#data officer recruitment January 2017

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Foxconn out-trumped Trump

In 2017, Donald Trump declared victory. Working with the far-right Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, he had brokered a deal to bring high-tech manufacturing jobs back to America, with a new, massive Foxconn plant that would anchor the new Wisconn Valley. Right away, there were three serious, obvious problems. I. Foxconn are crooks. It's not just the Apple device factories where they drive workers to suicide, it's a long history of promising to build massive factories, absorbing billions in subsidies, and then bailing. It's a con they'd already pulled in Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil and in Pennsylvania. The US heist happened only four years before the Wisconsin deal (which offered $4b in subsidies!) was signed. II. The plant made no sense. Foxconn promised that it would employ tens of thousands of American workers building massive LCDs. The world did not need massive LCDs. It had a glut of them. The price for cheap LCDs built by low-waged workers in the Pacific Rim was tumbling. III. There was already stuff where the plant was supposed to be built. Notably, there were family homes, places that had been owned by Wisconsinites for generations, real homesteads. In order for Foxconn to build its nonsensical plant and receive $4b in US public subsidies, these families would have to be expropriated and their homes - their whole communities - literally bulldozed and dumped into landfills. The deal revealed - if there was any doubt - that Trump is a rube, a sucker, a fool. Foxconn played him and played Walker and the state of Wisconsin. They never planned to build an LCD plant. Indeed, they seem never to have planned to build ANYTHING. They wanted the free money as a subsidy for exploring what they might build, and they knew that the best way to get Wisconsin and the USA to subsidize this speculation was to tell risible lies about multibillion-dollar LCD factories that credulous US leaders would swallow. No news outlet has done more to chronicle the endless, absurd, idiotic Foxconn grift than The Verge, and while many writers there have worked on the story (like Bruce Murphy and James Vincent), Josh Dzieza has been the most indefatigable chronicler of the Foxconn shitshow. Now, after reporting out piece after piece on the Foxconn deal, Dzieza has published a kind of master narrative that tells the whole story from beginning to end, piecing it all together and augmenting it with new insider dope: https://www.theverge.com/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-wisconsin-jobs-loophole-trump Dzieza's masterpiece leaves no doubt that this was a titanic fraud, nor that it was incompetently negotiated by Wisconsin's local and state officials as well as the federal government. Take the subsidies: to qualify for them, Foxconn had to meet various hiring targets. But those targets were easily gamed. So long as Foxconn had a certain number of workers on the books in December, it could count them as employed for the whole year, even if it laid them off in January. Which, of course, it did. Indeed, the way Foxconn uses human lives as conveniences not worthy of any consideration make it clear that the suicides at its Apple factories are not isolated incidents (and also constitute a stinging rebuke to Walker and Trump's union-bashing). To prop up its sham, Foxconn sent recruiters out to hold high-pressure job fairs where applicants were pressured to immediately accept job offers and tender their resignations at their current employers. Then they were strung along for months as they jobs they'd been promised didn't materialized, and, for many, those jobs did not ever materialize. Workers who DID get jobs hardly fared better, showered in racist abuse about their inferiority to Asian workers. They were asked to work in facilities without furniture, made to bring in their own pencils AND NETWORKING EQUIPMENT, made to buy new elevator carpets out of their own pockets to assuage the screaming rages of their managers, given impossible duties or none at all. At various stages, these workers were called in to brainstorm ideas for building something, anything, in the facilities that Foxconn had been given at firesale prices by the state of Wisconsin. Some ideas:

A fish-farm that could absorb the subsidized water they'd been guaranteed for cooling the data-center they would never build

An AI research lab

A Wework clone

A dairy exporter serving the Chinese market

A federal tech contractor

None of this bore fruit. The only time Foxconn turned a nickel was when they bought in-use office buildings with the intention of using them for some harebrained scheme but lost interest before they could evict the businesses tenanted there, and so earned some rent. Foxconn eventually laid off the bulk of its US workforce and hired Indian and Chinese tech-workers on H1B visas, whom it showered with even more abuse, backstopped by threats of deportation if any of them dared to complain. All along, Foxconn just told stupid lies that Wisconsin's business community gobbled up: Foxconn founder Terry Guo got fantastic praise for his $100m donation to the U Wisconsin system. None of that praise was revoked when he only delivered $700k of it. The Foxconn deal is a black hole that has sucked Wisconsin's productive economy through its event horizon. The company charged local businesses thousands of dollars to get signed up as suppliers, then stiffed them on their invoices. And the towns - like Mt Pleasant - that destroyed their residents' family homes to clear the way for Foxconn lost those taxpayers - and never got the promised tax payments that a Foxconn facility was supposed to deliver. Here's Dzieza's masterful summary: "Trump promised to bring back manufacturing... Into the gap between appearance and reality fell people’s jobs, homes, and livelihoods." Trump calls the Foxconn plant "The Eighth Wonder of the World." In 2018, Wisconsin voters fired Scott Walker for being such a plute-sucking rube. In 2020, they have the chance to fire Trump.

[mr-entj]

Hello Mr. Entj! I hope you’re well. I have a request, can I please ask about your LinkedIn profile? Please don’t worry I won’t send you a request or share it with anyone. I want to check your experiences and how you wrote about them. I’m truly inspired by you and I feel like you’ve opened my eyes for certain matters and motivated me even though I have been suffering from depression for years now so it’s hard for me to always put my head up and feel hopeful! Thank you for everything :)

I’m well, thank you, and I’m glad to hear you’re finding motivation despite still battling depression. Never stop fighting.

To your question, I don’t publicly post personal identifiable information on Tumblr, but I’ll share how my LinkedIn profile is set up by highlighting the 4 main sections every LinkedIn profile should have and provide concrete examples to help illustrate my point.

LinkedIn 101: Building your profile

1. About

What goes in this section:

A 1-3 paragraph professional summary. Use short and concise sentences with bullet points to highlight your professional background, don’t hit people with an autobiographical length wall of text with personal details.

This section includes: who you are, your work experience, what you’re good at, what you can do for potential employers, and what you’re looking for in your next position if you’re job hunting. Add skills, specialties, areas of expertise, etc.

If job hunting, tailor this section to your target role (the role that you want) and not your current role (the role that you have).

What doesn’t go in this section:

Referring to yourself in a cringey third-person voice (ex: ”Jane is a graphic designer. She has a degree from American University.”). You don’t have multiple personality disorder, and even if you did, tell whichever personality writing your LinkedIn profile not to do this.

Personal details (ex: ”I have 2 kids and a rottweiler named Ben”). I’m sure Ben is adorable, but LinkedIn isn’t the place for that.

Political preferences and views (ex: ”Trump is an asshole!”). This will hurt instead of help your chances of finding a job, not necessarily because people disagree with your political views (they may actually agree with you), but because it shows poor judgment in publicly posting something like that in the first place.

Example:

I am a Junior Partner at McKinsey & Company with 10+ years of experience delivering strategy and operations engagements to Fortune 500 health care and life science clients in the United States and European market. I help executives identify growth opportunities and unlock operational potential through digital innovation.

My passion is in creating systems and innovative processes to deliver high quality and affordable health care services to the vulnerable and underserved populations.

My areas of expertise include:

Digital strategy

Organizational change

Process improvement

Performance improvement

Systems implementation

In my spare time, I sit on the Board of Women in Tech where I champion initiatives to mentor and grow the next generation of female leaders. I graduated from Yale University with a Master of Business Administration and the University of California-Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Science in Business-Economics.

2. Experience

What goes in this section:

All the companies you’ve worked for that are relevant to your current career. Add a few sentences describing the specific teams you’ve worked on and what they do because outsiders wouldn't have any idea.

Your exact titles. Don’t lie or embellish this. Recruiters searching for talent will reach out under the impression you hold the titles you’ve listed because they signal years of experience. It’ll also be reflected in the background check.

If you have less than 2 years of work experience, add:

Internships and university experience. Highlight what projects you worked on, what they accomplished, and what your role was. Be sure to define acronyms before using them.

What doesn’t go in this section:

Resume-style bullet points of your tasks and/or achievements. A LinkedIn profile is not a digital resume, don’t treat it as such. Resumes are submitted to websites and/or recruiters and should be customized for the target role. If you list all your tasks and/or achievements on a LinkedIn profile, you become locked into one type of professional profile and won’t be able to tailor your narrative for specific roles. A resume is a separate document.

Jobs that have no relevance to your target career. Don’t add the summer job at Jane’s Frozen Yogurt Shop if you’re searching for UX designer opportunities in tech unless you actually did UX design work for Jane’s Frozen Yogurt Shop. Only add experience that’s relevant.

Client information. Don’t publicly name clients without permission, ever.

Example:

McKinsey & Company - Junior Partner (January 2019 - Present)

McKinsey & Company is an international management consulting firm with more than fifty offices in twenty-five countries. One of the five largest consulting services in the United States, it specializes in problem solving and program implementation, primarily for corporate clients.

Member of the Digital Innovation team leading health care and life sciences clients in systems implementation and optimization initiatives.

Tumblr - Senior Product Manager (January 2017 - January 2019)

Tumblr is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007. As of August 12, 2019, Tumblr hosts over 475 million blogs and has over 500 million monthly visitors.

Member of the UX Product team responsible for building and launching new features on the platform such as chat, video uploads, and interface updates.

3. Education

What goes in this section:

The schools you’ve attended. Add undergraduate and graduate schools only, don’t add community college or high school unless they’re your highest levels of education.

Your degree and major. Self-explanatory.

If you have less than 2 years of work experience, add:

Latin honors (ex: summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude)

Clubs (ex: Sororities, fraternities)

Awards (ex: Dean’s List)

Scholarships (Ex. Fullbright Scholarship, Presidential Scholarship)

What doesn’t go in this section:

GPA. No one cares.

Test scores (ex: SAT, LSAT, GMAT). No one cares.

Certificates from MOOCs. Put them in the Licenses and Certifications section.

4. Skills & Endorsements

What goes in this section:

Your professional skills (ex: Data analysis, project management, financial modeling, graphic design, UX design, research design, SQL, C++, etc.).

