Canada takes a step back on immigration policy | Bauder and Omidvar

2015/05/27 Leave a comment

Harald Bauder and Ratna Omidvar overview on citizenship and immigration policy changes and their implications:

Ottawa has failed in our eyes to provide a convincing justification for these changes. Many dependants and elderly family members seem to be excluded not because they would be eligible for social benefits but simply because they are from low-income families.

Canada has a story of exceptionalism to tell and it is widely regarded by others as model in how it manages immigration and succeeds in integrating immigrants. However, the evidence now tells another story, one that is somewhat more tarnished than we know.

The new data signals a shift and encourages us to reflect on the most alarming trends and redirect where necessary. But there is good mixed in with the bad. Canada still leads in labour market integration, anti-discrimination and creating a sense of belonging for newcomers. The one-point drop is smoke and not fire.

Canada takes a step back on immigration policy | Toronto Star.

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A Qatari sheikh, Picasso’s censored breasts and the west’s confusion over Islam

2015/05/27 Leave a comment

PicassoJonathan Jones on the rumours that the Picasso painting, Women of Algiers, was sold to Qatar and what the press coverage of that rumour says about West and Islam:

And yet, there is very solid evidence that it offends the conservative Christian scruples of some in the west. We have no proof that a Middle Eastern billionaire is sitting on this salacious picture, but we do know that the breasts in the painting were blurred out by a Fox news channel. How peculiar, to project this bizarre outbreak of American puritanism on to Qatar. We are modern: they are bigots. So how come “we” are the ones censoring Picasso?

As it happens, Picasso’s painting is itself a fantasy of the orient. Picasso, in his villa in the south of France, created for himself an imaginary harem of buxom babes. Women of Algiers (Version O) is one of his remakes of an 1834 masterpiece by Eugène Delacroix in the Louvre. The original Women of Algiers by Delacroix is a richly coloured, flamboyantly sensual scene of Algerian concubines smoking drugs from a hookah in the seclusion of their harem apartment.

Delacroix, the great Romantic who also painted France’s national icon Liberty Leading the People, travelled extensively in north Africa, so it would not be quite true to call his Women of Algiers an orientalist fantasy. It is, at least, partly rooted in real observations by an artist who genuinely loved the Maghreb, as can be seen from the travel sketches and Moroccan artefacts that fill his preserved studio in Paris.

Above all, the light and colour of north Africa – which were also to inspire Matisse – pervade Delacroix’s Women of Algiers with an intense shadowy heat. But, clearly, it creates an image of harem life for western eyes – an erotic idyll of Arabian Nights decadence. This idea thrilled French artists in the 19th century, and was taken to fleshy heights in The Turkish Bath by the neoclassical painter Ingres. In his versions of Women of Algiers, Picasso revives that orientalist license for lust.

What strikes me here is how the west’s image of Arabia has reversed since the 19th century. Once, the Islamic world was equated with sexual license and harem decadence. Today, Islam is imagined as sexually prudish, although, in fact, it is Christian theology that is darkly preoccupied with sexual sin. The idea of Picasso’s painting being locked away in shame in a sheikh’s cellar appeals to the current image of Islamic intolerance, which Islamic State are doing nothing to discourage. When it comes to images of Arabia, the west goes from fantasy to fear, from idyll to hysteria, without it seems ever waking up to the complexity of a real place where real, individual people live in a messy human way – whether they have a painting by Picasso or not.

A Qatari sheikh, Picasso’s censored breasts and the west’s confusion over Islam | Art and design | The Guardian.

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Counterterrorism strategy: Take the long view – The Globe and Mail

2015/05/27 Leave a comment

Two interesting pieces on counter radicalization strategies, with both focusing on the Prevent aspect.

Wesley Wark notes the risks of politic rhetoric with respect to radicalization and the relative neglect of the Government’s Prevent element (compared to the other elements of the national security strategy, Deny, Detect and Respond):

The more that political rhetoric swirls around national-security threats such as the foreign-fighter problem, the more difficult it will be to establish the exact scale of the threat. In reality, the danger posed by the relatively small Canadian foreign-fighter stream is threefold – it bolsters IS psychologically; it conjures up concerns about battle-hardened veterans who might return to Canada to incite and commit terrorism; it puts Muslim communities in Canada under an unwanted spotlight and may create a new set of tensions for them as they work to contribute to de-radicalization measures. Our biggest concern is not about how we prevent Canadian foreign fighters from blowing things up in Iraq and Syria, or even blowing things up if they manage to return to Canada, but how we stop them from blowing up community stability and inciting tensions within Canada.

