Welcome to Global Connections. I'm your host, Grace Chang, and I'm here today with Dr. Margo Kipp, Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at Hawaii Pacific University. And we'll be talking about violence and the religious imagination. Hi, Margo. Hi, Grace. Welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us. So in addition to being a professor of humanities and religious studies at Hawaii Pacific University, you also are editor of a couple of things, the Journal on Religion and Violence, as well as the Cambridge series on Elements of Religion and Violence. That's right. And also, actually, another one, Oxford Research and Cyclopedia of Religion, where I do the religion and violence stuff. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because you've written quite a lot of interesting work on this topic, which is what we want to explore further today. Recently, you introduced the December issue of the Journal of Religion and Violence on violence and the biblical imagination. True. Yeah, and so I'm interested in this topic that you're writing about. And so first of all, can you tell a little bit about what you mean by religious imagination? Good question. Religious imagination is the new focus, right? There were many decades, maybe five decades ago, people were still doing theology. When you think about religious studies, you think about the logos, the logoi, about theoi, the arguments about God and the existence of God, right? There's a whole history of philosophy on that. But today, we're not so much interested in a God or the gods, and we tend to focus more on imagination because it is the stories of a religion, the narrative imagination that tends to capture people's hearts and souls and make them respond to certain themes. Themes like the good guys and the bad guys, the heroes, the villains, the just fight, the good war and the bad war, and things is good and evil and all kinds of stories that get under your skin, role models that get under your skin. So we have so many of the religion love stories, right? It's all about narrative that tends to motivate people to act in certain ways that they may not even know. They may not even know they're inspired by really just narratives, but nonetheless, it tends to feed into a lot of our, especially our ideologies of conflict these days. So narrative is everything, the stories, the imagination. Nowadays, we don't talk about imagination as much as imaginaries. This is a new lingo, I guess. But it's supposed to refer to the way the imaginations represent themselves or manifest themselves in action. So it has to do with certain things that you don't even know necessarily that you're responding to these ideas until you find yourself motivated to act. So this is an old idea. It's been around for about three decades, maybe. Koran Ijimer talked a lot about religion and the violent imaginary. Charles Taylor is the one who really made it the notion popular. He talked about religion as basically social imaginaries. So yeah, we're into the imagination now. So you might wonder, well, how does that differ? How does religious imagination differ from any other imagination? And one of the ways to see this or to understand this is that religions tend to presume that all experiences are flat. There's a deeper reservoir of either notions or experiences that motivate people, even if they're not always addressing them. So I suppose that would be the primary thing that makes a religious imaginary religious. But if you think about it, religions include a lot of other stuff besides just codes of belief and rituals and things like that, because it includes things like altered experiences and altered mind states and trance states and rituals that engender maybe terror or maybe delight and there's so much more to it than just the old codes of belief and sets of behaviors. So how these narratives foster imagination and the meaning behind these kinds of acts? And in particular, you're interested in acts of violence. So what do you mean by violence? What constitutes violence in your study? That's just as complicated as the notion of an imagination, right? So violence, we don't treat when we're doing religious studies, we don't treat violence simply as a matter of wars. I mean, those are pretty ever-present these days. And of course, there's a long history of religion and war. But we look at all different kinds of violence. For instance, we look at the notion of, I don't know, verbal violence, structural violence, the way that there's implicit suppression built into the social schemes of things. We look at victory parades as tending to have a violent dimension because they're implicit threats. So we look at all kinds of, we look at violence as multifaceted. Even the way you think can be, it automatically, you make decisions between what's good or bad. You make decisions of what's proper and improper. And you're always weighing against some framework which manifests some kind of damage to something. Your violence itself is multi-layered, the way we treat it now. So we talk a lot about verbal violence and religious studies, because especially when we're dealing with narratives. And there are so many outstanding examples of violence and, of course, religious traditions and the history of them. Is there an example of verbal violence that you can give us as far as something historical, contemporary? Yeah, no, let's take some biblical examples because they're just so profound. The Bible is really captured Western imagination, right? So here's a few that I have to pull out. This is Isaiah 13, 6, 8. Whale for the day of the Lord is near. It will come like destruction from the Almighty. Because of this, all hands will go limp. Every man's heart will melt, terror will seize them, pain and anguish will grip them. They will ride like women, like a woman in labor. They will look at gas at each other, their faces aflame. So this is an implicit threat, right? The coming from Isaiah, who's supposed to be manifesting the voice of the God, he's a prophet. And this is about losing your bearings on so many. It's not just about hitting each other. It's about losing your bearings, losing trust in the world. Here's one of my favorites from, my favorites, it's not favorites, it's just riveting. It's from Leviticus. And I will make those of you who are left in the lands of your enemies so ridden with fear that when a leaf flutters behind them in the wind, they shall run as if it were a sword behind them. They shall fall with no one in pursuit. Though no one pursues them, they shall stumble over one another as if the sword were behind them. And there shall be no stand made against the enemy. If you think about this, this is another thread from Leviticus.  And you can't trust the world. That there's an implicit uncertainty to everything and there might be stuff out there that you just can't, your perceptions aren't gonna necessarily grasp. So a lot of this violent narratives are about how you relate to these stories and metaphors of course and metonyms and the whole, all the language that we use for understanding literature from the whole world, especially important in religious imagination because you're expected to respond. If you open yourself up to these stories, you can feel it, it's not, it doesn't matter if you're not an Israelite in the land of an enemy. You can relate to this perception of that there's something after you and the world's not quite reliable. And that prophecy from Isaiah, I mean that's just so implicitly terroristic. Terror will seize them, pain and anguish. They'll ride like a woman in labor. I love that there are so many female references to some of these things. But anyway, and so it's not just the Bible of course, the Bible is just one of many, many traditions. And there are so many examples of the ritual inculcation of terror. I've been studying Africa for the last couple of years and I wrote one of the introductions to our African issue of the general religion and violence. And one of the things you learn there is there's a, there are musical traditions which attempt to make you experience things entering and leaving your body and there's drumming traditions