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The Center's reputation grew further when industrialists and environmentalists together hammered out a policy framework on coal, an effort that received special recognition in Fortune Magazine. From there we became really innovative, partnering with Hanna-Barbera cartoons to teach America's children about the energy crisis of the early 1970s. Fred, are you with that again? Yeah, I sure am. I found it, will you? Found what? I found the secret. I found the secret of these black rocks. With Dr. Abshar's vision, the Center established its first endowed chairs, the Japan Chair, the Shoal Chair in International Business, and the Simon Chair in Political Economy. Today's CSIS has ten chairs, thanks to supporters like Ramesh Wadwani. We also welcomed Henry Kissinger, Jim Schlesinger, and Zabig Brzezinski as the Center's first counselors. Once again, our West Pointer, Dave Abshar, was called a public office. This time on President Reagan's team, he passed a baton to the Center's Chief Operations Officer, General Amos Jojorton, as our third president. During the late 80s, our revered chairwoman, Ambassador Ann Armstrong, expanded the Center's international reach and continued to build our reputation for independence and bipartisanship. Under Ambassador Armstrong, we extended our reach in Asia, welcoming Hawaii's Pacific Forum to the Center. Twenty-three years later, Jim Kelly and Raf Khasa continued to bring together strong minds and visionary leaders from around the Pacific Rim. Senators Sam Nunn and Pete Domenici, relying on the wisdom of Dr. Charlie Sanders, brought into sharp focus the nation's fiscal challenges with the Strengthening of America Commission. In 1999, Ambassador Richard Fairbanks became the fourth president of CSIS. Building on the foundation laid by his predecessors, he kept CSIS on its course and speed during a time of transition. In the same year, Senator Nunn was elected chairman of the board. Drawing on his long and diversified career in leadership roles, he was eminently qualified to bring the Center into the 21st century. After serving in the challenging position of Deputy Secretary of Defense, John Hamery assumed the presidency, marking the new millennium. In the last ten years, Dr. Hamery has engineered a period of phenomenal growth at CSIS. Currently, we host more than 1,600 events each year. Every day, we welcome hundreds of visitors through our doors. All of these interactions enrich the dialogue in Washington and add up to a powerful impact on public policy at home and abroad. In the last decade, Dr. Absher and Kazuo Inamuri founded a leadership academy to guide the coming generation of policymakers. Senator Bill Frist led a bipartisan task force on HIV AIDS with the generous support of Don and Katie Marin. Their projects helped inform the principles behind PEPFAR. 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Now we embark on a new era at CSIS, and together we build on the last decade of remarkable progress. The Center will continue to go forward, shaping policy both at home and abroad, with the dynamic leadership of Dr. Hamry, the strength of our scholars and staff, and with the vision of our eminent Board of Trustees. As we move towards the half-century mark, CSIS is at the ready for a state-of-the-art headquarters. And now, welcome to 1616 Rhode Island Avenue. May I thank you, and from an old senator, over and out.


Somebody said to me recently, if you had to start again, what would you do? I would buy property. And the reason I would buy property is I looked at an exercise this morning. If you put 8,000 pounds into the S&P in 1970, the average, you could buy two houses at that time, or you could put it in the S&P. Now it would be worth one and a half million pounds. And those two houses would only be worth half a million because the average house price nowadays is 250,000. But the second house, if you did a conventional mortgage, would have been paid off by 1995. So it would have been giving you income for 28 years now. And this year, it might be giving you 2,000 a month. And the point of that then is, instead of putting money away for 60 years time, you could draw that money on a regular basis. This is the show.


Give the thought to the heart of men we thought he knew as well for us. Spring, 1942. The Axis was winning the war and the Allies faced their gravest crisis as Nazi and Japanese officers met in Germany. If their victory is continued, and as yet there was no force to stop them, the Axis' powers hoped their armies would victoriously meet in Asia, just as their tacticians met for maneuvers. Each greedy for immediate conquests, they planned to completely dominate the world. In those black days of 1942, German armies and air forces pushed toward Japan. Relentlessly, the gigantic Axis pincers were threatening to close in Central Asia. That's why American industry doubled and quadrupled its war effort. There was definite hope for victory, provided the British and Russian people could give the United States time to supply our allies and time to build an air force which could smash the Axis pincers. It wasn't long when the Truman Committee was able to state, we have succeeded in building up an air industry in the U.S. which our foes cannot hope to equal. But planes alone were not enough, and so specialized training began in 1942 under the watchful eye of Secretary of War Henry Stimson. He saw the 82nd Airborne Flying Foot soldiers change from a brave dream into a deadly fighting machine under command of General Matthew Ridgeway. The first air troop carrier unit had been set up by the AAF to work with paratroopers. The amazing success of the Germans had awakened the late American interest in vertical envelopment, which means landing a combat force behind enemy lines. Reliable C-47s were quickly boarded by the shock troops who were going to spearhead the way for a glider army which would follow. They were about to test tactical principles in North Carolina before going overseas to help blunt the Axis pincers. For all the great airborne operations of the war, American troop carrier Manin Plains provided most of the lift. There was nothing new about an airborne army. Billy Mitchell had received approval for such an operation during World War I. But even he never dreamed of entire armies filling the skies. In theory, the American paratroopers dropped on surprise defenders and seized bridgeheads for the gliders. Another airfield's tow craft, modified C-47 sky trains, hitched down two carrier gliders which were loaded and ready. Nylon, the new strong synthetic, was science's answer to the tow rope problem. Put together, the transport towed the glider into position for the takeoff front. This made room for another sky train. On a split second schedule, there were like so many locomotives taking on freight cars. Some sky trains hauled double freight. Taxiing at full throttle, the tow planes had to remain on the ground until a ton and a half gliders were airborne. Once over the drop zone, glider pilots cut their ships loose to play their special part in the pattern of attack. Banking sharply away, they dove with the ground. Quickest possible landing kept the unarmed gliders from being easy game for enemy fighters. As more cut loose and headed down to the spinning earth, the glider army joined the paratroopers who had set up points of resistance. Thus, the AAF gave the infantry wing and the weapon's vertical envelopment became a reality. Another weapon in America's arsenal for global war was the skill and experience of our great commercial airlines operating under contract to the War Department. July 1942, this ferrying service was reorganized as the Air Transport Command under veteran flyer General Harold George. In the company of C.R. Smith, his deputy, they inspected new installations. By summer, ATC routes touched all six continents. The growth of the Air Transport Command closely paralleled the expansion of the Air Force itself. In less than two years, sky bridges connected practically every corner of the world. ATC skywagons, guided by the Army Airways' communication system, crossed the Atlantic on an average of one every 13 minutes. They brought a Pacific every hour and a half. And so ATC, by supplying both men and machines to world battle fronts, was preparing to smash the Axis Threat. During these critical early days, the Navy succeeded in breaking the Japanese secret code. On May 15, Navy intelligence officers intercepted an important communication. It was the detailed JAP plan to attack Midway and points in the illusions with an invasion army, supported by a tremendous task force. But if the JAPs knew that we had broken their code, this could have been a wild goose chase or a trap. The Army and Navy decided to gamble. If we could intercept the JAP Navy at Midway, the payoff was too great to overlook. And so the call went out. ATC had to deliver reinforcements, bombs, and ammunition to the illusions in B-17s to Midway. The Hawaiian Department had to beg, borrow, and steal these bomber aircraft from our slim Pacific forces. The B-17s committed to this mission were led by Lieutenant Colonel Walter Sweeney and Brooke Gallant. Every last plane would be needed for the impending battle. Once down on Midway after the long flight, with no rest, our crews had to be thrown into immediate patrol. The Japanese fleet, more than 80 warships, advanced. The coded message was authentic. Their task forces divided, some steaming north toward Alaska, the main body converging on Midway. 470 miles west of the island, the battle stage was set when a Navy Catalina spotted the strong enemy task force. But Midway's commander refused to commit American naval or air units until he had more information about the enemy. Our newly arrived B-17s and B-26s as well as Marine fighters were under constant alert. Installed extra gas tanks to increase bomber range. Our crewmen realized that this was going to be the first test of B-17s as a defensive weapon against attacking surface forces. And some big bomber boys even claimed that B-17s could stop carriers. The 4th of June was the day of the real battle. Minutes after a patrol sighted the enemy, those bombers not yet in the air got going fast. 9 B-17 crews under Colonel Sweeney were joined by 5 from Colonel Alex. Warmed up and ready for battle, Air Force bombers took off to find the enemy. The wonderful point was Cury Island, from where our bombers were to proceed. 