Canadians’ health data are in a shambles

2021/12/10 2 Comments

Unfortunately, all too true, with too few exceptions, based upon my admittedly anecdotal experience in Ottawa:

Canadians see new and increasingly powerful computerization in almost every facet of their day-to-day lives – everywhere, that is, except for something as fundamental as our health care, where systems are too often stuck in the past.

When we go to the doctor, we get prescriptions printed on paper; lab results are sent via fax; and typically, medical offices have no direct links to any patient hospitalization data. And while the pandemic sparked a mad scramble to set up many new data systems – to track who was infected, where there were ventilators, who has been vaccinated and with which vaccine – this has happened in a largely unco-ordinated way, with Ottawa and provincial governments each developing systems separately.

As a result, even these newest computer systems are duplicative, and they do not communicate across provincial boundaries, or even within some provinces – not even, for example, to connect vaccinations, infections, the genotype of the virus, hospitalizations, other diseases and deaths so they are centrally accessible. And so Canada’s recent health-data efforts have wasted millions of dollars while failing to provide the evidence base needed for real-time effective responses to the fluctuating waves of COVID-19 infections..

This kind of failure is not new. Even before the pandemic, key kinds of data have long been imprisoned by data custodians who are excessively fearful of privacy breaches, even though the data are generally collected and stored in secure computer databases. A broad range of critical health care data remains unavailable – not only for patients’ direct clinical care, research and quality control, but also for tracking adverse drug reactions, showing unnecessary diagnostic imaging and drug over-prescribing. The result is that major inefficiencies in the systems remain hidden – and may actually cause health problems, and even deaths by medical misadventure.

There are many directions one could point the finger of blame, but as a new report from the Expert Advisory Committee to the Public Health Agency of Canada found, the root cause is a failure of governance. Federal and provincial governments have failed to agree on strong enforcement of common data standards and interoperability, though this is not only a problem of federalism. Health-data governance problems are also evident within provinces where one health agency’s data system is not connected to others within the same province.

What Canada and the provinces have now is essentially provider-centric health-data systems – not just one but many kinds for hospitals, others for primary care, and yet others still for public health. What Canadians want and need is patient- or person-centric health data. That way, no matter where you are in the country, your allergies, chronic diseases and prescriptions can be known instantly by care providers.

Private vendor-centric health-data software also pose a threat, as do data collected by powerful tech companies from new wearable technologies that offer to collect your health data for you. If Canada does not act swiftly and decisively to establish the needed governance, competing vendor software and individual data will continue the rapidly growing cacophony of proprietary standards. This trend is raising new concerns about privacy, along with untracked increases in health care costs.

The fundamental importance of standardized, interoperable, securely protected health data has been known for decades. There have been repeated efforts to achieve a modern effective health-data system for Canada. But federal cajoling and even financial incentives have failed. Much stronger governance mechanisms are required, and urgently, as the global pandemic has revealed.

The federal government has the constitutional authority to play a much stronger role, given its powers in spending, public health, statistics, as well as “peace, order and good government.” It also has readily available regulatory powers under the Canada Health Act.

Of course, high-quality data collection and data software have costs. But given the tens of billions of health care dollars the federal government is providing to the provinces through fiscal transfers, it is long past time they leveraged this clout – using both carrots and sticks – so Canadians can finally have informed, accessible health data when and where they need it most.

Michael Wolfson is a former assistant chief statistician at Statistics Canada, and a current member of the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. Bartha Maria Knoppers is a professor, the Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine, and director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy at McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine. They are both members of the Expert Advisory Group for the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canadians-health-data-are-in-a-shambles/

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Jewish federal employees form network to combat antisemitism in government service

2021/12/10 Leave a comment

Yet another group network. Sad that felt needed:

Jewish civil servants met the prime minister’s special envoy on fighting antisemitism to ask for support dealing with anti-Jewish abuse and slurs in the federal public service.

The government officials have formed a support network to provide a “safe space” where they can share experiences of antisemitism and to change the culture in the sector.

On Tuesday, they met Irwin Cotler, the prime minister’s antisemitism envoy, to relay to him the problem in government offices. Some expressed fears that anti-Jewish hatred risked becoming marginalized in the government’s fight against discrimination and racism in the public service.

Artur Wilczynski, Canada’s former ambassador to Norway, said this is the first time in his 30 years working in the public service that Jewish public servants have formed such a group, which met for the first time during Hanukkah this month.

He said while some government departments — including his own — take antisemitism seriously, some within the public service have been “tone deaf to the experiences of Jewish colleagues.”

The Jewish public service network, founded by public servant Jonathon Greenberg, met the Privy Council Office this month to voice their concerns and to try to ensure that inclusivity and diversity training in all government departments includes antisemitism. The group said the Privy Council was receptive to their concerns.

Kayla Estrin, a federal official for 30 years, said antisemitism “has caused many of us stress and anxiety.”

She said the network had been founded because antisemitism, including casually hurtful jibes at work and tropes about Jews in the office, was preoccupying many Jewish employees.

“This is very much being felt now,” she said. “There’s lots of dialogue about diversity and inclusion but antisemitism seems to be absent from that discussion. We just want to make sure that we are part of that dialogue and to raise awareness of antisemitism. We appreciate how receptive the Privy Council has been.”

The group wants to make sure that Jewish employees are not excluded from the terms of a “call to action” on anti-racism, equity and inclusion in the federal public service, published by Ian Shugart, Clerk of the Privy Council and head of the public service.

Cotler, a former justice minister, said he was concerned by a rising tide of anti-Jewish hatred and would seek to get antisemitism included in not just the call to action, but all strategies across government to combat racism and discrimination.

“I would like to see an express reference to antisemitism and its importance. If we don’t include antisemitism it relegates it to a subject of no concern at a time of an alarming rise,” he said. “What is happening is that antisemitism is being increasingly normalized with an absence of outrage when it occurs.”

The Treasury Board of Canada, which is responsible for federal public servants, said the “work of eradicating bias, barriers, and discrimination, which have taken root over generations, demands an ongoing, relentless effort.”

It said it would engage with Jewish employees along with other equity-seeking employee networks. In a statement it said its Centre on Diversity and Inclusion had a “mandate is to address barriers and challenges to a diverse and inclusive workplace and to prevent discrimination for all equity-seeking groups, including religious minorities.”

The public service has also faced allegations of anti-Black racism, with a group of former and current workers filing a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging systemic discrimination in hiring and promoting. The allegations have not been tested in court.

Wilczynski, an assistant deputy minister and senior adviser for people, equity and inclusion at the communications security establishment, says he has experienced — as a Jewish, gay man — more antisemitism than homophobia during his lifetime, including at work.

“I have never seen the community as vulnerable and concerned. People are worried,” he said. “There isn’t a good understanding of how antisemitism has permeated its way across society including the public service.”