and dancing traditions and people just participate in this altered world. It's not altered at the time, it's just ever present, totally real. But I don't know if you'd call this necessarily violent but it certainly gets in you and disturbs you. And it implies that you have a sensuous openness to these kinds of musical experiences. So it sort of goes beneath the old kind of cognitive framework that we tend to have in the West, especially when you're looking at religion. Also in the African context, we have a lot of rituals which are supposed to make you immune to bolt from the old wars of the nineties in particular, the Rwanda actually, it's more of the West Coast of Africa, you have so many interesting ritual attempts to make people impervious to battle weapons. So you'll have an infliction of pain and certain kinds of cuttings that are supposed to make you resilient too. Well, as you wear special clothing, you might wear, I don't know, specially fabricated garments and sometimes pieces of animals or of other. Kind of fetish. Yes, a lot of those. And who can say that those don't have real physical effects because people get, they scare the daylights out of the other side for one thing. And they make you, if you've undergone these kinds of initiation rituals, you're on top of the world. You got it, you're in the fight part of the fight and flight thing, you're pumped. So ritual is a really important element too actually in this whole creating narrative imagination. And there's so many examples but the African ones are kind of exotic. Yeah, yeah. And the rituals kind of highlight how we think forces manifest themselves and how we can arm ourselves against those forces. So that's really fascinating. Yeah, it is. And the fact that these are 20th century wars that were still also in the Mai Mai wars, those were, that was intense. Like they take, they eat certain things they couldn't eat, certain things they could eat. They weren't supposed to bathe. This is recently, like within the last two decades and the whole world becomes suddenly a much more dangerous place, but you're in tune. You're in touch with the dangers. So there's a lot of war magic. There's more to what's amongst us than what we physically can observe in a material level. But religion and the narratives provide us with how we imagine those things. Yes, and I think those imaginations become alive. Visceral experiences, people do have visions in these battles. I mean, we have visions in any war, right? When there's a lot of adrenaline going, we have a lot of stories back from the days of the Crusades that people seen the Virgin Mary, for instance, on the battle, or the war in Yugoslavia, right? You had kids seeing the Virgin Mary at the boundaries between Croatia and certain places they wouldn't, and they just like reported their parents so the words get out. But the point is that these experiences really do change your perception. And it's in the West that we think, oh, it's just a matter of belief and that screwy belief, so just put it aside. In context, and every war has this, even our war, it's of course just as much. You're in the Sturm and Drang of battle and your life. So it's not me to say that they're not real. I think people respond to them. Great, great. That's great first half here and I'm looking forward to hearing more from you, Margo. Okay, well, great. Give you some examples. Yeah, so stay tuned, everybody. We'll be back in one minute. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to navigate the journey with us. We are here every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m., and we really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of end of life care. Aloha. Hey, has your signal just been taken over or am I supposed to be here? This is Andrew, the security guy, your co-host on Hibachi Talk. Please join us every Friday on Think Tech Away. Hi, I'm Marianne Sasaki from Life in the Lot. I'm so excited to be marching on Washington on Saturday, January 21st with the big women's march on Washington.  Come on out and visit us, and we're gonna be at the Capitol on January 21st, starting at eight o'clock, gathering by 9.30, and March starts at 10. That'd be great. All right, everybody, welcome back to Global Connections. I'm your host, Grace Cheng, and I'm here with Professor Margo Kitts of Hawaii Pacific University, talking about violence and the religious imagination. Welcome back, Margo. Thanks. So we were talking before the break on your research and some of the findings in your studies about this topic, and we kind of concluded about how religion, the narratives inspire this kind of imagination that mobilizes people to act. And really, what you were saying before we went on break is how, unlike some of the modern philosophers, the world has not become disenchanted. Religion still animates a lot of our imagination and our action. It's so obvious, isn't it, when you open up the newspaper today, right? We have so many, so much hostility on coming from these, like, the drags of the different religions. For instance, obviously we have tremendous Islamic, Jewish, Christian nexus of tensions, at least at the moment. That's very hard not to, very riveting, very hard to take your eyes off of it, especially for me, because my background is in the ancient Near East, which is ancient Middle East. From modern perspective, it's an ancient, it's the Middle East, but from the European perspective, before the modern era was the ancient Near East. But nonetheless, I'm personally riveted to that whole, that whole mess, and it's just heartbreaking in parts. And we see that also in any religious tradition, as you were talking about in African context, as well as in the Buddhist context, the 969 movement in Myanmar. Absolutely, and picking on the Rohingya Muslims. Yes, there's a tremendous, no religious tradition. One thing that I really need to get out there, there are no religious traditions that have pristine histories. There's violence and even the Buddhist origins. There's wars at the start, right, from Sri Lanka. And there's plenty of, obviously we've had a lot of problems, the Tamils and the Buddhists in Sri Lanka as well, or some Tamils, L-T-T-E. So yeah, nobody's got a clean slate, so. And it's always some people, right, within a religion, as you were saying, coming from some of this violence, rhetoric and behaviors, coming from the dregs, it's not the religion itself, but what's interesting is what you're talking about is studying the narratives of the religion. Yeah, so the narratives are there. The fact that people harness them is because they're there. And there's, like, I gave you some biblical examples, but there are, you know, anyone can, for instance, in the jihadi context, as you probably know, there are many verses that address jihad in the Koran. We're talking about the Islamic tradition. And they range hugely from, you know, kind of turn the other cheeky those all the way to kill the infidel wherever he may be found. But even in that most, the verse that gets picked up by ISIS and folks like that and really exploited to their own ends, right after that it says, but if he asks for mercy, show him compassion, for God is merciful. So there are no just straight out Trump at the war, kind of, kind of, everything's contextualized, that's my point. So in the modern context, it's just obvious that everybody's, there's just, there are conflicts that are just breaking out under religious banners now, are they originally religious? Are they intentionally religious? Does everyone think of them as religious? Of course not, there's so many different dimensions to, especially in the Middle East right now, there's so many territorial issues and there's so much. But on the other hand, everything seems to feed into religion ultimately, because if you're talking about, I don't know, something like suicide bombing from our perspective here in the West, you just think, oh man, that guy's misguided. But, you know, when you look at it in context, that's very brave. People going out and, I mean, diluted as they may be, but they get heralded as heroes, they're role models for people and there's some, there's dimensions to this that I