Trump's social media platform looks like a high-tech version of 'Trump Steaks': report

John Wright
October 21, 2021

Trump steaks and a Trump bobblehead/Screenshots

Former president Donald Trump's new social media venture appears designed to make him money without taking much risk — by effectively selling his name to someone so they can slap it on a product while he avoids responsibility, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

"Trump began his career in the high-risk, high-reward business of buying and selling New York real estate. But, after he achieved TV fame on 'The Apprentice,' he entered another line of business with far less risk: selling his name to people who wanted to slap it on their products," the Post's David Fahrenthold and Jonathan O'Connell report. "In the heyday of that merchandising business, Trump was paid to lend his name to apartment buildings, eyeglasses, cologne, mattresses, vodka, steaks, coffee, chandeliers, suits — even a brand of urine test. Many of these products failed, but that was not Trump's problem."

The story notes that the former president's own company, the Trump Organization, is facing "unprecedented challenges" in the form of mounting losses, the indictment of chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and investigations into its financial practices in at least three states. But Trump's social media venture unveiled Wednesday, through the publicly traded Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), could allow him to "enter the tech sector without much risk" and generate revenue "with little work or overhead."

Michael D'Antonio, who has written biographies of Trump, told the Post: "Avoiding being responsible, in any ultimate sense, is a constant in his strategy. If you think of him always looking for ways to try businesses without being truly responsible — combined with his sense that he can do anything — then this is kind of natural."

Gwenda Blair, who wrote a biography of Trump, his father and his grandfather, added: "There's nothing surprising. The only surprising thing would be if he actually put his own money into it. He's always an other-people's-money people guy."

The story notes that this week's launch of TMTG's social media platform, called Truth Social, was "less than impressive." The platform was defaced by pranksters, with a video of a pig defecating supposedly posted by "donaldjtrump."

And there are other potential signs of problems: The CEO of TMTG is listed as Patrick Orlando, whose office address corresponds to a WeWork co-working space in Miami, and the CFO is Luis Orleans-Braganza, who claims to be a member of the defunct Brazilian royal family.

"Trump has previously run one publicly traded company, which included many of his Atlantic City casinos and was called Trump Entertainment Resorts," the Post notes. "The company operated for roughly two decades, starting in 1995. For Trump's investors, it was a disaster: The company lost more than $1 billion, its stock price nosedived, and it filed for bankruptcy three times, in 2004, 2009 and 2014. ... But Trump himself did well: The struggling company paid him more than $44 million in salary, bonuses and other compensation."

Trump blasted for 'chilling' new ​rant: 'This statement is an act of war against America'

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
October 21, 2021

Donald Trump (AFP)

Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president, on Thursday issued what is being called a "chilling" statement on the election and the insurrection he incited.

"The insurrection took place on November 3, Election Day. January 6 was the Protest!" Trump said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh simply and clearly calls it an "act of war."


U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) during debate on the House floor has "repeatedly" been "calling on Republicans to denounce the Trump statement," according to reporter Jamie Dupree.

"All my colleagues were elected on November 3," McGovern said. "If you believe that Election Day was an insurrection, then your election results are illegitimate."

McGovern is not the only one to blast the Trump statement:

Some journalists are also slamming the former president's latest remarks.

S.V. Dáte, the White House correspondent at HuffPost weighed in, saying, "Donald Trump tried to overthrow American democracy after he lost his election by 7 million votes, but nearly a year later, he's still lying. About all of it."

Washington Post national political reporter Felicia Sonmez called it a "chilling statement … that makes clear his stance on peaceful democracy vs. violent insurrection."

Washington Post White House bureau chief Ashley Parker pointed to the statement and said: "In which Trump's shamelessness continues to be his political super power."

ProPublica Senior Reporter Peter Elkind says: "This is the position of the widely embraced leader of the GOP. Republicans all behind that?"

A former president of the United States who took an oath to uphold the US Constitution: "The insurrection took plac… https://t.co/4sPD6X1hXM— Priscilla Huff (@Priscilla Huff) 1634835937.0

SPAC THE MONKEY
Trump Takes Advantage of Wall Street Fad to Bankroll New Venture

A merger with a so-called blank check company is poised to give the former president access to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Donald J. Trump’s new company, Trump Media and Technology Group, reached a deal to merge with a special purpose acquisition company that has raised nearly $300 million.

Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

By David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein and Shane Goldmacher
Oct. 21, 2021

After decades of bankruptcies, loan defaults, business disputes and commercial failures — not to mention a polarizing presidency that ended with a violent mob storming the Capitol — Donald J. Trump was shunned by much of corporate America.

Now, thanks to one of Wall Street’s hottest fads, the former president has managed to sidestep that tarnished reputation and gain access to hundreds of millions of dollars to launch a social media company.

Riding to his rescue: SPACs.

Special purpose acquisition companies are the reverse of initial public offerings. Sometimes called blank-check companies, SPACs go public first and raise money from investors with the goal of finding a private company to merge with. Those investors have no clue about what that merger partner will turn out to be.

Which led some of the prominent investors in a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition — including the hedge funds D.E. Shaw and Saba Capital — to the surprising realization that they were financially backing Mr. Trump’s latest company.

Mr. Trump’s new company, Trump Media and Technology Group — incorporated in Delaware in February with little fanfare, and with no revenue or tested business plan — reached a deal to merge with Digital World on Wednesday.

Digital World, which was set up shortly after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, last month raised nearly $300 million, largely from big investors. Assuming the merger is consummated, that money will soon be bankrolling the Trump media venture, which plans early next year to offer a Twitter-like social media app.

Shares of the newly merged company soared on Thursday, rising more than 300 percent to close at $45.50 a share and partly reflecting expectations that the former president’s media company could be very profitable.

Daily business updates The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox.

