Okay, here we are So hi everyone welcome to code pinks weekly webinar what the F is going on in Latin America This is 20 minutes of hot news out of the Americas every Wednesday 12 p.m. Eastern and Today, I'm really pleased and excited and honored to have my friend fellow activist and compatriot Dan Kovalec join us Dan is Teaches international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh and also many of you listening may also know He's the author of a number of books, but relevant to today's conversation He is the author of the plot to attack Iran how the CIA and the deep state have Have conspired to vilify Iran and then your other book Yeah, I've read both of them by the way The plot to overthrow Venezuela how the US is orchestrating a coup for oil and so Dan How fun to have you with us for this very very probable conversation Thanks. I was in Venezuela when the Iranian general was assassinated and Yeah, it was pretty shocking For the entire world and I'm happy to say there are no missiles flying between continents as we speak but So maybe we could Take this conversation Maybe give a little bit of history of the first US coup against Iran 1953 we can talk about the similarities of that coup and what's been happening in Venezuela the last 20 years and Then maybe how this whole global vision of the United States is is affecting these two countries and not just them but those two as of For this for the sake of this conversation The other thing I'd kind of like to throw in the mix that and I'm assuming you saw it was this really crazy article in New York Post over the weekend that Iran could potentially use Venezuela as a tool to attack the United States I don't know if you saw that but That's not and of course the president of Honduras Made the statement over the weekend as well that he is an enemy of Iran and Hezbollah so we can see how Things are overtly starting or could potentially align. So so anyway, let's um, let me have you take the conversation so If we start in 1953, this was the well, it goes back, you know, even before then we have to remember that for most of the Early part of the 20th century Iran's oil was controlled by the British through a company called the Anglo-Persian oil company but emphasis on the Anglo because Britain got nearly all the profits from Iran's oil at the time By the time Mosadek Mohammed Mosadek was elected prime minister in 1951 90% of Iran was living literally in rags While the British were siphoning oil and Money out of the country and so Mohammed Mosadek a very popular politician was elected prime minister and The parliament of Iran Supported him in nationalizing British Well, what was Iranian oil but nationalizing it and taking it from the British And they were willing to pay compensation for it by the way, though that number was never settled on what that would be though at one point Mosadek who loved the Americans by the way much to his peril Agreed that Eisenhower president Eisenhower could be the arbiter of how much that compensation would be But in any case the British were furious by the nationalization Made one run at Truman before Eisenhower was elected to get him to help overthrow Mosadek and Truman refused Truman said, you know I have no interest in protecting British oil interest in Iran go home But then two things happened Churchill was elected the new prime minister he was reelected as As the prime minister of Great Britain and then president Eisenhower was elected General Eisenhower was elected president the US so Churchill made another run at Eisenhower and Through the Dulles brothers we have to remember both of which had had Interests in Anglo-Persian oil by the way John Dulles was the was Eisenhower's secretary of state Alan Was the head of the CIA their newly formed CIA They convinced Eisenhower that somehow Iran was a communist threat, which was not true And that Mosadek had to be overthrown and so they overthrew Mosadek Took a couple of years to do that But they did and they used a lot of the same tact a lot of same tactics they used in Iran They continue to use in Iran to this day and try to overthrow The current government there, but they also use them against other governments like the one in Venezuela. So what does that look like? back in the in 19 in the early 50s what they did to Iran is they They actually blockaded Iran's oil made it impossible for them to sell any oil on the world market and They intentionally racked up Iran's economy. They paid people to engage in violent street protests to undermine Mosadek's popularity And this is how they orchestrated in the end a military coup Against Mosadek again very much. We see these things happening in Venezuela. We see these things happening in Iran both countries now are under Very draconian sanctions by the United States, which are killing people. We know in Venezuela from this study I'm sure you've cited many times by Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weiss brought that about 40,000 Venezuelans died in a one-year period due to these sanctions They expect more That was between 2017-2018 They expect more to die, you know in 2019 and into this year And many people are dying in Iran as well because people are not getting food. They're not getting medicine due to these sanctions at one point You know Trump threatened that Iran would not be able to sell one drop of oil. He has tried mightily to You know back up that threat. He hasn't quite managed to do that But that we have really damaged Iran's economy and we've damaged Venezuela's economy Even you know by stealing and let's face it the US stole a sit-go of Venezuela's American based oil company And their largest cash source of cash revenue the US stolen from them. Well, it's been really the whole Movement against Venezuela has really been about reappropriating assets financial aspects and natural resource assets and they're doing it short of a military It looks a lot like Iran in the early fifties I mean where you know Venezuela under Chavez Nationalized Venezuela's oil from companies like Exxon mobile those companies want that oil back and you know what? John Bolton was national security advisor, you know He openly started meeting with Exxon and other companies and divvying up Venezuela's oil before they even had it back you know, so It's pretty naked Fat imperial theft That's happening You know the latest move I saw today was that Trump is imposing sanctions Not just against the Maduro government, but now against sectors of the opposition Yes, those opposition people who were elected to the National Assembly on the 5th of January, correct Right because they voted out the US's puppet Wang Guaido as the head of the National Assembly His being the head of the National Assembly was the only fig leaf the US had for justifying Recognizing him as president. Even that was not real. You know, that was not constitutional But it was at least a fig leaf, right? It gave some Faces for saying, uh, you know that that the US could recognize him now. There's no fig leaf, you know, so Uh, the Trump, well, it's also an attempt. Don't you think it's also an attempt to prevent moderate more pragmatic opposition members from Creating dialogue and perhaps a peaceful solution between the elected government Yeah, it was an overt attempt to prevent that from happening Yeah, and we know that the US has been doing that for some time. We know that for example Right before the 2018 18 is a 2018 reelection of Nicholas Maduro Uh, the opposition and the government were just about to sign a comprehensive agreement in Santo Domingo and literally, uh I believe it was Mike Pence who called and told the opposition don't sign They didn't want peace in Venezuela. They didn't want moderate opposition Meanwhile, there was a moderate opposition candidate running against Maduro. Henry Falcone from the business community Who is a conservative, but he's not a radical Conservative, I would say he's part of the loyal opposition. You know, he's not willing to Burn Venezuela to the ground to get power as some of these people He was actually threatened to be sanctioned. Wasn't he for running? Yeah, yeah, Trump threatened to sanction him if he ran for president against Maduro because again Two things they felt threatened by one