Quebec: Discrimination systémique et racisme: une consultation dès septembre 

2017/07/22 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see how the hearings progress and the tenor of the interventions:

La ministre de l’Immigration, Kathleen Weil, pouvait difficilement mieux tomber, jeudi, en annonçant une vaste consultation sur la discrimination systémique et le racisme à compter de septembre prochain.

L’annonce de Mme Weil coïncidait avec l’apparition d’une affiche proclamant «Saguenay ville blanche» au cimetière de Saguenay, à Saint-Honoré, et d’autocollants anti-immigration à Sherbrooke.

«Tous ces gestes haineux sont inacceptables dans une société, a déclaré Mme Weil en marge de son annonce à Montréal. C’est blessant. Moi ça me touche profondément.»

…Pour le professeur André Gagné, spécialiste en radicalisation au département d’études théologiques de l’Université Concordia, ces gestes sont «l’expression d’un malaise» face à l’islam.

«C’est présent depuis plusieurs années, mais ça semble maintenant se manifester davantage», note-t-il, déplorant «la tendance pour les gens de faire cet amalgame entre ce que des djihadistes font et ce que les musulmans peuvent être».

Et cette tendance, basée sur une incompréhension de l’islam, sert particulièrement les extrémistes. «On a des individus, des groupes, qu’on peut qualifier d’extrême droite, qui jouent sur la peur de certaines personnes, qui est une peur de l’inconnu et aussi une peur au plan identitaire», dit-il.

Il rappelle qu’il y a pourtant davantage de points de convergence que de divergence entre la tradition judéo-chrétienne et l’islam, une des trois religions monothéistes qui se rattache autant au judaïsme qu’au christianisme, qui a les mêmes figures et que, malgré des différences, on y retrouve à peu près les mêmes principes et les mêmes commandements.

Surtout, il fait valoir que les petits groupes d’extrême droite reçoivent beaucoup d’attention bien que le le phénomène ne soit pas généralisé, comme le démontre «le très grand élan de solidarité qu’on a vu à travers toute la province après les événements tragiques du mois de janvier», faisant ainsi référence à l’attentat du 29 janvier au Centre culturel islamique de Québec qui a fait six morts et huit blessés.

Consultations: «un exercice ouvert, démocratique, utile et nécessaire»

Le professeur Gagné applaudit par ailleurs la démarche du gouvernement en matière de lutte contre le racisme et la discrimination systémique.

«Ce n’est pas une mauvaise idée pour le gouvernement d’investiguer ce qui se passe au niveau de l’éducation, de la santé et d’autres domaines pour voir s’il y a cette chose que l’on appelle le racisme systémique et, si c’est le cas, de faire des recommandations pour éradiquer le problème», dit-il.

«Il faut qu’il y ait un dialogue. La meilleure manière de se comprendre, de vivre ensemble et de mieux apprendre à apprécier l’autre, c’est de dialoguer.»

Les consultations annoncées par Mme Weil seront pilotées par la Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (CDPDJQ), avec l’objectif de «proposer des solutions concrètes et durables (…) pour combattre ces problématiques».

En mêlée de presse à la suite de son annonce, Kathleen Weil s’est bien défendue de vouloir faire le procès des Québécois, un reproche qui a été adressé au gouvernement Couillard, notamment par le chef du Parti québécois, Jean-François Lisée, en mai dernier.

«Je ne suis pas préoccupée du tout par ces commentaires, a-t-elle dit. Je crois que les gens vont voir l’exercice pour ce qu’il est: un exercice ouvert, démocratique, utile et nécessaire.

«Cette consultation, c’est la pièce manquante pour aller plus profondément dans le vécu. Il y a des gens qui souffrent encore», a-t-elle fait valoir.

La présidente de la CDPDJQ, Tamara Thermitus, avait préalablement fait état d’exemples de discrimination systémique, rappelant que les personnes «racisées» nées au Canada ou ailleurs affichent un taux de chômage deux à trois fois plus élevé que les autres Québécois, peu importe le parcours académique.

Elle a également rappelé qu’une enquête de la Commission avait démontré qu’à qualifications égales, un candidat ayant un nom à consonance franco-québécoise a 60 pour cent plus de chances d’être interviewé pour un emploi qu’un candidat ayant un nom à consonance africaine, arabe ou latino-américaine.

«Mieux vaut s’appeler Tremblay que Traoré», a-t-elle laissé tomber en conférence de presse.

La consultation s’amorcera en septembre.

Un site web sera alors mis en ligne avec un questionnaire pour les citoyens intéressés, qui pourront également y déposer un mémoire.

