So, let us continue quick revision, we said first law is the our understanding of the behavior of adiabatic systems, we define what is meant by adiabatic systems, then we generalize the behavior of adiabatic systems understood that W adiabatic is independent of some paths, so should represent change in some property, that property we took as energy to be consistent with other branches of physics giving you definition of delta E that is thermodynamic energy of the system as minus W adiabatic minus is a matter of sign convention, the second sign convention. Then we did the definition of heat interaction that was this, again mind you there is a sign convention involved here, because we could have defined it as W12 minus W12 adiabatic or we could have defined it the other way W adiabatic 12 minus W12, but we define it this way again as a matter of sign convention, because this way we are consistent with the nomenclature or the convention that the heat absorbed by a system is positive, heat rejected by a system is negative, if I were to define it the other way W ad12 minus W12, it would be heat rejected by the system to be positive and heat absorbed by the system to be negative. For some reason historically and traditionally perhaps because of our link with the calorific calorific theory of heat, calorific was a fluid, so when something is gained it is positive, something is lost it is negative, so we have physicists, chemists, engineers all work with the convention, but a convention that heat absorbed by a system is positive, heat rejected by a system is negative and we are consistent with that definition. Now adiabatic work being independent of the path is first law, defining that as an energy change is the definition of energy, for a non adiabatic process agreeing that W12 need not be equal to W adiabatic 12 that is obvious because we have said first law is actually characteristic of adiabatic processes, so the difference if any is defined as the heat transfer 12. And finally the final form can now be written down as I will just drop the surfaces Q equals W plus delta E, this is the final form for any process, the differential form will be DQ equals DW plus DE, at this stage it is necessary for us to emphasize that DE being the differential of a property is an exact differential like DX or DY, whereas DQ and DW are not exact differential and to emphasize that quite often we cross the stem of these or while typing we prime D prime Q or D prime W, it is not necessary to write it, but what is necessary is to understand and be always conscious of the fact that DQ and DW are in exact differential whereas DE is an exact differential and because of that delta E is a property change, it is a point function difference in energy between two points whereas Q and W are path functions, so if you have the same states 1 and 2 delta E for any process between the two states is fixed, it is even minus E2 whereas Q may be different W may be different if the processes are different. Then again to emphasize that the units of E, units of W and units of Q are the same and this is for any process, this is for a differential process, for a process element and mind you for a small change in state this can always be written, but if you go on accumulating that small change unless it is a quasi-static process you cannot integrate this, whenever it is integration of a differential quasi-static process is a necessary that should again be emphasized. Then let us consider a cycle, cycle means one is the same thing as two and hence delta E is 0 and that means Q over a cycle should be W over a cycle something which we know but this is our proper derivation of that. Now before taking questions which I know there will be a number of them, I will make a statement which had sometimes got me into trouble but I have properly come out of it and that statement is that we should now realize that with in our scheme of things, this is not only is the end form of first law and remember the restriction here is we are considering a process and the process is that of a closed system, we are saying fixed mass we have not considered any mass flow here, but what I am going to say is that we should also realize that this is the only equation being the definition of Q which relates Q to the rest of the world. During our study of thermodynamics if we come across any relation which does not obviously look like this relating Q to something else that relation must be a derivation from this relation, there is no other independent relation linking Q with the rest of the world except of course the second law of thermodynamics where it will vaguely get related to delta S but so long as there is no entropy around purely from an energy point of view this is the only relation between Q and the rest of the world and that relation for second law is a relation for delta S, it is not a relation for Q, this is the defining relation for Q and if you have any other relation that must be a derivative of this and derivable from this, questions. Actually now you adiabatic is independent of path, adiabatic is independent of path you are told adiabatic work is independent of path, adiabatic work is independent of path, but actually the work in general is depends on path, yes general work depends on path and that is why we have said that if a process is not adiabatic the work done need not be equal to each other and the work done hence need not be equal to the adiabatic work done. But if you have two states one and two and execute any number of adiabatic processes from one to two the work done in each and everyone should be the same that is the discovery realization which has been used to formulate the first law of thermodynamics. So what I feel now that exactly is the first law, what I have feel now is there must be a only one path between one and two if it is adiabatic it is true or not, no not necessary that will be true if you say that you have only one mode of work the path is quasi static and may be some other restrictions if you put those restrictions then there will be only one path, but adiabatic means only work done if you have more than one mode of work between one and two you can have any number of adiabatic paths. So can you give example? Examples will follow when we do the example, yes madam. We have come across the definition for adiabatic as where there is no heat transfer we call that adiabatic yes, but there are agree that this our definition of adiabatic means work transfer only after defining Q adiabatic is saying equivalent to no heat transfer, but if you try to define adiabatic meaning that there is no heat transfer you have to define what is meant by heat transfer before that. Whether it is between the system and the surroundings. Okay, but how do you define heat transfer between system A and system B, we have not yet defined before defining adiabatic and hence we will not define adiabatic as no heat transfer. It is another way of saying work transfer only okay, but we say work transfer only because still we define heat transfer we do not want to use the word heat okay just the way we have talked about temperature, but we have not defined temperature so we have not related anything to temperature. In fact you will find that unless we define temperature now we cannot proceed significantly beyond this we cannot solve any problems and that is what we will come to now. Professor the W122 minus W adiabatic 122. Yes. Whether the W122 is greater than the W ad12. No, if it is greater than W ad12 then Q12 will be a positive number if it is less than W ad12 Q12 will be a negative number there is no restriction on the sign of Q12 nothing is greater than something else all I said is it need not be equal to and this need not be equal to as I explained beans it can be equal to it can be greater than it can be less than if it happens to be equal to well that net Q12 will be 0 that will be a overall adiabatic process. If W12 is greater than this Q12 will be positive we will say heat is absorbed by the system in our traditional norm of nature if W12 is less than W12 adiabatic then Q12 will be negative and we will say in our traditional terms heat is rejected by the system. Now the next step is the following it was just pointed out that delta E has different components yes W has different components yes so what we will now do is our first law which we said was Q equals delta E plus W we will split delta E into different components and before that we will split W into different components because W came first. So let us say that W is made up of various modes it could be expansion it could be stirrer it could be electrical it could be surface tension plus what have you more complicated the system more these work modes are possible some of them could be two way some of them could be one way and again I emphasize two way one way because we will come back to it when we come to the next version of the state postulate. Now we also know that energy is not unique to thermodynamics the idea of energy it has occurred in mechanics fluid mechanics electricity magnetism gravitation whatever you have. So we know that E is made up of some components for example there will be a delta E kinetic plus delta E potential of various kinds there could be gravitational potential there could be electric potential there could be magnetic potential so you can even sum this up over all such potential energies of other kinds delta E kinetic would be delta of M v square delta E potential gravitational would be delta M g delta H assuming g is uniform or if you have g varying you integrate it out with local g into dh after taking care of all this if you say that you execute a process in which you assure that kinetic energy is not changing potential energy is not changing of any kind but then the question arises that if I execute an adiabatic process in which I see to it that there is no change in the gravitational potential energy it stays where it is there is no change in kinetic energy my system does not accelerate or decelerate there is no change in magnetic field no change in surface area so all other energies are restricted to not change in that case I can still do work on the system that is a discovery and hence we say that there must be an component of internal component of energy which is unrelated to anything else in physics that component that remains we call it as the thermal internal energy the reason why traditionally it has been called internal is that it does not have to do with anything external like position velocity etc so even other components for example kinetic energy it is measurable my means of velocity you have an external frame of gravitational potential you have to measure something with respect to a datum so these are sort of external variables coming into picture whereas electrical energy chemical energy nuclear energy these are all internal there is nothing external to measure we have the potential inside the charge inside and that gives us the electrical energy the magnetic induction in the field inside gives us the magnetic energy chemical energy depending on the concentrations and the components we can these are considered sort of internal energy we do not have to look at external variables so that is why this thermal energy because it does not depend on external variable depends purely on the local state of the system is known as thermal internal energy but a better nomenclature would simply be thermal energy so our nomenclature would be for this thermodynamic energy or the total energy which contains all components and when you remove components pertaining to other branches of physics what remains is the thermal energy and the traditional nomenclature is u and because we are writing in the delta form it is delta u quite often in our simple problems we will not have other components so it is okay to write q equals delta u plus w but make it a habit force the student to write always q equals delta u plus w and make an assumption that delta equals delta u let the student be conscious of this fact because suddenly you have a problem one problem of a sack falling from a height of 30 or 40 meters if you use delta u you will be wrong because there is a change in potential energy which has to be taken care of whenever a student writes q equals delta u plus w and not delta u plus p dv he should be conscious of the fact that delta e could be delta u plus something else so let him make an assumption that delta e equals delta u when you make an assumption you may realize that look apart from delta u there could be something else and similarly let him write it as w and then let him write as w is w expansion only when he stops at w expansion he should quickly think are there other components read the problem does it mention a stirrer does it mention electrical work all these things okay so it is a good idea to solve our first law problems always from this equation and do not replace immediately delta e with delta e let that be the first step as appropriate. Now look at this equation a simple equation three terms so that means given two terms I can find the third nothing special about it but okay I can measure w if q is 0 I can determine delta e or by some reason if I have measured q and w I have determined delta e but see e or delta u the thermal part of it is a property of the system it is not directly measurable I need some property by which I can have a handle over it so now the question that arises is the following and that slowly brings us to the zeroth law delta e is change in some property now the question is