Wilczynski said he was very encouraged that the government was devoting so much energy and resources to inclusion. But, he said, it should make sure it is “committed to creating a safe space for all its employees, including Muslim, Jewish, Black and Indigenous staff.

Doree Kovalio, a member of the Jewish public service network’s steering committee and public servant for 17 years, also welcomed the push for diversity and inclusivity training within government and outside. But she said it had become “acutely apparent” to Jewish public servants that acknowledging and addressing antisemitism was not a priority in these discussions.

Jewish federal employees have shared numerous accounts of antisemitism at work, she said.

“Thankfully we have a safe space for Jewish public servants where they feel open to share their experiences without judgment or reprisal,” she said.

Former Bloc Québécois MP Richard Marceau, of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said it was very troubling that Jewish civil servants for the first time ever had to create an association to combat antisemitism.

“I commend them for standing up to combat antisemitism in the biggest employer in Canada. This shows that antisemitism has become mainstream in Canada.”

Tory MP Marty Morantz said he is glad Jewish civil servants are able to come together to offer each other support over antisemitism which he said is “pervasive.”

Source: Jewish federal employees form network to combat antisemitism in government service

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U of T accepts all recommendations of Anti-Semitism Working Group

2021/12/10 Leave a comment

Significant and sensible, not adapting the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism or other definitions as “They are not suitable to the distinctive context of the university:”

The University of Toronto’s Anti-Semitism Working Group has delivered its final report and made a series of recommendations to tackle anti-Semitic racism and religious discrimination on campus – all of which have been accepted by the university.

The report’s eight recommendations also address definitions of anti-Semitism, the extent and limits of academic freedom in a university setting and the provision of kosher food on campus.

“Anti-Semitism is an ancient but still present and problematic form of hatred,” said Arthur Ripstein, chair of the working group and a University Professor of law and philosophy. “Our aim in drafting this report is to make realistic and actionable recommendations of the ways that the university can move forward in addressing it and to ensure that U of T is a place where Jewish members of the community feel safe and welcome.”Comprising student, staff and faculty representatives, the working group conducted extensive consultations across the three campuses. Its findings draw on nearly 700 survey responses, more than 200 email submissions, six focus groups and several interviews with Jewish student organizations, as well as one with Jewish faith leaders.

The Anti-Semitism Working Group was established last December by U of T’s president, provost and vice-president, human resources and equity (now people strategy, equity and culture) to review programming, activities, processes and practices in place at the university, as well as to make recommendations to support the university’s response to anti-Semitism.

The review comes at a time when incidents of anti-Semitism are sharply on the rise in broader society. In July, the chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission warned that there had been “an alarming increase in antisemitic acts” during the pandemic.

Ripstein recounts that the university has a troubling history of anti-Semitism. In the 19th century, Jews were not able to become faculty members, and through to the middle part of the 20th century some faculties had quotas on the number of Jewish students that could be admitted.

“The situation for Jewish members of the university has improved considerably since that time,” said Ripstein. “But there are still situations in which they are made to feel unwelcome or harassed. Our aim is to address those issues in ways that are sensitive to the particular position of the university as a place of learning and as a place of academic disagreement.”

Each of the working group’s recommendations focuses on ways the university can make itself a more inclusive and equitable place. That includes calling for the university to apply its equity, diversity and inclusion policies consistently, and procedures to ensure that anti-Semitism is treated in the same way as other forms of racism and religious discrimination. Other recommendations include:

  • The university should focus on problems and issues specific to the distinctive context of the university as a place in which difficult and controversial questions are addressed. In so doing, it should not adopt any of the definitions of anti-Semitism that have recently been proposed because of concerns about their applicability to a university setting.
  • Academic units, administrative units and student organizations in which enrolment is mandatory must not make participation in their activities or access to their resources conditional on taking a particular position on any controversial question.
  • The university should issue regular communications about its approach to controversial events, emphasizing that it will not enforce content-based restrictions on such events but that such events must be held in a respectful, safe and open manner.
  • The university must develop measures for responding to various forms of social exclusion, harassment, micro-aggressions and bullying (including online instances) for all equity-deserving groups and apply these consistently.
  • The university and its divisions and academic units should apply the Policy on Scheduling Classes and Examinations and Other Accommodations for Religious Observances consistently, avoiding scheduling mandatory events on significant Jewish holidays and permitting Jewish members of the university to participate fully in a range of accommodations.
  • The university should ensure kosher food is readily available on its campuses.

In response, U of T President Meric Gertler, Acting Vice-President & Provost Trevor Young and Vice-President, People Strategy, Equity and Culture Kelly Hannah-Moffat said they were pleased to accept all the working group’s recommendations.

“We are profoundly opposed to anti-Semitism,” the university leaders said in their official response to the report. “We are determined to ensure that our campuses are places where members of the Jewish community feel that they are safe, included and respected as members and friends of the U of T community.”

They also thanked the members of the working group, as well as all those who took part in the consultations. “Through their consultations and deliberations, and through their report, [the working group has] made an extremely valuable contribution to the University on behalf of its Jewish community,” they said.

The working group report examined the tensions between the essential need for a culture of respect and inclusion and the university’s unique position in society, where, in the words of the Statement of Institutional Purpose, “the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of research.”

Within this context, the working group recommended that the university not adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. “The reason that we are not recommending the adoption of the IHRA, or other definitions, is that all of them are designed for different purposes,” explained Ripstein. “They are not suitable to the distinctive context of the university. Adoption of them would not integrate with the requirements on us and our other existing policy commitments.”

The university’s senior leaders confirmed that a definition of anti-Semitism will not be adopted: “We appreciate that some members of the University community as well as external stakeholders may be disappointed … We also acknowledge and appreciate the working group’s principled and thoughtful reasoning on this point.”

The working group report noted that free speech and academic freedom requirements mean that unpopular views must not lead to any form of sanctions or exclusion from the university experience. Also, academic units should not pressure or require individuals to endorse or oppose political causes, the report said.

The institutional response highlights several ways in which individuals will be reminded of their responsibilities, including through proactive communications and training that address anti-Semitism. There will also be a review of existing policies and guidelines to ensure that they respond to the particular challenge of addressing racism and faith-based hatred that’s found on social media.

The university will provide progress updates on the implementation of the report’s recommendations on its Anti-Racism Strategic Tables webpage.

Source: U of T accepts all recommendations of Anti-Semitism Working Group

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A residential school system in China is stripping Tibetan children of their languages and culture, report claims

2021/12/09 Leave a comment

After Chinese officials criticize Canadian residential schools…

Almost 80 per cent of Tibetan children in China have been placed in a vast system of government-run boarding schools, where they are cut off from their families, languages and traditional culture, according to an analysis of official data by researchers at Tibet Action Institute.

