Hi everyone, Joe for Jasmine's Case Breaks.com coming at you with a good one here, 2024 Hit Parade Baseball Autographed Limited Edition Series 2, a dual case break, 20 total boxes, a hit per box, and we should see at least two of these, one in each case. So some nice stuff to chase as well. A very big thank you to this group for making it happen. Congrats again to the people who won their spots in those capstone pack breaks. Chris with LastBot Mojo Star, next year named 70% in time, LastBot Mojo hits 100% in time. And all 30 baseball teams are in. Let's roll it. Randomize names and teams 5 and 3, 8 times each. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and once more, right? Yeah, 8th and final time, 5 and a 3, there's 8. We got Chris, down to John, 5 and a 3, 8 times for the teams. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8th and final time. We got Miami, down to Tampa Bay. You're bought into capstone, your name's not on the list. You might have been in capstone 145, Brian. This is capstone, that was capstone 146. Yeah, you were in 145. Just checked your order. All right, so Chris with the mark, Chris A with the Marlins. I think there's two different Chris's here. We got Kevin with the Braves, Eugene with the A's. David with the Pirates, Mike with the Rangers. John with the Tigers and Rockies. Jared with the Guardians. John with the Diamondbacks. Jimmy with the Nats. David with the Twins. John, you got my Dodgers. Jared, you have the Reds. Mike with the Blue Jays. Chris W with the Mariners. John Orioles, Yankees, White Sox, Red Sox. Jared with the Cubs. Jimmy with the Royals. John with the Cardinals. Eugene with the Giants. Joe with the Brew Crew. Josh with the Mets. Jared with the Padres. Damien with the Astro. Eugene with the Angels. Chris W with the Phillies. And John with the Tampa Bay Rays. And let's alphabetize by team. There is a trade window. So feel free to trade, trade at your own risk. We're gonna pause the video when we come back. We'll see if there's any trades and then we'll have the break. Stick around, BRB. All right, welcome back everybody. No deals are done here on a Sunday. So that list you saw previously is now officially printed out. All the teams remain the same. Thanks everybody for making this happen. Appreciate you. All right, here's the first case right here. We've got the second case right over here. And good luck. See all the hand numbered boxes right here as well. All right, first one out of the gate is, is O'Neill Cruz. Nice rookie auto from Five Star. Looks like it should be numbered, but it's not. Still nice though. Good start, Pirates, David. And you big renew releases this week. Your taxes come back on Tuesday, I don't know. I'll have to check the new release calendar at some point. Next one. And we have Corbin Carroll. I think that's a sell sheet hit. Let's go back to the product page there. It is from Inception. Nice patch, nice autograph. It's his rookie card. It's 11 out of 50. That's awesome. John Jackson, Diamondbacks, congrats. We've got another Gilo. What was the first Gilo? Maybe G-O. I just noticed this too. That's nice how they do this. I'm just going auto pilot. Next is Gabriel Moreno. Rookie auto. 44 out of 50. Mike with the Blue Jays. Oh, your burner account is Gilo without the 810, got it. Kyle Tucker, four out of 10. And his Team USA gear from the World Baseball Classic. He is a Astro? Astros. That's going to be for Damian. I guess you don't know what that is. You have two Gilo accounts for some reason. It's kind of weird. Maybe you got a... I don't know what happened there. Maybe you did make one for... Well, it wouldn't be really much of a burner. It's both Gilo. We got Laser Show, Dustin Padroia. Three-color triple relic and autograph. That is 91 out of 99. Red Sox, John. With the red socks. There's Al Kaline. 166 out of 353. Old Tiger. This is an old five-star set from 2019. I think this was the year before they changed it to its current format. Anyway, John with the Tiger. It's a nice one. Yeah, I have no idea. Frank, you're right. Out of 553, it's kind of sort of a weird stamp, right? Did he ever hit 353? No. Don't know. Then we have James Wood. Oh, piece of candy. That's going to be for the Padres. Jared with the Friars. And that Mojo Refractor. All right, a few more to go and then another case. And then we got Josh Young. Very nice. That's out of 88 out of 125 from Bowman Sterling. Nice. Mike with the Rangers. All right, final couple. Another one from Triple Threads. Jordan Walker, dual relic and autograph. Or museum collection. That is 45 out of 99. Cardinals. John with the Redbirds. All right, and the final box of the first case. And we've got a gold frame here. Gold frame, Cal Ripken Jr. 7 out of 30 from Definitive. Speaking of Definitive, we do have a one-box break of Definitive Baseball in the store right now. That's down to its last filler. Random number block. If you want to chase stuff like this. Orioles, John with the Oaks. ABC, always be closing, ladies and gentlemen. But wait, there's more. Here's another case. Now that we know that those case hits have that gold flyer on them. Maybe I'll save that box to the end. For the end. Until the end. At the end. All right, first hit of the second case is Junior Caminero from Bowman Sterling. John with the Rays. Next up we have Raphael Devers. 25 out of 25 from Topps Chrome Platinum. John has the Red Sox. Got a thick one here. And it is from Absolute Baseball. Tools of the trade. Dual Relic, two-color dual relic and autograph, Boba Chet from 2020 Absolute Baseball. It's going to go to Mike in the Toronto Blue Jays. Oh, that's an even thicker one here. It is Brandon Marsh in the Stars and Stripes. Parallel here, Rookie, Patch and Autograph. 5 out of 25. Angels Edition. That's going to be for Eugene. I feel like they gave up on him a little too soon, I guess. Traded him to the Philly. Eugene with the Angels. And a nice Juan Soto. Two-color dual relic and autograph. That's 23 out of 25. 30 homers, 10 steals. It's from a 2020 Sterling, Topps Sterling. Topps Sterling, I think that's what it is. Yeah, there it is right there, Topps Sterling. Nice, and that will be for Jimmy and the Nationals. So that's the case hit. So we're going to save that to the end. Add a little suspense to the break here. What could the case hit be? All right, next one is Manny Machado. From, is this, yeah, Heritage. Baseball, you can see on the top left right there. Padres, that's going to be for Jared. Jared and the Padres, the Friars. How about some Jordan Lawler. Five out of 25. Future Cornerstones autograph from Pro Debut. He is a Diamondback? He is a Diamondback. One of their top prospects, too. Former Amarillo's Sod Pottle. Sod Poodle? Whatever those are. A Poodle that runs around in some sod. I guess would be it. John with the Diamondbacks. Who's my pick for MVP? Just any league? Joe Jaspy for MVP. Of life. There's Grayson Rodriguez. Three color patch. Autograph out of NT Baseball, 45 out of 49. Oh, for the NBA. I mean, it's got to be, I mean, SGA is definitely making a case. But I think, I think it's yokiches to lose. Another heartbreaker for my Lakers anyway, for Lakers fans anyway. Again, Denver the other night. They were looking good the first three quarters or so. It was like the playoffs last year. That team, too good. And there's Ronald Acuna Jr. 48 out of 49. Who probably does not like the fact that Otani is in the NL. It's gonna be just that much more difficult for NL players to get an MVP. All right, final box. We saved the case hit to last. There you go. It's got the gold case hit flyer right there, card. And who's it gonna be? It's a thick one from Immaculate. And it is Aaron Judge, 10 out of 10. That's gonna be for John and the Yankees. Looks like a piece of the glove, his autograph, a low number from 2022 Immaculate baseball. Nice finish there. And there you go, ladies and gentlemen. A dual case break of hit parade baseball in the books. Nice work has always hit parade. Thanks everybody for joining. I'm Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com. And I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye bye.


