Proudly we hail from New York City where the American stage begins. Here's another program of the cast of outstanding players. Public service time has been made available by this station for your Air Force to bring you this story as proudly we hail the United States Air Force's tactical air command. Our story is entitled The Replacement. This is the story of the planes that are the workhorses of the Air Force and of the men who fly these ships as proudly we hail the troop carrier squadrons of the United States Air Force's tactical air command. Our first act curtain will rise in just one moment but first many times a man is skilled in a particular job yet unable to find a use for it. Has this happened to you? Are you a service veteran with a service gain skill that's just going to waste? Well if you are then listen to me. You may be able to put that skill to work as a member of the United States Air Force. Right now the Air Force needs experience and know how gained and all of the armed forces. If you possess one of the critical skills needed to keep America's air defense strong you can put that experience to work in the Air Force and do so at a higher grade and with higher pay than you may realize. You've earned credits toward a valuable retirement income so protect that initial investment. For full details you ride or visit your Air Force recruiter. Ask for the prior service man's folder. Now that's the prior service man's folder. This folder will show you why. Today and tomorrow you're better off in the United States Air Force and now your Air Force presents the proudly we hail production the replacement. Mind if I sit down? What did you say Sergeant? I said to your mind if I sit down here. Oh no not at all. It's just kind of noise and I didn't hear what you said. Yeah it's one thing about an airman's mess there's always something doing but you haven't heard anything yet there's something special on tonight. Oh yeah?  Well okay Sergeant. Good you know it's funny but it began about a year ago right in this very room during a farewell party thrown by my crew for airman Jim Potter and as it happened I had the honor of making the farewell speech. Conclusion Jim I know I speak for the crew when I say that as happy as they are that you're gonna better yourself by being transferred to radio school just as sorry are they to lose you right fellas? We've been through a lot together and your going's gonna leave a hole that's gonna be hard to fill believe me. Anyway now in behalf of the crew I want to present you with this watch. Oh boy there's one guy we're sure gonna miss right Sergeant Baker? You said it daily. You know it's the first time I ever saw him at a loss for words. Well I don't think you expected all this. I guess not. He's gonna leave quite a hole that's for sure. No other guy in the crew with this sense of humor always had a crack at the right time you know just when you need it. Don't I know guys like that are few and far between daily you know this sense of humor is like a well it's like a pearl in an oyster it only turns up once in a blue moon. A sergeant. You remember the time when he was coming out? Well Sergeant daily reminisced I noticed a tall young airman a stranger standing nearby listening and the way he kept glancing about him I know he was looking for somebody so and daily finished. I'm telling you there was some day alright. What a guy he was. Daily you talk like he's departed from this veil of tears already.   We want Jim to leave feeling good. I'll see you later. Yeah okay. Well hello airman anything I can do for you. Hello Sergeant maybe you can. I'm looking for a Sergeant Baker. That's me. Oh well I'm airman Henry Bush the first sergeant said I could find you down here at the mess. Glad I made you Bush. What's on your mind. Well I just got in an hour ago and the first told me I'm to be your replacement for all the guy you gave the watch to. For party. Were you here during the speech a while ago. Yes I came in while you were talking. Well then you know how much we thought about it. He was a good man and I might as well let you know right now you're gonna have a job filling his shoes. I'm beginning to realize that. But look if you try and that's all I ask. I'm sure you won't have any trouble.  We'll join the party and I'll introduce you around. Well serge thanks a lot but I'm I'm kind of tired is it okay with you if I run on to bed. Oh no not at all Bush. Sure go ahead get some shut out. It's kind of funny you know that makes you a Bush Bush doesn't it. Yes. Good night Sergeant Baker. Yeah. Good night. He didn't seem to get my little attempt at the joke but I figured maybe it was just too tired. Next morning I turned him over to my assistant Sergeant daily while I had it for headquarters where I had a lot of paperwork waiting for me being first engineer that means I have quite a few records to keep up and it took most of the time for a couple of days so I didn't get to see much of the crew. But just when I was about finished my ship commander Major Williams called me into his office. Sergeant I've just been up to see the wing commander we've got a job coming up. Yes sir. And from the looks of it this is going to be one that will top all the others we've had. We're ready for anything sir. What is it cargo carrying. No troops and it's going to be a long one. That's all I can tell you about it now it's pretty much hush hush. I see. There'll be an initial briefing tomorrow morning but in the meantime you can proceed with normal long flight preparation will do sir. When do you think we'll be taken off very soon within a day or two at the most. You might call it an emergency flight sergeant. Yeah quite an emergency. Emergency is a word that always spells trouble of some kind for somebody but for us an emergency mission spells action like the time we flew to Pakistan with medical supplies a year they had the terrible floods or an operation hay lift when we airlifted hay and grain food to starving cattle during a severe winter in the southwest and now once more we were being called on. Carrying troops sergeant. Must be a maneuver coming up huh. I don't know daily or when's the briefing tomorrow morning. Hey daily how's a new man Bush how's he coming along Bush. Okay I guess good will and work but but what I don't. Sort of down the dumps you know oh yeah well what's eating I don't know I don't know whatever it is it's contagious I don't get you will the crew maybe I'm imagining things but they're not the way they used to be when Jim was around life and things up so used to seeing that green and mug of his when they look at this guy straight face well well they'll get over it and so will Bush all he needs is time to get oriented I don't know such I hope you're right but you can't change a lip at spots if there's any place that teamwork is needed it's on a plane like the C124 when you've got a ship as big as a two-story house and it can haul two greyhound buses you can bet it isn't a one-man job to get and keep her in the air takes a bunch of men to work together like a like a high precision machine the only difference is men are not machines you can't keep them at a high pitch merely by flicking a couple of switches or adjusting fuel mixture take something else I don't know call it what you want morale spirit pep it's got to be there or else so you can see why daily was worried about bush the next morning at the brief all right everyone all right give me your attention all right the mission this squadron will engage in calls for maximum security for caution those regulations will be enforced as of now the primary purpose of your mission is to carry troops in flight destination to be given later but this is not to be a maneuver I repeat not a maneuver squadron will depart this afternoon across the continent to west over base after refueling and rest you will then proceed across the Atlantic to location in Europe where you will pick up your troop load navigators and ship commanders will see me after this briefing for flight plan instructions this miss as soon as the briefing was finished we hustled out to the bulletin board block time 1630 hours it doesn't give us much time no say Saaj what's he talking about not a maneuver you heard the man same as I did Adams what else could it be Adams yours not to reason why yours but to do and fly yeah so let's get going we got business to take care of daily was right this mission was gonna mean business but I was as much in the dark as the crew was we only had eight hours to take off time and during that time the crew had to complete the pre-flight check of the globetrotter from spark plugs the nose ramp and elevator raising mechanisms it's a big job but every item on the checklist has to have an okay beside it before we can take off however we finally were checked and loaded with major Williams at the controls our ship lumbered down the flight line Larson Tower Air Force 5 4 2 0 3 ready for takeoff Larson Tower to Air Force 5 4 2 0 3 clear for takeoff over AF 5 4 2 0 3 to Larson Tower Roger with a tremendous power of 15,000 horses turning our four engines we were airborne in a few minutes on our way across the continent to the Atlantic Coast it was gonna be a long flight so after our primary in flight check I dropped back to see how the crew was getting along everything okay back here guys good you might as well relax a bit got a long ride ahead of us what do you say Bush how's it going okay Sarge I like the globetrotter some ship are yes yes it is a bush you feel all right yeah I'm okay you're sure there's nothing bothering you know no sergeant daily tells me he thinks you're down in the dumps about something he did well I'll tell you Sarge it's my first time on a long flight sort of new oh first time sure but you'll get used to it you know after you're up a while a funny thing begins to happen to you you don't ever want to come down again look take a look down there through the wind we're gonna be passing over the rocky stone and look see how the ground is rising up in the hills see almost as if it was moving you see what I mean yes Sarge I see I could see that he didn't he glanced out of the window he didn't seem much interested just polite and obliged even though I tried a little longer to snap him out of his glumness I felt like I was talking to a brick wall so I gave up hoping that whatever was bothering him would wear off with time our night long flight was uneventful after we landed at West over and had our debriefing I stopped by at the PX to pick up some things anything else sergeant no that's all here you are oh hi aside hey bush getting something to yeah well you have four candy bars this magazine here and and that harmonica there harmonica so you're a musician huh well I play a little oh kidding hey maybe you could oh sergeant which can I have a card in a cigarette hello major way well I'll be running along now look at yourself some sleep now bush we got a long trip ahead of us okay Sarge you said it sergeant I've just come back from squadron operations anything new sir come on over here a minute anything else sir no no thanks thank you sir we've got some work to do the troops we're going to carry will be combat ready combat uh-huh and if you remember they told us this was to be no maneuver but major we're not at war with anybody right now that's right bigger we aren't but I don't get it you will sergeant you will you are listening to the proudly we hail production the replacement and we will return in just one moment for our second act are you a service veteran well then listen carefully because this message is just for you you may be qualified to enlist in the United States Air Force and agree that'll be a real surprise to you if you possess one of the critical skills needed to keep America's air defense strong the Air Force offers you an opportunity to put your skill to work