Well, hello and happy new year. It's Sandy Allnock and I have some new goodies from Daniel Smith. They sent me five new colors of paint and I'm gonna do a wash and ink today, keeping it easy, keeping it light and talking about delight. But before I get started, I wanna let you know I'm not looking at what I am putting on screen. I'm just sitting here with my microphone talking and telling stories and then I will edit the video on top of that. So don't expect that this is gonna be a play by play. But the colors that I'm using, as I said, were gifted from Daniel Smith and I will have more on the blog if you're looking for specific swatches of them and the properties, et cetera, will be listed over on my blog. But I decided I would just play with the colors, kind of let them run across the page, see what happens, do some fun things with pouring water on it and then some pen and ink work because I thought that would be a nice relaxing way to start the new year just some taking some delight in color and line. So speaking of delight, delight is my word for 2023. 2023 is a new brand shiny spanking new year and I am just happy to kick 2022 to the curve. I don't know if anybody else is, but let me tell you a little about where 2022 even came from and what I learned from it that has led me to the word delight for this year. So in 2019, 2020, I guess it was, I started noticing some things changing in my business because I depended partially on students taking classes and then partially on affiliate sales as a card maker. And I started noticing drastic drops in income from the affiliate stuff. I wasn't sure whether it was the card making industry having issues or whatnot, but it just kept getting worse over the years. And by the time the end of 2021 came, I was faced with realizing that it was actually one of my partners that had some issues on a website where I was not getting what I was due. And rather than continue that and trying to make something work that just wasn't working and wasn't workable, I decided I just had to move on. So I decided last year in 2022 that this would just be the beginning of something new and began to do more general art instead of card making. And that has led to a lot of really excellent things. Last year, I had a huge jump in my international followers, subscribers here on YouTube. It used to be like 75% in the United States and now it's only 48% in the United States and there are just people all around the world who are watching my content. So thank you all. The age range is also dropping. I used to be mostly in the folks my age. So middle age and upward and way more female. And now we've got some guys coming along. So I am super excited about reaching new audiences and new people. So I'm grateful for the subscribers who have joined in this past year especially. But as I started working through last year I had three words that I chose for my focus. I had never done that before but I saw a lot of people doing it and I said, well, what the heck? I could try it and see. And it actually helped me learn some things about myself. So I chose three words, rest, grow and play. Rest, I rocked. I got an A plus in rest last year. I wanted to rest from work because I was a workaholic and I was just doing too much. I cut back to two videos a week instead of three occasionally three last year, but usually two. And it was great. It was less pressure to produce, produce, produce. I was able to create more content for social media because that's quicker. And I took lots of walks with the dogs. I think we walked 95% of the days in 2022. So instead of me sitting at a park on a bench while they ran, I got the exercise with them when we walked every day. That was fantastic. And I also got more naps in. And naps are always good. I endorse naps 100%. They are fantastic. Then I also, you know, started looking at growth. And as an artist, I do believe I grew last year. I tried new things, new mediums and found some things that I didn't think I would excel at that I really did. Very excited to see where wood burning is gonna go because that was way, way, way, way fun in the last quarter of last year. But in terms of my business, I was hoping the business would grow as well after having had so many challenges for the last few years before that. And that didn't happen for a couple of reasons. One, of course, is inflation. A lot of people did not have the ability to invest in their art education because they were busy trying to pay for gas. And then there's also social media and social media changed some algorithms on all the platforms. And it's just really hard to get seen. It's hard to get outreach to new people as well as to be seen by those who are already following you so that you can tell them that you have a new class. And small businesses are just really struggling with that. So I had that as an issue. But one of the other things that I was hoping would compensate for all that would be that I had an app. And last January, I launched an app store and I wanted that to be a really great thing and it sucked, it was so bad. And thank you to those who gave it the good college try with me and participated in my challenge in the summer to try to get more people to use it. And it just was a terrible platform. So even though I was committed to pay for it through the end of 2022, I decided to also move over to Mighty Networks. And so I was paying for the last half of the year for two big platforms that way. And it was really brutal to the budget, but it was worth it because the art venture community on Mighty is just fantastic. If you have not been there, I highly recommend coming over and joining in. It's free to join, at least for now. I may end up eventually needing to charge a little bit to come and be a member. But nonetheless, it's a fantastic place. We had a holiday card swap last year and it was great. People were sending cards to each other for the holidays and then we had a big zoom when people revealed the card that they had received. And then the person who made it said, oh, I made that one and here's how I did it. It was just a blast. We played bingo, we had prizes, it was great. So we're hoping to do more of that kind of thing. And I'm gonna be having some people from the community join in and help out with moderating it and stuff as well in this new year. So app, the big app that I launched in January, big fail, art venture, better recovery and hopefully moving forward, that's gonna be a good thing. Then the last word for last year that was a big fail but I learned so much from it, it was the word play which you would not think would be so hard to do. Why is play so hard? Well, I ended up doing some things that for me were play. Like one of the videos I did on YouTube was painting a stick. And you know, okay, painting a stick is a little weird of a thing but hardly anybody watched it. I came away from that experience feeling really burned. Not that I was mad at anybody for not watching it but I just thought, maybe I don't know what I'm doing. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Maybe I need to go just get a job at Starbucks. I don't even drink coffee but like I kept thinking maybe I need to just go get a regular job and not do this anymore because I am apparently clueless. I don't know what to do. And I had some other things where like classes didn't take off the way that they normally used to. And I didn't bother to think, well, algorithms are blocking people from seeing some content. So maybe that's the problem.  Maybe it's like finding better ways to reach out to people. Maybe there's something else to do instead of just dunk on myself. But that wasn't where my head went because I ended up feeling like I couldn't play. I had to strategically think about the content for everything and is this something everybody is going to be interested in? How do I get people to pay attention? And I think if I change my word instead of being play to being delight, that's gonna be a better focus for me because if I focus on what delights me then that's gonna come through to other people. In the same way that I tell some friends who also do videos and they say, why do you always sound so good on your videos?  And if you're smiling, that comes through even though you can't see my face, you can almost hear it in the words. You can hear it in the tone of voice, et cetera. And I think the same thing would happen with my artwork. If I delighted in what I was doing, other people would delight in it. And I think I forced too much. I was trying too hard to be pleasing instead of trying to make great projects. So this year I wanna focus on delight. I also chose the word delight because of where our society seems to be nowadays. And it's just, it's kind of weird. Everybody's on the frayed edge all the time, it seems. And maybe that's only where I live but I was at the post office on Christmas Eve and I had a couple packages to mail. And while I was walking in, there were a couple cars trying to back out at the same time. I think it was three or four cars. And nobody wanted to let anybody else go first. And they were yelling at each other out the windows of their cars. All kinds of profanity, it was bad enough. And then one of them leaned on his horn. The other two guys also leaned on their horns. And I went in because I was just waiting to see if there was gonna be a weapon coming out at any moment and they were gonna duke it out in the parking lot. I didn't know what was gonna happen. They finally did, I guess, one of them must have allowed the others to leave or something because they were gone by the time I came out. But I was struck that people were doing this on Christmas Eve. Oh my goodness, what happened to us? How did we get to where we are? It's as though we've all forgotten that sense of delight and wonder in life. We've forgotten how to be polite. We've forgotten how to have patience with people. We just don't do that. We don't show anybody any grace, any gratitude. I mean, it's just unbelievable. And if we lived in a land of delight where we were looking for the good things, we were looking for the things that made us happy and smile and even the tiniest things, then we would be willing to wait 20 seconds for somebody else to go in front of us. We would hold the door for another person. Those little things are what I think used to hold society together when we felt like we were in this world together and now we walk around with our fists up in the air ready to defend ourselves or attack someone else. But in the land of delight where we can live, we can park there, there's a lot of good to be seen. And if we live there, if we hang our hat on the hat rack when we walk in the door and we unpack our suitcase and decide we're gonna camp out in delight, then that's gonna help us to see things differently. It's gonna help us to see people differently. We're maybe no longer gonna be ready to be their victim at the drop of a hat. Maybe we can let go of resentments from 50 years ago that we're carrying around now that still make us feel like a victim to that 50-year-old injury. I don't know where every person watching this video is at. I don't know what your issues are. I know what mine are. I know I'm gonna try to let go of some of those because I wanna live in delight. I wanna become a person who passes that on to others. And I know that if when I smile while I'm doing a voiceover, while I'm telling a story, if you can hear that and that brings a smile to you, then maybe if I live a life of delight and people see that, then that also can pass on to other people. So I invite you to join me if you wanna live there because I think there's probably a lot of room. Everybody else is living in anger and resentment. So it's crowded over there. Let's move to the good place. Now, if you would like a little bit of delight in your home, I'm gonna post the painting, drawing. I don't know if you call a wash and ink thing a drawing or a painting, but I'm gonna post this piece which is called Delight in my Fine Art Shop. So if you'd like the original, you can go purchase that if that's already sold. You can go to society six and go get a print of it and hang it up in your studio, put it in your workspace. I don't know, put a little print of it in your car if you need to to remind you to live in the land of delight while you're on the highway.  I'm gonna carry the word around in my head and try to see how that changes me in the year 2023 and let me know if it changes you. And do you have a word for the year? Have you chosen one? And if you haven't, maybe you should. What might it be? One last note before I go, I'm gonna have my big videos now on Tuesdays and Saturdays instead of Mondays and Fridays. But on Fridays, we have a card making short every week. So stay tuned for that. Subscribe if you haven't, make sure you turn on notifications because I hear only 7% of you have your notifications turned on so that you can join me here on Friday for a short and Saturday for a gouache video. And I will see you then, take care, go make something amazing. I will see you later, bye.