don't think we appreciate in the United States. I'm not saying it's good, believe me, I'm not promoting it, but I just think it's really important that we understand that there are cultural dimensions to these outbreaks that are not just a matter of rational choice theory, as we tend to think of things in political science, for instance. Yeah, religion's all about understanding the metaphors and the motivations of, as I said, the Slien times and narratives that people can harvest, the role models, like from the prophet and his companions, right? They're always held up as the perfect society of warriors who were fighting for justice and against injustice. And so, those images are right there for harvesting. Yeah, and it seems like a lot of religions, they do see their members of their community as either being victimized or threatened and that seems to be kind of the reason behind the compulsion to act in violent ways. Is there any, I mean, is that correct or? I totally agree with that and especially in this country, you're seeing a lot now with the religious right, the reconstructionists who want to, who feel like they're losing control of their society and they pass rules about Sharia law, which have no relevance to anything. And you have their Christian reconstructionists, right? You wanna go to reconstruct this United States on a theological model of theocracy and they're very insistent that this is a Christian nation. They're willing to fight for it. So we have the abortion clinic bombings and all kinds of Rush Dune and his crew talking about how to, with a proper family arrangement where the wives honor the husbands and you're kind of a flipping back to some fantasy world which was not there in the Bible. It's kind of a made up moral right? Imagine. Yeah, because there's so many, yes, exactly. But not necessarily based in the text. So yeah, there are plenty of examples, contemporary examples or it's, although in some cases, for instance, in the settler movements in Israel, of course, you have Israel probably the most complicated, just as complicated as we are here in Oahu, right? You have people from everywhere and many different points of view and it's not like it's a homogenous society. But among the settler movements, a lot of the zeal goes back to Abraham and the idea, or at Moses, the covenant with Abraham and one with Moses too, where they're given the land of Canaan, at least with Abraham that says this land in which you'll be strangers, but after the Moses covenant becomes more of a... All of these ancient narratives kind of are very important. I think they're right for people. Their seeds continue to shape imagination. So it's not like anybody's forgotten them. I mean, and you were saying about, you know, political scientists and, you know, for the most part, I think, yeah, social scientists have assumed in the modern era, I have assumed that human beings are rational, that we are enlightened and we've, you know, we behave based on material, self-interest, cost-benefit analysis, but from the perspective of religious studies, it seems like, you know, if that has been the case for a period, it wasn't a very strong expansion of that way of thinking and that we've had sort of a continuous kind of, you know, influence of religious imagination throughout history. I think that's a really important point because it doesn't mean every aspect of your life is driven by religious models. Obviously, we do make rational choices with your bank account and various things, but I'm sure you know that present work ethic is, you know, just so structured American imagination of what it thinks that we are. But ultimately, it boils down to that individual motivation. You rape what you sow and these are all ideas that are harvested from the Bible, but it does seem to me we were really wrong to think that rational choice theory was being in the end of the whole thing because who would have thought, you know, 20 years ago that religion would be the inspiration for so many wars. We thought we were past that. And so, like, so present in a lot of our religious, at political discourse, social discourse, all around the world, including in very modern countries. Absolutely. So, friend of mine has written quite a bit for the Oxford Handbook online, which you can go check out in Oxford Research, Cycle and Pediatrics and Religion. He's written on, Mark Juergensmann, Cosmic War and how some of these old narratives are totally present for modern fighters who believe that they're fighting something bigger than just a wrong government. They're fighting, you know, the end of order. They're fighting for a worldview that has to be there in order for, in many cases, redemption to come. It's hard to believe from a rational university oriented perspective, but there are many people who are waiting for the end of the world. There's raptures and Christianity and Judaism. You have the Messiah's gonna come.  You have so many theories of our pictures, imaginations of a time when everything's gonna be put right if we just fight the proper war and get rid of the bad guys. It seems, it seems trivial to us, perhaps, walking around in Honolulu, but it's there. I mean, you just have to read the text. Read ISIS, you know? They think it's gonna come in rock-off. The end of the world will be the place for the salvation of the chosen, so. Yeah, I remember reading about how, you know, even the United Nations was read by some Christians as kind of an indication of the end of the world because of, yeah, the disillusion of barriers among people and some of the, yeah, some of the themes that they were finding parallels in the Bible. So it's really fascinating how people, yeah, still, still, these ideas still resonate and come back to the present. And the Christian movement in the United States, it seems very present to this, the one that fights for the, Israel has to have the promised land in order for Jesus to come back, right, for the second coming. And this is, and so they're a very big lobby on behalf of Israel, this Christian group that's, you know. For Christian interests. Yeah, for a particular Christian, it doesn't mean all Christians are like that, of course, Christianity, 2000-year-old history. It's not just one thing.  Like Christianity is a global religion and like the cultures of those regions do animate that and the imagination, I assume. It's so true, Africa is just a great example. Islam and Christianity have been indigenized in such interesting ways. Indigenized in the sense that they've been, I don't know, melded with pre-existing traditions and they seem to do just fine, right? Living, integrated, I don't mean the people, I mean the whole world views are just, they've integrated different elements. And Christianity's always done that, right? And where do we get the Easter Bunny, you know? Obviously we have a lot of old traditions that... Kind of secularized, but still, we can't erase the religious foundations of it. Yeah, and why is that associated with Easter, you know, when there's always so many? Yeah, so in the West, we take a lot of this stuff as a matter of faith, you know, like some interior condition. But I don't think that's how these traditions tend to be experienced necessarily everywhere. When there's instead, you know, particularly among certain evangelicals, there are experiences that happen. You feel transported, you're born again. You have, these are the kind of experiences that would have been hard to put into a philosophical narrative 50 years ago, I think in the academia, but now they're essential. Thank you. Thank you so much, Margo. It's really interesting to hear from a religious studies perspective, and your research in this field is very, yeah, it's really fascinating. So thank you for coming on the program and enlightening us. So I encourage anyone who wants to, to go to the Journal of Religion and Violence, and there are some articles that are on, grunt, ace, or unfree. You can just read them, the introductions and a few other things. I don't know if you can necessarily get Oxford Handbook online, but some of these, if you write to me, I'll give you a password, I'll let you get in. Thank you for joining us.


