Cynics Unlimited

Jan

Is Canada Islamophobic?

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments

Categories: Canadian Politics, Politics and Religion

Last week’s headlines were marked by news of an attack on a mosque in the city of Gatineau, Quebec. The mosque was spray-painted and its windows broken, while two cars in the parking lot were almost torched. After a short period of deliberation, the Gatineau police declared the attack a hate crime. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney paid a visit to the mosque, stating that the type of bigotry displayed by the vandals had no place in Canada.

The vandalism, and Kenney’s appearance at the mosque, came at a time when relations between the federal government and Canada’s Muslim community were uneasy at best and hostile at worst. A month earlier, the Minister had decreed that Muslim women had to remove any face veils like burkas or niqabs when taking the oath of citizenship. Some Muslims felt that Kenney was making these women choose between their faith and their citizenship. Higher up on the political hierarchy, Prime Minister Stephen Harper angered many Muslim Canadians in September when he described ‘Islamicism’ as the greatest threat to Canada’s security. Critics accused politicians like Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney of appealing to the mainstream Canadian population’s Islamophobia in order to obtain votes. But are Canada, and its government, really as Islamophobic as some allege?

To a certain extent, allegations of pervasive anti-Islamic hostility in Canada have some basis in fact. A recent survey by the Association for Canadian Studies found that only 43% of Canadians had a ‘very positive’ or ‘somewhat positive’ perception of Muslims. In contrast, 70% of respondents had a positive perception of Catholics and Jews and 60% of atheists. According to a similar poll in 2009 conducted by Angus Reid, a mere 28% of respondents held a favourable attitude toward Islam, compared to 57% and 53% toward Buddhism and Judaism, respectively, and 72% toward Christianity. These results suggest that a considerable portion of Canadian society views Muslims and their religion in a fairly negative light, at least in comparison to other belief systems.

It’s also true that much anti-Islamic feeling in Canada is based on ignorance or plain bigotry. For example, honour killing, a crime in which a woman is murdered by her family members for ‘disgracing’ them by having premarital sex, marrying men not of the family’s liking, or even talking to boys, is often described as a ‘Muslim tradition.’ Even in Canada, however, such crimes have occurred not only among Muslims but among Sikhs and, in at least one instance, Hindus (a Sri Lankan father who tried to run over his daughter because she was seeing a man of another caste). Some so-called Islamophobes seem to be against any non-White Anglo-Saxon Protestant immigration whatsoever. An example is a commentator calling him- (or her-?)self PaxCanadiana who runs a website called the Canadian Immigration Reform Blog. True, he or she rails against Muslim immigrants, but he (she) also deplores the entry of Filipinos, Chinese, and even the White – if not Anglo-Saxon Protestant – Portuguese into Canada.

One might therefore ask whether this apparent Islamophobia extends to the Canadian government, more specifically the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Much was made of Stephen Harper’s remark about ‘Islamicism’ being the greatest threat to Canada. I am not so sure; it seems that problems like home-grown crime (the bulk of which is NOT committed by Muslims), environmental degradation and child poverty are at least as threatening as Islamicism is in the lives of most Canadians. On the other hand, while ‘Islamicists’ by no means constitute all Muslims, the somewhat uncomfortable truth is that there exists a fanatical element in Islam that has no modern-day counterpart in Christianity or other belief systems. Even ‘arch-atheist’ Richard Dawkins admitted that he knows of no ‘Christian suicide bombers’ or ‘major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death.’ Christianity, he said, might serve as a ‘bulwark against something worse’ (he didn’t spell out what that ‘something’ was). And both Dawkins and Harper are old enough to remember the ‘fatwa’ against writer Salman Rushdie by Muslim leaders for his supposedly blasphemous work The Satanic Verses.

It does not appear that Stephen Harper or his Cabinet have anything against Islam or Muslims per se. They participated in an Eid (major Muslim holiday) celebration on Parliament Hill, for example. Furthermore, both Harper and Jason Kenney spoke out strongly against the vandalism of the mosque in Gatineau, Quebec – whereas neither they nor any other federal official, as far as I’m aware, said anything about the spray-painting of a public nativity scene in St. Catharines. Finally, in 2010 Harper bestowed honorary Canadian citizenship on the Aga Khan, leader of the Ismaili Muslim spiritual community.

So back to my original question – ‘Is Canada Islamophobic?’ – with regard to the Canadian government itself and its main leaders, I would have to say no, at least not based on anything they have expressed or actually done. When it comes to the population at large, my response is more mixed. It’s apparent from polls like the above-mentioned Angus Reid survey that many Canadians are hostile to both Muslims and their religion.

Finally, how can this gap be bridged? Perhaps Muslim Canadians can let it be known that practices like honour killing and female genital mutilation are not Islamic traditions and that not all Muslims embrace capital punishment for apostates, for instance. Non-Muslims for their part should avoid lumping all Muslims together as fanatics or automatically labelling abusive husbands/fathers/brothers from the Middle East or South Asian as ‘Islamofascists’ (a term used to describe, ironically, a Lebanese Christian man named Joseph Hawach who kidnapped his two daughters from his ex-wife and brought them to Lebanon). Good fences may make good neighbours, but talking over these fences might make even better ones. Above all, I’d like to see Muslims and Canadians of other (or no) religions see themselves as fellow citizens of our one country.

Dec

The Gypsies: Then, Now and Later

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

My mother said I never should,
Play with the Gypsies in the wood.

It might come as a surprise to many Canadians that the largest source of refugee claims to Canada right now is not some war-torn land like Afghanistan or Iraq, but Hungary. At least since the fall of Communism, Hungary has been a more or less peaceful country, having transitioned fairly smoothly into a quasi-Western existence. Goulash, not gunfire, is what first springs to most people’s minds when they think of Hungary.

However, the news might not be quite as surprising if one considers that in 2009, Canada imposed a visa requirement on citizens of the nearby Czech Republic. The purpose of the visa was to stem the tide of refugees from the latter nation. However, the measure was not targeted at Czechs à la Vaclav Havel: the personae non gratae here were the so-called Roma, otherwise known as Gypsies.

