dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

The Lab Grown GOOD Meat Company Has a Murky Past and They’re Extremely Sensitive About It. 1/2

On March 21, GOOD Meat, the lab-grown, “cultivated” meat division of Eat Just Inc., announced that it had received an important preliminary approval from the FDA to bring one of its alternative meat products to market in the US. The approval, in the form of a “no questions” letter, means that the FDA has accepted the company’s claim that its first product, cultivated chicken, is safe to eat. The evaluation process involved a detailed submission from GOOD Meat about the safety and production process for the product, including assurances about its nutritional content and purity.

The letter comes two years after GOOD Meat received its first approval, from the government of Singapore, and served its chicken product to the public for the very first time, at upmarket Singapore restaurant called 1880. It has since been sold in a variety of locations in the city-state, from street stalls to the prestigious Huber’s Butchery. At present, GOOD Meat remains the only producer of lab-grown meat in the world not only to have the necessary approvals to sell its products to consumers, but also to have done so. Although Upside Foods secured FDA approval before GOOD Meat, it has yet to feed any paying customers.

GOOD Meat is now working with the US Department of Agriculture to secure the final necessary approvals, before serving its cultivated chicken at a restaurant in Washington DC, with the help of chef José Andrés, who also happens to be a member of the company’s Board of Directors.

“Since Singapore approved GOOD Meat for sale, we knew this moment was next. I am so proud to bring this new way of making meat to my country and to do it with a hero of mine, Chef José Andrés,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of GOOD Meat and Eat Just, in response to the FDA approval.

“The future of our planet depends on how we feed ourselves,” added Andrés. “And we have a responsibility to look beyond the horizon for smarter, sustainable ways to eat. GOOD Meat is doing just that, pushing the boundary on innovative new solutions, and I’m excited for everyone to taste the result.”

Despite the fanfare for this supposed “food of the future,” and the fact that consumers in the US are probably going to be eating it very soon, there remain serious questions to be answered. Not only about the product, but also the man who produced it: Josh Tetrick.

Can eating lab-grown meat – which is essentially a form of deliberately grown cancer – actually giveyou cancer? How can you convince the public that it won’t, when nobody has ever eaten it before? And is a man with a troubled business history – a history he’s done his best to hide – the right person to do it?

THE CRUELTY-FREE FOOD OF THE FUTURE?

Lab-grown meat, meat that is produced in a bioreactor in a high-tech manufacturing facility rather than on a traditional farm, is widely touted as a “food of the future”, along with so-called “plant-based meats” and new alternative protein sources like insects and algae.

The promise of lab-grown meat is almost too good to be true: all of the benefits of meat – the taste, the texture, and the nutritional profile – without any of the downsides. That means no raising and slaughtering of animals and, even more importantly, claims of a significantly reduced carbon footprint versus traditional agriculture. Agriculture is widely portrayed as one of the principal culprits in the deepening “climate crisis,” with predictions of looming catastrophe if we don’t transform animal farming soon. By “transform”, of course, many simply mean “get rid of altogether”.

Huge amounts of money have already been poured into lab-grown meat, on the promise of an imminent transformation of meat production and consumption. The so-called “Big Three” players – Eat Just, Believer Meat and Upside Foods – have raised $1.2 billion between them in venture funding, and counting.

These new companies have the backing of organizations like the World Economic Forum, which has proposed a “Planetary Health Diet” built around plant-based and alternative protein sources, as well as the UN and governments – including now the US government, and the governments of the UK, France, the Netherlands and Singapore.

Activist celebrities have been at the forefront of this revolution in food production, providing vocal support, as well as financing, for the new technology. In 2021, for instance, Leonardo DiCaprio bought an unspecified stake in two lab-grown meat companies, Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms, after an earlier investment in Beyond Meat, one of the leading producers of so-called “plant-based meat”.….continued

https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/04/15/the-lab-grown-good-meat-company-has-a-murky-past-and-theyre-extremely-sensitive-about-it

>>18704276

2/3

In a press release to accompany his investment in lab-grown meat, DiCaprio said, “One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system. Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production.”

