Category Archives: New Utopia

The Swiss city of Lugano has announced today that it will recognize cryptocurrencies as legal tender.

According to Michele Foletti, the mayor of the City of Lugano, Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), and Luganos own LVGA Points token will be recognized as de-facto currencies.

The announcement was made at Luganos Plan B event, where the citys key figures discussed the implications of the progressive decision alongside Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether.

The decision to accept Bitcoin and Tether as legal tender was 18 months in the making, said Pietro Poretti, the director of the City of Lugano. The city began experimenting with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency payments in late 2020 by establishing a loyalty program with its proprietary points token called LVGA.

All transactions made with the LVGA token were made on Luganos Proof-of-Authority blockchain, which the city developed last year.

Although none of the panelists said explicitly, the decision to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender was certainly sped up by El Salvadors move last September when the country became the first to recognize a cryptocurrency as de-facto money.

Poretti said that the decision to make cryptocurrencies legal tender was driven by Luganos history of adopting technological developments.

Lugano is the economic capital of southern Switzerland and has always been a leader in the creation of new opportunities, he said during the panel.

To speed up its journey to adopt blockchain, the city partnered with Tether and recognized its proprietary stablecoin, USDT, as legal tender alongside Bitcoin.

Collaborating with a company the caliber of Tether is a magnet that will attract more companies to come to Lugano.

The companies that do decide to come to Lugano will be able to benefit from a generous incentive package the city enabled with the help of Tether.

Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether, said that the company partnered with the city to create a $100 million incentive fund aimed at startups that relocate their headquarters and employees to Lugano. Tether will also participate in the creation of a massive startup hub in the center of Lugano that will host tech startups from around the world.

Ardoino went on name Polygon as its main infrastructure partner in facilitating stablecoin payments in Lugano. After Ethereum, Polygon is the second-largest network hosting Tethers USDT stablecoin. Polygons low latency, high scalability, and low cost will enable seamless settlements of all USDT payments in the city, he explained.

This will be especially significant given the scale of crypto adoption Lugano is expecting to achieve.

According to Poretti, there has already been a widespread effort to bring cryptocurrency payments to the public sector. Citizens are already able to pay virtually all public services in cryptocurrencies, including personal and municipal taxes, naturalization fees, access to public infrastructure, and document issuance fees.

An equally widespread adoption is expected in the private sector as well. Poretti said that over 200 businesses have already installed the infrastructure necessary to accept payments in BTC, USDT, and LVGA. In the past month, over 5,000 citizens of Lugano made payments to these businesses in the citys LVGA payment token and have been interacting with the digital wallet on a daily basis.

The citys plans to become a crypto utopia seem to be very well thought-out.

With just over 60,000 residents, Lugano is set to see a huge labor shortage if it manages to attract even a fraction of the startups it believes will relocate to the city. Ardoino addressed this concern, saying that Tether and Bitfinex have already begun working with Luganos three major universities to promote blockchain and crypto-focused education. The two companies are working with academics to establish curriculums that will help the universities produce an educated workforce thats well-versed in blockchain technology. Ardoino also said that the companies have set aside funds for 500 scholarships that will be granted to students focusing on blockchain and crypto technologies.

This isnt a marketing ploy, Ardoino said. Its a set of concrete steps to make Lugano the blockchain capital of the world.

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Switzerland aims to become the next crypto utopia as Lugano makes Bitcoin and USDT legal tender - CryptoSlate

Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide,

No escape from reality

---- Freddie Mercury, Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody).

As we trudge into 2022, terms like Meta/ Metaverse/ Augmented Reality/ Occulus are on the tips of every tongue, the words seemingly flowing through social media and news platforms in an endless stream of information. As such, a crash course on this much talked about Metaverse, la Metaverse 101, is warranted before exploring the innumerable legal issues and challenges surrounding the Metaverse.

What is the Metaverse?

As noted by many researchers as well as the Merriam-Websters online dictionary, the term Metaverse was coined by the famed author Neal Stephenson, in his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Metaverse may be construed as to allude to a world or conception that requires the real world in order to move beyond it and acknowledge another realm.[1]

Rather simplistically, Oxford defines Metaverse as A slang term used to describe a virtual representation of reality implemented by means of virtual reality software[2]. However, while simplistic, the above definition is also surprisingly helpful in visualizing what exactly a Metaverse is, although it may lack the depth which is now associated with the term. To begin with exploring the concept, the above Oxford definition is as good as any a place to begin with.

Into the Metaverse: Origins

While the current hype and media (social as well as conventional) would have one believe that the Metaverse is the present and the future, the same is quite a fallacy. The origins of not only the concept of the Metaverse, but also its execution, is one which goes back as far back as the late 90s although one of the most recognizable examples of the Metaverse only came into being in 2003. A trip down the memory lane would enable one to better understand the future of the Metaverse, as and when it may unfold.

Many tech savvy readers would undoubtedly recall the viral virtual world of Linden Labs Second Life[3], which took the world by storm in the mid-2000s, and till date, remains relevant and popular, and has not faded into memory. For beginners to the modern interpretation of Metaverse, the much revered (and much reviled also by quite a few!), Second Life is a great frame of reference. Second Life is essentially a digital world on its own, a plane of existence which can be accessed by creating your own avatar (or digital representation of yourself) on the online platform, and entering the world. Second Life comprises of worlds where people lead parallel/ concurrent lives and do what all they would do in real lives have a job, do shopping, socialize, have romantic relationships, get married, attend classes, go to office meetings, take your pets out for walks, etc. While the above sounds eerily similar to something like a more advanced or immersive version of EAs (Electronic Arts) famous SIMS series of games, the creators of Second Life have over the years reiterated that it is not a game there are no goals, no missions, and importantly, there is no manufactured conflict, and it is a completely open-ended experience[4]. However, this virtual world also involves a sophisticated monetary aspect as well to such an extent that users (or residents) can make actual money while living their Second Life. The Second Life world has its own economic system as well as its own currency or virtual token, called the Linden Dollar. While the Linden Dollar cannot be redeemed for actual currency from Linden Labs, users/residents can trade Linden Dollars amongst themselves, and also exchange the same for US Dollars on an exchange called the Lindex[5]. Beyond economics, Second Life also has a robust IP aspect, which John Zdanowski (CFO) of the company, in an interview by the MIT Technology Review in 2007, specifically stated that The fundamental difference is that in World of Warcraft, the company, Blizzard Entertainment, makes all the content in world. In Second Life, our users make substantially all the content. And World of Warcraft is a game. If you buy something that advances your powers, youre sort of circumventing the rules of the game. Second Life isnt a game: its a platform for collaboration and interaction. When people build something, it has value, and they have intellectual-property rights to it. Its those intellectual-property rights that other games specifically restrict and Second Life specifically allows.

