Indigenous filmmaker says he was refused entry on Cannes red carpet for his moccasins

The Canadian Press

Yesterday

TORONTO — A Dene filmmaker says he was "disappointed" and "close to tears" when security at the Cannes Film Festival blocked him from walking the red carpet while dressed in a pair of moccasins.


© Provided by The Canadian PressIndigenous filmmaker says he was refused entry on Cannes red carpet for his moccasins

Kelvin Redvers, a Vancouver-based producer who attended Cannes as part of a delegation of six Indigenous filmmakers, says he was refused entry to the carpet for Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s "Les Amandiers" last Sunday because festival staff didn't approve of his traditional Indigenous footwear.

He says he was only allowed to walk the carpet if he swapped out his moccasins for a pair of formal shoes that Cannes deemed appropriate.

Redvers obliged, but he says he hopes speaking out about his experience leads Cannes organizers to rethink what counts as formal wear when it comes to representing different cultures on their red carpets.

"Whenever there's an opportunity — if there's an award show or a special event — it's really important for me to be able to bring in a bit of my Dene heritage," he said.

"My goal was to wear my suit, and my bowtie and my Dene moccasins, which are formal, they're cultural. And they're still sort of elegant and classy. I had no reason to believe that they wouldn't fit on the red carpet."

Cannes is notoriously strict about formalwear at many of its red carpet premieres – requiring a black tie for men and evening gowns for women – however, some traditional formal wear is accommodated, such as Scottish kilts and Indian saris.

The festival once outlined some of the formalwear expectations on their website, but in recent years — after a number of controversies, including one involving women wearing flats instead of heels — the official guidelines have all but disappeared online.

Before the Sunday screening, Redvers says he gathered with his fellow filmmakers to take photos in their tuxedos and moccasins. The group, who were in Cannes with the support of Telefilm, the Indigenous Screen Office, and Capilano University's FILMBA program, then headed to the red carpet.

After getting past the first security checkpoint, Redvers pulled off his pair of street shoes and stepped into his moccasins. That is when security at a second checkpoint stopped him.

Various levels of Cannes red carpet officials were brought in to assess the situation, Redvers says, while a French-speaking member of his cohort tried to explain to security, "this is cultural wear, this is traditional. They were just not hearing it."


Related video: Cannes security turned away this Dene filmmaker for wearing moccasins (cbc.ca)


"Eventually one security guard just hit his breaking point," Redvers says.

"He just switched and was ... furiously demanding immediately that I leave, in an aggressive and angry tone, saying, 'Leave, leave, you must leave now.'"

Representatives for the festival did not respond to requests for comment.

After the heated moment, Redvers decided he still wanted to attend the screening, so he took off his moccasins and went into the theatre.

"I was so disappointed, like, it was actually distracting during the movie," he says.

"I just couldn't stop thinking about not being allowed to represent my culture on the red carpet on this world stage."

"I was pretty close to tears and quite upset," he added.

After members of Telefilm and the Indigenous Screen Office complained to Cannes about the treatment the filmmakers received, Redvers says leadership agreed to meet with them and apologize for the negative experience.

"I think it was a productive meeting," he said.

"It's an educational time because they just didn't understand what moccasins were and why they were important. (They) just kind of thought of them as slippers, which is what they said a few times."

Cannes officials invited him to wear his moccasins at the red carpet premiere of David Cronenberg's "Crimes of the Future" the following night. When one security guard rejected his footwear at that screening, a higher-up staff member intervened and let him onto the carpet.

"That was probably the most satisfying moment of the festival," he says.

"To be able to rock the mocs on the red carpet."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2022.

David Friend, The Canadian Press

U.S. proposal could change the way oil companies report their carbon footprint


The Canadian Press


CALGARY — The officially disclosed carbon footprints of Canada's largest oil companies could balloon in size if tough new climate rules proposed earlier this year by a U.S. regulator come into effect.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's proposal — which at this point has not been enacted and faces stiff opposition from industry groups and conservative lawmakers — would require publicly listed companies to account for their total "life-cycle" greenhouse gas emissions.

The rules would apply not only to publicly listed companies south of the border, but also to the more than 230 Canadian companies that are listed on U.S. stock exchanges. (Among these are Canadian energy giants like Enbridge Inc., Suncor Energy Inc., Imperial Oil Ltd. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.)

Under the new proposal, companies would have to disclose their Scope One and Scope Two emissions (terms that encompass the greenhouse gases produced directly by a company's operations, as well as indirectly through the generation of energy the company purchases such as electricity to power the business).

But they would also have to publicly account for their Scope Three emissions, meaning all the other greenhouse gases they produce indirectly, including emissions produced by customers when they use a company's product.

In other words, for oil producers, Scope One and Two emissions are the emissions the company makes itself (the methane emitted directly from a well, for example, or the electricity an oilsands producer uses to power its massive facilities). Scope Three emissions are the emissions an oil company causes when it sells its product (when a driver burns gasoline in a car, for example).

"The moment we ask companies to report Scope Three, we're now focusing on the carbon intensity of the product itself," said Tima Bansal, Canada research chair in business sustainability at the University of Western Ontario's Ivey Business School."It’s not the carbon intensity of their process – which they can reduce and can reduce quite substantially — it’s the carbon intensity of their product.”

Many Canadian energy producers have begun reporting their Scope One and Scope Two emissions in the years since the 2015 U.N. Paris agreement on climate change.

These numbers often form the basis of some of the industry's own aggressive emissions reduction targets, such as Pathways to Net Zero — an alliance of the country's biggest oilsands producers that have jointly set the goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The companies behind that initiative (Suncor, Cenovus, CNRL, Imperial, MEG Energy, and ConocoPhillips Canada) have laid out a road map to net-zero that includes the large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage technology, and they're asking for government support to help do it.

