As I have blogged several times in the past (in regards to Charlie Hebdo incident or the gang-style shooting in Sweden highlighting immigrants' situations in Europe), this op-ed piece talks about how Arabic language is associated with terrorism & Islamophobia.
Immigrants to US & Canada are constantly asked (in some cases, told) to assimilate & integrate with the culture of their new homelands. Assimilation & integration is a two-way street. Immigrants will happily assimilate & integrate with the culture of new homelands, as long as their native counterparts are also absorbing what immigrants are bringing to the nation.
But, that does not how it happens. Native residents (Anglo-Saxon Caucasians) of North America want immigrants to forget all about their pasts (culture, language, social norms etc.) & do as they are told to do by the native population.
Native residents have in their mind that beggars can't be choosers, so immigrants should change their ways, but native residents won't change their ways a bit ... to make their guests feel welcome.
Ironically, when these native residents of North America move to any other country in the world, which has a different culture than theirs, they try to change that country's culture or boldly defy it. For instance, Dubai authorities have politely asked their expat populations several times to cover up in public places but Europeans & North Americans stroll around in public places (malls etc.) in bikinis. Now, that may be acceptable in Miami or Rio or Bangkok, but it's not in Dubai.
Problem is that the native populations of North America & even Europe have a superiority complex. Lack of knowledge is hysterical (how is Arabic & Afghanistan are related is beyond me). Most of the population is closed-minded, & don't have any desire in learning something other than their own culture. This may not be as much visible or extreme in bigger cities, like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia etc. (where both kinds of populations, native & immigrant, come across each other quite often), but a big chunk of population also lives in much smaller cities, e.g. Thunder Bay, Brandon, Kamloops, or, as in this op-ed, Pine Bush. Immigrant population is usually relatively much smaller or even non-existent in these smaller cities, compared to large metro areas.
Remember, you need both hands to clap. Assimilation & integration requires both sides, native & immigrant populations, to reach out towards each other & understand each other; be they be living in a large metro area or a small town. Until that happens, both sides will keep blaming each other for not extending the hand of friendship & trying to understand each other's cultures.
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2 weeks after New York City announced that its schools would observe the principal Muslim holidays, another school district in the State of New York signaled that Islamophobia in the US, & its classrooms, was hardly on the decline.
On March 18, a student at Pine Bush High School recited the American Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. The exercise was part of the School's "National Foreign Language Week", an event held to celebrate the "many races, cultures & religions that make up [the US & the Pine Bush] School District".
However, an event celebrating American multiculturalism & pledging patriotism was immediately met with anger & offense - driven by the conflation of the Arabic language with Islam, & in turn, inassimilability, violence & terrorism.
The controversy sparked by the "Arabic pledge" highlights, very vividly, how different dimensions of Arab or Muslim identity - even language - are conflated with threat. And more audibly, how even reverent attempts to reconcile Arab or Muslim culture with American identity incites zeal & scorn.
Pine Bush is roughly 85 miles away from New York City. Although within a 2-mile drive of the Big Apple, the School District is culturally & demographically worlds away. At 95%, the small town is overwhelmingly white. The Arab & Muslim-American populations are negligible, as is the presence of other minority communities.
National Foreign Language Week was an institutional attempt to culturally integrate (racially & religiously) minority students. Providing a platform, within the walls of the classroom, for these students to celebrate their native tongues, customs, & identities.
This invaluable teaching moment, as soon as the pledge was recited in Arabic, mutated into mis-education & malice.
"The pledge should always be said in English," one student stated. Several parents were offended, "because they had family members killed in Afghanistan," associating the language with war, & a nation where Arabic is not even spoken.
The chorus of opposition was united by a common baseline. Namely, that Arabic was anything but a standalone language. But rather, the linguistic tentacle of perverted representations of Islam, ISIL & al-Qaeda, & terrorism.
The very utterance of the language instantly evoked this imagery, & the translation of the pledge of allegiance from English to Arabic signaled hostility, imminent takeover, & the "clashing civilizations" discourse permeating through every pore of American society.
Instead of standing firm with the spirit of National Foreign Language Week, the Pine Bush High School principal apologised for the recital. Consequently, endorsing the idea that reciting the American pledge of allegiance in Arabic was an inherently unethical or unpatriotic act. A decision from the school's principal administrator & educator, no less, delivering a lesson (in Islamophobia) that won't be soon forgotten by the School's more than 1,000 students.
