Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has officially launched the Contract for the Web, a set of principles designed to “fix” the internet and prevent us from sliding into a “digital dystopia,” The Guardian reports. The contract lists nine core principles for governments, companies, and individuals to adhere to, including responsibilities to provide affordable, reliable internet access and to respect civil discourse and human dignity.

At launch, the initiative has received the backing of over 150 organizations, including tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, DuckDuckGo, and Facebook, and nonprofit groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Guardian initially reported that Amazon and Twitter were absent from the list of backers, however as of November 25th, Twitter’s logo has appeared on the Contract’s homepage. Twitter’s increasing role in political discourse was recently brought into sharp focus after it chose to ban political ads on its platform, citing the “challenges to civic discourse” that they create.

The contract’s launch comes as tech companies such as Facebook and Google have faced mounting pressure around both the amount of user data they collect, and the ways in which they collect it. The Contract for the Web includes principles designed to prevent this, including a requirement for companies to respect people’s privacy and personal data. If companies do not show that they are working to support these aims they risk being removed from the list of the project’s endorsers.

“THE FORCES TAKING THE WEB IN THE WRONG DIRECTION HAVE ALWAYS BEEN VERY STRONG”

It’s not that we need a 10-year plan for the web, we need to turn the web around now,” Berners-Lee told The Guardian. The Contract, which includes 72 clauses alongside its nine principles, offers a shared vision for the web that Berners-Lee’s Web Foundation wants to see built, as well as a roadmap for action. Finally, it also provides a tool to try and hold companies and governments to account.

The governments of Germany, France, and Ghana have also signed up to the Contract’s founding principles. The Contract calls on governments to ensure everyone can connect to the internet, and to keep the internet available all of the time. This latter point feels especially timely in light of the Iranian government’s recent decision to shut down the internet in an attempt to prevent protests from spreading.

“The forces taking the web in the wrong direction have always been very strong,” Berners-Lee told The Guardian, noting that it will be vital for citizens to hold governments and companies to account if the situation is to improve.

Why the atomic bombing of Hiroshima would be illegal today

The archival record makes clear that killing large numbers of civilians was the primary purpose of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima; destruction of military targets and war industry was a secondary goal and one that “legitimized” the intentional destruction of a city in the minds of some participants. The atomic bomb was detonated over the center of Hiroshima. 

More than 70,000 men, women, and children were killed immediately; the munitions factories on the periphery of the city were left largely unscathed. Such a nuclear attack would be illegal today. It would violate three major requirements of the law of armed conflict codified in Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions: the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. 

There could be great pressure to use nuclear weapons in future scenarios in which many American soldiers’ lives are at risk and there is no guarantee that a future US president would follow the law of armed conflict. That is why the United States needs senior military officers who fully understand the law and demand compliance and presidents who care about law and justice in war.

Wilfred Burchett and Hiroshima

In 1940 Burchett began his career in journalism. His freelance reports of the revolt against the Vichy French in the South Pacific colony of New Caledonia helped him gain accreditation with the Daily Express newspaper. He spent the remainder of the war in China and Burma and also covered General Douglas MacArthur's island-hopping campaign.

He was the first Western journalist to visit Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped, arriving alone by train from Tokyo on 2 September, the day of the formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri. His Morse code dispatch was printed on the front page of the Daily Express newspaper in London on 5 September 1945, entitled "The Atomic Plague", the first public report in the Western media to mention the effects of radiation and nuclear fallout. On this "scoop of the century"

Renewable Energy in Japan

New laws and new targets: renewable power in Japan

Japan plans to increase its reliance on renewable power to 24% of its energy mix by 2030, more than double its current production.

With new laws in place to encourage renewable projects, JP Casey profiles the country’s clean energy sources, and consider how realistic its 2030 goals are.



Japan has big plans for the future of its renewables sector. New legislation introduced in 2017 aims to increase the country’s percentage of power from renewable sources, with greater government oversight of renewable projects to ensure their efficiency, and purchases of greater volumes of power from renewable sources.

This is particularly significant considering two factors: Japan’s reliance on energy from foreign sources, and its recent move away from nuclear power.

The World Nuclear Association reported in 2019 that the country needs to import 90% of its energy, and following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Japan’s share of power from nuclear sources has collapsed from 30% in 2011 to a production target of just 20% by 2030.

With these in mind, Japan is turning to sources such as solar, wind and tidal power to reduce its dependence on overseas production, and trigger innovation in its domestic energy sector. We profile the country’s clean energy sources, and consider how realistic its 2030 clean energy goals are.

Rosa Luxemburg

Belgium On The Grid

Belgiums turbines

A fleet of giant wind turbines off the nation’s coast is generating power not only for its mainland but also for the United Kingdom, located more than 80 miles across the North Sea.

With a demanding deadline, the ambitious wind integration project by Belgian grid operator Elia went online in early 2019 without a glitch. Consequently, renewable energy generated by offshore wind is benefitting millions of homes and businesses in Belgium and beyond.

“Integrating our offshore wind energy into the European grid has improved the future security of supply of electricity for a wide region,” said Elia Project Manager Rodolphe Hanuise, based in Brussels.

The project came to fruition with the help of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL), whose engineers, technicians, and other employees worked late hours in multiple countries to meet a tight target date.

Because the new integrated grid couldn’t be brought online until SEL implemented a special protection scheme (SPS) to ensure stable delivery of power, “it was definitely a high-pressure deadline,” Hanuise said. “Many people were counting on it.”

During the project kick-off meeting in Belgium, he recalled wondering if SEL could complete the SPS in such a short time, especially with the high quality of technical work that was required.

“It’s hard to believe now, but I actually didn’t think it would be possible,” he said.

Today, 318 wind turbines are anchored off the Belgian coastline, making Belgium the world’s fourth-largest producer of offshore wind power, according to the industry organization WindEurope. Rising as tall as 58 stories above the surface of the North Sea, the turbines are capable of generating 8,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity each year, enough to power 2 million homes.

These powerful fan-like structures harvest the abundant and consistent winds found at sea, enabling the turbines to generate continuous energy. Also, with the turbines operating in a patch stretching 14 to 33 miles from the coast, sea views are unobstructed for Belgians and tourists alike.

                BOOM FUELED BY NEW TECHNOLOGIES, LOWER COSTS

But even though the link was finished and tested late last year, engineers would not energize it until the SPS was in place.

“The amount of power capable of being transported through the transmission corridor—both from the offshore windfarms and from the HVdc link—is equivalent of up to three nuclear reactors,” Hanuise explained.

