legislative context behind this case, Britain's historic engagement with Afghanistan, witnessed testimony on life under the Taliban, witnessed testimony from Arzun Nawbahar and Sahar regarding the treatment of women and the domestic counter-terrorist legislation put in place in the United Kingdom and the detrimental effect it has had on Muslim communities. We also heard testimony from Mozambique, an anonymous witness Naw, of lived experiences of torture with British complicity. Trial session 6 begins now. In order to resist the Soviet invasion, as part of Operation Cyclone, small arms began to be imported into Afghanistan on a large scale. Funding reached 613 million per year for arms in 1987. The United States set up with the help of its allies a massive arms pipeline to the Afghan guerrilla forces, which profoundly transformed the nature of the civil war. The United States delivered at least 400,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles to the Afghan guerrillas in cooperation with the Pakistani ISI. This made Afghanistan's the world's largest recipient in relation to the size of its population during the 1980s. To give us a better indication of the true implications of the UK's involvement in dealing of arms in Afghanistan, we can refer to the secret cabinet documents which were later published detailing the communication between Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter. From these files we can see how Britain provided direct financial material and practical support to resistance fighters before and during the Soviet occupation, in what may well represent the UK's largest post-war intelligence operation since 1944. On December the 17th, 1979, US Vice President Walter Mondale convened a meeting in the White House where officials agreed to discuss with Britain. The UK duly agreed to train the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and sent military specialists to support their efforts against the Russians. The weapons supplied to the UK, to the Mujahideen forces, also assisted the efforts of groups seen by the UK government as extremists. As blowpipe missiles have regularly been found in Taliban and Al-Qaeda arms caches across Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. The prosecution would now like to call social and human rights activists in Afghanistan and in the UK, Habib Ahmadiyya, to the stand, please. Let it be noted that Habib Ahmadiyya could not be with us today, so his interview has been pre-recorded. Habib, would you like to swear or affirm? Affirm, please. Please read out the oath. I do solemnly and sincerely affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You, Habib. Could you please tell us, tell the court your full name? My name is Habib Ahmadiyya. And what is your profession, Habib? I am social activist and human rights activist, Afghanistan and the refugees in Europe and in the UK. And how long, whereabouts from Afghanistan are you originally from? I'm from Orozgan province. We are very close to Kandahar, Ghazni province. We aim to understand the impact of Operation Cyclone on life in Afghanistan in the 80s and 90s. Could you please describe to the court the impact that the flood of life weapons had on your daily life in this decade? Unfortunately, what Afghanistan facing now and what we as a refugee around the world, people are facing is all come from 1980s. It's the time that when Reagan come to power before he get into the White House, he had a meeting with the head of intelligence from UK and French. He asked them, he said, what is my priority for the world? You know, the head of intelligence from French and British just suggested him that you should concentrate on Afghanistan. I should, he said why, but they said, you know, we should defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. That was the time the Soviet Union being already invaded Afghanistan. And then he asked for suggestions, you know, what is the tool we have, you know, how can we defeat the Soviet Union? And the head of intelligence said, you know, first of all, we have to promote the drugs in Afghanistan and give it the try to send the drugs among the Soviet Union soldiers and as well as the promoting with the Mujahidin. So the Reagan's actually accept that offer and then ask all the three states, head of intelligence, go to go through the plan and they sent them into Pakistan. They asked Pakistan, they said we have some plan. We want to do something here, you know, helping them. We need a place to train the Mujahidin.  So they Pakistan accepted actually. So they Saudi Arabia accepted the fund and they, the head of intelligence, CIA's and the French and the British they accepted to, they, they, they have the plans, you know, the masterminds. That was the things they probably started in Afghanistan. At that time, the Mujahidin did not have enough weapons to fight the Soviet Union. As you know, the Soviet Union, the communist regime in Afghanistan was so strong, they will be well equipped and very strong army and the Soviet Union itself was very strong. So unfortunately, when the weapon came to Afghanistan, also, which is every time they went to see the Mujahidin, very probably they meet all the Mujahidin is accepted. He's Islam, except the head of the Taliban, except the, and that wasn't, that they didn't stop there. They allow, you know, or they turn the blind eyes for all the extremists from Arab country to go on Afghanistan as well. From Chichinia, from Uzbekistan, from all Central Asia, they didn't, you know, they, especially at the time, the Arabs, they will see the Bussama Billah and his friends and families, you know, very proudly they said, we will go to Jihad in Afghanistan. For them, they had one goal. The goal was to the face Soviet Union. For that, they do everything. They gave weapon to anybody. Anybody can kill. Anybody can bring destructions. Anybody can make the life of the Soviet Union miserable, but they did not have exit plan. They did not have a plan after the Mujahidin and the terrorist groups. At that time, you know, we, there's all evidence that the meetings of the US officials today, the terrorist groups and the, that time was so called Mujahidin or so called Taliban's. They did, they, they had no, they had no standard for or a rule that what kind of people they are looking for, what kind of people they actually found, what kind of people. Any, anyone can fight without any ideologies. If you are the very extreme, they don't care. So that is what happened. And as you see, nine years later, the Soviet Union defeated, seven years later, with some internal issues in Afghanistan's communist regime, they had some divisions among the army and they is a full out or clubs. And then straight away, you can see destruction is start, the fight, the Mujahidin came to power. They had the first meetings they had in Peshawar. They had the caretaker governments. And when they, a journalist asked them about the Shia minorities or the Hazaras, they said, in your government, we don't have a representative from the Hazara community. They said, we will talk about Hazara later. And that was the start of the issue. When the Mujahidin went to Kabul, they had, everyone wanted to be in the power. Everybody claimed that the victory, everybody was claiming that they are the heroes. And then the civil war starts, we had the civil war. And then suddenly those people in Madrasas, which has been funded by Americans, you know, the Mujahidin, the Taliban, some of them was the young, they could fight at the time of Soviet Union. And some of them were very young, they couldn't fight at the time of Soviet Union. And suddenly you see a big army of the Taliban appear in Afghanistan, South Afghanistan from Spinboldak crossing. They came to Kandahar and then they start taking slowly, slowly take over Afghanistan. And that is the Taliban history. Do you know the number of small arms and light weapons in circulation today in Afghanistan as a result of what you've just described to us? Some of the reports says from half a million to one and a half million light weapons. But to my experience, as I was in the time of the, the previous time of the Taliban, I was in Afghanistan. I know for the fact every household had a light weapon. Using of weapon was become a normal things that for the people in Europe now, it's like common things going for holiday, going down a beach, or going, for example, playing, doing some exercises. That was a common thing, exactly like this in Afghanistan, having fun. People using weapon was that was a fun for them. And can you reconfirm for the course, Britain's involvement in this distribution of light weapons in Afghanistan? Sure. I've seen, I've seen a report from 2000 about the, how the British are proud that they took part. And as soon as the Soviet Union came into power, I think that was the time of torture. And then she's very proudly allowed and said, we have to, we have to help absolutely equal and they didn't want to be like a small brother or something. They want to have more share than others. How do you feel as somebody from Afghanistan about knowing Britain's involvement in the 80s and 90s in arming Afghanistan and arming groups like the more jihad and then Britain, do you find it contradictory and hypocritical that Britain will then come and invade Afghanistan on the 7th of October 2001 to bring democracy and freedom to Afghanistan? Oh, 100% absolutely. I think the cost of the, the bloods of Afghanis, all those distractions, you know, the destruction they brought to have exit plan, you have to have something for the future of the people, you know, what are you going to do afterwards? Right. If you want to take, if I, if we had the communist regime now, for example, we could have been like Tajikistan or Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan or Central Asia, like anyone like Azerbaijan, like Mongolia, but in peaceful country with a strong army. What we have now, of course, of course, they are solely responsible for it. They left, they left Afghanistan alone.  