However, their plan only addresses Scope One and Two emissions. In fact, the oil and gas industry as whole has been very reluctant to talk about the emissions produced by the combustion of its product itself.

"Reporting Scope 3 emissions continues to be a challenge at this time and will prove difficult to provide in a timely manner, if at all," wrote the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in a recent submission to the Canadian Securities Administrators. (The CSA is currently mulling its own set of proposed climate disclosure rules, though the Canadian version would allow companies to opt out of Scope 2 and 3 disclosures as long as they explain their reason for doing so.)

"We believe this (Scope 3 disclosure) would not only add additional burden to industry, but is also not practical in that upstream oil and gas producers don’t have knowledge or control over the end use of their sales products," the industry lobby group wrote.

While only a very small minority of Canadian oil and gas firms are even attempting to report Scope 3 emissions right now, it's already apparent that having to disclose these numbers would massively increase the size of the carbon footprint that companies must report to investors and the public.

For example, Cenovus Energy — which began disclosing its estimated Scope Three emissions in 2020 — says its Scope One and Two emissions in 2019 amounted to 23.94 million tonnes of C02. But Scope Three emissions, generated by the final use of the company's products by customers, amounted to an estimated 113 million tonnes.

Duncan Kenyon, director of corporate engagement with climate change activist group Investors for Paris Compliance, said more than 80 per cent of emissions from fossil fuels fall under the umbrella of Scope Three — that is, they're produced when the product is consumed.

"I hear it all the time from (oil companies), that Scope Three is 'not our problem, it's the consumers choice,' " Kenyon said. “But you can’t be a Paris-aligned, climate believer if you’re going to say that 80 per cent is someone else’s problem.”

“It also undermines the claims that ‘oh well, if we capture it all and put it underground, we’ll be OK for 2050,' " he added. "Because no, you won’t.”

Oil and gas companies have been returning major dividends to shareholders in the past year thanks to surging global energy demand, so it's easy to question why investors would care about the Scope Three issue at all.

But Kenyon said ESG (environmental, social and governance) focused investors view climate change as a real business risk, and want to know how prepared a company is to adapt to what is coming. For example, an energy company actively working to reduce its Scope Three emissions would aim to increase the percentage of renewables in its portfolio.

“If you do bring in Scope Three disclosure, it becomes apparent really fast where your company is in the decarbonization game," he said. "And then you have to decide what kind of a company you want to be in five years, 10 years or 25 years."

In issuing the regulator's proposal in March, SEC chair Gary Gensler said greenhouse gas emissions have become a commonly used metric to assess a company's exposure to climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on its business.

"Investors get to decide which risks to take, as long as public companies provide full and fair disclosure and are truthful in those disclosures," Gensler said in a news release. "Today, investors representing literally tens of trillions of dollars support climate-related disclosures because they recognize that climate risks can pose significant financial risks to companies, and investors need reliable information about climate risks to make informed investment decisions."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2022.

Companies in this story: (TSX:SU, TSX:CVE, TSX:IMO, TSX:CNQ, TSX:MEG, TSX:ENB)

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

Ukrainian language schools in Western Canada were shaped by shifting settler colonial policies

Andrea Sterzuk, Professor of Language and Literacies Education, University of Regina -
The Conversation

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the number of people studying Ukrainian globally via the language learning app Duolingo has grown: figures from March 20 showed a 577 per cent increase.

In Canada, there is also new interest in learning Ukrainian.

As solidarity with Ukraine grows, Canadians may be curious to know more about the history of Ukrainian-language schools in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, spanning roughly 125 years.

Ukrainian-language education in the Prairies has been shaped by national, provincial and territorial policies. In Canada’s settler colonial context, these policies have shifted over time in how they accommodate, marginalize and privilege settler languages other than English.

Colonial settlement

Following Canadian Confederation in 1867, interconnected approaches and policies were consolidated and developed to displace Indigenous Peoples from their lands. Canada used dispossession to make the territory that would become Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba available for European settlement.

As historian James Daschuk explains, “clearing the plains,” entailed using starvation against Indigenous people to clear the way for settlement.

In 1876, Canada passed the Indian Act, designed to assimilate and control First Nations.

After the Red River Resistance of 1869-70, the Manitoba Act transferred land from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Dominion of Canada.

Read more: Louis Riel's trial from 135 years ago continues today with competing cultural stories and icons

The Canadian government created a system called Métis scrip to provide Métis families already living in the area with titles to their lands (land scrip) or money in exchange (money scrip). The process was slow, complicated and served to extinguish Métis title to land.

Métis scrip commissions coincided with the numbered treaties (1871-1921), which pertained to lands from Lake of the Woods in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west, and to the north, as far as the Beaufort Sea.

Read more: Let Indigenous treaties -- not the duty to consult -- lead us to reconciliation

In this era, as historian Kenneth Taylor notes, Canadian immigration law was “explicitly racist in working and intent”: it discouraged and prohibited non-white and non-European immigration in several ways.

The 1910 Canadian Immigration Act provided the Ministry of the Interior with the authority to ban entry of people of any race “deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada.” Immigration officials used this section to limit Black settlement in the Prairies. Prior to this policy, roughly 1,500 Black settlers moved to the Canadian Prairies and research has documented long Black community histories and ongoing presence there.

While there were well-established Chinese communities in British Columbia prior to 1923, and Chinese immigration to the prairies between the 1870s and 1923. Widespread Asian immigration to the prairies did not happen until the 1960s due to to federal legislation including 1908 amendments to the Immigration Act and exclusionary 1923 amendments to the Chinese Immigration Act.

