Good morning and welcome to the round table to release two new reports on Agent Orange in Vietnam, which is a part of USIP's War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative for the last year. I've had the pleasure to work with three authors on two different reports, one about the overview of the effects and efforts to remediate Agent Orange and help victims in Vietnam, and the second looking specifically at US assistance and programs that provide non-medical support to victims and families. Two of the authors of these reports are with us today and will be sharing about the contents and their experiences in doing this research. First will be Phan Suen Thuong, who is a researcher at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore as a young Vietnamese researcher. He's written compelling articles about Agent Orange in Vietnam, its meaning in US-Vietnam relations. Welcome, Thuong, we're really delighted to have you here with us today at the US Institute of Peace. The second report was co-authored by Susan Hammond and Da Quang Thuong. Susan is the Executive Director of the War Legacies Project based in Vermont, which is a non-governmental organization supporting families affected by Agent Orange, both in Vietnam and in Laos. And Thuong, the co-author, works with Project Renew in Quang Chi Province, Vietnam. And Project Renew is an organization that was founded by the US veteran Chuck Cersey and Quang Chi provincial counterparts to address UXO and other war legacies, including Agent Orange. We will invite each of the authors here to give an overview of their reports and then we will have time for questions and answers with the audience in person and online. There are two mics down at the front of the stage and since we're starting later than planned, I think we will go over a bit into the coffee break and push the schedule back so there's enough time for discussion. And with that, I'd like to invite Susan to start. Thank you, Andrew. First, I would like to express my appreciation for the USIP and especially Andrew for entrusting me with the responsibility of preparing this very important report. It's a new and comprehensive analysis of Vietnamese Agent Orange victims and I hope that everyone will have the opportunity to read it later. And for the purpose of today's round table discussion, I will cover some key findings of my report. Okay, so my report, sorry. My report is based on a review of existing studies and also interview data that I collected in 2022. While writing this report, I visited the Vietnam Friendship Village in Hanoi which provides home for children with disabilities associated with Agent Orange exposure. And in this photo, you can see me and some of the children at the village. The village was founded by an American veteran, George Meizel, who had served in Vietnam and later passed away because of health complications related to dioxin exposure. The village stands as a symbol of people-to-people reconciliation in Vietnam-US relations alongside many other examples of humanitarian work by Americans and American NGOs such as Susan's War Legacy's project. However, in Vietnam, many believe that the US government has not done enough to reconcile with Vietnamese victims. So the purpose of my report is to make a case for greater efforts by the US government to address the needs and concerns of people affected by Agent Orange in Vietnam. Their ongoing suffering is a humanitarian tragedy that was caused by US wartime action and the US can't help to mitigate. And doing more on this issue will also enhance bilateral trust which serves as a solid foundation for the Vietnam-US comprehensive strategy partnership. So first, let's start with who are Vietnamese Agent Orange victims. The majority of people who identify as Agent Orange in Vietnam live in central and southern regions of Vietnam and that were sprayed with herbicides but they also include Northern soldiers who fought in the south and also their descendants. There are currently four generations of Agent Orange victims in Vietnam. The first generation includes those who were directly exposed to Agent Orange and they experience chronic illnesses such as cancer and diabetes. Later generations include the second, third and fourth generation, descendants of the first generation and were born with very severe and often multiple disabilities. Now, obtaining the exact number of Vietnamese Agent Orange victims is an impossible task because of scientific limitations and many other unknown variables. So we can only rely on estimates to understand the scope of the issue. One estimate puts the number of victims at three millions and there's another estimate suggests that there are about one million victims including 150,000 children with disabilities. But when we talk about people affected by Agent Orange, we also need to count family members, people who have to deal with the financial, physical and mental burdens while caring for affected individuals and taking that into account, it is evident that the number of people affected by Agent Orange in Vietnam likely reaches into the millions even if we cannot provide an exact number. So what have been their experiences? In my report, I highlight several key themes in this regard. The first theme is their social economic struggles. The health and disability effects of Agent Orange alone is already tragic, but many affected families also live in poverty and they lack access to healthcare services. Caregivers often have to forego stable employment to provide full-time care for the victims. As Mrs. Nguyen Thi Hong Tham told me, she had to quit her job as a tailor to take care for her daughter who has severe mental and mobility disabilities linked to Agent Orange. And her family earns meager income from a home-based motorbike washing business and so they have to rely on government assistance to make ends meet. The second theme that I highlight in my report is psychological distress. Parents of victims often feel ashamed and socially isolated, even hiding their status as Agent Orange victims to avoid communal judgment. In many communities, disabilities often are attributed to fat or karma for past sins, the sins committed by themselves or their ancestors. And so this idea could lead to stigmatization and discrimination against the families. Caregivers also worry about their children's access to education, employment, and medical care, as well as who will take care of their children when they, the caregivers, are no longer around. Children with disabilities often face bullying at school which can lead to a loss of self-confidence and also suicidal thoughts. As for the Kim Tuen, a second generation victim shared with me and I quote, when I was in school, other kids bullied me and I feel sad and quite alone. I feel ashamed when they made fun of me. I thought about death. Third theme that I mention in my report is the disproportionate impacts on women caregivers. Women not only bear the responsibility of caring for their families, but also can be unfairly blamed for the children's disabilities. Some cases even result in single motherhood as the husband leaves to help a new family. And this is what happened to Mrs. Pham Thi Zit, a single mother and caregiver of her 29-year-old daughter who has disabilities linked to Agent Orange. Mrs. Zit's husband, who was exposed to Agent Orange, left the family when the daughter was just three months old. For many victims and family members, Agent Orange is not just a personal pain but also a collective grievance that demands recognition and compensation from its human perpetrators. So there has been an ongoing struggle for justice led by Vietnamese victims and advocates. This includes a lawsuit against chemical companies by Vava, the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange in 2004, and another lawsuit by Mrs. Tran Tung Ngah, a French-Vietnamese victim in 2014. Now this struggle for justice is driven in part because of a perceived double standard of the US government and Agent Orange producers who recognize and compensate American veterans who are affected by Agent Orange but has not done the same for Vietnamese victims. And whatever the eventual outcome of these legal battles for recognition and compensation, Vietnamese people affected by Agent Orange will continue to rely on Vietnamese government support and also assistance from various international NGOs, often with funding from the US government. I will not go into the specifics of these assistance because I think Susan will cover in her presentation but I will provide a brief assessment of Vietnamese government assistance and US government assistance and provide some recommendations. Vietnamese government assistance can be categorized into two types. The first is preferential treatment for people with meritorious service for the revolution and the second is general disability assistance. The term people with meritorious service to the revolution refers to individuals according to the Vietnamese government have made significant contributions to revolutionary causes and Vietnam's development particularly during wartime. Vietnamese government assistance does alleviate some financial burdens for many families but however the monthly stipend provided is often considered insufficient to meet the needs of all families, especially those living in poverty. And for the policy for people with meritorious service to the revolution, it has not covered the third and fourth generation victims and there are also many problems with the beneficiary identification process that has caused some public satisfaction. Turning to US assistance, the US Congress has provided increasing funding to support health and disability programs in eight Vietnamese provinces and a few days ago during President Biden's visit to Vietnam it was announced that there will be two more provinces leading to the total of 10 provinces and the US AID implements these programs in the form of direct assistance, capacity building and policy development. I want to highlight notable development which is the updated language in the appropriations bill on this issue. Now until 2022, the language in appropriations bills was ambiguous about the connection between the allocated funding and agent orange. However, in the US Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 and 2023, it is explicitly stated that funds will be used to assist persons whose disabilities may be related to the use of agent orange and exposure to dioxin. So I believe this is a positive development toward greater acknowledgement of US responsibility. The programs themselves, the programs by US AID are viewed positively by beneficiaries in Vietnam. They are seen as beneficial to many later generations, later agent orange victims. However, they're still limited in scope, so it is necessary to increase funding and expand the current scope of existing services, particularly direct assistance because many affected individuals do not have access to rehabilitation centers and healthcare facilities. But beyond health and disability assistance, it is also important to have explicit acknowledgement of Vietnamese agent orange victims, especially in office of statements. This is necessary to reduce the criticism of US labor standard. Finally, engaging in direct dialogue with the victims and their families is a necessary step toward greater reconciliation with the civilian victims of agent orange. So what are the key takeaways from my report? There are three points. First is that the number of people affected by agent orange in Vietnam, maybe as many as several millions, and their needs are both diverse and pressing. Second, despite the scale of the challenge, the Vietnamese government, and increasingly the US government, have sought to provide assistance to agent orange victims and their families. Third, much more remains to be done to assist and reconcile with the multiple generations of Vietnamese affected. And to conclude, I would like to say that as the two countries, as the two governments enhance their ties, it is crucial not to leave war victims behind. Not just agent orange victims, also victims of UXO and many people who are still looking for their missing loved ones. And so I hope that my report and also Susan's and Thuan's report will contribute to the discussion on how to ensure that cooperation on war legacy issues is an integral part of Vietnam-US comprehensive strategic partnership. Thank you. Thank you very much, Zoltan, for that clear and quite comprehensive overview of your report. I recommend everyone to look at it. I think seeing the statements from President Biden and General Secretary Nguyen Phu Tham last weekend, emphasizing the importance of this issue, really this report, and Susan's do show some of what's been achieved up to now, but also steps for taking it forward into the future. Susan, over to you. Thank you. As Andrew mentioned, my report covers the summary of the US assistance in Vietnam for people who were believed to be affected by Agent Orange. But then we also, my colleague, Thuan, went to interview 14 organizations that are primary, they're focusing their work on providing non-medical assistance to families, so beyond the rehabilitation, which is the primary focus, really, of USAID funding.  