What happened to those people who fight it for your purpose? And do you believe that that is the same? Do you have the same opinion regarding the 2001 invasion? If they, they, of course, you know, there's other people who are the Taliban. The Bill Nadan, when that Bill Nadan came to Afghanistan, the Bill Nadan came to Afghanistan is the time of Soviet Union through the Pakistan's, who are the Taliban? The Taliban are the same people that the British and the French and Americans created those madrasa, funded those madrasa and wanted those people to come out, to come take part in the war in Afghanistan. And these are the people who you may know, who you created. That's no, it's not a hidden things for the people around the world. Excuse me.  Again, right, if you call them that now, if you call these people terrorists, how come you are compromising and sitting down with the terrorists? You know, in 2001, when they went there in a one week, they get rid of the Taliban from all over Afghanistan. One year later, they start rebuilding the Taliban. The car, they was, you know, the puppets, they're forcing the Afghani people to accept this puppet with the help of Zalmay Khalilzad, the special envoy and they, at the time, the British ambassador and the US ambassador. The first election we had in 2009 that was a fraud in election, a very clear fraud. Karzai lost the elections and Abdullah win the elections. What happened? The Zalmay Khalilzad, the special envoy, the British ambassador, the UK ambassador, they went, sorry, the US ambassador, they all sit down with the Mujahideen called Northern Allies. They said, if you don't accept Karzai as a president, we will make you accept with the help, with the force, with the power of NATO. Ewaina, that was the things. And then who was the Karzai? Karzai called Taliban's brother, unhappy brother. They all called him unhappy brother later. And the same guy said, he betrayed Americans. Well, if the American knew it, that was he, there was an American plan. If the American didn't knew it, of course, the Zalmay Khalilzad and Karzai then betrayed American and the British because he said to the American, if you ride overnight, I will, I will call for jihad against you. I would like to ask you what your wishes for the future of Afghanistan are now I as a British citizen, I strongly request all the human rights groups, all the, the charities they're doing the to help the poor people of Afghanistan, Afghanistan, at least more than 20 million of people are in power trees. People are struggling to find a bread for them, for their children's. Now the winter coming, you know, the winter is so cold in Afghanistan. I'm sorry. And let's not leave these people alone. And now we see the so-called inclusive government of Taliban. Yesterday they announced their governments that I was inclusive Taliban government, not inclusive for the Afghan people because all the factions, different factions of the Taliban came to power, not nobody else from Taliban. That is a true so-called Islamic state of Emirate of Afghanistan's. What is this? You know, now you, the woman don't have any part in the edad government, the minorities all because they Afghanistan is the country for minorities, the Tajik, the Uzbek, the Hazaras, they don't have any part in that governments. Please, I request the world, I request the people who can hear my voice. Please stand with your brother and sister in Afghanistan. Please don't leave them alone. You know, this is not, this is the time they exactly need you. They need your voice. They need your help. They need your fund. They need, they need you to talk to your MPs. They need you to lobby for the good purpose. You know, the MP should talk to the governments. Now they can send help to the people of Afghanistan. Not, you know, like what they did in 2001 or what they did in the 1980s. Nothing further. We hope to understand how since 2001 military spending in the context of Afghanistan and in other countries in the Middle East was not driven by sound analysis of threat to national security, but by profit. At the end of the Cold War, military spending was declining. In terms of profit, the need for another great catastrophe became clear. After 2001, the threat of terrorism was used as an additional argument for national acquisitions and transfers of arms and other military equipment. We understand the war on terror and oxymoron in itself as a tool by which those who profit from war can perpetuate permanent war. Figuring out who we're at war with is impossible. What better way to make money than to sell weapons against a perpetual enemy that can never be beaten. The prosecution would now like to call Lawrence Wilkerson, retired US Army colonel to the stand, please. As Mr. Wilkinson is currently in the United States, his testimony has also been pre-recorded. Would you like to swear or affirm? Affirm. You can read the oath. I do solemnly, I do solemnly, sincerely and truly affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Could you please tell us what your roles were in the United States government between the 1988, between 1989 and 2005? In 1989, I became the assistant to General Colin Powell as he commanded the US Forces Command at Fort McPherson in Georgia for five and a half months. And then when he was selected to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I moved with him to Washington and was his special assistant for four years, 89 to 93. Then I directed and deputy directed the Marine Corps War College from 93 to 97. Then I worked for General Powell in a personal capacity until 2001, at which time I went to the State Department with General Powell at his request and was a member of his policy planning staff until August of 2002, when I became his Chief of Staff and the Departmental Chief of Staff until January 2005. Thank you. And could you, could you tell us what your roles were in developing the strategy of what later became known as the War on Terror? My role in that regard was essentially as a bystander and advisor to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State started out along with Richard Haas, the director of the policy planning staff for whom I then work as pro-offering to the president the grand strategy, if you will, that we would pursue post-911. That quickly fell apart and became essentially a war strategy executed first in Afghanistan and then very, very quickly, November of the same October year that we invaded Afghanistan, moving to Iraq. That made the Secretary's strategy almost null and void within a few months, though we did continue to carry out parts of it that were appropriate for the Department of State and Diplomacy. It really was not the strategy we followed, the strategy we followed was almost purely a war strategy. Can I ask you what you thought should have been done instead of creating this war strategy? We had a discussion at the State Department, we being Secretary of State Powell, some of his undersecretaries and assistant secretaries and very predominantly his lawyer, William Howard Taft IV, who had a famous political name in America and had himself been Deputy Secretary of Defense for a time under Ronald Reagan, as I recall. And that was, hey, in the past, we have always used law enforcement as the principal national instrument to go after terrorists. And we've been relatively successful. The only exception to that I pointed out was Ronald Reagan in April of 1986 when he attacked Libya. Very short raid, we would call it in military terms, but mostly we had used law enforcement and abandoning law enforcement was dangerous because of a number of factors. One, you would have a real hard time with that body of laws that we had been primarily responsible for, not least of which was the Geneva Conventions and other what we in the military call rules of land warfare. You'd have a hard time figuring out how to classify your enemy. Indeed, we spent weeks trying to figure out what term to use for our enemies in a legal sense. A second reason that we'll point it out was the reason that our founders had said James Madison in particular, the pin on our Constitution. When you give the executive the war power and you make it fairly expansive, the way the authorization for the use of military force did in 2001, you're courting tyranny through the most effective instrument to bring it about. And those arguments didn't have much sway, though, with people like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, who had absolutely no grasp of American history and were rather ruthless, ruthless practitioners of political matters and such. So we didn't we didn't have a lot of I think the only thing we really weighed in at the last minute heavily on and I thought we were going to be successful on was a memo that Will Tafe wrote for the secretary and the secretary appended his own memo 28 January 2000. I want to say to know when was that that was probably. Probably, yeah, I believe it was January 2000 and two at any rate, I have a copy of it downstairs. At any rate, the memo essentially pointed out the serious deficiencies, shortcomings of abandoning Geneva and the rules of warfare as we knew them. They didn't wash. They went ahead and did what they did. And of course, what they did led to all manner of things. The manifestation that bothered me the most was torture of other human beings, blessed as it were at the very highest levels in the United States government. Thank you very much. And in terms of the response to the 9 11 attack, do you think that the invasion of Afghanistan was justified? I think it came out of a number of factors, the most probably the most prominent of which was it was clarified by President Bush himself when he had a meeting in the Oval Office with a group of evangelical Christian evangelical leaders whom he respected. And he more or less asked them to help him restrain his rage because it was very un-Christian like that he was feeling this rage about 9 11. I think that my own personal view there is that had two components