Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, a popular resistance broadcast of hot news out of the region. In partnership with Black Alliance for Peace, Haiti, America's team, Code Pink, Common Frontiers, Counsel on Hemispheric Affairs, Friends of Latin America, Interreligious Task Force on Central America, Massachusetts Peace Action, and Task Force on the Americas. We broadcast Thursdays at 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, right here on YouTube Live, including channels for the ConvoCouch, Popular Resistance, and Code Pink. Post broadcast recordings can be found at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Telegram, RadIndyMedia.com, and now under podcast at popularresistance.org. Today's episode, Ecuador's President dissolves the National Assembly triggering early elections. I'm so happy to welcome back today's guest, author and journalist, Joe Emersberger. I'm sure many of you remember him from our conversations last year regarding the controversies in Ecuador, June of 2022. You can find Joe's work published at Counterpunch. It was a great article that was published yesterday that I will put in the program notes. He can also be found at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Mint Press, and many other publications. Also, be sure to read his book, Extraordinary Threat, The U.S. Empire, The Media, and 20 Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela. So before I have Joe join us, I just want to again remind all of you, this is, we're really lucky to have him back with us for this episode, because it'll be a nice follow-up expansion of our conversation, late June of 2022, regarding the protests in Ecuador. And so let me give you all a little bit of background as to what's happened in Ecuador in the past week. So, Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly by decree on May 17, bringing forward legislative and presidential elections and heading off an attempt by opposition politicians to impeach him. Opposition politicians wanted to impeach Lasso over accusations he disregarded warnings of embezzlement related to a contract at state-owned oil transportation company, Flopec, F-L-O-P-E-C. Charges the president himself denies. A majority of lawmakers had backed a resolution accusing Lasso of allowing the corrupt contract to continue after his taking office in 2021, although a congressional oversight committee, which heard testimony from opposition lawmakers, officials, and Lasso's attorney said in its report it did not recommend impeachment. Lasso says the impeachment process, the first against an Ecuadorian president in decades is politically motivated and has sparked a grave crisis that has threatened democracy. The dissolution was necessary, he claims. Citing the crisis and inability to govern, Lasso invoked the Constitutional Constitution so-called two-way death, Muerte Cruzara, which we talked about a bit last year with Joe. So this provision, excuse me, which allows the president to call elections for both his post and the National Assembly under certain conditions, including if actions by the legislature are blocking the functioning of government. According to the Constitution, Lasso will now remain in office and ruled by decree. And so it's this circumstance that we've asked Joe to come back and talk to us about. So welcome, Joe, really, I'm so pleased that you had time to talk with us today. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be back with you. So where should we pick up this conversation? Because it really is a continuation of what we saw happening May, June in Ecuador of last year, the demands specifically by the indigenous community, which in fact, we had talked about, have had the power to remove presidents two or three times before in Ecuador. And now we have a president who under threat of impeachment has dissolved the executive and legislative branches of his government. Yeah, Muerte Cruzara came in with the new constitution of Ecuador in 2008. And it was meant to prevent the political instability that happened in the past. They went through like seven or eight presidents in 10 years over a 10 year period in the 90s and early 2000s.  And so this was a mechanism that was brought in to say, okay, look, if the Congress wants to get rid of the president, if the president wants to disregard Congress, there should be a way to say, okay, you know what, go to the voters, let them decide that your fate, you know what? And this was supposed to head off that kind of instability. And I think while Correa was in office, it probably was a factor in preventing and keep, because he was in office for 10 years was unprecedented. He had that 10 years in office and achieved a lot reduced homicide rate by two thirds, reduced poverty by almost half. And then what happened was when Letty Moreno came in in 2017, he ran on a Correa loyalist, but he immediately transformed into like a copy of Lasso. He basically implemented Lasso's political, in that Lasso's political platform has really been underway since 2017. We should think of Lasso's presidency like Moreno's second term, it's the same thing. And with that, first two years of Moreno, what he does is he stacked the judiciary and the electoral authorities and the all kinds of regulators. He did it in a very unconstitutional way. He handpicked the body that acted as if it were a constituent assembly elected by everybody, elected by voters, and it made these sweeping changes. So that's one concern about Lasso's being able to rule by decree now for a little while is because all the authorities are stacked more or less in his favor. Because according to Article 148 that he invoked, he's allowed to issue the only decrees of emergency nature for economic reasons, right? And the constitutional court is supposed to approve them. But the problem is the constitutional court is a very pro-business court. It was illegally fired and replaced in 2018. It's been stacked with very pro-business, pro-corporate people so that it's not, nobody thinks nobody believes it's gonna be a real check on his ability to ram through all kinds of right-wing decrees, gutting labor laws, giving tax giveaways, privatization, all sorts of nasty things that he can do in the time that, in the little time there remains. I mean, the first round of the elections are supposed to happen on August 20th. So there's a short window, but still given the way the whole apparatus, the state apparatus has been stacked over the last several years, it gives him a lot of extra power in the short time, right? To do a lot of nasty things. Oh yeah, he could, I mean, he could essentially, he basically has like almost 90 days to kind of put in a really strong, complete neoliberal model. Oh yeah, yeah, he's got a lot of, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, he's got a lot of leeway now with the court that's supposed to be the only check on him is one that was, it's been, it was legally brought into existence that the other court was fired and replaced, right, so he has a stacked regulatory apparatus. Any other concerns to what's he gonna do with the elect, are there gonna be dirty tricks in terms of the elections? What are the, you know, what's gonna happen there? Although it looks like the, one thing to stress is that the right wing in general did not want this to happen. Like I said, like we discussed last year, the National Assembly tried to invoke Muerte Crusada last year during protests over the neoliberal austerity measures last year was bringing in, there were major street protests, people dying in the streets, the National Assembly said, okay, this is an emergency, let's go to the polls, let's settle this at the polls, not in the streets. That's the whole point of this measure, right? Of the Muerte Crusada. So, and it failed to get the necessary votes. It fell short of the two thirds majority required to get it. Then there were their efforts to, to subject to a recall referendum, but the electoral authorities shot that down as well. They found excuses to shoot that down. So, the impeachment process then came. But again, the impeachment process only came, I think only really was pressed forward because these other methods to force loss to be held accountable at the polls failed. And now, and now it's ironic that now he ends up invoking Muerte Crusada when he fought against it, right? But he did it as a last-ditch effort because he was gonna get impeached. He, and he made it ridiculously obvious that the only reason he was invoking was because he didn't, he was gonna get impeached. And he wanted to just cut the proceeding short. So that calls in the question, the legality of him doing it because even though the Article 148 gives him a very broad latitude to invoke Muerte Crusada to resolve the forced snap elections, it's not clear that he's allowed to do it and make it obvious that he's only doing it to cut short an impeachment process that's underway in the National Assembly that had a constitutional court approval to be underway. So that becomes somewhat dubious but in the end, the court unsurprisingly it upheld his decree. But like I said, there's a very pro-business right wing court that was installed illegally. So it's not surprising. On the other hand, I honestly, I think compared to compared to what I just mentioned, compared to the fact that a constitutional court was fired and replaced this unconstitutionality of his decree is in my opinion not as big a deal as what we've already seen. We've seen political opponents exile thrown into jail. Korea disqualified from running. During the election in 2021, we had the Attorney General conspire openly put on this big show with Columbia's prosecutor accusing one of the major candidate of being financed by the ELN rebels in Columbia. Oh, right. Yeah. And Andresa Rous is actually he's gone to Columbia and he's pursuing legal action against that prosecutor now. It's a very good time to do it too, because it's hopefully will deter some of those dirty tricks from happening again. So, you know, in view of all that, you could actually say it's kind of, it's not even that it's, there's an argument that what he did was illegal, but I don't think it's as bad as what they've done over the course of the last six years since Moreno took over, they've done worse than that. Well, they've basically ensured all the institutions are in favor of a neoliberal project. Right, exactly. And so now, so now they're gonna, well, the good thing is that Lasso basically did this to save himself, but he didn't, I don't, he did not consider the interests of the broader right wing. So this has fractured the right wing unity that's kind of held them together in the past six years, you know?  