The dramatic events, as witnessed all over the planet in prehistory, would send civilization back to the primitive state for 6,000 years. That is, if you consider this event having taken place right around the time of the last Ice Age and perhaps the Aurora was responsible for ending the Ice Age cycle, shifting Earth's settled pattern of behavior. Why does the Easter Island Rangu-Rangu inscriptions show characteristics of the petroglyphs found all over the planet? Are the Nazca Lines a massive manifestation of the Aurora? Immortalized in the geoglyphs and the Nazca spider is definitely showing a design of what the ancient earthlings were seeing. It seems they tried to make sense of what they were seeing in the sky by comparing the phenomena to shapes of animals that were of the earth. These shapes of characteristics are matching up with astounding accuracy all over the place and it seems these civilizations who created them were stuck at these locations for sheltering as the immense discharge of plasmatic activity unfolded before their very eyes. Conservatively between 15,000 to 11,000 years ago, the planet earth experienced a series of climatic fluctuations. It is widely thought through study of the geological layer that extreme cold made it very harsh in some regions of our world that is habitable today with continental glaciers extending much further than they do today, but the climate started to warm and temperatures suddenly reverted back and this triggered a cold spell known as the Younger Dryads period. Based on Greenland ice core data, the Younger Dryads began and ended very abruptly with the start dates to 10,900 B.C. and its ending the final warming beginning around 9,700 B.C. and may have occurred within an incredibly short period of time. Almost overnight and this confounds researchers because it is unclear how our planet was habitable during the previous couple of million years settled period, but we do know there were golden elements during this so-called ice age. The civilizations who flourished in the apparent ice even tell us as much. They don't tell us that it was frozen, they tell us it was golden, the golden age. The Hindus and the Egyptians tell us this was before the current wave of existence that is before 5,000 years ago and that puts it past the Younger Dryads also because of the dark age that followed the Younger Dryads before the reemergence around 5,000 years ago, but how do we explain this pattern of abrupt climatic shifts? Perhaps a comet was responsible as Robert Shock and many other leading researchers have pointed out. A comet hitting the land or a shallow ocean or exploding above the land's surface, scattering dust and debris into the atmosphere could cause global cooling, but what about the warming events of 10,000 B.C.? In years past, Robert Shock had speculated that comets hitting deep oceans were responsible. A comet might break the thin oceanic crust, releasing heat from the hot magma beneath. This would trigger vaporized and displace water terrain down on Earth, releasing tsunamis that would wash across coastal areas, warming the Earth. But even with a comet or a series of comets bombarding the oceans, could the warm happen as quickly as the Greenland ice cores indicate? The mind-blowing similarities found in the petroglyph and pictographic records that relate to geoglyphs and even the undicipered Rangu-Rangu inscriptions of Easter Island may prove to be the biggest uplifting of answers ever formed in the minds of Earthlings separated by thousands of years from the minds of other Earthlings, reaching across time and reality, and delivering a message that could hold answers to our very existence on the planet we call home. But first, before the realization, let's do the homework. Let's sort the facts from the fiction and establish something missing from the existence of every Earthling alive today. The truth about our existence. We have to consider the concept of the fourth state of matter, plasma. Plasma consists of electrically charged particles and these phenomena are no strangers to stargazers anywhere and everywhere. With familiar plasma phenomena including lightning and the aurora borealis and australis is also the sprite phenomena. In the past, much more powerful plasma events sometimes took place due to solar outbursts and coronal mass ejections from the sun. But the sun has not always been alone in the sky display. If the petroglyph records matching up all over the world are to be believed, then solar emissions from other celestial objects are not a possibility but a historical fact. Powerful plasma phenomena could cause strong electrical discharges to hit Earth from electrical plasmatic exchanges between planets in the solar system. Burning and incinerating materials on our planet's surface, as Dr. Anthony L. Peratt has asserted and established that petroglyphs found worldwide record an intense plasma event in prehistoric Earth. Anthony has determined that powerful plasma phenomena observed in the sky would take on characteristic shapes resembling humanoid figures, humans with bird heads, sets of rings or doughnut shapes and snake shapes reflected in countless ancient petroglyphs and seemingly assimilating into the worship of gods leading to the birth of religion in Egypt, Mesopotamia and above all other influence also on Easter Island. The most remote location on the planet. The Easter Island Rangu-Rangu inscriptions remain a great deluder of observable hope. Recorded on antique wood tablets stands a great testament of the Aurora event. Characterized on these symbols are the same shapes as found on all other worldwide petroglyphs. The unmistakable similarities are a shocking tribute that is only being realized in the 21st century. Robert Shock has concluded based on Anthony Peratt's groundbreaking observations that the Easter Island Rangu-Rangu tablets record a major plasma event in the sky of prehistoric Earth thousands and thousands of years ago. This was the event that brought a final close to the last Ice Age. Plasma hitting the surface of Earth could heat and fuse rock, incinerate flammable material, melt ice caps, vaporize shallow bodies of water creating an extended deluge of rain and send the climate into a warming spell. The release of pressure that follows the melting of thousands of meter thick ice sheets can induce earthquakes and even cause hot rock under pressure to melt and erupt to the surface as volcanoes. The world was in chaos and this is the event recorded by petroglyphs and the Rangu-Rangu texts. How the Easter Island residents constructed the Great Moai is unclear, but the fact that Akivi Moai axis of the platform was oriented from north to south, getting the face of the Moai looks exactly at the point where the sun sets during the equinox of the Astral Spring, September 21st, and their backs face the sun of the dawn during the Autumn Equinox, March 21st. Among the oddities of Easter Island are the low-lying solid thick wallstone buildings with narrow entrances that look like bunkers or fallout shelters, and the strange stone houses of Easter Island are similar to the structures formed by the walls and pillars of Gobekli Tepe. Could they, in both cases, have been protection from some type of phenomena emanating from the skies? Maybe this is the same for Durinkyu. Maybe the ancients built bunkers to shelter from the plasma strikes, and what world did they leave behind, you have to wonder. According to standard chronologies, Easter Island was not inhabited until a mere millennium and a half ago, but do we really know when Easter Island was first colonized? And even if surviving Easter Island antiquities and structures are from a relatively late period, they may reflect much more earlier traditions and styles, perhaps brought by settlers from elsewhere that date back to a time of intense Plasmatic Aurora Discharging, and the Rangu-Rangu tablets may carefully preserve ancient texts that were copied over and over reflecting patterns in the prehistoric sky of our planet. The Easter Island Rangu-Rangu script, it could be argued, records plasma events in the ancient sky, so too might certain carved motifs found at Gobekli Tepe. The connection between bird man petroglyphs and plasma phenomena around the world, on Easter Island we find bird man petroglyphs as well as bird men and bird symbols among the Rangu-Rangu hieroglyphs, and even a great tradition of the bird man remembrance and a Gobekli Tepe, a very similar bird form was carved into the pillars. Dr. Purrat records many plasma phenomena that can be interpreted as having the appearance of snakes and numerous snakes are found on the pillars of Gobekli Tepe, slithering vertically up and down the ends of some of the columns. Could these represent huge thunderbolts of plasma? Plasma hitting the surface of earth could heat and fuse rock, incinerate flammable material, melt ice caps, vaporize shallow bodies of water, creating an extended day luge of rain and send the climate into a warming spell. The release of pressure that follows the melting of thousands of meter thick ice sheets can induce earthquakes and even cause hot rock under pressure to melt and erupt to the surface as volcanoes. The world was in chaos and this is the event recorded by petroglyphs, geoglyphs, and the Rangu-Rangu text. The plasma event eradicated advanced civilizations and high cultures of the time fusing large sways of built-up areas to verified states and the radiation emanating from the plasma may have affected mental and physical abilities. This could be the basis for the nearly universal myth of a golden age, a time when beings on earth had mental abilities, far surpassing those of later times. Plasma and electrical discharges hitting the surface of earth may have been responsible for the vitrification of ancient stone structures seen in some parts of the world such as various hill forts in Scotland.  The ancient civilization migrated away from an event they could not escape and as it intensified they sought shelter in caves under cliffs and dwellings built of thick stone or carved into mountain sides. Perhaps Gobekli Tepe was intentionally buried in an attempt to protect it from an ongoing plasma events in an effort by the priest of old to send this information through the ages. Perhaps these places were meant to be recovered in the aftermath of an event that lasted longer than they had anticipated, so long in fact that they became forgotten about. The documentation of these events are the petroglyphs and other inscriptions now being recovered into a better understanding of the past. One that makes more sense today than the concept of time itself, only being in a primitive age and bewildering our state of being, but what do you guys think about this anyway? Comments below and as always, thank you for watching.


