Good morning, good morning. Welcome to Women and More, the second day of the Washington, D.C. celebration of the 10th anniversary of the United Nations Security Resolution 1325. My name is Kathleen Kienist. I am the Gender Advisor at the United States Institute of Peace and Independent Nonpartisan National Institution established and funded by Congress. We're very excited to have all of you here with us today. And we really want to note that this is not only a momentous day marking the 10th anniversary of this important resolution, but really it's important because all of us are coming together. Many institutions here in D.C. working on these issues, gender, women, peace and security. Indeed, USIP has organized this event with 10 partners and three sponsors who have each publicly committed to the effort of moving this agenda forward. And so it is my pleasure to recognize the generous support that has helped us realize this three-day event. The Royal Netherlands Embassy, the United States Agency for International Development, and Creative Associates International. And a special thanks to our partners, and forgive me, but I'm going to list them all because we would not all be here without all of our help together. Women in International Security, the World Bank, the Office of Global Women's Issues at the United States Department of State, the Institute for Inclusive Security, Women for Women International, International Civil Society Action Network, Peace by Peace, the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, and the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area. Together, we have created a community of practice around these issues. And a lot of people have already asked me, okay, this is going to be a great event, but what's next? What's next is this community of practice. We are moving forward, we're looking forward to more partners, and we will keep you all in the loop as to what we are going to keep doing to keep these issues first and foremost as we move forward on looking at global security. The public response to this event has been tremendous, with over a thousand registrants for the three-day event. Today alone, we have over 400 registrants as well as those joining us via webcast, which has been underwritten, by the way, by USAID. Thank you. We have a great lineup of speakers and panelists who really have a vast pool of knowledge and experience. But frankly, you in this audience and the webcast are a part of all of this knowledge and experience. And we hope that we will have more and more dialogue throughout the day, not only among you at the tables, but also during our Q&A for most sessions. So we really encourage your active participation and moving forward after the event. We are focusing today on women in war and the UN Resolution 1325 to help improve security around the world. It is important to recognize that this resolution is not a women's issue, that this is a security issue, and that women play a critical role in creating regional and global security. Let me now turn to my colleague, Jolene Shoemaker, Executive of Women in International Security, otherwise known as WISE, who has been a terrific partner in this endeavor. She will say a few comments. Thank you, Kathleen. And I just want to reiterate the thanks to all the partners and sponsors that have been part of this event and draw particular attention as well to the government of the Netherlands for their support for this, making this happen. Just to follow up on what Kathleen has said, this is a really unprecedented opportunity for all of us. As she listed the partners, I was really struck by the combination of nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and U.S. government entities that have joined together behind this issue. And I think that we can all use this unique opportunity today to certainly network as we do so well in Washington, but to also really think about how we can each in our own positions, jobs, responsibilities here on a daily basis move this issue forward. As Kathleen has said, we've been building a community of practice on this issue, and there's been a number of events that have occurred in the last few weeks and few months looking at 1325, Resolution 1325, assessing where we are and where we need to go. And this is our opportunity in Washington to draw all of the relevant actors together to do the same thing that has been done in the past week in New York and so forth. This is not just an issue, certainly as we all know, that is relevant to U.N. actors and those in New York and other capitals. Washington, D.C. and our policy community here has a very, very critical role to play. And I think all of us in the civil society community were very, very pleased with the recent news that the U.S. government will develop a action plan on Resolution 1325. I think it's an indication of the momentum and the point we are at on this issue. I think many of us in this room have done so much work on the ground in capitals around the world these past 10 years to move this forward, engaging in research, advocacy, gathering lessons learned and really advocating on behalf of including women. But it is at this point, 10 years later, it has been slower than many of us would like. We have reached a point of momentum, I think. And I hope that each of you will leave this conference today and those of you who attended the events at the World Bank yesterday and will attend tomorrow with a renewed sense of commitment to this issue, a renewed energy to move forward and incorporate women's participation, opportunities for women's leadership into your daily policymaking activities, your daily educating activities, and your daily advocacy activities. So I thank you all for being here. I'm looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible today and I'm looking forward to the discussions and moving this issue forward. So thanks. It is now my great privilege to introduce Tara Sonenshine, Executive Vice President of the United States Institute of Peace. In addition to her broad management responsibilities at the Institute, Tara oversees public education, public outreach and programmatic activity and has been intimately involved with her activities marking the 10th anniversary of UNSCR 1325. Tara has been a tireless advocate for women's rights and issues and has been active over the years in many different levels of civil society. In fact, she is just back from a two-day conference in Denmark on the role of women in global security. Prior to Tara's time at USIP, she was Strategic Communications Advisor to many international organizations. She has also served in various White House capacities, including the Transition Director for the National Security Council. We are honored to have had her invaluable input and collaboration in this three-day event. I would like to personally thank Tara for her never-ending support. And I turn the podium over to Tara who will now introduce our first session of the day. Tara. Okay, well my first job is to raise the energy level in the room. It's a rainy Thursday. I think it's Thursday. I'm still on partly Denmark time. But I want to get you all inspired with the following couple of thoughts. First of all, we have with us today a class from the Naval Academy. And I want to welcome them and ask them to stand. We also have the heads of all kinds of organizations. This 1325 new decade of implementation is not going to happen without every single one of you. So what you really ought to be doing right now is applauding one another for the work you're about to do. In Denmark, men and women gathered from the military, the civilian sector. And we heard stories from men and women from Liberia, Afghanistan, Uganda, Iraq. We heard stories of horror, of rape, violence, marginalization, discrimination, and deprivation. We also heard stories of enormous hope of women in parliaments, of women in female engagement teams in Kandahar, of women starting businesses and banks in Uganda. We heard it all. And what it gave each of us that came back from that conference was a renewed sense of energy and passion. About taking a document and operationalizing it. It is time to take words off paper and put them into action. One of the best speakers in Denmark, truly, was our ambassador at large for women's issues. A champion who has really devoted her life's work to that. And I'm going to invite now Melanne Vavere to come up and thank her publicly for her vital voice, for vital voices that she started, for the work she does with the First Lady, did with the First Lady, and now for the Secretary of State, and for her journeying. She journeys, journeys, journeys on this issue. And she is our traveler and leader. And I hope you will join me with the warmest and most energetic welcome for Melanne Vavere. Well, we're all on that journey, aren't we? And I want to thank Tara, who has been such an extraordinary leader and a dear friend for whom I am very, very grateful for her and for all that she does. It is a real honor to be here today with so many who recognize that intrinsic link between women and global peace and security. All of you who are working so hard to implement Security Council Resolution 1325. I want to thank USIP for the extraordinary leadership that you have played in bringing us to this day, to Kathleen and all of the others, to WISE, to the sponsors and the partners, to all who have done so much. I want to recognize all of our friends from around the world who are here, our friends from the government of Netherlands, Ambassador Choudhury, who in so many ways is the godfather of 1325, to Special Representative Wallström, who will be here, and many from my government. I am particularly delighted to be able to share this morning's session with my dear friend, our Assistant Secretary in the Veterans Administration, Tammy Duckworth, who is an extraordinary public servant, just extraordinary. Admiral Mullins will be here later and so many others who are committed to our common cause. This is an important and historic conference. It is a conference that will bind us to unstinting action for women's participation, representation and involvement in all aspects of peace building. It is a conference we all hope will help us turn the page, as Tara said, from words to deeds in preventing gender-based violence against women in armed conflicts. And it is a conference that will offer us all the vision and the strategies that we need to make 1325 a powerful tool for peace and security around the world. The facts are sobering. Of the 39 conflicts that have erupted during the past decade, only eight are entirely new. Thirty-one are recurrences of conflicts that have never been fully resolved. And it is no coincidence that most of these conflicts have occurred in societies where women have had little power and were excluded from the process of negotiating and implementing the peace. As Secretary Clinton said in the Security Council last week, the only way to achieve our goals, to reduce the number of conflicts around the world, to eliminate rape as a weapon of war, to combat the culture of impunity for sexual violence, to build sustainable peace. The only way is to draw on the full contributions of both women and men in every aspect of peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding. In response to the title of this morning's session, Power and Protection, it seems clear that those who have power, only those who have power, can really protect themselves. Those who have political and economic power, the power of full participation in decision making at the highest levels, and the power to ensure that those decisions are enforced. President Obama's National Security Strategy reflects this by recognizing that countries are more peaceful and prosperous when women are recorded full and equal rights and opportunities. When those rights and opportunities lag, countries lag behind. As we mark the 10th anniversary of 1325, we also observe a decade since the Millennium Development Goals were adopted by the UN General Assembly. MDG-3, to promote gender