Citizenship is a tough mountain to climb, especially under Trump

2020/04/03 Leave a comment

Good overview of some of the additional hurdles, including increased fees. But of note that the backlog dates from Obama:

Gaining citizenship is a long, expensive and complicated process — one that has gotten more so under the Trump administration.

As the system currently stands, it can take 10 years or more for a person who entered the United States on a visa to become a citizen. Just getting a green card can take at least five years. Becoming eligible to apply for citizenship as a permanent resident after that? Another five years.

If you get to that stage, you then fill out the N-400 form, submit it with a $640 filing fee and then ready yourself for the civics test, biometric appointment and potential further vetting. After clearing those last hurdles, you are home free — a bona fide U.S. citizen.

Except, for an increasing number of people, that process never really takes off.

Around 700,000 applications for citizenship remained pending at the end of 2019 — and wait times have doubled over the past two years to almost three years, according to a September report by the Colorado State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

“The substantial delay to naturalization created by the backlog negatively impacts voting rights, civil rights, and the administration of justice,” the report’s authors write.

A backlog results when the number of applications coming in exceed the ones processed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staff, who are tasked with adjudicating immigration benefits. Citizenship applications tend to spike before general elections, so throughout history, there have been crests and troughs in backlogs as the agency tries to catch up to the fluctuating heap of incoming applications.

The most recent uptick in pending applications started during the Obama administration. According to Eric Cohen, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, technological updates instituted by the administration — meant to speed the processing along — actually led to delays due to unforeseen bugs. According to a 2017 report to Congress, the electronic platform initially faced “multiple technical problems, which negatively impacted processing times.”

The 2016 election year saw more applications than expected, as people rushed to apply before candidate Donald Trump could fulfill anti-immigration promises as president, so despite the technical hiccups demand continued to rise.

“It is my understanding that they underestimated the bump [in applications],” says Cohen, whose organization oversees the New American Campaign, a coalition of 150 organizations that provide legal help with naturalizations.

“The Trump effect was more profound than expected.”

The number of pending applications actually doubled under the Obama administration, from around 300,000 in 2010 to around 700,000 in early 2017, when Trump took office. Fast forward two years, at the end of fiscal 2019, when the administration boasted about its processing progress.

“The men and women of USCIS continue to administer our nation’s lawful immigration system, processing a large number of applications and requests while naturalizing 833,000 new U.S. citizens, an 11-year high,” Ken Cuccinelli, then serving as the acting director of USCIS, touted in an end-of-the-year email.

But on the back end, delays compound the backlog, critics say.

The failure to resolve them is partly the result of a tepid response on the part of the Trump administration to the surge in naturalization applications, according to some.

Cohen mentions two other contributing factors causing delays: more interviews and additional vetting, even in cases where neither are needed. He says he has heard stories of people vetted during the asylum process, then again when they sought to obtain their green cards, and then once more during the citizenship process. One elderly Iranian woman was so distraught during the final vetting that she broke down and withdrew her application, Cohen says.

“By doing super vetting, what you’re doing is discouraging people from applying, you’re giving people a really hard time during their interview process, and you’re taking much longer — 50 percent-plus longer,” he says. “Therefore, you’re doing fewer and fewer applications. So there are a lot of these bumps in the road that are there, I would say, purposely.”

USCIS maintains that it is “completing more citizenship applications, more efficiently and effectively — outperforming itself as an agency,” a spokesman said via email, and that “many factors relating to an individual’s case can affect processing times.”

In addition, the administration has put up what critics call the “second wall” — seemingly small rule changes, fee hikes and additional paperwork requirements that altogether make naturalization much more burdensome and prohibitive.

The one proposal advocates are most concerned about is a regulation that would, among other things, increase citizenship application fees from $640 to $1,170, and fees for green card applications from $1,225 to $2,195. It also would eliminate all fee waivers for these applications.

In a comment on the regulation, the National Partnership for New Americans, a group that helps immigrants naturalize, writes that the increase would leave tens of thousands of immigrants it serves unable to undergo naturalization.  It is “undermining the civic and economic benefits that are a direct result of welcoming and naturalizing millions,” the organization writes.

“The agency is proposing to do this during the exact same time that citizenship application fees are beginning to rise in anticipation of the presidential election of 2020.”

Source: Citizenship is a tough mountain to climb, especially under Trump

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Fox’s Fake News Contagion The network spent too long spraying its viewers with false information about the coronavirus pandemic.

2020/04/02 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Kara Swisher. Applies more broadly than COVID-19 but particularly dangerous during a pandemic:

You can relax, Sean Hannity, I’m not going to sue you.

Some people are suggesting that there might be grounds for legal action against the cable network that you pretty much rule — Fox News — because you and your colleagues dished out dangerous misinformation about the virus in the early days of the crisis in the United States. Some might allege that they have lost loved ones because of what was broadcast by your news organization.

But lawsuits are a bad idea. Here’s why: I believe in Fox News’s First Amendment right as a press organization, even if some of its on-air talent did not mind being egregiously bad at their jobs when it came to giving out accurate health data.

And, more to the point, when all is said and done, my Mom will listen to her children over Fox News. One of us — my brother — is an actual doctor and knows what he is talking about. And the other is a persistent annoyance — that would be me.