So, if the event A is common knowledge in state of the world omega star, suppose the event A is common knowledge in the state of the world omega star and another you have another state omega dash which is in the same element of the partition as omega star for some player i. So, an omega dash belongs to F i of omega star for some player i. Then what can we say about this? Then event A is also common knowledge, it is also common knowledge in omega dash. Now, this may seem very strong and very surprising essentially what this means is. So, what is this theorem claiming? If event A is common knowledge in the state of the world omega star in some state of the world omega star and there is some player who cannot distinguish between omega star and omega dash. Then even if omega dash has occurred then even in that state omega dash the event A has to be common knowledge. This seems super strong because it seems like then you know how is this because one fellow cannot distinguish between omega dash and omega star. How can this country such a thing hold? How can it be that A remains common knowledge? But that is exactly how the criterion of common knowledge is. It is extremely demanding you know the very that it must be that player i knows that player d knows that etcetera for every such sequence of players. That criterion effectively implies this particular thing. So, if there is any one player who cannot distinguish between two events then the entire thing for it to be common entire for the event to be common knowledge then it has to be that it is also common knowledge in that other state that this player cannot distinguish between. So, let us just look at the proof. So, A is common knowledge in omega star. So, now consider any sequence of like this i 0 I will start from i 0 i 1 dot dot dot i k and then it has to be that omega star belongs to k i 0 of k i 1 dot dot dot let us call this R k i R. This is because A is common knowledge in omega star. So, this is true for every i 0 to i i R. Now, omega star belongs to this. Now what I will do is I will take i 0 to be that player i. The player i who cannot distinguish between omega star and omega dash. So, take i 0 is equal to i that means take it to be this guy. Now this if omega star belongs to k i 0 of all this then it means therefore that f i of omega star is a subset of k i 1 of k i 2 of dot dot dot k i R of A. But then this belongs to a subset this is a subset of all this which means what which means omega dash is an element of k i 1 of k i 2 dot dot dot k i R of A. And remember I just took an arbitrary sequence like this i 0 i 1 dot dot dot i R now and I took i 0 as i but the rest of them I can vary in whatever way I want. So, I effectively means that this is true therefore for this whole thing is true for holds for all i 1 to i R. The point is that because I am not allowed to take any length of sequence all I am doing is I am fixing the first player as my player i and then the remaining I am just varying over the remaining and then I will get any in any length of sequences from there also. So, this is true for all i 1 which means that A is common knowledge in omega dash. So, this also means that you know as another consequence of the demanding nature of common the definition of common knowledge is that you also have this particular property that if if A is common knowledge in omega star and A is contained in B. So, A is more specific B is more general if A is contained in B then what does this mean if A is common knowledge in omega star and A is contained in B then B would also B is also common knowledge in omega star. So, now let us discuss the structure of sets that turn out to be common knowledge and there is a very. So, if you see this properties now you realize that you know that for a set for an event to be common knowledge it has to have some very specific structure because it is you know it seems like that is there not every set can end up being common knowledge. So, what so for the first observation towards that is first is we can go back to we can see what what he said and let us look at actually what is the if you are you have a certain partition like this you have a partition like this and suppose I gave you a set I gave you a set like this. So, this is my set A the red boundary is my set A now what is Ki of A if this if this is the partition of player I what would be Ki of A it is just this likewise and then suppose if I suppose I give you another partition like this I gave you another partition like this now can you tell me what is for this player what would be is knowledge of A those two. So, I will highlight that here let me see if this color works it would be this. So, what this means is that Ki of A is always the union of elements of a partition for every player. Now, when you want a set to be when you want an event to be common knowledge for that event to be common knowledge it has to be no firstly it has to be knowledge it has to be known to every player and when is it known to every player when it contains in it the entire element of a particular an entire element or one or more entire elements of a partition of the partition of that player. So, what this means is for a set to end up becoming common knowledge it should be structured very nicely with the way the partitions are already defined otherwise you will soon into a sufficiently high into the hierarchy you will have a problem that you know someone knows someone does not know that someone knows that someone knows something. So, that is what we will come to now. So, let us try to write out this condition. So, characterizing that are common knowledge.  Take the vertices as the states of the world and when do we define when is there an edge between two vertices if there is an edge between two vertices if there is at least one there is some player who cannot distinguish between them. So, there is an edge between omega, omega dash in y if there exists player i in n such that omega dash belongs to F i of omega. So, player if there is at least one player who cannot tell the difference between omega and omega dash. So, this condition remember is symmetric omega dash belongs to F i of omega is the same as saying omega belongs to F i of omega dash. This is these are equivalent. So, this basically gives you a graph. So, this will give you a graph in which in which there are these vertices which is the states of the world you join any you join a pair of these vertices if there is at least one player who cannot tell the difference between the two. So, this this pillar cannot tell the difference between these two this fellow cannot tell the difference between these two there will be a third player who cannot tell the difference between these etcetera. So, the subset C of y is said to be is called a connected component is called a connected component if for all omega, omega dash and C there exists a path connecting omega to omega dash in the graph G ok. So, you take your set of vertices, you join them in this way that whenever there is some fellow who cannot distinguish between them you draw an edge ok. Now, it can happen that the entire graph becomes connected that means between you get a path from any vertex to any other vertex. Path means what? It is just a collection of edges one starting from you start from i to j go from j to k from k to l etcetera and eventually end up at the vertex that you wanted to. So, starting so if that it could happen that there is a path between and every pair of vertices or it can happen that the graph has multiple connected components means that there is a subset of vertices such that they all share have a path between each of them, but then none of them have a path with another subset ok. So, the so a connected component will always be like this. So, you could have a graph like this where there is one connected component of this kind. So, all of these guys there is a they are related in this way that there is a path between them, but none of them have an edge to something in this subset because if there was an edge like this from here to here right then this would become one connected component actually this would not be two separate connected components this is clear. So, that is because then there would obviously be a path from any one vertex from here to here. So, connected component is one such that for if you so you can of course you can make so usually when we talk of connected component. So, I will come to maximality and so on see the point here is that between every two vertices there has to be a path. Now, you can of course take a very small connected component which is the point he is making. So, I can take so for example these guys and say well this is a connected one yes it is a connected component, but can it be enlarged in further yes it can be you can enlarge it to the point where you all of these guys are included, but you cannot enlarge it further than this. So, actually formally speaking I connected component is one where there is a path between any two vertices and if you take a vertex and you cannot add another vertex to this and still keep it a connected component. So, this is a connected component now and we can talk of a maximal connected component or let us maybe let us just extend this definition itself. So, C is called a connect so I have just extended the earlier definition because I did not want to create another maximal connect this thing. So, let C be a connect as set C is a connected component if there is a path between every any two vertices and there is no edge connecting a vertex in C to a vertex outside C. Then such a set is called a connected component. So, the graph that we have created here could end up having one or more connected component. Now, if the entire graph is connected then it has one connected component and that is the graph itself other, but in general it could have multiple connected component because every, otherwise every pair of vertices is a connected component, trivially a connected component. So, the theorem is this. So, the structure of sets that end up being common knowledge. So, let us first actually before the theorem let me define this, define C of omega as the connected component containing omega. So, the entire graph breaks down into connected components and every vertex is going to be in one and exactly one such connected component. Now, let C of omega be that connected component for a vertex omega. Now, the theorem is this that an event A is common knowledge in omega star let us say if and only if A is a subset of C of omega star sorry super set of super set of C of the connected component is a subset of the event. A is a super set of C of omega star. Now, what this means is that your A should be general enough that so how did we create the graph remember we created the graph by saying if there is any one player who cannot distinguish between two events then there is an edge between them. Now, you keep creating this chain of players you know this fellow cannot distinguish between this two that they cannot distinguish between that and something else etc. And you create a graph in that you will find a connected component. So, for A to be a common knowledge it has to be large enough or more you know but intuitively general enough that the entire connected component for the event that you are considering for the state of the world that you are considering that entire connected component has to be in A. So, what this means is for us for when a set is ends up being common knowledge it cannot be very, very specific. This is also intuitively correct you know the things that everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows etc. are usually things that are generalities you know that today is Friday you know that such now is this time etc. If you ask me something very specific that means that is known to very specific players who have that specific knowledge who have the information channels to know that particular specific thing or something to be known by common knowledge across multiple players it has to be where for large enough or in general basically general enough and a trivial set therefore that is always common knowledge is why itself right everybody knows that this is this is this is all the states of the world or in short everybody knows that something has happened is it clear. So, next time we will prove this another consequence of this is that in any state of the world there is always one set that is there is one event that is always common knowledge and the minimal such event that is common knowledge the minimal thing that everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows is that connected component is that is the most specific thing that everyone can have agreement on. So, this is the notion of common knowledge has tremendous implications like for example take all these coordination problems consensus you know coordination or distributed optimization federated learning etcetera what do various agents in a actually know about a particular thing is being is basically being expressed through this you can actually show that there are certain types of protocols that cannot converge unless there is an underlying structure where in a certain thing is common knowledge you know if for example if if if there is if if certain elements are not common knowledge like for example players do not agree on on certain distributions or to not agree on certain aspects of the data or something like that then certain there are you can show that there is no protocol that can work very interesting things can be shown shown from this.


What's going on guys? It's your boy dpj here today for another destiny video and today we have top five fusion rifle plays of the week Now if you guys do enjoy the video do hit that like button I'd appreciate to support submit any badass clip You've got to the email or just linked in the top of the video description and I'll catch you guys on that next one The lead the spark is available defend your runner Your runner moving in opponents down. This is amazing They've stopped your spark runner. I can't believe what I'm seeing tree doesn't win a war, but it's a good start good work Look at them fall.


