Category Archives: Alt-right

Market participants and project leaders discuss their picks for the altcoin universe. Looking for ... [+] new cryptos to buy? Here are some ideas.

Is Cardano (ADA) considered an alt-coin? Basically anything thats not DeFi, an NFT, Bitcoin and Ethereum is probably alt. Well, after a couple of rough trading sessions last week, the less energy intensive blockchain is expected to rise up. I own it. Boy, am I glad.

Cardano is on a clear upward trajectory and theres no reason to think that this will come to a halt any time soon, says Nigel Green, founder of the DeVere Group in London. Momentum is likely to pick up. I believe that the price of Cardano will reach all-time highs in the next month, hitting more than $3, he says.

Cardano, the "green" blockchain.

There are three main drivers currently fueling the price of Cardano. First, its being pulled by the broader crypto market rally. Total market capitalization is back up to $2 trillion again. Second, its upcoming network upgrade this month, putting its blockchain in a strong position to take on Ethereum, the most used blockchain in terms of smart contract functionality.And third, Cardano will keep benefitting from its reputation of being a green cryptocurrency compared to the likes of Bitcoin, which is not considered as efficient in energy consumption, says Green.

It used to be that every crypto basically tracked Bitcoin. Maybe not to a perfect 100% degree, but 70% and more was common. We have been seeing, and for some time now, a break in the correlation with altcoins and the Mother of all Cryptos: Bitcoin (BTC). To some extent, there is also a split between other coins and Ethereum (ETH). In other words, just because BTC and ETH are down, it doesnt mean the entire crypto portfolio is going down with it.

We are now seeing some coins breaking away from that correlation, says Ian Mvula CEO and Founder T.E Markets Ltd. As at January 2021, Bitcoin dominance was well above 60% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization. Thats dropping like a stone. Hitting below 50% at one point last week thanks in part to Ethereums rise, but also numerous altcoins. That should give you an idea of how much growth we've witnessed in the alt coins space lately, Mvula says.

Other than jumps in Cardano, Mvula names Axie Infinity (AXS); Binance (BNB); Polkadot (DOT) and Luna (LUNA) heading towards or having already surpassing their all-time-highs. He, of course, touts his own companys coin: TEMCoin. He said holders will be able to participate in staking programs on high yield projects like the African Consolidated Exchange (ACEX), as well as their own product lines: TE Properties, TE Micro Funding and TE Capital, to name a few.

In the crypto world, the overall picture remains more or less the same at all times, regardless of exchange. The most popular trading pairs are major cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, and Litecoin against Tether (USDT). They are followed by different altcoins traded for BTC, ETH, or the token of the exchange where the trade is taking place. At the moment, ADA and DOT are at the top of all alt-coin charts. These projects are considered alternatives to the more expensive, gas heavy Ethereum.

Edmund Hillary has got news for Cardano and the like, this coin has done way better in terms of investment gains: Avalanche (AVAX).

Without a doubt the answer for me for altcoins is AVAX, says Hillary, co-founder and lead architect of RelayChain. The AVAX token has seen over a 400% price growth since BTC started recovering and liquidity and demand has poured in as a result of their Avalanche Rush event. Hillary said that his bridging traffic from Avalanche to Polygon for the AVAX token is accounting for over 40% of their total bridge traffic at this time. We expect it to jump more as the AVAX token becomes available on more chains, he says.

Wow, this chart is pretty.

Avalanche versus Cardano over the last three months.

AVAX has been a massive winner. Against BTC, the other gas tokens have performed extremely well, as well. BNB is up over 50%, Huobi Token (HT) is up nearly 100%, and Polygon (MATIC) is up about 100% as well, Hillary says.

I asked all of these guys, looking for ideas myself: if you were investing in altcoins trying to catch BTCs journey back to $50,000+, what would you be buying and why do you like these projects?

NFTs are as alt as they come, even if they have a different name. Yaroslav Gordeev, CEO of London-based Phenom Ecosystem, a decentralized project uniting several high tech solutions and, on its website, touts that it helps turn your phone into a cash machine, likes Enjin (ENJ).

NFTs are still crazy popular, and this trend is not fading away, so its worth trying, Gordeev says. The Phenom Ecosystem includes the Phenom Network, Phenom Chain, Phenom Exchange, and Phenom Metaverse, which is the world of NFTs.

I would take a closer look at Enjin, a project that helps you integrate NFT tokens into any video game, including Minecraft. This year, weve seen some games that can be monetized with the help of an internal currency. For instance, Axie Infinity became the first NFT game on the Ethereum network that gained over $1 billion in sales. This might give you a hunch of the Enjin potential.

I have a small investment in Enjin. Its been a dud so far, so heres to hoping Gordeev is right. Patience has proven to be a virtue in this market. Pre-pandemic, Bitcoin was worth less than $10 grand.

There's a pot of crypto at the end of the rainbow. What it's worth depends on the day.

Another example of an altcoin thats became more popular due to the limitations of the market is cryptoexchange FTX, seen as an alternative to Coinbase and Gemini here in the U.S. Its battling Coinbase over fees. Coinbase is ridiculously expensive. It reminds me of the days when it cost like $7 to trade stocks on E-Trade.

FTX has risen 28% in roughly four weeks. I expect it to keep rising, Gordeev says. Other projects that have not been mentioned yet by anyone and has great potential: Chainlink (LINK), he says. Chainlink is one of the major market players taking care of transferring and processing tamper-proof data, while Polkadot aims to facilitate cross-blockchain transfers. Multichain will be the next big thing, he says.

Id be buying DeFi and NFT's, as well as layer two solutions (Ethereum-related scaling solutions) and decentralized exchange coins almost exclusively, says Handy Barot, co-founder of StorX (SRX), a peer-to-peer decentralized cloud storage network for those who hate Jeff Bezoss AWS, perhaps. StorX says it does encryption, fragment, and distributes data across multiple hosting nodes worldwide.

As far as the Ethereum scale-up angle goes, Barots would look at a few names in particular. Many have already been named.

The greatest impact to the market by both proportional gains and volume come from layer one and layer two platforms for smart contracts such as Ethereum, Polygon, Cardano, Luna, Avalanche, Polkadot and (some new ones here), Solana (SOL) Unibright (UBT) and Cosmos (ATOM), he says. But also the DeFi and NFT segments, he stressed again.

Back to Hillary, here are some coins that move in near-correlation with some of his favorites so far:

Avalanche: JOE, BENQ, Coin98 (C98), Pangolin (PNG)

Solana: Mango Markets (MNGO), Serum (SRM), Raydium (RAY)

Polkadot: Moonriver (MOVR), Moonbeam (GLMR), Kusama (KSM), Air (AIR)

Fantom (FTM): Spookyswab (BOO)

These are less correlated to the fortunes of BTC and ETH, Hillary says. I think these are some of the names that are core to the new ecosystems.

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These Are The Altcoins Everyone Loves Right Now - Forbes

Its one of the most famous scenes in modern film history. In The Matrix, the 1999 phenomenon that introduced the world to bullet-time fight sequences and briefly made fiddly little sunglasses without arms the height of fashion, Laurence Fishburnes Morpheus offers Keanu Reevess Neo a simple choice. After explaining to him that he has lived his whole life in a virtual prison for [his] mind known as The Matrix and offering to show him the truth outside of that cage Morpheus presents him with a pair of colour-coded pills: You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe, he says. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes remember, all Im offering is the truth, nothing more.

That moment was invoked this week in a viral marketing campaign for The Matrix Resurrections the fourth film in the franchise which is set for release this December. The films website allowed viewers to choose between a red or blue pill, which in turn determined the teaser trailer theyd be shown. The decision to place the choice between the two pills front and centre in Resurrections marketing feels purposeful: a possible attempt by director Lana Wachowski to reclaim the contemporary narrative that surrounds the scene. It isnt hard to find evidence that she and her sister Lilly, who created The Matrix together, have become unhappy with how its meaning has been twisted and reinterpreted. In May 2020, after Elon Musk tweeted: Take the red pill and Ivanka Trump replied: Taken!, Lilly responded pithily: F*** both of you.

The red pill, of course, is the same pill that Neo chooses. In the film, his decision symbolises his rejection of received wisdom, and his brave determination to reject comforting illusions and keep seeking out the uncomfortable truth. Later, however, that symbol took on a life the Wachowskis never could have predicted.