SPACs have long had a dubious reputation because they give struggling or untested companies that would otherwise not find backers a pathway to the public markets. But in recent years, these lightly regulated entities have become all the rage because with interest rates remaining low, investors are eager for new places to put their money to work. In the past two years alone, such companies have raised $190 billion from investors.

But even by Wall Street’s frothy standards, the swiftness with which Digital World reached a deal with Mr. Trump — which many in the former president’s inner circle didn’t know about — was remarkable.

Most blank-check companies take about 17 months to find a target and complete a deal after going public. Digital World gave itself a year, but found its target within a month of going public.

“That is an extraordinary time period,” said Usha Rodrigues, who teaches corporate law at the University of Georgia School of Law and has written about SPACs. “It is far outside the norm.”

Digital World’s founder and chief executive is Patrick Orlando, who previously worked for Deutsche Bank and other Wall Street firms. More recently, Mr. Orlando, who is based in Miami and knew Mr. Trump before the deal, according to one of Mr. Orlando’s colleagues, has launched three other blank-check companies. While they have raised money from investors, not one has completed a deal. A plan to merge one of the SPACs, Yunhong International, with Giga Energy recently fell apart.

When Digital World went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange last month, it didn’t have the assistance of a brand-name investment bank. Instead, it turned to a small firm that until recently was called Kingswood Capital Markets.

This summer, Kingswood changed its name to E.F. Hutton, adopting one of Wall Street’s most storied brands, presumably in a bid to improve its marketing cachet. (The original E.F. Hutton was famous for the advertising slogan “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”) Joseph Rallo, E.F. Hutton’s chief executive, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

With the help of bankers at the newly renamed E.F. Hutton, Mr. Orlando and Digital World lined up 11 hedge funds and other institutional investors to serve as so-called anchor investors. They agreed to buy substantial slugs of shares in Digital World’s public stock offering on Sept. 8.

As is standard in “blank check” deals, the investors in some cases ponied up as much as $30 million without much guidance as to how Digital World would spend their money, officials at several of the hedge funds said. All they knew was what Digital World said in its securities filing — that it was looking to invest in “middle-market emerging growth technology-focused companies.” It didn’t give any hint that it was hoping to merge with a social-media company or to work with the former president.


Vik Mittal, chief investment officer with Meteora Capital, one of the anchor investors, said the firm wasn’t aware of an imminent deal with Mr. Trump’s media company when it committed money to Mr. Orlando’s SPAC.

Mr. Orlando negotiated the deal with Mr. Trump, with whom he had a relationship. “I’m the C.E.O. of the SPAC, and the conversations were generally at the highest levels,” Mr. Orlando said in a brief interview on Thursday. He declined to comment on the details of the agreement or how it came together. “Everybody worked really hard, 24 hours a day,” he said.

Patrick Orlando

Credit...Hector Fallas

Mr. Trump, for his part, kept much of his inner circle in the dark. His plans had not come up on his political team’s weekly calls, according to participants.

Trump Media and Technology Group, whose website lists Mr. Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago, as its mailing address, has grand ambitions. A slide presentation on the company’s website envisions it competing not only with Twitter and Facebook, but also against companies like Netflix, Disney and CNN. In the “long-term opportunity” category, the company lists Google and Amazon as potential rivals.

Mr. Trump’s yet-to-be-launched app is called Truth Social. Within hours of its announcement, hackers claimed to have created fake accounts on an unreleased test version in the name of Mr. Trump and others.

Some Republican groups immediately sought to use the announcement of the social media site for fund-raising purposes. The Republican National Committee, for instance, sent a “BREAKING NEWS” email on Thursday asking supporters if they would join the site.

The hedge funds that invested in Digital World appear to have profited at least on paper, given the stock’s steep rise on Thursday.

One of Digital World’s major investors was Saba Capital, a $3.5 billion hedge fund run by Boaz Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein said on Thursday that after learning of the Trump deal, his firm sold much of its stake in Digital World in the early morning, notching a small profit before the shares soared higher. Mr. Weinstein’s wife, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, recently ran unsuccessfully for Manhattan district attorney as a Democrat.

“Many investors are grappling with hard questions about how to incorporate their values into their work,” Mr. Weinstein said in a statement. “For us, this was not a close call.”


Lauren Hirsch, Jeremy W. Peters, Nicole Perlroth and Andrew Ross Sorkin contributed reporting.

David Enrich is the business investigations editor. He is the author of “Dark Towers,” about Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump. @davidenrich • Facebook

Matthew Goldstein covers Wall Street and white collar crime and housing issues. @mattgoldstein26

Shane Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief political correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times, he worked at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016 presidential campaign. @ShaneGoldmacher

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 22, 2021, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Wall St. Fad Helps Trump In Financing New Venture. 

Billionaires who killed the GOP are now turning it into an anti-American insurgency -- along the lines of the Confederacy

Thom Hartmann
October 21, 2021

Fox News/screen grab

Congressman Steve Scalise, the #2 Republican in the House of Representatives and the guy who ran for office from Louisiana as "David Duke without the baggage," has announced he's whipping Republican votes to block a criminal contempt referral to the DOJ from the Jan 6 Select Committee against Steve Bannon.

My father's Republican Party is now the modern-day Confederacy, and Republicans' defense of Steve Bannon defying subpoenas this week pretty much proves it. If it keeps moving in the same direction, our American republic may soon be fully transformed into a racist, strongman oligarchy.

The racist and big-money poisons began to take over the Republican Party in the 1950s and 1960s after the Supreme Court ordered an end to school segregation with Brown v Board, and LBJ and the Democrats embraced the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Medicare Acts.

In aggregate, Johnson's Great Society offended both the nation's billionaire oligarchs, who saw Medicare and other programs as "socialism," and the white racists who were horrified that they'd now have to share schools, hospitals and polling places with African Americans and other minorities.

