Okay, very good morning. It is Wednesday the 27th of October. So I hope you're doing well Before I begin really exciting day for amplifiers You all know if you've been following the channel our new mission to democratize financial education for young people and today this afternoon We're going to be training 1.4,000 people in two hours this afternoon Fortunately through our society network We're going to be dealing with students from the likes of Queen Mary's in London Durham Imperial lots of others and so Even if you're not part of any of these universities You know our mission is to really bring Financial education to everyone every young person and so if you just go on to amplify me comm You can actually just jump on one of our open free public events as well that are coming up We do those on a weekly basis where you can get knees deep in a role in finance like market Making sales trading asset management and so on so I'm going to check that out and find me comm again We'd love to have you on our mission to get as many people Access to this type of training. So please do check it out otherwise quick look at the markets this morning and things are Relatively quiet. We did touch of course a record momentarily for the Dow and S&P yesterday in US indices Earnings still very much in focus. We had the likes of UPS general electric finished up around 7% 2% each respectively yesterday and for context around 81% of the S&P 500 members have reported better than expected Earnings results so far and obviously this week particularly busy one 164 spooze companies reporting And we did have a number of large mega cap tech names reporting after the close yesterday We'll have a look at those in a moment But generally looking at the overall sentiment After those highs that were seen in North American indices shortly after the open Just drifted a little bit since then and overnight in the Asia pack session But just bumping back up as European UK players come back into the market So overall pretty steady going I'd say an index futures US seen marginally higher the DAX down about 42 But finding some overnight support in the futures market at the pivot level in the FX market The Dixie's pretty much unchanged and that's reflected largely in the major pairs trading pretty flat as Two really is gold and the US 10 year oil just printing session loads I can see here as I'm just looking at my chart with down $1.83 62 Nothing particularly too meaningful from an oil perspective. We did have the API crude or infantry's last night Which we can recap but overall as you can see here largely Although a wide-scale a period of consolidation for crude oil given that big push that we've seen up over a multi-week period So I'm going to get straight into Corporate earnings from last night quite a bit of to get through So I'm going to try and keep this as brief and to the kind of need to know facts for each individual company And I've got five or six in total to go through so starting off with the mega cap tech names and Microsoft Microsoft traded up about 2% in aftermarket trades. So generally a positive response from the market They're adjusted EPS came in at 227 against 207 on the street revenues as well We're a beat 45.3 billion and this estimates were for just under 44 In particular as you can see here the software giant gets a boost from demand for a zoo and office 365 So they're intelligent cloud, which is what that division is called Which is made up of the Azure and service software that revenue rose to 17 billion That was hard and expected around 16.5 and then productivity division that mostly then entails the office software And also in addition to personal computing, which is made up of things like windows the surface tablet Xbox the gaming side of things they also those two divisions both beat expectations as well so generally some good news there and Shares already at a record rise in the 11th straight earnings beat there for Microsoft for alphabet They're actually was slightly lower aftermarket But very marginally and I definitely would stress that in context, you know Shares have been up close to 60% year to date And so the fact that they've come up a percent or so I'd say it's absolutely nothing at all really to worry about Looking at alphabet specifically in their share price. They've been the big out performer, of course Against those kind of big fire the fab five tech names Definitely well outperforming the lights of Amazon, which overall are only up marginally on the year Despite being a real pandemic standout, of course that we had in 2020 In comparison definitely these two firms alphabet and Microsoft have really outperformed the lights of Facebook, Apple on Amazon Looking at alphabet their EPS was at $27.99 $27.99 that was well and above expectations of 2350 revenues again 65 point one two billion a firm beat they had robust advertising spending, but it did have slightly disappointing Results for YouTube and cloud computing divisions, which was what will the kind of weighing factor was and why they finished down in aftermarket trade Otherwise couple of other quick ones AMD they were down marginally point seven aftermarket Their revenues were a slight beat, but they in terms of their another bullish forecast But overall not too much there that really got the market excited So again, they did beat on AMD on their EPS adjusted basis revenues and they had a pretty decent outlook But a lot of that already being factored in Twitter was another one aftermarket they were up about three and a half percent one of the standout things Here was is that social media names given the Privacy tracking changes that we've seen on the iOS on Apple. We saw that last week absolutely Decimate snap shares which fell around 25% or so concerns then about how Facebook numbers might have looked and other subsequent social media Companies which are heavily dependent on advertising. I believe Twitter Generates about 90% of its revenues from from advertising and so those tracking changes would be very detrimental as what people were fearing and in fact They're having what the company called a modest impact on sales and actually that in itself was far lesser Degree than what markets were expecting and hence the reason why their their shares were a little bit higher Daily active users in Q3 was 211 million five million more than the previous period and a 13% increase in fat from a year earlier for Twitter and obviously those DAU numbers are Particularly important for these types of stocks and their revenues were broadly in line Otherwise Robin Hood from a percentage basis actually was one of the standouts. They actually Were down about eight and a half percent eight point five percent Their EPS was much worse than expected It came in a loss of two dollars and six cents analysts were looking for a loss of just one thirty seven You can see here revenue from crypto trading plunged 78% from the preceding quarter It's a strange one Robin Hood. I think kind of had its day I'm definitely not calling them down and out yet, but they were so popular during that whole game stop kind of meme squeeze that we had but that's kind of a distant memory now and The process of obviously IPOing takes time and that as well as why we've had lots of other SPAC bills and things of late given the the time to market can be much quicker But that's the kind of double-edged sword of being related to that kind of momentum Wall Street bets type marketplace is where you know really time is of the essence and and and also the fact that There's just plenty more competition there now out for zero commission kind of trading platforms Robin Hood. So One of the figures that stood out to me was something called the ARPU, which is the average revenue per user and that decreased 36% to 65 bucks. So yeah, the Company stuck stock falling around eight and a half percent last night another big one as well Just to mention was visa. They were down about two and a half percent The EPS was a beat as was their revenues and they also boosted their quarterly dividend But not perhaps up to the the kind of more lofty heights that some analysts were anticipating And so their shares just a little bit weaker All right Jumping over to the macro side of things quick update on China generally tone overnight in Asia was just a bit on the soft side Failing to really take on the positive handover from the US where the S&P was up about two tenths the down as that generally We're pretty flat Couple things on the evergrand side Chinese authorities have told the billionaire Hugh Kar-Yan Who is the evergrand founder to use his personal wealth to alleviate the property developers deepening crisis? according to people familiar the matter on Bloomberg and Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure what What he can do his personal wealth, I think it was in 2017 around 40 50 billion It's now down to just seven billion. I say just just seven billion. I think that's you US dollar based So, I mean that's obviously a drop in the ocean of the some 300 billion or so that the company kind of requires And how deep their their debt is at this point in time But I think it's more symbolic than that that the government are very reluctant to bail out this particular company And so they're just putting some pressure. I guess from the kind of management of this situation on the lights of the founder in attempt to I guess try and Stop this type of activity Manifesting into this this situation again in the future in whatever other sector that might be For ever grand themselves the next test will be a dollar coupon payment Which comes due basically in a couple days time on the 29th That's when a 30-day grace period ends and as you'll remember they did actually pay that 85 million dollars or so Last time that kind of kicked the can down the road a little bit further. Will they do that again? Probably so I would imagine Other things that I thought were quite interesting to mention from overnight was the ongoing tensions between Biden and G They've obviously tried to reestablish some kind of line of communication But the US Federal Commission Communications Commission the FCC an independent government agency overseen by Congress yesterday Voted 4-0 to cancel permissions for to operate in the US for the unit of China Telecom and China Telecom is one of the three leading communication providers in China So the FCC citing national security concerns and government connections. So obviously this will increasingly frustrate the counterparty in China in Beijing and so Just not that surprising. I guess this is kind of just keeping the pressure on as those talks Continue between those two superpowers Then the other thing talking about the Asia-Pac region was Australia Probably would have caught some of these headlines. The Aussie really hasn't moved a great deal, but the rates market has And the rationale is that Australian three-year bond yield has climbed to its highest level since July 2019 Comes after consumer inflation picked up pace in September quarter Strengthening rate hike expectations Perhaps I can show you this the black line is the annual core inflation in Australia And as you can see here really ramped up here with a kind of surge in commodity prices that we've had the supply chain Disruptions which globally have obviously caused this very hot inflationary environment at the moment and Australia is no different So their core inflation numbers very high And then you've got the Aussie three-year bond that spread to cash rate in this orange line here As you can see so swap traders now have priced in Three hikes by the RBA by the end of 2022 to take the cash rate up to what would be 0.75% according to overnight index swap futures so if you heard tapping them my My toddler daughter knocking on the door trying to test out my focus, but um Yeah, that's then Wednesday The report we had overnight was the inflation report from Australia's annual trim mean gauge Accelerated to 2.1% in the last quarter and that's then To the RBA is two to three percent target the first time it's really got to that point in six years And hence the reason why this rates market has has moved in the fashion that it has Find it hard to see why there They've been lagging that a little bit Given the