All right, let me pull up my notes. All right, welcome to WTF is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Code Pink Latin America team's weekly webinar. Today, I am joined by Thomas Becker, attorney and activist who has lived in Bolivia for over a decade and one of the co-authors of a report by Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic and the University Network for Human Rights. The report is titled, They Shot Us Like Animals, Black November and Bolivia's Interim Government. It details the human rights abuses committed in the aftermath of the coup in Bolivia last year. Welcome to the program, Thomas. Thank you, thanks so much. So on October 18th, there were elections in Bolivia, of course, the movement towards socialism, the mass party, won, taking 55% of the vote and hopefully beginning to close the door on a dark chapter in Bolivia's history. The elections have already been recognized by a whole range of actors, including both domestic and international, but there are groups in Bolivia attempting to discredit the elections and calling for the military and police to stage a coup. What's your reaction to the mass victory and how concerned are you about the possibility of another coup? Well, so first, I think, you know, to put it into context, as you mentioned, it's been just an incredibly rough year in Bolivia, arguably, I think over and over and over, we heard people say this is as bad as, if not worse than the dictatorships in the 70s and before. And so, you know, this has been such a repressive year. So the landslide victory, the 55% victory, was incredibly important and really in some ways, you know, like, and this is not to discredit the candidates, Lucho Arce or David Chokewanka, the vice presidential candidate, they certainly brought a lot to the table, but this election was really a resounding rejection of authoritarianism, of racism, of violence. So these were incredibly important elections that the mass party just won and it really was, it came from below. It was people saying, look, we've had enough of this, we are not gonna accept this authoritarian behavior. And, you know, certainly the right has resisted, the right resisted. Last year, the right has been pushing back for, you know, 13, 14 years since Abel Morales took power.  And so, yeah, there's a concern that the government, wow, we'll see, you know, I think with the 55% win, I think it's a pretty strong position that the mass party is in, but there is certainly resistance. In the Eastern part of the country, there are parastate groups that are actively out in the streets that have been attacking people, same in Cochabamba, kind of in the center of the country. And here in La Paz, like I said, just a few blocks away, there are these groups that are decrying fraud, saying that, you know, there's no way the mass party could have won with 55%, there must have been fraud. Right, and there's, of course, no evidence that there's any sort of fraud, much like last year's elections, which there was also no fraud, of course. No, but at this time around, even, you know, the right and international institutions like the OAS who played such a really nefarious role over the last year, even they said, look, there was no fraud. So it's really like, there's no proof at all.  So they're pressuring the military to quite literally carry out another coup. Days after the election, a mining union leader by the name of Orlando Gutierrez was reportedly attacked by right-wing thugs. He tragically passed away on October 28th. Can you tell us a little bit about who Gutierrez was and shed some light on what happened to him? You know, so I actually can't shed light because it's, we don't know exactly what happened. Orlando was a really powerful union leader with the Cobb, one of the top leaders, union leaders in the country, a miner, a minero, very well respected amongst the social movements, amongst the left, but also, you know, folks in the center, he is a really charismatic guy and, you know, when the Moss won, he was kind of seen as one of the big potential rising stars that could have been a face in this party. And, you know, as far as we know, the official reports are that he was beaten to death. There are peristate groups that have been threatening him and his family. He applied for precautionary measures. I apologize for being kind of boring and lawyerly, but what the precautionary measures are is when people apply for these to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, which just kind of oversees all the Americas. And in theory, you know, if he receives them, then the government has to provide him protections. He had been receiving all these death threats. He applied for precautionary measures, but meanwhile, while this process has been going through, he potentially was beaten to death. We don't know. I was actually with his lawyer, then maybe perhaps it was the first night or the second night trying to get into the clinic to see him. I was with a representative from the Ombudsperson's office and they wouldn't let us in. They were undercover police, kind of harassing us, trying to get information from us, tailing us in an undercover vehicle. And so at this point, truthfully, there's not much more information other than, you know, he was allegedly beaten by peristate groups and we don't know much more and are drastically trying to get more info, honestly. Yeah, and as he said, we don't know yet. And so we might not be able to draw kind of a direct connection between the Anya's government and his passing, but it certainly seems to kind of fit into the pattern of intimidation, harassment, assault and murder that suffered by indigenous leaders, labor leaders, social leaders, mass party officials and others as a result of the Anya's government's rhetoric and policies. And I think you detailed this really well in the report published over the summer. Can you give us a kind of a brief summary of the findings in this report? Sure, so, you know, as I mentioned, I think many, many people think that what took place with this over the last year has been extreme authoritarianism, behavior that we haven't seen since the 70s. And again, in some ways worse, because, you know, a lot of people we spoke to said, look, at least in the 70s, we knew what this was. We could say, yes, this is a dictatorship, whereas this government has some face that's something quite different.  And Anya's, the interim or the de facto president certainly didn't have that image. So the international community didn't know how to respond, but certainly on the ground, if you were, you know, indigenous left or perceived to be a supporter of the boss party, boy, it's been a rough year. And so just to kind of like, throw a little bit of numbers out there, November, when Anya's took over, it was the second deadliest month in terms of state killing, since Bolivia became a democracy nearly 40 years ago. The first deadliest is a case I've been working on for a decade and a half against Bolivia's ex-president, who was found guilty, reliable for extra-digital killings. His entire military high command was put in jail for genocide, just to put in context of, these are kind of the players, and this is like the magnitude of the killings. And in Anya's first week alone, she deployed the military twice and carried out two separate massacres. The first in Sakaba, the second in Sankata, where literally hundreds were either killed or injured and zero police and zero soldiers were killed or injured. And then the government passed a decree giving immunity to the soldiers. So really once the government took power, they just went on this really human rights abuse rampage, first killing people, but they didn't just use violence against those that kind of expressed discontent with the government. They shut down critical media outlets, including commercial stations, but also indigenous stations, community radio stations. They shut down something like 53 community stations, which broadcast primarily to indigenous communities in Aymara or Quechua. They arrested journalists for sedition, terrorism, even people that literally had WhatsApp groups saying the massacres that took place in Sankata and Sakaba were massacres, that was enough to get arrested for terrorism. It's been quite wild that the domain owner of a website that criticized the government was thrown in jail for, I believe, sedition and perhaps terrorism as well. And the same thing, they went after mass party members just left and right. By the beginning of January, there was something like 600 people being investigated for sedition or terrorism. These are these kind of nebula, just vague charges that they used as a net to cast anybody and pull them in. And really, they've just gone after anybody that's criticized the government. And you mentioned kind of Orlando and these groups that are allied with Anya's. It's been this really complicated thing because on the one hand, their state force is carrying out this violence and arresting people, but they're collaborating with civilians. There are a pair of state groups that work directly with the police, police in civilian clothes or dressed as police, grabbing people, arresting them, torturing them, throwing them in jail and beating people just to give a little context. I've been attacked, while we were doing this investigation, I was attacked multiple times. I'm suing the ex-president of Bolivia. I certainly have enemies here. And in all my years, I've been here for roughly 15 years off and on, never had problems like this. And if they're gonna attack a gringo from an overrated institution with a fancy pants name like Harvard, you can only imagine how they're gonna treat indigenous women or leftists or any form of dissident here. Well, I mean, you don't have to imagine that the statistics show it. They've beaten them, they've thrown them in jail, they've shot them. It's been really tragic over the last year. