive a deeper wedge between the two countries.

Despite the generally strong economy on both sides of the border, and a stable Canadian dollar, the number of vehicle passengers crossing the border has fallen over the past year. An unpredictable border is a blow to the economy of Whatcom County, which relies heavily on Canadian consumers, but also discourages Americans from coming north to visit or do business in the Vancouver region.

State and provincial officials have talked grandly about the development of a “Cascadia Innovation Corridor” that would strengthen innovation and economic growth across the Pacific Northwest. But that dream rests on seamless travel across the border between B.C. and Washington State. Instead, thanks to increasingly aggressive border enforcement, the region is headed in the opposite direction.

Edward Alden is the Ross Distinguished Professor of U.S.-Canada Economic Relations at Western Washington University, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security since 9/11.

Source: vancouversun.com/opinion/edward…

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The Bloc changes its tune on Canada’s court challenges program

2020/02/07 Leave a comment

Twelve years ago, a Bloc Québécois MP stood in the House of Commons to proclaim his party’s support for the court challenges program — a federal initiative that had been providing grants to individuals and groups who sought to defend or assert their constitutional or language rights through the courts.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government announced its intention to eliminate funding for the program in 2006.

“Philosopher and writer Paul Valéry said that the greatness of a civilization is measured in its treatment of minorities,” said Réal Ménard, who was the MP for Hochelaga from 1993 to 2009.

The Bloc Quebecois, Menard said, “has always been extremely supportive of the court challenges program.”

Twelve years later, the Bloc has discovered a limit to its enthusiasm for the program, which was reinstated by Justin Trudeau’s government in 2017. Its zeal appears to end at Bill 21, the Quebec law that bans many of the province’s public servants from wearing religious symbols or articles clothing, such as hijabs or turbans, while at work.

The Montreal Gazette reported this week that Montreal’s English school board received $125,000 through the program to help fund a legal challenge to Bill 21. The school board quickly renounced the funding, but not before the Bloc — which had been demanding that the federal government stay out of the fight over Quebec’s so-called secularism law — expressed its vehement displeasure.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet says the federal government has no business funding legal challenges of Bill 21. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

When challenged by Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet in the House this week, Trudeau was quick to note that the court challenges program is an arms-length institution that makes its funding decisions completely independent of the federal government.

We don’t know if the court challenges program is funding any other challenges to Bill 21; the grants are confidential. But it provide federal support to a cause that Trudeau has been reluctant to engage with directly.

The history here is long and rich.

The program that died many deaths

The court challenges program actually has its roots in Pierre Trudeau’s push to establish official bilingualism — and his own government’s reluctance to directly intervene against Bill 101, the French-language charter that was introduced in 1977 by Quebec’s Parti Québécois government.

Back then, the Liberals decided against trying to disallow the legislation or referring it to the Supreme Court. But they did create a program that would provide financial support to individuals or groups who wished to challenge provincial language laws — both anglophones in Quebec and francophones in other provinces.

The program was later expanded by Brian Mulroney’s government to cover other equality rights, but the Progressive Conservatives later reversed course and decided to withdraw funding. Jean Chrétien’s Liberals restored the program in 1994. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives took a dim view of the program’s activities and quickly moved to cancel it again in 2006.

By then, the program had become a significant source of financial support for francophones outside Quebec who wished to assert their rights. A House committee report in 2007 listed a number of linguistic cases that had benefited from program funding, including several that challenged provincial or federal governments.

“Many of the cases funded by the program resulted in important language rights precedents in Canadian constitutional law.” Richard Nadeau, another Bloc MP, told the House in 2008. “They made a significant contribution to official language minority rights in Canada.”

Stéphane Dion, Liberal leader at the time, vowed that a Liberal government would revive it. Justin Trudeau made good on that promise in 2017 with a commitment of $1.5 million in annual funding and an expanded mandate to cover a wider array of rights-based cases.

Watch

Trudeau to Singh: Why close the door to intervention on Bill 21?

  • 4 months ago
  • 1:15
  • Turn captions on

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh speaks about his battle against discrimination after Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau challenges him to say he’ll intervene on Quebec’s secularism law. 1:15

When asked directly about Bill 21, Trudeau has maintained that he does not believe any government has the right to tell people what to wear. But he has refrained from getting the federal government directly involved — even while not ruling out the possibility of intervening at some point.

There is a case to be made for Ottawa staying out and letting Quebeckers themselves lead the challenges to the law. Federal involvement could further inflame public opinion in a province that prizes its autonomy. But the court challenges program offers an option for indirect support — something that should be harder for Quebec nationalists to demonize because politicians aren’t involved in deciding who gets the funding.

Majority will, minority rights

The Liberal Party’s interest in reviving the program predated the discussion in Quebec that led to Bill 21, but Liberals also might think that Bill 21 is exactly the sort of thing that the court challenges program exists to deal with.

