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Ripples
The shooting death of Michael Brown on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, is causing ripples across Europe and Asia. While several governments in the Middle East see this as an opportunity to point the finger at America’s troubled race relations, the death is also dominating front pages in Europe. As The Economist observes, “In recent years it has been Europe that has struggled with anti-immigrant racism and an integration model that seems to work much worse that America’s. Europeans weary of criticism over rising xenophobia may be relieved to see that America still has its own troubles.”
As we reported in last week’s NewFeed, our very own Tahir ul Qadri continues to make waves in his native Pakistan, although not everybody sees it as an extension of Canadian democratic values. In the words of Najam Sethi, editor-in-chief of The Friday Times in Lahore, “Tahir ul Qadri can't win one electoral seat in any general elections. He has always served as an agent of the military establishment to create political instability and undermine the writ of elected governments. I'm afraid his time in Canada hasn't taught him the virtues of constitutional democracy, however halting and imperfect it may be in his country of origin.” (photo credit: Jolanda Flubacher)
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Harmony Jazz
An interesting experiment shows that appealing to higher motives is less effective in reducing biases than more targeting training in Can You Overcome Inbuilt Bias?
On citizenship, release of documents showed the Government had little evidence to change Canada’s longstanding automatic birth-on-soil policy, in addition to increased costs to government and inconvenience to citizens in Ottawa urged to remove citizenship by birth on Canadian soil. 
An extreme example of “shopping for votes” is seen in one candidate’s exclusive nomination campaign with Chinese Canadians in Federal Liberals cultivate Mandarin powerhouse in GTA. In contrast, Sikhs denied exemption from Ontario’s motorcycle helmet law shows that governments can draw the line on reasonable accommodation when safety reasons prevail.
And for those who fret about Canada’s current citizenship oath to the Queen (of Canada), commentary both in favour A distinctly Canadian oath – I’ll swear to that, neutrality The oath to the Queen is constitutional – as is changing it, and against, New citizens should pledge loyalty to Canada. (photo credit: David July)
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Back Pocket
[Contributed by author Madeleine Thien]
Zia Haider Rahman’s novel, In the Light of What We Know, is a great work, one of the most extraordinary novels I have ever read. A conversation between two once mathematicians, the novel is a persistent and profound seeking of knowledge in all its fields, from numbers to maps to the geopolitics of our contemporary world, a singular story of the United States, the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan.
 I happened to be reading, at the same time, Pankaj Mishra’s brilliant and complex From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Making of Asia, which tells history through the lives of intellectuals and writers who came to the fore in Asia, Africa and the Middle East in the last 200 years, recounting history from an entirely different centre. “It is now clearer,” Mishra writes, "that the central event of the last century for the majority of the world’s population was the intellectual and political awakening of Asia and its emergence from the ruins of both Asian and European empires.”
With that, have a great weekend and don’t forget to look up the next edition of NCM NewsFeed every Friday morning! We will soon be launching an e-mail version of this newsletter, so please subscribe by clicking here.
Publisher’s Note: This NewsFeed was compiled with input from our Newsroom Editors and regular columnist, Andrew Griffith. We welcome your feedback.
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The honest truth is there is still reluctance around immigration policy... When we want to talk about immigration and we say we want to bring more immigrants in because it's good for the economy, we still get pushback. 