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  #1041  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 6:50 PM
geotag277 geotag277 is offline
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From my understanding, it was only used as board meetings as well, not the general meeting. Board meetings are conducted by members of the condo board, usually a handful of people who meet every once in a while to discuss building business. You could only really get agreement to use a different language if it was really spoken by every member of the board.

Also, I believe in Ontario, owners of the building aren't even allowed to attend board meetings without the approval of the chairman of the board. It's not really something that is necessarily appropriate for owners to even attend all the time. As an owner you can request building business be added to the agenda during the board meeting, but since you aren't on the board, you don't really have a vote.

The general meeting is a different beast, and is typically used to update and discuss building business with the general ownership.

And, again, in the context of all this, all the board meeting minutes and updates were provided in English for anyone who requested it, as is legally required.
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  #1042  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 7:07 PM
geotag277 geotag277 is offline
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
Who rags on Japan because it's not multicultural?
Japan has a litany of societal issues that seem to me to be hard to separate from it's homogeneous insular nature.

Top of mind is the reluctance and persistent denial of war crimes during world war 2. German collective guilt is such a stark contrast to the blasé attitudes of the Japanese considering what they did to China. I believe the homogeneous nature of their demographics contributes to such attitudes. Perhaps you think such attitudes are desirable. Would those attitudes fly in a country like Germany, where almost 10% of the population is from Poland, Russia, and other places in Eastern Europe? Probably not.

Aside from concepts of "shame" being so ridiculously prevalent that police cover up crimes due to it, their seriously workaholic culture which is also intimately intertwined with shame, and persistent suicide problems which extent to school children.

I always find it strange how some people hold up Japanese culture as a ideal, calling them polite and other such nonsense, and gloss over the rest.

In any case, while you may not hear Japan being directly criticized for it's homogeneous nature (although you might have recently considering it's refusal of 99% of refugees, it's hard to separate some of these issues from it's perpetual homogenous nature.
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  #1043  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 7:12 PM
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Originally Posted by geotag277 View Post
From my understanding, it was only used as board meetings as well, not the general meeting. Board meetings are conducted by members of the condo board, usually a handful of people who meet every once in a while to discuss building business. You could only really get agreement to use a different language if it was really spoken by every member of the board.

Also, I believe in Ontario, owners of the building aren't even allowed to attend board meetings without the approval of the chairman of the board. It's not really something that is necessarily appropriate for owners to even attend all the time. As an owner you can request building business be added to the agenda during the board meeting, but since you aren't on the board, you don't really have a vote.

The general meeting is a different beast, and is typically used to update and discuss building business with the general ownership.

And, again, in the context of all this, all the board meeting minutes and updates were provided in English for anyone who requested it, as is legally required.
However all owners in a strata are entitled to attend board meetings. It would not be very welcoming if it was conducted in a language they did not understand, and is not one of our official languages.

Now, before you go and try to argue that an English-only meeting might make someone from China feel the same way: They've immigrated to Canada. If you have chosen to make your life here you should be able to get along in English or French and not try and continue to live your life as if you were still in your home country.
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  #1044  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 7:20 PM
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Originally Posted by geotag277 View Post
Japan has a litany of societal issues that seem to me to be hard to separate from it's homogeneous insular nature.

Top of mind is the reluctance and persistent denial of war crimes during world war 2. German collective guilt is such a stark contrast to the blasé attitudes of the Japanese considering what they did to China. I believe the homogeneous nature of their demographics contributes to such attitudes. Perhaps you think such attitudes are desirable. Would those attitudes fly in a country like Germany, where almost 10% of the population is from Poland, Russia, and other places in Eastern Europe? Probably not.

Aside from concepts of "shame" being so ridiculously prevalent that police cover up crimes due to it, their seriously workaholic culture which is also intimately intertwined with shame, and persistent suicide problems which extent to school children.

I always find it strange how some people hold up Japanese culture as a ideal, calling them polite and other such nonsense, and gloss over the rest.

In any case, while you may not hear Japan being directly criticized for it's homogeneous nature (although you might have recently considering it's refusal of 99% of refugees, it's hard to separate some of these issues from it's perpetual homogenous nature.
Postwar Germany up until the Turkish worker program was more homogenously German than it was before the war. For, erm, two very obvious reasons. Not only is your contention that homogenization produces the sort of society that would deny war crimes a facile non sequitur, an assertion of fact with precisely zero reasoning for it, but your argument holding up Germany against Japan is an incoherent contradiction in and of itself.