I'm Premier Christy Clark. As kids get ready to go back to school, they'll learn new things. They'll be inspired by their teachers. They'll prepare to become our future leaders. And they'll make lots of new friends. We're working to build a better relationship with BC teachers. Because like parents, teachers play a crucial role in making sure our kids succeed. We're proposing 10 years of labor peace in the classroom. It means a fresh start for the adults around the bargaining table. A chance to work together for our kids and for their education. Students shouldn't lose out because the adults can't get along. 10 years of labor peace puts kids first. It's about making sure that a student in grade 2 today can reach grade 12 without missing a single day of school because of a labor disruption. We want to create long-term stability for our students, for their families, and for teachers because we want to set the foundation for our children to be first in line for the jobs that will come and to compete and win on the world stage. Work is already underway, but we have a lot more to do. Together we can achieve labor peace in our classrooms because there's nothing more important for our kids. I'm Premier Christy Clark. Thanks for listening.


Hello everybody hooded, Cobra Commander 788 here, and this is a quick look at the 1993 rapid deployment force mail away set. This was a set of three action figures that were available together through a mail away offer in 1993. All three of these figures are reissued from earlier action figures, and all of the accessories are reissues as well. None of them are new, but there was one unique item that came with the set, a black pocket patrol pack. We'll take a look at that momentarily. These three figures also shared a single file card, and that file card had a photograph of the figures. It didn't have unique card art, it actually had a photograph, and it had a photograph of the figures in the black pocket patrol pack, and it's on somebody's belt. Yes, I am curious who was the model for this pocket patrol pack in this photo. If you were a fan of earlier GI Joe, you know it was customary for figures to have their own file card, even if they were available in a set with other figures. But in 1993 they began this trend of issuing single file cards for multi-figure sets and using photographs instead of card art. Some other sets that came with these photograph file cards included the copter pilot set that included interrogator and major altitude, and the Arctic commandos set and the international action force set. I'm not gonna look at the text of this file card just yet. I will save that for a full review. Let's look at the figures that came in the set.  These are pretty much just straight issues of the retail action figures, but I think I have noticed some minor differences in the paint applications on the rapid deployment force fast draw that are different from the retail issue. The entire set came polybagged. And in that polybag, the individual figures were also polybagged like this. It does raise the question, if the figures are the same or nearly the same as the retail issues, how do you know if you have a figure that came with the rapid deployment force set? With these specific figures, I am pretty confident they came with the rapid deployment force set and they are not retail figures because I bought them from a seller who claimed to be the original owner of these figures. He got them when he was a kid and he had the original polybag packaging for the rapid deployment force set. It does appear to be genuine. So that increases my confident that these specific figures came with the rapid deployment force set and they're not just retail figures. The individual figures were bagged with a single black figure stand and nothing else, no other accessories. But there was another polybag in the set that included three additional figure stands for a total of six figure stands and three weapons. These accessories are also not original. It included the sniper rifle that came with 1986 low light. It included the submachine gun that came with 1988 hit and run and it included the gold submachine gun that came with 1993 DJ version two. The most unique piece in this set is the black pocket patrol pack. Most of us are familiar with the green pocket patrol pack that was first issued in 1983. This is a carrying case for figures. It can open up and it can hold three action figures. So you can put these three figures in there and it has a loop in the back. So you can put it on your belt. The green pocket patrol pack was first introduced in 1983 and it was available for a long time through mail order and with the Starduster action figure. Most of us are familiar with the green version. There are a lot of them out there. So it's kind of interesting to see one molded in black. It even has a unique sticker. Instead of having the GI Joe logo, it has a rapid deployment force sticker. That was a quick look at the mail away rapid deployment force set. This set can be very hard to find. It took me months and months to complete it. And I'm very happy to have the whole thing here with all the parts and the original packaging. Since this set is so hard to find, this will be a special occasion review. I will save the full review for a special occasion. It may not seem like there's a lot to talk about here since it's all just reissued stuff, but there is actually quite a bit that we can say. There are some unique things about this set. And this set does kind of encapsulate some of the trends from 1993. That's it. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you liked this video, please check back. I do have full vintage GI Joe toy reviews every week. Make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any. You can support the channel on Patreon. I have a website, HCC788.com, and you can find me on social media, on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for joining me. Make sure you check out the upcoming vintage GI Joe toy review. I will see you soon. And until then, remember only GI Joe is GI Joe.