It's now my pleasure to introduce the first of our two keynote speakers this morning. Dr. Helen Gichohi is another award-winning woman, having been named to the Order of the Great Warrior by the President of Kenya in 2006. And at least to me, it remains undisclosed whether or not that came with pound sterling. Now, since 2011, she has led the African Wildlife Foundation, and in that role has worked across Africa, across stakeholder groups, and across the many ecological, social, political, and ecological issues necessary to promote conservation. So I can think of no better speaker to help us cover the ground from policy to practice. Dr. Gichohi. Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I think I will be comparing notes to the minister this afternoon about whether we are owed some checks for these awards that we win. But let me start by congratulating SIFO for this very impressive turnout for Forest Day and to thank SIFO for inviting me to be one of the keynote addresses. It's a real honor for me and for the organization I serve, the African Wildlife Foundation. My task this morning is to tell you about Africa's forests and why they matter. But before I do so, I would like to join you all in paying tribute to a fallen icon, the late Professor Wangari Badai, a Nobel-winning environmental and human rights crusader who saw the links between environment, sustainable development, and peace. She's a woman who inspired many of us, and I might speak for myself here, to take action and to care. If she was here today, she would challenge us to act decisively and seize this opportunity to restore our common future. Today and throughout COP17, we have the opportunity to shine light, the spotlight on Africa. So I'll begin by giving you a few facts about this continent. People often underestimate the size of Africa. Africa is a huge continent, measuring 30.3 million kilometers squared. To put it into context, it is larger than the U.S., China, India, Western Europe, and Argentina put together, and with some space to spare. There are approximately one billion people living on the continent, fewer than live in China, whose land mass is only one-fifth of that of Africa. It gives you a good sense of Africa's low population density. But Africa's people are distributed unevenly, concentrating in areas of high productivity along coastal areas, high agricultural potential in land-trading cities, while vast tracts of land in semi-arid areas in the north and the rainforest in the center have very few people living in them. What about the scale of the resource, the Africa's forest resources? African forests account for 17 percent of the world's forest cover, with over 582 million hectares of forested land. This includes the world's second largest rainforest, covering 180 million hectares across the Congo basin and 270 million hectares of Myanmar woodlands. The remaining African forests are comprised of various types of dry, deciduous woodlands, coastal forests, and montane forests. The Congo basin also accounts for more than 60 percent of Africa's biodiversity, and is home to three or five of the world's great apes, a large diversity of birds and mammals, and are home to many indigenous human populations. They also provide critical ecosystem services, most notably food, water, and climate regulation. They are the lungs of our continent. Despite its huge potential and natural resource wealth, Africa remains a very poor continent. Nine of the 10 countries with the largest percent of people living on less than a dollar a day are in Africa. The situation is predicted to worsen. Under various climatic change and environmental challenge scenarios, nearly two-thirds of people of the sub-Saharan continent depend directly or indirectly on forest and woodlands for food, fewer wood, building material, traditional medicines, raisins, and ecological services, such as hydrological and pollination services. As forest dependent and forest adjacent populations grow, they're putting pressure on forest resources. The combination of increasing scarcity of agricultural land globally, growing human population, and changing food preferences are bringing more attention to the bulk of underdeveloped agricultural potential in Africa. Deforestation rates in Africa are already estimated to be four times the world average and accelerating. It's also estimated that 9 percent of forests was lost between 1995 and 2005, and that this represents an average loss of 40,000 kilometers squared of forests every year. These staggering statistics make the continent an appropriate focus for forest-based mitigation and adaptation efforts. In addition, national economies of many African countries are dependent on forests, either directly through timber industry, watershed protection, or indirectly through the services provided, for example, by climate stabilization and safeguarding water supplies for key crops such as coffee, tea, and Kenya that Africa produces. They also enable hydropower generation that drives industry for many of South Saharan African countries, and I could go on. Africa is also renowned for its wildlife and is dependent, which are dependent on these forests as well. We often do not link the great world of beast migrations of the Serengeti Mara with forest ecosystems, yet the Mau Forest is the resource of the Great Mara River. The Great Cobb migration of Ethiopia and southern Sudan also depend on wetland forests. The 750,000 Cobb spent their dry season migration in Gambela National Park, and many of you here from Ethiopia. And these wetlands are fed by the forests of Ethiopian islands. The great apes that inspire us are also directly dependent on forest resources. In short, the greatness of the wildlife of these plains depends on the integrity of forest ecosystems. Now imagine Africa without migrations, without great apes, and without its diverse wildlife. But that's what would happen if we do not care for our forests. So how do we conserve and manage these forests, enabling them to remain the storehouses of vast biodiversity resources, providing the ecosystem services that are essential to life while meeting the demands of a growing human population that's dependent on the forests for food security and livelihoods. At national level, how can forests continue to contribute to economic growth through extraction and agriculture without further deforestation or loss of wildlife? And how do we balance local, national, international needs that oftentimes compete? It is a collective challenge, and I'm hopeful it is one of the challenges we'll be handling and dealing with throughout forestry today. The African Wildlife Foundation's conservation program uses landscape approach. Because we are convinced that the high dependency of natural resources demands that solutions to these challenges must be addressed at large scale. They must be practical. They must be coherent in the context of ecosystems and local livelihoods. AWF also works closely with regional, national, and local partners to assess conservation and human needs in each landscape, and use the information available to determine what the best response strategies will be. I'll give you three quick examples from the field that illustrate how we do our work. AWF is currently engaged in the Congo basin in the landscape in the Northern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Marine Galopore Wamba landscape covers 75,000 kilometers squared. It's a rainforest dominated 90 percent that dominates 90 percent of the landscape with about one quarter of the forests which are swamp and flooded and flooded forests. The MLW, as we popularly call it, forms part of the watershed of the Lopore and Moringa rivers. And it feeds the great Congo River and is an important refuge for endangered Bonobo apes, numerous rare orangutans species of the giant pangolin, the golden cat, the forest elephant, and the Congo peacock. Ecosystem integrity and landscape connectivity are threatened by deforestation, resulting from expansion of shifting cultivation and sustainable forest utilization and the bushmeat trade that relies on extraction of these forests. While traditional people made use of the MLW forests through collection of bushmeat, wood energy, and shifting cultivation, these practices moved deeper in the forest during the war as people sought refuge. They lost access to markets for their products and services, and this increased acute poverty and population. And as population has grown in recent years, the pressure on forest has also grown. In the absence of adequate land use planning, open access forest management has become unsustainable. And I must say I've had occasion to witness this when I flew over that landscape six years ago, and I was struck by the number of forest fires in the middle of that forest. With the support of the U.S. government under their CARPE program, macro-level zoning of the whole landscape has now enabled stakeholders in AWF to define areas for protection, logging concessions, community forests for multiple use, and agriculture zones. After the macro-level planning, participative micro-level zoning in key strategic areas has enabled communities to define and enhance land uses in defined areas so that livelihood opportunities are maximized along with forest conservation. We have partnered with communities and institutions such as eCraft, SEAT, and others to intensify agriculture, bringing in resilient and productive crop varieties, providing training on soil management and improvement, and appropriate farming techniques to increase yields. We have also linked these communities to distant markets by facilitating private sector participation to bring a barge that travels 2,000 kilometers away to collect produce from communities and take it to these distant markets. We've also built storage facilities to keep produce fresh as they wait for transportation. Finally, a program to improve domestic livestock and regulate hunting in designated areas is underway to enable bushmeat to be part of people's livelihoods and diets on a sustainable basis. To support protected area conservation efforts, AWF provides support to the National Conservation Agency, the ICCN, to build capacity, conduct by diversity research, and develop a noble-based adventure and scientific tourism. And of course, they are the logging concessions in this system, and they occupy 20 percent of the landscape. And we are working closely with the logging companies to develop clear plans to manage their concessions and to work with local people to support sustainable livelihoods. And this work has helped to shape national policy on land use zoning. These measures can be further enhanced through carbon revenues. Communities in this region have potential to further secure approximately 2,000, 200,000 hectares of primary forests. And this could provide direct benefits to approximately 16,000 inhabitants. AWF has begun to work with communities to enhance awareness of red plus as DRC prepares its national red strategy. And we will be piloting a carbon project with the country. Again, this emerging work is providing information and tangible lessons to climate change policy for that country. Let me take you from the rainforest of Congo basin to the dryland forests of African plains. And the previous speaker talked about the value of dryland forests on the continent of Africa. The Birikani Group Ranch in southern Kenya is a 320,000 hectare community land, which is located in the semi-arid area. It is owned by a community of Maasai pastoralists and is a ranch that supports large heads of wildlife and provides grazing for livestock, the main source of livelihood and wealth for this community. A part of the group ranch is a dryland cloud forest that measures about 20,000 hectares and serves as an important water catchment for what is a very dry and arid area. This community, like many in East Africa, have very limited options because of the aridity of the lands and the high levels of poverty. To enhance conservation livelihoods, we've been working with the community for the last 10 years with the support of the US and the Dutch governments to develop the areas tourism as a first step to strengthening incomes from wildlife and conservation. We're also linking communities directly to improve livestock markets, to increase revenues from the sale of their cows and goats, in exchange for improved rangeland management. Yet this is not enough. To divert deforestation and forest degradation, we're now piloting carbon projects so that they too can generate revenue from the