Mens rights activists vociferously adopted it, believing that theyd seen the truth that society is unfairly structured to benefit women. They called themselves red pillers, and congregated online in deeply misogynistic groups like the subreddit r/TheRedPill, which proved so unruly even by Reddit standards that its been placed in the sites quarantine since 2018. That means its subject to tighter controls, is invisible in the sites search function and that anyone trying to visit the group is first warned that it is dedicated to shocking or highly offensive content. One of the groups core rules forbids anyone declaring in a post that they are, in fact, a woman. From that ignoble interpretation, the idea of taking the red pill became a running motif for Trump supporters, QAnon followers and anyone else who believed they were declaring their rejection of a perceived liberal consensus. If youve taken their version of the red pill, you probably havent had the Covid vaccine, either.

Needless to say, this was not the message the Wachowskis intended their film to send out into the world. When they made The Matrix in 1999, Lana and Lilly had yet to come out publicly as trans women. Lana transitioned after the sisters made Speed Racer in 2008, and then in 2016 Lilly announced she had also transitioned. Last year, in an interview with Netflix Film Club, Lilly Wachowski was asked what she thought of fans now interpreting The Matrix as an allegory for the trans experience and she pointed out that it had always been. Im glad that it has gotten out that that was the original intention, she said, before hinting at why that fact wasnt publicly discussed at the time: The world wasnt quite ready, at a corporate level the corporate world wasnt ready for it.

The trans symbolism of The Matrix is easy enough to identify. Neo is living a double life. By day, hes an office drone known as Thomas Anderson. By night, he is a hacker with a name hes chosen for himself. He is troubled by the nagging sensation that something is off about the world, something he cant quite put his finger on. In other words, he is suffering from dysphoria. Neo only becomes his true self when he breaks free from The Matrix, but not everyone is happy about it. Hugo Weavings terrifying baddie Agent Smith only ever refers to Neo by his original, socially approved name Mister Anderson, a practice known as deadnaming when done to trans people. Then theres the red pill itself, which can be seen as analogous to hormone therapy. The metaphor is a neat one: in the Nineties, prescription estrogen given to transitioning trans women did indeed come in the form of a red pill.

The Matrix Resurrections: First trailer released for sci-fi sequel

It remains to be seen whether Lana Wachowski will take the opportunity presented by her return to the world of The Matrix to make these themes more explicit. The fact that the red pill/blue pill dichotomy is so prominent in the new films advertising, though, does suggest shed like to reclaim them symbols not of right-wing nonsense, but of positive change.

Its about time. It is, after all, the red pill that allows Neo to become the hero he was always destined to be, by first allowing him to become the person he always was.

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Red-pilled: Can The Matrix Resurrections reclaim Neo from the alt-right? - The Independent

Canadas snap election has increasingly featured threats of violence against Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. Though not the only leader to be harassed, Trudeaus campaign stops in recent weeks have been disrupted by small, hostile, mostly white crowds one protester was charged with throwing gravel at Trudeau during a campaign appearance.

Outside of Canada, people might be surprised to hear about the anger directed at a politician known internationally as a youthful, charming, energetic progressive. But our research into Canadian memes has found a persistent, visceral dislike of Trudeau among many right-wing online communities.

In Canada, Trudeau is a polarising figure online, people either love or immensely dislike him.

Trudeau, the son of famed former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau who enjoyed a similar international celebrity, ushered in another bout of Trudeaumania when he won his first election in 2015. That campaign was defined by a focus on sunny ways and Instagram style as part of a progressive reset after years of Conservative rule.

Trudeaumania 2.0 was real, another example of how closely linked celebrity and political culture can sometimes be.

Two years later, Trudeaumania had largely dissipated, though it never existed among right-wing groups. In 2017, a friend shared a post from Ontario Proud, part of Canada Proud, a popular Facebook page run by a right-of-centre media strategist. It was a cartoon that originated on an alt-right sub-Reddit suggesting Trudeau has betrayed white, wounded male veterans.

The Islamic crescent on Trudeaus socks is perhaps a conspiratorial explanation of the false belief that Trudeau paid out to Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who at the age of 15 was detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay for 10 years for the wartime killing of a US army sergeant in Afghanistan. This allegation ignores the violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that led to a $10.5 million court settlement with Khadr.

Accusations that Trudeau has betrayed Canada was a common theme as we began studying grassroots Facebook pages in 2019, another election year. We found no Trudeau meme pages celebrating the leader.

Instead, we watched anti-Trudeau pages describe him as a traitor who deserved to be treated with contempt.

In another meme, Trudeaus name had been reduced to Turd.

These right-wing groups had a distinct reaction to the blackface scandals that erupted during the 2019 campaign. They believed, as did some mainstream commentators, that the prime ministers past behaviour symbolised Liberal hypocrisy, accusing him of a performative and superficial embrace of equality and social justice.

The blackface, however, seemed to matter less to right-wing groups than framing Trudeau as a sexual predator. They uncovered proof of Trudeaus alleged lecherous conduct at past schools and targeted the placement of his hands in a photo from a 2001 Bollywood gala.

Memes became evidence collages designed to prove Trudeaus past sexual misconduct and used to negatively taint his contemporary image.

Trudeau was a sex symbol, alright, but the worst kind, according to these groups. Trudeau denied the allegations and apologised for one incident though he said he had no memory of it. But the claims had made their mark in these communities and further soured their adherents on the Liberal leader.

The Covid-19 pandemic offered these groups further cause to feel betrayed by Trudeau.

Pandemic lockdowns, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and disruptions to businesses offered new ways to interpret Trudeaus arrogance and betrayal. The reaction was not exceptional most countries in the world are dealing with anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers but rather the continuation of anti-Trudeau attitudes that regard him as an incompetent leader who is not to be trusted, whether with women or with the economy.

Our observations show a darker side to Trudeaus celebrity status. As much as Trudeau may be regarded as a likeable person by many Canadians and international observers, he is disliked by right-wing groups for perhaps similar reasons: he is a rich, entitled white man in a position of privilege and power who they view as betraying what they often call old-stock Canadians.

This may explain Trudeaus niche unpopularity online and the white, violent crowds appearing at his rallies.

As journalist Fatima Syed writes, these largely white groups of protesters that have followed Trudeau have an unfair privilege that has been afforded to them by all aspects of society: they largely get away with their hateful rhetoric and actions, and dont get called out or punished for it.

That privilege might also explain a media blind spot. There is a multitude of right-wing rage online, and as a society, Canada needs to urgently make sense of the racial and cultural power dynamics that are underlying angry and hateful discourse.

Fenwick McKelvey is an Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy and Scott DeJong is a PhD Candidate and Research Assistant, Communication Studies at the Concordia University.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

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Behind the hatred for Justin Trudeau is a racial power dynamic that Canada has failed to address - Scroll.in

Every week, Benzinga conducts a survey to collect sentiment on what traders are most excited about, interested in or thinking about as they manage and build their personal portfolios.

This week we posed the following question to over 1,000 Benzinga visitors on cryptocurrency investing:

If you had $5,000 to invest, would you put it on Solana, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) or Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) right now?

Solana: 21.7%

Ethereum: 42.8%

Dogecoin: 35.5%

See Also: How To Buy Solana

Ethereum was trading around $3,420 at press time. Ethereum is trading lower over the past week by 12.2% and higher over the past month by 45.3%.

Meanwhile, Dogecoin is trading around $0.244. The joke cryptocurrencys price action continues to turn heads and churn stomachs in 2021.

On September 2 the Shibu-Inu themed alt-coin broke up from a descending trendline that had been holding it down since its Aug. 16 high of 35 cents and soared up almost 10% higher. Technically speaking the break of the trend should have carried the crypto higher... Read More

Lastly, Solana has skyrocketed from $43.59 to $177.80, translating to a 307.8% return.

Like Ethereum, Solana uses smart contracts to host decentralized applications (dApps). However, Solanas unique parameters allow for significantly cheaper transaction costs while simultaneously increasing the speed of the network... Read More

This survey was conducted by Benzinga in September 2021 and included the responses of a diverse population of adults 18 or older.

Opting into the survey was completely voluntary, with no incentives offered to potential respondents. The study reflects results from over 1,000 adults.

See more from Benzinga

2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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If You Had $5,000 Right Now, Would You Put It On Solana, Ethereum Or Dogecoin? - Yahoo Finance

In August 2021, a Facebook ad campaign criticizing Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the United States first Muslim congresswomen, came under intense scrutiny. Critics charged that the ads linked the congresswomen with terrorism, and some faith leaders condemned the campaign as Islamophobic that is, spreading fear of Islam and hatred against Muslims.