The U.S.-based NGO found more than 800,000 Tibetan children between the ages of 6 and 18 “are now housed in these state-run institutions.”

“The colonial boarding school system in Tibet is a core element of the Chinese Communist Party’s systematic effort to co-opt, undermine, and ultimately eliminate Tibetan identity in an attempt to neutralize Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule,” the group said in a report published Tuesday.

For years, Tibetans have been sounding the alarm over what they see as assimilationist policies from Beijing. Scholars agree that the implementation of such policies escalated in the wake of large-scale unrest in parts of Tibet in 2008 and the coming to power of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2012. Spiking repression in Tibet has coincided with a crackdown in China’s neighbouring Xinjiang region in recent years, which has seen an estimated two million ethnic Uyghurs pass through a system of “re-education” or “de-radicalization” camps.

While boarding schools for Tibetan children have been promoted by the state for decades, the scale of the system and its growth since 2008 have not been previously reported. The Tibet Action Institute drew on official data to estimate that 806,218 Tibetans between the ages of 6 and 18 currently attend a boarding school – 78 per cent of the 1,039,370 children attending school in Tibetan regions.

Much of the data are publicly available and supported by other official Chinese documents and pronouncements reviewed by The Globe.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a faxed request for comment. In the past, officials have defended education policies in Tibet by saying they are aimed at alleviating poor school standards and widespread poverty in the region and by arguing that “bilingual education” protects and promotes Tibetan languages alongside Chinese.

When Tibet was invaded by the People’s Liberation Army in 1951, the Chinese government promised that the “religious beliefs, customs and habits of the Tibetan people” would be respected.

After an uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama – the spiritual leader of Tibet but also a former political leader, as his predecessors have often been – fled to India, and Beijing took full control over the Tibet Autonomous Region. Since then, Chinese leaders have remained nervous about potential support for independence among Tibetans, which they generally blame on overseas actors, including the “separatist Dalai clique.”

At times China’s leaders have promoted and protected Tibetan languages and culture. This reached a peak with the 1982 constitution, which states that “the people of all nationalities have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages and to preserve or reform their own ways and customs.”

Back then Tibet was, as it is now, among the poorest regions of China, and Beijing made considerable investments in education, including the establishment of some early boarding schools.

One Tibetan who attended one of those schools – whom The Globe and Mail is identifying by the pseudonym Tenzin so he could speak freely, without concern for his family back in Tibet – said that while instruction was still largely in a Tibetan language, “the content of what we studied was almost all Chinese.

“The history we studied was all Communist or Chinese-centred, even when we studied world history.”

Kunchok, a Tibetan now living in exile in New Delhi who asked to be identified only by his first name, described being sent to a boarding school in Markam, a town in the east, on the border with Sichuan, in 2000, when he was seven years old.

“We were not allowed to go home on the weekend or holidays – for the whole of [my first year] I did not see my parents,” he said.

Widespread unrest in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as well as chronic poverty and economic difficulties in Tibet that some officials blamed on the limited use of the Chinese language, prompted Beijing to rethink its policies in the region – just as Mr. Xi was coming to power.

“There was a feeling that education and propaganda work had not been taken as seriously as it could have been, with too much focus on ethnic autonomy,” said James Leibold, an expert on Chinese politics and ethnic minority policies at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

Tenzin also connected the policy shift to the events of 2008. “If you look at a map of Tibetan protests and self-immolation protests, they overlap with places where there was a strong cultural identity or linguistic identity,” he said. “Almost all the counties in Qinghai and Gansu [provinces] have been converted to Chinese medium education. There’s a policy to reduce any room for Tibetan language learning or cultural spaces, to clamp down on future potential protests.”

By 2016, even a state media report noted that almost all schools in Tibet were using Mandarin Chinese as the primary language of instruction. It added that some parents and teachers “have taken action, opening Tibetan-language schools.”

Many of those alternative schools, often run or staffed by Buddhist monks, have since been shut down. According to Amnesty International, in 2018 the government urged the public to report groups that organize Tibetan classes, branding them “criminal gangs connected to the separatist forces of the Dalai Lama.”

Mr. Xi himself has overseen this assimilationist shift in policy, according to classified documents leaked to the Uyghur Tribunal, an independent body based in the U.K. that is examining allegations of genocide and other crimes in Xinjiang. Documents published by the group include speeches by Mr. Xi from the mid-2010s demanding that children in western China be sent to boarding schools so they would “study in school, live in school, grow up in school.”

“Numerous other policies designed to assimilate and control the region’s ethnic groups, including a Chinese (Mandarin) language focused education in centralized boarding schools … can be directly linked to statements or explicit demands made by Xi Jinping,” scholar Adrian Zenz wrote in a summary of the leaked documents.

Tenzin, who is now living in the U.S., said “now kids as young as five years old are being taken from their hometowns and environments and put in this school system.

“When you are cut off from your language and culture and history, you lose a sense of who you are, and eventually it feels like you’re losing the very fabric of your humanity,” he said. “You don’t feel complete.”

Speaking at a news conference in 2019, Wu Yingjie, the party secretary for the Tibet Autonomous Region, praised the “centralized school system,” as the boarding school network is sometimes called, saying it could help solve “the problems of Tibet’s large area and sparse population.”

Officials in Sichuan recently published a “10-year action plan for educational development in ethnic minority regions,” which calls on local governments to “advance the boarding school system” with the aim of increasing capacity to 820,000 students by 2030.

In the TAI report, the authors directly compared the situation in Tibet to that of colonial societies elsewhere, including in Canada. This year, researchers in Kamloops discovered the unmarked graves of more than 200 Indigenous children, which forced Canada to reckon with the horrors of the residential school system. More mass graves have since been discovered, prompting calls for further action and reparations.

“There is strong evidence that the colonial boarding school system for Tibetans is designed to achieve the same end as the residential school systems in Canada and the United States,” they wrote.

One of the report’s authors, Lhadon Tethong, said researching the boarding school system resonated with her not only as a Tibetan, but as a Canadian. She was born in Victoria and attended the University of King’s College in Halifax.

“The parallels were very striking,” she said. “We are acutely aware that the situation in Tibet is not the same as for First Nations people in Canada, but what is clear is that the aim of the state in separating children from their families is the same. The fundamental bottom line is about eliminating identity and changing children into something they’re not, taking the language from their tongues, taking the cultural roots out from beneath them.”

When the Kamloops and other unmarked graves were discovered this year, Chinese state media covered the story intensely, while officials used it as an opportunity to highlight Canada’s historic abuse and mistreatment of Indigenous people.

“Indigenous lives matter,” Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in June. “Canada claims to be a model of human rights and an open advocate of the cause. However, it is reticent and blind to its own crimes and stains in human rights that can never be washed away or justified. Such hypocrisy and double standard is disgraceful.”