It was swept by the big, the huge winners were the Koreas. They won by far the most municipalities and Lasso in those elections had eight referendum proposals that he, for dealing with crime and insecurity that he put forward and they were all defeated because the people just didn't don't, he's so unpopular, he can't even get proposals passed. Like for his, he tried to say, well, we should be able to extradite people to United States if they, you know, they're found accused of drug trafficking or stuff like that. And those were kind of, they were proposals tailored to kind of appeal to kind of a right-wing populist approach to fighting crime. And it didn't work because the Koreas and other progressive fighters say, look, we didn't have that. We reduced homicides by two thirds. We didn't do any of that. We just had, we had good common sense policies that reformed the police, that devoted resources to improving security. So they, and they didn't have mass incarceration, didn't have the death pound, didn't have all the kind of things that right-wing people always want to say or the solution to bring down crime. So- Joe, I just want to mention for the audience that the audience can find in the program notes, your article from February discussing the election results. And the article is called Elections in Ecuador, Unmask Western Media Dishonesty. I've shared the link with Mint Press, but that article was published in several different publications as well. But it's well worth reading. So we'll- So you come off elections where you do that horribly. I mean, not just last but the whole right-wing, his party though. And so why are you going to force snap elections after you just got thrown? So this was so obviously just an attempt to save himself and only himself. Because if he had been impeached, okay, his vice president takes over. The right-wing technically still has a time left. Right, so this shows that the right-wing unity has been fractured. Even the right-wing media outlets like Equivice are saying no, the elections have to happen right away because they know that if they try to pull something just to delay the elections or tie themselves further to lasso, he's like a sinking ship. They don't want to be tied to him. So yeah, it's an important development, but it's a huge concern in what's he going to do in the time that remains. He basically has- All he seems to care about is just, I think one reason he could be trying to ram through all these right-wing decrees is also to shore up support, to help him make sure he doesn't suffer any conflict. He can escape and not face any legal consequences in Ecuador and make sure he has the support of any foreign supporters and the US supporters and just get out of there before anything can happen to him, before he can be potentially jailed for all the things he's done. So yeah, so he's looking to save himself and he's sacrificed the broader interest of the Ecuadorian right by doing this. That to me is just fascinating. That, I mean, for long-term political strategy, because like you were saying earlier, that all the institutions have been configured under the Moreno government to support neoliberal policies. And so, and also for the audience, Joe has another article that was published yesterday in Counterpunch called Ecuador's Democratic Backsliding has been ongoing since 2017 with US support. And you talk about all of this, how, and that link, by the way, is also in the program notes for the article. So you talk about all of this. So why, I mean, the self-preservation of one man over this project that we don't necessarily agree with, but this project has been in place since 2017. And so you have one person's desire for self-preservation destroying that, I mean, it's destroying that whole right-wing project. I mean, I guess in a way it's a backhanded blessing for many people. Well, you know, it's Ecuador's right, traditionally Ecuador's right wing has been very fractured, very self-interested, very not united. And actually the unity it's shown is a new thing over the past six years. They've been united because they had this tremendous fear of Korea coming back, but their tendency has always been to really fight viciously amongst each other. That's why when I mentioned that period of eight presidents in 10 years, a lot of it has to do with that right-wing infighting. Now, it didn't really, they kept replacing with neoliberal governments anyway, but it was different factions within each other. I have an interview with David Villamari, but you can also, you could find on Counterpunch for a while ago, where we talk about the right-wing infighting, even during Lasso, it starts to become evident. But then, you know, when there's a threat, like a more at the crusade, they closed ranks again. But this time they weren't able to close ranks.  So it's gonna be tough for them now. They, like I said, they just got throttled in elections in February and now they're gonna go to snap elections. So it's gonna be very tough for them. And, but on the other hand, like I guess we have been saying, Lasso has all these powers that he can use to do a lot of nasty things and try to tie it in another government's hands if it can. So there's another conversation about what, and if the Koreas get back in power, what are they gonna have to do to undo all this now? And one idea that's been floated by Korea and by, well, even Andresa Ross a bit when his candidacy in 2021 was the idea of a, electing another constituent assembly, like they did in 2008 where you elect, you elect people, an assembly that has powers to rewrite, to modify the constitution. And it has, in the transitionary period, there's a lot of other powers it has where it could reorder the judiciary and the electoral authorities. So it could undo a lot of the damage that's been done by the previous governments. So that's one way they could proceed. But in creating a situation that has to be undone means that the Progressive Project should it, and as people come back to power, it's gonna have a delay in initiating its vision. Well, there's things that- Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, they're gonna have to do both at once, in my opinion, because that's what they did in 2008. They didn't just, when they started, they immediately started doing things, the implementing progressive powers at the same time, they also reordered the call constitution. This time won't be as bad, in spite of everything, they still have the same constitution they had from 2008. So they probably won't have to be as drastic an overhaul, but I know that that idea has been floated, that some of the irregularities and illegal appointments has just been a nightmare. So that's one option they're gonna have to undo some of the damage. Now, they can't focus only on that, as you say. They have to address the immediate problems. They have to address them quickly. If they get into power, they have to show immediate improvement in living conditions to have to have the, because to prevail with you have to have elections for a constituent assembly. If you want to win those elections, you have to be showing something. You'd better be showing that you're doing something other than just say vote for us. So yeah, they're gonna have to do a lot. This is gonna be a challenge, but I think they've done it before, and I think they can get back into power. And they have, Korea has a track record, they have achievements. They have people who like, Andresa Rose, for example, ran the central bank. So they have key people who are involved in fixing the Ecuador before. And I think they know how to do it. They have the experience. I think they can do it again, but it's, yeah, they're gonna have to get busy right away. So let's talk a bit about what is possible in these snap elections in August? Because I'd like to go back to the article you wrote in February, discussing what a lot of us found really surprising and excited how much the Codestas won, how much political ground they were able to take back, mayoral ships and governor ships, specifically in Guayaquil. And so to me, we see that we're like, wow, so what happened to make that possible? I mean, certainly lost those policies and these protests that have been manifesting since, for almost a year now, but what happened within the party and the movement did, can we talk a bit about that? How that came about? Because it seems to me, Joe, that that success in February also was a reason either for Lasso too, and to dissolve the presidency in the National Assembly, but you could also see why the right wing is saying, why would you dissolve? Why would you exercise this Muerte Cruzada now when the Codestas gained so much ground in February? Right. Well, I don't think they know what to, like they've lost control of the violent crime in the country, it's quite, but homicide rate has quite droopled since 2017. They have, they've just lost control. They just, they have, I don't think they have any idea how to fix it. I don't think they have any idea how to do anything but spin, try to spin it somehow and say it's either Korea's fault or resort to these reactionary proposals. Like for instance, saying, we got to give people more guns. And that's one of the solutions they have. In fact, one of the candidates, they've put forward for one of the right wing parties, the party that used to have so much power in the coast, the social, social cristianos, the guys who used to run the coast pretty much, why kill them? They had the, they were, they were the, they had the municipality, why kill like for decades. The candidate they just put forward is this unknown guy, I forget his name, but he's a, he's a mercenary. You fought, you fought in Ukraine. You fought in Syria. And that's his big thing. Hey, I know how to use guns. I'm going to fix that. I'm going to shoot them.  Literally, that's what they're resorting to. So it's scary because they don't have no idea what to do and the only solutions they come up with are just, are just, just horrific. So yeah, so that's, that's what's really going on. I think that's, that's really taken over everything. When you have people, they're just horrified to, and that's the goal, because it correlates with, of course, an increase in, in poverty and everything else, but the, the insecurity in the country, which of course also affects the economy. How do you, you know, affects all everything. So yeah, it's, it's, that's, I think the thing that, that's, that's, that helps Kota Ismo is that this is happening, but also that people, I mean, people remember how safe Ecuador was, how safe it became, but there was a two thirds reduction. So it wasn't just like Ecuador was safe, but it had always been safe. It wasn't actually very safe when Korea first took office, because if you have a two thirds of reduction in homicide rate, obviously you have a lot to reduce still. It was pretty high. It wasn't like compared to Columbia, other very, very unsafe places, but it was still, it was like, it was three times higher than what it is in the United States. Okay, so if you, if you look at the, over time, the homicide rate when Ecuador, when Korea took office at the same year in 2007, it was, it's homicide rate was like three times higher than what the USA's homicide rate is. By the time Korea leaves office, it's pretty much the same. It's come down almost at the same level as the United States, reduced by two thirds. So that's a huge improvement. People remember that and they remember that.  