In Amazon’s Bookstore, No Second Chances for the Third Reich The retailer once said it would sell “the good, the bad and the ugly.” Now it has banished objectionable volumes — and agreed to erasing the swastikas from a photo book about a Nazi takeover.

2020/02/11 Leave a comment

Some transparency on their criteria needed, given the size and impact of Amazon. Strikes me as over-reach with the respect to the scrubbing of Nazi symbols in the “The Man in the High Castle” tribute book given that they are so central to the original novel and television series.

Other examples more clear cut:

Amazon is quietly canceling its Nazis.

Over the past 18 months, the retailer has removed two books by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as several titles by George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. Amazon has also prohibited volumes like “The Ruling Elite: The Zionist Seizure of World Power” and “A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind.”

While few may lament the disappearance of these hate-filled books, the increasing number of banished titles has set off concern among some of the third-party booksellers who stock Amazon’s vast virtual shelves. Amazon, they said, seems to operate under vague or nonexistent rules.

“Amazon reserves the right to determine whether content provides an acceptable experience,” said one recent removal notice that the company sent to a bookseller.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been roiled in recent years by controversies that pit freedom of speech against offensive content. Amazon has largely escaped this debate. But with millions of third-party merchants supplying much of what Amazon sells to tens of millions of customers, that ability to maintain a low profile may be reaching its end.

Amazon began as a bookstore and, even as it has moved on to many more lucrative projects, now controls at least two-thirds of the market for new, used and digital volumes in the United States. With its profusion of reader reviews, ability to cut prices without worrying about profitability and its control of the electronic book landscape, to name only three advantages, Amazon has immense power to shape what information people are consuming.

Yet the retailer declines to provide a list of prohibited books, say how they were chosen or even discuss the topic. “Booksellers make decisions every day about what selection of books they choose to offer,” it said in a statement.

Gregory Delzer is a Tennessee bookseller whose Amazon listings account for about a third of his sales. “They don’t tell us the rules and don’t let us have a say,” he said. “But they squeeze us for every penny.”

Nazi-themed items regularly crop up on Amazon, where they are removed under its policy on “offensive and controversial materials.” Those rules pointedly do not apply to books. Amazon merely says that books for sale on its site “should provide a positive customer experience.”

Now Amazon is becoming increasingly proactive in removing Nazi material. It even allowed its own Nazi-themed show, “The Man in the High Castle,” to be cleaned up for a tribute book. The series, which began in 2015 and concluded in November, is set in a parallel United States where the Germans and the Japanese won World War II.

“High Castle” is lavish in its use of National Socialist symbols. “There’s nothing that there isn’t a swastika on,” the actor Rufus Sewell, who played the Nazi antihero, said in a promotional video. The series promoted its portrayal of “the controlling aesthetic of Hitler” in its nomination for a special effects Emmy.

But in “The Man in the High Castle: Creating the Alt World,” published in November by Titan Books, the swastikas and eagle-and-crosses were digitally erased from Mr. Sewell’s uniform, from Times Square and the Statue of Liberty, even from scenes set in Berlin. A note on the copyright page said, “We respect, in this book, the legal and ethical responsibility of not perpetuating the distribution of the symbols of oppression.”

An Amazon spokeswoman said, “We did not make editorial edits to the images.” Titan, which wanted to market the book in Germany, where laws on Nazi imagery are strict, said Amazon approved the changes.

Some fans of the series said they found reading the book as dystopian as the show itself. “If you can’t even have swastikas shown in a book about Nazis taking over America, please do not make books ever again,” wrote one reviewer.

When Amazon drops a book from its store, it is as if it never existed. A recent Google search for David Duke’s “My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding” on Amazon yielded a link to a picture of an Amazon employee’s dog. Amazon sellers call these dead ends “dog pages.”

Some booksellers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said they had no problem with the retailer converting as many offensive books to dog pages as it wished.

Mr. Delzer, the proprietor of a secondhand store in Nashville called Defunct Books, has a different view. “If Amazon executives are so proud of their moral high ground, they should issue memos about which books they are banning instead of keeping sellers and readers in the dark,” he said.

The bookseller said he only knew Amazon was forbidding titles because he received an automated message from the retailer, saying two used books he sold seven years ago — “Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star: Eye-Opening Revelations and Forbidden Knowledge About Israel, the Jews, Zionism, and the Rothschilds” and “Toward the White Republic” — were now proscribed.

“This product was identified as one that is prohibited for sale,” Amazon told him. Failure to immediately delete listings for these books, the company said, “may result in the deactivation of your selling account” and possible confiscation of any money he was owed.

Amazon said it didn’t really mean any of that about “Toward the White Republic.” “We did not intend to imply the book itself could not be listed for sale,” it said in a statement.

As for “Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star,” which is widely available from other online booksellers, Amazon said the book did not comply with its “content guidelines.”

Mr. Delzer said the email, which he posted on an Amazon forum,was clear and Amazon was dissembling about “White Republic.”

A bookseller since 2001, Mr. Delzer said he does not condone white supremacist material but believes people should be free to read what they want. The biggest seller in his shop at the moment is by Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist.

“Amazon wants its customers to trust Amazon,” he said. “The place that sells books doesn’t want much critical thinking.”

In 1998, when Amazon was an ambitious start-up, its founder, Jeff Bezos, said, “We want to make every book available — the good, the bad and the ugly.” Customers reviews, he said, would “let truth loose.”

