What's up trade hackers welcome to today's update today's Thursday, February 6th It has been a couple of days since I did an update. I've been traveling and Little under the weather. So I am back and let's talk markets. So what's going on today? I mean the S&P 500 hitting new all-time highs at 3348 let's call it, you know last Friday We had this huge down day S&Ps were down over 60 points And I really thought you know all the media was talking about the coronavirus and that's what the drop was due to You know, I really thought we might get a little bounce or consolidation and then potentially roll over But that is definitely not what happened here. I mean Monday We got a gap higher Tuesday gap higher Wednesday gap higher Thursday gap higher And it looks like it's back to all-time. Well, it is back to all-time highs and looks like it's back on the rally train So interesting stuff here. I mean this market just continues to be unbelievably resilient if we look at couple of the other markets Specifically a couple of the energies if you look at oil, I mean up here, you know We had this huge spike up overnight during the Iran missile issue And then it just dropped big time and it's continued just to slide got a little bit of a bounce and oil yesterday But just continued downside action in oil and that gas another energy that's just been on this major downhill slide So interesting stuff if we take a look at so what some of these stocks have been doing, you know we've had some earnings come out and Specifically or first I want to talk about Tesla. I haven't done an update since we've had this massive run in Tesla And let's go to a one-year daily chart. I mean if we look at right around here So let's just zoom in here right around this point when we were trading at about $400, you know I really thought okay Tesla looks like it's it's gonna take off and I even mentioned in one of the videos I said, I think this will be trading at $600 in not the two distant future now I didn't know it would take just a few weeks to get to 600 and I didn't know that it would blast through 900 in just a few days, but wow what a what a ride on Tesla, you know topped out at 969 basically and then had a huge drop yesterday and then just kind of bouncing around today So Tesla has been quite their wild ride Twitter announced earnings after the market closed yesterday and Up big up 15% today Some of the other things that we've been looking at, you know beyond meat had been moving around quite a bit if we look at BYND It's kind of settled down into a little bit of a range here And it's got earnings coming up here in the next month or so So those are some of the major movers bowing another one kind of back on the rally train You know after earnings announcement is pretty muted, but the last couple days is just really shot up You know one of the big big drags on the performance of bowing has been obviously their their max You know they were having some Mechanical issues had to ground some of those flights and then they ended up firing their CEO because he kept Overpromising when they were gonna come back Well, the new CEO seems to have got things together being a little bit more conservative on the outlook of when that's gonna happen And things look like they're starting to come back around for bowing So where does this leave us? I mean, what are we looking at here? Well in the overall market going back to the S&P I don't think we're just gonna roll over and die at this point I mean that things are just too strong too resilient So we you know, we've obviously got the election coming up here in 2020 And I think though that will create some definitely some significant volatility And I certainly don't see the market just continuing to rally with no two-sided action like we saw Most of the part of the end of 2019 so I definitely think we're gonna have some volatility some two-sided action and not just a one directional up move But at the same time, you know, I don't think anytime soon are we gonna see a huge huge downturn? So just my take hopefully that is helpful and we'll talk to you guys next time


Hello, and welcome to the discussion series of Buddha Knights. I'm Munira Hashemi, playwright, actor, and director. In 2005, I co-founded Seymour Film Association of Culture and Art in Herat, west of Afghanistan. March 11, 2013, I co-founded a night with Buddha Festival to commemorate the destruction of world cultural heritage, the Buddha statues in Bamyan. The destruction of Buddha statues in 2001, which carried out in the continuation of decades of ethnic cleansing with the aim of destroying the history of Hazara people, was beyond massacre. It was a cultural genocide. 21 years later after destruction, even the remains, the empty niches of Buddha statues are again in danger in Bamyan. This year, we at Theotardus, with collaboration of Safe Heaven Freedom Talks, arranged a series of discussion to understand the different aspects of destruction of cultural heritage, destroying history, post-forgetting, social discrimination, and genocide against Hazara people. Our guest for these discussions are Ali Karimi and Abdullam Ahmadi. Ali Karimi is a post-doctoral fellow in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies the history and politics of technology with a focus on the information and governance. Ali holds a PhD in communication studies from McGill University, a master degree in communication from the University of Ottawa, and bachelor degree in film studies from Kabul University. Ali is currently working on his book project that deals with the history of information in Afghanistan. Abdullam Ahmadi is a researcher contributing to mixed migration center in Asia region. His main research interests are migration culture and forced displacement among Afghans. Beside his research, he has translated many books on Afghanistan society and politics. Abdullah holds a master degree in demography and is studying ethnic and migration studies in Linköping University, Sweden. This discussion will be moderated by Assad Buddha. Assad Buddha is a freelance writer. He studied sociology and Islamic theology and has worked as a lecturer and researcher in Kabul. He is the former ICON guest writer in Kallstad. That Otir Vendan de Oogat, a chapter of his personal memoir, was published in Vamland Writers' Anthology. He has worked with Rick's Theatre and Theatre News on a project called Little History, resulted in publishing a book under the title of Hoppet's Territorium. Souther stars and homo-soccer of Foglan Apollinir Gatam are his last published texts in the Uruk-Bild and Gobet-Britzer-Altgare. He is also involved in visual arch, focusing on the demonization of political enemies and aesthetic aspects of extremist and religion violences. Now, we take one minute silence for the last shocking attacks on Hazari people in Afghanistan. In these attacks, over 300 people were injured and 250 people were killed. 126 of those who were killed were school students. Thank you. Thank you, dear Ali and Abdullah, for being with us. As said, now I leave the platform for you and our honored guests. Thank you, Munir, Meltem, and Chatterdus and Freedom Talk. And welcome to Ali and Abdullah for this discussion today, under the title of Destroying History, Orbiside, and Distraction of Cultural Heritage in Bonyang. In 2001, the Taliban shook war by ballooning of statues of Buddha in Bonyang, Afghanistan. Violence is not new to Bonyang. The Valley of Bonyang has documented its own history. When one enters the city, the first thing I see is the absence of Buddha statues at the heart of Bonyang mountain. The ancient age not only shows the distraction of Buddha statues, but also the cultural genocide against the urban life that has been a part of the history of the valley. The distraction of Bonyang Buddha was one of the most horrific cultural crime in the recent memory. We need to look at the distraction of history and why what's happened in Bonyang is more than a case of violence against the material heritage. In fact, it was a form of violence against the speach of urbanity, civility, against the Hazara people's history, and against the long history of cooperation and coexistence in Bonyang. Today we will talk with Ali and Abdullah. I want to start with Ali Kareem. Ali, let's unpack our title. Can you explain what destroying history means? How do we conceptualize the distraction of cultural heritage in Bonyang? Thank you Asat for the question. I also want to thank Munirah for the introductions and Milton and Sev Haven Freedom Talks for organizing this event. It is an honor to be here. Destroying history is a deliberate act of violence against historical evidence. It is a political act for the purpose of editing the past, erasing some part of the past, creating a new narrative about history in order to create a story that would fit with the narratives of the ruling class, and also a story that would justify the power of the ruling class. So this type of violent distraction of historical sites happens sometimes during warfare, when two nations are in war or there is one nation engaged in civil war. And this type of violence is important because history is important. The stories we tell about ourselves, the stories we tell about our origin, about our culture, about our identity matters a lot. And it's very contested, not only in a place like Afghanistan, which is very unstable and doesn't have democratic governance, but also in more stable liberal democracies too. The past is not set out, it is always negotiated, it's always debated. Although not violently, but the debate about the past is an ongoing process, because as social scientists would say, our nation states are tied together mostly based on some shared phenomenon. One of these shared phenomenon is the stories that people tell about themselves. And in authoritarian states, the debate and the contestation about the past is more serious and sometimes more violent. In the Soviet Union, there was a joke that in the Soviet Union, the future is certain, it is the past that is unpredictable. Because with each regime change, a new narrative about the past would emerge that would highlight certain parts of the past and erase the other parts. In Afghanistan, Nile Green, a historian of Afghanistan, says that about the contestation about history, that two figures in Afghanistan have been the most influential in shaping political events. One is Mujahid, the other is Muarrish. Mujahid is the Islamic finals and Muarrish means historians. They have been engaged in this first ideological battle in shaping the identity of Afghanistan and the history of Afghanistan. The distractions that Afghanistan heritage has seen over the past, let's say a century, the biggest one would be the destruction of Buddhas in Bangan have also been a form of orbicide. Orbicide literally means killing of the city. When there is a war, you are trying to kill not only people but also deny the people, the infrastructure, the built environment that sustained them. When it comes to cultural heritage, the distraction of the people's cultural heritage means that you are trying to erase their evidence, the evidence of their existence in history. This form of violence, the concept of orbicide comes from political geography and geographers have talked about the urban warfare in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, in the Balkans and also we can explain the war in Afghanistan, the civil war and the Taliban war. As a form of war against the city, a war against civility and community and this distraction is not only a form of destroying history that deliberate distraction of historical evidence but also part of this larger movement in Afghanistan, this nationalistic movement in Afghanistan to edit the past, to erase the past in order to build new stories in their place. I'm sure that Abdullah is going to discuss this further also and we will come to this question later but in terms of understanding this violence against the cultural heritage sites, one way to look at it is through the concept of orbicide, a form of violence against the built environment. You mean what's happening in Bangan is we need a new concept, a new framework for that and it's maybe not possible to just explain by genocide, so we need the other concept which is