Source: https://trk.cp20.com/click/e7a4-2h7l42-qdcp9p-7qf243g7/pmreg33oorqwg5boivugc43iei5cejjsijkhqolri52xqq2ghfjekvjwnnhgyzdki5fhi4cwkvdusvscgnmse7i%3D

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U.S. Trade And Immigration Policies Toward China Have Backfired

2021/12/09 Leave a comment

Of note, impact on visa restrictions on Chinese students and researchers:

When small children start playing chess they make one common mistake—they forget the other side gets to a make a move. That analogy describes U.S. policy toward China in three areas: trade, semiconductors and immigration. In all three areas, U.S. policies described by supporters as “tough” have backfired.

Innovation and International Students: Is it a good idea to let the FBI and members of the National Security Council develop innovation policies for the U.S. economy? Whether it’s a good idea or not, that is what’s happened when it comes to students, professors and researchers from China.

On May 29, 2020, Donald Trump issued presidential proclamation 10043 (PP10043) on the “Suspension of Entry as Nonimmigrants of Certain Students and Researchers from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).” The proclamation led the State Department to deny and revoke many visas for Chinese graduate students and researchers

At its core, the proclamation denies a visa to someone who studied at a particular university on a proscribed list, even if no negative information exists on the individual. The proclamation sweeps up many people who show no evidence of bad intent. Picture an American young person denied a visa to study in a foreign country because he or she attended MIT and professors at MIT have received Pentagon funds or U.S. government research grants.

At least hundreds and possibly thousands of Chinese graduate students and researchers have been refused visas under the proclamation. Exact figures are unavailable because the State Department has not been forthcoming in releasing information despite many requests. Official figures would understate the proclamation’s impact because individuals who believe they will be denied visas would not even apply.

In a June 2020 interview conducted soon after the proclamation took effect, Jeffrey Gorsky, former Chief of the Legal Advisory Opinion section of the Visa Office in the State Department and an advisor to the National Foundation for American Policy, predicted the current impact. “There is already a longstanding program in place to vet potential students based on concerns over the transfer of sensitive technologies,” he said. “This proclamation will exclude persons from the United States based on past or minor associations with PRC entities even if the individuals pass the interagency clearance process. America will lose out on a valuable talent pool and the financial and scientific contributions these students make to U.S. universities and the United States.”

The policy is costly to the United States. Every 1,000 Ph.D.’s blocked in a year from U.S. universities costs an estimated $210 billion in the expected value of patents produced at universities over 10 years and nearly $1 billion in lost tuition over a decade, according to an analysisfrom the National Foundation for American Policy. That does not include other economic costs, such as the loss of highly productive scientists and engineers prevented from working in the U.S. economy or patents and innovations produced outside university settings. Approximately 75% of graduate students in computer science and electrical engineering at U.S. universities are international students, primarily from China and India.

As with trade, the Biden administration has continued the questionable policies on Chinese graduate students started by the Trump administration. A China expert on the current National Security Council staff has written favorably of the restrictions on international students from China. Immigration policy people who favor restrictions on international students, such as Trump adviser Stephen Miller, understood the proclamation would keep out many Chinese students. It’s not clear people with expertise on China understand enough about how visa policies are implemented to appreciate the significant negative impact of these policies on U.S. innovation.

Two recent reports question FBI investigations of Chinese-born professors at U.S. universities that have resulted in few successful criminal prosecutions.

“There is insufficient evidence that academic/economic espionage by Chinese nationals is a widespread problem at U.S. universities,” writes Rory Truex, an assistant professor at Princeton University, in a 2021 paper. “After 20 months of ongoing investigations in 2019 and 2020, the ‘China Initiative’—a Department of Justice (DOJ) effort—had brought formal charges at only ten U.S. universities or research institutions, and only three cases involved any evidence of espionage, theft, or transfer of intellectual property. Given that there are about 107,000 Chinese citizens in STEM [fields] at U.S. universities at the graduate level or above, current DOJ charges imply a criminality rate in this population of .0000934, less than 1/10,000.” (Formal charges are not convictions, and DOJ has dropped several cases.)

A recent investigation by the MIT Technology Review found the Department of Justice’s China Initiative investigations have devolved primarily into finding disclosure and paperwork violations. “The initiative’s focus increasingly has moved away from economic espionage and hacking cases to ‘research integrity’ issues, such as failures to fully disclose foreign affiliations on forms.”

The MIT Technology Review concluded: “Our reporting and analysis showed that the climate of fear created by the prosecutions has already pushed some talented scientists to leave the United States and made it more difficult for others to enter or stay, endangering America’s ability to attract new talent in science and technology from China and around the world.” A former U.S. attorney who helped create DOJ’s China Initiative during the Trump administration agreed with the MIT Technology Review critique.

The Thousand Talents recruitment program started by China’s government in 2008 encourages Chinese scientists overseas to return to China and, more generally, for talented Chinese-born scientists to work in China rather than the United States. It would seem current U.S. policies have backfired and support the long-term goals of the Chinese Communist Party to bring talent back to China.

Source: U.S. Trade And Immigration Policies Toward China Have Backfired

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India’s proud tradition of celebrating multiculturalism is facing a crisis

2021/12/09 Leave a comment

Of note:

In Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s 1995 film Naseem (streaming on Mubi), an ailing old man regales his granddaughter with anecdotes of his youth, a time when India’s Hindus and Muslims rejoiced in one another’s festivities and fought in solidarity against British colonial rule. The grandfather’s narrative of religious harmony and national integration is juxtaposed with the tensions leading up to the Babri Mosque demolition in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, by Hindu extremists on December 6, 1992 — a tragic event now widely considered to be a turning point in the rise of Hindu nationalism.

The film’s fraught backdrop, as witnessed by 15-year-old Naseem (Mayuri Kango), offers a stark contrast to the pre-independence past described by her grandfather as India’s secular fabric begins to slowly erode. But what sadly makes Naseem as relevant today as it was upon its release — if not more so — is that contemporary India continues to mirror the tumultuous nation depicted in the film. In fact, now more than ever, India is consumed by hate towards the “other,” marking a shift away from the more pluralistic values historically espoused in its films, poetry, music, and even (to the ire of the conservative ruling party) its TV ads.

Naseem ultimately ends with the death of the grandfather coinciding with the demolition of the Babri Mosque, symbolically marking the fall of India’s pluralistic bastion. Actor and Urdu-language poet Kaifi Azmi, whose grandfather character is the embodiment of secularism in the film, was pained by the grinding down of his country’s secularism in real life, too. His lament found expression in the poem “Doosra Banwas” (“The Second Exile”), which imagines the Hindu deity Rama visiting his birthplace, Ayodhya, on the day of demolition and becoming despondent upon witnessing the carnage and politics played out in his name. Rama subsequently decides to go into exile again.