Look up people with the role you want and copy their skills as a good start. Skills are one thing used by recruiters to search for candidates.

What doesn’t go in this section:

Your personal skills or hobbies (ex: Cooking, juggling, yo-yo-ing). It’s LinkedIn, not eHarmony.

[startupbusiness10]

Environmental Marketing Consultant Cambodia

The ambition of the organisation was to reach beyond options provided by present service suppliers by adding sophisticated analysis and ongoing retail advertising providers to its existing strengths as mall administration and operators. 

By creating a truly comprehensive service offering, The Mall Company offers the one complete retail real estate and mall administration resolution in Cambodia.

Almond Hospitality Group offers complete or partial resort & restaurant administration services; building from a strong base of years of experience in creating successful brands for hotels to prime-notch F&B outlets in Cambodia. Singapore, 12 June 2015 — Deloitte Southeast Asia expands its regional footprint by officially opening its Cambodia follow today. 

Joining 10 other native practices – Brunei, Guam, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – Deloitte Cambodia aims to draw on the regional and international experience inside the Deloitte community to deliver high quality services to firms working in or out of the country. 

Here, we believe that a sense of camaraderie and open communication inside the team are critical in constructing a high performance staff. Azuri Engineers is licensed to provide professional engineering services by the Professional Engineers Board .

Chief APO Resource Person for this in-county Development of National Productivity Organisation implementation program that skilled a total of 18 Consultants of the Malaysia Productivity Corporation in January 2012. Together with two other Resources Persons from Japan and Taiwan, the school brought members through 2 weeks of intensive coaching on superior productiveness matters of enterprise innovation and process reengineering. 

Through our expansive trade experience within PwC, we assist create integrated, finish-to-end digital solutions from strategy and innovation via to execution to solve our purchasers’ most complex enterprise challenges. Our regional presence brings access to one of the best of native data and a longtime network of sector expertise across South East Asia. 

Asia CEO Awards presented by Aseana City represents the grandest alliance of native and worldwide enterprise individuals ever created to advertise Philippines on the world stage.

 As one of many largest occasions of its type within the Asia Pacific region, it is thought of a must-attend event for business leaders active in Southeast Asia. We can improve your in-house Project Management skills through a combination of formal and informal training in both Project Management Methodologies and Soft Skills Training in managing project groups in addition to the connection with external customers.

Our earlier clients embrace both national and worldwide and United Nations corresponding to International Center on Research on Women , World Bank, FAO, UNDP, UNIDO, ILO, VSO, FACT, Survey Distribute Ltd, and so on. EDI is devoted to the success of our shoppers by offering probably the most trusted and respected professional research and consulting providers for the nation's business group. 

Oliver Ho & Associates is nicely-trained consultancy firm in every area of business management. Each of our consultants are capable of create an tough environment to audit your small business. Soon after we will provide in-depth suggestions to additional increase the standard management of your organization. 

You will establish efficiency gaps and training alternatives and ensure the easy operations of all L&D programs and initiatives. You will serve as consultant for performance management activities including talent mapping, objective setting and particular person development planning.

Deloitte Cambodia can faucet into this full spectrum of world and regional insights, and at the similar time, present in-depth local market data which is crucial when navigating the local enterprise, tax and regulatory setting. Our mission is to be recognised by our repeat and new shoppers as a reliable skilled consultancy agency, that understands and adds worth to their businesses.

 Alphasearch is an Asia-Pacific centered Executive Search firm that gives business and functional experience delivered by a group of extremely skilled recruitment professionals. The capability of Alphasearch extends throughout Commerce, Industry and Professional Services with each distinct sector driven by highly-reputed industry and useful specialists. 

Alphasearch is particularly noted for its success supporting the regional 'Emerging Markets' and it presents a superb track-record of success constructing complete teams in addition to delivering ad hoc appointments. Interested candidates will supply no less than 10 years’ senior-stage F&B management expertise complemented by P&L accountability and multi-territory/website accountability ideally gained within a multinational, branded F&B enterprise. 

In addition, the profitable candidate could have proven capability to lead and inspire multi-functional teams to ship high efficiency whilst also providing experience in building relationships with Franchise Partners.

The course lined sharing of the experiences masking more than 18 productiveness methods utilized in Singapore and Philippines. Chief Resource Person to plan, supervise and conduct the 2-week in-Country Advanced Development of Productivity Practitioners Course training forty consultants for Thailand Productivity Institute in Thailand in 2009. The course coated sharing of the experiences overlaying greater than 30 productivity techniques utilized in Singapore, India and Malaysia. 

Technical Expert on Productivity and Consultancy for the Development of Productivity Specialist course organized by the Development Academy of the Philippines and the Asian Productivity Organization since 2002. The work involved preparing and coaching of government officers from National Productivity Organisations, in the in-company productivity diagnosis of firms within the Philippines. 

Conducted 9 runs of the course training 250 members from Asian countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iran, Lao DPR, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Brunei. Technical Expert for the Asian Productivity Organization for the project on Structured On-the-Job training in Malaysia for the Malaysian Productivity Corporation in the course of the period 2007 and 2009.

The growth, scheduled for completion in 2020, may also characteristic a 3rd fifty five-storey tower containing places of work and a 300-room Shangri-La Hotel, atop a five-storey retail podium. Residential unit sales for Tower 2 will go international next month with a Singapore launch, deliberate be adopted by further launches in China and Hong Kong later this yr.   startup management meaning

CK&A Consultancy International Pte Ltd has a comprhensive position on the project, offering design providers for Town Planning, Architecture, C&S + M&E Engineering and Traffic Engineering, as well as Project Management.

Meinhardt Group has just lately expanded its world operations with the opening of its new workplace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Member firms are independently constituted and controlled in accordance with relevant native legal requirements. Services offered by a member agency are governed by the phrases of engagement between the member agency and the consumer. 

Acted for the Stock Exchange of Thailand in relation to authorized comparative examine on capital market associated laws focusing on shareholder protections. Acted for Hitachi Ltd., a Japanese multinational conglomerate company, in relation to its Cambodian three way partnership firm’s labour registration and other regulatory filings.

My success in building lasting consumer relationships is evident via the belief placed in me by my purchasers and the numerous referrals that I have obtained from them in consequence. During 2017 I accomplished numerous massive and small workplace leasing transactions, in addition to finishing numerous, complicated valuation and consultancy reviews.

He can be confident that Deloitte Cambodia will play a key position in uplifting and transforming accountancy sector to another level of superior stage. Deloitte is presently the most important professional companies organisation on the earth with mixture revenue of US$34.2 billion and a headcount of over 210,000 professionals.

 Azuri Engineers Pte Ltd is a younger and dynamic firm with offices in Singapore and Cambodia. "Conjunct Consulting is a meaningful project that helps VWOs align their strategy with their mission. This platform offers the scholars an actual experience of the corporate world and appreciation of the Social Service Sector." Our strategy initiatives could also be adopted by an implementation project for profitable execution. 

Tight research and reliable information are needed for grant proposals, evaluations, fiscal monitoring, useful resource allocation and project planning. We also can help you analyse and draw insights from the programme data you could have collected.

[thetens-blog1]

Graduate recruitment in an Internet Service Provider Company in Lekki, Lagos (Tizeti Network Limited),January 2017

Graduate recruitment in an Internet Service Provider Company in Lekki, Lagos (Tizeti Network Limited),January 2017 Tizeti is a growing NCC licensed Internet Service Provider operating in Lekki, Lagos and expanding coverage to Lagos and Ibadan. We offer commercial and residential Internet to estates, hotels and multi-tenant buildings. Tizeti Network Limited is recruiting to fill the position…

[angelofberlin2000]

By Mike Seymour

January 29, 2019

In the film, after a car accident kills the family of William "Will" Foster, played by Keanu Reeves, he will stop at nothing to bring them back, even if it means pitting himself against a government-controlled laboratory, a police task force and the physical laws of science.

On the verge of successfully transferring human consciousness into a computer, synthetic biologist and neuroscientist Will believes he can essentially resurrect his family. Will recruits fellow scientist Ed Whittle to help him secretly clone the bodies of his family and create replicas. Will eventually faces a "Sophie's choice" when it turns out that he can only bring three of his four deceased family members back to life. The film features what has been described by one critic as "cinema's weirdest not-to-be-missed robots, as it scarily, giddily threatens revenge, with a mere turn of its head."

The story and screenplay for Replicas was developed at Keanu Reeves and Stephen Hamel's production company Company Films.

trailer

Executive producer James Dodson got involved at the very beginning of the Replicas project two and half years ago, around the time they decided to shoot the film in Puerto Rico. 

Copyright: Entertainment Studios

The film was shot on the Alexa and ended up with over 400 visual effects shots. Keanu Reeves was heavily involved as both producer and actor. "He was interested in the whole movie. It was his movie. He developed the script. He was on it for two years before we shot it...and he was particularly interested in the AV stuff," comments Dodson, referring to the minority report style sequences, which were complex to act and animate. "Basically we were trying to tell the story that Keanu's character, William Foster, was going into the human brain and analyzing the data in the brain and then transferring the data elegantly into a machine facsimile of a human - into a synthetic human brain, if you will," he adds. "And it's not like you can just go and buy that on Turbo Squid."

The team worked with multiple vendors, spending months to try and find the right design solution. "Every piece of user interface was crafted, there was nothing off the shelf that you could use. Everything had to be designed specifically for this because it was such a specific story. Keanu was keenly interested in every step." 

The user interface designs of the brain in AR were started by Chris Keifer, who does much of the screen graphics for Westworld. "He finally cracked how to represent it. We had 9 or 10 weeks with him, before Pacific Rim 2 stole him away from us!" jokes Dodson. "Then Josh Zacharias took over, I talked to him almost every day for a year on this project. He really elevated the work and nailed it. It had to be believable and it had to tell the story but not be too on the nose...it was just so important that the audience would buy it."