to it. One genuine rage about so many dead Americans, but also on his watch because his watch was not very much supported by a political mandate. You may recall he was elected by the Supreme Court, not by the American people. So I think he felt rather weak in terms of his political mandate. And once he'd gone to New York and stood on top of that debris pile and said through that bullhorn that the people who did this will hear from us soon. And his poll rating shot up to 90 percent and higher. I think he understood how effective war would be for his political prospects. And so I think those two things motivated them more than anything else. And in that sense, it was disturbing to watch it because that's not the reason you should go to war. Absolutely. And you you said that war war is profitable as well as making a politician popular. So in your view, what role does the arms trade play? The arms trade has played a major role in American penchant for war. Ever since Eisenhower delivered his not farewell address where he addresses the military industrial complex. But when he in 1953 gave his so-called Cross of Iron Speech, where he compared the expenditure for a single fighter plane to various civilian accoutrements, barrels of wheat, a modern hospital, miles of freeway and highway and so forth. In other words, saying as he did that this is no way of this is a direct quote. This is no way of life at all under the threatening cloud of war. It is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. To me, that was a more powerful speech, even in the military industrial speech in January 1960. So Eisenhower pointed it out and it came true. And I think Eisenhower today were he alive would be amazed and very saddened at how much it has outstripped the confines of our democracy to withstand it. It is hugely a component of going to war. We have merchants of death like Lockheed Martin, Ray Pion, Grumman, Boeing that essentially thrive and continue to thrive in ways that are billion even billions of dollars denominated because of our wars. So would you say that the interest of certain defense companies dictate foreign policy in the case of the United States? I would not go that far and say that if you called up Dick Cheney, for example, and asked him for a war and you were from Halliburton, his previous contractor, that he would get you a war. But I will say that it has a massive influence on the Congress and on the executive in terms of their proclivity for going to war. I understand. So we must be mindful then of the relationships that certain government officials have to these companies. When we look at the reasons behind certain invasion or certain military actions, would you agree with that statement? Yes, too many too many flag officers, generals and admirals exit the military and go right into Lockheed or Raytheon, their boards or even go into the executive suite. For now, we used to say six figure salaries, now seven figure salaries. And it's a huge influence on what they then advocate with regard to the people who stayed in the Pentagon. Absolutely. And could you please explain to the court the idea of permanent war? Permanent War has been an aspect of the empires since particularly Rome, but even before that. Empires bill their outpost around the world. Today, America has around eight hundred such military outposts. To give you some idea of comparison, the rest of the world combined, one hundred and ninety eight other nations have seventy outposts together. We have eight hundred. They cost anywhere from seventy five to a hundred billion dollars a year, depending on how you calculate them to maintain. That's an incredible empire and incredible, incredible imperial vastness.  There's a communist outside my door. And before you know it, we have a war plan, a contingency plan or even an operational war plan for that area because of that report. And that's simplistic to an extent, but it's very illustrative. It's how the empire exists, how Rome existed, you know, when Britain called in and said from maybe a couple of legionnaires that there were some threats around. Rome sent legions. That's pretty much the way we do it today. Only I don't think the financial component of it was so direct for Rome. Yes, having territories overseas and getting the food from there and so forth was particularly important. But today you have so many people in the decision making chain or advising that chain that profit from these wars that it's easy to see why they're endless. And you mentioned the communists. So the communists were the enemy during the Cold War. And now it seems that that has shifted on to people of the Muslim faith. Would you agree that this and this terror terrorism as a sort of shapeless enemy has become the next scapegoat? That's part of it. You're absolutely correct. I think it's more complex than that. But that's certainly the surface veneer, if not some of the substance of it. And it makes sense to the empire from the perspective of what people have written about even. And that is the unanimity, the coalescing together and so forth, which is nonsense of all these countries, mostly Muslim, twenty two Arab countries in particular who you don't see, for example, Indonesia in there or the Muslims in the India who together outnumber all the rest of the Muslims combined. But nonetheless, it's a handy stereotype to use when you're going after a replacement for communism, a replacement to keep the cash flow going to the war machine and so forth. Muslims make a good replacement. And it's interesting, too, if you look at it from a perspective I did when Powell and I were having a conversation at one point, I said, you remember what we said about one man's freedom fighters and other man's terrorists? Well, all those in this case, we were talking about Palestine and Israel and all those cases where the Palestinians mount terrorism as an instrument of warfare against the Israelis or whoever. They're just doing what they have to do because they don't have that 16th. They don't have Boeing. They don't have Ray beyond. So they're doing precisely what they have to do. That's the only methodology they have to impact the fight, if you will. So it's clearly, in my view, understandable why they do it. So why do we make such heinous people out there? They're doing nothing that we wouldn't do if the situation won't reverse. Don't get good answers to those kinds of questions. And going back to the arm straight, Saudi Arabia is an ally to both the United States and the United Kingdom. How do you see this alliance with Saudi Arabia in terms of the arms trade? In terms of the arm trade, arms trade, it's it's a vicious cycle because the Saudis buy arms that probably they will never use. Sadly, they're using some of them in Yemen right now. But they buy them at exorbitant prices. And that sort of is a balance of payments mechanism because we for so long bought oil at exorbitant prices from them. And so we balance that with massive arms sales to them and kept the relationship somewhat on an equilibrium. Today, it's a little bit different and you see it changing. And I'm very hopeful it's not changing fast enough, but I'm very hopeful that it's going to change dramatically over the next decade or so because it's no longer the case that we need their oil and it's no longer the case really that they need our arms to the extent that they were buying them before. But one wonders where the regime in Riyadh is going to turn in the interim and in the long run. And Mohammed bin Salman's plans for the future while they've been lauded from one capital to another don't look like they're accomplishable to me. So I think we're looking at a real future problem with Saudi Arabia. And finally, to return to the beginning of our conversation and the invasion that happened on the 7th of October, 2001, do you think it was justified and do you think that the new or do you think that the UK by helping the United States and this invasion are guilty of a crime of aggression? Difficult time with just flat out proclaiming that Afghanistan was a crime of aggression on the UK's part over the U.S. Because had we done what was anticipated to be done by Secretary Powell and myself and others, I think, gone in and eliminated al-Qaeda to the extent possible, preferably gotten Osama bin Laden at the very beginning and done to the Taliban what was necessary to keep them from reintroducing a terrorist sanctuary and left say maybe eight months at most, at most a year. But I think it could have been done in eight months and left with a warning to the government in Afghanistan, whatever it might be, Taliban or otherwise. If you do it again, we'll come back and do it again. Then that would have been justified if under no other authority than Article 51 of the UN Convention on the Right to Self-Defense. I have to modify that, though, and put a footnote with it and say I believe at the time and I believe even more so now after having students do case studies on it for 16 years that we could have solved it diplomatically, that had we pursued it vigorously enough, we probably could have gotten the Taliban to hand over those responsible for 9-11. I don't think that would have satisfied President Bush and Dick Trini though because they wanted more and we saw what they wanted. We saw they wanted Iraq and I think they wanted Syria. I think they wanted other parts of the Levant and I think they were intent on doing it. I happened to stumble on some war plans in the Pentagon when I was visiting the Pentagon as a State Department employee and I asked about those war plans and I was told I shouldn't ask about those war plans. And right after that, Donald Roosevelt canceled he forbade the policy planning staff at state led by me to come to the Pentagon. That's very interesting. So you're saying that this is the reason why the United States refused to negotiate with the Taliban because the Taliban accepted to hand over bin Laden if he were to be tried in a court rather than be assassinated or detained indefinitely. So