equality and to empower women, is critical to the realization of all the other MDGs. And it is useful to note that among the indicators for MDG-3 are women's political and economic participation. Both of these are linked to 1325 as well, and it is significant to note that there have been increases in women in politics, thanks in part to quotas and other arrangements chiseled into constitutions adopted in post-conflict societies. Now, last week, the UN Security Council held that special high-level session on 1325 that all of you are more than aware of at this point, and Secretary Clinton spoke on behalf of the United States. She said, we all need to look honestly at what remains to be done to fulfill the promise made to women to be treated as agents of peace and reconciliation, not just victims of war and conflict. One week later, we are gathered here, not just to renew our commitment to the role of women in global security, but to accelerate implementation of 1325. To learn from each other, to identify obstacles, what has been working, what hasn't, what are the new ideas that need to be developed and applied, how can we coordinate better among all of our partners? Because we know that despite all the positive steps that have been taken, progress has been too slow and too uneven. And real progress has to be felt on the ground where it matters most in people's lives. Now things are slowly beginning to change in a way that I think will make progress that much more robust and real. For example, women are more directly involved in defense and security, thanks to the work of so many of you. India, Bangladesh, Namibia and Nigeria have deployed all female police contingents as part of peacekeeping operations. The women have not only contributed to stability, peace and security, but they have served as models for women in policing and inspired so many more in the host countries to become police officers themselves. The United States has embraced this as well. All female engagement teams of U.S. Marines are working with women on the ground in Afghanistan and making a difference. And when we were in Denmark a few days ago, there were several representatives of the female engagement teams who told us what a difference it was making on the ground. At the same conference in Denmark, which was sponsored by the United States Embassy in Copenhagen as well as the Foreign Ministry of Denmark, NATO Secretary General Russ Musin reported that NATO is incorporating the 1325 principles of participation, prevention and protection into its directives and is ensuring that soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan and elsewhere seek to take into account the views and needs of women. Moreover, with the creation of UN Women under the ABLE leadership of the former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, the international community will have a strong and essential partner on 1325. And the Secretary General Special Representative Margo Wallstrom is working hard and truly needs the support of all of us to implement Resolution 1888 to combat sexual violence in armed combat, in armed conflicts. I am very proud of the concrete steps that the United States has been taking. For example, in Namibia the U.S. military has helped to train nearly 600 peacekeepers on women's issues, peacekeepers who were later deployed to Chad. And as Secretary Clinton has noted, from Nepal to Uganda, USAID is promoting women's role in politics, supporting their participation in local peace committees, helping to develop plans to implement 1325. In fact, in the future, every USAID project to protect or manage conflict will study its effect on women and will include them in planning and implementation. And I think when Deputy Administrator Don Steinberg is here later today, I'm sure he will expand on that. For example, USAID has included gender analysis into its $26 million annual reconciliation program worldwide. This program supports small, innovative and state-of-the-art programming and priority conflict-affected communities. Additionally, the United States has written protection and respect for women's human rights into all of our peacekeeping training. Each of the hundreds of courses that are provided to foreign militaries include emphasis on human rights, protection of civilians, prevention of gender-based violence, prevention of sexual exploitation, prevention of trafficking in persons, and elimination of child soldiers. Working closely with the UN and donors, the United States also will continue to bolster international police peacekeeping capacity in ways that are consistent and reinforce Resolution 1325. Next year, we will partner with several police contributing countries to provide pre-deployment training and other support to those police units, effectively preparing them to fully meet the UN standards. This will build on other continuing efforts, such as the Center for Excellence in Stability Police Units, a joint U.S. Italian initiative which trains police officers from around the world for participation in peacekeeping missions. We are also committed to training national police to strengthen their ability to combat sexual and gender-based violence. For example, the U.S. and Botswana have jointly managed the International Law Enforcement Academy, a training center for police and security officials from 29 African countries. This past summer, they hosted a five-day course on policing, sexual and gender-based violence for law enforcement officials from eight countries. And in Afghanistan, our diplomatic efforts have been rooted in the notion that respect for the rights of women, as protected in the Afghan Constitution, is an essential element of democracy and stability. Secretary Clinton said last week and she could not have said it more firmly. The United States has backed women's inclusion at all levels, including in the recently formed High Peace Council, because we believe that the potential for sustainable peace will be subverted if women are silenced or marginalized. Our policy on Afghan reintegration and reconciliation is that it must be done in accordance with the Afghan Constitution and the process must not jeopardize the rights of women. Its actual implementation, this means women's equality, the right of women and girls to go to school, to participate in the economic and political lives of their country, to be free from violence, all are guaranteed in the Constitution. And Secretary Clinton has stated our position on this on many occasions, and that is that women in Afghanistan are rightly worried that in the very legitimate search for peace their rights will be sacrificed. And we will not permit that to happen because no peace, as she said, that sacrifices women's rights is a peace that we can afford to support. But despite all of these concrete steps and so many more, we know we need to accelerate the progress. Because, as she said last week, there is no starker reminder of the work that lies ahead than the horrific mass rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo that took place last summer and the problems that continue. Those rapes and our failure as an international community, she said, to bring that conflict to an end and to protect the women and children in the process stands as a tragic rebuke of our efforts so far. So we are committed to promoting accountability for the perpetrators of serious crimes against women by supporting international efforts to end impunity, as well as by strengthening domestic judicial systems to help ensure that those responsible for these crimes, including sexual violence, are brought to justice. And in this vein, we also recognize the essential need to strengthen the UN's capacity to combat sexual violence in conflict situations and are working closely with the UN Department of Peacekeeping operations to support more effective mission-wide strategies for the protection of civilians. Now, over the past year, the United States has explored ways to accelerate implementation of 1325. We have used a full range of diplomatic defense and development tools in doing so. We have met with members of civil society. We have mapped U.S. programs and initiatives that support the 1325 principles contained in the four pillars of participation, protection, prevention, and relief and recovery. The Secretary requested that all of our embassies throughout the world provide a summary of actions that they were taking. Many have been drawing attention to the importance of women in peacebuilding, promoting women's economic empowerment, protecting women refugees, and promoting their participation, women's participation, military, and peacekeeping forces. But it is also clear that we need to do more to advocate for the inclusion of women in peace processes and post-conflict reconstruction to promote the connection between economic empowerment and security, and to raise community awareness of how to respond to SGBV. The Department of Defense also completed a similar mapping of the combatant command's engagement in the promotion of 1325, and Rosa Brooks will be here later this afternoon, and she and her office have done much to bring a concerted effort and focus on these issues. This is a reflection of the intense process that led our government and its decision to develop a national action plan, which the Secretary, as you now know well, announced last week at the Security Council. And we will work to make our national action plan one that is broad, deep, and ambitious. As a first step, the Secretary announced that the United States will commit over $40 million in new resources for initiatives designed to empower women. The largest portion, about 17 million, will support civil society groups that focus on women in Afghanistan. $14 million will go to NGOs working to make clean water more available in conflict zones, because in those areas, when women and girls go looking for water, we know what happens to them in terms of their safety. Another $11 million will help expand literacy, job training, and maternal health services for refugee women and girls. We also know how indebted we are to all of you who are here today, you who represent particularly the NGOs, civil society. We want to thank those of you who participated in our consultations on a national action plan. And we thank you for your generosity in sharing your wisdom and sharing your experiences and for continuing your commitment. The Secretary also announced that in order to measure our progress, the United States will adopt the indicators laid out in the Secretary General's report. We will measure whether women are effectively represented in the full range of peace building and reconstruction efforts, whether they're protected against sexual violence, and whether they are the focus of conflict prevention, relief, and reconciliation efforts. Because measuring our progress will help us to be held accountable and identify those areas where we need to do more. And we must not look at women as victims, but we must look at them as leaders. And I am haunted by a statement that a woman in Afghanistan made to me on one of my last trips there. I mentioned this earlier because it stays with me. She said, please do not look at us as victims. Look at us as the leaders that we are. Because when we are looked at as victims, we are not seen for the potential, for the effectiveness, for the abilities, for the experiences that we bring to the table. We are marginalized in the process. We must look at women's participation not as a favor to women, but as an ingredient that is absolutely essential to peace and security. Make no mistake, the structural marginalization of women we witness around the globe does not amount to a soft issue that we can afford to put aside while all the other so-called hard issues are being solved. The hard issue we are gathered here to address is precisely this. International peace and security depend on women as much as on men. And international economic growth and prosperity depend as much on women as it does on men. What we actually do, what we do today, tomorrow, next week and the days ahead to change women's role in the world will change the world itself. And I have no doubt that that will be a good outcome. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Ambassador. We are now going to move to our second speaker and then open it up to all of you. Many of you first heard about Tammy Duckworth reading in the press about her mission in Iraq where her Black Hawk helicopter that she was co-piloting went down and she suffered unthinkable injuries. Many of us then listened to Tammy Duckworth during the Obama campaign when she gave her voice and spirit to the call for more assistance and help for our veterans. And today we are all very fortunate that she is part of the Veterans Affairs Administration and bringing those insights, those experiences, and those great ideas to the work of securing and protecting America's women and men veterans. Would you join me in the warmest of welcomes for Tammy Duckworth? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador Bevere. It's really an honor to be sharing the stage with you today. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Well, thank you to the United States Institute for Peace, Women in International Securities, and all the partners who have allowed me to be here today and for putting together this amazing event. I'm really delighted to be here to speak to all of you. I was asked to come today to speak about my experiences as a female leader from the military and now at the Department of Veterans Affairs. But I thought instead that I would like to speak to you about strength and what exactly do we mean by strength? Having served in the military, I served in an organization whose measure of strength is very clear, tanks and guns and helicopters, the steel of our weapons. But I do think that strength is not just the strength of tanks and guns and helicopters, especially to a nation. The greatest privilege I've ever had has been, yes, flying helicopters was a lot of fun, but really serving next to some of the most amazing men and women I've ever had the privilege to serve next to. And really, the most that I learned in the military was the strength of my own character, the strength of determination, the strength of resolve, and the strength that America presented to the world. And that strength, oftentimes we do rely on our tanks and guns and helicopters, but really the strength of our military, the military that I served, were the people. When my unit served in so many different humanitarian missions, so whenever we got out of our aircraft, whether it was in NATO exercises in Iceland or Egypt or humanitarian missions in Guyana where we built schools and hospitals in the Amazon, the strength of my unit was the diversity of our crew, and the fact that we treated each other with respect and admiration. And when you looked at the crew of a helicopter unit in my National Guard unit, and somebody would say, well, who's in charge of that crew? The men would immediately say, Tammy, she's the highest ranking officer, and they would say, that little Chinese girl? I'm from the Midwest, so all the guys in my unit were like six feet tall of Nordic origin. It's that Nordic American stock out there in northern Illinois, and there was me. I'm also two inches taller than I used to be, because when you lose both your legs, you can be any height you want. And they said, the dog said, how tall were you? I said, am I held to that? And they said, no, no. So I tried 5'10 for a while, it didn't work. I'm now 5'8, I used to be 5'6, it's great. I can look people more right in the eyes, you know? But the strength of our unit was the respect we had for one another. The fact that we had an African American crew chief, and when people wanted to tour our aircraft and they came to me thinking, you know, I was the highest ranking person asking my permission, and the guys were asking my permission to do things as I was the highest ranking officer. I would say, well, you have to talk to Sergeant Jones, because it's his aircraft. He lets me borrow it from time to time, but I promise not to break it. And he was the African American crew chief, or our Latino door gunner. That's the strength of our unit was the respect and the teamwork that we had among each other. And I'm really alive today because of the crew of my aircraft and the fact that we stuck together. And I think that's what you're doing here today, is we're sticking together to push for an ideal and push for a goal. Before I joined the military, I worked for Rotary International. Many of you may be aware of it. It's a social service network of clubs international in scope. And the last thing that I did at Rotary International before I was deployed to Iraq was I was able to help reestablish a Rotary Club in Afghanistan, the first one in Kabul since 1973. And when I was helping these Rotarians in Afghanistan establish this first club, one of the things they had to do was decide who was going to be the first club president. And they selected a woman. And we were all astonished by this. Having them having just emerged from decades of Taliban rule, women having been shut in the homes. And I asked the club members and most of the ones that we were corresponding with were men. And I said, well, why are you choosing a woman? We think it's wonderful, but we're quite surprised by this. And they said, well, you see, because the women have been shut up for decades, they're the only ones that we for sure know don't have blood on their hands and have not collaborated. And they were the only ones that we could agree on to truly be leaders. And the first female president of the Rotary Club of Kabul did an amazing job. And actually turned it into a conduit and a partner with Care International and other organizations to be the main source of aid coming into Afghanistan at that time. And I think about the strength of this woman who did not have access for so many years and for so many years continued to display compassion and determination and did everything that she could. And then when the opportunity was there, stepped forward immediately to take leadership and to move forward for her people. One of the first things that the Rotary Club of Kabul did was partner with, and I love, this is the international nature of so many not-for-profits. It was the Rotary Club in California that had the funds that worked together with the Rotary Club in Pakistan in order to get funds and expertise into Afghanistan. This very early days, this was 2003, and they decided that they wanted to build schools for girls in some of the villages in Afghanistan. And the Rotary Club of Kabul was going to be at the forefront of this. And the day came for them to do the dedication ceremony for this amazing school for girls. And you have to picture this image of villagers on a dusty mountainside, government officials there, U.S. military officials there, wealthy Rotarians from the United States, Afghani Rotarians, mostly men, a few women there, how intimidating and impressive a sight this must have been to the villagers. And they're all giving speeches about how much money was being spent and how much money had been raised and they were here to help these local people and they were going to build this school for girls. And I think about the strength that existed at that time in a local villager mother. And she was on the side, along with all the other villagers, watching this grand ceremony, and she did an amazing thing. She stepped forward, put aside one of the female Rotarians, and very quietly whispered something in her ear. And what she said was this, you can build the school, but I would never send my daughter to school here. It's not because I don't want her to go to school, but it's because we need water and it takes her three hours per round trip to go fetch water. And my family can't survive without water, so how can I send her to school if she spends at least six hours a day fetching water? What we need is a well. And I think of the strength that this Afghani mother, who faced with this assemblage of officials, stepped forward and found the one way that she could to get the message across to help her daughter, because she really wanted her daughter to go to school. And so we built a well so that the girls didn't have to walk three hours round trip each day at least to fetch water. And that is strength, because I think that is far more courage than it took me to climb into an helicopter after many years of training. I don't know that I would have had the courage in that instance of having been oppressed, having been not allowed to have a voice, and yet to still out of love for one's child step forward. So when we talk about leadership and strength, sometimes leadership comes in different ways. It's not the country with the most guns and tanks and helicopters always. And I'm not apologizing for the strength of my nation and the strength of the military. I am proud of what I did in the military and I will defend my nation. But I also think that the strength of this nation and the strength of many nations around the world is our conviction and our morality and our ideals and our belief in democracy and our belief in equality and opportunity for everyone. And that is the true strength. And that is why it is so important for everyone in this room to when you leave this conference and you go forward, continue the important work that so many of you have been doing far before I ever came on the scene. Because somewhere there's a mother in a village who just wants a better life for her child. And she may not have the steel of an M16, but she's got the steel and the courage of love for her child. And she will step forward on shaky legs and confront those in power because she will if given the opportunity and the access because she sees a female leader somewhere speak her mind so that she can get the help that she needs. And I really think that's what you're doing today. And when we talk leadership, we're not talking, at least I'm not talking about my ability to be as tough as the guys and swear like the guys and all the things that I had to do to get ahead in the military back when I, you know, being the only woman in Amio unit. Let me tell you.  And they were not always the right thing to do. Sometimes it's about making the choices that come from who you are as a person. I tell this story and it's a little bit of a funny story, but when I first became a company commander, and this is my lesson to the midshipmen, but when someday you take command, I was a very young commander in Army helicopter units, especially in the National Guard. Oftentimes the men are warren officers who have been flying for 30, 40 years. I had Vietnam veterans in my unit and I came marching on as a 28-year-old and I was going to take charge of this unit. First female, first Asian, all of that stuff. And I lived in Chicago. It's pretty cold in Chicago in the wintertime. And I decided that I was going to have hot cocoa for my men to drink before we went out on missions. And as they were preparing the aircraft and they were coming back and forth, you don't want to give them anything with caffeine because you fly in such tight formations sometimes. 20,000-pound aircraft, 30 feet between your rotor blades sometimes if you're doing extremely tight formations. We rarely did that, but if you were, you don't want the jitters. So I had hot cocoa out for my men and I was the first person to do that. And the other company commanders, of course, immediately seized on this like piranhas and started calling me the mommy company commander. And I took that remark in exactly the way that was meant as an insult and a pejorative. I didn't want to be the mommy company commander.  