#labour day 2017 sale

[earaercircular]

Vancouver Island (CDN) project aims to nurture next generation of farmers

Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture, an 83-acre farm in North Saanich on Vancouver Island, opened in January, 2021.

Stephanie Jacobs spends her Saturdays knee-high in soil and manure, planting medicinal herbs in a quarter-acre plot that used to be the car park of a racetrack. This is the closest she has come to owning her own farm, something she has dreamed of since she was a child.

“Farming is my passion in life,” she said. “It connects me to the ecosystem in a larger way.” After looking for farming land near her home on Vancouver Island[1] for two years, she’d given up – land prices were far too high. Plus, even if she had been successful in her search, she wasn’t entirely sure she would be able to take the long, physically demanding days for such slim profits.

Then, she heard about Sandown. Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture is a 83-acre farm in North Saanich on Vancouver Island[2]. It is located on an old racetrack, nestled in the shadow of Victoria Airport and downstream from an Amazon warehouse.

Ms. Jacobs works in the hot afternoon sun cutting yarrow flowers at Sandown.

The centre opened in January, 2021. It is a non-profit that is focused on regenerative agriculture – an eco-friendly approach that integrates livestock, removes tillage and uses crops that are good for the soil to sequester carbon and increase biodiversity.

But Sandown is also interested in fostering the next generation of farmers through what they call their farmpreneur program – an initiative that provides farmers with affordable land and the knowledge, support and community they need to become financially viable. The program helps them get started by leasing them plots for a fraction of what it would cost to purchase or lease land for a farm.

The economic challenges posed by farming stretch beyond Vancouver Island. According to the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council[3], 47 per cent of agricultural producers can’t find enough workers, leading to $2.9-billion in lost sales. This labour shortage is only getting worse. As of 2017, a quarter of farmers were set to retire by 2025. Simultaneously, 200,000 fewer young people were entering the industry.

“We are facing a shortage of farms and farmers primarily because new farmers cannot purchase land,” said Ms. Jacobs. “It is simply out of reach financially. The program at Sandown offers farmers an opportunity to access land at an affordable rate to start farming.”

Once in the program, the farmpreneurs are given help with marketing their produce, and research on how to best cultivate crops. They are also connected to the other farmpreneurs, and encouraged to foster a sense of community and camaraderie.

“We asked ourselves: ‘How do we incubate new farmers and support them to learn?’” said Lindsey Boyle, board member and co-founder at Sandown. “Not only on how to farm regeneratively – which is a climate solution and a way to grow better food – but how do we support farmers to learn in a way that’ll make them want to stick around?”

This means giving farmers guidance on how to make their operation financially viable. According to Ms. Boyle, selling produce is rarely enough, especially when competing with cheap imported goods, and especially when considering the huge upfront investment farming entails. For example, Ms. Jacobs has planted perennials such as raspberry bushes in her plot, the equivalent of a quarter of a football field. She will not reap the fruits of this investment for at least five years.

Ms. Boyle therefore argues that today’s farmers must think about multiple revenue streams. One short-term example would be to market farms as a wedding venue until they can make more money through farming. Other options are to teach agricultural students, and provide services such as consultations on soil health to the general public. Ms. Boyle would also like to see an agri-tourism sector fostered on the island.

“We call it farmpreneur because we want to fix this narrative that farming is a ton of work and that you’re barely scraping by,” said Ms. Boyle. “We really have to make it so people are well set up and supported to successfully run a business, which in many cases is more than just selling the food you grow.” But other options start at the roots. Sandown is researching the ways in which regenerative agriculture could be more financially viable in the long term.

Matthew Kyriakides is the manager of land resources at Sandown and a PhD student at the University of Victoria. Over the next few years, he will be working with 20 plots of degraded land, and will be using various techniques – some traditional and other regenerative – to see if he can bring the land back to health. He is hoping that the regenerative techniques will prove to be more successful, and more financially viable.

Matthew Kyriakides, manager of land resources at Sandown, will spend the next few years seeing if he can bring 20 plots of degraded land back to health.

While the traditional techniques will be straightforward – a single crop, placed into land that is tilled, and controlled via pesticides – the diversified techniques will use a combination of techniques. In some, the land will not be tilled, and in others, Mr. Kyriakides is using cover crops – specific crops grown for the protection and enrichment of soil – and animals, such as sheep, for weed and pest control. “I’m hoping I can find a win-win with this,” said Mr. Kyriakides. “And I feel quite confident that a diversified system will be the way to go.”

However, Ms. Boyle thinks that farmers won’t be truly financially successful until a larger, structural issue is tackled: supply chains. According to Ms. Boyle, the upfront costs of farming are huge and without a marketplace that offers stable, guaranteed prices for local produce, most would-be farmers simply won’t be able to justify the risk.

“We need a business model that will connect farmers to the people who need a secure supply of produce,” said Ms. Boyle. “We need them to forward-pay, to build relationships where those growers can trust that there is going to be a market for what they’re doing.”

Ms. Boyle thinks that this will allow local, regenerative growers to scale up, making agriculture more sustainable, both environmentally and financially. “We need to support financially to get to those bigger volumes,” said Ms. Boyle. “We need to provide that financial incentive so people won’t see this as a small-market niche.” When Ms. Jacobs thinks of the future, she also envisions an updated, more community-based agricultural industry, one that will support her, her family and their lifestyle moving forward. “I dream of being able to let my kids run into the field and eat raspberries until their bellies are full,” said Ms. Jacobs. “And then still have enough to be able to give to other people.”

Source

Kate Helmore, Vancouver Island project aims to nurture next generation of farmers, in: The Globe and Mail, 6-08-2022, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-regenerative-agriculture-sandown/

[1] Vancouver Island is an island in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is 456 km in length, 100 km in width at its widest point, and 32,134 km2 in area. The island is the largest by area and the most populous along the west coasts of the Americas. The southern part of Vancouver Island and some of the nearby Gulf Islands are the only parts of British Columbia or Western Canada to lie south of the 49th parallel. This area has one of the warmest climates in Canada, and since the mid-1990s has been mild enough in a few areas to grow Mediterranean crops such as olives and lemons. The population of Vancouver Island was 864,864 as of 2021. Nearly half of that population (~400,000) live in the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia. Other notable cities and towns on Vancouver Island include Nanaimo, Port Alberni, Parksville, Courtenay, and Campbell River.

[2] Geographically, the Sandown site sits between two village sites: the original Tseycum village called W̱SE¸IKEM, or Tsehum Harbour, on the east side of the peninsula, and the later village site on the west side, where the Tseycum community lives today. As North Saanich became a centre for agricultural activity, the lands now known as Sandown became part of the 500 acre (!) Glamorgan Farm. The handsome buildings from this historic family farm are still in operation, right across the road.  https://www.sandowncentre.com/about

[3] The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council is a national, non-profit organisation focused on addressing human resource issues facing agricultural businesses across Canada. https://cahrc-ccrha.ca/

[twnenglish]

The Three Basic Mantras Of Real Estate

After the primary sector and agriculture, the real estate market in India is one of the largest in the world. These industries contribute between 6.5 and 7%, and they are a significant source of employment for the unorganized sector of the Indian labour market.

This industry benefited greatly from the post-liberalization era when India became a sought-after destination for foreign direct investment, numerous big ventures were starting up every day, and middle-class earnings in India experienced a rapid rise. Since the 1990s, it has experienced significant growth, and Indian metropolises like Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata have seen a surge in the real sector.

As soon as a new government took office at the center in 2014, the sector experienced one surprise after another with the introduction of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), the Goods and Services Tax (GST), demonetization, the act against benami property, and the insolvency code. After demonetization, RERA, and GST, not only have new project launches in the residential real estate sector decreased significantly but so have housing sales.

An overview of the Real State scenario in India

Market Size of Real Estate in India

By 2040, real estate market would expand to Rs. 65,000 crore (US$ 9.30 billion) from Rs. 12,000 crore (US$ 1.72 billion) in 2019. The real estate sector in India is predicted to reach US$ 1 trillion in market size by 2030, up from US$ 200 billion in 2021 and contribute 13% to the country’s GDP by 2025. Retail, hospitality, and commercial real estate are also increasing considerably, providing the much-needed infrastructure for India's growing requirements.

India’s real estate market saw over 1,700 acres of land deals in the top 7 cities in 1 year. Foreign investments in the commercial real estate sector were at US$ 10.3 billion over 2017-21. As of February 2022, Developers expect demand for office spaces in SEZs to spike up after the replacement of the present SEZs act.

To Read This Full ARTICLE, Click Here

[k00287291]

PRETTY LITTLE THING

PrettyLittleThing is a UK-based fast-fashion retailer, aimed at 16-41-year-old women. The company is owned by Boohoo Group and operates in the UK, Ireland, Australia, US, France, Middle East and North Africa. The brand's main headquarters are in Manchester, with offices in London, Paris and Los Angeles.

PrettyLittleThing was co-founded in 2012 by Umar Kamani and his brother Adam Kamani. It started with an accessory only brand with limited products on the site.The company now sells Womenswear, footwear, accessories and beauty products. Celebrities including Miley Cyrus, Kourtney Kardashian, Rita Ora, Molly-Mae Hague and Nicki Minaj were seen wearing their products. As of 2020 the companies revenue stands at £516.3 million. In November 2017, the firm drew press attention when it was named one of the top three fastest growing fashion companies by Hitwise.

PrettyLittleThing faced criticism for its Black Friday sale, with its concerning working conditions and low pay to workers at garment factories in Leicester, UK – paying workers a mere £3.50 an hour. PLT also faced further controversy when it was blasted on Twitter that, buried in their terms and conditions, they had a notice sign reading “WARNING: Some Products on our Online Store from time to time may contain chemicals that are known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm and may be included on the Proposition 65 chemical list”.

The implications of sales like this on those who make the clothes are vast. It has been said that Mahmud Kamani, the co-founder and joint CEO of BOOHOO is ultimately getting away with running a modern-day sweatshop and is accused of forcing staff to work in poor conditions, even as some were tested positive with coronavirus. Many believe this exposes his company’s extreme negligence and, arguably, slave labour.

PLT has made claims of sustainability by having a recycled section, stating on their website their ‘aim is to rework unwanted, worn-out materials and give them a second chance , made from recycled fabrics means you can update your new season style and take a small step in making the world a better place. With this season’s best picks formed from recycled fabric off-cuts and plastic bottles – you can look great, feel great, and help make a difference to the world we live in’. Furthermore, PLT promotes a ‘regain’ app that claims to help the environment, yet this app allows customers to turn unwanted clothes into discounts to get cash off their next PLT purchase. And so, the cycle remains – continuously increasing consumption, and the impact on the environment. After all, as calculated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the fashion industry produces 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions every year.

Pretty little thing is a brand I have researched before and have since stopped buying from. Whilst I have carried out personal research on this brand before new information painting them in a bad light is always fore coming and to hear the statistics again is still as shocking as when I heard them the first time.

[rorodawnchorus]

The Chinese journalist who’s been writing about Uyghur people

"Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.” - Uyghurs For Sale

Vicky Xu was born and raised in China. She thought the Tiananmen Square massacre was fake and she used to be very nationalistic, often standing up for the CCP. Now, she has been writing about the oppression and cultural genocide Uyghur people have been experiencing for years. In this tweet, she talks about her experience and why she was driven to do investigative journalism on human rights abuses in China, particularly Xinjiang. 

https://mobile.twitter.com/xu_xiuzhong/status/1377527819715010561

(I won’t be translating her thread word for word but I’ll translate some quotes and also the gist of the thread) 

She says she’s questioned herself about taking huge risks and writing about Xinjiang and Uyghur people. She’s wondered if it was all “worth it”. She says “no matter how difficult it is, I must report about all that has befallen on Uyghur people. The root of the oppression on Uyghur people stems from the governing authority which is held by the majority Han Chinese government and this is the destruction of Uyghur people and culture.” Using the excuse of anti-terrorism policies, Uyghur people who are just average citizens with no intention to overthrow the government, they’re being put into concentration camps that are called “re-education camps” by the CCP. “As an ethnic majority Han Chinese” she says, “I cannot sit by idly and remain silent.” 

In 2017, when she was writing for New York Times, she was told that articles written in English would more likely fly under the radar of the CCP so she decided to do that. However, her articles had been translated and she has been cyberbullied, her family and friends have been harassed in China, and deepfake sex tapes/nudes have been spread online with claims that it is her. 

When she graduated in 2018, she joined Australian Broadcasting Company. However, due to lack of funds, she was only able to interview Uyghur people who have moved to Australia (there is a community in Adelaide, as per her tweet). At first, she noted, they were reluctant to open up to her and share more with her. She says, “At that time, all I could do was to write and tell the truth. Even if no one cares about it now or what the truth is, at least I’m leaving a historical record.” She would listen to her interviewees in tears, talking about their captured relatives in Xinjiang. Then she would return to her office and draft an email asking for China’s formal response on these claims; she would always watch as her hand tremble, hesitant about sending the email. 

In 2019, she wrote a piece for the NY Times which had enough international attention which put pressure on the CCP to release the relatives of the two families in that article. Ever since then, her family and friends in China began receiving threats and were harassed. Her Uyghur friends said to her at the time: “You’ve become like us.” 

Later, she joined the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and was the lead author for a research publication, Uyghur For Sale. In that report, it was mentioned that “Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.” 

“This report” she says in her tweet, “illustrates the undeniable relation between every other person to the human rights abuses against Uyghur people: Everyone could possibly be wearing a product that was manufactured through forced labour. This research report was passed on within the journalism industry and the influence it has far exceeds the expectations which my colleagues and I initially had. I haven’t purchased any new clothes or mobile phone this year for I know that once I step into the mall, I would see all the brands involved which I have written about and I would feel guilty (about buying any one of them).” 

She says the State Security has been detaining, interrogating and harassing people in Mainland China who are close to her. They’ve also attempted to paint her in a bad light by “exposing” her sexual affairs, etc. 

Recently, she has been accused for being the mastermind behind the “fake news” of Xinjiang Cotton. She clarifies that she’s never written about “Xinjiang Cotton” specifically but have only been reporting on supply chains involving forced labour. She also emphasised that in the past years, countless journalists and scholars have been writing about these human rights abuses. This was how so many countries were able to arrive at a conclusion regarding the allegations of human rights abuses, thus making policy decisions to stop import or penalise any companies involved. 