having a moderate opposition person in power Who again? Might not carry out all of the us's Wishes in Venezuela, but also they wanted to totally delegitimize the election If Maduro ran unopposed, of course, they could say, oh, you know, this is democracy You know soviet style or Hussein, you know Saddam Hussein style or something To have a candidate actually run against him and lose Was not what the us wanted. So yes, they threatened to sanction Um him and by the way his economic advisor Francisco I think Rodriguez is out right here He has come out against us sanctions on Venezuelan he has said that they could permanently destroy Venezuela's economy And again, that is an inconvenient statement By him and many members of the opposition of force again the loyal opposition Are opposed to sanctions because they know it's wrecking Their country and again possibly irreparably And they don't want to see that, you know, it's the people the real radical Right wing who don't care about that because they can always live in Miami or whatever And that already do Yeah, and they already do and that's who the us is aligning with Are those radical sectors of the opposition? In both countries In both the best in the class in both countries I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the the actual Working relationship between Iran and Venezuela. They've been trade partners for many years. This is nothing new And so nothing for us civilians to be fearful of this is a A south global south to south trading relationship that's that has existed for many years and it It stemmed from from then hugo president hugo chavez's vision of of a multilateral trade situation Particularly the global south, but for the planet in general, which is completely Antithetical to this unilateral vision That the united states has been promoting for I would argue for at least 40 years yes, so Iran and Venezuela are very close allies, which makes a lot of sense again. Both are very important oil producers Um Both have been under the gun of the united states for a long time Both are members of the non-aligned movement By the way, and in fact, uh, Venezuela and Iran over the years have Essentially rotated as the heads of the non-aligned movement chavez or that was the head for a while was the president of the non-aligned movement uh, I believe opera denny jad was um, and then maduro was and then um the current, uh, uh, prime minister of Iran it was I don't Honestly, they just had elections and I forget who's ahead of it now, but point is they've been very important Uh actors in the non-aligned movement, which is goes back to the 1960s, which was a movement of bocy third world countries um, who wanted to get out of Uh, not only western hegemony but also Wanted some independence from the soviet union and china as well So iran and venezuela have this natural kindred relationship and iran has been trying to help venezuela through this period Particularly by helping get it medicine for example In other resources that it can't get due to these sanctions now of course now that iran's under tighter sanctions That's going to be harder for them to do but iran has learned over Uh, the 40 years of its revolution Which has meant 40 years of sanctions Um to become largely self-sufficient, you know, they make almost everything they use And they help venezuela make that adjustment and to become more Uh independent as well, so um, there's a lot of of Kindred feelings between those two countries and it's interesting of course because iran's an interesting country the government's an interesting Amalgam of things because of course It is islamic, you know, we know that it's it's a theocracy though. It does have democratic aspects A democratically elected parliament a democratically elected president. I'm a spoke. I said prime minister. It's a president Um, but ultimately you have the ayatollah who is the supreme leader um So you have this uh theocratic government, but you also have socialist aspects of that system As well, so it's a bit of an amalgam and it seems like iran and venezuela are able to Kind of get over what seem to be some natural differences, uh in african Well, let me um, I know, you know, you and I have done a lot of solidarity work in venezuela and and of course their Solidarity work with iran intersects quite often for both of us and um You mentioned uh pharmaceuticals and developing more domestic the iranians helping the venezuelans Develop more domestic industry. I believe pharmaceuticals is one of the projects the iranians are helping with And I would also like to just share with the audience and you too I guess you know, I was in venezuela for two weeks the end of december I went for the holidays and you and I haven't talked since I came back actually, but um I have to say the holiday season in venezuela was one of the most vibrant socially and economically that I've seen in In a number of years and I think you would have been very pleased to have been there to see it Um There is more and more food products being produced domestically and that was very clear in the stores earlier in 2019 as well, but really very over for the holidays and this introduction And really overt use of their cryptocurrency for holiday purchasing the petro and the iranians are Big supporters of cryptocurrency as well, correct Yes, yes, indeed. And I I do want to you know, also, you know, just chime in that. Yeah, it looks like things in venezuela are improving The oil production is up the highest. It's been in years Um, its economy expect is expected to grow this year. So things are really moving It seems forward, which of course was making the us much more desperate Um, and and so the us, you know wants to hurt iran uh, not just To hurt iran but also to prevent them from helping Of course, uh, venezuela and you see that that the us is trying to interfere in this sort of, uh, third world solidarity Trying to interrupt cuba's medical missions throughout the world, for example, which really threaten us in germany. So Um, again, yeah, things are looking up in venezuela And so expect more trouble from the united states So, dan, you've been so gracious to give us 20 minutes of your time this this afternoon. Is there anything in that we Should specifically mention before I let you go. I should also ask to see if we have a few questions Oh Is there anything that we should emphasize? Well, I mean, I think the main thing is that we need to be vigilant We need to continue to support venezuela continue to support iran continue to support cuba nicaragua, bolivia Uh, in resisting us aggression. I mean, that's really our duty. I think as americans um Both of us have been to venezuela Have seen the process there have seen that it is Not this dictatorship. We've been led to believe it is I've I've been in iran once in 2017. I mean, that's an amazing country. It's not perfect By the way, neither is our country You know, but they tried To make strides in terms of women's rights in terms of other rights Let's say, you know comparing apples to apples. I'd rather live in tehran than in saudi arabia, for example, which the us Which we never discuss. Yeah, we never discuss that candidly regarding foreign policy You know, there's one thing I'm just looking at my notes um Looking at something that we that you brought up Early on in our conversation and that was about, uh, the eisenhower administration and this was in the early fifties um Not agreeing or not setting Uh a price for iranian oil. I don't know exactly what you said, but it made me think of what Happened with the cuban sugar in the early fifties. Um with the same administration and when the cubans had nationalized, uh Business us businesses and it offered to pay fair market price for those businesses and would sell Cuban sugar to raise that money and then the u.s. Government said you can't sell cuban sugar in the united states any longer So is it the same sort of thing that they did to the iranian oil in the in the same era within the same years? Yeah, well very similar. Yeah in the case of yeah, iran, they just they literally britain set up a naval blockade uh In the persian gulf literally did not allow ron to to sell any oil Which also showed important thing by the way, which i think we