Canada's multiculturalism is no model for Europe
Europe often holds up Canadian multiculturalism as a success to be emulated, but its definition of diversity is hardly inclusive
Kenan Malik
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 December 2011
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Last month I was invited to give a talk on immigration and citizenship in Europe to a Trudeau Foundation conference in Nova Scotia. For someone like me, a European in favour of mass immigration but critical of multiculturalism, it was a fascinating experience.
・・・・・
In Europe, one of the key problems with multicultural policy has been the confusion between the lived experience of diversity and the policies enacted to manage that diversity. The first describes the experience of living in a society that has been made less insular and more vibrant through mass immigration, the second a set of political policies, the aim of which is to manage diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes, and using those boxes to shape public policy.
The irony is that, as a political process, multiculturalism undermines much of what is valuable about the lived experience of diversity. Diversity is important because it allows us to expand our horizons, to think about different values and beliefs, and to engage in political dialogue and debate that can help create a more universal language of citizenship. But it is precisely such dialogue and debate that multicultural policy makes so difficult by boxing people into particular ethnic or cultural categories.
・・・・・
In Canada, as in Europe, individuals with a minority background are often treated as members of a group rather than simply as citizens. In Canada, as in Europe, politicians look to unelected community leaders, often deeply conservative figures, to speak for their particular communities. The underlying problems with multicultural policies do not vanish on crossing the Atlantic. Confrontations over issues such as free speech, public prayers or the wearing of the burqa cast a shadow over Canadian society as much as they do over European ones.
Historically, Canadian multicultural policy developed as a way not of welcoming immigrants but of mitigating the impact of biculturalism – the long-standing tensions between French-speaking Quebec and the rest of English-speaking Canada that have provoked violence and come close to tearing the nation apart. Multiculturalism was initially seen as the ideal means of defusing these tensions, by promoting the idea that, not just the French, but all peoples should have the right to their culture and heritage, and that the preservation of such culture and heritage should be funded by the state. This historical legacy has ensured that Canadian policy, even more that of European nations, is about the public recognition and institutionalisation of cultural differences.
There is a growing movement, for instance, for the creation of segregated schools. Toronto council recently approved a second "Afrocentric" school exclusively for black pupils. There are plans for similar schools for other groups. Not exactly progressive.
Canadians see their multicultural policy as inextricably linked to a liberal immigration policy. Ottawa boasts that Canada has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world. Look more closely, however, and you see a different picture. Canadian policy is largely about cherry-picking middle-class professionals, in particular rich businessmen, and keeping out the "wrong" kind of immigrant by making it almost impossible for unskilled workers to enter. So much so, in fact, that many European nations are now looking to the Canadian system as a model for limiting immigration.
The Canadian economy increasingly requires, however, the kinds of immigrants that Canadian immigration rules deem socially unsuitable to be citizens. To get round this, both business and government now draw upon the services of "temporary workers", who have become the biggest source of new labour in Canada – 182,322 temporary workers arrived in 2010, coming to be fruit pickers, janitors and factory workers; they have few rights and little chance of citizenship.
The irony is that just as European nations are looking to Canada's points system as a way of restricting immigration, Canada is adopting execrable European "guestworker" policies that deny migrants rights and status. This suggests that when it comes to celebrating diversity, Canada has a highly restricted definition of the term. It is the diversity of those who are "like us", not in terms of race or ethnicity, but in terms of class and outlook. Again, the differences with Europe are more apparent than real.
多文化主義 外国人の権利
Angry Britain: why are we becoming so intolerant?
From racist outbursts on public transport to comedians baiting strikers and disabled people, there's an ugly mood in the air. What's making us increasingly cranky about our fellow citizens? And is there any cure for this modern malaise?
Hugh Muir
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 December 2011
Intolerant Britain: we feel your anger
Hugh Muir's piece wondering why Britain is becoming so intolerant touched a few raw nerves and provoked a huge response from readers. Here are just a few of your comments
イギリス 不寛容
Emma West: White Supremacists to Send Donations
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By Jamie Lewis | December 7, 2011 10:01 AM GMT
White supremacists are planning to send donations to Emma West the alleged racist in the ‘My Tram Experience’ YouTube video.