Now, as gunshots echo across the wind-swept snow-covered reaches of the wild northwest, Quaker-pop wheat and Quaker-pop rice, the breakfast cereal shot from guns, present the challenge of the Yukon. It's Yukon King, swift as some strongest lead dog of the northwest, blazing the trail for Sergeant Preston of the Northwest Mounted Police in his relentless pursuit of lawbreakers. Gold, gold discovered in the Yukon, a stampede to the clandike in the wild race for riches. Back to the days of the gold rush, with Quaker-pop wheat and Quaker-pop rice bringing you the adventures of Sergeant Preston and his Wonder Dog Yukon King as they meet the challenge of the Yukon. Bellows and girls, listen, today's the day. Yes, in just a few minutes you're going to get in on the surprise offer of a lifetime. It's thrilling, it's terrific, it's new, it's different, it's something you'll want to have. No, it flashes red, no it flashes green. It's out of this world for secret codes and messages. It's not on sale in stores anywhere, you've never seen anything just like it. So listen to this, Quaker-pop wheat and Quaker-pop rice, the keen tasting, ready to serve breakfast cereals shot from guns, are offering every one of you listeners a chance to get one. And what is it? Just stand by, have pencil and paper handy, keep listening for full details in just a few minutes. Midwinter winds, lash through the main street of Dawson and beat at Dave Carson, publisher of the newspaper as he made his way to Arnold Blenheim's bank. The clerk, a man named Slade, stepped up to greet the publisher. Well, Mr. Carson, I declare it takes more than a blizzard to keep you from carrying on your business. Hello, Slade, weigh up this gold and put it to my account. Gladly. Oh, by the way, Mr. Blenheim hoped you'd be in today. Why do you hope that? I don't know his bank any money. Oh, no, of course not, but he'd like to see you. Well, well, well, just the man I want to see here. How are you, Carson? How is everything at the movies, baby? That's right. I'll go and weigh up this gold. Carson, I've just learned a few things in which your newspaper might be interesting. Yeah? You're familiar with a young engineer named John Bevin. What about him? He came here several months ago with his attractive wife and an elderly gentleman, his father, I think. Since then, a number of heavy shipments of equipment packed in wooden cases have been unloaded here, Dawson. I might add that it's expensive equipment. I happen to know because the payments have been handled through my bank. I know he's received a lot of heavy equipment. What about us? Well, Bevin is supposed to be prospecting up near Gopher Rapids.  He's not? The equipment that Bevin has bought and paid for is not mining equipment. No? No. It's electrical equipment, heavy iron castings, wire magnets, things of that sort, and machines that have been shipped from a place in Orange, New Jersey. Some fellow there by the name of Edison. Why are you telling me all this, Blenheim? You want me to publish it in my newspaper? No, no, no. But, uh, Carson, something is going on at the Bevin place. I happen to know the house he's built near the Rapids is much larger than he needs. That, uh, that man is up to something. And, uh, I've learned that John Bevin is an engineer from the east who studied electricity. His father helped build the telegraph. He's a scientist. And I tell you, Carson knows Bevin's will bear investigation. Maybe so. If, uh, I were you, I'd send a man up to go for Rapids to learn what they're up to. I'll think about it. Here you are, Mr. Carson. Here's your slip. I've credited three hundred and fourteen dollars to your account. Oh, thanks, Slade. I've got to get back to my office. You, if he go with what I suggest. Yeah. I'll take it over. He'll do it. Do what, Mr. Blenheim? Send one of his newspaper men up to go for Rapids to investigate the Bevin. That Slade is where you come in. What? Get a couple of men to help you. Be ready to move if Carson sends out a representative. What do you want me to do? Get the reporter before he gets to Bevin's house. Have him held while you take his credentials and go in his place. Find out all you can about the Bevin's project. Have you any idea of what he's doing? He's trying to harness the water power of the Rapids, make it run what is known as a dynamo to generate electricity. He's there. He has a dream of sending electricity here to Dawson and using it to light the buildings. I must know whether or not Bevin is going to be successful. If not, I'll have no further concern. But if he is, I want a finger in the pie. In fact, I want the pie. Slade lined up two men who were willing to do anything for money and held himself in readiness. Meanwhile, Dave Carson considered the bankers' suggestion. The more he thought about it, the more he became interested in the activities at Gopher Rapids. Randy, this suggestion comes from Blenheim. But it's good in spite of that. Boss, I never heard of anything good in connection with Blenheim. You like this one. You're going north to go for Rapids. That's two days on snowshoes if the weather isn't too bad. Two days going, two days coming, three days there. You should be back here in a week. I provide you with identification papers. And I think you'll find John Bevin willing to talk. See how he's coming on his plans to light the town of Dawson with electricity. Is that what he's doing? Hopes to. He confided in me when he first came up here but asked me to keep quiet until he saw how things would work out. He knows he can trust me. That's why I think he'll give you the facts true. Get your gear together and be ready to leave here tomorrow morning. Brighter than early. Randy set out on schedule early in the morning and made good time that day and the next. Late afternoon found him pushing through the darkness following the bank of Gopher River on the last few miles of his journey. Slade the bank clerk was waiting behind the big rock on the trail ahead and with him were two hard-faced men. There he comes, Greed. That's the man.  Yes. I am up and take him to that shack nearby. Clean out his pockets. You can have the cash, but bring me his credentials. How's Savvy? He's nearly here. Step out and meet him. We come over here, sure. All right, mister. Hi, Sam.  You're covered. What's your game? We want you. This is the time you've made a mistake. I've got nothing worse to do. We'll be the judge of that. Cover him, Greed, or clean out his pockets. Maybe you're expecting someone else. I'm Randy Cole representing the Dawson Herald. Here's a wallet. There's no cash in it, just a couple of letters. Oh, still. I have a hundred dollars in gold in my belt, and that's all I have. There's a watch. That watch was my father's. You can't have it. Ah, heavy watch, too. Give it to me. Steady. Give me that watch, I tell you. You can have my cash, but that's all. Don't fight me, will you? Why do you... I'll show you. Oh, get him. Oh. Oh. Here, there. Yeah, that did it, you. You shot him. Sure I shoot him. You saw him hit, Jake. He flamed the embossed, my Joe. Glad you got him, Greed. He asked for it. See how hard he's hit. We've got to take care of it. He don't need no care for it. It's dead.  Now we are in trouble.  I told you I didn't want you to hurt him.  I let him slay what you told us and what's done at two different things. You wanted the letters he was carrying, didn't you? There they are in the wallet. I think we can't leave him here in the snow. We won't leave him here in the snow. No need for that. We'll go for a river close by. Yeah, and it's running full too, Greed. Sure. We just toss him over the bank in the stream. We'll wash him away. Chances are he'll never be found. Yeah, grab his feet. No, no, wait. What's the matter, Slade? Wait until I'm away from here. I'll take the wallet and go on to the Bevan place. I'm going you to get rid of that yellow back. Be careful what you say. Remember, I'm the one who's paying you. Speaking of that pay, when do we get it? You wait in that shack you spoke of, the one where you were going to hold a newspaper man. I'll join you there after I've spent a few days with Bevan and his father. Dave Carson waited impatiently for the return of his representative with the story of the activities at Gopher Rapids. The allotted week had gone by in two days more, but Randy had not returned. On the third day, the publisher was pacing the floor uneasily when the door opened. Sergeant Preston, am I glad to see you. And King. Hello, cousin. Did you just get into town? Yes. Sit down, Sergeant. Thanks. You've come at the right time. What's wrong? Sergeant, what do you know about John Bevan? I've been to Gopher Rapids. Not a great deal. He's doing something with electricity. Yes? Then you knew it. Yes, I did. The point is just this, Preston. I have a fine young man working for me, a chap