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the Code Pink Electoral Observation Delegation received threats, and that was the first thing that came to my mind as well. If this is how international observers were treated, how are people on the ground treated, and I'm glad- You were invited. You know, you were invited. Exactly, it shouldn't be about us. All the privilege I have is gringo, but just to put it into context, with all the privilege we have, and yet we are still being targeted, it's just drastic, it's exponentially worse for those who don't have the same privilege that you and I have. Absolutely. And so President elect Arsé has repeatedly said that the mass would not seek vengeance while in office, but there's certainly a clamor for justice, especially from below, from the people. Do you expect to see Agnes, Interior Minister Murillo and Defense Minister Lopez indicted for their crimes? How was the mass going to balance this need for justice, which is very apparent, and which I don't see how they can ignore with a desire to restabilize the country and not really seek out vengeance as they put it? Yeah, you know, that's really gonna be a tough balance. I mean, I think during Lucho Arsé's first speech, he said, we are not gonna be a government of vengeance. We want to build bridges with the other side, which I think is really important because Bolivia is so incredibly divided right now. But I think that, you know, we need to distinguish what took place during the Agnes government and the way that they, you know, as one minister told me, the moments before he was arrested in a hospital after per estate groups, you know, surrounded him, but they are collecting them like trophies, is what he said. Now, what the Lucho Arsé government needs to do, in my opinion, is certainly, that's a completely different thing. They are not going after Agnes or Murillo, the former minister of government because of political vengeance. It's because these people were in charge of multiple massacres, where unarmed people were shot dead and tortured. And so, you know, I think there's certainly calls by the international community and by folks on the ground for justice. There have been pushes for what's called a trial of responsibilities here in Bolivia, which Congress just recently approved against Agnes, as well as more traditional processes against Murillo and the other ministers involved in the killings. Whether they advance, you know, we'll see. I think it's going to be an uphill battle. I think, you know, the Moss does not control the Congress or will not be, well, they have a majority, but they don't have a two-thirds majority. And whether the right or some of the center will be willing to do this trial is, we'll see. That being said, you know, as an attorney who's worked on, previously worked on a trial of responsibilities here in Bolivia and has worked on international processes against ex-leaders, the proof is there. There's a whole lot of information. I think the claims are there. And if it doesn't work in Bolivia, my assumption is that the families will seek justice in international fora. Or if, you know, folks escaped other countries, if these countries have more liberal forms of jurisdiction, they'll probably follow them there because they certainly need justice. What role did the US play in the run-up to the 2019 coup and in supporting the coup regime? You know, it's not clear. Certainly the United States has had a pretty tumultuous relationship with Abel Morales. The US has not been a fan and it's been, you know, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have not necessarily gotten along so well with Morales. You know, they've certainly, the United States, the US aid has had a really troublesome history here. The US has funded groups that are generally kind of opposition right-wing groups.  But the US certainly has had a hand in this. What took place in last year, the coup, you know, on one level, I think folks didn't really expect it to happen. You know, there was certainly a lead up and the US, again, certainly was not a fan of Morales, but I would say that folks I've talked to on the left and right and international institutions were all kind of surprised that this all culminated and then Abel Morales was forced to step down in the way that he did. Certainly after he did step down, the Trump administration, you know, reached out to Anya to congratulate her, Pompeo, you know, got behind her. There have been leaked recordings of the opposition having allegedly phone calls with Marco Rubio and other right-wing government officials in the United States.  And so, you know, we'll see what the US role will be under Lucho. My assumption is, you know, it will continue to have not the best relationship. The US has always kind of had its hands in things in Latin America and Bolivia is no exception. And what about the relationship between Bolivia and the OAS going forward? I saw that even Lucho Luis Arce, the president of the left, has called for Almagro's resignation, Almagro being the secretary general of the OAS. This is a call that's being echoed throughout the hemisphere, including a Code Pink campaign calling for that. Evo Morales, the Puebla group, a long list of people and institutions have called for his resignation. Assuming that does not happen, what do you see Bolivia doing with the OAS in the near future? Well, just to add to what you said, because I think people like to politicize everything, a lot of groups from the center have also called for Almagro's resignation. I mean, he's his role in what took place last year. Look, the fraud narrative existed six months before the first vote was cast here in Bolivia. And so when the OAS prematurely said, oh, they're all these irregularities, they just doused gasoline on already, like an uncontrolled fire. And Almagro has just been shockingly stubborn over the last year and not budged and actually just kind of gone after political enemies, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, which is kind of under the umbrella of the OAS. It is an independent institution, but it is part of the OAS. The executive secretary, Almagro did not, you know, he basically booted the guy. You know, he did not renew his mandate. This is the first time in the history of the OAS that they do not, that the OAS did not renew the mandate of the executive secretary. And, you know, a lot of folks think it's because of the role he played in criticizing the abuses that took place immediately after the OAS blundered their OAS, or sorry, their election analysis.  I don't know what's gonna happen. I mean, the U.S. certainly has, provides the majority of the funding to the OAS. And, you know, the OAS as much as it's supposed to be an impartial institution, it certainly is political. And the United States, though it doesn't necessarily respect some of these institutions, still put a lot of pressure on it.  And I can't predict.  He's taken a different tone than perhaps Morales was certainly a little more fiery. Arsé's come into this and said, look, we're gonna have an open mind. We're gonna reach across the aisle, both nationally and internationally. So I don't know if they're gonna, yeah, I mean, I'm assuming they'll continue the relationship with the OAS. But under Almagro's leadership, you know, who knows? I think a lot of people don't trust him anymore. And going back to something we touched on earlier in the interview, you talked about social movements in Bolivia. What's gonna be the relationship between the mass and social movements going forward? When I was in Bolivia, I spoke to several social leaders and one of their criticisms, and really they call it self criticisms because they view themselves very much as a part of this process of change in Bolivia that the mass has spearheaded. One of their criticisms was that social movements had been kind of demobilized or bureaucratized, particularly in the run up to the coup last year. So how do you see that interaction between social movements and the new government playing out? I mean, I think you nailed it. One of the main criticisms of the mass is, you know, Bolivia is such a bottom-up country. Really the social movements have been steering the ship for a while. And as the mass got larger and larger, it started to consolidate power and it became more of a, well, on the one hand kind of a top-down movement. On the other hand, things improved drastically. And so people weren't in the streets in the same ways because, you know, the middle class, the lower class, folks were doing a lot better. Even the upper class was doing better. So it did somewhat demobilize the social movements. But I think that there's just kind of this resurgence over the last year, you know, right after the coup, I think part of the reason that Anya's was able to get away with a lot of the stuff she did is because the social movements were a little bit demobilized and a little thrown off. One, not ready for this, nobody kind of expected it. But two, you know, they didn't have the power that they previously had. And in addition to obviously the government quite literally killing social movement leaders and making it, or people protesting, it made it quite hard to go out into the streets. But I think, you know, over the last year, that's changed. I think the thing, you know, Anya's was supposed to be just a interim president, a caretaker, a placeholder. She was supposed to call elections within 90 days and kept canceling them and canceling them. She said she wasn't gonna run for president. We know that, you know, obviously she did. And eventually it really wasn't the Moss Party that forced elections, it was the social movements. In fact, you know, over the summer, there were these widespread mobilizations all over the country. And the Anya's government tried to actually take out the leadership and take out Moss Party officials charging them with genocide, terrorism, sedition. And it didn't work because the people on top weren't really making the decisions. It was the people below, it was the social movements that said, frankly, we don't care if the Moss Fund's elections are not, we want elections. So we're going to the streets. And I think it was this kind of moment of like, okay, we're back and we're ready to go. And I think the Moss has admitted that, you know, like we've made some mistakes over, over the last several years. And I think that they have recognized that they really need to look to the social movements for guidance in how they govern over the next five years or, you know, however many years they stay in power. Slightly related to question. Evo Morales is scheduled to come back to the country the day after the inauguration of Arsene Chokowanka. How do you expect Evo to be received? I mean, I think there's a spectrum of people here. And I would say certainly the right is not going to, you know, invite him in with open arms. There's already mobilizations all over, you know, he's going to enter through Argentina and he's got a path up into, you know, through several different kind of provinces into the Chapare. And there are already groups out in the streets that are blocking the path who've attacked people. You know, so I think it's going to, there could be some serious conflict, you know, next week when he comes in. In terms of folks kind of allied with the Moss, I think that, you know, from what I hear, there's a division. I think some folks think he shouldn't come back yet. Because he is such a polarizing figure and because he's been completely maligned over the last year. And others think, no, he has a right to be back here. He should be back. You know, certainly I think the Moss is going to invite him back. They've said that they are inviting him back. He isn't necessarily going to, you know, play a role in the government, but you know, as a citizen, he should come back. But, you know, frankly, I would be scared if I was able Morales.   She did, this was last November.   She received precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission. The government had a legal responsibility to protect her. They refused to do it. And they said, if you tell anybody we're not doing it, you're going to pay. And she did, she told the commission, hey, you know, I've not gotten the protection. I'm still getting, I see my kidnappers in the street. And the government responded by charging her with terrorism, sedition, genocide, self-kidnapping, all these things. I mean, they went after her all year long. And this is the context. I mean, there's still this very angry, violent right that's either part of the government or allied with the government, and you know, that have been targeting officials. I think kind of the lightning rod of all this is Abel Morales. And boy, you know, I think him coming back could be quite and will be very unsafe for him and those around him. Well, thank you so much for your time, Thomas. Very insightful interviewing. And hopefully we'll have you back on in a couple of months as things progress and develop in Bolivia. That'd be great. Thanks so much.