This was hardly the first time the pair faced Islamophobic or racist abuse, especially on the internet. As a communications professor who studies the politics of race and identity online, I have seen that Omar is often a target of white nationalist attacks on Twitter.

But online attacks on Muslims are not limited to politicians. Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, stereotypes that associate Muslims with terrorism go far beyond depictions in newspapers and television. Recent research raises the alarm about rampant Islamophobia in digital spaces, particularly far-right groups use of disinformation and other manipulation tactics to vilify Muslims and their faith.

In July 2021, for example, a team led by media researcher Lawrence Pintak published research on tweets that mentioned Omar during her campaign for Congress. They reported that half the tweets they studied involved overtly Islamophobic or xenophobic language or other forms of hate speech.

The majority of offensive posts came from a small number of provocateurs accounts that seed Islamophobic conversations on Twitter. Many of these accounts belonged to conservatives, they found. But the researchers reported that such accounts themselves did not generate significant traffic.

Instead, the team found that amplifiers were primarily responsible: accounts that collect and circulate agents provocateurs ideas through mass retweets and replies.

Their most interesting finding was that only four of the top 20 Islamophobic amplifiers were authentic accounts. Most were either bots algorithmically generated to mimic human accounts or sockpuppets, which are human accounts that use fake identities to deceive others and manipulate conversations online.

Bots and sockpuppets disseminated Islamophobic tweets originally posted by authentic accounts, creating a megaphone effect that scales up Islamophobia across the Twitterverse.

Twitter has a little over 200 million daily active users. Facebook, meanwhile, has nearly 2 billion and some use similar manipulation strategies on this platform to escalate Islamophobia.

Disinformation researcher Johan Farkas and his colleagues have studied cloaked Facebook pages in Denmark, which are run by individuals or groups who pretend to be radical Islamists in order to provoke antipathy against Muslims. The scholars analysis of 11 such pages, identified as fakes, found that organizers posted spiteful claims about ethnic Danes and Danish society and threatened an Islamic takeover of the country.

Facebook removed the pages for violating the platforms content policy, according to the study, but they reemerged under a different guise. Although Farkas team couldnt confirm who was creating the pages, they found patterns indicating the same individual or group hiding behind the cloak.

These cloaked pages succeeded in prompting thousands of hostile and racist comments toward the radical Islamists that users believed were running the pages. But they also prompted anger toward the wider Muslim community in Denmark, including refugees.

Such comments often fit into a wider view of Muslims as a threat to Western values and whiteness, underscoring how Islamophobia goes beyond religious intolerance.

This is not to suggest that real Islamist extremists are absent from the web. The internet in general and social media in particular have long served as a means of Islamist radicalization.

But in recent years, far-right groups have been expanding their online presence much faster than Islamists. Between 2012 and 2016, white nationalists Twitter followers grew by more than 600%, according to a study by extremism expert J.M. Berger. White nationalists outperform ISIS in nearly every social metric, from follower counts to tweets per day, he found.

A more recent study of Bergers, a 2018 analysis of alt-right content on Twitter, found a very significant presence of automation, fake profiles and other social media manipulation tactics among such groups.

Social media companies have emphasized their policies to identify and stamp out content from Islamic terror groups. Big Tech critics, however, argue that the companies are less willing to police right-wing groups like white supremacists, making it easier to spread Islamophobia online.

Exposure to Islamophobic messages has grave consequences. Experiments show that portrayals of Muslims as terrorists can increase support for civil restrictions on Muslim-Americans, as well as support for military action against Muslim-majority countries.

The same research indicates that being exposed to content that challenges stereotypes of Muslims such as Muslims volunteering to help fellow Americans during the Christmas season can have the opposite effect and reduce support for such policies, especially among political conservatives.

Violence toward Muslims, the vandalization of mosques and burnings of the Quran have been extensively reported in the U.S. over the past 20 years, and there are indications that Islamophobia continues to rise.

But studies following the 2016 election indicate Muslims now experience Islamophobia more frequently online than face-to-face. Earlier in 2021, a Muslim advocacy group sued Facebook executives, accusing the company of failing to remove anti-Muslim hate speech. The suit claims that Facebook itself commissioned a civil rights audit that found the website created an atmosphere where Muslims feel under siege.

In 2011, around the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a report by the Center for American Progress documented the countrys extensive Islamophobia network, especially drawing attention to the role of misinformation experts from the far-right in spreading anti-Muslim propaganda.

Five years later, the entire country was awash in talk of misinformation experts using similar strategies this time, trying to influence the presidential election. Ultimately, these evolving strategies dont just target Muslims, but may be replicated on a grander scale.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Islamophobia is getting amplified by bots on social media - Quartz

Ullram told us the alternative protein market is quickly evolving beyond the ubiquitous soy and pea. Todays manufactures are discovering an ever-expanding bouquet of new ingredients and technologies available to them. This allows food brands to make products of appeal to the rising numbers of flexitarian consumers who say they want to cut their meat consumption for environmental, health and ethical reasons.

Givaudan has therefore expanded its global protein innovation network with a new Protein Hub at its flagship 12,000 square metre Zurich Innovation Centre in Kemptthal, Switzerland, which itself recently opened in 2019 ata cost ofCHF 120 million.

The Protein Hub builds on Givaudans expertise in taste, texture, colours, proteins and ingredients, and aims to provide the experts, technologies and equipment to help accelerate the development of alternative proteins.

"The market is going in all directions, said Ullram. It's almost becoming a jungle out there with so many new ingredients coming up every day."

For instance, Givaudan's 2019 study withresearchers from the University of California, Berkeley identified -- from a group of42 plant proteins -- sixpotentially game changing proteins all boasting viablecommercial, nutritional and sustainability credentials. These were oats; mung beans; chickpeas; lentils; flax seeds and sunflower seeds. Whats exciting about these newer ingredients, said Ullram, is that manufacturers may look to use them in combination with each other to improve the taste, texture and nutritional qualities of the current crop of meat alternatives."We believe there will be more combining of the different protein sources in order to get the best out of the taste and texture, Ullram told us. This will also help get the supply chain issues right. If we see there are protein shortages, combinations of different proteins will help address that.

All of this is being done in an environment of improving production technology: namely high moisture extrusion, 3D printing and clean meatexpertise.

But this febrile climate can bring both challenges and opportunities. Newer ingredients may promise better versatility and ease of use in a range of applications. But they may bring unintended consequences, such as allergen and legislation discussions.

Meanwhile, the European market is experiencing country-specific changes, which can influence how brands can look to expand meat-free products in different regions. Soy, for example, has a good reputation in some countries like France, which is home to a large number of soy farmers. Other countries -- like Russia, where it was used for a long time to produce very cheap, processed fake meat -- are more suspicious of it.

Givaudan aims to provide its customers the right, tools, partners, ingredients and technology to help themthrough this alt protein jungle, said Ullram.

We believe that the way forward is to stay on our toes and to stay as agile and flexible as possible, he said. Were trying to bring in as many partners to the game and provide our customers the best experience to solve their specific challenges.

Some recent reports suggest a saturating market. But citing figures from MarketsandMarkets, Givaudan says the market for plant-based protein globally has reached US $4.3 billion and is projected to grow to US $290 billion by 2035. Around the world, many consumers are shifting to plant-based options and other alternatives for health and ethical reasons, added Louie DAmico, President Taste & Wellbeing. The Protein Hub brings together customers, start-ups, academics, chefs and other partners to co-create protein experiences that not only taste great, but are good for body, mind and planet.

As a large, taste,fragrance and flavour company, Givaudan says it can pull a wide variety of different expertsto address potential roadblocks in the market and discuss different impacts around price, nutrition, sustainability, flavour and texture.

"We have our food technologists who can help us by, for example, calculating hypothetical Nutriscores by using certain protein adjustments. We can tap into chefs who can help us with taste ideas," elaborated Ullram. It all depends what's driving what a particular company wants to do.Customers can come to the Protein Hub to work on all types of applications and every aspect of the product development process, from initial ideation and consumer insights to hands on prototyping sessionsall with the aim of getting products to market quickly.

Fabio Campanile, Global Head of Science and Technology, Taste & Wellbeing, added: Creating delicious alternatives for meat, fish or dairy from plant-based to fermented products comes with a unique set of challenges and requires a holistic approach. At the same time, we realise that no one company can do this alone. We need to work together to address challenges, accelerate innovation and shape the future of food. The Protein Hub provides the ideal environment to make that happen.

