Hi there! It's DJB and in this video I'm going to be teaching you how to strip a model horse of its custom paint job. So sometimes when we're customizing models we mess up and we want to restart. I've done this several times in commission work and regular customizing or even just old customs that I didn't feel were as technically sound as my new stuff. I have stripped the model down so that you can reprime and repaint. I use Easy Off Heavy Duty Oven Cleaner. Goodbye it! Pretty much anywhere I've seen it in grocery stores, drug stores, and department stores. Now this stuff is very very potent and very toxic for both your lungs and your skin. You don't want to touch this and you don't want to breathe it in. So I usually do this process in my kitchen sink. It won't wreck your sink. It's made for appliances but I would highly recommend using a respirator. I use the 3M medium size respirator with two fine particle filters on it. In the video you'll see me wearing just simple latex gloves which do work but I really prefer using the big yellow kitchen gloves that you can just get in any regular store.  So this stuff comes out really good and it will start to foam on the model. You want to feel through your gloves that the model is completely slimy in all the areas.  Sometimes some paint will already start to come off. And then you're just going to take a Ziploc bag. I've also had success in using just a normal garbage bag. Some kind of plastic product that you can seal off.  And then you're actually going to let it sit overnight. So 24 hours gives the best results. The longer you can let it sit the better. I wouldn't let it go over a few days though. You really only need overnight or at least a day. And you will notice that when you go back to the models the product will have activated and some of the paint will seem loose and detaching from the model. So then I find it works good to use some kind of a scrub brush. I've had success with just using these green scrubby brushes. A bristly brush and old tooth brushes. I wouldn't recommend using wire as it can wreck the plastic or resin in your model. Then you're going to want to rinse the model and just do this under some warm to hot water.  You will notice right away that a lot of the paint will start to slough off. The crevices that you can't reach, that's where the toothbrush comes in. Depending on what products were used on the model, I find primer takes a lot of scrubbing to come off. This stuff should come off fairly easy but if you've been scrubbing for a while then you're probably not going to get the remainder off. So you can redo this process several times until you get the model to a consistency that you like. I found some models work a lot easier than others. How long you let it sit and how good of the coverage you got with the easy off in the beginning. Be careful with traditional models as they do have an air hole in the side of their mouth. I've heard that putting a drop of hot glue over the hole actually helps eliminate the ability for water to get inside of the model but if you do get water inside, if you let the model sit for a few days and shake it every few hours, eventually all of the water will evaporate and you'll have no problems. In this Marabella custom, I got her stripped to this point and this was good enough for me. Depending on what you're doing with the custom, you may need to do some additional sanding for the final flakes of primer or the final flakes of paint. But generally speaking, this method works really really well. Fear not, you can make mistakes, just strip your model and start again. All of the tools used in this video are in the description below. Please subscribe for weekly Wednesday uploads, follow me on Instagram and Facebook at DJB Studios. Check out my website and sign up to my mailing list to be the first to know about commissions, tutorials, and sales pieces. If you have any questions, feel free to message me. Thank you so much for watching and happy customizing.


Good morning everybody. Good morning members of the public committee members. We're going to start on the new proposed home ownership. I don't have the exact title down or in front of me, but more Collins is my housing finance agency. Is charged with implementing and running that program, which I understand was proposed by the governor in. A budget adjustment, I think, but was not put in the budget. Just act as it came over to the Senate. So that brief introduction. We'd like to learn more about it. I don't think we, I don't think we've heard a lot about it at this point. And I guess a preview. For me anyhow, and for other folks is where. I think it's a little bit outside the boundaries of a typical budget adjustment act that usually tweaks what happens. What happened in the last budget. For changes in spending or need for more money. And doing potentially starting new programs within the budget. Adjustment act. And we're doing that, I guess, it's being suggested in a couple of areas and housing because. There's so much pressing need for housing. I think it's in my own feeling. We need to go judiciously in that direction where the substantive committees don't get to do a thorough review. We're told that the budget adjustment act has to be out by Friday, at least on the money issues. So with that pessimistic note, I'm turning it over to you. Thank you. I'm up for the challenge. My name is more Collins. I'm the director of the Vermont housing finance agency. Thank you for squeezing me into what looks like a very full agenda. So I'm going to move quickly. Senator Sarkin was right that. The governor proposed $5 million for a new home ownership construction program in the budget adjustment act. I think it didn't, didn't vote against it, but thought that as Senator Sarkin said, proposing new programs in the budget adjustment is unusual. And they wanted to take more time and think about the implications of starting a new program. The governor has proposed another $10 million in FY 23 budget. I believe his overall goal is however, is to make sure that we have a new program. Whichever vehicle it comes to be that