Manufacturers among first to sign up to low carbon innovation with Eco-I North West – Manufacturer.com

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SME manufacturers have been among the first to sign up to Eco-I North West, a first-of-its-kind research and development programme for low carbon innovation.

Eco-I North West is a 14m initiative offering businesses the opportunity to collaborate with and access the extensive knowledge base, cutting-edge research facilities, and skills of six of the regions leading universities Lancaster, Central Lancashire, Cumbria, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester Metropolitan.

The programme, part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, will work with more than 300 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the region over the next two years, supporting the development of 135 new innovative solutions which will save 3,850 tonnes of CO2.

This is support for businesses to build back better, enabling R&D, and building networks to drive innovation, which is good for business and better for the environment.

Among the 80+ businesses signed up to Eco-I NW is Fibrestar Drums, based in Stockport, a manufacturer of fibre drums innovating with new materials and solutions which will have a lasting impact on the environment.

Colin Pardoe, Managing Director, said: For the last two years we have been innovating to produce Europes first conical and nestable 100% fibre (kraft) container primarily for the agricultural sector which is edible by livestock with no waste, as well as having 66% less CO2 than a plastic pail and helping soil enrichment which also acts as a carbon sink.

Working with Lancaster University through the Eco-I NW programme we are driving that innovation forward to explore how we can apply our product to other materials for applications in other sectors. It is an exciting opportunity to access world-class academic expertise and facilities for innovation and develop solutions which will have a lasting impact on the environment while supporting the growth of the business.

Enviroo, based in Manchester, specialises in turning plastic bottles into the raw material for new food-grade packaging, is also developing low carbon innovation.

Ahmed Detta, CEO & founder, said: Our partnership with Lancaster University through the Eco-I NW programme is the perfect fit for our company. It will give us access to the research body of a prestigious university, and essentially create an R&D arm for our young enterprise, to help us achieve our long-term business goals.

Others manufacturers signed up to Eco-I NW are:

Biotech Services, based in Sandbach, a manufacturer exploring the use of extracted organic production waste to create new products such as fabrics, regenerative medicine, biodegradable packaging and batteries.

Kerax, based in Chorley, a wax manufacturer innovating with hydrogenated vegetable waxes and solutions to reduce the energy and CO2 emissions involved in transporting wax products.

CO2 Extraction, based in Morecambe, specialists in the extraction of high-value bioactive compounds and oils from botanicals;

Silverwoods Waste Management, based in Altham, Lancashire, an industrial waste recycling specialist, is researching the sequestration and capture of carbon within agricultural soils.

Some of these inspirational stories will be showcased at a free-to-access virtual summit, Disruption, Innovation, Transformation. Climate Change: Its Now or Never, today, Wednesday 20 October.

ECO-I NW speakers Top LtoR Dr Ariel Edesess, Duncan Pollard, Dr Rhiannon Hunt- Bottom LtoR Dr Yagya Regmi, Helen Wilkinson, Professor Karl Williams. Image courtesy of Eco-I North West

The two-hour summit, running from 10am-12pm, will include keynote speaker Duncan Pollard, former VP for Sustainability at Nestle and Director of Conservation Practice & Policy at WWF, who will share his expertise on how to integrate, engage, and operationalise sustainable practice in business.

Delegates will then be invited to participate in three themed breakout sessions about nature-based solutions, the built environment, and the circular economy.

Businesses will also learn about the funding opportunities and innovation support to enable them to pilot, prototype and demonstrate new technologies, as well as opportunities for leadership development, workshops, and networking.

Speaking ahead of the event, Duncan Pollard said: The business community has the power to influence the effects of climate change, through its operations, supply chains, and offering more sustainable choices to customers. But for positive change we must disrupt and challenge the business as usual mind set.

Sustainability must be at the heart of the post-Covid recovery, not just an add-on. Any business that doesnt heed the sustainability concerns of staff, customers and investors risks being left behind.

SMEs are the lifeblood of our economy and offer something very special to help deliver solutions to tackle the massive challenge of climate change. Without the scale or complexity of large corporations they can move quickly to try new things and are efficient in the way in which they use resources.

With more than 560,000 SMEs operating in the North West, now is the time for this crucial collective to rise up and embrace the opportunity.

The event will be chaired by Prof Jess Davies, Director of the Centre for Global Eco-Innovation at Lancaster University said: This virtual summit will be the first time all the key partners involved in Eco-I NW have been able to come together to ask the difficult questions about how we can approach key global challenges such as water supply and quality, waste, energy, resource efficiency, natural capital, air quality, and food security.

Eco-I NW is the first project of its kind to open up such a huge academic regional resource to businesses and offers the opportunity for the North West to take the lead and benefit from the transition to a low carbon economy.

I would encourage leaders of small and medium sized enterprises in the North West to sign up to the event and come along to understand how Eco-I NW could help them, and the planet.

Sustainability is a major theme of this years Digital Manufacturing Week, including Smart Factory Expo and Manufacturing Leaders Summit.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW!

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Manufacturers among first to sign up to low carbon innovation with Eco-I North West - Manufacturer.com

There Are A Lot Of Plans To Improve Childcare In Michigan. Here’s What They Do. – Patch.com

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Oct. 18

Carrie Anderson, owner and director of Morning Star Child Care in Dexter, has worked in the childcare industry for over 25 years. While she loves her job, she has grappled with some of the perils that come along with the industry: low wages, insufficient amounts of staffing and making it affordable for parents.

Now there are several state and national plans that aim to help reform and support the childcare industry. The new state budget includes $1.4 billion for cost stabilization and childcare center support effort. President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan also has support for families seeking childcare.

And an eight-bill package passed by the Michigan House this month reforms Michigan's childcare system by helping families in seeking care, as well as providing assistance to in-home childcare providers, specifically.

"This is one of the few glorious moments that we have, where everybody's kind of on the same page," said state Rep. Kelly Breen (D-Novi), who sponsored one of the bills. "We now realize in the light of this pandemic, that childcare is something that a lot of us working parents have known for a while, is a crisis."

Anderson said that childcare centers and in-home daycares "run 100% on parent tuition" and that the state has been in need of childcare reform. The state has https://childcarecenter.us/sta..."> style="font-weight: 400">4,457 preschool and child care centers. She said the House bills will finally start to provide relief for in-home childcare providers and bring issues in the childcare industry as a whole to the forefront of lawmakers' minds.

"It's been a long-neglected conversation," Anderson said. "It's nice that it's finally being recognized for the important industry that it is. The funding is definitely long overdue. I'm very hopeful that it goes to the right places to where it really can make a difference for families and mostly for childcare providers."

Anderson said specific attention is needed when it comes to staffing daycare centers and increasing wages in the industry. About 11.8% of childcare workers' families live below the poverty line, making them twice as likely to live below the poverty line compared to other workers' families. According to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, the https://cscce.berkeley.edu/wor..."> style="font-weight: 400">median wage for child care workers in 2019 was $11.13. In 2020, childcare workers made an https://www.bls.gov/ooh/person..."> style="font-weight: 400">average of $12.24 per hour according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"The hardest thing is staffing," Anderson said. "There's a shortage everywhere of people looking for jobs. And this has always been a very hard industry to find people to work in, because it is a very difficult and [are] low paying job. Since the pandemic, it's been even more difficult to hire people. There's been a lot of childcare centers that are shutting down."

A median childcare worker would have to put 49% of their earnings toward infant care in order to afford it.

The cost of childcare is also prohibitive for Michigan families, which face an average annual https://www.epi.org/child-care..."> style="font-weight: 400">cost of $10,861, translating to $905 a month, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Infant care costs are 6.7% above the cost of average rent, per EPI, a left-leaning think tank. For a typical Michigan family with one child, infant care costs would compose 19% of that family's income. For those with an infant with an additional 4-year-old in the house, childcare costs about $19,751 equating to about 34.6% of the typical family's income.

A poll released last month from the Detroit-based Skillman Foundation and Lansing-based Michigan's Children and carried out by Lake Research Partners https://michiganadvance.com/20..."> style="font-weight: 400">found that 62% of the 800 people surveyed said they supported an increase in public funding for children. The poll, conducted from July 27 to Aug. 3, found that 58% of respondents said they would vote to increase their taxes if more funding were to be sent to programs supporting youth.

State budget funding

In the state's Fiscal Year 2022 budget that went into effect Oct. 1, $1.4 billion was pumped into the state's childcare system.

The budget mostly utilizes federal COVID-19 aid dollars to close funding gaps that have hurt early childhood employees and left a vacuum for "childcare deserts" areas where there is little to no access to childcare like the Upper Peninsula and northern Michigan. About $100 million will help childcare centers open in childcare deserts.

About half of the $1.4 billion will go towards stabilization grants to help childcare providers stay afloat as they emerge from the pandemic. An estimated $36.5 million will go to providers who help infants and toddlers and help stabilize funding through contracts. childcare workers will also receive a $1,000 bonus.

Under the budget, about 105,000 more children in the state will also be able to receive low- or no-cost childcare. About $108 million will be utilized to expand income eligibility for the child care subsidy program while another $158 million will be used to expand reimbursement rates for providers taking part in the child care subsidy program.

When signing the budget in September, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer touted that it expands childcare and called it "a budget that puts Michiganders first."

While House Bills 5041-5048 do not lower childcare costs or provide funding for childcare providers like the budget or Build Back Better plan do, the bills help reform the way childcare centers are funded and legal practices revolving around them.

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/..."> style="font-weight: 400">House Bill 5041, introduced by Rep. Jack O'Malley (R-Lake Ann), expands the caregiver to child ratio from 1:6 to 1:7. The intent of the bill, according to O'Malley, was to add another slot for a child while also giving providers an expanded opportunity to earn more money.