Des organismes communautaires des différentes régions mèneront des séances de consultation publique en septembre et en octobre. Ils seront sélectionnés par un appel d’offres qui a été lancé jeudi.

Parallèlement, quatre groupes de travail seront formés en septembre pour analyser les questions de discrimination systémique et de racisme dans les domaines de l’emploi et du travail; de l’éducation, la santé, les services sociaux et le logement; la justice et la sécurité publique; ainsi que la culture et les médias.

L’effort se conclura par un forum public en novembre.

La Commission aura ensuite la tâche de recueillir tous les éléments de la démarche et faire rapport au gouvernement.

Source: Discrimination systémique et racisme: une consultation dès septembre | Pierre Saint-Arnaud | Politique québécoise

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Groundbreaking project explores Black experience in the GTA

2017/07/21 Leave a comment

Good detailed coverage in the Star and Globe (not much if anything in the Sun):

Whenever he is asked about his racial identity, Carl James always says “Black” instead of Antiguan, especially in Canada, where race is often defined by skin colour.

But there is more to the York University education professor’s preferred response to the question.

“I generally see myself as a Black person who happens to be from the Caribbean,” said James, who came to Toronto in the 1970s as a university student.

“It’s the politics about being Black that we are thinking in skin-colour terms. That’s the way we have come to define and see ourselves in our struggles.”

He is not alone in feeling that way.

According to the Black Experience Project, a groundbreaking survey of 1,504 self-identified Black individuals in Greater Toronto, 53 per cent of the participants identified themselves as Black regardless of their heritage, country of origin, and ethnocultural and other identities.

The participants were sampled to represent the population across census tracts, taking into account age, gender household income and ethnic/cultural backgrounds.

The study led by the Environics Institute, released Wednesday, posed 250 questions to participants about their daily experiences as Black people in the GTA. Most interviews were conducted in person and each took between 90 to 120 minutes.

“What struck me is how the experience of the Black community is so similar,” said Marva Wisdom, the project’s director of outreach engagement, whose family moved here from Jamaica 40 years ago.

“Being Black is an important identity for us despite our diversity. It is our shared experiences that help bind us together.”

Black people make up 400,000, or 7 per cent, of Greater Toronto’s population and the community has more than tripled in size over the last three decades.

Until 2011, young Black adults living in GTA were much more likely to be born in the Caribbean than in Canada, but the trend has reversed. Black youth today are twice as likely to be born in Canada than in the Caribbean, while those from Africa have been on the rise.

While people with Caribbean heritage make up 55 per cent of GTA’s Black population, those with African origins now account for 31 per cent of the community, with the rest being a mix of both and/or with other ethnicities.

The study also found:

  • Two-thirds of survey participants said they frequently or occasionally experience racism and discrimination because they are Black;
  • Eight in 10 reported experiencing one of several forms of day-to-day “microaggression” such as having others expect their work to be inferior or being treated in a condescending or superficial way;
  • Although those with lower incomes are affected more intensively by these incidents, when it comes to getting randomly stopped in public by the police, those in the higher socio-economic stratum are not immune;
  • About four respondents in 10 said they felt accepted by their teachers “only sometimes” or “never”;
  • One-third identified challenges in the workplace linked to being Black, whether those involved explicit racism or discrimination, or an uncomfortable workplace culture in which they do not feel they are treated professionally accepted.

“Teenagers growing up feel they’re experiencing all these things on their own. You feel you have to work hard to prove Blackness is a positive thing. Now we can confirm and validate our experiences with data,” Wisdom said.

“There have been incremental changes, but things haven’t changed that much, either.”

Source: Groundbreaking project explores Black experience in the GTA | Toronto Star, Black Experience Project a heart-rending snapshot of Black lives in Toronto: Paradkar

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Carl James, an education professor at York University and one of the researchers behind the study, explains the lasting effect frequent police interactions has on the black population as a whole and how wealth and education offer little protection against profiling.

Half the black people you surveyed said they’ve been stopped by police in public but that number surges to 80 per cent when it comes to black males between 25 and 44. What’s behind the targeting of this demographic?

I think it has to do with how black males are thought about in society. These stereotypes operate to influence the relationship we’re going to have with the police, with teachers, with our neighbours. The sense [police] have of these people is that they are probably up to no good, probably mischief makers. In order to prevent any of those things that might take place, let us take pre-emptive action.

Get the latest political headlines.

What’s the effect of having so many of these interactions with police?

