Hello and welcome to this latest Lowey Institute Live event. This is part of what we're calling the Long Distance Lowey Institute, in which we communicate our content and analysis online while we're unable to do so in person. A very warm welcome to everyone joining us from Australia and to those dialing in from overseas. My name is Michael Foleylove and I'm the Executive Director of the Lowey Institute. I'm delighted to be here for this very special Lowey Institute Live event with General Jim Mattis, former U.S. Defense Secretary and Commander of U.S. Central Command and one of the most storied generals in recent American history. Also joining us today is one of Australia's most highly regarded military leaders, Serangus Houston, the former Chief of the Defense Force and one of my board members at the Lowey Institute. General Mattis and Serangus are old friends as well as colleagues at the Cohen Group. Since General Mattis resigned as Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense in December 2018 he's been very discerning about the events in which he's agreed to participate. So I'm grateful to General Mattis for agreeing to join us today and to Serangus for helping to facilitate. This event is part of the Lowey Institute's project on Australia's security and the rules based order which is supported by the Australian Department of Defense. Earlier this week the Institute released an interactive timeline illustrating how Australian governments have spoken and acted in relation to the rules based order. I encourage everyone watching to visit the Institute's website and explore this feature. Now some brief housekeeping before we begin I'm going to share a conversation with General Mattis and Serangus and later I'll put some questions to them that our audience members submitted when they registered online. So welcome General Mattis and Serangus. Thank you both for joining me. Thank you Michael. Good to be here sir. Thank you. I'm going to ask both of you a bit about your upbringing and how you got into your, how you started your military careers. I'd like to start with you General Mattis. You grew up in Richland, Washington in a bookish household without a TV. Tell me a bit about your upbringing and how it is you came to join the U.S. Marine Corps. One of the most feared fighting forces in human history. Yeah well Dr. Michael it's like most things. We make our plans in life and God laughs. I grew up hiking in the mountains enjoying life here on the Columbia River. We're a little bit south of British Columbia but in the dry side, the semi-arid side. So probably like many of your people who enjoy the outback, we enjoyed the outdoors here in our region. At the time my team, conscription was still a reality in the U.S. forces and U.S. society. And without a whole lot of reflection, I decided to do my service for a couple years in the U.S. Marines. That leads naturally to how did that go from a couple years to over four decades. And it was just I found that I didn't like a lot of the jobs in the Marines. I grew to hate minefields at a very young age. But I absolutely fell in love with the sailors and Marines, those rambunctious young lads in the infantry who would crawl into minefields looking for something they didn't want to find. And I just stuck around for the pure joy of serving alongside such I'd call them selfless and high-spirited young men. It was the infantry. It got its name infant soldier, young soldier. They were all very young men basically. So that's the story of my life in a capsule. And General Mattis, you described your childhood as heaven on earth, but in your 43 years of service in the Marines, many of the places to which you were deployed from Iraq to Afghanistan and many other places could hardly be described as heavenly. Let me ask you, what was the toughest assignment that you were given during your military career and which job did you enjoy the most?  You're right there in the mud alongside your sailors and Marines. And that's also the rank when I first met Australian soldiers and found a like-minded crew there I might add. But I think that the job that was probably most difficult was the last job I was in. I find it a lot easier to actually go into the brawls than it is to order other people to go into the brawls. That's a lot more difficult in its own way. Different skill set and not one that is as rewarding the sense of you're testing yourself against what you're sending the men to. You've got a little bit of remoteness there and it's not the most redeeming kind of job. Alright, I'm going to ask you about your time as Defense Secretary a little bit later. Sir Angus, let me bring you in because you had a different journey. You were born in Scotland, I recall. You applied to the Royal Air Force initially but I think you were told you were too tall to be a pilot. Thankfully the Royal Australian Air Force wasn't so picky. So tell us a bit about how a young man from Scotland ended up having such a distinguished career in the RAAF. Well, it's interesting. Actually the people who did the cockpit check didn't know how an ejection seat worked. I would have fitted but they didn't know you had to lower the seat to the lowest position to adjust the ejection seat. So I guess a mistake was made. I came to Australia. I decided I'd go out on the land and the second year on the land I was share farming and we had a very bad drought and I went broke and joined the Royal Australian Air Force and from there I never looked back. Interestingly, I discovered as soon as I got into flying training that the ejection seat works by you get into it and you adjust it downwards, not upwards. I fitted perfectly. Well, I think Australia rose a vote of thanks to that recruiter for the Royal Air Force that mistakenly told you you couldn't join the British Armed Forces. General Mattis, I want to ask you about alliances. You've often quoted a line from your time in the Marines when you're going to a gunfight bring all your friends with guns. What's your view about how America's alliance system works and how it furthers the interest of the United States? I think you have to put it in a historical context because for 100 its first 150 years and more as a Republic, America tried to shy away from alliances and after World War I the world had changed but we still kept that tradition and it still tugs at us today. It's still an aspect of the American view of the world but the greatest generation coming home from World War II having gone through a global depression, having been through a horrible war tens of millions. We don't even know within 10 million how many died in the war. So many died. It was somewhere between 50 and 70 million and they said what a crummy world and whether we like it or not we're part of it. And out of this comes the United Nations which was the effort to have a place where we could talk and try to keep peace and prosperity online. Bretton Woods, Bretton Woods one and two, you and I know it as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank so when people were losing hope they didn't have to turn to a fascist named Mussolini. It was actually a lender of last resort to get wealth generation going again. We saw it with the Marshall Plan and then I had something the Australian Ambassador to Washington DC taught me and he said and America made the single most self-sacrificial pledge in world history. I thought I knew something about American history I said oh you mean the Marshall Plan you know where we told him he said oh no he said that was just an example of America's generosity after being the victor in a war that it actually escaped a lot of the costs of. He said no he said the most generous thing, the most self-sacrificial pledge made was after World War II they couldn't look at Europe and said that's twice in 25 years you've drawn us into your war something I think Australians too feel to a degree and we're turning to Asia to Latin America to Africa you're on your own with the Soviets. We're tired of you. He said instead you pledged 100 million dead Americans in a nuclear war to protect democracy in Europe. Took a foreigner to teach me that the Australian ambassador to Washington DC. So it was out of that reality that the greatest generation said we have got to be part of this world and from that point on the rules-based order became exactly what we aim to promote and protect with like-minded nations we couldn't do it on our own that was a going in assumption and since then it worked so well that some people have forgotten that you need to tend to it you need to nurture it you need to protect it you need to adapt it but that's that's where the alliances came from and when you have like in our case 100 years of mateship in many cases you actually have something to build on already so it's a matter of continuing to build it's a matter of continuing to show respect and listening to your allies something we occasionally need a reminder about I might add like today. Well tell me a bit you alluded earlier to having some experiences with Australian servicemen over the years give us a little bit of color about that if you wouldn't mind in what circumstances have you dealt with Australian officers and service men and women and what's been your experience? Yeah in over many years we deployed into the western Pacific the Indian Ocean we've trained alongside each other and one thing that really stuck out for me was the Marines being a naval force we cannot solve problems with mass we're not the US Air Force we're not the US Army and so we actually find similar problem solving in the US Force where the individuals initiative and their skill is what you rely on you're not going to rely on mass so it was always at times a heartening experience to serve alongside your guys because we could learn from them and then of course going into Afghanistan it was the Australians under then Lieutenant Colonel Gus Gilmore were the first non-American reinforcements that I had come inside our lines there at a place called Rhino and out of that they were under our tactical control and there is where Australia lost its first lad killed in action was under my that tactical control and I might add that the last Australian killed in action was when I was the commander of US Central Command so when America was attacked on 9-11 if you ever wanted to see the value of alliances there was Australia at our side immediately with very competent very high spirited and ethical troops and you can't ask for more than that. Sir Angus let me bring you into the conversation and ask you the same question from the other end of the telescope if you like what do you think Australia gets out of the US Alliance and what do we give in return Well I'm a very strong supporter of the the ANZUS Alliance I think it's it underpins our defence policy it enables us to gain access to intelligence logistics and technology which we probably wouldn't get without being an alliance partner this has enhanced our capability and of course we've had access to the most advanced weapons that are available and many other force multipliers so without that sort of alliance we wouldn't have as much well I guess let me go another way we also get interoperability we exercise with the US forces we've done an awful lot with the US Marine Corps they come to Australia regularly on a number of different bases and they basically are the only nation that really gets a chance to routinely mount an exercise invasion of Australia and that relationship at the high end of war fighting has served us incredibly well we stay in touch with what's happening at the high end and right across the spectrum of conflict and we're very very I think privileged because of this access because of this interoperability we do not have to spend as much on defence as otherwise would be the case and just over 2% of our GDP on defence without the alliance we'd be spending double that to have the required insurance policy that we need against the risks that we see around the world at the moment particularly in our neighbourhood General Mattis tell us what is the role of the US military in supporting the global rules based order and what is the role of the State Department how important are diplomats in supporting this order that you described earlier I think that over the last 25 years we've gotten this little caddy wampus where we've put the military into some circumstances that could probably be better addressed by our diplomats but our diplomats carry out the most essential function and that is two fundamental sources of power over its last 100 years one is the power of inspiration a little frayed on the edges right now and one is the power of intimidation the role of the