there be $15 million spent on home ownership construction through ARPA funding. And I believe the reason the first bit was proposed in budget adjustment was in recognition of the pipeline of projects that developers and builders have underway or available coming forward. So I'm going to send a signal to the building industry that there was funding available, which I can speak to what the program is next. I'm going to share my screen very quickly to show you that there are, there have been many investments in home ownership over the years from the state. I'm going to show you some examples. I'll run through a few projects that we have long with the support of the legislature through the state home ownership tax credit program. We have long run a home ownership development program. East branch farms are 20 newly constructed duplexes in Manchester within walking distance of a shopping center that they have the shared equity model. But we're funded through the state home ownership tax credit program. And we're brought online over several years. You can see that we've funded homes in Cavendish several in Chittenden County. We've in total done $18 million of construction loans. We've also funded the state home ownership tax credit program that the state has to nonprofit and for-profit builders and developers in our state. The legislature expanded the state's tax credit program from just being a rental development program to home ownership in 2009. And over that time since then we've overseen and expanded the state's tax credit program. A lot of those have been manufactured homes that Champlain housing trusted ministers through their manufactured home replacement program. But the balance of the money, just over 6.6 million has been in stick built homes in 25 different communities. You can see this is a very old picture of Stafford Commons and Woodstock that is notorious for its decade long permit that does house many homeowners in Woodstock, which was a great success. And Dalton Drive is on the Essex Colchester line and it's the historic rehabilitation of Officer's Row, which is on bus service close to healthcare and amenities. I just want to remind the committee that there's a lot of programs VHF runs with federal dollars that frankly doesn't blow through the legislature and we don't get in, frankly, we don't spend enough time talking about and informing you of an example was after the last financial crisis, there was federal funds that VHFA administered in total about $10 million where we would purchase foreclosures from lenders work with homeownership centers and builders and trades folks to rehabilitate them with an eye on energy efficiency and then sell them to income qualified buyers and those homes remain affordable going forward. The initial program ran from 2009 through 2015, but once we used up all the money, now our role switches to one of monitor and we produce regular reports and watch the resale of these homes over time. This was really designed to be a neighborhood stabilization program from the feds, which was administered through VHFA. Again, the tax credit program expanded, you added homeownership as an eligible activity in 2009, but then in response tropical storm Irene, it expanded again to cover the manufactured home replacement program. I do think this is a program you hear about often and so I won't spend a lot of time on it, but you can see that it's gone to help 263 manufactured homes so far, which are all energy star rated, if not net zero. I'm going to stop my screen share there so I can see your lovely faces. There is a handout in your files under my testimony. It does show, actually, you know what? I'm going to share my screen one more second. I apologize. But you're right, Laura. It's all posted on our website under today's date, the documents. Yeah, and you'll see this chart on there. This shows I've showed this to you so many times.  When I get asked by reporters, as I was again last week by VPR, doing another brave little state story on housing, they keep saying, why do we have this housing crisis? And I keep pointing to, because we aren't keeping up with producing the homes that we need. You can see here, the 1980s weren't even one of our biggest growth decades, but you can see then, even then we were adding just about 3200 primary homes a year to our housing stock. And every decade, that annual rate of increase drops off. And so in the most recent decade, I'm showing on this chart, we were adding just about 400 homes a year. And I'm excluding vacation homes. There was more construction happening then, but I think this program and this committee and definitely VHV, as an agency, is mostly focused on primary homes for Vermonters who can purchase them. And this is not just a Vermont problem. This is a national problem. We know that America is short between five and 7 million homes nationwide, but you can also see what this has done on this map. That Vermont has one of the highest in the top 10 small bottom 10 states, however you say that, of having the greatest home price appreciation in the nation. And so this pandemic has proposed unique challenges and we've come up with what we think is the best solution to this problem for this particular crisis that's been thrown at Vermont. So the problem is, is that it's too expensive to build a modest home that's affordable to Vermonters. We have a strong framework for new investments that builds off historical and ongoing success of state investments into building home ownership opportunities, which is what I just ran through quickly in those slides. So we know how to meet the home ownership needs in Vermont. We're building off these existing models and adjusting them to today's market, which is what this program proposes. This program was spurred by the survey and the forum that we held this summer with builders and developers that I spoke about a week or two ago when I was last in front of this committee, they really talked a lot about the barriers to home production. And so the approach in this pilot program was informed by conversations with Vermont's builder and banker communities and