"Women-led local council revives a small Spanish town against all odds"

 They wanted to stop the depopulation of the municipality... and they did it!

[Edited photo by Francisco Lomero]

"In mid-June, an all-female independent group, Women for the Municipality of Angüés (AMPMA), [began] its second term leading the small Aragonese town of Angüés, Spain, after winning, for the second time, an absolute majority in the municipal elections of May 28, 2023. Their term of office is today's most unique political phenomenon in Spain's democracy...

The first thing they did when they assumed the legislature in 2019 was to eliminate the mayor's salary and remove the cell phones, Christmas bonuses, and Christmas dinners of councilors paid by the City Council: Now, the positions are completely voluntary, and this saved the locality about 12 000 euros per year. In addition, they reduced energy costs by installing solar panels in the Town Hall and changing the street lighting."

Read more from source at Global Voices here.

"50 years of Greenpeace" -- My interview with their spokesperson in Catalonia

 

                       [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2021.]

"Generation Precarious" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

[Photo: Oriol Duran]

I saw the best minds of my generation being dog-walkers or asking ’Would you like fries with that?’”

This may well be the sentiment of plenty of young people under the age of 30 across the developed world. 

Certainly, I include Catalonia, and especially those who camped across Barcelona’s main street of Gran Via and into the public square in front of the University of Barcelona.

Yes, they had other issues too that are important to them: the jailing of independence movement leaders, police brutality against protesters, increasing legal restrictions on free expression, but one of their other three stated aims was “a dignified future.”

It’s worth considering what this means. I see no reason why we should simply ignore the different groups who made up the “encampment”. 

When I visited the area in early November I saw groups of surprisingly youthful-looking kids being politically active. Some were in their mid-teens but were confident and obviously happy to be there. One young woman I spoke to had a makeshift stall that was all about a red plastic rubbish bin and her own writing I read was a vague and confusing attempt at satire. Another group were encouraging tweets as a method of expression where you could win a prize.

It’s difficult to argue though, with much of what the main section of the Gran Via campers have said. 

Calling themselves the ‘October 14 Generation’, their manifesto states, “We are a generation without a future. The generation of precariousness. The one that does not have access to housing, the one that is the victim of a system that threatens the very existence of our planet. We are a generation that has been robbed of the most basic social and labour rights.”

To me, that is all clear and true. Only someone living with their eyes closed could dispute it and in fact the far right continue to dishonestly and selectively use these young people’s sense of frustration and alienation for their own political benefit all across Europe.

Of course, it’s easy to write off the street-campers as just some university student vandals and fire-starters who are abusing the privileges that they’ve been given. 

Sadly, even a great writer and thinker such as Antonio Muñoz Molina (considered to be progressive) did this in a recent article for El Pais newspaper. His comments seem to have at least partly come from jealousy when comparing his own strict upbringing compared to “the academic authorities’ paternal and maternal indulgence” over these students’ postponed exams.

To make a comparison, I originally come from a part of the planet (Australia) where the level of political interest in most of the population, but especially the young, could best be described as minimal. In fact, apathy rules. 

I’m filled with optimism (rare for me) when I see young people taking a strong interest in anything outside their own narrow lives, even if I don’t happen to agree in all cases with everything they are on about. If any protester anywhere uses violence against people or private property then I naturally condemn it.

History has taught us that for protest to gain enough popular support to cause meaningful, long-term, lasting change it has to be non-violent. If that means camping out in a public square and main street, then that is a far more humanitarian option than us attacking each other with sticks. It might even help to foster a future that is less unstable.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2019.]

    

"German captain becomes anti-populist heroine in Italy migrant standoff"

 [Photo.

Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters] 

"The young German captain of a migrant-rescue ship stranded off Italy dismissed threats of arrest and personal criticism from the country's far-right interior minister on Friday, saying her main priority was the safety of 40 rescued Africans.

After two weeks at sea, the...31-year-old, Carola Rackete, has become a symbol of defiance for challenging the authority of minister Matteo Salvini, known as "Il Capitano" at home for closing ports to non-government rescue ships.

Speaking to reporters from her ship, the Sea Watch, via a Skype connection, Rackete said she was forced to enter Italian waters due to the worsening condition of the migrants plucked by her crew from international seas off Libya on June 12.

