On behalf of the US Institute of Peace and the Due Process of Law Foundation, I want to welcome everyone to what we hope will be a very interesting and enlightening event. The Due Process of Law Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Professor Thomas Bergenthal and colleagues at the UN Truth Commission for El Salvador to work on issues of transitional justice. Headquartered in Washington has offices in San Salvador and a team of professionals throughout the hemisphere. DPLF is dedicated to human rights and the rule of law in Latin America and works with civil society organizations to promote compliance with international standards and the use of inter-American law to improve legislation, policy, and practice. USIP is a publicly funded institute funded by Congress with the objective of seeking to avoid and resolve conflicts around the world and to help countries coming out of conflict to remain at peace. It does this through research, analysis, and programming in 40 countries. In the hemisphere, the institute is most active in Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Central America, seeking to help reduce polarization, strengthen communities coming out of conflict, and broker new solutions to existing political conflicts. So one housekeeping issue, the event is being conveyed in both English and Spanish, but there is a different link for each language. You have to commit to one language or the other, so Spanglish in this case is not going to be an option. So if you're in the wrong language, please come back in with the other language, other link in that language of your choice. Just by way of framing, just over 30 years ago, in the early morning hours of January 1, 1992, President Cristiani, his cabinet, the Estada Mayor, and the FMLN commanders signed a final peace accord in Chipotlepec Castle in Mexico City. It was a hard fought victory that was the result of two years of very skillful negotiations, the alignment of a number of factors both inside El Salvador and in the international community. The writer Ellen Moody commented years later that post-conflict policy analysts have called the Salvadoran case among the most successful peace agreements in the post Cold War period. So we're here today to reflect back on the peace agreement, both what we can learn from the process itself and what it says about where El Salvador is headed today. The accord was never intended to solve all the country's problems, nor was it possible to foresee everything that would transpire in the succeeding 30 years. Rather it set the conditions for a future of peace, conditions that would need to be continually nourished both inside El Salvador and from abroad. And we have just the right people with us to cover this ground today. Alberto de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat who led the UN peace negotiations in El Salvador, very fortunate to have him with us today. He's a renowned mediator who also led negotiations on Cyprus, served as a UN, a special UN envoy to Myanmar and the western Sahara and as a UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. He teaches conflict resolution at the Paris School of International Affairs, part of Ciencius Pope. Leonor Artiega is a Salvadoran attorney who heads the due process of law foundations program on impunity and grave human rights violations, leading investigations, advocacy and monitoring on issues related to memory, justice and state violence in Latin America. In February 2018, she was appointed by the Salvadoran government to serve on the National Commission to search for disappeared persons during the armed conflict. Gino Costa is the, is a Peruvian politician who served in Congress as Minister of the Interior, President of the National Prison System and Deputy Ombudsman for Human Rights, among other positions. He was a member of the UN Observer Mission to El Salvador and has been a consultant for the UN and aid agencies on police reform, human rights and citizen security, publishing widely on these topics. He now teaches at the Catholic University of Peru and is preparing a book on the country's political crisis. And Douglas Cassell is a scholar and practitioner of international human rights law. He served as legal advisor to the Truth Commission for El Salvador and has represented victims of human rights violations in Colombia, Guatemala, Peru and Venezuela. He's also filed amicus cura briefs in the United States Supreme Court on the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. He's a professor emeritus of law at the University of Notre Dame. Now, to start off, I wanted to kind of get the big picture of the Accords and what we've learned from them. So I wanted to start with Alvaro and, and ask, spend a few minutes discussing what we've learned in retrospect about the Accord itself and about peace Accords in general. You said in a speech at the State Department in 1994 that the Accord was a pioneering effort, textbook example of successful peace negotiations. You were not touting your own leadership of the process. If anything, I think you were far too humble, but you pointed to the alignment of internal and external factors that allowed the conditions for the peace to take hold. But you also pointed out both there and in an article you published that same year about the evolving post-conflict issues and said that the jury was still out on whether the peace would hold internally and whether an external, the international community that seemed more focused on reaching a proper IMF agreement with the new country rather than mobilizing funding would do what was necessary to secure the peace. So I wanted to ask is you reflect back on the Salvadoran peace process. What are the major lessons you came away with both on the process for negotiating peace and for securing the peace on the other end? And are there things that could be useful to other countries facing similar processes presently or in the future? And how do you view the role of the international community in the Salvadoran peace process? And if you could comment a bit on the international architecture for peace. Thank you, Keith, for this invitation. On your part, the U.S. Institute of Peace as well as the due process of law foundation, founded by a person who played an extremely important role in providing a framework so that the Salvadorans could look back within context on what had actually happened. And I'm referring, of course, to the Truth Commission report. Now, the context in which the negotiations became possible really for the first time during the war in El Salvador occurred at a time when the necessary factors came into play. Now, the moment at which the possibility of conducting a serious negotiation crystallized, so to speak, was actually before the negotiations started, the negotiations proper under the aegis of the United Nations began. That is, during the offensive of the FMLN of November 1989. For that is the moment at which both parties in the conflict realized that they could not win militarily. As simple as that, it became clear to the FMLN that it could not ignite the generalized popular insurrection that they would have liked to trigger. And it also became clear, I think, to the leading forces in El Salvador, including the party and government at the time, that they could not defeat the FMLN. And a key sort of focal moment for this realization was the assassination of the Jesuit priests at the Central American University. On the odd theory that they were the real intellectual authors behind the FMLN insurgency. And that in turn triggered a reaction of indignation in the US Congress, especially in the House of Representatives where the Speaker of the House immediately mobilized an investigation into the assassination of the Jesuits. And now this was an initiative taken by a body which played a key role in aid of the military character to the El Salvador armed forces, which was crucial for the conduct of the war on the part of the military. So all of these factors brought about in the US a reconsideration of its role and its legitimacy. And it brought about what has become known as a mutually hurting stalemate, which is when the parties to a negotiation perceive that the cost of continuing the conflict has become greater than the cost of actually solving it by negotiation. So that was the key moment. And within weeks, both parties in the conflict had come to the UN Secretary General in request of for help, diplomatic help to negotiate an end to the conflict. And it coincided serendipitously with a summit of the Central American countries who had a couple of years earlier taken a decision to take charge themselves after the efforts of the Contadora Group to solve the conflicts in the region. And at that summit meeting, which was sort of the farewell summit for President Oscar Arias, whose term was ending, they came out strongly in support of a role by the United Nations to help the parties solve the conflict. So that laid the foundations for the start. The presidents even asked the Secretary General, whom they saw as having the drawing power necessary to bring into the effort powers from outside the region. And of course, what they had in mind was the US, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in solving this, in sorting out this conflict. And so that allowed matters to begin. President Cristiani came to New York to request the Secretary General's to ask the Secretary General to play this role, to help them facilitate a resumption, as they saw it, of negotiations, which hadn't really begun. They had had a couple of meetings in Mexico and in Costa Rica, after which the offensive began. Now, the importance of it is that the of this and the lesson that we I think can draw from it is try to bring about the right timing for negotiations. Unless you have the good luck that that timing has actually already intervened, such as occurred in the case of El Salvador. I think it was the intention of the FMLN. Well, perhaps they started out with the intention of actually taking power in November of 1989. But when they realized that this was not possible. They turned it, it began became an effort which converged with that of the leadership in power at that time in El Salvador to use it to trigger a negotiation under a single unified mediator. And that was another consideration that was important. Collective efforts at mediation. Well, they're having cases where they have brought about a solution to a conflict. But it is much better in the words of Javier Perez de Cuellar to ensure the unity and integrity of the mediation effort that it should be clearly under the leadership of a single person or entity. Or that even if the effort is collective, there should be a an acceptance that that single institution or person should be in the lead. Now, it became very clear very early that these negotiations could not be simply geared toward bringing about in the usual sort of model or sequence for these things. A ceasefire and then a calm negotiation and to essentially get everybody to who needed to be demobilized to demobilize. It wasn't that simple. The FMLN's objectives in this negotiation were quintessentially political and the correlation of forces was such that they believed. And so they stated very clearly from the first meetings that the government had exceeded to come to the negotiating table because of the military pressure that the FMLN had been able to muster particularly at the time of the military offensive. And they said, therefore, they insisted in their proposals for an agenda that before even considering a ceasefire, there should be at least political agreements for reform in the issues that were identified, which covered essentially the whole gamma of issues that could needed to be addressed at the top of which was the armed forces, human rights, the judiciary, the judicial system, the electoral system, economic and social questions and constitutional reforms that might be necessary to solve these. So you can see that the whole agenda that faced the country needed to be addressed. Now the negotiations actually devoted an enormous portion of the time to the armed forces and in discussions that seemed interminable and they set out their problems with the armed forces in order to make the case essentially that the role that the armed forces played was so pervasive that it affected the entire political life of the country. And that it somehow infused all of the problems that the country faced on all the remaining questions. So they took the position that unless the problem of the armed forces could be cracked and solved, there was no point in proceeding to the other questions. Now, there was very little movement on this for the first