I’m a huge pest, in fact. “I’m going to block your number, if you don’t stop,” my mother said to me over the phone several weeks ago from Florida, after I had texted her the umpteenth chart about the spread of coronavirus across the country. All of these graphs had scary lines that went up and to the right. And all of them flashed big honking red lights: Go home and stay there until all clear.

She ignored my texts, so I had switched to calling her to make sure she had accurate information in those critical weeks at the end of February and the beginning of March. She is in the over-80 group that is most at risk of dying from infection. I worry a lot.

But she was not concerned — and it was clear why. Her primary source of news is Fox. In those days she was telling me that the Covid-19 threat was overblown by the mainstream news media (note, her daughter is in the media). She told me that it wasn’t going to be that big a deal. She told me that it was just like the flu.

And, she added, it was more likely that the Democrats were using the virus to score political points. And, did I know, by the way, that Joe Biden was addled?

Thankfully, Mom had not gone as far as claiming the coronavirus is a plot to hurt President Trump — a theory pushed by some at Fox News heavily at first. While she has been alternately appalled and amused by the president, and often takes his side, she is not enough of a superfan to think that he is any kind of victim here.

So, she kept going out with friends to restaurants and shopping and generally living her life as it always had been. “What’s the big deal, Kara? Stop bothering me,” she said over the phone. “You’re the one who is going to get sick, if you don’t stop working so much.”

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Facebook, YouTube Warn Of More Mistakes As Machines Replace Moderators

2020/04/02 Leave a comment

Whether by humans or AI, not an easy thing to do consistently and appropriately:

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are relying more heavily on automated systems to flag content that violate their rules, as tech workers were sent home to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

But that shift could mean more mistakes — some posts or videos that should be taken down might stay up, and others might be incorrectly removed. It comes at a time when the volume of content the platforms have to review is skyrocketing, as they clamp down on misinformation about the pandemic.

Tech companies have been saying for years that they want computers to take on more of the work of keeping misinformation, violence and other objectionable content off their platforms. Now the coronavirus outbreak is accelerating their use of algorithms rather than human reviewers.

“We’re seeing that play out in real time at a scale that I think a lot of the companies probably didn’t expect at all,” said Graham Brookie, director and managing editor of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters that automated review of some content means “we may be a little less effective in the near term while we’re adjusting to this.”

Twitter and YouTube are also sounding caution about the shift to automated moderation.

“While we work to ensure our systems are consistent, they can sometimes lack the context that our teams bring, and this may result in us making mistakes,” Twitter said in a blog post. It added that no accounts will be permanently suspended based only on the actions of the automated systems.

YouTube said its automated systems “are not always as accurate or granular in their analysis of content as human reviewers.” It warned that more content may be removed, “including some videos that may not violate policies.” And, it added, it will take longer to review appeals of removed videos.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter rely on tens of thousands of content moderators to monitor their sites and apps for material that breaks their rules, from spam and nudity to hate speech and violence. Many moderators are not full-time employees of the companies, but contractors who work for staffing firms.

Now those workers are being sent home. But some content moderation cannot be done outside the office, for privacy and security reasons.

For the most sensitive categories, including suicide, self-injury, child exploitation and terrorism, Facebook says it’s shifting work from contractors to full-time employees — and is ramping up the number of people working on those areas.

There are also increased demands for moderation as a result of the pandemic. Facebook says use of its apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram, is surging. The platforms are under pressure to keep false information, including dangerous fake health claims, from spreading.

The World Health Organization calls the situation an infodemic, where too much information, both true and false, makes it hard to find trustworthy information.

The tech companies “are dealing with more information with less staff,” Brookie said. “Which is why you’ve seen these decisions to move to more automated systems. Because frankly, there’s not enough people to look at the amount of information that’s ongoing.”

That makes the platforms’ decisions right now even more important, he said. “I think that we should all rely on more moderation rather than less moderation, in order to make sure that the vast majority of people are connecting with objective, science-based facts.”

Some Facebook users raised alarm that automated review was already causing problems.

When they tried to post links to mainstream news sources like The Atlantic and BuzzFeed, they got notifications that Facebook thought the posts were spam.

Facebook said the posts were erroneously flagged as spam due to a glitch in its automated spam filter.

Zuckerberg denied the problem was related to shifting content moderation from humans to computers.

“This is a completely separate system on spam,” he said. “This is not about any kind of near-term change, this was just a technical error.”

Source: Facebook, YouTube Warn Of More Mistakes As Machines Replace Moderators

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Opinion: Tunisia has a problem with internalised Islamophobia

2020/04/02 Leave a comment

More the tension between more conservative strains of Islam and more secular Muslims than Islamophobia:

On March 13, the Tunisian government announced emergency measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The measures included closing its sea borders, suspending international flights, shutting cafes from 4pm and completely closing mosques.

It was this last decision that sparked controversy on social media and among religious scholars and reminded many Tunisians of something they have long suspected; a deep-seated Islamophobia that has framed internal Tunisian policies and politics since the country’s independence from French colonial rule in 1956.

While the importance of prevention measures and controlling the spread of the virus is not debatable, the choice to completely close down mosques while only partially closing cafes was met with dismay.

Hicham Grissa, president of Zitouna University in Montfleury, criticised the decision as being “unresponsive” to people’s need for religious and spiritual practices in these times.

Grissa said while the spread of the virus will determine future actions, right now “you should not be talking about prohibiting prayer in mosques, unless the same measures are being taken for cafes and clubs.”

