Awesome. Okay. So our first panel will cover the role of private organizations in supporting international stability operations. History of non-governmental organizations in peacekeeping and nation-building efforts is a storied one that spans nearly every continent and many regional conflicts for decades. Doug Brooks is a special advisor for response business practices at the Fund for Peace, FFB. He leads FFP's responsible business practice, including implementation of security and human rights projects in partnership with natural resource companies, governments, and multilateral institutions. He also represents FFP at the international level of the VP SHR and coordinates FFP's human rights and business roundtable. Prior to joining the FFP, he was founder and president of the International Peace Operations Association, now the International Stability Operations Association. He also serves as adjunct faculty for the University of Fiji. Now, without further ado, Mr. Brooks. Thank you. Where are my screen here? Thanks for having me today. Looking forward to talking on this and hopefully we'll have some good questions at the end. Just a quick disclaimer. Everything I say, of course, is my personal perspective and not necessarily that of the organizations for which I'm affiliated, mentioned. Some terminology and I assume most of the audience here has some background in this, but weak failed and fragile states are essentially states that have weak or non-existent governments, lack of rule of law, rule of law. There may be an ongoing war or insurgency or just a large humanitarian crisis. If you're interested in that sort of stuff, I do recommend you check out the Fund for Peace Fragile State Index, where they keep track of state fragility. They've been doing that now for almost, what, 20 years. And it's for research, I think you'll find it as a very interesting tool. The difference between refugees and IDPs are internally displaced persons. A refugee is essentially somebody who's had to flee their home internationally across the border. An IDP is essentially the same refugee, but internal, not crossing an international border. Contingency operations or complex operations or stability operations or peace operations, essentially these are all basically the same thing. They're international stability operations that are in areas where you have near wars or low intensity conflicts. Sometimes I think the Pentagon calls them complex contingency operations or CCOs, but essentially in all these operations, you have a simultaneous requirement for security, humanitarian relief, and reconstruction efforts. The stability operations industries contractors, basically the private companies you hire to do things. And finally, when we start talking about employees for our industry, they will be sometimes called expats, which are Westerners in general. LNs are local nationals or local people that you hire to work in the companies. And TCNs are third country nationals, so people you hire from other countries that you bring into the operation. The theme I'm going to be talking about here is any military that plans to be relevant beyond its national borders from invasions to peacekeeping will be working with the private sector. This is just a general rule for all militaries everywhere. A little trip to the past year. If we go back to 1999, before most of you were born, there was no stability operations industry. The academic community was interested in mercenaries as a Frenchman named Bob Denard, who was essentially carrying out French policies as a private person. You had an interest in banning the private sector, essentially banning the war profiteers and the mercenaries as they called them. There were two private military companies that were fairly prominent at the time, executive outcomes of South African company and Sandline International British Company. They were essentially involved in carrying out wars or helping their clients, states fight wars. The reality at the time was that you had a private sector that was already supporting international peace operations, that these private military companies were in fact doing jobs at the international community wanted to have done, but they didn't want to do them themselves. In countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia, you had these private military companies operating and essentially doing what the international community wanted to have done by doing it in the private sector. Forward 20 years and we have a stability operations industry. ISOA, the International Stability Operations Association, the trade association I founded 20 years ago, is essentially representing this industry of companies that work in conflict, post-conflict disaster relief. There's an academic interest in something called the Wagner Group, which we can talk a little bit more about, which essentially is a Russian private organization but working for the Russian government. There's an interest in regulating and accountability for private companies. We'll talk a bit about the Montreux document in the International Code of Conduct Association for private security providers. There's an interest in maximizing competition and efficiency in the private companies that work in conflict, post-conflict environments, and there's still an interest in mercenaries because some things never change. In fact, the private sector roles much larger in international peace operations than it was in 1999. Private military companies are still doing jobs that the international community doesn't want to do, and we see them now in Mozambique and Small Yen, but fairly recently in Nigeria as well. What does the private sector do in wars? Well, some photos, some are my photos, some are from the companies or whatever. Top left corner, we have companies building housing for peacekeepers. We have them doing landmine removal and exploded ordinance disposal. Center top photo, they're doing training. That's actually from Afghanistan a few years ago. That is a private company training Afghans to be prison guards. Top right corner, that's Karzai back in the early days of Afghanistan, and that guy in the far left there is actually an American who served with Delta Force, and then became private and became a bodyguard in Afghanistan. The lower right corner, that's a really interesting picture from the days of Iraq, where you have a lot of private security companies working. Those heavily armed guys are in fact not Americans or Iraqis. They are Nepalese, and they are working for a British company and an American operation from Iraq. So just think of the legal ambiguities on that one. Lower center, obviously just moving things around. Logistics is a big part of the private sector, and lower left is a fairly recent photo of a company called DAG which was working for the Mozambique police fighting against the insurgency at Mozambique. If you want to take a look at the whole industry that works in conflict, post-conflict, and disaster relief operations, it's sort of four general sectors, and academics will split in parts in different ways and describe it different ways. This is sort of how the industry sees itself. On the left one, the logistics and support companies, probably 80 percent of the industry is this. They're doing logistics, they're doing construction, they're doing medical services. Essentially a job that would be fairly normal in any developed country or any developing country, but they're doing it in really dangerous places essentially. The second category, the private security companies are the ones that I think raises the most hackles and interests from a human rights perspective, but essentially they're private companies that are hired to protect them now in a person, place, or thing. They can be armed or unarmed, but they're just there to protect things. They are not private military companies, which we'll talk about a little bit later, but they are security companies and they can protect people in places and things. The third sector is the security sector reform and development sector, which I think is the most interesting sector. When you have a peacekeeping or stability operation, you need to have a long-term plan. Where are you going? What are you trying to do? Ultimately you're trying to stabilize a government or stabilize a country. You're trying to create a democratic system. You're trying to create a functioning bureaucracy. You're trying to make sure that the power plants are working, the phones are working, that the things are being done. And so there's a whole sector that used to be done by governments, but now is hired by governments to do this sort of stuff, security sector reform, training police, training military, training lawyers, training judges, all sorts of things, but basically preparing the country for to be self-sufficient again. In the last sector in our industry, the industry support organizations is the only sector that really doesn't go into the field. It's law firms, insurance firms, it's public relations firms, it's staff augmentation firms, but they generally support the industry but don't necessarily go on the field. Why do we look to contractors? Eventually they bring value to militaries and government. The reason we hire contractors is because we want them there. Number one reason is just simply surge capacity. The contracting industry is global. It's able to bring in resources from other countries and other places. It has huge capabilities or niche expertise. If you need somebody who has a really specialized capability, language skills or whatever, you can go to the private sector and just pull them off the shelf. They're also able to deploy really quickly. Militaries actually take a little hung time to actually deploy in any numbers or in any capacity. The private sector essentially is off the shelf. Everything is basically available in two weeks. Construction