acceleration of inflation has been quite clear for some time and the movement though Really has been a global one that's been happening in the rates market over the last couple of weeks Perhaps Australia just lagging that a little bit and playing a bit of catch-up in this most recent move And then jumping elsewhere co vid And you might have seen these headlines again as well the pound not having any movement to this because it's just fitting With the trajectory generally of the cases that we've been seeing of late And it's something that we're monitoring to see whether or not essentially the government in acts Plan B and so UK reported its highly highest daily death toll 263 from coronavirus since the beginning of March Yesterday adding to fears that tighter restrictions might well be needed this winter Steadily increasing hospitalization death rates have put pressure on the government to enact plan B Which would include mandatory face coverings and a recommendation to work from home So we just continue to keep an eye on that and just generally the comms coming out of of number 10 about their decision making going far Going forward. The other thing today of course is UK budget Rishi Sunak the Chancellor will brandish new official forecasts showing that the economy generally has grown fast and expected this year And that long-term covid scarring of the economy will be less severe than feared freeing him vital fiscal room for maneuver the upgraded forecast will allow the Chancellor to Trumpet investment in priorities including the NHS local transport left behind areas and so on The one thing I would say is that whenever we have the UK budget. It's always very clearly telegraphed I if you just to jump on any of the UK national newspapers today You can see a full list and break down of all of the major Things that are going to be announced today. So as you can see here lifts in the minimum wage You've got extra six billion pounds to be given to the NHS Leveling up of transport outside London so on and so forth So hence the reason why the budget doesn't really have Intra day too much of an impact on market prices because all of this is pretty much known at this point the one thing In future as a point of note if you were trading the UK fixed income market the announcement that typically bookends the chance of speech Which begins at 12 30 so when it gets to around kind of one one o'clock 115 because the speech normally lasts for about 45 minutes or so you get an announcement from the UK Treasury debt management office Which is in charge of the issuance of fixed income supply and depending on the supply Then that can have a short-term move on the 10-year yield in the UK Society to just be aware of but from a stunning perspective Not really expecting anything dramatic today, but certainly be interested and will generate a lot of headline buzz for sure Then from Pfizer on the vaccine side just a quick update Pfizer-BioNTech shop for children as young as five has won US backing of the US FDA vaccines advisory committee So just rounding up that kind of coverage. I've been doing over the last two days Quick look at the day ahead We've already had the German Data import prices month-to-month 1.3 percent actually sites often 1.5 again Not real reaction to that as you would expect so the UK European morning is pretty quiet as I mentioned the budget from Rishi Sonak starts at 12 30 US wise You've got durable goods coming at 130 and then you've got the Bank of Canada Interest rate decision at three o'clock According to analysts at ING the Bank of Canada is set to dial back It's stimulus further by tapering weekly QE purchases from what is currently two billion Canadian dollars to one billion ING add that the BOC could adjust their language Which could conceivably see the prospect of an April rate hike being priced fully in however They suspect that this move will be likely at the December meeting when they bring QE In this latest tapering to a conclusion. So something to look out for obviously if they start talking a Little bit more aggressively About that timeline then all the more kind of CAD positives that would be the lesser clarity on that The the probably the opposite vice versa effect Okay, and then Finishing up you've got the oil infantry data coming out from the DOE this afternoon quick recap The API's last night was a build of around 2.3 million in the headline crude Expectations were for actually a slight draw down But the cushing number was the biggest draw since the beginning of the year at 3.7 34 So slightly conflicting their headlines But as I said overall crude just ticking a little low as Europe would come into the market this morning And then finally from an earnings perspective Pre-market today interesting ones include the Dow Giant Boeing you've also got the likes of Coca-Cola and McDonald's We've also got GM and Ford reporting today as well as companies like Spotify, which I know are quite popular and well followed And that is it so I'm gonna leave it there that you guys get on with the day again for any students If you're not part of a finance society if you are part of a finance society And you want us to come to your university and run one of these sessions Doesn't come with any cost anything like that We just want to see an identified talent so that we can then talk to some of the big Investment banks that we work closely with and they're interested in trying to find the next Serena Williams So check it out and find me comm feel free to get in contact with me directly at info Amplified trading comm absolutely happy to help otherwise. Have a great day. I'll see you same time tomorrow. Take care


Hello. Thank you for staying to listen to our discussion, despite the lack of the break. Today, this is the second part, as I can say, of the discussion on the NGOs. And the Iranals just spoke about the importance of public sector, especially in these crisis times. And now we'll talk with the people who I think played and keep playing a very important part in this public sector of culture. And the topic of this discussion is with the culture communities, and I'm really happy and honored to moderate this discussion because I admire every speaker and participant. And those people played an essential part in building the cultural communities in the activation of this public sector of culture and even more. Let me introduce our participants, Diana Burg, Olena Fanasieva, Vitaly Matukhno, founder of the gallery, and Yulia Krivich, founder of the Solidarity Palace of Culture. I also forgot to mention the locations of these institutions. So, Diana is from Marupul, Olena is from Korsan, Vitaly is from Lisichansk, and Yulia is from Warsaw. So, you can see the geography is really wide and calls for a lot of emotions. I think it will be interesting discussing that because of all those challenges that each of the participants faced. At first, I'm giving the floor to each of the participants for them to speak briefly about their initiatives, about their activities, in case any of you doesn't know about the work of those initiatives before the war, and about how these activities changed after the full-scale invasions and whether it's possible to continue because each of the initiatives was connected with the rebuilding of the community, sometimes from scratch. And now, there is no access to those territories, so I wonder how the cooperation with these communities can be continued on the background of those blackouts, evacuations, etc. So, at first, there is Diana speaking about her platform too. Can you hear me? Hello everybody. I'd like to play the movie. Thanks. In the background, you can see a movie by our artist, Marsha. You will see Mariupol as of style, factory. You can even turn off the sound. There are no dialogues here. You can see Mariupol as it looked during the war but prior to the full-scale invasion. It was in 2021. This movie presents Mariupol and it shows the two platforms as a team. We created it in 2016 when I, together with my friends, we moved from Donetsk, where we were originally from, due to the Russian occupation of Ukraine. We used to be 20 kilometers away from the front line and we promoted human rights and freedoms through cultural activism in the local sphere and modern art. I will be commenting on the video. As this video, Marsha, the author, was comparing the art of style, as you can see right now, with the activity of the platform. It's called Sector. You can see this factory is kind of outside the center. You can see it's quite symbolic. I decided to put this as the background of my speech as this video presents the greatest audience as we rediscovered this year. It's the youth, it's teenagers. We had a project, Astraklots, in which we understood for ourselves, we comprehended that working with youth and teenagers is vital. I will not get into the details but in 2021 this is what was most important for us. You can see the people with whom we cooperated, I hope you can recollect on your very warm and positive memories. It's very difficult to discuss this in the past tense because these memories are so vivid. I deeply understand that the city, as it was, does not longer exist. Last year we were surrounded by a huge community of teenagers. This is an Ukrainian underprivileged marginalized group from underprivileged areas. The parents were far from perfect and the prose of life was unfortunately very poignant. For the teens, they understood that their future is quite limited, is to go to church and to drink. So for them we organized some hope. We presented them with exhibitions, with concerts. As youth we understand teens from 15 to 20, as you can see in the background they are just having fun. Obviously there are more than the ones presented in the video. Our activity was centered around organizing their time so that they can have fun. When it comes to the current situation we managed to evacuate, we managed to survive. Some of the people unfortunately were captured but the platform TU fortunately managed to evacuate. Most people managed to evacuate. David actually unfortunately was captured and just in a matter of a few days ago he managed to escape as Russian captivity. People were deported together with their families, unfortunately to Russia. And then for Ukrainians it was very difficult to run away, back to Ukraine or Europe. We organized a rescue group together with Masha and Denise. They were the mentors of our cluster. They knew the mentality of these children, the story behind each and every kid. Within the past nine months they managed to evacuate to Europe or internally into Ukraine about 220 teens from our community. We are very much community centered. Right now we take care of dozens of kids, some of them lost their parents, some of them are members of minority groups, LGBTQ groups. And we just want to listen to their stories and to support them. They are saying that I managed to survive two months in the shelter without any light, without any support. And I survived. For example, Vladik Pyatin for 30 seconds a day he was turning on his camera to record anything that was happening. Right now he is in Dublin and then he took all these records and he edited everything and created a video. These children actually do not want to be called children. So speaking of youth, they helped us feel as community as a whole. Thank you very much. Diana, thank you very much. It was a very impressive story and it's really relevant to our discussion. I'm really impressed how you as a cultural institution became something much bigger than that. So that it's not only like cultural connection, but it went beyond this and helped people survive horrible challenges. So that platform to you acted as a shelter. Yes, I will just add that to your platform as a building right now became a shelter because we gave the keys back to the neighbors who had no shelter. So underground people managed to hide there and took some other people as well. We are very happy that they could use this opportunity. So indeed, yes, we became something more than just a platform. I just want to ask another question. You are not experiencing this for the first time refugee issue. So you created the community actually from scratch and at some point this movement started