This is Winston Welton, I am your host today for CoronaWatch. The date is Wednesday, April 22, 2020, and I am joined by Cynthia Sinclair and Stephanie Dalton. Welcome, ladies. Aloha. Good bye. So, lots happened in the last week since we last met, and it's hard to keep up with so many things going on, but I think probably one of the biggest things that's now sort of the problem is that we're talking about the liberation of states that Donald Trump has called for. What is this liberation? Is it real? Are the rest of us who don't want to be liberated yet being duped by the mainstream media? Is that what's going on, or are the other folks kind of being duped? What do you think? Let's start with you, Cynthia. Well, I think it's a very political divide that's happening here. It seems that Republican states tend to want to open up as opposed to Democratic states that don't necessarily want to. You look at responsible people like Andrew Cuomo, who is very adamant about making sure that the testing levels are in place before you open up, and then you have the opposite extreme of an interview that I watched earlier today with the mayor of Las Vegas, who was talking about the importance of putting the many before the one instead of the one before the many. She wants to put the many before the one, and she thinks it's more important for people to get back to work than it is for them to save lives. Is that a valid argument? I mean, just playing the devil's advocate, are these people in their right mind? Is this whole coronavirus thing overblown? Are we not dealing with a full deck here? Well, I don't believe that it is that we're not dealing with a full deck. I believe that people are desperate, and I understand that. And Anderson Cooper was doing that interview this morning, and he was trying to give her every out to explain why she thinks it's important, and it's okay. And still, without her actually being able to articulate that she wants to put the many before the one, that's basically what she was saying, and that was her only argument. And when he tried to ask her about testing, do you want to put testing in place? Have you talked to the mayor of Los Angeles, who's trying to make sure when he opens up, he's got all the testing in place, and she didn't even want to hear anything about it. She said, well, yes, I talked to him, but no, I'm not talking to him about that. And it seems like some people are staying sort of in an information bubble that doesn't really include the science. And I think it's important for people to include the science. We see Georgia saying they're going to open up tomorrow. We've had other states that are trying to open up, even though they don't meet the federal guidelines of a 14-day downward trend of cases and deaths. And these people are not even listening to that. So how do we figure this out? I don't know. Oh, it's a big question, because I want to keep an open mind and think, okay, am I being sold a bill of goods, but it seems to me that people are still getting infected. Our death rate goes up by thousands daily in this country. There's no place to put the dead in Italy. It's getting better there. I mean, they may have hit a peak in Ecuador. They're leaving bodies on the street. Is this all just overreaction for us being put into quarantine in here in Oahu? We've gone, the mayor says, May 31 is our new deadline to get out of quarantine. We got Georgia opening up tomorrow. Other states, I was talking with a friend in Chicago. He said less than 20% of the people at his bank were wearing masks. And none of them were practicing social distancing yesterday, which to us in Hawaii seems like madness. Stephanie, are we mad in Hawaii, or are they mad, or are we just both all of us lost and we just can't find our way because of the confusion from STEMI from the top? That's a good question, Winston. I don't know. I'm totally perplexed. I don't know that these people are watching the same shows I'm seeing of the rooms where people are dying, and that is not a good way to go. And it's a very desperate situation, not one you would choose to get into. My concern is not only for their recklessness in going out now, but that they're not thinking about history. History teaches us some things, and even the people of earlier ages knew to get out of the way of these things. That was their only defense, was to go, leave. People moved. They got out of the way of whatever it was, the sweating sickness or the plague or what have you tried to outrun it, that's all they could do. But what is really perplexing for me is that we all know, and I don't, maybe we're not talking about it enough, but there's asymptomatic virus infection. So there are many people who are not showing any symptoms whatsoever, but are shedding this virus voluminously everywhere they go. So why is that not a bit of a concern to everybody? Just because you're standing by somebody that doesn't have a cold or anything, that's really wild. So that also has to do with the testing issue and why it's so important, because we don't know how many people are infected, because even if we think about it just as county running noses, that's not going to tell us how many are infected. And it's going to turn out to be if, in fact, the Rockefeller Foundation is going to do this, has established a national testing plan, what we're going to find out is what I think a lot of people don't want