could probably conclude on A lot of times people think that these wars against venezuela and iran are for access to oil But it showed for example during the blockade of iran. We didn't need their oil, right? We don't need oil now the us exports oil and natural gas now We're a net exporter fossil fuels. We don't need access to it. The us wants control over it One because it's important geopolitically and two they want control so their company's profit from it And so it's not about access. It's about control, which is a point. Noam Chomsky has made time to get It's about control of the oil and is it about control the oil to control the global currency and how the global currency remain the us petrodollar Yeah, well, that's that's part of as well to be able to control the pricing all that right And the us is afraid if they have, you know, frankly competitors It really is kind of it's it's like an old style mafia mentality You know, right you go and you knock out the business owner. There's this little shopkeeper, right? Your tribute, right? Exactly it just on a global scale. Yeah Controls the world And but if there's one little guy out there Who's not paying tribute? He's got to be knocked out. It sets a bad example. I mean, that's what this is about Yeah, yeah Yeah, the total the total um us financial and corporate Yeah control the unilateral control Of the global currency and global trade and that is precisely what iran and venezuela Um Have sought an alternative for for many many years. So, okay, dan. I want to thank you again for joining us really great talking to you this afternoon and So folks, you can join us next wednesday 12 p.m. Eastern For another 20 minutes of hot news out of latin america on code pinks what the f is going on in latin america Thanks again, dan. Really appreciate your time. Good to talk to you. Uh-huh. Bye. Bye. Bye


We're back. We're pleased. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech Hawaii. It's Energy in America, and today we're doing leadership and energy with our old friend Jeff Kissell, who is here, I guess, on business from his digs on the mainland, where he is a trustee of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, EPRINC, and joins us every now and then by Skype from that vantage. Welcome to the show, Jeff. It is so nice to be back here in Hawaii. Aloha, Jay. So we know we could, so many things we could talk about because you have two vanishes, you know, you were here as an executive in an energy company for many years, well, I guess. And also now you're involved in energy policy in Washington, D.C., and in business in general. You have a fantastic vantage from both sides of the pond, so to speak. Well, it's a lot of work to get that vantage point. It's like climbing the mountain to get the view. I don't know whether it's worth the price or not, but we've got the view. So we can talk about so many things, but what we settled on after discussing so many of them today is leadership, okay? I suppose the first part of it is trying to determine what we need to lead, okay? And we have, you know, sort of a wild horse in the way of energy, renewable energy going on for the past several years. A horse that doesn't always know the right path. A horse that needs to be bridled and marshaled and taught and trained and incentivized one way or the other, both on the mainland and in Hawaii. Can you take a moment, chef? I know you can do this. And give us a kind of status report of how clean energy is doing in this country and in Hawaii. Clean energy is suffering in Hawaii. It is actually suffering in the continental U.S. because of a lack of leadership and lack of political will in administering public policy. Hawaii, like it has been for many, many years, is kind of a microcosm of what's going on everywhere else. And it's kind of the face of things to come if we aren't careful. You know, Hawaii led the nation for many years and things like health care, education, we led it and voter turnout, if you recall. You couldn't get into a poll in the 1960s and 1970s without an appointment. Well, that's changed here. And unfortunately, it's not changed for the better in all cases. I'm still optimistic and I still love Hawaii and I think that the leadership in Hawaii is trying to do the right thing, but the circumstances have changed. We've had volatility in the energy sector now for half a century. That's a lot of volatility for a very long time. We had the oil shock in the 1970s. We had the oil collapse in the 1980s. We had carbon introduced as a factor in energy production. It changed the landscape of electricity and other kinds of production of energy on the continental U.S. and the world. We had nuclear, come, go, come and gone or export it. And so those things are tough to contend with. They're even tougher to contend with when you're sitting out here in the middle of the ocean, 2,500 miles from the nearest populated center in the world. Well, it's a transformational experience. There's so many options and possibilities out there, so many things, so many points we don't know. We have to invent and follow and create all by ourselves. This makes it hard. And if you allow the consensus management model, which in some ways is good, in some ways is not so good, to make these determinations, it's very difficult to get to where you think you want to go. So it's more difficult. We're isolated. It's transformational. And we have a goal, but we're not sure what follows. I want to make a point that I made to you on one of our programs where I was talking to you from Washington, D.C. Hawaii in abandoning a diversified fuels strategy. Letting go of LNG, letting go of distributed solar generation and wind generation has put itself back on the oil standard. Oil now is the only bridge we've got to an energy future. Why do you say that? I mean, how does that work? It's the only fuel that's in use in Hawaii today on a large scale. There are no competing sources of energy, electrical or transportation. Even though everybody thinks that we've got a big renewable sector, we've cut that off. We've cut that off with net metering and other restrictions on Oahu. We've cut it off by saying we're not going to use any other fuel, no coal, no LNG. The wind is under restraint. Geothermal is under restraint.  The only unlimited source of energy for Hawaii today is oil. We have made that our bridge to the energy future by default. I don't think it's by design because I don't know of anyone in state, city government or business that really wants oil to be the Hawaii bridge to the energy future. If you look forward on that notion, that oil has by default been made into a bridge. Where does it go from here? We have this aspiration goal of reaching 100% by 2045. 2045 is not that far away. 2045 is around the corner. And the bridge is running right by 2045. It's not stopping there. This is the bridge to nowhere. Because what's happening is oil is getting worldwide. Oil is getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper relative to other energy sources. That is a trend where unless we have enlightened leadership and enlightened support, educated support from our community, that trend will continue and we will be left perfectly okay. The lights will still be on. But we'll be burning oil in our generators and we'll have big central station generators instead of a reasonably well diversified source of energy. Then if something happens to disrupt the oil supply, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, we've made ourselves highly vulnerable to the point where lives could be lost here. Yes, absolutely. Now compare that with the mainland. Last couple of years. How's the mainland been doing? Is there a parallel process, a parallel, you know, set of circumstances on the mainland? Continental US is doing a very effective job of killing off a lot of its solar and small scale wind and other small companies. The difference between the Continental US and Hawaii is the Continental US has a very diversified set of energy alternatives. Hydroelectric power, obviously still cold. Cold is a very widely used source of energy even though it's not popular. Natural gas. And then for transportation fuels, there's plenty of oil. Today, you are not limited in the oil