Improving technology promises to have a huge impact on the market, noted Ullram. The Protein Hub is equipped with a state-of-the art development kitchen and a pilot plant that includes a new high moisture extrusion machine. This technology could prove a potential game-changer for meat alternative products, Ullram believes, by allowing bigger fibres to be made which better replicate the muscle fibres of real meat. Without high moisture extrusion, manufacturers are only ever going to be able to make meat alternatives as big as chicken nuggets. The focus of the Protein Hub is everything in the extrusion space, including dry and wet. Quickly advancing extrusion technology means manufacturers can begin to make meat alternative products that mimic whole meat cuts, like a Wiener schnitzel. That's the Holy Grail," he said.

All this will assist the alternative protein market to bloom and to progress from passing trend into one firmly established in everyday consumer buying habits. Givaudan is focussed on making these products appeal to the masses,said Ullram. What do we need to do to reach mainstream consumers, which are not there right now.

What does that mean for innovation in end-products? Will it be confined to plant-based mince, meatballs, sausages, sausage patties and burgers, or will new formats emerge?

A drive to steer imitations to a new authenticity is one direction we will see, said Ullram. But Givaudan also wants to continue exploring trends which may evolve beyond dishes that mimic meat. For example, its most recent Chefs Council event -- where international Michelin-star chefs explore new tastes and textures set to hit the food and beverage industry investigated ways at putting plants at the centre of the plate. The result was a Middle Eastern inspired lambalogue made with aubergine.

We can go in all directions, said Ullram. We have the chefs and the creative minds. We'll go where the demand is.

Read more from the original source:

'Alternative proteins are moving in all directions it's becoming like a jungle out there': Givaudan discusses its new Protein Hub launch -...

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast:How has a generation with no memory of 9/11 come to understand the event and its aftermath?

Gen Zers across the nation share how their specific identifies and lived experiences, family histories, and the U.S. public education system have shaped their understanding of what happenedand is still happening. USA TODAY's Grace Hauck reports.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Shannon Rae Green:

Hey there. I'm Ms. Shannon Rae Green and this is 5 Things. It's Sunday, September 12th. These Sunday episodes are special. We're bringing you more from in-depth stories you may have already heard. Gen Z has virtually no memory of 9/11, so how have they come to understand the events of the day and their aftermath? Gen Z, people born around 1997 and after, experienced 9/11 through family history, the US public education system, movies, and social media. On today's episode, you'll hear from a few Gen Zers, each having a lived experience that connects their family and plans that they have for the future, with the tragedy. USA Today reporter Grace Hauck spent the past couple of months talking to Gen Zers about how they experienced 9/11. Thanks so much for joining me, Grace.

Grace Hauck:

Thanks for having me.

Shannon Rae Green:

So why did you think that this was an important angle to cover as part of USA TODAY's coverage of the 20th anniversary of 9/11?

Grace Hauck:

I think it's natural, 20 years later, to think about this new generation that has come of age in a post 9/11 world. Census data would suggest that if we think about Gen Z as those born between 1997 and 2012, which is what the Pew Center has as the endpoint right now, tentatively. That means they're anywhere from 9 to 24, and that would mean there's about 70 million Gen Zers right now, all who, if they were born on 9/11, may have little to no memory and many who have been born since then.

Grace Hauck:

So they've grown up in a world and a country shaped by what happened on 9/11. And many of them now, are of an age where they can vote, they're coming into the workforce and they're shaping our society. And so I thought it would be interesting and important to talk to them about what they think about 9/11, how they learned about it and how their views have changed over their lives?

Shannon Rae Green:

Yeah. It's so interesting that they don't know anything different. So what did you hear from them, Grace? What did you expect to find and what surprised you?

Grace Hauck:

Yeah, so I talked to dozens of them across the country. I wanted to see if there were differences in regional opinions by age, because anywhere between 9 and 24 years old, of course, everyone has a different story. But generally, what I expected most Gen Zers to say is, "They didn't know much about 9/11, it hasn't had a big effect on their life. And that they're more concerned with the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, mass shootings, the crises that are facing their generation now." And I did hear that from some Gen Zers.

Grace Hauck:

One, in particular, Ronnie, told me, Gen Zers would rather focus on the problems of now, instead of looking back to the past. But I was surprised by how many, who said, really expressed a sense of being shaped and formed by 9/11, if they couldn't pinpoint how it affected them personally. And I wonder if maybe that is the sense that has been impressed on them in school or from families, the sense of, we were forever changed by this, and of course, many Gen Zers had varying degrees of proximity to the event. So some who did lose the family member or serving as caregivers for second relatives or had family away for most of their life, have a very different take and perspective on 9/11 and the aftermath than those who weren't as close.

Grace Hauck:

But even again, those who were slightly more distant and didn't have a personal connection or have a family or friend tie, have a sense of, "This changed my country. This created the Department of Homeland Security, and this is why we have TSA." And of course, many Gen Zers who are Muslim or perceived to be Muslim or Arab or Sikh, said that it has cast a long shadow over their communities. And as I expected to find, they feel personally affected by it in a way that many other Gen Zers who aren't Muslim or appear to be Muslim were affected.

Shannon Rae Green:

Were there certain things that you saw pop up again and again when you did these interviews?

Grace Hauck:

Yeah. So many Gen Zers, they talk about this initial exposure to information about what happened or this kind of initial understanding and then that changing as they grew older, kind of a loss of innocence happening there. And so many said that they first learned about 9/11 in school, on the anniversary of the attacks. So instead of in a history class, where they might learn about it in a chronological order of sorts, learn about US involvement in Afghanistan, and then the post 9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. They had a sense of it, separate from history and being this traumatic event that shaped our nation.

Grace Hauck:

And many talked about New York City, few talked about Shanksville or the Pentagon, and so many had that first exposure at school at a young age. Others said it was family who first talked to them and many said that it was a combination of coming home from school and asking family, "Hey, what is this, why are we talking about it?" And then as they grew older, many said that they were exposed to, whether it was social media, whether it was books or movies, or memoirs of Muslims growing up in the US and having a sense of, "Wow, this was a lot more than just a singular event."

Grace Hauck:

And of course, that's happening while the US is at war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And so there's the sense of coming of age and understanding this event as something that caused a lot of long-lasting harm too. And many said that as they themselves changed or their political views changed, their views on 9/11 changed, as well.

Shannon Rae Green:

So we're going to hear from certain people that you interviewed in today's podcast episode. So let's talk about Meghan Carr. Can you tell me about her family's connection to 9/11?

Grace Hauck:

Yeah. So I got to drive up and visit Megan actually, a couple of weeks ago in Hudson, New York. Her grandmother, Megan Carr Wilkes was a detective with the New York Police Department on that day, when she responded to the World Trade Center. Megan said she either talked to or called her grandmother every single day.

Megan Carr:

Our relationship was really good. We hung out a lot and talked all the time. After I got off the bus at home, she would call me and then come pick me up and we'd figure out what we were going to do for the day. Well, sometimes we'd go get ice cream, or sometimes we'd just hang out at her house, play, just dance, we went out to eat, go to the park. My grandmother was a very hopeful and cheerful person.

Grace Hauck:

Sometimes people talk about having a person, someone's that person and Megan would say that her Mimi was her person.

Shannon Rae Green:

Yeah. It's really beautiful how close of a relationship they had. How did Megan first learn about 9/11?

Grace Hauck:

So it's funny because looking back, Megan will talk about how she always knew her grandmother was sick but had never heard about 9/11, had never heard her grandmother, her family, talk about it. And she was in school in third or fourth grade on the anniversary when they mentioned it, brought it up, and she went home and asked her parents about it.

Megan Carr:

Well, when I went home, I asked my mom about it and she told me more and that my grandma was in it. So after I asked my mom, I went to my grandma and asked her about it more. She just told me much like the basics, why she was there and how it happened. She was with her friend, I think her boss, when everything took place and they radioed them and she didn't have to go, but she just decided to go.

Grace Hauck:

She developed lung cancer after her assignment to the search and recovery efforts and was sick for most of Megan's life. And Megan grew up, she calls her, her Mimi, always knowing that her grandmother was sick, but never really knowing why.

Megan Carr:

When she had to go get chemo, I was probably seven, eight. I didn't want to ever watch my grandma have to go do that. Heartbreaking. It was hard for her to walk. She was losing her hair.

Grace Hauck:

Multiple Gen Zers who I talked with too, for the story, talked about these drives they would go on with their relatives to the hospital. And that's something that Megan would do too. When her grandmother started getting really sick, she would accompany her on hours-long drives, watching SpongeBob in the back of the car.