Related: The radical populist party that shook Italy's establishment

"The need which we have on board is psychological... The necessity to go into port is to prevent any harm or any self-harm which people might be contemplating," she said.

Rackete, a conservationist who has served on cruise ships and on a Greenpeace vessel in the past, has drawn strong support from Italy's pro-immigration opposition parties and also felt the sting of Salvini's ever-busy Twitter account.

Related: After 'Salvini decree,' refugees face uncertain future

She says she now devotes her time to rescuing migrants as a reaction to her privileged upbringing.

"My life was easy. … I am white, German, born in a rich country and with the right passport," she said in comments provided by Germany's Sea Watch, a charity that has been running rescue operations in the Mediterranean since 2014.

"When I realized it, I felt a moral obligation to help those who did not have the same opportunities as me." "

Read more from source at PRI here.

"Belgian-Canadian student faces up to 8 years in prison after protest in Hungary"

"A Belgian-Canadian university student and DiEM25 member is facing up to eight years of jail-time after being arrested during a spontaneous protest in front of the Hungarian Parliament on the evening of December 12.

Adrien Beauduin, a PhD student in Gender Studies at Central European University, was arrested along with four other protesters, who are all being charged with collective assault on a public official. Police charges allege that all five who were arrested, including Beauduin, used their left arm to strike a police officer and then kicked in the direction of a police officer.

According to videos and photos from the event, as well as witnesses present, Beauduin did not attack any police officers. Available video footage of the demonstration shows him standing calmly before being swept up when police charged the crowd.

“I am being charged with a very serious crime that I did not commit,” says Beauduin. “I am afraid for my future and the future of my fellow protestors.”

If found guilty of the police charges Beauduin will face a prison sentence ranging from a minimum of two years to a maximum of eight years."

Read more from source (and donate to help) here.

"Crimes of solidarity’ in Europe multiply -- 11 stand trial in Belgium for helping migrants"

[The September 6, 2018, trial of 11 people who have helped migrants in Belgium has attracted a number of protesters. Photo: Melissa Vida. Used with permission.]

 "Eleven people who had been arrested and charged with human trafficking in October 2017 appeared in court in Brussels on September 6, the first hearing of a trial that activists say is yet another case of “criminalization of solidarity” in Europe.

The defendants have allegedly assisted 95 undocumented migrants, including 12 minors, to travel from Belgium to the United Kingdom last year, either by hosting them in their homes, by lending them phones and thereby indirectly helping them cross the channel.

On the day of the trial, three hundred people protested in front of the courthouse. Demonstrators say this is a political trial, aimed at dissuading people from helping migrants by establishing an intimidating judicial precedent.

The defendants are two Belgian journalists, one Belgian-Moroccan social worker, a Tunisian man who is a legal Belgian resident and seven people who are undocumented migrants themselves. Eight of the defendants have been in jail since the arrest.

Belgian law states that there must be a monetary transaction involved for an act to be framed as human trafficking, something the defendants deny ever happening. However, the relationship between the migrants and their helpers seems to fall into a legal grey area, raising fears that the law's scope is unjustly being expanded to target activists.

Myriam Berghe, one of the two journalists, said in an interview with RTBF (Belgium's public service broadcaster) that she's received money on behalf of a migrant she was hosting. The migrant in question had been sent money from abroad via Western Union, Berghe says, but had no way of collecting it due to having no papers. What for Berghe was simply an act of kindness, in the eyes of the authorities was payment for smuggling.

In the same interview, she explains that despite some of the people she's hosted being smugglers themselves, she wouldn't consider them “human traffickers...”

Read more from source at Global Voices here.

"Greed, ineptitude and austerity fanned the flames of the Greek wildfire" -- Yanis Varoufakis

[DiEM25 co-founder, Yanis Varoufakis]

"ATHENS: A biblical calamity befell the Attica region last [month.] 

I saw its first sign in the late morning at Athens airport, where I was seeing off my daughter to Australia. A strong whiff of burning wood caused me to look up to the sky, where a whitish-yellow sun beckoned, surrounded by the tell-tale eclipse-like daytime darkness that only thick, sky-high smoke can cause. 

