Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

The Sri Lankan public school teachers online learning strike has now entered its third week. Teachers are demanding a salary increase, abolition of existing salary anomalies and withdrawal of the Kotelawala National Defence University Act (KNDUA).

Over 200,000 teachers across the country are involved in the strike, called by the Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU), Ceylon Teacher Service Union, United Teachers Union and several other unions.

The teacher unions were forced to call the online learning strike after police brutally suppressed a protest against the KNDUA on July 8. Several participants, including CTU General Secretary Joseph Stalin, were arrested and detained at an Air Force-controlled quarantine centre.

The KNDUA has been presented to parliament by the defence ministry and will be debated in early August. If passed, it will give the military-controlled tertiary institution, which was originally established to train senior officers, the same powers as other universities, under the University Grants Commission, including to establish more private fee-paying courses. The transformation of the university is part of the governments moves towards the privatisation of education and the militarisation of society. Teacher union officials and others were released in the face of widespread anger over the police crackdown. The unions have been compelled to continue the national strike, because teachers are determined to win their long-standing demands.

The Teacher-Student-Parent Safety Committee (TSPSC) and Socialist Equality Party (SEP) warn that the teachers national strike is at a critical turning point. Despite the governments intransigence and threats, the unions continue to insist that pressure will force it to bow to teachers demands. They are deliberately limiting industrial action, in preparation for shutting down the struggle.

On July 22, over 2,000 teachers marched to the presidential secretariat in central Colombo. Teacher union leaders were summoned to a meeting with senior officials, with Education Minister G.L. Peiris participating via telephone.

Following the talks, CTU General Secretary Stalin told teachers that discussions would be held on Tuesday with the minister and officials, regarding a cabinet paper on their demands. This would be followed by a discussion with President Gotabhaya Rajapakse on July 30.

A similar cabinet paper was prepared by the minister when teachers held a one-day sick leave strike in January 2020. The union bureaucracy hailed this as a victory, but later admitted there would be no change in teachers wages or conditions.

The unions have called for the elimination of salary anomalies, comparing teachers wages with the salaries of other state employees. But instead of uniting all workers in a common fight for decent living wages, the unions are dividing the workers. Likewise, the different unions among teachers are dividing the latter and stoking grievances over grade differences.

The unions are also demanding that teachers service be classified as a separate closed service, meaning that employees can only be transferred within the education sector, not to other public sectors. The unions make the empty claim that this would improve wages and conditions. Closed services in other state sectors, such as the railways and the postal services, have produced no improvements for workers.

The teacher unions leadership now boasts that the unions have never been more united, that they are better able to pressure the government and win their demands. Since 1997, teachers have heard this rhetoric constantly, at protests over the past 24 years, when the unions first called for abolition of salary anomalies.

Teachers must reject union claims that increased pressure will shift the government. In fact, the Rajapakse government, which confronts a profound economic crisis, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, is preparing to unleash even greater attacks on the working class.

On July 24, Trade Minister Bandula Gunawardena told the media that the government spends 86 percent of its revenue on state employees salaries and a teachers wage rise was impossible, given the depth of the economic crisis induced by the pandemic.

If the government granted teachers salary demands, it would have to increase taxes and burden the people, he declared, in an attempt to pit other workers and the poor against teachers.

The Rajapakse government, however, has already increased taxes on the masses, while granting huge tax concessions and cheap capital to big business.

Last week, Basil Rajapakse, the newly-appointed finance minister, directed officials to prune state-sector expenditure and not hire new workers. Colombo has slashed imports and forced employees to work in dangerous pandemic conditions, in a desperate attempt to earn foreign exchange to pay huge external debts.

The education budget has also been slashed this year to 126 billion rupees ($US630 million), down from 166 billion rupees in 2019. Only about 1.2 percent of gross domestic product is being allocated to education spending.

In recent months, thousands of health, postal and plantation workers have taken industrial action against government and big business attacks on living and social conditions. Other sections of the population, including poor peasants and fishermen, have protested, demanding financial support from the government.

These struggles are part of a wave of working class resistance unfolding around the world. Like its international counterparts, the Rajapakse administration has responded to the rising social opposition with anti-democratic measures and moves towards a presidential dictatorship.

Help the WSWS expand our coverage on the class struggle!

The trade unions have responded to the rising opposition by doing their utmost to prevent workers coming into struggle. When forced to call industrial action, they treacherously work to contain and then scuttle it, betraying their members demands.

The unions fully backed Rajapakses demand for a reopening of the economy, amid the ongoing pandemic, thus placing workers and their families in harms way. The teachers unions, likewise, have supported the reopening of schools in unsafe conditions.

On May 27 and June 2, President Rajapakse imposed the essential public services act, which bans any strike action and protests by workers in 12 public sector entities. While the government continues to renew this repressive measure every two weeks, it has not been opposed by a single union, including the teachers unions.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Samagi Jana Balavegaya, the Tamil National Alliance and pseudo-left groups, such as the Frontline Socialist Party, have supported this anti-democratic attack. The Socialist Equality Party is the only organisation to oppose it and call on workers to prepare for struggle to defeat it.

The struggle against Colombos attacks, and the defence of living and social rights, requires a political struggle against the government and the entire capitalist system. The unions are utterly hostile to such a fight.

Teachers cannot allow their strike to remain under the control of the unions. They must take their struggle into their own hands.

We urge teachers to build independent Teacher-Student-Parent Safety Committees at every school, to rally parents, students and other sections of the working class, as well as the oppressed, to defend public free education with the following demands:

This is the program advanced by the SEP in Sri Lanka, as part of the International Committee of the Fourth Internationals fight to develop the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.

The TSPSC will hold an online public meeting on the program for teachers struggle on Friday, July 30 at 7 p.m. We urge teachers, students and workers to participate in this meeting and discussion. Please register for the meeting here.

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A program of struggle for the teachers' wage strike in Sri Lanka - WSWS

It will also have implications for councillors who in May 2022 will have to stand for election to a new unitary authority serving the entire county.

But above all, it will be the around 10,000 council staff across North Yorkshire who will be the most affected by the changes.

When the new authority launches in April 2023 following the abolition of North Yorkshire County Council and the district and borough councils in Harrogate, Scarborough, Selby, Craven, Ryedale, Hambleton and Richmondshire, most staff will be transferred across but some duplicated roles will inevitably be at risk of redundancy.

It is not yet known how many jobs will be affected - and there are also the questions of whether staff will be relocated and what happens to office buildings including Harrogates new civic centre headquarters.

North Yorkshire County Council - which is behind the single council plans and will act as the continuing authority when reorganisation happens - has said those at risk of redundancy will be mostly senior staff and that the transferring of workers will be a simple process.

However, some union officials are not fully convinced.

David Houlgate, branch secretary at Unison Harrogate, which supported rival plans for two new councils split on a east/west basis, said: Whilst we saw merits in both proposals there was a concern that district and borough council roles were at greater risk with the North Yorkshire County Council proposal. It would be safe to say that concern remains.

Staff are also concerned about possibly having to relocate though at this time we have no idea what is likely to happen.

On the other hand, Wendy Nichols, secretary of the North Yorkshire branch of Unison, which supported the single council plans, said reorganisation should be welcomed by all staff who she hopes will work together to deliver a stronger future for everyones benefit.

She said: Many thousands of staff will now simply transfer to the new council as part of the process of setting it up.

Our priority is to make sure that staff experience the least possible disruption so they can get on with their jobs and continue to deliver high quality and reliable public services.

The aim of reorganisation is to unlock the door to a devolution deal with the government which could see millions of pounds and decision-making powers handed down from Whitehall to North Yorkshire.