And so I took away the hot cocoa. And you know what? My readiness rates went down. The ability of my men to perform their mission went down. And we weren't meeting our targets and our missions exactly on time. Because it was taking them that much longer to work on the aircraft because they were cold. It was taking them that much longer to hit their marks. And I realized that the hot cocoa was making my men deadlier. So out came the hot cocoa and my guys were back on track. And the heck with being called the mommy company commander. But that insight that I had, that instinct that I had to take care of my men came from me being a woman. It didn't come from me being a guy and it wasn't about who could out tough the other guy. I thought I'm cold. I could use a cup of hot cocoa. I'm sure they could too. And so in my case, the strength that I found in myself was the strength to listen to my own instincts and bring that insight forward and to use that to accomplish my mission. And that's really what I urge you to do when you're talking to other women leaders and when you're mentoring women leaders is to listen to who they are because women as leaders bring a very important insight to the table. They bring an important component of strength and wisdom to any negotiation. We are a world of men and women. We are not a world of just men or just women. We need to be working together and to bring our different instincts together to achieve the goals that we want to achieve. Just as I did not get forward in my career only based on female mentors, I would never have gotten anywhere because I was often the only woman in a unit. It was the men who mentored me, the men who had the insight and the wisdom and the compassion to reach out to a young officer and help me grow and teach me. We also need to listen to both sides and we need to not be afraid to be who we are as women and as leaders and not be afraid of the strength that we have and not be afraid to see strength in what others may view as weakness and not accept their labels for what might be weak and instead turn those weaknesses into an advantage and into the ability to be deadlier in whatever mission you choose to be. So I say again that we as a people are strong, not because of our guns and our tanks and our helicopters, but we are strong because of the steel of our determination, the steel of our ability to be compassionate when compassion is hard to find, the steel of our willingness just as that Afghani mother had to in the face of our own fears on shaking legs and with quivering voice still step forward to say what is important to us and what we see as the truth. And so I thank you for letting me be here today. I urge you to go forward with steel in your spine, steel in your heart, strength in everything that you do, and let's get this done because it's time to stop being surprised that our daughters are fully capable of doing their jobs and fighting for freedom and fighting for equality. They've been doing it, they're doing it, and they will continue to do it, and we cannot succeed without each other, men and women. Thank you for letting me be here today. Thank you. I hope this is on. Thank you very much for that wonderful talk. I would like to open the microphones that are positioned on each side of the room and encourage you to not be shy. I think we've been encouraged here to use our voices and we'll take some questions for our guests. I'm looking either for a hand or somebody at the brave soul that I see lining up. Yes, we'll start in the middle here. And if you tell us a little bit about who you are, sure. While you're making your way there, let me start. If there's a gentleman there, go ahead and then we'll take the lady in pink following you. No. Let's raise the volume on the microphone. No. Okay, David, you're going to have to shout. You talk in a little bit more depth about what the U.S. is doing and will be doing in Eastern DRC. I mentioned that briefly, but you didn't talk about it at much length. Okay, the Eastern DRC, what the U.S. is planning to do, and that question is for Ambassador Revere. Well, it's both planning to do and continuing to do. As I think many of you, if not all of you know, the secretary went to the DRC several months ago now and saw firsthand the magnitude of the catastrophe that continues there and has been working at all levels politically in terms of development and the kind of resources that can be brought to bear to those who are suffering so much, as well as in terms of trying to create a justice system that can begin to deal with the impunity, which is a huge part of the problem. None of these deeds go punished and we've got to have a system that begins to work better. So there is a process in place to explore and work through the possibilities of some sort of mixed chamber system of justice that can be brought in and based, both as something that is part of the DRC's government as well as support from the outside to begin to rectify that situation. There are ongoing efforts for better delivery of services to deal with the whole range of trauma and restorative efforts to those who are suffering. There are political efforts going on in terms of discussions with the people who have the authority both in the country and outside the country to turn things around. There are steps being taken with respect to conflict minerals as legislation becomes enforced and implemented. There are efforts being made to find a way to pay the soldiers in the DRC who don't get paid and as a result pillage and do horrific things. We've even been exploring ways through mobile banking to try to rectify that situation. So this is not a magic bullet. One thing will solve the problems there. It requires a range of actions and that is exactly what we are pursuing. Range of actions, political, judicial, supportive of the women who are suffering so much in so many ways and I must say on that score there has been a growing although still I think fledgling coming together of both the women in DRC with some who suffer through conflicts themselves to begin to create that kind of cadre of increased NGO activity and leadership. So it is a full range of efforts that's being made and hopefully we will begin one day soon to turn around this terrible armed conflict that's been going on for far too long. Thank you. Second question. Can you hear me now? Yes. I'm Etsy Wertheim. 33 years ago I was the first female political appointee at the Navy. I was deputy undersecretary and I used that as a metric for how long it takes to get the kind of change we're looking for. What it means is we have to work really hard. I mean this is two generations to get to this point. What women bring to the party is their ability to share, to collaborate and to bring other people in. If you work from the bottom up you get much quicker acceptance for the ideas of what you're wanting to do. I want to congratulate you all but I think you have to recognize we're going to have to be conscious of the emotional needs of men as women move forward and you have to take that into account in terms of how you're going to handle that. We all need to work together. We need a much stronger desire to be in charge and we have to teach them how to be more collaborative. So again, thank you all very much. I think of you as my children or my grandchildren and it's just wonderful to see where we are today. Thank you. Thank you. So in response to that I want to say that as women become leaders and take more leadership positions around the world the important thing is not to become male leaders. That you become who you are and a leader at the same time. If you become a male leader, if you take on that persona so completely then you're not bringing anything new or anything of value to the table because they're already male leaders. And so stick with who you are but be a leader in your own way. And that's not just gender but it's also cultural as well. And I find that we are all more successful when there are many different viewpoints than a single one. My question. My name is Teresa DeLanges. I just finished serving in Afghanistan for two and a half years with UNIFEM. So I really understand the importance and the moment of opportunity for a 1325 action plan for the U.S. internationally. My question though is about the use of 1325 action plans domestically and if there will be any approaches to using 1325 in the United States for things like encouraging women's political participation and their economic self-sufficiency and what role will civil society and grassroots women's organizations have in terms of feeding into that plan? Well I think one of the most important domestic considerations is how we effectively function in our own government to ensure the full range of implementation that's required. And I think in many ways it's the hardest of challenges because it requires in many ways different ways of thinking than we have in the past recognizing that there are other avenues to pursue our common cause. And we have to do a lot of work within government in an interagency way. And I think to the extent that that is something that is required of all of us, what civil society does, what our political system does to ensure that that goes forward is extremely important. So the role that we play within this own country about the role that women will have in peace and security and how we will implement that around the world is a vital link. What I'm going to suggest we do is take the final three questions in order and then get responses and closing statements so that we can stay on schedule. We have many speakers who have arrived for the next panel. So let us quickly in staccato fashion hear the three questioners and we will try to incorporate your answers in our closing thoughts. Thank you. My name is Valérie Rozou. I am a senior fellow at the USIP and thank you very much for your outstanding presentations. I'm grateful. My question goes to you Ambassador and to each of you, the three of you. Ambassador, you explicitly refer to reconciliation programs in your speech. Could you tell me what you mean by reconciliation? I guess at the political level and my question is also for each of you. What is reconciliation for you? What does it mean? Okay reconciliation we will come to. Okay now it's on. Actually I'll piggyback off of that question. I actually got back from Afghanistan a couple months ago where I was working with the force reintegration cell on reintegration and reconciliation issues there from an ISAF perspective. And I was actually confronted with the question as a young woman in a crowd of mostly Afghan civilian and military folks why are you pushing the issue of women's issues with us which was an awkward position for me to be in but I do still feel very strongly in and I agree with the sentiments you expressed earlier Ambassador but it's a question for mostly the Ambassador but if anyone else wants to comment this would be great as well. How would you respond to how can we assert that we want to put forward women's rights as an important issue while remaining culturally sensitive. I got the feedback that it seemed insulting and that we were pushing our own cultural values as opposed to just standing up for women's rights so what your feedback is on that would be wonderful to hear. Terrific and the third question. Thank you. My name is Jean Cassongo and I'm from Congo. I would be more comfortable if I speak in French because what is there need to be speaking in my own language. My question for the Ambassador. Thank you. Je ne suis pas satisfait de la réponse vous avez donné aux messieurs pour la leste du Congo. Vous avez parlé du gouvernement qui arrange les judiciaires au Congo. Au Congo il n'y a pas de justice. Au Congo il n'y a même pas des législatives. La femme au Congo est laissée par elle-même. Alors quand vous parlez de la sécurité pour le Congo il faut commencer d'abord à sécuriser. Il n'y a pas de sécurité. Au Congo nous n'avons pas l'armée républicaine. L'armée que nous avons est le mixage de rébelles et tout le monde est rébellé de toute façon. On ne sait pas ce que vous dites pour le Congo. La résolution 1325 ne concerne pas la femme comme laissée. C'est pour les femmes de partout dans le monde mais pas la femme comme laissée. So I know that in all of the United States Institute of Peace and in this room there will be somebody who is going to help us. Do you want me to