Those white racists, particularly in the South where the majority of America's Black people lived, fled the Democratic Party and flocked instead to the GOP. Richard Nixon saw this as the key to his presidential victory in 1968, openly inviting racists in with his "Southern Strategy."

Thus began the transformation of the party founded by Abraham Lincoln.

At the same time, the Libertarian and Objectivist movements found common cause with the anti-communist movement led by the John Birch Society that saw every effort to help working class or poor Americas as a step towards full-blown Soviet-style socialism. They all marched into the GOP.

"The mob," as Ayn Rand used to call us American voters, couldn't be trusted any longer to determine who held power in America, these early leaders of the GOP determined, so they worked out ways to get around a multiracial and politically active populace.

The leading conservative light of the era, William F. Buckley, wrote for his National Review magazine an article titled Why The South Must Prevail:

"The South does not want to deprive the Negro of a vote for the sake of depriving him of the vote," Buckley wrote. "In some parts of the South, the White community merely intends to prevail — that is all. It means to prevail on any issue on which there is corporate disagreement between Negro and White. The White community will take whatever measures are necessary to make certain that it has its way."

His article was grounded in a discussion of the jury system, but he couldn't help veering off-course (or on-course):

"The central question that emerges … is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically?

"The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists."

It's exactly the philosophy that today animates the new voting laws put into place over the past six months in Florida, Georgia, Texas and multiple other states.

Racists and big money seized the GOP, and the GOP then drained 40 years of wealth from the Middle Class.

The merger of racism and big money reached its first peak in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, who openly ran on "states' rights" and the argument that government was the cause, not the solution, to the nation's problems. Just leave everything to the morbidly rich and their magical "free market" and America, Saint Ronnie promised us, would become a paradise. At least for white people.

But it didn't work out that way for white people or anybody else; instead, the top 1 percent of Americans succeeded in grabbing well over $10 trillion from the middle class over the next forty years and have now largely ringfenced their wealth with bought-off Republicans declaring they'll never, ever vote to raise taxes on the morbidly rich.

And the billionaires and racists who seized the GOP are now turning it into something not seen in a major American political party since the Civil War. It's become an anti-American insurgency, along the lines of the Confederacy.

Many of the same wealthy individuals and corporations that brought Reagan to power continue to pour billions into the GOP, an effort that in 2016 brought authoritarian Donald Trump to the White House and threatens to do so again in 3 years.

But this isn't even the GOP of Reagan's time: today's GOP has now transformed itself into a full-blown anti-democratic neofascist party.

It's no longer the business-loving white-middle-class GOP of the 20th century: it's now the party of Nazis and the Klan, although they've turned in their cartoonish swastikas and white robes for red caps and camo.

Which is presenting the "funder class" in the GOP with a stark decision.

Are their tax cuts and deregulation of pollution so important to them that they'll continue to fund a neofascist party in order to keep them?

Early signs are not good.

Billionaire-owned rightwing radio and TV are rewriting the history of January 6th and continue spreading Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election. Rightwing think tanks and billionaire-founded and -funded Astroturf activist groups continue their mischaracterizations and outright lies about President Biden's agenda.

Social media sites continue to use algorithms that drive increasingly extremist views and have become organizing platforms for lies, racism and "political" actions like intimidating school boards and election officials.

They've been so successful that the majority of Republican voters no longer trust our electoral system and are willing to have Republican-controlled legislatures decide how elections came out rather than voters.

While a small but vocal and credible group of former Republicans — from politicians like Jeff Flake and George W. Bush, to GOP operatives like Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson, to media figures like Jennifer Rubin and Joe Scarborough — are speaking out and doing so in terms often far more blunt than even Democratic politicians, the oligarchs who own the Party aren't listening.

The Republican base, meanwhile, is completely in thrall to Trump and he's showing every sign of running and possibly taking over the country using the 12th Amendment trick I was warning of more than a year ago, this time running John Eastman's scheme in 2024.

And if not Trump, there's no shortage of ambitious fascist-leaning Republican politicians in the mold of Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott who are more than willing to stand-in for him with the same strategy.

The stage is thus set now for the final, irrevocable transformation of Eisenhower's Party — and American democracy. The turning point will be the 2022 election if Republicans can retake the House and Senate.

Nineteen states have already changed thirty-three voting laws to accommodate Trump's and John Eastman's 6-point-plan to ignore the popular vote and throw the electoral college vote into the House of Representatives to put a Republican loser of the 2024 election into the White House.

This will work if Justice Sam Alito and his rightwing extremist friends on the Supreme Court give the scheme their stamp of approval; Trump lawyer Sydney Powell said this week Alito was prepared to do just that.

It's decision time.

Numerous corporations said that they'd stop funding the so-called "treason caucus" of 140+ Republicans who voted to decertify the 2020 election after the January 6th attempted assassination of the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.

Almost all of those corporations, as Judd Legum and David Sirota regularly document at popular.info and DailyPoster.com, have gone back on that pledge.

Eisenhower's GOP no longer exists: it's been replaced by an authoritarian shell that's home to open racists and billionaire oligarchs who don't want their businesses regulated or taxed. They're willing to end democracy in America to get what they want.

German industrialist Fritz Thyssen famously backed Hitler and lived to regret it, penning an awkward but portentous autobiography titled I Paid Hitler.

Will today's rightwing billionaires and the CEOs of our largest corporations one day be writing similar books?

Or, if Trump prevails, will American democracy be so totally wiped out that no future publisher would dare sell such a book?

CANADA SHOULD DO SO TOO

Barbados elects first president, replacing UK Queen as head of state

Barbados has elected its first-ever president to replace Britain's Queen Elizabeth as head of state, in a decisive step toward shedding the Caribbean island's colonial past.

© Stillwell/WPA Pool/Getty Images Sandra Mason after she was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, at Buckingham Palace on March 23, 2018 in London.