to know is that the infestation rate is extremely high. Is that something that we actually want? I mean, do we want to have a herd immunity coming about? The other thing that's troubling is why is this the Rockefeller Foundation? Where's the federal government? Where is, how can South Korea be testing on a scale that's so much greater than the United States, you know, the richest, most powerful nation on earth? How is this possible in this day and age? So we have to wait for the Rockefellers to come out with a... Don't you think that that's why they're doing it? Because the federal government is not doing it and has no plans to do it. So somebody needed to step up to do it. It's just like the governors now are forming in these regional associations in order for them to meet their needs that the federal government is not meeting. So I think that now there's response because the people who are conscientious about protection of themselves and their people are taking actions like this to get things done that aren't going to be possible. Fair enough. Cynthia, are you, when you go out, are you, are you wearing a mask as is mandated by our mayor and our governor for your protection and the protection of others? Just going to throw out my bias there.  I'm going without a mask because it's not really a threat and we're being just lied to and bamboozled. This is some sort of socialist takeover of the economy or whatever it is.  Who are other people wearing masks for the people that may be beaming in from everywhere? Well, I don't really know the answer to that as far as other people because I don't go out. Literally, I don't go out. I just not too long ago got out of the hospital. I have lupus and Crohn's disease, so I'm extremely compromised. And if I get it, it's very likely that I will die. So I'm one of the, you know, people that, that hope everybody else will wear their masks. And I'd gone out twice since this all started. And yes, I wore a mask even before it was required, even though I knew that wearing a mask does not protect me from other people or from getting the disease. All it does is protect me from shedding the disease to someone else. And even though I haven't been out at all, I still know that I should just even if to be a good, you know, example for other people, I think it's important. So your civic responsibility, even though you may feel that you don't have this and most likely don't since you've been sequestered away, you just say, this is our civic duty to our fellow humans. Right. Exactly. So and does it seem like people here in Oahu and Honolulu are taking this seriously more than say they are in the states that want to be, whether people want to be liberated? Absolutely, I think it's making a difference. Look at our numbers. Our numbers are better than anywhere else. We have these super low numbers. We're not increasing our cases by very much each day. And that's including all of the islands. You know, we only had four new cases the other day. That's very low, all total. We only have what 10 or 12, I think, deaths total for here in Hawaii. That's a big difference than anywhere else in the country. My children live in the South. They live in Alabama. And what a difference it is because I still have a lot of friends there. And I live there for a number of years. And the people there think that this is all just a big joke. They don't wear the masks. They're not going to wear the masks. And they're adamant about saying nobody's going to tell me I have to. And I think, well, then I guess Alabama is going to go through the herd immunity, like you were saying, is that's what's going to happen. Or as soon as these states start opening up like they are planning on doing. Then we are going to see a huge surge, a resurgence of this virus. And we can look at New York as a really good example. And we can look at what Washington did or California did in the very beginning. They closed down immediately and they kept their numbers low. New York didn't close right away. Their numbers, obviously, we know, make up what I think half of the numbers for the whole country are in New York and New Jersey.  This is not fake news. Those are not fake deaths. You know, that's the thing is that these are real people behind every single statistic. This is someone's mother, sister, brother, father, child, co-worker. We're looking at the CDC came out, I believe, either late yesterday or early today, Stephanie, saying that this winter was going to be worse than it is right now. And I mean, they're obviously using some whatever methods of projection that they have there. We see cases like Taiwan and Singapore. Singapore was being held up as the model, Stephanie, right? That they got the thing right down. But now we're seeing a mass surge. And interestingly enough, they said that the huge majority of the people that are getting in Singapore are not citizens. They're marginalized people who are their guest workers coming from other countries and crowded in dormitories. Do you see parallels with us here in Hawaii that might be a cause or even in this nation about marginalized people, whether the homeless or immigrants or folks without insurance? And do you see this surge coming back here? Well, of course, you know, I don't know anything for sure. And I have no medical degree. But Dr. Bricks said at the yesterday's advisory that there were going to be all of these