So, so welcome everyone to the testing conversational AI strategy to automation session by Shama O'Gaulay We are glad they can join us today So without further delay over to you Shama for this wonderful Thank you so much Devesh So let's start people and I just wanted to you know Ask one question before I begin. Have you ever heard of tea? Anyone of you heard of tea? You can give thumbs up So a day was a Microsoft bot or released on Twitter And I just love this example whenever I discuss about conversation eis back in March 2016 Microsoft launch this bot and this was designed to have conversations with Twitter users Or to learn and mimic the human You know behavior by copying the speech patterns So what that was the intent and it was supposed to engage with the people is between 18 to 24 and let's see what happened Okay as part of that experiment So as usual, she started with a very sweet hello world message and in few minutes We could see that she became you know Hitler's fan and Few more minutes later We could see her or you know that she wanted to teach Mexican a lesson by building a wall and In couple of more time she also became racist and that was enough damage made to the brand and They had to shut down this within 24 hours Or Let's see another example Which is CNN news what and the spot was designed or to you know achieve The news updates and the user tries to do the unsubscribe and it did it says yes I unsubscribe but the next day since you know it continues to send alerts So it continued to send you know alerts and then we could see that Something went wrong, but what failed I don't think board did not understand what it understand It did its job, but then I think underlying integration failed here, right? Another example Poncho, so this is a weather board. It is supposed to give you the weather information for a given location, okay, and With this conversation at least I could clearly see when the user asks about an umbrella or asks about the weekend Weather information it fails to understand that pretty straightforward, right that we use on day-to-day basis weekends So before I know Now that we have seen enough of the examples how they can fail and what can go wrong We need to understand what makes The conversation AI so different from any other Traditional softwares and what are the challenges here while we do test them, right? The first thing is they are self-learning systems Then what do you mean by self-learning systems? Most of them are built using natural language processing In a machine learning deep learning algorithms and these are under constant training and improvement on day-to-day basis So the tests that you're writing today with the expected outcome may change in the next run, okay? because they have got green and Having such a non-deterministic component in your system under test which would make the software testing completely useless Because it is changing as soon as you cannot tell the reason whether it was a failure or it was a defect or it was an improvement Okay, that becomes a challenge and And when using a chatbot or a voicebot for that matter or either You know, there are no Interaction barriers for the users as compared to any other traditional web application or a mobile application where you have a UI which allows and Predefined means of interaction it will have pages buttons links to navigate to give information But then in bots You have to cover all that kind of unexpected user input in a very decent way Plus the non-deterministic user interactions such as a human language is a way of speaking texting Also using the phrases jargon short forms of tons of different possibilities makes it really challenging for you to cover all the tests and Also, if you this is specifically for voiceports if you see On an average at least we have seven and a half billion humans out there today, right? And that means that I have seven and a half billion of voice samples with different textures Okay, and for you why it does not just matter who is clicking the button who is calling that API who was filling in that form but then for a bot it does matter because the voice is in action and Before you just jump into talking how to strategize such kind of Application testing and how you know how we can proceed with that Let us see how it works in a nutshell so that it will make our life easier and we could do Stabilizing them better. So this is an actual how it works like the you know, the user may have input coming through either Boys or either chat text format and any any any platform it might be, you know, like your sky your Twitter or WhatsApp or Telegram or also the bots like Alexa a Google Assistant, right and What it does is the next is it takes the input from these platforms and it is read by your NLP here and NLP here would process this based on the input and it would direct these To maybe, you know a third party or internal APIs or also the deep databases And it will try to find or to convert the user's speech or text into a structured data by tokenizing it first that is it will You know break down the user's input into the series of words called tokens and then these tokens are Representative with different value in the application the next is it will also go sentiment analysis that it would try to study Or what is a user experience being like it would transfer the inquiry to the human whenever necessary and Also, it does the normalization where it is trying to correct your typos and you know trying to understand your phrases So this is what you know NLP layer does in a nutshell and then it will also Do the dependency parsing which is checking for what are the subject what the user is trying to do and what are the Entities that again extract think of these entities just like your variables. So this is what the NLP layer does for us So let us just see an example before, you know, we could understand it completely So here is an example. Let us say that I'm trying to book tickets and this is the user utterance that the User is giving as an input. Okay, and this input says I want to book tickets from Mumbai to London Now what my NLP will do is to try to understand the user intent and here it is booking tickets and Next status or trying to extract the values that is the entities what we call them as and the entities here are the source and destination Mumbai to London Okay, and now we have a clear idea what utterance look like What is the intent of the user and what are the entities? Okay, so now let us see how I can strategize testing this so In this inner talk, we are going to explore all these strategies to design a test case And we will move forward How do I automate the tests that I have already designed and also we will see what are the other things that I have to consider while I'm testing such applications and My name is Shamal and I have been working You know on testing reports AI and LPs so far and I just wanted to share my experience with you So that it could help you to better strategize if you come across any such applications Oh, so let's begin. I'll talk about this test strategy first, definitely we start with the Designing a test cases that is manual tests And then we will move to automation testing. We'll see how do we automate and then we will also You know analyze once I have the results. I'll have to analyze the performance matrix How it is performing we find the kps and then take a decision whether I can productionize it or not and secondly Last but not the least do the crowd testing which is very important. We'll discuss this later So let's begin um In test case design, we are going to categorize this with uh, you know, if seven different categories And we will design test cases for each of the categories and the first category is personality and onboarding So make sure your board has a personality It has a name associated with it. If you remember, uh, if I say Alexa, what does come to your mind? You know what elixir is right? It's support right if I say um Google assistant, you know, what exactly it means. So they have their own personality. They have names I could relate to them if I go and talk to a person and don't I don't know the name The first thing is what I am going to do is as ice breaker I ask the name and then start greeting and then start my conversation So the same thing should go with your bots as well Keep them a name and the personality matters because if it is a sales board if it is or you know a board which is In the customer. I mean a customer service. They have to be polite sales board have to be a little aggressive, right? So this is what the personality matters and then onboarding is where the board will tell you what it is capable of doing for you Introduce itself and then give you options what you can do, right? So that way it will minimize the conversations and you can get straight to the point by knowing its ability So write all the kind of tests around there So if you see an example here, uh, still, you know, uh, it is uh, directly jumping into asking a zip code and when the user is trying to engage with the spot By doing the small talk, it does not understand all it needs is a zip code. It does not understand anything So this is what you have to keep in mind that it has to also engage with people to do a small talk Introduce and then move on to the topic when the user is comfortable going ahead, right? Uh, next is intelligence In intelligence, you might want to test for Multi-step conversations. How does a board remember for example? If you are giving an address now for a delivery, uh, there are, you know, a different kind of people, right? Like let us see this so, uh, the person might give you every component of the address in separate lines Or there are people who type everything at once and then say, right? But then what has to understand when to stop or when to process that So that is the intelligence of it and does it handle it better way? You might want to test it You might also want to test whether it remembers Um, you know going back or to the conversation here if you see, uh, it Wanted to go back to the conversation Um and see what all information the user has given remember it and process the