Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome if you are joining us from wherever in the world you might be. Thank you so much for coming to this first and inaugural Maritime Warfare and International Law Symposium hosted by the Defence Studies Department of King's College London and the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies. We are very much hoping that this will become an annual event. So if you enjoy what goes on here, then we will hope to see you back next year. This particular conference is on the theme of intersection continuity and evolution from the early modern period to the 20th century. And the idea behind this conference was really to bring scholars who focus on maritime themes and international law themes and to get a sense of how the treatment of these themes has changed from the early modern period into the 20th century. And I think that we've put together quite quite an amazing program with it with some pretty stellar scholars from around the world. So I want to say first of all thank you to Professor Greg Kennedy, who is is my sort of co-chair in this conference and without whom it could not have happened. I also wanted to thank Danny McDavitt, who is essentially the person at DSD who makes all of this technology possible, and who's going to keep the conference running for us from a technological point of view. And I also then would just like to thank all of our speakers for agreeing to come and be part of this and for being so easy to manage and be in contact with over the course of the past year as we were organizing this. Before we move on to our first panel just a few housekeeping notes and just please make sure that your cameras are off while the speakers are speaking. Make sure you are muted while the speakers are speaking. When we switch to Q&A, I would actually request that you keep your cameras off just to preserve bandwidth. When we move to the Q&A, you know, I will I will call on people who want to present their questions orally, but if you would like to write your questions in the chat as well. I will keep track of it there and then sort of pull questions together of a general theme and present those to the speaker. If the panels end early, then the next panel will start at its appointed time. This is so that people who are dropping in and out of the conference due to other commitments or having an interest in a particular panel won't miss anything at all. And without any further ado, in that case, I'm going to hand over to Professor Lauren Benton and introduce her a little bit. So Professor Lauren Benton is the Martin M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law at Yale University. Her research focuses on the comparative legal history of European empires and the history of international law. Benton's books include Rage for Order, the British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800 to 1850, co-authored with Lisa Ford. Also, A Search for Sovereignty, Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400 to 1900, and Law and Colonial Cultures, Legal Regimes in World History, 1400 to 1900, which was awarded the James Willard Hearst Prize and the World History Association Bentley Book Prize in 2019. Benton received the Toynbee Foundation Prize for significant contributions to global history. And so, without any further delay, Lauren, please take it away. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and to speak to you from afar. So, I'm going to be talking today about seaborne raiding in early modern empires, European empires, and of course historians agree that it was foundational to the formation of early overseas empires. And we also know that maritime violence in extra European spaces was central to the history of international law, not least through Grotius's 1609 tract, Marie Librem. But there is more to know about the way Europeans in early empires legally structured maritime violence and more to ask about the parallels in the legalities of raiding in practice and juridical writings on war. And today I'm going to approach these questions in a somewhat unusual way. I investigate what role households played in constituting early European empires and in shaping their capacity and right to make war. I'll book with analysis of commentary on two European writers, Francisco Suarez and Hugo Grotius. And please note that I am not suggesting that Imperial agents were applying European legal templates. And I'm also not making a case. Alexander wits that extra European legal practices were directly informing European doctrines. Instead, I will use the text as a lens through which to examine a historical material with the object of bringing new elements into view, and I'll use the cases to highlight often overlooked aspects of European texts on maritime warfare, and both moves reveal that the proliferation of households was a crucial element in efforts in both theory and practice to justify private or limited conflicts and to situate them within the category of authorized public wars. I begin with Francisco Suarez writer who summarize more broadly held scholastic views for Suarez households did not have today what we would call foreign policy. They could not as imperfect communities make war, only a legitimate sovereign could go to war against a sovereign by taking up a just cause in response to an injury. But Suarez stated that there was nothing inherently wrong about private war, even quote one fought by two or a few individuals and quote. A choir that is the nature of war, at least war of a limited sort. Private violence could be made to be part of a public war if a small engagement was defined as symbolically standing in for a larger armed conflict, or if private war was used to obtain tactical public conflict through weakening an enemy or strengthening the resolve of one's own soldiers. Together these mechanisms covered a lot of sins, private actions could attain the character of parts of a legitimate war. Whenever participants conform to public resolutions made by quote the possessor of authority. But what was the political community and what conditions gave public authorities their legitimacy. One of the questions appears in another part of Suarez's writings where he noted that political communities originated with the coming together of households and again he was following scholastics in in this regard. And I'm going to go over them selves sites of politics and I won't have time today to discuss Anna Becker's recent and excellent book on households as sites of politics and how they're talked about as sites of politics and early modern political thought but I do want to mention it here as an influence. Orderly households produced social and political order and reinforce the legitimacy of public authorities. They converted their authority to go to war and made it possible to align private violence with public goals. There was also a more specific relation of households to the state and that both participated in distributing and managing the proceeds from war. So this logic writer Suarez affirm the legality of taking captives and just wars enslavement of war captives was therefore a penal action and this logic made households into sites of perpetual punishment of captives and enslavement into an act that drew on public authorization but was carried out as private violence to restrict the rights of some persons. So by creating private slaving private seizure of goods including of captives. All these forms of violence might be bundled under the category of public war in certain conditions. Households were symbolically powerful in this conversion because they made political communities potentially capable of legitimate war, because they exercise private violence on behalf of public authority, particularly in holding captives. So with their members engaged in private violence against others that might support officially sanctioned goals. Now I'll ask you to keep these points in mind while I turn to two case studies. So Imperial histories teach us that the Portuguese created a trading post empire in the Indian Ocean, and maritime raiding we know was an integral part of that enterprise the Portuguese routinely sees coastal shipping in the Indian Ocean from the very first time that they arrived. And the corollary to maritime violence was the collection of protection money from Asian shippers through the sale of safe conduct passes. Now central to the system was the creation of a network of fortresses. This, this project may seem to us logical and even natural, but it was actually controversial among Portuguese in the East, and wouldn't have developed without the energetic legacy of a series of governors, most importantly, Afonso the Albuquerque who was governor from 1510 to 1518. The fortresses fulfilled a range of practical and symbolic purposes under the Treaty of Tordesillas the Portuguese were still required to show proofs of discovery and possession, and fortified outposts served this purpose, or aided it fortified garrisons were essential to financing empire in the East because they were the places where officials could receive prizes and take the Royal fifth. They made violence against passing