100 miles out our bomber commanders received new orders. After an enemy carrier force that had broken away from the main fleet and was now launching an attack against our bases. The Japanese dagger, pointed at midway, was made up for 4 carriers, great battle wagons, many destroyers and transports. The mission of the Imperial Carrier Plains was to wake the island's gun emplacements and bomb away for an invasion. Marine vindicators sprang to meet the enemy and the battle was on. In the heat of battle our flag was struck down. Marines quickly repaired the broken staff and ceremoniously raised old glory against the backdrop of fire, smoke and fate. Units of the U.S. Navy, including 3 flattops, had raced up to midway. Navy fighters and bombers were wound up and set off while the jets were still counting U.S. defenses. Enemy destroyers and cruisers were the target. Our marauders and fortresses went after enemy carriers. Jet units were like huge magnets attracting Navy planes, marine dive bombers and AAF heavies.  Jet units and American bombers joined the battle. This jet ready got to our barrage. It was up-free for all. Finally, when our Navy and Air Force bombers hammered back at jet carriers, the issue was decided. First our bombers attacked from 3,600 feet and then came down to scrape the deck of a fire. During the three-day battle aside from eight auxiliary vessels sunk or damaged, Japan lost four carriers, two heavy cruisers and three destroyers. In addition to 275 aircraft and 4,800 men, we had smashed the jet dagger. The base, now free from the threat of invasion, the men dug themselves out of the wreckage. A Navy PBY, which had rescued a ditched B-17 crew, now brought them home. The battle ended with midway's installations, including the hospital badly wrecked by enemy bombers. Unified under one flag, sailors, Marines and airmen who had fought side by side now saluted the 92 officers and 215 enlisted men we had lost. All were heroes. In the battle of midway, perhaps the most important single engagement of the Pacific naval war, the airplane at last proved itself a defensive weapon against attacking surface forces. Once again, the AAF had demonstrated its ability to meet the enemy on land, on sea and in the air. It was planned destiny that the Axis pincers would suffer the crushing blows of the greatest striking force in military history, the United States Air Force.


So, we have now by my count reached 65 participants in attendance, which I think constitutes a full house, whether we're online or North Great Georgia Street, so I think we can proceed. Welcome, welcome to this brave new world of zoom diplomacy and webinars. I'm very happy today to welcome a distinguished panel of speakers, three ambassadors of Ireland to three very different parts of the world to discuss how COVID-19 is playing out in their respective regions, the implications of COVID-19 and the responses both in their host states and the wider regions that they represent. I'd like to introduce our three speakers. First of all, we have Fanula Quinlan, ambassador of Ireland to Kenya, joining us from Nairobi today. Secondly, we have Julian Clare, ambassador of Ireland to the Republic of Korea, joining us from Seoul. And finally, Barbara Jones, ambassador of Ireland to Mexico, joining us at 7am local time from Mexico City. Welcome all and looking forward to our end discussions today. We're going to kick it off with some introductory remarks from our three panelists, giving us a little bit of an overview of the situation regarding COVID-19 in their host states and also the wider regions. I'd like to go to Fanula, first of all, for the view from Nairobi, Fanula. Good idea to unmute first. Thanks so much, Mary, and let me start by saying thank you so much to the IIEA for hosting us today and giving us an opportunity to reflect on the impacts of COVID in our various regions. I thought I might start by drawing out some common themes, although you'd appreciate with a content of 54 very different countries. You may have to indulge me somewhat, but I'll make just a few points I suppose to frame the discussion. The first thing I would say is that Africa is behind the curve when it comes to the number of cases that we're seeing. While Africa has 17% of the world's population, we currently have 2% of the cases. Also, COVID arrived here substantially later. The first case was on February 14th in Egypt, and Lesotho became the last African state last week to declare its first COVID case. Health systems as a rule are much weaker here, even South Africa, which we would think has the strongest, and does indeed have the strongest public health system in Africa, has only 1,000 ICU beds for a population of 56 million people, while Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, has none. Governments here also, everywhere in the world, governments are making extraordinarily difficult decisions between public health and the economies. Here, that's even more difficult because we live on this continent, 8 out of 10 workers approximately work in the informal sector. They're really very reliant on their daily wage or their weekly wage to sustain their families. There's really no room, no room for shocks, very little room for resilience there. Of course, with job losses, shrinking resources, and so forth, those vulnerable people are even more vulnerable now as a result of COVID. But first, let me talk a little bit about those low transmission rates that I mentioned at the outset. The WHO released some research last week that showed the virus is spreading much more slowly in Africa. They predict about a quarter of a billion people will contract the disease over the coming year, but that far fewer of them will die. They note that Africans travel less, that they're younger, the average age in the continent is barely 20, and also that they're less likely to be obese and suffer from lifestyle-related diseases that plague some of the wealthier countries. But in terms of those low case rates, I guess if you look at Kenya, initially modeling would have predicted that we'd be at about 30,000 cases by now, whereas in fact we haven't yet reached a thousand, and that's out of about 40,000 people tested. So low testing certainly seems to be playing a role, rather. In Africa as a whole, it's estimated there's been about a million people tested. Compare that to Wuhan, where authorities plan on testing 11 million citizens in two weeks. But the WHO does think also that there's more to it than low testing rates, and they feel that there are cultural, developmental, and other structural elements that are playing a role in the lower transmission rates. And it's very likely actually that the very swift action by many African governments, the very swift way in which they introduce containment measures, have really helped to hold the spread. In Rwanda, for example, we saw that within days of having their first case, they'd shut down airports closed and so forth. Ethiopia, Uganda were very quick with contact tracing and isolation. South Africa sent 30,000 health workers out to communities to survey 15% of their population in a really short space of time. It's also worth bearing in mind, I suppose, that a lot of African countries have experience of infectious diseases, and particularly if we think of Ebola, very contagious diseases also. So in Liberia, a country that's desperately poor, and we might have expected to see really devastated by this, they very quickly rolled out their existing protocols and guidelines for Ebola to respond to COVID. And the same in countries bordering the DRC. Compare that to France and the US, which now only four months on, they're starting to introduce contact tracing. And while it's true that many, many African governments acted very quickly, there's a few notable exceptions. So Madagascar's president, for example, has been peddling herbal tea as a cure. Tanzania's president was very interested in that cure, and he's also recently claimed that papaya samples have tested positive for coronavirus. Just this weekend, he went to church and told the population that, you know, COVID was now, COVID numbers were coming down significantly, they're going to allow tourists back into the country. And in fact, the country hasn't released any data in three weeks, but there's anecdotal evidence of a huge increase in deaths. And last weekend, Kenya closed their border with Tanzania out of concern for just this danger. Talking about containment, of course, on the flips on the good side, it has helped contain the virus. On the negative side, it has led to a lot of human rights abuses. So police and security officers in enforcing these lockdowns in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and elsewhere are accused of really of killing and beating people to enforce these restrictions. And of course, in Africa, as we've seen elsewhere, gender-based violence and domestic violence are increasing. I mentioned at the outset that health systems and of course the environment here also have a role to play. So what was very interesting, I was talking to the head of the WHO here last week and he told me that 75% of people testing positive are asymptomatic. They don't know at all that they're sick. Now, there's no data to suggest why this is the case, but scientists are kind of positing that it may be because, again, African people tend to have higher experience and exposure to infectious diseases, and therefore they're better able to withstand the disease. At the same time, Africa suffers from a much higher burden of TB, malaria