named Randy Cole. I met him last time I was through here. Oh, that's right, so you did. Well, he went up to Gopher Rapids to see what he could learn about the Bevan's activities. He was due back here three or four days ago. I haven't heard from him. I have a feeling that something's happened to Randy. I'm going up that way. I'll look in on Bevan. I wish you would. I'm wondering if maybe Randy learned things Bevan didn't want known. Bevan is playing for big stakes, Sergeant. Almost anything might have happened to Randy. I have some things to do here in town. I'll take a couple of hours. And King and I will start out for Gopher Rapids. It was supper time, but Sergeant Preston didn't pause. He pushed on hoping to reach the Bevan home in time for the evening meal. He was striding along the bank of Gopher River when suddenly King stopped. What's the matter with you, King? The big dog had caught the scent of death close by. He looked at his master, then barked once more and bound it to the left of the trail where a steep bank dropped sharply to the edge of Gopher River. Sergeant Preston watched his dog curiously. He's caught the scent of something. Then at a moment King was back whining and tugging at his master's clothing. That is a whine. You found something? King had found something, and he thought the Mountie should see it. All right, King, you didn't tear my clothes off. I'll go with you. It's on the bank, eh? The snow's deep here. Old River's running fast. It keeps going like this all the time. King was near the water's edge, pawing at something dark that had been partially covered by snow. Then the Northwest Mountie was beside his dog. A man. Dead. Shot. The cold moonlight was brilliant. It revealed a face that was familiar to Randy. King, it's Randy Cole. He's been murdered. We'll continue our story in just a moment. Now then, fellas and girls, here it comes. Here comes the hottest news since gold was discovered in the Yukon. Right now, you're hearing one of the keenest offers ever. It's something made especially for you. It's the new official challenge of the Yukon secret two-way signal flashlight. Yes, today you can send for your two-way signal flashlight that flashes red and green. Listen to that. This is no ordinary flashlight. It's special. It's new. It's different. It's a real flashlight that flashes red and that flashes green. Think of it. With a simple flick of your finger, you can send out beams of red light or beams of green light. Did you ever hear of anything like it for sending or receiving secret codes and messages? Why, it works much like blinker signal guns used by the Army and Navy. Yes, listen. This is a secret two-way signaling flashlight. It has a special plastic directional signal barrel. That means you cannot see the red or green rays except from directly in front. That's to prevent others from detecting your secret signal flashes except the person at whom they're aimed. Man, oh man, what fun you'll have. Say, you can make up your own code to signal friends. For instance, one green flash and one red flash might mean come at once. Two red flashes might mean danger. Stay back. And listen, this two-way signal flashlight is handy pocket size. It's less than four inches long. Imagine, you can carry it concealed in your pocket anywhere without anyone being the wiser. And it's real keen-looking too. Your official new challenge of the Yukon signal flashlight is shiny black and it has Sergeant Preston's name in his own handwriting across the side. What's more, this special signal flashlight comes complete with standard replaceable electric bulb and battery. Send for yours today. Send now for your secret signal flashlight, the amazing kind of flashlight that's two-way, that sends out beams of red light or beams of green light. All you do is send 25 cents in coin. That's all, just 25 cents and one box top from a package of delicious Quakerpuff wheat or Quakerpuff rice. Print your name and address and send it once to Flashlight, Chicago, 50, Illinois. This official two-way signal flashlight is not on sale in stores anywhere. To get yours, remember, send only 25 cents and one box top from Quakerpuff wheat or Quakerpuff rice. The swell tasting breakfast cereals shot from gun. Hurry, be first to get yours. Don't delay, address your letter today to Flashlight, Chicago, 50, Illinois. I'll repeat, that's Flashlight, Chicago, 50, Illinois. Now to continue our story. After King had found the body of the murdered newspaper man, Sergeant Preston hurried over the last few miles to the home of John Bevin and his wife and father where he was warmly greeted. Come on in, Sergeant. You too, King. Thanks, John. Dad, you remember Sergeant Preston? Indeed I do. Yes, sir, indeed I do. Glad to see you again, Dr. Bevin. You too, Margie. I declare we should really have a party tonight. It's an occasion to celebrate. Oh, close that door, John. Don't let it get cold in. I've come through some deep snow. I'm sorry to track up your floor like this. Oh, don't worry about that, Sergeant. You might at least make a comment, Sergeant Preston. Comment. He hasn't noticed it, Marge. And I thought the Mounties had sharp eyes. Oh, the light. I wondered how long it would take you. An electric light. The first one in the Yukon territory. Congratulations, John. Oh, Dad's the one that congratulated. He did all the brain work. Oh, now, now. You must show Sergeant Preston your workshop. Yes, indeed. Here in the house? Yes, you're standing right beneath it. Beneath it? Yes. You see, when we built this house, we made her a few feet higher than usual. Put a ceiling over this room in the one in back. Right there is a ladder leading up to a hole in the ceiling. My workshop's up above, under the eaves. I see. Got a good salad floor there to support my machinery and equipment. Makes the first great place to work. It's snug and it's warm. Well, you've been successful. Well, we can operate this one lamp. Now it's a case of increasing the output. We're using the light tonight for the first time. I'm sorry. But why? This should be an occasion to celebrate. I'm sorry I have to bring bad news. I found a dead man on the trail. What? It was a newspaper man in Dawson. His name was Randy Cole. Randy Cole? Oh, but that's impossible. Impossible? Cole's right here. He's been with us about a week. And I've found he's been dead about that long. You must have made a mistake, Sergeant. What made you think it was Randy Cole? I recognized him, Doctor. What makes you think Randy Cole's here with you? It's credentials. He showed them to us to identify himself. We've been telling him all about the electric plant we've set up here and our plans for expansion. He promised to help us. You see, we plan to form a company and issue stock. I'll talk to this man who calls himself Cole. Where is he? He's in a room at the rear. One that has a door in the outside so that he can come and go as he wants to without going through the rest of the house. He went to take a nap a few minutes ago.  I'll go in. He doesn't answer. Maybe he's asleep. That wind. The outer door is open. Cole's not here. Looks as if he left in a hurry. Didn't even take time to close the door. You going after him? I am. King can follow his trail all right, even though the wind does fill in his footprints. But before I go after him, I'd like to borrow your sled and dog team to bring in the body of the other man. You're welcome to anything we have. Thanks, John. I'll be back here in an hour. And King and I will go after the man who called himself Cole. I'll see what he knows about the murder of Randy. During the week that Slade had lived with the Bevan family, with all the information about their plans, he had gone at least once each day to a nearby cabin where the killers waited. But now he traveled faster than ever before. He was tired and breathless when he came out of the windy darkness. Reed! Take. We've got to work fast. What's the trouble? What's gone wrong? It's a mountain. He's at the Bevan place. A mountain? Yes. He found and recognized Cole. He did. I thought the body would be carried downstream. Well, it wasn't. The mountain knows I'm an imposter. How'd you get away? I got skin on my teeth. I had a room at the back of the house. I could hear what was going on. I skinned out before the Mountie got around to questioning me. Come on, boys. We've got to get back there. For what? To get the Mountie, of course. Not so fast, Slade. Mounties come a lot higher than newspaper men. Before we move, we better talk terms. Terms?  You'll get that Mountie or he'll get you. We can maybe get away if we start now and keep moving. But you're not in such a good position. The Bevan's know you. They can describe you. Chances are the Mountie will recognize you as the bank clerk when he hears the description. All right. All right, boys. I'll pay. We're in this up to our necks and we'll have to get out. We'll have to get more than the money. There's Bevan and his wife and his father to consider.  