Okay, so all right. Well good morning. I think everyone's from Europe So I think I can say good morning and not make any mistake Yeah, David's not gonna be able to join the Talia's on vacation and I don't know if you folks now Yeah, Ko-po is expecting a baby sometime this week is a due date. So Not surprised. He's not on the call. He's good. He's got bigger things to worry about them Don't mean that a mean boring meeting. So All right, so thanks for joining. We'll we'll get things Kicked off and let me expand my slides so you can see better So three main topics I want to talk about I mean, we hit a milestone in in the community. I mean, we've sort of already talked about this and maybe even at the virtual contribute event Like if we reach a milestone with a number of community contributors Wanted to do a quick recap on hackathon, which again was successful But there are certain things that that I mean learnings that that I wanted to share and discuss On the hackathon For for future events going forward and then Some of you I think George you actually provided feedback on the gdk survey draft that was available We could say I'll go it's it's I think it's going to go out like either today or sometime shortly. I haven't Got in confirmation from ash. So once it's available, I'll send out the I'll post the links on the core team channel as well. But I want to talk about that briefly And I think Lee you you're aware of this as well on various gdk discussions. We've had in the past I know we've been talking about it, but I'm not sure if I've had sight of it yet. Is it okay? And Which is it in core team or is it in within the gdk project or yeah, I have a link to the issue I mean, I don't think the issue has a link to the preview of the survey because I don't know who has access to them, but I can give a quick update and then I mean I'll go live soon enough anyways. Cool. So and And then a couple of quick topics under any other business But not sure if people have any other topics that people want to discuss Hey, Ben. I just noticed that you just joined us Good evening I added a point on the any other business. Yeah Is what's the topic that let's go add them there right now before we forget Um The I want to know the status of the community advisory council Yeah, okay. Yeah, so Cool. Uh, yeah, I need to follow up with david on that. Unfortunately. He's not on but yeah, that's a good reminder Thanks for adding that already so Cool So, let's see. I'll get back to the presentation mode. So, yeah, I think I mentioned The the sort of news has sort of been Been discussed already. We hit a milestone. I think officially I forget the day that I have a blog post that's In the mr stage. That's uh, that's sort of on hold right now Uh, so I think we hit the milestone like about a month ago Crossing the threshold or of 3000 contributors, which is this is great. I mean, it's always nice to have nice round numbers and our graphic design team even Designed a nice graphic that we can add to the blog post which will be going out Soon and I'll talk about that in a minute and then in the same blog post I also took the opportunity to introduce new core team members lee and natalia. So Continuing on the theme of growth in the community So I thought it was appropriate to include that And I mean originally I think we're trying to get the Post out. I think last week You may have noticed our social Campaigns sort of gone quiet over the last few weeks And that's due to the fact that like You know after george floyd's passing a couple of weeks ago We wanted to stop all like a celebrity Celebratory type of post or blog post. So those things are currently on hold and Maybe in the next week or so. I mean lee in case you're curious So you already provided feedback and review a couple of weeks ago. That's what's sort of holding it up Which I think is appropriate. So we'll follow the social teams guidance On you know, they'll probably give us a guidance on when to start Restart Like a regular blog post like celebrating important accomplishments and so forth. So The blog post is pretty much ready to go. I think The marketing team added sort of on hold in the title But I think pretty much all the edits are done Just waiting for the buttons to be pushed. So that's sort of where things are but still wanted to I mean celebrate it I mean, it's a it's a good occasion So It was a worthwhile thing to highlight in the blog post.  So thank you So hopefully I don't know like we'll we'll be interested to see when we get to 4 000 And like maybe we'll take a year or maybe like we'll see but I think we're already at like a 3100 the last time I checked. So the numbers numbers going pretty fast. So So that's that I mean, I don't know if I don't know I think a lot of times we talked about like when I first joined get lab a couple years ago We talked about like the 2 000 contributors that included both team members and the wider community members and This 3 000 number is just the wider community number. So Pretty happy to see the growth of the wider community over the past few years. So it's pretty gratifying Cool, so so That's just a quick update On the blog post that's coming out I mean another awesome thing that happened over the past couple of weeks Uh, I mean when I I mean when the hackathon wrapped up a couple of weeks ago I I just looking at the lists of mr's and couldn't believe it. We Um, the previous record of mr submitted over a two-day period was like 147 definitely under 150 And then we just you know crushed the record by more than 60 percent About to 240 And I mean a lot of you guys, uh, I mean a lot of you core team members not only submitted mr's But also help people on Gitter help with reviews. I think George you got tagged with some of the Some of the reviews for internet internationalization. So appreciate you doing that and Helping out relatively. I mean you contributor. I mean you just started contributing a few few months ago Get along from indonesia and also adding like issues to highlight for the hackathon.  Uh, so it was uh, it was awesome I mean volume was was phenomenal Uh to a point where my inbox is still out of control because of you know, what happened two weeks ago But happy to take that Not complaining So, um, so Obviously it went very successfully and then we want to keep them a momentum and then but we also want to Moving forward, um Make future hackathons and future events better one of them, uh, I mean this came up, uh, I have a link to the issue The request was to avoid holding hackathons We've been pretty much doing it like a second week of the month or second or third week of the month and that Unfortunately coincides with the last week of the release when people are obviously very busy and heads down Uh, and I was actually surprised the number of mr's that got merged during that week during the hackathon I knew the engineers are busy, but uh, I felt bad about adding extra burden on people when they're already Uh, I have a lot of things on their plate. Uh, so there's an issue that was opened by paul and what I what I'll try to do Uh, I mean I already decided to do this for the next one We'll we'll do it like a we'll try to do in the first week of the month. I think that I mean people have sufficiently recovered from the release Uh, and then that's like three weeks from from the release date Um, so the next one will be the first week of uh, september We'll see if we're able to sort of repeat that like each quarter But we'll try to do my best to sort of stick to that and For some reason if that those dates are not workable for whatever reason if we have events or something else going on uh, I might try to like make the Like a deadline's more flexible so people have more time to get their their mr's so that they don't have to rely on Or put additional pressure on the reviewers and maintainers to get things merged so So that's one of the one thing that we definitely want to improve or change Starting with the next hackathon And the next one is I think Vitali you actually brought this up When we had a kickoff session last time Because I talked about a lot of the epics and issues that we had for front end So I started talking to several people on the on the back end team a couple of engineers and A number of people And see if there are good issues or epics that we can create on for the back end For the hackathon So what I think I'll do is I'll go ahead and create an issue and I'll ping the people that I talked to And I think definitely ping all of you on the core team and see if you have any ideas. I got couple of suggestions, uh, like I mean some of the labels to look for for the back end like technical that was Was an interesting one. Uh, I think if you look at like what for gender work on I think he was like able to Like harvest a lot of those and worked on some of the quick mrs But when I actually talked to stan Yesterday, he suggested that there might be things that have like a priority three or priority four that are You know sufficiently self-contained so that that might those might be good candidates so I might Uh, I might do some like a queries and searches and and look at some of the issues But you know, I don't have the technical background so I might ping a lot of a lot of you folks here on the call and see if you have any feedback, but uh You know because I mean the assumption I I think I made was that things might be more like a self-contained on the front end side of things but You know the stan didn't think that was necessarily the case a lot of back and stuff that that people would be interested in doing and working on So if you have any feedback on that, I mean, please let me know, but I'll I'll definitely go ahead and open an issue So we can start the conversation um So ray, I would yeah, go ahead. I would maybe stay away from the technical debt label I could have swore I read in the handbook the other day that it was being discouraged to use that label um, okay I I can't find it off hand, but it was something along the lines of you know Like technical debt can go to back end, but you don't need to label it as technical debt or something that affect because it's the um You know what the definition of technical debt is varies greatly Okay Yeah, I mean ramy. I actually do you have any take on that or like I don't I don't think I saw that like I mean obviously like Can't read every page is in the handbook, but yeah Yes, so we have uh, we actually have uh an okr in the engineering pretty team for the Q2 which is to move away from the backstage label, which is kind of a catchall label right now and technical debt is Is often uh Kind of mixed with this backstage label. So I agree that it's the definition of fuzzy right now um But yeah, that's um I think the the idea to to have more back end Issues for the hackathon is a good idea. So we we need to see what If there's specific labels that we can filter on or just maybe back end or Yeah, I think looking at the Um At the weights of issues also Would that right? Yeah, I mean I haven't looked at like how many of the back end issues