to evolve really rapidly and this happened thanks to you. Right now you are forced to relocate again to Kiev, as I understand, yes. I wanted to talk about this too pronged approach and do you think you'll be starting this activity again from scratch? Or would you like to remain in contact with Mariupol as well? Well, unfortunately, I'm quite out of strength, but subjectively speaking emotionally and mentally it was really difficult for me to lose my second home even on the first day because in Mariupol I was building purposefully. My efforts were much, much, much, much bigger than when building my first home. Actually, yes, being relocated is part of my belonging. It was much more difficult for the second time because in 2014 when the war started this experience gave me the opportunity to help others. For example, I knew that it is necessary when you're on the run but you really don't know when it's going to happen. Though it was really much more difficult for me and right now it is still really, really difficult on the emotional and mental level. We created an emergency fund really quickly because it's fundamental that when you escape an occupied area it is important to have something for yourself. For example, when you're in the shelter for one month you don't have access to the dentist and one person really suffered from dental problems. So we needed the support of the authority of in the first place European Union partners who would finance our fund. We had 42,000 euros that helped 420 families living in under occupation in Mariupol. This experience helped me understand the needs. On the other hand, coming back to your question, do I have strength? Well, I'm completely devoid of any strength in terms of physical resources. I'm completely depleted. As a team, we turned online but we work with the local community, mostly with teens, with teenagers. This double experience of the relocation is, to half of our team is Masha, Denise, Yuta. The people who were all relocated to Mariupol after me. It was really strange to why you came from Donetsk to Mariupol. I believe this is a really great example of how you can create a community. It's maybe illogical but yes, this happened. Right now we're quite dispersed around the whole world. You can look back at our community, the stories that were continued. Some people remained in Ukraine, some people moved elsewhere, abroad. In short, I don't want to talk about my lack of strength but yes, the community is working. But the third time it's really hard. Thank you, Diana. I'd like to give the floor to Elena Afanasyeva and listen to the story about the Centre of Cultural Development. I'm from Kyrsten. I hope everyone was happy for us and drinking some alcohol for us in November. Thank you. Thank you from all of us. Well, thank you from all of these of us. As for Totem, we've been working for, you know, NGOs don't live that long as we've been working. We've been working since 1996 as some initiative group. Three years later we started operating as the NGO. And there was the need for creating the community and taking care of bringing the modern culture to Kyrsten. Because, let's be honest, this is the cultural province. And there was no modern culture. But if you lack anything, you should take responsibility and do that for yourself. And that's what we started to do. For all these years, we've managed to build a great cultural community. I've always said that once you come to Kyrsten, you will definitely love it. Because Kyrsten was about the people, not about the watermelons or architecture, but about the people that we've seen now. I mean those thousands of our people. And while our collaborative former officer, official Saldar, who said that these are actors, you know it's not true, there are people from our town. So we've made this initiative that let us make amazing projects, performances of the European level. That let us build some visual programs for the past two years before the war. We hosted Google Fest. We made the local visual program. So we basically could do anything. And it was not just like a bubble, but an extended community. So Totem was a platform where you could do anything and find any connections and networks. We've created the urban garden in Kyrsten, in the territory of the former plant. And now it's always remembered by everyone who talks about Kyrsten. So just for you to know, we had everything and we definitely didn't need to be saved by Russians. Six weeks after the February 24, we were shocked. We were silent, even inside our network. We didn't know what and how to talk. But two months later, when we just came to our senses a bit, my partners and I, we left when we heard those explosions at the Antonievsky Bridge, because we had those shelters in the cellars for our international partners. And now, you know, people internationally are amazed by the number of those torture rooms found, discovered in Kyrsten after the release, because everyone was caught by Russians. Even those teenagers with just the Ukrainian flag, they were also put to those torture rooms. And it was just a matter of survival for us. And so, then two months after the beginning, we realized that we're nothing without the community. We started gathering in Zoom, and the first question for everyone was, where are you? Because if you see a person online, it means the person is alive. And it was like that kind of register of cultural heritage, but here we had the register of human. We saw people living from different, through different parts. And we saw artists starting to leave, and now they are in different countries, even in Greenland. And starting from those Zoom calls, we understood, well, at first we were just like talking to each other about trying to understand where we are and what we do. But for those Zoom calls turned into the exhibition, which we called Kyrsten Inside and Outside, because no matter how weird it can be, we still had some people left in Kyrsten, and our mission was to support them, because many of them made the conscious, aware decision not to leave Kyrsten. And many people, they were on TV and said that Kyrsten is Ukraine, we all know it. But if everyone leaves and there is no Ukrainian left in Kyrsten, how can we say that? That's the reason we stay. So we made this kind of exhibition, Kyrsten Inside and Outside, which was exposed in different cities. And there was also some reflection helping us realize, process our experience as displaced persons, experience of living under occupation. There's a lot of opinions about how we feel this new space, how we get integrated, how we support each other, what we took with ourselves. There was this very creative task, just look at your emergency bag and check what part of Kyrsten did you put there that you shouldn't have. And so that's how we began rebuilding our connections with Kyrsten, because of course it was the matter of surviving, of making up the life. But do you have any connection to the city? At the same time we've created, we engage the Ukrainian community who knew the totem. We collected histories about civilian Ukrainians. This project was called LIVD-BRA, which was created for Europe about our collective security. And about each of us being, well you know, it was about those vests, bulletproof vests. They were drawn on bodies of different public figures. And we were saying like that war is like a tattoo is under our skin already and it's in every detail. And we continue this project speaking with Europe and it's in Prague now. And so this is what I introduced last week. These are the chronicles of the embroidered Ukrainian shirt. One of our activists who stayed in Kyrsten, well she finally left. And she left after the release and every day she made those chronicles, those diaries of the embroidered shirt. So you must know that there is this belief, old Ukrainian belief that you make a wish and start embroidering the shirt. And once it's done, the embroiderment is done, the wish will come true. And so this activist started this embroidery when the war started. And by the end she worked on it every day. She had four shirts during the war and she had only one reality every day that there is no other way other than Kyrsten being the part of Ukraine and military coming and saving, releasing us. So I invited our great community to choose one day out of those diaries, those chronicles to get close to Kyrsten to relieve that experience of occupation. And now we're gonna talk about this project and present it as a very practical case made or invented for renewing, reconnecting all Ukrainians to our home. And last week one of our authors, also a woman from Kyrsten, she made an answer, formulated an answer to the question, are you gonna come back? So she said, I will come back to Kyrsten if there is at least one person who will wait for me. And so now here comes the question. As cultural managers we potentially cannot turn into those waiters, just sitting and waiting. Instead we can do something and today I'm really grateful to the representative of the culture ministry because that was the first time that I heard when the activities of public sector was recognized. I realized that that same recognition is needed for volunteers but speaking about the domain of culture you're the first who said that you recognize the contribution of the public sector and of NGOs into this cultural resistance. So we should preserve it. I'll also come up to you talking about returning to those deoccupied territories about what cultural policies we should have. Yesterday I heard from one person from the cultural institution who said that they need, like we need donations, we need grants. And it's not about the money because well I know that those deoccupied territories there will be in the center of attention but we shouldn't just blindly put money there, we should make kind of like a roadmap to understand how we will come back. Not just waiting but making, creating that local policy. And for the question if I have, I feel strong enough to do that, before the conference I was sure that I'm not, but now when I see there are many people like me here I see that we will go on. Thank you, I think later we'll discuss the matter of the occupation in more details. But I'd like to ask you, well you said that part of the artists you used to work with stayed in Kursun. So are you in touch with them now after the occupation and has this occupation affected the culture community? They're awesome, they stay, many of them after the the occupation evacuated their families but they have some pets and old parents left there. So they stayed and they send us pictures of them being in coffee houses with the electricity drinking coffee. So the community did stay in Kursun but thanks to feeling supported because we raised funds for them, we made some stipendiums for them and people there under occupation they made amazing art projects. For example one artist made this capsule of time and for like, his pieces of art were such that he would be really shot by Russians for them. And so he made this capsule and we're thinking that maybe we shouldn't break it and just keep it. So those projects they were great and they continue, those artists come back to the Kursun region. And for example there's this director, theater director who came back home and saw that a part of some machine, some vehicle came to his, fell to his garden and his son died at the front line. And so I realized that it's hard but I suggested to him being very cautious. I suggested them like packing that experience into some art project. And now the stipendium is over, he's made all those art reports but he keeps sending me that material. So he made the installation out of it, like it's the beautiful part of the beautiful land art on the garden which was not processed this year. So now I'd like to pass the floor to Vitaly Manukhnov and his gallery. Good morning, I'm the founder of Artistic Movements project. It's been mutating, I really can't really say what it is. It was created as an experimental project that did not have its area. So we were making the exhibition in galleries which were abandoned. One of the locations was not a true art gallery but an abandoned one. I worked a lot with our local activists and the