Happy 50th Earth Day! This year Earth Day is turning 50 years old and even though we can't be together, we could still celebrate as a community. We encourage you to celebrate Earth Day by showing your appreciation for Mother Earth from your home. Here are our favorite ideas to inspire you, not only today, but all year long. Plant wildflowers or native plants that attract butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. Grow your own organic vegetable garden. Create a window or yard sign to wish your neighbors a Happy Earth Day. Reduce your use of single-use plastics. This includes plastic bags, water bottles, utensils and straws. Save electricity. Turn off lights when you leave a room. Be water smart when brushing your teeth, showering, doing dishes and watering your yard. Make your own eco-friendly cleaning products. Start a home compost bin. Take a walk in your neighborhood creek trail and enjoy all Mother Earth has to offer. As you celebrate Earth Day, keep this jengadol quote in mind. You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Thank you for celebrating Earth Day with us.


Honored watch is Laun Jean. Laun Jean watches have won 10 World's Fair Grand Prizes, 28 gold medals and more honors for accuracy than any other timepiece. Laun Jean, the world's most honored watch, is made and guaranteed by the Laun Jean Wittgenall Watch Company. It's time for the Laun Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour, brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A presentation of the Laun Jean Wittgenall Watch Company, maker of Laun Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittgenall, distinguished companion to the world-honored Laun Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Laun Jean Chronoscope? Mr. William White, war correspondent and editor of the Emporia Gazette, and Mr. William Bradford Huey, editor of the American Mercury. Our distinguished guest for this evening is Dr. H. C. Byrd, president of Maryland University. The opinions expressed are necessarily those of the speakers. Dr. Byrd, you, of course, are president of the University of Maryland. The school lets you play in the sugar bowl. And our audience knows something about what seemed to be a row between you and the Southern Conference. Now, did you accept an invitation to play despite a ruling from the Southern Conference, sir? We did not. We accepted an invitation within the rules and regulations of the Southern Conference, and we're perfectly valid in what we did. And has the Southern Conference taken some action against you as a result of that? That is right. The Southern Conference has put us on probation so far as football is concerned for one year. What kind of a doghouse is this, Dr.? How long are they going to keep you there, and what do they do to you? Well, it's a doghouse that's going to earn us about $180,000 for the year time we're in the doghouse. So I think that much sugar in that sugar bowl. Just about. Well, that $180,000. How would you earn that, sir? Well, we'll make $100,000 of the sugar bowl, and we'll make a good deal more money on the football games that we'll play with other schools, and we would with the schools that have been necessarily forced off our schedule by virtue of the action of the conference. Now, just once again, sir, how much is the sugar bowl worth to the University of Maryland? How much would you make out of the sugar bowl? About $125,000. And you're, as a college president, you're not opposed to making that money, I suppose. Well, I'll tell you, I'm Jesuit enough to believe that it's the purposes to which money is put rather than the sources in which it comes. You have no objection to the University of Maryland football team playing before large crowds and taking in money. Well, provided the money is properly used. But the point is, you don't object to making it if it is properly used. Well, I can't find many people who do object to it. Now, is football, we've heard a lot about over-emphasis of football, sir. Is football over-emphasized at your school? No, it is not. Football is kept within its proper sphere and does not interfere in the slightest degree with any of the academic work, and actually, I think it's true in most cases and most schools. It occupies a minor place, actually, in university life. Well, now in general, sir, what is your opinion? Do you think, you don't think, then, that generally football has been emphasized too much? Generally no, specifically in some cases, yes. Doctor, is there much competition for players down there? Is there any in the Southern Conference generally? Well, I think most whites, you shouldn't say down there. You should say up here and down there, and I will agree with you, sir, yes. You mean there's a great deal of competition all over the country? That is correct. And Maryland is in their pitching, I said. That is right. And you think that's quite proper for schools to compete for the services of college athletes? Well, my own thinking is that all schools go a little bit too far in that direction. But you haven't called totally people at Maryland to slow down or to compete any less vigorously, have you, sir? Yes, we work in that score within reps, as they may say on the racetrack, much more so than some other institutions do. There are things that we do not do and points beyond which we do not go. Now, at Maryland, you're the president, sir. Now, do you make the policy? Do you manage sports at Maryland? Or do you leave that to your coaching staff? Oh, that's left to an athletic board, which is composed entirely of members of the faculty and those who are professionally employed for that purpose. You don't, the alumni don't come in for just a little bit of say on that matter. We do not let the alumni have anything to do with the management of athletics. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Well, now, what about the, our audience has heard a great deal. I might add to that, too, that that's one of the evils of athletics in some places. There's too much influence, pernicious influence on the part of alumni. And at Maryland, you feel that you have that influence under control. We not only have it under control, we've eliminated it. Now, our audience has heard a great deal and has been perhaps been concerned with the news about the West Point fix. And they, we've, around the country, we've heard that that's an indication of the overemphasis of football. Now, specifically, do you think that the West Point scandals were the result of overemphasis of football? No, I'm inclined to think, and possibly I shouldn't say this, if certainly isn't diplomatic to say it. The situation at West Point might have developed with any group of students. Because they just should not have given the same type of examinations year after year and asked the same questions year after year. You, you'd be inclined to excuse the boys, partially, and to place the blame elsewhere for, for the development. Well, you can't, you can't excuse dishonesty under any circumstances. But you can develop circumstances of such a nature as to prevent opportunities for dishonesty. Do you think that there is a general deterioration among students? Do you think that the West Point scandals, the basketball fixes indicate that there is a deterioration of standards of honor among students? No, sir, I do not. I think the average college student today is a better man and the average college girl today is a better woman than they were 20 years ago. And I think they're getting better and better all the time. The average college student is a pretty high-class youngster. By the way, doctor, on this recent ruling of the Federal Communications Commission enforcing the free televising of games, what do you think about that? Is the conference, are the conferences right or the FCC, what? Well, my viewpoint about that's a little bit different from the athletic people. They feel that television is cutting in greatly on receipts. My judgment is that television cuts in on some particular games, but in the long pull it will do more in the way of advertising and do more for athletics, or as much for athletics as any other one factor.  I think there should be no restrictions unless they be of a minor nature and connection with some particular game. And specifically, you have no objection to all of the games played by your school being televised. We would like to have them televised. In first place, it makes the athletic board some money and money can be used very advantageously. You think that in televising, there is more money to be made in televising than in restricting televising? I do, in the long run, yes, over the long pull, while specifically for some games and in some particular season you might lose some money, the resultant advertising and the building up of interest among people over the years will be very, very valuable because it's proved in radio. Well, they didn't want radio games broadcast at the start, but after a while, they began to see that radio actually was building better crowds. Eventually, you think that there will be freedom of telebasing. You think that all schools will allow them... The public will demand it. And what the public demands, the public's going to have. Sir, I'd like to come back just one second to a point that you made before. You believe that it's perfectly proper for a college president to plan to make as much money as possible with his football team? Well, I doubt if any college president makes plans of that kind. Certainly we don't, and I don't. I do think that it's a good thing if a football team can make money in a season because that money helps to carry on a larger program, bringing in more students, helps out the physical education program, and affects a student body. Do you recognize any ill effects of the present college football system? There are some ill effects, yes. To the men themselves, would you say? Who are playing, you mean? To the players. No, there's no ill effects to the players. Do they have time to carry on their studies? In some schools they may not, whereas school overemphasizes the importance of football, they wouldn't have time to do it, but certainly in most institutions, type of institutions which I'm thinking, state universities, schools like Yale, Cornell, they couldn't afford to let football interfere with their scholastic or academic work. By the way, doctor, this matter of academic scholarships, what are the, of athletic scholarships, what are the rules of the ring on that in the Southern Conference?  But the Southern Conference and the Southern Institutions believe in absolute open honesty about it, and they do not believe in hiding the hypocrisy of a situation behind an assumed veil of ignorance. And that's done in some institutions, because they say they have no athletic scholarships, but the athletes get scholarships. Well, doctor, bird, and as I understand your message to our audience tonight, you do not see any dangers of overemphasis at the moment. You are glad that the University of Maryland is playing in the sugar bowl, and you are very, very glad to get the $125,000 from it. And you think that the responsibility is on college presidents to manage athletics properly. Thank you very much for being with us, sir. The editorial board for this edition of the Lone Jean Chronoscope was Mr. William White and Mr. William Bradford Huey. Our distinguished guest was Dr. H. C. Byrd, president of Maryland University. One of the most interesting monuments in New York is in Herald Square.  There was no dial, no hands, just tolling bells to mark the time. And way back in the distant past, the word watch was first applied to a timepiece where the time could be read rather than heard. And way back in 1866, that's 85 years ago, the first Lone Jean watch was made. Created to the ideals that forever and forever the name Lone Jean would be placed only on the finest watches which mechanical skills could produce. How well successive generations of Lone Jean watchmakers have followed this ideal is reflected by the public honors Lone Jean watches have won. 10 World's Fair Grand Prizes, 28 gold medals, and highest honors for accuracy from the leading government observatories. 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This is Via Yeah, what's up? Hold on. I got the mic here. You can't you can't Scratch the mic here is Via. Hi Via Say hi to the people Yeah, you want some lovin? Yeah, you could have some lovin. You can't scratch the mic though. The neck scratch. Don't you? Yeah, yeah Good kitty. Looks like a super cool lion. They've gone a lot bigger getting comfy. He's getting comfy Let him get comfy. This is Via Salvia. Sal is still on the couch. She's chillin