few months to the point where the negotiations seem to lose momentum and energy. So we try to make an effort to consider what could be done about this. We at the United Nations. And so we entered a period between negotiating sessions of reflection on these other issues where we turn particularly to human rights and the judiciary. And at one of these meetings in Costa Rica of the negotiators, we proposed to them that we should have a pause, we referred to it, a momentary pause in discussions on the armed forces and turned briefly to look at another issue with a clear commitment that we would be returning immediately to the armed forces. And there we managed to produce a such context in which the parties were able to agree on essentially an article which reaffirmed a set of articles where essentially they reaffirmed obligations that already committed El Salvador, the state of El Salvador in the right to life area. The basic human rights that could ensure this. And this actually was quite celebrated because it was signed immediately there and proclaimed and became obligatory. And on the basis of the commitment that already existed in the first two procedural agreements on the framework for negotiations and the rules of the game, as well as the agenda reached in Geneva and then in Caracas, it was agreed that the compliance with the commitments undertaken in the framework of right to life on human rights would be monitored by the United Nations, something which the had never been done before. There had never been long term nationwide constant monitoring which required when it finally was implemented required the deployment of a large number of human rights observers throughout the country that had a positive effect. However, this proved a bit of a of a setback, because the FMLN, which had until then shown great sort of a tactical resiliency in the offensive, and in agreeing to to switch to armed forces if only briefly had apparently not done their homework with their constituents in who were actually fighting and who had been were fully committed to the idea that armed forces must be solved first before we turn to anything else. And this brought about a bit of a reaction by their constituents against the negotiators and the leadership, and that proved a little bit a bit of a setback in time. I'm afraid it was a setback that led into the autumn months and even into the winter. Now, early in 1991, we what focused the minds of everybody concerned, apart from the war itself, in which there were some extremely serious developments, which included a new offensive by the FMLN, but they came to the realization that time was actually running out. And the time was that if constitutional reforms were going to be required in order to reach agreement on certain aspects of the armed forces in particular, they had better hurry up and agree on them, because the term in office of the legislature was coming to an end on the 30th of April. Now, we gathered them in Mexico early in April of 1991, and there, at almost with three days to go before the expiration of the legislature, they actually agreed on a set of constitutional reforms. Now, the alternative to that would have could conceivably have been the continuation of the war for three years longer, the term of office of the new legislature because constitutional reforms needed to be approved by two consecutive legislature. Now, as it happened, this worked out. And there were extremely important negotiations, which actually had were there to prepare the ground for important reforms in the armed forces, consisting of the need to rectify some flaws in the constitution under which they needed to, which required, were required so that the armed forces central role in the maintenance of internal order could be brought to an end and shifted to a national civilian police. We also took out the sort of a residual role of the armed forces in determining whether the constitutional law could, whether the political order of the country was such that they had to intervene. That was something that, that was something that I know Diana Vieira's Negroponte pointed that out that this all was part of the whole evolution of the country's structure where the military was no longer in that key role in politics, one of the real key things that came came out of it. So, Alvaro tremendous tremendous framing. I guess one just one very quick final question was how much of the, because you framed it in a bid and all of the things that came together how much of this was, was just an alignment and kind of good luck with the different internal factors and how much was dependent on regional leaders, the international community internal leaders how much it was dependent on leadership and how much was just the fortuitous alignment of these different factors and then we're going to move right on to Gino and on some police issues. Very well. The, the, what we were able to do and we, the only people present in the room when discussions took place were the representatives of the two sides, the FMLN and the government, including a senior member of the El Salvador armed forces and the United Nations personnel that was involved in this effort. Now, one of the things that became very clear fairly early is that very little was happening in the face to face negotiations. And therefore we shifted fairly early to more separate meetings between myself and my team, particularly the late great Pedro Nican, who was our legal advisor, with each of the two sides separately, where we were able to make far more progress in assessing what would be viable and what would be acceptable by the two sides. So we had already shifted to a position, for instance, where we, it is we on the basis of what we heard from the parties to make a proposal on the armed forces as we had done on human rights. But I think that let me just emphasize, I've spoken perhaps too long, but let me just emphasize one point, which was that, that we concluded internally, which is that it was necessary as part of solving a conflict that was internal, in which you couldn't, as in an international conflict, essentially make sure that there was a separation where they could be sent home each to their own territory. You couldn't do that. Everybody was already in their own territory. So there was no choice but to address this panoply of issues that would then lead to an acceptance by the two sides that it was possible to separate. Now this translated eventually into what Buttozali, the Secretary General as of 1992, called post-conflict peace building, which he saw the insight that would likely be at the top of the UN agenda in the post-Cold War years. I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much. That's incredibly good framing and that I think sets the stage for all the rest of what we'll do today. So we're about at the halfway mark, and I wanted to move on to Gino. I wanted to open the door for one question and then deliberately another question. One is just about the socioeconomic issues. I know this wasn't your issue in the negotiations and as part of the delegation. But if you have any comments on the socioeconomic issues that were in play in El Salvador at the time, how that was treated in the negotiations. And then mostly I wanted you to talk a little bit about police. That was your specialty. So as a member of the UN advisor mission focused on police and the author of a book on your experience, how do you see that in hindsight? And how do you see the resultant criminal violence that's emerged in El Salvador? How is that related to what was done during the peace accords? And then the question of reform, how is reform locked in in a process like this in what follows? And this is, I think, the main lesson coming out of much of this is there's only so much that can be done in the accord. It sets the stage and then there's a lot that has to follow, as Al Bro just mentioned. So anyway, any comments on either of those two topics? Thanks. Thank you, Keith, for your question and for this invitation. Thank you so much also to Alvaro for sharing that information, which is a foundation, an important foundation for the negotiations. Now you've asked about the socioeconomic issues. And truly, this was not a big part of the negotiation. We did talk about this. And as Alvaro said, it's something that people talked about on the last day of the negotiations in the year 1992. Now, this is something that they could have talked about and considered looking more into the future. I think it wasn't that important for the government or for the guerrilla. And this part was not very important for the forum. They did not make it a priority. So it was not important for the parliamentary. I do think it was fundamental and essential. If the FMLN took to arms, it's because there was no democracy in the country. It was their only option. And that's what the war showed us. Peace allowed this termination of war and conflict while at the same time incorporating this front. At the same time, we could have included these other topics such as the socioeconomic issues and the lands, etc. In regards to safety, Alvaro referred to the importance of the armed forces. This was one of the most important topics because they bore a lot of weight in the country and during the war. We at that moment wanted to walk towards peace and open the doors to democracy and for FMLN to form as a political party. We needed to give those armed forces some power. However, here their doctrine and the armed forces were restricted and limited. Now this is a model that can be applied to El Salvador for Latin America and for the world in general. The military police was responsible for a lot of corruption and violation of human rights. They were replaced by a democratic police force and I think that this model is very comprehensive. And it can serve as a model for El Salvador and many other countries. Now I think the issue was in the implementation of the agreement. I'm an interested party. I was part of the UN observer mission in El Salvador. But I do think that the issues were once this agreement was implemented. First, the commitments that had to be adopted. For example, for the civil police. It would have been nice if the police hadn't been as contaminated, but the needs in terms of the police made it necessary for the military force and representatives of FMLN be present. And those who represented the police ended up being ex combatants. So it would have been much better for the representatives to not be contaminated by the war to rather focus on the old ways of carrying out the police. The police units. This really impacted the professional part of the negotiation. This was a huge challenge and it continued to be a huge challenge not only for the police but for the justice system and for the entire country. A country that has not had a possibility on a state level to face these issues. Now we need a new perspective because to solve this problem to be able to have this piece, which has been, by the way, very violent piece. I also like to mention one more topic in terms of implementation. Now remember before the war, the decades before the war, which was marked a lot by the military and not by democracy. When President Cristianio signed the peace accords, he recognized that this opened El Salvador to a democratic path. Now you have the right wing party with tradition of just a bit of democratic tradition. And then the other side, which looks towards Cuba and the Soviet Union as a model. So to build democracy on these foundations has not been easy and this has marked our security policy. Let's remember the history with the military before having to withdraw the military. This really did not respect human rights. The only thing that we have been able to show the world to be valuable and face these criminal issues are these examples. This has impacted our political culture. It seemed that the accords didn't really implement as well. And then we were able to implement them, but because of the government, it's the same behavior over and over again. And that explains a progressive militancy. Even the agreements point towards something completely different. Now this is the weight of our history, which marks the future considerably. These are issues that nobody could see that were going to happen. And then Salvador, in the end, was impacted by the criminal politics of the US. Now they used the sons of young people in El Salvador that had issues, criminal issues, and these have led to more problems that cannot be solved. Now these are current problems that the new institutions can't solve and the young people of our country must solve this in the future. Fantastic. Thank you so much, genome. I want to move