mayor and the council and I was battling over everything with them and the freedom necessary for me to make these events in my city, to create a community is impossible in regular institutions in our country. So when I want to get my freedom I need to go to places without people who can stop me. So places which are without any authority, without any people, simply abandoned places. I would say we work with anarchy. This format had no form as such. I decided to make it really flexible and not connected to any location, to any place. But there was an audience of young people from Donetsk and Luhansk regions. I needed to understand how our art scene looks like of young creators living there together with me. Because indeed there were very few projects that included cooperation with young artists from the east. A lot of artists came to Donbass to explore it but nobody understood whether there is some community on the side. So I decided to find them and explore this issue in detail to identify the community. When it comes to occupied territories I live quite close, let's say, in quite a close vicinity, 23 kilometers from the front line. And I understand that beyond this border, the front line, I don't know what's happening. So the occupied territories and the so-called separatist republics, they live in a bubble. So I think that within the past, they've been living for the eight years probably without any understanding of what Ukraine is. They probably forgot what Ukraine can really mean. All the news I've heard about these territories, it was strictly military news actually. So I didn't know what was happening inside there and this is why I started digging. It was really important for me to work with artists from occupied territories to bring together our region at least in improvised exhibition areas in abandoned places. To create something, let's say, alive. Indeed it was a vital part of my activity. Right now the city of Lysichinsk, the town is occupied, Luhansk and Donetsk territory is occupied. And I don't think we'll continue working in the same format. I'm quite doubtful about returning even to this location, but I hope it's going to happen someday. Even when the full-scale invasion was started, I understand people started leaving the place. Last year we created our first zine. Yeah, it's a presentation also connected with Platform 2. We cooperated with it after all. We organized this exhibition in many cities across Ukraine. And we made an exhibition in Mariupol, Lysichinsk, Serbiansk, Kramatorsk, Rubizhnia, Konstantinist, Kharkiv, Rivna. All the cities we worked in, apart from Rivna, right now are afflicted by the war. Rubizhnia and Serbiansk completely destroyed by the war indeed Mariupol, right? So right now, when I think what I'm going to do when I come back, it's really hard to wrap my head around it. But I really hope it will happen. Last year we created our first zine by the name of Neotodryosh. I understand I could not come back with everything. I wanted to create an autonomic product that can travel without me. This format includes or foresees the format of a printed zine magazine. It is a kind of a book, but with a lot of pages including works of over 50 artists from Luhansk and Donetsk regions. We distributed part of it and part of it of the printouts were left in Lysichinsk and maybe in Mariupol as well. I hope a lot that we will reprint it once again. After the full-scale invasion, I was evacuated to Lviv and sometime I was in some kind of suspended state. When I came to my senses, I understood that my responsibility for the risk community is quite huge. I cannot just sit empty-handed, I just need to act. A lot of people like Tiana who were migrating, who were refugees, there were some resources for me to start my life from scratch. I understand that not for everybody it was possible because our community is really diverse including youth. For example, a person from Tkramotarsk who escaped from his parents who were pro-Russian, he is right now like 16, 17 years old, so he cannot work. He lives somewhere at somebody's place, it is very difficult for such people. I can say this based on my experience and my teams. Every team member was relocated even for the second time. We created a small support fund. We collected some donations from people all across the world including America, Europe and international organizations as well. We helped about 200 people, this number will be on the rise. I hope we are working, we have been working on it. We have some possibilities to support a number of people. We are starting an open call for support and this is the data we made public. We also try to work this year on the international market as well. I would say to make a contribution to popularize Ukrainian art. This photo is from a collaboration with Goethe Institute in the city of Bonn. In Germany this is our biggest exhibition I myself could not actually attend. It was an exhibition in the public sphere in a dozen of biggest, largest German cities in Germany at bus stops in metro stations. People could see it for two and a half months every single day when they were commuting. This exhibition displayed the works of artists in our community. It is a shame I could not see it myself but it was really successful. Another project we started as our site. I understood that I have never spoken in my life so often with our community about the war as much as we have been experiencing it for the second time. With the artists from Luhansk and Donetsk regions they were located for the second time. Now I am 23 years old and in 2014 I was 15 years old. I have been living in the state of war for 8 years so the war comprises a huge part of my life. There are many people like me. Such stories need to be collected and I want to give voice to such people. In Lviv I have often heard that ever since the war started so that is the name of the project. It was a question we asked people. It is divided into three parts. 2014, 2022 and the eight years. It is one of the stories we received from a girl from Avdivka. Personally for me there were years of silence, of peace. I could create festivals but actually the war has never ended. These stories we received are very, very various. There is very little in these stories about being strong. People write a lot about tragedies, about deaths, ruins, destruction. This is their experience. However they persevere regardless. This is the format of the stories. They say it as it is, as it was. This is what we wanted to give voice to. The stories in their words are not an interview format. We also supported them financially. As we understand it is a very painful experience for them to tell these stories. This is why I understood we needed to support them financially for their input. We also have been creating the second magazine last year. We decided it would be great to create a book like this every single year. But it would be different every single year. Right now the topic of the book would be about the full-scale invasion. We should not discuss this issue only with people from Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast. We received over 250 applications but we can only select 60. The presentation will take place on the 25th of December in Lviv. The printed zine will be free. I hope I can send you a copy to each and every one of you who is in the hall. This is an example of some pages from the zine. With a very nice design this is one of our specialties. It's really hard to say how to print it because all projects are delayed unfortunately. Our online archive 2022, all these stories are in Ukrainian and English. We publish it online but everything is delayed unfortunately. When you are interested to read this archive you can do it in English as well. You are welcome. I think this is everything. Thank you very much. Vitaly, thank you very much for your story. It's really interesting. You touched a really not easy topic about the big part of Ukrainian society. I have been feeling this experience of war after the full-scale invasion. But for many people this experience has been alive for eight years. I believe it's important for everyone to listen to the experience of people who have been inside this war much longer. I also want to ask, I believe it's really valuable what you do in your gallery working with artists from uncontrolled territories. We know what a hard topic it is to deal with people living in occupied territories. And it's one of the topics we'll have to touch upon in future. And what were the challenges for you that you faced working with those artists, those who maybe left those separatist republics after the full-scale invasion? In fact, speaking about those artists we used to work with, almost everyone left. But, well, it just happened so that not everyone has the Ukrainian passport. And even if, well, for example, the guy can be 17 years old and he just didn't have a chance to get the Ukrainian passport yet. But he cannot go to Ukraine now. We have this person like that. So they kind of have that DPR passport. And they were planning to go to Ukraine and make this passport according to some specific procedure, which would be, you know, lasting and not easy. Well, also, this would be challenging. But considering the context, the background they lived in, someone had it for eight years. Someone managed to leave the occupied territory before the full-scale invasion. And their context is totally different because, well, the occupation that they were under was a really, you know, such thing. For example, there was this art group in Donetsk under occupation. They tried, it was called Different, and they tried to work on different projects. They had this performance. And when they were preparing that, they said, like, why haven't we worked here before? Why it was hard for us? Just because we were scared of uncertainty, we didn't know what... It's like there's no public sector under occupation, you know. And everyone understands that if there is, well, there are any art projects or just some hanging out, it's a really, really rare thing. And these are the people who risk everything doing that. And that was one of the painful topics. They didn't do anything directly with the occupied territories. They were just collecting their works and presented them in Ukraine. Even in that format, they were really scared that anyone would see that. Anyone from that side would see that. So it was challenging. But I worked... I did that in such a way that we didn't mention directly that, like, this comes... This art comes from a person who lives under occupation in the DPR. No, we tried to show, and the reason of our cooperation with them was that I don't want to live in the world where we have those groups of DPR or LPR. And for me, it was like if I recognize them, then the notion of occupation will disappear. And I didn't want to recognize that. I knew that there couldn't be anyone wanting to be separated from Ukraine. And I wanted to show other people what Ukraine is. Because, you know, if there are some people who grew up under occupation, they have a totally different context. When now they come to Ukraine and they see and get surprised by a lot of things in Ukraine, they are surprised with the level of freedom they can have here. Thank you. I think this work with those artists from uncontrolled territories is a really unbelievable contribution of public sector into preserving the connections with those people under occupation. I would like to give the floor to Julia Krivich, who comes from a bit other discourse, but she will tell us about this Solidarity House of Culture, Sunflower, which was created after the war. So this is the first time for all this time when I introduced, present our project in Ukrainian. I should start with saying that I come originally come from Dnipro, and then Sunflower is associated with the Ukrainians, with the diaspora, even in Poland. With the Ukrainian culture workers and Polish culture workers, all of which were somehow related to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. So I would start with the story of how this house appeared. And I will maybe tell you about how the situation looked from this side in Poland after the February 24, the first weeks after the invasion. There