There are various reasons that the Japanese gloss over their record in the Second World War. Pinning it on their relative ethnic homogenization is mostly a non-starter. It probably has more to do with the fact that it is not a Western country. The twentieth century zeal for forcing certain nations to own up to misdeeds (with all the attendant hypocrisies, of course) after two devastating world wars was informed more by the traditions of Christianity and the Enlightenment than by what little ethnic diversity existed in their societies.

I mean, we sent the ethnic Japanese to concentration camps. Remember? And they didn't get their land or money back after the war.

And this...

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Perhaps you think such attitudes are desirable.
...as a drive-by slander of Acajack is beneath contempt.

Last edited by rousseau; Jul 20, 2017 at 1:12 PM. Reason: Grammar
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  #1045  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 7:34 PM
geotag277 geotag277 is offline
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In any case the example stands because one society persisted with it's dogged commitment to homogeneity and the other turned a corner and embraced something else. It's attitudes towards the most heinous war crimes of the modern world also stand in stark contrast.

You can draw your own conclusions, but it is simply a "correlated/causation" observation, which is of course open to debate.
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  #1046  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 7:42 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by geotag277 View Post

In any case, while you may not hear Japan being directly criticized for it's homogeneous nature (although you might have recently considering it's refusal of 99% of refugees, it's hard to separate some of these issues from it's perpetual homogenous nature.
That was mostly my point. Why is Japan largely exempt from scrutiny and criticism, and even admired (though not necessarily for homogeneity, but certainly for uniqueness and exoticism) in most of Western discourse?
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  #1047  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 7:43 PM
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Originally Posted by rousseau View Post
Postwar Germany up until the Turkish worker program was more homogenously German than it was before the war. For, erm, two very obvious reasons. Not only is your contention that homogenization produces the sort of society that would deny war crimes a facile non sequitur, an assertion of fact with precisely zero reasoning for it, but your argument holding up Germany against Japan is an incoherent contradiction in and of itself.

There are various reasons that the Japanese gloss over their record in the Second World War. Pinning it on their relative ethnic homogenization is mostly a non-starter. It probably has more to do with the fact that it is not a Western country. The twentieth century zeal for forcing certain nations to own up to misdeeds (with all the attendant hypocrisies, of course) after two devastating world wars was informed more by the traditions of Christianity and the Enlightenment than by what little ethnic diversity existed in their societies.

I mean, we sent the ethnic Japanese to concentration camps. Remember? And they didn't get their land or money back after the war.

And this...



...as as drive-by slander of Acajack beneath contempt.
Thanks. I can certainly take it (as you know), but it's always nice to get support.
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  #1048  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 7:47 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by geotag277 View Post

Top of mind is the reluctance and persistent denial of war crimes during world war 2. German collective guilt is such a stark contrast to the blasé attitudes of the Japanese considering what they did to China. I believe the homogeneous nature of their demographics contributes to such attitudes. Perhaps you think such attitudes are desirable. Would those attitudes fly in a country like Germany, where almost 10% of the population is from Poland, Russia, and other places in Eastern Europe? Probably not.
.
As rousseau said, there doesn't seem to be a relationship as post-war German guilt took root fairly soon after the war and before any large-scale migration of Turks and central and eastern Europeans.

And neo-Nazism and denial of war crimes have arguably increased as Germany's population has diversified post-unification.
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  #1049  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2017, 7:53 PM
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Originally Posted by geotag277 View Post
(...) Perhaps you think such attitudes are desirable. (...)

Aside from concepts of "shame" being so ridiculously prevalent that police cover up crimes due to it, their seriously workaholic culture which is also intimately intertwined with shame, and persistent suicide problems which extent to school children.

I always find it strange how some people hold up Japanese culture as a ideal, calling them polite and other such nonsense, and gloss over the rest.

.
I don't consider it desirable or undesirable. It's just another (legitimate) "way of being" for a human society.

On a global level anyway, I don't deal in better or worse, or desirable or undesirable societal models.

Sure, on a micro level I do feel that the western model for a country like Canada is desirable. But I live here. My kids are growing up here. Most of the people I care about live here. The model has proven its worth. For us.

And I don't see the advantage for us of adopting the Japanese one. Or the Russian one. Or the Saudi Arabian one.

