Tag: EUROPE

Italian integration “boot camp” forces migrants to do free community work, sing the national anthem and wear “thank you” printed clothes

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At the mayor-founded academy in Bergamo, a group of about 30 uniformed migrants form two neat rows, hands behind their straight backs in a military-style “at ease” position.

In the corridor of a building, they repeat in chorus: “We are the students of the first course of the Accademia dell’Integrazione Grazie Bergamo, Thank you Bergamo”.

Then they break ranks, line up two by two and move to a larger room, where two of the students, wearing white aprons, begin serving lunch.

The “students” are asylum seekers and participating in a boot-camp style one-year programme whose explicit purpose is to integrate migrants.

Participants attend Italian-language classes, get internships at factories in the area and have to follow a strict routine.

They also have to do community service work for free.

The academy’s students can only use their smartphones for a few hours a day. For the best part of the day, their rooms are empty, with perfectly made beds. No language other than Italian is allowed. And they look more like cadets than students.

They must always wear a uniform and have three kinds of outfits.

When they are inside, it is a blue tracksuit with the words “Grazie Bergamo” in large print on the back; the second uniform is orange, similar to waste collectors, and also bears the words “Grazie Bergamo” in large print; the third, worn in free time, is a blue shirt and grey sweater with a small school logo, which also allows them to take the city’s public transportation free of charge.

“This is not a school for everyone”, Giorgio Gori, mayor of Bergamo, a wealthy city in northern Italy, about 50km east of Milan, told Al Jazeera.

It’s no place for slackers, he says, because participants “must respect a series of rules of cohabitation” and professional training is mandatory, “with the aim of getting them to a job”.

To get into the programme, participants must pass three interviews assessing their knowledge of Italian, the level of schooling and their ability to respect the rules.

Christophe Sanchez, the mayor’s chief of staff, who created the academy, believes that Italy’s system of asylum seekers’ management is not working and attributes its failure to the fact that they have rights but few duties: “Asylum seekers can stay in bed all day and there is no legal instrument to force them to do something.”

The underlying message of the academy seems to be that participants must demonstrate that they are hardworking people, that they really like Italy and are not troublemakers – in other words, that they deserve to stay.

The fact that the programme includes free-of-charge community work, not to mention the “Thank you” part in the name, gives the impression that migrants must be grateful.
Stefano Quadri, an activist from the Bergamo migrante antirazzista group, an anti-racist organisation, objects to the idea that migrants need to prove they deserve to be hosted, since asylum is a human right, and says free labour “destroys the local economy”.
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A worker at the Ruah coop, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, is worried that students live in relative isolation, with little contact with locals: “Integration means inserting a person in society,” he said.
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But organisers brush off criticism, saying that the programme is effective.
“We have so far done 380 hours of volunteer work and all our students understand Italian”, says Sanchez.
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As for the free labour, Gori insists it is not really free: “Between food, lodging and classes, we are investing 1,000 euros per months on each of them, so in a way they are getting paid.”
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NYT Chief WH Correspondent: Here’s The Real Reason Obama Didn’t Address Russian Meddling In 2016

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

“…if I speak out more, he’ll just say it’s rigged…”

By JAMES BARRETT

In his recently updated and expanded book on former President Obama, “Obama: The Call Of History,” The New York Times’ Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker addresses several hot-button topics, including why Obama failed to adequately address Russian meddling ahead of the 2016 election and his response to “buffoonish showman” Donald Trump shocking the world by defeating Hillary Clinton, a response that involved “multiple emotional stages.”

In one of the sections of the book highlighted by The Daily Mail Friday, Baker peels back the curtain on why Obama was so weak in his response to Russian meddling ahead of the election in 2016 — something for which Trump has hammered Obama amid all the Robert Mueller-debunked “collusion” allegations.
“Anything the Russians did concerning the 2016 Election was done while Obama was President. He was told about it and did nothing! Most importantly, the vote was not affected,” Trump tweeted last month.
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The reason Obama didn’t act more decisively and rebuke Russia more directly, says Baker is that he feared that it might “escalate” the Russian interference campaign. This cautious approach, Baker suggests, flows out of Obama’s “don’t do stupid sh**” foreign policy philosophy, an approach for which Obama has been criticized in the past.

But fearing the escalation of the campaign wasn’t the only reason Obama didn’t act more forcefully, says Baker: Obama reportedly once admitted that “if I speak out more, he’ll just say it’s rigged.”

According to Baker, in one meeting Obama — who was convinced like most of the political establishment that Clinton was going to win — said confidently that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “backed the wrong horse” by supposedly helping Trump’s campaign.

As the Daily Mail notes, it was only after the election, which Trump won in stunning fashion, that Obama finally took action against the Russians as punishment for the meddling his administration had known about for months. Obama’s decision to expel a bunch of Russian diplomats conveniently fed into the “collusion” narrative that had already gotten rolling and which the election’s loser, Clinton, helped promote.