With the enormous weight of such individual and institutional backing, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the success of lab-grown meat is all-but-guaranteed. But lab-grown meat faces at least two serious, related, problems that are intrinsic to what it is and the way it is produced. If these problems cannot be resolved, the product may just as easily fail to sell, regardless of how much money has been invested in it.

Manufacturers of lab-grown meat like to say that their product is indistinguishable from real meat. It isn’t a copy, nor replica, nor approximation of real meat: it is real meat. But this isn’t true.In actual fact, lab-grown meat cells differ from typical animal cellsin at least one fundamental regard: they will replicate eternally if placed under the right conditions. As a result, =they are functionally indistinguishable from cancer==. They are cancer. As you might imagine, this brings with it image and safety concerns that are likely to prove very hard to shake.

Cells that replicate eternally are known in the medical business as “=•immortalized cell lines==”. The first immortalized human cell line was produced from cancer cells taken from a woman called Henrietta Lacks in 1951, at Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore. The sample was taken from Lacks without her informed consent, and her treatment is held up today as a test case of failed medical ethics, alongside other injustices like the Tuskegee experiments. Despite the ethical controversy that still surrounds their use, the HeLa line of cells, as it is known, has been responsible for a number of scientific and medical breakthroughs. Immortalized human cells taken from aborted fetal tissue were used to develop a number of the COVID-19 shots. Cells may already be cancerous, or cancerous growth may be induced in them via the application of radiation or substances such as enzymes like telomerase, or by genetic modification.

Producers of lab-grown meat favor immortal cell lines for much the same reasons scientists do. Since normal cells will only go on dividing so long, constant samples would need to be taken from animals to continue production. As well as increasing costs, this would also give the lie to the claim that lab-grown meats are “cruelty free”, since animals would still need to be raised – and ultimately slaughtered at some point – to produce them. What would be the point?

While using immortalized cell lines may partially solve one problem – the need to justify the product as an (ethical) alternative to traditional meat – it creates an entirely new one, since now producers and consumers must reckon with some of the least desirable associations you could possibly devise for a food product. Whatever safety concerns manufacturers of other alternative products have faced – perhaps most notably Impossible’s novel ingredient “heme” – simply pale in comparison.

Some manufacturers of lab-grown meat, believing the C-word image problem to be intractable, are quietly moving away from using immortalized cell lines and trying different technologies instead. The Big Three, however, are still pushing on with the use of immortalized cell lines and, if a recent Bloomberg Businessweek piece is any indication, they are doing their very best not to acknowledge the endlessly replicating elephant in the room.

But this will hardly do. It’s abundantly clear from polls and market-research data that alternative products like plant-based meats are already viewed negatively, with consumers being deeply skeptical about their taste and health benefits. One amusing survey of Australian men revealed that 70 percent would prefer to lose ten years of their lives than give up meat. A study revealed that the only effective way to get people to choose plant-based options over traditional choices is to shame people with social pressure, and especially messaging about the environmental and ethical cost of not changing their habits. Add the word “cancer” to the mix, and it’s likely that many consumers will have to face down the barrel of a gun before they choose to eat lab-grown meat…continued

https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/04/15/the-lab-grown-good-meat-company-has-a-murky-past-and-theyre-extremely-sensitive-about-it/

>>18704295

3/3

Could consuming these products actually give you cancer? The answer is, simply – we don’t know. Humans haven’t ever made tumors a staple of their diet, so we have zero long-term data about the effects consumption could have. Worries about the safety of lab-grown meat are real enough that the Italian government is now in the process of banning it, much to the dismay of activists and advocates at organizations like the Bill Gates-funded Good Food Institute. The country has also made moves to restrict the addition of insect protein to foods like flour, pasta, and pizza.

Where cancer is a risk, most would be likely to plead for abundant caution, but this is precisely what is not being exercised, except perhaps in Italy. Although we don’t have long-term safety data, we have good reason, prima facie, to believe that eating lab-grown meat could give you cancer.