The animation was choreographed to the motion data gained from Reeves hand movements, animated in Maya and rendered in RenderMan.

The team used iClone software in the production of Replicas in three different ways:

James Martin and John Martin led the previz team in visualising some of the action sequences such as the car crash in iClone.

There was also conceptual work around the AR infographics that Keanu's character manipulates, that needed the software for the interaction to work onscreen.

Finally in post-production, iClone was invaluable in animating the robot when it gains consciousness.

Reallusion makes the iClone software the team used. They are headquartered in Silicon Valley, with R&D centres in Taiwan, and offices in Germany and Japan. Reallusion is focused on the development of real-time cinematic virtual production and motion capture tools.

Reallusion provides users with character animation, facial and body mocap, and voice lipsync solutions for real-time filmmaking production. The company first launched iClone v1.0 at the end of 2005 and it found popularity within the Machinima community. The current version 7 was released in 2017. In addition to having its own real time engine, an easy-to-use avatar and facial morphing system with a voice lip-sync solution, the software interfaces with most mocap systems.

More recently the company has developed Motion LIVE, which is a body motion capture platform that connects motion data streams from multiple industry mocap devices, such as Xsens and Rokoko, to animate 3D character faces, hands and bodies.

Motion LIVE did not exist when Replicas was in production however. "That program didn't exist 18 months ago when we were doing Replicas, but we used a similar thing. It was just Perception Neurons, motion capture software (by Noitom), which then fed directly into iClone. Replicas did not need facial capture of the actors' expressions, only their movements."

In the robot sequence, the robot was 100% CGI. On set there was a mocap artist in a Perception Neuron suit. This live data was fed into iClone and this allowed for a 'slap comp' version of the robot to be seen on set for framing and blocking. The edit used this footage as post-viz. "The great thing was that once that sequence was cut, we could send those exact MoCap files down to Argentina where the artists could take the data and attach it to the final full resolution robot," explains Dodson. The export from iClone to Maya was done as an FBX file.

For the crash sequence, the team used iClone to work out how to film with the stunt team and physical effects crew. The stunt car was on "a crane cable with a gymbal and we worked out which shots we could chuck it in the air and pull it back like a pendulum to drop it, and which ones would need visual effects," Dodson recalls. One of the features the team used in the previz is the ability to use a single jpeg to create a representation of the actual actors on the 3D models used for the layout and previz. Each of the family members was modelled this way for the previz.

Dodson fully acknowledges that major big budget films use expensive and often proprietary technology for simulation and previz. However for him, the benefit is in how inexpensive and accessible tools, such as iClone, are able to, "democratize the entire process of motion capture and real time rendering - I am just addicted to previsualisation, and the level of quality and detail we can do for a few hundred dollars and still have studio quality results is incredible." 

source

[thezodiaczone]

November Forecast for Pisces

Are you thinking big enough, Pisces? A growth surge is headed your way this month as bountiful Jupiter enters its home sign of Sagittarius on November 8, bringing abundance to your tenth house of career, public image and success. With the auspicious giant tearing through the top of your chart until December 2, 2019, you’ve got 13 golden months to really make your mark.

Even more exciting? This is happening against the backdrop of the Sun in Scorpio and your ninth house of expansion until October 22, which will fuel your confidence to take a leap of faith. At the November 7 Scorpio new moon—on Jupiter’s very last day in Scorpio for more than a decade—you could have a big white-light epiphany or finally make a major move you’ve been toying with all year.

Since October 2017, you’ve been exploring new options—from world travel to study to entrepreneurship—and Jupiter in your no-limits ninth house gave you a sense of endless possibilities. If you didn’t want to be tied down to anything concrete, that was fine. The point was to explore all your options and widen your focus. Pisces in academia may have finished work on a degree while others could have devised a winning business idea that tapped your boundless creativity. Hopefully you enjoyed the free-spirited energy of this year because you’ve got one last week of it.

Now, as Jupiter enters your structured tenth house, things start to take concrete form. In fact, you could be entering your luckiest career year in over a decade, when all your hard work and expertise reach a pinnacle. Pisces who’ve been drifting a bit could start craving a concrete focus. Drop that interview outfit at the dry cleaner, call the recruiter and polish your LinkedIn profile. You might go work for a “serious” company or take a full-time job with hefty responsibilities—and salary and recognition to match!

Jupiter only comes to this zone of your chart every 12 years, and its last visit to Sagittarius was from November 24, 2006, to December 18, 2007. Look back to that time if you can for clues of what might resurface. The tenth house rules fathers and men, and your relationship with an important guy could undergo major evolution (or evaluation).

A couple days prior to Jupiter’s transit, another slow-moving planet also changes signs. On November 6, transformer Uranus, which has been retrograde since August 7, backs out of Taurus and into Aries for a final four-month lap. Uranus was in Aries and your second house of money from March 2011 until May 2018, which brought innovation AND instability to your finances for seven years. The greater goal was to push you onto an authentic path, where purpose and paycheck aligned. As a Pisces, you prefer to make your money by doing something meaningful.

While Jupiter pushes you into the big leagues, this Uranus cycle reminds you not to “sell out” for a fancy title—but to bring your principles along as you ascend! Uranus will hang out in Aries until March 6, 2019, then it will make a permanent exit, not to return in your lifetime. Until January 6, the side-spinning planet will be retrograde, so keep a watchful eye on your budget and spending—and make sure you really connect to your values when fielding job offers or pondering professional next steps.

Midmonth, there’s another cluster of cosmic activity. On November 15, you’ll wake up with a jolt as energy planet Mars zooms into YOUR sign for the rest of the year—and not a moment too soon! For many Fish, 2018 was like a long, surreal trip because Mars spent a huge portion of the year slogging through Aquarius and your twelfth house of rest, healing and the imagination. While you may have had some creative or spiritual epiphanies, mustering the mojo to interact with the rat race was a challenge. Mars was in Aquarius from May 16 to August 12 (retrograde from June 27 on, adding insult to injury) and again from September 10 to November 15. It’s a wonder you’ve gotten out of your pajamas this year at all, Pisces!

Now, as Mars zooms into your sign you can leave those dreamy vibes in the rearview because Mars won’t return to Aquarius for two more years. Hope you’re rested and refreshed for the new, fast-paced phase you’re entering, because you won’t be hitting the brakes anytime soon.

But don’t barrel in without looking both ways! The next day, November 16, communication planet Mercury will turn retrograde until December 6. For the bulk of this signal-scrambling reversal, Mercury will be in Sagittarius and your tenth house of career, thwarting some of Jupiter’s grand plans. You may have some unfinished business at the office to attend to before you charge into the new…and it’s probably wise to check in so you don’t burn any bridges. Because Mercury retrograde can foil technology and travel, back up all your important data and leave early for the airport if you’ve got a business trip planned.

That same day, Venus will end a six-week retrograde, which has been disrupting your most intimate ties all month. At least this is a silver lining to the Mercury effect! And on November 22, the Sun will enter Sagittarius, joining Jupiter and Mercury in your ambitious tenth house. When Jupiter and the Sun make their once-a-year meetup in this success-driven zone of your chart on November 26, you’re on fire when it comes to crushing those goals or making a big move. Don’t be surprised if you get an exciting offer or have an aha moment about your life purpose…one you’ll actually feel confident enough to act on.

The November 23 Gemini full moon beams into a very different part of your chart, putting the spotlight on your domestic fourth house. If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving in the U.S., this full moon falls on Black Friday—so cozy up under the cashmere throw and do your shopping online as you munch on leftovers and nest and bond with la familia.

The next day, November 24, brings even more good news: Your co-ruler Neptune wakes up from a five-month nap in Pisces. Since June 18, you may have felt a bit disconnected from your personal goals or less motivated to pursue them. It was a time to step back and soul-search, so don’t worry if you meandered off course. As Neptune powers forward in Pisces, side by side with motivator Mars, you could make up for ALL the lost time in the last month of 2018. Talk about finishing strong!

Love & Romance

Intensity alert! Romantic Venus will spend the whole month in Libra and your eighth house of sex and intimacy, turning up the heat to max levels. Normally this would be a boon for your bedroom, but until November 16, Venus is wrapping up a six-week retrograde (backward) spin. With Venus retrograde, your thoughts and attention could turn to the past: an old flame, unresolved trust issues or just some raw and palpable feelings you need to process.

With the other love planet, Mars, in Aquarius and your twelfth house of healing and closure until November 15, you’re even more likely to be swept up in a swirl of feelings. Your moods could swing pretty wildly at times, and you could get locked in a fantasy rather than looking at the real picture. Watch for a clandestine attraction or the temptation of a sexy but unreliable ex.

On the upside, all this vulnerability could lead to epic sex and new levels of emotional honesty that you haven’t reached in years. On November 9, when Venus and Mars meet in their third and final trine of 2018, the stars could align for you to meet a soulmate or pour out your heart. If you haven’t fully mourned a breakup, prepare for the floodgates to open—or you might do some powerful forgiveness work and close the door on a chapter that you’ve been obsessing over for far too long.

The best news? You’ll have no trouble moving on (finally) after November 15, when red-hot Mars zooms into your sign for the rest of the year, spicing up the holidays and bringing back your sultry swagger with a vengeance. You’ll have way too many flirty encounters and eager admirers to get hung up on THAT person or situation anymore. And with Venus powering forward in Libra the next day, your sex appeal will be off the charts. Time to treat yourself to some boudoir shots or a sexy vacation getaway as an early holiday gift?

Key Dates

November 30: Venus-Uranus Opposition Intense emotions may overcome you today as these planets collide in your reactive eighth and second houses. You could be caught off-guard by this powerful sense of possessiveness or jealousy. On the other side of the coin, if someone’s had a Svengali-like hold on you—or has been way too clingy—it’s time to cut bait and head for the nearest exit!

