Yeah, taking middle and left-stump guard on this Thursday edition of the Sportsman's Owners, we begin with Cricket an improved batting performance from the West Indies in the second test against Australia at the Gabba in Brisbane. The Caribbean side electing Tabat and finishing they won a 266 for eight. Here is Derrard Marseille with that recap. West Indies elected Tabat on a flat-looking surface at the Gabba in Brisbane, but there was very little intent shown by the opener. Greg Brathway, Tantasia Reishandepoel merely tried to survive, but the plan backfired with the captain nicking off to Josh Hazelwood for four. Jamaican Kirk McKenzie came and went on the counter-attack, striking three-fourths and a six in his 25-ball knock. But his loose drive gave Pat Cummins his only wicket of the day, the left-handed gone for 21, the West Indies two for 42. Wickets kept tumbling in the opening session, Tantasia Reishandepoel for 21, Alec Athene is falling again, this time going for eight, and Justin Graves for six, leaving the Caribbean side reeling at five for 64 at the dinner interval. But Kavim Hodge and Joshua De Silva were the saving grace for the Windies. The two put on a 149-run sixth wicket stand, a record for any team in 11 day-night tests against Australia. The peer batted through the tee at five for 145 before both brought up half centuries after the break. First, Hodge in only his second test. Oh, it goes down, there's a shout of catch, whether it carried. Nevertheless, it's 50 for Hodge, his first in-test cricket. He's part of a fine partnership alongside De Silva, trying to rescue the West Indies. What about it? And then De Silva. Scurries through, 100 partnership and 50 for Joshua De Silva. The fourth time he's reached the mark in test cricket and part of a valuable middle-order partnership to bring the West Indies back into the game. The Aussies had the final say though, De Silva fought a leg before Nathan Lyon for a top score of 79 before Mitchell Stark claimed his fourth wicket, removing Hodge for 71 with the squad 7 for 225. Azari Josef and debutant Kevin Sinclair frustrated the Aussies, adding 41 for the eighth wicket before Azari edge to slip. The Antigone dismissed for 32 of what turned out to be the final ball of the day. West Indies 8 for 266 at the close. All right, let's get the umpire in. Fazir Mohammed, he's moved from our captain to the man out in the middle. Faz, how are you doing today? Day one of this test match between the West Indies and Australia, 266 for eight at the close. How do you assess the day one performance from the Caribbean side? Well, it really was encouraging that partnership. I think that made all the difference because at 64 for five at lunch, you were thinking the West Indies would be all probably just over 100 if that many early into the afternoon. But that partnership, I think it showed just what the West Indies are capable of is the highest partnership ever against Australia in a day and night test match is the highest partnership of this Australian summer, which also involves free tests against Pakistan. So it says that there is some fighting ability, there's some quality, there's some character. And even at the end, Azari Joseph and Devutan Sinclair really just rub the Australian's noses in it. But again, it's important to put it in context. 266 for eight is encouraging. Yes, but we have to wait and see how many the West Indies finish up with and Australia's replied. Yeah, for sure. Let's have a look at some of the details of that 149 run partnership and specifically Joshua the Silver because he had gotten out hooking in the first test twice. And he said he had to make a conscious decision not to play that shot this time around. And of course, the Australians ensured that he had the opportunities to do so. How pleased were you to see that Joshua the Silver was able to make the adjustments and produce such an important innings for the West Indies? It was very pleasing to see because you don't want someone who was such a young person almost saying, well, this is my favorite shot. I'm going to go with it anyway. You have to recognize the circumstances, the situation in front of you. He knew he was being set up again. And you're almost drawn on his stumps trying to get out of the way of one of those short pitch deliveries because he was caught into mind because he seems to be almost a compulsive puller and hooker, but it was again commendable that he would be able to restrain himself that way for the sake of himself and the team. Yeah, and Kavim Hodge only a second test match. Of course, he was impressive in the warm-up match leading into this test series. Didn't get a lot of runs in the first test, but last night was an impressive innings, wasn't it? Very impressive. In fact, I was already getting ready to celebrate just the second Test 100 by a Dominican after Irvin Shilinford way back in 1979 against Pakistan, but it didn't happen. And having said all of that and the disappointment of that, you have to give him credit for the way he batted. Yes, he looked airy-fairy occasionally outside the off-stump, especially to Mitchell Stark, but these things happen. Let's not forget, going into this test match, everyone was talking about the Australian bowlers licking their lips to demolish the West Indies even more than they did in Adelaide. So credit to Kavim Hodge, as you said, just the second test match, the pit years, that is third test match, that's probably not going to be one of the six months. Yeah, love how you keep driving that point home, Faiz. Let's talk a little bit about the approach at the top of the order from Tejna Ryan-Chandepole and Craig Brathwaite, one in which they were merely looking to survive. What did you think of the approach? Was there a lack of positivity you think? It's easy for us to say that from more than half a will to be. It's easy for us to say everything, Faiz. That's true, but you're right. The fact is, they could not replicate what we saw 13 months ago when they had a century stand, a 64 run stand, then another 50 run stand in the start of the second test match. But again, we made that point and it bears repeating that in Australia, given the nature of the pitch, the quality of the bowling, you're not going to achieve much poking and prodding and trying to survive because sooner or later, the unplayable delivery will come along. So you've got to expand your repertoire. And I think this is really where Brathwaite and Chandepole, Chandepole, the much younger man, they need to up their game and recognize that occupying the crease for 40 minutes and scoring five, six, seven runs really doesn't do a whole lot to the team effort if you get out right after that. Yeah, it's interesting. When you look at the dismissals on day one of this test match, a number of the batsmen edging just poking outside the off-stamp, that good line, that good length, that causes some amount of indecision. You look at the decisions or the dismissals in isolation and you will probably say, well, they could have left that one. They should have left that one. From what you saw, though, is there some type of technical deficiency in the batsmen? Is it an issue of concentration and focus or is it just that this Australian bowling lineup is top notch and they are putting the balls in the right areas consistently enough and reaping the rewards? If it were a multiple-choice question you are asking, I would say all of the above, because essentially it's really all those points are valid. What is also valid is that if you've got players who are relatively new, who are relatively inexperienced and don't come up against that quality of bowling that often like a Hazelwood metronomically accurate honourable that off-stamp and all of the fast moals essentially doing the same thing, it's going to be difficult. It's easy for us again to say, well, you know, you should have left that alone. But in the heat of things, when you've got the mood with you, when as we saw that shot, that what Atheneus got out and subsequently as well, another slash that saw another wicket going down with Mackenzie, you would say on the face of it, look, those are poor shots and granted they are. But in the context of things with failure to run to be had, you can't allow the bowlers to get on top of you. You've got to find a way to score runs because you just can't simply survive just by blocking all day. It presents a dilemma. And therefore, if you've got players who are not really attuned to these sorts of conditions day in, day out in their domestic competition, it's bound to be a struggle. Yeah. And then, of course, quickly, I want a quick word on Kurt Mackenzie because only got 21 last night, but I rather like the look of him. He is positive when he gets to the crease and he clearly has a lot of shots. And I was listening to some of the discussion about maybe Kevin Hodge being put up to number three because the former players, the commentators suggesting that I would think not because I think Kurt Mackenzie plays that role. You need someone who's willing to dominate. Okay, didn't happen. It may not happen. But if he gets enough opportunity, if he gets enough of a chance at the highest level often enough and back in the regional competition in that role, he'll grow into because clearly he has the temperament. He has the wherewithal and just giving him the chance in that position, eventually, he's going to come good and hopefully come good on a consistent basis. Yeah, so unfortunate, of course, that Zahrajose fellow of what turned out to be the last ball of the day, 10 seconds files. How many do the West Indies get in this first innings? I would say maybe 285. I would like them to get up to 320, which would really be a psychological boost. But at the moment, I see it difficult to get up to 300. Yeah, who knows, we probably will have another Shamar Joseph show. Thanks very much for us. We'll chat again after day two tomorrow. Take care. All right, Fazir Mohamed, let's take a break. We'll be back with more on the Sportsmax Zone.