We have heard a little bit about USAID, but I'm gonna give a little brief summary. But I first wanna give a shout out to Michael Martin, who we rely on his reports. And if you haven't read the CRS reports on US assistance on this issue, read them. They're still very valuable. It gives a nice history of where we've gone on this issue over the years. Since 2007, the US has begun funding specifically to address the Agent Orange issue in Vietnam. And it took more than, unlike the unexploded ordinance issue, which we heard this morning started in the 90s, earlier 90s, took almost a decade, more than a decade, actually, after the normalization of relations for the two countries to work together to how to address the problems of Agent Orange. And we could spend the whole day talking about that history, but we're really looking towards the future about where we are now on this issue. And in the beginning, as you mentioned, it really was not very specific. It was focused on addressing the related health issues around the communities that lived around the dioxin hotspots. And that was in the very early days where we were trying to basically define the full extent of the problems of Agent Orange. But luckily, we had Senator Leahy and Tim Reiser putting money into the system, and in a lot of ways forcing USAID to confront this issue. And over time, as was mentioned, the language has changed significantly to the point where it's much more direct to address people who are, persons whose disabilities may be related to the use of Agent Orange and exposure to dioxin. So in the Senate language, it's very clear that the target of this USAID funding is for people believed in Vietnam to be Agent Orange victims. And as we said, it's very difficult to define who they are. But because the USAID funding by its nature, really, needs to be looking at disabilities regardless of cause because you can't help one person with a disability and then ignore the person who has the Agent Orange-related disability and ignore the other person who's their neighbor who also has a disability. So morally, you really have to approach it as a regardless of cause. But the language and the appropriations bills targets it geographically, which I'm happy to see that another two provinces has been added. So the U.S. and over the years, the U.S. and Vietnam have really began to fine tune how they're gonna work together to address this, the disability section of impacts of Agent Orange. And as Daniel, Ambassador Curtinbrick mentioned back in 2019 when this partnership really began to be developed, he says our goal is simply put to improve the quality of life for persons with disabilities here in Vietnam. And in that expanded partnership on disabilities, the two governments agreed to cooperate to expand healthcare and rehabilitation services, expand the social inclusion and improve the quality of life of people with disabilities, improve policies and public attitudes, reduce barriers and increase social inclusion and strengthen the capacity in the implementation of support activities. And so currently the USAID funding, which is now at 30 million a year from the beginning of three million, is channeled through several organizations. Two are American, two are foreign organizations, the Humanity and Inclusion, which is really working on the capacity building of the rehabilitation sector. And then Vietnam Assistance to the handicapped who also works in that field, but it also has been done a lot over the past several decades to help the Vietnamese expand, develop and implement their disability, law and disabilities. And then there's currently five Vietnamese organizations that are the primary recipients of the funding, though there are many sub recipients like Project Renew who I worked with on this paper. As we said earlier, much of the funding has been focused on improving rehabilitation services in Vietnam and helping the Vietnamese develop and implement the law and disabilities. And although they are, as I skipped, the Vietnamese government has also made great efforts as was summarized earlier, partly for passing the law and disabilities, but also creating this support system through the Ministry of Labor and Social, I always get that mixed with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. I get always mixed up with the Vietnamese, the Lao version of it. And so there's this monthly stipend program that if you are certified as a person with a disability who has a severe or very severe disability. And as Ong mentioned, it's not, the families welcome this assistance, but it's not sufficient to address all of their needs. Is it the 2016 National Survey on People with Disabilities in Vietnam found that households with disabilities are twice as likely to live in multi-dimensional poverty in Vietnam. The greatest impact is on the quality of their housing and sanitation and the likelihood of children not completing school. And these deprivations are greater in the rural areas of Vietnam. 80% of the people with disabilities in Vietnam live in rural communities. So they have a difficult access to the medical care that is existing, but the impact of disability tends to be more severe when you're living in a rural community. Also having a family, a person with a disability in your family is shown to increase a family's cost of living by 12% due to the increased cost of medical care, transportation, food, personal care, and many other expenses that come with caring for a family member with a disability. And often, if it's a child with a very severe or an adult in some cases, some of these children we're talking about are now in their 30s or 40s. They often require a full-time caregiver who therefore cannot work outside the home, cannot contribute to the income, can't even go into the fields to farm. So programs that are focused only on the medical side of disability, I mean, though they are very welcome and very needed in Vietnam, they do not address the impacts of disability that affect the whole family and make it difficult for families to move outside of this financial or multi-dimensional poverty. And so our report looked at 14 different organizations. Many of them were chapters of the Vietnam Association of Victims of Age and Orange who have programs in probably almost every province now, I would assume, in Vietnam that are providing some working directly with families who have victims, who have family members with disabilities, particularly those believed to be impacted by age and orange. Vietnam Red Cross is another organization that has a nationwide impact because they have both Vava and the Vietnam Red Cross have volunteers often down to the very local village level and even smaller level in that in some cases. So they have really developed direct relationships with the people with disabilities in their community. So they are well, both Vava and the Red Cross are very well placed to provide programs that are providing direct assistance to families who are caring for severely disabled children. And our interviews found that in the non-medical side of the equation, there are, these programs tend to fall into six main categories, livelihood support, which it could be helping families develop livestock, breeding, setting up a small business in their home so the caregiver does not have to leave the home, improving the living conditions. When you have, particularly in areas where many of these people live, where there's the rainy season and the monsoon season that comes through and the typhoons that come through, there are homes that are in vast need of safe housing, roofs that won't leak. So many of these organizations help in that aspect.  You may need transportation to get to and from school and that can be difficult if you're someone with a physical disability. But also, some of these organizations provide support to the siblings of children with disabilities because after they will be the ones who will need to provide the caregiving for their disabled sibling when their parents pass on. And so to help with that, ensure that that child stays in school so that they can have a decent job upon graduation so that they can have, ideally, have some of the resources that are needed to care for their disabled sibling when their parents pass. Some other organizations provide just financial assistance for either an emergency situation that comes up or just cash assistance to help them deal with a medical trip or if they have some, they lose a job and are in a situation where they need cash on hand. So there's some organizations who will provide that type of support. Caregiver training and support, which USAID has also provided, but the Red Cross and VAVA and others have worked by training their network of local volunteers to provide, to assist caregivers in providing better care for their children with disabilities or providing some respite care even so the mother can go off to the market. And the other programs work on providing social integration and peer support and helping people with disabilities integrate into their local community. In addition, a few of the programs, and I want to shout out here to the children of Vietnam's Hope System of Care, work in collaboration with multiple government agencies and organizations to provide more comprehensive wraparound services to people with disabilities and their families. And since about 80% of the people with disabilities live and roll families, many of these programs come out in the form of the first, which is the livelihood support and often in the form of raising cattle, water buffalo. And these can be challenging because it's not, you can't just take this cow and hand it to a family and expect everything to go well.  