When the government first announced a counterterrorism strategy in 2012, it used a model borrowed from the British, with four “pillars”: Prevent, Detect, Deny, Respond. The respond pillar is meant to ensure a capacity to deal with terrorist attacks that occur on our soil. When the CT strategy was launched, there hadn’t been any. Now there have been two – the attacks in Quebec and near Parliament Hill in October of 2014. The one good thing the October attacks brought to light is the degree to which Canadian society poses a strong, innate resilience to terrorist violence.

…But what about Prevent? Here, the greatest challenge lies, and potentially our greatest weakness. Some will always slip through the cracks, notably the convicted “Toronto 18” member, Ali Mohamed Dirie, whose incarceration and subsequent release did nothing to dissuade him; who obtained false identity documentation, travelled to Syria and was killed in the fighting in 2013. We risk failure on the “prevention” front if the RCMP’s efforts at community engagement do not gain a stronger foothold, if CSIS is too emboldened by its soon-to-be-granted “disruption” mandate and if the government (of whatever stripe after October, 2015) fails to find a better way to justify Canada’s actions in the world, especially its international efforts against terrorist groups.

Counterterrorism: Is it working? – The Globe and Mail.

Although Zekulin does not mention the word Prevent, he essentially echoes other critics of the Government for its apparently exclusive focus on security measures rather than the ‘softer’ prevention approaches:

As long as IS exists, their message will continue to spread. This has the potential to create additional numbers of young Canadians with whom their message might resonate. Several months ago, I wrote that Canada’s counterterrorism strategy needed to address two separate but interconnected aspects in order to meet the threat posed by IS. These included measures to deal with the imminent threat posed by the current cohort of radicalized Canadians and a counter-radicalization strategy to prevent or at least minimize the next generation of radicalized young Canadians.

IS is selling a product – themselves and their vision of what the world should look like. A counter-radicalization strategy is based on challenging the messages espoused by the group and its supporters. We need to develop our message, identify the most credible messengers and the most efficient and effective way to distribute it. This will at least begin to counter IS’s efforts. We recognize that this approach will not deter every individual. However, as our messages circulate and gain momentum, it will become increasingly difficult for IS’s perverted ideas to find fertile minds. The end goal is to minimize the number of individuals who might adopt the ideas and become a threat in the future.

We cannot be lulled into a false sense of security by our recent successes. IS’s ideas pose the real threat and they continue to circulate, incubate and entrench themselves in our society. Our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have done an admirable job, but we need to ask ourselves whether our current strategy is sustainable. Financially, our government has limited resources; it is not realistic to continuously increase our investigative capacity every few months. We run the risk of falling into a never-ending cycle where those we identify and disrupt are quickly replaced by others. Eventually, some individuals or incidents will slip through the cracks. In the context of the current threat, that means very bad things will happen.

Counterterrorism strategy: Take the long view – The Globe and Mail.

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Dual-national jihadists face loss of Australian citizenship, but not sole nationals yet

2015/05/27 Leave a comment

Out of the Canadian Conservative government (and UK) playbook, with interesting internal disagreement over whether or not this should include revocation in case of statelessness:

Tony Abbott will push ahead with proposed changes to strip dual citizens of their Australian nationality if they are suspected of terrorism, but has deferred a decision on strong new powers against sole nationals after a cabinet backlash.

The prime minister confirmed a bill to be introduced to parliament in coming weeks would grant the immigration minister the discretion to strip dual nationals of their citizenship if they were deemed to be involved in terrorism, even if the person had not been convicted of an offence.

But the government is yet to settle on a position on punishing Australians who hold no other citizenship after several ministers raised significant concerns in cabinet on Monday evening.

It is understood Abbott backed the push by the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, for the power to strip sole nationals of their Australian citizenship in cases where they were entitled to apply for citizenship in another country.

But the attorney general, George Brandis, the defence minister, Kevin Andrews, and the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, are believed to be among numerous ministers who raised concerns during the cabinet discussion.

Fairfax Media reported that the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, had also questioned whether another country would be likely to approve a citizenship application for a person from whom Australia had deprived citizenship.

In an interview with Sky News on Tuesday, Brandis emphasised that the government had not made any decisions about second-generation Australians and had instead opted to “lead a national conversation about the rights and obligations associated with citizenship”. This will begin with the release of a discussion paper for community feedback on Tuesday.

Dual-national jihadists face loss of Australian citizenship, but not sole nationals yet | Australia news | The Guardian.