What Now America? I'm Tim Apachele, your host, and today's title is Vaccination Passport, Reasonable or Not. You know, more than half of Americans now, adults have been vaccinated. And as that number increases, we're going to have some societal pressure applied. And that is, to what extent will businesses, schools, public gatherings require a passport stating that you've been vaccinated? And to what degree does that polarize Americans even further, even further than the mask issue that we've been dealing with and totally politicized? So it's an interesting topic. I think it's going to be with us for some time. And I think it's worthwhile to discuss it. So let's get right to it. I'd like to introduce Jay Fidel, Cynthia Leeson-Claire, and Winston Welch. Welcome, everyone. Welcome to What Now America? Jay, let's go to the obvious question. Is it reasonable for businesses, schools, entities that people gather, stadiums, football, sports events? Is it reasonable to say entry is allowed based on your ability to prove that you were vaccinated? You know, we're still at the cusp here. We're still at a tipping point. You know, when the CDC, and that means that Biden administration announced that it was okay now to go out in public, except in limited circumstances, and not wear a mask, I said, gee, that's not a good idea. Why do that? I mean, his target date is July 4th. It's a long way to July 4th. Why don't we keep on wearing masks? There's so many variables in play. There's so many risks still to be dealt with. And what is worse? And I talked to a number of people about this, and I get the same reaction. You know, if you have the people who are, what do you want to call hesitant about taking the vaccine? They don't wear a mask. Because, you know, hesitancy and Trumpism is the same thing. And, you know, anti-voting rights is the same thing. And on and on is all the said gun, gun, gun, not gun control, the same thing. So if these people don't wear masks, and then the people who have had a vaccine don't wear masks, how can you tell the difference? How can I tell the difference? If I've had a vaccine, it doesn't exclude the possibility I can still catch it. The jury is still out on that. We don't know. We don't have the data, the experience factor to know yet. Moreover, let me add, there's a lot of people in this country who, you know, are not doing anybody a favor, but not wearing masks and not social distancing, not taking the vaccines. And they're vulnerable to not only the virus, but the variant. And the more of them there are, the more variants we'll have. And the more variants we have, the less sure we can be that our vaccines will work against the variants. It's a jury still out on that. Let me add one more. That's a great point. And I just want to say one thing on that point you just made. And to what degree is it allowable for people to put those who have been vaccinated at new risk with the virus? Because their refusal to get vaccinated is a breeding ground for the variant. And so that's a societal question. If not a legal question is, to what right do you have the right to infect me with a variant that I normally would not have been infected with? Absolutely. Absolutely.  It's a question of lack of consideration for the people around you or in the community.   You may die as a result of your political beliefs. It's really bizarre what is happening in the country. And I'm so sorry that we live in a country where the president can't say, you will wear a mask, all of you. You know, it almost extols the virtue of more authoritarian countries where they can do that and achieve a better result, better outcomes. But I was going to add this one point before I stop. And that is, is that look around the world now, look at India is out of control.  So I started looking on the web for countries, you know, that would permit me in. There are very few. I think maybe that's changing in Europe, but in Asia, a lot of them just say no. New Zealand, Australia, they just say no. Singapore, they just say no. And so the world is still in the throes of this. And some countries are having huge spikes in it. Some states, for that matter, are having huge spikes. So it's not like we're out of the woods. We need to protect ourselves.  Good point. Thank you. Appreciate it. You know, Cynthia, the Bill of Rights is a very important document that provides protections of all Americans. But the Bill of Rights is really a protection against government infringing upon the individual. There's nothing in the Bill of Rights that says an employer, a private entity, can impose its restrictions. So what is to prevent businesses from saying you should not come in our business without your vaccination? Now, as Jay pointed out, it was very easy to spot who had a mask and who didn't. That was very easy. And that alone caused a lot of conflict at Costco and other big box stores, which we all saw on YouTube here and there. It was ugly. It was a horrible situation. To what extent will employers that hire and have employees that working in their confines and businesses that are retail of nature, to what extent do they say we're going to require in demand of vaccination, proof of vaccination, before you enter the premise? And to what degree does that create a social problem? Well, I think it's, of course, going to cause more social issues and divisions. Well, it may not cause more divisions, but just shine a light on these divisions more. Because I don't think it's so much going to, I think the division between the vaccine people and the anti-vaccine people, masters and unmaskers are sort of already, it's already there pretty clearly. So I don't think it's going to make it worse. But I think it will shine a light on it. That's definitely for sure. And it's going to cause problems for the people that say that the private businesses would have to hire somebody that can stand at the door and check people's passports. There's a lot of, I would think, you know, economic stuff that's involved in it too. How do you pay for it? How do you do it? But you know, all this, the government can't make you do stuff. I want everybody to look at their arm, at least our age people, right?  Now, even today, even without the polio and a lot of other stuff, right? You can't go to school unless you have a vaccine, unless your kids are vaccinated, kids in the school. So now then there was this big thing about anti-vaccine because of a misinformation post, social media post, that has since been debunked, but has spread like wildfire, and people think that vaccines cause autism now for kids. Just totally not true. Well, that was an English report. It wasn't just a social media report. It was an actual document from an English doctor, and that has been debunked years ago. You're right. Yet still people think of that, right? So, you know. This was about measles. And look at what is happening in the schools. My brother's a pediatrician, and he said it's crazy what's happening. Kids, all these childhood diseases that were gone are now coming back because of this vaccine hesitancy stuff. So isn't that going to apply again here now? And how we fight it? I'm not sure, but I agree with Jay about taking the masks off. I don't think it was a good idea for him. Okay. Let me ask you this. Is it reasonable for a retail employee, a real entity, to say, please show us your passport before you come in? Is that a reasonable request? And to what degree do you think there will be conflict at the door? I think it is a completely reasonable request, and I think there will be plenty of parents that show up and say, oh, you can't make me do this. Well, you know, it's a private business and they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone that they feel, and every business does that. So, you know, there might be a problem, but you know, I think if they can call the police and a few people get arrested throwing fists like that, maybe it'll stop, I don't know, or at least slow down a little. Okay. Winston, is this an issue of public safety versus personal rights, or is there more to it than that? Is it just that simple? Is your rights stopped where my rights start? And this is a public health issue, and therefore, you know, compliance is expected? Or does the individual rights of an individual Trump public safety? In a word? No. All right, Jay. No, I just can't. Okay, Jay.  How awful that was? No, you don't because you didn't get smallpox as a kid because you got vaccinated against it, as did I. They're not doing it anymore because it doesn't exist in the wild.  It's against our religion. It's almost done. It's almost done. And we've made headway on this. We had the Mises Monspevella. And then when you see exactly when that doesn't happen, the government has not only a right, it has the responsibility to look out for its citizens. And while we have a bill of rights that allows us a lot of rights, one of them is not the ability to infect other people or to cause a social chaos by not getting infected, by infecting others with the disease. Now, this one is a this is a trickier one because we're at this point now where you have all this distrust. Why do people distrust this? They don't like vaccines to begin with. Maybe they think they're injecting us with something. They think it's too fast. They don't know if it's effective. They're worried about the side effects. Or they're not worried about the virus at all. I mean, these are some reasons why people don't want to get this on top of those concerns about vaccines that have been debunked. Let me supplement that point. And don't lose your point, but let me supplement that. And that is I've heard from the counter argument from the folks I know. And that is the FDA studies drugs all the time for years before they approve it. And then, lo and behold, we find out that those drugs either caused heart damage or all sorts of deaths, cancer, things of that nature. And so the drugs were pulled, yet the FDA had studied them for years and finally gave approval to it, where these vaccines have been studied for months. And lo and behold, here they are in the marketplace. And shouldn't that be a reason for my desire not to take the vaccine? Because it really hasn't been proven to be quite safe. And the study regime has been truncated greatly in order to address the virus itself. It's a fair question. And I think that we are all enrolled in a giant medical study from birth. Every single person you know is enrolled in a medical study and we will all die of something and we will all have certain diseases based on our age, race, socioeconomic status, a lot of different factors, our genetic predisposition to things, where we grow up, radiations, but whatever, vaccines. But this one in particular has completely shut down our societies on a global level. If there isn't a more clarion call to have our world start up again by getting this vaccine, which has been proven to virtually stop people from dying this disease, if they've managed to get it in the 5% that may get it, and I'm not sure that it's even that high, they don't seem to be dying from this. So I'm just going to go with that. Now down the road, are we going to find out some things like this subgroup got more of this or was more susceptible to that? Inevitably, that's just going to happen. Nothing is foolproof, but as far as I can tell, and this is a new technology, I don't want to, you know, it's just like anything else. It's a new technology, but it's been around for 20 years, they've been testing it. And as far as I can tell, they have administered this to, to, you know, half a billion people, maybe a billion people worldwide for these vaccines. And they seem to be really very safe. And they're stopping this disease right now. As far as, so that argument, while it's true, we don't have the luxury of time to wait for 30 years to see who got vaccinated for COVID and who didn't because the whole society needs to be vaccinated now in the same way that we tackled smallpox. It's going to be, it's going to be a