First, we know the human genome has acquired hundreds of genes “horizontally”, i.e. from other organisms, including bacteria (“vertical” transfer is the “normal” route, from parent to offspring). Although we don’t fully understand the mechanisms by which this has happened in our history, we can be sure, at least, that it has. Second, we know that complete genes pass from food, via our gut, into our blood. Third, we know that horizontal gene transfer, from cancerous to non-cancerous cells, is a central part of the progression of cancers. Cancer cells create bubbles, or exosomes, to transfer genetic material into healthy cells and make them cancerous.

There’s no reason, then, to believe that oncogenes – i.e. cancer-causing genes– present in lab-grown meat couldn’t be assimilated into the genome of an eater. Certainly, any scientist who said this could never happen would be mistaken or lying.

EAT JUST INC.: A “CULT OF DELUSION”?

The formidable difficulties of disrupting an industry, let alone an industry as fundamental and as popular as animal-based agriculture, would be hard enough without factoring in a product that could give consumers cancer. Truly, you’d need an extraordinarily capable leader to do it. But is Josh Tetrick that man? To answer that question, let’s take a look at how Josh Tetrick, and his company, got to where they are today.

The story of the CEO of Eat Just Inc. begins in 2011 with perhaps the closest approximation to a startup fairytale you could imagine.

Two childhood friends – indeed two Joshes, Tetrick and Balk – founded a company.

The aim: to revolutionize food by offering ethical alternatives to traditional animal-based products. The initial focus is on replacing eggs in products like mayonnaise and cookie dough. They start out as small as possible, working from Tetrick’s garage in San Francisco. Within two years, which they spend largely on research and development, they manage to secure tens of millions of dollars of venture capital from some of the richest men in the world. This includedBill Gates as well as Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. In 2014, they bring their first product to the market. It’s a plant-based mayonnaise. And they team up withWhole Foods, as well as with Costco and Safeway. By the end of that year, the company raised almost $130 million in funding.

If the first couple of years for the company were a fairytale, what followed would be anything but dreamlike. Just how bad things would get is best illustrated by just three years later, when the company would be forced to rebrand entirely and even change its name. Because before Eat Just Inc. was Eat Just Inc., it was Hampton Creek.

Mere mention of the name Hampton Creek is enough to elicit an extremely defensive response from anybody associated with Just Inc. When I started mentioning Hampton Creek on Twitter, I found myself almost immediately blocked by the accounts of GOOD Meat and JUST Egg, another brand within the Just Inc. group. Tetrick himself, with whom I had been speaking in a private Twitter groupchat, in the hope of arranging a live debate about the future of food, unceremoniously left, without a word. Hampton Creek is a touchy subject, and it’s not hard to see why.

The problems began in October of 2014, when Hampton Creek was sued by Unilever for false advertising over its plant-based mayonnaise. Although the lawsuit was dropped, Hampton Creek was slapped with a warning from the FDA that it would have to tighten the marketing of its product.

Less than a year later, several former employees came forward as part of a Business Insider exposéentitled, “Sex, lies and eggless mayonnaise: something is rotten at food startup Hampton Creek, former employees say.”

Very long articleread the rest here

https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/04/15/the-lab-grown-good-meat-company-has-a-murky-past-and-theyre-extremely-sensitive-about-it/

“Envelopes” – Quint’s Message 1/2

April 15, 2023 | Sundance

I am a reasonably intelligent person, generally of mild and polite disposition; perhaps blessed by the grace of a loving God and brutally practical outlook therein, and with the acuity to look at things from a slightly less complicated perspective.

I have watched, viewed, read and consumed the Potemkin Village discussion across a broad spectrum of platforms for several weeks. I have watched the news, read the headlines, researched the general promotions from a wide variety of sources and personalities. Heck, yesterday, I even forced myself to watch a painful podcast [LINK], which included the insufferable pontifications of Buck Sexton and Clay Travis as they discussed the Trump -vs- DeSantis popular genre of domestic 2024 politics.

The world is full of small voices shouting the exact same shiny things in unison. However, one thing is abundantly clear… everyone in conservative and republican politics is consumed by the 2024 puppet show and focused, to the exclusion of all other intelligent review, on the Potemkin Village of federal political constructs.

