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Politics in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, located east of Australia, can be turbulent, with constant chessboard moves among parliamentary members with fluid party ties and frequent no confidence motions. But the strategic importance of the country to the U.S.-Australia alliance and China was a factor in the recent abrupt expulsion of the 10-month-old government led by then-Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau.In late August, Kalsakau lost a vote of no confidence against him by opposition leader Bob Loughman, who has for years backed China's increasing influence in the Pacific nation. After disputes about the vote result, Loughman was appointed deputy prime minister in the new government under Prime Minister Sato Kilman, who took the helm on September 4. The sudden change in administration came a year after Loughman, a former prime minister, ceded his leadership after parliament was dissolved and he avoided a vote of no confidence against himself. The snap election which followed in October last year saw Kalsakau take the top job.While the government is contending with domestic issues, such as a struggling economy, unemployment and contentious debates about the minimum wage, the main trigger for the latest political crisis was a security agreement with Australia signed by Kalsakau in December last year and due for parliamentary ratification. Vanuatu is one of many Pacific Island states that do not have their own armed forces and depend on military assistance from bilateral partners when needed.For Loughman, the unratified bilateral pact, which would increase military and law enforcement, but also disaster and humanitarian relief and cybersecurity co-operation with Australia, could have risked Vanuatu's relations with China. New Prime Minister Kilman claimed there had been a lack of consultation about the pact with ministers. Yet it was not an unknown or hasty development. Discussions about the agreement had been occurring between Australia and successive governments in Vanuatu for five years. "Australia respects Vanuatu's sovereign decision-making processes, including in relation to the bilateral security agreement that began in 2018 and was signed in 2022," Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs responded. The signing of the pact followed deep concerns by the U.S. and its allies about China's security agreement with the Solomon Islands that was announced last April.Soon after taking office, Kilman vehemently denied any geopolitical reasons for the crisis, claiming that the country had always and will continue to be "neutral" in big power contests. "We are not pro-West and we are not pro-Chinese," he said. "We adopt a non-aligned policy." Indeed, Vanuatu has a spectrum of development and aid relations with Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan, and its mobile paramilitary police force has also received support from Australia, New Zealand and China.Yet, in being non-aligned, Vanuatu was swift in 2016 to declare its support for China's territorial claim to islands in the South China Sea that are at the center of a heated sovereignty dispute and military provocation between the East Asian powerhouse and several of its Southeast Asian neighbors. And, for U.S. commentators, a high-risk site for potential conflict.Despite the Pacific nation remaining outside of any direct military involvement in U.S.-China geopolitics, it has, under some political leaders, become increasingly receptive to China's political influence. Last year, Loughman signed an array of agreements with China on technology, energy, infrastructure, health and economic development and, the year before, a multi-million dollar bilateral grant agreement on economic and technical cooperation. In 2018, Chinese funding and construction of a massive port development in the provincial, but geographically strategic, coastal town of Luganville, attracted international attention. Security experts speculated that, due to its exceptional size, it could potentially be used as a warship base.In contrast, Kalsakau has been publicly critical of China's penetration of Vanuatu's political life for several years. In 2018, he told the Australian media there wasn't enough internal scrutiny of the massive inflow of Chinese loans, businesses and influence and "he feared China was pursuing its strategic interests by showering Vanuatu with largesse and deepening its influence in the country." Last year, Vanuatu's public debt totalled 40 percent of GDP. China, its largest foreign creditor, is owed more than one third of its total external debt, which totals about $314 million and constitutes 32 percent of GDP.French President Emmanuel Macron expressed additional concerns during a visit to Vanuatu in July. "There is in the Indo-Pacific, and particularly in Oceania, new imperialism appearing and a power logic that is threatening the sovereignty of several states; the smallest, often the most fragile,"Macron said.Vanuatu, like many Pacific Island states, is a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. But its statecraft is heavily influenced by norms of Melanesian customary governance that have prevailed for centuries. The power of traditional clan leaders in island societies is determined by their ability to acquire and distribute wealth and resources to their constituencies, rather than adherence to an ideology or party-driven policies. While political cultures in the Pacific are evolving, this legacy makes politicians particularly vulnerable to China's strategies of economic largesse and coercion which entails reciprocity.During his recent tenure as prime minister, Kalsakau attempted to broaden his country's international relations, bringing in other development partners, such as Saudi Arabia, and working for wide-ranging global support of its legal probe of climate justice at the UN General Assembly. He also took steps to reform Vanuatu's controversial citizenship-selling program in response to security concerns by the EU which has had a visa waiver arrangement with the nation.There is no doubt that Pacific Island leaders are opposed to being parties in the regional U.S.-China rivalry and are reasserting their rights of sovereignty above all else. At a meeting in August of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, an inter-governmental organization of southwest Pacific Island states, leaders emphasized their refusal to take sides in geopolitical battles.But regional analysts also point to Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Samoa being located on a key geographical axis, which is crucial to maritime access into and across the Pacific Ocean by the U.S., Australia and China.Yet, despite the political upheaval, the new prime minister has not dismissed closer security ties with Australia; only that the pending agreement won't be ratified in its current form. "My view would be to revisit the agreement with both sides, the Australians and the Vanuatu government, and see if there's any sticking points and then address that," Kilman was quoted on September 4.Some Australian strategists support Vanuatu's greater scrutiny of the pact, claiming that it is a sign of democratic processes at work. But, in terms of a timeline, it is unlikely to be an immediate priority for the new leadership.