hard, arduous thing because I don't think people denied that smallpox existed when they were giving out those vaccines at the 40s, 50s, 60s or whenever they came out. These days, you have all of these alternative narratives going around. So it's going to be harder, but we'll reach a herd immunity. At some point though, you ask, is it okay for the government to do that? It was a mistake to say people don't have to wear their masks outside because it will confuse things more. But I think eventually, the writing is on the wall, if you don't have your vaccine and you don't have your vaccine passport, however that shows up, they're not going to let you into the mall. They're not going to let you on a plane. You're not going to be able to go to Costco or if they do, you're going to be able to go from seven till nine on Tuesday mornings. And you will be allowed only one person and you'll be forced to double mask or whatever it is that they'll have. They'll let you be on the Tuesday flight to Milwaukee at three in the morning. And it'll be something like that. So I think the answer about do employers have a right to require this, it's yes. And if you don't, you can be fired from that schools. Probably I saw their testing on six months old now with this vaccine. So eventually, the reason right now why it's not required and why the army can't require it, although I think they could by some presidential order, is that it remains under an emergency youth authorization. So until that changes, which will probably be sometime this fall, it can't be mandated for people. And even then not everyone's going to get it, but we will reach a, we will reach some sort of herd immunity over time. And I think the public pressure to get that shot is just going to become so overwhelming for people for whatever reasons that they have that, that they will just give up and get the shot because it will be so much trouble and humbug. They won't be able to be around their friends or family. It'll create more personal division and more societal division. And at some point, they're just going to say, I just want to go to Tommy's birthday party, but Mary and Susie and Sally won't let me until I get this damn vaccine. So I just gave in and got it. I think at the end of the day, that's going to be about half of it. Okay. Yeah, I think you took a nice swipe at the issues involved that we're going to face and we're going to see. Jay, does this, for those who refuse to get vaccinated and they'll feel the ramifications from society, either private employers or schools or whatever, will cases work its way to the Supreme Court on this issue? What do you think? As I've said before, you know, it's still in flux and I don't completely agree with Winston's notion this is all going to work out swell. I think we've got a long way to go. We had somebody from the EEOC, it was the Employers Council, the Employers Council, the other day on the show. And she said, well, we have to educate our employers that handle situations where they don't want to hire somebody or they have somebody in their staff who doesn't want to do vaccine. And really, because if it was me and they didn't take a vaccine, I wouldn't let them in the house or the store or the restaurant, I wouldn't let them in. I said, no, no, we have to deal with that. There are people feel very strongly about it and they make complaints and you can expect litigation by people who don't want to take the vaccine and don't want to be fired or want to get a job despite the fact they haven't taken the vaccine. I mean, that's outrageous, but that's what's happening. And yes, it will go through the courts, but it'll take a long time.  You know that they're going to fight, they're going to put money on it, they're going to, you know, wind its way to the Supreme Court slowly because everything is slow when you have a tumble, when you have chaos, you don't want to resolve it right away. That's their MO. So my view of it is, we don't have time to waste here. This is still a crisis. Lest we forget it's still a crisis. And it's just remarkable to me that people don't want to solve the crisis. They want to have the right to a crisis. I don't think this is going to work out well. I don't think that the employers are going to be in charge, at least not for a while. And I think we're going to have other surges. And I think what Joe Biden did the other day with the CD, he did about the masks was really a strange man over strange. Why do you think he did it? Why do you think he did it? Why do you think he caved? I think there was pressure and he came to it. Why? What do you think? I think that's true. He was about to give his state of the union, just happening as we speak. And he wanted to, you know, claim a victory here. He wants to move to July 4th and look good. And, you know, I think he did have something to do with that decision. It wasn't pure CDC. Bottom line, though, is premature and unnecessary, unnecessary. We would have been much better off if he didn't, if they didn't make that decision. Let me add a couple of other points. Well, let me, before you move on, let me, let me ask you a question. Did he just do what Donald Trump did and that's unduly influenced a science, a science-based organization called the CDC? Did he apply political? I have no information on that. Yeah. Okay. But I would disagree with what the CDC did. And, and if he was, you know, resonant with that, then I would disagree with him. I guess he was, he went along with it. Yeah, he went along with it, but he never, he never said boo about it. And so what we have is the problem. The same thing, you know, you made an interesting point about the kids in school. It's chilling to find that we're, you know, we have anti-vaxxers on a number of, and Winston mentioned this too, on a number of diseases that we, you know, that we used to have everybody take a vaccine, you know, it was, it was simple. It was de rigueur for every kid in school. Nobody questioned it. And to find that they're not taking these, these vaccines, it's just remarkable. But I would like to add to what you said, that they come home at night. And some of these diseases are adult disease. Measles would be a good example of that.  And so, you know, what my concern is, we're going to have an outbreak of this, that and the other thing, these kids don't, they, they are a, what do you call it, they're, they're a breeding ground for all those childhood hyphen adult diseases. We're going to, we're going to see that again. The other thing I want to add to what Winston was saying, you know, the people around the country, you know, are in this issue, and maybe it'll work out, but on a global basis, Winston, you know, take Africa. Some of these countries in Africa, the number of people who are vaccinated is like 2% or less. It really low. And, and this is the remarkable part. This is the part that's so chilling. The people in these countries are hesitant also. So you get the unavailability of the, of the vaccine. And on top of that, you get hesitancy. I don't see a light at the end of that tunnel. And that's global. So, you know, we can lift travel bans and, and we can say Americans are welcome back for, you know, tourism purposes. But the bottom line is it's still one world. It's a flat world. And if something is going wrong in Africa, South America, or other, you know, undeveloped countries, we are going to see it bounce right back. And it's going to remain global. And it's going to have an effect, even though we don't spend enough time as far as I'm concerned in the media, the media loves to generate these silly issues. And everybody runs around the block on silly issues, like the raw meat issue, or the Tucker Carlson remark about kids should, you know, parents should go to jail if kids are wearing masks. That was insane. It was another one recently too. Oh, the post, the writer on the post who said that her that that she was she she wrote that Kamala Harris was selling kids books to immigrants who were detained, come to find it's not true at all, then come to find that the New York Post published that article, they also told her to write it. They told her to write the article and she said it's not true. They said you will write that article. She wrote the article and then she quit. And she went public on what happened. And just keep in mind that Fox News and the New York Post are owned by the same people. Okay, well, you know, you kind of, that's our second topic we're going to talk about is what's Fox up to and why are they doing it. We'll get to that in a minute. Let's close this one out Cynthia. Got a governor by the name of Jim Justice, he's the Republican governor from West Virginia. And he has stated, maybe it's an innovative approach, maybe it's not. And that is, he's going to offer a hundred dollar savings bond to anyone between the ages of 16 and I believe 35 in his state. That's the wrong message to send or is it a good idea? I think it's a great idea. I think anything that's going to motivate people, it's going to get people there to the spot to get that shot. That's what I say, anything that's going to work, let's do it. What are the optics on this? What are the optics that the United States has to bribe its population to combat a deadly disease? Because their personal opinions and rights of infringement have been addressed. And they refuse to do it. Now I have to bribe them. What does that say to people in India who are clamoring for a vaccine?  Well, I hate to tell you this, but they kind of already think that anyway. When I went around the world, I found out why do you think that? There would be an American in front of me in line at a store or at a site that I was going, an attraction I was going to see. And they were so rude and so horrible. By the time it was my turn, I would find myself apologizing profusely for all Americans. In the travel circle, that's referred to as the ugly American. So it's been going on for quite a while, but this is a new kind of wrinkle to it, isn't it? It's a new form of ugliness. It's that entitlement that is what people look at and see as ugly.  And that's what's sort of behind some of this hesitancy. And I wonder, I put this to you and to our viewers, if Trump had won and all this vaccine stuff was happening the same way, because it would have rolled out about the same time and everything else, well the rollout would have been a little different because all of his rich friends would have got it first. But all of the Trumpers wouldn't have to say, we don't want it because it would have been his. But now they got to say it's Biden's so they don't want it, which is, it shows they're ignorant. It's like, and so they're not just ugly, but they're ignorant. Well, in a cultural personality that we're still facing with the ex-president, yes means no and no means yes. And whatever you think is good for the country, we were going to oppose it because we can't afford to make you look good. That's the world of polarization we live in and I think your point's well made. Winston, do you agree with her?  