on what does e depend and how that is the next question that we have to solve but since we know that e has a number of components let us restrict our self to u because we know how the other components are evaluated if we know the velocity we know the kinetic energy change if we know the change in level we know the gravitational energy change. So let us ask ourselves the more pertinent question that how is delta e to be related to the property other properties of the state and that brings us to the subsequent section how many properties fix the state of a system is it two is it three is it four and which ones that brings us to the state postulate again and that brings us also to the number of two way work modes this which ones are not really dictated by thermodynamics we will take a forward link to one part of thermodynamics which is known as the phase rule we will not derive it but we will use it because we are going to work with water and steam two phases together the phase rule tells us the conditions under which pressure and temperature are independent and the conditions under which pressure and temperature are not independent that is all it does but thermodynamics using the state postulate will tell us how many properties are required to define uniquely the state of a system but thermodynamics will not tell us which properties and that brings us to state postulate which I may call state postulate one but in most books this is mentioned only as a state postulate hardly any book or very few books we talk of state postulate one which we discussed yesterday that the state of a thermodynamic system can always be defined using only primitive variables it does not say how many but it says that only primitive variables are necessary it may not be always the most convenient one but only primitive variables can be used to define the state the state postulate says that if we have a system fixed mass that means a closed system then the number of independent intensive variables intensive actually because of fixed mass intensive now includes intensive as well as specific equals number of two way work modes plus one this is the state postulate the second part of state postulate and because it is a postulate this is a premise we do not have a proof for this now under certain assumptions about type of system and type of work modes using mathematics one can sort of do a differential analysis and show that this is derivable but mathematics using differential geometry so esoteric that we will leave it at a postulate we will not seek a proof of this now what is the consequence of this remember this one is important and that will bring us to our property known as temperature we have seen that suppose you have a fluid like a gas what is the number of two way work modes it has one so how many properties are required to fix the state of a system of containing a gas of fixed mass two that is all it says it does not say which two okay it could be pressure volume it should be pressure temperature mass is already fixed so that is not a variable or anything tomorrow you define entropy maybe entropy temperature would define the state entropy pressure would define the state entropy enthalpy would define the state so long as they are independent shown to be independent by some other thing the number of properties will be two so this means that we have defined simple systems N2W is one so two properties are needed and this is the reason whenever we talk of air water in some such fluid system where the number of two way work mode is one compression and expansion we always say pressure temperature when we say air at 3 bar 300 degrees we are happy we know everything about the reason we are happy is because of state postulate air being a fluid with only single two way work mode two properties are sufficient but the moment you have a complex system say an electrolyte expand contract as well as charge discharge number of two way work modes is two you will need three properties more complex the system higher be the number of properties needed and at this stage many books will have definitions which we should make the students comfortable with a system which has a single work mode is known as a simple system if that single work mode is that of expansion compression we will call it a simple compressible system if that for example the cell in my mobile it is a simple electrical system because the only two way work mode is charging and discharging similarly you take a simple elastic rod extension and compression is the only work mode assume that it is constrained not to get twisted and bent so we will call it a simple elastic system similarly a soft iron piece assuming that you cannot compress it or expand it you can only magnetize it and de magnetize it that will be a simple magnetic system but if that soft iron piece can be extended and compressed then you can magnetize it de magnetize it expand it extend it compress it that will be a complex system two two way work modes so this way because most of the books will be talking of a simple compressible substance simple electrical substance and so on we will not use the word substance everything for us is the system whatever is inside the system with some substance that is okay but we will always define a simple compressible system because unless it is a system thermodynamic system we will not talk about it so the proper thing would be although the books say substance we will say okay the substance which is contained in that system but actually the characteristic of being simple compressible simple electrical is that of the system so we will properly talk about a simple compressible system a simple compressible simple electrical system and so on and now remember that unless we really talk about properties we are not really worried about what is inside a system we have always been talking about the system inside the system is like a black box so long as we know what its state is it can be anything we all need its properties so we do not really have to be talking about a substance we will always be talking about a system now before we go further we have said that there are substances or there are systems which yesterday I called rudimentary systems here number of two way work modes is zero what is the number of properties needed to define the state of such a system one property and that is good because if we were to have a thermodynamic system with zero property we will get into lots of problems what do we do with thermodynamics so this indicates that even if there is no two way work mode there will be one property needed to define the state of a system what is that one property that is what thermodynamics does not say and hence because of that suppose we have a mercury in glass thermometer the only property we know the only thing which can change is the length of the thread of mercury in the capillary we have mapped it to temperature but the basic property is that length of the thread which can be very easily measured that brings us to the idea of a temperature but we must now formalize what we mean by temperature and for that we move to 0th law I do not have to write off thermodynamics although I should really write it I will leave it to write it but 0th law is unique to thermodynamics for the simple reason I do not think there is any other science which has a 0th law associated with it is there one Newton's law is first second in electromagnetism there are some laws which are but there is no 0th law those laws are usually named after people amperes law and somebody else's law maxels laws maxels relations which come out of all those but there is no 0th law now what is 0th law what is your idea of 0th law let us hear because every textbook has usually it does not have a chapter on 0th law but almost all thermodynamics textbooks for some reason talk of 0th law usually in the very first chapter finish it off in about a paragraph talk about something called thermal equilibrium and say something something and say low and behold something called temperature comes out we will not accept that we want the proper formulation of 0th law so what is your idea of 0th law internal the energy transfer from a to b who is talking the energy transfer internal energy we call it as thermodynamics because it is internal energy is property of a system it cannot be transferred anything which is transferred is only energy is transferred energy is transferred in the means energy is transferred okay way by the way something which I forgot a great analogy before going to this again this is something which you have to impress on your student so I will see let me write this as delta E is q minus w this is another way of writing first law okay just transpose terms delta E is change in property of a system okay this q minus w are interactions between so this is not really complete because we are talking of delta E of a system q and w with some other system but we are not yet talked about delta E of that system okay there will be first law applied to them of a system and between system means there must be two systems involved this depends for this state only on the initial state and the final state these depend on initial state final state and the process detail so we must emphasize on students that q and w are interactions two systems are involved and both q and w are energy in transit that means while doing the interaction of either q type or w type there must be a transfer of energy from one system to another two systems are involved a boundary must be involved unless the boundary is defined you cannot talk of a q or a w okay and there are two illustrations one analogy and one illustration one analogy is that of rain which I found in a book by small book by boxer some 40 or 80 page book so he talks of a cloud okay and then he says well I have converted it to we have a lake what do we have in cloud water in vapor form or in droplet form what we have in the lake is water cloud burst and forms a shower of rain what is rain rain is the interaction between cloud and the water in the lake something comes out of the cloud something goes into the lake so rain is water in transit like heat and work we do not say pavay lake now contains so many meter cube of rain it contains so many meter cube of water the cloud contain cloud can't say oh that cloud has 250 millimeters of rain in it no cloud has so many tons or so many meter cube of water vapor in it but when that water gets transferred to the ground the interaction is known as rain if there is no rain the amount of water in the cloud remains what it is if there is no rain the amount of liquid in the lake remains what it is because of the interaction called rain the water in the cloud cloud depletes sometimes to such an extent that the cloud vanishes water in the lake increases sometimes if initial water is zero a lake is formed that is one analogy and the second thing which we should talk about is there is a neat situation where a small movement of the boundary converts a work interaction into a heat interaction and the situation is that of a break consider a simple situation nowadays mobikes particularly front wheels have what is known as a disc break very clearly seen open mechanism so that is an advantage otherwise drum brakes are inside the hub we do not even see what that mechanism is so now consider a situation where I am simplifying it I have this disc which I am considering as a plate and this is the shoe shoes which are holding it together and the plate is being moved I want to know what is the interaction between the plate and the shoe is it a work type of interaction or is it a heat type of interaction and let us assume that the shoes are fixed to somebody the structure of the car or the motorcycle and the plate is moving because it is connected to the wheel ask them to do the problem using two system diagrams in one case say that the system is the plate itself and nothing else and say that the system boundary is just inside the surface of the plate this is one ask them to redo the problem and say that now the system boundary instead of just inside the plate I am extending it slightly into the this is case a this is case b I will leave it to you as an exercise to do this today evening think about it discuss among yourself and do not be surprised if you come to the conclusion the correct one is in case of a the interaction is a work type of interaction in case b the interaction is a heat type of interaction and all that we have done is moved the boundary of our system by maybe just a fraction of a millimeter but this also means that if I make an adamant choice that the boundary of my system is exactly on the interface of the brake and the shoe then I am at a situation where I do not know whether my interaction is purely a work interaction or purely a heat interaction but if I move it slightly into the shoe it is heat if I move slightly into the plate it is work this is an excellent illustration that work is an interaction depends not only on the two systems but on where the boundary is located of course when you move the boundary we are also changing the definition of our system because the system is defined only by its boundary but this emphasizes on the student the importance of laying out the boundaries precisely because if two students assume two different sets of boundaries hence two slightly different systems the answer can be totally different in one case somebody will say oh it is a proper work interaction the other one will say where is the work interaction this is purely a heat interaction.