One mosque-goer in Nabeul, where I am from, told me: “I went to pray at dawn and the mosque was closed.

“We are usually only a dozen people at the Fajr prayer in the neighbourhood mosque, and we’re only there for 10 or 15 minutes. I just don’t see how that poses a higher risk than cafes downtown that host hundreds of people throughout the day.”

As schools and universities were closed from March 12, Tunisian youth took to cafes, sitting in confined spaces, drinking coffee and playing card games.

The decision to suspend prayer in mosques was, therefore, perceived by many social media users as the continuation of a state tradition of what they see as internalised Islamophobia, and “problematising” Islam and Islamic practices as the first step in dealing with crises.

This is all reminiscent of another problematic decision illustrating the internalised Islamophobia of the Tunisian state – the niqab ban imposed in July 2019.

After a double suicide bombing in June, Tunisia’s prime minister, Youssef Chahed, issued an order banning the wearing of the Islamic face veil in all state buildings and institutions for “security reasons”. This, despite the fact that the Ministry of Interior denied that the culprit had been wearing a niqab to disguise himself.

Several civil society organisations and politicians considered this to be a repetition of the hijab ban which has been imposed several times in Tunisia’s modern history. Over time, such bans have taken their toll on women’s rights and on freedom of religion, with resulting arrests, imprisonment, suspension from work and even police violence.

In 2019, activists argued that, if security is a concern, the state can take several measures to ensure security without infringing on freedom of religion and banning clothing. For example, female police officers or employees could carry out identity checks or searches at the entrance to public buildings in case of security concerns.

However, consecutive Tunisian governments from 1956, while more lenient today than in the past, have continued to exhibit an internalised Islamophobia that has propagated throughout Tunisia.

In the 1960s, Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first post-independence president, sought to weaken Islamic culture and establish a secular national identity. He closed the historical Islamic Zitouna University and discouraged fasting, personally appearing on TV drinking orange juice during Ramadan and advising Tunisians to do the same.

The Bourguiba administration abolished the system of religious endowments and religious courts, banned groups and political parties with an Islamic focus and officially banned the hijab in 1981, a policy that remained in place until the Tunisian revolution in 2011.

This state-sanctioned anti-hijab sentiment can be traced back to French colonial rule when women were encouraged to remove their veils as a statement of modernity and civilisation. This began in Algeria, but it was this Western notion of “modernity” that Bourguiba later sought to enforce in Tunisia.

This imposition of secular national identity resulted not only in the persecution of large groups of people but also in a growing societal mistrust of certain Islamic practices.

Restrictions on Islamic practices intensified during the Zine El Abidine Ben Ali administration from 1987 to 2011, when the state leveraged the fear of the threat of terrorism to crack down even more on religious freedoms and further entice fear of Islam among its population.

The Ben Ali administration enacted the 2003 anti-terrorism law, for example, which served to further alienate and persecute political opposition and ordinary religious people.

According to reports by organisations such as Amnesty International, between 2,000 and 3,000 people were prosecuted under this law. The law was vague and activities that were deemed to warrant police investigation included praying in mosques and owning Islamic items.

Just like the Bourguiba government before it, the Ben Ali administration established an increasingly authoritarian rule, under the cover of “modernity” and “fighting terrorism”, amid silence from Western allies such as the United States and France.

People who wore the hijab, who went to the mosque regularly or who engaged in Quran studies or recitation were perceived as “too religious”, and as a threat to Tunisian homogeneity and state security.

Documents found by protesters in police stations during the 2010 to 2011 protests showed how informants would keep logs of the numbers of people who went to a specific mosque, who was in the front row, how many women wore the headscarf and even how many women wore the headscarf but with more conservative, loose-fitting dresses.

A classified internal document from the Ministry of the Interior dated 2009, which started circulating on social media a few weeks ago, reads: “I am honoured to let you know that on 18/03/2009, a girl wearing a headscarf was detained [….] after investigation it became clear that she practises her religious duties regularly. She was warned about the necessity to remove the sectarian dress and she showed willingness to do so.” “Sectarian clothing” was the term used by the government to describe the headscarf at that time.

The government’s use of both police and neighbours/colleagues to watch out for each other’s “level of religiousness”, has resulted in these policies being adopted at a societal and individual level.

Despite the political changes brought by the revolution in 2011, these policies seeped into certain domains and became part of the culture.

Women wearing the hijab are still discriminated against. They are prohibited from certain swimming pools for “hygiene reasons” while men with long beards are still perceived as a threat.

After the striking incident of the suspension of a hijab-wearing flight attendant from Tunisair in 2015, the then-Minister of Transport declared that the hijab reduces hearingby 30 percent, putting the lives of passengers in danger.

While the justifications switch from safety, national security and hygiene to health concerns, the Tunisian state continues a decades-long tradition of internalised Islamophobia and remains quick to pursue policies that target Islamic practices first and foremost.

Source: Tunisia has a problem with internalised Islamophobia

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Portugal gives migrants and asylum-seekers full citizenship rights during coronavirus outbreak

2020/04/02 Leave a comment

Of note. Best approach from a public health perspective (not full rights, can’t vote):

Portugal has temporarily given all migrants and asylum seekers full citizenship rights, granting them full access to the country’s healthcare as the outbreak of the novel coronavirusescalates in the country.