orbicide. The same happened in the Syria by Daesh in Iraq and today maybe in Ukraine when they put in order people to leave the city and after they are living so he destroyed. That is a very good point, so a force when they destroy humans they will not hesitate destroying heritage sites. In Syria we saw that there was a genocide going on against the Shia minorities, the Yazidis and also the same group destroyed this world heritage sites from the Roman era. The Taliban distraction of Buddha is part of this form of political violence when they try to kill people they will also kill the heritage of that people so genocide and orbicide sometimes go at least it has gone hand in hand in places that we have seen violent extremism in as you said the Middle East and also in Afghanistan. So it's somehow to destroy the built environment to make an impossible life for the people thank you Ali. And so we are going back maybe to historical background of this discussion because the Buddha statue was one of the important historical phenomena in in the bombing and also part of Gandahara art, which was maybe the first form of Buddha statue because before that the statue of Buddha was in maybe was forbidden somehow and Buddha symbolized by lotus and by other symbols. So in this part we're going to Abdullah, can you tell us about the construction of Buddha statues, who built them, when did they build them, why and how. Thank you asset. Let me get this opportunity and things said heaven to provide this platform to discuss topics, timely topics, like what you are going to discuss today. What about Buddha statues I think it will be relevant to give a very short background about the Bami and city first so the city of Bami and where Buddha statues are located historically was one of the main trade and transit hub along the Silk Road and had a significant place in in the region culturally so. In addition, the city was located on the route where many military campaigns passed through it in different periods. And each of these foreign forces, you know this campaign, this campaign is where, passing through the cities or those who have stayed behind from these campaigns they usually impacted deeply, you know, the deep impacts on the political social and economic life of the city from Alexander's military campaigns to the attacks of nomadic tribes from Central Asia. For what we see in later periods campaigns of Arabs Mongols and not a shop. So this geographical stand along the Silk Road had led to a kind of, we can say unique way of social and political life, which pretty close and constant interaction with other people and cultures in neighboring. Territories or even father. So the authorities of this region dynasties who ruled this region were also very active in terms of political diplomatic religious and artistic relationship with other parts of the world. And through this relationship. These interactions we see that's one of the main features of social life in bombing was the cultural diversity and religious tolerance among peoples of this, the people of the album, something that still can be seen in has our community in the value of So, about who build Buddha statues in bombing on, they were built, they were built in this context by order of cushioning empires, the Buddhas, those who have been in bombing and they have seen that the Buddha fair Buddha space to south of the bombing valley. And they are about 102 meters apart from from each other and between these two statues in the heart of the mountain there is a many cover covers that were once places where months and pilgrims pray and worship. The two statues came, as I said mentioned, came from the heart of Gandhara School of Art and Gandhara sculpture are closely related to the Roman art in terms of artistic affiliation also it seems that they have some links to the Greek or the Roman art. So, in fact, maybe the best description of Gandhara school as some, some scholars say is that Gandhara School of Art is was the most oriental manifestation of the art of the Roman Empire in this part of the world. And I think what's mentioning here is that so many believe that the statues and other form of forms of art in bombing and in the region are influenced largely by the Congress and invaders and they give passive role to local artists. I think we should remember that Bamiyan and Bamiyan statues and the other artistic forms from this region. They only themselves shows the that the fact that artists and craftsman of bombing. Kind of eclectic style and then are affected on the other artistic forms in the region. A very good example of this we can see in Bamiyan painting. The oil painting that were artistically a combination of elements from East Roman art, Sasanian Persian art and Indian subcontinent art. So the skill of Bamiyan artists in combining these elements where they were that they combined them in a such a harmonious way that it's really difficult to say which style is dominant to the to the others. And then we can see the same eclectic style of Bamiyan painting later in other regions, for example, in Mingo in Central Asia where we can see the same exact feature of art from Bamiyan. And this feature actually gives the statue, the Bamiyan statues. It's painting and other historical monuments in the region, cosmopolitan nature. So, I think we can ask now what this statue statues and caverns can tell us about the life of people in Bamiyan. So, one, one thing is, as you mentioned, as I mentioned in the introduction that it was against genocide or maybe violence against the urbanity, against the civility. So if I got from your discussion, so Bamiyan cultural heritage was very multicultural from different people from different parts of the world, Indian, Rumiyan, great people and the local people and also. So, if we go back again and focus on the statue of Buddha, what was the motivation of those people who built the statue. What I can say here is that, you know, what I learned from living in Bamiyan when look at the Buddha statues is that, you know, these statues themselves and they can, you know, better than anything depicting cultural or political and social situation of the city. Bamiyan was at, hey, when the statues were built, you know, the economy was good at the, it was the main hob land, the silt road, it witnessed the presence of various Buddhist and Hindu sets and in terms of cultural and artistic activities, of course, the city was very dynamic. So at the same time it was politically active and had important diplomatic relations with other regions. I think it was after it was almost after this period that gradually the following centuries with the advent of Islam, you know, the Buddhist life in the region began to decline. And the Buddhists who are living there were forced to convert to Islam or flee. But if we look closely at the life of Bamiyan people after converting to Islam, we see that here again people instead of rejecting Islam or abandoning Buddhism altogether to try to preserve elements of the, you know, different elements of the Buddhist religions in their daily life. And in some occasion they even integrated with Islamic values we had, we have its manifestation in the religious tolerance of Bamiyan people under the rule of Islam to this day. The Buddha statues were stood in the heart of Bamiyan Valley for centuries and although the people of Bamiyan converted to Islam, not only they never destroyed this statue but they always see them as part of their identity. What destroyed the Buddha statues in 2001 was quite the opposite of the diversity and tolerance of Bamiyan people. It was a force from, you know, coming outside of Bamiyan to destroy this statue. I'm going to stop here because I'm sure Ali has a lot to say when, yes, about the process of destruction or the history of the destruction of the statues. Yeah. So for just a quick question and then we for the sort of destruction we'll ask Ali. So Bamiyan statue was a form of Gandahara art and it's made by Koshanian empire. So, which was the first time maybe the king asked people, I want to see the face of Buddha. Exactly. So one of the interesting point about the School of Arts in Gandahara is that the first time for the first time we see Buddha in a human form in the Gandahara School of Art. So it's said that Kanishka, the great Koshan empire wanted to see, you know, as, you know, he was a, he was very supportive of the goodies, and he wanted to see actually Buddha. So that's, that was when the followers of, you know, the artis and craftsmen under the empire, Koshan empire, you know, they started to come up with statues with the human, you know, with the human form of Buddha in this culture in Gandahara sculpture. Thank you, Abdullah. And it's very, very good answer. And we are going to Ali. So the other coin of this question is the destroying of Buddha, because the destroying of Buddha statue also has a very long history in Bamiyan. There have been other attempts in history to destroy Bamiyan Buddhas almost from the arriving of Islam in Bamiyan. Can you tell us more about this previous attempts? Sure. So the history of Bamiyan Buddhas are somehow tied to the history of Islam. The smaller Buddha was built in 570. That is about 39 years before Muhammad declared his prophecy in Arabia. The bigger Buddha was built in 618. So Muhammad declared his prophecy, the prophet of Islam, in 609. That is at the beginning of the seventh century almost. So they were still building the Buddha statues in Bamiyan when Muhammad declared his prophecy and invited people to join Islam. But Islam did not reach Bamiyan for some time. And for all these histories that followed, all these centuries that followed, several invading armies, Muslim invading armies arrived in Bamiyan in order to convert people to Islam or to conquer this valley. And although some of them they spared the Buddhas, but some of them attempted to destroy this because this was such a huge prominent relic demonstrating the culture and heritage of non-Islamic past of this valley. So the history, the entire history of this statue is the post-Islamic history because as I said they were built right at the beginning of the arrival of Islam in Arabia. And among the many invading armies who arrived in Bamiyan to conquer it or to destroy the Buddhas, one was a ninth century dynasty from Nimru's province in southwest of Afghanistan. They were called the Safarids. They arrived there and the value of Bamiyan was still a very much a Buddhist city. There were monasteries, there were all other forms of religious sites other than the two big Buddhas. So they destroyed these things that were on flat lands. They destroyed the monasteries, they took some of these statues and sent them to Baghdad as a form of souvenir for the caliph. And they didn't have the technology and the know-how to destroy the giant Buddhas and that's how the Buddhas survived. And still after the Safarids in the ninth century Bamiyan started to become Muslim, but it did not become fully Muslim until the 10th century when the Ghaznavid came. The Ghaznavid converted the entire area to Islam and there were no practicing Buddhists left in Bamiyan in the 10th century. And the Ghaznavid did not destroy, of course, the Buddhas, the Buddhas survived. It was later on in the 17th century, almost modern times, that a Mongol emperor from India, Aurangzeb, famously Islamist and very religious ruler who was famous for his intolerance of non-Muslims, who attempted to destroy the Buddha. In addition to being a very extremist person, he was also very good at military. He would build this big cannon, guns, and come up with new strategies for the Indian army. And one of the new guns that he built, he sent that to Bamiyan. At the time, Bamiyan and Kabul was part of the Indian Empire, was a province or suburb of the Indian Mongol Empire. To test it on the Buddha, they wanted to test the guns of the Buddha. So they fired at the Buddha, but they could not destroy it completely. But they destroyed the legs of this time. So if you look at the pictures of Buddha, the legs are gone, at least one of them is gone. Those legs were destroyed by Aurangzeb. So that person was the newest ruler who wanted to destroy this heritage in order first to erase the non-Islamic heritage of this valley and also test his guns. Then, a