The county could also get a mayor similar to those seen in South Yorkshire, the Tees Valley and Greater Manchester.

But a key part of the plans is saving money and a large part of this will come from a reduction in staff.

For example, there are currently eight council chief executives across North Yorkshire earning around 100,000 a year.

The new council will just have one - and the same will most likely be said for other top roles including directors.

A spokesperson for North Yorkshire County Council explained: With the exception of a handful of the most senior managers, all staff will simply carry on doing what they are currently doing.

After April 2023 when the new authority is in place some services may want to review their structures and arrangements especially if there is duplication of work and roles or more efficient new ways of delivering services which have been brought together.

The expectation is that whilst over time for some services there will be changes to staffing structures and need for reductions in posts this will be able to be managed by removing vacancies.

For a small number of the most senior managers there will be a need to reduce posts at an early stage when eight senior management teams become a single new management team.

The coming months and as more details emerge about the new authority will undoubtedly be a nervy time for some staff.

Until it starts to take shape, there will be many unanswered questions about exactly whose jobs are at risk and what the new staffing structure will look like.

But officials have insisted staff will play a key part in the process and that they hope workers wont quit local government due to the uncertainties ahead.

The county council spokesperson added: There is a wealth of talent across district, borough and county council staff and it is very much hoped that everyone will see this as a huge opportunity to build a new, ambitious and exemplar council for everyone in North Yorkshire.

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Around 10,000 public sector staff to 'keep doing their jobs' when North Yorkshire district councils are abolished - but unions aren't convinced - The...

Hello, friends.

The second half of the 2021 season remains a fun one for Orioles fans. With a 5-2 win over the Tigers on Saturday, the Os improved to 9-4 coming out of the All-Star break. Thats a fun run of baseball. Its probably not a coincidence that its come when four of the five series theyve played have been against teams out of a race, but hey, wins are wins. Check out Harrisons recap of the game for the lovely totals, and dont forget to vote in the MBP poll.

The last two wins have come with no thanks whatsoever to reliever Tanner Scott, whos done a lot to show why he didnt get traded. Scott faced three batters without recording an out on Friday, and faced three more batters without recording an out on Saturday as well. That included two walks and a hit by pitch; Scott has now walked or hit 19.1% of the batters hes faced this year. Its not great!

Following Saturdays game, manager Brandon Hyde told reporters that Scott has been battling a sore knee that may end up landing him on the injured list, though thats not certain yet. Someones coming off the active roster today, as Keegan Akin will be activated from the COVID injured list and head into the bullpen.

This recent good stretch of Os baseball has shifted their current position in the 2022 draft standings. At 37-66, the Orioles have dropped below the Texas Rangers, recent losers of 12 straight. The Rangers blew a late lead but then won a walkoff in extra innings last night and are now 37-67. This puts the Os in line for the #3 pick. The Orioles are now on pace for a 58-104 record on the season. I think Id enjoy if they could somehow avoid crossing the 100 loss mark, but I certainly wont be holding my breath.

After todays 1:10 finale against the Tigers, the Orioles will play four of their next five series against teams who are contending in the 2021 season. Early August will be the exact opposite in opponent quality compared to the start of their second half. I hope youve been able to enjoy what you could of the last couple of weeks while you could.

Orioles quiet trade deadline signals that return to contention might not be so far away: I think its getting closer (The Baltimore Sun)Some people, including those in the Orioles beat writer class, are drawing inferences from Paul Fry and Tanner Scott not being traded prior to the deadline that I would not draw.

Whats left to look forward to after the trade deadline? (School of Roch)Rochs list of questions for the second half of the Orioles season is so thorough that he even wonders if people will keep mixing up Shaun Anderson and Shawn Armstrong.

What Galviss departure means for Urias and Martin (Baltimore Baseball)Ramn Uras is going to be the shortstop for the next little while, and Richie Martin is going to play in Norfolk once hes through with his rehab. Next!

Phillies tug at heartstrings with Freddy Galviss return (Fangraphs)The lone Orioles trade prior to the deadline wasnt among the more earth-shaking ones made. Fangraphs has some nice things to say about the prospect they got in return, though.

Tyler Alexander, Spenser Watkins face off as ex-teammates (Orioles.com)Todays Orioles and Tigers starting pitchers were teammates at four different levels in the Tigers minor league system. Pretty neat that they are going to be starting pitchers in the same big league game.

Today in 1994, Cal Ripken Jr. played in his 2,000th consecutive game. The Orioles won a 1-0 game over the Twins as Arthur Rhodes pitched a complete game shutout. Rhodes followed with a CGSO in his next game as well, then the strike hit after that. Ripkens streak paused at 2,009 during the strike.

In 2003, the Orioles traded Sidney Ponson to the Giants for three players: Kurt Ainsworth, Ryan Hannaman, and Damian Moss. This trade felt important at the time and ultimately didnt matter at all.

There are several former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2008-18 outfielder Adam Jones, 2002-03 pitcher Travis Driskill, 1975-77 first baseman/outfielder Tony Muser, and 1959 three-game pitcher George Bamberger.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: explorer William Clark (1770), anthem writer Francis Scott Key (1779), writer Herman Melville (1819), fashion figure Yves Saint Laurent (1936), rapper Chuck D (1960), and rapper Coolio (1963).

In 1798, the British fleet launched a surprise night attack against the French navy at Aboukir Bay. When the battle wrapped up two days later, the British had achieved a decisive victory, sinking two French ships of the line and capturing another nine. British admiral Horatio Nelson was made a baron following the Battle of the Nile.

In 1834, Britains Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 came into effect, abolishing slavery in the British Empire, though it lingered through the British East India Company territory for another decade.

In 1914, the conflict we now know as World War I escalated significantly as the German Empire declared war on the Russian Empire.

In 1965, Frank Herberts Dune was first published. The title is recognized as the worlds best-selling work of science fiction. A new movie adaptation is set for release on October 22.

In 1981, MTV went on the air for the first time. The first music video played on the channel was The Buggless song Video Killed The Radio Star.

**

And thats the way it is in Birdland on August 1. Have a safe Sunday. Go Os!

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The Orioles are undefeated since the trade deadline and 9-4 in the second half - Camden Chat

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When the Biden administration retreated twice this month from its attempts to shoehorn critical race theory into K-12 classrooms, it showed two things: The first is that a strategy of exposure and pressure works, the second is that the American people can never let up.

The second is particularly vital. President Joe Biden has surrounded himself with committed ideologues who themselves have appointed mid-level managers devoted to far-leftist causes, and they are determined to impose these ideas on the rest of us.

If anything, this is a "teachable moment." Conservatives often remind themselves that personnel is policy, but when it comes to filling out administrations, they sometimes buckle under to the wishes of the left-of-center entrenched federal bureaucracy.

Example A is the Department of Educations hasty decision to eliminate a radical CRT outfit from its recommendations to schools on how to open up in the fall after the lengthy COVID-19 shutdown, and how to spend moneys allocated in the American Rescue Plan.

CRITICAL RACE THEORY TO FACE FIRST MAJOR POLITICAL TEST IN VIRGINIA

The guidance, called the "Roadmap to Reopening Safely and Meeting all Students Needs," had promoted theAbolitionist Teaching Network, a grifting outfit that (sadly) is fairly typical of companies that offer "anti-racist" trainings programs or curricula.

The network itself says it is gearing toward building "abolitionist teachers requires students, families, and educators who disrupt Whiteness and other forms of oppression."

The "roadmap" called for the elimination of "all punitive or disciplinary practices that spirit murder Black, Brown, and Indigenous children." And it included calls to "remove any and all police and policing from schools" and institute "reparations for children of color stolen by the school-to-prison pipeline."

WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY?

According to Fox News, Bettina Love, co-founder of ATN and chair of its board, said during a welcome webinar, "If you dont recognize that White supremacy is in everything we do, then we got a problem." Love added, "I want us to be feared."

All of this is ugly stuff, but average fare for the outfits that suck tax dollars out of hard-strapped communities with their "Social Emotional Learning" (SEL) programs. The outrageous posturing of these trainers and "educators" has helped convinced parents across the country to resist CRT.

The thinking is also classic Critical Race Theoryeven though now that a natural resistance to CRT has built up, those practicing these divisive concepts deny that they are part of CRT. They cant hide, however; defining deviancy down, and decriminalizingcrime, is at the heart of the writings of Regina Austin, Angela Harris and Paul Butler, undeniable CRT academics.

MARK BRNOVICH: TO DEFEAT CRITICAL RACE THEORY, HOLD TIGHT TO CONSTITUTION, DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

And, it is important to note as well that the use of the term "abolitionist" is not meant to associate this effort with the actual abolition of slavery, the work of Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, or the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.

No, abolition in this sense is a Marxist term.

In his book,"The Devil and Karl Marx," Grove City Colleges Paul Kengor reminds us that, "The word abolition is omnipresent throughout Marxs writings. As [Marx scholar] Robert Payne noted, the word almost seems to jump off every page of the Manifesto. And after he has "abolished" property, family, and nations, and all existing societies, Marx shows little interest in creating a new society on the ruins of the old."

ANTI-CRT GROUP TARGETS VIRGINIA INDEPENDENTS WITH MASS TEXTS ABOUT MCAULIFFE'S CONSPIRACY COMMENT

In fact, in a video that Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors cut in February, she praised her intellectual guru, Angela Davis, as one of her "favorite abolitionists." Lest we forget, Davis ran twice for VP on the Communist Party ticket and received the Lenin Peace Prize from the ruthless East German leader Erich Honnecker. She fills auditoriums at universities today where she informs her clueless audience that "I am now and have always been a Marxist."

So its not really surprising that almost as soon as Fox News had reported that the administration was recommending ATN materials, a spokesperson said the whole thing had been"an error."A rushed-outstatementsaid, "The Department does not endorse the recommendation of this group, nor do they reflect our policy positions."

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The department may not officially endorse the abolitionist teaching network, but some of its top appointees already know the network well.

Cindy Marten, newly appointed Deputy Secretary at education, hosted Love when she was superintendent of the San Diego unified public school system, where Love conducted SEL trainings in 2020, according to investigative journalist and Manhattan Institute fellow Chris Rufo. Love was paid $11,000 for her work, according to Fox News.

And Love spoke at a national education association event last year when Donna Harris-Aikens, now an acting assistant secretary, was senior director at the far-left teachers union.

The episode over the abolitionist teaching network was but the second time the Department of Education leads with its CRT fist, and then folds when America punches back.

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Earlier this year, Secretary Miguel Cardona recommended a rule that would prioritize grants to educational institutions that practiced CRT. Over 30,000 Americans wrote mostly negative comments on the departments website, including The Heritage Foundation.Cardona appears to have folded. He said in astatementlast week that "this program, however, has not, does not, and will not dictate or recommend specific curriculum be introduced or taught in classrooms."

Americans are faced with an administration that pretends to be moderate, and which a fawning media portrays as moderate, but which appoints people who attempt to impose fringe ideas onto impressionable minds. Parents and taxpayers must remain vigilant.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM MIKE GONZALEZ

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Mike Gonzalez: Critical race theory, Team Biden and our schools 2 big lessons conservatives must learn - Fox News

JULY 31, 2021

YOU WAKE UP surrounded by empty bottles, no memory of the previous night, no memory of your own name. You climb out of bed, retrieve pants and a shirt from the floor, a tie from the ceiling fan. Your head pounds. You make your way to the bathroom, splash water on your face, then stare into the mirror. The face you confront is mottled and raw. Youre not sure whats happened, but you have the nagging sense that theres some crime for which you must atone. You retreat from the toilet, back into the remains of a hotel room. You scuttle out the door, make your way downstairs, creep to the angry-looking individual behind the counter. In the course of your conversation with Garte, the hotel and caf manager, you realize several things: you owe a not insignificant sum of money for damages to your hotel room, you are a police officer a detective here to investigate a case, and a dead body hangs from a tree behind the hotel its been there for at least a week. You still dont remember your name, though.

This is the opening scene of Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, the newly released version of the 2019 computer roleplaying game from Estonian developers ZA/UM. Amnesia is a well-worn trope, especially in video games, where it offers players a clean slate for building their own character. Disco Elysium makes up for this tired clich by introducing the fascinating post-revolutionary city of Revachol and the peculiar stories embedded in it. Like the best detective fiction, the games murder case is really an excuse to dig up the social, political, and personal secrets that led to there being a corpse in the first place. The body hanging from a tree turns out to have been a mercenary, working for a shipping company (Wild Pines) thats currently trying to break the local dockworkers strike. The mercenary may or may not have been killed by a band of union dockworkers. Drug trafficking may be involved, or it may just be a distraction. There are plenty of characters directly involved in the conflict between the company and the union, but theres also a broad spectrum of individuals caught in the conflicts orbit: an old royalist soldier gripes about how the revolutionaries of yesteryear paved the way for the decadence of the present. A red-headed boy spews obscenity, throws rocks at the mercenarys corpse, and prays for the city to burn. A woman in a wheelchair reminisces about a moment in her youth when she spotted the Insulindian Phasmid, an otherworldly creature that uses psychic powers to conceal itself as a thicket of reeds.

Most digital roleplaying games feature a gameplay loop alternating between combat and dialogue. Sometimes conversation is integral to the game, opening up branching story lines, but usually conversation is simply a means to an end: you get a quest in a dialogue, that quest sends you after an object, you fight creatures to acquire said object, and you return to the aforementioned quest giver (for a reward, of course). Your character grows through this experience, but most of that growth revolves around combat, not only because you earn experience points through combat but also because those points get funneled back into combat skills. All of which is to say that all too often video games turn the richest fantasy worlds into stages of destruction.

In contrast, Disco Elysium has almost no combat. Instead, it has an incredibly complex conversation system. The conversation system ZA/UM designed doesnt simply communicate dialogue between characters, it also expresses the inner conflict of your protagonist. Skills in the game take the form of distinct voices. These voices contribute to conversations, opening up different dialogue options, but they also present ideas, observations, and opinions to the player. In other words, even when hes not speaking with another character, your detective talks to himself, a crowd of voices thrumming in his head. The Inland Empire skill a nod to David Lynchs film of the same name channels surreal visions of your surroundings and hunches about mysterious goings on. (It makes you sound an awful lot like Agent Dale Cooper during the first season of Twin Peaks.) Empathy lets you understand others feelings, opening up conversation paths in which characters confess their inner turmoil, while Suggestion trades in charm to persuade others to your point of view. Even skills that lack obvious application to conversation, like Visual Calculus (used for reconstructing crime scenes) or Interfacing (for picking locks and operating machines), still play out as conversation. Instead of the lockpicking mini-games found in so many roleplaying games, Disco Elysium narrates the experience of picking the lock, as if you were overhearing the grumblings of a grizzled locksmith.

