So I came to Wales Girls not knowing anything about programming. I picked up programming in April last year. So that was about two months before I came to Wales Girls. So I picked up front-end programming. I learned HTML and CSS, which were very accessible comparatively compared to the background languages like Ruby. So I learned that and then I learned JavaScript about two months later. So with this set of tools, I built a very simple, like, you know, very simple, like, you know, okay, HTML says let's build a Google page. Let's build a simple resume page. So those simple successes gave me confidence to go ahead. So for me, I think it was important that I started with those simple languages. And then with JavaScript. But I came to a point where I still didn't know how to program and so didn't know how to take control of the computer. So I wanted to learn the background language. And then I was invited to Ruby on Wales, the workshop here, like, yeah, by a friend. And I said, oh, okay, free workshop. Let's just go and see what I can learn. Because I've been actually trying to learn on my own, but even though I had some successes with the front-end languages, it was still very frustrating for me at the beginning. So it's normal to feel frustration. And then I came to Wales and I was like, okay, so I went through all the courses here. And I went back and I thought, okay, I really need to learn this. I didn't go ahead with Ruby on Wales. I went ahead with another programming language called Go. You might not know of it. I really like learning that language. It taught me a lot of things. I think if you're wondering, as a beginner, if you're wondering what language you should choose, what language you should learn first, and many people will tell you a lot of things. But I think if the language strikes you as interesting or if you are just curious about the language and it looks good to you, then you should just go ahead and learn whatever you want to learn. So people can tell you that this language is good for beginners. And then the middle person, and both experienced programmers will tell you very, very different things. They'll tell you, no, no, you shouldn't learn this. You should learn something else. But I think what's important is that you should be driven by curiosity, curiosity about programming. Why are you going to know why you're doing this and then you pick the one that kind of strikes you. So Go was a language that struck me. And with Go, it taught me a lot about programming. I built a couple of apps in Go. I don't know if I can show you now. Yeah, you can. Should I show you? Okay. So that was... Okay, let me log on to GitHub. So you can find some of my projects on GitHub. This is one of my favorite ones. Let's see. Okay, so I put an API client. We did two months of learning Go. I don't know why I have to stick so long with my applications. Yeah, so this is my API client. What it does is that it calls the photos from Flickr. So you get a step together. And then it also pings the API for weather information. So all you have to do is just press this button. And then so it will show you the weather information for Atlanta. It will also show you the photos that have been uploaded on Flickr that have been tagged with Atlanta. So yeah, I just keep pressing it. So this is the weather information for Tokyo. It's just also from Tokyo. So this was built in about two months since I let go. So today I'm employed by Nitrous. Nitrous is a cloud development platform. I think Winston explained that it lets you code in the browser. So there are many ways of setting up your development environment. Sometimes it's a pain. I went into a lot of problems when I was setting up my development environment. So what we do is that if you log on, you can access your container. So your container is your development environment where you write your Ruby on Rails code. When you write your code, everything is set up for you so you don't have to install the tools that you need for your application onto your own local machine. So it's been a year since I put up programming. And I really enjoy it. So if it's something that interests you, just keep building stuff. You can use Nitrous to build your applications. They are really easy to set up. So now I have an introduction about me. Now we can start with coding in Nitrous. So you can go beyond the trial and test stuff. So a lot of do pro.nitrous.io.


The world changes quickly. Get the internet that moves even faster. Next light, gigabit fiber ties Longmont together and brings the world to your door. Thank you to Grupo as Teca, to Luis Lucali. They do such wonderful performances and we are very grateful for their blessing ceremony for our celebration this evening. I'm Ann Macca. I'm the curator of education here at the Longmont Museum. I'd like to welcome our online audience and thank you so much for joining us for this 20th anniversary celebration of Day of the Dead at the Longmont Museum and with the Longmont community. Also I'd like to say a big thank you to our museum members and our donors to the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District and this year's Presenting Sponsor for Longmont Museum's Dia de los Muertos Next Light. And I'd like to introduce Lyra Nickley of Next Light to give a few words. I'm the communications manager for Next Light and on behalf of Next Light I'd like to welcome you to the 20th annual and first virtual Day of the Dead celebration from the Longmont Museum. This time of year is an opportunity for us to celebrate our heritage and remember our loved ones. It's a chance to make a connection because we know that connections only make us stronger. We hope you enjoy the festivities and we thank you so much for joining us. Feliz de los Muertos. Thank you so much Lyra. We really appreciate your support. Without that we really couldn't do the work that we try so hard to do here at the Longmont Museum. Next I would like to introduce Alondra Vazquez from Elevations Credit Union. Elevations is sponsoring this live stream opening reception this evening. Hola todos. My name is Alondra Vazquez with Elevations Credit Union. I want to start by thanking you for your support and joining us tonight virtually. At Elevations Credit Union we take pride in all the good work we do in our communities through college sponsorships, sorry, college scholarships, community sponsorships and financial education. We value our partnership with the Longmont Museum and are happy to celebrate such a wonderful exhibition that's become a special tradition for our community. Hola todos. Mi nombre es Alondra con Elevations Credit Union. Quiero empezar por agradecerles su apoyo y por apoyarnos esta noche aunque no sea en persona. En Elevations nos enorgulleza el trabajo que dedicamos a nuestras comunidades a través de becas, educación financiera y apoyando a nuestras organizaciones sin fines de lucro. Valoramos nuestra asociación con el museo de Longmont y estamos contentos de estar aquí para celebrar esta exhibición tan especial que se ha vuelto una tradición en nuestra comunidad. Gracias. Thank you again so much for your support. Really without it we couldn't do our work here. The next part of our evening will be a conversation between Tony Ortega and his son Cipriano. Ortega's lifelong goal is to contribute to the better understanding of diversity by addressing the culture, history and experience of Latinx people. Through his vibrant artwork, the exhibition includes painting, prints, mixed media works, illustrations from book collaboration with George Rivera and a newly commissioned mural in honor of our 20th Dia de los Muertos celebration. That work will be installed downtown in Longmont very soon. So I'm to turn it over now to Tony and Cipriano. Good evening everybody and kind of cool to be part of this experience. Hello Facebook and everybody who's watching. So that's a conversation. Hello dad. Hello son. So I guess we'll start off by talking a little bit about your background and where you grew up. I've heard all this before but obviously the audience hasn't before. So tell us a bit about your upbringing and where you grew up and such. Well I was raised between New Mexico and here in Denver and traveled back and forth with my maternal grandmother, Trini Ortega. In fact I'm paying tribute to her and my mother and my great aunt at an altar here. But I grew up going back and forth between Denver, Colorado and Pecos, New Mexico. I would spend summers there and I would spend the winters here going to school. And my grandmother was a seamstress. She used to do alterations, make quilts, make clothes, etc. So I was always hanging out basically underneath the sewing machine cabinet. And my grandmother would give me a needle and thread and some material and I would start sewing. So that was the beginning of my creative career. Also my grandmother was a wonderful storyteller. She would share stories with me about her childhood, my mom's childhood, my uncle's. She would tell old book tales from the Southwest. So I think that was a way of me learning to visualize, to see things, to be creative. So my grandmother was probably the biggest inspiration for me being an artist. So I would be safe to say that she was probably one of your favorite people in your childhood. She primarily raised you, correct? Yeah, she was with me basically 24-7, especially