and other diseases and there's a danger now that people won't go to hospitals for treatment, they won't go for routine immunizations and so forth because they're afraid of COVID. And of course, you know, public health officials are worried about a return of polio and various other things because people aren't going to get treatment. And living conditions here also are very different and pose significant challenges. Hundreds of millions of families live in slums or informal settlements. Nairobi, where I am talking to you from today is a city of 5 million people, almost 60% of whom live in these slums. And there you might find anything, you know, between 5 to 10 people sharing a room and no running water. Families will spend a huge amount of their income on water and shared latrines and so forth. So very poor sanitation, you know, really living cheek by jowl, almost impossible to social distance. A few, just two final points I'll make. One is on food security. Even before COVID broke out, more than a quarter of a billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa were food insecure. And that's as a result of economic shocks, climate, conflict and so forth. Obviously, COVID is now really exacerbating that, not least as a result of border closures and lockdowns which are halting the supplies of seeds and fertilizers to farmers. Bear in mind, 60% of Africa depends on farming for their income and also food imports. At the same time, you know, we're seeing currency depreciation, falling prices for cash crops, falling revenues from stalled industries like oil and tourism. And so in response, many governments are introducing social safety protection programs, so cash transfers to vulnerable populations to allow them to buy food, at least the basics. And last week, the governor of the Kenyan Central Bank said this is the biggest challenge facing certainly the Kenya, the country I'm in, in more than a century. Across the continent, trade is down by about a third. And so facilitating, trying to facilitate safe trade is obviously really, really important. But the picture is grim, but there's also some positives that we may see in terms of the ability for manufacturers to adapt as they're doing in Kenya. We've seen a big increase in, you know, the production of masks and PPE and sanitizers and so forth. And then also the government governments are being encouraged now to go digital in terms of trade, which longer term could boost competitiveness. My last word is kind of a worrying one as well. It's in terms of security and anti-terrorism. Violent tax in this region have gone up by a third in the month to mid-April. So ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab have all said that they see this crisis as an opportunity to increase their terror, you know, to really roll out their terror agenda. Of course, at the same time, African governments like elsewhere in the world are, you know, refocusing their military to pandemic response. And therefore, there may be these risks that, you know, terror organizations will take advantage of that. And of course, we also know peacekeepers and others are being rotated out because of COVID. So there is a real risk that the games we've made could be rolled back across all of those different indicators. But maybe I'll stop there and happy to take questions later. Thank you very much, Fanula. So the picture you paint is, you know, at the beginning when COVID-19 hit Europe in particular, there was a lot of concern about what may happen when we started seeing cases in Africa as a continent. So you've painted a picture that has positives, but also negatives, particularly in the long-term economic impact and the security impact. Julian, if we could turn to you. You know, you're in Seoul. South Korea was held up as an example of how to handle COVID-19 fairly well, given all the unpredictability of this. That has had a bit of a reality check just recently because we see the emergence of the new clusters, et cetera. What is your view on how South Korea has handled this and how this may play out in the future? Well, thank you. I would say very well, it's not just embassy bias. There was the outbreak recently in the nightclubs, but they jumped in it very, very fast. I mean, Korea has won a lot of praise. 66 countries and 23 international organizations have sought Korea's advice. The future could be a very good meeting. President Moon, the telephone meeting on the 4th of May. And Korea's approach basically, it merges transparency in dealing with the public, constant information, text messaging. Some people argue almost too much information and come back to that issue. It's a bit of a privacy and so on, but an innovation of technology. And so it rests on the three pillars, mass testing, contact tracing, and quarantine treatment. Korea has conducted more than 750,000 tests since January and it does about 5,000 a day. When things were very bad in February, it was doing 10 to 15,000 a day. And what it also does is it puts up makeshift centers when you open outbreaks. So rather than bringing people into hospitals, what you see around the town, and it's been fascinating to see this, somebody living here, independently of the new embassy, just to be living here, these kind of improvised test centers, drive-in test centers, literally, like my dollars. But where you get tested in 10 minutes, the results are available within hours. The tester is separated physically from the person who's been tested. And it's extraordinary. It also keeps, it prevents hospitals from having to be disinfected. It protects basically health workers and the people being tested. That's the big testing thing here. But the other side of it, of course, is this contact contact tracing, which of course is an issue that we're all interested in. Basically in Korea, text messengers are sent to the public with anonymous information on cases. And so actually, just before, I hope it won't happen when we're speaking now, your phone goes off quite often and it will tell you of a case in your locality. And you can then check the path the person who has tested positive has taken. In other words, they're kind of, if you like, they're odyssey through shops, bars, restaurants, convenience stores, nightclubs, and so on. And if you were there at that time, then of course you come forward and you get tested. And if you are tested positive, and then of course your movements are traced and so on. Now, there are, some people have raised concerns in terms of privacy, but in fairness, there are snapback provisions. And there's a very strong public sense that in Korea that these are, these are temporary measures, you know, dealing with the public health emergency. The third pillar is treatment, where confirmed cases are sent, if it's a serious case, of course, to hospital, but if it's not such a serious case in temporary facilities. Now, of course, it's a, by and large, as you mentioned the reality check, Mary, but it has overall been a very successful story. But it didn't seem so three months ago. And at that stage, cases were rocketing. And after the, the kind of the was now famous or infamous patient number 31, there were 2300 cases in 10 days. New cases were appearing at a rate of 800 or 900 new cases per day. But through mass testing, contact tracing, quarantine, treatment and social distancing, Korea, it brought it down, it brought down in really very short amount of time, the number of new cases by 90%, number of new cases each day by 90%. Basically, Korea went from having the second highest incidence at that time of COVID-19 in the world to the 43rd, where it is now. So basically took about two weeks in early March, combining those things, the mass testing, the contact tracing, the quarantine, treatment, social distancing. Took about two weeks in early March to go from 800 new cases a day to fewer than 100. Nearly four weeks later, on the 15th of April, Korea held parliamentary elections, which were, you know, they had protocols like social distancing, taking temperatures, hand sanitizers, clothes for gloves. But in those elections, people thought maybe they'd have to be postponed, but in those elections 29 million people voted the highest turnout since 1992. So basically, yes, what Korea did was it provided a kind of a template for flattening the curve. Bill Gates referred to an interview last night as bending the curve, as he announced funding for two Korean organizations for big data tracking of COVID-19 and for work on a medical treatment. And in fact, one of the companies, one of the beneficiary companies, SK Bioscience, is a kind of a cousin company of SK Biotech, who's a major foreign direct investment source in Korea in Ireland. Just to say briefly, just on the Korean example, because I know as you say, Mary, it is one that has provoked great interest. One of the reasons for success has been the lessons learned from the bruising experience of MERS in 2015. At the time, the, in fact, the current president, President Moon, the leader of the opposition was, as many others were, deeply critical of the approach of the time in terms of lack of transparency, lack of kids and so on. And response was really in Korea, an accelerated program to develop kids, new CCTV footage, geolocation data and so on. So when COVID-19 struck, Korea was ready to go with a network of 96 public and private laboratories to test for COVID-19. In fairness to Korea, because I think it has won many admirers, but there is an important cultural point, which I'm sure many people today in the audience would have seen, is that sometimes there has been a tendency to say, well, this has been down to the Confucian culture and it's a very obedient society and so on. But a lot of commentators have said, this actually sells Korea short. It's a very reductive analysis, because the reality is that in fact Korea is almost, I don't say like a hyper-democracy, in that it's got a very strong culture of protest, whether it's political demonstrations or whether it's one person with a