Sandra Mason was elected late on Wednesday by a two-thirds vote of a joint session of the country's House of Assembly and Senate. In a statement, the government called her appointment a milestone on its "road to republic."

A former British colony that gained independence in 1966, the nation of just under 300,000 had long maintained ties with the United Kingdom's monarchy.

But many Barbadians have long agitated to remove the Queen's status -- and with it, the lingering symbolic presence of imperialism over its governance. Multiple leaders this century have proposed that the country become a republic.

That will finally happen on November 30, the country's 55th anniversary of independence from Britain, when Mason will be sworn in.

A former jurist who has been governor-general of the island since 2018, Mason was also the first woman to serve on the Barbados Court of Appeals.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called the election of a president "a seminal moment" in the country's journey.

"We have just elected from among us a woman who is uniquely and passionately Barbadian, does not pretend to be anything else (and) reflects the values of who we are," Mottley said after Mason's election.

Several countries dropped the Queen as head of state in the years after they gained independence, with Mauritius the last to do so, in 1992. That makes Barbados the first country in nearly three decades to drop the monarch.

The Queen is still head of state in more than a dozen other countries that were formerly under British rule, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Jamaica.

Wazim Mowla of the Atlantic Council think tank told Reuters the election could benefit Barbados both at home and abroad.

The move makes Barbados, a small developing country, a more legitimate player in global politics, Mowla said, but could also serve as a "unifying and nationalistic move" that may benefit its current leadership at home.

"Other Caribbean leaders and their citizens will likely praise the move, but I don't expect others to follow suit," Mowla added. "This move will always be considered only if it is in the best interest of each country."

Mottley said the country's decision to become a republic was not a condemnation of its British past.

"We look forward to continuing the relationship with the British monarch," she said.

DOING YOUR PRIVATEER FREE MARKET ANCESTORS PROUD 

ONLY IN CANADA YOU  SAY 
Supreme Court of Canada sides with injured woman in snow-clearing squabble

OTTAWA — A woman will get another chance to sue for damages over a leg injury she suffered while climbing through snow piled by a city's plow, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Taryn Joy Marchi alleged the City of Nelson, B.C., created a hazard when it cleared snow from downtown streets after a storm in early January 2015.

The removal effort left snow piles at the edge of the street along the sidewalk early in the morning of Jan. 5.

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 6, Marchi — then a 28-year-old nurse — parked in an angled spot on the street and, wearing running shoes with a good tread, tried to cross a snow pile to get on to the sidewalk.

Her right foot dropped through the snow and she fell forward, seriously injuring her leg.

Marchi contended the city should have left openings in the snowbank to allow safe passage to the sidewalk.

She pointed to the neighbouring municipalities of Castlegar, Rossland and Penticton in arguing there were preferable ways to clear the streets so as to ensure safe access for pedestrians.

However, the trial judge dismissed her case, saying the city was immune from liability because it made legitimate policy decisions about snow clearing based on the availability of personnel and resources.


Video: Mayor reacts to Supreme Court ruling on snow removal (cbc.ca)

In any event, the judge concluded, Marchi assumed the risk of crossing the snow pile and was "the author of her own misfortune."

The B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the decision and ordered a new trial, saying the judge erred in addressing the city's duty of care and the question of Marchi's negligence.

The ruling prompted the City of Nelson to seek a hearing in the Supreme Court.

In a written submission to the high court, the city said its actions amount to "a clear example of a core policy decision" that should be immune from liability.

In her filing with the court, Marchi said city employees made a number of operational decisions that fell below the expected standard of care of a municipality — decisions not required by the written policy.

In its 7-0 ruling Thursday, the Supreme Court said a fresh trial should take place because the city has not proved that its decision on how to clear the snow was "a core policy decision" immune from liability.

While there is no suggestion the city made an irrational or "bad faith decision," the city’s core policy defence fails and it owed Ms. Marchi a duty of care, justices Sheilah Martin and Andromache Karakatsanis wrote on behalf of the court.

"The regular principles of negligence law apply in determining whether the City breached the duty of care and, if so, whether it should be liable for Ms. Marchi’s damages."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2021.

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press

Italy's Covid pass: Violence at protests has ignited a national debate about fascism

By Sarah Dean, CNN

Down a narrow, winding street in central Rome, golden cobblestones shine out from the footpath in front of homes, etched with the words: "Deportata Auschwitz" ("deported to Auschwitz").

© Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP People gather in Piazza del Popolo square during a protest against the Covid-19 health pass, in Rome, Saturday, October 9, 2021.

© Borut Zivulovic/Reuters People participate in a protest against the implementation of the COVID-19 health pass, the Green Pass, in the workplace as they gather outside the entrance of the major port of Trieste, Italy, Oct. 15, 2021.

One of the stones is dedicated to Rossana Calo, who was just two years old when she, along with her mother, was transported hundreds of miles to the Nazi death camp; on arrival, she was killed in the gas chambers.

These plaques, commemorating more than 1,000 victims snatched from their homes in the Italian capital's Jewish Ghetto in October 1943, are a sobering reminder of the country's dark past.

Italy entered World War II as an ally of Adolf Hitler in 1940, but Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime had already embraced anti-Semitism. Months after he was overthrown in 1943, German authorities began to round up Jews in Rome and other major cities in the country's north.

More than 75 years after Mussolini's inglorious death at the hands of partisans, the debate about fascist ideology -- and its continuing appeal to some Italians -- has been reignited in the wake of the government's attempts to control the coronavirus pandemic.

On October 9, the headquarters of Italy's largest trade union and a hospital emergency ward in Rome were targeted during angry protests against the country's Covid-19 "Green Pass."

The Green Pass, which came into force last Friday, requires all workers -- from café staff to care workers, taxi drivers to teachers -- to show proof of vaccination, a negative test or recent recovery from infection. Italy -- once Europe's Covid-19 epicenter -- now has the continent's strongest vaccine mandate

.