operations a little bit longer, but you're able to go to a private company or put out a proposal and get bids to do all sorts of things under very short notice. You have a lot of control over private companies that are required to follow all relevant laws. They're subject to legal systems. They have contracts. You design a contract, you write into the contract, what you want companies doing, what you don't want them doing. It's easy to control them. By the way, you can fire them. In peacekeeping militaries, you can't fire. US military, Bangladesh military, unfireable. There are political advantages to using the private sector. Contractor numbers and casualties are not generally viewed the same as soldiers from the country that sends them. There's less political risk in vital but obscure or unpopular missions, but ones that need to be done. They mostly use local employees. We'll talk a bit about that later. And of course, if things go wrong, you can shift the blame to the private companies and your government didn't really fail, right? So contractors to follow obviously. International peace operations, the private sector is revolutionizing these operations. No mission could be seen without having private contractors there. Let me just put a little bit up to the private side to the international side and just emphasize that the UN is irreplaceable when it comes to peacekeeping or peace operations. The UN provides observers, monitors, peacekeepers, peace enforcers. It has a reputation or a reputation. It's a reality that it is neutral and it has international legitimacy and that's something that the private sector cannot replace. The UN can end ongoing conflicts. It can support post-conflict stabilization operations. It can provide legal mandates and sets of rules on how an operation is being done. And most importantly, perhaps for Americans, it shares a burden among members.  I think the peacekeeping budget is about 25 or 27 percent. I can't remember what it is now. It goes up and down depending on Republicans or Democrats. But essentially the US is only paying a fraction of the cost and the UN does things cheaper anyway than the US operation. So a lot of the stuff the UN does is stuff that if the UN didn't exist, you probably have to have Americans or some other Western country doing the peacekeeping. So the UN saves us a lot of money. Regional organizations often do similar things to the UN. They have similar capabilities. ECOMOG was a West African peacekeeping force back in the 90s and 2000s. ECOMIG is one they have, I think still going on, maybe a thousand West African soldiers in Gambia right now. Amazon is the peacekeeping operation in Somalia. And Samim is a new one they've just created in Mozambique. These are regional peacekeeping operations. Not quite the same we're going to see as the UN, but the same idea of sharing the burden using militaries in personnel from all the countries.  There's going to be, I can almost guarantee you, when you put thousands of young men or young soldiers into another country, there's going to be a sex trade. There's going to be organized crime going on. There's going to be corruption. There's inefficiencies. There's injustices. This is pretty much universal in all peacekeeping operations. To a greater or lesser extent, the UN tries to address this with more effect or less effect depending. I like to say stability operations are sometimes only a marginal improvement on the actual violent conflict, but they are an improvement. So when we think about peacekeeping operations, they're not saints that are doing these things. They are interesting places and they are improvements of what was there before, but they're not pretty. Footprint size, when you put large numbers of troops, peacekeepers or whatever, you're going to have big problems as a result. Sometimes they're anticipated, like the ones I mentioned, sometimes they're unanticipated. Some of you may be familiar with Haiti, where UN troops ended up polluting the water with cholera, killing thousands of people, unanticipated. International peacekeeping is often western-less, which means that the most capable militaries are not there. You're using militaries from developing countries. They don't have the same resources that the larger militaries have. They often need specialized support. And when you have any sort of military, you want them really focused on the core mission. If they're supposed to be there to keep sides apart in a peacekeeping mission, you want them doing that. You don't want them essentially cooking their own meals, doing their own truck driving, things like that. That's stuff that can be done that can be outsourced. So it makes a lot of sense to bring in the private companies to do the outsourcing. And again, the private sector uses mostly local workforces. So you're not bringing in people from outside of the country. You have far fewer problems. They speak the local languages. They're a lot cheaper. There's a lot of reasons to do that. Well, how do you get accountability, especially with private companies, when they're operating in war zones? Well, private sectors always subject to local laws. So when you have a company operating in Congo or Somalia, they're actually under Congolese law or Somali law. If the local country is not capable of handling a legal issue, the home countries of the firms often have legal options to hold the firm or the individuals accountable. And ultimately with the private sector, if you stop paying companies, they actually go away because the whole point of having a company is to make money. If there's no money, they disappear. There are limitations. Obviously, host countries may have weak or failed legal systems, so they may not be able to hold people accountable inside the country, the peacekeeping operations going on. Home countries may be reluctant to address the problems that their contractors are creating in other countries. And of course, if you actually had a crime that occurred in a war zone, who's going to go and gather the evidence to prosecute the case? Well, there's problems, but there's ways to get around these. The U.S. has a number of laws, but their contractor is in line legally. The UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, square peg in a round hole. It doesn't really work well, but they do. Technically, companies are under the UCMJ. The UCMJ is really designed for military people, so it's a whole code of behavior, how military soldiers are supposed to behave or sale or whatever are supposed to behave in uniform, but it's not really designed for civilians. And in cases where it's become a very serious court case has been brought against civilians under UCMJ, the Supreme Court's Toss Development Pass. So a better option, we now have something called Media Military Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction Act, which originally was test for Department of Defense contractors, but that was expanded to include all U.S. government contractors working in support of a DOD mission. And it generally worked. It does mean you can bring, you can extradite personnel, bring them back to the U.S. and charge them and put them in prison, which they have done. Again, it's not a perfect fit, and there was a law that keeps getting brought up now and then called CJA, Civilian Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction Act, something that the industry supports, which would be much more, much broader and essentially cover all U.S. contractors working in conflict, post-conflict environments. There have been scores of prosecutions under media, but the Department of Justice for some reason does not publicize that. So we know of a number of cases, but they don't actually have a webpage you can go to to find out who's been charged under media, but they haven't until recently. Internationally, there's ways of holding companies accountable as well. The Swiss government, the International Committee of the Red Cross, NGOs, International Community Industry have come together, and there's the number of results in 2008. There's something called the Montreux document. The part one of the Montreux document clarified that international law applies to contractors, and it says, you know, you can be held to account, as I said, either by the local government, by the sending, by the country where the contractors are from, or where the individuals are from can actually be hold people accountable. More than 50 states are signed onto the Montreux documents, a very active document. They have a webpage. It's pretty interesting. It just makes sure that when you have peacekeeping stability operations, there's some way of holding people accountable, even if they're in the private sector. In 2010, something was created called the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers, ICOC. Over 300 companies signed on to that private companies, and this is, again, just for the security companies, but I remember I talked about the four different categories. The second one was the security companies, maybe five or 10 percent of our industry. The ones that perhaps are the most direct relevance to human rights. So there's over, they've signed onto this code of conduct, and there's something called the ICOCA, the Association for this Code, and it's the members of the ICOCA include industry, governments, and human rights NGOs, and so on. And basically, they hammer out rules, guidelines, and also address issues that are raised when private security companies are operating these areas. Again, this is strongly supported by the industry and the idea is that you want to be comfortable when private companies are operating in areas of chaos. Let me talk a little bit about the armed civilians that you might find in a peacekeeping or stability operation. Yeah, obviously, the normal thing in the upper left corner is you have regular militants. That's