translate? Yes of course. It's quite brief. There is no, it's for you ambassador. You mentioned your help and the help of the United States in the Congo but she would disagree. She would mention the fact that so far there is no justice in the Congo, there is no security at all in the Congo so what do you mean when you say that the US is going to help Congo? Okay and the resolution is not for the Congolese women but for all the other 31. But it's not for the Congolese women so far. Not for the Congolese women to what? To reconcile. So I'm going to let Tammy Duckworth respond to the reconciliation question and to her broader closing thoughts and to give the last word to Ambassador Vavir and we will try to wrap together these issues of what is reconciliation. Secondly, how do we avoid foisting or preaching what we think are equal rights or inclusion of women onto a culture if there is resistance from the women themselves in any way, shape or form. And then the final question that you raised. So let me start here. I truly believe that we need to grow leaders and female leaders around the world. If that Afghani woman in my story did not have a local Afghani female leader to turn to her voice would never have been heard. And we as nations that come with great intentions and resources into nations like Afghanistan and when you are the only woman there as a young foreign worker in that nation we have to grow those leaders, those local leaders so that we can get a more culturally sensitive nuance to what we're doing so that we understand what the true need is and also so that we can reach true reconciliation because after all many of us are leaving these nations that we are working in and it is the people there that will have to live with whatever solution that we come up with or fail at and we cannot implement these solutions without the leadership of local women who need to be part of formulating that plan and that reconciliation and so I go back to my message which is whatever we do we need to involve local leaders and we also need to provide the mentoring and the access and the recognition of the value of the voices of women in these areas to be leaders in that group. There may not be female leaders when you first get there but by encouraging and pulling some in you give them status and you give them the ability to speak up and then that status will remain after you're gone. Just to follow up on that reconciliation really has to happen at all levels and it really fundamentally has to happen at the level that Tammy spoke about because if it doesn't happen from the ground up whatever is decided at the top is not going to hold and so we have to have the kind of processes and programs at that level to bring people together to reconcile between each other and that usually happens over economic possibilities over a better life, over the things that are going to change the circumstances that will make conflict be something that's part of the past not something that's embraced as continuing into the future. So it is an important process that really has to happen at all levels but it will not hold what's decided at the negotiating table if it does not get fully implemented at that grassroots level. In terms of cultural imposition or going contrary to cultural mores I always say that what I say as a representative of the United States in Afghanistan is what I hear from Afghan women it is not something that's being imposed on them it is something that they are saying to us be there for us, stand with us do not abandon us. Our religion in many ways has been hijacked to condone taking girls out of school or to condone oppression or to condone the lack of participation that is not who we are. So it is not doing something that is contrary but doing it in a way that is sensitive but it is also focused completely on the dignity of the human being and the kind of embracing of the role that women are seeking to have not exactly in the same way that we may implement in the United States but in terms of their own worth their own dignity, their own futures in their own country. Well I want to take this opportunity to thank both of our guests today and all of you. We are going to give you I think a stretch break and then we are going to hear some international perspectives and that will lead to Admiral Mullen later this morning and again thank you to these two distinguished speakers and a wonderful beginning to this event. Thank you.


Hi, I'm Colin Foster. I'm an academic at the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University. In this short video I'm going to set out an approach to professional development that is based on reflecting on small things that happen in the classroom. I call this armchair responses to classroom events. I'm going to suggest this is a useful thing to do. So sometimes people are critical of things that happen in armchairs and think that they're not relevant or useful to anything that takes place in the real world. But we all find those points in lessons, I think, where you wish you could press a pause button. Something happens, a student says something perhaps or does something and you wish that you could pause the lesson and really think about what you're going to do and maybe discuss with other people. And the question for me is what might I say or do that might be more helpful than the first thing that comes to mind? Because in the busyness of a classroom often all we can really do is just react to whatever happens in the way that seems reasonable at the time. And so what I'm suggesting is it might be too late for this occasion but to look back at some of those things and think about what other options would be is helpful for our development as teachers. And I'm really influenced by John Mason here in his book The Discipline of Noticing Researching Your Own Practice, which I think is an amazing book. And if you haven't read that book I think you get a lot out of it. So this isn't about beating ourselves up and saying that we did the wrong thing, it's not what should I have done. And if we're thinking about someone else's lesson and someone else has told us something that happened or we've seen something in that lesson, it's not about saying what would I have done if I'd been the teacher, what would I have done, or I might have done exactly the same thing or possibly something worse than what the teacher did. The point is what might I wish to have done if I'd been the teacher and if I'd had the luxury of hindsight and sitting in an armchair to really think about it. And I think the aim here is to just expand our sense of possibilities and to think more deeply about what's going on in the mathematics and in the teaching. How might I inform my perspective on my future teaching? So are you ready for a very quick armchair workout? So I'm going to give an example of something. So often it's things that students have said. So I was watching a lesson where students were calculating areas of triangles and the phrase that was going around all the time was half the base times the height. And then a student, I heard a student say, is it half of the base times by the height or is it half of the whole thing, base times height? I wonder how might you respond to that from the comfort of your armchair having time to think about it? And maybe try and come up with at least three different ways to respond. Because what I think is quite useful, if you only have one thing you can do then you'll probably do it. But if you have more than one thing you can do then maybe you can select whatever seems the most helpful from those different possibilities. And maybe even get to the point in the classroom where something happens and in your mind is not just one thing that you could do but more than one thing so that you're selecting whatever seems the most helpful. So do you want to take a moment to pause the video and think about what you might do and maybe a few possibilities. So I've given you a moment there to have a think of different possibilities and here are some things that are cared to me. So you might say well don't worry about it, it doesn't matter. You can half the base or you can half the whole thing or you can half the height. You still get the same answer, maybe just tell them. You could ask them to find out what their neighbour thinks about it. You could invite them to work it out both ways, maybe with some numbers and say see what happens if you try it both ways and compare the answers. You could ask them why we've got that half there in the first place, where does it come from, what's it doing there. That might tell us what it is that needs halving. You might want to draw some pictures. You might say this is all about priority of operations and start talking about mid-mass or whatever you call it. You might think this has got something to do with associativity of multiplication and you might want to bring in that term and talk about that. Or you might think well actually maybe this suggests that something has gone wrong beforehand and ideally students wouldn't be asking this question so maybe you want to not start from here. I wonder if any of those are any similarities with your ideas. Obviously if we were face to face in a room together this would be the point where I would be asking you to talk about that. But we can't do that. So what did I think about? Well I thought about ways in which these things are written and the difference between having a half multiplied by something or dividing by two and perhaps when you're multiplying by half it kind of looks like it's happening at the front because if you do a big long line over a two you can show sort of more of the symmetry that's going on. But you still have this issue about what's getting divided by two here. Is it just the base? Is it just the height or is it everything? And you can see why students might be puzzled by this. They might say even if you'd ask them to do the calculations and see if it makes a difference they might be quite surprised. They might say how can these be equal? On the left hand side you're only dividing, sorry on the left hand side you're dividing by everything. On the right hand side it's just the six and we didn't halve the four. So how can they possibly be equal? Or you could think of it this way where you've changed the order and you're saying if I halve the six and multiply by four that's the same as halving the four and multiplying by six. Why should that be? So these are potentially quite puzzling things for students. You could think about associativity of multiplication. What kind of a thing is associativity? Is it a rule that you just say please follow this rule? Or is it perhaps an axiom or just a fact? Is there something to understand or is it just is? It doesn't work for division so it can't be that obvious perhaps if it works for multiplication but not for division. And then there's confusions around priority of operations isn't there? Maybe the student thinks that if you're multiplying it's the same level of bid mass or whatever mnemonic you might be using and so you have to do the first multiplication first. You have to do a half times six because you're going left to right but you do get the same answer if you do the six times four and then multiply by a half. Or maybe they're attending to the word half of six times four. Maybe if you've got bod mass then maybe they've been told that the O in bod mass is of and therefore that has to happen before any multiplication. So I was thinking about where else does this happen? Sometimes students will do four times four is 16 so point four times point four is point sixteen they might say point sixteen instead of point one six which is right but with three times three equals nine you can't do the same thing point three times point three isn't point nine and they might think well I've divided all the numbers by ten I've scaled it all down why doesn't it work and that feels like that's a similar issue because point three times three would be point nine but point three times point three wouldn't be and maybe