Alright ladies and gentlemen, we can all take our seats, that would be great. We're in for a real treat now because we have, we have with us Michelle Leonard and Michelle will be talking to us about the from El's genealogy project from a World War One mass grave to 21st century named grave. This is an incredible and a wonderful story about how dealing has actually restored the identities of some of the soldiers who fell on the western front and have lain there for almost 100 years. Now Michelle comes to us from the University of Strathclyde, she has an MA in modern history in English from the University of St Andrews, a PG cert in genealogical paleographic and heraldic studies from the University of Strathclyde, she's a member of the Society of Genealogists. I've heard her talk already and I know you're in for a treat, so please give a warm welcome to Michelle Leonard. Hi everyone, can you hear me okay? You can, I've put the mute button off and you'll be activated. Thank you, that's better, yes everyone can hear me now. Okay, so I'm going to do a presentation that's maybe a little bit different in terms of genetic genealogy, my presentation's not going to be terribly DNA heavy but I'm going to be telling you a story that illustrates how DNA can be used in a specific and practical situation, how it can make a really important difference. So what is the Formel's genealogy project? Well it's a project that was set up in order to trace DNA appropriate relatives of soldiers who died at the Battle of Formel on the 19th of July 1916 and may have been buried in a mass grave located in Northern France. So I'm going to give you a brief overview of the battle, how the discovery came about, the initial investigation, how to proceed after the discovery was made, how DNA testing came about, what role genealogy played, how to find those DNA appropriate relatives and how the identities of the men were eventually confirmed. So the Battle of Formel. Formel is a small village town in Northern France, it's about 10 miles from Leo and there's a little under a thousand inhabitants. It was a prized possession of the German army during the First World War. Now Formel is in what we now know of as the Forgotten Front. Nobody knows about the Somme, Yggra, Passchendaele, but Formel isn't the name that readily comes to mind. Here anyway, over in Australia it's a different story, but here Formel is part of the Forgotten Front. It's part of French Flanders and the Germans occupied the strategic ground really during the war. They dug themselves in and made themselves as comfortable as was possible in the First World War. They had what you might call the high ground, although French Flanders is so flat that there isn't really anything like a high ground. But they had an area called the Sugarloaf Salient, which was just a slight ridge and that was enough to give them the strategic advantage. They had machine gun positions in very important places. They built amazing defences, some block houses that still stand in the area to this day. Basically their defensive structure was vastly superior to what the Entente forces had and to attack them there was pretty suicidal. However, it was attempted on three occasions between 1914 and 1916. First time was December 1914 and it ended with a predictable disaster. The second time was the 9th of May, 1915, which was the Battle of Obert Ridge. Again, that was an unmitigated disaster. There were over 11,000 British casualties on that particular day. We move into 1916 and on the 1st of July, 1916, the Great Somme Offensive begins. Back on French Flanders on the Formel Front, the man in charge was Lieutenant General Sir Richard Haking. This big idea was to repeat exactly the same attack that had been tried twice before in order to create a diversionary tactic. This was basically a faint. It was to prevent the German soldiers from going to help out their comrades at the Somme more than anything else. There was quite a lot of debate on whether it should take place or it shouldn't, but he got his way and it was put off a few times. The way that they were going to attack was changed a few times and it was put off due to weather on the 18th, but the 19th dawned and clear weather. A seven-hour bombardment, artillery bombardment was the first port of call. That took away all surprise from the move. The Germans had seen it before. They also had a very good vantage point to see everything that the Allies were doing. Not from the ground, per se, but they had created platforms and trees on church towers. They made sorties out into no man's land, irregularly, listening posts. They knew exactly what was coming. And the seven-hour bombardment, unfortunately, fell short, didn't really reach the German lines and didn't cause the damage that they hoped it would cause. And once the infantry started their attack at 6 p.m. in the evening, they were basically lambs to the slaughter. There was followed 14-hour battle and it's one of those occasions, and often when looking at the First World War, you get a stereotypical lions led by donkeys idea put forward. And often this is not accurate, but from El is one of those stereotypical occasions where you can say that it was a truly futile attack battle, whatever you want to call it. It wasn't actually given the name battle for several decades because the regiments involved were not accorded battle owners for it, and it was called an attack. But yeah, it is one of those occasions where it was absolutely futile and they gained nothing from it but a massacre, really. Some small areas of the German trenches were breached by Australian soldiers, but they were not able to hold them and they had to retreat. They were subjected to fierce counterattacks, and by 8 a.m. on the 20th of July it was over. The 5th Australian Division had suffered 5,533 casualties, of which 1,740 were killed. And the 61st British Division suffered 1,547 casualties, of which 503 were killed. The German casualties numbered just over 1,000, 8,000 casualties in 14 hours. It was, as I say, a complete failure, and in fact the Germans had the original order, Hay King's original order in their possession before the end of the battle. So they knew exactly what they were up to before they even had a chance to talk to any of the prisoners. They knew it was a faint and it had no impact whatsoever upon the progress of the Somme Offensive. No ground was gained and all that was left was a mass of destruction. So in a gesture of respect on humanity the German forces at this point offered a temporary truce to permit the safe passage of the wounded from the battlefield and the collection of enemy dead. The commanders on the other side, however, declined this offer. They said that this sort of concession would show weakness and be a bad thing for the morale of the men. So they left the wounded out there. I think the attack, although it failed, has done both divisions a great deal of good. That's the words of Lieutenant General Sir Richard Hay King after the battle. I won't comment on that. Yesterday evening, south of our Montier, we carried out some important raids on a front of two miles in which Australian troops took part. About 140 Germans were captured. That was the official Army communique on the events. I suppose it's technically true, but it's rather economical. The 19th to the 20th of July, 1916, isn't known as the worst 24 hours in military history in Australia. It's known as the worst 24 hours in Australian history. The Australian toilet for mail is equivalent to the total Australian casualties in the Boer War, Korean War, and Vietnam War put together in a space of 14 hours. There were 24 sets of brothers and one father and son involved and it is the single biggest loss of Australian life in a single engagement ever. That is why it's well known in Australia and not so well known here. So, as I say, the Allied commanders refused the offer from the Germans to go out and collect the dead. So, this left a number of people out in No Man's Land, dying, wounded, and there are several quite amazing stories that came out of that of heroic actions. One in particular is a Simon phrase, or Sergeant Simon phrase, of the 57th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force, who went out into No Man's Land numerous times and carried wounded men back in on his shoulders. There's no estimate of exactly how many, many brought in, but it's very, very high. He wasn't decorated at the time for it and he actually, unfortunately, died himself the year later at bullcourt and his body was never found. But there is now, in Fromel, a statue dedicated to him and it's of Simon Fraser with a man on his shoulder. So, if you ever go to Fromel, it's called the Don't Forget Me Cobber statue, the Cobbers Memorial and it's called that because on one of his forays in No Man's Land he heard one of the wounded men shout to him, Don't Forget Me Cobber, and that man was brought back in. So, Don't Forget Me Cobber is actually an Irishman, Father John Joseph Kennedy. He was a priest and he was born in Kerry in 1881 and he was appointed a chaplain captain in the AIF in 1915 and on the night of the battle he carried wounded men from the front trenches to the dressing station under heavy shell fire throughout the whole night returning again and again to get more men and he was awarded the DSO for his gallantry and bravery and devotion to duty. He survived the war. So, at this point we have a lot of men who have made it to the German trenches, primarily Australian it was the 8th and 14th Brigade of the 5th Division that made it to the German lines because they had the shortest amount of No Man's Land to traverse from where they started out from. And basically they posed a health risk. They were a sanitation problem to the Germans and they had to deal with them so they decided to bury them and they buried them in a field close by called Boa de Fazón, Pheasantwood. And they did this with respect. They dug eight pits, 50 men to a pit and they filled five of them and left three of them empty. And there they lay. And after the war a commission was set up and a lot of teams went out to try and discover all the graves and obviously a lot of military cemeteries were built and men were reinterred in these cemeteries and a lot of mass graves were found but somehow and nobody is to this day quite sure how this one was missed. This one was overlooked. And the men from the Battle of Formel lay in the field at Pheasantwood for over 90 years. However there had been rumour in Australia because there's so many families out there with relatives who they want to know where they were, what happened to them, where they were buried. And they spent years trying to find this out and sadly the relatives of the day never did find out where they were. But the rumours persisted that this mass grave was out there and in the late 20th century a retired schoolteacher by the name of Lambison Glazos took up the cause with fervour. He basically made its lives mission to find this missing mass grave, to find these men. And he enlisted a band of helpers and he even went to a talk that was given by the military historian Peter Barton in Melbourne and enlisted his help in the process as well. He at first was sceptical as were the authorities. I mean they didn't want to hear that there was a mass grave out there that was mid-miss. They couldn't believe that so a grave that large could have been missed in the 1919 to 1921 searches. So it was a task to convince the authorities to look at it in the first place but Lambis and friends would not give up on that task. They managed to get together evidence from letters from the time talking of the mass grave from evidence that had been given by prisoners taking it from El and one of the most important things they managed to hold of were some aerial trench maps and on ones from June 1916 you could see the ground at Fesentwood was plain and by the end of July and into August and September you could see these eight pits were there. And that was clear evidence. It wasn't enough however to convince the authorities. So further evidence was required and the Bavarian