Sikhs denied exemption from Ontario’s motorcycle helmet law | Toronto Star

2014/08/21 Leave a comment

Good decision, not without courage given support in all party caucuses for the exemption, that other provinces have provided and exemption, and the importance of the Sikh vote in a number of ridings (but expect that most Sikh voters are not single issue voters).

Riding a motorcycle is a choice, not a right. While accommodation for turbans and other head (but not face) coverings is appropriate in most settings,  it is not for this one.

Motorcycle-riding Sikhs in Ontario will not be exempted from the province’s helmet law, Premier Kathleen Wynne has decided.The Canadian Sikh Association says it received a letter last week from Wynne stating the Liberal government, for safety reasons, will not allow Sikh motorcycle riders to wear only turbans as British Columbia and Manitoba currently allow.

“After careful deliberation, we have determined that we will not grant this type of exemption as it would pose a road safety risk. Ultimately, the safety of Ontarians is my utmost priority, and I cannot justify setting that concern aside on this issue,” Wynne said in her letter dated Aug. 14.

Wynne said safety trumps religious freedoms in this case.“As you know, the issue of balance between religious accommodation and public safety has been considered by the courts in Ontario which, on this issue, have found that Ontario’s mandatory helmet law does not infringe on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, nor the Ontario Human Rights Code,” she said.

The Ontario Highway Traffic Act requires all motorcyclists to wear a helmet. This poses a problem for Sikhs, whose turbans don’t fit under most helmets.

Sikhs denied exemption from Ontario’s motorcycle helmet law | Toronto Star.

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Khurram Sher not guilty on terrorism charge

2014/08/21 Leave a comment

The former Canadian Idol contestant and medical doctor Khurram Sher is found not guilty, given not enough proof to support a criminal conviction:

In his decision, Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland said that while Sher, 32, probably harboured some jihadist sympathies, he was not convinced the doctor genuinely intended to join a conspiracy.

As a result, the Crown had not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, Hackland said.

The judge described Sher as an undoubtedly bright, but ultimately “quite naive, immature and inarticulate young man.”

….The judge said it was relevant to ask whether a medical doctor with a track record of humanitarian support “would so readily sign on to a group planning potential terrorist activity in Canada without any careful consideration or reflection.”

Khurram Sher not guilty on terrorism charge.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with ,

As online anti-Semitism grows, so do efforts to counter it | Religion News Service

2014/08/21 Leave a comment

Haven’t seen much reporting on efforts to combat hate speech on the internet recently and this one regarding a Dutch organization was picked up by Feedly:

It’s been 17 years since Suzette Bronkhorst co-founded the Dutch Complaints Bureau for Discrimination on the Internet, but she said she doesn’t remember the level of anti-Semitic speech on social media platforms ever being this high.

“There are thousands of incidents and we’re getting so many complaints,” she said of her organization, which registers complaints of hate speech online. “There’s been a huge surge since Gaza.”

The Gaza conflict, which has led to the deaths of 1,900 Palestinians and 68 Israelis, has also sparked a wave of counter speech, with organizations like Bronkhorst’s attempting to tackle hate speech by debunking myths and stereotypes on blogs, forums and social media.

“There’s a lot of chatter on the Internet that is not based on fact and there are different ways in which you can do counter speech,” said Bronkhorst, whose organization goes by the name MDI. “For instance, if there’s a discussion on Facebook, you join in and you try to give counterpoints to people who are just ill-informed.”

In one instance, Bronkhorst’s volunteers asked a Twitter user writing “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” whether he really wanted to murder people by gassing them. The user removed the tweet, apologized and said he didn’t mean it.

In July, the number of Dutch-language anti-Semitic Facebook pages ran into the hundreds, according to MDI, which cannot keep up with the amount of hate-fueled posts, ranging from statements such as “Jews must die” to those praising Adolf Hitler. On Twitter, the hashtag “Hitler was right” appeared more than 10,000 times in July in connection with Gaza and became a trending topic, says MDI.

As online anti-Semitism grows, so do efforts to counter it | Religion News Service.

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Can You Overcome Inbuilt Bias?

2014/08/20 Leave a comment

Interesting psych experiment, showing that appealing to higher motives less effective than more targeted tasking to reduce implicit biases:

Interestingly, most of the successful interventions were explicit about what they were trying to achieve and why. It’s important to remove the taboos around workplace discrimination and to educate people that bias is natural – what matters is that it doesn’t influence behavior. But worryingly, the majority of the successful interventions both associated black people with positive attributes and white people with negative attributes, reversing the natural direction of the white participants’ bias. Clearly reducing workplace bias by encouraging negativity towards a different group is not a solution.