was panic, total panic here, because people didn't know what to do. I mean the Polish society now. They really wanted to help, they really wanted to do something. All this help that you saw on pictures, on TV, it mostly came from the people, not from the government, and I would like to emphasize that it's really important to mention it here in this palace, that this support was from the regular people. And the Museum of Modern Art also wanted to include... Well, I should start by saying that this place, this is the office of the Modern Art Museum, which is in the city center of Warsaw. And you can see at the picture that we have three flags, Polish, Ukrainian, and the international refugee flag. And on the third day after the invasion, we were shocked, coming to the museum, making some banners for... We wanted to go to the rally for the Russian Embassy in Warsaw. And that was the time when we stayed. Since then, we just have occupied the building of the museum. The curator has helped us. And there was the main team of our project comes from that museum. There are different people in terms of different aspects. So there are people who used to work in the museum, working with migrants, Ukrainian migrants in Poland. So it's me, I'm the artist and activist, educator. And since then... So that's when we stayed in the museum, we started different efforts, starting from collecting medicine to some humanitarian aid. We got contacts to different hospitals in Ukraine, and we arranged transportation, which... Well, we had almost every week there was someone coming to Ukraine with medicine. We made this kitchen of the sunflower initiative. People started coming there from the very first days, then the number of people increased. And people just saw those banners, those flags, and they came up to us and just... They were searching for some safe space. Yeah, that's what we wanted to create for us and for others. And these, you know, joint cooking, making, joint making something was an important element to create in our community. And so, just a fun fact, we started with making sandwiches, and then we brought them to different places in Warsaw where refugees from Ukraine came. And that transportation system was arranged so well, like every outlet, every hub with refugees knew that's what we do. And it was so large that all the artists, all the people of art made those sandwiches with us. And for the first months, we've made about 30,000 sandwiches. And it sounds funny now, but now when remembering that, I understand that this, you know, making sandwiches was like we have to do something, just no matter what, we just have to do something and we will do that. And very quickly, we realized that we would stay at that place, that we would create some safe space and make this initiative. And very quickly, we understood that different structures, different people can help us. And it's very interesting that the artists who used to work with the Modern Art Museum, they just wrote letters to the museum offering some funds and some help. Like, you know, Wolfgang Tillmans sent some money to us, Miam Khan. They sent some money to us, to our activities in the museum. And so since the beginning, it was just some, you know, quick sporadic random acts, level of support, but then it turned into understanding that this help is changing. And so at first it was just, you know, welcoming people, welcoming refugees, making some space for them. At the end, we understood that those people, they want to stay, they need some documents. So we had our friends, photographers came to us and said that they can help making like, they have the resource and they can make free photos for the identification documents. We made some outlets making copies of those applications and documents. So we also started the cultural program from the first aid to such joint efforts. For example, here you see the celebration of the Easter, the Orthodox Easter, because this year there was a weak difference between the Catholic and Orthodox Easter. And so all the artists made this celebration. Refugees from Chechnya made the Kukin, because they also have their community here where they cook and create, like make their, you know, small business. We cooperate with them. And so this wall, it's famous. It became like the visit card of our community. It was made by children of the women who used to come to us. We made some workshops for children. And so that's where children drew those sunflowers, which we later put on Monika Sosnovskaya's installation. And Monika is really happy that her installation has changed and got like updated as of now. Later, okay, it's also important to mention that Poland starting, you know, from the onset of war, Poland is also kind of a transit point for many people. And our connections with the cultural community of Ukraine was like we captured people coming through us and asked them to make something for us. And so these are, for example, some workshops from different, you know, artists. I don't have many slides, but it's hard to present the activities of sunflower in just five slides. So I just wanted you to understand that who we are here in Poland, because like this is the first time I have realized that I used to be a migrant here and my identity was the one of Ukrainian immigrant. Now after the full-scale invasion, I felt that that identity has changed into such a kind of a mediator. So just a mediator between the Ukrainian cultural environment and the Polish one. And it's important thing that I've understood recently that it also affects Polish culture. And of course we're invited everywhere because the Ukrainian voice must be presented everywhere now in Poland and it's really interesting. Our other activity, we've been collecting money all the time. We're finding out different ways how to collect money. Since the beginning we made some fundraising actions. We thought about some gadgets and merchandise. You can see the t-shirt in the slide titled The Colonised Russia. You can see in the other picture Magda Moravik, our friend, who helped us volunteer to support refugees on the railway stations. Right now she comes to Ukraine every month supplying Zaporizhia and Kiev with humanitarian aid. She was invited to the meeting of Ursula von der Leyen at the SOTM meeting. She asked what we can do. So she got a t-shirt from us and she advertised us in a way. Another important thing is Sonic Digest. It's a sister initiative of the Sunflower Organization. I'll come back to the story of the first days of the full-scale invasion. In the first week we organised a huge meeting of Polish artistic activists who needed to meet to understand what to do, how they can help and over 200 people arrived all across Poland. Artists, curators, activists who sat at the table together and they asked what do you need, what does Ukraine need? In this meeting we were divided into five groups, one of which we understood something was going on and we felt something is kind of weird and one of the groups was called Counter-Propaganda and this group resulted in Sonic Digest which is made of people from Ukraine but also other countries as well of Europe. This is a platform, a website where we disseminate Ukrainian voices, the Ukrainian point of view. We advertise Ukrainian, popularise Ukrainian art. And that would be it. Thank you very much, Julia. Within our panel today it's a very interesting case. Three previous cases were sent around a cultural activity that turned into mutual support with the full-scale invasion. In your case, however, it was the other way around. So you started your activity as a safe space from the will to help refugees out of which an artistic culture was created. I wanted to pose a question. Am I right that you could use the name community in this case? Initially, after all, people were brought together by common needs. Could you form a community out of these people? What kind of role art plays in this community then? Yes, obviously, as I said, this safe space was created to meet the needs of being together, to create such a community. People who came to us and have been coming to us have not remained in Poland. Many people who left the country at the beginning, they've moved along. They've moved forward ever since. But our core is made of around 20, 30 people who always come to us. They are not Ukrainian refugees only. They come from Poland as well, people from other countries as well. It is really important to emphasize that the future of our initiative as we understand it, must be a space. We understand that we are located in Poland. So there are refugees from other countries as well. So this is an important factor that we need to connect, unify them with the Ukrainian context. There are much, much more Ukrainians in Poland right now than prior to the full-scale invasion. According to official data, without seasonal migrants prior to the full-scale invasion, there used to be 1.4 million Ukrainians in Poland. Again, according to official data, 3 additional million Ukrainians came to Poland. Together, we have the number of 4.4 million Ukrainians, which constitutes roughly 10% of the Polish population. It's really hard to quantify, to be honest, but I would estimate 3.5 million Ukrainians stayed. Some of them obviously moved on to other countries as well. Our lectures and workshops are held in English because we want to connect the Ukrainian and Polish community, but we understand that English as lingua franca is available to everyone, as we also reach out to other people as well. My final point will be about the sunflower initiative as community. The sunflower indeed is quite symbolic of our community because even the very image of it, the very logo type, represents people in it. Thank you very much. Speaking about community, I would like to address the issue to everybody about the community of place. Today, we spoke about many topics and these communities were connected, kind of rooted to specific locations, even place in Marupol in Warsaw. Is it possible to create a community without connection to location, without physical access to it? Let me answer this question. You know, when I arrived here to Warsaw three days ago to take part in this assembly, I felt something overwhelming when I saw all of you, when I saw Ukrainian artists, curators, friends all across Ukraine, people in Europe as well. For the past three days, we were just talking, meeting. We just cannot let ourselves out. We just want to be together physically, be around, mingle together. This is an example of connections which, speaking about Marupol, it's really difficult as Marupol has been destroyed. So right now, personally, I come to understand and feel, experience this feeling of loss, physical location. It's a very weird feeling as I understand the physical aspect. It was really important. Marupol right now is scattered around the world. It is not concentrated. There is no weight attached to this area. It's my emotional feeling. It's very difficult to put this into words. But as we discuss on the social media, we try to bring the weight of our community down to Earth and to build upon this, at least in our minds. As we are so used to being attached to location, it might be a city. This would be important for us to relearn and to reinstate this physical locality as we record our memories of these areas starting from 2014. As Vitaly, for example, you have been doing this as a museum of memories, everything that we associate with Marupol. You must understand that Marupol is no longer as it used to be. For the past eight years, I had lived there. Marupol, I believe that these online exhibitions can replace the physical existence of Marupol. In our case, everything is quite more specific. We did not have our area. We just captured our area, these abandoned places. If you're speaking about a community or audience that participated in our exhibitions, it was quite specific as well. If we managed to collect our collection, you could say that there is some kind of diaspora there. Our project or our community, in essence, now happens online. To be honest, I haven't met them in person physically, especially people who live in the occupied areas. We don't know where somebody lives, where people are relocated, have been moving around. This community has been alive, in essence, without a specific location. Right now, they've been activated quite vividly. To reconnect them means to prove their existence, especially in the occupied areas. Right now, I see that they cooperate together in other projects, not connected with our gallery. I'm really happy for them. I wanted to voice this opinion. As I understand, this ephemeral project that moved to Reviv, to be honest, we didn't lose much. How can you lose an abandoned place that you intercepted? Some of the magazines, hopefully, will manage to reprint. It was very difficult for me to relocate. But for me, it was really important to live in the town of Lisicinsk, to work with local activities and local audience. So far, we've been trying to continue our activity in Reviv. This is our home right now. I do not have answers to these questions. On the one hand, Herzog is a new trend. So how can we talk about the community of Herzog without Herzog itself? On the other hand, we understand that, we've been talking about this for the past two days, that for Herzog, a new old window of opportunity opens. So right now, it can become the center of gravity. On the third side, being cognizant of the current situation, it's not the center of gravity, but rather the question mark of gravity. Because plenty of questions being in the center of the process of communicating with the community for the past nine months. I even invited an independent moderator who would look after our dynamics. Even Ms. Irina was talking about migration, occupation, and also people who left, who stayed. At the first stages, there was a wave of incredible hate between the ones who stayed and who left.  