© CNN Gold cobblestones outside front doors in Rome's Jewish Ghetto commemorate people arrested and deported to Auschwitz. Two-year-old Rossana Calo was one of those.

Members of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova were arrested in relation to the violent attacks in Rome.

Fascist parties banned

"Fascism never went away in this country," said history professor Simon Martin, the author of several books on Italian fascism. "Italy has not confronted its past. There is no appetite for this, I think, on either side."

Martin said thousands of people still line up each year on anniversaries, such as Mussolini's birth, death and "March on Rome," to visit his tomb in Predappio, 200 miles northeast of Rome, despite the fact he ran a repressive police state, and was responsible for brutal colonial campaigns and massacres during his 20 years in power.

"[It] has a book of condolence which has to be changed on a regular basis because it fills up," he said.

A 1952 law banned the reconstitution of fascist parties in Italy, but they have reformed under alternative names, Martin told CNN during a visit to the Jewish Ghetto.

© CNN The Mussolini-commissioned building Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana is the centerpiece of Mussolini's Esposizione Universale Roma neighborhood and remains a symbol of the country's fascist era.

The violence of the Green Pass protests on October 9 has led to mounting calls to dissolve neo-fascist groups in the country.

This week, Italian lawmakers in both the upper house Senate and lower house voted in favor of a motion put forward by the country's center-left parties, which calls on Prime Minister Mario Draghi's government to dissolve Forza Nuova and all movements of neo-fascist inspiration. Draghi and his Council of Ministers will now consult legal experts before announcing a decision.

Forza Nuova's lawyer Carlo Taormina told CNN the group is currently being dismantled and has not been active as a political movement for 20 months.

In response to the violent scenes on October 9, tens of thousands of people demonstrated against fascism in Rome's San Giovanni Square at the weekend.

"I came here because it is important to send a message," Jacopo Basili, 30, told CNN at the rally organized by Italy's main trades unions. "What happened was very bad, as if we were returning to 100 years ago in Italy. Today we must say no. It is not possible."

Another demonstrator, Leone Rivara, told CNN he doesn't believe the threat of fascism in Italy today compares to the Mussolini era, but that social tensions in the country have been "aggravated by the pandemic," and that "forces that declare themselves democratic ... cross boundaries and exploit the weakness, the fragility, the anger, the delusion of the people to [upset] the democratic balance of this country."  

© CNN The balcony overlooking Palazzo Venezia where Fascist leader Benito Mussolini gave some of his most notable speeches.

One group accused of doing just that is the Fratelli d'Italia, or Brothers of Italy, a right-wing party that made international headlines when one of its members, Rachele Mussolini -- granddaughter of Benito -- was elected to Rome's city council for a second term earlier this month.

Rachele Mussolini won more than 8,200 votes -- the highest number tallied for any candidate -- and a huge increase on the 657 votes she received in the 2016 ballot.

"I will strive not to disappoint those who trusted me and to conquer those who don't know me ... My goal is to keep working for my city to give it back [its] lost dignity," she wrote in a Facebook post following her re-election.

CNN contacted Rachele Mussolini, via her press secretary, to ask if she finds it hard to distinguish herself from the fascist associations tied to her last name, but has not received a response.

She is not the first descendant of the Italian dictator to go into politics. Her stepsister Alessandra served as a member of parliament in Silvio Berlusconi's center-right People of Freedom alliance, and was a Member of the European Parliament.

Opinion polls suggest Fratelli d'Italia, which grew out of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement party (MSI), is currently the most popular party in Italy.

The Fratelli d'Italia party -- along with Matteo Salvini's right-wing Lega and the centre-right Forza Italia -- recently backed radio host and lawyer Enrico Michetti in his fight to become Rome's next mayor.

On Monday, Michetti lost the run-off vote by roughly 20%. During the campaign, his office was defaced with the word "fascista."

Asked why Fratelli d'Italia is still affiliated with fascism, the party's leader Giorgia Meloni told CNN her party is not a breeding ground for such a regime.

Andrea Ungari, professor of contemporary history at Rome's LUISS university said he believes a small proportion of Italians could be defined as having fascist beliefs.

Neo-fascist groups Forza Nuova and CasaPound did not participate in Italy's most recent elections.

"It's difficult to define Fratelli d'Italia as a fascist party," Ungari said. "Of course, there are some declarations ... some harsh attitudes ... it is clearly a right-wing party but with the difference between right and extreme right."

"In Italy there is the heritage of fascism of course but sometimes it's a term utilized by the left to monopolise the political debate," Ungari warned.

Numerous reminders of fascism

Monuments linked to racism, colonialism and shameful moments in history have been removed from countries around the world in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.

In Italy though, architecture from the 20 years of Benito Mussolini's rule is maintained. Unlike Germany, which outlawed and eradicated Nazi symbols in the aftermath of World War II, Italy left numerous reminders of the fascist era standing.

Rome's sports complex -- Foro Mussolini, or Mussolini's forum -- which houses the city's main soccer stadium Stadio Olimpico, has been renamed Foro Italico, but an almost 60-foot marble obelisk bearing Mussolini's name still towers outside it.

Ostiense railway station, which was built to commemorate Hitler's visit to Rome in 1938 and boasts a mosaic themed around the Italian fascist ideology that modern Italy was the heir to ancient Rome, is still one of the city's major railway stations.

And the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana -- a six-storey marble tower constructed as the centerpiece of Mussolini's new neighborhood, Esposizione Universale Roma, in the city's southwest -- remains engraved with a phrase from his 1935 speech announcing the invasion of Ethiopia.

"I think the real problem with those statues is there's nothing to contextualize them ... [nothing] to tell us what fascism was about," said history professor Martin.