She says “China is using “Xinjiang Cotton” to confuse the public (divert attention). The fact is that many companies, whether they are fashion houses, electronics companies or medical equipment manufacturers, or even food product manufacturers, they have all had some kind of relation to the Uyghur forced labour (through supply chains). This problem runs deeper than “Xinjiang cotton”*. The Chinese government is attempting to equate the forced labour issue in Xinjiang with the China-US trade war, completely ignoring the fact that Australian, American, European, Japanese and even some Chinese consumers are concerned about purchasing products that were manufactured through force labour.”   

“At first, I chose to become a journalist because I didn’t have the courage to become an activist. While working in the newsroom, I was less outspoken and seldom expressed my personal views. Now, I see myself being labelled “a devilish woman”, “Han traitor (a traitor to China)”; I feel helpless but amused at the same time. I started from “secretly writing in English to leave some historical record” to becoming the target of State machinations, painting me as the female monster causing disaster to befall on countless Chinese people.” 

“If I previously held onto the faint thought of remaining silent to save my own skin, I have become purged of all these thoughts after going through the cyberbullying. All I can do is to continue writing; I shall write to the day these “re-education camps” are closed down; I shall write until I see the day forced labour is put to an end; I shall write to the end of the earth. Personally, I must carry on doing what is right. The price which I must pay will all be worthy for the troubles I have caused to the people around me, I will repay them myself.” 

*** 

Note: The CCP and their 50 cent army/Little Pink movement online constantly tries to place the focus on Xinjiang cotton, pulling out a photo of enslaved Black people during a press statement, saying “Look! The US did this. We, on the other hand, use highly mechanized harvest operations in Xinjiang.” to claim that there are no human rights abuses taking place there.  

She concludes her tweet by saying she has not written in Chinese for some time and the CCP machinations has forced her to use a “translation tone Chinese” in her writing as response to the cyberbullying from C-netz. So this is basically  a translation of a Twitter thread written like a translation O_O

I would like to add, though, the way I see the CCP works is that they like to use nationalism and patriotism to inflame C-netz and cause them to “take things into their own hands”. They caused this “national boycott” of Western fashion houses within Mainland China using nationalistic sentiments and “a sign of loyalty”; to act in any other way online or in public could bring about verbal attacks. Some Chinese staff of Adidas or other stores in China are being cyberbullied as well. Some Taiwanese consumers have expressed that they feel less guilty about shopping at fashion houses like H&M since they took this stance but I wonder how many people around the world actually cared enough to take on the personal initiative to consciously choose what they are purchasing? Obviously, a Twitter thread can’t go into the complex psychological workings of all that’s going on. 

(Hopefully this adds to the voice for Uyghur people as well. Do not be confused by the whole “Western imperialism against China” talk. It does not erase or reduce the fact that there are human rights abuses happening.)  

[cathkaesque]

Origins

The origins of the present crisis can be traced back to the disintegration of the USSR and independence in 1991. Uniquely among the states of the former USSR and Eastern Bloc, Belarus has so far avoided the shock market therapy which destroyed the bureaucratically planned economies and plunged tens of millions into dire poverty.

Instead, the caste of ex-Soviet bureaucrats — Lukashenko himself is a former manager of a collective farm — transformed themselves into national administrators of state capitalist enterprises and successfully consolidated power at the head of a still largely state-owned economy. The ruling elite’s strategy for maintaining power and social stability has been to conduct a careful balancing act between the expansionist ambitions of Western and Russian imperialism, leveraging the benefits of foreign loans and subsidies while denying its people basic democratic freedoms to suppress internal opposition.

Existing as it does within the confines of an international capitalist market, Belarus’s state-owned and bureaucratically managed economy was unable to attract sufficient foreign investment or develop the productivity of its heavy industry, and became heavily dependent on Russian oil subsidies and export markets. Even today, state industry is responsible for more than 50 percent of GDP. Belarus is very different from the oligarchic capitalism of Ukraine or Russia, but far away from a planned economy: its state industries are organised in holdings operating on the global markets at the centre of which are the three big state banks. With credit growth far outpacing real growth and lacking domestic sources of capital, foreign debt has inevitably risen and was at 80 percent of GDP even before the coronavirus crisis. For more than a decade, Belarus has been in the vicious cycle of debt refinancing, stagnation, currency crisis and price stability problems, increasing its dependence on Russia as a result.

To keep the oil flowing, Lukashenko has indulged successive Russian attempts at greater integration between the two states, but delayed or resisted any decisive moves towards privatisation, which would threaten the dispossession of domestic elites in favour of Russian oligarchs. Likewise, if he followed through on his flirtations with the EU, loans and private investment would no doubt be conditional on “reform”, that is, wholesale opening to market forces.

Despite creeping economic stagnation, for decades Lukashenko was able to redistribute the profits from sales of Russian oil to provide an at least reasonable standard of living for the country’s population, including universal healthcare, free education, subsidised rents, high state pensions, and other state welfare programmes. As a result, his government has been able to maintain a certain degree of legitimacy amongst the rural and urban workers, notwithstanding its iron grip on Belarusian civil society. Periodic expressions of pro-democracy sentiment have failed to win wider support and been easily repressed.

Stagnation

Yet Lukashenko’s stubborn refusal to accept his designated role as Putin’s stooge has led to growing tensions between the two countries, resulting in cuts to Russian oil subsidies and contract disputes frequently interrupting oil supply flows. The increasingly pressing need for economic diversification, alongside a desire to avoid aligning itself with Russia in the Ukraine crisis, have led Lukashenko to make overtures to the European Union, engaging in “dialogue” about economic liberalisation in exchange for increased European aid. But the process has been slow — a fully-fledged partnership and cooperation agreement has been blocked by opposition from Lithuania — and is ultimately limited by the regime’s need to hedge its bets between East and West to maintain its own position.

In recent years, that balancing act has reached its limits. During the deep recession of 2015 to 2017, the highly indebted state was unable to act countercyclically and real income fell by 13 percent as a result of currency devaluation and price increases. Faced with falling growth and increasingly unable, or unwilling, to draw on Moscow’s patronage, Lukashenko has turned to an assault on his own working class to claw back losses and stave off economic disaster. In 2015, the so-called “parasite law” was brought in, forcing anyone not in state-recognised employment to pay a special tax or be sentenced to community service. The decree was withdrawn in 2018, but the unemployed are instead being forced to pay for all state services. A series of amendments to the labour code in 2017 unilaterally shifted 90 percent of workers from permanent to temporary contracts.

Widespread cuts have been implemented across health and education and the retirement age has been raised. All this combined with the steadily falling value of the Belarusian Rouble, has meant a serious decline in the standard of living for Belarusian workers. With the coronavirus crisis, the economic problems of its main trading partner (Russia) and the amount of accumulated debt, Belarus is now on the brink of economic collapse. Given the “crisis management” of Lukashenko during the coronavirus crisis so far, the working class and parts of the ruling class have lost confidence in the ability of the existing regime to prevent the approaching disaster. At the same time, the prolonged shutdown of the global economy is causing both Russia and the EU to re-evaluate their budget priorities.

Protest

Thus, growing discontent with the regime has, for the first time since independence, exploded into a mass popular movement drawing in huge swathes of the working class and backed by industrial action across all sectors and across every part of the country. The scale and breadth of the actions reveals the depths of the country’s political and economic crisis and the authentic character of the uprising; a US-orchestrated “colour revolution” this is not.

In the first few days of protests, the movement’s official demands were limited to calls for new elections monitored by international observers and the release of detained activists but, by Sunday, mass protests were demanding Lukashenko’s immediate resignation. The movement has developed a momentum of its own which is quickly eroding the regime’s legitimacy.

If the protests continue and, crucially, if the strike movement grows to paralyse greater parts of the economy, Lukashenko will face a choice between a bloody crackdown and surrendering power. For now, the regime still controls the police and the military, though there have been reports of some police and army personnel joining demonstrations, and protesters have been filmed appealing to soldiers to join the uprising.

The democracy movement is determined and enjoys mass support; its suppression would be likely to involve prolonged violence, risking defections in the military. Putin has promised Lukashenko military assistance in accordance with the two countries’ military pact, but stopped short of endorsing Lukashenko, who he regards as an altogether unreliable ally. In any case, Russian support would come at a high price; Lukashenko would surely be forced to abandon his policy of constructive ambiguity towards Russia and accept a future as a custodian of a Russian protectorate.

A “managed transition” of some sort may become a preferable alternative for parts of the bureaucracy which will hope to placate the democracy movement but preserve parts of the governing apparatus and reap the profits from any forthcoming privatisations of state-owned enterprises. The democracy movement thus far has little organised political leadership, taking the form of a spontaneous upsurge of popular discontent. Many leaders of the liberal opposition, who support economic liberalisation and full integration into world markets, are in prison or abroad. The movement stands on a critical threshold, what comes next will be determined by what kind of political leadership emerges to channel the discontent.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition candidate in last week’s elections, has declared that she is ready to take up the presidency and announced the creation of a national ‘coordination council’ from her self-imposed exile in Lithuania. She stated:

“I ask you to unite in the coordination council. We desperately need your help and experience. We need your connections, contacts, expert advice and support. This coordination council should be joined by everyone interested in dialogue and peaceful transfer of power – working groups, parties, trade unions and other organizations of the civic society.”

Many are now calling for international recognition of Tikhanovskaya’s claim to the presidency and for the EU to mediate negotiations between civil society leaders in exile and the incumbent government. But it would be a catastrophic mistake for the movement to place its faith in the thoroughly capitalist self-appointed leaders of the opposition or their ‘friends’ in the EU. Nor should it recognise a ‘coordination council’ even with bureaucratic union representatives. It is the mass forces of the working class that has brought the movement this far and they should not allow the representatives of the liberal middle classes to reap the fruits of their actions.

Nor will “free elections” on their own alleviate the suffering caused by the contradictions of Belarus’ economy. In fact, unless the mass movement can organise itself around an alternative political programme and prepare to administer the transition itself, Lukashenko’s departure is highly likely to herald a neoliberal programme of privatisations which will further destabilise the economy and turn Belarus into a semi-colony dependent on the EU and Germany.

The experience of Poland and the Baltic states in the 90s shows that this will lead to even greater attacks on workers, unemployment, austerity and inflation which will rapidly erode the remaining protections of workers’ living conditions. Every worker should know: a new “shock therapy” under conditions of accumulated debt and in the circumstances of the global coronavirus crisis would be a social disaster in Belarus. To avoid this kind of “experiment” by the liberal opposition and its “economic experts”, the working class has to have its own organisation and programme to survive this crisis.

[dippedanddripped]

At the AW20 menswear shows, Raf Simons wrapped his models up in slogan-adorned faux fur muffs, buttoned up stoles, and broad-shouldered coats; Dries Van Noten went for fake foxes draped around shoulders; and Vetements’ first show without Demna featured vintage-inspired faux fur ankle length coats, refreshed in electric blue and parakeet green.

The ranks of brands going fur-free are growing. Gucci, Coach, Versace, DKNY, Burberry, Margiela, and Prada have all pledged to ditch fur in recent years. Even Fendi, a renowned furrier, has begun to debut faux fur looks on the runway alongside the real thing. Compounding brands’ individual decisions, the British Fashion Council encouraged labels showing as part of London Fashion Week to go fur-free in 2018. Meanwhile, just yesterday, Peta announced the end of its naked celebrity-featuring anti-fur campaigns, given use of the material is dwindling among designers.

The big fur shun isn’t just contained to the fashion industry. In 2018, Oldham council banned the sale of fur on its markets and in 2019, Islington became the first London council to do the same. From 2023, the manufacture and sale of fur will be prohibited in California, as it becomes the first US state to do so. Cities such as LA, San Francisco and West Hollywood have done the same and in 2018, the Labour party vowed to ban fur imports to the UK – but sadly, we all know how that story ends.

For many, this about-turn from fur is a positive sign, a win for animals, but for others, concern surrounding the environmental implications of turning to polyester and acrylic alternatives is growing. Made in an automated process, faux fur is created using synthetic fibres which are mostly petroleum-based.

The use of plastic in a world already drowning in it is a major concern, with many anxious about faux fur coats languishing in landfill, refusing to degrade for hundreds or thousands of years (of course, one solution to that could be just: don’t throw your coats in the bin). Another major side effect of our global obsession with plastic is microfibres. 83 per cent of tap water samples taken from around the world were found to be contaminated with plastic in 2017, and in 2018 another study found 10 plastic particles per litre in bottled water too. It’s not just us ingesting plastic, though: fish and marine life do too, with an estimated 1.4 trillion microfibres floating in our oceans right now.

The fur industry in particular has taken the plastic argument and run with it, positioning faux fur as a plastic scourge on the environment and real fur as the only real natural and sustainable option. Mark Oaten, former LibDem MP (the party responsible for the ban in Oldham, incidentally) and now CEO of the International Fur Federation (IFF), voiced his concerns in an interview with WWD. “There is a lot of talk about fake fur these days,” he said, “for me it makes no sense to use a product full of chemicals and plastics when you can have a natural and biodegradable fashion item like real fur.”

“It makes no sense to use a product full of chemicals and plastics when you can have a natural and biodegradable fashion item like real fur” – Mark Oaten, CEO of the International Fur Federation

Backing up Oaten’s public stance, IFF launched a global campaign in 2018 to “highlight the colossal environmental damage caused by plastic based fake fur”, and there are some studies to support them. One 2012 report, commissioned by the International Fur Trade Federation, suggested that faux fur coats consume more non-renewable energy, have greater risk of potential impacts of global warming and greater risk of ecotoxicity impacts. Another, sponsored by Fur Europe, found that real fur biodegrades faster than faux fur. However, much like a study sponsored by Philip Morris that says smoking is good for you, they should be read with the underlying bias in mind.

In their list of fake fur’s ‘deadly credentials’, IFF pointed out that “fake fur is produced in factories from chemicals derived from fossils fuels”. What they fail to mention, though, are the many chemicals used during the processing of real fur, which include formic, hydrochloric and sulphuric acid, ammonia, formaldehyde and lead acetate, all of which are, or can be, toxic.

Unsurprisingly, given the high stakes of the real versus faux debate, for every pro-fur study, there’s an anti-fur one to match, pointing out everything from the unsustainable amount of feed it takes to produce 1kg of mink fur (aka 11 minks), to how the industry adds almost 1,000 tons of phosphorus to the environment each year.