The move will “unequivocally guarantee the rights of all the foreign citizens” with applications pending with Portuguese immigration, meaning they are “in a situation of regular permanence in National Territory,” until June 30, the Portuguese Council of Ministers said on Friday.
The Portuguese Council of Ministers explained that the decision was taken to “reduce the risks for public health” of maintaining the current scheduling of appointments at the immigration office, for both the border agents and the migrants and asylum seekers.
The US is swiftly removing migrant children due to new coronavirus restrictions
Portugal declared a State of Emergency on March 18 that came into effect at midnight that day and was due to last for 15 days. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said during a news conference that “democracy won’t be suspended.”
The country was a dictatorship for decades, with democracy being restored in 1974.
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa called the Covid-19 pandemic “a true war,” which would bring true challenges to the country’s “way of life and economy.”
Rebelo de Sousa also praised the behavior of Portuguese citizens, “who have been exemplary in imposing a self-quarantine,” reflecting “a country that has lived through everything.”
Portugal has has 6,408 cases of coronavirus, with 140 deaths and 43 recovered, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

Source: Portugal gives migrants and asylum-seekers full citizenship rights during coronavirus outbreak

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Islamic missionaries of Tablighi Jamaat may be biggest carrier of Covid-19 in South Asia

2020/04/02 Leave a comment

Like many evangelical and proselytizing groups:

In a strange pattern, members of Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic proselytizing group, have been found unrestrainedly preaching in large religious gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic restrictions in several countries in Asia, leading to hundreds of infections.

Every year in February and March, over a million Islamic preachers from around the world visit South Asian and South East Asian countries for a celebration of Islam and proselytization programmes. After the outbreak of novel coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan city of Hubei province of China in December, many countries imposed travel restrictions. However, Tablighi Jamaat went ahead with its pre-planned celebrations, sources in Islamabad said.

On Monday, Pakistani media reported that 36 cases of community transmission among the members of the Tableeghi Jamaat in Hyderabad, Sindh were detected. At least two deaths from the coronavirus were directly linked to Tablighi Jamaat”s gathering in Raiwind.

The cases were reported from Noor Mosque, where around 200 Jamaat members were initially quarantined. Noor Mosque, the second-largest centre of the Jamaat in Sindh, was sealed off after a 19-year-old Chinese-origin member of the preaching group tested positive for Covid-19 on March 27.

They had arrived at Raiwind from Swat and then went to Hyderabad Noor Mosque for Islamic congregation. From there, they went to Sehrish Nagar for preaching of Islamic teachings and are now in Makki Mosque, Pakistan media reported.

Sources in Islamabad said thousands of Muslim preachers from about 80 countries including Palestine and Kyrgyzstan, attended the Tablighi Jamaat meet early March in Sindh. After hundreds tested positive, sources said, the congregation was called off by the government.

In India, in the first week of March, about 250 foreign nationals arrived in Nizamuddin West locality of New Delhi to attend a religious congregation organised by Tablighi Jamaat. The gathering was attended by over 1,700 to 1,800 people from both India and abroad. Many foreign members, traveled to various states for preaching Islam, even as they were on tourist visas.

Nine Indian participants of the congregation have died of the coronavirus infection. Of the nine, six were in Telangana and one each in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and J&K. Among foreign nationals, one has died and 19 others are infected so far.

The Delhi Police by Tuesday afternoon, was able to track 1,830 of these missionaries — 501 from tamil Nadu, 216 from Assam, 156 from Uttar Pradesh, 107 from Madhya Pradesh, 109 from Mahrashtra, 86 from Bihar and 73 from West Bengal among others.

Malaysian media reported that more than half of the country”s known coronavirus cases were traced to a Tablighi Jamaat gathering outside Kuala Lumpur, in late February and early March. The New York Times reported that the Islamic missionaries who participated in the congregation in Malaysia spread the virus to Brunei and Thailand as well.

Founded by Deobandi cleric Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalawi in 1927 in Mewat, India, Tablighi Jamaat grew in prominence in Pakistan under General Zia ul Haq”s Islamization of the country. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif”s father was a prominent Tablighi member and financier.

Tablighi Jamaat rejects modernity and preaches a code of conduct as practised during Prophet Mohammad”s time, on the same lines as Wahhabi-Salafist ideology which many Islamic terror groups follow. The largest group of Islamic proselytizers, Tablighi Jamaat is credited for making Islam one of the fastest growing religions in the world.

Source: Islamic missionaries of Tablighi Jamaat may be biggest carrier of Covid-19 in South Asia

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Corak: Ottawa is struggling to be a just-in-time government

2020/04/01 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Miles Corak and the need to rebalance between policy development and service delivery. The initial idea behind Service Canada was precisely to do just that, having policy being service and citizen-centric rather than stove-piped by department and program. Too risky an approach for government, and most DMs and other senior officials make their name and career based upon their role in policy development rather than service delivery, with the inevitable results of some major screw-ups like the Phoenix pay system.

We shall see how the government manages to deliver all of the COVID-19 measures, as I suspect, like Corak, that they will be judged on that basis. Of course, a few years later, evaluations and audits will highlight some of the accountability and integrity issues that arose with the new and expanded programs rushed out the door (given time being of the essence over full due process and safeguards):

Big government rode into town just in time, but alas, when he jumped off his bronco and reached for his six-gun, it became clear he wasn’t just-in-time government.