military is to make sure that the military factors are understood by our diplomats what we can do what we can't do what we recommend and to keep the diplomats in the driver's seat of our foreign policy it's very important I think that we remember that America is not out to seize other countries and this sort of thing and at times we've tried to solve problems using the military that I think perhaps could have been better addressed by using our diplomats now there's a role for the military this is where we can learn a lot from our allies the Australian effort to restore order in the Solomon's several years ago showed a diplomatically led police reinforced with army troops effort to calm the situation in a part of the world that needed your attention and so there you see a kind of a collaboration with the policy written by the civilians the military supporting the constable who was put in charge of the restoring the order and a very adroit use of the military and one of the reasons that we want to maintain a very strong relationship with Australia is that this is one of the countries that can actually teach us how you use all elements of national power and not just default to the military so it's a it's a sort of thing that I think takes more training in our schools I'll be blunt about it I don't think the way we teach history today is turning out graduates of our universities fully steep in the role of traditional diplomatic practices and I think that has been to our I just say it has not been proved to our credit as we tried to fill the gap using the military well Angus let me bring you into this question if I can because I don't think we would say Australia's perfect and in fact Australia's spending on defence will shortly pass the magic number of 2% of our GDP however recent governments of both colours have underfunded the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade what would you say about the importance of the armed forces on the one hand and diplomats in supporting the rules based order and also furthering Australia's national interests well I think on the defence side this government's got it right I think their approach to the strategic update and the associated force structure update is right on the money the strategy shape deter respond is the right strategy I think we need to build up our deterrence capability and that's brought out in the force structure review but I also think we need to put some of the hollowness out of the defence force and again some of those issues have been addressed in terms of increasing stock levels of weapons and fuel and so forth the other thing I was very pleased about was the fact that there was a focus for the first time on what to do about the grey zone we have seen what's happened in the South China Sea we've also seen what's happened in Ukraine and I saw that very close and personal when I was in Ukraine looking after Australia's interests after the shooting down of MH17 and I think the funding is right too well over 2% $575 billion for the next 10 years and a large proportion of that $1 billion going to capital investment but I think it's absolutely imperative that we also build up DTHAT the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade I believe that diplomats can achieve an awful lot and they may even prevent the need for using military force in a given set of circumstances and I think we've taken too many cuts in the diplomatic area we need more diplomats and not less because the people that I have observed I mean Jim just mentioned Solon and Arlen's Nick Warner was the diplomat who went out and did that he's an incredibly capable man and did a wonderful job there in leading that particular campaign but diplomats diplomats are incredibly useful in circumstances short of conflict and I just don't think we have enough of them and when you look at the comparisons between the number of diplomats we have around the world with other similar sized countries we're at the bottom of the list and I think that's disappointing and we need to do something about it. General Mattis let me ask you about how you dealt with some of these issues during your service as President Trump's Secretary of Defense shortly after you became Secretary you delivered a major address to the 2017 Shangri-La Dialogue and after you spoke you may recall I asked a question from the floor in which I described you as the hope of the side and I asked whether the world might be present at the destruction of the global order the US had helped to establish and maintain since the Second World War and you may recall you responded by quoting Winston Churchill to me and you said bear with us once we've exhausted all possible alternatives the Americans will do the right thing. Now that comment attracted quite a bit of press coverage because you seem to be implying that America was exhausting all other opportunities all other avenues. General Mattis let me put it to you that nearly four years later it feels like Washington really has exhausted in some cases all possible alternatives to doing the right thing. Can I ask you do you think that America has taken a right to a wrong turn in the past few years? I think you have to go back again in history and remember Dr. Michael that after our very nasty argument with King George III we actually set up a government that would not function smoothly or efficiently. We wanted to be clunky for example a lot of people were concerned about our commitment to the NATO alliance probably the most successful military alliance in history because it kept the peace it was set up to maintain the peace of course in the Cold War protect Western European democracy and the first time it goes to war is when the United States gets attacked. I mean you couldn't have mistaken the irony of how what it was set up for but what it eventually was used for but if you say that the rules based order and let's just take that alliance as a canary in the way that for all of the president's concerns that the people in Europe are not paying their fair share they're not paying full freight in most cases which is not new to President Trump he's perhaps a little blunter in his comments about it but you can find this going all the way back to John F. Kennedy's administration but on the other hand you see the U.S. Congress adding money the president requests for NATO every year and adding money to that budget we are spending more on NATO year-on-year for the last several years so I would say also in the midst of a very raucous time in our democracy certainly words are important but actions speak louder than words even in diplomacy and in security issues and right now I think the president's having one of these periods where they go through a lot of a very passionate arguments and there came a point where it manifested politically I came in by the way after first meeting with the president and we had a very interesting discussion where I disagreed with him on the three positions he put forward to me and he still hired me while in office I had only three lines of effort one was to make the U.S. military more lethal one was to broaden and deepen trust with our allies and partners and one was to reform our business practices I spent 80% of my time on line of effort number two working with allies and so rest assured in the U.S. Congress there is very strong support for alliances in the executive branch in the state department in the institutions there is strong support certainly across America we find strong support but at the same time I don't think we have in our own responsible way promoted the value of alliances clearly as Serangus just explained the value of the bilateral relationship with America we have not done that well in America fortunately it's coming out in this election and I think we're going to see some impact of the view of alliances here in the next couple of weeks let me ask you you referred earlier to the fact that when I asked you what was the most challenging job you had in your career you nominated that period as defense secretary from the outside it felt like you were trying to hold things together and ensure that the military remain strong the alliance system remain strong how challenging was that when you were operating in a system where of course the alliance system the rules based order had a lot of allies within the system but perhaps not in the Oval Office how much of a challenge was that for you as defense secretary yeah I don't think I know it was out in the news a lot that I would somehow keeping things together against the president I had a very forward relationship with President Trump I mean I was right up front with him that's the way I work with my boss wherever I've been and you know I had to deal with tweets he has an unusual way of putting things out at times but at the same time I generally saw him once a week over a private lunch and I explained to him very clearly what I was doing I'd tell him what I'm going to say when I go to NATO next week this sort of thing so it wasn't that difficult but further Michael you know I went into I went into NATO in my first conference there and I explained to the people many of whom were friends because I'd been a supreme allied commander for NATO wearing a uniform only a few years before I saw a lot of familiar faces and I said you know it's now manifested I cannot go home and tell the American people that they have to care more about the freedom for your children then you're willing to pay for then you're willing to sacrifice for it's now manifested politically we've got to have this talk this is no longer World War two devastated Europe you're on your feet you're doing well and I would just tell you that in a number of areas from India to Sweden and Finland to Mexico believe it or not we have very very warm and trusting very trusted military to military relations not five eyes level in terms of what Serangus rightly called interoperability and intelligence sharing but nonetheless very strong relations so it would to me that was not the difficulty it was it was something I was very upfront when I was interviewed for the job I was upfront in my Senate hearings and again I didn't feel like the lone ranger on this at all this is a widespread belief in America even if it's kind of subdued beneath the headlines on the on the newspapers every day thank you general I want to ask just one more question about the Trump administration and then come on to China and some other issues you're very careful when you're asked to reflect on the Trump administration you did however break your valve silence in a statement you gave to the Atlantic in June when you said that Mr Trump is the first president in your lifetime who does not try to unite the American people instead he tries to divide us what was it about that moment that led you to speak up what were you concerned about at that point in time when I left office it was about the treatment of allies I made it very clear in a public letter and when you walk out of an administration on a matter of principle Michael I think knowing that it's still a dangerous world we have a commander-in-chief elected by the American people that's what the Constitution says the French colon de Devoix de reserve a duty of you don't need to get out and start running your mouth about suddenly you're the font of all wisdom and make their job very difficult for the president the secretary of state the secretary of defense this sort of thing so I remain silent and there did come a point when I thought the military had been put into a position that it shouldn't be I'm hard over about the apolitical tradition of the US military the military exists to protect the experiment that we call America the peace the people of America that's a separate issue so I wanted to make that very clear and I did so and I promptly left the public stage at that point I want to ask both of you about China we've had one or two problems with Zoom during this interview on your end but it looks like it's working now so we're going to plow on I want to come to you first Sir Angus on the question of China and let me ask you about China in the context of the rules based order obviously an emerging China a rising China presents in many ways the most serious challenge to the global order that we've been discussing let me start with you Angus and then come to General Mattis Angus what do you think about Australian policy on China at the moment what do you think about the Australian debate on China have we got a balance right both in our public policy and in our public debate well I think that right now we're in a difficult position a challenging position our number one alliance partner is at loggerheads with