Let me be clear…. Nothing, not one single thing…. about candidates, debates, endorsements, media support, branding, imaging, leadership, effectiveness, policy, polling, communications, digital outreach, social media platforms, rallies or love of country matters in the 2024 election. None of it matters. The outcome of the 2024 presidential contest will be determined by ONLY ONE THING….

….ENVELOPES!

That’s it.

That’s the sum total of what matters.

Envelopes containing ballots.

Red envelopes -vs- Blue envelopes, and who can gather the most envelopes. That’s it folks. That’s the only thing that matters.

When Team Obama watch their opposition deciding on who is the best person to reach the “independent”, “middle”, or “swing voters”… as if voters really mattered, the David Axelrod’s, Marc Elias’s, David Plouffe and Barack Obama’s of the world laugh. I mean straight up hysterically belly laugh.

…”the RNC is still conducting ‘voter outreach‘!”….

More than half the country is still focused on a political pretense that is akin to using a flip phone in a smart phone world.

When the DNC sees the RNC focused on selecting the best congressional candidates who can be the best representatives for a district in Virginia… the entire mechanism of the donor class behind the DNC orders another round of drinks.

Debates don’t matter…. Did you forget Arizona 2022? Katie Hobbs giggled when asked about why no debates.

Candidates don’t matter…. Did you forget Pennsylvania 2022? When grunge clad, hoodie-wearing, John Fetterman promoted pancake syrup as the best solution to the Medicare crisis (or something equally as bat-shit crazy from his compromised mental state).

Rally size doesn’t matter…. Did you forget the Biden campaign audiences that could fit into one mid-sized SUV?

Qualifications do not matter. Intelligence, policy, legislative accomplishments, executive experience, success or lack thereof in any life endeavor… NONE of this matters.

All of these former aspects of the political industry are gone, they have absolutely no bearing on the outcome of federal elections.

The only reason these insufferable discussions still exist is to maintain theillusion of a political business that generates money. The business they are pretending to still exist is like Blockbuster video being subsidized by corporations who sell streaming services. The media pretend the traditional business model of elections is still viable because without it, there is no need for them.

There is only one function of modern political industry that matters… Collecting envelopes. That’s it!

It doesn’t even matter whose name is on the paper inside the envelope. The people who switched from Flip Phones to Smart Phones don’t even pay attention to the candidate names on the ballots any longer. We elect dead people now…continued

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/04/15/envelopes-quints-message-to-donald-trump/

>>18704339

2/2

The entire mechanism of American political outcomes is now one really simple process. There are Blue envelopes to locate, and there are Red envelopes to locate. Tune in to the news in November of 2024 and find out which team collected the most envelopes.

♦ Dear President Donald Trump, go ahead and hold the rallies…. continue putting out the platform…. continue using your podium to promote vision, excitement and direction in the largest scale possible to save the nation. Continue providing fuel for the cultural battle and primary battle being waged in the social media sphere by warriors for the MAGA movement…. However, in the totality of the 2024 presidential contest, this effort should be -at most- 20% of the industrial political campaign.

80% of the entirety of the money spent, the effort exhausted, the assembly constructed, the people and supporters assembled, should be focused – to the exclusion of all other things – on the process of maximizing envelope collection.

Make that paradigm shift, and 2024 is easily within reach. Ignore it, and you might as well use a carrier pigeon to send your next email.The RNC is no help. The RNC is focused on EVERYTHING that doesn’t matter.

You cannot win an election if you rely on the RNC to make this adjustment. You are going to have to organize this assembly on your own while enlisting the resources of the MAGA army.

The DNC already has the network of thousands of community activist organizations and business units at work in preparation for the 2024 envelope gathering operation. They do not care about voters; the wants and needs of the people on the front of the envelope are an arcane annoyance, irrelevant to the DNC objective.

For the Republican presidential primary,whoever contracts Catherine Engelbrecht and the coast-to-coast organization of True The Vote first, will likely win.