megaphone outside his former office of employment, whatever. Because frankly people in this country fought hard for their freedom in the 1980s and in fact two days ago marked the 14th anniversary of a terrible massacre of demonstrators in Guangzhou in 1980 seeking freedom, which the country secured in 1987 through its own bravery. So the way this argument about the people in Korea follow the advice because it's an obedient society is actually really, really most unfair and the reality is, is that the more persuasive reason for the success of the containment measures in this country is that basically the government acted convincingly on the public respecting the device. The last thing I just say just in terms of Korea is, again, just to put its social distancing achievements into perspective. Same measures, you know, standing apart, temperature checks, working from home and so on, but in many ways it's more striking in this country because, because of population density. Korea has a population density of 503 people per square kilometer. The EU 27 collectively have a population density of 117 people per square kilometer and then you add the fact that 70% of Korea is mountainous and then beyond that you add the fact that this is a very social culture, very social country where people, you know, it's very unusual to eat alone, people, you know, people, workers dying together, lunchtime and so on. So in many ways social distancing has required, has required an even greater effort here. So the last thing I'll say is that of course, for Nulu to talk about economic impacts, here of course, you know, not so much but still almost half a million jobs lost, biggest loss of 20 years, exports so far may have compared to last year but there are encouraging signs in the sense of Korea has provided a very effective template in terms of early action to deal with COVID-19 both in terms of harnessing technology but also winning public trust. Not every lesson is replicable everywhere. I think they accept that but I think Korea is keen in a multinational framework to share its lessons which is deeply encouraging and I think there's a lot we can all take from this. It has been a great privilege, great fortune to be living here in this time and then just to say, look, it's difficult to stop the whole region, you know, I know obviously it's very, very perfect throughout the region but perhaps we can certainly come to that more in the Q&A. Thank you very much. Excellent, thank you for that overview Julian and to turn now to Barbara in Mexico City and Barbara, you are a master to Mexico of course. Your brief also means that you represent Ireland in other countries across the region including Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Cuba and very different countries, very different contexts and perspectives etc and so the floor is yours to give us a flavor of what it, how this is played out not just in Mexico but more regionally. Yeah, super, Mary and thank you very much for echoing the colleagues comments about the benefit of this sort of pooling of ideas. I think listening to to Finula and Julian, you have a real sense of that we're here now the epicenter of where Julian was talking about earlier earlier times in in February and in March. So the Americas, the Americas, Mexico's in North America, the Americas are now the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world, in this wave, if the world trans organization is right, this wave may just wash across the Pacific and roll again through, please God not. So what we're looking at here at the Americas is obviously the US as the lead 1.5 million cases, 90,000 people have died so tragically in the United States. Then in Latin, in the Latin part of America we have the Brazil in the lead with the 250,000 plus cases and that's 50% of the cases in Latin America are in Brazil and 17,000 deaths approximately based on official figures. Then we're looking at in terms of the death count which is of my goodness who would have ever thought about thinking about this part of the world in that way. But Canada follows Brazil in the Americas with 6,000 deaths followed by Mexico and Peru with a fairly relatively speaking a modest amount. So what you have here in the Americas is all of the interconnections that flow from migration, remittances, the intra and interdependencies of the region being highlighted and brought to really to the surface here. For example, one of the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 in Central America and in Mexico is the disproportionate impact of this of the COVID-19 in the United States on the Hispanic and the African American community remittances on the floor, wiping out the essential lifeline for poor, as Vinula says, a great dependency on the informal economy in all of these countries and a dependency as in Ireland for decades and decades for generations on the money coming from America. So what we're looking at here, I mean at the top line, obviously a great variation and I was talking to Paul Gleason, Alison Milton is now our Ambassador to Colombia and we've been there, Jackie and Barry Tumulty and Sean Hoy just in prepping for this. We're a small group, five countries, six offices. And what's a common theme on this is the public health crisis on masking a social crisis that was there already of inequality and poverty. For example, in Mexico, I would just highlight one figure, a brilliant group Coneval bringing out her study last Monday saying that as a result of COVID-19, 10 million, one zero million more people will join the lines of extreme poverty in Mexico. So the devastating on the social side, let's broadly say on the political side, you're looking at several right throughout the region, a swathe of elections have been postponed. We have three important elections coming up. We have the plebiscite coming up in Chile. We have an important, how would you say it, an important test coming up in Dominican Republic and in Bolivia too. So here you see this trend of emergency powers all over the world. I mean Aiman Gilmour, our special rep used special rep briefed some of the colleagues recently and he described it as the largest setback for human rights in the world because of emergency measures and all of our governments are having to do this, as Julian says, for the necessity for the public health crisis. What I would highlight here is the question of the capacity of the state itself, the states themselves, to deal with a pandemic of this scale and of this virilence. So we're in the very first phase of it now and it really is, it really is too early to say Mary where the region will end up. We have strong constitutional democracies in the region, which you see here, what Franula said, we see we have for example in a great friend of Ireland government of Nicaragua, the people of Nicaragua, but a certain denial in the public narrative about the case 25 reported cases. We also saw very, very tardy responses in some of the more populist countries in the Americas, a certain denial of the science and I mean maybe there's something about the way the populist governments have responded to this that we can touch on. But here it is a bit like, you know, the final lives of Juneau and the Peacock, you know, the whole world may be in a terrible state of chasis. Nothing like a bit of Juneau to finish off. Thank you, Barbara. You know, what's clear from the three overviews is the sense of uncertainty here and the unpredictability of the situation we all find ourselves in now minus a vaccine fears of a second or possibly third wave. We're really, you know, approaching this on a day-to-day basis in so many respects. But just a couple of questions before we go to Q&A with the audience later and I would encourage our attendees to send questions through the Q&A function over the next 10 minutes or so before we go into Q&A proper and during the Q&A session. But before we go to Q&A, I'd like to ask our three panelists question in terms of how the European Union has been perceived throughout this crisis. Has it been perceived as an effective actor in terms of its engagement with your respective regions throughout this period? Also how the EU has dealt with this situation itself and also how multilateral organizations are perceived in your respective regions as well. The World Health Organization, we've seen there have been criticisms, praise, different views of how it has handled this particular episode. Fanula, we'll start with you. Thanks Mary. Well maybe I'll start with the EU response. I mean overall the EU put together a package of 20 billion to help the most vulnerable countries to respond and many of those countries were in Africa. Certainly in Kenya they would, they're perceived to have done a really excellent job. So they've pulled together a package of 300 million here composed of grants and loans to SMEs to keep them buoyant working very closely with the European Investment Bank but also providing some direct support to government investing in those cash transfers I spoke about earlier so that vulnerable families can have a minimum income to buy the basic necessities. They're investing in community health as well and safe trade. So I spoke earlier about you know the dangers, you know the many impacts that blocked trade has. So the EU is funding an organization called Trade Mark East Africa that works very closely with governments in this region to try to make trade safer so we can keep the trade corridors open but ensure that officials have PPE, that they're moving digital and so on and so forth. So they've really I think been regarded as responding well. In fact I know President Kenyatta of Kenya actually rang the EU, had a delegation to you know thank the EU for their support. Of course the AU is the big multilateral organization in this part of the world and they also mobilized quickly. They've established a COVID task force, they've developed a continental strategy for responding to COVID. The chair who's the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has