Amid political gamesmanship, some Quebec Muslim women enticed by offer to move to Manitoba

2019/11/30 Leave a comment

Cheeky of Manitoba but Premier Pallister has been one of the most principled Canadian politician on Bill 21:

As a political spat plays out between Manitoba and Quebec over Bill 21, some Muslim women affected by the province’s ban on religious symbols say they are tempted by the offer to move to the Prairie province.

“If this persists, and as a result of this there are more hate crimes against me and my people, then why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t I go somewhere where I feel welcome?” said Chaachouh, who wears a hijab.”I know that if I go there, they will look at my skills rather than what I am wearing on my head.”

The ad campaign launched Thursday is aimed at Quebecers who feel limited by the province’s secularism law, which prohibits public servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols. These include the hijab, skullcap and turban.

In a nod to Bill 21, the ad lists 21 reasons why Manitoba is an appealing place to move, ranging from its diverse population to its plethora of provincial parks.

There isn’t, in fact, much history of movement between the two provinces. In 2018, for example, only 341 people moved from Quebec to Manitoba (and 799 went the other way).

A better solution: no Bill 21

Chaachouh is under no illusions a government ad means she would be safe from discrimination in Manitoba.

At the very least, though, Chaachouh said it is encouraging to see a province take a stand against the legislation, while Ottawa has shied away from doing the same.The Manitoba government’s campaign was dismissed as a political ploy by Premier François Legault and much of the opposition in Quebec City.

Legault said Bill 21 will ensure secularism in the public sector, and that the law is “a decision to be taken by Quebecers and Quebecers only.”

But Shahad Salman, a lawyer who runs a public relations firm in Montreal, said the message appealed to her as well.

“The fact that they used 21 reasons — that made me laugh,” she said.

“I think it’s an interesting move from another province: They take something bad happening somewhere else and turn it into a good thing for them.”

Salman, 32, said she would consider such a move. But a better solution? “Not having Bill 21,” she said.

The legislation is facing multiple legal challenges.

Critics say it infringes on a person’s right to practice their religion, and disproportionately targets Muslim women who wear a headscarf.

In a Quebec Court of Appeal hearing earlier this week, civil rights groups argued the law is causing immediate and irreparable harm.

“People’s lives are being ruined. People are being forced to leave their professions. People are being forced to leave this province,” Catherine McKenzie, a lawyer representing the groups, told the court.

Fighting inside Quebec

Nour Farhat, a 28-year-old Montrealer who recently completed a master’s in criminal law, is involved in one of the legal challenges.

She says the law thwarted her dream of becoming a Crown prosecutor in Quebec.

She said the Manitoba ad was like “a breath of fresh air,” and such a move is appealing.

But Farhat, who works in litigation, has no plans to leave.

“Why can’t I be this person here, where I was born and raised? Why do I have to go to the other side of the country to realize my dream?” she said. “This is why I won’t go to any other province — because I want to be able to do this here in Quebec.”

Source: Amid political gamesmanship, some Quebec Muslim women enticed by offer to move to Manitoba

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Jason Kenney denounces ‘useful idiots’ amid uproar over university lecturer’s Holodomor denial

2019/11/30 Leave a comment

A very Kenney comment, and warranted:

A day after Ukrainian students vented their fury at a University of Alberta lecturer who called the Holodomor famine “a lie,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney slammed the “useful idiots” who engage in genocide denial.

Dougal MacDonald, who is listed as a lecturer in the university’s education department, said on Facebook that the Holodomor was a myth perpetuated by the Nazis. His comments led the Ukrainian Students’ Society to call them “harmful and false beliefs” that are unacceptable for an employee of the university.

“Sad to see some in Canada still engaged in this genocide denial,” Kenney said on Twitter on Thursday morning although he didn’t mention MacDonald by name.

Kenney also posted a video of a speech he gave about Holodomor, which was a fierce condemnation of “Western, supposedly-progressive voices who were complicit in one of history’s great cover-ups.”

“These were the useful idiots of whom Lenin wrote. Westerners who purposefully lied about one of the great acts of mass murder in human history,” said Kenney.

The speech was delivered last week at a Holodomor commemoration in Calgary and the video was posted in full on Thursday morning as the scandal around MacDonald erupted.

MacDonald’s comments were originally reported by The Gateway, the student newspaper at the U of A, and MacDonald responded to the paper’s story with a statement decrying the “irrational assertions” and “defamation” directed at him.

The term Holodomor means “to kill by starvation” and refers to the famine in Ukraine that killed millions of people in 1932–33. The genocide has been recognized by the Canadian Parliament and provincial legislatures, including in Alberta.

In his Facebook post, which was archived online by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, MacDonald describes the Holodomor as a myth perpetuated by the Nazis to discredit the Soviet Union.

“In Canada, former Nazi collaborators and their spawn have long led the phony Holodomor campaign,” wrote MacDonald.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress urged its members to contact the university and demand the dismissal of MacDonald, even providing suggested text for an email to the school’s president.