Martin said that while it may not be practical to tear down all of Italy's fascist-era buildings, because of the sheer numbers involved, "it should be contextualized. We need to talk about what it means."

As for the motion to ban neo-fascist groups and parties, it "would be a statement of intent by the government," said Martin, but it is unlikely to change people's ideas.

THE ANTI FASCIST ANTHEM

Canada's unfair extradition system needs major reform: legal and human rights experts


OTTAWA — Canada's extradition laws need a thorough overhaul to ensure fairness, transparency, and a balance between a desire for administrative efficiency and crucial constitutional protections, say legal and human rights experts.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In a report released Thursday, the voices calling for reform say the Canadian process for sending people to face prosecution and incarceration abroad is riddled with shortcomings that make the system inherently unjust.

The recommendations for change emerge from the Halifax Colloquium on Extradition Law Reform at Dalhousie University in September 2018, which brought together academics, defence counsel and human rights organizations.

The report acknowledges the importance of extradition in an increasingly globalized world where criminal activity often traverses borders, but highlights "a number of problems" with how proceedings unfold through the 1999 Extradition Act.

"Canada fulfils most extradition requests from other countries, and individuals who are sought for extradition are almost always unsuccessful in challenging it," the report says.

"But is this as it should be?"

The advocates for reform highlight the case of Ottawa sociology professor Hassan Diab, a Canadian citizen who was extradited to France and imprisoned for over three years, only to be released without even being committed to trial.

"It is worth recalling that, when the Extradition Act was brought in, Parliament was assured by the Department of Justice that Canadians would not moulder away in foreign states awaiting trial, nor would extradition procedures be used to facilitate foreign investigation," the report says.

"Hassan Diab’s case shows that neither of these promises is being taken seriously."

In the Canadian extradition process, Department of Justice officials first determine whether to authorize the start of proceedings in the courts through what’s known as an "Authority to Proceed."

Once an Authority to Proceed has been issued, the Canadian courts have to decide whether there is sufficient evidence, or other applicable grounds, to justify the person’s committal for extradition. When someone is committed for extradition, the justice minister must personally decide whether to order the individual's surrender to the foreign state.

Someone sought for extradition may appeal their committal and seek judicial review of the minister’s surrender order — a process that can play out for months or even years in the courts.

The report released Thursday says the committal process compromises the ability of the person sought to meaningfully challenge the foreign case against them, reducing Canadian judges to rubber stamps and permitting use of unreliable material.

Diab's lawyer, Donald Bayne, said Canada's extradition process is "essentially an unjust system" unworthy of a modern, constitutional Canada.

"Extradition involves the deprivation of liberty of Canadians, and others, without any sworn evidence at all," he told a news conference Thursday to launch the report.

The surrender decision made by the justice minister is a highly discretionary and explicitly political process, unfairly weighted toward extradition, the report says.

The Justice Department's International Assistance Group facilitates the extradition of people to face prosecution or sentencing in the country in which they are charged or convicted.

However, the group is "excessively adversarial" in the way it conducts proceedings, acting without any separation between the litigators and the decision-makers, the report says.

All this takes place under a "veil of unnecessary secrecy," it adds. The group behind the report advocates changes including:

— A presumption of innocence in the committal process, as well as more use of first-person evidence and cross-examination to allow the person sought to challenge the reliability of the case against them;

— Timely disclosure of exculpatory evidence possessed by either the requesting state or the Canadian government;

— A more exacting standard of review for the minister's surrender decisions, and changes to the law to hand some legal questions to the courts;

— Permitting surrender only if the requesting state is ready to take the case to trial;

— Explicit consideration of Canada's obligations under international human rights law;

— A requirement that, if diplomatic assurances are used to facilitate surrender, they be meaningful, transparent, monitored and legally enforceable;

— Reformulation of the International Assistance Group's role so members seek a fair and just result rather than a litigation "win";

— Adequate oversight of the assistance group's activities, including public scrutiny;

— Barring extradition, in cases where Canadian citizens are sought, in favour of a Canadian prosecution, where possible, unless the government can prove it is actually in the interests of justice to extradite.

Dalhousie University law professor Rob Currie said the report had been sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Justice Minister David Lametti, among others.

"But what is most pressing is that Parliament look seriously at what extradition actually looks like in Canada and what it should look like in the future," Currie said. "Canadians should have a say in this, and it is well past time for law reform."

Lametti's office had no immediate comment on the report.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2021.

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press

Uber drivers, gig workers pressure Ontario government for employee status

Mike Crawley 

© Carlos Osorio/CBC 

People who drive and deliver for apps such as Uber and DoorDash are calling on the Ontario government to grant them the rights of employees. The province's minister of labour says new protections for gig workers are coming and says it's wrong for app-based workers to earn less than minimum wage.

People in Ontario who drive or deliver for apps such as Uber, Lyft and Skip the Dishes are calling on Premier Doug Ford's government to grant them basic workers' rights by classifying them as employees.

It's an issue that directly affects hundreds of thousands of people who work in the province's gig economy, and could have implications for all workers across Ontario and in other provinces.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake and there are clear signs that some sort of action is imminent:
Industry sources tell CBC News they expect the Ford government will soon reveal new measures regarding wages and benefits for gig workers.
Ontario's Minister of Labour, Training and Skills Development Monte McNaughton is promising legislation by the end of the month as part of "broader efforts to protect and support vulnerable workers, such as those who have kept essential goods moving and the economy going through the pandemic."
A government-appointed advisory panel is working on recommendations "to ensure Ontario's technology platform workers benefit from flexibility, control, and security."

The app companies are profiting from having a workforce at the ready, yet don't provide those workers the rights and benefits of employees, says Brice Sopher, who delivers for Uber Eats and serves as vice-president of the union-backed group Gig Workers United.

"There is nothing right now stopping Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and these other app-based employment companies from offering us full employee rights. They are just choosing not to," Sopher told CBC News. "They have all the advantages with none of the responsibilities."