when I was really little. And then she would be the person that would pick me up after school. She's the one that took care of me when I was sick. And because of her, I learned a lot about my identity, traditions, and culture. So I have a lot to thank her for. And with that being said, it being a deal to those, why don't those, do you want to talk a bit about the people in the altar? Yeah, in the altar I'm paying homage basically to the three women that I consider were my mothers. My mother, Mary Martinez, my grandmother Trini Ortega, and my great aunt, Pauline Segura. Sort of, they sort of did the baby shuffle or the title shuffle when I was small. They all helped me in various ways. I didn't meet my father until I was 19 years old. But then after that it became more acquainted with him, got to know him a little bit, got to see sort of the DNA from that side of the family. And I'm also paying tribute to him there in the altar. And the other person I'm paying tribute to there is my stepfather, Max Martinez. So let's go a little bit more into the art itself. And do you want to talk about the creative process about creating these stories with George Rivera and also involving me? Well, George Rivera is a good friend of mine. He's a professor at CU Boulder. I've known him for well over 20 years. We started the first story Jumping Over the Pyramid, which is not here. We have three other stories. And he came up with the idea of creating a storybook, a storybook about our energy. He wanted to do it bi-lingually. And he wanted a story to come from us, from our culture. And so we had worked on a project previously to that. Our leader, Guadalupe, we did a fundraising, an auction to raise money for scholarships for college students. And then he started collecting my work. He became more and more friends. And he approached me one day, I'd like to do a children's book. Would you be interested in doing the illustrations with me? And so he got to know me and my family, and he saw my son growing up. And from that, he said, well, I'm going to make a story about your son and my two little dogs. And his two little dogs, Chodo and Vato, who are in all the images, and you. So I used you as my model. So you become the characters of all the stories of the adventures of Chodo, Vato, and Pano. Do you want to talk a bit about the book, then particularly the ones behind us and on these walls over here? Yeah. So back in 1992, George Rivera organized a show with Chicano artists, and we went down to Michoacán, to Zinzunsan in Pazcuaro. And we went there for Day of the Dead, which Chicanos just didn't know a lot about Day of the Dead. We had been doing some art, some reading, some research. But to experience it is incredible, because you get to see people in the cemeteries, people cleaning off the graves, burning off the weeds, decorating with candles and marigolds. So that informed my work. But we wanted to have the stories, or George wanted to have the stories with a little boy and two dogs, the Chicanos, learning about their heritage. So we involved you and them. So basically you were probably, I guess, eight or nine years old, and I staged you and the dogs, pretending that you were in front of a tomb, or pretending you were in front of the cemetery, or learning about marigolds. So I used photographs for, as an inspiration, as a point of departure to create the work. And all of these pieces are pastels, pastels on black paper. Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned, back in 1992, how Dia de los Muertos really wasn't mainstream like it is now. So I think it's fair to say that we did, before Pixar did Coco, we kind of did the concept before they did, but not trying to make claims. But anyway, I've been just thinking about that. But yeah, I just want to talk a little bit about my experience, and I remember looking around at these paintings and being able to have the fond memories, because I have a pretty photographic memory of being able to photograph for these. At the time that I did them, I didn't really remember or think about what I was doing. I should say I just didn't know it was really for a book. I just figured you wanted to just take pictures and we posed with the dogs and stuff. I remember Cholón Vato when I was a kid. And I just remember slowly understanding, because how old was I when we first did the first book? For the first book, you were probably three or four. And then the second book, Migrant Child's Dream, which is also here in the exhibit, you were probably more like five or six. And then this Day of the Dead was about ten years old.  Remember your microphone. Yeah. So, yeah, I just remember a lot about being able to pose for these and being able to take those photographs and then transferring them into pastels. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you did that process? Yeah, well, I had images or photographs drawing studies from Day of the Dead from Potspot when we went. And then I had those photographs of you and the dogs. And so I would use those as a point of departure, a way to inform the work. And then I would do some sketches. And then I would lay out the compositions. And then I would do the pastels. One thing I always remember is when you were really little, George and I, we would organize these exhibitions with these stories. We would take them to a trans-mutant museum, to pediatrics wards, to libraries, children's libraries, et cetera. And we would bring you along, even when you were little, and George brought these little stamps, the paws of the dogs. And we would sign the books for the kids. And then you would sign, you weren't even old enough to even write yet, you would sign them, and then you would put the paw prints. Yeah, I remember that. You remember that? I do remember that, yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you remember that. That was a pretty fun doing that. And the other kids who were in the audience, because we'd read the story to the kids, and they got a kick out of it. And then we would sign the books for them. And you would, too. Yeah, it was a pretty good, like, little tour that we did with that book. And I just have good fond memories about that a lot. Yeah. So do you want to talk a bit more about the other books, regardless of, we just talked about the De Los Muertos book. Do you want to talk a little bit about the subjects of the most, let's talk about the most recent one, the one we did back in 2012. Yeah, the, in the entry hallway here is the Sink of the Mile book. Those aren't pastels. Those are etchings. They're hand-colored etchings. So an etching is a printing process. So I would do the drawings. Then we'd make a film positive. And then I would burn it onto a plate. It was all photographic processes, trying to get the image on there. And then I would print them and then hand-color them. What was different about that book, it was in 2012. You were already in college. Yeah. You were at Regis University. Yeah, I remember when you were working on it. So I found these old Polaroid photos of when you were a kid, when you were wearing different costumes, playing different characters. So I would take George's story and then try to fit these costumes and that narrative, follow more of us, historical narratives. Yeah, I was about to say this particular, most recent book is more about history and involving, you know, Cholo Batampano's journey through those knowledgements of history. So that's the difference between these other books. And this one, Adielos Muertos, is it's not as personal in the sense of being based off of family or experiences is more about the Mexican history, essentially. Correct? Right. Yeah, the sequel to Batampano characters from history, yes. Where did you get those images, the historical ones? Many of those images, I appropriated off of the internet and some of the other images, I put photographs that I took, like the one that you see out there with you're singing like a mariachi. Mm-hmm. I actually, Brian Webster and Denver in elementary school, they have mariachi classes for kids and I have some photographs and I use that as the backdrop for that particular image. What I like about your work and what we've done is that a lot of the things that we do in the backgrounds at least are things that we've been familiar with, like George's house is the porches over here and then the swing set and the park is Woodbury Park and I just remember what I like about that is I have a personal connection, obviously, to those backgrounds but it's also not just involving backgrounds that I'm familiar with but also the community of Denver as well too. Yeah, George has been an incredible person to work with. We've been doing this for over 18 years. We have a total of five stories, bilingual. Most of them are written in poems and they're all couplets in rhyme. They're in Spanish and English. So the Spanish translation isn't exact as the English but it's close because he wanted to keep it in rhyme. Right. But George, specifically for the Migrant Child's Dream story that you can come and see here at the museum, he actually interviewed his aunt who traveled the migrant trail to the different states, Wisconsin to pick cherries. Yeah, do you want to explain what that really means historically? Yeah, well, migrant workers are the people that pick our fruits and our vegetables that have to be hand-picked and they're very important to our economy because they help feed us. That's how we get those foods or those items to our grocery stores. So George, as family members and my wife has family members who are migrant workers and so we wanted to pay homage to them, recognize them, let people know that, not keep them in the shadow. So this brings a story about a little boy who followed his family on the migrant trail through different states throughout the Midwest. And it's not just about your or my family experience. It's about, like you said, it's about people who still to this day do that occupation. Yeah. It's a very important factor in our economy and also in our way of being in this country and I think we forget how much of that kind of story is important to tell everybody, especially, you know, common people who aren't familiar with that kind of lifestyle and pursuit of survival, essentially. Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons the museum wanted that story here in Longmont because Longmont has a history of growing sugar beets and having migrant workers pick the sugar beets. In fact, your grandfather, Frank Montero, who I want to acknowledge also, he was a migrant worker and he picked sugar beets. So he'd picked sugar beets for part of the year and the other part of the year he would go up to Washington and they would pick apples. Yeah. Kind of a fun fact. This is my grandfather's leather jacket I wore tonight kind of an homage to him. He's still with us but he's not doing the best in health at the moment but my thoughts go out to him. But yeah, let's talk about a little bit more about the philosophical meaning behind Day of the Dead and the symbology and what it means for the Mexican people and where this whole concept comes from. Okay. Well, yeah, it's basically the pre-Columbian indigenous people of Mexico already had a day set aside or days set aside to remember their ancestors to remember their families. Well, when the Spanish came they brought Catholicism. Well, it mixed. The cultures mixed. In fact, I consider myself a mestizo. I'm part of my cultured heritage as Native American. Part of my culture is from Spain, right? And so it mixed. So it became part of All Saints and All Souls Day. And so Catholic icons and imagery were introduced then later on as it developed and evolved and started including photographs which probably didn't happen until the early part of the 20th century. And so on an altar or at the grave site there's a feeling that the spirits have a divine right to come back and visit us. Well, they had to be able to find that way back. So they used candles to light the trail. They used the marigolds to send to the marigolds in the color to bring them back. Obviously they recognized themselves when they see photos of themselves. They put their favorite food or their favorite crossword puzzle that's what I did for my grandmother or hearing aids from my aunt. So when they come back and visit us on those days they can say, oh, these are people here on earth that are remembering this. And it's not only just for the spirits to come back it's also a way for the people who are still living on the earth to be able to use materialistic items to remember their loved ones because it's a way of we forget how much, you know, energy and time we put into materialistic items and just myself seeing those things on the altar remind me of, you know, Pauline and Mary and Victor as well too. So it's an interesting beautiful practice I think. I think that's why a lot of people beyond the Mexican people really find it quite a moving festival and an event and a way of living. Yeah, we call it Adilos Murthos the day of the dead, right? But in a lot of ways it's the day for the living. And we're the ones who celebrate we're the ones who are remembering we're the ones who are paying homage to, right? And what's by going down to Zinzunsan, Mexico in Michoacán it made me realize that people in Mexico take time off they stop working they stop going to school because kids participate teens participate seniors participate it's really a family event. I remember when we finally took you to Oaxaca you were like an eighth grade I believe and you asked me what are we going to do in Mexico?  Well for me I don't think it was very much that's what's interesting I wanted to talk about that for me it wasn't a very big deal but I remember telling my teachers when I went to Denver School of the Arts about where I was going because I had to miss a couple of weeks of school and a lot of the teachers like you're going to go and do what you're going to go to Mexico and like because this is before you know day of the dead you know popular but for me going back to your question is it's not really uncommon for the Mexican people and other indigenous cultures around the world to embrace you know the calavera or the scholar to see literally death and to make not humor of it but to make it humanized because it is part of the human journey so to answer your question it wasn't a big shock for me I mean to play with the candy skulls and the little puppets and you know the shrines and the Catholicism behind it I didn't necessarily understand all of it but I think I understood the bigger meaning of it even when I was younger so yeah definitely so do you remember Cholón Vato? yeah I do I do remember them yeah what do you remember about them? I just remember you know George having those toys in the back of his car that he would get for the dogs but he would always let me pick a couple of them before they tore him apart that's the biggest thing I remember as a kid yeah I remember I would meet George at my studio and you were really little and you'd be running around and you'd be touching the art and you'd be touching art materials and George would every two minutes would say aren't you getting nervous? he's touching that stuff I kept you entertained right? yeah I still touch some of your stuff in the studio so when George and I were having a conversation about putting these books together or he was looking at the art my son was touching some pastels I was working on a tile mural and I was laying it out on the floor to see what it looked like and he would move one color to another area and George would get all nervous like are you gonna let him do that? it's keeping him entertained yeah I mean that kind of relationship still develops even now I mean I do my own art and still need your power tools and stuff and you're up there working or teaching and whatever and I just go up there and grab what I need and go down and work on it and come back and put it away so the behavior really hasn't changed that much I think we're gonna wrap it up here about two minutes here but I just wanted to kind of go back to the idea of you know day of the dead and understanding where it comes from but also just kind of want to ask you what would you like to have on your altar I mean obviously you won't be there but if I do it for you how do you envision it? well I would hope you put some pastels on there I should be taking notes here have some paint brushes maybe some acrylic tubes right oh you know what you definitely have to put on there is that apron yes my grandmother I have this apron she was a seamstress so when I was in art school she knew I had to get an apron so she would make that for me so I have this apron that's made out of denim and it's got layers and layers of paint yeah so it's almost bulletproof and I had to fix the straps remember so I've had that apron probably 40 years since I was in art school so you'll have to put that on there yeah definitely but again it's a way of not making lighter thinking death is silly but being able to understand that it's a part of life and obviously with COVID and everything that's going on it's a much more serious in-your-face subject even especially more so now but I just wanted to for anybody who's lost lost loved ones during this time period I think it's really important to look at these you know type of practices and be able to just find comfort in those things so I think I think that's a good way to wrap it up so but yeah thank you so much thank you I hope you can come to the museum and wonderful conversation to be a part of so thank you very much for taking the time to be with us this evening and thank you for sharing your artwork with our community so we have gotten to the portion of the evening where we are going to recognize and honor some of the founders of this celebration I'm going to start by reading a statement from Jill Orr she was the curator of education before me and was responsible for initiating this celebration bringing these community members together and kind of getting it going so I reached out to Jill to see if she wanted to tell us something to the conversation this evening and tell us what it has meant to her to see this celebration grow and change within this community over the past 20 years Jill said good evening I'm honored to be part of this very special celebration it's hard to believe that it has been 20 years since we began this incredible journey together I could have never imagined in 2001 when 170 people attended the first event that Dia de los Muertos would become one of Longmont's signature multicultural community events attracting thousands of people becoming the largest in Colorado and one of the best in the