We'll talk this over. John's father became restless waiting for the sergeant to return. Presently, he said. John! I'm going up to the loft. Do some work on my calculations. All right, Dad. Shall we call you when Sergeant Preston returns? Oh, Marge, I'll see him coming. I'll watch for him through that air bin. Be careful of the ladder. Here is Santa Claus. John, what do you make of that man who came here calling himself Cole? I don't know who he is, Marge. But obviously, it was after information. And I don't like it. Right now, it would be easy for someone with money to step in and take over after all our work. He there! Down below, John! Yes, Dad? Someone's coming. But it's not Sergeant Preston. Well, who is it? I can see two men heading towards the front door. One of them is walking like that imposter. Two men? They're almost at the door. I'll open it. You stay here, Marge. All right. Well, Mr. Cole. Hello, John. All right, Mr. Get them up. Oh, God! What's the idea? Where's the money? He's not here, but he was... Marge. Oh, dear. Not here, huh? It slipped off. He'll be back. And when he comes, he'll have some questions to ask about a murder. And he'll also want to know why you called yourself Cole. And how you got the credentials you showed us. Oh, he will, huh? Well, maybe I won't be answering his questions. Where's the old man? I'm up here, you murderer. The loft. I get him. Woo-hoo! You can't get me by shooting through the floor. But I can get you. I can see you through the cracks. I'll throw down that guy. Slave, is that true? Yes, I guess so. There's wide cracks on the floor of that loft. Do as I say. I'm not doing it. Oh, so your name is Slade, huh? Drop that gun in the burrow. Don't do it, Brady. Oh, John. There's another man in the back room. I got you covered. Bevin, you can hear me, but you can't see me. I came through the back door and I got your son and his wife covered. You start any shooting and you can guess what'll happen to him. That's the ticket take. Now who's got the upper hand? Why you... Oh, don't try another move like that or I'll let you have it. Let him have it anyway. We've got to get rid of all of them. And that's Mountie, too, when he gets back. All right. Wait a minute, Jake. I handled this.  Now, wait a minute. Go ahead, John. You and Marge do as he says. These crooks have already killed Randy Cole.  That's good advice, Bevin. You heard it, John. Go on. You and Marge get back there. Come on, honey. We'll follow dad's advice. Get moving. What are we going to do about that old coat over head, Brady? We've got to get him down from there. Leave that to me. First, we've got to get rid of that Mountie, and he'll be back here soon. Yeah. You stand right here at the door while I go into the back room with these two. Keep an eye on that hole in the ceiling, and be sure old Bevin don't come down. All right. What are your plans, Bede? We keep the girl here in this room. You can stay here and hold a gun on her. I'll take her husband to the front of the house to let them Mountie in. Now, watch yourself. I've heard about Preston. He travels with a dog this money dangerous.  That's why young Bevin is going to let Preston into the house. Once he's inside, we'll get the drop on him, take his gun and get the dog. If the old man makes any trouble from the loft, we'll just put a bullet right between his girls.  John! You heard the plan, Bevin. No, come on. We'll go and wait for Sergeant Preston. Minutes dragged for the group waiting near the front door. John was tortured with thoughts of Sergeant Preston's certain death, which would unquestionably be followed by the cold-blooded murder of his wife, his father and himself. Breed and Slade sat close by, six guns in their hands waiting. There was silence in the loft, and it was equally silent beyond the closed door at the back room where Jake was holding a gun on Margie. Makes me uneasy to think of old Bevin up in that loft. He can probably watch us through the holes in the floor. That's right, Slade. I'm watching you. You better come down from there. Come up and get me. You heard what Breed said, Bevin. Come down! Come down, or I'll tell Jake to shoot Margie. You won't do that, Slade. It wasn't for Margie. You couldn't threaten John into keeping silent when Preston comes. He'd shout a warning, and so would I. I'll leave him up there, Slade. He don't dare shoot us. In fact, I'm not sure he's even got a gun.  The back room. It's Jake. And Sergeant Preston. Jake. There he is. He came in the back way. Who else wants gunplay? Wait, wait. Don't shoot. Don't shoot! Stop it, Slade. Pick up the gun, John. While you're at it, pick up the one Breed dropped. My arm! You bust my arm! That's a good thing. I didn't have a gun up there in the loft. Right a push to your head. Kingsman guarding. Jake, I'll go get him. John! Oh, John, are you all right? Yes, Marge. Can you? I'm all right. Sergeant Preston and King came through the back door, so suddenly Jake didn't know what happened. Wait a minute, Jake. Join your friends. All three of you are under arrest in the name of the Queen. For the murder of Randy Cole. No, no, I didn't do it. You can't hold me for that. You hired the shoe-y-y-y-y. Get back there. You thought you were so smart, Breed. You didn't figure on Preston coming through the back door and getting Jake first. There's always something crooks like you don't figure on. Seems like every criminal's got a blind spot. Sergeant Preston, wait until I tell you about these crooks.  I know all about it, John. I told him about the trap. That's why he and King went around the back door to get Jake first. You told him, Dad. But how? They used the telegraph code to send me a message in the dark. Yes, sir. While I was up in the loft, I took a small electric light bulb. It was wired up to those dry cell batteries I'd been working on. I watched through the air vent. When I saw the sergeant coming, I flashed the light on and off and told him what was going on here. Your flashing light was a good idea, Doctor. Something of that sort would be of great value to the law in a country like this. We could send messages through the long night. You have one, Sergeant. I'll fix up some batteries and a small bulb for you. Well, Doctor, if you could make it small enough to carry in my pocket, a very small bulb and very small batteries held together in a tube. Yes, with a button you could push to turn the light on and off. Right. And I can fix it so it signals in different colors. A red signal for danger, perhaps. And a green one to mean all as well. Yes, indeed, I'll fix the light for you. You just draw a sketch of what you want. I'll do that, Doctor Bevan. Just as soon as I've turned in these three crooks for trial, then we have another job. That's right, boy, a big job. We must learn why Slade came here to investigate this project. We must find out who was behind him. We have a lot to do before this case is closed. In just a moment, Sergeant Preston will give you a preview of Wednesday's adventure. Fellows and girls, remember, it's first come, first served. Yes, hurry, leave first in your gang to get your amazing new secret two-way signal flashlight. That's the special new pocket-sized flashlight that's two-way that sends out beams of red light or beams of green light. Tell your best friends to order one, too. This amazing signal flashlight that flashes either red or green can't be beat for secret codes and messages among your own particular gang. Now hurry, simply put 25 cents in coin in an envelope, along with the 25 cents and close one box top from a package of Quakerpuff wheat or Quakerpuff rice and your own name and address. Send tonight to Flashlight Chicago 50, Illinois. Here's that address again. Flashlight Chicago 50, Illinois. These radio dramas, a feature of the challenge of the Yukon Incorporated, are created and produced by George W. Trendo, directed by Fred Flower Day and supervised by Charles D. Livingston. The part of Sergeant Preston is played by Paul Sutton. They are brought to you every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the same time by Quakerpuff wheat and Quakerpuff rice, the breakfast cereal shot from guns. Listen, Wednesday, when Sergeant Preston and Yukon King meet the challenge of the Yukon in the case of the signal in green. The constable and I saw the signal gleaming like an emerald in the darkness of a cave. We had to go there, even though we knew our approach might mean the death of Margie Bevin. This was one of our most critical situations. Be sure to hear this exciting adventure, Wednesday. Till then, this is J. Michael wishing you good-bye, good luck and good health from Quakerpuff wheat and Quakerpuff rice. So long. This is ABC, the American Broadcasting Company.