and at a higher grade and with higher pay than you may realize right now the Air Force needs experience and know how gained in the armed forces and now thanks to the new career incentive act you can put your service gain skills to work to your best advantage by returning to the armed forces as a member of the Air Force team right or visit your Air Force recruiter for the special prior service man's folder now remember that's a special prior service man's folder it's full of important details and you'll see why today and tomorrow you're better off in the United States Air Force you're listening to proudly we hail and now we present the second act of the replacement say I was puzzled the major William said we'd carry combat troops is putting it mildly you have to remember that that was in the spring of 1954 our country was not at war anywhere in the world I thought though that maybe the briefing the next morning would clear things up but I was wrong all we found out was that our first stop was Paris France in order to maintain security precautions the ship commanders will open and read seal orders after takeoff that's all any questions we had plenty of questions at least I had but they'd be answered later in the dim hours of dawn we once more boarded our ship and took off on a mission that was going to turn out to be one of the most unusual I ever took part in after we got squared away attention all members of the crew at Eastman is the final dope on our mission is called Operation Valley High it will take us completely around the world we'll pick up a full load of volunteer combat paratroops in Paris those troops are French and will be flown by us to window China so that they may take part in the battle for DNBN full from there we will proceed to the Philippines where we'll pick up a cargo to be delivered to the States if you've been reading the papers I don't have to tell you what's going on at DNBN full but at this mission is of vital importance Lieutenant Johnson will give the information later on our route but our first stop is it all he failed Paris landing time 1800 hours that's all DNBN full isn't that where they're fighting the last ditch battle side yeah it is Adams and it's a tough one they're surrounded they've got something like 11,000 men left against maybe four times as many enemy sure sounds rugged does that mean we'll drop in there I doubt it from what I know they're landing strips under fire already it's probably not big enough anyway for the globetrotter we'll find out soon enough the sooner the better side yeah the sooner the better we'd find out all right but we had some traveling to do first during the flight from west over to Paris the crew is a pretty thoughtful bunch I can tell you and this time it wasn't because of their new colleague Bush on the way we picked up some tailwinds and arrived a few minutes earlier than 1800 we could see the lights at Paris in the Eiffel Tower but on that evening they were just the lights of another city AF 5 4 2 0 3 to Orly Tower final approach geared down and locked over a major brought the ship around the beautiful approach turn and the globetrotter touched down in a perfect landing while she was being refueled I finished filling out my flight and fuel records and then reported to the crew shack sergeant there's hot chow for you and the crew in the mess hall and after that you can grab some sleep right sir they'll have the troops here by then ready to load it's sergeant Ali all set for them yes sir good see you then oh 600 oh 600 hours 6 a.m. and it's no different there in Paris and it is back in the States gray chilly our ship has been pre-flighted everything is ready waiting for our payload in a few minutes the buses pull up there's no dawdling around the nose ramp of our ship is down and with daily supervising the tough-looking French paratroopers 220 strong marched up and into their seats along the two low decks the nose ramp is brazed in a few minutes we're airborne 80 500 miles to go I ran to my desk checking the engine and flight performance then turned it over to the second engineer while I dropped down to take a look see below everything's under control here search too much if you ask me too much elucidate daily well it's those French since they come on poor there's been a peep out of me all look as glum as bush does well maybe they got a reason to I guess they have look such we've carried plenty of troops before you know how they sort of yuck it up among themselves and it's good to it helps them to relieve their tension exactly these guys just sitting there seats period come on take a look you see what I mean just sitting there looking at the floor who's in charge of that guy over there I think it's a sergeant I'll talk to him hello sergeant I'm sergeant Baker crew chief bonjour mon sergeant you speak English only little how you men feel feel oh they feel not good we're croix the battle the ambient few we think maybe we come too late oh well sergeant we'll do our best to get them there as fast as we can look if they want anything just let us know okay mercy okay see what I mean such yeah yeah that impressed and for guys it is soon gonna be on the front line and what you mean there ought to be something that could be done to buck them up yeah sure but what I mean even if we didn't know the language there's nobody in the crew you could call a gloom chaser now that potter's yeah boy we could use him now while daily and I stood there talking bush passed by us going down the line of men and pouring hot coffee for him as he bent down the pour a cup for the French sergeant I saw something that started the wheels turning in my head a bush yes I just saw your harmonica sticking out of your shirt pocket I I got an idea you know these guys are gonna be in a tough spot very soon they need some cheering up how about playing a couple of tunes for my gosh sergeant I don't know I'm I'm not too hot on the harmonica so what play what you know well I yeah I still got a finished pour on this car I'll take over for you well okay I'll try but I play anything let me think a minute hey how's this oh no no no no that's too sad too slow place of let me see some lively okay that's okay keep it loud and strong from the flight deck a little trouble with one of the generators I got it straightened out and then took over for my second engineer for the next two hours when matured duty was finished you can bet I headed for the ladder down to midship right away as they got halfway down the ladder I could hear above the roar of the engines I looked around the deck and what a difference instead of being gloomy and glum and standing besides the hatching down the lower decks that both decks that here was airmen bushes face red nice sparkling blow on his head oh whoever said music was a universal language knew what he was talking for the rest of the trip to window china with stops refueling and rest the French paratroopers were relaxed and cheerful and in sign language and pigeon English and French they swapped experiences with the guys in my crew there were a lot of friendship started that trip some that continued up till now by letter and others that well we'll cut short and then at last we were flying over into China attention crew and passengers stand by prepared for any emergencies that is all a few minutes later we landed safely at the field in a matter of seconds the globetrotters nose ramp was lowered and the French paratroopers started disembarking as they did so airmen bush pulled out his harmonica standing at the head of the ramp that was one straight back proud bunch of soldiers that marched down that and as the sergeant who was the last one to leave came by bush he stopped merci moncomon merci he stepped back one pace saluted bush and turned around smartly and followed the others down the ramp and as he passed by me I saw tears glistening in his eyes and I knew without looking that his weren't the only eyes they were just a little bit damp but not the last we heard shortly after they left we again took off continued the Clark Field in the Philippines as soon as I got the chance I got hold of bush yes Sarge that was a great job you did with that harmonic you know that's something I bet a French general would give his right arm to be able to do to be able to relax those men and you know renew their courage anybody could have done it I'm I'm glad I was able to help I can see you are you you feel you feel better now you did before right yes Sarge a lot bush tell me something what has really been bothering you since you joined up with us well Sarge I I don't mind telling you now but that first day in the em club when I when I talked to you remember yeah I remember well I heard what you and daily said about the guy I was replacing and from the way the crew felt about him I thought I'd never be able to fill his shoes boy you have filled them already as of now you are officially and otherwise a full-fledged member of this crew and it'll be a sad day if we ever have to lose I just about finishes it I said then it would be a sad day of bush ever had to leave us well that's the crew you're here marching into the club now with the bush we're gonna have another farewell party it's for bush this time he's being transferred to another C124 as assistant crucial what when I saw you stand in here I figured you were Bush's replacement right that's right sir well I I thought I'd tell you his story so you know you have a chance to do just as well as he did another man's shoes and the greatest crew with a greatest ship in a world of globetrotting come on and you make an investment you wanted to pay off right well fellas how about those years you invested in the service learning skills gaining experience valuable to yourself and your country you can make those years pay off in big dividends today by becoming a member of the United States Air Force yes indeed if you've been in any of the armed forces you may be eligible to enlist in the Air Force in a gray that'll be a real pleasant surprise to you you see the Air Force needs men skilled in certain important fields and you may be just such a man if so the Air Force offers you an opportunity to put your previous service experience to work and to collect on those credits you've earned toward a comfortable retirement your Air Force recruiter has a folder full of details so you write or visit him right away ask for the prior service man's folder today and tomorrow you're better off in the United States Air Force this has been another program on proudly we have presented transcribed in cooperation with this radio station proudly we hail is produced by the recruiting publicity center in New York for the United States Air Force and this is dick Herbert speaking and inviting you to tune in the same station next week for another interesting story on proudly we hail