You have to bring the veterinary services there from the very beginning to make sure that that animal is healthy and that they can go, they can breed and go through the purpose of why they're there is really to have increased the family's livestock supply. And without that direct hands-on support, there can be a lot of failure. But if you have this program where you invest, the families are invested in the livestock by including their own investment, whether it's building the stable or helping to purchase the animal, there's more success that has been found. And then the number and scale of these programs that we looked at with the 14 organizations are pretty limited because their funding tends to come through individual donations, particularly when it comes to VAVA and the Red Cross, it's donations that they are able to generate in the local community or in some cases internationally. And so they can ebb and flow. There's no sustainability at this point. They're pretty, depending on what funding is available at the time. So there needs to be more sustainable funding sources targeted at this type of support. And as Ambassador Crittenberg noted in 2019, the U.S. and Vietnam were working together to create a comprehensive service system that supports caregivers as well as a person with disability. And so far USAID has done a pretty good job. I can critique some of their things, but overall they've been a very good job on the rehabilitation side and the disability rights side of these issues. But I think there can be more efforts over time to reach what Ambassador Crittenberg also mentioned, connecting people with disabilities and their families to economic and social support and particularly that economic support because having a child with a severe disability is an economic strain that impacts the whole family. And so when I was completing this paper, I was happy to read that the USAID is doing some pilot projects in this field. And maybe we can hear from Tony about some of the successes there and the lessons learned and how we can move this forward more. And on an individual level, these are just a few examples of some of the livelihood support and educational support, caregiving training. So on an individual level, these programs are not, it's not a huge amount of money. It depends on the type of program obviously, but for scholarships and small loans, up to that can be $100, $250 per family for building, helping renovating a home, which is a huge need as well. It's more around the range of 2,000 of family. The animal husbandry that I talked about is usually in the $20 million, 20 million dong range or about 340 to 860 per family, depending again on the type of livestock that you're helping them with. And then some of the more wraparound services that the children of Vietnam provide and others. The investment is around 1,000 per family, not including of course, the management costs that are involved in that. So I think, I believe that scaling up these projects can be possible if there's more cooperation between the implementing organizations and local government officials. And there is already a framework in place in Vietnam called the Action Plan on Disabilities from 2021 to 2030, which outlays how each ministry and each organization can work together to and set concrete goals in order to improve services and support people with disabilities. So there's a plan in place. The issue is trying to work, how do you filter in some of these individual organizations and efforts into the greater plan to provide more sustainable direct assistance to people with disability. And so the next round of appropriations remains at 30 million, which we hope it does. I mean, that investment in the future can, if that can be transferred, not just to the medical programs that are in the pipeline, but some of these additional support that families need beyond medical care, we could go a great, a long way in addressing some of the economic support that is needed for these families. And again, as we don't really know the full extent of how many people we're talking about, though there are surveys on disabilities in Vietnam and we do have a sense of how many have severe or very severe disabilities. And if you target it geographically to the areas where there are, where we're working now in the provinces that were sprayed, we're really talking an estimated population of about 73,000 or more, around 73,000, 74,000 people with disabilities. And if your average level of support is 500,000, I mean, $500, I'm sorry, with that 30 million that the US is already allocating hopefully per year for the next several years, if some of that can be put into these programs that are non-medical assistance, you could really make a difference in those 73,000 families. So in conclusion, oops, I didn't put this one on, sorry. One of my conclusions of my paper or paper is that one of the priorities is to vote more resources, time and attention to providing non-medical support for persons with significant disabilities. In addition to this, excluding what has been done in the rehabilitation side of things, but in addition to what has been done on the rehabilitation side. The second priority is to foster more and closer collaboration between Vietnamese government agencies and Vietnamese international NGOs in order to provide more wraparound services for people with disabilities. And third is to fully engage people with disabilities and their families in the programs that support them and that was your recommendation as well. You have to really bring the people into the discussion, you can't just bring the program to them. Thank you. I'll end here with, if you wanna read the quote from Ambassador, Samantha Power. Great, please join me in congratulating Zoom and Susan for their work and presentations this morning. And I'd also like to thank the USIP Publications Team that we've been working with to get these reports finished and printed. According to one of my colleagues, USIP produces a large number of reports on many different piece and security topics, but these reports have special meaning and the chance to be, I think really, go to sources for understanding Agent Orange issues in Vietnam for years to come. So they were also quite moved by what you've done and these issues that we're talking about. I'd like to ask the first question and then we'll open up for everyone else. At a workshop that USIP organized with the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam several months ago, Charles Bailey, former Ford Foundation and Aspen Institute leader stated that he thought that key difference in the US Vietnam reconciliation process compared with any other post-war relationship is actually the Agent Orange issue. This is a unique feature between the US and Vietnam. And there are many reasons for that, right? One is that it affects both people and the environment around them. It's hidden and unclear in its effects and its causes. We're still finding out what some of the impacts might be and the fact that it affects US veterans as well as people throughout Vietnam. I'd be interested in your reflections on what role the Agent Orange issue has played in US Vietnam reconciliation and getting us to this new comprehensive strategic partnership. Who'd like to start? You wanna start? Yeah, I can start first. Yes, I've worked with Charles Bailey closely on this report so first I would like to extend my appreciation for him. I wish he could be here today. And as I learned about this issue, as I did research on this topic, it was the most difficult war legacy issue in Vietnam-US relations because of the reasons that you mentioned. For many years, even after normalization, the two sides could not agree on the science, on the basis facts. And so that state of deadlock persisted even as we have formal relationships. But I think what led to the progress was the initiatives by a lot of people from both sides, both from the state sector and the non-state sector working together because they realized that it is a humanitarian issue that we need to do something about. It affects not just Vietnam, but also the US and also veterans from other countries. So it's a shared humanitarian issue that connected us. And because of that, we had a lot of initiatives that led to scientific discovery of the hotspots. And then we talked about science. We began to talk about science. Before that, the issue was mired with politics and emotions, so it was very hard to reach a compromise. But then we discovered the science and we also recognized that the science might not be perfect, but it's something that we can work with. And we do see that there are a lot of people in need. So let's combine that together. We have some science and we also have the need, compassion to do something about it. And then we can compromise and work together. And it demonstrates that we can, it's the most difficult issue and we overcame that. And so I think it shows the strength of US-Vietnam relations, of US-Vietnam reconciliation. And it shows that people from both countries are willing to work together to deal, to confront with lingering war legacies. Yeah, I would agree with that. It's been I think very important because there was just so many throughout that earlier days that the two countries just could not figure out how to discuss this issue in a way that can address the humanitarian problems. Everyone was seeing the humanitarian issues. We couldn't agree on defining what was causing it necessarily, but there was certainly in a sense we got to help these people who are impacted by the war. But it really took, I mean, I think we really have to thank Tim and Senator Leahy for being so persistent in and evolving that language over time to the point where it was really forcing USAID, the administrative side, to reach out to this population that the Vietnamese, they weren't questioning the science. For them, they were a victim of Agent Orange and that victim, they were victims because of the war, caused by the US. But through Senator Leahy and Tim and Charles who also really finessed that language in a way to get the programs to more reflect what the Vietnamese, the people that the Vietnamese wanted helped which are those who were perceived to be or were believed to be or are victims of Agent Orange. I kind of hesitate because it's hard.  It's like, because you cannot prove that one individual person has this disability due to that Agent Orange. I mean, the science shows that in animal studies quite clearly, but that was that stumbling over the language, which I still do today was causing a lot of these problems. But we worked it out. The US and the Vietnamese worked it out. They found a way to address this really controversial, both scientifically controversial and just politically scientific controversial issue. And I think that it's a good example of what can be done in other countries to develop, to tackle some of those problems of where you just can't see to find a way to have a common language on it and then or agree in a way to stop debating over the language and just doing the work that needs to be done to provide assistance. Great, thanks to you both. So we welcome comments and questions in the discussion. He's come down to one of the two mics here in front. Would like to go first. We welcome questions in Vietnamese as well. Please. Hi, Scott Willis from Children of Vietnam. And I wanted to say thank you Dung and Susan for these reports and for continuing to draw attention to this really important issue. And thank you Susan for the shout out to Hope System of Care for the program that we run. It was in fact, Hope System of Care that drew me to Children of Vietnam back in 2014. So I'm very proud of the work that we do. My question is this. Well, first I wanna say that I think what's happening with respect to age and orange and the treatment of people with disabilities is making great progress. I mean, if we look at the 2022 and 2023 language in the budgets, right? You've got, first of all, I went from 20 to 30 million and you're actually saying the words age and orange, right? So these are milestones. I mean, I think we have to acknowledge that, right? So of course there's still work to be done. But, you know, and when we look at the infrastructure, albeit it's small and limited to certain provinces like we're in Quang Nam, you're in Quang Nam, but you're working with Red Cross. We have our local stakeholders and partners that we're working with. So, you know, the model is there. It just needs to be expanded. So in Vietnam, I think at least, of course it can be bigger and more, but it's on track, right? My question to you, Susan, I know you're very active in Laos and looking at the issue of dioxin contamination there. And I'm just wondering when you think Laos is going to be ready to kind of begin this journey, right? So we've got a 1.5 million there versus 30 million for Vietnam. It's obviously a smaller scale in Laos. That's, I got that. But, you know, we're not really doing anything there. I think in terms of remediation, in terms of helping people with disabilities, just wanted to get your thoughts on when you think Laos will be able to get on the train. Thank you. We're getting closer. So that's good. And first of all, the language is in the last two appropriation bill, 1.5 million. In Laos, the problem is somewhat different because the primarily the sprain that took place in Laos are in the spine along the border between Vietnam and Laos. Very rural communities, mostly ethnic minority communities that don't have access to healthcare to begin with. So even identifying how many people have disabilities that may be related to Agent Orange is challenging. I mean, my organization in Laos, we go village to village in the districts where we're working. And we do find the same types of disabilities, the same percentage population-wise that you see across the border in Vietnam. And the Laos know, particularly the border villages, they know that Vietnam is receiving this assistance from the US government. They're well aware of it. But things move very slowly in Laos. And we are now, as far as I know, the last I talked to USAID, which was several months ago, they are hoping to develop a program to reach those rural communities, the rural districts that were sprayed, hopefully having some type of program in place by the end of the year. They have a strong disability program there now, but they're not in these more remote areas. So we're hopeful that that will start to phase out and they'll be able to utilize the funding that's in the pipeline right now, which is a total of three million. On the dioxin hotspot side of the question in Laos, that's more challenging because of the secret nature of the war. There is no denying or Ben Hoa, no large military bases where millions of these barrels were stored in Laos. We're talking about much smaller bases that the CIA was operating out of that we have heard from CIA alumni, Air America former pilots that they did have barrels of herbicide, whether it was Agent Orange or something else, they're a little unclear, but for the dioxin hotspot, that's where science is very simple.  