But just as the fur industry bankrolls pro-fur studies, the ones that highlight the negatives are often sponsored by animal welfare organisations, leaving people with the feeling that they don’t know who to trust, unable to navigate the best way forward. Consumer organisations in countries such as Denmark, France, the Netherlands and England, however, have tended to lean against the claims made by the fur industry, their argument being that there simply isn’t enough empirical data to support them.

What’s lost in the who’s-more-eco debate, though, are the animals themselves. It’s their welfare, more than environmental concerns, which is often the reason for people boycotting real fur. So should those who will simply never wear it ask why they’re so worried about the synthetic alternative all of a sudden? Especially when they likely have a wardrobe full of synthetics in the form of leggings, underwear, t-shirts, dresses and most other garments you’d pick up in any high street shop.

“Currently the most bio-based faux fur on the market (KOBA) is made with only 37 per cent bio materials, then the remainder is either recycled polyester or just polyester” – Kim Canter, CEO of cult faux fur label House of Fluff

“Of course we are aware of the environmental impact of faux fur, even though we are always surprised to see the intensity of the debate when it comes to faux fur, as we are a small niche, with less impact than animal-based materials,” says Arnaud Brunois, communications manager for EcoPel, a French company which has created KOBA, the first bio-based faux fur. “The defamation campaign created by the fur lobby surely has created a very toxic conversation, as all fibres have their own issues and faux fur has never claimed some sort of perfection,” he continues. (EcoPel has also released a report on faux versus real, showing faux winning out against real on the environmental impact index).

Kym Canter, CEO of House of Fluff, a cult faux fur brand launched in 2017 that has been seen on the covers of Elle and InStyle and worn by Drew Barrymore, Sarah Harris and Oprah, agrees. “Changing the conversation and moving it away from animal welfare, which they can never win, and rebranding themselves as a natural fur alternative was an incredibly smart move,” says Canter, who previously worked as creative director for a fur brand before having a change of heart.

The likes of EcoPel and House of Fluff don’t deny their use of plastics but innovation is happening to move towards more sustainable alternatives. “This year we launched a faux fur made from 100 per cent recycled post-consumer plastic. So it’s made from old straws and bottles that are melted down, turned into a thread and rewoven,” says Canter. The brand also uses Tencel, a cellulose fibre, for lining, and recycles their factory offcuts into plush ‘Scrappies’.

Like EcoPel, Canter is currently working on a bio-based fur made from all natural materials in order to be even more sustainable. “Currently the most bio-based faux fur on the market (KOBA) is only made with 37 per cent bio materials,” she says, “and then the remainder is from either recycled polyester or just polyester. And so, we’re just trying to get a lot better on that bio-based number and hopefully bring it up to 100 per cent.” Canter hopes to bring her bio-fur to market for AW20 but until then, where do vegan, anti-plastic advocates turn?

Vintage fur is great in theory – it already exists, it won’t be using up any more resources, and it’s cheaper. But in reality, many just aren’t prepared to wear it. “I don’t wear fur as it creeps me out,” Clotilde says, while designer Becky said she tried a fur cape that had belonged to her great aunt but “felt icky just touching it”. Vivienne, meanwhile, has concerns about the stigma attached to wearing fur. “I’d worry I’d get abuse!” she says. Her concerns aren’t unfounded.

If you can’t stomach the vintage fur, faux fur as it stands is no worse than most other polyester or acrylic hanging in your wardrobe, and buying it second hand offers a more sustainable approach. But if you’re still feeling plastic-phobic, you might have to place your bets on those bio-fur innovations and hold out for the next gen of faux

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The spring legislative session ended in acrimony, but its conclusion bore little relation to the events of the past four months.

The NDP government accomplished most of its legislative agenda, the Green Party showed it can play a role in shaping public policy and the BC Liberals made it clear they have a ways to go before exorcising the lingering trauma from their 2017 election loss.

The antics of Speaker Darryl Plecas during the last two days of the session were a reminder he is a divisive, partisan figure who wants to disrupt. He stands accused of workplace bullying and seems intent on investigating the legislature’s security staff, a move that may result in those staff members joining the B.C. Government Employees Union, which would be a first.

But while Plecas and his staff have become a circus sideshow, they haven’t stopped the NDP from checking off a lot of boxes from their list of campaign promises.

The NDP enacted significant changes to labour laws, the Agricultural Land Reserve and how forest tenures are managed. As well, it dealt with unfair ticket sales, B.C. Ferry routes and fares, and called a public inquiry into money laundering.

Continue Reading.

[pubtheatres1]

ONE GIANT LEAP Brockley Jack Theatre 2 – 27 July 2019 “That’s one small step for man…” Neil Armstrong INTERVIEW WITH WRITER & DIRECTOR OF ARROWS AND TRAPS THEATRE, ROSS MCGREGOR LPT: Hello Ross, We’re rather pleased to have another chat with you about your company, the award nominated Arrows & Traps but also wanted to grill you a little bit on your new writing, ONE GIANT LEAP. How long did it take you to write it? Hi there, how lovely to be asked. I have a somewhat unusual process in that I pitch the idea to the Jack, book the slot, design the artwork / poster, get the show on sale, start selling tickets and only then start writing the script. This is partly due to the quick turnaround of shows and my lack of time between, and also that we have to book these things quite far in advance as the Jack is a popular and sought-after space, but also because I have an issue with self-discipline, and so if I didn’t have a concrete deadline, I think I’d still be tinkering with Frankenstein, a show I wrote and produced in 2017. One Giant Leap is the first completely original piece that I’ve written without a source material, and it took me about two weeks to get onto paper. ONE GIANT LEAP is celebrating the fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing but it seems you have got your own spin on it. Could you tell us the story in nutshell? Yes absolutely. It’s a comic take on the greatest conspiracy in history. It centres on Edward Price, a producer of a failing 60’s sci-fi show called Moonsaber – which is basically a poor man’s Star Trek. Edward’s life has fallen into a rut, his wife has left him, he’s lost his house to the IRS, and Moonsaber has just been cancelled in its first season. All looks grim, until a representative to President Nixon comes to his door with a suitcase of money and a proposition. The Apollo 11 Moon Landing is four days away, but due to the moon being about a hundred degrees too hot for photographic film; they can get there, they just can’t film it. And what is a massive propaganda exercise without proof that you actually did it? So they ask Edward to fake the footage by any means possible, if he can do it, he can bring Moonsaber back to life for another season, if he fails – he loses everything. Where does the comedy come from? Mainly from the people that Edward employs in Moonsaber. They’re a ragtag bunch of actors, stage managers and technicians, and due to the show being cancelled – they’re falling apart at the seams – it’s down to Edward to keep it all together, to pull off the greatest lie in history, whilst trying to save his marriage, salvage his career, and keep the lies he’s telling intact. It’s a study of the creative industry, a satirical and loving homage to theatre. We’re not trying to say anything serious about whether the moon landing was or wasn’t real, but more provide a raucous night out at the theatre, and keep you laughing about it on the Overground home. Why is it important to offer a lighter comedy in theatre right now? I think, at times, theatre can take itself too seriously, and become too myopic about tackling the dark and dreadful issues that are affecting society – I’ve lost count of how many shows there are about Brexit playing right now – and whilst that’s great, and admirable - speaking for myself, after the last year I’m sick of the darkness, I’m bored by the constant stream of depressive updates about the rise of the Right, I can’t engage with it, the European elections gave a victory to nationalists, we gave a state visit to a racist, homelessness is at an all-time high, and we’re literally cooking the planet to death. There are sometimes when I just want a great night out and forget how scary the world seems right now – laughter is the best medicine – not as a retreat, but a reminder of the good in us, of the joy, of the light. As the company is repertory, you’ll be working with some actors you know very well. Did you have any of them in mind when you were writing the script? I certainly wrote two of the eight roles with long time company members Will Pinchin and Lucy Loannou in mind. And whilst yes, the roles are tailored to suit both of them - I did write the roles of Howard and Alchamy to stretch and challenge Will and Lucy, because I’d never seen them play characters like that. Will is nothing like Howard, and Lucy isn’t at all like Alchamy, but in way, they’re made for those roles, and for me, they’re perfect choices. I do like working with the same actors repeatedly, it is true, because you build up a short hand of technique and approach, but also you build up a trust. The actors in the company come in on day one, sort of knowing what to bring me, and what kind of vision I’ll probably have, since my style is something of a constant, but also I’m able to, as their director, cast them in roles that perhaps play against type, or test their flexibility and skillsets. I’m not an actor, but if I were, I’d hate to play the same roles every time, to only get the “intense one” or the “dopey one” or the “awkward one” – I’d want to think I could play anything that was thrown at me, and I think our rep system allows for experimentation and exploration. What has been the hardest part of the whole process to date? We’re only in the first week of rehearsal, so nothing too taxing thus far. Hands down, the hardest part of a comedy is when you’ve rehearsed it so much you no longer find it funny, at which point we need an audience. One Giant Leap hasn’t hit that point yet, obviously, but I think most comic work benefits from the response and energy an audience gives. Theatre can be electric when you have that to play off, but in terms of where we are – One Giant Leap’s greatest challenge is the analysing of why something is funny, and making sure it’s that way every time. It’s all about timing. For many years I laboured under the misapprehension that stand up comedy was just a funny person being funny with a microphone, that was until I saw Dylan Moran do the same set twice in the space of three weeks. He has a very casual, off the cuff, almost improvised way of performing, and I assumed that it was just his natural charisma and quick wit, until I saw the set the second time, only to find it was identical to the first. All the pauses, the stresses, the tangents, the quips, all of which was honed, polished and a work of precision. It was funny because he’d worked out the best way to get the laugh, every time, and that’s beyond art, it’s science, it’s music. Traditionally Arrows and Traps have produced a selection of brilliantly adapted classics, including Dracula, Frankenstein, Crime & Punishment and Anna Karenina. Have you got a soft spot for one of them? I loved the breathlessness and breadth of Anna Karenina, the precision and murk of Crime & Punishment, the thrill and gothicism of Dracula, and the humanity and pang of loss in Frankenstein. I think my favourite adaptation, if I had to pick one, is probably Frankenstein – but that’s purely subjective, and there was something about the biography of Mary Shelley, which we incorporated into the show, that really spoke to me – in the sense of a creator and a creation, a parent and child, a sinner and the terrible revenge. You’ve also got THE STRANGE CASE OF JEKYLL & HYDE coming up at Jack Studio in September. Your adaptations of the classics have been Arrows and Traps main focus, so does ONE GIANT LEAP herald a shift away from this? No, in fact because I know the next season of shows, One Giant Leap is perhaps the anomaly. Our work normally has a dark bent, we favour drama with funny lines as opposed to an out-and-out comedy. We’ve only ever done one full comedy before, The Gospel According To Philip back in 2016, so this is something of a return to that. I knew that the company was changing, and wanted to make a swansong to the current phase of work, I had originally planned for it to be TARO but that story ended so sadly, I wanted the last one to be lighter, more celebratory – there’s something inherently amusing about the various tropes you usually get in the theatre world, and so I thought a comedy would be a fitting homage to where we’ve come from, and a clean break to where we want to go next. The company has been going from strength to strength, what are the things of which you are most proud? Mainly, that we’re still going. Most theatre companies on the fringe don’t make it to their third show, we’re on our seventeenth. Part of that is sheer stubbornness, there have been points where any rational person would have thrown in the towel, but there was always something in me that would never bend, never break, never give up. It’s part ambition, part not wanting to fail, part wanting to make my father proud of me, part bloody-mindedness, part theatre-addiction. I think production-wise I’m most proud of The White Rose, to what that achieved, all the five star reviews and the Best Production Offie-nom, but of course I’m also very proud of the other twelve times we’ve been nominated for Off West End Awards, the relationship we’ve built with the Jack, the bond I have with my creative team and my casts, and just the fact that people seem to like the work. It’s still always funny to me when a reviewer calls us “critically-acclaimed” or “renowned rep company” – to me it’s just me, telling the stories I want to tell, with people I want to work with, you don’t always think about how it looks from the outside. I’m just producing the theatre I’d like to go and see. It was rumoured that you would be leaving fringe theatre for other careers, partly because of problems with funding. Was there are truth in that? Absolutely! And in a sense, this is still completely true. I am indeed done with fringe. I think I got to The White Rose in 2018 – where we got the Offie-Nom for Production, we had eight 5-star reviews, four 4 star reviews, we’d completely sold out, and done it the cheapest way possible, and we still didn’t break even. Which was very hard to take, and forced me to face the truth – you cannot hope to attain best practice ITC rates for your casts / creatives / yourself if you only do 15 shows in a 50 seater and you don’t have subsidising support from an arts grant scheme. It just isn’t possible. So I made the decision to stop producing work. Now obviously, with the shows being booked so far in advance, there were still three productions upcoming in the diary that I had to honour. But knowing I was quitting, and that this was the end for me, was too hard to bear - ultimately I had to face the fact that theatre is my life, and I could never leave it – so I had to find a way to make it work financially, not just for myself but for everyone else in the company, particularly the actors who are so often completely screwed over in fringe, and often end up working for nothing. Which is where the idea to change the model came from. Shrink the casts and sets to a more tourable model – 14 people down to 4 – and engage a tour booker to take the productions out of London to larger spaces that could widen the potential revenue. The Jack is our home, and we will always premiere all our shows there, but then we will take them into the provinces. The vision is still the same, adaptations of literary work, and biopics of iconic figures of history, but the remit and scale of the endeavour has changed. I don’t see it as an ending, just a moving from one phase into another. But yes, absolutely, the 8-10 handers, movement-heavy, ensemble, big music, huge shows – this stage in our trajectory is ending with One Giant Leap, and whilst I see why it has to end, a part of me is sad to see it go, because there was something so wonderful about doing a massive 15-hander like Three Sisters. Are you one of those people who is meticulously planning the future? Yes indeed, because really we have to plan ahead in order to book the shows with the venues. We’re doing One Giant Leap next month, and then move to Jeykll & Hyde in September, both at the Jack – and then Hyde goes on tour for about six months, with an opening of our next biopic Chaplin coming about halfway through the run in February. Because I’m overseeing contracts, and touring plans, and writing the scripts as well as casting each show and most likely directing each one, I need to know where we’ll be and when we’re doing it – I’m trying to build a book of shows, a repertoire that is constantly touring, moving forward, and ever-evolving – reaching more audiences, and engaging with new communities. In the meantime, we can’t wait to see ONE GIANT LEAP. Could you give us a little flavour of what’s to come? In terms of shows after One Giant Leap, we have Jekyll & Hyde - a dark, political thriller set in a post-Trump America – a gritty examination of the corruption of power, then Chaplin – which tells the story of the 20th Century’s most famous clown, documenting his path to becoming the iconic Little Tramp – and his meteoric rise from Victorian poverty to Hollywood fame. After that, we’re bringing back one of our most successful productions of 2017, Frankenstein, revisited and rewritten for a more tourable model, and then a biopic of Marilyn Monroe, called Making Marilyn, which covers the Norma Jean origin portion of the star’s life. After that – who knows? I’ve always wanted to tackle Madame Bovary – and I’d like to bring back TARO as it was one that I was particularly proud of in terms of its style and poetry. Finally, your shows at Brockley Jack are becoming legendary, it’s a great partnership. What are the things you’ve learnt about theatre whilst working at Brockley Jack? So much. The Jack has been a great place to develop my approach to stagecraft, and how to tell stories as clearly and engagingly as possible. Since we joined the Jack, we’ve built a vision of the style we want to have, and how we approach each difficulty, or tricky moment to stage, how our work with movement and text interconnect, and what we look for in our ensemble for each show. And, I guess, ultimately, I’ve being able to return to my training as a writer, and I’ve been so lucky to have so many opportunities to experiment with my writing, and get to think about how to tell a story and how to build each character. Playwriting is not something I’ve tried before, and I’ve loved delving into each of the worlds that the Jack has opened the door to. But I think most of all, I’ve been honoured by the patronage and support of Kate and Karl – and they’ve shown me the power of hard work, diligence, and care – if I ended up with anything like the talent and acumen they have, I’d be very happy. @June 2019 London Pub Theatres Magazine Ltd All Rights Reserved THIS SHOW HAS ENDED ONE GIANT LEAP Brockley Jack Theatre 2 – 27 July 2019 directed by Ross McGregor produced by Arrows & Traps Theatre Productions Box Office > Below: Rehearsals at Brockley Jack Studio "We’re not trying to say anything serious about whether the moon landing was or wasn’t real, but more provide a raucous night out at the theatre, and keep you laughing about it on the Overground home." "... speaking for myself, after the last year I’m sick of the darkness, I’m bored by the constant stream of depressive updates about the rise of the Right, I can’t engage with it, the European elections gave a victory to nationalists, we gave a state visit to a racist, homelessness is at an all-time high, and we’re literally cooking the planet to death." "Most theatre companies on the fringe don’t make it to their third show, we’re on our seventeenth. Part of that is sheer stubbornness, there have been points where any rational person would have thrown in the towel, but there was always something in me that would never bend, never break, never give up. It’s part ambition, part not wanting to fail, part wanting to make my father proud of me, part bloody-mindedness, part theatre-addiction." "... knowing I was quitting, and that this was the end for me, was too hard to bear - ultimately I had to face the fact that theatre is my life, and I could never leave it – so I had to find a way to make it work financially, not just for myself but for everyone else in the company, particularly the actors who are so often completely screwed over in fringe, and often end up working for nothing. Which is where the idea to change the model came from." " ... most of all, I’ve been honoured by the patronage and support of Kate and Karl (Jack Studio Theatre) – and they’ve shown me the power of hard work, diligence, and care – if I ended up with anything like the talent and acumen they have, I’d be very happy." In celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, Arrows & Traps Theatre bring their critically-acclaimed approach to a brand-new comedy set in the back streets of a Hollywood lot. One Giant Leap is about the power of having an impossible dream, realising it’s impossible, and then trying your hardest to fake it and hope no one notices.