ships possible and place soldiers and strategic positions for future crown actions. At the same time the men in these posts engaged in their own private or quasi private raiding and imperial officials were competing all the time with Portuguese captains for the service of these men. And remember that the empire, Portuguese empire in the Indian Ocean was starved for manpower. Most men had little chance of ever sailing back to Portugal many were younger sons who were very focused on making their fortunes in the Indian Ocean. And some even turned renegade or threatened to turn renegade and renegade and join Muslim forces imperial officials like Albuquerque he understood the importance of solidifying their commander with these men and over fortified garrisons. They were patronage partly to do so, for example distributing captaincies of the forts these were valuable posts because captains took a share of prizes brought within the walls. They also pursued policies of household formation. Such policies tended to be treated by tend to be treated by historians as matters of internal administration of the empire and serve separate entirely from warm making capacity and rights. There's a different story in in Albuquerque's accounts. He described at great length in letters to the king his efforts to encourage marriages of Portuguese men to local women. The directive to encourage marriages had initially issued from the crown under Albuquerque's predecessor. He placed the policy and championed it, and he regarded it as essential to tying men to the garrisons and composing the outposts as pieces of Portuguese territory in which married men had the right to participate in town, excuse me town governance. Albuquerque offered soldiers and former soldiers direct payments if they married and he also took men's marriage status into account in making lucrative appointments. In the courtification scheme Albuquerque's marriage policy met with active opposition from captains who were competing with him for labor and the loyalties of Portuguese soldiers. At Goa Albuquerque reported to the king quote a rebellious council of men had sent out to wreck the whole enterprise unquote of marriages while Albuquerque was in Malacca. Albuquerque declared to the king that opposition to the marriage policy was quote the worst vexation that I have at present in India the worst vexation, and his vexation jumps off the pages in his letters to the king and occupies an place in those letters. Albuquerque complained at length about a Dominican friar who was inserting himself into marriage matters and undermining Albuquerque's exclusive authority over the assignment to women. He railed against a particular marriage match that he had not authorized and actually intervened in to seize the woman to have her married to another man. In these and other ways Albuquerque asserted his authority over husband's rights and over the dispensation of women. One has to note that the Portuguese were inserting themselves in a region where the taking of war captives mainly women was very common, and it was also a well established form of payment of booty to Portuguese mariners. On one raid off the East African coast Albuquerque reported that quote them captain major had given leave for every man to take as many captives as he liked. The value of captives as booty dependent on their having someplace to go, regularizing marriage and households not only stabilized garrisons under Portuguese rule it also turned them into repository for booty of all kinds including and especially If these preoccupations have been marginalized and accounts of Portuguese depredations in the Indian Ocean, it's partly because of the prevalent view that the Portuguese regarded themselves as fully authorized as Christians to attack Muslims anywhere. The focus on this blanket authorization for war has discouraged historians from interpreting the actions of Portuguese officials to establish their local right or capacity to make war. Yet as we've seen Imperial officials were acutely aware of and focused on the intricate connections among fortification household formation, the Constitution of garrisons as political communities, and their own capacity and authority to make war and to make peace with the proceeds of war. So I'm now going to move far away and later to the 17th century Caribbean. Early English colonizing to a large extent centered on the goal of creating bases from which raiders could reach Spanish sea lanes. Yet it was impossible to create viable footholds in the Atlantic from which to mount raids without both fortification and planting. Portuguese, but in slightly different ways the English did not seem to need to search for arguments for legitimate war. Before leaving England in 1654 at the head of a very large force to take Hispaniola from the Spanish or to try to general Robert Venables inquired about the legal basis for the expeditions and this is what he was told, quote that either with the Spaniards in the West Indies or not. If peace the Spaniards had violated it and to seek reparation was just if we had no peace then there was nothing acted against articles with Spain. So this formulation gave capacious legal cover for violence, but it did not exhaust officials interest in undertaking measures to reinforce the legality of private raiding. After failing spectacularly in Hispaniola Venables took possession of Jamaica and he found himself without the means to sustain a large and hungry army. A turn into planting seemed one answer a Council war was called in Jamaica and issued an order that the soldiers be distributed to plantations by lot. But the soldiers had few tools or knowledge with which to plant. After six months only half the original army of thousands remained alive. When the beast arrived in 1660 he described Jamaica's residents as an army, but without pay in London the committee of the Council of Foreign plantations took a similar view, the committee deliberated about how to make the perfect conversion of the army into a colony, and decided it was beyond their capacity they settled on the one thing that they could agree on and that was sending money to improve the fort. The conversion alone could not turn Jamaica from garrison to colony. Venables successor Edward doily grasp that rating offered more immediate gains than planting and was a faster way out of desperation for former officers and soldiers. Maybe had never stopped targeting Spanish ships and ports and private men of war gradually began to share in the rating in 1662 and 1663 a mixture of Navy and private ships participated in raids and in 1664 the first major raid took place. And that was entirely the work of private men of war it was a small fleet of 120 men that sees Santa Marta on the Spanish mainland. And governors facilitated the trend toward private rating by issuing commissions directly to privateers. And in 1662, Governor General Windsor took the unusual measure of declaring what he called a war with the Spaniards on this ground. Windsor boldly asserted that he held the power in himself to make either war or peace as he put it by, and this was an extraordinary assertion, one with a very pragmatic goal of allowing the governor to continue to issue commissions despite London's wish to make and keeps peace with Spain. The usual narratives of English piracy in the Caribbean, they tend to leave out the story of the army's crisis and the rise of rating as a response to the crisis. The standard accounts center on as I'm sure you know, sometimes they didn't begin with accounts of the periods Richard, Richard riches prize. In 1771 capture port de bello by Henry Morgan. It also emphasize they also emphasize the actions of footloose men, many originally based on tortuga, who collected import royal and took up piracy. So this storyline assumes that the unofficial war and sponsored reading prior to that belong to a settled condition of no peace beyond the line. It is said that before 1670 Governors went out of their way to justify rating including in two cases by declaring a regional war against Spain. Governors knew that as in Portuguese Goa households in Jamaica were the main repository for imported and captive labor. They also pursued a litany of strategies to encourage household formation from distributing and seeking servants from Scotland to encouraging the resettlement of families from other colonies to the purchase of African slaves for planter households. It is not an exaggeration to say that the legal encasement of slave labor on plantations developed directly out of and in tandem with measures taken to situate servants and captives from Spanish raiding in planter households. While we see that addressing the urgent problem of transforming the garrison into a colony pivoted around defining public authority over both households and private violence. Governors General acted independently of London and making local war, not just because they were pursuing their own private interests but also because it was impossible to rule the fractious former garrison, without asserting control over rating and its including captives and over households. Like Portuguese officials in the Indian Ocean Jamaican