conservation of these important forests. Together, these measures diversify, improve overall incomes, and support the conservation of important forests. They're also providing, helping to deliver climate change mitigation benefits to these communities. Through these programs, communities are able to leave rangelands open for their cattle, for wildlife, and together with neighboring communities, improve connectivity in landscapes. And this is needed to build resilience in areas that have suffered frequent and regular droughts through the last few years. My final example is from the montane forest of the Coral Hills, which serve as water catchment for communities in the beyond the woodlands. These hills provide water that is a source of the great Terangiri River, the lifeline of many thousands of people who live with wildlife of the Terangiri Maniara ecosystem. The Terangiri Maniara is a gem in the northern Tanzanian tourist circuit, where people from around the world are drawn to see large heads of wildlife migrating through this landscape. Resource-intensive commercial livelihood practices, such as charcoal production and brick-making, are taking trees from the forest more quickly than they can grow. In this setting, and with the support of the Norwegian government, we're working with communities to introduce better land use practices, such as agroforestry, sustainable agriculture, and reforestation, framed by management practices, such as joint forest management and community-based management. In this area, as with other forests, the objectives under a Red Cross program are to conserve the forest while providing better livelihood opportunities for all people in the area by expanding the availability of alternative energy sources, improving agriculture practices, and yields here in the pilot phase have increased eightfold, while supporting new businesses which diversify incomes. So what am I saying, ladies and gentlemen in summary, that forests are critical to climate mitigation and adaptation, but their value goes far beyond carbon sequestration alone. Forests are critical to the lives of millions of people who depend upon them for everyday sustenance. They're important to national governments for economic growth and development. They are vital for Africa's magnificent and unique wildlife. They're important for global important biodiversity. They hold climate stabilization and other services for the climate stabilization and other services that they provide. These values sometimes compete with one another and with other land use options in particular agriculture. I hope through the few examples, I have shown some ways in which, in large landscapes, these competing needs can be reconciled through integrated strategies to enable people to prosper and by the diversity of Africa to survive. We do, however, need help to take these examples to scale to make them the standard at national, regional, and regional levels in order to halt ongoing loss of forests and associated by diversity. Looking to the economics, the values of forest services that forest services provide, including by diversity, remain accounted for in our national decision making. While carbon values can be determined during carbon assessment processes, these are far from complete. Other values such as soil conservation, water capture and retention, pollination, food habitat for wildlife, and others are generally not accounted for at all. The economists behind the important study, the economics of ecosystem and biodiversity that was led by Kevin Sukta have shown us how much these values might be. They are hugely significant. It is now incumbent upon us to value ecosystem services in our accounting systems. To incorporate these values into our national decisions about the scale, the location of agriculture investments, forestry, mining, and other land uses that risk discounting our future for short-term benefits. RED is a tool for bringing the value of one ecosystem service from forest into decisions. But RED presents both opportunities and challenges as we are learning from our projects. If we get it right, we can finance long-term conservation of extensive state, private, and communally owned forests. For RED to work, however, we need to bring down the transaction costs of getting the carbon to market. We need to design ways of sharing carbon incomes fairly and equitably, particularly with those who bear the opportunity costs of forgone forest uses. And we need to share the responsibilities for long-term compliance fairly and equitably. While money is available globally for climate change mitigation adaptation, sadly, not much is flowing to people in forest communities where it would transform the prospects for climate mitigation and adaptation, livelihoods, and biodiversity. National mechanisms, therefore, are urgently needed to fast-track implementation on the ground of responsibly planned, delivered local initiatives to address climate change and the threat it poses both to people and to ecosystems.  For all this to be meaningful, for all to make meaningful contribution to climate change mitigation, the large polluting countries, both historically and currently, must do their part to substantially reduce their own emission levels. Finally, let me remind us that Africa is a low greenhouse gas emitting continent. Yet it still suffers serious and disproportionate impacts from climate change. It is therefore appropriate that COP 17 is being held here. I hope decisions from this COP will provide adequate means for Africa to cushion itself from this impact. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you this morning. Forest Day represents a unique gathering of people from a whole spectrum of groups involved in forest conservation around the world. The diversity is important because it is just such a richness of values and views that is needed to map a pathway towards a better future for us all. We must work together with respect and compassion, but also with energy and determination, as our professor did, to create a bright future. I have faith that the deliberations throughout the rest of the day and the conference as a whole will nurture a future for forests, for forest resources, for people, for wildlife, for Africa and for us all. Thank you very much.


Joining us from Paris is Judah Grundstein. He's the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, and his podcast, Trend Lines, drops every Friday. Hello, Judah. You're joining us from Paris, right? That's right. A lot to discuss, obviously, Emmanuel Macron. I'm not pronouncing that properly, but that's the way I roll. I don't think he'd pronounce our names correctly either, though, so don't feel bad. So he won with about 64 percent of the vote, and Marine Le Pen took in fewer than 40 percent. She kind of tanked it, didn't she, at the last minute? Were they expecting it to be this bad for her? Well, it really depends how you look at it. To begin with, she took 21 percent in the first round. To give you an idea, that was already more than anyone from her party had ever taken in a presidential election. Basically, it's been her father and her. The party is sort of like a very lucrative family business that runs on anger and resentment. What do you mean it's lucrative? Well, I mean, it's how they make their living, between that and she's actually a member of the European Parliament. But they've been investigated for campaign financial fraud. Basically in France, any party over a certain percentage gets all of their campaign expenses reimbursed by the state. The FN has been investigated for basically contracting, let's say, they get their posters printed by someone who's a close associate of the party and he'll charge them twice as much as it actually costs to print the posters and then they'll get reimbursed by the state at the higher cost and the rest of the money gets kicked back. They've been fined for stuff like that, shenanigans like that. Are they getting rich off this? From what I understand, they're not out on the street. They've got like a nice family compound outside of Paris. But the difference between her father and Marine Le Pen is that her father, Jean-Marie, was always kind of happy with that arrangement. He never really sought to popularize the party or to win office. He was always happy there being the sort of gadfly of French politics.  The difference is that Marine Le Pen, when she took over the party from him or when she inherited the party from him, she actually had this vision where she could sort of normalize the party, moderate its positions a little bit, weed out some of the more hateful stuff, and actually win elections and govern. And so what you saw happening, especially over the last few years, where immigration has become more and more of a high-profile issue here in France and then culminating in the terrorist attacks, which sort of served the law and order aspect of the FN's program. And then also some of the mounting resentment against Europe and the European Union. So she sort of used that to grow the party's appeal. At the same time, she distanced some of the more sort of visibly anti-Semitic people and racist people. And so when she got 21 percent in the first round, I think the highest that she'd ever gotten and her father had ever gotten was something like 17 percent. Now, to give you an idea, the difference is that in 2002, her father made it to the second round of the election. It was a seismic shock here. The entire country was in shock for about a week or two, maybe longer. He won something like 16 percent in the first round and won 17 percent in the second round. So there was this nationwide, what they called the Republican front that blocked his way and he only won one percent more votes in the second round in the first round. So for Marine Le Pen to go from 21 percent to 35, it shows that there is a much bigger pool of voters who will accept the National Front candidate as a second choice. Now, the problem is they kind of painted themselves in a corner because they kept they kind of got into this enthusiasm after the first round and expected to do a lot better. So they started talking about reaching a 40 percent threshold and they defined 40 percent as they're sort of cut off for being successful. So falling to 30, so only getting 35 percent, as you said, it definitely it's created a bit of a backlash within the party, actually. And so there's going to be a little bit of a falling out probably after the legislative elections in a month where some of the hardliners are going to say, see, we told you so. You shouldn't have moderated the position and others are going to say, well, we need to moderate a little more. The legislative elections are a month away and there are members of the National Front who serve in the parliament. Well, here's the thing. At this point, I think they have only two members of parliament. I think there's five hundred and sixty something or five hundred and seventy something members of parliament. They have two five hundred seventy seven, the way in which France's electoral system works. It's a two round first pass the poll, which means that after the all the candidates that make that win more than I think fifteen percent of the votes in the first round, make it into the second round. What's happened traditionally, there's no proportional representation at all. And so what's happened traditionally historically is that in any any voting districts where a FN candidate makes it into the second round and looks like they could possibly win if the other two major candidates stay in the race, the weaker of the other two candidates drops out. So the socialists will drop out and let a center right, what's called the Republicans Party win if they finished behind and vice versa. So the two major parties have effectively blocked the National Front from any sort of popular representation beyond the municipal and local level. Now what the problem this time is, or rather not necessarily the problem, it really depends how you look at it because clearly you have a party that has, they polled I think thirty five percent or thirty to thirty five percent in the last regional elections. The regions would be sort of like if you group together three or four states in America and there was an election between the state level and the federal level. So those are the regions in France. The National Front won about thirty five percent in the first round and didn't win a single region. And so they can regularly win twenty five thirty percent in various voting districts, sometimes