our number one trading partner and of course I think there's been some shall I say some loose talk from here in Australia where we've seen some comments basically make the circumstances a little worse than they needed to be so I think our relationship at the moment is at a very low point I think the Huawei decision was probably you know where it really started and this year we've seen a number of events that run through them because I think everybody knows and even today there's some debate about whether coal is being restricted Australian coal exports but I think we need to take a hard look at our relationship with China I think we need a reset we need a circuit breaker because really we're going to come out of this recession that we have at the moment because of COVID-19 we need China why we're integrated into the Chinese economy and you know fundamentally we need to be able to work effectively with them and we need to engage them with mutual respect and mutual sensitivity I think they need to respect our sovereignty as we respect theirs but constructive relationships with China both at the bilateral and the multilateral level are essential to Australia going forward they're not going to go away they're going to get stronger they are going to be a force that we have to deal with so we better work out the best way to work with them China is not our enemy let's get that very straight and some of the messaging that we've seen from elements within Australia particularly in the parliament I think has been a little bit ill disciplined I'll probably take a hit for saying that but the fact of the matter is I think in the sensitive relationship we have either to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Trade Minister the people who are carrying the responsibilities to make statements and messaging about China in terms of these calls we've heard for more economic sovereignty in our trading relationship diversification is fine but it's going to take years to achieve and the fact of the matter is as John Edwards from the Lowy Institute has said we're deeply integrated into the East Asian economy and that's China and any talk about instant sovereignty in an economic sense is more rhetoric than real we need to hold firm to our values and our interests and work with like-minded in arrangements like the Quad and with ASEAN to construct a new strategic architecture in the region and that's going to be very challenging but we've got to do something along those lines and I was very encouraged by the outcome from the Quad last week. I might say finally I was really taken with what our Foreign Minister said in the press conference after the Osmond meeting in Washington. She said we make our own decisions, our own judgments in the Australian national interest and about upholding our security and prosperity and our values. The relationship that we have with China is important and we have no intention of injuring it. I agree with that and I think we need to put a high priority on restoring some sort of normality to a very challenging relationship. Thank you Angus and I note that as you were talking about undisciplined statements there were a couple of dogs barking at your end. General Mattis I want to bring you in on China if I can. Tell us a bit about where you think the US relationship with China will go over the next decade and in particular how do you think Washington should strike a balance between different imperatives on China. For example the economic relationship versus criticizing human rights abuses within China versus a more realist emphasis on constraining China's external behavior versus cooperating with China on issues such as climate change for example. How will the US square this circle? How should it square this circle? Again Michael I would just put it in a historical context we have not had an adversarial relationship with China I mean with Australia and China and the United Nations we together rolled back fascism in the Pacific we lost there and it was only in 1947 to about 1972 that we had the adversarial relationship never before then and since then Republican and Democrat administrations have seen China coming of its own as a positive thing the one point I would make is as we look forward which we must do right now we leaders have a responsibility to define reality and I only hope that in Beijing they want the kind of respect and the kind of respect for other nations that we want to see or China or Surangus mentioned about China but as we look forward this is probably the most significant issue of our time specifically between the United States and the PRC and I say this because we must find a way that when these two nuclear arms superpowers step on each other's toes as we will from time to time the nature of the world we're going to have to think through how we're going to resolve those differences I mean this is a reality this is what leaders do and history is not very forgiving of someone saying well that's difficult that's your duty now let's get on with it I think that we will see a more constructive engagement in the new year and perhaps with a more mature strategic framework but I think that what we want to do is remember that no one nation dominates in this part of the world European colonialism came in it was pushed back in the years of World War II and following we've seen the Soviet communism what they tried to do as far as bringing the ideas in it was pushed back and when someone we're not asking for people to sign up it's our way or the Chinese way but when someone comes out and says there's one belt and one road my view is with sovereign nations there's many belts and many roads and we should not put people in a position where it's either with one belt and one road or they're voted off the island kind of thing I think too that we're going to have to preserve the positive pieces that we do have and there are positive elements from education there's been some mucking around there too with certain Confucius societies and all but overall the education doors I think are a positive part of the relationship Australia with China and the United States with China I think too if we can look at the aspects of the economics where it's reciprocal and if they want customer facing relationships and investments in our country then we should have the same for our businesses in their country further I think we need to reframe the narrative which I think is also what Serangus was saying there and that means a return to what I would call structured strategic dialogues right now Michael I'm concerned we talk about North Korea's nukes or we talk about the Senkaku islands or the South China Sea or Hong Kong or the Uyghurs but there's not the overarching strategic discussions about common ground and the priorities we placed the kind of thing we had for example with Moscow and Washington DC even during some tough times that the Reagan administration for example dealt with as we arranged to get Jews out of Russia unable to immigrate to Israel in the midst of the Cold War we were able to do that and I think too we're going to have to prioritize multilateral engagements and there Serangus mentioned the Quad I just think the Quad helps us to integrate and yet separate where necessary so that we can have we don't throw the baby out with the bath water and my last question but I don't understand right now why China is doing much of what it's doing they come to America and the president said we will not militarize the Spratly Islands and they militarized the Spratly they asked for our help in the 80s about the return of Hong Kong it was the right thing to do they said one country two system they violated them we had reduced our sales of arms to Taiwan over the years on the assumption it would be a peaceful reconciliation and we're not seeing that now you look on the Indian border I don't know what is causing President Xi no one else matters in the country I don't know what is causing President Xi right now to go with diplomacy and the cyber efforts against Australia the banning of beef from certain Australian when you put this together there's something driving this a vulnerability somewhere that I don't understand and part of getting this relationship back on track is understanding each other and right now China is doing some things that makes that problematic. General Mattis I want to ask you about another cheery topic and that is coronavirus first let me say how shocked and sad and Australians have been about a toll that coronavirus has taken on your country now 210,000 dead and counting that's more than the losses in World War I, 9-11 and Vietnam combined if I'm correct we're used to seeing the United States as the epicenter of global power not as the epicenter of global disease has COVID shown up America's frailties do you think yeah you know that one of the biggest challenges we have is we are the United States and an awful lot of power is in our states but we have not handled COVID situation well that is no ground for an excuse the bottom line is we have seen a response to disease politicized in an unfortunate way and the cost is real any crisis and certainly a crisis against a nasty little bugger like COVID-19 is a race between knowledge and time it caught us all flat footed China I think mishandled some things early on I think Australia was quite right to say we need to look at this so we don't do it again unfortunate that China took that as a reason to take retribution economic retribution on Australia but I think that what we have to look at here is the democracies New Zealand I would say Australia is not not perfect I'm not saying that but well handled Taiwan Republic of Korea but it's interesting too to see that countries that had recently been through a bad hit with SARS there's nothing like something in the human experience a disaster to really get you ready for the next one and we got lucky and lucky on one did not put us in a position I think where lessons learned processes and procedures rehearsed put us at the top of our game and we've paid a we've paid a bloody awful price for it is the bottom line there's no dressing it up all right now I'm going to take a few questions from the audience or rather we collected some questions before the event began and I want to put a couple of them to to both of you I'm going to start with you if you don't mind syringes can I ask you we were talking about China before and and General Mattis was putting some of the onus back on Beijing we have a question from Malcolm Garcia and he asks what can the world do to influence Xi Jinping what do you think Angus what can the world what can Australia do to influence Chinese thinking on some of these questions and I think that's very very challenging you're dealing with a an authoritarian state in China the president of China is also the the leader of the the Communist Party in China and he holds immense power in November of 2017 he went out with a very long statement which suggested that he was stronger than any of his predecessors in terms of his leadership of the Communist Party and of course of China so influencing China I think is a great challenge but I believe I do believe we've got a this is where diplomats come in I think the diplomats have to start working to prepare the way for the politicians to engage and I think that at the political level that's probably the way to do it more broadly engaging the Chinese people well a lot of Chinese young Chinese come to western universities they get a good education and they get exposure to what happens in the democratic world they go back to China and they get involved in business and so on so I think there's probably a lot of people in China who are well disposed to the western world and I think we should try and and build on that good world that's out there but it's very challenging because of the limitations of working with a state that has essentially closed doors to any suggestion that we might be trying to influence their young people or we might be trying to influence their community I think we just the way we were going in 2014 when I think the relationship hit a high point seemed to me that we were headed in a really good direction things were becoming more open we were working together on things like MH370 we signed a trade free trade arrangement and we even signed off on a strategic partnership with China but since then things have become much tighter and Jim said he's not quite sure why so I'm not quite sure why because things seem to be going in a reasonable direction but they changed after 2014 and I think it's more than Huawei I think there are other things that have changed it and I'm not sure what those other things are. Alright