So it was very hard to bullet. So I think that's a huge factor in why Korea's most really pressed that advantage and said, look, we know how to solve this. We've done it before. That's a huge, that's a huge argument to use. And how much, you know, last year's protests or approaching almost a year or exactly June of 2022 were triggered by extensive austerity measures by the Lasso government. And so there's clearly been some backlash to that. Well, we saw the protests last year specifically by the most marginalized people, the indigenous people and campesinos. So you've got unity among that and probably stronger now a year later in pushing this change. Yeah, although I still think there are tensions there. We'll have to see how that plays out. There's always been a tension between the indigenous movement and the Koreas movement. Electorally, Koreas was been the big electoral movement, but they kind of lack a certain grassroots capacity to organize. It's always been an issue, but especially because during under Moreno, they took the brunt of the persecution, everything. Their leaders were exiled and jailed and everything. Whereas Kanai initially got along with Moreno, because Moreno originally, he was marketing himself kind of as a, even though he was very right-wing, but he was kind of marketing himself a little bit as like a reformed Koreas, and he could kind of pull that crap initially because it took a while for his policies to really bite. His whole, all his right-wing neoliberal crap, it took a while for it to really hurt people because Ecuador isn't a pretty good place, obviously, when he first took office. So he could ram a lot of things through before people realized what he really was. So that was an issue. So now, but then by 2019, the indigenous movement was totally against him. It already had, even before the pandemic struck, before the pandemic arrived, they were massive protests in 2019. There were like 11 people killed or eight or 10 people killed in several days. Those were like the first we saw and then Chile and then Colombia. And then you have to remember is that the pandemic, Ecuador had one of the worst pandemic responses in the world, which is really amazing because given its climate, giving its young population, it had some advantages there, but it was really amazing. And this was coming out even in the Western media, which always gave Moreno a kind of a free ride. They gave them good press. They got away with so much with them and they would never, they got really good press. And yet, even in like a financial times, kept a careful track of the COVID deaths. And for several months, Ecuador was near the top and the worst preferred. A lot of it is based in the coast. The response, especially in the coast, the bastion of the right wing social Christian party, they were especially bad. It was just horrific on the coast around why it killed the response to COVID and that really hurt them. And I think that really, I think they really, that was part of why they paid such a big price in the elections as well. So there was multiple factors. There's just been one disaster after another. And then all throughout this, ever since Moreno took office, the homicide rate constantly climbing and then with lots of accelerating, just getting even worse. So it's just multiple disasters. And I think, my opinion, the corruption scandals that get with lasso, I think if things weren't so bad, I think you could fight those off. I think the media, with the media support, I think you could probably fight those off. But if people just have to look around them and see how everything's falling apart, it's very easy to think, well, the government must be corrupt too. It can't be this, just this. You just simply use that as the excuse to get rid of it. It's much more easy to buy into that versus say, well, okay, he's a bad guy, but the streets are clean and the economy's growing. And so you tend to, I mean, and not just Ecuadorians, but all of us, we tend to accept things when living conditions and economic conditions are favorable. If we could go back, I just wanna mention for the audience regarding Ecuador during COVID, we were able to do a WTF episode with Guillaume Long, who is Korea's former, for the audience, Korea's former foreign minister. And we talked at that time, it was when all the bodies were in the streets because the mortuaries and stuff were privatized and not able to respond. I mean, just in the deconstruction of the national healthcare system and all of that. Yeah, it was gruesome. No, yeah. Yeah, it was very gruesome. It's pretty bad. When you have a pro-US government, like Ecuador is getting these macabre headlines around the world, you know, things are bad because they really shield them. But it really had to get extreme for them to get the kind of headlines you usually associate with US enemies. You know, if it comes into the Nicaragua, Venezuela will take anything and blow it up into a big international news, do you think, right? But for a country like Ecuador to be getting that kind of press, you know it had to be bad. Yeah, and it couldn't be hidden. Right. Yeah, it couldn't be glossed over or hidden. I wonder, Joe, in our last few minutes for the audience, if we could have a technical conversation about Article 148, just so that people, what this muerte cruzada is, and we talked briefly before going live, but technically what it is, how it came about and how it's being used. Okay, it was brought in in 2008 because, like I said, Ecuador had a period of tremendous political economic instability in the 90s and the early part of the 2000s where you had like musical chairs of presidents getting thrown out constantly. This refers back to the, and not that these were right, a lot of it was a right wing presidents getting thrown out by other right wing factions. It was, like I mentioned, this right wing bitterness and viciousness among themselves. And so when Korea's government came in, they rewrote the, they convened a constitutional assembly to rewrite the constitution. And so one of the things they said was they thought was, okay, if there's, previously the Congress would just be able to impeach a president, get rid of them and then basically stay there. And then, so they said, look, there's gotta be a better way if they really wanna get rid of a president or if the president wants to dissolve the Congress, they should both immediately have to go to the voters to say, okay, now we put ourselves in your, to be judged by you, to you to basically settle who's right here, who stays, who stays and who goes. So it was a way to empower voters. And also to get things, the idea was to get people out of the streets out of unconstitutional ways to change governments and get them into a more constitutional way that goes to ultimately the voters decide, right? So that was the idea. And I think it's a good idea. I just think in Ecuador's context today with the several years of the judiciary and everything being stacked, that it becomes dangerous because the president can issue the Cree, the Crees and not have reading real check on them. But Article 148 is very broad, actually. It allows the president to dissolve the National Assembly and within seven days, the electoral authorities have to put out a calendar for new elections. And there are other laws, not in the constitution, but other electoral laws that basically tell them that it's gonna have to be within 90 days, the new elections. So, and what is- Can I ask, just we're talking about the composition, how the Moreno government was able to reconstruct the court. What about the electoral body? It's the- Same. Oh. Same. That's all been re-constructed. Yes, yes. That was this body, this constituent assembly. It wasn't, I can say it was a handpicked body by Moreno, it has this long acronym. But it reconfigured the judicial council, the electoral authorities, superintendents, all kinds of regular, all kinds of control authorities, right? That were stacked by this body. So, yeah, so the Article 148 gives the president broad logic, because it says in his opinion, in his or her opinion. So that's already very broad, right? It just has to have an opinion. It's an opinion. Yeah, yeah. And there has to be like, but there's an internal, like one of the reasons that some of them require, like for instance, if he says that the national assembly is blocking him, that would, if he gives that as the rationale, he would have to go to the constitutional court, constitutional court, and have them approve that. But the reason he gave is internal commotion, internal shock, whatever. Internal shock, yeah. That one did not require constitutional approval. So what is an internal shock? I mean, the Koreas will argue that there are other rulings that they can point to where they say, no, the constitutional, it has to be something else, it has to be like where there's a thread of the uprising or something like that. But the problem is it's very broad, right? So it's a very broad power. So it's hard to argue against the, I mean, you can, but I think they didn't have that, I think they had a pretty good argument that would last a bit, because there's nothing, if you read it, there's nothing where you can say, well, Lasso made it so obvious that he wanted to just stop the impeachment. So there's nothing in that article 148 that says that the president, if his opinion, he's about to be impeached, he can invoke this. It has to be, it's even given the broad latitude, it's dubious that it's fair to say that he can just use this article 148 just to cut short an impeachment process that's already underway. Yeah, that the court already approved. That the court already approved, yeah. That's looking pretty dubious, but on the other hand, I'm not sure that it's a slim dunk either, it's dubious, but I don't think it's, it doesn't compare to other illegal things they did. Like when Moreno convened his referendum that allowed him to handpick this body that restacked everything in the country, he did that without even any constitutional court approval. He just disregarded it completely. I mean, that was more blatantly illegal than what Lasso just did, I mean, way more. And then based on that, everything that followed from that, the illegal, because if the referendum itself didn't get a constitutional court approval, it was an illegal referendum. So you have an illegal referendum that leads to illegal authorities because if the referendum was legal, everything that followed from it was illegal. And then you had the firing of the whole constitutional court. You know what I mean? That's just outrageous. And so in the context of what's been happening, Lasso's transgression was relatively minor, I'd say. And he was just saving his own butt. Yeah. I've used that earlier. There was one thing, you know, go ahead, I'm sorry. No, no, I was gonna say, yeah. And that started