And if there's a dioxin problem, then we know ways to remediate that, but there's still a lot of sensitivity in Laos about these sites. I mean, these were former CIA bases like Long Chan, which are still sensitive areas today in Laos. So getting that moving forward on the remediation side is challenging, not only because the Laos are hesitant, but the US embassy, to them it's not a priority either because it's pretty small. So we're still moving, trying to push that a little bit further, but it's slow steps on the remediation side. If I can add to that, when I was in Laos a month ago with Sarah Kulabdura, we met with several of the Laos government's officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who had recently gone to Vietnam on a study visit that Susan's organization sponsored. And they visited some of the hotspots and areas affected in Vietnam. It seems to me that that has increased their interest and perhaps they're ready to speak more about Agent Orange issues in Laos. And also from USAID, I met the mission director in Bing Chan. Yeah, so they have this existing OCARD project, which is supporting people with disabilities in several provinces. And their intention with this additional appropriated funds is to expand that to several provinces in central and southern Laos that were sprayed. So that's sort of a comparable strategy to the one that USAID has carried out in Vietnam, first geographic targeting. But then as you say, it's a question of, okay, it's in that geographic area, but what places exactly and how to reach and best support the people affected there. And particularly because unlike in Vietnam, which has a quite robust medical system in place quite many levels, these area of Vietnam, I mean in Laos, there's nothing really set up. I mean, if to get services, rehabilitation services, you would need to go all the way to Bing Chan, which can be an eight to overnight bus ride. And first you even have to get from your rural village to get to the bus. And so there's a lot more complexities in providing services to people with disability in Laos. Who would like to come up next? Hello, good morning. Thank you so much for the presentation.  And I was just curious to get your take on the kinds of strategies or approaches to get people's awareness or support to that place where that kind of action can become reality, particularly when it comes to just communication or I think you were at the session yesterday and discussing the arts or the role of the arts and these types of initiatives. So I'm just curious to get any ideas about just channels or approaches to build greater awareness or greater support. Lance, do you want to introduce yourself for a minute too? Sure, sure. Selfishly, I'm a filmmaker. My name's Lance Kramer. And so I spend my time thinking about storytelling and the arts and its role in working towards peace and reconciliation. So I'm not only interested in film, but I would love to just get your recommendations. And not just in the, I mean, I think I'm interested in government and NGOs, but also just amongst the general public in both cultures or both countries. Thanks. Well, I think your paper did that very well in a lot of ways in getting the voices out of the families who just understanding the day-to-day reality, the waking up, the preparing the meal, the feeding the child, which can take an hour or more. And then there's the bathing. And I mean, it's just, it's for some of these people that you spoke with very severe disabilities, I think for someone who does not have that experience of caring for a child with severe disabilities, I don't think you under, it's hard to understand the intensity of that and how it impacts the caregiver and the family. And so I think finding ways to get those stories out in your paper does, helps to do that. In Vietnam, I think if you mentioned Agent Orange to any Vietnamese person, they would know what you're talking about and they would get in their mind of vision of who that person is and the impact on that family because there has been a lot of, thanks to a great extent to the Vietnam assistance of victims of Agent Orange, Devava, who have that, who are working directly with these families and helping tell their stories, but then moving that into policy, that's very challenging to do. But I mean, there's the will there, I think, but it's just, it's a lot of it, it's the techniques. How do you actually do it? How do you go from that $30 million that's allocated by Congress to a program that's going to reach that family that was described in your paper, who's overwhelmed by the burden of caregiving and deeply in poverty? Yeah, so one of the themes that I mentioned in my report is psychological distress that comes from the reactions of people in the community because disabilities or disabilities linked to Agent Orange can be seen as curse. It's not perceived as, okay, this is human action and these people are suffering the consequences, but you also have cultural belief that this is God's decision, God decided that this family deserves that because they did something in the past, their ancestors did something in the past life. So people have this rumor, okay, so this family, they did something bad, they deserve that. So I think it's important to raise community awareness and I also think why it is so important to have acknowledgement that, okay, this is something that the US Air Force did, right? And these people are suffering the consequence. That's why we need clear language to say that, okay, this is not your fault, right? This is a mistake that happened. There needs to be people to take responsibility for those actions. And so I think we should replicate the language in the appropriations bill that we are supporting people with disabilities that might be related to Agent Orange, right? To show that, okay, so this is not fit, this is not karma for your actions. This is a worse tragedy, it is ongoing, and the US is doing something to address that. I think that's very important. Megan, do we have questions or comments online? Not yet, it's okay. Just to kind of expand on that too, I mean, like I said, in Vietnam, people understand the impacts of Agent Orange. It's been in the papers, there's been movies, there's a lot of fundraising done to support the victims. That's not the case in Laos at all. The people who were impacted are very remote, they know, they recall the planes, they talk about the spraying. They don't link, though, that that spraying that was done 50 years ago, maybe the cause of the disability in their family member. There is not that link in Laos at this point. Could I invite our colleagues from VAVA or USAID, if you'd like to share your thoughts? Thank you very much, Mr. Andrew, to invite her to have some comment. And first of all, I'd like to say thank you very much for UCIP, this time you organize a one round table about these subjects. And for these subjects, we agree with the study and survey from Susan and Mr. Zung here. We understand that it's already difficult to find out the number of the victims. As you said, and it is really difficult to find out how many of the people now, because as Zung said, it is they have some emotion about themselves and they don't want to show that they are the victims. So that's why during the wage that we find, we want to survey about that one, it's not easy even from outside. And the second thing is difficulties. We have no finance to do this for all our provinces in Vietnam. So that's why we need the help from the US first. And that's of course. And for the program that we know that with this program and with you can put it online, then it's very useful for us. Because from here, we can let everyone to know how about our victims and how about their life now is very difficult in Vietnam. And they always say that it is the poorest and difficult in our countries. And so I think so with your research, it's very useful for everyone if they can present here and they can understand more about that one. And we'd like to say thank you again for your try to do everything for ours during the days. And I think during the times and before and in the future. And we hope that in the future you have many actions for them and for the new relations between the two countries. And as Mr. Jeff Mucklake talked about this morning and we hope that they'll continue to this policy that we are doing for us. And we hope that in the future, it will be better for everyone above 50. Thank you. Thank you Chi-Khang. My kind is the head of international relations at Vava. And also with us today is General Minvan Ring who is the president of Vava. He'll be speaking on the closing plenary this afternoon. Yeah, and I think one sort of symbol of how this relationship has strongly developed is that USAID is working with Vava now as a sub-grantee, I believe, right? And that before it was Vava was sort of like they're here doing their advocacy kind of separate from what the US government was doing. And now they're really starting to work better and more closely together. And I think that's very promising because Vava has such a reach throughout the whole country for this population that we're really targeting which is the victims of Agent Orange. And I should add that in addition to this session being translated and live streamed in Vietnamese, we will be translating both Zobem and Susan's reports into Vietnamese. That's not ready yet, but it will be coming out and will be available online. I think we'll go for another 10 minutes so we do have time for several more comments. Yes, sir. So I am Michael Martin and thank you, Susan, for your comment earlier. This has been an issue that I've been dealing with when I was at CRS for about 15 years and it was actually representative Fali Omaviega of America Samoa who held the first congressional hearing on Agent Orange. And in that hearing he himself found out that he was potentially a beneficiary of the program the United States had for veterans. So that was sort of an interesting detail at the hearing that I found out. But that leads me into one aspect that's in the language and has been around for a while that often is looked past. You've been talking mostly about disabilities and indeed disabilities has been a word that's been used. But it also talks about healthcare. And it's very sensitive politically, both in the United States and in Vietnam. I know on the Vietnamese side, at least through my interlocutors, that they look at the presumed exposure programs that the United States has that provides to US veterans healthcare for multiple diseases including type two diabetes, which is what representative Fali Omaviega