watches put in place, that there was going to be much observance and watching for signs that things were. She was very, she repeated herself several times saying all of that. But she didn't say how they were going to do that and what was it that they were going to do. And I think, you know, she was implying that she was answering a question about a resurgence and that that was what she was responding to, that everybody was going to be watching out. But with no testing and no real plans to do anything about scheduling the stay at home events and no national policy on that. I don't understand why she could say that. So I was left really perplexed by her because ordinarily she's very informative. But there are a couple of issues here, which are that we don't know about this virus very much. And I think even the medical and the researchers are saying that that we don't know enough yet. We don't know that there's any herd immunity. I don't think that the Black Plague has herd immunity. I mean, you will be wiped out to a man. And the same way with the virus that broke out in New Mexico a couple of years ago. I don't. So so we just don't know anything. And so that's why I'm I'm curious that people are are what have assumptions. They're making assumptions about how this is going to act when it doesn't have any rules that it's letting us know about yet, except that it's a killer. So are they is it just that people are anecdotally looking at evidence in, say, Georgia, Alabama, or, you know, the other states that Donald Trump is. Well, they'd be we can call them, you know, Republican states, but they're filled with human beings that may be led astray by their leaders for whatever reasons, let's just assume that it's positive reasons, although a lot of it seems very political.  He's fomenting your great unrest and it's very scary to the president to be counting on these things. It's one thing for him to call the governors and say, hey, we're going to sweeten the pod if you do open up or whatever. But this seems like terribly irresponsible. Did that strike you the same way, Cynthia? Or I don't know, are we off base here? I just say the authority thing, which you mentioned with Alabama, you know, people have are adverse to authority, right? Anybody telling them to stay at home. So I was just going to say you'd already kind of dipped into that with your Alabama comments. Well, Alabama sort of just gets the, you know, Alabama, Mississippi. It's they kind of get the they're sort of the benchmark, aren't they, for a lot of different things and you you live there, Cynthia. So you understand, is it an anti-government thing? Is it that they're listening to too much right wing talk radio and TV so that they're not really getting a complete picture from the highfalutin scientists and with the big words? They don't. They don't listen to the scientists. They listen to what Trump says. They are completely victims of the Kool-Aid. I don't know how else to describe it. They are so pro-Trump that they can't admit or even face that he might be wrong about something. They don't want to think that he could ever be wrong. And they it's a very much of a, it reminds me of a cult thing, right? But it's all being backed up by all this misinformation that's being thrown out. And we were talking before the show about the algorithms, you know, that there are our use, our media use tells them everything they need to know about us. So then they can really pinpoint who they need to send what information or what misinformation to. And so I think that has a lot to do with it. I'll tell you, one of the things that struck me this week was when I read about William Barr coming out with his statement saying that he will prosecute governors, make some sort of legal ramifications if they don't follow what Trump says. If they're too strict. Now, he didn't have anything to say about the dangerous, life-risking governors that are opening their states too soon and risking people's lives. That he didn't say anything about that. But for the senators, I mean, the governors that will not open their states and are being too strict, then he's got legal ramifications for them. That's absolutely insane. This is the attorney general of the United States, who is supposed to be upholding the law, where this is obviously that the states are closest to them. They know where the outbreaks are happening. They can make these decisions. I mean, if George is allowed to make its decisions, then should Hawaii not be allowed to make its decisions? It's madness when you have an attorney general doing that. And I don't know how I have missed that story. Maybe I just got a coronavirus and Trump overload. But as we're looking at this and we're seeing that there's going to be a resurgence of cases regardless. And it's going to happen everywhere. And we don't know how it's going to happen or what. We're at 37% unemployment right now. And Chicago is not exactly a bastion of the South. So when my friend told me nobody was wearing masks there, I was seeking, what is with people? And I would like to be proven wrong, but I'm seeing people dying all over the place still and that we seem to be doing something right here in Hawaii. But we do have now we're very tourist economy based. We're going to see second quarter unemployment go very widespread. 