officials constructed their authority in relation to their capacity then to oversee raids and to distribute the proceeds to households. So do these histories show us new ways of reading European legal approaches to maritime violence. I think they do point to some interesting strands of thought. So the usual view of Hugo Grosius is that he developed a highly original position on the rights of private parties as well as public entities to make war. In the in Marie Libre, Grosius famously argued that anyone could lawfully punish violators of natural law, and Grosius also sought to extend and supplement this view in various ways. He argued as Annabelle Brett discusses in a recent article on Grosius and spaces of war, that the rights of private actors to defend and punish violators of natural law were activated in places where no civil authority was present. As Grosius put it such sites encompassed places quote on the seas in a wilderness in desert islands and any other places where there is no civil government included in this category were places inhabited by those, as he said who have not yet come together into a nation, such as those collections of families not yet cohere in the formation of political communities. Elsewhere to Grosius specified that a magistrate standing in for the sovereign might make war lawfully against mirror private persons. One of his most intriguing passages related to my theme today Grosius reflected on the necessity of controlled territory in the exercise of solemn war that is a declared war in which one side had a just cause for Grosius only in a solemn war that would be lawfully acquired by bringing things or people within the borders of a clearly controlled space. The corollary of this position of course is that the creation of such controlled pieces of territory could work to convert conflicts into solemn war. Fortifications might mark a controlled territory very effectively so might the presence of an army, which itself, according to Grosius could stand in for the political community. To emphasize the way claims about the adherence of participants to public goals, legitimated the violence of what he called limited wars. Grosius was pointing to the place where armies were masked or the creation of as, or the creation of a fortified place, as signifying that the capacity to convert booty into the legitimate spoils of war fortified places that doubled as political communities could give them private actions the color of public war. What broader points can we take from highlighting these themes and also by placing them alongside histories of maritime rating. Recently, in conclusion, Martin, Marty Koskini and he has argued that usual accounts of the history of international law have failed to appreciate a key contribution of the scholastics, what he calls the development of a vocabulary of rights. Private rights he tells us lay at the center of empire they rested on the universal nature of rights to property as well as on the centrality of just war to empire. What had to be defended in a just war that is was not just the political community but also widely distributed rights to property and attendant rights to travel and trade. Now this insight helps us to make sense of the lengths to which Suarez and Grosius went to bring together private and public authority, and it is also consistent with the history of practices and early empire that I've described. But a key missing element is the importance in usual accounts is the importance of households in legitimation of violence. They made a bridge between private or limited war and legitimate public war. In empires creating and collecting households relieved any doubt that garrisons were political communities households also completed the punishment of enemies by exercising dominium over goods and captives. As repositories for subject citizens household households and garrison colonies gathered crown subjects whose private raids rolled up to public authorities. These household functions meant that the private empire of rights was not free floating an individual, like empire itself it was spatially uneven and gnarled a raid in a series of armed enclaves. So just to briefly summarize the transformation of mere collections of forts into elements of empires required three conditions. One was the proliferation of households to hold course labor and potential raiders. Another was the affirmation of the authority of imperial or colonial officials achieved in part through their their simultaneous establishment of the authority to make war and the authority to govern households. Third officials had to anchor their authority to the legitimacy of distant sovereigns. As we saw in Portuguese go and Jamaica they did so partly by championing their role in the formation and regulation of households. These legalities of households and raiding turned private violence into public war and converted armed archipelagos into empires. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you so much for that. Professor Benton that was absolutely fascinating. So we're going to open this up to questions now. And unless someone has a burning question on, I will actually kick off with a question of my own, but I'm happy to give the floor to you guys first. All right, brilliant. And I guess I will jump in. I had a question that actually came up from the start of your talk when you were talking about women as war captives with the sort of end game of becoming wives. Did the women who were taken as captive and eventually became these wives, did they have any legal recourse either local or imperial to contest this state of captivity at all? I think the quick answer to that is not that we know of. And I have to say that part of the difficulty of bringing this dimension of raiding into view is the dearth of records that we have about what happens to female captives. We can see in the Caribbean how many of them were taken in raids, but we don't know very much about what happens to them, if anything at all. And the same thing is true in the Indian Ocean where we know something about the governance of the households in Portuguese territories but not very much about the words of resistance. There are some hints in Portuguese records about the way the Portuguese actually regarded some of these very extended households as potential sites of fifth columns where people who were properly converted to Christianity or still had loyalties to other communities might steal from the Portuguese or abscond and there are some references to those but we just really don't have a very good record about what was going on. Having said that, one thing I would like to point out because it's really very interesting is that some of the, a lot of the recent work on slavery in the Atlantic points out or suggests that we should really think about slave rebellions in general in a slightly different way and think about them as part of the laws of war. That is to say that in a sense this idea that households were holding captives as a form of perpetual punishment. One of the things of that or the corollary of that is that captives were themselves in a state of war with their captors and so in say Vincent Brown's recent book on tacky's rebellion he uses that logic to talk about the rebellion as an act of war and suggest that captives regarded it that way. Thanks to you to questions about the maroon populations as well and the preys made with those populations and all that sort of stuff. No, that's fascinating. Thank you. So I'm going to read out a question from Professor Greg Kennedy who says, you mentioned the role of households in the redistribution of wealth. Can you speak to the method of redistribution blood relations, size of contribution to effort potential as possible rival or important partner, etc. Is there any chance he could come on and explain that question a little bit better. I'm sure that Greg would love to do that. Well, maybe while he, there he is, you go. Danny said, Danny said yes I can. The question is really about in the in the household method then of the redistribution. How are they assessing, you know what, what good redistribution is, is there a formula, what kind of methodology are they really using that is it by blood kinship. How do you expand the household through, you'd mentioned the book, of course, the possible marriage so the way in which the distribution works is to create possible alliances or, or even to limit what you might perceive to be potential rival household that you would undermine the redistribution to limit their amount of power that would grow. So I just kind of interested in this wealth redistribution as being. Is there a sense of it being part of a growth of a greater something, or is it very territorial and very micro to the household itself. Well, I don't think it is entirely micro to the household itself in the sense that, you know, one of the things that I was not able to talk about given how much time I have but is I think speaks partly to your question is that is that there's a lot of controversy about politics around who gets access to captives and of course, a lot of this is is functioning around status, and in the conversion