[anastpaul]

Second Saint of the Day – 14 March – Blessed Giacomo Cusmano (1834-1888) – Priest, Founder, Physician, Surgeon, Apostle of the Poor.   Bl Giacomo was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the “Congregation of Missionary Servants of the Poor” which is also known as the Morsel of the Poor.   Cusmano also established the Sisters Servants of the Poor.   He was beatified by St Pope John Paul II on 30 October 1983.   His older sister was Vincenzina Cusmano (1826-1894), who joined his female religious order was declared Venerable in May 2017, putting her on the path to beatification.

This Italian Blessed was born on 15 March 1834, in Palermo on the island of Sicily.   He received his first schooling in his parents’ house from a priest-tutor.   This perhaps laid the foundation for his piety, which was then deepened at the Collegio Massimo of the Jesuits in Palermo.   Hence, the young medical student was armed against the threats to religion and morals during his studies at the University in Palermo.

After Giacomo Cusmano had brilliantly completed a doctorate in medicine and surgery, he practised the medical profession from 1855 to 1859 with intelligence, skill and zeal, caring particularly for those poor sick people who could not afford a doctor.   Soon he noted that many of his patients from the poorer sections of the city of Palermo were in much greater need of a priestly physician of souls.   He began to study theology as well, and on 22 December 1860, he was ordained a priest.

Now both doctor and priest, he felt compelled to start an institution for his poor patients that he called Boccone del Povero (Food of the Poor).   He began by gathering medicines, foodstuffs and other material relief for the poor and by distributing these donations to them in their lodgings.   Out of this developed a society, which was authorised in 1867 by Archbishop Naselli of Palermo and was finally approved and blessed by Pope Pius IX.

The physician-priest Father Cusmano wanted to provide his institution with a band of auxilliaries, women and men who would help serve the poor.  After twelve years of labour pains, such an association of lay brothers and sisters came into being.   On 13 May 1880, the Blessed was able to present the habit to the first Sisters, on 14 October 1884, after a long preparation, he conferred the habit upon the first lay Brothers of the Servants of the Poor.   On 21 November 1887, Blessed Giacomo erected also the Congregation of Missionary Fathers, who were commissioned to proclaim the Good News to the poor and furthermore to direct and minister to the Servants of the Poor.   Then Dr Cusmano founded additional hostels, hospitals and orphanages for the poor people in Palermo and in other Sicilian localities.   His work soon extended to other regions of Italy, as well as to Africa and to both North and South America.

The ideal that personally motivated this Blessed and that he wanted the members of his societies to put into action was “unlimited charity”.   One of his first collaborators, later the Archbishop of Palermo, Cardinal Giuseppe Guarino, wrote about Giacomo Cusmano: “God has placed deep within the bosom of this physician and priest the heart of Saint Vincent de Paul.   The fervour of his love for the poor was unsurpassed, the integrity of his blameless conduct was truly angelic, the kindness beaming from his face recalled Saint Francis de Sales.   I have followed him very attentively through all the stages of his virtuous life and I must acknowledge, I have never met a priest who was so zealous for the salvation of souls, so amiable and so holy as he.”

On 9 February 1888, Giacomo Cusmano said at the inaugural meeting of the committee of the Ladies of Charity – presumably with a view to his approaching death – “My mission is now finished.”   In fact, he died a few weeks later, on 14 March 1888, at 04:30am in Palermo, Italy of natural causes following a severe bout of pleurisy, in his fifty-fourth year just a day before his birthday and in the odour of sanctity, lamented and mourned by countless people.  The orations that were given at his funeral were very moving, they spoke quite clearly of a saint who had gone home, of an Italian Vincent de Paul.

(via Saint of the Day - 14 March - Blessed Giacomo Cusmano (1834-1888))

[market-research-future]

Medical Holography Market Key Players, Opportunities and Global Industry Analysis Till 2023

A holography is a method of producing a three-dimensional image of an object using an interference pattern. The existing 3D technologies such as 3D-CT, 3D rotational angiography, 3D-ultrasound revolutionized medicine because they allowed doctors to see an individual patient's anatomy without cutting into the body. The exceptional penetration rate of holography products is attributable to the natural benefits of this technology over conservative alternatives, which influence companies to work further toward developing these products for subsequent commercialization.

The global Medical Holography Market is majorly driven by factors such as rapid adoption of holography technology by medical fraternity for applications such as medical education, dentistry, orthopedics, increasing applications of holography in diagnostic imaging to visualize complex 3D structures in human body and biomedical research recent technological advancements in holography products are expected to significantly contribute to the growth of the market throughout the forecast period.

Request Free Sample Copy @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1519

Technological advances in hologram recording techniques in the recent years and the availability of tools for interpretation of holographic interferograms should boost its usage in the field of urology, pathology, ophthalmology, and orthopedics. Moreover, endoscopic holography should emerge as a powerful tool for non-contact high resolution and non-invasive measurements inside the human organs.

The market for Medical holography will grow very rapidly at a rate of 32% CAGR during the forecasted period 2017-2023. The market is expected to reach USD 3.5 billion during the forecasted period.

Industry updates:

Nov, 2016 Holoxica Limited introduced a holographic 3D digital human anatomy atlas prototype for neuroscience. This product impacted medical science giving neurosurgeons and clinicians insights into identifying, diagnosing and treating a wide range of neurological conditions.

Dec, 2015 Japan scientists developed touchable holograms, which are to be adopted in wide range of applications in the future, to enable improved demonstration of biological processes and procedures.

Nov, 2015 Zebra Imaging acquired Rattan, a software-consulting firm. This acquisition was carried out to accelerate the integration of advanced 3D light-field technology in their array of holographic display products.

Dec, 2014 Bristol University developed a touchable holographic display through the generation of air disturbances using ultrasound to create 3D haptic shapes.

Oct, 2014 Zebra Imaging entered into a partnership with Zygote Media Group to develop advanced 3D biomedical models to visualize human anatomy.

Oct, 2013 RealView Imaging Ltd. and Royal Philips completed an assessment of live 3D holographic imaging, which facilitates 3D interaction and facilitates minimally-invasive structural heart disease procedures.

Sept, 2012 Zebra Imaging, Inc.’s digital print technologies have proven useful in medical, military, retail, and other commercial disciplines. This acquisition will add new products to HoloTech AG’s product portfolio, which will also help the company to expand its presence in holographic digital print operations.

Global Medical holography Market – Regional:

Geographically, the regional market is segmented into America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa.

America accounts the larger market for the hologram machines. As the early adoption of new technologies and more R&D is being carried out in this region. North America is the largest market for the hologram machines which is led by the United States. The adoption of new technology is more in this region as the research and development is also more and developing day by day.

Europe is the second largest market as it also has the advanced technologies and its own R&D. The region is also having its own set of regulations for the medical regulations. The expenditures are also more by the government bodies for the healthcare and adoption for the new and sophisticated technologies.

The Asia-Pacific region is witnessing fast growth in this region because of the rising factors such as healthcare spending, improving healthcare infrastructure in developing economies such as China, India, and South Korea, and growing awareness regarding the usage of holography products in medical applications.

The Middle East and Africa region is growing slowly due to factors like large number of unskilled labours, illiteracy is more, and economic development is slow.

Real View Imaging (Israel), Echo Pixel (CA), Integraf (USA), Royal Philips (Netherland), Zebra imaging, Eon Reality (US), Nano live SA (Switzerland), Holoxcia (Engalnd), Lyncee Tec (Switzerland), Mach 7 Technologies, General Electric Company, DPL Industri A/S Denmark, Olomagic, Arnold Herzig GmbH and others are some of the prominent players at the forefront of competition in the global medical holography treatment market and are profiled in MRFR Analysis.  

Browse Full Research Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/medical-holography-market-1519

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At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.

In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.

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[newstfionline]

Headlines

Tensions With China Help U.S. See Importance of North American Trade: Mexican Official (Reuters) Tense relations between the United States and China are helping the United States understand the importance of a North American trade bloc, Mexico’s deputy foreign minister said on Friday, after negotiating a deal that ended steel tariffs in the region.

10-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl dies in Mexican custody (Washington Post) The death came on the same day a 2½-year-old Guatemalan boy died in El Paso several weeks after being apprehended by U.S. immigration authorities.

Angry Venezuelans Wait Hours for Fuel as Shortages Worsen (Reuters) Angry drivers queued for hours in towns across Venezuela on Friday as fuel shortages worsened in the South American nation following a plunge in gasoline imports and a stoppage at the nation’s second-largest oil refinery.

Brexit talks collapse, setting up Theresa May’s likely departure (Washington Post) Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said there is no point in talks with a government as weak and unstable as May’s.

At His First News Conference in India, PM Modi Declines Questions (Reuters) Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in power for five years, attended his first news conference ever in India on Friday but took no questions, prompting taunts from journalists and from opposition parties seeking to oust him in an election that ends on Sunday.

U.S. State Department Approves Possible $314 Million Sale of Missiles to South Korea (Reuters) The U.S. State Department has cleared $314 million in possible sales of air defense missiles to South Korea, the Pentagon said on Friday, as tensions re-emerge on the Korean peninsula.

Australian Elections on Saturday (AP) More than 16 million Australians are eligible to vote at elections on Saturday that are likely to deliver Australia’s eighth prime minister in 12 years.

U.S. Issues Warning on Airspace Near Gulf as Iran Tensions Simmer (Reuters) The Federal Aviation Administration has issued an advisory to U.S. commercial airliners flying over the waters of the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to exercise caution as tensions between Washington and Tehran continue to simmer.

UN Aid Chief Fears Northwest Syria ‘Humanitarian Nightmare’ (AP) The U.N. humanitarian chief says his worst fears that a full-scale military onslaught in northwestern Syria would “unleash a humanitarian nightmare unlike any we have seen” in Syria are now coming true.

Syrian TV Says Damascus Targeted ‘From Direction of’ Israel (Reuters) Loud blasts echoed across Damascus late on Friday, residents said, as Syrian state media reported “enemy targets” coming from the direction of Israel, which has previously acknowledged conducting repeated strikes inside Syria.

Israel Claims Its Troops Didn’t Kill Paraplegic Palestinian (AP) The Israeli army on Friday closed a criminal investigation into the death of a paraplegic Palestinian man shot while demonstrating along Gaza’s border with Israel in 2017, saying the probe found “no evidence” that its soldiers fired the fatal bullet.

Algerians hold anti-government protest, jump on police vans (AP) Protesters have flooded the streets of Algeria for the 13th straight Friday, climbing atop police vans that were blocking the main demonstration site in the capital in a bold show of defiance.

Ethiopia Starts Rationing Electricity for Homes and Industries (Reuters) Ethiopia has started to ration electricity for domestic and industrial customers after a drop in water levels in hydroelectric dams led to a production deficit, the minister for water and electricity, Seleshi Bekele, said on Friday.

Israeli Disinformation Campaign Targeted Nigerian Election (AP) A U.S. think tank that analyzes misinformation online said Friday that an Israel-based influence campaign busted by Facebook had stumped for the winning candidate in the February 2019 Nigerian presidential elections.