Corporations involved in the extractive industry, based in Australia but operating overseas, are the main focus of this report. The report examines why legislation needs to be passed in order to regulate these corporations and why legislation of this kind has not been passed before. Australian mining corporations have been operating overseas, without sufficient regulation, for too long. Three examples of this are examined in chapter one of the report: • BHP Billiton destroyed the environment around Ok Tedi without suffering any consequences under Australian law. • Anvil Mining was able to cover up its actions in relation to a massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as Australia does not yet have legislation imposing an obligation on corporations to release information in circumstances such as these. • Woodside Petroleum Ltd was able to negotiate, in secret, both contractual amendments with the former Mauritanian government and a resolution of the amendments with the current government, as there is no legislation to enforce transparency of Australia's corporate citizens in situations such as this. International organisations have been trying to regulate trans-national corporations {TNC) for decades. The OECD, the ILO, the UN, the GRI, there are too many acronyms to list here, all of which have written declarations or instruments pertaining to the obligations of trans-national corporations to uphold certain standards. Of particular note is the most recent UN initiative, the Norms on the Responsibilities of Trans-national Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights. The UN Norms attempt to take all previous international instruments, such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) and the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, and set out the obligations contained within them as they relate to TNCs. This is particularly helpful in relation to the UDHR due to the fact that it was originally drafted to outline the specific obligations of states, rather than corporations. Thus previous attempts to apply these obligations to corporations have been subject to both scepticism and criticism. The significant and continuing growth of TNCs means that regulation of the kind envisaged by the UN Norms is required. However international law can be difficult to apply, depending on whether or not it is deemed 'customary' and enjoys the support of enough states. Thus the onus is on states to show their support for the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by regulating the activities of its corporate citizens, both at home and overseas .Whilst NGOs and the media have done incredible work trying to expose the unacceptable actions of Australian corporations overseas, the Australian government has remained unwilling to approach the topic. In 2000, when former Democrat Senator Vicki Bourne introduced the Corporate Code of Conduct Bill 2000 into the Senate, the Australian Parliament had an opportunity to examine the overseas operations of Australia's corporate citizens and discuss appropriate methods of regulation. Instead, the Parliamentary Joint Statutory Committee on Corporations and Securities who investigated the Bills suitability for introduction into the House of Representatives came to the conclusion that the Bill could not go any further, mostly as a result of poor drafting. Thus, the debate is still to be had. This report provides ideas about what kind of legislation should be passed by the Australian government and why this needs to happen. Australia needs to impose basic human rights obligations on its corporate citizens, in particular those involved in the extractive industry and operating overseas. The actions of Anvil at the Dikulushi mine in the DRC provides evidence as to why this is required. Australia also needs to impose strict environmental standards on its corporate citizens and the Ok Tedi disaster is evidence of why this needs to occur. Australia should require that its corporate citizens adhere to basic labour standards in line with the ILO Declaration and the Australian government must enforce already existing legislation, such as that relating to the bribery of foreign public officials in Division 70 of the Criminal Code Act 1995. The report concludes that the most helpful instrument for the drafting of legislation would be the UN Norms. As the world has become increasingly globalised, some TNCs have become economically more powerful than many states. As such, the Norms attempt to interpret the obligations of previous international instruments in a corporate context. This means that the UN Norms, whilst recognising that a corporation is not a state, also recognise that corporations have a significant influence in determining the living standards of many people. As such, corporations have an obligation to make sure that the standards of living for the communities and people they affect are decent. Australia can enforce these obligations by legislating to impose basic human rights and environmental standards on its corporate citizens, both at home and overseas.

Deaf children's patterns of emergent literacy can parallel those of hearing children, but their acquisition of conventional reading skills in elementary school is often delayed. Group storybook reading in the residences of a state-sponsored school for the Deaf was investigated as a means of fostering literacy development outside the classroom. Eighteen children, ages 4-11 years, participated. The nine children in the experimental group cottages participated in group storybook reading twice each week for 5 months. Both the experimental and the control-group cottages were provided with a variety of books that were rotated biweekly. Children were highly engaged during the storybook-reading sessions, particularly when the readers used an interactive/expressive reading style. Children in the experimental group performed more independently on an emergent reading task, and their counselors judged them to be more interested in books than children in the control group.