The Pine Bush pledge of allegiance controversy has also revitalised discussion of the tolerable scope of multiculturalism within American schools. Namely, which languages or cultures are deemed acceptable for students to celebrate at school - & which ones are considered pariahs?
This controversy, juxtaposed with NYC's plans to observe the Muslim holidays, illustrates that the answers to this question are more complex than clear. Indeed, languages - like Arabic & English - are more than merely systems of communication. They are symbols, expressions of membership, & perhaps most saliently, religious & racial proxies.
Arabic, in past & present in the US, does not only signal foreignness, but also an inextricable nexus to Islam, the Middle East, & the Orient. Spheres positioned as America's geopolitical & normative rival.
Several languages - primarily European ones such as French or Italian, for instance - are deemed assimilable with English. And therefore, American culture & its classrooms. However, other languages such as Chinese or Spanish are frequently branded as alien, inferior, & menacing. The former associated with long-embedded tropes of Asian hostility & subversion, & the latter linked to intense xenophobia & nativism.
However, Arabic - & the maligned entities & ideas it is associated with - stands head & shoulders above (other foreign languages) as linguistic pariah. While the pledge recited in Chinese or Spanish may have caused a minor stir, its reading in Arabic - as illustrated this past week at Pine Bush High School - rose to the level of national alarm & outrage.
A degree of zeal that matches the still climbing heights of Islamophobia on US streets. Which, unfortunately, is still being taught within the vast majority of its schools. While NYC's decision to observe the Muslim holidays offers a much heartening exception, Pine Bush - exactly 2 weeks after that unprecedented step forward - still stands as the unequivocal rule.
As I have blogged in some of my previous blog posts that assimilation is a 2-way street. Most, if not all, countries of Northern & Western Europe, & North America, are being chosen by immigrants, from South Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, & even Middle East, as their new adopted home.
These immigrants come with so much hope & so many dreams to these countries. They all range from different backgrounds; religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic etc. But, once they land in these countries, they are relegated to the back of the society by the indigenous or born-nationals of that country. These immigrants are subjected to discrimination in education & jobs.
When these immigrants or their kids are sidelined by their new adopted country, regardless of how much they want to assimilate or love their new country, they grew hatred towards their new adopted country. And that time, they are easy to be radicalized & molded by people & organizations who can get them to do whatever these kids can do.
Blaming those kids or their families for not assimilating or hating their adopted country is not the solution to resolving the issue of uprooting criminality & terrorism out of the country. That blame unjustifiably will only radicalize those youths even more.
The solution is to provide education & jobs to these immigrants & kids; not doing them any favours, but based on objective merits. Then, immigrants can't complain if they don't get a certain job or degree, because they can see that they themselves don't posses the skills for those jobs. But, in reality, we see hurdles / demands which are clearly been put up to sideline these immigrants & their kids; networking, relevant work experience, education obtained from that country's institution (math is same everywhere, Newton's & Einstein's theories are same everywhere, Debits & Credits are same everywhere, in the world).
For example, in Canada, we can see in any major city that taxi / cab drivers are, overwhelmingly, South Asians. Once you start talking to them, you come to realize that most of them are quite educated; doctors, engineers, PhDs, CAs, MBAs etc, but they are told to bring Canadian education & experience to get any job in their field.
Their kids usually suffer almost similar fate. Since, they have Canadian education &, in most cases, work experience, too, they get better jobs than what their parents are able to do, but, not better than, the similarly educated & experienced Canadian counterpart. Compared to that born-Canadian (esp. a Caucasian), that immigrant's kid is actually underemployed. That's why, we see immigrants, esp. South Asians, Africans, & even Eastern Europeans, gather several designations & degrees to move up the corporate ladder, but only a few are able to do so.
Some people of these European & North American countries counter that why don't these immigrants leave their country, if their conditions are so bad. Where they are going to go? Back to their own country? They may not have any financial means to go back; spent all their money to get in their new adopted country in the hope of a better future. We all have heard stories of people scrounging money to pay to human smugglers to get into a country.