archives in Munich were contacted. Now the Bavarian archives in Munich house hundreds of thousands of meticulously kept documents from the German army in the First World War and most of them haven't been touched since that time. They are an amazing resource and very rarely looked at. So the director of the Bavarian archives came back to Lambis and his friends and he uncovered two important pieces of paper. One was an excerpt from the war diary from the Germans on that day and it stated that they were preparing to bury these men at Fesentwood. He also found the original order, order 5220 that ordered the burial of the men at Fesentwood. So these were game changers. These showed this definitely took place. There is a mass grave that was there. The authorities still were convinced that well even if it was there surely it was found in the 1920s and the men have been moved since but going back to Imperial War Graves Commission evidence and records there was no record of it ever being found. So something had to be done and eventually enough pressure was brought to bear and a team from Glasgow University Archaeology Department were sent out in May 2008 to do an exploratory search in the area and they very quickly found that there was indeed an undisturbed mass grave at Fesentwood. So at this point decisions have to be made. We have a mass grave what do we do with it? Well protocol in France when bodies are found and it does happen with regularity is the man is disinterred. Every attempt is made to identify him if there are positions on him or dog tags etc. And then a place is found for him in a nearby military cemetery and he is buried with full military honours and most occasions given a known unto God grave and if they can identify his uniform then perhaps underneath will be a soldier of the Australian army a soldier of the British army etc. That's the general protocol but when you have 250 that's not so easy. So the first war cemetery to be built since the 1950s was commissioned and that became the task of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Construction began in 2009 and it opened with a dedication ceremony on the 94th anniversary of the battle in 2010. All family members of those identified were invited and everyone who worked on the project. It was a very emotional and proud day seeing this cemetery open up and all of these men laid in graves. All of the 250 men were reburied with full honours in February 2010 except for one unknown soldier who was buried on the day of the opening. So now we get to the DNA part. The next question, when you have these 250 men you're going to build a cemetery that's a given you have to do that. What do you do to identify them? Well you'll have an archaeological dig and a team from Oxford Archaeology were sent in from May 2009 to September 2009 in order to do an archaeological dig. There were anthropologists forensic scientists painstakingly poured over the area to get every last piece of evidence they possibly could and the men themselves were removed to a temporary mortuary awaiting burial in the new cemetery. And at this point the decision was taken to do DNA testing, to extract DNA from the remains of the men and attempt to identify them through DNA and other methods but DNA testing is going to be the key to getting names on graves. So the British authorities and the Australian authorities both compiled lists of the men who had died on the 19th of July but whose bodies had never been found. And they circulated those lists to the media quite widely and hoped that family members would come forward but there was a pretty big flaw in this thinking. It had been over 90 years and the majority of these men were actually boys. They had no families and the majority of the relatives that you're hoping to come forward would be second cousins and great-nephews and people who very well might not know this person ever existed. And even those who did have issue of their own and who had living grandchildren or great-grandchildren very often the information given at the time to the families was incorrect. They were told he died on the psalm and I'll show examples of this but these people might not go looking at this list because, oh, my granddad died at the psalm. So how do you get from the DNA from the men? How do you then get your DNA from the living relatives in order to try and match it up? Well, you need a project to do that. The Formel's genealogy project was set up by a group of volunteers in order to proactively track down DNA-appropriate donors for all of the men on the lists. There were separate projects although they worked in conjunction with Britain and Australia. The British project took on the task of researching the trees of 332 missing men of the 61st British Division and that was an enormous undertaking which has resulted in an ancestry tree of over 18,000 names and counting. The Australian project had a much harder decision to make with over 1,300 missing men that night whose bodies had never been found. It would really take an army of researchers decades to trace donors for them all. So it was decided to concentrate on the 191 of those who appeared on what are called Toten lists, lists of the dead. And these were uncovered by the military historian Peter Barton via the Red Cross archives in Geneva. Now, when the bodies were taken by the Germans from the battlefield what they would do is they would take the dog tags off the bodies and they would send these dog tags to the Bureau in Berlin who would then send them on to the Red Cross in Geneva who would then send them on to the British who would then send them on to Australia who would then send them to the families. So the Red Cross was the correlation, the meeting point for all. Both sides would send possessions and dog tags to the Red Cross and the Red Cross had the unenviable task of administrating administrating death really and the news to all of the different areas and families. So these dog tags unfortunately were no longer on the bodies. The families would have them and great lists were created called Toten lists, lists of the dead by the Germans and these were passed to the Red Cross. So all of the men's names on these lists had gone through German hands. Not all of them would have been buried by the Germans because some of them may have been a bit too far out in no man's land and they would have just taken the dog tags or the possessions and sent them on. But most of them would have been, all of them had gone through German hands so it stood to reason that those on the Toten lists were much more likely to have been buried by the Germans at Formel than the other men on the list of missing. So the Australian project decided to initially concentrate on the 191 names of Australian AIF soldiers on the Toten lists. The other problem with the dog tags is that in July 1916 men only wore one dog tag. By September 1916 the decision had been taken that they should all wear two. Therefore, if a man died in battle and one dog tag was taken off and sent to the Red Cross, the other would remain on him and then if he was later found he could be identified by his second dog tag. Unfortunately that wasn't the case for the Formel's boys. So looking at the DNA, they decided that the tests to be conducted on the men would be Y DNA tests and mitochondrial DNA tests, not autosomal. Only six out of the 250 men did not yield a viable DNA sample. Most of the samples were taken from vascular tooth pulp. Teeth preserved well, they are encased in enamel and that turned out to be the best way of extracting the DNA. Although femur bones, metatarsals and metacarpals were also used for sampling. Initially it was thought that mitochondrial testing would be the best but as time progressed it became clear that two Y DNA donors and two mitochondrial DNA donors for each soldier was the ideal scenario if possible and it wasn't possible in most cases to track down that many donors. So just to go over the, how do you identify your DNA donor? Now as a genealogist you are used to working back. You're used to tracing every line and you have to completely change your mindset. You have to completely change, it's a reverse genealogy in a way and you have to be a bit ruthless. You have to get rid of the idea of tracing every line. You have to think only in terms of what lines yield me a DNA donor and the closest living relative that you find is often not the best match. So you start with your soldier, has your soldier had any children? Well in terms of Y DNA tests and mitochondrial DNA tests since no other sumo test has been undertaken only the sons of the soldier are going to be a DNA appropriate line. I did make exceptions when it came to children of soldiers whoever if I found that the soldier had had daughters I would trace those lines because I felt that morally if there were grandchildren or great-grandchildren from a daughter although they may not be able to take the DNA test they deserved to know that their grandfather or great-grandfather may be buried in this masquerade so I did follow all lines of children but only the sons would be any good in terms of taking the DNA test. So then you have to look at siblings after that and you want to trace both lines but it has to be in specific ways and I'll go on to what those specific ways are in a minute. After siblings, sants and uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles. So looking at mitochondrial DNA only certain female relations of the soldier could have transmitted the same mitochondrial DNA he possessed to future generations. So for a living descendant to share his mitochondrial DNA they have to descend from his mother or his maternal grandmother or his maternal great-grandmother and so on down an unbroken female line however do not disregard men on the end of these lines if the man is alive he is just as good a mitochondrial donor as a woman is. Therefore you're looking for an FU or an Ease they must however be the son or the daughter of a daughter of the mother of the soldier. So they have to be the son or the daughter of a sister of the soldier so long as that sister shares the same mother they have to share the same mother because that could be a half-sister don't discount half siblings either so long as they share the mitochondrial DNA of the mother then you could look at great-nephews and great-nesses and great-nephews and great-nesses and then you're on to looking at cousins but the key aspect is tracing the straight female line from the mother or the grandmother or the great-grandmother of the soldier straight down until you find living descendants and whether those living descendants are male or female doesn't matter so long as they are alive they'll share that mitochondrial DNA and they are a very good mitochondrial donor so moving on to why DNA it's a little simpler the soldier inherits his wichromosone from his father his father in turn inherits the same wichromosone from his father and so on and so forth and you're just basically looking for a straight male line here so if you're looking at your soldier you first look for sons sons of sons, grandsons straight male line, straight down as soon as a female enters it that's a dead end you then looking for nephews so long as the nephew is the son of a brother of the soldier but that brother has to have the same father so it could be a half-brother but so long as he shares the same father he shares the same wichromosone and again great-nephews and first cousins and the key point is look at your soldier he has the same wichromosone as his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather and whatever line you're tracing has to come down a straight male line and they will all share the same wichromosone until you find a living descendant on the end of it who could be your DNA donor so in order to get a positive identification a joint identification board was set up to meet every year for five years and they first met in March 2010 in order to have a positive identification the DNA was key it wasn't the only thing taken into account each year the project's data analysis team examined forensic and artifact evidence