And I don't want to look at this funding cut in isolation from what is happening. In British Columbia, the federal government wants to put through a massive pipeline. And the people who are raising the biggest opposition to it are Aboriginal. The bands throughout British Columbia, the First Nations throughout British Columbia, they want to put a pipeline, an expanded pipeline through Southern BC. And the people who are most opposed to it are the First Nations. They want to transport coal on Vancouver Island and it's the First Nations who are mostly opposed. I tend to view this as an attempt by Harper and the federal government to silence critics. And I think that's how we should look at it. I also looked at the letter we got, I don't have it as I said here in front of me, but it says the amount of money we're going to get is going to be based on a number of factors and one of those factors is the on reserve population. The federal government still refuses to accept that First Nations governments represent all of their people. They want to divide us, they want to continue to divide us just as they have for the past couple of hundred years. So they want to pit us against each other on reserve, against off reserve. And the Neuchon Earth people don't fall for that. We represent all Neuchon Earth people, all of the First Nations of the Neuchon Earth Tribal Council. So we tend to view this as an attempt to silence First Nations and as an attempt to divide them. In the letter that you see in the kits, the minister says that there's going to be a simplified way of reporting. This is his carrot in front of the horse. He's going to make a simplified way of reporting. But if you look at the block funding agreement, the reporting mechanism is way more onerous than it used to be because there's now clawback provisions. They're going to claw back money that isn't spent properly according to their eyes. So our reporting mechanism under the block funding is going to be far more difficult than it was in the past. But now the minister and his press verb is saying that this is all good for the Aboriginal people because among other things their reporting mechanism is going to be a lot easier. Those two statements just cannot stand beside each other. When I was young one of them would have been called a lie. Today we call it misleading or something like that. So our view of the announcement by the minister to the Neuchon Earth Tribal Council last week is looked at in terms of the bigger picture of what is happening in British Columbia.


the first week I kind of will envisage giving you a good grounding in terms of using gender as an analytical tool in your writing moving beyond just focusing on women although women's experiences of armed conflict will be very much part of the course and I want you to start thinking about you know how gender operates as both a symbolic and a structural kind of constraint and kind of mode of operating in our communities and what that means in conflict and post-conflict spaces. That will involve as I said gender as an analytical tool thinking about gender theories and their approaches to conflict and conflict spaces, studying the UN Security Council's resolutions on women, peace and security, there's 10 of them you might like to have a look at them before the course starts and then pushing our analytical thinking a little bit by embracing and studying queer and decolonizing approaches to gender and applying them in conflict scenarios and in particular also the Security Council's work. That will form week one it's going to be intense we'll have a lot to do super challenging but actually some fantastic conversations as well. In week two as you start designing your own assignment topic I will be focusing in on a couple of case studies in particular conflict related sexual violence, counterterrorism and emergency laws and gendered and feminist responses to military technologies from drones to you know the move towards potentially other kinds of automated systems and throughout we will be hosting a series of online debates running tutorial spaces for you to come and join the conversation in person or to ask me questions and a kind of lecture series that both begins and ends each academic day. There should be lots of fun there's lots to learn and lots to discuss and I really look forward to having you in online for the SOAS gender and conflict summer school. If you have got some questions you can drop me an email and I'll reply via email or if you prefer we can set up a meeting time and we can have a short discussion about the course and whether it's good for you. See you in the summer!


Conversations with Strategy in the Department of War Studies. Just if you just hold off a few seconds, I think the attendee is coming in. Hello everyone, welcome to this session on Conversations with Strategy in the Department of War Studies in the School of Security Studies, King's College London. I'm Dr. Stacey Giettkowski, Senior Lecturer in Conflict Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies. And joining us today, we're very happy to welcome Dr. Roxanne Farman-Farmaine. She is a visiting senior fellow in the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies here at King's. She's a scholar of international relations specializing in the foreign and security dimensions of the Middle East and in the media. She is Director of International Relations and Global Studies at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education and lecturer on modern Middle East politics at the Cambridge Department of Politics and International Studies. She's a senior associate fellow of the European Leadership Network and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, Women and Security Dialogue. She was a resident fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies between 2008 and 19, where she finalized a new model for theorizing media in the Middle East. In 2013, she received a five-year, 680,000-pound grant from Al Jazeera Media Corporation to study media and politics in the Southern Mediterranean, focusing on Tunisia, Morocco, and Turkey after the Arab uprisings. She's a recipient of ESRC and Annenberg Foundation for Communication Awards. She was the founder of the Paula Space Center for International Relations with the Middle East in North Africa at Cambridge and previously editor of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. We're going to start the conversation with her earlier experience, which is prior to becoming an academic. She was an international reporter covering the Soviet Union, Iran, women's business, and the high-tech media industry. She's a frequent public speaker, opinion writer, policy commentator and television commentator on the Middle East and on its political and international affairs. Thank you so much, Roxanne, for joining us today. We're really delighted to have you. So you've worn many hats over the course of your career as a journalist, as a high-level policy consultant, as an academic, and I hope we're going to get to touch on all of those things. But perhaps we can go back to the beginning with an experience as a journalist during the Iranian Revolution. What do you remember most vividly about the time and what can you tell us about how you came to found and run Iranian Weekly News Magazine, which served as an important source of information for Foreign Press and Diplomatic Corps in Tehran between 1979 and 1980. It was a very vivid time, as you can imagine, and thank you so very much for having me. Let me first put that out there. It's a real pleasure, and it's wonderful to be a visiting fellow at King's. So I really appreciate this opportunity to speak with you, Stacey, and to look back on that period, which is already now some some decades ago. And I was quite fresh out of university. My father was Iranian, my mother was American, and I had gone to university in the United States. So I thought, okay, I shall go and do my first work in Iran and find out what it was like and arrive there just as it was having a revolution. And to be honest, the only companies that hired during a revolution are the media companies because they need people to go out into the streets. So it was an extremely exciting time, quite dangerous. And I worked for the big English language newspaper there until it closed very, very soon after I arrived and then a number of us got together young whippersnappers and started our own magazine it seems so doable at the time. And we tried to make it we thought of ourselves as a very mini version or revolutionary version of the new statesman we sort of went out and tried to have a really important interview, and with somebody at the time it was a weekly. We really just tried to cover as many aspects of the oil news of the demonstrations and, and it was, it was an extraordinary time because nobody, I think, as we look back on where Iran and the United States particularly have ended up since. It was an amazing time to witness how everyone in Iran at the time really was quite behind the revolution. There wasn't a whole lot of debate about whether everybody wanted the shot to go. Because of debate is what to create afterwards and so I think in many ways I encountered the idea of a divided society which has been part of my experience ever since, because there was definitely a whole group of people that wanted to go and have a sense of comfort a sense that they could give back as the authenticity and possibly the commandments that had that would help create a new society after the Shah's experience. I don't think that there was a great deal of debate either about the fact that people wanted free expression. They wanted individual liberties, but those were much more abstract and the Islamic dimension and the form of community that it offered was something that people at the time could hold on to and this was something my office luckily from the magazine that we started was somehow right between the United States Embassy on one end of the road. There were several blocks down and the university that was on the other end of the road several blocks down so we got to see basically the entirety of the street prayers and the demonstrations and of course once the embassy was seized in the hostage