In an interview with CBC’s Power & Politics this week, Blanchet presented two arguments against providing the funding to Montreal’s English school boards.

First, he argued that the school boards already have ample resources and shouldn’t need federal funding to mount a legal challenge. That could be an argument for changing the funding criteria.

But his second argument was much broader.

“What I say is that a citizen, a group, an institution has the right to disagree with the law. It has a right to challenge the law in court,” he said. “What we cannot accept, and we’ve been saying that for a whole year now, is when the government is taking Quebec taxpayers’ money to challenge a law which is largely approved by Quebec citizens and people. This is what we do not agree with.”

In a similar statement released by the Bloc on Wednesday, Blanchet is quoted as saying that the will of Quebec’s National Assembly, which passed Bill 21, must be respected.

That amounts to a suggestion that the court challenges program should be severely curtailed — that it should not be used to support challenges against any rightfully adopted provincial or federal law, particularly if the law is popular with the general public.

Constitutional and human rights exist, in part, to protect individuals and groups against abuse by the majority. But Blanchet now suggests that the court challenges program — a program designed to help protect those rights — should defer to that majority.

Is a society to be judged by how it treats all of its minorities — or just by how it treats those minorities who are easier to support politically?

Source: The Bloc changes its tune on Canada’s court challenges program

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How John Legend’s Get Lifted Became a Major Production House for Multicultural Storytelling

2020/02/05 Leave a comment

Given the overall lack of diversity in the industry as exemplified in the various awards, worth noting:

In the eight years since Get Lifted Film Co.’s start, the partnership launched by John Legend, Mike Jackson and Ty Stiklorius has grown to become an industry player. Launched in 2012, Get Lifted has delivered one thunderclap after another, from WGN America’s record-setting sensation “Underground,” to the Oscar winning “La La Land,” for which the company served as executive producer. On the stage, Get Lifted produced a 2017 Broadway production of August Wilson’s “Jitney,” for which its founders won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

The trio has built a successful and influential independent production house without much fanfare, and have largely avoided any vanity press. They have more recently started to discuss the company, and all three founders sat with IndieWire last month for a lengthy and candid conversation about the origins of the company and its vision for the future.

“Hollywood has changed over the years, for women and people of color, because it was hard when we started,” Jackson said. “’12 Years a Slave’ hadn’t won an Oscar. And so we would pitch projects like a black historic biopic for example, and executives would scoff. So it’s been revealing to have been there before, and then to now see so much more openness and interest in the kind of stories we wanted to tell, but couldn’t.”

For many, Get Lifted is principally known as Legend’s company, but the company’s aspirations go far beyond his own musical and acting ambitions. (Its catchphrase: “Smart, Elevated, Commercial.”) The company’s most groundbreaking project to date is “Underground.” A critical success that also broke viewership records for WGN America in its first season in 2016, the series was a bold, refreshing take on the slave narrative, unfolding more like a fast-paced action-drama, than anything TV audiences had seen before it. And it caught on quickly: Slave narratives weren’t quite the same again after that, with last year’s Harriet Tubman biopic, “Harriet,” taking a similar approach.

“That really represented who we are and the types of chance-taking stories we wanted to be at the forefront of,” said Jackson. The project was a real breakthrough for the company. “It was something that came to us already pretty much baked, but we ensured that our DNA was in the show.”

They also tout the critical success of their new sketch series “Sherman’s Showcase,” which premiered on IFC last fall to raves. Created by Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle, the series is hosted by Sherman McDaniel (Salahuddin) as he takes viewers through time via music and comedy drawn from the 40-year library of a legendary (but fictitious) musical variety show.

“It’s very smart, probably the best-reviewed thing I’ve ever been part of in my life,” said Legend. “There’s been this assumption that there isn’t an audience for intelligent black content, but we’re proving that it’s obviously not true.” The series will return with a one-hour “Black History Month Spectacular,” this summer, not in February.

Get Lifted’s latest offering, the Netflix hip-hop competition series “Rhythm + Flow,” was released in October 2019, also to raves.  In the series, which the company developed internally, hip hop artists Cardi B, Chance The Rapper, and Tip “T.I.” Harris critique and judge unsigned rappers, who are competing to win a $250,000 prize.

As usual, Netflix hasn’t released viewership data on the series, but its contestants have become stars virtually overnight, with the winner, a 34-year-old rapper named D Smoke, seeing his Instagram follower count skyrocket from around 7,000 to over 1.3 million in a matter weeks.

“Rhythm + Flow” is the first original music competition program for Netflix, which was the most sensible home for it, Legend said. “It was hard to try to make it at a regular network because of the language,” he said. “And there’s so many things that would sand off the edge of the show if it were sanitized, and hip hop needs edge. And we’re so happy to partner with Netflix because they allowed us to do exactly what we wanted to do.”