you're saying that the reason why it was refused was because it was already in part of the plan to eventually go into Iraq. And I have to, that's what I'm saying and I'm also saying and I want to add that I think with the president and his political advisor, Carl Rowe it was that plus and more powerfully. So I know how to become popular. I know how to become popular and I know how to win a second term and it's to go to war. Thank you very much, Colonel Wilkerson. No further questions. We have to understand how the battlefield is a marketplace and how this is actualized on the ground. Once we see and understand how on the scale of day-to-day conflict modern warfare is profit driven we can see how on the large scale the arms trade operates in a parallel legal universe between governments, corporations, non-state actors and brokers. We can understand how there is no accountability and no scrutiny. The prosecution would now like to call Andrew Feinstein to the stand, please. I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Thank you, take a seat. Would you please tell the court your full name? Andrew Joseph Feinstein. And can you please describe your profession? It's not as easy as it might seem. I am entitled the executive director of Shadow World Investigations a not-for-profit organization based in London where we investigate and research the global arms trade and particularly corruption in the global arms trade. I'm also an author, including of the book The Shadow World Inside the Global Arms Trade and was a former member of parliament for the ANC in South Africa under Nelson Mandela. Can you please for the court give a brief overview of how corruption in the arms trade actually operates? We've heard a bit from Colonel Wilkerson, but... I think in answering that, Colonel Wilkerson spoke specifically about the political and economic dividends of conflict and of warfare and at the heart of that is the global trade in weapons. It's where the economic side of these transactions take place. So the first thing to understand is that arms deals which average around $400 billion a year, which is actually not that big a sum when one thinks of some other industries, but neither is it a small sum, that that trade in weapons happens usually between governments where one government will enter into a contract with another government for the sale or purchase of weaponry. The government selling the weapons then hands over the fulfillment of that agreement to a company or companies usually located in that government's country. There are of course occasions on which there will be direct government to company transactions and even company to company transactions, but the vast majority of arms deals are undertaken on a government to government basis. The second thing to take note of is that the arms trade, according to a piece of work undertaken by a gentleman by the name of Joe Roba, working at Transparency International at the time, accounts for approximately 40% of all corruption in all global trade. So to reiterate, here is an industry that on average accounts for $400 billion a year that is responsible for 40% of all corruption in the world, which is a truly astonishing figure. And the reason for that is that that $400 billion on average is a consequence of a small handful of arms deals every year. So they're worth tens of billions of dollars each. Of course, there are much smaller ones. One talks of small and light weapons, which the quantum and the money involved are far less. But in general terms, they account for tens of billions of dollars. On the buying country, there are a very, very small number of people on average half a dozen who actually make the decisions which are very technical decisions about what to buy and who to buy it from. And all of this happens behind a veil of national security imposed secrecy. So what it does, those factors create the most fertile possible environment for corruption to take place and to flourish. And then one has to add on to that two other factors. The first is that because of national security and its impact, what happens in arms transactions and in military transactions generally often happen with no impunity, sorry, with no legal accountability, that's with impunity. The best indicator of this is some research we did for the Shadow World book with a group of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada that concluded that by mid-2011, there had been 502 recorded violations of UN arms embargoes where a country, company or individual sold weapons into a conflict where the sale of such weapons had been embargoed by the United Nations. Of those 502 recorded violations, two resulted in any legal accountability whatsoever. One resulted in a prosecution and the arms dealer who was prosecuted in that instance who I interviewed laughed at the prosecution which he described as an immoral prosecution and at the size of the fine he was required to pay as in his words, it wasn't even pocket change by comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars of profit I made on that particular transaction. So that impunity is a key factor in the corrupt nature of the global arms trade. The final factor is as Colonel Wilkerson mentioned in his evidence, the involvement of a number of actors, both state and commercial, in each of these transactions. So each arms deal, be it for a small amount of small and light weaponry or be it for a number of aircraft carrier and jet fighters, involve a strange alliance, if you will, between politicians and very importantly, their political parties, corporate executives from the defense contractors or arms companies, as we call them in this country, government officials, military leaders and the various intermediaries. And by the intermediaries, I mean the arms dealers, sometimes called agents or brokers, depending on the role that they play, but also banks, other financial institutions, lawyers, auditing firms and various types of consultants. And they effectively work together to transact what in any other economic sector would largely be regarded as illegal transactions. And why do I say that? I say that because in over 20 years of doing this work, I have yet to come across an arms deal and I haven't investigated all of them but I've investigated a great many that does not involve some level of illegality, often criminality. And so it is that confluence of factors that lead to the levels and nature of corruption that we experience in the global arms trade. So the politician, as Colonel Wilkerson pointed out in his evidence, is not only gaining an incredibly important political lever and he described in that instance George W. Bush using his invasion of Afghanistan amongst other things to see a massive increase in his popularity, much as Margaret Thatcher did with the invasion of the Falkland Islands or the protection, as she would have it, of the Falkland Islands when she too was in trouble politically. But, and I cannot emphasize this enough, there are also economic benefits both to those politicians, sometimes directly, often indirectly and most crucially to their political parties. And we should not underestimate the role of corruption in the arms trade in the funding of political parties in the United States, where it is what I describe as legalized bribery because it is illegal in the US. The United Kingdom and many European countries, most obviously Germany and France and in those latter three countries, it is actually an illegal mechanism to fund political parties but is incredibly common. And to back that up factually and finally, the most corrupt commercial transaction in history, the Al-Yamama arms deal between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, in which six billion pounds of bribes were paid, not only with the Saudi royal family given billions in bribes to conclude that arms deal, but the then Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher's son Mark Thatcher was paid 12 million pounds. For what? We don't quite know. But it was basically reading between the lines, it was to satisfy his mother. Many of the intermediaries in that transaction donated vast sums of money to the conservative party of Margaret Thatcher. Can you give any examples of corruption in regards to Afghanistan and especially the 2001 invasion or the military occupation that followed? It is my contention that the entire decision to invade Afghanistan in 2001 was itself structurally and systemically corrupt. And I mean that both because I believe it did not conform to international law, that it was morally reprehensible in terms of the impact it would have on the people of Afghanistan. But also in the material sense of corruption as so many of us understand it. In that, in making that decision, the politicians who made that decision knew that companies with whom they're very closely associated financially, primarily, would make billions and billions of dollars in profit. Now, one can look specifically to the George W. Bush administration for the best example of this, which is in the person of the vice president, Dick Cheney, who Colonel Wilkerson mentioned in his evidence. Dick Cheney had been America's Secretary of Defense in George H. W. Bush's administration. So the father of President George W. Bush. Dynastic administrations, you might suggest. When Bush Sr. lost the election after four years in power, Cheney went to the private sector where he became chief executive of one of the largest military services companies in the United States of America, a company called Halliburton. As chief executive of Halliburton, he was asked by the Clinton administration to do a study of the extent to which American war-making, if you will, could be privatized. The conclusion of the study undertaken by Halliburton was that American war-making could basically be entirely privatized. This was Cheney's conclusion. Cheney then returns to government as vice president in Bush Jr.'s administration and is the most forceful advocate for the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. At