crisis that we were in many ways on a front seat of that. It was an opportunity also to see enormous misunderstanding between two countries and I would say that that actually has been the tragedy of Iran, it was not that they got didn't get the government that they wanted. They didn't anticipate that the government they got would have such a long and toxic relationship and misunderstanding with the world's greatest unipolar power at that time, and that has been the great tragedy of the Iranian situation. It's amazing to hear how you were right there on, you know, on the cusp of history right on the road I mean that is that is absolutely amazing. If some of our students found themselves in a similar situation you know in the context of history evolving around them you know how would you, what, what would you suggest to them how would you go about doing something similar to what you did. In that case we all find ourselves in new settings and new challenges, and often new crises. And so, I think the, the opportunity that students should always be aware of is the one that's right there in front of them, and to jump in. And often it may seem slightly crazy I'm sure slightly. I think all of us feel as though we, we suffer from something called imposter syndrome, where we don't feel we're well enough equipped or we don't have the background, and the only way to get that is by jumping in and doing it. And so I think I didn't know anything about writing. I didn't know anything about editing, and yet I had a confidence that I was a relatively good writer and I got along with people and I had a nose for what I was curious about and I think to follow your curiosity is really important. So my next step after he won was I ended up going to Moscow right as the Soviet Union was falling apart. And I was there in 1984. I mean it was just the moment that all of that was happening and the book and been long ago anticipating that those days. And it was a fascinating time and I was a journalist during that period as well. And it was not easy because the Soviet Union was anytime a country is falling apart is usually when it's most difficult it's very scared it tends to shut down it tends to try to repress and control. And so it was really an opportunity for me to try something new, and so I took up photography as well it just seemed like an easier way to capture some of the things that were going on. And again, I was not a, you know, a born photographer I unfortunately was unable to take that up as as I went forward, but I was able to run around with an awful lot of photo journalists and thereby see different dimensions of what was going on as a country was beginning to fall apart. And, and that too was something that I think very much shows that you can do it. I think it's really important as students to go forward, grab the bull by the horns. And you may be convinced that it's not something you want to do or that you've got other strengths, but you won't know until you've actually worked in something and given it a try. So what are sort of your main observations. Are there any kind of anecdotes or something from from that period, watching the Soviet Union start to disintegrate. Well actually having come from Iran, and then gone to the Soviet Union when I finally emerged and went back to the United States and arrived in New York. I decided I must be a journalist of revolutions. And I think since then I realized I am an academic of divided societies actually, but they are in a sense different versions of the same thing. And so when I got to the United States I was more confident in the skills that I had built and felt that I could contribute in an area that was again new. I was more confident about being able to process new materials and new ideas and meet new groups of people, and I had a certain confidence in that so I think that in some ways is one of the anecdotes is that I came away from particularly Moscow where there were a great number of journalists that were pouring in at any given moment and getting to know them and realizing there were many different styles of journalism, and many different audiences and viewpoints and my viewpoint was very different than many of those that did arrive and and being located there I had a different perspective as well than people that were coming in from the outside. And so when I got to the States. What was just happening again it just seems like another era was the beginning of the tech revolution so that was the era of the Apple to that arrived we didn't have cell phones and so what I did was I joined a magazine that was beginning to report on the tech industry which was a great place to be because every six months or every five months a new machine would arrive or a whole new kind of machine would arrive. And we rapidly cycle through the, the quick development of the tech industry so that when I left just a few years I was having been snapped up by several different magazines in turn because everybody needed somebody that knew something about the tech industry. And, although I rapidly also realized it was not going to be the specialty. I'm not a tech person. And in fact I'm disastrous at it now. But I, I realized that I knew enough about how I was working with society that it was one of the things I could bring real value to for a while and so one of the really extremely interesting programs that I did was AT&T developed the first touchscreen technology, and I was working at the time for a magazine that's now died, called Working Woman which was really at the forefront of helping women understand how to move into management and administration and executive positions. And so again, another revolution if you will. AT&T partnered with us and I was able to do a wonderful project on eight women who we labeled as eight women who had changed the world. So including the very first woman who had ever held a seat on the American stock, New York Stock Exchange, and that kind of thing. And you could do it all by touchscreen and this was at least 10, 15 years before touchscreen actually became commercial. That's amazing. And, you know, it's a very clear thread from studying different kinds of revolutions to this, this new other form of what technological and social revolution. Yes. I wonder, so then how did you start to make the transition towards becoming an academic. You did write another another book. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that transition and about the book. Well, I think that in, in having written and reported on what was happening on the streets of Iran what was clear is the growing division between the United States and Iran, and it didn't really make sense. There are equal relationships in the United States has with countries that are as abusive or as incomprehensible, and yet those relationships are quite close simply because they fit within a strategic national interest of the United States so particularly let me specify Saudi which is not any more natural an ally to the United States than Iran would be. And in fact I would probably argue, Iran would be more likely an ally and yet somehow they were unable to patch up the relationship and I was convinced that something had, it had something to do with the hostage crisis but also being someone who who was a word longer, if you will somebody who wrote and reported and dealt with language. I felt that there was something about how the meanings of the exchange had been amplified to the point where it was very difficult to get over the assumptions and the associations the other had. I did start by writing a book with my father about his memoirs he was the, a, a high executive in the oil industry, and in fact was the originally Ron delegate to whatever what became OPEC, and so he had some extraordinary perspectives to bring to the story as well and he also during the revolution, one of the things I experienced and certainly one of the things he experiences he had to walk out of the border across the border to save his life. And so he had extraordinary stories and so I helped him write a book, his first language was not English. And so together we wrote a book called blood and oil memoirs of a Persian prince because he was from a large family that in the past was royal. And it was published by a random house and I thought, and that involved an enormous amount of research into the British archives and all sorts of things. And it went a long way to understanding a great deal more, but I felt I still wasn't there so a wonderful professor in Cambridge Peter Avery, who was known as an Iran specialist at King's College in Cambridge, invited me to come in for a fellowship, and I had never gotten a masters, and I thought, I think, better would be to spend that year. And if they'll take me to come in for an MPhil so I did. And I arrived three days before 911. So before classes that even started I was, I found myself in the politics department, weighing in on some relation, some recommendation one of the professors had to give to some of their contacts about now what does the world do. And very rapidly was invited before I'd really even embarked very much on the masters, the MPhil to do a PhD on that very concept of the relationship between Iran and my particular case but the Middle East more generally democracy and Islam. And so I was I received a thank goodness a wonderful scholarship for that, and spent the next four, five years almost completing the PhD, and trying to figure out what was it that really made the difference and I remember presenting my some of my last years PhD to a PhD group, which you sat in on Stacy, I remember your paper, and you made a statement about shame and pride, and emotions that sent me back at that last moment back to the library to find some further insight and it was actually very critical to the overall thesis it was like that that touchstone that I was missing. And it really made a difference to making a whole theory about emotion and international relations now it's become quite common effect, the effect of turn is what it's called is quite common in IR. But at the time it was really quite new a lot of people thought oh there's a woman writing about emotion again. And, and I think actually explains a great deal about the ongoing