It’s a long way from when they first launched Get Lifted, and had to prove themselves. Some didn’t take them seriously: Legend’s celebrity was seen as a handicap, and they were treated like a vanity company. However, the founders that only made them more inclined to take risks.

“We had almost nothing to lose at that point,” Stiklorius said. “And so, looking back on those years when a lot of people were saying things like, ‘You’ll never make it in this town,’ it’s great that we’ve built a strong reputation for having great taste and great work ethic.”

As the company has grown, they haven’t lost that nerve — whether it’s with a wholly original program like an IFC sketch variety show that’s unlike anything before it, or NBC’s “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert,” which Legend starred in.

A lot of people balked at that last one. “The three of us talked and decided, John being the black Jesus? We’ve got to do this,” Stiklorius said. “We exec produced it, and then we won the Emmy for it. But everything about how we live our lives, and what we’ve done to get to this point, is about going against the norm, doing the work and believing in ourselves.”

The three founders have been friends for many years. Stiklorius and Jackson grew up together in Philadelphia. Legend met Stiklorius in college, at the University of Pennsylvania, in the mid-1990s, where they sang in an a capella group. She would eventually introduce Legend to Jackson, who became the singer’s first manager, after graduating from Penn in 1999.

Legend’s music career took off when his debut studio album, “Get Lifted,” was released in 2004 by Columbia Records. Music eventually brought him into the world of film and television, and he never looked back, becoming increasingly more influential as his celebrity grew. Get Lifted Film Co. was born not long after that. They sold over two dozen shows almost immediately, but quickly realized that getting those projects on the air was a whole separate challenge.

“We would pitch and they would buy it in the room, and we were thinking, ‘This is easy’,” Stiklorius said. “The frustrating part was getting all the way to the finish line with any project. But we knew that we had really great ideas, because they were at least buying into them.”

Get Lifted landed its first overall deal from Universal about nine months after it launched, which kept the company afloat as its ambitions grew. It took another three to four years before its first TV show actually made it to series — “Underground,” in 2016 — and it was a big year for the company, which had a hit TV series and two feature film releases: the young Obama romance, “Southside with You,” and “La La Land.” Following its Sundance premiere, “Southside With You” was praised by critics, and was a mild box office hit; and “La La Land” received a record-tying 14 nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, winning in six categories.

More deals would come, including a multi-year overall production pact signed in early 2017 with independent studio Critical Content to create unscripted television and digital media content. A few months later, the company inked a first-look deal with Sony Pictures Television, and in 2019, signed a three-year overall deal with ABC Studios after a multiple-studio bidding war.

Now, Get Lifted is benefited from changes to the industry climate, from the rise of streamers to increased pressure to diversify. The founders said they have more outlets for their projects, but like anyone else, faced more competition than ever before. One advantage: Legend’s starpower and social media reach, which includes over 13 million followers on Twitter, and close to 12 million on Instagram.

The company has a lot in the pipeline, but the project they expressed particular enthusiasm for upcoming Netflix musical “Jingle Jangle,” written and directed by David E. Talbert. Get Lifted’s biggest and most expensive project to date, it stars Forest Whitaker and Madalen Mills in the story of a toymaker and his granddaughter who construct a magical invention which, if they can get it to work in time for the holidays, could change their lives forever. Jackson called it “black ‘Willy Wonka.’”

Talbert had been trying to get off the ground for nearly two decades when Netflix bought the pitch in 2017, and Get Lifted came onboard as producers the following year. “It’s amazing to be part of something that’s really this huge, with this budget, for original content by a black writer and director, with an all black cast, and black producers,” said Legend. (Netflix is targeting a fall release.)

So what does Get Lifted envision for the future? “World domination,” Jackson joked, but noted the company has developed an international footprint with unscripted shows like “Rhythm + Flow.” The team is are also having broader conversations about how to expand the brand, and the potential of owning their own distribution channels so they can operate on multiple platforms.

“We’re pretty ambitious and have smartly taken our time and built our business slowly and systematically,” Legend said. “Now we’re at that point where we can expand it globally, and really make a dent, without ever losing our identity and without compromise.”

Source: How John Legend’s Get Lifted Became a Major Production House for Multicultural Storytelling

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Non-citizen parents allowed to return home with Canadian children from Wuhan

2020/02/05 Leave a comment

Good:

The Liberal government insisted China let the primary caregivers of Canadian children return to the country with those children after leaving Wuhan, the epicentre of an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, even if they are not citizens themselves.

“We insisted on the concept of family unity,” Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Monday in Ottawa.