Megan Carr:

When she had to go to New York City for chemo, sometimes I would go with her and after we'd go out to eat and go see my cousins that lived there. I'm glad I have those memories now, with her.

Shannon Rae Green:

I know in your story, you talked about how Megan actually took care of her grandmother for a few weeks when she stayed in her home, and that was actually the summer before she passed away, that fall in 2017, right?

Grace Hauck:

Megan moved in with her grandmother, was a caretaker for her full-time, for those three weeks.

Megan Carr:

We'd make her food, help her go to the bathroom, run to the store and get her things. We used to watch Law and Order, like police shows, her favorite shows. My favorite memories probably were watching TV shows with her. Sometimes we'd sit on the balcony and eat and talk. When she passed away, I felt like something was took from me, like a missing piece.

Grace Hauck:

She's named after her. So Megan and Megan.

Megan Carr:

It feels good to be named after her, so that everybody knows I'm named after someone that did something really good in the world.

Shannon Rae Green:

Since every Gen Zers learn about 9/11 secondhand, it's significant work to process the emotion surrounding the event for these folks. Right? And to grasp how it changed the very culture of America. Katie Brockhage spoke about this. Tell me more about interviewing her?

Grace Hauck:

Yeah. So Katie is based out in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but she was in rural Nevada that day and has blurry memories of being at a friend's house and seeing some of the news on the TV. And she said that she grew up really surrounded by this aura of 9/11, even though her family bounced around several states out West when she was young and wasn't geographically close, it was something that was ever-present in her household. She said she remembered her parents talking about 9/11. She remembers her dad bringing it up in conversations with her when she was young, even if they were out fishing or out hiking. And so she said it really became this horrible event. That is part of what made her want to join the military and as she says, be a protector to prevent anything like that from happening again.

Katie Brockhage:

Immediately after 9/11, a lot of older friends and mentors of mine have told me that the whole aura and vibe in America pretty much changed overnight. They mentioned things like fear, paranoia, Islamophobia, and overzealous patriotism. Of course, not all the changes and sentiments were negative, but it seems to me like overall, they were. As a kid growing up in a world where those feelings were so prevalent, especially in a rural conservative area, before I even knew the first thing about politics, I was quite the young patriot.

Katie Brockhage:

I'd run around in the yard with my best friend Henry all day, after school, pretending to hunt down terrorists. I have no memories of going through an airport that wasn't laden down with TSA security and body scanners, the list goes on. I inevitably grew up with a lot of negative sentiments that I had to overcome, which culminated in me flirting with the alt-right movement during the years of 2015 and 2016, when it was really starting to peak. I fought to work hard to unlearn these feelings and a conscious decision to overcome my own biases. Making Muslim friends, escaping the conservative bubble, and finding a real home in the left-winged LGBT community.

Grace Hauck:

And as she grew older, she said that that view really changed. And it was a combination of events that led to that evolution for her. The main one being, her best friend came out as trans and she began to have more conversations with her friend about that and she then realized her own identity as a trans woman. And as she says, that just created a crisis of her political beliefs in some way, because she had long developed these conservative Republican ideals, grounded in her understanding of 9/11, and what it means to protect a country from something like that happening again. And to then have to challenge those because she's realizing that belief system doesn't allow her to be her full self and to be who she is.

Grace Hauck:

And that she said, was fundamental in changing her view on the US reaction, domestic and foreign policy changes too, after 9/11. And part of that for her is also, not as much as her own transition process, but she talked quite a bit about just being connected into a global community and what that does for someone's worldview. She talked a bit about growing up playing video games and having access at all times to people from around the world. To people in Russia and Europe, and being able to talk to them while they're on video games together and having a much more global understanding of what was happening in the US involvement in the world. She talked about being on Reddit quite a bit, TikTok and just seeing memes too, and having a growing understanding as she got older of Gen Zers having pretty high-level political discussions through memes and TikTok.

Katie Brockhage:

Probably more so than any other generation, we are connected and aware of what goes around all over the world, past and future. It's an extremely powerful thing, and it completely changes how we contextualize and understand major world events. Especially with political issues that spread like wildfire in an almost viral way, over an incredibly wide variety of platforms and places. From deep, hours-long political talks in person, to short, funny meme videos on TikTok and really, just about everywhere in between.

Grace Hauck:

And she says, Gen Zers are able to have that kind of discussion now, whereas 20 years ago, that kind of discussion wasn't happening. And especially because Gen Z has now inherited the US legacy over the past 20 years. And the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, elsewhere, as well as the US Patriot Act, the National Muslim Registry. And so she says, like many Gen Zers, that she's become critical of what the US did in reaction to 9/11. And a lot of that discussion, she sees playing out online and on social media.

Shannon Rae Green:

So Katie does hit on this fact that we can't talk about 9/11 without discussing, well, so many layers of things, right? That's coming up in our interview right now. But particularly the war in Afghanistan and the backlash and discrimination that Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent have faced in America. What did you learn about Gen Z']ers experience of Islamophobia in the wake of 9/11?

Grace Hauck:

Yeah. So I talked to multiple Gen Zers across the country who are Muslim or have been perceived as Muslim and what their life has been like in a post 9/11 world? And many of them talk about maybe having some sense when they're very young of fear in their communities and not really understanding until they were older, why that was happening. Ayoub Affaneh for example, a 24-year-old living here in Chicago, talked to me about when he was younger, about four or so, when 9/11 happened.

Grace Hauck:

He remembers his mother, she stopped wearing her hijab for several years and he wasn't sure why she wasn't wearing it when they would go out to the park or to the mall. And it was only really when he was in college, that she was comfortable talking to him about why she did that. And it was around that time, maybe more toward the end of high school, that his family members, his older siblings, other people in his community, began to open up to him about what happened, particularly in the direct aftermath of 9/11. How there were protests near his mosque that shut down Friday prayers. How many of his relatives were spat on and his female relatives had their hijabs ripped off.

Grace Hauck:

And so it was an awakening and a consciousness that developed for him as he grew older, that he felt shielded from in some ways when he was much younger and he, and many other Muslim Gen Zers I spoke with, point to this generational difference, even between millennial Muslims and those who are older, who may have been older and more aware. And when 9/11 happened and really bore the brunt of this, whereas Ayoubhas grown up in a world that is shaped by this, where this is just the norm for him and he's had to learn about it and why? One woman Mayesha here, she also talked about getting pulled over by TSA every time she flies and always having an agent swab her hijab.

Grace Hauck:

And it reminded me of how Ayoub, when he was 19, he had a car pull up to him and just an older man shouted the word, terrorist, at him and he was just rolled his eyes and was like, I got the sense from his tone, "Really, is this still happening 20 years later?" And Mayesha almost had that sense as well, like, "Really, it's been 20 years and it's ludicrous." And at the same time, many have a sense that their generation is different, that Gen Z and Pulman supports this as well, is a more accepting, diverse generation, the most educated generation that the US has ever seen. And that this is something that they don't have to face as much with their friends or that this is something they don't have to face much as now in their generation. And that they have hope for their generation in the future to combat anti-Muslim bigotry.

Shannon Rae Green:

Well, I certainly hope so. Katie spoke about America's longest war and the chaos of the Taliban coming back to power in Afghanistan, despite American efforts. And this is so tied to the legacy of 9/11. Can you talk about what she had to say about that?

Grace Hauck:

Katie was telling me how she was sitting at work recently, watching live streams of what was happening at Kabul Airport and Afghans attempting to flee, American citizens, attempting to flee, to get on planes. And seeing photos really 9/11-esque photos of people falling from the sky, that she hopped in her car after work, pulled up into her driveway, and just sat there balling until she couldn't cry anymore. Because she was just feeling so much for Afghanistan and feeling so much for all her friends and veterans who had served there for 20 years and who were just wondering, "What was this all for? What have we done?"

Shannon Rae Green:

Yeah, let's hear from Katie.

Katie Brockhage:

When I was younger, 9/11 felt very, one-sided. Obviously, the terrible loss of American lives on that day and every year since, as we were deployed in Afghanistan, are what hurt the most, even today. But what used to be a simple, us versus them situation for me, has evolved into a very complicated set of feelings and emotions. Rather than just a loss of American lives, so much of the legacy of 9/11 is fear, mistrust, countless innocent people caught up in a war they never asked for both in America and abroad. And for an entire minority of people, both in America and in other countries, a lot of fear and discrimination has arisen as a result of this. I hate that.

