Hi, everybody. We're going to get started here with the next presentation. I'm Stephanie Welch. I'm going to be introducing our next speaker, who is Gideon Maylor. The talk that we're going to have today from Gideon is Decolonizing the Diet, Teaching Early US History in the Home of Ansel Keys. And so Gideon Maylor is a PhD, is an assistant professor in the history of early America at the University of Minnesota, and a former Title A Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge University. He's engaged in a project to raise awareness about ancestral health principles through the teaching of early US history in a large public research institution. So take it away, Gideon. Thank you, and good morning. So I came to the University of Minnesota system from Cambridge, the home of Darwin, and you could say evolutionary health. And I came to the home of Ansel Keys, progenitor of the failed lipid hypothesis, yada, yada, yada, the seven country study. We all know how bad that was, so I won't go into it. It was also a place where in 1954, the Scottish biologist who discovered Penicillin, Alexander Fleming, came. And he was told by various members of the university that it might be great to give some of the antibiotics that he was pioneering to various animals to fatten them up, and maybe even little babies as well. He didn't think that was a great idea, but so these are some of the darker aspects of the university's history in terms of public health. But as I'm gonna try and talk about today, there are also some more positive aspects. And positive aspects that I'm gonna hope to show can be taught through the study of early US history. So there are those are the negatives, and then there are more positives in the state. We all know about the Mayo Clinic, trying to turn the state into a public health destination, often in conjunction with the university. And the Mayo Clinic, as many know, pioneered ketogenic diets, for example, or at least helped to pioneer it. They pioneered various treatments of epilepsy, and they don't always promote a high-carb, low-fat paradigm. There are new models which are being introduced, often in conjunction with University of Minnesota researchers. So it's not all bad. There are other aspects of the university which are looking to promote grains and so on, and so that might be thought of as slightly more problematic. But we've got other positive aspects in the state. We've got the Thousand Hills Cattle Company, who are pioneers in the grass-fed movement. Second, I would say, in terms of accessing grass-fed foods, maybe just to this state, California. And of course, as many people don't realize, the state's home to our great and good Nora Goodgaldis. And thanks to my partner, Nicola, for some of the artwork that you'll see in this original artwork that you'll see in this presentation. And so there's Nora saying, we're all genetically, biologically, physiologically, without exception, hunter-gatherers. Here's another cartoon. There's our friend Rob Wolf in Reno, Nevada, telling the police force, eat your butter. Figures such as Rob Wolf have recently begun to try and move ancestral principles into public communities, a bit like we saw with the native paleo movement in the previous presentation. Rob did this with his paleo diet risk assessment in the Nevada police force, whom he said were literally dying of metabolic syndrome. But what I want to talk about today is how can ancestral principles be promoted from within, really, what are the largest public institutions in this country, public research institutions, such as the UM system, with its many different branch campuses. And particularly, in my case, a university system with two populations that are particularly amenable to ancestral health principles. Number one, Scandinavian Americans, who I'll get onto at the very end of my talk, Minnesota being more Norwegian and Swedish than Sweden and Norway, as many people know, as well as Indian communities. And I'm using the word Indian because that's the preferred use of the term amongst the indigenous communities of Minnesota. I know in other states, the preferred term is Native Americans or American Indians, but I'll use the word Indian and Indian studies. And so what I particularly want to show is how, as a professor of history, I'm not a scientist, never have been, never will be, how, but a professor in the humanities of history, somebody who has to teach about Thomas Jefferson and the founding and the Puritans and the witches in Salem, how it's actually within a US history course that ancestral health principles might actually be promoted. Particularly a course which would be open to bio majors, engineers, historians, English literature students, pre-med, whatever, but a course in which we would look at the early survey of US history, but within that course, particularly focus on Indian studies and the Indian encounter. But we would not only be looking at history, we would be, and what I think is unique about the course and what I would hope to roll out in the next few years, we'd be also looking at the latest scientific, peer-reviewed medical literature, peer-reviewed scientific literature, and so how some of the hot button issues in ancestral health might speak to the study of early US history, but also how the study of early US history might speak to some of those hot button issues whether it's resistant starch, safe starch, ketogenic diets, insulin, all that kind of stuff. And so that's what I'd like to outline now, how such a course would work. We would, with the students, we'd focus on what I would call the old thesis, in which we would partly discredit, and it's being partly discredited among scholars anyway, which is what we call the biological exchange thesis, which in a nutshell is Europeans come over to the US, to what was then continental North America after Columbus, and through the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, Native American communities, Indian communities, are decimated, we used to say just as a result of a lack of immunity to infectious diseases from Europe. But this kind of gets Europeans off the hook in a way, because we're talking about abstract diseases here, which kind of just are there, and then unfortunately indigenous peoples die. What we're now increasingly saying, is that it's not just a biological exchange model where abstract infectious diseases are somehow just transported, unfortunately. What's now coming into scholarship is colonization. It's the effects of colonization alongside the biological exchange of pathogens, which Indian communities were unable to withstand. Because we know that in fact studies of the black death in medieval Europe and various other plagues across the world, medieval China for example, populations can actually, according to historians, bioanthropologists, recover from near destructive epidemics. Within a hundred years it is possible and has been possible through history to recover from widespread epidemics. We're starting to realize that you need something else alongside those epidemics, and that something else is interventions, interventions from peoples, and from what we'd see in the North American context, interventions from European colonizers. And particularly what we can see is forced changes in diet and agriculture. Number one, the first example that we can see there and we can talk about is the problem of domesticated agriculture. How European agriculture moves a hunter gathering system among Indians towards one in which cattle and new forms of cattle are concentrated in small pens. We in a class, this class that I'm trying to show the model for, we would look at for example, the ways in which Indian communities often, after they had been attacked or subjected to colonization, they would attack European livestock before they were attacked or retaliated against actual European settlers. So from the 1500 through to the 19th century, we see livestock being attacked, often before we see humans being attacked. Why attack livestock? Firstly, as we discuss in any class, livestock concentrated into pens. As we know from modern ecology, modern agriculture, work by Joel Salaton and many other people in the ancestral health movement, concentrated livestock has a propensity to create all sorts of infectious diseases that people might not have noted before. And there are many original sources and we don't have time to go into this now, but we suggest that Indians knew this very well. They knew this wasn't just about pathogens coming from Europe, but they knew that somehow it was this concentrated cattle that and within close proximity to concentrated cattle that infectious diseases can move across the barrier. And so they attack that cattle because that's a way of getting rid of what they see as a key factor in the promotion of infectious diseases. We also, aside from the issue of infectious diseases and cattle, cattle gets in the way of traditional diets. It gets in the way of Indian communities whether in California, New England, parts of Florida, whichever case study we'd look at in any class. The new forms of European enclosures and domesticated agriculture will literally provide a physical barrier that stops hunting and gathering of fatty meats, but also stops Indian communities from gathering what we would call, I guess, or at least some people in this community would call safe starches, acorns, tubers, those kind of things. And when you lose your ability to harvest those, we can see from bioanthropological literature, historical literature, your health, your fertility goes down. We saw that in the previous talk, but we can see historical evidence of this from the 1500s onwards. And so here are some of the examples of just some of the native foods that various Indian communities, in particular case studies, would have had access to. And then after colonization, you lose access to those. Different types of berries, lower glycemic starches, fish, particularly in the Great Lakes region and all the way up to Alaska, fatty fishes. And of course, you've got the bison and many other things, which the fattiest cuts and the organs would have been prized. And again, we have many sources from this, going back to the 1500s, all the way through to the 20th century. But what we see is a loss of access to hunting and gathering those meats and a loss of culture, a culture which would prize the fattiest parts, the organs, all the stuff that we don't need to be told about here, that we know about that Western A price has shown over the last decades. And so an aspect of colonization leads to a lack of an ability to access these fat soluble minerals and a lack of an ability to access the kind of meats that you would have already gotten to before. In any class, we could even look at peer-reviewed literature on what Western A price called Activator X, Vitamin K2 and how we would have to hypothesize at this point that colonization decreases the ability of Indian communities to access K2 from things like oligon grease and from fatty parts of fish eggs and many other types of foods. So here are some examples of the previous high-fat consumption, which colonization reduces access to from Northern Canada all the way down to the Southwest. But I also mentioned starch and acorns and tubers. Many, we now know that many of the starches that Indians got less access to after European colonization tended to be lower glycemic, mesquite pods in the Southwest, a cereal known as psyllium or plantargo consumed by Pima Indians in the Southwest. Those same substances in peer-reviewed scientific literature more recently have been shown actually to lower insulin-like properties in their consumption or even when they're consumed alongside other starches. And so again, we would see a lack, a loss of access to these leads to a decline in health really. And so we'd be looking at the historical case studies for this alongside more modern literature, which I think is really important. And so