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.
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / April 25th, 2023
Better not knock on the wrong door or drive into the wrong driveway, you may get shot. Kids are afraid to go to school for fear of getting killed, as the body count from mass shootings climbs every day. Hate crimes are increasing, and just driving to work is potentially dangerous. Think of tailgaters honking their horns and flipping you the bird as they speed past. Politicians address these issues by calling for gun safety legislation, increasing the number of police, and so on. But these policy responses accept the existence of aggressive behavior as a given and only treat …
Journalists are on the front lines of battles to defend the right to freedom of expression
by Andy Lee Roth / April 25th, 2023
Two cornerstones of democracy—freedom of expression and freedom of information—are under concerted attack, in the United States and around the world.
In the US, for example, reactionary elected officials seek to ban books in schools, often in the name of protecting children; and government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, seek to curb online speech that they …
“It’s a ‘monster heat spell like none before,” according to climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera, describing Asia’s heatwave as the worst in history. (Source: “Extreme Heat Scorches Asia, Affecting at Least a Third of the World’s Population,” The Verge, April 19, 2023)
Global warming is hitting full stride as SE Asia, inclusive of parts of China and India literally roast. It’s a bad omen for the rest of the world as the entire planet is threatened by an emerging El Niño event starting this year.
The recently concluded LIV Tournament in Adelaide was a matter of bread, circuses and golf. It was something of a triumph for the chief sponsor: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and, more notably, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Critics, and criticism about the regime and the blood spattered House of Saud, were generally forgotten.
This vulgar display of denial and indulgence was typified by the face of Australian golf, Greg Norman. After three days of competition at The Grange, The Advertiser ran with the painful headline: “LIV-ing the dream: Golf’s boom weekend for SA.” The South Australian Premier …
To be a leftist in the United States is a dispiriting experience, but in the last year one of the more dispiriting things has been to see the attitude of many leftists themselves on a subject of crucial importance: the war in Ukraine. The consensus of the Washington establishment remains that the U.S. must support Ukraine against Russian aggression, in the form of providing enormous amounts of military aid. Progressives in Congress largely share this consensus, having voted for military aid and even cravenly retracted their letter to Biden in October that suggested he pursue diplomacy. Outside the halls …
The European Parliament just spent a whole week discussing China, and the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell will convene foreign ministers from across EU on April 24 local time to discuss the same topic. In anticipation of this meeting, Borrell published a column on April 22 urging the EU to take a more active role in the Taiwan question and calling for European navies to patrol the Taiwan Straits.
This highly provocative statement immediately attracted a lot of attention, especially in light of the …
Another tax season has ended, and more than 50 million returns arrived at the Internal Revenue Service marked “Married filing jointly”. Few of the filers had any idea that joint returns—created in 1948 and modified in 1969—may be the oldest tax inequity in America. They’ve been picking various pockets for 75 years, and there’s little chance they’ll ever stop.
Let’s find out how and why the returns came to be, and what’s at the root of the thievery. Let’s see how different parties, notably women, have been paying the price. Lastly, let’s examine a newfound connection between joint returns and America’s …
Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Garland Nixon for his current thoughts. We focus here on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them.
Garland Nixon is a veteran progressive radio and television talk show host, whose analysis and hard-hitting commentary targets U.S. foreign policy with a comprehensive focus on anti-imperialist movements worldwide. He spent over 20 years in law …
He was always a step ahead, his mind geared not only for the next move, but the next sequence. He also smelt it, anticipated the audience reaction, shaped the prejudice in context for consumption. He created an antipodean version of dada art. He confused, baffled and enraged audiences with his polymathic, panoramic reach.
The genius of the late Barry Humphries first took root in Britain, along with a flowing of other Australian expatriates who had made Blighty their home. It became evident in Britain’s most famous, remorseless panner of reputation and issue, the satirical magazine Private Eye, that weedkiller of …
Market and labor in market are crucial questions both to capital and labor. The questions have been discussed and answered by economists, from the mainstream, and also from the camp of labor.
“Markets”, writes Michael D. Yates in his Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation, and Class Struggle (Monthly Review Press, 2022), “act as a veil, hiding the face of the system. They are impersonal mechanisms, which allow us to use them without knowing what is underneath.”
Yates elaborates the issue: “We buy goods and services and are thereby dependent on those who produce our food, clothing, shelter, and services …
In ancient Rome, at one point, they wanted to make all the slaves wear something so they could identify them. Like a cloak or whatever. But then they decided not to do it. And do you know why? Hmm? Because they realized if all the slaves dressed the same, they would see how many of them there were, and they’d rise up and kill their masters. But the point is, if-if we wanna survive, …
Can the world handle a climate that exceeds the far-reaching excesses of 2022 when the entire world turned upside down with unprecedented flooding, fires, and drought?
NOAA and climate researchers in Germany and China believe an El Niño, starting in 2023-24, is the works. El Niños equate to more heat throughout the planet.
Buckle-up! El Niño could increase ocean temps by 2°-to-4° Fahrenheit, impacting the planet’s entire climate system, and it’s coming on top of the whackiest, hottest, boldest climate year (2022) in recorded history as paradoxically La Niña in 2022, which is supposed to help cool the planet, didn’t …
Twenty years ago, Noam Chomsky published a bestselling book called Hegemony or Survival. Since then, the stark choice he posed has only become more urgent. Depending on how humanity responds to the challenges of ecological destruction and imperialistic war, in the coming decade that terrifying question “Hegemony or survival?” may well be answered.
Modern history shows that the most dangerous periods are when two or more great powers are struggling for hegemony. The eighteenth century in Europe was a time of “multipolarity,” as Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia were almost continually at war, competing for geopolitical advantage and to divide …
Despite whatever charges Julian Assange may be accused of, it is well known that the WikiLeaks publisher was targeted for exposing the war crimes of the US government. In an upside-down Bizarro World, the screws are being ever so gradually tightened on Assange by the war criminals and their criminal accomplices. It is, in fact, a slow-motion assassination being played out before the open and closed eyes of the world.
Robert F Kennedy kicked off his bid for the Presidency proving he is for pretty much everything present-day politicians are against: He is against military expansion, he is against censorship, against the CIA, against authoritarianism. He’ll get no mainstream media coverage for this! So we’ll give him some air time and discuss his ideas on Redacted. What do you think? Has he got a chance?
In early March 2023, President Joe Biden embedded in his proposed 2024 budget to Congress revenue increases through tax measures that the rich and corporations do not like. Like his predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, he doesn’t really mean what he says.
Biden’s four proposed increases are significant because they would restore the corporate tax rate to 28% from Trump’s decrease to 21% in 2017, raise the top rate for income above $400,000 a year from 37% to 39.6%, raise the 1% excise tax on massive stock buybacks to 4% and get rid of the gaping super-rich private fund managers’ …
