The nation's students returned to the classroom with the reopening of the second school term on Monday, January 11, 2021, after months of closure. The Department of Education, Innovation and Generations continues to engage all stakeholders within the education sector amid the fluid nature of COVID-19. Minister for Education Honourable Dr. Gil Rigabet, during a press conference on Monday, reiterated the importance of consultation, especially during this time. She called on all stakeholders to engage their respective leaders and heads of department, as they would have been part of the consultation meetings and the decision-making process. The sharing of information and decisions taken the Minister stressed is critical. On all of the engagements that we've had, Mrs. Eugene, who's the head of the school councillors, sits in on that meeting and she then would relay to her membership, her team, the councillors, that which pertains to them. In the same way, for example, Ms. Prince is the Education Officer for Early Childhood Education and sits in on all of our engagements and she too will therefore pass on to that information to both. Privates and public administrators or owners of what we call preschools or Early Childhood Education officers. In the same spirit in which, for example, Mr. Sergei, who oversees our special education institution, sits in on these meetings and then passes on the information and engages persons in his particular sub-sector. So I want to thank all of those team leads, some of whom I have not mentioned, for your full participation and I trust that in your own way too you will continue to engage with your sub-sectors. The Minister of Education emphasised that the safety of students, teachers and other school staff remain paramount and as such a number of measures have been undertaken to ensure their safety. One such measure is the boosting of the school's cleaning regimen. We have embellished, improved, emphasised our cleaning programme throughout the week. In fact, additionally for consideration by the Ministry of Finance is that a provision be made for extending the hours of janitors, caretakers so as to accommodate that additional cleaning and we will see that rule out in the new fiscal year. But in the meantime the concerns should be under way in which we should consider it. It is not that cleaning is reserved for one day a week but rather it is a complete embrace of the need to ensure a comprehensive cleaning, not that we weren't cleaning before but that the effort be amplified throughout the week. Education Minister Honourable Dr Rigabet highlighted other measures that have been undertaken to ensure all protocols are adhered to and safety prevails. Evidently to allow for us to adhere to the protocols that pertain to the transportation sector, we've had to consider the inclusion of additional buses so as to allow for us to meet that requirement within the transportation sector. Education Minister Honourable Dr Rigabet


Hello and welcome to Quit Targa West for 2015, the 11th running of this great event, Thursday lunchtime at the centre of the city. Overcast conditions have been horrible weather leading up. We're hoping it holds off for four fabulous days of targa activities in and around Perth. Great chance for us to catch up with the teams and the crews, see how they're feeling before they head out to the first stages this afternoon. We head out to Waniru Raceway and then we're going to the night stage, back by popular demand in the Malaga industrial area. It's going to be a fascinating four days of targa, can't wait to bring it to you. Fun favourite, Jim Rich is great to have you back at Quit Targa West, an event you love doing as well. No, I certainly do, I really like the difference in grade between here and South Tassie. They're different as you know, but I enjoy them and we come here each year to support Channons and one of the reasons we really enjoy it.  Well, we bought the car for the showroom category, but unfortunately they cancelled that class. I think they knew you were going to rock up in your Porsche off of over. Yeah, but we're happy to promote the Cayman, it's one of the entry level Porsches, we've always promoted the top of the range, or now we're sort of trying to promote the bottom of the range, you might say. Bob Fisher, we're at the very start of the rally. The bonnet's up though, why is that, what's going on?  So the old girl got a little bit hot there, didn't it? No, she's alright now. I started to worry for you mate, just started four big days and you're ready to bonnet up, but you're looking forward to this no doubt as usual. Absolutely, yes, of course, we had a good run in target Tassie, and we hope to do good things here, although the opposition looks a bit strong. Roderick, welcome back mate, the fluoro cars back out there, another tilt of this event. Another tilt, yeah, another year, so hopefully go better than last year. We had a bit of an upset on the roundabout, so we're not going to do the same thing this year. Apart from the odd fix of a few wheels and maybe a few damaged arm, what else have you been doing on this car in between Tom? We haven't really done any massive development that we've done years before, it's just kind of fixing up and tidying up bits and pieces, so yeah, that's going good. How are you feeling now mate? Start of a rally, nice people pretty nervous, how do the butterflies go? Oh yeah, well I was feeling a little bit better earlier on today, but we've just got a bit nervous now only because it's starting to get a bit warm, so the engine wise anyway. Well, stars this afternoon, so make sure you keep those in check and we'll see you out there. We will do, cheers. Pete Major, back in, former winner, how's it all feeling at the moment? Yeah, not too bad, as the past three years, just the last-minute decision to run, so worked all the last sort of week with the help of Kate at Racing on Amps to get the car ready, so yeah, should be good. I love it, it's something different, do a lot of circuit racing and this just, you know, having another person in the car in four days, it's, you know, a really good event and I love doing it. Now look, I would put you as short price favourite, but as you know only too well, this is a hard event to nail fully over four days, isn't it? Like I tell anyone, I think Time Mac rolling is probably the hardest workout for any vehicle and motorsport, but yeah, hopefully it's our year, we've kind of put the car back to stand a little bit, so hopefully it hangs in there. We've been bridesmaids a few years, so yeah, both Jim and myself, it's our seventh year, so hopefully it's lucky number seven. Mano Niel, back from another tilt, you were awesome last year in this machine. What's the plan this year? Hopefully go a few spots better this year, done a few little changes to the car and it should be, it's coming off quite well, so yeah, aiming for, I don't know if this is like a podium, but definitely in the top five this year would be a good outcome, I would expect. There's lots of makes and models, but there is something about the Subaru versus the Mitsubishi Evo's that goes on and you're flying the flag for the Subis and you were the first one home last year, of course. Yes I was, yeah, and the only one in the top ten which was really good, that was the aim last year, was just to make the top ten and yeah, I really do like the Subaru's and try to stick up these Evo's as much as I can. Last year's winner in the classics in your back, mate, new paint scheme and everything here. New car, new paint scheme, it's a whole new car. Running the same mechanical gear, so underneath it drives the same, identical base mechanically, but different body kit. And look, you did a superb job last year, you have a real good tussle with these guys. You really get your teeth in this event, don't you? Ah, they really will drive high horsepower cars, they are just fantastic, they're a driver's car and that's what I like about them, you know, we're just going to have fun. And the top drivers in the classics do drive them very hard, you are on the limit all the time, not conserving, you're driving these cars the way they were built basically. Well that's it, we don't have any aids or anything like that, no traction control, no ABS or anything like that, and you've got to drive them hard. And the fast classics are up there with the fast moderns as well, so we're hunking along.