there's Paul Jaminé might be happy, might not be so happy with the maze in the corner, but the rest he might be happy with in such a course. We'd look at, for example, Minnesota wild rice, which is more lower glycemic and indigenous communities in Minnesota after colonization lost access to that. And so we'd look at the historical case studies of that alongside modern literature. And again, references to acorns raises in my opinion some interesting ideas with regards to resistant starch. We saw in Grace Liu's talk a couple of days ago, parts of acorns, if they're ground up, can be a form of resistant starch. And we know that Indian communities used to ground up acorns and eat them with various kinds of foods, fats and so on, and lost their ability to harvest acorns after European enclosure and after European agriculture moves. So we could hypothesize, and this will just be a hypothesis in a class, that colonization actually literally affects the gut biome of Indian communities, a lack of resistant starch, having potentially all sorts of other kickback issues. And so we'd look into the medical literature there, but we'd also look at the history. So it's not often that acorns get mentioned so much. There'd be another sidebar that we'd look at and which I was going to talk about, but I can't go into now, which is the whole issue of maize, which is very controversial as to whether maize, how maize has changed over the years. But there is evidence that the consumption of maize starts to affect Indian health even before European contact in terms of skeletal and dental evidence. But we'd go into that controversial literature also. Finally, we could talk about, for example, new research on ketosis and seasonal ketosis. How it is that colonization and the reduction of the ability of Indians in various communities to take part in seasonal hunts, how it is that that means that their ability to consume more starches in some communities in summer, from fruits and tubers, what Jan Rene would call safe starches, how that would often diminish once you move into winter, winter hunts. What we're seeing is during winter, the consumption of fat would be a lot higher. And so again, you'd have to hypothesize that there could be a keto-adapted state during winter when Indians would be more likely to go on long hunts. And these are the kind of hunts that our friend Ben Greenfield's triathlon experiment has sort of simulated, i.e., cardiovascular exercise, sort of slow burn, many, many hours, but how a keto-adapted state may benefit that. And there's Ben trying to chase a deer there. But whether or not it's keto clarity is up for debate, but we would see that Jimmy might be happy with the suggestion that we could see an example of a move towards a seasonal approach to ketosis. Summer starches, winter ketosis. And there is literature and there are studies that show the ways in which summer might be a greater time for starch and winter maybe for fat. But again, there's all sorts of controversies there and we would discuss that, but we would do it in conjunction with trying to understand the food ways, the seasonal food ways of Indian communities and how they were disrupted by colonization. And we'd look at, therefore, the seasonality of eating and the fractal nature of early human existence, as Mark Sisson likes to say. We would look at how that fractal nature was ruined by European colonization. So how the seasonality of hunting that moved from starches in summer towards keto adaptation in winter was potentially ruptured. So again, we're looking at history, but alongside other evidence. And so finally, in the last 30 seconds or so, we know as we saw in the previous talk that there are very important contemporary dimensions to this. We know about the high instances of diabetes and other forms of metabolic syndrome in Indian communities, who when they return to ancestral health paradigms, health often greatly improves. So we try and understand how, how is it that particular susceptibility to diabetes might be understood in terms of the previous ancestral diets that were then ruptured by colonization. There are all sorts of other case studies that we go into, but I don't have time to now. The Pima Indians in the Southwest, a lot has been done in that respect. Again, the advantage of the traditional diet don't need to go into that. We've heard it in the previous talk. But there is a movement in conjunction, in addition to native paleo, there's the decolonizing the diet movement in the Great Lakes, particularly Michigan and Michigan State, where college students, particularly with Indian ancestry, have been moving back to their ancestral diet, learning about it in class, but then teaching other people within their class who don't have Indian ancestry, why it is that they're doing so. So you're learning about history, but you're also learning about contemporary health. And these communities are actually significantly finding benefits and health markers. And it's not just in things like diabetes, but it's also in, for example, instances of depression and stuff like that has been improving. And this is all being pioneered in Michigan, but I'd like to see it roll out into Minnesota, the Great Lakes, and then further onwards to the rest of America. And why is Andreas Enfeld, who was here last year but isn't here this year, I don't think, why is he here?  And he is very excited how in Sweden, public policy is now getting on board with a more of a high-fat, low-carb lifestyle, albeit he might not place such of an emphasis on safe starches that I might do, for example. But he might be excited by this contemporary initiative, particularly in a state like Minnesota, where Scandinavian Americans who came over in the 19th century haven't always had the best, have always had a tricky relationship with Indians, just like all European colonizers have. It's sometimes tense, but we can see in the classroom how in Indians are learning about ancestral health principles in the conjunction of studying their own history, how Scandinavian Americans could also learn from their own students, their own compatriots alongside them. And of course, don't forget, many Scandinavian Americans take a lot of note of what's going on in their old country, and I've had many conversations, many know about the Swedish, what some call the Swedish craze for ancestral health principles. So this is a community that's particularly amenable to this message alongside Indians. And so in conjunction, come to Minnesota. Thank you. So we have time for maybe about two questions. I see one right here. Hi, thank you, great talk. I wanted to just first say thank you for doing original artwork. It's a very, very rare thing to not be using clip art from the web and that kind of thing. I wanted to ask if you had a recommendation for a single resource or book to learn about all the bad things that happen to native peoples upon colonization. Is 1491 a good book? So if someone wanted to kind of learn the big picture of what really happened, is there a good resource? Yeah, the work by just Google Russell Thornton. He's a Cherokee American anthropologist and professor. He's actually at UCLA, and I've learned a lot from reading him. I am by no means an expert in Indian studies. I come from early American intellectual history. So this has been a journey for me as much as anyone else. So I'd recommend Russell Thornton. He's actually got a really important article, Health, Disease and Demography. It's actually in a book called A Companion to American Indian History, very simple. I can give it to you after. But Russell Thornton, he's quite controversial because he's actually used the word Holocaust, which personally I wouldn't, but you can see where he's coming from. So yeah, go for him. And there are various other indigenous health practitioners as well who are also cultural historians and community historians as well. And I can put you on to some of those too. Can I just add to that? I'd like to add Vine DeLoria to that book. Do you have any Vine DeLoria? Would be a good author as well. One more question. Thank you, Gideon. My question is, in your research, what specific things have maybe you found for indigenous peoples concentrating on the procreation years of people who are having children and producing the next generation? I feel like a lot of my research has been, indigenous peoples put a lot of concentration on the health of new moms, dads and children. Well, I guess, again, I'm no expert on breastfeeding and where all the health benefits of that, but we know that the ability to transmit nutrition through breast milk, the kind of nutrition that you're transmitting is lessened by the move towards some of the diets post-contact. And so Indians do realize this. And there is a, we see, for example, in Indians, in Indian communities, in Great Lakes area and in Alaska, expectant mothers, or even when you're trying to conceive, there is a Ulegan grease I mentioned and fish eggs are often highly prized for expectant mothers. And so we, from now we say this is because of omega-3 and all that kind of stuff. So I've seen that, I've seen that a lot particularly focus on fish eggs in the Great Lakes. And also after colonization, a desire to try and get to those fish eggs because you know you're not gonna get stuff from other animals, such as the various mammals that you're unable to hunt or get the organs that you would be before when you're having to rely on other cattle. And often the cuts of meat that Indians get are the worst cuts, they're the muscle meats that we all eat now, which we know aren't the good ones. And we can see them trying to mitigate that, but particularly for fertility issues. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you.


All this month get any smartphone 32gigand under for 50% off regular price at Appalachian Wireless. Better service, bigger savings, that's today's Appalachian Wireless. While supplies last, two-year agreement required. By a unanimous vote, the Jenkins City Council approved the second reading of the city's packaged alcohol sales ordinance Monday evening. That means packaged alcohol sales, including Sunday sales, could begin soon in the city. The ordinance voted largely in favor of packaged alcohol sales last summer. Mayor Todd DePriest said public sentiment has largely been favorable toward the sale of alcohol in the city. He said the alcohol sales will ultimately benefit the city by promoting growth as well as helping fund the city's police department. We're trying to relieve some stress we have, I guess, in the general fund. One thing being the police department, it's hard to fund the police department. There's no revenue created by police force, water, sewer, garbage, and those things all have revenue streams coming in that help support it, and we're hoping to free up some money in the general fund and be able to pay our policemen and possibly hire another one in the near future depending on how the revenue comes in. The alcohol ordinance was approved, but there'll be a little bit of time passed between now and the time that alcohol finally begins to be sold here in the city of Jenkins. Any business wishing to sell alcohol here in the city will have to apply with the city and with the state. Prior to the vote last year, DePriest said three businesses in town, Double Quick, Ride Aid, and Dollar General, all expressed interest in alcohol sales. The mayor said one of those businesses has already begun the application process and could be ready to sell packaged alcohol when the ordinance is published in Letcher County's newspaper of record, The Mountain Eagle. That'll finalize making the ordinance in force and then it'll be up to the license and when the license comes through the individual businesses and then they'll be able to sell after that. The Jenkins alcohol ordinance is expected to be published in The Mountain Eagle either this week or next week. Reporting in Jenkins for EKB News, I'm Chris Anderson.