One youth sent me an e-mail where he talked about going home at 11:30 and police stopped him and searched him and in the process roughed him up. We then think we can’t be out at 11 at night or drive a nice car or live our lives. It affects how we might trust police or a teacher.

We’ve seen a lot of reports in the past couple of months prepared by judges or human-rights organizations that look at policing and the recommendations are always the same: collecting race-based data, providing implicit bias training to police. Are these the right solutions?

I think collecting the data is absolutely important and critical but what we do with it is important afterward. Even though the data might be there, in a society where institutional racism exists, people might not believe the evidence because that’s not their personal experience.

With personnel training, I’m not sure it helps unless people start thinking about how they’re complicit, and also responsible for working at the issues, instead of, “I got some training. Black people aren’t exactly all what I thought.” I think we need a deliberate attempt coming from federal policies and programs.

We need different representations in media. It’s not just when we hear about issues related to blacks that we get a black person on the radio. If a personal story is the only way that the larger society can be able to respect and understand and get to know the black person, I think that’s a very sad situation.

Your results show that black people from the GTA from all class backgrounds had negative interactions with police. Your social standing, your education, it can’t really protect you. Was that surprising?

No. If you’re a doctor, a lawyer, a professional, the fact is, outside of those contexts, you’re seen as who we construct you to be. We have to shift the thinking, shift the ideas to challenge the stereotypes.

You have a Ph.D. You’re a faculty chair at York University. How does that have an effect on your experience being black in this city?

There are assumptions of what my research might be about. Assumptions I might be biased based on how I come to my research. The assumptions of how I might teach or perceive some students. We all are marinated in the same stew of stereotypes and we’re going to bring that to the world and interactions we’re going to have.

Eighty per cent of the people you surveyed said that they believed that others – specifically non-black people – saw them in a somewhat negative or very negative light. Do you think it’s worthwhile trying to change the perception of adults? Or are those stereotypes too ingrained?

We have to get at the perception of adults. These are the people that set the laws, set the rules, set out the school curriculum, set out the kinds of processes that people need to live by. If they are allowed to maintain their ideas, nothing will change. Even if we worked with kids to have them see the world differently than the adults, after a while, they’re inculcated by ideas held by adults and are going to think they’re right. To be able to succeed, you might not be able to challenge the existing ideas, the status quo, so sooner or later these kids will have to fall in line.

I don’t think it’s just the individual ways it must be done. It has to be done with institutional practices. Since the police occupy a very significant place in society in which we live, the government’s going to have to play a significant role in bringing them into understanding and respecting the role that they play and their relationship with the community.

Source: Majority of black people in Toronto feel targeted and disrespected: study 

Other commentary of note, from a more activist perspective:

Black Experience Project exposes Canada’s big lie: Mochama – Multiculturalism is a national policy that promises to embrace diversity while doing nothing to address a long history of punishing Black people.,

The tragic echoes in the cycle of Black death – As a verdict loomed in the Andrew Loku inquest, Pierre Coriolan was killed in Montreal—reminders of why Black Canadians fight for change

 

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Quebec City mayor worried about far-right group linked to cemetery referendum

2017/07/21 Leave a comment

Valid concern:

A far-right group in Quebec is being warned against further political meddling after it was tied to a referendum campaign that successfully managed to block the construction of a Muslim cemetery.

Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume issued a stern rebuke Tuesday to La Meute, a secret Facebook group with more than 43,000 listed members that believes radical Islam is growing in influence in the province.

“We don’t need private militias to take care of that,” Labeaume said. “We are in society of laws, a democratic society.”

The group played an active role in the early stages of a campaign against a proposed Muslim cemetery in Saint-Apollinaire, Que., a town of 6,400 that’s 35 kilometres southwest of Quebec City.

La Meute supported efforts by resident Sunny Létourneau to gather enough signatures to force the required zoning changes to be submitted to a referendum.

On Sunday, the changes were voted down by a slim majority, with 19 of 36 voters checking the No box.

Aggressive campaigning

The failure of the referendum to pass was seen by many prominent Muslims as a rebuke to their community. The project was spearheaded by Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre, the Quebec City mosque where six people were killed in a January attack.

In the wake of the shooting, Labeaume promised Quebec City Muslims to ensure they would have a burial ground in the area, something they have sought for years.

But the referendum campaign in Saint-Apollinaire was marred by aggressive canvassing and misinformation on the part of opponents of the project, said Mayor Bernard Ouellet, who backed the cemetery.

“In the worst of cases, they were talking about being invaded or losing their roots as Quebecers,” he told Radio-Canada following the vote.