now. We have about 20 minutes left. I wanted to move now to justice issues, which we've touched on a little bit. I wanted to go to Leonor for this. I'm touching on the fact that in the Accord there was so much that was committed to the issue of transitional justice and establishment of a justice system that was going to function. So I wanted to ask you, looking back now, how do you see the judicial provisions of the Accord? What impact did they have on the rule of law? And then what can be done to support judicial independence and the rule of law going forward? And particularly if you could touch on the issues of the Truth Commission, accountability, and how those issues are still playing out inside El Salvador. Leonor? Thank you so much, Keith. And thank you to all the other panelists. It's an honor to be able to talk about the last 30 years and the peace accords and the report that came out on the peace accords. Now, these reports fulfilled their purpose in the moment in terms of the justice system and also the Truth Commission. The reports were instruments that allowed El Salvador to renew itself. It helped the country enter into a new era. And at the same time, being conscious of the fact that the justice system had carried out a very important role. It was a complex of the atrocities and the violation of human rights that both parties had caused during the armed conflict. The Truth Commission, up until now, has violated all credibility. The Truth Commission has tried to civilize these conflicts, but no one has been able to really implement or fulfill the purpose of the Truth Commission. Now, in relation to justice, the Truth Commission made very clear what had happened during the armed conflict. It wasn't about some rotten apples or just a couple of people that wanted to harm the country. Rather, it was really an instrument of power, an organized tool that was used by the state of El Salvador. Its purpose was to carry out human rights violations to maintain the status quo. The commission clearly shows us that the crimes that were carried out were carried out by the system. The justice system was a fundamental tool that was used to carry out the systemic crimes. Now, the peace agreements did not support the justice system. Now, what we were able to do was something innovative for the times, sanctions, administrative sanctions, and others, not only focusing on the trials, but the entire justice system. During that time, the justice system was not the only method. Using other strategies was something innovative. The commission says that the Supreme Court needs to undergo a process to identify all the judges that took part in this system. Well, the Supreme Court, they never really left, but they took on these recommendations in the judiciary. And two years after the commission had recommended it, they designated a new court. Another point that I'd like to highlight is that the Truth Commission, the Commission for Truth designated a different methodology. This was used to identify very significant cases. It wasn't just the everyday cases, but the ones that really highlighted the patterns of the violence that had taken place, the main characteristics for violence, and how this level of crime was achieved in the country. So the commission said, first, we have to clean everything in the justice system, we have to put everything in order, and then we will go to trials. So, what's the conclusion now, looking back these 30 years? Well, the peace accords, along with the report from the commission, was able to transform El Salvador's justice system. Then we had constitutional reforms, new legislation was passed, which changed how the judges and employees of the Supreme Court and other entities carried out their duties. We had the attorney for the republic, we looked into all of their responsibilities, and well, we were able to transform the whole justice system at the end. And that model is currently in place and has been a model for other countries as well. Another thing is that the justice culture didn't necessarily change. So we see how these patterns of impunity continue to take place. But the justice system reform was very useful and continues to be so for other nations as well. Finally, I'd like to say that the commission wasn't as strong or firm as it could have been with the amnesty. It's not an absolute amnesty, perhaps we hadn't thought about that at that moment, or perhaps that topic hadn't been developed. And later on there was an absolute amnesty. But what I want to say here was that the commission played a very important role. Their work and their report was carried out in a moment when El Salvador wasn't achieving a complete transition. There had been a transition from war to peace with the ceasefire, but it hadn't been completely developed. And it was a very complex process. The reports from the commission was rejected by the government. But at the end, the commission was able to set the foundations. And today what El Salvador has in its justice system, despite its imperfections, is due to the commission. We don't want to discredit, discredit rather what the commission did or the peace accords did. But we want to analyze what led to the development of this justice system that is complicit with impunity and how we can reflect the current reality of El Salvador. Thank you very much. So we've got 10 minutes to go. I wanted to get a couple of questions in for Douglas. And one of them is very specific to what you worked on. That was looking back again at the truth commission, its recommendations. What are your reflections on that? And the framing is that so much of this was part of a process that was to set up democratic institutions, which would then move forward. And we see now that those democratic institutions in many cases, of course, have not cohere. There's frustration on the part of the Salvadoran people, only 25% believe in electoral institutions, 10% in the judiciary. So a little bit of what happened there, but also a larger question of this incredible event of making peace, this historic peace that is now seemingly not valued particularly by many political leaders inside El Salvador starting at the top. But also maybe not understood by the youth of the country by the citizens. And how do you recapture something of the magic of this peace process and use it as an anchor and as a guide going forward rather than something to be dismissed and moved away from. Douglas, if you could comment on those two questions, we'd appreciate it. Gracias Keith. Felicitaciones al Instituto. Thank you chief. Congratulations to the Institute for organizing such an important panel. It's truly an honor to be able to share the floor with such important people such as Alvaro de Sota, Gino Costa, El honor Arteaga. I'd like to ask the question in a different way. The great achievements and the success of the peace accords in El Salvador are two sided. First, it ended the armed conflict, which was absolutely terrible and horrific when we consider the well being of the El Salvadorian people. And finally, it opened the doors for political transformation and the political inclusion of the gorilla, which had been completely excluded from political life in the formal channels. So these are two incredibly important successes. We cannot ignore them. And we must recognize the contribution of the United Nations of Alvaro de Soto and all of the negotiators that participated. We also have to consider the work of the UN with Gino Costa and others who contributed. But I think there was a significant failure. And that was, and well, I'm not just referring to the peace accords here, but also to the recommendations that were made in the commission's report. The failure was that we thought that we could create a long lasting peace based on justice system changes and political changes. And just on that, we've heard that they really only touched on some political aspects in the last days of the negotiations. We heard from Gino that the socioeconomic forum was failure basically. And there was an opportunity when we came to the recommendations of the commission to focus on those socioeconomic topics that have to be the foundation in order to have democratic political transformation and for it to be successful. But we let the opportunity slip through our fingers. We didn't do it. Our recommendations were purely political in nature. We focused on the judicial system and well, they were positive. But they weren't enough. They were not enough for building peace, which was what the secretary general wanted to do. So where are we currently in El Salvador? Well, at least a third of the population lives in poverty. There is great disillusion with the democratic institutions. There's rampant corruption. We've seen it constantly throughout all of the different administrations. And we've had four presidents before this current president who've been involved in murky legal matters and corruption. And this is all during this time. And well, the current president is dismantling internal mechanisms as well as the mechanisms of the OAS for fighting corruption. The gangs, the Madas, as Gino mentioned, well, this isn't just the fault of some young people or the lack of success of the penitentiary system in the United States, but it really reflects the lack of economic opportunities for young people and their families. And the need to have both parents when possible at home, they need to work enough to be able to survive and to care for their families. And when that's not possible, young people go to the Madas, to the gangs. So I'm not saying that the peace accords or the commission could have prevented all of these problems. We see that there's a series of interrelated problems related to crime, disillusionment, lack of education. Half of the Salvadorians don't study beyond primary school. We see that there's fear of going out on the streets or sending your children to school. I'm not saying that the peace accords could have solved all of that. But undoubtedly, rather, they should have focused on those topics more. If we don't consider those elemental issues, then the recommendations of the commission or different proposals that just focus on judicial or political issues, well, there's a great risk that we'd end up in the same place where we are 30 years later in El Salvador with an authoritarian government, a corrupt political system, which has led to the disillusionment of the majority of the people. Well, we're at the end of our panel now, and I just wanted to close with a couple of comments. First, I wanted to thank the panelists for your service to El Salvador over these past three decades and for not only joining us today, but for being with the country through all the different things that's been through. For those of us that were involved in the Salvadoran conflict very early and then have been attached to the country ever since, I think there is this community of Salvadoran watchers, Salvadoran supporters that remains very strong. But it's very encouraging, I think, to see that through these three decades of ups and downs, there's still so many people that are committed to El Salvador and to getting to that piece that it secured back those 30 years ago but has not quite realized yet. As we say in USIP, there's no real failed states, there's only unfinished states. And El Salvador is definitely an unfinished state that still has work to do but has the support of many in the international community. And I want to also just pay tribute to those that have suffered and sacrificed during the war itself. I think it's always a good time to remember the casualties of war, those on both sides that fought for what they may have believed in and the many who fought dirty, if you will, and ended up making that war worse than it needed to be. And so all the efforts at peace during that time and since have really been worthwhile and again are something that we should keep before us in the future. But I want to pay tribute to those that suffered during the war and those that have been trying again ever since to bring about a future that's complete with social economic justice, human rights, and institutions that work. So anyway, thank you all for joining us today. It's been a tremendous insight, I think, into again a very important peace process and one that has a lot of lessons for our current environment. And I think as Alvaro helped us to understand, there is a lot of agency in these processes. There's a lot that can be done by civil society, by citizens, by business to push for peace and to bring about the conditions for peace. And then the leadership that needs to be secured to bring it about. So thank you very much and wish you all the best. Thanks.