The Gypsies have a long and complicated history. Once believed to have come from Egypt, hence the name ‘Gypsy,’ it is now clear that their homeland was in Northern India. Their original language, Romany, is related to Indian languages like Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati, the names of which may be familiar to Canadians thanks to recent immigration. The Roma, or Gypsies, reportedly made their way from India to Europe around the 14^th century via the Balkans and from there spread to the rest of the continent. Virtually every European country has a Gypsy community. In Spain, the Gypsies helped create the colourful flamenco dancing. Britain as well had a distinct Roma population, a member of which is actor Bob Hoskins of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Mermaids fame; one of his grandmothers was a British Romani. Gypsies from Europe also travelled with their European overlords to the New World, as actor/director Robert Duvall’s documentary Angelo My Love about the Roma in New York demonstrates. Nonetheless, most Gypsies today live in Eastern Europe, particularly Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak Republics. There they form a small percentage of the population, a proportion expected to rise due to higher birth rates among the Roma than in the wider community.

Over the centuries, the Gypsies have been reviled, romanticized in works of fiction from Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen to British author Jilly Cooper’s trash novel Riders, and routed to Nazi concentration camps during the Third Reich. Although the Roma have always been ‘outsiders,’ attitudes towards them even by nationalistic leaders of their host countries have varied through time and place. Adolf Hitler, most notably, despised the Roma as ‘non-Aryans.’ In contrast, Serbian paramilitary leader Arkan deliberately courted the Gypsies, describing them as ‘fellow victims of fascism’ (while Arkan’s overtures to the Roma were probably motivated more by opportunism than humanitarianism, the reality is that in World War II, both Serbs and Gypsies were persecuted by Axis forces).

Attitudes towards the Gypsies in the Anglo-Saxon world have likewise been ambiguous. On one hand, they have seen themselves glamorized in works of fiction: for example, the romantic hero of the above-mentioned Riders is a half-Gypsy man who steals the beautiful wife of his blond blue-eyed childhood enemy. Even the word ‘gypsy’ with a small ‘g’ has the positive connotation of a free spirit, as in the Fleetwood Mac song ‘Gypsy.’ On the other hand, ‘gyp’ or ‘gip’ is hardly a flattering term, though interestingly, similar expressions exist about other ethnic groups, such as to ‘Jew someone’ or to ‘Welsh on a bet.’

Returning to Hungary, the position of the Roma in that country and other parts of Eastern European is not very enviable. Gypsies in those places experience higher than average unemployment rates, are much poorer than the general populace, and basically live on the margins of society. An alarmingly high proportion of Gypsy children are enrolled in special education classes. Roma activists and outside observers frequently attribute these findings to oppression on the part of the larger community, noting as well that Gypsies have been targeted by nationalist groups, sometimes violently. ‘Native’ Hungarians and other Eastern Europeans are quick to respond that much of what the Roma do – theft, unruliness, and uncontrolled breeding at the taxpayers’ expense being among the things most commonly mentioned – hardly endears them to the rest of the population. After a group of Roma from the Czech Republic attempted to seek asylum in Canada in the mid-1990s, a Maclean’s reader noted that the Czech government had once built special housing for the Roma but that the Roma burned down the dwellings.

The Roma are frequently compared to the Jews, with whom they perished in Hitler’s concentration camps. It is true that the Jews, another diaspora population, often incurred the dislike and even open hostility of the inhabitants of the nations in which they resided. Similarly, like the Jews the Roma at times deliberately chose to separate themselves from the surrounding society: both groups, for instance, have special terms for outsiders (‘goy’ or ‘Gentile’ for the Jews and ‘gadjo’ for the Roma). One significant difference between the Roma and Jews, however, is that while the former group has constituted an underclass, the Jews were and in many ways still are an overclass in the lands they have inhabited: rich, well-educated, and disproportionately represented in prestigious professions like medicine. To illustrate, whereas Roma children are streamed into special education classes, Jewish schools in Hungary are known for their academic excellence to the point that even some non-Jews send their children there. The glaring discrepancy between Jews and Gypsies’ status in countries like Hungary calls into question the charge that the latter’s present misery is entirely due to discrimination from the host society. One might ask why are the Jews, who have also faced fierce prejudice (including, I must admit, in Canada), not living in poverty or filling the rosters of schools for subnormal children.

The situation of Jews versus Gypsies may help explain why unlike the former, the latter have never pushed for an independent nation for themselves. According to columnist Steve Sailer, the Jews were able to create their own country (Israel), but in a homeland of their own, the parasitical Roma would lack a non-Gypsy population to ‘leech off of.’ Nor is returning to their actual homeland – India – a feasible proposition. Not only would a developing nation like India have difficulty absorbing a large essentially non-productive population, but seven centuries away from India have distanced the Roma from that country socially, culturally, and religiously. Even the Romany language is no longer spoken by the bulk of Gypsies in Europe: most have adopted the languages of their host countries. The bond between the Gypsies and the people they left behind in India has long been severed.

Finally, should Canada accept requests for asylum from Roma applicants? I tend to take a libertarian approach to immigration: that is, let everyone in (barring of course those with criminal records), but once they are here, they are on their own (i.e. no tax-funded settlement services, English as a Second Language classes, etcetera). However, since I know such a scenario is unlikely to occur in my lifetime, under the present circumstances I would say that the Roma’s claims for Canada’s protection are fairly weak. So, of course, are many other refugee claims, like that of South African carnival worker Brandon Huntley, who applied for asylum in Canada on the basis that as a White man, he was targeted by Black criminals in his homeland. I do not doubt that Huntley may have been a victim of crime – South Africa is, after all, one of the most violent countries in the world – but whether he was victimized solely because of his skin colour is another matter altogether. Interestingly, I wonder how many people who scoffed at Huntley’s claim of persecution would be the first to call for the acceptance of Roma refugees from Hungary. I have absolutely no problem with Hungarian Gypsies – or Mr. Huntley, for that matter – coming to Canada under other programs, like the Federal Skilled Worker category. However, granting asylum to citizens of Hungary, a democratic country and member of the European Union, comes off as insulting both to Hungary and Canada, in my view. Although it cannot be totally excluded that some individual Hungarian Gypsies may have valid claims for refugee status, Canadian immigration authorities should remain sceptical.