General Mattis I'm going to ask you a question I might just say for our live viewers we've had some problems with the video from General Mattis but the audio is fine so if you know why you're seeing a lot of shots of me of my face when you're hearing General Mattis speaking I assure you it's not vanity on my part it's just because we're having some video problems but we're going to plow on like a good Australian infantry or US Marine General Mattis let me ask you I have a question from my chairman Sir Frank Lowey who's in Tel Aviv at the moment. Sir Frank asks in relation to the Middle East what has the Trump Administration got right or has it got wrong. Yeah I think right now in answer to Frank's question you take a look at this opening between the United Arab Emirates and Israel and we're seeing the seeds of a deeper piece it still concerns me that Iran is doing what it's doing there I'm not trying to look at that reality and the amount of support they're giving from Lebanese Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Syrian Assad regime and some of their militias acting contrary to the best interest of the Iraqi people for example and all the way down to Yemen but as you see this warming trend between the Arab states now joining Egypt and in terms of relations with Israel with United Arab Emirates and Bahrain I think you're seeing some of the groundwork taking firm hold that will reduce a lot of the tensions and what has kept the Middle East out of boil at the same time there are worrisome issues out of Turkey certainly the situation in Syria with Iran's continued help and Russia's blocking the UN from really playing a good role to mediate that are reason for a lot of concern but I think within the realm of what the administration has done I think that the most important thing is that we're seeing this relaxation of tensions and coming out into the open something that was only happening very quietly for quite some time there have been warming trends but in the Middle East I learned don't believe anything that's not in public it's got to get in public and it finally has gotten there so I would really highlight that as what has been gotten right. Alright I want to ask both of you briefly about climate change if I can as a threat to the international order General Mattis perhaps you first obviously the US Marine specialized in traditional security threats climate change is a non-traditional one but how real a problem is that how much of a threat is that to our national interests and to the order from which we've benefited so much. You know I've ceased trying to convince the disbelievers in climate change that there's climate change the way I would handle it when I was Secretary of Defense I'd simply say okay I don't know how come but all the ice has gone away from a certain place and I've got to be concerned with it so just bear with me as I deal with it because what I eventually hit on in order to try to change the thinking there was most of you who drove to this meeting or wherever you're at have car insurance it's not because you expect to have a car accident tonight it's in case something goes wrong so shouldn't we at least have a insurance policy if climate change is real for me it's real it's quantifiable it's science and I have no doubt about it matter of fact in 2008 as the as the commander of US Joint Forces Command we wrote down the 10 talk drivers for the next decade or national security problems and one of them was we announced in 2008 was climate change it's a very alarming trend in the desertification all those those kind of things I think it is an area that in one way allows us all to work together and lose a lot of the adversarial relations we may have on a number of other issues for the good of all mankind but it's going to take political leadership and that's by everyone including the United States is the bottom line I consider it very serious if something we can get to in 10 or 20 years I think you need to start working the insurance policy with urgency yesterday all right and Angus just briefly on climate change as a security threat if you wouldn't mind look I think climate change is real I recently became the chair of the Murray Dalning Basin Authority and inflows into the basin have been reducing steadily over the years 20% reduction at least and if you have a look at the droughts over the years 6 drought in the last 20 years 20 years before that only one drought 20 years before that only one drought so in key parts of Australia in the food bowl of Australia we're seeing the climate change in an adverse way and those sorts of events are happening all over the world and I think it will have a security dimension to it I don't know how food production for example with a vast growing population huge population growth predicted through the next 20, 30 years I'm not sure about food supply I think food security is an associated issue which is going to become very prominent and very important so climate change in itself is real it's what comes out of the climate change I think there'll be issues with food security and if we look at the rising temperature it doesn't just have an effect over the land in places like eastern Australia we look out into the Pacific some of those little nations out there have real concern about a rise in the sea level and there's got to be a security concern about that as well so I agree with Jim we've got to get the world community together and climate change is something that we can put on the table and be guided by the science and basically decide how we're going to handle what is arguably one of the biggest challenges that we face in the future. General Mattis we've got time for one more question I'm going to ask you about the 2020 election I'm going to ask you to endorse a candidate although of course if you want to make news for the Lowy Institute you're very welcome to do so but let me ask you this having served a number of US presidents what do you think is the most important quality for the commander in chief in your memoir call sign chaos you said that the two qualities you look for when you're looking to leaders in the US marines were initiative and assertiveness when you're in the box what do you look for what will you look for on November the third in your commander in chief. Yeah I will decline your offer Dr. Michael to endorse a candidate my thoughts are that retired generals need to retire their tongues during election season in keeping with the a political tradition of democracies from Australia to the America but I would just say that what I would look for most in leader is competence and compassion that to me is the character piece of them I would look to the character and competence as a leader and compassion empathy with their people all their people as Harry Truman put it he's also the president of those who did not vote for him I'd look for character Michael and thanks so much for having me Michael this is more fun than waterboarding you know training thank you thank you general Jim Mattis and syringes Houston for having me for having us in your homes today it's been a fascinating conversation I know you won't blame me general Mattis for trying to push you a little bit on newsworthy topics thank you for teaching us or teaching me a new word today and that is Caddy Wampus I still don't know what that is but I'm going to look that up later so I've learned a new word from a US Marine today so thank you very much it's been an honor truthfully for me to speak to two individuals who've served their countries with such distinction so thank you thank you for pressing on despite zoom difficulties we really appreciated it and thank you everyone else for joining us for this Lowy Institute live event please keep an eye out for the Lowy Institute's work I mentioned earlier our timeline on the rules based order last week we published an analysis by non-resident fellow Dr Tom Wright on American global leadership and the November election and let me also give a plug to my podcast the director's chair in recent episodes I've interviewed Jake Sullivan and Nick Burns we've both endorsed Joe Biden and in the next episode I'll speak to the leading Republican foreign policy figure Steve Hadley who was national security advisor to George W. Bush in the meantime from everyone at the Lowy Institute thank you for joining us today and stay safe and well


Right next to that Humvee, with the intent. Yeah, Roger, we got two drones out, over. We was, but they can't see it from here. We're under attack. There are UAS systems out there, and there are ground forces attacking. Sir, you had it. There are no UAS systems. They're bad guys outside. They're bad guys outside. We're engaging right now. It's defeating right now. Okay. There's drones. There are drones. Kill them. Kill them. We got drones. Titan. They will have US equipment. Okay. Dace, get up there. You got here. You got here. You got here. Hire and main are tracking everything. We've hit them up on Espoir, JVC, and Chad. He punches. He punches. He punches. He punches. Come on. Kiss me. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. He's just above the knee. He last missed above the knee. Dace, target everything from the main. Both lanes, just this side. Can he walk? No, I can't. Not you kids. No. Seconds? Yeah. No holes, no blood, no nothing. Perfect. Ready? You guys got that litter up? Twist it in? Yeah. Twist it out? Twist it out. We're done. Checking right now. Respirations. Checking restoration. Stand rise and fall. He's got two respiration per minute. Checking 30 seconds. One of your respiration per minute. If we're on the falls, they all on the fields of the rabbit. SPO 2 is 98. Nothing's pretty hard. You don't have little pole socks, but still. I got one right here. You got a friendly fire. You don't have one on you, but I just tell you. Oh yeah, run, run, run, run. Just make sure. How many litter? Airways, pegs. All right, so. Restoration. We've got a bilateral ratio on them. 42. All right. Point to the left. He feels like we already know. You're fine. He's like, what? Call the OCs? Yeah. Reserve. Oh, three. What about a little morphine? You need a pelvic bone to progress down stairs. We're good? Yeah. We're good. Hang on. Lift. Lift. Thanks. Grab kind of pretty good. Yeah. All right. One, two, three. One, two, three. Pulse, radio, I'm good. Capillary refill. Normal, normal, normal. They know that you're here. I'm going to go across once and we'll just rev it.   Every single time you're like tired. So it doesn't mean that you're tired. That was me by the present. Hey, is it possible to get one of those drum busters? Why do they have to? They're in the woods. Now he's heading out to East East. Now he's heading out to East. He's not on. Roger, he's already passed all that. It's in the open now? He's out in the open to the East. He's passed all our elements. Looks like a moss going towards the water top.


Santa knows where to find all the best and hottest smartphones just in time to make this Christmas better and bigger than ever. Better service, bigger savings, that's today's Appalachian Wireless! Ho, ho, ho! It was a heartbreaking day in Warfield as family, friends, and community members said their goodbyes to 7-year-old Paul Luther Bowen. Paul died Christmas Day after falling into the tug-fork of the Big Sandy River behind his residence at Hode. Paul was a very lovable little boy. He'd never seen a stranger.  It didn't matter if he'd never seen him before or if he'd know him, he wanted to hug him. He was very well loved by the community. The outreach has been overwhelming. The day that he went missing. We had over 100 people in literally a matter of minutes. I'm not talking about taking hours to get people. I mean literally minutes. We had everybody coming up and down the riverbank. Bowen says Paul was full of life and everyone loved to be around him. I hope everybody just remembers him. I mean the type boy was. He smiled all the time. He liked to dress up. The bus driver, when she would come out and pick him up, her and the aide on the bus would take bets on what he would come dressed up as that morning. In Lua Flowers, the family requests contributions be made to the funeral home to assist with expenses. Everything that we collect is going straight to the funeral cost along with a monument and then be going to the family. We do want to thank everybody so far that has sent in donations. The outpouring from the community has been overwhelming. Donations to the family can be made by mail or over the phone by using the methods listed on your screen. Funeral services will be held tomorrow at noon at the Mullins Family Funeral Home. In Warfield, Shelby Porter, EKB News.