actually appointed four envoys to go out and really advocate for debt relief and for the international community to stand by Africa at this moment. And that advocacy has had some impact. I mean we've seen the G20 suspend debt repayments for some time. The IMF also offered debt relief and most of the beneficiaries of those were countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The Africa CDC has done very well. They're trying to pool the resources of African countries so that they're better able to benefit in terms of procurement practices and training and so forth of health workers so they've also played a very important part. So I think overall the multilateral response here would be regarded as you know as having worked. I mean obviously there's an awful lot to do, there's an awful lot of there's a huge amount of need and certainly I think that you know people will continue to look to the international community for further measures to support Africa when indeed the peak does hit. Thank you for that Finula. Over to you Julian. Mary thanks. Yeah I think it has boosted the image of the EU here including the activity behind the 20 billion euro package Finula mentioned. Just the EU in some ways here I'll say underappreciated but it's the EU for instance just in the case of Korea is it's force you know fourth largest export you know treating as a country destination and it's the largest single source of foreign direct investment in Korea. But like in a lot of countries sometimes there isn't really a sense of maybe the partnership perhaps so often isn't as rich maybe as the economic interaction would merit. I think that's not an issue unique to this country by any means. But I think there's a lot of good work going on to raise the profile of the EU here and I think the corona diplomacy that Korea has engaged on has brought it into closer contact with the EU both with the institutions of the EU and at the United Nations. And lastly I'd say just to link back to the the aid dimensions that Finula mentioned and even looking as recently as the comments made by President Moon at the World Health Assembly yesterday and so on. Korea is looking much more to aid and I think that will bring it again more closely into the EU's orbit. It has the unique experience of going of course from being an aid recipient to an aid donor in its you know extraordinary historical trajectory of development in this country and I think that's something that that's something that will will bind it more closely to the EU and I think will will I think the the contacts that have been made in discussions that have been occasioned by coronavirus the COVID-19 I think will will I think will bring will bring the EU and Korea together in a whole raft of dimensions. Thank you Julian and Barbara over to you finally. And on the European Union visibility here I think it has been a moment a really defining moment for our new leadership in in Brussels. I think that the leadership of Ursula herself has been so so impressive. The crystallizing moment here in Latin America where there is a very significant and correct debate led brilliantly by Mexico and the United Nations for public access to the vaccine and an easing of intellectual IP games in the shall we say around access to medicines has created a visibility for the European Union with the pledging conference Mary phenomenal to see that and and I think in a in a really complementary way working with the United Nations and that solidarity Ireland quadrupling our support for the World Health Organization so a certain position of visibility for the Union but I speak from a conviction here that we're stronger when we're aligning our European Unionists and values with the mandated authority of the United Nations agencies and I think that was a brilliant moment here in the field all of my colleagues Sean Paul Alison Jackie Barry report alacrity in the response reprogramming of money and there is not it's not you know Latin America is not a recipient of the EU as the world's leaders leading donor in the way many people might imagine but a great alacrity of response great leadership from the center maybe just give a shout out given that it's the IEA to fabulous support for Ireland with the repatriation of our citizens from here and from the European Union the emergency mechanism my colleagues in Brussels an old team working with Andrew and colleagues in Dublin fabulous visibility in our own country for what European Union solidarity is and my final point Mary really is a very important one and it's something that I would like to highlight. Finula mentioned earlier on the question of thematic you know when you look at the world is the world you know is this a level or Mary Robinson said last week COVID is not a level or actually it highlights all the discrimination and the inequalities and one of the greatest source of inequalities in the world is the issue of women's rights and here in this crisis we are seeing women's rights once again being the highlight you know the highlighted vulnerable group let me just give you an example the issue of gender-based violence and the peak in violence against women in countries with this machismo and this inbuilt cultural and it's worldwide I mean I'm not I'm not singling any country out for it it's a trend but I would like to highlight the great work being done by the United Nations Women's Organization we have a brilliant leader here Belen Sands let a whole team of people in New York working with Geraldine Byrne and there's something about the necessity for Ireland in my opinion to align our great feminism and our great support for equality around that issue now because it is a crisis that women if there is a risk that in some countries more women will die of violence from the restrictive measures of being pulled up at home in small inadequate accommodation and themselves be victim of murder and genocide which is a terrible plague in the world and as I say I highlight it because it's a Latin problem but as Vanoula said it's not just a problem of Latin America or of Ireland or of Europe the HCH or as well I would give a shout out for for great leadership and Madame Bachelet highlighting the injustice in this context of the continued blockade of Cuba I mean here's a country having a fantastic well-managed response to the crisis sending out their brigades medicas around the world and they themselves cannot access on the open market the medicines that they need and here's the European Union again organizing PPE Swiss government sending in ventilators European Union medicines so really great visibility great solidarity but with the United Nations Mary I think that's the piece you know it's not a competition for visibility it's a competition for effectiveness to save lives thank you Barbara and before we move to Q&A with our attendees I would ask all three of you to just give us a brief overview of Ireland's engagement with your respective regions what are we're talking about the development trade diplomacy human rights and of course as all three of you have touched on I mean what we're dealing right now in terms of this crisis is is unprecedented and you know the way paradigms will change whether it's related to development whether it's related to trade whether it's related to bilateral relations between countries so much is again going back to that word uncertainty so much is uncertain unpredictable right now but if you could before we move to the the attendees give us an overview of Ireland's engagement with your respective regions thank you would you like me to start Mary we were staying in the same order and so I'm accredited to Nairobi covering Sudan Somalia and Eritrea and the embassy here actually was closed in the 80s as a result of cutbacks fiscal situation in Ireland but in 2014 I guess there was a you know the government is in the process of increasing of course our global footprint and Kenya was seen as an obvious place where we should be represented given you know it's a big economic it's a big geopolitical player of course it's the economic powerhouse of east Africa and we have very deep and long routes here I mean we just need to think of and it's a great pleasure of mine to meet so many of the missionaries that have been here for many years and really have done fantastic work in terms of building Ireland's reputation in terms in health care and in them education particularly we've also had many NGOs concerned and many others trokera have been operational here so we reopened in 2014 with the dual mandate really and certainly to build trade Kenya is becoming a middle income a lower middle income country you know there's a lot of and there's a lot of potential in terms of services agribusiness and technology and so forth we had our first trade mission our first ever trade mission last November led by minister Heather Humphreys 40 plus businesses coming here and a lot of deals done at the same time of course I mentioned some of the countries I'm covering Sudan and Somalia Eritrea they're among some of the most fragile countries in the world Somalia particularly obviously deeply afflicted afflicted by conflict over many years so we're also engaged in the development sphere with a relatively modest budget and so here in Kenya we're working in agriculture supporting and supporting agriculture you know it's it's about it accounts for about two-thirds of GDP and more than much more than two-thirds of employment so making a difference there can really be transformational and we're working on dairy and in and potatoes and so forth leveraging the experience of Chagas really and to help help support that sector education we have young scientists Kenya and which is a wonderful initiative really reaching many many thousands of students here and helping to build the industries and the skills of the future and then we're also supporting the development of the private sector so that's supporting the equivalence of the IDA in Ireland so that Kenya Kenya can develop