with 148, which allows the president to force the invokement to Kusat. Article 130 gives the National Assembly essentially the same power, except they have to get a two thirds vote in the National Assembly. Which was June of last year. Yes. With all the, with the Paranatiamal. Yeah. And that you could probably, where they tried to make the legitimate argument. And like you said, it didn't get the two thirds majority vote. There was political instability and economic instability. Well, people are being killed in the streets by the security forces. And so that's kind of what the whole point of Martin Kusat was supposed to avoid. From the nineties and 2000s, you go to the streets, you have mass protests, you have people dying, and then that chases out the government or whatever. You know, this is supposed to be, no, let's go to the polls. Let's go to the polls that the voters decide. That was the idea. But Lasso invoked it just to save himself from an impeachment process. So that's why the constitutionality of what he did was questionable. But like I said, what's been going on the past six years, there's been way worse than. Yeah. No, the damage, the institutional damage has already been done. Yeah. So I wonder in our last few minutes, if we can put this into some context as to what we're seeing throughout the Americas right now, specifically Latin America and the Caribbean. And I asked this in the context of a conversation I had with our Venezuelan friend Carlos Rón about the Monroe Doctrine. And you and I have talked about this also, how since October of 2020 through October of 2022, we've had presidential and national assembly elections across Latin America and the Caribbean with the majority of electoral results being left of center. And it's a spectrum. It's social Democrat to revolutionary left, but a huge shift in the political landscape south of the US border. And I was saying in that conversation that I thought this was really, really exciting and that the end of the Monroe Doctrine is people in the southern part of the hemisphere are liberating themselves from US hegemony. And his response was, yes, but we have done this before. And this is when we see the US get most aggressive, specifically citing Planned Condor in the 60s and 70s. So what I see potentially in this, Joe, is we've seen what's happened in Peru with Pedro Castillo and their non-elected government in Peru now and the US Southern command, Laura Richardson, saying our hemisphere, meaning US business, US military, US government, our hemisphere, our resources, our real estate. And so this is why fear what Lasso has just done. He's got 90 days to privatize all the natural resources, water, gold, oil, what's remaining of any public infrastructure and institutions. That can all conceivably happen between now and August 20th, especially when you've got a government so tightly aligned with the US and you've got the US Southern command just overtly saying what the objective is in the hemisphere. I mean, there's no window dressing on this policy any longer. Great. Yeah, that's always a danger. We saw in the early part of this century, we saw a wave of right-wing governments, so-called pink tide. And then we saw kind of a reversion from that. We had the parliamentary coup in Brazil. We had Macri come in and we had a kind of a reversal. We had Moreno come in, Ecuador. We had all these other reversals. But what we're seeing is that they didn't last because people remember the governments that actually delivered. So it's very hard for them, the reversals didn't last that long either. Despite all the things you've mentioned in the US, despite the US support, I mean, despite all the US, everything the US can do doesn't make them omnipotent. And a huge factor for, it's a huge challenge, but integration. One of the most damaging things, Moreno, Ecuador was more or less the center of Unisor. They had the, and Moreno dismantled that entirely. They sold them to the building, didn't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So his whole project was just destroying everything. But here we are and it's on the cost of coming back again, the caressa coming back again with this idea of integration, with this, excuse me, with this idea of looking to China to help them with unifying and diversifying away from the United States, getting independent of the US financial system. Andresa Rous, the candidate for, in 2021 for Corizumal, he had a very, very fascinating chat with Ben Norton about the global, the US dollar, but the US financial system and how countries are thinking of creative ways to break away from it and to break away from this arbitrary power the United States has to sanction everybody, you know? Right. So people are very aware of what the solutions that are potentially out there to get around that. So that's going to be huge. So it's, like what you're saying is quite right. It's a dangerous situation that they're in because of US power, but US power is not omnipotent. There are solutions. They have, if they were omnipotent, they wouldn't even have, none of this would be happening. I mean, guys like Lassell would just, guys like Lassell would just be replaced with somebody else just like him. You know, it would be no problem, right? But these things are happening and it's going to be tough though. They got to, the key to them is integration. They realize that, you know, as individual countries, they're much weaker, right? They have to find a way to unify and become more independent of the United States. Right now, you know, two countries like Andresa Rose was telling Ben Norton, two countries in Latin America want to do trade right now. The money that even if they're just trading among themselves, the money always ends up flowing through banks in the U.S. financial system. Right, or you trade into U.S. dollars before... Yeah, it ends up flowing through the U.S. financial system, even has nothing to do with them. And that gives them, and then they're able to needle their way through, to kind of weasel their way in and if they want to do sanctions, you see how they have tremendous, how that gives them the power to disrupt everyone's economy if they don't like you, right? So they have to find ways to get independent of that. And there are technical solutions that are out there, but it's the, they need a sense of urgency and a sense of to get that done, these governments as they come in, they can't be complacent, they have to get to work right away, you know? So that's going to be huge, but you're right, it's a huge challenge. United States might be in relative decline, but that doesn't mean it's still not very powerful and still not very disruptive. No, and what will it do on its way down? Yeah, exactly. Like a wounded animal is when, yeah, when you're the most aggressive, yeah, the self-preservation, yeah. Precisely. So Joe, is there anything else regarding the dissolution of the National Assembly and the SNAP elections that we should, we should let the audience know about before I let you go, anything that? It's nothing, I think we've covered pretty much, I can't think of anything really, I think we've covered all the important stuff, you know, just so. Okay, well, great. And just for the audience, I will include in the program notes, both of the articles that Joe wrote, February and the one in Truthout yesterday, the links are both in the program notes, and I will also include our WTF episode with Joe from June of 2022, because that's some nice historical context as to how things have unfolded between then and now. And then I guess I should also just remind all of you, you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, we're a popular resistance broadcast. We air Thursday, 7 30 p.m. Eastern on YouTube Live, including channels for the Convo Couch, Code Pink and Popular Resistance, post-broadcast recordings can be found at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcast. So thank you everyone and we'll see you next week. And thank you so much, Joe.


Burmese Chase is a multi-national exercise involving second Anglico and members of the Dutch, British, Norwegian, French. What we are replicating here is the ability to show up at any battlefield anywhere and be able to operate as effectively and as efficiently as possible on day one. We are trained to insert via combat rubber raid craft, fast rope, any types of these insert platforms as well as extract the other spy line. Brotherhood doesn't know a specific uniform or a specific country. Phenomenal exercise with a great deal of complexity that is put together for a multi-national joint fire exercise so a fantastic opportunity for us to come over from the UK and be represented in this exercise one. It is us working alongside the US ensuring that our tactics, techniques and practices work together and ensure that the end result is fires on the ground, on time, on target and safe. Great exercise. Long may it continue.


Short period comets visit the sun so often that they quickly evaporate, vanishing in only a few hundred thousand years. Here's one that evaporated in the sun's corona in July 2011. It was traveling at 644 km per second. That's 400 miles per second. Here we see it in time lapse from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The comet enters on the right in this video. In this second pass I've marked it along the way. It starts out with the mass of an aircraft carrier and it's completely evaporated in twenty minutes by the searing heat of the sun's corona. They evaporate so quickly compared to the age of the solar system that we shouldn't see any left at all, yet we routinely track dozens of them every year. In 1951 Gerard Kuiper proposed that there must be a belt of icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune. That is the source for new comets. It is much further away, much larger, and far less dense than the asteroid belt. It starts at 30 astronomical units from the sun and is 20 astronomical units wide. 1992 QB1 was the first Kuiper Belt object. In 2002 a large KBO, hundreds of kilometers in diameter, named Kwawa, was found. In 2004, KBO Sedna was discovered. And we have seen that Pluto and Maki Maki are dwarf planet KBOs. It is estimated that the Kuiper Belt contains a hundred million comets. In 1950, in order to explain long period orbits, the Dutch astronomer Jan Ort proposed the existence of a cloud of comets between 5,000 and 55,000 astronomical units from the sun. Other estimates have it going out much further. All estimates put the Ort cloud well outside the heliosphere. Ort estimated that this reservoir contains a hundred billion comets. Maybe a trillion. Sighting spring, ale bop, and lubejoy 2014 are three of them. No space probe has yet been sent to the area of the Ort cloud. Voyager 1, in the heliosheath, is traveling at 1.6 million kilometers per day. That's a million miles per day. It will take over 1,200 years just to reach the Ort cloud. And over 12,000 years to pass through it. So its existence will remain a theory for some time to come.