century later, another Afshar arrived, and also it is noted that he tried to destroy the Buddha, but he failed. And after that, the Buddha remained in Bamiyan, almost intact. It was not destroyed, it was a site of wonder tourists. The British would come to Bamiyan and paint it and make drawings of it and report about it. Orientalists, everyone was fascinated by this site. So there were several attempts by previous rulers of Bamiyan and Afghanistan who came to destroy it, but they did not have the technical capacity to destroy completely these two giant Buddhas. And it was, of course, the Taliban who finally managed to destroy it. So the Taliban, too, they started in the 1990s towards, I think, 1999, they started to blow up the head of the Buddha. So the head of the Buddha is a bit controversial because its face is erased. The ears and the chin and the lips were visible, but the eyes and the forehead and the nose were gone. Some local historians would speculate that probably because the Buddhas looked like a hazard, somebody came and they didn't like hazards, they just erased the face. But archaeologists, they believed that no, it is part of the design of the Buddha, it's part of the original feature. They did not build the face, they just leave it just blank. I don't know, I cannot take sides on this because this is not my area of specialty. I think ancient historians or archaeologists should have better explanation for this. But what Taliban did, they tried to blow up the face and the head, sorry, they actually blew up some part of the head, but not all of it. But they did not continue, they left it unfinished until 2001. So one thing about the head of the Buddha, I would say that all this Islamic extremists that they are against these un-Islamic icons, they have this rigid view that building a statue or even painting, a living being is un-Islamic, it is challenging the authority of God that, yeah, I can also make a living being. So in order to destroy this, what they do is they behead the artistic object.  So destroying the head signifies that we have killed this art object. So it not only in Afghanistan, in India, in the Middle East, many times being this extremist, they want to destroy artistic objects like paintings or status, they start with the head. But of course in 2001, the Taliban in an act of extreme violence against the history of not only this region, but also the history and heritage of the world, they blew up the entire thing and they finished something that previous generations of extremists failed to accomplish. And thank you, as you told, the beheading is a very strong tradition, Islam, when they captured the enemy, so they beheaded, when they even killed the enemy, so they beheaded, it was a symbol of to be wean or defeated of enemy. So as you mentioned, Abdullah, before that, there is a very, very close relationship between Bamiyan people and this cultural heritage and somehow the statue of Buddha and the Bamiyan mountains are the mirror of these people and they show the rising and collapsing of these people and the humiliating of them and maybe to construct them or reconstruct them. So there is a mainstream narrative, if you can in today that they believe the Buddha statue destroyed in Bamiyan, it was just because of religious interpretation of that statue. So the question is, what's the political meaning of destruction, destroying of Buddha statue by Taliban, is it just the religious interpretation of that or maybe there is other reason also. The question, yes, whenever there is a discussion about destruction of Buddha statues, usually the first reason behind the destruction mentioned is the religious fundamentalism that it was the result of Taliban religious ideology or that the Taliban saw it as a symbol of ideology, ideology or politics, but I think reducing this act of this distraction to a religious motive is a kind of simplification of the issue. Yeah, so as Ali said, if we look at the history of this region, there have been people who tried to destroy these statues and all of these people movements kind of came from outside of the region, outside of Bamiyan, whether it be Nader Shah, as Navid or Aurangzeb, so they all have their own motives, there was a religious motive in all of them. However, for the Taliban, I think there is another aspect that has a few, you know, it didn't receive much attention yet. And it's the ethnic nationalism which goes hand to hand with religious fundamentalism here in Afghanistan. If we ignore this link without looking at the context in the Afghanistan contemporary history, it will mislead us. I mean, the act of destructing Bamiyan statues is one of a series of measures that have been going on in Afghanistan for more than two centuries in order to reshape the history of this country as Ali mentioned. And reshaping this history means destroying the past and anything that has any relation to it and anything that can confront with the newly forged history, whether it's a text, it's a book, it's a monument, it's a story, an archaeological site, or even people themselves. So the Taliban reason for destroying the Buddha must be understood in line with the efforts of the late passion dominated government in Afghanistan who tried to rewrite the country's history and come up with a fake Afghan identity. If we look at the history closely, we see that after Ahmad Chow became a king, if I'm not mistaken, in 1747, and with the formation of the, you know, so called Afghanistan, we witnessed that the attempts to create this new distorted history or all the time accompanied by the destruction of history and the demolition of anything that relate this land to the indigenous people, including the destruction of the Buddhist heritage in Bamiyan. It was in 16th century that Pashtuns came from India to the areas which is now Pakistan and Afghanistan border areas and they took power in the context of conflict between India, Mughal empire and the Safavid in Iraq. This region, this borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan was the main Afghanistan before the colonial intervention and later in the context of the great game between Britain and Russia, the Pashtun managed to extend their power over most part of the country and to control of central and northern Afghanistan by physically eliminating and killing different ethnic groups and since these new rulers of the regions were not originally from there. They were alien, they were unfamiliar with the culture of this region, the culture of Baal, the culture of Bamiyan, the culture of Herod and therefore they took a hostile approach to them.  For example, they began to change the names of historical and ancient sites and replace them with the replaced many dairy and other local names with Pashtun names. The forced displacement also began in a scale that the demographic composition of the region changed significantly and many Hazara, Tajik and Uzbek residents in south, north and east of the country were forcibly displaced. At the same time, institutions with the full support of the government were formed to formally begin to create a nationalist narrative. Like Anjuman Tari or Academy of Science. They also started to create this false maze and stories to give legitimacy to their national narratives and the result was nothing but absolute chaos in the current Afghanistan historiography that we witness today. For example, according to this nationalist, just to give an example, this national narrative. So it claims a five year, 5000 year history for Pashtuns and by this claim they are trying not only to destroy, and of course this distort history but to confiscate the history of other ethnic groups Unfortunately, this situation still continues even more than before. For example, as Dr. Karibi already pointed out in one of his interviews, the government of Ashraf Ghani selectively reconstructs the past and historical monuments in the last 10 years. We saw that large sums of money were spent on the reconstruction of Dora-Lamon Palace, Sarajeh and other works that were made by recent Pashtun rulers in the 90s and 20th century. But the cultural heritage of other people like Manarjian, the historical sites in Herat, in Bamiyan, in Dasni, they were intentionally ignored by the government. They, I mean, the government, they selectively choose which part of the history should be bought and highlighted. And which part should be ignored and left to be forgotten. In one word, the distraction of Buddha statues as a historical and cultural heritage of Hazara people must be understood in the context of a kind of wider process of cultural, social and political exclusion of Hazara people from the society. Now that the Taliban are back in power, the situation will become worse for Hazara even worse than before, as we can see these days. And it's because the Taliban is not just a religious ideology but an ethnic process in its nature and religion is just a political tool for them to cover this fact. Thank you, Abdullah, as we talked to the distraction of Buddha statues is a part of maybe a reconstruction of ethnic knowledge in history. So it was not just, it doesn't have just a religious message, it is a kind of distortion of collective memory, distortion of history. And now we come back again to Ali Karimi, I think we don't have so much time. So Ali, as Abdullah mentioned, there is an understanding that there is a relationship between people who are living in Bonyon and this cultural heritage and this history. So as you know that this two statues were located in Bonyon, which is somehow the Hazara cultural center. So what is the relationship of Bonyon people with this cultural heritage in today? So what do you think about that? The relationship between people and their free Islamic heritage is always complicated. We see that in Egypt, we see that in Iran, other Muslim countries, there are first debates and also mixed feelings about these sites. They are not sure that should we be proud of this un-Islamic past or we should forget them. So I think a few years ago in Egypt, they organized this parade with ancient pharaohs and kings on the street. But the Egyptians who are a large portion of the society are very conservative. They said, no, don't bring them back. We are Egyptians or Muslims and we are only proud of our Islamic heritage. In Iran, this debate is going on, but even though the Iranian regime is very much a conservative Islamic government, they are trying to bring back some of the pre-Islamic Iranian heritage. The show was more proactive. He was trying to reinvent the contemporary Iran in the image of this ancient Persian past, even changing the calendar of the country to the ancient calendar. So when it comes to Afghanistan, this complicated history is there. People, not only the Hazaras but other ethnic groups too, they have a very strange feeling and ideas about their own pre-Islamic past. Because of this long history of suppression, they don't remember much about the past. Our only evidence is this material heritage, the remnants of this pre-Islamic era. But we don't know much about them because the Islamic culture and Arab culture has been very overwhelming. It washed out the previous memories and cultures and identities of people. But when it comes to the Hazaras in Bamiyan, they have a very interesting relationship with these two giant Buddhas. Although Buddhist beliefs no longer exist in Bamiyan, but people are not stranger to these two sides. They are not antagonistic against these two sides. They appreciate them, they make up stories about them. Among the locals, this smaller Buddha is called Shammaman, the larger one is called Salson, the smaller one is perceived as a female figure and the larger one as male. They have built up these stories, folkloric tales, poetry about these two giant Buddhas, and they have this intimate relationship with them, but not in a religious way. They are still Muslims. They still believe in Shia or Sunni Islam, but they have no desire, I think, to return to Buddhist beliefs, but they see these sides as their own. They don't see them as some stranger things that they have nothing to do with. So that's different from, let's say, the Persian rulers who are originally from northern Pakistan, from the Suleyman Mountain range area, when they colonized Afghanistan