of, you know, I like to keep the eye on this notion that these are garrisons and armies that are in being converted into colonies. And so one of the things that operates is that there's, there are status distinctions from within the military so that that continue to have power in the way. And so the booty and captives and land are distributed on, and you can see this, you can see this actually in both my examples been Jamaica. You know, initially, officers are being given more land and more access to captives than than rank and file people are of course there are a lot of status distinctions as you can imagine in the Portuguese Empire that are entering in and these are points of I wouldn't describe them as kind of fixed system they are improvising as they go and when they get kind of pushback from rank and file, who are unhappy about their lack of resources and access distribution changes. Is that helpful, I mean, I, they are insight into what's going on inside households is unfortunately I think really very limited, but I do want to point out this kind of, you know, I think somewhat missed connection between captive taking and in war and the English enslavement and slavery implantation slavery these things were operating very much in the same register. No I mean it is really helpful or in the sense that you know you, you have the concept yes of redistribution of gold and silver weapons even or the other kind of, but you know the power of slaves in terms of both economic status as a signal and symbology within the structure, I think are really quite, quite important in these, these frontier developing areas, because they represent so many of these different kind of elements and I'm just thinking about the kind of the codification, the, the understanding of this and how this would work and be, to my mind what you paint is very, very, very complicated administrative pictures social economic, political, you know all of the elements to it on a, on a daily basis almost. So it's very much flowing through a kind of continued politics one element that's also worth mentioning is then that partly responds to Anna's question as well, is that there's good evidence that servants, and, and possibly captives to we're very aware of the relative status of households in on Providence Island in, which is also in some ways even a better example than early Jamaica, these phenomena, the sponsors back in London say well you know if we give households in Providence Island association with with noble households and grand grandee households in England that will will will give them a better capacity to attract and hold labor, because individuals will see the advantages of aligning themselves with high status households. The extent to which that was actually true, we don't so much know but it was certainly something very much on people's minds. Lauren I've got a couple more questions from the audience. And so Fernando says, he has a question about grossius. He asks, is grossius building on the previous scholastics, I francisco the Victoria, etc. And what can we say about 20th century uses. So for example, James Brown Scots uses grossius when the US is picking up global momentum, namely is freedom, the recourse of the powerful, or not necessarily. So, these are great questions, grossius yes very much is echoing scholastics and the reason I put him together with Suarez is because I think it's important to understand that he also is operating on this well accepted scholastic view about political community formation. And as for 20th century applications what I'm actually most interested in is the justification of limited war and small war. And so this is part of a book that goes at that problem from multiple directions, and, and sees, you know, certainly some continuities of these different phenomena in the 20th century around justifications for, you know, limited war, which as we know, just reading the headlines of the past week continues to be a very important problem. I haven't thought probably enough about how this particular household phenomena layers into the 20th century, but I will do more about that I do think that the question of what makes a political community that has the legitimacy to go to war is still a burning question as we see. And that was not intended as a pun but as we see in Gaza. Yeah, absolutely thank you for that. And then we also have a question from Dr Alan James, who asks, did households in the formation of Portuguese Empire remain a long term strategy, or was this just an early feature of Portuguese occupation. I learned a long time ago this is the answer to every question as a historian is it's very complicated. So, it's very complicated. It continues to be I would say a partial strategy. This is the moment when we can see it in its sharpest form. But, you know, there, as the Portuguese move and their commerce expands there is a panoply of other interpolity arrangements that come into view, we know a lot more about their alliance building and so forth in the eastern Indian for example. Now, so their strategies get more layered and complex, but they still have the problem of building these enclaves and defining their relationship to Empire. And that definition of that relationship does continue to flow at least partly through the understanding of who's there, what Portuguese people are there, and are they families and of course the other thing that Iberianists will immediately recognize is that a key question is, is are these towns. Right, do they have the legal standing of towns do they have enough enough people who can inhabit towns had I had more time I would have shown you pictures these wonderful maps of the early fortresses in the Indian constitution, some of which label the rule of the casados the street of married men. Once you had enough married men you could have a town or the legal equivalent of one and it continued to be important. And I actually have another question as well that just occurred to me, was, was there any backlash from, or response doesn't have to be backlash from the Catholic Church to this type of marriage to to this idea of of taking a captive woman and converting her essentially into a wife, or did that somehow get, you know philosophically adapted into acceptable Catholicism. That's a super good question and one of the things in in in the Portuguese Empire is that as a kind of first principle the church was very much in favor of household formation as a form of Christianization right this was how you created a Christian community. Everyone in these extended households was supposed to convert. So they, they, this seemed consistent to a consistent element of crown and church policies, but you see already in Albuquerque's letters, the beginning of this conflict over who controls marriage you know marriage was the legal of the church. And so to have Albuquerque you know reaching in and you know pulling a woman away and having married and he's having this feud with one Dominican friar, and this is a kind of little window into a larger conflict over, over the church's dominion over marriage in general, but the overall kind of strategic policy of creating Christian communities on that they're aligned. I think that makes sense. Thank you for that. And then another question from the audience so from Lucia de Oliveira, sorry, Oliveira is, is the Portuguese logic implemented in Asia, similar to the one used in Brazil that later became the center of Portuguese strategy. There are similarities. Yes, and the thing that I would point to there is that this, this problem of constituting households to receive captives was actually a very central element of the ability to sustain violence on the frontier. Okay, so here I have focused on maritime violence, but the interior violence in Brazil, and not just in Brazil, also in Spanish America against, against Native Americans who are being made captive right through the colonial period despite the official ban on saving. This relies very directly on the legalities of household formation, right because these captives were taken and they were sold or sometimes even just assigned to households. And so there was a, there was a kind of legal construction of the household that was absolutely, had to, had to be supportive of this rating and these things went hand in hand, often they're viewed differently but you know you read on these raids, and you can see that this is a central preoccupation of that interior rating. Absolutely. There's a certain amount of consistency and adaptability in the empires going out to the different geographical areas isn't there. We've got another question and I am so sorry to this participant I do not know how to pronounce your name I'm going to give it a shot but I do apologize. I think it's doja I didn't turn is asking about the Portuguese Empire's validity of using the Treaty of Thursday CS as a causes belly in order to initiate war without papal intervention. So, this is a very good question and I just mentioned it in passing I do think it's very important that they they're not tying themselves and not these imperial agents in the east about whether they can raid legitimately. They're just doing it from