[teamigen-blog]

Role of Mobile Applications in your Business Development

Preceding few years technology has seen a foremost advancement, especially in terms of the use of electronic devices. Earlier, mobile phones were simply used to communicate but now they play the role of a mini computer that we can use anywhere at any time. According to a report released in 2017, American customers are spending 5 hours a day on their mobile devices. That’s an increase of 20% from 2015, which might be applicable globally with slight swing. With so many consumers using their devices, it is no surprise that App Stores receive a pretty positive upturn in the numbers of users. Concisely, your consumers are more prospective than ever to access business on their mobile device.

Mobile applications are increasingly playing a key role in business with a grander customer base as well as labour force pivoting on the accessibility on-demand to information & upshots

Businesses from all corners of the world, offering a wide range of products, have begun drifting from the old marketing strategies such as handing out leaflets, printing advertisements, and hanging billboards, to the mobile realm. And you should too.

Consider the facts that:

·         Individuals are spending more time online than with any other media

·         Individuals pass much of that digital time on smart mobile devices

·         Time spent per day on mobile devices has increased 40 - 50% in three                 years

·         80% of the time spent on mobile devices is disbursed on apps

·         Mobile Apps offer a better user experience which even an’ Adaptive                    Websites' are unable to provide.

Therefore, now the apps are developed into the prevailing form of digital interaction. The customers, whether they use mobile phones, tablets or other smart mobile devices - they have all the information they need and thus mobile apps have become an integral part of  today's business world.

Despite of the nature of your business, a mobile app can help you acquire and maintain customers. If you own an online app that users can download to their devices, your brand will mark a certain good impression which will enable them to get in to your business for more interactions/purchase, thereby yielding dual benefits for both the client and the entrepreneur.

Here are some of the biggest benefits of mobile apps for businesses.

·         Strengthen your brand

·         Enhance your visibility

·         Increase accessibility

·         Get Customer insights

·         Improve Engagement

·         Provide better user experience

·         To provide assertive notifications, to make your Advertisements, sales                  and promotions visible and relevant,

·         Boost online trades/sales by putting your product at their fingertips for                  purchase.

·         Get ahead of the Curve by surpassing Competitors

·         Connect better with the Customers

·         Create a database of projections/prospective clients.

·         Show case your products

·         Create an exclusive Marketing Channel

·         Improve customer engagement

·         To gain new customers

·         Have easy access to your inventory

·         Have one-touch entree to your contact  and location information from any            where.

     ·   Make fast, impeccable appointment scheduling

It is to be noted that the ‘Push’ notification are read by 95% of the receivers, while it is only 5% for the ‘promotional email’ messages.

The most important reason for building your own mobile app is ‘customer loyalty’. Brand loyalty is always a plus for your company. If you don’t have a mobile app you might appear outdated or removed from latest modern trends. This can have a negative impact on the performance of your business. . An app isn’t just a sales medium. It’s a communications channel and if you use it right, apps can help you swot from, adapt to, and engross with your customers, so that you can address their needs while concurrently attaining your business goals.

The decisions you make at present is going define your tomorrow in the Industry. So each steps should be taken with a vision and planning because it’s on you to decide whether you want to be a Lion or a Sheep in your Business.

https://www.igensoftware.com/

[mattkennard]

Britain’s Warfare State

Published: OpenDemocracy (24 September 2018) w/ Mark Curtis

In September 2017, London hosted the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair, the biggest in the world. Delegations of military officials and politicians from across the globe descended on the ExCel Centre in London’s Docklands to play pick ‘n mix with the world’s most deadly technology.

We were granted a press pass to the DSEI the day before it opened, despite applying several months earlier and repeatedly checking up. The pass came through only after we threatened to publicise the case. The opaque arms industry and the governments that support it do not like journalists or civil society dampening the buying mood.

Docklands, London

Once inside we saw delegations from nearly every oppressive state in the world walking the air-conditioned halls. At the flagship BAE exhibition, we took a few photos of the Egyptian delegation talking to a stocky BAE official. All the Egyptian military men had obscured their identity badges, but they could not stop us taking photos.

In the middle of this, what looked like a British military official, moustachioed and in full officer garb, told us to stop, that we weren’t allowed to take photos. We protested that we had never heard that. He said it didn’t matter. We asked him whom he worked for. “The Defence and Security Organisation,” he replied. We saw that there were other officials with the DSO badge on their breast. Who were they? Why were they working for BAE Systems?

The Defence Sales Organisation (DSO) – the predecessor to the current Defence and Security Organisation – was set up in 1966 under Harold Wilson’s Labour government and was part of a significant reform of the Ministry of Defence. There was no great fanfare about its advent but the internal reasoning was that Britain had effectively lost its Empire and was looking for ways to retain “clout” on the international stage. Becoming a major arms dealer was one of the ways to do that.

As the Cold War raged, the UK was also losing business to its rivals. The UK share of the world aircraft market fell more than half in the five years to 1964 to just 14%. In this context, a report commissioned by Defence Secretary Dennis Healey recommended the creation of “a small but very high powered central arms sales organisation in the MoD”.

It also recommended that the DSO be headed by an arms industry executive, and this has been the case ever since. Essentially the DSO joins arms industry executives and government trade officials in a concerted effort to sell British weapons of war around the world.

Despite its controversial position in the UK’s export ecosystem, in 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was scrapping the DSO as part of the MOD. The decision was apparently made without the knowledge of BAE - a rare thing in the industry. Gerald Howarth, a shadow defence minister, said at the time: "This is outrageous. DESO [as it was then called] has been responsible for £5bn of British defence exports." But, as Robin Cook said in his memoirs, "I came to learn that the chairman of BAE appeared to have the key to the garden door to No 10.” He added, "Certainly I never knew No 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to BAE."

True to this maxim, the body was salvaged and repurposed as part of the Department for International Trade.

Impartial advice

Nowadays DSO is very visible at arms shows, helping visiting buyers and delegations understand the latest technology offered by BAE Systems and its smaller competitors. It says it offers exporters free support by “company visits ... to [headquarters] in Salisbury to discuss how [we] ... can support you in export opportunities and campaigns,” alongside “impartial military advice ... on products and capabilities to enhance and exploit opportunities in overseas defence and security markets”.

The DSO has around 105 staff in London and another 27 members in its export support team. It also has 20 diplomatic posts overseas with the title ‘First Secretary, Defence and Security’.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, we gleaned information on where DSO has people stationed throughout the world. It said it had 57 officials, including three people in Japan, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Turkey, and the largest number, four, in the US. The UK taxpayer pays for three fulltime staff in Mexico City to sell British weapons to a country ravaged by violence. The UK has exported small weapons ammunition, weapon sights and components for rifles, among other things, to the Mexican military.

Half of the private sector individuals seconded to the DIT have “strong links” to the arms industry. But the government’s help to the arms industry doesn’t end there. When buyers cannot afford British weapons, the government subsidises loans to them through export credit guarantees. UK Export Finance, which is supposed to back all British exports, says 50% of the support it provides (in the form of loans or guarantees) is given to military exports.

The British state is set up to deal arms, and its mission has been successful.

Thatcher and the arms industry

Britain is a country of 65 million people, and the 21st most populous nation in the world, with the 9th largest economy in the world based on GDP (PPP). But this small island, with very little in the way of an industrial base, has become the second largest exporter of arms in the world. Britain is the go-to country for despots around the world who want to ‘tool up’.

Aside from the establishment of the DSO, the key to this is a little-known element of the Thatcher Revolution in the 1980s. The story of Thatcher’s confrontation with the unions and the industries they represented is well known. Thatcher's government emerged victorious and replaced a manufacturing base with the “Big Bang” in the City of London, which drew capital looking for a liberal regulatory environment from around the world. London and the country as a whole is still living with the consequences of this revolution.

But Thatcher wasn’t a total industrial arsonist. There was one industry that she promoted to unprecedented levels: the arms industry. During her tenure, the British economy was given a massive boost from the sale of military hardware, and Thatcher spent a large portion of her overseas trips trying to sell British arms to foreign governments.

In 1985, for instance, Thatcher negotiated what is still the largest ever British arms deal. The Al-Yamamah agreement would see Britain sell fighter jets, missiles and ships to Saudi Arabia worth £42bn. The deal was, though, riven with accusations of corruption and bribery, the extent of which may be never fully known: two National Audit Office reports on the Al-Yamamah have been suppressed because of  “national interest” concerns. Mark Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher’s son, also stands accused of making millions of pounds in “commissions” from the sales.

The deal led to Britain pushing ahead of France and Russia as an exporter of arms, behind only the US. Over the past 10 years, the UK has sold over £122 billion worth of arms around the world, 20 per cent of the global total. Thatcher would regard this as an industrial success story.

Since the Thatcher era, however, warfare has changed markedly. Technology has changed how wars are fought, while many adversaries have splintered and become uncoupled from states. But Britain has maintained its pre-eminence in the industry, nimbly moving on to dominate the cyber sector and private military sector in turn, thanks both to the relationships and capacities offered by the conventional arms industry and to the light-touch regulatory environment fostered during the Thatcher era. No subsequent government since she stepped down as Prime Minister in 1990 has wanted to restrict Britain’s industries of war and repression from having maximum power on the world stage.

Cyber warfare and mercenaries

But the arms industry and the government’s willingness to champion it has also enabled the UK to become a global hub for companies working on the cutting edge of the new cyber warfare. According to Privacy International, the UK has 104 surveillance companies producing technology for export – to foreign governments and corporations – headquartered in the country. That number is more than double the number of companies of the next European country, France, which has 45 companies headquartered in country.

Privacy International, the NGO working on privacy rights, has written: “The UK government … promotes exports abroad through the UK Trade and Investment Defence and Security Organisation, for example, proactively assisting surveillance company Hidden Technologies to access markets abroad by providing advice and introducing the company to potential customers.”

The UK has significantly more surveillance technology companies registered in its borders than anywhere in the world outside the US. This technology is being exported, with government approval, to some of the most repressive regimes in the world.

The UK’s role in the US War on Terror since 2001 has given the war industries another fillip. Many of the private military and security companies (PMSCs) in the UK were set up by former soldiers in the British military who left service after fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and wanted to make significantly more money in mercenary work. As Dave Allison, chief executive and founder of Octaga, a Hereford-based PMSC, says: “I left the forces after serving time with the parachute regiment and the Special Forces. I saw a distinct gap in providing security to corporate and private clientele, the various big companies out there that were doing it, it was all basically being driven on price, and we wanted to offer them something a little bit different, something bespoke. We cater for various clientele, from television and film industry, to corporate, government, and private high net worth (HNT) individuals, so it’s really broad spectrum of services we do, we do the physical side, the consultation side, and we do the technical side.” He says business has been roaring since they set up in 2001.

But like the conventional arms industry, these companies are shrouded in secrecy, something the government has no interest in ending. A large reason for the attractiveness of the UK as a destination is that these companies – and those producing conventional arms and surveillance technology – are left alone by government and the media. Sam Raphael, a senior lecturer in International Relations at Westminster University and author of a report on PMSCs in the UK, says that “this is a world where very little is known about what’s going on, no-one is publishing data on this. The government is not publishing lists of PMSCs which are operating, PMSCs themselves if you look on their websites… it (is) just corporate rubbish.”

This combination of learned skills in warfare, liberal regulation, the lucrativeness of mercenary work, and Britain’s global-facing heritage has meant that, today, the UK is the world’s leading centre for PMCS. According to the SiéChéou-Kang Center at the University of Denver, the UK has by far the largest number of PMSCs headquartered in country (199 companies).

So this is twenty-first century Britain. Surveillance system producers, mercenary groups, arms industries are flourishing in the dark. As well as being the financial capital of the world, the UK is right at the centre of the world’s war industry. The latter crown is more embarrassing, so we don’t hear about it, but it has been steadily fostered by successive governments for seventy years.

Livelihoods

Ground zero for the British arms industry – and all the issues it raises in the country -– is Barrow-in-Furness.

While there, we met Norman Hill who has been agitating against nuclear weapons for nearly half a century but it hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm one bit. As we walk along the empty road that runs alongside BAE Systems’ imposing shipyard at the edge of Barrow, the veteran anti-nuclear activist speaks at a hundred miles an hour, wanting to get all the arguments against the industry that sustains his town out as fast as possible.

Hill was born in the town in 1941 and has lived most of his life in the town. “I came from a solid working class family. My dad was an engineer in the shipyard,” he tells us. The Barrow shipyard occupies a central place in the production of what is called Britain’s ‘nuclear deterrent’, producing the submarines which carry the missiles and nuclear warheads.

The previous class of nuclear submarines was produced here, as will be the new submarines that will carry Trident. Hill first became involved in the anti-nuclear movement in Barrow in the mid 1970s. There was talk of cruise missiles being deployed in the UK in response to a Soviet build-up the US claimed was a threat to Europe. He thought the idea was madness. Hill’s father worked in the shipyard, but was supportive of his son’s activism. “At that time there were a lot of people in the shipyard who agreed with that position,” he says. Much has changed since then.

“The nest of the dragon is here, pure evil,” he says, pointing towards the shipyard. “The fact that people are dependent on living for manufacturing this obscenity. The submarines themselves are not an obscenity; it’s what they are going to carry. That’s the obscenity.”

The current Trident renewal proposal aims to replace four Vanguard class nuclear submarines with four new submarines of the so-called Dreadnought class. They will have a 30-year life cycle. Each one costs over £8bn. Government policy is to have an ‘active stockpile’ of 160 nuclear weapons, 40 nuclear warheads on each submarine, with up to eight missiles, each of which is longer than Nelson’s Column. They are hydrogen bombs - weapons that have never been dropped outside of tests and have 100 kilotonnes of explosive power, about seven times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. “We could have 160 of those,” said Stuart Parkinson, executive director of Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), an organisation of scientists and engineers concerned about the misuse of science and technology in the UK. “You could literally destroy civilisation with that, basically.”

Crossing the bridge over the Devonshire Dock where the shipyard sits, we see one of the nuclear submarines poking out from under the water. It is hard to fathom that little Barrow, population 69,087, is the central node in the production of a nuclear arsenal capable of wiping out civilisation. “No one really thinks about it like this,” Hill tells us as we take in the scene.

Barrow, the biggest town in Cumbria, sits on the outer edge of the Furness peninsula which juts into to the Irish Sea. Half an hour drive north takes you into the tourist hotspot of the Lake District, but Barrow is a world away from there. The shipyard has dominated the town since its inception in the 1870s. 70 miles up the coast is Sellafield, where nuclear waste disposal is a divisive political issue.