Meaning that if a severe storm were to trigger a fault, power stability could be compromised.

To avoid blackouts, an SPS was needed to detect abnormal conditions along the corridor and quickly respond. Ultimately, Elia selected a company outside Europe to provide it.


“We picked Schweitzer Engineering for two main reasons,” said Hanuise. “They proposed the best solution with very technologically advanced relays. We also took into account that they had done comparable SPS projects in other countries, such as Georgia and Uruguay, with very good results.”

The longue durée of the avant-garde project

The longue durée of the avant-garde project, even if it was to subside momentarily in Russia, extended across diverse locations and continents, taking root through institutions that were inaugurated when decolonised nations sought to imagine a new future for themselves.

 It is a bequest that did not always maintain a dialectical relationship with local social conditions and geography, because of which this historical project of modernity today finds itself at a crossroads.

Liubov Popova

Liubov Popova Textile Design 1923–4, Ink and gouache on paper

Return of Albanian Gold

Pounds 6.5m in war gold returns to Albania 49 years
TONY BARBER Europe Editor
Friday 23 February 1996 01:02 

Albania and the West laid to rest one of their oldest disputes yesterday when France approved an agreement returning pounds 6.5m of gold to the Albanian state. German forces seized the gold during the Second World War, but when the Germans withdrew from Albania and Communist guerrillas took power, the United States, Britain and France confiscated the gold and stored it at the Bank of England.

There it remained, under the trusteeship of a US-British-French commission, throughthe long years of isolation which Albania endured under its late Stalinist dictator, Enver Hoxha.

Britain blocked the gold's return in 1946 after Albania refused to admit responsibility for the deaths of 44 British seamen in a mine explosion in the Corfu Channel. The US had a separate grievance concerning the Communists' seizure of property belonging to US citizens.

With the collapse of Albanian communism in 1991, relations between Albania and the West improved. Britain resumed diplomatic relations with Albania in 1994 and, last Wednesday, named its first ambassador to the Albanian capital, Tirana.Negotiations over the gold began in 1992 and the US and Britain signed agreements last year with Albania, providing for the restitution of half the gold in return for compensation for the British and US claims.

French officials supplied the final touch to the deal yesterday at a signing ceremony in Tirana. Albania expects the gold coins and ingots, weighing 1,574kg, to be back in Tirana next month.

Lev Vigotsky

Perhaps Vygotsky's most important contribution concerns the inter-relationship of language development and thought.

Thinking and speech, entitled in Russian, Myshlenie i rech, that was published in 1934. This book was a collection of essays and scholarly papers that Vygotsky wrote during different periods of his thought development and included writings of his "instrumental" and "holistic" periods.

Vygotsky never saw the book published: it was published posthumously, edited by his closest associates (Kolbanovskii, Zankov, and Shif)

Not sooner than December, 1934, i.e., half a year after his death. The first English translation was published in 1962 (with several later revised editions) heavily abbreviated and under an alternative and incorrect translation of the title

Thought and Language for the Russian title Mysl' i iazyk.

The book establishes the explicit and profound connection between speech (both silent inner speech and oral language), and the development of mental concepts and cognitive awareness.

Vygotsky described inner speech as being qualitatively different from verbal external speech. Although Vygotsky believed inner speech developed from external speech via a gradual process of "internalization" (i.e., transition from the external to the internal), with younger children only really able to "think out loud", he claimed that in its mature form, inner speech would not resemble spoken language as we know it (in particular, being greatly compressed). Hence, thought itself developing socially.

In January 1924, Vygotsky took part in the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Petrograd (soon thereafter renamed Leningrad). After the Congress, Vygotsky received an invitation to become a research fellow at the Psychological Institute in Moscow. Vygotsky moved to Moscow with his new wife, Roza Smekhova. He began his career at the Psychological Institute as a "staff scientist, second class". He also became a secondary teacher, covering a period marked by his interest in the processes of learning and the role of language in learning.

Bakhtin and Music

Researchers repeatedly noted that M.M. Bakhtin’s works are characterized by integration of musical culture into theoretical discourse, which is expressed in his appeal to the conceptual sphere of musical art and use of musical terminology as an instrument of literary, aesthetic, and cultural analysis.

However, when examining Bakhtin’s connection with music, researchers, as a rule, discuss “music in general”, without specifying which music Bakhtin used to listen.

The paper discusses the phenomenon of “the musical world of Bakhtin”, including his music experience, personal and creative contacts with musicians. The authors find out musical sources of Bakhtin’s creative intuitions.

Based on the study of Bakhtin’s collection of gramophone records
(now located in the M. M. Bakhtin Center of the Mordovia State University),

published and oral memories of people personally communicating with Bakhtin, and other sources, his individual musical preferences are identified, and the circle of his favorite composers and performers is determined.

It is emphasized that the phenomenon of the “Bakhtin’s musical world” is a “marker” of his commitment to the tendency of interaction and synthesis of arts, intermediality, and the objectification of the idea of cultural synthesis, which was one of the prevailing philosophical and cultural intuitions of Russian symbolism.

Soap and our biome

Hamblin started to notice that he smelled less pleasant when stressed. He interviewed a researcher who could train dogs to sniff out cancer in humans, while lovers he spoke to told him they thought the way their partner smelled naturally was good. He writes: “The hundreds of subtle volatile chemical signals we emit may play roles in communicating with other people (and other species) in ways we’re just beginning to understand.”

Hamblin also highlights the bare-faced cheek behind the rise of the skincare industry, as soap progressed from a multipurpose, often homemade product to a seemingly infinite parade of near-identical concoctions advertised for different problems, genders and occasions, at wildly different prices. Once hooked on daily soapings that remove our natural oils, we needed moisturisers and hair conditioners to replace them. In the 50s, the industry further cashed in by highlighting the drying effects of soap and offering milder detergents. Today, Hamblin writes, we have come full circle; many people seek products that are “as close as possible to nothing at all”.

He writes about a fellow journalist – and soap dodger – Maya Dusenbery, who had been prescribed every acne treatment going. The only one that worked? Nothing at all.

She had tried astringents, to dry out the skin; oral and topical antibiotics; the pill; and isotretinoin, a drug that has been linked to side-effects such as suicidal thoughts and inflammatory bowel disease. Not only were these ineffective, but she also developed rheumatoid arthritis – an agonising autoimmune condition. When she started taking immune-suppressing medication for that, her hair started falling out.