That expansive philosophy narrowed over the years. In 2010, when the news media discovered the self-published “Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure” on the site, the retailer’s first reaction was to hang tough.

“Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable,” it said at the time.

That resolution wilted in the face of a barrage of hostility and boycott threats. Amazon pulled the book.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said Amazon has the same First Amendment right as any retailer.

“Amazon has a First Amendment right to pick and choose the materials they offer,” she said. “Despite its size, it does not have to sponsor speech it finds unacceptable.”

Physical bookstores rarely stock supremacist literature, for no other reason than it would alienate many customers. The question is whether Amazon, because of its size and power, should behave differently.

“I’m not going to argue for the wider distribution of Nazi material,” said Danny Caine of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kan., who is the author of a critical pamphlet, “How to Resist Amazon and Why.” “But I still don’t trust Amazon to be the arbiters of free speech. What if Amazon decided to pull books representing a less despicable political viewpoint? Or books critical of Amazon’s practices?”

Amazon’s newfound zeal to remove “the ugly” extends beyond the Nazis. The order page for the e-book of The Nation of Islam’s “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” stated last week, “This title not currently available for purchase.”

“The Man in the High Castle” was based on a 1962 novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick, whose stories are often about the slippery nature of reality and how it will be controlled in the future by governments and corporations. One character in the streaming series was Mr. Rockwell, the American Nazi Party founder.

In photos in “Creating the Alt World,” the tribute book, the swastika around Mr. Rockwell’s neck was removed. The real life Mr. Rockwell has been largely removed from Amazon’s bookstore as well.

After a complaint by a member of Congress in 2018, a children’s book that Mr. Rockwell wrote disappeared from Amazon. So did his book “White Power.” Other Rockwell material, like The Stormtrooper Magazine, is described as “currently unavailable.”

Some sellers circumvent the blocks by listing titles with a word or two changed, other booksellers said. One seller said he recently received a message from Amazon that several titles by Savitri Devi, also known as “Hitler’s Priestess,” were forbidden. But they are now on the site. And a copy of “Toward the White Republic” recently popped up on Amazon, for $973 plus postage.

There is still an abundance of other Nazi material available on Amazon, much of it with favorable reviews. There is the “SS Leadership Guide,” many editions of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and Joseph Goebbels’s “Nature and Form of National Socialism,” to name just a few.

That only underlines how hard it can be to tell exactly what Amazon’s rules are. The confusion is reinforced by AbeBooks, the biggest secondhand book platform outside of Amazon itself.

Some of the books dropped from Amazon are available on Abe. Recently, there were 18 copies of Mr. Duke’s books on Abe, at prices up to $150. Amazon, which owns Abe, declined to comment.

Source: In Amazon’s Bookstore, No Second Chances for the Third ReichThe retailer once said it would sell “the good, the bad and the ugly.” Now it has banished objectionable volumes — and agreed to erasing the swastikas from a photo book about a Nazi takeover.By David Streitfeld

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

ICE now uses cellphone location data to help arrest immigrants

2020/02/11 Leave a comment

Reminder of the risks of location tracking (convenience versus privacy). Wonder whether CBSA is doing the same:

Companies that sell your cellphone location data to marketers are also selling that information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the government body known for detaining children in cages. According to a new report by the Wall Street Journal, ICE and its affiliated organizations at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been using location information for “millions” of cellphones bought from marketers to track down and arrest undocumented immigrants at the US-Mexico border.

The effort seems to be massive and legal. And as WSJ points out, “The federal government’s use of such data for law enforcement purposes hasn’t previously been reported.”

Experts told the Journal that these are the “largest known troves of bulk data being deployed by law enforcement in the US.” Venntel, a company that licenses location data and is affiliated with the mobile ad company Gravy Analytics, has received $250,000 in contracts in the past few years from DHS, which operates ICE. Public records show that Venntel has also received a contract from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

“This shows the overlap of immigrant rights and data privacy rights,” Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Recode. “Our society has failed to protect consumers from companies that harvest and monetize their personal information, including their sensitive location data. Now, reportedly, the federal government has purchased access to that data, and is using it to locate and deport immigrants.”

He added, “This is one more reason why we need strong consumer data privacy laws.”

Homeland Security officials wouldn’t tell the WSJ exactly how it leverages location data. It’s possible that the agency can use the information to see where people are crossing the border — for instance, in locations outside of regulated entry ports — and plan detention efforts accordingly. Documents reviewed by the Journal “make oblique references to such data being used to track, among other things, tunnels along the border.” The use of data does not sound dissimilar to certain marketing strategies. Advertisers can use anonymized geolocation data from cellphones to target people when they visit, say, a McDonald’s location.

As Recode has previously reported, DHS has stated that its organizations acquire “commercially available location data” from “third-party data providers” to “detect the presence of individuals in areas between Ports of Entry where such a presence is indicative of potential illicit or illegal activity.”

A 2018 Supreme Court case determined that cellphone location data is protected and that law enforcement needs warrants to collect it. As the Journal reports, however:

The federal government has essentially found a workaround by purchasing location data used by marketing firms rather than going to court on a case-by-case basis. Because location data is available through numerous commercial ad exchanges, government lawyers have approved the programs and concluded that the Carpenter ruling doesn’t apply.