Hey everybody, this is Brian, and this video is all about understanding Magic8Ball's predictions. Now Magic8Ball is a stock market prediction engine for options traders. I'm assuming you've already joined, if not, jump out to LaunchPass.com. The link down below. Once you join using whatever email it's going to send you an activation code, you'll have to go to LaunchPass and send it the code and it will grant you access. But I'm assuming you've already done that for this video. And in doubt, if you can't see any of these little things with the locks on them, you're not in yet. So scroll down. Let's go down to predictions. This is what we're talking about in this video.  So go down to the very newest one. In case you're wondering why is there so many predictions, these are updated every five minutes. Unfortunately, Discord does not allow real time, so I can't share like some dynamic chart, so I have to update this on a pulled interval. So every five minutes, these will update. I may adjust that time in the future. And future versions, these may be dynamic, meaning it will only update when there's a big market change. But for right now, for version 1.0, this is what we got. The prediction, we'll show you the symbol and the time. That time is in Eastern Standard Time, in case you're wondering. And the prediction is broken into two parts, you have a text wall and a chart. So the text wall is also got little sections in it. Let's just run through those real quick. The first section is all about price action. It is December 5th, 2022 at 3.20 in the afternoon, and SPX is currently at 3.992.17. Let's flip over into our charts, and sure enough, right on the money. This is what SPX has been doing all day. Let's flip over here. So we have a predicted close. This is where Magic8Ball thinks the market is going to close. So the difference between the current price and where we're going to close is $9.23. Now we have two things, which is often the source of confusion, the short term and the long term. What's the difference here? Short term is where we think the price is going to go very, very soon. Meaning we could see this jump up, because it's 3.992, could jump up to 4,002.80. Long term is if there's no market in, the market just runs till midnight, then it's going to settle around 4,000. How are we getting to these numbers?  Predicted short term, this uses a lot of math, and it also uses volume, open interest and a few other little goodies like Delta, Gex, a few other things. Long term, this is purely volume profile analysis, which leads us down to this guy, our nodes. You'll notice node one, 4,000 is the same as long term. Volume profile analysis existed way before the internet. You don't even need really a computer to do this. They used to use this on ticker tapes long time ago. Let's flip over and let's look at an options chain here. Let's scroll all the way to the top. You can go to customize and make sure you have volume in here. You just scroll down, find volume, add it, and then hit okay. You want to make sure that you have volume as one of these columns. At the very top, you'll see it says NA for not applicable, meaning there's no volume. What is volume? Volume is buyers and sellers. This is the market. This is where the action is. Scroll down and you'll start seeing these numbers grow and grow and grow and grow until they hit at the money. You'll see this on both sides, but you notice they're not centered, meaning it's ballooning here and the highest is around 4,000 on the put side and on the call side. Let's just scroll down here. It looks like the highest is right here at 40, 50. You notice these are offset, meaning it's a tug of war happening between calls and puts. That's what drives this price action is. You have people on both sides of this pulling in their direction between calls and puts. In between these two, we have what's called true market center, which just eyeballing it is right around here, 25, 30, 25, 20, 40, 25, 40, 30, somewhere in this area. This is called true market center, which means the price wants to drive up there, but there's a catch. It doesn't have the volume to do it. Let's flip into Magic 8 Ball and no, it does not. Node 1, 4,000, has the most volume. This is the highest price action right here in terms of volume for 62,000, 620,000. That's a huge amount of volume. Then Node 2 is this guy right here. This is really confusing. Think of it in this terms. You have Node 1, Node 2, and true market center. You have a tug of war between these two guys, and there's the center of those two. If you're still not sure, flip into something like TradingView, something that's going to show you volume, and you see how the volume profile spikes out. These are volume nodes. When it goes up, it's a node. If it goes down, it's a well. I didn't invent this. This is volume profile analysis. This has been around since long before the internet even existed. You can see right here, our price action is actually right around this node. If I can just zoom in here, you'll see, yep, here's a node, here's a node. The price is going to keep doing this right around this volume node. This red line is what's called the point of control. You notice how it's brighter here? This is called the value area, meaning this is where most of the volume is. You may look at this and go, oh, well, the point of control is at 4013, but if you've been a long-term investor, you know, the price doesn't always go towards the point of control, which is the highest amount of volume. It usually lands somewhere around it, though. You notice these two nodes are pretty much about the same height, which tells me these are pretty much the same strength. What Magic8Ball is doing is all of that for you under the hood. It's got this beautiful range here. It shows you how big that node is, and then it shows you the highest point in the node, and it's doing that for multiple nodes. You can see, I think, up to five of these with the true market center. When in doubt, the first node is where the price is always going to go to, so this is what you want to watch like a hawk. If you see that suddenly drop to, say, like, you know, 3,000, that means the market's going to plummet. If it shot up to 5,000, the market's going to jump. And to that end, you have Forecasts, which do all of that equation, but multiple days in advance. So you can see this three-day forecast, target 3950, 3950, 4050. This is volume right here. Same thing just a few days out ahead of time. So now I can see the market's going to go down over the next two days, and then probably go up on the eighth. And you've got the relative volume score next to it. Last but not least, in case you're a newbie, we have some recommended trades based off all of this information. Again, if you're kind of deer in headlights and you're like, what do I do? Just tell me what to do. Look at the price. Look at the close. Make sure that difference is good enough for you. And then select a trade. But always kind of keep in mind that volume is a thing and it's in the background. So to use these trades, you can literally just select this, copy it, and go out to thinkorswim. Go to your order entry tools and let's just paste this in. And let's analyze this and see what this looks like.  Usually they're pretty close, but the market does move sometimes faster than I do. Let's analyze this and let's get some market real estate here on our screen. And this is what's going to happen. You can see there's our trade. That's right around where we want it to go. I'm not going to go in depth into trades, but I just wanted to highlight that you can copy and paste the trades directly from Magic 8 Balls. So for example, it's almost 3.30. If I wanted to try and pin a butterfly, I would just copy this butterfly. Let's go out here. Order entry, save tools. Let's go ahead and delete this and again, paste that. Here's our butterfly. Get the newest price. Let's analyze this. Ah, where are you? There you are. All right. There we go. I am not a thinkorswim expert. I am a software developer. Bear with me. So here's our glorious butterfly. Try and center this. You can see this is a narrow butterfly. This is great for end of day trades. So I'm going to put that line right there. That's our primary node, 4,000, and you can see our price is actually lower. There's that $9 difference. Now this blue line represents at the end of day in about a half an hour. This pink line represents time decay or in time. This is the profit curve. So as this price moves up towards this node, you're going to start making money. You see the number right there growing, right where the mouse is. That's how much money. So if this shot up to 4,000, you make $133 now or, and I'm watching over here this little box, you can make about $300. It's really that simple. You can just plug this in. And of course, you can adjust the trades however you want. This is just, for someone like me who is a complete options idiot, it makes it that simple where I can copy and paste a trade and then either watch it make money or watch Magic 8 Balls prediction engine to tell me, hey, I need to bail out of the trade. So let's talk about that. Next comes these beautiful charts. And I'm going to go down to the newest prediction. You see it's been updating while we've been talking here. Expand this chart out. This looks busy, but let's talk about it in depth. So you've got these lines here and they're almost snapped on top of each other. You'll see them spread out in other predictions, but you have short term predicted close, long term remember short term is soon predicted close. We're actually almost right on top of that node now of 4,082. And long term, of course, if there was no into the market at 4,000, blue is the prediction history. And you can see right from the beginning of the market, it jumped up. This is usually the first 15 minutes of volume loads up. And then it starts to stabilize. And as it stabilizes throughout the day, you'll see the price kind of go around it. And you can see the price is low. So we're expecting this market to go up. And we can actually double check that with our prediction. Let's get out of here. So current price is 3,988 and we're predicted close at 4,082 price difference of $11. So we're expecting this to go up $11. That is the overly simplified view. Now we have what's called the volume view. Remember, I was talking about volume profile analysis earlier. This is the volume view. So here's volume. This is a visual representation, this blue line of what volume looks like in the market. This is where it gets messy. So you got to kind of look at this legend over here. Black is true market center. Remember I said the tug of war, and then you got node 1, node 2, and I've got the other nodes, but node 1 and node 2 are in red, the rest are in green. So this solid red line is node 1. This dark red line is node 2. And then you got these color boxes. This is that range, how much actual volume you have in here. So like node 1 is a massive node from $39.75 to $40.30. See if I can highlight this, nope, not let me. So $39.75 to $40.30. This whole pink box is that node. And here is the point of control in that node. Node 2 is a much smaller node, but it still has a range. And then there's the point of control in that node with the market center. So you've got node 1, node 2, and then center. And there's this tug of war between them. Now you notice the price is actually lower than node 1 and node 2 combined. So we're expecting this to move up. It makes it pretty simple to understand what's going on once you know what to look for here. We've got these two charts. We've got the price action in the volume view. Price is down. We're expecting it to snap up to the blue line. The magenta line is going to move towards the solid red line. It's going to go up. Makes it dead simple. And let's kind of, now that we understand this, go through some of these others. So let's go to SPY. And it's much simpler because SPY has a smaller amount of volume compared to SPX. Maybe I misspoke. I think SPY has more volume, but SPX has more open interest. Maybe I always get those confused. Again I'm a software guy. So blue line is the prediction history, magenta is the actual price, and we're going to see that snap up. And again here we have this volume area with the volume point of control at 400, and the price is going to jump up. Let me just open the original. So it's easier to see. Apologies. Blue line's prediction, magenta is the price, blue line is volume, red is the end of day node one, and magenta is the price. So this is going to slap up to the 400. So this shows you very simply where the market is and what's going on, meaning it's going to snap up. I showed SPX and SPY because they're pretty much very similar mathematically. I think SPX is actually calculated off ES and SPY. So let's go into another one here. Let's go with QQQ, and you can see it's a little bit more erratic. Each one of these has different behaviors and patterns based off the investors investing, and here you can see the lines are actually spread out. You have the short term, or I'm sorry, the short term down here, the long term and the close. So short term's green, long term's red, close is blue, and you can see that the price action, this magenta line is actually below the short term, and it's going to go to the short term and then eventually up to close.  