Welcome to this Christmas special of DMTV. I am Sotiris Mitralexis and I work for Metta, the Centre for Post-Capitalist Civilisation, to which this episode shall be dedicated. And the episode's title is All I Want For Christmas is Post-Capitalism. Usually, for such Christmas special, it is customary that a fire place is in the background, unfortunately, albeit that as it may, this is not the case right now, yet our political struggles are more fiery than our office's infrastructure. Metta, the Centre for Post-Capitalist Civilisation, will soon celebrate its first birthday. It was founded in 2020 as a think tank combining research and art in order to serve and assist Mera25, Greece's parliamentary party, DM25, the Pan-European movement, Democracy in Europe, and the Progressive International. Yet we have prepared an introductory video for most of this, prepared by the artist Jo Kanima, Yorgos Karayorgos, dear director Dimitris Ografakis, please present this one minute video. We are currently at a crossroads. We find ourselves at a threshold. Something is over. What we are experiencing can no longer be properly described as capitalism. The old tools are broken. The old rules do not apply anymore. Something begins. Something after capitalism as we knew it. From a dystopic, techno-feudalist future with even more powerful economic oligarchies, stride the prospects of justice, equality, prosperity. Metta, the centre for post-capitalist civilisation, examines and researches this threshold and it tries to propose ways out towards a sustainable distribution of wealth, a sustainable use of technology, a sustainable relationship to our environment, to our labour, our society and our creativity. Not only via research, but also via culture and art, which is not simply to depict the world, but to change it. Metta, centre for post-capitalist civilisation. Metta's mission is to become a unique international intellectual, artistic and scholarly and cultural hub for radical progressive movements across Europe and beyond. A centre not only for researching post-capitalism, but also for working towards its civilisation. For we live in politically eschatological times. Late modernity is expiring. We know that an era is coming to a close, or rather that it has already come to a close. And capitalism is silently being replaced by a technologically advanced feudalism. The contradicting terminus encapsulated in the global permanent crisis forms the least of our symptoms. The primacy of bankrupt entities, what has been called bankruptocracy, the limits of financialisation, the emergence of wholly new types of automation, the development of artificial intelligence, the radical digitisation of everything, and the promised dystopian metaverses, all these merely indicative facts circumscribe a system that cannot be properly called capitalism anymore. We already witness the first stages of an emerging era, an emerging reality that can only be described by that which it succeeds. We live in post-capitalist times. These may eventually prove to be utopian, or dystopian, or anything in between. Meta, the centre for post-capitalist civilisation, strives to understand this future by studying the past, and correctly, hopefully correctly, diagnosing the present. And the turbulences of the gradual transition to any possible post-capitalism are to be witnessed by all. The oligarchic decline of liberal democracy engenders countless variations of authoritarian tendencies. The supply chain of tributes for the global minotaur are increasingly interrupted. Novel desiderata for emancipation are articulated, the chasms between mega-cities and provinces nurture silent, cold civil wars. The emergence of a non-anglophone, non-Atlantic, non-liberal, non-bipartisan state as the planet's largest economy is just around the corner, overturning a two centuries old order. The changes in global demographics and geopolitics are vertiginous, climate change is threatening our very existence. Transformations of gigantic proportions radically reshape the world before our very eyes. Now, terms with a post or meta-prefix do not necessarily run on parallel courses. They describe a new reality by citing what this reality succeeds. They describe thresholds. However, now that late modernity is reaching its final thresholds, realities described by terms with a post-prefix or meta in Greek seem to be reaching a convergence. Post-capitalism, post-secularism, post-colonialism, post-modernity and the list goes on. We are reaching, we have already reached, a common threshold. This post or meta-prefix declares a lucid realisation that something has ended, but also a certain opacity concerning that which now commences. Meta, the centre for post-capitalist civilisation, explores that which now commences and strives to achieve lucidity in all of its varied aspects via research, discursive and academic means, publications, conferences and seminars, art and culture. What comes after an end of times? What kind of reckoning does this day of reckoning dictate? These questions form the general field of our enquiry through art and research, argument and poetry. Meta will strive to help progressive movements break with a dismal present and imagine the world anew to grasp our present historical moment so as to pave the way to a world worth fighting and living for. These are the founding, as it were, words of the academic sector of Meta. Meta has two sectors, the academic one and the cultural one. As it strives, as I just said, to combine art and research, argument and poetry. But let us ground the floor to the chairman of the steering committee of Meta, a noted artist Dana Estratou. She had recorded a video for our launching event, about which I will tell you after a few words from her. Dear director, please present our chairman Dana Estratou to the world. Well, it is said that from the historical point of view, the pandemics forced the people to come and throw themselves into their past and imagine the world anew. This is not a different pandemic. It is a dilemma, a dilemma between you and the world and the future. We can choose to continue to be together in the depths of our expectations and our goals, our stubbornness, our negative attitudes and our bad ideas. The dark rivers and the mollified skies behind us. Or we can destroy them with weapons, with a few weapons. To imagine a new world and to be ready to fight for it. Today we are moving to Meta, the center for the semi-capitalist culture. From Pse, we are starting a lot of ambitious projects. From the title of Kiemonos, some basic decisions are being made. The center for the semi-capitalist culture is not yet an institution or a think tank. We chose, with an emphasis, the word culture. Why? Because for us, the business and the land, the science and the art, the research and the music are all the weapons needed against the reforms of organized solidarity, of oppression, of free will. Meta will be supported by two basic actions, from one, the Pse, the art, the creation. And from the other, the research, the academy and the education. But why, with the specific capitalistic culture? Is it an institution? Is it a belief? Or is it a prejudice? It is also the three, because we live in an art, a capital. From the crisis of 2008 and the attacks of an anarchist capital, to the pandemic and the parallel between our communities, and even more. Capitalistic businesses, either have a bad feeling and are being protected by the central banks, or have been transformed into a state-of-the-art state, like Amazon or Facebook. Something has been completed, we know it, we see it. What we live, can no longer be described as capitalism, it has been removed from its roots. The old jobs have been lost, the old laws simply no longer exist. Something has begun, something after capitalism, as we know it, but we don't know yet what. In this period of transition, everything is effective. From a local future, technologically empowered authorities, and even more powerful economic authorities in which we are fighting, to the point of a bright future, of equality, of prosperity, to which we will be able to fight again, and if we fight hard to save it. This struggle, for saving a human with capitalist culture, needs to be supported by the goal. Without its support, the social presence of the party was halted on the 25th. However, the goal is to overcome the Greek background. The revolution is to become the birthplace of technology and ideas, for the Pan-European movement of the European Republic on the 25th, but also of the progressive nation, of the progressive international. It is the first center or institute of the Greek party with international support, but also of administration. Besides that, our contribution to the revolution is also a part of the individuality of the whole world. And a last personal discussion. As a craftsman, as a craftsman, I would like to leave you with nothing other than my works, the artistic disasters. However, traveling around the world, in the context of the creation of the artistic works, I had already been very impressed by the global economic crisis of 2008, starting with a serious problem with the crisis of the environment, the uncertainty of democracy. After this crisis, already in 2010, we had the opportunity to meet with Gianni Varoufakis for the discussion of art and politics, as well as the organization Vital Space and the Vital Space Projects. It is very strong that I do not believe that at a time of great uncertainty and economic and social crisis, modern art can create a deeper connection around the most important and vital parts of our times, and to improve the quality of art in the conditions that make up our present and future. With the way of the business and of the business, with the way of the culture, after the end of capitalism, as we know it. We are starting something new, we are starting something nice. We would like to have you as speakers, and all of you who are participating. What you just watched was a few words by Danai Strato from our launching event on the 13th of May 2020. Due to the lockdown, this was unfortunately, regrettably, a digital event with which we officially launched our center. As mentioned previously, this center has two sectors. The academic sector, where I run most of the things, and the cultural artistic sector. The director of this sector is Nikos Kanarelys, also a noted artist in Greece. And please, do watch a minute or two of his message at that launching event. As a result of the pandemic and the lockdown, the sector is working towards the end of the crisis with the pandemic, without even realizing and imagining the new world. The cultural sector of the sector is dealing with the diagnosis of the period of crisis and creating a vision for a capitalistic future through technology. A platform for performance, statements, speeches and dialogues. We live in a controlled society. We are multilateral and pluralistic. We are experiencing the diversity in the different. We do not have the right to have it. And we deserve the respect, even though we are different. Walter Benjamin said, there is never a demarcation that is not the same-day demarcation of barbarity. Otherwise, technology is a trauma. Technology is a crisis. Technology is a threat. Technology is a race. In technology, it is included in the whole society and with its barbarity. We must realize that technology is a political expression as it refers to the freedom of the human and the logical expressions and actions. It affects as many people who produce it as many as those who take it. And in a critical way, it has the ability to make us think and imagine. Technology can change if not the world, certainly the perceptions and the values of people. It can make criticism and criticize. It can influence people and make us see things in a different way and make us see another reality, another hidden option. It has the ability to cover the issues that are being discussed for economic or political reasons. We called it our effort to focus on the multi-capitalism of civilization. As Chaucis said, civilization remains a part of the social society. As a matter of fact, the social identity and the self-sacrifice of three important institutions and the social community. This is the recognition of interaction and participation. Thanks to the culture, the members of the social community get to know each other, get involved in the social community, get rid of the human identity and get involved in life through this interaction. So, with the multi-capitalism of civilization, we present the total and spiritual values that will characterize our way of life in the social community. The occasion of which the Meta, the centre for post-capitalist civilization, was initially founded, was Merot25's entrance into the Greek Parliament, the Hellenic Parliament. Thus, we are able to set up an institute, a centre for