Among the documents that were circulated by opponents were articles taken from Poste de Veille, a now-inactive website that had often been accused of posting Islamophobic content.

La Meute promised not to ruffle feathers

It is unclear whether members of the registered no committee were responsible for the campaign tactics Ouellet criticized,

But Létourneau, and several other members of the no-committee, became members of La Meute’s group this spring.

A spokesperson for La Meute said the group ceased its participation in the referendum campaign in April.

She​ asked us to not ruffle any feathers, and we respected that,” Sylvain Brouillette told Radio-Canada, referring to Létourneau.

Since it was formed in 2015 by a group of former Canadian Forces soldiers, La Meute has progressively grown in size and organization.

Earlier this month, members joined another far right group from the Quebec City area — Storm Alliance — to demonstrate against asylum seekers illegally crossing into Canada from the U.S.

In a Facebook post from this spring, Brouillette — writing under his pseudonym, Sylvain Maikan — suggested the group’s involvement in Saint-Apollinaire was a sign of its future political plans.

“Between now the next provincial election, la Meute [sic] will be very active in trying to make people aware of their real power when they stand up, and the citizens of Saint-Apollinaire will held out as an example,” the post reads.

That prospect appeared to unsettle Labeaume on Tuesday.

“They can organize. But I am advising them to be peaceful in Quebec City,” he said. “We won’t accept anything on their part … that could resemble a provocation to violence.”

Source: Quebec City mayor worried about far-right group linked to cemetery referendum – Montreal – CBC News

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The cost of unbelief – The Economist

2017/07/21 Leave a comment

Interesting:

ACROSS the world, people who reject all religious belief or profess secular humanism are facing ever worse discrimination and persecution, but the existence and legitimacy of such ideas is becoming more widely known and accepted. That is the rather subtle conclusion of the latest report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, an umbrella body for secularist groups in 40 countries, which in 2012 began making annual surveys of how freedom of thought and conscience are faring worldwide.

In common with lots of other reports on the subject, it noted that many countries still prescribe draconian penalties for religious dissent, through laws that bar blasphemy against the prevailing religions or “apostasy” from Islam. Some 19 countries punish their citizens for apostasy, and in 12 of those countries it is punishable by death. In Pakistan, the death sentence can be imposed for blasphemy, for which the threshold is very low. In all, 55 countries (including several Western ones) had laws against blasphemy; the perceived offence could lead to prison terms in 39 countries and execution in six.

Aside from all that ghastliness, the report detected a new trend, a “marked increase” in the specific targeting of atheists and humanists, which was a kind of back-handed acknowledgement of the reality that such beliefs existed and were spreading. Saudi Arabia had enacted a new law equating atheism with terrorism. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak had branded “humanism and secularism as well as liberalism” as deviant. And in Egypt, the youth ministry had launched an organised campaign against non-belief among the young, designed to spread awareness of the “dangers of atheism” and the “threat to society” that it posed. Dreadful as it was, this trend could be a negative side-effect of a “different, positive, parallel trend”—the fact that atheism and humanism were being recognised as cohesive world-views.

I asked one of the best-known professed atheists to have emerged from the Muslim world, the exiled Egyptian blogger Mikael Nabil Sanad, what he thought of the report’s conclusions. And Mr Nabil, who was not involved in the report, offered a very similar point about his native country. On the one hand, despite the overthrow last year of an Islamist regime, repression of all minorities, including atheists, is as bad as ever. But, he says, acceptance by society of atheism as a tenable position is growing. Mr Nabil, who recently moved to Washington, DC, told me that in 2008, when he renounced his Coptic Christian background and declared himself an atheist, “it was completely shocking to society”. Now, he says, “society accepts it” as a possibility. For example, there have been television debates between Christians, Muslims and atheists. Last year, a group of Egyptian atheists made some proposals to a committee that was reviewing the constitution; the very fact that such proposals could be aired and reported marked progress in a country where officialdom generally assumed that everybody was Muslim, Christian or Jewish.

Having spent much of 2011 in prison, where he was tortured and went on hunger strike, and then studied for two years in Germany, Mr Nabil says it is unsafe for him to return to Egypt because blasphemy charges have been laid against him. He now hoped to write a book about his experiences and campaign for change in his homeland, where despite the authorities’ best efforts, social media and private communications were still buzzing with discordant and dissident opinions, including atheist ones. There is a broader point there. The fact that dissident religious and anti-religious ideas are being persecuted ever more severely does not mean that the persecutors will prevail.