the start and they are actively citing their, their, their role as Christians in war with at war with a kind of constant war with Muslims. So, I'm just answering less directly to the Treaty of Thursday CS, the reason I mentioned it here is because I do think it is important to the extent that that these imperial agents have the crown as their audience which in part of course they do for everything that they are, they are trying to support this kind of claims making and I think also the other reason why I think it's important to mention this is that, no matter how hard we try people continue to write about the Treaty of Thursday CS as if it's a division of the world into realms of sovereignty, and they forget that what the treaty says is that it gives the Portuguese on one side of the line, and the Spanish on the other rights to discovery and possession. And that means you still have to show that that you've discovered and that you possess and those the proofs of that are somewhat improvisational. So making fortifications was very important in that regard. Obviously, these things are linked. And I would say that, you know, it's because there's this confidence on the part of these, you know, Albuquerque is very confident that he doesn't have to worry about the right to attack Muslim shipping and and and yet here he is in Goa taking these measures and later in other places to attempt to kind of fortify this this local right to make war for all the reasons I described. Thank you so much for that. All right. Well, I think that we're going to sort of draw your panel to a close there. So I just want to say on behalf of all the participants since we can't clap virtually. Thank you so much. It was a really fascinating paper. Thank you for listening to it and we will return at 430 to hear Lucas has his on his paper so please stay with us and thank you to those who have participated so far and thank you again for Professor Benton for wonderful paper.


Israel's PR problem, and other notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. Israel's mounting PR crisis boils down to the fact that its violence and oppression isn't happening in some far-off land, as in the case with U.S. wars. It's happening right at home, surrounded by video cameras, and enforced by police and soldiers who are not adept PR spinmeisters. Israeli apartheid is imposed not by trained propagandists, but by armed thugs who've been told their whole lives that the people they're responsible for keeping in check are inferior. They don't think how it's going to look when they, for example, assault mourners at the funeral of a Palestinian journalist who was slain by IDF sniper fire. If the whole thing was being upheld by spinmeisters like Jen Psaki, Michael McFowell, and Jake Tapper, it would unfold in a much more media-friendly way. But it's being largely upheld by people who've been indoctrinated with an apartheid mind frame their entire lives instead. Combine that element with the dramatic uptick in recent years of video cameras and internet access, and you've got a surefire recipe for the defeat of a generations-long perception management campaign that had up until that point been very successful. I mean, whatever your opinion on Israel-Palestine in general, and this latest episode in particular, you really can't dispute that the caption in this tweet is just objectively true. And it's a video of the Israeli police forces attacking the funeral procession of the slain Palestinian journalist. And it's captioned, this will never be unseen. Public approval of the Israeli apartheid regime, like approval of the US police, has plummeted in direct proportion to the ubiquitousness of video cameras. In much the same way DNA testing vindicated prisoners who'd insisted on their innocence for years, a new technological development proved true what a marginalized population had been saying all along. So in that sense, the increasingly mainstream opposition to the Israeli status quo has been a rare victory for alternative media and citizen journalism, ordinary people recording and spreading the truth without the permission of establishment narrative managers. I think it's basically accurate to say that the human adventure is mostly about becoming more and more conscious of both our inner and our outer worlds. And it doesn't get much more conscious than raw video footage circulating on a global mind network. That's why the Israeli regime kills journalists. And that's why the US centralized empire is working to legalize and normalize extraditing and imprisoning them. In a weird way, it really is kind of a fight between the forces within humanity who want to switch the lights on versus the forces who wish to keep the lights off. There is no the squad. There's the US Congress, which is responsible for facilitating the continued domination of a globe-spanning empire. And running alongside that, there are a few social media accounts who periodically make progressive-sounding noises on the internet. The squad isn't a political faction. It's a soundtrack to an empire. It's soothing noises people can listen to while the US hegemon destroys the world. They used to call you crazy if you warned that we're being propagandized to support a war with Russia.  Obviously, the only logical response to a war that was caused by NATO expansionism is to dramatically expand NATO. NATO is a defensive alliance like Hiroshima and Nagasaki where defensive nuclear strikes. I guess you can call anything a defensive alliance. If you define everything it does as defense up to and including wars of aggression to topple foreign governments. I mean, I suppose if you assume it's your God-given right to control everything that happens in the world, then anyone who disobeys your will can be construed as an aggressor against your imperial divine right. And therefore anything you do in response to them is defensive in nature. It's just amazing how quickly and effectively the spectrum of debate was limited to we should engage in tons of nuclear brinkmanship versus we should only engage in a fair bit of nuclear brinkmanship. No space is allowed in the Overton window for no nuclear brinkmanship at all, please. That was transformed into a Russian talking point and therefore taboo. The US propaganda machine is the most powerful force on earth. We are turning into China, complained to the citizen living under an empire that is vastly more tyrannical than China. You're only as free as you allow your world to be. The impulse to control and manipulate life is what gives rise to egoic consciousness which is what chains us to the wheels of suffering. What presents as a path to security is really the path to insecurity. In setting the world free, we set ourselves free. In setting ourselves free, the world becomes that much freer.


All right. Good morning and thanks for being here today. As we approach Thanksgiving, it's important to take a moment to pause and reflect on the many things in our lives we're thankful for. For me, I'm grateful for family and friends who continue to support me through thick and thin. I'm thankful for my talented team for their commitment to protecting Vermonters in their incredible work ethic. I'm grateful to public servants across the state, our first responders, national guard, teachers, road crews and so many more who we count on in times of need. And we've needed them quite a bit over the last few years from the pandemic to the last years or this summer's flooding. But I'm most thankful for the people of Vermont who continue to inspire me with their generosity and willingness to step up and meet the moment and help their neighbors. And for those who can, I need you to dig a little bit deeper because we still have more work to do. Heading into Thanksgiving week, many will be thinking about getting together with family, sharing a meal with loved ones, and maybe even doing some shopping. But with summer flooding not yet in the rearview mirror, many families are going into the holiday season, still trying to make repairs to their damaged homes. And some will be living with family and friends, while others are still trying to figure out what their future looks like. They also know many businesses are still trying to open in time for the holiday season, which they rely on heavily to survive. This is why it's as important today as it was in July for each of us to find ways to get back and support our communities. It could be as simple as a simple act of kindness, which can have more of an impact than you'll ever know. And giving your time and labor is another incredibly important gift for those who continue to be overwhelmed by this summer's flood. But there's another way to get back. As you may recall, soon after the flooding, we relaunched the Vermont Strong license plates to raise money for Vermonters and businesses in desperate need. To date, we've sold about 22,000 plates and received about 120,000 in donations, raising nearly $1 million. And this money has supported many in the aftermath of the disaster. But challenges and needs remain, and many of our neighbors are still struggling. From a lack of heat to buying food because their local grocery store is still