Abusing terrorism

 

 

Today’s concept of terrorism seems to be largely influenced by the identity of the perpetrators or the nature of the cause, rather than the nature of the act. Take for example the recent bombing at the Boston Marathon last April 15.

 

Bombs explode during the Boston Marathon, April 15, 2013. Photo by the New
Yorker. Click link to view Explosions at the Boston Marathon by the Boston
Globe,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xiXroQp8t4

The suspects, the brothers Tsarnaev, are of Chechen descent and followers of Islam, but their Islamic or Chechen heritage alone is hardly proof of jihadist intent. No evidence has emerged to link Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, who travelled to Dagestan for six months, to militant groups in Russia’s Caucasus. In fact, the Caucasus Emirate, which both Russia and the US consider a terrorist organization, denied involvement in the Boston attack.

 

US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and three other Republican lawmakers wanted the surviving Boston bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, be declared an enemy combatant, not a criminal, which would deprive the 19-year-old American citizen the fundamental rights that distinguish this country from authoritarian regimes.

 

Right after the photographs of the Boston suspects were revealed to the public, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis quickly prejudged the Muslim brothers and considered them “terrorists with a mission to kill.”

 

But whose enemy is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

 

Certainly, not the United States. Probably Russia. But why on earth did the Tsarnaev brothers choose to bomb the Boston marathon instead of the Bolshoi Theatre or the Moscow Metro, which is closer to home and symbolic of their dislike of Russia? Recall that in 2010, two women suicide bombers carried out an attack on the Moscow Metro. At least 40 people were killed, and over 100 injured.

 

Russian officials called the Moscow Metro bombing the deadliest in recent years. At the time of the attacks, an estimated 500,000 people were commuting through Moscow’s metro system. The Caucasus Emirate claimed responsibility for the Moscow Metro bombings, stating that attacks in Russia will continue unless Russia grants independence to Muslim states in the North Caucasus region.

 

The true motivation for the Tsarnaev brothers for bombing the Boston marathon with pressure-cooker bombs, if they were really the culprits beyond nagging suspicions of conspiracy or being framed up, would never be exactly known. One thing sure is their religion is going to be blamed for radicalizing them. That, “like all militant Muslims,” the Tsarnaev brothers are guilty of committing terrorism in order to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm. With no history of violence or prior criminal record (except for the older Tamerlan for domestic assault), both brothers will be forever linked to terrorism, simply because they are fervent Muslims from a volatile Muslim-dominated republic in the Caucasus where “violence, abductions, widows, orphans and rape” are ordinary.

 

Never mind that the younger Tsarnaev told FBI interrogators that they were self-radicalized, that they were driven to terrorism by the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and its policy against Islamic jihadists overall. Rebellious words from a young kid who regularly “stoned” with his friends. This is too convenient a motive to believe.

 

One wonders why this “self-radicalizing” effect has not similarly aroused other militant Americans to engage in terrorism to send a political message that they too don’t approve of American military intervention in the wars against Muslim extremists. Is it the Muslim connection that is missing as a trigger to commit terrorism?

 

It makes more sense to listen to the Caucasus Emirate when it said that its mujahedin are not fighting with the US. Their website declares: “We are at war with Russia, which is not only responsible for the occupation of the Caucasus, but also for heinous crimes against Muslims.” The group suggested that Russia’s secret services would have had a greater interest in carrying out the attack in Boston.

 

Ethnicity has often been used today to justify the violent behaviour of terrorists. But there is no ethnicity that is inherently violent. Even if the brother Tsarnaevs have aligned themselves with Chechen resistance against Russia or with Islamic jihad in general, which has not been established, treating Chechen ethnicity and the brothers’ Islamic faith as the cause of the Boston violence is highly irresponsible.

 

Muslim immigrants in the United States are being treated as walking symbols of violent behaviour. As if terrorism can only be explained by linking acts of terror to Muslims who are presumed to have a mission of committing violence against America and its allies.

 

In an article in Harper’s Magazine in September 1986, “Terrorism: A cliché in search of a meaning,” Christopher Hitchens writes: “The word “terrorist” is not-like “communist” and “fascist”— being abused; it is itself an abuse. It disguises reality and impoverishes language and makes a banality out of the discussion of war and revolution and politics. It’s the perfect instrument for the cheapening of public opinion and for the intimidation of dissent.”