New Zealand Prime Minister Kay takes a different tack with respect to an Australian/New Zealander dual national:

NZ ‘unlikely’ to strip woman’s citizenship – PM

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‘Tomorrowland’ (The Movie) And the Future of the Past | Re/code

2015/05/26 Leave a comment

On science fiction, dystopias, nostalgia and the film Tomorrowland:

But let’s be honest: “Tomorrowland”’s longing for a hopeful future has absolutely nothing to do with looking forward and everything to do with looking back. The real culprit behind this moaning and complaining is nostalgia. And like most exercises in nostalgia, the time to which we’re trying to return never really existed in the first place.

The first thing that has to happen in science fiction, though, is we have to stop looking backward for inspiration on how to look forward.

You can’t lose your virginity twice. We can’t return to the sci-fi of rayguns and jetpacks and moral simplicity unless we acknowledge we’re making and enjoying works of retro-fiction, a throwback to a dead past. As great as Ray Bradbury’s works are — and oh, lord, Bradbury’s fiction is incredible — they are very much a product of their time and place, the America of the 1950s. It’s difficult to remember now that the description of billboards Bradbury wrote into “Fahrenheit 451″ (“cars started rushing by so quickly they had to stretch the advertising out so it would last”) were written shortly before the national highway system, and therefore the concept of billboards, was created.

Those stories may have been set in the future, but they were really about documenting the time in which he lived. Bradbury’s Martian colonists were products of a homogenous, unselfconscious America. The stories still have great value today, but emulation should not be our goal.

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I don’t live in the America of the 1950s. The Internet may be a cesspool at times, but I’m glad that everyone, regardless of race or class or religious belief (or lack thereof) has a megaphone and a platform. I’m glad that women are speaking up about the thousand little injustices they suffer every day, because it gives us an opportunity to change the system, to make things better.

It’s unpleasant to know about the human cost of American drone strikes, say, or the brutal history of colonialism, or the human rights violations that make Chinese-made products so cheap, but I would rather know about these things than not know about them. We can’t go back to innocent stories of space exploration, now that we know the real stories of what white Europeans did to indigenous people. We can’t plug our ears and shake our heads and relive our grandparents’ fantasies until the whole world goes away.

So, yes. We don’t need any more “Hunger Games” knockoffs, but that’s an aesthetic argument, and not a moral one. I think the idea of a “Walking Dead” spinoff show is frankly a bit much. But it’s easier for a multinational entertainment megaconglomerate to sell cynicism than optimism, so I suspect this dystopian trend isn’t going to end anytime soon.

The first thing that has to happen in science fiction, though, is we have to stop looking backward for inspiration on how to look forward. The real future — multicultural, inclusive, aware of injustice and striving for something better — looks brighter than anything the glamorous, mostly white cast of “Tomorrowland” can offer us.

Let’s tell each other stories about our future. Let’s stop trying to live up to the present as dreamed up by the past. Once we free our sci-fi from the heavy chains of nostalgia, we can start pointing the way to something better. Let’s turn our backs on “Tomorrowland.” That’s not where the future is.

‘Tomorrowland’ (The Movie) And the Future of the Past | Re/code.

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Teachings about aboriginals ‘simply wrong’, says Murray Sinclair

2015/05/26 Leave a comment

Valid and needed points:

But Sinclair emphasized that one of the most important messages that will come from the report is that the consequences of the school system are far more wide-reaching than many realize.

“This is not an aboriginal problem,” he said. “This is a Canadian problem. Because at the same time that aboriginal people were being demeaned in the schools and their culture and language were being taken away from them and they were being told that they were inferior, they were pagans, that they were heathens and savages and that they were unworthy of being respected — that very same message was being given to the non-aboriginal children in the public schools as well.”

As a result, he said, many generations of non-aboriginal Canadians have had their perceptions of aboriginal people “tainted.”

“They need to know that this history includes them,” Sinclair said of Canadians.

He said many people have told the commission they did not know their country had set up a school system that treated aboriginal children so poorly.

Sinclair said the commission decided during its work that it needed to be “gentle” with Canadians as they learned of their country’s past.

“We needed to be sure that people were brought to the table of knowledge about this in a way that didn’t scare them, didn’t push them away, didn’t make them feel ashamed or guilty or that they were to blame.

“But they needed to see that they were victims, too, of this history.”

In their report, Sinclair and his co-commissioners, former journalist Marie Wilson and Alberta Chief Willie Littlechild, will make recommendations to federal and provincial governments. It’s clear one of them will be to ensure schools teach children about the residential schools and indigenous culture.

“By including teaching around residential schools in Canadian curriculum,” said Sinclair, “we are not only opening the door to having aboriginal people become part of the circle, we are also opening the eyes of Canadians to the fact that they have been educated in the public schools about aboriginals historically, and even today, in (a way) that is simply wrong and doesn’t contain accurate information.”