As such, the above mentioned Second Life digital world, which still exists and has millions of active users, can be thought of as a base about what the Metaverse is all about. Except, the new conception of the Metaverse has a capitalistic aspect to it, and there is far more emphasis on economics and marketplaces. Nevertheless, there are significant overlaps between how we perceive the Metaverse, and the gaming concept of MMORPGs (i.e. Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game).

As such, at present there is no single Metaverse, rather, as per the definition and conventional notions about the term, many Metaverses already exist in the form of various platforms such as the above mentioned Second Life, Microsoft Mesh, Facebooks Horizon Worlds, etc. These are essentially centralized expressions of the Metaverse, with the creators essentially at the end of the day, having ultimate control over the worlds they have created. In this context of the Metaverse, the context of a Centralized system versus a Decentralized one, is one which merits an in-depth analysis.

Further, while an existing Metaverse certainly has the tools to elevate social media and marketplaces to the next level, one does wonder about just how far can mankind push its digital boundaries?

Thus, using the above frame of reference of what an existing Metaverse is, we now look towards what the Metaverse is at present, and what it can be.

Time to move forward and deeper Into the Matrix!

Into the Metaverse sliding into 2022 with a Bang

Perhaps the change of name of Facebook to Meta, is likely the most ringing endorsement of the notion that the tech world is now gearing up towards the next big paradigm shift, perhaps leaving the world of conventional internet behind!

This notion is further reinforced by the fact that Facebook, or rather Meta, has committed to invest 10 Billion US Dollars this year on its Metaverse division (Facebook Reality Labs)[6]. The company has stated that it sees AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) as the core of this future of the Metaverse. This in itself hints at the two below directions that the winds of the Metaverse are blowing in:

Coupled with what a marketplace is in an existing digital world like Second Life, and with recent ground-breaking developments in the last few years, especially in the realm of AR and VR, the possibilities of a paradigm shift in how we perceive the above two most popular online activities are endless! For instance, imagine browsing a super-store, from the comfort of your home, while being fully immersed in a 3D representation of the same via AR/ VR and being able to shop in a manner reminiscent to how one would in an actual store! That said, the application and creative reach of the Metaverse is not in the slightest limited to the above two overarching fields indeed Hyundai Motors for instance, aims to expand human reach and fulfil unlimited freedom of mobility by utilizing robotics and integrating it with the Metaverse.[7]

However, while the future is seemingly bright for the Metaverse, the same is beset with innumerable questions and dilemmas, including but not limited to legal, social, economic, moral, etc. As such, the same also opens up a Pandoras Box of Intellectual Property related questions as well.

Over the coming weeks and months, we would hope to explore many of these questions.

Excerpt from:

MetaVerse - the fabled digital utopia gets a Second Life? - Lexology

The Batman (Warner Bros.) delivered the goods with an excellent $128,500,000 domestic opening, $248,500,000 worldwide. That makes it nearly three times better than any previous 2022 debut and the second best since 2019.

Its a big victory for theaters for multiple reasons. Perhaps most importantly, as Warner Bros.s first release of the year, it returns them to theater-exclusive openings after more than a year of initially streaming on HBO Max as well.

Spider-Man: No Way Home and Batman v Superman, two comparisons to The Batman, set unreasonably high marks for similar releases. The former opened to just over double ($260 million), while the most recent D.C. Comic mainstay character release in 2016 debuted at $166 million.

This is somewhere between an apples to apples and apples to oranges situation. Again, $128.5 million is terrific. And more so in a period where clearly fewer people are attending theaters.

As a reboot, it lacked some of the momentum that these other two titles had. Both of them, particularly Spider-Man, were helped by good will from the previous franchise title, while B v S was boosted by its Easter weekend start (with Friday a holiday for many), despite being poorly received.

But The Batman also had some standalone assets. It opened after more than two months without a blockbuster. Spider-Man came at a time with less pent-up demand after a strong fall. B v S followed massive recent openers Zootopia and Deadpool.

The Batman sold 30 percent of its tickets on premium screens, and it overall benefits from significantly higher prices than B v S, even somewhat higher than those last December. None of this is meant to diminish the excellent figure.

The context is critical because the demands on it to provide results is intense. Only one other film this month is likely to open to over $20 million (The Lost City/Paramount), with The Batman to provide the majority of the March gross. Certainly it has given it a great smart. The $156 million total for the weekend (82 percent from The Batman) is a third better than the same weekend in 2019.

This boosted the ongoing four week rolling comparison to the same period three years ago to 75 percent. That will mark a high point for a while next week will face off against Captain Marvel, which in 2019 opened at $153 million.

The best news for The Batman is what appears to be a positive first reaction. Its A- Cinemascore bests the weak B grade for B v S. This shows up in the Saturday versus Friday plus preview gross drop. This time the fall was 24 percent compared to 38 percent in 2016. That bodes well that it could top $300 million, more so with the clear field ahead this month.

What this opening reasserts is that top-flight high expense (the budget premarketing here a reported $200 million) is the best way to ensure a big gross. But at the same time, the disparity between this type of blockbuster and all movies, and the gap of time between similar titles, along with few mid-level successes at the same time, remains a major issue for theaters.