 

Hitchens goes on: “What is frightening and depressing is that a pseudoscientific propaganda word like “terrorism” has come to have such a hypnotic effect on public debate in the United States. A word which originated with the most benighted opponents of the French Revolution; a word featured constantly in the anti-partisan communiqués of the Third Reich; a word which is a commonplace in the handouts of the Red Army in Afghanistan and the South African army in Namibia; a word which was in everyday use during the decline of the British, French, Portuguese, and Belgian empires. Should we not be wary of a term with which rulers fool themselves and by which history is abolished and language debased? Don’t we fool and console ourselves enough as it is?”

 

Timothy McVeigh committed a terroristic act in the Oklahoma City bombing, but at least we knew exactly why he did it. The “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski was an American terrorist who single-handedly waged a bombing campaign against modern technology that killed three people and injuring 23 others. We all knew why he did it.

 

When the trial is over, the Tsarnaev brothers will be found guilty for the Boston bombing. But for whatever rhyme or reason, meaning the real one, we simply will never know. All that matters is “it was for the cause of terrorism,” however vague or nebulous these words may mean.

Is there a conspiracy behind the Boston bombing? Click link to view video,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpu6_kArb9U

Because we have allowed ourselves to abuse the concept of terrorism in its modern usage. For it is enough that the perpetrators are believers of a perverted form of Islam and that they come from a terrorism-infested place where violence is a way of life. Many Americans have been led to believe that Islam is capable of nurturing terrorists and suicide-bombers and that committing terrorism among its adherents has an evangelizing charm.

 

The perverted idea of Islam being able to generate a “self-radicalizing” effect that could trigger domestic terrorism has gone too far. Muslim immigrants to the US, many of whom are peace-loving people, should have reason to worry that they could be deprived of their First Amendment right if their religion is seen as so powerful to convert them to embrace terrorism against their host country. Immigration of Muslims might even be shut down if this anti-Muslim hysteria is allowed to dominate the debate on current initiatives to reform immigration in the US.

 

In addition to the twisted American definition of terrorism, there is also the distorted basis for laying charges of terrorism, at least in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The federal criminal complaint charges the young Chechen-American with “unlawfully using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction ... against persons and property.” The WMD in question was, the document explains, “an improvised explosive device (IED).”

 

Now, isn’t this notion of WMD a ridiculous charge?

 

If pressure cookers retrofitted with explosives were to be considered WMD, then George W. Bush was right that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction after all. Furthermore, if an IED is a WMD, then Iraq actually ended up with more WMDs after the U.S. invasion than before. It does not fit any logical definition of WMDs.

 

Obviously, the federal statute could no longer distinguish “dangerous weapons from apocalyptic ones.” Under the statute, 18 USC §2332a, a weapon of mass destruction might be what it’s always been understood to be – a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon. It can now include any bomb, grenade, mine, or any rocket with a propellant charge exceeding four ounces, or any missile with an explosive charge exceeding one-quarter ounce. Someone suggested that a cherry bomb, exploded on the Fourth of July, if deployed with sufficient malice, would be deemed a WMD.

 

The United Nations adopted the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” in 1947 to describe not only nuclear weapons, but also chemical and biological weapons that are capable of extinguishing human civilization. With new technologies being made available on the Internet, we should be thankful that no category of weapon has been invented to date that could match the destructive power of nuclear weapons.

 

In characterizing the Boston Marathon bombers as wielding WMDs, we probably miss the point as to what was truly frightening about that event.

 

Timothy Noah writes in Foreign Policy: “It isn’t only terrorist masterminds who can harm us with weapons of unimaginable power. It’s also ordinary people moved by inexplicable hatreds using the simplest of tools. Weapons of minor destruction, in the wrong hands, are perhaps even more terrifying, because they’re so much easier to acquire, and so much easier to set off.”

 

Whether the Boston bombing is really an act of terrorism or not has significant political implications and legal consequences as well. Terrorism could raise our levels of fear and even justify any government response.

 

But the current use of the word “terrorism” has been manipulated to suit what the state officially wants.

 

As Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian writes: “It’s hard not to suspect that the only thing distinguishing the Boston attack from Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook and Columbine (to say nothing of the US “shock and awe” attack on Baghdad and the mass killings in Fallujah) is that the accused Boston attackers are Muslim and the other perpetrators are not. As usual, what terrorism really means in American discourse – its operational meaning – is: violence by Muslims against Americans and their allies.”

New language threshold discriminatory

When the points system for selecting new immigrants was adopted by Canada in the 1960s, it was hailed as a Canadian innovation. The system removed any type of formal discrimination from immigration policy. Individuals would no longer be denied immigration to Canada, as it was in the past, based on their ethnicity, nationality or religion.