The results of this comparison also raise an interesting question about the means of change and the outcome it achieves. Interventions which appealed to participants’ moral, conscious beliefs didn’t work, while those which targeted specific task behaviors – e.g. responding faster when black was paired with good – did. Some may argue that these interventions addressed the symptoms and not the cause. But in the workplace, when the ‘symptoms’ of implicit bias include unconsciously excluding and ostracizing others, addressing these behaviors may be a more effective use of time and resources than trying and failing to change the underlying beliefs which cause them.

It’s a tricky, emotive subject, but as more organizations wake up to the damaging consequences of implicit bias in terms of workforce engagement and performance, we can only hope for more research to shed light on how best to overcome it.

Can You Overcome Inbuilt Bias?.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Federal Liberals cultivate Mandarin powerhouse in GTA

2014/08/20 Leave a comment

This is not good, by any standard, relying exclusively on one ethnic community to win party nominations.

Even if in ethnic communities like Surrey, Richmond, Brampton, Markham etc, most candidates from all parties are from the largest community as part of “Shopping for Votes,” this is not an example to be emulated.

And as noted in the article, this may not help in the election when more than one community’s votes are needed:

By either grand design or ferocious grassroots organization, Toronto’s suburbs are shaping up to be a Mandarin-speaking powerhouse for the federal Liberal Party.

Four ridings around the GTA have Chinese-Canadians candidates, and in sharp contrast to the Conservatives’ top-down ethnic strategy of wooing voters through messaging that appeals to a specific minority, the Mandarin community is fielding its own candidates. In Don Valley North’s nomination contest, scientist Geng Tan upset presumed front-runner Rana Sarkar, a veteran party member and friend of Gerald Butts, Leader Justin Trudeau’s top adviser. Mr. Geng accomplished this by appealing almost solely to a monolithic base of Mandarin-speakers in Mandarin only.

On one hand, this trend represents the essence of the multicultural experiment. Arnold Chan, elected in Scarborough-Agincourt last month, is the GTA’s first Liberal Chinese MP. On the other hand, pursuing a single group for support, as Mr. Geng appears to have done, may alienate other minorities. It strikes critics as anti-pluralistic.

A pivotal figure in this wider political development is Michael Chan, an influential Ontario cabinet minister and fundraiser who stepped outside his daily sphere during June’s provincial election to bolster his community’s voice in the federal party. Mr. Chan’s involvement, along with the number of Chinese-Canadian candidates, indicates the growing demographic power of the Mandarin vote, whose participation has long been seen as dormant. The Conservatives and New Democrats have vowed to conduct open nominations as well – meaning the party leadership does not protect its preferred candidates – clearing the way for other ethnic groups to launch similar campaigns.

In the case of Mr. Geng’s campaign, his website was mostly in Mandarin and was changed to English only after a conversation with The Globe and Mail last week. His membership list, which The Globe reviewed, was composed exclusively of Chinese names.

Federal Liberals cultivate Mandarin powerhouse in GTA – The Globe and Mail.

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Watch John Oliver Deliver a Flawless Takedown of the Turmoil in Ferguson

2014/08/20 1 Comment

One of the better pieces on Ferguson (15 minutes):

Watch John Oliver Deliver a Flawless Takedown of the Turmoil in Ferguson | TIME.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Charts, Colour Palettes, and Design

2014/08/19 Leave a comment

Ethnic Origin Based Charts.001

NHS 2011

As some of you may know, working fairly intensely on analyzing and charting Canadian multiculturalism as seen through the National Household Survey data from 2011 (not as reliable as the Census but what we have).

In looking at how to make charts as simple as clear and possible, came across some good design and related sites.

The above sample is illustrative of the work I am doing.

Starting with Perceptual Edge on data visualization, and the advantages of simplicity. A short clear article outlining good design principles, with some suggested colour palettes:

Practical Rules for Using Color in Charts – Perceptual Edge

For a wider choice of colour palettes, see Every ColorBrewer Scale.

And for users of iWork, this nifty and easy to follow tutorial on how to use the “Colour Picker” effectively and create customized palettes:

Using Apple’s “Color Picker” in Pages 5, Numbers 3, & Keynote 6 (iWork 2013)

Any feedback or suggestions always welcome.