Money & Career

Show YOU the money! Your luckiest career cycle in more than a decade begins November 8, when abundant Jupiter starts a 13-month trek through Sagittarius and your tenth house of professional success. If you’re ready to take a business to the next level or enter a whole new field, expansive Jupiter is ready to grant your wish. Since the tenth house rules traditional corporations and hierarchies, you might be offered a promotion or a formal position with benefits, stock options and the like. Globe-trotting Jupiter could also bring an opportunity to travel or work remotely—perhaps opening up your company’s new office in Brazil or Berlin?

After November 16, take it SLOW with any job offers and if possible, sleep on all negotiations (or stall until early December!). Communication planet Mercury will be retrograde until December 6, and it’s backing through Sagittarius until December 1, causing some crossed wires or hazy details. Ask all the questions you need before accepting an offer. Since Mercury retrograde is a reflective time, this could be a good moment for a salary or performance review at your current job or to ask old colleagues for testimonials to boost your online profiles.

Think carefully about locking yourself into anything too structured just yet. With freedom-seeking Uranus backing into Aries and your money zone from November 6, 2018, until March 6, 2019, you’ll still crave some flexibility. Perhaps you should consider being an independent contractor instead of a full-time worker or build in the option of working remotely a couple days a week. Your inner Fish still needs room to swim freely!

Key Dates

November 19: Mars-Jupiter Square If you can’t come to an agreement with a boss, client or authority figure, don’t back down—or go all passive-aggressive on them. Dial up the courage to take a stand for yourself. But speak only in positive terms—what you believe in, the greater good, the higher mission. What you don’t want to do is lose your temper, which could get you kicked off the island.

Love Days: 29, 29 Money Days: 13, 23 Luck Days: 11, 20 Off Days: 31, 8

[xtruss]

Revealed: Neo-Confederate Group Includes Military Officers and Politicians

Leaked data shows other high-profile members have overlapping membership in more explicitly racist or violent groups

— Jason Wilson | Monday, 28 June 2021 | The Guardian USA

Donald Trump supporters stand gather for his first post-presidency campaign rally in Wellington, Ohio, on Saturday. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Leaked membership data from the neo-Confederate Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) organization has revealed that the organization’s members include serving military officers, elected officials, public employees, and a national security expert whose CV boasts of “Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance”.

But alongside these members are others who participated in and committed acts of violence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and others who hold overlapping membership in violent neo-Confederate groups such as the League of the South (LoS).

The group, organized as a federation of state chapters, has recently made news for increasingly aggressive campaigns against the removal of Confederate monuments. This has included legal action against states and cities, the flying of giant Confederate battle flags near public roadways, and Confederate flag flyovers at Nascar races.

Last Monday, the Georgia division of SCV commenced legal action against the city of Decatur with the aim of restoring a Confederate memorial obelisk which was removed in June 2020, and later replaced with a statue of the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis.

Last year, in a widely criticized move, the University of North Carolina’s board of governors proposed creating a $2.5m charitable trust which would pay the state’s SCV organization to maintain a Confederate “Silent Sam” statue which had been removed from the campus.

That deal fell apart in recent weeks. But critics – including former members – alleged that the SCV commander for the state, Kevin Stone, associated with extremists and other “scary” individuals who had been recruited to the group.

Stone, who who also co-founded the SCV Mechanized Cavalry, a motorcycle club associated with the SCV, reportedly led a takeover of the branch which pushed out anti-racist members.

College of Charleston historian, Adam Domby, whose book, The False Cause, details the history of the neo-Confederate movement, said in a telephone conversation that “throughout its history, the SCV has been linked with white supremacist groups, and historically it has avowedly supported white supremacist groups”.

Jalane Schmidt, a professor of religion at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has been active in the campaign to remove the statues that the Unite the Right rally sought to defend in 2017, and is working on a book about the history of neo-Confederate groups including SCV in Virginia.

Sons of Confederate Veterans last year rededicated removed statues of Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest at its National Confederate Museum in Columbia, Tennessee. Photograph: Adrian Sainz/AP

In a telephone conversation, she pointed to an 1 April ruling of the Virginia supreme court which reversed lower court rulings in favor of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Monument Fund in their quest to ensure Charlottesville’s monuments stayed in place.

“According to the supreme court, the SCV and the Monument Fund were wrong all along, and we could have taken down our statues in 2017,” she said.

Instead, the statues were still standing when Unite the Right was organized. As a result of the rally, Schmidt added: “People are dead.”

SCV’s attempts to preserve Confederate monuments have become more difficult in the face of intensifying demands for their removal since the rise of the anti-racist Black Lives Matter movement, and the neo-Confederate-inspired mass murder of Black church-goers by Dylann Roof in South Carolina in 2015.

SCV last year rededicated removed statues of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest at its National Confederate Museum in Columbia, Tennessee.

The Data

The national membership data was provided to the Guardian by a self-described hacktivist whose identity has been withheld for their safety.

The data reveals the names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of almost 59,000 past and present members of the organization, including 91 who used addresses associated with government agencies for their contact email, and 74 who used addresses associated with various branches of the armed forces.

They noticed that the organization’s website had been misconfigured, allowing access to membership rolls, recruiting data, and other information about the internal workings of the group. The website has had the security issue for a number of years, according to the hacktivist.

The membership data shows members’ names, addresses, telephone numbers, whether they are active or not, and their email addresses.

Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and alt-right members gathered at the Unite the Right rally on August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Guardian identified members who were listed as active, and whose contact information included addresses associated with government agencies, the armed forces, educational institutions, and non-government organizations.

There was some previous reporting on an earlier version of the membership database, made public by Atlanta Antifa, which noted the presence of Georgia state legislators in the group’s data.

But the Guardian has found additional legislators, and active members who are in positions of influence and responsibility that stretch far beyond the walls of state legislatures.

High-Profile Members

One member listed as active in the data is Scott Wyatt, who represents the 97th district in Virginia’s house of delegates, which comprises rural counties north of Richmond, which served as the Confederate capital for much of the civil war.

Duane AJ Probst, who was elected coroner of Osage county, Missouri in 2020, after reaching the rank of Lt Col in the US Army National Guard, is also listed as an active member of the group.

In a telephone conversation, Probst confirmed his membership, saying that he had joined in the last “four or five years” after he discovered a relative had fought for the Confederacy, had attended meetings until around two years ago when he became too busy for regular attendance.

He said that in his experience of the local group in Missouri, it was “a friendly organization that doesn’t advocate white supremacy”, and the main activities he had been involved in were dinners and lectures.

On the question of statues, Probst said that “the men who forged the country were flawed”, and that “I don’t know that taking down a statue is going to ameliorate any issues”, adding that he was not opposed to adding plaques to monuments since “perspectives change as time goes on”.

On the presence of extremists in SCV, Probst said he had never encountered any, but that “it doesn’t surprise me. There are militant members of every organization.”

A heart shaped group of flowers placed at the corner of Fourth Street and Water Street, where Heather Heyer was murdered by white supremacist James Fields at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on 12 August 2017. Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/EPA

Probst, who ran for coroner as a Republican, added that: “I am a member of a political faction in this country. There are members of that faction who are loony in my opinion. That doesn’t mean I have to walk away from the organization. Instead I fight for the values I think it represents.”

Another member of the group who is listed as active, Dr Danny W Davis, is both a professor and program director at Texas A&M University and a training consultant to the US army reserve. His membership data includes a US army contact email address.

Davis states on his publicly available CV that he has “Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance”, that he is a “Training Consultant to US Army Reserve, San Antonio, Texas”, and the “Director, Certificate in Homeland Security Program”.

Davis’s CV includes details of courses Davis has taught and developed, including “Domestic Terrorism: The Internal Threat to America”, which is described as “a comprehensive survey of domestic terrorism”. The CV also points to Davis’s 20-year military career, which ended in 1997 with Davis a lieutenant colonel.

In a telephone conversation, Davis confirmed his active membership in the group, saying that he had joined because he had “three great grandfathers” who had fought for the Confederate army.

On the question of statues he said that “when we start taking down monuments, I think that’s wrong”, and that to him they “represent men who were fighting for something they believed in”.

Davis said that those beliefs “included slavery, but not only slavery”, adding: “Do I think the right outcome came out of the civil war? Yes.”

Davis said “I am not a white supremacist” and said he was surprised to hear about the overlap between the group and extremist organizations, saying that members were mostly “re-enactors”, “people like me who are interested in history”, and “military veterans”.

He said that he includes rightwing extremists in his graduate courses on domestic terrorism, and that he is currently revising a course to include the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, as well as the activities of “Antifa and BLM in the north-west”.

A number of members listed as active members use email addresses associated with the Citadel, a public military academy located in Charleston, South Carolina.

A total of 13 members using Citadel or Citadel alumni email addresses appear in the membership database, with six listed as active members.

One of those active members is retired National Guard Brig Gen Roger Clifton Poole, who has twice served as interim president of the college, and remains a professor in The Citadel’s School of Business.

Wyatt and Poole did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Radical Neo-Confederates

Alongside these SCV members, however, are others who have overlapping membership in more explicitly racist or violent groups, or who have been involved in political violence at events like Unite the Right, the event where Heather Heyer was murdered by white supremacist James Fields in 2017.

They include North Carolina lawyer, Harold Crews, who is listed as an active member of the SCV. Crews is also a member of the League of the South, and marched with the group at Unite the Right in 2017.

White supremacist groups clashed with hundreds of counter-protesters during the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginai, on 12 August 2017. Photograph: DDP/Rex/Shutterstock

Crews was involved in scuffles with counter-protesters on the day. Later, backed by a disinformation campaign pushed by white nationalist blogger, Brad Griffin, who was then LoS’s public relations officer, Crews persuaded a judge to issue a warrant for the arrest of DeAndre Harris, who was badly beaten in a parking garage by six Unite the Right attendees.

While the public positions of SCV emphasize the preservation of Confederate “heritage”, LoS is an openly secessionist group which seeks to separate the states which joined the confederacy as a new white supremacist state. Crews served as the North Carolina chair of LoS, and hosted a podcast called Southern Nationalist Radio, where his guests included LoS founder Michael Hill.

Other active members who attended Unite the Right include Virginian, George Randall, and North Carolina based James Shillinglaw. On the day of the rally, Shillinglaw was captured on video beating a counter-protester with a flagpole.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Randall and Shillinglaw are also LoS members.