30% of people didn't pay their rent on time in April. I guess nation wide from a story that I was reading. I get people that there's impacts of the economy are huge. And people are asking, is it worth it? Or should we, who was it? Glenn Beck saying, oh, he happily sacrificed himself for his children and the economy. I'm not sure that that's so true. I also read we're going to looking at famine, biblical famine is what we're seeing. Stephanie, do you see that the government, if it's opening up and forcing these states to open up and be liberated, is it going to step up to the plate then? And somehow if everything still doesn't work out or you're going to see mass government handouts, are we going to see food being delivered and unemployment checks? Or is that going to be then say, oh, no, states, you need to take care of this? Because I saw today they're going to let the states go bankrupt. Well, that's right. And they didn't include the states in the latest package of helpful money. But my concern is that it is just chaotic. And because of not having a national program of testing or a federal policy of containment or a policy for the nation and how to act under this in all the states, it's just chaotic. And I think that this is exactly the kind of environment that our leaders want to be in. Because when it's chaos, then they have a lot more degrees of freedom to do whatever they want and move around in that chaos. However, if you actually have a database, like what Dr. Bricks and Dr. Fauci and the other scientific people say, if we are going to have a national testing program so that we can get a framework of data that can help guide the decisions and the policies that are going to be put in place, apps and that, it's just chaos. And that's how. And do you see that? Cynthia, do you see any organized framework coming out that makes sense, like Stephanie was saying, or do you think it's going to continue to be chaos for a while? I think the only organized thing that I see coming out is what Andrew Cuomo is doing. And you really see him making specific choices that are completely because of what data he gets that day. Not what some political person outside says or if he, and I would love to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting that he had with the president in DC, was it yesterday, I think? I mean, it both said it was a good meeting. I don't know. I don't see Andrew Cuomo just totally kissing Trump's butt. I think he probably would have said, listen, we need this. We need that. You've got to do this and you've got to do that. And this is what's working. And being on the front lines of the worst outbreak, the biggest hotspot that we have in this country, I think he's the one we really need to listen to because he's tried things that didn't work and tried things that didn't work. And so he's kind of got a better handle on this than anybody in Washington does. And so I think that's important. OK. And do you think the same thing, Stephanie, are you feeling optimistic that chaos will not rain and that maybe the Dr. Bricks is and the Dr. Fauci's and other people with their science, their sciences are going to rescue us? Or is it just going to be more political mayhem that's the whim of the minute? I think we've got a better shot, like New York has, with their leadership. Cuomo has now shown leadership. OK, so there's a model. Here in Hawaii, maybe we're getting some leadership from some of the people that are making good decisions now. Well, we may be in a better place now, but look at what we had to go through. Hilo chased away cruise ships. Literally down on the top, you're not coming in. The airlines were coming in with people. There were no temperature takers at the airport. No people that came in from Washington State at during the height of the crisis. Nothing, no check. So look at what happened to us. We didn't get it all right. In Hawaii, I'm talking about now, we didn't get it all right. But people tend to be more rule followers here. And our family, I mean, we're aloha. We're a family base. We want to be safe here on our island. So there are some values that may be guiding our state. Now we're going to lead the nation then, Stephanie. We have a question from a viewer, a viewer like you, says, how are we going to provide tests to everyone? How can we get masks to everyone? Is that going to be possible? And what would that take? As we know that all the president has to do is use that act that's been used since the second war or Korean War to get the productive factories and industry to make those things happen. He can make those things happen. Is it going to happen? Is it going to happen? Is it going to make it happen or do we need to wait for the governors and the Rockefellers to do it? Well, we may, is Trump going to do it? No, I don't think. Yes. I don't know. Cynthia, what do you think? Is the Trump going to do it? Or is it going to be governors and Rockefellers? Governors and Rockefellers, because I think if he was going to do something, he would have done it already. I think what he is doing, and when I watch some of the reports that are coming out from these really hard hit states and these hard hit cities, and they're talking about how they're doing these basic drug deal type deals to get their masks and their PPE delivered for them. And then they show up to pick it up and the feds show up at the same time. And sometimes they abscond with it. The feds take it. And I think that the comment that Jared