The nuclear warheads are produced and maintained at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, a town of just over a thousand people near Reading. The site was the end point for anti-nuclear weapons demonstrators who did an annual walk from London in the 1950s and 1960s. The government owns the site, but private sector contractors operate it. The AWE is run by a consortium of three companies (two of them American) – Lockheed Martin, Serco and Jacobs Engineering. The missiles are made in the US and then rented to the UK. Britain does not own the missiles on which its nuclear warheads sit. Nonetheless, it is considered an ‘independent nuclear deterrent’, though it is arguable that only one of the words in the phrase – nuclear – is true.

Barrow shipyard

The Barrow shipyard became part of BAE when Marconi Electronic Systems and British Aerospace merged in 1999. The company dominates the town physically: the shipyard is the first thing you see as you come into the town, eclipsing the rows of one up, one down terraces that line the roads. The company’s logo is all over the town. On one of the main streets in the centre we come across a slab of pavement with BAE’s logo spray-painted on Banksy-style. Up the pedestrianised Dalton Street, which runs to the shipyard from the centre of town, sits a brass monument (paid for by BAE Systems) of workers in heroic poses. ‘LABOUR. WIDE AS THE EARTH’ says one engraving. ‘COURAGE. THE READINESS IS ALL’ reads another.

BAE has essential leverage over every aspect of Barrow because of the jobs the shipyard provides. If anyone proposes something the company doesn’t like, it can say it will shut down the shipyard. But they do not like visitors. After nearly a year of back and forth, BAE Systems refused us a tour of the shipyard or an interview. Meanwhile Unite and GMB unions, both representing workers in the shipyard, said they could not provide any workers or shop stewards to be interviewed. The secrecy of the arms industry is one its most striking features: the companies and these workers are employed on government contracts, paid for by the public. Unite and GMB were big supporters of Corbyn’s leadership bid while being in favour of Trident renewal to save jobs.

In the Furness Railway, a buzzing Wetherspoons pub a stone’s throw from the Labour party’s headquarters in the town, locals eat and drink from early in the morning to late in the night. It’s a regular hangout for young lads who work at the shipyard. We sit down with two who are getting in their evening beers. Jack Burns is a 31 year old steelworker at the shipyard, a place it was always his dream to work in. “I always wanted to work in there but I’ve only been working there for the last year. I’ve had a career in office work and computer work but I like to work with my hands plus my grandparents always worked in the yard. In fact, my great granddad died on one of the boats when he worked in there, before - was born.” Everyone in Barrow has a multi-generational connection of some sort to the shipyard.

Jeremy Corbyn

Has he been worried about Corbyn’s position on Trident renewal? “I don’t care too much about it to be honest with you. It’s just another contract. We just go in. We just do our job. You know? I mean, not many people ask about it and it doesn’t really come up.”

Barrow, a working class town built on manufacturing, is a natural Labour heartland. “But the Labour manifesto actually supported the renewal with Trident. It’s just Corbyn himself that didn’t support it. So, I don’t know. There is worry. I’m certainly worried because I’m only a year deep in my work. I’d like to think that I’ve got a career for life.”

His friend, Josh Crawford, 18, and also a steelworker at the shipyard, chimes in, “Now they’ve passed the Dreadnought and I don’t think they’d get rid of it. But I think it could halt future buildings.”

Corbyn has promised to replace any jobs lost, in the event of not renewing Trident, with high skilled employment in other industries. Doesn’t that assuage their fears? “Actually, no,” says Jack. “If we get rid of the Trident renewal, then they’re not gonna give us any jobs. I think Barrow is only as well known as it is because of the shipyard. I think if you got rid of the shipyard, in Barrow a lot of people would move out. Barrow would become a deserted town. The only reason Barrow is a thriving town is because of the shipyard.”

The fear that promises of alternative employment might not be met is understandable. The Thatcher government made similar promises as it destroyed the mining industry, but never replaced the jobs, leaving subsequent generations deprived and destitute. But to many in the anti-nuclear community, Corbyn is valued because he believes in both nuclear disarmament and in protecting workers.

Jack continues: “I believe him when he says that he doesn’t support Trident, which is actually the missile system. It’s not the submarine. I remember hearing him say that. Just because he doesn’t support Trident doesn’t mean that the submarines can’t still be built. They still have other functions so there is that. I don’t fully understand if he was saying that just to keep some people happy. He doesn’t sort of strike us as the sort of person to keep people happy.”

We ask them if they would consider themselves Corbyn supporters. “I don’t really like the guy personally, but then I don’t necessarily like Theresa May either,” says Jack. “I’m leaning towards Theresa May, but I think that’s because of the fact that I want to keep my job.” Josh adds: “If I had to vote, I’d definitely vote for Theresa May. She wants to renew Trident.”

“So you’d vote on a single issue on this one?” we ask.

“When our job’s put in jeopardy, yes, because this is probably the best paying job I’ll ever have,” says Jack. “And I’ve got a five year old son to support, so if I ended up losing my job simply because Jeremy Corbyn didn’t like it, then that’s probably enough for me to not like him.”

This is the sentiment Hill is up against, and it’s pervasive and understandable.

The behemoth

British governments have long viewed the arms industry as a key mechanism to boost the British economy. Brexit looks set to be the next stage – after the creation of DSO under Labour and the Thatcherite Revolution – in the arms industry's occupation of the British state.

The government claims it has a rigorous export licensing system for its arms exports. Britain has had a defined export licensing process to approve arms sales since 1997, when recommendations in the Scott Report into arms sales to Saddam Hussein were enacted.

Arms companies require licences from the DTI to sell “goods, technology, software or components designed or modified for military use” as well as  “‘dual use’ goods, technology, software, documents or diagrams which meet certain technical standards and could be used for military or civilian purposes”.

But the export licensing system is shrouded in secrecy, with information very difficult to get. In the case of an information request made to the government about surveillance technology sold to Egypt by the UK, further requests were declined because it would “likely prejudice the commercial interests of any companies that may have applied for a licence,” and “would reveal details of the markets that companies are operating in and possibly details of commercial opportunities that are still available.” With this proviso many information requests are turned down.

British arms export 'controls' seem more about facilitating exports than restricting them. The licensing system still allows half of all UK’s arms sales to go to the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, currently undertaking a brutal bombing campaign in Yemen, using British-supplied warplanes and missiles. Since 2008, the UK has sold £10.8bn of weapons to the Saudis, by far the biggest market for UK companies. The British government has rejected repeated calls to halt arms sales to Riyadh.

In some conflicts, the government just does not know if its weapons are being used. Earlier this year, Turkish military forces intervened in the mainly Kurdish-controlled province of Afrin in northern Syria, in an operation widely criticised by human rights groups. In answer to a parliamentary question, the British government stated: “We cannot categorically state that UK weapons are not in use in Turkish military operations in Afrin”.

‘Responsible’ arms exports

Another major problem is that, as the government admits, “We do not collect data on the use of equipment after sale.” It is hard to see how this is consistent with government claims that it operates a 'responsible' arms export policy.

The same government department set up to promote and facilitate arms exports is meant to regulate them, too. Licences are provided by the Export Control Organisation (ECO), which is part of the DIT. And it shows.

Levels of sales of British arms to countries around the world often correlate with an uptick in violations of human rights norms in those countries. The majority of British arms go to the Middle East, particularly the Gulf region. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring when authoritarian governments cracked down on protest movements and dissent, the British government did not blink. Arms continued to flow, in fact, in nearly all cases the increased demand was met by more British arms. Countries where repression has deepened in recent years, such as Egypt, Israel and Bahrain, remain significant recipients of British weapons and military equipment.

The problem is not just that British equipment might be used to crush legitimate dissent; it is that the supply of weapons to security forces sends an overall message of support for what they are doing. It can also enhance the international legitimacy of repressive states and reduce the political space for opposition forces to challenge them.  

BAE Systems is the jewel in the crown of the British arms industry. Other significant companies in the country include Rolls Royce, Babcock, Serco, Cobham, QinetiQ, Meggitt, but BAE is in a class of its own. A large majority of UK arms procurement goes straight into the coffers of BAE. Through an FOI we submitted, we discovered that the UK consistently awards contracts worth over $3bn a year to BAE Systems - around 10% of its total outlay. BAE, actively involved in the Yemen war as a supplier of aircraft and technical military assistance to the Saudis, made profits of £792m in the first half of 2018.

BAE profits

BAE's profits are very important to the UK government, which is a key reason it maintains such a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has 6,000 BAE staffers in the country, according to the Labour MP, Graham Jones, who we met in Portcullis House. Jones was recently appointed chair of the Committee on Arms Export Controls in Parliament. In our hour-long meeting, he spent considerable time defending Saudi Arabia’s record in Yemen, and insisted there was no evidence British weapons had been used in atrocities. He said he had a very strong aversion to the reporting of NGOs on the situation in Yemen.

It is hard to know the extent of lobbying by BAE in the UK, but in the US things are more transparent. In trying to drum up business in the US, BAE has put a lot of money into its lobbying operation in Washington DC. According to records, Podesta Group, which is now under investigation in the Russia-Trump inquiry, received most money from BAE in 2017.

Through the FOI, we obtained recognition that it had been “established from the records ... that BAE Systems did once form a part of a business delegation that accompanied the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for International Trade on a visit to India in November 2016.” This was Theresa May’s first bilateral meeting since becoming Prime Minister. May said: “The UK and India are natural partners – the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy – and together I believe we can achieve great things – delivering jobs and skills, developing new technologies and improving our cities, tackling terrorism and climate change.” Securing contracts for BAE Systems was obviously a large part of this.

We also requested the FCO briefing notes for Theresa May's April 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia. After being kept waiting for eight months, we were told they came under a national security exemption. A lengthy discussion had obviously taken place inside the department.

There is a revolving door between the MOD and DTI and the arms industry. Through another FOI request, it was revealed that in one year, from 2006 to 2007, 36 former employees of the MOD applied to join BAE Systems. These employees use the knowledge gained from MOD to earn bigger sums in the private sector, and may end up back at DSO.

BAE is heavily involved in many centres of learning in the UK, making it indispensable to young engineers getting an education. The company has partnered with Cranfield University to boost Britain’s engineering skills through a new post-graduate engineering apprenticeship programme, which will provide learners with a valuable Masters-level qualification. Richard Hamer, director of education and skills at BAE Systems, said it was part of the company's "on going commitment to nurture talent and high-end skills.” Britain’s top universities have received at least £83m worth of funds during 2014-17 from firms involved in the arms trade.

Unions are also a very powerful lobby for the arms industry. By making the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft and Britain’s nuclear submarines, BAE employs 34,600 people in the UK, out of 83,100 worldwide. Workers from BAE Systems recently travelled from across England to the Houses of Parliament to lobby MPs and demand that the government “takes back control of Britain’s defence capability and spends the UK’s defence budget to support jobs in Britain rather than in factories overseas”. The lobby was organised by Unite, the UK’s largest defence union, following plans by BAE Systems to cut nearly 2,000 jobs. The cuts, which will see significant job losses in Typhoon and Hawk aircraft production as well as RAF base support and at BAE’s marine division, came amid warnings that nearly 25 per cent of the UK’s military spending will benefit US factories and firms such as Boeing by 2020.

Is there an alternative?

Military industry in the UK is made up of close to 2,500 companies, generates £33.5bn in turnover and employs 128,000 people, according to the government.Yet even from this high base, the government is currently seeking, in effect, to further militarise the British economy and society. The 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review was the first time the UK officially recognised promoting prosperity as a national security task. Ministers have said that "Strategic exports are now a core activity for the Ministry of Defence so we are calling on companies to play their part in increasing defence export sales and attracting inward investment into the UK".

The government's new Defence Industrial Strategy, announced last December, and its new Combat Air Strategy, announced earlier this year, both envisage deepening UK industry's reliance on the military sector for jobs and growth. Indeed, the government has recently come to a stunning but little-noticed conclusion about its industrial strategy, saying that "British prosperity relies on defence".  A government-commissioned review of defence’s contribution to national economic and social value, released last month, concludes that " defence and the defence industry reaches every corner of the UK and is central to employment in so many cities and towns" but that more can be done to promote its role in promoting the UK's technological future.

But is Britain's military-industrial complex truly in the public interest? Could the 26,000 highly skilled researchers, designers and engineers currently working in the military sector be better deployed elsewhere?

A defence diversification strategy

Jeremy Corbyn has called for a Defence Diversification Agency and has said in the event of non-renewal of Trident that investment would save all the jobs and put people to work in other high-skilled socially-useful industries such as renewable power. Research shows that when evaluated on a cost-per-job basis, jobs in the arms industry are more costly than nearly every other sector.  A University of Massachusetts study concluded that, if the US government invested $1 billion in alternative civilian sectors rather than on military production, it would generate up to 140% more jobs; $1 billion military spending was found to create 11,200 jobs whereas education spending creates 26,700 jobs and health spending 17,200 jobs.

A recent report by the Nuclear Education Trust in the UK calls for the development of a defence diversification strategy, something that UK governments have never formally championed. The report does not pretend diversification will come without costs in terms of some jobs losses. But it notes that employment in military manufacturing is anyway falling. The number of jobs in the arms industry is less than a third of the level in 1980 (then over 400,000) - a long-term decline substantially due to the increasingly capital-intensive nature of the work carried out in the UK, automation and globalised supply chains.

By contrast, employment in 'new' industrial sectors is rising and could benefit from a broad arms conversion programme. For example, the German renewable energy industry already employs 380,000 people and this is expected to rise to 600,000 by 2030 as the country increases the proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources. Unite, which has persistently called for defence diversification and backs Corbyn's support for defence diversification, notes that legislation is needed to create a statutory duty on the Ministry of Defence and its suppliers to consider diversification. "Without legislation, history tells us that voluntary mechanisms do not work, as defence companies are unwilling to take the risk of entering new or adjacent markets", Unite says.

The UK’s military role in the world and Brexit

If the case for diversification is strong, why have successive UK governments not taken it up? One reason is certainly due to the short-term upheaval in some areas where military industry is important. But there is a more generic issue: the British military-industrial complex is seen by senior military and political figures as an essential part of the UK's military role in the world.