inability of what I thought it was very much a special relationship between Iran and the United States under the Shaw. And there's, and there's no worse relationship in a way than a love affair gone wrong, and I think in many ways that sums up where we are with Iran in the US at the moment. And once at Cambridge, I just sort of never left. I was thinking of your work actually, you know, during the, you know, when the, the nuclear deal was signed, how you know how these things were were evolving and what is, you know, very much a relationship and evolving and very emotional. So, once you, once you got your PhD, then you know you had you had this trajectory coming through as a journalist and then post PhD in addition to being an academic you've done all this policy consultants, which is something a lot of our students, you know, are interested in and want to go on and do. So, kind of how did you build that line of interest, and you know what would you suggest to students who want to move into that world. Well I'd always done some policy work because I think when you're involved with with certainly controversial politics or countries that people find very confusing. I often ask journalists for commentary whether the journalist knows anything about the policy side or not. And when I finally felt as though I had much stronger roots into what gave me confidence to speak about policy and politics and the longer historical relationships about between these two countries and about the United States and the Middle East generally and about issues such as not only oil but also then the nuclear issue in Iran. And when it began more clearly to develop and I think part of that is that to write policy you need to write a different way than you do as an academic. My very first approach to that was when, in quite a few cases, different committees simply wanted me to comment, and so I was invited to present my findings or my work or something I'd written to panels that were being held by different policy think tanks. And I would suggest that for students, one of the key areas to break in through is by having actually written something that presents a viewpoint that's balanced and that has a strong arguments for the position that you're taking. And I think that can often be developed through the networks that you set up, even if you yourself are not working at a think tank very likely there are friends, colleagues of yours, student friends that will be so I think one should never overlook the benefit of networking, going to various activities, attending various think tanks, for example, seeing how they put things, you know, and then again as I said earlier on, you know, grab the opportunity and go right up and present yourself and offer the fact that you know something about X that you've actually written something about X or you are writing something about X. And that will at least begin to include you on smaller closed panels or groups. And I think that often is the way of getting and it's the same way in media to get in as a journalist. It's, it's not easy.  Of course these days that's a little difficult, but it will change and and and be the unique writer about something and that will often be the opportunity to be placed in on the string of stringers and and that's how you often will begin to be able to move in and also to be able to move across you maybe a, you know, a reporter in one area but you can't seem to make the jump. Well, that's the way you make the jump is to start writing about other things and really sending them in. I ask you a little bit in more detail about networking, because I think as as women, particularly in the early stages of our careers we feel you know somewhat intimidated sometimes by networking I know as I get more gray hair I feel more you know confidence in it. And I wonder if you have some sort of tips for students who say okay, she says to turn up at events in London. I'm doing that. Now what. Well, first of all, one of the things that I found at Cambridge that helps a lot is that people will form groups right in the university right in either cross disciplinary cross departmental, or within the department that become what we call reading groups, and that often will bring not only the students themselves together but it gives them the opportunity to either invite people in, or to get to know absolutely everybody else in the university that's actually doing that. One of the things I've always found and I think you probably would agree with this Stacy is that we academics, often come over is just doing academics when we're talking to our students, but actually we often wear many different hats, and so getting to have academics that come in and speak to you about different things will often thereby open up their networks to you, especially if you express interest, and some knowledge on things. So I think it's the difficulty is it's often that you don't know who you'll meet who actually opens that door. But the fact is, unless you're in and, and speaking to people and exchanging cards or, or emails or whatever, you don't have the opportunity to meet that one person out of seven or 10 that is going to open the door. So it's work. It's work, but it's, you know, hopefully from the, from the aspect of meeting people, it's, it's more pleasant work, but it takes skill, it takes development. Hi, I'm conscious that we've come up to about the halfway point and I'm hoping that our participants will will jump in with your your questions Roxanne and I will keep going a little bit but if you have any questions please would you either pop them in the Q&A box, or or in the chat or raise your hand in the, and I will see you in the participants list and and call on you. I think they look like there might be two or three in the chat. I don't know if you're okay. Oh, oh, sorry. That's Lizzie in the chat. That's okay. But I hope someone will. Yeah, come. What's your quote. Give us give us your questions. Sorry, I just want to add to any students attending here that in terms of the school of security today's worst of these, we have a student engagement office in Senjana Balu and a comms team who are really interested in ideas that students might have for speakers for podcast ideas, blogs, that kind of thing. So, you know, always reach out to Senjana Balu or the comms team. If you have ideas and want to get involved and do something and we'll try and support you in that we can't always promise obviously but we've had some students come forward with podcast suggestions. And it's really helpful because at the end of the day, a lot of students listen to the worst of these podcasts. And so we want, you know, we want to give you the opportunity to contribute ideas and suggestions to speakers and themes, and that sort of thing as well and certainly we also plan to interview PhD students. So if you've got a really interesting search project that you're working on, then again put yourself forward and we could potentially interview you for the podcast. I'll put my email in. Well, and I have to underscore that I think universities themselves are are something to be maximized one year there they're multifaceted and they really do offer the opportunity for small group activities for for invited speakers for panels for all of these different ways of encounter. And I think that makes an enormous difference from our perspective as as as teachers Stacy I'm sure you two have run into this. My, what turned out to be long relationship with Al Jazeera actually came up by the fact that I had a student a master student that had come in, who was among the very first crew of Al Jazeera when it launched. And he was responsible for developing one of the main online news channels. And we just started chatting and it turned out that there was a Center for Studies in in Doha, which I had no idea about. And he suggested that maybe some of the work I'd done on media might be helpful for them, because it was always quite difficult to find common ground between the broadcasting company and this center for studies. And so I was their first visiting fellow. They'd never had one. I sort of suggested that it might be an interesting idea and there was an enlightened wonderful director at the time. The that helped set that up. And I think for both of us it really made a huge difference so even for us as as lecturers or for us students, these are things that that can come unexpectedly and I have to say he brought on, I would say at least four or five members of the infill group that he was in at the time. In one way or another into the Al Jazeera family during that period because it was growing. And they were, you know, beneficiaries but also contributors. That's really fascinating rocks take away. Can you tell us a little bit more about your observations about Al Jazeera from from the beginning, because it's such an interesting outlet. It is a very interesting place. And it's in a very interesting country that's obviously gone through quite a bit quite recently. And I think one of the extraordinary things for me was to arrive at a channel that was both Arabic and English, and the two were unbelievably different. They were very much exuding their own cultures their own linguistic specialties their own kinds of training the relationships that were common to their cultures and that were not necessarily completely similar. They had figured out a way, probably because it was growing fast when I was there and changing and very popular it was filling an enormous niche at the time that hadn't quite yet been defined, but was very very clearly something that needed to be filled. Al Jazeera has gone through many changes and has alienated many of the countries around it in its region. And in fact, of course, in the recent fallout of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the embargo that was put on Qatar the number one out of I think there were seven requirements for Qatar to fulfill before it could rejoin the Gulf Cooperation Council. The number one was to get rid of Al Jazeera and that alone helped to rally the people of Qatar together and support what Al Jazeera is a very, very important form of identity, as well as to instrument for the region in general and what's been interesting is, it's Qatar