A chartered plane will soon be in Hanoi, Vietnam, where it will wait to pick up Canadian citizens — and some permanent residents accompanying their children — from Wuhan, the city of 11 million people in the central Hubei province that is currently under quarantine in response to the outbreak.

The federal government is awaiting final approval from the Chinese government to fly through the restricted airspace and land at the closed airport in Wuhan, but Champagne said other preparations are already well underway.

“We will be in touch with Canadians in Wuhan later this afternoon to provide them all the necessary details,” Champagne said.

Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu said 304 Canadians have asked for assistance to return home but only 280 have Canadian passports.

The numbers remain fluid and Canada has secured a second flight, as well as seats on other flights, should they be needed.

China is allowing only foreign nationals from all countries to board repatriation flights, but Champagne said Canada insisted that children be able to fly with their primary caregivers, even if they are permanent residents, and China agreed to let this happen.

That will not apply to families where no minors are involved.

Hajdu says China will not allow anyone who is showing symptoms of coronavirus to board a flight to leave the country, even if they are Canadian citizens, as part of that country’s efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus.

“I don’t anticipate we will be able to get the Chinese to concede on that point,” Hajdu said.

Those who remain will be offered consular services from the rapid deployment team already on the ground in Wuhan.

Passengers will be screened twice — once by Chinese authorities and then again before they board — and will be monitored during the flight for possible symptoms of the virus.

If any fall ill, they will be transported to a health facility in British Columbia while the plane refuels. Otherwise, passengers will not be allowed to leave the plane until they arrive at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, where they will be held in isolation for 14 days.

The Ontario base was chosen because it has the space to allow large numbers of people to be processed quickly, and a facility where people can be housed with dignity, said Hajdu.

“I want to remind people that these are Canadians who have been through a very traumatic experience over the past couple of months and in many cases will have significant stressors,” Hajdu said.

The repatriated Canadians will be housed at the nearby Yukon Lodge until they are cleared to return home.

“Part of the reason we’re offering social support is they will also be isolated from one another,” Hajdu said. “So if one person falls ill, that won’t necessitate the start of an entire other quarantine for all of the passengers.”

Source: Non-citizen parents allowed to return home with Canadian children from Wuhan

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Albert Speer, the Hitler Henchman Who Enabled the Holocaust, Bears Another Look Today

2020/02/04 Leave a comment

A good look back on Speer and some general points on complicity:

The last of the Auschwitz survivors to revisit the extermination machine in Poland have left. Now very old men and women, they returned to mark the 75th anniversary of the infamous death camp’s liberation last Monday.

Memory inflicts no greater pain than is theirs. The day they were freed in 1945 was both an end and a beginning: the end of terror and the beginning of remembering.

And one of the things to remember is not just the vast horror of the Holocaust but the fact that it was conducted as an industrial enterprise by managers and bureaucrats with a chillingly impersonal attention to detail. Adolf Hitler’s demonic program of genocide would have come to nothing without his enablers.

On Feb. 6, 1944, SS Obergruppenfuhrer Oswald Pohl, who headed the part of the Nazi terror machine given the bland name Office of Economic Administration, wrote a report with the title “Utilization of Textiles: Used Clothes from the Jewish Resettlement.”

He complained about the condition of “material so far obtained from the Jewish resettlement in the camps in the Lublin area, and Auschwitz.” Much of it, “particularly for men, is much diminished by the fact that many clothes are rags…”

Speer’s story reminds us in a timely way that it’s not only the knowingly depraved who gather around a tyrant.
The SS controlled the distribution of the clothes and possessions taken from the Jews as they arrived at the death camps. Every train delivering prisoners left on its return journey loaded with those possessions. Items of value, like jewelry, gold, including gold teeth, and foreign currency mostly ended up in the Reichsbank in Berlin, their worth carefully noted in ledgers. The clothes, if at all serviceable, went to the “foreign workers” who were part of a gigantic program of forced labor producing weapons and munitions.

That program was designed and overseen with clinical efficiency by Albert Speer, the Reichsminister for Armaments and Munitions,

Five days later he wrote to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, complaining that he needed all the steel, wood and manpower he could get for building arms factories: “We must therefore carry out a new planning program for construction within the concentration camps… [that] will require a minimum of material and labor. The answer is an immediate switch to primitive construction methods.”

Pohl, not Himmler, replied with a furious reminder that Speer had himself signed off on all the plans for building the camps and said a switch to primitive materials was “unrealistic.” He continued: “…we have 160,000 prisoners and are constantly battling against epidemics and a disproportionately high death rate, both largely due to impossible sanitary conditions.”

Of all those involved in the Nazi terror machine, Albert Speer was, literally, the most elusive—elusive because he escaped a death sentence at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, and elusive because until the end of his life (he died in 1981) he was never able to display any guilt about his role as an accomplice to genocide.