U.S. wow I remember the first event extremely well it was downtown in the former museum building on Kimbark street I had recently come on board as the new curator of education when Marta Clevenger the museum's director asked me to create programming for an exhibition called Mexican Folk Toys our goal was to connect with the Latino community fortunately our friends and colleagues Caroline Gonzalez and Carmen Ramirez were more than willing to help not only did they encourage our team to connect our programming to a holiday celebration such as Dia de los Muertos but they also helped open doors and introduced us to several people in the community during the first years we forged new relationships and partnerships with people including Carlotta Loyola Hernandez at Casa de la Esperanza Marta Moreno at El Comité de Longmont Mary V. Hill from Alternatives for Youth and so many others I wish I could name everyone personally but we'd be here all night we've listened we've learned we've laughed together and we've cried together by coming together to create to create and build Longmont's Dia de los Muertos event we found common ground while the programs on the exhibits are undoubtedly important vehicles for our work what has made this event incredibly successful are the trusted relationships the friendships and the ongoing support among our communities it's because of collective generosity it's because of all of you to this day I'm incredibly grateful for being part of something so impactful authentic and genuine it's been an absolute joy to see how it has continued to evolve over the years I can't wait to see what's next Jill Orr, Executive Director with Love Oregon so just like Jill said I feel so honored to have inherited responsibility for this event and the exhibition to have inherited the relationships that she began to build within the community and we have some of those people here that she mentioned this evening so first I'd like to introduce Carmen Ramirez to speak for a little bit on what it has meant for her to be a founder of this event and to see it grow and change in this community over the years Carmen Good evening everyone I'm really honored to be here tonight and to be talking after 20 years on something that started with a very simple question and the question was why don't Latinos come to the museum and then our response was we didn't know we were welcome we didn't know we were invited and what do you have that would attract us so that's when with Martha Clevenger and Jill Orr we started reaching out to the Latino community and I think what is so important is not just the opening of the doors but it's the gems that you bring in through the doors if we look at now 20 years later what we started with bringing in folks that knew how to make wooden toys we've brought in artists more importantly our community altars these are people from the community that come and they share their stories of their families the pain of those they have lost the gratitude of being able to display not only their culture their heritage their food but to share that with community I think that's so important over the last 20 years and I've been involved with making altars my own personal altars which has given me the opportunity years to mourn people that I've lost from my family to remember them remember by their favorite foods remember something maybe a cup maybe a little figurine that belonged to my aunt so that kind of connection to community but more importantly to share that with the rest of the community so they can learn about us but they learn about as a Latino community by looking at us as an asset a gem as we share our hearts we share our stories and we share everything about our community and I think that's really important because if we're going to have a community that is inclusive values everybody and understands how to be multilingual and multicultural we needed to start with our Latino community and as Anne was reading Jill's piece where she was talking about how many other people came forward Marta Moreno and Mary V. Hill and everybody else that came forward and they too shared but again it was because they wanted to come forward and highlight the gems in our community the gems in our culture the gems in our food and share that with our community and for that I am grateful to everybody that has shared over the last 20 years and hopeful that the next 20 years we're going to have a bunch of other people that are going to be sharing their ancestors sharing their stories and their food muchas gracias a todos es un honor estar aquí con ustedes después de 20 años pero más importante es un honor que ustedes han compartido de parte de la comunidad latina gracias thank you so much Carmen and thank you so much for your participation thank you for everything that you've taught me I really appreciate you sorry guys now I'm going to cry next I'd like to introduce Marta Moreno she's become a really important person in my life in the past few years Marta is a really powerful and wonderful woman she is a strong member of the community she's one of the founders of El Comité de Longmont which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and she was also one of the founding members of Longmont Museums Dia de los Muertos Celebration so Marta would you like to come up please Buenas noches good evening my name is Marta Valenzuela Moreno Elias known in Longmont like the Boris number one don't forget that I've been part of the museum for the past 20 years and the founders were Carmen, Jill, whatever it's been an honor my pleasure to bring to the museum this cultural event because when I moved out here I said what goes on in Longmont and in the museum I said Dia de los Muertos yeah we should they wanted to build an auditorium they said what for we have the museum we built an auditorium in the museum and we don't spend money on another auditorium so I've been part of the Dia de los Muertos bringing memories from my family I'm a family of one dad, three moms my dad had won his first wife the second he had five with my mother he had about 13 so it's un chorro a whole family this year I added my brother David who I called El Pacino Valenzuela because he resembled a lot and all my brothers and sisters and to me having the altar has been very personal because I bring the stuff that my mother used to do used to wash by hand board make tortillas chile mole chocolate everything that you see there my mother know are my brothers and sisters and my father was a tough man you know you don't mess with Mr. Valenzuela you know everybody he whistled you had to be home and we he was very strict very loving father my mother and my brothers and sisters many of them were in the and the military Navy Army Marines and all they all served and I am very proud of a big family I just lost my brother by El Pacino and August the 31st I was able to go see him in forward even though the COVID I said I don't care I have to go so I went and he was still there and I when the person is dying the last thing that goes is your hearing so I said brother David it's time to go that's okay you can go and join my mother and my father and my brothers and my sisters you save a spot over there for us because we will soon join you you know when our turn comes about it's been a very honor grateful to be part of the museum and to show what culturally you know competent the museum has become you know allowing us to bring our cultural and introduce our family how we grew and what we use you know in our daily household it's been a pleasure to be part of the museum to be able to exhibit all my family with all the things that my mother used to do at home when she was doing tamales washing hand the my brother who was the last one who read I called Al Pacino Valenzuela with his hat and I thank him and you the honor of going to say goodbye to him and brother there is time it's okay that you go there to join you with my mother and my brothers and save a spot for us when the time comes all that represents my brothers I'm involved in the museum has been a great honor this city has been culturally recognizing the days of the dead for all the families who have been able to carry to the top and it's a respect for our loved ones who have gone and all the others who are here joining their altars with their things que han sido muy favorables. Doy un mil gracias al museo y a todos que están, he estado aquí, thanks to Ann and all the staff that has allowed us to be part, is an honor, because when I moved here, que hace long man. So Mark is here, the butters is here, we're gonna do a lot and learn. Gracias, and anosis, Dios los bendiga. Thank you, God bless you.  