…“The message for all Canadians is it’s important for us to understand that it’s now time for us to live up to the reputation that we think we had, that we thought we had — and we don’t have,” he said.

“It’s important for us to understand that we have deluded ourselves as a country to a certain extent because we have not educated ourselves about this experience.”

Teachings about aboriginals ‘simply wrong’, says Murray Sinclair.

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Britain plans to control immigration, step up deportations

2015/05/26 Leave a comment

While UKIP did not win many seats, their high share of the popular vote (12.6 percent), along with internal Conservative dynamics, keeps on shifting British immigration policy to the right:

Anger against migrants in the United Kingdom has reached fever pitch. Some have even blamed part of Britain’s ongoing economic problems on allowing those from the European Union’s poorer countries entry into the U.K.

In the election race, the U.K. Independence party campaigned against the influx of immigrants, vowing to “take back control of our borders.”

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage got into hot water after he said he’d be concerned if a group of Romanians became his neighbours. When outrage ensued, Farage quickly apologized.

While UKIP only gained one parliamentary seat in the vote, going to Douglas Carswell, the party attracted popular support — coming an astounding second in 120 constituencies and gaining nearly 4 million votes, says the Financial Times.

While the finer details of Cameron’s plan will be released next week in the Queen’s Speech (which sets out the Conservative program for the year ahead), his self-described “whole government approach” will aim to clamp down against migrants in Britain illegally. He’ll even lead the charge by chairing a new task force on immigration.

Police will be given the authority to seize the wages of those working at off-the-books jobs, making it a crime to be working illegally.

Municipal governments or councils will be given new powers to crack down on landlords housing migrants and then evict the occupants.

Banks will now be required to check all bank accounts against databases of people illegally living in Britain.

Foreign criminals awaiting deportation will wear satellite tracking tags, so authorities know where they are at all times.

Already, Cameron noted, they’ve weeded out fake brides and grooms that stage sham marriages and taken away the licenses of 9,000 “illegal immigrants driving on our roads.”

Britain plans to control immigration, step up deportations | Toronto Star.

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ICYMI: Germany: Where the refugee flood is a solution, not a problem

2015/05/26 Leave a comment

Refugees as part of an economic immigration strategy:

Unlike Canada, where refugees are mainly sponsored by families and charities, the German government sorts and disperses its asylum seekers: Towns and cities with the strongest economies get the most. This week, Chancellor Angela Merkel pressed the 27 other European Union countries to imitate this system internationally. The response, so far, has been chilly.

In Germany, by contrast, the public and their politicians are receiving the majority of Europe’s refugees with surprising calm, even optimism. While there was a brief flare-up of anti-immigrant politics earlier this year in cities of the former East Germany (where there are almost no immigrants to be found), those died away quickly. Here, even refugee advocates say they’re surprised by the broadly positive reception.

“I am really amazed at how much this country has changed – even a decade ago this would have created anger and distrust, but today I’m hearing nothing but welcome for the new refugees – people are being really open,” says Zerai Kiros Abraham, a former Eritrean refugee who now runs Project Moses, a refugee-settlement charity in Frankfurt.

Olaf Cunitz, the vice-mayor of Frankfurt responsible for planning and housing, says that the refugees are being seen by many Germans not as a problem but as a solution. “What’s unusual is that here in Frankfurt, people are very, very open to the topic of refugees,” he says. “At the moment, we don’t have any resistance, in any neighbourhood, to the settlement of refugees. People say ‘We need new people, they need our help. We’re a wealthy city, we can handle this.’”

Nowhere is this attitude more visible than in the rural town of Gelnhausen, to the east of Frankfurt, where town officials are hoping that the 2,500 refugees they will receive this year will be just the thing for their aging, fast-shrinking work force. They particularly want the Syrians, who tend to be middle-class and have the professional degrees and technical skills needed here.

“The good thing about the refugees is that they’re here – we don’t have to go out to their communities to get them,” says Susanne Simmler, head of the regional council. “We have labour shortages and demographic changes here, so we need new people – and a rural region like this normally does not attract immigrants.”

Germany: Where the refugee flood is a solution, not a problem – The Globe and Mail.

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In France, post-Charlie debate hits a new level of vitriol: Yakabuski

2015/05/26 Leave a comment

Konrad Yakabuski on French debates.

Unless you know your French history, the country’s debate over secularism and freedom of expression can be difficult to follow at times. In Mr. Todd’s view, French secularism is really a form of “zombie Catholicism” and a manifestation of the country’s inability to live up to its officially pluralistic values. It’s one thing to stand up for free speech. It’s quite another to celebrate the systematic piling on of a disenfranchised minority. Some disgruntled members of PEN expressed similar discomfort after the organization recently gave an award in New York for “freedom of expression courage” to Charlie Hebdo.