Katie Brockhage:

You can see the legacy in every American flag flying over a porch and the unity that so many communities have experienced in the wake of 9/11, but also in hundreds of thousands of US service members, living with PTSD, anxiety and depression. Being a veteran and continuing to work in the defense industry with almost entirely veteran co-workers, a lot of my friends and colleagues personally deployed to Afghanistan. It's not my place to throw out opinions about policy, but I can confidently say, that for many of us who were involved in the fight in various ways, though, I should stress that I never deployed personally.

Katie Brockhage:

It's been a real challenge seeing everything end the way it has, seeing everything left behind, those tragic 13 deaths in the final days. Just wondering if what we did and the people we lost, really made a difference, and if they were worth it? Personally, it hurts me to think about what's going to happen over there with the Taliban in control. And I personally really do worry for the people of Afghanistan, in the coming days.

Shannon Rae Green:

See the original post:

Gen Z has only known society changed by 9/11: Hear how the attacks have shaped their lives - USA TODAY

This past weekend, someone in an angry crowd threw rocks (or gravel) at Justin Trudeau at an election campaign stop in London, Ont.

Afterwards, Trudeau told reporters on his campaign plane that someone had once thrown a pumpkin seed at him. Some of the rocks might have hit his shoulder, he said. He quickly grazed his left shoulder to indicate. When asked by Global Newss Abigail Bimman (who was seeking clarity on a troubling event) if it might have or actually did hit him, he shrugged his shoulders and asked does it matter?

It was just a little gravel, he said.

It absolutely matters.

It matters because its part of a terrifying series of physical and verbal vitriol on the election campaign trail that has seen the signs of candidates defaced with swastikas and obscenities, and their team members slapped and spit at.

It matters because the incident occurred in the same city that witnessed a terrorist attack that killed a Muslim family of four just three months before the election call was made.

It matters because the first thought for every BIPOC person across the country was Imagine if it was a Black or Indigenous or Muslim person that tried to physically assault the Prime Minister.

It matters because Im about to become the mobs next online target for calling this group of protesters what they are. Theyre not anti-vaxxer mobs, as Trudeau keeps calling them. These are not all people frustrated by the lockdowns and the pandemic. They are a manifestation of white supremacist hate.

Many of the protests following Justin Trudeau have been marked by the kind of extreme rage that became familiar in the U.S. during Donald Trumps presidency. Protesters have yelled Lock him up, Traitor, and piece of st. They have called for Trudeau to be hanged. They have verbally attacked members of his team and his security detail using racist and misogynistic language, the CBC reports.

This needs to make us ever more convinced of the importance of the choice in this election, Trudeau said on Aug. 29. Do we fall into division and hatred and racism and violence, or do we say no.

But its not as simple as saying no. This didnt happen in a vacuum, or because of the pandemic. Hate, too, is a virus and it grows rapidly if left unaddressed. And its been left unaddressed in Canada for far too long.

There is a link between the anti-vaxx movement and far-right groups that we need to talk about. (Note: the movement is separate from vaccine-hesitant people who have legitimate concerns.) An upcoming study by Amarnath Amarasingam, Stephanie Carvin and Kurt Philips for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue documents the connections, finding that anti-mask, anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination movements in Canada are predominantly propagated by the far-right. Some of the most vocal critics of lockdown measures and vaccines are leaders of far-right groups or political parties, including People Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier.

It is likely that many (if not most) far-right movements have latched on to COVID-19 conspiracy movements to lure anti-vaccine activists and conspiracy theorists to their cause. This includes adapting their propaganda and attending anti-lockdown protests and events, the study says. Emboldened by this cause, the study wonders if the movement could return with previous far-right preoccupations with more vigour: the promotion of anti-immigration, Islamophobic and antisemitic views and policies.

The purple signs of the PPC, for instance, have been a common sight at the protests. This is a party that wants to force future Canadian immigrants to answer questions about Canadian values and societal norms in a face-to-face interview, repeal a non-binding motion condemning Islamophobia, and restrict the definition of hate speech in the Criminal Code. The party was founded in 2019 and in its submission to Elections Canada of 250 signatories, included a former leader of a U.S. neo-Nazi group and other far-right extremists. The same year, it ousted a candidate who was critical of the partys refusal to denounce far-right groups.

The party holds a shocking 8 per cent support in the race, according to one poll. It has recruited an almost full slate of candidates (312 out of 338 ridings). Bernier (who was also egged on the campaign trail and has condemned physical violence) won 12 rounds of the 2017 Conservative leadership race, losing by a hair in the 13th round to Andrew Scheer. Hes calling for a revolution to defend freedom.

So, yeah, it matters. It matters so much, and Canadian leaders need to stop being so cavalier and rote in dismissing it by suggesting that this is a minority that we shouldnt bow to.

These largely white groups of protestors that have followed Trudeau have an unfair privilege that has been afforded to them by all aspects of society: they largely get away with their hateful rhetoric and actions, and dont get called out or punished for it.

Condemnations are not a cure for what were seeing unfold on the election campaign trail. (Ive personally seen enough condemnations of hate to last a lifetime.) Erin OToole, condemned the disgusting act and called it political violence in a statement. That doesnt address the fact that race or racism dont appear once in the Conservative Party platform, or the fact that Conservative MPs have been stoking hate by refusing to even condemn it for the longest time. (Like that time they all voted against a non-binding motion against Islamophobia.)

The Liberals arent absolved either. Theyve been in power for six years and hate has grown under their watch. They couldve done more after the 2017 Quebec mosquethe first terrifying manifestation of white supremacist hate in the country. Instead, they chose to table online hate legislation, the one big thing communities targeted by hate have been demanding, the day parliament adjourned this summer. The government just held its first-ever anti-hate summits in July, after parliament was already over, so any pledges made there wont come to light for some time.

In the days since the rock-throwing incident happened, Trudeau has changed his tune and called it unacceptable. Perhaps this was a political calculation for sympathy votes or a realization that this was a way to differentiate his party from the Conservatives. Either way, it was, once again, a condemnation with no follow-up.

We need to see action, anger and arrests. (The London police say they are investigating the rock throwing.) Our leaders are quick to remind us that Canada isnt the U.S., but the same alt-right, extreme rhetoric is loudly echoing here today and has done so for years.

Unfortunately, even under the strictest of societal lockdowns, the spread of hate has continued.

According to Statistics Canada, there were an estimated 223,000 hate crimes in Canada in 2019, and the police only laid 1,951 charges, less than one per cent. This means that in Canada, youre more likely to be the victim of a hate crime in Canada than be hurt in a car crash (152,847 injuries in 2018).

We had a year of anti-racism protests by the Black community. The Asian community was targeted throughout the pandemic. There seems to be a surge in incidents against Muslim communities. And just this week, Prabhjot Singh Katri, a 23-year-old Sikh international student, was murdered in an apparent hate crime in Truro, N.S.

Racism and hate are serious problems in Canada and the leaders are encountering both on the campaign trail. A plan to address racism and hateand eradicate themshould be on the ballot. They should have been debate topics.

The absence of racism and hate in the 2021 election conversation is absolutely terrifying for a country that still refuses to look itself the mirror.

CORRECTION, Sept. 9, 2021:An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the word hate does not appear in the Conservative Party platform.

Go here to see the original:

Protesters threw rocks at the PM. It should matter more. - Maclean's

In case you havent heard, Texas now has a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help women get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest and to take advantage of that, the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life encouraged citizens to report those people at a dedicated whistleblower website, promising to ensure that these lawbreakers are held accountable for their actions.

As of Sunday, that dedicated website now appears to be no more.

On Friday, Texas Right to Life had to find a new home on the web for the site, because hosting provider GoDaddy gave the group 24 hours to find an alternative. We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service, a spokesperson told The New York Times and The Verge.

By late Friday, it appeared it found that home: Epik, the provider that also helped save controversial sites Gab, social media platform Parler, and internet hate forum 8chan when other web service providers wouldnt take them, is now listed as the registrar and name server provider for prolifewhistleblower.com as well.

But the site may have gone too far for any web provider to touch, even Epik.

Initially, GoDaddy told The Verge that the whistleblower site violated multiple provisions of its Terms of Service including Section 5.2, which reads:

You will not collect or harvest (or permit anyone else to collect or harvest) any User Content (as defined below) or any non-public or personally identifiable information about another User or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent.

After Epik stepped in, the website still had plenty of trouble staying online. As of 4AM ET Saturday, we saw HTTP 503 error codes when trying to access it. According to Ars Technica, the Texas anti-abortion group tried to use Digital Ocean as a hosting provider first, but may have fallen afoul of that providers rules as well, and its not hosted there anymore.