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/..."> style="font-weight: 400">House Bill 5042 introduced by Rep. Greg VanWoerkom (R-Norton Shores) and http://www.legislature.mi.gov/..."> style="font-weight: 400">5045, introduced by Rep. Rodney Wakeman (R-Saginaw Twp.) are aimed at changing the laws surrounding penalties faced by childcare providers. HB 5042 mandates that childcare centers disclose their owners in order to prevent a former center who received violations from changing their name and location. HB 5045 establishes that if a facility received a complaint that went on to be dismissed, the charge will no longer be on their record after three years.

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/..."> style="font-weight: 400">House Bill 5043, introduced by Breen, establishes liaisons in every region across the state to help train, prepare and network with other childcare facilities. http://www.legislature.mi.gov/..."> style="font-weight: 400">House Bill 5044, introduced by Rep. Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton Twp.) enables childcare providers to be funded with federal childcare and development block grant requirements.

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/..."> style="font-weight: 400">House Bill 5046, introduced by Rep. Gregory Markkanen (R-Hancock), makes the Department of Health and Human Services and Licensing and Regulatory Affairs responsible for drafting and communicating rules for a child organization.

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/..."> style="font-weight: 400">House Bills 5047, introduced by Rep. Julie Calley (R-Portland), and http://www.legislature.mi.gov/..."> style="font-weight: 400">5048, introduced by Rep. John Roth (R-Traverse City) ensure records from childcare centers are maintained through the Michigan Department of Education's database of licensing records and that childcare centers notify the DOE if they are in a multi-occupancy building.

O'Malley said the bills are just the first of many to come to help address issues in childcare in the state, but recognized "there are more things to work on."

"We want the daycare providers and the parents and the employers to know that we're actually heard them, and help is on the way," O'Malley said. "After all these years, we're actually getting something done. Let's do things that will help bring back and sustain childcare, and reverse really decades of pushing childcare out of the way."

Annette Sobocinski, executive director of childcare Network and Great Start to Quality Southeast Resource Center, said each bill will have a significant impact on in-home childcare centers where government support is especially needed.

"Oftentimes, home providers can feel very isolated," Sobocinski said. "And so the opportunity to be able to give them more support and help them access more resources, I think is going to be a huge benefit to them, and then also to the families that they serve."

Breen said these bills have broad bipartisan support and that lawmakers across the aisle recognize the "crisis" at hand. She said these bills are the first step to helping childcare providers and families to afford childcare in the state. She added that the package will work in tandem with the stimulus dollars to provide much-needed support to families in need of childcare and childcare providers in need of relief.

"[The] package is going to work I think hand in hand with what's happening with the stimulus dollars," Breen said. "I think everybody sort of agrees that this is an area where we're going to be spending more money and more time rather than less because compared to where we are worldwide. We are not doing enough. We just are not doing enough, and you want people to go back to work. They need to know that their kids are safe."

While childcare reform is being pushed to the forefront of minds in the Michigan Legislature, lawmakers at the federal level are also taking notice.

In Biden's Build Back Better plan, a https://19thnews.org/2021/10/w..."> style="font-weight: 400">proposed $450 billion would be allocated to pay for preschool for 3 and 4-year-olds. The bill also would subsidize childcare on a sliding scale and cap expenditures to 7% of annual income for middle-class families. Grants would also be utilized to steady childcare facilities and incentivize them to raise wages for their employees.

The Build Back Better plan is currently stalled in a closely divided Congress, as Republicans oppose it and centrist Democrats like U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) have demanded cuts. The holdup on the plan also comes as the House is grappling with the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has said that childcare is considered affordable if it equates to 7% of a family's income. With these findings, only 9.3% of families in Michigan have the ability to afford infant care.

If childcare reform were to cap a families' childcare expenses to 7% of their income, Michigan families would save $6,609 on childcare expenses. Not only would this also free up 14.2% of their annual income, it would also supply 44,489 more parents with the option to enter the workforce. This could subsequently grow Michigan's economy by .9% and generate $4.6 billion in new economic activity.

Sobocinski said legislators should continue to find ways to support childcare providers and families in need of childcare.

"This is a bipartisan issue, it is not a left or right issue," Sobocinski said. "It is something that impacts everybody. Knowing that there's broad support in the general public helps legislators [and] businesses. I think [they] are starting to come on board with realizing how important it is. There's no downside to investing in childcare."

Michigan" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://michiganadvance.com">M... Advance is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and Twitter.

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There Are A Lot Of Plans To Improve Childcare In Michigan. Here's What They Do. - Patch.com

Global Digital Transformation Market Report 2021 with Focus on Waste Recycling and Circular Economy Growth Opportunities – ResearchAndMarkets.com -…

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DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Global Digital Transformation in the Waste Recycling and Circular Economy Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global market for digital solutions dedicated to waste recycling and management is estimated to be $3,287.4 million in 2020 and is forecast to record an 11.6% CAGR by 2030.

The study aims to understand market transformation speed, regional differences in emerging technology adoption, growth opportunities in specific technologies and solutions, and the competitive environment. It will also provide an in-depth analysis of market trends, drivers, and restraints up to 2030.

The global waste management industry is transitioning toward greater digital technology adoption with the growing availability and deployment of smart solutions such as smart bins and fleet management, cloud computing, customer interfaces, waste tracking systems, and AI robotic sorting.

These solutions will significantly improve waste collection, transportation, and recycling efficiency. In the long term, all companies in the waste recycling and management market will need to implement digital strategies to remain competitive and seize the chance for future growth.

Digital technologies and smart solutions dedicated to waste management are well-established in the market. However, only connected and integrated systems that can convert data to valuable information will transform the waste industry and move it closer to a sustainable and circular economy. Future urban development relies on technology, with significant links between smart solutions and sustainable approaches, leading to enormous demand for digitization and technology-based waste recycling and management.

RESEARCH SCOPE

Digitization of the waste recycling and management market includes the data-driven transformation of crucial segments to enable more efficient operations. The segments covered in this report are smart waste recycling bin collection systems; smart fleet management and logistics solutions; smart waste sorting and recycling systems; and enterprise resource planning (ERP), cloud computing, connectivity, and customer interface operations.

Digitization's role and importance are rising and seen as the game-changer in the transformation toward efficient waste recycling and management system and crucial element of the future sustainable smart city and circular economy. Other factors driving market development are the ability to significantly reduce operational costs, allocate resources more accurately, easily adapt to specific client expectations, and support end users to become more efficient and sustainable.

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Key Topics Covered:

1. Strategic Imperatives

2. Growth Opportunity Analysis

3. Growth Opportunity Analysis - Europe

4. Growth Opportunity Analysis - Americas

5. Growth Opportunity Analysis - Middle East and Africa

6. Growth Opportunity Analysis - Asia-Pacific

7. Growth Opportunity Universe

8. Case Studies

9. Next Steps

Companies Mentioned

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/3a8ok3

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Global Digital Transformation Market Report 2021 with Focus on Waste Recycling and Circular Economy Growth Opportunities - ResearchAndMarkets.com -...

China, coal and COP26: can the worlds biggest emitter give up its dirty habit? – The Guardian

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When he was a little boy in the 1980s, Wang Xiaojun was taught to be proud of his home town of Lliang in the north-western Chinese province of Shanxi. Shanxi is Chinas biggest coal-producing region, and Lliang was a significant base for the army during the second world war.

Nestled in the mountains of the dusty Loess Plateau, Lliang, a city of 3.4 million people, has had less to shout about in recent years. A series of corruption scandals in the city brought down several high profile officials shortly after President Xi Jinping came to power in 2013; there are concerns over the high number of babies born with congenital defects, blamed by experts on air pollution; and, last week, a huge flood forced coal mines to close just as China scrambles to tackle its energy crunch.

Coal is the main source of power generation in China, but Xi has vowed to change that. The country has been the worlds biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions for more than a decade now. A year ago, Xi pledged his countrys carbon emissions would peak by 2030, then achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Last month, he announced China would stop building new coal-fired projects overseas in a move that analysts say could be pivotal in tackling global emissions.

Ending a dependency on coal at home has proved trickier. Shortly after he took office, Xi began to plan on low-carbon and sustainable development of resource-based cities. But since September China has been experiencing its own coal dilemma, with power shortages spread across key regions, causing a ripple effect to the global economy. To tackle the crisis, officials ordered more than 70 mines in Inner Mongolia to increase coal production by almost 100m tonnes early this month. And on 29 September Shanxi promised to supply coal to 14 other regions across China to ensure sufficient energy throughout this winter.

Outside China, there is a fear that Beijing may be rethinking its promises on decarbonisation. That mood darkened last week, when it emerged that Xi would not be attending Cop26 in person. It is a worry that some veteran China analysts dismiss as over-interpretation Xi has not left the country since January 2020 and was always unlikely to make an exception for Cop26, particularly as it is being hosted by a western nation.

They argue that Beijings recent whac-a-mole approach merely reflects the messy reality of the countrys energy transition. To residents in Shanxi, however, Chinas reliance on dirty coal is a vicious circle that the province of 37 million people can not easily pull itself out of, despite the promises from central government. It is not about whether China can be less reliant on coal eventually, it is rather about what will happen to a province like ours afterwards, Wang, who now works as a climate campaigner, told the Observer.

As an activist, of course Id like to see my home town move away from coal. After all, I grew up only knowing the sky is grey and coal is the only source of energy. But I also worry what will happen to a province whose economy overwhelmingly depends on coal and heavy industries, and the millions of people whose livelihoods are reliant on them.