primary education and political analysis. However, we strived for a more international nature, also in order to support the progressive international in Diem25, in the context of which we truly boast about the advisory board we have at Meta and the collaborations we have managed to forge in the context of this. The advisory board hosts international figures, internationally known intellectuals, artists, political thinkers and people we deem important, we look up to and we collaborate with these thinkers and artists in order to further our causes and our future projects. For example, we'll soon launch our series of meta-dialogues, that is, dialogues between two or more members of our advisory board, discussing about our current dismal predicament and the possible ways out of this and the way to a better post-capitalist future. Please do take a look at the messages, some of the members of our advisory board, which you can all pay use online, the messages that they have offered to Meta for its launching, the greeting they have provided us with. Every member of the advisory board has also contributed the perspective on post-capitalism, how they see the future currently in front of us unfolding and how they would hope that a different future could indeed unfold. We hope to publish a short booklet on that, both in English and in Greek. Apart from that, though, and even during the lockdown, we strived to offer a number of events discussing both current political events and a more wide perspective to both our English, our international and our Greek audience. In this context, we attempted the following events. Due to Meta being Athens-based and due to its seeds having been planted in the Greek Spring of 2015, our very first event was with Professor Nikos Tucharakis from the University of Athens, who provided us with an insider's view of the undermined negotiation of 2015, of how the Spring of 2015 was annulled by the very government that had as its mandate to materialize it. We continued with a thorough discussion with Professor Saul Newman from Goldsmiths College, London on post-capitalism and post-anarchism entitled at the threshold post-capitalism, post-anarchism, and the pandemic. And we had the great joy of discussing with Dr. Antara Haldar of the University of Cambridge the future of the history of capitalism, that is her research, on capitalism from an interdisciplinary perspective. This was indeed a very interesting discussion concerning Greece and its never-ending crisis. We had also the opportunity to discuss how there is a Tina, there is no alternative of conservatism in Greece after it's turning into a dead colony. And the question that we thoroughly discussed was whether there is an alternative and what this alternative would look like. We went on with a seminar by both Yanis Varoufakis and Nikos Theoharakis on precisely our dead prison predicament and how we may escape this. Sexism, sexual violence and the abuse of the vulnerable was also an issue that concerned us immensely and which we discussed with Greek experts on the topic. In March, we organized a discussion on police violence and the new law and order doctrine in Greece as well as on the mutations of the concept of security. This is particularly timely in Greece as police violence is on the rise. We even had an MP of Marathon D5, a member of parliament being hit by a policeman. Well, Greece is the country where members of the parliament may be routinely hit by policemen as it seems Athens is the city where democracy was born and where it has come to die. Apart from all this, we have a weekly radio show on Greece's Marathon D5, very own digital radio station, Radiomera, Metavasis, which is a program of theory and discussion and analysis by Meta, the center for post-capital civilization, directed, organized and presented by Kostas Raptis, a veteran journalist working with us as a policy analyst and the press officer of Meta. From the 12th to the 22nd of July, after months of confinement and enforced cultural eclipse lockdown, Meta set up a feast on the road with six stops throughout Greece, Athens, Patra, Ioannina, Kavala, Thessaloniki and Volos, our buluki or Meta troupe. The video you shall see offers a glimpse of some highlights and its backstage. At the same time, if there is one field that has been hit harder than any other, during the pandemic and the lockdown, this is the artistic space, the cultural space. Artists have been declared more or less superfluous. Their activity is something like a hobby in Greece. Therefore, the capacity to professionally collaborate with distinguished artists from different backgrounds was also one of the tools of our buluki or a tour around Greece and not confined to Athens, our all-consuming capital, as is usually the case. The outcome thankfully has exceeded our expectations. Our artists gave their best and the reception of our buluki by literally thousands of citizens all over Greece were clearly informed at the beginning of the event about the purposes of Meta and its political connection to Merot 25 was truly touching. Our Meta buluki completed its tour of six stations all over Greece and organized a feast for every citizen with free entrance to the public, collective space that we were deprived of. Thomas Agrafiottis, Dimitra Nikitea, Ira Katsouda and Konstantiz Pistiolis starred in a troupe of music, laughter, critical gaze and a re-examination of the tradition of our country in a future-oriented, nay, post-capitalist even perspective. We warmly thank all the artists and everybody who has supported us in this and please, dear audience, take a glimpse of the backstage of this feast. It was very important. The characters, the actors, the actors, the actors did the same thing. They had their own packaging, some figures which were covered in a very reputable, so comical, so heroic. They had their own packaging and the basic technical equipment and they arrived in a village, a morning and they left their work and sent it to some coffee shop. They made a positive change with the coffee shop. They presented the work and the next day they left. And of course, it was one night when the whole village was concerned because the theater had arrived in the village. Welcome to our bubble tea. The oldest one can be received and the rest of you surely have heard of it. The famous bubble teasers that were being distributed in the Greek country. We decided to follow their movements from city to city. In a renewed form, in a... with a bubble tea. Don't light up! Here in the bubble tea, we were a bit confused because, let me tell you, I was thinking about it. Because it's very strange, the whole thing and with the audience. First, the actors, then us, then all of us. We didn't talk much, but it's in the beginning that the audience won't be the new one. But everyone here will have good performances. Miran, and we'll see today a stand-up comedy. To avoid seeing stand-up comedies, Zota, Naena and Kirokrot.   She'll be at the end of her mother-in-law. This scene is self-created. It was an idea of someone I don't know and I don't know them. But it has an amazing idea to combine three, four different artists who... They have no relationship with each other. However, there is a connection, a common ground. That's why we can all tell each other that we accept each other's differences. At least, yes. No, that's not what you're supposed to say. After the lockdown, thankfully, we were able to reclaim the public square with actual flesh and blood events. In the context of which, we are trying to forge a series of three events that would be theoretically important for articulating the framework for any better post-capitalism than the dismal, techno feudalist post-capitalism that is already right now in front of us. The first event was on basic income, on universal basic income, with Professor Guy Standing, a very important figure in the international movement for basic income, both in theory and in practice. This was, I propose, the Greek publication of his book on basic income, and it included a discussion with Yanis Varoufakis, which you may find on Meta's YouTube channel in English with Greek subtitles. Our second event in this series was with Professor Vasili Kostakis from Taltec in Tallinn, Estonia, on P2P, Peer to Peer, and the Digital Commons, as not a pathway to post-capitalism on its own terms, but a potent tool in order to achieve one aspect of post-capitalism, yet a tool that does not lie in a utopian future, a theoretical utopian future, but is here with us right now in flesh and blood. The third event in this series, which we are planning but have not realized as of yet, concerns the technology of blockchain. The technology of blockchain as a potentially liberating tool against, over and against the reality of Bitcoin, which, according to Yanis Varoufakis' analysis, is simply good old capitalism. So we are planning an event on how blockchain has the potential to become a tool in liberating us, yet crypto on its own terms cannot do that and might actually prove to be detrimental to this aim. We have also set up a series of working papers of peer-reviewed research papers, well aptly entitled meta-working papers, in the context of which we're also planning a series of papers on a post-capitalist how-to, a handy how-to guide to post-capitalism, because we have to give an answer to three pressing questions if we are to indeed articulate a post-capitalism that is not purely theoretical, but indeed has a map, a pathway on the table. The question of production and the means of production in post-capitalism, the question of allocation that is an alternative to the market as it is now, and the question of decision-making that is democracy and post-capitalist democracy. This has already been set up. Now that you're watching this, at least one of the papers, a paper on participatory planning that is on the question of allocation has been published on our website, MetaCPC.org, by Professor Robin Hanell. And more of them will follow, and we are also planning some video tutorials, video educating material in Greek and potentially also in English on the basis of these dedicated meta-working papers. Yet we also have meta-working papers, both published and soon to be published, which do not form part of this particular post-capitalist how-to series. Of course, when we named our center for post-capitalist civilization Meta, we had no idea that one of our primary techno feudal overlords, Mark Zuckerberg, would also rename Facebook as a company into Meta and propose his dystopian metaverse where the whole of our lives will be digitized and take place therein, yet this space, this new digital universe will belong to a certain person, will be part and a thief of a certain company. Of course, this might be coincidental or rather not because also Facebook's or other meta's coin, digital coin, digital token, Libra, was renamed into Diem a number of months ago. But aside from this all, this techno feudal overlord has proposed a very dystopian post-capitalism, which unfortunately is already here, Apithanikomiria, as we would say in Greece, which are already being invested in this dystopian future. Meta has no millions, much less zillions, but we are trying in order to support the work of Mera25, DM25 and the Progressive International to articulate an alternative, not a dystopian alternative, not only a theoretically utopian alternative, a post-capitalist alternative that we can indeed turn into a flesh and blood reality. The whole discussion on post-capitalism, on the multiple post-capitalisms that lie in front of us as possible realities is starting right now. Another now is indeed possible. Would you like to take part in that conversation? That being said, and given that this is a Christmas special, may I wish to all of you, Merry Christmas or a merry holiday season. Ho, ho, ho!