Late in 1943, when Speer had brought about a dramatic revival of German arms production, the issue of Hitler’s succession was being discussed quietly by his generals and some lower level ministers.

At this point they were not talking about a coup, but a planned succession with Hitler’s consent. They ruled out the founding Nazi psychopaths, Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann and Goering. One minister told Speer he thought Hitler himself favored Speer—nobody else had such a close relationship with him. Speer did not disagree, but the moment never came.

Speer’s story reminds us in a timely way that it’s not only the knowingly depraved who gather around a tyrant. Equally dangerous are those, like Speer, who provide the system with their intellect while in denial about the consequences. Some people do this because the tyrant helps them to advance their own agendas; others do it just because being in the same room delivers the craved-for embrace of power.

Once Speer fell within Hitler’s spell he enjoyed his proximity to absolute power, no matter how vile its actions.

Speer had first endeared himself to Hitler as an architect.  They shared a taste for the Greco-Roman style of triumphal buildings. This culminated in Speer’s plan to replace Berlin with a new capital city called Germania for the thousand-year Reich. At its center—roughly where Berlin’s Reichstag now sits—there was to be a Great Hall with a massive dome nearly 1,000 feet high (the U.S. Capitol dome is 284 feet high).

Speer was always resistant to self-doubt. Once he fell within Hitler’s spell he enjoyed his proximity to absolute power, no matter how vile its actions. And Hitler clearly enjoyed his frequent communion with Speer. In these moments of spiritual kinship, talking of art and architecture, Hitler was flattered by Speer into thinking that he was an aesthete at the head of an Aryan empire purged of all racial impurities.

As the war ended, Speer was captured in northern Germany by American troops—a U.S. intelligence team was keen to get to him before the Russians could, in order to understand how he had been able to double weapons production while under constant Allied air bombardment. Then he was handed over to the United Nations war crimes commission and put on trial at Nuremberg.

He claimed that he had not been present at a conference in 1943 when Himmler spoke of ‘wiping Jews from the face of the earth.’

On the night of Oct. 16-17, 1946, ten of Hitler’s closest associates were hanged in the gymnasium of Nuremberg prison, having been found guilty of war crimes. Speer was there and heard their names being called out. But he was spared, given a 20-year sentence to be served in Spandau. (Oswald Pohl was executed in June 1951.)

Afterward it emerged that the principal American judge, Francis Biddle, and the Soviet Union’s judge, General Iona Nikitchenko, had voted to sentence Speer to death, but another American judge, John Parker, and a British judge, Norman Birkett, argued for clemency, apparently because he seemed to them too refined to be a mass murderer. Also taken into consideration was his cooperation with Allied intelligence. The jail sentence was a compromise reached after a two-day argument among the judges.

Speer was released in 1966. He published a self-serving best-selling version of history, Inside the Third Reich, and became wealthy, considered by many as the rare “Good Nazi” who had done what he could to curb the worst of Hitler’s instincts. He had always acknowledged that his industrial plan had depended on slave labor, including many Jews, working under appalling conditions, often dying on the job, but denied any knowledge of the scale of the Holocaust.

He claimed that he had not been present at a conference in 1943 when Himmler spoke of “wiping Jews from the face of the earth.” But 25 years after his death a newly discovered cache of letters revealed that he had, indeed, been present. The master dissembler was finally exposed as the monster he was.

It’s always questionable to introduce the Nazi regime as a caution when looking at our own present carelessness with the values of our republic. The Holocaust was a crime of such enormity and singularity that we can too easily trivialize it by invoking any historical comparison.

Nonetheless the message from Auschwitz was reinforced by its anniversary: Ronald Lauder, head of the World Jewish Congress, said he was worried that the lessons were being forgotten: “Auschwitz is a beacon of where anti-Semitism can lead, we can’t rewrite history but we can be much more forceful today.”

A wave of anti-Semitic attacks and hate crimes in the U.S. has followed the massacre of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018. Three people were killed last December in a shooting at a kosher grocery in Jersey City and at least 10 anti-Semitic incidents took place in the New York area over Hanukkah.

One issue raised by several of the Holocaust survivors at Auschwitz was how such a barbaric crime could happen in a country that, until then, was regarded as both civilized and an intellectual powerhouse. It seemed all too easy for the Nazis to operate with the silent consent of a majority of the German people.

Speer addressed this in an interview with the British journalist Gitta Sereny, who spent 10 years studying his life for a riveting book, Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. He was responding to a charge that he tried to present himself as the prototype of the new technological man while he had conveniently overlooked the connection between technology and a program of mass extermination. He argued that the machinery of murder had nothing to do with technology, it was too primitive. And then he said:

“Eighty million people were not persuaded to follow Hitler because they knew he was going to murder people in lime ditches and gas chambers; they did not follow him because he seemed evil, but because he seemed extraordinarily good. And what convinced them of this was Goebbels’ brilliant propaganda, his unprecedented use of modern means of mass communication.”