So in the middle, it was a wave coming on and off. So as far as people, how do you call it, the Monaco Battalion, as we call it, this happened in the culture sphere. As I made an exhibition in Odessa, museum workers said that after work they created a room. They've been creating camouflage networks. It was really difficult for them, for the people who left to see the photos of a beautiful sea on Odessa. It's really helpful for them. So even inside this professional community that worked together, I can say that actually I unfriended a lot of people, to be honest. So a photo of an artist in Greece, we left because we want to be far away from this context. We don't want to have a war in any media sphere. An artist needs to be beautiful and happy. But afterwards, I needed to work on my own, on myself, because I needed to understand that your own zone of freedom is your own choice. But this is my right with whom to work or not. It's a very complex process, it's very dynamic. So to create a center of gravity is actually probably not with this community you have been working with so far. If you look at the group, the psychologist, this moderator saw that you need to expand your bubble when it comes to your community. Within the past, following the 11th of November, I received numerous applications from other artists and institutions who want to come to her son and to work with you and represent you beyond. It is a very difficult question for me as well. I am afraid, because for the safety, I'm concerned for the safety. For example, her son Museum was also shelled, the second maripole may happen here as well. It's just a question of safety as well. To be honest, I'm really concerned about speculation in that sphere. We need to work with deep processes and not to just scratch on the surface. Yesterday, there was a very important discussion about time. It's really horrible that we do not have even time to think. These three days of our assembly was the sphere for us that allowed the time for us to think. Unfortunately, we do not have time to dive deep into the processes and only deep processes can reinstate our community. To make something, we want to come back. This is a question for me as well. Coming back to her son is to come back to a different war with these challenges we face right now in the culture of politics and the situation. I'll be brief, because in my case, I think the location is the key, because the space gives you a lot of opportunities. We can use the space as a gallery, as a place of meetings. For example, in summer, each of us is engaged in other initiatives connected to Ukraine, to helping Ukraine. For example, in summer, we worked more in the park. We made some events, some parties, and now when it's impossible to do that outdoors, we come back to the sunflower space located at Ponska Street 3. There's also the resource that we get from the museum, and it's the key here. The museum is an initiative and the answer to the question of how cultural institutions can leave and operate in the time of a temporary crisis. When we just came into that space, it was just the empty office because of COVID. So we came there when the war started. So I think this project is important for the museum because I think this community, this place will not be temporary. This crisis will last, I guess, and realizing the added value of crisis in cultural institutions in Poland. It's just another level of exclusivity, just the exclusivity that our project has in this context. Thank you, and at the end I'd like to touch upon the issue of future reintegration. Of course, maybe it's too early to say about it, but I'd like to make some benchmarks for the future and try to imagine how those gaps will be covered, those gaps that now appear emerge in the Ukrainian territory. I have mentioned already some challenges that are clear now concerning the reintegration of the occupied territories, but now judging by your previous experience of work with those challenging problematic connections that were broken during the war, do you see any scenarios or recipes how to recover this fabric of the Ukrainian society despite those deep scars that we have and that become thicker? I've been thinking about it since 2014, how we would get Donetsk, Remy and Lugansk back, and then it seemed to be something really complicated, but now, surprisingly, it seems more possible than when I was thinking about it five years ago, because now the whole country's face is experiencing this trauma, this pain of intrusion in the same way. We all shared that pain for our land, and just a few years ago we thought that Donbass, well, it's something, they have something horrible, but Ukraine is flowering, but now it's scary everywhere. And in terms of that, I do have a hope that it will be easier and less painful. I used to have this phantom pain for Donetsk, I always remembered about it, I dreamt about it, I thought that maybe I see something, and now I have two places like that, so it turns out that one can absorb a few of those phantom pains. And well, before I used to be like, well, when Donetsk is back, I'll be the first to come back, because like I'm living in Mariupol, it's so close, so I'll be the first there. And then it seemed so like a fantasy, and I was like, let's not be delusional. But now I know for sure that Donetsk, that Ukrainian army will return Donetsk to us, Donetsk, Mariupol. Now I'm like, where should I go first? So this is my problem now, because I have a home in Donetsk and in Mariupol. But of course we understand that the first persons there will be those military who will occupy them. But in general, yeah, I'm trying to escape the answer, but well, the most important is how we're going to cooperate with people, how we'll deal with them, and Kursan just showed us how much people there waited for Ukraine. And there are also many people like that waiting for Ukraine like that in Donetsk and Lugansk, and you'll see it, everything is going to be great and we will reintegrate everything. In fact, remembering year 2014, when we had different artists from different projects, cultural missions, I think that now there will be something similar to that. Because back then no one understood what Donbass is and what do you want to see, what is war, what do you want to know. And now no one needs the explanation, unfortunately. But if we speak about the territories under occupation for eight years, we all will have to rediscover, re-explore Donetsk, Lugansk, Crimea, we'll have to study everything from scratch because I was in Lugansk only when I was a kid, only once. And I don't even remember it, so it's a bit easier for me to some extent because I was kind of touching, we had those points of connection because we worked with people from under occupation. And now I'm just starting to prepare myself to how we will work on those territories, how we will explore them in terms of how I will maybe travel just like a regular person. Because now there are different issues with those red names, those accents of Russian-Ukrainian names, of towns, but it's hard now to say about the towns that are destroyed. For example, I don't know yet whether I have something home to come back to. I just know that my house has been robbed, but I don't know how it is now. So it will be complicated in any case and it requires some preparation as well because the end of the full-scale war will be like the opening of the start of the new war, but on a different front line. And now these territories under occupation for eight years, they're too close to Russia and working with them is essentially important because we cannot let any pro-Russian mood in. We should work with these territories for a long time in any format. I think there will be, the situation will be kind of limited there when it comes back and comes back. And I don't think the Ukrainianization should not be gentle there, but rather really harsh. And we should work with that, deal with that as well as for me. So these will be the important places because once we close our eyes and stop looking at it will be in trouble. Thank you. And just coming back to the question of putting that fabric with the scars all together, we should say that what Ukraine did to us already made some framework for us and now no one needs an explanation of what Ukraine or being an Ukrainian is. And also someone mentioned that like we're afraid of that military tourism and I thought only I am concerned about it, but then I saw some other project which is also present here at the exhibition in this palace with the concept very well developed, the concept of what that tourism, so-called tourism to the places of battle is because we saw like all foreign guests come now, come to Sibucha, European etc. But that was politically important, but I think it's important that we prevent repeating of the history of 2014 when people just artists got those grants, they came to the places of battle, they just watched something and then left without doing nothing. So now I think I like the idea of keeping that in mind of letting ourselves some time to think about it. Maybe that's where the grants should go for like the process of the analysis, the thinking, imagining of that, just an easy example, simple example. They stole the Potomkin's monument in Kursin, but I said that I'm only thankful for that because there was a lot of history behind that monument, there were different people there and it was stolen in parts and at the end the whole monument was stolen. But there is this thing, the best period for me was when there was no figure on this post, but only the post itself and every person went over to that post and made a picture of that. And for me that was the vivid example of democracy. And this is like preventing of making some other monuments there would be the motivation for me. So up to you what do you think can be put on that post? So maybe something Cossack like, I don't mind it but maybe it should be in some other place because there maybe that empty post and the stellar and the history of what happened there would be better there and would be some food for thought. So if we do everything reasonably and smart then this cultural fabric will be really organic. And I'm sorry for this word, but it will be modern. Today I have, like I find it resonating that now there is a lot of exhibitions because everyone wants to speak about Ukrainian culture through art and there are many exhibitions with Ukrainian women in blood, you know, and with flowers but that's not what we want to show, how we want to show Ukraine to the world. We want the modern culture and when talking about this fabric it's really, we should really avoid, you know, those cliches and stereotypes. We should just think through and we should take our time because the last point is that the public society has manifested itself really great and we're all representatives of the public sector here and if any bullshit keeps appearing we will not be silent.  