The Daily Mail also draws attention to another juicy passage in the book which reveals new details about Obama’s response to Trump’s upset victory over the woman who was supposed to protect Obama’s legacy.

Accoring to Baker, Obama watched the Marvel film “Dr. Strange” on election night with Michelle and Valerie Jarrett. At one point, Baker writes, Obama received an update on his phone and said, “Huh. Results in Florida are looking kind of strange.”

While Michelle went to sleep early, Obama stayed up and witnessed Trump’s devastating defeat of Clinton, which Baker suggests Obama found unthinkable because he thought there was “no way Americans would turn on him.”

According to Baker, Obama phoned Clinton at 1 a.m. and advised her to concede quickly, advice she didn’t take. In response, she supposedly said, “I’m sorry for letting you down.”

Obama and his team, Baker says, did in fact feel that Clinton had let them down. “To Obama and his team … the real blame lay squarely with Clinton. She was the one who could not translate his strong record and healthy economy into a winning message.”

Related: BOMBSHELL: Ukraine Embassy Says DNC Operative Reached Out For Dirt On Trump In 2016, Report Says

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POYNTER ‘BLACKLIST’ OF CONSERVATIVE NEWS SITES WAS CREATED BY SPLC EMPLOYEE

Poynter ‘Blacklist’ of Conservative News Sites Was Created by SPLC Employee

List contains sites such as Free Beacon, Daily Caller, Breitbart

By Joe Schoffstall

A journalism institute released a “blacklist” of media outlets they deemed as “unreliable” that was created by an employee of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center and overwhelmingly contains conservative new media outlets.

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a Florida-based nonprofit journalism school, released the list on Wednesday and declared dozens of mainstream conservative sites such as the Washington Free Beacon, Daily Caller, Daily Signal, CNS News, and Breitbart as “unreliable” while listing few liberal sites,” Newsbusters reports. 

The study notes it trimmed the list “by removing several sites whose stories, though highly politicized, were mostly not fake: alternet.org, cato.org, heritage.org, nationalreview.com, thedailybeast.com, the intercept.com, thinkprogress.org, and weeklystandard.com.”

A majority of the removed sites lean left. Of the removed conservative sites, the Heritage Foundation, a think tank – and not in itself a news site — was taken off the list. However, the Daily Signal, which is hosted by the Heritage Foundation, is included on the list. Another conservative site that was removed from the list, the Weekly Standard, was shuttered in December.

While most of the sites are labeled as “unreliable”, “fake”, or “conspiracy” – or a combination of the three — the Free Beacon is listed as “bias”, a label that prompted further review of the sites that were ultimately removed from the list upon further review and before its release.

Barrett Golding, an employee at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left nonprofit embroiled in controversy over accusations of internal racism from its top management that led to its co-founder, Morris Dees, and president, Richard Cohen, being ousted from the group, created the list for Poynter.

Golding appears to have followed the SPLC “list” model in its creation of “unreliable” news sites, as many of the mainstream conservative sites on the list are thrown in with actual sites that push conspiracy theories. This mirrors the SPLC’s “hate group” list, which contains mainstream conservative organizations alongside racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC’s “hate” list, which it is perhaps best known for today, has helped the controversial — and allegedly internally racist group itself towards its black employees – to garner more than $500 million in total assets, $120 million of which is parked overseas.

“These sites stood next to conservative organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented baker Jack Phillips in the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission,” Newsbusters writes. “While the ADF is not a news site, it was likely targeted because Golding works for the SPLC. The ADF is considered a ‘hate group’ by the SPLC and is marked on the ‘hate map.’ The Washington Post even questioned SPLC’s ‘political activism’ and ‘bias.'”

“SPLC has been dropped by Twitter from its Trust and Safety Council and slammed by the mainstream media after multiple scandals rocked the organization. Its hate map even helped shooter Floyd Lee Corkins find the location of the Family Research Council, where he shot and wounded five people.”

Factcheck.org, Fake News Codex, OpenSources, and PolitiFact were also involved in the study alongside Golding.

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Washington Post Scrubs Headline Calling Louis Farrakhan ‘Far-Right’

Barack Obama and Louis Farrakhan (Askia Muhammad via TriceEdnyWire.com)

By Justin Caruso

UPDATE 5:23 PM EST: The Washington Post has added a correction to the post in question — after this article was published. The paper held off on a correction on its site for nearly two hours after acknowledging the error on Twitter. The headline on Breitbart’s story has been updated to reflect this change.

The Washington Post described Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “far-right” Thursday, then scrubbed the error from the article’s headline and text without acknowledging the edit.

The far-left newspaper’s coverage of Facebook’s latest move to ban controversial and anti-establishment figures linked Farrakhan with conservative activists, originally posting the headline “Facebook bans far-right leaders including Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos for being ‘dangerous.’”

The false label was also included in the first line of author Elizabeth Dwoskin’s article.