diagrams is what we need so you can take a triangle get another one identical one reflect it and shove it back and that kind of looks like a parallelogram is every triangle half a parallelogram because the error of a parallelogram is BH and so maybe we can see the thing that we need to halve is the whole thing the whole BH but we can think about that in other ways we can think about the triangle and we can think about halving just the base and keeping the height the same that's going to halve the area we could think about just halving the height and that's going to halve the area as well but if we do both half the base and half the height we're going to quarter the area so maybe there are some ways of thinking visually that are helpful here but I think the point for me isn't about finding one magic best answer that's going to be right for every student but expanding our notion of what's possible educating ourselves about possibilities trying to see things a bit more from a student's perspective getting around that curse of knowledge that we often have that things might seem obvious to us but don't seem obvious to students seeing how things are maybe more difficult than they might appear at first glance and it's easy to find examples to look at I've got loads and loads of examples of things like this that I've spent time thinking about keeping a notepad in the classroom and jot down just those small things that happen I think sometimes people try to reflect on whole lessons and for me that's really too big a unit to say much that's useful but reflecting on just a sentence the students said or one thing that they did can be really helpful and there are some great articles in mathematics teaching the ATM journal which often describe with enough detail things that happened in classrooms or with students in other situations that you can reflect on in a really fruitful way so I have fun doing that I commend that to you as a great way to develop professionally and if you want some homework I've got another one that you might like to think about here's something a student said in a lesson on directed numbers if two minuses make a plus why don't two pluses make a minus think about maybe how you would respond to that and think about multiple different ways of responding and what some of the issues might be for the student and I found that very stimulating and interesting I hope some of that's been useful and thank you


TLO what's poppin? We are on twitch. We are not live man, but you go leave a like and comment subscribe turn on the post notification Bells let's continue to grow the family for Chicago Right above me man if we do go live and you happen to miss it highlights might be on this page Or they might be on the main page. Oh, no, no, I'm just trying to figure stuff out Don't forget we do got merch got mine on you get me and we got the patreon we post Monday through Friday, man Anything that doesn't go on YouTube goes on here. What's crazy is I've Tried to record two videos for today, and they both got blocked both hour-long blocked One was the documentary on poor kids in the UK and the other one was traffic cops It's just shocking that traffic cops got blocked That's why I'll anyway. This is Jimmy the giant UK vs. US culture Okay Let me see if I see any cap Britain and America are like twins separated from birth one was raised in fine aristocracy And the other was abandoned at a gas station and told good luck these two great nations have dominated the world both economically militarily and culturally everyone in Britain got in a big old boat And we set sail and we robbed at this was unfair fetched everyone in the world What's having spawned from the same origins they went off in their own two directions becoming both very similar and very different Yeah, we all agree. We all should think that we're great There's no reason for you to not think that you're great. I've started to get this feeling that I'm totally Totally fucked.   Well the British comedian would want to play the folk singer Comedy is a great way of revealing a cultures ideas so American comedy and British comedy They're very different American comedies always tend to be built around the idea of like optimism and positivity be curious Not judgmental I like There's typically always the motion that things can get better You can see this in the character Leslie nope in pox and rex. I can do it. I can crush him I promise and Typically in an American comedy the cool guy is the main character. So, you know how to take the reservation You just don't know how to hold Now let's compare that to British comedies typically the idea in a British comedy is that life will always disappoint you We need to have a talk you finishing with me. We weren't ever really Oh, I see you not around but here see you That's crazy that that's how that started and they had a whole kid at by the end Secondly, you'll never make it in life or your dreams and hopes and optimum I feel like I've seen this before but it's only been out two weeks But I like it feels eerily similar to something I watched is ultimately futile at this dream You and I own this skyscraper office block on the south bank and above us on top of a skyscraper in 50-foot high neon lettering Are the initials of trotters? Independent traders just above your reading is the word Tim Another idea that is shown is that you can always expect the worst thing to happen. So Right, thank you very much. Do you like it?   I'm afraid they're not for sale Now for you want they're not for sale So this leads us to our first key cultural difference That is American idealism versus British realism They said are you saying we're stuck in La La land why you focus on what's really going on me telling you this I'm gonna show you it through Expressions Americans will say things like this. Well, you know what they say the scars the limits You miss 100% of the shots. You don't take where that's facts You that is facts is in Britain will say things like go home for the best but expect the worst, right? That is also facts as well, though. We literally have a thing called sod's law will can go wrong will go wrong And then let's say you have a See, maybe that's why I identify as a British man because I believe both of those statements that bro See situation where something is looking good. You've got an opportunity Americans will say when life gives you lemons make lemonade or as we'll literally say well Oh boy, don't count your chickens before they hatch And then finally if you're in America and your whole life is is going terribly is looking awful Americans say well, it's always dark as before dawn In England if everything's going well, we'll say yeah, crikey, crikey in it. Yeah, mate But this is just the calm before the storm. So you might be wondering the same thing Why why do we have these very distinct attitude differences? Oh calm before the storm is not the same thing It's gonna get worse is what they say in the UK Before we go any further with this video Colt Add fumes natural delicious really like 100,000 ha fumes today. I do our code and use the You get your journey back today. Anyway back to the video Now stand aside worthy adversary Here's but a scratch a lot of the British attitude can really be pointed to our very long and brutal history We've had tons of wars and plagues and religious upheavals all of these things have kind of led to British people sort of having Doubt and distrust into the future. Yeah, it might be going well now But tomorrow a swarm of Belgians might come over and behead us Understanding our history gives us this Cautiousness to being too optimistic about the future as well You have to combine the religious attitudes of the Church of England The Church of England was very much a believer in the idea of original sin the idea that humans have fallen from God We're all inherently bad Although we do have the ability to be somewhat redeemed. This has engineered a sort of attitude of cautious optimism.  There's 365 days of 165 left. It's 160 166 days of no rain That's like winter in Chicago. It's like 199 days of winter You could literally have a week of sunshine in England and think you know what this Saturday Let's go for a picnic with the family and then because your dad showed some optimism in the weather God will smite you with a torrential downpour for the next month And so this Wait, was that real or a skit? General attitude can be completely contrasted with American optimism and that stems from Ultimately, if you're the type of person to leave Britain a established nation that you know has infrastructure Etc hop on a boat travel for weeks months across Uncharted waters to arrive on uncharted lands to do that You need at least an ounce of optimism Look water lands in the distance. See mate.   I'm tired of this And it's after discovering this new land, which was a crazy thing to go and do America then went through two great Awakenings, I don't know what happened in the first one if they just hit snooze or something But the first great awakening was in 1730 to 1740 and then the second one in 1795 all the way up to 1835 So what happened in this was that the religious attitudes of America had evolved new ideas around like self-improvement The idea that everyone has the ability to shape their own destiny in their own future humans can be better They can improve society. They can make and create things that make the world better They had strong convictions around the importance of working hard as well as very pragmatic attitudes The idea that things should be done well and efficiently these last two led to a very strong cultural focus on capitalism and efficiency in business Which all of this manifested itself in the idea of the American dream No, shall I say it that American dream does not apply to everybody but continue American dream is just the ability to achieve anybody can do it But you're not just gonna get it cause you want it. You got to be willing to work hard You got to apply a lot of hard work. You got to apply faith. You got to apply persistence.   Why are Britain so pessimistic? I mean we literally pessimistic and optimistic He had the biggest empire on earth. Why are we so deflated? And so that leads us to a very core cultural difference between England and America and that is class structure I was brought up in a poor family You know really we had nothing really if I could get into position that someone had people in I would like to be any of these lords or ladies or peers or you're talking about these 10 class of people Persons family started with William the Conqueror in Britain the idea of class and where you stand Socially has been a very core part of our identity until very recently as a Brit Your whole life was decided before you were born these differences between the upper class and the working class has existed through most of British history There's like this idea that the upper class are pure blood. They were like chosen by God. They had divine rights They literally referred to themselves as blue-blooded and they were much better than the grunts work in the coal mines to power their beautiful machinery And so there's always been this attitude in England of like judgment between the classes the upper class and the working class Hate each other and class is interesting because it's not just defined by wealth We give dinner parties two or three times a week This enables us to keep in touch with our wide circle of friends We give a wine and cheese do once a month. This enables us to do it on the cheap Her mother comes around Saturday nights and drinks my Guinness This enables her to get drunk for nothing Class is much deeper than simply wealth It's the accent you're talking the way you behave the schools that you're educated in if you're from Cambridge school of witchcraft and wizardry versus the community college in shitton literally everything you did would be defined by class I think working class people in general feel this kind of thing Weighing down upon and I can't put it into words of what it is I think people watching this