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White supremacists are planning to send donations to Emma West the alleged racist in the ‘My Tram Experience’ YouTube video.
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Death Threats Mean 'My Tram Experience' Emma West to Spend Christmas in Prison
The International Business Times UK discovered a far-right forum which promotes white supremacy supporting “white hero” Emma West.
白人至上主義 電車 ヘイトスピーチ
The NAACP exposes voter suppression schemes
There is scant evidence of 'voter fraud', yet under that pretext states are trying to return us to a pre-Civil Rights era America
Kay Dilday
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 December 2011
The NAACP will be sending a delegation to the United Nations Commissioner of Human Rights alleging a concerted effort to deny voting rights to black and hispanic Americans. Given how rarely anyone in the United States looks to the United Nations for justice, and how often the United States ignores the UN, this is both a significant and futile effort. But what's at issue is so egregious that the NAACP has chosen to shout it from a global stage.
In the United States, citizens are not required to carry any sort of ID card in their daily life; thus the national government does not issue one without a specific request or fee. Nonetheless, it is difficult for affluent people, involved in all of the trappings of middle-class life – car-owning and driving, check-writing, international traveling, etc – to understand that many people don't have drivers' licenses or passports and aren't asked for them in their extremely localised, cash-transactional lives.
So, this very reasonable-sounding requirement means that many poor people, a disproportionate number of whom are black in Mississippi, will be unable to vote.
This particular law has to be examined closely for one to realise how disenfranchising it is for poor people, blacks and Latinos. Others, though, are just bald efforts to prevent poor people, predominantly people of color, from voting. There are laws, for instance, that prevent early voting, even though this is essential for low-income people who often have little control over their working hours. There are laws, also, that subject voter registrations efforts, which often bring in poor people on the margins of society, to onerous restrictions. This recently forced, for example, the League of Women Voters, one of the nation's bedrock voting groups, to cancel their annual drive in Florida.
選挙 差別 国連
DECEMBER 8, 2011 · 5:50 AM
Former Maryland Governer Aide Guilty Of Conspiring To Suppress Black Voter Turnout
A political aide to former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich was convicted Tuesday of conspiring to use Election Day robocalls in what prosecutors cast as an effort to suppress black voter turnout during the 2010 gubernatorial election.
・・・・・
Prosecutors argued the calls that went out on the evening of Election Day to about 110,000 voters in Baltimore and Prince George’s County – two jurisdictions with high percentages of black voters – were an effort by the Republican campaign to reduce the number of black Democrats voting in heavily Democratic Maryland.
“Hello. I’m calling to let everybody know that Governor O’Malley and President Obama have been successful,” the call said. “Our goals have been met. The polls were correct, and we took it back. We’re OK. Relax. Everything’s fine. The only thing left is to watch it on TV tonight. Congratulations, and thank you.”
・・・・・
[Source: Huffington Post]
選挙 差別 不当な選挙方法
Trafficked people being treated as criminals by officials, inquiry says
Women, men and children trafficked into Britain not seen as victims of crime whose rights have been breached – report
reddit this
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 27 November 2011
The victims of human trafficking, including women forced into the sex industry or trapped as unpaid domestic servants, are being unfairly treated as criminals and illegal immigrants, an inquiry has found.
The investigation by Lady Helena Kennedy QC has concluded that the police and immigration authorities fail to see the thousands of women, men and children trafficked into Britain as the innocent victims of organised crime whose own basic rights have been breached.
Kennedy's report to the Scottish office of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), published on Monday after an 18-month inquiry, calls on the UK and Scottish governments to introduce legislation and criminal justice policies which will tackle trafficking as a specific crime and support its victims.
She said trafficked people frequently end up being forced to work in prostitution, domestic service, fruit and vegetable picking, food processing, benefit fraud and cannabis cultivation. But the issue is chiefly treated by the authorities as an illegal immigration, sexual offences or crime enforcement matter.
外国人犯罪者扱い 外国人摘発
DECEMBER 8, 2011 · 5:51 AM
Update: Final Suspect In Racially Motivated Firebomb Attack Pleads Guilty In Arkansas
The fifth of five Arkansas residents accused of firebombing an interracial couple’s home has pleaded guilty.