have like I mean because we also have good for first sign contributors label like It is probably worth looking at. I mean I we always highlight that label You know during every hackathon anyways, but Yeah, because I haven't been able to do this for the past A couple of hackathons, but this is something that that I definitely want to fix going forward for people You know like Vitali who's interested more on the back end side of things versus front end so Cool. Thank you. Thanks for that. Thanks for that um The third bullet here is I mean obviously we had like a huge growth in the number of mrs, which is great But one of the things I noticed was that if you look at the number of people who win the merge mr prize For people who anyone who has like mrs merge That count has been so much steady. It's been like low to like mid 30s Although the overall mr count's been growing which uh, what what that tells me is that bulk of the mr growth is is due to like just two or three people Basically, that's I mean that's definitely what happened like this time around So, you know, this is probably something where I probably need to attract more people to start contributing I think in general like I mean I haven't looked at the numbers like in detail, but I was actually talking to david about this earlier today Like we probably attract like five to seven like a first time contributors during hackathon, but maybe that number needs to grow Um, so I mean, maybe that's something that I need to look at but And then the number of people have mrs merge that's sort of been pretty Pretty constant over the past few quarters. So I definitely want to have More people participating and having their mrs merge So that's something that I definitely want to look at but if you have other other ideas, I would I would welcome it Please let me know Either through issues or or slack And the other one this is similar to what we talked about in the past like maybe we should create a separate category for like the more challenging issues Because one of the discussions I had with a number of people was was that I mean some of the contributors definitely want to have as many mrs merged as possible because they want to get Either the grand prize or the second prize, but there are other contributors that are more interested in working on something That's a little bit more challenging and then they actually want to learn something through the experience They're not necessarily doing it through like a win A better prize or a better award through the hackathon So maybe it's worth highlighting. I think we had some of those For this hackathon I mean one was I don't know if this is challenging enough But you know for a getter client on ios like to be able to log in with your gleb ID Like no one took up on that. You know if I You know if we had a more substantial prize, maybe we wouldn't able to attract Like the front end person to work on that as an example And then the other thing I remember was like like more female emojis Like I don't think anybody like that took up on that But that would have been a good one to sort of have more people to participate in So maybe we'll have like a separate category for specific, you know issues that You know or mr said we want to encourage people to work on So that's I mean sort of four ideas that I thought of but You know, I think the last one is sort of what we talked about in the past Just want to make sure that we're not just rewarding volume of work, but also quality of work or The type of contribution that people are making you know Yeah, let me know what you think like I don't know if you have any thoughts or if you agree disagree, but Ray we did have a Contribute for price category label a thing, right? Yeah. Yeah, we do. Yeah. So maybe this is another way to sort of You know, I mean, I mean to be honest for that prize There's only one person who actually like submit an mr and claim that prize is actually a copo He's been the only one. So I've been looking at ways to sort of Rebound that I mean, maybe this is a way of doing it. So Yeah, that's a that's a good idea I guess that that would be my kind of force and concern is is that contribute for prize at the moment a bit redundant if If we're sort of saying the idea is to highlight Issues which are good to attack, but we've also got You know except in mr's and the way and lots of other ways of doing it So we maybe want to be careful and As maybe george was alluding to there maybe contribute for prizes specific for ones which We want people to attack rather than ones that we're suggesting are easy to attack Right So I don't I haven't looked to see if When you hover over the label does it give you a good description of Yeah, I mean it yeah, I think it yeah, it it does but I think like I mean, I'm guilty of this too like the Label description is sometimes not descriptive enough. So that's I mean, like I think I don't know what did this what description I put in for contribute for prize But it might be too generic and it doesn't really mean much So but that's Yeah, definitely something that I can look at If if we use this for marking at once issues Probably rename it because It's name is so much. We've done this except in merge requests So it's not clear. It's the first glance. Uh, what's the different? differences between the two Like between contribute for prize and accepting wise request. Yeah, okay. Yeah That's a fair point. I mean You know me this is not, you know, we probably need a different term for this but Making more like this is a challenging issue or something like or yeah, something like that. Yeah Something along those lines so Um, so it'll be sort of a badge of accomplishment. I guess once if People actually completes that part however long it takes but go ahead Lee But it makes more sense outside of the hackathon the contribute for prize label. Yeah But within the hackathon, I guess it makes less sense right No, I mean, you know, we can highlight these issues like, you know You know, even outside of the context of the hackathon even during hackathon I don't mind saying there are these other issues that I mean you get an extra prize for Um, but you know, I don't necessarily want people to just wait for this Event that happens once a quarter to to work on something because it might actually take longer than then What's reasonably doable During like a 10 day period we have for hackathon, right? So Again, I wonder Some of the questions that have come in get her around What should we contribute to George and are you helped to suggest some Some issues and I kind of mentioned some of the techniques that I use to You know, look for old issues look for popular issues look for issues with certain labels again it's A bit of a concern to duplicate by having labels that kind of cover those things but Whether we either provide hyperlinks to those or or just some additional suggestions to say well You know, you might just want to go for things that have got a weight of one or you might want to go for Old issues or you might want to go for popular issues or issues plagued with technical debt or Just a few more suggestions then I know you normally provide a couple of links, but Okay, yeah, let me think about somebody Sorry, sorry. Yeah, the fact that a few people have asked the question In the the channel previously, but it's just yeah, it's a safe people asking again Provide that a few of the answers to those questions in the the kind of kickoff notes or the Hackathon site itself going forwards. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense cool Okay. All right. Well, thanks for your feedback. Um, let me move on here I don't know how to There we go. So G2k survey, there's a link to the issue And I haven't looked at the issue in a while, but I'm not 100% sure if it has a link to the survey itself It may not because what was being circulated internally was like like a preview link that I don't think was public to Well, maybe it was public because it didn't require any login or anything like that. I remember I sort of went through like a couple of iterations of it Um, but I mean this survey is for I mean this is good. It's too poor both get lab team members and the wider community members Uh, and hopefully like either today or tomorrow You know, it should be going out. Uh, so I Had a quick exchange with ash mckenzie Uh, I think about 20 like 24 hours ago It would it sounded like it was about to go out pretty soon But the survey is not going to be very surprising. They're like a demographic type of questions like what your roles are And that also talks. I mean ask a lot of questions about your what OS What which operating system you have and like how much memory and ask questions about your systems that you use for for your development work And then questions about like, you know, how do you install like ruby and no j s on your system? and In all like a satisfaction question on on different areas like how easy it is Is it to use how are you happy with like the support you even know the support's available and documentation, etc, etc Um, so I mean there were we went through like a multiple iterations I I think the first iteration early iterations were more focused on like a give lab team members So I think George and I both provided feedback on Well, if you talk about slack channel, that's not relevant for people out in the wider community so I mean there's some Tweaks that they need to make but I it's it's not terribly long Survey, I think like you can even take the survey on on the phone They showed a prototype. I think it's like a five or six screens that you should be done I should be going out pretty soon. And then Uh, I mean gdk team. We've been doing an office hour That I mean I think Lee you probably had like a hundred percent attendance record for that Your office. I will probably talk about that including at like five a.m.  