So I've also seen that Americans could be really great. But Cynthia's point is, I understand what she's saying. I think what it is, the world rightly so can look at our nation and say, boy, you guys talk a good talk, but when it comes down to it, you have lunatics storming your capital and also like think there's microchips in the vaccine. And on and on, they don't remember Donald Trump got the vaccine before he left the White House, as did his wife. So his followers need to be aware of that, whoever's left. I was heartened to see that in the Republican House meeting that they had in Florida, they didn't invite him there. And Liz Cheney and Kevin McCarty are still trying to work things out to be nice. But, you know, if the world is looking at us and we're paying people to do that for the vaccine hesitant, that's fine with me too. I'm with Cynthia on that. It's sort of like, if that's what we need to do to get the job done, to get those 10 or 15% that need to be a little bribe, it's like the lollipop at the end of your shot that we used to get the old days. I think, why don't they give that out? Why don't you get a gift card to go to Safeway? The sugar product, that's why it's a sugar product. Yeah, we need a sugar, but yeah, then you can get your sugar-free dairy-free, gluten-free, cruelty-free pop, but a gift card to Safeway or something, or to plant a tree. But I think that the point here is it's organ donation. People are going to sign up for organ donation and the people that realize that, and that's a great thing. And we should really have it be an opt out instead of an opt-in on your driver's license. You have to check this if you don't want to give your organs, but they're looking at different approaches now and says, you know what? We'll pay you for a kidney. We'll pay your family, well not your family, but if you're alive and we can do a donor transplant, we'll pay you for that. And people have some ethical problems with that because they're like, but then other people think, hey, I can make a quarter of a million dollars selling my kidney, I got two. So I don't know if it's exactly a fair comparison. I like the Lolli better or maybe $25 gift card, Safeway. If that's going to bring them out, bring them out that way, and the rest will either come on board and you'll always have your heart for ones that are not going to get this shot. And we will be able to work with that and around that because we will have herd immunity by then. Hopefully we won't get some awful combo variant mutants that diseases that start inside of that population, but Jay may be right is that's where that's going to come from. And we are just going to have to cross that bridge when we get to it, but everybody who's got a shot now probably going to sign up and take the pill or the shot in 12 months or 18 months from now with the boosters that cover all these other variants that have come out. Good point. Cynthia, go ahead. Just want to add one thing really quick. They're not like giving them a hundred bucks. They don't just give them a hundred dollars when they walk out the door. It's a hundred dollars savings bond. Right. A little bit different, right? I mean, not that different, but it is a little bit different. I just wanted to make sure that no, you you did. Thank you.  I thought I was going to have enough time to talk about what Fox News up to Rupert Murdoch and his his craziness. But we've run out of time just about, but I just want to throw this out there. Did everyone hear what Tucker Carlson said? Jay, you brought it up two things.  You're offensive. And then the other thing was that people should call the the police or the Department of Child Care Services and report parents that make their children wear masks because it's the same as equivalent to child abuse. And is Tucker Carlson trying to be the next Rush Limbaugh? Is that what he's angling for? Winston, he's aiming to be the next President of the United States from what I can understand. And he's got a platform and he's got the anger behind it. But a statement like that is so incredibly irresponsible. Okay, let me go to that point. Let me go to that point. Donald Trump was canceled from Twitter, from Facebook for not speaking in the benefit of the public good. And whether it be misinformation about the virus or potentially creating more insurrection in society, he was banned. Where's the where's the slap on the wrist for Tucker Carlson? Maybe it comes that they have to have whenever he's on, they have to have a disclaimer whether it's Time Warner or whoever your cable provider is that comes into your house has to have a disclaimer underneath when he is talking that says notice this speaker has been known to disseminate false information. And that's the way they get around. I don't know otherwise how you do that besides just banning his show, but it's not going to happen. Oh, we are in court. And he got away with it because it was an opinion show. It's just his opinion. We got away with it. Well, no, yeah, his opinion is basically inciting people to great conflict. And as they say, the season is ripe for it. And to what degree is he trying to incite violence against members of society against one another? So again, I question where the FCC is on this. And I know they got rid of the fair doctrine law back in 1987. But maybe it's time to bring it back. Well, we've run out of time, but we have time for comments. So Jay, your last comments on this week and where you think we go next week. Yeah, just after the last discussion here, I feel I have a short historical reference. Okay, back in the 18th century, when the captain took the ship, say from Europe into the New World, he would get his orders in a little envelope, and it had a wax seal. And he couldn't open the envelope until they got out to sea. And in the envelope were his orders, which was on one sheet of paper about what he was supposed to do, where he was supposed to go, what his authority was. And that's the last conversation he had with the Admiralty when they got back the way it was. Now the captain leaves, and he's under conversation with the Admiralty every moment of every day. Ari's decision is better. It's sort of an example of what happens when you have everybody involved in the conversation all day long, including people who know and people who don't know. And I submit that we have shoved off into a new world where the press is irresponsible, where you have Tucker Carlson, he'll get away with it. Who's going to stop him? Congress is not going to stop him. I'm telling you this now, go and record him. And you have social media, which is still a potent force, and Congress is not stopping them. As long as these phenomena keep on happening, we are not going to have an honest public conversation. Without honesty in the public conversation, we cannot have a democracy. We're in trouble. That's my comment. I often talk about the misinformation that's still out there. Having fallen prey to it myself, it makes me a more heightened alert to it now. And so I really want everyone, not just Fox News, but every station, really vet all your information, make sure you can find it in a couple of different places. If you find your information in only one place, and it's not corroborated anywhere else, then it's probably not true. And I just really want people to be careful about that and get your vaccine, please. And I don't care if the thing has changed, CDC changed it, wear your mask, until we know everybody's going to be safe. All right. Thank you so much, Cynthia. I love your words. Hey, Winston, your last thoughts, comments about this week and next week?   This is not, I mean, it's not rocket science here. Let's go with the flow. If we all die in two years, the world's going to probably be better off for it anyway. But let's just go that we're not going to. We're going to rebuild our society. We're going to rebuild our world. We're going to recover everything that we've lost. And we're going to end up in a better place because we're starting to function as rational, sane, kind individuals again. Great. You know, Winston, there's some people that used to have a nice frame embroidery of home sweet home.  I can't wait. Thank you for that, that great suggestion. That's what I'm going to do. And I want to thank you, Winston, you, Jay Fidel, and you, Cynthia, Lisa and Claire for joining us on What Now America. Join us next week, Wednesday at 11 o'clock. I'm Tim Epichel, your host, and we'll see you then. Aloha.


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Welcome to our luncheon program of this second annual USIP dialogue on war legacies and peace in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. I hope you're benefiting from the last day and a half now of sessions. I'm David Yong. I'm a vice president at the US Institute of Peace. I'll be your moderator for this session. The wounds of war are both physical and psychological, of course. That's why reconciliation between former combatants requires dealing with both. The issue of wartime remains or lost souls bridges the two realms. We look for physical remains because finding them will provide loved ones with a profound peace of mind. So for 50 years, the search for wartime remains or lost souls has occupied a central place in the war legacies agenda. Indeed, key parts of the Paris peace accords of 1973 were devoted to this topic. And I quote, the party shall help each other to get information about those military personnel and foreign civilians of the party's missing in action to determine the location and take care of the graves of the dead so as to facilitate the exhumation and repatriation of the remains. And to take any such measures as may be required to get information about those considered still missing in action. We're honored to host the senior US official in charge of continuing to advance this core goal. Mr. Kelly McKee. Kelly is director of the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency at the Defense Department. I'll call this for short DPAA. DPAA's mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting of US missing personnel accounting to their families and to the American public. Kelly was appointed as director of DPAA in 2017, a full six years ago. Before that, he had a 34 year career in the US Air Force. He retired in 2015 at the rank of Major General. His last two posts were very pertinent to his new job. They were commander of POW MIA, the accounting command at Pearl Harbor, and then deputy director of the then newly created DPAA agency. Kelly, welcome. Thanks so much for being with us today. Thank you, David. It's a privilege. And thank you for your leadership. So DPAA is now eight years old, either as director or deputy director. You've been involved for most of those eight years. Could you, we start our discussion by you're providing us with an overview of DPAA's mission and given your history on this topic. If you could explain to those uninitiated to this particular issue of the great milestones during this 50 year reconciliation journey. As David mentioned, it truly is a reconciliation initiative. That dates back again to the Paris peace accords. But I think more importantly, it was Vietnam and trusting this objective and pursuing it with vigor. It took until 1981 for the first technical talks to occur in Hanoi between US officials and Vietnamese officials and led by foreign minister talk at the time. Vietnam embarked upon these discussions. And for several years, these discussions would go back and forth as to how do we go about tangibly implementing the objectives of the Paris peace accord when it comes to remains recovery and more importantly repatriation. Vietnam in August of 1981 turned over the first two sets of remains. Back and forth with additional technical talks with diplomatic initiatives with various meetings both in New York at the United Nations as well as in Hanoi. We finally had the first US officials, military officials on the ground in Vietnam in May of 1985. Now this is 10 years after the end of the war. It also was 10 years before normalization. And here Vietnam was reaching out openly trying to again utilize what we look at this as a tool of diplomacy to begin the healing process, to begin reconciliation with the United States. And it's not lost on any of us that have been long working this mission to find Americans missing from the war. That the comprehensive strategic partnership that President Biden and General Secretary Chonk announced on Sunday. Vietnam's cooperation on remains recovery of Americans really was a foundational building block to what we now appreciate with not just where we've come as two nations, former enemies, but more importantly, the bright, prosperous, secure, stable future that leads to not just improvements in the region, but I would submit also in the world. Now all of this began literally with the families of both Americans that were prisoners of war, as well as families of Miss Americans that were missing in action. And these