This week Donald Trump is learning the hard way that actions have consequences and with every action you take There's going to be a reaction and it was evident that in the event the US Moved out of northern Syria Turkey was going to invade and Donald Trump announced that in spite of the risks, he'd be moving out of northern Syria and Turkey did exactly what we expected them to do Invade and now there is a lot of death and destruction as a direct result of Donald Trump just making a decision seemingly on a whim So as Darren Butler and Orhan Koskin of Reuters report Turkey pounded Kurdish militia in northeast Syria for a second day on Thursday forcing tens of thousands of people to flee and Killing at least dozens of people in a cross-border assault on US allies that has turned the Washington establishment Against President Donald Trump the offensive against the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF led by Kurdish YPG Militia which began days after Trump pulled US troops out of the way and following a phone call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan Opens one of the biggest new fronts in years in an eight-year-old civil war that has drawn in global powers The SDF said Turkish airstrikes and shelling had also killed nine civilians in an apparent retaliation by Kurdish Led forces six people including a nine-month-old baby were killed by mortar and rocket fire into Turkish border towns Officials in southeastern Turkey said the international rescue committee said 64,000 people in Syria have fled since the campaign began now because I like to put human faces to crises like this because I think it's a Good way of showing how certain things affects human beings in a really concrete way I want to play a clip from CNN International Where they kind of show you the chaos that's unfolding and how many people are currently trying to flee the area This is about a day and a half old But nonetheless it still kind of gives you a sense of what's going on and the terror that a lot of people are feeling We're here on the road out of the town of Ras al-Ain and as you can see it is a chaotic situation The streets roads just choked full of cars filled with families Desperate to get out of here none of them understanding Exactly what is going on what has happened? What the intention of this Turkish military strikes are we saw at least six Big plumes of black smoke with our own eyes at least one building that appeared to be on fire And these people are now fleeing to try to get to safety But they don't know exactly where safety might be and let's just take a talk and chat to these people quickly Salam alaikum marhaba, how are you? Where are you? I'm sorry, I'm sorry Are you afraid? They're saying that they're frightened for the children and you can imagine why look at the sky. It's thick with black smoke There have been strikes for the last couple of hours Can in front of him in for jarad can Oh So they're saying there were many different explosions She's a there were many Explosions that was coming from shelling artillery. They're now trying to get out But the army went through here a lot And they don't know where they're going or where they might be able to sleep tonight Clarissa Ward, CNN outside Ras al-Ain, Syria So people are scared Thousands are fleeing and now people are dying and we are seeing a Confrontation between the Kurds and Turkey and as the Reuters article pointed out it's drying in global powers So let me just stress here that this is a very complex Issue that requires nuance. This isn't just Pro-war anti-war, you know if you're anti-war then pull out if you're pro-war stay in This goes deeper than that This is an issue that is tricky, right? Because if you are against war if you are against war because you think that it's immoral because it causes death and destruction Then it makes sense to want to pull out But it's kind of counterintuitive to suggest that maybe we should stay there if that means technically we're an occupying force That's there illegally to begin with but you know someone who I really respect Noom Chomsky actually argued that US troops should stay in Syria in order to protect the Kurds And if you're anti-war and acknowledged that we shouldn't be involved in every single country Then it seems counterintuitive to support this it seems like a little bit contradictory for an anti-war advocate like Noom Chomsky to say this But here's the thing you have to think why do we not like war to begin with? Because whenever there's a war there's a guarantee that there will be death Destruction and human suffering. It's all about human beings. We don't want sentient beings to suffer and that's why we are against war and What I usually say because you know what a lot of people do is they make the case for war on humanitarian grounds And that's really difficult to argue against because people don't understand that humanitarian wars don't exist Right if they did then I would be advocating for us to be Peacekeeping forces to protect the Rohingya and Uyghurs, but that's just not a reality like most times when the US military Intervenes in a country. We always make matters worse. So if there's a humanitarian crisis, we end up leading to more Destruction and death but in this instance in this unique complex instance the US's presence Even if it was illegal was actually stopping death and destruction Which means that we have to think more deeply. We can't just be you know anti-war and pro-war in this instance We have to be driven by a desire to protect human life And in this instance if we have evidence that withdrawing troops from northern Syria would lead to a possible Genocide and what's happening now that I think that the humanitarian and us even if we are instinctively anti-war Should do what protects life and that means staying in northern Syria while Maintaining the position that we should get out as soon as possible But not do it in an idiotic way like Donald Trump and not even try to set up some type of long-term Continuancy plan so because I personally am guided by a desire to protect human life I am gonna have to side with Chomsky here I think that you know to prevent genocide from happening to prevent what's happening now from happening the troops should have stayed there I'll be it temporarily until we figure something else out, but it doesn't matter, you know, that's kind of That's all said and done right it doesn't matter what we want because Donald Trump already made the decision It was a hasty decision that was essentially I'm assuming anyways influenced by a phone call He had with type air to one and now we're to a point where you know We're looking at even more death and destruction because he pulled out You know what was largely viewed as the anti-war move is going to lead to more war, you know, which which is weird It's it's why this situation requires, you know more nuance and more deep thinking here now Donald Trump tweeted We have one of three choices send in thousands of troops and win militarily hit turkey very hard financially with sanctions Or mediate a deal between turkey and the Kurds. So think about what this has led to he is Vocalizing his intent to possibly escalate With the NATO ally and this isn't just going to be like a dispute between the United States and turkey Like this will draw in global powers If you think that Israel and Saudi Arabia and Russia won't be involved then, you know, you're naive So the situation now is Worse than anyone could have imagined. I've been a longtime advocate of saying we need to get out of all these countries But that doesn't mean that we just do it willy-nilly without a plan and we do it idiotically like you can't just withdraw And you know Not expect any negative repercussions Now it's going to be the case that a lot of ISIS fighters could be freed As the Kurds have to turn their attention to turkey and now this could involve a dispute between the United States and turkey It's it's a disaster staying there was a better option than Conflict with turkey potentially, which is why, you know anti-war individuals are sympathetic towards this position that may be staying in at least temporarily until we figure out a better plan and get UN peacekeeping sources there Was the preferable move and now it's just a complete disaster. It's a clusterfuck And a potential nightmare situation. It's already a nightmare scenario, right? But it could get worse if global powers start really Having a proxy war here um So I'll leave that there. We are looking at, you know a situation where we're far worse off And donald trump may escalate with turkey now and you know, he can argue that He's doing it because he wants to protect the Kurds, but we all know that donald trump doesn't care about genocide He vetoed the bill that would have ended the united states' complicity in the yemeni genocide Saudi arabia is genocide in yemen, so he doesn't care But now we have this manchild Potentially navigating, you know a really huge conflict now We don't know how this is going to play out, right?  I'm anti-war. He needs to understand How to navigate foreign policy He needs to have a coherent ideology politically and a strategy and know about the complex geopolitical issues going on in these regions So that way he can stop Why we all care about stopping wars to begin with stop death and destruction. That's the goal So if he's not going to do that then being anti-war effectively is pointless So we'll just you know, we'll pay attention to this and watch but um I'm not optimistic now. This looks like it's it's turning into a horrible situation


