I think it's time to get started. So let me welcome you all to the session. I'm Cliff Lynch, the director of CNI, and you've reached one of the project briefing sessions in the Coalition's Spring 2020 member meeting, which is running virtually through the end of May. This session, just by way of introduction, is one of a number of late breaking sessions that we added after we made the decision to go virtual that focus on various aspects of the current emergency and our members' response to it. Today we're going to hear a presentation from Scott Walter, which describes how a smallish liberal arts institution with very little experience in the online instructional delivery world did a very, very rapid pivot to online instructional delivery. And as I think you'll see, this is quite different than a number of institutions who already had extensive experience and were delivering at least some courses through the online environment. And I believe Scott's going to share quite a fascinating story. At the end of his presentation, Diane Goldenberg Hart of CNI will materialize and moderate questions. There's a Q&A tool at the bottom of your screen, and please feel free to use that to enter questions at any time during the presentation as they occur to you. We'll take all the questions at the end, but certainly as you think of things, feel free to put them in. And with that, I just thank you all for joining us. I thank Scott for sharing his experiences and insights with us. And over to you, Scott. Thank you, Cliff. I'm going to go ahead and share the screen. And then after I put the presentation up, I'm going to close out my video so that we can keep attention on the presentation. And I'm also going to switch it to the presentation mode. There we are. So first off, I'd like to begin with my hope that you and your colleagues are all well. And my thanks to CNI for this opportunity to present at its virtual conference. My talk today, as Cliff noted, is about the coronavirus-driven pivot to online. But it's a topic especially appropriate at a conference that has made that same sharp turn. Let me continue with a quick caveat. When I proposed this talk a month ago, I had no idea what I would be talking about. And now I realize how little time 30 minutes is to talk about it.  Yesterday on Twitter, CNI promised that I would provide, quote, a strategy to support continued innovation post-crisis. I wish that I had that crystal ball, but I don't. I hope you'll forgive me for what is inevitably a brief talk about a work in progress and that we may share strategies for innovation during our Q&A. For many of us, I expect the metaphor that has come to mind most often over the past two months has less to do with strategy and more to do with building the plane while in midair. Today, I'll talk about most of the frame, some of the essential systems, but there are definitely some parts of the cabin that are still open to the elements. And as a final part of this introduction, let me note that my campus is still in the scenario planning phase for fall. We aren't looking at 15, but we are looking at several, running the gamut from fully on campus to fully online to different variations of somewhere in the middle. Given this, our planning for library services, IT services, and more must be flexible and prepared to shift as fall plans firm up. Our response to the virus has been shaped, as one reporter said, by the fact that it attacks our campuses at one of the places where they have been strongest. That is, in the establishment and strengthening of community. And while this has been felt in colleges and universities of all types, I'll share some thoughts today on why this impact may be felt most keenly on the campuses of small liberal arts colleges, where, as Botstein reminds us, we have shaped the academic experience around the virtue of real contact with people. And I'm not the only one to suggest that the universal impact the virus has had on the traditional academic experience may be felt most keenly on small residential campuses, or that even in recovery, these campuses already strained by changing demographics and budgetary pressures may soon face an existential challenge to their continued existence. For context, let's begin with a brief definition of liberal education, which is closely associated with, though not synonymous with, small liberal arts colleges like mine. This definition from the AACNU is closest to the one that I grew up with, liberal education as an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to think critically and to learn throughout their lives. The AACNU continues by describing liberal education as that best suited to a democracy in which empowered citizens are disposed not only to critical thinking, but to civic engagement in support of a more just and inclusive society. Finally, on a more practical note, an education distinguished by certain high-impact educational practices conducive to providing the knowledge and shaping the habits of mind that help to ensure those learning outcomes. I've highlighted some of the ways that those educational practices aligned with the conduct of a liberal education depend on community, engagement with peers, and opportunities for mentoring or, as Botstein put it, real contact with people. Many of these building blocks of a liberal education are the ones most difficult to keep in place in our current environment. Each of these features of the distinctive mission, character, and pedagogical approaches associated with liberal education is clearly seen at Illinois Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts college in central Illinois. I've provided the fast facts here, but you can see that we are small, highly residential normally, and very successful when it comes to measures of student success, such as first year retention, student participation in high-impact educational practices, and graduation rate. You can also see that we feature personal attention and access to mentoring opportunities in our description of our educational offer. So much so, in fact, that the creation of an even more enriched campus environment was a goal of our last president's strategic plan, looking to capitalize not only on the in-class experience our students have, but on a similar approach to learning in the co-curriculum in non-classroom spaces, including the library, and through the synergy provided by connections between campus and community-centered programs. The pivot to online challenged each of these aspects of what we've promoted for years as some of the most important reasons to choose IWU, whether as a student or as a faculty member. And as Gannon reminds us, we had to make this change without a blueprint, without a roadmap, choose your metaphor. For me, I'm thinking without a net. Hicks provides a good description of why this pivot may have been especially challenging in liberal arts colleges, as it may require faculty and students to embrace with little preparation or discussion modes of teaching and learning that they may have made a conscious choice to avoid. Moreover, they may be doing this work in an organization in which broad adoption of or even broad discussion of best practices in online learning may not have been a part of the faculty culture. Thus, any efforts to pivot to online may have found a relatively small number of faculty already engaged in this work or even familiar with some of the tools available to them to teach remotely. This was the case at Illinois Wesleyan. For the remainder of our time today, I'll be discussing how we made the pivot in our planning for the future across three areas, the library, information technology services, and faculty development. You can see links here to a number of the sites I'll draw from today, and I'll add others. Please let me know if you'd like any of them dropped into the chat. I also want to note that while we talk about the pivot, as if it was a one-time thing, I've experienced this more as a tide or more accurately a series of tides, each representing points in a crowded academic calendar. And while the tide may evoke a serene vision of waves breaking on the beach, my experience has felt a little more like this. And as my title suggests, my experience has also felt like one of starting almost from scratch, as we were required to address the full range of pivot issues within the context of a traditional residential liberal arts environment. But even almost isn't really fair, because we had a strong foundation in place on which we could build while supporting the pivot to online learning. Of these, I'd like to note the history of faculty engagement with and instructional collaboration with the library, as well as changes in the use of library space that ensured that key partner programs were already here when the virus came. Also, the library and campus IT had a long history of working together successfully, and this had resulted in the establishment of a number of new media spaces in the library over the past year, including a one button studio, podcast studio, and film production studio. These are the more typical focus for a CNI talk, and they were critical resources for campus as the crisis evolved. Finally, while online teaching and learning had not been a recent focus, we had a strong model of instructional mentoring and collegial approaches to faculty development essential to our ability to meet the surge in demand for help with a very small IT staff. And for me, it may be helpful to note that circumstances had placed me in the middle of all of this as university librarian, co-interim CTO with responsibility for online learning and technology training, and point person for our Center for Engaged Learning Initiative, which includes a faculty development component. Given the audience today, I won't go into great detail about the challenges we faced in making the pivot to online in the library. These have been well documented in emerging work, such as the COVID-19 survey that Hinchliffe and Wolf Eisenberg put in the field in March, and on which they have already presented for this conference. I will say that this survey was incredibly valuable in terms of benchmarking our swiftly changing response to the virus at the Ames Library and to my ability to advocate with campus leadership for a speedy progression through plans that resulted in our moving to an online only model of library service ahead of other campuses. To get a sense of how volatile the planning environment was in March, I am reminded of the fact that I had to update my responses to this survey at least three times in one week. Key factors influencing our plan included the rapid evolution of the statewide plan advanced by our Governor, especially his early closure of the schools, the tradition of face-to-face services in the library and IT, and the opportunities that we had for campus engagement. Some of the major areas of focus for our work over the past two months have been on the access, acquisition, or creation of digital content that faculty needed for courses, as well as a renewal of earlier discussions about open access content. While drop-in research consultations dropped off almost completely, we continued to see requests for scheduled consultations with specific courses that mirrored the way our librarians had worked with those classes in the past. We also found ourselves consulting on a wider range of copyright fair use and digital inclusion issues as edge cases became mainstream. And like many libraries, we began to document our experience with the virus as part of university archives. In IT, our focus was on ensuring access to necessary technology for teaching and learning, media content creation, and help desk services, which expanded into heavy use of drop-in opportunities using Google Meet and Zoom, as well as scheduled assistance with issues from course setup to assignment construction to creation of grade books. The pivot meant a stress test for our LMS and video conferencing solutions, and exposed significant gaps in areas such as availability of home technology for faculty, remote access to licensed software and software needed to support certain types of courses, including lab courses and performance-based