Do you record it as well? Welcome to what the app is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of the region. In partnership with Friends of Latin America, Massachusetts Peace Action and Task Force on the Americas, we broadcast weekly at 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern on CodePink's YouTube channel. You can also now find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Today's episode, Election Observers Denied Entry to Columbia. My co-host today is CodePink's Latin America policy expert, Leonardo Flores, and our guest is Nestor Cristancho of Canal 2 in Columbia. And we're hoping that Nestor has an opportunity to join us live from Columbia at some point during our conversation. So let me just give you a little background about what we're gonna talk about today. On Sunday, May 29, Colombians will vote for president. The election comes at a difficult moment for the country. Polls show widespread dissatisfaction with the government of the current president, Ivan Duque, and frustration over chronic poverty, a widening income gap, and insecurity, all of which have worsened during the pandemic. Among those hurt the most by these problems are younger Colombians, younger people who are likely to play a big role in determining whether or not the country takes a step to the left. Young people led anti-government protests that filled the streets of Columbia last year, dominating the national conversation for weeks, I would say the international conversation as well. At least 46 people died, I would argue, I think there's far more than that, and we can talk about that later. 46 people and died, many of them young, unarmed protesters, and many of them at the hands of the police, and what became known as the National Strike, or in Spanish, the Faro Nacional. Some analysts expect young people to vote in record numbers, energized not just by the Pacto historical presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, but also by his running mate, Francia Marqués, a 40-year-old environmental activist with a gender, race, and class consciousness focus who would be the nation's first Afro-Caribbean vice president. In this episode, we are going to discuss the situation in Colombia in the final days before the historic election. So please join me and my co-host, Leonardo Flores. Thanks so much for having me on, Terry. And I think it'd be good to start off this conversation kind of for you to recount for us what happened with you on Sunday, last Sunday, May 22nd, because you were on your way to observe the elections in Colombia, invited by a very prestigious NGO. And then at least from our end in the US, from the people who work with you at Code Pink, we were pretty worried about you for a little while because it was hard to get in touch and we were very concerned, even calling the State Department. So can you let the audience know what went on? Well, so I was interested in going to Colombia to observe the presidential elections, principally because it's such a crucial historical moment for the Colombian people. And also, as you know, I was there last year, this time last year, on a human rights delegation based out of Argentina to do a human rights observing, witnessing, take testimony of the Paro Nacional, the activity that was taking place. And as we talked about in the introduction, it was principally young people fighting for a future, unbelievable generational, older generational support for what these young people were doing. The population, so many of the population were saying, this is what we should have been doing all along. And now it's the young people fighting for a future and we have to support what they want because we as older people have failed to do this for them. So that I was there and I wanted to basically follow up on that and support people's right to vote and make sure people had proper or necessary, I guess, witnessing, human rights witnessing. It wasn't so much about like having to go into the polls and see exactly what happened, making sure people could get to the polls and vote, especially after what we all saw last year. So I was participating on a delegation out of Toronto, Common Frontiers, an organization that I've worked with for many years in Latin America with my good friend Raul Verbano and a wonderful group of experienced election observers were on that trip. And the trip started Sunday the 22nd and I arrived in Bogota, El Dorado Airport, I think just before 7 a.m. And I got through, I approached the immigration desk. Now the immigration booths there are like two people.  So I gave my passport to the female immigration officer and she looked at it and kind of hemmed and hot and then she looked at her computer screen and then after that, she handed my passport to the gentleman sitting behind her and he started flipping through every page of my passport and then stood up and said, come with me now. So I was escorted back to an office, very professional office that had conference rooms and sitting area where clearly people who were in question were being processed. And so I sat there and watched two immigration officers sit at this desk and they were on a computer perhaps checking my social media accounts who I don't really know that speculation but every once in a while they would ask me a question like you're my full name, where did I live? At one point they wanted to know, they said, you've entered the country as a tourist which is on the pre-migration checking online form is one of a few options you have. In my case, I was there as a human rights observer and electoral witnessing observer, accompaniment I guess is the correct term. And they said there was discrepancy between coming as a tourist and doing that work. Now on the pre-migration check-in form there is no option to declare yourself as an electoral observer or human rights observer. There's no option, nothing. So pretty much everybody entering the country as an observer checked tourist. Well, they had a problem with that. They found that as an inconsistency with me which I kind of thought was odd. But so that kind of triggered more questioning and they asked for my itinerary. I told them where I was gonna be, what cities I was gonna be in. They wanted to know what hotels I was gonna be staying at. They called those hotels to make sure that the delegation actually had a reservation and that I was actually listed as part of the delegation reservation. So they did that. And then there really wasn't much except everybody was like typing away. And since came to realize, well, they pulled me from out front, brought me back here to process my exit. I was like, there was never gonna be an interview. There was never gonna be any questioning. I was like, we don't want you here. So when they finished, they did actually process immigration documents for me and the document, they finally showed me what they had. And the document was a denial of entry document, entry denied document. And they showed it to me to read. And in the top right-hand corner of the document, it says my nationality. It has me identified as an Argentine national. Now I was not born in Argentina. I don't have Argentine residency. I've never had Argentine passport of any recognition. I've never had any passport in my life other than my US passport, the country I was born and raised in. So they're identifying me as an Argentine national with US residency. They've had my passport for over an hour and it's very clear my passport says I was born in Burlington, Vermont, USA. So that was disturbing. Then I read the one part of the document that was in English. And mind you, nothing else was in English. None of our conversation. I wasn't offered an English speaking conversation, only Spanish, which should have been a clue to me that they had no intention of interviewing me. They did never offered me English. So the one part of the document that is in English is the reason for my denial. And the reason for my denial is that they labeled me a threat to Columbia State Security. And I can only surmise that that is because of being in Columbia during the Pato Nacional and seeing the state violence that we saw and documented and reported on. Yeah, and to me, that's really one of the most enraging and absurd parts of this whole ordeal that you went through that they accused you of being a threat to state security, because again, we're talking about a country where so far this year, 79 social leaders have been murdered. Another 21 signers of the Peace Accords have been murdered. That's just this year alone. I think there's 30-some massacres as well. I saw a really alarming statistic the other day that the public ombudsperson of Columbia recently warned that in 26% of the country's municipalities, 26% of them are at high risk or extreme risk for human rights violations, but somehow you're the threat to state security. And that's not even going into the threats that have been faced by Gustavo Petra and Francia Márquez, the long-term historic pack, which we'll get into, but that's so wild to me. And really, so folks know, because I mean, you have a long history of observing elections. How many countries have you observed elections in or how many elections have you observed roughly? I don't even know. And who invited you this time around? Well, so I should first say this delegation that I was allowed to join out of Canada had very specific requirements. And the trip later, really it was, you had to demonstrate prior electoral observation experience. That was a requirement. So everyone on that delegation had, you know, years of experience, which was one of the reasons I was so excited to go with these people was I knew we'd be traveling, you know, with people who knew what they were doing and could provide, you know, good