and settled there, the entire region of Kursam was a stranger to them. The Persian language was a stranger, the heritage, the Buddhist heritage, the other physical and material sites that existed in this region was a stranger to them. So they tried either to destroy them or to neglect them and let them be destroyed. So in the case of the Hazaras, so there is a myth going on for at least the 19th century would be poor, but the Hazaras are Mongols. They are the remnants of the Chi Changi Khan's army in the Bamiyan region, but that is not true. There is no evidence suggesting that Chiangis left a portion of his army in a very remote mountainous area like Bamiyan. And in my view and according to historical evidence that there's not a lot of research going on about this, but the Hazaras are indigenous to this region, to the region of Khorasan. And because of their faith, they have been pushed further and further into the highlands in the central Afghanistan. So if we don't have Hazaras today in Kandahar, that's because in the 19th century, their lands were confiscated, they were pushed into the mountains. We don't have Hazaras in some parts of, for example, between Kabul and Ghazni and Kandahar district in Herab. Because of all this mass depopulation and displacement going on in the history. So the Hazaras are indigenous to the area and they have a very intimate relationship with the Buddhist sites. Although they do not view them as religious sites as sacred symbols, they view them as more of folkloric and cultural sites as part of their own history. So they don't have antagonistic relationship with the pre-Islamic past of their valley. The same that's going on with, let's say, Muslim extremists in some parts of the Middle East that they don't want anything to do with the pre-Islamic heritage of their nations. Thank you, Adi, as you told. So the Bahamian people always try to reconstruct themselves in this cultural heritage and find a way to see themselves and find themselves even in the place of Buddha statue in Bahamian. And we have very few time and I want to ask the last question from Abdullah. It was Heinrich Heine told that the people who burn the book, so they will burn the people. So we can have the same question.  So what is the relationship between this cultural genocide and genocide in Afghanistan? Well, I'm not an expert in law or international law and I can define genocide and cultural genocide in their strict legal terms, but the general definition of genocide, so it's a systematic attempt to destroy a group whether for political ties, religious ethnic background or other. But cultural genocide is one of the concepts when it comes to Afghanistan, I rarely heard it to use it, you know, about what happened in Afghanistan. Look at the 18th century, we see the genocide of Azaras under Abdulrahman rule, along with other systematic efforts to remove these people from the social and political life of Afghanistan. And the point here to keep in mind is that genocide in its, I don't know if I'm using the right sense or not in physical sense. We cannot separate it from cultural genocide. From cultural genocide here, I mean the destruction of the identity of a group, because the identity of each group is generally defined by the culture of the, of that group and cultural genocide which which make a different stage sometimes before the genocide itself and something along with it. So the oppressor's attempts are made to violently target the culture that holds the group together like a glue. And in order to break, to break up the group. Once it's done people don't see, you know, my choices ahead of them so other than to either be to be assimilated in the other in the dominant culture, which is very painful process. You get surrender and in some occasions even physically eliminated. This is why the distraction of cultural and historical symbols for me is in itself a kind of genocide. And we cannot separate these two from each other. And in the destruction of the Buddha statues is, in fact, deliberate destruction or destruction of the identity of has ours. And I think it's not fair to justify this act simply by idolatry because these statues belong to past centuries, and they're not empty of their religious meaning and they're only silent kind of silence signs of an ancient civilization. Calling this act destruction of Buddha statues as a war crime by the international community is a kind of ignoring and turning a blind eye to the, to the fact that this act is a kind of destruction of culture and the identities of has ours. We have seen this process. This process, of course, in other parts of the world in in 70s 90s 70s. The Khmer Rouge Communist regime in Cambodia massacre people and then at the same time destroy temples Muslim mosque church and Buddhist statues. And two decades later in Serbia destroyed all libraries mosque and other religious and cultural science or belonging to Bosnian Muslims. So, or what ISIS did in Iraq and Syria. So these are all examples of a cultural genocide and the distraction of this cultural heritage is not just a distraction of stone or wooden or other material works of art but these structures are the proof of proof of existence for people and their distractions means to deliberately make a group of people to disappear from history. And the code that as I mentioned from the Heinrich China.  We have witnessed this so many times in human story that we can say that the destruction of bombing with us is an act of the act of cultural heritage and ignoring it or reducing it to something like a criminal act will make Taliban and other group with the same mindset to become more aggressive in their nationalist agendas. Thank you, Ali and thank you, Abdullah it was a very nice discussion. Do you want Ali to add a few sentences because we don't have so much time. I just want to stress the fact that Afghanistan as a whole as a very diverse country it is not one country with one people the world afghan alone is not enough to cover the entire population. To understand Afghanistan to understand the conflict in Afghanistan. We need to look at the cultural diversity of this country and to understand different people's different histories and identities. And when it comes to the hazardous the experience of the hazardous throughout the modern history of Afghanistan is a very good way to understand the two politics the culture of this country. And especially it is true now that the Taliban is ruling back the country we sometimes hear from foreign reporters to do Afghanistan war is ended now it is so peaceful you can travel everywhere. There is security everywhere, but that is false. If you want to assess the situation the security in Afghanistan as the hazardous, the war against the hazardous is still going on. Last week, hundreds of school kids were blown up in a suicide attack. From 30 to 60, the numbers are not known 60 worshipers in just the day after the bomb on the schools. So that this brutal war, the mass killing of the hazardous is still going on while foreign reporters go to Taliban and talk to them and just have tea with them and then write that Afghanistan is so peaceful. There's no war going on. Yes, the war against the fashion is going on because the Taliban were doing the war. But the war against the hazardous is still going on the same as it went on for 20 years and also before that throughout the modern history of this country. So, acknowledging that Afghan is not the right way to describe this country, there is diversity of people is one way to understand this country and possibly have a more constructive dialogue about its history about its politics and possibly about its future. Thank you very much Ali and thank you very much. I will do you want to add some sentence. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Okay Good wow full house Nice feels good Okay, let's get started so So what I think that I didn't Anyway, so welcome. Thank you for coming This talk I'm going to describe how I've been contributing to OpenStack for the last almost a year And I did not install a single DevStack VM in that year So start telling you a little bit about myself. I've been working with Rackspace for a little bit over a year A couple things I contribute to OpenStack mostly the heat orchestration project and I'm also in the team that Created OpenStack Ansible, which is the project. I'm going to talk about today I Do a little bit of contributions in other areas Keystone horizon I am an O'Reilly author. I wrote the flask book the one with the dog the cover that you may have seen So I tend to gravitate towards things that are web development that that's that's what I like and I feel more knowledgeable and I have a blog also where I blog about flask and web development on Python and that type of thing so Just to give you an idea and if if you you think this is not interesting you can just go find something else to do I'm going to talk about the problems I have with DevStack. I'm gonna start with that Then I'm going to show you this this project OpenStack Ansible. Give you a quick description I'll tell you how to install it Which is very easy. I have a demonstration and Then in the end I'm going to give you some pros and cons This isn't a project that you can use for every type of OpenStack upstream work So I'm going to tell you what works and what doesn't so it's not really, you know, the Full replacement for DevStack if you were hoping for that. I'm sorry Okay, so what's wrong with DevStack? There's a much that's wrong in my opinion But a few things to bother me So for starters when you install DevStack, it's an all-or-nothing distribution You you have to install you have to select what you want you get it installed and that's it basically, if you need to change something you have to start over right you have to unstack and then You don't change the config and run the whole thing again So you cannot mix and match you cannot modify after you do an installation You get everything installed in in the same environment, which usually a VM or a cloud server so all the projects share the dependencies the Basically you have to make sure that everything is consistent if you You're working on one of the projects So you update your requirements to match that process that that project You're progressing and that screws up everything else, right? So you're forced to go and fix all the other projects So a lot of problems Some extent I have to be fair Recently DevStack added support for virtual environments, which alleviates some of these problems So I should mention that I'm not sure how how many people know about it But you can set up virtual environments per project now Which is it's a good step forward. You're still sharing packages at the OS level though so So open stack Ansible this used to be called OSAD open stack Ansible deployment Now that we were accepted into big tent. We renamed it to open stack Ansible or OSA It's all the same thing. It's just how things progress and tend to change very often I'm sure it'll be named differently for the next summit. I'm pretty sure so In in one sentence what this project is it's just a set of Ansible playbooks that deploy open stack So that that that's all we have It's an initiative of Rackspace We use it to deploy our private cloud product. It's built on top of this But this is completely vendor free it installs in the same way as DevStack It gets the sources out of the the get repositories and installs a pre Pre-generic cloud if you if you get it from this repository open stack Ansible on the open stack namespace So we don't have anything that's Rackspace specific here It's a pretty standard open stack and the big difference between this and DevStack is that Services are installed in LXC containers So For some of you if I say containers you may think Docker. So LXC it's it's a different option which Some of us think that it's more powerful When you create an LXC container you get like a VM. It's not it's not an application container It's basically a VM or you can do whatever you want. You can start multiple applications It works in the same way as a VM, but it's a container So that's basically what we do here. You have a little diagram So this is not the way you use it to develop but this this is how you get a private cloud that that