continues on as they frankly hear us testifying about it and get excited about learning more about the program. Although this is designed to be a pilot and a new set of approaches, we will be engaging even more with a broad audience of home builders and banks and credit unions to continue to shape the final mechanics of the program. And I think that that is where, if I had to say, you know, why the house appropriations committees was thinking that this wasn't done being developed was that they wanted all the answers of how big will the homes be? What will they cost? How will it work? What will the profit limits be? And we've been talking about how we will be setting all those limits through a public process. That is the way VHFA typically designs our programs. We administer $36 million a year that doesn't go through the state house through federal tax credits. And in doing so, we do that through a very transparent public process. We have to have a public document, which is in a nerd terminology called the qualified allocation plan. And in that we have to publicly propose what the priorities are going to be, how the priorities of the funding are in alignment with the state's housing policies and plans, how we're going to define downtown developments. Does that just mean in a designated area? Or does that mean within a half mile walking radius of a designated area? Which of the five designated areas counts? And should they all count equally? Or do we really want to treat village centers and designated downtowns as different from new town centers and growth areas? These are the detailed conversations that I think are best had in a public forum where builders, developers, nonprofits and advocates can grapple with these conversations so that we can come out with the best outcome. In the end, there are two elements of what is being proposed. One is proposed to be funded through the BAA. The other is currently a request to VHCB, they have a board meeting tomorrow and their staff has recommended $2 million to go to VHFA so that we can support banks and credit unions who provide construction loans for home builders. And we would look through various formats to guarantee those loans, we would look at the cost of those loans, maybe through deposit access or participating in construction loans with the lenders so they don't have to take on all the risk. But somehow to backstop those construction loans, which carry some risk with home ownership development. And because VHFA would put this $2 million to work in this way, it would lower the cost of the construction loan and that would lower the cost of the construction loan. And that would lower the cost of the construction loan and lower the cost on to the home buyer. That is not a part of the BAA request, but it's an important component so that you know that when we were hearing from builders, this was one thing that they really raised was that they had to set aside too much money upfront cash, deposit it with the bank just to backstop and protect the construction loan. And so the BAA request is for a subsidy program that's going to address two kinds of gaps we see in building homes. One is the value gap. The reality that one can't do that, but it's not going to reduce the cost of the construction loan costs. The BAA request is for a subsidy program that's going to address two kinds of gaps we see in building homes. One is the value gap. One can in many communities in our state build a home, but it will cost so much that the minute the last nail is hammered in or the paint dries, that home may not appraise for the full amount that it costs to build it. That's a reality that in some of our communities costs in the example on my one pager that your committee has, it costs $425,000 to build a modest home, but it's only going to appraise for $375,000. That value gap needs to be covered if we're going to bring more affordable homes to market, and this program would pay for that. Additionally, $375,000 may be too expensive for some of the targeted households we're trying to serve. And so we can choose to also cover an affordability subsidy that could buy down that purchase price even farther to serve a lower income Vermont household. That affordability subsidy we're proposing would stay with the home in the form of a land covenant, which Vermont has many decades of using, and it would be a silent subsidy at the home that would stay there and could be available to future buyers if they're income eligible. It would not grow with time. It is different from the shared equity model. So the home buyer, when they go to sell, they would not share in the appreciation. They would take the appreciation, but the public funds would stay with the home and be available for the next buyer. There's also parts of the state where that value gap isn't so much a problem. And there's many parts of the state where we're focused much more on rehabilitation instead of new construction. And this program would cover both new construction or rehabilitation. I can appreciate this in all of your counties, but I'm looking at Senator Brock, knowing that there are some towns and cities that really need new construction. But then there are many communities that need money to repair and bring back to market, vacant housing stock. And so this would be available there too. The amounts of money that would be available to cover the value gap or the affordability gap would fluctuate and be nimble based on the needs of that development. Just like every application that BHCB or VHFA or DHCD funds, we would look at and do a full financial underwriting of that proposal and determine how much is, needs to go to the value gap, how much would be needed for the affordability subsidy. And that we would cap this assistance at 35% of the total development cost. We got that standard based on a federal tax credit program that was proposed in Build Back Better, but obviously has not passed yet because Build Back Better hasn't passed. But we are trying where we can to mirror this program to what we see developing at the federal level so that I'm a hopeful girl. If there's ever a