The data they’re using doesn’t include personally identifiable information like a user’s name, but rather an anonymized alphanumeric ID. Still, as a New York Times investigation into this type of data showed late last year, it’s pretty easy to figure out who someone is based solely on their location. If a person spends every night at a certain location and working hours on weekdays at another location, for example, it’s relatively straightforward to determine where that person lives and works. Using those two bits of information, only minor internet sleuthing is necessary to figure out who that person is, not to mention loads of other info about them.

“Even though they say it’s anonymous, when compiling different datasets together it gives you a very detailed picture of who you are, better than even you have,” Dragana Kaurin, a research fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, told Recode.

“This data can be used to discriminate against people by race, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation or class,” she added, giving the example of how you could figure out someone is, say, Muslim based on their shopping at Halal markets or visiting mosques.

And as we’ve said before, free software like the weather or gaming app on your phone is never free. It’s common for free software and services — anything from antivirus software to your weather or gaming app — to sell your personal information, including your location, to data brokers that can then sell it to other entities and even law enforcement. In other words, free software can come at a significant cost to your privacy. The terms of the exchange are embedded deep in the privacy policies we never read.

This is no longer a matter of creepy ads following you around the internet. It could be law enforcement, too.

Source: ICE now uses cellphone location data to help arrest immigrants

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Rulings spark hope for Egyptian Copts fighting Islamic estate law

2020/02/11 Leave a comment

 Some apparent progress:

  • Egyptian courts have largely applied Islamic inheritance laws to both Muslims and the Coptic Christian minority

  • But Coptic Orthodox customs call for gender equality in inheritance matters

CAIRO: Egyptian Copt Amal Hanna says she is determined to fight the long-standing application of Islamic inheritance laws to Christians, as recent court victories embolden Coptic women.For decades, Egyptian courts have largely applied Islamic inheritance laws — which mostly allocate a bigger share of inheritances to men than to women — to both Muslims and the country’s significant Coptic Christian minority.But Coptic Orthodox customs call for gender equality in inheritance matters.
Hanna has twice been faced with the unbalanced division of family estates.
The first was more than 20 years ago, when a court granted her brother double her share of their parents’ property.
Then, after her aunt died last year, another court awarded the entire inheritance to Hanna’s brother.
“I was dumbstruck,” she said. “It really upset me, especially as my family raised us — me and my brother — as equals.”
Hanna has appealed against the ruling.
But Christian women’s hopes were rekindled late last year after Coptic lawyer Hoda Nasrallah and her brothers were granted an equal share of their father’s inheritance.
The November ruling by a Cairo family court took into account a constitutional article allowing Christian principles to be the basis of rulings on the minority’s personal status affairs.
Nasrallah’s rare victory generated a buzz across Egypt, but it was not the first of its kind.
In 2016, a Christian woman won a legal dispute with her brother, obtaining equal inheritance.
Coptic Christians have long complained of discrimination and underrepresentation in Egypt.
They are the largest non-Muslim religious minority in the Middle East, and account for 10-15 percent of Egypt’s predominantly Sunni Muslim population of 100 million.
They have also been the target of Islamist militant attacks that have left more than 100 dead since December 2016.
Elizabeth Monier, an expert on Coptic affairs at the University of Cambridge, said applying Christian inheritance rules would meet resistance from within the legal system.
Their application “has had to overcome resistance from entrenched practices and norms, both in the judiciary and society,” she said.
Though Nasrallah had already agreed with her brothers to split the estate equally, it took her around a year to have a court rule in her favor.
She said she pursued the case in order to set a legal precedent for other Christian women.
“My fight was about ensuring that the constitution is applied,” Nasrallah said.
“Many judges are against applying Christian norms,” she added. “It can be even more challenging when the heirs are in disagreement.”
Hanna also criticized a lack of legislation forcing judges to apply Christian rules.
In building her case, she said she invoked the constitution and used the 2016 ruling as precedent.
Hanna said she feared her appeal would be rejected, but would keep on challenging the decision.
“I will even take it to the constitutional court if I have to,” she said.
Lawyers say the lack of a personal status law for Christians is partly to blame for courts’ resistance.
“Coptic males sometimes push for Islamic laws to be applied since it’s in their interest,” lawyer Atef Nazmy said. “It is vital that a personal status law for Christians be created to regulate these issues.”
Christian denominations have for years been locked in talks over a unified personal status law.
They have yet to reach agreement or present a bill to parliament.
Nazmy said issues like divorce were at the core of the divisions.
Egypt’s strict Coptic Church applies rigid rules to divorce, granting it only in cases of adultery or conversion to other faiths.
Monier said courts might also resist granting Christian women equal inheritance because they fear Muslim women would seek the same rights.
In 2018, then Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi sparked controversy across the Islamic world by proposing a bill on equal inheritance for Muslim women.
The move drew praise from secularists and women’s rights activists across the region, but stern rebuke from Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s most prestigious educational institution.
Despite the resistance, Monier remains optimistic.
“That a Coptic woman has taken her case to court and won suggests there is some progress being made,” she said.
“This is another step that is part of the journey toward greater gender equality.”