Kushner made was very telling me about what they think about the federal stockpile. It's ours. Not ours. It's ours. Maybe they're hoarding them at the White House. So it's a lot of, we're getting a lot of gloom and doom, but at the end of this, this is what we're calling the great reset, a great awakening. We're getting a lot of interesting communicative initiatives out of this. We're seeing companies, organizations, state cities, mayors, governors, interesting people step up to the plate, inventing new things. We don't have much time left, but I'd like to know, what are you seeing that's inspiring you that you've said, wow, this is a great thing. It doesn't have to necessarily be in our state or even country. What are you seeing that's happy? You're waving. It's the picture of Los Angeles with a blue sky. I am a California kid born and raised, and so I know what Los Angeles usually looks like, and it doesn't have a blue sky. So seeing Los Angeles with a blue sky was pretty special to me. Okay, so that's one thing that's come out of it, so maybe we'll have some increased environmental awareness of where we want to go now that the EPA doesn't exist anymore, and California's being sued for its stronger emissions controls, but maybe that will be reversed. So that's one thing. And today's Earth Day, it's good you mentioned that. Stephanie, what do you see that's positive, that's interesting, and that's peaking your happy, happy space? Thank you, thank you, Cynthia, because that is a really good thing, and it's happening in a lot of places, and it's a 5% reduction in emissions. And if it can keep up, that's a silver lining, they're saying of this play, of what's happening to us, and that if they could just build on this and keep going, they might be able to meet the standard for reducing our difficulties with the environment and the climate, so which is a standard of 8% reduction every day, so it's still short of that, but that's a very good one. I take great pleasure, I take great joy in seeing that too. My other one that's good, I think is that our Lieutenant Governor, and our Governor, resolved their consternations with each other, so I think that politically, Hawaii has also produced a miracle, and things got better, and so maybe we can lead the nation, which we had a chance to do from the get-go, just like the US had a chance to do from the get-go, blew that, Hawaii blew its get-go, but now let's see if we can't come out and see. Let's see if we can't get it there, and I think that we have every chance to do that with our low rates, and with that, we're gonna have to wrap it up. I want to shout out Sharon Moriwaki, the Senator, has a great little newsletter that she sends out. If you're not on it, sign up for it. It's uplifting, and she's sending it about every day. So let's see what happens in the next week. We're gonna hope for the best. It's been a pleasure having Cynthia Sinclair and Stephanie Dalton on this Corona Watch, and I'm once again your guest host for today. We wish Jay Fiedel a happy recovery from an eye surgery that he had, and we will look forward to seeing him and all of you here next week. Okay ladies, thank you so much. Thank you.


Hello everyone, welcome to another International Relations Capsule for the Shankar AIS Academy. This time I thought we would touch upon two or three subjects, already interesting and important but the background has already been covered so I thought I would just talk about the latest developments. Of course the ongoing most difficult situation is in Ukraine and I'm sure you're all following the developments there. For a few months, two or three months now, this is the eighth month of the war but last two or three months there was some kind of a lull apart from of course the things like annexation of the four republics and criticism of that internationally and NATO talking about countering it and Ukraine saying that they would now press for immediate admission of Ukraine to the NATO which was not very warmly welcomed by NATO. There was not much of a comment on that because nobody wanted to do something serious like that at that point in time. NATO is itself cautious about that but then suddenly out of the blue Ukraine was able to blow up a huge bridge, 19 kilometers bridge which connects Russia to Crimea which of course was annexed by Putin in 2014 and this seems to have hurt the Russians more than any other recent activity in the war and so there was a very quick reaction. It could be various reasons. Generally there was an impression that Russians are not doing too well in the war and that may have caused some concern and in general Mr Putin appointed a new general who is known to be very vicious and very strong and very what shall we say heroic kind of a general. His record is of very serious action in very different situations so the moment this general was called back to the operation in Ukraine it was very clear that something was going to happen and it happened in the last few days. For the first time after several months they hit Kiev very extensively and one could see a large number of fires in the city and though that toll was not very high but it was considered a very serious development Ukraine and the president of Ukraine said there's nothing this is nothing but terrorism and he also said that this is an effort to wipe Ukraine off the world map that is how he put it. He is of course accustomed