coverage for the citizens of Columbia, but for outside Columbia too. So I don't know, Leo, I don't know how many countries, I think in the last, you know, 14 to 16 months, I've been in Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, just, you know, since I guess December of 2020. So it's fair to say that by now you're an expert in observing what's kind of getting in the current. I'm familiar with what, you know, with the processes of, you know, particularly the human rights aspect of, you know, voting and what can and cannot go wrong. I mean, every country has a different constitution and a different process, but there are, you know, fundamentals that are guaranteed pretty much for people to vote. For instance, you know, not being threatened, not having your life threatened by showing up at a polling center. And that's the sort of thing that you really, I mean, that's extreme. I think for our audience, that probably sounds really extreme, but in many countries, and I would probably unfortunately put Columbia at the top of the list, that's a real threat. And so, you know, it's really, it's going to take a lot of courage for people in Columbia to vote on Sunday the 29th. And that is no, that's not an understatement. It's gonna take a lot of courage. And we really have to support the fact that so many, not all, that so many want a change. They want a change. And I will, one of the things that I think is really important to share, oh, here I think that Mr. has joined us. Sorry, folks, give me just a minute to- Yeah, no, and while you're doing that, I mean, I just wanna emphasize that you're not exaggerating when you say that people are afraid and are threatened because earlier this month, there was an armed strike in Columbia that affected, I think it was something like 280 municipalities where basically a paramilitary group drug cartel shut down a huge chunk of the country because they were angry at the government. And so, and on top of this, we've had death threats against Gustavo Petro, death threats against Francia Marquez. They've been having the campaign with huge shields in front of them. And I think it was at her closing campaign event. We had Francia Marquez was targeted with a laser from a roof pop that was overlooking the campaign event. Yeah, like a sniper's laser. Exactly. That was Saturday night. It was a terrifying moment for people who watched it, who were there of course, and then it went viral on Twitter really quickly. So yeah, absolutely. There's a serious threat, not only to the candidates, but I think there is a threat against regular voters who might be intimidated as particularly in the countryside. I, yeah, that is more historic. Those politics outside the capital, and that's very Latin America, that's very old world Spain where the capital, and we've seen this in Peru is a really good example, Peru last summer where the capital control, the capital city controls the power, the money, the oligarchs, all of that. And then outside in the provinces is more mixed. So people and the traditional activists out of the Afro-Caribbean community, the Campesinos, the indigenous land rights people, and all of that. And that was all active last year when we were there during the National Pottery. But the other thing that was very striking, our last day in Bogota last year, we went out on the streets to just kind of see in Bogota during commuter hour. And just to kind of get a temperature reading of the population. And there was a flash rally, a flash, you know, Baro Nacional Rally and a group of people were walking down the highway, the Caratera during commuter time with a banner wide enough to cross both lanes of traffic. And all the, so many cars stopped. And the people got out of their cars and joined the flash rally, including people driving BMWs and Mercedes. So you are looking at a middle class, upper middle class, educated people, advanced educated people, most likely with money protesting the government. That to me, when you see that demographic joining the rest, the traditional groups or for Columbia, those historical protestors, when you see that, that tells me the government has lost its people. People literally, people in Mercedes and BMWs got out of their car and joined the protest. It was very, and I will argue that's, this is the kind of stuff the Colombian government is not allowing me sharing inside the country. And Nesto, if you're there, feel free to jump in, please. We would love to hear your thoughts.  And it's incredibly important to have electoral observation in this particular case because we had the primaries in mid-March and there was something like 400,000 votes that were missing from the initial count. They were later added. These votes happened to favor the historic pact. And now what we're seeing is an attempt by the duke government to maybe they were talking about postponing the elections as late as a week ago. But now it seems like there's an attempt to get rid of the national registrar, which would nullify the elections. Nesto, can you talk to us a little bit about all of these threats to the electoral process itself that you've been witnessing? You're muted. Oh, maybe I have time to get him. Yeah, here he is. Hi, welcome, Nesto. Happy to see you again. And thank you for inviting me to this meeting. Yeah, well, about your question, well, there are many threats. And of course, the whole situation is like, we live in like in a state of fretting all the time. It's not just the government using all these tricks against you, for example, the international overseas. But it's all the coercion that you live even in the streets with the cops, with the military actions, but also with the paramilitaries, the self-groups that are around rural areas in Colombia that are showing their teeth and their strength with guns and threatening people to go out to vote for certain people. But if you read it as a journalist, you can see that it's like one of the branches of the whole government, of the whole power, people in power, because this government, it's not just the legal security forces, it's not just them. They're using also criminal and these mafia groups, these mobs groups, all the bands related to the traffic dealing, the drug dealing. And they really lead all the rural areas in Colombia. So even thinking that we're gonna have in some of the cities, the big cities, regular, not violent elections, at least till 4 p.m. on Sunday, we expect some kind of threatens in the rural areas in Colombia. So that's one of the things that people gotta understand, that Colombia got like three big cities, four or five big cities where everything looks like another country, like European cities or something like that, no, I mean, at least in the atmosphere, in the electoral atmosphere. Yeah, I'm not talking about the structure or the economics, but at least you can go and vote in whatever your site is.  The whole issue here, or it's be sickly, go sickly vote for whoever you felt you can, whoever you feel like may change this status queue in Colombia, but it's your own life, it's on risk in some of those rural areas, yes. Which is why international observers were invited to your country was to help. And for example, that's the reason you were invited to Buenaventura, for example. Because Buenaventura is under, it's no government. I mean, it's not, the government rules there, but with the militias, these groups, these authoritarian groups that are involved in all the drugs, the drug building, but also they rule a lot of small business there, like the small loans for people, even the rule, if you got a store in your area, in your small town, they're gonna rule you. They're gonna ask you, who are you? Probably they're gonna ask you for more money. That's something we call, be vaccinated. It's a funny way, be vaccinated by the... Okay, oh. Yeah, it's a metaphorical way to express how you got out in a store. But Buenaventura, if you got, maybe you've been in Buenaventura before, in this national strike, last year, you were in Buenaventura? No, I was in Bogota and Pereira.  All the youth, all these kids are like, taking their own spot, they're taking their posts for the first time in many years in Colombia, because we've been talking about this in the Canal Dose channel too, the independent... Which is where Nestor's from, I just want the audience to know that you are a journalist. Yeah, today you were invited. Our guest, you were our guest, and now we switch positions here. You're out of Kali, you broadcast out of Kali for a while. Yeah, we are in Kali, that it's being considered the capital of the resistance here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, we were in conversation very early this morning, and just for our audience, it's a wonderful show that Nestor hosts. It's a great journalism, great panel discussion, and terrific program production too. So just thumbs up to you guys. It was a pleasure to do that this morning. It was a pleasure having you there. And it's also been... It's really important for us that people in the whole world see a little bit of what's going on, because the reality, Colombian reality, is something that people don't... It's like nobody deals with that. Even I've been in New York, you know, in those kind of... What we call plantonists, just people getting together, going for a march and, you know, showing some kind of protest against the government, but nobody listened. Nobody listened. Every day you see more people, for example, Kali Medellin, you see a lot of tourists here. A lot of people come over here, but they come from drugs, from prostitution, and not even prostitution, but also they come for... Any young girls here, young ladies, and even the young kids, but especially men come here for this statistical way