information But not with every single step ask the same, uh Information again and again. So you should remember what the user has already given you input. Remember, we don't have a UI here I have to collect all the information that I have and remember and then process all of that at once, right? So have those test cases as well Navigation this is very important Um with my, uh, you know web application or a mobile application I can go back to the previous step By clicking the back button right and I can make the changes to the inputs that I have given right But then with bots you cannot do that. It's a conversation flow. Okay. Let us see this example The user is uh, you know, um trying to do the pickup But then when the user sees that the time, uh, the open times of the store are different Uh, they he wants to now a change Or to pick up but then The bot does not understand that what happens here is Uh, bot just failed to understand and make a change from a delivery to pick up, right? So I the the user could not go back Another example the user is trying to do shopping. I wanted to buy For bananas by by mistake The user says for apples and then corrects its, uh, you know immediately But what bot does is it does not correct it, but it adds four bananas and four apples as well So it It did not understand going back to the conversation and making those changes, right? So these are the kind of test cases also that you have to include Error management, this is again very important in y you will get a error Message saying that this went wrong. Please enter this. Please enter that right, but then in Bot again, it's a conversation flow. Uh, it has to understand Uh, what you're trying to say and if it is not designed to do what you are asking It it has to give you options very gracefully. So that is feeling very gracefully not that if Think about uh talking to a person every question that you ask the person simply says Sorry, I can't help sorry. Sorry. I can't understand. It is very annoying, right? Same happens with the bots as well If every time the bot is giving you a response is that sorry, I don't understand. I am afraid. I don't understand That's not the way you might want to handle. You might want to handle by giving user an option that this is what I'm designed to do Why don't you um, you know, ask me these questions, which I understand something like that Handle the failures gracefully and try to move forward with giving options to the user so that the user could pick one of them This is again very important or understanding, right? Um Every user has a different way of texting using emojis nowadays. At least you can Create your own emoji, right? Uh, so think of that you send such emojis and the bots you can understand that and then respond also think of sending links like you know the media videos pictures um and You know short forms phrases local language and also the context for example Uh, what do you understand? Uh by Selenium if I ask you, right? If I ask you, uh, if I ask a person who was working in it industry, what is selenium? Their understanding of selenium is different. It is automation tool, correct? And What about A chemist if I go and ask, uh, hey, what's uh, what selenium? What is his understanding or her understanding? It's completely different. It's a chemical, right? So understanding a particular word in the context is very important and that testing also you have to do Whether the board understands the context, okay? Have those test cases as well Uh, if you see here, uh, the user is trying to give an emotion what correctly responds and identifies that and Next is speed and accuracy Um with UI if you're loading a used data, you know, you're getting a loader the user knows. Okay. This is being processed But with what you ask something and what is processing that? Meanwhile, you might want to see how is your board responding while it is processing the, you know Used response or it is taking time.  Uh, just this example I just love this example where the board tells you, uh, you know before you three people Approximately waited for two minutes of time to get this response. So And engage the user in the small talk instead and then give the response that was beautifully handed and secondly I just don't want to throw any response just like that without thinking at the user But then I want to answer the security, right? For example here, uh, fine It is engaging the user with a small talk The board asks how would you describe a term bought to your grandma and the user says my grandma is dead Uh, without understanding the sentiment behind it or what it is It gives you, you know, um, a normal response A genetic response. All right. Thank you for your feedback. That is completely annoying, right? So you might want to test Uh, such scenarios as when uh, what it is responding it the response is not important, but What it is responding and whether it is accurate to the context is more important understanding the user's intent and responding to the intent is important So have the test cases around all of these as well, okay And there is another example here It it just does not understand what the user is trying to say and continues sending messages Right So that said, uh, we now have all the test cases Suppose around all the categories that I can think of a robot and I have created my test cases Now the next step is I'm going to automate that To automate I'm going to use botume as part of the stop and we will see how we can do it Okay, and in nutshell a botume is a platform where it is Uh, it is root of open source tools as well as it has an enterprise edition where you get even more features Um, and uh, it consists of a port where it will allow you to integrate or run your test cases on platforms like slack or telegram whatsapp where you are deploying it And then it also has a lot of connectors nlp engines like if you're using your uh back end nlp as Dialog flow or ibm what's in macros uh microsoft lures There are tons of them and all are supported as part of botume You can use this connect to these nlp engines and then you can also use this through cli Or you can have a beautiful ui, which is botume box. I'll show you in the demo And you need not to have any programming background Or you need not to write any code as such When you're using the botume box, but then if you're writing your code You can use your cli and put it under ci cd as well through botume box So you can integrate that you're with your cd Let's quickly jump on to a demo Without wasting time. So I have my files here Okay, and what I'm going to simply do is I'm going to run using botume cli and I'm going to run with mocha Okay, while I run these test cases Let me quickly show that I ran or sometime ago And let us see The report so it executed all the test cases. I had around 15 different test categories and two of them failed and it says Uh that it failed for some reason what response was this expected was this okay, and the same here Uh, I was trying to test with a picture, but then it failed to Uh, you know a respond to a picture I'm sure you're confused what I did right now, right? I just had a bunch of Some files here I started running it if you could see and they showed you some reports random reports But then we don't know what happened. Okay, but then let us see what happens step by step. Okay First is I'm going to set up my botume Okay, I it is uh node based so you will have to have more installed on your system And you can install using npm, which is a package manager by this Uh, you know a simple command npm install hyphen g globally install port mcli Then I'll do in it which it is going to initialize the project and it's going to add two files One is the bottom dot json file and the conversation file. Okay, and then I can run the test using mocha Now all are these files. So what in your dot json file is a file which it Uses to configure and connect to your bot. Okay, uh, think of this I'm I'm sure people are You know aware of selenium and apm and if you're using that you would know what are the capabilities Okay, uh, the capabilities Uh are like your desirable capabilities that you can use to connect to your bots So that is where exactly we use the same thing in botume as well And we would put those in the bottom dot json file. I will show you a sample bottom dot json file Here it is. I'm just telling the name of the project I'm going to give the source. Where is my port and I'm going to give certain arguments This is a simple json and if I want to run it locally I might want to tell I want to run it on pro I want to connect to uh, you know, vector IO. This is one of the connectors where you can run your test cases on um, you know a browser And you could also run your test cases on different devices different platforms Or using one of the uh, uh tools such as uh, you know, uh, sauce labs connect to it Define all your capabilities here If you look at this section, it is exactly like your selenium and your, uh, you know, uh apm So you can define all of these capabilities where it will connect to your Devices and run the test cases Okay, and the next is the conversation file the convo files are nothing but your test cases Now the test cases can be written either in simple A straightforward text format Or in a notepad or in an excel sheet or in a csv file or whatever you're comfortable with or if you like coding You can write the javascript code as well So let us see how we write the test cases. The first line is the name of the test file Okay, hello dot conversation or what i'm trying to do is i'm just trying to do Uh, greeting. Okay. This is the name of the test case And then there is a section called as hash me And then there is high and then there is hash bot. Then there is, uh, you know the response So whatever you're Giving is part of hash me that is the user input that you're giving to bot. Okay And followed by hash bot is the response that you're expecting from your bot. Think of this as an assertion and think of this as a Simple input. Okay. Uh, now if you think of a bot, right, do you think always this test case is going to pass? What do you think? So, uh, not always right, uh, think of this, uh, good