Fortunately for Azmi, when he recited the poem at an event in the late 1990s, the sociopolitical climate of India was a bit more tolerant than it is now. If such an act of “blasphemy” were to be attempted today, in all probability the socialist poet would have to languish in jail alongside many other artists and activists, on account of “hurting religious sentiments.”

Ever since the right-wing forces rose to power in the previous decade, a wave of religious intolerance has been sweeping over India, rendering artists and their work extremely vulnerable to attack. Stand-up comic Munawar Faruqui found himself at the receiving end of such bigoted absurdity at the beginning of the new year when he was arrested on Jan. 1 in the central Indian city of Indore for allegedly making objectionable jokes about Hindu deities, following a complaint by the son of a politician who belonged to the ruling right-wing party, BJP. Faruqui was eventually released on bail after more than a month in prison.

That witch-hunt mentality might also explain the outcry by many educated Indians over an advertisement for the jewelry brand Tanishq. The 45-second ad depicts a baby shower for a Hindu wife by her Muslim in-laws, but right-wingers criticized the clip for promoting love jihad, a term used by radical Hindu groups to accuse Muslim men of converting Hindu women by marriage. Similarly, consumer goods company Dabur recently withdrew an advertisement for a skin-bleaching cream that showed a same-sex couple celebrating Karwa Chauth — a Hindu festival where married women observe fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands — hours after the home minister of India’s second-largest state, Narottam Mishra, warned of legal action against the firm.

Meanwhile, the clothing company Fabindia came under fire for running a Diwali-themed advertisement for a clothing collection named “Jashn-e-Riwaaz,” an Urdu phrase meaning “celebration of tradition.” Advertising a collection by that name in connection with the Hindu festival of Diwali drew accusations of “unnecessarily uplifting secularism and Muslim ideologies” from critics who “claimed it hurt their religious sentiments,” The New Indian Express recounts. BJP leader Tejasvi Surya further slammed Fabindia for its “deliberate attempt of Abrahamanization of Hindu festivals and depicting models without traditional Hindu attire.” The message was loud and clear: The secular rhetoric of a pluralistic society needs to give way to the hegemony of Hindutva ideology. Further, any individual, entity, or even brand acting as proponents of a composite culture must be prepared to face clampdown.

But such close-mindedness flies in the face of a long history of progressivism that can easily be located in India’s art; arguably, even the narrative commercials censored by the government are an extension of this tradition. Ironically, it is the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which had a long history of religious syncretism before the Babri mayhem, that has been at the forefront of the deepening religious divide in the country. Yet long before the spread of fundamentalism in the state, Uttar Pradesh was emblematic of the “Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb,” a poetic phrase comparing the Hindu-Muslim camaraderie to the holy confluence of India’s major rivers, the Ganga and Yamuna. The late musician Ustad Bismillah Khan and his predecessors — who hailed from the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh — stand as easy examples of this inclusive culture, since their Muslim identities never prevented them from performing at temples and Hindu festivals.

ia’s tradition of multiculturalism can be further witnessed in Niharika Popli’s documentary Rasan Piya (2015), about the life of renowned Hindustani (Indian) classical musician Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan. Belonging to a lineage of artists who performed in provinces of diverse faiths, he was appointed as a court singer to the Hindu king of Gwalior in the state of Madhya Pradesh. An exemplar of polytheism and yet a devout Muslim, Rashid Khan was also a devotee of the Hindu god Lord Krishna, and would fast on Janmashtami (the birth anniversary of Krishna) every year.

It is evident that for centuries, then, the heterogeneous culture of India was capable of embracing the ethos of the Sanskrit phrase “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” meaning “the world is one family.” However, any traces of “unity in diversity” that persist today stand threatened by the hijackers of culture and religion who are hellbent on ignoring the nation’s age-old multicultural narrative, otherwise so evident and celebrated in its art.

Source: India’s proud tradition of celebrating multiculturalism is facing a crisis

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 8 December Update

2021/12/09 Leave a comment

The latest charts, compiled 8 December. Too early to assess the impact of omicron.

Canadians fully vaccinated 77.5 percent, compared to Japan 77.4 percent, UK 69.7 percent and USA 60.8 percent.

Vaccinations: Minor shifts: Ontario ahead of Italy and Quebec, Sweden ahead of Alberta, Australia, New York and Japan. China fully vaccinated 79.5 percent, India 35.6 percent, Nigeria 1.9 percent, Pakistan 24.5 percent, Philippines 35.8 percent.

Trendline Charts:

Infections: Recent trends of increased infections in Europe continues. Canadian provincial trends showing minimal change from last week, with Quebec uptick noticeable.

Deaths: G7 less Canada (driven mainly by USA) continue to increase, Alberta has flattened while Manitoba and Saskatchewan are still increasing more than other provinces.

Vaccinations: Ongoing convergence among provinces and G7 less Canada and narrowing gap with immigration source countries given China, and to a lessor extent, India, Pakistan and the Philippines which continue to increase vaccinations. Nigeria remains a laggard.

Weekly

Infections: France now ahead of Sweden.

Deaths: No relative change

Useful analysis of vaccine equity and other challenges for many developing countries:

While vaccine inequity among African countries has played a major role in the continent’s low COVID-19 vaccination rate, experts say capacity and logistical challenges, along with vaccine hesitancy, is also creating significant challenges.

“I’ve seen a number of articles say it’s just vaccine inequity — and that’s wrong. It’s not just vaccine inequity,” said Dr. Ron Whelan, who heads health insurer Discovery’s COVID-19 task team in South Africa.

“[It’s] one part supply, one part health-system capacity and the third part is the hesitancy component,” he said.

“It is a multi-factorial problem that’s got to be solved.”

Dr. Saad B. Omer, an epidemiologist and director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, agrees it’s a more nuanced explanation than just blaming vaccine inequity for low vaccination rates across the continent.

“We expect people to land the plane with a few doses at the airport, do a photo op, [and] people to run to the airport to get their jabs. That’s never happened,” he said.

While about 76 per cent of Canada’s total population is fully vaccinated, on the African continent — home to 1.3 billion people — it’s only about 7.5 per cent, according to Our World in Data.

Delivery expected to ramp up

In October, a report by the People’s Vaccine Alliance — a coalition which advocates for equitable and sustainable use of vaccines, and includes Oxfam, ActionAid and Amnesty International — found that only one in seven COVID-19 vaccine doses promised to low-income countries were actually delivered.

However, vaccine shipments have been on the rise over the past three months and are expected to ramp up in coming weeks and over the new year, according to the World Health Organization.

Yet despite the increases in vaccine supply, experts suggest inoculation efforts in Africa could still face hurdles.

About 40 per cent of vaccines that have arrived on the continent so far have not been used, according to data from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a policy think-tank.