While the promotion of Eastern European immigration was not without some controversy, the recruitment of these early “agricultural immigrants” became government practice.

Canada opened the door to the first wave of Ukrainian settlement in 1890.

400 Ukrainian schools

Ukrainians arriving during this period were pushed out of Ukraine by overpopulation, poverty and foreign domination, and pulled to Canada by the prospect of what Canada billed as free farm lands and jobs.


© (BiblioArchives/Flickr)Poster advertising free farms of 160 acres for settlers in Manitoba, Canadian North-West (present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan) and British Columbia, from circa 1890.

At the time of this wave of settlement, western Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ukrainians from Galicia, Bukovyna and Transcarpathia were officially called Ruthenians in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

From their arrival, Ukrainians directed most of their organized effort to maintaining their language. By 1915, there were roughly 400 Ukrainian schools in Western Canada.

‘Laurier-Greenway Compromise’

How were Ukrainians able to create Ruthenian bilingual schools and teacher training programs?

An 1896 agreement for bilingual schooling in Manitoba called the Laurier-Greenway Compromise holds part of the answer.


© (R-A7229/Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan)Ukrainian or central European farm family in front of their barn, seen circa 1910 in Saskatchewan, location unknown.

This regulation stated that when there were 10 or more students who spoke French or another language, the school could provide instruction in a language other than English. This policy made it possible to establish Ukrainian bilingual schools in Manitoba, and influenced their creation in Saskatchewan and Alberta too.

Teacher shortages

Another reason for the creation of Ukrainian schools was a teacher shortage in Ukrainian districts. Historian Orest T. Martynowych explains that English-speaking teachers were unwilling to work in Ukrainian communities due to “prejudice, a sense of cultural superiority and more lucrative positions elsewhere.”

To address the shortage, the provincial governments assisted young Ukrainian men in qualifying as teachers. The Ruthenian Training School opened in Manitoba in 1905 and operated for 11 years. Similar programs opened in Saskatchewan in 1909 and in Alberta in 1913.

In Manitoba, the province also produced a Ukrainian bilingual school textbook called the Manitoba Ruthenian-English Reader.

As historian Cornelius Jaenen notes, the success of bilingual Ukrainian education programs angered influential members of society who wanted schools to assimilate immigrants towards building an English-speaking Prairies.


© (BiblioArchives/Flickr)

Ukrainian women cutting logs, Athabasca, Alta. Year unknown.

‘Enemy aliens’

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 further threatened these programs as Eastern Europeans fell under surveillance and suspicion. The issue of bilingual schools became mixed up with the question of “enemy aliens,” which included people from Germany, the Turkish Empire, Bulgaria and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The same year, the government of Alberta declared itself opposed to bilingualism in its school system.

By 1916, the option for bilingual schooling was also removed in Manitoba. Saskatchewan waited until 1919 to introduce a regulation naming English as the sole language of instruction.

English-only status quo

For the next 50 years, the Prairie provinces maintained an English-only status quo, resulting in considerable language shift in Ukrainian and Francophone communities and many other immigrant language communities also.

During this time, 66 Indian residential schools operated in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba under federal responsibility. First Nations children were taken from their families to attend these institutions and forced to learn English, systematically resulting in Indigenous language loss.

As a result of Métis scrip, many Métis people were living on road allowances, settlements they created on unused portions of Crown land. There, multilingual Métis people maintained community languages, including Michif and other Indigenous languages. Between the 1920s and 1960s, however, provincial governments forcibly dispersed these communities, introducing a period of rapid language shift to English.

Ukrainian children were often not permitted to speak Ukrainian at school. Adults faced workplace discrimination and many Ukrainians anglicized their family names.
New era of bilingual Ukrainian schooling

In 1969, Canada introduced the Official Languages Act, and the Multiculturalism Policy followed in 1971. Soon, the Prairie provinces’ education acts were changed to allow languages other than English to be used for instruction in schools again.


© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Ukrainian Canadian Senator Paul Yuzyk discussed Canada as multicultural nation a year after Liberal Prime Minister Lester Pearson launched the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1963.

These developments led to a new era of Ukrainian bilingual Prairie schools. In 1974, advocates established a bilingual Ukrainian program in Edmonton. In 1979, programs in Manitoba and Saskatchewan classrooms followed.

Today, Ukrainian bilingual programs are once again found in school divisions in all three provinces. Ukrainian learning opportunities also include heritage language classes for children (Ridna Shkola), summer camps, preschool programs (Sadochok) and adult language classes.

As Canada begins to receive displaced Ukrainians, Ukrainian language education programs can help bridge communication gaps.

Laws, culture and languages

Language policies and language-in-education policies shape the ability of individuals, families and communities to maintain minoritized languages. When languages are under-protected by policy — or intentionally attacked through cultural genocidal policies, as in the case of Indigenous languages in Canada until recently — language loss is difficult to prevent.

Confronting settler colonial legacies is a reminder of why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada urgently advocated policy to bolster Indigenous language resurgence.

In the case of the Ukrainian language, today’s programs exist due to changes in federal policies, provincial education act amendments and the hard work of Ukrainian Canadian communities who have maintained their language despite many obstacles.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
How heritage language schools offered grassroots community support through the pandemic

‘Clearing the plains’ continues with the acquittal of Gerald Stanley

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for INTERNMENT 

This year's canola crop is the most expensive ever planted, say Alberta farmers

Liam Harrap -

There is a lot riding on this year's canola crop in Alberta, according to the producers who plant and harvest it.


A canola field near Olds, Alta. In just a few decades, canola has become one of the world's most important oilseed crops.