Those people, perhaps, can't go back to their own homeland. Most people love their homelands, but due to civil wars & terrorism, they are forced out of their homes in their homelands. We can't say to those people that it's their country's fault, because in most cases, those civil wars & terrorism & their governments' heavy-handedness is supported by these Western countries.
For example, take the example of Yemen & Egypt right now. Egypt arrested many of its citizens during Arab Spring demonstrations, & imprisoned them on false charges. Their ruler has the full blessing of Western countries & the government receives millions in aid from these Western countries. Yemenis are being killed by Saudi Arabian army. Saudi Arabia doesn't have any arms-manufacturing facilities in its own country. It buys all of its arms & weapons from US, Canada, & several European countries, including France, Germany, UK, Sweden etc. Those arms are also used by the country's rulers on their own citizens to subdue any dissidents & opponents. We all know this. So where will or can these immigrants go? They certainly can't go back their own countries.
So, the solutions are that either these Western countries stop arms selling to these corrupt countries in Asia, Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central & South America OR accept these immigrants in your countries with open arms & get them education & jobs, which they worked hard for & they rightly deserve.
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French counter-terrorism experts have identified 64 suburbs in dozens of cities that act as breeding grounds for Islamic extremism.
So-called 'ghettos' with high rates of youth unemployment, immigration and single-parent families, such as L'Ariane near Nice, have been linked to the radicalisation of young & vulnerable people.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls last month admitted that the country had collapsed into social & ethnic 'apartheid' - the first time a senior politician has conceded that economic marginalisation & religious tensions have led to serious divides.
In total 64 French suburbs have been identified as breeding grounds for extremism, each of them sharing startling similar characteristics, according to Sky News.
Unemployment, for example, is on average 23% in the suburbs, rising to a staggering 45% among the young. Up to half of all families in the 64 suburbs also have just one parent.
For those lucky enough to have work, the average income is just €11,000 (£8,300) a year, leaving many with barely enough money to survive.
As many as 50% of those living in the suburbs are also first generation immigrants or their children, many of them having travelled to France from war-torn nations.
Such patterns of have now proved to the French leadership that vast swathes of the population are falling behind economically, resulting in ghettoised suburbs where mental & social attachment to France as a nation holds little sway, & where criminal & religious leaders often wield power.
A long, but great, article. Racism is rampant in Canada. Until a few years back, most thought there was minimal racism in US; well, we can see how that went & still coming along since last year there.
Racism is not felt by the majority of Caucasians in Canada; be it education, jobs, & other social spheres of society. But, it is felt by non-Caucasians, be they be Natives or non-Caucasian immigrants from other countries. Assimilation is the word frequently thrown about & the society usually start blaming the immigrants (similar to in this case, Natives) for all their troubles they are facing in Canada.
As I commented in another blog post a few days ago that assimilation is a 2-way street. Natives or immigrants can only assimilate only when Caucasian Canadians also move in their direction & are willing to accept them as their equal, as Canadians.
Jobs, education, & personal safety are 3 of the most basic requirements for any person. Most parents want to see their progeny have a good education, get a good job & lead a happy, safe, & successful life. However, in many cases, be it the African-Americans in US, immigrants all over North America, or Natives in North America (US, Canada, & even Mexico), are not provided educational facilities & some who do get through the education system, they are not provided jobs, as per their education & skills dictate.
If most of the jobs are taken over by Caucasians & they are not willing to help, or "network" with, non-Caucasians (immigrants & Natives), then they are always going to feel inequality & injustice. As long as they are going to feel that way, rightly or wrongly, they will lash out against the majority populations through violent means, which then cause prisons to fill up with African-Americans in US, Natives & even immigrants in Canada, which in turn, feeds the thinking of the society that these groups of people are violent & not good for society.
We can even expand the scope & scale of this to go global. RCMP, FBI, CIA, CSIS are all trying to curb the growth of ISIS, which it is doing through recruitment of western youths. They are failing to understand this basic point that immigrant youths in the West feel rejected from the society. They see that their future seems to be bleak in the West & they feel powerless to do anything in the West. So, they find an easy outlet to move to Middle East, enroll themselves in ISIS, & start feeling like they are contributing something meaningful to a cause.
