Institute

• Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive was the subject of speculation for months before it officially began at the beginning of June.
• So far, only modest progress has been made and there have been concerns from Kyiv’s allies that Ukraine is making insufficient headway against entrenched Russian defences.
• With the end of summer now fast approaching, it seems that a serious push is taking place.
• But reports emerge daily to indicate that progress is being made in a number of areas.

Overcoming Russian defences

• While Russian forces are reported to be disorganised and suffering low morale, they have the advantage of occupying well-prepared defensive positions, which will make them hard to dislodge.
• They have been able to prepare many challenges, such as minefields that stretch for hundreds of kilometres.
• While Ukraine possesses a highly mobile, well-trained and capable force, physical barriers of this nature are proving difficult to navigate.

Pragmatic approach

• Heavy losses in early phases have already caused Ukraine to rethink its approach.
• General Syrskyi, the architect of some of Ukraine’s biggest victories, stresses the importance of a cautious approach: “We’d like to get very fast results, but in reality, it’s practically impossible.” Likewise, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has stressed the importance of not expecting “Hollywood” style outcomes.
• This is likely to frustrate key Nato allies, who are increasingly critical of the pace of advance.
• Yet again, Ukrainian forces are pragmatic: “We can’t draw big conclusions yet,” a senior military officer told journalists on July 30.

• Any examination of Pahad’s full political record will take you back to the heroic phases of South Africa’s liberation history, when prospects for a democratic South African government seemed very remote.
• As a teenager in the 1950s he was busy in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress.
• This was the equivalent of the youth league of the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), for Indian South Africans.
• In my own research on the South African Communist Party’s history, groups like the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress were game-changers.

The early years

• Pahad employed ANC leader Walter Sisulu, supporting his efforts to become an estate agent.
• Both Essop and his younger brother Aziz did well enough to obtain entry to the University of the Witwatersrand.
• The Transvaal Indian Youth Congress was led by party members and its political affiliations were very evident in its journal, New Youth.
• Mbeki was then staying in Johannesburg, completing his A-levels through correspondence after expulsion from Lovedale College for leading a class boycott.

Exile years

• Pahad would complete an MA and a doctorate at Sussex between 1965 and 1971, producing a workmanlike dissertation about the South African Indian Congresses.
• Pahad’s most conspicuous activity during his exile was his deployment in Prague at the World Marxist Review; acknowledgement by the Communist Party of his status as a reliable theoretician.
• He and Meg lived in Prague between 1975 and 1985, and their two daughters were born there, attending Czech schools.

Right-hand man

• At that time Mbeki’s future succession to the presidency was uncertain and the party was one key constituency.
• But it is true that Pahad’s subsequent political career would be defined by his status as Mbeki’s trusted friend, his best man as it were, a function he actually performed at Mbeki’s wedding in 1974.
• So, during the presidency of Nelson Mandela (10 May 1994-16 June 1999) he served as Mbeki’s “parliamentary counsellor”.

Diligent

• He surprised even his critics with the diligence with which he supported the offices placed under his authority as minister, for example urging municipalities to “mainstream” disability rights.
• He had invited Ajay Gupta to join the International Marketing Council in 2000, an appointment that he subsequently regretted.

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

• Based on a study we conducted, we determined that if strict eligibility rules for Medicaid were changed to help cover such people, from 700,000 to 11.5 million people over 65 would be newly eligible for the program.
• Depending on which rules were changed, we would expect to see one of the following scenarios:


Unless the government adopted the Elder Index approach, most of the additional enrollees in these scenarios would have poor health and few financial assets.

Why it matters

• Low-income adults who are excluded from Medicaid under existing criteria also face high health care costs that contribute to their financial insecurity.
• Researchers found that 1 in 5 Americans over 65 skipped, delayed or used less medical care or drugs because of financial constraints.
• Increasing the number of low-income older people with both Medicaid and Medicare coverage would reduce their out-of-pocket health spending.

What still isn’t known

• Increasing the number of older people with Medicaid coverage would require more government funding, although the degree of extra spending would depend on which rules the government would change.
• Accurately estimating these costs and the potential benefits for families and communities that would come from these changes would require additional research.

Robert Oppenheimer is often placed next to Albert Einstein as the 20th century’s most famous physicist. He will forever be the “father of the atomic bomb” after the first nuclear weapon was successfully tested on July 16, 1945 in the New Mexican desert. The event brought to his mind words from a Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.

Who was Robert Oppenheimer?

• Two years later, he completed his PhD in physics at one of the world’s leading institutions for theoretical physics, the University of Göttingen, Germany.
• Throughout his life, Oppenheimer would be judged either as an aloof prodigy or an anxious narcissist.
• Before the outbreak of the second world war, Oppenheimer worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology.
• His partner, Kitty Puening, was a left-leaning radical and their social circle included Communist Party members and activists.

The second world war

• His ideas about chain reaction in an atomic bomb gained recognition among the US defence community.
• His ability to master the large-scale workforce and channel their energy towards the needs of the project earned him respect.
• He proved to be more than just an administrator by being involved in the interdisciplinary team across theoretical and experimental stages of the weapons development.

The nuclear test

• On July 16, 1945 the nuclear test, code named Trinity, took place.
• Shortly after the atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Oppenheimer confronted the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, demanding that nuclear weapons were banned.
• Truman’s rebuttal did not prevent Oppenheimer from advocating for the establishment of controls on the nuclear arms race.

Arms control

• But his chief concern was the unavoidable arms race.
• He advocated for the establishment of an international body that would control the development of nuclear energy and its usage.
• Oppenheimer urged strongly for international arms control.
• The investigation that followed in 1954 exposed Oppenheimer’s past communist ties and culminated in his security clearance being revoked.

McCarthyism and academic freedom

• In the era of Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunts, his fellow scientists considered Oppenheimer as a martyr of the cause of academic freedom.
• He toured internationally with talks about the role of academic freedom unrestrained by political considerations.