I created a Roblox account a few years ago, I was new to the game back then. I enjoyed Roblox and got pretty good at it after a little messing around with the controls. After I figured out how to look at the forums, everyone was talking about a rumor about a mysterious hacker named air underscore cord. I liked scary stories at the time, and I didn't know much about him, so I decided to look up his accounts and see his games. It said he had been banned 32 times for bribing players to come into his house on games where he would then kill them with a knife, admins say he was hacking to give himself weapons, I think so too. After searching up more stuff about him, I found he had a game called Hackered 21. I explored it and it seemed like a normal library, so I didn't spend much time on the game. You couldn't see very well and you walked very slow. I was starting to get nervous when air underscore cord joined, he was there for about 10 seconds, chatted a smiley face emoticon, and left. And he was teleporting around me. Right after he left, I walked over to it. The plaques where he teleported to. I knew it probably wasn't the best idea to go through, but curiosity got the better of me. On the other side was a brick hallway that seemed endless, once I got to the end, there was a white man. He didn't talk at all but when I walked up to him my computer froze for 15 seconds. When it started working again, a message popped up saying you made a mistake all. I took a break from Roblox for 4 months after that. I had decided that Roblox was not safe to join anymore and took a break, hoping the glitch or bug would go away. Four months later. My computer seemed to be working normally and everything was fine, I felt like I could get back on Roblox since I hadn't played in a while. I clicked on the Roblox icon and it took longer than usual to load, once it loaded, my avatar was dressed like reset 1332. I changed it back to my normal appearance. After that, Roblox seemed fine. But I was wrong. 28 days later, I found I could no longer join any games because of an unknown error that kept popping up when I wanted to join a game. I thought maybe Roblox was undergoing some type of new update and was being shut down to update, but I checked the forums and found out there wasn't any new updates coming out. But just then I thought about how 28 days after I made my Roblox account, I found out about reset 1332. I thought it was just a coincidence, and I just shrugged it off and thought it was a glitch. But when I investigated a little more, it all tied back to error underscore chord. I didn't know why he wanted to target me. So I just stayed off of Roblox and played some other games. I continued to forget more in almost two years. But about Roblox and let it slip out of my mind for almost two years. By then I had forgotten all about Roblox. Until I received a letter in the mail, it was addressed to me but it had my Roblox account username on it. It said I'm coming out, error underscore chord. I was scared not only because of the letter, but because he knew where I lived. I didn't feel safe even in my own home, I needed to do something but I didn't know anything about him besides his account. I quit Roblox forever and moved to a apartment far away from where I used to live. Some of my friends say he's still online now and again, I know he is going to get another person to terrorize.


There are many ways to tell a story The most ancient of people's long since vanished still speak to us through their tools of flint and the household shards, which they left behind Others have left us temples and monuments or reveal themselves through their paintings their sculptures their songs or the written word but sounds too are a part of all life and While the sounds of history are gone with the winds that bore them We can reconstruct enough of them from our own experience to tell the story of our forebears through sound From the time of their arrival upon this continent through their trials and tribulations and trials the CBS radio workshop Dedicated to man's imagination The theater of the mind today a Re-evocation through sound of some of the significant themes and development of our country the title sounds of a nation The bells are ringing throughout the land this week Hundreds of bells thousands of bells tens perhaps hundreds of thousands of bells From the clear joyous village bell as pure as virgin landscape to the majestic choirs cast in bronze of the big city of Theatres The little bells are ringing to the proud forlorn little schoolhouse bells Which do double and triple duty on our lonely prairies and in the close held hills and swamps of our south Calling the children to school the grown-up to their meetings and potents and both old and young to their prayers You're too amigo speak out for him over the Sunseer desert Long since gone are the unhappy days when your pioneering mission voice calling man to penance Clashed with the less somber tones of the bells which others brought from their homelands We all now rejoice together. There were no bells in Plymouth, Massachusetts in late October of 1621 11 buildings there comprised a new colony Seven private dwellings each eight feet wide and four built for public use These like the homes constructed of wattle and mud and roofed with bark 50 odd souls still survived of more than a hundred who together had landed there just ten months before There were no bells But there was faith and there was jollity as they called it then when the first Harvard had at last been secured It's a rain but hold off James I was but learning the cause Leave now the calling truth captain standard She felt so some wood for the fire and stay I truly pray to heaven may not rain I know or it might be snow leave now the praying to those who might be more in the habit of it No, James logs go on the fire His cooling in the brook not the red his airing in the shade.  We would be here now idling in We'd be up on the on hill most likely with the others under the thought of this cruel land I but if he the chief brings some of his men as he is wrong to there will not be enough games Up with no fewer than 90 of his selected braves each one places hungry as any pilgrim But as soon as the Indians found out that there was really not enough for the kind of slam bang feast They'd expected they cheerfully offered to help bring in more and So together a pilgrim and Indians set out to the forest the Indians alone brought in four deer Plus no one counted how much other game and the pilgrims contributed their share Not least of all a supply of the potent wines which they had learned from cocked from the abundant native grapes The feast lasted three full days with a half hundred half-starved English pilgrims and 90 odd Indians Stuffing themselves as they had rarely been stuffed before with venison and roast goose roast duck and fricasseed squirrel with black fish and eel Clams and oysters and other shellfish with white bread and cornbread boiled corn and roast corn Wild leeks and onions and watercress mint wild plums dried berries and always the potent wine It was a glorious three days More than 300 Thanksgiving festivals have been celebrated on this continent Which at first seemed so harsh and limitless since that first memorable brawl in Plymouth Each generation since 1621 has of course created its own pattern of living with its own sounds But the basic sounds most expressive of the things for which Americans have given thanks each fall have always returned certain common characteristics Exuberance about life a willingness to face the unknown a fascination with building and creating and a faith in the limitless possibilities of experience A clean sharp bite of a well-honed axe notching the living tissue of forest trees Some as straight and pure as gothic colors They felled them to make masts for the world's swiftest sailing ships or building lumber or paper pulp or just firewood or to clear new land for the planting and The saws the busy saws hand saws band saws two-man saws power saws Cutting an endless supply of boards and planks for more and more homes in more and more towns for more and more Americans and the mallets first wood then iron Riding the stakes which in the course of a few generations made a checkerboard of the new continent a squared-off plaza private domains Then the hammers riding pegs and nails fix the fences fix the shingles fix the barns eating out the yarn rims Eating out rims for the wagon wheels that could travel across the land on roads of clay or sand Pumped with rocks or no roads at all Carrying the ebb and flow of new world humanity Precious produce and that eternal verity the main Oh Tens of millions of us know this sound the blacksmiths shaping the red-hot arc of iron into a horse Conquest of the land and the fencing of it the building of homes and of the furnishings to make them livable The never ceasing cross-country movement of people and of goods all these produced sounds which are part of our heritage And there is yet another sound which our forefathers The pilgrims used the blunder bus inaccurate but loud Then came the flintlock the straight shooting rifle the handy carbine the pistol and the revolver All of them too often misused in needless slaughter most of all of Indians Got about 400 head a guest but look at here boss under what they ain't nobody around can eat that much I'd spring You mean Not all of the gunshots heard on the continent of course were fired in unworthy causes In April 1775 in a small Massachusetts town named Lexington a salvo was fired that was heard around the world The amazement of the world of badly trained highly individualistic band of new world settlers Defeated an organized body of British regular soldiers sent against them to confiscate their stores of powder and shot Once having chosen freedom in preference to security the settlers fought on through a bitter seven-year war the time and souls The summer soldier the sunshine take it will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country But he who now stands Only obtained by the early settlers of our land a one-ton bell in the state house in Philadelphia rang out loud and clear It was rung after that at every important occasion in the development of the new United States But the bell had always been brittle in 1835 it cracked for good Now when the symbolic sound of this broken token of man's will to freedom is wanted It is only struck gently with rubber mallets But the sound of its voice however cracked has attained a worldwide significance Independence achieved the eyes of many descendants of the Plymouth settlers and those who had come after them turned westward To the empty lands beyond the Appalachians which had been ceded to the nation as far as the banks of the Mississippi and Then swept on across the river to the still vaster even emptier regions Which stretched to what seemed like the end of the world the shore of the great Western Let me get my feet on the ground Just pulled in County, Pennsylvania right close by the Virginia line. I'm from Kentucky myself The call me a little bad Dave. Hey, just Josh you like Coming all the way to Oregon. Oh seems like that's what's wearing the most of us that name engines That's what's got my old lady Florence all worked up Independence Missouri in 1846 Those who assembled