So yeah, we'll they'll probably definitely be a topic next week. I Have been sending invites out yet, but So, I mean stay tuned. I definitely appreciate you Participating in the survey you'll probably get like a number of reminders from me To to take the survey. I definitely want to have Make improvements to the gdk to make it easier to use for contributors because it's one of the I mean frequently I mean, I think I don't know what the percentage is like Lee you probably Would agree. I think 50 percent of the questions on gitter are probably gdk related Or something closer to that and and then I mean fortunately we have people like lee regendre and others that are That jump on and answer those questions, which I appreciate but hopefully They'll will You know the data will help make improvements to the gdk. So it's it's a lot easier to use than it is today So that's Should be coming out soon Just just to mention very much for next week's call, but Um, somebody jumped on the gitter channel and mentioned that the latest version of windows 10 now has full support for For linux version two as they're calling it and after me jumping ship very recently and Removing windows from all my laptops and installing Ubuntu instead Um, I've now gone back to windows and can run Ubuntu inside windows I'm going to call it natively. It's not exactly native, but it's a lot more native than running it in a vm And gdk works, you know following exactly the same instructions as if I was running it natively. So That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was ethan right who that's right Yeah, yeah that provided a little nugget on on gitter and and I think lee you you already updated a documentation Uh, put that put that update so Exactly. Yeah, exactly Latest development on gdk Yeah So, you know, whether there are a lot of guys that want to contribute that are windows users I don't know, but if there are I really hope that that will Um ease that pain a little bit cool All right, so Uh, the last slide So I mentioned earlier. We sort of stopped a lot of the I mean pretty much all of the social campaigning. So what would have been happening? Last week was reminder on the lab cfp So what we decided was to sort of extend the deadline because we sort of gone We I mean we pretty much completely gone quite on the on the social side of things So if you think you missed the deadline and and You're upset. I mean you have another a few days to submit the cfp, but I think it's end of the day pacific time on on friday so If you have a chance or if you thought you missed the deadline you have another few days to submit the cfp um in Yeah, I I thought we there like the cfps were coming in at a decent rate like the last week. I don't know the numbers But uh, definitely want to see more submissions on on the number of tracks. Um, so I'm helping out on on the community track So I don't I probably haven't necessarily paid attention to submission for other tracks, but Definitely want to see submissions across different areas for or For the event in a couple of months um The next one. Oh before I move forward any questions on on commit or the cfp I mean if you have any questions if you want to run ideas By like me or john or john coglian or emily chen just just let us now I mean if you want like a feedback on the cfp before submitting it will be happy to help out and And discuss your submissions Uh The next one is just a quick question on on vacation plans. I think we took Uh, one of the months off in the summer last time because a lot of people are on vacation Uh, I can't remember whether that was july or august But wanted to see if you have any if people are okay. We're just continuing with the Monthly meetings or like a lot of people are happened to be off like one month. We could we could just take a pause During the summer break, but just wanted to take a quick poll And see what People's availabilities are I know like a I guess in eu like I guess the borders are going to open again pretty soon So people may be able to travel, but might be an interesting summer. We may at all be Yeah, but I think so. I think it might be winter vacation this year Well, yeah, so we'll see like that sort of hits it like it coincides with the flu season into during during the winter But yeah, we might be not we might not be vacationing far away for a while Yeah, I would be vacationing in france. Um, you noticed Okay, yeah So, yeah, maybe I'll do a quick like, uh, I guess we have a new polling feature in in uh in slacks So maybe I'll do a poll like people I take I know Uh, David might be back because I know he's taking like, uh three weeks off like late july early august But you know, maybe we'll take a pause in august if a lot of people are off in august So, um, all right. So the last one. Yeah, thanks for the reminder harness. I mean, this is something that we Uh, drop the ball on um, so I know I like to reach out to a lot of people, uh, I mean people on the court team plus others about, um, uh advisory council Uh, I think like the discussion that david and I were having with with some of the colleagues in the marketing team was Was on how formalized do we want this team to be like with like a formal meetings or do we just reach out to people for feedback if If we're working on something that that needs community feedback. So that's sort of I think that's where david and I sort of left it at and and we kind of Haven't like, you know, appreciate it through the to the finish line. So Uh, apologies for that harness. Uh, I think what I'll do is I'll definitely put this back on the radar with david You know during our one-on-one meeting next week, but Uh, Hannah said did you have anything else on this besides just reminding us to to Uh, carry this through completion or I don't know. I don't know if you have any like a feedback or concerns. Yeah I wasn't sure if the uh, uh, cac is such a still land because the Handbook change has been open for more than seven months now. Right and from what I understand like Three to four months ago Some people were already contacted if they wanted to be on the cac Since then nothing seemed to happen Right, right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I I agree. Like I I know I actively like recruited I mean including from the core team but others community members that I work with about About about the group, but yeah, well I'll definitely get back in touch with david and and figure out the next step of apologies. It's completely Slipped our mind over the past few months Okay Any other topics anything else? People want to discuss I have um one other Again, maybe slightly off topic, but um the getter itself Um, I I tend to pay more attention to the contributors channel, but um, I am in the the main git lab channel itself Um, and there's been quite a lot of negativity recently and a lot of questions around why getter actually exists Um, okay, and you know, I clearly don't know the answer to that. Um, you know, how it was born I actually did a bit of googling and it looks like it was acquired Um by a git lab at some point. Um, and actually open sourced from whatever it was before Um, but you know the the general thoughts Everyone that was on the channel was well With developers we all use slack why on earth are we using getter? Um, all the questions that are asked in there go unanswered Etc. Etc. And now that's that's obviously not quite the case a bit of an exaggeration, etc but it it raised some interesting questions that um, you know I'd be keen to know some of the answers to like Do you expect get lab staff to be in the git lab channel to answer questions or is it um purely for the community to help each other out? Why why is um getter used rather than slack etc? Okay, well, thanks for bringing that up. I'll try to find those like uh comments if I can't find it I might pin you Lee and Yeah, I mean there are there are three channels. I mean there's a channel for heroes That's uh, I mean johns. I think you're in a good job of moderating and contributor I mean, I think I mean, there are a lot of active people there like like you Lee and and we're gender and I Try to look in there at least few times a day. Like hopefully I'm not too terribly behind Uh, but I don't know if that's the case with the main channel. I'll I'll talk to Eric On the getter team and and and get his take on it, but I appreciate that but Yeah, I mean to be honest, I I don't really look at the channel either I I point people to go there people have like a user like a how to use get lab type of questions, but uh, I don't think I like Worked in there too much and try to answer any questions, but I mean thanks for bringing that up you know, yeah, I mean not to pile on here Ray, but kind of echo that like in a way it feels like a little disconnected because Uh, you know omni bus ships matter most so that's what like the customers are using if you're not using slack So like, you know, I'd say the order here is slack matter most getters pretty low on people's Totem pole Right, you as you find out I don't really do much there because it's a lot harder to be engaged on something that you're not using regularly for other stuff right Okay, now a good point. So let me talk to folks on the getter team and I'll Let them know that's going on In addition to that ray may add the getter actually is home for many open source projects besides Get that get love itself. So Yeah, it'd be interesting to see Some usage analytics that I'm sure somebody's got the lab side right Like I know Not not all projects are interested in using slack But I know a number of open source projects have you know, figured out how to set up with the slack api a way to have like a free team Right Okay, all right All right, any other topics? Questions I was interested brain the The the dashboard that you linked in the blog post Is is that tall something that's because I'm aware of melt meltana is it that's kind of been introduced in the last that say six months or so, but That dashboard that you linked these is isn't meltana. Is it something no, it's Yeah, detergent is a company that that I've been working with for the past I don't know four or five years and they work with a lot of open source projects to provide Project dashboards.  Well, thanks everybody for your time and I'll talk to you again Next month if that's sooner Great stuff. Thanks. We're good every day. Good evening. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye


We recently covered the enigmatic megalith, known as the white rock of Vilcambaba within Peru, showing how this rock was in fact abandoned, abandoned midway through being harvested of blocks to be used in the nearby polygonal masonry, with many other sites, many still strewn with blocks cut with a natural appearing face, but a right-angled interlocking body. Yet upon the white rock still remained other mysterious patterns, such as that of the 90-degree steps cut into the stone. We have identified this kind of stone cutting previously, such as at Machu Picchu, clearly used to help construct the polygonal walls themselves, but also at other, until now unexplained, unfinished stones many found throughout Peru. Alpa Iglesia, for example, found just outside the astonishing ancient ruins of Olente Tambo, a mysterious megalith at many, including us, previously presumed was possibly some elaborate deliberate carving, a throne, or possibly, like the false door meters away an ancient portal of some form. However, when one approaches said rock with the same eye as that of the white rock, one quickly finds matching stonework, finished and installed as that of the water fountain found within Olente Tambo itself. Thus, further supporting our hypothesis of these types of stone cuts, and indeed step patterning found upon them, is indicative of unfinished, abruptly abandoned stonework, many left unliberated or strewn among their ancient quarries. As with the many other discoveries made, once one begins to perceive unexplained artifacts of this nature in the correct way, they suddenly make sense, and the supportive evidence simply flows from the hidden into plain sight. How this, or possibly another, clearly advanced yet once stone age civilization, made the cut marks into the solid pink aswan granite found upon the