“This is a stark reminder that, even in 2019, we cannot afford complacency in Holodomor education and awareness,” the organization’s website reads.

MacDonald was a candidate for the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada in the 2019 federal election in the Edmonton-Strathcona riding, which NDP candidate Heather McPherson won. MacDonald tallied 77 votes. His banner photo on Facebook is an advertisement to subscribe to the Marxist-Leninist Party’s online bulletin and his profile picture is a photo of Fidel Castro. His photos on Facebook are a collection of historical leftist leaders, like former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara and former North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung, who MacDonald describes as a “great leader of the Korean people.”

Although the university did not respond to a request for comment before press time, it said in a statement to the Gateway that the university is “balancing many interests and obligations” while it is “carefully monitoring this matter.”

The university has a commitment to freedom of expression and academic freedom for its staff, which includes “the right to comment (and) to criticize without deference to prescribed doctrine.”

In responding to the Gateway’s questions, deputy provost Wendy Rogers noted that MacDonald was making the comments as a private citizen and that they did not reflect the university’s views.

“The University of Alberta actively fosters an inclusive culture committed to the expression of, exposure to, and debate of diverse points of view,” a draft statement on freedom of expression on the school’s website reads. “Our campuses are forums for rigorous debate.”

Source: Jason Kenney denounces ‘useful idiots’ amid uproar over university lecturer’s Holodomor denial

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The Principles of Trump University Now Apply to Our Immigration Policy

2019/11/29 Leave a comment

Speaks for itself:

Let’s say you’re a highly motivated immigrant kid from India who comes (legally) to Michigan. You want to study, say, computer science. So you run into another student from India who tells you about this place called the University of Farmington, where you can get your degree. The cost is relatively cheap as American colleges go: $12,000 a year, plus fees. This sounds great, you think.

Then, one day, after you’ve paid your money, the gang from ICE shows up, busts you for immigration violations, keeps all the money you paid for your classes, and ships you back to India. Or, they offer you a chance to pitch this university to other people in your same situation, people who get deported later. Then you get busted for fraud and sent to jail. But at least you’re still in the United States for a while, so there’s that.

Welcome to United States immigration policy in 2019. From the Detroit Free Press:

“A total of about 250 students have now been arrested since January on immigration violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a sting operation by federal agents … The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was … staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials. Out of the approximately 250 students arrested on administrative charges, “nearly 80% were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States,” the Detroit office of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) told the Free Press in a statement Tuesday.”

Plot twist No. 1 coming.

“ICE said in March that 161 students had been arrested, which has now increased to about 250. Meanwhile, seven of the eight recruiters who were criminally charged for trying to recruit students have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced in Detroit, including Prem Rampeesa, 27, last week. The remaining one is to be sentenced in January. Rampeesa was sentenced Nov, 19 to one year in prison by Judge Gershwin Drain of U.S. District Court in Detroit. With time already served of 295 days, he should be out in about two to three months, and will then be deported to India, said his attorney Wanda Cal. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harbor aliens for profit. …

Rampeesa arrived in the U.S. legally a few years ago on a student visa and earned in 2016 a master’s degree in computer science at Northwestern Polytechnic University. But the university later lost its accreditation, which put his immigration status in jeopardy. He had spent $40,000 in tuition and fees for his studies at the university.

“He was desperate to find a way to stay in the United States,” Rampeesa’s attorney, Cal, wrote in his sentencing memo. He wanted to get a Ph.D. in computer science, she said. Rampeesa then met Sama, who recruited him to attend the University of Farmington and told him he could get tuition credits if he recruited other students, Cal said. Sama and Rampeesa were working with people they thought were university officials, but were actually undercover agents for the Department of Homeland Security.”

First, you convince some students that your university is real so you can bust them. Then you convince other students that they should help you recruit still other students for your university. Then you bust this second group of students and the people you entrapped to entrap them. Lovely.

And, of course, there’s the money, which ended up God knows where. Maybe in the university endowment.

“Emails obtained by the Free Press earlier this year showed how the fake university attracted students to the university… The U.S. “trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status,” Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students arrested, told the Free Press this week. “They preyed upon on them.” The fake university is believed to have collected millions of dollars from the unsuspecting students. … “They made a lot of money,” Reddy said of the U.S. government.”

Of course, the prosecutors held the students at their fake university liable for stealing their own money.

“Attorneys for ICE and the Department of Justice maintain that the students should have known it was not a legitimate university because it did not have classes in a physical location. Some CPT programs have classes combined with work programs at companies. “Their true intent could not be clearer,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms wrote in a sentencing memo this month for Rampeesa, one of the eight recruiters, of the hundreds of students enrolled. “While ‘enrolled’ at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services.”

Of course, the whole scam was set up as yet another vehicle to restrict immigration to this country, and to delegitimize programs already in place. In related news, you all are still paying Stephen Miller’s salary.