OTOH I also don't necessarily think that the Japanese, Russians or Saudis should adopt our model. Unless they want to.
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  #1050  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 5:46 AM
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As far as I know, the only confirmed use of Mandarin at the condo of reknown, was as the spoken language in some meetings where interpretation may or may not have been available (in at least one report, the condo claimed it was)...
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From my understanding, it was only used as board meetings as well, not the general meeting...
A handful of Chinese board members conversing with each other in mandarin - that's what set this whole thing off?! Makes for great doomsday news headlines I guess, esp for folks like whatnext who call them "locusts" lol
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  #1051  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 1:10 PM
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A handful of Chinese board members conversing with each other in mandarin - that's what set this whole thing off?! Makes for great doomsday news headlines I guess, esp for folks like whatnext who call them "locusts" lol
It does sound like it was more than just a one-off semi-informal conversation though. And that people who don't speak Mandarin were more or less told to go suck a lemon if they didn't like it.
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  #1052  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 1:23 PM
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To me, it always had the odour of someone wanting to make a public splash of their "white flight", with the media as a happy accomplice. But I don't live in the building, so who knows.
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  #1053  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 1:54 PM
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esp for folks like whatnext who call them "locusts" lol
Strange comment coming from someone who takes great tribal pride in the homogenization of Vancouver currently.

kwoldtimer, you realize you're on the wrong side of the debate for your beliefs? Those of us who want diversity are concerned about what's going on.
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  #1054  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 2:15 PM
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It's been a while now but I seem to recall quite clearly that in the early days of this story the condo board people were somewhat defiant when confronted about the issue.

It wasn't "oh, sorry. we were just doing what comes naturally to us. didn't mean to offend anyone."

It was more like: "we can do whatever the hell we want."

After a while the tone became more conciliatory, with offers to have interpreters and such IIRC.

And then I think they had interpreters for some meetings, but eventually for some meetings they didn't have them anymore...

Seems like that's how it went.
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  #1055  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 2:56 PM
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It's been a while now but I seem to recall quite clearly that in the early days of this story the condo board people were somewhat defiant when confronted about the issue.

It wasn't "oh, sorry. we were just doing what comes naturally to us. didn't mean to offend anyone."

It was more like: "we can do whatever the hell we want."

After a while the tone became more conciliatory, with offers to have interpreters and such IIRC.

And then I think they had interpreters for some meetings, but eventually for some meetings they didn't have them anymore...

Seems like that's how it went.
They never hired an interpreter. It was the usual M.O. of apologizing profusely and pleading ignorance while knowing exactly what they were doing. Canadians fall for this shit constantly, we're so naive in our arrogance.
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  #1056  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 4:44 PM
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To me, it always had the odour of someone wanting to make a public splash of their "white flight", with the media as a happy accomplice. But I don't live in the building, so who knows.
Indeed. Regardless, that we are still discussing this one condo complex more than a year after it first entered the news would suggest that this is an isolated incident and hardly indicative of a trend toward mass sinicization.
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  #1057  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 5:10 PM
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You can really tell who hasn't been to Vancouver lately here.
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  #1058  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 5:23 PM
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I know the post above is not directed at me but I don't really have an opinion on the overall "sinicization" (or not) of Vancouver.
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  #1059  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 5:28 PM
geotag277 geotag277 is offline
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Indeed. Regardless, that we are still discussing this one condo complex more than a year after it first entered the news would suggest that this is an isolated incident and hardly indicative of a trend toward mass sinicization.
Also shows the appetite for anti-Chinese sentiment is rather large and potentially growing quite a bit that such a news story can hold attention for so long. It seems to be sowing the seeds of "Breitbart" style news, pandering to a certain audience in a certain way.

Of course, this is also a consequence of the conversation being marginalized among mainstream circles. There is a legitimate conversation to be had among housing policies, especially as they concern foreign investors. By marginalizing that conversation, it promotes extremist sensationalism, and that is where otherwise rational people will turn to have the conversation if it isn't happening anywhere else - arguably the underlying reason for any mainstream success of any "Breitbart" style outlet.
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  #1060  
Old Posted Jul 20, 2017, 5:30 PM
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Also shows the appetite for anti-Chinese sentiment is rather large and potentially growing quite a bit that such a news story can hold attention for so long. It seems to be sowing the seeds of "Breitbart" style news, pandering to a certain audience in a certain way.

Of course, this is also a consequence of the conversation being marginalized among mainstream circles. There is a legitimate conversation to be had among housing policies, especially as they concern foreign investors. By marginalizing that conversation, it promotes extremist sensationalism, and that is where otherwise rational people will turn to have the conversation if it isn't happening anywhere else - arguably the underlying reason for any mainstream success of any "Breitbart" style outlet.
There is also the fact that government inaction can let issues fester and spiral out of control. Becoming much worse and more divisive and explosive than they needed to be.
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