In Lliang, villages like Wangs are often built atop barren mountains to avoid constant floods. Until the 1980s, most of the boys would grow up to become farmers. Then coal became a valuable commodity as China began to expand its economy. But a few years ago, as coal depleted underneath some mountains, many villages collapsed and people died. Those who survived moved away. In Wangs old village, only three elderly people are still there, he said. They are reluctant to move. Its where they spent most of their lives.

Growing up with coal miners in the village, Wang saw with his own eyes how dangerous mines could be. Seven years ago, when working in a coal mine, Wangs 38-year-old cousin, Wang Xiaobing, was caught in an accident. A ceiling collapsed and he lost his lower left leg. He was sent home after the incident. But, with a young family to support and lacking the skills to switch career, Xiaobing eventually went back to his former mine as a driver. Shortly after, he developed lung and liver illness and died two years ago.

You see, the addiction to coal is not just on a national level, but also on a personal level. Its not easy to move away from, Wang said. A lot of people here, including another relative of mine, are unhappy with [media] talk of climate change and the [the governments] effort to reduce coal consumption. To us, this is bread and butter. Without it, what would Lliang look like?

They need to start to prepare for a coal-free future right now before its too late.

Stories like this have been commonplace across Chinas coal regions in the past two decades. In the decade between 2000 and 2010, on average 4,870 people died in mine accidents every year. In the US, the figure was only 33. The figure began to decrease dramatically in the last decade as the government imposed strict safety rules for mine owners and nationalised many mines.

Han Jinsong (not his real name), a 50-year-old former coal miner in the city of Fengyang, said that while also working as a miner, his elder brother was hit by a mine car and stayed in hospital for about six months. He became disabled and the coal mine he worked at compensated for once, he said. Thats it.

Han added: Despite all these tragedies, its unrealistic for China to move away from coal. Youve seen the recent power shortages spread across the country. Now the government has to reopen coal mines to meet the accelerating demand. Its always going to be a dilemma.

Its a reality that senior officials have openly admitted. Chinas energy structure is dominated by coal power. This is an objective reality, said Su Wei, deputy secretary-general of the National Development and Reform Commission in Beijing, in April. We have no other choice. For a period of time, we may need to use coal power as a point of flexible adjustment.

The rise and fall of Lliang as well as other coal-heavy cities is also the story of Chinas changing economic and social structure, said Judith Audin, a French sociologist who writes about the coal industry in Shanxi province. In 2010, when Shanxi coal boss a term used as a symbol of Dickensian China often appeared in social media, Lliangs GDP growth was at a staggering 21%. In 2020, it was only 2.7%.

Local officials have been talking about transition for a long time. When Lliangs economy was booming a decade ago, billions were poured into road construction and apartment buildings. But by 2015, supply had far exceeded the demand. Coupled with a decrease in coal consumption, the local economy crashed, and the mayor was sacked on corruption charges.

Across Shanxi, there have been other experiments in recent years, too, said Audin. In Datong, Chinas coal capital, the coal mining land is now covered in solar panels and wind turbines.

But even if these efforts were eventually successful, to what extent will these new energy businesses absorb the excess labour left by coal mining? Audin said. And how would the authorities deal with the generations of coal miners and their families whove helped power China but who have no other skills in the new economy?

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China, coal and COP26: can the worlds biggest emitter give up its dirty habit? - The Guardian

Explainer: White Nationalism | Facing History and Ourselves

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White nationalism is a dangerous ideology thathas seen an exponential rise in prevalence across the United States since 2017.1 The threat of white nationalism gained new attention after the insurrection on January 6 2021, where many members of the mob attacking the US Capitol displayed white nationalist symbols and slogans2. Other recent attacks motivated by white nationalist ideology include the shootings in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; in mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand; in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. White nationalist violence is not a new phenomenon, even if it is taking on new forms. In the United States, the 1979 Greensboro shootings, various attacks committed in the 1980s by the Order, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, were all motivated by the white nationalist ideology.3 Increasingly, white nationalists are targeting young people for recruitment online, and white nationalism has been linked to bullying, threats, and violence in schools. For these reasons, it is critical that we all understand what white nationalism is and why it is harmful.

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Why Hungary is infected by ultras who are almost impossible to control – The Guardian

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There was an air of inevitability when fighting broke out in the away end during Hungarys 1-1 draw with England at Wembley on Tuesday night.

Hungarys fans had been disciplined over their behaviour at four of the previous six games played in front of fans, with homophobic banners seen against Portugal and Germany, and monkey chanting heard against France and England.

The abuse directed at Raheem Sterling and his teammate Jude Bellingham at last months game in Budapest led to Fifa imposing a stadium closure on Hungary after another enforced by Uefa because of the summers troubles.

In Hungary, there is an overriding sense of injustice, with both bans vehemently condemned by football fans and government ministers.

At Ferencvaross game with Real Betis in the Europa League on 30 September, the Green Monsters Ultra group revealed a banner reading: Double standards instead of equality! This is not FARE!

Hungarys foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, wrote on Facebook in July of the Uefa ban: The committee that makes a decision like that is a pitiful and cowardly body. They should be ashamed of themselves.

In Hungary, the Fidesz partys governmental figures are loth to criticise Hungarian football fans, owing to the close relationship between the government and ultra groups. These relationships are more than a decade old, going back as far as when the government was in opposition.

In 2009, in an effort to contain neo-Nazi violence on the terraces, Fidesz met ultras groups from Hungarys biggest clubs and formed the now-infamous and unmistakeable black-shirted Carpathian Brigade.

Founded on the promise of bringing all fans together the ultras groups, the left, liberals, the right for years the Carpathian Brigade built a healthy relationship within Hungary. The group conducts a wide range of charity work and is credited with bringing a much-improved atmosphere to national team games.

Fifa will take no disciplinary action over the confrontation between England's Kyle Walker and Poland's Kamil Glik during last month's World Cup qualifier in Warsaw owing to a lack of evidence. It is understood Football Association officials immediately reported the incident to the Fifa match delegate, with the Polish federation denying any racist element. Both associations were asked for their observations on the incident by Fifa.

A spokesperson for the world governing body said: "After a thorough assessment which included relevant match reports, the Fifa disciplinary committee has decided not to open disciplinary proceedings in relation to Poland against England on September 8 due to insufficient evidence. Fifa's position remains firm and resolute in rejecting all forms of discrimination. In this particular case, no evidence has been produced to support further action."PA Media

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Only the big matches had a proper atmosphere but the ultras of the clubs did not unite behind the national team or skipped the games altogether, Gergely Marosi, a sports journalism lecturer at Budapest Metropolitan University, tells the Guardian.

Because these ultras had their conflicts amongst themselves, sometimes they did not stand close to each other, otherwise there was a chance for trouble. That obviously did not help the atmosphere. Chants were disjointed and coming from different sectors; there were a lot of lifeless games in terms of fan performance.

Yet the Carpathian Brigade soon became a victim of its own success. For many years it was able to keep its members in check, but as the group grew, so did the trouble. Games against fierce rivals Romania in 2013 and 2014 saw coordinated violence, and at Euro 2016 the Carpathian Brigade made headlines around Europe for the first time after clashing with stewards during the game against Iceland in Marseille.

Initially being made up of 50-100 core ultras, the membership grew and the neo-Nazi element that the Hungarian government tried so hard to contain was again seen on the terraces. The group in time became a sort of safe space for that white nationalist element to fester.

White nationalism on the terraces of Hungarian football stadiums dates back to the 1950s, and grew through the 1970s and 1980s as Hungarys youth, disillusioned with communism, became more brazen with their protests.

When the Soviet system collapsed, fan violence at games became commonplace and most of the regular match-attending fans not interested in violence walked away. When communism fell in 1989, attendances in Hungary averaged about 7,000. Today they are below 3,000.

The remaining match-going public largely share similar sentiments. White power tattoos are common among the ultras groups at domestic games, as are Nazi-inspired banners, and this has spilled into national team games more recently, so much so that before Hungarys European Championship game in Munich in June, the Carpathian Brigade warned fans on its Facebook page that they would need to cover tattoos to abide by local laws.

The Carpathian Brigade has become almost impossible to control. The principles it was founded on are starting to shatter and it is impossible to determine who belongs to the group.

On Tuesday night the core of the Carpathian Brigade were not in attendance, yet the groups rising infamy is breeding a culture that inspires those in the ultras culture outside the groups core to hide under its banner.

It was a mix of Hungarian and Polish fans who caused the trouble at Wembley on Tuesday night. Poland and Hungarys close connections date back centuries and in football terms over the past decade the ultras groups have begun to form ever more intertwined relationships.

Before 2009 Hungarys ultras at national team games were fragmented. Ferencvaros ultras would not associate with their rival ultras Ujpest, and neither would Fehervar, Honved or Debrecen. Each ultras group would sit in a different part of the stadium and they would never walk under the same banner.

Now under the Carpathian Brigade name, Hungarys ultras (and to a small extent Polands too) have formed alliances that in the fragmented years most would have thought impossible. That name is starting to become one of the most feared and infamous ultras groups in Europe. It is an extremely worrying development and the question is, where it will all end?

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Why Hungary is infected by ultras who are almost impossible to control - The Guardian

A Hindu foundation has filed a complaint against University of Pennsylvania, saying an online conference perpetuated stereotypes – The Philadelphia…

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Another political rift is stirring U.S. universities, this one rooted in India, and it has resulted in a federal complaint being filed against the University of Pennsylvania.

The Hindu American Foundation, led by Philadelphia-based cofounder and executive director Suhag A. Shukla, has asked the U.S. Department of Educations Office of Civil Rights to investigate Penns treatment of students and faculty of Indian and Hindu descent.