Filed under Data, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Farah Mohamed Shirdon of Calgary, fighting for ISIS, dead in Iraq, reports say – Politics – CBC News

2014/08/19 Leave a comment

Hard to feel any sympathy for Shirdon given his actions and rhetoric but we can for family members:

Farah Mohamed Shirdon, a Calgarian fighting overseas with the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, was seen in the video burning his Canadian passport and threatening to destroy Iraq’s oppressors.

The Department of Foreign Affairs says it is aware of reports that a Canadian was killed in Iraq and is following the situation closely.

Farah Mohamed Shirdon of Calgary, fighting for ISIS, dead in Iraq, reports say – Politics – CBC News.

A good profile on Shirdon in The National Post:

Mr. Little said he didn’t recognize his friend in the video.

“It clearly wasn’t him anymore,” he said. When he learned of his death, Mr. Little tweeted: “The guy I knew was already dead inside, it’s still very disheartening to hear the news about my former friend. R.I.P. Farah Shirdon”

….. Mr. Shirdon’s family, including a mother, two brothers and at least one sister, were members of Calgary’s Somali-Canadian community.

Mohamed Jama, the Somali Canadian Society of Calgary president, described the family as “normal.”

“It’s very hard for his family,” he said. “Even the parents have no idea why this young man has [gone] to join this radical group.”

Mr. Jama was unaware Mr. Shirdon had been killed, calling the news “shocking.”

On a Twitter account believed to belong to Mr. Shirdon, a tweet from June read, “Beheading Shias is a beautiful thing.”

The account, under the pseudonym Abu Usamah, had more than 10,000 followers.

Mr. Jama said the Somali community in Calgary didn’t understand why Mr. Shirdon radicalized.

“It’s very hard to believe,” he said. “Especially a young person who grew up in the Western [world] and goes to a place he has no ethnicity, no community, no language.”

Mr. Jama described the actions of ISIS as a “killing phenomena.”

Farah Mohamed Shirdon, Calgary ISIS fighter reportedly killed in Iraq, was ‘dead inside’ long ago, friend says

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ISIS child recruitment push hints at long-term ambitions – World – CBC News

2014/08/19 Leave a comment

Pretty nasty stuff, but in character of ISIS and its equivalents (and reminiscent of the Kadr family):

HRW [Human Rights Watch] said that children who joined armed groups in Syria did so after enduring torture by the regime, after participating in protests, or because schooling was no longer an option.

But, according to the report, others “simply … had a desire to go to battle.”

“The images of child soldiers I’m most familiar with are out of Africa, where there’s the practice of taking young children and sort of breaking them down psychologically and remoulding them as trained killers said Michael Dartnell, a terrorism expert who teaches political science at Georgian College in Ontario.

“I’m not certain if that’s actually what is going on in Syria and Iraq right now.”

Even so, Dartnell added he wasn’t sure about the capacity for such young minds to make independent ideological choices so early in life.

While Roggio said his monitoring of jihadi social-media feeds brought up images of young ISIS supporters brandishing weapons, marching in extremist parades and hitting posters of perceived infidels with their shoes, “I don’t see them being deployed on the battlefields or into towns” as one might expect a child soldier to do.

Instead, he believes youths are considered by ISIS as being more of a long-term “asset.”

“The children aren’t disposable to them,” he said, adding that their exploitation is a means of survival for the movement.

Becker, with HRW, said that child soldiers have been shown in the past to be used in some of the most dangerous tasks, such as suicide missions.

“It’s deeply concerning,” she said. “All children in Syria are suffering incredibly from the violence there, but to put children directly into battle is just beyond the pale.”

ISIS child recruitment push hints at long-term ambitions – World – CBC News.

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Don’t beat up Statscan for one data error – Cross

2014/08/18 Leave a comment

More on StatsCan from Phillip Cross, former chief economic analyst. Worth reading for some of the history and how the agency reacted to previous cuts:

People should get agitated about Statscan over substantive issues. Wring your hands that the CPI over-states price changes over long periods. Write your MP complaining that the Labour Force Survey doesn’t follow the U.S. practice and exclude 15 year olds. Take to the barricades that for an energy superpower like Canada, measuring energy exports has become a monthly adventure, routinely revised by $1-billion a month. But don’t use the July employment incident to evaluate how the statistical system is functioning overall. They messed up one data point in one series. Big deal. Anyone who lets one data point affect their view of the economy should not be doing analysis. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Don’t beat up Statscan for one data error – The Globe and Mail.

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