to speaking in very flowery language so he meant that this was a very serious threat to Ukraine and in response we saw NATO talking about the missile defense system because some 84 missiles were fired and apparently half of them actually hit different targets in Ukraine particularly in and around the Kiev so all all missiles could not be resisted some actually landed and caused some damage and therefore this particular situation has created a demand for NATO to do something about the missile systems how soon they can establish it for Ukraine one does not know but there has been talk of it and even the US has talked about giving them a missile system how long it will take what will happen etc we don't know and in the meanwhile there was a resolution in the General Assembly which of course the same pattern as before and criticizing Russia you know the largest number of people from the general assembly voting for the resolution but since this is a general assembly resolution it has on the kind of moral value and it has no implication for Russia so that has also happened in India as before abstain on that resolution and so things are really bad in Ukraine at the moment but Zelensky seems to keep up his spirits and is wanting to fight and at the same time there was talks about reconciliation talks about mediation a UAE president said to have reported to have gone to the area others might also do that India's name is being mentioned as a candidate for negotiations and for dialogue but all this depends on what Mr Putin wants and so everybody is waiting we all know that this is his war in the mind of one man and as you know the his mind there's no way of predicting it so in other words there is no good news from from Ukraine Russia or front some indication of the United States not being very happy with the Indian position and some of these topics is visible in some announcements recently about US-Pakistan relations we know that Pakistan recently pledged $460 million US dollars to what they call to maintain the F-16 aircraft in Pakistan we know about F-16 we had a shutdown on F-16 in the in the war between them and the attack that India did on the Pakistani beyond the LOC and we know that it is in operation F-16s are all in operation in Pakistan and that was one of the reasons why we did not buy F-16 or F-18 aircraft in 2010 when we decided to buy French aircraft rather than American because we didn't want to have the same kind of fighter jets that Pakistan already has so that's a past history so but now saying that they are going to maintain the F-16 may be part of a contract and Trump having stopped the supply of weapons or financing to Pakistan so this is a new development to maintain this and we have of course naturally resized that and we have said that this would be used against India and there's a point that we have been making with the Americans for a long time and each time they would say that no no they will not be used this is basically for their own security and so on but we know where they land and therefore we have some concerns but interestingly the our concerns was met by the State Secretary of State saying that India and Pakistan are both partners of the United States so it looks as though the old linkage old hyphenation between India and Pakistan is being restored I know the old system that whatever they do for Pakistan they must do for India vice versa including presidential visits remember Clinton came to India for five days and he went via Pakistan for five hours just to fulfill that requirement of hyphenation but that was given up during Trump's time but it looks as though this is their weapon against India in a sense and therefore they have revived this and you know started talking about the different points of emphasis between India and Pakistan but both are important partners and also there was a an irritant in the sense that the Pakistani ambassador in Islamabad seems to have visited POK and referred it to as Azad Kashmir this is a provocation because most diplomats don't do that and when the American ambassador goes there going there itself is we are not too very happy but at the same time to say that this is Azad Kashmir using the Pakistani word rather than Pakistan occupied Kashmir so that also is rather interesting then the Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal the young man was in Washington and he was warmly welcomed and you know questions regarding India-Pakistan relations are also discussed etc and even more importantly this visit of General Gavit Bajwa who is about to retire as the army chief of Pakistan who he met US defense secretary and it was reported that he was given a given a separate special treatment he was given what is called enhanced honor pardon and of course I believe something like that was done for Foreign Minister of India also but here General Bajwa was leaving the chief position of the Pakistan army going there and having discussions at the political level is considered interesting so these indicators have an amount of strain in India-US relations but obviously India is much more important for Pakistan and we are members of the Quad and in fact Mr Jaishankar made a very positive reference to the Quad in the midst of all this saying that it is because of the United States that Quad is working well and he also spoke positively about Mr Biden's policies towards India and the Quad