Okay, the next insect on the list is the Eastern Tent Caterpillar, and it has this name because it builds these tents in the crotches of trees, and it's one thing you need to remember. It's always in the crotch of branches that you will find these tents never out on the end of the limbs, but in the branch crotches is where the tents are, and they live inside these tents. They come out in the nighttime, and they feed when they're safe from predators, and then they return to the tent. The larvae is a rather large caterpillar, and it has a white stripe down the middle that's very characteristic of this caterpillar. The adults are a tan colored moth, and they have buff colored lines. So it's very easy to identify that you can see the tan color, and it has just these little buff lines, two buff lines down the wings, and it really has a very hairy body. This is the only tan colored moth with these buff lines in it, so it's very easy to distinguish. You may also see egg masses, which just looks like black encrusting around a twig. So the egg mass is a black encrusting around the twig, so you could be given the adult caterpillar that has the white line down the back, the egg mass that's the black encrusting around the twig, or the adult insect, which is a tan colored moth with buff stripes, or again the damage, the tent that they build in the crotches of the tree, and this is the Eastern Tent Caterpillar. The next insect we're going to talk about is the Fall Webworm, and this webworm also creates a tent, but it does it out on the end of the branches. So in contrast to the Eastern Tent Caterpillar that we just looked at, the tent will be out on the end of the branches encompassing the leaves instead of in the crotches. And in these tents, you can find caterpillars, and you can find frass within these tents. The larvae or the caterpillar is a very small, fuzzy, white caterpillar, so it's very, very fuzzy. It's easy to distinguish. And the moth is a white moth. So it's about the same size of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar, but it's a white, solid, white, fuzzy moth, and it's still pretty small. So for the Fall Webworm, you can see the damage, which is the tent out at the end of the branches encompassing the leaves. You can have a small, fuzzy, white caterpillar, or a small, solid, white moth. And that's the Fall Webworm. The next insect we're going to talk about is the gypsy moth. And the gypsy moth again attacks hardwoods. They leave their egg masses on the outside of the bark and their small, tan, fuzzy blotches of eggs. The female puts her fur into the eggs to help hold them together so that the egg mass stays on the bark of the tree. When the they emerge and they become larvae, these larvae are hairy, but it may be hard to see here, but they have blue dots followed by red dots on their body. And that's a very distinguishable character for gypsy moths. So you want to look for red dots and blue dots. So if you got a Eastern Tent Caterpillar, you would have a white stripe down the center. And if you have gypsy moth caterpillar, you would have blue dots and red dots on its back. The egg mat or the pupae is just a cocoon. It's going to be fusiform-shaped and it's black if you get one of those.  The male moth is dark-colored brown and the female moth is white with dark brown striping on the wings. She's also has a very very large body and she cannot fly. So when she emerges from larvae to adults, she just crawls up the tree, signals for a male to come find her, then she lays her eggs and she does not fly.  She's about three times the size and she has these brown stripes on her wings and she has that large large body, as you can see, and she cannot fly. And that's the gypsy moth. The next instance we're going to talk about is the Paley's Weevil. This beetle is very distinguishable from the other insects that you will see. It has a very long snout, more like an elephant trunk, coming off the bottom of its face. So it's very distinguishable characteristic in this beetle. So you'll want to make sure again that you have your magnifying glass. So you can see this characteristic. It's one that you'll want to look for so that you know that you have a weevil. They cause damage. They feed on seedlings and you can see feeding damage up and down the stem where they remove the bark as they're feeding. I mean, it's very distinguishable. So you could get the damage which is this feeding up and down the stems of these young pines or say the insect and you want to look for that snout. There can sometimes be a spattering of little tiny dots caused by the hairs on the back of the beetle and sometimes there'll be no spots. And that is the Paley's Weevil.  So you will have ips beetle, southern pine beetle, and black turpentine beetle. Black turpentine beetle will be the largest black beetle on your test. They produce these large pitch tubes when they bore into trees. So you could see pitch tubes. But very, very large black beetle. And you can see a size difference if you compare it to an ips beetle. There is a definite size difference and the southern pine beetle is about the same size or smaller than this ips beetle and is more of a reddish-brown color. So the black turpentine beetle is the largest beetle and it is solid black. And forms these large, massive pitch tubes from the pitch exuding from the tree as the beetle bores in. So that is the black turpentine beetle. The next beetle is the ips engraver beetle. And it's a medium-sized, small, reddish-colored beetle. One thing you'll want to notice with this beetle is that it looks like a scoop has been taken out of its rear end. And you can see that very easily if you're using your magnifying glass. And it looks like it has teeth around the edges. And just like the rear end is missing. Like somebody just took a big bite out of it. The galleries formed by the ips beetles are H-shaped or they can also be Y-shaped. So when you're looking at the gallery formation and damage caused by the ips beetle, that's one characteristic you want to look for. Either these H-shaped galleries or these Y-shaped galleries. And that's very distinguishable from southern pine beetle for these ips beetles. So the beetle with the scoop out of its rear end and the H or the Y-shaped galleries to distinguish the ips beetle. The next beetle is the southern pine beetle. And the southern pine beetle again is a small reddish beetle. It's going to be very distinguishable between the ips and the black turpentine. It'll look similar to the ips. And if you think it's a ips, you have to look for the rear end missing. If there's no rear end missing, then it's the southern pine beetle. Another thing for the southern pine beetle, when you look at the galleries, the galleries are S-shaped. So you can see all these S's in the gallery pattern. So that's what you're looking for. So S shapes in the galleries for southern pine beetle, which is distinguishable from the H shapes or the Y shapes of the ips beetle. So S-shaped galleries, they also, when they bore into the tree, they always bore in on top of the plates. So if the boring holes, the entrance holes are on top of the plates, that's another sign that it's southern pine beetle. ips beetles will always bore in the crevices in between the plates. And southern pine beetle always bore in on top of the plates. So if you're looking at a piece of bark, that's another thing that you can look at between the S-shaped galleries. If the entrance holes are on top of the plates and you have a small red beetle, and that will let you know that you are looking at southern pine beetle, vice ips or black turpentine beetle. The next insect or the last insect on our list is the locust bore. This is very distinctive of any insect we've seen so far. It's solid black with bright bright yellow markings. It has a very distinctive long antennae. The antennae are going to be almost as long or as long as the insect's body. But this will be, this is the only insect on the list that has these bright colored markings, so it's very easy to distinguish. The larvae is a very indescript white caterpillar with a red, very tiny, tiny red head. And it has a round head, so it does not look like any of the other caterpillars in the group. There are no hairs on it. It just looks like just skin, just white wrinkly skin. And you can see the damage that the larvae cause in the tree, in the locust. It bores these long tunnels and feeds around those tunnels and just leaves big holes in concave. If you don't have the inside, you can see on the mature tree, it makes these large, large holes where the insects are boring in and out of the tree. So very distinguishable damage. No other insect that we looked at will cause these large, large holes in the tree or as wide and deep of cavities where they burrow, unlike the southern pine beetle and the bark beetles that have very shallow galleries. The locust bore has very deep, thick galleries. And again, the adult is just that black, black, shiny color with bright, bright yellow markings with long skinny legs and long antennae. It will be very, very distinctive from anything else that you see. And that's the locust bore.