Enough was enough: Dusenbery stopped taking any medication for her skin. After an extremely oily few months, it settled. Now, the only things that touch her face are a microfibre cloth and water. Thanks to her adoption of a more holistic approach to her rheumatoid arthritis, in consultation with a specialist, this has gone into remission, too.

Perhaps as a result of experiences such as Dusenbery’s, microbiologists, dermatologists and skincare companies are striving to create new medicines for skin conditions, along with mainstream beauty products that contain live bacteria or ingredients that could feed our microbiomes. There is even the prospect of bespoke products from beauty behemoths such as L’Oréal that are tailored to our own skin microbiomes, which are as unique as our fingerprints. But we are certainly not there yet – and we should be wary, says Hamblin, of “anyone who’s out there right now selling a single microbe, or who tells you that you have a certain [microbial] imbalance you need to get corrected medically”.

There is a good chance we will never understand our microbiomes well enough to manipulate them confidently and to positive effect. “Maybe there are some things we can do, but … it keeps coming back to this holistic sense of ‘everything matters’.”

Microbiologists have found that hunter-gatherers and Amish people, who work together on farms from childhood, have optimally diverse microbiomes and minimal chances of contracting autoimmune conditions and associated inflammation. Urban westerners who want to boost their more modest skin microbes would benefit from close contact with other people and animals, and from spending as much time as possible in nature, preferably getting dirty.

But now that we are in a pandemic, much of that behaviour is on hold. In fact, if the relative sterility of the world before Covid-19 (in which Hamblin’s book was written) was already compromising our microbial balance, lockdowns and social distancing could challenge it even more. “I don’t know when we’ll go back to handshaking and ways that we might have been sharing different sorts of microbes with one another,” says Hamblin.

Of course, reducing antibiotic use is key to microbiome success, along with resisting washing so frequently. Which brings us to bottoms – for this is what people visualise when they get grossed out over other people not soaping themselves. How can you get rid of unwanted residue down there with just your hand and water? “Dry toilet paper kind of creates that problem,” says Hamblin. “If you were gardening and had mud all over your hands, would you just use a dry paper towel? No, you’d at least get them wet and scrub them together. When people use bidets, they have less of an issue with that, or when people use disposable towelette things.” But the towelettes are expensive, wasteful and block drains, he admits, so “wetting toilet paper is fine”. This is his solution, which he shares to satisfy curiosity, rather than to preach or prescribe. And no, the paper does not fall apart when wet – “unless you’re trying to drown it”.

Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less by James Hamblin is published on 6 August by The Bodley Head

Apples in Reflection

Legal experts warned of a looming constitutional crisis in the US today after judges in the city of Portland in Oregon were asked to issue a restraining order against federal agents deployed to quell protests.

A lawsuit was filed by Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, accusing federal agents of arresting protesters without probable cause and using excessive force, in a claim contested by the US government.

Outside the city’s federal courthouse on Wednesday night, national government agents set off explosives and fired chemicals into a crowd of hundreds, including Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, who said he was standing with protesters against the federal “occupying force.”

It comes amid growing pushback against US President Donald Trump who announced that he was also sending forces to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

But 15 Democratic mayors have signed a letter opposing the move while the Portland City Council on Wednesday banned city police from co-operating with federal agents or knowingly arresting reporters or legal observers.

Mr Trump remains defiant and appears to be positioning himself as the candidate of law and order in November’s election.

He has falsely accused his Democratic Party rival for the presidency Joe Biden as supporting moves to defund the police, one of the central demands of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a claim yesterday on behalf of journalists and legal observers who say they were targeted and attacked by Portland police while documenting demonstrations.

MEAA Today is World Press Freedom Day

Today is World Press Freedom Day but there is little for us to celebrate here in Australia.

The police raids in June last year on the home of a News Corp journalist and the ABC offices in Sydney were a wake up call to the wider Australian public that our nation’s reputation as a healthy democracy is now at risk because of growing attacks and restrictions on public interest journalism and the right to know.

On World Press Freedom Day, MEAA is calling for serious reforms to reverse a raft of ‘national security’ laws that can be used to criminalise journalism and punish whistleblowers for telling the truth, and which have sent Australia backwards on press freedom.

MEAA has been cataloguing the deterioration of press freedom in an annual report for 15 years. This year’s report is aptly named The War on Journalism, and much space is devoted to analysing how we got to a place where police are raiding journalists’ homes and offices.

These raids were the culmination of almost 20 years of parliament legislating sweeping powers in the name of ‘national security’ which enable government agencies to reach into our homes and offices, into our phones and computers, and intrude into our lives in an effort to control the possession and flow of information.

These laws allow governments to hide information from public view and punish those who reveal that information.  This cloak is also being used to shield the governments from embarrassment.

As a member of the Your Right to Know campaign with major publishers and broadcasters, MEAA is advocating reforms to restore the balance of freedom of information and expression versus the needs of national security. The reforms are:

•  The right to contest the application for warrants for journalists and media organisations;
•  Exemptions for journalists from laws that would put them in jail for doing their jobs, including security laws enacted over the last seven years;
•  Public sector whistleblowers must be adequately protected – the current law needs to change;
•  A new regime that limits which documents can be stamped secret;
•  A properly functioning freedom of information (FOI) regime; and
•  Defamation law reform.

Journalists are not above the law but bad laws must be reformed if freedom of expression, and press  freedom, is to be upheld.

At stake is not just Australia’s reputation but also our ability to function as a healthy democracy that respects the human rights of its people.

On World Press Freedom Day, we also call for the release of all imprisoned journalists around the world who are in detention for shining the light on public-interest information that governments would rather keep secret, including MEAA members Julian Assange and Yang Hengjun.

The War on Journalism: the MEAA Report into the State of Press Freedom in Australia in 2020 is available at pressfreedom.org.au

Tony Elliot Founder of Time Out Dies age 73

Tony Elliott, who has died aged 73, was the founder of Time Out magazine, which began as a crudely printed listings sheet and grew to become the noticeboard and parish pump of London life, an indispensable part of living in the capital, and ultimately a global publishing phenomenon....

Elliott started the magazine in London in 1968 and it grew into a global media brand covering hundreds of countries.

A statement on Time Out's website described him as "a visionary publisher, a tireless champion of city culture and a staunch friend".

It said Time Out's first post-lockdown print magazine in London on 11 August would be dedicated to him.

"It is with great sadness that we announce that Time Out's founder Tony Elliott passed away on 16th July, after a long illness," the statement said.