The things that you've done for this community are gonna last forever, so thank you. Next, we have one more person to hear from this evening, another strong woman who's been a leader in this community for many, many years, a former Boulder County commissioner and a former representative. I'd like to welcome Jan Amendez to please come forward. I'm very thrilled that El Comite's founding fathers who have passed away are being honored here. Edna Varo, or Moon, and Tony Tafoya, and my ex-husband, Richard Mendez. We have all brought mementos and things that they loved. Ed and Tony were, I think, president four times each of El Comite, they were there the first night when we all came together after the shootings, and they stayed with it for many, many years. Ed came to us from Pueblo, and Tony from Santa Fe, and they really made Longmont a part of their lives. Richard was born in Longmont in the house that still stands on Terry Street where his mother died, and they were all outstanding men, and we miss them very much. All the children and grandchildren honor them daily, and remember them. You can come and see some of the things they loved and cherished in their lives, and I hope you will appreciate what they gave to the city of Longmont and to peace and justice, because it was very necessary at the time, and they gave, and gave, and gave. Ed was a wonderful attorney and helped many, many people with their issues over the years, and was a great photographer as well. He was a photographer of many, many sports teams, all over the state, I think. He loved it, and Tony was a man of peace. I think he coined the El Comite from something he had done earlier, and he was there the first night, too. I have wonderful memories of these gentlemen, and after Richard's and my marriage ended, he married a wonderful woman who was a fellow teacher, not at his school, but, and they were able to travel the world on every vacation, and some of the places he went, China, and Hungary, and England, and Africa are remembered on this occasion, and I wanna thank the museum for their wonderful work in making sure the culture has recognized the wonderful Latino culture in Longmont. Richard was very proud of his heritage, as were Ed and Tony, and I think we don't want to remember, but we must remember that there were days when my Richard's brothers came back from the Korean War, and there were still signs up that said no dogs are Mexicans. It was a terrible time, and I think it's changed, but we must always remember because history cannot be allowed to repeat itself. Thank you, Anna, and I hope you'll come and see the beautiful displays. And thank you, Jana, for sharing your words with us. Thank you for your service to the community. Thank you for everything you do. I also just wanna thank our audience. Thanks for being with us tonight. Thank you for supporting the museum. We invite you to come and see the exhibit. It opens tomorrow. It will be up until January 9th, so you've got plenty of time to come in, make sure to wear your mask. And we're open Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Also, don't forget to check out additional live stream performances. Our celebration's not over yet. This Sunday, we have a local talent showcase featuring a number of performers that you will recognize from festivals past, and then again on Sunday, November 1st, on Day of the Dead. Every week, check our Day of the Dead website, longmontdayofthed.com, and longmontdiedalosmortos.com, where you can find new content every week about the history, the traditions, how to build an altar, the food, the arts, the crafts, all the different ways that the celebration is held in different parts of Mexico and Guatemala. So we welcome you to check that out every week for new information. And of course, we have, since we can't have a festival this year, we can't all come together in person. We have free celebration kits. We've made 500 of them. We'll be handing them out to the community. So check our website for those details to find out when and where you can pick up yours. And just one more time, a big thank you to all of the people who have made the celebration so wonderful and who have made it grow and thrive for the past 20 years. We hope you'll join us again on Sunday for the next performance. Be well. The world changes quickly. Get the internet that moves even faster. Next light gigabit fiber ties longmont together and brings the world to your door.


OK, so I would like to run this concluding session as a dunk tank on Mick Ryan. So anybody who has ordinance they'd like to hurl. Please, please let me know. But I want to start for a few minutes, my friend, because I am such an enormous fan, not just of your work, but the way you do your work. And I want to start by asking you to talk a little bit about the book, because nowhere yet have you done that in these couple of days. And it's such an important guide to how to think about the problems of war in the future. So the book War Transform published nine days before the Russians crossed the border into Ukraine came out of a whole range of things. But I guess the final piece that fell into place for me was a conversation with Alan Dupont a few years ago. And I was talking to Alan about maybe doing a PhD. And Alan probably knows me well enough to know, well, you're probably not going to like the discipline of that. You're probably not going to like being told what to do. And he was very right. I said, why don't you write a book? And I thought, that's a good idea. So I was doing a fair bit of writing. And I wanted just to write about something that I think is a core part of human existence, which is warfare. And ensuring that our country and other Western nations are able to generate advantage and deter conflict in the 21st century. And that's really where it came from. So my favorite news source is The Onion, the satirical newspaper in my country. And three weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks, The Onion ran an enormous headline saying, Americans yearning to return to pointless bullshit. And it encapsulates what I think is the Chinese and Russian view of the inevitable decadence of free societies. What's your reaction to that? Because our narrative is about the sparkly vitality and ingenuity to build a better mousetrap creativity of free societies. How do these two narratives diverge so convincingly? Yeah, I think Xi's got a real problem with his declaration of the decline of the West, particularly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One, it's shown that authoritarian powers don't always generate effective military forces. But it's also shown that the West is remarkably more united in how it feels about those kind of the foreign actions the Russians have undertaken in Ukraine than they anticipated. I don't think there's anything inevitable about decline of the West or anything like that. And that kind of argument is the same as this we see from time to time the military is more woke. And it's like, well, I don't think so. I think we're a pretty tough, focused organization that just thinks that everyone should get a fair go now, not just white folks. And if giving everyone a fair go and encouraging a more diverse bunch of people to be able to serve their country regardless of whatever their background, bring on the wokeness. But that's not what it is. It's smart because our superpower, I talked about before, our superpower is our capacity to do the right thing, I think. And really, it's about leveraging the best in every member of society, which authoritarian powers can never do and we can, at least theoretically. I think the Russians are at a double disadvantage, not only as an authoritarian power, but as under Putin styling themselves the preservers of traditional culture by which they mean a particular definition of masculinity that you see the Russian military videos on TikTok and stuff, extoll. And they're getting their lunch handed to them by the transvestites and professional ballerinas of the Ukrainian military. So that too falls by the wayside. Because actually what matters is people having their heart in the fight and thinking creatively about in the chaos of a battlefield, where do you see opportunity and advantage? How do you capitalize on it? Do you have the intellectual framework for the prosecution of organized violence? And the Russians have failed so catastrophically about that. Were you surprised by your Twitter handles war in the future? How did we get the Russian military so wrong? There's a whole bunch of things here and I'd caveat this by saying there's so many things we're not seeing that's going on me. I mean, there's a lot of data that we just don't have about this war. And to, I don't want to be fair to the Russians, but to be fair, the start of every war is a bit of an experiment for both sides. If you go back and look at every war for the last however long humans have fought, the first few months is an exploration of what works and what doesn't because most countries go into not having fought for a long time. Have a look at Australia at the beginning of World War II. We were a disaster, we were just lucky. We were a long way away from everywhere. That gave us strategic breathing space. So the Russians have kind of gone through that again, but that's not the only problem. I mean, they suffer from a lack of purpose, invading a sovereign country by surprise because most of these soldiers didn't know what they were doing. It doesn't inspire people to go that extra mile. So they've suffered from a lack of purpose, but also they were kind of dodging, dodging the books a little bit in a lot of their military readiness and stuff. And some of these battalion tactical groups they talk about are only half the size they're supposed to be. So they didn't prepare themselves well. They've kind of had a bad plan and a bad military and the conjunction of those two things has been a disaster for the first few months. I will say, I think they're learning. The Russians are learning. They are demonstrating endurance. They certainly demonstrate will. They don't think they're losing. I don't see any evidence where they think they're losing. And I think they use as evidence the Germans, for example, and others to say, we can wait these countries out and we can carve them off one at a time to eventually win. I think that's honestly what they think and that's why this unified effort, sticking with Ukraine, strategic patience, understanding that vegetables might be a bit more important, but at least your kids aren't dying on the frontline because if we allow Russia to win this, that just emboldens future adventurism by him, Xi and others. So given how wrong we were about the capacity of the Russian military, what are you worried about we might be bad at in our own militaries? Exactly the same things. You never know how good a military organization is till it actually fights.  