morning If I if I ping my bot in the afternoon I could not say good morning, but it might say good afternoon and that is what I need to test But how do I maintain all of these validations? Do I need to write those many test cases? No, not at all. Just the way we do, uh, Parameterization in our automation test cases with different tools I can do it here as well where I can create a utterance file and put all the possible ways that I can talk to my bot I can say hi. I can say hello. I can say hey Right, I can put all of those possibilities and then use the name of the file there So what this bot is going to do is it is going to parameterize this test case and your input has so many different parameters it will test this application test this scenario for every single Uh input from your hello utterance And how do I put assertions and validations here? I can use another utterance file and use that utterance file in my bot. So what will happen? It will pick each of the you know Example uh that you have put in hello utterance and it will assert and look for any of this Occurrences. So any of this occurrence is good morning. Good afternoon or good evening If anything of this is responded your test case would pass because it might depend on time as well, right? So next is how can I um send in emojis or pictures or links? I can do that by um, you know giving or the input using the keywords like buttons If if you remember there are Uh, if you have seen the bots will give you certain buttons or links as well to click on You can interact with them using the keyword button Or you can also send a picture or an emoji or a link or a video using the keyword like uh media And when validation you could also Use what the bot is sending, right? And the next is how do you want to end? You know run the test cases on either your browsers because your bots can be embedded into your browsers If you have seen or when you're trying to search for something You get the pop up where bot is asking you if you need any help and it can assist you, right? So it can be integrated and embedded in your web applications or it can be separate Bot posted on any of the platforms like slack or messenger or to help you to Help you with the orders, right or it can be embedded inside your Or mobile application as well. For example, swiggy is one of the four delivery applications in india Uh, it has if you want to raise, uh, you know return request or you want to refund Or you can use the bot and you you can connect to the customer care Which by in the scenes bot is responding or you can run if you have you know your bot on multiple platforms I want to test it across multiple platforms. Uh, just I was showing you the uh Bottom dot json that I can uh mention all the different platforms And uh define the capabilities and those test cases can be run On different platforms, right? So what next I have tested it, uh, I have automated it I can put it on the ci cd as well But then as part of the next steps, I might uh want to see How my application is behaving based on the responses that I get uh For that I might want to remember that My models are self learning. So all my test cases not might pass every time But then I need to validate do the analysis and then I might want to take a decision based on my analysis Do I need to uh make this as a production candidate or not, right? But then uh the underlying things would You know remain right like I mean the underlying things where I need to train my bot based on the kind of responses I see from the users Or remain constant. So I might want to also strategize. How do I train my bot? How frequently should I do and Oh Based on my analysis, I'll also have to take a decision Whether it is a bot failure or I need to improvise a improvise on training my bot So let us see an example. Okay, let us say that I want to train my toddler With the two of the initial forbids a and b and I train uh my toddler with these pictures I show uh continuously and repeat this and I want my toddler to memorize a for apple And this is the picture of apple before ball and this is a picture of ball Now uh after uh, you know a week's time I want to test whether my toddler has learned or not. So it is a test time. So what I now do is I'll call my toddler and tell Hey What is this? Right, and my toddler says, uh, this is an apple Oh, I was and I confused apple. No, okay, let me try with the next one. Um What's this? Okay, and my toddler just now confused, uh, and says, I'm sorry. I don't understand this So what happened? I thought my toddler for a week's time and I felt here my toddler learned but then when I test it's completely different Or my toddler recognizes a ball as an apple and apple does not recognize at all. So what happened? It is it something to do with the learning capabilities or I have to improvise on my teaching skills All right, so what do you think I need to improvise on that? Yes, I might want to think about Uh, you know, how do I keep different samples of apples and different samples of ball so that my toddler does everything Right, so let's fix that and train it Okay, and once I train with all the samples now my toddler will be in a position to identify an apple And ball and differentiate between them that it is not just a red color Oh, you know circular object that is four or uh, you know, uh, and my Apples are not always red, right? um So with this we do understand that training data is again very important and The underlying database or your board is only as intelligent as your data So make sure you keep analyzing your data and you keep training it Um every now and then to see how it is performing But then how do I know how it is performing for that? You need to define the kpis and you have to evaluate those matrices. What kind of kpis can I do? So in our testing we do, you know defect matrix, uh, how it is performing What are the different defects that pick it in right traceability matrix to see the coverage and defect density The same way, um, if for nlps I can track something called as confusion matrix They're just going to give me, uh, the false positives and false negatives. That is Uh, what is I mean just the previous example false positive is your ball? Uh, you know is an apple something like that, right? So And based on the confusion matrix I can derive multiple parameters and these are some of them Accuracy precision and these are the formulae that we can use. This can be all automated We need not to calculate that for every run and the next is We have to do it on every basis. So how do I do that? I will just show you This on bottom box. I was talking before our bottom box is again The same thing that we did previously we can do with bottom box. I can have my chat box registered here And I can have all my test cases here. I can keep it on git and I can connect to my git repo and I can then run the test cases Okay, um by you know putting the name of the board and the test said that I want to run Um, and as part of the analysis, there is something called as bottom coach and using bottom coach is what I can Uh, you know, uh, see how it is performing and this is the confusion matrix that I was talking about So what it will do is it will uh, it will give you Uh, the list of all the utterances your board has identified and all the utterances It should have been identified correctly So if you see all of these greens if everything is going fine You will see the diagonal with all greens that what this is trying to tell you is Uh, the intent, uh, how are you doing? Or the whenever you asked what it responded with how are you doing? But then if you see these two outliers, you're trying to check, uh, the balance But then it mistakenly identified that, uh, What's possible and one, uh, uh, appearance it mistakenly identified by Account balance check, but it was supposed to be earning check. Okay. So these are the outliers So you'll have to see that why did not it understand why is there this ambiguity and then try to See so if you click on this, it will give you the prediction confidence And it will also tell you what was the predicted intent and what was the expected intent And if you click on this further, you will see the utterances itself. So it's the email contents A surging message contents. So there are, you know, uh, small ambiguities that you see here And you might want to improvise on training because The remember or when you're, uh, having the conversation with bot The user is always right right because the user knows what he or she wants But the bot has failed to understand So this is the basic assumption that we always go of when while we are doing the analysis And try to analyze what are these utterances, which were Not understood by the bot and how we can train them or how I can improvise on my, uh, energy itself And if I look at, uh, one of the instances which was Uh, you know pretty fair and you can show that as well Um, so if you see I just ran Um, you know one test yesterday Which you know had a couple of good samples, I would say I can go in bottom coach and then I can analyze this if you see I see a good number which are passing. Uh, typically this is how you will see But then there is one utterance which was failed to understand and that one occurrence was Understood as banking or view activity, but it was supposed to be the, uh Banking account opening right and there was one incidence where it failed to understand and mistakenly identified that as a language spot, but it was supposed to be identified that as You know a different utterance So, uh, this is how I can analyze and get into, uh, you know the content and intents and utterances to see how it is performing and as the next step I will also have to make sure that I'm not only testing the nlp layer. So everything that we discussed right now Was how to test your nlp layer specific things, but then you remember We have all the other components of the application as well still up and running My nlp is only understanding the user intents and extracting the entities and processing it But then what it does next is it might be just calling an end point an api might be it is internal api might be it is external api And