day that federal tax credits or funds are available, we could use this to leverage with that and grow the program even more. Additionally, I think leverage is important. We do have existing programs in our state as I rolled through very quickly in my slides to support home ownership development. And we would like to see this program be developed so that it could complement other funding. It could maybe be paired with the state tax credit if we were going to try to reach really deep affordability. It could be a tool for the shared equity model to access so that there had to be less subsidy to buy down that affordability to the sweet spot of where their program serves. This pilot is designed as the governor has deemed it, a middle income, missing middle income proposal. So it's really saying that it would serve at the bottom and maybe 80% of median income up to 120% of area median income. I think 80% is going to be hard without leveraging those other subsidies. I think maybe starting at median income is probably going to be more realistic about what we see, but I never want to put a floor on an income limit. If there's some way we can serve very low income with a home ownership program, that's wonderful. I just want to recognize that it really would take other subsidies to pair with this to get to that point. Can I interrupt? Are you close to being done? Very close. The last thing I wanted to say was just the reviews that we would do as an agency in the administration would include reviewing land costs for reasonableness. Like I said, putting limits on the size of the homes, the cost per square foot and the profit that a builder developer could have and in that know that this would remain a flexible nimble program as markets change. I don't know what coming out of the pandemic is going to look like for the home building industry and this kind of flexible resource would be critical so that we can make sure that we're responding to that changing market. Thank you. We're really pressed for time. Have you presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee? Yes. I think that was last week. Okay. I guess overall, in addition to the concern that the house may have had about specifics of this program, I'm also, you know, if we were able to do full due diligence, I would want to know why we need another new program. It seems like we have other programs that are targeted similar things or could be tweaked or expanded to cover this as opposed to establishing a brand new program. One of the things you mentioned sounded very similar to what was suggested in S79 in the home ownership rehabilitation revolving program for a million dollars. I don't know that that's started and maybe this is, that's the governor's not still pushing for that, even though there's a million dollars sitting there in the house. But I just, I'm starting to feel like there's all this. I realize putting together deals for housing development is complicated and we just have to draw from a lot of sources, but it does start to seem that. I mean, just, I know it's too simplified, it's really a subsidy program to help somebody afford a house that they can't afford at the building costs right now. And why can't that be factored in some, in some other existing program as opposed to creating a whole new program. So I'm just expressing, I'm not expecting an answer or a very long answer, but I, I guess my feeling is that I have that concern as well as the specific concerns that the house appropriations committee have of specific parameters for the program. And finally, I would say that, you know, the difference between budget adjustment and the budget, if you make sections of the budget effective upon passage, maybe two to three months. And there is also, as you know, we're doing this omnibus housing bill. There's also that bill where something like this could potentially go in. So the, the delta between what you can get in better budget adjustment and what you can get from a separate standalone bill, maybe even less than two to three months. So I'm feeling that sense of discomfort at this point, but I'll stop there and ask if any committee members have questions. We have a very full agenda this morning. I'm not sure we can get more back, but if you have questions, we're going to have to make a recommendation. I think Jane has asked me for a recommendation on this program, which as you can imagine, based on a half hour testimony, it's a little unusual for a legislative. Do diligence committee. I can't see everybody. Let me check. Is any shout out if anybody wants to ask a question of more. Okay. More any last words? I'm, I'm, I'm sorry if there is, if you have some availability this week, there may be some more time, but I'm not, I can't guarantee it. Thank you for your time. I look forward to talking about this more under the budget request because, and it would be great to think about this under the omnibus and or the budget. And I can answer your questions at that point about how this is similar, different from that revolving loan fund you mentioned and the other programs that exist in Vermont. We can talk about that then. Good. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you more.


Here's the truth about what's changing with Spotify realities. Spotify is gonna stop paying out the bottom artists who already don't get paid because most distributors don't pay out unless you reach a certain threshold of money each month. So a lot of this money, and we're talking millions, sits at accounts being unpaid. And that money will now go to paying out the pool Spotify pays. So every one of you who's already getting paid should hypothetically get paid more. And that money will now go to pay out the artists who already get paid, resulting in anyone who's already making some money, making more hypothetical. But the big change here is gonna be that if you're botting your music or paying to be unbotted playlists, Spotify is gonna start penalizing the distributor payouts.  If for once looks like Spotify is doing changes that will make the music world a better place, which is pretty rare for that company.