© CBC Brice Sopher does delivery work for Uber Eats and is vice-president of the group Gig Workers United.

Since app-based workers are currently classified as independent contractors under Ontario's Employment Standards Act, they are not entitled to minimum wage, vacation days or statutory holiday pay. The companies they work for do not have to pay Employment Insurance premiums or Canada Pension Plan contributions.

"There is no reason why we don't deserve full employment rights," said Sopher. "Anything less than that is a lowering of the bar for all workers."

Even those whose jobs are outside the gig economy should still be concerned about the issue, says Sopher. He says if Ontario does not classify app-based workers as employees, companies will have an incentive to convert their existing employees to gig workers, stripping them of employment rights.

While McNaughton is not promising to classify app workers as employees, he says new protections are on the way.

"There's going to be more to come on this in the days ahead," he said Wednesday in an interview with CBC News.

"It's wrong, quite frankly, when we see app-based workers making $3 an hour or anything less than a minimum wage. They deserve more, and we're going to deliver for them," said McNaughton.

Officials from Uber Canada declined a request for an interview, but a spokesperson emailed a statement to CBC News.

"What's important is that we prioritize what drivers and delivery people want: flexibility plus benefits," said the spokesperson.

© Carlos Osorio/CBC App-based workers want Premier Doug Ford's government to force the companies to provide greater transparency on how their pay is calculated.

The spokesperson referred to a proposal the company calls Flexible Work+. It would not grant Uber drivers the status of employees with the right to minimum wage and holiday pay, but would provide a cash-based benefit fund that the workers could dip into for any reason, whether a paid day off or to cover the cost of medications.

Uber Canada's proposal does not commit to how much it would pay into the benefits fund, but it uses rates of two to four per cent of a driver's income as what it calls "illustrative examples."

The question of whether app-based workers should be classed as employees is at issue in a $400-million class-action lawsuit against Uber Canada on behalf of its Ontario drivers.

"When you actually look at the relationship and you look at the control that Uber has over these drivers in many different ways, that's where you see that there is in fact, an employee-employer relationship," said employment lawyer Samara Belitzky.

Belitzky is with the Toronto-based law firm Samfiru Tumarkin, which is bringing the class-action suit on behalf of the estimated 360,000 people who have driven for Uber in Ontario since 2012. 

© Carlos Osorio/CBC Tens of thousands of people in Ontario work for app-based transport and delivery companies such as Uber, Lyft, Skip The Dishes and Doordash.

Ontario's Employment Standards Act previously put the onus on employers to prove that their workers are independent contractors, Belitzky said, but the Ford government changed that in its 2018 rollback of provincial labour law. The burden of proof now rests with the workers.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has led attempts at unionizing app-based workers. The delivery company Foodora ceased its operations in Canada in the spring of 2020 in the wake of one such unionization drive.

Failing to classify gig workers as employees "is creating two classes of workers right now within our society, and we do not want that," said CUPW president Jan Simpson.

"If the Ford government truly wanted to to support workers in a just economic recovery, they must get rid of the misclassification," Simpson said in an interview.

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government is in the midst of a series of announcements on workers' rights, with a provincial election looming next June.

On Monday, McNaughton revealed measures to tighten rules for temp agencies and firms that recruit foreign workers

On Wednesday, he announced plans for 'right to pee' legislation, which would ban locations from denying delivery drivers access to their washrooms, a common practice during the pandemic.

While drivers welcomed that news, many are looking for much more from Ontario's government.

"There was a time during the pandemic when they could have very easily brought in measures to protect gig workers," said Sopher. "That never happened."

In particular, app-based workers want greater transparency on how their pay is calculated.

"My pay can vary 50 per cent from one day to the next," said Sopher, who delivers exclusively for Uber Eats. "I have no idea how much I make per kilometre or why it's different at a different time. All of that information is hidden from me."

The employment status of app-based workers has been a hot issue elsewhere in Canada and in the U.S.

In British Columbia, a union failed in its bid to have ride-sharing drivers classified as employees. This month, the same union said three Vancouver-area Uber drivers were unjustly fired for refusing unsafe work.

© Ben Nelms/CBC Ontario's government has announced plans for 'right to pee' legislation, which would ban locations from denying delivery drivers access to their washrooms, a common practice during the pandemic.

During the federal election campaign, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole proposed a flexible benefits package for gig workers that echoed some of what Uber is pitching.

In California, Uber, Lyft and DoorDash led a push to classify app-based workers as contractors, making them exempt from the state's minimum wage and overtime laws. Facilitated by that change, U.S. grocery chain Albertsons laid off delivery workers employed by its 2,200 stores earlier this year and replaced its service with DoorDash.

It's unclear how many people in Ontario work for the app-based companies, but it definitely numbers in the tens of thousands and there's some evidence it could exceed 100,000.

Pre-pandemic research by Statistics Canada found 10 per cent of the labour force in the Toronto area to be gig workers, along with eight to nine per cent of the workforce across Ontario. That would suggest some 700,000 people work in the gig economy in the province, with a significant portion of them driving or delivering for app companies.

Uber Canada said "tens of thousands" of drivers are currently on its platform in Ontario, but declined to provide a more precise estimate, citing competitive reasons.

Survey data from 2016 by Statistics Canada found 36,000 people in Ontario driving for ride-sharing apps such as Uber.

B.C. forests minister introduces bill to overhaul forest practices

VICTORIA — British Columbia's forests minister has introduced a bill to amend the Forest and Range Practices Act, saying it would "reshape" forest management in the province.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Katrine Conroy told the legislature on Wednesday the proposed changes align forestry legislation with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act passed in late 2019 and introduce "new tools to establish resilient forests."

"The vision is for a forest sector that delivers higher value from our forests, with secure, long-term jobs and healthier ecosystems," she later told a news conference.