It’s terrifying to think what Goebbels could have done using today’s means of mass communication. But perhaps we already know

Source: Albert Speer, the Hitler Henchman Who Enabled the Holocaust, Bears Another Look Today

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

‘We Are Canada project’ showcases diverse Canadian stories of resilience, tenacity and tolerance

2020/02/04 Leave a comment

Nice initiative by the CRRF:

Whether they were born here or came from somewhere else, they all share the same resilience and drive to thrive in this land of opportunity and make Canada a stronger country.

Through civic engagement, social activism and volunteering, community leaders and activists featured in the Canadian Race Relations Foundation’s new project showcase personal stories that reflect the values Canadians share in spite of diverse backgrounds.

In light of the rise of nationalism and nativism around the world, Lilian Ma, the foundation’s executive director, said the “We Are Canada project” profiles ordinary Canadians who fight for social justice and contribute to the country in their respective ways.

“They are community heroes who make a difference in Canada. We want to make their stories known to other Canadians,” Ma said.

The idea of the virtual storybook came from photographer and writer Jean-François Bergeron, who grew up in a “secluded and closed” community in Quebec and was inspired by people he met while travelling across Canada over the years.

“I grew up in a very homogeneous city. There’s no exposure to foreign languages and other skin colour. Then I came across all these people from different faiths and cultures. I was impressed by how they all have shared values and common visions,” said Bergeron, who spent months travelling from coast to coast to photograph and interview dozens of people referred through his community and professional networks.

“They all have this strong desire to contribute to Canada. Their stories share the themes of resilience, tenacity, tolerance and hard work.”

Born in Toronto, Kristin Kobayashi was thrilled when she was approached to share her story. Her ancestors came to Canada from Japan as early as 1906 and went through displacement and internment here during the Second World War. Unlike her parents who grew up being pushed to be “more Canadian and less Japanese,” Kobayashi was raised to acknowledge her heritage and not be ashamed of her roots.

To her, Canada embodies open-mindedness, inclusiveness, the respect of diversity and cultural traditions, freedom of expression and equal opportunities.

“These are the values I was raised with and am trying to promote,” said Kobayashi, an investment adviser, who has been involved in the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Canadian Multicultural Council and the Toronto Police Service Asia Pacific Community Consultative Committee.

“It does not matter where people came from. It doesn’t make them less Canadian. We all came here at some point and we are all Canadian at the end of the day.”

Frantz Brent-Harris fled violence against the LGBTQ community in Jamaica for asylum in Canada in 2003 after he witnessed the murder of his friends. He was grateful to be here but it didn’t take him long to realize the subtlety of racism in Canada, from the person who stands up and leaves when he sits down on a bus to the lady who holds her handbag tight as he approaches.

The Toronto artist, sculptor and graphic designer also quickly recognized the lack of representation of Black people in the art scene that he says is still heavily influenced by colonialism. Through his art work, including his signature handcrafted Black dolls, he tries to reclaim that space.

“Attitudes and racism are taught to people. You can have some really nice people who have racist ideas due to ignorance. They are not malicious, but they just don’t have the exposure,” explained Brent-Harris, who believes the “We Are Canada” stories can serve as that bridge.

Pardeep Singh Nagra, a human rights advocate and Sikh community leader, hopes the narratives of different Canadians like him can inspire others, like he was once inspired by those profiled by Mehfil Magazine that served the South Asian community in Canada between 1993 and 2010.

“It featured people who looked like me. It spoke to me,” recalled Nagra, who endured racism while growing up in Malton and was trying to find his own identity as a Canadian.

Inspired by Baltej Singh Dhillon, who successfully lobbied the RCMP to allow Mounties to serve with a beard and turban in the late 1980s, Nagra, a trained boxer, twice took Canadian amateur boxing officials to court over their beard ban, and won.

Nagra said Canada has been built by pioneers of all backgrounds and an understanding and appreciation of that diverse history is what’s needed today when hate is spread through social media, and a law such as Quebec’s Bill 21 is passed to prohibit public sector workers such as teachers and police officers from wearing religious symbols at on the job.

“That’s alarming,” noted Nagra. “We are not others. We are all Canadians.”

Source: ‘We Are Canada project’ showcases diverse Canadian stories of resilience, tenacity and tolerance

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Australia: Do we need to ‘reboot’ our policy of multiculturalism?

2020/02/04 1 Comment

Of note (as the same time the small grants program for community languages call for proposals launched):

Labor MP Dr Anne Aly, in a media report on 25 January, called for a ‘reboot of multiculturalism’.