so some kind of mending fences you know US with Pakistan and we with the United States so this is not very abnormal but we thought that this period was over and India-Pakistan India-US relationship is much stronger than the US-Pakistan relationship so there's a little of a setback but I suppose in diplomacy these things happen and sometimes they would like to express their displeasure or disappointment in certain ways but this is two familiar parts that they have taken and maybe this will be reversed but a similar thing has happened between UK and India also it's very surprisingly because this has been discussed before also that you know Indians overstaying in the UK illegally has been an issue and this has been raised before also but the Home Ministry which has got Indian origin ministers they have come up with a question about you know the Indian immigration and this is considered serious enough that the FTA the trade agreement which has to be signed between India and the UK has been delayed because this has been going on for a long time and this year we are supposed to complete it but these statements about Indian migrants overstaying as a serious issue is again come up in 2016 there was some discussion about the Indians not returning and now what they are saying is that visa issues to India will be affected by this particular situation it is tied to the return of Indians with no regular right to live in the United States as the language of the objection and of course we have not reacted too strongly to that we said that since there are many immigrants there this may happen in certain stages but this is not something which has to be tied down to FTA or any kind of relationship between the UK and India so maybe it will be ignored but the position is that we have more than 1.5 million Indians and is 18% of the population of the UK and according to the UK there are 200,000 Indians who have been overstaying in the UK so here again it is possible that this is a repercussion of the of our position on the Ukraine war because we are rather unhappy but we have been very consistent and we believe it is being appreciated but in diplomacy reciprocity is a kind of holy principle and so if you take a position which is concrete to their national interest they are likely to react like that and so it has to be taken by that and meanwhile our ex-minister was in Australia which was a very good visit about Indo-Pacific and very warm things being said about Australia and India and that's something which we expect because it was really Australian policy towards China has changed and as a result it has come closer to India and as members of the Quad we have some linkages also there and then there was this incident of North Korea shooting off a missile across South Korea and Japan and this is of course familiar ground but this is dangerous when people are talking about nuclear weapons slightly because I believe the danger of Putin using nuclear weapons is becoming more and more more and more real and people say Russia has the largest number of tactical nuclear weapons which theoretically can be used but the destruction will be such that nobody would want to do that and Putin has increasingly been referring to that and some missiles supposed to have been shifted from the Arctic to somewhere or the other and so these are very dangerous signals so this is the middle of that North Korea has announced that they have tested the missile and they are seeking their position that they will maintain their nuclear weapons whatever may happen and IAE has been asking questions because North Korea has accepted inspection so but then they switch off the cameras and often distract the IAE and hide their activities so that is one dangerous signal that we have apart from Putin's own threats to use tactical nuclear weapons and so this is created once again an issue of nuclear danger and hopefully every one country will restrain itself rather than make this into a worse situation so crane war where in the middle end we don't know and in what situations and meanwhile such threats also also arise there have always been developments in Taiwan the Taiwanese president has just spoken about the danger from China as a real threat and she also said that Taiwan will fight the war by themselves without having any external support so that's a matter of nationalism and the kind of strength and ability that they have but I suppose the United States has already said that they will intervene if that's your thing happens but the president is going to face re-election and she's likely to be re-elected and so this must be in that context that she's talking about being able to fight the Chinese by themselves and she has also said that Taiwan is accumulating more different capability and so it is a warning to China that they cannot have to walk through our Taiwan of course American support is very much with them even though the Chinese now have Russian support to deal with Taiwan so it's also also complicated but the real big issue is the winter in Europe and this is something you have heard about general winter defeated armies you know when winter sets in it's a very very difficult situation to fight a war or even even living freely without you know energy and heating is very essential and there are some alternatives have been proposed of people sleeping in sleeping bags and not having to heat up their