more. There are some down south for instance where they win forty five percent of the vote in the first round, but they get no representation in parliament. So it's it's obviously anti anti-democratic in a certain way. What's what's happened now this time, and we can get into that a little later, is that because both of the major party candidates for the presidential election failed to make it into the second round. I have my doubts as to whether the system for blocking the National Front from representation in parliament will actually be as effective this this time. There's going to be a lot of divisions. A lot of people might just not want to sit out a second round because of the kind of losses that both of the major parties might be expected to accumulate. A lot of people sat out this election. Voter turnout was incredibly low, even though it was an important election. And a lot of people handed in blank ballots. What is that about? The protest well the protest vote even the protest vote was enormous. Even if you look at the first round results. So if you look at the first round results, you basically had twenty percent or eighty five percent split between the top four candidates and then there were a couple second tier candidates who got about five percent or so and then some marginal candidates. The four candidates that made between the one between 20 and 25 percent of the vote, one was Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is a pretty far left candidate who argued for massively massive hiring in the public sector, raising the minimum wage, renegotiating European treaties to make Europe basically a social welfare union as opposed to a common market. So this would be a populist from the left? From the left. In a lot of ways, he's the most entertaining theatrical candidate. I really like him, his style personally. He's got some drawbacks in that he's got a soft spot for Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro and some of the less attractive models on the left in terms of their authoritarian practice. Why the low voter turnout? Because people didn't get the candidate they wanted? Yeah, definitely. So absolutely. So you have him on the left, you have 21% who went to Marine Le Pen on the right. So already you have 40% of the first round voters who were expressing an extreme dissatisfaction with the status quo, not just around the margins or they want some change or some reform, but an extreme dissatisfaction. Apparently, quite a bit of the Mélenchon voters stayed home, not as enormous as they expected, but quite a bit did. And Marine Le Pen won out actually, she won over some of the conservative right candidate, François Fillon, who lost in the first round also. So there was definitely a sense that in 2002, when her father made it to the second round, there was an enormous outpouring of voter engagement. Socialist voters, I have friends whose family are longtime socialist and communist voters. There's still a French Communist Party here that runs candidates who literally cried voting for Jacques Chirac, who was a conservative right politician against Jean-Marie Le Pen. But they went and they did what they considered to be their duty as in terms of Republican ideals, Republican meaning of Republic, not the Republican Party. This time that didn't exist where people weren't willing to, they didn't want to hold their nose and vote for the lesser. Exactly. There was just this sense, this sense that, you know, we've given enough over the years, no one's listening to us and we're not going to do it again, kind of similar to some of the very dedicated Bernie Sanders voters who refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton, I suspect. At the same time, the polling leading into the second round showed Macron ahead something like 60 to 40 percent and the French polling was pretty accurate. So I think there was a sense that... Is there a Brexit movement in there? I mean, was Marine Le Pen for... She's in the European Parliament, would she be against the EU? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was the central part of her platform was pulling out of the EU and the Euro and it cost her significantly. She's a member of the European Parliament, partly to be obstructionist, partly because that was where the FN did the best because I believe the European Parliament is a proportional representation from the national elections. I'd have to check on that. But that's why they didn't get boxed out in a second round. But for instance, she's been accused of using EU parliamentary funds to hire people as parliamentary assistants for the European Parliament and then dedicating them to basically national front campaign duties. So she's being basically investigated for embezzling EU funds for her own national campaign. What I like about the national front is at least we know where they are. We kind of know they're in the Republican Party here in America, but I kind of like the idea of one party of racist Holocaust deniers. What I didn't know about... Well, at least you can... They are what they are. The national... So you don't have to... Also, increasingly, because she's tried to normalize the party, it's gotten a little cloudier. So there have been, for instance, she stepped down as party president after the first round symbolically to show that she's rising above party politics. And the person who took her place, within days, it was revealed that they'd given an interview 10 years ago denying that the gas chambers existed, for instance. That's what I wanted to ask you about the national front. Up until recently, I didn't know this and I'm not sure it's true. The Vichy government, when the Nazis invaded France, they had a puppet regime, the Vichy government, and there were collaborators. And it was roughly about four years of French politicians doing the Nazis business in France. I always assumed there was shame associated with that. And people would be busy denying their involvement with the Nazis. But from what I've been reading, Le Pen and the National Front kind of coalesced. These were all people who were collaborators during World War II. Is that a fair statement that the National Front has its roots in the Vichy government? No, I don't think so. I mean, generationally, it's not the same generation. Her father founded the party. I mean, maybe in terms of legacy and inheritance from a previous generation of French sort of extreme right collaborationists, that yes. But in terms of the party itself growing out of that or being formed by people like that, no, I wouldn't say that. It's very complicated because you have, definitely you have instant, I mean, there were collaborationists in France. And, you know, nowadays everyone was in, everyone was in the resistance, right? But at the time, whether that was actually the case or not, who knows. But they say they all were. It's complicated. I don't think anyone actually celebrates the Nazi occupation. And I don't think you could celebrate the Nazi occupation and actually succeed as a party. But there's all sorts of dog whistle stuff about antisemitism, revisionism and Holocaust denial. And then obviously there's always that complicated aspect of sort of fetishizing the oppressor, right? So there was the Nazi occupier and French who wanted to be like as strong as the Nazis or as strong as the occupying force.  I mean, what we can say is that for sure, even recently, there was a part of one of the functionaries of the party down south who had a bookstore. And in his bookstore, he was filmed. There's a secret back room with all these Holocaust denial books, which it's actually illegal to sell here in France. And he was giving a tour to the initiated of the secret chamber of his bookstore, you know. And so he was forced to resign. The party is just, you know, riddled with people like that because that's who it appealed to in the early days. And that's who the father never really renounced appealing to.  And so the part of it, part of the skinhead movement had a neo-Nazi element to it. And some of the younger far right student groups had a neo-Nazi element to it, to them. So whether or not they actually celebrate the occupation or our collaborationists, there's a sort of fetishizing of that historically. For another show, I would love to talk about the collaborators and how they were treated after the war and whether or not they have reunions and defend themselves and what happened to Patan, Marshall Patan. And there's a great documentary on that. I forget the title. It has chagrin in the title. I can email it to you afterward if you'd like to mention. It's not the sara on the pity, is it? Exactly. That's it. So there was actually a lot of women who had relationships with Nazi soldiers, had their hair shaved off and were publicly humiliated in village squares and town squares and lots of extrajudicial killings, shall we say, after the war. Some of it's hard to determine whether it was just scores being settled, but a lot of it was collaborators. Well, I wrote a book defending the collaborators. It wasn't about the Nazis. It was about states' rights. That's why that's a joke. I'm comparing it was about states' rights. I don't know. It might be too soon. I know. I know. But there isn't the kind of denial in France, the way we have here in America when it comes to slavery.  On another level, I hear what you're saying, but the French are masters of what's called here, the non-die, the unsaid. There's a lot that hasn't been addressed. Just to give you an example, during the campaign, Marine Le Pen created a controversy by saying that when the French Vichy forces, police officers rounded up Jews for the Germans, for the Nazis, and deported them, that it wasn't France that was responsible. Jacques Chirac, when he was president, took the unprecedented step of apologizing and accepting responsibility on behalf of the French state, even though at that time it was Vichy. Marine Le Pen went back on that and said, no, that wasn't France, it was Vichy. France at the time was Jacques de Gaulle, who was in London, and France is not responsible, Vichy was. There's still a lot of historical stuff that hasn't been addressed, and that's just World War II. If you get into the Algerian war, it's even more, and that drives a lot of support for the National Front. A lot of their supporters are either first generation or second generation French Algerians who came back from Algeria after the war in Algeria and who have a huge bitterness still to this day against the French state and against de Gaulle for having pulled out of the war and allowing Algeria to become independent. Jean Marine Le Pen, the father, was a soldier in that war. He's actually endorsed the torture that was committed by the French forces in the war. All of that stuff in terms of the historical aspects, it's all there. A lot of it isn't really addressed or mentioned, but very fascinating stuff. There are speech codes in France. There are certain things you're not allowed to say. You'll be prosecuted. I think the first time you invited me to talk on the show, it had to do with that. I was just going to talk about that. I have two questions about that. One is, can a politician be brought up on speech code violations? I would think Le Pen is saying things. I mean, as you pointed out, the person who replaced her to head the party had been a Holocaust denier. Can you run for office and violate the speech codes? No. In other words, it's not protected speech just because you're a politician campaigning. For instance, her father Jean Marine Le Pen was convicted on a couple of occasions for violating speech codes when it came to the Holocaust. I believe maybe a racist remark or two. But for instance, at one point, in talking about World War II, he called the gas chamber as a detail of history, and that the main story was World War II, and the gas chambers were a detail. I believe he was convicted on that of apology for the Holocaust, is the term. Are you fined or what happens? You don't go to jail. I'm not sure. I'd have to check on that. I don't think so, but it depends. I think if you called for violence based on racial characteristics, for instance, that could be jail time. A candidate running for president in France, if he stirs up the populace... Could not question, for instance, the existence of the gas chambers. And suppose they said something about the Arab population, like their... Anything that could be considered targeting someone for their... Well, first of all, race isn't really accepted in France as a category. It's not acknowledged. But I mean, for instance, anyone who said, for instance, when Donald Trump said that Muslims should be banned from entering during the campaign, that would not be protected speech here, I don't believe. Again, I'm not a lawyer, so I hesitate to be 100% certain on this stuff. But certainly, disparaging someone because of their racial characteristics, even as a politician on the stump, would not be protected speech. But you'd still be allowed to run. You'd be fined. But you could probably still get elected president in France saying... I don't know. I mean, you can be excluded from seeking public office. For instance, if you've been convicted of corruption, you can be excluded from public office from one to 10 years, maybe more.  