a Kenyan military there, and that's what you would expect in a peacekeeping operation. But in the upper right corner, of course, you have private security companies. Those people protecting people, places, things, they can be armed, they can be unarmed, they can be locals, they can be international, third country nationals. But again, they're there just doing defensive protective work. Lower left corner is a picture of the old executive outcomes, which was South Africans at Angolans, and they worked in Angola and also in South Africa and a little bit in Congo. And they were essentially hired by the government of those countries to help them fight against an insurgency. They were legal, they operated legally, they wore the uniform and were under the command structure, but they were, in fact, foreigners. The lower right corner is Wagner Group, which is this Russian group. We'll talk a little bit more about what Wagner Group is, why they are not personaries and why they are not PMCs and why they're not private security companies. The security companies legally contract to detect a noun, a person, place, or thing. They operate under something called the rules for use of force. That may vary the name, but basically it says that if you're an individual doing private security, you're allowed to do self-defense, you're allowed to protect yourself, you're allowed to protect that noun that you've been hired to protect, and in most cases you're allowed to defend civilians under mortal threat of boredom. These are public companies, they're licensed to operate. Again, self-defense, they're civilians, some are barbed, some are unarmed, and they're generally funded by government or civilian entities under contract. Military companies, also legal, also is working for government clients, often deputized by the governments. They are allowed to use lethal force proactively, so they're not as defensive, they're allowed to use lethal forces if they were military. They can do offensive operations, they're generally a force multiplier, so they'll have a small number of them and a much larger force of local military, and they're funded, the funding may be less transparent than you have with a private company, because they are in fact working for a government. Little quick bows, and this is a new term that's being thrown around, but one that I worked out with someone else, but it's a quasi-governmental military organization, and this essentially is when a government hires a private entity to do its bidding. Back in the 60s and 70s, there was a guy named, a Frenchman named Bob Denard, who helped overthrow the government in Comoros several times. But one of those times, he was basically doing it with either the permission or the behest of the French government, but the government didn't want to be involved with it, so they hired Bob to do this, and that's what he did. Now it is, you have the Russian Wagner group, there's actually several groups, not just Wagner, and they're operating in Ukraine, Syria, Central African Republic, where they were in Mozambique, but they got a bloody nose left. They extensively are private, but the reality is, they're pretty much just doing Russian government policy. Not clear where their funding comes from, not clear what their rules for use of force are, or their rules of engagement, it's pretty opaque. Hard to do accountability with these guys, they're anonymous, the government often protects them, they're super interesting, and I think in the academic sphere, this is pretty perhaps is the most interesting sector of all to study, especially in peacekeeping and stability operations, look at Central African Republic for the largest deployment of the Wagner group for these quick moves. Overall, these people, mercenaries, well, we actually have a definition of what a mercenary really is. A mercenary is a person who chooses to fight in a conflict that actually does fight in that conflict, that they're motivated to fight in that conflict by personal gain, that they're not from the area of the conflict where it takes place, they're not sent by a state to fight in that conflict, and they're not a member of a military fighting in the conflict.   A lot of people say, well, I know a mercenary, when I see a mercenary, that's fine, but the real definition as we learn from the New York Times is a foreigner or a business person we don't like. So that term gets thrown around, I'll be not so useful. What's the future for private companies? The ability to operation exists not because it wants to exist because we want it to exist. It's not a big industry. At peak, it was probably about $20 billion a year, which seems like a lot of money, but industry size, it's nothing. In fact, there was an Australia once and one of the big Australian mining companies announced their profits for the previous year, and for one mining company, the profits were $20 billion in size of my industry at the time. So yeah, it's a tiny industry when you really look at it. It operates legally, it follows the contracts that it's given, easy to control, it accepts regulations, sometimes it supports regulation, and it will always require the realities that any sort of peacekeeping is going to require these companies to be there. The industry actually does support regulation and guidelines because there are bottom feeders, as we call them, companies that aren't necessarily following the rules that are always trying to undercut the better companies financial, and it's easy to do with the clients are not paying attention to see that the companies are operating the way they want them to. The private military companies, again, that one interesting sector are not their in demand, but they're largely unregulated because academics and policymakers don't like to admit they exist or don't like to use them. They can be guided and regulated, but right now they're they're unacceptable. So they exist, they're going to be there, but we're not really regulating them. That's a bad thing. A little background on myself, the International Stability Operations Association, ISOA, I founded that originally as International Peace Operations Association in April of 2001. 9-11 happened shortly after that, and my little association of six companies that were all working in Africa quickly brought in their their competitors and their subsidiaries. I left the association in 2012, I'm President of Maristown, but the association that gets over 130 companies from all over the world that support peacekeeping stability operations and so on. The Fund for Peace, where I also work, is an NGO. It's not a funding agency. It develops practical tools for reducing conflict. It finds that nexus between human security and economic development. So unlike many NGOs, the Fund for Peace is quite happy to work with the private sector to come up with rules and guidelines for how best to minimize damage to civilians or to employees or to people that where the companies are working around. For example, your projects on ethical mining. We do work with ECOWAS and other places on state regional early warning systems. How do you know when something bad or conflicts going to or civic unstability is going to happen? We have systems for developing early warning for that. They do a peacekeeping peacebuilding project in the major Delta, which has been very successful, and they're involved with voluntary principles on security and human rights, which works with extractive companies around the world. It also includes human rights NGOs and so on. It basically tries to develop a means that where commercial operations are not harming, but are in fact benefiting humanity. They may be, FFP may be best known for their annual Federal States Index. You can find it online, federalstatesindex.org. Every year they come out. It's a great way to see how countries are doing. There's many of these now. This is one of the first ones. I found the first one that really started to look at the entire world and just track how countries are doing from a stability perspective. FFP uses a lot of interns. People looking for internships. It's pretty interesting stuff. It's all been remote now, of course, for a year and a half, but the interns do a lot of hands-on work. I think it would be quite interesting. That's it for me. Happy to talk to people. I'm happy to answer questions. Also, if you want to get in touch with me, that's my contact information. Doug Brooks at Hoosera84.com. I'm from Indiana originally. That's it. Happy to do questions now, Jackson. Awesome. Thank you so much. Okay. For all attendees, you can click the Q&A in the bottom right and type in questions and I can see them. I give them Mr. Brooks. I'll start off with a few of my own. I was very interested when you were talking about the Wagner Group. I was wondering how you see the role of these quasi-governmental military groups in the future changing, possibly, now that we see countries like Russia embracing their uses? It's a great question. That's worthy of some lot of academic papers. I don't want to like skull the beans early, but these things are going to be around. I think, I mean, France sort of pioneers. I guess if you go back in history, you'll probably find a lot of these sorts of things going on. The Russians have really, really bought into it and it gives them some plausible deniability when they invade Crimea. When they try to control the mining resources of Central African Republic and you'll see that these guys are huge down there. There's lots of them in there. They provide like the bodyguards, I think, for the president and CAR and things like that. I think the international community is also a little hesitant to try to go after them as well because if you didn't have these Russians down there doing the body guard work and whatever, who would be doing it? It's a touchy issue. I don't think they're going anywhere. There's always