Ex-Governors Darie and Jolene Yame released from Kujae Prison and Ohane Zindigo alleges that there is a plot to keep Sen. Ike Kweramadu away from Nigeria ahead of the 2023 elections. This is Plus Politics. I am Mary Anacoff. Former Governors of Platteau State, Joshua Darie and Jolene Yame of Tarabastate have been released from Kujae Prison months after they were pardoned by the National Council of State. Darie and Yame were granted pardon by the President's Mohamed Buhari's government on 14 April 2022. Both former Governors were serving jail term for corruption allegations until they were granted a pardon by President Buhari, a development that received a lot of negative reactions. The High Court of the Federal Capital Territory Guru Abuja had on Tuesday 12 June 2018 sentenced Darie to 14 years imprisonment on the charges of criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of funds to the tune of 1.6 billion Naira while he was a State Governor of Platteau. Now Yame was also to serve a 12-year term for diverting 1.64 billion Naira during his tenure as Governor of Tarabastate. Joining us to break this down is Jiri Ulogun. He is a legal practitioner. Thank you so much Mr. Ulogun for joining us. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Let's start by going to the basics because this release is necessitated by a presidential pardon and that's what we'll call it. But for the benefit of those who are wondering on what a presidential pardon is, it's obviously the power that is on the President against every other law to grant pardon. But I'm sure that you have a better way of explaining this. And I think the question for every Nigerian or on every Nigerian's mind is why these two? You know when you talk about state program, it is an act of mercy or forgiveness or clemency and in the words of Justice John Marshall in the United States v. Wilson in 1833 a matter he described it as an act of grace. And there is another way of saying that even though the two from my God knows have been prosecuted from victory and sentence is to serve their geotimes, the Council of States led by the President has given an act of grace to pardon them. And basically we have four types of pardon.  And in this case it appears they are enjoying full pardon. And is this a constitutional action? The answer is yes. If you look at section 175 of the Nigerian constitution as amended from subsections one to six, it gives the President the barricade of pardon. And historically speaking, you know the state pardon can be traced back to the early sixties. But before we go into that, if at all, we have the Council of States whose responsibility is to advise the President before the state pardon was granted. And you have the President himself as the chairman, the vice president as the deputy chairman, all former presidents of the Federation, all former heads of government of the Federation, all former chief judges of Nigeria, the president of the Senate, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and all the governors of the states of the Federation, and of course the attorney general of the Federation. So here is a very reports representation that should have considered all the variables. And it was recommended and approved that the President could grant them pardon, not just these two personalities for 157 orders. And what made people to react in the way they reacted is to consider is it because they are high-profile personalities and looking at the allegations that led them to prosecution and conviction, serious acts of corruption. Because the citizens are now asking what to be the rating of Nigeria as a nation that comes with fighting corruption, then are we not reinforcing corruption in the nation if they can go away with such every, you know, very enormous levels of allegations for which they were convicted? But like I mentioned earlier, if you go back to 1966, before the Civil War, the Yakubu Goan regime, pardoned, she went back to the whole lower world, leader of the Ashokan group, and the former premier of the different western region, and also chief Antony Enaho, journalist and top politician then, even though he moved the press motion for Nigeria's independence in 1953, both of them were convicted of treasonable penalty in 1963. So President Sherw Shagari, pardoned, Nigeria, the Yakubu Goan, you know, a bankita-granted pattern into Kairabog and Tudi Thompson, General Al-Salam-e-Pardon, General Nishabu Vassal, so we can trace it down, you know, empirically that this is not the first one. But as mentioned earlier, people are worried that we're really fighting corruption. That is where we are right now. And even after the pattern was granted, it was kept in the Correctional Facility for about three additional months, and recently finally released. So another question came up with all the attacks on the Kuji Correctional Facility. What happened when they kept in the bunker? And this is where we are now. But on whether the President has the constitutional power to grant the answers, yes, and of course based on the advice of the Council of States. Let me go back to, you made mention of the crimes that these men were put away for. These men were convicted for funneling funds, public funds, or diverting these monies. And I'm talking about monies to the tune of billions, and these are taxpayers' monies. Again, because this is the issue, and Mr. President has decided that these are the men alongside with 150 more people who he would pardon. Nigerians are wondering, is there not a contradiction of sorts? Being that Mr. President is a man who said, rather, ran on the heels of, I want to fight corruption, zero tolerance for corruption. And then almost at the eve of, you know, rather at the close of his government, he's pardoning Treasury looters. What sort of legacy is Mr. President trying to leave for himself by doing this? And these are two people whose notoriety is for looting, for want of a better way to put it. You know, morally speaking, and of course, making reference to the need to fight corruption. This may be a dent on the profiling of the President. I mean, two governors who allegedly embezzled and misappropriated such funds at the expense of state's development and now have been left of the hook.  Make it so big that you can find your way around. And again, we need to mention the case of separation of powers. You can imagine the rigors that the judiciary went through in investigating and persecuting these defendants, we call them defendants under the new Criminal Justice Act. And at the end of the day, whilst having their jail time, the criminal justice turned around to say, they're going to release these persons. And the implication of that is that it will appear they never committed any offense against the state. And that's why I ruled out the four types of patterns. So this is like an absolute pattern. So they are free to go back and be heavily involved in politics, seek to lead some areas of the country again. And another school of thought is saying that perhaps because these are political big wheat, they may be released to support the political agenda of the good news. Whatever the case may be, personally, as a matter of my opinion, I believe that we have not done justice to the mandate of Section 15, Subsection 5 of the Nigerian Constitution and Asamende, that says that the state shall abolish corrupt practices and abuse of office. So right now, we are seeing as governors who abuse office, who are corrupt, convicted by the court. In actual fact, the day the Supreme Court confirmed the conviction of Governor Dairie, I was in the Supreme Court the same day, in Abuja.  And when a matter goes to the level of the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, and you must have applauded the jury for taking the aim to go through prosecution to ensure that the strong message is sent down, those who may want to be corrupt, that the laws of the land will not permit it. But at last, somewhere along the line of certain digital terms, there were granted state burdens. Again, this may be an assignment for the National Assembly. If you look at Section 4 of the Nigerian Constitution and Asamende, it says that the National Assembly shall make laws of the peace, order, and good governance of Nigeria. So we may look at this and give very stringent conditions for the grant of state burdens in the future. And that may be one of the ways of correcting such. But as we stand now, the President subject to the advice and approval of the Council of State has that constitutional power to grant state burdens. Remember that in March 2013, President Gulok Ibele Junatan granted a burden to former governor of the United States of Nigeria, Alamesia, and of course, Lieutenant-General Oladipo Diya retired, and with General Bukarim Hadissa, and the former MD of Bank of the North, Fetima Bulamo. So we need to check critically how we exercise state burden. And I must say here, it's a global concern, not just in Nigeria. And in cases in the United States of America, where questions were raised on the rationale behind grants of state burden. So here we are now, but I suggest that we are really going to fight corruption seriously. We must ensure that we totally consider the cases of those who enjoy state burden. I do remember that an American President was pardoned by his former vice, who also became President. And we saw how that turned out in the polls for him, because he lost his second term, because the Americans were unhappy about the state burden. It was a Watergate scandal, I remember. And that's why he lost that election. So let's look at the politics here now, because a lot of people have wondered why Mr. President has decided now, and not even earlier on, but now to release these two gentlemen. And they're wondering, is it political? And what role will this play, again, in the politics of things, knowing that we're just at the bend of the campaign season, and it's going to kick off in earnest in a few weeks? Will this play a role in, will this affect, will this one way or the other, also play a role in how we cast our votes in the coming election, especially for the APC? You know, we expect that with the calibre of personalities we have here, they have very commendable political influence on the citizens and the electorates. And if I know Nigeria very well, the fact that a notable figure has gone to serve a jail time, may not erode the respect given to the personality. And in their respective ways, they may be able to swing the voting pattern for political interests. But having said that also, it's also subject to the politics at the party level. If you look at the Delta State, for instance, the former governor of Delta State, Gibori, who was jailed for 13 years in the UK for crime, and came back to Nigeria where he has not even been convicted, came back exercising very strong political influence. But right now, he appears to be losing that interest, that political