had. So far you have seen a great reluctance on the US side to actually activate that healthcare side. It has been USAID focusing almost exclusively on disabilities and trying to disentangle or disengage it from the Agent Orange exposure part of it. And there's been kind of a delicate political dance on how it gets brought in but not explicitly. So one of the things I've often pondered about when I was at CRS I couldn't, I could ponder things but I couldn't propose things. Now I can, now that I'm retired. But can either of you see a way that something parallel to the presumed exposure program in the United States could be brought into the provision of assistance by the United States in Vietnam, for example, to veterans of the conflict on the Vietnamese side who have some of these types of cancer or other medical conditions, not disabilities, but medical conditions that are in need of assistance. So I was wondering if you had any thoughts about how that might be brought into the program or is it just politically not feasible at this time? You wanna talk about that? Thank you, Mr. Martin for the question. I also consulted your report, inviting my report. So thank you so much for all your work. So one of the criticisms of US assistance in Vietnam is that so far it has disregarded first generation victims who were directly exposed to Agent Orange and like you said, have chronic diseases, not disabilities. So in Vietnam, there are support programs for veterans. There are social protection centers that provide healthcare and treatment for Vietnamese veterans and many of those are run by VAVA. So in Vietnam, there is that support system. And what I recommend in my report is for the US to support those existing infrastructure and system in Vietnam. And I also talked to some of the veterans who received treatment in these facilities and they reported improved health and they do want to see those kind of services being expanded to many other provinces. So I think there's an opportunity there for the US to support this program. And also, by doing so, they also recognize the first generation victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Yeah, but I do think it is, there are a lot of political sensitivities about that. And even on the disability side of things here that we also have not brought up the problem of children of veterans in the US who have disabilities that they believe are impacted by Agent Orange. And so that, I think that kind of adds to the complexity because if we're working with the children who have disabilities in Vietnam who may be Agent Orange related and now we're working with their parents or grandparents at this point and we're still ignoring the population back here in the US, it gets kind of challenging politically, I think. I've asked myself the same question that it's interesting that US assistance is going mainly to people in second and following generations that are less definitively linked to Agent Orange, whereas the first generation, which no one can dispute, they were exposed to dioxin, right? Has not benefited to the same extent. One reason may just be that USAID had existing disability programs and expertise in Vietnam that it could link this to. Tony says no. They did have that. I know I worked on some of those programs earlier, but you don't think that's the reason, no? Okay. Please come up to the mic, yeah. My name's Tony Kolb. I'm the Deputy Director of our Reconciliation and Inclusive Development Office in Hanoi and responsible for all the war legacy work that USAID has been tasked with taking on. I'm back in Vietnam for a second four year tour. I just started last November. I had previously worked on the super fun cleanup aspects of our work in Danang and Benoit, and now I'm working more closely with our Disabilities Team. I think the easiest way to connect the focus on disabilities within the the victims of age and orange support that we have currently is that there was from the beginning the Lehi War Victims Fund, which focused a lot on injuries from unexplored ordinance. A somewhat safer area or a clearer area of cause and effect.  So there's no debate about the potential role of dax and say in a stroke victim's elderly experience or a child being born to somebody that perhaps was involved in the war. There's just, there's inherent uncertainty because if it was certain, there would be many more victims and it's simply it's not, that's not the way the human body reacts to environmental contaminants. Some bodies handle it very well and some are very sensitive to it. So and we'll never know really the, have the smoking biological gun per se. But I really frankly don't know exactly the Vietnamese perspective on age and orange impacts and the focus on birth defects. I just assume that it comes from a sense of catastrophic impact and somewhat clear impact from the get go. If you're born with a congenital issue which is gonna affect you your whole life, it's a huge burden on any family. And chronic illnesses come on slowly, they're associated with older age. I think it's just more accepted as that's life. I've had a rough life and I have to deal with it. But when it happens to a child who is sort of an innocent victim, it's just much more, it hits you right there. You need to do something about it. And so I assume that that's one of the reasons that in the communications on this issue that it's always been a big focus because I think it was the hope that it would spur action and response. And I think it has. It's been successful in that way. It's not that USAID has had no involvement. And in fact, just in the last year, we've been getting strong interest from counterparts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in particular in some of their realms to try to see what we could do to help on stroke care. Stroke later in life is associated with oxen exposure. It has, again, not a smoking gun. There's lots of other smoking in Vietnam causes potentially. But because it's affecting such a large number of veterans currently, I think there's a great interest in seeing what can be done to help. And we're currently starting some work with Blackwine Hospital, which is one of our oldest partners in dealing with the medical issues related to oxen exposure, to try to encourage their efforts to establish better quick response care to stroke to avoid disabilities. So we're sort of getting in a little bit in the back door and saying that we're trying to prevent disabilities from occurring by improved interventions in the early stages of stroke in victims there and trying to spread that experience through the medical system in Vietnam. I think I just comment on Laos a little bit. I mean, the big difference is that the Malaysian government does not recognize Agent Orange as a problem. And in fact, there's, I think, some active interest there in not talking about it because they don't want to create problems when they don't see them. So it's a little bit hard for us to cooperate with a bilateral partner if they don't see a problem. They typically come to us and want to work together on things that they self-define. So I think the exchange visit was very helpful between Laos and Vietnam to show some practical things that can be done to show improvements. And again, I think that's also the case in Vietnam. When you show solutions to a problem, you're gonna get a lot more cooperation. So that again, I think, explains some of the bias, potentially, in our assistance on disabilities towards the medicalized approach. When you deal with rehab, it's a time limited and results-orientated intervention. And if you don't rehabilitate to the best of your ability, there's no way that the caregivers are gonna have an easier life or that the family's going to potentially benefit economically from a disabled individual's efforts. So rehab is sort of an entry point and a critical one and tailored to the type of money that we have, which is year by year. So we can do something here, try to leave behind an improved rehabilitation medical system that exists in Vietnam and is just weak. When it comes to social support interventions, the types of things that Susan talked about, those are more akin to what we do for veterans, which is appropriations that are not gonna go away, they're gonna be there every year to support our VA system. So our veterans know that later in life, these benefits will be there. We can't provide that to Vietnam. We only have a small window of time to try to leave behind something significant. And I just think in general that we have not been so very satisfied with the short-term efforts to improve people's economic lives. It could be because we see those fail. And we see that's the way we work with poverty in America. We have benefits that are open to people over time because the challenges keep coming up. And especially when you have a disability, it doesn't really go away. You need some level of assistance all the time. And this is the type of things that VAVA, and hopefully everybody knows that acronym, it's the Vietnam Association for Victims of Age and Orange, a government program to support this sort of long-term assistance over time. Small amounts of money, but there are resources there all the time. And we are not currently granting money to VAVA. It's very difficult for us regulatory-wise to give money to Vietnamese government institutions because of some issues with financial transparency, which we're very sensitive to. But we are trying to build their capacity so that they can play this role into the future in a better, in a more, I guess, impactful way. So what we're doing is trying to share the U.S. experience in dealing with these sorts of chronic issues of poverty and social support and try to share those models and approaches, which rely on leveraging government resources and civil society support. Because that exactly is what VAVA is. Full of retired government people with strong connections, but have a network of individuals down to the local level who volunteer their time to support their beneficiaries. And we'd just like to see that be sustained and improve over time. So we're really proud of our partnership with them because I think it reflects what I think, for many of us, has been a frustration on the ground to be sort of hiding this focus on victims of Agent Orange under a basket of legal risk that the U.S. government has felt to have the space that our leadership, like Ambassador Crittenbrink, was able to do, to speak a little bit more directly to what we know those in Congress want us to do and have good partners in Vietnam to make that happen, is, you know, it's very satisfying now to be at that point. So, thank you. Thank you very much, Tony, for sharing. Zomer Susan, do you have any closing comments? I think we're about at the time. No, but I mean, I think there is more opportunity for USAID funding to get into this more non-medical side of things. I think it's challenging, but I think we're at a point now where we can start to find a way that, you're right, you can't do it without an ending, but I think there are ways that we can move into this field to at least just with some of the most immediate needs, but I know there's a lot of constraints within USAID, even house construction and helping a family renovate a house, there's a whole level of layers of bureaucracy even to do something like that. So, I think there's ways that we can find, the best thing about Vietnam, I think, is there's always a way. You can always find a way to solve the problem and the Vietnamese are very creative in doing that. I think there's openings here. Yeah, and to add to that, just as we overcame the initial deadlock, I do, I'm confident that the two countries can again find a compromise and think of a pragmatic way to advance their cooperation and I'm glad that there's great interest from both sides in enhancing the current programs and finding more ways to support people affected by Agent Orange. Great, thank you both. That concludes our round table. Congratulations again to both of you on publication of the reports and recommend them to everyone in the audience and online to look in more detail. Thanks for being with us today. Thank you.