The Labor MP recounted how when attending a medical appointment in her Perth electorate of Cowan she was asked by reception staff: “Where are you from? Because you’re not from Australia.”

This question is a perhaps more common in Perth than Melbourne or Sydney. It is doubtful that medical reception staff in Coburg, Victoria, or Liverpool, NSW, would ask such a question. More likely they would be of non Anglo background themselves. Also, we can only assume that “the woman behind the desk”, as that Dr Aly refers to her is Anglo – we don’t know.

Nevertheless, Dr Aly makes a salient point. How often have we, as Greek Australians, been told, “I won’t try to pronounce that name”, after we give our surnames to staff, or have been asked “What nationality are you?” When they mean what is your cultural background.

Often these types of questions are benign, if irritating. They reflect an implicit understanding that Australians – with the exception of Indigenous Australians – come from somewhere. Equally, they may reveal more about one’s class and education rather than hardwired racism.

In Dr Aly’s desire to reboot multiculturalism she refers to reports that outline the experiences of racism by Victorian high school students, and the reality of highly-skilled migrants being forced to do menial or less qualified jobs.

There is of course the other side. Poorly skilled migrants, like many post-war Greek and Italian migrants began their life in Australia in menial factory jobs and over the years developed businesses, bought property, created wealth, and their children have attended university and become professionals.

Dr Aly herself is a great model of the success of multiculturalism as the first Muslim woman elected to Federal Parliament from Western Australia. And, for those that know Western Australia, it is not exactly a poster child for diversity, not as much as NSW or Victoria.

In contrast to most modern nations Australia’s multiculturalism has done well. We do not have significant inter-ethnic conflicts, no violent racially-born street brawls and there are no sectarian conflicts. Egypt, where Dr Aly’s family migrated from, has suffered horrific racial and faith-based violence in recent years as members of the Muslim Brotherhood burn Orthodox Churches and kill scores of Egyptian Christians. In Burma we have seen the forcible displacement and mass killing of Myanmar nationals of Muslim faith, and Rohingya ethnicity. In China we see the imprisonment in re-education camps of Muslim Uyghur, who are Chinese citizens. Egypt, Myanmar, nor China, can claim to have democratic credentials, however citizenship is no guarantee of cultural safety in those states.

However, much of Europe, (especially Eastern Europe), has experienced spikes of violence against refugees, immigrants, Roma, and religious minorities. France has seen a disturbing rise of anti-Semitism. Anti-Muslim attitudes are rife in Poland, Hungary, and Russia. Attaining citizenship as a foreigner in Europe is difficult and cultural assimilation is a prerequisite, especially in Nordic nations. Greece, at the height of its financial crisis saw the rise of the violent Nazi affiliated Golden Dawn and anti-refugee sentiment remains high. Anti African racism has become common in football marches in Italy and other nations. Interestingly, Britain which is leaving the EU, has the most formed multicultural policies and even under the populist new PM Boris Johnston one of the most culturally diverse cabinets.

Yet, Dr Aly’s call to reboot multiculturalism has credit. We may have become complacent. While we accept the reality on the street of multiculturalism, we see the development of less purposeful policy architecture since the mid 90s. What once made Australia’s policy of multiculturalism unique under Gough Whitlam, then Malcolm Fraser and later Bob Hawke, were the rejection of assimilation, and equally the rejection of colour as a basis of determining diversity.

The anaemic responses to multicultural policy by Labor and Coalition since the mid-90s, that Dr Aly alludes to, has allowed race and new identity politics, born in the US, to colonise our very distinctive policy. Our multicultural policy was exceptional in determining language as a key aspect of diversity.

Once we talked of non-English-speaking-background not of ‘white’ people, or people of colour. In that context policies were developed that allowed migrants access to services and programs based on their English language skills. We see a diminishing focus on Languages Other Than English, (LOTE). We once had clear policy directions on a Federal and State government level to teach community-based languages be they, Arabic, Greek, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Italian and so on, as well as commercially based LOTE. The diminishing programs in language learning can not augur well for multiculturalism or Australia.

Finally, the reality that Labor’s catastrophic loss last year to the Coalition had much to do with Labor’s focus on new identity politics. Labor once led in communication efforts with culturally diverse constituents, not this time. Many Chinese Australians, Indians, Greeks, Italians and others voted for the Coalition.

Greeks, even if once lock step with Labor, saw danger in Mr Bill Shorten’s anti-aspiration messaging. The fear that negative gearing would be abolished did little to enhance Labor’s credentials among migrants who see it as a way of building for their future and their children.

Racism exists, there is no doubt, but Australians on the whole are far less racist and much more accommodating than people in other nations. Migrants feel more confident here than say in Sweden, Greece or Italy. Dr Aly is correct, we do need to reboot multiculturalism but to do so we need to make it a policy as it was once – broad, bipartisan, language focused and overall, unifying.