Past policies "left too much control of the forest operations in the hands of the private sector" and limited the province's ability to fight climate change, protect old-growth forests and share benefits with Indigenous and local communities, she said.

"We'll put government back in the driver's seat of land-management decisions in partnership with First Nations, including where forest roads are built," Conroy said.

"The ability for the public and communities to view and have input on harvesting plans has been limited. It's time to increase transparency," she added.

Conroy said the proposed changes were "long overdue."

A new forest landscape planning framework is expected to be implemented over time, fully replacing the current forest stewardship planning system, she said.

The new system of 10-year forest landscape plans developed in partnership with First Nations, local communities and other stakeholders will prioritize forest health, replacing the stewardship plans developed largely by the forest industry, she said.

With the proposed changes, companies with harvesting licences would be required to develop and submit their operational plans for the minister's approval, and they must meet the requirements of the broader landscape-level plans, Conroy said.

The landscape and operations plans would be posted publicly, she added.

The province has been working with the forest industry on the changes, which are expected to come into effect through regulation over the next year, Conroy said.

The B.C. Council of Forest Industries supports "modernizing and further strengthening forest policy to ensure we have a strong, sustainable, and competitive forest sector," president Susan Yurkovich said in a statement.

"This includes continuously enhancing frameworks for engagement and collaboration with Indigenous Peoples, communities, labour and industry."

John Betts, the executive director of the Western Forestry Contractor's Association, said in the government statement announcing the changes that the legislation will allow the province to better manage forest resources for both climate change and the cumulative effects of resource development.

"For our reforestation sector, it means we will be managing stands and implementing forest practices more sensitive to the complexities and dynamics of how our forest and range ecosystems connect over the landscape and time."

The province previously released a series of far-ranging forest "policy intentions," including diversifying the ownership of harvesting rights and establishing a framework for compensation in the event those rights are redistributed.

About half of B.C.'s forest tenures are held by five major companies, and the plan released in June included the goal to increase the tenures for Indigenous Peoples, local communities and smaller operators.

Conroy said the province has been working to implement recommendations from an independent review of B.C.'s old-growth forest management released last year, including the deferral of logging in ecosystems at risk of irreversible loss.

B.C. announced the temporary deferral of harvesting across 196,000 hectares of old-growth forests in nine different areas in fall 2020. In June, the government approved a request from three Vancouver Island First Nations to defer old-growth logging across about 2,000 hectares of the Fairy Creek and central Walbran areas.

The province is in talks with Indigenous rights and titleholders over old-growth management and additional deferrals are expected soon, Conroy said.

Further changes to the Forest Act are expected later, she added. That act, separate from the Forest and Range Practices Act, governs the annual allowable cut.

— by Brenna Owen in Vancouver

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 20, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Ancient solar storm helped pinpoint the exact date Vikings settled in Newfoundland

HALIFAX — A groundbreaking study has confirmed Vikings had settled in a remote corner of northern Newfoundland by AD 1021, establishing for the first time a precise date for the earliest European habitation in the Americas — exactly 1,000 years ago.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The remains of the small Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows were unearthed in 1960 by Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, archeologist Anne Stine. But the methods used to pinpoint the date of construction were imprecise.

Until this week, it was believed the Norse encampment was established around AD 1000 — a finding that prompted Canada's easternmost province to stage an elaborate re-enactment and festival in 2000 called, "Vikings! 2000."

That initial date of settlement was based on early radiocarbon dating techniques, the results of which were cross-referenced with analysis of the architectural remains and a handful of artifacts, as well as interpretations of Icelandic sagas written centuries after the Vikings had left the island.

"The buildings are typical of 11th and 10th century Iceland and Greenland," said Birgitta Wallace, a retired senior archeologist with Parks Canada who worked with Ingstad and his wife in the 1960s. "They're quite distinctive in shape and material and there were enough artifacts to confirm that."

As well, Ingstad and Stine found wood cut by metal tools, which were not made by the local Indigenous inhabitants.

But radiocarbon dating techniques at the time were lacking. "You got error factors of plus or minus 100 years — even more sometimes," said Wallace, a co-author of the new study published this week in the journal Nature. "You couldn't even say if it was late 10th century or early 11th century."

Wallace stressed that the original AD 1000 date was never meant to be a precise declaration. "But this new method pinpoints the exact year," she said in an interview Thursday.

Using accelerator mass spectrometry, researchers re-examined tree rings in pieces of wood used to build the camp. They found some tree rings exhibited a pattern consistent with exposure to a solar storm that swept over Earth in AD 993.

"There was one year of solar activity that affected the growth of trees throughout the world," said Wallace, who specialized in Viking archeology in Sweden and the United States before she moved to Canada. "Those tree rings are really wiggly."

Wallace said it's important to understand that the new AD 1021 date represents a precise calculation of when the trees used to build the settlement were felled. There's no way to know how long the Vikings were in Newfoundland, either before or after that date, but it is widely believed that the settlement existed for a relatively short time.

Still, it is the first and only authenticated Viking settlement in North America, outside of Greenland.

The study's contributors, who include researchers from the Netherlands, Germany and Canada, found conclusive evidence from three different trees to support their cosmic radiation theory.

"Our result of AD 1021 for the cutting year (of the wood) constitutes the only secure calendar date for the presence of Europeans across the Atlantic before the voyages of Columbus," the study says.

The archeological find in 1960 turned Norse myth into historical fact. Led by Norse explorer Leif Ericsson, the Vikings' voyage to Newfoundland — completed almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus would lay claim to the continent — was described in two medieval Icelandic documents, the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of Greenlanders.

The site at L'Anse aux Meadows, managed by Parks Canada, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978.

When asked to explain why the latest findings are important, Wallace said the level of precision was key. "It's something we rarely have," she said. "There are always many uncertainties in archeology."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2021.

Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press