Hey, this is Brett, and this 2020 Ford F250 Crew Cab Short Box XLT is stock number 12704Z. I am here at Summit Automotive in Fondlack, Wisconsin, your new and used heavy-duty truck headquarters. This 2020 Ford F250 has the 6.7-liter Powerstroke diesel engine, puts out 475 horsepower, 1,050 foot-pounds of torque. It's paired up with the 10-speed automatic transmission. This truck has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop for the state of Wisconsin inspection process. Has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and tapped off, and this truck is 100% ready to go. I'm going to go all the way around in this video, inside, underneath, start it up and take a look under the hood. Iconic silver metallic is the color, and I shoot all my videos in 4K, so if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet, smartphone, or television, I highly recommend turning them on right now, because it is your best way to check out the quality, condition, options, and cleanliness of the vehicle before seeing it in person. This thing is super clean all the way around. If you like the video and how I do things here at Summit Automotive, consider clicking the subscribe button to my YouTube channel in the lower right-hand part of the screen, and then click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos I do each and every day here at Summit Auto. This one comes with the chromed 18-inch alloy rims, and it has Goodyear Wrangler All-Terrain Adventure tires. These are LT27570R18s, and they have right around a little over half the tread left. Frame and underbody is exceptionally clean on this truck. Front fender, I didn't see any denser dings on there, and the headlight lenses are nice and clear. It does come with the factory fog lights. Front bumper and lower valance are all in very nice condition as well. You do get the chrome-trimmed grille. I think this one has the chrome appearance package on it. The hood is in fantastic condition. I didn't see any dense or dings on there. And the passenger side front fender is in very nice condition as well. Passengers side front rim, no scuffs or scrapes on there. And as you go down this side of this 2020 Ford F-250, take note of how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. Take these HD videos so if you are far away, or even if you're close by and you just cannot make the trip down, but you're still interested in purchasing the truck, you can see the truck, hear the truck, and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here, there's absolutely no surprises, and you can make a smart and informed buying decision from wherever you're at. We sell a lot of these trucks out of state, so that's why we do it. And if this video helps you make a decision, a smart buying decision, let your salesmen know that you saw the video, that it was helpful, and that Brett sends you back rims in excellent shape as well. And the back tires have a little over half the tread left, more like three quarters of the tread left on those tires. This one does have rear airbag suspension. Frame and underbody is in excellent shape, has all the remaining factory exhaust, and very clean all the way underneath. Several rockers and cab corners are in nice shape, and it does come with the nice chrome step bars. You also get the chrome tipped exhaust part of that chrome package. Coming around the back, rear bumper is in great shape. It does have the back of parking sensors and the full towing package, which includes a receiver hitch four pin and seven pin wiring. Tailgate is in fantastic condition. Comes with a Truxedo soft roll up tonneau cover, I got the same one on my truck. That's in nice shape. Didn't see any rips or tears. This one comes with a spring and bed liner. It also has side box tie downs, and you get a Kurt A20 fifth wheel. Very clean back here. And the fifth wheel, that's a pretty nice thing to have if you have a fifth wheel. Spring and bed liner goes all the way on to the tailgate. You also get the tailgate step assist. Tailgate shuts nice and solidly. And as you go down the driver's side, just as clean as that passenger's side, no dents or dings on the box. And for full disclosure, this back rim is in fantastic condition as well. Down the rest of the side of the truck, doors and cab all look really good. Does have the driver's side door code entry. We do have the code for this truck. If you ever wanted to figure out what your door code is for your 17 to 22 super duty in the upper right hand part screen, I got a video showing you how to do that. Front spot monitoring, built in directional signals. These mirrors power fold in. They power telescope out. I'll show you how that works in just a second. Inside the XLT package gives you the gray cloth interior. There are no rips. There are no tears on these seats. They're in fantastic condition. You do get a power driver seat with lumbar, factory, all weather floor mats, power pedals, auto headlamps, and telescopic steering wheel. Four windows power locks, power mirrors. These mirrors do power fold in. I was like showing both sides so you know that both sides are working properly. And then they do power telescope out and in. And once again, both sides working nicely. Check out the miles, radio, and everything that this truck has to offer on the interior. So this truck has, let me dim it down here just for a second, 27,278 miles. The compass display, instrument cluster is nice and clean. Multi-function steering wheel, cruise and information center controls on the left. Bluetooth and audio controls on the right. Excuse me. 10-speed automatic transmission with the optional tap shift. It has the sync 8-inch radio. You get AM, FM, and Sirius XM radio capabilities, as well as Bluetooth capabilities. You also have all your apps on here, including Ford Pass, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, as well. This is also where your backup camera shows up. Truck's got to be on for that to work. Factory exhaust brake, stability control, downhill assist control, lane departure warning. Turn down four-wheel drive, factory brake controller right here. Heated seat, climate controls, and then you get a USB and a USB-C down there. You get two cup holders there, and now you get four cup holders. That's my magic trick. 12-volt and 110-volt 400-watt plug-in. Dual-glove boxes in the passenger side format and seat are in excellent condition. No rips or tears on there, and the headliner is in fantastic condition. Smells very clean inside this truck. You do get six up-fitter switches and map lights. We'll take a quick look at the back seats, and then we'll start it up and take a look under the hood. Back seats are just as clean as the front seats. No rips or tears back here. It does have the latch child safety system. For any child car seats, you may have power sliding rear window with the built-in rear defrost. Seats are in very nice condition. You get the all-weather floor map back here, and you get storage underneath here. This piece also folds down nice and flat. Right here you get another USB, USB-C, another 110-volt 400-watt max plug-in, and then another 12-volt power point. All-weather floor map looks good. Child safety locks on the back doors and the bottoms of the doors all look really good as well. All right, we'll start it up. Take a look under the hood. First, I'm going to show you the tire and loading information sticker, and then the VIN sticker right there. All right, let's start it up. Starts right up. No check engine lights or anything like that. Once again, I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today, and hopefully from this HD video, you'll be able to verify the quality and condition of this truck inside and out. Really nice ride. I didn't see a single dent or ding on it. Under the hood, we have the 6.7-liter Power Stroke diesel engine, and today is very clean. It runs very smooth. Once again, this truck has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop which has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off for the state of Wisconsin inspection process, and this truck is 100% ready to go. There is your emission sticker. Cab lights up top are working great, and I would highly recommend this 2020 Ford F-250 Crew Cab Short Box XLT FX4 in iconic silver from a quality and condition standpoint. And to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and new Scars trucks, SCVs, minivans, Wranglers, half-tons, three-quarter-tons, one-tons. In the name of it, we've got to go to that website right there, summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com, and if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. Click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos we do each and every day here at Summit Automotive. In fact, in a second, you'll see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on the upper left. Links to more F-250 videos like this one on the upper right, a link to this vehicle on our website on the lower left, and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos on the lower right. Take those, check us out, and we're super excited to help you with this Ultra Clean 2020 Ford F-250 Crew Cab Short Box XLT FX4 in iconic silver metallic with a 6.7 liter power stroke diesel. Thanks again for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe, and share. I really appreciate it, and thanks again.