sector by what you can find because we can find more than we can use. It's just the cost of production. Yeah, like this, the shale. It's shale. It's all kinds of other things that are making oil available today. North America, Canada, the United States and Mexico are virtually energy independent. And in some cases, they're net exporters of oil. Yeah. So it's not the Middle East that we're dependent on. It's not the Middle East. It's not South America. Venezuela used to be a big source of imported oil. They still are but it's all for logistical reasons. And it's keeping costs low. It has nothing to do with the availability of the resource itself. Dwelling on the mainland for a minute. I mean, how is the Trump administration likely to impact what you're talking about the set of circumstances on the mainland? Well, whether you have a political affinity for the president in his way of thinking or not, it is impactful. They're changing things. Sure. Now, whether they'll get it done, if you look at their record on healthcare and thus far on tax, it's anybody's guess and I'm not a policy wonka. I can't tell you what they're going to do. Though we have headwinds that are being made worse by the Trump administration in their desire to redevelop coal as a resource in their desire to develop more and more fossil fuel resources domestically the pipeline, for example, then I must tell you my colors are flying from the mast on that. I'm an advocate of the pipeline. It's a cleaner, safer and better way to move energy than any other that we have. Fewer people will be injured and killed with a pipeline running underground than a train or trucks running on the surface. But regardless of how you feel about it, the Trump administration is putting headwinds in the way of renewable energy. They're cutting off one of the more important ways we can diversify our energy sources. Now Angela Merkel did something interesting in Germany. Angela Merkel said no more nuclear power in Germany. So she financed her companies to go build the nuclear reactors in Poland so they can ship the electricity back across the board. Perfect. And that's a liberal and enlightened and progressive administration. They're bowing to the practicalities. And the reason I want to talk about leadership is because it's really difficult to get and expect political leadership in this current environment. I'm not suggesting it's impossible. But the days when John Kennedy would stand up there and say we are going to the moon and the country united behind him and a space industry developed and emerged, that's gone. It's different today. Yes, you have Elon Musk. Yes, you have Bezos and Amazon. You've got a lot of different things going on, but they're not the product of political leadership. It's a different kind of consensus building that's going on in the United States and probably worldwide. And that we have to recognize that in Hawaii and we have to work within it. John Burns led this state in developing its educational resources, its health care resources. The people who have followed him have done a great job by and large because the quality of life here is marvelous. And the current administration is enlightened. But political leadership is not something in high demand by the public anymore. This is really good. And I want to take a short break and come back. I'm going to talk about how you get leadership, how the public can speak on leadership, and how it can help us in energy and otherwise. That's Jeff Kissel. He's a trustee of the Energy Policy Research Foundation in Washington and in other various things he does. We'll be right back after this short break. Okay, welcome back to Think Tech. I'm here with Jeff Kissel. He's a trustee of the Energy Policy Research Foundation in Washington. He run our Energy in America show and he appears every now and now and then on Energy in America by Skype for the mainland. But today he's present in Honolulu. We're very happy to see him. We're talking about leadership and energy.  So, I mean, clearly we need we need leadership and energy because it's something new. It's transformational. It's difficult. It's complex. It's technological. It draws on and that there are special interests that would like perhaps not to see the diversification of renewable energy. So my question to you is, and it's national and local, my question is how in the 21st century now, not George Washington or Jefferson or Madison, but right now, do we achieve the kind of leadership we need to take us forward in this very complex environment? Well, we're seeing a trend beginning to emerge that is not from the political leadership. It's from the institutional leaders, the social leaders and the business leaders. Bill Gates with the Gates Foundation. Elon Musk with his innovative transportation solutions and other things. Jeff Bezos, who is his partner or competitor in space travel. These things are emerging there. It's a different kind of leadership that's emerging and we see a lot of community leadership here in Hawaii that is really important to pay attention to. The Co-op on Kauai, for an example, has not curtailed the production of solar energy into the grid. They take it all. They've got an old and less sophisticated system than almost any place in the United States. The issue of how do you do this is difficult to understand, but it's easy to execute. Everybody here needs to realize that they've got to become a soldier in the Army for diversified energy. And they've got to do things that allow us to broaden our energy alternatives, whether it's installing a solar water heater on your roof to take care of your hot watering needs, even if you can't put PV on the roof to sell into the grid, to using less energy, to moving to more energy-efficient offices and homes. Those are the things we've got to kind of think about as individuals because the government is just, it's changed in the last two or three generations. It's not the kind of government that led us through the Second World War that led us into the modern industrial age. It's a different government today. I'm not suggesting it's right or wrong. I'm suggesting it's different. We got to respond to it different. Yeah, absolutely. But how does the citizen, how can the citizen, let's assume the citizen agrees with you and me, and let's assume the citizen is well informed about renewable energy, about the technology, you know about about the effect of renewable energy on the society, on the community. And of course he can do energy efficiency at home, but Query, what else? I mean, does he have an obligation? Will it be beneficial for him to get involved in the political process and try to achieve some outcomes there? I think you and your colleagues in broadcasting are doing quite a lot for that. I think the individuals have got to pay attention to the things that they can affect most closely. Personal behavior, learning what is really accurate and what is myth about energy and energy solutions, and then educating the next generation, investing in education, in my opinion, will do more for energy in the long term than anything else we can do. And teaching our children how to do math, how to understand the physics. You know, I love Teslas. I think they're great cars. I also like Rolex watches. A Timex will tell the time. A Honda will get you where you're going as efficiently as a Tesla will. Sure. In Hawaii, unless you have a source of renewable energy to charge your electric car, your electric car is running on oil. Sure it is. You know, 87% or 82% of the fuel. You have to change the generation system in general in order to change the result. But you know, something you said, and I'd like to visit that for a moment, you were talking about these tech executives. And you can see that because you've been essentially what I would consider a tech executive yourself. And so you can see sort of across the street how they conduct themselves, how they relate to the community and to government. And you suggest something that I've been thinking about for a while, namely this. That when you have government in the one corner and you have industry in the other corner, there's relative power there. Government is a certain amount of power. And industry is a certain amount of power. I