Days before the release of Mr. Todd’s book, a 15-year-old girl in Reims was kicked out of class for wearing a full-length skirt deemed by her teachers to be in contravention of a ban on religious symbols in public schools. The girl had removed her Muslim head scarf before entering class, in accordance with French law. But her teachers did not like her “proselytizing” attitude.

“The personnel asks that students dress in a manner that is respectful of secularist principles before entering the establishment,” the school administration said after the incident hit the news. “If any students were invited to change their attitude and clothing, no one was excluded.”

This is the kind of radical-secularist overkill Mr. Todd finds so disturbing. “Let’s leave France’s Muslims alone,” he said in an interview published in the magazine L’Obs. “Let’s not do to them what we did to the Jews in the 1930s by putting them all in the same boat, regardless of their degree of integration. … Let’s stop forcing Muslims to think of themselves [only] as Muslims.”

A colleague warned Mr. Todd he wouldn’t have “a single friend” in France after his book came out. It’s looking like he was right.

For a different take on Todd’s book and his accusations of hypocrisy regarding those demonstrating their solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, see Le simplisme d’Emmanuel Todd démonté par la sociologie des « Je suis Charlie ».

And for a more sophisticated understanding of French laïcité, see my earlier post, Olivier Roy on Laicite as Ideology, the Myth of ‘National Identity’ and Racism in the French Republic.

In France, post-Charlie debate hits a new level of vitriol – The Globe and Mail.

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How to talk to kids about religion: Spiritual multiculturalism is absolutely essential

2015/05/25 Leave a comment

Lisa Miller on the need for spiritual multiculturalism:

If a spiritual compass, commitment to family, and spiritual community as a sustaining source of love are must haves for children’s life journey, then spiritual multilingualism is their passport. Having our own spirituality and sense of community, whatever that may be, is important to a child. But you want your child to be able to see the sacred in others. Spiritual multilingualism enables us to cross familiar borders and embrace the essence of spirituality in its many cultural narratives.

Children come to understand that diverse spiritual traditions share common themes and often have parallel ideas and observances: the rhythm of the seasons, the birth of a baby, ceremonies of commitment, or rituals around death and mourning. Having your own spiritual or religious orientation but being able to hear and understand others doesn’t only make it easier to engage with other people; it also enhances your own access to sacred experience by making these universal inner connections available to you wherever we go. A child who is conversant in the “many names, many faces” of spiritual practice can find the sacred in others— engage more meaningfully with other people in our diverse global culture.

“The biggest mistake people make when first beginning to look at unfamiliar perspectives is immediately to make comparisons between the familiar and the unfamiliar,” writes Buddhist feminist theologian and author Rita Gross. “The power of the comparative lens comes not from making positive and negative comparisons; rather, it comes from seeing each perspective clearly, in its own right. In other words, one gets a deeper understanding of one’s own perspective by understanding how others understand their own perspective.”

In childhood, natural spirituality of the heart very quickly attaches to the names, stories, and rules to which our children gain daily exposure. Starting as early as age four and certainly by age seven, children absorb the language and customs of thought used to express spirituality in their family or spiritual community. Research shows that for children these names are prioritized as spiritually “more real.” A team of Harvard psychologists led by professor Mahzarin Banaji, investigated whether very young children, ages four to six, already had in- group versus outgroup—my God is better than your God— perceptions around the names of the higher power. The team found in controlled experiments, a child as young as age six will rate “God” as named by her faith as more omniscient than “God” as named by another geographically remote unfamiliar faith. No matter what we may think about religion, we want to be sure children are open to other possibilities. You want your kid to be as open minded as possible. As parents, we want to act early, deliberately, and swiftly. We do not want a child to build tribal superiority, which has nothing to do with a clear and open pipeline for natural spirituality. Theology competition is a misguided form of implicit socialization that ultimately distorts access to transcendent love in all three forms of self, other, and higher power.

The early mental packaging of a child’s natural spirituality makes imperative— read urgent— that our children become, in essence, spiritually multilingual and multicultural from an early age if we genuinely want them to have respect and appreciation for natural spirituality in other people and cultures. This “many faces, many names” perspective is the opposite of religious chauvinism and all other “isms.” Offer your child a window into the religions of other families and peoples. As ambassadors, offer the opportunity to feel transcendence in many places and ways.

How to talk to kids about religion: Spiritual multiculturalism is absolutely essential – Salon.com.

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