Welcome to the sixth annual Great Decision Series co-sponsored by the Meadburg Library and the Sheboygan Branch at the American Association of University Women. AEW is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering girls and women and advancing equity through advocacy, education and research. We are celebrating our 100th branch anniversary this year. And we are going to have a centennial tea at the Balder House in Kohler where our first meetings were held. AEW does not endorse candidates, but we do take positions on issues, especially women and education. And we sponsor candidates forums for the nonpartisan elections here in April. Locally, we also give scholarships to non-traditional women students. This year we again gave $3,000 scholarships to non-traditional women students. And one of the other big things that we do is sponsor a STEM workshop for sixth-to-ninth grade girls. This is our sixth year doing that. And last year we had 86 girls who we hope to inspire to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and math. We also always welcome new members. So if you're interested, you can talk with me or you can go online to the Shabuigan branch of AEW. Great Decisions is a project of the Foreign Policy Association, which also publishes a book with information about eight timely topics. We are not offering books for sale this year, but you can go online and print the book through the Foreign Policy Association. We are indebted to the work of Meade Library and Albrey Blau for arranging the schedule of the programs. The topic for tonight, very timely, is Iran's protest movement. And will be presented by Beth Doherty, who has a PhD and teaches at Beloit College. Beth Doherty is manager professor of international relations and professor of political science at Beloit College. She received her MA and PhD in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. Since joining the Beloit faculty in 1996, she has taught a broad range of international politics courses, including U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the politics of mass killing, human rights and nationalism and ethnic conflict. She has received both campus and national awards for innovative teaching. Her main research interests are transitional justice, focusing on the causes, cases of Iraq, Sierra Leone and Bosnia, human rights and Iraq policies. Dr. Doherty will speak for about 45 minutes after which we will have a question and answer period. And we need to be out of this room by eight o'clock. Thank you for that introduction. Thank you to everyone who came tonight. So one year ago, almost to the day, Masa Amini, a young Kurdish woman in Iran, died in the hospital three days after she had been admitted. She was actually not a native of Tehran. She was visiting the city with her family. They had been elsewhere and they were just passing through Tehran on the way back home. In fact, she had asked if they could fly directly from where they were back to their home rather than have to go through Tehran. But in the one day that she was there, she was arrested by Iran's morality police for showing too much of her hair. She collapsed in the custody of the Guardian police and died three days later. They claim that she had a heart attack and underlying health issues, but her family and most others in Iran believe that she probably died of a blow to the back of the head because the morality police do tend to use their truncheons when they are arresting people. Shockingly, Masa Amini's death led to an explosion of protests in Iran. The largest protests that we have seen since the Iranian Revolution itself in 1979. So what I want to consider tonight are the factors that are contributing to the Iranian regime's crisis of legitimacy. These are all interconnected and they threaten the regime's survival. It's already clear that the regime has lost its legitimacy with many in Iran. Most rounds of protests in this most recent wave have also included the so-called reformers within their slogans. So they're basically angry at the entire establishment for failing to deliver on promises and for the repression and violations of civil and political rights that are so typical. This has left the regime with nothing but repression and violence as its only option because the hard-line members of the regime are simply not open to the issue of reform. In some ways, it's ironic because this is very reminiscent of the last days of the Shah's regime because at a certain point, those protests went from calling for constitutional reforms to calling for death to the Shah. That transition happened in Iran in late 2017 when protesters began chanting for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. So the four crises that I want to consider, demography, political repression, socioeconomic grievances and environmental problems. And then I want to go through the several rounds of protests that have taken place in Iran in recent years and sort of point out the different social bases for these protests, the reasons why they're protesting, et cetera. So Iran's political structure is a combination of elected offices, so the parliament is actually elected, so is the presidency, everything else is appointed. And at the top of the political structure is the so-called Faki, the supreme leader, who is Ayatollah Ali Khomeini. He succeeded Ayatollah Khomeini when Khomeini passed away. He is a hardliner. He is considered to be extremely close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran has a dual military structure. It has a regular army, like Navy Air Force, but it also has the Revolutionary Guard. The Bazi, which is a paramilitary force and the morality police. And actually the Revolutionary Guard Corps has more power than the regular military does in Iran. But Khomeini is well known to be closely tied in with the leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Nothing can happen in Iran unless the supreme leader allows it to happen. The current president, Ibrahim Raisi, is also a hardliner. In fact, in an earlier stage when he was a deputy prosecutor in Tehran, he was one of the four judges that held show trials of political prisoners when thousands, literally thousands, of political prisoners were executed. They basically just emptied out the jails in 1989. We've had this kind of rotating thing in Iran where a reformer gets elected and then a hardliner, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gets elected and then a reformer gets elected and then another hardliner, in this case, Raisi. But what we've seen is that people are not going out to vote in nearly the numbers that they once did. In the June 2021 presidential election when Raisi was elected, it was the lowest turnout for a presidential election in Iran since the Revolution. And it suggests that people are beginning to believe that voting is not, like for Majlis and for president, that that is just simply not going to be enough to be able to bring about real change. There is going to be an election in Iran in 2024. And so that may give us more of a sense if voter turnout rebounds, then there may be a possibility that the efforts at reform could get channeled that way. But if we continue on this downward trend of very low voter turnout, again, it just underscores the degree to which the regime has lost its legitimacy. So the Revolutionary Guard Corps is basically there as the ideological guardian of the Revolution. And the Basij is a volunteer force. They are heavily indoctrinated. So a lot of young men will join because it's a way to get a job and youth unemployment in Iran is very high. But once they are in, again, it's intense indoctrination and it's kind of like a feeder to send people into the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. So the first of the four crises that I want to consider is demography. There are concerns that by 2050, Iran will be the oldest country in the Middle East. 30% of its population will be over the age of 60. But the current demographic challenge that the Iranians are facing is coming from Gen Z. Gen Z is in the green. Those are individuals who are between 10 and 24 years of age. It's close to 20% of the overall population. In 2019, almost 47% of Iran's population was under the age of 30. And that is significant because anybody who is under the age of 45 was born after the Iranian Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. They have no memory of the Shah. They have no memory of the founding of the Republic. This population wants jobs. They want political freedom. They want more freedom in general. Thanks to social media, advances in communications, television, et cetera, they see what members of their generation are able to do in other places and they wanna know why they can't do that as well. So the other piece to this is with this large young population, the regime is going to have to be able to provide jobs for them. But unemployment, especially for university graduates, is especially high in Iran. And the regime has not really shown itself able to produce the kinds of jobs that will be necessary to help make this generation feel like they have any kind of stake in the system. About 95% of everybody who came out to protest in Iran during the most recent rounds from September of 2022 was under the age of 25. It overwhelmingly being driven by young people. The second piece to Iran's crisis of legitimacy has to do with political repression but also in some cases actual political incompetence. And this is sort of all on top of the rigged nature of the political system and the way in which the supreme leader basically can rule over everything. Iran's system is plagued with endemic corruption. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is tightly linked into the economy. They own a lot of companies and fronts in things like telecommunications, in business, in construction, et cetera. Ironically, one of the reasons the Revolutionary Guard Corps has been able to get this huge slice of the economy in their hands is because of sanctions against Iran by the US, the UN, et cetera. This has meant Iran has had to try to find smuggling options, black market options to try to get around those sanctions and that has allowed the Revolutionary Guard Corps to be pushed to the front. So they have a socioeconomic stake in trying to keep the regime in place as well. In terms of the political repression, there are severe restrictions on media in Iran and very heavy censorship. The hardliners control the state broadcasting company and satellite dishes are banned. They have used force to crush protests and not just tear gas and water cannons but repeatedly have used live ammunition against unarmed civilian protesters. Labor unions are banned. Human rights and democracy activists and organizations have been harassed, jailed, tortured. The judiciary is used in a variety of ways to try to silence the opposition. Things like vague laws, show trials, long sentences. Oftentimes people are arrested but then they're held without charge for long periods of time. Prison conditions in Iran are awful, especially in Evan prison outside of Tehran. Many of the Americans that were just released in the swap with the Iranians were being held in Evan prison and the administration said that was one of the reasons why they wanted to get these people out. Conditions are so bad there. There's overcrowding, there's ill treatment, there's torture, especially for human rights and democracy activists. Oftentimes they are denied access to proper medical care, et cetera. Iran is second only to China in terms of the number of executions that it's carried out. There is discrimination and underdevelopment of minority regions. Kurdistan, Baluchistan in the south and Housistan province. And women obviously do not have equal rights in Iran. Much of the focus now has become about the issue of hijab and the compulsory covering of your hair when you go out in public. A third issue that Iran struggles with is socioeconomic grievances. Part of this has to do with sanctions. I mean, prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Iran was the most sanctioned country in the world and these are multifaceted, so some are for human rights violations. Some of them have to do with its ballistic missile program. Some of them have to do with interference in other countries. Some of them have to do with their nuclear program and many of the sanctions go back 30 years, like in the United States, et cetera. So very heavily sanctioned and as I said, this has allowed the Revolutionary Guard Corps to take a substantial portion of the economy under its