Also on the membership rolls, but listed as currently inactive, is long time Georgia-based far-right activist Chester Doles. Doles, a former Klansman and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance who marched at Unite The Right with the Hammerskins white power gang, was pictured in 2013 wearing the insignia of the SCV Motorized Cavalry, a motorcycle club made up of members of SCV.

Doles was apparently a member of the group long after he was imprisoned first in Maryland in 1993 for beating a black man, and later for weapons charges in Georgia.

Crews, Doles, Randall, and Shillinglaw did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• This article was amended on 28 June 2021 to remove an incorrect statement that Decatur is a majority-black city; and to refer to Nathan Bedford Forrest by his full name.

[orbemnews]

Inside a smuggling operation moving migrants across the US-Mexico border In most other places in Mexico, this might have just been some workers doing construction without the right truck for the job. Two human smugglers, called polleros in this part of the world, were in the car along with two migrants in the backseat who wanted to cross illegally into the United States. And as we would soon see, the group would use that rebar column as a makeshift ladder to hoist those two migrants up and over the wall and into the US. The resurgence has also put a renewed focus on the role human smugglers play in getting so many migrants to the border. The business of migrant smuggling The smugglers are brothers and run the business out of their family home, smuggling people into the US with the help of one brother’s 14-year-old son. Makeshift ladders laid out in the backyard were the only real giveaway of the family business. “It’s super light,” said the 14-year-old, picking up one of the ladders. He works with his father and uncle moving somewhere between 10 to 35 migrants per week on average, he says. Lately, that number has been on the high side. “Dozens are crossing everyday around here, it’s very high,” said one brother. “From the top of the wall in my backyard you can see people running, so many are jumping the wall.” There is scant data to quantify the exact number of migrants using smugglers’ services to make this journey. But most experts agree that many have used a smuggler for at least a part of their journey, in ways that can vary from a taxi ride between towns to an “all-inclusive” service that takes migrants from start to finish. A 2018 report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that more than 800,000 migrants from around the world were smuggled into Mexico and from there, smuggled or attempted to be smuggled into the US annually, based on a review of data from 2014 and 2015. Only a fraction of migrants avoid being caught before making it to their final US destination, despite the enormous fees required to make the trip. Costs can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands depending on a number of factors, largely based on the total distance of the journey and how many borders need to be crossed, according to the report. The amounts can leave migrants penniless, many of whom are migrating in the first place due to extreme poverty in their countries of origin. The UN report estimated that the business of trying to get people into Mexico and the US illegally was worth about $4 billion annually using data from 2014 and 2015, an estimate it calls conservative. A cartel operation A large chunk of money spent on smuggling finds its way into the hands of organized crime, especially in Mexico, where experts say cartels operate with virtual impunity. “Human smuggling is a multimillion dollar industry and I would venture to guess that it’s approaching a billion dollar industry [in Mexico alone],” said Victor Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol Sector Chief in El Paso, Texas. Manjarrez says organized crime groups have used the money to create sophisticated smuggling networks that in some cases operate transnationally. “It’s almost like a Fortune 500 company dealing with their supply chain,” he said. “It is a ruthless business. [The cartels] do look at migrants like they’re commodities, not people, and they’re definitely exploited.” One of the two brothers interviewed by CNN who smuggles people in Ciudad Juárez said he was recruited for the job after moving into his house on the border. “Some guys asked me if I wanted to join, and I said yes. That’s why I’m here.” In this case, the “guys” he referred to were members of the Juárez cartel—one of Mexico’s oldest and most powerful organized crime groups—which the smugglers said they work for directly. Each migrant must pay the cartel $2,000 to cross the border here with the help of a smuggler, the two brothers told CNN. That’s in addition to whatever these migrants had to pay just to arrive at the border. The smugglers then receive a salary, or a commission, from the cartel for their work. It’s a system that plays out across the US-Mexico border. Different cartels control large sections of the border, commonly called plazas. Those groups then control what crosses the border illegally in these territories, whether it be drugs or people. Human smugglers operating in these areas almost always operate in one of two ways—they either work directly for the cartel that is in charge of that individual plaza or they work independently but have to pay the cartel a tax of sorts for the right to move through that territory, the smugglers told CNN. While the exact extent of organized crime’s role in migrant smuggling throughout Central America remains unclear, its presence is apparent in Mexico, where migrants are taking enormous risks in making their journey to the United States. “Most smugglers involved in complex operations are either known to each other by virtue of kinship or friendship, or have entered into ad hoc partnerships with larger and better resourced groups,” according to the 2018 UN report. The trip northward Tens of thousands of migrants have fled their home countries in Central America this year for myriad reasons. Poverty and corruption continue to plague countries like Honduras, food insecurity is rising in places like Guatemala, and gang violence continues to be pervasive across El Salvador. Two massive Category 4 hurricanes also hit the region late last year, destroying entire communities and Covid-19 further decimated regional economies that were already struggling. The journey itself is grueling. Stories of rape and abuse are common among migrants along the border. “They can be raped, they can be robbed, they can be extorted, they can die on the journey,” said psychologist Claudia Grisel Villalobos Esparza, who works at the government-run Nohemí Álvarez Quillay migrant shelter for unaccompanied minors in Ciudad Juárez. At another non-profit shelter in town, a young mother from Guatemala told us she and her toddler were smuggled north by various men over the course of a few weeks. But upon arrival to Ciudad Juárez, instead of being crossed into the United States as she was promised, she was put into a house with dozens of other people. “It was a huge house, the windows were covered with black nylon so we couldn’t see outside,” said the woman. “They gave us food some days, but one time we spent 8 days without enough food. They locked us in, we couldn’t leave.” The woman asked CNN not to reveal her identity because of her ongoing fears for her safety while she remains in Mexico. The family of smugglers, led by the two brothers, told CNN they have heard of many such cases of abuse. They even brought up the smugglers who, a few weeks earlier, had dropped two young children over the border wall not far from their home, a case that made national headlines in the US. “We don’t do that,” said one of the brothers. “We’re all humans. They want to arrive safely. We don’t harm them; we give them food and water and help them cross. Other people may hurt them, but we don’t.” CNN has no way of verifying how they treat the migrants in their charge. But even if they treat them well, the family’s actions are far from selfless. Each time they are compensated for their work, they help to maintain a system that perpetuates rampant kidnapping, rape, extortion and even murder, according to experts like the psychologist at the unaccompanied minor shelter in Ciudad Juárez. While extensive data quantifying the specific threats faced by migrants using smugglers is not readily available, a Human Rights First report released last month reported at least 492 attacks and kidnappings suffered by asylum seekers turned away from the US or stranded in Mexico since President Joe Biden took office in January. A Medecins San Frontieres report from 2017 reported that nearly a third of female migrants entering Mexico interviewed had experienced some form of sexual abuse on their journeys north and nearly 70 percent of all interviewees experienced violence of some kind. The smugglers CNN spoke to argue that they provide a service that helps migrants who are desperate to get to the US. The last leg of the journey The smugglers told us to meet them at a car park. CNN chose to document the smugglers’ process despite the illegality of their act to illuminate what is happening along the border on a daily basis as the immigration debate rages on in the United States. As our team sat in a minivan waiting, the blue sedan pulled out from a side street and stopped several hundred yards up the road in front of us. Two men got out and went to grab the makeshift ladder the migrants would use to go over the wall. Once it was secured to the side, the car took off down the highway. The smugglers were looking for a good spot to try and cross, they told us later, a location where US Border Patrol would be too far away to catch them in the act. About ten minutes of driving, the sedan slowed to a stop along a stretch of highway. One of the smugglers got out of the car along with the two migrants, one of whom grabbed the makeshift ladder. From that point, the border wall was about 500 meters away. A quick dash from the road and the trio made it into the sandy desert that is dominant feature of this arid landscape. Their progress quickly slowed, forced to crawl on their hands and knees to avoid anyone along the border who might be watching. Inching forward, dragging their metal ladder behind them, the labored haggard breathing of the migrants is the only sound apart from the occasional instruction from the smuggler. “Get down lower!,” he shouted at one point as a Border Patrol truck drove by on the other side of the border. Halfway to the wall, the group took a break, during which CNN only had about 30 seconds to speak with the migrants. They were Ecuadorian, a young man and woman, 18 and 20, carrying nothing but the clothes on their backs and two 16-ounce bottles of water. They had paid various smugglers thousands of dollars to get to this point and they were hoping to find work in South Texas. But the only way they could do that was if they got over the wall. After peering over a small bush, searching intently for any sign of law enforcement, the smuggler signaled it was time for the final push to the wall. Crouched in a low run, they made up the final distance in about a minute. The 18-year-old then lifted up the ladder and the smuggler helped him hook one end on the top of the fence, the ladder bent over the wall like a candy cane. The young man tossed both water bottles over the fence and immediately scaled the ladder, nimbly going hand over hand until he reached the top of the wall that’s 15-20 feet high. He quickly lowered himself down on the other side, dropping into what looked like an unused construction site, and then it was the young woman’s turn. Only slighter slower, she too made it with little problem. They both took off through the desert on the other side and the smuggler took off back to the highway. For the two migrants, there seemed to be little plan as to what to do next. Clearly confused and overwhelmed, they both ran toward an uncertain future. There was little but desert on that side of the wall. Yes, they’d made it to the United States but far from being the end of their journey it was clear they had so much left to navigate. Where would they go? What would they do? How would they earn money? What would happen if they were caught by immigration authorities? These are questions we cannot answer. For the smuggler, those were immaterial queries — the reality was simple. He had no idea what happened to them on the other side nor did he have a real interest in knowing. His job was to get them the over the wall and he’d done that. On this mission, he was successful. He raced back to the waiting blue sedan, the migrants he’d just crossed seemingly far from his mind. It was already on to the next one. There were more migrants he had to go pick up that were still waiting to be crossed. Source link Orbem News #Border #migrants #Moving #operation #Smuggling #USMexico

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Two Unmatched-Doctor Advocacy Groups Are Tied to Anti-Immigrant Organizations

In their last year of medical school, fourth-year students get matched to a hospital where they will serve their residency.