the time, and I'm not saying this is what drove him, but it is a factor. Of course, there were all sorts of geopolitical and domestic political considerations, as Colonel Wilkerson has indicated. But the reality is that Dick Cheney was a huge personal shareholder in Halliburton amongst many other defense contracting companies. And the decision to invade those two countries increased Dick Cheney's wealth by tens of millions of dollars by the simple stroke of a pen. So in that sense, it was also materially corrupt. There is then, if I may, the example of how this corruption perhaps fed lower into the contracting process with a company called AEY Incorporated, which, to call it a company, was something of an overstatement. It was basically an entity established by two people who described themselves as down and outers in Miami Beach, Florida. One of whom was a masseuse who, by his own admission, had a fairly serious drug problem. They were given a contract by the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Defense, of almost $300 million to provide the Afghan security forces who are now under the control of the Americans with all of their ammunition. Pentagon's due diligence in awarding them this contract, despite the fact that they were on the U.S. State Department's arms trafficking blacklist, was to get due diligence in an independent evaluation undertaken by a gentleman who produced a glowing endorsement of the company who happened to be a financial backer and vice president of AEY Incorporated, the very company that was going to be awarded a $300 million contract. The CEO of AEY wanted to spend as little of the $300 million as possible on the actual ammunition so as to maximize his profit. He therefore went to Albania and by bribing the Albanian government and military, including the son of the then Albanian prime minister and Albania's defense minister at the time who had already served a prison sentence in Italy for his associations with organized criminal networks, what we know as mafia, in Italy. Forty-year-old Chinese ammunition that had been stored by the Albanian regime under the dictator Enver Hotchart was unearthed at the expense and by the Albanian military and taken to a factory that AEY had created just outside of Tirana, the capital, in a village called Jairdez. This ammunition was then washed. The made in China insignia were filed off it because it is illegal for an American citizen to trade in Chinese weaponry and was sent to Afghanistan where they resulted in a number of unfortunate accidents to Afghani security personnel, including the explosion of handguns in the hand when the ammunition was attempted to use, et cetera, et cetera. Unfortunately, this factory on which there were no safety controls exploded in the village of Jairdez, killing 25 people, including a pregnant woman who was unfortunate enough to be walking past the factory at the time and a seven-year-old boy who was cycling past the factory. The Americans did everything they could to ensure that there was no prosecution of anyone in Albania or the United States for this profoundly corrupt and ultimately murderous contract. Eventually, divirally, because of the insistence of public interest lawyers, was found guilty of trading in Chinese ammunition. No one has ever been found guilty for the deaths of the 20-odd people in Jairdez, in Albania, or for the accidents that happened in Afghanistan to the security personnel being trained. So that is an example of the way in which the corrupt and unaccountable nature of the global arms trade took place as a consequence of the invasion of Afghanistan. Thank you. Can you tell us how the United Kingdom regulates the use of private contractors? To put it succinctly, it doesn't. The reality is that despite almost 30,000 contractors being used, for instance, by the US Department of Defense in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, despite many what are described in military parlance as military service providers, what I think we should more honestly call what they are, which is mercenaries, people who kill for money, being used extensively in Afghanistan, in the privatized warfare. The United Kingdom and the United States of America refuse to ratify the UN mercenaries convention that came into force in late 2001. In fact, at the time, the biggest and most vocal opponent of the convention was the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who blocked attempts to make the convention in any way meaningful. It is worth noting that her son, Mark Thatcher, who, as I've mentioned, has been a beneficiary of corrupt arms deals, was actually arrested and prosecuted for mercenary activities in South Africa, my own home country, a few years after his mother had effectively put paid to the mercenaries convention. She argued then that the only way to meaningfully regulate mercenary operations was voluntary regulation by these providers themselves. Now, from my over 20 years experience of researching and investigating the global trade in weapons and many, many mercenary companies, and interestingly, the vast majority of which are actually British in origin, there are some American ones that are extremely well known like Blackwater and Z as it was renamed, only because of their size. But in terms of the actual quantum of mercenary outfits, it's my contention that the United Kingdom is probably home to more of them than the United States of America. They have played a pernicious, unaccountable, and deadly role in the invasion of Afghanistan and in many such conflicts around the world. And there is no self-regulation. There is no regulation by the companies in which they are registered and from which they come. And that is by intention of those governments. And is there any way in which the United Kingdom government makes it difficult for these companies, these private contractors to be held to account for their crimes when they do eventually commit war crimes? I would argue that in fact, the opposite is true. That the government of the United Kingdom and sadly, that is regardless of which political party is in power, actually enable and facilitate the nature of these mercenary operations, the nature, corrupt nature, and unregulated nature of the global trade in weapons. And the reason for that goes back to my answer to your first query, which relates to the relationship between these companies, politicians, their political parties, and thus governments. There is no desire to hold these entities to account. There is no desire to meaningfully regulate their activities. Now, we saw this repeatedly in the invasion of Afghanistan. We saw it repeatedly in the invasion of Iraq. We see it every single day at any historical conjuncture. So today, again, as Colonel Wilkinson intimated, we are seeing that the United Kingdom and the United States in particular are selling huge amounts of weaponry, particularly to Saudi Arabia and UAE who lead the coalition that is fighting the Houthi militias in Yemen today. And there is overwhelming evidence from the UN expert panels on Yemen that some of this military materiel or weaponry is being used in the violation of international humanitarian law in Yemen. Is even being used to intentionally target civilians in schools, in hospitals, in places of residence, in places of worship, in places of work. And that constitutes war crimes. Thank you. But today, the United States and the United Kingdom continue to allow the exports of those weaponry, which shows that their claims to have arms export control regimes are simply false. They do not exist in practice. They are simply voluntary and can be used by our governments to claim they're regulating their export of weapons while in practice doing nothing of the sort. Thank you. If my colleagues have no questions, then nothing further. I'd like to open Mr. Feinstein's questioning up to the panel. Do you have any questions? Yeah, I just have. Thank you very much for your expert testimony. I just want to make sure that I've understood one thing correctly. So in the case of the UK's ally, the US, you have these case of contractors in one of the examples that you've given of effectively selling bad weaponry to their allies who are fighting in Afghanistan, therefore weapons potentially exploding on Afghan national security forces. And there was knowledge of this within the US and within the UK of these faulty kind of goods. Therefore, those Afghan forces who are effectively their allies in this fight against the so-called Taliban are losing their lives and no one's really batting too much of an eyelid. Is that correct? That's exactly correct. I think that your characterization of the situation is correct. It was clear from the documentation that a superb investigative researcher in Albania itself who I was fortunate enough to have contact with that he had managed to access that showed that certainly the American ambassador had communicated back to the United States concerns about these contractors and was told simply to support those contractors in whatever their needs were. He reiterated the concern that there was massive corruption going on and that the ammunition that they were procuring in Albania, first of all was Chinese, which made it illegal. Second of all was 40 years old on average and had been stored usually underground in mud. So would never be used by even the Albanian defense forces, let alone the American forces, but was deemed okay to send to Afghanistan. And it was only after a number of the incidents with Afghani security personnel had made it into the American media that any sort of action was taken about this flow of ammunition at all. I'm right then in understanding that there was clearly a different standard of weaponry that was issued to the U.S. and the U.K. military forces who were serving in Afghanistan as opposed to the Afghan national security forces. That's absolutely correct. I would just give one caveat to that to say that even in the equipment that was going to British and American forces in Afghanistan, not all of that equipment was as good as it could have been or should have been, but it was a significantly better quality and condition than what was given to the Afghan security forces. And really in essence, the Americans were trying to arm their allies in that conflict with the cheapest equipment possible, which I think shows in some contexts how economic imperatives sometimes take precedence over national security and defence imperatives. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Andrew. You may go back to your seat. The prosecution may continue. What we have gathered is that the U.K. played a direct combat role with covert British forces supporting resistant groups. Current and former SAS officers trained numerous Jihadi forces at MI6 and CIA bases. The U.K. is using drones, special operation forces like the SAS, intelligence assets and military advisers to tackle groups it sees as extremist in a way that allows a large number of military operations to fall through cracks of policies designed to scrutinise the use of force. Britain has a culture of no comment and using private self-regulated military contractors. This leaves the public in the realm of the unknown, trusting the little information we are given through heads of state and the media, both of which have been proven untrustworthy. Small arms and light weapons are the primary source of violations and abuses of humanitarian and human rights laws by states, rebels, terrorists and criminals. The U.K. has enabled, encouraged and participated in violating these rights. We argue that the failure to protect civilians and the continued violation of human rights contributes to the crime of aggression. Nothing further. Thank you. This concludes trial session 6. We return at 8 p.m. for a further evidence session in which we shall screen Shadow World, which is, as Andrew mentioned, a documentary about the inner workings of the arms trade. Thank you very much.


I'm Marcus Tavernier, this is the Ball Swap Challenge. I ain't got a clue what I'm doing to be honest. I heard you've got to switch the balls as quick as you can. As long as I don't come last, I'm happy with that. Actually, I've got to be Jaden. No, I've got to be Jaden. Any tips? No, no tips. Brilliant, yeah. You meant to help each other in life. You meant to help each other in life, but no one does it anymore. No, no, no, someone, where is it?  Oh, why don't I just do that?  Nah, nah, nah, nah, this is, this is, nah. Can, can we restart, please? Can you pick the box up? I don't know what I'm, nah, honestly, I'm gonna be real. Nah, I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't, I'll jump in, I'll jump in, I'm gonna clue how I'm gonna do this. One eternity later. Okay, we're ready, man. Not really? Deep breath. This is, nah, this is, this is cheating. Whoever did this here, oh, I'm on, I'm on to something here, you know. I'm on to something. Where's, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. This, this, the box is on big enough, man.  You didn't see the balls on the floor, you don't see them, you don't see them. Just keep it going. I could have done better than that, actually. I'm not so sure about that. Remember, I'm injured also, that's why I didn't do too well.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have our discussion on COVID-19 and we are going to now not do it weekly as we did but once in a while we will take a review of what the current scenario is. We have Professor Satyajit Rath to discuss what appear to be some uptick of the COVID-19 cases both in Western Europe as well as Southeast and East Asia as well as the numbers don't seem to be falling as fast as we might have expected for instance in the United States. Satyajit the picture is definitely better than what it was during the Omicron wave in India and the Delta wave earlier but it is not as rosy and as if we are going to an end game when we see now numbers in South Korea seem to be quite high. We have numbers also in certain other East European East Asian countries that seem to be quite high. Hong Kong has a major outbreak right now. China of course is going for a zero COVID policy so 1400 numbers which be considered very low any other part of the world considering there are 1.5 billion people is still considered high in China but if we look at it even in the West European countries where the vaccination rates have been higher a lot of work being done over there to prepare for repeated waves. We see again an uptick taking place there. So what does it say about this? Is it because we have lowered our guard? Is it because there is a new slightly newer Omicron variant which seems to be spreading faster than the older Omicron variant? Is that the reason? So what is the reason for this new outbreaks and the new uptick we are seeing of the cases? So it's an interesting question and it underlines what has come up repeatedly over the past couple of years in terms of what is the future going to look like and the future is not going to look like suddenly one day definitively the pandemic is over, COVID-19 is over, we can go back to life before the pandemic. This is not going to happen and many people we included have been saying that in a variety of ways and this if you like is one of those scenarios that support that caution. So in the first place what seems to be happening is that the newer lineages, the newer strains of the virus, the Omicron cluster of strains is clearly quite capable of infecting vaccinated people. That means that we are not stopping transmission. The last three, four months have now given us adequate evidence for this, we're not stopping transmission which means that the spread of the virus in communities is not coming down in the same kind of fashion as it did during the days of the Delta lineages last year which were coupled to vaccination and wherever vaccination was fairly robust and widespread, mostly in the global north given vaccine inequities, Delta transmissions did come under control. Transmission is not coming under control with the Omicron lineages in vaccinated communities. So what seems to be the situation is that it's only when the bulk of the community is infected with Omicron lineages that an Omicron specific transmission blocking immune situation will emerge and will begin to reduce Omicron transmission. Again, we don't as yet have absolutely hard evidence for this but the initial indications are supported with this. Secondly, because the vaccines even though they don't block transmission do reduce rates of hospitalization and death which is manifest in the current situations where even though infection case numbers are high, are rising, hospitalization deaths, the overwhelming of hospital critical care facilities that we've seen in the previous two years is not really being seen anywhere very much. Hong Kong may perhaps be an exception for very local reasons but is not being seen as widespread a fashion. What that has led to is two things. Number one, the people who were vaccine hesitant have simply settled into vaccine hesitancy rather than going forward in getting vaccinated because it's over and we have on the other hand the so-called community pathways of distancing and the non-pharmaceutical interventions that we've been using. We are beginning to give it up. We are opening up marketplaces, we are opening up schools, colleges, entertainment, everything and as a result we have this convergence of situations where a rapidly transmissible strain that cannot be stopped from transmitting by vaccination even though serious disease can be stopped is being invited by the communities to spread more and more. So it's not particularly surprising that we are seeing an optic. Let me add a note about the quality of some of this evidence. We've said this repeatedly that the number of cases, test positivity rates, all of these remain a little difficult to compare between different times and different places and that's because it's not clear who's being tested, what the criterion for testing is and if the criterion shifts or is different between countries then comparing test positivity rates, comparing numbers all becomes something of a guessing game. The one place where I'm aware a steady consistent effort at statistically designed robust sampling of testing in the community was going on has been in Britain and it is therefore interesting and instructive that it's the British numbers that have begun to show this rise that is reflected by a fall off of vaccination so that communities that have not, sub communities that have not gotten vaccinated are getting more exposed, a slightly more transmissible Omicron lineages apparently spreading and most of all especially in Britain where the disconnect between the high quality science and the poor quality policy is quite striking, the community has opened up to transmission. One thing that I would like to add Satyajit over here is that also a lot of home kits are now available which don't enter therefore the governmental or the public health system in terms of reporting about positive cases though some of them do ask you to report back and so on but a lot of them actually don't so that is also the reason again it's not an apple to apple comparison when you compare the number of people infected being reported today and as you have discussed earlier in with us that in fact this is beginning to become a more less important criteria except to see a broad trend than a real scientific evidence so to say which it was earlier when it was much more difficult to access the tests and therefore the tests were actually led to good reporting as well. Now coming to the other issue that we are talking about an end state clearly the middle state if not the end state today is relaxation of controls the non-pharmaceutical interventions because it's also true after two and a half years people are also becoming tired of not having various activities which are considered normal not visiting each other so even though you may be quite willing to accept