to find their love, or their lover, and they come here, they get nice parties, drugs, women, or whatever it is, and that's the reality they breathe from Colombia. And that's what they've been talking since the government of this guy, Alvaro Uribe Belles, that's been like the big mob, it's the big mafia mob in Colombia. And after the last 10 years, we got this many people coming from overseas to Colombia to do this kind of touristy thing, but I didn't... Those are some of the reasons behind the Cuban Revolution, was to get all of that vice activity off the island, out of their country, it's the same thing. Cuban living Batista regents back in the 1950s. Well, we're having that kind of... And many countries, the sad thing is that European countries and United States are taking these small countries, Thailand, Morocco, this place where they can go visit and spend easy money, because it's not... You know, one dollar here, it's like a lot of money. I guess you don't have too much money to come over here. I got friends from Australia, I got a friend from Australia that bought up a simple small house here, and now she turned that into a great mansion in one of these towns, these neighborhoods in Cali. And well, she says, I live like my dream here because with small money, small amount of money, I can build this big house and got this nice, beautiful life for every springtime. So I don't have to deal with winter, I don't have to deal with the prices in my own country. So well, you see, it's my point is we need that all these places, these spaces spread the war about the reality in Colombia. This is a drug state, it's a mafia state. Absolutely. And, you know, earlier today, we actually had Code Pink, we sent an email to our supporters, warning them about what's going on with the elections and asking Secretary of State Blinken to not only respect the elections, but also to advocate for the lives of Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez because of the death threats. And one of the things we talked about in this email we sent is the issue of foreign interference because you've had the U.S. Ambassador and you had Victoria Nuland who's the Under Secretary of State. Both echo claims from the Duque government talking about possible Russian interference in the elections or maybe even Cuban or Venezuelan interference. But from my perspective, when we look at what's happening in Colombia, the interference is actually coming from the military. You had the Chief of the Army, you know, talking about saying that Petro was corrupt whereby the constitutionally he's not supposed to get involved nor is anyone in the military supposed to get involved. And then you have Duque, who I just read a really interesting article that said in one out of every three speeches he's given in the past year, he's brought up either Gustavo Petro or his policies. So he's in himself has been interfering. How concerned are you about these issues, Mr. Well, the army and the police, police is and they are both, we know we as journalists, we've been knowing this for, I start doing this from the 90s, 1990s. And my whole life in this journalist experience, I know the army and the cops are part of the whole mafia establishment in Colombia. Now when you see this kind of reaction from the army commander, well, you understand is this power, these people that been in power for so long, they scare about losing the power, losing power. And even if they have to show their guns, their weapons to keep them keeping power, they're gonna show their weapons. Even the legal ones, the formal ones, I mean the army and the cops and the police, but also the legal ones that are like branches of the whole establishment in Colombia. So it's not a surprise for me, at least for me and many other journalists, but it's at least, it's a symptom of what could make happen next week if we got a new government, or not even next week, even after August 7th, whoever is the president, but let's say according to what you see in the squares, in all the towns that Gustavo Petro and the Francia market being visiting, it's like, you see, it's the people, we can see people joining these meetings for thousands. So beyond all the polls, all the statistics, that they also being like playing with those numbers to share a little bit and to confuse people, confuse the most people, because you got those numbers, the numbers that media are showing in these polls and these statistics and people maybe can buy that, but when you go to the great meetings that this left or let's say progressive movement is attracting while you see the reality, people are going to vote for this option, for this alternative option. Let's say Petro and Francia markets are elected next Sunday or even in the second round area in the states, yeah. We still don't know how the army is gonna react and take that, we don't know. One of the most important things, one of the crucial things Petro has to do once in government is changing the whole structure of the army and the police and by changing the structure, I mean the main levels, commanders, officers, all those that are ranking in the top levels because they're gonna oppose to that government and alternative government and maybe that's one of the reasons we talk about a possible cop here in Colombia. A cop, yeah, a cop, sorry. Oh, I just wanted to, I'm sorry, Leo, just follow up on something you said, Nestor, because a lot of people have asked me before arriving at the airport, I don't wanna say I arrived in Colombia because I was never allowed to enter Colombia. I got to the airport and before I got there and since I have returned from there, people have said, well, what's gonna happen on Sunday and what are the chances of, you know, Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez win and it looks very favorable, but assuming they do win and especially if they do win in the first round, there is so much that a new administration is gonna have to dismantle. As you mentioned, the military and the police, there's a lot that has to be dismantled initially before you and your people can start moving forward. I mean, so this, a first administration post-urribismo, as I said that correctly, whatever administration is the first to come after, there's so much dismantling that has to be done before you can move forward. And then what do you do if you remove these military leadership, the police leadership, what do you do with those people to ensure they don't like go to the private sector or, you know, become a problem from the outside in? Right now there's a problem from the inside out, but they could possibly become a problem from the outside in as well. Well, also think about the justice system in Colombia. Yeah. Yes, I can attest. They gotta change it. They gotta change. The accusatory, how do you call it? The attorney department here, like the fiscal general, the attorney, the national attorney, the whole office is not, it's something we gotta change totally. The way we have now that the system of the accusatory system is a copy of the United States. That works a little, we've seen in the Trump era that it start like, you know, shaking a little bit. Well, in Colombia, one of the things that the constitution, the 1991 constitution change was that the attorney general office, before that it was like a very naive system that it was like a small judges around Colombia being the accusatory system of the justice system. But now we have no, that system is not working. It's part of the government. When I say the government, I'm talking about the executive power. I mean, the presidency is running, is running that. The same way it's running the disciplinary or administrative, you know, the investigators in the Procuratoria General that maybe you don't have that in America, in United States. But we have something called Procuratoria that at least oversees the public workers, yeah, the public workers. And in some levels, you got some kind of guarantees before years ago, before the way it's worked. But the whole point is that the national attorney and other institutions that could make the check and balance system work, doesn't work in Colombia. They actually doesn't work because it's all part of the same criminal and corrupt structure. And going back to something you said earlier about the possibility of the army or the police not respecting the results of the election and maybe launching a coup, do you think the United States could possibly play a positive role here if they were to come out and say strongly that the Colombian Army must respect the will of the voters? Or would it not make a difference? You know what, unfortunately, the American government is being like newt about anything that happens in Colombia. Even that this president, Duque, shows support to Trump. Well, Biden was like at the beginning of his first year, he was like not talking to directly at least with Ivan Duque or president and he keep the distance from this guy. But when you see last year, National Strike in Colombia, there was no word from the government. It was some of the congress people that actually the progressives from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, this guy Gork, well, another of you senators there, they kind of chose support to the Colombian National Strike. But starting from the Plan Colombia, Plan Colombia is like this treat the disagreement between the United States and the Colombian government to support the drugs war. That doesn't work at all. Not working in not even in Colombia in the whole war, it's like they keeping this, what they call the drugs war, but on the ground, it's like, no, you gotta keep the business. The whole business is actually, they keep the whole thing, the banks. I'm talking about the financial system. I'm