there came from everywhere and they brought everything their families their belongings their hopes and dreams And when they finally embarked on the Western Trail they carried the mark of destiny upon It was not an easy trip and not all survived it enough of them did however to build an empire By this time the eastern coast of the continent was dotted with cities with cobbled streets and gracious three story houses and other Modern conveniences including slums There were Boston and Philadelphia Charleston and Savannah Baltimore and New Orleans and oh yes, of course, New York Life was gentler there with good manners and parties and a gentleman of course had a carriage It has been a delightful evening You flatter me sir, but so delightfully my carriage is waiting outside. May I might I be permitted to drive you home, sir? I Well, I suppose it would be the cobble streets at times though had to carry more serious burdens than amorous young men and women There were four tragic years when the young union was rent by discord Cities of course were prime targets The bloody fraternal strife was ended at last it sounds never again to be heard in the land one nation Indivisible with liberty and justice for all New sounds by then had joined the national Symphony ever increasing numbers of devoted men of many nations and varied antecedents had long been pushing against the frontiers of human Knowledge and skill and now the age of invention was at hand and our young nation was seizing it as its own Three generations before a Scotsman named James Watt had learned to harness the power of steam to make it work for the benefit of man And The Yankee Eli Whitney was his name had designed a piece of simple machinery Which freed countless thousands in the course of time from the drudgery of cleaning cotton by hand The spinning of the clean cotton and other textile fibers into thread for the weaving had been attended to by an Englishman among others James Hargraves by name I Because doesn't have other men working each on his own produced a baker's dozen of ideas Which in the aggregate made the weaving of the thread into cloth to a mechanized process? Yeah in New England just like I hear it in the old country Which is all them ideas about gin in and spin in and we then them all together That is a steam engine The flood of inexpensive fabrics dazzling to the feminine eye Mr. Robert Fulton having heard of experiments conducted by others had installed a steam engine on a riverboat and hitched it up to side paddle He had turned the waters of the world regardless of winds and currents into fast dependable highways for the transport of goods And a fella called Stevenson over in England is somewhere Started pulling whole wagon trains with one of them steam dinguses a locomotive. He called it He put him on rails first of course. Well, sirie Bob, you couldn't put one like that over on us We had the same kind of things running down to Washington almost before the old Baltimore could get its last horse off on them wooden tracks And then from Albany to Schenectady and back on down to New York and out to Buffalo and Chicago The other way and then still further west until believe it or not in 1869 they drove in a golden spike out there in Utah some place And joined up to an Emory Alliance Time to a closer and closer knit spider web of copper wire began to cover the length and breadth of the continent Symbolic among the many strange sounds which were forming a new pattern Invention an industry in which we still live was one in particular This is the sound of a monument Weighing many tons built to temper and shape the steel which was asserting itself as the world's new master The backbone of national economies the measure of their prestige and the gauge by which even a people's potential to wage war was soon to be judged This sound not only set the tone for the transformation of our nation from a basically Agricultural to an industrial one, but also quickly became a pie pie post melody for work hungry Peace hungry opportunity hungry men and women throughout the world Responded by the millions abandoning their old homes to follow the rainbow trail to the new world and to partake of the new The hands and heads of the newcomers helped to make the nation a giant among the world's giants and also to shape new Syllables for the nation's vocabulary of sounds They took up places amid the awesome rumble of the steel rolling bills They manned believers which controlled the doomsday platter of the sheet steel plans And presses which now she pulled for the bottom of your body's a single brief embrace The bones are a air-driven chisels Newcomers brought with them many skills acquired in their ancient homelands They learned many new ones from the conquerors of the new continent Until the efforts of the two merged in the brotherhood of creative labor Embracing everything from the smallest detail Such as the ingenious testing of the jewel-like steel balls which cut down friction in our machines and transport vehicles From the smallest to the largest Grims might easily have learned to enjoy that last sound Strange as it would have spin to their ears the factory whistle It may tyrannize our lives, but it also brings to us the welcome news It's time to go home you have been listening to the CBS radio workshop and the sounds of a nation Sounds of a nation was written by Henry E. Fritch with music adapted and conducted by Alexander Steinert and Produced and directed in New York by Paul Roberts Louis van Rootman was heard as the narrator others in the cast included Leon Janney Ruth Tobin Ralph Bell Millicent Brower, Herm Dinkin, Raleigh Bester and Joe Helgeson This is Dick Noel inviting you to tune in each Sunday afternoon for the CBS radio workshop Your first opportunity since the Israeli Egyptian war to hear Israel's point of view expressed by her Ambassador Abba Eben in a live question-and-answer session will come to you tonight on face the nation For another timely interview with a key figure in the news Here face the nation on most of these same stations tonight and for suspense which follows immediately over most of these same stations America listens most to the CBS radio network


Hi everyone, welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, Code Pink's weekly YouTube broadcast of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. This week I am proud to be in conversation with activist academic journalist and my friend Roberto Lovato, whose memoir Unforgetting, a memoir of family, migration, gangs and revolution in the Americas was released on September 1. Welcome Roberto, I'm so pleased to be in conversation with you today. Great to see you through this medium Terry. So when I first approached you about doing this conversation. I asked we talked about how we want to focus the conversation today and there's so many angles and so many themes that you present in this book and I just want to show the audience this is this is the new book. And you've done many, you've done quite a few interviews prior to the to today, and you said I want to talk about me as a US citizen, which of course you are you were born in San Francisco to Salvadoran parents and reading the book from that perspective as a US citizen was really in a way it was liberating for me to some of the things that you cover. The things that really hit me with this is when you talk about getting your papers and we'll back up for the audience as to how you got to Salvador and needed a new Sedgilla, etc. You wanted your papers in Salvador to say Roberto versus Robert, which was on your US passport and for me when I read that all this stereotypes and history of immigration to the US just started kind of pouring into my mind as to how when you come here, you're basically in subtle ways and an overt ways told to just forget where you came from forget the history of your country or culture your language, whatever violence you you fled whatever economic educational back of opportunities you fled you're here now, and we become this kind of mix, I wouldn't even call it a culture when when, especially reading your book and you when you when you talk about the richness of the Salvadoran culture. So that to me was a real like strong theme about just forgetting in general. But in the case of your book, you are also talking about the violence that that so many people forget on all levels emotional violence, family violence, state violence military violence violence, and leading to the into getting in order to survive. And that seems a lot of what you in this book is a very personal journey and a very personal unraveling for you but getting tapping into the some of the violence that occurred for your family or father specifically. Yeah, I you hit on nail on head I wrote the book. You never I don't think you I don't write with one singular purpose I write with different motives. One of my major motive for writing unforgettable was to simply get my story down on paper that I've witnessed over the last, especially 30 years of my life with the between El Salvador and the United States. It's obviously a personal story and you know tells a story of a family of family secrets. But it's also about the secrets of nations, nations like El Salvador, nations like the United States, and the way that these secrets can often have violent effects. So if you look at, for example, in the beginning of the book I have a quote by a great theorist of nations, Ernest Renan, and he basically says that forgetting is at the core, and at the beginning of nations. It's a fundamental part of it or the way I like to say is if you look under the hood of any nation you're going to find the bones and bodies of indigenous people and others slaughtered to create these ideas and so. You know, nations are very nations like progress are very genocidal concepts that have material effects and so the material effects trickle downward through the family. And what I call my SHI blank theory of state and family violence and so my mission in the book is to link my experience of family to my experience of the states of El Salvador and the United States and the violence between them. So it's an underworld journey of anything you know I go into the underworld journey of my family history my father's history which is very intense in terms of the kinds of violence that my family lived through in the 1930s in El Salvador during the age of when the Salvadoran government killed. Something on the order of 10 to 30,000 people we don't know in a matter of weeks and one of the most singularly violent episodes in world history as far as the numbers of people killed per day per month per week in a concentrated space, according to scholars at Oxford that I've interviewed. So the book also is is is a way to look at the present violence of say the government and the gangs in El Salvador that are perpetrating extreme violence themselves right and, and I do mean government because often time in the gang equation we leave out the government part and the counterinsurgency policing that was brought on by characters like those in my book like a guy named Attorney General William Barr of the Bush administration. Who's who's who's back, who's back with us and talking about gangs again he talked about gangs and he and he deployed massive FBI resources to begin the quote unquote