Sorry, I'm a little bit late, I'm trying to find, like, so big here. So I'm Robin, from Paris originally, and I'm here to present you about what we do in my company basically, which is called Common, and yeah, in one sentence we are a cooperative for circular electronics. So what does that mean? So yeah, as you know, we still are generally picking in a linear business model, which means exploitation, production, distribution, and then we throw things out and we hop, they are recycled, but actually for e-waste, only 20% of e-waste are collected, so I'm not speaking about recycled, collected, so there is problems, of course, at each and every step of this business model, and particularly with electronic, because e-waste is also the faster growing flow of waste, actually, and we have a big problem with resources. I'm not speaking about environment and working conditions, there's a problem with resources, it's for Indium, I don't know, do you know what is Indium, what does it is for, no? I don't have any specialist about raw material here, no. Indium is to make the screen, the touch screen, right, to make the screen responsive, and as you can see here, we will reach the production peak in 2030, so it's almost tomorrow, right. So how do we do, do you have a solution for that? What do we do when we have no Indium, no more? Come back to Blackberry. So I think that the brainstorm, so some people, they say, when I ask this question, sometimes people say recycling, which could make sense, the problem is when you look in the actual technology that we use for recycling, can you see Indium, Indium is here, so it means Indium at the maximum of the current technology, we can get 10% back. In reality, it's more 1 to 2%. So sadly, recycling is not yet a solution because the technology is not good enough, and because most of the time we don't have modular devices, we put all devices in the mixer, and then we try to take back the raw materials with chemical processes, and we are very good at taking back plastic, but Indium, because it's too small, it's completely diluted with other things, so it's just greenwashing for the moment when Apple tells you that they're recycling plastic. So one thing which is important to understand is that the problem with the leading our business model is that those big companies, the producers, how do they make money? They sell devices, right? But in Europe, the market is already saturated. As you can see here, we've reached a peak, and now each year there is less, it doesn't grow no more, because 90% of the people in Europe, they already have a smartphone, a computer, sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes a lot in their clubboards. But the producers, they still need to make money, right, they still need to sell, and how do you sell, how do you keep on selling on a market which is already completely saturated? Any answer? Plan of Solicense. You have no choice. Either you diversify your business model, you know, like Google selling data, etc., or you use Plan of Solicense, and the more the market is saturated, the more you have to use Plan of Solicense so that as a consumer, at some point, they need to buy again. Can you hear me well? It's not perfect, right? More way? Not in front, like here, like that? Can you still hear me? Yeah, okay. Okay, better, indeed. So yeah, and how do we, it's like a trap, if you want this business model where you have to keep on selling, the market is already saturated, so you make everything you can so that people they have to buy again, right? They have treated a lot of Plan of Solicense material, so you glue the battery, you know, so you can change your battery, you have to buy a new phone, software, you install a new operating system, and on the old phone, it's too demanding, so you can't use WhatsApp anymore on your phone, you have to buy a new one, and marketing, that we all know. Just an example of hardware and software, Plan of Solicense, in France now we have to use the Reparability, so Reparability Index, you know, and so you see the difference between a fair phone, which is a modular phone, and the iPhone, the fair phone, you can open it, fix it yourself, the iPhone, it's more difficult, and here you have Plan of Solicense, right, with Apple having 20 models since 2013, even more, no, it's not updated, and you can see the note, Apple have been fined 25 million euros for deliberately slowing down other iPhones model, so it's called Software Plan of Solicense, and it's forbidden, so Apple had to pay for that. Yeah, and that's a little slide about how much a phone is used, how long a phone is used nowadays, and how long, you know, to offset the carbon emissions, et cetera, should a phone last at least. So as you can see, the average is three years, no, I think it goes slowly to four years because the devices are, you know, more and more expensive, but ideally the minimum would be 25 years, so you see we are far away, and that's what we try to do at Common, our goal is to make the devices last at least 25 years, so that's interesting, because if you just change the business model from a linear business model to a leasing business model, you change completely the intensive. At Common we are cooperative, and we lease eco-designed devices, right, so we are leasing the devices, so the clients they pay every month, for that all these include in the price of course, but so if you think about it, we earn money because the devices last, right, when new devices break, we have to replace it, we lose money, it's exactly the opposite, right, and on the tree level, like on the modular, so we have to do exactly the opposite of plan of solicence, if we want to earn money, basically, so on the material level, we have to work with modular devices that we can fix easily, on the software level, we have to use with alternative operating system, Linux and Lineage OS and EOS, so that we can flash the device, so we can still use them on old devices, and on the marketing level, we have to make the prices so that the longest you keep the devices, the less you pay, so you see those three levels, we do exactly the opposite, and of course the leasing has also the advantage of collecting 100% of the zero e-waste, because if you pay for a device, you're not going to leave it in your cupboard, you're going to send it back, because you don't want to pay for nothing, so we combine modularity of the products and hardware as a service, which means because the devices, they stay the property of the cooperative, the cooperative has interest to fix them and lease them again, because the cooperative is losing money. So, yeah, the idea is to make a system where everybody has interest to make the devices last longer, and of course, you still make money in this system, the producers are still making money, and if the ones can even lease them directly, Fairphone began to lease directly the devices in the Netherlands, so they still make money, but of course it's way more sustainable, because they have interest to fix the devices, they will create modular devices, and you can fix, if it's modular, you can fix the broken devices with the spares coming from other devices, so not only it is more ecological, because you don't have to produce the spares again, you can use the spares of broken devices to fix the other devices, but it's also more economically, more economically, because you don't have to pay for them, so not only it's more sustainable, but it reduces the cost of the companies, and at Common we decided to do that in the legal framework of the cooperative to put everyone around the table, so the clients can be members in our cooperative, but also the producers and the investors, so maybe the most interesting part is the produce with which we work, so most of you may know Fairphone, the most known modular smartphone in the market from the Netherlands, but there is also producers in Germany actually, Shiftphone, I don't know if you know them, they are close to Frankfurt, and there is a French producer, Crosscall, and from the laptops, Y, it's from Switzerland, Nega IT, it's a mouse, it's also from Germany, and you can also, you know, it's completely modular, and for headset there is Jero Street, and it's an Iser that you know, so yeah, just a very short demo, like normally with a headset, when the jack is dead, you have to throw the whole thing away, right, and here, just put it away, if you have a false contact, you just change this piece here, and you put a new jack with a mic if you need to do home office, so you see, it's smart, because you can also customize, right, in the future, maybe you will never change phone anymore, you will just add new component, like you do on a fix, right, computer, and it's not only more sustainable, more economically, it's also, there is also a lot of advantage for the clients, because all is included in the price, if they need a new battery, if they need, you know, the phone is, the screen is broken, if they have any problem with software, hardware, they just send us a message, and it's already, the support is included in the price, and it's the same for companies, so for companies it's super interesting, because they don't have to hire a technician, you know, they pay, they don't have to buy the devices, they know that if any problems happen, it's already included in the price. So yeah, that's the kind of service we propose, so anything break, configuration, battery replacement, the results are the insurance, if it's stolen or lost, and actually you pay to have someone, to have something which works, you know, so yeah, if at some point the phone really doesn't work anymore, we'll just replace it, yeah, and that's the price, I don't know, in English, Gestaltung, yeah, so each year you pay less and less, but you keep the same level of services, of course, and that's some example of prices for the B2B, so you see it's reasonable, so to say, because of this circular business model, as I said, it's also reduced your cost, because we focus only on a few devices, and so we can fix them with the spares coming from broken devices, so all the spares, we don't have to buy them again, so it's quite reasonable price, yeah, that's a few articles and things we got, a few of our clients, it's interesting actually what Coman is doing, because we are showing that this model works, the big players, they did it Xerox, did it for the printer, B2B printer, like if you are a school or company, you want a printer for Xerox, you don't buy it, they put it, they put the printer at your disposal, you pay pro copy, and they redesigned all printers, you know, so they are modular between each other, so they just, when it's broken, it still belongs to Xerox, and they just put the part which is broken, replace it with another part, and so they really can, they write in their sustainability report that they spare tons and tons and tons of raw material every year, which is true, and the last iPhone, I don't know if you have seen, you can open it back and forth, so you know, also the big players, they are conscious that there is a program with resources, for Apple, for example, you know, the people buying Apple, they are trapped in the ecosystem whatsoever, so instead of buying a new iPhone every two, three years, you know, Apple could just make them pay monthly and redesign, you know, the old production line to make it modular, I guess that's what they should do, you know, just on a logical point of view, and I think that's also what they will do at some point, because there will be a problem with the resources, with China, when you look at, you know, 90% of the raw material they are produced in China, and not with the geopolitical context, yeah, I mean, you know, those people know about it, yeah, exactly, and if you want to know more about common, we are based in Strasbourg, so now in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and exactly if you can go on our website or ask me questions if you want to know more about it, yeah, do you have any questions? There was one, because there was a German company that contacted us for that, they wanted to do routers as a service, et cetera, for schools, and so we did a small, you know, market study, and actually there is a brand from Switzerland, and they do that, like routers as a service, et cetera, and yeah, so it already exists, and I think they are quite successful. I don't remember the name of the company, I can check afterwards, you can send me an email and I'll check if you're interested, I can find it again, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and so I was just wondering how much, how big of a percentage of the original product can actually last, like five years or 25 years, like, do you repair the parts and then put them in other devices, like, or can you extract the material more efficiently now that you can replace just the screen, can you maybe then retract more of the resources? Yeah, yeah, like I don't know if you've seen a fair phone inside, I'll show you, but you can open it, and it's like a puzzle, right, there is seven modules, and if you just, your mic is broken, you just change the mic, right, if you just choose the battery, choose the battery. So your question is very interesting because as you said, you know, if you're new, for example, what they do in America to force people buying new phones is that they slowly disconnect 2G and soon, you know, the 3G so that you don't have internet no more with your phones, so you have to buy a new one, you know, compatible with 4G and 5G, it's mostly pushed by the, I mean, there is a technology part we can speak about, but it's also software plan obsolescence to force consumers to. So that's where regulation is so important because somewhere in the regulation we have to go further that it's already banned, you know, software-based plan obsolescence, Apple has been fired for it, but then we need to go further and, you know, to also prevent, to consider, you know, forcing people to buy a new phone because 2G or 3G are not supported anymore, that should be also considered as plan obsolescence, you know, we have to go further. But for that, as I said, you know, we need to change the business model because as long as companies rely on selling to survive, you know, there is no other way than plan obsolescence or selling data or things like that, you know, we could think about it, you know. Apple, Google, they also make a lot of money, you know, with Apple stores and selling data, like, you know. But, you know. Yeah, it's basically a regulation, and that's what I suppose, so that's what I'm thinking. Business model and regulation. I think that the richest companies can continue to sue, repair shops, for instance. Yeah. Thank you. The device instead of owning it, the owner of the device is the company who rents it out, come on in this case. That must come with some restrictions to what the user of the device can do. Yeah. What are those restrictions in this case? And also, how can we avoid that if, let's say, the restrictions are not bad for you, but like when Apple starts leasing their device, that they keep a remote to basically actually, like, they could reset the device at a distance, track you, like, it's their device, right? Yeah, that's a good question. Actually, in leasing models, like hardware as a service model, the general condition of sales, they are always very, very, very long, because as you said, you know, you need to, because as you say, the devices, they still are the goods of the companies, and so that's why the companies have to put a lot of limitation to avoid abuse, et cetera, you know. So in our case, you know, we have a few limitations about most, for example, you are not supposed to, I mean, you can install another operating system than Android 11 or EOS, but then the support is not guaranteed anymore. If you install your own version of lineage, you know, or you try to install, I don't know what, you know, you can do it, but you know, we don't provide support anymore because, you know, it's impossible.  