The UK's two new aircraft carriers, being built at a cost of over £6 billion, don't just create British jobs, they will “transform the Royal Navy’s ability to project our influence overseas”, the government has said. Indeed, the plan is for these carriers to deploy “in every ocean around the world over the next five decades”. The new platforms are appearing to take Ministers back to the glory of days of empire in what the Head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, has calleda "new era of British maritime power". To add to their new bases in the Gulf, military chiefs are now also talking about projecting power beyond the Middle East to the Indian Ocean and beyond and considering setting up new bases in South East Asia.

Here is where we come back to promoting UK commercial interests – with the addition of a small matter called Brexit. In a speech to an audience in Washington in 2016, Admiral Jones said: "Now that our Government seeks to extend the UK’s economic partnerships post-Brexit, the Royal Navy stands ready once again to be melded and aligned for best effect with our nation’s growing global ambition". Jones says that to promote UK commercial interests, the Royal Navy must have a "formidable presence on the global stage" especially given Britain's dependence on the sea for imports and exports.

So Brexit is driving UK leaders' new military ambitions. Or perhaps providing an easy cover for their ambitions. Either way, the whole strategy raises concerns. Does this enhanced global military strategy have public support? It is hard to say because it has been so little debated. The public is surely even less likely to support future entanglement in wars in Asia than it does Britain's current wars in the Middle East.

What is clearer is that Britain needs an industrial strategy that makes the economy less dependent on the military and arms exports and which articulates a transition towards creating new, civilian jobs for large numbers of people. But at the same time, Britain surely needs to move away from its imperial pretensions to police the world's oceans. The two factors are likely to be become ever more interlinked in post-Brexit Britain.

[thesparkjournal]

WHAT SHOULD SOCIALISTS DO ABOUT THE INTERNET?

By Daniel Joseph

Socialists need to seriously contend with the economic and structural role the internet is playing today in our politics and struggles, both here in Canada and around the world.

In October 2016, Breitbart News Network, a far-right political website headed by eventual for-one-year White House Chief Strategist,

Steve Bannon — with close (and publically verified - see Bernstein, [2017]) ties to the white supremacist “alt right” movement — opened an online store to sell branded merchandise. On this store, Breitbart was to sell t-shirts with an assortment of racist dog-whistles and anti- immigration rhetoric celebrating the soon-to- be President Elect’s border wall (Daro, 2016).  The functioning of this store was made possible with tools provided to them by Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce company based in Ottawa. Shopify provides the interface, the point-of- sale system, inventory management, and other tools for, typically, small-to-medium-sized businesses whose primary activity is conducted online. Essentially, Shopify functions as an intermediary or middleman for the circulation of capital (which Marx [1893] discusses in detail in Capital, Volume II).

On February 2, 2017 it came to light that behind the scenes at Shopify, numerous employees were “quietly urging” management to end their business relationship with Breitbart (Daro, 2016). Six days later, Shopify’s CEO, Tobias Lütke, published a defence of Shopify’s official stance to continue supplying ecommerce tools for Breitbart. Lütke stated: “products are speech and we are pro-free- speech. This means protecting the right of organizations to use our platform even if they are unpopular or if we disagree with their premise,” (Lütke, 2017).

Shopify, a company whose products usually keep them out of the spotlight, found itself at the centre of a public conflict: employees and critics pointed out that by providing tools for Breitbart, they were implicitly endorsing the hate that Breitbart used to peddle its clickbait articles like t-shirts. Yet according to Lütke’s professed fidelity to an unsophisticated liberalism, a private company had no right to restrict the speech — in this case, the buying and selling of products — of others. This public relations crisis surrounding Shopify and Breitbart is just one example of the increasing conflicts that are made apparent by the growth and increasing monopolistic status of companies that have based their business model on and around the internet.

While this conflict was quickly forgotten in the churn of the news cycle and the eventual election of Donald Trump, I think it illustrates that socialists need to seriously contend with the economic and structural role the internet is playing today in our politics and struggles, both here in Canada and around the world. There are two good reasons for this. The first is that we use the internet to communicate, build solidarity, and organize. It’s a powerful infrastructure that enables all kinds of communication in tangible ways. This is especially apparent when considering the growth of progressive movements around the world, including ours, in the last 10 years. Because we rely on them it is incumbent upon us to understand the history and workings of the technologies we use to build our movement.

The second reason we should understand the internet is that it’s at the centre of today’s version of monopoly capitalism. While resource extraction, commodity production, and agriculture undergird the majority of global capitalism’s ongoing operation and reproduction, the advanced capitalist countries have simultaneously put the internet at the centre of their economies, rhetorically and literally. It’s not that the biggest companies by revenue will necessarily be companies whose business exists only on the internet. In Canada, for example, the biggest companies remain in the hands of our banks and mining corporations. Instead, it’s that every company, in pursuit of what Marx called “relative surplus value” can’t be competitive without relying heavily on the communication tools provided by internet-based platform owners (such as Facebook, Shopify, Alphabet [formerly Google], etc). The internet is where capitalists go to try to transcend space and time, because if they find the right tool, they will find themselves at the cutting edge faster than their global competitors. If they play their cards right, they will leverage that, gain advantage and possibly even restructure the market.

In academia, one book that addresses this process, Nick Srnicek’s Platform Capitalism (2017), is an important (if limited) look at the growing importance of platforms in the global economy, written from an explicitly Marxist perspective. In it Srnicek describes how businesses on the internet function just like any others: “we can learn a lot about major tech companies by taking them to be economic actors within a capitalist mode of production.”

The argument of the book rests on the economic history of capitalism that is laid out by Robert Brenner (2006) in The Economics of Global Turbulence, which itself was a critique of some of the core arguments in Sweezy and Baran’s (1956) Monopoly Capital. Brenner’s argument is that competition from East Asia, Russia, and Brazil exacerbated the decline in profits for manufacturing in the core capitalist countries. As a result, less and less capital was finding its way into manufacturing, and found itself in need of productive use. So, something we are now very familiar with, it found its way into finance. Part of this move towards finance resulted in the dot com-crash of the late 1990s, as well as the housing bubble of the last decade. It also found its way into companies specializing in business on the internet, many of them promising low fixed capital costs, room for expansion, and high margins.

Srnicek argues that this money-capital, sitting in bank accounts in desperate need of investment is what explains the massive growth of internet-based companies like Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook — all successful companies making money from a variety of sources. It also explains the recent growth of other companies, what Srnicek calls “lean platforms”, like Uber or Airbnb: companies that specialize in making themselves the mandatory go-between for the so-called “sharing economy”. From these platforms, Srnicek argues that there are roughly four tendencies for the future of platform capitalism: the expansion of extraction (the intensification of data mining, which is productively sold to advertisers and marketing companies for a profit), a company positioning itself as a gatekeeper (gaining control over vital exchange points for capital and labour), convergence of markets (the tendency for companies in previously different markets to find themselves in competition), and the enclosure of ecosystems (putting users into walled, fully controlled “gardens”, like Apple’s iOS).

It is in this vortex of capital that we currently find ourselves. All the time it feels like platforms and corporations like Facebook, Google, or Apple are what the internet “is”, instead of the network being what provides their infrastructure. There’s also the ever- present and depressing daily pressure on the working class, on our friends and family, to sell off their lives to companies like Uber or Airbnb to cover the crisis of rising fixed living costs like rent.

Srnicek suggests that one possible solution goes beyond state regulation of these technologies: “Rather than just regulating corporate platforms, efforts should be made to create public platforms — platforms owned and controlled by the people” (p. 128). I certainly think that’s a noble goal, and it could be something those advocating for socialism should incorporate into our analysis and policies. Platforms — the places where goods and services are exchanged and where all kinds of communication takes place — can and will be genuinely useful and important technologies for the development of socialism. At the same time, we should also recognize that existing platforms are there to extract data from us and exercise control over us. Platforms shape how we consume, and they function as a propaganda distribution system, while also doubling as a surveillance system for the repressive bourgeois state. It would be a huge misstep to argue that the internet and the technologies it enables are neutral in the class struggle.

If I have an immediate pointed criticism of Srnicek’s case for emancipatory platforms, it’s that there’s no historical discussion of past struggles concerning communication technologies. Communication has been, and continues to be, an important consideration for any revolutionary program for a better world, especially in the multitude of struggles of the twentieth century. There’s a history of Marxist political economy that took imperialism very seriously, and centred on the struggles of people under the thumb of imperialism who attempted to use communications technologies against it. They didn’t hedge their bets by imagining a utopian society: instead they had to start with the state of communication technology at the moment of struggle, and to do what they could at that specific historical juncture.

For example, take what Herbert Schiller and Dallas Smythe wrote in a report titled Chile: An End to Cultural Colonialism while consulting with Armand Mattleart and Salvadore Allende’s Popular Unity coalition in Chile in 1972:

“It seems clear that this gap [between the nationalization of basic infrastructure and the relative free market treatment of the culture industries] will be a site of a coming struggle – a battle for control of the mass media, a battle which the left in Chile is a long way from resolving in a strategy for winning. First they must decide what policies a proto-socialist mass media structure would follow. The problem is incredibly more complex than, say, how to nationalize copper. Among the reasons it is difficult to analyze is that in concentrating its attention on man as affected by his production relations, Marxists have relatively neglected man as affected by his consciousness, his leisure relationships, his cultural relations. It is in analyzing this problem and solving it that Chile has the opportunity to make an historically new contribution to the development of socialism.” (p. 61)

Clearly, the success of the fascist coup that came soon after illustrated that this aspect of the struggle was by no means solved conclusively. It could very well have been fatal.

Applying Schiller and Smythe’s concerns about the complexities of proto-socialist communications systems in a time of struggle and revolution to the internet increases the complexity drastically. The relative decline of broadcasting, the rise of platform owners and software as service companies, the proliferation of intermediaries and our dependence on social media mean that the question extends way beyond the (still very important) questioning of who owns this or that radio tower, TV station, or newspaper chain. Instead, we have to think about what companies, such as Shopify, maintain and profit by maintaining the infrastructure of the internet. Complicating matters for Canadians, very few of these organizations are based in Canada. Our local media monopolies like Rogers and Shaw own the physical infrastructure that allows us to access the internet, but in the end most of us rely on Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix and dozens of other US-based platform owners to filter, organize, secure, and regulate our communication. I don’t have an answer to these problems. The only way we will get to them, however is by our analysis taking them into account. It’s important to not put the cart before the horse. Start with things as they are, and then go from there. If this is the case, it’s doubtful that any of the existing platforms could in practice be nationalized, much less used to build socialism. Whatever comes next will have to be built anew, conditions permitting.

We need answers because in the meantime those advocating for a socialist future are sadly tied to media platforms with no meaningful democratic accountability, despite being considered by liberals as the guardians of a democratic discourse. For example, there was Facebook’s January 2018 change to its news feed towards personal items, which was, by their account, designed to encourage what they describe as “meaningful interactions”. In other words, the one platform that is most relied on for news is shifting its focus away from news. Facebook justified this choice partly on psychological research they had conducted about what kind of posts they thought people wanted to interact with. The place where the majority of people get their news was fundamentally changed, with no democratic input, entirely on the basis of what Facebook thought would increase their bottom line.

Hanging over the corporation, and much discussed, was also the moral panic surrounding state-sponsored Russian “fake news” proliferating through Facebook, and presumably swinging undecided voters towards Donald Trump. No doubt by shifting focus towards social interaction with no news content, Facebook can safely tell their lobbyists to assuage the hypocritical liberal Russophobia and paranoid concerns of their political benefactors. Justin Trudeau’s meeting with Sheryl Sandburg, Facebook’s Chief Operating

Officer, was clearly related to such public relations concerns about possible government regulation of advertising and news distribution.

At the same time, we know from past efforts that Facebook’s tackling the “fake news” problem is likely to target both reactionary right-wing news outlets, and also, though, critical, progressive and explicitly socialist outlets. Not long ago, Facebook sounded like Shopify’s Tobais Lutke, professing a maximalist liberal conception of the neutrality of platforms towards content in “the marketplace of ideas”. Now Facebook has stated that they do, in fact, have an opinion about what qualifies as “real” journalism. Anybody who understands the history of how media monopolies function and what their actual goal is (to collect and sell audiences to advertisers and collect subscriptions) knows that the kind of journalism they will protect will be that which stands up for, and protects the bourgeois state and order of things.

It’s up to us as socialists to keep challenging this narrative, and keep a critical eye on the internet in general.

REFERENCES

Baran, P. A., & Sweezy, P. (1966). Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (1st Modern reader paperback ed edition). New York: Monthly Review Press.

Bernstein, J. (n.d.). Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream. Retrieved October 14, 2017, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo- smuggled-white-nationalism

Brenner, R. (2006). The Economics of Global Turbulence (1st edition). London ; New York: Verso.

Daro, I. N. (2017, February 2). Shopify Employees Want The Company To Stop Doing Business With Breitbart. Retrieved September 5, 2017, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/ishmaeldaro/shopify-breitbart-store

Farnsworth, M. (2018, February 9). Watch the interview: Facebook’s heads of News Feed and news partnerships. Retrieved February 13, 2018, from https://www.recode.net/2018/2/9/16996696/how-to-watch-livestream- facebook-head-of-news-feed-partnerships-campbell-brown-adam-mosseri

Marx, K. (1893). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. (F. Engels, Ed.) (Vol. 2). Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Schiller, H., & Smythe, D. (1972). Chile: An End to Cultural Colonialism. Society, 9(5), 35–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/ BF02697609

Daniel Joseph is a political economist and freelance writer researching digital distribution platforms, games, and labour.

[scarlettlillies]

Hetalia- Beautiful Goodbyes: Ch.5 (EstIce)

(You can read from the beginning here)

(Ao3 Version)

I can't believe it took a year to finish this. 2017 was not very forgiving when it came to free time and 2018 is not really any better. This chapter didn't fully form to the way I wanted but I'm satisfied that it's good enough to post. Still, I hope you enjoy this chapter! For those of you new to this fic, this is a 1920s human AU.

Name Legend: Eduard (Olev) - APH Estonia Eyvindur - APH Iceland Timo - APH Finland Heino - OC

The skies changed over so quickly. Eyvindur rushed to the living room windows and shut them fanatically. The rain was such a surprise that they hadn't considered a “Plan B” when Eduard showed up out of the kitchen with a picnic basket in his hands. “What a shame,” Eyvindur sighed. “To think we spent our whole morning preparing all that food for nothing.” “I wouldn't say that,” Eduard said cheerfully. “We'll just have a picnic indoors then. Besides, we'll still have to head out into the rain anyway. I need some ingredients for dinner tonight.” “I'll help then.”