historical information, anthropological data so things like height or the estimated age from skeletal remains were important it all had to match up in order for the soldier to be passed as identified the Joint of Identification Board was made up of officials from the Australian and UK military as well as forensic advisors and it considered all available evidence and decided on the identifications the first board that sat in 2010 allowed 75 identifications so 75 out of the 250 men were initially identified, all were Australian this wasn't surprising in a sense because the Australians had such a huge loss during the battle so many more than the British and also because it was the Australians that had been known to breach the German lines therefore it was much more likely that Australians had been buried by the Germans because they got closer it turned out that there were 213 Australian 34 unknown nationality and three British in the end that's the way that the breakdown came about this was a bit of a blow to those of us working on the British trees because obviously out of 332 we only had the chance of identifying three men very, very difficult thing to do anyway, 75 Australians initially identified and then a second special board met just before the opening ceremony of the cemetery in July 2010 and that identified a further 21 men and the boards have met every year since and as you can see, 2011 14 more identifications, 2012 and 2009 2013 and 2005 and 2014, just a few months ago a further 20 men were identified and we now have 144 named graves out of 250 in the cemetery so let's do a bit of a case study this is the British working list and I am going to work on a man named George Cole, Private 5598 so there he is there and it shows that he was in the 27th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and the not known on the end is his birth time so that's my starting point and that's what I have to work from so where do I start? well, I go to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website and as you'll see on this corner it's a find war dead box and you put in his name, George Cole and here we go this is the result of the search and there he is 5598, the third one time so what does it tell us? well it tells us he's a private, we knew that he tells us his service number, we already knew that he's dead also, his regiment the only extra information we get here is panel reference, panel 22-25 of the Loose Memorial there are over 25, there are over 20,000 names on the Loose Memorial of men whose bodies were not found and George is one of those the additional information box here is empty and I'll come back to that but it can be important so where do we go from there? well we go look at the UK soldiers died in the Great War Index and that is an amazing resource it was published in 1921 and it has over 703,000 names of men who died in the Great World War and here we go it gives us his birthplace Abercurdur in Banff, his residence again Abercurdur his death which we know already but enlistment place we don't have that, Perth and the only other thing that's new is this little bit here, Comments formerly 1701 of the Highlands Cyclist Battalion that's new and that's actually quite significant because 25 Scottish men died at the Battle of Romel and 23 of them were in the Highlands Cyclist Battalion it turned out that 150 men of the Highlands Cyclist Battalion had been transferred into the Royal War in May 1916 and the casualty rate for those 150 men is quite horrendous over 50 of them died, 23 on that night and the Highlands Cyclist Battalion was a territorial unit and it was comprised mainly of very young, highly mobile troops and they had been trained to be runners on bikes big, heavy bikes and of course when they got out there that was completely obsolete there was no way you could use bikes in trench warfare and they just had to become regular soldiers so now we know where George is born where do we go from here where we look for his birth and we find that he was born on August 18th, 1894 in Abercorder and his parents are John and Mary Brocke so we then search for their marriage and we look for siblings and we try to find our appropriate DNA lines and here there's the family on the census and at this point we see he already has two brothers by 1901 and straight away we're thinking why DNA lines let's see if we can trace a straight male line sons, grandsons, etc I actually couldn't find a why DNA donor via his brothers but I did find a niece and she was the daughter of one of his younger brothers and obviously therefore she's not the DNA appropriate relative however she's a very close relative so I've rung her up and I got used to doing this spiel I am a World War I researcher, etc, etc from hell, battle, mass grave and before I had got anything else out other than World War I and I can't convey the emotion myself but she just said, oh my uncle George and that was it, I didn't get anything else out and I said yes I am calling about your uncle George and we spent about an hour or so on the phone and she was like I haven't spoken his name in over 45 years how did that happen? you know my George had been her dad, Harry's idol really he was his big brother and he was his idol and when they lost him Harry always spoke of his brother George and she grew up listening to the stories of her uncle George and always being reminded of what had happened to him and the grief that her father felt at his loss and that grief was passed down to her by him and she couldn't believe that after he had gone and those who had known George or those who would speak about George had gone that she never spoke of him and no one to speak and she felt awful that she hadn't told her own children about her uncle George or her grandchildren and she got energised and decided that she was going to do all of these things and she went to visit her cousins widow and managed to get hold of the set photographs of men in military uniform and she phoned me up really excited and she said it might be George hold fire on that and I said well go and see if you can get them copied and send me some copies and whatever you do do not put these originals in the post to me of course she did exactly that special delivery the next day and they turned up and I very quickly realised that they were photographs of First World War boys this is actually a photograph of the whole family and that's George the eldest at the back there but the First World War photographs here they are and I think this was the bit that stopped my heart Seacoy HCB at dinner Seacompany of the Highland Cyclist Battalion at dinner and I did do a bit of research just in case anyone else in the immediate family had been in the Highland Cyclist Battalion but it was highly unlikely and I didn't find any evidence of it there's one boy that's in most of the photographs and there is a photograph of him on his own and this was a photograph taken in late 1915 dated to late 1915 and that would be the correct period for when George joined up and so that is George so we identified him we gave him his name and his face back and this actually shows you just what the parents were told so here we have here George on the gravestone reported missing at the Battle of the Somme 19th July 1916 afterwards reported dead November 1916 aged 21 years and the parents wanted his name on their gravestone they wanted him commemorated because he had no gravestone but this is what they were told this was the misinformation they had never heard from Al the family knew nothing of from Al until I made that phone call in 2009 so moving on to another HDB boy and this is Harry and he actually joined up underage he died from Al on the 19th July age 17 and the family a story goes that he joined up aged 16 because he wanted a bike he was a young boy and he wanted a bike and there he is with his HDB bike they had guns on the front of him and this is his final letter home from the trenches and it is quite poignant it says that he's in the trenches and it's like hell on earth it's been raining for a few days and they're up to their boots heads in muck he asks for little Willie and also Barbara and Maggie and says he's no more to say at present but he remains their loving brother right soon Harry SWAK sailed with a kiss good night sailed with a kiss two sailed with a kisses it's really quite childlike in a way very upsetting I'm just going to move on to this man here and he's one of at least two Irish born men that have uncovered who died from Al and he was Lieutenant Louie Barron and he was born on Christmas Eve 1888 in Linnwick and he was a pupil at the high school in Dublin on Harcourt Street he was the eldest of six children of Jewish immigrants and the family moved to Dublin in 1893 he became a solicitor and actually worked for a well known Republican solicitor during the Easter Rising and is named in a few different witness statements at that time but then he went on to join the army and he also died from Al and we did find a donor for Louie in Ireland but he also was not identified so here is someone who was identified and you may recognise him Corporal Robert Courtney Green the 32nd Battalion of the AIF and that is his grave in the cemetery in Fromel he was one of the subjects of the official documentary that I worked on in 2010 and his mother was a hoarder and she kept everything everything and it was all found in a suitcase lying in an attic untouched pretty much for 90 years and there is an amazing set of letters from Bob's fiance photographs, letters that Bob sent himself his identity tag sent back by the Red Cross his death penny and his official scroll all in the original envelopes and everything and Bob was born in London in 1886 and he wanted freedom and decided that emigrating to Australia and working out there to try and gain a bit of land for himself was the way to go so he did that and he did get a land with his friend Bill they bought a 250 acre plot in Western Australia and they did okay for a couple of years and then there was a couple of years of success of drought and they were struggling financially and Bob had a young family at this point and Bob felt conflicted he desperately wanted to join up and do his duty but at the same time he felt that by joining up he might be condemning Bill and his family to destitution because he would no longer be there to help with the farm and he actually sent a letter to his mother apologising for not doing his duty at that point in time and this was early 1915 he felt so bad about it he could no longer stay out and he joined up and he ended up in the 32nd Battalion of the AIF he trained in Egypt and they were shipped into France at the end of June 1916 and he had died within a month that's the thing about the the Australian recruits and the British recruits that fought in the Battle of Formel none of them had ever seen active service before they fought in France between May and June 1916 and this was their first ever battle, this was their first ever engagement so it was hardly experienced people they were sending over the front so this is his identity tag and you can actually see the ingrained blood still on it this is his scroll and his death penny and this is one and this is his actual Australian Imperial Force attestation papers now the Australian records are absolutely amazing and thankfully survive and his record actually runs to 49 pages yeah and so if you want to they include letters, photographs all sorts of amazing information and newspaper clippings as well as a photograph of his fiance Nancy who tirelessly worked to try and find out what happened to him, she sent letters to all sorts of soldiers she knew had been at the battle she harranged the Red Cross time and again for information and eventually she did find out that he had died with his friend Alan Bennett and they had been wounded so badly that they had to be left behind during the retreat and he died of a stomach wound and those are the famous letters that she sent to his mother I'm just going to go on here to how you find those Australian records so here is the National Archives of Australia and you