32 year old Gary Dodson of Waldron, Arkansas entered the guilty plea to three charges just prior to the start of his federal trial.
Prosecutors agreed to drop two other charges. Dodson faces up to ten years in prison on each count.
[Source: KSPR]
国際結婚 ヘイトクライム
DECEMBER 8, 2011 · 5:50 AM
Latino Families In Texas Receive Racially Charged Letters
The Garland Police Department needs the public’s helping finding the person sending threatening and racially charged letters to Latino families. The police have received four reports of the letters being sent out since this past weekend.
[Source: NBCDFW]
Census: Widening Income Gap As Blacks Leave Cities
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Affluent black Americans who are leaving industrial cities for the suburbs and the South are shifting traditional lines between rich and poor, according to new census data. Their migration is widening the income gap between whites and the inner-city blacks who remain behind, while making blacks less monolithic as a group and subject to greater income disparities.
"Reverse migration is changing the South and its race relations," said Roderick Harrison, a Howard University sociologist and former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau.
He said a rising black middle class is promoting a growing belief among some black conservatives that problems of the disadvantaged are now rooted more in character or cultural problems, rather than race. But Harrison said most black Americans maintain a strong racial identity, focused on redressing perceived lack of opportunities, in part because many of them maintain close ties to siblings or other blacks who are less successful.
所得格差
7 December 2011 Last updated at 00:58 GMT Share this pageEmailPrint
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Germany's neo-Nazi underground
Ten murders blamed on a neo-Nazi underground cell have raised fresh fears about far-right extremism in Germany. BBC Radio One Newsbeat's Sima Kotecha went to investigate.
But tucked away from the hustle and bustle is a 34-year-old former neo-Nazi who has agreed to meet us on condition that we do not reveal his identity.
"We stirred up discontent and unrest. Violence was part of the scene, the whole ideology of the movement is based on violence, and it is seen as a legitimate means to reach political targets.
"The inhibition threshold to go as far as killing people is very low," he says.
With a solid, icy stare he tells us he never killed anyone but came close to it.
"I still cannot say to this day if I would have killed, but I realised later that just by punching someone in the face, or hitting them with brass knuckles, I could have killed them," he says.
This man escaped the tight-knit underground community that glorifies Hitler's Third Reich but anti-fascist charities are worried a growing number of young men are being lured into the far-right, especially amid tough economic times.
ドイツ ネオナチ
Naomi Campbell cries racism
February 6, 2008 - 9:57AM
Supermodel Naomi Campbell says the fashion industry is more racist than ever.
Ms Campbell hit out at the lack of black faces on magazine covers and catwalks.
She told a London Paper: "Women of colour are not a trend. That's the bottom line. It's a pity that people don't always appreciate black beauty.
ファッションモデル 流行
D.C. schools have largest black-white achievement gap in federal study
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By Lyndsey Layton, Published: December 7
D.C. public schools have the largest achievement gap between black and white students among the nation’s major urban school systems, a distinction laid bare in a federal study released Wednesday.
The District also has the widest achievement gap between white and Hispanic students, the study found, compared with results from other large systems and the national average.
The study is based on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, federal reading and math exams taken this year by fourth- and eighth-graders across the country.
学力差
The CIA's most secret prison revealed
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Published: 08 December, 2011
AP Exclusive: Inside Romania's secret CIA prison
By ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press – 7 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the center of Romania's capital city, is a secret that the Romanian government has tried for years to protect.
For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed Bright Light — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There, it held al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11, and others in a basement prison before they were ultimately transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.
The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported but its location has never been made public until a joint investigation by The Associated Press and German public television, ARD Panorama. The news organizations located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD's program on the CIA prison will air Dec 8.
The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA's detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.
CIA 秘密 勾留
Firefighters let home burn down because owner didn't pay $75
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Published: 08 December, 2011
Firefighters let home burn over $75 fee -- again
Firefighters in Tennessee let a home burn to the ground because the owners did not pay a $75 fire subscription fee. WPSD-TV's Jason Hibbs reports.
By msnbc.com staff and WSMV-TV
SOUTH FULTON, Tenn. -- Firefighters stood by and watched a Tennessee house burn to the ground earlier this week because the homeowners didn't pay the annual subscription fee for fire service.