unfinished obelisk among many other megalithic blocks found within the aswan quarry within Egypt, however, is yet another mystery yet to be unraveled, but by identifying and distinguishing between what were enormous megalithic block quarries and what were those of the baffling polygonal blocks is, we believe, the correct path to take if one wishes to unravel the mystery of just how this lost civilization operated, what they were constructing, and hopefully explain who they were and indeed where we came from. It is a pursuit which we find highly compelling. Peru is undoubtedly a jewel in the crown of ancient sites that can be found all throughout the world. Not only does it contain some of the most astonishing as yet unexplained polygonal masonry to be found anywhere, but it also contains many other anomalous, advanced features built with such precision and prowess, they are still utilized by modern-day man. Irrigation systems still flow with fresh water as if they were built yesterday, still providing water to the local residents who reside in these mountainous areas. Agricultural technologies, utilized by our more modern ancestors, the Incas, undoubtedly aiding in the flourishing of their culture. It is a place that possesses such advanced features, academia can merely resign themselves to a limited close explanation of such wonders, as merely identified as pre-Incan. This, without any explanation as to how these ancient groups, who predate those who they have studied in depth, were aware of such advanced, elegant solutions to farming, water sourcing, building, and many other miraculous techniques for survival, among these notoriously inaccessible cliffs throughout the Inca Trail. However, deep within the Andes, far away from the well-worn tourist routes, is possibly one of the most perplexing ancient ruins of them all. Known as Napahuaca, it is a rock-cut ruin that is seemingly placed alone in a place of no initially obvious significance, no indication that it was linked to any existing pre-Incan ruin, yet the precision and indeed obvious effort that went into the creation of this anomalous artifact is undeniable. Carved into the mountainside, strongly reminiscent of false doors, features that can be found among many ancient ruins around the world, that, according to numerous ancient legends, were used by spirits to enter and exit the realm of the living. It is intricately designed, features smooth, seemingly laser-cut surfaces, which, in regard to its dating, is nothing short of astonishing. Found in an altitude of nearly 3,000 feet above sea level, it contains many baffling features, which may indicate why this seemingly inconspicuous location was selected. The ceiling and floor of the cave entrance, for instance, not only appear as if it was hewn with laser-like precision, but were also carved at two precise separate angles, one of 60 degrees and another of 52 degrees. These angles, intriguingly, are also found within the great pyramids of Giza at numerous locations. Furthermore, whoever constructed this possible false door somehow picked the only spot upon the mountain that contained traces of a mysterious blue stone. This blue stone, only found within this specific spot, has for many years been utilized within modern technology for its unique characteristic for its piezoelectric properties, a type of crystal capable of generating an electrical charge used by radio manufacturers for many decades within receivers. The rock chosen for the specific location of the carving is also, intriguingly, magnetic in nature. What's more, if one travels exactly halfway around the world to the UK, the false door aligns perfectly with Stonehenge. Why was this false door created? How was it created with such precision? What tools were utilized by ancient man to achieve these feats of ancient engineering? Why was it placed at this specific location, a place that has been discovered to contain mysterious blue crystals with unique electrical properties? Is this false door, like many alternative researchers have postulated, a portal of some kind? Allowing the teleportation of an ancient advanced civilization? We find the location, the precision involved, and indeed the other intriguing characteristics surrounding this mysterious anomaly, highly compelling. There are many gems from ancient architecture which can be found nestled amongst the mountains of Peru, when form of these, in which is a particularly fascinating mystery, is the different types and sizes of polygonal masonry, found throughout this incredibly ancient landscape. One such site, once named by the Inca after this site, namely Rimak-Tabo, was Lima-Tabo, now popularly known as Terawazi. We feel the reason why this site is rarely mentioned, like the many other archaeological and historical anomalies we share on our channel, rarely visited or indeed studied, is due to its truly remarkable, and we feel, almost unique polygonal methodology, which can still be found within the walls that make up this little publicly shared ruin, in addition to its seemingly impossible nature, a mystery of construction no one to this day seems to be able to decipher. Found some 80 kilometers west of Cusco, the site was used in antiquity as a ceremonial center and a resting place for the Inca chaskeys, known as legendary Inca runners, ones who would deliver messages by foot throughout these mountainous regions over long distances at incredible speed. Yet with all the other remarkable polygonal masonry found throughout Peru, we feel that this site was merely adapted by the Inca, and due to its remarkable location and the aforementioned unique polygonal stonework present, was also seen by the Inca as a significant location. The design of the site itself is particularly peculiar, and it does indeed appear to have once been a ceremonial site of some kind, perhaps a tomb. Yet what sort or indeed how these polygonal sites were once constructed remains a complete mystery, one which we find highly compelling. Lake Titicaca undoubtedly a location of extraordinary history, a shoreline known by the historical world for a substantial time as somewhere of considerable interest, having been inhabited for an unknown yet incredibly long time. With legends of large antediluvian highly developed cities plummeting to the bottom of its lake, thus claimed as modern locals as revered, yet also the source of life, but I digress. Polygonal structures still litter its shores and further afield in other watercourse connected regions, known as Chilpas, these most intriguing of stone structures still stand here, built with pre-Incan polygonal technological precision with varying qualities and types of stones, also with stone brick and overall statues of various sizes. They are claimed as spherical burial chambers, yet the precision that went into their construction is evident from without, and also from within, among the few that have inevitably fell to nature over time. The most concentrated area of these enigmatic structures are located at a site known as Puna Cemetery. The Silustani Chilpas surround an adjacent lagoon to Lake Titicaca, and just like the others found in other sparsely scattered regions, were all built with extraordinary precision, built into perfectly circular towers with a perfect pre-Incan polygonal masonry technique. Therefore, we feel the possibility that they were once made by a now lost civilization has strong evidence to suggest so, still present within their builds for all to see. Furthermore, if indeed they were tombs as claimed is a possibility, we find highly intriguing. For if true, parallel to the fallacious claims of the great tombs of Egypt, then these many still intact structures would still possess the remains of a now lost civilization. It is a possibility and indeed collection of buildings which we find highly intriguing. There are many ancient ruins that were not only beyond the capabilities of the claimed creators, but we postulate were simply re-inhabited, allowing the far more primitive and we feel far more recent inhabitants to flourish, developing these sanctuaries, often heavily fortified temples to a point where they were able to leave their own mark upon these locations. An archaeological legacy left after the original creators of said sites were seemingly wiped with their own archaeological legacies simply washed away by the seas of our planet. These remnants have allowed academia to simply disregard the feat of engineering, such incredibly large sites would have required pinning such efforts to a more suitable candidate. After researching many such sites, backed up by the megalithic accomplishments that they still possess, one will begin to notice a pattern, an illogical and contradictory history for these groups, often invaded by a similarly capable and heavily studied group. The question is, why were a group who were apparently capable of building such a site so easily dominated by another which existed at the same era of history? One would have imagined that if they were indeed the builders of said sites that they would have also been able to have created substantial defense systems, yet these are invariably absent from nearly all of these sites, with just the weather resistant megaliths, and indeed the condition of the sites most probably very similar to how they are found today. And Chan Chan is no exception. Believed to have been constructed around 850 AD, based on archaeological finds, subsequently claimed as having been constructed by the Chamu.  