will understand that you feel it pushing you down all the time And so there's this understanding that there isn't much class Mobility if you are lower class even if you got wealthy you could never be upper class There's no way and so this kind of demoralization spawned a attitude in British people that things can't really get that much better I'm always gonna be judged from basically the background that I'm from in America as I explained with the American dream The attitude is that anyone can be anything Americans love the idea of the rags to riches story the underdog archetype that you see in films like I don't think that's true at all I think as a black man in America Yes, you you hear that a lot the old the American dream, but that's not for us Even if we achieve the American dream, we're still gonna be looked at like this and we can't get to that dream unless we have the the the the the The a-ok from somebody. That's not this color. I just want to let's let's clarify that like we have to be To get into a certain room. We got to be let in period And we can still get kicked out of that room. No matter how much money we got This might this might be a little bit cat Pursuit of happiness or the founder class does exist in America, but it is very different You're probably gonna see more things between North and South divides and racial divides But I do as a British person quickly want to make a caveat the British people have never had like outright Defeatism British people will try in life. They'll try very hard, but we just don't like to get our hopes up We are optimistic, but just in a very cautious way like Americans might aspire to be a millionaire CEO of a big tech startup Whilst British people will aspire to one-day shop at Waitrose my wife likes to show me waitress It's the middle class. I aspire to one day put all my bills on auto pay That's a different type of wealth option They like to drop it into conversation It's just a waitress just so the explanation on the class system leads us to another point which is politeness and expressiveness Everything okay with the food. Oh, yes, lovely. Thank you I would say British people are kind of overly aware of being rude and impolite which has some benefits You know, we're very we treat people really well We we hate to be awkward and we like people to feel relaxed But it can cause British people to take way too much shit and not stand up for themselves October 10th I'm like that too though. I don't want to create awkwardness, but you can't stop You got one time to think I'm to think I'm P. U. S. Y.  I slapped you and you want me to hit you on the other cheek Americans will tolerate less bullshit, which is a good thing But then sometimes they can be a bit rude and a bit overly confrontational I have waited exactly five minutes. It is a bit.  You know saying so I can get overly I can work Incorrectly analyze the situation big Mac. How long do you need difference when it comes to being polite probably stems from the British reserve and American individualism British people are very reserved typically in public. We all sit like this and all very quiet And we don't laugh too loud on me.  We don't have a lot of space and we're all on top of each other So we have a strong respect for people's purse Hey the flag in my peripheral vision tweaked me out Small space Okay And then like some of it is the fact that the upper-class social attitudes probably trickled down to the working class We're always seen as being a lower-class thing to speak loudly and have bad manners and be overly confrontational And so British people have the attitude of a stiff upper lip don't show emotion and don't complain about your problems All right, well that was fucking scary. Where as Americans it that that is not the case This is my right as much as it is yours. This is my land as much as it is yours to Americans I am important. I am the center of the universe after the greater weight Note you did not see any black people doing that in American in there was a strong focus on individualism Emotionality and expression is a good thing being outgoing and extroverted is a very American thing British people are very introverted Americans are after things like the Bill of Rights have a strong focus on their personal rights and freedoms and liberty in America All men are created equal and so they don't have this I Freedoms and Liberty in America All men are created equal We know that's cat. We all know that's cat prohibition slavery. We know that ain't real now It's unfortunate that we'd live in times like this, but you know just recently I got caught the n-word. So it's like This ain't for me Salute though All men are created equal and so they don't have this idea that you're better than me or I'm better than you but birthright We're all humans. We all exist and we all deserve respect and so this leads to politics and the attitude toward authority This is an illegal detention at this point.   I'd say one thing man. There's white America and there's black America and he is talking about why America I'm just gonna say it and I'm gonna say it I'm not from the sugar coat what I'm saying right now. He's like and indeed UK. That doesn't exist This color UK and that color you in America. You got two different America's Is as well Americans are very rebellious the formation of America was around escaping the Church of England in Britain on the other hand is We do have a trust in our government is waning currently But typically we trust in social order and we don't really make too much of a big deal about infringement of our rights and that's probably because of years of Unquestioned power by monarchs and again the stoicism and the idea of stiff upper lip not complaining too much Not making a big deal. It kind of has led to this polite submissive behavior, which sometimes a bit embarrassing careful So it's hot. Oh, sorry. It might burn yourself. Yeah, sorry. Would you like some salt and pepper? Oh, yeah Sorry, but you can kind of picture the movie scene of a British person American person dealing with authority. Excuse me, sir I'm gonna have to ask you to leave listen here a tough guy.  I'm going to have to ask you to leave Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, that's fine. We'll leave for sure. But darling, you're dead on the restaurant And so of all this you can extrapolate these attitudes and understand different attitudes towards certain issues, you know For instance guns Americans see guns as like a right to protect themselves from the government and other people America's fast food and Subsequent obesity problem has stemmed from the ideas of efficiency and business not wanting to waste time on food Taking too long to cook and then you have things like health care welfare like in Britain We have a pretty strong health care system. Let's not get into that Whereas Americans are far more reserved on bringing Anything into public domain a long waits Especially health care Britain has an obsession with tradition not holding tradition Whereas America have a strong focus on new and innovation Because America's history and their tradition is terrible in products technology by making this and they don't have their own Screen taller but not wider. You can see more of your content without the need to scroll We're making scrolling a thing of the past. And so look I've picked apart British people and American people I've made jokes. I've pointed out some bad things But I want to say and I think this is true Americans and British people have a very deep mutual do one on black America To respect for each other. I think very much these days ever since if you do one on black America you do one on UK vs. USA black USA culture it'd be more similar The war we've had what has been dubbed a special. That's why I think I can rock That's why I think I rock with the UK so much because black relationship I don't know that's a gay thing or something, but whatever as a Brit I can say honestly a lot of y'all might not understand what I'm talking about Really do love Americans. I love being around Americans. I really admire their confidence. They're so easy to don't take me Don't get me wrong man in my eyes. All all people are the same color. I don't even Rock like that, but the realization of it is What I have to talk to they're very warm open demeanors British people can be very reserved at times Excuse me young man is anyone sitting here? No, would you mind if we sat here? No, it's fine. I'm Ronald This is Pammy Actually you forgot to tell us your name Peter Peter It can be pretty depressing talking with British people about the future and your ambitions as Americans all pat on you on the back saying Yeah, you can do it, bro. I think Americans do appreciate British people as well.   We're all seeing the same media constantly I will listen to endless American podcasters telling me to go after my dreams and fix my life or something The idea that the internet is bringing lots of different value systems together and you can kind of choose which one suits you As opposed just the one I go to the UK on that dominates your country But I do wonder are we gonna see less of these interesting differences and are we just gonna become a sort of best of greatest album kind of thing? Let me know in the comments if you want to see more on this topic check out the afters podcast where we talk Yeah We got to address black america And and and you guys are realists over there. We realize that that that is not the same But tll leave a like comment subscribe turn on your post notification bells and go


Hi, my name is Tanu Yakupiti-Age and I work at 350.org. I am a Sri Lankan immigrant to the US.  I'm from an island in South Asia that will face the impacts of rising sea levels over the next many decades. My family came here to the United States from the Philippines in the 70s to give me a better life. The Philippines has seen firsthand the direct impacts of climate destruction, one of the most famous examples being Typhoon Haiyan. As a Filipino-American, I feel a deep responsibility to my family members who live in the Philippines who have experienced and are currently experiencing the impacts of climate change every week and every year. There are typhoons, there are floods, there are mudslides. The United States is largely responsible for these climate disasters. We are one of the biggest culprits of causing climate change through our emissions. And not only that, we have a harmful history and legacy of colonization on the Philippines and on the global south. I'm invested in fighting for climate justice because the climate crisis doesn't pick and choose who it affects. It is inevitably going to affect all of us and impact us in ways that we can't even foresee and imagine. But it's already impacting people who are on the front lines currently. And a lot of those folks are AAPI folks who are living on islands, who are living in communities where they don't have access to clean and safe drinking water or are at threat because of rising sea levels. So we're going to be seeing mass migrations of people over the next many decades and it's already starting, whether it's from parts of India, from Bangladesh, from the Maldives. And so for me, it's really important that we talk about the climate crisis and we talk about it in connection to our communities in South Asia because we're impacted and we are also suffering from the fact that the governments in our countries are mainly right-wing and nationalist governments and so we really have to be pushing for real action on the climate crisis and for real justice for our communities. I feel as an Asian American, I have a unique role to play in ending our country's harmful legacy on the Global South. I think it's a responsibility that I take on in my work but also on a personal level to see how I can reduce my impact in the climate crisis and also urge people within my community, particularly my AAPI community, to be the same thing. We need to join together and be talking about the real impact of this crisis and how we have a role in it.