then reading the response and giving it to the end user But then the business logic again still remains on the api side. So you might want to thoroughly test your apis as well You want to thoroughly do the performance testing to see how the bot can handle the load You'll have to do security testing because the user here is entering the data the personal information And uh, it's it is not supposed to be stored Um at your back end and it should not use that data for anything else All right So you'll have to keep that in mind the data security aspect as well And also the database testing because you are involving a lot of data and every time you're Fetching the data from the databases you might want to test that thoroughly as well And all the other kind of tests that we perform. This is just a very few things that I have picked up And uh, last but not the least we'll also have to do crowd testing as part of crowd testing What I'm doing is I'll have to do, you know, I'll select the different genders age groups professions a different language local languages localites and You know a huge these bunch of people identify this bunch of people and ask them to test my bot That is just interact with my bot with using this I'll be able to check my chatbots performance again I'll be able to collect as much as different styles of utterances with coming it from different people because uh user Uh, you know, uh two different users might give two different inputs or they have their own texting style And I want to capture that and see whether my bot is responding according to that as well and it is understanding it correctly as well So So, uh, this is what I do with crowd testing and end of the day I collect all the utterances and I do the analysis just the way we did it here Uh, with our podium coach analyze the matrix see what was correctly identified what was incorrectly identified and see if I need to train my bot more with the Different kind of samples that I've received from the users or I might want to improvise on the algorithm and it failed to understand Okay, so these are the things that I'll be doing as part of the automation and crowd testing and that is it I'm Open to take questions people if you have any questions We have a couple of questions so far So this is my satshi teku So, uh, what are the security of pivc features, uh by ai? Especially when Uh, so while implementing any application today, uh, it will uh, maybe it is web or movie We have to take care of the data security and the Consent of the user as well, right because there are a lot of data protection laws that have come up Same thing you have to keep in mind if you're having a conversation with a user where you need to take the personal information you need not to You know, you need not to store that back and that security aspect is what you have to implement So that is one aspect that you might want to test thoroughly. Is it using that data anywhere? Is it, uh, you know publishing that data? So these aspects you'll have to test and also you'll have to keep in mind that it is not reaching any of the data policies as part of your country And you take the consent from the user as well okay, great, great So the other question is Are bop is a laptop dependent just like mobile apps are driven by what kind of phone and what kind of force you are Uh, so bots are actually implemented using any of these nlpd or you know There's like you have frameworks like dialogue flow or you are using ibeam Watson um, and you're using Lewis microsoft louis So there are a lot of such platforms and they have their own, you know way of implementing it Uh, so you might be using one of these technologies to implement that But then they also support a lot of different platforms for you to deploy that Okay, so just like our web application is supporting multiple Browsers and your mobile applications. I mean, uh, the response is less as well. You can operate that on mobile as well It's the same way you are developing it using one of these and then you can deploy that on multiple platform It can be one of your application It can be on web or it can be independently deployed Uh, thanks shama for sharing your experience with us today


Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Craft thank you for watching today so this week I have purchased a few bits and pieces so from Hobbycraft I've got the 102 gems these are the sparkles and then 384 gems this is the shaped gems. Now the reason I've got these ones is because they are heart shaped and you can see there they're all separate which I prefer than being on like a continued strip that you know is okay but you have to if I just want that one I have to cut it whereas with these each one has got its own little piece of adhesive so they're really good and these ones I already have in the smaller stones but I love the colors it's like a midnight going into this you know other kind of blue navy color and then you've got the mobs and the purples down there and again they are just really nice and they're all faceted as well you can just see there so really really nice so I got those two and they were only a pound each. Hobbycraft do have quite a large amount of product that's in sale at the moment so those were on offer. Then I went to the good old charity shops I go in them every week because I always find you know some good handy things I think anyway but this was really good so this is a roll now I've looked on eBay and there is a company selling these exactly the same for what I can kind of roughly see how long this is this is anything from 15 to 25 pound and I paid 1 pound 50 and basically they are just larger square foam adhesives but they're a bit thinner but I thought they're going to be great for when I'm doing my decoupage and just when I'm sticking down any of kind of my mats and my layers because you see me always using foam adhesive but for the amount I've got here there's absolutely tons on here although with the amount of things that I make it probably won't last me too long but yeah I picked those up so I will share a link to them but unfortunately I did get a bargain here because from what I've seen for these exact ones on eBay they're rather expensive so I'm hoping that they're going to be super sticky for that price because I haven't used them yet but you can see there's absolutely tons on there so that was a good find. Also in the charity shop I picked up these here now I know I have a stamping platform but sometimes when you just want to just stamp like a tiny little heart or just a really small sentiment or something I don't always want to get my stamp position around and I know that with certain stamps and with the black ink that I use I'll get a good impression first time so I actually found these in the same charity shop I thought I'm just going to buy both because the rockers I've never used now I know that the crafters companion do block rockers or rocker blocks or something like that and there's a the crafters companion purple color these are just clear I'll take them out the packaging in a minute they're by quick stamps I I'm guessing they're old I'll have a look inside there and then these ones here are from America by Apple Pie Memories so anybody any of my US followers says here made in the USA Apple Pie Memories they've never been used they're still in the packaging there's no date or anything on this but this size here is perfect for my actual brand branded stamp and I stamp on the back of all my cards so I prefer the ones where they don't have any lines through them so these being completely clear are great so again you can just see there just how nice those are really really nice really thick and yeah solid so yeah that one there will stay out because that will have my my stamp on it but £2 those work and these are the rockers so it works exactly the same way so you pop your stamp so I'll bring in this stamp here because this was another stamp set that I purchased from a charity shop this is a old it's by Trimcraft it's me to you collection and I used to have me to you bears when I was younger but these are just Mother's Day ones but there are a few on here if I pop it on that's a bit better so here you've got with love from me to you so that can be used for anybody best mom happy Mother's Day but I liked those fonts for my beautiful mother so those three are obviously you know they are occasion specific but this one here you've got thank you for all that you do so I thought that was a really nice one to use on just a normal thank you card so there's some stamps that I got but just to show you how the rockers work you just pop your stamp down there are lines on this one so it will help you to line up like so I've got a bit of scrap card here and let's ink this one up first time using this never done it before but you're to hold these pieces here and basically rock it like so yeah that's really nice gone a little bit squishy there on those ones so I think I need a bit more practice I have seen some people's comments with these is that you do have to watch your pressure especially if you're using these stamps of silicon so they're not photopolymer so photopolymer a little bit more robust and harder and they don't tend to squash whereas silicon will squash so you do put too much pressure on so if I ink that up on there let's try a little bit lighter it's better that is better it's just gonna take some practice but I thought I'd try them out I'm not too sure about them but it's handy for when I do any craft classes and things like that see that one's getting better I think it is just a matter of just rolling it the block kind of does everything for you see it is getting better all of them are stamping okay even that one where it is a bit thicker that's all it is it's thicker it hasn't kind of ruined the image in any way but I love the the font on that I think it's really nice whereas if I was to stamp this with let's use the clear block push it down with the ink pad there because I haven't cleaned it flip this one over with these you just apply the same pressure all over which is my kind of preferred way so there we go you've got an equal even even you've got a nice even