control. Many Iranians find themselves in situations of economic precarity despite the promises of the revolution that it was going to take care of the marginalized, et cetera. There has been economic growth in Iran, so the blue is showing growth up, the red is showing negative growth, but despite that, the problem has become that the growth is highly inequitable. So a small slice of society is benefiting from this. Regime supporters, members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, people connected to the Supreme Leader, they have seen themselves do well in Iran while the vast majority of the population remains impoverished. There's been a great deal of inflation in Iran. It's actually fallen off in July of 2023 to only about 40%. We think we have issues with inflation. And this has been especially spelt in the prices for key staples for Persian cooking, which would include eggs, onions, and tomatoes. The prices for those things have gone up by 50% in some cases. The currency in Iran has also been tanking, this is at least partially the responsibility of the sanctions. And you have high levels of unemployment, as I said, especially for youth women and minorities. It reports a 15% unemployment rate among young professionals and a 19% rate among those in the ages of 15 to 24. And of course the likelihood is that the actual numbers are much higher than what the regime is reporting. This is one of the world's highest unemployment rates for university graduates. There are no labor protections in Iran. And the estimate is that about 50% of the Iranian workforce is in irregular employment, which means they get paid irregularly, often not on time. There's little protection for them for exploitation. There's really no social safety net for them if they get hurt. You have significant migration that is being driven from regions outside of Tehran towards the capital that is the result of environmental degradation. There is anger at the regime over its failure to bring prosperity to ordinary people. The fact that ordinary people find themselves growing more and more impoverished helps explain at least some of the explosion of anger that we see that starts in late 2017. A fourth major crisis that the regime is facing is actually environmental.  But actually, even the Iranian parliament's study suggests that it's between 20% to 30% of the damage is attributable to climate change. The other 70% to 80% is because of mismanagement of the water resources on the part of the current regime. There has been tremendous overuse and mismanagement of water sources that have contributed to desertification, to the drying up of various bodies of water, to sandstorms which have then led to all kinds of health problems, et cetera. Agriculture is an area where the regime has a stronghold. So they see farmers as being one of their chief constituencies and that's why they've been willing to put so much effort into ensuring that water is getting to the areas where it is needed for irrigation. The Iran has over-dammed. It just keeps building dams everywhere in the country. And so Lake Ermia is the largest saltwater lake in Iran, or in the Middle East, rather. So it's up across from Turkey and Iraq. So this is basically an Iranian Kurdistan. This is a picture of what the lake looks like. And this can show over time how much that lake has shrunk. And of course, when the lake bed is exposed, you get dust storms, there's all kinds of stuff that's in that lake bed that gets put in the dust. It's really bad for people if they're breathing it in, et cetera. And to complicate matters for the Iranians with their groundwater shortages, you've had periods of extreme drought. So this area, down where it says December of 2021, that part of Iran is Baluchistan. That is a separate ethnic group from the majority Persians. And there's been a great deal of unrest coming from that area, a lot of it having to do with water shortages. And we're talking in this case where people turn their taps on and nothing is coming out. Or they have to buy bottled water because the water they have access to is too salty for them to be able to drink. Abadan and Horemshahr, this area is in Kuzestan province. That is where the Arab population in Iran lives. Like the Baluch, the Arabs believe that they have been mistreated and marginalized. So that's been another real hotbed of protest. And you can see that actually those are some of the areas where the drought has been the worst in Iran. So Avaz, which is in Kuzestan province, the Arab, it has the worst, one of the worst air pollution problems anywhere in the world. And in fact, a photographer from there took these series of pictures where he just went around and took pictures on what it looks like on a regular day and then what it looks like when the sky is orange, which is a great many days out of the year. And so there's a lot of, and what this means is people are leaving these places because they don't have water. They can't farm, they can't do animal husbandry. Their health is being impacted by the sandstorms and the pollution. And then that is putting a lot of pressure on Tehran. So these interconnected crises have led to a number of outbreaks of protests against the regime since late 2017. Prior to this outbreak of protests, the largest protests we had seen in Iran after the Iranian Revolution was the so-called Green Movement in 2009. This was launched because there was a presidential election. It was Ahmadinejad was running for his second term. The opposition candidate, people thought that he was doing very well. There was some expectation he might even be able to win the election. And on June 12th, two hours after the polls closed, the regime announced the results of the elections. There's no way they could have counted those votes in two hours. But they claimed that Ahmadinejad got 62% of the vote and his opponent, Mir Husan Musavi, got about 34%. And they claim Musavi didn't even win his hometown. He immediately claimed fraud. He asked the Supreme Leader to step in. He said, I won by a big margin. You can't allow this corruption of the election. And this precipitated massive demonstrations in Tehran. On June 15th, three million people demonstrated in the capital city. And there were hundreds of thousands of people who came out in these demonstrations every day for a week. The slogan for the green movement was, where is my vote? After that initial week of protests, for about six months, they would periodically emerge on major holidays. It's largely limited to Tehran and several of the other larger cities in Iran. But when they did come out, hundreds of thousands of people were coming out into the street. In late December, the regime fired on the protesters with live ammunition, killing a number of individuals. There is a ritual in Shia Islam where 40 days after someone's death, you have commemorations. And so the plan was that there would be very large commemorations in early February of 2010. But the regime decided at this point that it had enough and it engaged in a massive crackdown in advance of the February 11th date to ensure that the protests were unable to go down. According to the regime, three dozen people were killed in these protests. The opposition says that probably twice that number were killed. You had thousands of people who were detained. The top leaders of the protests, this was a very well organized movement, were all arrested and put on trial. And Meera Hussein Musavi and two of his closest allies were placed under house arrest in February of 2011, which is where they remain. They've never been released. In the aftermath of the green movement, there were major crackdowns on journalism. And this is when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps became the major owner of the telecommunications company in Iran. So a couple of things about 2009, just to keep in mind, these were calls for political accountability and reform. They were appealing to the Supreme Leader to follow the rules that the Islamic Republic had set out. Secondly, you had identifiable leaders who were public figures. Musavi, the presidential candidate. Thirdly, the huge size of these demonstrations, but they were mainly limited to Tehran and some provincial capitals. It was mainly the middle class that came out in 2009. And then one other thing to keep in mind, at this stage, only about one million people in Iran had smartphones. And Twitter is only three years old at that point. The explosion in telecommunications and social media is going to have a major impact on people's ability to be able to organize protests. After the regime suppressed the green movement, it was relatively quiet in Iran. And then suddenly at the end of December of 2017, you had a massive wave of protests emerge. They were sparked by the 50% rise in the price of eggs in a little over a week, following on a year in which the price of food staples had risen by 50%. One of the remarkable things about this set of protests is that they started in Iran's second largest city, this up in the corner here, Mashhad, but that is considered a regime stronghold. So this is the first sign that the regime's actual base might be cracking. The so-called day protests ended up nationwide, whereas it had been fairly limited for 2009, late 2017 into early 2018, anywhere from 70 to 100 provincial cities and towns in Iran had protests that came out. The rapid diffusion of the protests across the country was the result of the fact that 40 million Iranians were on an app called Telegram, which allowed them to very easily, for example, people were using the same slogans in city after city. So that's suggesting that social media had a lot, a big role to play in helping all of this take place. Other reason why the day protests are important is because the slogans at this point are much more radical than what we heard in 2009. At this point, people are now targeting the entire regime. They are calling for economic justice, and they are actually linking Iran's regional policies to its domestic shortcomings. So for example, chance that complained about the fact that Iran was involved in Syria, but children were going hungry in Iran. And so, and of course, it's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that's largely responsible for things like involvement in Syria and other places. So this was also kind of a hit at the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The social base of the day protests was different than what we had seen in 2009. This time, it was mainly the alienated, lower socioeconomic classes that went out into the streets. The youth, lower middle class, students, pensioners, I mean, this is a class base that is largely, previously, had been considered to be the regime's base. Whereas 2009 had been huge protests, but only occasionally, this was smaller protests, but everywhere. So some of these protests would only have a few hundred people. Others would have tens of thousands of people who went out into the streets. You also had violence by both protesters and counter demonstrators and deaths and attacks on police, which is what the different color-coded things are trying to show on this map. Once again, the regime cracked down heavily. And actually, it's the oppression, really, that did bring this round of protests to an end. They sent the Revolutionary Guard Corps into the minority areas of Iran, and that really frightened people. And so that's kind of why this round of protests tamps down. There were at least 21 people that were killed, because again, the regime oftentimes will use live ammunition. About 5,000 people were detained. The regime banned telegram for a little bit, little period of time. And so by early, you know, first week, second week of January of 2018, the day protests had died down. But while they were happening, we had a different kind of protest that emerges. And that is, in December of 2017, Vita Mohave Day was the first known person to publicly protest by taking her hijab off in Tehran. So she stood on like a utility box. She took her headscarf up and she held it up. And she just stood there. These became known as White Wednesday protests. Young women in Iran would publicly go out, take off their headscarves, hold it up, take pictures of themselves. This would then spread on social media. So this began, gets a lot of movement. The regime tries to arrest people who do this. They harass the lawyers like Nazreen Satuta, who tried to defend women that were arrested for participating in these kinds of protests.  