Welcome back to the Trade Hacker Mindset. In this episode, I want to talk to you about the psychology of trading FOMO. Trading the markets can be difficult to master and seemingly just out of reach. Professional traders have a secret.  It requires the Trade Hacker Mindset. All right, so let's jump into this topic of the psychology of trading FOMO. So we all know FOMO stands for the fear of missing out, right? So I was reading and I came across another interview with Dr. Brett Steenbarger, who's a trading psychologist. And I thought it was really insightful, some of the points that he made around the issue of FOMO when it comes to our trading. You know, I think a lot of times in trading, the fear of missing a good trade is almost worse than losing on a trade. It can be, I've felt it before, it's not every time, but I have felt the fact that the fear of missing a trade a lot of times is a stronger emotion than actually losing on a trade that you did get in. Now, one of the things that he talks about that he said was that it's not actually that we have missed a trade opportunity, it's that we actually perceive it as a threat to us. Okay, and so the key word, the key component of FOMO is the word fear. Fear is anxiety. So what happens is when we experience fear, when we experience anxiety, our brain automatically goes into that fight or flight mode. And what happens is the blood actually flows from the frontal cortex, which is the area of the brain that does the higher level thinking, the judging, the planning, and it flows into another area of the brain that is more of the take action, the impulsive type mode. And as we know, as traders, impulses are a lot of times the negative things that impact our trading. It's when we actually do the planning and we go through the process and we're thinking clearly that we are trading the best. When we make those impulsive revenge trades, different impulsive type situations in our trading is what creates negative impacts in our overall P&L. So if our brain actually reacts to FOMO as a threat, then the key to overcoming fear, the key to overcoming FOMO is to find a way to remove that threat. And so what we have to do is we have to tap into motivations that are stronger than that fear. Think about this as an example.  They've whether somebody beat them at one time or something really bad happened, that dog has zero trust and is very, very skittish and might even be mean or angry if anyone tries to touch them. Well, what happens a lot of times over time is if you find the motivation that is stronger than that dog's fear, which typically ends up being hunger, right? If the dog is hungry, that hunger a lot of times becomes a stronger emotion than the fear. And so if you consistently hand feed the dog food and start to build its trust and start to work into that emotion of that dog's hunger, that becomes a stronger emotion than the fear and over time, the dog will start to trust you and eventually might actually become a loving pet. You know, we've seen this over and over and over again. So to relate that to trading, what motivation is greater than P and L? Because if P and L is the measure of our worth, then anytime we lose, we're gonna feel worse, okay? And that becomes the threat in our brain, in our mind. The motivation for successful traders is the desire to learn and grow. Now, the key component of what I said is the motivation for successful traders is the desire to learn and grow. What you'll see is that most unsuccessful traders are those who are just focused on the P and L, they just come in and they wanna make a quick buck. It's the traders who have a deep desire to really learn and grow in trading that ultimately become the top successful traders. Now, with P and L being the top threat that we need to overcome, I mean, keep in mind, you know, I mean, just for me personally, I'm a very competitive person. I was competitive in sports, I'm competitive with all my friends, and so I naturally was competitive when it came to P and L.  So one thing that I had to, one thing that I had to do to like practice to get away from that is I had to teach myself not to compete based on P and L, I had to teach myself to compete on the process of trading. I had to compete on following my rules. On my whiteboard that I'm looking at right now in my office that I look at every single day at the very top, it says compete on process and that's underlined. So if you restructure your thinking so that your main focus is the process and not the P and L, then if you miss a single trade opportunity, is that really a threat to our trading process? No, it's not really, right? I mean, it's a tiny bump in the road. Yeah, we wish we would have caught that trade. We wish we would have caught that move. We wish we would have invested in Bitcoin when it was $10. We wish we would have invested in Amazon when it was $10 a share, but it's not really something that consumes us or it's certainly not something that we perceive as a threat. But if P and L is our worth, then missing that trade opportunity becomes a threat. So in this talk, Dr. Steenbarger broke it down into three different strategies. And the first he titled as exposure. And there was basically three steps to this strategy. Step number one is to train ourselves in relaxation, in visualization, in meditation, in a breathing exercise, whatever you wanna call it, get the mind out of that fight or flight scenario, okay? So think about this, if you're sitting there and you're focusing on your breath and you're very relaxed or you're visualizing yourself on the beach on a nice sunny day with a little bit of a breeze and you're hearing the ocean, that type of focus on that type of scenario is going to automatically draw our mind out of a fight or flight and into a more relaxed state of mind. Okay, so step one, train ourselves in relaxation. Step two is to create an anxiety hierarchy. And he talks about listing the scenarios, okay? If you're in a trade or if you're just thinking about a trading scenario, listing the things that would create anxiety from the least threatening down to the most threatening, okay? So an example of kind of the most threatening thing is to have a massive significant drawdown, right? A big loss. Another thing might be, well, what if your internet goes out? You know, that would be a threat or a little bit of a frustration all the way down to minimal frustrations like the phone rings while you're trying to focus on making a trade. So list your hierarchy of these different anxiety points that might come up. So that's the second step. List, create an anxiety hierarchy. And then step three is to visualize this threatening situation. Okay, so take the least threatening one, for example. Take the scenario of you're trying to focus on trading and your phone rings, okay? So take that scenario. And then what you wanna do is you wanna use that visualization, that relaxation, that meditation, that breathing technique that they talked about in step one. You wanna take that and pair that together with that threatening situation. So if you are focused on trading and your phone rang and you had that anxiety, you had that frustration, why is this person calling right now? You know, that kind of scenario. Just a very minor frustration in the grand scheme of things, but nonetheless a frustration that could have taken you out of your focus with the markets. Take that little frustration, pair that with the visualization and breathing, visualization of being on a beach, a calm wind blowing the sound of the waves and think about that frustration at the same time. And what will happen is if you repeat that over and over and over again, it doesn't happen right away. But if you, with repetition and consistency of pairing, calming, non-threatening, relaxation, visualization with that frustrating scenario and you do that over and over and over, eventually what'll happen is that threat will be eliminated. Okay, so you can start with the least frustrating of these scenarios and work your way all the way up to a point of thinking about the thought of a huge drawdown that you've had or just the thought of having a drawdown on a specific trade or a specific scenario of a large drawdown and pair that with the relaxation, with the visualization and do it over and over and over again until that threat is eliminated. And here's the cool part. And I know this to be fact, because I've done this, is that once that is locked in, it's in your brain for life, okay? Once you repeat it enough times so that you completely disarm that threat, that's locked into your mind for life. Okay, so those three steps together is kind of the first strategy when it comes to dealing with FOMO from a psychological standpoint. Strategy number two is about changing your thinking, okay? Our thinking is what actually creates our fears, but we can learn new ways of thinking. And one way we can do that, and I've talked about this so many times in past episodes, is to keep a mindset journal. Dr. Steenbarger calls it a cognitive journal. I always call it a mindset journal because that's what works for me in my brain. But he has a very specific way of journaling and he calls it the ABCD cognitive journal. And basically what he has you do is just on a sheet of paper, create four different columns. Column A, column B, column C, and column D, okay? So in column A, that is the activating event, okay? That's the, you know, we're talking about FOMO here. So that would be the missed opportunity. So if you missed out on a trade, that would be the activating event. So you would list that there. In column B, this would be the beliefs of that event, okay? So these are all the negative thoughts that go through your head when you think about that specific event. And then in column C, this is the consequences of these negative feelings. So what are the consequences of having all these negative feelings? You might write things such as it clouds your decision-making process for future trades or it causes you to get frustrated with your wife or your kids or these negative thoughts put you in a bad mood or they cause you to be distracted if you have a full-time job or whatever it might be, you list all the consequences of these negative feelings. Now the goal of doing this, and I'll get to D here in a second, but the goal of doing this is to get to a point so that you are so aware of the consequences, so much so that you learn to hate them, so much so that you realize that all these negative consequences outweigh so much the fact of what you're trying to produce, the consistency that you're trying to get to, that these consequences have such a negative effect and you think about them and you're aware of them to the point where you actually really start to hate them. Because then what you'll do in column D, and this one is called the Disputions column, and this is where you dispute the negative feelings. In other words, you think about how you would talk to somebody else who was in a similar situation. You would dispute these negative feelings, you would see the other side, you would find a way to eliminate those negative feelings, and he talks about talking to someone else who was in a similar situation. So picture yourself sitting in a trading room or sitting there trading with a buddy or sitting there trading with somebody else, and they start to have these negative beliefs or comments about a situation where they missed out on a trade. What would you say to them?   But if you're actually a normal social person who cares about other people's feelings, then you would probably talk them up, right? You wouldn't beat them down or call them names. You wouldn't, you would focus on the positive, help build them up and talk to them about the reasons why, you know, yeah, maybe that situation happened, but here's the positive aspect of it. Here's what to do next time. Here's how you think about that and talk to them in a very positive, reinforcing kind of way. Now, this isn't just like, you know, positive thinking kind of situation, but this is actually the way that you would talk to somebody else who's in this situation, you wanna talk to yourself in the same way, okay? If you're calling yourself names, if you're having these negative thoughts to yourself, that is going to do nothing positive for your trading going forward. So you have to be able to learn from that and you have to be able to talk to yourself in the same way that you would talk to somebody else to make that situation better, okay? So strategy number two was changing your thinking by using the ABCD mindset journal or cognitive journal. And then strategy number three, I thought this was interesting. I wouldn't have thought about this, but I definitely agree with it. And this comes from personal experience. So strategy number three is what he calls broaden and build. You know, one reason that we get caught up in P&L as traders is a lot of times is because we don't have enough other positive things going on in our lives. Think about that, isn't that interesting? Like, I know that for me specific times in my life where I was just 100% focused on trading, a lot of times that's when my trading and my profits were the worst. But it was times when I was focused on other things, maybe that was relationships, maybe that was focused on my health, focused on spiritual aspects of my life that things in my trading were actually better. You know, we hear about diversification and investing, right? You don't put all your eggs in one basket, that way when some assets are performing worse and some are performing better, they help offset each other and over time that creates less risk. Well, what is your life portfolio? In other words, how balanced are you in your life? Is all of your focus day in, day out about trading, about your trading P&L, is that all your folks, is that all you're thinking about? Is that what you're thinking about when you go to bed at night? Is that what you were thinking about when you wake up? And trust me, I'm as guilty as anybody on this. This is how, you know, trading, I love trading, but if my only focus is on trading and specifically the P&L around trading, then I'm extremely vulnerable. I am extremely vulnerable to having negative emotions around different aspects of trading, such as losses, such as FOMO and all of the things that we deal with as traders. So the key is with your focus in trading, for that one part of your life that is focused on trading, the focus should not be on the P&L, but on our growth in trading, on our process of growing and our process of following our rules around our trading. So in conclusion, really, it comes down to rechanneling our fears, eliminating these fears, turning these fears into non-threatening emotions in our brain, measuring our trading, in other words, journaling, understanding, being aware of our emotions and then focusing on the process and not the P&L. So I thought this was really insightful. I hope it was helpful for you as well. If you like this episode, please go to Spotify or Apple Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, rate and review. We would love to hear your feedback on the podcast and look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Talk to you then.