YES THAT IS A DEER IN THE CANOLA FIELD

Last summer's heat wave caused significant challenges across Western Canada, and some farmers in Alberta say they are hoping to take advantage of this year's high prices to make up for previous losses.

"This is by far the most expensive crop we've ever grown," said Roger Chevaux, farmer and chair of the Alberta Canola Producers Commission.

Input costs for growing the crop has skyrocketed but Chevaux also said he's never seen canola sell this high in his 35 years of farming.

Last year, canola was selling at around $12 per bushel, Chevaux said. This year, it's at $25.

Chevaux's fertilizer costs are at $2,300 per tonne — up from $850 last year. Fuel prices, including diesel, have also surged since last year. In the last month alone, a litre of diesel has climbed by 35 cents.

"We've got more at risk this year than we've ever had before," Chevaux said on CBC's Edmonton AM.

The war in Ukraine is one of the factors driving up canola prices said Erin Harakal, a commodity broker with Agfinity.

Ukraine is a large producer of sunflower oil and some people might be turning to canola oil to make up the shortage, said Chevaux. Russia is also a major global supplier of fertilizers, but shipments to Canada are now restricted due to trade sanctions.

With high canola prices, Harakal said some producers are hesitant to sell. Instead, they are hoping to get an even better price the next day.

"There's a fear of missing out," she said.

Last week, China lifted its three year ban on Canadian canola.

In March 2019, the Chinese government blocked canola shipments from Canadian companies Richardson International Ltd. and Viterra Inc. by suspending their licences, alleging the detection of pests in canola shipments.

However, the restrictions followed the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver.

Chevaux said having open trade is crucial for Alberta canola producers.

It's possible that China opening its markets to Canadian canola again could drive up prices even higher, he said.

"It's always good to have more competitors out there to compete for our product," said Chevaux.

Before China restricted trade, the Chinese market made up 40 per cent of Canada's canola exports.

While Chevaux is hopeful for the future of canola in Alberta, he does worry about the recent ban of Huawei from working on Canada's fifth-generation network over security concerns.

The move puts Canada in line with key intelligence allies like the United States, which have expressed concerns about the national security implications of giving the Chinese tech giant access to key infrastructure.

"Our hope, of course, is the Chinese government doesn't react and punish us again," said Chevaux.

"But I guess time will tell."

Last weekend, Chevaux finished seeding his canola crop at his farm in Killam, Alta., roughly 168 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. Further north, he said farmers might be waiting to finish seeding due to rain. But in southern Alberta, conditions are dry.

"We're always hoping for the rain to come at the right time for us to get a good crop."

Fish off the coast of Florida test positive for pharmaceutical drugs, says study

Zoe Sottile -

Bonefish off the coast of Florida have tested positive for a cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs, including anti-depressants and blood pressure medications, according to a new study.

The three-year study was conducted by researchers at Florida International University and Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (BTT), a nonprofit based in Miami focused on bonefish and tarpon conservation, says a news release from the university.

Bonefish are a family of fish found throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and tarpons are found in the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans.

Researchers took blood and tissue samples from 93 bonefish in Biscayne Bay and the Florida Keys since 2018, when the study started. They found each bonefish had an average of seven pharmaceuticals present, including blood pressure medications, antidepressants, prostate treatment medications, antibiotics and pain relievers, according to the release. One fish had a total of 17 different pharmaceuticals in its tissues.

The findings reflect a serious problem with ocean contamination from human wastewater, the university said.

“These findings are truly alarming,” Jennifer Rehage, a coastal and fish ecologist and associate professor at the university, said in the release. “Pharmaceuticals are an invisible threat, unlike algal blooms or turbid waters. Yet these results tell us that they are a formidable threat to our fisheries, and highlight the pressing need to address our longstanding wastewater infrastructure issues.”

The pharmaceutical contaminants can also negatively affect bonefish behavior.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorizes bonefish as “near threatened,” with their population declining due to a combination of fishing, habitat loss and water contamination.

Since 2013, bonefish have been a catch-and-release only species in Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The fish are exciting targets for recreational fishers because they are fast and difficult to catch, and can reach impressive sizes of up to three feet long.

OPINION

‘Because I don’t want my children to get shot’: why I left America


Cole Haddon

Writer
May 29, 2022 — 

“Because I don’t want my children to get shot in the face.” I’ve uttered these words countless times since I self-exiled myself from the United States following the 2016 election. It’s the reply I offer when anyone questions why I left the so-called “greatest country on Earth”.

After the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last week I am yet again convinced this decision to move my family away from America – where the number one cause of death for children is now guns – was the right one.

Children pray at a memorial site for the victims killed in the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.CREDIT:AP

The day after Donald Trump’s election, my wife and I decided to leave the United States despite the fact that we had grown up and spent most of our lives there. As I said at the time, the half of me that wasn’t American was tired of being afraid. I wanted to send my children to school and not wonder if they wouldn’t come home that afternoon.

And even if they did reach adulthood, escaping the culture of mass murder the States now endures, they would have done so experiencing regular active shooter drills in a country governed by people who care so little about children’s lives it protects automatic weapons with greater passion than living beings. I wanted my children to grow up with a sense of their value as human beings, which I no longer believed America could provide them that.

Our first port of call was the United Kingdom. Within three months, my wife, pregnant with our second son, came home and described a deeply moving experience on the bus – she had realised she dropped our first son off at school that morning without any consideration that anything bad could happen to him.

Our greatest fear as parents had become what we call “acts of God”, such as a truck jumping a curb, lightning, a plane falling out of the sky and landing on him. But realistically, the greatest threat to his safety had become trees, because maybe he would fall out of one and break a bone. That was what we, as parents, now worried about when we considered our children – trees.