That makes me nervous as an investor, but what I've seen is that it will bounce around, and this is that tug of war going on in the background. That tells me that it's very tight match. It's not nearly as strong as say SPY or SPX where it's just a solid blue line. There's more contention in QQQ. So I would watch this to make sure it stays within this range, and you notice how the lines are on top of each other in SPX and SPY, but in QQQ they're spread out because we have a bigger range for the prediction. Regardless, it's still below the lowest point, so it's going to snap up, and we have this volume profile showing us here's the volume curve, here's the volume point of control, the volume node, and the price is way below that, so it's going to go up for QQQ. Let's go with RUT, scroll down. Same thing. Now, some of these, if volume really isn't that high, it becomes like a modern art masterpiece where you just got these weird lines, but you can trust that here's the prediction, here's the price, it's going to snap up. Same thing, price, point of control, snap up, well below market center. Close some of these out. You can see though the pattern here, it becomes very easy once you understand this to kind of scroll through, but here's a twist. You notice Apple doesn't have a chart because Apple's currently not traded today. Today's Monday, Apple's not trading today, so we get a forecast and this only goes out three days, so the next time Apple's being traded is on 12.9, but it gives us a target of 150 with the relative volume. If we go into Tesla, same thing, it's not traded today, but we get a forecast out to three days, by 12.9, Tesla should be at 185, there's the volume to show how that works. Pretty actually simple once you get into it.  Where's it closed? What's the difference? Do I need to grab a trade and I want to visually confirm what I think's happening with the chart? Simple and easy, I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for watching.


For many years, we have been associated with the NCSTC and the process of identifying and recognizing efforts in science communication has been both encouraging and at times is of concern. While individual efforts by committed organizations, NGOs, educationists have definitely proved to be beneficial in popularizing science as the macro movement is seized with, the challenge of utilizing the enormous and growing communication resources for this purpose I think is still imbued with substantial issues. One is that the level of the government of India and state governments, no doubt there is a participation support systems are in place and also being developed. But the challenge of education itself in science as a career is also a matter of utmost concern, particularly for some of us who are now savvy with the responsibility of developing programs in what I would call as a green field university. These 12 universities that have come up of one of which I am currently leading are so green field that not a single brick has been gained for these universities. But when I was discussing the matter of what kind of programs we should develop, the immediate concern was that can the new universities, central universities take on the task of building a good program in the sciences that to at the plus two level. So there is a separate dynamics of policy making with regard to strengthening science education in the country, particularly at the higher education in the higher education sector. But that also is limited by the fact that as all of you know that hardly we have space for 10 to 12 percent of our students wanting to have education in the university system. That is the reason why many new institutions are being created. Although there is a lot of debate about the timing, relevance and the location of these universities. The second challenge is that is science and by extension scientific temper an important foundation for building a rational, output looking society. And that is where I think the role of science, science in communication or communication of science in which we want to use the term in combination becomes very crucial. And we are often encouraged by the proliferation of mass media in the country. At the time that mass media grew in the country on a very phenomenal basis. Some of us in the social education sector, we were highly encouraged that here we are in a situation where mass media, print and electronic media have grown to such an extent that they provide enormous multiplier opportunities for communicating socially relevant themes of which science and scientific temper is a crucial foundation block. But this was not the situation. There was a multiplicity of shambles, but as my first point senior colleague Sheikirin Karnik pointed out it was poverty amidst plenty. In the sense that the mass media expansion saw more of the same rather than providing diverse and plural opportunities for communicators to reach their messages to the masses. A very common refrain from the management is that it is so boring. It is so uninteresting how can we even use this material. But my response to some such perceptions, valid as they are from their point of view because media operates in a free market place. Neither the media nor anyone of us intellectuals would like the media to be directed as to what it should do. But at the same time I think media today has an enormous appetite for content. You have a 24 by 7 scenario and let us imagine a situation where even if 3 minutes on the earth is devoted by the 300 plus television channels only, you realize what kind of an impact that it would have in terms of reaching the right messages. It is not repetitive. It is a slot that it can definitely think of because the remaining 57, 58 minutes and if you take away the 17 or 18 minutes of advertisement is in any case repetitive. It is the same story that comes in the loop. So, there is definitely an opportunity for what is considered as the largest scientific and technological human resources in this part of the world to utilize that opportunity. So, the journalism that we taught was always based on what people criticize us as western oriented. But I have a problem in slotting all education into the west and the east because if you look at the tradition of the institutions that we are all talking about, all of them where products of the post printing press development and therefore, they carried the baggage of whatever reformative and renaissance elements that these new inventions were supposed to bring to the communication field. So, communications revolution as somebody would call it is essentially rooted in the science and technology of the west and therefore, it also brings the aberrations of that particular society because the profession is shaped by the nature of industry. Therefore, could we have had a Gandhian model of no advertising newspaper? Some people would order. Now, tell that to the media management today, they will easily ask you to climb the nearest tree and say that what minus advertising can be run the industry. There is no way I mean. So, it is not that models do not exist, but models which are built on high capital technology in this intensive communications environment bring with them certain practices. So, you have advertising which subsidizes the main content and to fuel the perpetuation of the content, the managers will have to constantly evolve the techniques of content management so that advertisers feel that the medium is viable and the media managers feel that the advertising revenue is stable. So, therefore, what they offer to us would be kind of free lunch as some people would call it. Essentially, what media tries to do in this process is to deliver each one of us in this room as a potential what should I say commodity for the advertiser. So, every newspaper ad that you see today does not talk about the thinking or the critical Indian. They talked about that I can give you a socio economic profile of a category, engineers, housewives, IT professionals we deliver them to you. Now, that is the language that newspapers and mass media are trying to develop to say that here is a constituency which we can give you. Now, I am trying to suggest all of these minor what should I say underpinnings of the industry basics to tell you that the symbiotic relationship between media content and the audience per force generates a certain kind of content which is rooted in what they would describe as news values. Now, if that definition of news values and its reflection in the mass media takes a longer time then you have a situation where socially relevant content takes a beating. I am not necessarily talking about science journalism because this is an occasion. We have had situations with regard to other equally important development items being neglected by the media. It is not that many a time that they neglected by conscious design or it is a deliberate act. It is like the typical in the movie a formula sells a hero is there. So, from chocolates to bricks that hero keeps selling and the advertiser keeps thinking that if he can sell chocolates he can sell bricks he can sell cement whatever it is. So, this kind of a formulaic approach essentially has allowed for neglect of certain important issues and prioritizing those issues has been a rallying call from the outside sector. Within the sector few journalists have reflected, few journalists have critiqued, but this criticism has come that what are you doing for development. So, we had a phase where development journalism was the mantra of the nineties. Five years in this field we had the press institute experiments, we had Alan Shacky, we had programs in the Philippines, we had programs elsewhere, where number crunching statistics, economic development, market information, all that become became important. What they said was that the role of a journalist is to allow for giving information that is complex and easy to read, easy to digest form. This by extension became the norm for this field of science journalism, where science and doing science was considered either as complex or as in the realm of expert domain and what is complex and what is in the expert domain needs an intermediary and that intermediary has to be the media. So, science journalism was purpose regarded as something so complex that it required the media to spend more time. But the nature and the sociological profile of the