Disco Elysium is the roleplaying game as interactive novel, a sustained exercise in eschewing the flashy graphics of big-budget games in favor of dense prose. This prose appears in a dedicated window on the right side of the screen, a box that appears every time you converse with a character or interact with an object in the world. This means that more often than not time spent playing Disco Elysium consists of reading text as it cascades down the screen. When youre not reading, youre navigating your character across a two-dimensional representation of the Revachol, sometimes entering a specific location like an abandoned church or a down-on-its-luck bookstore. In some respects, the game does little more than revise the conventions of 1990s computer roleplaying games like Baldurs Gate and Planescape: Torment, pushing them back toward their origins in pen-and-paper roleplaying games. The games descriptions resemble the notes of a skilled dungeon master (DM) coordinating a session of Dungeons & Dragons (though in much more detail than your typical DM). That isnt to say the game is lacking in the graphics department. Aleksander Rostovs art direction is a brilliant blend of steampunk fantasy illustration, the realist painting of Gustave Courbet, and the disfigured portraits of Francis Bacon: character portraits tend toward the grotesque; landscapes are detailed and realistic, with nuanced shades of grays, browns, and blues; and the nonhuman object world is littered with fascinating and fantastic junk, like radio computers with their own version of the internet.

What distinguishes Disco Elysium from other recent retro roleplaying games like Divinity: Original Sin or Pillars of Eternity? In part, its the games setting. There are fantastic and sci-fi elements in the world of Elysium, but theyre incorporated into the mundane affairs of working-class life. There are no roaming monsters, errant knights, or dank dungeons. Instead, youll find a maintenance worker perpetually sweeping the floors of an apartment building, a street artist working on a mural and sneering at the police, and a fisherwoman stoically mourning her husbands loss to the sea. To describe the overall tone by analogy, its as if David Lynch had directed the second season of The Wire, blending its depiction of labor struggles in the Port of Baltimore with a mysterious air of otherworldly corruption. I wont get into the otherworldly elements of Disco Elysium it ventures into spoiler territory except to say that they tend toward the apocalyptic, with hints that the world is far less stable than the citys concrete structures suggest.

But what truly distinguishes Disco Elysium from most recent video games and a great deal of contemporary culture is its unflinching approach to the politics of capitalism, revolution, and policing. Revachol is haunted by the ghosts of a failed revolution a communal uprising that established an alternative to empire and capitalism, only to be violently put down by an international military alliance. The people of Revachol dont just remember the revolution, they relive its conflicts. They hash out the questions it raised about the dignity of work, what constitutes real democracy, how much autonomy folks should have, and much more. As a detective, youre a lightning rod for these political conversations, in part because of your inquisitive nature, but even more so because you represent political reaction: like it or not, your amnesiac protagonist is the police, and the police almost by definition preserve the status quo. The developers of ZA/UM could have had you play a private investigator, a conventional move in noir fiction which makes the protagonist more sympathetic by virtue of their exemption from a (usually) corrupt police force. Instead, Disco Elysium takes every effort to remind you of your complicity, to gesture toward the fact that solving the mystery might mean abetting a multinational corporation in shutting down a worker rebellion. That isnt to say you cant make political choices. You can, for example, choose to learn Mazovian Socio-Economics the science of revolution! becoming a socialist cop who vows to push history to its ultimate conclusion: the abolition of capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Of course, socialist characters in the game will be more than a little suspicious of you. Perhaps youre really just trying to infiltrate radical political groups in order to undermine them from within.

There are other political paths players can choose, too. In my first playthrough, I drifted toward my own proclivities, choosing every anti-capitalist piece of dialogue available. In contrast, in my second playthrough, I ignored my political instincts to become an ultra-liberal, which essentially meant I was Milton Friedman with a badge, praising the creativity of entrepreneurs and decrying the barbarism of socialism. The game also allows you to role-play a moralist a humanitarian centrist and a fascist all right-wing diatribes against race-mixing and decadence. No matter the political orientation you play toward, the game introduces friction into your internal dialogue, as well as your conversations with other characters. One character might mock you for believing that resistance to capitalism is possible at all, while another will not so subtly call you out for being a tool of the bourgeoisie. When you choose enough dialogue options that correspond to one of the games political orientations, it offers you a thought that not only introduces even more dialogue options of the same type but also rewards you for choosing them. Crucially, the game doesnt suggest that the different political positions are equal in value. The majority of the characters lean to the left. Theyre more than happy to insult you for your chosen profession as an officer of the law. Even if theyre not revolutionaries, you get the sense that they would have rooted for the communards during the revolution. After all, it wasnt the revolutionaries who shelled their neighborhood.

The fantasy offered by so many roleplaying games is that of being a hero, a savior, the last hope of a besieged civilization. Disco Elysium turns that entire paradigm on its head. Civilization is already fucked, and not because of monsters but because of the impersonal machinations of capitalism and empire. You arent a hero; youre a cop, a detective. You might be able to introduce a measure of justice into the world, but that might come at the cost of perpetuating the violence thats built into the social system. The strength of Disco Elysium is that it manages to raise these questions in a manner thats blunt but not didactic or when it is didactic, its with a wink and a sly grin. Its a game that makes the difficult matters of politics, ethics, religion, love, and loss into a pleasurable conversation, but its a conversation without victory or resolution. If theres hope, the game suggests, its in reckoning with our own complicities and in learning the lessons of political history.

Christian Haines is an assistant professor of English at Penn State University and a managing editor of Gamers with Glasses.

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Roleplaying a Communist Cop in the Ruins of Revolution - lareviewofbooks

For the hundreds of thousands of Africans who were enslaved around the world as part of the British Empire, August 1, 1834 marked a watershed moment. That was the day Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act, signaling the end of slavery in Canada and the countrys other colonies.

As momentous as emancipation was for those enslaved individuals, relatively little national attention has been paid in Canada to this historic milestone likely down, in part, to how scarcely slavery itself has been acknowledged in the countrys history until recent years.

Finally, in March of this year, the Government of Canada officially designated every August 1 as Emancipation Day across the country after unanimous support in the House of Commons.

The Honourable Wanda Thomas Bernard is a Canadian senator for Nova Scotia, a social worker and a professor emeritus at Dalhousie who has been pushing for years for federal recognition of Emancipation Day. We spoke to her about the long road to recognition and the possibilities it offers to raise awareness about and overcome anti-Black racism, one of slaverys toughest legacies.

You and others have been pushing for some time to get the Canadian government to recognize Emancipation Day, even introducing a private member's bill in 2018. Then this year, the House of Commons and Senate both came out in support of national designation. Why did it take so long and what changed to make it finally happen?

The reality is that community advocates and activists have been working on this for over 25 years. We just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the motion that was introduced by the Honourable Jean Augustine to have Black History Month nationally recognized in Canada. There have been several attempts since then to have Emancipation Day nationally recognized.

It is quite likely that Canada wasnt ready to accept this because accepting Emancipation Day to be nationally recognized in Canada in essence means that Canada is finally owning its past, its full history. Owning the history of the enslavement of African people here in Canada as well. Part of the Canadian narrative has been the comparison to our neighbours to the south, the idea of Canada being better the place where African American slaves seeking freedom escaped to. Weve not acknowledged and recognized that full history. Yes, the Underground Railroad was an important part of our history, but it was not the full history.

How were you first introduced to Emancipation Day and what does the day mean to you?

I first learned about Emancipation Day as an undergraduate student and my engagement in the civil rights movement. When I think about Emancipation Day, I see it as being a marker. Its a day to honour our ancestors and honour the legacy of their resilience, resistance and hard work. Its also honouring those who didnt survive. Its also a time to reflect. Reflecting on the full history and on how that history informed the anti-Black racism we are still dealing with today.

I also see Emancipation Day as a time to think about what actions we need to do individually, collectively across systems to effect systemic change so that we are truly emancipated. Although emancipation happened in 1834, the groundwork for anti-Black racism took root through the institution of enslavement, which has been allowed to flourish in this country and around the world. By marking Emancipation Day, were saying we need to heal from trauma of the violent past, but also make systemic changes so that things are better for future generations.