There are basically two reasons why one language might be more efficient than another. The first reason is that some languages provide more direct control over what precisely goes on in the machine. Having precise control is certainly no guarantee that the programmer will find optimal solutions, but with enough time and effort, good programmers can generally optimize more than even the best compilers and interpreters. The second reason the language might be more efficient than another is that it introduces less overhead. Automatic memory management, for example, requires work, work which must be intermingled amongst the programmer's own code, and hence introduces overhead. Interpretation itself also introduces overhead, as the instructions which read and execute the program source code themselves consume time and memory. Dynamic strongly typed languages also introduce overhead, because every time an operation is performed, the types of the operands must be checked. So high-level languages which use automatic memory management, interpretation, and dynamic typing all introduce overhead, and so generally perform worse than languages which use manual memory management, compilation, and static typing. So code written in Perl, Python, Ruby, and JavaScript generally performs worse than the functionally equivalent code written in C++ and Objective-C. In the middle, we have languages like Java and C-Sharp, which both feature automatic memory management, but use a hybrid of static and dynamic typing, and a combination of compilation and interpretation. So what kind of performance differences are we talking about? Well, that varies greatly depending upon what the code does, and of course depending upon how well we write the code. In the average case, code written in the slower languages like JavaScript or Python runs probably 10 to 100 times slower than the equivalent code written in C or C++. In many cases, however, the performance difference may be negligible. For tasks in which the CPU spends much of its time waiting for input-output devices, like when reading data off a hard drive, the time the CPU spends actually executing code may account for a trivial part of the overall performance. By analogy, if it takes 16 hours to fly to Australia, a 40-minute walk to the hotel doesn't really add much travel time compared to a 10-minute drive. As for memory usage, again, overhead is added by automatic memory management, interpretation, and dynamic typing. The interpreter itself, of course, consumes memory as the program runs, and garbage collection and dynamic typing both require storing additional metadata about the objects in our code. Garbage collectors, for example, usually work by counting the number of references to each object, and these reference counts take up some amount of memory. Aside from this overhead, the more direct control of memory which programmers exercise in languages like C and C++ allows programmers to minimize their usage of memory in ways they simply can't using languages like Python or JavaScript. Now, what about portability? What is it about a language that allows you to run your code on different platforms without extra work for each platform? Portability comes down to basically four issues. First, different makes-it-processor generally have different instruction sets, and the machine code written for one instruction set doesn't work for another, so the assembly program written for an x86 processor, of course, doesn't run on an ARM processor. Second, different operating systems have different system calls and different APIs for invoking those system calls. Third, not all computers have processors, operating systems, and input output devices with the same capabilities. Obviously then, our code cannot make use of capabilities which a system we wish to run it on doesn't have. And fourth, because of the first three reasons, library code doesn't necessarily run on all platforms. If a library which our code needs doesn't work on a platform, then our code won't work on that platform either. So now, how do we write a program to run on different platforms without writing separate versions of the program for each platform? Well, the first issue, differing instruction sets, is pretty much solved by using any language other than assembly. To run on multiple operating systems, we can avoid invoking system calls directly and instead use a library as intermediary. Instead of directly invoking system calls, we invoke library code which invokes those system calls for us, and so it's left up to the library to make the right calls. The library itself, of course, must have different code for each operating system, but by using the library, our own code can be the same for all platforms. Differences in capabilities, however, quite often, simply have no workaround. For example, if a target platform doesn't support a hardware device, there's simply no way your program can use that device on that platform. In other cases though, your target platform's capabilities diverge only in non-essential details. For example, the file system on Windows broadly resembles the file system on Unix, but some details differ, such as their support for file locks. Your program might then work around these differences by simply avoiding the capabilities which both systems do not share in common. Alternatively, program features which rely upon certain capabilities might simply be emitted on the target platforms which do not support them. A so-called functional language is a language geared for programming in the functional style. The category includes several well-known but not very popular languages, including Scheme, Haskell, Scala, and ML. Another language, Prologue, belongs to an entirely separate paradigm which we didn't mention, called logic programming. To give you an idea of how unpopular logic programming is, Prologue is the only logic programming language anyone's ever heard of, and even it has hardly ever been used outside of academia. A shell language is any language which runs interactively as a command prompt. The user types one line, they hit Enter, and then that line is executed. While shell languages do typically have control flow of functions and variables, the stuff that usually makes up a general purpose programming language, shell languages allow the user to run programs by simply typing their name, and then everything else about the language's syntax and semantics is built around that design decision. The result is that shell languages tend to be awkward and ugly for general purpose use. The Windows shell language is usually just called Windows command prompt. On Unix systems there's a wide variety of shells, though the default on most Linux systems is called bash, which we'll cover in a later unit. Though shell languages are oriented around interactively entering and running commands line by line, shells can be made to execute files of sequential commands. Such a file is called a shell script. The term script in programming has come to mean a program in which most of the real work is farmed out to other programs. The program is a script in the sense that it is giving high level directions, but then the real work is being done by all the other actors. You might occasionally hear some languages described as scripting languages. For instance, using Perl and Python became popular alternatives to writing shell scripts, so many people started calling Perl and Python scripting languages. In recent years, however, Perl, Python, and other dynamic languages have come to be used more and more in the writing of complete programs rather than just small scripts, so in truth the term scripting language is kind of outmoded. So far, every language I've described is a general purpose programming language, which means that you can write code in these languages that does anything code can possibly do. While writing some programs and say bash would be very impractical, it is in principle possible. In contrast, what are sometimes called data languages are not programming languages at all, even though they are forms of code heavily used by programmers. Webpages, for example, are ultimately documents expressed as text in the data language called HTML. XML is another data language. It's pretty much a standard syntax for representing hierarchical data in textual form. By using the common syntax of XML to represent their data, programmers can save themselves a lot of grunt work when reading and writing their data because they can use library code that deals with the XML format. A query language is used to make requests of a database. A database, as we'll discuss in a later unit, is basically a program for storing and organizing large quantities of data. When we write a program that needs to deal with a lot of data, it often makes sense to farm this job out to a database. To then communicate with a database, our program would use a query language like SQL, spelled SQL, which stands for Structured Query Language. A domain-specific language, as the name implies, is designed to solve one particular problem in one specific domain. The term is sometimes applied to anything which isn't primarily meant to be a general-purpose language. So the term can be applied to SQL, HTML, XML, and even shell languages like Bash. Lastly, a graphical language is any language where the code is not expressed as text, but rather as graphics, as something visual, either wholly or in part. There aren't many examples of graphical languages, or at least those examples which do exist often aren't recognized as programming languages. For instance, there are programs which allow you to create a graphical user interface visually rather than having to write all the code by hand. These GUI builders, as they're called, usually generate, from the visual representation, actual code of some programming language, like, say, Java. Still, the graphical representation itself is like a kind of language. So the graphical languages which do exist are data languages, or otherwise domain-specific. While a general-purpose graphical language is conceivable, no one has yet demonstrated that such a thing would be a good idea. It might sound very appealing to get away from just boring text, but the disadvantage is very quickly outweigh the potential merits.


This is the animation minute First up we have a Gora studio that just launched a new platform called a Gora community It's there to provide education content and personalized reviews as well And I'm happy to say that I'm also featured there now I'll be providing material and in the future reviews for that platform as well You can go in there and check out the assets that they have and the current reviewers Which are part of the Gora community all the public reviews will be added to the review library Which is accessible to all for free so go and check it out It's really really cool and speaking of learning animation mentor has now published their 2020 animation mentor students showcase and it's fantastic Job alert as it says here tangent animation is still hiring for all kinds of positions including animators The coalition is also looking for a animator specifically a lead cinematic animator That's right pixel art. We got to show you but Narita boy has always fantastic. Look at this. I love it So good and speaking of pixel art. Here's a really cool short tutorial about animating impacts Combining pixel art with more personal animation here is I'm going to scrub forward Here's a personal thing where you can see middle-year solid and then someone who reimagined it as a 2d clip and if you're watching it, you're gonna hear the running man score nice touch there Speaking of personal animation, this is 14 minutes if you follow the YouTube link But it's absolutely insanity and I love it Next up is this really cool personal piece by Leonardo Which he did for the animation collaborative go and check it out and all the classes that the animacy offers Next up is real cool breakdown of a very quick shot that can be broken down and simplified using a bouncing ball Which leads me to Robert's next tweet talking about bouncing balls always going back to basics being important And I can only a thousand percent agree Very awesome display of turbo turbo is a rake. This is his first quote-unquote commercial. It's really nicely Don't check it out. Come on. So cool Speak of cool the montage in spider-verse here, which is one of my favorite scenes in spider-verse has a really nice thread Explaining why it is so good and why it's important in the movie and the current theme that is represented there to go and check it out It's really really nicely written out and speak of spider-verse the suit has been revealed for the Mars Morales game And when you have it the animation is on twos. I love it John is retweeting this fantastic one-minute dog brilliance clip as it says here But just for reference is absolutely fantastic totally agree really really cool to see Last but at least I highly recommend that you check out Harvey Newman's YouTube clip He currently has a series about animation power tips featuring Autodesk and animation layers are a very powerful tool that you should use in your repertoire So go check it out and that's it. You will see more of these news every Monday at 8 a.m. in my animation minute