ways to keep these sort of vague entities operating. I think the more developed, more westernized, more democratic countries aren't going to use them too much, but other countries certainly will. I think that makes sense. I feel like it'd be hard for the U.S. to plausibly use those kinds of companies. They kind of have. Go back to Vietnam, for example. There was a company called Flying Tigers, which was a transport company. It did operate privately, but it was essentially set up by the CIA to help do things like drop supplies to insurgents and things like that as well. There has been some of that in a slightly different way, ideally for better reasons, but not so much right now. Let's see. A small follow up to that, actually. Do people in the industry who tend to be working in these regions, do they view those groups as just another kind of arm of states? That's also a really good question. Probably. I don't know enough about Central African Republic to say one way or the other. I think the academics probably have a clearer view of it than the people in the field. Actually, well, here's a good point. For a private military company, executive outcomes, when they operated in Sierra Leone, again, it was mostly South Africans left over from the Apartheid era military and Angolans who had been on the side of South Africans at the time, but it was mostly Angolan. They went up to Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone's assumed that they'd been sent by Mandela to support them in their time of need. They kept thanking Mandela for sending these Apartheid era warriors up there to help them out. It was a little confusing. Yeah, I don't think that's very clear. Yes, great question. I think that's very fascinating. It's a very interesting topic that I think a lot of you are going to focus on, especially now. We have a question from the chat that says, with climate change potentially driving increased flows of refugees and especially IDPs, how do you see the role of the private sector evolving to continue to support international peace and stability in the face of this expanding challenge? This is fascinating. When Kosovo was attacked or when the Kosovo situation happened in the 90s, there was a company that had a contract with the U.S. Army called the log cap logistics. I forget what it all stands for, but essentially this massive contract to support the Army, whatever the building basis, feeding the troops, transporting things. And so all of a sudden, we had these refugees flying across the border from Kosovo and being pushed by the Serbs. And the U.S. government, the Army was able to wave its magic wand and tell KBR, which was a company that was running it at the time, build a refugee camp that has lights, plumbing, cafeterias, rec halls, everything. And almost overnight, boom, you had probably the best refugee camp ever built. For 20,000 refugees or whatever it was. Pretty amazing. That's super rare. The reality is that refugees are not well liked by anybody. You can see that in Afghanistan now where tens of thousands of Afghans are trying to flee the Taliban. Uzbekistan's not allowing them in. Tajikistan's not allowing them in. Pakistan's allowing them in at a trickle. Nobody likes refugees. During Syria, a lot of refugees fled to Jordan. We wanted to build a model refugee camp in Jordan. The private sector, I should say, we were offering plans and so on. Jordan didn't want that. They didn't want a permanent, semi-permanent refugee camp on their border. So they prefer to have things a little bit rough. Yes, this is something that the private sector could do a lot of, including climate change, where you have massive amounts of people moving because of the change in sea levels and so on. On the refugee side, probably not so much just because nobody wants a really nice refugee camp where refugees are well fed and cared for. But IDP, yes. Certainly bringing in companies to build emergency housing or even more permanent structures and things like that, yeah, 100%. And again, when you hire a company, especially in an IDP situation, the people doing all the work are going to be local national. So maybe an international company that brings in the expertise and the capabilities. But it's going to be local nationals that do most of the work. And ideally, it'll be local nationals from the IDP community who need the work and everything after being forced out of whatever location they're in. So, yeah, there's a big role for the private sector. I think it's important to remember that they're not making policy. The policies come from governments and is influenced by NGOs and other academics. But ultimately, once you have a policy, the private sector will bring in services that are faster, better, cheaper than the way a military would do or government would do it by itself. That's really interesting. It's interesting that you mentioned the conflict of interest that countries might have setting up refugee camps. It's like a very complicated. It's pretty horrible. There was, he was named Fred Cooney. You're going to read about an interesting guy, Fred Cooney, really pioneered a lot of the ideas of how a refugee camp should be set up. He was doing the Biafra war in the 60s in Nigeria. He went in and found these refugee camps were disastrous or NGOs bringing food and things like that. But they were basically tent cities with sewage everywhere and so on. And Fred Cooney had an engineering background that quickly set up clean water, sewage and things like it just made the camps a lot safer and healthier. And he really pioneered a lot of those ideas. But he also said, interestingly, he said, don't make a refugee camp too nice or people will never go home. And I saw the Sincere Leone when I was there where you had essentially a very, very poor country. You have a lot of IDPs going to this one UN camp. And in the camp, they were getting medical treatment. The kids were going to school. They're getting three square meals a day. That's something they never got out where they lived in their villages. And so getting them to go home, not so easy. So Cooney said, keep them rough, interestingly. On the other hand, you have refugee camps that full Palestinians that have been there for how many decades now.  They're born and raised there three generations. So it makes sense to have some nicer places. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, we have another question from the chat that says, historically, PMCs have been documented doing problematic things due to their unaccountability, such as their involvement in the Neeser Square massacre, Abu Ghraib and private security companies, Blackwater. Not a PMC, but carry on. How do you see their role going forward in building states rather than undermining coalition goals? Well, they were hired that case, Neeser Square was a company called Blackwater. Some of you may be familiar with it. Run by Eric Prince is quite prominent within the Trump Republican circles these days. We thought Eric had his heart in the right place, but he does things that really differently. What happened in Neeser Square was a private security company that essentially got out of control. There was accountability. The company does not exist anymore. The individuals that were involved, there were four that were actually convicted of the crimes and had served several years in prison before Trump pardoned the last year or two years ago. I think everybody in the industry felt these guys had exceeded what they were allowed to do in that particular incident and that they deserved what they got, and that the company deserved what it got because of the way it did its training and handled its operations. You can debate that, but there's a lot of information out there on Neeser Square. The reality is there's been a couple of academic papers now that have asked, are you safer with a private security company as a civilian where these operations are taking place? Are you safer with private security companies or with militaries? The answer is, quite easily, you're safer with the private security companies. They have different rules of engagement. They can return fire. They can't start a battle. Militaries have something, or the American military, has something they call the death blossom, which is when one of their convoy's is assaulted, the way they get out of the ambush is to fire in every direction with everything they have, and so you get out of the X, so you get out of the ambush. That's probably good from military perspective, but if you happen to be in a town, all those civilians around there, they're probably not as appreciative. It was interesting in Iraq when you had these private security companies, including Blackwater, very, very few of them had heavy weapons. I mean, they had essentially rifle-caliber bullets, and a lot of them, even though their government clients would say you need to use 50-caliber machine guns to do this kind of security, the companies wouldn't do it because of the liability involved. In other words, they had different rules that they had to follow. The militaries, the military liability for throwing around the 1,000-pound bomb, they'll figure it out later. They also have governments backing them up that will either confirm or deny the bomb was there, or pay compensation if the bomb did it the wrong target. Private companies, it's a little different because you can actually sue the private company and has been done when they exceed their use of force, use of force improperly. There's a lot more ways you can control them, and also within the contract. If you are hiring a private security company, you put in the contract, but they're allowed to use in terms of weapons or equipment, and you can minimize the risk to the civilians by designing that into the contract. Now, if the company doesn't like the idea that they're not allowed to use armored vehicles or