“Baker wrote that “immigration and visa programs have been hot-button topics in the United States for years and national scrutiny has only been increasing. Fairly or unfairly, Rampeesa’s conduct casts a shadow on the foreign-student visa program in general, and it raises questions as to whether the potential for abuse threatens to outweigh the benefits.” Reddy said, though, that in some cases, students who transferred out from the University of Farmington after realizing they didn’t have classes on-site, were still arrested.”

And thus were the basic principles behind Trump University enshrined in federal law enforcement.

Source: The Principles of Trump University Now Apply to Our Immigration Policy

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High immigration is changing the Aussie way of life

2019/11/29 Leave a comment

Some of the same concerns could be applied to current and planned Canadian high immigration levels:

The nation’s economic elite – politicians of all colours, businesspeople and economists – long ago decided we need to grow our population as fast as we can. To them, their reasons for believing this are so blindingly obvious they don’t need to be discussed.

Unfortunately, however, it’s doubtful most ordinary Australians agree. A survey last year by researchers at the Australian National University found that more than 69 per cent of respondents felt we didn’t need more people, well up on a similar poll in 2010.

This may explain why Scott Morrison announced before this year’s election a big cut in our permanent migrant intake – while failing to mention that our booming temporary migrant intake wouldn’t be constrained.

He also foreshadowed measures to encourage more migrants to settle in regional cities. What he didn’t say is what he’d be doing differently this time, given the many times such efforts had failed in the past.

In between scandalising over the invading hordes of boat people, John Howard greatly increased the immigration intake after the turn of the century, and this has been continued by the later Labor and Coalition governments. “Net overseas migration” accounts for about 60 per cent of our population growth.

In 2000, the Australian Bureau of Statistics projected that our population wouldn’t reach 25.4 million until 2051. We got there this year. Our population is growing much faster than other developed countries are.

The growth in our economy has been so weak over the past year that they’ve had to stop saying it, but for years our politicians boasted about how much faster our economy was growing than the other economies.

What they invariably failed to mention was that most of our faster growth was explained by our faster-growing population, not our increasing prosperity. Over the year to June, for instance, real gross domestic product grew by (a pathetic) 1.4 per cent, whereas GDP per person actually fell by 0.2 per cent.

That’s telling us that, despite the growth in the economy, on average our material standard of living is stagnant. All that immigration isn’t making the rest of us any better off in monetary terms.

Of course, that’s just a crude average. You can be sure some people are better off as a result of all the migration. Our business people have always demanded high migration because of their confidence that a bigger market allows them to make bigger profits.

Economists, on the other hand, are supposed to believe in economic growth because it makes all of us better off. They’re not supposed to believe in growth for its own sake.

This week one of the few interest groups devoted to opposing high migration, Sustainable Population Australia, issued a discussion paper that’s worth discussing. It reminds us that many of the problems we complain about are symptoms of migration.

The biggest issue is infrastructure. We need additional public infrastructure – and private business equipment and structures, and housing – to accommodate the needs of every extra person (locally born as well as immigrant) if average living standards aren’t to fall.

Taking just public infrastructure – covering roads, public transport, hospitals, schools, electricity, water and sewage, policing, law and justice, parks and open space and much more – the discussion paper estimates that every extra person requires well over $100,000 of infrastructure spending.

When governments fail to keep up with this need – as they have been, despite a surge in spending lately – congestion on roads and public transport is just the most obvious disruption we suffer.

The International Monetary Fund’s latest report on our economy says we have “a notable infrastructure gap compared to other advanced economies”. Spending is “not keeping up with population and economic growth”. We have a forecast annual gap averaging about 0.35 per cent of GDP for basic infrastructure (roads, rail, water, ports) plus a smaller gap for social infrastructure (schools, hospitals, prisons).

One factor increasing the cost of infrastructure is that about two-thirds of migrants settle in the already crowded cities of Sydney and Melbourne – each of whose populations is projected to reach 10 million in the next 50 years, with Melbourne overtaking Sydney.

According to a Productivity Commission report, “growing populations will place pressure on already strained transport systems. Yet available choices for new investments are constrained by the increasingly limited availability of unutilised land”.

New developments such as Sydney’s WestConnex have required land reclamation, costly compensation arrangements, or otherwise more expensive alternatives such as tunnels. It’s reported to cost $515 million a kilometre, with Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel costing $1.34 billion a kilometre.

Who pays for all this? We do – one way or another. “Funding will inevitably be borne by the Australian community either through user-pays fees or general taxation,” the commission says.

Combine our growing population with lower rainfall and increased evaporation from climate change and water will become a perennial problem and an ever-rising expense to householders and farmers alike.

The housing industry’s frequent failure to keep up with the demand for new homes adds to the price of housing. And the only way we’ll double the populations of Melbourne and Sydney is by moving to a lot more high-rise living.

High immigration is changing the Aussie way of life. Before long, only the rich will be able to afford a detached house with a backyard.