rooms it's not going to be very easy it will be very tough maybe technology is being developed in this level but it remains the fact remains that they need to have a winter fuel to keep their homes warm and that is becoming increasingly difficult because of the situation about oil crisis energy crisis Russia is still holding the price down but prices are going up in the Gulf and so this is the real crisis which is facing Europe at this moment and it makes it makes it all the more necessary for the war to end because otherwise this situation will become much worse for Europeans themselves and of course it will affect all of us you know specifically we have a warm weather but our requirement of important fuel is also very high so therefore we also are affected will be affected by this whatever may happen and therefore there is an increasing pressure on president put into end the war but he has to find a formula by which we have to declare victory but the collapse of the bridge has really enraged and he has in fact made it more difficult for anyone to have any kind of conversation in the war but the efforts taking place in all directions and let's hope things will improve before the first anniversary of the war which is which is quite nearby so I just thought I'll collect all these important developments to indicate the kind of situation that we are in there's really no good news from any side now everyone is looking at the G20 meeting in Indonesia later it's meeting in India so the G20 is increasingly significant in all this context so this is the picture of this week so I thought I'll cover generally at that thank you very much well use India to deter China I don't know whether it is true but certainly using Pakistan to deter India is a standard practice as well as China is concerned I don't know whether they are using India to deter China because India is not as powerful as China and in fact anything we are more vulnerable to Chinese aggression are being used as a kind of deterring against China because our armies are not equal in strength or capability and so it'll be an unbalanced situation so I haven't heard about US deterring China by using India and zero emission because it's not related to the political situation because all the countries have fixed net zero emissions and it's a matter of their countries honestly implementing them so but that again will be affected because of the fuel crisis because the idea is to cut down energy consumption and go to zero emission years that may not be affected directly and climate change things may not be affected but of course when there is an atmosphere of competition and conflict then cooperation is not very easy to do and you need cooperation in the case of dealing with climate change so there may be difficulties but here now the responsibilities of the individual countries of course they can come up and say for this reason this reason we are not able to fulfill our commitment that is a possibility but I don't see there is a direct link between climate change and the atmosphere of conflict which is prevalent in the world today it could be independent of each other because I'm sure that there is another interaction there is the implication for everything today this could be one of them this is fundamental isn't it because China believes that Taiwan is part of China because history is like that when it became up to the China the revolution in China Chiang Kai should move over to Formosa and establish their government there so they consider that an illegal government since then but then Taiwan has developed it has a democratic system it is one of the powerful countries of the world 23 million people and all that and that was not very easy for China to just work over it and then the United States's commitment even though we all say only one China but we're all dealing with Taiwan in various ways including India and so this has been one of the major missions of China to reunify so in the case of Hong Kong they accepted the principle of one country two systems because it was necessary for them to have Hong Kong as a trading center but in the case of Taiwan they are not even talking about some of us have been writing about it saying that why don't we adopt the Hong Kong formula though the Hong Kong formula is not worked increasingly China is just taking out everything they are not leaving that system intact so that's not a good model anymore but China has made no secret to the fact that they will reunite Taiwan with China whether it is by peaceful means or by war this is a declared policy and there has been no change after the Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan the situation even got more aggravated because they saw it as a signal that the Americans will stand by Taiwan whatever and then of course Russia supporting China has become another factor in Taiwan and in return for China supporting Russia on the Christian Ukraine so people expect something will happen in China in Taiwan the year 2027 is being mentioned as the outer limits that China has switched for them to annex Taiwan so it's not a not a secret that's very public the objective of China is to simply amalgamate Taiwan with China that's only point that's being made but it's timing it's seriousness it has become a world war all these things are still open questions but China's intention is crystal clear thank you very much thank you