something, they're not going to bid on the contract. That's up to the client. I think one of the problems in our industry is that the clients haven't always enforced the contracts or enforced the laws. Again, from an industry perspective, that benefits the industry when you actually have laws and you enforce the laws. You have guidelines and you have contract rules and you enforce those. That's good for the companies that are really good at following the rules. But if we do the bottom features, there's always going to be a company that's going to want to cut corners, you know, not maybe not have people the right training or background. And if the government client isn't paying attention to it, then you're going to end up with a poor product with the risks that bring. That's very interesting. That makes sense. And that demonstrates the kind of the need for regulation for these kind of groups. And a similar kind of question. Somebody asked, how do quasi-government military organizations interact with PMCs and PSCs in the field? Do they collaborate on projects? And what happens if they happen to come in conflict with each other? That's a great question. I have to think if they've ever actually... So in Mozambique, you did have a... No, no, they've been actually... So Wagner was in Mozambique, but I don't think they interacted with security companies. There were security companies working for some of the extractive firms that are developing the big natural gas field they have there. Wagner went in, but they were not there very long, because I think basically because I weren't used to fighting in that environment, they were ambushed, I think several times, and I think as many as 12 of them were killed, and then the company or the organization just pulled out and decided it wasn't worth it. They didn't want to do it. Did they interact with the private security companies? I don't know that they did. I tend to think when you have... What I saw in Sierra Leone was that everybody pretty much coordinated, at least all the intervening forces, the UN, and so on would coordinate with each other. The NGOs as well were coordinating with these other companies. They didn't necessarily like each other, at least officially, but the reality was every evening Sierra Leone was a pretty small country. Every evening, everybody went to the same bars, and that's where your trade information hookup would do whatever, and that's where the security companies and the more than security companies and the NGOs and the UN people are able to sort out the problems informally without actually officially talking to each other or endorsing each other. It was quite useful, and it also allowed them to de-conflict their missions during the days because they would work all the stuff out at night and know that somebody was moving here or whatever. It was informal, but it actually worked. I think nowadays with the ICOCA and other things, we've legitimized a lot of these companies, and the NGOs are much more comfortable working alongside them or working in the same area and knowing what the limitations are on the security companies and so on. For the quick moves, quick moves are, especially we're talking about the Russian ones, probably not talking to many people, probably not interested in doing that. Certainly, they're more interested in anonymity on the individual level. They do know that sanctions can be slapped against individuals that are involved with this. You'll see that even though it's in equatorial areas, the Wagner group guys all wear masks. You'll never see pictures of their faces or anything. They're pretty careful to stay anonymous. Security companies, they're usually unmasked except for COVID. They're operating legitimately and so on. So different roles and stuff. I don't know that you have attract conflicts. There was, I think, an interesting example. Wagner group was in Syria. I think they're still in Syria, and there was an incident. You had Russian troops in Syria, you had the Wagner group in Syria, and then you had the U.S. have a small base, this is 78 years ago, had a small base with their U.S. allies in Syria. At one point, the Wagner group along with its Syrian allies actually attacked the U.S. base. The U.S. had a hotline, a telephone number that they could call the Russians and de-conflict because they did not want to have a battle between Russian troops and U.S. troops. So even though they're both operating in Syria, they basically had a phone number. They could talk to each other and make sure this wouldn't happen. So reportedly, the U.S. commander of this base saw Wagner group and the Syrians attacking his base and picks up the phone and calls the Russian military and says, are these your guys that are attacking? And the Russian military said, no, not ours, do you want? And they made several phone calls just to reconfirm that these Russians that were attacking them were not in fact part of the Russian military. And the Russian military said, do you want? And so the Americans did and they hammered the Wagner guys, killed quite a few of them, a lot of the Syrian allies with airstrikes, helicopters. It was a mess. It was the biggest setback that Wagner group had ever faced. Now, why the Russian military and Wagner group were not coordinating or agreeing on this? That's another question. But it does show that there was, I think at the very least, there was some friction going on between the Russian military and the Wagner group, people that had not been resolved. So I don't know if that addresses the question, but that kind of, I think maybe to extend that question a bit, you have a lot of UN troops operating in Central African Republic now alongside the Wagner group. I don't know enough about it, but if somebody wanted to write a held standing term paper, that would be a great topic to look at, the coordination between Wagner and the UN, Central African Republic. That's very interesting. Your example demonstrates some kind of like some level of autonomy of these groups, but I don't know if we could describe them as totally autonomous. Well, you know, I mean, you would have thought, even if there's some hostility between the private sector and the public sector, in the case of Russia, you would have thought the Kremlin or somebody would have de-conflicted that issue there in Syria. I don't know what happened. I don't think that whole story has been written yet. That's very interesting. I think we'll just have you time for like one or two more questions if that's all right with you. And I actually had a question regarding, you talked a little bit about how NGOs respect the law of the, not only the country they come from, but the country that they are working in. And I was wondering what that would kind of look like when they're working in a country that might not have a stable rule of law system or might have a conflicting governmental structure with like two parties, each claiming to be the proper government. And let's say one of them doesn't want the NGO there. How do NGOs navigate situations like this? In general, you have recognized the UN will recognize one entity as the legitimate like in Libya, for example, the UN recognizes this government in Tripoli. And so the NGOs will probably be operating under that auspices. But you have NGOs like MSF and ICRC, which will also work with the other semi-legitimate entities, whatever you want to call them. And they will have a special agreement usually with the UN or whoever that will allow this in Columbia. For example, you had the FARC insurrection the last 30 years or whatever. The ICRC actually had a, was able to meet with and discuss things with the FARC, even though it was clearly not, you know, it was not the legitimate governor of Columbia, but it was an advantage to everybody that you had entities that were able to do that, that were able to cross over this border and so on. So it does take special agreements and so on to be able to do this, but NGOs are actually really good at, some NGOs I would say are especially really good at doing, make sure that the UN and the Korean requirements are addressed, even in areas not controlled by the legitimate government. Okay. I think that makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much for coming and speaking with us today. I think we all learned a lot. I've really enjoyed the presentation. That was super interesting. If anybody wants to follow up on it, you're welcome to contact me by sharing my email. That's fine. And yeah, there's always an interesting topic. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for coming. I'm going to drop the links to the IGL event and the Zoom room for the next panel that's starting at 1.30. So in about an hour and 10 minutes, so everybody has time for like lunch and just to relax for a little bit. Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much, Mr. Brooks. And thank you everyone for coming to this panel. It's a pleasure. Take care.


Israeli military astonished by the size and quality of Gaza tunnels. The Israeli military has been astonished by the size and quality of the tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza, according to an article published in the New York Times. The tunnel network was originally estimated to include 400 kilometers of underground passages and bunkers. Israel Defense Forces has since revised these estimates to 560 to 725 kilometers or more. Two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said there were close to 5,700 separate shafts leading into the tunnels under Gaza. None of the numbers could be independently verified, however. It could take years to disable the tunnels one Israeli official told the Times. They need to be mapped, checked for Israeli captives and made irreparable. He said, acknowledging that the recent attempts to destroy the tunnels by flooding them with seawater have failed. According to another official, Israel is using a triangle model to locate the tunnels, which assumes they will be found under any hospital, school or mosque in Gaza. The Israeli military has underestimated the extent and importance of the tunnels to Hamas, which the Times described as an intelligence failure. One soldier who spoke with the Times on condition of anonymity said that he had taken part in destroying about 50 tunnels in Beit Hanun in the northeast of Gaza. All of them were rigged with bombs and other explosives wired to be activated remotely.