I'm very pleased the Welsh Government has funded 500 community support officers right across Wales and that most of these are now in post. It's very good to see how they reassure members of the public and how they are supporting police in the communities. Community support officers are an excellent addition to warranted police officers. They're not instead of, they're an addition and having spoken to members of the public they feel very reassured that these are people that they can go up to, talk about low-level anti-social behaviour and they know that their concerns will be acted upon. The skills of actually patrolling the streets on foot and interacting with people is a skill that has perhaps been neglected in previous times but has been reawakened with the role of a community support officer. It's a good way of making relationships, information gathering, being out there on the street that we wouldn't get if we were inside or in a car. And when we hold on local surgeries they're brilliant because we have confidential areas where people can come up to us and give us information or any worries that they have about their local areas. I've been in business in the town for about 25 years. I've noticed a big difference ever since they've started patrolling the streets. Mae nifer swyddogion cyfnogi yn yr eil wedi trefwyd os yd blwyddyn dweud a'r mae hyn yn o'r helwed cyfnogaeth o'r chwweodraeth Cymru. The main job that we do is replace the railway network. This encompasses a proactive police approach. So we engage with the community on a regular basis but 80% of our time is either on the platform or on the trains. We deal with things from anti-social behaviour to managing rowdy children, drug use, fights, alcohol, everything we deal with. Basically they're a normal police force we deal with. A visible presence is always a deterrent with crime. It makes people feel safer on the trains. It's kind of the ethos of a bobby on the beat, something that they've grown up with and they like to see it more. Then you've got young children who we'll just engage with on the train, have a little chat with them about track safety and how they behave on the train and empowering them to travel safely and securely and independently. We go into the schools, they get a chance to talk to someone in uniform which is a major barrier for them and see that there is a human persona behind the uniform. One of my best roles I think in this job at the moment is doing the follow-up reassurance visits to any victims of crime. So if any of our residents have been a victim of crime they will be on edge and they will be, if you like, a little bit more vulnerable. We go in those next few days as a reassurance to knock on the door. If they need any contacts, we liaise with partner companies or partner agencies to put them in touch if they need anything further. A lot of the residents are now aware that we do cover two patches where they are quite close to each other, the two quite big areas to cover so I'm either on foot or on a bicycle. So a lot of the residents know if it is, they do see a police cycle cycle and it's usually me so they usually give me a wave. I really feel part of the community and feel like I belong there and I really feel like I am valued. We've had quite a lot of good feedback from the local community especially among the residents. We've been really pleased to see a policeman on the streets for the first time in a couple of years. We've been doing the job now for about six months I think the best part of the job is meeting the community being out and about, you know, talking to the local people finding out the local issues and trying to help them as best we can from there. In Newport Central we come across lots of antisocial behaviour both in terms of children who are coming in to cause some issues and also people who are coming to enjoy the night time economy and who are drinking alcohol in the streets often causes some problems. We like to intervene as early on as we can to avoid there being problems further on in the night so we use techniques where we approach them as friendly as we can be to start with. We are asked to confiscate alcohol. People definitely feel threatened and I think by giving a visible presence at night time this helps people to feel more comfortable. As I already live in Newport and I'm only 21 I find it easier to interact and talk to them as they are around the same age as myself. We also carry around with us another radio which links us to close circuit TV. This allows us to keep an eye on action within the town and then get in contact with other police officers to help us. Community support officers have become an integral part of the wider policing family. Through their visible and reassuring presence in our communities they have quickly earned the trust and confidence of the public. They have shown their value in tackling crime and disorder and delivering lasting solutions to community problems. The Chief Constables in Wales welcomed the commitment of the Welsh Government to making Wales a safer place for everyone and we look forward to their continued support in the future. Many people have a fear of crime particularly young people and older people and it was good to speak with community support officers and hear how they are going out into the community into youth clubs, into care homes and talking to people about their concerns.