can be small or huge Basically you have a the horizontal bar. That's your switch and then you connect the external networks top on the top left You have load balancers next and then in the bottom the first box with the Many gray boxes. These are your infrastructure nodes. You can get many of them and Each gray box inside it. It's it's a container So that that's how you get redundancy. This is you know production ready Next you have the compute nodes where your instances live and then the last two set of boxes are for storage So, you know, it's a pretty standard open stack cloud But of course if you see this and you're thinking I mean this this is as far as as it can be from Dev Stack, right the single node where So What's the trick? When we work on open stack Ansible we For for convenience we work on a single node So it is possible to install open stack Ansible in a single node We use it for our gate and for our development every day So it's fully supported. We have scripts that perform installation for you. So you don't have to worry about it You can deploy it on a cloud server That's what we usually do when we work on it or when I work on on open stack heat I have a rack space public cloud server and you know, I just put it there The requirements are a little bit higher than for that stack. You need 16 gigabytes and 80 Seen a bit of RAM and 80 gigabytes of this space and that that's for the container, you know overhead Right now we only support Ubuntu so Ubuntu trustee is the only platform where you can install this at this time Hopefully that will double change And One nice thing that you get from containers is that even though If you install in this way, it's a single node you you can get redundancy so you can install You know a load balancer you we install HAProxy to load balance multiple instances multiple containers of the same service And I'm going to show you all this in a little bit. So you'll see how that works so I've never described the process the installation process, which is very simple So hopefully when this ends you all gonna go running to you know, start a cloud server and try it So you need a 1404 fresh VM Or cloud server So you need to clone the project so open stack slash open stack ansible We put it in slash opt slash open stack ansible but choice is yours and Then you have a Set of three scripts that you need to run the first one which comes with the project is called bootstrap AIO This creates the the configuration files that are proper for for an only one So you don't have to worry about knowing how to configure this Which you can if you want to deploy it in a different way But but we have a script that does it all for you Once that script runs you have a directory it see open stack deploy where all the config files are So you can go and make any changes before the installation occurs So for example, what I typically do is I go set my admin password any passwords that you don't set the randomly selected for you so You can you can use a random password and then you go check the config file to see what it is But to save time I just set my my password there so once your config files are ready to go you Bootstrap ansible that this is another script that installs ansible and a bunch of extras and wrappers to make it simple to use Just runs it doesn't need any configuration and Then the most important step is to run the ansible playbooks So this is the last thing you do and this using the config files it goes and installs open stack On On a public cloud server this takes about 45 to one hour for five minutes to one hour and and you have a cloud that's ready to go With all the major services installed So I'd say one hour one hour is a fair thing to say So Suppose many of you are not familiar with LXC So this is a simple list of the most useful commands the ones that you're using all the time If you want to see the list of containers LXC LS Dash F it's like it and S the dash L for LS it shows You know that the one line a one container per line nicely formatted If you want to log in to a container you use LXC attach and provide the container name Which you can get from the LS listing The containers are all started so you normally don't start a container But that that's the command LXC start that you use if for any reason a container has been stopped So you can restart it And the D by the way that the dash D is to start it in demon mode So it's in the background it runs in the background. You still you stay in your host after you start the container And then a couple options that I'm gonna show how to use them or a use of for them later Is how to stop and destroy a container?  Sorry, sorry about this So this is my workflow. It's not the only workflow by the way You know, you there's other people my colleagues that do it differently So if you look around you're gonna find, you know, it's not the the only way to do this But what I found to be the most useful and convenient for me is I start by deploying one of these things So I get it in a public cloud service Once it's running say I as I typically do I want to work on heat engine for example So I do LXC attached to that container So now I'm logged in that container that container is running a stock heat engine that Ansible installed for me Right, but that's not really good for me. I just want to install my development version So what I do is I stop it and this is this is like a mini Ubuntu So I say stop heat engine. I'm sorry service heat engine stop, right? It's an Ubuntu VM. It feels like one so you stop it Then I just get my version which could be from GitHub or maybe I have my fork doesn't matter You just install your version In case there are any differences between the version that Ansible installed versus your development version You can refresh your dependencies. You can update your database If you need to change the config files the config files are there because Ansible installed a Running version of the service. So in most cases you you're ready to go You don't need to touch the config files, but if you if you're working on something that requires Changes to the config file. You can make them and then after that you just run it You run it manually and you know logs to go out to the console. You just running like a Python application and That that works really well for me in a way it matches the way things run in in Dev stack Where or you have on that screen thing that you get, you know all those sessions The difference that you only get the one that matters the one that you're working on You don't have all the other stuff, right? So you you get your single session and then everything else is installed for production unlike Dev stack where everything is installed As if you were developing So So I'm going to apologize the so I have a recorded demo and it's tiny characters But if you go to that that URL I recorded this the same session the session that you're going to see here It's recorded and you can view it now along with me or you can do it later It's it's out there. If you're not familiar with Askinema. This is like a YouTube for console sessions And it allows you to copy paste so it's really text that you see in your browser. So It's actually very useful. So if you want to play with this later and see what I did it's all recorded So let's see how that works. So this is what I have. I'm sorry about the size Sure, yes Okay, so let's see if my magic button works So first thing I did Show you the container list so LX CLS dash fancy and That's that's the list of containers on on this installation. So if you do this you're gonna get a list exactly like this one or very close The container names are gonna be different because they're randomly generated, but other than that you're gonna get this So these are all containers are running in this single host. This is a single host It's hosted on a rock space public cloud VM Of the specs that I mentioned before 16 gigabyte of RAM 80 gig of this So you're gonna notice that all the usual suspects are there you can see Nova keystone glands all those But notice that some of them are redundant, right? We have how many keystones? We have two keystones. We have three rabbit mqs. So HAP Is it three? Okay So you can see three galeras. So we have a redundant database here. We have a galera cluster It's all running on on on my little node, right? And it's basically we installed it as a production service, right? It's a production deployment the production cloud, but it's running in a single node So let's continue What did I do next? Yes Very important. You enter is fully supported So here's Alexi attach. So So I picked a container. So I'm gonna stop right there and tell you about this. So this is the utility container So this is the only if you if you produced that list very carefully When you got to the last one with utility containers, so what's this, right?  So here I logged into that container with Alexi attach a Couple more enters. Yes, that still works So I'm going to source my credentials which and she will put them there for me. So just source open RC that's ready to go and I'm gonna show you some commands which I I tested a little bit of everything So the open stack command line is installed. You can get use a list Then heat stack list, which is gonna be empty because this is a fresh install And I did one more glance Which is also empty. So this is a very new very new installation So I think clear works. I divided the screen now I left so I I split the screen now. So I left the utility container. It's at the top because I'm gonna use it again in a little bit and Here I'm gonna show you How this host is structured. So the bottom one. I'm not in the utility container. I'm in the host So it's very useful that all the file system of the file systems of all the containers are Files in the host. So you don't have to Log in to a container to see the files that the container sees as its root file system So you can see here that there's a directory for each container if you go inside that directory There's a root FS sub directory inside that you have the root file system of the container So for example, if you are a say you are a pie charm person You like, you know full-blown ID ease You can install it in your host in a container it will be in practical right so you install it in your host and you you can share the source code between the container and Your host by going to this the corresponding directory Same thing happens with logs I'm gonna show you right there that the logs are also all hosted in the in the main host and they're mounted on each Each container mounts its own logs So this is opposite slash log same thing one directory per container and here I'm doing a little demo of The host of the logs. I'm gonna tell glance API logs So I just go to the glance There you go glance container glance API.log That's log file Now you can see me going to the utility container on the top half and as a running command I can see it in a log. So It's kind of a dyi of a dev stack But you customize it to the stuff that matters to you. You don't have to get the whole thing configured this way So Okay, what's next? I'm gonna show you how to set up this box to develop on heat, which is what I do most of the time as an example so I'm gonna start by logging in to the heat engine container Alexi attach the shen container name Then as I said before I'm gonna stop heat engine because that's a service that I don't care about I'm gonna install my own heat engine So stop it You probably don't believe me.  