What is clear from the COVID-19 crisis is that we should always choose our leaders with one thing in mind: character. Character determines how they will stand up to the unexpected. That’s what matters, and whether it is François Legault, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, John Horgan, Naheed Nenshi, John Tory or Justin Trudeau, Canadians feel they are all passing the test.

Opinion polling shows that strong majorities see their leaders as doing a good job responding to COVID-19. And it’s impressive, their sensibility to consult, their conviction to act. Now, when we need them, they’ve all shown up, just in time.

But we can’t be governed by character alone. Good governance needs an infrastructure that can deliver, and thank goodness Canadians can also count on a professional public service. But at the same time, we fear its muscles can’t flex in real time.

The biggest stumble of the past week was Ottawa’s overreaching ambition in the first draft of Bill C-13 – the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act – an attempt to skirt parliamentary oversight and seize control of taxing and spending for two years. Not immediately tasteful, not in character – and certainly not contributing to the we-are-in-it-together spirit that is crucial for good governance and success.

It was probably driven more by insecurity than partisanship, springing from having to look through the veil of uncertainty that has fallen over Ottawa. Staring into the mirror and seeing no reassuring reflection, Finance Minister Bill Morneau wished for a pot of gold, just in case, you never know, down the road, we may need it.

Insecurity about a fluid situation, and about how quickly programs can be delivered, flows out of clogged government plumbing, a hard constraint on Big Think. For years we’ve neglected, cut, denigrated, and now the public service has a tough time doing just-in-time.

Take, for example, Employment Insurance, that grand social insurance scheme born from the disaster of the Great Depression, intended to offer income support to all in need, to insure against the great social risks we collectively face – risks that would bankrupt private insurers in no time. How is it performing during a collective crisis of the very kind it was intended to address?

It is straining, with computer code written in the 1980s running its servers, processing power and devoted personnel stretched to the limit, service centres now shut down. The public service is doing the best it can with old plumbing.

Ottawa mandarins often muse about an “all of government approach,” a busting across the silos of different ministries to address all aspects of a policy challenge. But the biggest silos of all have never been breached, those between policy development and service delivery. And now the delivery plumbing is conditioning the choices that Big Thinkers can make.

What is also clear from the COVID-19 crisis is that we should always be investing and innovating in public service delivery, something that’s easy to ignore in normal times.

There is no doubt that the income-support programs the federal government moved quickly out of the drawing room and into legislation last week were designed with an eye, not simply to whether they were big enough, but to how they would be delivered. The cheques won’t be in the mail for weeks. In a time of pandemic, that’s a lifetime.

Our governments have to think big, but they can only implement incrementally, a couple of quick steps forward, one back. Events are moving too fast, capacity is too limited, for Canadians to expect otherwise, even if what they really need is both big and just-in-time government.

When Mr. Trudeau’s team first came to power, they were enamoured with the idea of governing with data. Measure outcomes, set targets, recalibrate in the face of results and move forward with a “there’s more to do” attitude. But lags in information and delivery make all that fall short.

There is always a big gap between intention and result, even more so in times of crisis, and that gap has to be filled with the trust that character instills in partners and citizens.

Trust gives us the assurance that the cheque is indeed in the mail, and character, now more than ever, needs to deliver. It can’t stumble too many times before trust rides away.

Source: Ottawa is struggling to be a just-in-time government: Miles Corak

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Their work is keeping Canada safe. But they earn a fraction of the national average

2020/04/01 Leave a comment

Another example of the COVID-19 class divide (‘White-Collar Quarantine’ Over Virus Spotlights Class Divide):

They’re the workers keeping Canada safe and healthy in the midst of a pandemic. But some — like cashiers — bring home just around a quarter of the average Canadian’s annual income.

From food processing to warehouses to delivery services, the workers deemed essential to maintaining the country’s vital supply chain are significantly more likely to be low-wage and racialized compared to the rest of the labour market, according to new statistics from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In some cases, they are bringing home less than half of the average Canadian worker a year.

“In the midst of a pandemic, many of us are going back to the essentials. We need to put food on the table for ourselves and our families. We need to have the medications that we require. And as there have been many new reports on, we all need toilet paper,” said Sheila Block, a senior economist with the CCPA.

“To keep us in these essentials, we rely on these workers whose work has often been undervalued and who are often marginalized.”

The CCPA study relied on 2016 census data, which showed average annual earnings across the entire Canadian economy stood at around $49,500. Analyzing the earnings of workers in essential jobs by both industry and occupation, Block’s research found that grocery store workers — a category that includes managers — earned on average half of that. Cashiers took home just 26 per cent.

Light duty cleaners fared poorly too, earning just over 40 per cent of the national average. Couriers and door-to-door messengers brought home just over 50 per cent.

Racialized workers make up 21 per cent of the total workforce in Canada, but they were overrepresented in sectors deemed essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, the CCPA’s analysis found.

In warehousing and storage, for example, racialized workers made up 37 per cent of the workforce; in food manufacturing, that figure was 30 per cent.

Kulwinder Singh, a truck driver based out of Mississauga, says he is working 10 to 12 hour days bringing goods to Shoppers Drug Mart, Sobeys, and the LCBO. He says the deliveries he makes every day are “essential” — but he’s afraid to come home at the end of his shift to his wife and daughter.

“It’s very risky,” he said.

As an independent owner/operator, he is technically self-employed — meaning he has no health insurance, no medical leave, and no access to protective equipment except for what he purchases himself.