Source: Do we need to ‘reboot’ our policy of multiculturalism?

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Australia: Community languages multicultural grants Stream Two now open

2020/02/04 Leave a comment

The Canadian federal multiculturalism used to fund community languages but that role has been assumed by the provinces:

Stream two of the Community Languages Multicultural Grants program is now open.

The grants are part of the Australian Government’s commitment to provide $10 million over two years to community language schools to help young Australians learn another language.

Through stream two, community language schools can apply for funding of up to $25,000 for projects that build the capacity of the community language sector across Australia, such as the development of teaching resources and professional development programs.

Community language schools are encouraged to partner with language associations or organisations, such as universities, institutes and consultants to deliver these projects.

Acting Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs Alan Tudge said learning a language other than English helps prepare students for a workforce which is increasingly global and competitive.

“Community language schools play an important role in helping to build strong communities and strengthen our social cohesion,” Mr Tudge said.

“We want more children and students learning a second or third language, which will in turn have positive impacts well into the future.”
About 1000 community language schools across Australia may be eligible for the grants. These schools specialise in 69 different languages and teach more than 100,000 school‐aged children.

Applications for stream two close on 6 March 2020.

Applications for stream one opened in December 2019, and close 17 February 2020. Under stream one, eligible language schools that apply for funding will receive a base payment of $1,500, as well as a per capita amount of funding based on student enrolment numbers, capped at a maximum of $30,000 per school per year.

For more information about the Community Languages Multicultural Grants Program and how to apply, visit the Community Grants Hub website at http://www.communitygrants.gov.au.

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Joaquin Phoenix Slammed BAFTAs For Lack Of Diversity During His Acceptance And Left The Award On The Stage

2020/02/04 Leave a comment

As the Golden Globes and the Oscars:

The Super Bowl isn’t the only big thing going on in the world on Sunday. The 2020 British Academy Film and Television Awards wrapped up a few hours ago and Joaquin Phoenix easily stole the show during his speech for winning the BAFTA Leading Actor prize.

After accepting the award, Phoenix expressed his appreciation for the recognition, but called out the show for not having any actor of color receiving a nomination.

“I have to say that I also feel conflicted because so many of my fellow actors that are deserving don’t have that same privilege,” he began. “I think that we send a very clear message to people of color that you’re not welcome here. I think that’s the message that we’re sending to people that have contributed so much to our medium and our industry and in ways that we benefit from.”

He continued, “I don’t think anybody wants a hand out or preferential treatment, although that’s what we give ourselves every year. I think people just want to be appreciated and respected for their work. This is not a self-righteous condemnation, because I’m ashamed that I’m part of the problem. I’ve not done everything in my power to ensure that the sets I work on are inclusive.”

Phoenix then opened his focus from racism in the film industry to systemic racism in all facets of life.

“It’s more than having sets that are multicultural, I think that we have to really do the hard work to truly understand systemic racism,” he explained. “I think that it is the obligation of the people that have created and perpetuate and benefit from a system of oppression to be the ones that dismantle it, so that’s on us.”

The BAFTAs were criticized for their lack of representation when the nominees were announced in early January. BAFTA CEO Amanda Berry called the nominations “hugely disappointing.”

“It’s clear there is much more to be done and we plan to double down on our efforts to affect real change and to continue to support,” she said, “And encourage the industry on the urgency of doing so much more.”

Source: Joaquin Phoenix Slammed BAFTAs For Lack Of Diversity During His Acceptance And Left The Award On The Stage

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Montreal city councillor withdraws motion defining anti-Semitism amid criticism

2020/02/03 Leave a comment

Always the risk with adopting what was always intended to be a working definition:

A Montreal city councillor has withdrawn a motion to have the city adopt an international organization’s definition of anti-Semitism.

Lionel Perez withdrew the motion endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition after it failed to gain support from Mayor Valerie Plante.

The IHRA definition has been adopted by over 30 countries including Canada, however critics say its wording is problematic because it connects criticism of the Israeli state with anti-Semitism.

While the international organization defines anti-Semitism in part as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred,” critics take aim at a list of examples that includes “denying Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.”

Corey Balsam of the group Independent Jewish Voices Canada says adopting the definition would put a “major chill” on those speaking out in favour of equality for the Palestinians, while failing to tackle more serious threats to Jewish communities, including the rise of the far right.

Perez said he’s disappointed the city missed an opportunity to take a firm stand against anti-Semitism.

Plante acknowledged the need to fight anti-Semitism but suggested a committee instead work to come up with its own definition — something Perez dismissed as “ludicrous.”

Source: Montreal city councillor withdraws motion defining anti-Semitism amid criticism

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