their FDI but and then there's a lot of humanitarian funding of course going to Sudan and Somalia as I mentioned already and more than three million this year and consider it's another big issue and actually that came to the fore and during this crisis we have a population here an Irish population something in the region of about between a thousand and fifteen hundred and some many of them stayed many of them have been here for many years but others did need to be repatriated and the flights closed down here pretty quickly so we assisted citizens to leave Kenya Sudan and Somalia and we have a very vibrant I'm just conscious I'm sorry Mary I'm conscious of the time ahead of us so if you could leave it there okay thank you Julian over to you um well very see Asia Pacific is going to be critical to our economic recovery the post-covid the department Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade launched an Asia strategy at the beginning of this year um because Asia is so important Asia Pacific is home to four billion people it's it's home to six of the large six of the largest 20 global economies China Japan India Korea Australia Indonesia and it's the primary driver of of the global economy it contributes 60 percent of economic global growth so it's going to have 3.5 billion middle-class people by 2030 so we are already deeply invested in Asia economically we're looking to to expand our our footprint to to last year we opened a very important consulate general in Mumbai we're planning to open in the Philippines and the other consulate consulate general in China so we have established often young business population throughout Asia as we also said we also have missionaries including here in Korea where we've had outstanding columbian missionaries have given decades of service um to this country so Asia Pacific is going to be absolutely with critical and will remain or will become even more critical to our to our our economic agenda just in fact very briefly mentioned um and I suppose I've been remiss talking about the region um really focusing on the Korea COVID-19 experience but it should be remiss not to mention just the outstanding work that colleagues have done in this region in responding to to COVID-19 you know with China in terms of sourcing PPE um in in repatriation flights Japan dealing with the diamond princess state of emergency our embassy in Singapore dealing with not just issues in Singapore but very very difficult cases in the Philippines Australia has got a huge Irish population Australia and New Zealand have done phenomenal work in helping Irish people getting home in Indonesia Indonesia and India of course um you know again repatriation flights of Irish people confront us with the um including with the lockdown situation and there so really you know it it um the the the work that has been done and I'm sure this is the same this is the same the whole world over with the work that's been done by our colleague embassies here in Asia Pacific in close coordination with our colleagues and consulate at home and and throughout the department has been extraordinary and and in talking about the region uh given the sort of the primary interest I suppose in the in the Korea coronavirus approach I just wanted to rebalance this debate and and to mention that it's we've we've had it lucky I suppose in a sense of you know the country that we've been in and really we've looked on and seen some incredible work done by our colleagues thank you thank you very much Julian and Barbara over to you okay so this the sound bite on Ireland's relations with 33 countries is I think it's it is true to say relations with this region between Ireland on the bilateral side are excellent historically there's a deep you know there's an invisible Irish footprint through you know Tim Fanning's fabulous book about the on the forgotten Irish of Latin America built the participation of the colonization changed sides built democracy here many of the constitutions bear the imprint of Irish enlightenment thinkers who were emigrates from our own country so a fabulous values piece in the culture um that translates in modern day times to this great great shared view between Ireland and all of these countries about the expectation that the world will be a fairer place and that the guarantors for that are the multilaterals and for example here the great candidacy of Ireland for the security council campaign people look to us to be that voice that independent Ireland and also that Ireland of solidarity but leveraging our membership and our commitment to the European Union to to bring the the the needs shall we say of the partnership to the table Maria would like to highlight if I could the fabulous work here you know this is not a development partner relationship for Ireland but there is fantastic work underway here through the funding we give to multilateral institutions all that money 85 million we've given to the UN system for the crisis working its way through here brilliant leadership for example by Alison Milton in the surf flexible money for emergencies this is a very earthquake and disaster prone region and then the great great work of Trocra and Guatemala Honduras and Nicaragua in the hardest of circumstances right now on the front line working in communities make you very proud of the practical expression of our values and the great support that the Irish aid program gives so excellent relations great belief in the multilateral order well done to by the way the international financial institutions the IMF for giving the free loans Paul Deson was saying to me the money is flowing through it's a very important test for the multilateral system if we fail this test bad outcome we're winning this test and that's the good outcome thank you Barbara


Those are your mighty mates. Now that's the kind of mighty companions you wanna be surrounding yourself with. That's the kind of mighty companion that you need. Number four, 56 votes. Empty the mind of people thoughts. Empty the mind of people thoughts. When you look at how, when you feel disturbed, worried, concerned, when you feel doubtful, when you feel guilty, how much do you think that fear and guilt is connected to people thoughts? If you just really were honest and started to say, okay, I feel bad, I feel terrible, what am I thinking about? Chances are you're thinking about people thoughts. Chances are there's people thoughts involved in that bad feeling, that guilt or that shame or that worry, that concern. So number four is empty the mind of quote, people thoughts. And the last one, number five with 51 votes is how to be guided through the fear of loss and sacrifice. How to be guided through the fear of loss and sacrifice. That when we deal with letting go and releasing what we're really praying for is to release the belief in loss and sacrifice from our mind, because God didn't create us as a being of light that feels loss and sacrifice. That would make no sense. Why would God create a perfect, innocent being of light and then go, oh, sorry about that loss and sacrifice feeling you have in your heart. No, God has nothing to do with loss and nothing to do with sacrifice and the ego has everything to do with loss and everything to do with sacrifice. And that's why we're praying to release the ego. So the movie today is another version of the movies that you've watched with me, some of you and love the most. Some of you remember we watched the island together where Lincoln Six Echo, you know, he doesn't like, why do we always wear white and isn't there any other color? And I don't like the food. Why can't I have bacon? And then it goes on to his friendships. He wants to have a deep friendship with the Scarlett Johansson character, Delta, something. That's another movie. And basically he slowly is curious and discovers signs and symbols that his environment in the world that he perceives is not what it seems to be.  It's not really, it's not home. It's not loving. It's not free. It's more like an imprisonment. Like he's perceiving a prison and matrix and the matrix he's told by his teacher that basically the world has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth, Morpheus says. And everything you think and taste and touch and smell in this world is part of a prison, a prison for your mind. And then when Neo questions Morpheus even more, he basically, Morpheus gives him the first step and that is to begin to realize that he's a slave. Most of us, we don't like the idea that we're slaves. We don't like, if anybody came to you and knocked on your door and said, I have something important to tell you, you're a slave. We'd say, sorry, we don't need any of that here.  And so we can relate that the way we've acted, sometimes afraid, fearful, shameful, we feel at times like we're slaves of something. But we seem to have forgotten what we're slaves of because we think we can blame the government, we can blame the pandemic, we can blame all kinds of things. Our friends, our relatives, what was that Pat Benatar song? Treat me right, dun, dun, dun. A lot of us have played the treat me right song right along with Pat Benatar. Like if you wanna be with me, you're gonna have to treat me right. And that's still not recognizing that the prison is the mind. Whenever we think we're personally in prison, we still don't realize that it's the mind. We still don't realize that it's the mind that believes in this world, that believes in the ego is the prison, the ego, the belief in death, the belief in separation is the prison. It's in the mind. It has nothing to do with the world that the five senses behold. In fact, Jesus does say, when you want only love, you will see nothing else.  