put in your soldier's name and find him down here service number 1216 this is James Hugh Ross who was also identified he's one of the Scottish men that I worked on who has a named grave now and you then click on up here view digital copy and it brings it up for you and this one has 37 pages again amazing, amazing letters and information inside the service record so if you have any Australian war dead or indeed just men who served in the Australian Imperial Force please go and look up the National Archives of Australia website please and this is Sergeant Jack Marchman who is one of the 20 men to recently be identified and just recently get his named grave a couple of months ago this is a look at the documentary that we made about Formel in 2010 so I'm going to end now by going back to George a lot of people say to me aren't you disappointed you never got any British named graves and that's I take issue with that because I don't find it strictly true quite a number of the Australian graves are well as you see with Bob men who were not born in Australia but born in England or Scotland or Ireland hopefully or Wales but of the 332 men on the British working list yes we don't have any identifications despite all the work we did tracking down DNA donors because there's only three possible men it could be and I say to the idea that I should be disappointed that yes a little but in the main no I'm not disappointed and I'm not disappointed because well I've called this talk from from mass grave to named grave but really I feel it's more about from anonymity to remembrance despite the fact we don't have named graves for most of the men we've worked on we've brought them back to life to family members to people who maybe never even knew they existed I get people telling me that they're going to go and visit the loose memorial and they're going to trace their finger across his name and that they never knew existed you know I get people saying that they've found photographs and they've framed them and they've put them on walls I get people saying that they've downloaded the Commonwealth War Graves Commission commemorative certificate and they're framing that these men are now being remembered and they may not have a name on a grave all of them only 250 could possibly get that but they've got the remembrance of family members and of the world at large bringing their stories back to life and I feel that that's much more important than just the names on the graves and going back to George on the day of the big cemetery opening in France on the 19th of July 2010 his niece gathered her family together because obviously George wasn't identified and went to their little cemetery in Turf to where the grave of her grandparents is with his name on it and she took the photograph that we uncovered of him which I had colourised and enlarged for her and she sat at the grave and they had their own little memorial just for George and I was at the big thing in France and I was thinking this I mean it was such a proud moment to be there and it was something at times but there were a few times throughout it that I thought I wouldn't mind being in a little cemetery in Turf and I always remembered the story that his niece told me about the time as a child that her father, her parents took her to Edinburgh Castle and they came across this massive book of war dead and they opened the book up and they were looking in the French and Flanders section for George's name and they couldn't find him and they closed the book and they went to walk away and the gust of wind blew it open now this may be a bit of poetic licence but we'll go with it the gust of wind blew it open and there his name was on this page and it was under the heading Anonymous and her father was Chris Fallon and she always remembered how sad it was to see his name listed as anonymous and I really think that this whole story is about from being anonymous to being remembered as opposed to just getting the named grave although the named graves 144 out of 250 with the help of DNA is a pretty amazing return. Thank you Thank you Michelle very fabulous, thank you so much for that 49,000 Irish men fought in World War 1 and died in World War 1 30,000 of them with the allied troops and within the the UK and another 19,000 I believe in the allied troops so this is a very relevant presentation for us in Ireland as well how many people actually have people in their family trees who fought in World War 1 right World War 1 practically have everybody in the room so I take what you say about every man remembered and in fact the Royal British Legion have a website now called I think it's everymanremembered.org the Imperial War Museums lives of the First World War project going on now where you can go on and put up remembrance to your own First World War relations as well and I think as genealogists it would be nice if we had not just every man remembered but every man's genealogy remembered so for those of you who are family history enthusiasts why not go to one of these websites why not go to both of these websites and go to the member in your family who fought in World War 1 but leave a link to your tree as well so that their genealogy is remembered as well as the men themselves now we have time for one or two questions we have one here thank you for a very interesting presentation my grandfather died in France in March 1918 and his body was never found and I'm just wondering if you think it will ever become normal to have them as they do occasionally find bodies to take a DNA sample and put it up somewhere publicly so that people who test with family tree DNA or whatever might find a match wow, Maurice shall I answer that you've hit on the $64,000 question Michelle and I are talking about how we actually go about getting the authorities to do DNA testing on the remains of people they find all the time on the western front with road widening schemes farmers digging up their land there is approximately somewhere between 100 and 200 remains found every year on the western front and the current estimate is there are 500,000 soldiers who are still lying on the western front their bodies have never been recovered so there is still a huge number of human remains there so of course if you do a DNA test will you actually be able to match it with anybody very difficult to know I have started a World War I missing in action DNA project of family tree DNA in the hope that we can actually encourage some kind of movement but Michelle and myself have to get together and knock our heads together and see if we can find a way of getting every man's genealogy remembered so that we can identify potential DNA donors within the DNA genealogy encourage those donors to do a family tree DNA test themselves both a wide DNA and mitochondria DNA in the hope that eventually if they do do routine DNA testing on the remains they can actually compare them with a public database such as family tree DNA which currently has approximately 400,000 wide DNA signatures and the largest database in the world is a mitochondrial DNA that's the challenge part of the challenge is that they only do 17 STR markers on the wide DNA test using the forensic laboratory that they currently use and I think one of the challenges that we have to inquire about is is it possible to get more than 17 STR markers on wide DNA preferably up to the 37 that family tree DNA do ideally 67 or 111 the idea being not to identify a close relative of the man who has fallen but to use his wide DNA to generate potential matches for the surname because then if you find the surname it narrows down the number of people you have to look at in the documentary records so that's the kind of project we're trying to develop at the moment and it's still in its early stages but we have had preliminary we've made overtures towards the Ministry of Defense in the UK and various other people as well with the idea that a variety of different groups get involved to try and make this come to pass but that's an excellent question we had one question over here very quickly could it or any of the DNA samples retain could they be tested later of the from Elmen I believe so although the five year cycle of the identification boards meeting is now over the fifth one met in March this year there's a strong hope that especially on the Australian side that there's still a lot of ongoing genealogy work to try and I'm working on some at the moment to try and track down DNA donors for more of the men and obviously if those are tracked down then the testing will be done that has been confirmed so yes the DNA samples will be obtained one final question thanks for the superb lecture just one question I've used obviously the Commonwealth War Against Commission website and Forces war records is there any other site that is particularly you mentioned one there about find UK something where you've got more information about the British side in the Great War you can find that you can get them on CD Rome it's online in a number of different places Ancestry, Find My Past all of these kind of it is free to search yeah it is an Ancestry it's an exceptionally good resource and Ancestry also has the remaining service records for the British soldiers as well and if you can find one they're fantastic the thing about the Australian ones is that they are complete there's none missing, whereas the British ones a large proportion of them were destroyed during the Blitzing World War II but those that survive are digitised and on Ancestry and very well worth a look, no problem great and I think that is the point where we'll have to end this conversation because we could talk about this for a lot longer and I think you've touched the hearts of a lot of people in the audience and it just remains for me to say thank you Michelle for sharing this with us that's fine you have everything? alright sorry about running a little bit glitch the drop dead time is 7 o'clock well in the sense that we get kicked out of here at 7 o'clock we're only going to get kicked out of here at 7 o'clock so don't worry about running a little bit of time for discussion afterwards because that's really really good but now did I put that in the right way and always get these ones wrong whether it's upside down that might be there we go and yours is the GGI and you want both of them let's do both and let's go down


People like yourselves can be significantly better at, which will put pressure on the city and the province, whichever government, to improve. I mean, yeah, we can. Yeah, that's kind of my answer. Thanks. Can you have some attention to push schools to have some data on public policies? My right away I was really just focused on the city of Montreal. We hope that it will inspire other organizations to open up the data sets.  But what we had about itself is really our focus is just to see Montreal for now. It's the beginning? Yeah, it's the beginning, exactly. Those are the questions. Unfortunately, we're great. I don't know where it's coming from. We'll just do really quick answers. Right. I was just wondering if you want to be more technical? Something blocks. Or have there been more people just going on? No, it's really just administrative protocols. A little habits, diar, kind of thing. You looked at the federal government announced a couple of years ago that they were going to release it. It's kind of a hazard that you guys use that data at all. It wasn't a couple of years ago. I don't give that much credit. Well, they talked about it six months ago. Well, they talked about it a couple of years ago. They launched it in May. I'm sure Michael and Molly will talk about it more. He's been very active at the federal level. It's basically all they did was aggregate existing data sets that were on different ministry websites. They haven't, as far as I can tell, haven't added much new content. Pretty much not. It was launched right before the election, not coincidentally. Like two days before. Michael and Molly, so we're not going to be around for questions after. We can't join you from here this time, but Michael and Molly is smarter than both of us.