Fortunately the rest of the year looks to provide several other titles opening over $100 million. But these need backup. Theaters are of a pace this year to struggle to gross 75 percent as much as 2019. A 25 percent drop in business (the projected result; at this point it is barely above 50 percent for 2022 so far) is enough to sustain theaters, but not a sign of a healthy business.

Despite top-flight competition, holdovers did well overall. Spider-Man fell only 24 percent on its way to an over $800 million domestic total. The third weekend of Dog (United Artists) dropped 41 percent to reach $40 million. Uncharted (Sony) reached $100 million, in second spot, down 52 percent.

The three decently performing subtitled films in Oscar contention The Worst Person in the World (Neon), Parallel Mothers (Sony Pictures Classics), and Drive My Car (Janus) all are at or about $2 million. These titles stand out in the still weak specialized field. All but Worst are available at home now, as is After Yang (A24), Kogonadas acclaimed film with Colin Farrells second role opening this week.

A24 reports the 24 theaters playing After Yang took in $47,000. That suggests nearly all of its viewing will not be in theaters.

The Top Ten

1. The Batman(Warner Bros.) NEW Cinemascore: A-; Metacritic: 72; Est. budget: $200 million

$128,500,000 in 4,417 theaters; PTA (per theater average): $29,092; Cumulative: $128,500,000

2. Uncharted(Sony) Week 3; Last weekend #1

$11,000,000 (-52%) in 3,875 (-400) theaters; PTA: $2,839; Cumulative: $100,276,000

3. Dog(United Artists) Week 3; Last weekend #2

$6,000,000 (-41%) in 3,507 (-320) theaters; PTA: $1,711; Cumulative: $40,007,000

4. Spider-Man: No Way Home(Sony) Week 12; Last weekend #3

$4,400,000 (-24%) in 2,709 (-293) theaters; PTA: $1,624; Cumulative: $786,448,000

5. Death on the Nile(Disney) Week 4; Last weekend #4

$2,727,000 (-41%) in 2,565 (-855) theaters; PTA: $1,063; Cumulative: $37,095,000

6. Sing 2(Universal) Week 11; Last weekend #6; also on PVOD

$1,520,000 (-32%) in 2,026 (-356) theaters; PTA: $750; Cumulative: $153,569,000

7. Jackass Forever(Paramount) Week 5; Last weekend #5

$1,360,000 (-57%) in 1,981 (-932) theaters; PTA: $687; Cumulative: $54,452,000

8. Cyrano(United Artists) Week 2; Last weekend #9

$682,607 (-51%) in 797 (no change) theaters; PTA: $856; Cumulative: $2,575,000

9. Scream(Paramount) Week 8; Last weekend #10; also on PVOD

$570,000 (-57%) in 853 (-713) theaters; PTA: $668; Cumulative: $80,226,000

10. Gangubai Kathiawadi(Hamsin) Week 2; Last weekend #12

$(est.) 590,000 (-41%) in 280 (-205) theaters; PTA: $2,107; Cumulative: $(est.) 1,698,000

Additional specialized/limited/independent releases

After Yang(A24) NEW Metacritic: 79; Festivals include: Cannes 2021, Sundance 2022; also on Showtime

$46,872 in 24 theaters; PTA: $1,953

Hudas Salon (IFC) NEW Metacritic: 70; Festivals include: Toronto 2021; also on VOD

$8,000 in 30 theaters; PTA: $267

Great Freedom (Mubi) NEW Metacritic: 89; Festivals include: Cannes 2021

$8,814 in 1 theater; PTA: $8,814

Adventures in Success (Utopia) NEW Festivals include: Cinequest 2021

$3,437 in 3 theaters; PTA: $1,155

The Automat(Slice of Pie) Week 3

$6,562 in 2 (-1) theaters; Cumulative: $54,285

The Worst Person in the World(Neon) Week 5

$210,000 in 264 (-290) theaters; Cumulative: $2,224,000

Parallel Mothers(Sony Pictures Classics) Week 11; also on PVOD 83

$43,833 in 52 (-31) theaters; Cumulative: $1,995,000

Nightmare Alley(Searchlight) Week 11; also streaming on HBO Max and Hulu

$19,000 in 165 (-100) theaters; Cumulative: $11,218,000

Drive My Car(Janus) Week 13; also on HBO Max

$75,645 in 102 (-60) theaters; Cumulative: $1,962,000

Licorice Pizza(United Artists) Week 14

$152,548 in 211 (-396) theaters; Cumulative: $16,443,000

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Strong Gross for The Batman Shows Audiences Excited by Smart Reimagining of the Familiar - IndieWire

Pieta Bouma works for accessible communications agency All is for All.

OPINION: After becoming disabled in 2019, it struck me how often people underestimated me after seeing my disability.

Amazed that I could drive, or do basic things like grocery shopping for myself, people seemed to be constantly underestimating exactly what I am capable of.

Supplied

Pieta Bouma works for accessible communications agency All is for All. She has been a paraplegic since 2019.

In the same way, I think the tourism industry may be underestimating disabled people as potential clientele for all sorts of tourism activities, with one in four New Zealanders experiencing some kind of disability. Thirty-five per cent of these are over 65; potentially retirees looking for somewhere accessible to relax or explore the country. Furthermore, many disabled people travel with companions, further increasing the money spent.

But more important than the profit margins this could bring, providing accessible travel opportunities fulfils the rights of disabled people to enjoy the benefits of tourism, as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

READ MORE:* Five of the best walks in New Zealand that are accessible to everyone* 'Learn to be creative': Three travellers with disabilities or chronic illness share how they navigate the world* We need beach access for everyone, and that includes people with a disability

Accessible travel has benefits even for those non-disabled, such as mothers with pushchairs. So what could New Zealand do, to become an accessible utopia for tourists, and to open up the beautiful sights and thrilling activities to people of all abilities?

The first and most obvious step is to provide detailed and up-to-date information to empower disabled people to make decisions about what is within their capabilities and how best to prepare. When searching for accessible walks or hiking trails I could do in my manual wheelchair, I found almost nothing useful on which walks had steps, how many, or what the surface or gradient of the track was like.