influence in Delta State is really battling to retain his position. So what I may just say that almost every decision has political conduct. But like you mentioned earlier, I think you were trying to make reference to what happened under President Gerald Ford, that was in 1974 in the USA, who granted full and unconditional pardon to former President Richard Nixon over the involvement in the Watergate scandal that led to his ceremonial resignation from office. And any other time he may have committed, many Americans felt that that was undecided. And it was a controversial decision. Other than the President's to his grant, but he paid a very heavy price. His popularity regime dropped. In 1993, President Clinton also pardoned a millionaire for generally considered to be an oilie. So there are these issues out there. And politically speaking, all of these decisions may be political in nature. But to what extent that we affect the people now, who have been embattled by the hardship, the inflation, the unkept promises of politicians in the country, I may not be able to say in what direction it will go. I believe that right now, Nigerians have been trained and groomed to take independent decisions on who they vote for, particularly when majority of Nigerians have tested the bitter fruit of corruption upon the land. Okay. Now, just let me backtrack a bit to something that you said. I mean, you talked about the fact that, you know, you made reference to James Ibori, the former governor of Delta State and how much popularity he has and the backing he has politically in the state. Many would attribute the political prowess of the governor of Delta State now to James Ibori that he had necessitated he coming to power. But that again is, you know, by the side. If what you have said is anything to go by politically and otherwise, what does this say about tossing us to people? Is it that we have chicken senses that, you know, after a while we seem to forget about these things or have we grown a thick skin of sorts to gloss over corruption so much so that we forget about how much we've been stolen from and then we still throw our weight behind these people because it does mean that there's a lot for us to ponder about before 2023, doesn't it? You know, we have a lot of adjustment to make, but let me also say this. It is recently that we are getting to witness many citizens who have actually rising up to ensure that they keep into the class of those who can actually vote. Maybe before now, those who go out there to vote are those who can hardly exercise discretion if they can enjoy 12,000 error from the politician to his election. They will go ahead and vote, but with the new revolution we are having in the country now where some citizens are even mobilizing or some candidates irrespective of whether the candidate has money to give them or not. I think we are growing our democracy and if you look at some of the restructuring that we have experienced in our electoral laws, for instance, the transmission of results electronically and other measures that we have introduced, we may have some shortcuts coming forward. But then, having said all this, we still have a percentage of electorates, maybe about 40% that can be influenced and flow with the tide of where the politician is leading them. Without considering the merits, but basically there is a new awareness in town now that you either secure your future or allow the politicians to promote your future. What has been said all this can let you know that these personalities that have just been released back in society, we still exercise some high levels of political influence. I should let you know that the day I made reference to in Abu Dhabi, I was shocked and what shocked me went to the court to confirm the conviction of former governor Darii. I witnessed political supporters being given money right in the lobby of the Supreme Court. So you can imagine to what extent people can go, perhaps because of poverty, or on trained partisan loyalty. But we still have a lot to learn about the fact that sovereignty actually belongs to the people and the people should conscientiously exercise that sovereignty without allowing politicians to swing them and later deal with them in a very bitter manner. And I also hope that the politicians, if they are learning at all, would have seen the level of insecurity in the country and just begin to start a new paradigm of making the new town a better place for all because the insecurity of one is the insecurity of all. And if you look at section 14, subsection 2B of the Nigerian constitution, it says that the security and the welfare of the people should be the primary purpose of government. And when the primary purpose of government fails, almost everyone is in danger. We have seen that even at this point in time, the so-called bandits are threatening to kidnap the president and commander of the armed forces and, of course, governor L. Rufai Katnassi for whatever reason is less noticeable. And that shows us that right now a very vulnerable society at the National Assembly is also rising up to say, okay, at this point in time, we need to question the competence of the president. We may be moving against the president on an impeachment exercise, which I can tell you if you look at the procedures under the constitution, it's like they're trying to move the camera through the eye of the name. Having said all this, I believe we should grow as a nation in being decisive on choosing those who manage our resources because the common world should be generated for the common good and not for the embezzlement of the few and the oppression of men. Talking about embezzlement now, because you see it's not enough, if you ask me, to put away somebody for stealing or looting federal or state treasury. But then again, where is the money? Because Nigerians will be asking that question, where these monies recovered. I mean, under the Bahá'í administration, we've seen all sorts. We've seen for the pension scam, a slap on the wrist. We've seen allegations of dollar scandals, et cetera, et cetera. And half the time, the percentage of the monies that we get back is nothing necessarily to write him about. So in a case where these men have been pardoned and brought back into society, what about the monies? Because again, we are facing an economy which is also going through a downturn of sorts. Inflation is at its peak. Should we not be questioning where the money is? I mean, Nobel Laureate Wallis-Szeringa, I'd like to quote him directly, has said that he slammed the President. He said that the presidential pardon for these former governors is an action that could be referred to as an ex-quashed against Nigerians' faces. And that all of this shall not be forgotten or wiped away in a hurry. Serap on the other hand is suing Mr. President, saying that this is a particular presidential pardon. It's not in the interest of the average Nigerian. So again, do we get these monies back? You know, this question should have gone to the account and general of the federation who is in charge of the resources. But then, he himself is engaged in an H-billion Naira investment scandal. So you see this viral ring of corruption going around. And again, may I also join you in asking another question? We are all the monies. We cover from Abacha. You know, at the time, the government claims to have spend on massive infrastructure. But I can let you know that as we speak right now, there are many roads that have collapsed in Nigeria. You can see that even though we spend 100 billion Naira reportedly on turnaround maintenance of the refiners, the refiners are off-function, even though we are promised that one of them will come off-function at very soon. But at a time, the NFC adds zero revenue to the federation account. So we just begin to go round and round this team of corruption. And for a regime that strongly promised to fight corruption, Nigerians, like the book, the beautiful ones are not yet born, are still looking for that leadership that we actually fight corruption. Because you may be shocked at the level of alleged corruptions under this regime that you have ever heard in the country before now. But we just want to advise that Nigerians should keep hope alive and not allow the despair to sink them, because we are just passing through the place. And to my president and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, I wish you the best. And that when your tenure is over, you may be recorded on the golden side of if you won't express your desire. But, you know, if we evaluate the situation of the country now, it means that you have a lot more to do before you step out of office. And finally, Mr. Logo, before we go, because you're trying to give Nigerians some hope. And this is the hope that Nigerians expected when they voted for Mr. President in 2015. Again, in 2019, even though not many people voted, Mr. President came back into power. Where is the justice? Where is the equity for the average Nigerian who seems to be working so hard, putting in so much, and getting nothing only for a handful of people to take these monies home and get a slap on the wrist, or a presidential pardon, or sometimes a slap on the carpet? Where is the justice? Where is the equity for the average Nigerian? I mean, you're trying to give us hope, but is there even a shred of it that one can actually hold on to? The elders say that hope dies last. And I'm going to mention, make a reference to Rwanda, African nation, that was in a very horrible pit. Somewhere along the line, a new leadership be made, led by Ocagami, whom we may not claim is perfect, who changed the narrative that country by reuniting the people and advancing the questions economically. And most recently, Tanzania is on the good book of the globe in terms of good leadership. And at a time, Singapore was a poor region.  If you know what is going on in Ghana now, they have more addictions than subscriptions in terms of making progress. And you know at a time, Ghana was like an outcast when it comes to that nations in the West African region. So that's how we keep up our life. And for someone like Gideon Lugun, looking at the enormous resources that God has deposited in Nigeria, I'm hopeful that when we have the resourceful leadership, the narrative will be quite exciting. As we speak right now, Nigeria retains the status of having the largest deposit of open gas in Africa. We have the goal. We have different kinds of resources in the country. We have fantastic weather. So we are just waiting patiently for a new order in the next term. Maybe a renewed federal republic of Nigeria. And I say this, don't give up. We will go on.  We can be well with Nigeria. All right. Thank you very much. Gideon Lugun is a legal practitioner. Always a pleasure to have you join us on the program. Thank you. God bless Nigeria. All right. Thank you for staying with us. We'll take a short break now. And when we get back, we will be discussing Ohaneze's plea to echo us over the Aquarium Madu Organ harvesting case. Stay with us.