But so White Wednesdays is going to begin to sort of push forward, you know, into the early 2020s. So the regime only had a little bit of respite because about two years after the day protests broke out, another round of protests broke out in 2019. These were sparked by a tripling of fuel prices. So the 2017, 2018, 2019 protests, these are all over socioeconomic grievances. These protests were much larger than the day protests had been. They spread to over 100 cities and towns. So again, that diffusion outside of the capital, they lasted about a week, but the regime engaged in a ferocious crackdown, even worse than what they had done during the day protests. At least 321 people were killed. Some people in the Iranian opposition claimed that the number could be over 1,000 individuals. Iran actually shut down internet access to the whole country for a week to try to prevent people from being able to share details about protests or slogans, et cetera. You also, in this, had thousands of people that were arrested. You have a different set of protests that begin in 2021 that are all about access to water. And so in Huzastan province, there were mass deaths of livestock because of thirst. The rivers and the wetlands in the areas had dried up, and you had whole villages in the area that were without running water. This was an area where the drought was particularly intense. And so this brought people in Huzastan, first in Avaz, and then it spread across Huzastan, and then it actually went national. So you had protests in places like Tehran in support of the people that were protesting of water in Huzastan. This time the regime was a little bit more careful. They only engaged in a partial internet blackout. They realized actually that completely cutting the internet off for a week wasn't just gonna stop. Ordinary people from using the internet, but businesses, et cetera, were also blocked from using the internet, and that had bad economic consequences. The water issue has led to these kinds of sporadic protests in different parts of the country. This one is from November of 2021 in Ishfahan, which is a city in the center of Iran. They're protesting on the dry riverbed, right? So again, just trying to make this point that the regime's water policies aren't working. This protest was just this past summer, July 31st. And so again, many of these are going to be on a smaller scale, but there's a persistence about this that's really notable. And that brings us to the protest that started last year in September of 2022. In many ways, it's remarkable that Masa Amini was able to spark this kind of response because she is a double minority. She's a Sunni and she's a Kurd. So both ethnically and religiously, she's not part of the majority. But her death, there was a journalist who snuck into the hospital and was able to snap a picture of her in her hospital bed and she's on life support. And you can see that there's blood that's coming from her mouth and from her ears, which again is why people think that she had a head injury that led to her death. That picture went viral. Her death resonated across ethnic lines in Iran, across class lines, across sectarian lines and across the urban rural divide. It was an absolute explosion of anger. It quickly spread to all the major cities and to many small towns in Iran.  Probably 200 cities and towns at one point or another had a protest that was linked to the Masa Amini death. This round of protests was wider geographically and socially than any of the earlier rounds of protests. One of the things that had prevented the day protests in 2017, 2018 from going any further was it was the lower middle class that went out into the streets. The middle class, which had gone out in 2009, did not join them. Partially that may be because of fears of repression. They saw what happened in 2009. Some people were worried about the destabilization that come from what massive wide-scale protests and the example of Syria was often raised that if you went out and protested against the government, you would end up like Syria, in just a collapse of authority, civil war, et cetera. So the middle class didn't go out 2017 and 2018, but they have gone out in 2022. Another remarkable fact about this set of protests is that they were sparked and led by women, which is absolutely unprecedented. This unity between men and women was really striking. The youth of the protesters is striking. Again, nearly everyone who participated is under the age of 25. And what you saw were lots of things like up in the far corner, school girls, right? Taking their hijab off at school, photographing themselves, shouting insult at a picture of Ayatollah Khomeini in their classrooms. There's one video that went viral where a bunch of school girls were having a rally in the courtyard of their school. The administration's trying to get them back into the building. And a man from the local government came into that courtyard and tried to quiet the girls down. And they drove him from the courtyard chanting shame at him. And again, this went viral because you can see he rapidly makes the calculation that it's probably not a good idea for him to stay there. And so he leaves. So even young girls are involved in these protests in different sorts of ways. Whereas 2009's protests were large and organized, these have been more widespread, but more sporadic and oftentimes smaller. So sometimes the protests may only be held for 15 minutes, a couple of dozen people, but they are still going out and chanting anti-regime slogans. These were much more sustained than the earlier rounds of protests, the day protests and the ones in 2019. Each of those episodes only lasted a week or two. These protests continued on into early 2023. And it's only because again, a ferocious crackdown that the protests sort of have dissipated. 2009 had organized leadership. This is a leaderless protest movement. People, young people are organizing on social media. They're organizing with friend groups and family groups. And that's how this whole thing is happening. But there isn't one particular person or set of people that the regime can arrest to try to stop this. And as a result of that, they have arrested about 20,000 people for their participation in these protests. So the regime eventually was able to get a handle on the protests because they executed, oh, one other thing I should mention. So cutting your hair is a sign of mourning in Shia Islam.  A lot of women in areas where you have a lot of Iranian exiles in Europe and in the United States and just other people in solidarity with activists there have been doing the same thing. And again, social media allows people to see what's happening in other places and to know that they have this kind of support. This is one of the most iconic photos of the 2022 protests. This is in Kurdistan. People are going to the grave where Masa Amini was buried. But what the regime did that finally kind of stopped the protests in February was they began executing people. So these four young men were all executed by the regime in December and January. The young man at the far end, his body was actually publicly displayed after he was dead. I mean, the message could not have been clearer to individuals. At least a hundred people have gotten death sentences from the regime for their participation in these protests. And so it dampened the protests themselves but it hasn't ended people's defiance. So these are small protests that were held on the 40th day of the executions of these young men. They took place in multiple places. So this one is taking place in Zahedan, which is over here towards the border with Afghanistan. The slogans, as I said, have become really radical. So among the things that people have been chanting since the end of 2017, death to the dictator. Mullahs get lost. The international or the revolutionary guard corps are traitors. At a recent round of protests, they were chanting that the revolutionary guard corps is our Daesh and Daesh is the Arabic for the Islamic state, which is not a complimentary comparison. Forget about Syria. Think about our condition.  All right. You've also heard in many places no more Islamic republic. A independent freedom, Iranian republic. And then another one that shows sort of like the cleverness that goes into some of these things. Chanting, resasha, may your spirit live on. So many of you are probably familiar with the Shah, the one that was overthrown in 1979. Resasha was his father. And Resasha, when he was in power, clamped down heavily on the clergy in Iran. So saying resasha, may your spirit live on is not directly saying that you want the regime to collapse, but it's clearly saying that you want the clergy to get out of politics. While the protests were still really kind of at their height in late November of 2022, you suddenly had these reports of schoolgirl poisonings. And this has happened all over the country. They estimate nearly all of Iran's provinces that this has happened. And at least 100 schools. Hundreds of girls have been hospitalized as a result of this. The stories are all very similar. The girls say that there's suspicious smells before they feel sick.  They have the symptoms, say headaches, heart palpitations, lethargy, nausea. Some of them have temporary paralysis. And so this again, this has been happening in place after place after place. And their parents have been coming out repeatedly to protest against the fact that the regime did nothing. So the first round when in November 30th, the very first set of the schoolgirl poisonings, the Interior Ministry said that they had collected suspicious samples, but then nothing else was ever heard of that. The regime has told families, doctors, medical staff, that they are not permitted to talk about what happened. The journalist in the city of Qom, where the first attack was done, who was investigating this was then arrested. But the fact that it keeps happening and that the regime hasn't shown much interest in this means most people in Iran believe that the regime is responsible for this. And that this is an effort to punish schoolgirls for participating in the protests. They're a key demographic of this. And so this is a way to try to undermine that. The regime was finally forced to say something about this in March of this year. But their reactions have been really contradictory. So on one hand, the Ayatollah Khomeini has said, if it was deliberate, the culprits should face death. On the other hand, other high-ranking Iranian officials have said 90% of the cases are stress-related. They said the girls just wanna skip school or the girls are stressed because they don't wanna take exams. And that kind of dismissive attitude only making people's parents angrier about what is happening. So just three days ago was the first anniversary and there was a lot of expectation, concern, that there would be another round of protests that people were going to come out to commemorate this. But the regime also knew that the one-year anniversary was going to be important. And they have been taking steps to ensure that people did not come back out again. So as a result of these protests, they had withdrawn the morality police from the streets or at least they told them not to interfere with anyone. But at the beginning of July of this year, the morality police have suddenly begun to show up on streets in Iran again. A draft bill has been submitted to the Iranian parliament this fall or rather the vote will be this fall, was submitted in May. It would reclassify failure to properly wear your hijab to a crime punishable by a five to 10-year prison sentence or an $8,500 fine, which is just absolutely beyond the means of most Iranian families. They threatened business owners who allow, people who are not wearing headscarves if you let them into your restaurant or allow them into your business, the regime says it will confiscate three months' worth of your profits. I mean, really draconian kinds of punishments in this draft bill. In fact, the modulus recognizes that this is not a popular stand because they decided that they're going to debate the bill behind closed doors rather than on open debate on the floor of the modulus, which you would typically have with this kind of legislation. And then the last piece of this was starting in July, they began arresting well-known human rights activists. They started arresting or calling in for interrogation members of families of young people who had died in the uprisings. And so about 500 people at least died during the rounds of protests that started in September of 2022. Masa Amini's uncle was called in by the regime. So they're sending the signals