Then, we have this problem of personal safety. Be it the law enforcement agencies acting out against the minorities (cops in US assaulting minorities or even the judicial system meting out much harsher sentences to minorities for similar offences perpetrated by a Caucasian person) or general Caucasian public on the main street (American Muslims being gunned down). From a Muslim perspective, we can take the issue of Muslim women wearing hijabs in Canada. Regardless of why federal government is demonizing hijabs, the general public take that in the wrong sense & then harassing, verbally, & in some cases, physically abusing Muslim women, out on the street. Law enforcement agencies don't take those matter seriously (similar to Natives in this article). NCCM (National Council of Canadian Muslims) record multiple incidents of harassment & abuse of Muslims in Canada, but how many do we see being reported in the media?
No society can ever achieve peace until & unless it ends injustice & inequality in itself.
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“Oh Goddd how long are aboriginal people going to use what happened as a crutch to suck more money out of Canadians?” Winnipeg teacher Brad Badiuk wrote on Facebook last month. “They have contributed NOTHING to the development of Canada. Just standing with their hand out. Get to work, tear the treaties & shut the FK up already. Why am I on the hook for their cultural support?”
Another day in Winnipeg, another hateful screed against the city’s growing indigenous population. This one from a teacher (now on unpaid leave) at Kelvin High School, long considered among the city’s progressive schools.
Badiuk’s comments came to light the day Rinelle Harper—the shy 16-year-old indigenous girl left for dead in the city’s Assiniboine River after a brutal sexual assault—spoke publicly for the first time after her recovery. She called for an inquiry to help explain why so many indigenous girls & women are being murdered in Winnipeg, & elsewhere in Canada.
Badiuk’s comments came while the city was still reeling from the murder of Tina Fontaine, a 15-year-old child from the Sagkeeng First Nation who was wrapped in plastic & tossed into the Red River after being sexually exploited in the city’s core.
They came the very week an inquest issued its findings in the death of Brian Sinclair, an indigenous 45-year-old who died from an entirely treatable infection after being ignored for 34 hours in a city ER.
They came in the wake of a civic election dominated by race relations after a racist rant by a frontrunner’s wife went viral: “I’m really tired of getting harassed by the drunken native guys” downtown, Gord Steeves’s wife, Lori, wrote on Facebook. “We all donate enough money to keep their sorry asses on welfare, so shut the f–k up & don’t ask me for another handout!” The former city councillor & long-serving, centrist politician didn’t bother apologizing.
“We value dogs more than we do these women,” says indigenous playwright Ian Ross.
When measuring racism, social scientists tend to rely on opinion polling & media analyses. Last year, for example, Winnipeg recorded the highest proportion of racist tweets of the 6 Canadian cities known for high levels of hate crime, according to data collected by University of Alberta researcher Irfan Chaudhry. (Manitoba recorded the second-highest rate of hate crimes last year, after Ontario, according to a recent report.)
1 in 3 Prairie residents believe that “many racial stereotypes are accurate,” for example, higher than anywhere else in Canada. In Alberta, just 23% do, according to polling by the Canadian Institute for Identities & Migration (CIIM). And 52% of Prairie residents agree that Aboriginals’ economic problems are “mainly their fault.” Nationally, the figure drops to 36%.
1 in 3 North End residents drop out of school before Grade 9.... 1 in 6 children are apprehended by Manitoba’s Child & Family Services. Girls as young as 11 or 12 routinely work the stroll. On North Main Street, traffic slows to a stall when intoxicated residents stumble across the street. Solvent abuse is as common as alcoholism here, & rising. Even in December’s cold, kids as young as 9 clutch gas-soaked rags; some have begun stuffing them directly into their mouths for a more powerful high.
“I used to tell myself I wouldn’t live to see my sweet 16,” says 24-year-old Jenna Wirch. “I was sure I was going to die before then.” Both Wirch’s sisters committed suicide when they were growing up. 4 of her closest friends have also died by suicide. One hung herself in an alley using her dog’s leash. She was 11. Wirch’s mom put her to work in the sex trade before her 10th birthday. She ran away at 11, then bounced between the street & a long list of foster homes. One was a crack house. Two friends were stabbed to death in front of her, one with a machete. This is a North End childhood.
The area’s hospitalization rate for violence is almost 7 times that of the wider city. Within a year, roughly 20% of youth treated for violence will be back in hospital seeking treatment for another injury, says Carolyn Snider, an ER doctor at the core area Health Sciences Centre.