gang war that we now know in the United States in the 1990s after the He's now back and after prop 187 here in California. Yeah, yeah, we were there. Yeah. So let's talk about, let's talk a little bit about the history of these gangs because this is something that he is really lost now in the US media and and therefore in the US narrative that these these gangs, particularly MS 13 were created in the United States. In Los Angeles, by young people who had no families who had come here either on their own or lost family here, Salvador and specifically Central Americans in general, and already there was a Mexican gang in existence. But this you talk in your book about where the term Mara comes from and how it really was about friendship, friends gathering families friendship gathering and how that whole term has been bastardized at this point and and and is and refers to a real significant form of violence but let's talk about the founding, the creation of the of the Mars in LA just so our audience has a really clear understanding that it is not the story we currently here. Yeah. And as I document in the book. The get the word models. I didn't even know what it meant I grew up with it. I was in the 70s in El Salvador I was, I was visiting El Salvador my family there. And you know people would call themselves La Mada, which was basically friend group of friends, hanging out on a corner playing soccer or playing or or or or different games hide and seek and it was La Mada. And so I watched as that word suddenly was adopted by young men in Los Angeles in Los Angeles Pico Union area where I work at an organization called caress and what was then called the Central American refugee center in the early 90s. And we were serving the Salvadoran and Guatemalan communities, providing legal services, etc. And we were our clients had these kids who had these tattoos with MS Mada, and we started kind of encountering these gang members who were coming together primarily at that time. Before that, like in the 80s, they were, they came together to listen to hard rock music like Metallica, Ronnie James deal and other kind of music that they liked and to protect. But they eventually found themselves having to protect themselves from larger better structured gangs, like what, like the bloods, the crypts, and the Mexican mafia. And so they had to start buying, you know, getting more formal and hardened to protect themselves in this environment. And to name themselves they call themselves Mada they took the word friend and applied it to them because they were friends who were listened to to rock music. Eventually, though that word has come to mean the heart of darkness evil quote unquote to everybody from the Obama administration who spent a lot of money researching and trying to help create this image of the evil quote unquote gang member, and now the Trump administration, the Pentagon, the US Southern Command, a number of scholars that I've been tracking over the years who have kind of made an industry out of the creation of enemies, you know that justify militarism in Latin America, and drug war in Latin America and drug war and police militarism here and now you have them fused in this thing I call, and that others like Stuart Schrader called counterinsurgency policing. Um, you know, as you know in the book I track, and I show the way that the models were used as a justification for this counterinsurgency policing that was brought by Salvadoran US Pentagon trainers who were training desk was in El Salvador came after the 90s after 92 came to LAPD and other police departments in the US to train the local police departments encounter insurgency gang policing. So it's complex this gang equation it's but it often excludes the police part of the equation and I put it back in. And so it's a really important variable and again, it's a very violent variable in this whole physical enforcement of a whole legal paradigm a whole and a whole national paradigm of who and what I would say the United States is, you know when we first talked about, Oh, having this conversation I had thrown out I'd like to talk about how those of us in the states are now seeing us foreign policy coming home, and if influencing domestic policy. Now say having read your book twice now that it really is about US domestic policy being exported that violent expansion of the of the US. And as you said earlier the genocide of of a hot and entire race of people is something that's that is part of US history that is rarely talked about, certainly not to the extent of the violence and heinous act that it was. That's used, you know, and then you go in to talk about this in 1930, 1932 El Salvador but it had already happened here in the States. And so to me it's almost like we're, we're seeing I think I really had it backward when for myself thinking about US foreign policy coming home and talking to you and reading your book it really is more of an exporting of US violence, which you and the later book, you know say is necessary for all empires to expand and I really hit me very hard to frame it that way. And I believe it's more accurate. Yeah, it's a it's a complicated. Culture of violence that is part of the core functioning of states right one of the things that defines a state is the control of violence. Right. According to political scientists and those that are into that. I think that. Yeah, it is an exporting but I prefer to talk about circuits. Because if you look at El Salvador right you have us trainers from the Pentagon going and training the outlook battalion that wiped out 1000 people in 19 December 1981. Half of those people were children under 12 half of those children under 12 were under six. I've seen the bones of those kids. I've spoken to people that have witnessed similar massacres. I was there when some of those massacres were happening in the later part of the war. And so, you know I come back from El Salvador to Los Angeles and I see the LAPD starting to get like you remember Adam 12. I don't know if you're. Yes. They're uniform really thin. Right. And I start button down shirts really thin and suddenly the police uniforms are getting puffier to the point of the Robocop uniforms that we have now. Right pretty soon they're going to be so puffed up beyond Robocop they're going to be like those inflated. Those inflated you know in the Macy's parade what do you call them. Yeah the inflated giant balloons right militarized because that's what they are the inflation is a is a as a reflection of of militarism in of US policing and so when those Pentagon trainers came from El Salvador for training the outlook battalion and the death squads. They came to the United States to start training the police. And that's when you start seeing this counter insurgency policing of what was known for example of the as the crash anti gang units. Right. And they targeted the gangs they started making the gangs more violent by pitting them against each other falsely arresting them, killing some shooting them in the back. You know doing all these things to divide conquer and kill the gangs so that they became more more violent. And my book is a is a is a personal telling of the wind of having witnessed all these different circuits because then remember those police and LAPD went to train El Salvador in some cases. In the post war era of the gangs in El Salvador so you have the US gang structures being born with the help of, of William Barr, and then you have William Barr sending US style policing to fight US style gangs. And then, you know it's astonishing the way that these circuits work. It's the same. I mean, I think you it's the same sort of circuit with with the arms trafficking from the US into Mexico. Yeah, and then back and forth. Yeah, and it's, it's very insidious and the fascinating thing with the gangs in El Salvador is that they originated here, many of the members US born and and then all deported to El Salvador. And so there's that exportation again and then how it all, like you said, I think circuit is a really brilliant description of it. You just mentioned, you know, in, in talking about all this violence that you've seen, you know, you've seen the bones of victims from 1932 to present day.  And one of the things you mentioned is in your book is how important these forensic anthropologists are. And as far as discovering the gravesites as far as defining, you know, determining how people died, but also in that process, allowing families and friends to recognize the death of a family or friend, and to start or I guess I will say to stop forgetting to start on forgetting, which allows for healing and moving forward. Thank you for bringing that up because with all the violence of El Salvador's history because it has been one of the most consistently violent places on earth since its founding in 1821. And with all the violence, what tends to get lost in the, in it is, is the tenderness like I like to say the, my journey is one to, to excavate the terror tenderness that survives the terror. And there's a lot of beauty in my book. I try to put a lot of beauty in my book I did the best that I could to put the beautiful and the sublime that I've encountered because I already saw what was coming like a lot of us in 2015. The journey of this book, and of writing it, that where the world was going and I anticipated that we were going to have to. I was, I wanted to contribute by bringing out whatever Jedi knowledge of transcendent knowledge I had about sustainable struggle. I've been in it for those that know me since the 1980s, early 90s up to the present, whether it was joining the FMLN guerrillas, whether it was as a journalist, whether it was co founding different organizations that have like presented the work, and that have done work of solidarity and others. There's always an undercurrent in my work of beauty and the sublime there's a, I like to say the strategic value to the sublime and the beautiful right now that we need to understand. That's why in the content and in the form that I wrote. I try to make it as beautiful as possible. And the beauty is contained in two of the dominant metaphors. The beauty is sewing my grandmother was a seamstress and my grandmother would take disparate pieces of a cloth to create these beautiful dresses for the prostitutes of the shanty town that she lived in in San Salvador during a great depression that made Steinbeck's dress look like a wine festival. You know, and so my grandmother in her mathematical and creative beauty would just size up somebody literally and create a dress for them that gave them some of the dignity back after La Matanza for example had erased indigenous identity as a public thing. In the same way and they were you know it's my grandmother was giving that person a piece of the dream that they had in by the same token right the dream of having dignity of being an indigenous princess in the case of one prostitute my my grandmother live next door to by the same token the forensic specialists sewed together that story so together the bones of a deceased this apparecido person to tell the story of what actually happened what were the final days of that person like to then give to the family. As I as I narrate the story the bones and therefore the beginning of some closure and the beginning of some unforgettable