Source: Rulings spark hope for Egyptian Copts fighting Islamic estate law

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

The End of the (Roxham) Road: Leuprecht on “Seeking coherence on Canada’s border migration compact” and some fundamental flaws

2020/02/11 Leave a comment

Reading Christian Leuprecht’s recent above study for MLI one statement caught my eye in particular, his assertion that:

“…. the timing and implementation of actual changes in regulations initiated by President Trump, which have expanded the remit of migrants who are now at risk of deportation, appear to have had little effect on the flow of irregular migrants crossing into Canada.

This study is skeptical of Trump as the arsonist: his policies are merely an accelerant on a slow-burning fire. A series of factors had affected migration from the United States to Canada prior to the 2016 US presidential election. However politically expedient, misidentifying Trump as a causal rather than an intervening variable is problematic insofar as it leads to a misinformed prescription, such as simply waiting out the current US presidential administration in the mis- guided belief that Trump and his policies are merely an aberration.”

As evidence, he cites the study by Craig Damian Smith, Changing U.S. Policy and Safe-Third Country “Loophole” Drive Irregular Migration to Canada, which states the contrary:

“The Trump administration’s decision not to extend a long-standing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for some 46,000 Haitians was the catalyst for the drastic increase in asylum claims in Canada in 2017. In April 2017, just 140 Haitians crossed into Canada at Roxham Road. The following month, the number increased to 1,355, and to 3,505 that June. Roughly half of the 6,500 Haitians who arrived during the April 2017 – June 2019 period examined, were U.S. residents, with the rest arriving from Haiti and third countries, particularly Brazil. Thus an announced U.S. policy change resulted in roughly 7.5 percent of all Haitians in the United States with TPS choosing Canada rather than risking deportation, moving to a third country, or remaining unauthorized in the United States.”

The various other measures, that Leuprecht cites as pre-Trump reasons for the spike (“electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) for visa-exempt nationals, cracked down on human traffickers, used enhanced technology to reduce fake passports, and improved intelligence sharing on at-risk travellers”) are more germane to the overall influx of irregular arrivals rather than the almost quadrupling that occurred between June and July 2017 (RCMP interceptions) and which have since stabilized as per the chart below (“the new normal”):

The following chart looks at overall inland claims (regular and irregular), again highlighting the post-Trump impact:

A marked increase in irregular border crossers, especially outside of official ports of entry, has put Canada’s immigration and refugee system under scrutiny and fuelled an emotionally charged debate with important policy implications for Ottawa, the provinces, and Canada-US relations: Who should qualify for asylum, or refugee protection, under domestic and international law? Proponents defend migrants’ unequivocal legal entitlement to lodge a claim as a refugee in Canada; critics deem these irregular crossings to be an end-run around Canada’s refugee system by breaking – or at least abusing – the law.

In an immigrant country with a checkered history of immigration policy, to champion the underdog migrant who actually makes it to Canada is par for the course. However, this lenient attitude has effectively turned irregular migration into a back door to Canada: A disproportion- ate number of refugee claims by irregular migrants turn out to be unfounded yet few rejected claimants ever end up being deported.

A disproportionate number of refugee claims by irregular migrants turns out to be unfounded.

On one hand, irregular migration is a function of a complex interplay of domestic, bilateral, and international factors. On the other hand, the Canadian dislike for US President Donald Trump has given rise to a narrative that attributes the surge in irregular migration to the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. However convenient and appealing, simplistic explanations also tend to be wrong or, as this study explains, at least inchoate. This study lays out the myriad aggravating political factors in the US that predate the Trump administration.

At the same time, Canada has implemented the electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) for visa-exempt nationals, cracked down on human traffickers, used enhanced technology to reduce fake passports, and improved intelligence sharing on at-risk travellers. While these measures have reduced the number of irregular migrants arriving by air and sea, they have made crossing by land from the US much more attractive for those who prefer Canada as a destination. Contrary to claims that most of those who are crossing are taking flight from the Trump regime, about two-thirds of asylum seekers crossing irregularly into Canada by land actually enter the United States legally on a visa for the sole purpose of making their way to Canada. By way of example, Saudi nationals have obtained American visas at the embassy in Riyadh under false pretense, intent on entering Canada to claim asylum.

Between 2016 and 2017 irregular migration into Quebec, primarily from New York state across the now infamous Roxham Road, surged by 230 percent. Although not wholly without precedent, these numbers are nonetheless high by historical standards. Through September 2019, 12,080 irregular migrants had been apprehended by the RCMP out of 46,165 total claims, or 26.2 percent of claims, in 2019. The 2019 numbers are a decline from the RCMP apprehension of roughly 20,000 irregular migrants in each of the two previous years, although at a rate of 1,200 a month in the fourth quarter, the final tally for 2019 will probably range around 15,700. It appears to be a case of squeezing the snake: total claims from all sources are running close to 6,500 a month in the third quarter of 2019 compared to 4,900 a month during the same quarter in 2018.

Canada’s migratory regime is based on a social contract. Recent trends challenge the integrity, sustainability, and legitimacy of that social contract because they undermine the cornerstones of Canada’s migratory regime writ large, and especially its approach to refugees:

  • the legitimacy of a well-administered migration policy that is grounded in the rule of law and preserves the integrity of Canada’s borders;
  • the successful political and economic socialization and integration of migrants; and migration’s collective benefit in fostering Canadian prosperity.

How, then, is Canada to confront the phenomenon of global migration in a way that respects the rule of law while preserving the legitimacy of domestic migration regimes?