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Iranian Lawmakers Aim To Scrap Discriminatory Citizenship Law

2017/07/21 Leave a comment

To watch:

A group of Iranian lawmakers are looking to scrap a longstanding law that denies citizenship and equal rights to Iranian children born to foreign fathers.

If approved by parliament, a recently drafted bill would overturn the discriminatory legislation and affect the lives of thousands of children abroad and inside Iran — especially Iranian children with fathers from the large community of Afghan refugees and migrants living in the Islamic republic.

Iranian rights activists have been campaigning for years to abolish the law, under which only Iranian men can pass their nationality to spouses or children.

For years, the citizenship of children born in marriages between Iranian women and Afghan refugees has been the driving force behind changing the law. To this point, such children are essentially stateless.

In recent days, the campaign to abolish the law was given an unexpected boost following the death of Maryam Mirzakhani, an award-winning Tehran-born mathematician who died of cancer in the United States on July 15. Mirzakhani’s only daughter, 6-year-old Anahita, has a Czech father and is thus ineligible for Iranian citizenship.

Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency reported that a group of lawmakers made an official request on July 16 to expedite voting on the bill.

The agency claimed that Mirzakhani had asked in her will that Iranian nationality be granted to her daughter. RFERL could not independently verify that claim.

Reza Shiran told the pro-government Mashregh news outlet on July 17 that he was collecting signatures to introduce the bill on the assembly floor. He said he had collected 60 signatures in the 290-seat chamber.

He said the bill was intended to “grant citizenship to Mirzakhani’s daughter,” adding that “equal attention” should be brought to the status of children born to Iranian mothers and Afghan fathers.

His remarks came after the parliamentary cultural committee on July 11 approved the wording of the draft legislation, which would extend the granting of Iranian citizenship to the offspring of foreign fathers.

Before becoming law, the legislation needs to be approved by parliament and ratified by the Guardians Council, the powerful clerical body that must approve all proposed legislation.

Human rights groups have welcomed efforts to repeal the law as a step toward gender equality in Iran.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Tara Sepehri Far says the current law discriminates against women and denies equal rights to thousands of children in Iran.

“In the case of marriages between Iranian women and Afghan refugees, mostly undocumented refugees, it has left many children who are born and raised in Iran with no path to nationality, which affects their access to many other rights such as education, health care, and jobs,” Far says.

The United Nations estimates the number of Afghan citizens in Iran at just under 1 million, many of whom claim to face violence and injustice in the Islamic republic. Tehran puts the figure of documented and undocumented Afghan refugees and migrants closer to 3 million.

Source: Iranian Lawmakers Aim To Scrap Discriminatory Citizenship Law

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Khadr is to Trudeau what the census was to Harper: John Ibbitson

2017/07/21 Leave a comment

Interesting parallel and difference. Note Ibbitson’s point on the census cancellation decision:

Fast forward to this summer. When news broke that the federal government had settled Omar Khadr’s lawsuit for $10.5-million and an apology, critics angrily alleged the government had turned a confessed terrorist into a millionaire. Caught off guard, the Liberals kept changing their story. Previous governments had violated Mr. Khadr’s Charter rights and this government was simply doing right by him, Justin Trudeau maintained. When that didn’t fly, the Prime Minister insisted that the government was saving the taxpayers money by settling for a smaller amount now, instead of a larger amount later. People aren’t buying that one, either. Seven in 10 oppose the settlement, according to an Angus Reid poll.

When the census story broke in 2010, the Liberals painted Mr. Harper as a philistine prepared to destroy knowledge for the sake of a blinkered ideology. Similarly, the Conservatives are using the Khadr settlement to paint Mr. Trudeau as not only soft on terrorists, but willing to pander to one. The census charge stuck to Mr. Harper, and the Khadr charge will likely stick to Mr. Trudeau.

There is, however, one crucial difference between the census scandal and the Khadr affair. In the former case, Stephen Harper was entirely in the wrong. Although he refused to admit it, he cancelled the census to starve the government of data that could be used to justify programs that Conservatives oppose. It truly was an act of political vandalism. But Mr. Trudeau can make a much better case for his actions.

You don’t have to believe, as some do, that Omar Khadr was an innocent child who suffered terribly in Guantanamo for a crime he never committed, and whose confession was forced from him in a travesty of justice. You can instead believe that Mr. Khadr is a piece of work. It doesn’t matter. The Supreme Court ruled that his Charter rights were violated. He was going to win the lawsuit. The Liberals were simply bowing to the inevitable.

The Conservatives believe that doesn’t matter, that the government should have battled to the end and paid what the court ordered grudgingly and without an apology. Reasonable people can disagree on this point. There was no reasonable case for cancelling the census.