What are some more specific opportunities you see arising out of federal recognition for Emancipation Day?

This federal recognition is a signal across the country that its time for us to bring more awareness to the contributions of Black Canadians. To bring a fuller appreciation to the fact that Black Canadian history is indeed Canadian history. I see it as an opportunity to remind all of Canada that Black history extends beyond the month of February and that we really need to be embracing and integrating Black history into our everyday practices.

I see an incredible opportunity for education systems at all levels to create meaningful space for teaching about the contributions of Black Canadians, our struggles, and about the survival. Then I also see an opportunity for allies to join the struggle and become part of the solution to bring about systemic change everywhere.

See also: Raising the African Nova Scotian flag on Emancipation Day

How do you suggest people spend their first Emancipation Day?

On this first year of this national recognition, I would encourage people to begin with learning more and to be open to understanding why Emancipation Day is important to this country and why it should be important to individuals and families and organizations. A recognition of the significance of this day and why we must acknowledge this day. This first year, I really see it setting the tone for future years.

One of the things that has been happening for years in Toronto on July 31 is the Emancipation Day Underground Freedom Train Ride, organized by Itah Sadu owner of A Different Booklist. This year, they are doing it virtually. Ive participated in that a few times in Toronto and it is such a spiritual moment because it puts you in touch with the journeys of our ancestors. When I think about what our ancestors had to endure, part of me wants to weep and then another part of me wants to go into an absolute rage. Fortunately, the more reasonable Wanda Thomas Bernard emerges and is propelled to action to do more, to do whatever I can to make a difference. I take that responsibility very seriously, partly because my birthday is on Emancipation Day. I was literally born minutes after midnight on August 1, so I was meant to be born on Emancipation Day and not on July 31. It feels like a mission.

Dr. Bernard will be speaking this weekend during a free Emancipation Day event on August 1 in the Grand Parade in downtown Halifax. Visit the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia on Facebook for information on more events.

Link:

Ask an expert: Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard on why Emancipation Day is crucial in fighting antiBlack racism - Dal News

After the Government announced it would back its version of a new super authority to run the county from 2023 with the possibility of an elected super mayor to follow, North Yorkshire County Council pledged Harrogates interests would not be left behind in LGR (Local Government Reorganisation).

North Yorkshire County Council leader Coun Carl Les said: We are not just talking about devolving powers down from Whitehall to the county, we are talking about a double devolution of new powers coming to town and parish councils.

Harrogate is going to be hugely important in this.

LGR may not be the worlds sexiest acronym but its impact on how council tax payers in Harrogate live their lives is likely to be felt in some way for decades.

But the reaction in the town to the news has been muted with Harrogate council saying it will work to carry on its existing projects and support a smooth transition to the new local government system.

Wallace Sampson OBE, chief executive of Harrogate Borough Council said: We are disappointed that Government has chosen to form one council across the whole of North Yorkshire.

Despite the outcome, Harrogate Borough Council will continue to exist until 2023 and we have no plans to sit back until this time.

But business and community groups say there are more practical implications for important parts of Harrogate life than is visible at first glance, with a long list of questions which need to be addressed.

Among the important issues they are raising now include:

What will happen to existing council staff?

Who will now have responsibility over the Stray?

What happens to Harrogate councils support in the arts and leisure sector such as Harrogate Theatre?

What happens to Harrogate Convention Centre?

What happens to the councils headquarters at Harrogate Civic Centre, built recently at a cost of 13million.

What happens to the councils former headquarters at Crescent Gardens?

Who will stand in elections to the new super authority?

What will happen to Harrogate councils support for homeless projects?

Will a Harrogate Town Council have to be created?

Despite the upheaval involved with transferring all current council services and powers to a new single unitary council based in Northallerton, including the abolition of Harrogate Borough Council, all concerned are emphasising that things will carry on largely as normal.

North Yorkshire County Council leader Coun Carl Les welcomed the news Northallertons bid had won over a rival plan by the countys seven district councils, including Harrogate, by saying it would not not only save an estimated 25million every year in efficiencies but it was a natural fit for residents in terms of delivering services.

As the elected body already handling 80 per cent of all services, North Yorkshire says it is ready for its new, bigger role even if it admits there are many decisions about policy and strategy to be made before April 2023.

Harrogate Borough Council says it is disappointed at losing out but it, too, is keen to work for a smooth transition to the new authority in 2023.

Read more from the original source:

Harrogate Borough Council will be abolished but what happens next to town's public assets - Harrogate Advertiser

Part I

The masters were dam tief, the Governor an old rogue, and the King not such a fool as to buy them half free when he was rich enough to pay for them altogether.

Port of Spain Gazette, August 5, 1834

Today is Emancipation Day. Ashton Ford, one of our respected elders, remembers the impetus that led former prime minister George Chambers to change the Discovery Day holiday (a day that recognised the misdeeds of our oppressors) to Emancipation Day that honours the achievements of our ancestors.

Chambers believed if you named your streets and monuments after local patriots, you encouraged a sense of nationhood and strengthened national identity among the population.

There is another aspect of this name change that is worthy of consideration. In his biography, Dostoevsky in Love, Alex Christofi outlines the themes that undergird Dostoevskys writing: The importance of understanding that autonomy and dignity are more precious to us than the rational self-interest of economics; that more people are killed by bad ideas than by honest feelings; that a society with no grand narrative is vulnerable to political extremism.

In 1848, at a meeting with his literary circle, Dostoevsky read V Belinskys famous open letter to NV Gogol. It said: The most urgent questions of national importance in Russia at present are the abolition of serfdom; the abolition of physical punishment; and the enforcement of laws that already exist. Belinsky described the Russian serfs as white Negroes. Dostoevsky devoted much of his early life to the liberation of the Russian serfs, which took place on March 5, 1861, Russias Emancipation Day.

One should keep these two considerations (Chambers rationale for creating Emancipation Day and Dostoevskys hatred of serfdom) in mind as one reads todays and next weeks columns.

On August 1, 1834, the glorious day arrived which the Trinidad planters had so opposed. On August 5, the Port of Spain Gazette apologised for not publishing its regular issue on Emancipation Day, the day on which for the first time for centuries the sun shone forth on the British West Indies without lighting a (single??) slave to labour; upon which 850,000 human beings who had gone to rest the previous night suffering under the weight of slavery and [sad]ness insupportable, arose free and happy, and rejoicing at their deliverance from [slavery] which had from birth kept them down to the level of beasts.

Prior to that glorious day, the enslaved made it clear that after Emancipation Day they did not have the slightest intention to work in the fields again. The Port of Spain Gazette reported that the orders of council, the ordinances and the proclamations relating to emancipation had been fully published and explained to the enslaved who had generally laughed at and rejected the interpretation of that august document that the governor had offered. They believed the King had freed them right out, and that the apprenticeship was a job got up between their masters and the Governor. Their masters were damn tief, the Governor an old rogue, and the King not such a fool as to buy them half free when he was rich enough to pay for them altogether.

These were the feelings expressed by the slaves whenever the topic of Apprenticeship was ventured upon, either by their masters or the Government, and it was consequently thought wise to provide some mode of convincing them of their errors more forcibly, than mere explanation and reasoning, and four companies of the local Militias were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to commence permanent duty.

This show of force did not intimidate the newly freed population. On the morning of that glorious day, the newspaper reported that the apprentices moved into town in numerous groups and gangs, and wended their way to Government House. Long before His Excellency the Governor arrived in town, the Court Yard and surrounding neighbourhood were peopled by the happy and free, to the number of about 400, who had come to inform His Excellency that they had resolved to strike work.