In our last session, we were basically talking about the organization as a corporate identity. And we talked about the history of the corporates coming in from the 17th century up till the 21st century. Today, we are going to be talking about the different forms of business organizations. And in that particular context, I would just like to mention that there can be three fundamentally different type of organizations. One could be a public sector organization. The second one could be a business organization. And the third one could be a social organization. Now when we look at these three fundamental dimensions of corporations, then we talk about the fact that the public sector organization basically is dealing with the public sector with government, with semi-government and also with government-owned organizations. And these are called public sector companies or public sector departments or public sector ministries. Now this is the public sector. And in a country like Pakistan, the biggest employer of the market or of the economy is the public sector. And therefore the public sector organizations are also very important. And because they can be doing business, they also are business organizations but working under the domain and nomenclature of public sector companies. And we have many like them in Pakistan. We have the Pakistan Steel Mills. We have the Pakistan International Airways. We have Pakistan Railways. We have Pakistan Post Offices. We have different companies, even the notorious 56 public sector companies in the Punjab. They were also business organizations working on different sectors of development. Then we have the National Highway Authority and all of these are different organizations which are working in the public sector. Then we have the social sector. The social sector is basically dealing with the development work and also sometimes in different businesses. Now when we talk about the social sector, it can be registered in seven different types of organizations based upon different laws with the most common being the Society's Registration Act. And the most complex and difficult actually comes under the Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan under section 42 and we call them section 42 organizations. And they can do business if they want to but they would be non-profit. That basically means that the profit will not be going to the directors or to the shareholders but would remain within the organization. So what we see is that there can be social organizations and those social organizations can be doing business. But those social organizations would remain confined to the fact that if they are a section 42 organization they would have limited liability. And then another very important thing would be that they can do business but their business would always be not for profit. So ladies and gentlemen when we are talking about the SECP, the Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan section 42 company in the social dimension then they can do business but they would be having limited liability and they would be not for profit and that basically means that all of the profits would be used within the organization and cannot be taken up by the shareholders or by the different stakeholders or by the board of directors. So again ladies and gentlemen when we are seeing all of this so in the social sector also we are talking about different forms of organizations which are primarily involved in doing business or social work and they tend to do something good for the society and nowadays there is also a terminology which is called social entrepreneurship. So coming back to business organizations, business organizations can also be of many types. They could be a proprietorship, they could be a partnership, they could be a private limited company, they could be a public limited company or they could be a joint venture, they could be a collaboration or they could be a conglomerate. So all of these different forms of businesses and business organizations tend to exist. We will be looking at the more corporate organizations, why because we will be looking it from the corporate governance context and we will see how the Securities Exchange Commission tends to regulate these different organizations to create an environment of corporate governance. So ladies and gentlemen when we are talking about proprietorships then in proprietorships there is no form of registration and individual can just simply for example Sayidusan Heather can have a organization called SHH Incorporate. Now this does not have to be registered separately. I can use the same text number, I can use my home address and I can do as much business as I want and again I can have a separate account or I can be using my own individual account but I would not be having limited liability. So as an individual I would have absolute liability even for my own company which is a proprietorship. Now when we look at a partnership then the partnership basically comes in two fundamental forms. One form is the is the partnership, the classical partnership which is basically regulated by the partnership act and then there is a new form in which there is limited partnership which comes under the limited partnership act. So again there are two different laws which regulate these two different partnerships and in a partnership again there is unlimited liability except for the limited partnership one and in that there are different partners. Those partners get together, they sign a partnership deed, they can or cannot get the partnership registered, they would have a separate account and that account would be basically for the different business. So again there could be proprietorship or there could be a partnership but when we go on to corporate organizations then ladies and gentlemen we are talking about the SECP regulated organizations and in that the most primary difference is that there is a limited liability. A primary motive for incorporating a business is the desire to limit individual's liability for the obligations of the enterprise. It consists of different partners and those partners are personally liable for the firm's debt. So that is what is happening in a partnership but in a corporate body what we see is that their liability is limited and therefore the organization is a separate legal entity, corporate entity and that is what is happening over there. Secondly what we see is that in a company there is perpetual succession. In perpetual succession what we see is that the succession is vested in the legal capacity and powers of an individual and then secondly what we see in that is that even if there is a debt or there is a bankruptcy it does not affect the company. So in the perpetual succession what we see is that it doesn't depend upon the different shareholders but there is continuity and it does not end. However in a partnership or in a proprietorship with the death of the individual then we see that those entities tend to vanquish. So that is the fundamental differences that we see that one is limited liability and the second one is perpetual succession. So in our next session what we are going to do ladies and gentlemen is that we are going to see how these different organizations tend to work and further see how they tend to work independently of personal liability and that is what we are going to do. Thank you so much.