remember one Harvard Business School professor was out here, gave a talk at the Pacific Club. And one of the things she said that stuck in my brain was that if you have the metric of how much money government is pushing around the world as against how much money industry is pushing around the world, industry is much more influential because there's much more money being pushed around the world by industry than government. And in the 21st century that you described, way different than the time of the Constitution, way different than the Second World War, what you have is a group, an industry group of managers who may be better equipped to handle the development of energy in these transformational times. So I suggest to you that inherent in what you said, Jeff, is executives of important energy companies should be leading, they should be leading the day in energy development. What do you think? It would be nice if that could be accomplished overnight. It can't. Because in order to operate a business you need access to capital. In our system the people who control the capital will only give you that capital if you provide them with a return. And that's a very short term kind of a business model. Now the people who have overcome the capital need, Bezos, Musk, Gates, it's to some extent Buffett. Those guys have the luxury to go out and do these things. America has millions and millions and millions of small and medium-sized businesses. They can't do it because the people who control the capital that they need to earn their returns are not going to look that far down the road. Well-intentioned or not. It's all about funding, isn't it? It's all about having the capital. Money is power. Well, money and then influence in government. Government rights the regulations. Government had effectively written coal out of existence until President Trump was elected. Now whether coal will have a comeback or not is still uncertain. But they certainly got a lifeline when the administration changed because the regulations, the trend in the regulations changed. And government has a huge effect on things. You know incentives and disincentives, tax policy, all these things. I don't know people don't realize it has a huge effect on the conduct of the community. So for example if I taxed a gallon of gas for your car way high you'd be thinking more about an electric car. If I gave you a tax credit for buying an electric car that was real attractive you'd be thinking more about that. If I gave you a program for rooftop solar that was irresistible you would go there. But we're not doing that. We're not doing that and I'm not suggesting that that's the only solution.  But that's how I make a choice and I'm typical. I'm an average person making an average choice. There are hundreds and hundreds of other people on those same subways with me because it's crowded down there. Right? And it has nothing to do with the regulations on the subsidy for the the cars. So what we need to do is get people educated so that they can make the better choice. They can take two alternatives, examine them, and choose the better one for a lot of reasons. It doesn't have to agree with my philosophy either. You know some people are rooting for the Yankees and some people are rooting for the Dodgers. You know sometimes multiple choices are all good. Yeah, that's exactly right. Just side on the path. I think the worst result is inaction especially when you're trying to achieve a specific result. Right. Now our court system and I don't I don't want to take this off the topic too far. Our court system is far from perfect. But generally speaking 12 jurors come out nine times out of ten with the right decision. It's not that you can't criticize the court system and make it better. The energy system in Hawaii needs to be adjusted so that we don't shock this economy the next time a crisis occurs because there will be a crisis and there will be a next time. So we have to be resilient for sure. We have to diversify. Yeah, diversification is the magic word. But in terms of leadership there's three things we touched on here. Number one is government and that the citizen perhaps he has some influence I hope with government. That formula has changed that whole paradigm has changed in recent years but still the citizen at least theoretically has an obligation to participate and has some influence. That's one thing. Secondly business with large capital concentrations and senior executives who have some influence over their business and perhaps by interaction over other businesses they can and should participate. And thirdly as you mentioned and as everybody says we've got to educate the kids in school we got to educate the public right now so that they participate. So it's a three-way thing as far as I can see. But how would you roll that out? How would you make all that come together so it works and now? Well now is the problem. We have to either decide we're going to diversify our energy sources or decide that we're going to abandon virtually all of our strategies and stay on oil because we need money in this economy. We can't live in this economy paying a high price for energy a high price for health care and a high price for the basics of life. In order to do that we need to either make a commitment do what they've done on kawaii it's right here in this state provide for a diversified energy strategy based on renewables or decide we're not going to do that and just do the cheapest next alternative. We're not going to change the carbon balance of the United of the earth. No, we're much too small for that. We have no influence on it. So fine you want cheap electricity bring in the coal from Australia and other places burn it and and you know do it lawfully but make the cheapest electricity you possibly can. Don't worry about a thing. Well I don't agree with that philosophy. I think that's that's very short-sighted. We've got to move in the direction that protects us from the extreme shock. The only way I know to do that is diversify and understand the cost of diversification. Well it takes a little three though I think. And it just strikes me that in order to do that we have to make legal changes so the legal community has to be on board the courts the the PUC and the guys who write the statutes in the legislature. And the guys who administer them who issue the building permits there are thousands of applications for really good renewable and and non petroleum based energy solutions sitting stacked up in building departments all over this state and unfortunately others. We need to clear that log jam. That's really important. It's a matter of changing the way the community thinks and changing the priorities so everybody sees the need for diversification the need for renewables the need for resilience and I don't think we have that now. The public is not refined on its view either here or on the mainland. They got to realize that there's not much more we can do to the car. There's not much more we can do to it so we need to get out of it. Yeah. And and we need to get away from these high consumption inefficient methods of using energy for everything we're doing. Industry has done that for the last 30 years. Factories today operate on about a fifth as much energy to do the same amount of work as they used to do. And we can't cars put out one tenth as much pollution as they used to. They're they're much more efficient. The next phase is to get out of the next phase is to get on to a way of life where either you're living and working in a closer proximity or you're using some kind of conveyance that gets you where you're going in a much more efficient way than we're doing in a car. Well what I get out of all of this is we have to make these decisions collectively in order to do that at the base of it we have to have community consciousness over these basic principles you've articulated. That's right and it takes an educated population to do that a very sophisticated and educated population. Well we're working to that chef. Well congratulations on your part in doing it you're doing a great job. And yours. Thank you so much for coming around. Good to see you. Thank you. So Steve the energy policy research foundation. Thanks to you. Aloha.