has now been semi re incorporated back into the GCC. Al Jazeera is alive and well it's perhaps a little less flamboyant than it was before that it's been a little bit careful. Sure, but it definitely is still very much active and has been successful in many of its international activities as well. So it's, it's been, I was always very admiring of Al Jazeera it's people are well trained. It operates as a large but very cohesive organization, and I admire. I was extremely admiring also of its ability to have a separate center of academic research and to have a place for that and in fact that as a think tank is one of the best examples of making a niche for itself and becoming well recognized by the international tank community it often will be indicated as one of the standouts in the world at any given annual assessment. And I think it's deserving so I, I'm a fan. I think there's a lot of problems with the country company as it's moved into its next levels and as what is the case with any company and it's certainly undergone major changes but it's a an interesting element and certainly sparked large very professional non Western journalism and broadcasting elsewhere. And so there's all sorts of new styles now that are no longer just the Anglo American. Thank you very much for that we we actually have a question about Al Jazeera from Hassan, and he asks, did you face criticism when you were with Al Jazeera, and if so how did you deal with it. In a ideal position I was never a reporter, I was never on their, their journalism side I was always an academic I served there as I mentioned two months as a fellow and then I received a very large grant from them in fact it's the only Arab broadcaster that has ever offered a string of no strings attached grant to a established educational institution. And, and it was no strings, and that's was the operative for Cambridge it would not have been able to accept that it was a grant like any other. So, I developed a project that was very much looking at media as it had changed after the Arab uprisings, but there was an element of the funding coming from Al Jazeera, in the sense that at the time for example in Egypt. There were three, I think even originally four correspondence that were incarcerated from Al Jazeera that were incarcerated by the Egyptian government, and therefore what had originally been a plan to do research in Egypt we couldn't do. So, the relationship was definitely a real relationship they were our funder we could not go into property areas in which our academics would be a risk because of the nature of the funder. We went to Algeria because it had closed the office of Al Jazeera already almost a decade before the grant was offered so we couldn't go there. It just simply would have been too dangerous for us, even though in our research we didn't say oh we're you know from Cambridge here on an Al Jazeera funding that's not what we said, but we also didn't cover it up and one has to be straightforward and if there are questions about something we need to be able to be transparent. So, it did affect our coverage to some degree on the other hand, we did get some criticism in Turkey, as it went through quite a bit of change while we were covering it it moved actually quite significantly from quite an open society to one. After the attempted coup in which academics and journalists were being incarcerated fired in large numbers and we were, you know, we were doing research the whole time, and spoke out about that, but also were able to see different sides. So, I feel as though we did the right kind of academic work there by trying to also understand the popularity of somebody. Such as air to one, because very much in the West it was described as somebody that was increasingly authoritarian and indeed he was, but how do you actually justify or understand that within the country. And that was something that Al Jazeera felt was very important that we understood and presented that side as well. So I feel as though it did help in us also realizing that there were multiple sides after all Al Jazeera's tagline is the story and the other story so it was important for us to understand that that's what we do as as academics as we present provide different sides of a story. Interesting, but you know studying the media at these particular historical turning points it really really gives you, you know the pulse of the society and the pulse of politics. I noticed that Charlie has his, his hand up Charlie would you like to jump in. I had a message from the students and thank you so much. This conversation is fascinating rocks and your story and your father's story is so inspiring and such a such a such a fascinating insight into the politics of the region and the question actually that she messing you who's on a my second year course was asking about, is it the case that even with the attention that has been we pay to Iranian hostage crisis that even that we still sort of underestimate its significance the way the way in which it's continued to reverberate. And what he was particularly the student was particularly pointing to was that in my course we listen, we look at Donald Trump's background in politics and his first interview in 1980 occurs around the time of the Iranian hostage crisis. And he's very much influenced by what happens there. Steve Bannon is in someone who's US Marine in the Middle East at the certain sort of segment of American society. As you mentioned, there's still a sense that that is still a sort of a, an open sore. Yeah, do you think it's something that we still don't really appreciate. It's such a good question and if I could begin by say I'd love to see that interview of Trump's because I haven't seen that and and I would be really fascinated to see it and in fact, I remember. I was reading, probably in about 2007 or eight an incredibly useful article written by a scholar in the United States called Elizabeth heard who has since become very much more well known but at the time, I think it was one of those first papers in the first conference and I happened to be at that conference. And she describes how, when the hostage crisis began, what happened in the majority of schools and classrooms around the country was that in the United States was that people had only had only ever heard about Israel as a part as the Middle East. They didn't really know about that much of the other parts of the world in that region.  So what's interesting is that from Iran's perspective is, it is incredibly important. It was also fundamentally misunderstood on both sides, which I thought, by being right in it. It was very interesting. It was immediately taken up and misinterpreted or reinterpreted or interpreted for different reasons to be different things by both sides, using quite different facts, or interpretations of facts. And I think that what got lost was all of the elements that actually would make unraveling this. It was so difficult. And, but it by having white washed out or ignored so many of the things that were important and instead really featured those things that weren't, or that were less important to the relationship of two countries. And so one of the things that certainly happened, I mean, the United States is actually one of the things that is fascinating is the United States has encountered this very same kind of situation of entire embassies being taken and sequestered for a year in China at the time, before it became sort of Vietnam and, you know, the, and, and, and Cambodia and Laos. That happened. And nothing happened. I mean the US sort of waited until the people were released and everybody got out fine and that was it but this one was immediately one of the first things that happened was that the embassy people were no longer construed in the American press as officials of the American government they were construed as American families. And that's what started the whole yellow ribbon movement which sort of popularized the whole thing everybody wore yellow ribbons, and the whole idea that they were doing government work was lost that they therefore had taken on the risk by as a profession as part of what goes on when representing a country and instead were sort of refashioned into this set of victims of that had no had no reason to be victims. Something that happened on the Iran side was that just by chance the acceptance of the Shaw into the United States which is what triggered the whole thing he was brought in for medical reasons. The Iranian government was never informed before he that would happen. Happen to be on the most important Shia day of the year moharam. And so the Americans that did this surely didn't know this, or if they did they weren't listened to at the point where he was accepted. And the kind of thing that for Iranians was absolutely clearly had been symbolically timed. Clearly there was more to this. And that's why the association in Iran was. Well then that's going to be a repeat of what happened in the 1950s when the American coup over through the Prime Minister who had nationalized oil. And so, and which took place in the American Embassy and that was a coup. So these are things that get lost in translation. And I think, you know, are the elements that have been in many ways, reinterpreted and misinterpreted. And yes, I my one, you know, tick at the top of the boxes of all of the problems is probably I would still put it as the hostage crisis, even if people don't remember it. Even if people don't know that that's what the problem is. That's what it is still. It was a hugely shaming experience for the United States, and, and for Iran, basically, both of them. Thanks very much, Roxanne. We have a couple of couple of more questions. One was a couple of follow up. Well, one follow up question on that, which was, do you think the cultural divide makes it harder to negotiate with Iran. And in that sense makes it a misunderstood state. And then another little clarification question about with your Al Jazeera grant, did you have completely unrestricted reporting and research. So let me answer the second one first because that's the easy one because it's a one word answer and the word is yes. Absolutely. I mean, we could not have had that grant accepted without the contract