If you want only love, you will see nothing else. I just listened to a friend of mine yesterday. I found his video on just popped up on YouTube and I've known this man for many, many years. And his name is Howard Storm. And he had a very lengthy, what they call near-death experience when he was 38 years old. He was very intellectual, very bright. He was a university professor. He's an atheist. He had a wife. He had children. He had a house. He had followed the American dream and then he died. His body seemed to die. And he had a long near-death experience where he had trouble praying even in the middle of his near-death experience because he couldn't remember how to pray. He started reciting like a forescore and seven years ago, the Gettysburg Address. He started going through the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence and everything because he couldn't even think how to pray. Now he was really an atheist. He was so convinced in the reality of this world that he couldn't even think of the words that he would put to pray. And then he went through this really hellish experience that kind of came to a point when this line came in his mind that he didn't hardly even recognize but it was from childhood when he was maybe four or five years old. And the line was, the Lord is my shepherd. And he was like, the Lord is my shepherd. And then his hellish experience, the demons started to leave him alone and back off when he remembered four words from his childhood. The Lord is my shepherd.  And then he started shouting the words out of, he was so angry, the Lord is my shepherd.  And then finally he basically heard this childhood prayer and he felt to call and ask Jesus for help. And with somebody who's a tribe and really convinced atheists, that's a big step. And then from there everything turned and he was taken into this amazing experience and taken by Jesus toward the light, this giant constellation of light. But when he was told he had to go back, he said, no, no, no, I don't wanna go back there. I don't know, I don't wanna go back. No, no, no, it's terrible there. It's terrible on earth. It's nothing like the light and everything. And basically Jesus and the angels said, earth is what you want it to be. Basically, whatever you want earth to be, it will be to you. And then of course, he explains it further in the course, when you want only love, you will see nothing else. That earth isn't good or bad. It's just what, it's a projection or a reflection of your mind. And it just shows you what you think and believe about yourself. And that's why when Jesus woke up and realized he was the Christ, then he transcended the world. He had no need for images that God did not create. He didn't even need a reflection. He got to, he ran right into I amness, right into the vertical of the cross. Whoa, I am as God created me. End of story, end of story, period. There is no world, I am as God created me, end of story. Now this movie is spectacular because if you're watching the movie and you're identified with a person, being a person, then what Jesus would say is, you're identified with the body and Jesus calls the body the hero of the dream. He says the serial adventures of the body involving all these different events and circumstances are really just made up by the ego. And he's teaching us that you aren't, you aren't a hero of the dream. No matter how great you seem to make your personality self, you'll never be satisfied with being the hero of the dream that God did not create. You will never find happiness in images. Well, thank you, give it to me straight. I'm happy, I'm happy that you can tell it to me straight. Give me the truth. You know, like they say in a court of law in the United States, do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? So help me God. And today we're going to go, yes. We want the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth and so help us God. So help us Holy Spirit and Jesus. And our movie today is the Truman Show. We're going on a journey with Truman to find escape. We're finding escape from the projected world. Wow, this is no small movie at all. So what we can see with Truman, even the name Truman, true man, that by itself is a contradiction in terms because Truman is kind of implying that there is such a thing as a true man. It's implying that there is such a thing as true, that mankind or the human race is true. And even most religions teach that there's God and then there's the human race. And then they have to try to figure out how do you put those together? A God of eternal love and a human race of time and space. How do you put those together? Well, Jesus is telling us you don't. I mean, the Holy Spirit can be the mediator and show you how to look upon the world in a different way. But he's not saying to try to make yourself something that you're not. That is not the teachings of Jesus. He's saying what the Greeks said, no thyself. So in this movie, the Truman Show, we see that one of the characters in the movie begins to start to realize that the world he perceives is not what he thinks it is. He begins to see signs and symbols like a light, a serious light falling down and crashing into the middle of his street where he lives in Sehaven. Like him starting to hear things on his radio in his car, his Ford Taurus. He's driving around, going to work and he starts to hear something happening on his radio that's showing him that there are voices and thoughts behind the world that he's seeing that are somehow directing the world as if the world is nothing but actors and actresses. That it's not real at all, that it's basically there's some kind of a director behind all of these characters and this director is telling them what to say and what to do and they're part of a giant conspiracy, a giant trick designed with one purpose in mind to keep you from knowing who you are. The entire world of time and space was designed and projected by the ego for one reason to keep you from knowing your Christ identity, your eternal identity. So what a journey.  That can sound a bit psychotic and it is. To believe in this world is the definition of psychosis. The definition of psychosis is a break from reality. So sure enough, sure enough that's what we're talking about. The entire cosmos is psychotic because it's an attempt to break from the reality of loves, from the reality of God. Is the cosmos schizophrenic? Ding, it's schizophrenic too. When you hear multiple voices, which we do every day, we have to admit we do hear multiple voices, that's schizophrenic. Ding, you know. And then you start to realize, okay, practically speaking then, what am I supposed to pay attention to now? And Truman's gonna show us the way. He's gonna pay attention to the signs and symbols. Is he afraid? Yes, he experiences fear. He's afraid of water. He's afraid of dogs. He doesn't really like going to work. Some of us can relate to that. Afraid of water, afraid of dogs and barking dogs and afraid of going to work. We're like, oh yeah, I can relate to Truman. He wants a deeper connection and he doesn't even feel that with his wife. He's got a best friend, Marlon, who he likes the feeling of having a best friend. But every time he talks to Marlon about escaping or going beyond his own perceived limitations, Marlon is going to put a beer in his hand. That's how your best buddy handles your existential crisis.  And as soon as Truman decides he's ready to escape, Marlon's going to show up with a six pack. He's coming with six beers when Truman starts to think there's something more than this world. The name of the director of this, we discovered TV show involving Truman and all these actors and actresses is basically called Christoff. Christ off. Christoff. Oh yeah, that's a good name for the ego director of a fake, designed world that was designed to keep you from knowing who you are. Christ off.  You can say, yeah, I know it's off. Yeah, the whole world is off. Time and space are off. They're off plan. The present moment, the holy instant is on. And that's one of our themes is experiencing the holy instant by desiring it holy. That's our second theme is experiencing the holy instant by desiring it holy. And just give yourself credit that if you started to desire the holy instant, the present moment, more than anything else in the world, I guarantee you the laughter, you would start to get more and more into laughter at just about everything.  And you would say, oh, now I understand what the Beatles meant in Strawberry Fields Forever. There's nothing to get hung about. Strawberry Fields Forever. You don't have to take LSD or ayahuasca to experience happiness and joy. It's right there in the holy instant.  I'm right here. Please, please desire me. Want me above all else. You know, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want things of this world. I want to know the Lord is my shepherd. I'll stay right there. The first part of the 23rd Psalm, I don't even have to go to the second line or the rest of the sentence. The Lord is my shepherd. So the other thing I think you'll like about this movie is as Truman begins to wake up, he begins to see signs and symbols around him. He sees them, a lot of them actually. And we all know how that feels because we get signs and symbols too. You know, we get little signs and symbols maybe every week that are there and we can acknowledge them or not, but they're there. When Truman starts to begin to be curious about these signs and symbols that the world's not real, it's not what it seems to be, then he actually has a moment where the world will come in to try to explain away the experience. And in this case, you always find that the ego is using all the characters to explain away the symbol of awakening. It will say, oh, a light fell from a plane. The debris was coming from a plane that flew overhead. It will try to explain something that comes across on his radio that shows him that it's all being orchestrated and that everyone is just acting and playing a part. It will just try to explain away everything. And that's the way it is with this world. When people have a near-death experience and have this, like my friend Howard, Howard Storm, who had this huge, long near-death experience that involved a hellish experience, that involved light beings, involved Jesus, that involved this giant constellation of light, and then a medical doctor will say, that was just some extra neurons firing in the brain when Howard died. He will take that whole thing and say, oh, there was some loose neurons firing. You see, science, the ego will try to explain away even your mystical experiences. Even when you have a deep meditation, it will try to reduce it to peptides in the brain, which is the brain's just a projection too.  