If I had this information available, I could plan a hike, rope in the appropriate amount of people needed to help if there were a few doable barriers such as just a few steps, and know what equipment would be best suited to the terrain. Without it, I was forced to abandon all plans of a great escape into nature. With all the benefits of time connecting to nature, and the beautiful landscapes New Zealand has to offer, it seems a shame that a whole subpopulation of New Zealanders may be missing out on this due to lack of information.

Supplied

Pieta Bouma wants it to be easier to book accessible accommodation and experiences, and for tourism providers to have detailed information available on their websites.

Details also needs to be clear and readily available for accommodation and other tourist attractions. What is accessible to one, might not be for another, so there should be clear pictures and descriptions of what to expect, so disabled people can make a judgment on what is going to work for them.

It should be just as easy to book online accessible rooms, with pictures and a description, as it is to book any other room. The information provided must also be accessible to all, which means making websites friendly for those with low vision or those who use voice assistance.

A less often thought about barrier disabled people face doesnt exist in the physical world, but in the general attitudes of the public. People with disabilities face stigma, misconceptions, intrusive questions and much more from (usually well-meaning) members of the public who do not know the appropriate way to interact with disabled people. It is important here to acknowledge that disability goes far beyond a person in a wheelchair, as epitomized by the symbol, but includes sensory, mental, behavioural, intellectual, and communicative impairments.

Although the array of disabilities is large, some basic rules go a long way, such as, always address the person with a disability, even if you are unsure if they can understand and communicate with you. It is always better to talk to the disabled person and have a support person step in to answer on their behalf than to make assumptions and talk over someone's head when they are perfectly capable of communicating themselves.

Supplied

Asking disabled people how can we help make this experience accessible to you? is a helpful way to cater to wheelchair users.

In my experience many people need reminding not to ask intrusive questions about the disability. What are your mobility needs? or How can we help make this experience accessible to you? go a lot further in making a disabled person feel catered to and respected than Whats wrong with you?.

It is as basic as airline staff knowing to ask me if I want help before touching my paralysed legs to help me transfer into a plane yes, even paralysed people want bodily autonomy. If the staff of tourism companies had some basic training regarding catering to a range of needs, it would make travelling a lot more enjoyable and less stressful for disabled people.

Makingtrax is one trailblazing organisation currently doing amazing work in New Zealand opening up the tourism sector to the whole range of abilities. They educate adventure companies and other tourist operators on how to make their experiences inclusive, and also provide a Trax seal to indicate to travellers that this company is equipped and educated to provide for every ability. This is groundbreaking work that is opening up all sorts of experiences to disabled people.

Its no secret New Zealand has a lot to offer; breathtaking nature, adrenaline filled activities, places for families to connect and unwind. It should be equally obvious that people of all abilities want to enjoy all of these taonga.

The social model of disability teaches that although it is individuals who have impairments, it is the environment in which they exist that may or may not disable them. We have the power to create enabling environments so that the one in four Kiwis with a disability dont miss out on all the tourism opportunities New Zealand has to offer.

Pieta Bouma is studying a conjoint degree in global studies and health sciences at the University of Auckland, while working for All is for All, an accessible communications agency. She has been a paraplegic since 2019.

See the article here:

This is how to make travel in New Zealand more accessible - Stuff

We human beings have always expressed our thoughts and emotions through various art forms, literature, symbols, or even recently, contemporary digital media.

And this year, fashion brand Le Reve has portrayed all these forms of expressions in their latest Spring/Summer 2022 collection, titled 'Liberate'.

"In this collection, Le Reve has highlighted 70's polka dots, suspending and tumbling floral prints, classic paisley along with optical geo pattern etc.", informed Monnujan Nargis, the CEO of Le Reve.

According to her, the optical geo pattern represents the digital influence of the present day.

'Hacked Utopia', the second theme of this campaign, is currently the most talked topic in the world fashion industry.

The idea of hacked utopia is attaining the long-cherished dream of escaping the mundane daily life and getting lost into the unknown through the help of the virtual and imaginary world.

Based on this idea, Le Reve has developed some unique prints for the summer collection.

The fashion brand has also incorporated free-form fluidity motifs that represent the linear way of our life.

Some of the prints in this collection focus on arts and paintings as well. These prints feature Kintsugi- the art of creating something fascinating by mending the broken pieces.

This motif is pictured through our digital patchworks. Besides, one can also notice motifs inspired by the paintings of various master painters.

"On the whole, the clothing of this collection is the expression of the joy and merriment people feel when they enjoy the shining bright rays of the summer sun after the long bleak days," said Monnujan Nargis.

This collection promotes the palette of bright spring colours with the comfort we need this summer. Fabrics like cotton, twill, voile, raimi cotton, viscose, slub, linen, smooth georgette, textured faille, organza, crepe silk, cotton pique etc have been introduced to save people from the scorching heat.

In terms of women's clothing, Le Reve has paid notable attention to the neckline design in this collection. Starting from shirt collar to frill-trimmed, boat neck, v slit, mandarin, round band, high neck, kimono, ascott, and shawl collar have been included in the collection.

For bottoms, they have designed harem pants, leggings, and matching palazzo.

In terms of men's clothing, the Spring-Summer casual styles have been given priority in this collection.

Along with short and long sleeve casual shirts, Henley and classic t-shirt, polo, and gym vest, people will also find Bermuda shorts, chinos, cotton, Tencel, and premium quality pajamas as well.

These pajamas can be worn as both casual wear and loungewear.

Colours of spring and comfort of summer together make up the Kids Spring/Summer-wear Collection.

Frock, ghagra-choli, tunic, salwar kameez, kaftan, 2-piece set, and knitted tops have been designed for girls. Whereas, boys have the options of t-shirt, polo, panjabi, casual shirt, and shorts. There is a new summer collection for newborns as well.

Matching hats, sandals, bags, purses, accessories, and home dcor products will also be available in the new Spring/Summer collection.

To know more about this new collection, you can browse their website and facebook page.

Originally posted here:

Summers comfort in the colours of spring - The Business Standard

Head below for the full list of science fiction titles heading your way in March!

Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Release dates are subject to change.

Stars and Bones (A Continuance Novel) Gareth L. Powell (Titan)

Seventy-five years from today, the human race has been cast from a dying Earth to wander the stars in a vast fleet of arkseach shaped by its inhabitants into a diverse and fascinating new environment, with its own rules and eccentricities. When her sister disappears while responding to a mysterious alien distress call, Eryn insists on being part of the crew sent to look for her. What she discovers on Candidate-623 is both terrifying and deadly. When the threat follows her back to the fleet and people start dying, she is tasked with seeking out a legendary recluse who may just hold the key to humanitys survival.

No new titles.

The Kaiju Preservation Society John Scalzi (Tor Books)

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls an animal rights organization. Toms team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesnt tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. Theyre the universes largest and most dangerous panda and theyre in trouble. Its not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

Memorys Legion (The Expanse) James S. A. Corey (Orbit)

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanitys journey into the stars. On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet. On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home. All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.

Kingdoms of Death (Sun Eater #4) Christopher Ruocchio (DAW)

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped. For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing. The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen. And the Empire stands alone. Now the Emperor has no choice but to give Hadrian Marloweonce his favorite knightone more impossible task: journey across the galaxy to the Lothrian Commonwealth and convince them to join the war. But not all is as it seems, and Hadrians journey will take him far beyond the Empire, beyond the Commonwealth, impossibly deep behind enemy lines.

The Temps Andrew DeYoung (Keylight)

Jacob Elliot doesnt want a temporary job in the mailroom at Delphi Enterprises, but after two post-college years of unpaid internships and living in his parents basement, he needs the work. Then, on his first day, the unthinkable happens: toxic gas descends on a meeting in Delphis outdoor amphitheater, killing all the regular employees and leaving Jacob stranded inside the vast office complex. Wandering through Delphi headquarters, Jacob finds other survivors: Lauren, the disillusioned classics major whos now writing online personality quizzes; Swati, the fitness instructor trying to escape a toxic relationship; and Dominic, the business school student who will do almost anything to get ahead. Stranded in the wreckage of the company that employed them, the temps band together to create a miniature world thats part spring break, part office cultureuntil a shocking discovery disrupts the survivors self-made paradise and drives them to uncover the truth about the mysterious corporation that employed them and the apocalypse that brought their world to an end.

Sweep of Stars (Astra Black #1) Maurice Broaddus (Tor Books)

The Muungano empire strived and struggled to form a utopia when they split away from old earth. Freeing themselves from the endless wars and oppression of their home planet in order to shape their own futures and create a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretched from Earth and Mars to Titan. With the wisdom of their ancestors, the leadership of their elders, the power and vision of their scientists and warriors they charted a course to a better future. But the old powers could not allow them to thrive and have now set in motion new plots to destroy all that theyve built. In the fire to come they will face down their greatest struggle yet. Amachi Adisa and other young leaders will contend with each other for the power to galvanize their people and chart the next course for the empire. Fela Buhari and her elite unit will take the fight to regions not seen by human eyes, but no training will be enough to bring them all home. Stacia Chikeke, captain of the starship Cypher, will face down enemies across the stars, and within her own vessel, as she searches for the answers that could save them all.

Until the Last of Me (Take Them to the Stars #2) Sylvain Neuvel (Tordotcom Publishing)

The First Rule is the most important: Always run, never fight. For generations, Mias family has shaped human history to push them to the stars. The year is 1968 and she is on the cusp of destiny, poised to launch the first humans into space. But she cannot take them to the stars, not quite yet. Her adversary is at her heels, the future of the planet at stake, and obeying the First Rule is no longer an option. For the first time in one-hundred generations, Mias family will have to choose to stand their ground, risking not only their bloodline, but the future of the human race.

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All the New Science Fiction Books Arriving in March! - tor.com

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of a writer who has been worshipped, loathed, and ridiculedand whose legacy, despite all the dismissals by her detractors, still reverberates in the twenty-first century. Ayn Rand, the bestselling novelist, controversial philosopher of Objectivism, and secular guru of reason and individualism, died in New York City on March 6, 1982, at the age of 77. As a refugee from Soviet Russia (born Alissa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) who vehemently rejected not only communism but the religious and nationalist values of pre-revolutionary Russian culture, Rand may be particularly relevant to the current moment, when the new Russia is rebuilding itself as a hybrid of the USSR and the old empire with its pillars of religion and nationalism.

Rands works, especially her two best-known novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), still continue to be read and to draw new and often passionate fans. Yet mainstream culture has mostly regarded her as a quaint niche interest on the rightan intellectual pin-up girl for the likes of Paul Ryan, the former speaker of the House, and Andy Puzder, Donald Trumps withdrawn nominee for secretary of laboror treated her as a caricature and a punchline. (Think the Ayn Rand School for Tots in a 1992 Simpsons episode, where the Objectivist daycare-center owner bans pacifiers and asserts that a child who reaches for a bottle of milk is being a leech.) Conservative culture mavens have not been much kinder: In 2010, New Criterion editor Roger Kimball wrote that he had never been able to make it through much of either Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead because each time he tried, he found himself oscillating between fits of the giggles, at the awful prose, and irritation, at the jejune philosophy.

Is Rand unfairly maligned, as her admirers assert? In some ways, yes. She did not, as is often implied, worship the rich (most of the wealthy characters in her novels are repulsive or ridiculous, or both), nor did she preach that moneymaking is lifes highest goal. (At one point in The Fountainhead, the hero, visionary architect Howard Roark, describes the man whose sole aim is to make money as a variety of the second-hander who lives solely through other people, seeking to impress them with his wealth.) The character in the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing who ditches his pregnant girlfriend and brandishes a dogeared paperback of The Fountainhead to explain that some people count, some people dont does not actually exemplify Randian philosophy.