Text pre-processing is an essential step in any text-binding pipeline as it determines what kind of data or machine learning and data explanation algorithms receive. Generally it comprises several steps so let's look at some of the most important ones. We'll use BBC3 from the data sets widget as an example data set. It contains several articles from the BBC News. Now again we'll use the corpus widget to indicate that our data comprises both a title and some content. So let's inspect our data in a word cloud to get a general feel for the corpus and its content. It could be more informative. Unsurprisingly the most frequent elements of the English language include the to in and of as well as some punctuation. So we need to clean this a bit and we can do so in the text process widget. I'll quickly insert it between the corpus widget and our word cloud. Now first we lowercase the text then we tokenize it. That means we break it into the core units of analysis typically words. Then finally we can remove some of the stop words. Stop words are words without semantic meaning like the and in and so on. In the preview on the left we can see a sample of the widgets output and we can look at the actual results in the word cloud widget. Okay great we see that words such as said in year and us are the most frequent words in our corpus. But let's look at the widget again. In the least on the left we have both year and years. Now the meaning is the same that distinction is only the grammatical number but it might make more sense to transform such words into a standard form. And the transformation of words into their base form is called normalization. For example working should become work. Orange is becomes orange and bigger becomes big. We'll use the UDPype limitizer a fast normalization option for English. So we just drag and drop the option between tokenization and filtering. Now here the order really is important. Okay great years and year are now a single year. Said has become say and so on. We can also select a word in the word cloud and inspect all the documents containing this word. For example win. Now observe the documents in the corpus viewer widget. Here are the 532 news articles that mentioned winning. Let's find each of its appearances. I can enter the regular expression backslash B win backslash B into the filter box which will locate the exact occurrences of the word win as backslash B denotes a non-word character. And it looks like winning doesn't appear only in the sports category. This concludes our pre-processing. Now if our data is big we might want to perform some additional filtering and if we wanted to distinguish between nouns and verbs we could apply some POS tagging which adds part of speech labels to the data. Now determining the best steps for your analysis can take a lot of time and it will probably heavily depend on your exact field. But the more you practice the easier it will be to decide which steps yield the best results.


Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. To date, we are going to add our second page to the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia by examining the Barabara No Mi. The Barabara No Mi is a Paramecia-type fruit which essentially allows its user to split their body up into various parts and control each portion individually. It was Eden, accidentally I might add, by Buggy the Clown who was originally planning to sell the fruit as a rookie pirate. It was also the second Devil Fruit to make a pre-consumption appearance in the series. This fruit takes its name from the Japanese Onomatopoeia for a knife hitting a board, which is Barabara. Barabara is also the term for splitting something up, not to be confused with the sound a knife makes when slicing through something which is Super, which lends its name to another fruit that will get to somewhat down the line. It should also be noted that in both the Four Kids and Funimation English Dubs, the Barabara No Mi is referred to as the Chop Chop Fruit, but I'm going to stick to the Japanese because well, I can.  However, the most immediate benefit given to a user of the Barabara No Mi is automatic immunity to any kind of sharp attacks. Well, immunity is probably the wrong word because people are still entirely capable of cutting you with a sword or a knife or whatever, but they won't actually deal any damage. The user's body will simply split at the point where the cut was made and should the user wish they could immediately reform themselves or use the split as a chance to enact some slightly more advanced tactics, particularly against an opponent who was initially unaware of the power. And just on that note, we should take a moment to focus on the fact that the fruit user is able to control their body parts while separated. This may not sound so great at first, I mean who really cares whether or not you're able to control a part of a hand flopping on the ground, but the Barabara No Mi actually has an incidental second ability which is limited levitation. Essentially the fruit allows its user to control and levitate their body parts within a certain spherical range. Should the parts extend outside of this range, then the user loses all control of that particular body part. The exact range of this ability is a 200 Barabara diameter, another fake unit of measurement invented by Oda to avoid questions. It should also be noted that a user of the Barabara No Mi is incapable of levitating their feet which are subject to the regular laws of gravity at all times. So with that in mind, what the Barabara No Mi has to offer a user is essentially endless possibilities in regards to tactical maneuverability. These powers can be used quite bluntly, for example, Buggy has an attack named Barabara Ho, where he fires a hand at an enemy, which can be particularly effective if he's holding some sort of weapon. Pretty basic, but even this, the most simple of attacks can be taken a step further. For example, if an opponent manages to catch the user's hand, then you could split off that captured portion of the hand and continue the attack. Buggy has even employed a purposeful strategy of making sure that he fires a portion of his forearm with his hand in order to bait his opponent into grabbing the forearm portion. And of course this kind of attack can be made with any limb or you know what, it doesn't have to be a limb and it doesn't even have to be fired head on. You could strategically plant portions of your body around the combat zone ready to spring various traps on opponents. Although this comes with a key disadvantage, which is rather simply that when you commit a body part to a trap like that, you lose it for use until your trap is activated, meaning that you could be fighting at a pretty severe disadvantage against a fully capable opponent. Furthermore, it may be difficult to spring these traps on your adversaries, as it becomes pretty immediately obvious that you are missing a body part. So most competent opponents, to some degree, will be prepared for a sneak attack. So alternatively, we can pursue a different route. Rather than trying to hide body parts, you could divide yourself into as many as possible in order to use them as a distraction like Buggy does with his Barabara festival technique. To a non-hockey user, this could be quite visually overwhelming and allow the user of the Barabara No Mi to strike at a wide array of openings. Really, the possibility in regards to the tactical use of this fruit are limitless and in the hands of somebody like a chess grandmaster, it would be absolutely deadly. Sadly, that's not quite what we have with Buggy. While I would certainly never say that Buggy fails to use the Barabara No Mi creatively, I would describe it as a more superficial form of creativity. Buggy uses this fruit as you'd expect an entertainer would, to craft illusions and absurdities that have incredible entertainment value but limited effectiveness in most other aspects of life. And I maintain that if given to the right mind, this fruit would be absurdly powerful. Some other miscellaneous things to consider when becoming a splitting human. This fruit holds another key advantage in regards to levitation, being that the effect seems to extend to any items being held by the user at the time. This allows the user to carry pretty much whatever they want, be it a knife, a giant axe or an incredibly large fishman whilst engaging in levitation. There is no defined limit to how many different parts of the body the Barabara No Mi allows you to split into. However, and this is pure speculation, I imagine that it is entirely dependent on the mental ability of the user to keep track of how many portions they have control over at any given point. Furthermore, there is no defined limit to how small a part of the user can split off their body. For example, the world's greatest swordsman, Dracula Micheal, chopped Buggy into some incredibly fine slices, which ended up being a perfectly acceptable use of the fruit. So perhaps an extremely proficient user of the Barabara No Mi could go so far as to split themselves into atoms. Whatever the case, there is a lot of untapped potential to be explored in this area.  With all of that said, the Barabara No Mi is a devil fruit that provides the user with a primarily tactical benefit. Being able to split your body up into multiple units can be seen as akin to controlling a small army. Placing much more emphasis on forward planning and maneuvering yourself into an advantageous position, then your more average devil fruit abilities allow. It is best suited to a truly gifted mind to pursue its full capabilities, however it would be instantaneously beneficial to anybody who consumed it. So yeah, highly recommend it if you just so happen to stumble upon it. And with that, we are going to commit the Barabara No Mi to the devil fruit encyclopedia. Next week, we will be examining the first slow gear type devil fruit introduced in the series, the Moku Moku No Mi. If you enjoyed this video, then feel free to like, favorite or subscribe. And if you are in any way keen on supporting this independent channel, then please do check out my Patreon, Discord server or Twitter. The links to it are in handy dandy description below. And finally, please do comment with your thoughts on the Barabara No Mi. This has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.