As challenges to the integrity of border management and policy have compounded over the past 25 years or so, binational and bilateral cooperation between Canada and the United States has expanded incrementally. After all, open borders depend on extensive cross-border cooperation for their effectiveness and legitimacy. This is the premise that informs a sustainable approach to irregular migration across Canada’s land border between ports of entry.

The government is currently exploring extending the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) beyond ports of entry to cover the entire land border. This is a better option than unilaterally suspending the STCA, as some commentators have prescribed. Yet, given the disproportionate number of refugee claims at inland offices, extending the STCA to cover the land border is un- likely to solve the migration problem facing Canada.

This study lays out a cooperative strategy with the aim of sustaining a coherent border-migration compact that includes:

  • weighing the costs and benefits of changing Canada’s STCA with the United States;
  • obviating the need to cross between ports of entry by reinstating the “Direct Back” provision under Section 41 of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, which would allow claimants to lodge their claims for refugee status from the United States;
  • enhancing current bilateral and binational administrative, intelligence and enforcement cooperation; and
  • acquiring better data to drive (more) informed and timely decision-making.

The cumulative effect of both regular and back-door immigration risks undermining popular support for migration altogether. Polling data suggest that trend is well underway. These targeted measures are designed to reinforce confidence in Canada’s commitment to managing its borders, the integrity of the refugee migration system, the prospects of the political and economic integration of migrants, and consequences for the country’s prosperity as a whole.

Source: https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/20191108_MLI_ROXHAM_ROAD_Leuprecht_PAPER_FWeb.pdf 

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Germany’s Post-Nazi Taboo Against the Far Right Has Been Shattered

2020/02/10 Leave a comment

Worrisome:

Sometimes, it takes an earthquake to reveal what’s below the surface.

In the eastern German state of Thuringia this week a regional election displayed the disastrous state of Germany’s political center — and how far the country now stands from the anti-fascist consensus it proclaims to maintain.

On Wednesday, the state Parliament of Thuringia elected Thomas Kemmerich of the Free Democratic Party as the new governor. The only reason Mr. Kemmerich was able to win, though, was because he received the backing of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known by its German initials AfD. The Free Democrats in Thuringia, along with members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, agreed to the deal to ensure Mr. Kemmerich took office.

In doing so, the center-right parties broke a taboo that has been in place in German politics since the end of the Nazi era. Mr. Kemmerich became the first high-ranking German politician since World War II to be elected by relying on votes from a far-right party.

The centrists’ decision to side with the far right is especially worrying in Thuringia, where the AfD is not only the second strongest party in the regional parliament, but also more extreme than in any other state. The AfD’s boss there, Björn Höcke, is the leader of a hard-line movement inside the party known as “Der Flügel” — The Wing. In a 2018 book, he warned of the “coming death of the nation through population replacement.” Last year, a court ruled that he could legally be termed a fascist.

The events in Thuringia have shaken German politics. Ms. Merkel called the outcome “unforgivable.” Lars Klingbeil, the secretary general of the Social Democrats, spoke of a “low point in Germany’s postwar history.” Even the conservative tabloid Bild called the result a “disgrace.” After a wave of public fury — including protests across the country — Mr. Kemmerich announced on Thursday that he would resign in order to allow new elections. (It’s far from clear that a new election wouldn’t produce even stronger results for the AfD, however.)

But what led to these shameful machinations goes far deeper: the increasing normalization of the radical right in German politics. Even if Germany’s conservatives and liberals have not previously entered into formal agreements with the far right at the federal level, and are unlikely to let the AfD into a future government, they have nonetheless helped it gain power and far too often set the agenda. That dynamic won’t disappear soon.

This was not the first time that centrists have collaborated with the AfD. There have been at least 18 cases in which Ms. Merkel’s party has cooperated with the AfD on a local level, it was reported last fall. In the state parliaments of Berlin and Brandenburg, for example, the two parties have voted together on legislation. Leading Christian Democrats from several states have declared their willingness to work with the far-right party. In Saxony-Anhalt, the two parties teamed up in 2017 on an “inquiry on left extremism.” And in the same state, two Christian Democratic members of Parliament wrote a position paper last year in which they considered a coalition with the AfD. “We must reconcile the social with the national,” they stated, echoing neo-Nazi rhetoric.

The AfD has grown consistently since its founding in 2013 and is now present in the parliaments of every one of Germany’s 16 states. The parties of the center, meanwhile, have all shifted rightward. Both the Free Democrats, under their leader Christian Lindner, and the Christian Democrats have moved their policy platforms in an anti-immigrant direction. Neither Ms. Merkel nor the party’s new leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, have created clear boundaries between their party and the far right. But many voters, especially in the east of Germany, would rather buy the original product than its copies.

How did it come to this? One major factor is the obsession of many German centrists with the so-called horseshoe theory of politics, where the far left and the far right are equivalent.

Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats have been guided by this theory. In an official resolution, the party stated that it will never enter coalition with either the Left Party or the AfD. In Thuringia, it was this unmovable opposition to the left — demonized in its entirety by conservatives and liberals, citing the Left Party’s history as successor to the East German Communist Party — that laid the groundwork for the latest scandal. To prevent a relatively moderate and highly popular Left Party politician, Bodo Ramelow, from taking power in a minority government, the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats instead colluded with the AfD.