The foundation asserts that Penn faculty, its South Asia Center, and its department of South Asia studies were involved in planning, sponsoring, hosting, and/or participating in a one-sided conference about India and Hindus that promoted negative stereotypes, slurs, and distorted facts. It also says they helped prepare a field manual that perpetuated negative stereotypes.

The three-day online conference, Dismantling Global Hindutva, which was held last month with at least 30,000 attendees, failed to adequately distinguish between Hindutva, generally defined as Hindu nationalism, with Hindu, the religion, Shukla said.

READ MORE: Haverford College students launched as strike last fall after a racial reckoning. The impact still lingers

When an entire country, an entire religious tradition, and its people are painted as dangerous, bigoted, an anathema to democratic ideals, you have no choice but to defend yourself, said Shukla, whose husband is a Penn medical professor.

Penn did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Education said it does not acknowledge complaints it receives until they have been accepted for investigation.

Several faculty members who participated disputed that characterization: A few speakers did argue the two were the same, but it was far from the overarching view, they said.

They were being hotly contested by other panelists, and thats the point of a conference, said Suvir Kaul, an English professor and president of the American Association of University Professors chapter at Penn, who attended the conference.

He dismissed the foundations concerns as unfounded.

Hindu nationalists want to conflate criticism of a political ideology, namely Hindu nationalism, which is also know as Hindutva, with criticism and discrimination against an entire broad-based religion of Hinduism, said Audrey Truschke, an associate professor in the department of history at Rutgers-Newark, who attended the conference. That is incorrect.

Hindutva, she said, advocates for the supremacy of Hindus over other religious minorities, similar to Christian nationalism and white supremacy.

READ MORE: A new wave of activism on campus: Students aggressively seek their demands

Truschke said the conference included a mix of speakers from India, the United States, and elsewhere and offered a variety of viewpoints.

And she added that another national Hindu group, Hindus for Human Rights, wrote a letter supporting the conference and condemning Hindu nationalism.

The conference involved professors or departments from dozens of universities, including Harvard and Princeton, and garnered a letter of support from more than 1,000 faculty members, including 17 at Penn. Other locals include Rutgers, Widener, Villanova, Lehigh, Lafayette, Drexel, Swarthmore, Stockton, Princeton, and Pennsylvania State University. The foundation has filed a complaint only against Penn, alleging that faculty there initiated it, though some professors involved said thats not the case.

While less than 1% of the U.S. population is Hindu, India accounts for the second-largest number of international students at U.S. colleges, nearly 200,000.

The conference has drawn international media attention with some supporting scholars saying they have been subjected to death and rape threats over their involvement. The Hindu American Foundation mounted an intense writing campaign to universities whose scholars were involved.

Its not the first such international conflict to reach university campuses. The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel on college campuses also brought intense debate and accusations of anti-Semitism.

Regarding the Hindutva conference, several professors and students contacted, both supporters and critics, asked not to be identified because they feared professional repercussions or threats.

Truschke said she and her children have been threatened multiple times over the years, most recently in August when a threat was called in to Rutgers and she was contacted by police. It was traced back to India, she said.

She has come under fire from some Rutgers students. Last March, a group of Hindu students in a petition asked the university to prevent Truschke from teaching courses on India or Hinduism. Rutgers in a statement to The Inquirer defended Truschkes freedom to pursue her scholarship and said it emphatically affirms its support for all members of the Hindu community to study and live in an environment in which they not only feel safe, but also fully supported in their religious identity.

Truschkes area of study is 16th- and 17th-century South Asia when a Muslim dynasty ruled over Hindus. Because of the rising Hindu-Muslim tensions in India today and the rising death toll of Muslims who are being lynched by Hindu nationalist groups in India, my work is considered to be politically explosive, she said.

She said the Hindu American Foundation, which is suing her for defamation, has supported the current Indian government, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a right-wing Hindu nationalist who campaigned in the United States for Donald Trump.

Shukla, of the Hindu American Foundation, called threats against academics horrible and not acceptable. She disputed Truschkes account that the foundation supports Modi. Shukla believes that a conference should explore multiple views.

Anyone who disagrees with the predominant ideology that was being promoted at this conference is labeled a fascist, is labeled a supremacist, she said.

One speaker listed Hindu surnames of people alleged to have had a long history of participating in violence, she said. She found about 60 people at Penn with those names, she said.

A medical professor at Penn who asked not to be identified said Penn should have spoken out against the conference or at least disassociated itself from views shared.

We would never say anti-Semitism is OK or Islamophobia is OK, he said. We want to hear from our university that what happened is not OK.

The Department of Educations Office of Civil Rights has investigated more than 1,000 complaints about discriminatory conduct at colleges and universities over the last decade. Many have ended with resolutions in which a school agrees to change its practices or take steps to work with the complainants.

Projit Bihari Mukharji, an associate professor in Penns department of history and sociology of science, who was born and raised Hindu, said he was not offended by the conference and in fact signed the letter in support, though he was not able to attend.

Im not necessarily supporting this or that view, he said. What I do support is the right of university spaces to have civilized conversations in a serious, orderly fashion, where people have the right to push back and disagree.

He said he was appalled that professors who supported the conference were threatened.

That was not the Hinduism my parents taught me, he said.

Kaul, the Penn English professor, said whats happening in India under the current government is a real problem. He noted a New York Times story from last week, which says Modi has used an antiterror law to silence critics, jailing thousands, including poets, political organizers, and a Catholic priest.

A Penn freshman who is Hindu and whose parents are involved in the foundation said that although he has always found Penn welcoming and diverse, the conference was offensive.

I have no problem with professors expressing their opinions on political issues in India, but the problem right now is they are conflating that with Hinduism, he said. That conflation contributes to negative stereotypes about India.

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A Hindu foundation has filed a complaint against University of Pennsylvania, saying an online conference perpetuated stereotypes - The Philadelphia...

Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis? – Discovery Institute

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Photo: Jonathan Wells, by Brian Gage.

A newID the Futureepisode spotlightsThe Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, and specifically, an essay in the new anthology by biologist Jonathan Wells, Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis? As Wells and host Casey Luskin note, the essay title alludes to philosopher of science Thomas Kuhns influential 1962 bookThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argued there that if one studies the history of scientific revolutions, one finds that when the scientific evidence has begun to turn against a dominant scientific paradigm when itsdays are numbered its adherents do not simply concede defeat. Instead they use all their institutional power to suppress dissent and punish proponents of any competing paradigm.

This is the period of crisis, which can last for years and even decades. Wells contends that modern evolutionary theory is a current instance of a dominant paradigm in crisis. He briefly makes the case in this episode, and at greater length in his essay, which appears in the newly released anthology from Harvest House, edited by William Dembski, Casey Luskin, and Joseph Holden.Download the podcast or listen to it here.

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Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis? - Discovery Institute

Gene-editing, Moderna, and transhumanism – The Times of Israel

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As gene-based mRNA vaccines from Moderna are being designed and tested at warp speeds to fight Covid-19, this is also bringing the debate over transhumanism into the forefront.

Transhumanism is a type of futurist philosophy aimed at transforming the human species by means of biotechnologies. Transhumanists see disease, aging and death as undesirable and unnecessary, and aim to transform human beings into post-human species with greater capacities than those of present human beings.

The philosophy is based on secular humanism and sees human nature as an evolutionary work-in-progress with room for improvement and enhancement. However, it is more radical in that it promotes not only traditional means of improving human nature such as education and cultural refinement, but also direct application of medicine and technology to overcome basic biological limits.

Transhumanists give special attention to genetic engineering, robotics, molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, and the Covid-19 pandemic is providing gene-based vaccines a chance to break through into the global health market.

Moderna and gene-editing

Currently there are various companies such as Inovio, Moderna and CanSino Biologics that are testing mRNA and DNA vaccines to counter SARS coronavirus-2 (SARS CoV-2) which causes Covid-19, but Moderna is the front runner that recently nabbed $472 million from U.S. governments Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to develop the vaccine. This is in addition to the $483 million it had already received back in April, bringing its total funding to $955 million.

With U.S. government funding at nearly $1 billion for one company, Moderna may be too big to fail. However, this is perplexing for a company that has never produced a single vaccine. According to a CNN report, Moderna was only established in 2010, has never brought a product to market, nor gotten any of its nine or so vaccine candidates approved for use by the FDA.

However, it has been a long-term Pentagon contractor for biodefense, working closely with Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) on gene-editing and mRNA therapeutics. DARPA is focused on developing emerging disruptive technologies to maintain a competitive edge over adversaries, including many transhuman projects such as genetic engineering and soldier enhancement via robotics.

In the case of Moderna and mRNA therapeutics, DNA vaccines is considered a new paradigm that would disrupt the pharmaceutical industry. Its vision is to harness a new technology that synthesizes messenger RNA, or mRNAwhich is an instruction manual in every living cell for creating proteinto prompt the human body to make its own medicine.

So instead of injecting a piece of virus into a person to stimulate the immune system, the synthesized genes would be shot into the body whereby the genes are edited, deleted, added, to re-engineer human DNA to resist the disease. If successful, scientists hope DNA vaccines could be a transformative treatment for heart disease, metabolic and genetic diseases, kidney failure and even cancer. Moreover, it could be an effective form of biodefense to protect the population against biological warfare, which is also the mandate for DARPA and BARDA.

Transhumanism and hybrids

Indeed, DARPA is also developing other forms of human enhancement in addition to gene editing. Already scientists are merging robotics with the human body in brain-to-computer interface (BCI), wherein individuals with physical injuries can regain their functions, and soldiers become smarter and more powerful through the fusing of their brain with machines.