ensuring that we also had full control overall publication, which was, of course, something new for Al Jazeera. I mean, it's a publishing company. Why would they have rights to everything that we found out and would, you know, publish and not publish. But that was absolutely, you know, in stone in terms of the contract. It was a complicated contract and it was really fascinating and, and I think it in it really was a success. I think we both learned how to how to huge organizations they kept saying, Oh, two huge organizations working together that couldn't be more different. Well, indeed. And, and it was, it was a felicitous relationship, I think we both came out happy with with what emerged. And so the Iranian thing I don't quite understand with the word, how you're using the word in your question of cultural differences but the United States and Iran have both succeeded in, in undertaking many significant negotiations with cultures that are not their own. And I would say that among the countries in the world, they are two extremely well placed countries in terms of being able to get over cultural divides. I mean, the United States as the country is the is this is the is the great power that came to power on the back of alliances it was the first global world in terms of a power and that's how it's done it is is negotiating with other cultures and bringing them on side and coming up with huge concepts such as all the international institutions that brought on every culture if you will into things like the WTO and the WHO and whatever. And Iran is at the center of the Silk Road it has always negotiated multicultural it is many many cultures itself, in fact.  And so, in if in essence I don't see that as the problem. It's both very open to, to being able to negotiate and in the right circumstances as Obama and Rohani who brought the to the nuclear deal together. It took leadership it took grit, and it worked. It took those two characters to bring two countries together and. The opposite can be said that in withdrawing from the deal. It was a different kind of character and set of characters and so I think a lot of it has to do with leadership and political will. Just to jump in on that one rocks and what what do you think about the future of the deal. I have to admit talk about think tank work it seems like that's what I'm doing at the moment is is weighing in and trying to read the Biden administration tea leaves and I, I have to admit right at the moment I'm not quite sure where it's going. I think on the one hand, many of us who are supporters and I put myself strongly into that of the nuclear deal the JCP away had expected that it would move more quickly on the Biden side. In many ways it's to recapture it as the low hanging fruit, it's negotiated, we know what's in it. And the key thing about it is it's a verification system it's simply the instrument. That ensures that nuclear development doesn't take place in Iran it dropped when the JCP away was signed it started going up once it was over. And, and I think any of us would sleep more soundly in our beds if we knew that as an arms agreement, it was back on track. So I think we had hoped that that would happen more rapidly, and there are many many ways that the Europeans who have kept the deal, ruggedly alive. On its last feet, nonetheless alive had developed for sort of simultaneous ways that both countries could get back in and say face and, and be able to reconstitute that part of it and what's often forgotten is that the deal was negotiated as something that would have flanking about diplomacy in other words that other negotiations on missiles on regional security on even possibly malicious it didn't specify at all. But it was understood that all of those agreements would follow next. So I think at this point it's a little disconcerting that we're moving from a phrase of compliance with compliance which would mean the US coming back on with a reduction and sanctions with Iran coming back on and dropping the enrichment. And so both of them complying. Now we're talking and beginning to hear the phrase freezing for freezing, which in some sense is a little less warming to the soul. And, and I don't see that necessarily working very well because of two important things one key thing is that there is a presidential election. In June, and the current reformists have been very badly damaged in Iran by the failure of the of the JCPOA the nuclear deal. And so the likelihood of them retaining power is almost zero. The likelihood of a more moderate hardliner if there could be such a thing is now beginning to to recede if some form of the JCPOA does not come back on it will be a country that is sanctioned has a nuclear program and an extremely comfortable and armed to the teeth set of neighbors. And so the temperature in the Gulf will be running high. So that being the other part of it so I think we're all hoping that the Biden administration can find some way forward to get this in operation before that election takes place because once a hardliner comes on, I think it's going to be over for a while. And I think you may have have answered one of the follow up questions which was about who do you think is going to take the lead in moving, you know getting the deal back on track that you think it will be the Biden administration rather than the Iranian side. Well, I think it's both. But to be really specific, it was the American administration that left the deal, and Iran stayed in it for another full year. And the reason for that the Iran deal was put together, not, not based on trust, it was based on distrust, but the distrust was basically all heading one direction, and that was about Iran. I mean the distrust was Iran was going to make a bomb, Iran had to be contained. So, the deal reflects that set of limitations on Iran should it break its compliance. The deal has no partnering constraints on any other party of the deal breaking their, their part of the agreement. So, nobody anticipated that the United States would be the one that would stop complying. And, as a result, the only response Iran had within the terms of the deal was to go back and start making nuclear material it did there were there are no other elements to it. And that's what this deal happens to cover. And that's what makes it such a technical deal and why in many ways this deal, in my view, is simply a way to verify and keep Iran's nuclear deal contained. In any case, that's why Iran stayed in it, but it feels very strongly that having signed an international deal can complied with the deal, it then had one of the parties leave the deal and reimpose sanctions so it feels, and I think with some justification that at least the deal should be working in tandem to get back in. But that the United States should indicate in some way that it plans to fulfill a commitment to get back in. So I'm not saying that the US is the only one to do it they both are now in breach. But I think the Iranians feel that one of the problems with the existing deal is that there's nothing that will guarantee a future administration not coming back it, not withdrawing should the Biden administration come in. So there it, it is extremely interested in having follow on negotiations about a number of things but particularly that. So it's, it's, it's once again as I felt all the way through the years of watching these two countries. I think they share a great deal of common, even in this deal is how do we get there. Thank you that's a really fascinating insight into it you know into the deal and where we where we are today. We have one last question which we may not have, I may not be able to do in a minute. Okay I'll try to get it short, but I think this is somebody maybe thinking about future future study or things that they want to go on to do. So today would like to see your, hear your views about what are the most pressing topics regarding divided societies in your research, what are kind of the hot topics to do. Well, right now, especially if you're looking at the Middle East but really anywhere, but the Middle East, in particular, the societies are become becoming divided, partially because of climate change. The land is running out the water, you know it's drying the Sahara is expanding at 25 miles a a year all around its perimeter that's pushing people out to the edges. To me societies are going to become increasingly pressed and divided as a result as this as just food and water and and employment and all of that that comes from a more restful setting become stretched. And so I would say one of the most important elements and divided society certainly is that I mean it's across the board. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. It's actually a very, very important area, I think, particularly around divided societies. And I think one of the things we're also finding is that, partially because of media, partially because of the fragmentation within divided societies, we're also finding that a lot of conflict is now taking place in cities is no longer large militaries, you know, exchanging battle on the plains of wherever it's in the roads and this and the alleyways of our cities and so I think our cities are at risk. And I think they are very much what divided societies are there, their, their encounters are closed their, the migration is, is filling them up I mean we have such a good example right now in Beirut. And, and I think there are others that are like that. So, I would, I would proceed to look at those kinds of areas as subjects. It's a rich area I think almost anything that you can do to help understand and and bring news insight will be extraordinarily rich in terms of a career direction. Thank you very much Roxanne for this fantastically wide ranging talk and you know taking us through your, your journey as, you know, as a journalist as an academic as a policy commentator, and also offering some you know, great insight into what's happening in the Middle East today as well so thank you very much. We're delighted to have you in the Center for the Study of Divided Societies delighted to have you in more studies and thank you for your time. Thank you Stacey what a wonderful interviewer you are. It was really fun. Thank you everyone.