all these are important at the same time the ability to follow it becomes lax particularly if you are vaccinated and you feel that hospitalization is going to be of much less chance and therefore there is this possibility of then weakening your barrier so to say of this non-pharmaceutical interventions but sorry I've said it the other way around but I think anyway people will understand so in any case so what are we looking at in terms of end state now given the fact that COVID-19 and its different lineages are here to stay of course if a new lineage comes up like Omicron did and proves to be much more dangerous than infection causes all kinds of other problems that all bets are off but looking at it and I know this crystal ball gazing is not what you like to do as a scientist but as a public health guest guest expert no it's not an expert can you tell us what is the guessing game we should play now as a possible outcome in the short run rather than the long run so in the first place we clearly need to go the last mile that phrase is actual mockery of many countries in the global south which have not even started the first mile of the vaccination campaign marathon but we really really really need to have the vaccination campaign reach hard to reach hesitant disconnected underprivileged communities I'm not really just talking about each individual vaccinated I'm talking about the problem that it is whole communities that are not vaccinated and as a result virus circulation in those communities becomes a sort of a simmering coal in in epidemiological terms so that's absolutely essential I also think that while it is perfectly true that draconian extensive and long-lasting law and order style public distancing measures especially on a wide scale have been long overdue for removal I think that there is a difference between restarting economic lives and the simple act of masking and I think that one of our biggest failures in public discourse is that we have not managed to separate these we have not managed to separate the fact that many of these restrictions lead to economic hardship and therefore need to be narrowly focused need to be only when needed need to be coupled with a great deal of support on the one hand and on the other hand good as we've repeatedly said in these discussions in 95 level masking by making reusable masks available from the state along with a public information campaign that makes wearing masks a matter of habit even when we are dealing with the opening of these other controls that in itself would contribute significantly to slowing down the rates of transmission and anybody who has heard that heard us discuss these matters over the past two years will remember our constant harping on rates of transmission and the control on rates of transmission as the critical issue in the pandemic and that I think has been a a a conflation and a failure of all of us and not simply blaming government and public health authorities on this but community is so-called guest birds and all of us so that's something of an issue all of that said I suspect that what we are going to come to is these ups and downs over coming months that will lead to invitations especially from people who stand to make a lot of money on it such as the Pfizer and Moderna chief executive officers for not only third dose vaccines but fourth dose vaccines of the tried and tested proven vaccines but I suspect that in the next few months we're also likely to see Omicron specific versions of vaccines beginning to come up and beginning to be tested at that point how vaccination campaigns are going to integrate these multiple vaccines not simply multiple forms of the 2020 generation vaccines but now the added complication of 2022 vaccines all of that is going to remain to be is going to have to be looked at carefully and it's going to be a challenge for global public health authorities that challenge is going to be complicated immeasurably if we treat the pandemic as over in that way. Two measures points that I will take out of what Satyajit has said one of it is that if we can slow down the rate of transmission through non pharmaceutical measures like masks etc whenever we have such a scenario the advantage we get in public health terms the number of people who overwhelm the hospital the real reason why hospitals collapse and death rates shoot up that can be avoided so therefore speed of transmission is the key to helping your public health systems survive therefore the importance of masking whenever numbers started up tick or even under normal conditions in busy places when you go into any crowds when you go into for instance the aircraft or you go into the metros all of that then become particularly important unfortunately we can't say that about restaurants because eating with masks is still going to be a difficult exercise but leaving that the second part of it which is that we need to look at vaccines again the public health part of it not the profit part of it the public health part of it and the fact that even now 700 million people in Africa do not have vaccines to the extent that even having covered the population with one vaccine or with two doses which is the minimum when you are talking of the third and fourth booster dose in other countries this is something which is completely incompatible with global public health if that's really even in your self-interest this is something that we have to we have to stop because if we don't we're going to see this new variance emerge continuously this is I think something we need to talk about in a larger way and we will have one discussion also purely devoted to vaccine what is the production processes what is the intellectual property issues and maybe we should have a larger discussion not just Satyajit and me discussing this issue but also those who deal with the intellectual property aspect of it and the production aspect of vaccines thank you very much Satyajit for being with us and thanks to all of you do visit our website and do see what we are discussing about COVID-19 and other issues


Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today we are here to talk about a most intriguing statement made by a certain fortune teller in chapter 990, which is pretty, you know, bowls deep into Act 3 of Wano. So if you're an anime-only watcher concerned about spoilers, I just want you to know that it's not really my mission to dive deeply into the core details of Act 3, but it is going to be unavoidable in this particular discussion. So there's your warning, I have many other videos safe for you to watch, but for everyone else, we are of course talking about a particularly impactful prediction made by the ever-curious Basil Hawkins. In chapter 990, with the raid on Onigashima now in full force, Hawkins has stated that the chances of a quote-unquote certain man surviving until tomorrow are 1%. Not a great number for the certain man in question, not a great number at all, but this does leave us with the ever-burning question of who this certain man is, of which there are a great number of options. But firstly, I would like to point out that however low this may sound, 1% is quite significant, especially compared to when Kaido attacked Kid's base, and Hawkins predicted that he had a 0% chance of escape. Compared to that, 1% is quite surprisingly hopeful. It's the same sort of hope I have that you, dear viewer, will subscribe to the Grand Line Review, resulting in regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed. And at this point, the Grand Fleet has surpassed a quarter of a million subscribers, which is amazing. So please do make sure to sign up through the red buttony thing and let's go and take this world by storm. But now, on to some more serious business. We are here to figure out who this certain man is. And I did dive into it quite briefly during my chapter review, but due to the speedy nature of those things, there was one amazing candidate who I completely overlooked, and that would be Diaz Drake. I think it would make all of the sense in the world for Drake to be the owner of this 1% survival rate. And quite frankly, this thought process all has to do with Drake's very next line, which was, 1% sucks to be him, and it's quite on the nose, but I think that would be one of these funny little narrative hints that Drake was accidentally referring to himself. An idea which I think is enforced further at the tail end of the chapter when Drake gets ambushed by Queen, Who's Who, and Hawkins. Because I really do quite like the idea that Hawkins, having concocted this plot with the other two, is taking one last opportunity to see how this whole situation with Drake is likely going to play out. That is very in keeping with how Hawkins operates, making readings right down to the very moment of conflict, just to make sure that he goes into a situation where there's much information as possible. Especially because he would have been the instigator of all of this actually, as neither Queen nor Who's Who would have had any idea without his information. And also the 1% fortune ties in very nicely with the end of chapter 990 as well. Because of Drake's whole inner monologue about hope and there still being hope and hope and stuff, culminating in his offer to fight alongside Luffy as an army of one, and you know I really don't think that there is a stronger indicator of raw hope than a mere 1% chance of survival. Sort of like the idea that hope can only be found within the deepest pit of despair, all poetic and such. The idea being that there is really no need for hope if the odds seem much more beneficial to you at the time. So I'm actually kind of annoyed that I missed that in the chapter review, although to be fair when I write those things it is usually like 6 in the morning here in Australia. So sometimes the more subtle nuance of chapters can be a bit lost in translation to me there. But as much as I do currently love the idea that we are referring to Drake, that is far from the only viable option here. So