Here's a move in the NBA that no one is talking about, but this could mean a lot in the future for the Los Angeles Clippers. Jerry West has moved from Golden State to LA and this is big because Jerry West is one of the best players of all time. But not only that, Jerry West brings people and makes them want to play for his team and the Clippers, well, they're still in Los Angeles. People want to go to Los Angeles and people want to play in LA and although I get it, they're not the Lakers and they haven't had success in the NBA. Jerry West is one of the best guys to make LA the Clippers, one of the new front runners to sign big name players. And you know what's crazy? Jerry West must know how good he is because this is what he said, I will really miss the Warriors organization. I really will. But honestly, there was nothing left for me to do. When I left there Monday night after they won the championship, it was probably the worst feeling I ever had in my life as a basketball person. I knew I wasn't going to be a part of that anymore. Now, if you literally say there was nothing left for me to do, you must be pretty darn good at your job. Let's be honest here. So, Jerry West, he spent five years with Memphis. Helped them become a playoff caliber team. Then he went to the Warriors, saw them win two of the last three NBA championships and reached the NBA finals three years in a row. So, as you can probably tell, Jerry West is seriously elite at what he does. And in a time, if you're the Los Angeles Clippers, where you're about to possibly lose Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, J.J. Reddick, you're looking to trade De'Andre Jordan. It's not the best time if you're a Clippers fan or you're just part of the Los Angeles Clippers in general, right? You're not looking great. But if anybody can turn the Clippers around, it's Jerry West. And obviously, Jerry West, we know how great he was as a player. Jerry West, I mean, yeah, he didn't win as many championships as he would have liked. And he actually talked about that to Kevin Durant as a way to bring KD down to Golden State. But Jerry West is not the first time he's brought a superstar player like Kevin Durant. Okay, let's go back to 1976. Jerry West returned to the Lakers. He was a head coach there. But then after working there, he became a scout at 1979. And then, obviously, where it really matters for this video, Jerry West was a general manager at the start of the Lakers team in the 1982 season. And although that Jerry West had players like Magic Johnson, Karim Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West made trades to go insane. He was a part of bringing James Worthy into the team and making a massive big three in LA. Then he went in 1996 as an executive for the Lakers. Once again, he managed to sign Shaquille O'Neal, possibly the biggest star in the NBA at that time to the Lakers. Shaquille O'Neal from Orlando to Lakers. Now, you've got to be a great GM to sign someone like that. Jerry West showed his executive touch there. Easy. Then not much later, he managed to draft Kobe Bryant and like obviously they didn't draft him. The Lakers traded for Kobe Bryant. If you're Jerry West, how crazy is that? You get Shaquille O'Neal down to LA, then you draft Kobe Bryant with a trade. Jerry West knows what he's doing. All right. So then, obviously, with those moves, the Lakers won three straight NBA finals from 2000 to 2002. Crazy. Oh, and did I mention that Jerry West was also the biggest part in why the Lakers ended up getting Phil Jackson, possibly the greatest coach in the NBA before Greg Popovich, of course. So Phil Jackson, well, he was brought there by Jerry West. Oh, Kobe Bryant, brought there by Jerry West. Shaquille O'Neal brought there by Jerry West. I mean, this guy was crazy. So after the Lakers, he said, well, I've had enough. This team is too good. I want to explore something else. I literally, this is what he said. I'll read a quote. After being a part of the Lakers' success for so many years, I have always wondered how it would be to build a winning franchise that does not experience much success. I want to help make a difference. So with that quote, Jerry West went to Memphis. Now, obviously, his time at Memphis was not as spectacular as it was in LA, but that's literally impossible to do. He still turned around that franchise. He's he completely turned around the Memphis Grizzlies. He made them a reliable playoff team, practically by making no trades. Then he went and signed coach B Brown, who became the coach of the year. So as you can imagine, Jerry West knows how to sign coaches as well as players. West himself won his second NBA Executive of the Year award in the same year and then retired in 2007 as the GM of the Memphis Grizzlies. Then after that, in 2011, Jerry West joined the Golden State Warriors. And once again, just like he did with the Lakers, Jerry West does something crazy. He turns while he doesn't turn. It wasn't really him, but he helps turn the Warriors around. Jerry West did something crazy. He saw the Warriors win two of the last three NBA championships and reached the NBA finals in the last three years. He was one of the main reasons they were able to draft as well as they did. And not only that, he was the guy just like he did with Shaquille O'Neal to bring him to LA. He was the guy that brought Kevin Durant from Oklahoma to Golden State. So Jerry West knows what he's doing. Now, that is crazy. Obviously, the Warriors have won two out of the last three championships. They've been to the finals three years in a row. So going back to the main part of this video, if you're the Los Angeles Clippers, you should be ecstatic. And this is the reason why I'm making the video. Nobody is talking about how Jerry West is a part of the Clippers. As I've stated in this video, the man knows how to get big name plays to join his team and to think that he has a team running that's located in LA, Los Angeles. That's pretty crazy for Jerry West. Now, I do think it will take some time. I do think it will take a lot of time and he's going to have to develop a lot of these plays through the draft and acquire them through the draft. And he won't be able to sign too many big name players, right? I don't think he will go after LeBron James in 2018 or or DeMarcus Cousins or Russ Westbrook in 2018. That's not what I'm saying. What I think will this is what I think Jerry West will do. He'll build from the draft just like he did in Golden State. And eventually, let's say by 2023 by that stage, hopefully Jerry West has a decent enough roster to just do some work and then he can attract big name free agents. Because like I said, he is still located in Los Angeles and players do want to play in LA. And by 2025, who knows LeBron James to LA in 2025? That could seriously happen. I mean, LeBron James, he's going to be old, right? Let's say not 2025, 2025. LeBron James will be like 44 or something like that. Crazy, right? But let's say 2021. If the Clippers somehow have a decent team by 2021, LeBron James, he could move to LA. He loves LA. His family wants to live in LA. Well, his wife does. And the Clippers, they're not the Lakers, obviously, but with a Jerry West run organization, LeBron James may be like, you know what, the Clippers have a decent roster. I'm a bandwagon on this team and in my career in LA.  But obviously that's a long shot. But LeBron to LA make it happen. And plus, like I said, if anyone could do it, it would be Jerry West, right? How are people not talking about this? Jerry West is now part of the Clippers. And yes, it may take some time. Jerry West may not be able to sign Chris Paul back. He may not be able to sign Blake Griffin back. He may look to trade Deandre Jordan. But I think if you're a Clippers fan, you should have trust in what Jerry West does, because Jerry West is seriously good at what he does. And maybe this might be the first time in Clippers history that they'll actually have a chance to win an NBA championship. It's the last thing he wants to do as an NBA person. So for Jerry West, he's got plenty of goals. And I think he's going to turn around this Clippers franchise. So if you guys enjoyed this video and you learned something new today, that you didn't maybe know, hit that subscribe button. If you guys want to leave a like, that would be awesome. Let's aim for 4000 likes for the next video. And I hope you guys are enjoying the videos as of late. I've been working really hard to try and get some videos out for you guys. So if you're new around here, definitely hit that subscribe button and I'll catch you guys in my next video. Peace.