courses. Finally, it exposed the need for a much more coordinated and sustainable approach in the future to IT training, both for students and faculty. This provides an overview of the support we put in place for training during the pivot, and on which we must build over the summer. This picture suggests something about the planning environment at the start of this. This was the Monday of the extended spring break we had been given to provide workshops to faculty to help get their courses online. And we had more than 20 faculty waiting at the door for the first workshop. Ten minutes before that workshop was to begin, there was a campus-wide blackout. Our staff pulled power from an uninterruptible source and projected from a laptop in the middle of a reading area. We continued this guerrilla technology training until the power came back and had faculty in the building until we closed. Sadly, rather than a week of workshops, we had only this one day as the university closed the library to the public the following morning. One of the distinctive areas of our academic program greatly affected by the pivot to online was experiential education, including study abroad, internships, undergraduate research, and community engagement. The impact on study abroad was obvious and total. Let's set that discussion aside. While some undergraduate research projects were able to continue, others were left incomplete or greatly modified, especially if completion required access to a lab or performance venue. Our annual undergraduate research conference was cancelled, but the abstracts for the projects accepted to the conference are available in our institutional repository. Finally, while many community engagement projects were completed before we suspended on-campus programs, others were not, including those being pursued for credit as part of the Action Research Seminar. One student had been scheduled to complete an internship with a firm providing legal services to individuals with low incomes. Instead, she completed an interview with an attorney via Zoom and shared the responses through one of our community partners. Another student was preparing a workshop on seed starters in community gardens as part of a community-based food access initiative. Instead, she created a how-to video on seed starting and connected it to the victory garden movement that has grown up as part of local responses to food access issues during the lockdown. We have also worked with our Student Affairs colleagues as they have addressed numerous issues on access to technology, services for students continuing to reside on campus, and opportunities for student employment, including in the library and IT. One area where Student Affairs has had to pivot is in student engagement and involvement, an issue of particular concern on our campus because of that core commitment to campus community. Here you see the Campus Activities Board running a virtual trivia game, and there have been other campus traditions that have migrated to the online environment, including late-night breakfast with the president for spring reading day. We have conducted two surveys to date of student satisfaction with remote instruction as well as remote access to core student services, including academic advising. Here you can see the results of student satisfaction with the advising process for fall. Student satisfaction with remote instruction was more mixed, but it was generally positive and helped us to identify key topics for faculty engagement and development in advance of the fall. One of those areas for further work is to direct faculty to digital resources available to them through the library. Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we seem to have lost your slides. Oh, could you try sharing them again? I will. Hold on. Thanks for your patience, everyone. How's that? Yes, perfect. Thank you. Let me go back to presentation. Presentation mode, yes. There we go. Okay, great. Thanks. So this brings us to the least-defined, but most important priority for the summer, faculty development. As noted earlier, we have a collegial culture for faculty development at IWU. As our faculty are recruited not only for their skill as teachers, but for their commitment to focus on continuing improvement of their teaching in support of student learning. We are fundamentally a student and teaching-centered university and one that has supported substantial collaborative approaches to faculty development in the past, including grant-funded initiatives around information literacy instruction in the disciplines and interdisciplinary team teaching. This aspect of our culture was critical to our surviving the pivot to online because we were able to count on faculty colleagues who have been teaching online to join librarians and IT staff in consulting with faculty new to online teaching as they made the pivot. Among these were faculty mentors in English, music, biology, and other departments. For us, with a small library staff, a small IT staff, and no dedicated staff in a teaching center or instructional design office, the expertise of our most innovative faculty colleagues and their willingness to share that expertise widely, even while having to make rapid adjustments to their own courses, reflected the culture of the liberal arts college at its best. Having spent some time describing where we are, I'd like to close by bringing out that crystal ball and sharing some of our thoughts about where we're going. In full knowledge of the fact that our students and families will expect a more robust, better coordinated approach to delivery of these services during the fall, if we are going to successfully retain them at our university. On the library side, we're working aggressively to review our collection plans and align what we expect to be a smaller budget with the need to enhance and expand access to digital content. We're looking at how we will support some of the common intellectual experiences on campus, including the first year experience. Finally, we're reviewing both our plans for library assessment and the library's contribution to campus assessment of the remote academic experience, and we're doing it within the broader context of similar discussions going on among members of our state consortium. On the IT side, we're focused on strengthening the infrastructure for online learning, including a census of current teaching spaces, surveying faculty about the spring experience and the specific needs for planned fall courses, and realigning our routine approaches to IT planning and budgeting to focus on the online learning environment in the coming year. This is an enormous endeavor and one complicated by the fact that the supply chain for hardware, software, and expertise is currently stretched to its limits. Finally, on the faculty development side, we're working with governance and other existing structures to determine how we can align existing opportunities to focus on these issues. These are some of the issues we're building into our contingency planning for a phased reopening of the library, both as a workplace and as a facility open or partially open to the public. Much of what we do will depend on the campus contingencies plan and our governor's phased approach to reopening Illinois over the next several months. We're looking at workshop programs combining synchronous and asynchronous components that can serve as a foundation in preparation for online teaching and learning. We are drawing these from existing examples, many developed over the past few weeks, as well as specific areas of concern raised by our faculty or by students responding to our surveys of their satisfaction with the remote instruction experience. One area that we recognize as especially important given our strong culture of face-to-face teaching and personal interaction is support for hybrid approaches, approaches that recognize the necessary blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning, especially in an environment where all of our students' courses may be delivered through online learning platforms. This is a short list of some of the issues where we are currently engaging with colleagues in academic affairs, student affairs, admissions and elsewhere to see where we will go now that we have made the pivot. And I should note that we hope that at least some of this work will be an opportunity for external funding, for example through the NEH CARES program. Here are some of the major resources I have consulted in each of the areas I've discussed today as these plans have evolved. This is me if you would like to talk further or ask a question that we don't cover today during Q&A. And with that I will thank you for your time. I open the floor and the chat box for questions and stop my screen share. Thank you Scott for that very rich presentation. Thank you. And also for the very well documented resources that you provided in your slide deck. There's a lot in there and I just want to let everyone know we will be making that slide deck available after the webinar on the project briefing page. So stay tuned for that as well as a video of this presentation. As Scott mentioned we have now opened the floor for questions so please go ahead and type your questions into the Q&A box. And Scott will answer them live. And we have our first question from Roger Schoenfeld who comments, very impressive pivot. Thanks so much for the real-time update. I'm almost afraid to ask a question about the future but is it too soon to wonder how if at all the residential liberal arts college might change longer term in the sense of mission, identity, and pedagogy as a result of what has happened during this experience. A big question. Yeah and we certainly don't have time to go through it. I think that where we're really focusing right now is on thinking about those core aspects of our identity both in terms of the focus on personal attention and mentoring and collegiality but also on that real connection between the campus and the community because so much of our work is really rooted not just in bringing people to a campus but to a community that they're able to contribute to. And I know that we're going to be looking at a number of ways to virtualize some of our academic programs, our co-curricular programs, these experiential education programs. And we've seen some examples of how we can do that but that notion of the close community and the interaction between faculty and students but also that opportunity to really grow and contribute to the local community in which the campus is currently situated, that I think is something that is a longer term discussion. What I can say is that the faculty that I know both at my college and at other liberal arts colleges are fundamentally dedicated to finding a way to bringing these experiences and these approaches that they've taken for years and making them work whether it be in a hybrid environment, a modular environment, a de-densified campus, pick your model. And I think that we will see all of those become components of that liberal arts offer in the future. Indeed. Yeah that's a big question. Thanks Roger for bringing that up and thank you Scott for addressing some of those issues and we will all be curious to see how this evolves for sure. As I said please go ahead and type your questions into the Q&A box there or into the chat. If you would like to make a comment or ask a question live you can raise your hand and that will allow me to unmute you and you can ask your question live. And while we're waiting for folks to type in their questions I just want to remind everyone that this webinar is part of CNI's spring 2020 virtual meeting which continues through the end of May and I'm sharing in the chat box there a link to the full schedule for the rest of the conference and also just wanted to bring everyone's attention that we announced yesterday a final plenary by Clifford Lynch which will be given on May 29th so if you haven't registered for that please join us then. Final thanks to Scott for coming and sharing these experiences with us at CNI and thanks to our attendees for being with us. Thank you so much again Scott, thanks everyone. Thank you. You're welcome.