"He will be sorely missed by his family, friends and colleagues.

"His life and his work inspired millions of people who did not have the good fortune to know him personally."

The Sydney Morning Herald Digital Edition

Changed union minds the shop SMH

The SDA has a new approach to its dealings. 

When Joe Bullock became a Labor senator in 2013, he hoped his vote could make a difference.
He hoped it would stop same-sex marriage becoming law.

The West Australian Labor powerbroker and former state secretary of the shoppies union was disappointed.

The party gave its parliamentarians a conscience vote for two terms of Parliament and then bound them to back same-sex marriage after what Bullock remembers as a 499-to one vote at the ALP national conference in 2015. ‘‘Mate, you start to feel you’re in a bit of a minority,’’

Bullock says he quit the Senate that year, adamant ‘‘marriage is between a man and a woman, full stop’’ Bullock, who worked for the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association.

ACOSS Campaign

ACTU Government Needs to Extend Leave to cover every worker

Unions have won paid pandemic leave for aged care workers, but the ACTU says the Federal Government needs to act now and extend the leave to cover every worker.

The Fair Work Commission’s decision grants paid leave to aged care workers, but excludes those casual workers with irregular hours.

In order to stop the spread of this virus in workplaces, every single worker must have access to paid leave so they can be supported to get tested for the virus and self-isolate if necessary.

Quotes attributable to ACTU Secretary Sally McManus:

“The problem of workers having no leave goes beyond the aged care sector.

“We welcome this decision but it still does not remove the trap door for casual workers with irregular hours, or workers in other industries.

“Paid pandemic leave is a crucial public health measure that provides a circuit breaker to stem the rate of transmission by allowing those with symptoms to stay home without losing income.

“Only the Federal Government can step up and deliver paid pandemic leave to protect all workers.

“No worker should be left considering if they should go to work with mild symptoms to pay the bills.

“The Government can fix this and should do so to stop the workplace transmission of the virus.”

NSW Teachers Federation -- Education at the core of jobs-led virus recovery

July 25, 2020

More than a million secure jobs would flow into the Australian workplace under a comprehensive five-point economic reconstruction plan developed by the ACTU to steer the nation through a COVID-10 recovery.

The ACTU is calling on the Federal Government to adopt a jobs-led recovery through a National Economic Reconstruction Plan and has identified five concrete ideas designed to create and save jobs, protect and nurture whole industries, support public and private sector jobs, invest in future skills and training and strengthen Australia’s physical and social infrastructure.

Among the plan’s far-reaching concept is a focus on education with a national commitment to free early child education and care and a massive investment in training that would include 150,000 free TAFE places.

ACTU President Michele O’Neil said the government has no plan to rebuild the economy and steer the country through the next stages of the pandemic crisis.

“Government must help build ongoing local jobs, more training and education opportunities to get people into jobs and provide support for people who are making things here in Australia,” Ms O’Neil said.

The ACTU, with economist Dr Jim Stanford and the Centre for Future Work, developed the National Economic Reconstruction Plan to counter “unprecedented economic contraction” that has occurred during disruptions and shutdowns to business and industry.

Other aspects of the strategy include a “Rediscover Australia” initiative to help the travel and hospitality sectors survive, a large and sustained increase in infrastructure investment and a comprehensive plan to expand sustainable manufacturing.

“Whether it is free and universal childcare, the expansion of public infrastructure investment with locally-made materials, free TAFE courses focussed on rebuilding our skills and training sector, support to revitalise our travel and hospitality sectors and regional communities or building a sustainable manufacturing capacity, this plan delivers jobs, community infrastructure and a future for Australia,” Ms O’Neil said.

The ACTU’s 23-page report on the reconstruction plan, while commending the cooperation between governments in the National Cabinet, warns against the Morrison Government’s “side hustles” that have little relevance to the genuine macroeconomic and structural challenges now facing Australia’s economy.

“An example is the Government’s far-fetched $688 million scheme to subsidise expensive home renovations undertaken by a narrow and affluent group of home-owners,” the report stated. “Politically motivated measures like this one fail all of the tests for effective fiscal policy that we defined … this program is small, ineffective in creating new jobs, and fails to deliver support to those Australians who need it most.”

Modi draconian lockdown

New Delhi | Narendra Modi has cultivated a reputation for making dramatic decisions to respond to India’s complex policy challenges. Addressing the nation on primetime television about coronavirus on March 24, the Prime Minister was true to form.

India then had just about 550 confirmed infections, and many Indians believed their repeated exposure to a wide range of germs would enable their immune systems to ward off the virus. But Mr Modi warned coronavirus had “rendered even the most developed countries of the world helpless”. India’s recent socio-economic progress, he warned, would be set back decades unless it could “break the chain of infection”.

The shutdown reflected Narendra Modi’s impulse to rely on the might of the state to enforce shock-and-awe tactics.

With that, Mr Modi ordered India’s 1.4 billion people into one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns, warning them not to step out of their homes — “whatever happens” — for the next 21 days. “We must accept that this is the only way before us,” he said of strictures that took effect less than four hours later, at the stroke of midnight.

The draconian lockdown — imposed with no warning, no planning and no transparency into the policy deliberations or scientific advice behind it — fit perfectly with the Prime Minister’s highly-personalised, muscular leadership style. Virtually all economic activity — including logistics, manufacturing, public transport and most healthcare — came to a near total standstill. Around 140m vulnerable workers were thrust into crisis as their earnings collapsed.

Yet for all the human suffering and economic damage it inflicted, India’s lockdown failed to flatten — or even slightly bend — the country’s coronavirus curve. With limited testing capacity and restrictive testing policies, authorities struggled to identify infected patients and trace their contacts.

Vladimir Vernadsky

Vladimir Vernadsky was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, on 12 March  1863 in family of the native Kiev residents Russian Imperial economist Ivan Vernadsky and music instructor Anna Petrovna Konstantinovich. According to family legend, his father's ancestors were Zaporozhian Cossacks. Ivan Vernadsky had been a professor of political economy in Kiev at the St. Vladimir University before moving to Saint Petersburg; then he was an Active State Councillor and worked in the Governing Senate in St. Petersburg. Vladimir's mother was a Russian noblewoman of Ukrainian Cossack descent.