Ostracism was originally an oyster. A famous hymn plays an important part in the rescue of nine persons. A man lives for years in a palace without being discovered. Can you imagine that? Yes, you're right, ladies and gentlemen. This is Lindsay McCary back again with you to present with the help of my friends here another session of this series in which we give you a batch of interesting strange facts and historical incidents. We'll be with you to offer the first one in just a minute and a half. Sorry for this session. You've all heard the old mother goose rhyme of the old woman who lived in a shoe. It seems that she had so many children she didn't know what to do, you remember? Well, here's a little story about a king who had so much room he didn't know what to do. It seems that in the year 1880 an attempt was made on the life of Tsar Alexander II of Russia in his huge St. Petersburg winter palace. Guards immediately rushed about the gigantic structure to find the person who had thrown the bomb. Through the more than thousand rooms they scurried, hunting frantically for the playful lad who had decided the Tsar's time was up, but did they find him? They did not. Instead, in one of the many unused rooms on an upper floor, they found a bewildered, frightened out of his wit's peasant who admitted that he had taken over the room some years before and had been living there unnoticed, not with his wife and family, but with his cow. Can you imagine that? Now for another of those very interesting word origins that we've dug up for you. The class will please come to attention for a little lesson on the word ostracize, meaning to cast out from society. According to some advertisements, any number of things may ostracize us today, but in ancient times it had a much more serious meaning. So let's go back to ancient Greece in the city of Athens where a meeting is taking place for the purpose of deciding a serious matter. Listen. I let him speak. Citizen of Athens. This day we are to decide upon the banishment of alcobites from Athens. I say that he is a menace to our political good. So let him be banished. I see you are of two minds, those who would banish alcobites and those who would keep him in Athens. Very well. Bring the Austrians. Bring the Austrians. That was the cry. And it meant bring the shells. For Austrians were oyster shells and upon them the voting citizenry inscribed the name of the person they wished banished from the city. If the shells were left blank it was a vote against banishment. Today our word ostracism or ostracize has come from the Greek word ostrion, the shell upon which the natives of Athens placed their ballots and thus did antiquity add another word to our vocabulary. Can you imagine that? Almost everyone, of course, knows the thrillingly tragic story of the matter in which the ships banned gave final solace to those brave men and women who went down in the Titanic on that cold Monday morning of April 15, 1912 by playing the grand old hymn, Nearer My God to Thee. I've found several other stories of sea disasters in which church hymns have been potent factors on soothing the troubled spirits of the victims. One of the most poignant of these is the story of the Chrissie of Castle. And here it is, dramatized directly from the official court report graciously provided to us by the mercantile marine department of the British Board of Trade. Under command of Captain Robert Thomas, the Chrissie of Castle, a three-masted British sailing ship built of iron in 1887, had unloaded a cargo of wheat at Calau on the coast of Peru and reloaded a cargo of guano at Ballistus Island destined for Antwerp. While this cargo was being taken on early in June in 1912, the captain went to Pisco to obtain the loading certificate, leaving orders with first mate William A. Gale to clean all the bilges of excess lube which he knew was there. Finally, on June 5th, the ship was ready to sail with a crew of 22 and two passengers, the captain's wife and his four-year-old son. About seven days out, the first officer came to Captain Thomas. Yes, Mr. Gale? I should have told you this before, sir, but I forgot all about it. What? Well, back at Calau, I wasn't able to get all the wheat cleared away from the bilges before loading the guano, sir. What? Well, sir, they were ready to load and we were short of men. That's right. That's no excuse, Mr. Gale. My orders were to clear those bilges, set some men to work at once and have those bilges cleared. I say at once. And be sure the sections around the pump well are cleared by all means. Yes, sir. Able-bodied seamen William Summers was dispatched to clean the bilge near the pump well, and after bailing from a tin cup and to a bucket for two hours, came above. What's the matter there, Summers? I can't stand it any longer, sir. It stinks down there.  It's terrible, Mr. Gale. I can't stand it. Very well, come on up. Will anyone else try down there? I will, Mr. Gale. All right, Lord, get down with you. But the third mate, Fred Lord, immediately affected by the stench of the rotting wheat and guano came up at once. The ship's master was informed of the impossibility of any man remaining in the bilge, and so he consequently tried the pumps. It was discovered that only a small quantity of water came up, and that was black and mixed with particles of wheat. Upon sounding the depth of the well, Captain Thomas discovered about six inches of water, but in view of the fine weather encountered along the coast of Chile, it was not considered to be a dangerous condition. Then, just as the Chrissie of Castle was proceeding under full sail about the latitude of Valparaiso, a boisterous wind arose, lashing the southern Pacific Ocean into heavy rolling swells. Southward, the ship sailed, tossed about like a toy boat in a bathtub. Then went on toward Cape Horn, hoping that calmer seas would be found in the Atlantic. On the 14th of July, after the ship had rounded the southernmost tip of South America, a terrific gale arose, whipping the sea into a greater fury, and about two o'clock in the morning, the first mate knocked on the door of the captain's cabin. Captain Thomas! Captain Thomas, sir! Who is it? It's me, Captain Thomas, sir, Gail. Just a minute. What's up, Mr. Gail? The rudder's broke, sir. The HBC under the port quarter struck the rudder, sir, and broke the stock under the stern plighting. She's banging up against the rudder stops. She's opening up the shell plates around the stern post. It won't be long now, for she springs the leak there, sir. Very well. Rouse the crew below and give orders to jets in the cargo in that quarter. I'll get on some clothes. I'll be with you presently. Aye, aye, sir! Right away! The cargo was tossed overboard during the next four hours with virtually no noticeable change in the ship's precarious condition. The pumps were useless, and the water in the hold went higher and higher until at about 2 p.m. on the 15th of July, the master explained the situation to the crew and gave orders to abandon ship a serious decision for a man in whose charge had been placed a costly ship and valuable cargo. Ordering a first major take charge of the longboat with a crew of six men, Captain Thomas loaded his wife and son and 14 other members of the crew into the lifeboat and cast off from the ill-fated Christyth Castle. As the day wore on, both ships shipped quantities of water, and it was necessary to bail continuously. At 4 p.m., the ship was lost sight of, and by 5 o'clock, a fresh gale blew up, widening the distance between the two smaller boats. At daybreak Tuesday, the longboat with their precious cargo of seven human souls had disappeared, never to be seen again. Later that day, a four-masted bark passed at a short distance, but failed to notice the floundering lifeboat and to hear the frantic cries of those aboard her. On Tuesday evening, the wind debated slightly, but a new crisis arose when it was discovered that all stimulants had been used, and food was running low. Later that night, there occurred the first death aboard the lifeboat. First? Yes, because in awesome succession, six members of the crew were claimed by death and were gently dropped over the side, buried at sea.  Those of us sitting within the comfort of our own homes may find it difficult to imagine the horrors suffered by that pitiable little group. We may be able to picture the torment within the souls of those terrified victims, but we may be able to feel the vicarious thrill of renewed hope that they felt when out through the night arose the clear voice of one of the members of the crew. One by one, the others picked up the strange of the old seamen's hymn, Pull for the Shore Sailor, with renewed strength, the crew pulled harder toward their destination, the British-owned Falkland Islands. With the spiritual uplift provided by the words of the hymn, they seemed to gain new inspiration to attain their precious goal, land. Then, on Monday, July 22, 1912, nine worn and haggard men and the captain's wife and little son landed near Pembroke Lighthouse, Port Stanley, where two more members of the crew of the Christyth Castle died of exposure. What torturous memories those nine survivors must have carried with them? How they must have lived and relived those seven miserable, horror-filled days. But doubtless, the one wonderful recollection that remained with them was the moment when the inspired sailor sang out the grand old hymn, Pull for the Shore Sailor, Pull for the Shore. But the sailor day is at hand. See, oh, army wins, though not... It's another session of Can You Imagine That? We'll return to the same station soon again, and we all hope you'll be listening for us. Until then, this is Lindsay McCarrie saying goodbye now.


What's up guys this is Chris Pike my friends call me Bigsy back in action I'm back in heartbeat today, and I'm gonna show you some of my favorite moments from a recent Apple Vision Pro Review this was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal and while I generally don't read the Wall Street Journal I thought they did a great job reviewing it now as you can imagine a thorough review of the Apple Vision Pro is Going to be a long one So I just went and used the heartbeat tool to get some of the best moments And of course if you want to use the tool you can download it link is in the description below Okay So I'm on h.ki and I'm gonna go ahead and click on the first moment and let's roll All right, so here we are inside heartbeat h.ki again link is in the description below So in this review, which is about nine minutes long, which is on the shorter end for most reviews I found about 12 things that really caught my attention And of course I used the heartbeat tool here the little trusty heart to go ahead and make note of them So let's get right into it here. I'm gonna click on the first one Which is about typing on the Apple Vision Pro. I was all set up to do some real work Except one big problem. Yeah, this is Typing yeah, it's a struggle for anything longer than a quick message So if anybody here knows how to type it's of no real value In the Apple Vision Pro all those people that took that did Mavis B Can teach us typing when you were a kid and you know how to touch type. Yeah, no real value However, there is a workaround. Let's skip forward here to 204 and I'll show you where typing does make sense Although it's a lot more expensive. I should add the real game changer for getting work done adding in a Mac We are connected Yes, you get a desktop for your Mac apps and you can run vision pro apps right next to them And you too can have this for the low low price of Yeah, so there you go that that's basically the point So if you have a lot of money or if you you know work on a Mac for a living I actually have a MacBook Pro And it cost me a fortune and I'm still paying it off by the way But if you're willing to combine the thirty five hundred dollar vision pro and the two thousand some odd dollar MacBook Pro the basic version more expensive for the big big ones.  You got money to burn. Maybe burn it here. Anyways, let's skip forward here I want to talk next about video calls. She goes into great depth on how video calls work on the Apple Vision Pro Video call in the headset. It can't capture your entire face Most of the vision pros cameras are pointed outward makes sense.  