families began a grassroots concerted campaign back in 1970 to raise the nation's consciousness that these men and women could not, should not, and would not be forgotten. From that came the operation homecoming, the return of American POWs. And as I pointed out, what began and now is in its 35th year of remains, searching for remains as well as recovering and then identifying those returning them to their families. David, you mentioned a great point that these are lost souls. We have with us two family members, in fact daughters, whose fathers died in the war. One, we were successful in recovering her father in 1996, and the other is still waiting for answers. Ladies and gentlemen, I think it's important to recognize that again, if not for Vietnam's cooperation, again, keep in mind this is 1985, 10 years after the war, 10 years before normalization, Vietnam began cooperating with the United States on this very important building block in terms of establishing not only a relationship, but now a partnership. And again, with many of you here working other war legacy issues, all of those followed that engender trust and confidence with where we are today. Thank you, Kelly, for that introduction and overview. So you've been in place for six years now. You have a wonderful team over 700 people. You worked with Congress to consolidate three different operations to form DPAA. Give us a sense of the last six years, what some of the specific initiatives you and your team have wanted to do. What were some of the challenges? What are you proudest of? We work in 45 countries, statutorily by Congress. We are bounded by World War II, all the way through Operation Iraqi Freedom and everything in between there. And so it really begins with archival research. And as we work with our Vietnamese counterparts, that's where the subject material really takes place. Because with those archival information, those archival history and records, we're able to narrow down an area that might be this big to a smaller area, thereby sending a joint investigation team to hopefully narrow it down to a smaller area, at which point we will send an archaeologist, an anthropologist and a small team to again jointly work with our Vietnamese counterparts to excavate and hopefully find remains. Should the remains be found, they are brought back to one of two laboratories, one in Hawaii and one in Nebraska for the laborious and meticulous step of forensically identifying those remains and putting a name and a face upon which we are able to return them to their families. Thank you. Kelly, DPAA has done an excellent job training teams in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. Can you give us some of the specifics of how it's been to train those teams and how they were independently or in tandem with your office? So as I mentioned, we work in 45 countries all over the world. Wherever Missing American died in combat, it begins and that's why I use the term tool of diplomacy. It begins obviously with getting permission from the host nation. And with that permission from that permission comes what our operations. Now, in the majority of places in the world, we will operate independently in Europe and the South Pacific. There are instances in Southeast Asia where we are jointly working with our host nation counterparts. The model was set with Vietnam in 1985 with the first joint excavation that then culminated with joint sustained operations in 1988. I believe we just completed our 151st joint field activity with Vietnam. What's interesting to note is among all the 45 countries we work in, there are only two that we entrust with unilateral excavation. South Korea is one and Vietnam is the other. And that capability is a result of, again, that 35-year track record of joint operations, but more importantly, a willingness on Vietnam's part to learn and more importantly, to train with us on how to conduct an excavation. And they've done that with great success, with great skills. Later on, I'll talk about two examples of where their unilateral excavation came to bear bore fruit in terms of not only finding remains, but then more importantly, those remains being identified as missing Americans. But Vietnam also helps us with archival research. And so obviously they have access to records not only at the federal level, but also at the provincial level. And again, those archival records are important to narrowing down areas for future searches. And I applaud the fact that after 35 years of this joint activity, several years ago, as many of you know, Vietnam embarked upon their own accounting initiative, which both the Department of Defense and USAID are helping Vietnam stand up this capability, not just to search for their missing, but also to forensically identify them. You mentioned a couple examples you'd like to share. Yesterday, we were talking about how COVID threw a wrench into your planning, particularly with the excellent Vietnamese counterparts. But you were together able to creatively surmount those challenges. Please share your stories with us. Like the rest of the world, we were shut down when COVID first hit in March of 2020.  We immediately brought them home. And for the next 11 months, we were stuck at home, not able to travel. As the world tried to figure out what this pandemic was all about, how to mitigate it, how to respond to it. In the midst of that, Vietnam, through those US trained teams approached us and said, let us go do some of these unilateral excavations. Over that course of that time, they ended up doing 16 unilateral excavations. Finding remains at two of them. Those remains have been identified subsequent to that recovery. The first was a Navy Commander Paul Charvet lost off of Hanh May Island. We identified Commander Charvet after again our Vietnamese counterparts found remains. Paul Charvet had a 101 year old mother. 101 year old mother. He also had two older sisters that were in their 20s when he went missing. I remember this distinctly is the older says his older sister went to his mother Blanche who was in a nursing home. And she said to her mother, she said, Mom, I have some phenomenal news without missing a beat. Blanche Paul's mom said Paul's coming home. His sister said, how do you know that? Eyes clear as day. Looked up at her and said, I've always known he would be coming home. Now, the Charvet family would not have had answers had it not been for the unilateral excavation and work of our counterpart, the Vietnamese office for seeking missing persons. Second vignette I would offer is in June. Again, this unilateral excavation found a Air Force crash site remains recovered. We identify as both the pilot, Colonel Ernest the Soto and the navigator, Captain Fred Rick Hall, Commander, Colonel the Soto was buried in June in his hometown of San Bruno, California, outside of San Francisco. His widow never remarried. His three kids are now adults, two sons and a daughter. They brought their father, their husband home. The navigator Captain Frederick Hall will be buried next month in his hometown of Wainsboro, Wainsville, North Carolina. Again, his widow, his childhood friends will be there to welcome Frederick Hall home to North Carolina. Again, those remains would not turn into a face. And a name had it not been for the unilateral efforts of our counterpart, the VNO SMP. Thank you for those very moving stories, Kelly. And thanks to Mr. Wong and his team for incredible work you're doing. Kelly, can you tell us a little bit more? You mentioned that families of the lost souls were originally pushing, pushing, pushing the US government to actually implement the words of the Paris Peace Accords. Can you give us some sense of how you work on a daily, weekly basis with families like Janies? We're still searching for their loved ones. So DPA has two missions. Obviously, the first one is to account as fully as possible for missing Americans from past wars. The second just as equally important is to connect and communicate with their families. And so we do this by establishing relationships and connections with families. We meet them throughout the country. We meet with them throughout the country. We host annually here in Washington a meeting for the Vietnam War Families and annually a meeting for the Korean and Cold War Families. It's an opportunity for them to not only receive updates on their particular case, but also to enable them to connect with each other. And this effort that began as a grassroots campaign truly blossomed into an awareness that President Reagan in 1989 established a national mandate, a national priority for the United States to again account as fully as possible for its missing from past wars. You mentioned to me yesterday that a different part of the Department of Defense and USAID supports our Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian colleagues searching for their own war remains. But it's a flip side of your mission of DPAA. Could you just tell us how you liaise with USAID and other DOD counterparts in that mission, that flip side mission? So it's no different. It begins with archival research. And so the Department of Defense working with Harvard University as well as Texas Tech University are in the midst of compiling for Vietnamese researchers, archival records, wartime records that might lead to the ability to pursue an excavation that might lead to an opportunity to pursue, again, finding and repatriating those remains. Concurrently, USAID working with the International Commission of Missing Persons out of Geneva is helping Vietnam stand up and build out a forensic capability that one day will allow them to put a name and a face to a set of remains. And that initiative is in its nascent seat. There's a steering committee that Vietnam established, as many of you know, Committee 515 several years ago, that is leading this initiative. And again, through the efforts of USIP, who are assisting that, we have offered technical expertise to USAID through its ICMP partner in Geneva. And we're very excited about, again, what this means. Ladies and gentlemen, here's where I think, whether beyond just being a tool of diplomacy, why this is an initiative, this is a goal and objective, a reconciliation act that builds trust and confidence and enhances nation to nation relationships, simply because it starts at the people to people level. From the very first moment that our teams went into Vietnam in 1985, obviously, we had government officials working jointly with us. But our teams that do these, this work, whether it be an investigation or a recovery mission, they do so with the support of numerous villagers that support the work. Oftentimes in harsh conditions, oftentimes in remote areas. And I'm struck by the fact that at that people to people level. These villagers were warm, were gracious. And despite having suffered personally, with losses within their own family, they helped in this effort.  