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The publication’s official Twitter account posted the same headline with this false information. In a followup tweet, the Post said, “We have deleted this tweet because it incorrectly included Louis Farrakhan, who has espoused anti-Semitic views, in a list of far-right leaders. Facebook banned extremist figures including Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos for being ‘dangerous.’”

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However, the paper has not acknowledged any error on the article page itself — or told readers that its editors altered the headline, lead paragraph, and URL after publication.

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Despite the stealth correction, the article has received the endorsement of NewsGuard, a Microsoft partner that marks news sources as reliable or not in a web browser extension — even on a cached version of the article with the false “far-right” label still included in the URL.

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“This website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard’s standards of credibility and transparency,” a pop-up reads when users mouse over the green checkmark next to the Post‘s name. Among those criteria: “Regularly corrects or clarifies errors.”

NewsGuard similarly defended a stealth edit from corporate media in February, saying that the New York Times did not run afoul of its policy by altering a headline without acknowledging the update.

Another article published in The Atlantic about the Facebook bans used the headline “Instagram and Facebook Ban Far-Right Extremists,” with a photo of Farrakhan in the featured image. As of this writing, it has not been corrected.

Farrakhan, who has praised Adolf Hitler and promotes an anti-Semitic and black nationalist worldview, has a number of well-documented relationships with Democratic lawmakers.

Former president Barack Obama posed for a photo with Farrakhan, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) have long associatedwith the hateful preacher.

Last October, Farrakhan said during an address that he was not an “antisemite” but an “anti-Termite.”

“So when they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater, you know they do, call me an antisemite–stop it! I’m anti-termite! I don’t know nothing about hating somebody because of their religious preference,” he said

 

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Leftist Activists Force Mastercard to Vote On Blacklisting The ‘Far Right’

By Chris Menahan

The ability to buy and sell goods and services may soon require folks to hold the “right” politically correct beliefs. 

From Tim Pool:

Activist group “The Sum Of Us” has successfully forced Mastercard to hold a vote that would see the creation of a “human rights committee” to oversee who uses the Mastercard service.

The goal of the leftist activist group is to shut down access for ‘far right’ groups as well as politicians and activists. They stress that stopping to flow of income will stop people they do not agree with.

This may be the most dramatic escalation in the Culture War we have seen yet, the targeting of major financial institutions to shut down opposition. While it sounds noble to ban certain groups we do not like it won’t end there. Massive multi national corporations should not have the right to sever access to basic services based on bad opinions.

Far left social justice activists have pushed for restrictions and censorship and this news marks the most dramatic escalation we have seen yet.

More from Breitbart:

In its supporting statement, ThisIsUs wrote:

Companies can face risks related to human rights even when they only perform support functions. Internet infrastructure companies like web host GoDaddy, social media platform Facebook and payments firm PayPal have come under pressure for doing business with or providing a forum for neo-Nazis and other hate groups. Mastercard has received negative publicity for processing of payments to white supremacist groups. “Organizers Catch Credit Card Companies Profiting From White Supremacy: Online payment companies are complicit in authorizing transactions related to hate groups,” AlterNet, August 22, 2017; and “Color Of Change Is Attacking Hate Groups At The Source: Their Funding,” Fast Company, August 21, 2017. According to the website bloodmoney.org (accessed on December 18, 2018), Mastercard continues to process payments for organizations such as American Border Patrol, League of the South, Proud Boys and Stormfront.

In response, the board of Mastercard recommended that stockholders vote against the proposal, stating that the company operates on the principle that consumers should be able to make “all lawful purchases.”

The Proposal focuses on the use of our products by certain organizations. We operate our network on the principle that consumers should be able to make all lawful purchases, and our franchise rules ensure compliance with the laws pertaining to the acceptable use of our payment processing services by merchants, acquirers and issuers. We regularly monitor activities involving our products and services for any alleged illegal use. When we process payment transactions, we do not have visibility into goods that are purchased or the use of those goods. When we are made aware of illegal activity or rules violations, we work closely with law enforcement and acquirers to shut down those activities.

Accordingly, because Mastercard has a committee with oversight over issues of corporate social responsibility and has disclosed its commitment to and oversight of human rights issues, the Board does not believe that establishing a separate human rights committee is necessary to properly exercise its oversight of this important area, nor does it add to Mastercard’s existing commitment to social responsibility and human rights.Therefore, our Board recommends that our stockholders vote AGAINST this joint proposal.

Although Mastercard’s board says it is committed to the principle of allowing “all lawful purchases,” online payments platform Patreon says that Mastercard asked it to withdraw service from Islam critic Robert Spencer, founder of JihadWatch.org, in August 2018.

Mastercard has yet to respond to a Breitbart News inquiry into why, if Patreon’s allegation is true, the company used its influence to cut off Spencer.

Multiple cases with Mastercard, Chase Bank and Bank of America suggest these megabanks are already doing a “belief check.”

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