Hi and welcome to IMTV, the international Marxist television channel brought to you by Socialist Appeal, Socialist.net. This week on our third episode we're going to be discussing the situation in Palestine and Gaza and to join us for this discussion we've got Francesco Murley, a regular writer at Marxist.com, the website of the international Marxist tendency and as I say we're going to be discussing what's going on in Israel-Palestine where on the border between Gaza and Israel recently we've seen mass protests taking place commemorating what's known as the Nakba, the mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948, 70 years ago when the state of Israel was founded. Dozens have been killed in what is the deadliest massacre of Gaza since 2014. So to begin with Francesco can you just outline a bit about these protests, why have they taken place? The protests were in commemoration of the Nakba and for the right of all refugees to return to their homes, 70% of the population of Gaza is made up of refugees on different moments, people who were displaced in 1948 or 1967 or in other moments during the many wars and many aggressions to the Palestinian people. So this is a very important question for all Palestinians but especially for the people living in Gaza. The second main reason for this protest was the enormous pressure on the Gaza people put by the blockade which has been in place over the last 12 years. It's an economic blockade, people cannot move freely out of the Gaza Strip and Israel controls effectively all the main levers of the economy in Gaza from telecommunications to even the water supply, energy supply, the import and export of any goods, spare parts, medicines, drugs, all these things are controlled by Israel which is asphyxiating about 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip which can be effectively described as open air prison now and for the last 12 years this increasing pressure by the Israeli authorities has brought about a collapse of the infrastructure in Gaza. So for example now most of the water is polluted because there are no investments or possibility to improve the sewage networks in the Gaza Strip. Also water supply is infiltrated by salt, by marine water so even the most basic needs of the Gaza population are completely jeopardized by this blockade which has been put in place for 12 years now. So you've talked about the blockade of the last 12 years but also the protests commemorating what happened 70 years ago with the foundation of Israel and this forced kind of eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Can you explain a bit about the background to the foundation of Israel in 1948? State of Israel was declared on the 15th of May 1948 and as a result of this process and terror unleashed against the Palestinian population about 700,000 to some figures talk about 1 million people even but about 700,000 Palestinians were pushed out of their villages, their towns, their land and pushed out of Palestine effectively and all the Palestinian properties were seized by the Israeli army and many cities were destroyed in order to avoid the possibility of the Palestinian population to go back to their homes and that created the establishment of Israel created the huge Palestinian question that we are now dealing with, that we are now facing with for the past 70 years. Now the population of Palestinians originated by the refugees fleeing from the advance of the Israeli army, what would become the Israeli army is numbered in about 7 million people which is displaced around in the neighboring countries or in a spread around the world. So how do we go from the situation of the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority to the situation today where you've got the West Bank and Gaza divided with Fatah dominating over the West Bank and Gaza dominated by Hamas politically, how is that situation? So the establishment of the Palestinian Authority has changed the whole situation, the Oslo and Madrid Accords were the culminating result of these diplomatic efforts by the Palestinian leadership but basically where the outcome, like a secondary outcome of a massive revolt of the Palestinian people, the second Intifada started in 1987 which was the revolt of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories in the West Bank, in Gaza and Jerusalem as well, a mass insurrection against the Israeli occupation, which after 20 years of this occupation signaled that there was an important change in the consciousness of the Palestinian people. This revolt went on for 5 years with more than 1,000 people, Palestinians killed and had a huge impact also on the Israeli youth and working class, especially at the beginning. So the negotiated outcome was based on the recognition by Israel that they couldn't hold on the occupied territories in the same way as before. They needed under the supervision and pressure by US imperialism, which kind of catered the Accords, had to rely on the Palestinian leadership in order to police and discipline and control the Palestinian population in the occupied territories. The outcome was the creation of the Palestinian Authority with the establishment and the handing over of the police operations to Palestinian police, for example, and the establishment of some sort of state, semi-state apparatus, Palestinian apparatus around the Palestinian Authority in 1994. Since then what happened is that the Palestinian Authority has failed completely in developing into an independent state because there was no possibility whatsoever for the Palestinian leadership to develop the economy of Gaza and the West Bank, even divided geographically as they are. There are constant economic and military pressure by Israel who stayed completely in control of the economy, of the infrastructure, of every lever of power, and the Palestinian leadership got increasingly discredited, the Palestinian leadership of the PLO especially, and Fatah in particular, including even Arafat, who was the first president of the Palestinian Authority and he was elected with 87% of the votes, huge massive support for Arafat. But in the space of 20 years the whole situation has revealed what we, Marxists, warned the Palestinian people at the time and that there was no possible solution for the Palestinian national liberation struggle by just establishing a kind of puppet state in the hands of Israel. That was expressed in the elections in 2006 where Hamas took over the majority in Gaza and that is the beginning of the present situation where Hamas has a big control over all the activities within Gaza, is in a frontal confrontation with the Israeli state, but at the same time obviously repressing its own population inside Gaza and especially the repression is aimed at those forces that are not under the control of Hamas, like for example the trade union movement or socialist organizations which historically have an important base in Gaza and the confrontation between Hamas and the Israeli state has helped Hamas to strengthen his position in Gaza and become the predominant force now. So as you said the Palestinian struggle obviously is something that's watched by the whole world and attracts a lot of attention and obviously it's the actions of the Israeli state in particular that attract a lot of criticism. But what we often see particularly here in Britain is that that criticism of the Israeli state of that kind of Zionist project it's often accused of being anti-Semitism, I mean we see here in Britain at the moment with the accusations against the Corbyn movement, lots of anti-Semitism accusations going on when in fact a lot of people are criticizing you know the oppression of the Palestinians not anything to do with Jewish people themselves but can you elaborate a bit on you know what is the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and what are the real origins of Zionism? Well Zionism develops as a reaction against the oppression of the Jewish people especially in Europe starting from the late 19th century and develops as a theory the idea basically that there could be a homeland for the Jewish people back in the original point of origin of Judaism which is Palestine. Zionism is an imperialist project because this Palestine was not an empty land as it was portrayed by the first Zionist writers each step in the setting up of first the Jewish authority and then the Israeli state has been a step of which meant the displacement of the indigenous population of Palestine step after step war after war and this process is continuing