Nov

Moammar Gadhafi: A Man for all Seasons?

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments

Categories: Politics and World Politics

The rais is dead. On Thursday, October 20, it was reported that Colonel Moammar Gadhafi had died at the hands of rebels near his hometown of Sirte, Libya. Compared to the demise of Osama bin Laden several months earlier, the death of Gadhafi was somewhat anti-climatic. While bin Laden had been missing in action for nearly a decade, the world’s eyes had been on the Colonel for the previous half year.

Many people wonder what will happen in Libya with Moammar Gadhafi gone for good. It is of course impossible to answer that question with any certainty. Nonetheless, it seems almost equally impossible to say who Gadhafi really was or what he represented during his lifetime. Was he a defender of the poor and oppressed of the (Third) World, a revolutionary hero, an archenemy of the United States (and by extension, the entire Western world), or the West’s trusted ally against the forces of what Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called Islamicism? Or was Gadhafi like a perpetual adolescent, trying on many identities without settling definitely on any one of them in particular?

Born into a poor family, Gadhafi came to power in 1969, toppling Libya’s monarchy and setting himself up as the country’s absolute ruler. He at first embraced the notion of pan-Arabism, or unity among all Arab peoples throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Most leaders of other Arab countries were uninterested in the idea, so he eventually abandoned it. Perhaps among the casualties of Gadhafi’s Arab nationalism was the suppression of the Berbers, the original people of Libya. For example, Berbers were forbidden to register their children under Berber names. Moammar Gadhafi later turned to the philosophy of pan-Africanism. One consequence of this new love affair was the marriage of one of his daughters to Ugandan ruler Idi Amin. Gadhafi’s pan-Africanism never got much further off the ground, however, for one because Libya and other North African countries had little in common with Africa south of the Sahara desert, as some observers have noted.

Moammar Gadhafi posed as the ally of revolutionaries around the world. His protégés in this regard included the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the ETA (a Basque separatist group in Northern Spain) in addition to a number of rebel groups in the Third World, like the FARC in Colombia or Moro (Muslim) secessionists in the Philippines. Race, religion or nationality did not seem to play a role in his choice of favourites here. His friends among other national leaders similarly consisted of a panoply of figures of various ethnicities, from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi.

In 1986, Libya became the target of air raids by the United States when Libyan agents were accused of planting a bomb in a Berlin discotheque which led to the death of two American servicemen and injury of over 200 other people, many of them US military personnel. The US, under President Ronald Reagan, retaliated by carrying out several air strikes on Libya. Moammar Gadhafi entered the Western public consciousness at that moment, with even a satirical song called ‘Mo Gadhafi’ (to the tune of Austrian singer Falco’s ‘Amadeus’) dedicated to him. Reagan called Gadhafi a ‘mad dog.’ Over two years later (in December of 1988), a bomb exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on a Pan Am flight travelling from London, England to New York, killing all the crew and passengers as well as several individuals on the ground. Libya ultimately admitted involvement in the Lockerbie bombing, although Gadhafi denied ordering the bombing himself.

While Gadhafi fancied himself a protector of the poor and downtrodden, especially in the Third World, and while the Berlin discotheque and Lockerbie incidents put him in the mainstream West’s bad books, he did not completely shy away from relations with Western leaders. He cultivated friendships with among others Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Libya’s former colonial master, a relationship that continued almost until the end of Gadhafi’s rule.

After being out of the spotlight for some time after the air raids on Libya and the Lockerbie affair, Moammar Gadhafi re-emerged after 9/11 with a new image: that of the ally of the West against al-Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism. Though a Muslim himself who sometimes flirted with the idea of an Islamic state, he never quite fit into the fundamentalist mould. Perhaps his associations with so-called infidels prevented hardcore Islamists from ever accepting him as one of their own. His potential as a Muslim leader was further hampered by the fact that the Islam practised in his native Libya was and still is more moderate than that in places like Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. However, Gadhafi’s rehabilitated reputation was questioned when his government sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor employed at a children’s hospital in Benghazi, Libya to death for supposedly infecting patients with the virus that causes AIDS. Evidence accumulated that the spread of AIDS at the hospital was not due to a deliberate ploy but to poor hygiene and improper sterilization of instruments. The healthcare workers’ sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison; they were subsequently sent back to Bulgaria and released there.

Towards the end, perhaps in a bid to salvage his decreasing popularity among his people, Gadhafi began voicing pro-Islamic and anti-Western ideas. He once exhorted Western women to convert to Islam during a visit to Italy in 2010. Some Italians were outraged, with one woman saying that women in Gadhafi’s culture were treated ‘pathetically,’ even though women in Libya probably enjoyed more freedom than those in much of the rest of the Arab world, with the Colonel himself even employing female bodyguards. His role as a champion of Islam did not last long, though, and by the time his subjects began to rebel, Muslim religious leaders in other countries were issuing fatwas against him.

Moammar Gadhafi was a man who tried on many hats, but perhaps in the end none of them quite fit him. He rushed into pan-Arabism, for instance, long after it had become passé (partly as a result of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s failed experiment with the ideology). Some observers, like Pakistani-Canadian commentator Zuhair Kashmeri, have attempted to portray Gadhafi as a Third World hero victimized by the evils of colonialism/imperialism. However, his relations with Western political leaders – particularly Silvio Berlusconi, who once called Islamic civilization ‘backward’ – and forceful expulsion of Palestinians from his territory after the Palestinian Authority decided to negotiate with Israel did not mesh very well with his underdog image.