journalists that have come into the field we have all the kinds of people coming into the field. Up to now I do not think there is any decent classification as to who a journalist is. We were at a gathering elsewhere and we talked about regulation, somebody talked about accreditation and so on. A lawyer cannot be called a lawyer unless he or she goes through a basic orientation in law. You cannot call a doctor if he does not have an MBA or degree. But try applying that to journalists. Journalism degree is not a prerequisite for entering into the profession. Anybody with a conscious mind with a critical eye with an ability to communicate theoretically can be a journalist. So, do we regulate the training institutions? If so, where do we draw the legitimacy from? Are we training the qualifications? If so, does the industry have the ability to pay duly qualified people the wages that is decent? Some of the wage conditions of journalists are pathetic, are really pathetic. They kind of live by the day and that explains at times many of the practices. So, we have a situation where this profession although noble although perceived to be held in high esteem does not yet have a uniform layer of either perception or the professional requirements. So, given this kind of a situation, if science journalism is complex, who should be doing science reporting? Who should be doing science journalism? This is the dilemma not for you and me. This is a dilemma for the newspapers because it is easy for them to get a bite out of a person saying that I do not like him, he should be dethroned, etcetera. But it is very difficult to immediately come to the news room and do a story on what is happening in the Copenhagen or wherever it is. It requires that much amount of training, understanding and many of the journalists by nature happen to come from liberal arts, humanities or sometimes no formal education itself as I said. Now for them to get to the root of a process and put it across either it requires an inclination or training. NCSTC the Indian Science Writers Association many like-minded and committed organizations have in the past done exemplary work in trying to have courses designed for them. They have supported university programs. For example, the Madurai Kamra University had a fully funded NCSTC supported program in science journalism where students were also given cycles. Recently we have taken that advantage. Dr. Thirupan is here. We said that science journalism cannot be slotted. So, let us do science journalism as a component of a main course in journalism and communication. But we said we will take the funding and have at least one course on science communication. So, there are models and models available. So, what has happened is that at one point in time there used to be specific magazines and outlets which would unravel the mysteries of science to the common people. Today you have fashion magazines, you have sports magazines and the magazines that were dedicated to science have closed down because they feel that they do not have a critical figure which which they can claim circulation and consequently advertising revenue. So, you have two categories of people who are doing science journalism in this country. One is very eminent scientist who feel that it is the call of their profession to be able to explain science to the common people. They are doing it in English language, they are doing it in Indian languages that is one step. Plus there are journalists who take it upon themselves as a special beat and do stories. But here also you see if you see the distinction between what goes on as AIDS reporting. The gentleman from ICIMA although it was very technical did have a paper which talked about you know what this micro nutrient can do. The AIDS stories are if you look at AIDS stories both in print and electronic media. I think it is perpetuating the commonly had belief rather than telling us that this is something that we can contain with. So, horror sensationalism becomes a norm and it defeats what could have been a good story to explain to the people what it is all about. Similar is the story of much more rampant cases like TV etc. We are doing good stories with regard to Chenryan space. It is because the establishment Indian state space research organization makes it upon to ensure that both its successes and failures are presented properly in a suitably evolved media care. So, therefore, you see lot of coverage because their science their technology is explained to the Germans. So, the owners for science communication apart from the interest that they have to show and apart from the information that the profession has to have is also on the scientific establishment. Unless the scientific establishment what does it matter to people? People know want to know how does your science help me in my everyday life. That is a fundamental question that all of us ask. You see if an ad comes somebody said they should be campaigns washing hands with water etc. Deep rooted societal problems there. Water is a scarce commodity. It is easy for you know a well cushioned media class to talk about some of these practices, but when you really have to go in search of water to other basic needs by cooking I am not trying to say that give away washing campaign etc. But what I am trying to say is that there are many other issues which are related to some of the things that we take for granted. So, when a society is asymmetrical when there are other basic issues unless you have science which demystifies and tells people that there are probably alternative means of doing things the person will not be motivated. Why is the employment guarantee scheme a success? Apart from the advertisement it means that there is an incentive for the person that there is an access to a hundred day wage. Similarly science teaching in single teacher schools in the villages one has to examine where where science is headed. What is this kind of fear that our children develop? First they develop a fear of mathematics by the time they come to 7th, 8th all the parents will be saying this take a hundred out of hundred hundred out of hundred come 9th the marks come down to 60 40 by the 10th it will be single digit. So, this phobia that is ingrained is disuading people. Either we have pedagogical problems in teaching foundations also infrastructural problems because you see a person who has missed the bus and not being able to understand science it becomes very difficult for him to mass media alone to discover the virtues of science. I think what we have to do is to kind of look at science journalism or any advocacy oriented kind of a journalism in a holistic context. And this is where university programs journalism training institutions have a very significant role because the how to do it part the skills part yes it has to be taught how to narrate the story it has to be taught storytelling has to be taught. But apart from that there should be considerable exposure for the students within their own university systems to try and understand what is the science that their faculty is doing. Now, I come from a university of Hyderabad we are supposed to be the number one institution and I am sure that many of us here who come from that university hardly know what is the significance of this scopus publication that people are talking about what does it mean to the neighborhood neither is there an open house neither is there an explanation by the scientists. Yes as somebody said in the morning they are very good at seminars but are they able to translate what relevance their work has every work need not necessarily have relevance. Either it should have relevance or it should be an interesting story unless we are not able to do either one of these two exerting journalists exerting media houses to spend more time on science journalism would be an exercise in Black Hill today we have many other means as I mentioned in the inaugural talk the appetite for electronic media for content is very high and science journalism somebody said that today people are watching discovery people are watching NGC wide etc etc but one has to understand that each program of discovery each program of NGC costs thousands of dollars to make we have a gamdarshan we have our science channel we have it is not that India does not have the infrastructure not for a while in fact you know Manoj was here this morning some of us even debated although I am less enthusiastic but we are even debating a dedicated satellite channel for science communication it is on the card now we have dedicated channel for education we have dedicated channel for science we have dedicated channel for sports I think you know too much of a dedication for slotted areas also is a problem because the human mind can comprehend holistically certain things unless it is able to relate these developments is bit of a sports bit of a politics bit of a topic and then tries to appreciate its threshold of comprehension I think is better that way you have rather than slotting and saying that early morning science afternoon science in school science I think the pedagogy of science I am not here to preach pedagogy of science definitely has to change to sustain the interests of the children who are coming into the scientific domain to the quality of journalists in terms of their ability to do and write science has to improve and the scientific establishment which claims that it is the third largest of the second largest in the world has got to come down to the level of the people and explain itself as to what is the relevance of so many crores of rupees that is being spent for S&T I think LCH etc are doing their job but I think what is happening is the CSIR labs the ICS lab all are supposed to transfer knowledge from lab to land and vice versa it is in their hands that science communication popularization risks unless they network in a dedicated manner with the journalists we will have many more workshops and we will agonize continuously as to why science is not there in the media we must ask a larger question what has overall S&T establishment done to popularize what has it done to sensitize people and today in the era of networking communication networking technologies social people say digital divide etc but I do have figures to say that this digital divide continuously talking about digital divide is perhaps a myth because today the situation is improving a lot we have as I said we have about 43 to 45 percent tele density and I think there is a situation where the proliferation of mass media the phenomenal reach of the print media the expansion of the television the expansion in the telecommunication the delivery mechanisms are in place we need to search for content content cannot be generated by the existing profile of journalists that we have I am sorry to say this can be checked by anybody it can only be generated by the next generation you know trained journalism graduates unfortunately universities also are not doing they are more interested in process they are more interested in asking the civil questions because they feel that their training has to emulate the practices in the field if the practices in the field have aberrations then that aberration continues and we will not be able to do anything much about it