with for example even after the establishment of the Palestinian authority there are now about 700 000 and more Jewish settlers Jewish colonizers in illegal colonies set up inside the territory of the West Bank and East Jerusalem so from this point of view we criticize Zionism we oppose Zionism doesn't mean that we oppose the Jews as such and we don't see for example the as Marxist the fact that Israel is a capitalist country like any other country in the world which is based on the exploitation of their own working class the working class in Israel is is made of Arab population is made of Jewish workers as well and it's a powerful force in Israel but because of this continuous conflict the Israeli ruling class is able to mobilize the Jewish working class or at least layers of Jewish working class in active support for Israel under the threat they they portray Israel as a besieged fortress which is threatened by all the enemy countries around them by the Palestinians insurgents and so on and so forth so in this way effectively they managed to rally around the the Jewish state at any junction at any at every important crisis where the Jewish state and Israel is under threat or is they portrayed as being under threat so our opposition is not to the Jewish people but it's an opposition to the Zionist imperialist project which has been supported and aided and financed by all the imperialist powers in the world and especially the United States with huge resources dedicated to supporting Israel from the US imperialist point of view Israel is an important stronghold in the Middle East it's a source of problems as well because it creates tensions and conflicts all the time but it is also what they can regard as the most powerful lever they have in the Middle East in terms of both military and economically economic terms Israel is an important country so obviously the oppression of the Palestinians is something that a lot of people feel very passionately about they want to do something internationally to try and resolve the situation to help the Palestinian struggle and I'd say the most kind of famous or most popular tactic internationally has been the the BDS movement the idea of boycott divestment and sanctions on Israeli products on Israeli academics things like that and can you explain a bit more about the BDS movement and and the impact that it's had well the impact is I would say very small almost negligible the only impact this campaign can have is to raise awareness in terms of being as being used as a tool to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people in many ways obviously the declaration of important intellectuals or important figures internationally criticizing the actions of Israel are important in the general movement against the occupation of Palestine and the violence and the oppression of the Palestinian people and so on but as a movement the BDS cannot achieve the aim of cutting out or even creating the critical mass of support for Israel to step down from the present course of action in fact Israel is totally the Israeli ruling class is totally is using the BDS movement as an excuse to strengthen the idea that Israel is under attack and in and that can have for a limited time I would say but still has an impact on the Israeli population so to present Israel as the the country that is under attack not the aggressors and and therefore the BDS the effects of the BDS movement are limited I would say that some forms of boycott could be justified but they have to be thought in a way that it's the boycott is carried out by the organized working class and there was one news item which was the announcement by trade union in Tunisia that they would carry out the boycott of all the trade with Israel in terms of blocking the shipments and blocking the unloading of stuff from Israeli ships and so on if that develops as an international movement of the working class then it can be aimed also at connecting with the legitimate struggles of the workers both on the Palestinian side and the Israel working class in the Israeli working class because there are there are struggles developing obviously also within Israel Israel is one of the most unequal countries we had examples of big waves of protest in the past and that could come again in the future I think one of the most notable examples that you just alluded to that was in 2011 when you obviously had the Arab revolutions the Arab Spring spreading from Tunisia and into Egypt and there were protests at that time I understand in Tel Aviv as well you know what was the impact of the Arab Spring on the situation in Israel and Palestine in 2011 we saw the impact of the Arab revolutions and I think that's important because one of the main levers in terms of justification for the foreign policy and the internal policy and repressive outlook of the Israeli ruling class has always been the threat from the outside and regimes like that of Mubarak or Saddam Hussein or other reactionary regimes were presented as scarecrows as the enemy that the mass of the Jewish workers in Israel would not consider as potential allies in a peaceful settlement but as enemies and therefore the development of the Arab revolution has had the effect of shaking this idea that the Arab people are reactionary they are enemies because most of the Israeli workers and youth could identify with the struggle of the youth in Cairo and their attempt to topple a reactionary and repressive regime so there was a connection there and they could recognize also that Israel is a country where the conditions of life are getting more and more difficult for the working class the level of wages has been under attack for a number of years if not decades now the polarization of wealth is increasing and all the resources put into the army and repression are not used obviously to create better conditions and housing for the Jewish population so that was the base for the 2011 movement which was the mass movement in Israel against the government which was a kind of a consequence of the wave of protests that was developing throughout the Middle East and it was also a consequence of the idea that there is a repressive reactionary government in Israel as well and that this government is carrying out austerity and anti-working class policies which are hitting both the Palestinians and the Jewish workers so there is a basis there for a future development of a mass movement against the Israeli ruling class and that is also the reason why the Netanyahu's of this world are so keen in provoking even more the possibility of future conflicts like for example the idea that Iran now is the big threat and that Iran has is developing nuclear weapons to wipe out Israel and things of this sort which is obviously part of this desperate attempt by Netanyahu and the right wing within Israel to mobilize support around them again against a foreign threat against a massive threat to the very existence of Israel and obviously this trick is working to a certain extent but less and less because people are now realizing even within Israel that society is not heading towards any any better situation it's becoming worse and worse the conditions are getting worse the conflict is getting worse and there is no not much hope in the future but that will turn into a rebellion against the government at some point so what do you think the solution is for the people of Palestine because a lot of the debate on the left especially and it always centers around the question of you know one state or two state are either of these really a solution what what is the way forward for the people well the two-state solution so-called solution is not two states first of all because two states are impossible Israel the Israeli ruling class cannot allow a Palestinian state in the territory of Palestine so what we had was in reality a puppet state which had the main purpose of keeping under control the mass of the Palestinian population in the former occupied territories in reality the occupation has continued so there is no two-state solution the the possibility of a two-state solution is also made impossible by Israel by all this movement of people that they are creating constantly this infiltrating and creating new settlements has basically wiped out the control over their own territory by the possibility of controlling their own territory by the Palestinian Authority all together Gaza is different they withdrew from Gaza but Gaza is not a viable state cannot be a viable state it's a strip of 40 kilometers times five or