That’s just a reality of having brown skin in Winnipeg, says Jacinta Bear, who manages the North End Hockey Program. ... “Our team has heard it all,” says Bear .... “Even opposing coaches & refs call our kids ‘dirty little Indians.’”
A few years ago, the federal government investigated claims that indigenous Winnipeggers were being denied housing due to discrimination. The Canadian Mortgage & Housing Corporation pulled together a random survey of Aboriginal renters. The results were damning. 1 in 3 told the CMHC that after showing up to visit an available suite they were told it had “just been rented.” More than 30% felt they had been driven to neighbourhoods in the core, where the poverty rate & the incidence of crime more than doubles the wider city & jobs are scarce.
“Colonialism didn’t just impact Aboriginal people,” says Perry Bellegarde, the new national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. “It forever changed the way the European population on the Prairies would see Aboriginals as a problem, never a partner.”
The province imprisons a higher proportion of its indigenous population than apartheid South Africa did its black population. 65% of inmates at Stony Mountain Penitentiary, a medium-security prison just outside Winnipeg, are indigenous, the country’s highest Aboriginal incarceration rate measured by jail.
A good summary article to highlight what American settlers did to the Natives. It didn't happen in the dark ages but after the European enlightenment period (after all, settlers were from the old continent). Atrocities conducted by "enlightened" settlers or even what American soldiers did during 20th-century wars are actively censored from traditional media so we may still falsely believe that we are the "civilized" world.
On top of that, as Dr. Saunt also says that the terminology is being changed now to effectively erase this history, by modern descendants of settlers now (Caucasian Americans) being called as "indigenous".
Now, these Natives are confined to reserves, with living standards, which are so far below a 3rd-world country's living standards that it's horrifying. Many reserves don't even have basic plumbing for running water & sanitation; forget the systems in place for education & jobs (that's why, Natives are far behind in education & employment in US & Canada).
North American NGOs pour millions of $$$ & actively work in Africa & Asia but ignore the abysmal conditions most of these Natives' reserves are in their own backyards. Why? because it makes far good PR from both NGOs & respective governments' perspectives to export the good deeds instead of help improve the living conditions of Natives.
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Between 1776 and 1887, white conquerors razed across 1.5 billion acres of occupied land, claiming it for their own. By 1800, Native Americans only accounted for 15% of the nation, compared to the settlers' 85. A survey taken in 1900 showed the Indians to make up just 0.5% of the US population.
It is a history that many claim to be ignored by the majority of non-indigenous Americans, who focus on the lives lost during the Civil War & European atrocities of the 19th century.
Dr Saunt explains the 'rapid & murderous' sweep by quoting California's first governor John Sutter:
'That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between races, until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected,' Sutter said in 1851.
In the 21st century, the canvas is being stretched for a change of perspective.
Now, more than 1% of Americans identify as indigenous - 'an increase,' Dr Saunt writes, 'that reflects not a substantive demographic shift but a newfound willingness & desire to identify as indigenous.'
He concludes: 'A history that glosses over the conquest of the continent is partial, in both senses of the word. It misleads people about the past & misinforms their debates about the present. In charting a course for the future, Americans would do well to put the dispossession of native peoples back on the map.'
As all Canadians may know already by now that new sex-ed curriculum of Ontario has been revealed & come September 2015, 7-year-olds (Grade 3) will come to know the meaning of same-sex relationships & gradually, within 5 years (age 12), will know what oral sex is.
I deliberately chose this article / opinion because that's the general attitude of people who are supportive of this curriculum. However, what it shows to me:
1. Disregard of people in a "democratic" govt: is this we called "democracy"? Is this the democracy Western leaders incessantly harping about in their speeches all over the world? It may as well be an absolute monarchy because at the end of the day, gov't is acting like, "I am going to throat-gag you with this, & you not only going to love it but will ask more for it."
2. What happened to diversity, Canadian multiculturalism & assimilation of new immigrants? As soon as something bad happens by a few deranged individuals, in the name of a specific religion, the whole group associated with that religion is blamed for not assimilating in the population & living in their own little bubbles (I'm deliberately not putting in any infamous labels here).