Dear students, in this module, we are going to discuss a very interesting question. What happens when religion and culture conflict? Conflict can arise when religious beliefs and practices clash with different cultural norms and values. Religious institutions may be resistant to change in response to cultural shifts leading to tension and conflict. And similarly, cultural practices that conflict with religious beliefs can also lead to tension and conflict within a society. If we look at the Pakistani Mosque, there are a lot of religions that do not have any special relations or religious ideology does not verify those religions or beliefs. But despite this, people's faith or belief is based on those religions. That is why they believe that this is also part of our religious beliefs. We often see such religions practiced in the mosques, especially in Pakistan. For example, when we look at the wedding pictures, the ideological aspect of the wedding pictures is that your wedding is a wedding, then it is a religious wedding, and this should be done very honestly. But in this, our cultural values, especially our societal norms, are mixed with a lot of religions that do not know which religions are derived from the ideology of religion and which religions are derived from culture. And people are a victim of confusion in this regard. And some people have to face these kinds of religions in every situation. The logic behind this is that these pictures are a part of this religious ideological value. So it becomes very conflicting and becomes a source of problem for people that when religious and cultural values are amalgamated with each other, they create a sense of confusion and sometimes they are completely in opposition to each other. So negotiation and compromise may be necessary to resolve the conflict between religion and culture. And examples from Pakistan, we see that there is an arranged marriage, like in our tradition culture, the elders decide their children's marriages. Unfortunately, there are many rural areas where they are still not allowed to marry and their marriages are decided without their consent. When we look at religious ideology, the religion gives full permission that you have to take consent of the couple in every situation. So this is a conflicting value in our society, because of which there are clashes, especially youths who face this confusion. That what is the right way to practice our belief system, either we should believe our tradition or we should believe on our religion. Similarly, the use of Dori, which is not accepted in Islam, however, are traditional cultural practice, which is creating a sense of conflict between cultural and religious beliefs. Then the celebration of Valentine's Day, which is a recent phenomenon that Valentine's Day is practiced especially in urban elite class or urban educational institutions, which is in complete contradiction and in complete conflict with our Islamic religious ideology. So it is a full thought for you that you see that in Pakistan, there are many such practices, social practices, cultural practices, which are in conflict with our religious beliefs, but still they are being practiced in the name of culture or sometimes in the name of religion. So it is a full thought for you that you should clarify the distinction between them, observe them and see them in different media or social media, and especially observe the practices that are being practiced in the atmosphere of your religion, so you can make a list of the cultural values that are in conflict with our religious beliefs.


t because he has already told us that he used to maintain diary and he is still maintaining the diary. And so friends we are thankful to Mr. Soma Shekhar and all those participants who are live with us on this platform YouTube and Facebook. We are thankful the way he has taken us to the trials proceedings etc and do stay connected with us for a day after tomorrow for the part two on substantive law. But meanwhile tomorrow we will be having a lot of people are nowadays discussing what is the role of mediation in the pre-legislative stage. What are the procedures? In what cases pre-mediation litigation can be done? Whether it has a sanctity, whether a private mediation also has a sanctity or quote a next mediation is only having this value. But do stay connected with us. Tomorrow we will be having justice beneath Kuthari. Yes sir. Only one more thing. I find another advocate of Bangalore Bar here Mr. S. P. Srinos. I am seeing him on the video. I must also make a reference to his father Mr. S. K. V. Chalapati. He had conducted a partition suit when I was in the garage bed. I think one of the decisions which I refer to today which says that if it is a record of a prior partition it does not require registration. And on the other hand if it evidences a partition under which the division has taken place I remember it was his father Mr. S. K. V. Chalapati who conducted a partition suit before me. Of course I could not dispose of that suit. I was transferred. I think during the course of trial itself that decision was brought to his notice. I also see him. I request him to convey my respects to his father. Yes, K. S. P. Srinos. Please convey my respects to your father Mr. Srinos, a great gentleman. And one more thing. I saw a question in the chat box from one of the judicial officers. Well, in the process we could not answer his question. He can call me over phone. He has my number and most of the judicial officers here have my number here. I have any questions. Certainly I found one question posed by one of the judicial officers or maybe he wanted me to cover that also. He is free to call me and we will take it on Sunday. If it is a thing to be covered, I will cover it on 30 years. If it is a thing for which I have required to answer, well I will answer him. He is free to call me. I don't want to mention his name here and cause embarrassment to him. So tomorrow friends we will be having wave forward in pre litigation, mediation in India. Challenges and solutions. There are three stalwarts in the mediation centre. One is Justice Vinit Kuthari, a sitting judge of Gujarat Iqut. Then the Ranjan Bhatt, who is a senior mediator and a mediator trainer. In fact, I have also done the mediation training from him. And A. J. Jawad, again a senior mediator and trainer. So do stay connected with us tomorrow at 6 p.m.  Keep on wearing your mask, maintain social distancing and do your vaccination at home. Namaskar. Thank you and thank you sir. We will meet on Sunday. Thank you.