So believe it or not, it has been more than a year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic and finally, things are starting to get a little bit better. We're starting to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Both cases and deaths are down substantially and 12% of Americans have now been fully vaccinated with 20% getting at least one of the doses from either Pfizer or Moderna. We just had the FDA approve Johnson & Johnson single shot vaccination, which is both safe and effective, and Joe Biden ordered 100 million additional doses. So it seems as if we're starting to get to a place where we can resume normal life, pre-pandemic life in America and throughout the world. The issue, however, is that a lot of folks, not just the American population, but political leaders are already pretending as if the pandemic is over. But if we don't see the writing on the wall, if we don't look at the warnings that are right in front of us, we could very easily find ourselves in another COVID-19 surge and right back to square one. Currently Europe is experiencing another wave of COVID-19, which has led to more lockdowns in Italy and calls for more lockdowns in France, although the French Prime Minister has resisted calls from health experts to impose new restrictions. And in the United States, Joe Biden's White House is anticipating another wave of COVID-19, and they're currently racing to vaccinate as many Americans as possible as new, more easily transmissible variants are beginning to spread and pop up across the world. Meanwhile, since cases are down, however, Republican governors have already preemptively declared victory in the fight against COVID-19 and in Texas and Mississippi. They've even lifted their mask mandates. I mean, the bare minimum. They won't even allow for that. And it's not just Republican governors who are acting irresponsibly. Democratic governors are following Joe Biden's lead as well. And you have some like Oregon's Kate Brown already deciding that it is time to reopen schools and she just signed an executive order, which mandates in-person learning fully resumed by April 19th, April 19th. It doesn't matter if we're in a fourth wave by then. It doesn't necessarily matter if there's some new variant that's more easily transmissible, that becomes the dominant strain in the U.S., we're just going to reopen by April 19th because I say so. And she's following Joe Biden's lead because as you all know, he just passed his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package and there's more than $100 billion in funding to safely reopen schools. The issue, however, is that it's no longer the case that we're trying to reopen schools by following the science or basing the decision to reopen schools and fully resume in-person learning on whether or not we can do that safely. We're just like doing it because that's exactly what is demanded of our system. Like, you have to understand that we live in a dystopian, late-stage capitalist society and if we do not resume business as usual, then the system suffers. And there's a reason why Biden all of a sudden sounds a little bit different. He's saying things that he wasn't necessarily willing to say on the campaign trail and all of this is laid out in a really long but excellent article by Walker Bragman of The Daily Poster. And he explains, the country's approach to the pandemic has been one of suppression over elimination of acceptable losses and acceptable spread. While other countries have been able to better control the spread of the virus through ambitious zero COVID strategies, the United States has never once seriously considered far-reaching responses like a national lockdown or a universal basic income that would allow people to shelter in place. For both Donald Trump and now Biden, the political risks of such moves were too great despite the arguments of scientific experts and the pleas of many of those on the front lines. Biden promised to be a different kind of president, one who will let the facts dictate policy rather than the other way around. In August, Biden told ABC, I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus. I would shut it down, Biden said. I would listen to the scientists. But after the election, Biden and company changed their tune. On November 19th, Biden told reporters that there was no circumstance which I can see that would require a total national lockdown. I think that would be counterproductive, he said. In December, Biden announced that his key COVID priorities for his first 100 days in office included school reopenings. Today, he is still actively moving forward on that plan. Now let's just pause there for a moment and reflect on why he's doing this. I think it's pretty obvious. If we do not resume business as usual, that's bad for capitalism. Capitalism requires that everything in our country functions as normally as possible, even during a pandemic. Otherwise, profits and growth might be stunted, even if it's a detriment to our health as human beings. And I mean, COVID is just a microcosm of a broader issue, of a broader theme that happens with crises and capitalism.  We're killing off the only habitable planet, because if we were to stop doing what we're doing currently, then that would be so disruptive to global economic capitalism that alone, that short term loss to profits and growth is worse than long term death and destruction that might come about because of global climate change. So our political leaders around the globe have collectively decided, inadvertently or unwittingly, or sometimes directly, that they would rather just try to manage climate crises than take action right now to stop the crisis in the future. And we're seeing that same exact decision making processes play out. But when it comes to COVID-19, I think there was a solution that could have stopped this from becoming a pandemic. But we never opted for that solution. We never opted to pay people to stay home. And now we're trying to resume business as usual as quickly as possible when the science does not, in fact, dictate that reopening schools is what we should be doing. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean that I'm necessarily displeased with Joe Biden's handling of the pandemic, because thus far, he is doing a much better job than Donald Trump. He surpassed his goal of 100 million vaccinations within his first 100 days. And that is something that he should be applauded for. He has ramped up vaccinations and that is really good. But when it comes to the issue of reopening schools, this is where I've had a lot of disagreements with him. And this next portion of the article from Walker Braggman really explains why reopening schools right now, it's absolutely reckless and irresponsible. For Dr. Deep Thai Gretasani, the push to reopen schools is alarming. A clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, specializing in machine learning in genomic and clinical prediction, she has found herself waging a Twitter war on misinformation surrounding school reopenings. Very early on in the pandemic, at least in the Western world or in Europe and the United States, this sort of narrative was built that children were somehow exceptional or unique and that they were less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and less likely to transmit Gretasani tells the Daily Poster. And this narrative very quickly got entrenched in political decision-making as well as in the scientific community, despite having very little evidence behind it. Gretasani explains that many of the studies cited as evidence that children are not major spreaders of the virus relied on symptom-based testing. Children, Gretasani explains, are not likely to be symptomatic. When you do symptom-based testing in a household, you could very often pick up adults who were infected actually from children but classify them as the index case who brought infection to the household because the actual index case, who was the child, was silent, she says. Similarly, transmission to children is being missed if you base testing on symptoms. Indeed, a study from January funded by Austria's Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research noted the failure of several previous studies to take into account asymptomatic spread by children and other flaws. Gretasani told the Daily Poster that new evidence actually suggests