kind of pressure over all of that there so yeah these are probably the ones I'm going to go to a bit more but I'd love to see what other people think about any you know rocker blocks or block of rockers or whatever they're called but they are handy to keep they will definitely come in handy for something no doubt then I picked up some buckles they were these were a pound and you know I like to use this kind of hardware when I make some of my gift bags so I just thought these would come in handy they're gonna look great to put some ribbon through or even some cardstock and have that hanging down these two are the same so that's quite handy to have those two but these lovely big ones I mean that would look lovely on a Christmas project as like Father Christmas is trousers or even a Father's Day gift you could have it as the belt buckle or something which it obviously is but you know what I mean so yeah if you ever see anything like this you know look in the haberdashery sections go into any of those kind of shops as well if you don't have any charity shops but they these kind of things are usually pretty cheap anyway so yeah I got those what one two three four five for a pound so I thought that was okay and then these were in these one in a charity shop these were in a shop I put on my Facebook page last week that me and my mom went to Totnes Totnes is just a really nice old kind of historic town really it's just got a lot of independent shops it's on a you know it's got a nice little high street lots of good food places but there was a lady there who's got a really lovely shop all with like kind of home interiors and things like that but she had this kind of bowl and it had loads of vintage images and I saw these and I thought I'm pretty sure these are Tim Holtz his ideology I think it is range and I've always admired them and I do like using these kind of things and maybe some more of my mixed media or even scrapbook layouts and things like that and some of them are really really fun like look at this one here look at his face really really good I love this one here of the two sisters that would be quite nice you know like I said on a scrapbook layout or even a card a sister card but there's also smaller versions of the same ones there but I went into hobby craft yesterday or the day before and they've got these in a pack in there for $6.99 and it is Tim Holtz so yeah that was a good bargain like that one there as well and it's a nice idea with any of your old with your own family photos you know if you scan them through on your brother scan and cut and cut them out you can have these so it's a you know it is a nice thing to have and I'm probably going to do that as well but some of them are good and there's the one with him sat down here you can actually sit him on something anyway they were a pound for all of those so I got myself a bargain and then I picked up these now these are I think from IKEA but maybe older styles because the ones that I've seen online I looked up the other day are taller than this slightly taller but the same width and they are basically for holding like your spices in the kitchen because all of these were brand new and they had a white kind of shaker plastic inside but these were from a charity shop and I got all of them for £2 and I know at the moment in on IKEA they've got two for $1.75 so again I've got myself a bargain but I am going to get more because these sit perfectly on the trays that I have on my pegboard so in here are lots of my sequins and I do have a few other sequin colors to pop in these jars when I get them because I know I've shared before these here which I love but the problem I have sometimes is when I make a shaker card and I want to use all of that color you have to try and cover all of these bits with your hands to make sure none of the other colors kind of fall out so I'm now decanting all of this into these things and I just think it looks really nice as well because you can really see what you've got I mean for example I forgot I had them and they're really nice like discs these are all beads tons and tons of beads they're gonna look great in a shaker card and things like this I purchased and then they kind of got pushed to the back a bit so it's nice now that I can actually see them in front of me all lined up and they look really pretty too so yeah that was another good bargain and then finally I received this really lovely package from Louise at Thompson's Craft Supplies now Louise has a really lovely online store and she specializes in many of her products are from out of you know the UK so there's a lot of European companies a lot of American you name it really they're just she's got all she's got a really nice mix of people on there and that's where I purchased the Minté papers which were from Poland so that's an example there and what she has is she has a thing where she does a monthly kit anyway so that's something I'll share her YouTube sorry I'll share her website and you can have a look at all the other things she has but one of the things she does do along with the shop is she has a craft kit but also she does a lucky dip now the lucky dip is something that you can basically email her say that you would like to receive a lucky dip and you can list your likes and your dislikes so if there's a certain color you don't like if there's maybe a certain even like a brand that maybe you don't like or certain embellishments like you might not like washi tapes for example you might only like to use pre-made die cuts or you might not like polka dots or you may not like gold hearts you can basically just kind of list the things that you do and you don't like and Louise will work really hard to put together a pick and mix for you of you know a variety of things and then send that to you now she does offer international shipping and what she will do is she will take it to the post office see what the final price is email email you to tell you what it is and then you can decide whether you want to proceed or whether you'd just like to have a refund so I spoke with Louise gave her an idea of the kind of things I like she already knows what I kind of enjoy anyway and this is what she sent me so I've got this washi tape here this is a doodle bug designs and it's just this pretty floral print here then I've got these here so these are shaped sprinkles heart of gold you at 33 again by doodle bug designs ink but they are like a kind of like a soft plastic I don't know what that material is I know I've mentioned it before because I've had other things similar but these are really pretty I like those a lot then I've received this here now I do love stickers and things like this and these will get used in scrapbook layouts but I love the colors love the alarm there love that yay and it's got like a glitter around it so it's framed for cake you've got the little hat there that's just moved a bit you've got yeah the alarm of that make a big wish happy birthday so great for my card you'll see these feature and I'm gonna be making some nice projects using this that she sent me but on the back there look what great inspiration with that tag and it's got the the kind of flags there and everything and the pom-pom trims this is very much my style so I really liked those so this is a vicky boot in sticker sheet you got 102 stickers here front and back again great for your scrapbook layouts because you've got your 12 inch trims here you've got the camera which I always like to use got little tabs here so these are great for your planners so they can really be mixed across the two and also used on cards that flower would look lovely stuck down or even you know stick it on to another card and then fussy cut around it love the bunting there that's really nice it's nice and big the old Polaroid camera there and just some really nice little sentiments and so really like them and then I've got all these papers so these are all individual papers that you can buy like I said she has tons of stuff over there so do go and have a look so this is a paper house productions this is Paradise Affound and you've got this kind of pineapple print on the front with the flowers and then this really kind of magnified leaf design which I like I think that's really cool then pop that one outside and you got this one here you know I love my floral prints so this one's really nice this is by Simple Stories it's called Love and Adore and then there's the other side there it's a really like them this one's beautiful as soon as I saw it I didn't need to look at the branding strip but it's Prima you can kind of spot Prima products when you see them look at that foiling absolutely beautiful so this is 2018 Prima this is called Flirty Fleur Collection something floral really really love that and then the other side there you've got the stripe so yeah that's definitely gonna feature on something cool then this is another Prima one look absolutely beautiful close-up they can see how lovely is that rose kind of spray there just love it and then on the other side you just got this really nice kind of romantic script which is pretty then I've got this one love it this is by Jean Hadfield this is called My Bright Life and I love that that is just so cool that is definitely going to be used in the scrapbook layout and then on the other side you just got the green there so again compliment each other really nicely then I've got the pink paisley I love page evans and this is the what's this one called pick me up so you've got the ice cream or milkshake sorry on that one and then just that really nice kind of see kind of blends there on the back really really nice this one this is another page evans this is by pick me ups this is part of the same collection as that one but here you've got the stalk I think that bird is looks like a stalk or it could be some kind of like heron or something anyway it's one of those birds that hunts for fish and then dives in the water let me know what one it is and then again it's got that really nice kind of pink blended wash kind of background there so it's those two this one here is one canoe to and this is Hazelwood and this is called flock again