وَأَقُولُوا فِي القُرْآنِ مَا جَاءَتْ بِيهِ اَيَاتُوهُ فَهُوَ الْكَارِيمُ الْمُنْزَالُوْ وَأَقُولُوا قَالَ اللَّهُ جَلَّ جَلَالُوهُ وَالْمُصْطَافَ الْهَاديِ وَلَا أَتْ أَوَّالُوْ الحمد لله رب العالمين وصلته السلام على عبد الله ورسوله نبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين السلام وعليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته مر coil the show from this series. Based around the statement of Allah w suppose the verse There is a beautiful series of supplications that I want to share with you today و أريد أن أتكلم معك أشخاص جدًا أن يتكلمون رفوج من بعض الأشخاص يتكلمون الله عن المساعدة و يتكلمون الله عن رفوج و نعرف ما يعني أن يتكلمون رفوج من الله عز وجل فقط من المثال من الصورة الفلق والصورة الناس كل أعوذ برب الفلق كل أعوذ برب الناس أريد أن أتكلم رفوج مع أمام الدون أو ديبريك أريد أن أتكلم رفوج مع أمام المساعدة والصورة و أريد أن أتكلم معك أشخاص جدًا من الأشخاص جدًا يتكلمون رفوج مع الله عز وجل أول أشخاص جدًا أن أتكلم معك في هذه الحديث هذه الحديث تتكلم من مجموعة صحابة أمام أبو بكر الصديق رضي الله عنه أبو موسى العشأري رضي الله عنه أخرى يتكلمون أن البخاري تتكلم في الأدب المفرد إنه صحيب و في الأدب المفرد لذلك يجب أن تتكلم من يتكلم مع الله اللهم إني أعوذ بك أن أشرك بك وأنا أعلم وأستغفرك لما لا أعلم أو الله و أردت أن أتكلم مع الله من أساسه أردت رفوج معك أن أتكلم معك أشخاص جدًا و أردت أن أتكلم معك لما لا أعلم سبحان الله سبحان الله this is an amazing amazing دعاء أسكن الله عز وجل أن أو الله إذا أردت رفوج معك أردتك أن أتكلم معك من تكلم معك و هذا شيء يبدو أن المفردين يبدو أن يكونوا أساعدة و المفردين يبدو أن يكونوا أساعدة يبدو أن يكونوا أساعدة إبراهيم قال واجنو بني وبني أن نعبو دل أصنام أو الله يبدو أن يبدو أن أساعدة و أردت لك و فكرة هذا الأمر بين أذان و الأرداك و أدخل أن أفعل أصاعدة و أحاول أن يبدو أنها خواتي و أنها مكيزة أو أي شيء يحدث مني أنني لم أكن أعرفه و هذا حيث يأتي مع ذلك في حالة سنة تساعد الله على أن تساعدك على شيء أن لا تتذكر أو أنك لا تستطيع أن تساعدك و أنك يجب أن تساعدك و أنك يجب أن تساعدك من المجموعة المجموعة التي أريد أن أشار with you هي هذه المجموعة و من ضلع الدين و غلبة الرجال أو الله أريد رفوج معك من الهم من الهم و الحزن الهم يمكن أن يكون أنزاية يمكن أن يكون أشعر يمكن أن يكون يصدر بشكل مجموعة بشكل مجموعة that don't concern you like the concerns of the world like a person doesn't he's been negligent in his religion because he's panicking over his worldly life over his job or his family it's all a kind of him and the sadness and depression and we know how badly they affect your Ibad how badly that affects your the way that you worship Allah and we have an evidence for that which is indicated in the ayah إنما نجوة من الشيطان ليحزن الذين أهمنو و ليس بضاررهم شيئاً إلا بإذن الله secret council or secret plans secret gatherings and whisperings are only from the shaitan to make the believers sad to sadden the believers and you seek refuge with Allah from worry, anxiety, sadness, depression then you seek refuge with Allah from stinginess and cowardice stinginess not being generous and cowardice not being brave and you seek refuge with Allah from inability and laziness so the first was anxiety and depression then we had inability and laziness then we had stinginess and cowardice inability is where you can't fix you have a problem or a difficulty but there's no current solution for you you're agile, you have no ability you're unable and you have an ability but you're too lazy to take advantage of it someone says I'm in such a difficult financial problem I'm suffering financially I don't know what to do it's so hard for me one of two things applies either they are agile or lazy either they are unable truly they are trying everything that is available to them but they're just not able to fix it or they are lazy they actually could do something but they're not finding the energy in themselves to be able to fix it and I'm just well-kessil we said stinginess and cowardice ومن ضلع الدين ضلع الدين is a debt if you feel it's so burdensome you feel like you could never repay it I've got this debt and I just don't know how I can repay it I can't imagine how I could ever repay this debt وغالبات الرجال being overcome by men being overpowered by people bullied compelled subjugated forced سبحان الله the scholars they say every problem that can ever happen to you your life is found in this dua and you're asking Allah to keep you safe from all of them so we have sadness grief worry depression anxiety inability laziness cowardice stinginess debt and being overcome and overpowered by other people everything that could ever go wrong is found in there there's nothing from the problems of life that's not found inside of that dua and you're asking Allah to keep you safe from all of it one last dua that I want to share with you in this episode إن شاء الله وتعالى which is from the duas of seeking refuge and it is an amazing amazing dua is to ask Allah عز و جل to seek refuge with Allah عز و جل from four things from the things that you seek refuge you say اللهم إني أعوذ بك من علم لا ينفع و قلب لا يخشع و دعاء لا يسمع و نفس لا تشبع والله I seek your refuge from knowledge that does not benefit سبحان الله how many others gain knowledge but that knowledge doesn't benefit that knowledge might not benefit for one of two reasons either because the knowledge itself is not beneficial it's not it's not beneficial knowledge like the knowledge of Haram or the knowledge of the dunya that doesn't bring someone nearer to Allah this is لا ينفع it doesn't really benefit you or because the person takes the knowledge but doesn't act upon it and you seek refuge with Allah from يخشع from a heart that doesn't have خشور a heart that isn't humbly submissive before Allah how many of us complain about hardness of the heart how many of us say I don't have خشور in my prayer this is the dua for you والله I seek refuge with you from knowledge that doesn't benefit and from a heart that doesn't have خشور that isn't submissive isn't humble before Allah ومن نفس ومن دعاء لا يسمع in some narrations ومن دعوة لا يستجاب لها from a dua that isn't heard and when we say isn't heard Allah hears everything إنه سميع عليم Allah hears everything and knows everything but a dua isn't heard means a dua that isn't answered and that's found in some of the other narrations like the wording of Imam Muslim ومن دعوة لا يستجاب لها a dua that isn't answered ومن نفس لا تشبأ and from a soul that isn't satisfied how many people subhan Allah they say ya Allah if you give this to me I will be grateful and that's a bad habit in dua like people say Allah if you give this to me I will not ask you for anything else and that's not right and subhan Allah a person says oh Allah give give give give and Allah gives it to them but they're not satisfied in the dunya they say oh Allah if I had this much money then Allah gives it to them and they're not satisfied subhan Allah it's a مصيبة it's a calamity to have a soul that isn't satisfied with what it has so you ask Allah's refuge from knowledge that doesn't benefit from a heart that doesn't have that isn't submissive and isn't humble from a soul that isn't satisfied from a dua that isn't answered in some of the narrations it also mentions وَمِنْ عَيْنِنْ لَا تَدْمَكْ from an eye that doesn't shed tears and there are various different wordings of this dua found in different sources with different wording sometimes one comes before the other and one is replaced with a different one but broadly speaking these are the features of the four particular ones that we find within this dua these are just some examples of comprehensive supplications and I just want to conclude by just reminding everyone how important it is that we learn these supplications as many as we can even some of the smaller ones and then build our way up to the bigger ones so that we are not stuck of you know not knowing what to say or asking Allah with our own words that might have shortcomings in them and might have flaws in them and even perhaps might have transgressions within them so we want to conclude by asking Allah عز وجل الحي القيون ذو الجلال والإكرام asking Allah سبحانه وتعالى to teach us what will benefit us to benefit us with what He teaches us to increase us in knowledge to give us the ability to act upon it to accept our supplications and to make us from those who are humbly submissive to Him that's what Allah made easy for me to mention and Allah knows best والصلاة والسلام على نبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعي السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته كيف can you do a two second action right now that will give you a share of the reward of everything we're doing on this YouTube channel simple like this video and click subscribe why it will allow YouTube to recommend our videos to other users and imagine the huge amount of reward that could be waiting for you on the day of judgment if you did that with a sincere intention of spreading the Dean of Allah you'll be rewarded for every single person who benefits from one of our videos as a result of your like or subscribe that's an easy two second action that you definitely don't want to miss out on do it now click like and subscribe and don't forget to make that intention


So let's take down From the bottom up okay, and these guys dance both of these guys the buds are pretty dense Let's take it down from here And I'll keep this We'll trim this all three together and then I have a rope hanging Right, so when I'm hanging these I just Put the stems on the rope and it just sits there right until they dry up Okay, so let's take this one down first put on my glasses.  It's fine as a job.  