I don't know the origins of the 515 effort. However, I would surmise that it was because these Vietnamese villagers started asking their government, we're here to help the United States. We don't mind helping. In fact, they almost embraced this, this opportunity. But what about our families? What about our missing? Just a conjecture on my part, what I would surmise that it was because of that assisting in people to people interactions over the years, that they in turn, much like our families, emboldened our government to begin this national priority and this national effort. Similarly, Vietnam has now established the same priority. I have one last question, but I invite all of you to begin coming up here. If you have your own question, there's the stand up mic right here. My last question is more a reverie of sorts. So yesterday, if all of you don't know, parallel to this meeting, Kelly's team and Mr. Wong's team are having their annual technical talks, located for the first time in Washington DC, as opposed to Hanoi. And they conducted those talks last night. I don't know if they're continuing into today. But at the kickoff luncheon for the technical talks between the two teams, Mr. Wong and Kelly gave very passionate moving toasts to each other's teams and each other's countries. And what I took away from both of those toasts was that, as Kelly has repeated today, that actually, the war remains cooperation has virtually really no kidding been a building block, the building block of US-Vietnamese cooperation that has now culminated in the comprehensive strategic partnership. Yet, of the roughly 2,600 Americans on account of 4, 1,200 still remain on account of 4. More work is still to be done. I have confidence in Kelly and Mr. Wong's leadership to stay the course. My question, Kelly, is, are you worried paradoxically, perhaps, that that grand new comprehensive strategic partnership ushering in new cooperation, the economic areas, climate change, etc., etc. Will in any sense dwarf the founding, founding link between Vietnam and the United States? I think there's a potential for that to happen, but I am absolutely confident that it will not happen. Simply because both President Biden and General Secretary Chunk, in their joint statement, included a paragraph about not only the past commitment, but also that this joint activity would continue to define the partnership between the United States and Vietnam. So I'm confident of that fact. I'm also confident of the fact that now that Vietnam is embarking upon a parallel similar mission, that there will be mutual opportunities for us to continue to provide, search for and provide answers to families. Look at this 50-year record. So the VNOSMP was established as a provision within the Paris Peace Accords, just celebrated the 50th anniversary. I mentioned 35 years of joint operations with the United States.  And I would only offer this not to end on a download, but just oppose what's happening with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. A war that ended in 1953, there are still 7,500 Americans missing, 5,300 of which are in North Korea. There are no communications. Although this was used in the past as again, building trust and confidence, the last time our teams were in North Korea was in 2005. Chuck supposed a difference. And you see how one country's trust, overture in the midst of economic sanctions in the midst of just devastating losses, trying to rebuild their country 10 years after the war end of the war. And here we are on the cusp of a bright, prosperous, stable, peaceful, secure future. Indeed, please. Good afternoon. I'm John McCullough from the Fund for Reconciliation and Development. I want to mention three names of people whose shoulders were standing on who saw the POW, MIA issue as the way to get to normalization. And that, of course, was General John Vessie, Colonel Dick Childress, and Mills Griffiths. Dick, in particular, I was working for the Quakers for the Friends Service Committee at that point. And he and I had many hours of conversation in which he convinced me that even though that was not a priority, obviously from people from the US peace movement, that that was in fact the way to open the issue of normalization with leading with high levels in the United States. So I think those we should remember those three people and their contribution to this. I had two questions. One is, you talked about people to people, Vietnam veterans of America from when it was founded by Bobby Mueller and John Tarzano, and then its later iteration have always made a priority trying to get their members to provide information from their combat experience that would help to meet the question of missing Vietnamese. So I wondered if you mentioned the two universities, but I wonder if you have also an ongoing relationship with them. The second question is just to take you back to the earlier days. The big problem that Senator Kerry and McCain and the people I mentioned faced was this lobby of advocates for the concept that there were Americans still held alive in Vietnam. And you begin you see echoes of that in contemporary American life and denialism on a variety of issues. And I don't know whether you reflect on that community which is now I think disappeared. I mean, maybe there's still people out there writing things about the Americans that are buried or underground or somewhere in Vietnam. But where do you think that came from? Was that just people's inability to come to terms with the reality of what had happened? Or was that in fact, a political agenda that that issue was used to try to prevent normalization? I'll work backwards. Obviously, there are conspiracy theorists for pick a subject. I can assure you that everything we've seen, there is no credible evidence of a missing American left behind against his will in Vietnam or anywhere in Southeast Asia. We do work closely not with just the VBA but also other veteran service organizations like the FW. We've actually taken veterans from those organizations to sites and they have been very helpful. It's amazing the recall that these veterans have for war that ended in 1973. I mean, they can take us they can take the team literally and talk about blades of grass branches of trees. And it's amazing. And we've been very successful with some of those. You mentioned three great Americans, Dick Childress worked for the National Security Council. He was assigned to work with General Vessie, who was the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with leading this effort. And Ann Mills Griffiths is very known to this audience for her decades of indomitable service, tired dogged service. And those three individuals made many trips, both to Hanoi, to New York all over the world, starting out as technical talks, and then moving toward again, how can we translate concepts into actually boots on the ground with putting a shovel in the ground with which to, again, find missing Americans. Dick has been a longtime advisor to the National League of Families, the organization that formed in 1970. And Ann Mills Griffiths is still its chairman. Absolutely. This was not a, and that's a great point, this was not an end to itself. Again, I think President Reagan was very clear in his direction that this was going to be an interagency effort, that this was going to be the US government coming together, and then reaching out to the Vietnamese government to, again, embark upon discussions. And it was in 1985, that the largest at the time since the war, 26 remains were turned over by Vietnam. And that preceded the first joint excavation that occurred in 1985. Thank you, John, for your questions. Are there other questions from the audience? Please. Dave Huffman with Mission POWMI. Would you let everybody know about the increased scope and pace due to the budget enhancements? I think it's very encouraging and it's something that should interest everyone here. It is. Thanks, Dave. By the way, Dave heads up a new organization of families that are that represent losses from all conflicts. He and his wife Cheney established this new organization Mission POWMI and again, to build advocacy. For the longest time, we were dependent upon largesse. I use that word fondly from Congress. Obviously hearing from their constituents, families, veterans. For many years, Congress would afford us an increase in our annual budget. For those of you that are business people, you know that that's not a way to run a successful business. So two years ago, we petitioned the Pentagon, the Department of Defense to increase our budget simply because time is our biggest enemy. Particularly in Southeast Asia, we're losing remains, both to natural conditions. The soil acidity in Southeast Asia has a pH of a lemon. And so remains are often degrading literally by the day, leaving us oftentimes only with teeth. Remains are also subject to loss due to manmade development where there be structing a dam that leads to reservoir, train track, housing development. And thankfully, our counterparts are very much aware of where these potential sites are. And should there be a site threatened by again, development, urbanization or what have you, they will make it a priority with which to pursue that particular site. So we presented the argument that time is our biggest enemy. Numbers are staggering. And so again, witnesses firsthand witnesses, especially in Southeast Asia, are passing or losing their memory are dying. And so it's incumbent upon us that if this remains a national priority, that we must have the resources with with with which to do that. And please to see that our argument earned some acknowledgement or importantly, it earned us money. So we will enter this next fiscal year in 2024 with a 40% increase, thereby allowing us in the case of Vietnam to triple the number of joint field activities that we had from this year to next. And to their credit, Vietnam has agreed in those technical talks last night, that they have the means and the capacity with which to support that increased scale and scope. Thank you. Andrew, we're almost out of time. So I'll take the last question more. And this returns to my introductory theme of the physical versus psychic psychological wounds of war. So we at USIP consider Kelly an American peace builder par excellence. And we value your leadership. The same for Mr. Wong and his colleagues. So as international peace builders, my question for you Kelly is, it's a version of leases our president's question to opening plenary yesterday and to Senator Merkley this morning. And that is she didn't put it this way. But let me put it this way. A cynic could say that US Vietnamese reconciliation has been a simply a product of geopolitical self interest on both parts. It has nothing to do with human to human spirit to spirit reconciliation. But I think all of us peace builders know that the human spirit and the human animal is more complicated than that. So to paraphrase Lisa's question, what would be your distilled lessons from both the half century journey and the parts of it that you walk Kelly for future reconcilers, whether they're Ukrainian, Russian, or Afghan and American, or whatever. And just from a very personal perspective, the consequences of war, as you all know, are devastating. The human impacts, the societal impacts are just mine, numbingly, mind boggling, devastating. If we can somehow take a war, which cynic would argue wars are inevitable, and mitigate those consequences through legacy issues like remains recovery, like unexploded ordinance removal, like dioxin remediation, then we can at least at least put a solve on what is really an open wound, and will remain an open wound simply open wound simply because of the personal loss that individuals, families, societies have experienced from any war. And if we're able to do that through efforts that many of you all rep many of you all represent, there's hope for the future. Now, would these war legacy initiatives, this reconciliation initiatives serve as a deterrent for future wars? Human nature tells me not so. However, at least there's an avenue that should there be a war in the future, much like one is ongoing all over several places in the world today, that efforts are being made proactively to be at the ready so that when hostility ceases, that we can use this human to human interaction, this peace building, this reconciliation initiatives, with which to restore hope, with which to restore trust among not just two nations, but among its peoples. And that's where the non cynic side of me tells me that the goodness that we're doing now is a blueprint. Should it ever be required in the future? And by the way, we have been asked by other countries to assist them in their wartime recovery efforts. Vietnam I mentioned South Korea is another one. And these countries again recognize that healing at least the loss of these families and their loved ones is one step forward in terms of restoring again, that nation to nation trust, and that people to people trust. Thank you, Kelly. Please join me in thanking Kelly for his leadership and his participation today.