I love butterflies Louise you must have heard me say how much I love butterflies this one is probably going to get fussy cut I have an idea to just fussy cut every single butterfly on this page and then use it on a layout right and that's the back there so it's always nice when you have these really lovely prints on one side and then just a pattern or something a bit more subtle on the other because I don't you know don't feel bad cutting this paper knowing that it's just that on the other side although it's great it's a chevron print and that will be lovely but pretty much everybody's gonna want to use this side than the other so it makes it easy for you to decide so that's those so I got one two three four five six seven eight twelve by twelve sheets now the favorite part for me from this kit is this here now this is again from Pink Paisley this is Paige Evans is collection sorry with Paisley and this is pick me up again but this is a sheet of acetate and this is what it is oh my goodness this is absolutely stunning now the tutorial where I'm going to be doing something with this I think might have already gone up earlier today by the time this video goes up so you may well have already seen this but and I'll be raving about it in that video as well but isn't that gorgeous it is absolutely beautiful love the foiling I love that it's on the acetate love the designs and love the colors are just yeah I love it Louise thank you so much and if I pop it against the pink here so this is the nice thing about this so it's it's you know don't look at it as necessarily a kit look at it more as a lucky dip so it's just you know a selection of products sent to you but lots of this goes together I think because I love bold and bright colors there's lots of these things I can incorporate together but do go and check out her kits as well and although there is a lot of it kind of driven more towards the mixed media there are tons of paper packs tons of embellishments tons of washi tapes all those things that we as card makers enjoy so I think it's just nice to find these other smaller businesses and also the fact that Louise is bringing newer things to the UK for us to see because for us in the UK there is not a lot of online sellers that sell product from outside of the UK so that's why I love going over there and having a look and finding new things like I said those mint tape papers and a few of you have already said how much you love them and that you've got some so yeah so that I just wanted to show you an example really of what you can get and how it all works there you have it guys that's a few of the bits that I've got this week but yeah it was mainly really to talk to you about that really nice lucky dip which I'm yeah hopefully you liked the kind of home decor piece that I done with the the acetate sheet there today these I'm gonna get some more of I'll share links to these ones so I think they're really handy because I love when you can see what you've got I don't really put things away in boxes and things like that everything you can see in my room which is it much much easier for me and then that adhesive roll which was gray and obviously the embellishments and those stamping blocks and stuff so yeah hope you like it as always I'll share as many links as I can below and I will be back tomorrow with another tutorial thanks for watching bye


Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here on Global Connections on a special show here on a given Wednesday morning at the 11 o'clock block with Carlos Juarez, one of our old friends and the host of Global Connections, who joins us by, I guess by VMIX call and by VoIP from a place called University of Puebla, which is 60... University of the Americas. University of the Americas in Puebla. Thank you, Carlos. Correct. I have to get down there and say hi and you have to show me around in Mexico, near Mexico City. And it's a special show because we're going to talk about Venezuela. Welcome to your show, Carlos. Lohan, thank you so much, Jake. Great to reconnect and, of course, offer some insights into this very complex set of issues happening south of the border, so to speak, in basically South America, Venezuela, a real crisis that is now flared to the forefront of our, well, of our news. It's quite dramatic and it's important for us to understand what's going on.  Director of the International Relations part of the University of the Americas there. And you're also, you know, you're also in Mexico, not too far away. And furthermore, you spent a fair amount of time in Venezuela years ago. So you're in a great spot to interpret what the news, interpret not only what's happening, but what might happen and its implications. So tell us from your point of view and from the, you know, the point of view of international relations, what is going on south of Mexico in Venezuela? Well, this is a crisis that as we know, and here we're speaking in early February, it has flared up in the last few weeks. It's been going on for a long time, probably stemmed from about 2009, 2010, actually, when the previous government, Hugo Chavez, had run into a beginning to have economic challenges, difficulties. A few years later, the price of oil plummeted in Venezuela, a very important country in South America, 30 million people, but a very big player in the petroleum markets, of course. And so it has this important crop product that obviously turns the industrial economies. The United States is a major importer, about one third of the exports of their petroleum come to the US alone. Russia, China, other big players. But can you give us an update, Carlos, from Hugo Chavez? He was what, 1999 or so? And from there on, what has happened in Venezuela since then? And so he was there just over a decade and about five, six years ago now, he passed away in, I think, 2003. His successor, his handpicked successor, Maduro is his name, Nicolas Maduro. He's the president now. And he inherited the position, you might say, a year ago in May, almost a year, last May of 2018, that he held a presidential election that the international community basically condemned as fraudulent. It didn't represent fair, open opposition was very much suppressed. And so a wide condemnation of that election well, you fast forward about eight or nine months later. And now in early January, this president, de facto president, of course, declares himself now a new term, and it sparked a lot of pushback, the international community again, but more importantly, internally, suddenly out of nowhere, you had a young leader of the National Assembly, one of their sort of parliamentary bodies, declaring himself the legitimate interim president and saying that Maduro is no longer the president. Well, the reality is today, Venezuela has two presidents. This doesn't happen often. But of course, one is the legitimate, I'm sorry, another one is the de facto president who's been there the last five, six years, who controls the government, who has the army very important, the military behind him. The other who has suddenly garnered support from a lot of international actors, including many of the Latin American countries, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, et cetera, Uruguay, they've all come in favor of this new opposition leader. Interestingly, Mexico, together with Uruguay, a small South American country, and Cuba, have not, they're kind of trying to go a middle ground. But you also have Canada, many of the European Union countries also supporting this self-declared interim president. His name is Juan Guaidol. It's not a household name that you could say, but he came out of nowhere. A month ago, nobody knew who he was, 35-year-old industrial engineer. But he is now given somehow voice and hope to some that he may be the sort of the person who can transition out of this current regime. Obviously, it's very polarized. Many see the Maduro regime as a very corrupt dictatorship that has obviously lost legitimacy and credibility. Others see it as the legitimate government that has been there. And maybe there are some who view this as imposed from the U.S. It's a lot more complex than that. The U.S. Donald Trump has also come out to support this opposition leader. So he is kind of following the many other international actors. So there you have it. It's a standoff right now. And this leader about two weeks ago, this opposition leader has now declared himself, but he doesn't control the... Well, you said he declared himself. I'm just wondering. It sounds like Hugo Chavez appointed him as a successor, but there was no popular vote where the people... I mean, there's a constitution in Venezuela. And I presume that under that constitution, you're supposed to elect your leaders, but apparently what? There was no election of Maduro. He was merely appointed and de facto. On the other hand, Guaidó was a leader of the National Assembly and elected as such, but not as the leader of the country. But however... Tell me if I'm wrong about this. However, there's a provision in the constitution that says in the event of a squabble, the leader of the assembly becomes the leader of the country. Is it something like that? I mean, it sounds like there's a constitution that isn't working quite right. Yeah. Well, again, depending on who's saying that, because this opposition leader is essentially invoking a provision of the Constitution that says something to the effect that if the president is unable to carry out his duties or essentially have used surface power, and that's his argument that the election held a year ago, in May of last year, was not recognized, was seen as fraudulent, and so it basically doesn't give him the ability to continue in a new term. I wonder what fraudulent means, Carlos, because we know we've had, in fact, yesterday at the State of the Union and the response by Stacey Abrams involved voter suppression, and we've had plenty of evidence in this country about voter suppression. And I'm wondering if the election last year in Venezuela involved fraud and voter suppression along those lines? I would say substantially more than just the purging of roles, etc., and the voter suppression that