Let me make sure that these don't have any bugs No, these are good nice hairs on those oops nice hairs on those Strong smell this could have waited a little bit more for the hairs to go a little bit more brown, but Not bad. Not bad. Let's see if you'll focus That's nice crystals It smells really strong. Cheryl. How are you doing? How's life? It smells really strong Or really The synchronicity wish I could smell them. Yeah, they're really nice. It's really nice So let's take these down I'm gonna cut really loose, right? We got a lot of cutting to do and as I mentioned after loading up the last one The there was a guy someone I forget I forget their name not bad with names especially on social media people have multiple names on different accounts, so it's It's difficult to know to remember but the person mentioned that What do you call it He does he takes the whole plant down Washes the roots right well, I didn't say washes the roots. I washed the one I did with and He hangs the plant with the root and all the leaves on there and when it's dry It's easy to take down the the extra leaves and stuff So that's what I'm gonna do for these ones the last ones. I still cut it pretty loose relative to some right, but These ones I'm gonna cut looser and just let them Dry and then take the extra leaves off a lot of people were commenting that the scissors get destroyed when you're trimming and Yeah, and large part you got to spend a little bit of time just cleaning them all of oil goes a long way right I Trim these down a little bit already as soon as I saw the bugs As soon as I saw the bugs that we took down the four stems I took down a lot of the bigger leaves While the plants were there, right? So I already gave a little bit of trim on this as Like couple of days ago So this the thornberry is going to be easier to trim than the other guy then Momosa was a call apricot momosa Okay, so it's just a handful of big leaves. We're gonna take that Sorry if I'm not reading the chat gang. I'll catch up or Try to catch up or notice stuff that's posted directly towards me once I Put this baby down before I take the next branch And I'm a slow trimmer. I have friends or I've known I've known people. Oh, I took down a bub. See Let's put that Oh, here we go. We can put it here I got these guys of my stacks there the ends of the Cornelian cherries that we harvested so I'm just gonna put that there cornelian cherries are amazing These things are rock and roll. I harvest it these from the park. This is the last batch that we have made jam Jam and liquor with them Lulu Lori first time chat salutations. Welcome to our last stream.  I might you know smoke the random one during the winter But in general take a break Because I can't just sit down in the patio. I don't smoke inside and I don't I don't I don't know any smoking lounges in BC because I don't think any exists the government made him illegal crazy Adults you can't go somewhere in a smoking lounge and have some smokes, which is crazy Absolutely crazy No informed consent allowed You cannot do You cannot live as a free-thinking responsible adult Nanny state doing it with three stems hanging on is harder One stem is way easier Just twirl it around you're done, but for hanging purposes. This is easy Nicholas Chico.  Yeah Closest to use in England crazy. I Loved going to cigar lounges like that's one of the things I did I worked in a cigar lounge Just love the atmosphere adults talking without Filters without censorship a spider Smoke the bugs No, it's not a spider Sorry, buddy You're out Yeah, I've had spider mites before on different plants and spider mites these weren't spider mites because you can see spider mites like just They're crazy.  It's how pretty this is Yeah, oh Yeah, spider mites are the worst. This is beautiful Yes So nice so nice Yeah, and this is lower branch. Let's go take down more Cheryl if you find any cute spiders not of the mite variety don't squish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah spiders No, I don't this wasn't a spider. I Don't think it was a spider. It was our if it was I had already Squished it before I squished it right Yo, yo, yo, you Mmm.  I love rubbing them with my hands When I get the chance This was gonna be easier to try. I should have taken these ones down, right? That way the energy would have gone up top like these little guys are they're cute and all but That energy could have been used better up top The bigger buds, right They come back here. Very hypnotic.  Nice. Thanks.  Oops Thank you for the tier one sub. They've subscribed for 21 months Alligot is your game over who won the Chelsea win Alligot be back in 20 minutes need to grab beer after two to draw We'll be here all the gun. It's gonna take us a while to take this down Or take these two down How long did these plants take they took? We got them into the ground late Right, so we didn't get into the ground until When they would get him into the into the pots probably Late June I would say probably late June or mid June. So they were late right First time chat. Mr. Bufas Dufas what happens to to a frog who parks in an illegal spot they get squished He gets told you get They don't get squished And I only fed these plants twice with organic feed Okay, once they were hardy enough to be able to use the extra food and it was fresh soil with What do you call it see see soil see soil and compost Good soil, so they were getting nutrition throughout the whole thing from the get go I Feel like smoking a blunt This little guy we have two cats poor cooked They cheat show any idea on where to obtain a salvia pound. No No in Canada. They used to sell like 10 years ago Some places is still legal so you can get it With this plant We pinched it here Right and the plants split into two Right and then when it reached this high We pinched this again, and it's split into two and then we pinched it here again and split into two Right, so that's a good way to obtain more yield Okay, the other guy we didn't pinch at all. It just went straight What I guess we forgot to pinch it the bedou which we settle on after is TP people I'm gonna get into trimming game So apologies about not reading the chat Once we get into the other one the other one is gonna be tougher cut I Haven't I barely trimmed that one at all when it was when it was up and And these top ones I didn't trim really too much beauty Very nice, I want to trim the big leaves first actually Reduce the weight easier to turn nice, but These are actually some of the best cannabis I've grown So I was pretty proud of these ones Even though they got in late if they got an earlier while these would have been crazy So much more it's like exponentially more, but we're late getting them in However, we are taking them down really late right Like we're mid-october to actually towards the end of October, so That's the late we're outdoor plans We did bring them in so they wouldn't get moldy sticky sticky Dense enough that it's hard. Oh here take a look Mites spider mites take a look. I'm gonna have to give this one a wash. I'll show it to you I'm gonna trim it down a little bit more and then Show you the spider mites Good thing. We're taking them down and they're separate from the other house plants Take a look nice crystals. See them.   Are you doing good? I'll come back and hang it later. I'll just hunt it on on top of the sink For it to just drip a little bit and then I'll come and hang it by By the thing I'm a G. Oh my god. Are you doing that beer? Oh, I could actually use a beer right now But I don't have any beer and gang do not forget. Do not forget Free Sange free Sange free Sange junior Sange publisher and journalists that has been crucified for trying to bring Transparency and accountability of capitalist poverty humanity something that we desperately need in our societies free Julian Assange For more information see wikilees.org the fendot wikilees.org or countless resources available on free speech platforms Salute. I'm just drinking soda soda water with ice It's nice refreshing and I have some tea here as well Okay, let's take down the other one. I'm betting that one also has mites. It's right at the beginning stages Right at the beginning stages So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna stand and trim this Speedy Gonzales My partner and actually noticed these first so I was like, oh And then we're gonna go give them a rinse and hang them and then Hang them on in front of the fireplace since these guys were inside the The predators the bugs from the garden weren't able to get to them to eat the mites so Inside the mites went picked it up expand it little buggers Save the buds Next time I think I'm gonna take down next year I'm gonna take down all these little guys and just let the energy go all the way to the top And it'd be easier to trim as well You know take a look a little bit of dead. It's not mold but Well a little bit I guess a little bit moldy just a little part of it went dead Nice buds though. What? I'll show it to you Unless we trim it down a little bit more and then I'm gonna go dump this the leaves outside Because it might have some spider mites so might as well throw the leaves outside So when we're doing the other bud We don't have problems and we don't get any spider much spitting inside our house plants. Let's do let's do I Really don't eat the mr. He's a guy. I really don't eat edibles too much. I have I do seldom Right very nice Very nice Beautiful Very nice Very nice I'm gonna go give this one a little rinse Gonna give this one a little rinse and then hang it there. Let it drip dry Beautiful let's take down the next big bud Big stem so there's one more stem left on it. Yeah, this guy's got it too. So the top guy's got Mines, so we're gonna give this one a quick trim too Here are the mites on this one. Let's see if you see them Focus or not. I gotta be able to see it too See a little bit just at the beginning stages But nice plants very nice plants Sal just went behind the fireplace one day When we are completely decentralized We'll have some of these for auction very nice very nice Padre Padre Padre salutations That's a little bit of something back there. I'm gonna go give this one a rinse as well hang it Take this and these guys and just dump them in the patio. Okay That way The spider mite infested stuff is not inside the house Because we don't want it to spread Anywhere else. It's not a really infested. I mean they were hit but We've had spider mice go crazy on plants before And I gotta check on Sal see what he's doing behind the fireplace Let's do this and then we're gonna come and hang those plants and then Take the other one down scrolls outside in the patio Putting his Fines into the pots into the soil because I like these guys The stems of the cannabis plant I really like like hard nice Good for using in the next season, right For holding up Tomeidos or whatever, right Nice So these are the ones that we took down from the same plant and this is A thorns berry right thorns berry and these ones we notice the mites on the water. They were way bigger Right, so we took them down and gave them a wash Have had them hanging drying Right And these were from the lower branches so I'm going to take these ones down from This contraption I set up here to dry these things. I'm going to bring the other ones and hang the thorns berry I'm just going to put them with these guys So we got this much Plus what I'm about to show you, right? Nice bouquet Bouquet of flowers for you Oh, this one we didn't trim it off. Look at this Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, these ones we didn't trim because we just took them down and washed them right off the bat, right? So Let me bring the other guys are going to hang them to dry And these were three of the top stems, right? So we got this This harvest from one plant and this would be It's got to be like Two three ounces Yeah Like it's got to be that much Right, so that's a pretty good harvest. That's a pretty good harvest Right nice nice nice Yes, I just put them in a tray and then later on I'm going to go hang them That's the thorns berry. Let me put the label with it. Let's do The apricot momosa This baby right here


