Introduction
During the SARS-CoV-2-pandemic, face masks have become one of the most important ubiquitous factors affecting human breathing. It increases the resistance and dead space volume leading to a re-breathing of CO2. So far, this phenomenon and possible implications on early life has not been evaluated in depth….
Discussion
There is a possible negative impact risk by …
A male wearing a dress is featured on the latest cover of Brides Today, an English-language Indian publication. The “model” is a “non-binary transfeminine” activist who goes by Alok.
In the article, Alok said: “I wish I could post an image of myself online without being inundated with hate mail. I wish I could be seen as a human being … But I’m not going to wait for that future, I’m going to build it now, here, with the people who are ready for love.”
Daniel Ellsberg — the Pentagon Papers whistleblower who has been an inspiring activist for peace since the early 1970s — recently wrote a public letter disclosing that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, with a prognosis that he has only three to six months to live.
Join us for “Daniel Ellsberg Week” to celebrate the life’s work of Daniel Ellsberg, to take action in support of whistleblowers and peacemakers, and to call on state and local governments around the country to honor the spirit of difficult …
As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary, every Israeli should remember that the occupation stains the country’s independence day and that Israel is not and will not be a true democracy as long as it remains an occupying power
I couldn’t applaud and admire enough the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who protested for 17 consecutive weeks against the Netanyahu government’s scheme to subvert Israel’s judiciary under the pretense of necessary ‘reforms.’ In reality, Netanyahu and his Justice Minister Levin were bent on subordinating Israel’s Supreme Court to the whims of a simple majority in the Knesset, and the appointment of judges …
US$2.24 trillion is a mighty amount. It’s also a sickening figure when considering the object of this exercise. The flickering tease of war, the promise of bloodshed and an increasingly large butcher’s bill, are inevitable suggestions from such a figure. The scenes are also clear: well-paid suits dazed by theories of the next war; policy wonks jabbering over mock war games. A huge amount of money is being pushed into the venture, and the sceptics are being held at bay.
Much of this news comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s latest findings that countries are spending …
For more than eight years, I did my wash in the same laundromat. Called “Sparkle Plenty,” it was a relic. It first opened in 1973 and appeared as if the decor had never been altered (and rarely cleaned).
It’s changed hands a few times over the years but when I first encountered it in 2006, Sparkle Plenty was owned and operated by a Chinese couple who appeared to be in their mid-60s. She was almost always smiling and pleasant. He seemed lost in a perpetual scowl and heaven forbid you …
A billboard van calling for an end to extradition proceedings against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange waits at traffic lights in Parliament Square in London, England, on September 14, 2020. (Photo by David Cliff/NurPhoto)However described, the shabby treatment of Julian Assange never ceases to startle. While he continues to suffer in Belmarsh prison awaiting the torments of an interminable legal process, more material is coming out showing the way he was spied upon while staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Of late, the Spanish daily El País has …
According to an article in American Banker titled “SEC’s Gensler Directly Links Crypto and Bank Failures,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler has asked for more financial resources to police the crypto market. Gensler testified at an April 18 House Financial Services Committee hearing:
[Crypto companies] have chosen to be noncompliant and not provide investors with confidence and protections, and it undermines the $100 trillion capital markets …
Silvergate and Signature [banks] were engaged in the crypto business — I mean some would say that they were crypto-backed …
Silicon Valley Bank, actually when it failed, saw the country’s — the world’s — second-leading stable …
• China to regulate Artificial Intelligence
• CATL’s new condensed matter Battery
• China increases exports to the Global South
• Journey to the West, low-budget science fiction
The Indian Left holds the record of running an Indian state for long 34 years without a break. The Left Front formed the government in West Bengal, an eastern state of the Indian Union, in 1977 and ruled the state for 34 years at a stretch, winning all the Assembly elections in the process, before losing out to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the Assembly election held in 2011.
If the year 2011 is considered a benchmark for the anti-Left in India in general and those in West Bengal in particular then what do we see happening to the Left in …
It’s a very funny thing. In the US, the provision of services in such industries as security and intelligence is outsourced in a sprawling complex of contractors and subcontractors. In Australia, the entire military and security establishment is outsourced to Washington’s former mandarins, many of them earning a pile in consultancy fees. This, perhaps, is what Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles means when he talks about the Australian Defence Force moving “beyond interoperability to interchangeability.”
The list of recipients is depressingly long, and suggests that Australia has ceased to have any pretensions of sovereignty in defence matters. Take, …
Here is a letter that Steve Clifford and I sent to the CEO Tim Cook of Apple corporation, whose percentage of charitable giving relative to its taxable income is astoundingly low as compared to other corporations noted below. Apple should increase its charitable giving.
April 24, 2023
Tim Cook, CEO
Apple, Inc.
One Apple Park Way
Cupertino, CA 95014
Dear Tim Cook,
We are writing you regarding Apple’s charitable giving.