The purpose of this study was to add to the sparse knowledge about literacy environments and practices in children's residences at schools for the deaf by conducting a nationwide survey. Twenty-six residential schools for the deaf throughout the country responded by mail. Results revealed that all of the responding schools made reading and writing materials available to children in their residences. Counselors read to children individually and supervised homework, and children wrote letters and read independently. However in half of the residences, materials were not regularly rotated and in most residences time was not set aside for group storybook reading. Implications for practice include focusing on providing interesting and stimulating literacy materials for children, rotating materials regularly, and planning group literacy-related events such as storybook reading or storytelling.

Kant's philosophy is usually treated according to 'internalist' textual methodology rather than contextually according to 'externalist' methodology. This book presents transcendental idealism, the metaphysics of morals, and other Kantian innovations in philosophy as a reaction to 18th century developments in the life and human sciences. It interprets Kant's metaphysics as motivated by, on one hand, anxiety over the moral dangers he perceived in the empiricism of Buffon, Hume, Smith, and certain German materialists; and, on the other, his theological scepticism.

part Part I Matter, Space and Relations -- chapter 1 John W. Nason (1945), 'Leibniz's Attack on the Cartesian Doctrine of Extension', Journal of the History of Ideas, 6, pp. 447-83 -- chapter 2 John Earman (1977), 'Perceptions and Relations in the Monadology', Studia Leibnitiana, 9, pp. 212-30 -- chapter 3 Richard Arthur (1994), 'Space and Relativity in Newton and Leibniz', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45, pp. 219-40 -- part Part II Leibnizian Substances -- chapter 4 David S. Scarrow (1973), 'Reflections on the Idealist Interpretation of Leibniz's Philosophy', Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa, 12, pp. 85-93 -- chapter 5 Donald P. Rutherford (1990), 'Leibniz's -- chapter 6 John Kronen (1997), 'Substances are not Windowless: A Suarézian Critique of Monadism', American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 71, pp. 59-81 -- part Part III Life, Mind and Action -- chapter 7 Samuel Scheffler (1976), 'Leibniz on Personal Identity and Moral Personality', Studia Leibnitiana, 8, pp. 219-40 -- chapter 8 Mark Kulstad (1981), 'Leibniz, Animals, and Apperception', Studia Leibnitiana, 13, pp. 25-60 -- chapter 9 Ezio Vailati (1990), 'Leibniz on Locke on Weakness of Will', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 28, pp. 213-28 -- chapter 10 William Seager (1991), 'The Worm in the Cheese: Leibniz, Consciousness and Matter', Studia Leibnitiana, 23, pp. 79-91 -- chapter 11 Catherine Wilson (1994), 'Leibniz and the Logic of Life', Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 48, pp. 237-53 -- part Part IV Matephysics -- chapter 12 William E. May (1962), 'The God of Leibniz', New Scholasticism, 36, pp. 506-28 -- chapter 13 Raja Bahlul (1992), 'Leibniz, Aristotle, and the Problem of Individuation', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 73, pp. 185-99 -- chapter 14 Daniel Fouke (1994), 'Emanation and the Perfections of Being: Divine Causation and the Autonomy of Nature in Leibniz', Archiv Fuer Geschichte der Philosophie, 76, pp. 168-94 -- chapter 15 Steven Nadler (1994), 'Choosing a Theodicy: The Leibniz-Malebranche-Arnauld Connection', Journal of the History of Ideas, 50, pp. 573-89 -- chapter 16 David Scott (1997), 'Leibniz and the Two Clocks', Journal of the History of Ideas, 58, pp. 445-63 -- chapter 17 Jack Davidson (1998), 'Imitators of God: Leibniz on Human Freedom', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 36, pp. 387-412 -- part Part V Leibniz in Context -- chapter 18 Donald F. Lach (1945), 'Leibniz and China', Journal of the History of Ideas, 6, pp. 436-55 -- chapter 19 Carolyn Merchant (1979), 'The Vitalism of Anne Conway: Its Impact on Leibniz's Concept of the Monad', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 17, pp. 255-69 -- chapter 20 Nicholas Rescher (1981), 'Leibniz and the Concept of a System', Studia Leibnitiana, 13, pp. 114-22 -- chapter 21 Michael Losonsky (1992), 'Leibniz's Adamic Language of Thought', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 30, pp. 523-43 -- chapter 22 Domenico Bertoloni Meli (1988), 'Leibniz on the Censorship of the Copernican System', Studia Leibnitiana, 20, pp. 19-42.

Introduction--Social inequality : Rousseau in retrospect / Catherine Wilson -- Lockean money, indigenism and globalism / Naomi Zack -- Vico and Montesquieu : limits of pluralist imagination / Bhikhu Parekh -- Millian liberalism and colonial oppression / D.G. Brown -- Sublime waste : Kant on the destiny of the 'races' / Mark Larrimore -- Time, modernity, and destructive habits of thought / Oliver Leaman -- Subjecthood and self-determination : the limitations of postmodernism as democratic theory / Jeff Noonan -- Justice theory and oppression / J. Harvey -- Epistemic oppression and epistemic privilege / Miranda Fricker -- Freud's metapsychology and the culture of philosophy / Jan Zwicky -- A singular and representative life : personal memory and systematic harms / Sue Campbell