talking about the big political fishes. I'm talking about the enterprises, all the multinationals, all the big companies. So if Petro is not smart enough, but I think the good thing about Petro is that he's very smart. So he's been in the United States, he's been talking to all these senators of the progressives movement in America. And that's like, he's like guaranteeing, and also in Europe, he's like, paying whatever is need to get the support we need from America, Europe and all the whole war in case something like that happens. Because he knows, one of the things he totally knows is that an actual cup may happen in Colombia if he's not smart enough to move. And I don't think we can trust him in what the American government it's gonna do for us. Because also losing this, in any case, for America, for United States system and the whole system in the war, keeping this corner of the war under control with this kind of government, with this kind of people is like a guarantee for the whole system to keep moving, especially in South America. That is critical for them. Because many new progressive movements are showing up now, Brazil, with Lula da Silva, they're probably gonna lose the power in Brazil. Yeah, hopefully. But they're looking at this, all these new progressive moment in Latin America, a threat for the whole system. And Biden, if I don't trust Biden that much, neither Obama did anything. Obama, well, he started like moving close to Cuba, at least he cooled down some of the sanctions and some of the, you know, all these things that tried to Venezuela that put in risk all the economics in Ecuador, even remember, Evo Morales was rolling in Bolivia after all these big companies tried to start doing business with the water in Bolivia. Remember, there is a famous movie, if you don't have anything, it's called also the water, is the name of that movie. I'm doing my translation. When they privatized, when Halliburton privatized all the water in Bolivia, yeah. And it was illegal to use a rainwater catchment system. Exactly. Of course, people to buy privatized water, it was just horrible, horrible. Well, guess what may happen with one of the proposition, one of the political changes that Petro and this alternative government is telling to us is that he's gonna change the whole oil exploration. At least he's not doing more exploration. He's gonna keep, you know, at least the contracts that are running now, well, he said, I'm gonna respect all those contracts, but I'm not gonna explore more new oils, you know, no more exploration of oil or a petroleum or anything like that, no more gas. The whole system that depends on that, and it's straight, it's straight, and most of them are in America and Europe was in the Colombian election and they'll say, oh my God, what these crazy people are gonna do with our business? Somebody stop them. Yeah. And maybe that's what's happening. That's the real thread, isn't it? What is this, what is the new government gonna do with our business, specifically the transnational corporations and the vice, the businesses that are based on vice, sex drugs and gambling, yeah. So Nestor, what a pleasure to have you join us this afternoon. I'm so thankful that you had time for this conversation and I just want our audience to really send you a lot of love for Sunday. You know, as we talked about this morning, it's gonna take a lot of courage for people to go to the polls on Sunday, but it's also just such an opportunity for change that we just hope everything goes well, that the elections aren't suspended, that there is no violence, you know, if the results are not pro-duke, yes. It's gonna be a very, you know, it's a really, really important day for you and your country and really, you know, for Latin America as a whole. It's a historic moment. It is. It's a historic moment for all of us. It really is, yeah. It really is. And we are really concerned, but also again, please, people in the whole world keep an eye on Colombia. If you blow coke, if you do coke, think we're crashing Colombia, Mexico, and all Latin America. Yeah, or do something. Yeah, blow the whole cocaine you want, but please help us to legalize this thing because the only way we can turn this terrible war, this terrible carnage that we live every day. Do you live it when somebody goes to, well, I don't wanna play with that. I know you got at this situation with the guns and the shootings in your country, but we live it every day. We live it every day. We know that something is happening just as today, just yesterday, you can count them out, that's every day. And that happens because nobody in the whole world cares about the drug situation.  And I'm like, here you go. It's my country, you're harming. You're harming my people. I know, but it's important, Terry, that you talk about these issues. Yeah. No, people call it connect the dots. They don't connect the dots. But you gotta push this thing. We gotta push this thing because at one point, the whole world gotta realize, wake up about these things. Because if not, you're condemning us, and you're putting us in the hell, because you just wanna have fun. In America and Europe, European countries are terrible as well. One of the things we joke here in Cali is that we joke about Petros saying that, oh, we have to be like Suiza, or we have to be to Noruega. No, I understand the guy and I appreciate the guy. I'm a journalist, so I'm not fanatic. But when he talks about that, remember you're talking about countries that just go, enjoy the comfortability, the all the beautiful things you can have in your countries, but under other people, under other countries, it was Africa. Africa is with the whole world that you show in Europe and you show in the United States, it's a shame that we have this situation that we have in Africa. Those kids in Africa, living like that and countries like Colombia, being in war and nobody cares. Sorry, I'm very passionate about this. No, it's okay, it's okay. And I talk too much about that, but it's just because I got the chance and when we have the chance to talk to people like you, we know you are the only way to spread this kind of war. This guy's from this kind of war. It's really important that we hear from you because some, and I think Leah would agree with me is so much of what you're sharing about these chains, Africa, the global South, it's still this expropriation of natural and human resources from historically colonized countries, countries colonized by Europe, by the global North in general, but Europe and the United States specifically. And that's, it's the same, it's this paradigm that you're living in and it's very destructive to you and your people. So it doesn't allow you to develop in any sort of economic or human way. So I wonder, Nestor, before we close today's program, is there anything particular about Sunday that we can do, that we at Code Pink sent our alert out today and we'll share that again with the audience and just we wish you so much luck and love and peace on Sunday. The only advice or the only thing we ask is do a program on Sunday. Do Code Pink on Sunday. Do it. And just report a little bit of what's going on. Okay. Keep an eye on us, check with other people, spread the word, spread the word. It's the only, the same way, if we learn something from internet, that was another weapon. Internet, the history tell us about all the whole world is being in these tensions for historic, it's a historic thing, but please spread the word. You got the chance on Sunday to have a meeting after four p.m. And if something is wrong in Colombia, keep an eye, even, I'm gonna text you on Sunday. Okay, please do. It's the only way we gotta keep in touch. Please do. We gotta keep the network happening. Yeah, for sure. And we're gonna, hey, Terry, please, something is going on or keep an eye on this and just report it and talk to your other people. And Leonardo, do the same. I don't know, Leonardo is from Colombia and Origins or not? Venezuela. It's from Venezuela.  But if we can change things, if something's happening in Colombia, even this is gonna be good for Venezuela, because everything's gonna turn into another, at least things are gonna move. But in Colombia, it's been one of the ways to stop the whole process in Latin America. And in our geographical spot, it's perfect to keep everything like now on the traditional system, ruling, governing, not just formally, not just legally, but also all the underground, all the illegal, all the criminal activities in Latin America and Colombia. If we can take this, how we call it, upon Leonardo, how we, with that name on that thing. Okay, let's take that long out of the whole thing and let's live better in this country. That's right, thank you so much, Néstor. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, just an honor to have you join us and thank you, Leonardo, for co-hosting today. And I wanna remind our audience that you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, Code Pink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of the region. We broadcast weekly at 430 p.m. Pacific, 730 p.m. Eastern, generally on Wednesdays, but we had this great opportunity to have Néstor join us this afternoon. And so you can also, don't forget to catch Code Pink Radio on Thursday mornings, 11 a.m. Eastern on WBAI out of New York City and WPFW out of Washington, D.C. Both projects, WTF and Code Pink Radio can also now be found on Apple Podcast and Spotify. So thanks again, gentlemen, a terrific conversation. We wish all the best to the Colombian people on Sunday the 29th. And for our audience, we'll keep you updated on Sunday and we'll see you formally on the air next week. Thank you so much. Thank you, Terry. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.