This story also ran on The Daily Beast. It can be republished for free.

The annual rite of passage is called the National Resident Matching Program. To the students, it’s simply the Match.

Except not every medical student is successful. While tens of thousands do land a residency slot every year, thousands others don’t.

Those “unmatched” students are usually left scrambling to figure out their next steps, since newly graduated doctors who don’t complete a residency program cannot receive their license to practice medicine.

At first glance, two new advocacy groups, Doctors Without Jobs and Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America, seem to be championing their cause, helping them find residency slots and lobbying Congress to create more medical residency positions. The groups also recently organized a protest in Washington, D.C., to draw attention to the scarcity of residencies.

But the organizations aren’t merely support groups. They are tied to Progressives for Immigration Reform, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as an anti-immigrant group. PFIR is financed by an anti-immigrant foundation and its executive director has been affiliated with a network of anti-immigrant groups.

The two doctor groups want U.S.-trained and U.S. citizen doctors to get top priority in the Match over foreign-educated doctors. While both Doctors Without Jobs and Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America do not say they are anti-immigrant, their websites include messaging that implies foreign doctors are taking residency spots away from U.S. doctors.

We need long-term solutions to the unmatched MD issue. That could include a 25 percent reduction in the number of doctors admitted on H-1B and J-1 visas.https://t.co/L81KmAY1B5

— Doctors Without Jobs (@DocsWithoutJobs) March 17, 2021

However, newly unmatched medical students searching for a source of support aren’t necessarily aware of the groups’ anti-immigrant affiliations.

Haley Canoles, a fourth-year medical student who didn’t match this year, was caught off guard when she learned of the organizations’ deeper agenda.

“I had no idea. I just recently joined Twitter and started following groups that I thought could help me network to find a residency position,” Canoles wrote in a private message on Twitter. “I absolutely do not stand for any anti-immigration agenda.”

As the percentage of unmatched U.S. medical students increases each year and the number of residency positions remains mostly static, more could be drawn to a support group such as Doctors Without Jobs.

According to 2021 data from the National Resident Matching Program, the percentage of medical school graduates who don’t match has increased. In 2021, 7.2% of students didn’t match into residency programs, up from 5.7% in 2017.

Meanwhile, the percentage of non-U.S. citizens who attended foreign medical schools who didn’t match has declined over the past five years to 45.2% in 2021, from 47.6% in 2017.

That makes advocates for international medical students worry that, if this trend continues, there could be increased resentment toward doctors educated abroad and xenophobic attitudes in the medical community.

“I obviously disagree with the idea that foreign medical graduates are taking spots from U.S. medical graduates,” said Dr. William Pinsky, president and chief executive officer of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, which certifies international medical graduates before they enter the U.S. graduate medical education system. “What residency directors primarily look for is who is the best qualified, and sometimes foreign medical graduates fit that bill.”

Kevin Lynn, executive director of PFIR, founded Doctors Without Jobs as an offshoot of the organization in 2018, after meeting an unmatched doctor outside a protest at the White House.

“I didn’t even know this was a problem, and then we started looking at the data and realizing that thousands of medical students weren’t getting into residency programs,” said Lynn. “At the same time, the number of foreign doctors who graduate from foreign medical schools and get taxpayer-funded residencies is increasing.”

PFIR endorses restricting immigration into the U.S., it says, to protect the American labor force and the environment. Its website also says it researches the “unintended consequences of mass migration.”

In a 2020 report, the SPLC found that Lynn had been closely involved with members of prominent Washington anti-immigration hate groups, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Both organizations push for reducing the number of immigrants in the U.S., are designated as hate groups by the SPLC and were founded by Dr. John Tanton, whom the SPLC has tied to white nationalists, racists and eugenicists.

And in July 2020, at the height of the covid pandemic, Lynn sent a letter to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asking him not to allow a bipartisan bill that would allocate unused green cards to foreign health care workers into the next covid stimulus bill, and instead prioritize unmatched U.S. doctors. That effort was publicized in Breitbart News, a right-wing publication that shares the anti-immigrant view. The bill died in the Senate.

The SPLC also reported that Joe Guzzardi, a writer for Doctors Without Jobs, has previously written more than 700 blog posts for a white nationalist hate website.

According to recent nonprofit filings, from 2015 to 2019 PFIR received almost $2 million in funding from the anti-immigrant Colcom Foundation, which also provides significant funds to FAIR and CIS. Neither Doctors Without Jobs nor Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America have made any public financial disclosures, though Doctors Without Jobs accepts donations.

The modus operandi of these types of nativist groups is to take any policy problem area and say the solution is to restrict or eliminate immigration into the U.S., said Eddie Bejarano, a research analyst at SPLC who wrote the 2020 report. Doctors not receiving residency spots is just the latest issue that the anti-immigration movement has seized on.

“They’re taking issues like this and saying that the solution is grounded in nativism, it’s not about reform,” said Bejarano. “It’s out of the textbook for nativists, if they can prey on the fears for normal Americans, such as here, where doctors are just wanting a fair shot at a job and blaming it on immigrants.”

Lynn’s rhetoric doesn’t contradict Bejarano’s observation. “I believe we should be prioritizing Americans,” Lynn said in an interview with KHN. “People say that is xenophobic, that is racist. These are attempts to quiet dissent. What I’m saying are uncomfortable truths.”

Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America has a less direct connection to the anti-immigrant groups. It claims it is solely volunteer-run, independent of Doctors Without Jobs and doesn’t receive any funding from the organization. But it does say on its website that it is affiliated with Doctors Without Jobs. The groups have worked together to organize a recent protest and feature each other on their respective websites and in promotional materials.

Leaders of Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America declined an interview but provided KHN with an emailed statement claiming nearly half its members are immigrants or are second-generation immigrants.

Doctors Without Jobs and Unmatched and Unemployed Doctors of America have increased their activity in the past couple of months. In January, members of the two groups traveled to Washington to protest outside the headquarters of the Association of American Medical Colleges, to bring attention to the issue of unmatched doctors. The AAMC runs the electronic system for submitting residency program applications.

The groups said they met with members of Congress to discuss reintroducing the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act, which would increase federally supported medical residency positions by 2,000 annually for seven years. The bill was introduced again in the House and Senate in March.

Doctors Without Jobs also recently released a video targeting the AAMC and saying that the organization is promoting a policy that “allows foreign medical students to take American students’ residencies.”

In an emailed statement, Karen Fisher, the AAMC’s chief public policy officer, said that any unnecessary restrictions on immigration would only accelerate and worsen the existing physician shortage and that foreign-trained doctors often fill critical gaps in the health care workforce.

“The nation’s teaching hospitals seek to recruit the most qualified candidates into their residency training programs,” said Fisher. “A blanket preference for U.S. applicants runs counter to this goal and would severely restrict the pool of highly qualified individuals and prevent U.S. patients from receiving the best possible care from a diverse and dedicated group of aspiring physicians.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Building Service: A Look into CNCS Research Program Grants [Part 2]

It’s been a few months since the Office of Research & Evaluation (ORE) first introduced the seven grantees who received 2017 AmeriCorps State and National Evidence-based Planning Grants from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). Since then, the organizations have continued the planning process and begun early implementation of their programs that leverage AmeriCorps members to make a local impact and address pressing societal needs.

In our second blog, we catch up with these grantees to get the scoop on the progress made in program development, to understand their current priorities, and to learn about opportunities and obstacles they encountered along the way. 

Antioch University

Antioch University is using its CNCS grant to explore an alliance with the Job Corps program that enhances career preparation in the health and science field, where participants practice their newly learned skills as AmeriCorps members.

The university is currently in a “reconnaissance phase” of program development, gathering information and identifying potential resources for the AmeriCorps partnership. Antioch University is specifically looking into the compatibility of apprenticeships, vocational schools, and community and small colleges to better transition program graduates. These types of offerings are important for the alignment of the curricula, as well as for building connections between opportunity youth and pathways to success after AmeriCorps service. For example, an ongoing review of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research documents and training materials has yielded valuable information and training resources, which also helps identify potential business and industry opportunities in the program areas.

Antioch’s AmeriCorps program encountered a few initial challenges, including aligning their timeline with Job Corps’ open enrollment program. Also, because they are working with different program sites, the university must research and understand each site’s focus, goals, and obligations. Combined, all of these challenges have made Antioch University appreciates the value of finding a third-party evaluator with an understanding of the elements of AmeriCorps, Job Corps, and opportunity youth.

As Antioch University continues to craft its program implementation strategy, they are referring to various Job Corps and AmeriCorps manuals for additional insight. The university is also seeking support from other external organizations for project enhancements, community partnerships, and incentives.

Appalachian Regional Coalition on Homelessness (ARCH)

With support from CNCS and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, ARCH is implementing a coordinated entry system – a streamlined platform for housing the most vulnerable homeless people first – to address homelessness in Northeast Tennessee. ARCH’s program will use AmeriCorps members to provide services to homeless and economically disadvantaged populations.

In January 2018, ARCH hosted an AmeriCorps/Housing First Planning Symposium with agencies who committed to the CNCS-funded program. ARCH presented a draft plan to each agency that outlined the number of AmeriCorps members needed for each location, identified interventions such as frequency and part-time vs. full-time support, and highlighted host agency responsibilities. The agencies took a week to review their individual “theory of change” and submitted adjustments to ARCH.

ARCH’s current priority is to assist host agencies with planning member activities in accordance with determined interventions. ARCH knows, from experience, that each locale will need its own coordinated entry process, and so they plan to meet with each locale to help them develop and organize an outreach plan.  Other priorities are recruiting members and developing a comprehensive training plan for members that includes evidence-based practices related to Housing First such as trauma informed care, critical time intervention, and an overview of the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), ARCH’s reporting database.