Hi, this is Sandy Baird and I wanted to tell everybody that this meeting will be recorded and then later shown on channel 17, CCTV public access television. So thank you all for being here. Tonight, we are going to be discussing the world as it tumbles into war between right now between Russia and Ukraine. And I say that guardedly because tonight I would like to have a discussion about that war and its implications for the rest of the world. Remember that it has thus far defined mainly by the US media, perhaps by the Russian media also as a war between Russia, which invaded Ukraine about one month, 29 days or so ago. I would like to broaden the discussion because the war has also been presented as largely a war against Vladimir Putin. That Putin has been described variously as a monster, as demented as mad, all of which might be the case. However, I think it does not define what is really going on in the world and it's rather irrelevant because this is a war that involves the whole world or might involve the whole world eventually. And so I would like to broaden the discussion tonight. And I would like to broaden that by bringing in the perspective of my guest tonight who is Eric Onero, a colleague of mine in what I would call the People's Law School, which I am developing and we'll speak about it sometime at a later date. But Eric is a man from Ivory Coast who is just in Africa. And at the time that he came back from Africa, he offered me the kind of transformative information that everywhere he went were signs that were pro Russia or pro Putin. And that really made me think hard about what is going on in the rest of the world. We think about mainly this war is of a concern and has been defined essentially as a European war, a war between Russia and between Ukraine where Russia invaded Ukraine about 29 days ago. And we are not thinking of it in broad world politics or even the consequences of what it might mean for the rest of the world. So I wanted to do an update with Eric about that. We did another program on that talking about his information from Africa. Also, the consequences and the underlying causes of what is best, it could very well tumble into World War III and that will be a whole world and not just a war between Russia and Ukraine. Eric is a former reporter for CNN. He is from the Ivory Coast. He is joining us here in Burlington and he is helping me develop the whole idea of the Vermont Institute of Community and International Development and also the People's Law School. So I guess I will turn this over a little bit to Eric and just get his perspective really from the third world. Okay. So, Eric, what did you find? Thank you, Sandy. And thank you to everybody to be with us tonight. I was in Abidjan in Ivory Coast and in Ghana when the war started in Ukraine and I was quite surprised to realize that among the Africans there was some kind of sympathy, some kind of backing, not like the war against the Ukrainian people, but the Africans in general were in favor or were behind Putin. So I asked the folks over there if it was are you okay for Russia to go to Ukraine and kill people eventually? And then as an answer I got the sense that it wasn't that people were condoning the war, so to speak, but mostly they were behind someone that was standing against the West. So why? That's important. Yeah. Okay. I think it's important. Unless somebody else wants to ask another question, what do you mean by the West exactly? I mean by the West, the US and the former colonial powers because the West or Africa is mostly the US and the world that is behind the idea of bringing democracy and bringing a more liberal world to Africa. So mostly the former colonial powers in the case of the Ivory Coast, it's France. France that even though these countries have some kind of independence on the papers are still ruled economically, politically and geopolitically by France. You have also former colonies from Great Britain and then other colonies from Portugal and Belgium and Belgium with the notorious King Leopold who chopped thousands, if not millions of hands in Congo. So it's a bitter Africa, I think, that is seeing Putin as someone that is standing against the West that has failed to bring what he promised. A few decades ago, the world was divided between like those who were for Russia and the USSR and those who were for the Western bloc. Most of the countries at that time didn't have the luxury to choose. Some did choose, they were more powerful but most of them were under, for example, the countries under the French rule were just had to do what France was asking them to. Which is what? To oppose the USSR? Right. Some other countries which were more daring and more, you know, less docile and a little bit hostile to the Western world because the Western world is linked to colonial power, you know? So these countries, like most of the countries that used to have revolutionaries like Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, you know, were aligned with the US, I mean with the Russians, USSR at that time, or were non-aligned because there was this movement of countries that didn't want to join either with the West or with USSR. Today, things have changed. These countries are, you know, seeing new powers. Hold on for one minute. So I think that one of the problems that I've seen in recent, in all the coverage, is a kind of a mindful forgetting of that past in Africa.  I mean, I think there's no real understanding that Africa was imperialized never by Russia or never by China, but by, in fact, the primaries of the NATO countries. If you want to think of it that way. Yes, and then it's interesting because the media tend to see what happened, what is happening to Africa today as something that just come out of the blue. They don't see it as the result. And then it's a little bit like... Okay, but what's coming out of the blue, okay. So the old imperial powers are what we're talking about France, England, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain. A little Spain, yeah. They have ruled these countries in Africa. Rural, and then they have continued even after the, you know, the independence. And independence occurred in the 50s and 60s, you know? But most of the countries were locked into treaties with the former colonial powers, which gives, you know, for example, France, the priority on the resources. So much so that, for example, Niger, which is one of the major supplier of uranium for France, you know, doesn't even have electricity. So the Western media is like, we have the feeling that it's all these Africans, you know, do they know better? You know, they better be ruled by the colonial masters. Nobody goes deep into what happened over there and what can be the reason why today these countries are seeing Vladimir Putin, not as, you know, the savior or whatever, but someone who's standing, someone who was like, at least, you know, telling the West that enough is enough. They are countries that want also to be, you know, to be free. So the problem is in this dynamic, these countries can also go towards new power, new, not colonial power, but, you know, China and Russia. They are there for business. So, oh, yeah, China is China is the major competitor for, I mean, for the West over there in Africa. China is in Africa. China doesn't ask the Africans to come up with, you know, good grades when it comes to democracy of human rights. They don't care. They don't care. They don't care. So because, you know, the Africans are saying, anyway, the US is asking us to have good grades when it comes to, you know, human rights and democracy. But are they example of such things?  When, for example, they're waging wars in other countries, proxy wars, when they went to Iraq with false critics, when they, you know, so the main issue is, is the West? Does the West have enough credibility to, you know, to, to be, you know, the gendarme of the world? Okay. All right. So in other words, then you did find sympathy, sympathy for Russia. And then. Why, the why Russia? Isn't that a white country also? Yeah, but there's no, there's no history of oppression in Africa. Right. From the Russia. Or Chinese? From the Chinese. Even though China is doing business in Africa, sometimes there could be some problems. China tend to come to countries with their own workers from China. Anyway, Chinese are not angels, but I remember when I was working for the African Union, Mugabe is saying one day that Mugabe is like the former, you know, former president of Zimbabwe, who used to be a good boy to the West until he asked Clinton and Tony Blair to help him get a little bit of the lands that were confiscated by, you know, the white farmers from England over there to his fellow Zimbabwe. And then it didn't happen. So Mugabe became. Wait a minute, did he confiscate the land? He confiscated some of the lands over there to give it back to the people over there. But from the Western world, he was like one of these barbarian, you know, dictator again, you know, going towards like. He was another Putin. He was another Putin. Mugabe was not an angel. But remember, any time the West put pressure on a leader in the third world, this guy is cornered and becomes someone a little bit heretic. So this is what happened to Zimbabwe. So Mugabe was saying at the African Union at a big meeting one day, we were raped by Europe. But with China, we can decide to go to bed with China. And that's, you think that's accurate? China, right?  So, you know, at the end of the day, China is building roads over there, without condition. Why then? Because China is making money. China is doing business with them, you know? So I think it's about time the West understands that things have changed, you know, that the new generation of leaders want to do business with whoever comes to them without, you know, patronizing them, without thinking that they're subhumans who don't even know how to take care of their own resources. The continent has changed. The continent now wants to do business the rest of the world with no, you know, father or mother who will come to dictate what they have to do. And without the history? Without the history. It's a thing maybe of the past, but, you know, how could you forget when you continue to be exploring Niger, in West Africa, I mean, in the Sahel, continues to provide uranium to France, but Niger doesn't even have electricity. Any electricity? I mean, barely, barely, Nigerians are living in extreme poverty. And you go to Mali, Mali has gold. All the gold that is in France comes from Mali and all these countries, you know? But Mali doesn't have decent hospitals. You go to Ivory Coast, Ivory Coast might be famous for, you know, chocolate and everything, but the Ivorians don't own their own country. It's all decided in France. So, you know, at some point, you want to go beyond that. So that's why I think these countries, I mean, these, the Africans are behind the Russian, but even for the sanction, Europe is the only continent or at least Western Europe. It's the only one in the US that are applying the sanction. Okay, that's important. So let's pause there for a minute. In response to the war in Ukraine, the United States primarily issued sanctions against Russia, which means what? That we're not doing any business. That's not true either, we're still doing business with Russia, right? Yeah. But these sanctions are really meant to cripple Russia and punish Russia so that Russia changes its mind. Yeah, but, you know, in fact, it's only European countries, Western European countries and the US that are maybe somehow applying these sanctions.  