Your predecessor reportedly believed that he could do more for the world by making great products than by donating to charitable causes. Apple’s charitable giving has increased substantially since you became CEO, indicating that you don’t share this …
Nuclear war is unthinkable, but also uncontrollable once a spark is lit. There’s no turning back once that big misstep occurs. Indeed, the film Dr. Strangelove (Director Stanley Kubrick, 1964, Columbia Pictures) is all about what could happen if the wrong person pushes the wrong buttons, as US Air Force General Jack Ripper (George C. Scott) sends his bomber wing to destroy Russia to prevent a commie plot to pollute Americans.
According to a recent article: “Is Nuclear War More Likely After Russia’s Suspension of the New START Treaty?” Nature, March 7, …
On 7 October 2022, the United States government implemented export controls in an effort to hinder the development of China’s semiconductor industry. An expert on the subject told the Financial Times, ‘The whole point of the policy is to kneecap China’s AI [Artificial Intelligence] and HPC [High Performance Computing] efforts’. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said:
In order to maintain its sci-tech hegemony, the US has been abusing …
Whenever I see he/him or she/her I think fuck/you. You must be living an awfully precious life if, amid the pervasive despair of an economy in free fall, your uppermost concern is clinging to your pronouns.”
— Norman Finkelstein, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom
The present mental state of the American public is almost as bad as the ruling military idiocy which is pushing us closer to a nuclear confrontation as we conduct a proxy war against Russia using Ukrainian lives while we supply the weapons. In the …
“Your nearly $1 TRILLION war budget is fueling the climate crisis.”
by Codepink / April 27th, 2023
Washington – CODEPINK members were in attendance at the Kennedy Center Wednesday night to watch cofounder Diane Wilson receive a Goldman Environmental Prize for her work and activism to save the gulf waters in Texas.
But when former Speaker of the House and California representative Nancy Pelosi took the stage to address the crowd, CODEPINK members felt compelled to speak out.
Olivia DiNucci calmly walked onto the stage with a “War is Not Green” sign and activists in the audience began shouting out “Stop the war in Ukraine. We need …
The World Bank says nearly 80% (560 million) of the 700 million people who were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 due to COVID policies were from India. Globally, extreme poverty levels increased by 9.3 per cent in 2020.
In the UK, poverty is increasing in two-thirds of communities, as millions go without heat and skip meals. Due to the ‘cost-of-living crisis’, 10.5 million are experiencing …
There are so many ways to frame a story, skin a cat, so to speak, and make a message lift up from the dry desert of the digital wasteland to somehow precipitate a reaction. Humor, sarcasm, wit, the Jonathan Swift “let them eat a modest proposal” sort of way.
Journalism has slid down a slippery slope, and mostly the legacy media and mainstream media is a dog and pony show, and full of Deep and Shallow state stenographers. I write literary stuff that sometimes ends up here at DV, and it is essay memoir sort of poetic writing. Then, the polemics, …
Rumours and streaks of hysteria are running rife about what such artificial intelligence (AI) systems as ChatGPT are meant to do. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy recently showed himself to be ignorant with terror about the search bot created by OpenAI. “ChatGPT taught itself to do advanced chemistry. It wasn’t built into the model. Nobody programmed it to learn complicated chemistry. It decided to teach itself, then made its knowledge available to anyone who asked. Something is coming. We aren’t ready.”
Melanie Mitchell, an academic who knows a thing or two about the field, was bemused and tweeted …
Today, the United Nations Security Council is holding consultations on the future of Haiti. No Haitian individuals or organizations will be present at the meeting. Instead, Haiti will be represented by its occupying entities: The Core Group and the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), the mandate of which is set to expire on July 23.
The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and BAP member organization in Haiti, MOLEGHAF (Mouvement National pour la Liberté et L’égalité des Haïtiens pour la Fraternité or National Movement for Liberty and Equality of Haitians for Fraternity), denounce the Core Group’s …
Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the phone at the invitation of the latter on Wednesday afternoon. The two sides exchanged views on China-Ukraine relations and the Ukraine crisis. Xi pointed out that China’s readiness to develop relations with Ukraine is consistent and clear-cut. Regarding the Ukraine crisis, Xi reiterated China’s consistent position and proposition, stating that China will send the Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Eurasian Affairs to Ukraine and other countries to have in-depth communication with all parties …
While the mass slaughtering of, and slaughter by, soldiers, is always a touchy subject of commemoration, a tension has existed between those who did the fighting, and those who ordered it. Comfortably secure in furnished rooms and battle props, planners would, as they still do, draw up the blueprints, concoct the strategy, and give the orders.
In Australia, politicians should have every reason to stay out of the grief and suffering they contributed to by sending their citizenry (wait, subjects – for the State remains a constitutional monarchy) to countries they could barely spell. But the bosom and milk of British …
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people…”
“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.” — Karl Marx
Cynical Attacks by Marxists About Neopaganism
“Neopagan Marxists? What are you talking about? We Marxists are atheist materialists. We don’t believe in any gods. Do you remember what Marx …
Impoverished people are not free, and when the ANC and the government lie to us and tell us that we are free they insult our intelligence and our humanity.
We are not free because we are assassinated and murdered by the izinkabi and the police.
We are not free because our homes are attacked and destroyed by the state.
We are not free because we are denied the right to well-located urban land and thereby our right to a place in the cities.
We are not free because we are forced into government shacks (so called ‘transit camps’) and left to rot there.