These men and women were determined to demonstrate their free condition. They would listen to nothing that the governor had to say about any restrictions on their freedom. They were not only utterly disregarded but grossly insulted, and openly set at defiance. Explanation was drowned by vociferation; persuasion was attributed to fear and treated with disdain, whilst threats [were] met with contempt. The mob [the newspapers description] would listen to none, and became more turbulent and insolent each moment. After being treated as beasts of burden for many years, they displayed a new understanding of their place in the world.

Even at this moment, the dominant class could not but show its adeptness and coercion. The militia were requested to appear and in a space of time scarcely creditable, the whole of the town corps were under arms, and in a force and state of appointment gratifying to every man [presumably, the whites] who beheld them. Mercifully, all of the armed forces did not behave the same way.

In spite of the military presence, the newly freed continued to swarm Government House until the evening without exhibiting the least inclination to return to the estates to which they were attached, and the Governor upon taking his departure for his residence was assailed with every kind of abuse that apparently impunity could suggest.

In spite of their jubilation, the newly freed remained remarkably peaceful.

The estate workers around Port of Spain ceased work almost without exception, but not a single instance of violence was heard of. After dark, the newly freed Negroes (their term) dispersed and went back to their estates.

Prof Cudjoes e-mail address is scudjoe@wellesley.edu.

He can be reached

@ProfessorCudjoe

See the original post:

Glorious day(s) of the happy and the free - Trinidad & Tobago Express Newspapers

When inmates at Kingston Penitentiary decided in 1950 to start theKP Telescope, their very own newspaper, they already had a printing press and resources to start producing it. But when inmates across the street at the Prison for Women created their own publication, calledTightwire, in 1970, it was a different story.

We had to do everything from scratch, says Heather Evans, who contributed poems and artwork toTightwirewhile in the Prison for Women between 1984 and 1990.

The women, Evans explains, typed each issues articles on a typewriter, then photocopied and stapled the pages together themselves.Tightwirecontained original art, poetry, essays, reports, op-eds, and news from other institutions and the outside, along with health and programming PSAs for prisoners.

North American prisoners began producing their own publications in the 1950s and distributed them in prisons and to the general public. Contributors sold subscriptions and ads to support production. Asprison populations skyrocketedduring the last half of the 20th centuryandinstitutional control tightened, though, the tradition of the prison pressshifted toward obsolescence.

You can count on TVO to cover the stories others dontto fill the gaps in the ever-changing media landscape. But we cant do this without you.

But archived copies ofTightwireand other publications, maintained by former prisoners and their allies, remain important resources for learning about the experience ofincarceration and the movement for prison abolition.

It was very personal and extremely subjective, says Evans. It was our own experiences that went down on those pages, that we allowed other people to see. Thishelped cultivate mutual respect among the prisoners inside the Prison for Women, she says: You got to see what another person experienced on some level, as a child growing up in the foster system, as a child growing up in the residential-school system. They shared, and that brought us closer together.

According to Evans, the Prison for Womens management censoredTightwiresignificantly. Whenseven prisoners died by suicidein the late 1980s, Evans says, they had to sneak notes out to the public to draw attention to the crisis.They wouldnt want the whole truth getting out there, she says.

For the past 10 years, Melissa Munn, a professor at Okanagan College, in British Columbia, has been building a digital collection of penal-press issues atPenal Press A History of Prison Within. It now features more than 1,500 PDF copies of issues from institutions across North America, including 31 issues ofTightwire.

The women who wrote forTightwirewere politically conscious, what people would now call woke, says Munn. They were proposing interventions and alternatives like harm reduction and safe supply for drug usersthat were largely being ignored by both the correctional apparatus and the public at large.

Munn says that prisoners have always been the most accurate and effective writers and thinkers on prison systems, even if they havent received credit in the mainstreamPrisoners are not just passive recipients of penal policy and action but have always been active in their resistance to it and active in suggesting change, says Munn. The women who were involved in the publication ofTightwirewere activists and resisters and people who deeply contemplated incarceration and penal justice overall.

Inmates at such mens prisons as Collins Bay Institution and Kingston Penitentiary had a significant audience for their publishing work: the formersC.B. Diamond, Munn says, had 700 subscribers in March 1953; the lattersTelescopehad1,500 paid subscribers by June 1958.

By contrast, Munn says,Tightwires writers were incarcerated women who had largely been erased from the public eye: It gave women a forum to be heard and to demand attention to their issues.Tightwiregave them a voice to agitate for change that they would not have had otherwise.

Ann Hansen was incarcerated at the Prison for Women from 1984 until 1992; while she didnt contribute toTightwire, she holds a deep respect for the former zine and the friends who produced it. It gives you a bit of an eye into the soul of a lot of prisoners, says Hansen, who is a founding member of thePrison for Women Memorial Collective,a group of former prisonersadvocating for a memorial gardenand community space on the grounds of the institution, which closed in 2000. You dont get that perspective from people who havent been to prison, to really understand why a person is maybe dysfunctional in the average working or educational stream of society.

Hansen, whos been a prison-abolition activist for 47 years, says that, in the past few years, shes noticed increased awareness around the struggles that prisoners face. But, she adds, prisoners are still looked down upon even by potential allies.

People still assume that prisoners are weak and impulsive and need to be helped, says Hansen. When youre in prison, you realize just how strong and resilient the women in prison are. Theyre used to dealing with hardship. Theyre not easily frightened and are not stupid, regardless of their education.

Tightwireceased printing in 1995, one of a crop of penal presses that disappeared over the back half of the 20th century. Today, only a handful such asOut of Bounds, from British Columbias William Head Institution, andThe Mallard, from B.C.s Mission Medium Security Institution operate across Canada. According to Munn, most were diminished by censorship, a lack of resources, and outdated tech. With larger prison populations and strained inmate-committee funds, the production of penal presses has dropped off.

Evans and Hansen are glad that people can look at issues ofTightwireand learn directly from their friends and fellow survivors of Prison for Women, in their own words. Evans remains proud of the work she and the otherTightwirecontributors were able to accomplish, summarizing its ultimate value simply: It was just It was ours.

Ontario Hubs are made possible by the Barry and Laurie Green Family Charitable Trust & Goldie Feldman.

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Writing in the margins: The story behind Kingstons Prison for Women magazine - TVO

A rendering of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project, the largest public works project in the early 1980s, which failed and was halted in 1983. (Wikimedia Commons)

This article was originally published byWyoFileand is republished here with permission.WyoFileis an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

July 30, 2021byJoel Funk, WyoFile

When state officialsunveiledin June that a nuclear demonstration project is slated for Wyoming, they touted it as an advanced technology. But critics of the Natrium project say weve been here before with the same technology and the same assurances made only to see hopes dashed and massive public investments go to waste.

Article continues below...

The multi-billion dollarNatriumproject is a joint effort of PacifiCorp, TerraPower and the U.S. Department of Energy that is expected to place a 345-megawatt power plant in Wyoming. Behind TerraPower is none other than Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates has injected vast sums from his enormous wealth into finding a solution to the worlds climate crisis that can be implemented in the near future. The investment in Natrium, Gates said during a recorded statement in June, would allow Wyoming to continue being a leader in U.S. energy.

Based on stipulations of the federal grant that makes the project possible, the plant is to be completed within seven years.

The unexpected announcementin early June brought rosy projections and big grins from Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), along with representatives from TerraPower and Rocky Mountain Power. (Rocky Mountain Power is a unit of PacifiCorp.)