Hello, hello, hello. I'm Maren Khalili and this is Frontline, a series of interviews where I talk with activists, organisers or just regular people who have confronted the establishment to figure out how they do it. And in today's interview, which was recorded on November 4th, 2022, I talk with Simon Howard. He's one of the organisers of the Don't Pay UK campaign for a massive payment strike on December 1st. And he explains a lot about the inner workings of the campaign in this interview. We talk about the tools they use, how they went from nothing to 250,000 signatures in just a couple of months with 32,000 organisers. Simon was very generous with his time. He was very, very open about the mechanics of the campaign. And I think there's a lot to learn from in this interview. So without further ado, I bring you Simon Howard. I'm a UK citizen and I work in the building trade. Okay. And you're very involved in the Don't Pay UK campaign to ask people to withhold their energy bills, basically a payment strike. Tell me a bit about that. What is the situation that has created the need for this strike? In the UK, we've been dealing with an ongoing cost of living crisis as wages stagnate and inflation has let rip. One of the more obvious aspects of this has been the massive increase in energy bills. The maximum amount that the energy companies are allowed to charge households is calculated according to the equation. In the run up to October, this campaign started in June. So it started on June 18, 2022. We'd already had massive price rises in energy in April. A lot of the energy suppliers had gone bust and been taken up by the government or amalgamated or people have been forced to switch companies. So people's energy bills were very, very high. And then another massive increase looked like it was going to happen in October, possibly tripling or dribbling people's energy bills. Some people, a group of friends in London, I believe, I didn't get involved two or three weeks later. I saw it on Facebook and got involved. People got together as a wireless, you know, we can organize a payment strike on this genuine leverage here in that everyone is individually responsible for their own bill. We could pull everyone together. We already knew that with the increase in prices, particularly predicted October increases that tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people are already not going to be able to pay. And that we were going to try to crystallize this into a political moment, not allow people to be individually picked off, but turn into a political movement. And that's how don't pay started. The energy companies Shell, BP, they're all making a killing, right? I mean, I've got some stats in front of me that Shell has doubled their profits from 2021 and made 8.2 billion in the last three months, BP also double compared to the same period of last year in terms of profits. So the bills are using tripling and quadrupling. And the profits of the energy companies are expanding. What's going on there a little bit? I mean, you tell me, I think we all guess what's going on there. But I think that the situation we have here, and that might be might be very different to other parts of Europe. The situation we have here is that we have a one of these rigged, false markets in this country. So you've got the people who mine and extract the energy, the growth, the big energy giants. And then you have the people you actually get your electricity bill from, supply the energy. And this was all deregulated, very saturate, big bang economics. So you have all these companies that you can switch between and look for bargains or whatever in this kind of free market. There isn't one because when the crunch actually came and the unit price went up, these companies all ended up offering the same deal. And many of them went bust because they offered on very slim margins. So what we've always said is don't pay is that we need to get rid of this rigged market entirely and be dealing directly with the energy giants who are banking billion dollar profits quarter on quarter, almost to the point where senior figures within the industry have demanded to be taxed. Because the situation is so ludicrous, the imbalance is so ludicrous. And I think they can they can see that the social unrest that will follow from energy bills increasing to this extent. The don't pay campaign top line like what what are your demands? The top three demands is that it should have been the first, certainly pre October, no energy price hike in October. That's what we demanded. And no any factor return to the April 2021 prices. So so attacking the price rise of the doubling that had happened in April 2022, that was on demand, that there should be no enforcement of prepayment meters. But this is the primary method of of cowing people is being put on a prepayment meter. Most of us pay our electricity and our gas in arrears. But they actually if you get on a prepayment meter, then you're obviously you have no possibility of withdrawing payment or budgeting. You simply have to go and add money whenever you need power. And not only that, the majority of charging more per unit. So we want no enforcement of prepayment meters. And that's across the board that includes existing ones. And then the third demand is that no one should be cold this winter. And I hope no one because this is we've actually had a mild winter so far, but if the temperatures are going down now. So we can we can see that. And this is, I hope a chance for us to address the ongoing inequality that we have a proper conversation here about fair price for power in the UK. At the moment, the less electricity you use, the less power you use, the more you're paying per unit. And that's completely unfair. We need to be looking at that and ensuring that everyone could afford to heat any. And it's that involves higher rates of people who can afford it in higher energy bands and so be it. The tactic of simply not paying. This was something that was based on the successful rebellion against Margaret Thatcher's poll tax. When was that 30, 30 years ago or so? 1991. Yeah. Well, it was a three year campaign actually to be fair. Okay, but explain a bit about that and the idea of pledging as opposed to just going on strike. Because that's how your campaign works, what it has up to now, just saying that we will look like a warning, like, hey, hey, energy companies, we're going to stop paying if you don't meet our demands, but without actually doing it yet. Well, that's right. I think we needed to build a critical mass of people. We already knew that there's to say tens of hundreds of thousand people were going to be in cut the can't pay bracket. People already on prepayment meters and so on and so forth have built a safety in numbers to make it quite clear that there was no way they could take us all to court. There's no way they could enforce a prepayment meter on all of us. And that they were going to have to take notice of this. And we know they did. I mean, this is what's been really interesting is that there have been documents that have come out for information and some leaks have shown that the energy companies were directly lobbying the government effectively saying this is going to work. This is going to work. This has gone viral, which it did an enormous response, enormous response, really resonated. And they were this is and we had a lever, we had an effective lever against these people because it was an action that people could take quite a low bar of entry. So just to cancel direct debit, you don't even get a letter for 28 days. But if if thousands of people did that once that creates an enormous cash flow come problem for the companies. And that that process that was working. So without doing anything at all, you know, the most powerful punch is often the one that's not thrown without doing anything at all. We steered trust his government into scrapping the October price hike. So it worked. And whether we took our inspiration from the poll tax or about other examples more recently in Kent, actually, which is a very conservative right wing part of the country or votes consistently conservative, people engaged in a mass payment strike there last summer over the sewage being dumped on the beaches by Southern water. And that was effective in effect, the Southern water row offloads of people's energy, sorry, water bills. Water bills are typically much lower than, you know, gas or electric, but nonetheless, they were forced to back off by thousands of people in a small area, deciding that they weren't going to pay. Which is quite an interesting example.  Right. You had some right wing commentators, Katie Hopkins and some other people like that sort of endorsing the campaign. And as you said, there were these documents, I think it was in October that showed that the energy companies were very worried specifically about your campaign.  I think I'm looking at this piece on from Open Democracy, whether they made a slide. I forget who the presentation was to maybe was sent to Tory ministers saying the don't pay campaign. What is going to be your response if this campaign goes ahead? And they actually have they've cut and pasted from your site. So it's I mean, it's very encouraging that you're kind of registering on the the establishment.  