It became the Chamur Empire's capital city, with an estimated population of 40 to 60 thousand people when invaded by the Inca. After the Inca captured the Chamu around 1470 AD, Chan Chan was abandoned, and by 1535 AD again became a ruin of history. Surviving into modern day and beyond, while no longer a teeming capital city, Chan Chan was still well known for its great riches, and was consequently looted by the Spanish treasure hunters. With an indication of the creator's wealth seen in a 16th century list of items looted from a burial tomb, a treasure equivalent to 80,000 pesos of gold was recovered, nearly 5 million US dollars in gold. Incredibly intricate stone-cut engravings rest alongside massive fortified walls, and there is most likely many other tombs in the site, which not only predate this later re-inhabitation, but are probably also filled to the rafters with gold, an expression of these original creator's power, and again, contradictory to the Chamu's claim to such a site. Furthermore, Chan Chan is in a particularly arid section of the coastal desert of northern Peru, and due to the lack of rain in this area, the major source of non-salted water was in the form of rivers carrying surface runoff from the Andes. This runoff allowed for the control of land and water through irrigation systems. The city of Chan Chan spanned 20 square kilometers, and had a dense urban center of 6 square kilometers. This contained extravagant Ciudadelas, Ciudadelas being the large architectural masterpieces which housed plazas, storerooms, and burial platforms for the royals. Who were the original builders of Chan Chan? Were they, like we postulate, wiped out during a disaster? We find the evidence to suggest such highly compelling. Tambomachai is an ancient site located within Peru that, like so many others within this remarkable landscape, clearly demonstrates a level of sophistication within its stonework unquestionably far out of the reaches of those who are academically claimed to have been the builders of these remarkable sites. It is a site that not only possesses the same mind-boggling methods of polygonal masonry as that of Machu Picchu and Saxe Huaman, among many others, but also exhibits an excellent example of the levels of refinement that also went into the building of the irrigation systems throughout the area, systems that, although unimaginably old, still function perfectly to this day. Furthermore, and perhaps most intriguing regarding this area, even eclipsing these astonishing feats of ancient engineering, is an area in particular which exhibits some of the most perplexing peculiar feature to be found anywhere in ancient Peru. This area of stone is not merely vitrified but was, at some point within the distant past, turned to lava. With the limited investigations available, predictably none of which undertaken by funded academics, it has been revealed that this mysterious event did not occur as one would have presumed from a heating from above but from beneath, or perhaps from within the center of the stonework, successfully melting the stone wall in its entirety into a pool of liquid magma. And although largely overlooked by tourists, and indeed academics alike, the evidence of the stone having once turned to liquid is undeniable. The question then, what turned this stone to liquid? Was it some form of weapon? Or perhaps is this evidence to suggest how polygonal walls were once built? Perhaps these as yet unexplained polygonal walls were constructed with such precision due to a past ability of its builders, able to melt and shape these stones prior to placement? Or perhaps, could this melted stone be evidence of a war? One that occurred between the inhabitants of these ancient ruins and an unknown entity, ultimately resulting in their demise. Perhaps being the reason why these highly advanced, highly capable ancient people from these civilizations not only mysteriously disappeared but left many a quarry amid ancient stonework seemingly abandoned, left where we find them today? In another area of the world, far away from Peru, there also exists compelling evidence of such a war, having actually once taken place with a possible entity from above. Irrelay, this site is claimed as the remnants of a battle with God, specifically surrounding the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sulphur balls embedded among the landscape at this specific site is undoubtedly compelling evidence to support these accounts of war, a holy war undertaken at this specific location that, regardless of holy scripture, was fought with a foe of considerable ability.  The sulfur found at these sites has also intriguingly been tested from 93% to as high as 98% pure sulfur with trace metal such as magnesium found within that would have produced astounding heat easily capable of melting stainless steel and indeed the stones within Peru. Furthermore, the brimstone found is significantly different to sulfur found elsewhere, almost as if this brimstone was specifically designed. For example, sulfur from within natural geothermal regions is yellow in crystal form. We find all these evidential factors highly compelling. Robert Benfer, a professor at the University of Missouri, mainly focuses on biological anthropology. However, surprisingly, Robert may be solely responsible for revealing to the world what must be one of the most unusual ancient pyramids ever found on earth. He had previously found a series of earthworks shaped to resemble orcas, condors, and other animals found dotted around the coastal valleys of Peru. He was looking for more of these peculiar mounds within the valleys north of Lima when he spotted what was initially presumed to be nothing more than a natural volcano, a formation with a crater in the center of the top. However, astonishingly, after closer investigations, Benfer discovered that this mound was actually a man-made pyramid all overgrown and resting in the forests of Peru. Curiously, for some reason within 60s, professional archaeologists employed by the Peruvian government had already realized that this particularly strange-looking volcano-like mound was indeed an artificial pyramid. But for some reason, this official analysis and subsequent discovery had been quietly buried within the academic archives within Peru. Intrigued by this, Benfer and his team decided to investigate further. As the researchers report in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity, they have dug explorative trenches into the inner crater of the volcano and found a collapsed stairwell that descended below through a layer of very old brickwork to a mudplaster floor. Although it seems that this mysterious underground layer had been inhabited by more recent people, the reason for this more modern invasion was more than likely due to the unusual celestial activities witnessed within the area in the 16th century. A total of four solar eclipses would have been visible from El Volcan in short succession. In AD 1521, 1538, 1539, and 1543. This of course being an extremely rare occurrence. Of course, this could have been the reason for the pyramid's initial construction, though the site clearly shows strong indications of being far older than this event. Regardless, profound questions arise from such a curious construction. For instance, if this was indeed a sacrificial mound, why was the top built to be concave? This obviously obscuring all those surrounding the building from seeing any sacrificial bloodletting. Benfer also noted that there are no volcanoes around El Volcan that would have served as models for its construction. No other structures like it have been found in Peru or indeed anywhere else on earth. He will continue to explore the mysterious structure in the hope of possibly discovering artifacts which could shed light on the pyramid's true antiquity. This is clearly one very weird pyramid and a perplexing mystery to history.


I'm Mark Hage. Welcome to Salam Shalom Report on Palestine Israel. This program is sponsored by Vermonters for Justice in Palestine. Please visit our extensive website at vtjp.org. Our webmaster is Ian Stokes. Among the many projects we undertake annually, we are leading an international campaign calling on Ben and Jerry's to stop selling its peace and love ice cream in illegal Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestine. You can find a lot about that campaign and how to support it on our website. Most of our program tonight will be devoted to a presentation by the Palestinian novelist Susan Abu-Hawa, who remarks came on March 22 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The occasion was the sixth Israeli lobby in American policy conference. Her address was entitled Israel beyond apartheid. It examines the nature of Israel's presence in the world beginning with its claim to being the only democracy in the Middle East versus its reality as an apartheid nation. And she asked us to consider the roles Israel has assumed beyond colonizing Palestine in terms of its relationship to other countries, to the natural world, and to history. Now, you can hear Susan Abu-Hawa read from her work or discuss literature or other topics, virtually any country in the world, except her homeland, Palestine. She traveled there in November in 2018, but she was barred entry into the country at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport. She was ordered deported. She then spent 32 hours in an Israeli jail cell, appealing that deportation order, which she lost. And while she was in that jail cell, she penned this note to those who had hoped to see her in Jerusalem and Ramallah, where she was to attend events at a literature festival. She wrote to them, It pains me that we cannot meet anywhere in the world, excuse me, it pains me that we can meet anywhere in the world, except Palestine. The place to which we belong, from whence our stories emerge and where all turns eventually lead. We cannot meet on soil that has been fertilized for millennia by the bodies of our ancestors and watered by the tears and blood of Palestine's sons and daughters who daily fight for her. I want to leave you with one more thought that I had in that jail cell. Israel is spiritually, emotionally, and culturally small, despite the large guns they pointed us, or perhaps precisely because of them. It is to their own detriment that they cannot accept our presence in our homeland because our humanity remains intact and our art is beautiful and life affirming and we aren't going anywhere but home. Now, before we turn to Ms. Abul Hawa's comments tonight, we'd like to share a brief video clip of the senators of Ireland last July debating support for a bill that would bar Israeli goods manufactured in illegal Jewish settlements from being sold in Ireland. That bill eventually passed on a vote of 25 to 20. The bill also passed Ireland's lower parliament in December by a vote of 78 to 45. Here are the speeches we hope one day to hear in the U.S. Congress. I've seen the results of the bombing of hospitals, of schools, of sewage treatment plants. It is appalling. And if you want to know what the people of Palestine, you'd say that you're speaking on behalf of the people of Palestine. If you want to know what the people of Palestine want, ask the Palestinian farmers. So we've seen the most desperate and brutal violations of people's right to protest against injustice, against occupation, against the taking of the very ground from under people. Israel is an apartheid state. And if it has been there, know that. Once you know that, it changes you. Though these settlements are repeatedly condemned as illegal by the EU, UN and Irish government, they continue to extract valuable natural resources and agricultural produce. These goods are then exported and sold on shelves around the world, including in Ireland, to pay for occupation. There is a clear hypocrisy here. How can we condemn the settlements as illegal, as theft of land and resources, but then happily buy the proceeds of this crime? We must be clear on this. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are war crimes. This is what we're dealing with. And I'm amazed at how relaxed people can be about it. As if trading in the proceeds of war crimes is not a big deal. I witnessed with my own eyes the crushing indignity of a Palestinian community cut off from their water supply so that it could be diverted instead to support an Israeli chicken farm. That is horrendous. And the injustice of it would stay with me forever. That commercial settlement built on stolen land beyond international recognised borders is a war crime. And I know I'm repeating myself today. And I'm asking my colleagues across the House today, is the moral response to simply condemn this as illegal, but then ask, how much for the eggs? Is there not a deep hypocrisy in that position? For a country that prides itself on upholding humanitarian principles and international law, this is unacceptable. And I believe it's time we stood clearly against this injustice. We are doing commerce with people who are committing war crimes. I believe that this bill from Senator Francis Black is where we get a chance to break the consensus that has utterly failed the Palestinian people. The case for this bill has become even more compelling, if I may say so, because we've seen appalling atrocities, killing of Palestinian civilians. I raised 55,000 euros to put in solar energy and water treatment plans. And I saw them being demolished, bombed by the Israelis. That's what happens. There is something rotten in the way democracy is defined and lived, and most importantly, denied. The relentless expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory is unjust, provocative, and undermines the credibility of Israeli's commitment to a peaceful solution to a conflict to which we all want an end. Nazem Mandela came to a joint sitting of these houses in the early 1990s. And he said, what made the practical difference on behalf of the Aries people was definitive action from the people. It was a boycott, it was solidarity, and that can make the difference here. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has to get a message. And I believe the message has to be a very simple one, and that is respect the rule of international law. Generous introduction. It's really great to be back at the Washington Report This is an institution that was one of the main sources, the first sources we had for independent media, and it's an honor to be the keynote. I'm too short to see that. I hope my clicks will work. I want in this talk to try and examine the nature of Israel in the world. And to do that, is it working? Can we get this working? You know, we just ran through this. There we go. Okay. I'm going to try and present a survey of Israel from multiple angles that are going to seem disparate and unrelated. They include democracy, nature, global weapons, friendship, and archaeology. Most of us in this room understand the colonial and apartheid underpinnings of Israel, which manifest in the unrelenting daily horrors and indignities for Palestinians. On the other hand, some folks see Israel as a benevolent place trying to exist with Palestinians. But I would like to look beyond this kind of contained binary framework relative only to Palestinians, because Israel is so much more. Every country in the world, of course, has good and bad elements. But I do think it's possible to pinpoint a kind of general imprint for societies, the way they exist in the world, and also, more importantly, how they impact the rest of the world. And to do this, I found that national spending data are useful. When we look at Israeli spending, we find that it is second only to Saudi Arabia, that other bastion of human rights, in spending, arms spending per capita in the world, exceeding the United States military spending per capita, as well as exceeding US military spending as a percent of GDP. I'm going to talk about what all of this means in real life. But first, I want to touch on the prevailing perception of Israel, which has been cultivated through sustained, multi-tiered, multi-pronged public relations campaigns that present Israel as an unfairly maligned modern democracy, one that is advanced, socially enlightened, and endlessly innovative, from such absurd claims as having invented falafel, to the equally absurd claim of being less than one year away from carrying cancer. It's actually a real thing. What is promulgated through popular international media is typically not merely an exaggeration of reality, or even just spin. But it's often precisely the opposite of reality. A case in point is this article in Scientific American, a respected magazine that translates scientific information for laypersons. The article touted Israel's desalination plans as unprecedented ingenuity in the region, using language that comports with the old proposition that Israel was a miracle that made the desert bloom. The reality could not be further from that. Two implicit lies in the title and subtitle alone. First, Arab nations in the Gulf have been using desalination technology for the past 50 years. But more important is the little known fact that Ramallah's annual rainfall actually exceeds London's annual rainfall, and Jerusalem's rainfall is nearly on par with London's, plus its way sunnier. The point is that Palestine isn't and never was dry desert or barren. This is the cover of a detailed audit book of all the ways that Israel has profoundly and detrimentally altered the natural biomes, landscape, hydraulic potential, and ecological balance of Palestine. It is a monumentally depressing read, but I don't have time to go into the terrible details. But keeping with example at hand, I'm briefly going to touch on water. The article described Israel as a quote, galvanized civilization that created water from nothingness, where a few miles away, water disappeared and civilizations crumbled. In fact, in its first years of establishment, Israel began water diversion projects and over pumping from rivers and tributaries to serve Zionist settlements with unsustainable European standards, which were utterly in conflict with the local terrain and which set the stage for a multitude of environmental disasters all across Palestine. One example among many of Israel's destruction of Palestine's natural water systems is the Al-Araja River, which Israel renamed as the Yarkon. It was a vigorous coastal river described in an 1891 travel guide as quote, a roaring river that zigzags until falling into the sea. Its power turns mills and small fish can be caught in it. In a mere decade of Israeli management of Palestine's water, this life-giving river was reduced to a trickle of sewage. Its water siphoned and replaced with a toxic sludge of industrial and domestic pollutants, which in 1997 ate through the lungs and vital organs of athletes competing in the Maccabeea Games when a bridge fell and they fell into the river. One of Israel's first water projects when it conquered the rest of Palestine was to divert as much water as possible from the Jordan River once it gained access. This spurred Syria and Jordan to follow suit to preserve their own share of regional waters. And decades later, water levels are so low that the Jordan River can no longer replenish the dead sea. The declining water levels coupled with Israel's evaporation ponds to extract minerals and other industrial activities have created an environmental disaster never before seen in Palestine. It has become cliche to say that the dead sea is dying. In the 1950s, Israel drained Palestine's hula wetlands, a regional biodiversity treasure in order to establish Jewish settlements. Hundreds of such colonial projects have greatly denigrated the rich biological and geographical diversity that once thrived in that terrain where three continents meet. Some of the fish and birds that were destroyed by this project were found nowhere else in the world and have since gone extinct. This is to say nothing of the way that the land has been scarred and disfigured. Hill tops decapitated for rapacious settlements, millions of imported, vast growing trees planted to conceal destroyed Palestinian villages only for these non-native trees to be rejected by the land in massive forest fires leaving a scorched earth on hundreds of thousands of acres. And it is to say nothing of the systematic ways in which Israel uproots olive trees and other fruit-bearing trees that sustain Palestinian families. There are countless such examples and systematic ways in which Israel has devastated nature, sometimes in ways that cannot be undone. And although Israel's role as a destroyer of Palestinian society overshadows their environmental record, Israel should nonetheless be counted among the world's polluters, decimators of trees and spoilers of nature. I want to turn now to Israeli innovations and exports because Israel leads the world in several niche death surveillance and suppression technologies and tactics. It is well known and admitted by Israeli weapons manufacturers that they test their weapons on Palestinians. And Gaza is their biggest laboratory. According to Darrell Lee of the University of Chicago, Gaza is a quote, space where Israel tests and refines various techniques of management continuously experimenting in search of an optimal balance between maximum control over territory and minimum responsibility for its non-Jewish population. I told you earlier that Israel is right there with Saudi Arabia leading the world in military spending per capita. Other countries like the United States, Russia and China aren't far behind but where an extraordinary difference emerges is with military exports. Studies and international databases will show that Israel is anywhere from the fourth to the eighth largest exporter of arms and this depends on the year and the currency examined. I should point out however that these data are likely gross under estimations because Israel doesn't actually report its arms deals many of which occur through covert deals via independent arms hustlers often retired Israeli military generals. Given that Israel is listed among exporters of arms with far bigger populations and far bigger economies, I looked for data to show exports per capita and I came up mostly empty-handed to my surprise. I'm sure that data must be out there somewhere but I couldn't find it so I put on my old scientist and statistician hat and did the calculations myself. I used two databases the first was of the top arms exporters in US dollars for years 2010 to 2018 from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or CIPRI which compiles data on arms transfers and conflicts around the world. Then using Excel functions I matched those data up with a world population database for corresponding years from the World Bank. Then using simple arithmetic functions I calculated and graphed arms sales normalized to the size of the population to determine arms export per capita for all the countries in the CIPRI database. And what I found is that Israel leads the entire world in arms exports often by a huge margin every single year between 2010 and 2018 with the exception of 2011 in which Sweden strangely was neck and neck with them. Again these data do not include the vast covert arms transfers military training and surveillance technology. One of Israel's biggest military hardware niches is drones. Over 60 percent of global drones export exports come from Israel. In the United States is just in second place with just less than 24 percent. The attractiveness of Israeli arms is that they boast of being combat tested. A case in point is Israel's Hermes 900 which was still in the testing phase when it was used against