What's up everybody, Jason here for jaspierscasebrakes.com. We're giving you a three prism choice spots Giveaways here with this one-pack break of 1920 panini prism retail one-pack break random teams number 41 So again, you're buying to a one-pack break of prism retail will randomize this customer names and teams Then we will break open the pack and distribute the hits out of here Then at the end of the break we'll take all 30 customer names randomize them and the top three cousin Rains will win each a spot in the two hundred ninety nine dollar prism choice tiered around team number five break Which is down to three spots left if no one else grabs the spots straight up right now guys once I'm done with this I'm gonna turn these last three spots into another pack break and you have an opportunity to win another Spot or three depending on any spots you get in the break Here's a dice. Well, here's a cousin named Sean down at Joe Pizzalos Bob mojo, and it's pasted in the team shall we There you go Let's roll the dice We got a four and four eight the hard way. Good luck one two three four five six seven and eight Matthew Donna Matthew three times one two three four five six seven and eight the final time Blazers now the Washington Wizards I know trades guys Let me quickly go through the teams here Matthew the Blazers Kevin with the cast Patrick the Pacers Matthew the Nuggets Sean with the Nets Robert the Warriors business D-Mag and Celtic Stephen K. The Jazz Robert the Magic Richard with the flippers Joe Pizz with the 76ers come within the Kings follow the heat Matthew the Hawks Hornets Natalie with the Grizzlies Kevin with the Lakers Thomas with the Thunder Dural with the Suns Stephen K with the T was Kevin with the Pelligans with the Spurs Natalie with the Rockets Matthew the Bulls Raptors Joe Pizz a lot more adults Mavericks Patrick with the Bugs and Matthew the Wizards All right guys, so no trades guys just stick with what you got just I think four cards per pack We'll see what we pull out of here Like I said, I'll turn these last three spots into another filler unless someone wants to buy it straight up So speak now forever hold your peace grab your spots Here it is We got Diallo Yeah, Ignace Brezdaikis Yana's dominance and Kent Baz more All righty guys, so now let's see Who wins spots in the break itself? Here's the dice roll that it's cuz it rains again. Let's get a new dice roll. Let's roll it And it's a four and a one for five times. Good luck one two three four and five Boom five times Matthew Kevin and Matthew Wow, look at that. There you go five times Congratulations Kevin Matthew and Matthew well Matthew Kevin and Matthew You guys are now in the break and again coming up next is a Choice filler unless someone already grabbed the spots we had to tell them straight up That's appreciated jazzy's case breaks.com


It appears that her career starring in adult films is treating Riley read well. The social media personality and adult film star has been thriving recently and just bought a brand spanking new compound in Pasadena for nearly 5 million dollars designed for fun and entertainment. Prior to this Riley was set up in a starter home in Altadena California which was also worth a couple million bucks and in this video we're going to check out both. In these videos we don't reveal any addresses and even though I've done a house tour of my own place please do not show up at any private residences because it's not safe for anyone. Riley read whose real name is actually Matthews is an adult film actress and one of the highest paid in the industry at that. She started her career as a teenager earning less than 1k per X-rated video but these days she's making bank. Riley who's also a social media personality has benefited from the popularity of only fans like many others in the same industry. She's one of the most followed models on the platform and while she won't disclose her exact earnings from it, top only fans performers have been known to make over 1 million dollars per month. Through Riley's income from only fans and other sources like Snapchat premium, her own website, earnings from her films and more she seems to be set for life. At the time of this recording she's amassed an estimated net worth of 12 million dollars or more. And with that Riley has just purchased a new mansion in the exclusive Linda Vista neighborhood of Pasadena, just an easy drive away from her former property in the Altadena community. Just wait till you see the backyard at her new party friendly home, it may just be the biggest flex of all. Welcome back everyone, I'm Cara the Vampire Slayer and I'm bringing you another exclusive house tour here on Famous Entertainment, this one looking at where Riley read Calls Home. If you haven't already make sure you subscribe and ring that bell for notifications because we post brand new content daily. And hey if you want follow me on Instagram and let me know who you want to see next featured on this channel. Alright let's get right into it. Shortly after snagging her slick newest date in Pasadena, Riley listed her former home in the neighboring community of Altadena, California. So let's take a look. Her former home was elegantly situated into the base of the San Gabriel Mountains on a prime cul-de-sac and discreetly hidden up a long driveway. Built in 1990, the 3,514 square foot home sat on almost two thirds of an acre and boasted four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. Not to mention it was one of the most desirably private properties in the area. Records reveal that the estate was purchased by Riley in December 2019 for $2.1 million and she completely remodeled the home, which includes an all new spa style master bathroom, modernized kitchen with top of the line appliances, a bolt load of modern farm house decor, new hardwood flooring and a ton of white paint. I guess that explains why she's listed the gated property for over $2.5 million since she put in so much work. From the outside, the estate may look a little underwhelming as the front exterior contains a long and tree shaded private drive complete with large motor court and flower line pathway to the front door. Personally, I like the kind of boxy shape of the house which you can notice better from the backyard. The interiors include a number of skylit spaces which include an open kitchen with breakfast bar and marble countertop in addition to a family room with sleek fireplace and direct access to the luxe backyard. While the formal living and dining rooms are highlighted by oversized windows, mahogany fittings and a wet bar for those that get thirsty. During the remodel, Riley had added all new hardwood flooring throughout, highlighting the especially modern look of the house. Perhaps one of the most relaxing spots in the dwelling is the airy family room attached to the kitchen, which boasts a soaring wood ceiling with skylights, sleek fireplace and large picture window. Riley decked out the new kitchen in all white aside from the stainless appliances for a super clean look and the Eden bar is big enough for plenty of friends to sit and have a chat. Upstairs, I love the loft like area that overlooks the kitchen while Riley's formal colossal master suite offered high ceilings, a cozy sitting area, separate window seats and spacious walk-in closet with tons of custom shelves. That window nook looks perfect for reading or meditating. I want one. Equally impressive is the second floor's three additional guest bedrooms that feature custom drawers, seating areas and their own private balcony access, boasting views of the backyard. Another successful remodeling project was Riley's en suite bathroom, where we can see the fresh marble flooring, a large soaking tub and standing shower for when you don't have time for a relaxing bath. Personally, I'm more of a shower girl, like all the time.   The backyard is nicely touched with gardens full of jasmine and roses making it smell perfect too, well manicured lawns and there were also stunning views of the San Gabriel mountain. If Riley was willing to part with this fancy home, one can only imagine just how sick or Pasadena home is going to be. After becoming one of the world's highest paid adult film stars and perhaps one of the most widely known and popular performers on OnlyFans, there's only a matter of time before Riley added to that real estate portfolio. As I mentioned, OnlyFans performers at her level have been known to rake in more than one million dollars a month so it should come as no surprise that Riley treated herself to a brand new 4.8 million dollar estate in the highly coveted LA suburb of Pasadena. I mean, it cost her almost 5 million dollars so it's certainly quite the upgrade. Located within the desirable Lindevista neighborhood pocket, the new compound built in 2020 features multiple structures totaling 4,985 square feet on 3.6 acre lot and boasts four bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. The residence is discreetly located down a long gated driveway, spending 450 feet, nicely touched with mature oak and pine trees lined up to the property. It also boasts a black top motor court with enough space for half a dozen cars. And the home includes an attached garage with room for two more. Like her previous residence, the house appears pretty humble from the front. However, the single story estate opens up to 3,900 square feet of spectacular living space and retractable walls of glass combined with wide plank hardwood flooring. The retractable walls were added to allow easy in and out access for the true Pasadena vibe. Just past the private atrium entrance, the interior of Riley's new property is highlighted by a stunning great room kitchen combo that opens to a wraparound patio perfect for soaking in the outdoors from the home. The great room and kitchen includes a mix of luxury furnishings, a cozy fireplace, a massive flat screen TV, and breakfast and wet bars to have your pick from. The open kitchen comes with viking and sub-zero appliances, marble courts, countertops, and brass sinks that are centered on a gorgeous Eden Island. Which kitchen do you guys prefer? This one or Riley's former all-white kitchen at the old house? The dining room in this Pasadena spread is amazing as it's surrounded by full walls of windows and insane views. Her dig includes a number of lounging spaces that come with awesome décor and more mesmerizing views of surrounding canyons and a downtown LA skyline. One of the most gorgeous lounging spaces is definitely the Skylet living room with grand fireplace, oversized windows, and wet bar. Riley's villa packs in four bedrooms in the main house including her new master retreat, complete with sitting area, double-sided fireplace, and balcony access to a private outdoor patio. She may not have a window seated this place, but she certainly isn't missing out on features. As you'd expect, the master suite also includes a walk-in closet big enough to pose as another room in the house to hold all of her designer duds, even her only fan's outfits. Moving to the spa like en suite bathroom, there's a custom dressing room for her to get ready. His are her sinks, heated flooring, marble bath, and glass-walled shower with some more A-plus views. In addition, the home also comes with an office complete with custom bookshelves, yet another fireplace and balcony access. And as stunning as the interior of this home is, the exterior truly takes the cake in this house tour. While her previous yard was nice, the resort-style backyard at Riley's new spot features a gorgeous saltwater pool-spot combination, not to be outdone by her waterfall surrounded by a large sunbathing deck. Elsewhere, you'll find multiple lounging spots with comfy furniture, as well as a full indoor outdoor kitchen with wet bar. If she and her fiance are in the mood to entertain, this is definitely the place. In addition to the main house, Riley's property boasts some bonus structures like a poolside cabana poolhouse and separate guest house with an additional 1,100 square feet, ideal for friends staying the night. Whether you're lounging on the deck, cooling off in the water or sipping a few with majestic views of California mountains in the backdrop, well, Riley's home has it all. Alright, so I think I'll bring this house tour to an end here. Got to take a deep dive into Riley Reed's starter home in Altadena, California and her new digs in Pasadena, which cost her five million. After seeing them both, did you guys have a favorite? Which home suits Riley better? I must say that the backyard in her Pasadena home is easily one of the nicest we've seen. So much space, high class amenities and amazing mountain views. And by no means was her starter home in Altadena a flaw. She clearly knows what she's doing when she remodels her homes and has an eye for making things modern yet cozy. I love the all-white kitchen at the Altadena home. Would you guys prefer a sleek and modern feel at your place or something a bit more cozy and traditional? Let me know in the comments. If you wanna get to know me better, check out my recent vlog on my personal channel and hit subscribe. I love the support and meeting new followers. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram and I will see you all in the next video. Bye.