that they did not want there to be any protests that broke out again. And they're starting to try to insist that women wear their headscarves. But many people, many women have decided they are not going to comply with this. So you see open defiance every day on the streets in Iran. Women just walking around without headscarves on. Mothers who decide that they're going to take their headscarf off in solidarity with their daughters, for example. And so the slogan of this latest round of protests has been women, life and freedom. So this is a brave young generation in Iran, which is literally risking their lives to try to assert that they want civil and political liberties. It's clear the regime knows repression is probably the only way that it can stay in power, giving these interlocking crises of legitimacy that it has been facing over the last number of years. And it's really hard to see change coming. Everything looks like it's going to stay forever until it doesn't. No one thought the Soviet Union was going to collapse. Hosni Mubarak did not think that he was going to be driven out of power in 17 days by a bunch of crowds in Cairo. And so while the regime looks like it has managed to sustain itself through this latest round of protests, the cracks are opening. When and how that final fracturing will take place, I think no one can really predict something like that. But it's clear that this younger generation is more fearless than older generations and much less willing to accept the conditions of life as they currently stand in the Islamic Republic. So I would be happy to take any questions that anyone has. I think there's a microphone. Okay, I don't know about you, but I have questions. So I'm sure you do. Okay, Yael. What's the size of the Revolutionary Guard and do private citizens have... Say the second part again. Do private citizens have weapons or guns? So farmers might have guns, but I mean, not. Like, right, exactly, yeah. The size of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, it's about 125,000 people that are in that. It reports directly to the Supreme Leader. There is compulsory conscription in Iran. All men over the age of 19 are supposed to spend two years in the military. And they do, some of them go to the regular military, but some people who are conscripted will be sent into the Republican Guard. And as I said, it is much more powerful than the regular military. Republican Guard has its own naval units. It has its own intelligence service. It literally is like a military security service unto itself. And its explicit purpose is to defend the Revolutionary Regime and make sure that the Islamic Republic maintains itself in power. Have you ever been to that country? No, and I would suggest American citizens not just travel to Iran. The prison exchange and the freeing up of billions of dollars. What kind of impact would that have on these people? So there was some disappointment about the timing because they felt like it deflected attention from the Masa Amini's anniversary towards the fact that the regime was going to be able to get some frozen funds back from South Korea. It doesn't appear that the timing so close to her death was actually intentional because a lot of it had to do with really complicated maneuvers where they're moving, like the money was in South Korean banks that had to be taken from South Korean currency, translated into something else, transferred into bank accounts in Qatar. I mean, there just were a lot of moving parts, but it is really unfortunate that it happened this week, of all weeks. So I don't know what the breakdown of men versus women are for the Iranians, but the population there is about 80 million. So do you mean in terms of what's happening elsewhere in Iran or? Yeah. So I would say in the younger generations, people are very aware of what's going on because of the fact that they're all connected on social media, they all have smartphones. People are filming themselves, for example, women of all ages are filming themselves on their camera, walking down the streets in Tehran, saying, I'm taking my headscarf off, I'm really scared, I'm just gonna keep going, and then you post that to the internet. And so it's just one of the reasons why we know as much as we do about what has been happening in Iran over the last number of years is precisely because there is so much of this kind of information that is being uploaded to the internet. So pictures of protests in far-flung places, probably wouldn't have known that Zahadan had a protest in February of 2023, if people there hadn't been doing it on their phones and then uploading it to the internet.  So areas where there is unrest or where they suspect there could be unrest, they'll have a partial blackout.  If you're interested, there's a really good documentary that was released this, I mean, it was released in September by PBS Frontline about the protest movements that was made by Iranians and is all based on sort of the kind of footage from social media discussions with young women who were part of the protests with their families, et cetera. And so that gives you a really surprising picture, I think, of what's happening in Iran because many of the young women look just like the young women on Beloit's campus, right? Which I think is not what you would think, right? As far as young women in Iran. But it's clear, I mean, again, communications, they all know what's happening other places. They see what other people's lives are like. That has a flip side to that. I mean, people also know what happened in Syria. And so that might mean that people in the middle class may think we barely have enough to, you know, maintain our family where we're at. We can't risk this by going out into the streets. So I mean, the communications and knowing what's going on can really cut both ways. Can you say a name? They are.  Calling out, you know, just saying that she was dressed more modestly than anybody else's daughters, right? I mean, that she, it was just, she wasn't really showing that much hair. And so if you're showing everything, the Basji and the morality police typically use a lot of brutality when they arrest people. Activists are aware that they use sexual violence against them. They use rape against prisoners, both men and women, to try to intimidate them into not being part of the democracy movement or human rights activists. So yes, people who go out know the risks that they are taking and they have persisted. And it's not just that they're going up. The fact that you have people chanting death to Hameini is the worst possible thing that you could say in public in Iran. Oh, and the Iranians in April started installing a lot more security cameras in major cities so that they can get better pictures of the faces of people that are engaged in protests. It's, they might not get you there, but they might be able to find you later, right? Yeah. I mean, they are very, so they're exposing body parts. Why is there such an importance on a headscarf? So that's what many people would like to say to the regime, but for the hardliners, for people like Raisi and Hatemi, or not Hatemi, Hameini, this issue has now suddenly become symbolic of the entire Islamic Republic. And the idea is that women should cover their hair to be modest. And the regime has been enforcing this since the revolution in 1979. That seems very, you're sort of exposed, the other body parts are exposed. It seems irrational to focus on the hair. But that's the, for many Muslim women, covering your hair is a sign of modesty and it's a religious obligation. The issue is, of course, that there are lots of different kinds of Islamic dress, depending on what country you're in, depends on what it looks like, how people wear their headscarves is different in Turkey than it is in Iran. And it's different in Iran than it is in other places in the Arab world. But the regime has like just fixated on this as a sign of the legitimacy of the entire proposition. They could have kind of backed off of this, but the hardliners are not willing to give an inch. So it's a submission of women? That's a large part of it, yes. So we have a question back here. So just because the history of Iraq and Iran, I mean their conflicts, how about the countries that are surrounding Iran? How are they supporting or not supporting what's going on in Iran in general with this type of movement? So Iran has a very good relationship with the Shia government in Baghdad. And so they're not really saying anything. Afghanistan is another story because the Taliban and the Iranians actually had a small border clash a couple of months ago around water. So there's a river that's coming in from Afghanistan into Iran and they started shooting at one another and about three body or border guards were killed in that. So there's a lot of tension between Afghanistan and Iran, but it's related to the water issue, not to anything else.  It's only real ally has been Syria. And that's pretty much where they're still at. Syria is still their primary ally. And that's why Iran went all in on making sure that Bashar al-Assad did not fall from power. So men are coming out to these demonstrations. I mean, that's one of the things that, you know, again, her death managed to cross all kinds of divides and earlier rounds of protests were mainly being driven by men. But this time it is women who are taking the forefront. So oftentimes you would see young women who were at the very front of crowds and with men behind them. But yes, men are coming out in support of women who are taking their headscarves off. How many years do they have to go to school? So it's a highly educated population. You have a significant percentage of the population, for example, that's gone to university. And I mean, that's what one of the problems is they haven't been able to create the kinds of jobs that are commensurate with young people coming out with university degrees. So it is, I mean, the regime would like there to be more sex segregation in schools. And so there are some universities that only take women and some that only take men, for example, but women can go all the way to the highest levels of education. That's not being restricted. It's not like it is in Afghanistan. Yes, yep, universal free primary education. The regime has done some, I mean, has done some things in the past that have been really interesting on this. I mean, assuring that girls are going to school, right? That that has never been an issue, right? With this regime, that yes, it was just, yes, girls will go to school. When Iran had just an exploding population, the regime recognized how much pressure that was gonna put on their resources. And so they actually implemented a really effective public program for family planning, which again is not what you would think of when you think of Iran, but it was a model that was used in many other places, and they were actually too successful from the perspective of the regime because now the average number of children per Iranian woman is 1.7. Replacement rate is 2.1. So that's why Iran is facing, by 2050, having a population where 30% of it is over the age of 60, right? So the regime has made some changes that you would think are surprising given it's sort of fundamentalist bent. So oil is a big part of the economy, natural gas. And then agriculture, that's been an important base for the regime, but that is really being threatened by mismanagement of water, and then climate change related kinds of issues. There was some place in Iran this past summer where it was 150 degrees. And so, I mean, that's past the limit at which the human body can actually regulate its own temperature. And that's what they're saying. There are areas in Iran, which are, they're among the places where you would have to be the most worried that temperatures would get so hot that people would no longer be able to live in those places and then you add the water crisis on top of that. So I've been reading about the billions of dollars that has just been released. And on one side, I hear that it's only for humanitarian purposes. And on the other hand, the regime is saying, we can do whatever we like with it. What do you know about this? They can't do whatever they like with it. There's actually more restrictions on that money now that it's in Qatar than there was when it was in South Korea. So yeah, they can only use the funds for humanitarian purposes, and the United States does have oversight of those funds. But it was money that South Korea owed Iran for oil purchases. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.