I feel like you can soak in in just two or three days of practice and getting ready to play. I've been playing for a long time, so I pretty much got everything down pat. Little kinks here and there, but I'm pretty comfortable. Got a lot of familiarity with them as a franchise. I know the personnel may be different, but what kind of stands out about what they're doing on offense this year?  And they capitalize off of other teams' mistakes. So being on the Jets, I've seen that a couple of times, playing them. But I mean, they're a good team. As you said, you've been playing a long time. You're back in Tennessee, where you played in college. What is that kind of like, what kind of recent coming back from? It's pretty cool.  It's cool. As far as mindset and what this team does, how do you think you fit in from that standpoint? Definitely slightly, this is a black and blue team. Running the ball first, play tough defense. And I feel like that's pretty much my game.  Well, Corey Levin, he went to Chattanooga, so I knew him. He actually came to Chicago. And that's about it, that's the only player I played with here. Quarterbacks getting the ball off fast, he's doing a good job. I mean, this is a part of the season, he's getting hot. So I think just as a defense go out there, play sound, execute will be good.  What kind of stands about them? What did you know about them coming in? So 3-1 make a lot of plays. He's always been good, I always respected this game. Genoers, always been good, I always respect this game as well. Got a couple of young dudes at DB and I like the way 2-4 plays. Please hold it, please say it, good play.


Here she is. Good morning Julie. How are you? Good. We're hiking today. We're gonna hike up in these mountains right now and find a mine. But we have to go around this way to make it easier for ourselves. So let's go hiking. It should be a great day. It's a little overcast. Probably be about 85 though a little warm. It's the way it is. Pretty rugged terrain. Nothing Julie can't handle though. We're down to the canyon and we're gonna go up. It's a pretty big wash coming out of here. It's a big canyon. We're gonna go up this way and then take a left out of it and then up to the mine. We found a can dump. Always a good sign when you're mind-exploring. Means there was a camp around here. There's some tobacco tins. More stuff.  That's pretty common. There's some pottery, a little crock pot. There are nine tobacco tins all in a row here. And then Julie found a cool can. It's got an opening tab like you would use with a key. But they opened it with a knife. The key is not there. What a view again. One thing about mind-exploring we get into some places that have some awesome views. These are very rugged mountains. This is looking the other direction from the last shot I just took. A little hazy today but you can see over into Nevada that's Mount Charleston with the snow on it. Over that way if you can see that. There's a screen maybe used as a classifier of some sort. Here it looks like an old cabin. Oh it's an old trailer. That's what it is. Maybe an old camp trailer. Wow. Wooden spoke trailer turned into a camp trailer. Look at that spoke wheel. You don't see that all the time. A lot of barrels down in the wash below it. It's kind of windy today so you're going to get some wind noise. So you can see this was made into a camp trailer with these curved raptors I guess it would be or roof supports. Look at a cute little cupola for the heater vent. All homemade stuff it's all welded. This is the front corner pieces made out of steel and all this all the roof has collapsed obviously. It looks like all these brackets were homemade too to make that roof unless this was a really old factory job. All on a trailer that's about let's see here. Probably only six by six by 15 roughly. Look what's it say on there. The top part was probably an atomizer and maybe it's a little perfume bottle. There's the new hardshell auto polish. They got a brand on it. Johnson? With Sunstop. I'm almost certain that this is an old ice chest. Not a refrigerator but an ice chest. And the ice would have been down below there. This might even be the top of it over here. I'm guessing. It probably went up here some out. I don't know. At least it would. Two by two. Oh this is a whistle. Oh that's a train whistle. Look at that. That's sitting under there. It's clean as a whistle but look how clean it is down there. It's like it's a whistle. No pun intended. Do I dare blow it?  That's pretty cool though. Seeing some old guys sitting out whittling this thing away. Lived out in the middle of nowhere in this contraption. You don't find those every day? No. That looks like an old skip bucket. Made of course. Here's a, this looks familiar but I can't remember what it is.  This looks like a rotating display rack for something that you'd see in a store. I don't think it's specific to mine. Something like a merchandise or something that's sitting here. Here's another barrel over here. What's that say? Ream. There you have it. Let's go find the mine. This looks like all paydirt piled here. It's not been processed. Several loads of it right here. Right in front of that old trailer. Otherwise it would be on the waste pile. In the mining dump. One of you around kind of a treacherous old road if you were driving on it. Obviously hasn't been driven on for some time. You definitely wouldn't want to go over the edge here though. I see a barrel way down there. Yeah. Alright we should be getting close to the mine if it's here. It's not even sure if it's really here or not. So here's some stuff. There's an opening here. Oh wow. Look at that. Look at that old door. There's a gas tank from a vehicle in there. Look at that little rail going in there. I'm following this trail past that portal I just saw. Just to see what's down here. That's an interesting looking deal. It must have been a chute. This must have been an ore chute. All you want to do down there is another looks like an ore handling facility. This is following back along the trail that led to the chute. Apparently they didn't haul the ore down the road that we came up. They sent it down that chute. A cabin or something. There's a lot of debris down there. Wood. You thought it was a head frame.  Imagine hauling that up here. This is all waste piled down here to my right. Among other stuff. Alright let's go in the, let's go in the mines here we have. It's kind of exciting. Right off I love the door. It's still in good shape. It's made out of 2x6's and 2x12's. Some big flat hinges. And notice that this rock is standing on its end here. And another interesting looking mineral vein over that way. This tin cover for something. Oh it's cool in here. Yeah it's hot out today. This is a kind of fractured rock. The track is still all here so far. It's still very usable. It's in good shape. They did a nice job of it. They're obviously following something the way it's curving around. Once again this pastel color is up here. Mineral vein. Jeff Williams told me what that was but now I can't remember. Yeah he's too smart for me with all the geology and knowledge. Anyway hey Jeff. Hope you guys are doing well today. Hey Jeff. Okay here we have a piece of rubber hose. Looks like airline or waterline one of the other. Looks like a little equipment storage area. They do a light bulb. They can't see anything. A? M? RPM. RPM. Should we go down there? Sure.  Wow. There's some ventilation pipe and some other stuff. So here's a V-belt pulley. It is part of a headlight assembly. This looks like a pulley for a flat belt. There's a mason jar and a big crock pot. It's good on here. See what's down here. It looks like a piece of drive belt off of something. Not super wide. There's the connector. We'll have to go look at that after a little while if we don't want to do it right now. Here's a box. Phillip's furring nails. Maybe for making their ladders. Yeah we'll have to go up there later. That's too inviting to skip but let's go visit the main level first. How's that sound? Do you think that crock has any writing on the bottom of it? Pacific. Number two Pacific? Yeah. Cool. Okay. Yeah. That u-hose looks familiar to that u-pipe. I can't remember what that's for. Anyway, let's carry on. That was interesting. More stuff. Old something paint. Some parts of some dynamite boxes. Can you pick one over there? Put it on there? Put this one. Let's get something on it. Company. And some paints. Some old cross ties and some paint cans. This is probably looking up to that spot where that other ladder went up. I'm sure we'll be up there before the day is over. I think this is a goldmine. It's there's a lot of stuff around here. There are talc mines. There are silver mines. There are other goldmines but this red, the mine nearby that I've been in here, that was a goldmine had the same red. Do we just bonk her head but she's okay. So here's some lagging. Not real heavy duty. Just one by stuff. Here's where Julie bonked her head. Anyway, it's red. Oh cool. That's that calcite and look at that. I'll say look at the geology. And we come to a big chute. That's got to be coming down from up above there. There's a lot of stuff in here too. This looks all just haphazardly chucked in here for some reason. If you come in here watch out for nails. We don't go very far. We you grab that little box that we went by but look at the look at the mineral vein in here. It's crazy. I'm glad we made the trip up the hill. This is cool. Wow, look at that. I don't believe I've ever seen anything quite like that. What is that? Isn't it got some red on it? Oh, I thought it was a label. Look at this is a hand soldered or brazed box. Take a little closer look at this chute. Now that's all jammed up. There's some burlap sacks that maybe used for something. So yeah, this is a pretty wild vein. This calcite stuff too is kind of strange. But look at the layers of this. It's very loose. Thousands of layers. Alright, let's backtrack to that ladder. See what's up there. Alright, Julie's gonna be the first one to brave the ladder. Hang on tight. A little dusty. What do you see? Oh yeah. Want me to come up? Okay, this is just on top of that little ladder. Crawling around through the low. Goes up that way. A little bit that way. Couple stalls. I