So far, ARCH has not encountered much in the way of obstacles on either the program or evaluation side. ARCH recommends that organizations seeking program grants should not try to create a program to fit a performance measure just to apply for a funding opportunity; instead they should look for the performance measure that aligns with their organization’s goals. Also, organizations should connect with partner agencies to inform them about AmeriCorps and other program details. Finally, they consider it beneficial for organizations to attend any events sponsored by the state service commissions that administer AmeriCorps.

Artesian Schools

Artesian Schools, Inc. is using their CNCS grant to leverage AmeriCorps members as mentors for a tutoring program based on the federal Talent Search youth development program. At Southwest Early College High School (SECHS), program mentors will provide high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds with aid in academics, career planning, and financial counseling.

Artesian continues to study Talent Search and the program’s implementation in other schools. Artesian met with their evaluator to see how the Talent Search program links to SECHS’s full-school program, prompting discussion on how intersecting program components could impact the outcome of their program. In addition to continued exploration and discussion, Artesian hired a supervisor for participating AmeriCorps members, a decision which has helped manage weekly check-ins and provide clear roles and responsibilities to AmeriCorps members.

In the current phase of program development, Artesian set specific goals for the end of the school year through the summer. One such goal is to complete recruitment of Talent Search mentors and tutors by the end of the school year, giving Artesian months to engage and train mentors before they start interacting with students.

While Artesian has hit a few obstacles in identifying a data collection tool, support from their evaluator may help them locate a comprehensive and affordable tool. Their priority is identifying a tool that will allow all their work to be quantifiable and measurable in the future. With all this in mind, Artesian is honing in on specific evaluation-focused questions to inform their data collection with the aim of having a system in place by mid-summer.

Artesian’s advice to other AmeriCorps programs? Don’t wait until the last minute. Find members that are a good fit for your program. Have regular meetings with members and make sure they understand the culture and expectations of your program so everyone involved has the most worthwhile experience.

Association of Clinicians for the Underserved (ACU)

ACU is using its CNCS grant to create an AmeriCorps program that trains members as patient “connectors.” Connectors provide patient-centered interventions such as case management assistance with coverage enrollment and support for accessing primary care and community services – all in an effort to enhance medical capabilities in underserved communities across the country.

Following February’s budget approval, ACU turned its energy toward developing its leadership committee. The committee’s established structure and vision provide clear marching orders for how to work with AmeriCorps staff on the planned evaluation and approaches, leading ACU to the final stages of putting these approaches into the application for a final program.

In this phase of program development, ACU hopes to continue developing the vision and technical understanding required to put together a full program. The organization values the opportunity to meet with other CNCS grantees and learn from their real-world examples with AmeriCorps. During the AmeriCorps State & National Symposium in September 2017, ACU formed connections with other CNCS-supported organizations, providing ACU with guidance for developing templates and examples of how to transition internal discussions into a full-fledged program.

Upon reflection, ACU is confident that a planning grant is the best type of funding to meet their needs, and they suggest other organizations consider it when looking into program grants. The planning grant afforded them the opportunity to learn, meet new people, and work through structures to put together a solid program.

Campus Compact of the Mountain West (CCMW)

CCMW is using its CNCS grant to convene education teams to enhance civic learning and engagement in students, kindergarten through higher education (K2H), across the Mountain West. These education teams implement or expand civic lessons by choosing from various evidence-based teaching models.

CCMW continues to meet with host sites to prepare for program implementation. CCMW has also been organizing a regional civic learning and engagement showcase and training for May. The event will convene K-12 and higher education representatives to plan for program start-up, participate in demonstrations of civic learning and engagement programs, and complete an AmeriCorps host site orientation.

CCMW is focusing on creating all program, member, and site supervisor materials. They will also communicate with participating K2H host sites and continue to build a community of practice between K-12 and higher education stakeholders in support of civic learning and engagement for youth.  CCMW is fortunate to be able to leverage the program evaluation and development expertise of their higher education partners, and to meet with researchers at participating campuses to discuss evaluation opportunities.

As for program development, CCMW cites the time gap between application submission and grant notification as the most challenging part of the process to develop an AmeriCorps program. For others considering a planning grant, CCMW advises that program leadership maintain energy and focus for program development from host sites. As CCMW puts it, “There is a lot of relationship development and a level of trust necessary to push through the uncertainty and keep teams focused on what could be, not what currently is.”

Children’s Forum (The Forum)

The Forum works to influence young children’s early learning skills while also building and diversifying the early learning workforce. The Forum is using their CNCS grant to explore a relationship-based coaching model, in which AmeriCorps members incorporate best practices from early learning literature.

The Forum continues to develop their planning grant by convening an advisory committee with representation from various stakeholders around the state, including childcare programs, local Early Learning Coalitions, Florida Department of Children and Families, Florida Office of Early Learning, and the higher education system. The Forum held various meetings with the advisory team to obtain guidance on member recruitment, site selection, match funding, and the proposed member training plan. In addition, the Forum drafted a program logic model and began drafting the intervention design and evaluation plan, working to align with existing local and state data.

The Forum is currently working with local partners to determine the best site locations for program implementation, while also gathering funds needed for the implementation grant. The Forum will develop a draft budget for the implementation project in an effort to better guide this process. Once the Forum narrows down possible sites, they will visit the childcare programs for potential program implementation. The Forum plans to finalize intervention design and evaluation plans and submit them along with their logic model to the advisory committee for their review and feedback.

Though gathering the full advisory committee has been difficult, the Forum was able to leverage virtual meetings to capitalize on the team’s energy and helpful advice. The Forum advises other programs to study implementation grant programs and budget requirements to inform their own efforts and tap into the experience of existing AmeriCorps grantees.

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How White nationalists evade the law and continue profiting off hate

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/how-white-nationalists-evade-the-law-and-continue-profiting-off-hate/

How White nationalists evade the law and continue profiting off hate

At the rally — which turned deadly — he participated with gusto, carrying a banner that, according to court documents, said, “Gas the kikes, race war now!” during a march past a synagogue.

But when Robert Warren Ray was indicted in June 2018 for using tear gas on counter-protesters at the event, police discovered he was nowhere to be found.

The fugitive, known in far-right circles as a prolific podcaster under a Bigfoot-themed avatar and the name “Azzmador,” has vanished — at least from real life.

However, Ray’s podcast, which he calls The Krypto Report, later appeared on a new gaming livestreaming service that has become a haven for right-wing extremists who have been deplatformed from YouTube and other mainstream social media channels.

Called DLive, the live-streaming platform with a blockchain-based reward system allows users to accept cryptocurrency donations — another perk for extremists barred from using services such as PayPal or GoFundMe, or who want to raise money internationally. Ray, a 54-year-old Texan, was a hit.

He quickly became one of the top 20 earners on DLive, according to an analysis by online extremism expert Megan Squire of Elon University in North Carolina, who studied the period from April 2020 — the earliest data available — through mid-January 2021.

It’s not just the police who are searching for Ray. Since September 2019, he has been flouting court orders and missing appearances in a civil case that names him as one of 24 defendants accused of conspiring to plan, promote and carry out the violent events of Charlottesville.

“(Ray) has failed to communicate with Plaintiffs and the Court in any manner –even while continuing to participate on social media, post articles on the website of The Daily Stormer, and publish podcasts,” said plaintiffs’ attorneys in court documents filed in June.

As for the criminal case, which charges Ray with maliciously releasing gas, authorities have labeled him a fugitive since his 2018 indictment.

To be sure, Ray — who mysteriously stopped podcasting from DLive a few months ago — didn’t get rich on DLive. But while he was ignoring court summonses for his alleged role in organizing Unite the Right, he earned $15,000 on the platform in just six months, according to Squire’s analysis. He cashed most of it out, she said.

“The idea that he’s wanted for all of this stuff, but then just gets to sit at home behind a microphone and make money on the side — I thought that was just not good at all,” Squire said.

Experts say the story of Ray and DLive underscores a reality about people who get chased into the shadows by lawsuits or deplatforming crusades: There will almost always be an entrepreneur who is willing to provide a venue for exiled promoters of hate.

“Where there is demand, eventually supply finds a way,” said John Bambenek, a cyber security expert who tracks the cryptocurrency accounts of extremists.

A game of cat and mouse

Public scrutiny drives alt-right personalities deeper into the bowels of the internet, reducing their visibility.

And while their retreat to ever more obscure corners can make it more difficult to monitor the chatter, Michael Edison Hayden, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, says the game of whack a mole is ultimately worthwhile.

“I have seen firsthand the degree to which figures who were…extremely successful in radicalizing large numbers of people, become extraordinarily marginalized, extraordinarily fast in so-called dark corners of the internet,” he said.

There are few neo-Nazi figures who have been as widely deplatformed as Andrew Anglin, publisher of The Daily Stormer, one of the web’s most notorious hate sites — and where Ray gained prominence as a writer and podcaster. Anglin’s Daily Stormer was dumped by Google and GoDaddy after Anglin in a post mocked the protester who was killed in Charlottesville as a “fat, childless 32-year-old slut.”

This made it more difficult for laypeople to find his site, though it has managed to stay on the internet, partially through the work of an adroit webmaster. “There was just this ongoing battle of what (the webmaster) would do in order to keep Anglin’s voice online,” Hayden said.

Like Ray, Anglin is on the lam. He has evaded attorneys since the summer of 2019, when he lost a spate of lawsuits. In the biggest judgment against him, Anglin was ordered by a judge to pay $14 million to a Jewish woman in Montana who had endured anti-Semitic harassment and death threats from Anglin’s “troll army” of supporters. (One voicemail said: “You are surprisingly easy to find on the Internet. And in real life.”) Anglin, who did not respond to Appradab’s request for comment, has said in court documents that he isn’t living in the country.

The woman, Tanya Gersh, recently told Appradab that she has yet to receive a dime of the judgment and is appalled that people are profiting from hate.

“If knowing that doesn’t disgust you, we have really, really been led astray in our country,” she said.

Founded in 2017, DLive, which is owned by a 30-year-old Chinese national named Justin Sun, takes a 20% cut of its streamers’ revenue, according to its website.