And all our militaries, I mean, the US Army, beginning of World War II in North Africa was a bit of a disaster. So you get out of disasters. You know, Pearl Harbor, the first six months of the First World War, all throughout history, our militaries have suffered disaster catastrophes and really bad events, Calipoli, because, you know, this stuff's hard and the other side gets a vote. And we sometimes forget that, you know, war's not a computer game. You can't simulate it. You can't predict outcomes. Klaus Witz is still red because he got it right. You know, friction, the fog of war, uncertainty, chance, it all plays a role. The Ukrainians have fought hard, but they've also been lucky. They were lucky to come up and against a adversary, had a bad strategy that used bad strategic assumptions and a poor military. I don't know how long that luck will last, though, if the Russians keep at it. And what lessons do you think the Chinese are learning from watching both the Russians' performance in Ukraine and ours? I think President Xi will be looking at this one. It hasn't stopped him at all wanting Taiwan back. So, no one should look at this and go, the Chinese are thinking, oh, Taiwan will be too late. No. You know, the Chinese defense minister at Shinglala was very keen. We're gonna get Taiwan back one way or the other. Paraphrase. He, I think he's learned that if you're gonna do it, gotta do it quickly. You gotta do it before the West perceives Taiwan has a fighting chance. Because if you remember the first couple of days of the Russian invasion, most people kind of went, except for the U.S., the U.S. didn't, but just about everyone else sat back on, let's just wait to see how this plays out. It was only when the Ukrainians showed that they were willing to fight, could fight, everyone started piling on. The Chinese are going, I wonder how long that period is for Taiwan. We've got to be successful in that period. Now, the operational problem for Taiwan, very different, 180 kilometers of sea is a really extraordinarily difficult challenge. So, speed will be big for them.  They've got to take out anyone that might inspire international opinion or solicit aid. And the third one is they need to kill the national telecommunications system because that has been central to Ukraine's ability for both government and citizen journalists to get out to the world images, video, and other media of what's going on. So, I think they'd be the three lessons they'd be looking at and from that would flow a whole range of military, economic, political deductions. It was said on the last panel that nobody wins the war in space. Do you agree with that judgment? Well, it depends what your definition of winning is. I mean, if you both got 100 satellites and you kill 90 of theirs and you've got 60 left, you could call that a win. The West has an idea of what winning is, but that's different to what the Russians might see as winning, what the Chinese might see as winning. So, we need to understand how different cultures view conflict, not just from our own perspective. And whilst we may see a war in space as something that's not winnable, other cultures will look at and go, we think we can win it or we think we can do this. So, I think that cultural appreciation, understanding is really important. No one goes into a war thinking they can't win it. Everyone goes into it thinking they'll win and it doesn't matter which domain that's in. So, my favorite book in my field is Jeffrey Blaney's Causes of War, which comes very strongly to that same conclusion. If you want to know why wars start, it's because somebody thinks they can win. They can achieve their political objectives through violence. I was actually paraphrasing that book in that last answer because it is a superb book. I'm sure many of you have read it. It is a really good book. He told me not long ago that he's revising it and changing the title slightly to say, Causes of War and Peace, which is going to be interesting. Okay, so my last question, you guys arm your weaponry, start locking in on the target. My last question for you is, what are you most worried about the future of warfare? What keeps you up at night? The thing that worries me is that we might think it's not possible again. That's what worries me because once you start thinking that you don't invest in deterring war, I mean, that's the most important thing you can invest in is deterring and not going to it. You've got to stop it before it happens because even if you win it, it's extraordinarily expensive in your people, treasure, across the board. So we have to make sure people understand that it can happen again. It always has, probably always will. I'll give you a quick annotate. When I took over the Australian Defence College in 2018, I gave a talk about how we needed to study war and why we're doing that. And one of the staff said, talking about war, that's a really military thing. I don't have a lot of hair, but it kind of blew me out. I said, we're supposed to be teaching this stuff, but I said, you've got to understand it if you're going to prevent it and you've got to understand it if you're going to fight it. But I said, war's not a military thing at all. War's a national thing. And that's how we need to conceive of war is this is a national, not a military undertaking. So I misrepresented my restraint, my friends. I do have one more question I want to ask. Which is, you have been such a fabulous mentor to young military officers and young authors interested in thinking about war. And you've participated in a group of people who've used science fiction as a way to relax some of the constraints around how we think about warfare. Say a little bit about why science fiction is such a valuable tool for helping young, up and coming people in the field to think about the future of war. Like I'm sure some people in this room, I'm a total science fiction tragic. And about five years ago on a Sunday afternoon, I was sitting on my back deck having a beer and I, as a bit of a joke, wrote a piece on why I think military officers should read science fiction. And I thought, I'll never publish this, I'll get laughed out of town. But anyway, I read through it, made sure there were no spelling errors or intemperate language. So I sent it off to granted curiosity and they published it and I was really worried. But the response I got was extraordinary.   And it started me thinking, so I started working with others on reading lists and then I set up an elective at the Defence College for staff college students in their own time to think through contemporary or near future problems through the lens of science fiction. I didn't just do it by myself, I went to the CDF at the time, Mark Binskin. He just thought, what a great idea. I said, you give me the topics. And for the last four years for him and General Campbell, they've written topics and they've written either non-fiction or fictional narratives, guided by professional authors, Kim Wilkins from UQ, Kat Sparks, who's a local Canberra author and a wonderful one, Peter Singer, August Cole, John Birmingham. And we've written stuff for our Chief of Defence just looking at just beyond the current investment program, not the current investment program, don't mess with that, but just beyond that. And it gives people a lot of freedom to think differently. And for me, it's about nurturing creativity and saying, you know what, it's okay to think differently. It's okay, you can do that, please. Okay, my friends, take your shots, fish in a barrel. Yes, sir. First of all, in China, I think we were right. Big lesson they take out is to do it quickly and back to Russia. Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah, coming back to Russia, we have had a bit of a laugh at Russia's expense in the first few months of this war, but you touched on this. The new narrative seems that it's turning in their favor and at least as they'll be able to hold a large amount of territory, perhaps regroup, perhaps start to go west again. And if that's the case, if that's a trend that sticks, then that has profound implications, doesn't it? Because they do actually win on any number, according to any number of metrics. And I'd like to hear more from you about that, about Russia actually winning. Yeah. I think the context for that is the last couple of hundred years with different technologies, there's been a back and forth between offense and defense as the stronger, right? You know, the start of First World War, people expected offense would be it was actually defense. We're seeing the same now, and there's been a lot of work in the last decade seeing with new sensor technologies connection to fires, defense is actually the stronger arm of war at the moment. And I think that's played out with what the Ukrainians have done. It's been one of the advantages. The Russians have learned they can't take the whole country, not in one bite. They might have to have several bites down the track. But what they've got, they're going to want to hold on to, particularly the south and the east, that kind of L shape section they've taken. They're going to be very hard to dig out, just because there's a natural advantage now in the defense. Ukraine is reaching a level of exhaustion, so I think there will be an operational pause for a while. Not stalemate. It's not a ceasefire. It's just an operational pause that you see in every long war. So I think the Russians will consolidate after they take at least Lhansk. I think the rest of the Donbas is going to be really hard. Let's have a bit of a pause, rethink. I mean, the Russians aren't fools. They have a long history of operational art and grinding their way through military victories. So I think they'll just look at this and go, okay, so this is what we've got this time. In six months or a year or two, we'll have another go and go for some more. But Putin, he's not stepping back from this challenge. He's not talking like someone who's reconsidering. So I take the other side of that issue, which is I actually do think the Russians are going to lose this. 80% of their army is already committed in the Ukraine, and they don't have reserves to repair to.  But I think the simple arithmetic of being unable to reinforce the fact that the arithmetic on the other side of the equation, which is the only pressure the Biden administration is under on Ukraine is why aren't you doing more? And so all of us are just about to run out of old Soviet equipment. We can hand over to the Ukrainians, which means we're going to start the transition to higher quality Western weapons for them, which I think will make an appreciable qualitative difference in their ability to go after the Russians. And the third thing that I think is going to affect it and prevent Russian success is the pressure to open, to demine the territorial waters and reopen ports because of a potential food scarcity problem. I noticed that the Russians and the Turks are playing footsies about Turkey reopening the Bosporus and allowing the Russians to inspect ships going in and out, which means the Russians are feeling some pressure about closing off food exports. And so I think those three things are going to combine by the fall to slowly corrode and then collapse Russia's ability to hang on to what they have now. All the way in the back. We can't assume that's going to happen though. We have to plan and work towards the worst case to ensure that happens, which is what we all want. All the way in the back with the great tie. Not you, Samir. Although that is a great tie, as I believe I'm already on the record about. That's right. I just wanted to ask the general question on the lack of purpose for something you mentioned as one of the vulnerabilities of Russia's operations this time or invasion this time. Do you believe the discourse coming out of Europe, the cancellation of Russians from ballets and theaters and their books and the tennis matches, do you think it is going to close the difference between Putin and his people and maybe infuse a sense of purpose for the long run that you were mentioning? So are we, do we have to be a little careful with the communications coming out from the side? And are we really reuniting and catalyzing a nation to get behind the leader? Is that a worry and do defence planners think about something like that? I'd be worried about that. I mean, Putin's narrative all the way through has been NATO's predation on Russia as a mechanism to unite the Russian people. A lot of the surveys show that he actually has a reasonable number of Russians who support what he's doing. You can go through all the reasons in the world for that, but that is what's happening. And we're seeing Russian messaging being amplified in different parts of the world that we don't traditionally watch follow. China very quietly and subtly, but through some areas in the Middle East, some areas in Africa, some areas in Southeast Asia, they're still trading with Russia. They're not buying the Western narrative of the inevitable defeat of Russia. So, you know, we need to pay attention of the other side of this story, which is really much what you're getting at. You don't win by just assuming you're going to win. You win by assuming the worst and making sure that doesn't happen. The other thing is that, so next question all the way in the back. But the other thing about this is that, you know, just as cyber war was supposed to be this great tornado that had flying sharks with lasers coming out of it, and that's not what we've seen. The other thing we haven't seen is that economic sanctions were supposed to be the nuclear weapons of our age. And in fact, Russia's turned an enormous profit because the price of oil has gone up and Russians seem to be holding up pretty much OK without McDonald's. And it doesn't appear to be denting Putin's support. So, in addition to cyber looking different than we thought and sanctions not being quite the neutron bomb we expected, we may have a Russia problem, not just a Putin problem. All the way in the back. Can I just talk to that very quickly? There's no such thing as a silver bullet that just doesn't exist in conflict. It's integrated effects across all the domains. And this is why this multi-domain concept is important. It's got some weaknesses, but the integration of different elements of military and national power is so important. I mean, the Chinese wrote about this in Under-Restricted Warfare in 1999. If you haven't read it, really good book, actually. But secondly, this is why the Chinese have systems destruction warfare as a key concept to break down integration that we might be able to generate at strategic and operational levels. Great point. Yes, sir. OK, I see all the way in the back. And then I'm going to take three more questions then we're going to go drink. I love that. James Robinson from Home Affairs. The question is around what lessons should Australia derive from the Ukraine situation on national resilience and the importance of it for us? Good question. You know, I think I did a piece a little while ago about learning from Ukraine. There's two kinds of lessons you take away, right? These lessons that are specific to that conflict. And there are lessons that will be more general. I think in the general category, this national resilience construct around cohesion, I mean, Ukraine has probably never been more cohesive than it has been the last six months. The protection of critical infrastructure, which didn't start on 24 February, obviously started, you know, probably a decade ago, are really important in what they've been able to achieve so far, you know, civil defence, keeping key services operating, firemen, ambulance people, they've kept them all operating. So I think civil defence, whichever term you want to use, offers quite a few lessons that we might be able to draw from Ukraine. Also, I think, at least in the case of my sweet provincial country, we haven't actually had to think about civil defence since basically the Eisenhower administration. And we get our highway system from the need to be able to evacuate major American cities. We haven't had to think in a serious way about societal resilience in a long time. And one of the things we could profit from the tragedy Ukraine is experiencing is to start thinking ourselves in serious ways again. How do we pull together the challenge of divisive societies in the face of those kinds of challenges, which we could very well face if we come to the defence of Taiwan or in lots of other contingencies? Angus. I've got a question for both of you. I get the impression that Russia is running out of precision weapons. I know that there's a real problem in supplying Ukraine with precision weapons. So I'd be interested to know what your views are on the ability of both sides to sustain the war given what appears to be a significant shortfall in the weaponry that they require. And then I wonder if you'd extend it to Germany, European countries, United States, and also Australia, because I know that if the worst were to happen down here, we'd be caught once again with our pants down. Preparedness is something that I think we need to give a much higher priority to. And I think the Europeans are finding that very much at the moment because they are really worried about what you spoke about, about the extension of the war into the NATO countries. Thank you. Go ahead. Precision weapons is one of those things that one, you don't hold a lot of them.  