that children are more likely to spread the virus to households than adults. Such was the finding of a study from the Office of National Statistics in England published in late December. Researchers found that young people ages 12 to 16 were seven times as likely as those older than 17 to be the first case in their household. They also found that children ages two to 16 were twice as likely as those over the age of 17 to spread the virus to family members. Another ONS study released last month found that teachers were at high risk ranking fourth among the 25 professions surveyed. The ONS studies are part of a growing body of research suggesting that reopening schools spread the virus. A Princeton study from September, which surveyed more than half a million people in India, found that children and young adults made up one third of COVID cases and were especially key to transmitting the virus. Similarly, a study released the month before in the Journal of Pediatrics found that children could be super spreaders even without displaying symptoms of COVID due to the amount of the virus in their systems. Meanwhile, the evidence on school closures cutting the spread of COVID is mounting too. A study from October based on data gathered from 131 countries found that school closures could reduce viral transmission by 15%. The next month, another study which looked at a number of mitigation strategies found that closing educational facilities ranked as the second most effective measure. Research studies aren't the only evidence that students are fueling the virus where schools are open, COVID is spreading. In the UK, where Girdasani is based, cases are surging among children ages five to 15 while dropping among other demographics. On February 21st, Democratic Iowa State Senator Rob Hogg tweeted that roughly 3,000 children had contracted COVID-19 since Republican Governor Kim Reynolds reopened schools with no restrictions in late January. A week earlier, public health officials in Onondaga County, New York where schools are open warned that they were seeing a rash of new cases among children around 50 to 60 per week, likely due to the prevalence of the new UK COVID variant. When you look at global evidence, school closures emerge as one of the most important and most effective interventions in reducing the spread of the pandemic, Girdasani says. So the conclusion I think is obvious. To reopen schools to just impose an arbitrary date and say that schools have to be reopened within 100 days or by April 19th, this is not a decision that is grounded in science. It's a decision that is being made because it is the most politically expedient decision that is being made in service of our late stage capitalist economic system.  And that's not to say that you can't try to make sure that we reopen as safely as possible because that's why Joe Biden included funding for schools to reopen. But the goal in and of itself should not be to just reopen for the sake of reopening. The goal should be to do what is necessary to stop the spread of the virus. And from the very beginning, we could have contained the virus if we just did one simple thing. We paid people to stay home. We are the richest country on the planet. We can afford to pay people to stay home. Subscribers of Modern Monetary Theory, individuals such as Stephanie Kelton know firsthand that any excuses that we've made are complete horseshit. If you're suggesting that we can't afford to pay people $2,000 to $3,000 per month to stay home, that is completely a fabrication. If we paid people to stay home, that is exactly how we could have saved thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives. And back in the Trump era, his administration was literally just hoping that Americans would grow numb to COVID-19 deaths. And now that we are more than 500,000 deaths into this pandemic, I think it's safe to say, unfortunately that most people have just grown numb to it. And because the American people has demonstrated that they are willing to grow numb to crises like this, our public officials now know that we can probably adapt to any crisis. Global pandemic, man, we can just kind of resume business as usual to an extent and people will just eventually become accustomed to it. Global climate change, I mean, wars over water, yeah, they're gonna happen, but so long as our citizens aren't directly fighting in those wars over water themselves, they'll probably just kind of forget about it and resume what is the new normal to them. So I want you to think about this story in two different ways. The first way is obviously, I need you to acknowledge that Joe Biden is being reckless here. And this decision to arbitrarily reopen schools just so he can brag about it and so that way the economy can function more smoothly so parents can go to work and send their children to school. I mean, schools were never fully closed. Distance learning, online learning, that is a form of education and it may not be ideal, but it will suffice during a pandemic when there are lives at stake, when teachers who are paid starvation wages don't have to risk their lives. Like, isn't that preferable? Well, of course not because we live in a late stage capitalist society. So we do what capitalism dictates, we do. And that's the second way that I want you to think about this. I want you to reexamine this system of capitalism and that might make some people feel uncomfortable, particularly in my older viewers who kind of grew up during the Cold War and were basically trained to never question capitalism.  And when I say us, I don't just mean lots and lots of human beings on this planet. I'm talking about other species on this planet. We're currently possibly witnessing another mass extinction. There's evidence that we're undergoing a mass extinction currently because of climate change and we're doing nothing about it because we can't disrupt the capitalist status quo because the economic system that we designed requires that we prioritize profits and growth over our own lives. That's insane. That is insane. We created this economic system. So very clearly there's a better way. We can change the system that we as human beings created. So think about this, not just in terms of like the way that the United States is reacting to COVID-19, the way that Joe Biden is irresponsibly reopening schools. But think about the bigger picture. Think about the way that capitalism has set us up for failure and disaster and extinction quite literally.


Yeah, that's it does not need to grow mustache dude. I mean the thing is about mustaches, right? I'll just say this okay, and this this is no prejudice whatsoever. I'm 46, okay? Yeah, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I would say the only people that had mustaches were like police firemen and gates Yeah, there was no dudes just now.  Yeah, and he looks like a time. He literally looks like a Tom of Finland character when he has the full Do you super dog this let's do super dog before we're done


Live from Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering Cloud Foundry Summit 2017. Brought to you by the Cloud Foundry Foundation and Pivotal. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and welcome to SiliconANGLE Media's production of theCUBE, Worldwide Leader in Live Tech coverage here at the Cloud Foundry Summit. We're in Santa Clara, California. Happy to have my co-host for our day coverage, John Troyer. John, great to see you. Glad to be here, Stu. So, you know, we're reflecting back, you know, the Cloud Foundry Summit has been going on for a few years. Last time I went to it in person was, I believe three years ago in San Francisco was actually the same year as the first DockerCon. But reflecting back even further, you know, Cloud Foundry was founded in 2009 at a little company called VMware, which you and I have some familiarity with. Back in 2009, I happened to be working for EMC, which was the major majority owner of VMware. And John, where were you in 2009? I was at VMware doing that thing, preaching about virtualization. And Paul Moritz was there. There was a growing trend there in the company to be pulling out developer tools. And I think this was one of the really bright ideas that came out of that time at VMware. Yeah, Derek Collison, who's a Cubalone, we've had on many times there, was really the creator there. Back when we were talking about, you know, when we talked about cloud, it was like, oh, yeah, it's about infrastructure today. But in the future, it's going to be as platform as a service, fast forward. I mean, boy, the ebbs and the flows of Cloud Foundry got spun out into what became pivotal.  