In a way, the Pentagon is now building real iron man similar to the American superhero based on the Marvel Comics character. Soldiers in exoskeleton suits are physically more powerful than those without, while other soldiers with bionic limbs perform better than adversaries with human limbs. When one adds artificial intelligence with BCI, the sky is the limit for an army of these genetically modified and robotically enhanced humanoids.

But U.S. is not the only country engaged in human enhancement and transhumanism, as Russia and China are also in hot pursuit with exoskeletons, vaccines and brain implants. As this competition gains traction, one wonders what the future of their militaries may look like as human beings are steadily integrated with machines to become armies of iron man.

Here the Book of Daniel may lend some insights. In interpreting King Nebuchadnezzars dream of an image with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay, Daniel revealed the parts as the sequence of world empires, with the feet of iron and clay being the last.

King Nebuchadnezzars dream manDaniel 2

All Telugu Christian Songs Lyrics - , 5 2016

In Daniel 2:43 it is written, as you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay, that seems to describe a hybrid of man (clay) mixed with machine (iron). And as transhumanism and biotech gain momentum, armies of hybrid humans of iron and clay may be a real possibility in a not too distant future world.

Dr. Christina Lin is a US-based foreign policy analyst specializing in China-Mediterranean relations. She has extensive US government experience working on national security issues and was a CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) research consultant for Jane's Information Group.

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Gene-editing, Moderna, and transhumanism - The Times of Israel

Hybrid Transhuman Black-eyed Babies Pandemic Babies …

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Posted by Jerry Derecha

PostedbyJerry DerechaonSeptember 30, 20210Comments

This is absolutely horrifying. They are not following Natural Law by doing this. Unless all the mothers had been vaccinated. Then they brought these little monsters upon themselves.

https://www.roxytube.com/v/fSLwfb

| Hybrid Transhuman Black-eyed Baby

To see these children being born as Serpent Seedesque black-eyed semi-synthetic abominations is certainly shocking, but not surprising and would fit right alongside our current prevailing theory regarding the DNA modifying aspirations of the EL-ites and their plans to kill or zombify the rest of us. It would make sense for them to target parts of the female genome to ensure that any child born moving forward would be loyal to the Beast & the Beast System and not technically human. THAT baby does NOT look human. It looks like a remote controlled drone baby from Tesla or something. Those eyes arent just dark. They aresodark that it almost looks like CGI(Maybe thats what it is. Judge for yourself, but I dont think so).

Source:https://www.massappealnews.com/2021/09/29/covid-video-black-eyed-vaccine-babies-admixture-of-creepy-aliens-and-manikins/

Pandemic babies resemble aliens.

Blog King,Mass Appeal

MEXICO A video has gone viral that shows the ill effects of the COVID vaccine oninfants. The parents were inoculated between December 2020 and January 2021. Many of theblack-eyed babieshave dilated pupils coupled withprematureaging. The tots resemble an admixture of aliens andmanikins. The video shows a baby sitting up at 4 months old. It also shows an infant crawling at 2 months, a baby walking at 3 months and acrumb snatchersayingmamaat 4 months.

Not to mention a neonate grew a damn tooth. Man, its one of thecreepiestvideos youll ever see. Social media reaction was priceless.One viewer wrote,No easy way to say it. Its some no soul having horror show sh*t.Another added,They were given super powers! The age of the X-babies is at hand.

Are parents to blame?

Is it time to recall and re-examine the vaccine?

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Humans are the only beings who can take responsibility for the world, there are no others: Thomas Fuchs – The Hindu

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The more AI gets established, the more likely it will be forgotten that decisions can ultimately only be made by humans, says the psychiatrist-philosopher

Thomas Fuchs is a psychiatrist and philosopher who lives and practises in Heidelberg, Germany. He holds the prestigious Karl Jaspers Chair for philosophical foundations of psychiatry and psychotherapy at Heidelberg University, where he is a senior physician in the psychiatric unit and heads the department of Phenomenological Psychopathology. In this exclusive interview, he talks about AI, data-driven societies, and contests the transhumanist notion that human beings are fundamentally imperfect and need to be reshaped and enhanced.

What I think needs a defence today is the humanistic image of man. At the centre of this image is the human person as a physical or embodied being, as a free, self-determining being, and ultimately as an essentially social being connected with others. The definitions that constitute a humanistic, personal image of humanity culminate in the concept of human dignity, understood as the claim to recognition that human beings raise through their bodily existence and co-existence. To what extent is this self-image of man currently under challenge?

In his book Homo Deus (2017), historian Yuval Noah Harari has sketched out a gloomy scenario for the future, according to which scientific and technological progress will gradually render the liberal and humanistic view of humanity obsolete. According to Harari, we will increasingly surrender to the algorithms, data analyses, and forecasts of artificial intelligence, as they can already provide better information about the future than our limited human intelligence: Homo sapiens is an obsolete algorithm, he says.

More generally, with the progress of artificial intelligence, digitalisation of the life world, and the reduction of the mind to neuronal processes, the human being appears more and more a product of data and algorithms. Thus, we conceive ourselves in the image of our machines, and conversely, we elevate our machines and brains to new subjects. At the same time, demands for an enhancement of human nature culminate in transhumanist visions of taking human evolution to a new stage. Against this self-reification of the human being, my book defends a humanism of embodiment: our corporeality, aliveness, and embodied freedom are the foundations of a self-determined existence, which uses new technologies only as a means instead of submitting to them.

This is not an easy question to answer. Classical humanism is undoubtedly anthropocentric to a high degree, and this can no longer be sustained today. Its lack of consideration of our embeddedness in the earthly environment is all too palpable today in the ecological crisis. The post-humanist criticism of anthropocentrism, however, overshoots the mark. To radically question or even want to overcome man because of his misconduct towards nature is absurd humans are the only beings who can take responsibility for the world, there are no others. As I write in my introduction: Even an ecological redefinition of our relationship with the earthly environment will succeed only if our own embodiment and aliveness as connectedness or conviviality with our natural environment is at its centre. The death of the subject much invoked by postmodernism would also be the end of the collective effort to save the earth algorithms, cyborgs, or post-human beings will not do this in our place.

Apart from the many positive possibilities of digital technologies, one of their main dangers is that they provide forms of technocratic regulation and manipulation of society that push freedom further and further back. We will be increasingly willing to get rid of the burden of our own responsibility and hand it over to machines and their algorithms. In this way, international IT companies on the one hand, and authoritarian regimes and state apparatuses on the other, are increasingly taking control of our lives.

The more the idea of AI as a supposedly superior form of analysis, prediction, and evaluation becomes established, the more likely it will be forgotten that decisions, with all their imponderables, can ultimately only be made by humans. Responsibility is no technical category; it cannot be passed on to artificial systems. But if we conceive of ourselves as objects, be it as algorithms or as neuronally determined apparatuses, then we forget our fundamental capacity of freedom and responsibility, and we surrender ourselves to the rule of those who seek to manipulate such apparatuses and to control them socio-technologically.

The term intelligence is derived from the Latin intelligere to see, understand, comprehend. It, therefore, presupposes subjectivity, namely someone who sees or understands something; above all, someone able to see himself and his situation from a higher perspective, so that he can find creative solutions to problems based on an overview. For example, he who leaves signs on his way through a forest to find his way back later, acts intelligently.

So, if we use the term intelligence to describe the ability to grasp oneself or a situation from a superordinate perspective in order to solve problems, then we certainly cannot attribute such abilities to any apparatus that lacks consciousness. The term intelligent is used here only improperly, just as one does not assume that a smartphone is really smart it only blindly executes programs that can be described as cleverly developed. The supposed intelligence of AI is, therefore, only borrowed: each of these programs is only as smart or sophisticated as the programmer who designed it.

The transformation of our social interactions into a semi-virtual screen experience is a mass experiment and we do not yet know how it will affect our psyche and social life; nor do we know what the consequences of social isolation and gradual de-realisation will be. In any case, being bodily together in a real space is still the most effective form of presence. And touch and resistance are the primary test of reality. The increasing transformation of our relations with the world into images and virtual spaces is already undermining our shared reality. Research has shown that conspiracy theories (e.g. Trumps stolen election or COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs) are mostly spread among people with reduced or missing social contacts, who compensate their loneliness by means of Internet echo chambers. We should keep this in mind when singing the praises of digitalisation. Humans are social beings in need of bodily resonance and contact; they need the physical presence of other people, otherwise they will dry out like plants in the sand.

It is true that increasing digitisation is resulting in a disembodiment of social relationships, which is making some of the differences tied to the body, its appearance, its gender, etc. less meaningful or even eliminating them. Whether this will contribute to higher justice and equality of individuals, however, can be doubted. Because the lived body is ultimately also our principium individuationis if it is replaced by a digital pattern or cluster of information received through social media, we will be formally more equal, but at the cost of losing our bodily presence, our appearance, our charisma. That seems like a bad deal to me.

I think that it is only through intersubjectivity that we attain reality in a genuine sense: the experience of that which exists independently of our subjective, momentary perception. This experience requires transcending our subjective, egocentric relationship to the environment, which only becomes possible through the experience of an alien subjectivity. Only the other, and especially his gaze, breaks through my subjective horizon and forms a reality beyond my own. This also fundamentally changes space it is no longer just surrounding space or environment, but an intersubjective space.

As I like to say: Even Robinson Crusoe saw his island for 10 years through the eyes of others it belonged to a common world, although nobody else saw it. Only in dreams do we dive into a purely egocentric world, where everything refers only to ourselves.