Last year, my family and I moved to Australia, where my mother was born and I am a citizen. It was an act of coming home for me, but also, finally, accepting that I will be Australian for the rest of my life and, conversely, scared of America for the rest of my life because it seems so impossible that anything could ever change there.

Two days after 19 children and two adults were murdered in Uvalde, Republican leaders are blaming everything but guns – a list that includes mental health, schools with too many doors, and a need for more “good guys with guns” (overlooking the fact that dozens of armed law enforcement took over an hour to eliminate the shooter in Uvalde).

Republicans in the US Senate have already blocked any chance of even debating the subject of new gun control legislation, and on Saturday many, including leaders from Texas and Donald Trump, proudly spoke at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston.

An acquaintance in the States asked on Twitter: “Question for my followers in countries that don’t have school shootings: What security measures do your schools have in place?”

I responded: “I live in Australia ... My kids’ school only has a fence … and a gate that stays open all the time. Why? Because a conservative government here, with the country’s support, acted to put an end to mass shootings.”

This experience isn’t universal in Australia. For example, some of my Jewish friends here live with armed security at their children’s schools. But the reality is, since Port Arthur, no parents have ever again had to bury their children because loose gun regulations allowed a person, for whatever reason, to open fire in schools, shopping malls, or workplaces.

No parent has ever had to stand outside a school screaming pleas for the police to do something, anything, only to get pepper-sprayed in the face. No parent has ever been asked to provide DNA swabs, as they were in Uvalde, to help identify murdered children because the children’s faces were so mangled by bullets from a semi-automatic rifle only recently and conveniently purchased.

“Because I don’t want my children to get shot in the face,” that’s how I answer when people ask me why I moved to Australia. “Because I don’t want my children to get shot in the face.”

With 100 Million Refugees, the Migrant Crisis Has Barely Begun

Analysis by Andreas Kluth | Bloomberg
May 29, 2022 

“When a stranger resides with you in your land, do not molest him,” a credible authority tells the Israelites in Leviticus. “You shall treat the stranger who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; for you too were once strangers in the land of Egypt.”

The tension God was referring to is timeless. We all may one day need to flee from injustice, tyranny, violence, hunger or other calamities. And then we’ll need help. In turn, even if we’re lucky enough (for now) to live in stability, we should offer asylum to those fleeing to us. And yet we often don’t.

For the first time ever, more than 100 million people worldwide have been “forcibly displaced,” in the jargon of the UNHCR, the refugee agency of the United Nations. Millions of Ukrainian women and children have fled from Russia’s war of aggression in just the past three months. Millions more — often less conspicuous in the Western media — have run from violence in places like Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Afghanistan or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Both the numbers and the suffering are about to get worse. Also owing to the Russian attack on Ukraine — a “bread basket” that now can’t export its wheat and other staples — a global food crisis is imminent. Most people in Western countries will feel it as a painful rise in prices. But those who are already hungry — in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere — will face starvation.

Margaritis Schinas, the European Union’s commissioner in charge of migration, told Bloomberg that he’s expecting another refugee crisis. In this one, people will be coming in dinghies across the Mediterranean, rather than on trains through Ukraine and Poland. It’ll be “more messy,” Schinas reckons. As if all those other crises hadn’t been messy enough.

I’ve never been a refugee, but as a journalist, I’ve occasionally witnessed the human toll of migration. I picked grapes in California’s Central Valley with undocumented farm workers from south of the border to hear their stories. They’re the heirs to the “Okies” who once fled America’s Dust Bowl, as described so hauntingly by John Steinbeck in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Except that they’re not only desperate and poor but also alien and unwelcome.

In 2015-16, I covered Europe’s refugee crisis. The migrants at that time were largely Syrians fleeing from their own murderous tyrant. I remember the range of reactions in Europe as they arrived.

At the train station in Munich, many Germans greeted the newcomers with bottled water, teddy bears and hugs. Other Germans were outraged about the chaos and wanted to keep the refugees out. Most were quietly apprehensive. A similar split in attitudes rent all of Europe. Countries such as Hungary turned the refugees back with barbed wire and water cannon.

This spread between hospitality (xenia in ancient Greek), xenophobia (literally, fear of strangers) and all the nuances in between has greeted aliens everywhere and at all times. It’s what God was talking about in Leviticus.

In my experience, the “xenophobes” are sometimes racist or callous but more often just anxious. In Germany in 2015, for example, the backlash against migrants was worst in what used to be the communist East, which has also become the bastion of the populist far right. In a meme I heard often, these Easterners felt that German reunification had turned them into second-class citizens in their own country.

Now they were watching exotic-looking foreigners arriving by the busload and — as they chose to interpret the situation — “skipping the line.” The aliens, in this narrative, were threatening to demote the Eastern Germans to third-class citizenship, and depriving them of nebulous rights — perhaps welfare, attention or compassion — that should belong only to the native-born.

The Scotch-Irish in 19th-century America probably felt the same way when the German immigrants arrived, until the Germans said all this about the Irish, who then repeated it with the Italians, then in succession, the Russians, the Jews, the Chinese… So it goes.

Part of human nature is to distinguish between in-groups and out-groups, and to show the ins more empathy than the outs. Even Benjamin Franklin, ordinarily an open-minded type, looked askance at German and other non-English immigrants, whom he considered “swarthy” and suspect.

That might explain the about-turn in Polish policies and attitudes between the 2015 crisis and this year’s. Back then, the refugees were dark-skinned Muslims, and Warsaw slammed its borders shut. Now they’re fellow Christians and Slavs, and Poland has warmly welcomed more than half of the 6.7 million Ukrainians who’ve fled abroad.