that I think individuals and families and nations have to undertake right now if we're to fight the the enormous crises we face we have to we have to have a political vision that it doesn't just look forward but that also looks backward in a clear way. And that's I think what the foundation for solidarity and and revolutionary politics of the future are So I'm thinking about a number of things simultaneously now what is coming right, you know, understanding the understanding the past and coming to terms with it is so important on on all levels moving forward and yes on a global scale more important now than ever. Particularly for young people, we older people really need to do the unforgetting to help them create a better planet for themselves and I I see that in so much of your personal story with your father because you as a young man really struggled without your, without your father, or because of your father's forgetting quote unquote, because of your father's forgetting that did not allow you as a young man, his son to really understand yourself, your family, your bicultural heritage, it was made for a very confusing frustrating and at one point violent youth. And I'd like you to talk about that because I think it's so important what you just said is for us as nations to come together and to forget, understand where we came from in order to go forward as peoples, and not just simply nation states and I think that is the experience of your personal life is really analogous to that. And that's kind of one of my points in my book is to show the connection between the person on the political. They really always are connected. My first rage against authority was against my father. You know, and like psychologists like R.D. Lang, you know, from the 60s, who wrote a book called the politics of the family and the politics, another book called the policy of the experience. You know, tells us that the first entry point for the state in our lives are in fact our parents to their subconscious, the way of the state propaganda education and other things insinuate themselves in the family. Families unconsciously sometimes adopt beliefs and words and beliefs that are kind of messages from the state. You can see Donald Trump doing it, but you could also see Barack Obama doing it. They're just different forms of the same thing. And so I was aware of this and I wanted to kind of show in my own example, the way that I was, I led this kind of crazy life and doing things that I didn't know why I did them, whether it was becoming, you know, a violent kid and, you know, engaging in criminal activity, or joining the FMLN. I didn't know why I did. I just knew that I wanted to do that. And then I go in, I discover a secret that I can't share with the, with the audience, Terry, because I'd be given away the whole book. People get angry with the story. So there's a big atom bomb of a secret that my dad has that I discover and that discovery of that secret. I hope and I try to show is the thing that connected my gut, literally my intestines, the tightness and trauma that I contain in my gut to, you know, it's umbilical connection to state violence. Right? Yeah, tightness in my gut was connected to the state violence of history that I didn't even know I was caring. But then I find out I did the excavation.  And it's been so liberating for me to write this book because I now have an arc explaining, you know, myself to myself, but also explaining my father. And it allows me to be more tender and loving towards my father who I had a lot of anger towards, because I understand more deeply what it was to live in the Great Depression. That made John Steinbeck's Great Depression look like a wine tasting, right? So, um, yeah, the healing is real in the writing. It's, you know, it's a fascinating read and it is, you know, it is a multi-level analogy. And the thing that really came through for me, you mentioned that you were, you know, careful to be sure you talked about beauty. And I think in the unforgetting, we re-encounter our humanity. That the forgetting is kind of pushing, you know, to heal emotional scars, physical scars, so that we can survive. And everybody has different levels of forgetting for very different reasons. And the whole nation-state forgetting is causing, you know, so much of the violence today, as you mentioned earlier. But that aspect of humanity that you keep bringing back into the book, the women you talk to who I think one young student in LA who talks to you about the garden she was sequestered in and climbing the trees and having this beautiful vision. The vista of the countryside, the fruit she was able to eat, and you just, you know, those are very human sentiments and experiences among all the physical violence. And I think that those moments that you bring out are so important. And I love the sewing analogy, the creation out of, you know, pieces, which is what so much of society is. Particularly, I would argue, for immigrants, like your parents and my grandparents coming to this country, these pieces that they bring with them, and what do you do next? You know, and your grandmother made beauty, made beautiful dresses out of remnants. And I just love that whole telling of her and her ability to create out of just remnants. And as you mentioned, that's the bones, the bones of these from these mass graves are remnants of physical remnants of human beings, but also remnants of people's lives, their greater lives, not their individual lives, but their families and society as well. Thank you. Thank you. That's what I was trying to do and I hope to elicit that in the reader. There's a third layer that's kind of unspoken. I kind of hint at it at the end. That's what, so what a forensic scientist did do, or what my grandmother did in terms of piecing things together. I try to do with words and you can see it at the end of the book where I'm at a table at Labouin coffee shop here in San Francisco in the Mission District. The table is a is my favorite table when I go there, people that know me here in the city. No, I'm in that corner, when we're not in COVID-19, working on my computer on top of a table that is a converted sewing machine that still has underneath the table. It still has the gears and they and the and the and the treadle of the singer sewing machine, the iron horse. And I'm typing there. I'm almost revisiting my grandmother being on my grandmother's lap as she was kind of creating the conditions for our livelihood in San Francisco, coming from the desperate and just devastating history of El Salvador coming here and showing those those close together to make us sustainable. I'm trying to do the same thing with our words by taking the fragments of my life and the experiences I have, one of which which I think is especially important to your audience is the experience of solidarity. Solidarity. I was part of, you know, the solidarity movement here in the United States, I was with care and with the committee of refugiados, and I actually made a point to try to draw out the beauty of solidarity and because there is a beauty and kind of connecting with something so far from us.  And I'll never forget him and others or people that I met in El Salvador who are, you know, guerrillas and guerrillas from Mexico from Spain from across the world I mean the way that, you know, the way that the way that say Hemingway or Orwell see saw solidarity with and of the Lincoln Brigade in Spain. I saw the solidarity in El Salvador in the same way as a heroic act. And so I try to do at least a little bit of justice to that beauty, the beauty of that is his heroic act of, of joining a people struggle across borders, which I think is fundamental and seriously lacking right now here in the United States in our concepts of politics even on the, even on the left. Especially on the left, I would argue lost. Yeah. Yeah. And if it doesn't matter what race you are whether you're white, black, Latinx or whatever you call yourself. There's a, there's many people whose concept of politics is limited to the borders of the United States. And that's already. That's already basically an embrace of empire at a certain level, when, you know, when, when you fail to see the global context that the United States is in, and the connections, whether it's through immigrants through trade, through militarism through police models. If we fit, we're not going to get anywhere being boarded off in a multicultural movement. I, I could care less to Beyonce is somebody's ally, quite frankly, Beyonce is class wise, a billionaire. I don't know any billionaires who are our class ally.  So, anyway, I don't want to get distracted by Beyonce and all, but my point is, the concepts of politics are, I think are dangerously boarded off and I'm, I'm sharing the experience in my book of solidarity and of revolution, in order for people to as an active political imagination, so that people kind of start thinking about politics in the way we did in America Latina. Well, I have to say, you mentioned solidarity and my activism interest in Latin America really began when I was in sixth grade my sixth grade teacher introduced me to Mesoamerica and pre Colombian cultures and at that time I was growing up in the Catholic Church under liberation theology which you touch on in your book to as well as evangelical religions, and all these years in and out of Latin America and some just touching on work and and and then at other points in my life, you know, it being 100% of my time and work as more now. I have to say and I say this was great sincerity of all the solidarity movements groups of people communities of people that have made the biggest impression on me are the Salvadorans specifically those with a history in the fmln, as far as understanding and as far as understanding organizing and being able to come together and not be, I guess, petty about identity and things like that that there's the ability for Salvadorans to organize is impressive. It's rapid it's solid and people just come together and make things happen and I have consistently seen that over the years. And you see it with other organizations as well and other groups of people but with the Salvadoran community, it is consistent and has been consistent for the last 3040 years. It's very impressive and it was really something admirable. I tried to get at a little bit of that political culture that you and I both partook of and I mean I don't put it in the book but my theory about Salvadorans and politics and why, for example, one of every three people had adopted organized politics at the height of the war. And I saw in the article in 1989 about how there was a poll that said one of every three people was organized against the Salvadoran state and had adopted radicalized politics. So with some things like the density of El Salvador, very tightly small population, you also have like La Matanza creating sadly a more homogenous culture so that you don't have the organizing issues that you have in a place like Guatemala, we have to organize across different, a broader space of geography and a broader expanse of languages, for example. Right, you have all these different Maya Quiche, Maya Canjoval, different identities, thankfully, thank goodness, I wish El Salvador had more indigenous identity than it does but it's been