Source: High immigration is changing the Aussie way of life

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Coptic Christian woman wins court case against Egypt’s Islamic inheritance law

2019/11/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

A Coptic Christian woman has won a major legal victory against Egypt’s Islamic inheritance law that greatly favors men.

Christian human rights lawyer Huda Nasrallah announced that a Cairo court ruled in her favor Monday, deciding that, as a Christian, she has a right to the same share of her father’s inheritance as her brothers.

The decision follows a nearly yearlong legal fight that has seen two other judges rule in favor of Egypt’s Islamic inheritance law that grants male relatives twice as much share of a family member’s inheritance as female relatives.

The Associated Press reported last week that when Nasrallah presented her case to a higher court she based her argument around a Coptic Christian doctrine that calls for an inheritance to be distributed equally.

On Tuesday, Nasrallah told AP that she is “thrilled” by the verdict and hopes it will serve as an encouragement to women in her country.

According to Texas Tech University law professor Gerry W. Beyer, recent cases and sentiment on the issue in Egypt did not bode well for Nasrallah. Additionally, leaders at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, regarded as the most prominent Sunni religious institution in Egypt, have rejected equal inheritance proposals.

Samuel Tadros, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., called the decision a “significant development” in a Twitter thread, but stressed that “only time will tell about its scope.”

“On the other hand, we still don’t have the court’s reasoning,” Tadros, the author of Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity, added. “In Hoda’s case, there was no contest. Her brothers joined her in her demand. So if the court simply found no objection and hence ruled in her favor, the case’s scope would be very limited.”

Although Nasrallah’s brothers were on her side in the case, complaints have been raised in the past about how Coptic men “usurp the inheritance of women.” The Coptic Church has also been accused of overlooking the inheritance issue.

Tadros explained that if the court’s reasoning cited the constitutional clause that grants Copts “the right to resort to their own laws in governing their personal status affairs, then this is a huge thing.” However, he stressed the decision could bring both “positive and negative developments.”

“On the positive side, obviously the rights of Coptic women to equal inheritance. It would also be interesting to see what else would the courts consider as Christian personal status. Adoption?” He asked.

“On the other hand, this means that there is unlikely to be any movement on marriage and divorce issues. In those cases, while @PopeTawadros made significant practical moves on them (ones that got him curses from the old guard), these changes remain tied to him and not long term.”

Tadros assured that “any such movement should be understood as a return to the Dhimmitude framework.” He explained it is a framework in which “non-Muslim communities were allowed to govern their own internal affairs, but in which they are not equal citizens.”

Nasrallah is not the only Coptic woman to have successfully sued in the past for their right to equal inheritance. The AP reported earlier this month that Nasrallah was inspired by a 2016 Cairo court ruling in favor of a Coptic woman who fought the inheritance laws.

“It is not really about inheritance, my father did not leave us millions of Egyptian pounds,” she told AP at the time. “I have the right to ask to be treated equally as my brothers.”

Source: Coptic Christian woman wins court case against Egypt’s Islamic inheritance law

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Cyprus Report Names Those At Risk of Stripped Citizenship

2019/11/29 Leave a comment

Another illustration of those most likely to be attracted by these schemes:

Cypriot outlet Politis on Wednesday published a list of 26 foreign investors and their family members from outside the EU whose Golden Visas it says are to be stripped by the Cyprus government. Earlier reports noted the nationality of the investors, but did not name names.

Cypriot passport cover. (Photo: Council of the European Union – PRADO [CC BY-SA 4.0]Perhaps the biggest name on the list is Malaysian Jho Taek Low, a fugitive wanted for his alleged role in the 1MDB scandal — the embezzlement scam uncovered in 2015, when Malaysia’s then-Prime Minister was accused of channelling over US$ 700 million from a government-run strategic development company, to his personal bank accounts. Since then, other players involved in the scheme (including, allegedly, Low) have been pursued by authorities.

Politis’s list adds more detail to the previously reported action the Cyprus government said it would take in light of October’s massive Reuters report on Cambodian elites and their Cypriot passports. The list includes eight Cambodians with political or familial ties to Cambodia’s current ruling party.

Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, currently under US Treasury sanctions, is also on the Politis list. OCCRP in 2018 reported on his acquisition of Cypriot citizenship.

Also facing revocation of their Cypriot citizenship are multi-millionaire businessman Humphrey Kariuki and his wife. Kariuki has been charged in his home country of Kenya for tax evasion related to his alcohol production and distribution business, according to Kenyan news reports.

As well, there are two Russian bankers on the list who Crime Russia has previously noted are wanted in their home country on corruption charges.

OCCRP reporter Stelios Orphanides noted that the Cypriot government’s original reaction to investigations into the citizenship-for-investment scheme was to “attack the press in response instead of reconsidering this practice.”

He called the latest efforts to revoke the passports “part of an effort to control damage.”

“But now that the genie is out of the bottle, it will take much more than revoking 26 of the thousands of passports they extended to Golden Visa buyers for them to restore their battered credibility, especially given that its economy’s reliance on the sale of passports in the absence of transparency and accountability in all levels has grown stronger than ever,” he said.