So there we are, forever stretched between dueling human impulses: on one side, openness, compassion and altruism; on the other, suspicion, prejudice and nativism. Some of us emphasize optimistic stories of migrants integrating well into their adopted societies, playing by the rules and just rebuilding their lives. Others dwell on those other tales — of traumatized refugees becoming a burden to their host country or committing crimes.

All these stories exist, and all are equally worth hearing. Then again, the exact same range of biographies exists for the native-born as for migrants. Ultimately, they’re just a reminder that we’re all — aliens and natives alike — human, as Leviticus understood.

The biggest refugee crisis in history is still ahead of us. War, famine and plague will not only stay around, but spread and become worse, because of climate change. What will that do to our societies, and to us as individuals?

All of us, since our common ancestors trudged out of the East African rift valley, descend from migrants. If we go back far enough, we all have refugees among our forebears. And all of us, if we’re not already displaced, can be sure to have descendants who will flee from something. We all were, are or will be natives and aliens somewhere, at some time.

There are no easy answers. Speaking for most Germans in 2015, the country’s president at the time, Joachim Gauck, expressed the dilemma well: “We want to help. We are big-hearted. But our means are finite.” It’ll be important to keep both parts of that sentiment in mind — the magnanimity and the limits. But when in doubt, we should heed Leviticus, and keep our hearts big.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European politics. A former editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist, he is author of “Hannibal and Me.”

Chinese university student, 24, loses graduate job offer for being 'too old'

MAY 29, 2022

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST


Chinese telecom company China Unicom has been accused of age discrimination after it withdrew a graduate job offer from a 24-year-old student because she was “too old”.

The undergraduate, surnamed He, was informed by the company on Wednesday (May 25) that a graduate role she had previously been offered was off the table because she was over the cut-off age of 24.More from AsiaOneRead the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite.

He said she is aware of at least five other students who have also been let go by the Guangdong-based company in southern China due to their age.


According to video news website Houlang, China Unicom told He her hiring had violated internal company rules that stipulate undergraduates hired through universities must be under 24 years old.

He had signed work agreements with Unicom’s Heyuan branch during an on-campus recruitment drive by the firm at her university last year.

Before the agreements were finalised the company ran a background check on He and found no issues with her eligibility, leaving He confused by the sudden termination of the role.

“China Unicom took advantage of our status as fresh college graduates,” said He.

“I was born in February, 1998. We are going to graduate soon, but both the autumn and spring campus recruitment periods have come and gone and it’s now almost impossible to find a new job.”

“When I asked to see the recruitment background check documents China Unicom refused, claiming it was a confidential internal file.”

The news report which has since gone viral also revealed the student’s confusion over whether they would receive any redundancy payments. One of the agreements did not indicate compensation for breach of contract, while another identified 5,000 yuan (S$1,026) as the default amount.

“The compensation is not the point,” said He. “But they took advantage of students and we are outraged, especially when some of us had declined offers from other companies to choose China Unicom.”

The story has triggered a wave of criticism of China’s notorious age discrimination in the workplace.

One online commenter said: “What’s wrong with being 24 years old? Anyone that age is definitely a fresh undergraduate. How can they be so ridiculous?”

Another said: “Oh, the age discrimination is no longer set at 35 years old? Has it now been lowered to nearly 25?”

“I’m speechless. Does it mean that our government is asking people to start work even earlier in life and then work longer?”, another quipped.

Age discrimination is a major problem in China, despite the country facing a declining working-age population of people aged between 19 and 59 years old.

The National Bureau of Statistics released a report at the beginning of this year that revealed there were 882 million people of working age in China, down from 894 million in 2021.

In China, the current retirement age for men is 60, 55 for white-collar women workers and 50 their blue-collar counterparts, according to Xinhua News Agency.

In a bid to reverse its declining working population the Chinese government initiated the three-child policy in 2021 and in the same year, planned to raise the official retirement age as part of the 14th Five-Year Plan for economic and social development between 2021 and 2025.

RIP -THE HAWK HAS FLOWN

Ronnie Hawkins, rock’n’roll legend who mentored The Band, dies aged 87

Arkansas-born showman – known as ‘The Hawk’ – cut his teeth on the South’s tough 50s circuit but settled in Canada where he nurtured local talent

Ronnie Hawkins and his wife Wanda in Toronto in 2007. ‘He went peacefully and he looked as handsome as ever,’ she said on Sunday. Photograph: Frank Gunn/AP

Martin Farrer and agenciesMon 30 May 2022 03.03 BST

Ronnie Hawkins, the Arkansas-born rock’n’roll legend who mentored the young Canadian and American musicians later known as the Band, has died.

Hawkins, described in tributes as the most important rock’n’roller in Canadian history, died at the age of 87 after an illness, his wife, Wanda, said on Sunday.

“He went peacefully and he looked as handsome as ever,” she told The Canadian Press.

In a tribute to Hawkins on Sunday, the Band’s Robbie Robertson said Hawkins had taught him and his bandmates “the rules of the road”.

“He was not only a great artist, tremendous performer and bandleader, but had a style of humor unequaled,” Robertson said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Fall down funny and completely unique. Yep, God only made one of those. And he will live in our hearts for ever. My deepest condolences to his family.”

The Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, tweeted the news, saying it was “very sad to hear”.

Born in Huntsville, Arkansas on 10 January 1935 (two days after the birth of Elvis Presley), the stockily built Hawkins was a born showman and quickly earned a reputation as a hellraiser on the burgeoning rock’n’roll circuit of the 1950s.