Vernadsky graduated from Saint Petersburg State University in 1885. As the position of mineralogist in Saint Petersburg State University was vacant, and Vasily Dokuchaev, a soil scientist, and Alexey Pavlov, a geologist, had been teaching Mineralogy for a while, Vernadsky chose to enter Mineralogy. He wrote to his wife Natasha on 20 June 1888 from Switzerland:

...to collect facts for their own sake, as many now gather facts, without a program, without a question to answer or a purpose, is not interesting. However, there is a task which someday those chemical reactions which took place at various points on earth; these reactions take place according to laws which are known to us, but which, we are allowed to think, are closely tied to general changes which the earth has undergone by the earth with the general laws of celestial mechanics. I believe there is hidden here still more to discover when one considers the complexity of chemical elements and the regularity of their occurrence in groups...

While trying to find a topic for his doctorate, he first went to Naples to study under crystallographer Arcangelo Scacchi, who was senile by that time. Scacchi's condition led Vernadsky to go to Germany to study under Paul Groth.

Vernadsky learned to use Groth's modern equipment, which included a machine to study the optical, thermal, elastic, magnetic and electrical properties of crystals. He also gained access to the physics lab of Leonhard Sohncke (Direktor, Physikalisches Institut der Universität Jena, 1883–1886; Professor der Physik an der Technischen Hochschule München 1886 -1897), who was studying crystallisation during that period.

Vernadsky participated in the First General Congress of the zemstvos, held in Petersburg on the eve of the 1905 revolution to discuss how best to pressure the government to the needs of the Russian society; became a member of the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party (KD); and served in parliament, resigning to protest the Tsar's proroguing of the Duma.

He served as professor and later as vice rector of Moscow University, from which he also resigned in 1911 in protest over the government's reactionary policies. After the February revolution of 1917, he served on several commissions of agriculture and education of the provisional government, including as assistant minister of education.

Vernadsky first popularized the concept of the noosphere and deepened the idea of the biosphere to the meaning largely recognized by today's scientific community. The word 'biosphere' was invented by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, whom Vernadsky met in 1911.

In Vernadsky's theory of the Earth's development, the noosphere is the third stage in the earth's development, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition will fundamentally transform the biosphere. In this theory, the principles of both life and cognition are essential features of the Earth's evolution, and must have been implicit in the earth all along.

This systemic and geological analysis of living systems complements Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which looks at each individual species, rather than at its relationship to a subsuming principle.

Vernadsky's visionary pronouncements were not widely accepted in the West. However, he was one of the first scientists to recognize that the oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere result from biological processes. During the 1920s he published works arguing that living organisms could reshape the planets as surely as any physical force. Vernadsky was an important pioneer of the scientific bases for the environmental sciences.

Vernadsky was a member of the Russian and Soviet Academies of Sciences since 1912 and was a founder and first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev, Ukraine (1918). He was a founder of the National Library of Ukrainian State and worked closely with the Tavrida University in Crimea. During the Russian Civil War, he hosted gatherings of the young intellectuals who later founded the émigré Eurasianism movement.

Japan Fan

Chinese Fan

Robert Sorby Shears

Vladimir Tatlin Self portrait The Sailor

Natalia Goncharova

                                                             The Mirror  1912

Natalia Goncharova

Learning to draw

                                Learning  to Draw ?  Start with your Shoes !

Chartists Gather at Kennington Common 1848 -- Captured in Early Photograph

William Cuffay was one of the speakers and his words were used to convict him of treason which     lead to his transportation for life to Van Diemens Land where he worked as a tailor and joined and where he was accepted as a leader and helped lead the struggles of the local labour movement.

Boing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Problems

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday issued an emergency airworthiness directive for 2,000 US-registered Boeing 737 NG and Classic aircraft, warning of possible corrosion on parked planes that could lead to a dual-engine failure.

Inspectors found compromised air check valves when bringing aircraft out of storage following four recent reports of single-engine shutdowns on planes that had been parked, prompting the directive for aircraft not operated for seven or more straight days.

Alaska Airlines said one of its aircraft is likely one of the four incidents, noting a recent engine shutdown issue.

"The safety of the flight was not compromised," Alaska said in a statement, adding it is now inspecting the check valves before returning planes to service.

If airlines find corrosion, they must replace the valve prior to flying the aircraft again, the FAA said.

Boeing Co said on Friday that it had advised operators to inspect the planes and added, "with airplanes being stored or used infrequently due to lower demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, the valve can be more susceptible to corrosion."

Global airlines parked thousands of aeroplanes after the coronavirus pandemic sharply reduced travel demand, but some have started flying again as demand picked up.

The FAA said the directive is to address corrosion of the engine bleed air 5th stage check valves for both engines. The agency said that could result in compressor stalls and dual-engine power loss without the ability to restart.

Boeing said it is providing inspection and replacement information to fleet owners if they find an issue.

Antonio Gramcsi Memorial in Moscow

University of Sussex 'founding father' Asa Briggs dies age 94

The social historian, who was second VC of Sussex and later chancellor of the Open University, was

Asa Briggs, one of the most prominent university leaders of his generation, has died aged 94.

Lord Briggs was one of the most respected and influential figures in post-war British academic life.

An acclaimed writer on the recent social and cultural history of Britain and the history of broadcasting, he was also a “founding father” of the University of Sussex who went on to become its second vice-chancellor (1967–76).

He later served as both the provost of Worcester College, Oxford (1976-91) and chancellor of the Open University (1978–94). He became a life peer – as Lord Briggs of Lewes – in 1976.

Sussex’s current vice-chancellor, Michael Farthing, described him as “a visionary and a dear friend” with a “stellar career” who “contributed to an enormous number of different universities, different ideas to his discipline of history, and on a much wider scale to higher education in general”.

Lord Briggs, who died on 15 March, was born in Yorkshire in 1921 and served in the intelligence corps at Bletchley Park during the war before he began his rise though the academic ranks.

He worked at Oxford, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the US and the University of Leeds before joining Sussex as pro-vice-chancellor in 1961.

His publications included the celebrated trilogy Victorian People, Victorian Cities and Victorian Things; A Social History of England; and a five-volume History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom.

Edward Hallett "Ted" Carr CBE FBA (28 June 1892November 1982)

Edward Hallett "Ted" Carr CBE FBA November 1982) was an English historian, diplomat, journalist and international relations theorist, and an opponent of empiricism within historiography. Carr was best known for his 14-volume history of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1929, for his writings on international relations, particularly The Twenty Years' Crisis, and for his book What Is History? in which he laid out historiographical principles rejecting traditional historical methods and practices.

Educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, London, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, Carr began his career as a diplomat in 1916; three years later, he participated at the Paris Peace Conference as a member of the British delegation. Becoming increasingly preoccupied with the study of international relations and of the Soviet Union, he resigned from the Foreign Office in 1936 to begin an academic career. From 1941 to 1946, Carr worked as an assistant editor at The Times, where he was noted for his leaders (editorials) urging a socialist system and an Anglo-Soviet alliance as the basis of a post-war order.

In 1919, Carr was part of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference and was involved in the drafting of parts of the Treaty of Versailles relating to the League of Nations.During the conference, Carr was much offended at the Allied, especially French, treatment of the Germans, writing that the German delegation at the peace conference were "cheated over the 'Fourteen Points', and subjected to every petty humiliation".

Beside working on the sections of the Versailles treaty relating to the League of Nations, Carr was also involved in working out the borders between Germany and Poland. Initially, Carr favoured Poland, urging in a memo in February 1919 that Britain recognise Poland at once, and that the German city of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland) be ceded to Poland. In March 1919, Carr fought against the idea of a Minorities Treaty for Poland, arguing that the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Poland would be best guaranteed by not involving the international community in Polish internal affairs. By the spring of 1919, however, Carr's relations with the Polish delegation had declined to a state of mutual hostility. Carr's tendency to favour the claims of the Germans at the expense of the Poles led Adam Zamoyski to note that Carr "held views of the most extraordinary racial arrogance on all of the nations of Eastern Europe".

Carr's biographer, Jonathan Haslam, wrote that Carr grew up in a place where German culture was deeply appreciated, which in turn always coloured his views towards Germany throughout his life. As a result, Carr supported the territorial claims of the Reich against Poland. In a letter written in 1954 to his friend, Isaac Deutscher, Carr described his attitude to Poland at the time: "The picture of Poland that was universal in Eastern Europe right down to 1925 was of a strong and potentially predatory power"

Carr's early political outlook was anti-Marxist and liberal. In his 1934 biography of Karl Marx, Carr presented his subject as highly intelligent man and a gifted writer, but one whose talents were devoted entirely for destruction. Carr argued that Marx's sole and only motivation was a mindless class hatred. Carr labelled dialectical materialism gibberish, and the labour theory of value doctrinal and derivative.He praised Marx for emphasising the importance of the collective over the individual. In view of his later conversion to a sort of quasi-Marxism, Carr was to find the passages in Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism criticising Marx to be highly embarrassing, and refused to allow the book to be republished. Carr was to later call his Marx biography his worst book, and complained that he had written it only because his publisher had made a Marx biography the precondition of publishing the biography of Mikhail Bakunin that he was writing.

His famous work The Twenty Years' Crisis was published in July 1939, which dealt with the subject of international relations between 1919 and 1939. In that book, Carr defended appeasement under the grounds that it was the only realistic policy option.[44] At the time the book was published in the summer of 1939, Neville Chamberlain had adopted his "containment" policy towards Germany, leading Carr to later ruefully comment that his book was dated even before it was published. In the spring and summer of 1939, Carr was very dubious about Chamberlain's "guarantee" of Polish independence issued on 31 March 1939.

Edward and Dorothy Thompson

Edward and Dorothy Thompson were historians and activists.

They met in 1945, and worked together on the international youth brigade which helped to build the railway in Tito's Yugoslavia.

Soon afterwards they married and settled in Halifax, West Yorkshire, where they both taught in extramural adult education.

They made a dynamic and idealistic team, determined to use their considerable energy to create a better world. A succession of houses in Yorkshire and the English midlands were constantly filled with interesting people and lively discussion.

Alongside their work as historians, writers and teachers, Edward and Dorothy worked tirelessly for the peace movement, being early supporters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and founder members of the later European Nuclear Disarmament, which encouraged dialogue across the iron curtain. Both of them published seminal works in their fields, and each was the other's first editor and critic.

Joan Baez -- 2020 Woody Guthrie Prize

Joan Baez accepts a Lifetime Achievement Award during the 2019 Latin Grammy Special Merit Awards on Nov. 13, 2019 in Las Vegas.

Joan Baez is this year’s recipient of the Woody Guthrie Prize, in recognition of her "groundbreaking career and impact on humanitarian causes."

The legendary folk singer, activist and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer will be inducted Aug. 16 during a virtual edition of the Philadelphia Folk Festival.

The prize was established in 2014 and is given each year to an artist who best exemplifies the spirit and life work of Woody Guthrie by speaking for the less fortunate and serving 

as a positive force for social change.

Baez joins past recipients of the award, 
including John Mellencamp, Kris Kristofferson, 
Mavis Staples, Pete Seeger and last year's winner, 
Public Enemy's Chuck D.

“It has been my mission to use my music as a voice for those who cannot be heard or have been silenced by fear and powerlessness,” Baez said.

Baez's 25th and final studio album Whistle Down The Wind, her first new LP in nearly a decade, arrived in early 2018.

A New York native, Baez was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2017.

EP Thompson Moral Economy

A moral economy is an economy that is based on goodness, fairness, and justice, as opposed to one where the market is assumed to be independent of such concerns. The concept was an elaboration by English historian E.P. Thompson from a term already used by various eighteenth century authors, who felt that economic and moral concerns increasingly seemed to drift apart.

Thompson wrote of the moral economy of the poor in the context of widespread food riots in the English countryside in the late eighteenth century. According to Thompson these riots were generally

peaceable acts that demonstrated a common political culture rooted in feudal rights to "set the price" of essential goods in the market. These peasants held that a traditional "fair price" was more important to the community than a "free" market price and they punished large farmers who sold their surpluses at higher prices outside the village while there were still those in need within the village. In the 1970s the concept of a moral economy was developed further in anthropological studies of peasant economies. The notion of a non-capitalist cultural mentality using the market for its own ends has been linked by others  to subsistence agriculture and the need for subsistence insurance in hard times.

James C. Scott

The concept was widely popularized in anthropology through the book The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia by James C. Scott (1976).
The book begins with a telling metaphor of peasants being like a man standing up to his nose in water; the smallest wave will drown him. Similarly, peasants generally live so close to the subsistence line that it takes little to destroy their livelihoods.

Firstly, he argued that peasants were "risk averse", or, put differently, followed a "safety first" principle. They would not adopt risky new seeds or technologies, no matter how promising, because tried and true traditional methods had demonstrated, not promised, effectiveness. This gives peasants an unfair reputation as "traditionalist" when in fact they are just risk averse. Secondly, Scott argues that peasant society provides "subsistence insurance" for its members to tide them over those occasions when natural or man-made disaster strikes.