Source: Cyprus Report Names Those At Risk of Stripped Citizenship

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Is Jeremy Corbyn an Anti-Semite? It No Longer Matters

2019/11/29 Leave a comment

One of the more interesting takes:

A lot of things about Britain today are what psychologists might describe as complex. Brexit? Don’t get me started. The social care crisis? A mess. Addressing the climate emergency and homelessness? Neither is straightforward.

Labour’s anti-Semitism problem doesn’t belong in this category. No venerable commission of experts is required to deliberate at length and produce an authoritative report on what to do. You don’t have to balance weighty arguments on both sides. This should be easy: Zero tolerance; one strike and you’re out.

And yet for reasons on which we can only speculate, it hasn’t been simple for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader’s failure to get a grip on anti-Semitism prompted an extraordinary intervention this week from Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who normally stays removed from politics. Corbyn has tried to dismiss the complaints and change the subject to the National Health Service, but his record is impossible to ignore. It now threatens to contribute to a “Never Corbyn” vote that takes the Dec. 12 election away from the battleground of inequality where Labour would prefer to be fighting — something that might ease Boris Johnson’s path to Downing Street.

It is striking that Her Majesty’s Opposition is being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over anti-Semitism. Nine Labour MPs have quit in protest over Corbyn’s leadership on Brexit and anti-Semitism. The Jewish Labour Movement says there are more than 100 outstanding cases of anti-Semitism the party hasn’t investigated, a figure Corbyn disputes.

Corbyn himself has shown a disregard for the message his own actions convey. His scorn for Western imperialism, his criticism of the Israeli state and the the sea of Palestinian flags at Labour Party conferences all create an impression of bias he does little to dispel. Nearly half of Jews say they would “seriously consider” emigrating if Corbyn were elected, according to a poll by Survation commissioned by the Jewish Leadership Council, while 87% believe he’s an anti-Semite.

A BBC investigation in July featured former party officials who claimed that senior Labour figures interfered with a supposedly independent disputes office on the issue. Each time the problem bubbles over, Corbyn has the same response: All racism is evil and wrong and his party won’t tolerate it. But it has.

Whether or not Jeremy Corbyn himself holds anti-Semitic views is now beside the point. All of this has happened on his watch. Either Corbyn is unable to deal with the problem, which suggests he lacks the leadership skills to do so, or he doesn’t regard it as the grave problem that nearly everyone else does. Either way his position is untenable.

In a remarkably tin-eared televised interview with Andrew Neil this week, Corbyn refused to apologize for anti-Semitism within the party and claimed he’s doing everything possible to tackle it. Such claims, wrote the Chief Rabbi, are a “mendacious fiction.”

Mervis couldn’t have been blunter when he said the “very soul of our nation is at stake.” He wasn’t out on a limb here either. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Hindu Council of Britain all released statements of support. It may now be incumbent on members of a minority group, or any voter who cares about minority rights, to shun Labour at the polls — although it must be said that Johnson’s Conservatives have had their own troubles with charges of Islamophobia. The Tory leader, who has compared burqa-wearing women to bank robbers and letterboxes, apologized on behalf of this party on Wednesday.

It’s impossible to say how the anti-Semitism row will affect an election that’s primarily about Brexit and public services. Jews make up about half a percent of the U.K. population and, of course, don’t vote as a block. A closely watched YouGov poll released Wednesday night, using methodology (known as MRP) that was remarkably accurate in 2017, predicted a Tory majority of 359 to 211 seats for Labour, a substantial gain for Johnson.

The YouGov projections have the Conservatives comfortably holding heavily Jewish Finchley and Golders Green in London, but puts the Labour vote more than eight points higher than another recent poll in that constituency and so may be overestimating the Jewish support for Corbyn’s party. In another area with a significant Jewish community, Chipping Barnet, the YouGov poll has Labour and the Tories even, but data scientist Abigail Lebrecht suspects the Labour vote may be overstated there too.

There’s also some evidence from focus groups by Tory tycoon and pollster Michael Ashcroft in leave-voting areas that the anti-Semitism charges may be hurting. People might not cast their votes on Dec. 12 on the issue alone, but it has an impact on how voters view Corbyn and the Labour brand.

Corbyn has been a pivotal figure in modern British history without ever being in government. Had another leader been at the helm of the Labour Party over the past four years, Leave might not have won the Brexit referendum in 2016 (remember Corbyn was largely AWOL during the Remain campaign he supposedly supported). If not for his unpopular leadership and radicalism, Labour would probably be mounting a serious challenge to form a majority government after nine years of Tory rule.

Britain certainly wouldn’t be embroiled in a discussion of anti-Semitism. Corbyn has put the word on the radar. “A year ago people didn’t know what anti-Semitism was,” says James Johnson, who conducted hundreds of focus groups for former prime minister Theresa May. “If you brought it up people were unsure. They thought it had something to do with Jewish people and racism but weren’t clear what it means. Now people know what it means. They know Corbyn is associated with it.”