Like you can keep an artillery shell forever. Well, you know, 50-100 years if you want. But a precision weapon, normally I think around 10 years is shelf-life. When you're playing on getting rid of 10% of your stock each year. That's a rough planning figure. So generally countries don't have large holdings of things like javelins, air-to-air missiles, harpoons, those kind of things. They have just enough for an initial pulse of combat. And then they hope either it's over or manufacturing might catch up. I think those assumptions have been proven wrong in this war. And that, one, we're going to have to re-look at stock-holding. That's probably going to have to be larger than we potentially imagine. That's going to be expensive. A more diverse range of manufacturers are going to have to come online. Because, you know, as we saw in Iraq, if you tried to buy a night vision monocular, you had a huge waiting time because the US Army was taking everything from the world market. And it's the same with precision weapons. We're going to have to develop our own capacity to design and build these things. Not just take American designs, but probably design our own and build our own innovative approaches to precision munitions that are cheaper and more numerous and not just fired from crude systems. So I agree with Mick, but I would add two points. The first is that, you know, we're all looking for good high-tech manufacturing jobs in our societies and investing in the ability to build munitions that might preserve our sovereignty and be able to activate industrial supply lines when you need them instead of keeping things in stockpiles that the clock is ticking down on. Like, why are we not good at that? This is like how we won World War II to your point earlier about, hey, we actually need to think about societal resilience. And the second point I would make is that there were a lot of wars fought and won in the days before precision weaponry. The Russians are probably already out and they're doing okay in the eastern part of the country having. And so we need to not become so invested in a single way of thinking about what will be successful that we don't do what that 15-year-old kid did, right? I got a drone and they don't need smart bombs because they actually have precise location. And so it's going to be messy. It's going to be ugly. And welcome to the modern battlefield. So if I can just build on that question. We talked about precision munitions, but I think it holds for a whole range of capabilities. Since the end of the Cold War, we've developed professional militaries that are smaller. And essentially we are exquisitely trained and educated. Like, the average military officer has a couple of master's degrees. Our soldiers are superbly educated and trained. You can't scale that when you've got to mobilize. You just can't scale that. You've got to have a different mobilization model when we go from an army of 30,000 to an army of half a million if that happens. So it's not just precision munitions. How do you scale a military understanding the ADF we have now is not going to be an ADF by 10 when we mobilize. That's just not possible. It's possible with a small force. A mobilized force is going to have to think differently about people, weapons systems, equipment, and how it trains and operates. Excellent point. Eric. Thanks. A question for both of you, really. Mick, you mentioned that war is inevitable. Major war is inevitable. And that's a key continuity. I wonder, though, if it's not becoming less inevitable, less likely, given that it doesn't seem to be working in favor of the aggressors. I mean, there was a famous line by Adam Tooze. You'd be hard-pressed to the name a single war since a war of aggression since 1914 that has yielded clearly positive results for the first mover. I mean, do you believe, do you think that Russia and Ukraine is a prime example of that? And then turning to Taiwan, I mean, if the lesson of Ukraine is that ironically a special military operation literally might have been successful for Russia, but the wholesale occupation was too much for them to chew, couldn't a similar lesson then be applied for Taiwan? And if I can be really sneaky, you talked about... You mean sneak in a third question after the two you already have snuck in? Thanks, Corey. You're welcome for my service. You talked about how the West was galvanized into action. It often takes a crisis for the West to wake up and realize that it can do something or that it is still something after all. But the West would count for less in the event of a Taiwan contingency. I mean, Europe is that much further away. There are fewer allies in Asia of the US. You're basically talking about Japan and Australia. So isn't that a big, big disadvantage that the US would be up against in the event of a war over Taiwan? So the last seven questions go to Alan. So take the microphone to him and please answer any of the 37, are they all right? For your first two questions, maybe, but I'm not willing to bet the life of my country on it. And there's always someone who thinks they can win. I mean, that's one of the great enduring themes in warfare. It doesn't matter if it makes no sense to us. This isn't about what's rational to us. It's about deterring those who think differently to us who think they can win. So I'm not willing to bet the life of the future of my country on it's less likely there's going to be a major conflict. Let's do things that ensure major conflicts don't happen and you've got to invest in a whole range of national security things. On Taiwan, I think the assumption that only Australia and Japan keys, kind of like Putin, assuming no one's going to help Ukraine, I think that's a flawed assumption. China cannot take Taiwan without a level of brutality that will get people going, frankly. It will change people's opinions of it just as it's coercive behaviour in the last few years have. And if you do the maths of an invasion at Taiwan and what the people of Taiwan now believe about themselves, remember that Taiwan now is not the Taiwan 10 or 20 years ago, every year there are less people who remember China, more people who see themselves as Taiwan. They are going to fight. And that will draw people to their side and countries to their side. So we should not assume that only Japan and Australia care. I think there are a lot more countries that are sitting on a fence that at the first sign of Chinese aggression they'll go, well, if we don't stop on there, that might be us next. So two quick points to add to that. They're very much like mixed suggestions that, you know, it's a big bet to have an economist say, I look back a lot across the last 100 years and I believe I see a huge trend. And, you know, economists have predicted the last 11, have predicted 11 of the last three financial crises. And so I'm not sure we ought to bet the country's salvation on that. And the second thing, I am more inclined I think than Mick towards your anxiety about who's, not just who's going to show up and help in a Taiwan contingency, but upon whom are we critically relying for access, for throughput, for other things essential, even to the operation of our own military forces. Zach Cooper and Sheena Chestnut Gritons have a fabulous essay coming out in the American Enterprises Collection of Essays on Taiwan later this month. I would encourage you to read it. And the closing question, please quickly. And Ashley, you get to ask yours over drinks. Okay, this may seem a silly question to end the day's proceedings on, but my question is, what do you mean by war? I can just elaborate a little bit quickly. So in the days of John Wayne movies, you know, there was a declaration of war, and guys that looked like us went to war with uniforms on the other guys had different uniforms, right? So we all know that that's changed. But now there's a belief that we're in a no war, no peace situation. And in fact, there's almost near wars going on in cyberspace, for example. So when you, I confess I haven't read your book yet, Mick, but you may have answered this question. So when you talk about war, what are you actually talking about? Are you talking about the formal stuff? I think he's got it. Go. Oh, it's about humans seeking to imposing their wills on other humans through the use of violence. That's what war is. You know, this is why Tom Reid wrote a book called Cyber War Does Not Exist. And I said, all it is, is bits and bytes are going on each other. That's not war. So, you know, I think war, at least in the Western tradition, that's what it is. Now, this is why I think we need to understand the conception of war from other cultures. Pete Mansour and Will Wick Murray had a great book come out two years ago on culture and military organizations. In that, Dave Kilcullen has a chapter on this fairy thing. What is war from different national and cultural perspectives? And I think that's worth reading for everyone because how the West sees war and the war, tradition of war of the last couple of hundred years in the West is actually different in different bits of the world. And I would give myself the luxury of the last word by saying that when you said war in the John Wayne era, I'm thinking of the great John Ford movies of the American Indian Wars, where there's no declaration of war, where there's no organized military operations. There are raiding and depredations on civil society on both sides. So I think the era of war as a discreetly defined military on military is anomalous, and therefore we shouldn't use it as a baseline. My friends, thank you for hanging in there this whole day for all these great conversations. Let's go have a drink together. And thank you. Thank you.