The neurotransmitters are a part of a projection. I mean, everything of time and space is a projection. So of course, if you try to use time and space to prove that time and space are real, what do you want? If that's what you want, you'll find evidence. And yet Jesus says in the Course, no amount of evidence will convince you of what you do not want. That's that one line from the Course. Imagine if you applied that to the pandemic, no amount of evidence will convince you of what you do not want. What if you applied it to vaccines? No amount of evidence will convince you of what you do not want. What if you applied it to interpersonal relationships? No amount of evidence will convince you of what you do not want. That's why we're here right now. We're here saying we want God. And we know God is the answer. And we know there is no other answer but God. In the very end, it wouldn't matter what happened to your body, even if it looked bad for your body. It looked like you were dying. You were, your body was dying according to the ego's version. Jesus says you could simply rise up from your death bed and say, I have no need of this at all. In an instant, in a concentration camp, in the middle of a nuclear war, in the middle of anything you can conceive of the worst conceivable conditions and situations, Jesus says in the Manual for Teachers, you could simply rise up and say, I have no need for this at all. Meaning I have no need for the ego at all. And then you get lifted into the glory. In one instant, in one instant, all it takes is one instant of complete devotion to God and that's it for the hallucination. Your Truman Show is over. The instant you want it over, it's over. And then all those other ideas that seem to be there are gone because there's no space for them. They can't even seem to exist in the light of love. Love is the answer. The Beatles knew it. All you need is love. It's been coming to us. The songs have been singing at us for all these years and the movies and the fairy tales are all saying the same thing. It's all about the love. That could be your slogan. It's all about the love, baby. Just if anybody says, what's it all about? It's all about the love, baby. It's not about anything else. It's only been about the love. So I hope you enjoy this movie today because when I first saw this movie, when it came out in 1998, I went to the theater and I had a really good feeling. I was like, I was just walking into the parking lot and into the theater and I felt this swirl of love in my heart. And then when I watched this movie, when I came out of the theater, I didn't want to leave the theater. I just actually just wanted to stay in the lobby and look into the eyes of every single person in that lobby when they came out of the movies, when they were at the concession stand, everybody. I just stayed for about 25 minutes or so in the movie theater because I was transported. I could only feel love for everyone and everything. And then finally I left the movie theater and I went to visit my grandmother, Lillian, because she was always so dear and close to me and we always had these beautiful talks of how could there be a God that would send anyone to hell and how could there be a hell? And we would have these deep mystical talks. But I went over to her apartment and she was just there as usual alone in her apartment and I knocked on the door and I came in and I think I was dancing around her apartment like Fred is there. I mean, all I needed was, I was just dancing. I probably even danced on her coffee table.  Cause she had never seen me that happy, never seen me that happy. And I said, I'm wonderful, I'm wonderful, I'm in love. You know, I was sharing all kinds of things with her and she just said, well, just don't get fanatic. And I had to laugh at that too, cause it was, I was, I was beyond fanatic. I was gone, gone. I was swept away in God's love. So that's my prayer for all of you today is to watch this movie and to really take it into your heart that you are not at the mercy of this world. That this world is very much like a TV show and you are not trapped in the TV show because the exit is always there if you desire the exit. And that exit is just forgiveness. That's why we're doing these movies is just to enter into that exit. And in the end, we all have to take a bow like Truman does, you know, in the end Truman will take a bow and just smile and say, in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night, we all can take that same bow. And then what do we do with all these characters? We can just applaud at the end of a play, bravo. Oh, bravo. I mean, Truman has a wife named Meryl and she really tries the best to act like she's the wife, the wife care, the wife of Truman. And a lot of times she seems like she's doing a commercial cause the whole world is just like this world is run on product placement. It's all run on economics. It's all run on selling products. And that's what this world is about too. It's all based on products, you know, by this, by that, you know, you watch a commercial. Meryl is so funny as a wife because she's pretending to be a wife but she's really a salesman. And so are all the characters. They're all just salesmen. They're all trying to get us to believe in the reality of this world. And they're doing, I just at the end, I'm like bravo.  That was a bravo. Oh, and the best friend, good job. And then I can say that to my mother.  Oh, that was the best acting role, Academy Award. Oscar for you. That's the best mother act I've ever seen. I believed it was real. I always took you to be mommy. You were so good. I didn't realize you were acting. I thought when you were saying those things to me, I was taking them as if it was something about me, my person. But that's bravo, bravo.  Like, wow, you really tricked me for a while there. I took it serious. I thought you were real. You were a real mother, a real father, a real child. I thought you were a real dog. I even thought my cat, ISO, was a real cat. Here, look at Anna, Anna's coming. There it is. It's just, it's a fake. She's got a fake ISO now. We had to do something fun here to remind us that even our cat, our dog, bravo, that was the best pet imitation you had me fooled. You snuggled with me and purred and you kissed me. You really convinced me that you were a real cat. I almost, bravo, that's an Academy Award stuff right there. But we have to be able to do that literally with everything and everyone, and then we can last. Because as long as we think it's real and it's external to our mind, we're sunk. We're not in good shape if we're at the mercy of these characters. And yet we all know we have to get over it. We have to get over this mesmerism. Mary Baker Eddy called this world mesmerism. It is mesmerizing. We have been fooled to think they were real people, but not anymore, and thanks to Truman.  And just remember that your life that you've seen in this world is a show too. And one that you can resign from at any instant if it gets too painful. Just pull the escape hatch in your mind called forgiveness whenever, if it gets too intense, just that's enough of that. Let the air out of that one. So enjoy the movie and I will pop in during the movie and join you in the commentary.


Hi, I'm going to show you how I teach young children about light and the properties of light We can always start with the Sun But one of the things that children love to do is work with a flashlight So what I go what I do with the children is they can use their flashlight to do whatever they want to on a paper Just to have some fun They can do shadows and things with their hands But one of the things I like to show the kids is how different things affect how much light goes through So I have a little card here with an clear piece of plastic and the children shine the flashlight over the clear piece of plastic onto the black and they can see that it goes all the way through and We think of things where light can pass through like a window or a door Then I have something that's more opaque and This is a piece of wax paper and we think of other things that then and they experiment see that just a little bit Of light goes through some but not all of it and we think of things in the in the environment That I'll just a little bit of light goes through maybe a hat or maybe They're some of their clothes or other things in the in their environment that would just be a little bit of light and the last thing is I cover a card with black paper and they can see that no light goes through and That's like the nighttime and we think of other things where no light goes through like when we shut the door and Pull the blinds or when we close our eyes or put on dark glasses Where no light goes through and another fun thing to do is to turn all the lights off in a room and Shine the flashlight and just experiment and see what happens to the light in the room when we put things in front of it Or move things and that's how I teach about teach about light to children that are young. Thank you


One of the worst things about modern times is ingratitude is cultivated in people They're ungrateful for the police. They're ungrateful for government. They're ungrateful for their educations They're ungrateful for everything people just complain all the time and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says What I've done I love you. I ain't she cut them. Let's eat in them.  I Will give you more reasons to be ungrateful. This is a metaphysical equation gratitude equals increase in blessings In gratitude equals decrease in blessings