One day after the disaster in Thuringia, Friedrich Merz, a Christian Democratic politician whom some believe could be the next chancellor, appeared on a late-night talk show. After condemning his party’s decision to collaborate with the AfD in Thuringia, Mr. Merz also felt the need to warn of the “left scene” in Berlin torching cars; he went on to equate the Left Party with the AfD. Should Mr. Merz really become Ms. Merkel’s successor, we can expect a red scare to become ever more part of the centrist program.

For the far right, this week has been an outstanding success. AfD’s leaders have long predicted — and hoped for — a convergence with centrist and conservative parties. On Wednesday, when shaking hands to congratulate the newly elected Thuringia governor, Mr. Höcke smiled. The scene reminded many Germans of a famous picture from 1933 in which Adolf Hitler greets Paul von Hindenburg, Germany’s president at the time.

Germany in 2020 is not Germany in 1933. But German politics have shifted in recent years in a disturbing way. Centrists and the far right share talking points on immigration. They share what they perceive as a common enemy in the left. And now, for the first time in decades, they even share a governor.

Source: Germany’s Post-Nazi Taboo Against the Far Right Has Been Shattered

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Retired MP overcame hurdles to secure Black History Month designation

2020/02/10 Leave a comment

A number of other federal heritage months have been added, e.g., Asian Heritage in May, Islamic History in October):

Jean Augustine’s efforts in the House of Commons 25 years ago to build support for a motion calling on the federal government to designate February as Black History Month in Canada succeeded in the end, but there were some hurdles along the way.

“I had colleagues who would say, ‘If you want February, who would come for March? If you have Black History month, when are we going to have white history month?'” the retired Liberal MP told The House on Friday.

“Those were kind of provocative statements that were made to me as I tried to convince my colleagues.”

The retired Liberal MP’s campaign to designate Black History Month in Canada in 1995 came just two years after the Grenada-born Augustine became the first African-Canadian woman elected to Parliament.

The importance of visibility

Today, there are still only a handful of black MPs in the House of Commons.

To encourage more black Canadians to run, Augustine said, political parties must ramp up their recruitment efforts and ensure candidates with diverse backgrounds are chosen to run in winnable ridings.

Otherwise, she said, “It’s kind of like an exercise.”

Augustine said she knows her presence in Parliament sent a signal to black Canadians everywhere. She said she can remember people telling her that they would gather their children and grandchildren every time they saw her on television in the House of Commons, or descending the stairs behind then-prime minister Jean Chrétien.

“‘Look, look, look, look,’ they would say. ‘If she can do this, you can do this.'”

Source: Retired MP overcame hurdles to secure Black History Month designation

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Camp survivors call on Japanese Americans to oppose immigrant detainment

2020/02/10 Leave a comment

A reminder:

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, prompting the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, only a handful of Americans took steps to oppose it.

Now, survivors of those camps are trying to make sure that immigrant detainment doesn’t go unopposed again.

On Friday, four survivors of the camps gathered in San Francisco’s Japantown to call on Japanese-Americans to oppose family separation and detainment of children by the U.S. government. The panel, which also included two Japanese-American activists, was hosted by the Bay Area Day of Remembrance Consortium.

“It’s the concept of the way these people are being treated,” said Chizu Omori, a former resident of the government camps. “It’s the racism. That’s the thing that gets to me — that peoples of color are particularly being singled out for exclusion from our country.”

At about the age of 13, Omori and her family, a farm family in San Diego County, were incarcerated in Poston, Arizona.

She recalled her parents signing repatriation papers to return to Japan because her father was an issei — a first-generation Japanese immigrant living in North America, which was illegal at the time.

“This was a very devastating thing to happen because I really didn’t know very much about Japan and didn’t think of myself as Japanese, and I didn’t want to leave America,” she said.

The civil rights activist, who now works with the nonviolent action project Tsuru for Solidarity, plans to protest in Washington, D.C., against the detention centers and family separation policies in June.

Sadako Kashiwagi, another speaker at Friday’s event, lived with her family as tenant farmers in the Sacramento area and was incarcerated in Arboga and then Tule Lake, California.

“We were there because we were rejected,” she said. “It was really dark because your country tells you you’re not good. So you reject your language, your food — your culture.”

Her father, who was known as a troublemaker to the authorities, was reported to the FBI, she said. The bureau separated them for several months.

“I really feel for those kids,” Kashiwagi said, referring to the immigrant children being separated from their parents today. “And all I can say (to them) is: Know your language, be proud of who you are, be strong, be kind and smile.”

For film producer Jon Osaki, who accompanied the former detainees on the panel, it was essential to note that the faults of the times are being repeated today.

Osaki said that some Japanese-Americans believe that immigrants detained today deserve it because they’re illegal.

But during World War II, he said, the Immigration Act of 1924 banned Japanese immigration; one-third of those detained were isseis and illegal for that reason; and those who resisted the mass roundup and incarceration of Japanese-Americans were technically breaking the law.

“Today, as a community that has experienced one of the greatest civil liberties violations in the history of this country, we have an opportunity to push back against the same sentiment that banished our mothers and our fathers and our aunts and uncles and our bacchans [grandmas] and jiichans [grandpas],” he said.

His parents, too, were incarcerated at camps before they met.

“The incarceration is ultimately about politics,” he said. “It was about people who did not want Japanese in this country, and politicians who are trying to placate their political base and use fear, to win elections.”