you've referred to, which is common in particularly some of the southern states. In the case of Venezuela, it was basically making illegal the ability to even run for office, so some of the opposition candidates were imprisoned or simply denied the ability to run, and then using a variety of tactics. And the thing about Venezuela, it represents an interesting model of a form of democratic, well, we would call it an illiberal democracy, so it uses democratic institutions to sort of squeeze out the opposition, the voices it doesn't like to hear, to control every aspect of the political system, but in ways that are deeply political, not fair and open. The courts, for example, are not independent and free, they are stacked and controlled by the regime. But the election itself, again, charges of fraud, charges of ballot stuffings, inability of candidates to simply have a fair shake, let's say, and it was widely condemned by international observers across the board. It's very interesting because what you have is a constitution that theoretically should work, but it isn't working. And you have people who twist and manipulate the language of the Constitution to their own goals and people who live on power. And for example, as we discussed before the show, the whole thing seems to pivot on who controls the army, and right now Maduro controls the army. So going forward, my question to you is, how is this going to play out? You have all this international recognition of Guaido, at the same time, you have Maduro de facto controlling the army, and you have the courts who belong to him, I mean, belong to Maduro. It sounds to me like Guaido, unless there is intervention of some kind, or sanctions, or the imposition of pressure from outside, Maduro is going to win this game, don't you think? Well, he can hold on as long as he does have the support of the military, which he continues to have. But let me add to this, I mean, a year ago, in particular, well no, a little over the year, in 2017, we began to see a massive groundswell of social protests in the streets, and again it took place here in the last month. So there is a widespread condemnation of the legitimacy of the existing regime, criticism of it, massive economic problems, hyperinflation, soaring hunger disease, a massive emigration that we're told up to 3 million Venezuelans, like 10% of the population has now left the country in the last maybe three years. And so some of it is that on the streets, there's a growing sentiment that is trying to push him out. But here the pressure is also now, as you touched on, coming from outside. And so you've got major governments, regional governments, and not just the US, you have Canada, many European Union, most of the major players of Latin America are putting the squeeze on him, and they have kicked him out of the OAS, they have set up a group a year ago called the Lima Group, Lima Peru, the capital, basically of the major South American plus Mexico, and they are essentially trying to put the squeeze on the country. Well, it's at a standstill right now, and what has happened is Lima Group in particular together with the European Union, they've managed to negotiate, you know, or else to put together some negotiations that are going to begin tomorrow, I believe in Uruguay, and they're going to have some dialogue. The hope is that they can negotiate a transition so that somehow it can avoid a bloodshed or a violence. But the reality is that Maduro, the government that is there, essentially controlling the military has the weapons, has the control over violence. The others have maybe, I don't know, a mixture of the moral authority, the international community support. The dynamics right now are such that Maduro is claiming that there's a likely invasion from the US.  What's happening as we speak, even today, for example, he has blocked the large bridge, a border with Colombia that is expected to receive some humanitarian aid coming from the US and other countries. And then he's trying to close that off saying that this is representing sort of the invasion coming from the US. It's a mess. It's unpredictable. It could languish and go on like this for a little while. But at some point, the writing on the wall seems to suggest that there's going to be some breakthrough, either a negotiated settlement where they decide on a transition government or, you know, this guy gets nudged out in some way. I think in the end, the cards are going to be held by the military and to the extent that they may assess that this leader's resolve and his likelihood of survival should go dimmer, they may have to, they may end up negotiating a sort of support for this opposition leader. And essentially, you know, things will quickly move. If that happens, it'll happen very fast. But it could be stuck like this for a little while longer. Yeah, of course, when you leave it in the hands of the military, you always have the risk of a military coup. And it would be a third person who steps up as a leader, wouldn't it? I mean, if the military took over, say, in a transitional kind of situation, they'd be in charge and they'd pick their own leadership, their own military leadership. Isn't that a possibility? It seems to happen all the time, no? Well, interestingly, Venezuela, you know, it had many dictatorships in the early part of the 20th century. But really, since the 1950s forward, it was a relatively stable, democratic, alternating political parties. Really, until the late 80s, it suddenly began a transition of sorts at that time. Chavez comes in in the late 20th century, and he kind of represents a break from this, even though it was a democratic process and system, it was very oligarchy, very elitist. And so what I want to get at here is, the military as an institution in Venezuela has not been involved in interventions and coups in the ways that we saw in the 60s and 70s in Brazil, in Peru, in Uruguay, in Chile. And so my quick answer would be, I don't myself see the military wanting to step in and be the solution. Instead, what's happened under Chavez and under the Maduro regime, the military has been brought in in many ways to run the country. And so they are put in positions of controlling the oil industry, controlling other, you know, government ministries and agencies. So they are in some ways more like political figures. And as we know, if anything about politicians, what do they want? They want survival. They want to stay in power. They want the benefits of the perks, the patronage that comes from that. But if there's several other issues about the military, many of them are deeply concerned about the integrity of the institution and they don't want to see that go away. And a military coup has the risk of really, you know, harming the institution itself. Also, a public opinion. And that's what's nudging on the streets, the social movement. It may nudge the military to seek, you know, the writing on the wall. On board with the future, they're going to be obviously purged. And many of those who have benefited, there's a large number of generals that have been appointed larger than the military, you know, size would warrant. So many of these are simply political appointees. The new, I'm sorry, not the new, but this opposition leader, Juan Guaido, has tried to reach out and offer them amnesty in hopes that some of them will defect. There's been a few cases. The Etcache in Washington DC did so pretty early on, but he was a lower ranking colonel. I believe a few days ago or this past week, there was one general who essentially did fall down. But for the most part, the core of the leadership, they tend to be loyalists to the, they call them Chavistas, supporters of the former Chavez. And basically, they are benefiting from the power and status they have. But again, they're also rational humans. When the big comes that this other leader, the Maduro may be gone, many of them are going to probably try to strike a bargain. Rather than being prisoned or exiled, they may simply switch their support. You have to look ahead and you have to look, see what the people want to do. And I think we had a show yesterday on our Hispanic-Hawaii series, where we had a couple of Venezuela people here in the studio to talk about, you know, the feelings of the people in Caracas and in Venezuela. And my sense of it from that and elsewhere is that the people on the streets really don't like Maduro at all. They're protesting against him and they're courageous enough to take the risk and go out on the streets, even with the soldiers there. And that represents a groundswell of support for Guaido. So it seems to me that if anyone is looking at the general sense of the population of the public in Venezuela, they will see that if the public has its way, the public will support Guaido. And that's got to affect the thinking of the military. Absolutely, I think so. And then that's where, again, if you look forward, whether it's two weeks or two months or two years, there will be a transition and a change that hope it doesn't get there by way of bloodshed or violence. It's already pretty bad. And some people said, oh, we can't sanction them. We can't do this. They're going to suffer well. The Venezuelans have been suffering quite a bit for the last, you know, years, particularly the last four or five years, the plummeting of oil prices has made it hard for the regime to dole out its support. And now the inflation, the inflation is remarkable and then happening as we speak. We have not seen this since Weimar Germany in the 20s. And even by comparison, I mean, the figures are staggering a million percent a year up to 10 million percent a year. I mean, you can't even fathom what that means. What it means is that the economy is essentially in a free fall and it has meant shortages of food, shortages of medicine. And that means everybody, even those who benefited from, let's say, the previous regime, the Chávez in particular, there was a time when there was a lot of social spending and programs often very targeted, but certainly gained a lot of popularity. And even today, the regime, it's very interesting. We live in this age of, you know, new social media and technologies, the amount of propaganda the amount of, let's say, well, the whole industry of that is just astonishing how every day they're putting out information on Twitter, on Facebook, on other media, the radio, the TV, advertising billboards, websites, the government has a pretty big industry of that.  