“Everything I’m paying for out of my own pocket,” he said, adding that some companies will not let him use washroom facilities to wash his hands.

The CCPA study notes that many of the sectors deemed essential have low unionization rates; in Canada, less than 8 per cent of retail workers have a union.

Many essential workers — including truck drivers and most gig workers — are classified as independent contractors, meaning they struggle to join unions and or access basic employment protections.

“There is a real divide between the people who can self isolate and who can work from home and the people that we rely on to make that possible,” said Block.

“We have to be particularly concerned that we are relying on industries that have a history of rights violations in this time. These rights violations have historically been threatening to workers’ health for sure and sometimes lives,” she added.

“Now we are actually putting the health of the public at risk if we don’t have good enforcement of health standards.”

Some companies, including Amazon and Loblaws, are offering employees a $2 an hour premium for working during the COVID-19 pandemic — measures Block called a “welcome but insufficient response.”

“We have to really look at governments to respond in a longer term manner by increasing minimum wages, easing access to unionization, and increasing both protections and enforcement under minimum employment standards,” she added.

Last week, federal labour minister Filomena Tassi said experts at the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety were drawing up best health and safety practices to share with provincial labour ministries for at-risk workplaces such as trucking and food processing.

Enacting 21 emergency leave days during the pandemic — plus seven permanent paid sick days — is also a critical step at the provincial level, Block said.

Source: Star ExclusiveTheir work is keeping Canada safe. But they earn a fraction of the national average A new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows low-wage and racialized workers are overrepresented in jobs deemed essential during COVID-19 pandemic.

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Some U.S. religious leaders flout COVID-19 restrictions

2020/04/01 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, not that surprising among some evangelical groups:

School buses delivered hundreds of church-goers to Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Sunday, defying physical-distancing guidelines and the state governor’s direct order banning gatherings of more than 10 people.

Religious service, steeped as it is in community, is one area where people are finding it hard to avoid gathering amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And while some churches in the U.S. are finding innovative ways to continue services, such as conducting them virtually, a few are still gathering in person, potentially exposing many people to the novel coronavirus.

South Korea has experience with the danger of public worship services: More than half of the country’s coronavirus cases were linked to the branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu.

But Life Tabernacle is flouting officials’ pleas in a state where, as of Monday afternoon, more than 4,000 have been infected and 185 have died, according to an ongoing tally by Johns Hopkins University.Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, on March 22 ordered a lockdown of all but essential services, which did not include religious worship services, and prohibited gatherings of more than 10 people.The father of Life Tabernacle’s pastor Tony Spell says the church is an essential service.

“The church is not a non-essential. The church is the most essential thing in all the world,” Timothy Spell told NBC News outside the church Sunday.

“No one is telling anybody you got to come to church. We tell people not to come if you have a fever, if you have any symptoms, if you’re aged, if you’re elderly, don’t come.”

Florida pastor arrested

That’s got local residents like Ryan Tregre fuming.

“If they really worried about just spreading the [spiritual] word, they would go on Facebook Live or YouTube or some kind of way to spread the word where they would not have to go and meet in places and spread this virus that’s killing people every day,” he told NBC.Life Tabernacle wasn’t the only church to defy public orders and open their doors to parishioners on Sunday.A video posted to the Facebook page of the River at Tampa Bay Pentecostal church in Florida on Sunday shows hundreds of parishioners standing side by side.

Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne has said he would close services only for the Rapture and that shutdowns were for “pansies.” He reportedly held two services Sunday, flying in the face of physical-distancing guidelines and attracting the attention of the local sheriff’s department.

Florida has not ordered a statewide shutdown of non-essential businesses, but on Monday the Hillsborough County Sheriff charged him with unlawful assembly and a violation of health emergency rules.

Canadian clergy urge compliance

It’s a different story in Canada.

A statement released by religious leaders across Canada on Monday urged people to follow public health officials’ guidelines.David Guretzki, vice-president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada said there were no evangelical services that he knew of this past weekend and noted his group has signed on to statement.Still, members of all faiths are grappling with how to continue practicing.

Some mosques in the Toronto have stayed open after Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a province-wide state of emergency March 17.

In Montreal, police were called to a synagogue after receiving a report that someone saw Hasidic men going inside, CTV reported.

Social distancing measures like working from home, school closures and cancelling sporting events could lead to a drop of new infections of coronavirus. 1:54

“Some wonder if this is too much, too fast, but in general the approach has been that, no, the best approach is just to shut down,” said Daniel Cere, an associate professor of Religion, Law and Public Policy at McGill University in Montreal.

“My impression is that on the whole, in Canada, the religious communities have fallen in line with the government on this.”

‘God will take care of your body’

One religious scholar in the U.S. attributes the defiance to a particular type of Christian teaching.

“There is this strand in modern American Christianity that has rejected the norms of science and medicine and that thinks health can be achieved through discourse with the divine, holy spirit,” said Bradley Storin, director of religious studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

The philosophy is, he says: “If you are a good and true believer then God will take care of your body.”

He’s noted the church busing people in for services and passing out “anointed” handkerchiefs to people for protection.

“What we see pastor Spell doing is giving way to this ancient tradition of linking faith in God with healing in the body,” said Storin.

“It feels a little violative of the social compact that we have right now,” said Storin.

Source: Some U.S. religious leaders flout COVID-19 restrictions

And meanwhile, in Egypt:

For 55-year-old Coptic housewife Magda Mounir, knowing she can no longer pray at her local church is worse than all the precautions she has had to endure to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in Egypt.