let's move on to someone who many would consider to be the obvious choice, and that is of course Mr. Luffy. So while it makes a lot less sense to me anyway, in the context of chapter 990 alone for Hawkins to be measuring Luffy, it is still entirely in keeping with his character. You know we have this unprecedented raid occurring in the very precariously placed Hawkins? Well he might be weighing up his, you know, betrayal options. And should Luffy have a fantastic chance of survival on this battlefield, then that might become the right party to align with. And I do maintain that a 1% survival chance for Luffy would be pretty fitting with the current events. As much as things might be going oddly well right now, Luffy is still in the most dire of situations going up directly against two emperors of the sea. So by all means, his survival rate should be low and just as with Drake, Luffy can work with that 1%, so long as it isn't 0% we're all good here. Once again finding hope within the depths of the opposite of hope. I don't know why I didn't just say despair again, but I'm not re-recording it. Now something I did not mention in the chapter review would be a pretty huge conflicting bit of information actually, which comes to us courtesy of all the way back to act one of one. When Luffy and Zora first encountered Hawkins, he did a reading which came to the conclusion that Luffy's chance of survival one month from then was a whopping 19%. A fair bit higher than 1%, maths would tell us. Which isn't to say that probabilities can't change or that they might be significantly less accurate the further out you're trying to read them. But it always struck me as a bit odd that Hawkins chose one month specifically. I mean, narratively, we obviously know why because it lines up perfectly with the Radon Onigashima. It was just a strange and almost arbitrary move for Hawkins to make as a character, but it was a great move for the actual story, which one piece is. And in any case, this event is what gives me the most pause for thought when attributing this 1% survival chance to Luffy. Just because it is a direct contradiction of another reading that lines up with the same sort of time destination. Things could have changed, we obviously don't really know how Hawkins powers work, but for now that's that. So moving on to another widely speculated character who I also touched on, we have Kido. And I would love for the reading to be referring to Kido, but my brain refuses to allow me to go down that path. It just feels like reading Kido's chances of survival as 1% would be a far more impactful moment than we see here. And my main argument in the review was that Hawkins would probably seem just a little bit more shocked. Upon further reflection though, there's nothing to say that this is the first time he's seen this reading, and maybe he's been keeping an eye on Kido for a while now. In fact, I'm almost certain he has. It's just tricky with Hawkins though, because it's hard to know how resilient he is to being a part of the Beast Pirates. Unlike the other worst generation members, he doesn't act out of his own core drive, rather he lets the cards tell him what would be the best cause of action. Which is fun and unique in one of the many reasons why I love Hawkins, and if anything, and rather fittingly, it does make him more predictable than the other members. But given that he has chosen to give up Drake here, rather than increase the chaos with his own betrayal, I think we can quite safely say that the 1% man is not Kido. So next up, let's move to a potentially much more tragic figure being Trafalgar Law. I think he might also be a good option because he's very much being the main pain in the Ask for Hawkins or throughout one or thus far, so it makes sense for Hawkins to be keeping tabs on him. In addition though, Law does slot in quite nicely as well due to the whole Will of D thing, because as much as I played up the 1% as being a great indicator of hope, that only works in certain cases, like the impossible existence that is Luffy, and the appropriate theming that is Drake. However, it is still 1%, and that is generally very bad, and that could add another death flag to Mr. Law, who rather unfortunately already has two of those, the first of which is that being the user of the Opioopinomy, he is seemingly destined to give up his own life to perform the perennial youth surgery, but in addition to that he is also a D, a D outside of the Monkey Clan, which generally does not bode too well for those characters as they have a habit of dying rather tragically and before their time, albeit with a nice smile on their faces. So as much as I don't know if I'm personally sold on the idea of a Law sacrifice especially on Wano, I could see it happening. He's just such an unfortunate man in that regard. Sticking with the worst generation though, I think that Kid could also be submitted as a potential candidate here. We haven't really gone too deeply into his character, but his presence in this conflict is absolutely massive, and he has a prior relationship with Hawkins. In fact, at one stage the two did have a genuine allegiance towards each other, which was ruined by one scratchman Appu, so Hawkins could still very much be looking to reignite that alliance and stay true to their original intentions. It's just that with a one percent survival chance, maybe Kid isn't quite the best guy to be turning to right now. That's something we would definitely need a lot more context for though. It's very hard to imagine Kid becoming incredibly relevant in this arc just to very potentially die, especially due to being such a primary component of the worst generation, and in fact the only other member that has been touted as more noteworthy than Luffy in any way, Blackbeard accepted of course. But we still have very little to go by with Kid, he's still kind of an enigma of this whole arc, so anymore talk in this regard would be pure speculation, and that's right, even purer than this whole video of speculation thus far. So I'm going to move on to a more fun idea which is that Hawkins might be reading himself. What a twist. Although I do have to admit this is something I more enjoy as an idea rather than anything I can support with actual evidence. I just really love the thought of Hawkins being forced into the Beats Pirates and perpetually trying to read his way out of it. And for example, should he now see his own chances of survival by tomorrow being 1%, then that could send him into quite the panic, causing him to take drastic action like he did in Chapter 990, revealing Drake's betrayal. And if anything, Hawkins could see a potential Luffy victory as a death sentence for him, and now might be in the motions of trying to do everything possible to make sure that Kaido and the Beats Pirates come out on top. To me, that would be a pretty fascinating use of Hawkins, a man so governed by fortune telling doing everything in his power in an attempt to change his own fortune. However, this is one piece I don't quite know how likely that is. Although if I was to rank all of these candidates thus far, I would put Hawkins possibly above that of both Kaido and Kid, because at least it makes sense with the character and his overall motifs. And to be perfectly honest, this list of potential characters may as well be endless. We could attribute it to anyone. And for example, Yamato, maybe. This is something I thought about in the chapter review, but I didn't really bring it up. However, there could be something quite tragically sound about Yamato facing a similar end to Odin, aka a bit of the old death. Perhaps, you know, helping to deal the final blow to Kaido, freeing Wano to open its borders and fulfilling Odin's final will, but tragically passing away as a result. Sounds kind of cool, but I don't know why Hawkins would, well, care enough to be reading Yamato as opposed to everyone else on Onigashima. It's a real stretch, as are most other candidates that I've seen proposed elsewhere. I mean, I've seen a fair few people raise the possibility of Momonosuke or other members of the Tobiropo or even key members of the Beast Pirates. And in each and every case, I just can't quite latch onto the idea. I mean, yes, it could be a completely random left field character like I've even seen Hyogoro proposed, but I just don't think it would hold the same sort of traumatic oomph. And we all know that Oda is all about that oomph. Plus, I mean Hawkins taking the time to read someone like Hyogoro as opposed to the plethora of other magnetic individuals around currently engaged in the Storm of Fate just seems like quite a waste of time. Wherever he happens to be looking, Hawkins is keeping his eye on the prize and the prize is never going to be Hyogoro. But eventually these readings are going to clear his path forward. So perhaps the certain man's 1% survival chance was not quite enough to push Hawkins as needed, but he is in such a unique position in the series right now. Hawkins knows a lot more about what's going on on Warner right now than anyone else in the story, or even us readers, YouTubers, theorists, whatever. He's just sitting there silently looking into his equivalent of the Matrix and maneuvering accordingly. And so Hawkins is someone to always keep your eye on. He's kind of like a compass telling you which way things are likely to go. And right now that compass is pointing very, very south with him still firmly aligned with Kaido. So with that in mind, I think we have some tough times ahead on Wano, although probably not tougher than the certain man and his 1% chance of survival. But what do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts in the comments below or even join my Discord server. And if you'd like to see more videos like this then please do go and check out some of my other content. I'll even subscribe to the channel for more glorious One Piece Business uploaded straight into YouTube feeds. But for now this has been the Grand Line Review and I'll see you next time.