Nicknamed “The Hawk”, he had minor hits with Mary Lou and Odessa and ran a club in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where acts included such early rock stars as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Conway Twitty.

“Hawkins is the only man I ever heard who can make a nice sexy song like My Gal is Red Hot sound sordid,” Greil Marcus wrote in his acclaimed book about music and American culture, Mystery Train, adding that Hawkins was alleged to “know more back roads, back rooms and backsides than any man from Newark to Mexicali”.

Hawkins, who nicknamed himself “The King of Rockabilly” and “Mr. Dynamo”, didn’t have the gifts of Presley or Perkins, but he did have ambition and an eye for talent.

He first performed in Canada in the late 50s and realised he would stand out far more in a country where homegrown rock still barely existed. Canadian musicians had often moved to the US to advance their careers, but Hawkins was the rare American to try the reverse.

With drummer and fellow Arkansan Levon Helm, Hawkins put together a Canadian backing group that included guitarist-songwriter Robbie Robertson, keyboardists Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel and bassist Rick Danko. They became the Hawks, educated in the Hawkins school of rock.

“When the music got a little too far out for Ronnie’s ear,” Robertson told Rolling Stone in 1978, “or he couldn’t tell when to come in singing, he would tell us that nobody but Thelonious Monk could understand what we were playing. But the big thing with him was that he made us rehearse and practice a lot. Often we would go and play until 1am and then rehearse until 4.”

Robertson and friends backed Hawkins from 1961-63, putting on raucous shows around Canada and recording a howling cover of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love that became one of Hawkins’ signature songs.

But Hawkins wasn’t selling many records and the Hawks outgrew their leader. They hooked up with Bob Dylan in the mid-60s and by the end of the decade were superstars on their own who had renamed themselves the Band.

Hawkins, meanwhile, settled in Peterborough, Ontario, and had a handful of Top 40 singles there, including Bluebirds in the Mountain and Down in the Alley.

Writing on Sunday, the Canadian music journalist and blogger Eric Alper said Hawkins would be deeply missed.

“Ronnie Hawkins, the single most important rock’n’roller in the history of Canada, has passed away at age 87,” Alper wrote. “The Band, Dale Hawkins, Bob Dylan and thousands of others wouldn’t be the same without him. Music wouldn’t be the same. He will be deeply missed, and thank you, Hawk.”

He did not keep up with the latest sounds – he was horrified the first time he heard Canadian Neil Young – but in the late 1960s he befriended John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono. They stayed with Hawkins and his wife, Wanda, and three children while they were visiting Canada.

“At that particular time, I thought I was doin’ them a favor,” he later told the National Post. “I thought the Beatles were an English group that got lucky. I didn’t know a lot about their music. I thought Yoko’s was (silly). To this day, I have never heard a Beatle album. For $10bn, I couldn’t name one song on Abbey Road. I have never in my life picked up a Beatle album, and listened to it. Never. But John was so powerful. I liked him. He wasn’t one of those hotshots, you know.”

Hawkins also kept in touch with the Band and was among the guests in 1976 for the all-star, farewell concert that was the basis for Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Last Waltz.

For a few moments he was back in charge, grinning and strutting under his Stetson hat, calling out “big time, big time” to his former underlings as they tore through Who Do You Love.

Besides The Last Waltz, Hawkins also appeared in Dylan’s film Renaldo and Clara, the big-budget flop Heaven’s Gate and Hello Mary Lou. A 2007 documentary about Hawkins, Alive and Kickin’ was narrated by Dan Aykroyd and featured a cameo from another famous Arkansan, Bill Clinton.

Hawkins’ albums included Ronnie Hawkins, The Hawk” and Can’t Stop Rockin’, a 2001 release notable for Helm and Robertson appearing on the same song, Blue Moon in My Sign. Helm and Robertson were no longer speaking, having fallen out after The Last Waltz, and recorded their contributions in separate studios.

Over time, Hawkins mentored numerous young Canadian musicians who went on to successful careers, including guitarist Pat Travers and future Janis Joplin guitarist John Till.

He received several honorary awards from his adopted country, and, in 2013, was named a member of the Order of Canada for “his contributions to the development of the music industry in Canada, as a rock’n’roll musician, and for his support of charitable causes”.

Ronnie ‘Hawk’ Hawkins Remembered by the Band’s Robbie Robertson

Jem Aswad - Yesterday 
Variety


The Band’s Robbie Robertson has issued a statement honoring Ronnie “Hawk” Hawkins, who died Sunday at the age of 87. Robertson and future members of the Band backed Hawkins in their formative years during the 1960s, before they toured with Bob Dylan and went on to become one of the most influential groups in rock history. Robertson’s statement follows below in full.

My heart sank when I heard “The Hawk” just flew into the sunset.

The story of The Band began with Ronnie Hawkins. He was our mentor. He taught us the rules of the road.

Ronnie Hawkins brought me down from Canada to the Mississippi delta when I was 16. He recorded two songs I’d written and thought I might be talented. He tried me out on guitar and bass the only problem was; I’m too young to play in the clubs they toured, I was too inexperienced, not a good enough musician yet, and there are NO Canadians in southern rock and roll bands. But I practiced until my fingers were bleeding and he ended up hiring me against all odds.

Ron prided himself in always having top notch players in his group. Levon Helm his drummer in the Hawks and I talked Ron into hiring Rick Danko on bass and vocals, Richard Manuel on piano and vocals and Garth Hudson on organ and sax. Along with Levon and me this became the magic combination.

Ronnie was the godfather. The one who made this all happen.

He had us rehearsing constantly into the wee hours. We balked about it, but we got better and better. Our goal whether we knew it or not.