You know, we spoke to trade union leaders, they were saying it's the membership who are coming up and talking to us about this. You know, we were getting, you know, WhatsApp groups, we can talk about mechanics and how the campaign works in a bit, but we were certainly getting interest in like, you know, rural areas where nothing radicals happen since the Civil War, you know, it was sort of for the benefit of it. We haven't had a we haven't had a civil war for 400 years. So the so but it that's that's what was really interesting here. And it was not it was outsized outside the unionized left. And I think they could see it was growing. So I think their focus groups are telling him that this was growing and was really catching on. And they had to swerve very rapidly. And I think in quite a disorganized fashion, they didn't come up with the best response to it. And in fact, that, you know, cause the problems which cause the collapse of the government effectively ends your price guarantee.  I mean, that was your first demand was a return to the pre April prices. You are right. They basically all they did was scrap the October price hike. They didn't return to which is yeah, it's a partial victory. Definitely. I think it showed just what what can actually be done. You know, if you get enough people together and and actually quite a low resource campaign, really, was effectively able to steer the government in that way by tapping into a public mood. And I don't again, it was interesting what you said about Katie Hopkins. I don't know if you want to talk about that later, but that was other things I've heard from other European activists, other people I've spoken to since getting involved in this is that we took this ground for the left. We that's crucial. I think we there's been a lot of criticisms of don't pay campaign in terms of whether it's democratic, how organized it is, etc, etc. But actually, we didn't spend, you know, a year polishing a model, the perfect model of how this campaign was going to turn out. We grabbed the ball and ran with it. And I think that was really important because it is quite clear that some of the fringe right wing populist characters in this country were already thinking about a don't pay campaign. They were already thinking about cost of living crisis. And we know what their answers to the cost of living crisis would have been, would have been a tax on the concept of net zero would have been about the return of fracking, it would have been anti immigration. And this is this is what we're talking would have been talking about if these people have been allowed to seize the initiative. So I think we reacted quickly and possibly imperfectly. But nonetheless, we had the initiative. So the conversation was about what we wanted it to be about, which is about fossil fuels. It was about profits. So we agreed united out on a class basis, not a, you know, a national basis. You're pushing ahead. You're, you're there's you've got 250,000 people so far, more than 250,000 who've pledged to strike. You originally were going to strike on October the first, but you pushed it back to December the first. So tell me a bit about the tactics that have essentially, like you said, the campaign started in June. I mean, it says decentralized campaign. All these people have suddenly got together. You've obviously had a lot of a lot of media interest and even some political wins for a campaign with that's so young. Basically, it's, it's quite remarkable. Tell me a bit about how it worked, how the mechanics of it. Yeah. So I suppose the important thing, and sort of said this from the beginning, we are not building this movement. We're channeling it. And I think that's important to understand is that one of the reasons I got involved, I'm not only because I weigh energy bills went to the roof. One of the reasons I got involved was because I was hearing this conversation on the school run. I was hearing it at work. What are we going to do? What's going to happen? You know, so this, you know, it was a conversation the whole country was already having. And it was our job effectively to stick up a lightning rod and channel that down into a political movement. And that's a very different thing to try to build something from scratch. So I think that's where we're at. And I think it, in terms of the developments, obviously, we didn't go on strike from October the first, because our first demand had been partially met. And this is nothing is perfect.  And that is very much what's happened here. I haven't got a great deal of faith in this government, if I'm brutally honest. But they are going to have to come up with a solution. We have the people power. We already know that millions of people. So this is the other thing. It wasn't just the campaign, but polling showed that up to three million people were talking about cancelling their barricade. It's huge. So there was the kind of gap, perhaps between people who just went to the point and pledged, and where the idea just lodged in people's head, and we had effectively created a social license to stop paying your energy bills. So I mean, you know, that kind of critical mass you reach where millions of people are doing it, so I can do it and it's very low risk, which I think is what you're trying to create as a moment. And I think we had penetrators to the point where that happened. Can you explain the risks that are involved? Some people are worried about their credit rating and that you can end up in court. But presumably the idea is that if so many people do this in one go, the system's going to grind to a halt. It's going to clog up the whole court system. It's not feasible. What really are the risks for individuals? I mean, yeah. So the risk is actually quite low in the sense that if you're on diet, which the majority of people pay their risk by diet, if you cancel that, you get a letter up 28 days, you get invited to pay. There's quite a lengthy process they get to before you get anywhere near court. And at that point, you can get off the train whenever you want, if you know what I mean. So kind of a rolling blockade, a mass foot dragging would work equally well. There's a very wide spectrum of going on strike. What we're asking people to do is cancel the various debits to attack the cash flow of these companies and force them as work very well to go to the government so watch your solution. And I think that's what's got them split because the actual cost they've got people under isn't a very strong one. Because they can write you a letter and a debt collector. If you wanted to string the whole thing out for six months, absolutely refuse to pay. You can choose to have your day in court, etc, etc. Then you could you so easily clock the system up. Not very many people could do that. You know, wouldn't take very many people doing it to do that. And to make the idea go viral. But if everyone demanded their day in court, that would slow the whole system down. And the whole point is if you could demand your day in court, and then and then pay the day before, if you wanted to and then still have created this massive backlog and harassment for the companies and uncertainty, which is what we're doing. But as you say, that only works when people really feel that they're not alone and that they're part of a wave of action. I think the campaign has been brilliant at creating that sense of look, it's us. It's about us on the site. You've got tips for how to help people in need. You've got lists of help lines that people can call if they're struggling to pay their bills, information about mental health, etc. I mean, it's really you get the sense from from all of the copy around this campaign, all the messaging that this is just regular people who can't do anything else. They're being pushed to their limit. They don't really want to do this. But hell, we're going to do this because they're not leaving us any other option. That's actually what has happened. I mean, yeah, it started by a small group of people, very rapidly people have come into this. Actually, some quite a wide range of political backgrounds have come into this. That's not even political backgrounds. They're not political activists, people with different sets of assumptions, perhaps have come in and fed into this. It's a very basic message, easy to understand, directly addresses a kind of material need in people's lives. And there's a certain when went viral. I tried to sign up a couple of days ago just to understand the onboarding process, if you like, of people.  And it uses WhatsApp as a kind of backbone in terms of keeping people connected, which is a great choice.  It's in your pocket. You don't have to be a member and log in and whatever. I mean, people have already got this this app on their phones. If there is an existing WhatsApp group in your postcode, for your postcode, then you're directed to it. If there isn't, you're directed to create one. Explain that choice and where does it go from there in terms of getting people organised using that system? There's two levels to this. One is pledging. And the other is agreeing to be an organiser. 32,000 people signed up for the next level up, which is being an organiser. And what that effectively meant is you would be put together with people in your area, based on postcode that you'd entered in a WhatsApp group. And that then you would then basically be left to and there's been a certain amount of work put into this to then link up with the other WhatsApp groups around you in the area and create, you know, biggest, biggest structures. And it's been interesting because some WhatsApp groups are reactive, some some not. So that and that's been but it has worked because we have 300 active WhatsApp groups. And we when we have called for decentralized protests, as we did in October the 1st, they popped up in all sorts of places. And so people have been left to come up with their own messaging, do their own recruitment. So it's been it's completely decentralized in that sense. So I think it started we threw the WhatsApp groups out there. And as the campaign goes on, it's a matter of trying to integrate those into a structure that's growing from those WhatsApp groups back up, which is kind of what's happening now. So there's a regional meetings that are going on in different parts of the country.  