On Saturday, the site appeared to have migrated to BitMitigate, a webhost owned by Epik itself, and one that specifically advertises its sovereign hosting services for platforms under attack. Yet by Saturday evening, the site was not loading for us at all, throwing an accessed a banned URL error. Epik says it informed Texas Right to Life that hosting the anonymous tip form was against its terms of service, general counsel Daniel Prince told The Verge.

By Sunday, the battle appeared to be over: prolifewhistleblower.com now redirects to Texas Right to Lifes primary website, instead of a form that allows citizens to inform on their neighbors. Epik takes credit for this, saying it persuaded them to stop collecting anonymous tips and to take it off the internet entirely. Were checking that with Texas Right to Life now.

The anti-abortion groups website had been under siege for days even before the web provider scuffle, with angry protesters flooding it with fake tips including at least one fake claim that Texas governor Greg Abbott himself had violated the law, according to the NYT. One activist on TikTok even created a script that can automatically feed fake reports into the websites tipbox, as Motherboard reported Thursday. He told the NYT that the automated tools hed created had received over 15,000 clicks.

But on Wednesday, Gizmodos Shoshana Wodinsky suggested another way for activists to protest: blowing the whistle on Texas Right to Life itself, by complaining to GoDaddy about what it was doing. Thats what appears to have happened.

Its not the first time web hosting providers or even GoDaddy specifically have played this role: Gab.com had to find a new home in October 2018, and GoDaddy took down white nationalist Richard Spencers Altright.com that May. Neo-nazi news site the Daily Stormer was similarly given 24 hours by GoDaddy to find a new home in August 2017, and wound up moving to the dark web instead. Gab was able to return, though, and Texas Right to Life at least briefly did as well.

Update, 4:36PM ET: Added additional context from GoDaddy.

Update September 4th, 4AM ET: Added that Epik appears to be Texas Right to Lifes new home for its site.

Update September 5th, 12:18AM ET: Added that the site now appears to be down, following a report that even Epik wasnt willing to host the whistleblower form.

Update September 5th, 10:29PM ET: Added that the website no longer exists, redirecting to the anti-abortion groups main site instead, and additional Epik context.

Visit link:

GoDaddy cut off Texas Right to Life's abortion 'whistleblowing' website, and it might be gone - The Verge

In his own words

Were going to be back here, and were going to humiliate all of these people who opposed us. Well be back here 1,000 times if necessary. I always win. Because I have the will to win, I keep going until I win. Interview with DailyMail.com, several days after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Islam at its full flourishing isnt some peaceful denomination like Methodism or religion like Buddhism; Islam is a black flag. It is an expansive, domineering ideology, and one that is directed against Europe. In this way, Islam give [sic] non-Europeans a fighting spirit and integrates them into something much greater than themselves. Interview with Europa Maxima, February 2017.

A race is genetically coherent, a race is something you can study, a race is about genes and DNA, but its not just about genes and DNA. The most important thing about it is the people and the spirit. Thats what a race is about. Speech at Texas A&M, December 2016.

Martin Luther King Jr., a fraud and degenerate in his life, has become the symbol and cynosure of White Dispossession and the deconstruction of Occidental civilization. We must overcome!National Policy Institute column, January 2014

Immigration is a kind a proxy warand maybe a last standfor White Americans, who are undergoing a painful recognition that, unless dramatic action is taken, their grandchildren will live in a country that is alien and hostile.National Policy Institute column, February 2014

Our dream is a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans. It would be a new society based on very different ideals than, say, the Declaration of Independence. VICE, October 2013.

When we hear any professional Latino support this or that social program, we sense in our guts that her policy proscriptions are rationalizations for nationalism. She mightsaymore immigration is good; shemeansThe Anglos are finished! Speech at the 2013 American Renaissance conference

What blocks our progress is thememethat has been carefully implanted in White peoples minds over the course of decades of programming, fromMississippi BurningtoLee Daniel's The Butlerthat any kind of positive racial feeling among Whites is inherently evil and stupid and derives solely from bigotry and resentment. And that the political and social advancement of non-Whites is inherently moral and wonderful. National Policy Institute column, September 2013

Richard Spencers clean-cut appearance conceals a radical white separatist whose goal is the establishment of a white ethno-state in North America. His writings and speeches portray this as a reasonable defense of Caucasians and Eurocentric culture. In Spencers myopic worldview, white people have been dispossessed by a combination of rising minority birth rates, immigration and government policies he abhors.

Fighting that alleged dispossession is the focus of the, until recently, tax-exempt organization he heads, the National Policy Institute (NPI). According to NPIs mission statement, it aims to elevate the consciousness of whites, ensure our biological and cultural continuity, and protect our civil rights. The institute ... will study the consequences of the ongoing influx that non-Western populations pose to our national identity. NPI lost its tax-deductible status with the IRS for failing to file tax returns after 2012.

Spencer became president of NPI in 2011, following the death of its chairman, longtime white nationalist Louis R. Andrews. Concurrently, he also oversaw NPIs publishing division, Washington Summit Publishers, home of such scientifically bogus works as a 2015 reissue of Richard LynnsRace Differences in Intelligenceand screeds by other white nationalists, includingJared Taylor, editorof the racistAmerican Renaissancejournal, andSam Francis, the late editor of the white supremacistCouncil of Conservative Citizens newsletter. In 2012, Spencer launched an offshoot of Washington Summit Publishers that he calledRadix Journal, a website and biannual publication whose contributors include notorious antisemite Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor at California State University, Long Beach.

Spencer abdicated his position as editor ofRadix Journalin January 2017 to serve as the American editor of his new site AltRight.com. Launched on January 16, 2017, AltRight.com brings together several well-known white nationalist personalities including Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice, Brad Griffin of Occidental Dissent, andWilliam H. Regnery II, a reclusive member of the Regnery right-wing publishing dynasty that founded both NPI and the Charles Martel Society. Other leadership on the site includes Daniel Friberg, European editor, Jason Jorjani, Culture editor, and Tor Westman, technical director.

Described as a leading academic racist by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Spencer takes a quasi-intellectual approach to white separatism. In an online NPI recruiting video, he employs the tone of a sociologist discussing demographics:

As long as whites continue to avoid and deny their own racial identity, at a time when almost every other racial and ethnic category is rediscovering and asserting its own, whites will have no chance to resist their dispossession.

Spencer acquired that academic tone while obtaining a bachelors degree from the University of Virginia and a masters degree in humanities from the University of Chicago. That tone is part of an image-conscious strategy meant to appeal to educated, middle-class whites. He dresses neatly, eschews violence and works to sound rational.

We have to look good, he told Salon.com writer Lauren Fox, because no one is going to want to join a movement that is crazed or ugly or vicious or just stupid.

In 2007, after he dropped out of a Duke University Ph.D. program in modern European intellectual history, Spencer took a job as assistant editor atAmerican Conservativemagazine, where he was later fired for his radical views, according to former colleague J. Arthur Bloom. Following that, Spencer became executive editor of the paleoconservative website Takis Magazine. In 2010, Spencer founded AlternativeRight, a supremacy-themed webzine aimed at the intellectual right wing, where he remained until joining NPI.

One of Spencers first acts after taking over NPI was to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Whitefish, Montana, where his family has a vacation home. But if Spencer is eyeing Whitefish as a locale for his Aryan homeland, he faces significant opposition. In December 2014, the Whitefish City Council debated an anti-hate ordinance barring groups such as NPI from assembling in the community. After concerns were raised about free speech, the council ultimately settled on a resolution supporting diversity and tolerance.

Spencer spoke at that council meeting, saying the anti-hate ordinance would have granted the right to police our minds but claiming that he supported the diversity and tolerance resolution. But real diversity includes thinking differently, theFlathead Beaconquoted him as saying. Real diversity is not people of all different shapes and colors acting the same way. That is the diversity of a Coke commercial.

Real diversity and tolerance apparently go only so far, however. In an address at white supremacist Jared Taylors 2013American Renaissanceconference, Spencer called for peaceful ethnic cleansing. As an example of how this could be accomplished, he cited the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where new national boundaries were formed at the end of World War I. Today, in the public imagination, ethnic cleansing has been associated with civil war and mass murder (understandably so), Spencer said. But this need not be the case. 1919 is a real example of successful ethnic redistribution done by fiat, we should remember, but done peacefully.