The chairman of the Presidential Election Petition Court, Justice Harunas Samani, has dismissed the application for live coverage of court proceedings. At the 2023 Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja, the Justice, said the application by the PDP and the Labour Party lacked merit. The presidential candidate of the PDP, Atikwa Bubaka, had filed an application on May 8 for an order to allow the live coverage of the daily court proceedings on the case that brought against Bola Tinnubu following the February 25 election. The Labour Party and its presidential candidates, Peter Albi, followed suit with a similar application asking that proceedings of the tribunal be televised. However, a week later, Tinnubu opposed the application for a live broadcast of the proceedings of the election petition, describing it as an abuse of court process. The subject of our application, i.e. the live streaming and open telecast, is not in any way connected with the merits of our petition. The petition is separate, it's ongoing. The application did not succeed to have the televised version of the proceedings relate to the entire world. And as far as we are concerned, we are now set for hearing. Tomorrow, we'll be here by God's grace for pre-hearing reports that will determine the progress of the petition and the time the petition will be had and concluded. Our position, as far as this is concerned, is that the issue of consolidation is one that is compelled by statute. And we have no objection to it. We are prepared to proceed. But given the reasons, the court says it's a policy matter. We are not part of the policy-making apparatus of the court or any court for that matter. We are a council, and our duty is to bring whatever the question we have to the court. If they agree, we say as a court business. If they disagree, we still say as a court business. So that's the position. They have disagreed and we are moving on. What the situation is, is simply that there are numerous documents and they are supplying them personally. So it's not something I can stand here. In Rivers State, for instance, let me just give you one example. There are 23 local governments. They're giving us from ACA here. In respect of 15, we still have eight outstanding. And you can't make a conclusion based on 15 of 23. So that's what the quarter, let me call it quarter. That's what it is about. Any day we receive everything we're asking for, we'll let you know.


We're live, we're live Yeah, so why am I going live all the time? Well, let me tell you because It's just easier I'm sorry that I did not do a baking class last week For if you don't know we've been raising money all of December for the local food bank And I've been baking and then bringing all the baked goods to them and I always buy groceries on my way for them and we've just been raising money for them and yesterday I was Or last week I was tired Like oh my gosh, and then I have like all my own baking that I need to do for family and parties and So yeah, so I've brought food over there, but no baking last week, but That's okay. People have still been giving so watching these videos All the money goes to the food bank just watching the commercials when they come up. There should have be too many Go ahead and watch the previous lives all of that counts the link in the description before giving or you can just give during this chat is fine Yeah, to the local food bank here or just give to your own doesn't matter easy Last day last day to get the cookbook if you want it in time for Christmas in New Zealand So I feel like if you wanted it, you would have got it. I've sold quite a few Not maybe as many as I hope but it's always a case But if you want it by Christmas, you don't have to have it by Christmas if you want to order it later, it's fine and I think like I talked about last time like I have it in like we're like bookstores and libraries can pick it up And so let's get me picked up around the world. That's weird to me. I Mean, it's weird because the intention is for American cooking in New Zealand in Australia. So Why does Germany want so many of these? I don't know Anyway, how's everyone? Where are you joining me from? What is this? Is this like heart just going off? You guys aren't hitting this heart. Are you anyway? Okay, I love it when my work just beeps. I just had lunch I decided to like shove it in before I came on here because it's like I'm noticing. It's a bit weird to be chewing I just had yogurt not too exciting With some, you know what I put in I put in skippies like they're like little corn flakes and some nuts whatever I have Just for the crunch. So good. Just try any protein. We have a big Christmas party tonight So don't eat too much, but they also don't want to die it to like Because I'm starving and I haven't had any protein. So what I thought we would do in the sense. I didn't bake for you I Did bake like all weekend for all the parties that I'm going to I like to bake and then I freeze it and then I bring It for Christmas Day because we're heading out of town this weekend So then it's all done and it's hard for me Like there's only four of us this year because two a minor out of the country To just like decide what to make and not make all of it. So of course I had to make all of it So I brought in a little plate of everything that I made and I'm going to show it to you and I'm going to describe to you what it is and I'm just going to preface this by saying sorry if you have a peanut allergy because there's a lot of peanut butter Welcome to America and peanut butter just peanut butter. So Sorry, it's really like when I see the angle of my phone. Oh Okay What put in the chat while I'm doing this like what it is that you love to make or you're definitely going to have Obviously pevlova is a big one in New Zealand and if you've never tried that Google it or message me All the Americans that come here always make that for them and that's their favorite and people they so it's starting to spread in the US through me So you're welcome and then they have like a trifle which I barely know what that is and They eat these like Christmas puddings, which I also barely know what that is and you guys like it's weird but like Fruit cake is a thing like it's like Apparently you get like the good one at New World. I don't really know. I'm not eating fruit cake. It's never happening I Would say never I guess I would try it Maybe I would try like a homemade one, but I'm not gonna buy it at New World But like in America you should know that it's like a joke gift If you don't like somebody you give them a fruit cake or like we make fun of people that get fruit cakes It's so funny. Is there can you I think you can buy I'm like you can definitely buy I'm like you definitely buy it at Costco. I think so comment below if you're in the US, but Yeah, so are you dying for this plate and I'm talking okay Here we go Let's start with this. So this is what is called a Scotcher rule and it's rice krispies sugar peanut butter with melted chocolate on tap and I made a ton of these now if You're in New Zealand. Let's not make these because they don't have corn syrup in New Zealand If you have croon sort corn syrup in New Zealand, please comment below because I have not found any So I have used glucose syrup glucose. Yeah syrup. Yeah glucose syrup And it doesn't work. It's okay, but look it doesn't stay together and it just it's It's delicious