Over 50 people were killed in fierce fighting between two militias in Libya's capital Tripoli. What led to this sudden outbreak? A new report has revealed the extent of the crackdown by Indonesian forces on indigenous villages in West Papua. What caused this crackdown and what was its impact? And a controversy is brewing in the US after a soldier allegedly defected to North Korea. What is this all about? This is the daily debrief. These are our stories for the day. And if you're watching this on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. We begin with Libya where fighting broke out on Monday between two militias loyal to the same government. The 444 Brigade and the Special Deterrence Force of the SDF fought over the detention of the commander of the brigade by the SDF. Later after mediation, the commander Mahmood Hamza was released. Both these militias report to the government of national unity, which itself is one of the two governments in the country. By large scale, fighting has not taken place in Libya for a couple of years. The country's political crisis has continued. We go to Abdul for more. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. Curious and in fact deadly situation in Libya, warfare and Tripoli killing over 50 people. The death count is 55, I believe. So before we go into the largest situation which led to this, why are two militias which are affiliated to the same government fighting? As per the reports from the local media, whatever reports are available because the condition in which Libya is since 2011, it is difficult to verify the exact news. But whatever reports are available in the media, according to that, the Special Deterrence Force is one of the militias affiliated to Abdul Hamid-e-Malba government, which is called the government of national accord, national unity, basically arrested. One of the commanders or the commander of another militia and which basically when he was trying to go out of Tripoli going to Misrata for an official on an official mission to discuss certain matters, it seems there is a negotiations, different rounds of parallel negotiations going on between different sections of militias which are ruling Libya at this moment. And at that moment, because of the disagreement over this whether the talk should proceed the way it should be, they arrested the leader of one of the militias. And the other militia retaliated against it, which led to violence in Tripoli, different parts of Tripoli for almost two days continued, despite the fact that on Tuesday afternoon it was announced that the commander which was arrested, who was arrested has been released. Despite that news breaking out, the fight did not end. And the fight went on in different localities all across Tripoli. The civilian airport had to be shut for a while. The flights had to be diverted and so on and so forth. By the way, this is nothing new. Tripoli has witnessed such kind of fights between all militias loyal to one particular government, the fact that there are two different governments in Libya at this moment. So the militias within one government are fighting against each other. And this is, at least this year, this is the third major incident. There are other instances which has happened in which again dozens of people were killed on all those occasions. And it seems that all those disagreements, the militias with the guns and all the firepower they have, instead of sitting together and resolving their differences, they prefer to use their guns to resolve their differences. And this is exactly what is happening in Libya for the last more than a decade now. Right, Abdul, in this context, let's go into the larger picture, which is like you said, this is only one government, the government of national unity. That is also another government led by another prime minister to power centers.  So why exactly are there two governments and why is there no political resolution yet? Well, as I said before, since 2011, NATO led an intervention in Libya, which basically led to the fall of the DAPI government and completely broke the stability with which the Libya was known for for decades. The different militias trying to control over have to have larger control over the country's resources, particularly the oil resources fought against each other, continued to fight against each other. Finally, in 2020, UN was able to intervene and kind of there was a ceasefire agreed in which there was an interim government form. The Beba was the interim prime minister. His government had a mandate that by the end of 2021, there will be an election in Libya and a new government will come up. But that, of course, the Beba government failed to do it again because of the disagreements among all the parties which participated in the UN-led discussion. And because of that, the Libyan parliament, which is based in one of the eastern cities, Tabruk in Libya, completely came out of the so-called interim government and said that we do not recognize the legitimacy of the Beba government. And they basically established a new government. This government, they tried to control Tripoli again. And that led to another set of classes, minor classes, of course, not at the scale at which Libya was before the ceasefire in 2020. And that new government finally decided after failing thrice to kind of enter Tripoli and get control over it, finally decided to have a new base in service. So there are two governments, one supported by the Libyan parliament, based in serve and one government supported called interim government, basically supported by a presidential council. This is a remnant of an earlier parliament which came out in Libya in 2014. So you can see there is a very complex situation, but the primary reason for the difference between all those forces is who will have the larger control and greater say over the country's resources. And this basically, and who is backed by which external power. So there are, of course, the involvement of US and other European countries like France, heavily involved, trying to have a greater control over the resources in Libya, backing a particular section of Malaysia there. But there are people who are also, and the regional countries, we're also trying to assert some kind of role in Libya's politics. And that basically has led to a complete chaos in Libya. Libya is ruled by, as we discussed already, there are two major governments, but also there are reasons in the southern Libya, which are ruled by other tribal affiliated militias. So it is a complete chaos, primarily created by the NATO-led intervention which basically broke all the truth which was there under Gaddafi's regime. Well, Abul, thank you so much for that analysis. It looks like, like you said, the underlying issues stemming from the NATO invasion and the complete failure thereafter, the complete chaos that is broken out. And to this day, people in Libya are suffering from that. We'll come back to you on other stories soon. A new report by a rights advocacy group has documented gruesome and indiscriminate violence by Indonesian security forces in the militarized region of West Papua. The report was released on August 17th by a Germany-based group called Human Rights Monitor. It focuses on Indonesia and West Papua. The report documented massive civilian destruction in the region because of the ongoing violence between West Papua nationalists and Indonesian forces, with over 2,000 people displaced. We speak to Anish about the report and the recent developments in the region. Anish, thank you so much for joining us. Now, we have talked on this show and written about West Papua and people's dispatch before, but for the benefit of our viewers, could you maybe explain the context of the violence which this report has documented? Yeah, so the current state of violence that we've seen kind of began in about December 2018 when, you know, nationalist, West Papua nationalist, actually militants, especially attacked as a construction site and killed about a dozen, more than a dozen people, mostly workers of attack. And this pretty much began this fate of violence. But, you know, the intensity that we are looking at right now pretty much began after the 2019 protests, anti-racist protests that students, not just in West Papua, but also in different parts of Indonesia took out on August 15th, which was also the day when the New York Agreement was signed, basically which gave Indonesia control and, you know, power over West Papua after the Dutch actually left. So this sort of situation, ever since then, we have seen violence. And this pretty much began with riots and, you know, anti-Papua violence that we saw in different parts of the country, especially in Jaipur. And then, followed by police repression and the police repression gave way to a new set of protests that went on for months, actually, in September, it was a peak in September, at least in Jaipur, which was the West Papua capital appetite. And this repression actually soon made way for the violent repression at the time. And obviously, the riots that followed displaced a large number of people and the violence created more militancy at the time, which in turn was met with higher levels of militarization by the Indonesian government. Hundreds of Indonesian groups were pulled into the region, which was already facing a kind of sustained level of violence for decades at that point. So this pretty much created a situation where West Papua was not only militarized, but it was also pretty much cut off from the rest of the world. Journalists, international journalists, especially, need to get special permits to enter the region, all of these experiences right now. And in many cases, at times when violence are actually at its peak, you have internet shutdowns, prolonged internet shutdowns and any kind of, you know, broadcasting shutdowns even, that pretty much limit any information that goes out of the region. So, and this obviously is coupled with violence, because every time we see like there is some kind of radiation, a video comes out of armed forces indiscriminately firing at civilians. It clearly shows that the violence has never really happened. And this report only pretty much outlines the intensity of this violence. It clearly shows how the documentation is pretty much based since mid-2021 to 2022. And it shows, and it estimates how not only fatalities doubled, it went from 21 in 2021 to 48 in 2022. But the number of people who were displaced because of the violent destruction that was carried out by the military in their bid to subdue the militants clearly created a more or less a humanitarian crisis of its own, even though at a smaller scale than we see in different parts of the world, but definitely a massive problem for people of West Park lot. Right, also Anish, are there any more contemporary developments regarding this, any process of negotiation that has taken place, you know, or it being raised in international fora, something like that? Well, there have been multiple attempts by the Pacific neighbors of Indonesia trying to raise this issue, especially the island nations and at times New Zealand and Australia as well, talking about raising this issue last year. We had about more than 2000 Pacific nations bringing up this matter at the United Nations General Assembly, calling for significant scrutiny on Indonesia over its record, its human rights record in the region. So there is that, definitely. There is also a certain level of international pressure, but it's very subdued because very often the news about West Park doesn't really reach as much in the mainstream media unless it's a major incident or something particularly inclusive as we recently did about the torture and mutilation of West Park wounds and the case around it and the conviction of the soldiers on the matter. But definitely the repression continues earlier this week. We actually saw again on August 15th when there was a demonstration, a protest demonstration in Jerkura being violently dispersed by the police with tear gas and, you know, multiple detentions. Again, we do not get much information about this, primarily because foreign media is not allowed. That is apart from the fact that even national media, even Indonesian journalists are not really allowed without being vetted by the military itself. So there is a constant state of, apart from militarization, there's a constant state of being on a military rule that is quite different from what Indonesians elsewhere, you know, kind of has to deal with. And this creates a situation where information is very rare.  