After the Hawks left Ron and went out on our own, we joined up with Bob Dylan. Next the Hawks became The Band and the rest is history, as they say.

All starting out with Ronnie Hawkins.

He was not only a great artist, a tremendous performer and bandleader, but had a style of humor unequaled. Fall down funny and completely unique. Yep, God only made one of those. And he will live in our hearts forever.

My deepest condolences to his family.

Bless his soul.
Best of Variety

‘We want Filipinos to hug themselves’: the P-pop stars reconnecting with their culture

Alamat are aiming to bring their music to the world – by singing in their local languages

Filipino boy group Alamat at Viva Studios in Quezon City. 

Photograph: Alecs Ongcal

WITH TRADITIONAL FILIPINO MARTIAL ARTS FIGHTING STICKS

Rebecca Ratcliffe and Lorna Bayani
Sun 29 May 2022

Vocal coach Zebedee Zuñiga twists his hand in the air, and the melody of a tender, haunting lullaby, Ili Ili Tulog Anay, begins. “Little one, little one, sleep now/ Your mother is not here / She went to buy some bread,” sing the six members of Alamat, sitting in a circle. Then hip-hop beats kick in; the traditional Philippine lullaby, known as oyayi, is merged with more contemporary sounds.

It’s a Monday afternoon at Viva records’ studios, and Alamat, one of the label’s rising acts, are rehearsing their next single. They’re part of a new wave of bands, often referred to as P-pop, flourishing in the Philippines.

Over past decades in Japan and South Korea, J-pop and later K-pop, emerged as huge cultural exports. K-pop is now a multibillion-dollar industry; last year Korean band BTS were the bestselling act globally, for the second year running. In the Philippines, record labels are hoping the country’s music scene could get a share of that global success.

P-pop bands are influenced by K-pop, but there is also a growing willingness to experiment with the Philippines’ own diverse languages and culture, which are sidelined by the country’s mainstream pop culture.

Such music has developed loyal fanbases at home, and is beginning to find success abroad too. Alamat’s debut single, Kbye, debuted at No 2 on Billboard’s Next Big Sound chart, while fellow P-pop band SB19 were nominated for Billboard’s top social artist category last year.

A member of Alamat. Each is from a different part of the country and sings in his own ethnic language. Photograph: Alecs Ongcal/The Observer

Korean and Filipino entertainment companies are investing in the trend in the hope of finding the next global stars, says Ian Urrutia, music writer and founder of Nyou Philippines, a Manila-based music and entertainment PR agency. “In terms of production and music-making process, a lot of entertainment companies have hired top K-pop producers to kickstart their talents,” he said.
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Jason Paul Laxamana, Alamat’s creative director, says he hopes to adopt the coaching and discipline that has shaped Korea’s pop industry – “and the fact that K-pop was able to dominate the world without having to drop Korean”.

For Alamat, language is especially important. Each member of the group comes from a different part of the country and sings in their own ethnic language. As well as Tagalog, the Philippines’ main language – these include Ilocano, Kapampangan, Bicolano, Waray-Waray, Bisaya and Sambal.

It’s highly unusual for mainstream pop. “There’s a notion that one language is superior to others,” says band member Taneo. “It’s part of our mission to have especially the younger generations be proud of their own roots.”

Laxamana remembers being a student and wondering why he never heard songs in his ethnic language, Kapampangan, played on the radio. Little has changed since then. “All I heard was songs in English, Tagalog, and eventually Korean,” he says. Shopping malls are reluctant to play songs in other Philippine languages, believing that they are less glamorous. So too are some radio stations, he adds.

Alamat rehearse a dance routine.

 Photograph: Alecs Ongcal/The Observer


Philippine languages – there are as many as 182 – are often wrongly downgraded as dialects, says Dr Ruanni Tupas of University College London, who has researched the role of Philippine languages in P-pop. “This is how colonial education was formed in favour of, for example, the English language. English was taught as a language but the rest of the Philippine languages as dialects.”

Speaking Philippine languages is associated “with coming from the provinces, with the lower class. It’s associated with being uneducated,” Tupas adds. “It has always been attached to Filipinos losing their own confidence in themselves.” Bands such as Alamat and SB19 have helped change this perception, he says.

Much of Alamat’s performance is rooted in Philippine culture. Their outfits blend modern streetwear with references to traditions from across the country – from Tayum, the indigo clothes worn by Kapampangan men, to the tattoos of Kalinga warriors and the colourful sails of the Vinta (small boats) of Zamboanga.

Choreography and melodies also reflect the country’s musical heritage – from Kundiman, a Philippine serenade, to folk music.


Indigenous languages project urges Cop26 leaders to rethink ties to the land

Ili Ili Tulog Anay is a Hiligaynon lullaby, traditionally sung by a nanny or sibling to a baby while their mother is away. Alamat’s version uses the song to explore the emotions of children whose parents work for long stretches overseas – 1.77 million Filipinos did so in 2020.

“I think it will resonate with a lot of Filipinos,” says Laxamana, whose father has worked abroad since he was a child. “The big brother tries to comfort the siblings, telling them that our parents will be home some day. But right now, you know, we are poor. So we need to work, we need to sacrifice,” he says of the lyrics. Other songs touch on social issues such as the legacy of colonialism and racism – with music videos referencing the oppression of the first Filipino Americans, and continued colourism with Philippine society.

Alamat’s supporters believe the group’s distinctive style could help them to stand out internationally. But the band members say that, for now, their focus is on growing, and shaping attitudes at home. “We want fellow Filipinos to dance and sing to our music and to make them proud of our own cultural diversity and our multilingualism,” says band member Jao.

“We want them to hug themselves.”