something like that with two million people in it with no possibility whatsoever of developing their own independent economy and so there is no basis there for a two-state solution one state solution would be the re-annexation by Israel of the whole territory of of Palestine there is now out of I think the dissatisfaction and disillusionment that a lot an increasing share of the Palestinian people have developed towards the Palestinian leadership of Fatah in particular but also towards Hamas and any forces that are kind of connected to the to the management of this situation there is a strong feeling developing now that it would be probably better for the Palestinian people to to be in in one state and to transform the Palestinian national struggle into struggle for equality but the problem is that one state or two-state solution whether that happens under the conditions of capitalism today both from the Israeli point side or the Palestinian side is creating a nightmarish situation because it's just a question of who even if an abstract bourgeois democratic state could be created in Palestine which would allow to some sort of democratic elections and so on and equal citizenship rights for all those who are who are citizens of Palestine even in in that case there would be a conflict a continuous conflict for the control over over this state which is has been transformed over the decades into an ethnic conflict for determining majorities ethnic majorities and so on and that's one of the reasons why the Israeli ruling class cannot allow free status of citizenship to the Palestinian people even if they had to regain control over the occupied territories they are effectively even now so one state or two states under capitalism will provoke convulsions crisis and ethnic and religious conflicts and ultimately a civil war situation so they are not both not solutions for the Palestinian liberation national liberation struggle point of view nor it is a solution for the Jewish working class and youth in Israel so the problem is not so much one state or two state but it's what kind of society and how the resources which are important resources industrially culturally infrastructure wise from all points of view created and accumulated by Israel can be made available and the disposal of the majority of the population of Palestine both Jewish and and Palestinian so that's the main question is a class struggle obviously this the development of the class struggle and the need to overthrow the reactionary regime both in the on the Palestinian side both in Gaza and in the West Bank and in Israel because obviously that's the main reactionary factor in the situation is the Israeli state and control of the Israeli ruling class over society within Israel the struggle against this can only be carried out successfully not so much by an international movement of boycott as we were talking before but by the development of a joint movement of the Arab and Jewish working class in against capitalism in Israel and in Palestine and then the solution from the point of view of how to overcome the inequalities the huge inequalities existing between the Israeli part of Palestine and the Palestinian part of Palestine how to resolve all the questions that have been created this festering wounds which have been created by imperialists in meddling in the Middle East like for example the question of the right for the Palestinians to return to their home home towns home lands which obviously cannot be carried out in the present situation can only in in in the process of overthrowing the capitalist oppressive system in Israel and in Palestine these questions can be dealt with in in a way that they do not open up a conflict between the poor in and those who are the victims of this situation which are the Palestinian people and workers and the Jewish working class as well thank you very much Francesco for joining us today and thank you to our viewers and listeners at home join us next time for IMTV episode 4 when we're going to be discussing the tragedy of the Grenfell fire which happened one year ago in the meantime check out www.socialist.net for more articles and also follow us on youtube for our videos and now you can also subscribe to our podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher and other podcast providers so join us next time and see you there thank you


What's up everybody Jason for jazby's case breaks calm 2021 panini a mac of the basketball one box break random teams number 11 Just sold out and again. This is a high risk high reward guys You have one random team in the NBA and chasing some potential RPAs and local men's like that right there. Let's go So here we go guys. Here's a dice roller. Here's a customer name So from Paul down to Ryan got those straight up and then from Kevin down to Ryan Herald Won those from prism sell a pack number 157 down to 158 paid a fraction of the price Here's the teams Let's roll It is a four to three seven times. Good luck one two three four five six and Seven four three seven times seven times Diane Bailey down to Ryan boom seven times four and three one two three four five six and Seven the final time four or three Houston Rockets down to the Oklahoma City Thunder There we go, and you have the Houston Rockets Daniel with the Celtics Brian With the Hornets Ryan off with the Magic Sam with the Nuggets Ryan Herald with the 76ers Alan with the T-Wills Daniel with the Raptors Diane Bailey with the Jazz Ryan off of the Warriors Michael Joseph with the Mavericks Kevin with the Bucks Sean Maddock with the Pelican Steven P with the Spurs Brenton with the Knicks Pistons Alan with the Bulls David green with the Nets Ryan case on with the Hawks Brian Frank with the Blazers Ryan With the heat Lewis with the Suns and Wizards Paul with the Pacers Brian are with the Lakers Joe van with the Clippers Joseph with the clip sorry Joe van with the Sacramento Clippers Sacramento Clippers Sacramento Kings Joseph with the Los Angeles Clippers Jorn with Grizzlies Brian Frank with the calves and Ryan with the Oklahoma City Thunder Here we go If you guys want to make any trades, I'll give you guys a quick minute for trade windows if anybody's watching So I'm gonna pause the video Come I'll come back and see if you have any trades guys All right, welcome back guys. No trades. So let's close it and let's print and rip. All right guys So here you go. Here's everybody in a Mac and the basketball Boom boom again fresh case guys fresh case boxes one two three four five See what we can get here Two one two So actually let me uh Number these boxes of course Of course we rolled a two so we're gonna do box two One three four five will be for future breaks And like I said, we can do those tomorrow for sure All right, good luck guys First one we have is a seven out of 25 true holiday And that is Milwaukee Bucks, which is Kevin we have Ray Allen Seattle Supersonic's edition 45 out of 99 Oklahoma City Thunder it's going to ride Ryan C We have Onyeka akongu One out of 99 for Atlanta going to Ryan C For the Minnesota T-Wills Malik Beasley for the Minnesota T-Wills two out of 10 Minnesota that is going to Allen who bought him straight up We have a Harrison Barnes Sacktown 40 out of 99 Sacramento Kings Gonna Joe vent Anthony Edwards signature moves 29 out of 49 it looks like I don't know if you can clean that with a microfiber cloth a little smudge not on the autograph but on the card But look at that 29 out of 49 Anthony Edwards Signed it actually where he's supposed to There you go Minnesota T-Wills Allen straight up there you go Very nice. Well, that wasn't an rpa, but it was a nice signature moves autograph So appreciate it guys Next one's in the store because there'll be some big rpa's maybe logo man one of ones remaining in the next one guys Appreciate it. Jasper's casebricks.com