But like it's not gonna come out pretty so it's fine If it's just for you and your family So that's the first thing I made another peanut butter item the Classic peanut butter cookie with the chocolate in the middle and this is this is like a Hershey's. Oh This is in my cookbook if you want this one. This one actually is I wasn't even think I didn't think any of these were But this actually is This is amazing because you like can you see like a little crystallized sugar? Oh, yeah, this is so good I wasn't gonna eat any of these because I've ate enough yesterday. I just had yogurt, but And then so this is my grandmother's recipe from Ohio Those always turn out nice so that's recipes in there and they will turn out nice in New Zealand This is my grandmother's sugar cookie. So sorry it kind of They go so fast in my house This is the last one so I would have liked to have a prettier one But this is it besides the stuff that I froze for Christmas But they're like it's like a sugar cookie, but it's puffy Do you like that and then this is not the prettiest one? But like and then I just make a royal icing for the front actually have not had one of these yet But they're really good because they're like this soft It's my grandmother's recipe It's a little bit complicated, but here's the trick on these recipes not butter, but shortening So you use that Cremelta is that what it's called here Cremelta instead now The last piece the best one. Oh, and it's melting. So this may have to be eaten So this is what's called a buckeye and This is a chocolate. This is chocolate covered peanut butter ball. So like the peanut butter has sugar in it and some butter so good for you and And you dip it and you kind of freeze it and then hello and then you dip it in chocolate. I Haven't had one of these either yet Okay, so now I have it all over my mmm. So good mmm So I brought these to a little party yesterday kind of like a whole beautiful tray of All of this and it's a huge hit and specifically the peanut butter balls Oh, I do like kiwi barbecues. I am having a real kiwi Christmas this year We are barbecuing on the beach Because I've never done that because it feels weird to be on the beach at Christmas But I'm over it and we're doing it this year and Yeah, I love kiwi barbecues. I mean split less cuz kind of how we all summer, right? Just make a salad and grill some meat. So Do I think more Americans will move here once Trump is reelected? Yes, I do. There was a huge surge last time he was And that was around the time I came back Well, I wasn't planning on eating this and I'll just put it in my mouth Oh my gosh, it's good. So yeah, so that's my Christmas baking from this weekend. Mmm. Mmm. I Really wish you guys would try it Like it's just look at that I don't want to eat while I'm talking New Americans know much about New Zealand at all. No, I Mean, it's just my experience. Obviously, there's 300 million people. So My experience though has been Oh, how is Australia? Oh, I bet you miss being home How is down under how are the Australians this is what I get people don't even know Like I've been here for eight years and you can't Google it for one second like I can understand if like You know, it was the 90s and you had to go to the library to figure out where something is or to look at a map so Oh my gosh, so yeah, do they know? Some do the educated do every case. So this was a very common thing every time I went when I moved back to the US every time I went to the doctor they were like I Couldn't even get them to focus on what it is I was there to see them for because they just wanted to talk about New Zealand because I guess People that have more disposable income and then travel more they knew everything about New Zealand and just were picking my brain constantly See, I'm it'd be helpful to know if you are you American because then I can tell her my answer is a little bit different He's you need to crack it out on deep. Yes, New Zealand did well with Lord of the Rings, obviously Okay, thanks What made me choose New Zealand originally now I did a whole video on this so you can watch it where I tell the whole story but Basically We were going this is true story we were going to travel the country the US and amen My gosh, sorry. I'm tired in a camper van for a year and take our kids out of school and we were literally looking at camper vans like at the sales office and With is what we're going to do and then we were like we've kind of been everywhere in the US minus a couple spots and we're like, oh Then my my husband says to me. What do you think about New Zealand? And I was like I wasn't even Thinking international I'm like, I don't know think about New Zealand.  It's dark. Why don't you Google it? so I did I literally spent hours googling it and It literally Based on my research, which I'm good at research, you know, not everybody is is Was like, what is this like the Garden of Eden like the most perfect place like I number one I can't find anything bad about it. Everybody just raving about it as the best place on earth and I was like, oh, so that definitely piqued my interest but really what got me to come here was Somebody saying that I couldn't It's true So I had a friend who runs like an international business who helps people move and transition And I told her that what we were thinking about moving to New Zealand and she was like, yeah, you're not gonna be able to get into that country It's the hardest one to get in which it is so and Then that's all I needed. Oh Really just give me a challenge and it's happening. So that's what happened Hi from Nelson Oh Thank you. So yeah, so that's what happened and then we came for two years we moved back for two years and now we've been here for six years and Yeah, didn't expect to love it as much as I do. So that's what happened So now those goodies are just staring at me over here Okay, do you have questions? I'm happy to answer questions Tell me what you're doing for the holidays Can't believe Christmas is in a couple days. Are you guys ready? I'm actually ready because I only had two kids and I had one day of panic and just went out and just got everything I needed and was done and then wrapped it and was done That's what I did. I Have so much to do like I'm manic at work right now like I have been on I had a two and a half hour meeting that I was leading a training and then I had another I've been up since five. So this is why I look like oh I've been up since five because I had to prepare for that and then I kind of had a panic because I forgot about a contract that I had on something that needs to get finished in two days and I'm just like so I just had lunch and I'm taking a break and talking with you and then I'll get back to it but Yeah, so just a lot to get done before we go but It's okay crank it out go on holiday. It'll be fine Okay, how different is America to New Zealand or is it similar in some ways? I've been to Los Angeles Too big for its own It's totally different if there's one thing that I've learned through this community Through the research I've done on New Zealand compared to the rest of the world Doing videos and just building like a huge audience of people sharing their experience is that Basically, everyone's relatively similar and then America's the odd one out That's what I found didn't expect that didn't think that that was true going into it, but It's like because I'll do something to be like this is what's