By the early evening the news had cascaded in. Many of our friends’ and some of our relatives’ houses were destroyed in northeast Attica. Forest fires had run amok, spreading westward towards the heavily built-up coastline, cutting the settlement of Mati and the town of Rafina off from Athens, forcing residents to flee towards the sea.

The first I knew of casualties was when told of the plight of activists belonging to our political movement, DiEM25. Their house in Mati was destroyed by the flames, along with every other house on their street, but at least they had escaped with their lives, just. Next door their neighbours perished, their corpses discovered next morning, crouched together, their three-year-old girl in the middle of a heart-breaking huddle.

And the ominous news continued to stream in: a friend and her husband, whose house is in ruins, are missing. A cousin, whose house sits on a cliff by the sea, had to jump more than 200ft into the rocky waters below as his house was burnt down — thankfully to be rescued by fishermen. However, 26 other people, who had come very close to the same coastline, succumbed to the smoke and flames before they could jump. As I write this, the official death toll stands at at least 83. Dozens are still missing.

Why did it happen? On this, our Black Monday, the weather conspired with Greek society’s, and our state’s, chronic failures to create the murderous inferno. A particularly dry winter had produced large quantities of forest and bush fuel ready and willing to wreak havoc on a Monday that brought to Attica temperatures of 39C and 80mph winds.

In addition to nature’s guilt, there is of, course, stupendous human culpability. Greek society’s postwar economic model, which relied on anarchic, unplanned property development anywhere and everywhere (in ravines, pine forests and so on), in effect invited nature to punish us, like any Third World country, with lethal forest fires in the summer and flash floods in winter. (Indeed, last winter 20 people died in houses built on the bed of an ancient creek.)

Society’s collective failure is aided and abetted by the Greek state’s perpetual lack of preparedness: for example, the failure to clear fields and forests of accumulated kindling during the winter and spring, or to organise escape routes for residents in case of an emergency.

Then there are the usual crimes of the oligarchy: for example, the enclosure of the coast around seaside villas for the purposes of illegally privatising the beach. Many died or were badly injured flailing against the barbed wire the rich had put in their way as they struggled to get to the sea. And last but not least, humanity’s collective guilt due to the manner in which rapid climate change is turbocharging the natural phenomena that punish our human foibles.

As is often the case every time Greece is ravaged by forest fires, the government hinted at arson. While I cannot rule out the possibility of foul play by profiteers, I am not convinced of this. Greek governments have traditionally found it convenient to blame profiteers, arsonists, terrorists, foreign agents even. Why? Because in so doing they avoid having to confess to their lack of preparedness, for having failed to impose laws and safety regulations, for not having organised or funded the emergency services properly.

What role did austerity and Greece’s ongoing Great Depression play in the ineffectiveness of the response? The fire department, the citizens’ protection agencies, the ambulance service and hospitals are terribly understaffed because of austerity, undoubtedly.

While the fires would not have been stopped if we had had three times the fire brigade staff and firefighting aircraft, a country that for a decade now has witnessed the steady diminution of its public services, its communities, its morale, can scarcely be expected to prepare itself well for a calamity boosted mightily by climate change.

Journalists ask me: is the EU helping? The reality is that Europe has made itself irrelevant when it comes to such issues. Truth be told, we had destructive fires before Greece entered the EU, before we swapped the drachma for the euro, and afterwards. Europe played no role in helping us fight the flames, a task that is not in its remit. But while Brussels cannot be held responsible for the fires per se or for 70 years of Greek society’s abuse of our natural environment, it is unquestionable that it has depleted the Greek state of most resources and capabilities.

Might, therefore, this not be the moment (the same journalists ask) for Athens to rebel and demand the end of austerity and of the spending cuts that are detrimental to Greece’s survival? Of course. Every moment is a good moment to confront Brussels, Berlin, Frankfurt and so forth to break free from the straitjacket of inane austerity and misanthropic social policies that are responsible for Greece’s permanent humanitarian crisis.

For a decade we have been losing many more people to the tragedy caused by the EU establishment than to any flood or forest fire. The number of suicides rose sharply immediately after the introduction of new austerity measures in 2011, while more than 1m have emigrated because of the economic depression the EU has imposed on Greece.

While I fully expect crocodile tears to be shed by Brussels over our burnt-out victims, and similarly hypocritical gesturing by the Greek government, I do not expect any reversal of the organised misanthropy afflicting Greece just because so many Greeks died last Monday.