There you go. So that's in a nutshell without the cameras inside so much. They're all outward facing so it scans your face and It tries hard, but as you can see here, she got a little bit of squirrel cheeks And apparently in some of the voice calls she had. Yeah, it just she just looked funny and people were kind of laughing at her So again, it's first-generation tech. It will no doubt get better, but for thirty five hundred dollars Yeah, you know got away those pros and cons. So anyways, let's skip forward a little bit here Let's talk about overheating and how her experience was with that. Let's go Combination of face timing and screen recording, but the top of this is very warm I think it's time to switch into the dual loop band Yeah, I ended up So there you go. So it does get hot too So I know it a lot of people are worried about the weight because it's heavy in it You got to do neck exercises like Mike Tyson used to do But yeah, you gotta it's heavy no doubt, but yeah Yeah, there's some overheating issues too if you're really running it hard So, you know, maybe you got to take a break take a break every once in a while So that's an important part here. Let's look at the battery here next Had to charge the battery every two to three hours So most of the time I just stayed plugged into the wall makes sense not for my next activity And here is our recipe balsamic mushroom and sausage pasta So there you go to the next part is the batteries and I mean if you're plugged into the wall It's not really an issue but you feel tethered no doubt. You're stuck to the wall However, they do have those huge batteries that uh, you know first-gen tech again But they're pretty big and you can get a holster for them, but You know, it's you know, it's 2024. So just keep that in the back your head They got some pretty big batteries and this thing runs pretty hot Okay, here's probably the best use second best use for an apple vision pro You're gonna love this one food was really natural Especially I could cut onions all day in this my eyes do not burn. All right, there you go So, I mean people were making fun of these as ski glasses and snowboard glasses But these are onion cutters people Think about it. You can still see the onions you put these big goggles on And your eyes don't get sore. Don't tell me that isn't the best 3500 dollars You could spend right now and I don't like mushrooms.  Anyways, so cutting onions All right, let's get forward a little bit. Let's talk about netflix youtube apps Those types of things and how they are kind of connected or not connected inside the apple vision pro tv plus disney plus and paramount plus But no netflix or youtube apps So there you go. You've got it right there. You got to watch them in the browser So t apple tv disney paramount good to go netflix youtube not good to go So in a lot of ways it's incomplete Now the apple tv makes sense and disney was even brought on the stage for their initial On whatever the hell it's called where they showed to the world But uh, there you go. So netflix and youtube they're not on there at least right now that may be changing in the future Let's get forward a little bit more here prescription inserts. Yes. Okay, so if you got glasses check this out And glasses on you have to get prescription inserts to use the vision pro Wow click in like that Wow crazy So literally click in plug and play inserts for those of you that you know Need glasses or have glasses you can get these prescription inserts So that's crazy like I never would have thought about that but uh, it's a thing so There you go. If you if you've got glasses and you're on the fence, maybe that'll tip you over Okay, let's keep going a little bit here. This is that the other really good use for these glasses. Check this out And I only wore them briefly to record some video Siri record spatial video Nope, you got to press the button You could literally use these as skiing goggles So the memes are alive and they're alive and well, but it's all she's also recording With the spatial recording. So let's see what happens here gloves on All right The vision pro's ability to record and then watch spatial or 3d images and videos is pretty great Okay, so it's you can record so instead of think about a use case where instead of walking around with your phone or Recording video or you know using a selfie stick or a gimbal or whatever You can literally record while skiing or walking or running or whatever with these With the headset on so something to keep in mind. Let's skip forward to the last one here Which is the uh movies. Let's go right there Now it gives you a pretty great way to work and watch movies Is that worth 3500? Yeah, I don't know that's between you and your bank account But in those 24 hours, I could see apple's future vision here So there's her wrap up So if you're a worker like we talked about earlier, you got a mac and you do these types of things for a living You're maybe a coder or a video editor, especially a video editor or a photoshop user, etc This could be a really good thing for you If you just want to use it to watch movies and you watch movies alone a lot like me forever alone Also a potential good use case, but it's 3500 bucks So there you go guys. That is the wall street journals quick, but to the point review Let me know if you're gonna pick one up. Is it worth the money? I don't know Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for watching


So let's try to factor x squared minus x minus 12 and so remember if I want to factor a monic Polynomial I want to look for two numbers that multiply to the constant term So we want to find numbers that multiply to negative 12 and these numbers are So remember the only way to determine if a factorization works is to check it So we try one and negative 12 first. So Is it true that x squared minus x minus 12 is the same as x plus 1 times x plus negative 12 Now before we check our factorization, let's clean up our factors a little bit. Remember that a plus negative b is the same as a Minus b and so instead of writing x plus negative 12. I can write this second factor as x minus 12 And so let's see if this factorization works by expanding And that's not what we want So when a negative 12 don't work So remember factoring requires patience and persistence There is no substitute and so even though one and negative 12 didn't work We can try something else about two and negative six And so the question is is x squared minus x minus 12 the same as x plus 2 times x minus 6 and We'll expand and it isn't We'll try 3 and negative 4 next is x squared minus x minus 12 the same as x plus 3 times x minus 4 so we'll expand and It is and so there's our factorization Now there is one shortcut to factoring notice that the last thing we try always works So you should always start with the last thing Okay, maybe you can't actually start with the last thing because you don't know what that last thing is going to be And so we might ask the following question if we're factoring a monic polynomial We can go through every pair a b that multiplies to q our constant term and see if our polynomial Factors as x plus a times x plus b But what if a lot of numbers multiply to q is there an easier way than checking every possibility? No But we might be able to make better choices For example, let's try to factor x squared minus 14x plus 48 So we want to find two numbers a and b where the product is 48 and to our possibilities are and Don't forget. We also have the possibility of negative numbers that multiply it to 48 So we get a second set of possibilities as well That's a lot of things to go through and we have to check every one. So we'll try 1 and 48 and see if x squared minus 14x plus 48 factors as x plus 1 times x plus 48 So we expand and find Now first of all this didn't work And so we could just move on to trying the next pair of factors But let's do a little bit of analysis and see if we can make better choices. Let's see why this didn't work So the first thing to notice here is that the x term is added plus 49x Because both factors plus 1 plus 48 are positive But we wanted the x term subtracted. We wanted to get minus 14 x And if we try any of the other positive factors 2 and 24 3 and 16 and so on We're still going to get a plus some number of x and so we'll focus on the negative factors We'll ignore all of these positive factorizations The other thing you might notice is the x term itself 49x is large because one of the factors 48 is also a large number But we don't want so large of an x term. We want a relatively small x term So let's try the smallest pair of factors negative 6 and negative 8 So we try negative 6 and negative 8 and we find We get a factorization Or let's take a look at x squared plus 8x minus 48 So again, we list the numbers that multiply to negative 48 and We'll try 1 and negative 48 which fails But again, we might analyze our result a little bit to see why it failed And the thing to notice here is the x term is subtracted minus 47x and that's because the negative factor minus 48 is Larger than the positive factor 1 But we wanted an added x term. We wanted to get plus 8x and So that means we should start looking among the factors where the negative factor is smaller than the positive factor And we can also ignore the factors where the negative factor will be larger And we can also check on the magnitude So notice the magnitude of the x coefficient is large negative 47 because the two factors minus 1 and 48 were very different But we want a smaller x coefficient. So we'll check the factors that are closer together So how about negative 6 and 8 and since this is the second thing we try we know that this is the factorization Well, let's actually check it to see if it works And it doesn't Well, we have other possibilities. We check negative 4 and 12 And finally we get something that works. So again remember Factoring requires patience and persistence. There is no substitute


Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. Give the people what they want. Coming to you every week from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. Zoe and I are both in undisclosed locations in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Prashant is in Delhi. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Glad to be with you. I'm really happy to be with you. We're on the cusp of May Day. Of course, May Day is a big day in the calendar of the international left. And I think about a hundred young people from the United States have decided to mark off in what they call a brigade to Havana, Cuba to join the Cuban people in their great May Day celebration used to be of course May Day was a big day in these socialist countries in the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc and so on. It was a big parade. Well, they have one in Cuba. Give the people what they want is the name of your show. Not sure that people want the continuation of this war in Ukraine. The United States government has now announced that they will increase their weapons delivery to the Ukrainian from about roughly three billion. Hard to tell what the initial number was to 33 billion dollars. That's a lot of money, my friends. 33 billion dollars. That's about just 10 billion less than the US government is planning on the so-called green transition. Just about 10 billion less than that. 33 billion dollars. Not likely that this 33 billion dollar amount is going to be spent merely on defensive material. You see, one of the issues in the war between Russia and Ukraine is that the United States is not a party to that war. NATO is not a party to the war. None of the neighboring countries of Ukraine are saying they are party to the war. This is really important because if a NATO country gets involved in the war, then NATO countries by their charter are compelled in a way to enter that war. Then it becomes a European war. This is Europe's third world war and so on. The fact that the United States selling weapons which I don't think are entirely going to be defensive weapons. Many of them are going to be offensive weapons. At what point does Russia say, well, look, this is no longer funding for weapons systems to Ukraine for defensive purposes but offensive purposes and therefore the United States has entered the war. At what point does Russia say that and then what happens next? Well, look, a very scary thing happened this week. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. This is the US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. He described when the US officials went to meet Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelinsky. He said something and I wanted to read out two sentences from US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's own remarks about that meeting. He said, our focus in the meeting was to talk about those things that would enable us to win the current fight. Please pay attention to his language. Our focus in the meeting that would enable us to win the current fight. That means the US Defense Secretary is saying quite clearly that us, the United States is part of the us with Ukraine and others in this fight and then Lloyd Austin said something interesting. You see, what is the United States providing $33 billion for? Is it to remove Russian troops from Ukrainian soil? That's one objective of a war. Is that the war objective? No, this is the second sentence from Lloyd Austin, US Defense Secretary, former senior general in the US Armed Forces. Lloyd Austin said, we want to see Russia weakened. We want to see Russia weakened. This is on the table now. $33 billion going into Ukraine and towards other special forces and so on. We want to see Russia weakened. Two CBS, former US Army Europe Commander, Ben Hodges said, we're not just observers cheering for Ukraine here. We want to win. We want to win. Striking language coming from the United States. That's $33 billion going into this conflict. No small amount. You know that this isn't a first tranche. The United States government not able to pass infrastructure funding within the country willing to spend $33 billion as a first tranche into a war that the United States says is to weaken Russia not to remove Russian troops from Ukraine and where former US officials say we want to win. Pretty chilling stuff. Lots of weapons flowing around. Arms dealers quite pleased. Arms companies seeing their profits rise in the middle of all this in Sweden of all places, I must say Sweden of all places gives out the Nobel Peace Prize also provides weapons systems all across the world. Prashant, they also are the home to Sipri and Sipri has a new report out. Right Vijay, you mentioned Sweden. Of course Sweden also considering joining NATO in what is probably going to be yet another unfortunate escalation but today we're talking about the Sipri report and as usual as we expected the Sipri report this time which talks about military expenditure across the world, paints a very dismal picture of what is happening. This is about the year 2021 the pandemic was still in full flow. We saw many countries where the pandemic actually was worse than in the first wave into 2020 but if you look at military spending it's like the pandemic never existed because the overall amount of money that is being spent is spent for military global expenditures again increased for the 7th straight year in a row it's 2.11 trillion US dollars now. And this is a remarkable, this is an unbelievable amount of money. You talked earlier about the amount of money the US was spending on military supply as opposed to the climate change purposes but if you look at these numbers they're like staggering because I think they have reports which talk about how much this US military spending is when compared to the amount of money it has spent on the pandemic I think it's about 7.5 times or whatever has been spent more on military spending than on the pandemic but if you look at the breakdown of the numbers that itself is quite interesting because we see that the United States has spent close to 801 billion of that 2.11 trillion that we talk about just one country just one country spending 800 billion of this amount alone and we know how in the last year we saw when Joe Biden asked for a particular amount of budget Congress actually voted to give him more which means this is like a bipartisan understanding you can't blame certain parties or certain people this is the understanding of the US establishment that they need to spend more on military purposes that they need to keep close to 1000 bases across the world because you know irrespective of how far it is from the mainland of the United States just because they need to achieve that sort of supremacy that preponderant power as they used to talk about earlier and we actually see if you look at for instance the fact that so much of the money there's been a considerable increase of money in terms of research that is being spent and okay let's go beyond the United States and of the 10 top spending countries there are I think 4 of the top 10 NATO members that's US, UK, France Germany and 7 of the top 10 are basically US allies because they include South Arabia, South Korea, Japan etc so if you have a world where today 7 of these top 10 countries are say together they account for about 1.14 trillion of total spending that we talked about of the 2.11 trillion so this itself I think shows is a very clear sign of the kind of spending you know of the kind of world we're building where at the height of the pandemic this was how countries still chose to spend money there was no concerted attempt to you know there was no attempt at universally reaching some kind of understanding on reducing military spending no global effort on that no global effort on disarmament of any sort the peace movement is a lot of challenges that way and in some senses this also reflects in the spending of other countries as well because countries like Russia, China or India for that matter have also tended to increases time passes because we're moving into this world where everyone has decided that increasing spending is the only way to sort of maintain some kind of parity and this is a very dangerous tendency when you look at especially when you look considering the fact that you know towards the 80s and 90s there was in fact so much progress towards the idea of disarmament itself not only the nuclear field but across the world there was a notion that we should sort of try and reduce the amount of say the amount of money the amount of energy the amount of human resources being spent in the military so all this together very depressing picture one stand out example is Nigeria whose expenditures increased by 56% that is an incredible increase considering the public health challenges that Nigeria and many other countries in Africa face so all around quite an unfortunate and depressing picture like you said the only people who are happy are the arms manufacturers the big companies you mentioned I think it is Blinken and one of them did meet with top weapons manufacturers recently who said they were facing supply side challenges and you know supply line challenges and the government was all for supporting them as much as possible so this has sort of become a kind of a vicious circle where the military establishment and these top companies are working together in such close collusion that getting out of this cycle seems very difficult and that's the top diplomat that's the top US diplomat who's there discussing with arms manufacturers how to ease their pain the top US diplomat gun to the head of countries gun to the head of countries gun to the head of a tiny little country many times invaded by the United States in fact if I if I'm right Zoe the little country of Nicaragua and I don't mean little in a diminished sense just in terms of the size of the population the country of Nicaragua once had a US national as its head of government in the 1920s I mean for God's sake this country is never allowed by Washington to exercise its sovereignty seems like it's having some problems with well with Washington isn't it well yes on Wednesday State Secretary a member of the State Department of the US actually announced that Nicaragua along with Cuba and Venezuela would not be allowed to attend the upcoming summit one of the Americas organized by United States alongside the Organization of American States this was not surprising as a development this has really been building in the last several years Nicaragua just last week actually announced that it was going to leave the Organization of American States this is a move that was taken by Venezuela several years ago but really their exclusion from this summit goes beyond you know their membership to the Organization of American States it's a flat out exclusion from the United States which not only implicates that this summit is not really about cooperation it's not really about building together or as it says on its website looking for addressing hemispheric challenges looking for social inclusion economic recovery it's not really about these broad ideas that it claims to be about but it's a political agenda and it's a political agenda because they're excluding Cuba they're excluding Venezuela they're excluding Nicaragua countries that have a different political orientation that have taken a stand against U.S. orientations in the region that have attempted to forge different forums of regional integration which actually seek to address these questions of economic recovery of recovery after the pandemic attempting to address climate change and so this announcement by the it wasn't an official announcement from this authority of the U.S. government but it does indicate that this will probably be formalized in the coming weeks this forum is going to take place the first week of June in Los Angeles this is the first time that the summit of the Americas will return to the United States in over two decades it's going to be a quite important forum with a crucial moment in the Americas where you know one year into one and a half years into Biden's presidency someone who said that he would be drastically different than Donald Trump on issues of foreign policy and on domestic policy and I think as both of you have just outlined in this first two segments this is clearly not true not only has the U.S. increased military spending at home and in that you know disregarding very key infrastructure bills cutting social spending cutting even benefits that were existing under Donald Trump to low income families to single mothers very very crucial social programs but also it has continued to pressure other countries under its influence to increase military spending we know that members of NATO alliance for example have to spend a certain amount of their GDP on weapons and I mean again I think we can look at Cipri we can look at other reports to see exactly where this money goes to but oftentimes it goes right into these U.S. weapons companies so when the U.S. is talking about democracy when it's talking about these forums for regional integration and it's excluding countries that are seeking to build outside of this it's important to question it and to really look at what's going to happen there one of the key topics for the summit of the Americas is immigration and this of course has become a very crucial topic over the past two decades of course in North America in the Americas across the world as well but it is at a moment where there was some expectations that with the Biden administration there would be laxer policies on immigration that the Trump era policies of for example separating children from their families and other very horrific and inhumane practices that were happening at the border were going to end and Kamala Harris famously went to Guatemala and told people do not come to the border and we have seen that the border practices have not really become that much more humane there are images of border patrol officials whipping Haitian migrants who are attempting to cross the border so it's important to pay attention to the summit of the Americas equally and not if more important important to pay attention to the People's Summit that was going to be happening at the same time as the summit of the Americas in Los Angeles organized by people's movements organized by trade unions immigrant rights groups which seek to call attention to his hypocrisy that I just mentioned well I am very interested in this because as you know the OAS takes all kinds of statements about various issues happening around the world they've been putting a lot of pressure on Nicaragua recently they had as you said on Cuba and Venezuela now the OAS putting pressure on these countries there's another platform in the world that puts a lot of pressure on countries during the Russian invasion of Ukraine you saw various social media accounts on