And is there a anti-PC movement going on in France? Are there people saying this is mind control and language control and it's Orwellian? No, not really. That's pretty much accepted. That's been litigated already. France isn't the only country, right? I mean, Germany, Mein Kampf was just published last year, I think, for the first time or the year before. And even that was controversial. You can't give the Hitler salute, for instance, in Germany. It's illegal. You and I first connected because you had written a piece for Politico about Charlie Hebdo. About, I think it was two years ago, the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was shot up by extremists who were upset that Charlie Hebdo was making fun of Muhammad and Allah and did all these cartoons. And you had written a piece in Politico that I loved because it echoed what I believed, which is, yes, there is the issue of freedom of speech, but there's also why are you doing that? Why is the satirical magazine choosing to punch down and pick on the Muslim community and incite them? Not that anybody deserves to be shot up, but you did, you took a chance by calling into question the wisdom of a satirical magazine trying to upset the oppressed. I'd have to go through the piece again. I think the point, I'm not sure I would say that the point I was trying to make is that the people who were defending that, first of all, I was trying to make the point that freedom of speech means something very different in America than it does in France. But also I think I was trying to point out the irony to me that a lot of that, for instance, I mean, Charlie Hebdo, their humor is extremely caustic. And it's caustic towards certain things in particular religion. And they don't respect any of the code. So for instance, of sort of political correctness in the US. So for instance, their cartoons about their cartoons that are trying to show that the National Front is racist use very racially charged images of black people, for instance. So in a way, I think any publication that played with that, you're a comedian, right? There's a third rail and you know it pretty much when you step on it. And it can be really, really funny if you play with it right. But once you step on the third rail, you're just dead. And there's no humor in it. And I think that in some ways, Charlie Hebdo, I don't think they would be considered too funny in the US. And they would probably be attacked and condemned for how close they come to the third rail of trying to attack racism, but at the same time using certain imagery that that are born out of racist stereotypes and things like that. I don't think they're racist by any means. They're like really hardcore atheist communists. But at the same time, they were completely... They had no respect for any codes of correctness. They were willing to offend everyone and anyone. So I think that there aren't too many people in the US who've embraced that fully, the free speech code of go ahead and you have the right to offend everyone. Is France racist in that your French first and everything else is tertiary? So do they... Like when you fill out an application, you don't identify your race for anything, right? No, it's actually... It's not legal if you're polling, for instance, to ask someone's race. You can't actually do... Like sociologists have trouble here doing research on religion and race because you're not allowed to ask that question. So for instance, they get around it by saying... There's no real census, for instance, of how many Muslims there are in France. So it's all sort of extrapolated from how many people are from North African descent and from Muslim majority, Sub-Saharan Africa, things like that. There's no real... There's no statistical count because it's illegal to do so. I don't know if I would say that that's a race, that's... I think that's fascinating and it's a form of racism in that it's saying we don't respect anybody's race, you're French. That's your race. I mean, it's racist in the sense that being colorblind can be accused of being racist. It's sort of enforced colorblindness. Yeah. And at the same time, it's a response... It's an attempt to create national cohesion in an increasingly diverse country. It's the complete opposite of America. It's fascinating. Would a comedian get away with doing the kind of jokes that they do here in the United States where ethnic humor and religious humor and... Yeah, you can. I mean, there's definitely... There's young comedians of, especially of ethnic minority background who get away with it. But I know that there was one who has been... Some hate... He got accused of some speech code violation. I can't... Oh, that's Joe Doné, who's in another category. He's sort of flirted. He started out as like an anti-racist comedian. He was in a duo with, I think, a French-North African Jewish guy, Elie Simone. And Joe Doné, I think, is from the French Antilles. Although I could be wrong. He might be from... His family background might be through Africa. I'm not sure on that. And then over the years, he just started becoming more and more sort of... He's kept getting closer and closer to that third rail, especially when it came to anti-Semitic jokes and Holocaust jokes and things like that. And at a certain point, it was people scratching their heads because some of these far-right extreme neo-Nazi groups were championing his show. And again, it's a complicated question. I kind of go for the Nat Hentoff School of Thought, which is the answer to bad speech is better speech. But France is a different culture. Well, hang on. That's my... Hang on. You said it's a different culture. Yeah, they have a different culture of free speech here. In the same way that they have a different culture, for instance, of what it means, what religious freedom means and tolerance and separation of church and state. You can't wear a head... You can't wear either... You can't wear a yarmulke or a head veil or a very... What's the word I'm looking for? Very visible cross to school if you're in the public school here. Post... Is that a post-World War II phenomenon or...? No, that dates back to the mid-2000s, 2007, I think it was, or 2005. The anti-religion. And again, it's sort of dog whistle because generally it targets young Muslim women who were beginning... There was a sort of a trend towards more religious observance among sometimes not even immigrant children. It was sometimes second and third generation French children of immigrant backgrounds. But at any rate, there are differences. Even there, for Americans, it's separation of church and state, which means you protect the church from the state. In France, it's a totally different religious history, where the Catholic Church was actually a rival and threat to the state. So in other words, in America, it's freedom of religion. In France, it's freedom from religion. So the state was there to guarantee that the church did not exercise power in the public sphere. And part of that means that... Pre-World War II, right? That goes back... Oh, yeah. That's well before World War II. That's the French laws from the turn of the century. And it dates back to the French Revolution. And even the... France had the papacy in French territory at one point. So European history in terms of the struggle between national secular powers and the Catholic Church goes back a long way. And so it's a totally different history. It's hard to explain that. But when you've lived...  I've lived here now for 16 years. And it's almost like part of being bilingual is that when I'm here, I understand it one way. And when I'm in America, I understand it another way. And it's not that I say one is better, one's worse, or that I agree with either. It's just that I understand things differently. It's different sensibility. It's a different mindset and a different culture. Before you go, I want to ask you about Francois Hollande. But I want to just ask you very quickly about freedom of speech, because once a week I have... You don't want to talk about the election at all? Well, I thought you'd be really... Well, I have some questions. But I want to ask you about... I have Professor Corey Bretschneider on the show once a week. And we do a course in constitutional law. And I'm always defending censorship as the devil's advocate. And I say that, to me, language is kind of like zoning in your neighborhood. I don't want a strip joint in my neighborhood. And I have a right as a citizen to block a strip joint in an adult bookstore from being around the corner from my kid's school. I have every right to say, I don't like that. You can have it, just don't have it around me. And I think, to some degree, the same applies to speech, that people have a right to say, I don't want to hear that. It's inappropriate. Knock it off. Go say that someplace else. And then everybody says it's a slippery slope. I say... Well, who's the people who are saying that? Are they government officials? Or are they just your neighbors who are saying, don't come to the block party if you're going to talk like that? I mean, there's a difference, right? There is this knee-jerk First Amendment conversation that I find disturbing in that I have certain friends who say, speech should not be monitored. Nobody should question speech. Everybody should be free to say whatever they want. And I say, if everybody's free to say whatever they want, then I'm saying, shut up.  And I'm not going to... I mean, First Amendment only applies to government. It doesn't apply even to private sector.  They're not government. And in fact, they're expected to now, for instance, censor, whether it's terrorists that use social media or racists or people who are advocating violence. So in terms of that, I think that you have to make the distinction between who's doing the censorship. But I mean, one thing I'd just say, in general, I remember the last time we spoke, we were talking about the American election, I think. And you said something that I didn't call you on, but I never forgot it because you said, no, I believe, you were talking about having faith in people and in talking with people because you said you could convince them. If you could talk with someone, you could convince them that you're right. But to me, having faith in people is sort of like, what if they're right? And the same thing with censorship, it's like, who's the one who's deciding who gets censored? Is am I censoring you or are you censoring me? I don't particularly like censorship, but I'm sure I find it a lot easier to deal with me censoring you than you censoring me. So I think that in general, when we look around and say who's talking, who's saying what, and who gets to say not to be quiet, it's similar to that respect that we have for each other democratically. We need to sort of put ourselves in the other person's position and say, well, maybe I wouldn't be too comfortable if someone were telling me what I could and couldn't say. So let me just not tell other people what they can and can't say. At the same time, I think you're well within your rights and I agree. Someone's just saying things that you don't like or you don't agree with or that make you uncomfortable, you have every right to not listen to them and not offer them a platform, certainly on your show, for instance. So the question I had was, in France, it's different. They do guide, they guide speech, they monitor speech, they listen to what people say. As I say, they have zoning. It seems to me that they have a more rational political discourse in France, that they are better read, better informed. They understand nuance and subtlety, more so than they do in the United States. It's a broad generalization. I mean... Wouldn't you say the French electorate is better informed than the American electorate? I'd say less and less so over the years. But overall. Yeah, probably. So by guiding... I mean, not being at all qualified to make a judgment one way or the other, my instinct would say yes, yeah. So there is some virtue to wise men and women saying, watch your language, mind your peas and cues. Again, you have to look back at the different... There's a different... It makes for better discourse. There's a different history here too, David. You have to look back at that and put it into the context. Here, Europe is three generations removed from World War II and from the Nazi ideology, where it wasn't abstract and it wasn't speech. So the things that are forbidden are things that had very real consequences here on this continent. Obviously for the United States too, in terms of American soldiers that fought here and and slaves and slaves. But I think, for instance, that I don't know that the American experience was as marked by that kind of speech and ideology. But perhaps I'm mistaken. Well, you're talking about America. What about... Hang on for a second, because I want to ask you about Olaan. We've learned the consequences of hate speech, the Civil War. We know what language does. That was more than speech. But I guess I'm trying to think through how I would feel if I were a Black American and someone was saying, maybe we should outlaw white supremacist discourse. Well, I... That because it had as... Even though it was 100 years ago or more than 100...  