Still, the Liberals are going to wear this. There is nothing for Mr. Trudeau to do now but what Mr. Harper did in 2010: hunker down and wait for the agenda to move on.

If Stephen Harper could survive the census, surely Justin Trudeau can survive the Khadr affair.

Source: Khadr is to Trudeau what the census was to Harper – The Globe and Mail

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Australian senator who denied knowing about Canadian citizenship makes suspicious, Canadian-like apology – The Beaverton

2017/07/20 Leave a comment

A funny, satirical take – sorry for sharing:

An Australian senator who announced her resignation after discovering her dual-citizenship has made a very suspicious, Canadian-sounding apology.

Green MP claimed that she was unaware that she was still a Canadian citizen, but issued two apologies in one statement along with some very nice compliments about the constituents she has served.

“I am deeply sorry for the impact that it will have,” said the Winnipeg-born Waters which raised many eyebrows among members of the press. “I apologise wholeheartedly to all those who have supported me and helped me to become a representative for the wonderful people of Queensland over the last six years.”

The politician known around the world for being the first woman to breastfeed in Australia’s Parliament has simultaneously renounced and reaffirmed her Canadian roots with the statement.

“If she actually didn’t know she was Canadian and didn’t intend to deceive anyone and violate section 44 of the constitution, she wouldn’t need to apologize,” explained Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s political analyst Louise Yaxley. “And saying you’re sorry for little or no reason is a very Canadian thing to do.”

In addition to her apologies, Waters continued to deny that she had any knowledge about her foreign identity despite being a strong supporter public health care, 52-week paternity leave, and asserting a smug superiority when compared to Americans.

At press time, Waters had already apologized for apologizing too much.

Source: Australian senator who denied knowing about Canadian citizenship makes suspicious, Canadian-like apology – The Beaverton

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Switzerland puzzles over citizenship test after lifelong resident fails | The Guardian

2017/07/20 2 Comments

Almost a parody:

Should foreign residents have to know how to recycle waste oil before they can apply for citizenship? Are people who shop at local corner shops more deserving citizens than those who frequent supermarkets? And what kind of sport is “hornussing”?

These are just some of the questions Switzerland is puzzling over after a 25-year-old failed the notoriously tough Swiss citizenship requirements – even though she has lived in the country all her life, speaks fluently in the local dialect and had passed the written part of the exam with full marks.

Funda Yilmaz, who was born in Switzerland to Turkish parents and works as a draughtswoman in the town of Aarau, applied for citizenship after her Swiss fiancee had suggested that she should take a more active part in the referendums that make up the country’s unusual mix of direct and representative democracy.

“I was born here. I don’t know any other life,” she told a panel of six examiners at the interview which follows the written test. “I don’t have plans to emigrate either.”

Yet after two rounds of interviews and more than 100 questions, a jury of local councillors from the municipality of Buchs rejected Yilmaz’s application by 20 votes to 12, reasoning that she “lives in a small world and shows no interest in entering a dialogue with Switzerland and its population” – a verdict many have questioned after weekly news magazine Schweizer Illustrierte published a transcript of the interview.

The jury criticised Yilmaz for displaying “gaps” in her knowledge of the municipal recycling system and for not being able to name any local shops other than chain supermarkets such as Aldi.

Another complaint centred around her unfamiliarity with “typical Swiss sports”, such as Hornussen, an indigenous cross between baseball and golf, or Schwingen, a style of folk wrestling. Yilmaz had named skiing as a typical Swiss sport. “One could have a very long debate about what is typical and traditional,” she wrote in a letter complaining about her rejection.

Asked in the interview about her views of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Yilmaz had replied: “He is becoming more and more of a dictator.” In her letter, she added: “I was asked whether my parents found it difficult to accept my partner, who is not Turkish. My family is open and moreover I am not a practising Muslim. I have never visited in a mosque in my life, but have several times been to a church.”

Other questions chosen by the jury included “Do you like hiking?”, “Would you rather visit Geneva or the region around Lake Geneva?” and “What kind of fitness training do you do?”

Since the case emerged, there have been several calls for a reform of the naturalisation process, which is decided by municipal juries comprised of local residents rather than a centralised agency. “The arbitrary nature of the official process has rarely been so visibly on display,” wrote the Tagesanzeigernewspaper.

A number of cases have drawn attention to the arbitrary nature of the Swiss naturalisation process in recent months. In January this year a Dutch woman had her application turned down for a second time because local residents objected to her campaign against cowbells. And in May 2016, a Kosovan family who were long-term residents of the canton of Basel-Country had their application for citizenship opposed by the residents’ committee, in part because they wore jogging bottoms around town.