Some countries have been forced to destroy thousands of doses of donated vaccines from their stockpiles. Namibia, for example, announced on Monday that it had to destroy 150,000 expired doses.

“It is highly regrettable that we are forced to destroy in excess of 150,000 vaccines, which have reached expiry date, because those who are eligible are refusing to be vaccinated,” Namibia President Hage Geingob is reported to have told a news conference on Monday.

According to the Washington Post, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe have all asked drugmaker Pfizer in the last several months to pause vaccine shipments because of challenges with uptake.

Vaccination rates vary widely across Africa and many experts are quick to note that vaccine hesitancy is not unique to the continent; it has been an issue in other parts of the globe, including the U.S and Europe. Child vaccination campaigns for various diseases, meanwhile, have been quite successful in Africa.

“Africa is, in many instances, a well-established vaccine culture overall, ” Whelan said.

But Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, recently told the New York Times that “there’s no doubt that vaccine hesitancy is a factor in the rollout of vaccines.”

News or rumours of potential side effects, she said, “gets picked out and talked about, and some people become afraid.”

1 in 4 health workers vaccinated

Additionally, only one in four of Africa’s health-care workers has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to WHO. That compares to 80 per cent of health workers vaccinated in 22 mostly high-income countries.

Many of Africa’s health-care workers, including those working in rural communities, still have “concerns over vaccine safety and adverse side effects,” Moeti recently told reporters.

Capacity has also been a major issue for many African countries, specifically their health systems’ ability to absorb and distribute vaccines, particularly in rural areas, where health resources are scarce.

“We need significant capacity to deliver those vaccines,” Whelan said.

‘Weak supply chains’

That includes the need for strengthened supply chains and temperature-controlled cold chains required to store Pfizer doses, Whelan said, together with infrastructure to actually track and deliver vaccines to hospitals, clinics and other vaccination sites.

“Many of the countries have weak supply chains, particularly weak cold chain infrastructure. And the cold chain infrastructure is not well set up for the Pfizer vaccine in particular,” he said.

Some countries, including South Sudan and Congo, have had to send some vaccines back because they could not distribute them in time.

Often, Whelan said, that’s the result of issues with health-system capacity, storage capacity and administration capacity.

But reliable capacity also cannot be built without reliable access to doses, said Omer.

“When you are the head of a public health agency or a health minister in a country, you want not only doses, but also predictability in doses,” he said.

Instead, he said, many government officials “don’t know what kind of doses are coming and when they are coming.”

“Often what would happen is that [some African countries] would receive a call saying that, ‘We have doses that we are sending your way, with a month’s expiration left. Please distribute.’ That’s an obviously challenging thing for any country,” said Omer.

Last month, African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT), the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and COVAX put out a joint statement, calling the majority of vaccination donations to date “ad hoc” and “provided with little notice and short shelf lives.”

“This has made it extremely challenging for countries to plan vaccination campaigns and increase absorptive capacity,” the statement said.

“Countries need predictable and reliable supply. Having to plan at short notice and ensure uptake of doses with short shelf lives exponentially magnifies the logistical burden on health systems that are already stretched.”

According to a recent WHO statement, since last February, Africa has received 330 million doses from the COVAX program, the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team and bilateral agreements.

Of those, more than 80 per cent have been delivered since August alone.

And so, as vaccine supply picks up, it said, “addressing uptake bottlenecks and accelerating rollout become more critical.”

Source: Vaccine inequity only partially to blame for Africa’s low vaccination rates, experts say

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Québec va aider les immigrants qui tenteront de faire reconnaître leurs compétences

2021/12/09 Leave a comment

Good initiative:

Québec va soutenir financièrement les immigrants qui ont besoin de suivre une formation de soutien pour faire reconnaître leurs compétences professionnelles. L’aide pourrait atteindre jusqu’à 500 $ par semaine pour les professionnels qui suivent la formation à temps plein.

Le ministre du Travail, Jean Boulet, en a fait l’annonce, mardi, lors du dévoilement d’un nouveau plan de 130 millions de dollars sur deux ans pour accélérer et faciliter la reconnaissance des compétences des immigrants.

Avec ce plan, les professionnels immigrants seront mieux accompagnés « de la sélection jusqu’à l’intégration » dans la reconnaissance de leurs compétences, affirme le ministre.

M. Boulet a donné l’exemple d’une infirmière qui voudrait faire reconnaître ses compétences. « Elle va bénéficier de formations d’appoint beaucoup plus flexibles. Il va y en avoir beaucoup plus. Elle va aussi bénéficier d’une aide financière de 500 $ par semaine. Elle va aussi profiter d’avoir un permis restrictif qui pourrait lui permettre de faire son travail sous certaines conditions ou de faire un travail qui est connexe à sa formation. »

Présente au côté du ministre, Gyslaine Desrosiers, présidente du Conseil interprofessionnel du Québec, a mentionné que le taux de décrochage était de 34 % parmi les immigrants souhaitant faire reconnaître leurs compétences. « Collectivement, on peut et on doit faire mieux. »

Pénurie de main-d’œuvre

Le plan fait partie d’une offensive de plus 2,9 milliards de dollars pour contrer la pénurie de main-d’œuvre, annoncée dans la mise à jour économique de novembre. Québec espère « former, requalifier et attirer » près de 170 000 travailleurs dans cinq secteurs ciblés : la santé et les services sociaux, l’éducation, les services de garde éducatifs à l’enfance, le génie et les technologies de l’information ainsi que la construction.

La décision de se concentrer sur les services essentiels et les secteurs « stratégiques » a fait des mécontents parmi les entreprises qui se sentent oubliées par cette intervention.

Dans le plan de reconnaissance des compétences, 12 métiers sont identifiés dans les services essentiels et les secteurs « stratégiques » comme le génie et la construction. « On va y aller selon nos besoins, a défendu M. Boulet en conférence de presse. Faut établir des priorités. »

« Ça ne veut pas dire que les autres sont exclus, nuance-t-il. On va considérer en fonction des besoins et de la société et du marché de l’emploi. »

Dans les secteurs visés, il y a environ 5000 personnes qui font chaque année des demandes de reconnaissance de leurs compétences.

Le Conseil du patronat satisfait

Au Conseil du patronat du Québec (CPQ), on estime que le plan répond à plusieurs besoins exprimés par le milieu des affaires. « Pour les entreprises, l’annonce d’aujourd’hui permettra une intégration en emploi plus rapide et adaptée aux compétences des candidats, commente Karl Blackburn, son président et chef de la direction, dans un courriel. La collaboration étroite des ordres professionnels, du gouvernement et des milieux de l’emploi est de la musique à nos oreilles. »

L’enjeu de la compétence des immigrants est soulevé depuis plusieurs années, mais le ministre Boulet a l’impression que le plan qu’il propose sera le bon. « Je pense qu’on ne peut pas manquer notre coup. »

« Oui, ça fait longtemps qu’on en discute, mais on a maintenant un plan qui est global, qui est compréhensif, qui est cohérent, qui est issu d’une concertation. Tout le monde tire dans la même direction », ajoute-t-il.