All right, so my name is Alex Vinyals, software engineer at Sky Scanner. I work in the hotel's data team. And this is the team that delivers all the data that populates the website and the apps. And I'm here to present you the pipeline that we built to make sure that all the hotels have images in production. So one of the biggest challenges when you're a meta-search is to actually unify all the data. This is what the results page for a meta-search looks like. And here you can see all the providers for the W Barcelona hotel. Here you see the three cheapest ones, but in reality there are many more of them. So we are getting the data for that hotel like 20 times. And our job is to make sure that it reaches production once and it has the best possible data. This is what it looks like. Every partner that you integrate with gives you access to the catalogs. Those catalogs give you all the data for the venues that the provider has. And they give you usually like slightly different names, slightly different street addresses, and different coordinates. So our job is to match those venues. So do some magic and make sure that they reach Sky Scanner once and with the best data. If we do that for all the hotels, that's Sky Scanner in the catalogs, we are going to end up with the data release and this is the Sky Scanner catalog. So what about the images? In this case here you can see a search result and there's no image there. So you as a customer are not going to look at that hotel.  Let's see how do we make sure that they reach production. The case is pretty similar. Every partner gives you all the images that they have for that hotel. And they usually give you like really similar images. You're going to see like corrupt images or slightly shifted different colors. And our job again is to make sure that we pick the best one and put it in production. Here you see the images in the results page. Take here you're going to get an expanded gallery. This gallery shows you the images with more detail. And if you look closely, you're going to see here down below, duplicated images. So this is what we are trying to avoid. And as you can see here, they are quite similar images, but slightly moved or shifted or cropped. So yeah, it's really hard to remove them all. So with around 200 partners, around 1 million hotels reach production. This means that we are going to have to process around 35 million images. But there's a trick here. And it's that we resize. We resize for mobile devices. We don't want a mobile phone to be resizing all the images. There you see the thumbnails. They are smaller ones. So all the work is done in our site. We have around 40 different configurations for resizing. So this is going to multiply the number of images that we end up processing. So I'm sure to tell you the tale of an image processing pipeline. But before doing that, I'm telling you the tech stack. We are happy users of Postgres on RDS managed. We've been together all the steps of that pipeline with SQS, queuing service. And obviously for machines, we just get EC2 instances. We try to scale them so there's nothing to do there. There are no machines up. As far as libraries is concerned, we use Django. We use it with Django REST framework. Incredible to make APIs. We avoid using the Django RM. We use SQL Alchemy instead. And for Combo, for messaging, we use Combo. This library, you may be already using it, because it's the underlying library under salary. It's maintained by the same guys, and it's simply a lower level. When you do Amazon stuff, you're going to use Voto. And for image processing, we use Pillow, which is a nice library with C binding, so it gives you a nice performance for manipulating the images. And then we use Python 2.7 for technical reasons. So the tail of an image processing pipeline, we're going to start with the triggering. And there are like two big groups here. The asynchronous steps and the synchronous steps. The asynchronous are going to be running continuously, making sure that all the images are ready to be used by the synchronous steps. So triggering. The trigger basically is a small worker that keeps running through all the catalogs. It looks for URLs there and computes the div. The state is stored in the database, and basically we say, all right, this catalog has been updated, and there are URLs that disappeared. Those images should be deleted. There are new images or updated images. So this payload is computed for every hotel, or every partner, and this is sent to an API. The image release API. So the API, when it receives the payload, it stores that image into the database, and we keep things like the URL. We give an identifier to that image. We know which provider gave us that image, and for which hotel of that provider that image is. And now the API is going to move forward and queue the messages to the next step, which is downloading. The downloader step basically gets the messages from the queue, hits the partner's CDN, gets the image, and puts it into our system, into an S3 bucket, so that if the CDN fails or the partner removes the image, we still have it, and we can roll back at any time. So this is what the callback looks like, what the worker looks like. Basically, we get the image URL, hit the CDN, get the contents, register a new key into S3, set the contents of that key, and after this is done, it's in our system, then we open the image repeal, and we ask some pretty basic questions like, should I filter that image? Is it picking off? Does it have resolution enough? If the image survives all of that, then it will go to the fingerprinter, because we are going to pull this message to the next queue. So notice here this reliable callback decorator. This is basically something we do on all the workers. We don't want to die on unexpected errors, so the main thing that this does is making sure that the workers don't die. Here we do an extra stuff. You see that this is converting a warning into an error. Pillowout really protects you from the compression bombs, and we actually got a few of them, so a worker, you don't want it to die for a compression bomb. You want it to continue going and move on to the next message. So here we catch everything, log it into a lockster or anything you're using, then we run the function and that's pretty much it. So this is what a worker looks like. It instantiates a consumer that is going to connect to the backend, and it's going to map all the messages in that queue to the callback that we just saw. Here you see the combo primitives being used. We just create a connection to the backend, and then we specify that start consuming all the messages of events in that connection, and we're going to map the messages to the callback. The callback is going to get the message and the body of that message. So we are going to process that message, and if everything goes fine, we just acknowledge the message and move on. So after the image is downloaded, we go to the fingerprinting step, a really simple one. We just download the image from S3 and compute some identifiers that are going to allow us to do further processing. The question that we will try to answer further is going to be if these images are the same or not. For a computer, those images are not the same, not really, because they have different bytes, different sizes. I mean, it's not the same image, but if you were a user and you saw that in the website, you would be disappointed, because obviously it's not telling you anything new. It's redundancy, and that's what we want to avoid. So yes, they are the same image, and this is what the fingerprint does. It computes some kind of hash. We use the image hash library. It implements different hashing algorithms. I believe average hashing, perceptual hashing, differential hashing. We end up using the differential hashing one, and we just do a slight modification. We're just doing a cropped hash thingy. So what does that do is it creates images of the image. It crops the image several times, and then we compute the sub-hash for each sub-image. The reason we do that is because we want to maximize the chances of matching duplicated images. So this kind of hash is such that similar images have a small distance between the hashes. So, time to duplicate. At this point, the data release is going to run, and it's going to say, okay, I have one million hotels that are going to reach production, and now you need to make sure that those hotels have images. So this goes to the API, and the API starts processing that, queues messages, payloads, and the applicator is going to update the status on the database, and then if it's needed, it's going to move to the next step, which is prioritizing the images. We're going to see that now. So what is a group of hotels? A group of hotels, basically, for us, it's just pairs of IDs. We identify a hotel as provider, and the ID of that hotel for that provider. So if we see here three pairs of IDs, it's a group of hotels provided by three partners. So that's what we call a group. And when I say if needed, this yellow line is a queue of messages in the duplication step. You see it raises up to about one million, and then it starts descending. This means that the workers are processing the payload, and the blue line is actually the next step queue, and you see not all of the messages go forward to the next step. So we try to be differential. If you do two releases, not all the data is going to change, so you can reuse the images that you already computed in the previous step. That's what we're trying to show here. So the duplication, the duplicator is going to wrap another group with all the providers, and it's going to fetch all the images that we have for them. And ideally, what we want to do here is identify that there are two image groups, the image group of the room and the image group of the pool. That's all we want to do. So the conclusion is I say to the other way that this group has those two image groups. And this is what it looks like. We have all the set of images to be processed, and we have no groups. And then we start moving. We see the group with the first image to be processed. We try to expand the group comparing it against the other, pending images to be processed. And we ask the same question always. Is that the same picture? And the arguments that we pass here are the hashes that we computed back before in the fingerprinting step. So what is this same picture doing is basically accepting all the hashes that we did, that we computed and comparing them with the Hamming distance. So if that distance is below threshold, we're going to consider the images to be actually the same or quite similar. So how do we tune that step? Well, how do we get a guarantee that tomorrow we don't break everything and in production we have tons of duplicate images? So what we do is you build the corpus.  So you set the truth. You say those images should be a group as a human. And then what you're able to do is run the automatic algorithm and get some metrics. Those metrics, you can further tune the code and see an improvement or not improvement in the metrics. So you keep doing improvements until you are happy. And that's how you have guarantees that you don't break the stuff. And then we go to prioritization step, which is choosing the best images. Now we know which groups of images we have, but each hotel. Now we need to pick the best ones. So prioritizing is quite simple. Just date the status in the database and what it does is it says, okay, I have two image groups. I'm going to get all the images again and I'm going to pick the best one from each group. So it says, okay, this is the best image and this is the best image. We are cool based on decision on pixels or resolution colors, histogram of colors. And once we know that, we're just going to sort them and say, if we have something to base our decision on, we're going to prioritize them accordingly. Sometimes partners tell you, this image should be the first one. So if we have this data, we're going to use it. And then that reaches production. Of course, that will reach production. So what could go wrong when you pick the best image? This could go wrong. Yeah. So obviously picking the best image is not an easy task. It's really hard. And yes, this image had tons of colors and tons of pixels, but obviously it's not the best one. So we have sort of an MVP to extract features from images. And obviously if we found a word that says, oh, there's a toilet here, we will put that image on the back. In the meanwhile, because doing that, it's complex, so in the meanwhile we have tools so you can go manually there and sort those images and fix them manually. It's not that it's happening like at all times. It's really specific cases, so that's why it doesn't have that much priority. And now you prioritize the images. You know which ones are going to reach production. It's time to waste time resizing them on all the sizes. So this worker is going to get the payload, make all the sizes, and put them into a bucket in S3. This special folder is going to be served through a CDN, so you get reduced latency on the website and the apps. And that's pretty much it. This is what the worker does. When you have an image with pillow and you want to resize it, it's quite easy. You can just call resize, and you're done. If we make the image smaller, we want maybe to improve the contrast. You can create image enhance, use the image enhance primitive, and you can just change the contrast as you want. And that's it for the pipeline. This is the final result. All the images have reached production and how they are progressing through each step. And this is the schematics of how it looks like on Amazon. Basically, we have a distributor machine, which is just deployment support. We keep all the dependencies there. We try to get the wheels in there, so the other workers are going to use to retrieve the dependencies from here. This saves time when getting heavy packages because the wheels installing them is really easy. And then we have the image release API. Basically, it's used for the data release, interfacing with the data release. And then we also have a health check there that checks the queues, and if there's, like, tons of work to be done, it's going to spin up the instances, triggering a CloudWatch alarm, and that's pretty much it. Then we have the auto-scaling group of workers, and everything is connected to the database, which is the central piece. The auto-scaling database, Amazon is quite easy to do that. You just provision more IOPS if you need more throughput, so we are happy with that. And then it just reads the final packet with the CloudFront on top, and that's pretty much it. So thanks for listening. So if you have any questions... Yeah, like, the guy is gone. Can you repeat? Do you consider using database events instead of a triggering process to scan the database? No. Like, it hasn't been a problem that much. We have maybe 80% usage, and we are not using, like, that big of an instance. Okay. Have you ever seen using one of these fancy, much-hand learning techniques to classify images? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we have kind of an MVP, but it needs more work. But basically, you got, like, basic words of what has been detected in that image. Like, I see a bed or I see a toilet, and that would be fair enough to get rid of those issues. But it needs more work. Times where you have the hotel room that shows all the features of the room, but has a bad resolution, and another one that has a great resolution that just shows the back. Do you have a way to... No, usually we try to trust the partners. We know that Leonardo is a good provider of images, so if we have Leonardo, we're going to prioritize Leonardo. If we have the sequence of the image, so we say a partner is telling us, hey, this image needs to be on top. We trust that. And as a last resort, we just check resolution and the history of colors. So if we have only blue color, we are going to ignore that image. It's quite good, so... We have here the metrics of the corpus. So the most important metrics here are completeness and pureness. Completeness, basically, we try not to put a wrong image. So if we have a group of beds, we don't want to put a toilet there. So this reduces completeness because we filter more groups of images. But the 91% of group of images that we have, 97% are pure. This means that of all the groups that we get, 97% have a similar, like, the same image. Like, all beds or all bedrooms. So, yeah. Could be better, of course, but... Yes, yes, like, the MVP for... You mean for recognizing features? Oh, no. Yeah, it's pretty easy to answer. We just have the workers, which are independent of Django completely. We had the workers there, and we knew that we were not going to couple them with the Django API. So why implement the models twice? We just choose to do it in a SQL alchemy and not pass the Django settings to the worker. Just technical decision. The question is if... Yeah, yeah. Well, you get the process of API, you get hyperlinks. We're happy with it, using it. It's not that... The APIs may be the less important of the components here. The workers are much heavy. I guess that's it.