Book sales, TV ads, legislative accomplishments, cultural wokeism, school choice, education policy, fiscal policy, foreign policy, debates, political experience, candidate qualifications, polls, rallies, crowd sizes, endorsements, not one single part of any of that matters in this electoral combat. There is only one thing that matters,…. collecting the most envelopes.

… And with that message clearly stated, here’s the metaphor for a brutally honest visit to the next national RNC meeting, along with a prediction for exactly what their reaction would be…..

…Enjoy your day!

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/04/15/envelopes-quints-message-to-donald-trump/

16 Apr, 2023 14:58

West doesn’t believe in Kiev's Crimea hopes – former MOD chief

Ukraine needs to convince foreign backers to support an attack on the peninsula, Andrey Zagorodnyuk says

Most in the US and EU do not believe Ukraine is capable of fulfilling its pledge to retake control of Crimea from Russia, former a Ukrainian defense minister has acknowledged.

“The vast majority of Western politicians, analysts and journalists don’t see the liberation of Crimea as a realistic prospect. This is a fact,” Andrey Zagorodnyuk said in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on Thursday.

However the former minister, who was part of President Vladimir Zelensky’s government between August 2019 and March 2020, stressed that Western doubts do not mean Kiev should give up on the idea of attacking the peninsula.

“We need to persuade them [the West], convince them, put them before a fact, look for different reasoning” to receive the required weapons and other forms of assistance, he insisted.

According to Zagorodnyuk, there are a number of reasons why foreign backers have doubts over Ukraine’s ability to achieve military success in Crimea, which became part of Russia in 2014 following a referendum organized in response to a violent coup in Kiev.

“First of all, it will be very difficult to do this because significant Russian forces will be gathered there to prevent its return by military means under Ukrainian rule. The second issue is the integration of Crimea [into Ukraine].It’s a rather problematic story,” he explained.

The minister also said that – when thinking about a Ukrainian operation against Crimea – Kiev’s Western backers are “considering its aftermath in terms of the escalation of the situation” in the conflict overall.

During his address on Saturday, dedicated to Orthodox Easter, Zelensky again promised that Ukraine will return Crimea and all other territories it has lost to Russia. This includes the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, which were incorporated into the Russian state last October, following referendums, in which the local populations voted overwhelmingly in favor of the move.

“Our flag will fly on the shores of the Sea of Azov and the Seversky Donets River, over the slag heaps, and [Crimea’s] Ai-Petri mountain. The sun will shine in the south, the sun will shine in the east, the sun will shine in Crimea,”the Ukrainian leader pledged.

Last month, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of the country’s Security Council, said threats against Crimea by Ukrainian officials were just “propaganda” and should not be treated seriously.

However, Medvedev warned that if the peninsula is actually attacked, it could become “the basis for the use of all means of protection, including those provided for by the fundamentals of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence.”

(They can’t convince the West because the whole point of Ukraine war was a distraction for the US, and most western countries want the territory to disappear)

https://www.rt.com/news/574831-crimea-ukraine-west-zagorodnyuk/

16 Apr, 2023 13:23

Hedge funds making billions from Ukraine turmoil – study

Experts blame the organizations for exacerbating the food crisis by “betting on hunger”

Ten of the planet's largest hedge funds made nearly$2 billion from the food-price spikethat occurred after the start of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, The Guardian HAS reported. The British newspaper cited a report by Greenpeace’s investigative journalism branch Unearthed and Lighthouse Reports, a journalism nonprofit.

Hedge funds are investment firms that buy and sell equities and commodities for profit.

According to the study, analysts examined the returns made by Societe Generale’s SG Trend Index for the first quarter of last year, both prior to the start of the conflict on February 24 last year, and immediately afterwards. The analysis focused on grains and soya beans. Calculations showed that the hedge funds in question made $1.9 billion in returns on these commodities, a much higher figure than the returns on them in the first quarter of any of the previous five years.

“Hedge funds helped inflate a price bubble, putting upward pressure on food prices… and this has affected hunger levels of the world’s poorest people… Hedge funds and financial speculators have made obscene profits by betting on hunger and exacerbating it. That cannot be right,” Olivier De Schutter, a UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said, commenting on the findings. He accused investors of intentionally “piling” into grains and commodities aiming solely to “capitalize on uncertainty and rising food prices.”