to all the microphone. Yes, I maybe want to say just one thing, then you go. Well, first of all, I am really pleased in these two days one and a half for all you people and the saying and talk to me, actually, and to us. I think it is very lively and very important. And so that is the first things I wanted to say. The second thing is just what we are doing here now is just to try to summarize some questions, some important questions and some problems that you raised, because that will be taken as an assignment to us, to the laboratory for what we have to do in the future. So that is the mission of this hour or less of discussion that we are doing together. Thank you. Well, let me first thank all the speakers for their very important contributions to the success of the workshop. I think we have had two very interesting days. We have definitely faced the complexity of the problem. And that's why we are dealing with theoretical physicists who are able to deal with complex systems. I think these morning's presentations that were more focused on diets are showing that whether it comes to primary production or whether it comes to making choices in diets. In both cases, we have many technologies. We have many solutions. And I think in both cases, we have a very heterogeneous situation that requires well-differentiated solutions that need to be suited to the local conditions. And so I think the term that was used by one of you, we need flexible solutions, is correct, both when it comes to diet as well as when it comes to agricultural production. We need good sense. We need not to stick to dogmas and ideology. And even in diets, I think there are often definitely lots of dogmas and ideologies that apply. I'm proven that, of course. And the same is true for agriculture. And forcing ourselves into restricted boundaries is not going to allow us to find the optimal solution to the problem. I think one important issue that has come out of the discussions is that we need indicators for sustainability that consider all the different aspects that sustainability can be declined even when it comes only to environmental sustainability. We have different aspects to consider. But I think when we want to assess the sustainability of the food production system, we should also incorporate into whatever measure will come up with the impacts on health and medical care. Because of course, we can have beneficial impacts of the choices that we make in the primary production systems. But we can also have negative effects. And I think the figures that were provided to us about the problem of obesity are striking in terms of the added burden on societies that is imposed by making wrong dietary choices, but also wrong choices in the food production system. So I think what we have clearly realized is that we need composite indices that combine different aspects by giving proper weights. And those weights may, again, differ from situation to situation, because there may be areas of the world where we need to give more weight to one aspect or to the other, depending on the local conditions. I think one topic that came out yesterday, and it was interesting to see how it was declined differently from different speakers, was the need for making consumers aware of the real cost of foods. So the FAO representative reminded us of the difference between price and cost. There is a price, which is what we pay when we buy the food, but there is a cost, which includes the externalities. His proposal was to add the externalities to the price to make the price higher. I think we heard from the European Union, and I was very intrigued by that, that they want to get to an environmental labeling system, which I think is something I'm very in favor of, but I also see that it could be very difficult and complicated to do. We have already seen the difficulties that have come out with the green, red, and light system that they want to put on food based on the health benefits. I think environmental sustainability is even more complicated. And finding an agreement on how to do it could be very difficult. But I do believe that we need to get to that point. I think it's no longer sufficient to inform people on how many calories they get from 100 grams of food, how many carbohydrates, proteins, and fats they're consuming. I think we also need to tell them how much water has been used to produce that food, how much energy has been consumed, how much CO2 has been emitted so that they can make their choices in a more conscious and aware manner. As to the proposal of increasing the price by including externalities, I think it's something that needs to be carefully thought about. I personally find it easier to think about imposing a carbon tax on specific food production systems, which would not be in the end very different. But at least it would probably be easier to accept for the producers. I think one aspect that was stressed also this morning by the colleague from the Philippines is the close relationship between food production and consumption and biodiversity. The figures she gave were striking. 24,000 out of 28,000 species that are threatened are due to land that was used for agriculture and where natural ecosystems have been destroyed. So we have to be fully aware that we can no longer afford to put more land into cultivation. But we also have to be aware, and the several speakers stressed that, that going forward we'll need to produce more food, more food because the population is increasing in number, because the population is increasing in food needs, dietary needs. So we have clearly one strategy ahead, which is what FAO has called sustainable intensification. So we have to be able to combine an increased production with a decreased impact on the environment. How to achieve this is clearly a matter of discussion. And I think there are very different views. We heard several times yesterday that nobody wants to do it by going backward in time, even though it's a temptation that appears to be quite popular, especially in some circles. I let Andrele discuss about the need for production systems that satisfy the criteria of being regenerative and circular, because I think that's a very important aspect. But if we want to achieve sustainable intensification and go towards regenerative and circular production systems, we need to rely on scientific progress that can come in many different ways. We have seen yesterday's examples of how genetic improvement can help us to do that. We have seen wonderful examples of how increased digitalization of the agricultural production systems combined with sophisticated modeling of the agricultural production system can help us to achieve those goals. Of course, one of the big issues is how to transfer these approaches and technologies not only to countries that have less developed economies, but also within the developed economies, how to make these technologies accessible to everybody, whether they are large farmers or smallholder farmers. And that's a really complex issue to deal with. I think we started off with a very important message. And the message came from a communication specialist who told us that whatever we decide to do, we need to be able to explain what we do and why we do it to the consumers. Because if we don't gain acceptance from the consumers, there will be no way that any policy will be able to achieve its goals. I think what Giovanni Carrada told us is that before we try to speak to the brain of the consumer, we need to speak to the heart of the consumer or perhaps to the guts since we talk about food and... To the pocket. And we need to play on emotions more than on rational aspects. Rational aspects come later. How to do that is not easy. We as scientists are not used to do that. We actually tend to use the opposite approach. So I think one important message that has to come out of this is that we need not only the science, we also need the help of communication specialists that can help us to get the right messages to the consumers. So I will stop here and hand over to the others for their considerations. Well, let me try to add a few points to your comprehensive review of what we have achieved. I think that what we need to ask now is what we have to do next. Because in my opinion, this meeting, this symposium, has been a sort of a seeding expertise, a seeding experience. We need to start from this seeding experience to collect what we are going to have from this experience. And what we need to do is actually to try to address the issue not only in terms of science, brain, heart, pocket or emotional, but we need to put some science behind. Because if we put some science behind, the discussion and the decisions, there's going to give us the leverage to impose what we think is good not only for us, but for the future generation. I mean, if we consider that in the future, I mean, the burden of what is now related to the adolescent overweight is going to be dramatical. I mean, as a pathologist, we understand that in 20 years, 80% of the liver transplantation will be related to an overweight child children now. And I think we need to take advantage of this information in order to prevent. In order to so, we need to have a sort of a comprehensive and translational approach to the problem. Made by scientists, communicators, economists, and you name it. And this is why the idea to have under a sort of common roof, although theoretical, the different aspects of this enterprise is going to be a winning experience. It's going to be difficult because it's going to be a total different approach of what we are used to consider medicine, physics, humanitarian sciences, and so forth, so on. This is time to remove the burden, try to mix things together, and actually to increase the outcome. I mean, and then the outcome is not the sum of the different expertise, but it's actually the blending of different experiences. So I think that what we have achieved during this two days event is going to be a very important message. We need to work together in order to achieve this important goal in order to make the world much more sustainable. Because if we are going to continue to work this way, we're going to face civil struggles. So I think that this is what is in front of us. We need to tackle this hurdle, but we also need to understand there's going to be a great opportunity to be played in the right way. And I think that all of us should be able to understand this and to be able to provide help to achieve this important task. And I finish in the past the mic too. To me? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I think this has been a great two days seminar and I agree with a comment that it is a seeding one, by the way, in agriculture you need to seed. And just to seeding in a sense that it gives a kind of the sense of the critical aspects that we are tackling with. First of all, for the first time, we are talking about nutrition and agriculture together. Because even at the European Union level, this new strategy is farmed to fork, see? So putting together these two dimensions which are totally different and both are significantly under knowledge because we don't know the most important factors of agriculture yet. And in nutrition, we know a lot about toxicology, metabolism, et cetera, but how really the cocktail of ingredients we consume every day, dependently also on our lifestyle, is really complex to understand. So if you put these two dimensions together and say, hey, I have to produce in a way which is not arming the environment at the same time, ensuring enough food, at the same time, safe food, not safe food security and food safety, and the disciplines involved are so many because you have genetics, of course, you have soy science, you have botany, you have agronomy, you have engineers, you have engineering now, more and more agriculture is lying upon digitalization for not only process management and automation, but also particularly for data collection and data mining. So it's a long journey that I think the most important thing we can do is to strategize. Because we are not fit for the job yet because science is very much super specialization. I was seeking for a doctor a few days ago, a generic doctor, a doctor to whom you can go and have a generic, let's say, diagnostic and this doctor then address you to the different specialists. They say there are really, really few doctors because everything is about specialization. You go to detail, detail, detail, detail. And in the science of complexity, there is always this kind of metaphor of the forest that if you look the forest from far away, you, of course, miss all the complexity of the life within the forest itself. But if you look into the detail of a single ant or a single plant, you also miss the detail. So where have you, at which level have we really to put our lens in order to observe the system and catch all the necessary system? And I think that this lens is a zoom. We need to go from sometimes empirical knowledge which has not been translated into scientific knowledge yet and see whether there are some correlations, some knowledge that we can extract by machine learning. And then once we have hints, then we investigate deeper and we try to figure out if we can extract the scientific knowledge. In this, I think it will be a very, very, very, very long journey. One day, I'm sure that we will have medical devices, no matter if it is a watch like this or a ring or whatever it will be or a kind of something on the skin which we'll be putting the condition to immediately read with the markers the response of our organism to the food that we eat. And this will be the day where we will really be able to reverse and go back from food just eaten to the plantation where it has been grown or the factory where it has been processed because this is another problem, processed food. For instance, in my case, I do coffee. I have a problem because if I eat a tomato, it's rare, so I eat what's come out from the plant. I have a direct correspondence between the chemical composition of the tomato and the physiological effect in my body. But if coffee is a seed, is a seed which is roasted at very high temperature where all the chemical composition of the original green coffee bean is completely changed. So how can I go from the physiological response of my body to my coffee bean to discover what is the driver, the trigger of this physiological response in a field? And there are so many of those kinds of examples. Still we do, still we do because we with 25,000 scientific studies centered around coffee and health, we now have a few ideas. This molecule, maybe this is antioxidant. Okay, this is another antioxidant. Oh, this antioxidant is present in the plant already because it's a defensive agent for the plant. Oh, this antioxidant is a consequence of roasting. And so we can see, oh, maybe this antioxidant is higher depending if coffee's grown here and there compared to if the coffee's grown in another condition. The day I would be able to say, I see that there is a higher concentration of the chlorogenic acids, just to name a few in coffee. And I see that consumer are responding better to that cup of coffee. This is the necessary correlation that we are looking for. Point is that there is a significant political and competitive and financial hurdle against that because who's going to build this gigantic database containing all the data from agriculture, food chemistry and nutrition? Who's going to build that? Maybe Google for profit, maybe, which level? Maybe the big pharma for their own competitive advantage in selling agronomical inputs. Are they going to put this data at disposal of the public for scientific research? So this is what we really need to come out in the years ahead. Thank you. Do we have any input from the floor on this discussion? I have built an agenda from what these people have sent. Do we have some other points? Oh, thanks for the very thoughtful consideration you have done. I'm not sure anyway that we really need more food for the future. I think we need more equitable food and more sustainable and equitable way of addressing the needs all over the world because we are perfectly aware that we live in a part of the world where we eat too much and there is a part of the world where they're eating insufficiently. And the amount of food must be or should be much more distributed. And I think we cannot address the challenges of modifying the diet of the population unless we are able to address also the problem of the distribution and the sustainability in terms of equity in terms of food. The other point I would like to stress is that we should make a clear cut division between what is the best diet for people who have to modify their habits because they eat too much and they are obese and what is the best diet to a well-nourished population and a well-growing population. So the normal diet is one issue and the diet to address diseases is probably something different. I understand correctly that besides the flexibility that I'm trying to understand what you're saying that besides the flexibility issue that Morganti was saying before, then you are asking another variable to the other one that have been included like for instance understood that nutrition and agriculture has to stay together, has to talk together. The other one is that the instruments to do that and to analyze that and to measure that are provided by science and what that. But there has to be a variable, economical variable that comes from different ways. And then I think society, we have to have a social variable to what we are saying and that was missing from what we are saying. May I say one example, the first movements of cereals from Ukraine were Mace, which was due to Europe for maintaining the kettles and the nut to feed the populations of the Ethiopia or Somalia who are facing a tremendous shortage of food because of the absence of cereals. And this is something which is really relevant in my opinion. We have as part of the Western world which is assumed to be superior in some way. And I'm not sure we are the same and we really are superior to other population. But anyway, we feel we have more culture and we're more prone to discuss of these problems. We should be aware that a more equitable distribution of food is what we need. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute into the solutions to look into the sustainability of environment, food and other related resources. I strongly believe in climate sustainability and climate modulation because climate controls everything on the earth. We live in a system, we live in the solar system where everything also fluctuates with the climate. Another point again is nutrition. Nutrition in the sense that also as a relationship with the climate from all what has been said. Then another strong point is financing, public, private financing, partnership. It's key, especially when you talk about water. Water is number one in agriculture and most part of the world including Africa that suffer severe drought due to excessive climate change. So if water financing is looked closely into that will also solve the problem. Climate financing has been a top talk during the IPCC climate forum for years now. But that has not really pay off for some countries and that has inhibited them from keying into the several climatic twitties like reducing emission to less than two or two. That calls into a severe climatic funding so that that can also be done scale to each localities and give them what they require to cut down, let the people who are emitting paid for people who are sequencer in the carbon. Stakeholders collaboration, I see it like key to collaborate in a cross-continental approach so that you can harness resources and intelligence all over the globe to solve this problem. And also strengthening policies and twitties that has to do with food and nutrition and reviewing some part of it that is not favorable for some countries. Because I know if you go into treaties some country may just sign the paperwork and when it comes to implementing what that treaty talks about, they may not do it. That could be maybe their culture. It could be due to their finance level and it could also be to their technological backwardness or advancement limitation. So let me stop there. Thank you so much for giving me the time. Thank you very much. I think in these closing remarks we have heard a number of elements which compose the puzzle of the whole idea behind this workshop, if I may say. And I will just quote a few of them. We talked about product production, productivity, nutrition, distribution indeed is a very important aspect. We have talked about flexibility. We have talked about science and technology. We have talked about culture. I think all these come under a very common denominator that needs to be tackled also and as a priority which is education. Education at the level of the schools, education somebody has already mentioned it at the level of the parents of the children, education at the level of society, education at the level of our economists also that they need to conceive also a new way of looking at how the economy of food needs to be developed. Thank you. Thanks a lot. I think coming back to the issue raised by Professor Marquezini, I fully agree that we are risking to yet increase