It's been a historic week for the continent of Africa and for the world as a whole. French troops finally withdrew from Mali after years of protests, after so-called anti-terrorist operation which also ended up in the killing of a lot of civilians and after its credibility has completely been destroyed in the region. We'll be looking at all of this in this episode of Mapping Fault Lines. We are with us Praveer Pulkai sir. Praveer sir, last week we talked about Afghanistan and the failed NATO war there Looks like we are back to another failed NATO or at least NATO members operation this time in the north of Africa. So we see that like I said French troops have withdrawn from Mali. There has been a series of protests over the years, not just in Mali but also in its neighboring countries which are often known as the G5 countries, the Sahel region. French troops there from 2013 supposedly fighting against Islamist forces but very very unpopular. So could you maybe first take us through why the French troops first came in and more importantly why were they so unpopular and forced to withdraw in such a disgraceful way? Well you know there is an important question for us to understand about the region itself that this region was essentially Francophone Africa. So France in its colonial role might have withdrawn after the Algerian war and so on but essentially still continued in different ways and we have talked about it earlier that for instance the control still the finances of these countries the Francophone Africa has a number of countries which essentially the currency is controlled by the Reserve Bank of France, the Central Bank of France. So that being what it is, it means that France has had an overwhelming presence in spite of the fact it is no longer in colonial possession in that sense of these countries. Having said that this also is the consequence of the whole unraveling of this part of the world and we can come to it later from which is basically Libya and you know the Mali intervention took place, the official French troops reaching there took place when the Tuaregs who were really bodyguards and part of the Libyan army they after the fall of Benghazi and Tripoli they came over with arms which they had because a part of Gandhaf's forces they came over and started their campaign against the Mali government trying to take over a part of Mali and as you know the ethnic divisions in all of these parts of Africa as a consequence of how these colonial states were formed essentially sitting down in the late 19th century and marking things on a map that this was the consequence of the fall of Gaddafi and then it opened destabilized the whole region and essentially who gained out of it were a set of forces which at that point of time decided to align itself with the Isis Al Qaeda forces and that's because of what was happening in the Arab world that's where the Isis Al Qaeda had strengthened but these were local militias, the local groups which were fighting a lot of them came from some of these aspirations of breaking away from what originally the colonial state was forming their own identities and that's where you have this whole growth of these forces aligning itself with certain regional or certain other ethnic identity groups you know Africa whenever these things take place the West calls it tribal wars now when it takes place for instance in Europe we don't call it tribal wars for instance when you have the Basques who have been fighting for their identity both in France and in Spain of course we know the Spain was one much more we don't call it tribal wars but when it comes to Africa all ethnic identities are consumed under this notion of tribal wars so you call this tribal wars that takes place in Africa fits in very nicely with the colonial view of Africa itself so this is the unraveling of a lot of this post-colonial states and Francophone Africa, France really stayed if you take the number of military interventions that have taken place with French troops in Africa post the 50s when officially the French started leaving their colonies the numbers are very large and even today this is the reason why when you talk about the unpopularity of France it is because they are aligned to essentially post-colonial governments whose strings they still hold and essentially of course the first strings they still hold so this is the other part of it after all you know if you control the economy people don't see you as their friend if the economy starts doing badly the French influence is weakening in these places there is a lot more nationalist forces which have come which have been overthrown on occasions by France or supported by France in the overthrow of various governments over there but you can see the dwindling of its popularity or its credibility but what we also see is the replacement of that by the United States you are really looking at the growth of American presence in this region so as France weakens or withdraws that vacuum might be filled by United States with exactly the same purpose again that which forces to support internally which military factions to support which government president to support and you will see the continuation perhaps of autocracies this time backed by the United States more openly then by the French or a combination of the French and the United States because they are working really together in this region the Mali example of course is the fact that they have been as you said local massacres they have also been very unpopular because they have supported leaders who have been isolated from the masses and therefore there was a coup that took place the section of the military took over and they basically said you know French troops can you go that we will be much better off without you not that they are democrats either but the point is that this any outside force aligning with a local set of leaders does not earn credibility for the local leaders and they now have gone to the Wagner group for instance who they think will not play the same role or who do not have the same identity in the eyes of the people and this is ex-colonial power which is what France was I think this is the change that we are likely to see but let us not forget that it is two implications for the region which is the French weakening and the United States replacing them and the other part of it that what did the fall of Gaddafi what impact did it have in Africa as well as the Mediterranean because when Gaddafi talks about it he says if I go that these are the two regions which are going to be affected and what is said has actually come true Good thing you mentioned that Praveer because that is what I was coming to as well the fall of Gaddafi is really some kind of a trigger moment for conflicts that take place across the region you mentioned of course we are talking about the Sahel region but also to the east maybe also you went to the south in countries in Africa so why was this such an integral moment so to speak one of the things that people do not understand about Gaddafi that he had an enormous influence on