Source: Québec va aider les immigrants qui tenteront de faire reconnaître leurs compétences

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Articles on #Beijing2022 and the boycott question: “The Nazis used us during the 1936 Olympics. We cannot fall for the same propaganda tactics in China next year;” “Kelly: Washington’s diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics is worse than meaningless;” “53% of Canadians would not send diplomats to 2022 Olympic Games; two-in-five would keep athletes home”

2021/12/08 Leave a comment

Starting with the obvious parallel:

In a recent telephone interview with Fox News, former President Donald Trump said he is opposed to a proposed boycott of the 2022 Olympics in China because it would “hurt the athletes.”

President Joe Biden and others have raised the idea of a potential boycott of the 2022 games to protest the Chinese government’s ongoing persecution of its Muslim Uyghur citizens and other human rights abuses, such as the oppression of Tibetans and the trampling of civil liberties in Hong Kong.

America has been through this debate before — in 1936, and again in 1980. The very different outcomes of those two earlier debates offer some useful lessons for our current controversy.

The Chinese regime is engaged in “ongoing genocide” against the Uyghurs, according to the State Department. A recent report by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum found that “the Chinese government’s attacks on the Uyghur community are alarming in scale and severity” and constitute “crimes against humanity,” including “forced sterilization, sexual violence, enslavement, torture, forcible transfer, persecution, and imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty.”

From the Chinese perspective, the Olympic Games represent a prime public relations opportunity. They make the host country seem like an accepted part of the civilized international community.

Adolf Hitler saw the 1936 Berlin Olympics the same way. Many Americans today remember the Berlin Olympics as a victory for the good guys, because African American track star Jesse Owens won four gold medals, an implicit challenge to Hitler’s claims of “Aryan” racial superiority.

But in reality, The Games were a triumph for the Nazis in the way that mattered most — improving the Hitler regime’s image abroad.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ample warning that the Nazis intended to use the games for propaganda purposes. The U.S. ambassador in Germany, William Dodd, reported to Washington that the Nazis intended to use the Olympics “to rehabilitate and enhance the reputation of the ‘New Germany.’”

Foreigners will “have only the usual tourist contacts,” he wrote, and are likely to come away doubting the veracity of “the Jewish persecution which they have previously read in their home papers,” he predicted. The 2,000 translators hired by the Hitler government were also being trained at “parrying embarrassing questions and insinuating praise of National Socialism in their small talk,” Dodd wrote.

Dodd’s warnings went unheeded; the Roosevelt administration rejected the boycott as undue interference in American-German relations

But he was right: The New York Times praised the German government for its “flawless hospitality.” A Los Angeles Times correspondent wrote that “Zeus, in his golden days, never witnessed a show as grand as this.” An editorial in that newspaper even predicted that the “spirit of the Olympiads” would “save the world from another purge of blood.”

Even President Roosevelt was taken in — or perhaps he was looking for a way to justify America’s participation. Meeting with American Jewish Congress leader Rabbi Stephen S. Wise shortly after the games, the president told Wise he had learned from two tourists who had attended the Olympics “that the synagogues are crowded and apparently there is nothing very wrong in the situation [of Germany’s Jews] at present.”

Rabbi Wise wrote later that he was horrified by FDR’s comment. Wise tried to “explain to him how grave conditions were….[I] told him of some recent happenings in Germany….Cited other examples of the ruthless and continuing oppression of the Jews. He listened carefully; but I could see that the tourists (whoever they were, the Lord bless them not) had made an impression upon him.”

In 1980, the U.S. government made a different calculation: the Carter administration boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics as a protest against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. In his interview, Trump claimed that this boycott “didn’t work.”

The Trump argument, apparently, is that since the boycott did not bring about a Soviet withdrawal, it was a failure. But that view misunderstands the purpose of the 1980 boycott.

President Carter obviously didn’t expect that his gesture alone would convince the Soviets to leave Afghanistan; it was a symbolic protest. A boycott of the Chinese games likewise would be symbolic.

But symbols are important. Such foreign policy gestures help shape international opinion and establish standards for how governments respond to crises around the world.

If the Biden administration does not undertake a substantial symbolic protest, such as a boycott, it would send a message to China’s leaders that their brutal human rights abuses are of no concern to the United States. That is a dangerous message to send.

The U.S. government looked away during the Holocaust, not to mention more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur. America’s response to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and mass atrocities in Syria was also too little, too late. It’s time for a new kind of U.S. response.

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust.

Source: https://links.forwardcdn.com/u/click?_t=4616583590614aeb8da9a4f87d20e5fd&_m=82a91bf047e343b9b3cb4e8d87fd1c3e&_e=0scGFp23L4VNUPFHgTznqQBWAILR5A2FqcTiEsrdG7IVqKQb2JActvbSFtCYbj2tGvYeBCqyx1oflHJeTbuca7fdCFmVxuj3D9WM8XkZp2ZYDb70zbvk5oXzLpowPM1je3aHhin5r4Yxa5afvWvH6Jaus20m8FzjzeUt1cOMYYeycDyE1IWHqbWi7QhL6zA4tfnOWB6tXzXGcy4Ml5qkL_KwJk-aSmM1gSHtrZrVdbKINuDXdMKHkl8RMs4bFeEGWFPvl5lj2ogjiYQeUCr2HqwHjnnIqZNsPUAj4Z0Ewh1zb6CPzU08_xVksP5Jp4qiTt0IqkbAcgHJ9i_A2Y3Q1r6M8loA3qfMhDHv1uMoJbQp63qkciZMu0iaTg9kF43rKv8UGfCFyGzoVCRjUpC1wwPrpQxVnYBK_NAlUtKE0oMNUUdFLe17ooHJLanothdJFfRJGAMtVKzhxJPRGcQGfQ%3D%3D

Cathal Kelly of the Globe calls out the hypocrisy and weakness of “diplomatic boycotts:”

Let’s try to imagine how a diplomatic boycott might work in your own life.

You told your neighbour that you’d go over to her house for her annual New Year’s Eve party. Then you found out that she runs a dog-fighting ring or some similarly heinous activity on her property.

You are so morally repulsed that skipping the party isn’t enough. You feel the need to get on the neighbourhood group chat and announce you’ve come to a difficult decision. After a lot of soul searching, you’ve determined that no decent person should be seen to support such a person and their party. With that in mind, you will not be attending this year. Instead, you will stay home rubbing your rosary beads. You’re not going to go so far as to call anyone else who would attend such a party lower than a serpent’s belly, but it’s implied.