And so it becomes a big task. And definitely there's no attempt by the government, at least from the Jokowi government that we've seen. So far there were obviously a very recent to be spoke about how the Indonesian government began a reparations process for past crimes, but almost nothing was mentioned about West Papuan and any of the crimes that were committed in the West Papuan region, because obviously this government was leading this violent and immediate and anti-insurgency campaign. And this has created a situation where, I mean, if you look at the record, it's quite significant, about 200 structures, including churches, houses, entire villages, about at least eight villages were raised to the ground and 2,200 or more of Papuans being completely displaced and there being no, there being no shelter for them, obviously, and they have to take refuge in the forest. This is like quite a very star dark picture that we're looking at. And that is very rarely being, you know, very rarely the seeds of tension outside of the Pacific in most cases. Right. Thank you so much, Anish, for talking to us and stay back because we'll come back to you for another story. And finally, a very curious story. A US soldier is apparently defected to North Korea. Travis King reportedly crossed into North Korean territory in July in an action that the US military described as willful and without authorization. Now, North Korea says that King came to the country due to, and I quote, inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination in the US army. What is this all about? We go back to Anish. Thanks for coming back, Anish. So a very curious story. This story of a US soldier defecting to North Korea happened in July, of course. Lot of confusion, lack of clarity. So first, could you maybe take us to the exact developments? What happened? How did this US soldier, obviously belonging, you know, to a very professional military force, so to speak, suddenly vanishes off to North Korea? Well, the incident itself at the time that it happened pretty much created a sensation itself because obviously this was not a situation. Obviously the US and its media houses tried to portray it as some kind of illegal detention. They tried to make it as some sort of a situation where the soldier was kidnapped in whatever way. I mean, like that was pretty much the language that we saw at the time. And they were trying to raise this issue in different international forums as if the soldier's life was threatened. But there was a lot of confusion on how things came about. There were multiple accounts, even eyewitness accounts. In some cases, some people said that there were no soldiers at the DMZ, the demilitarized zone that pretty much separates North and South Korea. And at the time that he ran through the border, which is quite rare. It doesn't really happen in that particular area. We know that. And some even say that he looked back at the people and just said ha ha ha and ran into North Korea before being apprehended by North Korean soldiers. So this situation was quite rare in many ways. It wasn't something that we were expecting. And nobody was sure if it was defection for sure. But at the time, the data that he had at the time, many had assumed this was a defection and now it is confirmed by the North Korean authorities that this man is trying to defect to North Korea or another country altogether. At the time of the reporting, at the time of the incident, there were multiple accounts from the family as well about how he was not having a great time with the military. He was facing racial discrimination. He had severe mental health issues that the military was not taking into account. He was charged with assault of two civilians in South Korea. Again, something not uncommon for those soldiers to do in South Korea. This is not something that is new. But this is definitely being done by a black man and that definitely probably that racial aspect of it comes into play. And the fact that he has raised this fact that he is facing racism and racial discrimination in the military to the North Korean authorities clearly shows that there was something far more significant than what we have been let on so far. Well, Anish, I believe this has also led to some discussion at least in the US about the issue of racism in the military itself. So what is being talked about there? Well, the discussion is quite muted, to be very honest. There was definitely reports about it, but nobody really wants to make a statement, a very categorical statement so far. From what we can assume is that in a few days we might see extensive extrapolation of his criminal records, the fact that he was detained in South Korea for two months for assault charges and was awaiting to be sent back to the United States to be court-martialed. All of that aside, we are also looking at a system which is quite a bit racial disparities pretty much system. We are looking at, despite the fact that more than 20% of US military personnel are African-Americans. There is a significant concentration of these African-Americans or even colored personnel at the lower ranks of the soldier ranks of the US military, almost very rare for them to reach into specialized professions like being a pilot or getting into air force or Navy, and the higher ranks almost completely dominated by white men. Like the fact that they are now talking about getting a new African-American or black general and the black chief of staff in the coming months shows that in this almost 200 years of history, there was pretty much no attempt for them to be, to actually elevate to that position. Apart from that, we have also reports, like past reports, and this is before even travesting actually happened. This was in 2017 when there were reports of how black soldiers were more likely to be court-martialed and convicted of their court-martial charges by the military than white soldiers. We have seen the rates are quite stark. Like you see 70% chances of them being court-martialed in the air force where they're already a smaller percentage of the personnel, about 60% in the Army. They are far more likely to be court-martialed, like more than twice as likely to be court-martialed in the Marine Corps, which is the fourth integrated force that mostly operate outside of US. In all of these cases, the discussion from them has not really significantly moved forward and changes have not happened. Even though multiple statements have been made by political leaders, the Senate members, and even the military about trying to diversify the diversification is pretty much happening on the lower runs of the military, where you have more and more likelihood of your average soldier being a non-white person than then becoming an officer who actually takes charge of this equation. So this is something that is very rarely talked about and the fact that it came out like that is pretty much a big massive damage to US military's reputation, not just because of the racial disparity, but also the fact that it clearly shows that it has created a situation where somebody had to defect to another country, seek a refuge in a country that is considered a US enemy in all sense of the word we can think of. And that really damages this reputation to that great extent, I believe. Right. Thank you so much, Anif, for speaking to us. And that's all we have in today's episode of Daily Debrief. Do keep visiting our website peoplesdispatch.org, follow us on YouTube, all the social media platforms, where you can see stories from across the world, stories of people's movements, stories of geopolitical interests. And if you haven't hit that subscribe button already, please do.


My name is Phillip Long, I am the Chief Innovation Officer and Associate Vice Provost at the University of Texas at Austin. Okay. Well, you're at the conference this week talking a little bit about learning recognition systems. What is a learning recognition system? Fundamentally, a learning recognition system is a piece of software and a framework for identifying when students have achieved something that faculty or others in the institution have set out for them to learn. Doing so in a way that tries to make it as objective as possible and recording that so that it can be used as a way of justifying the value of whatever achievement it is that they've been awarded. It doesn't mean that they're technology-based, they've been around for hundreds of thousands of years in some ways. Well, early on, if you remember, people used to get, and still do, in the military they get badges associated with achievements of various kinds. Some for performance in academic settings, some for performance on the field of battle. So those are recognition systems. It can be done simply in awarding a certificate for accomplishing the various requirements of a course of study. What's happened in recent years with the invention of various kinds of digital technologies is those have been effectively digitized and the processes have been written up as execution steps in a learning sequence that can be tracked in a digital environment. And by doing so, it also affords greater both transparency and visibility to the learning, but it also allows it to be connected to other kinds of digital artifacts. Is there any sort of standardization going on where you can take things across institutions, across different learning systems? Absolutely. For a while there, there was something called the Open Badge Initiative, which was a community-based organization that was trying to standardize the actual structure of the data associated with the elements that are necessary to recognize achievement, who the issuer was, what it was for, what is the evidence that was submitted to be able to judge and be awarded this particular achievement, etc. That group has been merged now with an international software standards organization. That group is called IMS Global and they do interoperability standards for all kinds of software, primarily in the learning environment. So they define interoperability for how learning tools plug into a learning management system through a standard called LTI or how information is captured, the events associated with the activity students are doing in a class, how those sensors are described and how that data is passed on to something else so that everybody can follow the same pattern and therefore that data can move across boundaries. How do you think learning recognition systems will evolve and affect higher education in the future? And that's probably the $64,000 question. In some cases, it depends on the sector of higher education you're talking about. They have been traditionally associated with more skill-based activities. And so those programs and those parts of higher education that have a more vocational scope tend to be adopting these things relatively quickly. More traditional research focused universities have been less willing to step into this space because I think they would say, well, how do you objectively determine that someone has thought creatively? And that's what we do in university. We teach creative thinking or we teach you how to think better. And the challenge is, in fact, just doing that because in some sense, that judgment is being made by the faculty member in the classroom based on something. And in many ways, this effort is trying to say, well, what can we do to actually extract out the key elements of that in a way that if you brought 50 similar professors together of that discipline and you asked them, did these things indicate that they achieved X? There would be reasonable concurrence that they'd say yes. Do you think, and this may be overly dramatic talk, I'm curious, do you think the popularization of badges and certifications could not delegitimize degrees but could compete with the degree system? So there's certainly the potential threat of the Tower of Badges, similar to the Babel Tower that we are familiar with, and it is a legitimate concern, particularly if the attention to the criteria associated with the rubric for assessing whether or not something has been achieved is taken carefully and seriously and how it's being developed and applied. I think that the likelihood of that is diminishing, even as the potential growth of badging increases, because there has been additional data added to the open badge specification that describes who the issuer is, what the authority the issuer has for making that assertion, if there is a third party that has validated that the issuer is capable of making that assertion. So there's sort of tracing back, if you will, the authenticity and the authority associated with that process, which gives a little bit more credibility to the assertion in the first place. What is more interesting is the potential for the idea that the issuer is no longer just the institution, and that's the idea that the students themselves may be able to issue badges to others based on the extent to which that student judged the contribution of another student to their own work. So you might expect, for example, if you have a certain number of badge points that you can allocate to your colleagues when you're working on a project and you've really helped me a lot, I could give you X number of badge points, write a description as to why those badge points were earned. That's the criteria. What's the rubric with which I judged that because I was able based on your help to do the following and then issue you something. That starts to democratize the process and prop potentially makes institutions