One might also ask whether Gadhafi was a man of high ideals – ideals that may have nonetheless changed over time – or an opportunist who adopted various personae in order to further his own goals, a bit like how Serbian warlord Arkan went from being a gang leader to Communist activist to devout Orthodox Christian patriot. But while Arkan was, in the words of one of his biographers, clearly ‘no ideologue,’ it is more difficult to determine Gadhafi’s motivations. Maybe he was both: a man of principle and a man on the make. Defying easy classification, Moammar Gadhafi remained alone, literally and figuratively, in death as well as in life.

Sep

Pisco – An Increasingly International Drink

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

From El Popular
Translated by Emilia Liz

Pisco is a banner product from Peru that very few Canadians know about, as it is very difficult to find in Canada. However, according to several studies and internationally renowned sommeliers, in two years this distilled beverage made from grapes will be the new boom in the sector, becoming an internationally fashionable distilled product. Its success lies in the current market trend, which leans on natural and classical products from the field. Qualities that fit perfectly with pisco.

The sector that produces this brandy in Peru is dominated by medium-scale industry and is largely manufactured in artisanal form in the coastal region of Lima, Ica, Arequipa, Moquegua and Tacna and the valleys of Locumba, Sama and Caplina. Due to the beverage’s link to the geography and toponymy of Peru, along with its long established tradition in the country’s roots, it is often manufactured not for commercial purposes but out of generational family pride, using ancient manufacturing processes to provide a quality product.

Pisco exports in the first six months of this year rose by 105% in comparison to the results of 2010 and generated $1.7 million, according to data from the country’s Exporters Association. The United States continues to be the country that imports the most pisco, spending $1.1 million in the first six months of 2011, a 201% increase from the previous year. Other countries that import the beverage include Chile, Spain, France, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia among others.

In the city of San Francisco, California (US), pisco has gained many fans and become a regular spirit after many Americans tried pisco for the first time at the end of the 19th century thanks to the punch called pisco punch, and subsequently pisco sour, that the Scot Duncan Nicol created in the basement of his San Francisco bar. The beverage is so well-established in the American city that they even have a Pisco Punch Day there just like in Lima and Ica.

There are 325 brands of Peruvian pisco, a brandy that ‘is not like Chilean pisco, Italian grappa, or Spain’s orujo. We only distil it once, and in practice, the final product is 100% grape, for which you need eight kilograms of grapes in order to produce a litre of pisco. And in the case of green must (unfermented grape juice), you need between 12 and 15 kilograms,’ explains Ricardo Carpio, owner of PiscoBar, which is one of the most famous Peruvian bars and which pays tribune to pisco.

Single distillation

‘In Spain you have orujo, which is made from spare wine, which are the already pressed skins and which have no sweetness, as a result of which you add water and sugar. In contrast, in Peru we pick the grapes and take them to a plant to crush them, and it is as if we were making a wine with grape juice. But instead of leaving part of the alcohol, with pisco, everything changes and distils. Grappa, for example, uses one or two kilograms of grape per litre,’ Ricardo explains.

In fact, green must is one of the piscos that Canadians like best because of its greater smoothness, as it is 40 degrees rather than 42 like most piscos. It is obtained through a shortened fermentation process, which usually lasts between seven and 20 days in order to make the sugar turn to alcohol and thereby distil it. In the case of green must, it is not completely fermented, and sugar residues remain in the wine’s juice so that the final distillate contains sugar particles and turns out a bit smoother.

Before this potential increase in global demand for pisco, the company Pisco Bar Corner has started marketing the brandy in the province of Ontario. At the events the company organized to let Canadians sample pisco, they discovered that besides green must, Italia and Torontel, both made with aromatic pesquera (literally, ‘fishing’) grapes, were also very popular.

Quebranta pisco ‘is the most common kind made and grown in Peru. It is a pisco with a strong blow, not an aromatic blow, and so it is not going to be popular with clients who have just begun to consume it or who want to learn,’ notes Ricardo, an expert at creating new cocktails made with brandy as well as a member of Pisco Bar Corner.

A very versatile drink

Serving it cold or at ambient temperature depends on the client and how it is going to be consumed. ‘In Peru, pisco is drunk in cocktails and in pure form. But not as if it were a tequila but rather served in a glass like a cognac, sampling it, tasting it, giving it aroma,’ Ricardo explains, emphasizing that this drink ‘is not only an alcohol but also citric, sweet and herb tastes and aromas.’

This characteristic allows it to be combined with all types of food and even flambéed. As well, it goes perfectly with chocolate or with Peru’s typical turrones, Ricardo comments.

Pisco has all the numbers to become an international drink, given its great versatility, especially when it comes to making cocktails. One of Ricardo’s works is the so-called Native, a combination designed exclusively for the Canadian public which contains pisco, brewed coffee, Canada Dry, Green Tea Ginger Ale, lemon juice and ice.

For the pisco expert barman, it is very important to explore every country and discover which products can be consumed with brandy. This way, not only will you get the best flavour but also adapt the Peruvian beverage to Canadian tastes, and then those cocktails will start showing up in bars in the country.

Pisco in Ontario

Ricardo is part of the company Pisco Bar Corner, which seeks to introduce pisco to the province of Ontario. However, to introduce this brandy in places, the company first wants to see how Canadians accept it, as alcohol ‘is very difficult to introduce to this market compared to those of other countries, given that the LCBO controls everything,’ Ricardo points out. For this reason, to get one of the premium piscos sold by the company, it is necessary to go to the website and order it.

Pisco Bar Corner not only brings pisco to Ontario but other high-quality Peruvian products for a gourmet public so that they can taste new exotic delicacies that are ‘an experience of new tastes and scents. A feast for the senses,’ and at the same time, ‘complementary products, as someone who likes a good pisco will also like a good coffee or good chocolate,’ says Jack Angeles, who is responsible for international business and management innovation at Pisco Bar Corner.