duty title? Oh yes, I'm Major James Guiliani and I'm the Morocco desk officer for Southern European Task Force Africa. Awesome, that's just for like a title. Okay. Could you tell me what was happening today? General Cavoli, he touched down. Can you tell me what happened today and why that's significant? Yeah, obviously as part of the exercise we had a great opportunity for the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa to conduct a senior leader engagement with his counterpart here in the Southern Zone headquarters in Agadir, Morocco, General Farouk and what's taking place is a engagement to discuss this operation, how the exercise is going to go, and then the potential for future operations. Okay, rephrasing just, I don't need the whole thing like part of that saying like the African lion exercise. Oh, okay. I don't know what you want to say. Maybe like just the first part, like just the very first sentence. It's very important to Okay. What happened today is the commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa visited the African lion exercise in Agadir, Morocco. So you want it? Yeah, that's cool. And then at the back of the like he met with General Farouk. Can you tell me what your role was today? Yeah, absolutely. As the desk officer served to help plan the engagement and the trip and to coordinate all the details between both General Farouk's office and General Cavoli's staff. It is.  What's a question you would come up with and like answer that question? Would they talk about? Would we care about what they engage with? Sure, yeah. So what did they talk about? What were they engaging about? During the engagement today, both General Cavoli and General Farouk highlighted the importance for our armies and militaries to engage with each other, not only to conduct training, but to learn and grow together and understand how we both operate.


I'd like to welcome Anupana Mukherjee, Anupana is from the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences and the title of her three-minute thesis tonight is Empires of Nostalgia. Nostalgia. The term immediately evokes a fuzzy feeling in our tummies. It takes us on a time travel to the days we loved and lost, homes that are no more, or the fields out there on which stands our auditorium today, gone forever. Indeed, nostalgia is one of the most persistent windows through which we see our yesterdays. And yet, it is most widely panned for soggy sentimentality that muddles our perception of history. This led me to the question, what is Nostalgia's relation to history then? History is a frame that holds a big picture, where is nostalgia whispered to us in soft voices, speaking to an absence or a loss in the present, with images from the past, imagination, desire and memory team up in nostalgia to give us the most perfect photoshopped picture of an imperfect world. So nostalgia is powerful because it gives us a blueprint of a beautiful world, but at the same time it can hold us prisoners of memory. My research shows how nostalgia passes from a personal sentiment to a tool for empire builders. Think of Sydney, Melbourne, Calcutta, all the little London's that the homesick travellers created in far-off lands which they treated as blank canvases to paint the images of their absent homes. From replicating English domestic scenes with lilies and lilacs in the garden, to using British place names, warrics and victorious, by responding to various nostalgias, the colonisers gradually extended their control over the colonies. So by the end of 19th century, we had many Englans scattered all across the globe like pieces of Chicks and Puzzle. Reading poems and texts of the colonial era, I show nostalgia's role in building colonies extending empire, because nostalgia is a weapon, perhaps more effective than wars of conquest. So by looking at the humdrum everyday longing and the role in shaping larger political events, my research illuminates how nostalgia for the past shape habitations of the future. Nostalgia is more than a fuzzy feeling in the tummy, it is a power we need to respect and question.


Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. Today I want to talk about the rigging of U.S. presidential elections, so travel back with me to the election of 2004, where incumbent Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat John Kerry. Across the country, Bush received about 3 million more votes that year than Kerry did, but of course the popular vote doesn't matter in U.S. presidential elections because of the Electoral College. This is a strange and anachronistic feature of our presidential elections explained in detail by CGP Gray here, but quick overview. Every state is allotted a certain number of electoral votes based on congressional representation, so every state has two senators, so they get two electoral votes, and from there it's decided by population, like California has 55 electoral votes whereas Montana has three. Right, so most states, there are of course exceptions because nothing is ever easy in U.S. politics, allot their electoral votes to the candidate who gets the most votes in that state. A candidate needs 270 total electoral college votes to win, and because you might win some states by a wide margin and lose others very narrowly, it is possible to win the popular vote in the country but lose the election. In fact, that's how George W. Bush was elected in 2000. Also, if three or more candidates get some electoral votes and that prevents any one candidate from getting a majority of electoral votes, the president is actually chosen by the U.S. House of Representatives. This has happened a couple times in U.S. history, including in 1826 when Congress chose John Quincy Adams to become president even though Andrew Jackson had received more votes. Anyway, if you're thinking all of this sounds bananas, I agree. But one of the very few even arguable upsides to the electoral college is that it makes U.S. presidential elections extremely hard to rig because we're not actually having one election. We're having 51 elections, each governed by the separate states, but in fact it's even more complicated than that because in every state counties and townships have their own elections with their own independent oversight, so we're having thousands of elections. And this massively decentralized system protects against widespread fraud. So back to 2004, there's not much question that George W. Bush won the most votes in that election. The question is Ohio. Kerry lost Ohio by about 118,000 votes. If he'd won, he would have been elected president. And lots of people on the left, including by many accounts John Kerry himself, believed that voter suppression and possible ballot fraud essentially rigged that election. Like there was a Rolling Stone cover story about it, you can still find blogs making the case. The claim goes like this, Ohio's Secretary of State, who oversees elections, was a Republican who engineered long lines at polling places. Also he purged voters from the rolls and failed to get the names of 25% of newly registered voters to polling places. And also somehow 150,000 votes in rural Ohio were switched from Kerry to Bush, possibly by a hacking electronic voting machines, possibly by a physically altering ballots. Here's what actually happened. 25% of newly registered voters did have to fill out provisional ballots, which is ridiculous and speaks to how poorly the Ohio election was run that year. However, almost exactly half of those people cast their ballots for George W. Bush. The voter rolls were purged because they are required by law to be purged because people die and or move. Actually I guess I don't really need the and or there, mostly they just die or move. Right, also none of the 150,000 purportedly switched votes was actually switched. However, long lines at polling places, which did disenfranchise voters, but not in a way that would have affected the outcome of Ohio's presidential election. The 2004 Ohio election was poorly run and it did not reflect the ideals of our democracy, but it also did not steal the election from John Kerry. Like the Democratic Party's own investigation concluded, despite the problems on election day, there is no evidence from our survey that John Kerry won the state of Ohio. But of course that report was written months later, the morning after the election, John Kerry still believed he might have won and he was furious with the partisanship he saw in the Ohio election, but nonetheless he called George W. Bush and conceded. This is one of the central tenants of our country. We have fair elections where the outcomes are trusted broadly, if not universally, and when power changes hands it does so peacefully. Like it sometimes said that the greatest moment of George Washington's presidency was its final moment when he handed the office over to John Adams and created a precedent for how American leaders would cede power. To paraphrase something George W. Bush said recently, in American history the office of the presidency is always more important than the person who holds it. Now none of this is to say that our elections are perfect, like voter suppression has been a hallmark of U.S. voting. And suppression efforts have disproportionately targeted systemically disadvantaged voters, the poor initially, and then when the franchise was extended women and people of color. Even today there are many political strategies for suppressing voters, but voter suppression, which is real, is not the same thing as widespread fraud, which is not. In most states observers from both major political parties monitor poll workers to prevent official fraud, and fraud among voters is incredibly rare in the United States. With very few exceptions, people do not vote when they are not allowed to, or impersonate voters, or vote multiple times, or vote when they are dead. The voter rolls may include dead or otherwise ineligible people because the rolls aren't kept up to date or purged often enough, but that does not mean fraudulent votes will be cast. Like you may have heard that in-person voter fraud is as uncommon in the United States as dying from a lightning strike, but that's just not true. In the past 14 years there have been 31 substantiated cases of in-person voter fraud in U.S. elections, and 36 people have been killed by lightning this year alone. Now fraud via absentee ballots is somewhat more common because it's easier to fill out someone's ballot if it's mailed in, but it is not widespread and it is not systematic. You might hear about a study showing that 6.4% of non-citizens living in the United States voted in 2008. That study has been thoroughly debunked. You may have heard that certain voting machines can be easily rigged. That is just not true. And you may have heard that voting machines owned by liberal George Soros will be used in 16 states this year. In fact, George Soros has no ownership stake in the company in question Smartmatic, and furthermore Smartmatic machines will be used in zero states in 2016. By the way, links to non-partisan sources in the doobly-doo as usual. So the U.S. presidential election will not be rigged any more than the one in 2004 was. What's different now is that one of the major party presidential candidates is loudly and consistently claiming that the election will be rigged, that there will be widespread voter fraud, that people may vote 10 times, that undocumented immigrants will vote, and on and on and on. These are all simply lies.  Because it means fewer Americans will trust our elections, even when they are free and fair. I guess I understand that fear-mongering is part of U.S. politics, but undermining the legitimacy of our political institutions without cause isn't. Hearing that unfounded rhetoric from a presidential candidate is a new and disturbing development in American political discourse, so I want to be very clear, your vote will count. The election will not be rigged. If you're fortunate enough to be an eligible voter in the United States of America, please make your voice heard. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.