Hey there friends, how's it going? My name is Kevin, and today we're playing Episode. Uh, it's kind of like a whole new episode of... Episode. If this were a TV show of sorts, what episode would we be on? One thousand one hundred and five. Okay, this is not realistic. I would have been cancelled a long time ago. I think right around the point of like, uh, kicking babies is about the time I would have got cancelled. Alright, well, that tangent aside, let's get started playing Episode. I've never played it before. I don't even know what it is. All I know is a lot of people want me to play it. Our fans love these stories. Which would you like to read first? Love on Fire. Or is that the kiss list? By who is censored?  This is gonna be a very, very fun experience. Alright, you've been selected to join Love on Fire. Love is a burning thing. Live in a luxury beachfront mansion with our hot singles and look for love. Great, sounds great. Wow, look at how much fun they're having. I like the flamingo. It's just my type of replay. No, hold on. We've just started. I like to be different. Is this me? Oh my God, I've never looked better. Maybe I should clean shave. I do things my own way. That movement then.  Is it like a game show? Is that, is that what I'm on? Welcome to the Love on Fire mansion. That is a horrible name. How do I turn down this music? I feel too empowered. I'm drooling apparently. End of your name. Mr. Jim Peckins. What's your look? Oh, I can change things around. Getting my paleness going. I like that. Oh, there we go. I've been a Jill Swanson chin. That's what I like to see. I just hope one of the contestants is called Peter. Hey, Peter, what a date. OMG, you're gorgeous. Please say my name. I wanted to say OMG. Mr. Jim Peckins. You're gorgeous. Oh my God, the tutorial is calling me hotstop. Stop it, you. Oh, now it's calling me babe. Oh my God, this tutorial keeps hitting on me. This is the only tutorial I've ever liked. All right, who is my love coach? You have to choose from me, Harley and Henry. Hi, Mr. Jim Peckins. I'm a model from New York City and I hate wearing shirts. You got the job.  I can do it. My life. All right. Is this the bikini he's picking for me? Stop that. Whatever that is, Mr. Jim Peckins, stop it. Don't wink at me. Wait, what? Hold on.  It's really, really manipulating me. It's like, be unforgettable in this hot as heck look. 14 diamonds. Wear a plain bikini. I don't have any money. How much does it cost? I really want to look hot af. My God, one euro isn't even enough to wear the bikini. This is the first option. No one's going to like me. All right, wear a plain bikini. Here in the case that you're breaking my head, our company's going to go under. This is your one chance to make your first impression.  You do you, he says. Jesus, talk about manipulation. I don't think I've ever been manipulated like that. Like not even from a game, just like in general. Oh my God, it's Mr. Jim Peckins. Mr. Jim Peckins, we're so excited to meet you. What would Mr. Jim Peckins sound like? Could someone get me a drink? Here, have some champagne. He just looks like the type that would pronounce it like that. He reads it phonetically. Do you have a type? Nope. I'm just trying to cast a wide net so that anyone might date me. Everyone is staring. I'm here. They really are. It's pretty intense. Okay, just kiss someone, Mr. Jim Peckins. I'm going to go for Mr. Generic over here. Yeah, go for it.  I wish they censored it. It's too much. Oh my God, look at her dancing. Look at Mr. Generic.  Oh, I picked badly. We have an addition to the group. The show just started.  She wore something so flashy. I should have just paid the euro. She even has her own soundtrack that plays when she enters. Like, listen to that. Who do you want to ask? Is this true? They're asking a new one. Put her on the spot. Truth. All right. These are really lame. Who are you most attracted to here? Asher for sure. That's my Mr. Generic.  Oh wait. Hold on. Warzone is an update.  Like, wow, he's masculine. I'm not, I'm not like threatened at all.  I shoot people sometimes. All right. Let's get back to getting angry at this woman, stealing my potential boyfriend. Mr. Jim Pickens. I just realized the, the highest capitals. I guess it's just for more pronunciation. So you go, Mr. Jim Peckens. Truth or dare? Dare me. Come on. Nebulcade's air and tell a secret.   Let me get some ASMR for you. All right. I hope that really got you immersed in the game. Oh, now for the secret. Isn't this kind of like, like bunching the dare and truth into one? This seems a bit unfair. I'm just going to say I'm very attracted to you because the other one's going to steal my man. We're adding twins to the mansion. Come on. And like, we just started and they keep coming.  And the wise words of the philosopher's smash mouth. Big fan of his work. Why are they all pointing at Asher? Like, I picked Mr. generic first, okay?  Oh my God. I think I just got kidnapped. Was this show a whole cover for human trafficking? Okay. You just threw me in the pool and I'm not coming out. I just sank to the bottom like a rock. I like that the music is still just pumping as I'm down there drowning. You can't help but stare at Asher. The water dripping off his golden skin. His big smile. They look in his eyes. He's had that same look in his eyes since we arrived. I think he's just spaced to be honest. Two more hotties joining us. Perfect. Say, will you stop adding people? I can't even keep track of who's already in here. Time for your first challenge. Speed dating. Oh, that's shocking, Mr. Jim Beckins. Who do you want to talk to? Yeah, why not? I don't really care to be honest.  Like, I'm so pale out in the sun. Everyone else is to hand. I'm the only pale person. Okay. I don't like this person already. Like, they're doing this weird dance after like one champagne and it looks like they're just suckling on my weakness. That's the back of the elbow. If you didn't know, by the way, you can Google it. I'm not joking. That's the weenus. I think he's got a hold of it there. I'm looking at the weenus and I'm not happy. So where are you from? The middle of nowhere. I'm from Ireland. He's like, Oh, is that in like New Jersey? I've always wanted to go to the middle of nowhere. Just sentence fill in blank, whatever the answer is.  A whale on your ankle. Yeah, it would just mean it would be so special to me. I don't want to go into details. He's like, that's so sexy. Oh my God. There's tons of new people joining. Stop. I can't keep on top of this. Oh, wait, I get to pick. Okay. He's moving a bit quick. He's like, for real, like we could be engaged by the end of this. Like I've been talking to him for literally 10, 20 seconds. Wait, only premium outfits unlock this choice. I want a skinny dip though. All right. Let's play a game instead. Preferably not episode. Anything else. Let's play Warzone and shoot some people. My turn.  I've just been down at a beach. There's so much sand all over it. You're going to love it.  This is so weird. Would it be okay if I kissed you?   This is so uncomfortable. It is so uncomfortable. God, he must love sand. Mr. Jim Pickens over there is like, God, that was the grittiest kiss I've ever had. Did he just say it's a white party? What kind of game show is this? All right, don't cancel me, please. We've made it to 1,105 episodes. I don't want to get canceled now. It's not my fault the game did this. Okay. This is not realistic. I would have been canceled a long time ago. What do you say, Mr. Jim Pickens? Shall we throw a party before we have to vote? I have the most hot points apparently, so I get to pick. Oh my God, I have to pay for it. I want to give all my new housemates the best night ever. But to do it, you're going to have to pay 2 euro. Here's the answer. Don't have fun with your new housemates. I got a gem. Why? Did I get voted off? Wait, oh, episode 2 of 15. What? Oh my God, I have to pay to play.  As a reminder, you speed dated Ben, Dale and Vlad. Let the voting begin. I've got to get two votes apparently. Oh wait, these are my votes. Hold on. Yeah, sure, everyone can stay. Oh wait, not him actually.  Uh, yeah, he was the toe sucker. He can stay. I voted for him to go, so he votes for me to stay. It's going to be weird. He didn't feel a connection. Like how come he gets to vote after I already voted him off? He's hardly going to go. Yeah, I just, I love you so much. Vlad's definitely going to keep me voted in. Yeah, there we go.  Bye-bye. Okay, these are my three date options. Let's go with Mr. Generic. I don't know why sandy toe guy didn't want to go on a date with me, but oh well. Yass honey, be bold. All right, I'll do it. Like, is this a TV show or what is happening? I don't understand the entertainment like factor for the audience. It's a very strange set up and making impression. Go for it. I go for it. Sorry, just trying to keep it respectful. You know, okay, we're doing some weird fashion shows a date.  I don't like her. They just got a nine out of 10 fact that we can beat them. We're going to blow all the other couples away. I'm assuming this is provided. I pay at least for your hoes. Be a golden goddess. Be a sexy diva. Stick with shorts and a tank. Even Ash is shaming me for not spending money. This is so manipulative. I am amazed by this. Like, if you were young at playing this, it would really make you feel bad. But it doesn't have that effect on me because I play games where I shoot people and stuff. So I don't mind at all like when they do this to me. No, not at all. Do something. Do something funky. But first stand on the catwalk for 10 seconds without moving. There we go. You got their attention. Now do something funky. Oh, yeah, that's nice.  That's not bad. This is just playing donkey pretty much. I'm glad it's over with. Let's play a little icebreaker game. I'm going to say I'm into brainy and brawnics. I don't think he's either. He said, do you think that's me? No, stay open minded. What's the weirdest thing about you? Okay, don't tell many people this, but I totally geek out over the apocalypse. Wow, that's so quirky and wild, Asher. You're so interesting. You really something, Mr. Jim Pickens. I'm into it. We're currently number two. Number two top couple. Fantastic. Of course it's them.  I don't even know who these people are. They brought too many people on the island. There's too many characters. There are literally thousands of posts from your viewers begging you to show them a super hot kiss. Oh my God, they didn't even censor it. This is going to be wild. You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now. Oh my God, honey. Yass, stop saying Yass. Let's give America a sexy AF kiss and get the premium treatment we deserve. Why don't you get the feeling they're going to make me pay for this? Of course. Even the answers is like kiss Asher and win America's favorite couple. Let you go and Isidore win. That's too bad. The cameras move away from you and Asher and over to you got Isidore. Oh my God, Isidore's here and her funky music is playing. She's scary. Better luck next time, sweetie.  