At some point, we have to make you pay, right? So, yeah, all those considerations, you have to take them in account. Your question about Apple, like, you know, who could be able to control the phones because they're still in the belonging of the company, it's a very good question. And that's the kind of question which has to be regulated in the, either by regulation on the law, you know, we say that's not, it's against privacy, it's not permitted, and also in the general condition of sales. You've got 25 years issue. So it's a common trend that the software and hardware requirements of, like, let's say, websites require more and more memory, more and more computing power, so getting more, more inefficient in some cases. So what's the guarantee that in 25, let's say just five years, the amount of RAM or CPU power that the device that you're renting or leasing is going to be able to handle, like, the same level of, like, usability to the user as it did five years ago because the same websites now take twice as much memory. So you also have, like, plans, like, okay, if the memory requirements are more, you can switch to a better memory. What do you do to the old memory module? So it's kind of the same question as you asked, right, because it depends on the environment. That's true, you know. If tomorrow we say only 5G is supported, everyone has to buy a phone again in this room, you know. So that's why regulation is so important. If you go on our website, it's made in a, it's coded with, I think it's called Leo. It's a static website, and it's super light. It's super fast, and it's super light in terms of size, you know. Is it really possible to regulate all websites to follow the same standard? I think, nowadays, we are at a point where, you know, if we assume a certain amount of sobriety, you know, what is inside here, it's sufficient for common news, you know.  So it has to do with sobriety, right? And if you want to continue to need even more and more and more power and more resources, and then we will have a problem, because as you say, it's impossible then to keep the same hardware and all. I mean, it's more difficult. Yeah, that's a choice, right? We have to make. Is it enough, what we have now? Or... Regulation. You talked about Indium in the beginning. So what do you do with components that come back to common? Because the Indium is still trapped in the e-waste. So does Common have plans for better recycling? We work with the producers, actually. We have a lot of Fairphone 2, which was the older model. And we... So first, we out of Android, Fairphone 2, we succeed to make 20 of them work again, you know. So we're still going to put them in the market, even if the phone is, I don't know, five, six, seven years old. And when it's broken, broken, Fairphone ask us to keep them because they are working on their own recycling strategy. And because it's interesting because it's modular, the recycling rate is a little bit better. Because, for example, you know that in a battery, you have more lithium. So you're going to recycle the battery separately and not to mix it, which is what we do with iPhone. No, they have these big machines, that's true. Sorry. When they are collected. Which is not the case. Why no laptop? Why? Why no laptop? We have also laptops. It's from this company. Why? It's a brand from Switzerland. But no, there is, I don't know if you followed, there is this project from America called Framework. And they want to create... Oh, is it a framework? Wow, amazing. And they want to go as far in the majority that you can change the main board, which is a big step because until now, you couldn't change the main board of the devices. That was the limit point. So we hope that we can work with them because we are super interested to, you know, it's really the future. If I may comment on this. I guess it's common that business notebooks are leased and you can clearly see the quality difference between consumer hardware and business hardware that way because they're meant to be leased. And if possible, not being serviced during that time period because that costs a lot of money. So they are very good quality and they go into aftermarket afterwards. And this is what I always recommend to my friends and family by a professional refurbished notebook. Yeah, yeah, completely. The thing with refurbishment is that it's good, you know, because in the good direction you make lifespan of the devices longer, but it doesn't solve the problem which is at the root, which is business model. So, you know, that's why we serve recycling, refurbishing. It's good, but if we don't attack the problem, you know, it's just part of the strategy of Apple, you know, having a new, they can also afford to bring a new iPhone on the market because they know that the people, they will buy it and they will sell it on the secondhand market. It doesn't solve the problem at the root. There's also Intel, we do the NUC stuff, you know, the NUC boxes and so on. And there's also hardware on the chip, basically, which you can put in into our shell, which is basically a notebook. So there are two or three generations now on a NUC shell. I think they're called like this. They have an empty notebook with only the keyboard, the battery and basic order for RAM and storage display. And you slot in your CPU and such as a unit itself, but you can also replace it later or change it later. And they try to keep one or two generations from CPU design with the same chip so you can reuse and upgrade. But it's not as much as a framework, but it's an option that not many people know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's really the future, you know. When you can use, you don't have to buy a new phone, you just put more memory, you just put more, you know, better battery, like maybe even a bigger screen, like, you know. Yeah, you change your CPU and such. Sometimes you can also change the RAM architecture with that, yeah, but the difference between the shells itself is often better screen and so on. Can you send me the name of the company? Intel. Intel does that. Yeah, Intel with their NUC stuff. Yeah, okay, yeah. I mean, you know, the people working in the industry, they have all those problems in mind, so they are slowly, but it's difficult because you need to change completely the way you do business. You know, it's not the same job to produce and to sell and to, you know, maintain devices. It's different a little bit. Sorry. A question for your, I suppose, business model or financing. So if you grow, the more you grow, the more capital you need to acquire more phones that you didn't rent out, and you obviously have a kind of cash flow gap in the years that people rent your phones. So how do you, what's the kind of long-term plan here? Because if you're wildly successful, then you have wildly a lot of debt to buy all these phones. Yeah, so the problem of what we're doing in terms of financing is that it's capital intensive because you need to buy the devices first to be able to. So we grown organically as a cooperative.  And then we got loans like that. So until now, you know, it has worked quite well. What we will do with producers that want to do that with us is that we buy the devices at the cheapest price, but then each month they got fees when the devices are rented. And so from our size, it's less capital intensive, and from their size, they have also a benefit to make the devices last longer. Because as long as the devices are in rent, they touch like, you know, fees, very fees. So you can make the whole system actually, you know, smarter, like so that really everyone has this interest to make the devices last. So that's something we are planning to do. I've got pretty much the same question, but for your marketing strategies, how big is your impact with your company, especially if you look at the big players, and what are your strategies to increase the market share? So at the moment we have, I'll just slide about it, more than 3,000 devices in circulation. Yeah, so the marketing, you know, basically that's that, you know, and for the company to explain that, you know, support is included, et cetera, and that actually we touch all the small and medium companies who don't want to pay a technician, who don't want to hire someone to manage the devices. And of course we explain, it's a lot of explanation, right, because you have to make understand people why it's interesting, because when people think about leasing, most of the time they say, oh no, it's just going to cost too much, you know, it's just a way to make me pay, you know, like for a long time. So you have to explain a lot, explain why, you know, the model makes sense and why it's actually, you know, the only business model who can be at the same time sustainable and rentable. So yeah, we have to explain a lot, you know, but it changed slowly, you know, because everybody gets aware of that. So no, we have lots of requests from journalists, like we will be on the German TV, et cetera, you know, but we have to explain, explain, explain, explain, and yeah, you know, yeah, marketing is explanation and that. Also research is, you know, we have lots of students, it's interesting to do research on that and it's a big part of marketing, you know, to show with figures that it's more sustainable, it's really a big part of soft, soft marketing research. Okay, then maybe for last question, because it's... Yeah. I was continuing to think which companies would be interesting to be involved in this idea. Like I'm thinking of, say, for instance, Philips, because Philips is a company making a tons of different products and not all of those products need the same computer, or the same capacity or processor power or such, but they use electronics in almost all their smart devices, right? So do you work with any company that sort of re-use components for different purposes so you don't put it back in the phone? You use the processor for, I don't know, a dishwasher or something else? Not yet, but that's clearly the future. It's clearly what we would like to achieve with our partners, you know, that for example, even if, for example, that's a Fairphone 3, I can't put any of those components in the Fairphone 4, you know? And there is a research gap here, clearly we should be able to fix the Fairphone 4 with some components of the Fairphone 3, you know, it should be possible. I know that chip phones, they are more innovative in this way. They want to do something in this direction. So, you know, I encourage them. There seems to be a gap between the private consumer market and like, you can call the, I mean, I'm thinking, for instance, most digital things like escalators or whatever, they use microcontrollers and those are often quite standardized. I don't know, you can, with an Arduino, for instance, control so many different things. But maybe if you, I don't know the answer, but you can check, maybe Xerox does that for the printer, because they have interest to be able to put a CPU for any printer on any other one, you know, to fix them. So they may be at the stage where, you know, them, because it's in their interest, once again, you know, they make money because they can do that. So they may be quite advanced on the topic. Xerox is in the research, in the study case, you know, the number one for this business model, like modularity and product as a service, Xerox was the option here. So it's documented. So yeah, have a look if you find the answer, I'm interesting. Thank you. I have some flyers if you want to, you know, have more, right there, it's in my bag then. Exactly. Is there any other question, do we stop here? You can also come to speak to me afterwards if you want. Okay, there's no other question. I would have a quick question. Are you planning to also lease the devices at your suppliers so that they can lease the materials or the components so that this leasing is going up the supply chain? Because the other way around, as I said, the producers they sell us devices at the cheapest price and we give them fees, you know, when their devices are leased, as long as the devices are leased. So you're not planning to only lease the devices already from the producer? Like for example, swap feeds is now leasing the tires. They are not buying the tires for their bicycles. But they are doing the product service in the supply chain. What we do goes in this direction. It's just you put the if we buy plus fees or if you lease completely for the moment we are buying cheaper with a leasing component with fees. But yeah, that's the complete extreme I mean extreme if you do it until the end if you publish the model until the end that's what you do completely. Which is I think a good way to do because so everybody has an interest to if you keep some actors out of having this interest to make the devices last long it can't work. That's a good direction to go. I guess. Thank you very much. Big applause. Thank you.