My name is Michal Boczek and I work for RedHead and I take care of mainly the development of the utility called ConvertDwell. I'll talk about it just in a second, but firstly, let me start with this thing. So this workshop is going to walk you through converting a CentOS 8 system. And for those who haven't prepared for this, please get your CentOS 8 machine started or downloaded right now. So because this Vagrant set up, this Vagrant box has 900 megabytes, so it can take a while to download. And yeah, if you have your CentOS machine ready, that's even better. So, I hope you all have Vagrant installed. I tried to send an email to all of you, all the participants who marked that they are gonna join this session. So yeah, please try to, if you haven't read that, try to install Vagrant on your system and then do these two steps, Vagrant init, CentOS slash 8 and Vagrant up. And this way it's gonna start downloading the Vagrant image. So what is ConvertDwell? It is an open source utility. We've open sourced it in 2019 and this utility allows you to migrate your CentOS and or Oracle Linux system to the Retail Enterprise Linux. It's as simple as that. There's nothing more to it. And this is just a visualized how it works. So yeah, you have the CentOS or Oracle Linux system. You use the ConvertDwell utility. You'll use it today and you are brought to the Retail ecosystem. You get the Retail Enterprise Linux. Nikola, can you please pose the poll? If it's not there already? Yeah. So there is a poll. You can answer if you are going to convert your own CentOS system or if you are just starting up the Vagrant box, I suggest it. Or if you have Oracle Linux instead of CentOS, prepared for the conversion. And so here I'll tell you about the steps, what the utility does. So once you start it, execute it, it analyzes the system. It checks whether it's even possible using this utility. Then it checks if you have some third-party packages installed. And if so, it will tell you that these are not going to be converted. The utility converts only those packages that are signed by the original system vendor, that is either by CentOS or Oracle. And it gets the list of the rail repositories that are needed for the conversion. Then the Convert part. It removes some excluded packages. These are those that we know that cause some conflicts. So we remove them beforehand. You are warned about that and you can stop the conversion before it continues if you don't like that. And then we install the subscription-related packages because Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires a subscription. And then it subscribes the system and starts replacing all the packages. And then once the packages are replaced, you are asked to reboot the system just to ensure that you are booted into the newly installed RL kernel. And let's get to the next slide. So where does the tool takes the Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages from? It depends what you choose. There are two possibilities. You can either use custom repositories. That means that it's your responsibility to get the RL repositories from somewhere. You can, for example, download the DVD ISO image and mount it. Or you may have already some RL system installed. That system already has access to the RL repos. And you can repos sync them and copy them to have them available locally on the CentOS system. Or you can make them available through web server or FTP server and so on. So that is the more, let's say, more difficult approach. But the easier one is to use the Red Hat subscription manager. And we'll be using that today on our workshop. And through the subscription manager, you can connect by default to the Red Hat CDN or for companies who have larger set of machines they need to manage, they usually use Red Hat Red Hat Satellite 6 server. And yeah, that's also the possibility to use for the conversion. So here I'm just going to note that the utility has implemented a basic rollback capability. And this rollback, if there's any failure during the conversion, it reverts all the actions that the utility has taken, but only up to so-called point of no return. And the tool warns you about this point of no return. And this point is right before replacing all of the packages. And yeah, just mentioning here that the users are expected to have a complete system backup before running the tool, before the conversion. So here we get to how to get the rail subscription, which is necessary for running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So in this workshop, we'll be using or talking about the no cost Red Hat developer subscription for individuals. And this subscription is for any individual, it's not for companies, organizations and so on. But anyone who's, we joined the session today. So basically anyone can get this subscription at no cost. And with this subscription, you can subscribe and receive updates for up to 16 systems. You get no support from Red Hat, it's self-support. And we will now get to how to create a Red Hat account with the associated subscription. So I'm just going to check if anyone has replied to the poll, probably not or maybe I'm just not seeing the results. So creating the Red Hat account, which is necessary for getting the subscription. So please go to the access.redhat.com and click on the figure out icon in the top right corner. And now I can probably show you that live. So opening access.redhat.com, clicking on the figure icon and clicking on register. This will get you to a form which you need to fill in. I'll give you some time to fill it out. Maybe you can, yeah, I'll give you just some time. So please choose the personal account. It's the one that we need if we want to get the developer subscription for individuals. And yeah, I'll just give you some time. In the meantime, I will log into my already created personal account. Okay, Q&A, definitely let me check the question. Is there any plan to offer Santos replacement for enterprise? Something like self-support or whatever. So actually the subscription I talked about no cost Red Hat developer subscription for individuals. You can use it in production as well, but only in case you have 16 servers or less. So this is not for, so when you talk about enterprise, you probably mean a bigger company, not just 16 servers. And in that case, you need, if you want to run RHEL, you need to buy the subscriptions, the regular subscriptions. But yeah, otherwise I don't think there's anything provided at least by Red Hat. Give you one more minute for complete the account creation. All right. So I hope you have all created the account that you are logged in. And now let's go to the subscription page under the Red Hat Customer Portal. That is the website access.redhat.com. And click on the subscription in the top left corner. What we just need to do now is to create a so-called activation key through which we will subscribe the system. So here you can click on manage and under manage, you get two activation keys. And I actually already have the demo key here. I will just remove it and create it once again. So please create a new activation key. You have you have none so far as a new user. So click on the new activation key. You can name it as demo key, ideally. That's what I use in the subsequent steps. And don't forget to check this this subscription, Red Hat Developer Subscription for individuals. You can leave the rest as it is by default. Okay. So considering you have the demo key created, please note this organization ID. We will need this organization ID in further steps. It's unique for each of you. So just copy and paste it somewhere and we'll use it in a while. I'll give you a couple of seconds to catch up. It's hard to tell without direct connection with the audience how far you are. Maybe you can just tell me in the chat if I'm too fast or too slow. Okay. So I will move on to the terminal and let's get to the weigh-grant box. So I will consider that you've taken the approach of using the weigh-grant box. I will actually, I have already done the weigh-grant init. So let me just go to the right folder. So I'm in the folder where I've done the weigh-grant init as I talked in the first step. And right now I will just do weigh-grant up. So it will probably, I haven't done weigh-grant in it here yet. So I'll do it the same way as you. Okay. Weigh-grant init, weigh-grant up. So weigh-grant up will start the VM virtual machine. Let's take just a couple of seconds. This is gonna be just totally clean VM, I think, prepared for us. So I'll run weigh-grant SSH, which will get us to the virtual machine. We are logged in as a weigh-grant user. So we will need actually the root privileges. So let me just run sudo-i to get logged in as root. And now we need to install convert to rel. That's actually just one of the two steps to run convert to rel is just first is to download the package. And actually I need to copy that from some other place because this gives me a broken command. Okay, yum install. And you can see that we currently host the packages in GitHub. And yeah, that's just where we have the latest release at the moment. So okay, convert rel is installed. And right now we need to run convert to rel to start the conversion. So I will let you give you a couple of seconds