closed, or even cooking it because their kitchen isn't usable, to paying bills because flood repairs weren't in the budget, to needing mental health services with all this on their shoulders. So starting today and for the next six weeks, we're going to sharpen our focus on fundraising with a campaign that targets specific needs for individuals and businesses impacted by the floods. The Community Foundation will focus its portion on individual needs in four main areas. Home repairs and heat, food security, helping families with household needs, and mental health services. And we'll continue working with ACCD to get the other half of the proceeds to businesses who are still working to open their doors and bring employees back. As I've said, we've raised close to a million dollars so far. And our goal with this campaign is to double it and raise another million. We know how much Vermonters care about each other, the way you showed up over the summer and into the fall is a testament to the strength of our communities and our resilience. But again, there's more work to do and more money to raise to help those still working to recover. So let's remember we're not just buying plates or socks, we're giving a helping hand to friends and neighbors. And there are other ways or others out there who are pitching in as well. And I want to mention Vermont Gloves, for example. So we have at both the socks, Vermont Strong socks, we also have Vermont Strong Gloves. And Vermont Strong Gloves is out of Randolph, Sam Hooper has been doing this for quite a number of years. And he's giving half of the proceeds to the Community Foundation. So these are worthwhile causes as well. And we know there are others out there doing similar things. So if you are and you're listening, let us know and we'll help get the word out. And please know how much I appreciate your contribution. So with that, I'll turn it over to Dan Smith at the Vermont Community Foundation to talk about how they're supporting individual needs. And then the Secretary Curley to speak a little more about those businesses who still need our help. So I think it's a great place to start and think about this week in the context of Thanksgiving, right? And we've got it's important to say thank you for all that's been done already in the course of this incredible event. It's affected so many of our friends and neighbors across the state, but also recognize that there's a ton more work to do and there's an incredible need that's still out there, particularly as the weather turns. And people are living in more challenging environments based on the conditions of their homes and the conditions of their places of work. To date, Vermonters and Vermont businesses have stepped up for the flood response and relief fund to the tune of just over $12 million of which 10.2 has been obligated or otherwise granted out. This next push, I think what's the most important about this next push around these license plate is not just the resources that will come in. A million dollars is going to go through the agency of commerce and through the community foundation straight out to those who are going to need it. With the presence of those tags on the front bumper of cars also sends a message that I think our neighbors need to hear, which is that we're looking out for each other, right? When you see that coming down the other way on the road, it sends a message to somebody who may be wondering in the context of this world who's got my back, you know, between the community foundation, this administration, the state neighbors helping neighbors, we have each other's back and that's one of the most inspiring things about Vermont and about Vermont communities. We look out for each other and it's really important to go into this time when we're going to celebrate with our own families, having wonderful meals with our own families, going into the holidays and thinking about what that will bring for our families to know that not every family is experiencing that the same way and one of the things we can do is participate in this campaign. So as the governor highlighted, those resources will go out the door supporting housing and heating implementation through local organizations, working with people who've been affected, food access and family security for people who have been, who are wrestling with those issues, supporting mental health and access to the supports as people wrestle with a series of crises that really erode our sense of well-being in the world. We know where the challenges are and this is one of those moments, one of my favorite phrases in the moment of a crisis is that there are some folks who really run towards a crisis. We're a state where people run towards a crisis when their neighbors are facing it and as we think about the next six weeks and the ability to raise another million dollars that are going to go back out the door to support our neighbors, this is a way we can all run towards our neighbors in need. Thank you to everybody for what you've done and what we're going to do in the next six weeks. Thank you, Dan. Good morning everyone. As you know, the Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program or BGAP, which launched less than a month after the floods, has been distributing grants to businesses to get their doors back open and rental housing stock back online. The $20 million program has supported more than 500 businesses with an average grant amount of $37,000. We've heard from many businesses about the real impact that this has had in getting their doors opened, their inventory replenished and their employees back to work. We have also heard from landlords who use the money to get housing fixed up and support the rehousing of people who were displaced by the floods. With the $20 million in funds that have been largely allocated, businesses reported more than $160 million in unmet total physical damages. So the unmet need remains great and we know every penny can help to get them to the next stage of reopening. As we raise more money through the Vermont Strong License Plate Program this holiday season, we will continue to provide grants through the BGAP program for those businesses that were already in the queue but did not get any money. We will not be reopening the application portal as the queue of applications already submitted remains sizable. The ability to grant more money will be the direct result of the generosity of Vermonters, their local communities and the business community in our state. There are many opportunities for businesses to sell these plates whether they are at their retail location or maybe they have a vehicle fleet that could be outfitted with Vermont Strong License Plates like GMP has done. You can see in the photo behind me. Or perhaps they could make their employee gift this year the gift of a plate and the knowledge that those dollars are going to support businesses reopening their local communities. We encourage all businesses to think creatively about how to support their fellow business owners through this holiday season license plate campaign. Plates can be bought in bulk very easily right on the Department of Motor Vehicles website. Again the recovery is ongoing and many people are still struggling. We can't lose sight of our neighbors in these coming winter months. The need remains great and this challenge to raise a million dollars will help those during a time when they need it most as the stress of the winter and the holiday season builds. Shopping local will also be important this year as our downtowns and our villages look to rebound from not only the physical damage but loss revenue and economic harm from this past summer. We hope Vermonters and Vermont businesses will get on board with supporting the Vermont Strong Program and help deliver needed relief and recovery resources. And with that, I'll turn it back over to the Governor. Thank you Secretary Curley. We'll get up to questions at this time. Many different organizations both on a smaller community collective to large Vermont companies pitching in over the past few months. Anything that stands out to you either from specific fundraisers to kind of the Vermont spirit across the state? Yeah, I think it's just so widespread and in all different sizes and that's what you know inspires me to want to do more and and I've talked about these random acts of kindness just doing little things that I've heard about people people just buying somebody else a meal somebody going and mowing somebody's uh some an elderly neighbor's uh lawn or just helping them clean up in some way just everyone trying to get back in some way and there's still more work to do so I would encourage anyone um it doesn't take long to find somebody who needs a bit of a lift and just just give them whatever you can whether it's time or money buy a plate buy a pair of gloves and and there are many other instances we'd love to hear about them too so we can tell their story because it's it just tells a lot about who we are as Vermonters. Governor of course in very Montpelier, Ludlow etc they're still living every day with the effects of the flood but how much of a concern is it that