As Peter Yn said, this comes out of conversations that we've had over the last couple of years. We've both been working independently and now together on horse equipment of the 11th century, hence the veritable sticker album of logos at the bottom. And we'd like to present to you our latest thinking in terms of placing this equipment, not just in geographical spaces, but also in social and cultural ones too. I would like to start with a person. Herod the Wake was famed for having led a rebellion against the new Norman rulers of England in 1071 from his final base on the island of Ely, but what's more of interest for the purposes of today's presentation is that he spent most of his adult life exiled in Flanders. In Herod the Wake we have an English mercenary fighting in Zeeland yn y cyfleidion ystafell bwlyndus, yn ei ddodbwysig o'r ysgol yn y rhan o'r gwrdd ac yn y bwysig o'r alwau yng Ngorffod Llywodraeth yn y meddwl 11 ym Mhysel. Rwy'n meddwl bod y pethau hynny yn ei ddweud rhoi sydd o meddwl gweithio mewn cwysteinismu yn yr 11 ym Mhysel o'r ddaeth yn y cyfleidion mewn gwir. Rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'r gweithfawr a wnaethau sy'n wahanol ar gyfer y cwestiwnol ac niferwyr o'r ffrifwyr i'r cyffredinol. Cymru i'r hunain o'r edrych i ddechrau'r llwyddiadau o'r cywestiwnol yn ei ysgrifetigau ar y cwestiwnol. Mae'n hoffio ar gweithio ar y cyfnod ymlaen gyffredinol i'r 11 ym mhwybwynt, chefnodd y cwestiwnol yn cael ei hunain o'r cyfrwyngfyniad a'r ffwyrdd yn gyfrwyngfyniad o'r gynhyrchu a'r ysgrifetig. Wrth gwrs, mae'n meddwl i'r cyfraith ohell a'r cyfraith o'r 11 yr Men, oherwydd o'r cyfraith ar y llaw'r cyfraith yng nghymru. Mae'n meddwl i'r hystod o'r gweithio'r materiol arall, efallai yn 30 years ydy'r cwrthys yn ystyried. Rydych yn teimlo'r materiol yn gweithfyrdd ychydig ar y ddechrau o'r 20 yr ysgol, oherwydd y ddechrau'r 1 ddechrau. Mae'r llei ymlaes yn ymladio a'i gwneud yn ymlaes pethau o'r llei ddeinidol a'r llei wedi'i cael meddwl mewn cynghlu mewn cyfron yma, i'r ysgol wedi'u tynnu mewn cyfrofiad mewn cyfrifiad mewn gwahanol, ac mae gyda'r mewn oedd ymlaen yn rhoi'r cas yn ystrath yn ymlaen. Ond yn hyn mae'r llei ystradd yma wedi i gyd-rhyw sydd gweithio'r leir ystraddd yma y tîm oedd yn cyfan i gyfweld y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth i'r llwyth llwy o'r ymdeg. Mae'r llwy o'r llwy o'r ymdeg wedi'i bach o'r cwmau. Mae y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth i'r llwy o'r llwy o'r llwy o'r llwy o'r llwyddon, yn meddwl i'r llwy o bobl yn cyfrifol i'r lleolau oherwydd y cyfrifol. Mae'r llwy o'r llwy o'r llwy o'r llywodraeth o'r llwyddon, ac yn ddafodd o'r ffordd byddai'n gwneud o'r ffordd o'r aceslau'r llaw yma i gael o'r strafflingau, sy'n ddweud hynny yn ddod i gael o'r llaw'r ffordd o'r Horsau. Felly o'r cyfrifio sydd cyfwyr o'r materiol byd James Graham Campbell, i ffwrdd ym mhwylwyr i siaradau strafflingau ym ddweud hefyd yn fwy o'r rai'r rai'r ni. It was the late David Williams in England who has advanced our knowledge of these fittings, in fact, this picture leads to David. He identified stirrup terminals in the 1990s and provided schemes of classification for the rest of the material by the early 2000s. In Denmark, Ann Pedersen applied some of these classifications to the Danish material in the late 1990s. Any subsequent work has been built on that by Williams in England and Pedersen in Denmark, but the most recent developments, which we're currently digesting, have come from other parts of Europe as schemes for the recording of metal-detected material have been developed. So in Denmark itself we have the DEMA database launched to the public quite recently, which will continue to expand the Danish Corpus of Fines. What we're considering particularly at the moment are the increased fines in the low countries, through Medea, in Flanders and the Portable Antiquities of the Netherlands. But while this North Sea zone is becoming far better documented through such schemes, there remains a dearth of publication from the interior of the continent with which to compare the corpus. So much of this earlier work was primarily focused on the identification of this material rather than by examining its spread. And although David Williams did publish continental material in his book on steric strap mounts in the late 90s, it wasn't his aim to chart the international spread of it, let alone assemble a complete European dataset. And subsequent writers, Ann Pedersen, Elsie Rosedal in Denmark, Norbert Gussler in Germany, they compared their national datasets with those from overseas, but nobody's tried to provide an overall distribution map. Well, until now we have. The map that we've generated for this presentation reflects both our current sense of the extent of use of mostly non-ferrous equestrian accoutrements. It also reflects the historiography of their study, a reflection itself on the extent to which method detected fines have been recorded historically. To what extent is this group of material homogenous? Now we don't have time to go into a highly detailed analysis of the similarities and differences, but we'd like to provide a couple of examples. So steric strap mounts, David Williams divided into three main types, two of which primarily the triangular class A at the top and the trapezoidal class B at the bottom are often the latter with openwork decoration and an angle on the flange where it was attached to the strap. At this very general level, we can see that although steric strap mounts of class B are spread throughout the whole of our study area, those of class A see to operate across an Anglo-Scandinavian axis and put rather crudely our absent on current evidence in the low countries. Delving slightly deeper, discrepancies can be noted within the types and subtypes of class B. I'm sorry I don't have a slide of this. If you start comparing those in the coast to those in the interior, those in the interior look rather different. They are of different form, pentagonal form rather than the trapezoidal form, and they have a lot more similarities with material from East Anglia, over in England, and to cite the cheek pieces briefly, there are distinctions there to be drawn between the distribution of Williams type I, which is another Anglo-Scandinavian distribution, and those of his type III which seem to follow the class B strap mounts being found both in England, eastern England, and the low countries. But approaching these questions of similarity and difference through typology can only take us so far, so I'd like to move on to art style. The dominant art style displayed on this equipment, art styles of the late Viking Age, art styles of Rhyngoreca on the left, and Uranus on the right. These dominate the corpus common to England and Scandinavia, as might be expected, and many have been argued to originate in England, as such as the English Uranus style strap mounts on the top. So the dominant style that we can apply to this equipment is Anglo-Scandinavian, but on the other hand we can't apply it to every single example. Now I'm not going to dwell on the Romanesque example on the left, Michael's already discussed those, and that suggests a relatively late date for them. Rather we'll return to this trend identified for variety in the distribution that we saw in the typological analysis. It seems apparent in the material emerging from the Netherlands, exemplified by examples on the right here, considered recently by Vessel Spelder, that even though cheap pieces might be characterised as being of William's type III, that the types in the Low Countries occupy a stylistic spectrum of animal art, one end of which can no longer be called Anglo-Scandinavian. So in the time remaining we'd like to have a look at the cultural implications of the commonality of 11th century question accessories in the North Sea world, but briefly to touch upon another question raised by this, the sheer quantity of the material that we're now documenting, what was the social status of the riders who were using it? So when Graham Campbell presented his synthesis of these 11th century objects in the early 1990s, he was discussing a corpus numbering in the 10s, and he was therefore talking in terms of the growth in use of horses by a military elite. But then when David Williams started gathering historic strap mounts, he amassed over 500 of them. We've had many more hundreds gathered through the PAS in the years since. We've been forced to reconsider the social status of those who possess and display such objects. Ann Pedersen has commented on the relatively low quality of manufacture of particular examples. Although they're well moulded, they're generally under-embellished, there's no nello, there's no gilding, perhaps there doesn't need to be, perhaps they'd be shiny anyway, but there's no gilding, or at least very little on these things. So that suggests that these relatively low-value cobraloaccessories were not necessarily used by the highest echelons of society. Moving from the nature of the objects to where they're found, we come up against the issue that most were lost in transit in the rural landscape and recovered by metal detecting rather than by excavation. My PhD data set of these has 95% decontextualised rural finds, leaving very few opportunities to explore contextual association. That said, looking at some of the detected finds in detail from a particular place, particular parish, we can make some suggestions. So one example is Romney and Kent. We know from the Doomsday survey, it's 1086 in England, that that was a large village with 14 freemen, and that has yielded eight of these stirrup strapmats. In coastal Flanders, this equipment is associated with larger detector-fined concentrations. Site conducts where we have them are rather mixed with examples of such material occurring in deserted medieval settlements and castles alike. In Monday Belgium, though, we have a stirrup strap mount as yet unpublished in the late 10th through early 11th century castle of Ename in East Flanders. This high status association in the continental interior might suggest that this material has slightly different social connotations across its geographical spread. Work in progress, these connotations need to be teased out as more material is recorded in those places where recording schemes for detector finds grows into maturity. But in the areas where we have a lot of material already, it seems clear now that these horse riders can no longer be thought to be the high elite. It may therefore be that such material was used by range encompassing the lower aristocracy and peasants who were free but who had military obligations. So, very briefly, we have a lot of this material now, we have a lot of it decorated in an Anglo-Scandinavian style. What are the cultural implications of this? Could it simply represent a fashion for a military look resulting from the Anglo-Danish military power in the early to mid 11th century? Remember that in the 9th century, we saw Carolingian sword