Spencer also has termed his mission a sort of white Zionism that would inspire whites with the dream of such a homeland just as Zionism helped spur the establishment of Israel. A white ethno-state would be anAltneuland an old, new country he said, attributing the term to Theodor Herzl, a founding father of Zionism.

Such historical comparisons show how desperate Spencer is to legitimize his agenda. After all, if white people are dispossessed, why shouldnt they get a homeland, too? The problem, of course, is that white Americans have not been dispossessed, no matter how often that claim is made by ideologues of the racist right.

But Spencer is doing his best to make it seem that they are. When the 2011 census revealed that for the first time the majority of children born in the United States are non-white, Spencer concluded that efforts to restrict immigration were meaningless going forward. Even if all immigration, legal and illegal, were miraculously halted tomorrow morning, our countrys demographic destiny would merely be delayed by a decade or two, he told theAmerican Renaissanceaudience. Put another way, we could win the immigration battle and nevertheless lose the country, and lose it completely.

Although Spencer has repeatedly denied that he is a racist, his protests amount to a semantic debate over what racist means. Racist isnt a descriptive word. Its a pejorative word. It is the equivalent of saying, I dont like you. Racist is just a slur word, he told theFlathead Beacon. I think race is real, and I think race is important. And those two principles do not mean I want to harm someone or hate someone. But the notion that these people can be equal is not a scientific way of looking at it.

Elsewhere, he has decried what he terms an overly expansive definition of racism by Cultural Marxists. In a 2013 NPI column, he wrote:

But for most academics and policy-makers who could be referred to as Cultural Marxiststhe definition of racism is much,muchmore expansive; it encompasses culture, privilege, societal assumptions and values, and all sorts of things they deem to be expressions of power. The hetero-normative marriage, Christmas, nationalist soccer fandom can each be considered racist, in that each is an avatar of European civilization and consciousnessand thus an obstacle for multicultural globalism.

Spencer has said he would gladly accept Germans, Latins and Slavic immigrants in his proposed ethno-state ironically, groups that faced severe discrimination in late 19th-century America. These foreigners and their customs, including Catholicism, spurred the creation of Know-Nothing societies, which eventually became known as the American Party. Pseudo-scientific studies were released, such as Carl Brighams A Study of Human Intelligence (1923), that claimed that Slavs and Italians, among others, were of inferior intelligence.

But today, kielbasa is considered as American as apple pie, and these non-Anglo Saxons are embraced by Spencer because of their white skins. They have assimilated.

To Spencer, however, assimilation is a deceptive term. In his foreword to a new edition of racist eugenicist Madison Grants 1933Conquest of a Continent, Spencer wrote:

Hispanic immigrants have been assimilating downwardacross generations towards the culture and behavior of African-Americans. Indeed, one possible outcome of the ongoing demographic transformation is a thoroughly miscegenated, and thus homogenous and assimilated, nation, which would have little resemblance to the White America that came before it.

This applies to the European motherland as well. In a promo for NPIs 2013 Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., Spencer opined that both Europe and America are experiencing economic, moral and cultural bankruptcy under the pressure of mass immigration, multiculturalism, and the natural expression of religious and ethnic identities by non-Europeans.

Spencers efforts to reach out to European nationalists have not gone well. In October 2014, his attempt to hold an NPI conference in Budapest, Hungary, resulted in his arrest and expulsion. Dubbed the 2014 European Congress, the conference featured an array of white nationalists from both Europe and America. Among the scheduled speakers were Jared Taylor ofAmerican Renaissance, Philippe Vardon from the far-right French Bloc Identitaire movement, Russian ultranationalist Alexander Dugin and right-wing Hungarian extremist MP Mrton Gyngysi.

Before the conference even started, the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade released a statement condemning all xenophobic and exclusionary organizations that discriminate based on religion or ethnicity. Planned reservations at the Larus Center venue were canceled. On Oct. 3, Spencer was arrested while meeting informally with other participants at a cafe that was to have been an alternate venue. He was jailed for three days, deported and banned for three years from entering all 26European countries that have abolished passport and other controls at their common borders.

Back in America, stronger free speech protections enable Spencer to hold such conferences. But even though he idealizes an American society founded by European whites, he rejects the principles of egalitarianism enshrined in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Spencer takes issue with conservatives who advocate returning America to its founding principles. Even if that did happen, the outcome would be the same, according to Spencer: One should not rewind a movie, play it again, and then be surprised when it reaches the same unhappy ending.

Should we, for instance, really be fighting for limited government or the Constitution, so that the Afro-Mestizo-Caribbean Melting Pot can enjoy the blessing of liberty and a sound currency? he asked theAmerican Renaissancegathering.

In Spencers ethno-state there would be no such problems. In aJuly 3, 2014, column in NPIsRadix Journal, he lauded Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens greatest address, in which Stephens said that Thomas Jefferson was wrong about all men being created equal.

Spencer endorsed that sentiment, saying, Ours, too, should be a declaration of difference and distance We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created unequal. In the wake of the old world, this will be our proposition.

At every NPI event there is a book fair, and NPIs publishing division, Washington Summit Publishers, also offers its white nationalist titles on its own website and through sites such as Amazon.com.

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Spencer was a vocal advocate for Donald Trump due to his signature proposal to build a wall along the United States border with Mexico and his racist statements referring to Mexicans as criminals and rapists. Following a high-profile press conference on the racist alt-right movement a term that Spencer popularized Spencer organized a press conference with Jared Taylor of American Renaissance and Peter Brimelow of VDARE, two longtime leaders in the white nationalist movement, to codify the tenets of the alt-right. Race is real, race matters, and race is the foundation of identity, Spencer told attendees. You cant understand who you are without race.

Only days after Trumps surprising victory over Hillary Clinton, the NPI held its fall conference on November 19, 2016, in Washington, D.C. In what he later described as a moment of exuberance, Spencer, flush with victory, offered the toast, Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory! to the nearly 200 attendees. He was met with a handful of stiff-armed salutes from the crowd. The gesture electrified the more radical sectors of the white supremacy movement while generating stern disappointment from some of its elder statesmen, including Jared Taylor. When asked about the incident, Taylor told Kristoffer Ronneberg: I was as shocked as anyone by all of that. The alt-right is a very broad movement. I have always known that there were at least anonymous Twitter accounts that are openly Nazi and anti-Semitic, but I did not think that Richard Spencer was that sort of person. I was shocked by these images that weve seen. The restaurant hosting the event later apologized and donated the proceeds to the Anti-Defamation League.

Following what Spencer and the alt-right came to refer to as hailgate, the media cycle fixated on trolling attacks against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish realtor living in Whitefish, Montana, who had been asked by Spencers mother to help her sell a piece of property.

The driving impetus behind the fracas appears to have been the possibility that some in the community might protest Sherry Spencers building to demonstrate their rejection of her sons ideology.

Spencer, who had recently joined into what was referred to as The First Triumvirate with Andrew Anglin ofthe Daily Stormer website and Mike Enoch ofthe Daily Shoah podcast (titles intended to evoke Nazism and the Holocaust), insisted that his mother was the subject of an extortion scheme, which Spencer categorized as a nasty shakedown of an innocent woman.

The shakedown allegation originated in a web posting purportedly authored by Sherry Spencer, Richards mother. The very next day, Anglin parroted the allegation in an article he wrote for the Daily Stormer. Over the next several months, Anglin posted a total of 30 articles urging his hundreds of thousands of readers to unleash a torrent of abusive phone calls, voicemails, emails, text messages, social media messages even Christmas cards on the Jewish realtor, her family and their associates. (In April 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against Anglin in the U.S. District Court of Montana in Missoula.)

But when Anglin threatened to bus in skinheads from the Bay Area for an armed protest against the towns small Jewish population, to be held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Spencer was forced to backpedal.

Spencer tried to play the march off as a joke and maintained that he had no control over Anglin, whom he referred to as totally wild thats not my kind of thing, though maintaining that Anglin was a rational person who wouldnt engage in physical violence.

On December 6, 2016, at the invitation of a neo-Nazi and former Texas A&M student Preston Wiginton, Spencer spoke to a ballroom of nearly 400 individuals. America, at the end of the day, Spencer told his audience, belongs to white men. Our bones are in the ground. We own it. At the end of the day America cant exist without us. We defined it. This country does belong to White people, culturally, politically, socially, everything. Following the controversy and attention generated by his appearance at Texas A&M, Spencer announced that he would be embarking on a college tour in 2017.

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Richard Bertrand Spencer | Southern Poverty Law Center