So there's no reason why it shouldn't be the same thing. In France, it's consistent in that its racist speech is outlawed as well as anti-Semitic speech. So there's no inconsistency there. I think the American culture of free speech is just completely different. Yeah. Well, I think the French are better educated. And because they're watching what people say and they listen to what people say. So very quickly before we wrap it up, Francois Olaan was a socialist. He did six years as president right after the economic collapse. The French decided, unlike the United States, to elect a socialist. They said, that's it, we can't trust the big banks. We were screwed. We're putting a socialist in office. And I liked Olaan. I thought, but everything worked against him, didn't it? He tried to maintain the safety net. He couldn't. And then he kind of turned his back on the safety net, right? Well, Olaan, I mean, to begin with the socialist party is no longer socialist in terms of like socialism. I mean, they're not talking about nationalizing industry, for instance. Olaan, the problem Olaan had was that he campaigned on a pretty militant left program of his enemy being international finance and how he was going to break Europe, EU austerity and things like that. And then basically he ran on a social democratic tick or he governed as a social democrat. Mac home was actually his principal economic advisor and was his minister of the economy for a couple years. And basically what he tried to do was, I don't think he would have been too supportive of it, to be honest, from what I know about your politics. He used tax credit incentives to try to get big businesses to hire. He had a sort of almost like an informal non-binding pact of responsibility to get big businesses to hire and to get big tax credits in exchange, but they didn't actually end up hiring. Mac home as the economy minister tried to lighten some of the regulations on the businesses and on the labor market that are extremely unpopular here. I mean, the thing is, and I know what we'd probably disagree on the fundamentals of this politically, but France has basically resisted sort of third way new left structural reforms over the last 20 years. There just hasn't, it's been at the margins, but France, while Great Britain and the US and then later Germany were creating more flexibility in terms of hiring and firing and trying to create economies that had more opportunity and more oxygen rather than social safety networks. For better and worse, I'm not going to argue that that was all good. France was actually reduced the legal working week to 35 hours per week. It did moderate, raised the retirement age at the margins, but not as much as other countries and still has very, very onerous restrictions in terms of how permanent employees can be fired and what kind of severance packages they get at the end of that. What it does is that it creates, there's certainly a better social safety net. At the same time, it creates these disincentives for hiring. You've had a younger generation that instead of having the very prized permanent job contract, which creates the greatest security and the safety, they have the string of temporary contracts on which they can't rent apartments because it's not, it's too precarious for landlords. They can't get loans to buy property, to buy an apartment or a house or a car because banks don't trust that they'll be employed. It's created this sort of second class job citizenship where you have an older generation that has permanent jobs and a younger generation that has temporary contracts. The businesses are afraid to hire because the business cycle is cyclic. That's why it's called the business cycle. When things go down for a small company that is particularly vulnerable to the business cycle, they can't just lay people off like they can in the US, now for better and worse, again. What it does is it builds in a high structural unemployment here. The unemployment rate in France has been between 7-9% pretty much uniformly for the last 20 years. 7-9% unemployment. Yeah, it's built in. That's cooked into the recipe. You have a high safety net. All of these people get free healthcare, but again, it condemns youth unemployment I think is at 25%. It condemns people to really long-term unemployment in a way that is very, very destructive in terms of people's lives. We know what the impact that that has. What Oran tried to do and what Macron is promising to do is to provide a little more flexibility for employers to increase training for workers get into fields that are growth fields as opposed to legacy fields and to invest in green energy, to invest in some of the innovative stuff, high tech, things like that. I mean, France has enormous human capital in terms of its education system, in terms of its high degree of technological innovation, things like that. France has all the strong cards to play in the global economy of today. What Macron is trying to do is try to say, look, we need to be a little more audacious, a little less risk averse. That's a very hard sell here because people here, whereas an American thinks of opportunity, French people think of precariousness. They don't like an American person when they start a business. Generally, if you have a friend or he or she says, I've got all this experience, now I'm going to start my own business and go out on my own. Generally in the States, we're like, oh, right on. Good luck. I really hope it works well for you. Here in France, if you say to someone, yeah, I'm going out on my own, I'm starting my own business, they're going to be like, are you sure? It's kind of dangerous. There's a real risk averseness here when it comes to that kind of risk taking. And Macron is trying to reconcile, is trying to say, look, he talked a lot about conquering France. He's trying to say, look, we can do it. But it's a hard sell here. People really don't like that kind of exposure. Judah Grenstein is the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review. Trend lines every Friday. Who's your guest? The guest this Friday should be Richard Bitzinger. He wrote a great article for us that will be publishing tomorrow on China's expanding global security role and presence. Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. It's been my pleasure. As always, David, thanks for having me. Great. Thank you, Judah.


Hello and welcome back to the craft box! My name is Brent and today we're in episode 201 of the Wizard101 Death Walkthrough. Last time, if you haven't checked it out already, we finished and started the... what was it called? The Ruin Delcazar? Yeah, the Ruin Delcazar. We defeated a whole bunch of things and did all that sort of stuff and today we're in Radiance Reborn which is a bit of a castle thing in this sky, essentially. I noticed that this is like kind of see-through. It's actually really cool but I don't know if it's like see-through or a reflection, but it's really cool. This place is really super cool. I was just, before I started recording, I was just wandering around here for like 10 minutes just thinking oh my gosh this looks so cool. Lowkey reminds me of the Arcanum. So I'm assuming that some of the assets were used in the Arcanum. Dark Morgant came here with a shadow across her heart. She wanted to force the stars to her wings. That is not our nature. Oh kiddo, get in. So essentially we have to go and talk to all of the things that we found, not found, all of the star creatures that we saved last episode. So again if you haven't checked that out you probably should kind of run straight off from that. Also in between episodes, I don't know if you saw the video that was probably posted yesterday, but we have a couple new spells. We now have Headless Horseman which is what I told a year and Pigsy. So yeah if you haven't seen that that was crazy. I got both of them in the first like a one minute of a video. So yeah go check that video out. A lot of fun. Also I got this that mount that you saw and this wand. You must reach the solar arc if you wish to better understand the magic of shadow. Okay, so yeah we got this new wand which is the Headmasters Doom stuff which gives more damage than the Sucea, the Eye of the Sucea, but less crit and block. So yeah it's kind of if you want to go for a damage set it's better and if you want to go for a crit set it's not. But I'm just, I mean for bosses I probably use the one that gives me a bit more block, but at the moment I'm just going to use this for now. Okay these guys are very wise, jeez. Yeah I also really like how it looks. Probably in my opinion probably my favorite wand in the game. I really like the particle effects and just how it cycles through the worlds. Obviously it's a take on something that happens at the end of Mirage which I'm not gonna spoil because A I haven't been there and B I was about to say C I don't even know why. A I haven't been there and B is kind of a big deal. So yeah. Yeah so we're currently sitting at 79 damage which is pretty good. I haven't got any more gear other than what the pack gear that I've got from Darkmoor in between episodes so yeah I've done a couple runs. They just take forever and I get nothing so. Okay this is apparently a very cool part. I think we go into more against kind of memories which is really cool. Oh yikes. Yes hello Emilia. Enter the first chamber of the mind. You will see and hear one of Morgan's earliest memories. Remember these are true things but colored by how she remembers them. Okay I also have noticed that I really do enjoy this mount. Like I think it's really cool. The jumps are a bit weird. You kind of like just roll off the seat but um and if you jump enough you kind of sink through the mount it's really weird but I really enjoy it. It's really cool. It's just so smooth. Who's nip at his heels? The people need a new strong sword to follow. Once I sabotage his armor the next friendly duel he accepts will be his last. If only Mallory would see there is another way. The frowling magic holds the key to getting what we want without hurting anybody. You are meeting a sprig in here? I will not treat with those dishonorable savages. I'll treat with whom? Poxy Knight? I have brought the horn crown that Lady Morganth requested. It is potent magic of darkness and shadow. You have my reward. Foul creature. Your reward will be my blade. Okay then. So I don't think we have our normal stats from memory. I don't actually really know. We'll see. Who knows? Yeah we've got 2000 health. 20% damage. Oh gosh. Luckily she's death. So we kind of already have a sort of idea of how to play as Morganth which is kind of cool because we obviously are death. Oh our pet heals. Okay so our pet keeps its traits which is good. That's good. That's good to know. This is really cool. I just haven't done this before obviously. But this is so cool. I really love her casting animations. Fantastic. Also last episode we got to level 101 so again if you haven't checked that out you probably should. Let's do that. Blade and the Hex should be good. No that's not Hex. It's Curse. Always forget which one's which because they're essentially the same Hex and Curse except they're just different names. Hex is the balance one which basically does that and obviously Curse is the death one. What happens if we discard? No we don't have any treasure cards.  