While Rand praised the virtue of selfishness, what she meant by the word was something very different from the common meaning. One of the points of The Fountainhead is that mediocre architect Peter Keating, the slick opportunist who uses everything from plagiarism to blackmail to advance his career, would be commonly seen as selfish even though a self is precisely whats absent from his pursuit of success, while Roark would be wrongly seen as self-sacrificing when he would rather be broke than sacrifice his integrity. (Donald Trump, who has fancied himself a Fountainhead fan and Roark wannabe, is in fact a perfect Randian baddie: not only a businessman who thrives on government connections, string-pulling and shady deals, but a man whose sense of achievement is derived mainly from bullying others and being loved.)

Rands affirmation of a strong sense of selfhood as the proper foundation of human relationshipsTo say I love you one must first know how to say the I, Roark tells his beloved, Dominique Franconis a worthwhile message for anyone. Likewise, her formulation of reasonpurposeself-esteem as the core principles of the good life in Atlas Shrugged is a powerful distillation of what we often call Enlightenment values. Conversely, her critique of altruism as the foundation of morality led her to some undeniably valid insights: for instance, that altruistic goals can easily become an excuse for bad acts or a vehicle for power-seeking and self-righteous bullying. Rand, who asserted almost a decade before Hannah Arendt that Nazism and communism were not opposites but totalitarian twinsone subordinating the individual to race, the other to class and collectivewas almost certainly on to something when she wrote that the habit of equating self-interest with immorality and self-sacrifice with nobility often left democracys defenders intellectually disarmed against arguments that communism, at least, teaches people to put others first.

Many of Rands admirers have singled out as a particularly important intellectual contribution her defense of the free market as a moral system based on accomplishment and voluntary exchange rather than coercion, as well as her celebration of entrepreneurship as a creative activity rather than mere pursuit of profit. But on this and much else Rand is ill served by her absolutism. She assumes that, absent dirty dealing of one kind or another, individuals rewarded by the market have an absolute moral claim to those rewards as the fruit of their own effortswhich means that not only any redistribution but all involuntary taxation is immoral (Rand believed that necessary government services should ideally be supported via voluntary financing). But this view ignores not only the extent to which an individuals achievement and flourishing is made possible by a vast and intricate civilizational infrastructure, but the role of factors unrelated to personal meritfrom family background to sheer luck. Rand was still right when she wrote that the government is not the owner of the citizens income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income and that the state should not have power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. But her political philosophy and her followers were often unable to reckon with the messy reality and compromises inherent in a government constituted to respect both the individual and the social contract.

Rands absolutism also undercuts her arguments on a moral level. Ideas she opposes, such as altruism, are relentlessly strawmanned: If you teach people that its praiseworthy to give up something to help others with no thought of your own self-interest, then youre telling them that they have no right to exist for their own sake and no purpose except to be a sacrificial animal. While some accusations of cruelty directed at Rand are based on caricature more than her actual work, its difficult to deny that her version of individualismwhich bears a Nietzschean stamp Rand deniedhas little room for physical afflictions and vulnerabilities. Except for her first major novel, We the Living (more about which in a moment), sick people mostly figure in her work as unworthy recipients of pity, and even private charities are mocked for helping drug addicts and unwed pregnant women.

The way Rands philosophy played out in her own life is a stark example of being mugged by reality. Her following, by the admission of former associates who never stopped admiring her work, became so cultlike that people who spoke of freedom and the independent mind felt compelled to admire the same books and music Rand admired. (Objectivist groups even held show trials of members accused of violating Randian precepts.) While her heroes stoically accepted romantic rejection, Rands reaction to the revelation that her much younger lover and disciple, Nathaniel Branden, was involved with a still-younger woman was to rail against him, curse him with impotence, and denounce him to her flock for unspecified immoral acts. Her belief that cancer and many other illnesses were the result of psycho-epistemological errors led her to conceal her lung cancer diagnosis from her fans (and refuse to retract her previous staunch denial of the hazards of smoking) and to torment her long-suffering husband by trying to reason him out of Alzheimers. Her professed commitment to truth did not prevent her from rewriting her history to proudly declare, No one helped me, even though she repeatedly received help from relatives, friends, and even charities after coming to the United States.

In other words: Dont try this philosophy at home, kids.

But Rand is hardly the first philosopher whose ideas cannot survive a close encounter with reality, or the first writer with eccentric philosophical views. And the truth is that, despite her eccentricities, she was a far better writer than Kimball and others recognizeat least until she went full ideologue in Atlas Shrugged and began to use fiction as a vehicle for heavy-handed agitprop. While Atlas has some powerful passages, its hero John Galt is an abstraction with the looks of a Greek god, its villains are a gallery of grotesques, and its plot is weighed down by endless preaching in which the message is hammered into the readers head again and again and again. That message subsumes anything that could be recognizable as human emotion: When the wife of industrialist Hank Rearden tries to humiliate him by announcing that she slept with a man he despises, he responds by having philosophical musings (as one does) on the creed of collective interdependence, which holds that the moral stature of one is at the mercy of the action of another.

But Rands earlier works, while always wedded to her ideas, are far more readable and humanand leave little doubt that she was a writer of extraordinary if idiosyncratic talent.

We the Living (1936), set in Petrograd/Leningrad in the early to mid-1920s, paints a compelling picture of life in the Soviet Union as the devastation of revolution and civil war gave way to the New Economic Policy, a brief interlude in which private enterprise was grudgingly tolerated along with a fair amount of personal and cultural freedom. At this point, Rand was still flexible enough that she could make some of her commies sympathetic and that her individualistic heroine, Kira Argounova, could have real, tangible bonds with her family despite being its black sheep. Kiras uncle Vassily, a dispossessed businessman who desperately tries to hold on to his dignity and cling to hope under the new regime, is a particularly tragic figure, while her mother Galina, whose haughty scorn for the new ways gradually shifts to acceptance and then enthusiastic conformism, is depicted with fine and subtle satire. Kiras tangled relationship with the idealistic Communist Andrei Taganov and the aristocrat Leo Kovalensky, which ends in Andreis suicide and Leos descent into cynicism and degradation, is a genuinely poignant story with enough unusual twists to make it riveting. And Rand has a knack for the vivid detail, such as the early scene in which a woman traveling on an overcrowded train holes up in the reeking cubicle of the toilet to devour a boiled potato, a rare luxury in a country only starting to climb out of the civil wars wreckage.