inequalities between different areas of the world even just by enforcing specific environmental policies. The best example is that, I mean, one of the things that is not often discussed in the European Union is that it's extremely easy to decrease the environmental impact of food production. If I measure it on a per hectare basis, if I don't cultivate, I have no impact. I mean, there needs to be no science but what that means is that I'm simply moving the problem elsewhere. So I'm offshoring the environmental impact to other parts of the world. And that could be yet another way by which we are damaging other countries for our own good and we're not compensating them in any manner for the damage we're making them because we're paying them the price but not the cost. So they're bearing the cost, we're paying the price. And there is a big difference as we heard between price and cost. But on the other hand, FAO itself said multiple times that there is no magic wand of redistribution. The problem of redistribution is itself a complex problem. And I think we need to think about ways to put everybody in a position to be able to produce food abundantly and with a low environmental impact. And I think that's a big problem. I was discussing this with Dr. Healy on the phone a few days ago. I think there should be a big plan to try to transfer technology to educate people all over the world, which would imply from the developed countries to spend money to do that. I don't see too many signs of that. He said that the European Union is thinking about a plan like that. Let's hope that that will happen because I think it's something that affects our life in many ways. I mean, if you think about the big migratory phenomena, they're related to the fact that there is not enough available food for the populations. And so if we don't tackle this problem, the problem will come to us in many different ways. I fully agree that education must be a priority. Of course, we are at a time when schools and educational institutions are not the only sources of information, unlike in the past, where there were definitely the main sources of information. Now, information is available in many different ways and it's not always easy to control. Sorry, too much information. Which is a problem that we need somehow to tackle. I'd like to ask you the problem of healthcare systems in the Western world at least, but also in the other parts of the world. The healthcare system is facing a problem of sustainability. So too many non-communicable disease. And if you reduce, for instance, obesity, you have diabetes disappear, hypertension is reduced, cancer is reduced. So therefore, I think the chance for nutrition is to face this problem. Nutrition is very important, but we are now there is medicalization of obesity treatment. So I think obesity is mainly associated with a nutritional problem. Therefore, if we are able to reply to this question, to improve nutrition, we reduce the non-communicable disease, we reduce the drug company effort in taking care of the problem. So it's very important for us to think about the future and you were speaking about children and the less. And yes, for me, obviously my word, but yes, it is important education, of course, but you have daughter Google, we have YouTube and you have this kind of information for especially for the youngest, it's very difficult to modify the information, the authoritative or sorry, the certification of quality of the information is very difficult to provide to people. So this is another important question that we have to face so potentially. Thank you. I try to add some comment about your idea. I mean, I agree, but we must realize that, I mean, if we invest now in nutrition, if we seed now, we harvest in 20 years. So we think to, we have to do something now, seed now, but I mean, also having something to cover the gap between seeding and harvesting. And I think that education is very important. It's also training in terms of how to behave. There's a lovely paper just published in APT, in a large series of population of South Korean where they demonstrate for the first time scientifically that the amount of obese adolescents with fat liver is much higher if the parents, both parents are obese and suffering of fat liver. And we wrote an editorial, like father, like son, talispata, talispilius. I mean, it means that if we teach them how to behave is important. We have to realize that our kids are not exercising any longer. They're behaving wrongly and we behave wrongly. So and I think that combining a proper food production, a proper food processing, a proper food storage and proper food delivery. And I quite agree that we need to balance because I mean, in the Western, the so-called, so-called underlying civilized countries, we are wasting a lot of food in other countries. We don't have food to be distributed. So we need to balance. And I agree that we need to make a joint effort. I'm glad to hear that the European Commission community are thinking about this possibility. Good, let's do it. But I mean, we need to act now in order to prevent the disaster in 20 years. And also to finish, the cost of health system is increasing almost every day. This is for two reasons. Number one, the number of diseases are increasing. Number two, the lifespan of population is increasing almost every day. That's, I mean, making possible to develop much more diseases related to the ages. But also, and this is also education because the demand for health system is increasingly and most probably unsustainable because it's not related to the real necessity.  Look at that. So we need to educate. And I think that addressing this in a sort of scientific way is the only way to win. Sorry, you have to be attractive. It's a competition information. I change behavior because this choice is better than the other one in my opinion. So you have to be competitive to propose to me a better choice to convince me that it is fashion. This is fine. This is good for me. So I can change. I can invest myself in changing. The motivation to change is a very difficult, very difficult issue in the medical science. So I think the patient or the subject has to modify the behavior. He has to be convinced because it's more convenient economically or for the reward that I get for nutrition or easily accessible and so on. So I have to be competitive. And this is the really difficult target to find, to have some chances because the people can change behavior, in my opinion. Very difficult to reply. Competitive is not fashionable because now it's fashion, it's not compatibility. Okay, I think just the last comment. Last comment. In the United States they invested millions or billions of dollars in education and they failed totally. So the problem is not to educate people. The problem has Browniel, which is one of the major leaders in terms of obesity said that the message should be that of favorable defaults which means that we must make healthier behavior more favorable and more sustainable than unhealthy behaviors. Because people choose according to what is best for them immediately. Now, if I have to go downtown and I can take a car and I can park my car over there, I will take the car. If I do not find a space where to park my car, I will take the bus or I'll go on foot. And this is what is called the theory of favorable defaults. And there is definitely a massive commitment for the institution to make healthier defaults more favorable than unhealthy defaults. Also in terms of prices, also in terms of everything, this is the only way to change something. Okay, I think that with this last comment, I'm sorry. With this last comment, I think that we, I think we can close now here thanking you again and again for so much. And we finish saying, do it and do it now, right? That is what we were saying, yeah, tomorrow. So in the afternoon, some of us will go to Udine. In Udine, actually there will be a part of what you are saying. It will be more communicational rather than very top scientific. And so that is in that and we will do that just to tell you, but I would like finishing too that we should thank not only you people as I've done, but also the people who made this conference to be real available. And so there are some of these people that we are sitting in this audience. Okay, so having said that, I think thank you very much. Excuse me.


Good to see you. This is Mrs. Thorne from Thorne Hill. I'm so happy that you've been inviting us to see her. Nice to see you. Mr. Maloma? Yes, hello there. His name is Flight of Sloth. Flight of Sloth. Flight of Sloth? Let's all come in and sit down here. I know we don't have much time. You two take our other sides of the couch here and sit with us. Well, thank you for having us, Mr. Price. Well, it's a pleasure to welcome you here. And I'm most interested in hearing some of your experiences and things that I haven't been able to vision as to the first plan. Great hazard must have been, how did you make it plain to the moujah, the dean, that you were more on their side? And that must have been a great hazard. I don't know. How did you explain to the moujah one that you were on their side? It was very difficult. And it took me a very long time. It took some time to convince me of the fact that I couldn't believe it. And of course, at first I worked as a guest. And my friends and everyone worked as a guest. And the moujah one? Yes. And then we started. Good afternoon. I'm Jonathan. How are you? Good to see you. That's great. How are you? I should see you. And I'm sure you want to come in. Yeah. I appreciate you. John, sit here. How are you? We'll see you before you. Good morning. Good day. Have a nice day. Have a nice day. How are you? Good day. How are you? Good day. I'm General. Alright, we should see you. I'm good. Well, listen, I know we haven't got very much time, but I just wanted to, first of all, thank you for the support that you have been in regard to this matter of working on some things that you think might be fruitful here with regard to the Congress and the problem down that's sent from America. And we're, as you know, submitting a proposal formally to the House of the Legislature today. And I just wanted you to, we think that the fact that recently and in San Jose that the Sandinista seemed, at least, to be making some moves is because of the pressure in the Polos by the Freedom Fighters. And so I'm going to call on Colin to tell you about our package and what it is we're sending up. And you know that I'm going to call on Colin to tell you about our package and what it is we're sending up. I'm going to call on Colin to tell you about our package and what it is we're sending