Gordon declared it game-changing and monumental for Wyoming, a state suffering massive budget shortfalls and economic ennui from a long-term downturn in fossil-fuel markets.

The advanced nuclear energy demonstration plant is slated to replace one of four coal-fired plant units in PacifiCorps Wyoming power system: either at Jim Bridger near Rock Springs, Naughton in Kemmerer, Dave Johnston near Glenrock or WyoDak near Gillette. Leaders in those communities have expressed hope tothe Casper Star Tribunethat they will land the jobs and tax revenues expected of the massive project.

Critics familiar with the technology and its history, however, doubt whether a commercially operating nuclear power plant will manifest in the next seven years or ever in Wyoming.

It would be quite a feat to pull off, Allison Macfarlane, Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair from 2012-2014, told WyoFile.

The history and current state of nuclear energy in the U.S. is long and complicated, but Edwin Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear power safety director, said one thing is abundantly clear:No U.S. nuclear power project has been successfully completed on time and on budget in recent decades.

To attempt to build and operate a commercial unit without first taking the time to do all the necessary safety testing is a recipe for disaster, Lyman said of the Natrium project.

TerraPower declined a request for an interview.

The nuclear reactors that supply roughly 20% of American electricity are known as light-water reactors. These thermal neutron reactors use water as both coolant and neutron moderator. Heat generated by controlled nuclear fission turns the water into steam, which drives the power-generating turbines.

The proposed Natrium reactor, by contrast, belongs to a broad class of non-light-water reactors. Sometimes called advanced reactors, they are cooled not by water but by other substances, such as liquid sodium, helium gas or even molten salts.

Natriums specific design is known as a fast reactor. This type of nuclear reactor does not require a moderator material to slow down fission neutrons. Natrium uses liquid sodium as its coolant. (The name Natrium comes from the Latin word for sodium.) The solid sodium melts into a liquid form when it gets hot enough. That molten metal is whats inside the core cooling the reactor vessel and via a molten salt loop ultimately allowing a steam turbine to generate electricity.

Its significantly different from light-water reactors, Jeff Navin, TerraPowers director of external affairs, told Wyoming lawmakers June 25 in Casper. The design makes the system safer, he said, and inherently prevents meltdowns.

That liquid metal has a very high boiling point, and what that means is the reactor cant get hot enough to boil the coolant off, Navin said. So in the event of an accident happening, or loss of power, we dont have to touch anything to keep the reactor from melting down.

Though significantly different from the more-established light-water reactors, Natriums sodium-cooled approach isnt new.

Its new technological development is the molten salt storage component, which has the potential to boost the systems power up to a maximum of 500 megawatts, Navin said. A megawatt of capacity produces electricity thats equivalent to powering between 400 and 900 homes for a year,according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

That energy storage component is four times larger than the biggest lithium ion battery plant that is currently deployed around the world, Navin said. This is a real massive and a real big gamechanger on that front. So what makes it valuable, what makes us valuable, is the ability to respond to that supply and demand on the energy system.

The Natrium reactor would be roughly one-third of the size of a traditional light-water-reactor design, resulting in cost savings and reducing the scale in the event of an accident, Navin said. Additionally, proponents assert it would produce two-thirds less spent radioactive waste than a traditional light water reactor. Radioactive waste from the Natrium reactor would be stored on-site as the federal government continues to develop plans for permanent nuclear waste storage an endeavor that has eluded policymakers since the inception of U.S. nuclear power generation.

Fast breeder reactor designs such as Natrium date back to 1944 with the Manhattan Project. The worlds first nuclear reactor to generate electricity was the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I, built in Idaho, which powered four lightbulbs in 1951.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, five sodium-cooled fast reactors are operating today in India, Russia and China. Four are experimental, testing features of the power systems. One commercial demonstration reactor is in Russia, where operators are assessing its ability to generate enough power consistently to serve electrical customers. A demonstration sodium-cooled fast reactor in India is slated to go online in 2021, but Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said theres some doubt as to whether that timeline will pan out. The only fast breeder reactors ever connected to electrical grids were the French Superphnix and the Russian BN-600 and BN-800.

None of these fast reactors are currently operating as commercial reactors serving power customers.

The U.S. Department of Energy in 2017 identified sodium-cooled fast reactors as one of two non-light-water reactor technologies it would focus on for demonstration. Two sodium-cooled fast reactor concepts were submitted to the federal agency for evaluation. One of those was the General Electric-Hitachi PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module) fast reactor, based on the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II.

Three companies, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, are developing reactors that are based, to varying extents, on the PRISM reactor design. One of those is TerraPowers Natrium reactor.

There have been high degrees of enthusiasm at various times in U.S. history for investing in nuclear power. Such endeavors have always come with baggage. Its expensive, technically complex and dogged by safety concerns. Public concerns about the prospects of a core meltdown, proliferation or security breach require constant management.

Nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism risk is the danger that nations or terrorist groups could illicitly obtain nuclear-weapon-usable materials from reactors or fuel cycle facilities, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Persistent problems continue to plague ambitions to incorporate more light-water reactors into the power grid. TheVogtle plant in Georgia, for example, is years behind schedule with projected costs standing at more than twice the initial estimate of $14 billion. Another example, theLevy County nuclear plant in Florida, scheduled to go online in 2016, was abandoned after costs ballooned from $5 billion to $22 billion and it was clear it would be roughly a decade behind schedule.

Proponents of nuclear energy understand there are public perception problems with continued government subsidization of light-water reactor projects, Lyman said. The interest in non-light-water reactors is, in part, a reaction to these perception problems, with supporters seeing the technology as a potential breakthrough in the nuclear industry.

But the term advanced reactor, when applied to non-light-water reactors, is something of a misnomer, Lyman said. Designs of today, he said, are largely descended from decades-old models.

There may be some variations on them, but you know its not like this hasnt been tried [in] many different countries for many decades, Lyman said.

In the mid-20th century, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission supported demonstration plants of non-light-water reactors at sites throughout the United States. One of those, a liquid-metal-sodium-cooled fast reactor calledFERMI-1, suffered a partial fuel meltdown in 1966. It went back online years later, but was shut down permanently in 1972. Another example is theFort St. Vrain high temperature gas cooled reactors in Coloradothat experienced operational problems. Established in 1979, thosefailedafter about a decade.

Several critics who spoke to WyoFile were reminded of the nuclear demonstration project that never was at Clinch River, Tennessee. In the early 1980s, it was thelargest public works projectin the United States.

The project a joint effort of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. electric power industry was intended to demonstrate the sodium-cooled fast reactor technology. It received an injection of government money with the idea it would be commercially viable after that initial boost. The Congressional appropriation came in 1972 after President Richard Nixonestablished it as the nations highest research and development priority. Cost estimates that started in the hundreds of millions grew to billions. There was opposition from the political left and right, and it lost lawmakers confidence. Construction that broke ground in 1981 under Reagan ceased in 1983.

Henry Sokolski, nowexecutive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, worked in the 1980s for the conservative Washington, D.C., think-tank the Heritage Foundation. When he first came to the foundation, it was in support of the Clinch River fast breeder nuclear project. Under Sokolskis direction, the think-tank would change course, condemning and eventually helping kill the project.

In Sokolskis view, pursuing another fast reactor is akin to swimming upstream against history, with the chances it will be commercially viable vanishingly small. Looking at predictions, and promises of the past, Sokolski said the federal government is again going down a fraught path.

Attempts at implementing fast breeder reactors have failed, Sokolski said, pointing to theSNR-300 in Germany;Dounreay in Scotland;Superphnix in France;JoyoandMonjuin Japan; and more.

The PRISM design that the Natrium is based on has not had real-world experience, Lyman said.