Hobsbawm on popular culture

Hobsbawm also comments on popular culture, a subject he has left alone in other books. He writes, "Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and a number of other popular divinities fell victim of a life-style designed for early death.

What made such deaths symbolic was that youth, which they represented, was impermanent by definition." Of these, Joplin's and Hendrix's deaths were drug-related; Jones's may have been (the coroner's verdict was "death by misadventure"; there has been much controversy surrounding the events leading to his death); Holly died in a plane crash and Marley of cancer. However, he does use youth culture as a lens to view the changes in the late-twentieth-century social order:

"The novelty of the new youth culture was threefold.

"First, 'youth' was not seen as a preparatory stage of adulthood but, in some sense, as the final stage of full human development. As in sport, the human activity in which youth is supreme, and which now defined the ambitions of more human beings than any other, life clearly went downhill after the age of thirty.

"The second novelty of the youth culture... it was or became dominant in the 'developed market economies'... What children could learn from their parents became less obvious than what parents did not know and children did.

The role of generations was reversed. Blue jeans..., pioneered... by students who did not wish to look like their elders, came to appear... below many a grey head.

"The third peculiarity of the new youth culture in urban societies was its astonishing
internationalism... The English language of rock lyrics was often not even translated...

The heartlands of Western youth culture themselves were the opposite of culturally chauvinist... They welcomed styles imported from the Caribbean, Latin America and, from the 1980s, increasingly Africa."

Hobsbawm goes on to write that "The cultural revolution of the latest twentieth century can thus best be understood as the triumph of the individual over society, or rather, the breaking of the threads which in the past had woven human beings into social textures"and evokes this as paralleling Margaret Thatcher's claim that 'There is no society, only individuals'

Kurdish-Iranian author Behrouz Boochani given refugee status in New Zealand

Boochani has been in New Zealand since November. He had travelled to Christchurch for a writers' festival on a one-month visa and was supported by Amnesty International.

He catapulted to worldwide fame in 2019 after his book, No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia's richest literature prize.

He wrote the book with WhatsApp on his phone.

Boochani's 374-page book, detailing his experiences in detention, was written in secret and was smuggled out of the detention centre via hundreds of text messages to his translators and editors in Australia.

Boochani discovered he had been granted asylum by New Zealand almost seven years to the day from the moment he was arrested by the Australian Navy, taken to Christmas Island, and subsequently flown to PNG.

Following the closure of the Manus Island centre in 2017, Boochani and his fellow detainees were moved to refugee transit centres near the island's main town of Lorengau, and later, to the country's capital Port Moresby.

The executive director of Amnesty, Meg de Ronde, said it is wonderful news that Boochani has been given asylum.

"This means that he's now a free man. He is free from the persecution as a Kurdish journalist. He's free from the persecution of Australia's torturous detention system and he is able to enjoy his life as anyone should be able to under our human rights system."

Last month the National Party said it was surprised New Zealand immigration officials didn't consult their Australian counterparts before granting a visa to Boochani ! ! !

Labour History

Labour history has its origins in the late 19th century, when it was predominantly written by activists such as the Webbs as an attempt to promote the trade union movement. As the subject established itself it tended to take an institutional and constitutional form, even in its Marxist varities.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a greater concentration on the social history of labour, prompted particularly by E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963), and marked the high point of the discipline's standing and popularity. It was challenged subsequently by those disputing both the homogeneity of the working class (from various perspectives including those of race and gender) and the primacy/validity of class analysis itself. More recently there have been attempts to bring a more comparative and internationalist perspective to bear on labour history.

Historians:
Briggs, Asa
Cole, George Douglas Howard
Hobsbawm, Eric J.
Joyce, Patrick
Pelling, Henry Mathison
Samuel, Raphael Elkan
Thompson, Edward Palmer
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice
Institutions:
Centre for the Study of Social History
History Workshop Journal
North East Labour History Society
North West Labour History Group
Past and Present
People's History Museum
Scottish Labour History Society
Society for the Study of Labour History
Society for the Study of Welsh History
Themes:
Economic history
History from below
Marxist history
Oral history
Social history

U.S. Stands Alone on Israel Annexation Plan As China Backs Palastinians

Leaf blowers in Versus Teargas in Portland, Oregon

A group of dads in Portland, Oregon, carried leaf blowers during a recent protest to help stop tear gas from police from affecting other protesters, specifically the Wall of Moms organization.

Several pictures and videos of the group were posted across social media as protests calling for an end to police brutality against Black Americans continue to take place in Oregon.

One photo posted by Twitter user Hermits United, shows the group of dads, holding leaf blowers, a sign that says, "FATHERS AGAINST FASCISM" and wearing helmets. The group of dads refer to themselves as the "PDX Dad Pod" according to the Twitter account.

Acoss Statement

Australian Council of Social Service CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie said: 

“Today’s statement shows that bold government action averted even deeper economic pain, but also spells out the ongoing depth of the crisis, with 700,000 jobs lost and unemployment to reach 9.25% in December. The Government’s plans need to respond to the scale of the health, economic and social crisis we must continue to confront.

"The statement confirms the depth of the crisis we face and the likely persistence of high unemployment into 2021. This news will be hard to take for many people who don’t have paid work and are looking for the light at the end of the tunnel.

"Three months ago the Government acted quickly and boldly to set up the income supports – JobSeeker and JobKeeper – that have saved many jobs and kept food on the table and a roof over head for millions of people.

"Instead of cutting JobSeeker Payments by $300 per fortnight, the Government must permanently secure the basics, including incomes and housing; create jobs and restore employment, avoiding another recession.  This requires the certainty of a permanent, adequate increase to the JobSeeker payment, and public investment in job-creating projects like building housing for people with low incomes, retrofitting homes to reduce energy bills and carbon emissions, and funding for care services that are in high demand.

“Taking action to create jobs requires public investment. The cost of this action is much less than the cost of failing to take it, which would put the nation at great risk of slipping into a deeper, longer recession. 

“We also need the Government to scale up training for people for the jobs that will become available in the recovery phase, which for many won’t be the same as the ones they had before, and to stem the inexorable rise in long-term unemployment. There are already 700,000 people on JobSeeker and Youth Allowance for over a year, and this is likely to increase to over a million people next year if we don’t act now. In addition to much-needed economic stimulus, the government should announce a jobs and training guarantee for young people unemployed for over 6 months and those over 25 years old unemployed for over 12-24 months.