I dont know Agambens critique in detail. I have only read that he doubted at the beginning whether the pandemic was not just an invention, which was, of course, nonsense. That the state of emergency must always remain a temporary state in need of clear justification is, however, essential for a democracy on this, we probably agree.

Seralathan teaches German at Goethe Institut Chennai and Milind teaches German language and literature at IIT-Madras.

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Humans are the only beings who can take responsibility for the world, there are no others: Thomas Fuchs - The Hindu

With ‘Dune,’ Frank Herbert Designed the Maxi Pad of the Future – WIRED

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Dont tell Frank Herbert (or the people at Thinx), but he actually came up with a pretty genius pair of menstrual underwear. Back in 1965. Only, well, his was outerwearand it did a lot more than collect blood and endometrial lining.

Herberts invention is, of course, the stillsuit. One of the iconic pieces of tech in his novel Duneand an iconic piece of sci-fi tech, periodits an invention born of necessity. Arrakis, where most of the novel takes place, is a desert; to survive, the planets native Fremen construct form-fitting suits that collect all of their moist excretionssweat, urine, feces, droplets from exhaled breathand recycle them into potable water. The idea is actually kind of brilliant and would, if you think about it, be hugely beneficial for a few days a month to anyone menstruating. The stillsuits would just wick away any discharge and recycle it with everything else!

To be clear, Herbert never mentions this specific purpose in the book. (No, thats a very, very good point, says Jacqueline West, Dunes costume designer, when I ask her about my maxi pad notion. Maybe Frank Herbert back in those days didnt think that far, but he thought of everything else.) The author describes the stillsuits in great detail in the bookthe tubes that collect air from the nose, the way body motion powers the pumps, the micro-sandwich that works as a filter and heat-exchange systembut he didnt seem to consider that some bodies have different functions than others. (Though, let the record show that there is an entry on Fremen menstruation [Fremenstruation?] in the Dune Encyclopedia.) Herbert also got the science wrong. Theres no way any suit could properly recycle the bodys fluids the way he describes without violating basic thermodynamics. Still, what he came up with back in the 1960s wouldve provided a great way to deal with period blood without spending hundreds of dollars a year on tampons, underwear liners, or menstrual cups.

Of course, Herberts not alone here. Spacefaring sci-fi stories rarely consider periods. Ripley, as I recall, never went around the Nostromo looking for a tampon. Rey didnt search the Millennium Falcon, either, though you can imagine her wrap garment could be put to some creative uses. Its hard to imagine what wouldve happened if The Martians Mark Watney had a uterus. Even the current adaptation of Y: The Last Man, which features a cast almost entirely composed of period-havers, doesn't talk about menses much. It just isnt a topic often covered in science fiction, unless its speculative fiction like Handmaids Tale that primarily deals with reproduction.

And, lets be real, its not like sci-fi never deals with matters of the body. For decades the genre has been littered with cyborgs, transhumanism, and even virtual worldsall of which challenge modern ideas of what bodies, and their functions, are. There is ample room for discussion of periods, but rarely do those discussions happen. (Perhaps technology has rendered them obsolete.) Even though stillsuits act like a second skin, they in no way make desert-dwellers cyborgs, and in Herbert's world such a thing likely wouldve been nixed anyway considering the forbiddance of thinking machines. Instead, his genius analog piece of equipment doesnt perform what could be one of its key functions.

Its hard not to imagine what could've happened if more writers broached the topic. Sci-fi tends to dream up the things humanity ultimately seeks to put into the worldartificial intelligence, robots, smartphonesand perhaps if Herbert had planted the idea in his groundbreaking bestselling novel, someone at Procter & Gamble wouldve thought it was cool to invest in developing something beyond dry-weave and pads with wings. (Though, TBH, those wings are clutch.) Instead, period technology has been the same for decadesand NASA once suggested Sally Ride take 100 tampons on a one-week trip to space.

Look, maybe nobody wants to read about any bathroom activity in a sci-fi booksuch mundanities are for life, not the page (or screen). But considering Herbert did explain moisture recapture from urine and feces and not menstruation, it does seem like an oversightone indicative of his novel's blind spots when it comes to the roles of its women-identified characters. (There are no trans characters in the Dune novel.) The Bene Gesserit are some of the most politically and spiritually powerful women in the Dune universe, yet theyre also spoken of as threatening space witches. Paul Atreides mother, Jessica, a powerful member of the Bene Gesserit herself, is a strong central figure, but her narrative is mostly there to serve Pauls. Same with Chani, the Fremen who becomes his concubine. (A lot of these characterizations led to Denis Villeneuve amplifying the roles of women in his film adaptation of Herberts book.) Perhaps their bodily needs werent considered because their actual lives werent considered.

Luckily, though, there are now people finally doing what Dune didnt. DivaCup and others are out to disrupt the menstrual cup market; GladRags is bringing back reusable pads; Knix, Modibodi, and others have all kinds of absorbent period underwearpretty much hyperlocal stillsuits without all the water reclamation functionality. Period products are now a $20-billion-plus industry. Just imagine if Frank Herbert had foreseen that.

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Succession Returns, With No Real People Involved – The New York Times

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As Logan musters his defense, he leans on the shows fictional American president, an unseen Republican he derisively calls the raisin. In the end, raisins are grapes, and grapes are meant to be stomped. Or cultivated, when the old ones stop giving juice.

With an election looming, Logan who owns a Fox-like cable news network with conservative king-making power begins auditioning candidates, including a slick quasi-fascist played by Justin Kirk. To Logan, the leader of the free world is, as he puts it in Season 1, basically an intern. This may explain his contempt for the presidential ambitions of his oldest son, Connor (Alan Ruck): Connors dream isnt just absurd, its slumming.

Is there anyone good in all of this? Shiv, once a political consultant of modest principle, has ideals shell cling to a touch longer than the other Roys, before discarding them like a champagne flute onto a waiters tray. Roman is an irresistible imp, but his eternal joking-not-joking mode makes him all the more sneakily dangerous, like a circa-2016 internet meme-lord.

Beyond the family core, you get to the characters who are merely morally weak in the way you or I might be if thrown into this world. Shivs husband, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), is an arriviste with a tormenting awareness of his dispensability. Greg (Nicholas Braun), a cousin from a poorer branch of the family, is delightfully squirmy, a worm constantly twisting to avoid the hook and maybe wriggle a few inches higher up the fishing line.

Gregs haplessness makes him sympathetic, but is he honorable? His grandfather Ewan (James Cromwell), Logans embittered brother, tells him in the new season that he is in the service of a monstrous enterprise. Ewan may be a sanctimonious scold he is the most principled and least likable character on the show but he is not wrong.

Thats Succession for you. The best lack all charisma, while the worst are full of panache and intensity.

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BANGLADESH Rising number of baptised among tribal people in Rajshahi – AsiaNews

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A few days ago, another 47 ethnic Santal received the sacrament of Christian initiation in the parish of Bhutahara Quasi. We have been visiting these villages for over seven years, said Fr Swapon Purification.More than 70 people will receive the baptism this Wednesday. In the past I worshipped nature and trees, one of the newly baptised said. Now I turn to Jesus in my prayers.

Naogaon (AsiaNews) A group of 47 adults were baptised last Wednesday in Korbala, a village in Bhutahara Quasi parish, Diocese of Rajshahi, northern Bangladesh. PIME missionaries founded the parish in 2005, which now has more than 2,500 members.

For years the missionaries worked among ethnic Santal and Oraon, tribal peoples indigenous to the area, who traditionally practise a form of pantheism closely linked to nature worship and the veneration of ancestral spirits.

We have been visiting these villages for over seven years, explained Fr Swapon Purification, speaking to AsiasNews.

We brought the Bible and the Word of God, celebrated Masses and proposed catechetical courses. The result has been surprising: 47 adults from 15 families received the baptism in Korbala. In another village in our parish, more than 70 people will receive the baptism this Wednesday.

Fr Swapon praised the catechists who, through their work, managed to enter the hearts of the new believers.

It seems to me that catechists have played a significant role and their commitment has been exemplary; they have continuously visited these remote areas that can only be reached after long hours of walking.

On each trip they stopped in the village for three to seven days to bring the word of God. The rest of the work was done by us priests together with the sisters.

Bernabas Hasda played a leading role in the new baptisms. An ethnic Santal, the 66-year-old catechist has been engaged in this precious task for 40 years.

For him, "There are huge opportunities to enter into people's hearts and bring Bangladeshs tribal community closer to Christianity. PIME missionaries have been at the forefront in this region of the country for years. We are following the path traced by them.

One of the newly baptised is Durga Joachim Basra, a 40-year-old farmer who shared his joy after receiving the sacrament.

In the past I worshipped nature and trees and practised, together with the tribe, rituals related to natures fruitfulness. I didn't have a specific God. Now I turn to Jesus in my prayers. I believe that thanks to him I will obtain salvation. I am very happy to have received baptism.

Another new believer, Buddhinath Hembrom, also expressed his joy. I thank the priests, nuns and catechists for bringing me closer to Jesus and for giving me the joy of baptism, he said.

Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country. Christians constitute less than 1 per cent of the population.

Thanks to the work of priests, nuns and catechists, especially in remote villages and regions, the number of Bangladeshi Catholics is rising despite ongoing tensions with majority Muslims, which often lead to violence against Christians.

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Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis …

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For the day ahead

Litecoin would need to move through the $171 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $175 into play.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Litecoin to break out from Sundays high $174.99.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely cap the upside.

In the event of another breakout, Litecoin could test resistance at the 23.6% FIB of $178 and the second major resistance level at $180.

Failure to move through the $171 pivot would bring the first major support level at $166 into play.