And it has meant that, you know, people get bombarded with some information overload. It's hard to know if you're there in Venezuela, getting good information, real information. And so for some, yes, this is all about the gringo Yankee, imperialist invaders. For many others, not quite, it's all about just, you know, the crisis of legitimacy that the leadership is having. And that's going to probably change the tide because the other thing is that Chávez, who was a very dynamic, charismatic leader, did have a considerable amount of support, especially among popular classes. He mobilized a lot of, you know, voiceless people from the past. The leader that's been there now, his successor, Nicolás Maduro, doesn't have a great deal of charisma or chutzpah, former bus driver who, you know, kind of sort of came up through the ranks as a loyal party, you know, follower, but he has not been able to mobilize the population in the same way and then added to that, the economy has tanked and so he just, you know, he's not been able to hold it together. We tend to think of countries south of the border in some, you know, ancient way. Some way goes back many decades as underdeveloped, you know, not having a lot of consumer goods, not having a decent economy, not having law and order for that matter. But I think I'm coming to the conclusion myself that Venezuela has been essentially a democracy in many ways. Venezuela has had some prosperity with the oil and otherwise. Venezuela enjoys a high level of public awareness and education. Venezuela is in large part a middle class state and it's different, you know, from our profiling of South American countries in the past. Am I right about this? Absolutely. And the other is maybe even like the race in ethnicity. If you go to places like Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, these are literally dual societies, race and ethnic divisions that are pronounced. Venezuela is not, it is a more, well we would call it Mestizo, but it had a heavy wave of different immigrants from Europe, but largely, you know, I guess we're lucky to use the word white, but maybe a more middle class. They don't have large indigenous populations. But even more than that, just as you touched on, throughout the 50s and 60s and 70s, there was a pretty booming economy and the oil helped to enrich that a large growing middle class. So, you know, the average secretary or government worker could take the vacation to Miami and, you know, and have a level of development that was the envy of the Andean countries of, you know, even Argentina relatively crossed the place, massive economic problems and chaos and turbulence and political violence. Venezuela relatively stable until about 1989. And I mentioned to you earlier, this was the time when I began doing some research in the area. I went down there in 8990 and suddenly they began a massive sort of social movement at that time, protesting the two-party system, which, you know, on paper, it looked pretty nice. The alternated power looked like our two-party system in the US. But it was very closed and elitist.  And that began what would culminate later. Actually in 92, Chavez attempted a first military coup that didn't work. It got snuffed out. But he would come back later, six, seven years later. And by the end of the 90s, he would suddenly launch, you know, what he called the Bolivarian Revolution, a leftist, populist, you know, transition, and one that worked well for a while, had a lot of international support, particularly from the left. And it reached out to communities that had been marginalized and neglected, that were not part of the elite, let's say, domination. And so while you had oil revenues, you could do that. You could dole out benefits and redirect social spending. But that began to erode. And moreover, Chavez represented a new form of authoritarianism using political institutions rather than the sort of military coups and government, but using democracy in ways that it was what we call illiberal. We see it today in Hungary and Poland. We see it in the US. We see it in the Philippines, where they get elected, they get in office, but they pretty soon begin to chip away at the Democratic institutions controlling the media using massive propaganda themselves. That's terrible. And the United States itself is at risk for that right now in this administration. But I wanted to go to one other thing that we should discuss, and that is the external effect of this. You know, it's become clear that the United, in this administration, become clear the United States must care about the whole continent. It must care about Canada, and it must care about everything south of the border. It must care about Mexico. It must care about all of South America, because they're close and they're contiguous in their own way to our own country. We have land borders and so forth. And so their health, the health of these other countries, affects our health. And so I disagree with the Trump administration on trying to build walls. Rather, we should be building influence and building connection collaboration with every country south of the border, not only Mexico, but every country south of the border for our own security, for our own protection. Here we have Russia coming into Venezuela and then creating its divisiveness, which it likes to do. And to me, that's a risk to us. So my question to you, Carlos, is what effect does all this turmoil in Venezuela have on Mexico, have on South America in general, have on the United States, and have global geopolitical effect? Because you know it's not happening in a vacuum. Well, absolutely. And you touched on many aspects there. Today, this crisis is not just the U.S. and Venezuela. In fact, at all, Trump has come on to support this opposition leader, but he's not calling the shots or driving the issues. Although the U.S. does have considerable influence and can. He's in fact negotiating with some of the other leaders. But I want to first say this crisis also unveils the geopolitical dynamics where, again, you mentioned Russia. With the transition in Cuba, the pastors are now long gone, and the country is no longer, let's say, at the forefront of U.S.-Latin American relations. It's kind of on the periphery. Venezuela has emerged as the main connection that Russia has in Latin America, and they are strategic partners both for oil revenues and investments that Russians have done themselves in Venezuela. Also, China. China is the other player that is a massive foreign investor throughout South America. The largest investor in Peru and Bolivia, obviously, for their mineral wealth, but in Venezuela as well, looking at their oil. And what's interesting is that the relationship Venezuela has with the U.S., it exports a third of its oil, and the U.S. pays with cash. And so that's desperately needed. The regime needs money to function. By contrast, the Russians and the Chinese that get most of the rest of the oil, they are getting paid debts that the Venezuelans owe to them because of their investment in the country. So Venezuela does not get hard cash and currency from Russia or China, but it has to pay them oil for debts that they have. And so it's curious that while you have this widespread international support for Guaido, the opposition leader, Russia, together with China, together with Turkey, together with just a couple of other sort of bad boys are standing firm behind the Maduro regime. And so it's got this curious dynamic. Now, aside from that, it's also interesting to see the role of Latin American countries, big players like Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, I'm sorry. And Mexico curiously trying to somehow take a softer position, a more neutral one. Some have been critical that it has been too soft. It hasn't really stepped up to join the others. This relatively new administration in Mexico is in some ways trying to assert maybe a non-intervention status, or some have said maybe it's trying to set up to be a mediator. But in fact, that role is now being assumed by Uruguay and the European Union rather than Mexico. So Mexico's a little bit outside of it at the moment, although, you know, they're trying to balance it. They're trying to redefine what their foreign policy should be. Because Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, these are the big Latin American countries. The other final point I would add is Venezuela is important. I mean, not just because it's the big oil market, but there's a large community today and a growing one given the immigration and the diaspora that exist in South Florida, that exist in New York, New Jersey, and a few other spots. A large number of Venezuelans in the U.S. now, we can speak of a diaspora that much like in the past, Cuba, the Cuban-Americans were determining.  That's not happening in the case of Venezuelans. But my point is that the economies are linked, but so are the societies. We have a big community of Venezuelans, even there in Hawaii, you've got some that you brought on your show yesterday. And so these people have an interest. They want their country to go back to what its real potential could be. These people that have left, I'm sure many of them would prefer to be going back home and rebuilding. Hopefully that can be done in the coming years. Right now, it's still not there. We're going to see how this crisis unfolds. It could be changing dynamic in a matter of days or weeks. Absolutely. Or it could languish. Yes. Well, Carlos will have to reconnect on it because the takeaway here is it's not over and it's complex and nobody knows exactly which way it's going to go. But I so appreciate this discussion with you. It's been great to have this fire hose of information from you, as always. Thanks so much. I look forward to our next global connection. Carlos Juarez, the host of Global Connection. Thank you so much.