“It is important that the Government avoids wasteful policies which will not help us out of unemployment crisis, like bringing forward tax cuts that mainly go to people with high incomes. 

“The burdens of the present crisis must be shared fairly. Bringing forward tax cuts for those with the highest incomes while cutting income support for those with the lowest would be grossly unfair. The slated ‘Stage 2’ tax cuts go mainly to people earning more than $100,000 per year and would cost the budget about $16 billion per year.  This makes no economic sense. Throughout the crisis, people with higher incomes have been saving their money; while those with low incomes have been propping up the real economy, showing the great value the doubling of the JobSeeker payment has had. The reality is that people with low incomes have no choice but to spend payments straight away in order to survive day-to-day.

“It is immeasurably better to use government revenue on guaranteed job creation – such as low income housing, reducing energy bills, care services like aged and disability care, as well as permanent increases to social security to protect incomes - rather than wasting public revenue on allowing people on higher incomes to save through high-end tax cuts,” Dr Goldie said. 

Marxism And History Lionel Munby And Ernst Wangerman

Letters: Harold Pinter

Letters: Harold Pinter Published on Wed 31 Dec 2008

Philip Purser writes: The television work of Harold Pinter (obituary, 27 December) was formidable and useful in making his name known to the masses. In April 1960 he came top of the audience ratings with A Night Out. Only four months later came another nocturnal title, Night School, about blighted youth, to seal his mastery of what might be called misery-comedy.

In 1962 the Eurovision partnership launched a daring annual venture, The Largest Theatre in the World, whereby on a given day every country should transmit its own production, in its own tongue, of a specially written TV drama. Britain opened the batting with Terence Rattigan's Heart to Heart, then came Italy, and next should have been France, but Jean Cocteau died before he had finished his script. The BBC was invited to fill the gap, and did so with Pinter's The Tea Party, a claustrophobic piece about a self-made tycoon driven to despair by the advent of a new wife, a new brother-in-law and a new secretary.

But perhaps the greatest tribute to his work came in another prestigious drama project, Granada's Best Play of ... anthology, which originally aimed to pick the best work of each year of the century (although in the end only six were made and screened between 1976 and 1978), which Laurence Olivier supervised, starred in, or both. The choice was always a theatrical masterpiece, except the one for 1961, when Olivier and his producer Derek Granger picked a television play - Harold Pinter's The Collection, with Olivier himself giving a striking new slant to the part of an elderly homosexual.

Hilary Wainwright writes:

At Red Pepper magazine, we saw a practical side of Harold Pinter. Sometimes it was advice, with great attention to detail, for example, on the magazine's launch. Sometimes it was sheer, self-sacrificing dedication, attending bedraggled meetings in chilly rooms above a pub and rekindling enthusiasm. Sometimes it was the enjoyment of a convivial AGM and party beneath the dilapidated chandeliers of the Irish Club in Eaton Square.

He had a fierce determination that was infectious. In the difficult days of founding Red Pepper, he made Denise Searle, its first editor, and I feel that we had to make it work. It would probably not have come into being without him. Financial support was the least of it, though he was generous when others saw the project as a well-meant fantasy. He gave us ideas, opened his address book, even rallied his friends when New Labour tried (unsuccessfully) to to ban us from the party conference, and occasionally wrote, beautifully and passionately. What struck me always was his political courage and complete absence of deference.

William Cuffay 150 Year Anniversary Celebration

The Cliffs of Moher --- No More Mining

What threshold must be reached before ordinary people decide it’s necessary to break the law?

Throughout history, people have resorted to means beyond the law in order to advance moral causes. In fact, there’s hardly any major struggle in history that didn’t involve breaking with the established legal logic of the time. The law often changes in response to law-breaking, and the cause becomes a celebrated one.

Whatever that threshold is, it has now been reached for the venerable Sierra Club, the USA’s oldest and largest conservation organisation, with 1.4 million members. Michael Brune, the Club’s Executive Director, announced last week that they will support civil disobedience for the first time in their 121-year history. This is significant far beyond the limited coverage that the announcement was given.

Brune stated, "For civil disobedience to be justified, something must be so wrong that it compels the strongest defensible protest...For Thoreau, the wrongs were slavery and the invasion of Mexico. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it was the brutal, institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow South. For us, it is the possibility that the United States might surrender any hope of stabilizing our planet's climate."

Stuart Hall the Great Moving Right Show

Selected Political Writings gathers Stuart Hall's best-known and most important essays that directly engage with political issues. 

Written between 1957 and 2011 and appearing in publications such as New Left Review and Marxism 

Today, these twenty essays span the whole of Hall's career, from his early involvement with the New Left, to his critique of Thatcherism, to his later focus on neoliberalism. 

Whether addressing economic decline and class struggle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the politics of empire, Hall's singular commentary and theorizations make this volume essential for anyone interested in the politics of the last sixty years.

YEAR OF THE NURSE AND MIDWIFE

October has been nominated as Australian Safework Month.

In this month’s Lamp, as in many previous ones, we highlight the tremendous work and the resolute action taken by many nurses and midwives throughout the state to make their health environments safer for their patients.

At Blacktown and Concord, Gosford and Wilcannia and in many other hospitals and health services throughout the state our members have taken strong action to ensure that adequate resources are being deployed to provide safe and high quality care.

Having the right number of qualified staff remains the bane of our public health system. It is an issue the state government has very publicly promised to address with an increase in nursing and midwifery staff.

These extra staff are needed now and our members should be commended for their actions which keep local managements honest and have led to the recruitment of extra nurses and midwives.

The safety of patients, which is 
the driving force of these actions, is paramount but so too is the safety of staff.

Australian Safework Month provides us with a focal point to highlight the issues which impact on workplace safety in healthcare.

SafeWork Australia has published a safety plan for the healthcare sector which provides a refreshingly broad analysis of the issues that contribute to the risk of injuries and illness and that undermine the safety of healthcare environments.

It recognises muscular stress, falls, harassment and bullying and work pressure as the top causes of injury among healthcare workers.

Commendably, it acknowledges the importance of psychosocial risk factors such as high job demands, low job control, poor support, poor environmental conditions and violent or traumatic events.

It nominates work-related violence as a key priority area for improving workplace health and safety.

Staffing is at the heart of safety

These are themes which nurses and midwives are intimately aware of. They are recurring themes which, unfortunately but by necessity, often dominate the pages of The Lamp.