Corbyn’s indulgence of anti-Semitism has at least heightened public awareness. What impact it has on the vote two weeks from now is hard to separate from Brexit and other issues. But it’s certainly damaged the Labour brand and raises serious questions about how long Corbyn’s leadership can last.

Source: Is Jeremy Corbyn an Anti-Semite? It No Longer Matters

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Negative attitudes about Muslims in Australia remain high, survey finds

2019/11/28 Leave a comment

Good overview of the Scanlon Foundations latest annual survey:

The vast majority of Australians agree multiculturalism has been good for Australia, but a significant minority still express negativity towards Muslims, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The findings come in the 12th annual Scanlon Foundation report into social cohesion which also found a major increase in the percentage of people concerned about climate change.

The 2019 Mapping Social Cohesion survey, an annual report produced by Monash University researchers, shows support for multiculturalism remains high at 85 per cent, and over 90 per cent of respondents also said they feel a sense of belonging in Australia.

But despite the optimism about multiculturalism, ‘negative’ or ‘very negative’ attitudes towards Muslims remain high with a stark contrast between respondents who were interviewed over the phone and those who self-completed an online survey.

When people were asked about negative attitudes towards different faith groups, 21 to 25 per cent of those interviewed said they held negative views about Muslims, but the rate in the self-completion survey was almost double at 40 per cent.

In 2018, asked whether they felt positive, negative or neutral towards Muslims, 23 per cent of those polled said they felt ‘very negative’ or ‘somewhat negative’, increasing to 39 per cent when answering anonymously. Results were similar in 2017.

Professor Andrew Markus from Monash University in Melbourne is the report’s author.

“The finding on Muslim Australians and that big difference was not a surprise the first time we did it. But we have now done it three times at 2017, 2018, 2019 and basically obtained the same result. So that level of difference is quite unusual,” he told SBS News.

“If I look at the self-completion survey for the other groups, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, it’s in the range of five to 10 per cent … but the Muslim figure is four times that level at 40 per cent.”

There were a total of 3,500 respondents to the survey – 1,500 via telephone interviews and 2,000 via the self-completion survey, which asks some 90 questions. All participants are anonymous.

Professor Markus said the result around attitudes towards Muslims indicated an underlying concern with some topics that people are reluctant to disclose if they are talking to an interviewer.

Increasing rates of discrimination

On the question ‘have you experienced discrimination over the last 12 months on the basis of your skin colour, ethnicity or religion?’ rates have consistently increased since the first survey in 2007 from about 10 per cent to 19 per cent in more recent surveys.

People who identify as Muslim or Hindu reported much higher rates of discrimination at 42 per cent for Muslims and 38 per cent for Hindus.

Between 2006 and 2016, the number of people identifying as Muslim in Australia increased from 340,400 to 604,200.

Mohammad Al-Khafaji, CEO of the Federation of The Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia, said anti-Muslim sentiment is an issue the government needs to address.

“That should be a warning sign for all of us, and especially for our political leaders, to make sure that we address this issue before it becomes a bigger problem,” he said.

“We know that there was a recent study released by the Islamophobia Register that has quantified some of those complaints and some of those attacks on people from Muslim backgrounds.

“We need to make sure that there are policies and social cohesion programs in place that facilitate a meeting between people so they understand each other’s differences, each other’s faiths, each other’s cultures.”

Climate change concern almost doubles

Since 2011, the survey has also sought to determine the issues that are of greatest concern in the community, asking the open-ended question: ‘What do you think is the most important problem facing Australia today?’

While concerns about the economy and unemployment have consistently topped the list, concern about environmental issues was the biggest change recorded from one year to the next, up from 10 per cent to 19 per cent in the telephone administered survey and from five per cent to 17 per cent in the self-completion survey.

Professor Markus said the movement of an issue from quite far down in the middle of the list to ranking second is unusual in the history of the survey.

He added other findings also highlight changing public perceptions about environmental issues.

“In the past, 2010 to 2011, there were a lot of people indicating that what they were concerned about was that people talking about climate change was overblown. There was too much of it, they didn’t believe it, they were sceptical,” he said.

“And 2019, almost no one is indicating that they are concerned because the issue is being overblown.”

Nearly half of those aged 18-24 reported being the most concerned about climate change, with much smaller rates seen in those over 65.

….

Immigration good for the economy

Professor Markus said the survey shows high, positive results on questions about the economic benefits of immigration and whether it is good that immigrants bring new ideas and cultures, with between 75 and 85 per cent agreeing it’s a good thing for Australia to have immigration.

But, he said, the results are less favourable on other immigration-related issues.

“When we ask people ‘do you think that the government is managing population growth well and are you concerned that immigration has got an impact of quality of life on overcrowding, on house prices, on the environment?’ … What we’re picking up is in the self-completion survey is 60 per cent or more of people are indicating concern,” he said.

The survey found concern about the level of immigration marginally declined from 43 per cent in 2018 to 41 per cent this year, with 53 per cent saying the intake is about right or too low.