Until and unless progressives get organised across Europe, willing to accept local responsibility while banding together to impose a change of policy at the European level, nothing will change, except perhaps a further strengthening of Greece’s Golden Dawn and other populist political parties in Italy, Germany, Austria and the Polish-Hungarian illiberal nexus.

Greece’s forest fires, in this context, are a tragic reminder of our collective responsibility as Europeans."

© Project Syndicate, 2018. (Also published in The Sunday Times.)

The author is Greece’s former finance minister and co-founder of DiEM25, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025.

A WeMove petition on the fires in Greece here.

VIDEO: "Meet DiEM25"

"Almost two years ago, we got together under DiEM25’s broad umbrella [Democracy in Europe Movement] to challenge old-style politics, to shatter TINA (“There Is No Alternative”) at the pan-European level, to turn Europe’s democratisation into a radical, realistic, uniting project.

2017 was an awful year for European democracy. But it was an amazing year for DiEM25. We:

• Rallied tens of thousands of people in cities including Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Dublin, Belfast, Hamburg, and London, and toured the breadth and length of Greece & Italy, demonstrating that There is An Alternative; that Another Europe Is Already Here!
• Nurtured our activists. There are now 70,000 DiEMers in almost every country on the planet!
• Launched and pushed specific campaigns to expose the Establishment’s worst abuses – and we just filed a lawsuit against the European Central Bank to force them to release #TheGreekFiles
• Launched our European New Deal, our concrete social and economic Policy Agenda, crowd-sourced from DiEM25ers and experts across the world

• Influenced elections with our interventions, like in Germany, France and the UK, and supported/partnered with candidates or parties that embraced them, like in Catalonia, Zagreb, Denmark and Poland
• Welcomed progressive leaders to our movement, like Naomi Klein and Richard Sennett

• Kickstarted the process for taking the European New Deal to a polling station near every European – at the Volksbuehne Theatre, in Berlin
• Began electing our Coordinating Collective
• Presented the Real State of the Union in Brussels, at the Bozar Theatre
• Set in motion the ‘Not Just Another Political Party’ endeavour
• Elected our first National Collectives (NCs), taking to new levels our ambitious experiment in grassroots transnational democracy – with all members (despite nationality) voting for different national collectives..."

Read more about DiEM25 here.

VIDEO: "To be a progressive..." (6 months after the British election)

"It’s exactly six months today, since [Britain] went to the polls. 

As the clock struck ten and we held our breath for the exit poll, few guessed the extraordinary result that was to come. Against all the odds, a Tory landslide had been stopped in its tracks – and a big part of that was down to the Progressive Alliance...

The impact of this is already being felt. We believe we are starting to see the end of austerity, and the beginning of a restoration of our public services, with the lifting of the cap on pay rises for parts of the public sector.

It wasn’t just that the Progressive Alliance got us more progressive MPs – it introduced a different kind of politics that was non-tribal and about something bigger than any single party. Through the Progressive Alliance we found out what we all have in common...

During the election campaign, we at Compass were often asked what it means to be a ‘progressive’, which is why we made a video. 

Watching it takes us back to that time, and revives the feelings of pride and gratitude (and relief!) that we hope you share.

Some days the news can make us angry or sad, even fill us with desperation. 

On these moments, it can be helpful to remind ourselves why we are doing what we are doing, and why it matters to continue to believe in, and fight for, a better world. 

Whether you’ve seen it before or not – this five-minute story will give your progressive spirit a boost:

Watch it here (YouTube Link) 
Or here (Facebook link) "

"Squatting in Vilafranca" -- My latest column for Catalonia Today magazine

[Graffiti wall in Vilafranca: “Enough speculation! The Penedès is not for sale!]

 If global warming is likely to be the biggest problem facing society in the coming years, it will certainly be competing with housing as an issue of great public concern. 

While the situation is probably most severe in Barcelona, the people of a medium-sized Catalan town such as Vilafranca del Penedès are certainly not free from these pressures.

One group who have acted against what they see as a major cause of housing difficulties is a squatter's collective that supports the politics of the Esquerra Independentista [independent left] movement. Recently, they took occupation of a former industrial building in the north of Vilafranca and have re-named it “El Taller” (The Workshop).