Hello viewers, it's K.E. Felix here and I will come you to my YouTube channel K.E. Felix Inspire. I would like to say a very big thank you to all of you for the support and the contribution you are giving to this channel. If you are new to this channel, please do not forget to subscribe and also you turn on the bell icon so that you get notified whenever I post new videos. In this video, College of Bishops of Christian Collision, Zambia, have called on President Hagainde Ichilima to give a statement on why the religious affairs and guidance ministry has been abolished in Zambia, which is called a Christian nation. In this clip, this is Prof. Charles Mupe speaking from the College of Bishops of Christian Collision, Zambia. College of Bishops of the Christian Collision, Zambia wish to appeal to the church in Zambia to rise and petition government for the dissolution of the ministry of national guidance and religious affairs. Zambia is a Christian nation. President Hagainde Ichilima made a commitment to this country that he will award that ministry and actualize it, make it perform. If it fails to perform under the PF leadership, the collision and the Christian fraternity in this country was optimism that this government will implement this ministry, maintaining it and making it work. We appeal that the president must make a statement on why the ministry of national guidance has been abolished in the Christian nation, that ministry is very key. We appreciate that his agenda is to have a lean government, but among the least ministries this ministry must be there. Having a directory or anything to do with the religious is downgrading the values and the principles of this country. This is Prof. Charles Mupe, President for the Christian Collision, Zambia.


So the next topic is looking at how we can make operations on columns. So with, I mean, one of the very nice features of Pandas DataFrame, and it's, you know, something that you also have in, I think that would be natural to you if you're using the Apprentice R, is that you can very easily apply operations on all elements of column. So here we have an example in this first section, we will look at arithmetic and logical operations. So I loaded my DataFrame and for instance, if I wanted to increase the age of every passenger by one year, I don't have to write a loop to loop over each element and add one to each element. I can simply take the column and say plus one, and then Pandas automatically understands that what I want to do is to apply this operation to every item, every element of the age column. And so now the age is increased by one. So you can apply any sort of mathematical operator in this way. So adding, decreasing, divided, and so on. Here now I'm subtracting one again. You can also use, if you're familiar with this Python shortcuts. So minus equals one means, you know, take the element and remove one. This also works with DataFrames and with columns of DataFrame. So here this basically means subtract one from the age column. So now we are back to the values we had at the beginning. Here we have another example. So we can also, you know, do operation on multiple columns. So here we have now a different data set. Maybe I will just show it here. Okay, so this is a data set of Swiss sensors made in 1880. And so it contains the rows of towns in Switzerland. And then the columns are different attributes of these towns. So you have the town name, how many inhabitants live in the town, how many are Swiss, how many are men, women, and so on. So here I just take a subset of this DataFrame. I just take the total number of people in town and the number of men. And now let's say, if I want to compute the fraction of men in each town, I can very easily simply take the columns of mail and divide it by the total. Okay, so if I do this, now I understand that I want to, for each row, I want to divide the value in the total column, sorry, the value in the mail column by the value in the total column. And now if I wanted, for instance, to add this information as a new column, then remember I can simply use the square bracket syntax here to refer to a column that does not exist yet, and assign it the value of the division of the mail column by the total. And if I do this, and now because this column does not exist yet, it's created by pandas, and I have a new column with my values here. Right, so this we have also already seen if we take a single column of a DataFrame, it returns a panda series, and it's the same if I apply an operation on a column, but not then what I get is a pandas series. So for instance, let's say if I take this, I will take, so now here I add two columns together. So the number of men and women, so male and female columns, and I want to check if it's equal to the total columns. Here let's say I just want to receive this data set, and I just do a very basic integrity check to see if these three columns make sense, right? If the sum of men and women equals total people in the village, or if there was some error introduced in the data set at some point. So here you see I can apply a mathematical operation, but I can also apply logical operations, and in fact we already did this earlier when we created masks to filter through DataFrames. So here you see I got a panda series, and therefore I can also apply any method of a series to the output of such an operation. So for instance here, I wanted to count the number of, so I wanted to count the number of true and false, because this returns me a series of true and false values, and if I wanted to see how many are true and how many are false, I can use the count values. So here I see that I have two rows, so two rows in my DataFrame where I have apparently a problem, and then I could, if I want to see exactly which rows are making a problem, then I can simply use the output of this computation which is true false as a mask, and then as we did before, I can mask, I can filter my DataFrame through the mask, and now I can easily find the two lines rows of my DataFrame where there is a problem between the counts of men and women and the total values. Okay, and here you can notice that I use this tile in front of the mask. So what this means is that it basically inverts, if you have a vector or series of Boolean values, if you add a tile in front, it will basically inverse the value, so it changes true into false and false into true, and here I use it to basically take the rows for which the output is false instead of true. Yeah, okay, so you can also, we didn't explicitly see this so far, but basically you can, what you can do is that when you do a selection, then you can also perform an assignment on this selection, and what this means is that it means that you assign this value only to the rows that match the conditions that you, or the selection that you did. Okay, so here, let's say I want to put the fare of the passengers in third class to NA value for some reason, so I can simply make a subset of the passengers in the third class, and I say for the fare column, I will set values of NA, and you see that values for passengers in the third class have been set to NA. Okay, okay, so let's take a few minutes to do a microexercise 6. Again, with the Titanic data set, now we would like to do a query to get the passengers that are younger than 10 years and apply a discount on their fare, so modify the value in the fare column basically. So what I want to do is I want to divide basically the fare by two, but only for people who are under the age of 10, right? So the first thing is I will need to select these rows somehow, and we know how to do this with the lock indexer, so we can say we want to select people, so columns, sorry, rows for which the column age is smaller than 10, right? So if I do this, I should now have only people whose age is a bit of 10. Okay, so that seems to work. Now, what I want to do is for these people, I will select the fare column, so now I have only one column here, I don't have my whole data frame, and for this column now I want to divide it by two, okay? So you can say, you can do it like this, okay, the column equals the column divided by two, but as we've seen, so this would work, but there is a shortcut to say simply divide equal two, okay? So this means the column equals the column divided by two. So if I do this, and I look up, I'll actually use this to get a few more kids, and now if I compare before and after, I should see that for kids, so for instance, the third column here, I have now divided by two fare, and same for the last two columns, I also have half of what I had before, and for all other passengers, the value is unchanged, okay? Because I only applied the division on this subset of rows. All right, any questions? It's not the case and let me continue, and we will now see a couple of built-in functions that you can apply to columns of a data frame, or actually also data frames. So you've seen, before I showed you, for instance, an example when we wanted to check the fraction of people who survived in the Titanic data set, I showed you that you could use the dot mean method to compute the mean of an entire column, while there are many other of these functions that are available, and here we just list a few of them, so they're useful, so you have count to count the number of non-NA values that you have in a column, or a series, then you can have things like sum, mean, max, min, you know, that would do exactly what you expect, so operation indicated in the name, std.std for standard deviation dot var for computing the variance, count to round the number to a given decimal, and you have also operations on booleans such as dot all to check if all values are true, or dot any to check if any, if the series or the column contains at least one true value. So all these methods by default, they apply on a column, and if you want to apply them on rows, then you have to add the axis equal to one argument. So zero is the default value for the axis argument, which means apply the operation by column, and if you want to apply it by row, you change this to axis equals one. So let's see a couple of examples here. The first one is I want to compute the mean and standard deviation of H in the, in the, in the data set, so I can simply select the column H, and then I apply the mean method on it. Okay, so I get the answer here. And if I want to compute the standard deviations and I simply apply the dot std method. So you can do this on one column but you can also do it on an entire data frame so here it's a data frame with two columns age and fair. And if I apply one of these function on it, you see that it will give me the value per column. If I wanted to compute them a row. In this case it will make much sense, but if I have some data frame in a data setting, it was a different setup organization, then I can simply use axis equal one. And sometimes you, you don't necessarily want to get to, for instance, you don't want to get a value itself but you want to get the index of the row with this value. So the typical example here is with a minimum and maximum. I don't mean this in this use case I want to find out, for instance, which passenger has paid the highest ticket price in the in the data set, but I'm not interested only in the in the actual fair so I don't want to use just the max method, but I can retrieve the index of the row where the fair is maximum so I can display the entire role and I can retrieve other attributes of the passengers and also the names, the class, and so on. So now what I can do for this I can use IDX max or IDX min. Okay, so in this case I want to get passengers who paid the most so I will select the fair column and then use the IDX max method and this will return me the index where the fair column is has its highest value. And then I use this output of this to filter my data frame. And you see now I retrieve the row of the person who paid the highest ticket price. Alright, so here we've seen how we can apply these some