The Fountainhead, almost certainly Rands best work, can also be read and appreciated without fully embracing the message. The frequently made claim that Rands characters are black-and-white cardboard cutouts does not apply here: Even the despicable Keating is a nuanced character with some sympathetic moments, including the bittersweet story of his thwarted romance with the young woman he truly loves but gives up for a more advantageous marriage. The Citizen Kane-like newspaper tycoon Gail Wynand, Roarks frenemy and (for a long stretch of the novel) Dominiques husband, is both odious and noble; many other characters such as Dominiques father Guy Francon do not neatly fit the good/bad scheme, and even the (very bad) archvillain Ellsworth Toohey has an acid intelligence, wit, and even Mephistophelean charm that place him in an entirely different league from the thoroughly repulsive baddies of Atlas Shrugged.

Likewise, Rands prose here has little in common with the later novels anvil-heavy propaganda tropes and crass mockery. It can be beautifully evocative (The air was heavy with untimely darkness, disquieting like premature old age, and there were yellow puddles of light in windows) and bitingly funny (Wynands tabloid, the New York Banner, is described as covering society news in a trashy way that gave the man on the street two satisfactions: that of entering illustrious drawing rooms and that of not wiping his feet on the threshold). Reviewing the novel in the New York Timesone of the few favorable mainstream reviews Rands books got in her lifetimepioneering feminist psychologist Lorine Pruette hailed it as the work of a writer of great power with a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly. The praise may sound startling to those used to thinking of Rand as a right-wing pseudo-intellectual hack, but its well deserved. The Fountainhead is rightly considered a twentieth-century American classic.

Rands relationship with American politics was always complicated, to say the least. Her fierce opposition to the New Deal and socialist encroachments on capitalism drew her to the right, but her militant atheism and radical individualism led to irreconcilable differences with the conservative movement. The scathing review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review by Whittaker Chambers, titled Big Sister is Watching You, made the divorce final. (While Chamberss animus focused primarily on the godlessness of Rands vision, some of his chargesfor instance, that Rands utopia is a world ruled by a technocratic eliteare difficult to refute regardless of the question of religion.)

Today, one could see Rands rational individualism as an alternative to the collectivist politics at both ends of the political spectrum: demagogic populism and anti-liberal traditionalism on the right, resurgent socialism and identity politics on the left. Unfortunately, her flaws inevitably get in the way. One need not, for example, be woke to find it shocking that during the years when Rand inveighed against onerous business regulations as an assault on individual rights, she never gave any thought to Jim Crow laws; it took until 1963 for her to write that the policy of the Southern states toward Negroes was and is a shameful contradiction of this countrys basic principles. (At that point, while condemning racism, she also criticized the Civil Rights Act for outlawing discrimination by private businesses and violating property rights.) Rands warning that the smallest minority on earth is the individual and that anti-racism must be founded on individual rights is a potent and relevant messagebut one likely to be undercut by her cavalier attitude toward racism. And her work has other problems that could play to the worst of current American discourse, such as a tendency to demonize people with bad opinions.

Yet it is also true that Rand contains multitudes. Perhaps the best way to approach her work is to get beyond her own black-and-white framework in which there is either total acceptance or wholesale rejection, and to acknowledge the contradictions that she denied she had. Encouragingly, some scholars are now engaging her work in a way that is critical but not dismissive; readers should, too. One can appreciate Rands affirmation of reason, personal autonomy, and achievement while acknowledging that these values need to be complemented by others. One need not accept her romantic individualism wholesale to see that it has a stirring power and a magnetic appeal, especially to young peoplewhich is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as that individualism comes to be balanced by a fuller understanding of lifes complexities. And one need not ignore the ugly side of Rands work to see the beauty in her celebration of life, creativity, and freedom.

I came across an unexpected, and oddly relevant, example of such beauty while looking through Rands 1970 collection of essays, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. While Rand rarely wrote about specific events in Russia, in early 1969 she was moved to write about the sentencing of five young people who had come out on Red Square on August 25, 1968 to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. (Their protest lasted three minutes before they were arrested.) Commenting on New York Times reporter Henry Kamms observation about the inexplicable personal alchemy that drove these five to such a brave and futile act, Rand wrote:

There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their daysthe conviction that ideas matter. In ones youth that conviction is experienced as a self-evident absolute. . . . That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that ones mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth.

Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the triumph of evil. . . . This is the inexplicable personal alchemy that puzzled Henry Kamm: an independent mind dedicated to the supremacy of ideas, i.e., of truth.

Voicing anguish for the physical and spiritual ordeal that awaits the young rebels, Rand finally addresses herself to people of good will, Objectivist or not, who have preserved some sense of humanity, justice and compassion (italics in the original), and pleads with them not to help the Soviet jailers pretend that they are the morally acceptable leaders of a civilized country.

Written about Soviet Russia in 1969, these words still ring true in 2022 for Putins Russia, where courage is not nearly as rare and protest not nearly as futile.

This, too, is the real Ayn Rand.

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Ayn Rand in Our Day - The Bulwark

It is perhaps unsurprising that a novel written by a Japanese author living in Germany, who regularly writes in both her native and adopted tongues, should focus so much on the nature of communication. The connection between language and identity is at the heart of Scattered All Over the Earth, a new novel by Yoko Tawada, translated from Japanese into English by Margaret Mitsutani.

Scattered All Over the Earth, by Yoko TawadaTranslated by Margaret Mitsutani256 pagesNEW DIRECTIONS

The novels protagonist, Hiruko, is a climate refugee cast adrift in northern Europe after Japan has succumbed to an unspecified environmental disaster. The Japanese populace is scattered all over the Earth, and it has been a long time since Hiruko has spoken to anyone in her first language. She works as a storyteller for children in Denmark, translating folk tales and legends into Panska, a language of her own invention based on a blend of Scandinavian languages. Armed with Panska and her own positive, can-do attitude, she is able to converse with anyone she meets but still yearns to speak Japanese.