Song. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine in a reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. It is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song. By Hartley Coleridge, read for LibraVox.org by Gemma Bluth. Song. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song. By Hartley Coleridge, read for LibraVox.org by Joseph Finkbag. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song. By Hartley Coleridge, read for LibraVox.org by Christian Hughes. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song. By Hartley Coleridge, read for LibraVox.org by Evan Barnes. Song. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song. By Hartley Coleridge, read for LibraVox.org by Rhonda Fetterman. Song. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song. By Hartley Coleridge, read for LibraVox.org by Secrets. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Song. She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be. Her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, a well of love, a spring of light. But now her looks are coy and cold, to mine they nare reply, and yet I cease not to behold the lovelight in her eye. Her very frowns are fairer far than smiles of other maidens are. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.


The annual Pearl Harbor Dinner has been a tradition in Bemidji for nearly a decade. Lakeland News reporter Cheryl Moore shares how veterans commemorated the evening in this week's community spotlight. Last week, the U.S. recognized the 76th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yesterday, over 60 local veterans got together to reflect on their time in service. We have an annual Pearl Harbor Dinner. We include it as a membership dinner and also thanking the Pearl Harbor veterans and all veterans. So, it's a membership dinner and the celebration of the Pearl Harbor Day. The vets were treated to a roast beef dinner served by the students from the J-R-O-T-C at the Bemidji High School. There was also a silent auction with proceeds going to local veterans and a guest speaker to help celebrate the evening. The things that veterans, you know, we come from all walks of life, from all demographic organizations and, you know, communities, but we all become one community as a veteran. And so it's really important to, you know, share that, to celebrate that and understand that we're better than, you know, just one individual here, one individual there that is a community we are, you know, very powerful and very resilient. The veterans that sat in these chairs tonight got more than just a warm meal. Tonight was also filled with laughter and comradery. There aren't as many gatherings of this size as there used to be and it's just a good thing for veterans to be able to come together and talk. During the ceremony, vets who served overseas were recognized. There was even one veteran who was there during the attack in Pearl Harbor. The vets who lost their lives during service were also honored during a special part of the ceremony. It was a great event to top up another successful year for the Bemidji Auxiliary Club. It's just a fun evening for veterans and their families to come together. The dinner was great. The whole thing was in the speaker, he was really great. Reporting in Bemidji with this week's community spotlight, Cheryl Moore, Lakeland News. The Bemidji Auxiliary Club hosts events for veterans throughout the year and they're always looking for new members. If you're interested, we have the information on our website, lptv.org. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Felly mae'n ddweud y cwm commercially ac mae'n dweud y gwaith o'r organiadau cymryd yn hynny o'r technol digital ar y gwaith. Felly mae'n ddych yn ei ddweud. Felly mae'n rhai prosesu yma, oherwydd mae'n gwneud yn enwedig i gweithio a'r cyfan. Mae'r tâliau yn y gwaith a'r gwneud yn eich gwaith. Ond mae'n amlwg ar ddweud eich gwaith, mae'ny'n amlwg. Mae'n amlwg nad oedd o ddweud eich gwaith. Mae'n amlwg eich gwaith o'r technol. If the organisations are willing to invest in it, that's not a problem. The real issue is bringing the people with you so that the organisation is fit for purpose in terms of the staff that it has and that the working culture is right. When you consider digital transformation, it's all about people. It's all about how people go about doing their jobs in order to deliver business success. The more that I've got into it, the more I've realised that this is about taking barriers away from people and giving people really the tools for them to do what they need to do to the best of their ability. So, from my perspective, digital is becoming more and more important. From a charity perspective, it's becoming absolutely critical because it's about how we connect with our people, it's about how we connect with the people that we're here for, but also the people who are giving us the vital funds in order to make a difference. Taking the initiative at a top level to do it. That means hard decisions, really easily said, very difficult to do because there's a conflict of priorities. It's not like charity leaders have been sat on their laurels just letting things tick along. There's a huge number of things involved in keeping the established charities going. There were a lot of things restricting what we were doing. So, we started to actually think about what is the point of the move, what is the culture that we want from our people. And the viewpoint was that we don't want people sat at our desk, we don't want people shied away from actually the people that we're here for and the people that we need to network with and raise money with. We want our people to be out there. And the real question came back to us actually, we want our people to be able to access their work wherever they are and however they're working, but still get the same feel for it. What it will do is it will probably bring great efficiencies of scale for you. Enable your resources, your people to work in better ways, be more positive about their work. And those are sort of soft benefits that it's not always easy for leadership to understand straight away. So, it's very easy to be in a position where you think this is going to cost a lot of money but we're not going to make any money from it. But in fact, it's about setting yourself up for a much more flexible approach to the organisation as a whole going forward. We are really seeing that by changing how our people work is having a huge impact on how we're connecting with our audience and therefore the service that we deliver. So, instead of a mentality of well they must come to us and we will then provide it, we are really changing our viewpoints being out with our service users because the tools are helping people get out there, not be a barrier to people getting out there. The problem with cystic fibrosis is an issue with cross infection and somebody with cystic fibrosis can never meet somebody else with cystic fibrosis. That means when we want to connect with our community it can't be in a physical environment. It takes a real stand out to digital project to be that kind of light bulb moment that switches everyone on to the power and the impact that digital can have in terms of influence, brand awareness and so on. For us that has definitely been our work around ending the awkwardness around disability. I have definitely seen since I've been at Scope teams really changing the way that they want to communicate coming to digital, people like our policy team will now come to digital and to find out the best way to promote the research that they're doing to get a high profile amongst influencers and so on. We've seen some really positive changes in the way that digital is perceived and the way that people think they can use digital. I've seen examples where the aim has been to put in a change in the way of working before you bring in the technology so actually analysing how people use the space and the building and the ways that they want to work long before you make any decisions about technology and I think that is probably the best approach because then you're able to establish with the people themselves what's the best way for them to actually work and what technology do they need. We need to go right back to people's job descriptions, the way that we recruit people, the way that we train and support them and the way that we manage their personal development so that digital isn't just seen as something that the digital team do. Really this shift is often talked about as being a technology change. It's not, it's a people and audience behaviour change that we're trying to keep up with. So you do need that expertise. Where I think digital teams have fallen down is that they've allowed themselves to be kept in these boxes and they've become defensive and they've tried to own digital too much. It's a natural behaviour when you're working within a team environment but I think there's a realisation and lots of the digital experts I know who work in charities will say this themselves that actually they would be happier being out in the rest of the organisation and they've reached a point where they no longer wish to be a director at holding on to digital skills usually overburdened by too many requests. So I think there's change on both sides and the core of that is making digital something where there is a heart of expertise but actually the skills are across the charity not all in one place. Seeing silos really being broken down and from my view that unless people in IT are closely joined you cannot make the leaps that we have currently seen as part of our organisation and I genuinely think that some of the cultural changes that we've gone through whilst partly linked to a move is because we've turned digital transformation on its head and made it a tool for people to get out there and use and I think now seeing it being better