Twitter that were sometimes loosely associated with the Russian Government thrown off Twitter as they were thrown off other sites before the Russian sites some of them as I said loosely connected to the state we saw the same thing happen to Chinese social media accounts and so on well long comes the white night fresh off his moon agenda decides to spend all his money not on alleviating poverty which he talked about but buying Twitter who is that Prashant who has just bought Twitter well the discussion around this has been one of the you know more interesting and slightly frustrating discussions in recent times because we've had this talk about free speech and democracy and being thrown about people critical of the decision people critical of around Moscow very good reasons of course being very skeptical but I think the simplest way to understand this is that this has just largely been two sets of oligarchs basically fighting each other for a platform which is basically built on capitalizing on our social networks and I think that's probably the better way to see it as opposed to this Elon Musk ride or Ice Twitter ride or Jack Ross ride which is a completely pointless debate because like you pointed out what we're seeing is two sides of sorry two sides of a political establishment two sides of an imperialist establishment which in many ways have pretty much exactly the same goals we're seeing this time and again we're seeing this when it came to Bolivia where Elon Musk tweeted about we will cool whoever we want we're seeing this when it comes to Ukraine just as just as Twitter cracked out very heavily on so many voices which did not to the US establishment line we had Elon Musk offering Starlink terminals to Ukraine as well so keeping all this in mind lets be very clear of the fact that there is in some ways very little it separates the two of them as two sets of people as far as we're concerned but nonetheless also throwing this nonetheless throws larger questions into the fray because like I said Twitter has become you know it's not just a plaything of rich people which you know it's not just some kind of tech entrepreneur or tech billionaires little project which you know they're doing it for fun it has become vital for many people across the world as a way of communication as a way of putting out their issues as a way of organizing even and this is something that is goes way beyond the whims and fancies of a particular set of people and this is something that has never adequately been taken into consideration because the fact that it is somehow understood or somehow accepted that billionaires have this kind of divine right so to speak to do whatever they choose with our data with our networks and that has been the understanding which has you know been at the bottom of this phase of capitalism to speak so to speak so I think you know these kind of questions are not really going to be addressed Elon Musk might bring in a new set of policies some of his policies seem quite dangerous because he seems to believe in a notion of free speech which in effect will actually embolden majoritarianism I mean we talk about rather than I think talking about whether he's far right wing or less right wing the key point is that they're going to you know embolden majoritarianism he's obviously also been very cynical and skeptical about the left and his whole statement that you know he wants to keep the far right and the far left out does not really work in practice that way because ultimately what this is going to do is embolden you know majoritarian and right wing sentiments across the world so we are Twitter is probably going to become a much more painful platform for lack of better words going to be more difficult unfortunately for activists people who are fighting to build a better world but you know what do we say except that is what capitalism does I mean again we've seen that happening in every phase of life every phase of life so Twitter is going to probably be no different as well well Elon Musk as you said the great exchange around Bolivia we're going to call you that's an epic statement coming from an important guy apparently and this might be fake news but apparently there was a tweet about cocaine and coca-cola most likely fake news all surrounding Bolivia not fake news I checked it today okay not fake news all around Bolivia in a way where of course coca leaf is part of the culture and life so speaking of Bolivia Zoe the Alba movements holding their third continental assembly give us some sense of what this Alba is and what are people discussing well I think it's directly related to the OAS in some senses because Alba is a platform Alba TCP is a platform that emerges in the 2000s under the leadership of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro it emerges as a platform for states for progressive states to come together to make economic cooperation agreements to have a political forum for discussion on different issues of cooperation not only in the economic realm but in other senses it's the space where Venezuela launches Pedro Caribe and it was largely a space for where states could come together and in this process and in a moment where a lot of different forums were opening up across the region and across the world really there was a need for movements to come together and have this space of dialogue space of debate there were many instances and many attempts to do this for example the World Social Forum which was a global platform but really there was the movements of Latin America needed a forum to come together and in this sense in 2013 Alba Muy Mientos was founded it is the social movement platform of Latin American the Caribbean I think there were over 300 hundreds of organizations really if you think of all the local chapters and this platform involves peasant organizations women's movements student movements trade unions left political formations really across the specter across sectors you have people coming together and they come together around six main principles the defense of the mother earth the internationalism the construction of our America the economy for good living and many other such principles that really outline their anti-capitalist anti neoliberal stance and all of these organizations involved in struggle across their territories across their regions come together in this forum to be able to channelize their power and to build a project that can challenge this exact project that has for the region and so they in many different countries they have been resisting government policies in others they have been working with progressive governments which is such the case with Venezuela now in Argentina is part of front de todos and so there's really a diversity of groupings of experiences and in these last couple of days in Buenos Aires they have been coming together to discuss precisely the international context since the last assembly in 2016 the world has changed a lot there's been a pandemic there's been now we are in the midst of this increasingly hot war in Europe which has global consequences which has global impacts which we have talked about on this show the rising price of fuel the rising price of food and so in these days they have been discussing this context how it impacts movements what are the new strategies they need to respond in this context what are the new banners of struggle that people are mobilizing behind in their regions what are the new challenges there's upcoming elections in Colombia upcoming elections in Brazil what is the new political scenario and so that's really what people have been doing in the past couple of days evaluating the work of the platform the conference will close and on May 1st along with the Argentinian workers they will be mobilizing on the streets of Buenos Aires in this great communist holiday that we love to celebrate which is International Workers Day a few years ago I was in a cafe or restaurant in Buenos Aires and during lunch the Argentinian peso fell by 40% currency markets around the world in great turmoil in almost turmoil the United States dollar is strengthening which means that it's actually getting stronger against other currencies around the world US Federal Reserve is decided in a sense to come in and act and basically the point of it is they don't want inflation which is now running at 8% they're going to expect it to raise the base interest rate to stem the tide of inflation down in some countries over 10% down by over 10% this is actually quite catastrophic in Europe the European Central Bank indicating it's not going to raise interest rates at the same pace as the US Federal Reserve this is actually going to be very interesting to watch and I don't mean interesting in a kind of observer way because it's going to impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people you know European capacity for consumers basically basic goods as not only as prices go up but as energy costs go up alongside that it's going to be the wide inflation across the board I wanted to actually point fingers at one other area which hasn't received much attention and that is the question of the Japanese yen now the Japanese yen has fallen to a 20 year low against the dollar it's very interesting the Bank of Japan doesn't have many tools left and it's struggled with the kind of stagnation inside the country for decades generally because Japan you know most of its debt is internally held and this is important Japan doesn't export its debt because its debt is internally held the yen is considered a pretty safe investment you know and the fact that it's fallen 12% this year is quite surprising it's doing worse than the ruble the Russian ruble that's remarkable the Wall Street Journal said if the yen were a smaller currency its slide might have less importance to financial markets that's interesting what are they talking about here's what they're talking about and this is why people need to pay attention to what's happening in the Bank of Japan there are there is a basically a US Treasury market the Treasury bond the bond market is worth around 22 trillion dollars it's really important to know that Japanese banks and financial institutions are some of the biggest purchasers of US Treasuries that means Japan is one of the biggest purchasers of US debt if Japanese capital is going to get skittish on buying US debt United States is going to have a really hard time transferring its debt obligations to other countries you can't go on and on pressuring China and expect it to continue to buy US debt you can't prosecute a war against Russia where you say we want to weaken Russia and expect the Russian billionaires who are being sanctioned to buy US debt the customers for US debt are getting fewer and fewer I almost said lesser and lesser then I remembered my old English teacher I think it's fewer and fewer the customers for US debt get fewer and fewer Japan is going to be key here what will Japan do to essentially protect the yen will it slow down on purchases of of US debt will it put whatever excess surplus capital it has in other areas where will it invest its money that's a possibility lots of potential for infrastructure development inside Japan will they continue to invest in China and Russia big locations for Japanese surplus capital particularly in energy markets in Russia production lines in China and so on gotta watch this carefully the Chinese meanwhile have been trying to protect the renmenbi renmenbi is not somehow protected from these ups and downs renmenbi also facing some serious challenges as the US dollar will strengthen when the US government when the Federal Reserve puts up the interest rates in the United States dollars come right back into the US because you'll get a higher rate of return there that is going to be catastrophic for the debt crisis in the third world we're going to keep a close eye on this I know that most of the people that watch give the people what they want from People's Dispatch and Globe Trotter their eyes glaze over when we talk about financial markets and currency markets and things like that but my friends the gap between what I'm telling you and the price of a tomato is very slim thanks for watching give the people what they want brought to you as I said from People's Dispatch that Zoe and Prashant I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter see you next week