This desire sets her on a journey that is something of a Canterbury Tales for the 21st century. As Hiruko travels around Europe, she collects a band of lost souls, each with a story to tell. Each chapter is told by a different character, giving rise to an orchestra of voices intermingling, echoing, reinterpreting and retranslating one another. This is a thoroughly modern novel that reflects the seismic changes technology and globalization have wrought on humanity.

The voices are all those of young people, comfortable with the idea of having fluid identities and being rootless. Toward the end of the novel, the rag-tag group congregates in a closed restaurant, where their connections, fears and expectations are laid clear across a symbolic roundtable. There is no judgement or rejection; acceptance is the watchword of the group until one of their mothers arrives and begins forcing old-fashioned ideas on them. She categorizes them by race, gender and nationality effectively excluding Akash, a transgender woman from India, because she doesnt neatly fit into the rigid definitions the older generation clings to.

Although the novel has been described as dystopian, in actuality, it is supremely utopian. Tawada looks at contemporary identity politics as a revolution that can bring people together, a potential way out of the hideous mess weve made of the world.

Author Yoko Tawada | NINA SUBIN

The dystopia is the present day in which the reader lives, the one remembered by the characters in flashbacks, where people fear increasingly authoritarian governments and nations are paralyzed in the face of an impending climate crisis. Hamstrung by an inability to see beyond the weight of systems and institutions, the worlds inaction literally sinks Japan beneath the waves. The broken society, for Hiruko and her friends, is behind them. Now they are rebuilding a new, better future severed from the binaries, assumptions and demands of their parents generation.

Through Hirukos use of Panska, Tawada proposes that identities tied to nationalities, race and gender are holding us back as a species. It isnt unusual for multilingual speakers to fashion a new personality to go with a new language our very thought processes adjust to fit into the rhythms of an existing language and culture. For Hiruko, however, the process is reversed. She does not change who she is to adapt to a certain language. Rather, she creates a way of communication that is simple, open and friendly. The honesty of Panska arises from Hirukos nature, and because the invented language doesnt stem from a national identity, it isnt synonymous with a specific culture. It is, in Joycean terms, free from the nightmare of history.

Tawadas real skill as a novelist is in making none of this didactic. Instead, she uses the polyphonic structure of the novel and the natural positivity of her characters to carry the argument, allowing the reader to lose themselves in the beautiful language, vivid descriptions of near-future Europe and the exciting thought experiments of a post-climate crisis renaissance.

This is not a novel for grumpy curmudgeons confused by pronouns or those who hark back to a simpler past; this is the first great utopian novel of the 21st century. Through Hiruko, Tawada encourages us to reject the exclusive, miserly conservative tendencies of the day and embrace the promise of a youthful revolution.

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'Scattered All Over the Earth': Yoko Tawada's utopia rejects present-day conventions - The Japan Times

BAYSIDE, QUEENS An apartment building is going to ruin Utopia, Auburndale residents say.

Developers have city permission to build a three-story apartment complex on Utopia Parkway and 37th Avenue, much to the chagrin of residents who cherish the block's single-family homes and Tudor-style duplexes.

"The city is all too willing to diminish the quality of life for hard working people in the outer boroughs," wrote a commenter in a private neighborhood Facebook group.

Added another, the building will "look like a sore thumb."

The three-unit Auburndale complex will stand 40 feet tall and feature a backyard and two parking spots, records show.

City records name the owner as Rong Chen of NYDC GROUP LLC and estimate the job will cost about $920,550.

The Department of Buildings issued a signed work order for the new building on Feb. 8, city records show.

News of the development angered neighbors of the Bayside, Queens Facebook group, most of whom contended that the apartment building would worsen neighborhood problems such as a short supply of parking spaces.

"People already have trouble visiting," one commenter said.

Arguments over new construction are not new for neighbors in Bayside. Locals often push back against new apartments and schools alike on the basis of area overcrowding.

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Apartment Building Will Ruin Utopia, Queens Residents Fear - Patch.com

Every war is a disaster and an anachronism. There is no because that justifies the destruction of human life.

By Javier Tolcachier

But war does not begin when the first bullets whistle, but long before.

War begins when the possessors of nuclear weapons hold the worlds population hostage and refuse to denuclearise the planet once and for all.

War begins when military bases are maintained outside ones own territory for decades, forcing other peoples to accept conditions of obedience.

War begins when nationalist slogans are adopted and differences between brotherly peoples are exacerbated.

All these elements are present in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, whose government in this case is just a painted cardboard in a larger geopolitical game.

It is the struggle between the supremacism and historical belligerence of the United States and its extended arm NATO, which today represent the last phase of the Western colonial world and are trying by all possible means to stop the rise and partnership of the powers in the East, such as China, Russia and the security pact called the Shanghai Cooperation, which also includes four other Central Asian countries.

It must be said that the conflict in Ukraine is also being used to once again discipline and calumniate Europeans and prevent them from turning their gaze fully towards Asia, participating in Chinas Belt and Road project, in the Asian Investment Bank and continuing to increase trade with Russia.

Nor should we forget the recent events in Belarus and Kazakhstan, which, although they constitute a legitimate expression of protest by the peoples against stagnant rulers, from a geopolitical point of view can be interpreted as meddling strategies to penetrate areas adjacent to Russias border and advance through the heart of Central Asia towards strategic positions.

Nor can economic interests, with which moral business trolls gloat.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, most governments called for dialogue and a peaceful solution, which is undoubtedly a path consistent with the Peace Zone Declaration achieved by the region at the CELAC Summit in 2014.

It is necessary to understand that we are heading towards a unique planetary civilisation, in which we will have to embrace a new utopia, the utopia corresponding to this period of History: that of building a Universal Human Nation, where different peoples and cultures fit, where only violence, discrimination or misery have no place.

We know when wars begin and why: only to maintain or conquer power, which cannot be justified.

That is why we also know when wars and invasions must end, not only this war but also all other wars: Right now.

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Wars don't start when the first bullets whistle - PRESSENZA International News Agency