down now we've been here for about four to six months you're really seeing a different energy and vibe in the workplace and that is because of digital transformation aiding rather than preventing some of those cultural needs. Organisations like Macmillan have been extremely successful in taking digital skills across their organisation so for example they made digital upskilling the key part of their first stage of digital transformation and they've now trained I think a thousand people in the organisation in social media skills the difference between having what they had before three social media editors and a thousand staff who have social media skills is pretty easy to understand what the impact of something like that can be and that's just one thing. One of the big things for me is about joining people and IT together and I'm having so many conversations from an IT perspective where HR is not at the table and actually if you really want to get good skills conversations if you want to be thinking about who you're recruiting if you want to think about succession planning to actually make digital transformation here to last for the long term those conversations need to be joined up the only way digital makes an impact is through people and therefore it's about getting your people stories lined up in the first place to actually go out and deliver it. I think digital transformation isn't something that has a start and a finish necessarily I think that it's something that if you undertake it correctly it puts you in a flexible position so that you can continue to adapt over time if you take the example of the way people use their mobile phones these days they're constantly upgrading they're constantly changing bits and pieces of it but it's still essentially a mobile phone. Digital transformation is very much like that I don't see it as being you buy your digital transformation and then you just keep it forever essentially you have to keep moving but to get yourself into that position first of all where you can continually upgrade and adapt according to the changing environments is the way to start it. Digital generally has moved so much just in the last ten years that there's no point trying to estimate where it's going to be in the next five to ten years anymore you just have to be able to anticipate much more short term change than you used to have to do with the more traditional ways of working and that's why digital transformation I think is really important in terms of just creating the right environment for you to be continually adapting to a changing world


Shoulder dislocations and partial dislocations are some of the most common and disabling injuries in active young people, especially athletes. After the bone has been popped back and the initial agony is over, the issue of what to do next is much debated. One option is surgery to try to repair the damage, but whether that is preferable to less invasive care remains controversial. Researchers now have evidence that supports the surgical option, at least for young people suffering a first event. The team monitored the degree of bone damage to the shoulder socket, or glenoid bone, which holds the head of the humerus in place. Until now, there has not been much information about the extent of this damage to guide a decision on the best approach. The shoulders of 714 student athletes were imaged by MRI scanning, and the subjects were then followed for four years. During this time, 22 of the sample group experienced a first time anterior dislocation, or partial dislocation, events in which the arm bone is pushed forward from its normal location. One individual suffered such an injury in each shoulder. The injuries included five full dislocations and 18 partial dislocations. Another six athletes with a previous history of shoulder injuries experienced one dislocation and five partial dislocations. Comparing the MRI scans made before and after the injuries revealed the level of bone loss in the glenoid bone and also any associated damage to the surrounding tissues. On average, a single injury led to a 6.8% decline in glenoid bone width. Four shoulders suffered 13.5% or more bone loss, while 12 shoulders had at least 5% bone loss. Subjects with a previous history of shoulder injuries had pre-existing bone loss averaging 10.2%, increasing to an average of 22.8% after the event that occurred during the study period. Based on their findings, the researchers recommend early surgical stabilization of the injured shoulders in young people, sustaining a first time anterior shoulder instability. The team believes this early action will promote better recovery with less risk of future shoulder injury.


Are all white men colonizers? Are all Asian women sellouts? And are all Asian guys internet in cells? Those are some questions that were raised by this viral article. All right, everybody, if you're excited, please hit that like button and let's get into this. Welcome everybody to the hot pop boys. David and Andrew here. We're talking about this viral article that is about white men and Asian women. So real quick, the author, Elaine Cho is an Asian woman who mostly dates white men but feels very, very conflicted about it because a portion of white men have a very condescending entitlement over Asian women. And it can turn to be very ugly. Yeah, this was really interesting article that came out last week. And I would say that if you are Asian American and you went to college, there's probably somebody in your circle of friends that has read this article. It went hyper viral in a world, not the world, but in the Asian world. I was actually fascinated by how many different lenses that people could view the same stimulus by. So we combed through a bunch of the comments to the article on Reddit, on Twitter. And these are the four main comments we saw and we're gonna analyze them. They also represent four different viewpoints that we find very interesting. All right, number one came from a lot of white guys that were offended by Elaine Cho's article. One of the most common things was a little bit defensive attitude saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not all us white guys. That ain't me and my friends. I'm married to a Chinese woman. I never thought none of this evil stuff ever before. So here's the truth on that comment. Of course, not all white guys are like evil. Our apportion is a one slice of the ratio distribution pie, totally the problematic and toxic and having that dominant colonizer mindset, I'm sure it is. But I do think one thing is interesting Andrew that a lot of people don't understand about pie distribution ratios because not everybody in society lives the most ultra holistic life. It depends on what slice you're exposed to. For example, if you only date frat boys that are part of like Sigma Zeta, you might get exposed to more problematic type guys. If you date guys who are like soy drinking like soft boys, you might get exposed to guys who don't rank as high on the problematic meter. And that's your exposure as an individual. Yes, it does. There's definitely a tinge of toxic masculinity across the board because if you've ever been a locker room with any type of guy, there are some conversations like, I'm not trying to say Asian guys cannot be toxic at all, but I will say it definitely feels like non Asian men sometimes feel a certain entitlement over Asian women that even Asian men don't feel. And that's always been really weird to me. It's not all white guys. It's actually a lot of other types of men too. So anyway, wrapping up, that's what a lot of white guys have been saying in there.  So that was interesting. Another very interesting comment that seemed to be coming from possibly other minority women that were non Asian was, hey, why are you surprised about this? I already assumed that white men said vile stuff about us anyways. Wow. I would say that these were actually the most interesting comments that had the longest reply chains in both the comments section and in Reddit. What is this comment trying to say? And what is it getting at? Is it getting at the potential privilege? And I'll put privilege and quotes of certain Asian women or Asian people. I believe it was from a lot of black and Latina women. Obviously some black and Latina women do also date white guys. But the truth is I think that black and Latina women on average date white men at a much lower rate than Asian women do. I think that she was pointing out that what privilege you have Miss Elaine Cho to ever believe until you were 25 years old that white men would say anything but vile dominating things about having sex with you. Dude, this is pointing to some very much deeper dynamics that would take much longer to break down. Yeah, we don't have time to get all into it in this video. Regardless, it's that a lot of people feel like certain groups of Asian women, maybe particularly East Asian women who are educated, who are maybe of Christian background or very, very Westernized, that they tend to lean into whiteness to the point where they forget that they're a minority and they forget that white dudes, when they're in the locker room, the white dudes will talk about you like, well, you're just crazy. Well, like you're just a very different species and probably a species that, and by the way, like we said earlier, not all, probably a species that ranks lower than them on the power scale. Yeah, there's also an assumption, trust me, that the white guys feel like that Asian women really, really like them, like all Asian women, that's what a lot of white guys think. Yeah, so I think that basically, these were fascinating comments, probably written by black women from what I could tell, basically accusing Asian women of saying, hey, listen, I'm not saying your pain isn't real, but I'm shocked that you're shocked. And there was a tinge of sassiness like, I guess that's what you get for thinking