I mean, why would you believe me, right? You don't know me But there you go instead see So now I'm going to clone heat from github. So there's a virtual environment Installed that I'm going to activate. That's where all the Sorry, all the dependencies are In all containers the virtual environments are in slash open stack slash VMs So I activate that that one now here comes Something that I'm gonna stop right there. I need to explain this Because open stack Ansible is a production deployment. It does not go out to the globally available Pipe I to get packages open stack Ansible sets up its own package repository so that every time you Install or fix an installation or change it You have consistency all the same packages are installed. So that there's a What I think there's really two I mean if you go back and review the list of containers There are two containers that are repositories for Python packages So when you're working with a developer version You may want to go out to the you know the big pipe by the the globally available one because you know as the project Changing the there might be requirements that are outside of what was generated at the time you installed this deployment So what I'm going to do is edit the pip configuration now, which is in all containers have it so It's configured to not go out to the cheese shop And I'm gonna tell it to do go out to the cheese shop by setting that thing from through to false This is in preparation for installing dependencies, which is what I'm gonna do next So now that I enabled access to pi pi and if you don't do this It doesn't matter right if there's a package that it's not there You're gonna get a failure and then you oh, okay. I need to do this you can do it later So now refresh all the requirements in that In that container Which usually When you do it like I did it where I installed the whole thing and then this doesn't happen to be much different But there's one that there's one update there So pretty pretty much everything else was already installed so this is kind of boring I think there's just one that's gonna be a little bit slow to install the XML one that's super slow Yeah So I'm just gonna See if I can skip that save some time. There you go. Yes Yes, it calculates, you know the consistent said Sorry It creates a consistent set of requirements for you know for all the projects that you install. Yes, that's correct But now since I'm installing a developer version, I may need to go outside of that Which for production you don't do but for this it's okay. Okay, so I need to Set to sync the database in case there are new migrations So this this one exercise I was lucky There were no migrations But you don't know you have to try it and I'm gonna talk a little bit about migrations later They're kind of a headache for some for a reason I'll tell you about it so Database was synced and now I can Install my version of heat in the virtual environment for development So I I do Python setup to apply develop For those that don't know This installs the package but doesn't move it to the virtual environment it installs it in place so you can edit the files and The changes are automatically picked up because Python put a link the same link in the virtual environment that points to the source files So it's very good very convenient Sorry, I'm not sure what's going on with my throat today. I apologize So now all that's left is to run it. You can just go ahead and run it it's it's a fully installed development package and Something that I particularly like is that when you run service this way The logs go out to To the console and of course you still don't believe me, so I'm gonna go to the utility container to show you that it's It's working again. There you go So and one more just for fun So it's really running it's running out of my source code so I can start working on it and each time I can control see this Make some changes run it again, and that's how I work. That's how I do all my contributions to heat so I'm gonna stop this and If you remember one of the things I mentioned I Promote the at the top the utility container so I Mentioned that with Dev stack. It's an all or nothing. There's no way to fix things so I'm gonna show you what happens if you mess up, right? I'm very good at this by the way happen many times So the container that you're working on starts working erratically You want to fix it so you can sit down and Debug it or you can just trash the container until ansi will make me a new one That that's the very nice thing that Dev stack. I mean it will take in taking years to support something like this I think so This is when I stop a container and destroy a container which is very exciting to do. I always love to do this Feels like you're doing something forbidden, but you know in the end It's no big deal. You get used to it.   I didn't know thank you and then you just run the answer will playbooks and Because of sorry Because of the way answer will works answer will detect that the container is missing and It will Just make a new one as if nothing happened now If you remember, I showed you that there's a run playbooks script So you can run that and that's gonna go through every little thing you have to do to install open stack You know, it's gonna say oh, this is done. Okay, let's move to the next one This is done to it. It'll keep going and it'll take a while just to realize that most of the things are still there So the option that I used here for some reason that run playbook script doesn't have doesn't take command line arguments But ansible does and with ansible you can limit the scope of what you want to do So here I I used ansible directly instead of through that wrapper script And I'm gonna tell it that only perform the tasks that are related to hit engine Which is quite faster. So opensack ansible and Opensack ansible basically imports all the config files It's a little wrapper around the original ansible and I tell it that shell hit engine So now it's gonna start finding all the things and it's gonna realize that the containers missing. It'll make a new one and if you Let's look at this. So this is 1150 ish So 1150 so I'm gonna first forward this so It's it's about two and a half minutes it took for this and you can verify it in the In the screencasts if you want if you don't believe me. It's almost done there There you go finished it Created a container and now I'm back to normal so Think we're running a little bit short on time. So I'm gonna speed this up basically what I did here is Just connect again and make sure that everything works Okay So I mentioned this I'm gonna go really fast all the locations of things If you you can get the slides for reference I Didn't show you h.a. Proxy, but the h.a. Proxy is installing the host so you can You can modify the configuration there, especially if you're working on one of the Services are redundant. Usually you disable all the ones you you don't work on and keep them as backup I typically do that if I screw up instead of going you know to destroy the container I have in the case of keystone. I have to I can screw up one and then I can move to the next so I mentioned the cheap shop, so I don't think I need to repeat that I showed you in the screencast Debuggers if you work with command line debuggers, they they work great on the container So my favorite one is pu db, but pdb works, too pu db is it's a It's a GUI debugger, but uses terminal so it's text mode GUI and that that was really great I use that all the time If you want to do remote debugging with pie charm I told you how to get to the sources from the host so you can install it in the host do remote thing through SSH That all works, too If if you're doing Apache so keystone and horizon they work on Apache So it takes a little bit It takes a trick to make it work with a development version the home director needs to be set So you have to remember to do that Database migrations if you get a migration in your development version, and then you need to go back your screw basically It's not this project's fault. It happens with Dev stack or with everything else And I I mean I don't understand why people thought it was a good idea to not support downgrades It's a horrible idea. I think So basically the nice thing about Ansible is that the option is you can delete the database and then run Ansible again And it will make a brand new database for you Empty yes, yeah Of course, that's why I'm so pissed. I I mean I want downgrades.  That's something you need to be aware of I work on it Public cloud server. So for me it never goes down But if you're using a VM every time you bring it back, you have to for the first node You have to take its document and you have to run it in a little different way Just so that the cluster starts So the pros of this No dependency headaches. So dependency problems is the thing of the past for me. It's very easy to modify things So I create one one of these and it lasts for a very very long time I can keep it going. I don't have to go make a new one very often like I used to with Dev stack It's really closer to the real thing because it's a production deployment Except for where you put your development version The cons is that this is a new project. It's young. It only supports the core services at this time So I mean any of you that if you work on a project that's not in that list and You want to write answerable playbooks for it? We will welcome you with open arms. So keep the contributions coming and Then for neutron guys any neutron developers here No, yes, okay, so It the way we deploy neutron is very opinionated. We use Linux bridge. So I suspect it's not very useful for development You have to do a lot of manual work to configure Whatever you want if it's not this so I don't see it as a Usable for and so usable for for neutron So as I said, we we would like to take contributions we We want to grow this project. We are an open stack Ansible on free note And that's what I have There's a blog post about this same talk, but it Block post version of this talk if you want to read it later that's the URL and That's it Question I supposed to give you Mike. I think It's probably off it's on now about Opens stack Ansible by itself is is this just a set of playbooks to set up a development environment Or could it be used for setting a production environment as well? You mean the open stack Ansible command that I used no that that's using production Basically, it's a wrapper around Ansible that just imports all the YAML files that that you have in the ETC or open stack deploy This is the place where the config files are so you don't have to I mean you can run Ansible Normally, but you have to include all these variable files by hand So this script doesn't for you. It's very simple actually When it's contributed I guess I don't know But we would like to we would really like to support red hat Would you be able to say how it differs from cola are they similar? Cola it's based on docker. I'm not I'm not familiar at all with cola. I know it's it's docker based so We find LXC much more flexible LXC basically you create VMs they feel and act like a VM So you're not restricted to deploy single applications per container You really get a an Ubuntu machine in each container. So we find it more flexible, but I'm not familiar with cola. So So this is a single node for development. This is the The playbook supports. Yeah up to thousands if you want. Yes, it's a production deployment We deploy for our customers to one more. I'm sorry. It's off. Here is the question when I use DevStack I always need for my purpose to disable force config drive on lower conf and This is a headache for me how with your project. I can atomize it or minimize my Specific actions. I don't remember specifically if we have a configuration option for config drive Okay, that guy says yes, and he knows yes, you can disable so after you Bootstrap ansible that first step you can go in the config files disable it and then when when you run the playbooks It'll start disabled. Yes So these two guys are experts by the way, I'm just a developer, but they know so One more you mentioned that you contribute back to heat. Yes, and the gates in DevStack At the gate So I can reform. Oh, oh you mean that the gate is set. Yeah So the problem is that when you do this stuff as you do you are running not the latest masters of all the other stuff and So there are Maybe I mean it's still useful, but probably something to be aware of that. That's a good point Gate might not accept your change because I mean something changed. Yes. So to be honest, I Guess it depends the kind of work that you do. Yes For the things that I've done that that was not a problem for me I run, you know the unit tests in the container and You know and then you know pray and send it Yeah, it's been good to me. Yeah, so probably when you Making a new resources or stuff like that on heat then when some API of Nova change or Maybe I have seen their change you move to see the well, so the config files in the In the ETC directory that I showed you can change what version of any project you want to install and you can upgrade any project So you don't have to you know make a new one You don't have to operate all the ones Change it run it and yeah And it will be much faster than upgrading everything. It's like minutes. Yeah, like I showed and two and a half minutes Yeah, so it's you can still know make it work. I think thanks. Yep. Yeah, we have to go Thank you Thank you