Hello. Can everyone hear me? Yes. Great. So I'm Lin Guan Ting and the other speaker is Wang Xiaowu. And our topic today is working with native indigenous communities to build native language liberal office projects. Okay. This will be a light topic, I think. But it's an important issue. So indigenous people in Taiwan have been in a social economically disadvantaged position due to the historical mistakes made by the government and the dominant class. And whereby the native languages were replaced by Mandarin. And in contemporary society, the social economically disadvantaged position also excluded the indigenous people from technology. And recently, the government in Taiwan has decided to adopt the ODF format in place of other preparatory formats as the national standard. In the meantime, the official documents in indigenous languages policy requires official documents to be written in indigenous languages in native areas. So taking this together, there is a rising need in writing liberal office documents in indigenous languages. Therefore, native language language version of liberal office helps both the indigenous people and the government. We believe that if we could provide a more friendly software environment, we can be part of the official documents in indigenous languages policy. And we can increase the usage of indigenous languages with this. So this is something we presented last year at the liberal con. However, this kind of project would often involve complicated issues of identity politics. As we implemented the project this year, there were several public controversy related to ethnicities in Taiwan such as ethnic discrimination on public videos and inappropriate headlines on news media. And these speeches be delivered or not would cause harm to ethnic minorities and lead to strains between ethnic groups. Therefore, we need to pay more attention to these issues if we are to do things about the indigenous community. And we have heard a few non-indigenous community members asking us like, I want to do something to help but I don't have indigenous friends. So I don't know if I will do something inappropriate or they ask who I can work with can truly represent the indigenous people. So to cope with these concerns, we consulted people from the indigenous movement and organized the things we've learned throughout the year. And we've come up with three useful steps to share with you and everyone who want to join or to build an open source project for the indigenous community. We believe the first crucial step for an outsider to participate in a project for the indigenous community is that we should not be presumptuous about what is good for the community.  We have seen them in some indigenous tribes as well as in urban schools. Some technology experts and some government officials, they think these E-white boards are superior technologies. But they often disregard the real needs of teachers and students. Such situations are even more likely to happen in an indigenous context. People often have orientalist biases and make entirely wrong assumptions about the indigenous community. But we should really ask, what does it mean to be indigenous? What things do indigenous people need? So the answer can vary from a tribe to another tribe. But before diving into a new idea for tech-related projects, you can read some ethnography works, find opinion articles written by local indigenous activists, or just ask them to figure out the answers to the questions if you happen to have indigenous friends. What we want to emphasise here is that the key to understanding a different culture is to know the local view. So you will really know what they need and what you can build for them. So step two, the second step is to find the right people to connect with. Recently, when the government in Taiwan tried to find representatives for each indigenous people, they selected a representative for the Kavalan people who were actually not engaged in indigenous or local affairs. And the incident backfired on the government severely, suggesting that we should be wary of the issue of representativeness when we try to connect with the indigenous community. We ourselves also made a similar mistake. One of us once went to a tribe to start a collaboration with them, but he only got approval from the local priest and the head of the village who was an elected government official. He did not seek permission from the leader of the indigenous tribe, and the leader was quite angry. So each group or organisation in the indigenous community is a little universe, like families, kings, clubs, schools, churches, meetings, tribes and some that don't even have words for them. And they are always, always overlapped and intertwined, and they all have different opinions and interests. Moreover, there are at least three types of indigenous political structures in Taiwan according to anthropologists. And each political structure has its own power dynamics and decision-making rules. Therefore, it is really dangerous just to assume that the indigenous community forms a homogeneous whole. We should understand and respect the complex and different decision-making processes in each group. And you will find the right people to begin your work only after you make efforts to understand the complex realities of the community. That's the basic idea. So why and how does your community... It turned out that it's not that straightforward. Simply just say mount and give the path and be done with. This urban people will just find a tribe and go in there as if they were to open up a residence. So seeing strangers in a tribe would make the residents have an aversion or even feel insecure. So avoid this kind of mindset and try to follow these tips. First, get a people familiar with the concept of free and open source software. Emphasis on the non-profit aspect of free software so they will know that you are not trying to make money out of this. The best way of doing this is to start your first events in a tribe with free classes of labor office and other free software apps. Usually education is the neutral concept and it is a trustworthy medium to generate trust. So highlight your project as an educational resource as well. Also do not stay close with unpopular people and politicians even when they seem to be very helpful. Avoid them forever. If you make your first appearance with people who are not trusted in a tribe, your first impression will surely be affected. So pay attention to the power dynamic in a tribe and choose the right person as we talked about earlier. They can be teachers or local NGO workers usually, but they are not politicians usually. And finally, mutual trust these two support when you are trying to advocate policy. The trust that you work hard to build can help you when you are trying to change something in a tribe and even legislation related to your project. For example, if you want to convince a local elementary school to try a labor office in class, or if you just want more people to share the concept of free software for you in a tribe, mutual trust can be really helpful. So let's recap. We have three steps. The first is to abandon your presumption. Just don't assume anything before you do your homework. And the second step, find the right people to connect with and like NGO workers or teachers. And third, maintain relationships based on mutual trust. And that will really help you when you are trying to like make more people use the office instead of pirates Microsoft office. And this wraps our presentation. And if you want to find out more about our plan, I think if you Google native language, LibreOffice Taiwan, you will find an article we've written on TDF's website. And thank you so much for listening.


What's going on? Welcome back to the channel. This is another video on modern day muscle. My name is Jordan. In this video, we got some important information to talk about. I'm going to be meeting up with a guy named Robert. He's got some important information to give out that I think anybody watching this that lives in the local Florida area would be interested in. Also too, if you haven't seen my last video, we talked about cards. You know, a card usually pops on the right-hand side of the screen. A card is going to pop up now in my last video. Please go check that out if you haven't already. Now let's fast forward to Robert's house. Boom. That was easy. We're here at Robert's property. He's going to go over some information real quick. That's my man, Fat Cat. Make sure you go up subscribe to his YouTube channel and follow him on IG. Fat Cat 8181. I'll put it on the screen and the link will be in the description. But yeah man, let's go check out what Robert has to say. I'm pretty sure Fat Cat's in talking to him right now. So let's go check it out. Guys, we got some time with Robert. He's going to talk about his car and then he's got some super important information that you guys are going to be excited to hear. So without further ado, here's Robert. Hey, how you doing? I'm Robert Elliott. I drive the Badass Scat. This is a 10 second scat pack. And if everything goes right, this will be a nine second scat pack within the next 30 days. This is a 392. She's been forged. She has long tube headers. The cats have been removed. She's running a D1X Pro Charger. The States II style. She also has a 6-1 intake on it. She has a HP 90 Hellcat transmission in it that was put in by Hellraiser down south in Pompano. And also the motor was done by American Muscle down there. It also has a one-piece drive shaft, aluminum drive shaft. She also runs on E85 fuel. She puts 850 to 908 horsepower to the wheels right now. So it's an extremely fast car. There's not any Hellcats out there right now out running me. I own Rhino General Contract and Enroute. We are trying to promote safe drag racing. We are, through the month of August, I'm willing to pay for 50 people to bring their cars out to the Braytonton Motor Speedway.  You can check me out on Instagram as Badass underscore scat. This is my son Gage, Elliot. My name is Gage. I run the channel of Gage underscore 392. I am always in the side of this car everywhere we go. I always tell everyone where I'm going, car shows, whatever. So check me out on Instagram. Check him out on Instagram. I am for safe drag racing. I have a 13 year old son, which you've seen. I'm trying to teach him the proper way to do it. These cars now that the kids have are extremely fast and somebody's going to get hurt out there. So I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and pay for 50 people to go to the track any Thursday through the month of August. Now I'm doing a call out to the highway patrol that anywhere, any track through the state of Florida, I will race their car against my scat because I know the highway patrol and all local law enforcement want to promote safe drag racing. So let's make this video go viral. Let's call out the highway patrol. Let's see if we can get them to race that new challenger against my little scat pack. And like I said before, I'm going to pay for 50 people to come to the track through the month of August on test and tune Thursday night. All you have to bring is a pair of blue jeans, tennis shoes, and a helmet. And you can race all night. And I pick up the tab. Alright guys, you heard it from Robert himself. He's saying that he's paying for 50 people at the drag strip. Make sure you go and check it out. I'll make sure I'll put the name of the park on the screen and also in the description as well. Make sure you check that out. But yeah, you can go and race his car, the badass scat, which has 850 to 900 horse. That's pretty fast. If you ask me, it runs in the 10s, I believe, from what Robert told me. Let's see, am I missing anything else? I don't think I am. That's going to be the end of this video. My name is Jordan. This is Modern Day Muscle. This is your first time to the channel. Please like and subscribe. I would greatly appreciate it. Also, make sure you hit the bell notification icon that lets you know when I post another video. Also too, since we're talking about drag strips and racing and all that stuff, our car is going to pop up on the right hand side of the screen about the last video that I did at the drag strip. So it's going to pop up right now. Alright, now it's popped up. My name is Modern Day Underscore Muscle on Instagram. It's going to pop up on the left of the right hand side of the screen. I'll catch you in the next video.