“The church is our haven; it is where we go to find moral support,” Mounir told Al-Monitor a few days after Egypt closed all places of worship, including mosques and churches.

The Ministry of Religious Endowments, more often referred to as the Awqaf Ministry, and Egypt’s Orthodox Christian Church both released statements March 21 announcing they would temporarily halt communal prayers.

Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, to which the majority of Egypt’s Christians belong, said it would lock down churches and suspend masses for at least two weeks.

In multicultural and multifaith Egypt, Christians make up roughly 10% of the country’s 100 million-plus population, with the vast majority of Christians in Egypt belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church.

“The holy week is coming, and we used to spend these days in the church. It seems this year we will not be able to do so for the first time in our lives,” Mounir said tearfully, referring to the Easter holiday on April 19.

Sandy Emad, a 27-year-old engineer, supports the ministry’s decision. “I support the decision [to close places of worship], and I can’t understand the anger of some people,” she told Al-Monitor. “We can’t kill ourselves and our families and say God will rescue us. God gave us brains to use and protect ourselves from any harm. This is what he ordered us to do,” Emad said.

“This decision is considered the most difficult decision the church has made in decades,” admitted Bishop Boules Boutros of St. Michael Church in the district of Heliopolis in Cairo. “However, it is necessary for slowing down the rapid spread of the coronavirus. God does not only exist in churches; we all have him in our hearts and can pray to him to heal the whole world,” Boutros said.

Boutros said he was not sure just how long the churches would remain closed, but it was unlikely they would be opened in time for Easter mass.

Egypt’s Awqaf Ministry decided to suspend congressional Friday prayers in all mosques nationwide until further notice. The suspension came after controversy erupted over Muslim worshippers insisting on flocking to mosques for Friday’s noon prayers despite a religious edict allowing people to pray at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“If it was necessary to shut mosques because of the crowd, why not close down the underground, which carries thousands every day?” Mohamed Abdel Monem, a 45-year-old Arabic teacher, said to Al-Monitor. “Now is the time most people need to resort to God and pray. Praying to God is our only way out of this ordeal,” he added.

But not everyone shares his views. Hassan Khaled, a 28-year-old graphic designer, agreed with the decision to shutter holy places. “Given that people insisted on going to the mosques despite the call to stay home, it is a wise decision to close down mosques,” he said. “If only one person is carrying the virus, thousands will be infected, and then they go home to infect their families,” Khaled added.

Khaled said while it is difficult to be deprived of places of worship during times like these, he also understands it is necessary for public health. “I imagine people will resort to praying in open areas if [prayers in mosques] continue to be banned,” he said.

Religion plays a major role in Egyptian society, so statements by religious authorities carry major weight on keeping people at home. Dar al-Ifta, Egypt’s body responsible for issuing religious edicts, issued March 24 a brief statement warning that “any call for people to gather in the streets in any pretext or under a slogan” would be sinful as it would jeopardize public health.

The statement stressed it is a “duty” under Sharia law to comply with official decisions to “protect people from epidemics and diseases.”

The Awqaf Ministry also modified the adhan — the Muslim call to prayer — to include warnings to stay at home and take precautions on preventing the spread of the coronavirus. The new adhan, broadcast on radio and television a day after religious sites were closed, urges believers to take “the utmost caution in adhering to preventive and precautionary” measures.

Islamic scholars say the special adhan was previously used during natural disasters and pandemics as well as in earlier times in Islam’s history when people were instructed to perform prayers at home.

Meanwhile, Minister of Endowments Muhammad Mukhtar Juma suspended on March 22 an imam and a preacher in Beni Suef governorate, south of Cairo, for violating the ministry’s order to close mosques. The two men were banned from giving sermons from the pulpit for a period of three months.

“Preserving life is a main aspect of Islam, and the faithful should comply with preventive measures taken by the government,” Sheikh Mohammed Mehana of Al-Azhar University told Al-Monitor.

“The images of empty mosques would break any Muslim’s heart, but the priority now is to save people’s lives. This is what Allah asked us to do, and the rest is his will,” said Mehana, adding he hoped the crisis would end before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which starts on April 24 and goes until May 23, and that everybody would reunite for Taraweeh, the additional prayers carried out at night during Ramadan.

The Ministry of Health has reported some 609 cases of coronavirus and 40 deaths in Egypt so far.

A 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew has been imposed countrywide as part of strict measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly said March 23.

All masses as well as public and private transport are suspended during the curfew.

Source: Egypt Egyptians feel demoralized by empty churches, mosques

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The Ancient Text Where Jesus Prayed to a Greek God

2020/04/01 Leave a comment

The equivalent of the “satanic verses” of the Quran and the Rushdie novel of the same name?

The crucifixion was a difficult thing for followers of Jesus to wrap their heads around. How could the Messiah die such a humiliating death? According to the New Testament, in the waning moments of his life, Jesus cries out, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” In the Gospel of Mark these are Jesus’ final words. This cry of desolation, as it is known, is painful to read and theologically difficult to manage. But one important ancient copy of Mark has a different take entirely: in the oldest surviving Latin gospel Jesus seems to call out to the sun-god Helios instead.