Hi everyone. Welcome to our latest episode of STEM Chat. April is National Letter Writing Month so this episode we're talking about sending STEM in the mail. You might remember a few months ago we did do a segment on STEM in the mail featuring Diana's huge dinosaur paper that she folded up and they sent to a friend. And this month we're elaborating and coming up with more fun ideas for you to send happy mail and send STEM in the mail. That's right. So we're going to start out by talking about insects and bugs. So my younger daughter is super into bugs right now and I thought it would be fun to send some butterfly letters. So we printed out some butterfly pictures we found online. They were you know I just kind of did like a google search and I found a lot of I'm sorry I found a lot of butterfly images also on websites that sell butterflies. This is really cool because I think it's such a fun idea instead of just using writing a letter it sounds you know kind of boring maybe but this makes it more fun because you pick some really colorful butterflies. So while you're doing this you know your child is also learning you know different kinds of butterflies and all about them while she's you know writing notes to her friends. Yeah that's true and oh hold on let me get to the next picture. Yes here she is writing and the butterfly shape is kind of fun too because you can fold it and it looks like a butterfly. Oh it's adorable yeah that's really cool did they have fun doing this? Yeah she did she wrote so many letters and then she also had a lot of fun cutting them out it's like the cutting is not perfect but that's still okay. Yeah she had a lot of fun doing it and the butterflies are kind of pretty too so they're just kind of like all over our house now so that's kind of fun. So here are some ideas of different things you can send in the mail to a friend that's STEM related in addition to the paper butterflies if you can see like all the leaves and you know artwork and photographs and there's so much more you can send an even little piece of Micah as Diana has sent around we're waiting for ours. Oh okay we'll send one this one was actually meant for you and we didn't get a chance to mail it. Oh cool I can't wait to get it. Yeah you'll have to let us know how well it survives the journey. Okay definitely. Yeah so here it is the Micah we like to find rocks as everyone probably knows now and go rock pounding but the Micah is kind of neat because it's flexible so you can peel off a piece and then see it's like flexi so you can kind you can send it in the mail and it'll still meet the first class letter requirements. But there's also other fun gentleman mineral stamps that you can use as well I like those diamond ones. So this was done by my daughter and she sent it to your girls she took some flower a photo of some flowers in our firehouse and she used pressed flower stickers so this was done back in February and things were just starting to bloom before spring and we found these really cute realistic looking stickers that look like pressed flowers from jet pens. Yeah right daughters love the card that you guys said. It's so fun so in addition to that you know the pressed flower stickers now that they're blooming we went and grabbed a few of the flowers just a little bit and I think it's easy to start with small ones because they will dry faster so here are the they're from two different plants that we have around our home. So these are two of the main plants around our home baby sage has really beautiful vibrant pink white and this very deep reddish pink color to them that I thought would be cute and the creeping land landana which is purple and it's just so cute with little tiny flowers so I think I did this a couple days ago I'll show you what I've so I took the flowers and I put it in wax paper and so because flowers have sort of a liquid to them these dry faster so these little creeping landana dried really well. Oh they're so pretty yeah so you can just include these little you can tape them in a card or put them in wax paper and we just I just put them between really heavy books for a couple days and there's a larger one I think it's still stuck to the wax paper it's not completely dry yet so that'll be dry so actually the smaller the better I think if you want to do the whole like really sophisticated larger press flower look I think those flowers take a long time you have to keep like changing the paper to blot it. I use wax paper so the the liquid wouldn't leak through into my books so I think they're pretty in the wax paper too I feel like you can almost put them in the wax paper also yeah it'd be really nice.  You can also send them I think my daughter wrote I love you on it. Oh that's cute but it's kind of neat to be able to. Oh yeah yeah I think they were more colorful and then they became brown as time passed but it's kind of neat to be able to find stuff in nature that you can send. Yeah so it's sort of like I think for whoever's going to receive it it's like a little touch of nature I think everybody feels happy with a little bit of nature around them and you can also write the name of the flowers that you've pressed so they can learn more about it look up some facts. Oh that's a great idea yeah so these are the stickers that are pressed flowers if you can't press any flowers around you. I got these on jet pens they're from a Korean brand and then this is um China Pink flower and this is lavender so there's different kinds I think there's more and then even you know if you want to send a postcard this was um what you sent to us Phyllis Ma's whatever mushroom artwork. Yeah we have some of her other postcards here it's neat because I really like how she depicts the mushrooms and it might be more difficult to send a mushroom in the mail but you can still. Yes yes I think there's tons of like postcards of butterflies and yeah magical things and it's it's just um something fun to send along. Yeah yeah we also um there's an artist I like named Christopher Marley and he has some neat bug cards. That's gorgeous. My older daughter wanted to send a secret code letter to her friend um so I had her write the alphabet out and then she wrote um a different number under each letter and then she wrote her message which you can see below um and underneath each letter she translated it and wrote the number so um you can see in the picture now on the left hand side she is copying all of the numbers down that make the secret code message that she's going to send to her friend. That's cool. I love that like between friends they have their own well now they have their almost secret code language. Yes yeah that like actually says something like you want to send secret code letters if you want to write back to me in our secret code. Oh that's cute. Oh I love that and then there's the code key that's great. Yeah so this is just what we're going to mail to the friend just the letter and then the code keys so she'll be able to hopefully figure it out and maybe write back. Oh that's fun. Yeah so my younger daughter is also friends with the younger sister of this little girl and she wanted to send a secret code letter as well but um you know they're not quite reading yet because they're toddlers so she drew a picture on a card instead and she's also very into dinosaurs so it's kind of a dino letter. Cute. And then she cut the card apart and she made a puzzle out of it so we've sent all the little pieces together and hopefully her friend will be able to put it together and have her own secret message. Oh that's fun that's a great idea for younger kids. Yeah I have um hopefully it'll be some fun for them. They let my daughter just like to do puzzles a lot so I think this is nice. Okay and then we also have been sending some sort of large format letters and we sent one to you Natalie. Yes should I show you? Yeah do you want to show us? Yes yes we got this in the mail which was really fun to open up. Let me just get it because large format is large. This is from the artwork in the pie episode and with the circles. Yeah we got super into making circles so then we're like let's just make big circle letters to send. Yeah so it's fun and it's all folded really well but uh yeah it's fun to get. My daughter is like oh wow she's looking at all the little drawings that your your daughter's did. It's really cute. Yeah I usually I like to put the big paper onto a table I just kind of like tape it down and then they'll just like walk by and draw on it and decorate it once in a while. Oh that's a good idea but you can fold it really well because. Yeah I was like trying to make it nice and flat so it can get made. Yeah so now this is really good flat shape but it's so big and bold so that was really fun. Thanks oh yeah so speaking of if you guys the viewers would like to send something in the mail that's large or you know maybe that you find in nature there's some guidelines that you'll have to follow but a first class letter can be mailed with a 55 cent stamp although I did put an extra stamp on yours Natalie because I just wanted to make sure it would get there and I was afraid it might weigh a little bit too much. If you'd like to send a first class letter which costs 55 cents to send you will want to follow these sort of rules it needs to be a maximum of 3.5 ounces it also needs to be machinable so it needs to be a rectangle instead of a square and it needs to be flexible so it can go through the machine. It can be a maximum of six and an eighth inch by 11 and a half inches and a minimum of three and a half inches by five inches. Yeah and when in doubt just stick an extra stamp on it right as you always say remember. You may need to stick as long as it fits in the dimensions you may need to stick like more extra stamps if it's extra big or weighs a lot. My hard thing about people sending like little boxes of movie candy in the mail too I don't know what costs to send there's all there's like a whole thing of like different fun things you can send in the mail like a brick or a hula hoop. Well I remember when the movie came out with Matt Damon the Martian people sent you could send potatoes. Really? Oh wow. Yes I guess there's lots of fun things more than 55 cents but still fun. Exactly. In addition to being able to send different shapes and sizes of envelopes you can also use different types of stamps you can use vintage stamps as long as they add up to 55 cents and here's a look at some of the ones we really like. There's all sorts of stamps these are vintage stamps so we combine them together to equal 55 cents and it's kind of a fun way to play with math too because my older daughter has fun putting together the different combinations to equal 55 and my younger daughter is learning about what the different numbers are. Do they also like does she pick certain stamps for certain friends that she wants to have on there too? Yeah she does she thinks she kind of knows what her friends are interested in so she usually tries to pick ones that her friends would be interested in. Very cool. Yeah and so you know that they have stamps about all different types of people so there is doctors and explorers and scientists. I actually didn't know who this was until I saw the stamp but this is Dr Elizabeth Blackwell and she was the first female physician. That's very cool it's very detailed for such a small stamp. Yeah it's pretty good because you can tell you can see like the font is kind of an old style font and then this one was interesting it's the photography stamp and it's also it's pretty old but it was neat because it shows what the old camera looked like and a roll of film which kids don't really see these days either. I recognize the space one you think you sent us that too the vintage space one right there in the middle. Oh this one? Yes. There you go. They have all different sorts of images on the stamps too