guess we're gonna make our way up there. So I just came from down there. Crawled up here. Comes to my intersection. Just goes a little way there and then ends. Goes this way. So I'm gonna crawl up here and see what's anything up there. Okay, so I'm up on top of that little area. That ends right there. And then this goes up. I don't know if you can see some stalls way over there. And I'm gonna have to crawl up there. But it might come get Tom. Alright, Tom's coming up to follow me. And it goes left. Okay, we just came up from that way. Now we're going this way. Julia's anyway. I believe we're crawling around in a stope. Looks like it opens up maybe after where she is right there. What do you see? A little bobbing wall. Baking me. We're twisting and turning through this whole little big mountain. I got my shorts on today because it's so hot out. You gotta put your knee pads on. That's where we just came from. We went, I believe it might be an or shoot or an or pass. And we're up to maybe another level here. And here are three MJB cans that don't look terribly old. But there's a bottle there. A full intact bottle. What's it say? Old Sunnybrook, Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. Wow. Louisville, Kentucky. That's cool. One pint. A pint of booze. Wow, cool. Let me get a picture of that. Alrighty, there are those cans in that whiskey bottle. That was pretty cool. Let's go this way. You see a bridge or something. A little bit of a muck sheet here. And a stope up above us. A couple stalls. I see a bridge. There was that shoot down below. Maybe that's what this was. Look at the vein up there. Wow. I don't know where that ladder was. I didn't see that down below, did we? I believe this is where this, I don't see. That's the shoot we found down below, but it doesn't look like it. If that's not a crazy looking shoot, huh? I don't believe that's a ventilation. I think that's a round shoot that they were using. Could be wrong though. But is there another level up higher here? How do they get up there? I wonder where this goes? Because you'd think it would come into that shoot where that, where we were at the end of the Lord Drift. But how do they get up above us to work? There weren't any ladders going up. Yeah, what's over this way? Okay, let's go over that way. Watch out. This is very light duty lagging here. It's only one by stop. Can you get up that way? You can go up this way. What's straight ahead of you? Just a little bit of a stoped out area. You probably want to go this way. Okay. The big stope up here where they've cleaned out a big area. Big stope that they cleaned out. Big area. Look at this old stuff here. Old lagging. The end of the line. So it ends shortly up there. It doesn't go much farther. Here's a Prince Albert can. Oh, you found another Prince Albert can.  Went right to me. What's up there? Mike, there's some rocks coming down. Okay, hold on. Let me get out of the way. Well, I'm up here as high as I can figure out how to get. I'm in this stope. This round shoot keeps going, but I don't know how they got any higher than this. Unless it's from the outside. I'm in this stope. I just sent that Prince Albert can down to Julie to look at. Once I was in the middle of this climb when I found it. Right in this slope here. And they've just cleaned this out. There's your mineral vein. It's some crazy, not very strong lagging that's holding all this stuff back. Julie's still down here. Unless this goes over this way. It's possible it goes over this way. Let me go over there and look. Okay, I've just come from that way. I'm up in the stope. It goes this way always. And it goes that way. You can see the mineral vein up here. And it goes behind me. There's, I believe, the beginning of that round shoot. Let's go make sure. Yup, here's the beginning of that shoot. Can you hear me down there? I'm at the top of that shoot. Do you hear that? Here Julie coming through the shoot. All right. Well that's the top of the mine. So back down I go. It's going to be a little treacherous getting down here. The stuff's going to want to slide. Here he comes. There you are. Sorry about the dust. Well, it's unavoidable. Oh boy, slide on down. Don't go that way. Don't come this way. No, you have to go behind you. And then I'll bring them out here. It's out of here with all this dust. Sorry about all that dust. That's okay. It's forgettable. Yeah, it's pretty rough up there getting around. Tom's wearing shorts today because it's really hot. It's 85 degrees out. We had a five mile hike to get here. We're just about back down to where that rope was. Dusty, dusty work. It's fun though. All right, better go catch up with him. Here she comes. It's kind of a tight little place to explore here. You can wear a helmet. Here's your rope. How many times do you whack your head? Three times. Three times in ten feet? Yeah. You may want to turn around another way you came up. I am. Hang on tight.  Let's hope it hangs on for a few minutes here. Yeah, it's probably held for a hundred years. It's going to make it another few minutes. Good job. Here's this stuff again. Say goodbye to that. Look at the buck in the nails. Look at the galvanized ones. A little bit of everything in there. The big rubber hose. Probably an air hose the way it looks. This is still full. This is grease. All right, that's the way we explored earlier. This is the way out. And that's where we're going to get some fresh air. Fun mine. Yeah, very interesting. Somebody else can go find their whiskey bottle, the tobacco can, ceramic jug. What are those called? Flask? No. Crop. Crop, yeah. It's all right here. There's the entrance. It's not a real big mine. We like it though. One last bump for your road. Here we go. Out we go. Wow, fresh air is always fun at the end of an explorer. Ooh, hot though. Ooh. It's on a time. It's kind of cloudy dude. It almost sounds like it feels like it's going to rain. They use dynamite boxes for wedging on this cribbing area. So we got to make our way down. We're going to try to take a new way down and go look at, there's a loading facility at the bottom of this. I'll tell you this over here. There's a loading facility down there towards where we have to go. So we'll try and get down that way. There's the bottom of that chute, which was at the end of the upper level there where the railway was. And the lower or bin was down that way, which is what we're trying to get down to. I'm getting over near that lower bin from this mine. Here's a wire rope or cable. It's possible there was a ground tram or even an aerial tram. I'm not sure which to haul or from the top up there over to this structure here, whatever this is. It actually looks like a couple of little tram buckets there, homemade ones out of a barrel. So here's this platform. No doubt it was a tram because here is one of the homemade buckets. How cool is that? Would have had a pulley up here or two. I had a big boat going through this. Huh, there's a pulley on there too. That's kind of weird. There's another one down here. It looks like a road right here that we can take. There's another tram bucket down here too. Yeah, Julie found a piece of enamel ware. Oh yeah, there's one of the towers right there. It's down the buckets. Anyway, homemade tram buckets. This would have had a pulley up here also. And this was the tower it looks like.


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The cheeky little buggers over at the UK Biobank convinced 100,000 people to agree to wear sophisticated accelerometers on their bodies around the clock, revealing their exercise intensity, timing, as well as other physical activity, not deemed exercise, like carrying groceries or walking the stairs.  User JQ278 has an overactive accelerometer on his right, right forearm. Yeah. Oh, maybe he's got some sort of butter churning business or just loves to wave to people. I wonder what that could be. Welcome to Lifespan News. I'm Emmett Short. Today, we're talking about a new study published in Nature Communications about exercise and all cause mortality. And in case you were hoping that maybe this time the data might finally show exercise is bad for you. No, no.  The correlation of not dying and exercise grew stronger from zero to 150 minutes of exercise a week and plateaued around 200 minutes per week. This was true for all three types of mortality, considered all cause cardiovascular and cancer. Exercise improved your chances of not dying from cardiovascular issues by four times. Sure, there's no guarantee you'll live longer if you exercise, but at least you'll have an excuse for wearing sweatpants all day. The study mainly looked at MVPA or moderate to vigorous physical activity at certain times of day. The finding was that people who had the bulk of their MVPA either in the morning or in the evening didn't get as much of a benefit as those who exercise mostly during midday afternoon or mixed hours. Even in models adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education level, diet, smoking, alcohol intake, sleep quality and a total exercise volume. The midday afternoon and mixed group hours showed a whopping 28 and 26 percent more of a reduction in cardiovascular mortality compared to the morning group. That's a lot. That's a substantial difference. And as someone who gets up early to exercise before work, I just have to say, damn, really? Yeah, really. The researchers mentioned circadian rhythms might affect recovery and that previous studies showed faster recovery of systolic blood pressure after exercising the late afternoon than in the early morning. So yeah, I guess exercise at certain times of the day might be more effective for certain people, especially those with existing cardiovascular conditions. So again, for my fellow morning workout people, I have to express that that's annoying. If you ask me, though, people whose schedule allows them to exercise just smack in the middle of their work day seem to be living a pretty stress-free, happy, go lucky life in the first place. That might be skewing the results. So when do you exercise and why? And tell us in the comments about your experiences. Make sure to subscribe and click the bell so you stay up to date on aging research. And that's it. I'm Emmett Short. We'll see you next time on Lifespan News.