The book in question, Codex Bobiensis, currently lives at the Turin National Library. It’s easy to overlook; the swarms of religious pilgrims who flood Turin each year prefer to visit the city’s considerably more famous Shroud instead. It’s one of thousands of texts of the New Testament—all of which differ from one another in small and significant ways—that scholars use to try to chart the history of the text of the New Testament.

Though some manuscripts are ornate or difficult to read, Bobiensis is refreshingly clear; the letters are even and, in as much as it is easy for anyone to read ancient manuscripts, it is comparably straightforward to follow. This late fourth or early fifth century book (or ‘codex’ as scholars call it) had come to Italy from North Africa by mistake, when Irish monks mistakenly associated it with the missionary St. Columba and placed it in a monastery in Bobbio. Though the book itself is incomplete and preserves only portions of Matthew and Mark, there’s enough material in it that scholars can draw some conclusions about its age and contents. Some date the version of the gospels in the book as early as the third century and connect it to the Bible used by Cyprian, a famous mid-third century Carthaginian bishop and martyr. Given that there are no first century manuscripts of the New Testament and there are only a few fragments that have survived from the second, it’s a very important text and earlier than the majority of Greek manuscripts.

Despite its ties to what someone who might figuratively be called an early Christian celebrity, most people and even most New Testament scholars don’t know much about this early Christian text. This is in part because it’s in Latin rather than Greek, but also because Bobiensis has some very peculiar, even shocking, features. In the portions of the gospels that have been preserved, sections of the story are missing. In some places the manuscript uses non-standard abbreviations for the sacred names of ‘God,’ ‘Lord,’ and ‘Jesus.’ Where Christian manuscripts would normally have IHS (derived from the Greek for Jesus) this manuscript has it spelled differently. There is even a mistake in the Lord’s Prayer (more on that later). But the most striking and, you might say, theologically troubling places are those instances in the life of Jesus where the copyist has substituted the name of pagan deities “Helion” (god of the sun) and Jove (Zeus) instead of the words for “Eloi” (the Aramaic for “my God”) and “sheep.” Many scribes make mistakes when transcribing and copying texts—our best guess for professional copyists is about one per page—but these kinds of errors are difficult to explain.

What kind of Christian doesn’t know the Lord’s Prayer? A non-Christian, or at least that’s the conclusion to which many scholars have come in the past. No Christian or Christian-employed slave copyist would have erratically omitted parts of the Jesus story. The book must have come from a different kind of source, most likely a late fourth-century North African bookshop. But book manufacturing, like any kind of luxury goods industry, was an expensive business. Parchment was costly and literary slaves were expensive. It’s easy to imagine how a pragmatic bookseller, who was painfully aware of his bottom line, instructed his copyist, who was clearly no Christian either, to leave certain portions out. The less parchment that was used in the production of this book, the greater the bookseller’s margins and potential profit would be.

But now scholar Matthew Larsen, of Princeton University and the author of Gospels Before the Book, has another explanation for Bobiensis’ peculiarity. Larsen told the Daily Beast that in a fourth or fifth century North African context, Jesus’ address to Helios isn’t as strange as it at first seems. During a visit to a late fourth century baptistery last October, Larsen “saw that in the very place where people would have stood while being baptized, there was not a quotation from scripture but a clear allusion to Virgilian poetry.” You can imagine, argues Larsen, “a community [like this one] using this type of gospel, with its strange readings about Helios and Jove.”

As early as the second century, added Larsen “we have evidence of Christians thinking about Jesus’ death and resurrection in association with the setting and rising of the sun, and in the third and fourth century we see a blending of imagery of Christ and Sol Invictus.” The person who made Bobiensis would not have been alone in incorporating sun-god imagery into Christianity, he would just be the first to integrate that idea into scripture itself. Of course, for modern Christians, the idea that Jesus (or any early Christians) believed in and spoke to Helios is deeply problematic. It’s one thing to say that Christians utilized pagan iconography in their artistic depictions of Jesus (which they did), but the idea that Jesus called out to Helios in his dying breath is considerably more challenging. Did Jesus believe in Helios? Almost certainly not, but it might be the case that some ancient Christians did and transposed their beliefs onto him.

Brent Nongbri, a professor at the Norwegian School of Theology, said that some differences in Bobiensis are just accidents, “But in other cases, it’s pretty certain that either the copyist of Bobiensis or one of its ancestor manuscripts intentionally changed the text to clarify its meaning.” For instance, later in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:13), the copyist of Bobiensis writes “Don’t allow us to be led into temptation” rather than the standard “Lead us not into temptation.” Interestingly, this is the same kind of clarification about the origins of temptation that Pope Francis tried to implement last year. Nongbri told me, “Maybe someone was thinking along the same lines as Pope Francis and absolving God of the act of leading humans into temptation.”

Larsen pointed out that while diverging versions of the Lord’s Prayer seem almost blasphemous to us today, there were at least three other versions of the Lord’s Prayer used in the ancient world, so perhaps this version is not so strange. This manuscript is evidence of the diversity of thought and practice among early Christians. Larsen likened it to modern sports rituals: “Maybe the state of the Lord’s Prayer in Late Antiquity was a bit more like when my football team used to say the Lord’s Prayer together before a game and at two or three lines of the prayer the team would break unison and diverge into different versions of the prayer practiced by the communities we had all come from.” If that’s the case, then Pope Francis should be delighted to have an important early manuscript on his side.

Source: The Ancient Text Where Jesus Prayed to a Greek God

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