In the catalogue of Peruvian products, we find chocolates, tea, coffee, and eight varieties of pisco of the brands Cholo Matias, Torre de la Gala, Tres Generaciones, and Campo de Encanto. The last is one of the most famous internationally, especially in San Francisco.

‘A taster or sommelier not only seeks to try wines, whiskey or vodka but also products like chocolate and coffee because they have a complex that includes sight, flavour, taste and aftertaste,’ Ricardo says, describing why they have chosen to include on their list other products besides Premium pisco, which costs just under $50 a bottle. A price that reflects its degree of exclusivity.

The company, which is associated with the Latin American company in Peru MIREMS, also seeks to demonstrate that part of the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries is feasible for small businesses, especially those linked to social issues, Jack emphasizes, explaining that Ontario was chosen to start the business because for Peru, ‘Toronto is the gateway to Canada,’ as all flights from Lima land in Toronto.

Translation from original Spanish at http://retrolab.ca/elpopular/2011/09/el-pisco-una-bebida-cada-vez-mas-internacional/

For more information, see http://www.piscobarcorner.com/ or call 416-901-0988.

Aug

Jack Layton: A hero of our time?

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments

Categories: Canadian Politics and Politics

On Monday, August 22, 2011, NDP leader Jack Layton died. His death was not completely unexpected: he had earlier been treated for prostate cancer, and he announced just weeks ago that he had developed a new tumour. He had also had a hip replacement, as a result of which he was seen in public using a cane. Surprise or no surprise, though, Layton’s passing was mourned by many, not only by his family but by Canadians of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and even political leanings. He is scheduled to be given a state funeral.

Personally, I have never voted for Jack Layton or the NDP for that matter. The times that I have cast a ballot, I’ve fluctuated between the Liberals and Conservatives. I tend to fall in the ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ category, the latter of which does not leave much room for supporting the New Democratic Party. Still, I remember telling a consistently Conservative friend a few months before Layton’s death that regardless of one’s political philosophy, few people could dispute that the NDP leader was a decent and honourable man. My friend agreed.

Another thing that could not help but impress the public about Jack Layton was the fact that he managed to do what would have been unthinkable even a year ago: he made the NDP the official Opposition. While the NDP has been elected in various provinces at different times, at the federal level it has basically been relegated to the sidelines. I sometimes wonder whether Bob Rae, once the NDP Premier of Ontario, regrets ‘jumping ship’ to the Liberals now that his former party has more seats than his present one.

The NDP’s relative success in the election – I say ‘relative’ because the Conservatives are after all a majority government – was in my view due to several factors. A large number of NDP seats were obtained in Quebec from the Bloc Quebecois. The Quebec separatist movement has always had its highs and lows. The Toronto Spanish-language newspaper El Centroamericano speculates that the movement is losing steam as Francophone Quebecers realize that it might be more difficult for an independent Quebec to be self-sufficient now that its prospective trading partner the United States is currently in the economic doldrums. As a left-wing party, the NDP in a sense filled in the gap for many Quebecers.

However, another reason behind the NDP’s newfound success may be its leader himself. Jack Layton certainly came across as a very personable and approachable figure – a reality recognized even by non-NDP supporters like me. In this respect Layton had the edge over his Liberal counterpart Michael Ignatieff, who basically lacked the charisma to win over the people of Canada as a whole. Of course approachability is not the only factor in a candidate’s victory or defeat. If that were the case, the NDP under Layton would have garnered more votes than the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper. Nonetheless, I believe that Layton’s personality played some role in the last election.

As well, part of Jack Layton’s appeal lay in the confidence he exuded. This was evident, for example, in his promise even after he was diagnosed with a second cancer that he would ‘be back.’ Unfortunately, he never did ‘come back,’ but for his followers this message still holds. Although I have never been one of Layton’s followers, I join other Canadians in mourning his passing. Canada has lost a great leader. At least we can take some comfort in the fact that he died peacefully at home with his family. Since we all must die one day, the least we can ask is that our death be as tranquil as possible. We shall see who will carry on his legacy.

Aug

Something Rotten in Norway: The Breivik Tragedy

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments

Categories: Politics, Religion and World Politics

The events in Norway two weekends ago came, literally, like a blast. When the news of the bombings in Oslo first broke, a large number of people immediately concluded that it was the work of Islamic terrorists (I, pardon the pun, remained agnostic on the issue). Several hours afterwards, it was revealed that the author of the explosions and of a subsequent shooting spree on an island outside the city was a very Aryan-looking young Norwegian man named Anders Behring Breivik who was in fact vehemently opposed to Muslim immigration to his country. He had previously written a 1,500-page manifesto detailing his political philosophy. He is now in custody awaiting psychiatric evaluation.

As soon as the culprit’s identity was disclosed, reaction was quick to follow. Many Muslims understandably took offence at being blamed for a crime of which they had no part and which was committed, to add insult to injury, by an individual with profoundly anti-Islamic sentiments. Other commentators, Muslim and non-Muslim, cited the event and the immediate response to it as an example of the widespread Islamophobia in Western societies like Norway. Finally, following reports describing Breivik as a ‘conservative Christian,’ some left-wing observers used the tragedy to expound on the alleged evils of the right wing, Christianity, and religion in general. But as with other calamities of this nature, the truth lies somewhere in between the extremes presented on all sides.

As mentioned above, it is not hard to sympathize with Muslims who felt that they were once again unfairly smeared for an atrocity in which they apparently played no role. I say ‘once again’ because Muslims were originally (and wrongly) suspected in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building – which turned out to be masterminded by homegrown American ‘patriot’ Timothy McVeigh. Some commentators have even attempted to link Muslims, or the Islamic faith, to mass murderers/serial killers whose connection to Islam was tenuous at best and non-existent at worst. For example, some anti-Islamic websites have made much of the fact that Marc Lepine, a lone gunman who in 1989 killed 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique because he ‘hated feminists,’ was the son of an Algerian-born Muslim father. However, Lepine (whose name at birth was Gamil Gharbi) was actually baptized a Roman Catholic by his French-Canadian mother and eventually became an atheist. Even more absurdly, it was suggested that Rolando del Rosario Mendoza, a Filipino former police officer who took passengers of a tour bus in Manila hostage in August 2010 and killed eight of them, was a Muslim. (While the Philippines do have a Muslim population in the south of the country, it seems somewhat far-fetched that a person with a middle name that literally means ‘of the rosary’ would be one of them.)