They don't want also to be in trouble with Russia because in this new world, nobody is the master of the world now. Is that right? Hey, look at India, India, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, and China are together in a new block that is called the BRICS, 40% of the population of the world and major contributors to the economy. These people even though, you know, the US is still the mightiest country in the world, but is it? I mean, let's say, yes, militarily, economically, you know, even China was trying to be there as a, I'm not saying a long way, but you know, yeah, as a way to, you know, let's not think that the US is a major, you know, player on the international, but the US cannot no more be like they used to be like 10, 20 years ago, you know, the superpower, because they are mid-sized powers like India, Russia, China, that could, if they get together or even alone can stand somehow, you know, in front of the US. So the sanctions are showing that it's only Europe, even Europe is divided. Right, right. You go to France television, you hear some leaders of political leaders that won't follow the landscape. They can say, yeah, some of them have said that, but, you know, of course, mainstream France, because of, you know, the links to what I mean inside NATO and stuff has to be aligned to, you know, the, you know, the NATO. But in reality, some of the leaders in France don't want it. And then a lot of, a lot of companies even in front, and Zelensky, when he was addressing the France parliament has named some companies from France that are still doing business in Russia, you know. So the world has changed and then the countries like in the Third World, even if you go to Latin America. No, no, I want to get to Latin America in a minute. But it seems to me that what we're talking about honestly is that our media here and the media that I see all over the United States is when they talk about the world does not support Putin. They're talking about the white world a lot. They're talking about NATO countries, period. They make no, they don't have any consciousness that Latin America probably does not stand with the United States and NATO, or that Asia does, or that Africa does. Yeah. So what are they talking about? They're talking about France. They're talking about the NATO countries, correct? Yeah. This shows also the bias because for a long time these countries, you know, didn't represent anything. But they still think they do.  Well, let's talk about that reality. Okay, so you mentioned a very key word and that is BRICS. I'm not certain that most Americans know what BRICS is or how long that semi-aligns. It's not a military alliance, correct? Yeah, it's not a military alliance. Okay. What is it? Economy. It's an economic agreement. Yes, because you have Brazil, Brazil. For example, Brazil says we cannot apply any sanction. Brazil is a major agricultural power. Correct. In Latin America. And Brazil needs, you know, fertilizers. Where do we get Russia? From Russia, you know. Most of the countries use wheat for bread.  Okay, so there's Brazil, and you're saying that they won't do the sanctions? They won't do the sanctions. China won't do the sanctions. And that R is Russia. Russia. India. I. Yeah. China. China and South Africa. And South Africa. Even South Africa, the beginning of the crisis at the UN, South Africa, issued a statement asking the Russians to get out of Ukraine. But two days later, they came back. What they say.  And then even Russia has been very important in the fight against. Against what? Apartheid against, you know, the oppressive regime in South Africa. So Russia was. Yeah. So the world today is like not the world of a polarized world with USSR. Even the Russians are no longer, you know. The USSR. Yeah. Yeah. So the world has changed and there are mid-sized players, mid-sized powers that can enter in the, in the balance and then look, even in Europe, you have, you have Turkey. Right. I was thinking about Turkey. Turkey is mediating a peace agreement. Can you believe that? Of course you can believe it. Yes. And Israel, Israel is. In Israel. Israel is, you know, Israel is, is kind of, you know, playing soft with Russia, because they need Russia to counter the influence of Iran. Right. You see, so it's a word where you have to understand, okay, take a deep breath. Okay. I'm still a superpower, but I cannot no longer dictate, you know, my will to the rest of the world. That's too business. And that's, believe me or not, you go through Africa. They still like Trump, Donald Trump. I know. You know why? I know why. Because it didn't change much of the, you know, the international policies of, you know, but it was mostly business. Right. Of course. At least that's what they perceive. Because it's true. From Trump. That's always been interested in making money. I tried to tell them, okay, listen, do you think that, you know, they said, this is the problem of the U.S.? We want a business partner. We don't want like someone who comes to give less. So the world has changed business. And then this is also the occasion for, I mean, the opportunity for the U.S., which has still, you know, a good audience in Africa. I do. Yes. I mean, China might be, you know, nice. We're coming with these, you know, new toys and things. But, you know, come on, it's the U.S. Why? It's the U.S. Why? Who went to the moon? Who did that? Hey, but you weren't saying it was because of Elvis Presley. But culturally, economically, I mean, whatever is happening here, even socially, the social movement, even like, you know, the right for women, even the U.S. is one of the first countries in the Western world that is tackling the race problem, even though in terms of, you know, race, even looking at the past and trying to find at least talking about it. Go to France. Go to Europe. Nobody is talking about it. No. It takes like, it takes, it takes, I don't know, what for, for, for Belgium to recognize that King Yopoul of stopping hands in Congo. Over rubber, over rubber. Yeah, France is bragging about being a country where everybody's equal. It's ridiculous. There's still, you know, I mean, me, I worked for the U.S. I worked for the voice of America, even though it was, it was a propaganda. It's a U.S. government office. But go to France for a fellow Ivorian to be able to work at that level. I have Ivorians here that have houses. I have Africans here that can buy a house that can go to work. That won't change the way maybe a white guy or another race will look at him. But at least if there's a problem they can do, they can go to court, you know. So it's still a great country, but the world has changed.  It's a world where you come with diplomacy. Except that the West France, U.S. is still militarizing Africans and African countries, right? Yeah, but it's a fantasy because they think that it's the solution would be, you know, a militarizing. They won't, what? Against terrorism or something? Terrorism is just a pretext to be there. Why do we want to be there?   That's what brings, you know, terrorism, give access to education to everybody, give access to, you know, electricity. I mean, these these I told us that wouldn't have any audience to talk to. What kids have to have to take like small small boats to go to Europe because their countries are being depleted of their resources by the same colonial powers that are, you know, to be giving lessons to the rest of the world.  I mean, it's not that simple. And then talking about terrorism.  Yeah. Gaddafi wasn't Gaddafi. The the the Libyan leader wasn't an angel. Oh, oh no. But at least, you know, there was some order over there. After the war in Libya, all the hoodlums that were operating over there left the country with guns and, you know, slaves, slavery again. Hey, Yemen, what's going on in Yemen today? You know, terrorism, it's poverty. It's poverty.  But we have to go by some rules of decency and not treat, you know, the Africans as subhumans or the people from Latin America as subhumans to whom you can apply rules like without, you know, you know, expecting any backlash. It still will still have as a country, the US, the mightiest country on the world, the, you know, the, you know, one of the bright, I mean, the country, the brightest mind to change the way we do business in Africa. We have like Africans that are, you know, now new Americans that can be the trailblazers for, you know, right here in this community. Yeah, but that can be the trailblazers for like a new way of doing business in Africa. They have collaterals here. The kids are here. They can be given loans to go to Africa. The same way China is financing. It's, you know, it's economic operators to go to Africa. The same way Turkey is giving everybody is, you know, subsidizing the business people to go to Africa. We have, we have, we have Erics. We have people that are still loyal to America that could go there, open McDonald's. I mean, I'm not, I'm not calling, I'm not calling for, you know, but that could open like franchises that could do business and change the way. And that you say is what Russia and China are doing. That is what Russia are doing. They're not coming. Of course we have to ask for, you know, human rights and so. But the best, the better way to have someone, you know, talk about human rights is to have him like, to be prosperous. And then you can start discussing about what, what do you ask for human rights to someone who doesn't even go to the hospital? It's like a secondary thing. I'm not, I'm not like minimizing the fact that we have to be, we have to hold some people accountable. But who are we? Are we credible enough when we, we let Saudi Arabia massacre people around? There's almost a half a million people that have died. You know, I don't know. In Yemen is correct. Yeah.  