to have the convert to rel installed. Maybe you struggled with copying and pasting this command the same as I. So in the meantime, I'm already preparing this command to run convert to rel. So you can also copy paste this this this command from from the slides. I hope you have them available. If you if you don't see the slides, I made the link available through the description of the workshop. But I can paste the link also here to the chat. So you can copy and paste the convert to rel command. So the first parameter or option is the is the activation key. We named it the more underscore key. The second one is dash oh, that's that stands for the organization ID. That's the ID I told you to to make to copy when creating the activation key. I'll get back to it. It's it's this one. And you have your own unique one. So just use that one. And I'm also using the dash dash debug option that will just give us more output, including what commands are running under the under the hood during the conversion. And actually, yeah, so I don't see any comments. So I'm gonna just run the command to start with the conversion. So first, you are presented with the end user license agreement. So by continuing just you accept the agreement. Again, I sent in the email beforehand that also also in the event description that this eura is necessary to to read through and accept. So I'll try to go ahead. I hope you you've done that or the other ways to just accept without reading it. So I'm gonna hit yes. And now it checks the system if it's supported by the tool. And now it tells us what third party packages are installed on the system. Right now it detects only the convert to real tool. It's not signed by it's not signed by this sent sent us GPG key. So it considers it as a third party. And also I should mention that if you use the regular redhead subscription for a rail upon converting the system, the the resulting rail system is automatically eligible for redhead support. This is not the case with the developer subscription because that comes with no support. But just I wanted to tell you that because here is the sentence that redhead support won't be provided for third party packages. Okay, so right now it starts to download the subscription manager necessary for subscribing the system. I'll make the window bigger. And now it starts to subscribing the system using using what those options we provided. That means the activation key and the the organization ID. This usually takes a couple of seconds. Contacts the redhead subscription servers. In the meantime if you have any other questions and I can see another question in the Q&A. So any plan to create low-cost self-support option for businesses to replace sent us with with rail. So the only thing I know of right now is the subscription we are using now. That's the no-cost one. And I'm not really sure about the future subscription possibilities that that will come the low-cost ones. That's not not released, not available at the moment. So I can't tell. Sorry. Yeah, we just use the no-cost one. It gives you subscription for up to 16 servers at no cost. So in the meantime I will scroll up the system got subscribed and so yeah. We got subscribed and now the convert to rail enables the right repositories. It detected that we need these two repositories, rail 8 base OS and upstream. They got enabled and now there are some packages that are to be removed. They are mainly sent us only related. So here we need to agree with those packages being removed. Now the packages actually those that are to be removed are first downloaded. That's for the case of the rollback I talked about. So if anything fails now those removed packages would be installed back. Right, so now we hit the point of no return. That is after this point all the packages are to be replaced. So let's hit yes. And first is the kernel and then the rest. So now it's gonna take a couple of minutes to replace all the packages. So in the meantime let me switch to the slides and I'll tell you how to how to run convert to rail with Ansible non interactively in an automated fashion. But before that I want to just mention that there is currently a gap in the utility functionality and that is UEFI. So if your system is based on UEFI after the conversion you need to do couple of manual steps so that you can reboot without a problem. So those interested can go to this link and I'll get to the Ansible and we don't have much time so I'll probably just talk you through that and you can probably try that on your own. So this is the simplest way at least from my point of view the simplest way how to use Ansible to run convert to rail. So this is the playbook and it's basically the same what we have done manually. So the first is to install convert to rail through YAM and this is yeah this is the same URL we used before and then we run this the same command. The only difference here is the dash y option. The dash y option just answers yes to all questions. You could see in the demo that I was hitting yes manually a couple of questions so yeah using this dash y the conversion runs non interactively until the end until the system is converted and then you need to tweak the vagrant file also a bit so it depends how you want to run the Ansible playbook but because we have used the vagrant box setup so I just added a couple of lines to the vagrant file which is what you what you have in the folder in which you run vagrant init. The vagrant file has been automatically created you just need to edit it and yeah paste this content there. It just means that we are adding a new provisioning setup for the conversion running the convert to rail YAML that's the playbook we created in the previous step is convert to rail YAML with this content and then you just run vagrant up with this the option provision mit conversion that's this this name conversion and yeah that's gonna do the thing for you and let me just see whether the conversion what's the state of that at the moment so if I scroll up yeah we are currently replacing the packages so it's still gonna take probably a couple more minutes and we've got six minutes so I will go further if you see any issue with the tool during the testing of yours or if you see how it could be improved you would be really glad if you contribute and I can see Neil is on this workshop so thank you Neil you've already contributed and yeah I'm looking at the chat okay so here's the GitHub repository you can contribute to the Python code is is pretty easy to understand I believe and yeah the team who works on this tool is is welcoming to everyone and I would say pretty responsive at least we try to to be as much as possible and I've got a price for you so if you create a pull request in that repository and adding the label Defcon or maybe just mentioning it in the description and you you do that contribution until the end of March we will send you a t-shirt with convert rel theme next slide yeah there is a link to discussions on github if you have any question after the workshop just just ask there and you can definitely report a bug or request a feature you do you do that through again github through the github issues and if you file a bug report please attach the log file that's gonna help us a lot because the log file contains actually all the outputs that you can also see on on the terminal when you run around the tool and that's it from me I will just show show the outputs of the conversion on the background and now is the Q&A time so any questions you can just ask for the permission to to share the audio and you can ask right away using microphone or even in the chat if you want yeah I can see that the conversion is gonna take a couple more minutes but I believe it's gonna finish until the end of the workshop hopefully and yeah there is a new question in the Q&A has to be the PR merged to get the t-shirt or just any PR is reverted oh I believe that any PR created will eventually get merged we can just make it work together so the answer would be any PR you create and I hope you're not gonna create just some random change that that makes no sense but yeah and and about the low-cost subscriptions I would just reiterate that please stay you can you can follow the news from Red Hat I believe maybe the Red Hat blog probably can be the right place to look at maybe the Red Hat Twitter I am sure that Red Hat is looking for new ways how to allow bigger businesses who that have more than 16 servers to to get subscription as a let's say alternative to CentOS 8 and yeah so just look for the news