Although DLive initially allowed far-right figures — including Ray — it has purged several amid scrutiny in the wake of the deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6.

That day, Anthime “Tim” Gionet, better known as “Baked Alaska,” used the service to live-stream his role in the incursion. In the video, he curses out a law-enforcement officer, sits on a couch and puts his feet on a table, and can be heard saying, “1776, baby,” according to an FBI affidavit. Gionet was suspended from the site, as was Nick Fuentes — part of a White nationalist group of young radicals called the Groypers — who was also at the January 6 rally, though he says he did not enter the Capitol. Both had already been permanently jettisoned by YouTube and other social media outlets, though Fuentes remains on Twitter.

“DLive was appalled that a number of rioters in the U.S. Capitol attack abused the platform to live stream their actions,” and when its moderators become aware of the live streams, they shut them down, the company said in a statement to Appradab. “All payments to those involved in the attack have been frozen.”

Ray’s DLive account, too, has been suspended, a company spokesman said, although the action did not publicly appear on his page until a couple of days after Appradab reached out to the company on February 5. The DLive spokesman said the decision to sanction his channel was unrelated to Appradab’s inquiry, and that the suspension amounts to a permanent ban.

In any case, Ray stopped posting to DLive about four months ago, around the time a judge in the Unite the Right case found him in contempt. He did not respond to Appradab’s requests for comment.

Gionet was arrested in Houston last month, but Fuentes and Ray have both since popped up elsewhere online.

Fuentes — DLive’s top earner, who took in about $114,000 in six months ending in January — has been scrambling to keep his podcast streaming since DLive booted him. For a few weeks, he’d figured out a way to keep using YouTube, even though the platform had dropped him, largely by using intermediaries to embed a livestream from other YouTube channels on his own website.

Squire said she spent those weeks engaged in a game of cat and mouse with him, repeatedly finding the 22-year-old Illinois native and notifying the third parties, and YouTube, of Fuentes’ actions.

The third parties have mostly acted swiftly and banned Fuentes’ content, Squire said. And while YouTube didn’t act on all of Squire’s initial reporting, the company took action when Appradab flagged it.

“We’ve terminated multiple channels surfaced by Appradab for attempting to circumvent our policies,” a YouTube spokesperson said last week. “Nicholas Fuentes’ channel was terminated in February 2020 after repeatedly violating our policies on hate speech and, as is the case with all terminated accounts, he is now prohibited from operating a channel on YouTube. We will continue to take the necessary steps to enforce our policies.”

Following YouTube’s crackdown, Fuentes began experimenting with other blockchain based technologies that enable him to stream his nightly program without being deplatformed. His recent moves have left Squire frustrated. “I don’t have an answer on how to do the take downs — I just don’t know,” she said.

Ray, meanwhile, appears to have retreated to another obscure streaming site, called Trovo, which is so new it is still in beta mode.

In the chat section of what appeared to be Ray’s new Azzmador page on Trovo, a follower said “we missed u Azz” on January 15.

Ray has yet to livestream any podcasts on Trovo. But in recent days — after several months of silence — a Telegram account bearing Azzmador’s logo with a link to his DLive channel burst back onto the platform with a series of racist and anti-Semitic messages.

“Harriet Tubman and MLK are both fake historical figures who had Communist Jew handlers/promoters,” read one February 7 message.

Some startups see the deplatforming of online firebrands as a recruitment opportunity.

“Hey @rooshv, so sorry to see you get censored!” a Canadian company called Entropy — which targets YouTubers and other streamers seeking to avoid censorship — tweeted at Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh, an online personality in the so-called “manosphere,” who has touted misogynistic ideas such as that women are intellectually inferior and that rape should be legal on private property. Valizadeh — who authored an online post called “Why are Jews behind most modern evils?” — had just been dumped by YouTube less than a week prior, on July 13. “We would be honored to support your streams,” the tweet added.

In March 2019, Entropy’s three young founders were interviewed by a podcaster about their new product, and excitedly touted their first big-name user, Jean-François Gariépy, an alt-right YouTuber who frequently featured White nationalists on one of his shows.

“He was actually the first streamer to try us out,” said co-founder Rachel Constantinidis. “He tried us out for a number of months, and we were able to really improve the stability of the platform based on his feedback.”

In an email to Appradab, Gariépy denied a CBC news article’s characterization of him as supporting “ideas of white superiority and white ‘ethnostates,'” saying, “no proper context was provided by the journalist to understand the circumstances in which I discussed these subjects in the past.”

Fuentes and Gionet did not respond to Appradab’s requests for comment, and Valizadeh declined an interview.

How cryptocurrency comes into play

Just as far-right provocateurs are driven underground to more niche sites when they are booted from mainstream platforms, so, too, do they often gravitate towards cryptocurrency such as bitcoin when banished from using online payment services like PayPal and GoFundMe.

“Cryptocurrencies are indispensable to them at this point,” said Squire.

Because many of them were early adopters — and because bitcoin’s volatile value has recently skyrocketed — some are now sitting on vast sums.

Most successful in this realm has been Stefan Molyneux, a Canadian vlogger who has promoted ideas of non-White inferiority and has said, “I don’t view humanity as a single species.” Molyneux, dropped by PayPal in late 2019, starting taking bitcoin donations in 2013 and is holding onto a chunk of the cryptocurrency that amounted to more than $27 million as of Thursday morning, said Bambenek, the cyber security expert.

(Molyneux — who is still on Facebook and Instagram — has also been expelled from YouTube, and has since shown up on lesser-known platforms such as BitChute, DLive and Entropy, where his audience is considerably diminished. Molyneux told Appradab in an email that he stopped covering politics last year, and is now writing about parenting. He declined to answer any questions about his finances.)

BitChute, Trovo and Entropy did not respond to Appradab’s requests for comment.

By publishing their wallet IDs online and urging followers to donate through cryptocurrency, extremists have — perhaps unwittingly — provided unprecedented insight into their financials. In an attempt to cut out the middleman and combat fraud, bitcoin transactions — including sender and recipient identifiers — are all recorded in a public ledger, available to anyone.

Individual donations to far-right personalities mostly appear to have been small, and Bambenek said they are shrinking on the whole.

One exception: Nick Fuentes received a single donation of 13.5 bitcoin, at the time worth about $250,000, in December from a person whom researchers believe was a computer programmer in France who apparently killed himself shortly afterward, according to a Yahoo News exclusive report.

Another notable cryptocurrency enthusiast is Anglin of The Daily Stormer who, in addition to owing Gersh of Montana $14 million, has another $4.1 million judgment against him for falsely branding comedian and Appradab contributor Dean Obeidallah — an American Muslim — as a terrorist. He also owes money to Taylor Dumpson, who, after becoming the first Black female student body president at American University, endured a harassment campaign orchestrated by The Daily Stormer. That $725,000 judgment is against Anglin, the site and one of the site’s followers.

Anglin, who claims on his website to be banned from PayPal, credit card processors and even his PO Box, has been directing his donations to bitcoin since 2014. Over the years, he received more than 200 bitcoin, but most appear to have been cashed out, according to Bambenek, who said Anglin is holding on to at least 10.1 bitcoin, worth more than $525,000 as of Thursday morning.

But Anglin’s cryptocurrency holdings are becoming more difficult to monitor.

While Anglin was embroiled in the Gersh lawsuit, his website started advertising donations through a more obscure cryptocurrency called Monero, which — contrary to crypto’s ethos of transparency — keeps transactions private.

Azzmador and Anglin sued by Charlottesville victims

Demonetizing and deplatforming aren’t the only way to defang groups and individuals who espouse identity-based hate.

“You also need to sue them,” said Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit civil rights group.

Ray and Anglin are among a couple dozen defendants named in a lawsuit underwritten by Spitalnick’s group on behalf of several activists who are Charlottesville victims. The two men are accused of being part of the leadership team that not only planned the Unite the Right rallies on August 11 and 12, 2017, but primed the pump for violence.

Four of the 10 plaintiffs in the civil rights lawsuit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October, were struck by the car driven by a neo-Nazi into a throng of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer, whose physical appearance Anglin would later disparage. Their injuries ranged from broken bones to concussions to torn ligaments. The other plaintiffs in the suit say they have suffered emotional distress either from physical injuries inflicted during the event or from psychological trauma and have missed work as a result.

In the days leading to the Unite the Right rally, much of the planning and coordination happened on The Daily Stormer, which — with Anglin and Ray as principal authors — began to take on a menacing tone, according to the suit.

On August 8, the suit says, Anglin and Ray said the purpose of the upcoming rally had shifted from being in support of a Confederate monument of Robert E. Lee, “which the Jew Mayor and his Negroid Deputy have marked for destruction” to “something much bigger…which will serve as a rallying point and battle cry for the rising Alt-Right movement.”

“There is a craving to return to an age of violence,” Anglin wrote, according to the suit. “We want a war.”

The Daily Stormer advertised the rally with a poster depicting a figure taking a sledgehammer to the Jewish Star of David.

“Join Azzmador and The Daily Stormer to end Jewish influence in America,” it said.

Prior to the event, the suit says, Ray and Anglin wrote on The Daily Stormer that “Stormers” were required to bring tiki torches and should also bring pepper spray, flag poles, flags and shields.

Anglin did not attend the rally in Charlottesville, but Ray did. During the march past the synagogue, the suit alleges, he yelled at a woman to “put on a fu**ing burka” and called her a “sharia whore.”

The suit says he then proclaimed: “Hitler did nothing wrong.”

Fast forward three-and-a-half years. By January, Ray’s once-prolific podcast had been dark for several months. His fans began to notice. On a forum called GamerUprising, somebody started a thread on January 25 called “What happened to Azzmador????”

“He just disappeared and no one even seems to care,” wrote the user, who goes by “Creepy-ass Cracker.”

But there are signs that Ray plans a return to podcasting as Azzmador.

On February 3, a fan on his Trovo page asked when Azzmador would begin streaming.

He responded in a word: “soon.”

Appradab’s Julia Jones contributed to this story.