Kids are dying in these mines. Like people are killing each other for just the ways to have cell phones. Of course the politicians over there are corrupt, but they are, they are peons. They are puppets of, you know, of most of the Western government and China and Russia. Okay, so I did want to talk a little bit about Latin America before we ask for questions. Because what you, what you also said was really curious to me because at one point I'm, to my thinking really has gotten transformed by what you're saying. I was seeing the war as it was presented by the media that this was a war between Russia and Ukraine for underlying reasons that invasion happened for, for other reasons that don't justify the invasion. Nevertheless, there are reasons why that happened. But I wasn't thinking about the fact that it is the NATO world only that is the European countries that appear to be behind the NATO countries and not with Putin. But in fact, the rest of the world has been very silent about this. I haven't heard of one protest pro-Ukraine in all of Latin America. None. Have you? No. Okay, or from Africa or from Asia. The big support for Ukraine seems to be only in Western Europe, Canada and the United States. Of course, because you know what is that. No, no, this is, now this is key.  That is, is that because they're ignorant of the way the rest of the world thinks. They don't want to inquire how the rest of the world thinks. They're so narrow-minded that they're not even willing to consider that there might be another point of view. I'm pretty sure, you know, most of the Americans know about it. No, they don't. No, they don't. Because like whatever is being seen on TV is not the truth.  But yeah, it's just that, you know, the media are manufacturing these, you know, these, of course, if a country is, you know, if a country goes through war, you have to have sympathy for the population. Of course, of course. But it looks like we have only sympathy. Not even the Ukrainians are not even like in the mind of people. It's Zelensky. Zelensky is just like a guy who's like agitating his cell phone and things. People don't get the sense of like the gravity of the problem. Right, right, right. It's like it's being like so much trivialized on television that we don't understand that it's, you know, a geopolitical war. It's like NATO going to look for trouble in Russia. And Russia being, you know, it's not, you know, saying that Russia has the right to go and start bombarding the country. But they've been a precedent.  But in reality, that's not what was happening on the ground. So, and then under the same pretext of, you know, the world is divided, you know, the Monroe Doctrine. Nobody can come and do whatever they want in the backyard of the U.S. So even in Yalta, Yalta divided the world. Even prior to Yalta, Berlin, the conference of Berlin divided. We were even dropped into small countries in Africa. So why do you accept that for your backyard? And you don't accept that for the backyard of Russia. Maybe it's about time the whole world make, put an end to all backyard around the planet. And then, but it can't be only for one side. It has to be for all the, all the, all the parties. Right. Okay. So before we get to that, though, okay. So I wanted to speak a little bit about Latin America because I'm going to, with you, I hope be able to go to Cuba, for instance, in a month or so. So it hit me too. Cuba probably is not anti-Russia. And why is that? The reason is, is a big history, really in all of Latin America, but particularly in Cuba, where the United States has decided that Cuba is going to have an embargo against it because it's a socialist country is what I believe. And it's because Cuba had to, in a lot of ways, accept assistance from the full Soviet Union and also now from Russia. There's these similar feelings, I think, throughout the Americas, except for the U.S. and Canada. The sympathies in Latin America must be all very mixed. And they must, too, be seeing that they might very well be not sympathetic to the NATO countries. In other words, I guess, put it that way. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, people are tired of a word that is about, follow this camp, follow here. People just want to have prosperity. But they want to, as you said, they want to do business. They just want to do business. And then so it might be, however, tragic the situation in Ukraine. The Malians have a problem. How are they going to feed the people? How are they going to have electricity? So would they spend time wasting their time following two elephants that are fighting? In Africa, we said when the two elephants are fighting, it's the grass underneath that is suffering. And that's true of Ukraine. Yeah, that's the grass. Ukraine has been the grass where two elephants are waging a proxy war. That's an important word, though. It's a proxy war. Between the U.S., I mean, the Western world and Russia.  I don't think Germany or France want to go to war in Russia. But they are NATO. And so what? What is NATO? When you agree to join an alliance, you lose a little bit of your sovereignty. Okay, so before we open up for questions, NATO, in my understanding, and I'm a historian, I love history. I've studied a lot of history and I taught history. In my memory, NATO was formed in about 1947 out of World War II. And it was an alliance. They said a defensive alliance against whom? Who was it aimed at? That alliance, Russia. Out of World War II, where the United States and the West had depended on the Soviet Union to help or pay the biggest price to defeat the Nazis. Everybody thought we were going to have peace with the Soviet Union. And in fact, the West developed an alliance against the Soviet Union. And immediately the Cold War started. It's my contention. And then NATO also expanded during the, I think, push. The first, there was an agreement not to expand NATO up to the borders of Russia. And then the Clinton administration broke that agreement and piled all these new countries right into Russia's backyard. Right? Yeah. That were NATO. Yeah. Okay. So to me, this is a proxy war, a continuation of the desire on the part, at least of the United States, to really, basically, to really hurt Russia. But you know, there was. And also Russia took the bait, probably. Yeah.  They're also pushing for, you know. Of course. So, I mean, one can understand that, you know, the US also is trying to defend, you know. Defend what? Defend its NATO allies, including all the new ones. Poland, for instance. Poland seems to be the ally in NATO that is, it seems to me that is most interested in this war against Russia. But I don't think Germany and France really are. No, they don't. I mean, they're in trouble. Because like, when are they going to get rid of the dependency towards, you know, Russia? They're only going to get rid of the dependency on the United States. I mean, the United States now, it's causing us, you know, it's creating an alternative now.  Gas to who? Germany and France? It won't happen now. I know it. It won't happen now. So, I mean, to me, let's go towards peace. Now it's. But you also say something else. Do business. Business. Let's go towards peace. Let's find a peaceful solution if you create now. Because, I mean, even if Russia cannot invade the whole Ukraine, the rest of the world wouldn't be able to also get Russia out of Ukraine that easily. At the end of the day, it's the poor people from Russia, from Ukraine. And the Africans know about it. They know how, you know, Western powers have been fighting for them, you know, in between, you know, if you go, for example, Rwanda, what happened to Rwanda? The genocide in Rwanda. Well, what did happen? One million, one million people died in almost two or three days. I mean, over a few days. Rivalry between the U.S. and France in the region. What? Really? Or definitely. Between U.S. and France? And France in the region. I thought we were going to France. At some point, the U.S. started to see if they can, you know, you know.  But, you know, at the end of the day, it was very tragic. Yes. So now they agreed to at least consult before doing anything over there. But, you know, what happened to Rwanda? A million people almost died. A million people. And that was a contest between the superpowers? Yes. If you go to Congo, what is happening to Congo? So Africa knows what it is to be, you know, used as proxies war. Even between, back in the days, the West and U.S. and South. They know what it is. So Ukraine is living that. And I think that Zelensky should calm down. War is not a game.  Well, I'll tell you who else should calm down is the President of the United States. I mean, Zelensky and, you know, the Ukrainians should calm down and look for a peaceful solution. But he is, I thought, Zelensky, right now. Let's see. Right. Let's see what's, what's, what happened. And everybody wants them. Everybody but the U.S., it seems Israel wants them to. There's no way but, you know, peace to look for. Right, right, right. But the major, major players are saying to Ukraine, settle this, settle this. Right. Except when the United States, the President says, let's go get Putin because he's a bad guy. That is serious escalation. But, you know, remember that it's politics.  Remember, we still want to go to war in Ukraine. I hope so. Are you kidding? I hope so. Okay. I hope so. Anyway, okay. Don't we, don't we have enough to care about here? Yes. Gas is like gas prices skyrocketing. We need to accelerate the transition towards like electrical, electric vehicles. We need to, we need to be able as a mightiest country to give at least a relief to the students that are carrying loans like, you know, you know, we need to be able to give two year free college. Why don't you run for president? You're not a citizen. Okay. Well, are there questions or anybody have any other thoughts? No, I can't. Let's see. We need to maybe mute yourself. Sandy, I can't hear you now. Who is speaking? This is Sharon Buescher. Hi Sharon. What's up? Well, so this was disheartening. Honesty sometimes hurts when you hear it. Very informative. But I wanted to understand in most of the countries that you're referencing, are the governments really dictator like or what are they like? And are they, you mentioned, you touched upon human rights and how the United States addresses that component of livability and just life in general. But if indeed they're aligned with Russia in this confrontation, and yet they're relying on Russia and China for resources and their quality of life, does anyone ever think about how Russia or China could potentially change the leadership in these countries and take away some of the freedoms that you have at this point? I would say that many of the African countries don't have that, don't have freedoms. And that's largely because of their governments and of their past. And also because there's still a rule that leads financially by the imperial powers and those are mainly their old imperial powers like France and England, Belgium and so forth. And I'm not saying that, I don't think Eric is either, that they go around saying that they would vote for Putin is just that they don't trust the Western powers to do anything decent for them because that's not the history yet. And so when the Russians and the Chinese do come to Africa as in Latin America, they don't come with a heavy hand of history or with the kinds of exploitation, at least not the history at this point of absolute exploitation.  