But there's more and more input coming from people who've arrived at the campaign through joining one of these WhatsApp groups. I mean, let's take that protest as an example. The there was a call for protest. I forget when a few weeks ago, right? October 1st, October the 1st. Sorry. Yeah, right. But it was but there was it was there was a protet. It was you're asking people to burn their bills. Correct. That so so you replace the October the 1st strike with an October the 1st bill burning protest, right? Yeah. Okay. Now, what I saw there was that there was you had sort of centralized kind of I know I'm getting into the nitty gritty a bit of how it works here. But like, you had some graphics that people could print. And an example of what it could look like the protest. And this was all this. This was a, I think, on the website, or a PDF, I forget. And also all of the legal advice, like you won't get in trouble for for burning some burning some pieces of paper kind of things. I mean, all the questions that people could have were effectively answered at that point. Like, hey, well, I haven't done this before. Could I get in trouble for doing that, etc. So I mean, it was just a symbolic protest, but burning imaginary bills or real bills. I mean, you gave people the choice. So like very difficult to set fire to an email, sadly. But yeah, it was tell me how did it end up how did it end up going? I mean, like, it went really well.  So so and there's another campaign in the UK called enough is enough, which a trade union led campaign, trying to kind of inspire non unionized backing for the strikes are going on at the moment. So they also called an action on October the 1st across the country. So in effect, we joined in with that across the country, and people took their burning barrels to those protests encourage people to burn their energy bills there.  And how do you I mean, one of the things that we we struggle with in terms of this decentralized campaigning idea is that people can come in kind of co-opt the the cause. You get people that are searching for political power or to raise their own profile. How do you deal with that? How do you instruct people to deal with that or guide people to deal with that? Because that's an inevitable part of any kind of political group or campaigning. How do you how do you handle it? It's a really good I mean, that is a really good question. And then so far, we've not been really confronted with any any major difficulties. I think one of the interesting things actually has been, this is me speaking personally, as you've been the big overlap with what is a huge belief system actually, which is the anti lockdown, anti vax belief system. Without getting the big, it's a very complicated phenomena.  It's really interesting, but it is huge. And I think often the left doesn't doesn't look at that. And it's something the right populists are happy to look at and exploit. And we've had a lot of people just for them, that's their common sense have come in to various what's up. So it's probably been the major challenges dealing with that, having a policy, trying to have a say to people, look, you know, we might we might not agree on, you know, on everything or indeed anything else, but we're here for one purpose. So a very clear, this is what we're here for, we are here for energy bills. And not getting beyond that has kind of helped keep the campaign on track. As I say, and I think it's actually the seeding of a campaign, the sort of the base assumptions that go into it from the very small group of people who set it up, they're not there centrally directing it anymore. But that that sort of built into it from the beginning, it's in its DNA, basically, and that I think was very important. And that that I don't know if there's any sort of political powers to be gained and don't pay from co-opting it. Maybe there is, I don't know. How do you marry that, that decentralized model that you just described, you said, I mean, the people that originally set it up on on no longer, I mean, it's it's it's running on its own steam now, basically, with, I mean, let's take, let's take a given take, you know, there's a protest, okay, and there's some media that are coming there. And we know that there's going to be some buzz and the social media hashtag, etc. And it's a protest that you've organized. And then suddenly, later people show up with their own banner about something else, you know, looking to looking to get in on some of that on some of that profile raising. How do you how do you handle that? Like, if it's decentralized, how do you go? Look, sorry, guys. No, this is not this is not going to work. Like, what kind of well, in effect, we couldn't. I mean, I think you're right. That is a potential weakness of the model. Um, genuinely, I think I think you're right. That sort of thing could happen, or we could have a road don't pay group quite easily. That could be that could happen. You know, that somebody could be in a WhatsApp group and have politics, so we're completely opposed to mine. And how, you know, that would be something to grapple with. I think I think possibly streamlining the media appearances through one office, that's been good. So we had an enormous amount of mainstream media interest at the beginning. And there was a spokesperson program. So you get actual authentic voices, rather than sort of the sort of semi celebrity influencer left-wing spokesperson model, which we've had in the UK up till now, really. So we sort of bypassed that and tried to get people from local groups from different areas, different backgrounds, and get them to be our spokespeople.  Which is a real strength of it, I think.  So I think that's very powerful. But then that brings me to a question about money. How do you pay for basic things like materials and for the protests? Local groups fundraise. So we've definitely done that. There was a lot of donations came in, actually. It's a very low-budget camp, but I don't know, let's sort of pick an example, a green piece or something that would spend millions on a campaign. It's not like that at all. I think we're talking in the low, tens of thousands have been spent, I mean, low, probably under $30,000 all-told has been spent on this campaign. But yeah, donations came in at the beginning, quite a lot, and more than people were expecting. So that's enabled the, but that's all gone straight back out. Millions of leaflets, hundreds of thousands of stickers were printed, distributed for your charge to people or for a nominal fee, and that's where the money went. I see. Okay. And what's the future then for Don't Pay? Because you've got 250,000 people who have pledged after the December 1st strike, whatever happens. What's the next step? I mean, obviously, it depends very much on the fork on the road is going to be what do they do about energy bills. That's going to be the big fork in the road. And I will be personally speaking, I'm going to be quite surprised if something, they're not going to let it rip again. Very unlikely, I feel, that the government is going to walk into exactly the same trap as they did in October 1st, where they were forced into a panic to response. That seems that they're not going to do that. They will address this in some way, and then we will have to address that. That seems to me the likeliest outcome. Let's see what comes out in this mini budget. Let's see what they're proposing come April. Whether we call off or go on strike on December 1st, we'll be dependent on that. What's on the table? I don't know to what extent, personally, I hope this doesn't sort of ossify into anything. I think this is a moment. We've channeled this movement. I hope we've shown, and the example is what I'd like to shout from the rooftops, is this works. Actually, the powers that be are not as powerful as you think they are. If you get enough people together, and you do this, and you work in a decentralized way, then you can win. With quite low resources, if you pick your moments, you can win. And that's what I'd like the takeaway to be for people. Now, whatever coalitions or ideas or whatever come after this, and we are still looking whatever happens with this mini budget or the next year, we're looking at, and there's no promise coming from the Labour Party either, really, other than just more years of austerity. That's what we're looking at, and the sort of continual trajectory into crisis after crisis our societies are experiencing. I'm hoping that people can learn it if you band together and act in this way. We can win, and we can win for people further down the social scale. Change is possible. Okay. Well, that's great. I mean, I'm conscious of time here. Could you just tell, for the benefit of people listening, tell them what are the first steps for people to get involved with, don't pay resources, points of contact, etc. So, really, please visit our website, don'tpay.uk. Pledge, well, read the resources first and decide if it's for you, but then pledge. It doesn't matter if you're on a pre-payment, whatever your situation is, just pledge, join in, help organise, help spread the strike. And that's what I'd like people to do. Great. Simon Howard, thank you very much indeed for your time. It's been fascinating talking to you, and best of luck with the campaign. Really appreciate you coming in today and opening the hood to explain how it all works, and good luck with it. Thank you very much.