“We have done this to protest against real estate speculation,” says their 21-year-old spokesman, who did not wish to be named or photographed. “But we also want to do productive things with this place. We are converting it into somewhere for people to meet to discuss politics, to drink coffee, and to have concerts and theatre performances. We are even creating a studio upstairs.”

According to the collective, the site they have taken over has been empty for at least four years, and is zoned to be eventually knocked down for redevelopment.

“The local people were happy when we moved in because there was a lot of rubbish lying around the building and no one was cleaning it up. But we did,” says their spokesman. “We're making something good out of a place that had no owner and we are doing it without any help from the Vilafranca town council. It was difficult to get this all happening but we will stay here.”

In a very different position to those who occupy vacant buildings are Vilafranca residents, Teresa and Jose. They have a rural property outside the town that is being lived in by a man without their permission. The couple have tried to avoid legal proceedings with the squatter for several years but have recently changed their approach of attempts at persuasion and conciliation.

“We were told we needed a judge's order to get him out of our house,” Teresa explains. “Our decision was to hire a private lawyer because using a public one takes much more time.”

“The procedure has taken two months to get to court and has cost us two thousand euros, but at the moment he's still there and he has smashed up half the house,” says Jose.

Speaking to some other people over lunch in Vilafranca, it is not difficult to find a common theme. There seems to be an acceptance that the government could not or would not do much to solve problems relating to housing. Apart from one suggestion that taxes should be reduced on houses, there is little genuine hope that improvements were possible coming from elected representatives.

“The introduction of the euro was what started our struggles,” says Silvia. “And the price of houses is the other burden. We pay more than double compared to those in southern Spain. The middle class has shrunk completely. Everything needs to be changed!”

Without knowing it, another woman also agrees with the squatters collective on the subject of profiteering in the real estate industry. She suggests that the high levels of speculation now means that for single people it is impossible to buy a house or even rent a decent apartment.
“Everyone has to live with their parents or share accommodation with at least one other person if they are to afford to have any quality of life,” she argues.

There is something here that is beyond dispute, though. Almost anyone would see the common sense in a group of energetic and optimistic young people making good use of a long-abandoned building, as with the Vilafranca squatters group. However, the question that does remain is: How should this happen, both legally and ethically?

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, February 2017.]

"Why the Spanish election offers hope for Europe" - Yanis Varoufakis interviewed in Barcelona

“On 26th June the people of Catalonia, the people of Spain, have a unique opportunity to vote in a progressive government that will save the European Union from itself and from the disaster caused by the self-defeating austerity breeding unbearable authoritarianism. 

The incumbent prime minister of the right-wing People’s Party behaves like a spoilt child in Brussels, begging to be allowed to violate the unenforceable rules. The next prime minister of Spain, representing a progressive government that the Spanish voters now have the opportunity to bring to power, must call forth a EU summit that discusses and draws up new, rational, enforceable rules. 

Only then can Spain breathe again in a Europe that re-discovers its poise, rationality and humanity. This is why the 26th of June presents a unique opportunity, one that will be realised as long as the next government refuses to commit to existing policies and to Rajoy’s and Dos Guindos’ prior commitments to the Eurogroup.”

Read more from a Greek bearing truths at his blog here.

Video: "Seeking ‘Brave Journalists’ in Spain to investigate the TTIP Trade Agreement"

"The main concerns for groups that oppose the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between Europe and North America are the lack of transparency and the way in which the agreement will affect the communities involved. 
 
In Madrid, Spain, the Asamblea Popular de Tres Cantos (Tres Cantos Popular Assembly), a community activist group that is well known for its participation in protests against the economic crisis, is “seeking brave journalists” as part of an appeal to the media to investigate the treaty.

In the video published on the organization's blog and various social networks, members of the assembly appear with photographs of employees from Spain's large media organizations, which have largely ignored the treaty in their coverage, and offer them a challenge:" [see English subtitled video above.]

More from Global Voices Online source article here.

"The best of times?" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Has there ever been a better time to be alive in the history of our tortured, super-intelligent species? 

At the press of a few buttons we have virtually all the accumulated knowledge of the last several hundred (or is it thousand?) years available. And it is available fast.