different about New Zealand than everybody was like Well, it's the same in Japan. It's the same in the UK. It's the same in France. It's the same, you know And it's like, okay, so we're the ones that are weird So I'm like, okay, so I would say it's very different when you come here as an American You're not gonna feel like it's that different, but when you get integrated into the culture, it's very different So this is why I have a whole consulting business that helps people move here. I'm really just kind of preparing them to get set up on life but also just like Understanding the culture how to thrive and do well at work how to get you know Kids schools and how they do things because when you go to a new country, it's not like there's like this Orientation Where people just tell you what everything is you're just literally kind of stumbling along trying to find it and trying to figure out Things like where to buy things like, you know, you got all these stores. You've got Harvey Norman You've got Noah Leeming. You've got Bunnings. Nobody knows what the hell is sold at any of these places I don't know, you know, so like I gotta do that actually I told my community I was gonna do that where I want to come up with like everything that you need to buy and where to get it and where to Get the best price. So I'm coming up with that. It's coming So That's So that's why I have that so if you're interested join my membership It's you get access to me you get access to other people moving here You get access to all the training on how to move here thrive here live here or whatever. It's great Link is in the description. I believe it normally is so Okay Nelson and all sunshine. Yes The gold This is a goal. Are you okay? So are you on the west coast of the South Island because I did gold panning Greg Did you know this I spent a whole Christmas two years ago panning for gold If I could remember exactly where I should it was so much fun. I Want to do it in the court. I want to keep doing it. I said bring the stuff.  Yes, I'm having time off. I'm welcome from Australia We are going to the Coromandel region kind of closer to Mount Manganui actually so the far south of it and for like I Don't know five days and then we're going to Rua for a couple days over New Year's and then we are going to the South Island We're gonna we're gonna do backpacking. I'm sorry tramping I'm Mount Cook and a mountain in Queen's Town And then we're gonna go kind of down on the east coast of the South Island down by the Catlins because I haven't been there Are you surprised how much American influence we have though too? Okay? I want to comment on the same Good question. Thank you for bringing it up I've been here for eight years total and The growing American influence is very noticeable to me It's way behind where other places I've seen so New Zealand is still pretty good But man, I could definitely see what you're saying and I could definitely see the influence I mean just to think about in 2013 how little you could get in in in ways of Mexican food at the grocery store or even restaurants like it didn't exist I Mean I'm not just talking about that. I'm talking about there's a lot of influence, but that's just something that just popped in my mind, but I'm at Boxing Day of the big sales. Yeah, I've never I've done one I did one year of Boxing Day sales and I didn't think they were really on sale. Have you guys had better experience of me? Was driving on the opposite. Yeah, that was what I was most nervous about and when I help people move here That's what their biggest concern is is driving on the opposite side, but honestly people in New Zealand drive so slow It's easy And the roads are straightforward The fact that you have roundabouts makes everything really easy because you just kind of go with the flow You know, it's like not the stopping and starting and knowing where I can turn in the four-way stops. It was pretty easy Oh Okay, so somebody commented they walked along on a beach with a dog yesterday and there's nobody around and that's true If you this is what I tell people If you go to a beach in New Zealand and there's some people there just go the next one Like that's how it is like there's nobody there like in the US when I used to do beach holidays I used to go down we would go down at 9 a.m. And put our chairs and our and our towels down and Then go back out probably around 11 and otherwise you wouldn't have a spot on the beach like that's the difference Oh, it's hot Nelson it looks beautiful out in Wellington I haven't been out there because I like I said Manic day and I've been working since 5 Do I have heaps of Americans contacting me about moving not as many as I would have hoped But there's definitely been an influx really since the immigration has changed You know has been updated in July, so it's really kind of just taken a little bit of time Kia ora hi.  Okay You don't understand that driving 10 over in the u.s. Is like normal and so like it's an adjustment is The fact that people stop for people everywhere like in the US nobody stopping for anybody nobody stopping so That is where you get the possibility of a lot of fender benders Because like somebody suddenly stopping for a cross because they'll put like a crosswalk like in the middle of a roundabout like what are we doing? Americans are ready to keep their Yeah currency rate. That's true People weren't very nice in LA. Yeah, I would believe that and the accent. Yeah, so certain Accents in New Zealand. I still struggle with actually still really hard for me to understand and can't believe how like almost every day I'm still learning things even after being here for eight years So there's that but So, yeah well, I hope you guys have a great Blenheim has a train through Blenheim has a train through a roundabout. I've been to Blenheim a couple times. Oh my gosh All I think about is that chocolate place when I think about Blenheim What's the name of it? Makana. Oh my gosh. Oh They dropped the speed limits. Oh, I better pay attention to that. What if they did that by me? You know, I would be the one in trouble Mm-hmm, mm-hmm So, yeah So if you're in New Zealand, this is the last day to get my cookbook by Christmas otherwise, I don't care order it whenever but I can ship it worldwide So you don't need to be in New Zealand and if you missed it watch it earlier where I showed you my baking that I made this weekend four different things If you're not impressed you should be Um What else is going on? Oh my gosh, okay, so I had this did you guys see the video of mine that were in viral? It was about basically menopause and being drafted for the For the war. Oh my gosh It literally went viral everywhere And I'm just like and I key and I've reached out to the person that made the video because I always feel bad Like I did it's not even my video I just do edit it if you don't know what that means. That just means like reacting to a video And so I don't mean to be getting all I wasn't the creator and so anyway, I've reached out to her and we talk and We're actually combining efforts because I have some really good product ideas for this so keep your eyes out It's gonna be good But anyway, I gotta get going. I got so much work to do but I just wanted to come on and say happy Monday and it's almost Christmas and You guys are the best so and if you're interested in giving the food bank the Details are in the description. I'll see you later