My topic this evening is a Granted grafted vegetables and why do we grab the vegetables single? the the practice of vegetable grafting Originated from Japan and Korea where land is limited crops are grown often Continually here after here. Where is the in the US? We rotate crops. We don't have a problem with the the soil diseases Plants grown every year. So vegetable seedling grafting Practices will overcome soil-borne diseases use the Roots stocks that are very highly tolerant to root diseases often those root stock cultivars root stock Plants are from wild native plants and so on and so There will be There will be no crop rotation needed and still can produce Quality and eat high yield crops year after year now Next one will be the some common popular popular crops that are Grapped it include a two-cup it Salinaceous crops and two-cup it crops watermelon musk melon usually in case of both Asian countries of Oriental melons cucumbers or summer squash and Salinaceous crops like a tomato potato eggplant and Peppers and of course a potato you don't use as a potato produces tubers Underground so it's usually potato grafting is used as a root stock Some cases you can grab the sweet potato on morning glory to Produce early flowering those plant breeders are using that techniques This is an older slide I often show that does show this a slide at 1996 in Japan Field production versus. Oh, I see it is somehow it Scares I don't know what happened, you know, and I just they're about 92 over 90 percent It's a stranger to status. Okay. Um watermelon cucumbers in Korea similar a 98 98 percent of Watermelons for grafted for greenhouse production Where's an field field grown ones are less that time, but now we'll see more about Peppers for example But field grown ones about 35 percent greenhouse grown about 95 percent peppers crept it now We'll talk about some grafting. We usually we are used to grab woody plants including fruit trees. This is picture shows the dwarf Roastock used in grafting apples apples Alma grown just like very densely with a very low height. They get the management is easier and Within four years you can produce a apple crops like this. I got this one from Korea and Also grafting is used very very effectively to combine Different growth habit say say for example here Picture on the right side of the mulberry the weeping form of a cyan cultivus grafted on Straight upward growing rust stock of a mulberry. It is very nice. You can generate nice form or Shade plans in the very hot Climate like in Arizona and so on. Let's be good way of changing Kind of a as a grafted plants and two different Grocer habits into one if you are interested in changing Cultivus or varieties of apples and pear on Existing tree in your backyard. You can grab New varieties sign words and new varieties on branches like cutting off the main branches and by using Grapes this case be not your ball graph and And you can harvest the fruits of a several different varieties Even from from one tree that'll be is called in a horticulture Tom Top working of apple trees next the Top work the plum tree has grown and on University campus at Syracuse New York And it's the coverage was by CBS News This tree has about 40 different varieties of cultivars showing different colors as well as fruits of a Different cultivars. It's kind of a one time several years ago. It was a good story covered by major news companies Now in woody plant We would like to combine Cambium layers of the cyan wood and rust dark for Successful grafting. So this will be on the left the picture on the left. We show how to make a Whip and tongue grab kind of made as a tongue and cyan wood and Rust off they're locked in and it's very good successful grafting and It will see from your right side right here is a splice grafting red and whip and tongue making sure at least the cambium layer of Cyan wood is in contact very good contact with the rust off stem and It doesn't matter whether it's both side have to be contacted. I think as long as Good contact on one side of the stem is good Then they will heal very nicely and form nice grab the healthy grafted plants Hobatius plants is a different you don't have to worry about aligning cambium layers cambium layers a very characteristic of a woody plant stem it'll be cambium layers actively dividing cell cells it's Cambium surround the xylem tissue the woody portion in the center and Cambium is responsible for Outward growth the stem growth Will increase as time passes whereas in herbaceous plants. You don't have to worry about as long as you can get the Sealing stems connected and they fuse together by callusing first and then forming vascular tissues together and then he grabbed it plant And there are different ways of combining the cyan cultivar and root star cultivar space inserting different ways Shoots and top of a Rust stock stem and in bottom case of you can use a pin to combine these and as long as a They stay together in physically and they will heal very nicely The most common Method is using grafting clips this picture is shown several different times and it appears that the asian countries use more grafting clips then We in the u.s. We have user tubes grafting tubes inserted and for this you have to have a the diameter of Cyan stem and diameter of a root stock stem has to be same to use this tubes, but somehow the us there are more of practices with the grafting tubes is compared to the clips will be on the right side. There's a lot of The grafting clips used they are retrieved and then used for several many many years This will be seen the grafting scene is early spring And it's very busy time and people get in the greenhouse and graft seedlings and planted for the field You know this occurs before the normal growing season and this this cut graft used you know now they found that especially for Chukubit crops you can use a cut graft cut graft that means The seedling stems usually hypochartal seedling stems are cut off and grafted And used in grafting so it'll be lower portion right here will be Roast stock stem hypochartal and then the Cyan cultivar on top is a clip together and then planted and and while The bottom of the stem can generate Adventitious root. This is the new chute formation from places uh Originally not really intended to produce roots and so advantageous root formation takes place the same time the callous formation and Kind of a joining of a tish the grafted union is taking place And this will be a cut graft Cyan root stock and it is a stuck root stock stem is stuck to cell packs and they are Now it's a callous and kind of incubated in place like that with a high humidity and lower light intensity When I visited this greenhouse in Korea, they were producing about 2.5 million grafted plants a year and it was a large operation very good success and I think more uh us Greenhouse and more the special seed companies are providing grafted plants, although they are expensive, you know so there should be Seed and grafted tomatoes ready to be marketed shipped and the Clips before shipping retrieved and saved for use for next year now We use seedling grafting root stock you know there's some root socks Plants if all you see germinated we grew them and they don't produce really good fruit. They just grow very vigorously and that's very Good healthy. There's no root diseases and so on they may produce the flowers and so on some A few fruits, but not really much as compared to regular Tomatoes in the background here. You see huge size And you'll see we did a lot of experiments on different root stocks to see whether there's an interaction between root stock cultivar and cyan cultivars and here's a middle two is a Estamino and max seaford. There is a usually most many seed companies carry this, but they initially Johnny's selected seeds and carry this and we usually buy this and have a I brought some root stock Seeds from Korea's blocking solution special Yes, a little bit producing a little bit bigger fruit, but not a quality that is edible and root stock Cultivar seeds are very expensive like a one seed is about 50 cents even grafted plants and as you know I took this took this picture from Johnny's selected seeds and and this one is a Randy wine tomato grafted on max seaford And this is a same cultivar grafted on Estamino and they're both are good expensive right here that I saw The prices about 35 300 to $400 For one tray of a grafted plant. It's a 72 grafted plant It goes about 3.5 to $5 per plant average about $4. It's a kind of expensive Use also grafting for peppers I get this is these slides from Korea And Koreans use a lot of hot peppers for making kimchi and so and they are most greenhouse peppers are grown but over 93 percent grafted peppers in the greenhouse field grown ones Yeah, and about about over 35 percent grafted so they're the grafting They're using automated grafting machine. There's a little bit pepper a seedling graph machine and when I was Uh, moderating a session and grafting the international horticulture society congress and I think it's 2007 People a lot of people had an interest in buying this machine and Again, there's be about per hour about 400 Grat seedling graphs and then this one machine and some visitors from Europe and then people who have a farm in Mexico They have to buy many many units because they need to plant millions of plants a day And you have to have several hundred units of a grafting machine to Satisfy their needs and so on so they still have to improve the speed of grafting by machine use cut seedling graph It's a kind of a now it's getting popular for vine crops like a grafting Watermelons and melons greenhouse in a field crop And then it's this picture. They are lower left The middle one is ungrafted and as the regular grafting and then this was a actually cut graph The hypochartal was a cut and Adventitious root was generated and there's much much help. So it's they're practicing somehow the graph union There's so much exudation of water that hinders healing of the union and Sometimes they found that Getting rid of a root as a source of water Can really help fast healing and growth of a grafted plant and this is the a rootstock used used for took Watermelons and so on as usually wild species that germplates coming from wild plant these I I brought some seeds from Korea and Planted the seeds because we ran out of seeds and grew them on the campus and those are the Watermelon almost they looked like a watermelon. It's not it's not sweet at all You cannot really cut them. They're so hard the rind It's hard. You have to use a big, you know, knife to release kind of With the force you have to cut and so it's like it's not edible I have a lot of seeds we use for seedling grafting for cucumber plants like a watermelon and melons Those are the seedlings and if anybody interested in Getting