Paz is kind of in the past now. We've said Paz is Pase. Abby Kearns, who we're going to have on the program, who's the, you know, with the Cloud Foundry Foundation, said that, you know, it's not about Paz anymore. It seems to be, you know, I hear multi-cloud.  What's your take on some of this journey that we've seen, John? Well, I think at this point in the journey, people are agreeing on the messaging and the needs and the things they want to be talking about. In fact, a lot of the messaging of Cloud Foundry, take my code, run it anywhere. I don't care how. The Cloud Foundry haiku is very similar to what you might hear from serverless, right? It's the same idea, different level of abstraction, different kinds of apps. But the idea that developer productivity is enhanced by not worrying about the things underneath them is a clear recognition across the industry today. Yeah, absolutely. And it really goes back.  And you know, what does that mean? Number one is companies, you know, are becoming software companies. So when you hear companies like GE, we're going to have Liberty Mutual on today. And you know, Liberty Mutual says we want to be a software company that happens to deliver insurance.  So it's this transformation, you know, the software is eating the world meme. And right, that differentiates. I want my company to be able to focus on my applications. And where that lives and what's underneath it doesn't matter enough. So right, whether it's Serverless, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, OpenShift are all kind of options to allow me to allow my, you know, my people that write code to work on that stuff. And you know, make sure we get the operators and the infrastructure people involved. Right. I want to consider Cloud Foundry and Cloud Foundry Summit in and of itself. I think it is interesting and people will compare it to things like DockerCon and we were both at DockerCon. I'm struck again by some similar messaging about developer experience and Agile. I think here though, the message much more enterprise ready, the scalability, the management, the kind of business digital transformation was much more the conversation that's going on this week. You know, the Docker experience, the container experience is a lot more bottom up, developer up, one developer kind of engaging in a deployment and a development pipeline. This is more about what does your business need to do to move faster? Absolutely, and this is a foundation show. So what is the state of the ecosystem? Pivotal is the big player here. Pivotal is also a sponsor that allowed us to bring the program there. Really appreciate Pivotal's support to bring us here. But you know, three years ago when I went to the show, it was, you know, IBM and HP, which is now HPE, you know, very heavily involved. Cisco had a decent presence. Now, you know, who's some of the headline companies here? Well, big announcement with Microsoft. Google Cloud is on stage. How does that, you know, changing of who's involved, who's contributing, how many of users are actually part of the foundation in doing things or changing? And as you brought up, very enterprise focus. One of the dynamics I've seen is Pivotal's done a real good job of getting to, you know, the C-level decision makers and help them say, you want to do that whole digital transformation and become a software company, we can help. We have the labs group that will help you along that journey and then they pull the developers in and say, hey, okay, here's the tooling you've got. Let's go write this stuff and they get on board and then they drive that change. Right. You can't look at this stuff in isolation just for the foundation or the project or just Pivotal, right? The other companies have their own journeys. Some of the big ones like HPE and Cisco have recently shifted a lot of their focus and their emphasis on open source and pulled back from other things like OpenStack. And so, you know, I don't think you can put that solely on the success or failure of Cloud Foundry. I think you're also seeing another dynamic, which is the Cloud Platforms, Google and Microsoft Azure, they want to be the best Cloud Platform for everything. They don't want to silo anything, they are welcoming. And so that's an example of them coming in and welcoming Cloud Foundry as one of the services that run great on their platform.  Chip Childers this morning said, I've redone my keynote, I'm just going to walk you through the stack and everybody laughed. But it comes to a point that, what we discussed at OpenStack, John, this is not a simple, you know, shrink wrap software. There are pieces of the component, how it all goes together. Kubo is something we're going to dig into, which is we take Bosch is the multi-Cloud solution for Cloud Foundry and then it says, okay, I've got my Cloud Foundry and I've got my Kubernetes and I can have them kind of live side by side, different from, okay, we're going to take OpenStack and put Cloud Foundry or Kubernetes on top of it. Can I put Kubernetes on top of it? I was talking to some people from Google leading up to the show and they said, well, yes, you can put it on top, you can put it on the side, how deeply do you integrate it? It is still very early days for Kubernetes, even though, you know, we've seen this real groundswell, especially in the developers world. You mentioned we were at DockerCon, we're also going to have theCUBE at KubeCon later this year, so, you know, lots of shows. The maturity level, the adoption, who makes money, so many different angles to get in. I'm excited we're going to have some users on. What are you looking to take out of today's event, John, some of our speakers are beyond? Well, you know, we're here talking to people. So I'm looking at energy and I'm looking at, looking at people who, their vision of the future, what they actually have accomplished, the businesses and the business outcomes that they've achieved. I'm really looking forward to the customers and also the ecosystem, right? Cloud Foundry Foundation is part of the Linux Foundation. How are the different open source components working together because in, we are discovering in 2017 and beyond that all these open source stacks do need to interoperate and do need to talk with each other and so that's something I'm very interested in as well. Yeah, absolutely. Our first guest, Chip Childers, is going to be able to go into a lot of them. As I mentioned, we've got a couple of guests from Pivotal. We've got a couple of end users. We've got people from the foundation. Got a guest analyst, Stephen O'Grady's, got to come on from Redmonk. So got a full day of coverage. In addition to some of the things you mentioned, right, that kind of multi-cloud, how do we differentiate?  You know, you know, Amazon seem to actually get, like denigrated a little bit by some of the comments of some of the speakers, not by the foundation or anything like that, but Liberty Mutual, one of the guests we have on, they run on Amazon. Pivotal started Cloud Foundry on Amazon and Amazon, of course, is the juggernaut in the cloud world. We've actually got, you know, one of our teams are out at the Amazon Public Sector Show digging into that ecosystem. So, you know, Amazon is always, you know, the elephant in the room, if you will, when we're talking about cloud. So how do all these pieces fit together? So I'm excited to dig in. Really glad we can bring, you know, the cube to this event, you know, very much a, you know, t-shirt crowd. We've got the show floor behind us.  I think we're the only ones with jackets here. I think maybe one or two. There are, there's some press and the analysts are here, but absolutely, if we did this two days, we'd pick our favorite t-shirt and throw it on under the blazer. That's kind of the valley way, as you know. All right, so John, really appreciate you joining me. Please stay with us for the full day of coverage. As always, check out SiliconANGLE.tv for this and all the events we're going to be back and we will be right back with our first guest here at the Cloud Foundry Summit. Thanks for watching theCUBE.