of these built-in functions, and they cover you know all the basics as we've seen like a mean median minimum maximum standard deviation and so on. But sometimes, you know you want to apply a function that is a little bit more specific, and that you will write yourself. In other words, you want to apply a custom function, and this is of course possible and the way it works is that you have to use these map and apply map methods. Okay, so if you want to apply a function to only a series or a single column of a data frame, you would use a map. And if you want to apply to an entire data frame, then you would use a plan. So here is an example of how it would work. So, first we need a you know some sort of custom function. So that's what I'm defining here in this. This is Excel. So it creates these functions that we call silly function. And what it does it simply takes a numeric input. So actually, in Tetris, and it will simply check if the value is even or up. Okay, and if it's even it returns a string even it's odd. It returns the string up. So let's just test it. I applied on numbers for from zero to four. And you see, I get even ones and even and odd, when it's odd. So now, let's say that I would like to apply this function to all elements of the age column in the data frame that I think data frame. Okay, so, the way I will do this is, select the column, I want to apply the functional. So he's age, and then I will apply the map method of this function and the argument that you pass to map is the actual function you want to to apply. Okay, so if I try this. And you see that now, it has taken every element of the age column, and it has checked if the age was even or odd. So just a couple of things that you have that you need to be aware here is that's a, sorry, the important thing is that's a this function that you are passing to map. It must accept, take exactly one input argument. Okay, because the column contains, you know, it's applied on each element of the column and each element is a single value so it's logical that's a function that you're passing to map must be a function that accepts exactly one argument, if it's a function that needs two arguments and it will not work. So in the case where I would like to apply this function to an entire data frame. So here, I created a frame with the three columns age for passenger class. Then I cannot use map I need to use a plan but it works exactly the same the same way you just call a plan map, and then you pass the custom function, you want to apply. It's the function has been applied to every cell in the data frame. Okay, so just map for a single column or a Panda series and apply map for an entire data frame. So if you wanted to apply a custom function, actually to an entire column, but not, you know, not element wise but actually that's a whole column is the input of your function, then you have to use dot apply method. So it works the same way as a, as a map method but the difference is that now you have to give a function that will accept a sequence of values, and the sequence will be the content of the, of the column so here, I have an example like this. I create a custom function called some also it should be some of squares. And what it does is takes a sequence of values as input and it will simply compute the sum of the square values. And now, if I want to apply this function to each of my three columns of the data frame, then I will simply call apply, and I pass the function sum of squares. And actually, here I'm passing one more arguments actually, I default zero. Yeah, so here I pass function sum of squares to apply. And you see that now, what I get as output is basically the function applied to each of the columns. Okay, so that's the difference between apply and apply map is that apply map will apply the function to each element of the data frame was applied will apply it column wise. So obviously, apply map takes a function that takes a single where each that takes only a single argument, whereas when you use apply then the input function must accept an argument that is a sequence of values. I wanted to now apply this function instead of computing the sum of square per column if I wanted to do per row, I would simply change axis to axis equals one K by default. Things are computed by on the entire columns. If I wanted to compute them on rows I have to manually add axis equals one. So now what I get is a base for each row I get a square sum mean the sum of the square values of age fair passenger class. So, here we have a small section is just to to draw your attention on the fact that, of course, you know to compute these, for instance, to to apply a certain function on all the elements of all the elements of a column so even all elements of data frame you could also very well say oh you know I will just write a loop and you know goes through my items one by one, and then applies a function to each of them. Okay, but so this is possible. It will work but the problem is that it will be very slow so if the data frame is small, maybe it doesn't matter. But if the data frame is large, then you know it could really have a make a big difference. So the idea here is that whenever possible you will want to do what is called this you know vectorized operation it means to apply a function on an entire column or on the entire data frame at once. So basically, what this means is that whenever possible, you really want to use a map apply or apply my functions. And you don't want to write loops. Okay, so basically you want to avoid for performance reasons, and also to make your code more concise, you really want to avoid loops as much as possible. And when you work with these data frames you really have to get into the habit of thinking into these vectorized ways or apply functions and methods on all elements of the column at once with, you know, map or apply map. So that's that's the idea that we want to message us we want to give you here. I think for if you do this type of analysis or in our party you're also familiar with this problem because you know always even slows and Python and the writing loops take for takes forever. So it's a you probably also use the vectorized functions. So in Python, and as it's the same, whenever possible, use map, apply or apply map to do computations on your tables. Yeah, don't don't use loops. Yeah, I think that's last. We almost got micro exercise for this notebook where what we want to do is that I give you here a function that will. Sorry, if you remember in the Yeah. So in the Titanic data sets the last column and bar here. It contains the abbreviated value of the port of invocation to the city where people boarded Titanic. So it has, you know, as for Southampton, see for Sherwood and queue for Winston. And so what we want to do is we want to create a new column that contains expanded value of the port of invocation. Okay, so here, I give you a function that when you pass it. First letter of the The abbreviated value of the port of invocation, it will expand it to the full value and what I want you to do here is to apply this function on every element of the embarked column and create a new columns. So let's take five minutes to do this. And then we will correct it together together. So we've just seen that to one way I want to apply a custom function to a column of data frame what we want to do here, we can use a map. Okay, so this method is, you need to apply it on a single column of data frame. So, and the column we want to work on is embarked right so I can do def dot embarked dot map. And now I can give the function that I want to apply. Okay, so I will do it like that. And if I try to run it. Now you see that I get back a column or a series that contains the expanded value. Okay, so for each element in the row. Pandas applied the function, and it got the response from the function which in this case simply expands the abbreviation of the city to the full name of the city. Now if I want to store this in a new column of the data frame, then we know that's very easy to do, because we simply use a square bracket notation, and we create a new column that we will call bar. Okay, and we assign it the output of the map function. Now if I look at my data set, I should have a new column exactly here with all the expanded values. And that's it to with just this line I can easily apply the function and create a new column in my data set.


The Bemidji Fire Department was busy this morning after responding to the report of a garage fire around 2 a.m. The fire happened at the 3,000 block of Island View Drive northeast. Eleven firefighters arrived on the scene and were able to extinguish the blaze in about three hours and prevent it from spreading to the home. The damage is estimated at $30,000. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but it appears to have been accidental. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


From DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com, I'm Darren Marlar and this is your Daily Dose of Weird News. Ikea is talking about launching a restaurant chain. When you order, you'll have to put the food together yourself. Bill O'Reilly's exit from the Fox News channel became official on Wednesday. Replacing Bill will be reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants. Nine lives or not, your cat could help you live longer. People who've owned a feline are 40% less likely to die of a heart attack, perhaps due to the pet's anxiety-easing powers. But get this, another study says household felines are able to manipulate you at whim with an urgent-sounding high-pitched meow, which is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While some owners think cats purr when they're happy, some cats make the purr cry when they want to be fed, and people find the mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore. The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response, explains Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is more likely to get them ejected from the bedroom. We think cats learn to dramatically exaggerate this purr cry when it proves effective in generating a response from humans, she says. So, in other words, cats know people like the back of their paws. The new trendy drink, clear coffee, so you aren't continually staining your teeth. Although at 3.50 a serving, I think I'll just use toothpaste instead. A Florida couple has set a record by going on their 200th Carnival cruise. Separately, I might add, which is the secret to their happy marriage. Netflix says it's true, their subscribers have spent over 500 million hours watching Adam Sandler movies. I guess I can't be so prideful now about calling myself a Netflix user. North Korean men can choose from among 15 sanctioned hairdos, but they are not allowed to get the Kim Jong-un haircut. Really, that's a problem?  The police chief of Sperry, Oklahoma, wrote himself a $300 speeding ticket. A citizen had complained about seeing him speeding, he admitted it, and so he's paying the fine. And then he had to write himself another ticket for disturbing the peace when he cursed himself for giving himself a ticket. Japan is trying to stop their death-by-overworking problem by placing a limit of 100 hours of overtime per month. Which if you are a YouTube creator, you know is still considered a normal work week. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe if you want to see more. And click that little bell next to the subscribe button to be notified when I post new videos. And if you're already an official weirdo, be sure to leave a comment and say so. Hey, have you signed up for the Marlar Sheet? It's free and it's the official newsletter of Marlar House. Writers to the Marlar Sheet are automatically entered in monthly prize drawings. Sign up for the Marlar Sheet free today at MarlarHouse.com. For more weird news anytime, visit DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com. I'm Darren Marlar and I'll see you next time, Weirdos!