which is neat there's all sorts of nature stamps and ocean stamps and flower stamps there's these carnivorous plant stamps over here and there's dinosaur stamps there's a lot of fun shapes. I really like these mineral stamps over here because they actually are diamond shaped when you put them on and there's the triangle stamp here and this stamp is interesting it's the Indian head penny and it's actually the smallest stamp that they ever printed. That's very cute. And this over here is a souvenir sheet that you can kind of stick on top of your letter like a giant stamp and we really like this stamp over here it's a hologram but it's actually it's not it I guess it's not technically a stamp it's a envelope right so if you want to send it you would need to put 30 cents of stamps beside it and then you can send it in the mail we sent one to you. Yes we clipped it out and saved it too. And there's also these stamp sheets that we love so my younger daughter loves insects and spiders and this one's neat because it has facts about each of the bugs on the back that you can read. That's really cool. Natalie do you remember this one I remember this one from when I was little I think. I think so too I don't I didn't have this one but I did remember them having I I think I do have some sheets with actual information on the back too. Yeah because there was like a frog there's a amphibians and lizards one that they also had there was like a phase of things from nature with the fact so I guess you can go and find it now in ebay. Yeah that's true. Let's see we also like there's some really great stamps that have these beautiful scenes we like the dinosaurs one. Oh yes that's really beautiful. But they also have a series of different ecosystems and they have all different like the animals that live in that ecosystem. So that's me there's like I don't know how many different ecosystems there are maybe 12 different ecosystems it's like tundra and rainforest. And these are kind of neat space stamps. They're images from the Hubble telescope. Oh that's really cool can you bring it up closer to see. Sure. Is this something that you got on ebay or you had this from your collection what year was this? Let's see so I bought these at a stamp show there's a lot of stamp shows and you can just buy the stamps at face value. I don't know people a lot of people used to collect them and then there are like so many collections now that there's just tons of stamps up like vintage stamps out that you can actually use. But I haven't been to a stamp show in a while but maybe soon. Yes. Let's see and then this is the last stamp sheet these are different types of wildflowers. Oh I love this. Yeah it has the wildflower's name on the sheet too. Seems like something your daughter would like. Yes. So and then there's some neat stamps that are out now that you can actually purchase at the USPS website and they use kind of interesting technology in them. So this one is a lenticular stamp and I think you can you see that it's like a dinosaur? Yeah and then you can see the the bones inside. Yeah you can see the bones and this is neat because they used it's like a hologram. Oh I have these ones. Rainbow hologram is my favorite it's just really cool. Yeah I think they've used that effect on some other stamps too kind of like a foil effect and then this one's neat also it's printed on foil so it's a little hard to see but it's shiny. Anyways those are all available right now at the USPS website and they have another set coming out soon that is it's going to feature the sun it's like their new space set that's going to come out this year. That's cool I can't wait to see that so Diana has had sent me over this course of the year she always sends really cool stamps and envelopes and she told me about stamp soaking so this was my chance to try it I was very nervous because some of these are vintage stamps but it was really fun. So all you have to do is because she used color paper you make sure that the if you are soaking multiple stamps at a time they all have the same color envelope otherwise it'll colorize the stamp but this was fine I just had one stamp floating in on top of water it takes about 10 minutes you can go the next screen and then what you can do is actually take it I took it out with the tweezers and then you very carefully kind of blot the paper and stamp on a paper towel and you're able to peel it off if you can see I have the other stamp I had done before on the side there face down because with the older vintage stamps they're still the adhesive on the back so I didn't want it to be wet and to stick to the paper towel so I just kind of let it be upside down I think it just took like maybe 20 minutes half an hour is dry and you can go the next screen once they're dry I just laid them face side up again and they can just kind of dry and then what I did was with the paper towel I folded it over and I put it between some heavy books so it could get flat again and that was it so it was pretty fun and a very easy process I don't know I was very scared and nervous but Diana really helped me through that so it's really fun so this is way you can sort of like when you have when you send fun stamps to people in the mail you can tell them they can soak it and then they can keep these and put them in the most stamp album or keep them you know put them on you know do artwork with them journaling there's so many different things you can do yeah and sometimes I'm you know this must have been kind of a thick envelope or something that we sent it to you on but sometimes the stamp just floats off the envelope on it so yeah stamp peeling off and separating but it really just depends on the stamp and the envelope that you get this envelope was a little bit quicker paper so yeah it didn't separate there that's why I waited the first time I did it I waited for a while longer than I should have yes yeah we were talking about it it was kind of uh so it really should only take 10 minutes or so so yeah wait no sometimes it's less sometimes it's just like pops off and like oh that's cool yeah so I don't I don't know I guess it was just the ones we sent you oh cool anyway it was really fun I thought it was it was great I love this is the vintage flowers there and the birds there so um the gold finch so I love the colors in here too so now it's a time at the end of the episode where we share our favorite things um and I'm going to start by showing you a video that we really like um it's on youtube it's about the us postal system and it's called systems at work and it's really neat because um they sort of use this ultra dramatic music and show how the us postal system works and how mail gets from your house and goes through the mail system and gets delivered at your door my kids love it we've been watching it for like three years and oh that's cool it's super exciting every time they're like wow so dramatic you know the mail really goes far we'll link it down below so you can check it out okay yeah yeah um so next up I know we've talked a lot about stamps in this issue this episode and um this is sort of what my daughter put together for her mini stamp album she used um little planner discs and then used um these sort of plastic sleeves and she stores them all um in here she has like little covers here but she has like her favorites in the front it's based on what she likes so she has like the Apollo one some vintage one some flowers um she kind of likes to organize it herself and sometimes she moves things and looks looks at them so it's been really fun just to serve like a diy little album here and I like the the mini size I like the little pockets in it yeah so this is our stamp album um we've sort of been reverse collecting in that where um we have unused stamps and then we use them to mail to friends let's see uh but it's similar it has the little pockets in it and you can put the stamps in the pockets oh that's cool my kids like to flip through and look at the pictures um to figure out what to send where here's our space page and I think it's really great for um them because it's like you want to try to get the stamps to add up to 55 sets so it's a good way um you know to learn about math and stuff too or to even learn about numbers uh to you know what you know what the number is and you actually um because you started sending all these cute stamps on the envelopes that my daughter was like oh I really want to like collect some of these stamps again and you sent her some to start her collection and then you found um cute there's lots of like stamps for sale on ebay so I went through and found a bunch especially the space ones that she likes and then um it's very like it's a few dollars and I made them as stocking stuffers for for Christmas and so she loved like putting them all in the book and so that was fun and the people that sent them they also put really fun stamps on their envelopes so it's just like this it just keeps going and I I love that um the whole like stamp world yeah yeah I really like buying them on ebay as well because you can get like a little grab bag or something and it's only a couple of dollars but it's fun to get in the mail and look at yeah that was a great tip okay and then this is another book I wanted to share um that uh I actually review a lot of children's books so um Diana uh I sent it to Diana after I reviewed it it's called the extraordinary book that eats itself and um what's cool about this book is not only is it printed on like recycled paper and what have you you the whole book is an activity and uh I think you your girls loved it right yes yeah they've actually done a bunch of the activities in it already um but here's some of the things that they did they made this um like an eco fortune teller oh I love that the cootie catcher yeah and then um they did this thing it's kind of like lenticular so you look at it one way and then look at the other changes well I like that because it's just in time and April is also you know Earth days in April and uh it's all about the environment and how we can be eco-friendly and learning about nature and you know there's all these different activities in there it's kind of a fun book for spring break and getting ready for summer too yeah yeah we've been spending lots of time working on our book uh a really fun virtual event coming up in May that we wanted to share with you guys is the maker music festival and um just like um all the events happening right now everything's online but it's great for families and it's great for kids um we just posted about it on instagram uh yesterday so you can check out our instagram at stem chat um but there is um you can just homemade music um there's okay house cat who takes uh his name's billy and he takes a bunch of like toys and electronics and makes new instruments out of them um there's um sonic marbles where you can learn how to do all these cool like marble runs um with making like sound and music um maki maki lego and playdough instruments for kids uh there's lots of fun things going on so check it out at um w w w maker music festival dot com there's um 120 maker music makers um attending and it'll be in like a virtual building and you'll be able to go into different rooms and buildings online and check everything out so that looks like something fun for next month yeah my daughter's actually really excited about it um she plays violin and she also likes to make her own instruments out of recycle things uh so we've been checking it out on instagram because they post um i guess who the different performers are going to be and we've been checking it every day so she's she's just really excited to try and she's really excited to be able to attend virtually that's two thank you for joining us for this episode of stem chat and we have something really exciting to talk to you about before we go is that we'll be offering soon this butterfly letter pdf and diana has a sample of how kids can cut it out and actually write on the wings of the butterfly uh to their friend anybody in their family and send it off for um our wonderful national card and letter writing month yeah uh this month so find out on instagram how um to download this printable pdf so thank you for watching yeah thank you for watching and we will see you next time bye