The Scanlon Foundation said less concern about immigration levels has been found in three other 2019 surveys with a similarly worded question, including a Lowy Institute poll finding those of the view that the intake was ‘too high’ fell from 54 per cent in 2018 to 47 per cent this year.

Hass Dellal, the executive director of the Multicultural Foundation and the chairman of SBS, said the discussion around immigration had become better informed.

“I think there has been some excellent research, particularly the Deloitte one with SBSwhere we actually showed the economic benefits of social cohesion. I think people get a better understanding of the values of not only the economic contributions and factors around immigration but also the benefits into social cohesion,” he said.

“A lot of the media are now being able to tell the stories of families and narratives of migrants and the contributions they make. I think there is a much more informed sense of understanding of immigration and I think that helps with that acceptance.”

On the issue of happiness, 84 per cent of respondents said they had been ‘very happy’ or ‘happy’ over the past year, but there has been a steady increase in levels of pessimism since the survey began with youngest people reporting the highest rates, increasing 10 per cent since 2007.

Source: Negative attitudes about Muslims in Australia remain high, survey finds

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Immigration New Zealand accused of slowing down applications

2019/11/28 Leave a comment

Would be nice to have some hard data rather than just anecdotes:

The immigration industry says officials are using what one lawyer described as Trump-style “extreme vetting” to limit immigration numbers.

Immigration representatives say bureaucratic tactics are being used to slow down residence processing, a claim Immigration New Zealand (INZ) denies.

New residents fell to the lowest levels since the turn of the century this year despite a sharp increase in applications.

Restaurant owner blasts Immigration NZ over delays

An Auckland restaurant owner feels helpless and ignored by Immigration New Zealand as he tries to sort out visas problems for his foreign workers.

The number of residence applications rose sharply from a low of 15,000 in April last year to 35,000 last month, according to figures from the INZ website.

The body that represents immigration lawyers and advisers, the Association for Migration and Investment, said it was concerned at the visa process slowdown and whether there were ulterior motives for it.

“When a case officer can come back and ask for any additional information, you’d think they’d come back and ask for all the things extra they need,” its chair June Ranson said.

“The problem is, you give them that, and then it’s almost as if they invent another question. Rather than wrapping it all in together, they go backwards and forwards – it’s almost like you’ve got a new penpal, and they want to keep in touch with you.

“That is totally inefficient, but it is happening, and it just drags out the application so you wonder if there’s ulterior motives to it.”

Immigration lawyer Richard Small said there was a growing culture of ‘extreme vetting’ alongside a decrease in discretion in decision-making.

US President Donald Trump took office promising to enact an “extreme vetting” immigration system. American academics say having been blocked on building a wall with Mexico to limit immigration numbers, the administration is using the ‘invisible walls’ of long processing times and administrative changes to make it harder for immigrants to work, settle and visit family there.

Case officers in New Zealand were asking for information they did not usually request and which were sometimes not contained in immigration instructions, said immigration adviser Toni Alexander.

“I had to remind an officer over and over that a medical was cleared, for instance, now when there should be no further obstacles, she has decided to submit a request for an NZ police clearance, a request which should have been made a very long time ago. A police clearance can take six weeks – so it is just a delaying tactic.

“We’re frequently told [by case officers] ‘oh well, my technical advisor told me to ask for this’. So they’re being instructed from above and it’s a process of slowing down applications because technical advisers are senior people, and they know the instructions very well, as well as we do.”

Immigrants had been waiting so long that even their extended temporary visas were now expiring, she said, adding expense and inconvenience.

They were being asked to resubmit evidence that had become out-dated because of the delays.

INZBorder and Visa Operations general manager Nicola Hogg said in a statement there had been no attempt to slow visa processing.

“New Zealand continues to be an attractive destination and application volumes have been increasing steadily across all categories,” she said.

“We are also seeing an increase in the level of risk and complexity in applications.

“Certain applications are always going to take longer to process because of the risk factors present.”

There were two main stages when applicants were asked for additional information: when the application was first received and after it was allocated to a case officer.

“However, sometimes when we receive information, we need to make an additional request for further information – for example, if the information supplied is insufficient to demonstrate immigration requirements are met,” she added.

Source: Immigration New Zealand accused of slowing down applications

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Conservative author Douglas Murray on immigration, Islam and why he doesn’t want to talk about Trump

2019/11/28 Leave a comment

I think the only points I agree with is the need to read widely, particularly those one disagrees with or who challenge us, and the need to travel outside one’s area:

…This particular Mr. Murray, 40 years old, is both a man who is read (his newly released book is The Madness of the Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity) and one who reads, and so the conversation this late afternoon almost inevitably begins with an inquiry about what is on his night table these days. It turns out that he’s dipping back into The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver (‘’I thought I finished it weeks ago but I hadn’t’’) and is deep into The Faber Book of Utopias(edited by John Carey, the Oxford literary critic and sworn enemy of elitism).