The two men laid out a picnic in the living room and enjoyed a hardy meal with potato and pasta salads and BLT sandwiches. Desserts were chocolate and vanilla cupcakes made the night before. Eduard was sure to have the radio on as they ate. Friday afternoons were when they played some of new brass and jazz music currently popular in the clubs. When they were finished, Eyvindur helped Eduard clean up and threw the leftovers inside the ice box. They could use the rest of the salads for tonight as a side dish.

Though the rain didn't look like it was letting up any time soon, it had been reduced down to a drizzle and it was enough for Eduard to decide to head out for some grocery shopping. Eyvindur was quick to follow him to the door, the two of them changing out of their matching slippers and into their outdoor shoes, raincoats, and all. Eduard grabbed his favourite umbrella, the one with a large blue plaid pattern on it, while Eyvindur had a hold of a dark brown wicker basket. They wasted no time running to the car and headed towards the city.

Their usual routine was to park within the core and browse around the markets. But with the weather being unpredictable as it was, Eduard decided to find a spot closer to the shops he needed to visit. He wasn't lucky however and found himself parking far from the shopping core. No worries, he said to himself, they'd just do what they could and take shelter if they needed to.

Eduard and Eyvindur always did their errands together. Eyvindur often helped him pick out the freshest vegetables as he seemed to have a better eye for it than Eduard did. Eyvindur's opinion mattered to Eduard and it made his efforts worth the while. When Eyvindur worked for his previous employer, he accompanied her during her shopping runs but she always seemed to have an opinion of some sort (often negative) about the way he did certain things. Eduard was not like that at all. He was always content to join him on days like today.

Eyvindur had been living with Eduard for the last four months. In the weeks that followed his first night at Eduard's home, he immediately hit the streets for work so he could pay for his portion of the bills. Despite Eduard saying it wasn't necessary, the man quickly discovered how stubborn Eyvindur could be and no longer made a fuss over it. He was fortunate enough to land several different kinds of jobs, however he proved to be an ill-proper fit. Eyvindur was simply not cut out for hard labour. He was smaller and not as well built than many of the men who worked in the shipyards and factories. Customer service jobs didn't fair much better as he was rather shy and could easily get short-tempered with certain customers. He rapidly went through five jobs within two months.

But Eyvindur was in a happier spot now; he had found part-time work at one of the library branches in the downtown core. On the days Eyvindur needed to work, Eduard would drive him back and forth between the city and their home in the countryside. Eyvindur assisted with all kinds of tasks like processing returns, restocking the shelves, and working the front desk. The thought of working another service job had him feeling anxious during his first week but he quickly discovered the people weren’t as bad as he thought they were going to be, as he dealt with mostly young families and students just like he once was. His book recommendations proved to be highly popular too, as well as his charming appearance. Young women would occasionally flirt with him but their words would fly over Eyvindur’s head. Eduard had caught a few of those moments as he waited for the boy’s shift to end and always had a good laugh out of Eyvindur’s confusion. With a mix of vegetables, some herbs, eggs, and salmon, their shopping was complete and it was time to head back home. Eduard was worried that Eyvindur was carrying too much as he was quick to take notice that the man was often swapping the basket between both his hands. But Eyvindur insisted that he was doing just fine. Turning the corner, the market was still buzzing with so much traffic. Each shop on the block was different and had a unique character to them. One was bright and open selling various flowers while the neighbouring shop appeared dark and unwelcoming with a large poster advertising fortune telling for one dollar. It felt eerily out of place with its other neighbouring shop, a butcher, who they normally get their meat from. But out of all the shops on the block, only one caught Eyvindur’s eye. Sandwiched between a small pub-style restaurant and a furniture store, the building was empty with a sign on the door saying ‘For Sale’ with a name of a real estate agent and their phone number. There was somewhat of an attempt to cover up the windows but the brown paper was gradually falling off. It allowed Eyvindur to grab a peek inside. However, there wasn’t much to see with the exception of some chairs and a desk. Eduard hadn’t noticed that Eyvindur had vanished from his sight until he realized the man was no longer responding to his questions.

“Eyvindur!” Eduard called out as he ran towards him. “Is something wrong?”

“Huh?” Eyvindur was a little dazed, not even noticing he was drenched from the rain. “Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” he replied flatly as he walked away and Eduard followed him closely. But he can’t get the building out of his head as he turned his head once more to grab another quick look before he turned his focus back to what was in front of him.

“You seem entranced by that empty shop,” Eduard said.

“Kind of. It seems odd that place is abandoned considering how busy the area is. Do you know what was there before?”

“Yes, that was a show repair shop ran by a pair of German brothers. We’ve been there before, about four months ago, when you just started living with me—remember?”

Oh right, that shop, Eyvindur recalled. His shoes were in rough shape when he had arrived to Eduard’s home and only lasted another week before the back end of his left shoe had opened up. “Yes, I remember those two.”

“I was always impressed by their work. The older brother got on my nerves many times but the younger one was always a pleasure to chat with. I wonder what happened to them?”

The conversation went cold and they retraced their steps back to their vehicle. But the building had stuck with Eyvindur and the feeling couldn’t be washed away. There was something about the place that made him want to go back.

“Eyvindur, does he have the scores ready?”

“Yes, but he looks nervous though.”

“It’s understandable. It’s his first exam,” Eduard said as he shut a small book with musical scores inside and rose from his chair. He joined Eyvindur who stood behind a young boy, who looked no more than ten years old, and ordered him to play the notes seen on the sheet in from of him. The tune is a basic children’s song and he played it perfectly, albeit very slowly.

“Nicely done. But try to pick up your pace.” Eyvindur instructed. “Let’s move on to the next song.”

The boy changed the sheet and it was another children’s song. Just as before, he plays it perfectly.

“Good, you’ve picked up your speed. Next song please,” Eduard said.

The next song was a little more challenging. They had moved away from children’s song to famous composers. The song of choice was Debussy’s Clair de Lune. When the boy begun the piece, it had started off nicely but with noticeable pauses in between some notes, it was clear he was beginning to struggle.

It was then a loud and jarring note echoed in the room and the boy froze in fear. Eduard however didn’t appear to be fazed by it and urged to keep going.

“It’s alright. Just keep playing.”

He did as he was told and he was slowly redeeming himself. Eyvindur was carrying a clipboard and jotting down notes as the exam was taking place. Eyvindur found his eyes wandering towards Eduard and caught a glimpse of a sweet smile as he praised the boy for not messing up a difficult note. Eyvindur quickly looked away and tried to stay concentrated on the performance in front of him. Now was not the time to be focusing on the looks of his friend and business partner.

Even though his heart really wanted to.

Eduard had nearly finished putting away all the dishes when the sounds of a loud knock made him jump.

“Who could that be at this hour?”

But when Eduard turned and found himself staring at the calendar hanging by the entrance to the dining room, he immediately knew who it was. He anxiously walked through the dining room and towards the door. But before he answered, he took a peak inside the living room and saw Eyvindur sleeping peacefully on the sofa. He breathed a sigh of relief and slowly opened the door. Eduard was greeted to a well-dressed man with short blond hair and a round face. He was much shorter than he was, bore a sweet and soft appearance, and spoke with a heavy Finnish accent.

“Good evening Olev,” he smiled. “May I come in?”

Before Eduard could answer, the man stepped in and he quietly repeated the words “No” and Eduard pushed him back. It was then the man saw Eyvindur sleeping on the sofa and his soft expression was quickly replaced with a dark glare.

“Outside. Now.”

The two of them stood on the door step and Eduard quietly shut the door behind so he wouldn’t wake Eyvindur up.

“Why is he still here?”

Eduard sighed, “I told you Timo, he’s living with me right now.”

“You’re supposed to be undercover until all this blows over! That means no job, no friends, no nothing.”

“I understand that but I couldn’t leave him to fend for himself. Besides—”

There was a long and lengthy pause but Eduard struggled to find the words of what he wanted to say. Not that Timo needed it. He knew Eduard long enough that he knew exactly what was on his mind.

“Eduard,” Timo said as he placed his hand on Eduard’s shoulder. He was surprised to hear Timo call him by his real name. “I understand that you’re lonely. It’s not easy being in the situation you’re in now. But you’re on a watch list and all it takes is one slip-up to put you on the first trip back to Tallinn. We asked this of you because we only want to protect you. You understand that right?”

Eduard nodded and gave Timo a faint smile, “Yes, I do—and I’m grateful for everything you and Heino have done for me so far.”

Timo reached inside his handbag and pulled out a thick white envelope. He handed it to Eduard and he took a peak inside. It was overflowing with cash with various denominations of bills.

“I’m sure this will hold you over for a while?”

“Yes, this is perfect. Thank you,” Eduard replied as his stuffed the envelope inside his vest.

Timo closed up the handbag and tipped his hat towards Eduard. “Alright I’ll take my leave then. I’ll be back in a few weeks with some more cash for you. Don’t blow it all in one place.”

Timo’s tone was playful in nature and it got Eduard smiling as his old self again. The two shared their goodbyes and Eduard quickly re-entered the home quietly. He was surprised to hear the piano playing a soft melody and he quickly realized that Eyvindur was up for his evening nap.

“Eduard, is that you?”

Eduard quickly grew anxious but he somehow managed to retain a cool and calm tone with Eyvindur.

“Yes, I’ll be with you in a second. I just need a moment to wash my hands.”

Quick on his feet, he rushed to the bedroom and stuffed the envelope of money underneath his mattress and tidying up the sheets to give the appearance that nothing had been touched. He then followed through on his words and watched his hands with the new soap he bought in the market a few days ago. The soap had a pleasant smell of lavender and loved the feel of it against his skin. Feeling a little more comfortable, he joined Eyvindur in the living room and took a seat next to him on the bench.

“Was someone outside? I heard you shutting the door earlier.”

“Just a lost man,” Eduard lied. “He got the wrong address so I gave him a hand with his map.”

“I see,” his voiced trailed off. Eduard felt guilty each time he had to lie. He’d always tell himself that it would get easier with time but the sharp sensation in his chest never seemed to fade away. He tried to ignore the feeling but it was becoming increasingly difficult and exhausting trying to keep up with this false life he was forced to have built up for himself.

“Is something wrong?” Eyvindur asked.

Eduard looked at him oddly before shaking his head, “No, no, I’m fine. Just a little tired.” Eduard said with a reassuring grin. He quickly tried to change the subject and the focus on music was an easy target.

“That music, it’s Clair de Lune that you‘re playing isn‘t?”

“You have a good ear Eduard,” Eyvindur replied as he continued playing the melody. “I had a dream just now that we were teachers and we were watching this child play this song. I felt a little inspired.”

Eduard chuckled, “That sounds like a wonderful dream. I wish something like that could be real. I always wanted to be a teacher.”

In a move that surprised Eduard, Eyvindur had cut off the tune but his fingers remained frozen at the keys. Eyvindur appeared almost expressionless leaving Eduard to wonder if what he had said upset him.

“Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry if I did.”

It had felt like minutes had passed before Eyvindur had finally spoken up to him. He moved his hands away from the keys and placed him against his thighs. Eduard had watched a weak and melancholic smile appear on the boy’s face as he appeared in almost a daze.

“No you’re good. I was just thinking the same thing.” Eyvindur replied. “I wanted that dream to be real too.”

Well, most of it, Eyvindur had replied to himself. He quietly pushed away the scene that found itself on loop since he awoke from his nap: the part where he found himself staring at Eduard in a more enamoured light. The idea baffled Eyvindur to no end. He had never though of Eduard as anything more than a friend—a person who saved him in a time of need. It was probably time to cut back a bit on the romance novels and poetry. At the end of the night, it was the only logical explanation Eyvindur could come to.

Yes, they were nothing more than friends.

And that’s all that they ever will be.

[techresearchandupdates]

Runtime Application Self-Protection Market Analysis with Robust Development and Leading Players Study till 2025 -  Pradeo, Micro Focus, Vasco Data Security International Inc. (OneSpan Inc.), CA Veracode, IMMUNIO

This report examines the "Mobile Runtime Application Self-Protection Market" using a SWOT analysis, which considers the organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The Mobile Runtime Application Self-Protection Market report also includes an in-depth analysis of leading market players, which is based on many organisational objectives such as profiling, product outline, production amount, required raw material, and financial health.

Market Trends:

Increasing mobile device usage and internet adoption are two reasons contributing to the rise in distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults. According to Coherent Market Insights' estimate, approximately 68 percent of the world's population was already using mobile phones in 2016. Furthermore, according to Internet World Stats, the overall number of internet users was 3,885,567,619 as of June 30, 2017, out of a global population of 7,519,028,970. This is due to the expansion of the internet, which is increasing the volume of data traffic, connection requests, floods of emails, and messages to target systems that are used in distributed denial of service assaults. This could cause the system to slow down or possibly crash.

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https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/2097

The current focus of the research report is on the following regional areas:

• North America (U.S., Canada & Mexico)

• South and Central America (Brazil, Rest of South America)

• Europe is a continent that has a (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, Rest of Europe)

• Asia and the Pacific (China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam)

• Africa and the Middle East (GCC Countries, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, Rest of Middle East & Africa)

The manufacturing cost structure is highlighted in this report, which includes material costs, labour costs, depreciation costs, and the cost of production operations. The analysts in the study also conduct a price analysis and a supplier analysis. This paper mentions how analytics have become an integral element of every company activity and position, and how they play a crucial role in firms' decision-making processes these days. The demand for the market is predicted to significantly increase internationally in the next years, allowing for healthy expansion of the Mobile Runtime Application Self-Protection Market, which is also covered in the report.

The key players covered in this study:

• Pradeo

• Micro Focus

• Vasco Data Security International Inc. (OneSpan Inc.)

• CA Veracode

• IMMUNIO

• Arxan

• Signal Science

• Promon, Prevoty, Inc.

• Waratek.

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Key questions answered in the report include:

• How big will the market be and how fast will it grow by the end of the forecast period?

• What are the key market trends influencing the growth of the Mobile Runtime Application Self-Protection market?

• What possible growth possibilities and risks do the market's major competitors face?

• This study contains all of the necessary details about the industry's overview, analysis, and revenue.

• Market Analysis of Mobile Runtime Application Self-Protection by Application.

• What will be the market's demand and growth?

Contact us:

Mr. Raj Shah

US +12067016702 / UK +4402081334027

Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com