You better keep walking. Want to get out of here? Get a little privacy. What about Ash? You're not screw Ash. I want to be interesting on this game show so people keep me in. Who are you? What? Who is this? Oh, hi. Hey, can I steal you? What? Not okay. I'm hanging out with Mr. Jim Pickens right now. Is it like first name Mr. Jim? Or is it like actually the prefix to his name? I don't know her name. I don't know. All right. She is falling over him and he's still like, look, I'm touched, but I want to spend time with Mr. Jim Pickens right now. Get crushed, Georgia. Oh my God. Look, he's kissing her eyeball. Maybe I'm not maybe cheek as they must be European heat. Things up with Nash or let Georgia have Nash. All right. Fine.  He's a gold digger. He's looking for me diamonds. All right. The ranking is beginning. Oh my God. She's getting rid of her date.  She's unpredictable. Oh, he's pissed. Oh, no, wait. Hold on. Maybe I shouldn't have gone on a date with someone else. Okay. And Azure, you want me to stay right? Yes. Okay. Yes. I'm saved. Oh my God. Thank you, Azure. How could I repay him for this? Honestly, he really did me a solid. Do you want Azure to stay in the mansion? No, I want to vote for Nash. He's pissed. I'm very sorry, Azure. Time to pack your bags. Mr. Jim Pickens. Is there anyone else you'd like to vote to keep in the mansion? No. Oh God. I'm going down to the beach again.  Wait, is she singing? All right. I guess they should sing the words first as we've no audio. I've learned and I've lost.  Oh, someone else is singing down the beach with me. So look what I got. Look what you saw on me. It's like a Louis Armstrong down the beach. I don't know that song, by the way. I think it might be Ariana Grande. Grandiosa. Is that her name? I don't know. Really trying to make it seem like I'm a tough guy here. And I don't know who Ariana Grande is. No, I don't know. I'm calling him out for being super creepy. Okay. We're going to a club now. I mean this random stranger who stalked me on the beach. It seems like this will end well.  Or will you be brutally murdered on the beach? I like how they put the hat just over his hair. So you can see the model of his hair coming around the back. Oh, it's not the way I envisioned, but they are guilty me. Give Max the best night of his life. Don't help Max. I'm not even guilted over that one. Just feck off. I don't care about you. Oh, this one says she's nice cookies. I'm going to go with her. Wait, she's not even an option. Oh, the towsockers there, though, sure. Fly to the Bahamas in a luxury jet with Vlad and 19 diamonds. Fly economy in a tank and shorts. Dot, dot, dot. Oh honey, why? Why won't you spend money on our game? Like if I bought all of these choices, which I'm sure kids have done in the past because they feel guilty, it would be about 10 euros by now. Ready for the Bahamas. You know, I don't think I am. This is getting frustrating. I don't play games to be guilted. All right. I save that for the YouTube comments. Oh, and look, I can't play it anyway because I have to pay for it. I'll only get another pass organically in three hours, 20 minutes. You could buy three passes for 73 cents, which that's how much I did. I did three episodes, so that would have been 73 cents. But the diamonds are ridiculous. Like just to get good choices and I assume get a happy ending at the end of it.  I'm happy for it to end there. I'll just say the plane crashed story over. I just saved you like about two hours. We're going to end it there. I hope you enjoyed. If you want me to try out more games like this, like mobile apps, I think it would be really fun. So do let me know in the comments or just leave a like if you liked it. If the video does well, I usually try and do something similar to it. And I don't know. Maybe we could do another story in this game. There might be totally different ones. I'm not that familiar with it. Like, trust me, I play really manly games usually, like really manly. Sometimes I go and I just like chop, chop timber and stuff. Like I was going red dead and like start chopping logs. It's just, you know, just a man thing. But like I could find more games probably like just just for a video, not something I'd enjoy. I just, you know, all right, well, it's been good. I hope to see you next time. I appreciate you watching. And yeah, that's about it. Bye for now.


Hey everyone, it's Gabrielle. I'm out here today at Oxmore Toyota. Today I'm actually out here with our used car manager Terry Smith Now a lot of people are interested in the process of selling your vehicle So I have Terry here and he is going to answer a couple questions. So the first one Terry is Why do we want to buy their car? well Today your car is worth more than it ever will be again use car markets right now at an all-time high and We are paying top dollar for trade-ins or if you want to just sell your car We're paying top dollar as well. Stop by and see us. All right now the second question. I have for you is Will you give me a guaranteed offer? Well, we do have an online Process that you can go online and it'll give you a rough idea what your car is worth But again as I was saying right now our markets are very very Tough and we are paying top dollar. I bet I can give you more money than what our online pricing will offer you All right now, how long would it take for me to get a check? We can generally have a check ready for you within 24 hours. All right now. What if I still owe money to the bank? that's no problem, we'll pay your car off in full and You don't have to worry about a thing. We do all the paperwork and we'll take care of that for you All right now in regards to COVID-19. Is it safe to visit the dealership? Yes, it is as you can tell Gabby and I are six feet apart We do have masks that we wear anytime. We're inside the building our cars upon test drives They are sanitized tables inside are sanitized as well. We are ready for you now I have a question that I'm actually going to answer Do I have to come into the dealership to see what my car is worth? So technically no We do have an online area and I'll actually have a link below where you can get an exact amount for your vehicle But when you come in we can even typically we can even go higher than what they're saying on there Just because we can see it in person and you know just kind of go from there But we really appreciate you all watching this. We look forward to seeing you guys If you have any questions all of our contact information will be down below. Thanks again guys. We look forward to seeing you all soon Bye


Home Alone was a gigantic movie released during the holiday season of 1990, and like all blockbuster movies of course there's a video game adaptation, or in this case several adaptations made by several different developers. Home Alone found its way to the NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Genesis, Game Gear, Master System, Amiga, and DOS, but unfortunately the Super Nintendo version was developed by Imagineering, the same group responsible for games like Home Improvement, Power Tool Pursuit, and Race Driven, two of the absolute worst games on the system. The rest of their catalog isn't exactly sterling either, with the best game of the bunch probably being Super Battle Tank. Anyway, in the Super Nintendo edition of Home Alone you play as Kevin McAllister, tasked with bringing all of the McAllister family's valued possessions down to lock into a safe in the basement while avoiding the wet bandits Harry and Marv. The game more or less follows the story of the film, as far as the overall structure goes anyway, complete with the characters likenesses, so it at least has that going for it. Otherwise, if first impressions matter to you, this is as bad as a first impression as you can get. This looks bad even for an NES game, which means the NES game looks, well, don't get me started on that one. So you start out in your own room, pressing up to open dressers and go through doors, the stuff you collect, you gotta put down these laundry shoots, and everything all just kinda sits there in a big pile.  Are you shooting them with ammonia or Ipacac or something? When they're doubled over like that, you just jump over them. So yeah, this is a game where you collect stuff and avoid stuff, and the number underneath the safe icon up top tells you how many things you need to collect. And a lot of placements are unintuitive, like who puts a ring behind a mirror, and who keeps money laying around everywhere in sacks with big dollar signs on them. What is a Scrooge McDuck's mansion? Once the counter hits zero, a key will appear next to the basement door, and you head downstairs to contend with bats and rats. And again, you're just avoiding everything, and that's fine. Not every game has to be Contra or Mario or whatever, but the controls here are terrible. This reminds me of Wizard of Oz where you have no idea what you can and can't jump on, or what can and can't hurt you. Once you get to the basement, avoiding all the enemies is such a pain. After that part, you get a boss fight where you have to make a concrete block fall on it a few times. Boring. There's four long levels here too, or at least they seem long. I should mention that the Genesis game is totally different, where you have to defend multiple houses against Marvin Harry by setting traps and inflicting pain, as indicated by the pain meter. Okay, that's pretty funny. And everything is hinged on a time limit. This game has more of a strategic slant, and I have to admit, it's not that bad. Sure, the controls are god-awful, but it's at least something different other than a generic platformer. But hey, if you love generic platformers and are a huge fan of games like Family Dog, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and the Home Improvement Game, then hey, you'll love Home Alone on Super Nintendo. Or you could play like three dozen other platformers that are much better than this. It's your call. Just in case you can't get enough Home Alone, here's Home Alone 2, Lost in New York. And again, we're saddled with Imagineering as the developer for the Super Nintendo Edition. But at least this time, it's a more traditional generic platformer, if that makes sense. You do get a few extra attacks here, like sliding, along with a couple extra items and weapons. It does a decent job following the movie, if that matters to you. And you get to set traps for the villains, which is a nice touch. Unfortunately, the structure of this game gets old quickly. Like in the first level, you get all the way to the end of the hallway, go back to the elevator, explore all the rooms, and knock out all the enemies, and backtrack all the way back to the elevator again, and repeat. There's five levels here, and no way to save. But this game takes like 25 minutes to beat. While Home Alone 2 is better than the first game, and it's not god-awful or anything, it's still incredibly dull. The enemy sprite animation is as cheap and lazy as it gets, and the level design feels thrown together. And again, just like the first game, you're better off playing it on Sega Genesis. It's a completely different game developed by Sega Interactive, the same team that made eternal champions and dinosaurs for hire. It's a decent enough platformer, and not exactly worth going out of your way to play or anything. I'm just saying, it's more worth your time than the Super Nintendo version. So yeah, if for whatever reason you're jonesing for a Home Alone fix, why wouldn't you just avoid all these games and just watch the movies? But if you have to play some Home Alone video games, play the two Genesis games.