Keep it clean. Let's play a little game of how it started versus how it's going How I started Mark Andrews was ball in this season once he finally got playing after week one and at the point where he got Hurting that bingles game. He was actually leading all tight ends in touchdown Receptions, but then he went down and it was said that old man Mark Andrews may miss the rest of the season And we were all heartbroken. We were hurting But then how ball did give us a tiny bit of hope because he said there's an outside chance that Mark Andrews could return So we held on to that for a long time We were just hoping hoping that we would get far enough and to give him the opportunity to come back So then it got reported that Mark Andrews He was in the locker room with the Ravens, but he ain't have no crutches. So you're like, okay Okay, that's something and that's some real positive news and then couple weeks later. It was reported that Mark Andrews He's been running around and he's getting a little closer to feel like he could come back Oh, okay, cool So then after that it got reported Mark Andrews has been designated to return from injured reserve and it was like whoa Hey, this is becoming real. It's becoming real and then he was practicing He started practicing and he was practicing in full. So we were thinking.  Let's get it baby, but Raven said nope but then Today the Baltimore Ravens made it official. This is big-time official news for the Baltimore Ravens That Mark Andrews has been activated to the 53 man roster So Mark Andrews, even though we anticipated we expected it It's always different when it becomes official and it's nice to have Mark Andrews one of the best tight ends in the league back Team keeping thing we got a lot to talk about in this video But before we get into it make sure you subscribe to the channel which I have been doing we getting closer to seventy four thousand Subscribers it's gonna take us a little minute to get there But keep telling your friends and family about the channel which I appreciate Leave a like on the video because it's been helping out the channel a lot I appreciate y'all another thing that I really appreciate y'all is the way that y'all been showing love to everybody that we've been Having come on here recently to we don't have a lot of people over here on over the past couple of weeks and a Ravens keep this thing going so we could have a lot more team keep it clean right there two more games Two more games It's crazy to just think back at the beginning of the season everything that we all talked about all the conversations that we don't Had all the questions from subscribers Every single video that we made where we we conversated back and forth in the comment section with everybody about everything It's crazy that we are two games away from everything that we had hoped this Baltimore Ravens team achieved We two games away from them making it happen. So they are literally right There big obstacle this Sunday at 3 p.m. in the T banks stadium but Ravens got more than enough to get the job done and speaking of getting the job done Mark Andrews He got the job done when it came to Returning but topic of conversation has continued to be how should the Ravens move when it comes to Mark Andrews How should they operate with him and Isaiah likely Isaiah likely has made Missing Mark Andrews a lot better and what I mean when I say that with Mark Andrews being out that's obviously a big blow I mean you lose one of your best players on a team is definitely gonna be a big blow But something that we talked about a couple days ago depth depth has been crazy for the Baltimore Ravens this year Crazy in a good way because they have lost a lot of guys There's a lot of guys that they have lost for the entire season some never even played this season But since the Baltimore Ravens created a roster with such quality depth They were able to sustain those injuries and what Isaiah likely he has stepped in and he has just he's gone off him And Lamar Jackson's chemistry is through the roof right now and we love it But now the question is the what do you do with Mark Andrews now now that he's back of him and Lamar Jackson Obviously got plenty of chemistry. Well, like I've continued to say I still do believe like you stick with Isaiah likely as your Main Titan as your top Titan I can't see especially the injury that Mark Andrews got the one that he sustained just was that October I think I don't see him that them throwing him back in all right Mark Andrews. You are number one Titan again next year Yeah, but right now I don't think so but I still think he gets his significant amount of snaps he get his significant amount of targets and I think he'll Make something happen because if he wasn't good enough to go if he wasn't good enough to play then there is no way that he Should be out there, but the Baltimore Ravens they've been handling business, especially injuries the right way this year So I expect Mark Andrews to not have any setbacks. No drawbacks. No issues. No, none of that stuff So I'm excited to see just how Todd Monkin uses both Titans and now the thing with this Because we didn't have this in the past remember before With Greg Roman and even with Todd Monkin a bit it was it was tough for to get both Titans going when they had both of them available but Now with Lamar Jackson something that's been big for Lamar Jackson Here y'all he been had chemistry Mark Andrews ever since 2018 because them to like Mark Andrews talked about today They came into this thing together and they got some unfinished business that they got to take care of and yes Y'all certainly do so they've been had chemistry for a long time But when Isaiah likely came on the scene him and Lamar chemistry wasn't there yet, but now it's there It's there So that makes them that much more dangerous shout out to my god Matt from slicing rice Shout out to both of them shout out to him and Gloria whole family love y'all love everything that y'all do and I appreciate the heck Out of y'all much love but One thing that he he talked about to me yesterday He said the RG three Robert Griffin the third He was in a space and he made a really really good point about Lamar Jackson when it came to the lack of running that he did During the regular season now me y'all know I was always somebody that said I could just tell Lamar Jackson was holding back from running And I felt like he was more of a self-preservation thing like he wanted to protect his body protect himself as Max as he possibly could not still think that is true But he talked about how Robert Griffin brought out a different point. He said well Lamar Jackson He thinks that Lamar Jackson ran a lot less so he could build up even more chemistry with his wide receivers So he could force himself to build up chemistry with his wide receivers, and I was like oh my goodness. I Never thought of that before Never did not that did not cross my mind not one time. I never would have thought man So the that is just such a great point and shout out to RG three obviously He got some experience in the NFL and got some direct experience with Lamar Jackson himself and with the Baltimore Ravens as well But that is something that if true I would assume it to be true because I mean we see it It has paid big dividends to the Baltimore Ravens and their offense because Lamar Jackson He has been putting that thing on the money man The offense the team they are peaking at just the right time like he talked about oh Yeah, they're doing it. They executed and they're getting that job done But specifically with Lamar Jackson just the the leaps and bounds that he's grown this year It's been amazing to see so with Lamar Jackson just the growth the chemistry to rapport With all of his past catchers. It's on another level right now, but Something that was also on another level was a former Baltimore Raven technically I mean he was here for a little bit. It wasn't even too long But former Baltimore Raven technically he felt like he said do we even need Mark Andrews We we you been repping Philly this whole time and talking about Eagles this fly Eagles fly And whatnot and you play for multiple teams play for the Eagles you play for the Ravens you play for the Raiders You play for the Washington Commanders to he's talking about none of them But I get it with Philly you got specialized with Philly. I get that and I respect it But Ravens we I don't know about we and that person I'm talking about is the Sean Jackson now the Sean Jackson Remember when the Baltimore Ravens first signed to Sean Jackson. It was crazy because Ravens would in they needed they needed to receive a help and that's something that Oh boy as a Ravens fan that is something that we would say literally every single year because it was pretty much like that every single Yeah, but anyway, um, they need to receive a help The Sean Jackson was on a podcast they hadn't reached out to the Sean Jackson nothing The Sean Jackson went on a podcast I am athlete said that he would love to play with them on Jackson and Baltimore Ravens He listed a couple other teams to what happened like a couple days later Ravens a what's up big head We heard you said on the podcast come through come come come be a Baltimore Raven and he came through He became a Baltimore Raven It didn't last very long, but he was there nonetheless, but anyway with the Sean Jackson Let's look at what he had to say. He said no disrespect To Mark Andrews, but do we put a little asterisk on that? We've been anyway. Do we really need him to win? so And of course what he was saying was with Isaiah likely how he's been balling and whatnot and how the Ravens Have really been balling overall as a team is Mark Andrews really a necessity in order for them to win now I would say no, I would say no, but at the same time I'm not gonna sit here and complain that an all-pro tight end is returning to the Ravens lineup That one of their best players on the team is returning to the line One of the best players in the NFL their position is returning to the line. Why would we complain about that? That would make no sense It's been we've been through so many Ravens teams to where we lost weapons where we lost guys for the season And we wish that they were able to come back So to be complaining about having an extra weapon having an additional weapon That is a primary target of Lamar Jackson and that has continued to show like a or that boy special No about the complaint over that or do we really need it? No, man Mark Andrews, you are more than welcome back and he knows that we all know that I know but Mark Andrews comes out the tunnel This Sunday at about 2 50 p.m. Oh M&T Bank gonna be going crazy And I know man, I can't wait to see all the videos and everybody pictures and stuff Oh man, I'm gonna just I'm sure I'm gonna get chills when I see it So I look forward to that but um That's it's never a bad thing when you get a great player back So the Sean Jackson I get it. There's a little more context involved, but still like the way he put that You don't even need context with the you like this to the wording and the thought I get the thought process behind it But again, you're getting a great player back Who will complain over there? What why not? But anyway team keep it clean.  I tried one last swing I shot my shot with the Ravens cuz they tweeted out something today They were like, oh anybody well if you want to try to enter this contest to win some tickets straight from Baltimore Ravens I put in my information quick, but I know Once they see oh, oh him. No, we ain't doing nothing for that guy, but It's all good, baby, so I'm looking forward to it though I'm looking forward to this game and I'm looking forward to the Ravens continuing to handle their business