Analysts found that food companies have also profited from the crisis. Calculations showed that the globe’s20 largest food companies made $53.5 billion in windfall profitsin the last two years, first from rising food prices during the Covid-19 pandemic and then from last year’s spike amid the crisis in Ukraine.

“What we are witnessing is an enormous transfer of wealth to a few rich families that basically own the global food system, at a time when the majority of the world population is struggling to make ends meet,” Greenpeace International campaigner Davi Martins stated.

The prices of staple foods like wheat and fertilizers rose sharply following the start of the military operation, propelled by soaring energy costs as the globe feared for the future of Russia’s energy exports amid sanctions that followed the conflict. They have somewhat subsided later in the year, especially after the Ukraine grain deal was reached in mid-2022 that allowed the country’s agricultural products to be exported from Ukrainian ports despite the ongoing military action.

However, the situation is still turbulent due to deficiencies in the deal, which has so far failed to assist Russia with its own agricultural exports. Russia faces difficulties exporting its produce due to economic restrictions placed on the country. As a result, global food prices have not yet returned to 2021, pre-conflict levels, prompting the International Monetary Fund to warn last month that “many vulnerable countries still face heightened food insecurity.”

Analysts urged global regulators to introduce stricter rules for market speculation, including better transparency in the food market and restrictions on how big a position investors are allowed to take in this market.

(How many western leaders made money by announcing “there will be food shortages”? They planned this.

https://www.rt.com/business/574752-hedge-funds-food-crisis/

16 Apr, 2023 12:43

Ukraine announces ‘big Easter prisoner swap’

Kiev is reporting that Russia has released 130 military personnel though Moscow has yet to confirm a deal

More than 100 Ukrainian prisoners have been released as part of a “big Easter exchange”with Russia, a senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday, when Orthodox Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No confirmation from Moscow immediately followed.

Andrey Yermak, President Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff, said the swap has been carried out “in several stages over the course of the last few days.” He added that soldiers, sailors, national guardsmen and border guards were among the service members returned home.“The task is simple: to have everyone returned,” the official said.

According to Yermak, some of the prisoners had been captured in the area of Artyomovsk, the Donbass city known to Ukrainians as Bakhmut. An important logistical hub, the city has been the scene of fierce fighting in recent months.

The Russian Defense Ministry has not confirmed the swap cited by Yermak yet. However, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military company Wagner Group, released a video on Sunday of himself instructing one of his fighters to transfer Ukrainian prisoners and place them under Kiev’s authority “by lunchtime today.”

The video then shows what appears to be a fighter with a Wagner insignia addressing a group of dozens of Ukrainian POWs. “I’ve been authorized today to hand you over to the Ukrainian side before Easter,” the man says. Prisoners are then seen climbing into trucks and marching in columns past an armored vehicle that has a pole with a white flag attached to it.

The Wagner Group is heavily involved in the battle of Artyomovsk.Prigozhin said this week that his forces were in control of “more than 80%” of the cityand that Ukrainian troops were holding out in its western suburbs.

The previous prisoner swap between Moscow and Kiev was announced earlier this week. Russia brought home 106 of its soldiers, while Ukrainian officials said that 100 of its service members had been released.

https://www.rt.com/russia/574830-ukraine-easter-prisoner-swap/

16 Apr, 2023 15:05

Conservative social media shut down by new owners

A “Twitter clone… for conservatives” is a no longer viable business, the new owners of the Parler platform have said

Parler, a conservative-leaning social media platform popular among supporters of former US President Donald Trump, was pulled offline earlier this week following its acquisition by digital media conglomerate Starboard.

The new owner of the platform, which was formerly called Olympic Media, announced the acquisition on Friday.Parler “as it is currently constituted” has been shut down “to undergo a strategic assessment,” Starboard said in a statement published on the platform’s homepage.

It did not say when Parler would return or what changes the new owners plan to introduce. Instead, Starboard said it sees “tremendous opportunities across multiple sectorsto continue to serve marginalized or even outright censored communities.”