Who should be blamed for French ban on burqa in public or as Mr. Harper itching to bring burqa ban in Canada (it's a slippery slope, starting with niqab ban in citizenship oath ceremonies) or Mrs. Kathleen Wynne ignoring all immigrants, a sizable majority of which hails from South Asia, in bringing this curriculum?
Who is considering whom a "second-class" citizen & doing every bit that can be done to help push immigrants away, instead of helping them assimilate, to the point, that that immigrant / "second-class" citizen packs up & leaves Canada for good?
Will a majority of Muslims (I can't talk about other religious groups, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs etc but I do believe they are in the similar situation as Muslims) happily embrace this curriculum & gladly assimilate in the multicultural fabric of Canadian society? I firmly don't think so. This will only alienate those immigrants further, & next thing you know, someone is again pointing fingers at this group for not assimilating.
Assimilation is a two-way street & how can the majority of a group identify with their new country or society when a majority of the residents of that country are always coming up with laws & regulations to encourage those immigrants to disavow their whole belief systems? Is this called "freedom of religion" as such enshrined in the Charter? In fact, it seems more like, "be like me or you are my enemy" or that famous Mr. Bush's quote, "either you are with us or against us."
3. Do I really want my future kid to learn about same-sex relationships at the age of 7? Yes, as a Muslim, I am against homosexuality, & no I don't want my kid to learn about homosexuality. I don't care what people do in the hallowed halls of their bedrooms. People who support it in this country ... well, put it bluntly, are the same people who naively believe that Western countries are the beacon of peace in the world, & religion is the source of all evils in this world & women are only liberated when they take all their clothes off ... what's the point of wearing a bikini in the public, anyway (thanks to this curriculum, even little kids will know what breasts, nipples & female genitalia look like) ... might as well be completely free ... take everything off !!! (this will be explored more in my next blog with the help of Irina Shayk's fabulous choice of dress in the Vanity Fair's after-Oscars party).
Even as a very involved parent (once in the future), how will I be able to "un-teach" homosexuality at home when my kid is learning all about the wonderful world of same-sex relationships from those teachers in the school? As the article suggests, it's better that schools are teaching this than parents. Really? That kid will be even more confused then. Do I believe the story of Lot in the Quran, as told by my parents or do I believe what my teacher told me that my budding love for another human of the same sex is because of my genes? (everything nowadays is genetic; obesity, homosexuality & next will be racism, drug addiction, hatred ... all happen because of our genes ... eventually, we won't need to have a debate on "nature v nurture" because it's all nature's fault).
To further compound the confusion of a little kid, if he/she is enrolled in an Islamic school & he/she is learning about same-sex relationship in Grade 3, but then he/she can't find any of his/her friends / classmates having 2 daddies or mommies (since, homosexuality is strictly forbidden in Islam), then learns about story of Lot from the Quran; that kid is completely confused by now. What is right & what is wrong? Is homosexuality right or natural or is it right what the Quran says & what punishment those people in the Quran got? Do we want this confusion for tender minds of our kids?
4. Another argument is put forward in support of this curriculum that today's kids are learning all about sex through social media & they are learning this at a very young age. My problem with that is why are parents enthusiastically buying smartphones for their kids with such expensive data plans to go along with them. They won't able to sext, at least from their own phones, when they have those dumb phones (yes, they are still available in the market) with parental locks on it.
Furthermore, what happened to parents getting involved with their kids & teaching them about sex & relationships when they themselves see fit, according to their own religion, customs, & beliefs. I will explain the story of Lot & dangers of homosexuality to my kid when I see fit, as per my religion, & not when Mrs. Kathleen Wynne likes to think.
5. Some may say now, well, why don't you move out of Ontario, since this is only being instituted in Ontario. My belief is that this curriculum will spread, if not already, all over Canada like wildfire. Take my word for it. Some of it is already in other provinces' sex-ed curriculum & other provinces who doesn't have this invasive curriculum will enthusiastically adopt it.
Regardless of what the Charter or Constitution espouse, the North American gov'ts enthusiastically adopt anything & everything which remotely sounds Liberal, as long as it helps their agenda; homosexuality is all market-driven (money from marriage licenses, weddings etc), so why not promote it even more, line up govt's pockets behind the clever charade of equality & in the process, look good too in the eyes of voters.