forced to go underground. And so for different reasons, yeah, I bring that into the book to show the spirit of the matter that made Salvadoran organized one of the most thrilling experiences for many of us to the point where the CIA, for example, said that Salvadoran opposition and people's movement was one of the most effective people's movement in the Americas in the 20th century. And so I try to, in between the lines I'm doing my best to show whatever Jedi knowledge of revolutionary kind of organizing and spirit I could amass. But I do it through the telling the story of actual people who were revolutionaries and what they taught people like me. So I am thinking about several things simultaneously that you mentioned, you know, the Salvadoran culture being more homogenous since 1932 and that being part of the ability to organize, unlike a lot of the cultural diversity in Guatemala. And when I was reading your book, you know, you have so many synonyms you use for forgetting and one of the things that was that I've heard over and over again in Guatemala, specifically since, you know, the Maya people were given genocide status by the UN and how they were able to, after the attempt to completely exterminate them in the 80s, they talk about memory, which I think is, you know, their historical memory and not, they had to get to a place as a people, the Maya people where they could start talking about what happened to them their women specifically get the men talking about what happened to the women in their in their culture before they had to do this memory before they could actually admit the genocide and then petition for that status from the UN and I just think that's just one more heinous example of, of what people suffer. But what has to be done, first that unbearing that excavating unbearing that unforgetting that has to be done in order to heal and move forward on, you know, Absolutely. I wish I wish I had the time to do another book on Guatemala. You know, I think we have writers like Hector Tovar and writers in Guatemala who are far better equipped than I am to tell that story as there are Salvador and other writers actually I want to make that point to is that I mean, mine is just one story. And one of my motives for writing this was to demonstrate in fact that Salvadorans and Central Americans in the United States have the ability to tell compare as compelling and powerful a Salvadoran and Central American story has non Salvadoran and non Central American writers in the US have won prizes for I'm not criticizing any of those writers, but the fact is you can look into your bookshelf. You don't have any books about Central Americans, non fiction. This is the first non fiction book by a US Central American about Central Americans, published by a major big five publisher Harper Collins. So we've been here for, since the 19th century, and in large numbers since, you know, the 1950s. And so there are reasons that we haven't been afforded the space to tell our own stories including for example, the fact that 1% of books in the space are Latino Latinx books by Latinx authors 1%. So, and we're within the margins, because you've got to remember the big groups in the Latino Latinx space are Mexican, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Dominican and Cuban right I mean those are in the sense. Those are the ones that are recognizing in the case of Mexicans. It's a colossal community that has no literary publication record in the US reflective of its numbers. And that's not the Mexican and Chicano spot. That's the publishing industry fall because most Mexicans are on this side of the Appalachians rather than on the other side in New York.  You know, the good part of the Western United States was part of Mexico and Spain at one point in time. And so you, you know, and there's that whole violent history as to how those Texas in particular how you know became, you know, part of the United States and they just you to not have more stories like yours. Or, or, or migrants who just who not even born here don't you know to hear those stories as to what the heritage is why people come I think it's intentional I have to say it's part of the it's part of the US nation state forgetting so to speak. I don't think you can erase a community of 60 million people in film in Sunday news shows in the political narrative of the United States, and in literature and other cultural and media systems with such just totality without it being having a degree of intentionality. And I think it's a it's an intentionality of a country that doesn't feel it can move beyond a black white narrative of itself. Many scholars of race and identity in the United States. So we had what known as the black white binary the conception that the United States is primarily just black and white and so, you know, you see this and, and, and, and those of us of who are neither black know why, although Latino is black right after Latinos are a large population and they're either. So, you know, those of us outside of that equation, kind of see this conception that's very obsolete and actually dangerous when you look, for example with the numbers of people identified it under this category of Latino whatever, getting COVID-19 the children among children the largest group that's getting COVID-19 or chill or Latino children. Of, you know, you know, death by police we're not hearing about the killings of young men here in San Francisco in Fresno in LA and out throughout the Southwest and on the East Coast, we're not hearing about that. We're coming upon Latinos to bring that up. And we are but we have to push even harder because the system doesn't seem to want to seem to say there's already enough room. And God bless the black community for for for for leading the way to abolishing police and and and bring in our awareness of the prison system and what's happening to black bodies. But, you know, we're going to advocate for our own dead and our own youth too. Otherwise, they're going to be continued slaughtering our youth with impunity and with invisibility and forgetting and forgetting. And then we just and then we have more young people suffering. You know, a childhood as as you did with the lack of understanding with the lack of knowledge with the lack of connecting any sort of continuum about your, your family or culture and yourself as an individual. That's exciting to me right now because I'm already getting responses from people who like yourself have already read the book. I got these notes from these young Salvadorans and Central Americans, and they're on fire for this because if only because they've never seen themselves in on the written page in the English language to read about themselves, they have to go read stories like Roke d'Alto and Claribel Alegria and Latin American writing, but they have no stories, except in in smaller presses and hard to get to spaces like an anthology that I was a part of called The Wandering Song, which is great, but you have this out of print, because it's so doubtful. So there's not a lot about us. So when these kids are seeing a major publisher with publishing a book that's about us. And coming out of the United States written by born here about us here. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a it's a seminal moment. And that's not even saying if the writing's any good. I mean, I don't know. I'll let the critics be the judges. I'll let the reader. All I'll say is that I put in total to make it as sublime and sublime and beautiful as I could, because I recognize not just for those Salvadoran and Central American kids but for those of us on the left those of us in solidarity. I use my book as an example of what I call the strategic value of the sublime and the beautiful at a time of epic crisis right now. Like I said, we're not going to face what we're facing right now in the world. You know, whether it's Trump, economic decline, you know, of neoliberalism that's continuation of neoliberalism, the militarization of our inner cities. COVID-19 and then if we deal with that, then we're going to have to go toe to toe with climate change. So we're not going to Democrat liberal or progressive our way out of this. We're going to have to develop something of another order. And I think that that that other order has to include the spiritual power given to us by the sublime and the beautiful that makes for sustainability of struggle. It's a fantastic story and I really, I'm so, I'm so happy that you wrote this. And I think that the message for all of us is really that you share is really, really profound.  And I know, Roberto, I promised you 2030 minutes today and we've been talking for almost an hour and I'm so thankful for that. Is there anything I want to show the audience your book again. Can you sit. Yeah. And read it and buy it read it and read it more than once, and then share it. Is there anything that that we should add to our conversation this morning before I let you go. You know, I, I would just add a big thank you to you and coat pink Terry for your work I've known you all for many years and you've been with it.  I want to commend you for that and thank you and especially with the work with America Latina that Medea and others have held. I also want to say that I just hope people understand my book is at its core a very hopeful book. It just takes a very underworld stark dark journey that I took so that you didn't have to to tell the story, but I do it with the intent to bring out the tenderness that survives the terror the stuff that we're going to need for a sustainable struggle. And I guess a lot of folks are struggling right now to, to find their way in struggle and in just living. And I would ask people to read my book as a, as my blueprint for how to survive an apocalyptic age.  Thank you so much. Thank you for your time I'm thankful for your work and for your friendship. And, and thank you for this lengthy conversation I know you gave me so much more time than, than we had initially talked about. So I want to tell our audience that a conversation can also be heard Thursday on code pink radio broadcasting on WPFW DC WBAI New York City simulcasting on both stations, 8am Pacific 11am Eastern and then re broadcasting again 730pm Eastern. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. I'm going to reread your book now with yet more insight and I'm so thankful for the, the, the political analogy that it offers and it's so hopeful for young people and it's marching orders for us older people. And I think that you know one of the things I'll just say real enclosing because you mentioned the underworld and, and it makes me think of the responsibility of us older people which, which indigenous cultures so understand that older people are to leave the world better for the upcoming generations and you talked about going under into the underworld into the dark space but also you tell an indigenous story about that and how the, the bones of the people in the soil are the fertilizer for the life above, so to speak. Yeah, and I think that's that's a wonderful story and I think that's what we all need to be now the fertilizer for the future. Thank you. Thank you so much Roberto. Always wonderful to see you and speak with you. My pleasure, Terry. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.