civilians in Gaza in 2014. A mere three weeks after that onslaught in Gaza that murdered 2,200 people and maimed tens of thousands more Israel held a drone trade show called Israel Unmanned Systems 2014 in which that Hermes 900 was all the rage for its so-called performance in Gaza. In that assault in 2014 Israel used drones to kill at least 840 people. In the current assault on Gaza protesters Israel is using a series of new drones called the Cyclone Riot Control Drone System. It's being used to spray aerosol and gas substances from the sky. They appear to be used for the first time against the Great March of Return. The company that makes the Cyclone claims on their website to be a leading supplier for police in the United States and they boast that their product claims are based on practical field experience. This is what it looks like. Happens after these death and suppression technologies are developed and tested on the bodies, psyches and spirits of Palestinians. Throughout its short history Israel has been one of the most dependable suppliers of weapons to pariah regimes especially in situations where weapons embargoes were put in place due to severe human rights abuses. The ones I'm going to show you were revealed due to leaks, revolutions or specific investigations especially those by two Israeli human rights activists Itaim Mack and Yair Auron. In South Sudan's civil war Israel continued to supply the South Sudanese regime with weapons despite an ongoing civil war that had left half a million people dead and four million displaced in the past five years. Israel's arms sales to South Sudan continued despite a UN report that documented extensive and grave human rights violations including the drafting of child soldiers, burning of villages, systematic rape, indiscriminate killing, pillaging and destruction of infrastructure. And they continued to supply weapons to them despite a U.S. arms embargo followed by a UN arms embargo against South Sudan. In fact just a few months ago the former head of the Israeli army's operation sanctioned was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as an agent who sold over $150 million worth of weapons under the cover of an agricultural company that was supposed to be building affordable housing in South Sudan. And the Bosnian massacres Israel sold weapons to Serbian forces during the Bosnian war in the early 90s long after the UN embargo was declared in 91. In 92 when Slobodan Milosevic was on trial the president of Serbia at the time he was described at the time as the new Hitler of Europe. I think most of us in this room are old enough to remember him. At that time Israel opened an embassy in Serbia and simultaneously Serbian forces were creating concentration camps and committing massacres against Bosnian Muslims that led to the murder of an estimated 250,000 people. Ite Mac whom I mentioned earlier gathered evidence that Israelis in the highest offices were involved in both arming and training Serbian forces. Mac and Oran then petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court with concrete evidence of this including the diary of Ratkom Lavik who's on trial at the ICC for war crimes. They had his diary in which he catalogued all the training and weapons that were transferred to them. Israel's high court rejected the petition arguing that declassifying documents exposing Israel's role in the Bosnian genocide would harm Israeli interests. Adding insult to injury Israel is now engaged in revising the history of this genocide. So Israel supplied weapons to Serbia while it was known that they were committing genocide and while there was a UN arms embargo in place and Israel's high court covered it all up. In Myanmar we know that Israel continued to transfer weapons to the Burmese army long after they were accused of committing war crimes including murder, rape, torture and the burning of villages that left thousands dead and at least 700,000 displaced from the Rohingya minority. Israel was selling arms to Myanmar well after the European Union and the United States imposed an arms embargo on the country. Mac and Oran petitioned the Israeli high court to stop these weapons sales but the the ruling was kept classified and but we know that Israel continued to supply armored land and water vehicles and artillery to the Burmese military. So once again Israel supplied arms to Myanmar while it was known that they were committing ethnic cleansing and while there was a UN embargo in place and Israel's high court helped to cover it up and enable it. In in Rwanda going back again to the 1990s to another horrific genocide an estimated one million men women and children were massacred in Rwanda in the space of 100 days. It is said to be the fastest pace of genocide in human history. Israel provided the rifles ammunition and grenades that made it all possible. Ita Mac again impetitioning the Israeli high court to declassify the arms transfers quoted the Israeli arms dealer who in Rwanda said quote I'm actually a doctor on quote expressing pride for supplying those weapons because he said he helped the victims die quickly. Israel's high court ruled that the details of those arms deals will remain a secret again claiming that it would harm Israeli interests to reveal the extent of those arms transfers. So again Israel supplied Rwanda with weapons while it was known that a genocide was taking place and while a UN arms embargo was in place and Israel's high court helped to cover it up. Adding insult to injury again Israel later backed a move at the UN by Rwanda to rewrite history of this particular genocide as a larger quid pro quo with Paul Kagame president of Rwanda to take in asylum seekers deported from Israel. Now going even further back to apartheid South Africa this is the cover of an explosive book when it was published in 2010 by Sasha Polakow-Syranski detailing the never before known extent of cooperation between Israel and the apartheid government of South Africa. Israel was South Africa's closest ally its most important arms supplier and eventually its only friend in a world that could no longer look the other way from the crimes of apartheid. The coordination between the two countries was unprecedented. Their respective intelligence chiefs held regular meetings sharing information and training and surveillance. They gave unfettered access to each other's military tactics missions and intelligence. Their relationship was actually deeper than mere trade and coordination. Israel had a spiritual and moral affinity for the apartheid government in South Africa which was articulated in the 1980s by Israeli chief of staff Rafael Itan who said referring to blacks in South Africa that they quote want to gain control over the white minority just like the Arabs here want to gain control over us and we too like the white minority in South Africa must act to prevent them from taking over us. In 1976 just two months after Israel rolled out the red carpet for the South African president school children in Soweto took to the streets to demonstrate against an imposed racist curriculum. The white South African police mowed them down with weapons that had been supplied by Israel. What shocked the world further from this book was to finally learn that Israel had offered to provide the apartheid government with nuclear arms as far back as 1975. Israel tried to prevent the declassification of the post apartheid government documents but they were unsuccessful and it became clear that Israel did indeed lead to the nuclear armament of the apartheid regime which luckily disarmed voluntarily following the fall of apartheid. One more thing that's worth noting here in 2007 former Israeli Prime Minister Huud Olmert warned that his country could one day quote face a South African style struggle for equal voting rights and as soon as that happens the state of Israel is finished. There are so many more examples of such violent Israeli subterfuge in the world and I'm going to quickly rattle through a few of these examples without going into detail for the sake of time but just know that every one of these instances and this is not a complete list of subarosa arms sales occurred to bolster repressive brutal regimes at different times and as well as training of mercenaries to facilitate corporate plunder. Israel continued supplying arms to the former repressive white colonial regime in Rhodesia or modern days in Babwe after UN sanctions were imposed in 1967. Israel armed and supported Portugal against national liberation movements in the former colonies of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau. Israel funded and trained the military oppression of anti-colonial uprisings and or dictatorships in the Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Benin, Togo, Cameroon, Senegal, Uganda, Nigeria and Somalia. Israel armed all sides of the Angola civil war at different times over 40 years. They used this colonial tactic in other places to fuel and arm wars to divide and reconquer Africa. Israel armed and trained elite units in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, bolstering the brutal rule of Mabutu Ceciseco following the assassination of Pan-Africanist Patrice Lumumba. They sold arms to Sri Lanka to suppress the Tamils. Israel provided nearly all arms sold to the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua that terrorized its people for over 12 years. Following the Democratic election of the Sandinistas, Israel funneled arms to the brutal Nicaraguan Contras and was embroiled in what became known as the Iran Contra affair. They likewise sold arms to Guatemalan death squads as well as death squads in El Salvador and Honduras to Chile during Pinochet's horrific dictatorship to Rafael Trujillo during his dictatorship of the Dominican Republic to the terrorist Argentinian junta in the 1970s. In many of these places, Israel also sold surveillance technology to monitor phones and track political activists. They did the same thing in the Philippines during the Ferdinand Marcos era and in Indonesia under the repressive Suharto. They're also now supplying weapons to the accused war criminal of leader of Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. In Cameroon, Israeli generals provide training and arms to protect dictator Paul Bia who has been crushing political dissidents, disappearing, assassinating and torturing activists. They're doing the same thing in the oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, colluding with Obeang and Guema and ExxonMobil to suppress political dissent and facilitate the siphoning of that nation's resources to enrich its rulers and U.S. and Israeli corporations while its people languish and abject poverty. Israel also provides countries and corporations with wares and training for domestic policing and suppression of dissent. In places like Brazil, Israel plays a huge role in the domestic surveillance, prisons, militarized borders and internal policing and suppression. In the United States, there is widespread training of U.S. police departments. The export