TheVersatile Test Reactor a sodium-cooled fast reactor funded by the Department of Energy originally intended for operation in Idaho in 2026 andalready projected to see cost overruns and Natrium are intended to serve as the first large-scale demonstrations of PRISM technology.

All non-light-water reactor designs, Lyman wrote in a March 2021Union of Concerned Scientists report, will require testing to understand and address new safety issues that come with the technology. To determine whether non-light-water reactors are, in fact, safer than light-water reactors,the reactor must achieve an advanced stage of technical maturity, undergo complete comprehensive safety testing and analysis, and acquire significant operating experience under realistic conditions.

Because of the questions about safety and reliability, Lyman wrote that proceeding with construction of the VTR and the Natrium without conducting prototype testing could pose unacceptable risks to public health, safety, and security, as well as to the success of either project.

Eight countries in the past 60 years have collectively spent more than$100 billionunsuccessfully trying to produce a commercially competitive sodium-cooled fast reactor, Macfarlane wrote in aJuly column in Foreign Affairs. Theeconomic, technical and logistical hurdles that stand in the way of building safer, more efficient and cost-competitive reactors are too great to succeed in the required timeline for reducing fossil fuel emissions in the fight against the global climate crisis, she told WyoFile.

Im a realist and a pragmatist, Im a scientist, Im a geologist by training, and its just not possible for nuclear to have any kind of significant impact on reducing climate change in the next 20 years, she said.

TerraPower is hoping its Natrium reactor project in Wyoming will be the first of 100 advanced nuclear reactor power plants operating commercially in the U.S., Navin told lawmakers in June. Wyoming, as a global leader in energy for more than a century, was a natural choice with several advantages, he said.

But critics are uncertain whether Natriums timeline, Wyomings workforce, and natural resource utilization projections are realistic.

Sen. Barrasso introduced and was the lead Senate author of theNuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which has facilitated greater investment in research and development of advanced reactor technology and reaffirms congressional support for nuclear energy. The legislation directs the NRC to be much more aggressive in bringing resources to the table to help get these advanced reactors licensed.

The licensing phase would likely take two to three years, TerraPower president and CEO Chris Levesque said during the June announcement.

TerraPower estimates that once construction is allowed to begin, there could be 2,000-3,000 workers needed, with another 300-400 permanent jobs projected through the 60-year life of the plant, Navin told lawmakers June 25.

There is a conflict, however, between economic viability and maximized on-site employment, Lyman said. On one hand, he said companies are telling audiences at conventions they are finding ways to cut capital costs, including labor, to make sure new nuclear power is competitive with other forms of power generation. On the other, Lyman said its advantageous to give politicians in Wyoming the higher end of labor projections.

Many small reactor vendors are banking on the ability to reduce both construction and operating costs radically in order to compete with lower-cost sources of generation, he told WyoFile in an email. TerraPower cant have it both ways.

TerraPower repeatedly told lawmakers June 25 that the company hoped it would take advantage of the existing Wyoming workforce for its labor needs, citing its experience and motivation. Lyman, however, is skeptical local workers would be the most economical choice, he said.

For instance, welders need to have special qualifications to work on nuclear projects, and I believe they are in short supply even in parts of the country where there is a workforce with nuclear experience, Lyman said in an email. And many of the jobs for plant operation would require professional training and skills, as well. Is TerraPower factoring in the time and resources needed for this retraining of the local workforce?

Barrasso, Gordon and the Wyoming Mining Association have all expressed enthusiasm at the prospect of using the states uranium for nuclear reactors in the U.S. Critics contend that prospect is exaggerated.

TerraPower and Rocky Mountain Power reached out to uranium operators in the state prior to the Natrium public announcement, Travis Deti, Wyoming Mining Association director told lawmakers June 25. For an industry in dreadful condition, Deti said it was welcome news.

And when the announcement was made we had representatives from all nine of our uranium companies in Wyoming it was met with applause, Deti said. Our guys are very excited about this.

Currently, theres little demand for uranium beyond that for existing reactors, and demand wont likely increase for decades, if at all, Macfarlane said.

The U.S. gets most of its uranium from imports, withdomestic supplydropping from a peak in 1980. Deti said Wyoming operators mined 27,000 pounds of uranium in 2020, comparing it to about 12 million pounds a year back in the 1970s.

Russia is the only realistic source of the large quantity of high-assay, low enriched uranium that the Natrium will need, Lyman said.

There is virtually no chance that U.S. uranium will be used if this reactor is to start up on schedule, Lyman said in an email.

Finally, Navin said Congress was clear it expected a seven-year timeframe. While he acknowledged that as very aggressive, he believes it could be done, he said.

Again, Lyman doubts this is achievable. Recent history, Lyman said, does not support the notion that new nuclear plants, even those based on proven technologies, can be built on time and on budget let alone on an accelerated schedule.

The Natrium demonstration projects cost will be split 50-50 between the Department of Energy and TerraPower with an overall cap of $4 billion. TerraPowers Navin said the company is assuming the risk of cost overruns, assuring lawmakers thats not going to be something thats going to be put either on the state of Wyoming or on Rocky Mountain Powers ratepayers.

So even with Wyoming not on the hook financially, what do residents of the Equality State stand to lose with the Natrium project?

For a community struggling economically, Lyman said he can see why the Natrium proposal would appear to have merits for Wyoming.

If it employs some people for some period of time, its better than nothing. But there are also the larger considerations, as well, he said. From a national perspective, not every pork barrel project that gives people employment is going to be a worthwhile expenditure of taxpayer money.

Wyoming could be left with a complicated cleanup from a project that doesnt go anywhere, and if the plant is operational for a period of time, there would be radioactive waste.A bottleneck in Congressis holding up a permanent geological solution for permanent spent nuclear waste disposal Theres no clear answer for where the waste is supposed to go.

The plan, Navin said, is to store nuclear waste on the plant site until there is a federal determination as to where it will be permanently stored.

The issue of waste is concerning whether the plant is commercially successful or not, Noah Miterko, Health Environmental Alliance of Utah policy associate, said.

If this plant ends up outside of Kemmerer [for example], then the downside for them is they have thousands of pounds of radioactive waste in their backyard, and if the time comes to move it, they have hundreds of trucks moving through their town with high-level radioactive waste, Miterko said. Theres been no innovation on how to deal with radioactive waste.

Miterko is closely following theNuScale project, apotential 720-megawatt nuclear power plant being developed by the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems for Idaho Falls, Idaho. The Department of Energy in October approved a $1.3 billion award for the NuScale project.

Miterko, whose organization advocates nuclear abolition, said Wyoming should proceed with caution in approaching the Natrium project.

I have a lot of empathy for these communities in Wyoming that are losing their economic engines in fossil fuels, Miterko said. Communities have been through this before and it doesnt always have a happy ending.

One of the key risks, Macfarlane said, is that humans are running out of time to address climate change in a meaningful way. The resources being funneled to nuclear energy could go elsewhere in the climate crisis fight, she said.

We cant pin our hopes on [nuclear] as the thing thats going to get us out of the next 20 years, and the next 20 years are absolutely crucial, Macfarlane said. And so we absolutely have to just throw what we have behind renewables because we know that technology works.

Despite assurances that TerraPower would assume any potential cost overruns, Lyman said he could picture a scenario where the company is back lobbying Congress to try to raise the $4 billion cap.

Were just speculating here, but unless they make a solemn pledge to the people of the state and the country that theyre not going to accept another dime of public money, anything goes, he said.

This story is supported by a grant through Wyomings Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and the National Science Foundation.

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Weve been here before: Wyoming nuclear project echoes of past - Oil City News