people in Chittenden County or Southern Vermont you know aren't aren't seeing it and it's not on their radar every day? Yeah I think it's uh it was a challenge during Irene I remember after Irene it didn't really affect much of the upper part of the state whether it was the the northwest or the northeast kingdom it just didn't have the same effect as it did in the southern parts of the central to southern and we struggled with that because people just didn't even know how bad things were but I would encourage people to to get out take a drive drive through around 302 right the main street of the berry and look at some of the homes that are still severely impacted drive through Montpelier the main street of the Montpelier and see the number of businesses that are still closed and struggling to open back up take a drive through Hardwick and take a look at the the hotel motel that's still halfway in the river and all the damage that they they felt they could drive through Johnson and see the the store that's still closed they're in the central part of the village and that was the main the main area of gathering for a number of things but but just to get the basic needs their groceries so it's still with us and you don't have to drive very far to find it but would you say the biggest need right now is volunteerism sort of you know bodies and people helping out or is it money or do you think it's both I think at this point it's it's both but money is going to go further at this point but there are still volunteer efforts still things to do I was I was out last weekend with a with our team and we finished up another playground in Barry and that's that's our third so there's there's still work to do we have one more playground to go in Barry and hopefully we'll get that done before for things freeze up but but there are playgrounds throughout the Vermont and in areas parks and so forth that still need needs some help on a separate but similar note do you know what's the latest with the FEMA trailers in in Montpelier the mobile housing units they're they've signed the agreement as far as I know they've signed the agreement with the city of Montpelier FEMA has so they'll start construction soon to put that the utilities in and get the pads in and so forth and I think they're looking into some probably middle of the winter before they're placing the first trailer but it'll it'll take some time is it surprising that's taking that long would you say it's it's discouraging that it takes a long but but I'm not surprised these are you know big decisions to make they had to find an area that was suitable to them we're dealing with the federal government and we're dealing with the local government and we're dealing with the state at the same time so we're all trying to pull in the same direction but I think the good news is we're on a on a path now to to provide for a certain segment of our population to have a home for the next 18 months is there any update you can give on the efforts to get heat to those who still might not have it yeah I mean we we make ground every day we had over 200 that we we contacted and it looks like the number is down to I think last I read Friday it might have been like 20 or 30 and we're still trying to reach but but we're in different stages there and hopefully we'll get that accomplished and we do have you know plan B if not but but I think we're going to get there looking at the Vermont community fund can you just explain a bit more into where those dollars have already gone to work in the community and how Vermonters who may have still applied have not received it yet how they might be able to qualify or get that money in the community sure so we've been running that fund the flood response and relief fund in phases you know from the sort of second day after the fund so the challenges you never really know how much you're going to have to work with so it makes budgeting particularly complicated you know we've been so we've been issuing them in stages and phases over since you know the second week of July the first phase was really oriented around immediate emergency response right making sure people had a place to go making sure they had food making sure volunteers were organized a lot of local grassroots work like the Montpelier alive Montpelier strong work in downtown local berry organizations and similar grassroots organizations moving more into systemic work you know the community action agencies capstone community actions been a great partner getting economic and food resources out helping organize case management in terms of people applying for federal resources and navigating those kinds of things we just closed out a 1.5 million dollar program in close coordination with the agency of agriculture supporting flood affected Vermont farmers it was you know I think roughly 150 different farms received grants directly from the flood fund to support their cash flow going into the winter months so the dollars have been coming in and going out as they've come through right now as we articulated earlier it'll be focusing on we've been working on a partnership with efficiency Vermont and some other folks around getting resources into the hands to address the heating crisis we're continuing to work on that case management question particularly Vermonters who are left out potentially of FEMA resources so letting those processes run and then figuring out how we can use the philanthropic dollars to backfill the gaps that are left in public resources we never quite have as much to work with as the public sector does but we can fill gaps fairly nimbly and fairly quickly when they're left in and that's one of the things we learned in Irene and the things we saw in the pandemic and one of the things we've been able to fluctuate in the last four months I would say the most important thing and the thing about which we're as an organization deeply grateful none of this works if we're not able to coordinate really closely with the administration so the partnership between the administration and the Vermont Community Foundation has been really really deep and really really clear and transparent so we've been able to put resources to work effectively and hopefully in ways to minimize redundancy and that's important to Vermonters who most end of benefit we'll continue to do with that with this next push of the campaign we'll get those resources back out to those who can most need them and can most put them to work Governor last week you appointed five superior court judges two of whom have extensive experience as defense attorneys you know those aren't the typical folks that wind up on the bench necessarily how do you how do you think about that decision to appoint public defendants yeah you know it's never been for me it's never been about appointing a prosecutor or defense attorney it's all about the person how they view the law how they're even uh uh keel um their their ability to to look at both sides of any any conflict and do what's best and adhere to the law so again we've we've appointed defense attorneys in the past but but I don't keep track because it doesn't really matter to me what what the game it matters to me that they adhere to the law and that they deal with things with a level level hand according to a recent report from state treasurer I think the state pension funds for state employees and for teachers still has a deficit something to the or shortfall something to the tune of 200 million have have you seen the latest numbers I saw that number as you might remember I uh I vetoed that bill because I didn't think it did enough it didn't go far enough that I didn't believe that it was going to solve our deficit and it appears it hasn't is there anything else you think should be done in this coming session or will you be making any I think they made it pretty clear they had no interest in what the suggestions I had if they want to take them up I was resoundly overridden by the legislature so I think it's up to them to make that move if they want to got a few folks on the line we'll go to next we'll start with Tim McQuiston from our business magazine and Governor a couple of things being of the legislature the hospital financing system is I think pretty clearly unsustainable is there do you have any thoughts about trying to work with legislators on trying to figure out a way forward and I'm not sure you can fix it but at least find a way forward and and try and assist them well obviously we all have the shared interests there we want to protect our healthcare system that's that's very important to every single for monitor but the Green Mountain Care Board has a role to play as well so we will continue to work with the Green Mountain Care Board and legislators to do whatever we can to make sure the our healthcare system is healthy and that's that's important. Secretary Curley I'm wondering if you've been able to have any data on how much economic activity was lost from the the summer storms and some of it was the perception of people coming here thinking Vermont was closed do you have any idea of what what might have been lost we have tried to survey to we have done some