Hey everybody, it's Nathaniel Rufflejantz, your favorite webmaster and owner from ZeldaInformer.com. And this is my first little video podcast I've done in a while. We noticed in a post that I made yesterday that we were asked for suggestions and discussion on the future of the website that people want more video features. So consider your prayers answered. In reality, we're actually working on a few video features, but before I get into any of all the video features that we plan to be doing, note plan, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen, but we want it to happen, let's just get into a little discussion here because it's been breaking out pretty heavily lately. And that's kind of the new school Zelda formula versus the old school Zelda formula in particular what Zelda is today versus what it was in the original, the Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System. There's been a lot of back and forth ever since the whole, ever since it was basically posted at our site that E.G. Enomu, however you pronounce, I'm pretty sure it's E.G. Enomu, but it doesn't like the original, the Legend of Zelda.  It's what a lot of people actually liked about the original game and a lot of people didn't like to be fair, but obviously enough people liked it for there to be an ongoing series that has led to what we know today is the Zelda series. 16 games later things are going pretty well for the series. One thing that most gamers really, really, really want to return from the Legend of Zelda series or, I'm sorry, the Legend of Zelda for the NES is the freedom of exploration. I mean there's a lot of other things that people want to change, you know, less hand holding, less, you know, more use with the items and a set of one dungeon. There's a whole bunch of stuff you can talk about. Let's just talk about this one aspect, freedom of exploration. Now it's true that there have been Zelda games that have allowed freedom of exploration since the original, the Legend of Zelda. The only, well there's kind of two 3D games that kind of broke the mold, that Ocarina of Time set up and really started with the link to the past and Link's Awakening and that would be Majora's Mask and The Wind Waker. Sure, both games were linear, but they were linear in a way that allowed you to still freely explore.  This is an aspect that really was from the original, The Legend of Zelda. And it's also an aspect that a lot of people kind of didn't like only because the sailing was boring. In the original Legend of Zelda, you were fighting new enemies every single screen. There were secret passageways to find. There was dungeon entrances to find. And in The Wind Waker, yeah, there was islands to find, but between the islands, there really wasn't a whole lot.  But in the end, it was pretty boring. Even though I find it peaceful to sail the open sea in The Wind Waker, if you're actually just trying to explore and not just traveling between, you know, your destinations, it did get a little boring. In Phantom Hourglass, it became completely linear. They barely ever let you just sail where you wanted in there. Or I'm sorry, steamboat where you wanted. But I digress. The Wind Waker had a lot of freedom of exploration. A lot of people liked it. A lot of people didn't. Kind of like in the original Zelda game. In Majora's Mask, you did have a lot of freedom because the game had a lot of focus and side quests. And you can pretty much do the side quests any time you want in pretty much any order that you want. The dungeon still kind of had a linear feel to go to the forest temple, and then the ice temple was next to the water. I don't remember. Anyways, the point is that you still had a kind of a linear pattern set up to get to the end of the game. But there was so much content packed into such a small area that it actually, I want to say that it kind of encouraged you to explore. I guess is what I want to say there. And Twilight Princess had none of that. That's well documented. Twilight Princess was one of the most linear Zelda games ever made. It took you what I've been calling station to station. Station to station, basically you start in one spot. You can explore that spot, but you're not allowed to leave. You can't go off and do what you want. You're stuck there until you follow the linear set path that takes you to the next location. And then you can explore that location, and you can go back and explore your previous location. But you're still confined. You're stuck. You can't go anywhere else that the game doesn't let you go to. And I've been using this example a lot. When you go to Kakariko Village for the first time in Twilight Princess, you actually have to cross part of Hyrule Field to get to Kakariko Village. OK, you're in Hyrule Field. Well, if Hyrule Field is the main hub of the overworld, which it is, I mean, everything in the world is connected to Hyrule Field, then why can't I just go wherever I want and just go to Kakariko Village when I feel like it to continue the story? I don't know. Nintendo didn't want you to do that. They wanted you to keep pushing forward, keep pushing forward. And sure, you finally eventually get to a point where you can freely explore every place in the world any time you want. But by the time you get to that point, you've already been to all those places and you've already explored them through your station to station method. At least if you're me and you're looking for everything you can possibly find, you explored it when you were there. So someone say, well, why do we need a big old moral when you're just going to explore each station you go to? And it's more so because the game is confining you to have to play the game that way. Like, say when I first leave Ordon Village, I actually, you know, I have a fishing pole. Maybe I want to go try fishing at Lake Helia, or Hylia, or however you pronounce it. Game doesn't let you do it. You can't go there right away. You have to go do other stuff. And that's, I think what I personally want back from the original game is the freedom to go anywhere you want. I don't care. I understand the story is going to have to have some linearity to it.   To me, that wasn't really that big a deal. I know we're not going to have time. You can do some dungeons on the water. To me, doing a lot of order isn't a big deal because, oh, say I want to go to the fire temple before the water temple, even though the water temple might be first in the unofficial order. It really doesn't make a difference. I mean, it's nice, but it's not really freedom of exploration to me. That's just more like you're just taking different paths to get to the exact same end, which is another point of having alternate endings and different ways you can go in the game to cause the story to change. That's something that's far another discussion. But so we have the freedom of the legend of Zelda with exploration. We have what we got with Twilight Princess and a lot of the games since Ocarina of Time have been pretty similar. Even with the Wind Waker, it was so boring that who really wanted to explore it anyways. I mean, I still did because I am sailing on the ocean that I've never been in Zelda before, but it did get all my second, third, fourth play through. So that all being said, would you guys like to see some of that exploration come back? And do you think Nintendo, sorry for my voice, it's a little raspy from, I had some adventures last night. That's just put it that way. Would you like to see Nintendo, and maybe in Skyward Sword itself, have a bit more of that freedom and exploration? We know there's flights. We assume at some point you'll be able to fly wherever you want. But would you like some more options? You get past the Sky Temple, which is the first temple and it appears the game's pretty linear to that point. Would you like to be able to just go wherever you want after that? Is that something you're interested in or do you prefer the more station to station, you're kind of forced down a set path, really discouraged from exploring? Is that, you know, what method do you prefer? And I do think what can actually encourage exploration is the same thing that encouraged it in Majora's Mask. And that is taking your massive overworld or in Majora's Mask is a small overworld and just jam packing it with content. Lots of enemies, lots of side quests, lots of everything that makes you actually, hey, what's this over here? I wanna go look. I wanna go see what this NPC is going on because he's not just gonna be sitting there like, oh, ho hum, I like looking at trees. No, he actually might have a quest for you to do. I'm sorry, I just called it a quest. What is this, World of Warcraft? Anyways, you get my point. It might have a side quest for you to do and a lot of that or not. Anyways, that's my opinion. I just wanna hear what you guys think. In terms of video features, we do have a mailbag. That was a hotly requested feature. We will have our very first ever, well not ever, we're very first, audio slash video mailbag tomorrow. Alex Plant is actually working on it right now. It's just an intro mailbag. He, you know, I'm mostly just getting, you know, whatever, getting you guys to submit questions to him. He'll be doing the mailbag every week. Hopefully he'll get a new webcam so he can actually record video. Then we also have, people have been wondering whatever happened to the top 100 list. We left off at number 71, I believe is where we left out that. So we've done 71 through 100. So we still have 70 spots left. The list does exist first off. So I don't doubt that I was just making it up on the fly. The list actually physically exists.  And we'll be doing it in 20 spots at a time segments up to the top 10, which will have a longer video feature. And, you know, a lot more cool stuff. Well, we're trying to get a podcast together. We don't have a name for the podcast yet. We have one member, maybe two so far for the team. We'd like to get at least one more for the core group. And then we can have special guests on every episode. Hopefully we can make it a weekly event because, hey, we cover a lot of news and it's nice to have a podcast that summarizes the news as well as creates discussions. So we don't have to have necessarily video features like this. Other video stuff we have going on. Well, let's see. We just hired someone who I think is going to be finishing a timeline video. That should be pretty cool. And we're presently in talks about creating a web app for you guys to create your own timeline by dropping games on a set list. And you can have different options in the timeline. You could save the timeline. You could share it with your friends. Just to kind of give a better format, I guess, instead of people on the forums always being like, oh well, blah, blah, blah. No, you can just link your timeline and people can look at it in picture form and get a better grasp of what you're saying if they don't understand the abbreviations. It's just, it's more user friendly and it's just kind of fun to do. That's not really a video feature, but it is something that we are hopefully going to have for you before the end of the year. That's about it. You might not want any more video logs from me. I tend to ramble. It's cool. Stay classy, Zelda and Farmer.