Barring an extended sell-off, Litecoin should steer clear of sub-$160. The second major support level at $161 should limit the downside.

First Major Support Level: $166

Pivot Level: $171

First Major Resistance Level: $175

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $178

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $223

62% FIB Retracement Level: $296

Ripples XRP rose by 1.76% on Sunday. Reversing a 0.37% decline from Saturday, Ripples XRP ended the week up by 11.74% to $1.05524.

Tracking the broader market, Ripples XRP fell to an early morning intraday low $1.02249 before making a move.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $1.0074, Ripples XRP rallied to a late intraday high $1.08920.

Ripples XRP broke through the 38.2% FIB of $1.0659 and the first major resistance level at $1.0707.

A late pullback, however, saw Ripples XRP fall back through the first major resistance level and the 38.2% FIB before ending the day at sub-$1.06 levels.

At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was down by 0.08% to $1.05438. A mixed start to the day saw Ripples XRP rise to an early morning high $1.05542 before falling to a low $1.05438.

Ripples XRP left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

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Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis ...

Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis October 19th, 2021 – Yahoo Finance

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Ethereum

Ethereum fell by 2.65% on Monday. Reversing a 0.46% gain from Sunday, Ethereum ended the day at $3,745.48.

A bullish start to the day saw Ethereum rise to an early morning intraday high $3,894.7 before hitting reverse.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $3,963, Ethereum slid to an early afternoon intraday low $3,676.35.

Ethereum fell through the first major support level at $3,687 before briefly revisiting $3,800 levels.

A bearish end to the day, however, saw Ethereum slide back to sub-$3,800 levels and into the red.

At the time of writing, Ethereum was up by 0.20% to $3,753.06. A mixed start to the day saw Ethereum fall to an early morning low $3,731.22 before rising to a high $3,765.55.

Ethereum left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Ethereum would need to move through the $3,772 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $3,868 play.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break out from $3,850 levels.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Mondays high $3,894.70 would likely cap the upside.

In the event of a broad-based crypto rally, Ethereum could test the second major resistance level at $3,991.

Failure to move through the $3,772 pivot would bring the first major support level at $3,650 into play.

Barring an extended sell-off, however, Ethereum should steer clear of sub-$3,500 levels. The second major support level at $3,554 should limit the downside.

First Major Support Level: $3,650

Pivot Level: $3,772

First Major Resistance Level: $3,868

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $3,369

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $2,740

62% FIB Retracement Level: $1,725

Litecoin rose by 1.01% on Monday. Partially reversing a 1.22% loss from Sunday, Litecoin ended the day at $185.63.

A bullish start to the day saw Litecoin rise to a mid-morning intraday high $187.50 before hitting reverse.

Story continues

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $189, Litecoin slid to an early afternoon intraday low $178.51.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $178 and the 23.6% FIB of $178, Litecoin revisited $187 levels before easing back.

At the time of writing, Litecoin was down by 0.20% to $185.25. A mixed start to the day saw Litecoin fall to an early morning low $184.71 before rising to a high $186.20.

Litecoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Litecoin would need to avoid the $184 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $189 into play.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Litecoin to break out from Mondays high $187.50.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and resistance at $190 would likely cap the upside.

In the event of another breakout, Litecoin could test resistance at $200 before any pullback. The second major resistance level sits at $193.

A fall through the $184 pivot would bring the first major support level at $180 and the 23.6% FIB of $178 into play.

Barring an extended sell-off, Litecoin should steer clear of sub-$170. The second major support level at $175 should limit the downside.

First Major Support Level: $180

Pivot Level: $184

First Major Resistance Level: $189

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $178

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $223

62% FIB Retracement Level: $296

Ripples XRP fell by 1.05% on Monday. Following a 3.61% slide on Sunday, Ripples XRP ended the day at $1.08233.

A mixed start to the day saw Ripples XRP rise to a mid-morning intraday high $1.10500 before hitting reverse.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $1.1479, Ripples XRP fell to an early afternoon intraday low $1.06510.

While steering clear of the first major support level at $1.0274, Ripples XRP fell through the 38.2% FIB of $1.0695.

Finding mid-afternoon support, however, Ripples XRP broke back through the 38.2% FIB to end the day at $1.08 levels.

At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was up by 0.11% to $1.08357. A mixed start to the day saw Ripples XRP fall to an early morning low $1.07858 before rising to a high $1.08704.

Ripples XRP left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Ripples XRP would need to move back through the $1.0841 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $1.1032 into play.

Support would be needed, however, for Ripples XRP to break back through to $1.10 levels.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Mondays high $1.1050 would likely cap the upside.

In the event of a broad-based crypto rally, Ripples XRP could test resistance at $1.15 before any pullback. The second major resistance level sits at $1.1240.

Failure to move back through the $1.0841 pivot would bring the 38.2% FIB of $1.0659 and the first major support level at $1.0633 into play.

Barring another extended sell-off, however, Ripples XRP should avoid sub-$1.05 levels. The second major support level sits at $1.0442.

First Major Support Level: $1.0633

Pivot Level: $1.0841

First Major resistance Level: $1.1032

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.8533

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $1.0659

62% FIB Retracement Level: $1.4096

Please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Thanks, Bob

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis October 19th, 2021 - Yahoo Finance

Litecoin Price Prediction: LTC on cusp of 26% breakout – FXStreet

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Litecoin price is on the penultimate leg of a technical formation that will catalyze a quick bull rally. LTC needs to clear one critical hurdle to kick-start a run-up to levels last seen more than a month ago.

Litecoin price has been on a slow but steady uptrend since October 13 and is approaching an inflection point. From September 7 to October 19, LTC set up three distinctive swing lows. The central one is deeper than the ones on either side and forms the head. In contrast, the ones on either side of comparable depths are referred to as shoulders. Together, this price action is known as head-and-shoulders.

A trend line drawn across the peaks of these swing lows results in a neckline or horizontal resistance at $191.20. This technical formation forecasts a 26% upswing, determined by adding the distance between the neckline and the heads lowest point. Adding this measure to the breakout point at $191.20 reveals a target at $243.07.

While this theoretical target for Litecoin price is plausible after producing a decisive close above the neckline, it will face hurdles at $212.26 and $232.68 before reaching its target. Therefore, Litecoin price must shatter these blockades to achieve a 26% ascent to $243.07.

LTC/USDT 9-hour chart

On the other hand, Litecoin price might not produce a breakout above $191.20 from its current position. Investors must expect the possibility of LTC retesting the $176.68 or $170.48 support floors before proceeding to shatter the neckline.

If Litecoin price fails to bounce off $165.28, it will put the upswing in jeopardy. A lower low below this barrier will put the bulls in a tight spot and invalidate the bullish thesis. In such a situation, LTC is likely to slide lower and retest $158.14 or other support floors.

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Litecoin Price Prediction: LTC on cusp of 26% breakout - FXStreet

After Surviving the Crypto Wave for a Decade, Where is Litecoin Headed? – Analytics Insight

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Litecoin is a cryptocurrency that was up by more than 140% the previous year. But now when we take a look at LTC, it is one of the fastest-growing coins until May this year, but with the external factors colliding the situation has drastically changed. Litecoin prices have been highly volatile. Like other cryptocurrencies, one of the big reasons for the fall of this cryptocurrency is the overall weakness of Bitcoin.

In general, as similar cryptocurrencies hold great correlations, it can be seen as it had fast growth, the coin may have witnessed a decline. The other major concern can also be the United States for higher capital gains taxes might have played a role in the financial industry. The Litecoin price predictions suggest that it has potential, but will it be able to survive? Lets find our answers here!

Litecoin is a superior and a strong alternative to fiat money when compared to the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum. Since ETH is not developed as money, we can still use it. ETH is a much more complex concept than Litecoin. LTC is just a digital p2p money with a built-in scarcity that can work faster when used for transactions. So, the adoption of Litecoin has been easy. So as the BTC increases, the transaction costs will rise and be cheaper making the transactions easier, thereby increasing the prices of LTC.

Litecoin has been advancing and has been included as a means of payment in Venezuelas mainstream international payments systems. Using the Remesas remittance platform, foreigners can send Litecoin to family members or even friends in the region. And the interesting part is that the Litecoin Foundation has a 9.9% share in the German WEG bank. The coin can be recognized in the long-term as a possible cryptocurrency to buy or invest in real estate in Germany.

The experts have predicted that Litecoin has a bright future in 2021 due to all integrations and partnerships that it has made. The Litecoin community is also very active with all the new and upcoming developments. It is clear that this cryptocurrency has great potential and will rise further being a tough competitor for all the currencies in the crypto market. Even so, the price of the cryptocurrency is below US$300 and is less likely to hit its all-time high of US$412.96, which it achieved on May 10th, 2021. 2022 is going to be crucial for Litecoin to stay in the race in the highly volatile crypto market.

The Litecoin predictions are based on the fact that it is one of the most appreciated cryptocurrencies across the globe. Even with low transaction costs and confirmations, Litecoin is emerging as the new form of payment standard for consumers and businesses worldwide. This cryptocurrency also reassures traders that costs are likely lower than what they believed. But the processing fees are less than those that are incurred by credit cards or any other types of payments even with integration is free. If the cryptocurrency can break above its current price and hold on in the long run, then the forecast says it will retest its all-time high.

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After Surviving the Crypto Wave for a Decade, Where is Litecoin Headed? - Analytics Insight

Litecoin 10-Year Anniversary Arrives Alongside Altcoin’s Darkest Hour – bitcoinist.com

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On October 13, 2011, the Litecoin network first went live. Today marks ten years from the debut of digital silver, which has arrived at the same time as the asset has made a new all-time low against BTC.