Hey everybody and welcome. We are so excited you're here joining us today talking all about family engagement. I'm super excited to be welcoming Justin here from Eugene, Oregon. I am Chris, your host. We're gonna be chatting all about how families can be engaged and how that powerful learning loop can be connected with our communities. Justin, I'll let you introduce yourself really quick before we jump right in. Yeah, my name is Justin Huntley. I'm a curriculum administrator here Eugene School District out in Oregon. We're I think the fifth largest district here in Oregon. We've got four comprehensive high schools and eight middle schools and like 2021 elementary schools. So a lot going on, a lot going on. I've been in education for 26 years now. Most of those have been as a secondary administrator, but for the last five I've been enjoying life in the curriculum department here at the district office. Awesome, awesome. I love it. You bring such a wide breadth of experiences which is always great. It helps you to just really serve your community, serve your teachers in the right way. We're gonna kick off with a pretty basic question here Justin, why is family engagement important for you in your role? I think it's something that I've learned over my years of being a school administrator. I thought as a high school principal I did a good job getting things out, using social media, kind of using the latest technology and kind of you get that high insight and you realize you could have done a better job. And I will say having daughters and having kids grow up within the system, elementary teachers do a far better job than secondary teachers at communicating with parents. They send a lot of things home. You kind of have an idea what's happening in the classroom and as they get older the disconnect between families and school just widens. And I think we can do a better job opening the doors and opening the window into the classroom. And that's one of the reasons I'm a real proponent of CSaw is it does just that and does it in a way that no other tool does.  A positive connection with your community, a positive connection with your families? You know, Eugene's a unique community in that we have a lot of individuality even amongst our schools. And so there has been a lot of unique efforts at various buildings that are different. And so it's not necessarily a unified district way of going about it. But I think our schools have done a good job reaching out. They host various events at the beginning of the school year where they're inviting those families into the schools. You know, whether it be an open house or they just have some very unique community type activities where they reach out and some of them have picnics some of them have barbecues and they invite their community to the school and try to get connected that way. And you know, it's funny too, communications always changing. And so folks are changing their phone numbers and you'll get those families that still have their original email and they've got their Yahoo, AOL and you have to kind of tackle when those come across but then there's others that are changing them monthly and it's like trying to keep up with how best to communicate and reach those parents. And so you've got to reach out. You've got to connect them to the school in some way and inviting them in. And the more that you can get that regular communication set up, the better off you're going to be. What has been the most impactful change you've made in your role to help to increase family engagement? I think in my role, my biggest strength or impact that I've had is being able to work directly with principals to show them the tools available, specifically to get them familiar with how to use CSAW. So that professional development that you do upfront to help folks, especially at the beginning of the year, there's never enough time at the beginning of the year but to spend the time, etch it out, do the professional development so people have the at least awareness that the tool is there. And then maybe in a couple of weeks when they can take a deep breath and go, okay, I need, come out and help me, walk me through this so that I can start to do this tool. And I think that's the biggest, the upfront loading and the upfront work can pay huge dividends in the end. And so it's just a matter of forcing yourself to sit down and learn that new tool. And I met with a principal just last week and she was asking me this exact question, what's the best way to communicate with your mom and parents? And I walked her through the tools and what you can do within CSaw. But then I said, hey, again, you've got to reach parents where they're at. She was used to doing this newsletter and using, I think, SMORE to do that newsletter. And hey, if you're already doing that, keep doing it. Just add another tool to your toolbox. Just add another way to reach out because the more that you can do, the more tools you can do, you're meeting parents where they're at and so just trying to convince folks that just try it. Just send one message, see what happens. And just getting them over that phobia of, I've never used this and now all of a sudden I'm gonna use it as my communication tool as my first interaction with a parent. It's like, no, no, it's not that big a deal. You can always, just like we're doing here, we can always delete it, go back and you can ask me that question again. It's not the end of the world. And so trying to get them over that phobia at the beginning, I think is important. If I were to give advice to another district, one of the things that we just kind of don't have the ability to do here is kind of that top down, edict of this is exactly how you're going to communicate. So we have an interesting district in that we're very site-based in our management and not district-based. And so that has its pros and cons, but in a district where you are centralized to be consistent in your communication because if I'm a parent and I've got a middle school student, a high school student, an elementary student and I'm getting communicated with three different ways, it's hard for me to keep up. Again, let's meet that parent where they're at and make sure that that parent, whatever it is that they're using, whether it be social media, whether they're using the app, whether they're getting on canvas, that it's very clear on how to access those tools. And so, and to do it multiple ways, if you do a newsletter, make sure you're just copying that link and you're dropping it into a message and you're sending that via whatever message system you're sending. You don't necessarily have to recreate it. You can just send a link to it, but at least they have access to it. And I think access is the key. We're real cognizant of trying to make sure that we are putting out messages that are multilingual. We wanna make sure that we're hitting all of our families that we're not just catering to the dominant majority. We want everybody to be connected. And so, looking for tools that translate into multiple languages. Yeah, having sat down with one of our teachers at one of our high SEL population schools, she talked about how powerful it was to UCSA in that it broke down that communication barrier. The parent at home didn't speak any English and she didn't speak the language of that student, the home language of that student. And so, UCSA allowed her to break down those communication barriers because they could chat two ways and it would translate for each of them. And so, kept them connected, kept that parent involved in what was happening in the classroom, allowed her an avenue or a venue to be able to communicate and it just broke down all those walls. And so, if we're not using technology to do those kinds of things, I mean, you're missing the boat. It's the 21st century. There's no reason why these things can't happen. There are so many tools, so many really good tools that do this. And so, if you don't find one that works, you're not trying very hard. In the terms of maybe starting the year or even if you have new families coming in, if you've ever come across a challenge or a barrier that was just tricky for you to overcome and if you did, what did you do to get through that barrier? How did you bridge that gap to be able to have that positive connection that you were aiming for? Yeah, and I'm gonna kind of go back to my earlier answer and I know Eugene is a community along with a lot of communities around the nation right now are seeing a rise in homelessness and just a lack of access. And so, I think that partnership that we were able to have where we were providing cell phones and cell service and internet service to those families and really breaking down those barriers is huge. And again, one less barrier for a family that's really experiencing trauma and going through some difficult times. If we can break those barriers down and give them the access they need to communicate with the teacher, which that's our goal. We want to connect that parent directly with that teacher in that school. If we can provide at a fairly low cost a way to do that, I think the benefits far outweigh the expense. Why I'm a proponent of CISA is because of the student voice. Parents don't necessarily want to hear the principal's message. They don't want to read through all of the pieces and parts. We got my teachers at the elementary where my daughters, they send stuff home every Friday. And it became the newspaper to me. It came every day. And if there was something catchy, I looked at it. If not, I didn't really pay attention. And I didn't ask my student about it either. I just looked at it and that was the end of it. Whereas with CISA, I think the power is I get to hear my kid narrate what they're learning in the classroom. Whether that's over the top of a picture that they've taken or they're doing an actual video. And I'm listening to that, watching that. I'm gonna watch that. I'm gonna be tied right into that.  So, and I'm gonna share with the person next to me, oh, look at my kid. It's the dad pulling out their wallet of pictures. But it's, hey, here's my kid. Look what my kid's doing. I just, I can't stress enough how important I think that tool is. And the other piece I think it does is it, because I have that window into the classroom when my student gets home and I ask them, I'm not asking them, hey, what'd you do today? And I'm gonna get the answer, nothing. That's the classic answer, right? And then you have to probe and pull teeth to figure out what they did in class today. No, I got to see exactly what they did in class today. And I'm gonna ask that specific question. Oh, I got to watch your video today. Tell me about that. And they're gonna get excited as well because you saw something they did. So it just takes the barriers down. It takes those, the curtains off the window. I can see what it is that they're doing every day. I just wanna close up with saying thank you so much, Justin, for being here. Thank you for chatting about family engagement and family involvement in your schools. We learned a ton from what you guys are doing here and we're very excited to share your stories with everybody who's interested in continuing to grow their family engagements and bridge their family connections. Thank you so much, Justin. Thank you.