surveys to try to to to determine that to be honest with you I don't have that information with me and I'm not sure how accurate it's going to be because there's there's no way because it's so fluid I'm just not sure how accurate it will be that being said Tim I'd be happy to connect you with the team at ACCD so you can see what we have gathered to see if there's any strong conclusions we can draw from that but uh but I don't have anything with me here that I could that I that would be helpful right now it's large I think it's too soon to tell I think that we'll know a little bit more in the coming quarters thank you yeah one thing I will say is one thing I will say is that we are starting to see reports from the the lodging and hospitality industry that that would indicate that in certain areas the the visitors visits were stronger than they anticipated and I will say you know I you know little kudos to the team to our tourism team tourism and marketing team for getting out very quickly to let folks know that Vermont was in fact open for business and that the best way that they could support vermoners was to come to Vermont so again you know hopeful that that we you know I realized there were areas of Vermont that certainly you know we're not able to welcome folks they were you know places that were not open but but for those that were I'm hoping that they did see a consistent consistent numbers that they that seen in the past and in some places as I mentioned they saw some optics so hopefully we'll have better numbers for you in the coming quarter on on that Tim you know it's really anecdotal but my many trips to Johnson I'd go through Stowe during the September months and or September weeks and and it was packed it was just I couldn't believe I don't think I've seen as many people in in Stowe at that time of year and so they did quite well but you get to to Johnson and again you see the devastation there or you return to Montpelier and you see the devastation there so I guess it it really depends on where you were a lot though I think it's going to be interesting to see their numbers when we when we're able to attain them and see the impact it might have had on them but but again it really depends on on your geographically and geographic area all right great I'll keep an eye on that thanks Ed Barbara Newport Daily Express all right we'll try Keith Droughton-Herald Hi my apologies if this was already covered but I was wondering if we knew exactly how many people are still without heat and what the holdup might be with that if it's a labor thing or money or they're just not contacting it where or what the situation yeah Keith we we did have the question before it is somewhere around if I've got these numbers right I think it was as of Friday we had maybe 30 20 30 families that that were still trying to get in touch with and have been able to so we don't know about them but the vast majority we've been able to to help and there are different stages of recovery at this point so we think we'll be able to to accommodate everyone but but we're still trying to reach out to to some and and that's been a bit of a struggle and and I would say the the reasoning behind maybe the various stages of repair are all the above whether it's workforce or whether supply chain whether it's funding and whatever else that that might be the case it's it's all across the board so we're trying to fill all the gaps we can we've had a lot of help from the efficiency Vermont and the feudalist association and they've been rallying and helping and supporting these families so so again it's a testament to Vermont everyone seeing the issue coming together and and trying to fill those gaps as needed but you know they concentrated in any one area or they scattered or scattered a bit but but it would be no surprise to see that some many are in the Washington County area the hardest hit area in the state particularly in the Bay Area yeah so it was about 30 is that down from what was it before I can't I think it's like it seemed like it was 250 but we let me let me get you the exact numbers so that unless Dan do you have those I want to give you the exact numbers we'll get you the exact numbers so I don't get this wrong thank you that's all I had thank you thank you Tom Davis Compass Vermont thanks Jason the governor in the previous press conference commissioner housing went through a extensive list of the things that we still need on regulatory side to help with housing and the increase in productivity in the state I don't recall the date that you were going to meet with a legislative team about that I was curious if that has happened and if there are any modifications you made in that presentation prior to that yeah no we haven't put all that together this will be a package we'll put together for the legislative session to be pretty broad and pretty bold along with a another public safety package as well and that will be equally as bold and broad will you be sharing that with the public at the same time we will be we haven't decided at this point but somewhere between now and January something we'll get something to you very good thank you back to the room government where do we stand with um flood debris and the clean up a few weeks months ago you'd said that there was a concern especially given yeah winter and then the spring meld how where do we stand with that we're we're getting there I mean there's still debris left but I think the vast majority has been picked up and we continue to use state resources and picking up any additional debris that we encounter but but come come spring I think you if you if you take a look at all the riverbanks right now the leaves are gone and all we see is sticks and debris at this point so I think we'll have another push for a green up day in May and I would say that there's going to be a lot to pick up at that point in time probably more than any other year that I can remember but you're not concerned like with at this point sounds like with debris with right you know clogging up storm drains yeah the debris the the municipalities they did reach out to us some did and needed assistance and we provided that assistance so it looks like at this point fingers crossed that we're in pretty good shape in terms of our storm drainage are there any big points after this summer's flooding that we're looking at similar to how in Irene we knew we needed to rebuild a lot of bridges in a different ways or any specific infrastructure that kind of jumped out this time yeah I think it really is in our watershed areas and looking for opportunities to to store water for the future and during these flood events that'll be that'll be I think a focus point at least for me and and trying to to make sure that we're protecting our resources as best we can and that could mean different things in different communities but but first doing this evaluation of the watershed is going to be important and we're working on that can you explain what you mean by store waters that dams is that floodplain yeah mostly just to let it expand naturally right so if if take a river bank that our river that might be 50 or 100 feet wide we need to expand that you know to terrace it out of that and and increase the amount of capacity that's available for land just naturally open up and flood into these wetlands and in different areas to make sure that there's a place for it to go because if we can store it I mean we know climate change is real we're going to have to continue to have these intense storms so we're going to have intense rains and a lot of water so we just need to figure out you know it's a just a giant math problem how to store that volume of water so it doesn't impact our downtowns and villages a few weeks back you were in Rutland for their public safety town hall you just mentioned your upcoming public safety package you plan to bring to the legislature what what stuck out with you from that meeting how might that impact your thoughts on legislation going forward I think the anger and frustration and fear that I heard that night from from the residents of Rutland and I and I would say it's not dissimilar from what I'm hearing and and it's in the county area Burlington in particular but other parts of the state as well so as I've said I think the pendulum might have gone a little bit too far in some of our criminal justice reform and we'll be looking at at least bringing proposals for the legislature to consider to try and get back to the middle just a moment you mentioned it is a proposed assessment of our flood plains what what did you mean by that and are there any specific areas that that you'd be looking at you know watersheds of restoring I probably should let I don't know if anybody's on I will have Secretary Moore talk to you about this specifically because we do we are working with the federal government and others to try and do this study to determine where we might be able to expand some of the storage capacity and what would be make the most sense where the choke points in our watershed so but she she and her team are working on that so it'd be better if it came from her thank you all have a wonderful thanks