here, this is theCUBE. We're live in Boston, Massachusetts for HP Vertica's user conference. Hashtag is HP Big Data 2013. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events, extract the signal from the noise, and share the best use cases with you here in the big data space. Obviously HP's doing very, very well. A lot of great practitioners here. Cutting-edge customers really doing some great work in the area of big data, business intelligence, data warehousing, all the transformative value-creating propositions are happening right here with Vertica. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm joined by my co-host. Hi everybody, I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org. Bruce Yen is here, he's the director of business intelligence at Guess. Bruce, welcome to theCUBE. It's a pleasure to be here. So, here in an industry, fashion business, retail business, it's elegant, it's clean, it's a tough business, but fashion is simple and alluring and compelling. Can you make data sort of match that same metaphor? Wearable data, right. I think it is challenging, you know, because we have users that expect our data to be easy to use and that's actually led us to a lot of different solutions and we've done a lot on mobile BI because of that, so that's a good point. So, talk a little bit about your business, what some of the drivers are and talk a little bit about your role. So, our business, I mean, we're a global retailer, right, and we have about 1,600, over 1,600 stores in 87 countries and we are growing, going to different regions and different countries. In fact, we're opening Japan later this year and so it's really exciting. I've seen the company grow from a wholesaler, primarily, into a retailer, into an international retailer. So, my role is really to provide the business with information, with data, to make it accessible and make it easy to use and really also look at some of the emerging trends with data and figure out how we can best leverage that. Now, just I inferred from reading about some of your background that you really were handed this problem, kind of a blank sheet of paper, spreadsheets and snapshots of photos.  What was it like, what were the drivers and what was the situation like back then and let's take it through sort of where it is today. Right, so the history of our data warehouse initiatives, we've always had data and we've created these data warehouses originally on Oracle, now we've moved over to Vertica. And, you know, our users, they're using, you know, spreadsheets, they're running reports and at the end of the day, you always have some users that just aren't that comfortable with that and we saw it as an opportunity to combine the rich media from our best sellers and basically use the links that we have online from our e-com store to really populate all the images so that they can easily just see what the best sellers are and to us it was kind of groundbreaking because initially we all had reports with style numbers and those are really hard to memorize. There are a few that do memorize numbers which is pretty tough but really to see it visually, you see so many things that there's a host of visual analytics such as just looking at the colors and the styles and the fabrics that are actually taking shape, putting them side by side, that's huge. You know, no report with tons of written data is actually going to get that for you. Was there some friction at first from some of those guys that would like to memorize some of that stuff? No, they loved it. They felt that we were basically kind of freeing up, you know, part of their time to like really just be able to analyze the information instead of compiling it and having people put the images on spreadsheets.  People would ask us, can I get access to it? And we're like, no, you already have access to it but they asked us in a way that we knew that they really wanted to use it and that was a very exciting course.  So expectations were probably pretty high as well. So how did you meet or exceed those expectations? Well, I think we looked at it from our company's cultural standpoint. We're a fashion industry. We're in the fashion industry and people like pretty things, you know, and we're very close to Hollywood, you know, we're based out of LA and we wanted to make it fun and just exciting to use. So we had a graphic designer actually go in there and re-skin these dashboards. Plus we looked at the workflow to make it really easy to use. So I think that really helped the adoption and we've done that ever since. With anything that's visual, we hire graphic designers and really we make sure that they're easy to use and the usability is actually there. Bruce, what are some of the things that you're seeing? I mean, honestly, you guys have using some big data stuff for the current business and transforming that and obviously there's benefits around seeing patterns and user behavior around your customers and analytics and all kinds of stuff you can now use on the BI side. But just generally beyond that, I'll see the trends of Google Glass, Fitbit, wearable computing, devices, the instrument. You could potentially have some sensors on jeans, right? Or I'm making that up. But it's possible down the road, obviously. But this brings up the user, the consumer experience, right? Where the fashion and the elegance of clothing, obviously you're seeing that tied to phones and smart phones. So is that something that you see happening in the fashion business and what do you guys look at there? What should we take on that? I think our take is really, how do we use technology to enhance the user experience? Enhance the customer experience. When they walk into our stores, when they're online, how do we better market to them? So I think part of it is really going back to, I guess, basic retailing is, do you really know your customers? How well do you know them? And with the advent of all these amazing technologies, such as Vertica, we're able to leverage all this data. And I like to say, we have a little big data problem or big little data problem because I think for a lot of retailers, we have a lot of structured data and we deal in a lot of structured data and just trying to make sense of it. Create more relevant recommendations when you go online, figure out how to pipe those different types of analytics to all parts of the business. That's key for us. So that's interesting. So I'm thinking about when I walk into a retail store and I'm looking for something.  So you're trying to essentially copy that experience but online, but it's going to be a very difficult thing to do. So how do you get that right? I mean, people always talk about A-B testing. John said it's A-B-C through Z testing these days, but maybe you could talk about how you've iterated and perfected that model. Well, I think it does go back to A-B testing and it does go back to a lot of testing because we create these models with some assumptions and just making sure that just to see if it increases lift or not, if customers are actually clicking on these recommendations. So to us, I think part of it is having business expertise in our field and for a particular brand of retail and being able to really leverage that and create these models and test them. So there is a lot of trial and error. So I don't know if you can share any specific metrics, but even just in general terms, maybe in the baseball family, baseball terms, walk, single, home run, what was the business impact of some of these innovations that you've brought to guests? Well, I think we're actually, we're still in the process of measuring how impactful the recommendations are that we actually leverage a lot of the data from in-store and actually online and incorporate that together for our analytics for recommendations. So we're still actually in the process of finding out how successful we are and actually still fine tuning it. So it's actually, it's very promising only because I see how from a company standpoint, we're beginning to look at analytics a lot more as something that's a lot more valuable. And I think for a lot of retailers, we're a 30 year old plus company, but a lot of times we still run the company like a mom and pop. We still have that DNA within our company to be innovative, to really be entrepreneur. So I think it's, in a way, that's great to have that DNA, but sometimes to be an analytics driven company, it's a little bit more difficult. So I don't know if you agree, but a lot of people see Amazon as sort of the gold standard here. Other people don't like the experience. I happen to like it myself, but what have you learned from sort of how the Amazon takes the approach? You know, what can you borrow from that metaphor and what can you improve upon as an industry, not even necessarily specifically guests? Well, I think we definitely, I think as retailers, we look up to what Amazon has been able to do, not only in their analytics, but also the customer experience and what, you know, they really drive customers to want to come back and shop with them. And they leverage technology, I think, in the best ways. So definitely for us, it's to look and see how we can incorporate some of that into our business.  And, you know, for the first time in modern business, you can actually monitor people and businesses end to end. And most people don't really know who their customers are. They've had studies and blind studies and panels and kind of the magic science. What have you learned about big data around understanding the customer and how to serve end users? That's different from when you entered into the industry. I mean, you're in the middle of the transition on the beginning of this major reflection point that's going to change how business is organized with big data and all the different architectures, changes that are going on. What's your personal view on, you know, when you entered in the industry as a fresh college grad to now an issue leading executive? I mean, what's different in the tech and the approaches or mindset tech, business model, I mean, all three, what do you see? What's your personal view on that? Well, really, I think at the core we're still trying to solve the same problems, right? How do we make data actionable? And it's just, we're given a different set of tools, a different set of data, but actually I think now with the convergence of all this technology and all this data, we're able to actually do something with it. In the past, we'd always have to, you know, create small samples of data and, you know, we were limited by technology. Now it's actually very refreshing because you can actually do something with this data and to try to really understand what our customers are doing, at the end of the day, you know, in a way, people get scared from that. You know, it's like, that's a lot of data or, you know, how do you use social data? I think for us, it's like we have to make sure that, you know, at the end of the day, we have the customer in mind. Like it has to be customer-centric and we have to be very careful with that data, you know, and earn their trust. So what if you could break it down for a lay people in the audience?  