Japanese-American activists are hosting a rally in front of the ICE Headquarters on Feb. 14 and a procession through Japantown and a reception on Feb. 16 at AMC Kabuki Theaters.

Source: Camp survivors call on Japanese Americans to oppose immigrant detainment

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China’s coronavirus outbreak calls out for Canada’s help – and we should respond, in the spirit of Dr. Bethune

2020/02/10 Leave a comment

Silly piece, divorced from reality: For Weeks, China Has Ignored Outside Offers of Help on VirusFor Weeks, China Has Ignored Outside Offers of Help on VirusThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been offering to send experts to China, but no invitation has come. The World Health Organization appears to be facing the same cold shoulder.

On Jan. 30, the World Health Organization declared the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. But two days later, an even more surprising statement: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang asked the European Union to provide medical supplies to fight the epidemic unfolding in China.

This was highly unusual – top Chinese officials are not particularly known for their willingness to ask for international aid. But it points to the gravity and severity of the situation.

China is grappling with a severe public health challenge that is now outpacing the deadly SARS outbreak in 2003. As of today, more than 31,000 people in 28 countries and territories have been diagnosed with the new virus. The vast majority of those cases have emerged in China, where more than 600 people have died.

After 2019-nCoV was identified as originating in the city of Wuhan, the Chinese government took extraordinary measures to contain the outbreak. Wuhan and 13 surrounding cities have been locked down since Jan. 23 in a quarantine that affects more than 40 million people. It might be hard for Canadians to imagine this feat, but consider that Canada’s entire population is about 37 million.

However, the biggest challenge China faces is on the front lines. Doctors and nurses are racing against the clock and struggling to treat thousands of patients with dwindling supplies. Somehow, they are standing firm despite a shortage of hospital beds, staff, medicine and protective gear – even for themselves. Many doctors have worked throughout the day without drinking, eating or going to the bathroom simply to avoid replacing their protective suits. One doctor we know wore his son’s goggles to work for protection.

That the Chinese medical community is in mourning only heightens the anxiety. Dr. Li Wenliang, the Wuhan Central Hospital ophthalmologist who was among the first to identify the disease, passed away Friday.

Canada has confirmed five cases of its own – three in Ontario, two in British Columbia – but it has been acting vigorously and vigilantly, monitoring the situation, providing travel advice and evacuating Canadians in China. It’s remarkably brave of Ottawa to follow the WHO’s recommendation not to ban Chinese and other international travellers from China from entering the country. Furthermore, as acts of racism against the Chinese-Canadian community increase, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made statements criticizing anti-Chinese sentiments and misinformation about the coronavirus. “This,” he said, “is not something Canadians will ever stand for.”

These are admirable steps. But it is our belief that Canadians will only be truly safe when China wins its battle. And history may offer a good example of what Canada can still do to achieve this goal.

In the late 1930s, Canadian physician Norman Bethune brought modern medicine to rural China. He was credited with saving thousands of Chinese civilians and soldiers during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and for this he is revered even today in China. His story confirms the most effective way to save lives: supplying Canadian medical treatment to China.

Doing so will require three courses of action. First, we would urge Ottawa to continue demonstrating respectful concern and vigorous support as China combats this virus during this critical period. Secondly, we would recommend the Canadian government play a vital role in facilitating the procurement of medical supplies for hospitals in affected regions. Trade-promotion agencies can help by adding a medical-supplies section to their information portals to connect qualified Canadian suppliers with Chinese buyers. Thirdly, we would encourage Canadian health-care professionals and specialists to work with Chinese and international experts in developing treatments and a vaccine.

Ottawa and Beijing have had their differences. A prominent Chinese executive is facing extradition to the U.S., while two Canadian citizens remain in jail in China and a crippling import ban hurts Canadian canola farmers. But Canadians remain highly respected and liked in China – in no small part because of the legacy of people like Dr. Bethune.

There is a Chinese saying: “Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.” We hope we can focus on our shared humanity and give Chinese medical workers and citizens a hand during this extremely difficult time – for their sake, in the name of selflessness, in the spirit of Dr. Bethune.

Kenny Zhang is a Fudan University alumnus, Jenny Li is a graduate of Hubei University, ChiChi Wang is an alumnus of the University of British Columbia and Zhenyu Cheng is a Wuhan University alumnus. All are residents of Canada.

Source: China’s coronavirus outbreak calls out for Canada’s help – and we should respond, in the spirit of Dr. Bethune

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UK Immigration: Salary threshold set to be lowered

2020/02/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel are expected to set out their immigration reforms, including a drop in salary threshold for some migrants, at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

Currently, skilled migrants from outside the EU need to have a job offer with a minimum salary of £30,000.

The BBC understands ministers plan to lower this threshold to £25,600.

Workers from the EU will face the same rules once the transition period for leaving the EU ends on 31 December.

Workers earning less might be allowed to make up “points” elsewhere in order to be granted a visa if they work in a sector with a skills shortage.

Points will also be awarded for speaking good English or for having an outstanding educational background.

It comes after the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) last month made a series of recommendations for a post-Brexit transition period immigration system, including lowering the salary threshold for skilled migrants to £25,600 in order to help recruit teachers and skilled NHS staff.

The committee also criticised the UK’s current complex immigration system, where non-EU workers can attempt to qualify for a range of visas.