His journalistic inquisitor and tablemate this late afternoon has been making his way through the massive biography of Napoleon by Andrew Roberts, a British historian and – who knew? – a friend of Murray’s. “I pretended to him that I’ve read it, but I haven’t,” he said. “I bluffed.”

Ordinarily Murray is no bluffer, though he prefers not to talk about Donald J. Trump. But like everyone else in Great Britain and Canada, he can’t help himself, and in this case he is talking about why he doesn’t want to talk about Trump.

“I never talk about Trump because everyone does,” he begins. “I never talk about Brexit either. I don’t think they’re as interesting as everybody thinks they are. I’m sad everyone is shouting hopelessly into the wind about these topics. I just don’t think it is useful for everyone to devote themselves to these two subjects. No one’s opinion on either of them is all that interesting, and basically no one can change anyone’s views on either.”

So much for that. Murray – here in Montreal on a flying visit, just two days, in part to promote his latest book, at this moment understated in a cranberry sweater with a metal zipper at the neck – would rather talk about Canada. (You’d perhaps rather hear what he says about that anyway.)

“You’ve become one of those nations where you had one story and are moving to another story,” he says, and his listener (and perhaps you readers) begins to sense that maybe we are onto an interesting riff. “The sense of what Canada was is different from the sense of what Canada is….The interesting way to get through this is to say that Canada [now wants] to be a welcoming, pluralistic, multicultural place, open and tolerant, while you talk up LGBTQ and women and ethnic minorities.”

There’s no way this conversation can go in any direction but…immigration.

So here we go. “People know immigration has different consequences depending on the numbers, the speed and the identity of the immigrants. Any one of these is explosive. All three together is dangerous. Everyone knows this.”

We are not remotely finished with this topic.

“The interesting question is: Who don’t we want,” he goes on. “We’re very bad at this question. We should be able to answer it. The problem with immigration that makes it very difficult – and I’ve gone to a lot more refugee camps than my critics have – is that it is very hard for first-world countries to say why we have such luck and others don’t.”

“Such luck” meaning the bon chance to live in Canada, or America, or any one of the industrial countries with freedoms and prosperity.

Do we dare bring up climate change? Do we dare not? (It’s not his “thing,” as he puts it, which is the thing that could make this so interesting.)

“I have only one thought,” he says, and suddenly his inquisitor breathes a sigh of relief. “It’s the obvious, undisguisable way that it has become clear that this is a replacement in the West for religion for fairly well-off, white, educated people. I don’t know the science, but it has all the manifestations of a new religion.”

What can he possibly mean by that?

“It has every single component of religion – original sin, guilt, the need for atonement. But it also has the mechanism for getting out of the [problem]. The answer is to never drive or fly again, to never buy new clothes and to live your life carefully so that you’ll save this planet, having harmed nothing. Tell your children to seek to be harmless! If it weren’t for them the moss and the trees would be getting on fine!”

Murray is an atheist, though one who did not come by that creed – the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ruled in 2013 that the term “creed” applies to it – naturally. It was (and here we go) Islam that made him an atheist, not that that was his religion to start with. Now he’s talking a bit about the subject that has put him into perhaps the most trouble: “Canada and America were not founded by Muslims. If they had been, we’d have a better way of understanding where the crazies emerge from. We are less literate in that religion. The second problem is that there are problems in Islam that we haven’t seen in Christianity in a long time: There’s a church/state problem. There’s a problem with extremist groups. …Where exactly is [Islam’s] cutoff line on extremism? Do the fanatics become fanatics from absolutely nowhere? It’s a very lively debate about where it comes from.”

Then this, and likely his critics will agree with at least the first sentence: “My stupidity is to tell what I think on this. I can’t pretend the Koran is a social-justice document.”

Murray has been flayed for saying that Hungarian tyrant Viktor Orban was a better representative of European values than the financier George Soros. He may be the only person outside the cabinet room in Budapest with that view. A New York Times reviewer scorched Mr. Murray’s lament for the Europe of the past for being “as fundamentally incoherent as its late-19th-century originals,” adding, “It never strikes him, or other secondhand vendors of fixed and singular identities, that nowhere in the world have individuals been the exclusive heirs of a single culture or civilization.”

Back to books before we close. What should Canadians be reading?

“My own books, obviously.”’ Well, of course. But what else should be on the Canadian bookshelf?

“People should read as widely as possible in authors they know they will disagree with,” he says, surely hoping to widen his own book sales among readers – you know who you are – who find his views contemptible. “I hate people who read by tribe. In America both political parties have their own libraries. The aim of this is to prove that your political party is always right, to say that your party got anti-Nazism, the Civil War and civil rights correct and the other side had got it wrong. That’s a danger. History is a mess for everyone.”

Just one more. Murray is a persistent and peripatetic traveler. Where should we mere middlebrows visit? “Any place in the world you haven’t visited is interesting,” he says, “even if nothing happens there.” He is not, he wants to assure you, talking about Canada.

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