So why Vertica? What was compelling about that, you know, from a technology or architectural perspective? What, as a practitioner, appealed to you? Well, first of all, we had a lot of performance pains with our Oracle system and we thought, you know what, we can't really grow the business if we keep having these performance issues, our staff is dedicated to performance tuning all the time. Our end users, our, you know, our analysts, they couldn't ask the right questions with the systems that we had because it was so slow. So really, when we looked at migrating from Oracle, we looked at a couple of other databases as well, but we settled on Vertica because we felt that they had a very, very clean approach to the technologies. Like if you wanted to query data fast, their approach just seemed just a little bit smarter.  I mean, he's up there in the industry. As a CUBE alum, we've had him on. And so what do you mean by clean it from a practitioner's perspective? How do you sort of evaluate, you know, cleanliness, if you will, in a database architecture? It just seemed, you know, when we looked at, we looked at other databases, but the speed at which you could query and just the way they compressed the data, the very little tuning that you actually have to do. I mean, there are other claims when we first started to do the PLC. We were very skeptical as well. You know, in fact, our DBA who's at this event, he was actually extremely against us looking at Vertica. Don't even bother. Oracle's the best, you know, we can just keep tuning it. But now he's actually here and he, you know, if you ask him, he loves Vertica. He thinks it's amazing what this architecture and how it's made. And it's just, it's a very smart database and it's a very smart platform, how they engineered it so that, you know, the amount of disk space that we're using, the performance that we get out of it is just huge. And they have, you know, a stack of analytical functions now that we're leveraging as well.  Yeah, one of my questions is, is it the nature of the data that you're running? Or is this generalizable for many, many, many use cases? And obviously many use cases, but many general purpose use cases, which it sounds like yours is pretty general purpose. I think so. I think we, I mean, I think we have the same problems that probably 80% of the retailers have out there. I don't think our data is that much special, more special than other people. So I really think that it's just able to hit the sweet spot in terms of performance and also flexibility in terms of being able to provide these answers to our users much more quickly. And, you know, the architecture, we've installed Vertica and a couple of other countries as well. In fact, we're going live with Korea in a couple of weeks. So it's been really exciting to see how, you know, the other teams are also around the world for gas are able to use it. So you mentioned, just mentioned Korea, you mentioned Japan earlier. How are the cultural aspects, how do the cultural aspects of data play into your strategies in terms of how you get adoption and how you accommodate the business needs? Is there a culture that must be, but can you talk about that? Yeah, there are actually, it is quite, it can be quite challenging. We spent a lot of time working with our, the teams in the other countries and getting them to adopt data. Different countries have different propensities and different levels of trust with running queries and getting that data versus looking at their spreadsheets. So getting them to adopt also the master data to, you know, look at the same calendar to, you know, like the retail week ends on a Saturday here. Well, it's different around the world.  They want to end it on a Sunday.   But then as soon as you show them what you can do with this technology and they begin to see, wow, I can save so much time. They start to really, really, the adoption is much easier. But there are a lot of cultural nuances. So take that nuance that you just mentioned, you know, closing on a Saturday versus a Sunday.  What's your philosophy on small teams versus big teams in the development environment? I mean, I know the rage is small teams, but I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit and what experiences you've had in that regard. It's a good question. You know, we actually do believe in small teams and small local teams, because only with the small local teams can they be agile enough to add the requirements that their business users need. For us, it's, you know, we went away from a centralized approach. So we have small local teams with, you know, our database hardware and our BI software out there as well. So it actually makes sense for what we're doing. We do work with them a lot so that we share a common data model so we can extract the data back for our corporate purposes. I know we're tight on time, but I wanted to ask you a question.  We've got a lot of young people in the audience. We're always encouraging, you know, obviously everybody's pushing math and science, but what advice would you give to young people looking to get into the data field? What advice? Take some sequel classes, get an internship, you know, get as much experience as you can, because I think a lot of it is also business experience. You know, so people that come out straight out of college with no work experience, no concept of an office or business or how businesses make money, I think they're at a disadvantage. They have to know both the business side and the data side to really be successful and they get our field. How about, same question for fellow practitioners. People, you know, that maybe organizationally have, you know, folks that want to hang on to their legacy systems.  You know, it's never easy. I've talked to a few other, some quick service retail food companies that actually, they still use cubes and, you know, they need to just take that step, you know, because no one's going to be really, I mean, with the technology that we have, they just need to make that step and it wasn't easy for us when we did it, but, you know, we're so much better off because of it. All right, Bruce, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE, really appreciate it. Thanks for really stopping in, John. Dave and I really appreciate your time and good luck with everything going forward on your big day. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break. Great, thank you.


Sub-call! Beyond blue horizons far at the world's end, strange fascinating lands beckon us. Did us rebel in their exotic splendors. Come with us as we head for ports of call. Over the Atlantic we journey, with our bows pointed at a land of fable and adventure. A land of jungle and felt, of juju and devil dances, of towering forests and steaming swamp. A country where witchcraft thrives, and the echoing footsteps of ancient adventurers still ring upon the ears of those who follow. Central Africa lies before us. With the equatorial sun blazing down out of a cloudless sky, we approach the west coast of Africa. A coast people with rays of old pirate ships and slave trading Moorish dowels that once haunted its coves and inlets. This is the fever coast of Africa, spoken of with awe and greed by the traders of ancient cottage. Fought over by Portuguese and English, Dutch and French, and finally divided among them. Sierra Leone lies directly ahead. As we near the land and penetrate the haze of heat, we see a town spreading over the lower slopes of bush-covered hills with low cliffs separating the houses from the waterline. In the distance, a fleet of large sailing gigs, loaded with passengers and produce from the Bullum shore, their huge white sails hanging far over to Leeward, tacking toward the harbor as we drop anchored in Freetown, our port of call. Freetown sprang into being toward the end of the 18th century, when England, after the abolition of slavery, transported ex-slaves and formed a colony in Sierra Leone, now using the port as a naval cooling station. Sierra Leone was well known to the agents. From the country around, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians obtained their spices, ivory and gold, which built up their huge resources. Carthage on the north, colonized the west coast as far as Sierra Leone, and jealously guarded her trade routes until Rome usurped her power. Very little of old Carthage remains. In the Museum of Bardot is a profile relief of Masanissa, the great fighting king of the Numidians. The story of his unrequited love is interwoven with the defeat of the Carthaginians in the Second Punic Wars. Masanissa was betrothed to Sofenespa, the beautiful daughter of a Carthaginian general. And our story opens in Spain, where Masanissa is fighting for Carthage against the Roman legions. A messenger stands before him. Well, has the council decided to give me more men? Or do they want to borrow some of mine to get them out of another blundering mistake? Speak, man, don't stand there gaping!  And as I am but the means by which the news is brought to your ears, I therefore beg personal immunity. Hmm, as bad as that, eh? All right, immunity and safety granted. I thank your Majesty for this.  I'm no politician, I'm a fighter. Syphax, king of the Massasilians, entered into an alliance with Rome. By the gods! But Carthage has won him back, Your Majesty. In the name of Baal, how did they manage that? Take him or promise him I, kingdom, which you'll never get. The council has made it impossible for Syphax to fight for Rome, Your Majesty. They've given the Lady Sophanisba to him in marriage. What? They've given? Say that again. Say that again. Quick, man, out with it before I take your foot in my hands. Steady, Massa Nisa, you've promised the man safety. Yes. Yes, so I have, Gatan. But let him repeat that. Messenger, repeat that statement. The council at Carthage has given the Lady Sophanisba in marriage to Syphax, king of the Massasilians. So, they've taken my affianced wife and given her to Syphax? Hmm, tell me, does Hasrubal her father know of this? It was done without his knowledge, Your Majesty. All right. Guards say that this man is well clothed and fed. Give him money that he may return to his home. You may go. Thank you, Your Majesty. Is there anything I can say or do to help you, Massa Nisa? No, my friend. They've taken from me the one thing I love most. There's nothing left to be now but war. War against those who have done this treacherous thing. But it was Carthage. Would you fight against Carthage? There's no need for you to do so, Gatan, or my other generals. The decision is mine alone. Your decision is mine, my king. I too have decided it. And I know the men will follow. General Gatan. Your Majesty, my friend. And so began the downfall of a great power. Massa Nisa allied himself with the Roman general Scipio. And when Carthage at last was brought to submission, and Massa Nisa proclaimed king of Numidia, he wed at once to the great palace at Seater, where Sophanesba awaited him, and they were married. Meanwhile, Syphax, held prisoner by Scipio, laid his plans carefully. General Scipio, I suppose you're aware of the nature of Massa Nisa's hurried trip to Seater? Yes, I think so.  