nervous. Right, yeah. There's a million questions that go along with that that we don't have time to get to, but I'll let that one go because I mean, I find myself feeling ambivalent about it. I mean, on the one hand, it's great to, it's like music, it's like the music industry, it's great that anybody can make music now, but it kind of sucks that anybody can make music now. Well, yes and no. I mean, there are people that have emerged out of that, that vast horde who turn out to be phenomenally creative, worthy of everything that they've achieved. And yeah, that there's a lot more noise in the system, so it improves or increases the need for discernment. But you can also think of using this in ways to surface work that otherwise has been invisible. The most common example is most faculty are judged by the merits of their publications. Their publications are submitted to peer review processes. The people who do the peer review are, of course, their fellow faculty, but those people aren't rewarded for that work. It's just built into the system. The publisher takes their feedback, uses it to judge whether or not to accept the publication or not. The individual who makes, does that work for that purpose, what do they get? Other than legitimate contribution to their own discipline, so there's a sense of community obligation. But what if the publisher awarded that individual review points and some sort of quality recognition for the reviews, and that starts to distinguish better reviewers from other reviewers. And if that reviewer could then take that information and present it in their package for promotion and tenure and say, I've been doing all of these reviews, it's taking this amount of time and here's the value that I've contributed, based on the publisher's comments, shouldn't that count for something? Absolutely. Right now, you can't do that. What technology trends do you think will enable student agency in the future? Well, the biggest one is the thing that's quite the hype these days in the cryptocurrency world, and that's the so-called badged blockchain. And the reason is that the blockchain can disintermediate or separate the mechanism by which the award of credit and its management can be done independent of the institution. So in the cryptocurrency world, the whole sort of disruption that came along with that is that you no longer need banks to intermediate the exchange of money. People can buy and sell across each other and do it by transferring Bitcoin from one person to another and there's nothing in the middle. Well, in the blockchain environment for universities and credit, you can imagine blocks, credits being awarded and instantiated in a block. That block is part of a fabric that's outside of the institution. They may be a part of it if they wish, they don't have to be. And since it's been encrypted, it can't be changed. So it has the same authority that it always has. At the time, the value of it and the authority of it is determined when it's written and it stays with it permanently. So you no longer have to go back to an institution and say to Joe Smith, actually, we'll earn this. Well, if they've got a piece of information that's written into a blockchain that says they did, then they did. And so there's the question of what sort of impact that will have on the institutions down the road is that one that frees them from that responsibility and keeps them from having to spend that money and money and energy doing all that verification or does it threaten them? Is there anything else you wanna add that we haven't touched on? You mentioned earlier about the proliferation of types of certification and such. I think the backstory behind that is the thing that we haven't talked about and that's the actual pressures from the job market and employers who are struggling to find ways of identifying workers who can perform the jobs they have and are a bit taken aback at this point by the lack of information, a transcript affords them. And now they've built all kinds of procedures to try to look past that and talk to the person's references and other sorts of things. But you can imagine where some of that evidence of their achievement is instantiated in some sort of a record, including actual artifacts that they produced to be awarded that work, which gives the employer a chance to actually see, oh, here's a CAD drawing that they made while they were doing this project. Or here is a way in which they tested this particular chemical. That's a lot different than getting a B in chemistry. That's true. Thanks so much for your time, Phil. Appreciate it.


Hi, I'm Théa. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Duvala, and I'm really excited to be here at Slush. We're currently facing the biggest refugee crisis of our time. 65.6 million people are displaced globally. And shockingly, the average time they spend in camp is an unbelievable 24 years. That's 24 years where a person is unable to grow, educate, and work. And because of the current geopolitical climate, refugees are going to be stuck in displacement for longer, which entitles that we need to look at something long-term. People need a tool to be resilient, so they're not just this word. Because sadly, today, it has a lot of negative connotations to it. We want to help them achieve the skills that they want and to verify the skills they already have. Because we see people that are resourceful. Many left brilliant careers before they had to flee their own country. They have skills and creativity. So imagine, refugees were actually giving a digital economy platform where they could build and verify their skill sets and identity, so they were able to work. And that is why we want to build Duvala. So we just got back from Jordan. This is the Southlady camp, the second largest camp. And we need to know that 3,000 small businesses have sprung up there, and we wanted to understand how can we actually encourage this entrepreneurial spirit further. We also know that 60% have access to internet and smartphones. So we can help people like Aisha become an entrepreneur with a click of a button. She could sell medical kits or childcare services. She could buy English lessons from others inside her community. She can even in the future request microloans for initiatives that she wants to build and do. But how are you going to do all this? We start with documenting the skill courses people like Aisha is already a part of with NGOs. Then we fully automate the process for the NGO and we build their resume for Aisha. Second, we implement the peer-to-peer product where she has her own tool to actually showcase what she done. Selling products and services, building it by transactions. And if we do that right, we're actually able to automate the whole process in the information and the cash management system. And we've seen in other projects that can actually save up to 96% percent of the of the back-end costs. We also seen in a recent report by NRC that that can save their group 800,000 hours of labor. That gives us two main revenue streams. We do a platform fee for NGOs and IGOs and we do 4% transaction fee when we implement microloans. The benefit of this is full transparency. Because we're building on blockchain, we're also able to exclude the challenges of corruption and black markets and information flows faster. So we've already been grateful to have a lot of people that wants to collaborate with us. As a team, we're worked with international development, huge consultancies in clients. We're humble, but we have the skills to do this. But let's bring this back to what it's all about. And as our brilliant ambassador in Nour says, this is about providing people with a choice. How do you feel about this word now? Let's change it. So I love the idea here and I love the idea of solving this problem. I guess I'd love to find ways that people can make money that's not just reliant on other people in the camp. Can you talk a bit more around how much remote working is possible with a basic Android smartphone and an unreliable connection? What kind of remote working could they do to get paid by US companies and dollars? I think we've been focused on doing initiatives in the country that they're in because you have a lot of regulations that you need to be aware of. So if you start with the country that they're in and also connecting them with the local workforce, you can actually make a better bridge between the community that's already there and the people that's here wanting to integrate into the country. We can if we want to, but I think it's more of actually having the patient to start one step and going one step at a time to see what the opportunities can be. Maybe it's a collaboration with another party. A wonderful pitch and there's concrete value for people living in such hard conditions. So how do they use the smartphones today to conduct business? What are you replacing? Is it like a messaging app or don't they just use a smartphone for business purposes? So it depends what country you're focusing on because we started our field research in Jordan. We know that the project that's been going there is more about food management system in Akra, which has actually been quite successful. What they're actually using right now is only processes, not digital tools. There's a lot of paper. They lose a lot of information. That's actually how we can provide a lot of value. And how are you financed so far and how do you want to do that in the future? You're financing. Are you talking to NGOs as well or how does that look like? Yes, our first clients would be the NGOs and IGOs because we make a system for them to basically give more ease and flow into what they currently do. And then if we do that right, they can actually get a lot of rich data and also direct feedback from the refugees in terms of how well are these courses? Do they want other systems? Should there maybe be more something digital? Should there be coding? And I think that's a strong value. So as I understand it, you're building this product now. So what is the initial functionality at launch going to be? So we're actually a company that's only five months old. We made this idea in May and then we started working in August. But we now have a plan to do three pilots, starting with you and women demo launch in New York last weekend of January, and then three pilots in the country that we partner with if that's NRC that we're talking with right now, and then doing a full launch of the MVP in April. Thank you very much.


This study aimed to explore the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on cognition, quality of life, and mental health in older adults with mild cognitive impairment or dementia, as well as analyze the association of living alone, technophilia, and access to health care and social support services with these outcomes. The study found that the first months of the outbreak did not significantly impact cognition, quality of life, and mental health in this population. However, being alone was nominally associated with self-perceived fear and depression, and higher technophilia with better quality of life, less boredom, perceived stress and depression, and also less calmness. The most used ICTs during the COVID-19 outbreak were the television for informative, cognitive, and entertainment-related uses and the smartphone for socialization. This article was authored by Elena Duraparez, Jessica Marion Goodman-Casanova, Amanda Vega-Nunez, and others.


U.S. warned Iran, you will pay a heavy price if uranium enrichment continues. U.S. and Iranian officials held indirect talks in Oman last month with Omani officials shuttling between their separate rooms to deliver messages, three sources briefed on the issue told Axios Barak-Ravid. The proximity talks, which haven't been previously reported, represent the first known indirect engagement between the U.S. and Iran in this way in several months. They took place amid growing concerns in the White House about Iran's nuclear advances. Axios reported last week that White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk traveled to Oman secretly on May 8 for talks with Omani officials on possible diplomatic outreach to Iran regarding its nuclear program. According to the three sources briefed on the issue, an Iranian delegation also arrived in Oman at the same time. Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Khan was part of the delegation one of the sources said. McGurk and the Iranian officials didn't meet according to the sources. The two sides were in separate locations with Omani officials going between them and passing messages. According to the sources, one of the main messages from the U.S. focused on deterrence. The sources said the U.S. made it clear that Iran will pay a heavy price if it moves forward with a 90% uranium enrichment the level needed to produce a nuclear weapon. It is said that the U.S. prefers diplomacy, but is prepared to take action in full coordination with its partners and allies to ensure Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.