nd a clear vision to help them to grow their businesses. Today's debate simply reinforces a view that I have long held that if we focus solely on the how much, how fast and when, then we are collectively failing our constituents to help Scotland to be the digital country that it could and should be. I will endeavour so to do. I have enjoyed most of this debate this afternoon, and as Mike Rumble says, there has been some excellent contributions from across the parties. I am pleased that, in the latter half of the debate, there seems to be more of a shift towards recognising that the need to have proper digital connectivity in Scotland in the modern world is now absolute, as Kate Forbes eloquently argued. That is not a disagreement between the political parties. I thought that Mr Kelly made a telling speech. I was grateful that he did so to point out that, for many people who have lower incomes, who are from deprived communities, they have a lesser rate of access to the internet and, in addition to making the point, that for accessing things like certain benefits and also most types of transactions in this day and age, access to the internet is becoming, if not essential, nearly essential in many cases. I want to stress that that is something that we take very seriously indeed. For example, 99 per cent of Scottish libraries offer free public wi-fi and that was following a level of Scottish investment, but there is much more to do. The other point that I wanted to make about that is that, in designing Scotland's new social security agency, we have been clear that we will offer support through a variety of different channels and we will offer assistance to those who want to apply digitally but lack the skills or technology so to do. I want to place that in record because I think that Mr Kelly was really the person who devoted his speech to that topic and a very important one it is to. I think that there was perhaps too much time spent over percentages. My late father reflected somewhat mischievously or even cheekily that he was an accountant and he opined that 50 per cent of the people do not understand percentages. I do not imagine that that is true in this place, but certainly we have got a big bog down with percentages. Let me try to deal with the basic points that I think this debate emerged. Everybody agrees that access to high-speed broadband is important. We in the Scottish Government think that 30 megabits per second, and that is now the definition of superfast. It was 24, it has gone up to 30. That is the standard that we should aspire to and that 10 megabits is too low. There is another point that I believe is the case from speaking to people in commerce, and that is that where the USO in Scotland 10 megabits, that would lead almost entirely to wireless solutions. It would not lead to fibre, because those providers would not be able to do so. Were it not for the fact that we are coming forward with R100, I do not believe that we would be able to complete the task. There is a difference here of principle, because Kate Forbes made the point that we believe that in order to equip Scotland digitally, there needs to be public and private sector working in partnership. One alone will not work. The private companies are investing in our towns and cities, and indeed there has been a plethora of recent announcements, all of which I welcome. We do not prefer an individual company, but we have welcomed all of the major announcements over recent weeks by commercial companies. It is also true that they will not cover our remote parts, and that is why the public investment is so necessary. The public investment of £600 million is the largest investment in any single project that has ever been in the UK. It will focus on an outside-in approach, and I think that Rhoda Grant made that point. I am bound to reflect on other countries, such as Estonia and Germany. A long time ago, I decided that the outside-in approach was necessary if their rural communities were not to be left behind for precisely the same reasons that the market would not be able to do anything other than fail those communities for very simple reasons. There is an intellectual divide between the Conservative party and the rest, and it would not surprise me if that is how matters rest tonight at the vote, although I very much hope that it will support our motion. I also think that, as I argued before the select committee, that the case for having a UK body, which presumably would be chaired by Mr Hancock, a committee on a standing basis involving the DAs, is absolutely essential, because in order to equip to complete the task with the least difficulty in the most friction-free pathway, we need to align the 10-meg USO with that part of the R100 project, which involves those to whom we will not be able to connect by means of fibre. In the statement to Parliament in December, I clearly stated that £600 million is an initial investment, explaining that it would deliver a superfast access to a significant proportion of unserved premises. I also clearly stated that I did not expect it to deliver 100 per cent coverage on its own. There will be further phases through which we will ensure that superfast broadband reaches each and every premise. However, the initial phase is the key one, and extending a future-proofed accessible fibre network into remote rural areas will provide the essential platform for delivering superfast broadband for all. We expect that our record investment will deliver a fantastic coverage outcome for pushing new fibre into rural areas. However, we are planning for the possibility that that may not complete the job, and we are scoping options for future phases that may include a superfast voucher scheme. However, we will only know, and it will only be possible for us to know whether that is necessary after the procurement process outcome. After all, until that tender process is completed, it will not be possible for us to know what the commercial companies in the various three segments will deliver. Incidentally, I wanted to reply to Mr Greene. I am in charge of the project. The buck stops with me. I have clear responsibility. There are clear lines of responsibility set out. I do not think that there is any confusion whatsoever. That is why I am so determined to work with everyone to discharge those responsibilities. I will certainly give way. Rhoda Grant, just based on the comments that he made about being unsure if R100 would reach everyone, what does he assume it will reach, and how long will the others wait? R100 is designed and our aim and our plan and our determination is to reach every home and business in Scotland by 2021. The question is how many homes and businesses will we be able to deliver through the first phase of £600 million, and how many homes and businesses will receive their connection by means of fibre. The benefits of fibre are clear in terms of future proofing the speeds at which access can be obtained, but it is not possible that members may be interested to know under state aid rules to mandate, to require, to prescribe that fibre is used as opposed to various other alternative technologies. It is undoubtedly clear that a voucher scheme of some sort will have to be considered, and only early next year will it be clear whether that is necessary. The point that I want to make is that, if it proves to be necessary—and it may be that that is the more likely scenario—a fair amount of funding from the UK Government would, obviously, assist us in achieving that end. Mike Rumbles I thank the cabinet secretary for taking an intervention. What would he say to putting into the tendering process a request from the people that are tendering that, when they actually do the work, they would be, by an area basis, able to tell people when their work would be completed? Happy to confirm to Mr Rumbles that, just as soon as the tender process is completed, the tender process is under way. It was announced to Parliament before that it is under way at the moment, and it is set by a process of competitive dialogue. As soon as that process is completed, there will obviously be an announcement as to the plans that will take place. I very much hope that we can reset the relationship with the UK Government. I very much hope that Mr Hancock will acknowledge that the UK Government, as he admits, has the responsibility for the internet and for mobile telephony. I very much hope that he will accept that that responsibility brings with it a financial duty. I very much hope that he will accept a message from this Parliament that the contribution of just 3 per cent of around £21 million, of a total initial estimate of £600 million, is simply insufficient and unfair. I very much hope that that argument can be advanced over the coming weeks and months. However, the Scottish Government is absolutely determined that Scotland will see our citizens and our businesses having access to superfast broadband at 30 megs, not 10 megs, and everybody should do so by the end of 2021. That is our pledge, that is what I am determined to deliver. Thank you very much, and that concludes our debate on Scotland's digital connectivity. We turn to decision time. I remind members that if the amendment in the name of Peter Chapman is agreed, then the amendment in the name of Mike Rumbles falls. The first question is that amendment 12010.2, in the name of Peter Chapman, which seeks to amend motion 12010, in the name of Fergus Ewing, on Scotland's digital connectivity, be agreed. Are we all agreed? No. We are not agreed. We will move to a vote. Members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 12010.2, in the name of Peter Chapman, is yes, 28, no, 84. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. I remind members that if the amendment in the name of Colin Smyth is agreed, then the amendment in the name of Mike Rumbles falls. The next question is that amendment 12010.3, in the name of Colin Smyth, which seeks to amend the motion in the name of Fergus Ewing, be agreed. Are we all agreed? No. Are we all agreed? No. We are not agreed. We will move to a vote. Members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 12010.3, in the name of Colin Smyth, is yes, 104, no, 2. There were six abstentions. The amendment is therefore agreed. The amendment in the name of Mike Rumbles falls. The amendment in the name of Mike Rumbles is preempted. The final question is that motion 12010, in the name of Fergus Ewing, as amended, on Scotland's digital connectivity, be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Thank you. That concludes decision time. I close this meeting.