Well, call it that, if you will. But do you realize what Sophanesba will set herself out to do? There's always that to be considered, you know. What do you mean? Massa Nisa has been and still is very valuable to Rome. Of course. I doubt if he'd have ended the war so soon without him. And I hope you realize the intense patriotism of Sophanesba toward Carthage. What are you getting at, Syphax? Explain yourself. Well, to put the situation briefly, the first thing Sophanesba will do will be to set herself the task of weaning Massa Nisa away from Rome and back to Carthage. True. I'll confess I've never given that angle of thought. Then, in an all fairness to yourself and to Rome, I'd advise you to go deeply into the matter. Sophanesba is a very beautiful and clever woman, and Massa Nisa is deeply in love with her. Yes. And I can't afford to lose Massa Nisa just yet. Besides, Rome will lead his cooperation. If you're going to do anything about it, General, and knowing Massa Nisa, you'd better act at once. Yes, that's true. Oh, here he comes now. Evidently straight back from Sita. Oh, well, I'll go out into the garden for a little while. Hello, Scipio. You look worried. There's no mood to be in when I'm so happy having to welcome for me. I'm afraid, Massa Nisa. I have some bad news for you. Oh, come now. How could any news be bad when I've just married the most beautiful woman on earth? Come on, Scipio. Cheer up. It's that which is worrying me. I must forbid your marriage to Sophanesba. What's that? Forbid my marriage? But you can't. I am married. Syphax is a prisoner. As good as dead. What else could prevent me from... Rome can prevent you, Massa Nisa. It is the decree of Rome. The decree of Rome? And that means... It means if you continue with your marriage to Sophanesba, Rome will take her from you. She will be humiliated before all people. Oh, I see. So Rome is afraid of a woman. Is that your final decree? There will be no alteration? There will be no alteration. Very well. I must talk to my wife and make arrangements for the future. Sophanesba. My husband, I have awaited you these past two hours. You've awaited me? How did you know I was coming? I have my spies. And bad news travels fastest of all. Then you know? Yes. Rome cannot trust me. It's what I expected. And there is but one way out, Massa Nisa. Yes, for both of us. No, no, for me alone. You must remain. There is much for you to do. I'd plan that we go together, but we... I know, but that shall not be. Give me the poison that you have brought with you. But, my dear, how can I... Give it to me. There is honour ahead for you, Massa Nisa. I would not have it otherwise. You see, I have a cup ready by my side. It will be so easy.  Yes. Yes, I shall go on. Alone. Alone. Don't be sad, my dear. I drink to the greatness of King Massa Nisa. It is done. Hold me gently. So, Panesba, my love... There will be no dishonour. There will be only greatness for you... and for me... peace. With the loss of Carthaginian sea power, African exploration was at a standstill for centuries. During the 15th century, Prince Henry of Portugal sent many expeditions to this coast. And in 1454 obtained a papal bull from Pope Nicholas V, granting all lands in Africa south of Cape Bohedore to Portugal. For nearly a century afterwards, the Portuguese roamed undisturbed in these parts, trading in ivory, spices, and gold. But when the Reformation came, England and Holland were past fearing the anger of Rome and set out to take what they could. Later, France joined in the merry chase. But this fever-infested coast took a huge toll of lives apart from the fighting. Expedition after expedition was wiped out by fever alone, and the terrible bite of Benin took on the proportions of a nightmare to all sailors bound for that region. In the 17th century on the Gold Coast, the Portuguese concentrated mainly on keeping their forts at Almena and Exum, which guarded their gold mines. The first and richest mine was the Apobi. But due to faulty construction of the tunnels which were run into the hill, the mine collapsed, burying hundreds of natives. Urged by their witch doctors, the native chiefs refused to allow the mine to be reopened, and the Portuguese made for the interior and found another hill of gold, the Aboace, which means under the stone, so named because of a huge granite rock which sat on the apex of the hill. Not long after the Aboace mine became a working factor, the chief of the Awuans, upon the advice of his witch doctor, called a council of warriors. The next morning at the Aboace mine, the Portuguese engineer in charge is talking with his assistant. What's the matter with the natives, Philippe? They seem sullen and restless today. I had a lot of trouble persuading them about making some sort of nonsense about a spirit who lives on the hill. Oh, that's it, eh? Same old spirit trouble. I thought we'd overcome that. Now I come to think of it, the drums were talking quite a bit last night. Hello. Isn't that Chief Dr. Coley coming this way? It looks like him, sir. You're right, sir. The guard just stopped him. All right, guard. Let him come through. We'll find out what the trouble is. I expect that old rascal of a witch doggie, Mdogo, has been starting something to worry us. Lord Whiteman. Good morning, Chief Dr. Coley. Looks a little excited, doesn't he, sir? Well, Dr. Coley, what's the business that brings you from your hut? It is serious business, Lord Whiteman. Last night when moon full, spirit of Aboace come among warriors, speak to them. Well, that's interesting. And what did the spirit of the hill have to say? Spirit speak of his brother, a probie. A probie, eh? What does that mean, sir? The probie mine collapsed a few years ago, killing all the natives and soldiers we had in there. The natives say the spirit of the hill gave a warning before it happened. It was superstition, of course. And the spirit of probie gave warning for Whiteman to cease disturbing him. So did spirit of Aboace speak last night. I see. Tell me, Chief Dr. Coley, through whose mouth did the spirit of Aboace speak? Through mouth of appointed one, Mdogo. Yes, I thought so. He's been doing his best to shut up this... mine ever since we started tunneling. Oh, here's a message coming from mine, sir. Yes, it's one of Pigale's men. Senior Pigale would like to speak with you in the royal tunnel, sir. Very well. I'll be along shortly. Yes, sir. What does Lord Whiteman say to warning of spirit of Aboace? He make many of my people work in hill, bringing golden treasure of Aboace into light of sun. Does Lord Whiteman wish vengeance of Aboace to fall on them? Look here, to Coley. You people allow the disaster of the probie mine to weigh too heavily in your arguments. It's a well-known fact that the mine was dangerous. It had no bracing inside to hold the tunnels open. But we've taken all precautions here to make the Aboace mine safe. Every tunnel is properly held up with timbers. Spirit of Aboace mightier than three which Whiteman use. Whiteman has disturbed slumbers of spirit of hill. Oh, we've been through all this before, to Coley. Then shall to Coley call his people from tunnels in hill? No. Your people cannot leave the mine. My soldiers are keeping them at work. And they'll continue to do so until I see fit to bring them out. Lord Whiteman, my warriors impatient. They have heard voice of spirit. If your warriors begin to make trouble to Coley, I shall seek you out personally and hang you to the nearest tree. I have spoken. It is well, Lord Whiteman. Coley has delivered message of spirit. Coley, go. Go in peace. And keep your warriors in order. Let him go through, guard. Is there going to be trouble, sir? I hope not. We'll have to double the night guards and just trust a look. Over there. Picarro. Inepe. Oh, that's Piquelli calling. Look, he's holding something up to show us.  He said there was a thick vein near the entrance of that back tunnel. Oh, it's hot today. It doesn't seem to be much sun. I think we're in for a storm. Hello, Picarro. So you found one, eh? Yes. It's a beauty, too. Look at it. That's one of the largest we've brought out yet. Tell me, how are the natives behaving inside? Oh, they're very restless. But the soldiers are keeping them at work. They're talking a lot about the spirit of the hill being angry. Yes, I know. We'll have to do something about this. What's that? What is it? The ground shake. Good heavens. It's an earthquake. Steady, Philippe. It's over now. There's only a very short one. But what if it were... There's been no damage, sir. No, thank goodness it was a light shock. Here's one of the soldiers. What was that, sir? The natives inside the tunnels are terrified. It was just a slight earth shock. All over now. Go back and tell Lieutenant Gullard to keep the natives working. Yes, sir. Wouldn't it be safe to let them go, sir? It might be another earthquake, and then it would... If we did it would take us weeks to round them up again. No, I think it's all over. Look out, sir. Here's another one. Run! Run! Run for your lives! Well, I suppose that's the end of the Abawasi mine. Isn't there something we can do, sir? All those natives and soldiers in there? No. No, there's nothing we can do. We can't even get into the mine. A huge rock that formed the top of the hill has broken away and completely covered the entrance. It's all buried alive. The spirit of Abawasi kept its word, and the native warriors fearing the God's vengeance was not complete, captured the remaining Portuguese, and sealed them up alive in the rear tunnel of the mine. Later the Dutch came to this part of the coast, but the Awuans held them off for a year until the Hollander set another powerful coast tribe, the Ahantas against them, which tribe holds the territory today under English rule. The Africa that constitutes the hunter's paradise, the Africa of Livingstone and Stanley, stretches in from the east coast. Tanganyika, Kenya, Uganda, these are names to make the big game hunter's heart quicken. For over the vast grazing lands of these territories, the African game roams and herds, Antelope, Zebra, Giraffes, and many more. And where the herds are found, there stalks the lion. The bands of elephant are not so numerous as they were. The ivory trade has taken a great toll, but the quick-tempered rhinoceros, a marvel of agility for his bulk, can still be found snorting and stamping his short-sighted way about the plains. In the rivers, the crocodile and hippopotamus still give the safari much food for thought. Just off the east coast, the African game roams and herds and antelope, zebra, giraffe, and ostrich. Just off the east coast is the island of Zanzibar, with its oriental atmosphere and ivory markets, where the old slave blots of the Arabs can still be seen. It was from here in 1870 that Stanley set out on his memorable journey across the eastern portion of Africa to find the missionary explorer Dr. Livingstone, from whom the whole world had been breathlessly awaiting news for the last five years. Outfitting at Bagomayo on the mainland, Stanley traveled over wild and practically uncharted country to reach Yujiji on the shores of Lake Tangayiki. Fever, poisonous insects, wild beasts, and hostile natives were daily occurrences, but the incessant booming of native drums aided into the brains of the two white men who went with him. One of these was an English sailor named Shaw. Fever, sickness, and heat had caused this man's nerves to be strained to the breaking point. They are in camp, and the native drums keep up their incessant booming until each beat seems to force itself against the sailor's brain. Those drums have been going for days. Why in Heaven's name don't they stop? I can't stand much more of this. I can't, I know I can't. Nothing but sweat and slime and grinning either natives, and then blasted drums are beating, beating, beating into my brain. I've got to get away from here. I've got to get away. Away from these here crawling things and felt them. And then drums.  