Everybody's in the car here, my new dog, what I have here, I have a beautiful red 1,220, 1,500-gram warlock, got the 5.7 AMI, it's got the The hood's tight, it's got the sport hood, black pants underwear, power seat, blue tooth, 8.4 screen, crew cap, power folding mirrors, storage in the floor, a lot of black rims, awesome, like I said it's a warlock, so you're gonna have your back in the camera as well This is got your backup sensors, kill the tow ready to go So for the month of august, we're giving 25% off msrp on these bad boys So where are you gonna go? Mountain View Dog, are you gonna see me, Steve McFarland, have a great day


Yeah, it's Ross Barnett deputy commissioner. We're good to go. All right. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen We just want to take this opportunity to remind the community that starting at six o'clock tonight and finishing at 6 a.m. On Sunday morning please from across Australia New Zealand will have a coordinated approach to the management of public space drinking operation unite It's the fifth time that the operation has been run. The last one was run in May this year While police are coordinating their efforts It's important to understand that alcohol and drug fuel violence is not just a policing issue But it's an issue that the whole community has to take responsibility for for the causes and the effects As we move into the holiday and festive season at the start of December We think particularly timely to remind everybody to be responsible in their approach to alcohol and to be mindful of the adverse effects that it can have on our families and our friends In Queensland, we're going to have extra police rosted on across the state Particularly within the entertainment precincts and the drinks safe precincts Our police will be targeting violent and anti-social behavior And we again encourage everybody to enjoy alcohol safely and responsibly While this weekend is a targeted high visibility approach to the issue the QPS maintains a constant focus throughout the year on Ensuring people's enjoyment of public space entertainment, and it's not going to be ruined by people who cannot drink and act responsibly Thank you for taking the question I think it's more busy this time of year for you guys in those party precincts and sort of the festive period Yeah, it's a natural consequence of the start of the holiday season and the festive season That people are out enjoying public spaces, there are a lot more Christmas parties People get out and enjoy what the state has to offer And that's only natural and appropriate and we want to see that happen We're certainly not the fun police We're not interested in people who go out and know how to have a good time and act responsibly We're only after that minority who can't go out and understand that there are limits And we're there trying to ruin the night for everybody else How are things going in that regard? I know that it probably gets busier at this time of year But essentially, more generally, sorry, is there a white privilege of alcohol fueled violence, say year on year? The stat review was just released recently and that showed that this year compared to last year We had about a 10% drop in good order offences Now, good order offences are things like move on, disobey move on directions from the police Disorderly conduct, resist arrest, those sorts of things, public nuisance is the major one So it dropped about 10% but across the state we had nearly 48,000 of those offences Which shows that it's still a problem for us, that number is far too high As a community, we shouldn't have that level of offending by people who can't go out And have a good time without their behaviour being such that the police have to intervene You're worried about people out there, but it's almost like drinking is like a sport that just gets crazy Yeah, it's sad, it's a community attitude issue that we have to deal with That people seem to go out, a minority of people, I must stress, go out with the intention of getting drunk Binge drinking is an issue for us, there is no doubt about it The demographics of the people that get dealt with by the police, as you would expect It's sort of in the 19-25 year old age bracket After that, after about 24-25, it starts to drop off fairly markedly with age as you would hope and you would expect But it's still a significant issue for us as a community And we can't arrest our way out of it, it's not just a policing issue It's for the community to educate our young people about responsible drinking And the fact that there are no rights without responsibilities in a community And the right to go out and drink in public comes with certain responsibilities How you should act and how your behaviour shouldn't impact on other people having a good time Unfortunately, we've just got to keep on with these sort of operations until people get that message What extra police will you have on board over the next 48 hours? And I know you said entertainment precincts are the ones you're going to be focusing on But which parts of the state will have a greater presence? Well, it'll be every area that has any sort of significant entertainment precinct As you know, we have three drink safe precincts That's Fortitude Valley, Surface Paradise and Townsville But all of the areas around the state where there are entertainment precincts, nightclubs, hotels are trade late Every one of those places around the state will receive extra police attention We will have in excess of a thousand police will be on duty each night across the state And we'll see what results come from that extra policing presence Why the cooperation between the Australian and New Zealand police in this particular operation? And is there similarities in the kinds of problems that they're experiencing across the town? The reason this comes out of the commissioners from Australia and New Zealand Meet regularly under the ANSPA Forum And this was a decision by all of the police commissioners that they wanted to focus on this issue And highlight it periodically to the community That this is an issue that the community needs to deal with So as a whole, as a collective, the police commissioners in Australia and New Zealand Decided on Operation United as a response And this is the fifth time, as I said The fact that we need to keep having it Would indicate that the community needs to be constantly reinforced on the message That alcohol, fuel, violence in public places won't be tolerated And it needs to be reduced What were the figures like last May when you held the last for Brooklyn and New Zealand and what you had before this weekend? Sure, in May when we had it there were 287 arrests 19 of those were for assault We had 140 arrests for drink driving And there were 186 liquor infringement notices issued Now, as in May this time round we're going to have extra general duties police around We're going to use the mounted unit that will be police dogs We'll have covert police inside licensed premises Looking for both drug activity and licensing breaches And there will be a very significant emphasis on RBT's and drink driving So last Operation United we did nearly 10,000 RBT's We'll do similar numbers this time round Thanks for your attention Thank you


Hi everyone. I'm Oscar. Welcome to Protocol Research at Status. I'm Dean. I also work on Protocol Research at Status. Today we're going to talk to you about VACP2P. So VAC is a family of protocols for developing secure, private, and sensor-persistent P2P solutions. What that means in practice for us at Status right now is essentially secure messaging. When people talk about secure messaging, you usually focus on sort of end-to-end encryption, forward secrecy, avoiding man and mill attacks, and so on. But there's other security properties such as privacy and predicting sort of metadata as well as sensor persistence. And all together these sort of properties help you protect against various types of threat models that we see around the world today, as well as for certain high-risk individuals. So one way of looking at the problem of sort of secure messaging is in terms of a messaging stack, where sort of each layer is roughly orthogonal to the other layers. So starting at the very top, you have sort of end-use semantics. So that's your, it's some private sort of encrypted group chat or maybe some public forum with some iteration mechanism. Then below that you have sort of the data, because this is a data sync layer, which ensures that sort of all the nodes have sort of the right idea of what the state of some context or conversation is.  And right now we use double-ratchet for data status, but there's others like message-layer security. Below that you sort of have the metadata protection layer, where right now we use whispered status, but there's also other sort of like PSS and tour mix nets that are kind of different, but they share some common design goals and they have various properties against various types of threat models. And then below that you have sort of the overlay network, overlay routing for natural virtual, and so abstracting awaited actual transports like TCP, UDP, and so on. And this layer sort of helps a lot when it comes to sensor persistence, because this is where you sort of guard against various types of traffic filtering and so on. And it's a kind of somewhat orthogonal piece of that. You also have trust establishment, which is sort of how you establish end-to-end trust, where there's various models like trust of first use and web of trust like PDP and key base and so on. Talking briefly about some design goals, we have it back. So we're trying to sort of create these interfaces at each layer, where that allows for sort of existing and new protocols at each layer of the stack. We don't want to reinvent the wheel here, because there's a lot of protocols and components that are being developed for people at this conference, as well as sort of in adjacent ecosystems and communities that sort of solve all of the problems. So it's more about sort of defining these interfaces and then allowing these various other protocols to work together. We very much sort of take the design philosophy from products like lead PTP and substrate in sort of enabling that and having kind of a protocol selection that depends on your specific design goals. So let's say you're extremely sort of privacy conscious, then you might want to use a mix net, such as the one developed by NIM. But if you have different sort of constraints, maybe you sort of care a lot about bandwidth or latency or sort of sense of persistence, then you might want to have a different choice at that specific layer. Another design goal is in terms of better specifications. And for status, we started off with this ad hoc protocol defined in the app. And now we're sort of moving to the more other extreme, where we sort of look at a protocol as an animal in its own right and sort of trying to make it maximum useful for sort of other parts as well. And this also includes sort of making more rigorous analysis of the exact gantees in behaviors of these protocols. Another design goal is in terms of sort of providing the tools to do sort of simulation testing in both at scale and for adverse environments. And this is for things like white block and Jepsen simulation framework and so on, to make sure that the design actually makes sense and will scale to the sort of have the properties that we want at scale, so it doesn't sort of fall under, which is what we're seeing with some of the stuff we had in production with Whisper, for example. Another big one is in terms of mostly offline. So when it comes to your messaging and so on, often users are sort of mobile phones. And usually this is sort of an afterthought. And this leads to people accessing the network through gateways and so on. And we want to sort of think about this from the get go. Because what makes mobile phones a bit special is that, for example, I guess you can't have back to executions, very limited on Android, it's draining your battery. So you got to think about these things and how you actually sort of natively connect to a network and make sure things work properly with research data devices. And finally sort of a lot of people use things like WhatsApp and Telegram and so on. And we do it internally at Stats