The prime minister made it a key pledge during the election campaign to introduce a points-based immigration scheme, based on Australia’s, for when existing EU freedom of movement rules end.

Under those rules, workers from the EU and European Economic Area countries can come to the UK to live or work without a visa.

The MAC has said there is no such thing as a “perfect” immigration system, with benefits and trade-offs in various parts of the economy.

It said whatever policies the government decides, it must work quickly to get something in place for after the transition period ends.

Source: Immigration: Salary threshold set to be lowered

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Coyne: The virus of Trumpism and his infectious moral failings

2020/02/08 Leave a comment

Possibly more dangerous than the coronavirus:

Over the past four years, it has been hard to escape the feeling that much of America – and even some Canadians – had fallen under the spell of a cult.

That it is also a political movement does not diminish its cult-like tendencies: the imperviousness to fact, the repetition of certain prescribed slogans, the suppression of the critical faculties, the blind devotion to the leader. And while some of this is present in all political movements, the particular zealotry of Donald Trump’s followers – the willingness to believe what isn’t so, and to disbelieve what is – is something else again.

Indeed, it is not only their thinking that appears to have been taken over; it’s behavioural. What we are witnessing is not so much the expression of a particular theory of government as of a personality type; the replication, on a mass scale, of the leader’s own temperament and bearing, if not the underlying psychological disorders, as if the virus of Trumpism had infected, not just people’s minds, but their souls – their character.

Or, perhaps, revealed it. The funny thing is, you’re almost never surprised to find who turns out to be a Trump supporter and who is not. Though they may never before have uttered the sentiments you hear coming out of their mouths now, there was always, you find yourself reflecting, a certain predilection.

This has nothing to do with how conservative they are. Some of the most committed conservatives I know are revolted by the U.S. President and want only to see the end of him. It has to do with character. It has become, frankly, something of a litmus test.

I hesitate to say this. I’m a strong believer in the proposition that “reasonable people can differ,” that there are two sides to every story, that one’s opponents are at worst mistaken. But Mr. Trump, and Trumpism, represents the triumph of unreason and the suppression of differences. To pay the usual respects to such an unworthy opponent is to do dishonour to one’s worthy opponents..

Perhaps it was possible, very early on, if you had not been paying much attention, to see him as a sort of necessary evil, a shock to the system – uncouth, sure, a bit rough around the edges, but a rock through the window, as it has been put, of official Washington, a signal that people were fed up with politics as usual.

But it is not possible now. It is not possible to look at all that Mr. Trump is and all that he represents – the pathological lying, the habitual corruption, the serial groping, the casual racism, the glorification of violence, the winking to Nazis, the laziness, the impulsiveness, the childish tantrums, the bottomless ignorance, the vanity, the insecurity, the vulnerability (so skilfully exploited by America’s adversaries) to flattery, the bullying, the crudity, the indifference to suffering, the incompetence, the chaos in the White House, the attacks on America’s allies and support for its foes, the contempt for experts and for expertise, for norms and conventions, for checks and balances, for limited government, for the very rule of law – it is not possible to be exposed to all this on a daily basis for four years and shrug it off or explain it away or accept it as part of the deal without there being something wrong with you.

Because it is the deal – that’s all there is – and it was obvious it was the deal, long before it was revealed that Mr. Trump’s victory in the last election was achieved with the aid of Russian intelligence – with or without the connivance of the multiple members of Mr. Trump’s circle who were in contact with Russian officials at the time – and quite apart from the explicit and documented solicitation of interference by another foreign power in the coming election that was the subject of his recent impeachment and trial.

The Republican senators who nevertheless voted to acquit may genuinely be Trump loyalists, or they may merely be fearful of retribution from the President and his cult followers. But either way, it would be hard to ascribe their decision to a judicious weighing of the facts before them. Not when so many had announced their intent to acquit before the trial, not when the evidence of guilt was so overwhelming, not when the justification on which they eventually settled – “he did it but should not be punished for it” – amounts not merely to a benediction on the President’s past abuses of power but an invitation to future ones as well. “Acquitted for life!” Rudy Giuliani tweeted afterward, not without cause.

To reach such a verdict, in such circumstances, is beyond a mere error of reasoning. It is moral error, and of a particularly egregious kind. These are not, after all, bar-stool yahoos or internet trolls, but senators who are supposed to know better. To say that one disagrees with it, then, is insufficient. It must be condemned, as surely history will condemn it. To be sure, there is danger in the other direction; people are all too ready nowadays to convert any disagreement into a contest of absolutes. So be it. We have to be able to see every shade of grey, including black and white.

We needn’t make too much of this. The people who have fallen under Mr. Trump’s spell, or at any rate bend themselves to his will, may have other compensating virtues; it may be a blight upon their character without being the whole of their character. But neither should we avoid it. It is not just a mistake to make excuses for Donald Trump. It is a moral failing. It may only be blindness – while some might actively applaud him for his depravities, most just minimize them – but it is, at this stage, culpable blindness, if not willful blindness.

To say that Trumpism is a moral failing is not to place his followers, or his enablers, beyond the pale. I have my own moral failings, and so do you. But it is worth identifying it in such terms; it is clarifying. Sometimes you have to, as it is sometimes said of Mr. Trump, tell it like it is.

Source: The virus of Trumpism and his infectious moral failings

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