seeds, please contact me. I can send the those seeds now seedling graph grafted Melons in the field not only in japan and korea I think this one came from israel I think and grafted melons and here they're because of the Resistance of a rootstock and it's very nice. It was as compared to un-grafted Row of same Science talk about there's a non-grafted row right here too. So it's a popularity is growing and uh, it was a price or for grafting and then production is uh afford the Justifiable but grafting the use of great grafting grafted Vegetables and field production is very well accepted practice And in n dsu we did this research and grafted tomatoes and this will be grafted tomatoes using all different types of combinations scion and rootstock cultiva combinations this be Rooting and the callousing success rate is 100 percent. This is in growth chamber and actually we practice herbaceous or seedling grafting very much actually our n dsu is One of the earlier probably the most earliest institution that Uh taught a seedling grafting than anybody else in the in other universities in in the united states I happen to moderate seedling grafting workshop for the american society for horticultural science in early 2000 And a lot of people had interest and nobody really heard about the seedling grafting now So this technology is being well adapted given in the united states These are the grafted plans evaluated in the field where the graduate student of zi gang Wu now Then it'll be in one of the field days. I think it's about the tom cab is a watching. Yeah, that's I think right here uh, so it was several years ago and We did grafting usually Use of an indeterminate type of Tomato variety it'll be better. So this would be big beef grafted on special maybe cultivar from Korea And it's very very good in the field. Um This is a zi gang who tested all of the graft combinations between cyan cultivar and rust dogs and He before he finished is a phd program at india. So he joined the army. I think I think he's Still serving uh there and hopefully after uh Getting out of a service. Hope he can come back and finish his Uh degree we had uh student This would be a sumen para julie Who's from nipal last year he finished his thesis on tomato grafted evaluation of grafted plans as compared to non grafted plans It will be published sometime in the spring and hot science and he he's gone to uh different universe well University in canada now you can use combinations inter specific graft combinations for example here's a Eggplants grafted than potatoes kind of are working very well. They very well and So we we thought maybe a good idea to have Some grafting of a tomatoes eggplants on Potato root stocks again potato root stocks are not grown from grown from seed They are grown from spud spud and seed potatoes sprout well, but non seed sprout Potato non seed potatoes. They don't sprout well any and when you buy from stores and then we can get the the eyes or the Spotted chop into and planted into cell packs and then they grow and then Cyan material from tomato or eggplants eggs egg plant eggplant and tomatoes is grafted and we did the Those potato and tomato potato graft I don't know the commercial value or not, but it was good the interest in it. Mommy was an undergraduate student who grew them in it She's digging at the end of the growing season And you will see there's a Out that the top tomato cultivar, you know tomato top producing and then potato tubers underground and we Had some different combinations as being as the Big beef grafted and Yukon gold potato be grafted plants on the right side of the non grafted and non grafted potatoes you can see the top The foliage is kind of a they dried out At the end of the growing season But it's still be still green and grafted plants So actually tomato provide a nourishment and they stayed uh stayed Longer with the still growing where's a potato is already dried out and ready to be dug and so you can see right here see on as compared to potatoes grown a non grafted potato potato tubers from non grafted plant as grafted plant usually smaller number of uh tubers on grafted plants you can see the can you can kind of yeah You explain that all the photosynthase going into fruits and tubers they have to be Allocated and they're kind of a competition. So I can imagine of the grafted plants producing less number or total yield their weight as compared to non grafted potato The celebrity grafted on Yukon gold again. It's a big celebrity isn't it's kind of a semi Determinate type. So we have another One would be the big beef grafted and red Viking similar result So with this Usually it's the same thing or celebrity and red Viking And whether you should have some grafted tomato or tomato because we haven't tried The cherry type small fruited tomato cultivars grafted on potato So we like to try to continuous the laid on the idea is to get maximum yield from I mean from top portion and bottom portion both fruits and uh tubers so with that I think a cow earlier presented a container gardening And I like to send some grafted plant to her And maybe she can grow in containers and can enjoy harvesting tomatoes throughout the growing season and in patio area And toward the end of the growing season and harvest potato tubers and we it Tested some potato varieties that Give a strong stem So that we don't have to stake the tomatoes That's a one thing we have to work on and that the longevity of a potato vines just be not as long as a tomato especially the indeterminate type tomato So we are selecting the varieties that will one thing Potato cultivar that can be used as a rust dog without staking and so on that's a The ongoing Work we are doing this is last slide. I think that we have we will have available Sealing grafted plant tomato tomato grafting on tomato potato grafting egg plants grafted in potato and watermelon and cucumber the resistant rust dogs if any When interested in you may Contact me. I have a contact info information my cell phone and email address and please Through tom and and let me know. I don't know how many we'll have The students are no longer coming to campus.  So With that, I think I would like to entertain questions Yes, we do have a few minutes here for questions One of them has to do with your Pomato plant there that you grow Does it have any special cultural practices or Nutrient needs the dead plant has compared to a standard tomato or a standard potato I don't think it is very Yep, they're picky just regular just the condition or Photolizes the soil condition, but we do find did find that clay soil Fog of clay soil they don't produce much here potato tubers on grafted plants Yeah, what do you think do you think if you had a limited space Does it makes sense to have Tomatoes wouldn't you shouldn't you just grow a tomato plant and a potato plant and Let it go with that or it's just for fun that we're growing tomatoes, huh? I don't know. It's a commercial if you have potato grows you go into all this Trouble and produce tomato plants or not, but this is the quality and anybody For fun, you may grow Home patio, you need to grow something like that This happens you can play around. Yep. How about when you grow? I'll take a grafted Tomato does do you find any advantages as far as resistance to Disorders like plasm and rot or Full your blights We haven't checked that you can see the Regular potato they became senescent and they became old sooner than grafted plant. There's some Um Distribution or translocation of photosynthesis From top to bottom may influence, but I don't know it'll be any there's any value Economic be a commercial value there. So this is just for For probably for hobbyist Or like if you were a high tonal grower and you were planting tomatoes in the same soil for years The grafted tomato could help because the rootstock would resist any soil diseases, right? Correct. Yeah, correct So We got a really adventurous gardener here. They want to graft two different types of tomatoes on a potato plant. Wow Oh Right idea. Yeah You just keep going. Yeah, good. I may do that then Okay, and how about when you have a okay people love your pomados How does the taste of the tomatoes change because of the potato rootstock? There's no kind of changes the The performance of a cyan would Cyan cyan cultivars it all depending on the cultivar Specific to cultivar and I don't think there'll be influence Taste or anything from rootstock to top ocean earlier when they did they digrapton Watermelon on wild gourd They thought they maybe watermelon is not tasting As a sweet as you know, there may be some taste of wild gourd, but now I think That worry is dispelled so I don't think there's a contribution in terms of fruit character the quality characteristics or taste or nutritional characteristics was grafted plant and grafted cyan from Roostock They're just the living and the supporting again. Yes, but the grafted rootstock Let's say on a grafted tomato. It can encourage higher yields Can it not? Yes Yes, so higher yields and a more stable production greater disease resistance That's why almost hundred percent of the tomatoes feel grown green house grown in korea japan grafted you know Okay, that's really there's a lot of comments here dr. Lee about uh, well one quick question How long does it take the callousine process or you know, they should let the wood in 10 days It's a very good efficient And the success rate is again 100% Yeah with good humidity. That's the key there You have to cover up and take some home practice. I didn't go over the greenhouse grows how they To maintain during callousine period Uh to cover up with a plastic 10 cents or one. I should have shown that but that's possible if there's anybody is interested in doing this and please Uh, let me know I will just try to help you out Uh and grafted. Uh, oh my goodness this person's worried other the Grafting will not control Colorado potato beetles Okay, we'll not do that Sorry The specific and potato right and then top portion is a tomato I don't think you grafted You can graft colorado Let me see colorado potato beetle resistant Cyan wild species of a selanum Grafted and regularly then avoid the problem by infestation that maybe Maybe may work out Because yeah, but then it's a wild potato. You're not going to have any good yield Oh, but because that I think rust dark is a producing Right It may not be influence Okay, this sounds like there's a whole world of possibilities as far as how fascinating It is when you kind of play with nature a little bit and there's a lot of comments here that reflect how Fascinated they are in this topic and everybody can can contact doctor leader later for a specific questions Or maybe to get access for a few of these grafted plants from Fargo But for now we want to thank you tonight. Dr. Lee that really interesting talk