On the other hand, should all those who initially thought that the bombings in Oslo were the actions of Muslim extremists be tarred as Islamophobic? The fact that Muslim groups were behind 9/11 in New York City and the later bombings in Madrid and London might have led some reasonable and not necessarily ‘Islamophobic’ people to this conclusion. In addition, an Islamic group linked to Al-Qaeda called ‘Helpers of the Global Jihad’ originally claimed responsibility for the explosions in Oslo, although they later retracted the statement. The notion that Muslims might have been involved in the attacks was, at least in the beginning, a plausible hypothesis.

Also somewhat dubious was the attempt to portray Anders Behring Breivik as a ‘Christian terrorist.’ Although like most Norwegians, he was most likely baptized into the Lutheran Church as a baby, in his manifesto he denied having a ‘personal relationship with God or Jesus Christ.’ He appeared to see Christianity as a cultural rather than religious phenomenon. In his own words, ‘I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a multicultural Christian Europe.’ In this respect he resembles the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, a self-confessed atheist who nonetheless viewed Christianity as a bulwark against the encroachment of Islam in Europe.

Still, some people have tried to depict Breivik as an example of right-wing Christianity gone wild. OMNI TV commentator Zuhair Kashmeri, for instance, calls Breivik a ‘right-wing Christian nutbar.’ While Kashmeri’s statement might be forgivable given that initial reports described the culprit as a conservative Christian, Kashmeri weakens his case by later referring to Timothy McVeigh as a ‘fundamentalist crackpot.’ A crackpot McVeigh may have been; however, he was by no means a Christian fundamentalist but a Catholic-turned-agnostic – a similar trajectory to that of Marc Lepine. I strongly suspect that Kashmeri, author of a book titled The Gulf Within: Canadian Arabs, Racism & The Gulf War about the experience of Arabs/Muslims in Canada, is desperately seeking proof that yes, Christians can be terrorists too. Kashmeri further sinks his own ship by seemingly acting as an apologist for Muslim terrorists. In one commentary, he says that Canada can expect to see more terrorist plots like that of the Toronto 18 if the country continues to wreak destruction on Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq – even though Canada did not join the war in the latter nation.

To be fair, Kashmeri has in the past criticized Islamic fundamentalism in places like Pakistan. His seeming acquiescence to Muslim extremism, though, doesn’t help his cause of defending the Muslim population – especially that in Canada and other Western nations – in general. On the other hand, fervent anti-Islamists like those who claim that everybody from Marc Lepine to Rolando del Rosario Mendoza to even Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui were Muslims might diminish the credibility of people who raise legitimate concerns about the way Islam is currently practised. These include concerns, for instance, that there is a fanatical element within Islam today which is more prominent than that in other major belief systems, including Christianity. (This of course does not mean that all or even most Muslims are fanatics but that probably a higher percentage of Muslims than members of other religions are.) If any good comes out of the Breivik tragedy, perhaps reaching a balance between these extremes and discussing the event logically may be among them.

Jun

Should Undocumented Migrants have the Right to Attend Canadian Schools?

By Cynapse 0 Comments

Categories: Society

Does a child in Canada have a right to education, regardless of citizenship or legal status? The debate is raging in Toronto over Toronto Catholic District School Board trustee Frank D’Amico’s response to social worker Nadia Saad regarding the registration of an undocumented student:

Activists are calling for the resignation of a Toronto Catholic District School Board trustee after he suggested that an undocumented immigrant student applying to Catholic schools should “apply for Canadian Citizenship ASAP.”

Both legislation and district policy state that the school district cannot discriminate against undocumented immigrants who apply. In an e-mail to Nadia Saad, a university social-work student who was working with an undocumented student, Frank D’Amico said that they were lucky he didn’t answer an earlier phone call, “because my first call would be to immigration Canada.

“If you want to live in Canada, take our Canadian jobs, use our Social Programs and Health Care … I strongly suggest becoming a citizen. I am forwarding your concern to the RCMP and to immigration Canada.”

The e-mail was in response to an earlier e-mail Ms. Saad had sent numerous trustees about difficulties finding a placement for a student whose parents were undocumented immigrants. In her original e-mail, she referred to a phone call with a school board administrator that she claimed was skeptical of undocumented immigrants; Mr. D’Amico’s response was that “unless you’ve been on another planet for the last Decade, I will remind you, 911. [sic] September 11 the day that changed the world.”

Saad provided portions of the original letter to Cynics Unlimited:

Not only were this TCDSB administrator’s questions unnecessary, unethical, intrusive and condescending, they, along with her tone of voice, reflect a dangerous underlying ideology that is deeply prejudiced and reeks of entitlement. It is extremely troubling to think of what sort of private information might have been shared unnecessarily with this demanding and intimidating administrator had it been the mother of the boy – anxious, fearful, and non-adept in English – communicating with her as opposed to the social worker, and how such information might have been used (against the family).

Furthermore, the administrator’s questioning is problematic in that it contradicts the afore-mentioned TCDSB policy on Students Without Legal Immigration Status, and section 49.1 of the Ontario Education Act which states:
A person who is otherwise entitled to be admitted to a school and who is less than eighteen years of age shall not be refused admission because the person or the person’s parent or guardian is unlawfully in Canada.
Both the TCDSB policy and section 49.1 of the Education Act should in no respect be viewed as generous, benevolent, unique or complementary gestures. In fact, they are obligations in accordance with international law, as is outlined by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which states that each child is entitled to free and compulsory education, on the basis of equal opportunity. Such a fundamentally human and moral obligation to recognize the right to education – not to mention, to be aware of the policies of your own institution – seemed to have been completely lacking where this particular administrator is concerned.