I think that's a good idea. We're just gonna go for it I think. Luckily these guys or the bosses in here don't actually do too much because obviously you only have so much health then you have to use like specific spells that kind of struggle trying to say that I don't know why. Specific spells so yeah that can be a bit of a challenge. Okay that's good if we do another one of those she should be dead.  Wicked weakness. That sounds good. Boop what's this? Okay a trap cool. I don't really need a life shield. She's not like she's gonna do lots of damage to me. She's still got heaps and heaps of health. She just wants me to life shield apparently. I'll just keep it on anyway. I sense you a weak... oh okay. Just as well I did that. I mean it doesn't hurt but okay. I didn't know she cheated. I mean it's not hard cheats though but yeah something. Hopefully this will do a bit of damage. Her left finger is crushed. 8-2-2. Okay we can probably finish off with a ghoul. Oh maybe not. What we'll do is we'll life shield and then ban shield vampire. One of the two unless that's a weakness. That is a weakness of course it is. Probably vampire would be good. Yeah all vampire and hopefully we'll kill. I may not but who knows we'll try. If not we can always go and that would definitely kill. Unless she heals which I don't think she's able to but I don't know. I don't really know. Hello. Nice wee vampire. I haven't used this spell in forever. I haven't used any of these spells in like forever. It's crazy. Oh she's dead. Cool. Fantastic. There we go. Yay. Then you must use the horn crown to enslave the king. If your plan goes awry I could not live on an Avalon without you. Crown contains a power I've not encountered in any of Merle Ambrose's teachings. It twists and turns. I wonder if Ambrose has any theory of it inscribed in his tomes of forbidden knowledge.  I will see when all of this is done and but a memory. Okay wow that is quite something. So this is going to be a very very very low heavy and back story sort of episode. Because essentially that is all this is just Morganz back story which is I personally find really interesting and cool. But other people obviously won't. Are you recovered from the first dream? Yup. Enter the second chamber of the mind. Another time. Another place. Another dream. Remember these are true things but Morganz age and temperament color them. Okay. We are just going to get some health. Just because that's a good idea. There we go. Fantastic. And we will head into a dream of Wizard City. Which is what the quest is called so I'm assuming it is a dream of Wizard City. Who knows we'll find out then. Just a sec. The ceaseless aid of Sylvia and myself. Wizard City might be a smoldering ruin. You think the astral schools are play things in the spiral worlds a game board or laboratory to practice upon? Aren't they? Someone needs to understand the boundaries of the spiral and figure out which rules can be bent and which broken. Punishment is a suspension of magical studies for the immediate future. Give me your wand. What? My wand?  I'll give you my wand. Oh look we are defeating Malastair Drake again. What a surprise. We've defeated Malastair so many times in the game. That's honestly a bit of a joke now. Okay we've got a few new spells which is cool. I think I might prism into a wraith. Probably won't use... Yeah we'll prism into a wraith probably is a good idea. I was trying to get as much damage as possible. I didn't see how much. We have decent amount of health. Don't know how much he has. We'll probably death shield. Probably a good idea. 6,000 yeah. We'll death shield. He's got a bit of health. We'll just take it a bit easy. Okay lightning bat is what the wizard city is. He's summoning Halston to try and defend himself. Next we'll be seeing him using myth magic. Okay we will go for a wraith since I don't actually know what we have. Like what cards we have so might as well just use what we've got. And yeah who knows I honestly don't know what we have. Okay anyone that's fine we will hopefully bring all of that back. Fingers crossed. I mean this shouldn't be too hard. Okay that didn't do much. That did not do much. That is bad. Surely we have a death blade somewhere. I just don't know what we have so it's kind of hard to like judge. We're going to death shield again. Curious of vulnerability. You keep saying they keep thinking about that. Luckily we put a death shield on before so it'll reduce it. Cheeky weird thing if you put on a thing and then a death shield it removes it. Basically essentially removes what it would do. So we're going to poison just for fun. Just continually get some damage on him. Might as well. I mean not much but it's something. So we'll do that. And what do we got next? We got another death shield. Okay we'll do this as well because why not. Just having fun with all these new spells that we can't use. Like well actually we can use poison. We just can't use this one. Like widow. Just a TC only sort of thing so yeah. This is going to do a bit. Jaws. Summoning the power of Gray Rose. Wow he's good. Nearly as good as he is in Dark Moor Jaws. Okay. What next? Oh we have Death Ninja Picks. That's nice. That's some juiciness. Right there. We'll do this. I mean we can just basically spam tower shields. I'm not tower shields. Death shields should be good. He's got so much resource. But we're slowly getting him down which is good. It's just kind of you. So you're not as good. Okay so that second shield isn't going to be of use in a while. Oh well. That's fine. Honestly I don't really care. Yeah who really cares. Not me. Let's go for a... what is more? A Wraith. Let's go for this because I think it finishes now. Correct. Yes cool. We'll go for this and then go for a... Oh look that doesn't even do it much anyway. Who cares? Who cares? Yeah that didn't normal mount anyway. So we'll do this into a... probably... he doesn't have many perps. So we won't go Ninja Pig. We'll probably go... I mean this could do more. So we'll go a Skeletal Pirate. Just because it can do more than Wraith and we're not too bad on health at the moment. So yeah that won't do much. 20. Yep. We're actually doing quite well. I'm not upset at all. Good. Hello. Okay. 618. That's pretty good. Okay slowly but surely getting him down. I mean we can just go again I suppose. Just do it again. Why not? Why not? Might as well. Banshee. Okay. Hi. Kind of see how minions feel now. That's good. That's juicy stuff right there. Nice. Okay nearly full health again which is good. Prism. Yay. And... Oh we do have a blade. That's good. That's really good. Okay. We will blade into a Skeletal Pirate then. Why haven't I got blades before? Like what? I knew we must have had blades somehow. Somewhere. Just didn't ever get them. Oh we even have faint. Oh my gosh. Yes please. This is going to be easy. Easy game. He's not even going to do much. He's just wasted all his perps. So I'm not worried at all. This is good. This is good. We're fine. We're fine. Maybe getting slightly cocky but we're fine. I mean this does the most or can do the most so we're just going to do that. Because we don't specifically need health at the moment. She might as well. That's going to do a lot. Whatever he does is going to do a bit. That's a 30 and a 20. But this is also going to do a lot so should be good. Boop boop. Please do the most. That would be great. Ooh that was good. Half health. Okay. Okay then. That's a child. Enough. What is going on here? Malastir Morgenth. Enough of this madness. Headmaster I was only teaching Morgenth how little she knows. Malastir I expected you to handle this prudently. Not to wage war on each other. And Morgenth. Oh Morgenth. You disappoint me. Never mind Malastir. Asking you to send your Morgenth was my failing as was my inability to teach her caution and mercy. Morgenth for placing Ravenwood in dire jeopardy and for your utter lack of remorse. There can be only one punishment. I must take away your wand and your deck of spells. You dare. I'll let you. I can't live without my magic. And expel you from Ravenwood. May you find your true self out in the spiral. We must all learn our lessons from this tragic series of events. Or else we will be doomed to repeat them. Ooh that was quite something there. G.A.'s. Umm. Hmm. Okay. Probably. Enter the third and final chamber of the mind. As I've said before these are true things but memory is a fickle and unreliable partner. Okay. So this is probably going to be a long episode just because I've kept in those two medals. Just because I find them really interesting so sorry about that. But let's head into this one. This is of Chrysalis I think it said.  Taylor. Hi. As promised we found a world of wonders and untapped riches did we not? The crew is eager to disembark. Shame you didn't want to stay longer at the Alcazar. Those burrowers had some lovely jewels and artwork. Fetch a pretty penny. Still after we see what this hive has to offer whether it's primitives can teach you the magic you seek we can go back there. Blasted astral magic. Too slippery to grasp. I swear I'll master it one day or burn a lot of it to ash. With luck you'll get a nice shiny deck of cards from these arachna magi and we crew will be able to explore. What have we here? Dress passes in the recourse chamber? Summon the arachna skinners. Do not let them escape. No no you don't understand. I'm a simple skyway captain and this is me charged Lady Morgenth and we are looking for... burrowers scum. Okay so I'm going to skip this battle just because the episode is probably kind of long. So I'm going to skip this just because it is a mob so it's not as good. Oh we have astral magic and lord of night and avenging. Okay so I'll be back in just a bit. Okay I am back. We just finished off that boss. Wasn't too difficult. Well it was about as difficult as the other ones. Hello. We must be running before... Hello guys. You cannot escape the shadow well. Once we deal with you we will find your ship and your crew and hang them up. Surrender and I can ensure you feel little pain. Be pleased that you shall feed the next generation of warriors. Skinner hold your weapon.  But we wish to examine this strange one. That does not sound good. She may prove to be the one we are searching for. The chosen one of the grand prophesy if she survives the testing. Wow that was a bit juicy wasn't it. Jeez. So you might have heard in the background we are joined with Finn for the end of this episode which will be slightly longer but I think here in the background we are about to record some road to 100 or something along those lines. I know what. So stay tuned for that later this week probably. Since this is probably going up on Tuesday. No Wednesday. Tuesdays tomorrow. Jeez. I was already Monday. Jeez I don't know. I love firing up wolves. Use this crystal to illuminate the teleporter. Okay let us use the crystal. So the next place we go is the Sardonyx.  The moon and the stars. The solar arc. I'm sure there's no way for Morgant to maintain a grip on this world. Have you found it yet? Oh it's a limited time offer. I can get it for $3.95. You can yeah. Spellbinder. The solar arc lies in the Badlands of the Kandah Desert. Beyond the city of Sardonyx. Damn. It has been lost to us since Morgant proclaimed it to be withdrawal. I am sending you to an ally of Reborn. To an order of monks devoted to star magic. Ask them about the solar arc. Travel to the city of Sardonyx. Bring word to the monks that radiance is reborn. And they can help you find the solar arc. Okay so we are just going to head over through this radiant teleporter. Yep and go to the temple and then we will finish off the episode there. It's been quite a long one. That is for sure. I don't know if we can easily get back probably. So this is the Sardonyx. We will be heading in here fully next time. There's also a pet vendor there. That's cool. And that goes into the Kandah Desert which is ages away because there will probably be that two episodes in the Sardonyx. It's quite a big area. Then the Hive and then the Shadow Palace. And then we are finished with Chrysalis. And head on into Pilarus. So anyway thank you for watching. Remember to leave a like and subscribe. And if you haven't already subscribed press the little bell so you know exactly when I post another video. And remember craft outside the box.