Hey this is Brett with Summit Auto in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used RAM and light duty truck headquarters and today I am super excited to show you this brand new 2021 RAM 1500 Crew Cab Short Box TRX. This is the very first TRX that we've gotten on our lot. This one has a 6.2 liter supercharged V8 Hemi motor pumps out 702 horsepower 650 foot-pounds of torque and it's gonna get you 14 miles per gallon on the highway 10 miles per gallon in the city for an average of 12 and this one is in granite crystal over black clearcoat. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second so if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device turn them on right now because it is definitely your best way to check out the looks and styling and color and to hear it run and check out all the options on this brand new 2021 RAM 1500 TRX. This is a level 2 TRX comes with the Mopar off-road running boards which are powder coated and it has 18 inch painted alloy rims on this one and Goodyear Wrangler Territory AT LT325 65R 18 tires on here definitely in all terrain tread pattern to them and this one has the performance active performance shocks on it so you can see there's all these bars and sensors and everything so it will adjust your shocks to your current conditions as far as articulation and everything like that if you're going downhill so very very cool and see you get the painted front bumpers the front bumper parking sensors this one has the LED headlamps the LED running lights the LED fog lights it also has the LED lights in the hood on the hood scoop there you also get the LED lights on the corners here this vehicle is this truck is 8 inches wider than normal RAM just with all the off-roading capabilities and everything they made a bit wider with all those fender flares and everything too here's the original window sticker well it's a copy of the original window sticker but feel free to pause this at any point to take a look at all these standard features I'm not going to go through everything does have those high performance brakes which 15 inch brakes in the front 3.55 rear axle ratio 33 gallon fuel tank has the front and rear active performance shock absorbers granite crystal is a color 200 bucks technology group which gives you heads up display review auto dimming digital display mirror which will show over in just a minute LED center high mounted stop lamp and the advanced safety group which is pedestrian emergency braking adaptive cruise control and lane keep is 995 the bed utility group which is 845 lower two-tone pain is 250 and then the TRX level 2 group is a $7,920 option basically gives you the cooled seats the cooled seats in the back the heated seats in the front the upgraded floor console the premium wrapped instrument panel the LED ambient light piping front and rear door accent lighting driver's seat memory the power driver's seat power passenger seat the trailer brake controller the pedals blind spot cross path detection those heated seats and heated steering wheel the front and rear parking sensors the LED bed lighting the rear under seat storage compartment remote proximity keyless entry remote start and the power release tailgate as well as the 6040 split seating in the back with the recline this one also has the dual pane panoramic sunroof for 1495 and the off-road style running boards which it is showed you are 1195 total MSRP is 85 685 and three year 36 bumper to bumper warranty five-year 60 power train 14 highway 10 city 12 average and it does not have any ratings for safety but we're going to get to that interior in just a second you can see it has a 12 inch screen there really a cool system that has all the different terrain settings as well those are those off-road Mopar step bars if you get up close you can see they're powder coated but it's a it's a really hard material on there so that they don't chip and stuff and sandy environments of course four-wheel disc brakes but check out these rear shocks these are blackhawk e2 if you just Google that and check out the page on these shocks it's just amazing all the different things that goes into these active performance shocks you can see down there it's all it's all riveted that's to create extra surface area for heat dissipation so really a lot of cool stuff and you can see once again you have all these sensors and levers and everything and that's to tell these shocks exactly what's going on with the truck so that it can adjust the shocks properly and those springs are just massive on this truck they look really thick they're really a big spring wide so that's pretty cool and everything is really beefy underneath in the suspension from the axles to the springs to the crossbar there everything's really beefy and then you get all the skid plates under the transfer case and everything up there just a really off-road capable vehicle you get the lights on the back here as well the LED tail lamps the painted rear bumper those exhaust tips are huge on here that is one of the first things I noticed in addition to those wide fender flares really gives the truck a good look to it so this one does have the power drop down tailgate spraying bed liner bed utility group with those tie-downs and cleats and everything the LED bed lighting you can turn those on with the button back here has the cargo LED lights up top and that's where your reverse camera in that rear view mirror is we'll check that out in just a second this one has the step as well so push that down and it'll come down like so I'm not sure exactly how to get that back up but we'll let it down for now the other thing I like that they did on TRX because of these wide fender flares as they kind of had to adapt the fuel fill door I think it looks really good but you get the capitalist fuel fill there has the enter and go system so you just have to have your key in your pocket put your hand in the door and you'll see that that door will automatically unlock pretty cool system has the heated power folding mirrors with the blind spot monitoring blind spot mirror directional signals in the mirror inside the TRX 2 package gives you the black and gray leather seats you get suede inserts on there the TRX stitched into the backrest and really a good-looking seat combination lumbar power seats factory all-weather floor mats this one has auto headlamps power pedals tilt telescopic steering wheel power windows power locks power mirrors and these mirrors do power fold in as well you get the suede inserts on the door the diamond plated looking trim right there and we'll hop inside you get these seven inch LCD display on this truck get the cool TRX animation to begin you get digital speedometer compass outside temp display lane departure adaptive cruise all that good stuff information is there your battery voltage oil temp and everything there this one has the flat bottom steering wheel get that diamond plate finish it's also suede and leather wrapped on here the steering wheels heated as well on the right are your cruise controls adaptive cruise controls bluetooth and information center controls on the left and then you have your paddle shifters right there there's also audio controls on the back of the steering wheel so a very high functioning steering wheel so there's a lot of buttons and stuff on there to go over before we get to the radio I want to go to the modes system so if you press this it'll change I'm gonna have the ignition on right so we got to get that off there now if you do them different modes you can see you get custom mud sand rock Baja so mud sand rock does not want to go into Baja but anyways you get all those different modes that you can go into wants you to go into four-wheel-drive low for that but you have your push button four-wheel-drive here as well as an axoloc and then you have launch control which is pretty cool on a truck but you'd expect it on this truck has alpine sound system the 12 inch you connect 4c radio AM FM serious XM radio capabilities you have your factory navigation system here you have your different climate controls for heated seats cooled seats heated steering wheel you have your surround view camera which is a nice system to have you can check out all the different cameras there and then you can also check your backup camera and then you have your forward camera heated cooled seat buttons and then you can also do Android Auto Apple CarPlay where you project yourself onto the screen with this radio acted to demo in the 8-4 if you want to check that out it's in the upper right hand part of the screen factory brake control you have your crawl assist I guess you could say or crawl speed set assist stability control your front and rear parking sensors you get six upfitter switches two USBs two USB C's and an aux jack so the other thing I like is that they have the mechanical shifter here on the truck it's a really nice addition I think and they probably did that because they had to do all this stuff here and that's normally where that knob is but they put the mechanical shifter here I really like it one thing it does take away is you don't have your 115 volt 400 watt plug-in down here anymore because this is fixed it doesn't slide like the other Rams has the ram charger on there as well and then you get the TRX badge on the suede and leather wrapped center console and you can see 702 horsepower gives you the VIN number gives you the turbo or I'm sorry the supercharger on here the 11 psi boost rating so just something else to let you know that this truck's fast and we're gonna get to the engine here in just a little bit and start it up and give it a good rev for you has the panoramic vista roof fixed glass second and power front you get home link buttons everything appears just like any normal ram and then you have your reverse camera right there so it's actually a camera looking at back you can change this to a normal mirror like that just like that and you can adjust the height of the camera and everything in the darkness so that's pretty cool and then you also have the heads-up display which is right there you got your digital speedometer and your different stuff like that I wanted to go over one more thing on the center console here you have these performance pages which are just like they're very similar to the SRT8 pages on the SRT8's the cars so you have zero to sixty zero to a hundred you can do timers you have your drag times right there your braking distance G forces you have histories of G force and then you have lap times and you can set those and then a top speed right there as well so pretty cool stuff and then you're off-road mode with our wheel articulation drive train and your pitch and roll so all you basically get the best of both worlds from the off-road pages to the SRT pages all in the center console now or the center instrument cluster I should say so pretty cool stuff a lot of stuff to go over but the main thing about this truck is all about the engine and the horsepower and all that so we're gonna get it started here in just a second do you want to show you the back seats these back seats are heated and cooled you get the latch child safety system you get all the same stitching and everything and suede inserts I recline that seat there so you can see just how much it reclines so these back seats are heated and cooled on the outboard sides and to get that back just push it back like so you have the storage bin right here you have in-floor storage on each side with removable containers for easy cleaning you can put ice and drinks in there it's like you have too many coolers wherever you go pretty cool stuff or you can just put whatever you want back there then you get your heated and cooled seat buttons two usb is two usb season and then a 115 volt 400 watt plug-in you get all these straps back here this is real leather backing's real nice on the back of the seats it's actually suede on the back of there these headrests do fold down power slide and rear window with the built in rear defrost and you get those speakers in the ceiling with that alpine sound system back doors are trimmed out just like the front doors and you can get child safety locks but this is what everybody wants to hear everybody wants to hear this truck run everybody wants to see what's under the hood and we'll do that right now this thing sounds so aggressive when it starts up and just check it out really a good sound you can see those led lights and the fenders there 702 horsepower 650 foot pounds of torque just a monster these led headlamps they look really good get the led lights in the hood there on the fenders really good looking truck and then after about a minute it calms down and it's pretty unsuspecting we'll take a look under the hood unfortunately there's not a ton to see because there's a there's a shroud over the engine so you can't see much but we'll take a look anyways i do like how they did the air intake that's pretty cool they have the ram airflow right there from that center cowl on the hood you get this big trx cowl on there it hides your hellcat engine but still got those headers painted orange and uh really a really a cool truck so we're getting pretty close on our time here i will uh give it a couple reps here and then we'll do a final walk around listen up check out those taillights and we'll do one more final walk around here i would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and uh hopefully from this hd video you got a good look at the trx i learned a little bit about it a little bit about it too and just uh ram really really went all out on this truck to make it an off-roning machine and i think they did a really good job and how can you go wrong with the 62 supercharged hemi in there anyways thanks for checking out the video if you'd like to see more of our inventory you can go to that website right there www.summodauto.com remember to like subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there in fact a second you'll see a link to subscribe to our youtube channel on the left a link to more ram 1500 truck videos like this one right if you haven't been to our website click the link below to get to our website thanks again for checking out the video and uh we look forward to selling these 2021 ram 1500 trx packages thanks again for checking out the video