However, it is my understanding that this is not an isolated occurrence: the report compiled by Social Planning Toronto entitled Policy Without Practice: Barriers to Enrolment for Non-Status Immigrant Students in Toronto’s Catholic Schools highlights as one of its key findings the fact that TCDSB administrative staff are unaware of their own board policies and of their legal obligation to admit children lacking immigration status. This report was completed in 2010 and forwarded to the TCDSB, which has given no response of its receipt nor acknowledgement of the findings of the report.

To conclude, it deeply concerns me that TCDSB administrators are acting inappropriately, unethically, and against their own policies, as gatekeepers to a fundamental human right which is clearly acknowledged by TCDSB policy. I urge the TCDSB to thoroughly educate your school principals, teachers and administrators on the policies I have discussed above, as well as on the international law and human obligations underlying them. If the attitude and ideology of other professionals is anything like this particular administrator who was involved in the above conversation, then I would also recommend everyone undergo extensive training in anti-oppressive practice in order to understand how systems of privilege and oppression operate, are reinforced, and must be worked against.

And so the debate that has divided America for the past decade or so has migrated north: should Canada show compassion to undocumented entrants or force them to abide by the rules before providing any benefits?

May

Canadian Federal Elections: Why and What

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments

Categories: Canadian Politics and Politics

They may not have received as much attention as Osama bin Laden’s death, but the Canadian federal elections have spawned no shortage of commentary. As expected, the Conservatives emerged victorious. However, contrary to some predictions, Stephen Harper won with a majority government this time. Another surprise: the NDP, under Jack Layton, is now the official Opposition. Although the NDP has been elected at the provincial level before – Ontario, for example, had an NDP government from 1990 to 1995 – on the federal scene it has been basically relegated to the sidelines. Other shocker: the once-mighty Liberals have now fallen to third place. Not so unusual, on the other hand, is the mere one seat obtained by the Green Party (by their leader Elizabeth May) and the absence of any seats whatsoever by the various independent candidates and fringe parties, such as the Christian Heritage Party.

Perhaps more important than the “what” is the “why” these elections turned out the way they did. First, the Conservative victory. It may be that despite the Bruce Carson and Bev Oda/KAIROS scandals, Canadians felt that the Tories were the best choice available or, from a more negative angle, the least of three or possibly more evils. Under the leadership of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, for instance, Canada managed to weather the economic recession relatively smoothly, at least compared to other nations like Portugal, Ireland or Greece. While the above-mentioned scandals may have dissuaded some Canadians from casting their ballots for Harper, many of these people may have simply abstained from voting altogether, thereby failing to give any advantage to the various non-Conservative parties.

I also attribute Stephen Harper’s win partly to the fact that Canadians refused to fall for the scare tactics engineered by the Conservatives’ opponents. One such tactic was the attempt to portray the Tories as reactionary Bible thumpers bent on banning abortion and keeping women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. This effort began well before the recent elections. A few years ago, one left-leaning website featured a picture of Gerri Santoro, an American woman who died from an illegal abortion in 1964, lying dead in a motel room, as if to portray what Canadian women would face if Harper remained at the helm. Leaving aside the fact that the most egregious violations of women’s reproductive rights in recent years took place not in a right-wing God-bothering theocracy but in a left-wing officially atheistic state, Communist Romania, where not only abortion but contraception was banned, Harper himself has stated that he has no plans to re-open the abortion issue. Critics have countered that he did raise the matter by failing to include abortion in a federal package for maternal health care in the Third World. But declining to finance a procedure can’t be equated to legally prohibiting it. As an analogy, no government in Canada would stop me from getting breast implants, but no government would pay for them either other than in the case of a mastectomy. Finally, Harper’s supposed pro-life sympathies are belied by anti-choice groups’ characterization of the Prime Minister as “pro-abortion.”

The huge sea change in this election was the Liberals’ descent to third place, behind the Conservatives and NDP. Some would sum up the reason for the Liberals’ seeming downfall in two words: Michael Ignatieff. However great an intellectual/author/broadcaster Ignatieff might be, he simply lacked the charisma to win the Canadian public’s favour as a future Prime Minister. The other side of the Liberals’ defeat was of course the rise of the NDP. Part of the NDP’s newfound success stemmed from the support it received in Quebec, where it managed to supplant the Bloc Quebecois in all but a few ridings. Quebec’s turn to the party of Layton was not especially surprising to me, as Quebecers have long held left-wing views on social and economic matters. I also wonder whether some people who might have otherwise voted for the Liberals chose the NDP out of a belief that the latter party has at least had the courage to stand by their principles (many of which, by the way, I do not personally share) while the Liberals in contrast seem to define themselves solely by their status as non-Conservatives.

I have to admit that I did not vote in this election. There was no party with which I felt 100% comfortable casting my ballot for, so I simply abstained. Nonetheless, I’m not necessarily displeased by the results of this election. I suppose that if I were forced to vote for one particular party, it would be the Conservatives. Yet the idea of the NDP as a counterbalance to the Conservatives doesn’t strike me as a bad scenario either. At the very least, the outcome of this election could have been worse.

Apr

Race Mixing and Westernization in Latin America and the Philippines

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments

Categories: Uncategorized

In his book Race and Ethnicity, Belgian sociologist Pierre van den Berghe compares the impact of European colonization on Africa and the Americas. While the former largely retained its original character despite being under European rule, the latter ended up with a predominantly Western culture. As well, race mixing was widespread in the New World but occurred on a much smaller scale in Africa, with the exception of South Africa’s Cape Province. The amount of acculturation and miscegenation moreover did not depend on whether the European power in question took an “assimilationist” approach, as France, Spain and Portugal did, or a “racialist” one, as did Britain and the Netherlands. At the end of the day, the Americas are a “cultural extension of Europe,” whereas Africa is not.