The new owners maintained that “no reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more.” Starboard CEO Ryan Coyne said his company was looking forward to integrating the social media platform’s audience “across all of our existing platforms.”

Founded by Coyne in 2018, Starboard houses several other conservative-leaning platforms like American Wire and BizPac Review. The company said it expects the Parler acquisition deal to be accretive by the end of the second quarter of 2023.

The development comes months after the collapse of another deal that would have seen Parler purchased by American rapper, Kanye West, who has legally changed his name to Ye. He sought to buy the social media platform after he was suspended on Instagram and Twitter. The two social media giants banned him following comments relating to Jewish people.

In December, Parler said the company and West had not closed the deal. “Parlement Technologies has confirmed that the company has mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale of Parler,” the then-owner of the social media platform said, as quoted by TechCrunch.

Parler was founded in 2018 by John Matze and Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, the co-owner of conservative news website Breitbart. The social network was removed from Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store for allowing “violent content” after the storming of the US Capitol building by Trump supporters. Amazon also dropped it from its web hosting service at that time.

In May 2021, it returned to the App Store after introducing stronger content moderation. Google Store brought it back in September 2022.

https://www.rt.com/news/574833-parler-social-media-shut-down/

16 Apr, 2023 12:21

Western firms in no rush to leave Russia – Ukrainian data

Fewer than 10% of foreign companies have so far divested from the sanctioned country, according to the Kiev School of Economics

Around 200 foreign companies have so far exited the Russian market amid Ukraine-related sanctions, representing fewer than 10% of the international brands that do business in the country, new data has shown.

The Kiev School of Economics (KSE) conducted an analysis of 3,157 foreign firms that operated in the Russian market prior to the start of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine as part of its Leave Russia project.

According to its calculations, only 213 of these companies have divested from the sanctioned country in the past year, which is roughly 6.7%. Some 473 have announced plans to leave, but haven’t executed them so far. More than 2,400 of the companies continue to do business in the country, despite roughly half of them being forced to curtail their operations to various extents.

The head of the project, Andrii Onopriienko, warned that it would become more difficult for firms to quit the Russian market without incurring losses as time passes.

“There are a lot of companies that did nothing or still continue to wait. And after one year of war, many companies will lose the opportunity to sell their businesses and will continue to lose because, finally, those assets could be nationalized or bought at a very cheap price,” he said, as quoted by the Washington Post.

Under regulations introduced by the Russian government last year, companies that want to divest of their assets in Russia must first seek permission from the country’s authorities. The measures were introduced to protect the Russian economy and consumers after many Western brands announced their intentions to leave the market as a result of sanctions, which have made it difficult to continue operations due to logistics and supply-chain problems.

The Russian authorities remain optimistic about the future of the economy despite the exit of foreign brands. President Vladimir Putin recently saidcompanies that quit Russia are leaving behind a “good legacy,” which is eagerly picked up by domestic companies and entrepreneurs, who “successfully” continue their work. Russia has also been actively reorienting both imports and exports from ‘unfriendly’ countries and companies to new markets, and introducing import substitution mechanisms, which help to keep the domestic market well-stocked.

The Russian government also recently approved several deals that will see popular products or their analogs return to the country’s market. Just this week, reports emerged that clothing stores that used to belong to Spanish retail giant Inditex, including Zara, Pull&Bear, Bershka and Massimo Dutti, will reopen in the coming weeks under new brand names after they were sold to a new owner. On Saturday, Belarusian furniture maker Swed House, which sells IKEA-like home goods and products, opened its first store in Moscow’s Shchelkovsky shopping mall.

https://www.rt.com/business/574825-western-firms-leave-russia

Anonymous ID: 7a328d April 16, 2023, 10:29 a.m. No.18704657 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>4690

Jack Poso 🇺🇸

A Texas Young Republican leader is crying that he got cyber bullied by Trump supporters after he called for them to be eradicated This is who is in charge of the party at so many levels

This is what MAGA is up against republicans who believe in America First is wrong and they are in charge

https://t.co/f8ubUMrmJe

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1647638238054457344?s=20