We have the answers to a billion conceivable questions and we can communicate almost instantly with the majority of people on the planet, language barriers excepted. 

For many of us, our taste buds can be stimulated by the food from dozens of cultures who, just a few short years ago were out of reach, either geographically or economically. 

In this increasingly mixed European society, young people have started to grow up sitting next to others from Asia, Africa and assorted parts of the wider continent and for them this is as natural as mother's milk.

On top of all this, there is a gentleness that in so many senses did not exist just a generation ago. 

A man can be intimately involved in the care of his baby or child without automatically being a figure of gossip or ridicule. He can be the main cook for his family and not be thought of us somehow suspect. 

Finally too, homosexuals are more accepted or at least tolerated in the majority of circles, rather than being chemically castrated as some were less than seventy years ago (in the UK for example.)

Today too, there are increasing numbers of people who are not only acknowledging their own depression or mental illness but are speaking openly about it in public forums and in the media. 

Such a development was virtually unthinkable merely a decade ago. 

Equally though, the average women in the developed world has a wider horizon than ever before. Her place in the workplace is now barely questioned at all, though she may still be paid less than a man or have trouble getting a full-time position or promoted according to her ability.

Yet despite this progress, despite the modern mind being freer from superstition and religious dogma than probably any time in history, what do we also have?

Underneath the shiny towers of vanity there is a great, putrid sewer stench of injustice. 

There is the distinct sensation of a nausea without relief and that comes from having both your eyeballs open and your ears unblocked. Anyone who chooses to not be ignorant knows, as Leonard Cohen wrote, "the deal is rotten." 

And all those signs of enlightenment that came to view in the the first half of the 20th century now have a faded quality and there is a hollow ring to the chants, songs and poems of social movements.

Throw into this mix the fact that the warming of the earth continues at pace. 

It is only those who genuinely don't understand or politicians who have been bought out by the polluting industries that do not accept the truth of the overheating globe that we walk on. 

Or think of the wealth that flows through financial systems. Shockingly, the 85 richest people on the planet now have as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion. 

And what else?

There's the vacant look of history's books

Slave labour and murder thy neighbour

Greed as a virtue and carers that hurt you

This is the present we have

We see the limp hand of the state and rape-a-date

The power of one at the point of a gun

And the good times are back with daily Prozac

This is the future that right now we have

See that liar's smile when the truth's on trial?

This is the justice we have.

Living and laughing in ignorance bliss

We have fashioned a world exactly like this.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2014.]

What is to be done?

As protests deservedly rage in Madrid, Barcelona and elsewhere in this blighted land, it’s worth remembering that here in the 21^st century there are other equally legitimate ways to get a point across.

While I completely support the right to go out into the streets (I have done it a few times myself) I have also seen the effectiveness of on-line activism.

I have signed up to several organisations who will email you a letter to simply be read and signed, if you agree with the contents, and one click on a “Send” button electronically sends it to a government head, a minister, a company head or whoever has the greatest responsibility for the issue at hand.

One of the best reasons for this type of activism is that it works. It is not time-consuming, it costs nothing, but most importantly, if enough protesters send enough letters then decisions are often completely reversed.

When this kind of success does happen the organisations let you know by email and the internal celebrations begin.

Two recent cases I can think of are that of two poor Mexican women who were raped by soldiers but the corrupt government was paid off and refused to investigate her violation. Eventually, after thousands of protest emails from people both in and outside Mexico they decided to bring the accused to trial and damages were finally paid to them both.

Another example is that of the Ukranian government introducing laws to make homosexuality a criminal act. Again, after thousands of people across the world signing on-line petitions against this absurdity, they dropped the law.

Having worked for a politician in Australia, and knowing a thing or two about how governments and corporations are concerned about public perceptions of them, now more than ever before there is a climate where faceless power-mongers are increasingly called to answer for their actions.

It is quite simple to start your own on-line petition as well.

This kind of participatory politics is becoming more influential and serves as an excellent complementary activity to physically protesting in public places.

Here are a few current ones to consider:

Put criminal bankers behind bars!

Questions for Spanish President Mariano Rajoy

THIS WILL PROBABLY BE THE LAST POST UNTIL MID-AUGUST AS I WILL BE IN AUSTRALIA, WHERE THE INTERNET IS COMPLETELY UNKNOWN.