as well. And like people are not going to use this technology unless you actually enable an extent use experience. So that's something you have to sort of make sure that you support the user stories for the end users, for people to actually use this kind of stuff. With that, Dean will talk a bit about our data sync layer. Yeah, so what we started off with that status is a very naive whisper transport. And whisper comes with various issues in the way that messages are sent, they expire at a certain point. So we need to go to save these messages on a mail server so that with mostly offline devices, a message actually reaches its destination user. So to solve for that, what we did is we built a data sync protocol on top of whisper to already add more reliability guarantees to the lower whisper transport layer. This is a general problem in peer to peer systems when you have unreliable transports where you need to add some form of synchronization protocol on top of it to ensure that we have these availability guarantees, which are usually only achievable through centralized servers. So how does this look? It's a very TCP like inspired protocol in that we now split up the way we send a message into multiple steps. What we initially do is we offer a message to a specific user. So Alice would offer a payload to Bob. And then once Bob has received that message of the offer, he will request it from Alice. Alice then sends that message. And Bob then returns an act saying that he received this message. With each of these steps, what happens is things are retransmitted. So if Bob is offline when Alice is sending an offer, Alice will exponentially try and offer that message again and again up until it receives a request from Bob. And that continues for every stage. So we know that this entire process has happened and that a message is transported in the end successfully because we've retransmitted it up until the next step. That's how the interactive mode works. It's like a very bandwidth high version of the protocol. What we also have is the batch data sync mode. So here we don't have any offers. We don't have any requests. What we do here is we simply repeatedly send the message payload up until we have received X. Sorry, this is the bandwidth high one. The other one just has a higher latency up until you've received the actual message because there's multiple steps in between. This still has certain problems because it requires us to keep forwarding these messages repeatedly. So one way we can solve for that is we can add a remote log on top of the protocol, which Oscar will talk about. Yeah, so the idea with the remote log is very straightforward.  And that acts as a kind of highly available caching layer. So what you have is you have essentially two new components. You have a cast and then name system. The cast is a content addressable storage. And essentially you upload some content and then you address it by sort of its content hash. So it's a mutable store. And the name system, that's something like DNS or E&S or SwarmFeeds or IPNs in the IPFS world. And essentially gives you sort of location addressing or mutable references. So when Alice, they upload something to the cast and they get back to address for it. And then they upload sort of the name system. And then when Bob comes online, when he knows it comes online, and they know about sort of this kind of conversation, nor did this sync scope between Alice and Bob, they have a fixed point. They know that it can look at the name system, even with Alice being offline. So they check the name system and they see what messes they've been missing. And then they can go to the cast and get those without Alice being online. In terms of data format, it's very straightforward. It's essentially a mapping. And it's just a mapping from sort of the native message identifier, which is sort of what's determined by the upper layers to this sort of address at the cast. And then there's also sort of an address to the next page. So you essentially have these pages with logs, because if you have a lot of sort of messes, you want to split it apart. And that's an alternative, you can also embed this sort of actual wire payload and encrypted content in the name system as well. And this is just kind of a trade off in terms of what the name system, specific name system supports. So it could be a very small one, in which case you can't actually embed the content. And then the trade off is if you want to sort of traverse the link list and sort of go to the cast multiple times and so on. This is sort of a very general design. So it works with swarm, it works with IPFS, and also works sort of if you want to have it on a USB drive to the backups or any other sort of similar thing that implements these interfaces. In terms of privacy properties, this very much depends on the underlying CAS. So if you have, for example, a mixed net and you do posts or gets through the mixed net, then you actually get send and receive an anonymity that way. You can also do other things like you can ratchet the name system. So you change the location of it kind of like how you do ratcheting in sort of forward secrecy schemes and so on. Dean, we'll talk a bit about how we achieve certain consistency committees with the metadata format. Yeah, so a problem of all this messaging stuff is that messages are usually related and so we need some way to provide some form of consistency to these messages. So we need to be able to provide ordering amongst various messages, not only a linear ordering through my messages, but we want some kind of DAG if I'm in a conversation where messages are linked to each other to show what message depends on what message. So here we have an example of this DAG where what we want is we want linear lists of messages saying I sent this message before this is the next message and I keep linking the previous message that I sent. But what we then also start doing is we start linking messages that other people have sent me. So I start linking the last seen message that I've received into the next message that I'm going to send. And additionally what we can start linking in is we can start linking in things like remote log information so that when we go to this log we know exactly what position a message is placed at in this remote log so that if I've missed let's say 10 messages before my last message I know exactly which page to go to and from which message number to which message number to sync. And the way we do this is relatively easy right now. We just add a protocol buffer essentially to the message as a header where we have a repeated byte array of parents which is just the parent IDs of messages. So that would be like messages that have been in this group context before my message this can be messages I've received or messages I've sent. Then the sequence number that is the one which relates to the actual number we're seeing on the remote log and then we have something like previous message which is my last sent message. And additionally we also add a boolean to indicate whether a message is required to be act or not. And this is important for things like user typing notifications or that a user came online. Those are things that we don't need to really be consistent about because if that message gets dropped I don't really care I'm not going to retransmit that. Those are like one time notifications that I'm just going to send out and if it's received that's good. If it's not received I don't really care because it's not important to the actual in a chat context conversation that is occurring. Cool so in terms of problems and rough priorities as next steps. So our initial focus has been on data sync. There's still some things we have to improve with it specifically in terms of scalability and semantics for sort of large sync context. So imagine if you have a group with sort of a thousand participants you want to reduce sort of the the chatter and sort of have efficient joining of logs so you don't sort of overwhelm the network. Another big sort of priorities in terms of better transport. So currently we use whisper and it sort of has a lot of issues when it comes to scalability and is using proof of work for BAM resistance which is not great for heterogeneous devices or nodes because your phone can easily be overwhelmed by someone spinning up an EWS node. And it's also not in sent device there's no reason to to actually run the whisper node and it sort of doesn't map cleanly to the counting of the resources that you're actually sort of consuming and so on. So that's sort of in looking at various alternatives and that's a very early research stage right now. And related to that is also the sort of concept of adaptive nodes. Right now you have generally speaking sort of this thing where you have full nodes that are sort of participating fully in network and then you have light nodes or even sort of gateways that are kind of like leeches and they don't actually contribute to the network. And we think this is a bit backwards because if you look at sort of more successful like peer-to-peer bit torrent as an example as one of the most successful sort of peer-to-peer deployments you actually always everyone's contributing to the network and the health of the network. It's a very nice property and not everyone all nodes will be able to contribute equally but you sort of have the option to do that. And it's something that Swarm is also working on this sort of idea and like you can imagine that if you have a mobile phone with limited data plan you probably aren't gonna contribute to the network as you might pay for it for some other means. But let's say that you come home and then you sort of plug in, you use wifi and you plug it in for charging then you can sort of start to use that for relaying your messages. Or if you have an old laptop laying around then you can use that to sort of store the messages and help the network that way. So this idea of sort of creating a continuum between sort of light nodes and full nodes where you sort of have some capabilities and you try to sort of contribute that to the network, sort of make the network stronger. We think this, that's sort of something we're looking into and we would love it if more people are also sort of thinking in these terms because it sort of creates for a better network in general and it's sort of also more in line with how we generally sort of see successful societies and systems where all nodes contribute to the extent that they can. So yeah, that's it for us. Are there any questions? Yeah, and you can check out these websites where we have some research logs. You can read more in detail about Datasync, Remote Log and the general stack. We also have specifications. And yeah, feel free to reach us on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah, so there are, there is a, for MVDS that there's already a spec and it's also in the status version one app. Remote Log is a spec improved concept. It's still not deployed in sort of the app and then the other sort of products are still sort of in various research stages. Oh, and the metadata format is in spec and proof of concept stage, but not yet in the app. There is some, not gonna promise anything because that's also sort of research. There's some interesting ideas when it comes to using senior knowledge proofs and so on where you can sort of limit it that way, but it's too early to tell if those things will actually work out, so we still need to spend more time on that, essentially. I would also point out that that's a specific thing for multicast networks as well where you sort of have this implication factor. So for other types of networks that might not be as big of a problem, but yeah. Any other questions? All right, cool. Thanks, Ron.


Pyrolysis is a promising technology for converting biomass into biofuels. This technology has many advantages over other methods, but still faces some challenges before it can be used commercially. These include improving the reliability of pyrolysis reactors and processes, and understanding the economics of biomass pyrolysis for biofuel production. Further study is needed to address these issues and make pyrolysis a viable option for biofuel production. This article was authored by Ashfaq Ahmed Chowdhury, Nunjha Paashwat, Muhammad G. Rasool and others.