"You could look out my mom's trailer and see the trucks sitting at a distance," Vicky Bell, the homeowner, said.
For Bell, that sight was almost as disturbing as the fire itself.
"We just wished we could've gotten more out," she said.
It's the second time in two years firefighters in the area have watched a house burn because of unpaid fees. Last year, Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in a house fire, along with three dogs and a cat, because the fire fee wasn't paid.
Related: No pay, no spray: Firefighters watch home burn
People in the city of South Fulton have fire protection, but those in the surrounding county do not unless they pay a $75 annual fee.
リベタリアン 消防
8 December 2011 Last updated at 00:51 GMT Share this pageEmailPrint
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What would Jesus do?: The rise of a slogan
suzuky suzuky
オキュパイが「イエス様ならどうしただろう？」とスローガンをあげている。金持ちよりも貧しい人々や娼婦などシモジモの者の味方になった。石をパンに変え、分け与えた。病人を見舞って直してやった。……なんてのは皆が知っている伝説。bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-…
イエス・キリスト② わりと「素直な気持ち」で聖書を読むとそういう普遍的なイエス像とかキリスト像が見えるはずなんだが、細部だけとりあげて「努力しないから金持ちになれないんだ、おまえらは」とか言い出すから困る、保守系キリスト者って。
キリスト教文化、キリスト教国家
少女をホステスに、経営者ら４人逮捕
１７歳の少女をホステスとして働かせていたとして、東京のキャバクラ経営者ら４人が警視庁に逮捕されました。
風適法違反の疑いで逮捕されたのは、東京・羽村市のキャバクラ「パブ エターナル」経営者で、バングラデシュ人のホセイン・ワリド容疑者（２９）ら４人で、今年１０月、１７歳の無職の少女をホステスとして働かせた疑いがもたれています。
警視庁によりますと、ワリド容疑者らはほかにも少女３人をホステスとして雇っていて、履歴書の年齢を改ざんするよう指示していたということです。
ワリド容疑者は容疑を否認していますが、警視庁は今年４月からおよそ４５００万円の売り上げがあったとみて調べています。（08日11:41）
外国人犯罪報道
群馬大教授「福島の農家はオウム信者と同じ」 訓告処分
群馬大学は、東京電力福島第一原発事故に絡んでインターネット上で不適切な発言を続けたとして、教育学部の早川由紀夫教授（火山学）を７日付で訓告処分にした。
早川教授のツイッターには約３万４千人のフォロワー（読者）がいる。早川教授は「福島県がやったコメのセシウム検査はすべて信用できない。利益相反が発生してる。第三者が検査しない限り福島県のコメは全部たべられない」などと書き込んだ。
「セシウムまみれの干し草を牛に与えて毒牛をつくる行為も、セシウムまみれの水田で稲を育てて毒米つくる行為も、サリンつくったオウム信者がしたことと同じだ」「福島の農家のことなんかひとつも心配していない。彼らが滅びても私は何も困らない」という農家への批判もあった。
原発 過剰反応
下妻の中１女子通報「うそをついてすみません」
茨城県下妻市で７日、登校中の中学１年の女子生徒（１３）が「ナイフを持った自転車の男に追いかけられた」と通報したことについて、下妻署は８日、通報内容は虚偽だったと発表した。
（2011年12月8日19時23分 読売新聞）
親日ドキュメンタリー制作 胡耀邦氏長男ら太子党
2011.12.8 23:04
中国改革派指導者の故胡耀邦元総書記の長男、胡徳平氏らが８日、北京市の人民大会堂で記者会見を開き、日中両国の歴史に埋もれた秘話や日中友好の姿を紹介するドキュメンタリー番組「暖流」を制作すると発表した。
来年の日中国交正常化４０周年に合わせ、両国の国民感情を改善する狙い。
胡氏をはじめ、故周恩来元首相や故薄一波元副首相、中国十大元帥の故聶栄臻元中央軍事委員会副主席らの親族が中心。典型的な「太子党」（共産党高級幹部の子弟）が“親日番組”を制作するとあって内外の話題を集めそうだ。