you were white. Yeah, kinda like, well, welcome to the club. Welcome to the minority women club. Another comment, which I believe was probably left by a lot of Asian guys who've had this conversation before, because obviously the white man, Asian women pairing is very, very popular amongst the world, to be honest. It basically said, hey, I know that the author is acknowledging all these horrific things that she's heard, but she does not tell Asian women to stop dating white men. So why are they still doing it? Yeah, there were some comments from some like Asian internet guys, and forgive me for the voice, but they're probably like, hey, I believe you, cause I saw my sister and some of my cousins go through the same thing, but how come at the end of the article, it just seems like you basically say, I just need to find better white guys and just be more, have a better filtration system, but you don't stop loving them. Good, good, it sounds like you still love them a lot. Yeah, I mean, I think as Asian guys who are kind of outside of this dynamic, who feel like their impact is very minimal, if anything at all, it's kind of like Asian guys are sitting here- No, no, what do you mean impact is very literal? Cause we feel heavily impacted by this pairing. No, no, they feel Asian men feel impacted, but as an Asian guy, you feel impacted by this pairing as far as like the dating pool and the dynamics of race and sex and everything, but you don't feel like you can have an impact. No, like you cannot do anything about it because Asian men, I do think I've heard that some Asian men do give like the side-eye to like Asian women who date white guys, but there's not like a lot of like public shaming per se. Well, Asians are pretty quiet. Yeah, we're pretty like, we just kind of, we just kind of deal with it and then blast it out on the internet, you know? Yeah, yeah, Asian guys, I think they might even like see it in public and just not like look the other way and then just go home and be like, first of all, let me say this, I think that all Asian guys acknowledge this dynamic, you would be hard pressed to find more than like 10% of Asian guys who say, nah, I don't care at all. But obviously, when you feel like you can't impact something, it's not beneficial to care.  Yeah, I do feel like a lot of Asian guys are like, man, I wish she told women to stop dating white guys at the end of the article. And I'm like, listen, at the end of the day, even if she said that, that's not gonna change anybody's mind. One article does not change your behavior. Okay, it's great for acknowledgement and it's spreading awareness, but one article cannot change people's minds.  Do you think they're just like done off kale forever? Or are they just like gonna be more discriminating to go to like the best elite, you know, black sea salt kale salads from like the better ranked restaurants, right? Because they want the kale, if you guys get what I mean. A lot of people still eat kale salads. Yeah, they want the Caleb from West Elm, AKA the kale, they want it, even though they know it's like, got a chance of being bad, they just keep rolling the dice. Yeah, it is interesting though, obviously on the subreddit, you got more of the, you know, angry comments as well from, you know, the Asian guys. And the fourth most common comment, this is probably the one that I saw the most, especially on Twitter, mostly by Asian women or women alike. Thank you for writing this. This was very emotional and tough for me to read because I have gone through similar experiences. This culture needs to change. I think people across the board, whether you're an Asian woman or a woman or a non Asian woman, they're very thankful that Elaine wrote this. Right. And it was well written and it's gonna get spread. Listen, I posted this article on my IG story and it got a thousand link clicks. Right off IG is crazy. I can't think of anything else I could have posted that would get that many link clicks. So I'm glad I could spread the article with people. It's just something that touched on something that is hyper relevant to, you know, 25 to 45 year olds. In terms of all the different responses that we saw from the article, they represented different perspectives and different agendas, you know? Yeah. And I think here's the thing. If the four different viewpoints are not empathizing with each other and only caring about their own selves. They're only their skin in the game.    I'm feeling like this fetishization is poisonous. It's toxic. And then white men are just gonna be like, I don't know, it's still working. I'm still gonna go ahead and do whatever I do. Right? But that's why it's important that we have the conversation and we hear each other out so we can empathize. Because obviously overall, the entitlement over women and taking Asian and white out of it, it's probably something that needs to change. It's something that needs to change and men overall probably could do a better job of just kind of like removing some of the most toxic language and thoughts out of it. But obviously to be honest, white men being the dominant group of the past 250 years, they're kind of acting like the colonizers of it all. Yeah. I mean, I think that all men can be better. I think the article was obviously pointing to some larger dynamics, but the larger dynamics were manifesting themselves more so in personal anecdotes. And my final takeaway on this article after we've analyzed everything is just like, I guess I'm glad to see more discussion on it, but it kind of goes to show you that that 25 to 45 year old range, man, they're just confused. You know, I just feel like it's just like, it's something to me that I'm like, all these dynamics that she wrote in the article to me are like hyper obvious for whatever life I've lived or the things that I've seen or things I know people that have gone through things, but by all means, I'm glad that she wrote it. To me, I kind of look at this article just like I would look at a protest or a rally against Asian hate. You know, it doesn't stop Asian hate, it doesn't stop these incidences from happening and it may not even reach the most problematic people. Like the super problematic white men are not even gonna read this whole article, you know, that need to- They don't read anything on the cut. But it's really a lot of the other people who need to get together and they're gonna feel like, oh, we can take action or we can stand up for Asian women next time or we can stand up for women next time, you know, like if you're around a bunch of guys who are saying this and that, you know, growing up. People used to say crazy stuff to me in high school, but I will tell you this, to be fair, there was a couple Asian chicks that were, you know, a lot of people- We're messing with. We're messing with. And people used to say crazy stuff to me in the locker room on my same sports team. Yeah. But they didn't even mean it to go against Asians. They were just like, yeah, it was crazy.  Welcome to the world of being a minority guy and being defined by your worst apples. Asian guys, we get defined by our bottom apples. Black men get defined by that. White guys, this is just, this is how the conversation goes, unfortunately. So obviously we all wish our bad apples weren't there, but again, we all, it's just maybe it's time. We have to talk about this. In a way, you would probably say that white guys are happier that they're so dominant they're becoming whack versus just being whack, whack. Oh. Yeah. I would probably imagine that the white guys out there that are written about in this article are still happy about that. Just an idea. We don't know. Leave it in the comments down below, guys. This is a interesting conversation that needs to happen more because the problem is not gonna be solved tomorrow. But it is very unfortunate. I hope that Elaine Chell finds the peace that she wants moving forward or at least is on that journey and that that peace begins spinning the wheels as well. All right, everybody, that's gonna wrap it up here. Thank you so much for watching the Hot Pop Boys. Please leave it in the comments down below what you thought of this article or what you think about this dynamic. I would really encourage you to read the article if you can or at least read some reviews about it. Thank you so much for watching and until next time, we out. Peace.


So the next step, tip number eight is use, this one says, using the status bar for quick insights. Use your status bar for quick insights. Yeah, a lot of times I see we forget that the status bar has a lot of interesting insights. So for example, I have this table. And if I highlight this table at the bottom here, I have a sum, obviously. This is the summation, sum of my values. And then someone says, okay, what's the average? What's the average for this round of wine? So beyond, so beyond long. What's the average? So what's the average? Basically, I don't need to come here and bring equals to average and all that stuff. That's a waste of time. I can just highlight, then look all the way down here at the bottom. It's a bit small to see for you guys on the screen. But at the bottom here, you have average, you have count, you have numeric, you have minimum, maximum, sum and everything there. So that is your status bar. And then your status bar has various options. So I can see average is 17,917. Now, if you right click that status bar, you would see all sorts of options available to you. Lots of options. So these are all the things that your status bar can show by default. All you need to do is tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And all I did is right click the status bar. So try and use the status bar, or remember to use the status bar to show you quick insights into your data. All right. This is why it's really cool. Thanks for watching another training video from DeepRound Consulting. See you in the next video.