belts permeating dress accessories to give that same sort of military appearance. We're obviously working in a similar geographic space. Are we seeing a similar social-cultural network operating around the North Sea in the 11th century? Does it provide evidence of interactions between a lower horse riding aristocracy given the spread of this material across Northwest Europe but also more particular patterning within the zone? Here we come back to Herod the Wake, an individual we know fought on both sides of the North Sea. We have argued that this material can be socially situated at and around this level, and in support of this, there was an apparent lack of high status prototypes for such adornments. Putting these together, is there something more culturally explicit in the adoption of a more or less distinctively Anglo-Scandinavian material culture? Can it be seen as a statement of political alignment with the Anglo-Danish Kingdom? Of course this is a particularly interesting question in the case of the Low Countries. There seemed to be a trend towards material found in the coastal zone of the Low Countries, mirroring that in Eastern England, as I mentioned, and by extension looking towards the Anglo-Danish Empire in parallel to political contact between the Court of Canute and the Count of Flanders. By contrast, stirrup strap mounts of the Atonian interior were of different designs and different forms, with very few parallels at all in England. However, as more material is coming to light through pan and medea, it seems that this patterning is not so clear cut with a greater spread of typologically similar cheek pieces in land. So what we're going to have to do before we come back to you again is potentially doing more details, stylistic analysis of each region to distinguish the material that might legitimately be described as Anglis, Scandinavian, or alluding to it at least, to define this zone of influence. To sum up, now we can place large quantities of non-ferrous equestrian adornments in the 11th century, which were barely known even 30 years ago, let alone their significance appreciated. Thanks primarily to those who have worked with metal detective material, first individuals, now regional and national schemes, we can now move beyond problems of identification to reconsider and place the social significance of such material and analyse and place its cultural implications within a truly international context. Thank you for your attention.


So yesterday here in Paris we won this FAME award and this thing represents 300,000 euros. 300,000 euros I mean that's oh wow that's a lot of money I I never have anything close to that amount so I was looking into what to do with that so I mean you could buy a house a boat or like 300 Louis Vuitton bags or a Ferrari but honestly I don't care about any of this stuff but there's one thing I really do care about and that is chocolate so I bought myself one of the finest bars I could find it's organic bio raw vegan all handmade and this thing is top notch I was like sick euros I mean that's it's next level chocolate I was good so I'm satisfied I mean that that's all I really need so now we have 299,994 euros left but to be fair this doesn't really feel like my money I mean this project and we wouldn't even have won this award if it wasn't for Mathia being a solid backbone into the project or everyone that helped out developing all these versions or people that all over the world actually set up this plastic recycling workspaces and started shredding a recycling plastic I mean basically this award is for the entire community behind it because without them it would be just one weird touch car in the Netherlands recycling some plastic and I would have never won this award so here's what we're gonna do so all this money the 299,994 euros maybe I shouldn't have bought the chocolate made it a bit easier to pronounce anyway we're gonna use this fully to develop precious plastic version 4 but we're not just gonna hire some corporations with some high-paid engineers to develop this no we're gonna use you guys to develop this the entire precious plastic network see we're looking for the weirdos like us that don't care about the money but they just want to recycle plastic and we want to use this money to facilitate those so they can follow their passion and do their magic so if you care about recycling plastics stay tuned if you want to get rich go work at Apple or something now this summer we're heading to Portugal to make a whole plan we'll do some surfing and I will probably visit some communities for project comp and we'll be back after summer with a concrete plan for version 4 so if you have any feedback or things we should include let us know right now because this is the time to do it so like I said all the rest of the money will go in here and in the end we will make some sort of an excel sheet so we can see where you'll spend it on please help Katrina so besides this nice bar of chocolate I won't use anything else so do make sure to keep supporting on Patreon so I can buy some food and thanks to Famae for hosting this award because in the end they could have also just bought themselves a Ferrari but they chose to use the money to support projects like this so that's cool so long story short we'll be back after summer with a plan make sure to keep your agenda open if you're passionate about plastic recycling and visit next.pressuresplastic.com for more information or share your feedback on version 4 have a good summer and I'm gonna get myself a bucket


The global landscape of UAV regulation has evolved significantly over the last two decades. While most countries have adopted some form of legislation, there remains considerable variation in the level of detail and complexity of these laws. This paper examines the current state of UAV regulation across the globe, focusing on the similarities and differences between nations' approaches. The authors find that while many countries have adopted some form of legislation, the level of detail and complexity varies greatly. Additionally, they identify several key factors that will likely influence the future direction of UAV regulation, including market forces, industry standards, and public perceptions. This article was authored by Claudia Stocker, Rohan Bennett, Francesco Nex, and others.


If you want to assess your learners, formatively or summatively, with questions for which you have specified answers, Moodle's very powerful quiz enables you to do this. We can only look at a few of the features of the quiz in this screencast, but it's worth exploring more yourselves and in the Moodle documentation. Quiz allows you to add different types of questions, not just multiple choice.  If we go to our course and see how to add a quiz, the first thing that it's interesting to note is that in the administration block, there is a link, Question Bank. When a quiz is created in Moodle, you create the questions separately and store them separately so they can be reused by you in a later quiz or by your colleague in the same course in a different quiz. To add our quiz, we turn on the editing either by clicking the link in the administration block or by clicking the button top right, and then in the section where we want the quiz, we click Add an activity or resource. This takes us to Moodle's activity chooser and if we scroll down to Quiz, Quiz is an activity because the learners are interacting with Moodle. If we click it once, we get information as to how best to use the quiz and then we click the Add button to bring up the setup screen. Or if we understand about Quiz and don't want to read the information, we simply click the radio button twice. The first thing that we will do is create the front page if you like of the quiz. The name and the description which the learners will see. If you want the description to appear on the course page, just tick the box display description on course page. There are many different settings in a quiz and it's worth exploring all of them. If there's anything that you're not sure of, the question mark help icon gives you extra information. For now, we're just going to click Save and Display. So we now have a blank quiz and what we need to do is to start adding some questions which we can do by clicking the button Edit Quiz or in the administration block by clicking the link Edit Quiz. If we already had questions that we'd stored in the question bank or a colleague had made questions in the same course, we could see them in the question bank contents here. But we're starting from New from Nothing and so we're going to add a question. We can click Add a Question or Create a New Question. We're then presented with a list of questions to choose from and just like with the activity chooser, if we click the radio button next to a question type, we're presented on the right with some information as to what that question type does. Note also that although most of these questions are questions where you provide the answer, it is possible by choosing Essay to have learners type in an essay which you would manually have to grade. For the purposes of our quiz, I'm just going to add a multiple choice question which I'm adding here and then I'm going to click Next to start creating the question. Note also that there is a description question. This isn't a question type as such. It's just the text editor into which you could add an explanation, some instructions, images, video or sound files. When we click Next, we're sent to the setup for this particular question. We have to give it a name although the name doesn't appear in the quiz, but it's important because it's how we will recognize it in the question bank in future if we have a lot of questions ourselves and perhaps shared with our colleagues. In the question text, that is where we write the actual question, then as we scroll down, what we see will depend on the question type but we'll always be able to add general feedback for any question. And then in the answers, because this is multiple choice, we add the first possible answer with a grade. None, we add none if the question is wrong and 100% if it's right. However, there are, as you see, options in between. We can give specific feedback for each individual answer and if we want to do more than just write simple text, clicking the Show Editing Tools button will give us the full tiny MCE text editor. So again, we write in our second choice, we choose whether it's right or wrong and we continue. When we click Save the changes, we have our question on capitals in the question bank and we can move it with the arrow to add it to our quiz. Up until now, we haven't had anything in our quiz because remember, the questions are separate from the quiz. We can preview the question by clicking the magnifying glass next to it. So we then go on to create a new question, which brings up the question list again and we select another type of question or the same type of question. And so on until we're finished with our quiz.