Thank you all for your optimism and for being ready to speak about some problems and challenges so let us give us some time and not be in a hurry. Thank you. If anyone has a question we can give you the mic but if you are brief. Thank you very much for sharing your experience. It was very interesting to hear what you experienced but I had two such ideas in mind. It's not just for speakers but for everyone present. I think that not so many Ukrainians are here but many are watching and many of us are not from Ukraine. See it because Ukraine is still a very interesting topic for the news but it's really a pity that we cannot see and hear and follow what you are doing so immediately I had an idea of doing kind of a database of your projects or even like I would love to be a part of, let's say, a Facebook group of you and be able to discuss and exchange ideas, what we can do and share ideas for foreigners, how we can participate and help and support because I feel very privileged that I can participate in this meeting with you. Second thing I wanted to ask you and now I know it's impossible to answer it but my question was because there are so many humanitarian charity programs, projects that an outsider can get lost like how to help and whom to help and of course everyone wants to support the army but I guess there are many vulnerable groups, people or issues or places that there is nobody that likes really taking attention so me as a non-Ukrainian artist, for example, I give an example has an idea of organizing kind of a charity action together with my art project, let's say and then how to choose which organization, which group, which people to support I feel completely lost and if you can give some trademarks like how to choose how to find out, how to assess which group or organization is really worth support I think that would be very useful for many people like me and the ones that are watching now Thank you Yes, I will tell you how to do it because we also pose this question we're inside the process so it's easier for us we are directly connected and contacting the groups in need let's say if a brigade needs to warm up, we know what to do but this question was posed to me by artists who left Ukraine Olena, I made money, I made some money, where should I donate it to? for me, there are just two options here first is you choose a big Ukrainian organization like Fund Pobrynezhyev which has the authority reports on its finances for me, this was Serhii Plutua fund or you take contacts from people whom you trust and who directly tell you I know this person and he or she needs this and that so you just choose people whom you trust and you know personally I was fortunate enough that I was asked what do you need money for she knew the person who contacted me that I came from her son so I told her we need funds for the evacuation of local people so please do not donate money to the people who you do not know a few weeks ago I saved a text written for donating money and the very editing of the text was so dubious that you wouldn't trust it so when you take a look at the text you need to look into the details but no matter how well it's written it is most important that you know the person behind the text or it's a huge organization with a high level of authority Thank you for the proposal to create such a database and I think that Arsling will help you it will help us to send you a message on Instagram or other social media and you can also follow our names If you want to donate money you need to donate money you don't have the time, you don't have the time There are three things and while you consider to what smaller initiatives to donate you just donate there when you have this willingness and as for the smaller funds, smaller donations, smaller initiatives it's a brilliant idea to choose someone but it just depends on what is closer to yourself like do you want to support artists from the front-line areas do you want to support teenagers from marginalized groups from Mariupol what makes you feel more close and better so just like that there are so many small initiatives that make so many changes but small ones so you can select one and just take care of it for a long time Thank you for this You can also support animals so people who are dealing with animals or if you've got an organization supporting animals you can trust them for sure Thank you very much for this panel it was truly inspiring Until next time, thank you very much


Welcome back to the YouTube channel, it's your boy Mr. Ghana, baby And I'm back again with another video I mean, it's my last day in Cuba So I was supposed to be in Agrabah in Havana I just had to do this story That's why I'm here Ghana My brother Yes, sir Good to see you Good to see you too, man I've heard a lot of good things about you Likewise I was supposed to leave today and I was like You know what?  Good food, man, good food It's just people love good food Of course Your name and where are you from? Well, they call me Chef K And I'm saying I'm from Toronto, Canada Were you born in Ghana or were you born in Toronto?  I guess at a young age, I didn't have a choice My mom seen my situation in Ghana and she decided to take me What kind of situation are you talking about? She left me when I was like 13 months to go to Canada And when she left, I was living with my father and my stepmother And you know how step-parents I was being maltreated a lot So she found out and later on the line when I was like 9 years old, she came to Ghana and she seen how I was living It wasn't a good situation So she took me and my older brother So I would say that you lived all your life in Canada? Yeah, mostly, for sure How is the experience like? It's cool, man Bittersweet Come again? Bittersweet There's good times and bad times Yeah, I understand How long have you been here? 5 years this April 5 years? Do you miss Canada? I miss certain situations but then when I see what I've been able to accomplish in 5 years in Ghana I see the future here more than over there What was your main intention moving to Ghana? What were you thinking? Why do you have to leave Canada and move back to Ghana? There's no place like home, man I felt like if I brought what I learned from there to here I could establish myself and push myself a lot easier than over there You know what I mean? So you're trying to say that there are more opportunities back here than what you're trying to say? For us that travelled and have a different way of thinking when we bring that way of thinking to over here yeah, there's more opportunities for us What are you doing in here now? I'm running a restaurant cooking hospitality business because the compound 11 is also like a whole store for students to rent out so I supply the students with food and I rent out my compound 5 years in Ghana Establishing your business in here was it that difficult? Extremely difficult How difficult it is? The thing is when you come to Ghana the way we do business abroad is not how Ghanaian people do business We do business like 9 o'clock is 9 o'clock 10 o'clock is 10 o'clock Your word is your bond but I had to find out very quickly that Ghanians don't live by that same code Ghanians do whatever they want whatever they want however they want So if you're not mentally strong they will literally mess up everything you have planned in one second That's not to bash anybody It's like one thing I realized is that when you travel your mind changes The fact that a lot of people in this country never really traveled outside of Ghana don't know how hard it is for us You know what I mean We have to struggle to make a dollar Let's go there You have to struggle to make a dollar How is the struggle like? Because you know me living in Ghana right now I know if you're living in Canada, USA Definitely there are people out there who normally say that those places are heaven on earth I know people don't like me saying these kind of things But I just wanted to know You were struggling, what kind of struggle were you going through because I know so many brothers who are here who are dying Some of them even want to cross the Mediterranean Sea just to go to such places How was the difficulty? What kind of difficulty were you facing? I could just give you one example You have to rent for like 5 years You know what I mean You can live in one house for 2 years by paying one time rent Over there you have to pay rent every month So that's just rent Then you got to pay your utilities which is like gas You got to pay for heating You got to pay for water You got to pay for your food transportation So when you add up all those things you have to literally live by the dollar You have to rent someone's house like Ghana But over there is not like that You have to rent out someone's house apartment and each month you have to pay So you always have to be working You always have to be struggling I know certain people who have been in Canada or America and they can't afford to come back to Ghana Why? Because they have no money or the job that they do and they don't even lose the job So people think that it's gold over there but it's really nice, it's more like slavery Are you kidding me brother? No man, I'm telling you the truth Anyone who is living in Canada right now will concur what I'm saying It's like slavery I'm not the one who is sending this back from the houses on Mar Can you repeat again so that they will know that it's not from me Canada is abroad, that's not Ghana It's literally slavery because the thing is, it's not your country So you don't have no family there that you can rely on, just in case things don't go well for you So you have to literally have to always be pushing You gotta be strong You don't have nobody you can fall back on The government doesn't care about you because you're not his people The system doesn't care about you because you're not their people So you're being pushed into a box You struggle to survive You've been in the jungle basically One more time, are you living or you're surviving here? Here I'm living I can say I'm living I'm free This is freedom I can actually breathe quality air drink quality water talk to quality people The thing is I'm not saying Ghana is easy What I'm saying is if you're from abroad and you have a little something along with your brain you can live like a king here Can I get it? Yeah, for sure Now you're back in Ghana and I definitely know that you have a message for young Africans What will it be? Young people on the continent The only message I can give the people the young people is this Your slow money is buried in no money It really matters The thing about the young Africans is we want everything so fast because we see people driving cars We see people doing this We want to do the same thing But it's what you're about to do We'll be happy and you'll be happy That envy always wants something that doesn't belong to you You feel free Try your best to work hard for what you have and appreciate the little you have because what you have in Ghana is the little you have and that's what you're about to do You have to think about it and stop saying things and don't say things and don't say things because you don't want to say things That's what you're saying I don't know if that makes any sense but I'm trying to say it I feel like the young people they want to rush too much when they see somebody doing something they don't know how that person did it and they don't know how that person did it They want to rob you You give somebody a small chance and say you're doing this to your mum and you're doing this to your mum and you don't know how that person did it They don't know how to say it You don't want to do nothing in Ghana because the young people here are so money hungry that's what they want to do That's not how The more you guys treat people good the more they want to come back It's on the young people to know if people are going to come back to this country just continue to work and bring their money to invest you have to be able to maintain that to be able to look after that So that person has confidence in you and says we could be a brand to have a serious money but if we can't leave this because we're so generous Do you think that it's worth it to invest in an African country? 