It seems to beat and drop right through my body. And they stand me over there, lying in his tent and taking their notice of them. Oh, God, why don't they stop? Why don't they stop? I might be going balmy. I can't stand this no longer. And he ain't got no nose. He goes on as if he's used to it. Used to this awful eat and sweat and them drums. What did he bring me here for? White man ain't got no business being in his blasted country. I've got to get out of here. I've got to move. Oh, God, them drums. No, no, I tell you, I won't do it. I won't. Why did I say that? What made me say that? How did I...it's the drums. The drums are saying kill. They're telling me to kill them. No, no, I won't do it. I tell you, I won't. I can't do it. I've got to go on with his eat and slime and stinking natives. But before I'm through, I'll be a madman. I know it. A madman. Yes. Madman. Madman. Madman. Oh, God, won't those drums stop? My man is tent just inside the opening. Foot and half off the ground. He brought me here. Stanley got me into this. And the fever killed half off the ground with the love of him. What have I done? What have I done? What made me do it? Why did I do that?  What's the shooting about? God, I don't know, Mr. Stanley. What shooting do you mean? Can you stand there with a smoking gun in your hand and ask me what shooting? What did you fire at? That is Mr. Stanley. I told I saw a native. Yes, that's it. A thief. Go and talk to your tent. Oh, a thief, eh? Yes, yes, a thief. Is there anything wrong? No, no, nothing wrong. Only, I'd advise you to be more careful where you fire next time. That bullet went through my tent just above me. And if I'd been hurt, some very ugly reports might have reached civilization. However, I think you'd better take a stiff dose of quinine. And we'll say no more about it. It was Stanley's understanding and dogged perseverance that later made his historic meeting with Dr. Livingstone possible. From then on, his one ambition was to follow the course of the Great Congo River from the interior to the coast. The story of his travels in that savage region leads like fiction. But civilization has slowly tried to follow him. Trade and Christianity is spreading itself gradually over the central parts of this dark continent. Palm oil, rubber, ebony and ivory now reach the sea by way of the Congo. And railroad communication has advanced considerably. Schools in the cities of the coast and missions in the districts of the interior typify the influence of the white man. But Africa remains Africa. Silent and mysterious. Brooding under inflexible native laws the origins of which are lost in legends mournful wail. Africa, where the myriad voices of nature join in a symphony of the jungle. Where overhanging vines prell us a fantasy of twilight on the forest path. Where safety lies in attack and the lifeblood of the weak flows into the veins of the strong. Once more, the ship which brought us to these shores has weighed her anchor. And as free town drops gradually away behind we know we shall always carry in our memories the picture of Africa's palm-fringe beaches her dew-soaked forests and the sound of a jungle symphony that never dies. We invite you to join us again next week in this time as we journey to another of the world's fascinating ports of call.


So, my name is Jasper Table. I am a soil scientist at the Carrington Research Extension Center with NDSU. This afternoon, I'll be presenting on corn response to nitrogen. Now, there are several studies we have done within the past eight years, and we have found that when nitrogen is applied, nitrogen fertilizer is applied to corn in the Carrington area, especially within the NDSU Carrington Research Extension Center research sites, the response has been very weak compared to responses at other sites. Despite the fact that the nitrogen content in the soil, the total nitrogen is usually very low, somewhere below 30 pounds per acre. We have taken data from nine sites here, so two sites, a high yielding site at Oaks, Selinoda Coda, and here in Carrington, we have looked at the data to see how the crop has been responding to nitrogen, where yields have been maximized, and where profits would be maximized. Now, it is important because previous nitrogen recommendations used to be based on yield goals. However, the recommendations were modified so that farmers should be focusing on maximizing profit, taking into consideration the response of yields to nitrogen rates, as well as the price of corn, rather than fertilizing their corn based on yield goals. Now, the problem with yield goals is that the response when you apply fertilizer to the crop based on that, at the end of the year, many times we see that the corn either did not respond to nitrogen or the amount of nitrogen applied was too high. So it is very important that farmers retain this information that the nitrogen recommendations are based on the maximum profit for a long-term change from the previous recommendation is that recommendations are not linked directly to expected yield. Nitrogen recommendations are based on an economic production function that accounts for the yield response of corn to other nitrogen, minus the cost of nitrogen. This recommendation system is called the return to nitrogen approach. That will show how corn has been responding to nitrogen and the estimated amount of nitrogen to apply to maximize yield, to produce maximum yield, is different from the point where maximum profit is attained. So farmers can make the most profit by applying less nitrogen and even obtaining less yield compared to applying high amount of nitrogen, higher yield, but less profit. So this has not just the economic implication, but also has environmental implications, that by not applying nitrogen that may not be needed by the crop, you are preventing or you are avoiding situations where nitrogen may be lost through leaching in the soil.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we will discuss circle graph or pie chart. We can represent the data using the circle graph or the pie chart. A circle graph shows the relationship between a whole and its part. Circle graph is also called a pie chart. Here we divide the whole circle into sectors and the size of each sector is proportional to the information that it represents. This pie chart shows the survey done to find the type of music that a certain group of people in a city liked. So according to this we have that 40% of the total people like light music, 20% of the total people like semi-classical music and 10% of the total people like classical music also 30% of the total people like folk music. Now let us discuss drawing pie charts. To draw a pie chart for given data we should first find out the central angle for the sector and that would be the fraction of 360 degrees. Consider this data which shows the percentage of students who prefer taking apple that is 25% students prefer taking apple, 25% students prefer taking grapes and 50% students prefer taking orange. Now we shall draw a pie chart for this particular data. We know that the total angle at the center of a circle is 360 degrees. So obviously the central angle for the sectors will be the fraction of 360 degrees. So first let's find out the fraction of 360 degrees for each root or you can say let's find out the central angle for each sector. Now we can express this percentage in fractions as 25 upon 100 and this is equal to 1 upon 4 and for grapes also we have 25 upon 100 which is equal to 1 upon 4 for orange we have 50 upon 100 and that is equal to 1 upon 2. Now the central angle or you can say the fraction of 360 degrees is given by 1 upon 4 of 360 degrees and this is equal to 90 degrees 1 upon 4 of 360 degrees is equal to 90 degrees and 1 upon 2 of 360 degrees is 180 degrees. So we have got the central angle for each sector. Now to draw a pie chart we draw a circle with any convenient radius and we mark its center as O and the radius as OA. Now we have the angle of the sector for apple is 90 degrees. So we use the protractor to draw angle AOB equal to 90 degrees. So we have drawn the angle AOB equal to 90 degrees. Now in the same way we will mark the other sectors that is we make an angle of 90 degree and 180 degrees for the sectors of grapes and orange. So we have done that also we have marked the angles of 90 degrees and 180 degrees. Now this portion shows the apple, this portion shows the grapes and this portion shows the orange. So this is how we draw a pie chart for any given data. Now we discuss chance and probability. We know that there are certain experiments whose outcomes have an equal chance of occurring. Now let's define a random experiment. A random experiment is one whose outcome cannot be predicted exactly in advance. Like we say tossing a coin is a random experiment. Since we don't know that when we toss a coin we will get a head or a tail. Next we discuss equally lightly outcomes. The outcomes of an experiment are equally lightly if each has the same chance of occurring. When we toss a coin we either get a head or a tail. Both these outcomes head or tail are equally lightly outcomes. Next we have each outcome of an experiment or a collection of outcomes make an event. So in the experiment of tossing the coin getting a head is an event and getting a tail is also an event. So these are the two events. Now we discuss chance and probability related to real life. The use of probability is made in various cases in real life like it can be used to find characteristics of a large group by using a small part of the group and also it has one important use that is meteorological department depicts weather by observing trends from the data over many years in the past. So this completes the session. Hope you have understood the pie chart or the circle graph and also the concept of chance and probability.


Too many important conversations in my life have ended with, well clearly you don't take the Bible seriously. It turns out what they actually mean is that I don't read a particular verse literally, you know, the way they read it. Don't get me wrong, I'm literally serious when I say I love the Bible. In its pages I find life-giving words about compassion and hospitality and justice and Jesus. And today I'm reminded that reading the words of Scripture seriously is not synonymous with reading them literally. After all, we follow a Jesus who taught through parables and answered questions with stories and more questions.