As reflected in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, one of Canada’s objectives is the enrichment of the social and cultural fabric of Canadian society that respects the federal, bilingual, and multicultural character of the country. The law mandated that new immigrants are determined based on the number of points they score on the criteria of education, skills, language and employment.

Although Canada’s immigration policy does not explicitly discriminate on grounds of race or religion, discrimination continues to persist under the points-system, albeit in a much more covert manner. Qualifications such as education, skills and employment still represent a barrier because there is no equivalency between Canadian requirements and qualifications earned by applicants in their home countries. Oftentimes, the education and skills of immigrants are unfairly discounted and devalued. Some have also suggested that one of the more explicit forms of discrimination can be found in the investor or business immigrant category, which allows wealthy individuals to effectively buy access to Canada by bringing significant financial capital into the domestic economy.

Now, Canada Immigration is proposing to overhaul the point grid it has used for the past 20 years in determining applicants for permanent residence in Canada. To take effect in January 2013, the revised point-system will emphasize language skills, which Canada Immigration considers as a better predictor of rapid integration and economic success.

People immigrating to Canada must pass minimum standard for English or
French proficiency, says Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

Canada Immigration Minster Jason Kenney said that immigration applicants will have to demonstrate high levels of English or French fluency to gain entry to Canada. Language proficiency must be shown by all applicants in all classes but the most stringent requirement will apply to applicants in the federal skilled worker category, which accounts for nearly 100,000 of the roughly 250,000 immigrants who come to Canada every year.

One wonders why professional team sports like baseball, basketball, soccer and hockey are able to recruit the best athletes in the world without subjecting them to a language proficiency test. If the Toronto Blue Jays were to screen their baseball players for their fluency in English, all the Latino players would probably fail despite their natural ability to play the game. All the best hockey players from Eastern Europe would also flunk an English or French exam if this would be required by the Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens hockey franchise. For sure, it’s not the ability to speak either of the official Canadian languages that enables a player to hit a slider or a curve ball or shoot the puck into the goal.

Why would English or French fluency be the most important factor in the grid in the new system? Considering that majority of Canadian permanent residents become easily integrated into the Canadian mainstream and are able to speak either English or French before becoming citizens three or four years after being landed. The history of immigration in Canada has shown a high degree of language integration over time. That applies, too, to professional ball players who initially didn’t a know word in English or French, but have become as assertive in English and are able to display a form of swagger as English-speaking players are wont to do.

Language fluency as the most important requirement for social integration and job placement seems to be overstated. The truth could be that it is simply a device to discriminate against applicants from non-English or French-speaking countries. That the real purpose is to tilt immigration toward those who are more similar to the original Anglo-French Canadian Caucasians who speak either English or French and those who carry with them the culture of their language. Thus, no more Chinese and other Asians, Africans or Latin Americans despite their higher level of skills and dependable work habits.

According to Canada Immigration, this kind of language proficiency is now being imposed by other countries, such as Australia. Look at the new immigrants to Australia nowadays. They are mostly from the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand, all English-speaking countries with a predominant white population.

Mikal Skuterud, an economist at the University of Waterloo said that most of the changes Jason Kenney has proposed to implement are inspired by the Australian immigration system. “It’s quite clear from the Australian evidence that it has the effect of shifting immigration away from non-English speaking countries, China particularly,” Skuterud said.

Canada Immigration would be using a Canadian Language Benchmark for all four abilities – speaking, oral comprehension, reading and writing. This will be the standard for describing, measuring and recognizing the language proficiency of adult immigrants and prospective immigrants in both English and French. That would be a total of 24 points for fluency in one official language as opposed to the former total of 16 points.

With the new and higher threshold for language proficiency, Canada is returning to an ethnocentric society rather than strengthening the country’s multicultural make-up. Back to a highly discriminatory immigration policy that the original points system wanted to remove.

Expect a dramatic shift in source countries, some critics have said about the new emphasis on language proficiency. Naomi Alboim, a public policy professor at Ontario’s Queen’s University, anticipates a decline in immigrants from China but a rise in the number from English-speaking countries.

While Prof. Alboim thinks that focusing on language makes sense, she cautioned that Canada should be more careful about setting the bar too high and “whether that is going to exclude a whole group of people who can contribute to a very significant degree with a little bit of assistance.”