Source: Switzerland puzzles over citizenship test after lifelong resident fails | World news | The Guardian

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The ‘Intersectionality’ Trap: Rothman | Commentary

2017/07/20 Leave a comment

While Noah Rothman mischaracterizes intersectionality – it can be used in an ideological or non-ideological manner – there is some merit is his critique of how the left, just as the right, overlooks the ‘sins’ of some of their supporters or advocates:

Republicans didn’t always scoff dismissively at the self-destructive, reactionary, fractious collection of malcontents who call themselves The Resistance. The hundreds of thousands who marched in the streets following Donald Trump’s election once honestly unnerved the GOP. This grassroots energy culminated in January’s Women’s March, a multi-day event in which nearly two million people mobilized peacefully and, most importantly, sympathetically in opposition to the president. It was the perfect antidote to the violent anti-Trump demonstrations that typified Inauguration Day, and it might have formed the nucleus of a politically potent movement. The fall of the Women’s March exposes the blight weakening the left and crippling the Democratic Party.

The fever sapping Trump’s opposition was evident in microcosm on Monday in the meltdown of the Women’s March’s social-media presence on Twitter. “Happy birthday to the revolutionary #AssataShakur,” the organization wrote, dedicating the day’s resistance-related activities in her “honor.” Shakur is perhaps better known as Joanne Chesimard, the name that appeared on the court documents in connection with her being tried and convicted of eight felonies, including the execution-style murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. She currently resides in communist Cuba, a fugitive from American justice.

The outrage that followed the Women’s March’s endorsement of a cop-killer, exile, and unrepentant black nationalist was such that the organization was compelled to explain itself. “[T]his is not to say that #AssataShakur has never committed a crime, and not to endorse all of her actions,” the group flailed. “We say this to demonstrate the ongoing history of government [and] right-wing attempts to criminalize and discredit political activists.” This fanatical display of befuddlement perfectly encapsulates the logic of “intersectionality.” It demonstrates why this vogue ideology shackles its devotees to doomed causes and sinking ships.

“Intersectionality,” the beast born in liberal hothouses on college campuses, slouches now toward the halls of power. It is a Marxist notion that all discrimination is linked because it is rooted in the unjust power structures that facilitate inequality. Therefore, there are no distinct struggles against prejudice. Class, race, gender, sexual identity; these and other signifiers are bound together by the fact that oppression is institutional and systemic. The problem with this ideology is it compels its adherents to abandon discretion. To sacrifice anyone with a claim to oppression is to forsake every victim of prejudice. So, sure, Assata Shakur robbed, assaulted, incited violence, and killed a cop. But she also hates capitalism and white supremacy. Therefore, she’s one of us.

It is this logic that has rendered the “Sister Souljah moment” a relic of the past, and The Resistance is drowning in Sister Souljahs.

One of the March organizers, Linda Sarsour, has enjoyed newfound popularity and legitimacy in the age of Trump. She is a self-styled organizer for civil rights and the Muslim-American community of which she is a part, and she’s been acclaimed by organizations like the ACLU and Demos. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand described Sarsour and her colleagues as “the suffragists of our time.” In return for this lavish praise, Sarsour has only forced her defenders into awkward positions.

Sarsour has praised Saudi Arabia’s social welfare state as appropriate compensation for stripping women of privileges such as driving a car. “I wish I could take their vaginas away,” she wroteof women like the Somali-born Dutch-American activist and genital-mutilation victim Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “You’ll know when you’re living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans [and] credit cards become interest-free. Sound nice, doesn’t it?” she asked. While delivering the keynote address to a Muslim-American conference, Sarsour advocated “jihad” against Donald Trump, defining the term to mean only speaking truth to power. Rather than admonish their political ally for this obvious indiscretion, the American left went to the mattresses to explain that only they understand the true meaning of the word “jihad.”

For some on the left, advocating violence is not only justified but fashionable. Misanthropic so-called “anti-Fascist” activists like Shanta Driver and Yvette Felarca have become a ubiquitous presence in pro-Resistance mythology. People like Driver advocate for “militant actions” while Felarca appears at the head of armed mobs “resisting” the white supremacist alt-right “by any means necessary” (which happens to be the name of the organization to which she belongs). For this “activism,” these and other “anti-fa” organizers are feted by left-wing magazines like Mother Jones and The Huffington Post.