of Israel's brutal tactics to the United States has been so alarming that Jewish Voice for Peace launched a dedicated campaign called Deadly Exchange to fight against it and bring awareness. Over 200 police and security agencies across the United States have gone on training junkets to Israel, and I think these are just the ones that are funded by one Zionist, domestic Zionist, agency where they are both brainwashed about Israel and instructed in ruthless military tactics. The impact of this cooperation between U.S. domestic police departments and the Israeli occupation military came to light after the Ferguson uprising, in which Robocop police showed up in military gear to suppress unarmed peaceful protesters. It turned out that the Ferguson police department had gone on one of these training junkets in Israel. Also of note is the incident of police shooting in 2016 in Dallas, Texas, in which police chief David Brown sent in a robot packed with explosives to kill the suspect. It was a kind of robot suicide bomber, if you will. It was apparently the first known time that police dispatched a robot to kill a suspect on U.S. soil rather than attempting apprehension or negotiating surrender. As it turned out, that police chief had been on a 10-day so-called anti-terrorism training in Israel. Lastly, on this point, and this is something that Ali Obonama touched on earlier, is the recent revelation that Israeli intelligence companies have been spying on U.S. citizens, not to mention the role that these Israeli intelligence companies have had in tampering with U.S. presidential election in 2016, as the Mueller investigation has revealed. Now, I want to move on to friendships and alliances. Despite claiming to be the guardians and protectors of Jews everywhere, Israel actually has courted some of the world's most notorious anti-Semites, as long as they support Israel's occupation and by their arms. John Worcester, the apartheid South African Prime Minister that I mentioned earlier, was a Nazi sympathizer who was imprisoned by the British for his ties to the gray shirt's fascist militia. In 1976, Yitzhak Rabin heaped praise on him and gave him the red carpet welcome when he visited Israel.  He told a female colleague she was too ugly to rape. He threatened to destroy or imprison his political opponents. He spoke favorably of torture. He lamented that the Brazilian cavalry wasn't as efficient as Americans who exterminated the Indians.  Israel has also developed ties and has been arming and training neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. Israel likewise opened its doors to anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, who praised his country's World War II era leadership that presided over the mass murder of Jews. And he employed terrible age-old anti-Semitic tropes to demonize George Soros. In December, Netanyahu even met with him to negotiate the opening of a revisionist Holocaust museum in Budapest, which basically exonerates Hungary's role in Europe's Holocaust. Netanyahu signed a joint declaration with the right-wing Polish Prime Minister Matusz Morawiecki, which likewise wipes clean Poland's record in Europe's Holocaust and rewrote history to state that the Poles were actually helping Jews escape Nazis. Of course, there's this card-carrying anti-Semite that Israel loves and embraces. Netanyahu went so far as to make excuses for Hitler, claiming in 2015 that Hitler wasn't the monster we all thought he was, rather that it was a Palestinian leader, Haj Amin al-Hosani, who convinced him to actually kill European Jews. Luckily, Netanyahu crossed a line with that one, and European leaders and historians rose together to give them a foul card. The last bit I want to touch on briefly has to do with the way that Israel's rewriting of history is robbing the world of archaeological treasures and important history that belongs not only to Palestinians, but to all of humanity, because Palestine is an extraordinarily special place. While it already has an indigenous population that formed there over millennia, Palestine holds a history that belongs to all people of monotheistic faiths. Since its inception, Israel has worked tirelessly to erase the footprints of the many civilizations, religions, and peoples who existed in that land before, during, and after Jewish presence in the land. The existence of so many churches and mosques are particular irritants to Israel, and it has worked in earnest to destroy, desecrate, or control them from the beginning of their control over the land. Immediately after the Nakba, Israel began a campaign of destroying the Palestinian villages it had just depopulated, including tearing down mosques and churches, some of which were centuries old and of great religious and historic significance, like the Sheikh Haid Mosque in Jerusalem that was built by one of Salahuddin's sons. In places where new Jewish inhabitants took over Palestinian towns, new Jewish places of worship have been turned into nightclubs, animal pens, restaurants, brothels, and the like. Other mosques were made inaccessible, declared closed military zones, leaving them derelict. When the Islamic movement once helped a group of internal refugees from the former village of Sadafund restore their mosque in 2000, it was bulldozed overnight and still unexplained circumstances. Increasingly Jewish militias are vandalizing and burning churches and mosques without any consequence perpetrators. In 2010, a U.S. State Department report stated that, quote, non-Jewish holy sites in Israel do not enjoy legal protection, because the government does not recognize them as officially holy sites. After Jewish settlers torched a mosque in 2012, former military chief of staff admitted in a radio interview that there was no interest in catching the culprits. He said, quote, if we wanted, we could catch them, and when we want to, we will, unquote. Part and parcel of Israel's erasure of history, they have also targeted non-Jewish cemeteries. The ancient Muslim cemetery of Mahmoudullah, which includes graveyards by prominent Muslim scholars, generals, and companions of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was destroyed to build a museum by the California-based Wysenthal Center. In 2008, over 100 skeletons were unearthed and tossed aside during excavations for the construction work. Throughout Palestine, in places where Israel has developed Jewish cities, Muslim and Christian cemeteries were simply dug up and built over. For example, Tel Aviv University, which was built over the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muniz, desecrated a graveyard and built a dormitory over it. Lastly, I want to briefly touch on the ways that Israel has weaponized archaeology. On the pretense of digging for history, it has confiscated and demolished whole Palestinian neighborhoods. Silwan in East Jerusalem is the best known example of this, where Israel has confiscated at least six dunams of land belonging to one family, the Siam family, and they've evicted over 6,000 Palestinians. The purpose of the dig was never about archaeology because we know that they're planning to build a so-called Jewish national park in the area, a kind of Jewish Disneyland as it's being referred to. We also know that the Israel Antiquities Authority has destroyed several ancient archaeological sites and antiquities as a result of this dig, including a cemetery dating back to the Abbasid Caliphate, and relics dating back to the Canaanite era and the second millennium BC. It is not for love of archaeology or history. In fact, Israel routinely destroys ancient cities unearthed by archaeologists, so long as they have nothing to do with Jewish history. The first thing they did when they conquered Palestine, the rest of Palestine in 1967, was to demolish the entire Moroccan neighborhood that was over 800 years old, displacing hundreds of Palestinians. Israel has engaged in such massive destruction of antiquities consistently and systematically. Another example shown here is a recent find of a 1200-year-old mixed village of well-off Muslims and Christians who live together. Archaeologists got a chance to take photos and record some of the relics, but the site is set to be bulldozed for development. Again, these are all just surface surveys of hidden realities. The depredations of Israel are much more vast, deeper, and far-reaching. But my hope is that what I have presented here today will expand the view from Israel as an apartheid nation suppressing the indigenous Palestinian population to a deeper understanding of Israel as a global force of violence, plunder, paranoia, surveillance, greed, war, suppression, ecological destruction, erasure of history, the forceful transfer of wealth from the weak to the powerful, and the entrenchment of supremacist ideologies that set human hierarchies and castes. No matter how many gay pride marches they hold or how many Eurovisions they host, no matter how good their national orchestra makes you feel when they tour the world, or how Palestinian citizens are given a symbolic vote, no matter how much greenwashing, pinkwashing, or whitewashing has but other is in mainstream media. The way that Israel exists in the world is ultimately antithetical to life and to liberty, not just for Palestinians, but for all people who struggle against tyranny, oppression, white supremacy, and ecological destruction. The situation is dire and desperate for our families in Palestine. The grim reality of our compatriots' daily lives and the dimming of our future in our homeland is portended by Israel's push now to ban the Adan over Jerusalem for the first time since the dawn of Islam, and Israel is moving forcefully against Al-Aqsa, perhaps the final frontier in Palestine. But I do not want to end on such a hopeless note, because despite everything, there is so much to celebrate, so much to encourage our continued struggle, and much to inspire hope. In fact, I believe that Israel's current escalation of their ongoing ethnic cleansing is in many ways a desperate though counterproductive response to the growing international repudiation of them, including by young Jews whose moral compass is not guided by Zionism. The conversation is changing here and around the world. Palestine is the single issue splitting leftist movements and parties globally. The Democratic Party here in the U.S., the Women's March, the Labor Party in the U.K. Increasingly, we are not alone. Points of intersection with liberation movements around the world are being filled with reciprocal solidarity. And more importantly, our people on the front lines have not given up, and they continue every day to fight and insist on life. And in the bigger picture afforded by historical examples, Palestine actually follows time-tested trajectories of liberation.  I believe that ultimately restoration to our homeland, to liberty and dignity, is our only collective destiny. Thank you. As always, thank you for being with us. I'm Mark Hage, and on behalf of our Monarchs for Justice in Palestine, until our next program, Salam Shalom.