Move on with you guys, Matt. OK, so the county supervisors where I live, when they have an ordinance up for consideration, there's this thing called a board letter that kind of tells you about it. And there's always been a row on it at the beginning. There's a section. It's called Business Impact Statement. And they've never been very thoughtful in their analysis of that, like when the county passed our eviction ban, the Business Impact Statement was, this ordinance will help tenants and families. And that was the Business Impact Statement. It had nothing to do really with business. But they've recently added a new paragraph to every ordinance called the Equity Impact Statement. And these answers are often a paragraph or a page long, and there's someone putting a lot of effort into when they write this. In my local newspaper, every page has an article that works equity and somehow every press release from our politicians is always everything's through the lens of equity. And maybe I'm defining it wrong, but it's close to the best definition I can say. When I hear equity, that means bringing equal outcomes. We're saying it's not equal opportunity. It's equal pushing for equal outcomes. And equal outcomes, people having the same amount of stuff, that's pretty much the point of communism. The main feature of communism is everyone has the same amount of stuff. So everyone is openly advocating for equity, but none of these people would say self-identify as a communist. But I feel like they're pushing for the same thing. What am I missing here? Well, what you're missing is that they don't take the concept seriously, right? People are saying equity, they don't know what it means. They have no clue what it means. They have a vague notion that equity is the word that they're supposed to say right now if they believe in fairness, if they believe in justice. Ask them what fairness and justice means. They don't really know. They certainly don't think it means communism. They certainly don't think it means equality of outcome. If they did, they would reject it if it was put in stock terms. So there are people out there who are clearly communists or I don't know communists, but they're egalitarianism. They're worse than communists, in my view. The egalitarians, they're really, really bad guys with one equality of outcome. The people out there, usually intellectuals, usually on the left, usually at universities, they don't actually work for a living. They don't actually participate in life. There's somewhere in the intellectual stratosphere. There's somewhere in the intellectual stratosphere. But they said, in terms of debate, so they know what equity means, but they'll never admit it.  Whatever that means. And so everybody else starts using equity. They don't know what it means. It's just the right thing to say. And it kind of vaguely means fairness and it kind of vaguely means not making a lot of money, but of course I am gonna make a lot of money. I don't care, I'm just gonna put this in a statement. Nobody cared. That's how it spreads to society, becomes just a term that everybody uses. But of course it has a meaning that the intellectuals give it and they're gonna use it against you over and over again when they raise your taxes. It's just getting in the name of equity and you agree that equity is a good thing. You use it in your own thing. And that's how they slowly erode your freedoms and erode your confidence in what you're doing. Just looking for a, let me just, one second. You know, here's just a website says equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources opportunities. All right, what does that even mean? Who given by whom? Resources, you're given resources. Who gives you those resources? It's a BS definition, but anyway. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances that and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. It says equal outcome, right? Yeah, but nobody actually holds that in terms of what that means other than, I guess the person who wrote this article, right? So if you've got a lot, you get a little, your opportunity set is reduced. If you have a little, you get a lot. Your opportunity set is increased in order to achieve equality of outcome. Very interesting. What's that? It just makes me cringe and it's everywhere, you know, in these, all the local publications and it's just like, it's just presented as a no-brainer that if you don't support equity, you're just a horrible person and that's like not contested at all. And it's not what equity actually means. Equity means fairness, which means the exact opposite of that.  I own equity in stocks. It means, you know, it means, it doesn't mean what they've made it into meaning. They lost inequality, they lost unfairness, so now they're trying with their equity. Here's a quote from Paula Dresel from the, and you can't believe, you know, the names of these institutes just unbelievable. She works for the Race Matters Institute, which three years ago, I would have assumed it was a white supremacist organization. And now I know as to be an anti-racist organization, Race Matters Institute. And this is the rule. The route to achieving equity will not be accomplished through treating everybody equally. It will be achieved by treating everyone justly according to their circumstances. Now, there's a sense in which I agree, but I have a sense that we completely disagree on what justly means. And that's the point. Equity just means treating people justly. Sounds good. Count me in. Yeah, exactly. That's what you mean. But that's reliance on how do we, us having a common definition of what justice is. And then there's not, you know, agreement on that. Yeah, and this is from a website on public health from George Washington University. All right, I just saved the article. I'll do a show on that. I'll do a show on equity versus equality.  Right. Thanks, Matt. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes, that should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show.  There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know, the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share. And you can support the show at yourunbrookshow.com slash support on Patreon or Subscribestar or locals and show your support for the work, for the value, hopefully you're receiving from this.  You'll know what shows are on, when they're on. You'll get notified. So, yes, like, share, subscribe, support. Like, share, subscribe, support. There you go. Easy. Do one or all of those, please.


What's everybody Jason for Jasper's case race calm 2021 panini revolution basketball two box hobby break three random teams each number 28 Just sold out. These are the last two boxes of the case Ten total spots everybody gets three random teams in NBA all cars ship So I tripled up your guys's names to make 30. There's a customer names and the teams. Let's roll the dice We got ourselves a three to one four times. Good luck one two three and Three and one four times Kevin down to Kevin four times One two Three and four So four times four times Clippers down to the Raptors All right, so Kevin you have the clippers John D with the Bucks John Oh with the 76ers Not the Lena with the Grizzlies and Rockets John with the Mavericks John Oh that is Ron Hollins with the Heat Brett with the Pistons John with the Bulls Kevin with the T-wolves John Oh with the Suns Ron Hollins with the Magic Kevin with the Thunder John Oh with the Hornets and Pelicans Carlos with the Nets Kevin with the Pacers Brett with the Celtics John Oh with the Jazz Carlos with the Cavs John Oh with the Lakers Brett with the Warriors Ron with the Nuggets John Oh with the net net sorry Excuse me New York Nets Carlos with the Hawks John D with the Spurs Kevin with the Wizards John D with the Kings not the Lena with the Blazers and Kevin with the Toronto Raptors So again, I'll give you a quick 30 seconds to a minute to and if anybody wants to trade I don't know how many people are actually watching but You guys want to trade you guys about a minute. All right guys TWC. All right again guys last Two boxes of the case There you go. Good luck everybody. We've been open both boxes We'll go through them. We got Odoka Cubic to 50 very nice for the Utah Jazz going to John Oh James Weisman Are we have a auto or galactic some card is flipped around Russell Westburn going off today crazy triple double Curie Lewis Jr. Malachi Ramsey or maybe not Rudy Gobert I thought that was flipped around Drummond you got Ben Simmons. That's a fractal CJ LB Devon Vassil All right next one Josh Green Isaac Acoro You got Keras Levert Saban Lee Steven Adams Jason Tatum and a Devon Vassil Fractal the spurs Jada McDaniels Fractal We got something here Very nice James Weisman Sunburst one out of 75 for the Golden State Warriors Brett P. In Cure Lewis Jr. to 100 autograph Pelicans when a John Oh Very nice offer paid feel Maladon Elijah Hughes All right. Well, at least mostly these two box regionally has at least one autograph in every two boxes. So But the second box definitely I'll beat the first box by a long shot autograph and a James Weisman Sunburst to 75 But all card ship guys beautiful cars is revolution is So again, these are the last two boxes I seen back there I mean if there is a fresh case somewhere else hiding we'll post it up That'll be from a fresh case if not like I said once we get some in we'll repost them Nice James Weisman there Cure Lewis junior autograph number to 100 There you go guys appreciate it Jatsby's case breaks calm