Is it lights out for Litecoin from here, or will this ten-year anniversary be the start of a dramatic turnaround the asset is known for.

Ten-year anniversaries are always a special event worth celebrating. LTC holders might not feel that way, considering their coin has fallen out of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap, and has in general underperformed nearly every other altcoin technically.

The LTC ratio against BTC has been through the wringer, just this week revisiting all-time lows and sending sentiment to the darkest its ever been.

Related Reading | Why Litecoin Could Ultimately Benefit From Bitcoins Success

Although technical picture is undoubtedly looking bad for the LTCBTC trading pair, fundamentally, there are few altcoins stronger than Litecoin. And on its ten year anniversary, it also has more longevity behind it than 90% of the rest of the market today.

The number of LTC transactions daily has been breaking records all year long. It is being heavily accumulated via shares of Grayscales LTCN. And now, on the assets ten year anniversary, revisiting all-time lows might have been necessary to prove to naysayers that it wont go any lower. Ever.

The LTCBTC chart above shows a massive bullish divergence, just as cycle lows are swept and historical lows are reached.

Litecoin trading against the dollar below, is even more bullish, still holding strong above the resistance turned support level at the neckline of an enormous Adam and Eve double bottom pattern.

A reversal in the LTCBTC pair and a rise in Bitcoin would fit the technical structure of a shocking upward move in Litecoin to the top of a pitchfork channel. Past upward moves took very little time to reach the top after passing through the median. Why would this time be different?

Related Reading | Technically Flawless Litecoin Could Lead To Biblical Bullish Move

Litecoin moves fast, because FOMO sets in the moment the market realizes it was wrong. Currently, because of the altcoins underperformance during this cycle, investors arent looking its way. But because today is the ten year anniversary, there could be more reason to see the light through all the darkness.

Follow @TonySpilotroBTC on Twitter or via the TonyTradesBTC Telegram. Content iseducational and should not beconsidered investment advice.

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Litecoin 10-Year Anniversary Arrives Alongside Altcoin's Darkest Hour - bitcoinist.com

Litecoin (LTC) price prediction: On the verge of breaking 26% – City Telegraph

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Litecoin price is on the penultimate leg of a technical formation that will catalyze a rapid bullish rally.LTC must clear a critical hurdle to start a race at levels last seen over a month ago.

Litecoin price has been following a slow but steady uptrend since October 13 and is approaching an inflection point.From September 7 to October 19, LTC implemented three separate swing lows.The central is deeper than those on each side and forms the head.In contrast, those on either side of comparable depths are called shoulders.Together, this price action is known as the head and shoulders.

A trendline drawn through the highs of these swing lows results in a neck line or horizontal resistance at $ 191.20.This technical training provides for a rise of 26%, determined by adding the distance between the neckline and the lowest point of the head.Adding this metric to the break point at $ 191.20 reveals a target of $ 243.07.

While this theoretical goal for the price of Litecoin is plausible after achieving a decisive close above the neckline, it will face obstacles at $ 212.26 and $ 232.68 before reaching its goal. .Therefore, the price of Litecoin needs to break these blockages to reach a 26% ascent to $ 243.07.

9 hour LTC / USDT chart

On the flip side, the price of Litecoin might not produce a breakout above $ 191.20 from its current position.Investors should expect LTC to re-test the support lows of $ 176.68 or $ 170.48 before proceeding to break the neckline.

If the price of Litecoin does not rebound to $ 165.28, it will jeopardize the recovery.A lower low below this barrier will put traders in a difficult position and invalidate the bullish thesis.In such a situation, LTC is likely to drop and retest $ 158.14 or other support floors.

Litecoin Price Predictions: How It could go in 2021 and Beyond

Litecoin cryptocurrency was up by more than 140% in 2020. In 2021, LTC showed very fast growth till May; however, due to some external factors, the situation significantly changed. The Litecoin price has been through a lot from its launch going up and down. Its price started at about $3 per LTC and has gone through a number of bubble cycles or alt seasons.

Eventually, Litecoin closed 2020 at $124.69 (on CoinMarketCap). From December 31st, 2020, to May 9th of this year, the price rose by 211%. After it hit the $400 level, the coin started dropping. From the period between May 10th and 23rd, it declined by 63.26%. Similar to other cryptocurrencies, one of the big reasons for such a fall is the overall weakness of Bitcoin. In general, similar and close currencies have tight correlations. It could have been seen that due to the fast growth of the LTC, the coin would have declines. Lastly, the concerns in the United States for higher capital gains taxes played a role in the financial industry.

As for the long-term Litecoin prediction, the outlook suggests that Litecoin has potential. Will the price of Litecoin go up this year and in the years to come? Lets find out!

Litecoin (LTC) is a so-called digital peer-to-peer currency integrated into open-source software. Technically, the Litecoin project is very similar to the Bitcoin system. Litecoin production and transmission are based on an open-source encryption protocol. There is no central control. With this in mind, all transactions, balances, and expenses are managed by a peer-to-peer network. Litecoin is created on the basis of a cryptological hash function, which in turn generates blocks. Litecoin can be exchanged for Bitcoin and fiat money. The processing in question usually takes place via online exchanges (cryptocurrency exchanges).

Litecoin was created by a former Google employee, Charlie Lee, in 2011. The cryptocurrency was created based on the Bitcoin protocol but differs in terms of the hash algorithm used. Furthermore, it also differs in hard caps, block transaction times, and some other factors. Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011. On October 13, 2011, 5 days later, the Litecoin network went live.

Lees goal was to create a light version of Bitcoin with Litecoin. Developers have always stated that you can consider Litecoin to be the silver version of Bitcoin. Litecoin differs from Bitcoin in the prioritization of the transaction confirmation rate, which is approximately 2.5 minutes per block. However, the reality is that Litecoin users will have to wait up to about 30 minutes for their transaction to be processed due to network congestion.

Litecoin is especially faster at handling payments than Bitcoin and is an excellent, proven complementary alternative. Its a very cheap, super-safe highway for making payments especially when it comes to micro-transactions, like, for example, when paying for a cup of coffee. In addition, the Litecoin community is working on the implementation of all kinds of new fintech gadgets that are actually intended for Bitcoin. Litecoin is now working on the implementation of the lightning network protocol and applications for smart contracts and privacy (including confidential transactions & MimbleWimble). Litecoin is certainly light and cheap, but above all in good hands with fantastic ambitions. Litecoin has a bright future as a classic and reliable altcoin.

Most investors see Bitcoin as gold and Litecoin as silver. Litecoin was developed as an alternative to Bitcoin and developed as a lightweight that solved some shortcomings of Bitcoin. It is a classic altcoin with more than 6 years of experience and development behind it. Software updates and new tech can be easily added to Litecoin.

As with Bitcoin, there is also a built-in scarcity. In total, only 84 million Litecoin can be mined. Litecoin can be considered a much cheaper and faster alternative. In fact, Litecoin is underestimated relative to other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is slower and more expensive to use compared to Litecoin.

The fact that Litecoin is fast and cheap has advantages, especially since people in third world countries without bank accounts can still get Litecoin cheaply and quickly.

Litecoin is a superior alternative to fiat money when compared to Ethereum. Ethereum was not developed as money, but it can certainly be used as such. You could rather consider Ethereum to be crypto gas.

In addition, Ethereum is a much more difficult concept to grasp than Litecoin. Litecoin is just digital p2p money with a built-in scarcity that actually works faster as a transaction medium. This makes adoption much easier and does not require much knowledge. Simply install the wallet app on your smartphone, and you will have your own Swiss Litecoin bank account with which you can actually conduct transactions almost immediately. As the popularity and price of Bitcoin increase and, therefore, the transaction costs rise, cheaper and faster alternatives will be sought. This is Litecoin, baby.

Litecoin has made a lot of progress and has even been included as a means of payment in Venezuelas mainstream international payments system. Via the Remesas remittance platform, foreigners can send Litecoin to family members and friends in Venezuela who receive Bolivars in their local bank account through Remesas. A commission of 15% is charged, which means that the government in Venezuela secretly collects Litecoin.

Another interesting fact is that the Litecoin Foundation has a 9.9% share in the German WEG bank. The Litecoin Foundation has received this as a donation from the Swiss blockchain company TokenPay. Together they have almost a 20% share in this conservative German bank, mainly for real estate investors. Litecoin can thus be recognized in the long-term as a possible cryptocurrency for buying real estate in Germany? But we digress, so lets not dive too deep into the matter, look at the price history, and see how the coin develops.

Despite it not being a bullish period for cryptocurrencies until around October 2020, Litecoin has performed reasonably well compared to its competitors. Charlie Lee is clearly doing really well; he finally introduced confidential transactions (CT). Like the privacy coins ZCash and Monero, LTCs confidential transactions will prevent replaceability, scalability, and privacy issues.

The acceptance rate is also quite high. Very recently, the Litecoin logo was even advertised on the UFC mat during a famous fight. It was a real eye-catcher. Furthermore, a new shopping center in Singapore with an ATM that accepts both Bitcoin and Litecoin has been installed. LTC price prediction is very optimistic in the opinion of experts.

Experts expect the Litecoin future to be bright in 2021 due to all integrations and partnerships. In addition, the Litecoin community is very active, with all the upcoming developments. They will, of course, keep the enthusiasts informed. There is a clear potential that Litecoin will rise further and is certainly a tough competitor for the other cryptos.

However, LTCs price will most probably stay below $300 and is less likely to hit its all-time high, $412.96, which was set on May 10, 2021. What will Litecoin do in the next 5 years?

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Litecoin (LTC) price prediction: On the verge of breaking 26% - City Telegraph