100% that's the question you gotta ask We don't believe in ourselves We don't think that what we have is good We don't believe in ourselves We don't believe in ourselves But we know that when we come here we probably clean it but when we come here we clean it That's our mentality when people come here they say why are you so full peeing and shitting on the floor you think they respect you because when you go to his country you can't do that so we have to change our way of thinking about our own we don't like what we have we think what we have is dirty and it's not. Find our message to the African diaspora living on there. What is the message for them? If you have something to tell your fellow brothers and sisters living over there, what are you going to say? Yo okay I hear a lot of people tell me the same thing over and over that Ghana's not ready Africa's not ready for people to come back right and my question to you guys is if you over there how do you expect it to be ready because a lot of you guys have the skills the trades the ambition the knowledge to come and fix this place if you're waiting for somebody to fix it so you can come who's gonna fix it and the thing is this our parents they sacrificed for us to go over there and my mom sacrificed for me to go with it to get an education so you got a sacrifice for yourself to come here and help your people like there's people foreigners coming here looting our gold looting our resources only because people like us over there getting looted ourselves for all resources human resource you know I mean so I just tell everybody be patient with the people in this country because they're your people and there's no place like home and come back home and try to you know this let's all do this together because the more of us there is the more they can't come back and loot you know you know why I think coming in here tonight was worth it yeah I just want to say thank you so much for talking to me where can we find you if anyone is in Kumasa and they want to come do business there or maybe buy something from the work and they find you okay well we'll call barbecues city and we're in can you ST compass basically address the news site so our phone number out there real quick<PHONE_NUMBER><PHONE_NUMBER> and yeah you can find us here or just whenever you come to can you ST just happen to ask somebody I'm sure somebody will somebody must have heard of us and they'll direct you to the right direction you know thank you so much thank you to him went to God and I were mackin up went to God and I were mackin up


PayPal blocks multiple alternative media figures critical of U.S. empire narratives. In what appears to be yet another escalation in Silicon Valley's redoubled efforts to quash dissident voices since the beginning of the Ukraine war, PayPal has just blocked the accounts of multiple alternative media voices who've been speaking critically against official U.S. empire narratives. These include journalist and speaker Caleb Maupin and Minar Adli and Alan McLeod of Mint Press News. Just the other day, Mint Press published an excellent article by McLeod titled, An Intellectual No Fly Zone. Online censorship of Ukraine dissent is becoming the new norm, documenting the many ways skepticism of the U.S. government's version of events in this war is being suppressed by Silicon Valley mega corporations, including financial censorship via the demonetization of YouTube videos that don't regurgitate the imperial line on Ukraine. Today, both Mint Press and McLeod have both been banned from using the payment service that many online content creators have come to rely on to help crowdfund their work. Mint Press News happens to have published critical journalism about PayPal itself in the past, like the articles it published in 2018 by Whitney Webb, documenting the way shady PayPal-linked billionaires Peter Thiel and Pierre Omidyar have advanced the interests of the U.S. empire and facilitated imperial narrative control, or this one from 2016 on how the company blocks Palestinians from opening accounts while showing no such bias against illegal Israeli settlers. I asked Mint Press News executive director Minar Adli for comment on PayPal's move. Here is a response in full. PayPal banning myself and Mint Press is blatant censorship of dissenting journalists and outlets. For the past decade, Mint Press has been unapologetically working as a watchdog journalism outlet to expose the profiteers of the permanent war state from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan to apartheid Israel's occupation of Palestine and Saudi Arabia's genocidal war in Yemen to regime change operations in Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela where U.S. weapons have flooded these nations to plunge them into devastating civil wars. In the era of a declining U.S. empire, censorship has become the last resort of an unpopular regime and its forever wars to make the truth disappear and critical thinking all but dead. With the war in Ukraine raging on, we've entered wartime and big tech giants including PayPal are working hand-in-hand with the new Cold War architects themselves to sanction dissenting journalists. If you read the board of any of these tech giants from Google, Twitter, Facebook and PayPal, they read like a rogue's gallery of warmongers and their agenda is clear. To control the free flow of information and target the bank accounts of anyone who dares question the official narrative of the Pentagon or State Department. It is outrageous to be told that tech giants, which are run by those who directly profit from the new Cold War, including the crisis in Ukraine, could limit any journalist's ability to fund their work. Can you imagine if this was the norm in Russia, China or Iran? Our media would be screaming about free speech and First Amendment rights. Yeah, when we do it, it's okay because it's under the guise of fighting Russian propaganda. We are living in an intellectual no-fly zone where online censorship of dissenting journalism has become the new norm. The US sanctions regime that is trying to starve Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Iran and over 25% of the world's population is now targeting its own citizens with maximum pressure campaigns. So we are forced to tow the official government line in order to survive as a journalist in alternative media today. No matter the war waged against us, we refuse to be backed into a corner and bullied by tech giants who have a deep relationship with weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and to work hand in hand with NATO that profit off the blood of millions around the world. The only way forward is for people to unite on a broader front of non-partisanship and fund our own media because there are more of us than there are of them." PayPal has also banned Caleb Moppen, an American speaker and journalist whose work has already seen his personal Twitter account branded Russia State-affiliated Media by the US State-affiliated Platform. Why should something as basic as cash transactions be subject to political censorship? said Moppen when asked for comment. The economic war on independent countries is turning into a war on free speech. Writers and journalists must be able to eat. Indeed, a very effective way to silence unauthorized media voices is to make it difficult for them to earn a living making their voices heard. Speaking from experience, I know for a fact that I couldn't put out a fraction of the content I put out if I was forced to work a 9-5 job in some office rather than having the freedom to put all my time and mental energy into this work thanks to the generous support of my readers. Cutting me off from that funding would be the same as censoring me directly because there's no way I could continue the kind of work I do. We are at a profoundly dangerous and frightening point in human history. The US proxy war against Russia and Ukraine is escalating by the day and the drums of war are beating ever louder against China over the Solomon Islands and Taiwan. If you think censorship is bad now, wait until this global power grab really gets going.


Welcome to the Endless Knot. So I've been sitting on an interesting linguistic fact about sea shanties for a few years, and now, suddenly, sea shanties are everywhere. There's been an explosion of interest in sea shanties, particularly one called Soon May the Wellerman Come, on TikTok. Actually, technically, Wellerman isn't exactly a sea shanty, as Adam Neely makes clear in a recent video. This fact is about sea shanties, and it's part of a larger story that I put out a video about a few months ago, the story of where the word and the instrument guitar came from, which ended with the particular importance of the guitar to rock and roll, and I have a follow-up video coming out later this year about the origin of rock and roll. And that's where sea shanties come in. The phrase rock and roll has been around much longer than rock and roll music itself. Rocking and rolling has been used since at least the 17th century to refer to the motion of a ship at sea, reflecting both the forward and backward rocking and side-to-side rolling motions. It was then picked up metaphorically with sexual connotations in, believe it or not, sea shanties. They were already using the phrase to refer to the ship's motion after all. So for instance, in the song Johnny Boker, is the line, Oh, do my Johnny Boker, Come rock and roll me over, do my Johnny Boker do, which, to my knowledge anyway, is the earliest connection between the phrase rock and roll and music. Sea shanties, by the way, are a type of work song, sung by the sailors as they do their work aboard ship. Work songs are a common phenomenon found in many cultures, times and contexts, as they help to regulate the rhythms of the labor and keep everyone in time. And the work songs sung by enslaved Africans on the plantations in the American South, along with being one of the possible influences on the development of sea shanties themselves, led to the blues and, eventually, to rock and roll. And this is why sea shanties, blues, and rock and roll, all often feature the call and response, which serve the functional role of regulating the rhythm by following the lead of the caller. The word shanty, by the way, first attested in 1856, long after the origin of the genre itself, though likely used for some time in sailor jargon before it was ever written down, probably comes from French chanté sing, the plural imperative of chanté to sing, from Latin cantare to sing, from the Proto-Indo-European root con to sing. Spellings with both the SH and CH are found, the CH reflecting the French spelling, and the SH reflecting the French pronunciation, though the SH may also reflect the influence of the other unrelated word shanty, meaning a crude hut, or perhaps even an attempt at making the word look less French. As for Johnny Boker, it exists in a number of different versions, including a fiddle folk song version that has nothing to do with the sea and has little in common with the sea shanty version. The sea shanty version is probably most popularly known from its use in the video game Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag. Originally, it seemed to have served the purpose of setting the time when pulling an anchor free from mud, which would make it a short drag shanty, appropriate for quick jobs that required a strong heave, as opposed to a howlered shanty for more prolonged work. Who Johnny Boker might be is unknown, but one suggestion is that the name is connected with an obscure 19th century British parlor song called Johnny Boker. So sea shanties and rock and roll share some characteristics because they share some history. And to highlight this, I now present to you my own version of the first rock and roll song, Johnny Boker.