the continent of Africa the reason for that was that he was seen as a nationalist figure that he was definitely an anti-colonial figure that he fought for African Union to be the major force in Africa and if there are any conflicts there African Union should be the one which should intervene and resolve it and at that point it is called the Organization of African Unity also Yes Name wise too Yes and there also it is again important that any institution in Africa has generally been funded by the colonial or ex-colonial or imperialist powers and they have therefore having bankrolled these organizations also controlled them this was an exception because Gaddafi used the fact that he had a lot of oil money he used it to essentially bring the African Union that as an independent power that it had its own bureaucracy it had its own institutional structure and it was not dependent on the west and Gaddafi's role therefore that anti-impealist or I will call it the non-aligned role the really the global south asserting itself this in Africa this was very important and Gaddafi played a key role because you see other countries and this is also interesting that all the other countries which threw up such leaders most of them went out in coups engineered by the United States and its allies the France and of course British In this region Thomas Sankara for instance in Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara then in Cruba in Ghana just a little below but this is very much there the figures who were really important was also in the non-aligned movement and Cruba was a very very important figure on that and of course Julius Niare and others were there who could not be displaced so easily but if you take the Francophone Africa this has been much more of an issue because Francophone Africa the France never really left so Gaddafi's fall was a re-emergence they thought of re-emergence of the kind of power they held in Africa and you can see it even today Africa Union is no longer the body it is it's not able to intervene in most of these issues that are coming up and that independent role of Africa Union is not there and actually Gaddafi had warned Tony Blair they had a phone conversation because the west wanted Gaddafi to go and they said why don't you resign hand over power and go and Gaddafi had said all the transcripts were there today because they were given to a parliamentary in a UK parliamentary committee so he said that you don't understand what's going to happen if I go what you're supporting over here are not just any group these are essentially allied to ISIS Al Qaeda forces and what you're going to see the rise of Islamic fundamentalist or sectarian groups over here it will impact Africa, northern Africa particularly but it will also affect the Mediterranean that's exactly what has happened after that of course Europe played a major role in this because it was led by France and Britain with the tacit implicit support of the United States but the front running forces were really France and UK if you remember when NATO intervened in Libya they imposed what they called a no-fly zone which is something that they have been trying to impose in other countries also but they have backed off given what the consequences have been in Libya and the United Nations Security Council realized particularly Russia and China this is a very dangerous thing so they gave the right essentially of the NATO forces to bomb whoever they wanted in Libya on the ground and then the special forces were also there who were not officially the army but really were the US, France and British special forces and they worked with the so-called sessionist groups or the groups which wanted to be free of Gaddafi and as you know the consequences of what happened Gaddafi was killed and of course the whole of Libya descended in anarchy the biggest consequence of this was the huge amount of money and arms and ammunition which then left Libya both for Southern Africa as we saw in Bali and other places but also for Syria if you remember there's a whole rat line which is well-attested which the United States and the ambassador was killed in Benghazi where he went he was actually supervising a lot of the arms transfer which was taking place and those arms all ended up with ISIS, Al-Qaeda, affiliates in Syria so this whole region was opened out to these kind of forces and Libya's fall was really one of the is in fact a very key event in this Rabbir you mentioned the military in another key country which is right now also seeing a rise in conflict is Somalia where recently we have seen two or three instances of attacks by Al-Shabaab militants who were associated reportedly associated with Al-Qaeda and of course Somalia another old playground for the United States and its allies they've brought a huge amount of suffering, military operations and yet we see that after all this time Al-Qaeda seems to be very active so what's happening there and how is it connected to the processes you're talking about both in Ethiopia and in Somalia the US has intervened on different sides at different points of time Somalia is a particularly important example because if you take General Wesley Clark's talk about books book that he wrote and also his television interviews he said seven countries are going to be dismantled essentially that there will be coups military operations that will take place and seven countries Iraq was of course the key one at that point of time but there are six others and Somalia and Libya are the two countries which also figure in that if we look at the map and you can see from the map that this really are the two sides of the Mediterranean so one is the Horn of Africa which is where Somalia is and the other is of course the gateway to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic so that's where Libya is so these are the two countries you don't understand the significance of all of this unless you look at the map that's why geo strategy becomes important geo politics becomes so important so Somalia was a target for them for that reason and it was strategically extremely important for them to control it and they thought that if it goes into hands like Islamic court council which was a lot of local groups which had established after the dissolution essentially of the Somalian state had got together and had established certain amount of jurisprudence within their boundaries and all of them had got together for the coalition government which represented supposedly these forces yes they were not shall we say on the Westminster pattern they had Islamic identities because they were enforcing in the absence of a central government they are enforcing therefore what they saw as a traditional law and as you know Somalia has a very large number of Muslims the majority of the country is that and therefore they sought their jurisprudence not in a colonial jurisprudence but in a traditional jurisprudence therefore the name Islam there are nothing to do with at that point with ISIS, Al Qaeda some sections may have been there but they were not very strong there