Immigrants learning English at LINC class, a government-approved language
course. Photo courtesy of  Dave Chan/Postmedia News

Right now, Canada offers several language training programs such as English as Second Language (ESL) courses which have helped many immigrants who have initial difficulty with the language. Eventually, most immigrants are able to integrate well as soon as they have picked up their new language skills. Besides, most entry-level job opportunities in the labour market do not demand very high English proficiency except for jobs in the federal government which are not open to new immigrants anyway.

Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, thinks the new immigration policy will screen out people from the global south. “We can’t discriminate against folks who don’t sound like us. That might mean more propping up of language teaching [for new immigrants] but that’s a very small price to pay for helping people contribute to building our country,” Douglas said.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has stated many times in the past that diversity makes Canada stronger socially and economically. It is Canada’s commitment to a multicultural ethos that immigrants from many different cultures are coming to live in this country. Kenney has reversed this pattern of migration that obviously favours people who sound more like him.

To some extent, mastery of the language might produce better economic outcomes for immigrants in the short term. But it could also have other effects. Canada may struggle to find enough people with sufficient levels of fluency to maintain its very high immigration levels. The emphasis toward a higher level of English or French proficiency may also have an impact on Canada’s ties to a country such as China and studies have shown that trade ties increase through immigration.

According to Howard Ramos, a sociologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia: “The points system was introduced to correct the injustices of focusing on culture and language too heavily. It was a society and a time that was much more ethnocentric. I don’t think it’s a time we should try and return to.”

In overhauling the government’s immigration policy, the ruling Conservative Party has obviously turned a blind eye to the real causes of poor social and economic integration of new immigrants. Instead of tearing down barriers like non-recognition of foreign credentials, de-skilling of immigrant labour, and preference for temporary and seasonal foreign workers, Canada’s ruling government is hell-bent on restoring the shameful immigration policies of the past that deny immigration on grounds of ethnicity, nationality or religion.

Language proficiency may not strike as an obvious form of discrimination. But requiring new immigrants to speak English or French to a higher level to improve their economic prospects may have the unintended consequence of targeting favoured nationalities.

Summer of the gun: Part II

To many peace-loving residents of Toronto, the latest mass shooting (July 16) on Danzig St. in Scarborough raises yet the spectre of another “summer of the gun” that shook the city in 2005. That summer seven years ago, 24 people were shot dead in Toronto from June 12 to September 16, and by year’s end, a total of 52 people were killed, all by guns.

A passerby stops to look at a memorial for Joshua Yasay, 23 and Shyanne Charles,
14, both of  whom died in the Danzig Street shooting on July 16, 2012. Photo by
Peter  Power/The Globe and Mail.  Click link to view "Looking at the Victims of
the Danzig Street Shooting," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOw9bHyU53g

This summer, there have been just six murders in Toronto, but all the victims have been shot. Of the 28 murders so far in 2012, 19 were by guns. There have been 140 shootings so far, up by 30 per cent from the 106 in 2011.

The statistics are not that grim to indicate another turbulent summer, but the level of violence is already driving Torontonians to push the panic button. After last Friday midnight’s (July 20) shooting rampage in a theatre complex in Aurora, Colorado, that killed 12 and wounded more than 50 people, fresh calls for tighter gun controls are being heard again in the U.S., and these have reverberated very loudly in Toronto.

But Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has a different idea – he stressed that the best remedy for shootings is jobs. Shallow as Ford has always been when it comes to effective public policy, according to him, “the best social program around, is a job.” He’s behaving like Marie Antoinette, whom, according to the myth, upon hearing that the French peasants were starving and had no bread, ordered to “let them eat cake.”

Ford’s doesn’t want any more spending on social programs, as others are wont to do. “I don’t believe in these programs. I call them hug-a-thug programs,” he added.

Last week, Ford voted by his lonesome against all city community development grants, even against accepting federal funds for a gang-prevention program that will cost the city nothing.

It’s easy to blame the lack of jobs as the engine that revs up criminality, without seeing unemployment in the context of poverty and other elements of social disorganization that can be found where poverty exists, such as poor housing, single-parent families, lack of discipline, economic inequalities, family breakdown, and absence of social and community controls. There is a societal explanation for crime in poor neighbourhoods and families, and people with simple minds like Mayor Ford do not understand the extent to which crime results from poverty. Thus, Mayor Ford would only see the absence of jobs and fail to understand the connection between the social environment in which people and institutions interact.