Amid the celebration of left-wing political violence, a man who had been radicalized by liberal politics attempted the mass assassination of Republican members of Congress. Far from dwelling on this potentially generation-defining attack, the event passed through the national consciousness like an apparition. We don’t talk about that now. Perhaps we don’t want to think about what it might portend.

None of these individuals have roots in Democratic politics so deep that they cannot be deracinated relatively painlessly. Indeed, their counterproductive behavior would compel any competent political operation to make an example or two—particularly an operation struggling to demonstrate that it can be trusted again to govern seriously and effectively. Yet the Democratic Party and the liberals who animate it have come under the spell of a philosophy that explicitly forbids the exorcism of its demons.

Republicans have their devils, too. The excision of which may not seem a terribly urgent project today, given the GOP’s political dominance. They will confront that crisis soon enough. In the interim, Democrats should be remaking themselves to appeal to the existing electorate; the one that delivered to the GOP near total control of state and federal government over just six years. Instead, Democrats are voluntarily yoking themselves to their most radical elements even as the number of Americans who describe the party as “too extreme” continues to climb.

Republicans may have their troubles, but a competent opposition is not among them. 

Source: The ‘Intersectionality’ Trap | commentary

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Shared Services Canada to begin talks on allowing federal departments to ‘opt out’ from centralized IT service

2017/07/20 Leave a comment

Recognition of reality. Will be interesting to see how departments respond over time:

Shared Services Canada is exploring transferring some responsibilities for federal information technology systems back to individual departments and agencies, in the wake of legislative changes weakening the agency’s monopoly on digital services.

Pat Breton, director general of procurement and vendor relations with SSC, said the agency has started reaching out to the 43 federal departments and agencies it counts as clients to discuss potential service improvements, including bringing certain IT operations back in-house, and plans to hold formal talks with departmental chief information officers in the coming weeks.

“We’ve been proactive in telling them that this is a new tool that we’ve got and we’ll be working with them to put it in place, where appropriate,” he told The Hill Times.

“We’re starting from the holistic needs assessment, gap analysis: What is the specific problem and what’s the best way to address it, and reach solutions together?”

The 2017 budget implementation bill, passed in June, made significant changes to the mandate of SSC, which was launched by the former Conservative government in 2011 with the responsibility of delivering email, data centre, and network services in a “consolidated and standardized manner,” and to offer optional technology-related services to government organizations on a cost-recovery basis.

First, it watered down SSC’s authority to consolidate IT systems across the public services by permitting organizations to opt out of using the agency in “exceptional circumstances.” It also restored the ability of individual departments to purchase software and digital hardware themselves, instead of conducting all business through the agency.

The bill, though, doesn’t allow for blanket exemptions from using SSC, with departments only permitted to opt out of using some services, according to Mr. Breton. Parts of departments can be granted complete exemptions from all SSC services.

The decision to grant the authorization is left to the minister responsible for SSC, Procurement and Public Services Minister Judy Foote (Bonavista–Burin–Trinity, N.L.).

When asked, Mr. Breton didn’t disclose if any departments had asked to opt out since the bill passed, noting that the SSC was only at the “starting point” of defining the exceptional circumstances process. However, departments like Global Affairs that work in remote and international locations would be “obvious areas for consideration,” he said, citing stringent restrictions on who can provide SSC services.

Under its mandate, only SSC employees can deliver its services, meaning the agency has to dispatch an SSC employee in every “point of [reference] around the globe,” according to Mr. Breton, who described it as “not efficient” and “not effective.”

He singled out departments providing services in other countries and working in remote and overseas locations as “consistent themes” where operating from a central location “may not be the most beneficial.”

The Hill Times reached out to several departments and agencies that would appear to fit the criteria or have been identified in media reports as encountering challenges with SSC to ask if they planned to seek an exemption from using its services, though none publicly confirmed they would.

Global Affairs Canada will “continue to work together and maintain our existing partnership,” according to a statement from spokesperson Jocelyn Sweet.

Annie Delisle, a spokesperson for the RCMP, said the national police force is “working closely” with SSC to try and find solutions to “fully meet the RCMP’s policing IT requirements, without compromising operations.”

A spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency simply said it “supports” the government’s goals and priorities, and will continue to contribute to areas related to its mandate of defending the country’s borders.

Statistics Canada said it values SSC as a “reliable service provider,” but clarified that while the budget implementation bill provides “more flexibility,” it doesn’t allow departments or agencies to opt out.

Source: Shared Services Canada to begin talks on allowing federal departments to ‘opt out’ from centralized IT service – The Hill Times – The Hill Times

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