are really small sections and Americans of course used Ethiopia the Tigray TPLF who was at that time a power in Ethiopia actually also brought into power by them by the US and other forces and they intervened militarily with Ethiopian forces to throw out this Islamic court government which was there which as I said was a coalition and having got rid of them they brought back the same warlords they fought earlier if you remember Black Hawk Down well they were fighting against a warlord the same bunch of warlords were brought back against the Islamic court regime that had come into being and the consequence has been US bombings US special operations over here number of people killed and no Somalian state for the last 10-15 years and it still continues so this is the consequence that what happened in Afghanistan at least the Taliban came to power what is happening now over here is nobody is in power so there are some towns which are controlled government in Somalia but they don't control the country and its consequences have been seen now in Kenya it's also in Ethiopia so the consequences of an unstable country or a country which has no central authority and also the Somali pirates have become famous because the fishing has been destroyed over there and it's destroyed by European and other countries fishing in Somalian waters so what you see as pirates are essentially X fishermen who can't fish anymore so all of this is again the consequence of the US finding enemies where they are not any and then converting those who are not its enemies into what they said are the people they are fighting so the relationship between Islamic fundamentalist forces which is what al-Shabaab has grown into what you also see developing in Mali also see developing in other parts of Central Africa all of this is really feeding into the anti-imperial anti-colonial instincts of the people and finding who has the guns and who therefore is the best to align with and I think these are the consequences that you are seeing how it can be resolved is well if African Union strengthens itself if the local forces can get together if the imperial colonial forces decide that they should lay lay their hands off these regions instead of doing what they are doing in Somalia the US has just recently bombed again other groups, other players and if we look at the map again you will see how many bombings they have carried out we don't know how many special operations on the ground they have carried out we do not know what CIA operations are there because they are supposed to be secret they are not reported at least the air operations we know at least some pictures are there again acknowledged and unacknowledged so if you see this Somalia and Libya the two classic examples where US intervention or imperial intervention exclolol interventions have destroyed these countries and more may follow unless, unless as I said the African countries get together and say can we get rid of you and let's see how we can solve our own problems thank you so much Rabir well it's not in vain that they say that may the US or in this case it's allies like France not take an interest in your country's democracy and security we will be covering many such issues in future episodes of mapping fault lines as well until then keep watching, just click


I'm Darren Marlar and this is a Weird Darkness bonus bite. From all that's interesting dot com, after almost 50 years, Pennsylvania pastor arrested for murder of 8-year-old girl who was attending his Bible camp by Kalina Fraga. On a summer day in 1975, 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington was killed while walking to Bible camp in Broomall, Pennsylvania. Now, a pastor who knew the Harrington family has been charged with her murder. Charges have been brought against David Zandra, 83, off Marietta, Georgia. The Delaware County District Attorney's Office explained in a statement, noting that Zandra had confessed. Zandra has been charged with criminal homicide, murder of the first, second, and third degree, as well as kidnapping of a minor and the possession of an instrument of crime. The story began on August 15, 1975, when Gretchen set out to attend a Bible camp, held at two churches, the Trinity Church Chapel Christian Reform Church, where Zandra was pastor, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, where her father was the pastor. When Gretchen failed to appear at her father's church later that morning, he called Trinity Church and spoke with Zandra's wife. Shortly afterward, The New York Times reports that Zandra himself called the police to report Gretchen missing. Two months later, Gretchen's skeletal remains were discovered at Ridley Creek State Park.  But it took almost 50 years to determine what had happened to her. As The New York Times reports, police got a break in the case earlier this year when a woman identified as CI number one came forward. She had gone to school with Gretchen and her sister Zoe and had known Zandra's daughter. The witness told police that Zandra had touched her inappropriately twice when she attended sleepovers at his house. She also showed them diary entries from September 1975, in which she muses that Zandra may have tried to kidnap a different girl in town. Guess what? A man tried to kidnap Holly twice, the witness wrote in her diary. It's a secret, so I can't tell anyone, but I think he might be the one who kidnapped Gretchen. I think it was Mr. Zandra. Following this lead, NBC News reports, police went to speak to Zandra in Marietta, Georgia on July 17, 2023. At first, Zandra denied having anything to do with Gretchen's murder. But when the police told him about their new witness and her accusations against him, he confessed. He was relieved, state police trooper Eugene Tray said according to NBC News, it was like a weight was lifted off his shoulders. As Zandra told the police, he saw Gretchen walking to church on the morning of August 15, 1975 and picked her up in his car. Instead of driving her to church, however, Zandra drove her to a wooded area where he pleasured himself and demanded that she take off her clothing. When Gretchen refused, Zandra struck her with his fist, killing her. Zandra then covered her half-naked body with sticks and drove to work as normal. Over the next two months, he pretended to know nothing about Gretchen's death and according to People magazine, acted as a family friend who supported the Harrington's through Gretchen's funeral. It's difficult to express the emotions that we are feeling as we take one step closer to justice, Harrington's family said in a statement reported by People magazine. The abduction and murder of Gretchen has forever altered our family and we miss her every single day. We are extremely hopeful that the person who is responsible for the heinous crime that was committed against our Gretchen will be held accountable. Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stolzmeier plans to do exactly that.  Find the lake to the original story in the show notes and find more news in the Weird News and blog at WeirdDarkness.com.