up. Good morning, sir. Now that I've made friends with everybody, I'm going to sit down. Well, don't anybody throw a long pass because we haven't got 11 of you, we've only got five. Well, listen, reason for the invitation, I appreciate very much your all coming down here. It has to do with, as you know, the days, the day that we send up at the Hill, the proposal in regard to the Freedom Fighters in Nicaragua. And we're sending up as I'm going to call on Colin in a few minutes to tell you what the package is and all about it. But I did want to, I didn't want to tell you that I believe that everything we've seen and the courage that we've been getting from the other four presidents down there, they have had a problem for quite some time in regard to how far they can go in speaking out about what they want down there because, frankly, they're frightened. They know that the Santanistas have got a bigger military than they all have put together. And the Santanistas haven't been hesitant about suggesting that their ideas might cross borders. But anyway, they themselves feel very definitely that the Freedom Fighters are the pressure that has made the Santanistas at least voice some of the concessions that they have already made. And yet they have fallen short in doing that of a really foolproof thing in regard to ceasefire and all. So we think that it is absolutely essential to maintain that pressure on them. The Freedom Fighters now remember about 17,000 and they've proven themselves and you know the military rule is in fighting guerrillas, which the Santanistas have to do now with the Freedom Fighters, is you have to have a superiority of 10 to 1 to be successful. So I don't think they've got 170,000 yet in their military. But I'm going to ask Colin to explain to you what it is we're sending up there and we'll discuss it a little bit. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I'm so honored to be here today. It's my pleasure. I wanted to present to you several photographs I've taken of things in Washington. One of them is the old detective office building, which I made into an exhibit poster. Well, it's wonderful and it is an historic, very famous building and I think beloved by all of us here. It is. Most people's favorite building in Washington's lead they didn't tear it down. I understand one president. They set out to do that. Howard Baker and his wife. His wife saved it. Well, that's fabulous. Howard Baker just saw these and he congratulated him and said he had a good eye. I mean, our fellow was quite a photographer. Yes, sir, I'd like to give you a set of matching sets. Of course, as you see, one's the old executive, one's the capital. And then I have one more that I think you'll realize. This is a little one of the White House at Christmas time. Oh. And I'd like to give you that. You could perhaps give that to Mrs. Reagan. That's a little present. Yes, thank you very much. Sure. Oh, she loved to have that. Oh, hi. Well, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you so much, sir. It was very much a pleasure. Well, I appreciate that. It was very good. Great. Thank you. Good speech. I mean, that was a good speech. Thank you. I was right there. Good speech. Right? Thank you. Thank you. Mr. President. How are you? How are you? I'm good. This is Mr. Steve Morris. He's the President of the National Association of Retired Federal Employees. He wants to make you. As of this moment, we're making you and First Lady members of the Art Association. You've now qualified. Well, thank you very much. Not urging your retirement. No, I was going to say that coming years from now, I won't be honorary. Those in 50 cents will probably get you cup and cup. Well, thank you very much. It's our pleasure. And this is your first issue of our monthly magazine. Retirement. One for you. One for First Lady. I wanted to tell you about him. He is years in service with the federal treasure agent. He's not been in the White House, but he has served other Presidents. He's Shover, Richard Nixon. I was also the special agent in charge of Los Angeles when you were governor. Well, for heaven's sakes. And I sure liked what you were doing out there. Thank you. I served on Nixon's detail. Of course, another Western White House there. Also a little bit with President Johnson. And once with President Eisenhower. Well, we're leaving out shortly. Yeah, okay. Well, thank you for your time, sir. Thank you. And I will convey to all the people I represent, which are the Federal Retirees, that you provided us with this opportunity. Well, please, congratulations. Congratulations to you. Thank you, Mr. President. See you soon. All right. Thank you, Howard. Thank you. Hi. How are you? Back again. Yes. Friends from the AAU celebrating their 100th anniversary. Hello there. Hello. Nice to see you. Thank you for having us. Nice to meet you. Hello, sir. Nice to see you. Go ahead. Hello. Nice to see you. I'm Don Page. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Pleased to meet you. Pleased to meet you. Nice to see you. Well, thank you all for coming in. We came during gifts. Well, since you were recognizing the AAU, we wanted you to be a life member in our new anniversary organization. Well, thank you. Nice to belong to someone older than I am. How about that? And as an honorary member, life member of the AAU, you are allowed to vote for the Sullivan Award. So there is your ballot if you would like to send it in. Well, thank you very much. Well, that's wonderful. Shouldn't we arrange ourselves for a group photo here? Quick, quick, quick. We also have a hat for you here. It's in your hands. In the middle. Can you crunch a little bit? Yeah, maybe turn slightly like that. We brought you a couple of sweatshirts. It's a real good photo. That's great. Thank you. And this one's for Senator Luther. Oh, thank you. My goodness. You've got to come to the ranch and cut wood. All right. Well, thank you. I wouldn't want you to find out sometime later and take all of these things back. I played football in college in the little 19 conference in Illinois. But at the end of the conference, I think in the United States, and still in the eligible, I, as a matter of fact, before I got out of school, I was in New York. That's the old days of journalism. It was a pretty strict, pretty strict code. So I loosened up a little bit. Exactly. I think that conference still calls itself the Blue 19, but now it has 23 colleges. You really accomplished it. You were the graduate. My family, my mother grew up in Dixon. Jack Talty was her cousin. Yes, that's a good name. He said you used to go there. I remember watching you do radio announcement on the ticket ticket. Oh, well, that was in Des Moines when that occasion was announced. Dixon for seven summers. I was a lifeguard. Jack's... Jack's seventh test pilot. Well, listen, I appreciate all of what you're doing and I highly respect this organization. And thank you for receiving this. Two years ago, we had your film when you spoke to about 3,000 kids in St. Louis there, which you made it pay for. March in your Olympics. Yes. And I want to thank you for the opportunity of representing you in West Germany and in Italy in 1984 on your youth and exchange initiative, which we followed through on and have had the re-German exchanges. That's wonderful. So it's been quite an opportunity. Thank you. Thank you for bringing it. And I enjoyed your state of the art. The props were wonderful. We laughed and laughed. It was great. When I dropped that one and then did this, I wasn't happy. I can understand. Oh, it was wonderful. Thank you. Thank you again, Mr. President. You're doing a wonderful job. I just wanted to thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Welcome back, Lakeland Sports. Mike Sousie, sophomore forward here, Bemidji State and the pride of Caledon, Ontario. And I think maybe the Bemidji State player that's the closest where I grew up in Acton, Ontario, which is 10 miles, not even. Yeah, no, it's really close. Something like that. Something like that. How did you find Bemidji State, Mike? Just the recruiting process. Like I said, we were talking earlier. I really didn't hear about Bemidji State being down there in Ontario. But I got talking to Tom there. He watched me play back in the OHL Cup quite a few years ago. So we got in contact through there. And then he saw me play. And then when Teddy was here, he watched me as well and just kind of through that process and came down here and visited and fell in love with the school and the program. Excellent. And now more and more ice time, of course, this year. And the two goal game that you had here, that first goal that you got a couple of weeks ago. Easiest you've ever scored in hockey, maybe? Yeah, that was a weird one for sure. Just crossed the blue line and shot it between the defenseman's legs. And somehow it trickled in. Some special teams as well for Bemidji State. How's that? Yeah, I know it's good. It's a learning process. Trying to do the PK right now. And we're pretty good at it. We do a lot of video on it. And I watched the older guys doing Charlie O'Connor and Kyle Baumann and Bretton Harms. They're good at it. So just try to follow those guys. And hopefully I'll get a bigger role. How about this season? Pretty incredible for Bemidji State. Your thoughts? Yeah, I know it's been a fun year. It's always fun winning. So it's really exciting. And then winning the McNeil Cup a couple of weeks back. So it's been a great year. And hopefully we can keep on going here the last weekend and then take it into playoffs. How about school? And what are we studying? Made the decision as to which way you're going? Yeah, I'm going to do business management with an emphasis in finance, management, and entrepreneurship. I'm standing right at the McNaughton. Let's bring on the Broadmoor too. Yes, thank you. All right, yeah. Mike Sucia, sophomore forward here, Bemidji State. Be back in just a moment. I like the sports.


In vivo reprogramming using October 3, 4, SOX2, KLF4, and CMYC, OSKM, has been shown to be effective in generating pluripotent stem cells from adult, fully differentiated cells. However, some studies have reported the formation of teratomas due to prolonged exposure to OSKM. Recently, a study by the Espigior Belmonti lab demonstrated a cyclical approach to in vivo OSKM expression that prevents full reprogramming and tumoragesis. This study provides evidence that in vivo reprogramming can be used to enhance tissue regeneration without the risk of teratoma formation. Further research into this area may lead to new applications in regenerative medicine. This article was authored by Irene de la Zaro, Giulio Cosso, and Costas Costarellos.