I guess that's the simplest thing, but I'll ask Eric to comment on that. Yeah. The countries over there, there's a strong desire for freedom that has been a sandwich or blocked by the former colonial powers because it will change the dynamic. For example, if I take the example of the Ivory Coast, the Ivory Coast at some point, you know, a leadership like by the socialists over there wanting to renegotiate the treaties with France to have more leverage on their own resources, result is they were sent mercenaries to topple them down. So the deficit of democracy over there is not due to a lack of desire by the people, but it is crushed. Most of the 15 countries that are ruled by France in West Africa have the leaders chosen by France. You can't be a president in the Francophone sphere if you don't have the blessing of France. And most of the time, he went against the people, but our friend is right. And then that's the danger. That's why I said we have to calm down and find a way to preserve because the US is not only an auger. The US also brings ideals of democracy and ideas of civil culture, but he has to be done in such a way that these people don't have to choose Uttan over human rights or the US. It means that the US has to stop only sending condoms to countries that are believed to be doomed to have AIDS. And the US has to do serious business, not to come with a few million dollars just to, I don't know, but we have to be serious about that. We have to be able to also... But we also bring weapons over there, don't we? But for example, what the countries over there have against the US that doesn't have any colonial history is that the US, through its alliance with France, condone the fact that France is still having 15 countries over there on the next rule. So they make it easy to blame the US as a friend of the French. How can the US come say, okay, we want democracy, we want human rights and let a colonial power still screw, I mean, take all the resources of a country and not even being able to have these people have electricity. Sharon, anything further? No, I understood his point about the past rule. I am not a historian, so I needed to be educated about the fact that these countries still select your leaders, which I didn't realize, which I think is unfortunate and not necessary, but I don't rule the world. But that was another piece that was missing for me. This has been a very important conversation for me to understand how complicated the world is, and you've really helped me take a step in understanding that. It doesn't make the situation any easier. I think it makes it more complicated. Can I just ask one other question? I didn't really understand. So as far as the Ukrainian people, is there any feeling of empathy for them or not? I just didn't understand that piece. Probably. I mean, you've got to understand, Sharon, too, these people know what war is like, so of course they have empathy with all people who are under the gun by foreign powers because they have been, for centuries, the African people, the people of Latin America have been the victims of US and Western European militarization and wars. So yes, they have a great, and I do, too. What I think our argument here is or are beginning to understand is that Ukraine is the battlefield upon which the superpowers are playing out their agendas. And it's the Ukrainian people who of course are suffering the most. Yes.  But we don't have the right to let it go that way. What I'm saying is like, even at the beginning of the war, we've seen on TV all around the world, you know, refugees, African refugees that were trying to flee from the Japanese that were blocked by, you know, some guys in Ukraine. It's not the Ukrainian government, but you know, even in Europe, some refugees, some African students that were in Ukraine tried to get to Europe to have the same right as the Ukrainian refugees, they were refused that. I remember that.   We need to have a fair word for all and then we do that work here. I'm so proud to be here while it's happening. Now it has to translate into the foreign policy because Black lives don't matter only in the U.S. I agree. All lives matter everywhere in the world. If we have the courage to, you know, face the past that have been an outrageous past, we agree about that.  It has to be applied everywhere. How can an African, you know, I mean, how can, even as an African American, I would doubt the fact that Black like mother would doubt that assertion.  So we have to. I wonder if I could just address Sharon, another aspect of Sharon's question. I've actually spent a good deal of time in Latin America. I've been to Venezuela about six times, a couple of times in Bolivia and so forth in Argentina. I can tell you that the role of the sanctions in particular in Venezuela, these are on completely false pretenses. The elections, I've been there during elections actually, they have elections which are certainly is perhaps more reliable than ours. I think that their system is really pretty foolproof and it's, and yet our country has consistently, one of their reasons is a completely fake reason for sanctions on Venezuela that the elections are false. And as a matter of fact, our country is promoting and recognizes as a president, a guy who has never elected anything like president. He's a complete fake.  He has almost zero credibility in Venezuela, but we're insisting that he is a legitimate, our government is insisting he's a legitimate president of Venezuela. He's a lapping stock in Latin America. We back and so on. So all of the sanctions are really not to bring about any kind of human rights or anything like that. It's really about gaining control over the resources and putting puppets into power. And I can tell you, I go into great lengths, which are obviously not appropriate at this point, to tell you that the sanctions are really from the Latin American point of view. I can't speak to others, but they're based on false pretenses and they're really very evil. They're killing, literally killing people and people turn in Russia to Russia and China. Venezuela got to vaccines. They were blockaded. We were, they were not, they would not be, could not be bought from the United States. The United States was keeping them from getting vaccines, but Cuba, Russia and China sent them vaccines. That's the ugly thing we're doing there. Thank you, Peter, because that's I think what really Peter, thank you a lot because that again it points out why the real world or a lot of the world does not support the NATO position and they look to other countries as more sympathetic to their real needs like Russia and China. And the old imperial powers, as Eric pointed out, are losing credibility I think everywhere in really in the black and brown world. It's an essential to understand that our media go along with all this. I read in the New York Times and Washington Post just blatant lies, things that I know from being from seeing on the ground what's going on. They're just plain lying and they're building a case so that we can, we can attack these countries through sanctions, kill people through starvation and deprivation, wreck their economies and our media go along with it. And I must say that I've been following, I've actually been looking at media from other countries with regard to Ukraine. And without going into detail, I can say that much of the reporting is so incredibly biased and one-sided and I believe though I can, as the authority I can about that in America, I believe that much of it is just plain lies. I've been a reporter for one of these media outlets and I followed the war and I because my own country, I know my papers were changed overnight just to be aligned with the good news from the, you know, the community powers, you know?  As soon as you, you ask for a ride, there's a, there's a message, would you donate to Ukraine? Would you donate to Ukraine? Not explain to me what's going on in Ukraine. Why should I donate? But, you know, just donate. So it's like manufacturing that empathy for Ukraine and they're doing it very well because at the end of the day, it's the same. You go to France, it's the same oligarchs from France that own all the media. It's the same thing, same thing like here. And then the liberals, the progressive here in the US are playing the same game. They're playing the same game. Okay. Are there any, we're kind of running out of time and I wanted to give every, any, somebody else an opportunity to say something or have other questions. Anybody? Sandy Nancy has her hand up. Okay. Nancy. Thank you, Nancy. Thanks. Well, thank you. I just want to make a quick comment about the sanctions. That's to me another way of making war. The other thing is my limited understanding of Ukraine is in 2013 and 14, the US was over there and helped and changed their government. Right. So I think Zelensky is possibly a puppet and we're sending more weapons to the Ukraine. So it just seems like we're there to make war and the news says, oh, Russia was unprovoked. Well, I don't think they were unprovoked. But anyway, that's just a couple things I was wondering about. I think that was, that's really great, Nancy, that you said that because the media puts forth the note and this is why we're doing this tonight. And we probably should keep doing it. The media is putting forth the notion, the mad man theory of history, that Putin's a mad man and that we have to get to war against that person. While it might be, while Putin did, in fact, enter Ukraine with weapons and is making war there at this moment, there are not, there are reasons for that. I continually say that and then people say I'm a Putin puppet. All I'm saying there are reasons that this has happened that are separate from the fact of Putin's personality. And I thank you for bringing that point up. Are there any final thoughts or questions? Thank you, Nancy. And thank you all for being here. Anybody else before we end? Thank you. Thank you very much. And hopefully we'll see you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you.