Also, in unrelated news, your kids will be going to the party. They’ve been looking forward to it all year and you can’t bring yourself to let them down.

Yes, there may be dog fighting and assorted other violence going on while they are in the house. Maybe they’ll be able to hear whimpering from the garage. But you don’t want to be the ogre who ruined everyone’s night out.

You heard there’s going to be a raffle at the party. What if your kids win a bunch of stuff and bring it home? Well, what can you do? You can’t stop them from winning. As much as it pains you, you’ll have to enjoy the spoils with them.

In summation, this party is wrong and you are against it.

This isn’t exactly what Washington has done in announcing an ersatz boycott of the upcoming Beijing Olympics. What it has come up with makes less sense than that.

America’s long-rumoured halfway measure – the diplomatic boycott – was officially announced on Monday. It doesn’t amount to much. It’s a more impressive sounding way of saying you are eliminating Olympic junkets. Now all the sad, second-rate pols from North Dakota and Maine won’t get flown private to Beijing so they can take a bunch of ego shots with Auston Matthews.

In the announcement, America’s rationales for taking this action were cast by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki in Second World War terms: “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity.” It is difficult to imagine more serious charges.

Yet elsewhere in the same remarks, Psaki sounded the executive air horn on behalf of her boss: “We will be behind [America’s Olympic athletes] 100 per cent as we cheer them on from home. We will not be contributing to the fanfare of the Games.”

That. What you did right there. That is fanfare. Fanfare’s what you call it when you root publicly for athletes. Eliminating the fanfare would mean saying nothing at all.

Fanfare is what this is about, though not the usual sort. We are speaking of political fanfare – controlling and redirecting the sporting kind so that it lands on the right politicians.

This is a leadership looking to be congratulated for doing the right thing, while getting to do what they self-evidently believe to be the wrong thing.

Take earlier comments about the proposed boycott from Robert Menendez, the senator who chairs the foreign relations committee. He called it “a necessary step to demonstrate our unwavering commitment to human rights in the face of the Chinese government’s unconscionable abuses.”

I’m sure the people suffering those abuses can discern the difference between American athletes holding up the Stars and Stripes on Beijing podiums and the American VIPs who will no longer be whooping it up in the stands behind them. Perhaps “unwavering” means something different in Menendez’s district.

You can’t be said to be taking a stand unless it involves some sort of sacrifice. What has America given up here? Nothing. Less than nothing. This move saves them on airfare.

This isn’t moral leadership. It’s outrage mitigation. Washington needs to be seen doing something, but nothing so substantive that it might interfere with everyone’s fun times. Unable to boycott and just as unable to not boycott, America has chosen a boycott that isn’t a boycott. Except it has called it a boycott. Cool trick.

Playing silly buggers with language makes it possible for everyone to oppose China as party host, while still enjoying the jingoistic boost that comes from attending China’s party.

Had America said nothing about a boycott and quietly ordered officials to stay home, its position would at least be logically consistent. That would have allowed them to give the athletes, broadcasters, corporate sponsors and voters/fans what they want, without confronting the implications of what that means. It wouldn’t be very honourable, but would at least make some sense.

Putting a name to America’s semi-absence reveals it as a hypocrite. What else would you call accusing someone of mass murder, congratulating yourself on your own bold truth-telling and then helping yourself to their hospitality?

Now we’ll see what America’s allies do, and what China does in turn. Beijing has already promised “firm countermeasures.”

Would it be possible for an Olympic host to pull out of a Games a few weeks before they start? The idea would not have even occurred to me a couple of weeks ago, but it’s beginning to feel like a lot of impossible scenarios are now possible.

For those who are still Beijing or Bust, there is good news. Despite all the hot talk, we are still in the posturing stage. No one has yet done anything to put the Games in doubt.

For those who had hoped for a moral stand on this file, there is no news at all. Just more of the same nonsense meant to obscure the fact that no one wants to take any position that might force them to tell the kids they can’t go to the globe’s most lavish and beloved circus.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/olympics/article-washingtons-diplomatic-boycott-of-beijing-olympics-is-worse-than/

Lastly, a useful Angus Reid survey showing that 40 percent, higher than I expected, support a full boycott (athletes) compared to 53 percent the “virtue signalling” diplomatic boycott:

Not since the 1980 Games in Moscow has Canada declined to send athletes – or officials – to the Olympics.

But as the U.S. announces a diplomatic boycott of next February’s Winter Games in Beijing – other Western nations are being asked their intentions.

While the Canadian government contemplates who – if anyone – it will send to the Olympics, a new study from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds just over half of Canadians (53%) supportive of their country taking the same measure as the U.S., denying any diplomatic presence in Beijing.

Two-in-five would go further, keeping athletes home from China as a protest against human rights abuses in the host country.

Overall, four-in-five (78%) support some sort of boycott. Despite this sentiment, the vast majority are resigned to the fact that Canadian protest will have little impact on China’s domestic policy. Nearly three-quarters (73%) say it is “unrealistic” to expect actions taken by this country will change China’s behaviour.

Chart, waterfall chart Description automatically generated

More Key Findings:

  • Favourability towards China has increased since Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were released from prison and returned to Canada, but it is the minority view. One-in-six (16%) Canadians say they hold favourable views of the country.
  • Half (48%) of Canadians who view China positively say there should be no boycott of the Games; one-in-five (17%) of those who view the country negatively say the same.
  • Men between the ages of 18 and 34 are the most supportive of officials and fans staying home at two-thirds (63%) and half (47%) respectively.

Source: https://angusreid.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4adb83e0e056e657a62fc6d8a&id=8a3a870561&e=1e1ae5dd63

Filed under foreign policy Tagged with , , , ,

Contrasting pre- and post-pandemic public service survey results

2021/12/08 Leave a comment

For the data nerds among you, you might this analysis of the Public Service Employee Survey organizational and harassment/discrimination indicators, broken down by visible minority and Indigenous group of interest, comparing the pre- and post-pandemic periods.

Conclusion:

There has been comparatively little change between the pre- and post-pandemic period but noteworthy that Black satisfaction with resolution of harassment and discrimination complaints is less than other visible minority groups.

While it appears that the experience of visible minorities is worse than Indigenous peoples, PSES data supports the view that the government has considerable work to improve the workplace organizational culture to reduce harassment and discrimination for both visible minority and Indigenous groups. This needs to take place at the general and the specific group levels by each department given the variances between the individual groups.

As in the case of disaggregated data with respect to employment equity groups, the increased granularity of the PSES provides a richer evidence base for managers and human resources to develop measures to improve inclusion in the public service at the departmental and organizational levels.

Full article:

pses-2020-2019-comparison-hill-timesDownload

Charts colour coded to show variations:

pses-2020-compared-to-2019-summary-chartsDownload

Filed under Aboriginal, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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