The same observation can be made of Latin America [1] and the Philippines. Though both were under Spain’s control for roughly three centuries, Latin America essentially adopted a Western (Iberian) culture as a result of colonization while the Philippines remained more or less as it had been before the conquest. Similarly, miscegenation between the conquered and conquerors took place extensively in the former region but was fairly negligible in the latter. To paraphrase van den Berghe, Latin America is a cultural extension of Spain; the Philippines is not.

This is not to say that the Philippines was not influenced by three hundred years of Spanish rule. Among Spain’s legacies to the islands were Castilian [2] loan words to the local languages, Spanish personal names of the inhabitants, and perhaps most importantly, Roman Catholicism, today the religion of over 80% of Filipinos. (When it comes to being good Catholics, the Filipinos may have beaten their former colonial masters and the latter’s overseas descendants at their own game. Several years ago the international newswires reported on Father Ener Glotario, a priest in Barranquilla, Colombia who refused to give communion to scantily clad female parishioners. I couldn’t help thinking how much easier Father Glotario’s life would have been if he were stationed in the Philippines, where the women, unlike their Western sisters, generally eschew miniskirts, midriff-baring tops and short shorts.) Yet the Philippines’ status as an Asian country is undisputed not only geographically but also culturally.

In fact, the example of the Philippines provides a powerful counterweight to claims by left- and right-wing ideologues alike that Latin America is not Western and that its “soul” is Indian rather than European. If such were the case, the counter argument might go, why did the region not end up like the Philippines, whose people were conquered by Spain but nonetheless kept their own languages and cultural traditions?

One of the most striking differences between Latin America and the Philippines today lies in the racial composition of their inhabitants. Mestizos [3] form the bulk of Latin America’s population. By contrast, most Filipinos are of indigenous Malay stock, and individuals of mixed Spanish-Malay descent are relatively rare.

What accounted for the low rate of miscegenation between Spaniards and natives in the Philippines? Certainly not a lack of desire by either party. Even clerics succumbed. Spanish chronicler Sinibaldo de Mas attempted to explain why so many Spanish priests in the Philippines broke their vows of celibacy: “The offense is most excusable, especially in young and healthy men placed in the torrid zone… The garb of the native women is very seductive; and the girls, far from being unattainable, consider themselves lucky to attract the attention of the curate, and their mother, father, and relatives share in that sentiment. What virtue and stoicism does not the friar need to possess!” (The good de Mas is perhaps a little too quick to blame the “girls” and their attire for his compatriots’ lust. More likely, the women’s eagerness to couple with curates stemmed from the higher social status that mixed race children in colonial — and according to some sources, modern — Philippines enjoyed compared to their unmixed native counterparts. In addition, I suspect Spanish priests’ fall into temptation was due less to the native women’s “garb” than to the fact that, as Pierre van den Berghe writes in his book Human Family Systems: An Evolutionary View, “celibacy, however saintly, goes against most people’s grain.”)

The main reason for the dearth of Spanish-Filipino mestizos was that few Spaniards ventured to the Philippines. The voyage from Spain to the islands was considerably long. Before the construction of the Panama Canal, it involved going around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. The Philippines in addition lacked natural resources like gold and silver that the Americas had and that might have convinced large numbers of Spaniards to migrate there (indeed, at one point the scarcity of potential riches led Spain to consider abandoning the islands). According to de Mas, in some Philippine villages the friar and/or the mayor were the only white residents.

Whatever the cause, the low incidence of race mixing in the Philippines effectively stopped that country from going down the path of Hispanicization. The offspring of Spanish men and Filipino women [4] may have adopted the culture of their fathers — some mixed race families in the Philippines still speak Spanish among themselves, for instance — but ultimately there were simply not enough Spanish mestizos in the country to have much of an effect on Philippine culture as a whole. Mestizos in Latin America conversely came to constitute the largest racial category in the region, so as a group they managed to maintain and promote the Spanish language and culture.

One giveaway to Latin America’s “Westernness” is the fact that the majority of the population speaks Spanish, not an indigenous language or even a Creole, as their mother tongue. On the other hand, it has been estimated that even at the height of Spanish domination only 10% of Filipinos were able to speak the language of their masters, and undoubtedly fewer still learned it as a mother tongue. And while the Americans who took over the islands in 1898 were much more successful in teaching their Filipino subjects English than the Spaniards were in teaching their language, the reality is that English in the Philippines is a lingua franca and an administrative medium rather than a mother tongue. Neither the Americans nor the Spaniards managed to eradicate the islands’ Asian character.

Going back to van den Berghe’s argument, the example of the Philippines and Latin America shows that regions colonized by the same power may nevertheless turn out quite differently. It also shows how miscegenation can change the course of history. Despite Spain’s assimilationist approach and occasional “successes” in the Philippines (such as religious conversion), the Spaniards failed to acculturate the islands to any significant degree. Spain’s conquest of Latin America on the other hand transformed that region into a part of the Western world. As van den Berghe explains with regard to Africa and the Americas, differences in the Philippines and Latin America themselves rather than racial attitudes on the part of the colonizer were responsible for the different outcomes of European rule in the two regions.

(1) For the purpose of this essay, Latin America will refer only to the Spanish-speaking part of the region.

(2) The term “Castilian” refers to the official language of Spain (as opposed to regional dialects and languages like Galician and Catalan).

(3) Though the term “mestizo” literally means “mixed” in Spanish, for the purpose of this essay the term will refer to individuals of mixed Spanish and Native American descent in the Latin American context and to those of mixed Spanish and Filipino Malay origin in the Philippines.

(4) The opposite combination was virtually non-existent, as even fewer Spanish women than men traveled to the islands.

Apr

Quotable: Lending Money to Family and Friends

By Cynapse 0 Comments

Categories: Economics and Quotable

My mom and dad advised me never to lend money to friends and family. Give it freely as a gift and never expect to get it back or don’t give it at all. Money ruins more relationships than anything else.

–Chilina Kennedy