Mayor Ford does not only betray his lack of knowledge of the link between crime and socio-economic circumstances, but also is quick to blame the ethnicity of those who commit crimes against society. Or perhaps, he is confusing those circumstances with ethnicity, and to many other people, the link between ethnicity and crime is too often simply obvious. We hear many in the community who believe that immigrants commit crimes because it comes with their cultural background.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who according to Chris Selley of the National Post, is
out of his depth when he starts talking about crime. Photo by Darren Calabrese
of  the National Post. Click link to view "Ford - Put Down Your Guns,"
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/07/19/ford-put-down-your-guns

During a radio interview in the aftermath of the largest mass shooting in Toronto’s history, Mayor Ford told listeners, "Once they’re charged [those guilty of crimes] and they go to jail, the most important thing is when they get out of jail, I don’t want them living in this city. They can go anywhere else, but I don’t want them in the city.”

When asked how he planned to force gangsters out of Toronto, Mr. Ford said: “I don’t know and that’s what I’m going to sit down with the prime minister and find out: how our immigration laws work. Obviously I have an idea. But whatever I can do to get them out of the city I’m going to, regardless of whether they have family or friends, I don’t want these people, if they’re convicted of a gun crime, to have anything to do with the City of Toronto.”

Unfortunately, Mayor Ford misses the whole point about the link between immigration and criminality. According to Scot Wortley, a University of Toronto criminologist and gang expert, Toronto’s gang problem is a “homegrown problem, not a problem that’s been exported from other countries.” Wortley pointed to studies across North America that found immigrant communities actually having lower levels of criminality and lower levels of gang membership than those born here.

The Toronto mayor seems to be saying that immigrants are responsible for most of the gang crimes, which they’re not. Again, Mayor Ford does not take into account that a person’s background and environment can affect their behaviour. If he would only look at the various communities in Toronto and try to reconcile crime, social support and cultural diversity, then the link between ethnicity and crime instantly disappears. People from ethnic communities are no more or less susceptible than anyone else to the pressures of poverty, unemployment or poor education. A person does not commit crime because of their ethnicity.

But then Mayor Rob Ford and people like him never truly understand the more relevant causes of criminality. For them, the only task to do is to round up criminals and throw them in jail. Or worse, expel them out of their communities. Street crimes, such as the shootings in Scarborough and the Eaton Centre often are given wider press coverage and public condemnation than those crimes committed in suites or by white collar executives or children of rich families. Greater sentences are imposed against street crimes, and often the poor are given stiff sentences while the wealthy are given leniency for even serious crimes.

Arguably poverty is an influence on the criminal, but there is some inconsistency in linking socio-economic variables with all crimes. The difficulty perhaps lies in not fully accounting for the multiple causes of crimes, such as divorce, unemployment, broken homes, neighborhood decay, or other related factors. It’s rather easy for those in power, like the Toronto mayor, the police and members of city council to suggest that people in poor families and communities are more likely to steal, rob, sell drugs, and possess and trade illicit guns.

There are many views as to the motivations of crime and the influences on criminal behavior. Economic deprivation or poverty can motivate individuals to commit crime or create the circumstances that serve as a breeding ground for crime. Nevertheless, there are many who are poor but still choose to live a life of high moral standards and to adhere to societal norms. As such, poverty cannot be the only and single cause of crime.

Solutions for reducing criminality, particularly street crimes that involve gangs and guns, call for interventions beyond traditional policing. More social programs, subsidies, government housing, funded education, or community service programs, while they may assist in halting an increase in crime rates, can create more dependency on outside help. Politically, such programs are also not widely held acceptable because someone has to pay for those programs, and when governments are in austerity mode, these programs are usually the first ones to be eliminated.

If economic conditions, such as lack of jobs as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford would like to suggest, are to be considered the primary causal factor for crime, then the future is very dim. Economic conditions will invariably get worse, as the higher proportion of the population is in the lower economic class. Indications are that poverty will increase and the proportion of people who make a significant income will decline, and this may be exacerbated by the marginalization of new immigrants, taxation policies, jobs going overseas, an increase in cost of living, and a reduction in consumer spending.

We need a more comprehensive solution to crime. One that addresses and reduces risks to the community, increases the quality of life in the community, strengthens social institutions so as to reinforce social control, decreases family stress and family decay, and improves education and educational opportunities. The family and the community must work together to build social bonds with young adults and children, giving them the positive influence they need to accept social norms.

In the larger context of social issues, crime should not be seen alone as the central problem, but rather poverty, unemployment, racism, family breakdown, and a host of other related factors that we often ignore or avoid because they inconveniently bring up the roles of class division and social inequality.